Nokia N9 Specs Leaked

Recently, some pictures of Nokia's forthcoming phone, N9, got leaked. The pictures tell that it will have an attractive aluminium clad design with black keys, something similar to the Macbooks. And now we even have some specifications available. Take a look at them -

• OS : most probably MeeGo.
• Screen : 4 inch capacitive super AMOLED
• Processor : 1 GHz Snapdragon processor with 512 MB of RAM
• Storage : 64 GB internal
• Camera : 8 MP with dual LED flash, capable of HD video recording 720p
• Connectivity : Almost everything.

Well, these are leaked ones, and accuracy is not guaranteed. But I hope these give a basic idea about what we can expect.
                                                                                                                                                                

Samsung Galaxy U Specs Released

After a good success with the Galaxy S, Samsung is moving forward with it's next phone in the Galaxy series, the Galaxy U. The specifications of theGalaxy U has been released, and it looks very stylish. That square "back" key looks similar to the key on my Samsung Star 3G.

Anyway, here are the specs -

• OS: Android (Version not yet known, hope it will get the latest one)
• Dimensions: 119.5×59.6×12.4 mm and weighs 131 gm
• Display: 3.7-inch AMOLED screen (480 x 800 )
• Network: J-CDMA, CDMA Rev. A
• CPU: 1GHZ Hummingbird processor
• Camera: 5MP autofocus camera with 720p HD video recording
• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
• Bluetooth: 3.0
• 8GB microSD card bundled
• Battery: 1500mAh
• Talk time: up to 7 hours
• Standby time: up to 370 hours
• Extra features: Live wallpapers, Google services, OZ Store, Kyobo e-book, Daum maps, Allshare.

What I really wanted to know is that whether it's camera will get a flash or not (the Galaxy S missed that badly), but no pictures has yet been leaked showing the back side. More will be known as more things get leaked. Stay tuned.

Source : Samsung Hub

                                                                                                                                                              

Samsung Marine

While we have been abusing our phones, dropping them from the stairs and into water, here's a phone that will atually bounce back.

The Samsung Marine is built to withstand bumps, bangs, scrapes and even dust and water (under upto 1 meter of water upto 30 minutes).

Encased in anti-shock urethane material and featuring external speakers, noise cancellation, a flash light, built-in camera, camcorder, FM radio, a music player and expandable memory upto 8GB.This ione is perfect for the careless ones.

HTC Touch Diamond2

The HTC Touch Diamond2 is more of a sensible upgrade over the Touch Diamond rather than brand -spanking new features. The original Diamond was one of the most complete Windows Mobile device ever launched, so just some tweaks here and there is enough for the Diamond2.

The Diamond2 is adorned with a larger and high resolution screen (3.2" at 480x800 WVGA resolution), a vastly superioe camera (5 MP auto focus), and more RAM (288 MB). The TouchFLO 3D UI has also been improved and noow covers the underlying Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS from cover to cover.

Unfortunately, the Diamond2 still uses the resistive touchscreen which means that the Diamond2 will live and die by the stylus while the competetion happily invites you to use your God-given stylus to smudge up those lovely touchscreens of iPhones and others. In short, it lacks multi-touch.

That apart, the Diamond2 is packed with features, including great web-browsing, great out-of-the-box applications including the all-important ability to edit documents right from the word go.

So if you don't mind weilding the tiny wand and you'd happily trade the usability of the iPhone with a phone full of features, then the Diamond2 is a good choice.

Know Your Mobile OS - Part I

APPLE

This is Apple’s proprietary operating system for the iPhone. For users, this means direct manipulation using multi-touch gestures such as swiping, tapping, pinching and reverse pinching. The internal accelerometers alter the screen orientation if the device is rotated.

The iPhone OS 3.0 includes a seach option, copy-paste facility, MMS, e-mail and text messages in the landscape mode. The App store offers value-added applications. The software development kit allows geeks to create and sell their own apps, though Apple has a controversial fee-sharing agreement in place.


WINDOWS

This is the operating system that runs most of our computers, but can also run on our mobile phones. Windows Mobile has been through the usual ups and downs as witnessed by the regular Windows OS, but the latest versions such as Windows 6.1 are widely seen as stable.

