Some great news from Affordable Mobiles. They now deliver all free gifts next day along with your mobile phone. Previously, customers had to send off their first paid bill in order to claim their free gift or cash back.

Free gifts include the iPod touch, Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, 42 inch HD TVs and a range of laptops. Affordable Mobiles offer a wide choice of mobile phones too, and delivery is free with every purchase.

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With over 18 years experience in the telecoms industry, Affordable Mobiles offer consumers an array of competitive mobile phone deals, which include; contract, prepay and sim free mobile phones, mobile phone accessories, mobile broadband and fixed line telecoms including home broadband.

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It’s that time of year again when someone associated with Taiwanese-based manufacturer HTC lets slip a few snippets of things to come. In the spirit of minor civil servants and junior ministers leaving confidential files on trains, the HTC “roadmap” has flashed its way through the ether, raising eyebrows as it passes.

Five Android and three Windows Mobile handsets are due to hit the streets in the next six months, continuing HTC’s decision to spread the load between the less favoured mobile operating systems.
We are currently talking the Legend, Salsa, Bravo, Tide and Buzz for Android; the Trophy, Photon and Tera for WinMo. The names will no doubt be changed before launch to protect the innocent and confuse the rest of us.

If the specs are to be believed, the bar stays high and the norm just got tastier, notably with the use of the Qualcomm processor platform in three of the handsets and 256 Mbytes’ RAM in the Androids.Take the Bravo due next April, sporting a big, big 3.7-inch capacitive AMOLED display that will muscle into top-of-the-range spot for HTC. It is set to be a multimedia powerhouse with DivX support and superior video recording, fuelled by a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU. Internet will be via 3.5G/HSDPA, with quad-band roaming potential and a 5 megapixel still camera.

The Tide, also expected in April, is to be equipped with 3.5G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and quad-band, again with a touchscreen (QVGA, 2.8-inch), 3 megapixel camara and, like the Salsa and the Buzz, a 528 MHz Qualcomm CPU. The Salsa – due in June 2010 - will be less pricey, so consequently less exotic, but still full-featured. It is likely to offer 3.5G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS, plus a 2.6-inch landscape QVGA touchscreen and full QWERTY keyboard among its goodies.

The 11.4 mm thin Legend is scheduled to be first out of the traps in March, with a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen and 5 megapixel camera. Connectivity, again, will be 3.5G/HSDPA with Wi-Fi and GPS: HTC is determined to make GPRS/EDGE so old hat.

The Buzz, due in May, will be quad-band, 3.5G/HSDPA with Wi-Fi and GPS, too, with a 3.2-inch touchscreen display with QVGA resolution and a rear panel that will have some swap around ability for the fashion conscious.

Pride of place in the Windows Mobile 6.5 stable will be the Trophy, due in May, with a full QWERTY keypad, 3-inch capacitive touchscreen with VGA resolution, 5 megapixel camera and top-notch connectivity via 3.5G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi and quad-band roaming to name but a few. Its brother in arms is the Photon, due in April, except the screen here is larger at 3.2-inch though with lower resolution (HVGA).

The successful Touch Pro2 has had its feature set slimmed down and resized to form the Tera, with its 3-inch resistive touchscreen and 3 megapixel camera. But even its cut-down functionality does not mean compromising on 3.5G/HSDPA internet connectivity, Wi-Fi and GPS.

So HTC is upping the ante in 2010, in speed, in video capability (720 pixel HDTV recording) and consistently of connectivity and everyone looks set to be a winner.

View all current HTC phones

Update - Now available in two colours; black or hazlenut. 3 launched Britain’s first £9 plan on 23rd December. Customers can get a free Sony Ericsson G502 (was previously a free K660i) with a mix of 100 minutes or texts per month for just £8.81 line rental.

It’s being advertised as £9 a month to fit in with their pricing of other tariffs, which are based on old VAT rates. But with VAT now reduced to 15%, line rental is actually £8.81. So, even better vlaue for money.

