The first Windows handset from Nokia, Sea Ray is creating quite a ruffle out there as another set of images and a video of the upcoming handset got splashed over the web.
WPCentral reports that the Nokia handset will sport a 7” logo screen which complements the refurbished Metro look of Windows Phone Mango.
The build 7710 which has been shown from a development factory is said to be the RTM build of Sea Ray which means that it is the final touch unless some issues crop up.
The Sea Ray looks like a reworked model of the N9 and does not have a front facing camera. It however seems to stick the specs issued by Microsoft to the WP maker s’ community.
Sooner or later, there is going to be an array of handsets, courtesy Fujitsu, Dell, Acer, LG, Samsung, ZTE, and Huawei. Microsoft is betting high on the WP Mango platform which brings tight coupling with Bing, Xbox, Windows Live and Office Mobile among other things.
LG Electronics has unveiled Optimus Duo smartphones viz. Pro C660 and Net P690. These budget Android-based smartphones, whose prices are anticipated to be under £200, will concentrate on the entry level market.
Both the handsets will feature Android Gingerbread 2.3.3 though they appear to be underpowered.
The Optimus Pro C660 packs a 2.8-inch HVGA touchscreen having a 4:3 screen ratio along with a four-row keyboard. It also features a 800MHz SoC, 512MB RAM, a 3MP camera, a 1500mAh battery, GPS, Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi and a microSD card slot.
On the other hand, the Optimus Net P690 is simply a replacement to the Optimus One. Though the handset does not come with any keyboard, it also features 512MB RAM, a 800MHz SoC, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, 3G, Wi-Fi, a three-megapixel camera, microUSB connector as well as a 1500mAh battery.
It also packs a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen having a HVGA resolution along with a 2GB microSD card. The C660 will be available with a price tag of 170 Euro where as the P690 would cost 200 Euro. Also, both the devices will be running LG Social, LG’s own social-focus UI.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray has been put on the “coming soon” section by O2. After Three UK, O2 is the second service provider to offer the Xperia Ray handset along with SE Mini Pro and Mix.
The SE Xperia Ray is a beautiful Smartphone with colour choices of Gold, Pink, Black and White. For those who flaunt, the Gold version looks awesome.
It has a 3.3 inch Touchscreen with Mobile Bravia technology and comes with an 8 megapixel camera with Exmor R technology and HD video recording option. An 8GB microSD card slot is available and the phone comes loaded with Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread.
The Ray is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC similar to the Arc and comes with a suave aluminium frame. The Android 2.3 driven handset comes with Wi-Fi, DLNA, Facebook integration, Mobile Engine and GPS.
The Xperia Ray is expected to be around on PAYG and monthly contracts for as low as £25 per month. Though SE might pitch the Xperia Arc at £300, it will be a tough call because Xperia X10 with similar features and a fairly bigger screen is available for lesser price.
The Arnova 8 from the French company packs some interesting features at a very reasonable price. Though the tablet will not give tough competition to the iPad 2, it comes at a quite affordable price.
UK retail store Asda drops the price of Arnova 8 to £99 which is almost one fourth price of what you have to shell out to grab the cheapest iPad 2.
Coming to the specs of the tablet, it boasts an 8-inch resistive screen having a SVGA (800×600) resolution and a Rockchip 2818 SoC clocked at 666MHz. The tablet which runs on Android 2.1 Éclair comes with onboard storage of 4GB expandable up to 36GB using a 32GB microSD card.
Arnova 8 supports battery life of up to 5.5 hours and up to 25 hours playback. It also features Wi-Fi and a USB port. However, the tablet also comes with turn offs such as the resistive screen and the lack of access to the official Android Market.
Thanks to Kasty, a custom firmware which allows the Arnova 8 to access the Android market and helps in solving some of the screen issues faced by the users. You can however find better tablets provided they are more expensive.
Just a week after being unveiled to the world, ZTE Skate is now available for preorder for £250 with the release date as 19th September, thanks to Clove.
The much-awaited follow-up to ZTE Blade is powered by an 800MHz processor, 256MB RAM, and a built-in storage of 512MB. The handset comes with a 4.3-inch WVGA capacitive TouchScreen with 480 x 800 resolution.
The handset driven by Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread comes with a 5 MP camera with Autofocus, microSD card slot, a 1420 mAh battery, and a dedicated camera button with flash.
The handset however will face resistance because ZTE Blade is available for a third of the price at £89. The ZTE Skate has got nothing more than a better camera and a bigger screen for that matter. Gingerbread has already been made available for ZTE Blade thanks to the community.
Given the fact that manufacturers are leaving no stone unturned to sell their handsets in this competitive market, ZTE Skate will need to be sold at a decent discount may be around £150 so that it stays afloat.
