HP announced that the Palm Pre 2 mobile phone powered by WebOS 2.0 will get launched on 15th November 2010. It also noted that a SIM-Free version of the handset will be made available for £399 on its Palm website a la Google way of doing things when it sold its Nexus One Smartphone online.
Speculation was rife last week that the hardware major is on the verge of launching its Palm Pre 2 loaded with the latest version of its WebOS platform in the UK. The excellent WebOS helped Palm build goodwill and this has set the tone high for the next launch. The Pre Plus released earlier this year with a 3.1-inch TouchScreen garnered eyeballs but it did not boast of WebOS 2.0.
As per The Inquirer, HP is far from being able to replicate the success enjoyed by Google’s Android OS for its WebOS as it has tied the platform to few devices only.
The Palm Pre 2 has a conservative feel and covers Flash as well as HTML 5 and that should make people cheer. HP has noted that the WebOS 2.0 will enable software developers an open platform to integrate apps unlike Apple.
Despite the entire craze about WebOS 2.0, what needs to be seen is whether the Palm Pre 2 can set the stage on fire given its 5 MP camera, 320×480 TouchScreen, 1 GHz CPU and a 16GB memory.
O2 is offering the successor to Motorola MileStone in various deals. O2 is offering the Milestone 2 starting from £20 per month while it offers the device for free for £30 per month contracts. Orange, T-Mobile, and Vodafone are also offering the handset in the UK and hence comparing them for the right choice should be a good thing.
The successor is named after sequel to the current one as Motorola Milestone 2, which will be launched in UK by Q4 of 2010 or to be more precise 17th of November.
Motorola Milestone 2 is an organic evolution of existing Milestone rather a revolutionary sequel. Basically, this is result out of elimination of certain fundamental design flaws in the first version, that’s been plaguing it. First of these flaws is beleaguered keyboard, which has been modified to be a pretty easy one to type. It also provides some additional space created by the removal of the directional pad.
Milestone 2 is faster than its predecessor and is equipped with 1 Ghz ARM Cortex A8 processor, which enables to run applications much faster and has memory which can be extended 8 GB. Milestone comes with preloaded Android 2.2, which is also known as Froyo.
The MotoBlur UI from Motorola so that all messages messages from Twitter, and Facebook merge into a common place on the home screen, thus making social networking very easy.
Motorola has launched other SmartPhones including the Motorola Defy, the BackFlip and Flipout models. Watch out for what you want.
The news is that the Xperia X10 from Sony Ericsson is being offered online retailers for as low as £19.38 per month on a 24-month contract. Analysts aver that this signifies the possible launch of another product from the technology behemoth soon.
Xperia X10 has already got Android 2.1 OS upgrade and the discounted price for the Xperia X10 could as well hint at the possibility of a PSP (Playstation Phone) in near future.
Orange through Buymobilephones.net has the Xperia X10 white or black version on offer for £20 per month on various packages and it also offers a £15 automatic cash-back.
Named as Dolphin 20, Racoon 20 and Canary 20, the three packages pack a good punch. The first one has unlimited texts, 100 minutes and 250MB data, the second has 200 minutes, unlimited UK landline calls, and 300 texts while the third one has 200 minutes and unlimited texts.
T-Mobile offers the handset otherwise for £430 along with an 18-month contract. You get to have 300 minutes, 1GB data allowance, and 300 texts. Looking at the total cost of ownership, this package sounds great as it has a lot more to offer.
Xperia X10 is more user-friendly to view anything on the TFT screen, which comes with a scratch-resistant glass so that the handset is shielded from day-to-day wear and tear. It has got 1GB of internal memory storage expandable up to 16GB.
Apart from a hand free communication supported by 3.5mm audio jack, it has got sophisticated technical features such as EDGE, 3G HSDPA and GPRS at the speed of 7.2 Mbps. Users can access various sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Flickr, thanks to the Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth with A2DP, and HTML web browsers.
The users will find it more convenient to hold and easy to use. The extraordinary 8MP camera comes with image stabilizer, geo-tagging, auto-focus, and LED flash. Users can experience full fun and amusement, thanks to the FM radio with RDS system. Various other features such as organiser, A-GPS system, voice memo, calculator, T9, etc can be explored using this amazing XPERIA X10 White.
Nokia has made its latest Symbian^3 based smartphone, Nokia C7, available to UK customers via direct channel, Nokia Online Shop. Orders started shipping from ending of October onwards, weeks before it is available with UK network providers.
Nokia made it available in both Locked and unlocked version. Unlocked (SIM Free) variant will be costing approximately £ 389, while same will be available at approximately £ 25 per month on a contract basis with UK networks that have agreed to stack up C7 on their store racks. Networks, that have confirmed are Three Mobile, O2, Virgin Mobile, Phone4U, Carphone Warehouse, T-Mobile and Vodafone.
