An image of HTC’s upcoming smartphone code-named “Ville” has leaked online, revealing a sleek design to match the phone’s remarkably thin frame. Earlier this month, BGR exclusively reported preliminary details on the HTC Ville, which is expected to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress in February ahead of an April launch. Now, Pocketnow.com has published the first image of the smartphone, which appears to resemble a thinner HTC Sensation. The HTC Ville is expected to feature an 8-millimeter thick case containing a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, an 8-megapixel camera, HSPA+, a 1,650 mAh battery and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with the HTC Sense 4.0 UI.

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Nokia may be poised to unveil at least two new Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) devices during its Nokia World conference next week. Pocketnow spilled an image of the Nokia “Sabre” on Thursday, which reportedly packs a 1.4GHz processor, a 3.5-inch WVGA display, a 5-megapixel camera and 1GB of storage. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said we can expect to see “a bunch” of Windows Phone handsets from Nokia during Nokia World, which kicks off on October 26th. We have already published plenty of purported details on the Nokia 800, also known as the Sea Ray, but perhaps Nokia still has a few surprises up its sleeve. The good news is we have just under a week until Nokia makes it all official. 

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Earlier reports of a redesigned iPhone 5 with a larger display and an elongated home button gained momentum on Wednesday when a new iPhone icon was discovered by 9to5 Mac. The icon was found within official Apple software — the latest Photo Stream beta for developers — and it clearly shows a phone that deviates sharply from the current iPhone 4. The display appears to encompass more of the phones face and the home button is most certainly not round, as it has been on each of the previous four iPhone models. This is just an icon we’re looking at, of course, but it could be a safe bet that Apple’s forthcoming fifth-generation iPhone will resemble the design seen above. A closeup of the iPhone 5 icon follows below.

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A new image of what is claimed to be an actual iPhone 5 handset emerged today, perhaps giving us our first look at Apple’s fifth-generation smartphone. Posted by MacRumors forum member guigsh, the image shows a slender smartphone that looks even thinner than Apple’s current iPhone 4 model, jibing with reports that the next-generation iPhone could be just 7mm thick. “Picture taken yesterday in the office of a French operator. Believe it or not,” the forum member said. He continued in a separate post, “We were able to see it only 2 minutes, pictures forbidden of course, so, we did our best.” As far as details about the device itself are concerned, guigsh added, “The only thing I can tell you, is that my iPhone 4 looks really slow now.” Of note, the image shows a device that looks strikingly similar to the Chinese counterfeit “iPhone 5″ we saw in images and a video recently, but it looks much more refined. This could mean that the Chinese clone pictured earlier was indeed based on Apple’s actual design as BGR and others speculated, or it could mean that this is just another fake from the same manufacturer.

UPDATE: The image is said to be fake, first posted here by a Twitter user. Thanks, Ron.

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RIM is currently prepping two new non-touchscreen additions to its Curve line this year, codenamed the Apollo (GSM) and Sedona (CDMA). On top of that, the company is said to be working on a full touchscreen Curve, appropriately dubbed the Curve Touch. Now, to confuse matters even further, BlackBerry enthusiast blog N4BB reveals an image of what it purports to be the BlackBerry Orlando — which is apparently just like the Apollo and Sedona, but with the addition of a touchscreen. No further details are available, which makes an unveiling of the Orlando in Orlando next month unlikely. Don’t fret though, BlackBerry fans, as we’re sure RIM will have a few other smartphones to show off at BlackBerry World.

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Blog PocketNow has acquired an image of what is presumed to be AT&T’s variant of the LG Optimus One. The popular, mid-level device — which sports a 3.2-inch touchscreen display, 800MHz processor, and largely unmolested version of Android 2.2. — is available on a half-dozen regional and national U.S. carriers. We would expect the device to be released under the moniker Optimus A — as is customary: Optimus + first letter of carrier name — but with AT&T, you never really know. If you read our report from earlier this morning, you’ll know that Android handsets costing under $150 are projected to be big business in 2011.

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The gang over at Engadget have acquired an image of a Verizon-branded, Windows Phone 7 handset — the HTC Trophy to be exact — in the wild. The site’s tipster notes that the phone has indeed been injected with Microsoft’s “NoDo” software update, providing copy and paste functionality. Rumors peg the Trophy for a late March release on Big Red and, if the aforementioned report is correct, you could be hubbing, copying, cutting, and pasting on VZW in the next thirty days.

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Pink might be the new black, but black is the new silver — at least, if Intel’s ad containing what appears to be a previously unseen refreshed MacBook Pro model ends up being accurate. 9 to 5 Mac drew attention to the ad this morning, which depicts a slim black MacBook Pro unlike anything currently available from Apple. The ad is for Intel’s new Core i5 processor, and this isn’t the first time Intel has let details of an unreleased Mac slip in one of its advertisements — the chip giant also ran ads discussing an unreleased MacBook Pro with a Core i5 processor in late January. Apple is expected to begin shipping new versions of its MacBook Pro laptop computer line in early March, though the company has not yet made any announcement regarding the refreshed models.

