Nokia Readies iPhone Response

Nokia remains at work on its answer to the Apple iPhone, codenamed “Tube,” a company official said on Monday.

Shown in a slide at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City, California, Tube looks similar to the popular iPhone. The Nokia device showed graphical displays, such as a promotion for the movie Shrek the Third. Other capabilities will be featured, such as the ability to upload photos.

“It’s our first touch device,” said Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia. Interfacing with the system is done via touch similar to the iPhone. He said the company has not published the planned date of shipment for Tube.

Nokia believes it can compete with iPhone, and during his presentation, Libretto compared volume shipments of iPhone to Nokia’s shipments of phones. Since the launch of iPhone in June, Apple has shipped 5 million to 6 million of the devices, paling in comparison to Nokia’s device shipments, Libretto said. “We’ve done that [volume] since we’ve had dinner on Friday,” he said.

(Apple afterward said 4 million iPhones had shipped worldwide by January.)

The Tube will support Java, something Apple has been reluctant to do with iPhone.

LG Teases Latest ‘Black Label’ Cell Phone Ahead of Launch

LG has begun teasing the upcoming launch of the third cell phone in its style-focused “Black Label” family of handsets.

The phone, the name of which wasn’t announced, will follow on from LG’s popular Chocolate and Shine handsets that launched in 2006 and 2007.

It will be officially unveiled and named at a product launch in London on April 24, but ahead of that LG released three images of the new phone.

It’s a slider-type handset with a shiny face, three shortcut buttons for answering a call, hanging up on a call and a cancel button sit below the shiny face and the upper part of the phone’s body is covered in what appears to be a faux leather plastic. Previous LG phones have touch-sensitive keys underneath the shiny cover and the new phone appears to have enough room for such a keypad but it’s impossible to tell from the images if there is indeed one.

The only technical detail available was the inclusion of a 5-megapixel camera.

The phone will first be available in Europe before being launched in other regions around the world, said LG.