We all know Sony Ericsson has launched Sony Ericsson Satio back in February under name of Idou packed with all the best features available in the market. till now plus a new Operating System. More precisely it is a combo of Walkman and Cyber shot and one can obviously make out that it will be equipped with superb camera and music capabilities.
Sony Ericsson Satio is flooded with contract deals across UK market cutting through all networks. All leading networks like Virgin, T-Mobile, 3G, O2, Vodafone and Orange are making sure that they are not missing out the bus.
Sony Ericsson has worked on aesthetic dimension too and provides handsets in attractive color shades like Back, Silver and Bordeaux. The Smartphone sports a camera with amazing 12.1 megapixel resolution and Xenon flash. A Cherry on top is the intuitive touch focus feature which allows users not only to take high resolution and stunning pictures, but also images which can be blown to bigger sizes
Bad news for already owners of LG Optimus 3D Smartphone and discouraging new for prospective users, LG has tentatively indicated that it will not be ready with Gingerbread (Android 2.3, latest version of Android Mobile Operating System) upgrade for LG Optimus 3D Smartphone until October.
Currently LG Optimus 3D is running Android 2.2, which is popularly known as Froyo and users are eagerly waiting for upgrade to latest version, for which they still need to wait for three more months, which will be ten months after the availability of Gingerbread version of Android Operating System, by which Google may announce Android 2.4, next version of Android Operating System and code named as Ice Cream Sandwich. In other words, immediately after getting upgrade for Gingerbread, LG Optimus 3D owners have to start waiting for next version upgrade. This is really not very encouraging news for prospective buyers of first 3D enabled Smartphone in the market.
October timeframe is for UK users, users from other countries may have to go through even longer waiting times before they could see the upgrade over their phones. This may indirectly help the sales of HTC’s Evo 3D, which comes with 3D feature and ships with Gingerbread version of Android.
Telefonica owned mobile phone operator O2 has come up with a location-based service for its customers known as Priority Moments. O2 jumped into the deals market in a £6 million campaign. With this service, O2 customers will be able to get discounts based on location.
Priority Moments, which is an extension of O2 Rewards scheme, will use GPS technology in finding out where the customers are and then accordingly offer them location-based services. With this service, every O2 user can make a monthly saving of up to £105.
It is expected that there will be over 40 individual offers from around 30 brands during the launch period which can be used by customers at over 3500 high street outlets across the country. The service would be available from 26th of July onwards.
Priority Moments is an application which is available as a free download for iPhone and Android smartphones. However, the service can also be accessed via a mobile website by any O2 user having a WAP-enabled device.
Offers will be delivered based on location and will be shown on handset screens of the customers which can then be redeemed.
Customers willing to access the Priority Moments app need to text ‘Moments’ to 2020 from their O2 handsets and then follow the instructions so as to download it.
Motorola Xoom users will be elated to know that the company is all set to upgrade its Xoom tablet with Google’s Android Honeycomb 3.2 OS. This roll out will bring a couple of key enhancements to the Xoom tablet which is expected to be rolled out to other Android tablets as well in the days ahead.
A Motorola representative revealed that Google started to roll out Android 3.2 to its Xoom users, in phases. Motorola is said to be the first tablet vendor to be rolled out with Android 3.2.
The Honeycomb update will bring a new viewing mode called as ‘zoom to fill’ as well as completely enable SD card slots. You can now view your app at the size of a phone screen and then zoom it to 200 percent.
Other enhancements bundled with the update are optimizations for 7-inch designs like Huawei’s 7-inch MediaPad as well as support for Qualcomm chips but not simply for Nvidia based which have so far been standard for tablets like the Xoom, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Acer’s Iconia Tab 500 and the Toshiba’s Thrive. For example, Huawei’s tablet is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
The update is also expected to bring a raft of other tweaks and improvements such as performance optimizations.
HTC has announced via Facebook to all its Desire Smartphone users about availability of Gingerbread (Android 2.3 version of Mobile Operating System) upgrade for HTC Desire Smartphones.
Though Gingerbread has been released quite a long back, HTC has just successfully finished its build for HTC Desire Smartphones. As per the sources the upgrade has gone through intensive testing phases and HTC is quite satisfied with results and is ready for release to users. Though the upgrade will be available immediately for contract free owners of HTC Desire by this month end, users who own it via contract has to still wait for their operator to announce the availability of the upgrade. Usually availability of upgrades via contract will be bit delayed, as operator and manufacturer has to arrive at understanding before doing announcement.
There were lot of fluctuations and news in air about availability of this upgrade for HTC Desire, as HTC sources have announced earlier that they will not be providing Gingerbread upgrade for Desire Smartphones as memory of the phones will not be sufficient for the upgrade. But after a while after this announcement, HTC backtracked it and announced that they are working on a build for providing this upgrade and finally it is ready for available to users.
