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Alcatel Ice 3 launches OT 520D handset

News

12 July 2011

Alcatel Ice 3 has launched an entry level phone OT 520D. It comes with features such as caller video, dual SIM, dual Memory card supporting 32 GB, wireless FM with recording and 2 MP camera.

The user can also shoot videos and affix it with the contact name in the phone book. The same video will be flashed whenever that person calls.

The OT 520D is also equipped with all popular multimedia features such as access to the Internet/ GPRS, Facebook, and Gmail. Additionally, the handset has features such as torch and Bluetooth.

Speaking about this phone MS Malik, managing director, Ice Mobile said, “Though OT 520D is an entry level phone, it has all features that are required to make the mobile phone experience truly enjoyable.”

The OT 520D is priced at Rs 2,299 and is available across India.

Nokia still rules the minds of Indians: TMI survey

News

The Mobile Indian Network

11 July 2011

Nokia still rules the minds of Indians: TMI survey

The Mobile Indian has released the findings for its first ‘The Handset Hotlist’, based on a survey of online preferences, last month. The goal of The Handset Hotlist research initiative is to give marketers a monthly insight into changing consumer preferences.

The Handset Hotlist, to be released each month, is brought out by The Mobile Indian, the country’s fastest growing B2C site for the mobile consumer by afaqs!. The list is based on the surfing patterns of more than 6.7 lakh unique visitors who visited the site in June 2011, and searched for and viewed information about mobiles on the site’s Handset Guide which lists nearly 1,000 models.

Nokia continues to rule the minds of consumers in India. Though the business press is full of articles about the competitive pressure the Finnish brand faces, Indian consumers still trust and love the brand, and its rivals still have a long way to go before beating it on buyer affection. According to The Handset Hotlist for July 2011, 12 of the 25 most exciting mobile handset models are from Nokia. Samsung follows next, with six models (one of which is a CDMA phone), while Micromax and Sony Ericsson figure on the list, with two models each. A model each from Dell, HTC and iPhone complete the list of 25.

Nokia C5-03 (Rs 8,600) was overwhelmingly the most exciting handset for visitors to the ‘The Mobile Indian’. Visitors are typically male, under 34 years. The model was searched for and viewed about 40 per cent more than the No. 2, Nokia C6 (Rs 12,200), which was followed at No. 3 by another stablemate, Nokia X7 (Rs 18,000). Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830, priced at Rs 14,700, intrigued visitors at No. 4, and was followed by Nokia X3-02 (Rs 7,500). Samsung has two other models figuring among the top 10.

Apart from Nokia and Samsung, the only other brand to feature among the top 10 is Micromax, whose models A70 and X560 figure at No. 8 and No. 10 positions, respectively. Sreekant Khandekar, director, The Mobile Indian, said, “This is a very exciting pack of information, the most comprehensive one publicly available on what the consumer wants. Ranking apart, The Handset Hotlist will also give marketers a monthly insight into changing consumer preferences.”

The list is dominated by international brands, and barring Micromax, none of the popular Indian brands features among the top 25.

Throwing light on this trend, Khandekar said, “Presumably, buyers of handsets marketed by Indian players, who usually make low-cost mobile phones, tend to seek information from the dealer rather than surf for information online. BlackBerry is a notable absentee too, probably because the models are few and potential buyers of the brand know what they want. Also, many get a BlackBerry on office account, and have a lower need to check for it online.”

Interestingly, consumer interest is not dictated by price. That is why handsets like the Nokia Oro (No. 9, Rs 50,000) and iPhone (No. 14, Rs 34,400) rub shoulders with Nokia X2-01, which costs a mere Rs 3,500, and sits at No. 11 this month. Seventeen of the handsets are priced below Rs 10,000.

