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BlackBerry Bold touch and type devices delayed

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BlackBerry fans will have to wait a little more to lay their hands on the much anticipated BlackBerry Bold 9900 touch and type devices, whose launch has now been delayed by the company. A RIM spokesperson in India, however, refused to comment on the news when approached by The Mobile Indian.

Some websites , however, have confirmed the delay in the launch of the device.

Last month only, we had reported that RIM will be launching the BlackBerry Bold touch and type devices in the month of June after the device were displayed during the BlackBerry World conference.

The price of the new BlackBerry Bold Touch handset is expected to be close to Rs 25,000 for the features that the new devices offer.

BlackBerry Bold 9900 supports fourth generation networks or 4G, with data connectivity. The device is powered by 1.2 GHz processor that operates at almost double the speed of the processors of existing BlackBerry phones. Along with it, the 768 of ensures smooth functioning.

The new handset will feature 8GB of onboard memory for storage, along with support for 32GB of expandable memory via SDHC cards. The operating system has also been totally overhauled. The new Bold Touch handsets will feature v7, which gives fast yet reliable performance for most present day tasks.

The display is one thing the company is majorly boasting about. The 2.8 inch display features or 640 x 480 resolution with 287 dpi per inch, for detailed and more vibrant graphics, along with the capacitive touch interface. The devices will have built in features to support Near Field Communication technology for touch-less transactions and the new OS will have built in support for augmented reality applications.

As of now, for the BlackBerry people in India, it seems like a long wait for the announcement or the launch of the Bold touch and type devices as the long due BlackBerry playbook is scheduled for the launch before the Bold devices and still there is no word for the Playbook as well.

The push towards mobile games

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Even the hardcore gamers have started converting towards the mobile games &#151 partly due to sheer need, after all the consoles cannot be carried everywhere, and second, the mobile gaming segment is being taken seriously by even the handset makers.

It’s good to be a part of the market which is being pampered by the mobile companies, right?

Sony Ericsson has launched a dedicated gaming phone, called Xperia Play, which has dedicated slide out keys for gaming. Since users are also able to make calls on the same device, gaming turns out to be an added bonus.

Those who find Sony Ericsson Xperia Play expensive, have other cheaper options in India as well including G4 Gamolution from Micromax and MAXX GLO MX388, which is a dual phone.

The Micromax Gamolution costs Rs 5,999 whereas the MAXX GLO costs about Rs 2,400 only. The MAXX GLO MX388 comes preloaded with 250 games and memory of 2GB. For the price, the gaming experience by the phone appears to be good enough.

At a time when most of the smartphones are offering the same features and all the phones look almost the same, handset makers are looking to gaming phones for differentiating themselves in a crowded market. The battery life, however, could be a problem because playing a game on phone drains the battery faster.

At the recent Qualcomm conference, Uplinq, the chief executive officer of the company Paul Jacobs said that there is a surge in creativity in the history of mobile phones with numerous developers coming out with new apps and games.

Paul Jacobs was simply trying to impress the audience with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips which allow mobile game and creators come out with more cutting products.

Mobile gaming is not the primary business of Qualcomm but the company sees a direct correlation between demand and mobile games which can run well only when the phone has better processing power.

The mobile gaming industry in India was still young, it was pegged at a size of Rs 100 crore and is likely to increase by 200 per cent in the current year.

As per the data gathered in 2009, about 30 million Indian used their mobiles to play games every day whereas total number of users playing games on their mobiles was 105 million. At the global level, five million iOS games are downloaded every day.

Unlike app stores on smartphones in India, the service providers are the most preferred source of games, followed by Zapak.com, Hungama.com and Rediff.com. In terms of sheer numbers, more users downloaded free games but the service providers got their basics right as more users purchased games from them instead of preferring free games.

At the smartphone level, the situation seems slightly different, where some handset makers confuse that mobile phone games are the same as console games and hence end up similar games to handsets also.

Most of the console games, however, are not playable on mobile phones. With the arrival of iPhone, the situation changed since the mobile games on it were simple enough to be played on a touchscreen. The trends suggest nobody wants to play with other gamers on the mobile handsets, all the users want is a quick Angry Bird type game before they get started with something else.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1: A worthy opponent for iPad 2

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The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a keenly awaited tablet, which is set to enter the market within one week in some stores, though officially it will be launched by the company only on June 17. While, the version of the tablet will arrive in the market later this year.

