Good old Blighty… what is it good for? Well, very little, if we’re honest. But one thing we can at least be proud of one our shores is our advertising, because without doubt we make the least terrible, the least vomit-inducing ads in the whole wide world.

Take the example below (sick bags at the ready) for the Samsung Genio Touch. What an absolute beauty. We can imagine the creative pitch to the client now: So, right, yeah, like, totally imagine, like, the phone – the phone is like the star here, so there’s hundreds of them right – and then like, imagine one of those twisty tube things, you know, like, from when you were a kid, with the glitter and the spinning, you know – a kaleidoscope! Yeah! That’s what they’re called – and like, that’s how the add works. Yeah? Like spinning and mirrors and stuff. Yeah.

Thanks for that, Creative Mind of the Year 2009. And look, look what else we have, some young people jumping around in water and so on. Gosh, this phone really is vibrant and playful, and I think it will fit into my active yet budget conscious lifestyle. I will appreciate the range of social media applications, engaging with them in order to facilitate an ‘always on’ sense of entertainment…

Who’d have thought it, the ad actually works. Or it would do if we’d been lobotomised at the age of twelve and then fed nothing but Big Macs and Coke (the fizzy brown stuff, not the good stuff).

All of which is a shame because the Samsung Genio Touch is – as budget phones go – pretty darn decent. Or favourite TouchWiz interface is onboard, as is some nice haptic feedback from the touchscreen and it’s all wrapped up in a dinky, nifty design. What more can we say… apart from go have a gander at this Samsung Genio Touch review, or at the official press release.

Actors should never, ever try and start a singing career.

Singers should never, ever try and start an acting career.

IT workers should never attempt to become escorts.

Footballers should never do… well, anything at all in public ever.

The list of inadvisable career changes out there is endless. So when we heard that a mobile phone manufacturer was going to be releasing a laptop, we scoffed heartily.

However, once we’d wiped the mushed up cereal and milk goo from our screens (warning: never scoff too hard when eating breakfast) we read further and found that the manufacturer in question was Nokia and that their choice of thing-to-make was a netbook. Hmmm, we then said, once we’d swallowed. Hmmm indeed.

And ever since that day we’ve been shifting nervously in our dried cereal covered seats waiting for the day when more details about this fabled netbook arrived, and hark, that day is here, because now the Nokia Booklet 3G is all, like, official and spec’ed up. Have a look at the official page, or at this Nokia Booklet 3G review, if you don’t believe us.

So what of these details, what can we read into the specs? Well, lots. Mostly good, once not so good. All the good bits you’ll find in the reviewy type links above, but these all become exceptionally impressive when you add them to just how darn good this thing looks. It looks like a high class laptop, while most netbooks look like cheap platicky things at best, poor kid’s toys at worst. Then there’s the Nokia 3G Booklet’s battery. Or it’s BATTERY, we should say. 12 hours of use from a single charge? Yes please, sailor, yes please indeed.

As always in this life of ours, there is one gripe: that of price. There’s nothing official out there just as yet, but our keen blogging ears are picking up something along the lines of £500. Which, when you can pick up the likes of the NC10 for half that, might be a sticking point. Speaking of sticking points… we fancy some cereal. So, off to the video below for you lot.

A computer in your pocket… A PC in the palm of your hand… A desktop on the go…

You’ve heard them all in relation to mobile phones before and you’ve become weary. So weary you can barely even get up these days, in fact. So tired with the lies and the self-aggrandising and posturing of all these mobile phone manufacturers, in fact, that you’re not even sure how you can carry on any more.

Well, our despondent friend, the answer is: you should carry merrily on along life’s highway with one of these in your pocket, because the N900 is just what all these other chumps have been promising and failing to deliver all along. Okay, so it’s not actually a PC, not really as powerful as a desktop, not in essence a computer. But, in terms of mobile phone computing, there is simply nothing that even comes close. Linux-powered, 1GB of processing RAM, a hefty graphics card, high speed internet access, up to 48GB storage… we’ve four laptops sat around here from only a couple of years ago that are cowering behind filing cabinets in fear of this thing.

But the best thing about all of the above is that you can happily ignore it. Because another thing manufacturers will do is stick lots of impressive stats in your face, shout and scream about this and that, but when it comes down to it, the thing doesn’t actually work very well. Worried about that with the Nokia N900? Then just have a look at the video below.

Nuff said, right?

Well, after this Nokia N900 review, and then after this official stats page. Then that is mos’ def’ nuff said. A’ight?

Cheap, trashy, easy to strip and responsive to touch is just how we like our… wait for it… wait some more… phones! Boom! Had you there! You thought we were going to say hookers. But we didn’t. We could of, but we didn’t. Cos we are proper class here, innit.

