Alcatel OT-209

The economy faces glaring uncertainties going into the new year and shoppers are being exceptionally careful on where they spend their money. This has lead to the return of the sub £20 mobile phones.

As smart phoneS took off around 4 years ago, so did the average price of mobile phones. However simpler models have now made a comeback. Leading the pack are Samsung, LG and Alcatel.

The Alcatel OT-209 is one such example. It is a simple phone that does its job, plus it has FM radio for music on the go. With bigger buttons, Alcatel seems to have stuck to the idea of making a simple phone, that is easy to use.

Mobile phones for under £20

The Facebook phone namely the Vodafone 555 Blue which was announced in July is finally available for sale from the mobile phone operator Vodafone. The smartphone is the first prepay handset to come with a Facebook button in the UK.

It looks quite similar to the HTC ChaCha handset as they share the same colour scheme and looks along with a dedicated Facebook button. The handset is manufactured by Alcatel which is famous for providing street-smart mobile phones with features and functions albeit at a low price.

The Vodafone 555 features a 2MP camera with flash, a 2.4-inch non-touchscreen QVGA display and a full QWERTY keyboard. There is no 3G or Wi-Fi though it has Opera Mini browser which comes with its compression capabilities thus enabling faster web access while saving bandwidth. The handset is powered by its proprietary OS.

The smartphone will be sold for £70 both in stores as well as online from Vodafone. This includes a top up of £15 by which users will be provided 200 minutes, 600 texts along with 100MB of web access. You can also grab the device for £62.50 which can be used only on Vodafone’s network.

It has just been three months that the Samsung Galaxy S2 has hit the stands and the white version of the handset is already on its way. Don’t keep your mouth open in awe; it is indeed going to be available from 1st of September 2011 in the UK.

The white Samsung Galaxy S2 has been promised this September by the Korean mobile phone manufacturer and mobile phone operator Vodafone has already added the device to its ‘Coming Soon’ page.

The white version would be available both online as well as in stores. However, Vodafone has not mentioned any further details such as pricing or release date of the device.

As the white version is no different from the black one in terms of software or hardware, the device is said to cost the same as that of the latter. It means that Vodafone’s monthly tariffs would start from £36. However, Vodafone will not be the exclusive carrier for the white Galaxy S2.

The Galaxy S II is slimmer, lighter and faster. It is a mere 8.49mm thick, weighs only 116g and has a huge 4.27-inch Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen.

The device comes pre-loaded with the latest Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Also bundled are a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. And of course adding value is an 8MP camera capable of recording HD 1080p video.

Korean Mobile phone manufacturer has added a durable touch screen device to its portfolio of mobile devices, which can resist water and is tough enough to resist wear and tear. The Smartphone is called Samsung Galaxy Xcover.

Xcover is made up of IP67 dirt and dust resistance, which not only gives it rough and tough look but also can resist water as deep as 1 meter up to 30 minutes. Xcover is built on Android 2.3 (which is more popularly known as Gingerbread) and is powered by an 800 MHz processor. It is interfaced via 3.65 inches wide touch screen, which is made up of tempered glass, a unique glass made in Samsung labs to make it four to five times tougher than normal glass. The tempered glass makes the touch screen to be scratch resistant.

Samsung is also introducing a new ‘Social Hub’ feature through this Xcover Smartphone. This feature allows users to update instant messenger status and social networking status updates in one place. The phone also comes with 3 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash. This LED flash can be converted into torch through Android application.

After ZTE, now Shenzhen based China’s largest networking and telecommunication equipment supplier, Huawei is also planning to follow HTC’s success path to launch its own brand Smartphone in UK market. It is third- largest mobile telecommunication infrastructure equipment supplier in the world. Huawei’s debut Smartphone is built on Google’s Mobile Operating System Android. Huawei has been acting as third party manufacturer for carriers and other major mobile manufacturers.

Yes Huawei is planning to launch Blaze it first Mobile on its own brand across UK in another one month. This will be a Smartphone based on Google’s Android Mobile Operating System.

Hauwei Blaze is a modest Android based Smartphone interfaced through 3.2 inches touch screen and is equipped with 3.2 megapixel camera and is built on 2.3 version of Android mobile operating system. Unique selling point for this phone is front facing camera, which is rear feature for a phone of mid range.

Right now hints were that O2 and Vodafone might be network providers who may stack up this Smartphone and will be bring it to UK users in a month time from now.

Korean mobile phone manufacturer Samsung is geared up to come with an updated version of its already popular Galaxy S2 smartphone very soon. The device which will is codenamed as Celox is targeted against the soon to be launched Apple iPhone 5.

Celox which is expected to be released in September is said to come with an appeal coinciding with the Apple’s successor to the iPhone 4. The new handset will boast a 4.5-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus display which is little bigger than the 4.3-inch screen of the Galaxy S2.

