We know you've been literally hanging on the edge of your seat waiting for this day to come, so it's our honor and privilege to announce that Lenovo and RIM's Constant Connect solution is now available. For those who managed to sleep right through February, the technology enables select ThinkPads to automatically pull down BlackBerry emails whenever it's within range, even if the laptop is completely off. There's no word on what it'll cost to have this added into your next corporate machine, but you can head past the break for a quick demonstration vid if you think you're interested.

Update: It's a $149 option from select business partners and through Lenovo.com.

We've known for some time that China Mobile was planning to launch the KIRFy OPhone from Lenovo. Now, with word on the street that China Unicom has snagged the iPhone in that provider's home turf, a report from DigiTimes is suggesting that China Mobile might be trying to undermine the competition's supposed June iPhone launch by dropping the OPhone a month earlier. That sounds sensible enough, but are people there so eager for iPhone they'd jump on the imitation rather than wait another month for the real thing? We'll find out soon enough.

[Image courtesy of modmyGphone]

It's always nice to get an update on one of our favorite KIRFs as of late. Lenvo's Android-powered OPhone has popped up in a hands-on video, showing off its mock-iPhone OS interface and all the doppelganger apps / features -- weather, stock, calculator and even a near-identical push notification window. Surprisingly, it's actually pretty well put together and includes some things we wish our legit Apple phone would do, like on-screen widgets and an option to change backgrounds. It'll be a cold day in Hell before we see this serial patent infringer outside of China, so for now you'll have to get your OPhone kicks by checking out the video after the break.

[Thanks, Neerhaj]

Alright, we have no idea why Lenovo's phone division is suddenly pumping out copycat handsets, but these supposed shots of the Android-based oPhone's UI look awfully familiar, don't you think? Combine that with the equally-fishy rip of Samsung's TouchWiz UI found in the recently-announced X1, and it more or less seems like Lenovo's running a high-end KIRF outfit over there -- no wonder this stuff never leaves China.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Okay, there's some amount of originality here, but enough to justify a Red Dot design award? What you're looking at here is the award-winning Lenovo X1 -- as opposed to, say, the Sony Ericsson X1 -- which is a triband EDGE handset Lenovo sells in China. To us, it looks like an Instinct with a slide-out keypad and TouchWiz, but what do we know? Coincidentally, Lenovo calls this totally original UI "Touch Dream," which sounds just a little bit (okay, a whole lot) like an HTC device. So, to summarize: Sony Ericsson and HTC branding, Samsung design, made by Lenovo. Right then.

[Thanks, Bin Xu]

After two years in development, Lenovo Constant Connect is finally here. A groundbreaking new tie-up between Lenovo and RIM has led to the creation of a $150 54mm ExpressCard -- which slots into any ThinkPad from around Summer '08 onward -- and automatically pulls down any email sent to your BlackBerry via Bluetooth, even if the laptop is completely powered down. The idea here is to always have your most recent inbox available within eight seconds of opening your machine, and thanks to the card's dedicated Bluetooth radio and 500MB of inbuilt storage, it can pull down and send out emails so long as the card and your 'Berry are within 30 feet or so from one another. Aside from needing an ExpressCard slot, you'll also need a handset with OS 4.2 or higher. It's designed to work with Exchange, Outlook, POP and Gmail, with Lotus Notes support coming in 2H 2009; as for availability, the card will be available through Lenovo and its partners in early Q2 here in America, while those elsewhere in the world will have to wait until the latter half of the year. Full release and demo video is after the break.

Look out, China -- Lenovo's all-too-sexy OPhone is about to land in the hands of unsuspecting China Mobile subscribers, or so says Reuters, anyway. The planet's largest mobile carrier will reportedly launch the 3G handset sometime this quarter, though some reports are suggesting that development is being hampered as engineers struggle with creating a Chinese language version of the OS. Once launched, it will go down as the first Android-powered handset to operate on China's home-cooked TD-SCDMA 3G network, but there's no word on just how costly it'll be. Not like cost is really a concern here, right?