The tab is set to challenge the supposedly indomitable Apple iPad 2, which is being currently sold from thousands of retail stores and about 300 Apple stores across the world.

As the name itself suggests, the tablet has a 10.1 inch capacitive touchscreen besides a 1 GHz dual core processor, storage options (of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB), a 3 back facing and a 2 megapixel front facing camera and much more. The latest Honeycomb (Android 3.1) operating system powers the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Moreover, the Samsung tablet is said to be thinner than iPad 2 by 0.2 mm. Thus, going by the features, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 does seem a worthy opponent for iPad 2.

However, the Apple tablet has its own share of advantages and despite arrival of several contenders, which came with better specs, it continues to hold on to its market share. Third party support is one of the biggest advantages of Apple, which means there are numerous additional features available for Apple products which are not made by Apple, but are still an inseparable part of the experience. Despite coming from the same family, in terms of additional add ons, Apple does provide choice to the users &#151 a good sticking point.

While talking about choice, it’ll be convenient for users if we took the example of chat facility. There are more chat options for Samsung Galaxy Tab users whereas Apple has FaceTime. But the devices offer apps like Skype, whereas the apps are mostly designed for smaller screens. The iOS devices also provide access to numerous apps, and the Android apps numbers do not match up.

The iPad 2 also faces threat from Toshiba which is set to launch it tablet, named as Thrive, within a month or two. To create the hype, Toshiba has chosen to poke fun at the iPad 2, though it remains to be seen how this strategy pans out in the real world.

Ban on SMS pushing J&K users towards internet enabled mobiles: Report

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After the ban on the use of prepaid Short Message Service (SMS), more users in Jammu and Kashmir are now preferring internet enabled mobile phones as they could now use social networking sites such as Facebook to spread their words, according to a website.

Last year, the state government had banned services on pre-paid connections. Now, only the post-paid users could send SMSes to fellow post-paid numbers.

“After the ban on SMS services, every customer wants to purchase internet enabled mobiles so that they can exchange messages on the move. Therefore the demand for the same is on a rise in the Valley as the internet enabled mobiles are available at very cheap rates now,” the website quoted as saying one Ajaz Ahmed, an executive at a mobile shop in Srinagar.

The website, quoting a report, said that Facebook has witnessed 1686 per cent increase in its share since April 2010, while its competitor, Orkut’s page-view growth since then declined by 0.7 per cent in India. Twitter has also seen and impressive 191 per cent increase in page-view since April last year.

The availability of plethora of internet enabled devices has thus now lured the mobile users in J&K towards social networking sites. Telecom service providers in India, which is one of the most competitive in the world, are also offering lucrative tariff data for internet on mobile.

According to a study by Boston Consulting Group, India will have 237 million internet users by 2015, making it the second largest internet market after China.

The arrival of is expected to fuel the growth of mobile internet users. Currently, telecos like RCom, BSNL, Idea, Aircel are providing third-generation mobile telephony services in the state.

Hungama brings mobile file-sharing app Huuked

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Hungama, a mobile and digital entertainment company, has partnered with Finnish applications developer Huuked Labs to bring a mobile file-sharing software application for Symbian Series 60 and Java enabled handsets, named as Huuked.

Huuked is a software application for mobile phones that allows users an easy way to share your pictures, videos and other files of any size. It transfers your files from phone to phone in real-time. Your contacts can access the files you’ve shared by using the Huuked mobile phone application or the website. Huuked lets you decide which content to share and with whom.

The application has been integrated with the Hungama.com store that lets users to experience, buy and share Indian entertainment content across genres such as Bollywood, regional, devotional, international and independent music tracks.

“We are very excited to launch the Hungama co-branded Huuked service to the Indian consumers. Users in India are now able to share their mobile pictures and videos easily while discovering the hottest Indian mobile entertainment content along the way.” says Jarkko Utriainen, chief executive officer of Huuked Labs.

The Huuked with the Hungama.com store will be available for downloads on app stores for all Java enabled and Symbian handsets from May 2011.

Gingerbread upgrade for Xperia X10

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Notwithstanding the fact that Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 devices are still getting 2.1 Eclair updates in some parts of the world, the company has now decided to upgrade the handset to Android version 2.3 Gingerbread.