The Celox will come with LTE/4G compatibility. The device is said to be powered by the Qualcomm APQ8060 SoC (coupled with the MDM9200) rather than the Samsung’s own Exynos 4210 SoC.

It also features an 8 megapixel camera, a 1750mAh battery, 16GB onboard storage, a microSD card slot, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, GPS, TouchWiz UI 4.0, and runs on Android 2.3 OS.

Moreover, there has been a steady fall in the price of the Samsung Galaxy S2 in the past few months. It is being anticipated that the S2 might be replaced by an even more powerful smartphone, which could probably be the Celox.

Alcatel has launched a new cheap touch phone Alcatel One Touch 602 with England Rugby team theme and O2 pepping up to make it available across UK.

Yes O2 is launching another pocket friendly touch phone from Alcatel, the Alcatel One Touch 602 and interesting this is this touch pone is centered on the England Rugby team theme. It is little dynamite in your pocket of 2.4 inches diagonally size and capable of showing you content at 240 X 320 pixel resolution. It is powered by a just modest processor of 102 MHz power, which is not sufficient enough to run a phones of this many features.

It is also equipped with 2 MP Camera and comes with 4 MB of internal memory, which can be expanded via microSD cards, which just enough to store pictures taken through this phone. Charged via micro USB charging is running with backup of 850 mAh battery.

It is again not so attractive in terms of network capabilities. But it is expected out of the phone of that price. It does not come with 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity. You need to manage your Facebook and Twitter via GPRS only. Only feature other than price, which should drive the sales of this small phone is its theme, which is targeted to attract rugby fans of England.

Samsung Galaxy R from the Korean mobile phone manufacturer which was announced last month has now been confirmed to land the UK market which was earlier not sure about its UK availability.

The Samsung Galaxy R is a cheaper version of the Galaxy S2 which is set to be positioned as an alternative to more affordable version of the iPhone 5. It features a 5-megapixel rear camera coupled with HD video recording capabilities and a front facing camera of 1.3-megapixel for video conferencing.

The Galaxy R is powered by a Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC along with Nvidia GEFORCE GPU rather than the Samsung Exynos 4210 making it even more powerful than the S2. This means that the handset comes with the latest mobile gaming technology.

The handset which runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread packs onboard storage of 8GB, Wi-Fi and a microSD card reader. Users can control the Galaxy R remotely using a new feature called Kies Air.

The Galaxy R features a 4.1 inch Super LCD touch-screen rather than the Super AMOLED one which comes with the Galaxy S2. Also, the R is slightly thicker and 15g heavier than the S2. However, this does not matter much as the R boasts powerful features at a cheaper price.

The exact release date and price of the device are yet to be announced.

The much awaited Android 3.1 update is finally available for Motorola Xoom tablet in the UK region. Motorola has now confirmed that it has released the Android 3.1 update for its UK Xoom users.

As such, the developer community who have been waiting for the newer version of OS since a long time finally gets relieved with this announcement from Motorola. However, Android 3.1 was made available for Xoom users in the US 3 months ago when it was debuted.

This Android 3.1 update includes a complete set of system performance upgrades and refinement such as placement, font changes and so on. The update will bring with it improved multitasking abilities, better widgets, more connectivity options to support keyboard and mouse along with an array of other enhanced features.

Users can also extend the storage capacity of the tablet up to 32GB using the micro SD card slot included in the device. Also included are Wi-Fi Lock and compatibility with joystick and game pads.

Earlier there was no wide range of support for USB devices. Thanks to the Android 3.1 update which allows you to connect anything from an Xbox 360 controller to an external hard drive with no obstacle at all. Simply saying, you can now use your Android 3.1 device as a USB host.

HTC has entered into Beats Audio to enhance speaker capabilities of its range of Smartphones. Sources from both HTC and Beats Audio have confirmed news of this partnership.

HTC believe that Music industry is in state of transition and is moving from pocket music playing devices to phones. Phone devices with A+ audio capability is recipe for success in current trend. HTC had sensed this right trend and had entered into partnership with Beats Audio to enhance music playing capabilities of its range of Smartphones.

HTC believes that enhanced music capability due to this partnership with not only enhances the capability of headphones but it will enhance the holistic experience of Smartphone themselves. HTC is planning to enhance speaker system of Smartphone not just headphones of the Smartphone. HTC has made a strategic investment in this partnership, where it buys the Beats rather than licensing it. As per this partnership HTC has entered into a total ownership partnership with Beats but partnership is designed in such a way that others can also license Beats technology of course for other than Smartphone only. Sources from Beats also confirmed this Smartphone exclusive partnership with HTC.