It is a known fact that the search giant Google has recently released Google+, its social networking website. With this release, Google is looking forward to make a revolution by knocking Facebook off its perch.
The search engine has already released an app for the Android operating system. A Google+ app has been developed by Google especially for the Apple iPhone. Google is now waiting for the green signal to be given by Apple. Apple will however take its own time to give Google+ app an entry into its AppStore.
Apple, which has a threat that the apps could not be up to the mark or could damage iOS gadgets takes much time for testing to accept or discard any app. However, some other reasons are being suspected by some Google employees for the delay being made in accepting Google+ iPhone app.
The iPhone application has been sent to Apple for verification and testing around two weeks back. It is being wondered as to why testing is taking such a long time.
A technician from Google revealed that the Google+ iPhone app was submitted around ten days ago to the App store and is waiting for approval.
Never heard of mobile brand ZTE? But sure you would have seen ZTE phone by now. ZTE is a Chinese Mobile manufacturing company, which has been producing Mobile equipment for other brands. Few examples of ZTE mobile phones in market under various operator brand names are ZTE Blade, out in market as San Francisco under Orange, Boston and Monte Carlo. ZTE was producing mobile phones for other brands and is second largest Chinese mobile manufacturing company. But it is not a very well known brand name to mobile users in UK.
Now ZTE is planning to enter into Mobile market with its own brand name in search for bigger chunk in mobile market.
It has already lined up contract with British Distribution Company to realize the plan in that direction and if news in air to be believed, ZTE (which has been providing budget phones till now), is planning to manufacture high-end Smartphones also.
ZTE is trying to replicate success story of HTC, which also has been manufacturer behind scenes for many leading operator branded phones for a decade and only after a decade, it has started producing mobile phone under its brand name. But only point to wait and watch is market dynamics have changed from times of HTC to now. Now there are lots of successful brands in market providing cut throat competition providing a very less space for new comers to enter into.
Better late than never, but this is really late. Finally Gingerbread update for Samsung Galaxy S has arrived for T-Mobile users across UK.
Samsung has released this update for Galaxy S, somewhere about May, which itself was pretty late. T-Mobile has taken this delay to next level by delaying it for three more months. Meanwhile other operators like Vodafone have provided this update by May itself.
So finally Samsung Galaxy S users through T-Mobile operator have started getting message to update their Smartphones from Android 2.2 (Froyo) to latest version of Android 2.3 (which is more popularly known as Gingerbread).
Though users already started getting messages, the operator has made it official now. Unfortunately T-Mobile sources or website provided no additional information apart from news about availability of the upgrade. There was a widespread criticism across market about the delay and kind of support Samsung or T-Mobile are providing to Galaxy S users. It is the same story repeated again. There was a considerable amount of delay for Froyo update too.
Maximum handset users are looking not just for impressive but affordable handsets of mid to low range. As such, thanks to Samsung to come up with the latest Samsung Galaxy Europa smartphone, thereby increasing the choices for the average handset user.
The handset which is also known as the i5500 Corby is an Android based one having a lot of sex-appeal. You can grab the smartphone from O2 for just £39.99 on Pay As You Go by making a minimum top up of £7.50. As such, you will have to shell out a total cost of £47.49 for the device.
The Corby i5500 comes equipped with a TFT capacitive touch screen display of 2.8 inch and a 600MHz CPU. It is powered by Android 2.1 Éclair OS which can be upgraded to Android OS 2.2. Also, it comes with a 2MP camera, a 1200mAh battery, the augmented reality app, GPS, Wi-Fi, Layar, an FM radio with RSS, Bluetooth as well as microUSB.
However, the Samsung Galaxy Europa is not as good as the Orange San Francisco. But, it should be noted that the latter comes with a price tag more than twice that of the Europa. Other good thing is that you can unlock the Europa for around £15 online.
It is raining budget phones in market these days. A set of budget phones are making foray into market, HTC is coming up with Wildfire S, Sony Ericsson is coming up with Xperia Mini and Samsung with its Samsung Galaxy Fit. Joining this band wagon is Motorola with its Motorola Fire.
Motorola is all set to set fire in UK market with its release of new budget phone Motorola Fire, which is also known as Spice XT316 in other markets.
Motorola Fire sports both touch screen as well as QWERTY key pad, it sometimes appears like it has borrowed these features from existing phones in market like HTC Cha Cha or LG Optimus Pro, which tried to imitate the look of Blackberry. It can be interfaced through 2.8 inches QCGA touchscreen on a QWERTY keyboard right below it.
This kid from Motorola is built on Android 2.2, which is popularly known as Froyo and is mostly expected to provide an upgrade to most recent in market Android 2.3, which is also called Gingerbread. With extended battery life, as boasted by Motorola, Motorola fire contains all expected features of a Smartphone of its range.