Features include Office Mobile support, remote desktop access, voice over internet, Windows Live, out-of-office replies with Microsoft Exchange 2007 and support for Office 2007 document formats. The much waited Windows 6.5 is expected to offer even more.


LINUX

Linux provides a compelling alternative to commercial operating systems such as Symbian or Windows Mobile as it’s cheaper and not controlled by a bigger company. It offers a stable kernel, a support base not restricted to a single software firm and the ability to modify and redistribute the source code.

New versions of Linux Mobile even offer gesture recognition technology. Linux seems to be most popular in China and Japan where it is used by Motorola and DoCoMo. Panasonic, Samsung, Vodafone, NEC, and NTT DoCoMo are also working on a Linux-based platform.

LG KM900 Arena

Long after the launch of the first generation iPhones, LG has come out with a phone which looks somewhat similar to the first generation iPhone. Named the LG KM900 Arena, the label “iPhone clone” wont be too harsh for this newest steed from LG’s stable.

The Arena really looks like a smaller version of the iPhone. Switch it on, and the Arena pays due homage to the Iphone’s menu icons ----- a familiar black background with a 4x4 grid of colourful icons. The build is excellent, even though the use of superlight metallic elements leaves it feeling a bit cheaper than it really is.

The main highlight is the cube interface (S-class 3-D user interface) ----- the 4 homescreens are placed on the sides of a cube that you roll by finger sweeps (much like HTC TouchFlo). There are enough animations and visual effects to enjoy on this phone.

The Arena comes with a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus and LED flash. It has also got a media player capable of playing DivX. It also comes with Bluetooth 2.1, GPRS/EDGE, TY-out, Mobile tracker, Google Maps, Motion Sensor games and so on.The battery life is a bit of disappointment.

But where the iPhone beats the Arena by a long way is the applications.The limited set os apps will do the job, but the gear envy will soon follow when you see the limit to which the current iPhone apps have taken the platform.
So, even though the Arena is a snappy challenger, but the next iPhone is but a few months away…so you’d better wait for that.

Nokia E75 - Work & Play

Till recently, Nokia’s E-series smartphones were bulky business devices, a household name for enterprise users but cursed with form factors that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 90s. But Nokia has blurred that line between work and play with the E66 and the E71 and now they have got the E75.

The E75 is very similar to the E71 in terms of specs and functionality.Similiar screen, similar processor, similar connectivity options. But still, it has got something new to offer. It had got a regular numeric keyboard as well as a side-slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It’s numeric keypad is a bit cramped, but the QWERTY keyboard makes up for that.

The E75 also has an improved Messaging Application service, bringing together the Nokia Email service and the Mail For Exchange into a single user interface.

The E75 had got a 1000 mAh battery as compared to the 1500 mAh of the E71, but since the E75 has Feature Pack 2, it brings in some battery management enhancement which makes the nattery of the E75 last a bit longer.Further, Nokia has also added USB charging.

The display at 2.4 inches is a bit small for a phone of this category, but is acceptable in terms of both brightness and contrast.It has  a 3.2 MP camers with LED flash, mp3 player, A-GPS with Nokia Maps, HSPDA, 8 GB micro SD card which is extendable upto 16 GB.It runs on Symbian OS v9.3.

So Nokia has tried to maintain the winning formula and provided a form factor alternative.But yeah, it’s pricier than the E71.So is the spacious keyboard worth paying the extra bucks???   

Card Mobile Phone - Excessive Dieting

Before, there has been phones which measure only 9 inches or even 8.5 inches, but this one beats them all.

The card mobile phone, which is a cellular phone that is the size of a credit card. Well, it is the length and width of a credit card, but it is thick as a stack of three credit cards (even that is not a matter of joke). That is thin enough to slide into the pocket with your Visa or MasterCard, and it weighs in at 1.3 ounces.

There are no buttons on this card mobile phone. Dialing is accomplished by navigating an onscreen dialpad, and it also comes with a built-in voice dialer. This is a dual band GSM GPRS that has about 200 minutes of talk time. The screen is either color or monochrome, and the credit card phone is waterproof.

The Card Mobile Phone will be available in June or July. There are some rumours that it will first be available in India, and then in the US.

