You don't see terribly many low-cost horizontal slider dumbphones from Samsung, and that's left the market wide open for LG with its Rumor and Scoop -- until now, that is. Meet the Messager, a candybar whose sole reason for being is making your texting life a little easier thanks to a QWERTY keyboard that slides out to the side. The 1xRTT data (yipes!) and 1.3-megapixel sensor aren't going to bake any noodles, but at $199 with no contract whatsoever, there's not a lot of room for bellyaching, especially when you throw in A2DP and a microSD slot. Just a hint, though, Samsung: any phone + pretty colors = $$$. Seriously.

Some phones just don't have to be cute; not even remotely so. They're too busy getting slung with mud, drenched with water, and baked in the sun to really put a priority on good looks -- and if any class of handsets can really get away with that sort of philosophy, it'd have to be Motorola's iDEN workhorses. The lineup has historically been a favorite of construction crews whose phones have a tendency to take a constant beating, and this should be another hot seller in that vein (for as long as iDEN lasts, anyway): meet the i365, a push-to-talk candybar without a single pretty bone in its entire body. It manages to pack both Bluetooth and GPS, so it's not a total slouch in the feature department -- but rest assured, it dispenses of luxuries like a camera, an intenna, or an expansive display. No word on when it'll launch or where it'll be available, but odds are good you'll never hear about it again unless your boss sets one on your desk.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Want an unattractive candybar? Use Vodafone? Can you wait a little while? If you've answered yes to all three of those questions, look no further than the 724FM, a Huawei-sourced piece that has just crossed the FCC's wires on its way to one or more of the megacarrier's networks around the world. There's no indication on when we might see the value-priced (or so we hope) phone come to market, but with a tri-band EDGE radio, Bluetooth, microSD slot, 2 megapixel camera, and a design that only a mother could love, we don't think there's a ton of anxious anticipation building out there.

[Via Mobil.cz]

Yippee, it's T700 day at Sony. First they launched the DSC-T700 digicam, now the T700 cellphone. The T700 candybar is mostly phone though with a smattering of camera just for kicks. We're talking quad-band GSM and UMTS/HSDPA 2100 with 4.5-hours of 3G talk and a 3.2 megapixel camera with cell-id geotagging and photo light. It measures just 10-mm thin with Bluetooth A2DP, stereo speakers, 2-inch TFT LCD, and 512MB of Memory Stick Micro (M2) storage tossed in the box. Available in "select markets" in Q4 for what's expected to be a middling price tag.

No, no -- Sammy wouldn't dare dub this the Mullet, although we have a sneaking suspicion it would sell quite well here in the south if such a bold decision were made. Nevertheless, the i7110c (that's more like it, no?) has just been revealed, and while a great deal of mystery still surrounds it, we are told that it will likely boast a QVGA display, a navigational cube that acts as a cursor controller, 5-megapixel camera (with flash), microSD expansion slot, multimedia player, Bluetooth and an FM tuner. We must say, we're strangely attracted to the harmonious mix of business-like design cues and consumer-friendly attributes, though it would be nice if Samsung came on out and made this thing official.

Moving just a tad downmarket from the mighty morphin' E8, Moto has rolled out three new members of its music-centric ROKR series today: the EM25 slider, EM28 flip, and EM30 candybar. The EM30 probably feels the most familiar, aping the E8's design language but trashing the touch-sensitive wheel for a plain ol' d-pad. It does, however, carry over the E8's so-called ModeShift morphing keypad and features an FM radio with RDS, 3.5mm headphone jack, and Windows Media compatibility. The EM28 brings the same style to a clamshell, while the EM25 reps the slider form factor. We're seeing some shots of a T-Mobile branded EM30 in here, too, so it looks like the carrier wants something to slot in right below the E8 in its Moto lineup -- a wise move, considering the E8's considerable expense. Look for the EM30 to launch first in Taiwan (sorry, T-Mob) followed by other markets later in the quarter, while the EM25 and EM28 should launch on a more global scale in the coming weeks.

Cellpassion has unearthed a new candybar from Motorola that it claims will find shelter on "a couple" US carriers -- and judging from the "MetroPCS" front and center on the display, we'd tend to agree. The so-called VE240 really isn't much to look at, but it obviously has a music slant and reminds us a bit of the W388 we first saw not long ago with an added bar of bright orange across the front for, oh... excitement and style, we guess? If the MetroPCS bit checks out, it'll be a CDMA handset, so put away those newfangled SIM cards, GSM fanboys and girls.

