If you were one of those who recently got their hands on Apple's new iPhone model, you might be surprised to find out that its actual manufacturing costs are a lot lower than you might think. Researching firm iSuppli released a comprehensive teardown analysis of the components and production costs for the iPhone 3G, summing up the total to a mere US$ 174.33. Find out more in our full article after the jump.

GPS smartphones such as the BlackBerry 8820 have become popular with today's modern road warriors so it's no surprise that Samsung has announced their own GPS phone, the SGH-i550. Reports say the unit is tentatively scheduled for launch this November but specific release markets or prices have yet to be officially announced.

On paper, the i550 looks like it will be a strong contender in the mobile smartphone market. The unit is a tri-band GSM phone with 3G capabilities via WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) and is equipped with the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 (Symbian OS 9.2).

The i550 also comes with a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, HSDPA connectivity, a 3.5mm audiojack, a 1200 mAh battery which is said to be good for up to 24 hours of heavy use, and of course a built-in GPS receiver.

The i550 looks to be a solid phone for workers and travelers. If the phone proves to be popular with the mobile phone community, then we'll undoubtedly be seeing more GPS enabled phones from Samsung.

Unlike many movie starlets, the Nokia E70 (about $500) isn't just about looking fabulous. The E70 has earned the right to bear the smartphone tag and has GPRS/EGPRS and WCDMA network technology for fast, wide area connectivity with WLAN for complementary local area connectivity. It boasts of up to 64 MB of built-in memory that can handle high capacity storage add-on applications, email attachments, photos and MP3 music files, plus up to 2 GB of data with a miniSD memory cards. The E70 also has the ability to switch from one memory card for another without having to remove the battery. Who says fabulousness and functionality can't exist in one package?

Other features include:

• Full keyboard and high-resolution color screen
• POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP native email client
  
• SMS and MMS text messaging
  
• Instant messaging
• Email attachment viewers (documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs and .ZIP manager) and editors (documents, spreadsheets, presentations)
• 2.0 megapixel camera
• Full Service Organizer: contacts with images, calendar with accept/reject a meeting request, to-do list, applications synchronize with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes
• Nokia Browser, JavaScript™ 1.3 and 1.5 support
• Loudspeaker for easy conference calls and hands-free use
  
• Car enhancements enable flexibility of communicating while on the road

Illinois-based cellular phone giant Motorola recently showed off a new finger-writing recognition technology that could be very popular with its users if it becomes widely available. The technology was part of a symposium organized by Motorola’s China R&D Institute.

This finger-writing innovation has been reaping accolades ever since it was introduced. Recently, it won the Asian Innovation Gold Award. Mobile phones blessed with the finger-writing recognition technology will allow its future users to compose SMSs and e-mails, be it Chinese or English, by tracing out letters on a special keypad with their fingertips. So don't be surprised if, come a few years from now, this technology is already a common sight in handhelds.

Aside from the finger-writing show, the Motorola engineers also presented Broadband Network Extension technology, which replaces the wired connection between a base station and a radio network controller. This technology is self-organized for WCDMA HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access)/HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) network, no additional technologies are needed.

The HSDPA is a mobile telephony protocol also referred to as 3.5G technology. It provides an evolutionary path for UMTS networks resulting in higher data capacity. It extends WCDMA in the way that EV-DO extends CDMA2000.

CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, on the other hand, is the CDMA2000 third-generation wireless standard that enables a high-speed wireless connectivity comparable wired broadband.

WiBro, short for Wireless Broadband, is a wireless broadband internet technology being developed by the Korean telecoms company.

If you are a techie person and you already knew all the above information, here's a question for you: what would you get if you integrate all three into one PCMCIA Card? Answer: SKTelecom's "ultimate" PC card. Said PC card is already in development and will be out in the future. For now, no precise date has been given when the SKTelecom product will be made available.