The same week that Nokia Siemens Networks unveiled its LTE solution for North America comes a little nugget from Ericsson: the M700. Hailed as the "world's first commercially available LTE-capable platform," it promises peak data transmissions of 100Mbps down and 50Mbps up, which will undoubtedly be the next best thing since sliced bread. Reportedly, initial devices based on the unit will be ExpressCards, USB modems, etc., and of course, it supports bandwidths between 1.4 and 20MHz and the oh-so-exciting 700MHz bands. Unfortunately, a commercial release isn't set to happen until 2009 -- with products "based on the platform" not scheduled until 2010 -- but to its credit, samples of ASICs will be ready to roll sometime this year.

Hot on the heels of T-Mobile's Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the Dash, E-TEN is rolling out the first Windows Mobile 6 Professional updates for its handsets. As of a few days ago, if you happen to have an X500 kicking around with that oh-so-long-in-the-tooth Windows Mobile 5 on it, head on over to E-TEN's site to freshen it up. It seems that M700 owners will have to keep that download finger waiting for another week as the Microsoft certification process seems to be stopping that ship from sailing. The update process is pretty straightforward, register your handset, E-TEN will send you an "action key" which coupled with your IMEI will let you get at the goodies. Good luck on those updates, and if you have a happy or nightmarish story about your upgrade, let us know. Hit the read link to head on over to E-TEN's site for all the details.

[Via the::unwired]

HTC naturally gets the lion's share of the Windows Mobile QWERTY fun, but E-TEN's doing its best to steal some of that thunder with the upcoming M700 in its "glofiish" line of Pocket PC phones. Happily for those of us well west of zero degrees longitude, the M700 packs quadband GSM plus EDGE; we suspect no American carriers will be picking it up directly, but as the FCC will happily vouch, it'll be a trivial matter to get it imported. 3G data is missing, but the M700 makes out with a SiRFstar III GPS receiver built in -- much like other devices in the glofiish line -- plus WiFi and a 2 megapixel cam.

These suckers look familiar to anyone? They should -- they're E-TEN's M700 and X500, respectively, with the "E-TEN" logos rubbed off and replaced with izenMobile's. The M700 becomes the "KSMT," sporting 128MB ROM / 64MB RAM, GPS, a 2 megapixel cam, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, presumably with the same trick backlighting as its E-TEN cousin. The "KRMA" looks positively nothing like the one izenMobile had originally been tossing around, trading a numeric keypad for the X500's ultra thinness. Still no word on a release date, but with E-TEN doing all the heavy lifting on these ones, it can't be that hard to get 'em out the door.

[Via Mobility Site]

Remember that iffy picture a few days back claiming to be the unannounced E-TEN M700 Pocket PC? Well, thanks to a Russian site with a comprehensive gallery of far more legit-looking pics, those among us who weren't believers are believers now. Not surprisingly, it looks like the production unit will be "glofiish" branded like the X500 before it, and it'll pack quad-band GSM with EDGE, 128MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM, 802.11g, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2 megapixel shooter, and a SiRFStar III GPS receiver. Even crazier, though, are the glowing blue lines between the keys -- an unexpected carryover from the mockup picture. Click through to the source for plenty of additional imagery.

[Via PDA247]

Sure, E-TEN's managed to make some waves with its thinnish glofiish X500, but what about a slide-out keyboard? Aren't those things, like, standard these days? If the E-TEN rumor mill pans out this time around (as it has in the past), this here M700 should come to the rescue. The alleged device looks to be the spiritual successor to the M600+ with GPS, WiFi, boatloads of internal storage, and some manner of 3G radio. Of course, this particular picture looks totally bunk (though we're digging the psychadelic blue glow on the keyboard) -- but we'll give it a mulligan for being a potentially legit mockup.

[Via Slashphone]

Dopod's cozy relationship with HTC (which we're thinking just might have to do with HTC's ownership of the firm) continues with the announcement of three new models: the M700, D810, and C800, based on the HTC Artemis, Trinity, and Herald, respectively. All three designs are fairly bleeding-edge, with the Herald yet to see an official release. Meanwhile, the M700 variant of the Artemis ups the reference design's ante by packing in a full 256MB of internal storage, a move that HTC says makes this a multimedia version of the product, and so far it's a Dopod exclusive -- is HTC giving preferential treatment to its in-house brand? Say it ain't so! Look for all three to drop in Dopod-friendly regions of the world (read: Asia) over the coming months.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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