Vodafone goes phone crazy with eight new mobiles

It has been a busy week for mobiles with new handsets announced by Sony Ericsson, Nokia and several others. Now UK network Vodafone is hopping aboard the launch bandwagon with a range of no fewer than eight own branded handsets.

I doubt that there’s much here to worry Apple, Palm and other smartphone makers but at least Voda customers will have plenty of choice of cheapo mobiles in their local store.

Internet phones

The most interesting of the eight are what Vodafone is billing as affordable internet phones. The Vodafone 1240, 540 and 340 are low specced devices but they do however include an optimised version of Opera Mini for speedy web browsing.

Top of the range is the Vodafone 1240 which is a bit of Blackberry /Nokia E series clone with a full QWERTY keypad. It is 3g and has a 262k color QVGA screen, 2MP camera and access to Voda’s push email service Visto.

The 540 is a chocolate bar model that isn’t too unlike the Nokia 5310. It has a 2inch TFT colour display, 2MP camera, FM radio and MP3 and AAC support.

The 340 is being billed as a budget camera phone but quite what sort of pics it will take on its VGA camera remains to be seen. It also has a 1.8 inch display and FM radio.

Touch screen

Vodafone has also unveiled a pair of touch screen devices in the guise of the 541 Touch and 840 Touch. The 840 is the more interesting of the pair in that it has 3G, a 2.8 inch QVGA screen, a 2MP camera and a music player. The Vodafone 541 Touch sports a 2.4 inch QVGA colour screen, a 1.3 MP Camera, FM radio and WAP. Both phones will come in pink as well as white and black.

Catwalk

Finally Voda has added three new handsets to its 533 Catwalk Collection. First up is a new metallic red version. Also available is the Lady, which was apparently designed by a Berlin artist. Lastly is a phone called Crystal which, appropriately enough, has Swarovski crystals embedded in the case and actually looks rather tasteful.

All the models will go on sale shortly.

Click on the phone to start the gallery and see all eight phones