Phone that helps you check your lipstick

Nokia demonstrated some future handsets at a press party in London on Thursday night. They included the 7380 "lipstick" phone. Long and thin, it has a mirror on one side (for checking your lipstick).

The phone – due out in the first quarter of 2006 - does not have a standard keypad. Instead, it has a kind of touch-sensitive circle, enabling the user to scroll through a choice of letters to compose a text message, or select other options.

A lower-end candy-bar-shaped phone in Gold, with a little macramé loop to hang on a belt, or leave to dangle, looked stylish and easy to use. There was also a 3 megapixel camera phone, the N80, and a black third-generation mobile (3G) phone with a Carl Zeiss lens that can take an hour of video footage. The 3250 video phone can swivel in new ways.

Some of the handsets had a rather masculine, squared off shape, and one slide-open N-series phone in highly-finished metal gave my finger a nasty pinch.

But a pre-Christmas phone with metallic finish and rounded corners that fits neatly into the palm of the hand, looked set to be a winner with women. Only the screen shows till you slide it up, when the keypad appears. It is available in girly pink, or black - for a more metrosexual (metropolitan heterosexual) appeal.

A "Blackberry killer" – the E61 - phone with a very high resolution screen will offer a range of office applications (in addition to email). The office applications looked more attractive to use than on a Blackberry, partly because of the clarity of the screen and icons.

The keyboard seemed a bit harder to type on, but acceptable. The real test will be whether Nokia's mobile email device can equal the Blackberry's two main advantages - very long battery life and very easy-to-use email - when it comes on to the market around May 2006.
http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,18062,00.html
http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,76565,00.html