A little touch of handset mania sets in

There was a fair amount of handset news this week on our sister site Pocket Picks, and for the first time in ages it was spread across a decent array of different manufacturers, without Apple hogging the limelight.

The Motorola Z9 slid into view looking very sleek, very skinny and ultimately a worthy successor to the Z8. Hot on its heels was an unofficial photo of the fabled 8GB version of the Nokia N95, making early adopters of the iPhone and the existing N95 alike uneasy.

Following that was Samsung's new Olympic themed handset. Although adorned in riches, to label the gold plated P318+ as blingin' would be to do it a disservice, such is its sophisticated aesthetic and tastefully implemented brushed golden hues. Sustaining the sporting theme was the less classy (though no doubt equally collectable) Barcelona FC-themed Willcom Nine handset, which was in turn overshadowed by Toshiba's new Softbank handset, the 814T, which is the world's first titanium mobile.

Samsung claimed some more Pocket Picks space later in the week with the SGH-L760, a mobile blogging phone with an inbuilt YouTube upload feature. In contrast, taking the 'age before beauty' maxim to new heights was the uninspiring looking DoCoMo F883iES handset designed to be practical for Japan's more senior members of society.

It seems manufacturers have been waiting for the iPhone fuss to die down before releasing a range of hot looking future phones. First came the as yet unconfirmed upgraded LG KE850, rumoured to be strapped of its original Prada branding but boasting a greatly improved camera and a mobile modem. LG dropped jaws again (and cut Toshiba's time in the spotlight short) by also revealing a titanium housed version of its Shine handset.

Not to be outdone, the Softbank 815SH dropped soon after, abandoning the 814T's robustness, favouring instead the inclusion of 3G and a VGA LCD display. A further Softbank offering was developed with a helping hand from Sharp. Featuring a lovely big touchscreen and some nifty integrated mobile TV functionality, the 913SH stole our hearts at the end of the week, and left us pondering an emigration to Japan.

In other news, O2 was confirmed by The Times as being the official carrier for the iPhone in the UK. Meanwhile the folks behind Digg rolled out a compatible version of the site for Apple's new toy. Both Trillian Astra and BeeJive released impressive IM applications for the iPhone and some folks lucky enough to own an iPhone and a Mac computer got to fiddling with the new remote access application, Telekinesis. It seems that not everyone is so keen on the iPhone however, as the sadistic crew at Will It Blend gave the iPhone the smoothie treatment.

In music news, Omnifone got ever closer to a UK deal for its much hyped MusicStation service and Samsung took the wraps off of its new music download service MusicNet.

Finally, an Italian man demonstrated a sense of resourcefulness beyond all praise by writing a novel on his Nokia 6630. No matter how much mobile news we cover, that just makes us feel downright lazy.

Click 'Track It!' for another round up of mobile news next week.