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Well, Apple didn’t release it’s much-rumoured iPhone last week, but rather than quash the rumours, the lack of an announcement seems to have stoked them even more (should I be surprised at this?)

The latest rumours doing the rounds come from ThinkSecret, who claim that a “source with direct connections to the company’s plans” has told them that the iPhone will be coming in 2007 (my reliable source told me that too – he’s from the ministry of the bleedin’ obvious!).

Well, maybe not – but Nokia have announced that they will be giving their mobile phones proper names from 2007. So while we may not see the Nokia Brian, Nokia Britney, or my personal favourite, the Nokia Nigel any time soon, we should at least see a new naming scheme that will make Nokia phones easier to remember.

Pantech have announced the new Pantech IM-U130, a mobile phone with 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth and 512MB of internal memory. Aside from all that, though, is the looks of this Korean mobile phone.

Silver, slim, large screen, and really sleek and clean looks all round, the Pantech I-U130 looks great. Destined only for Korea at the moment, though, with no news on its availability in other markets.

More pictures of the Pantech IM-U130 mobile phone after the jump.

Nokia will be releasing new N-Gage phones early in 2007. The news leaked out from CTIA Wireless 2006 in Los Angeles, courtesy of CrunchGear.

Nokia announced they were going to integrate their N-Gage mobile gaming technology into future mobile phones back in February. True to their word, the new technology is taking shape, as the video (below) shows. The new N-Gage technology will obviously feature advanced 3D graphics, as well as online gaming, public chat, and the ability to download new games through an online marketplace.

More details and the video of Nokia’s new N-Gage gaming technology after the jump.

Pantech, one of Korea’s mobile phone companies that also ships its phones overseas, has revealed a few concept phones that show how its future phones might look.

Interestingly, the Korean mobile phone firms recruit top students to come up with designs for future phones in dedicated design teams sponsored by the companies. Pantech, for example, provides students with office space and cash to come up with new designs, some of which may actually be put into production. The best students also get the chance to work for the company once they’ve graduated.

Good news for UK telly addicts: BBC One, ITV1 and E4 programmes will be broadcast to mobile TV phones by BT’s new BT Movio service, and all for just £5 a month.

The service will be broadcast via the DAB digital radio network, which, unlike similar 3G mobile TV services, is a broadcast technology, meaning there’s no limit to the number of devices accessing the TV programmes. DAB operates in a similar way to your TV signal in that it’s broadcast via a transmitter, and thus doesn’t use any of the mobile network’s precious bandwidth.

In contrast, 3G is limited by the available bandwdith, as it requires streaming the video as data over the existing 3G network.

Apple have taken out a patent on a new handheld device that does something, and which contains the words ‘mobile phone.’ This naturally has led to feverish speculation along the lines of “oooh, it must be the new iPhone,” but when you look closer at what exactly Apple has patented, it’s nothing more than a user interface for a handheld device – any handheld device.

Yet more delicious rumours, this time in the shape of new Sony Ericsson WEGA phones that may be coming in the next year or so. Despite mobile TV being all the rage amongst the top mobile manufacturers, Sony Ericsson have been slow to announce their plans, let alone release a mobile TV handset.

Rumours have filtered out that Sony may be working on a new Playstation mobile phone. The rumours seem to suggest that the device, should it exist, might come in the form either of mobile-phone functionality added to the PSP, or adding Playstation-branded content to a beefed up game-playing Sony Ericsson phone.

Yet more rumours of the forthcoming massively-overhyped Apple iPhone are doing the rounds, this time courtesy of AppleInsider, who report on a research note given by American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu. According to Wu, Apple is believed to be “near completion” of the iPhone, which could apparently be announced as early as next week.