[Via mocoNews, image courtesy of modmyGphone]

Okay, okay, we get it: everyone knows how big an iPhone is, so this comparison makes sense, we guess -- but both an original and a 3G? Seriously? At any rate, we'll just admire the latest in-the-wild shots of the Ophone, Lenovo's first Android device. We've seen shots of it before, but from this latest impromptu review, we learn that it's rocking a 624MHz CPU, mini USB interface, a 5-megapixel camera, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. We also learn that it's longer, wider, and thicker than the iPhones, though only by the slimmest of margins -- and when you take into account the considerable additional shooting power, we can cut it some slack there. Then again, we doubt we'll ever see one of these in the US of A, however, so it looks like we'll have to sit this one out and wait for another Android device to take our breath away anyhow.

[Thanks, Jason]

What goes down easy with a gorgeous cellphone that'll probably never leave China's borders? Stately rocks, of course. The Android-powered "OPhone" is quite the sight to behold, and while the Lenovo logo may not look quite right to American eyes, we're sure you could learn to love it in time. We're also finding out a bit more about the unit's internals, as it will include a 5-megapixel camera (with Auto Focus and flash), a microSD card slot, English / Chinese input via virtual keyboard, a video recorder and Bluetooth 2.0. Check the read link for a few more angles, and just in case you're wondering, no touchscreens were harmed during the shoot.

What if we told you the most beautiful phone in the world was a Lenovo? Reactions to that statement are likely going to oscillate between "Lenovo doesn't make cellphones" and "impossible, considering this is the country that gave us the QKfone G998," -- but seriously, have a look. Even if you don't agree that it's one of the most attractive mobile devices you've ever laid eyes on, you're going to have a hard time making a cohesive argument that the Android-based slate doesn't run circles around the G1 for physical design. 'Course, that just makes it all the more maddening that it's apparently nothing more than an early model of the "Ophone," a handset designed to comply to China Mobile's Open Mobile System that combines Android's core with support and apps for the carrier's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G network. Translation: we'll never see one outside China, so yeah, just lust from afar while you pray HTC and its comrades are busy cooking up some stellar gear.

In modern business, brand names frequently have very little -- nay, shockingly little -- to do with the company that's actually behind the product, and Lenovo's totally cool playing that game. Well, not Lenovo proper -- but Lenovo Mobile, which was sold off earlier in the year but continues to use the parent company's name to hawk goods. That's where the P80 comes into play, a new flip that features a 1-inch external OLED combined with a 2.8-inch primary display, microSD expansion to 4GB, 2-megapixel cam, and FM radio. Missing are dual SIM slots (surprisingly common in China) and GPS, but hey, at least it's available in seven tasty colors.

Samsung's P960 handset has a built-in DVR, while Lenovo's P960 includes a fingerprint scanner. Pointless trivia aside, the latter is also Lenovo's first commercial mobile phone to incorporate fingerprint biometrics. Atrua Technologies has provided a fingerprint scanner that resides on the handset's edge in order to provide additional security for folks (read: cheaters, FBI agents and Segway users) who simply cannot afford to let their contact list be known. Even dodgier, the phone has a VIP recording feature which "automatically records calls from designated numbers" -- something that's sure to provide hours upon hours of merriment. We'd bemoan the fact that pricing information isn't readily available, but we just can't get over that whole automatic recording thing.

We knew good and well China Mobile was all geared up to launch its homegrown 3G standard in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shenzhen (among other locales), and though China's government hasn't issued 3G licenses yet, TD-SCDMA has finally made its soft launch. In order to garner interest in the service, said carrier has also opened up "experience shops" in the aforementioned cities "to allow the public to experiment with TD-SCDMA handsets and gain confidence with TD-SCDMA's capabilities." During the initial launch, some 60,000 dual-mode TD-SCDMA / GSM handsets and 15,000 data cards will be on sale in these outlets, with most of the units being in the "mid- to high-end range" and costing between $286 and $572 (those are subsidized prices). Here is where we suppose China Mobile holds its breath and hopes for things to take off.

[Via mocoNews]