If you are the type of techie that loves luxury items, I can tell you for sure that you are going to love the brand new Nokia N97 Mini Gold Edition that is actually covered with 18 carat gold.  Personally, I am a huge fan of luxury phones and I think that Nokia has done it up right in the way of luxury with the Nokia N97 Mini.

This special edition phone has all of the technology to go with it’s awesome appearance too, it has a 3.2-inch touchscreen display at 360 x 640 resolution, an 8GB of internal memory, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a microSD memory card slot, 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi connectivity, an integrated FM transmitter and a 5-megapixel camera with AutoFocus and Carl Zeiss optics.

All of that and it will still not be released in the states, instead, it will be released in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East!

Finally, the cell phone companies are smartening up a little bit and lowering their prices, starting with the Palm Pixi.  This particular phone is one that I know that I have been waiting for, for quite some time and I can honestly say that the Sprint is the only carrier that has it … at the $49.99 rate.

Now, there is of course a mail-in rebate whenever you purchase the Palm Pixi, so you will have to keep that in mind when you are purchasing this particular phone.  However, I can tell you that this phone is worth this price and more!  You want technology?  The Palm Pixi is packed with it!

It has everything from a 2.63-inch 320 x 400 touchscreen display, a 2MP fixed-focus camera with LED flash, a full QWERTY keyboard, a web browser, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and supports EVDO Rev.

Finally, it is imperative — mobile imperative, you might say — that you talk to the providers you are considering about the contracts they offer. Typically, you will be looking at a two year contract with any given provider. In the event that you break the contract it ends, you usually have to pay them a fee to make up for this. You also need to figure out how often you can change or update your phone without being charged fees.

After you have followed all of these tips, then it is time to go through a search of cell phone plans that will meet the criteria you need. Because there are so many, you will have many from which to choose, but knowing what you are looking for beforehand will help.

How do you intend to use your phone? That makes a big difference too. What I mean is, will your phone be for emergencies? Or do you plan to use it as your main phone, your social, work, and emergency contact? A lot of people are eschewing landlines for cell phones these days, and if you plan to do that, it will factor into the plan you choose. On the other hand, you do not want to get stuck paying for way more minutes than you use.

The places you call matter as well. For example, if you make a lot of international calls, you naturally need a plan that will include such provisions, otherwise you will be stuck paying out the nose.

On the other hand, if most of your calls will be merely national, or simply local, well, you need to look for the proper plans.

So many mobile providers, so many cell phone plans. The choices seem endless and the act of finding the right provider with the perfect plan for you can often be an exercise in frustration. It so often happens that one carrier’s plan has some aspects you want, while another carrier has the other things you want, and you cannot find a happy medium. Fortunately, here are some tips that can make your search easier.

For one thing, you first need to see what carriers actually have coverage in your area. You don’t want to be stuck with no coverage in your own home, or find that you get charged for roaming when making calls in your living room.

Trust me, I’ve been there. It’s a wake up call you can do without.

Now, I am all for the environment.  I am all about recycling and making sure that you use a lower emission car, but honestly – do you think that we need to rely on using solar-powered phones?  Well, China seems to think that we do and honestly, they have come out with a phone by Sharp that is pretty neat … and solar-powered.

Sharp is actually trying to gear up so that they can launch this brand new clamshell phone and I have to say that it is actually pretty cool.  It offers up a 2.9-inch internal display, a 5-megapixel autofocus camera and Sharp’s proprietary solar cell module.

While right now there is not word on pricing, February is the month that it is going to be coming out in China.

Cell phones are hard to purchase – especially when you really have no idea what exactly you are looking for.  Well, I can tell you for sure that one of the hottest handsets out there is KDDI and they have come out with some of the hottest phones on the market right now – the Lotta.

This particular series of phones actually come in three different colors and I can tell you for sure guys that these phones are incredible looking.  These handsets actually have a 2.8-inch screen that is LCD, a 2Mp camera and of course a LED flash as well as a microSD card slot and a GPS.

If you want a phone at a decent price that looks awesome, this is the phone for you – for real!

Okay, this is an app that I am extremely excited for.  Now, for all of you that are like me and are constantly on the internet, you notice the differences between Firefox and IE – all that I use is Firefox.  Right now, doing these blogs, I am using Firefox and I have to say that this particular app is awesome!

Android is one phone that seems to be extremely popular right now and finally, they are switched their gears from just offering up IE as a browser and finally offering up Firefox as an option.

While you might have to wait until next month, I can tell you for sure that this particular app is going to be hella popular!

Ready for number three? It goes to the LG enV3. People love this particular LG due to its wide range of features. Its full QWERTY keyboard encompasses four lines, its web browsers — the EV-DO WAP 2.0 — are super fast, it has the ability for multi flips, and those are just a few of the features that drive people wild.

Number four: the Motorola Droid. I have lately heard too much about this phone to be really enthusiastic about it, but it wouldn’t be fair to leave it off the list because of that. Folks adore this phone in large part because of its touch screen, generally considered the biggest available on the market at four hundred thousand pixels on a 16 by 9, 3.7 inch display.

And last but not least, in number five, we have the Palm Pre, exclusive to Sprint with a 3.1 inch touch screen and extreme fluidity between applications.

It probably comes as absolutely no surprise that the iPhone ranks up there as number one on most lists. That is pretty much a given, and I will grant you that most of the people I know who have iPhones are absolutely in love with them.

Still, in this case, you have to wonder if the popularity level is not at all influenced by all the hype surrounding the iPhone 3G. I mean, after all, there was a heck of a lot of attention, to both the phone and all the many apps you can get for it.

The BlackBerry comes in at number two — shocker shocker. People love these smart phones, especially the BlackBerry Bold 9700. After all, that model is all business.