Top 25 Handset Hotlist for July 2011
Rank	Brand	Model	Price ( in Rs.)	3G	OS
1	Nokia	Nokia C5-03	8600	Yes	Symbian
2	Nokia	Nokia C6	12200	Yes	Symbian
3	Nokia	Nokia X7	18000	Yes	Symbian
4	Samsung	Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830	14700	Yes	Android
5	Nokia	Nokia X3-02	7500	Yes	S40
6	Samsung	Samsung S3850 Corby II	5600	No	Java
7	Samsung	Samsung R910 Galaxy Indulge	8000	Yes	Android
8	Micromax	Micromax A70	8000	Yes	Android
9	Nokia	Nokia Oro	50000	Yes	Symbian
10	Micromax	Micromax X560	5350	No	Java
11	Nokia	Nokia X2-01	3500	No	S40
12	Nokia	Nokia 5250	7900	No	Symbian
13	Nokia	Nokia C2-01	3800	Yes	S40
14	iPhone	iPhone 4G 16GB	34400	Yes	iOS
15	Sony Ericsson	Sony Ericsson Yendo	5200	No	Java
16	Sony Ericsson	Sony Ericsson W8	12000	Yes	Android
17	Nokia	Nokia C3	5800	No	S40
18	Samsung	Samsung E2652W Champ Duos	5000	No	Java
19	Dell	Dell XCD 28	7750	Yes	Android
20	Samsung	Samsung StarII S5263	5900	No	Java
21	Nokia	Nokia X2	4500	No	S40
22	Nokia	Nokia 5233	6100	No	Symbian
23	Samsung	Samsung-Galaxy-Pro-B7510	10100	Yes	Android
24	Nokia	Nokia-C7	16500	Yes	Symbian
25	HTC	HTC-Wildfire-S	14000	Yes	Android
The Mobile Indian July, 2011

Spice to launch MI 720 tablet in August

News

nilabh-jha

11 July 2011

Contrary to its earlier announcement to launch MI 700 tablet in July, Spice will launch MI 720 tablet in August instead, a company spokesperson told ‘The Mobile Indian’.

Spice groups’ Malaysian subsidiary CSL already sells MI 700 Droidpad in Malaysia. The device was launched in October 2010 itself, and therefore it probably does need an upgrade.

The Malaysian DroidPad MI 700 runs on Android 2.2 Froyo, which is likely to be upgraded to Android 2.3 Gingerbread for India, while the rest of its specs remain the same.

The tablet is equipped with an 800 x 480 pixel 7 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen and supports a regular-sized SIM card. The DroidPad is capable of supporting quadband GSM/Edge/UMTS (3G) and HSDPA (3.5G) networks with WiFi (802.11 b/g) as a backup.

For making calls, users need a Bluetooth headset with the DroidPad. Video conferencing is also available thanks to its front facing VGA camera. It also comes with an Autofocus 3 Megapixel camera placed at the back. The DroidPad is equipped with Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR support.

Measuring 179.4 (height) x 110 (width) x 11.5 (thickness) mm, it has a 3240 mAh Li-Polymer battery compared to the 1500 mAh battery of one of its competitors.

Under its hood the DroidPad is powered by a Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset, which has only a 600 MHz application processor, and this is another thing we expect to see upgraded in future. The most desirable will obviously be a 1 GHz plus processor, but we might see one that clocks 800 MHz to keep the cost down. MI700 comes with 512 MB of ROM and 512 MB of RAM, and the ability to support a microSD card up to 32 GB, which, in all probability, is not going to change.

Spice Droidpad supports tethering and a portable WiFi hotspot, which means that you can turn your DroidPad device into a mini WiFi hotspot and can share your 3G network with up to eight other devices.

Google’s useful and free applications, including Latitude, Maps, Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk, Calendar and Google Voice, will be available as usual. The device can access Android Market so you will never run out of applications.

MI 720 is expected to retail for less than Rs 20,000, when it is launched in August.

Best smartphones for video entertainment

News

samir-makwana

11 July 2011

Best smartphones for video entertainment

Today, smartphones have gone beyond their usual role of mere office tools to become powerful all-in-one gadgets. Besides the ability to read and compose emails or edit documents, smartphone makers have started adding more processing muscle to new devices. Most users love to play games on their large screen smartphones and many seek a theatre like movie experience.

Large displays alone, however, do not ensure a theatre-like experience. Rather, smartphones need to support various video formats and also need appropriate hardware to complement wider video formats.

And new smartphones today try to do precisely this&#151saving people from the hassle of converting video or a movie file to watch it on the phone.

Here we have selected some of the best video smartphones:

Samsung Galaxy S II

Flaunting the new Super AMOLED Plus (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology based 4.3 inch display, Galaxy S II GT-I9100 is our first recommendation if you want to enjoy movies, TV shows or Flash based videos anytime and anywhere.

It’s a perfect combination of large screen, powerful top of the line hardware (processor + graphics) and also wider video format support. These are major ingredients for enjoying high quality video on smartphones.

The top of the line Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone supports playback of 1080p HD video at 30 frames per second. Apart from that it also supports DivX and Xvid codecs bearing .avi file formats, which most smartphones don’t support.