The Sony Ericson spokesperson in India has confirmed this to ‘The Mobile Indian’, although the time of the launch of Gingerbread for Xperia X10 is still unknown. But, considering the timing of Eclair updates, it is expected to arrive later this year.

Xperia X10 has all the required hardware to successfully run Android 2.3 Gingerbread with its 1GHz and 384 RAM, and the company will make all the necessary tweaks to make the new version of the software run flawlessly on the X10.

With the update, Sony Ericsson is also expected to add the ‘Facebook inside Xperia’ feature that was introduced during the launch of the new range of Xperia Mini handsets. The feature allows users to share, like and connect on Facebook in a faster and easier way through their mobile phones.

As of now only limited information is available related to details of improvements and changes that the new upgrade will bring to the X10, but that Sony Ericsson plans to upgrade the X10 soon will itself bring a smile to a lot of faces.

GPRS vs EDGE

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Internet on mobile devices, known as or General Packet Receiving Service, began with the evolution of mobile phones and especially with the adoption of 2nd generation or 2G mobile networks.

Being the first service to bring data to mobile phones, GPRS networks were able to transmit only a limited amount of data and therefore companies soon started to look out for alternative networks that would not require a complete overhaul of mobile equipment and would yet satisfy data needs.

A new system of data transmission was adopted in the year 2003. It is known as or Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution.

Although both these services deal with the transmission of data to mobile devices via mobile networks, there is still big confusion amongst users as to what these two things stand for.

To begin with, though both these technologies are related to the transmission of data to mobile devices, due to the advanced or evolved nature of EDGE, it is able to deliver far better data speeds to mobile devices and that too over existing 2G mobile networks.

GPRS offers slower download speeds of up to a maximum of 120 Kbps. On the other hand, EDGE offers speeds of up to 384 Kbps.

In simpler terms, the working of an EDGE connection is similar to that of getting things delivered using multiple channels. So the more channels there are, the more data can be transmitted. That is why EDGE, despite being just an extension of the 2G GSM telephony system, is able to provide faster data transfer rates.

Not only are data speeds increased on EDGE networks, data costs also go up very steeply when a user shifts from GPRS to EDGE.

Currently in India many cellular operators offer GPRS-only data packs that offer anywhere between 3-6 of monthly usage &#151 which is practically impossible to completely utilise using a GPRS connection &#151 for a monthly charge ranging from Rs 95 to Rs 150.

On the other hand, on EDGE networks prices across the country are not less than 1 Paisa per of data download with postpaid customers getting to download about 600 per month free.

Ngmoco prepares to launch Mobage

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Game fanatics around the world will soon rejoice as Ngmoco, a Japan based company, is all set to release its social networking website Mobage globally.

Mobage is a very popular service in Japan that allows users to connect with other people and play games. It is available across different platforms such as for personal computers and mobile phones.

With its global launch Mobage is expected to hit smartphones other than and iPhone, for which it is already available.

Ngmoco has opened membership for developers who can create applications in the Mobage Sandbox environment, which gives users a real world feel while the setup remains secure and protected from the outside world, making it better for developers to create applications.

“The company is now inviting developers to sign up for its Sandbox development environment, which allows developers to test and develop their games so they can become available on the Mobage platform. There are already more than 100 games on the platform, and more are in the works,” the company spokesperson said to Venturebeat in an interview.

HTC is the leading Android partner

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Taiwanese handset maker HTC is the top vendor in the world, its chief executive officer, Peter Chou, has claimed.

While speaking at a recent Uplinq conference, he said the company shipped 25 million smartphones in 2010 alone. The conference was organised by Qualcomm in San Diego, USA.

Peter Chou also talked about the growth plans of the company as well as the development of HTC Sense. At the same time, he emphasised that the company remains committed to Windows Phone 7 so that users have a choice of smartphone operating systems.

He also talked about HTC’s Sense user interface and how it would make HTC devices more user friendly. With the new user interface animations are smoother than before and even the lock screen provides some useful information to users. The new lock screen looks inspired by the Windows Phone 7 user interface, in which live tiles give up to date information to users without requiring them to launch apps every time.

Sense user interface is important to HTC because it helps the company differentiate its products. Peter Chou believes that just the hardware was not enough and that software was also required to make customer experience unique.

HTC and Onlive, a streaming video game service, have also entered into a partnership which will enable Onlive to provide streaming gaming services on HTC tablets and smartphones.