Anyway, moving swiftly away from that legally dubious territory, the Nokia 5230 is actually all of those things, but we don’t mean any of it in a bad way. It really is a cracker of a touchscreen, with tactile feedback and so on. It comes in a selection of base colours and you can also replace the battery covers for even more choice / gaudiness. And, best of all, it’s at the low-end of the touchscreen price range.

Why’s it able to be there? Well, this Nokia 5230 review will explain it better than we can be bothered to (as too does the official page, in fact), but basically this phone is the 5800 minus a bunch of stuff. Just as the 5530 was the 5800 minus some stuff. So, the Nokia 5230 is the 5800 and the 5530 kind of trashy little sister. Which is fine by us. If you see what we mean…

Great music playing (with up to 33 hours playback – a bonus of the stripped down features not being big power drainers), decent internet accessibility, cool Ovi Mapping with the on-board GPS… there’s not much, in fact, that’s missing from this thing that you’re really going to be all that concerned about.

If you’re a flashy type you might want the very latest, the all-singing/-dancing phone, but if you’re happy with not-quite-the-best-but-still-good, then the 5230 might be right up your street.

Ah, self-made promotional videos, is there a branch of film that deserves to die a more horrific, painful death? Short answer: no. Short reasoning behind proposed violence: the video below for the Sony Ericsson Jalou.

Look at it… just look. Does the world get any more patronising? Are metaphors ever so brutally disgusting. Is the complete absence of anything, absolutely anything at all redeeming really possible.

There is, in fact, so little subtlety, so little depth to this thing, that there can actually only be one intended outcome, one hoped for response from the viewers of said video. The conversation would have gone something like this, in fact:

Slimy Sony Ericsson Suit: So, what we want, what we need the consumer out-take here to be, is, you know, success, fashion, style, you know, high fashion. We want our demographic to walk away from this thinking, ‘that’s it, I want to be that stylish, that’s how I envisage myself in a perfect world: as a successful model, with successful model friends (although they’re not quite as successful as me), living on a rollercoaster of beaches and bars.’ And we want them to realise that they can have this life, they can tap into is by purchasing the Sony Ericsson Jalou

Director: I like, make pictures. Picture films with the ladies with the nice parts. Pretty ladies with no clothes.

Suit: Quite, yes, well, we know your reputation. However for this film the ladies must be clothed. Not that much, mind, but with their, well, you know, parts – as it were – at least mostly – covered.

Director: Okay, yes please. I sign now where? And you tell judge I good man in next week trial?

Etc and so on and so forth. See? Do you see now?

Hopefully that cleared it all up. If you actually want to know anything about the phone (idiot!) then have a little gander at this Sony Ericsson Jalou review. It’s not as bad, to be fair, as the video suggests. But then, unless the phone actually commits hate crimes and massacres after you purchase it, it couldn’t really be quite as bad as the video suggests.

The 3 Mobile INQ Chat 3G has a full QWERTY and a landscape 2.4″ QVGA display yet still manages to be bucketloads cheaper than the likes of the Nokia E71.

The INQ Chat 3G was inspired by the fact that 30% of the INQ1 (INQ’s first ever, and multi-award winning phone) users regularly sent emails despite only having a 12-key keypad to work with.

Then if we take a look at some videos online we’ll see that the Chat 3G is also OH MY GOOD GOD WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT GUY…

Because that’s how it happened for us, we thought we’d bring you the above 3 short paragraphs to take you on the special journey that led us to our new friend in the video below. Actually scratch that: that led us to our new hero, the guy in the video below. Because while the Chat 3G is a super little phone, while we’d love to tell you all about it’s swappable covers, crazy cheap price and all that jazz, once we found our little hero below, we couldn’t but dedicate this blog to him. There’s a INQ Chat review here, and some more info if you look at this over thisaway if you want some actual serious news about this phone, but for our money, all the entertainment today is resting squarely on this guys rounded shoulders.

What’s that? You’ve started watching and you’re not that impressed? In fact, the guy annoyed you and you’ve stopped the video after a minute or so and started reading this again to find out what the hell we’re going on about. Unpause. Wait. Watch him rap.

That’s right. You heard us. Rap.

There it is. What more can we say? Apart from: go new hero of ours, go!

INQ have the kind of mobile phone manufacturing record that is the stuff of dreams: one mobile phone (the INQ 1) released, one trophy as Best Mobile Handset – 2009 Global Mobile Awards on the mantelpiece.

So, where next for the newbies in the mobile phone world? A swish new 4-inch touchscreen device? An A-GPS handset integrating with a sophisticated navigational software license? A 14MB camera that produces DVD quality videos and makes you toast in the morning? Well, no, no and no.

And while it’s a shame about the lack of toast-making, the INQ Mini 3G is all the better for these guys keeping to the ‘keep it simple’ mantra. And not just because this will be about one of the cheapest phones on the market, as these INQ Mini 3G deals testify.

