It would appear those leaked and unintentional early peeks at Dell's first foray into smartphones did not happen in Brazil and China by accident. Hans Erickson of Dell Latin America has announced the decision to "give priority" to those two countries, who will be first to experience the Mini 3i's Android glory, with China receiving devices "in the coming days" and Brazil getting 'em later this year. Interestingly, China Mobile will be making do without 3G, while Brazil's Claro will be offering a 3G-enabled handset. Dell remains mum on pricing and the rest of the spec, though all the information so far indicates that Brazilians will be able to buy the same WiFi-packing FCC-certified 3iX handset that's heading to the US. Either way, we've got another heavyweight's presence in the smartphone market, and we'll be even happier once we know what Dell's value-add will be.

Update: Official Dell press release is out making it clear that this is just the "initial" smartphone from Dell.

[Via Yahoo! Brazil, thanks Marcos R.]

While it's busy trying to rebuild market share on the backs of Android-powered devices in North America and Europe, Motorola's already got a bustling business in China, so it makes sense that they'd want to contribute some Google juice over there as well. That dovetails nicely with China Mobile's Android-based Open Mobile System -- which runs those so-called OPhones -- and Motorola has yet to bring an OPhone to market, so that's where this little beast appears poised to come into play. The MT710 is said to feature an 854 x 480 display clocking in at 3.7 inches and 3G support (using China Mobile's up-and-coming TD-SCDMA network), but beyond that, little is known; rumor has it that Motorola will intro a total of seven Android models in China over the next year, though, and this is clearly one of them. Shave three or four millimeters off the Droid's girth with this puppy, and count us in.

[Via PMP Today]

Nokia might be hemorrhaging smartphone marketshare to North America's meddling upstarts but it still dominates in total handsets sold worldwide. Today's news can only help that cause as Nokia taps into China's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G marketplace for the first time. The Nokia 6788 does the honor via collaboration with China Mobile, China's (and the world's) largest mobile phone operator. The handset itself brings a 2.8-inch QVGA display, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual-LED flash, 4GB of memory plus microSD expansion, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack, and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, all riding atop S60 3rd Edition -- not 5th as we're accustomed to seeing by now. Unfortunately, it won't start contributing to Nokia's sagging bottom-line until the end of December.

Motorola may be pinning its comeback hopes on the CLIQ here in America, but it obviously has some rather large plans for the world's largest carrier, too. An admittedly perplexing report has surfaced purporting that the creator of the iconic i776, er, RAZR, is fixing to distribute not one, not two, but eight OPhones to China Mobile next year. For those unaware, OPhone is an Android-based OS tailor made to operate on the aforesaid carrier and cater to its customers, and to date, quite a few other manufacturers have jumped on board over there. Sadly, no actual details about the eight Moto handsets were given, so it looks like it's just you, a cup of joe and your hyperactive imagination for the time being.

China Mobile officially passed the half-billion subscriber count mark as of the end of August, and we'd just like to present a couple staggering ways of looking at that figure:

• The carrier has a phone in the pocket of nearly 38 percent of the population. For comparison's sake, the biggest carrier in the US clocks in at under 29 percent -- never mind the fact that China has over 1.3 billion people.
• If China Mobile were a US carrier, it'd be providing every American man, woman, and child with about 1.65 phones (and OPhones).

Call us when you hit a billion, guys -- we're pretty amped to liveblog that party.

LTE's being designed to support deployment in both frequency division (FD-LTE) and time division (TD-LTE) modes depending on bandwidth allocation and the legacy network that's being upgraded, and in China Mobile's case, they're looking at possibly rolling out a mix -- TD-LTE makes for an elegant and inexpensive upgrade path when you're starting with another tech with "TD" in its name, TD-SCDMA. Carriers around the world are looking to lean heavily on femtocells to boost LTE footprint out of the gate, and to that end, China Mobile has teamed up with Nokia Siemens -- a company that's been pushing a number of "world's firsts" lately -- to show off the first functional TD-LTE femtocell demo by streaming video over a base station in the carrier's labs. It's still a ways off yet before customers will actually have these tucked away in the corners of their homes, but it's a step in the right direction.

It's sort of interesting that China is where all the Android action seems to be going down lately, but here we are, staring at the LG GW880 -- essentially the company's first Android phone. Of course, "Android" in this case means China Mobile's custom WiFi-less OPhone platform, which means we'll probably never see this guy outside of the Middle Kingdom, but it's a fair look at what LG's handset designers think an Android set should look like: 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen, 256MB RAM, GPS, and a five megapixel camera. Honestly? We're hoping LG has grander plans for those other Android phones it has planned for this year -- we'll just have to wait and see. Hit the read link for a few more shots in the meantime.