Motorola AURA - Forget Recession

The words "Recession" , "Credit Crunch" etc are missing from Motorola's dictionary , or at least it seems so. Or it may be that they are wanting to challenge this recession. And for this, the AURA is their answer, a style-led, low spec phone costing ......... errr (too little to be mentioned).

The phone costs almost $2000 , but it has got every reason to be so cheap (read the opposite). The phone's look is inspired by the design of the classic watches. It's body is made up of stainless steel and it has got an unusual swivel action. But the jewel of this phone is it's circular screen. It features 16 million colours, 480-pixel diameter and sits beneath a grade 1, 62-carat sapphire crystal lens which Motorola says is exceptionally scratch-resistant. It looks gorgeous, with pin-sharp detail going all the way to the edge of the elliptical lens.

Turn the phone, and you can see all the sophisticated mechanism of the screen and the swivel action. You got it right, this feature has also been inspired by those classical watches.

But apart from the looks, this phone has got nothing. A mere 2 mega pixel camera with not so good picture quality, a media player, somer basics games etc. It comes with a 2 GB onboard memory , but there's no memory card slot.Too bad.

Butttttt.....this phone is not for those looking for features, but for those wanting to show off a gem in hand. So the lack of features can be neglected.

Going "GREEN"

If everything is going green, then why should the mobile market be left out???It all started with the Motorola "Renew", the world's first "GREEN" phone.


Motorola Renew


Motorola's new W233 Renew, a cell phone whose case is made from recycled water bottles (yeah, those water bottles made of plastic which we use in our daily life), is the world's first "GREEN" phone. Motorola claims that the phone, announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show gives an eco-friendly talk time of up to 9 hours and a “zero-carbon footprint”.

Motorola says it will pay Carbonfund.org, which sells carbon credits, an undisclosed sum for every Renew to offset the carbon dioxide used to manufacture, distribute, and operate the phone. Carbonfund.org, in turn, says it will use the money to fund projects that reduce carbon emissions, such as wind farms and methane-trapping programs.A nice deal, isn't it???

Nokia Remade


Following Motorola's footsteps, other manufactures also began to show their concept GREEN phones. There's the Remade, a cell phone Nokia .Remade's case is also made from water bottles, as well as recycled aluminum cans and old tires (the keypad). The Remade makes claims to be green on the inside as well, with supposedly environmentally friendly printed electronics and an energy-saving display. And late last year, Sony Ericsson unveiled it's Green Heart, a phone with a biodegradable skin and an energy-smart charger that shuts off after it charges the phone.

And since the mobile market is so competetive, Samsung and other players may soon come out with their offers.

Sony Ericsson Idou

Another first from Sony Ericsson, and this time it’s in the camera section.Sony Ericsson has come out with the world’s first 12 mega pixel camera.

Yeah, you read it right.The Sony Ericsson Idou comes with a 12.1 mega pixel shooter along with a xenon flash.It also has got a full touchscreen interface with only 3 physical keys.

The phone is scheduled to be launched in the last quarter of 2009.

Samsung Omnia HD

After the Samsung Omnia, the Windows Mobile phone, Samsung is planning to bring out the Omnia HD, running on th Symbian S60 version 5 OS.Samsung has unveiled the phone at the Mobile World Congres 2009, Barcelona.

With almost all the features of the original Omnia , this phone is an upgrade to the original version.It comes with a 8 mega pixel camera, instead of 5 Mp in the previous version.The screen is a stunning one.It’s a full touch screen phone with only 3 physical keys on the front face.

The phone is scheduled to be launch in the third quarter of 2009.More updates to come after its launch…..

NOKIA N85

Ease of Use : Easy
Range of Features : Excellent
Design & Look : Good
Reliability : Reliable
Value for Money : Good value for money

Advantages: Camera, Screen, Music, Gaming
Disadvantages: None

Recommend to potential buyers: Yes

Full review
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The Nokia N85 mobile phone is a gorgeous and neatly compact slide design handset with a two-way slider, like the N95.The N85 comprises a very large 2.6 inch screen with active matrix OLED technology that displays up to 16.7 million colours with 320 x 240 pixel resolutions providing a very clear, bright and colourful screen display. The mobile phones many dedicated keys for various features and functions include S0 keys, multi-media key, send/end keys and short slide keys.
The mobile phone dimensions are 103mm x 50mm x 16mm and weighs a respectable 128g. The user can expect to gain up to a maximum of 6.9 hours talk time and up to 363 hours of stand by time on one single charge of the battery.


