HTC on Monday reported that the company’s fourth quarter earnings missed analysts’ estimates. While speaking on the vendor’s earnings call, HTC’s chief financial officer said that the manufacturer ”dropped the ball” with its 2011 devices, SlashGear reports. Winston Yung admitted that the company’s LTE handsets were too thick, offered insufficient battery life and that there was plenty of work to be done to improve both “design and components.” Products launched in the fourth quarter “are not selling as we expected,” Yung said. New phones are on the way, however, and HTC’s next-generation smartphones are expected to be revealed later this month. BGR exclusively reported this past November that HTC will unveil the Ville at Mobile World Congress along side the company’s quad-core flagship HTC Edge.

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Following earlier reports revealing an unannounced buttonless HTC smartphone due to be launched by Verizon Wireless, images of a second unnamed Android phone have been published. This new smartphone appears to be more in tune with HTC’s current higher-end models, suggesting that it may launch as a flagship device. The device was spied on a commuter train in Taipei and details are extremely scarce. The smartphone runs Android, as evidenced by the four touch-sensitive buttons beneath the display and the visible on-screen menu bar, and it appears to have a front-facing camera for video chat. Beyond that, the phone is a mystery. Hit the jump for two more images of the unnamed handset.

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Well what do we have here? According to the gang over at Engadget, you are looking at none-other than the LG “Star”; LG’s upcoming, flagship, Android handset. What makes this DROID Incredible look-alike a flagship device you ask? Purportedly, the unreleased set will sport a dual-core, Tegra 2 processor along with a 4-inch screen, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera with flash and full 1080p video-recording, front-facing camera of an unknown pixel-count, microSD card slot, and 1500 mAh battery.

Now, we know what you’re thinking: “I hope LG doesn’t muck-up this handset with UI enhancements.” You’ll be happy to know that Engadget’s source mentions that the version of Android that runs on this bad boy is “nearly untouched.” Joy.

The device is pegged for release in early 2012 2011 in unknown regions on unknown carriers, but seeing as how LG has yet to make a big splash in the U.S. smartphone market… we’d say this would be a great way to start!

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Hey there Nokia lovers, we’ve got some good news for you! It looks like the company’s newest flagship device, the N8, is now available for pre-order via store.nokia.com. The N8 will retail for $549 contract free and its availability is listed as the “end of September 2010.” Anyone out there enticed by the 12 megapixel camera and full touch-screen format going to pre-order one?

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We know many of you are close to dying and holding your breath for the awesome Nokia flagship device, the Maemo-packing N900. It was probably a big tease when we told you guys it was going to hit U.S. distribution centers on September 27, but for some untold reason sales planned for October have been delayed and it will go on sale in November. In just days T-Mobile will be making its Even More and Even More Plus plans available, and the N900 will totally support the network’s 3G, and several of our readers are waiting to jump on this handset/carrier combo. Just be prepared to fork over somewhere in the neighborhood of $650 – $700 for the device itself and you’ll be good to go. You’ve waited this long, what’s another week or two?

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A little over a month ago, a fearless (or stupid) Vodafone forum moderator got excited and blabbed about two unannounced handsets that would eventually be making their way to Voda — the BlackBerry Storm 2 and the Nokia N97 Mini. The former has been seen grazing in the wild many times already but the latter has managed to elude the digirazzi… Until now, that is. Behold, the Nokia N97 Mini. Maybe. While the authenticity of these first live N97 Mini shots has yet to be confirmed, they do depict what we would imagine the handset to be — a smaller N97. Of note, the phone pictured has a cluster of four arrow keys at the right end of the keypad in place of the d-pad found on the left of the N97. Also, for those who enjoy dropping a space between words with their left thumb from time to time, the space bar is still off to the right of the pad (though slightly closer to the center this time) and it’s still tiny. Whether or not this turns out to be the actual device, we can only hope the N97 Mini hits the US with a slightly more realistic price tag since the odds of a carrier snagging it aren’t great. Hit the jump for a shot of the back.