[Via Slashphone]

HTC's got a super-tight relationship with Qualcomm, a relationship that they've gone to the mat to defend on many occasions -- most recently with the Hero, which uses essentially the same 528MHz MSM7201a chipset as pretty much every other notable HTC in recent memory. Thing is, this is 2009 and there now are better, faster processors out there, even within the ARM family; take TI's Cortex A8-based OMAP3, for example, which very effectively powers some of the most media-centric, UI eye candy-heavy devices on the market. That's not to say that the MSM7200 series can't hold its own -- one look at TouchFLO 3D gliding along smoothly on a Touch Pro2 will tell you that -- but why not throw more horsepower under the hood if you can still get a full days' worth of use on battery power? We've been able to confirm a wmpoweruser.com report that HTC's upcoming Qilin for China Mobile will be underpinned by an honest-to-goodness OMAP3, which you'd think might rock the Qualcomm boat but HTC's decision was actually very easy: the fully-integrated MSM7200 isn't available in a TD-SCDMA configuration. That's good for Qilin, good for China Mobile, bad for customers of every other Whitestone variant in the world. If there's a silver lining here, it's that HTC's leaked roadmaps seem to indicate that Snapdragon-powered gear will happen sooner rather than later, but at this point, it can't happen soon enough.

The O1 isn't even out yet, but a new filing with China's regulatory folks suggests that Lenovo's already hard at work at a lower-cost version that would swap out metal bits for plastic ones and kick the camera down from 5 megapixels to 3. On the plus side, buyers still make out with 8GB of internal storage and quite possibly China Mobile's homegrown Android skin, so it can't be all bad, right? Then again, this remix could be for a different carrier altogether, in which case we might be spared Open Mobile System's uncomfortably iPhone-esque home screen -- and really, that'd be just fine with us.

In China, excited about Android, and finding yourself a bit let down by Dell's first smartphone outing? Chin up, kid -- maybe Philips has your number. The company already has an established Asian phone business with its Xenium line of ridiculously energy-efficient handsets, and as suspected, it turns out it'll be one of China Mobile's launch partners as it kicks off its Android-based Open Mobile System next month alongside Lenovo, Dell, and HTC subsidiary Dopod. What you're looking at here is the V900, and like all OMS devices, it runs a highly customized Android build that's taken on a vaguely iPhone-esque appearance; other features include WiFi, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and -- if you squint really hard -- the momentary believe that you're actually holding a Touch Diamond2. Looks-wise, we think we prefer every other OMS launch phone, but it's good to see that there'll be plenty of options on the shelves.

[Via HTC Phones, thanks Micah]

Oh, how we love PR people and their eternal clarifications on things. Apparently, the Dell Mini 3i's apperance at a China Mobile event on Monday was merely a proof of concept, and -- wait for it -- "it wasn't officially, formally introduced so much as it was waved around." Thank you, Dell, for our quote of the week. Unwilling to yet commit to the handset and specs on display, Dell is saying that it was there to support China Mobile in its role as a development partner rather than to promote any retail products. We wouldn't read too much into this supposed refutation -- if the phone were indeed a concept, that'd have been made clear at the show (and it wasn't based on the original report), and what we're experiencing now feels very much like post-event spin.

[Via Mobile Review]

Its website is still showing a Coming Soon page for us, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting via Hong Kong -- China Mobile's hometown -- that the world's largest carrier's app store is now live. The service, which offers the usual array of apps and media that you'd expect of any self-respecting fee-based carrier content deck, is said to support some ten handsets out of the gate from Nokia, Samsung, and LG. Mysteriously missing from that list is anything that'd be running OMS, though we suppose that makes sense since the first OPhones aren't coming to market in an official capacity until next month.

At last, the much rumored Dell cellphone has made its first official appearance. The 3.5-inch 360 x 640 pixel device with capacitive touchscreen was on display in China running the Android-based Open Mobile System (OMS). The Mini 3i was on-hand as part of the launch of China Mobile's new Application Platform that offers music, video, and app downloads to mobile phones from Nokia, Samsung, LG, and apparently, Dell. The candybar device lacks WiFi (or Chinese WAPI) and is strictly 2G GSM (no 3G) but does come with a 3 megapixel camera, microSD slot, Bluetooth, and 950mAh battery. Guess now we know why the early prototypes were met by a collective meh by mobile carriers earlier this year. No idea when this will ship but it looks China-bound for at least the near future. A few more pics after the break.

[Via Cloned In China]

Read -- China Mobile's Application Platform
Read -- Dell cooperating with China Mobile
Read -- Dell Mini 3i unveil