Now, The Carphone Warehouse Group is preparing to launch a similar deal on T-Mobile. For £8.99 per month users will get a free phone with 100 minutes and 100 texts per month on an 18 month contract. It’s not yet known what handsets will be available or whether the £8.99 will include VAT at 15%.

Compare Sony Ericsson G502 deals here

All of the UK’s mobile phone networks have reduced their monthly line rental, passing on the 2.5% reduction in VAT. VAT has been reduced from 17.5% to 15%, which equates to an actual saving of 2.13%.

It’s going to take a little while for all retailers to update their web sites so over the next few days you might notice some discrepancies. The important thing is that the new lower prices will apply when you receive your bill from the network.

Orange Canary 30 for example, now costs £29.36 per month. The price of phones has also been reduced and Orange has rounded down the cost of all phones to the nearest 50p.

T-Mobile has reduced prices but is continuing to show deals at the old prices for the time being. All new and existing customers will see a reduction on their bills from 1st December. PAYG customers will receive extra credit at the end of each month depending on how much they have topped up.

Vodafone are also passing on the VAT saving to all customers and line rental will be reduced by 2.13%. PAYG customers will receive an extra 2.5% extra credit when they top up, which is actually more than the effective VAT saving.

3 are passing on the VAT cut for all of their products and services. The cost of phones and tariffs will continue to be shown at the old prices for the time being, but you will pay the new, lower price. So if a phone costs £99.99 you will actually pay £97.86. A tariff advertised at £18.00 per month will be charged at £17.62. PAYG top ups offer extra credit, so if you top up by £10.00 you will receive £10.18 of credit.

O2 are passing on the VAT reduction. The new prices may not be displayed on all web sites immediately.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8220 (originally known as the BlackBerry Kickstart), will be the first BlackBerry flip design phone. It will also be available as the BlackBerry Pearl 8210, which will have GPS but no WiFi. Both devices have the same form factor with an external display to show information about incoming calls, emails and messages.

Flip it open and you’ll find the familiar SureType keyboard that combines a miniature QWERTY-based keyboard with a traditional numeric keypad. The BlackBerry 8220 has everything you’d expect from a BlackBerry such as trackball navigation, WiFi, advanced email, a 2 megapixel camera, expandable memory up to 4GB, a 3.5mm headset jack and great audio and video capabilities.

Expected soon on pay monthly contract.

Compare all BlackBerry Pearl 8220 deals here

The HTC Touch Diamond is a thin and good looking touchscreen phone powered by the powerful and highly customisable new Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system.

The Touch Diamond has a very clever TouchFLO™ 3D system that allows your photos and music to be searched as you rotate the phone or via finger gestures on it’s very impressive touchcreen. The touchscreen itself is a 2.8 inch TFT-LCD with full VGA resolution meaning you will have plenty of room to view pictures from the onboard 3.2 megapixel camera or movies stored on the impressive 4GB internal memory.

Browsing the web on this phone is great too as the large touchscreen is complimented by broadband like speed thanks to the HSDPA and WiFi data connectivity.

Built in GPS completes the Touch Diamond’s impressive feature list and with all this packed into a 11.5mm thin, good looking fashion phone like shell we think HTC have a best seller on their hands when it is due for release here in the UK sometime in early June. Unless…

If the alleged new 3G iPhone rumoured to be arriving on these very shores at roughly the same time as the HTC Touch Diamond has a few new tricks up it’s sleeve as well as a price reduction to the £169 level we seen a few weeks ago when O2 got shot of their 8GB first generation iPhone versions then the HTC Touch Diamond could struggle.

However the following teaser video of the HTC Touch Diamond should keep you interested until we can compare the two phones in the flesh hopefully within the next few weeks!

As always bookmark our HTC Touch Diamond deals comparison page to be sure to see all the launch deals compared.

Below is the official HTC teaser video:

Coolsmartphone have got their hands on the HTC Touch Diamond and in the flesh the interface looks even better!