It’s more that INQ seemed to have realised what so few manufacturers do these days: that doing something very well indeed, even that things not as superficially exciting as what other people are doing, is more important than pretending (but failing) to do lots of flashy things well. So the INQ Mini 3G only has a 2MP, has no WiFi, no GPS, no nothing like that at all, in fact. But that’s not the point. You don’t buy this phone if you want these things. You buy it if you want the most intuitive, most easy to use, and most downrightly cheap phone out there that lets you connect to all your favourite social networking, messaging and email sites.

There we are then. Simple as that. Read this INQ 3G Mini review for some more background if you want, but take our word for it: it don’t get much simpler that the Chat 3G. And we think that’s a very good thing indeed.

Ah, the Finns. If anyone was going to make a functional, informative and utterly, utterly tedious video in order to try and raise some excitement about a product, it was them.

Just take a look at the…zzzzzzz

Sorry, we just started to watch the… zzzzzz

My goodness, apologies again, all we did was press play and… zzzzzz

They should prescribe this stuff on the NHS. No more Nytol for us, this stuff is better than opium.

Seriously, how did they take a feature – the face that the all new (well, not really) Nokia 5800 Navigation edition comes preloaded with a lifetime license for Nokia’s cool turn-by-turn and voice-guided navigation add-ons to the already fantastic Nokia Maps – and make it so… zzzzzzz

Even this Nokjia 5800 navigation review was more entertaining. Even the official page, no less, left us at least mildly awake.

Here we are! Helsinki’s famous Sibelius Monumet!

Yeah, woo-******-tastic.

And would you look at what she’d wearing… if her clothes were any more sensible they’d… well… they’d… here we are!

Bah. Somebody shoot us.

So there we have it. The Nokia 5800 Navigator edition zzzzzzzz

The original N97 is an odd thing, full of contradictions and strife. On the one hand, it’s a clumsy, unwieldy, clunky, basically obese phone that was given a lukewarm reception by many in the industry on its release. On the other hand, it’s a top-drawer smartphone that blows most of its competitors out of the water and shifted two million units in a little under three months, almost single-handedly (or double-handedly, along with the even more impressive 5800) keeping Nokia’s quarterly finances just mildly shocking, when by all rights they should have been utterly shocking.

We think this is due to one of two things. Firstly, it might be that the so-called industry are just a bunch of cynical old gits who like to pan everything as soon as it’s released, regardless of how good it actually is. Or, it might be because while the N97 was flawed in many ways, the public still recognised it’s greatness and wanted a piece of its (high in saturated fat) pie. And recognising that both of these are probably true, we can’t help but feel the Nokia N97 Mini is going to sell like little low fat, low-GI, high fibre, free range, wheat grass infused hot cakes. Because it is literally exactly the same phone, just in a physical package that actually feels not only good, but right. And feeling right is one of the hardest things a phone can achieve, but boy does this little thing do it.

And yes, yes, we know the mini Nokia N97 is not exactly exactly the same, but all the changes (that you’ll find in this Nokia N97 mini review) are so minor that we can’t even be arsed talking about them. All you’ve got to realise is that if you’ve been tempted by all you’ve read or heard about the N97, only to then find yourself wondering why someone has placed a small car in your hand when you’ve gone along to test one out, then the mini is just what you need. It’s as simple as that. And, simple as it is, this is why we think people are going to be flocking mini-wards faster than you can say get your Nokia N97 Mini deals here.

Sometimes phones just have win written all over them.

Not literally, of course.

If someone tried writing on our phone we’d probably punch them. Or at least, imagine punching them in some kind of elaborate scenario that also resulted in us going home with the barmaid from our local who happened to be there, then going home and using some non-corrosive cleaner to clean the writing off our phone.

But anyway, in a metaphorical sense, some phones have win written all over them and one of those phones currently sites right in front of us: the Nokia X6. It’s not immediately clear why, as, despite the best lies – sorry – best efforts of their press release, the Nokia X6 is not a ’sexy’ or a ’slim’ phone. However, it is alright in the looks department, and we’re alright with alright. Where it gets really exciting though is in the two departments that we think are also going to get a lot of you excited too: the music department (ground floor, next to the lingerie) and the interneting department (second floor, next to the toilets).

First up: there isn’t a better music phone out there. That was brief, wasn’t it. But that’s honestly all that needs to be said (though more is said in this Nokia X6 review if you wants some backing up of such bold statements). Second up: with Nokia’s fab little browser, a bunch of apps designed to make linking into you Facebook / Twitter / Myspace / [insert cool new thing that we haven't heard of yet here] as easy as sending a text, this thing will make you feel more connected that, say, a plug that’s been superglued into a wall socket.

Sounds like your kind of thing? Thought you’d say that… so get your virtual arse over to these Nokia X6 deals pronto.