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According to the Wall Street Journal, Google will be announcing its plans for its long-rumoured Google gPhone in just two weeks’ time. In contrast to Apple, with its locked iPhone, Google is going totally open – Google will provide a reference model for the phone that any manufacturer can build, and the phone’s entire software will be open, including the Operating System itself, enabling anyone to develop any type of software for the device.

Even more interestingly, TechCrunch have been tipped of that Google will also be announcing its strategy for a huge new social network platform that will take on Facebook. Looking at the two rumours, and their timing, it seems that Google’s mobile plans might be a lot bigger than many people had realised.

Find out how big after the jump.

Sony Ericsson have given us all a sneak peak of its latest UIQ user interface, which will come to Sony Ericsson phones in 2008. Unsurprisingly, the new interface shares a certain, er, similarity with Apple’s iPhone. In fact, with a squint, it’s hard to tell the two apart!

All this comes on the back of Nokia’s latest user interface update for its S60 smartphones, the S60 Touch, which it announced a couple of weeks ago. The Touch also offers a similar user experience to the iPhone.

Motorola have announced their latest financial Sales and Earnings figures for the third quarter of 2007 – and they ain’t pretty. Although the company as a whole recorded sales of $8.8 billion and a positive operating cash flow of $342 million, it’s mobile phone division is hitting crisis levels, with sales having dropped 36 percent compared to the third quarter 2006, which itself wasn’t a particularly good quarter.

In all, Motorola’s Mobile Devices unit lost $138 million in that quarter alone, showing that its new handsets just aren’t selling at anywhere near the level they need to in order for the company to sustain itself in the cut-throat mobile phone world.

Nokia is the world’s number one handset manufacturer, and has kept that position for years. Its N-Series smartphones cram in a breathtaking array of technology, and it’s now branching out into GPS Sat-Nav phones, location-based services and a wide range of innovative mobile software solutions that combine the best of mobile devices and Web 2.0.

But what does it take for a company to retain the number one position in one of the world’s most competitive markets? The answer is an army of Research and Development engineers and a tonne of cash. Nearly a third of Nokia’s total workforce is dedicated to R&D: a staggering 21,453 people. More amazing still is the amount Nokia spends on R&D – an almost unbelievable 3.9 billion Euros a year.

The payoff is huge, though. 3.9 billion Euros is an enormous figure, but it’s not even ten percent of Nokia’s net sales. With figures like that, it’s hard to see anyone toppling the company any time soon.

[Source: Nokia Research Center]

Nokia has been showing off some of the R&D it does at its Nokia Research Centre at its The Way We Live Next show in Finland. One of the most amazing services it was keen to talk about was its Point&Find solution, which literally links the real world to the virtual world via your camera phone.

The concept is simple. Wherever you are in the real world, you’ll see objects that you’ll want more information about, such as film posters, books, statues, restaurants, etc. You might want more details of a film being advertised on a poster, for example, or find out why a statue was created, or even how good a restaurant’s food is.

Nokia’s Point&Find solution lets you find this out with your camera phone instantly.

See how after the jump.

Samsung have announced the new Samsung i450 music phone.

I have to say, Samsung really seem to have got their act together lately. their new interface looks the biz, and the features on their latest phones are all high quality.

Rather than coming out with endless “world’s most amazing phone” claim, with features that excelled in the specs, but were let down by poor quality results, they now seem to have consolidated their range and focused more on getting a high quality end product, rather than beating other handsets with more megapixel or super-thin designs.

And the i450 reflects this, with an in-built amplifier developed by none other than Bang & Olufsen.

Sony Ericsson has long ruled the music phones with its Walkman brand.

Samsung, though, despite having its own range of music players (including its Yepp range of super-small MP3 players), doesn’t have the branding to beat the Walkman.

More details of the Samsung i450 after the jump.

Not content with letting Nokia grab all the GPS market all to itself, Samsung is the latest manufacturer to launch its own GPS phone. The new Samsung i550 features a GPS receiver, as well as dedicated GPS buttons on the phone’s front keypad, turning the i550 into a car-based Sat-Nav or personal navigation device at the touch of a button.

The phone itself isn’t bad, either!

More details of the Samsung i550 GPS phone after the jump.

I wrote a few days ago how Google would be Nokia’s next competitor. Having trounced the opposition in the mobile handset marketplace, the Finnish mobile phone giant is looking to expand into the GPS market in order to grab a large share of the lucrative location-based and mobile advertising market.

The article I wrote was speculative, based on piecing together rumours and Nokia’s recent buying spree. Now, though, this supposition has been confirmed, as Nokia has stated that it “really sees itself one day competing with Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo in this space.”

More details after the jump.

Nokia have announced the Nokia 810 Internet Tablet, an updated version of the old Nokia 800. The concept of an Internet Tablet has always been a good one, but flawed. Previous versions from Nokia had no keyboard, which made using the tablet difficult, and only came with Wi-Fi, meaning you could only use it in the same places you can use a laptop…so why not just use a laptop?!

The new 810 overcomes some of these problems. Firstly, it has a slide out keyboard, which makes using the device much easier. Secondly, it’s got a much more sophisticated browser.

The 8010’s browser comes form Mozilla, supports Ajax and Flash 9, so can be used to view YouTube videos as well as using Web 2.0 sites.

It also comes with GPS, so it sounds great – but still no 3G connection though.

More details of the Nokia 810 Internet Tablet after the jump.

Rumours of Google’s GPhone have taken a low-tech turn, as analysts are now speculating whether the phone will either be a stripped down inexpensive device, or simply a button on other manufacturers’ handsets.

The speculation comes after Google’s recent purchase of Jaiku, a Finnish company that specialises in SMS applications. People such as Richard Doherty, research director at The Envisioneering Group, believe that Google are aiming to get people used to querying the search engine giant’s database via SMS, either through Google’s own phone, or a “GButton” on other manufacturers’ handsets that would let you communicate with Google instantly.