C7 interfacing over a full touch screen, enclosed in a stainless steel case has the style quotient embedded into it. Equipped with HD Video feature through 8 megapixel camera and webTV, Nokia C7 is also equipped with Social Networking features like access Facebook and Twitter feeds. It also provides one button access to all popular mail services like Yahoo Mails, Ovi Mail and Hotmail.
There is no doubt in saying that one of the most awaited Symbian^3 based phone has arrived in the market.
The latest addition to HTC’s Desire range, HTC Desire Z is soon going to be available to UK customers through Vodafone network. Though HTC Desire Z is not as glamorous as its predecessor HTC Desire HD, it is still a Smartphone packed of powerful features.
This Android 2.2 based Smartphone will be available with 5 megapixel camera and allows user to stay connected from anywhere and anytime.
HTC Desire Z inherits HTC’s trademark QWERTY keypad, which specially designed for text intensive users and corporate users to type lengthy emails with maximum comfort. Desire Z, has the keypad sliding vertically beneath the touch screen, which claims to much decent slide, when compared to any other sliding keypad models available in market including Dell Venue Pro, Blackberry Torch and Nokia E7.
HTC Desire Z comes with Flash support, which is backed by 800 MHz Snapdragon processor, which makes it not only attractive, but also faster and powerful.
This dynamite of features is expected to start reaching customers before to Christmas to make maximum out of year end and holiday shopping.
After a long wait finally Samsung is rolling out its new version of updated Android, Froyo, on Galaxy S handset for UK users. Though Google has released latest version of Android, Android 2.2, in May of this year, it took months for Samsung to release its update.
This update brings in many enhanced features. Some of them are Wi-Fi sharing, faster performance, flash supports and many other enterprise friendly features. Though the update was released in UK on October 18th, it was available to users from November 4th itself.
Handset manufacturer has posted a very good growth in mobile sets during third quarter of the financial year. Samsung Galaxy and Wave are two key enabling models for this amount growth rate.
Galaxy S was one of the most successful models Samsung has ever released. Another interesting pattern is, after Samsung next nearest growth is posted by another Android based mobile manufacturer.
Nokia has unveiled Nokia X3, first of its kind “Touch and Type” handset, in UK market. It is now available in UK stores.
X3 combines traditional 12 keys keypad along with touch screen fitted into 9.6 mm case. Currently X3 is available in 5 different and attractive colors. Trying to bridge gap between standard handset and Smartphone, Nokia X3 has borrowed its features from both of these variations.
It is packed with all the latest features of Smartphone, dedicated music player FM, messaging keys, and easy access to Ovi stores. One can stay connected using this through its 3G and WLAN support. One can also push emails from all popular services to phone. X3 is fitted with advanced 5 MP camera with 4X digital zoom to capture high quality pictures.
Nokia has made it available on its online shop and Phone 4U. it is also available in contract with Orange. Handsets are available at £ 159 or £ 15 per month on contract.
For many years AM had remained the most popular radio, gone are the days when FM has taken its place and it’s a newer technology DAB, going to replace it. DAB is the latest technology, which allows you to listen to sweet new music. DAB technology allows higher quality of audio with less interference of external noise and also provides additional information regarding the track being played.
Nokia has come up with an accessory, called ‘DAB digital radio headsets’, which will act as receiver. This actually results in lot of cost reduction for Nokia, as the other option left is to embed this technology in each and every device.
The device measures 55 X 23 X 14.5 mm and weighs 30.5 grams. This comes with micro USB interface and comes with a pair of jazzy headphones, which uses standard 3.5 mm headphone jack.
This is supposed to release in UK, somewhere in next quarter and after that in all other countries.
We can no way comment whether it was intentional or not but Samsung made Sony Ericsson’s efforts to move forward look smaller when it upgraded its Galaxy S handset to Android 2.2 even as Sony Ericsson upgraded its Xperia X1o users to Android 2.1 after a long wait.
Sony Ericsson has stayed way behind its peers with regard to Android updates. Most of the OEMs have been with Android 2.1 for better part of this year while some manufacturers like HTC lapped up Android 2.2 very soon. SE though has languished at Android 1.6 and the upgrade to Android 2.1 is surely a welcome change for its users though it is not enough to stop tongues wagging.
For the record, SE did not make noise about the Android 2.1 roll-out though it actually started a week ago across Europe.
Decades later if you happen to talk about internet on mobile phones, you might talk about 5th November 2010 as the “Belated Android update Friday”.
Click here to view Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 deals from OBIL.co.uk
Mobile service provider, Vodafone has more to offer on its PAYG range as it started offering three more RIM BlackBerry handsets – the Curve 9300, the Pearl 9105, and the Curve 8520.