The Nokia N85 mobile phone comes equipped with a 5 mega-pixel camera with 2584 x 1938 pixels complete with amazing imaging features which include, 20x digital zoom, CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens and Auto-focus with assisted light and a two stage capture key as well as the dedicated camera key. The N85 mobile phone comes with fantastic camera flash abilities which consist of, Duel LED flash, On/Off/Automatic and Red-eye reduction flash modes with a flash operating of 3 metres.
The main video camera records at up to 640 x 480 pixels and up to 30 fps with a brilliant 8x digital video zoom. The front video camera records at up to 352 x 288 pixels and up to 15 frames per second with a 2x digital video zoom feature. The video recorder records in MP4, 3GP, Codecs, H.263 & H.264 file formats with audio recording formats of AMR and AAC stereo. The choice of Modes that are available are, Scene Modes; automatic & night, Colour Tone Modes; normal, sepia, black & white, negative and vivid. The maximum clip length that can be taken is 1 hour and 30 minutes.


The Nokia N85 mobile phone comes equipped with a fantastic digital music player system and supports popular music formats which include, MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+ formats. The user can really enjoy the great selection of facilities that will enable the user to create play-lists, selection by- artist, genre, albums and composers along with the album graphics display, skins an the equaliser. The N85 mobile phone comes available with a built-in FM stereo radio with RDS support and visual radio support as well as Nokia music manager, Nokia music store support and Nokia podcasting.It also has 3D speakers.
The N85 mobile phone comes equipped with 74 mega-bytes of internal dynamic memory - 78 mega-bytes of NAND flash memory with memory card slot to add a MicroSD™ card hot swappable with up to a 8 gigabytes of memory providing a huge amount of storage for all the users downloads, music and other files.


Surfing the web on the Nokia N85 mobile phone is a pleasure with HTML, XHTML, MP, WML, WAP & CSS web browsing technologies over TCP and IP all supported. Other technologies that are also available are Nokia web browser with Mini Map & Nokia Mobile Search. The Nokia N85 mobile also presents integrated and separate GPS, A-GPS and is cell based along with the Nokia Maps® 2.0 application. HSDPA - GPRS - EDGE - CSD - HSCSD are all network based technologies to provide you with fast network capabilities. The N85 mobile phone operates on a Quad-band network which covers EGSM 850/900/1800/1900. It also has Bluetootn 2.0, micro USB and 3.5mm headjack.

The N85 mobile phone supports mobile phone gaming with embedded Java. There really are too many games to mention so again please check out below for all the information required. The N85 handset comes with an N-Gage application that will make the gaming experience even more entertaining and amazing.

This phone will really keep the owner amused and busy all the time.

NOKIA 5310

Ease of Use : Easy
Range of Features : Good
Reception Quality : Good
Design & Look : OK
Value for Money : OK
Advantages: Music
Disadvantages: S40 platform, Camera
Recommend to potential buyers: Yes
Full review
Nokia 5310 is a slim and stylish music phone. I really liked the ultra slim, light weight and the practical keypad and the hot looks.The bevelled edge makes it easy to hold in your palm, and the red or blue stripes are funky but not over the top. We like the look, we like the feel. This is definitely a phone that you can enjoy even when it's switched off, and it's small and light enough to carry anywhere - jeans pocket, shirt pocket or handbag.
It has a 2inch QVGA display with 256k colours.The screen is sharp and bright.It is full multimedia music phone with FM Radio, 2 Mega Pixels camera (but no flash) to capture your special moments and also has video recording capabilities(at 15 fps).The camera could have been better.It has a 4GB memory that is very helpful for storing your music tracks.
This mobile phone is mainly a music phone. The music player has support for playlists, album art and an equaliser. You can listen to your music using the built-in loudspeaker, or preferably using the stereo headset supplied or a Bluetooth wireless headset.the sound quality is great and is a real treat for the ears.There are dedicated music keys at the sides for easier and faster control of music.It has a 3.5mm standard jack for headsets and a micro USB connector.It has Blueetooth 2.0 with A2DP support.It also supports MS Outlook, and has pre installed Opera mini and Nokia search.
I think it is a good gadget for music lovers.

