Machines that Go Bing! -- The Gadgets Blog

TheStreet.com reports that Nokia will this year “finally embrace the touchscreen movement” in the form of the futuristic Nautilus range of cell phones.

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan has developed a flexible display which allows a smartphone’s screen to double to five inches. This makes the display comparable to many netbooks and other portable gadgets.

Following hot on the heels of the Blackberry Storm Nokia has at last released details of its first QWERTY sliding smartphone in the form of the N97 which builds on the standard Symbian S60 OS with a UI layer optimized for touchscreens and some surprise features which put it ahead of the competition.

Samsung’s i7110 surfaced today which boasts several multimedia functions despite its business-targeted ‘i’ prefix. Samsung has yet to announce this product and the photo below was obtained by KingMobile.

It looks as if the exclusive iPhone retail model is collapsing around Apple’s ears and Vodafone is proving to be the beneficiary. The Apple iPhone is now to be sold by Vodafone in ten countries, some of them with an incumbent ‘exclusive’ retailer.