Packing a 1650 mAh battery, the Galaxy S II allows sharing of video content to Samsung Smart TVs via their AllShare feature. The only possible limitation could be the lack of an HDMI port, but that has been compensated for with a slew of other features like 16 GB or 32 GB onboard memory. Samsung Galaxy S II is being sold at a market operating price of Rs 32,500.

LG Optimus 2X (LG-P990)

Touted to be the first dual core 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 Processor based smartphone, it offers enough muscle to playback HD video smoothly. This smartphone supports full 1080p HD video playback along with wider video format support that includes DivX and XviD as well.

Users can enjoy hardware accelerated Flash videos with an ultra low power consuming Nvidia GeForce GPU.

The LG Optimus 2X has a 4 inch WVGA touchscreen LCD display with IPS technology, which is good enough to enjoy high quality videos. LG has also added an HDMI port that allows the phone to play HD quality video through HDMI mirroring, without compromising the 1500 mAh battery. However, the 8 GB onboard storage might not be enough and LG should have offered 16 GB and 32 GB versions as well. Currently, Optimus 2X is available for about Rs 25,000.

Nokia X7 (X7-00)

The freshly announced Nokia X7-00, running Symbian Anna, is a surprise entrant in this list. Recently introduced in India, the new X7-00 has a 4 inch AMOLED Display that makes movies appear more immersive.

However, the smartphone has a slow processor and an aging but tweaked operating system. It supports DivX and XviD formats as well, so don’t expect phenomenal performance with any video you copy blindly; it may stutter a bit.

This Nokia smartphone is being sold for about Rs 21,000 in India.

Samsung Wave II (GT-S8530)

Samsung’s Bada OS loaded Wave II is a successor to the first Wave and continues the legacy of the “feature phone operating system”.

Bearing a 3.7 inch Gorilla Glass display, this device comes at a pocket friendly price of Rs 15,700. Being a mid-range feature handset it also supports several video formats like DivX and XviD without any extra software having to be installed.

Unlike its predecessor, Wave, the S8530 doesn’t come with a Super Amoled display. That could be a downer, but for the price it’s one heck of a handset to watch movies on.

Motorola Defy (MB525)

Motorola Defy might sound like a shocker but yes, this mid-range Android mobile phone is capable of supporting DivX and XviD files provided they aren’t of high resolution.

With a 3.7 inch display Defy supports up to 850 x 480 Pixel resolution. That means all standard definition movie files are supported and YouTube based Flash videos look amazing in the highest quality mode. Motorola Defy is currently being sold for Rs 15,500.

Apple iPhone 4 is one device that offers a smooth and soothing movie watching experience on its 3.7 inch Retina display. However, its major limitation is lack of support for popular file formats. One has to be satisfied with only those formats that Apple supports.

Should you buy Nokia N9?

News

prasoon-kumar

11 July 2011

N9, the latest smartphone from Nokia, which was launched in Singapore by its chief executive officer, is largely seen as the first and last smartphone that will run MeeGo.

MeeGo operating system was launched in February 2010 but today it stands almost dumped by the company in favour of Windows Phone 7.

So an obvious dilemma that arises is whether one should go for Nokia N9 or not.
The company was never clear in its support for MeeGo. Recently, it promised support for MeeGo for years.

But the famous burning platform memo from Nokia’s chief executive officer Stephen Elop effectively made it clear to users that he did not think very highly of Nokia’s own platform.

Obviously, users have a perception that Nokia is more excited about the Windows Phone 7 platform.

The first Windows Phone 7 device from Nokia is likely to be launched later this year, which is not very far. The closeness between the launch of N9, a MeeGo device, and WP7 devices from Nokia makes them compete with each other and might tempt a few potential buyers of N9 to wait some more time for a newer Nokia device.

Merits

Nokia N9 comes armed with a large touchscreen, no buttons, and is available in three colours: magenta, cyan and black.

The N9 offers a new user experience, very different from current Nokia smartphones. It is a pure touch smartphone which has no home button or keypad in front, though there are some physical controls on the right side. For most functions Nokia depends on its users making swipe gestures or tapping the screen, which is normal for other smartphone users but new for Nokia users.

However, the positive experience is very difficult to miss simply because the phone is so easy to use &#151 the main reason why iPhone and iPad succeeded. The basic MeeGo experience for users concentrates on making things simpler, which is a great idea.

Facebook and Twitter clients are embedded in its operating system, and most apps are available on the home screen itself.