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Apparently Nokia’s online sale last week was pretty effective because the Finnish manufacturer has decided to give it another go. This time around the sale is good at both Nokia Flagship Stores — in New York and Chicago — and online as well for those who don’t live near a shop. Here’s how this one shapes up:

• 5800            $280.00
• E63              $195.00
• E66              $275.00
• E71              $285.00
• E75              $380.00
• N79              $260.00
• N85              $330.00
• N95 8G         $355.00
• N96              $440.00

Not bad at all, Nokia. As you can see, some of the prices are even better than last week’s deal and all fall into range off the 30-50 percent off. So when can you get your Symbian fix on the cheap? Thursday, June 25th in New York City from 11am-4pm local time (Eastern) and in Chicago from 10am-3pm local time (Central). The sale will also be going down in the same time slot on nokiausa.com. Anyone eyeing some new kit?

We’ve got a lot of tips on this over the course of the morning but wanted to double check them to be safe. In short, we’re told that many, many new Nokia 5800 NAM owners are returning their units to the Flapship points of purchase, due to an issue with the handset not properly connecting to the internet. Now, our unit got 3G/3.5G signal fine in NYC over AT&T’s network, but we’re told many other units don’t pick up signal at all in a lot of locations. Literally another Nokia next to it will have 5 bars and the 5800 won’t have any. And yes, they’ve all confirmed they have NAM units and the boxes say “850MHz/1900MHz UMTS”. I’d turn my unit on again to check this out but it’s honestly not worth it. Stay in the box, 5800. You’re at peace.

Thanks, to everyone that hit us up!

Remember that whole Nokia flagship POS issue? Well, it looks like they’ve finally cleared that up. Ever since around 7PM ET they started selling the Nokia 5800 NAM edition handsets. What, you didn’t expect us to bum rush the store and purchase one already? We’ve taken some pictures of the phone for you, and here’s some quick impressions on what we think of it:

UPDATE: Added a short video after the break!

When you first pick up the NokYA, you’ll immediately notice that it’s light as hell. You might even have to check to make sure the battery is in — yeah, that light. Once you turn it on and get it to use it, however, the handset feels perfectly balanced. Many of you are wondering about the resistive touch screen (those of you who haven’t played with the Euro variant, we suppose), and to cut this short, it’s pretty bad. You don’t get a lot of feedback from the screen yet light touches are not accepted. That puts you in an awkward position — do soft, or too firm? We’re not sure, but you might want to call up SelectComfort about that, Nokia.

As far as S60 Fifth Edition goes, it’s cool. The larger UI elements make navigating pretty simple, and look, at the end of the day this is your tried and true Nokia handset. Great phone, great camera, music, web, texts and email. There’s no really scrolling or flicking through things, and that makes navigating really difficult in the limited time we’ve used it so far. We’re just not sure people will lining up to snatch one up with all the other options out there. Full review coming soon, but hey, the party is in the gallery, not here!

P.S. The battery used in here is 1320mAh, not 1500mAh as incorrectly reported elsewhere before — sorry!

Click on over to our Nokia 5800 XpressMusic unboxing gallery!

We mentioned it a few days ago and rumors were true, something big has come from the Finnish mobile manufacturer. Nokia has just announced in Barcelona, Spain during Nokia World ’08 that it will be launching the N97. This feature-packed phone is guaranteed to please Nokia fans and general phone geeks alike. Apparently, product managers are calling this the “Facebook Phone,” and while it is a little silly, the name doesn’t just come from nowhere. The device is geared toward social networking and multimedia but it doesn’t seem like the business user has been left out, either. Here are some specs to get your appetite going:

• 3.5″, 640 x 360 resistive touch screen (No! Why not capacitive?! Fail.)
• QWERTY keyboard
• Tri-band HSDPA 3G
• 802.11 b/g WiFi
• A-GPS and Stand-alone GPS for directions and geo-tagging
• 32GB Built-In Memory
• microSD expansion support for ADDITIONAL 16GB
• 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• Flash Lite 3.0 support and Flash Video in web browser
• Music player up to 36 hours playback time
• Share and Ovi services support

Holy cow, this phone is loaded! Is there anything else you can ask for? 30 frames-per-second video and tons of on-board storage! It has 3G, WiFi, a touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard and a fully customizable home screen. We’re not going to call this an iPhone killer just yet, but Apple has some serious competition. The biggest feature for a lot of you will be Flash support and Flash video – bonus! This is going to be a killer phone for sure. The N97 will be released in the first half of 2009 and will go for €550, or approximately $695 – maybe. Hit the jump for more images and a video.

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