Everyone seems to love skinny phones these days with particular attention being paid to those that flip open. At the same time, it's awesome when you can avoid the cheap plastic feel and enjoy some rich metallic goodness instead. Pantech is addressing all of this high fashion needs with their all-new IM-U170.

The major Korean phonemaker has certainly taken the minimalist approach with this new phone, keeping the package skinny and simple, yet loading it with some rather nifty features.

At long last, that orange splat has joined the next-gen Motorola party as Cingular has just added the KRZR to its lineup. The successor to the ubiquitous RAZR doesn't really bring any special features to the table above and beyond the other KRZRs available. Not to say that is necessarily a bad thing.

You still get a pretty decent 2.0 megapixel camera, touch sensitive music controls on the outside, Bluetooth, multimedia messaging, quad-band GSM connectivity, speakerphone, advanced speech recognition, and "airplane mode" for dedicated music listening.

Motorola today announced a global strategic partnership to create new music-based products and experiences for the mobile platform. This groundbreaking agreement marks the first time a music company and handset manufacturer have established a broad-ranging global agreement for collaboration on the development of digital products, marketing campaigns and strategic planning across multiple devices and featuring a variety of artists.

Cisco Systems sued Apple today to prevent it from using the name iPhone for the new smart phone that it introduced yesterday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.

Cisco filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for Northern California seeking an injunction against Apple's using the name.

That credit card wallet will be in full force sooner than you think. Visa, holding their own at CES, announced a deal with Nokia to make millions of phones into wallets around the world.

The full details of the deal have yet to be announced, but we do know that you will be able to pay for more things in more ways than ever before. You can pay other people, pay for groceries, pay for gas, and you can even redeem coupons.

If you're the investing type and you happen to be holding on to some Palm or RIM stock, yesterday wasn't a good day for you. Today isn't much better. Upon announcement of the real Apple iPhone, Apple stock started shooting up, gaining over 8%. By contrast, both Research in Motion (makers of the BlackBerry) and Palm took significant hits, with their stocks plummeting near 8% and 6% respectively. And the trend is continuing.

The luxury phones keep coming. Check out the latest from Mobiado. Their Luminoso is similar in design to their original phone, adds a bit of a curve and a whole lot of cool lighting. The Luminoso has a frame made of aircraft aluminum and sapphire crystal buttons. The phone has a dual lighting system that lights the keypad both from underneath and through the buttons. The 3G mobile phone will work with any GSM network operator.