De-merits

After using it for some time, it becomes clear the device is targeted at style conscious users, and not at serious geeks. Those who want numerous third party apps, for instance, will not want this device. Sadly, that’s the trend currently and Nokia N9 misses out on it.

The other problem is, often Nokia needs to come out with clarifications that it will support MeeGo forever. This should have been clear anyway, and Nokia wouldn’t be asked to clarify its position time and again. If only Nokia could make up its mind like Samsung, and decided to support two operating systems, the situation would have been clearer.

Nokia N9 runs on an ARM A8 chip, but MeeGo was being developed by both Nokia and Intel. By that logic, N9 should have been running on an Intel chip. We don’t know how deeply Intel has been involved with the platform before it pulled out of the partnership. Intel apparently still hasn’t given up on MeeGo though.

For more than a decade Nokia was the undisputed king of the handset market, but its market share has been declining rapidly with the arrival of Apple’s iPhone and Android powered handsets.

Nokia has a big opportunity with the arrival of N9, which shows that the company has the potential to come up with something fresh and innovative in the smartphone segment, and that it can build an attractive user interface, which was not its strong point earlier. Now, it’s up to Nokia to seize this opportunity.

Nokia C5 get firmware upgrade

News

rahul-gupta

11 July 2011

Nokia has released a new firmware update for the C5-00 users in India. With the new update, the firmware version has been upgraded to 71.005 from the present 62.001. The update aims to fix the remaining while bringing a host of new features to the C5-00 device.

The biggest inclusion, with the new update, is a new web Browser which is considerably faster than the previous one while incorporating quick search and an integrated search tab along with the address field. Also included is the support from multiple windows for multiple browser instances at one go.

The OVI maps, OVI store and the Adobe reader application has also been updated. The update has also brought couple of new emoticons for use in both text and multimedia messaging.

The new firmware improves the stability and performance of the device while maximizing battery usage as well for better battery efficiency too.

With all the inclusions and upgrades, Nokia has decided to remove the OVI contacts from the device with this upgrade. So if you are using the OVI contacts service than you might want to avert from using the upgrade.

The update will be a non UDP (User Data Preservation) upgrade so users will have to back up their device before upgrading or else they will lose their data stored on the device and not the SD card.

The upgrade is available both on Over The Air (OTA) and OVI suite upgrade but since in India we do not have OTA upgrade users will have to update using the later.

Nokia Perks: A new paperless discount coupons service

News

samir-makwana

11 July 2011

Nokia is secretly working on a new service that will attract smart shoppers with perks. Similar to the Google Groupon, the upcoming Nokia Perks service will get consumers discount or deal coupons directly on their devices reported ZOMGITSCJ.

Perks is a paperless coupons service that one can search on their mobile handsets and redeem the coupons without taking out a physical print.

It is expected to work with the upcoming Near-Field Communication Chip based handsets.

A commercial of the new service says: “If you like saving Money, you’ll love Perks. Perks are paperless coupons that you can find and redeem right on your mobile. Perks will show you brilliant offers on everything from jeans to sushi. It’ll even show you how to get there, with the Map View. Now that’s smart shopping.”

It further adds: “Perks is free to use, save serious dough by planning ahead, subscribing to your favourite brands, and checking for deals when you’re out. So get out there, and make any hour a happy hour, with Perks!”.

In last few months , several deals and discount coupons sites have cropped up in India. Consumers indeed are looking to spend their money wisely by saving few bucks instead of splurging it out blindly.

But, most of these services require print outs of the coupon copy, which the users are required to carry to the respective merchants. With the new Nokia Perks, users can check for deals and coupons anytime, anywhere and without need for print-out. For starters, Nokia N9 comes with NFC chip and we can expect the Perks service to launch in coming months.

Now book train ticket through mobile and show SMS as proof

News

nilabh-jha

11 July 2011

Indian Railway has launched a mobile phone based railway ticket booking service called ‘M-ticket’. This allows users with an internet enabled mobile phone to book ticket though a mobile application. This free application can be downloaded from here.

While the booking of the ticket was already available through applications like NGPay (which in fact allows so many other purchase and books), the service is particularly useful as now the users will not have to take printouts of the booked ticket.

Instead, they will receive an SMS containing the ticket details. Called as Mobile Reservation Message, the SMS can be used like a physical ticket. Alternatively, screen shot of the e-ticket on tablet or laptop will also work as a proof.