SONY ERICSSON C905

Another 8 mega pixel camera phone, and this time it is from the stable of Sony Ericsson.After the 8 MP Samsung INNOV8, Sony Ericsson has launched the C905 Cyber-shot (codenamed Shiho)with an 8 megapixel shooter.The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot packs auto focus, face detection, image stabilization and both a xenon and a photo flash (for video), as well as a nice new feature called Smart Contrast.The C905 photos can be geotagged thanks to the built-in GPS receiver. The accelerometer will rotate the screen automatically when you go through your camera album.

The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot is somewhere in the line of 104 x 49 x 18 (or 19.5) millimetres and weighs good 136 grams. It'll be available in Copper Gold, Ice Silver & Night Black.

It's also got a TV-out port for watching your images on the TV.The Sony Ericsson C905 is also armed with a 2.4-inch QVGA TFT display with scratch-resistant mineral glass cover. It's the first Sony Ericsson feature phone to feature Wi-Fi support - and there's even more. The Wi-Fi feature supports DLNA, which is basically a wireless media sharing protocol that runs on top of Wi-Fi.

It has got a 2 GB Memory Stick Micro M2.Connectivity wise, it comes in three variants, two with full support for UMTS and HSDPA. The battery is good for 380 hours of standby or 9 hours of talk on GSM networks, or 360 hours of standby or 4 hours of talk on 3G networks.

Even though it is a camera phone, the music quality does not disappoint.Sound quality is good like all other SE products.So this is not a bad buy for people looking for a good multimedia phone.Priced at about Rs. 30000, it will give a tough fight to the Nokia N96.

NOKIA N96

Ease of Use : Easy
Range of Features : Excellent
Reception Quality : Excellent
Design & Look : Excellent
Value for Money : Excellent value for money
Advantages: Camera, Web browsing, Connectivity, AGPS .
Disadvantages: Size, weight.
Recommend to potential buyers: Yes
Full review
The first feeling was great, though a bit hefty and heavy like all other nokia cellphones.It scores high on looks and the features are awesome.The 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash is great, though a Xenon flash would have done a better job in dim lighting conditions.Video capturing is at 30 fps.A touch screen would have been a better option (given the trend of the present market), but the screen of the N96 is good for videos and picture quality is good.The music quality was a bit disappointing even with two speakers.Web browsing was superb and the launch of 3G will make it even better.For connectivity, it has got Bluetooth 2.0, HSPDA(3.5G), USB 2.0.It has a huge memory of 16 GB and can be extended upto 24 GB.Unfortunately, I could not check out its GPS.The stand for viewing videos needs a special mention.Priced at about Rs.34000, its a good buy.But the N97 will be launched by mid 2009.Its a touchscreen phone.So I think we can wait for the N97.

NOKIA 3230

Ease of Use : Easy
Range of Features : Poor
Reception Quality : OK
Design & Look : Good
Value for Money : OK
Advantages: Looks, Symbian s60 .
Disadvantages: Music
Recommend to potential buyers: No
Full review
The phone looks good,especially the red one with a large 2 inch display(though 2 inch screens are quite small in todays world).the picture quality is decent and sharp.It is heavy like all other Nokia phones.The 1.3 megapixel camera is one of the best in the category of the 1.3 mps, but the video capture functionality is poor.The music quality of the onboard speaker is horrible, I think it is the worst among the Nokia phones.But the decent headsets make up for this fault.Video playback too is a setback for this phone.The S60 v2 software is backdated an the phone has a tendency to hang and restart on its own.The battery back up is good.It has Bluetooth and Infra Red as connectivity options.The 3230 has only the push to talk key on its side and does lack the volume and the camera keys.But the keypad is quite comfortable and typing is fun.Since it is a Symbian phone, there are numerous third party apps ready to be installed.Some recommended softwares are : power mp3, divx player, core player, symentec or any other anti virus.