The price-sensitive consumers in India still prefer to look out for mobile phones in the price bracket of Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000, suggests the second edition of The Handset Hotlist survey (August 2011).

The Handset Hotlist, based on a survey of online preferences, is brought out by The Mobile Indian (www.themobileindian.com), and will be released every month.

The Mobile Indian, one of the fastest growing websites in the country, lists the 25 most-searched mobile phones. The objective of The Handset Hotlist survey is to give marketers a monthly insight into the changing consumer preferences.

The list is based on the surfing patterns of 7.5 lakh unique visitors who visited the website in July 2011, and searched for and viewed information about mobiles on the site’s Handset Guide, which lists more than 1,100 models.

Nokia, followed by Samsung, continues to dominate the second edition of The Handset Hotlist. The Finland-based handset maker has 12 models on the list, as opposed to eight from its South Korean rival. The remaining slots in the Top 25 list are shared by Micromax and Sony Ericsson — each with two models — with the last slot going to the iPhone.

Among the models that have entered the list for the first time, the most dramatic rise has been that of Samsung Star II Duos C6712, which stands at No. 2. The Duos C6712 is a Java-based touch screen phone with a 3.2 inch screen, and is priced at Rs 6,000.

Nokia C5-03 maintained its Numero Uno position as the most-searched handset in July.

Five notable handsets from the last Handset Hotlist, which failed to make it to the Top 25 list this time are the Nokia X2, Nokia C7, Dell XCD 28, Samsung Champ Duos C67812, and HTC Wildfire S.

Top 10 Indian Challengers

This month, The Mobile Indian has also introduced the Top 10 Indian Challengers list, a monthly ranking of the 10 most exciting handsets from Indian marketers, based on the preferences of the visitors on the website.

Commenting on the new sub-list, Sreekant Khandekar, director, The Mobile Indian, says, “The idea of Top 10 Indian Challengers is to go beyond the dominant international names and capture the undercurrent of change in the Indian market. Some of these names could well be the leaders of tomorrow.”

The Top 10 Indian Challengers list is LED by Micromax A70, followed by Micromax X560. The Intex IN 6660 V.DO Touch Wi-Fi comes in at No. 3 on the list. Spice Mobiles has three handsets on the Challenger list, and iCube has one.

Differences between the two lists:

* Handsets featuring in the Top 10 Indian Challengers list are priced lower than those in the Handset Hotlist. Half the phones in the Top 10 Challengers list are priced at Rs 5,000 or less, as compared to only 20 per cent in the latter.

* Only two of the 10 handsets are 3G-enabled in the Top 10 Challengers list, while in The Handset Hotlist, the figure is 56 per cent.

* In the Challengers list, visitors have shown a keen interest in Wi-Fi functionality, as seven out of 10 handsets support it.

* A good camera seems to be a lower priority in the Challenger choice; half the phones have a lens of 2 MP or less.

Both lists suggest that touch screens are a must-have in the most preferred handsets, and the typical screen size, too, is roughly the same at about three inches.

Apple had released the fifth beta build of its iOS 5.0 software update for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. Apple centric blog 9to5Mac was tipped with a screenshot and details about a new speech to text feature being tested on iOS 5.

This feature is said to be supported by Nuance, a USA-based software solutions provider. Nuance already offers Dragon Dictation 2.0 and Dragon Search apps for Apple iPhone.

Sunny Rao, managing director of Nuance India and South East Asia, told ‘The Mobile Indian’, “Nuance offers a number of Indian voices and related solutions for the text to speech functions. We have the Nuance Mobile Developer Program that offers a wider platform for mobile developers to use our platforms to develop applications. Only after the products are official will we be at liberty to talk more about them.”

Usually people love to use smartphones with full keyboards. However, not everyone would be comfortable using the onscreen keyboard on multi-touch devices. With the new iOS 5.0 beta 5, iOS platform developers noticed a mic icon next to the spacebar key on the onscreen keyboard. Using that mic icon, one can speak and the text box will come up with the spoken words transcribed in it.

The newly released Apple Mac OS X Lion operating system also supports Nuance powered speech synthesis features.

The speech to text feature also known as Speech Synthesis aids a user in several aspects, for instance, those with big fingers can use it for sending texts or drafting email.

We don’t know whether this Speech Synthesis feature will be native or will require a data connection or some other support. Also, there’s no clarity if this feature is limited just to text messages or will allow a user to navigate the device’s menus using speech. If enabled, Apple will certainly win brownie points over other operating systems.

Google already offers a speech-to-text engine in Android OS with multiple language support in it. The only requirement for using the speech to text feature in Android is an active data connection.

Apple is expected to release the iOS 5.0 update for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad some time later this month.

Gamers have always dreamt of a device which could give them conventional console gaming experience. Now Qualcomm says the day is not far and that the dedicated consoles would become irrelevant with time because most gaming segments will be going mobile with the help of Snapdragon platform.

The company has recently come out with Snapdragon S3 System on a chip (SoC) which is armed with up to 1.5 GHz dual core Scorpion CPU and runs on Adreno 220 GPU (graphics processing unit). The company will also be coming out with Snapdragon S4 with dual core Krait CPUs and faster Adreno 225 GPUs. Qualcomm is especially emphatic the Snapdragon S4 will do better than the gaming experience provided by gaming consoles.

Not many games available currently take full advantage of dual core CPUs and GPUs, but with the arrival of more dual core smartphones in the market, the situation is likely to change soon. For example, with Snapdragon S4, users will now be able to connect their mobile devices either wirelessly or via HDMI to a large display and enjoy the game like they do with conventional gaming consoles.

Just the way the computing has been gradually moving towards mobile devices, Qualcomm envisions the gaming will also move towards the mobile devices. At the time of writing the story, some hard core gamers around, however, voiced their concerns over the gaming experience from the smartphones which they don’t believe would be able to match gaming consoles graphics experience.

Research In Motion (RIM) has now come out with a new version of its BlackBerry App World application. Although currently in the beta Phase, the BlackBerry App World 3.0 comes with a different look than its predecessor and brings some improvisations to impress its users.

With the new application, BlackBerry has tried to keep it as simple as possible. The interface of the new app has been made touch friendly with bigger icons and gesture based controls. A search bar has been included right on top of the application with a new and refined search engine. Users can simply search the application based on the name, developer and even the price.

Besides, the newer application also gets grouping of the similar apps in the form of tabs like games, application, and themes. Also featuring on the home page is an app banner that suggests applications to the users on the basis of popularity and users can also see 25 top apps in each category. Also the developers promise weekly updation of the application catalogue.

The BlackBerry App World 3.0 also provides more details to each app along with the screen shots and user rating, all in one screen. There are more improvements promised by the developers on all fronts of this application including payment gateway and additional search functionalities.

Users can head straight to the BlackBerry Beta zone to get hands on experience of the new app world. Alternatively, they can also follow this link to download the application. PS users need to be registered with the BlackBerry Beta zone in order to download and use this application.