GigaOM

Obopay, a three-year-old mobile payments startup, has scored $20 million in additional funding, CEO Carol Realini told me this afternoon. She and other Obopay executives contributed to the round by wiring their investments to the company coffers by way of their Obopay accounts on their mobile phones.

Yes, it’s a gimmick, but it’s also a very real indication of Obopay’s determination. Much like Western Union is the money transfer agent of choice in the real world, and PayPal is online, Obopay wants to be the way to send money for mobile. To do this it will have to win out over PayPal’s own mobile division, plus a myriad of startups such as KushCash and TextPayMe.com. It has the backing. Prior to the most recent round, Obopay had raised $48 million. A company spokeswoman said the $20 million round isn’t complete and that the eventual total may be higher.

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When it comes to mobile phones, it’s all about touch screens — this year. But what will they look like in four or five years? I recognize that in 25 years they’ll be implanted into our bodies, à la Ray Kurzweil’s thesis, but how will we we improve upon them in the meantime?

Since Apple has scored the touch crown, Samsung is going hands-free. It’s filed for a patent to let your fingers do the talking — simply wave them in some predetermined way to, for example, pull up a phone number, navigate the web or play music. The patent is focused on how the phone’s camera is used to translate the hand signals and then deliver those instructions to the device for execution. For an example of how this could go wrong, think back to the movement-controlled radios in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (the book, not the movie).

If your fingers can’t walk the talk, then it’s up to voice. Nuance Communications along with an undisclosed OEM are playing around with a button-less phone that will be entirely voice-controlled. I love using speech instead of my hands, but since the Nuance-powered voice recognition on my BlackBerry Pearl consistently offers to call my friend Trudy every time I ask it to call Om, I’m a little concerned about how that will work. C’mon Nuance, I can see confusing Om with Home, but Trudy? I don’t get it.

So touch, talk or sign, when it comes to mobile phones, it’ll be whatever pushes your buttons.

Image courtesy of cellpassion.com

One of the most important calls I make during the week is the one to my mother, followed by another one to my baby brother. These are international long distance calls, and for the first 15 years of my American life, those calls went over AT&T’s wired or wireless networks, forging a very special bond with Ma Bell.

This past year, however, that bond has been broken. AT&T has been replaced by Truphone, a UK-based mobile VoIP company that offers better quality voice calls at lower rates and doesn’t require me to own a landline. A WiFi-enabled Nokia phone is all it takes. (These days, I am totally in love with my Nokia E61.)

Truphone has become indispensable to my work and personal life, and perhaps that is why I’m glad to learn it just raised a whopping $32.7 million in Series B funding from “new investors,” although the company wouldn’t name names. Previous investors who have pumped in over $24.5 million in Series A funding — Burda Digital Ventures, Eden Ventures, Independent News & Media and Wellington Partners — came back with more cash as well.

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Well the iPhone may be hard to come by in the U.S. these days, but they’re practically giving them away overseas. As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster notes today, two more mobile phone retailers — Britain’s 02 and Carphone Warehouse — have cut the price of the 8 GB iPhone by 37 percent. This follows another, even more drastic price reduction earlier this month, of 75 percent, by T-Mobile in Germany.

Munster thinks the cuts indicate that the demand for iPhones in Europe is light. However, he also believes iPhone carriers are clearing the way for the new 3G model, expected to be launched in June.

Meanwhile, RIM’s BlackBerry keeps adding addicts overseas: Roughly 33 percent of its subscriber base is now outside of North America, according to Scotia Capital’s Gus Papageorgiou — with most of it in Europe.