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LG have announced a brand new top-end LG Chocolate phone that can only be described as king size! The LG BL40 Chocolate features a whopping 4.0″ screen with a huge 800 x 345 resolution.

All that screen real estate means you can feature a lot – and I mean a lot! – of icons on the homescreen, which LG have gleefully done.

Question is, though – is it too big? Read on to find out…

No sooner has Nokia launched the Nokia N97 than rumours of a new Nokia N97 Mini start swirling around the blogosphere.

This would be important news in its own right, but given the underwhelming reception that the Nokia N97 received, it’s news that might just save Nokia’s skin.

More details and pictures of the Nokia N97 Mini after the jump.

After reading our HTC Hero review earlier, you might be under the impression that mobiles are going the way of Windows – super-functional, but bogged down with bloat that makes them sluggish.

Not a bit of it! There’s no less than three super-charged mobile processors about to come on stream leading to a new age of GHz mobile phones that are super-fast, super-responsive, and which pack some stunning new features. The likes of Samsung, Toshiba and HTC are just some of the mobile phone manufacturers leading this race, with graphics specialist NVIDIA also helping out.

Here’s a run down of these new technologies, and a sneak preview at some of the phones that are coming that will make any handset you currently own look like a creaking old truck!

Time, at last, for an HTC Hero Review round-up. After working feverishly on the new look MobileMentalism for what seems like the past 100 years (still not finished – give me time, people, it’ll be worth the wait ;), I remembered that I said I’d do a review of HTC’s brand new Android phone, the Hero. So here it is!

For those who don’t know, the Hero is the latest Android phone from HTC, who’ve so far not only taken the lead, but seemingly cornered the market in Android phones. The Hero has been long awaited by tech lovers as its the first Android phone with a heavily-customized user interface and might, just might, actually beat the iPhone in terms of overall user interface.

So the question is: does it? Read on to find out!

The HTC Hero is a brand new Android phone that’s received all manner of awards as best mobile phone of 2009 (read our HTC Hero review for full details). One of the best features about the Hero is the fact that it has a brand new user interface – called Rosie, of all things! Rosie has bee developed by HTC to help it differentiate its Android phones from the myriad competitors that are now appearing.

The new user interface has been designed from the ground up to give Android a super-slick polished look. It’s not just a port of HTC’s TouchFLO user interface that it created for Windows Mobile. It’s a brand new dedicated Android interface that looks super-slick, has a nifty new Web browser and great new music player, among many many other enhancements.

But what if you’ve already got a T-Mobile G1 with the “vanilla” Android user interface? Are you forced to watch your HTC Hero-sporting friend gloat over the greatness of his new phone’s UI while you’re stuck with your G1′s UI for the next year or so?

Fear not. If you’ve got the technical chops, patience, and balls of steel, you too can port the HTC Hero’s user interface over to your T-Mobile G1. Be warned – it’s not easy!

But it can be done, and my brother Dave (@terminal7) has proved it by successfully upgrading his G1. You can see the pics he took of his new Hero G1, plus videos and details on how to do it after the jump.

Nokia has announced the Nokia Surge, an S60-based smartphone that looks to be, to all intents and purposes, a Nokia N97 without the touchscreen.

As you can see, the Surge has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that’s just as usable as the N97′s. And although its feature-list isn’t quite as good as the N97′s (there’s only a 2 megapixel camera, for example), nearly all of the software included is identical.

Indeed, the Surge seems to be a thinner version of the E90 mixed with a bit of N97 social networkiness, but with one key difference: price.

The Nokia costs just $79!

More details and pics of the Nokia Surge after the jump.

Sony Ericsson have been teasing us of late with what could be the new Sony Ericsson XPERIA X5. Currently going under the codename of the Sony Ericsson Rachael, we’ve seen pictures of a brand new smartphone with a fantastic spec, all built on top of the Android OS. Better still, we’ve now got a video of the new user interface, showing exactly what Sony Ericsson has in store for Android’s UI.

More details and video of the Sony Ericsson X5 after the jump.

It must be summer, as rumours of Dell working on a smartphone have resurfaced. Although such rumours do the rounds seemingly every year or so, this one carries more weight as it comes from no less a figure than Ronald Garriques – president of Dell’s consumer division, and ex VP of Motorola’s cell phone division.

In an interview with analysts, Garrique said that Dell was in talks with the “…top three to four” telecoms companies to launch a range of handsets, including 4″ smartphones and 12″ netbooks running on Android.

Although al this sounds rather tasty, however, there may be a sting in the tail…

At the risk of adding to the overload of coverage at the moment, I’ve put together a video review of the Nokia N97. You can read more on Nokia’s latest top-end N-Series phone on my detailed Nokia N97 review. Words can only say so much, though, so here are several videos showing exactly what I’m banging on about in my review!

More videos after the jump.