Nokia and HTC attempt to throw sand in each other's eyes

As mobile phones get ever more inventive, so too do the ways manufacturers find to take swipes at one another.

Leaving the Nokia World event in East London today, Sneak heard a rumour that the Finnish giant was handing out lunchboxes to journalists sneaking off to attend a launch by handset rival HTC.

Doing some detective work - "Can I have a lunchbox please?" - Sneak can confirm this is indeed true. Enclosed in the blue, Nokia-daubed box, was a ham, tomato and cheese sandwich (HTC - geddit?!) that was, Sneak can reveal, rather bland - perhaps the point?

"Hello, I'm calling from Nokia, we were hoping you could make us 100 ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches please...but can you make them taste like how we perceive the quality of HTC smartphones to be? Hello? Hello?".

Alongside the sandwich was an eye mask and some headphones (to help journos sleep through the conference), a giant gobstopper (to stop them asking questions), and a laser pointer (to blind the HTC executive team ... perhaps not).

We attach photographic evidence of these items as final proof of such underhand tactics, your honours.

But don't feel too sorry for HTC for being on the end of this Oscar Wilde-esque ribbing as it was up to its own sneaky tricks too.

It sent buses to the Excel centre to pick up journalists to take them to its event, to save them the ignominy of having to ride the toy-train system that is London's Docklands Light Railway service.

Twitter was all-a-flurry of users taking pot shots at Nokia for its stunt, but when HTC's actions came to light, Nokia was able to offer a swift rebuttal to these accusations on its Twitter page.

Oh, and in between all this both firms unveiled new phones.

Never a dull day in the mobile phone world eh?