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Apple began the week by announcing there will be a delay in delivering the iPhone 4 in white, where HTC also made public they will be dropping the AMOLED screens in favour of the Super LCD displays instead. A couple of new handsets went on sale this week, these were the Acer Android Stream phone and Nokia’s new smartphone the C6 and a trio of phones arrived on Three.

Orange made public this week an apology from HTC over the delay in rolling out the Hero Android update, where RIM and the American mobile network AT&T have scheduled a press event surrounding a new handset launch and finally, the iPhone 4 came to Three and T-mobile.

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Apple was in the news a few times this week, in one way or another surrounding delays, arrivals and being publically mocked by another mobile phone manufacturer.

The iPhone 4 maker started off the weeks’ news by announcing there’s a delay in bringing the white version of their latest phone to market, despite claiming at their recent press conference it will be available in July.

This statement comes after a month of waiting for the white iPhone 4 to arrive, with many supposedly holding out for that very model.

The announcement by Apple states: “White models of Apple’s new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year.”

Rumours surrounding the delay are that the mass production of the cases or iPhone 4 bumpers has taken precedence, which would make perfect sense - as 3 million customers need them to be able to make and receive phone calls.

Midweek, two mobile phone networks let slip they will be selling the iPhone 4 as of Friday where both T-Mobile and Three made their announcements over twitter

The two networks unveiled the news in a very low key way, whilst also showing the they have embraced social media.

T-Mobile announced and confirmed the arrival of the new Apple mobile in the twitter message ” #iPhone 4 launching on T-Mobile on Friday July 30th. Official pricing announcement expected imminently “.

Mobile phone network Three was more subtle, by responding to a Tweet from a customer with the message ” iPhone 4 will be on sale in our stores from Friday!! ” .

Three has the most competitive costing model of the larger networks, where they undercut most deals with a cost of just £99 on a £30 a month tariff.

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At the start of the week, Acer made public their Android Stream handset will arrive exclusively with on-line phone reseller eXpansys.

Acer’s first high-end Android mobile tips up on August the 9th SIM free and unlocked for £399, in much the same way as Motorola’s Milestone Google OS driven phone also went on sale in the past for an exclusive period of time.

Acer’s Stream arrives running Android 2.1 with their own customised UI, running from a 3.7-inch AMOLED WVGA touch screen driven by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor where the 5 megapixel camera is capable of 720p HD video recording - that can be displayed through its mini-HDMI socket.

Also early on in the week, Nokia’s new C6 handset appeared for sale on-line from their own retail store.

Their C6 Qwerty based keyboard mobile phone arrived for £289 SIM free and unlocked, although contracts are available with O2 and Vodafone.

Nokia’s latest mobile has a similar look to their flagship N97, along with its cut down version of the N97 Mini. The C6 tips up with a 3.2-inch 640×360 resistive touch screen, along with a slide-out physical Qwerty keyboard and a 5 megapixel camera whilst running their own Symbian S60 OS.

C6’s Qwerty keyboard slides out from under the screen, unlike their previous N97 handset whose keyboard slid opened in an angular fixed position when exposed.

At the end of the week Three announced a Trio of new handsets on their One Plan, which were the Sony Ericsson Zylo, Nokia E63 and Nokia 5230.

The One Plan is a £25 a month tariff, which offers 2,000 minutes to any network, a further 5,000 minutes to any other Three mobile phone numbers, 5,000 texts and 1GB data allowance - which is one of the most competitive deals around today.

The Sony Ericsson Zylo is their recent 2.6-inch screen Walkman phone, with a slide out T9 keypad along with a 3.2 megapixel camera and memory that can be expanded to 16GB from a microSD card.

Nokia’s E63 builds on the success of the E71 BlackBerry-esque handset, with a large Qwerty keyboard, which is accompanied by a 2.4-inch display where there’s also free 6 months Spotify premium account access.

The Nokia 5230 is their large touch screen music orientated mobile phone, which runs their Symbian platform and has access to the Ovi store and is also accompanied by free 6 months access to premium Spotify account
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HTC was also in the news this week, with an update to the Hero and an announcement they will be changing their screens in the future.

The mobile phone manufacture made public they will be dropping AMOLED, whilst replacing them with Super LCD displays in future models and bringing it into current ranges such as the HTC Desires and future Nexus Ones.

AMOLED displays that are currently within the more recent HTC handsets are manufactured by Samsung where rumour has it the demand is high and the supplies are running low, where the AMOLED screens are also plagued with poor visibility in sunlight.

The Super LCD (SLCD) displays are manufactured by Sony, where they are on a similar par to the AMOLED screens only LCD doesn’t traditionally suffer from the same sunlight-washout issues.Super LCD’s will improve on battery life, as they don’t have the same drain on power resources as the AMOLED currently do in the HTC Desire.

This new display technology is due to appear in handsets arriving on the shelves later this year, within the new models in addition to the updating the current range of phones which will be unknown to the end user.

Orange made public mid-week an apology from HTC over the massive delay to Android 2.1 arriving on their HTC Hero, where Éclair has been on the American mobile phone network Sprint since mid-May.

The HTC Sense overlay to Android might be partly responsible for the delay, as that overlay is deeply interwoven around the platform itself where Orange in addition has their own software installed on top of Android too.

The statement from HTC mentions: “We apologise for the delay in Orange Hero customers receiving their Éclair update. Testing the update across European markets took longer than anticipated. However, we hope to receive final approval by the end of the week and Orange handsets should start updating from next week.”
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Research In Motion and the American mobile phone network AT&T jointly sent out an invite towards the end of the week, to an event being held in New York.

It’s rumoured the BlackBerry slider 9800 or even the Curve 9300 will be announced on August the 3rd.

The BlackBerry 9800 has been leaked for some months now, with images and video cropping up on the Internet showing the large Storm sized touch screen being slid down vertically - to expose a keyboard, which almost has the appearance of the newest Bold 9700.

The other phone that might be unveiled could be their 9300 handset, which also has seen leaked images and video appearing online of late only with higher frequency. This handset appears to be a cross between their low budget BlackBerry Curve 9250 model from last year, with the size and feel of their BlackBerry Curve 8900 from a few years back.

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And finally, Motorola mocked Apple this week in adverts that appeared in The New York Times newspaper and also on their own website.

Moto raised the issues that ‘No Jacket’ is required for using their own handsets, as it doesn’t need a case to work properly where just holding their latest Driod X mobile in a certain way doesn’t result in a loss of signal.

Motorola placed a large advert in the New York Times newspaper that mocks Apple, where they really bring to attention the problems over the iPhone 4’s reception faults and in a very not so subtle or understated way.

The advert starts with the very large letters ‘No Jacket Required’, stamping home in the largest possible way their message that a case isn’t needed. The ad then draws attention to the features of the Droid X, whilst highlighting and pointing out around the sides of the phone how it betters the iPhone 4 - in what can only be described as an attack ad of the highest order.

It is the statement at the bottom that really digs in knife, and then turns it.

“At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn’t have to dress up their phone for it to work properly”

“That’s why the Driod X comes with a dual antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like to make a crystal clear call without a bulky phone jacket”

“For us it’s just one of those things that comes as a given when you’ve been making mobile phones for over 30 years”

All of which is a great and funny way to sell your upcoming phone we believe at One Mobile Ring, whilst at the same time highlighting the flaws of others and possibly having to pay rights to Phil Collins along the way.