All the three new additions are candybar models. The Curve 9300 priced at £230 is available in red and black while the Curve 8520 priced at £230 appears in black. Both the handsets have QWERRT keypads and 2.4-inch display screens with a 320 x 240 resolution.
The BlackBerry Pearl 9105 on the other hand has a smaller screen, looks slicker and still costs £230. The BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) which bundles email, apps and BlackBerry’s proprietary Instant Messaging Service is provided for free till June 2011 to those who buy the handsets on PAYG.
As a topping on the cake, Vodafone is providing a host of freebies too. The Vodafone Freebees includes as an example “Top up and Get Text and Web” offer. Users who top up with £10 get to have 300 free texts and 500MB monthly data allowance under this scheme.
Motorola is looking towards a major road ahead after the acquisition of Symbol Technologies way back in 2007. This acquisition has paved the way into “Enterprise Mobility” area, into which it was unable to make headway earlier.
Though the brand is well known in consumer world for its wireless devices and to an extent in defense world for its secure radios, it has done very little into Mobile Computing, which primarily deals with collecting and transmitting data unlike voice services. It is this acquisition, which has given Motorola required focus into this market.
After this acquisition, Motorola is able to provide companies with wireless tablets and other data gathering and transmitting equipment to their mobile workers. Motorola finds a huge demand for these devices in public sectors to carry on wide data collection activities of roles like postal carriers, census workers, health care professionals and others who collect and process data.
Motorola is expecting to double its revenues with this refocus of business and also planning to increase its headcount in this team.
Unlike Nokia N8, which took almost 5 months to hit shelves after launch announcement, Nokia C7 and C6-01 did hit the shelves swiftly, within a month of their announcement. Nokia has made announcement about launch of Nokia N8 back in April and has hit the market at the end of September, almost made a delay of 5 months.
But Nokia C7 and C6-01 were announced in mid September and ready to ship within a month of that announcement. All these phone Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 are based on new improvised Symbian^3. Though the new Symbian^3 is definitely better than the old one, but still retains the same ancient look.
These new pieces are fit with all new features like 3.2 inches display with 640 x 360 pixel resolution, 103.8 mm X 13.9 x 52.5 mm dimensions (length X Thickness X Width), Bluetooth 3.0 inside, WiFi b/g/n, multiple bands (Quadband GSM/EDGE), Pentaband 3G and finally weighing 131.
These powerful and yet slim Nokia new launches will be available with high speed internet access all around the world. In addition to above, these new launches are equipped with 8 megapixel camera.
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which is not available in market, is a tablet device from Samsung, which can actually compete with iPad in many aspects. Android based Samsung Galaxy, which is also called as SGT, has a 7 inches screen and is well equipped with required front facing camera for video calling capability. It also has regular rear camera.
Samsung has to accept iPad for its superior screen resolution. Samsung Galaxy is available with 7 inches screen with a lower resolution when compared to iPad’s 10 inches screen. iPad has upper hand in displaying text and icons when compared to Samsung Galaxy.
Samsung has added an additional TouchWiz UI, a User Interface, to standard Android 2.2 to enhance the interface for its tablet device. Samsung SGT provides features of phone along with being a tablet gadget. It comes with a slot for SIM card to provide 3G data connectivity and supports Phone Calls and SMS.
Samsung’s light weight design allows you to handle it in same way as you do any other Smartphone. Your thumbs will be doing actual interfacing work, while rest of eight fingers will be holding the device. With these features competing iPad, Samsung Galaxy will be one of the best alternatives available for Android based tablet devices.
3 UK came up with a better deal than those from T-Mobile for the LG Optimus One as it offered a 24-month contract for £15 per month.
The Internet Talker 300 tariff provides 500 MB internet, 300 minutes or texts, 5000 Three to Three minutes, unlimited Skype, Twitter and Windows Live Messenger usage, and free Voice mail. At this price slot, the handset has an array of competitors in the HTC Wildfire, the Nokia E5, and the Samsung Galaxy Portal.
If you want to grab it on PAYG, the handset is up for grabs from 3 UK at £175, almost half the price of high-end handsets like Samsung Galaxy S or the HTC Desire.
The LG Optimus One is bundled with a 3.2 inch wide HVGA capacitive touchscreen, a 3MP camera, a 600MHz processor, a microSD card slot up to 32GB and a long lasting battery supporting up to 450 minutes of talk time.
T-Mobile, Orange, 3 UK, and Vodafone are offering the Android powered LG Smartphone at the moment and O2 is thus the only one yet to confirm the sale of LG Optimus One.
Here comes some good news for BlackBerry users who would love to watch TV programs while they are on the go in the form of the iPlayer app from BBC. The app launched by BBC allows BlackBerry Smartphone users to access the iPlayer television service on their devices.
