Scientists at UCLA have modified a cellphone to act as a portable blood tester that is capable of detecting HIV, malaria and other illnesses. Dr. Aydogan Ozcan hopes to bring this technology to countries that otherwise would not have the ability to test for disease. Palm chief executive Ed Colligan revealed that many developers and carriers already have devices running the new Palm Nova OS.

Recently leaked Best Buy inventory screenshots suggest that the Palm Treo Pro 850 and pink Samsung Instinct are both headed to Best Buy. You would think Best Buy would put a stop to this but it has yet to happen. Both are reported to be available on shelves on January 25th. In other rumors T-Mobile is said to be getting the BlackBerry 8900 on February 18th. Unfortunately this Curve successor will lack 3G support.

SlingPlayer Mobile has been updated to be compatible with many more Windows Mobile devices. The added devices include the Sprint Treo 800w, Sony Ericsson X1, Palm Treo Pro, Sprint HTC Touch Diamond, Sprint HTC Touch Pro, Verizon HTC Touch Pro, Verizon Samsung Saga, Verizon Samsung Omnia, AT&T LG Incite, AT&T HTC Fuze, AT&T Samsung Epix, HP iPAQ 910, AT&T Pantech Duo, Sprint Samsung ACE, Verizon XV6900. There is a possibility of a touchscreen Bold and a slider Storm sometime next year. The 2009 BlackBerry Roadmap offers some details such as the touchscreen Bold 9900, codenamed “Pluto”, which maintain standard Bold QWERTY keyboard and the unconfirmed slider Storm with a slide-out keyboard.

RIM just grabbed one of the most off the wall QWERTY keyboard patents that we have seen so far. In the sketching we can see the QWERTY keyboard opens up like wings extending from the sides. Qik has recently added 27 new handsets to their compatibility list. This list includes Palm Treo 800w, Palm Treo Pro (alpha support), Samsung SGH-i900/i908/ SCH-i910 (Omnia), Samsung SGH-i907 (Epix), Samsung SGH-i760, Samsung SGH-i780 (Blackjack3), HTC Touch Pro, HTC Touch HD, HTC XV6800, HTC TyTN, O2 XDA Trion, T-Mobile MDA Vario II, Vodafone 1605 VPA Compact III, Orange SPV M3100, Dopod CHT 9000, Dopod 838 Pro, DoCoMo HTC Z, Qtek 9600, iMate JasJam, AT&T 8525, Swisscom XPA v1605, SoftBank X01HT, Vodafone PDA 1605, Vodafone PDA 9600, AT&T SMT 5700, Orange SPV E610.