Samsung is producing Smartphones across the budget spectrum. While it has best of high end Smartphones at premium end of this spectrum, it has come up with Galaxy Europa last year on the lower end and now it is coming up with another Android based Smartphone in this range.
Samsung has recently come up with Samsung Galaxy Fit in budget range of Android based Smartphone for budget conscious customers.
Samsung Galaxy Fit is not just on lower end of Samsung spectrum, but also on lower end when compared to its comparables like Wildfire S from HTC or Xperia Mini from Sony Ericsson. It is interfaced through a 3.31 inches screen with 240 X 320 pixel resolution. But it does support multi touch, which is not in its predecessor Samsung Europa or other comparables in market. Physically it tried to imitate high end phones with a single key home button.
It is appealing physically with rounded edges, which gives a bit of classical look. It is packaged with all expected features like camera, GPS, Wi-Fi. But one has to compromise on performance side for the cost they pay.
Overall Samsung Galaxy S is a decent Android based Smartphone for budget conscious customers.
Samsung is all set to launch another mid-range smartphone featuring its own inhouse Bada OS called as Wave 725. The smartphone will be powered by Bada 2.0 OS which has been thought to be vanished.
The Wave 725 will be featuring a 3.65-inch HVGA capacitive display, a VGA front-facing camera, a five-megapixel rear camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi as well as NFC.
Bundled with Bada 2.0 are fabulous features like NFC support, an enhanced user interface, multi tasking as well as improved security. Above all, the price will be kept low which is like icing on the cake.
Currently, Samsung is the only manufacturer which runs its devices on different number of platforms. Samsung boasts devices running on Symbian, Android as well as Windows Phone in addition to its own Bada OS. However, most of the company’s revenue is made from the former.
The Wave 725 is anticipated to be out in Q3 2011. The other side of Bada phones is that they are not up to the mark in terms of performance, functionality or few other features. As such, they will have to face cutting-edge challenge given the fact that Samsung will be forced by the competition to come up with more efficient and cheaper Android devices by this year end.
Here comes some news to rejoice for those who are looking forward to place their hands on the Windows Phone 7 handset, the HTC 7 Pro. The amazing device is now available for £230, which also includes free delivery that too within 24 hours.
This HTC device which is offered by Play.com for £229.99 varies from other Windows Phone 7 handsets as it boasts a proper, dedicated QWERTY keyboard. As such, it is said to be a perfect alternative to the Dell Venue Pro or the HTC Desire Z.
The handset which features similar specs as that of the other current Windows Phone handsets comes with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC, 3.6-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, 576MB RAM, a 5MP camera coupled with AF, HD recording option and flash, a number of sensors, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
It also features a raft of Microsoft tools such as the mobile version of Office suite, Skydrive, Zune, Xbox live, the Bing Maps, Windows Live Messenger and so on. Moreover, these services are expected to give much better performance after the upcoming release of Mango.
The HTC Salsa which has been released this February at MWC is now available from O2 UK.
Both the HTC devices, the Salsa as well as the ChaCha would come with a dedicated Facebook button along with social networking integration throughout the UI. Also, both of these handsets from HTC are quite efficient Android smartphones.
You can place your hands on the Salsa for free from O2 UK by shelling out £27 every month on a 24-month contract. Bundled with this plan are 300 minutes and unlimited texts. Other option is to grab the Salsa for £104.99 on Pay Monthly deal and this coupled with a monthly plan of £16.50 will give you 50 minutes and 250 texts.
Alternatively, you can also grab the HTC Salsa by shelling out £299.99 on Pay As You Go.
The HTC Salsa boasts a 3.4-inch 320×480 capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass, a 5 MP autofocus rear camera coupled with LED flash and video recording, an 800 MHz processor, a secondary front-facing VGA camera, a microSD card slot, 512 MB of each RAM and ROM, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11n, a 1520 mAh battery and most importantly Facebook touch.
Samsung Galaxy Tab, which was originally available on older version of Android Mobile Operating System, Android 2.2 (which is popularly known as Froyo), is now providing an upgrade for the Operating System to Android 2.3, which is popularly known as Gingerbread. Users of Galaxy Tabs through Sprint network in US, recently had this upgrade done over their Tabs, while rest of the world is still waiting for that to happen.
Samsung Galaxy Tab users in UK are going to get this upgrade (upgrading OS from Android 2.2 to Android 2.3) in few weeks.
This does not mean that all Samsung Galaxy Tab users will get this update in one go in few weeks. As per sources from Samsung, Galaxy Tabs without any kind of contract (in other words not tied to any operator) will be getting this update within next weeks. They can do this by logging into their SKIES store. On other hand, those Galaxy Tabs on contract, which are tied to Mobile Network Operators, will get these updates through their Operator and they have to wait for update from their Operators for further information. Currently Samsung is working with them to plan this upgrade by August.