Other rules remain the same, so they will still need to carry a valid id proof along with the SMS for their booking to be valid.

Handset Review: Spice Mi410

Reviews

rahul-gupta

11 July 2011

Honestly speaking, when we got to know that we will be getting the Spice Mi410 for review we were hoping for a device that will be more on the lines of other Spice handsets. But the day we got the device delivered at out office all things changed.

The device comes in a small box, possibly designed to minimise shipping cost and to reduce the price for the device. Well upon opening the box, we were sort of shocked and amazed at looking at the quality of the device – it stands apart from all the other Spice handsets till date and by far is the most impressive Android smartphone that we have reviewed with a price tag of under Rs 15,000.

Looks and Build Quality

The Mi410 has a striking resemblance with the Huawei U9000 IDEOS X6 smartphone which is due for launch sometime this year. The phone has a slim profile for a smartphone and the metallic brown finish on the device look amazing, grabbing a lot of eyeballs.

In terms of the build quality, the Mi410 is good. The overall finishing of the device is great and it seems as the design department has put in a lot of efforts to get there. By far, the Mi410 has been the best smartphone that has come from Spice’s stable and those who are willing to buy this device will not be disappointed by the by the device at all.

Display and Touch

The Mi410 has a big 4.1 inch TFT display featuring a 480 x 800 pixel Resolution in 16 million colour pallets. The display might be a little low on resolution as compared to most big screen smartphones that are available today but the price difference between them and the Mi410 bridges the gap.

The capacitive touch of the Mi410 is great and has functions like pitch to zoom, two finger scrolling and even the pinch to rotate application. The Mi410 comes with a bundled scratch guard as well but remember that it may also reduce the touch sensitivity of the screen by about 30 per cent.

There is no special scratch resistant glass used here to protect the screen so users will have to be careful while using the device without the scratch guard or they can also invest is a good quality holster for this device as well.

Performance

Looking at the price tag, it is hard to believe that this phone offers so much for so little. The most striking of them is the inclusion of the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8255 chip that includes a 1Ghz Processor and Andreno 205 graphics engine for dedicated graphics support.
In terms of performance, the Mi410 is a speeding train! It performed well as per our expectations. So be it HD gaming or multitasking, this device does not show signs of fatigue.

A suggestion – install a task manager application that will help the device to keep performing at speed while saving valuable RAM.

The phone has a 2GB of Internal Memory that doubles up as RAM and another 2GB of ROM as well. The external memory supported by this device is 32GB which is pretty much a standard these days.

Although Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread is already out in the market and many device manufacturers have already shifted to that, the Mi410 still features the older 2.2 Froyo. But spice has promised an upgrade it to 2.3 soon, so no worries there.

Connectivity

In terms of connectivity, the Mi410 is a straight forward winner. The Mi410 is a 3G enabled phone that supports HSPA upload and download speed. It is also DLNA certified which allows it to connect to any other DLNA certified device over the WiFi network.

DLNA is not the only option, the Mi410 can be connected to any HDMI supporting device by using its dedicated HDMI port as well, but for that you will have to buy an HDMI cable separately.

Apart from just being a WiFi enabled device, the Mi410 can also be used as a WiFi hot spot as well.

Camera and Multimedia

The Mi410 features a 5 Megapixel snapper at the back and a frontal VGA camera, which is strictly meant for video calling. The camera supports video recording in 720p HD mode at 30 FPS which is pretty impressive. The presence of a LED flash adds a few more points for low light or night photography but some more illumination is still required.

On multimedia front, the Mi410 can play almost any media file with the help of applications that can be downloaded from the marketplace. Along with that, users can also see HD videos on it big 4.1 inch screen.

Its 3.5 mm audio output is good for maximum connectivity options while the stereo loudspeakers allow this device to play great sound that is made even richer with its Dolby sound enhancement feature.

Finally

The Mi410 has a 1500 mAh battery pack that powers the device but it would be unjustified if we were to rate this device on the battery backup. It is almost like asking how much a mug of coffee will last; it depends on the speed at which you finish it. So simply put forth, the battery backup of this phone is decent as it lasted for two days with nominal usage which includes moderate WiFi and GPRS web browsing.

So ultimately all things boil down to one common thing and that is how much does this handset costs. Well the Mi410 cost Rs 14,000 which makes it an excellent buy for the price considering its features. Even when compared to other phones within the price bracket, this phone emerges as a straight forward winner as it offers a great value for money proposition.

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Top 25 Handset Hotlist for July 2011