"18 remarkable facts and 15 amazing phones from MWC 2010"

HTC will be releasing the HTC Espresso soon, possibly in time for MWC 2010 in Barcelona. The Espresso is rumoured to be the successor to the HTC Hero, featuring a QWERTY keyboard and an even better user interface.

This has led to some excitement in the mobile phone world, as HTC already make some cracking user interfaces (see the Hero and HTC HD2 for just osme examples), so the thought of a brand new one is mouth-watering!

Fortunately, we don’t need to wait! The Espresso’s user interface has already been leaked, the ROM containing it has found its way onto the Internet, and now here it sits, on a T-Mobile G1, looking for all the world like no other G1 has looked before!

More pictures of the HTC Espresso interface after the jump.

HTC surprised everyone when they released the HTC HD2 late last year. The HD2 is nothing short of the best Windows Mobile phone on the market now, and probably will be for some time (particularly given that HTC are pretty much the only company investing in innovative Windows Mobile phones at the moment).

The surprise is that HTC actually bothered to make a phone this good. Given their expertise with Google’s Android, their obvious close relationship with the search engine giant (just look at the Nexus One, which Google designed and HTC built), and the critical success they received with the HTC Hero (another Android device), why bother developing such a great phone as the HD2 on such a dog of a platform as Windows Mobile?

Step forward an intriguing theory…!

Google’s Android has been everywhere in 2010, not just thanks to Google’s own Nexus One Android phone, but also with the huge number of Android gadgets that were released at CES 2010 this week. From tablets to phone to microwaves, wherever you looked, it was powered by Android.

This might just explain why rumours of the 4th generation iPhone are now surfacing, as Apple fan boys (if not Apple themselves) seek to regain some of the hype from Google.

So what do these rumours suggest? Check them out after the jump.

If you wondered why I called the HTC HD2 the best Windows Mobile phone in the world, take a look at these leaked pics of the Sony Ericsson Faith and shudder!

The Faith hasn’t even been announed yet – these are leaked pics after all – and so it’s a phone that will be much new than the HD2 when it’s released, yet already you feel like you’re looknig at a phone from 2005!

Blimey, Windows Mobile needs updating, and fast – and Sony Ericsson needs to stop working on ugly phones and ugly OSes like this!

Why should you care about an HTC HD2 review? HTC’s new huge smartphone is based on Windows Mobile, and with the mobile world seemingly full of Android phones, iPhones and Palms, doesn’t that make it already out of date?

The short answer is no: Windows Mobile is certainly out of date, but nothing on the HTC HD2 looks even remotely like Windows Mobile! HTC have created their own sleek user interface and refined it for the HD2, and then given it the horsepower via the 1GHz Snapdragon CPU to turbocharge its responsiveness.

The result is the best Windows Mobile phone ever made, and one that should certainly be on your shopping list if you’re looking for a cutting edge smartphone with some serious power.

The Monsoon Volcano is a new app and Set Top Box combo on display at CES 2010 that lets you watch TV from your mobile phone. Not just any TV, though – your own TV at home. Yup, that one there in the corner, and you can watch it wherever you are in the world!

If that’s enough for you, you can also change channels from your mobile phone, which should certainly freak out whoever’s watching the TV at home.

Not only that, you can also stream content from your PC, Network Attached Storage device – just about anywhere.

The Monsoon Volcano is a cracking piece of kit that literally brings part of your home with you, wherever you are!

Check out more details and pictures of the Monsoon Volcano over at sister site MediaMentalism.

LG have been showing off the LG GT540 at CES 2010, a low-cost Android 2.0 phone that does pretty much what you expect an Android phone to do.

Rather than go to town on the user interface like some other manufacturers have done, LG have simply taken an LG phone and wrapped it around a standard Android interface. Not exactyl innovative, but it should keep the cost nice and low when it’s released in a few month’s time.

You can see a video of the LG GT540 after the jump.

Newcomer Inbrics has been showing off the Inbrics M1 at CES 2010. The Inbrics M1 is a new Android phone (currently Android 1.5, but Android 2.0 is on its way) with a cracking form factor. Like the Motorola Droid, it’s got a slide out physical keyboard, but it’s super-thin so you’d never know it was even there until it’s revealed.

But that’s not the key selling point of the M1 – no, that would be the way it handles media, making Nokia’s notion of “multimedia computers” look a little…lagging!

If you think touchscreens are old fashioned and accelerometers are so last year, then Synaptics have go the phone for you – the Synaptics Fuse, a new prototype phone with working technology that was shown off at CES 2010 this week.

The Fuse features more capacitive touchscreens in one phone than in the entire range of Nokia devices! The front display in obviously a capacitive touchscreen, but so too is the back…and the sides as well!

OK, so they’re not screens exactly, but they are capacitive and they do respond to touch to produce a responsive interactive interface unlike any ohter phone on the market today.

More details and video after the jump.

Asus have a tradition of showing off odd-looking concept phones at CES, and CES 2010 is no different. They’ve gone one better this year, though. They’ve come up with a whole range of concept gadgets, each given the WaveFace name, and all of which jump on as many bandwagons as Asus could think of!

The concepts aren’t exactly new. Wearable smartphones, information pushed to you whenever you need it, info available form all sources at all times, yada yada!

The only difference is that the concepts are being demoed at an electronics show where the gadgets are actually doing exactly what Asus reckons the devices of the future will be doing!

Other than the bendy smartphone, everything else you see in the video after the jump is pretty much here now – just check out the latest gadgets at CES 2010 to see for yourself!