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BlackBerry Storm2, BlackBerry Torch 9800, and the BlackBerry Bold 9700 are some of the handsets with which the iPlayer app is compatible.
Users with monthly contracts on Three and Vodafone networks will be enabled to access the iPlayer app through the 3G mobile phone network while people on the other networks will have to be content with watching The Apprentice, EastEnders or listen to Woman’s Hour over Wi-Fi.
BlackBerry App World, the app store from BlackBerry hosts the BBC iPlayer app for free download. Apple iPhone has already got a similar service in place and despite the fact that there is no official iPlayer for Android based devices, there are a host of workarounds which are used by users to access the catch-up television service.
Creative is all set to join the crammed market for tablet PCs as it gears up to unveil two tablets. Christened as Creative Ziio, the tablets will be available in 7-inch and 10-inch versions with a choice to choose 8 GB or 16 GB memory.
Given the fact that the basic model of the tablet (7-inch with 8GB) is priced at £200 a resistive touch screen should not be that bad. The 10-inch 16GB tablet is priced at £270.
Creative has been a company focussed on sound and it does not come as a surprise as it pitches the tablets as entertainment devices around music.
Powered by an in-house processor with undisclosed speed and Android 2.1 the tablet will have a microSD slot, an HDMI port, a front facing camera and a stylus.
Ziio 10 has Bluetooth connectivity and Creative’s own X-Fi technology. The budget tablet is a good bet for those who are looking for a budget device as it costs half the price of the likes of the iPad or the Galaxy Tab.
Come 4th November, Apple users across the globe will get to download a web browser which can play Flash content from the Apple App store. The browser from Skyfire is surely gonna fire up the raging battle in the Smartphone / Tablet space.
The Skyfire browser will be the first Flash app on Apple’s App store. Skyfire has made this possible by turning Flash into HTML5 web standard content and then iPhone users will stream the same from Skyfire’s servers.
Though Apple denied to support Flash-based content on its flagship iOS platform and Jobs made all kinds of statements in the same regard, Apple had to give a leeway to allow Flash compatible apps at the end.
Jobs ran the extra mile too when he made a scathing attack on Flash and advised the Wall Street Journal to drop the software. Adobe retorted that Flash is for a multi-platform world, but Microsoft dumping Flash on its flagship Windows Phone 7 platform is another thing to note.
Another thread in complicated web, Apple has filed patent lawsuit against Motorola, but this time for a first time on multi-touch feature, which is a new hallmark feature in modern smartphones. While Motorola has filed six cases against Apple, Apple has filed two cases against Motorola.
Apple has filed two cases against Motorola for infringing two of its patents, Multi-Touch Surfaces and Multipoint Touchscreen. Both of them involve patents around touching a screen with a multiple fingers at same time. This is the first time, Apple is targeting patents around this technology.
Using this particular technology, iPhone can recognize if an user wants to scroll up and down only or side to side as well based on the angle with which finger hits the screen.
Two bullets Samsung Continuum and Motorola Citrus are ready to being fired out of a double barrel gun, called Verizon.
This release of two Android 2.2 based phones is expected to happen by November 11. Both these smartphones are dynamites powered by set of powerful features.
Samsung Continuum, a Samsung’s handset based on Android 2.2, is powered with 1 GHz Hummingbird processor. One can interface with its 480X800 3.4 inches WVGA super AMOLED display, it also has a smaller 1.8 Inches 96X480 super AMOLED display. It is also equipped with a powerful 5 MP Autofocus camera with 720p video recording along with inbuilt LED flash support. It comes with 2GB of internal memory, which is extended by 8GB microSHDC card.
Motorola CITRUS is based on Android 2.1, interfaced through 320X420 3 inches QVGA display. It is equipped with 3 MP camera and comes with Wi-Fi and EVDO Rev. It comes with 2GB pre-installed microSD memory card. This will come with Microsoft Bing Search and Bing Maps.
In a survey conducted by a research firm called Open First, among 104 Nokia Ovi store developers, who also post their apps on non Nokia platforms, reveal that, 84 percent of responders feel that Apple’s store is better than Nokia Ovi and 40 percent feel that android based stores are better than, Nokia’s Symbian based stores.
Some of the reasons for this level of dissatisfaction, which publishers account to are lack of required levels of promotion by Nokia and complexity in finding apps over store. While 63 percent of responders still vote their loyalty to Nokia Ovi store, 69 percent feel the revenues are low and reasons for which, they attribute to above mentioned reasons. Overall findings reveal that still 50 percent of responders are pretty much satisfied with Ovi Stores.
Other major reason surfaced is slower or inconsistent quality approval process, for which responders anticipate Nokia to take improvement measures. Nokia in that direction is offering end user support for development community, which needs to be communicated better for Nokia app development group to take maximum benefit.