Update: phoneArena has now scored some high-res shots of the phone and says that it'll be available in Cricket in addition to MetroPCS.

So, we figure one of two things has happened here: either the Samsung Access has been a solid seller for AT&T, leading the carrier to request a near-clone from competitor LG -- or LG saw the Access and felt compelled to provide a clone of its own volition. Either way, the CB630 Invision is getting to the AT&T Mobile TV fight a little late, because we're actually hearing that the Access is already scheduled for an official sunset (not Sunset) on August 24, along with the Sony Ericsson Z750, Samsung SLM, and the Mobile TV-less version of the LG Vu, the CU915. We're also hearing that it'll launch on August 13 for $99.99 on contract with a $50 rebate, so getcha popcorn ready, people.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Looks just a little less glamorous when it's chilling in some clean-room lab somewhere, doesn't it? Tag Heuer's mighty Meridiist, the luxury set designed to compete with the Vertus and Mobiados of the world, has just navigated its way through the FCC's bureaucracy on the wings of French ODM ModeLabs complete with a posting of the user's manual. And let's be honest, at well over five grand, an online user's manual is about as close as most of us are ever going to get to this thing.

As boring (or in the case of the W6, difficult) as they may be to look at, we've got to hand it to Motorola -- they've managed to pack in a nice mix of interesting features into the latest round of wallet-friendly W-series phones. Starting at the bottom, the W231 candybar has an FM radio with RDS and recording capability, media player, microSD slot, "streamlined interface" for text messaging (your guess is as good as ours), and Moto's CrystalTalk noise reduction circuitry. The W388 and W396 -- a candybar and flip, respectively -- are dead ringers for one another on the spec sheet, with both offering VGA cams and Windows Media compatibility in addition to the W231's decent list of capabilities. Our personal favorite, though, has to be the W6 (pictured), which has a few really unique features: a host of built-in training software (and A2DP doesn't hurt either) for making the phone particularly useful on the jogging circuit, the ability to export recorded data up to your PC in Excel format, and the tendency to burn your retinas with one of the loudest, most painful shades of yellow we've ever seen on a phone.

[Via Celularis, thanks Mariano]

Read - Motorola W6
Read - Motorola W231, W388, and W396

Frequent web browsers, email checkers, and game players need not apply for Samsung's latest, the rather simple SGH-M150. The dual-band candybar does manage to pack Bluetooth and an integrated FM radio, but you're certainly not going to find anything approximating 3G here -- and the 160 x 128 display and VGA cam aren't exactly barn-burners, either. It'll be available in German starting next month in a selection of five colors with other markets coming online shortly thereafter.

Like virtually all other Sony Ericsson hardware (sorry, Sony Ericsson, but it's true), the Remi is getting a full pictorial ahead of a presumed official announcement in the coming weeks or months. Pegged as a spiritual successor to the wildly popular T610 by fans, Remi (whose real model number hasn't been deduced yet) should end up essentially being a W890 in slightly tamer clothing. Thin, fast, and pretty -- sounds about right for a T610 descendent, assuming the boys and girls in London can deliver.

[Via Sony Ericsson Blog]

The rumor mill promised us that the Motorola W388 would be nothing worth writing home about, and we've got to hand it to the mill -- it was spot-on this time around. Mobil.cz appears to have scored the first shot we've seen of the new low-end candybar, and while the design's positively retro, the microSD slot is still a notable inclusion for such a cheap (or cheap-looking, anyway) device. Music gets some special attention, thanks to a shiny d-pad with embossed music controls, a dedicated player button, and the inclusion (seemingly) of in-ear buds. A VGA camera rounds out the hearty feast of mediocrity. No date or price are given, but you know what they say -- if you have to ask, well, odds are you can probably still afford it.

If you were thinking to yourself, "gee whiz, if only Sony Ericsson had made a Walkman version of the S302," well, your life is now complete. The sporty, hipper version of the S302 Snapshot is predictably hot-rodded up, though the changes seem to be strictly visual -- from a guts perspective, the W302 (codenamed "Feng," it seems) should be a dead ringer for its recently announced cousin. Sony Ericsson Blog claims we can expect to see it announced on July 22 alongside the W595 and W902, with a release in October.