It’s been almost three weeks since “Boy Genius” broke Vodafone’s new business handsets for H1 2008.  The manufacturers are no doubt apoplectic about this release especially with the World Mobile Congress only weeks away. 

Palm’s range appears technically old hat, but the Nokia E71, E66 and BlackBerry 8xxx are attractive new devices that will hit the corporate sweet spot. 

Surprisingly a resurgent HP has a strong line up of devices in mid to late 08. 

But Vodafone does leave some unanswered questions.  Will Sony Ericsson launch a replacement to their P1i/P990 and what will the successor to the E90 be like?

Every year one of the networks tries to stifle handset choice in the name of efficiency.  Great mobiles launched with some fanfare by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others, never make it to the catalogues.  The latest example of this is the Nokia N82 and Nokia 6267.

No doubt a limited exclusive deal was negotiated between O2 and Nokia for the N82, but it is frustrating that Vodafone ignore it in their “Coming Soon” section of their website.  Even more troublesome are the operators totally ignoring the 3G Nokia 6267.  Choose the colour of your dream because that’s what it will remain.

The release of a firmware update for the Nokia N82 is in itself is not of any great interest.  It offers no new features, just correcting some bugs.  However it does provide proof of a key technology working with real users.

Although users have had the opportunity of updating their own handsets without returning them to a service centre, remember the horror of the 7110, flash updates deletes all their personal information.  This is no longer the case for the N82 as the blogs are reporting successful updates without having to backup, though I still would.  A real step forward.