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Just ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC), blog Phandroid has acquired and image of what appears to be the LG Optimus 3D. The new handset will purportedly be a 4+ inch, dual-core, Android handset with a glasses-free 3D display. The report states that the Optiums 3D will use multi-channel RAM and from the photograph we can see the presence of a front-facing camera. Not too shabby looking to be honest. LG has a press event scheduled for February 14th, where the company has said it will take the Optimus “into the new dimension.” Your friends at BGR will be at MWC to bring you all the latest and greatest happenings from your favorite smartphone vendors. Who’s ready for mobile devices that utilize the third dimension?Read

For those with a memory that stretches back far enough to remember a world before the introduction of Apple’s iPad, you may recall that Nokia had a go at tablets once before. Maybe the company was ahead of its time or maybe its Internet Tablets were anything but consumer-friendly and appealing — in either case, Nokia’s 770, N800 and N810 never managed to gain any real momentum with consumers. Now that the world has a serious case of tablet fever, however, you can rest assured that the Finnish phone maker will be having another go at it. The company has confirmed as much, but a purported new image that surfaced Sunday on a Russian forum gives us a glimpse of what may end up being Nokia’s first MeeGo tablet to hit production. We like what we’ve seen so far with MeeGo, so if Nokia and Intel can iron out the wrinkles and toss some unique features into the mix we can definitely see our favorite Finns faring a bit better this time around. Hit the jump for an over exposed version of the image above that shows a bit more detail.

[Via TabletNews]

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It isn’t all that often we get to report on mobile technology news broken by magazine Rolling Stone, which makes this news even more special. In a print ad touting HTC’s portfolio of 4G handsets, some of the usual suspects are depicted. Obviously, Sprint’s EVO 4G makes a cameo, T-Mobile’s G2 is depicted, and Verizon’s unannounced-but-well-documented Thunderbolt is sitting front and center. But one carrier is missing from our above list. AT&T. Slinking around the background is AT&T’s HTC Inspire 4G, which looks an awful lot like the European Desire HD — the same handset that was just spotted at the FCC with North American 3G bands. We know AT&T is working on an LTE network, but this handset appearance really is a shocker. Hopefully HTC and AT&T will show the Inspire a little love at this week’s CES conference. Any AT&T Android fanatics excited?!

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If you don’t have the talent and know-how to construct a visually appealing and improvised Facebook layout like that of French artist Alexandre Oudin, fear not. A new Facebook application dubbed Profile Maker will allow you to easily and painlessly emulate Monsieur Oudin’s thoughtful layouts. So if you’re low on creativity, but still want to impress your friends, give Profile Maker a shot. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

[Via All Facebook]

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HTC’s Incredible HD is starting to make the rounds which makes us think — fingers crossed — a release is right around the corner. The above image was sent in to Gizmodo and, as you can see from the status bar, there is a nice little 4G logo complete with an LTE distinction. Could this be the LTE handset Verizon plans to debut at CES?

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Sprint and Samsung shot us over a Galaxy Tab and, after several days of fiddling, we have our first impressions to report back. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is the first real contender to Apple’s iPad many would say, and while it’s too early for us to totally pit them head to head, there are many visible strengths and weaknesses of the Tab. Want to know what we thought of Samsung’s little, mean, iPad-combating machine? Buckle up and hit the jump!

Let’s get to the most obvious thing — size! Apple’s CEO — who will remain nameless — publicly stated that a 7-inch screen was too small for a tablet, and after using the Tab, we tend to agree. Just using the device for the last few days proved to be very difficult from a size perspective. Seven inches of display on a tablet, for us, feels pretty odd and makes using the device pretty uncomfortable. It’s a very weird in-between feeling; we can’t decide it feels like a smartphone that is too big or a tablet that is too small. We still can’t figure out the best way to use the keyboard in portrait mode. Hold it with both hands and try and thumb type? Hold the tablet in one hand and only use one hand to type? Use Swype?

The weight and feel of the tablet might throw you for a loop at first. Why? It’s actually a tad heavier than you’d imagine (though not too heavy at all). The plastic shell in the back of the device feels very inexpensive and makes the entire device feel a bit… hollow. Thus our conflicted feeling on whether the device felt heavy and expensive, or hollow and inexpensive. The white plastic back is extremely glossy, and while you can’t really see fingerprints much, the tablet feels overly slippery to us. Picture a very large white iPhone 3GS and you’ll get our drift.

Browsing the web with Flash on (enabled by default) proved to be a pretty frustrating experience. Scrolling was jittery, slow, and sometimes pages just wouldn’t even finish loading. However, once we changed the browser’s plug-ins setting to on demand (think Click2Flash), the browser popped to life. Pages loaded very quick, scrolling was almost fluid, and using multi-touch gestures to pinch zoom in and out worked like a charm. The browsing experience on the device is exactly where you want it to be.

As far as annoyances? When holding the device in the landscape orientation, one of our fingers covers the ambient light sensor and dims the display to the point that we can’t use the device. It’s borderline slippery to hold at times, the screen’s quality — while vibrant and vivid — is pretty poor resolution-wise, especially when compared to the displays on some of the latest Android smartphones. Plus, there is that size issue — we’re not sure we’d trade 3-inches of valuable screen real estate for something that’s slightly more portable, yet not really. We say that because there really isn’t a scenario where we think we’d carry the Samsung tablet over Apple’s tablet; speaking strictly from a size point of view. Both aren’t fitting in your pocket, both would fit in your laptop bag or backpack, and so on. We’ll reserve our final thoughts for our full review, in the meantime, make sure to hit the Galaxy Tab gallery for all the pretty photos, ok?

Blog WMPoweruser has just published several sketches of what the HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 device will look like. The schematic isn’t quite as good as an image, but you can use your imagination — and knowledge of HTC hardware — to fill in the blanks. The handset looks to have that familiar EVO form, with a 4.3-inch screen, dual-LED flash, and beveled back. There is an outline of  something on the lower-rear quarter of the device which could be a kickstand (although that is unconfirmed). Hopefully, as rumored, the operating system — and accompanying hardware — is on track for an October launch.

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