Virgin Media is offering a really, really affordable (that means cheap, you guys) mobile phone with some funky pink and black styling. The VM202 costs £30 on pay as you go, including 300 free texts when you buy it with £10 airtime, which is practically giving it away. It’s part of Alcatel’s budget range of …

Alcatel, famous among skinflints across the land for its serviceable budget mobiles, is threatening to go all lah-de-dah by bringing out an Android smart phone. Worry not, cheapsters, because it’s set to cost just £99.95. The OT-980 is Alcatel’s first Android-based slider phone, with a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen and a Qwerty keypad, reminding us of a low-rent Palm Pre. But …

The long-planned breakup of Motorola is now a reality. The two new companies both began trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange, Motorola Mobility Holdings under the ticker “MMI” and Motorola Solutions as “MSI.” Motorola Mobility gets the more consumer-focused lineup of mobile phones and set-top boxes, and it begins independent life riding a surge of success for …

Toshiba will showcase its second Android-flavoured tablet at tech tradeshow CES, which kicks off on Thursday. The company will also show off a glasses-free 3D laptop. Our much-loved cousins at CNET.com have already manhandled both. The unnamed successor to the Folio 100 tablet will run Android Honeycomb, an upcoming version of Google’s mobile operating system. The device will, like Apple’s iPad, have a capacitive …

Forget Christmas — that’s so last month. Mobile World Congress in February is the most wonderful time of the year for portable gadget fans, and it looks like HTC will be dropping down the chimney with a 7-inch Android tablet called the HTC Scribe.  Pocketnow pointed out that HTC has filed for a patent on a tablet and a trademark on the …

CES, the Consumer Electronics Show that fills Las Vegas with the pitter patter of geek feet every January, promises to be a corker in 2011. Last year was all about 3D TV, ebooks and wireless charging, all of which left us shaken but not stirred. Sure, telly, books and um, charging, are okay, but wait till you hear what’s in store …

Despite Research In Motion’s best efforts to silence them, questions about the battery life of its forthcoming PlayBook tablet have followed the company into the new year. In a sequel to his original research note suggesting the PlayBook’s battery life is “relatively poor” compared to rivals, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu reiterates that claim, saying he would be “very surprised …

Sprint continues to add partners to its Sprint ID theme packs for select Android smartphones (LG Optimus S, Samsung Transform, and the Sony Zio for now). ESPN is the latest, officially joining the Sprint ID gallery today. ID packs like the new offering from ESPN includes apps, widgets, wallpaper, and ringtones that gather around a main theme: sports. The ESPN …

Expect a tidalwave of tablets from Asus to sweep over this week’s CES tradeshow like a wall of touchscreen water. The company that built the netbook bandwagon with its Eee PCs is going finger-friendly for the new year. We’re expecting a bouquet of Windows 7-powered touchscreen tablets to break cover in Las Vegas. Asus already announced the 12-inch EP121 and …

We gave the screen on the iPhone 4 the gong over the Google Nexus S because of its retina-searing sharpness and clarity, and now the boffins in the CNET US lab have gone and backed us up with some proper science-y measurements. Our amusingly accented cousins from across the pond strapped on their stars-and-stripes lab coats and subjected the iPhone …