Break out the bubbly, it's party time! If you're a little software outfit by the name of Symbian, that is -- or Nokia, Sony Ericsson, or any other of Symbian's ten active licensees. The British company has announced that the 100 millionth phone running its goodies has shipped, 36 million of which have come in 2006 alone. If we were the betting type, we'd put our money on that 100 millionth handset being a Nokia piece seeing how their particular flavor of Symbian -- S60 -- accounts for an overwhelming majority of Symbian-powered devices finding their way into consumers' hands, but as we've seen, Sony Ericsson isn't about to give up on UIQ. Either way, Symbian's celebrating the occasion with their "Because of the Code" contest, which'll award 100 smartphones and other miscellaneous parting gifts to the best code samples submitted by January 7; meanwhile, non-developers can get in on the fun with the "Symbian Hundred Million Phones" quiz, offering handsets to another three folks randomly selected from the pool of those answering all the questions correctly. Here's to another 100 million, Symbian!

[Thanks, Wimbo]

If you're having a hard time justifying dropping a cool million on your next phone, might we turn your attention to the "Black Diamond," brought to us by Swiss manufacturer VIPN. Penned by Singaporean designer Jaren Goh, there's little question that the glossy black candybar is gorgeous -- but whether it's $300,000 gorgeous is another question entirely. Details are slim, but we know that the Windows Mobile 5 device should be rocking quadband GSM, WiFi, 128MB of memory with SD expansion, a 2-inch display, and a 400MHz XScale all wrapped up in titanium and diamonds. The touch sensitive keypad is Chocolate-esque, completely disappearing when not lit, while SIP is thrown in to keep your GSM usage minimum when you're in WiFi range (not to suggest anyone owning this phone is looking to save a few bucks). If we've piqued your interest, it looks like you've got until early 2007 to save your pennies, but keep your eyes peeled -- production is limited to 5 (yes, five) units.

Thought we admire diamond encruster extraordinaire Peter Aloisson and his previous work, it suffered the same problem as other million-dollar cellphones have in the past: not enough cryptography. Happily, Russian firm JSC Ancort has developed a Windows CE-based smartphone ready for Aloisson's bejeweling that employs "powerful encryption technology" to "provide secure protection of information against kidnapping, technological blackmail, financial racketeers and corrupted state officials" -- sounds like marketing speak for a password-protected wallet app, but who are we to judge? Of course, with its $1.3 million price tag and 50 diamonds (10 of which are blue) we think you might start to have more trouble with mugging than with "technological blackmail," but there's only one way to find out for certain -- anyone want to donate the cash for a hands-on?

[Via textually.org]