No surprises here -- particularly since LG's Vu has been on sale through a number of AT&T retail outlets since late last month (whoops!). Today, however, the carrier is officially listing LG's latest for sale, and the Mobile TV-supporting handset is going for a stiff $549.99 sans contract, or $299.99 after giving away your cellular soul for two years and waiting anxiously for a $100 mail-in rebate to arrive. Check out our hands-on gallery to see if you're really ready to make this kind of commitment.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Get this: the first North American carrier to offer up Nokia's 8GB N95 isn't AT&T. Heck, it's not even a US-based operator. No friends, it's Canada's own Rogers Wireless. Just as we had heard late last month, the N95 8GB has officially landed in the Great North, and starting on May 6th, consumers up that way will be able to secure one for a hefty $399.99 with a three-year activation on the Rogers Vision Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan. Don't weep too heavily, AT&T users -- your time should be coming soon.

It wasn't too long ago that Acer was finalizing paperwork to acquire E-Ten, and now that it's moving on, we're hearing that the company should be launching its very first (aw, how cute) smartphone in around eight to ten months. According to the firm's president, it's aiming to introduce the handset "near the end of this year or early next year," and it will indeed "be Microsoft-based." Gianfranco Lanci also suggested that smartphones could represent up to 10-percent of the company's revenue within the next few years. Notably, the outfit is apparently planning to move its phones via mobile network operators, and while it typically takes six to nine months to sweet talk a carrier into marketing a new smartphone, it hopes to use its "existing relationships with telecommunications companies to speed up such sales." Sadly, we're not given any clues about what carriers it's aiming for, but it won't be too awfully long before we're sure to find out.

Just days after Telus picked up the attractive LG Venus, the carrier has officially started offering up the Motorola Mike i877. The half-rugged, half-sleek looking flip phone was designed by Pininfarina and features integrated Bluetooth, a multimedia player (MP3, AAC, WMA), microSD expansion slot, miniUSB port, 1.3-megapixel camera, VibraCall, a digital voice recorder and the obligatory push-to-talk support. If it floats your boat, you can snag it now sans contract for $349.99, or anywhere between $149.99 to $299.99 if you're cool with signing the dotted line for varying lengths of time.

[Via MobileInCanada]

Just months after Alcatel Lucent and SFR hosted DVB-SH trials across the pond comes word that the mobile TV technology is headed Stateside. ICO Global Communications is donning the party hats and going through buckets upon buckets of ice cream in celebration of a successful satellite launch that will eventually bring those yearned-after mobile television goods to the US, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. The ICO G1 was placed into its initial geosynchronous transfer orbit yesterday afternoon, and now the company is eagerly awaiting certification that the bird is fully operational (and can pass the final FCC milestone) by May 15th. If all goes to plan, Las Vegas, Nevada and Raleigh / Durham, North Carolina will be gifted with ICO mim (mobile interactive media) service trials "later this summer," though a commercial launch isn't slated to occur until "later in 2009."

[Via phonemag], image courtesy of WESH]

If you thought Samsung's Soul would be content with sitting in Barcelona, you've never had the pleasure of vacationing in Las Vegas. Sure enough, the Soul is following the HTC Touch Dual in making its US debut at CTIA 2008, and it's quite alright if your palms are already beginning to get sweaty. After all, what else would you expect from looking forward to a quad-band / HSDPA 7.2Mbps slider with a 2.2-inch QVGA display, 5-megapixel camera (with QVGA movie mode), Bluetooth 2.0, microSD expansion slot and Magical Touch navigation? Beyond that, the long-awaited miCoach is also making its US debut in the desert, along with a number of other global handsets (F480, F400 and G810). The sad part here is that none of the mobiles are actually slated to go on sale here in America -- yeah, it's a bit depressing to know they're sitting within our borders as we speak and won't be available for purchase, but there's always next year (right?).

Brace yourself, US-based Touch Dual lovers -- the handset that your Japanese / European friends have been taunting you with for months is finally making the trip stateside. Slated to launch "later this quarter" (at Best Buy initially, of all places), the US Touch Dual will come rocking Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, TouchFLO, Office Mobile, Live HTC Home, a 2-megapixel camera, quad-band GSM support and HSDPA connectivity. Sadly, HTC didn't give us the pleasure of knowing a price, but we'll be keeping an ear to the ground for more exact details surrounding the release.

Merely months after we heard that the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 was headed to Rogers, Americans green with envy can finally chill. According to shots posted over at Boy Genius Report, the GPS-enabled 8110 looks to be making a B-line for AT&T outlets -- in two colors, no less (red is option two, for those curious). Word on the street has these ready to rock "in the next month or two," but your guess is as good as ours on price. Check the high-resolution snaps in the read link below.

Yeah, we know, this one's a pretty monstrous stretch, but we are so stoked about Nokia's N96 that we figured you'd be just as happy as we are to get some news -- and by news, we mean hopeful rumor. Well the folks at the Carphone Warehouse Insider page have plopped the N96 in all its black glossy glory on the watch list and the date they've set for release is August 2008. Sure, this could slip forward, back, or even get canned, but we'll take what we can get as a tentative date is hair better than no date, right friends? Place your release date bets down in the comments section and the closest to the real deal will get a hardy pat on the back coupled with a rousing thumbs-up.

[Via Trustedreviews]

A table of release dates dug up on Sony Ericsson's own site suggests something powerfully depressing, which is that the XPERIA X1 has been pushed all the way out to February 10, 2009 (notice that the date is in European format -- we'd just give up now if it were actually October 2, 2009). While the presence of the page on the company's very own domain is pretty damning evidence, we're still holding out hope that it's a typo or an oversight; late Q2 of '08 was mentioned at MWC, and we really don't see how it's possible to push out a phone nearly three-quarters of a year just weeks after its initial announcement. Please tell us we're right on this one, Sony Ericsson. Please.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

"As early as possible" in 2008 is getting less "early" by the minute, and details are starting to emerge on all the juicy drama going on behind the scenes at AT&T where the powers that be have been unable so far to get their long-overdue MediaFLO-based mobile TV network launched. Apparently, both LG and Samsung were rearing to show their launch devices (Samsung's Access is pictured here) at CES last month, and both were asked to pull 'em at the very last minute as it became apparent that AT&T wasn't ready to rock and roll, leaving LG with a rather awkward situation on its hands as some folks caught the Vu doing... well, absolutely nothing in the company's booth. Rumor has it that unspecified legal troubles and flaky mobile TV chipsets are both to blame, with delays hovering somewhere in the two to eight week range. Here's our simple question: if the network already exists (and it does, because Verizon's been using it for a year now), what the heck is so hard here?

We're hearing rumblings that everybody's favorite iPhone is wandering to Austria -- no, not Australia -- and T-Mobile in the very near future. No other details right now, but we won't let you down, check back soon for more.

You've waited oh-so-patiently for LG's Viewty to land, and you've even tried to subdue your anxiety by combing over a glowing review, so feel free to cut loose now that the KU990 is finally available. Yep, starting today users can snatch up the mobile in "major European countries" for a still unannounced price, but we're willing to bet you'll pony up for all the joy that touchscreen, five-megapixel camera, DivX support, TV out and HSDPA will bring. Unfortunately, LG fails to mention any specific carriers in its release, but we'd assume Vodafone (and potentially Orange in the not-too-distant future) will be picking it up in their respective regions.

UPDATE: A couple of folks in comments have mentioned that the Viewty is a go on O2.