HTC sells a range of Android handsets in India including Desire (Rs 26,400), HD2 Black (Rs 26,650), and Legend A6363 Black (Rs 26,100). In fact, the first Android device, Dream, was also an HTC product.

Top five camera apps for Android smartphones

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Google based smartphones usually carry high end hardware but the camera quality has always been a debatable topic for many. Keeping the quality part aside, Android Market has plethora of applications that will allow you to make the best of your smartphone’s camera.

Do note that we won’t be talking about the image quality of Android smartphones considering the huge number of such devices available today. Instead, we are here taking a quick look at the top five free image editing and optimising applications available today in the Android Market.

Vignette:

It add loads of camera effects as well as filters while taking photos and also can tweak the ones you have already taken. Vignette works as a standalone camera and also one that can edit existing images.

With over 68 different effects and 56 frames, this app will let you capture photos in different styles. The application has been coded to make the best of your smartphone’s image sensor and can support up to 5 resolution. So, Android smartphones with 8 megapixel camera will not be able to reap true potential (highest possible resolution) of their camera while using Vignette.

Right from white balance, ISO or metering mode settings to effects and frame settings – Vignette offers it all. With the diversity of nifty customisations offered, this app truly over performs the native camera app.

Users can also user the 10x zoom using the app and geotag the photos as well. Do note that certain settings won’t be available in the demo version of the app. Also, the demo version won’t give it a clear picture of the app as it supports only 0.3 megapixel.

PicSay:

Want to play a prank on a friend or upload a hilarious display picture on social network? You have to take a look at this easy-to-use photo editing app that will let you add much more to your photos than mere colour-correction such as speech bubbles, art tiles, smileys, and other such effects.

In the Free version of PicSay, you can add word balloons, title, stickers and effects like distortion, market, spotlight, market, tint, etc.

Fake hair, glasses, caps and more such things can add more life to the bland portraits to make them look more interesting. Once you are done glorifying the image, you can mail it via Gmail or upload it directly to the social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or store it in Picasa.

PicSay Pro version of the app comes with additional set of effects and options. If you are looking for some fun with photos, then this is the app you should try out.

FxCamera:

Those looking for no nonsense and minimal customisations in an application should go for the FxCamera app. Five different Effect settings are available through this app – toy camera, polandroid, fisheye, symmetriCam and (Andy) warhol.

On choosing any of these five effects, you’ll get Shot, Auto Focus, Config and Menu Option. The Config options lets you further make the adjustment using different filters for each effect.

To be honest, this is one of the most easy to customise and use app for the camera for a desired effect. However, at times it may crash on certain devices.

However, this app would give you astonishing results if you choose effects aptly with appropriate filter settings.

Camera360:

Many might be looking for an HDR (High Dynamic Range) effects on an Android device just like Apple has added for the iPhone 4. The Camera360 app stands for its name and provides most possible imaging solutions for the Android smartphones.

This app has divided different effects in to separate modes. For instance, the Scenery Mode allows taking photos as art painting, movie poster, or an outdoor promotion.

Prank around with the Ghost, Surrealistic Black and White painting, and other effects listed under the Funny mode. This app lists the effects as the photography mode before capturing image. It also provides selective focus and grids.

Apparently, many recent devices seem to be facing issue while using this app.

Adobe Photoshop Express:

Official photo editing application from Adobe is quite useful and simplistic for those who are well versed with the Photoshop program for the desktop.

Create a free account on Photoshop and then use it as online storage to save photos. The desktop version of Photoshop certainly is quite complex for any average person to get used to with. However, the Android version of the Photoshop Express is simplified enough to be usable through touch. One can touch to crop, rotate, adjust the colour, add effects, and also add borders to the images clicked.

The intuitive user interface helps even novices to manipulate their images and make them look more appealing than earlier. Customisations let you adjust the exposure, saturation, and other filters without having worried about any sort of graphs or sliders. The manipulations are taken care of purely with touch gestures.

Photoshop Express app lets one edit images on the device or stored online with the Photoshop account. So after editing/manipulating an image, one can share it over social networks, email it or upload it to Photoshop account where 2 worth storage is offered for free.

The default camera app may not have enough options but you can always use such free apps from Android Market to get desired results.

Monsoon is a good time to click photos and edit them quickly on your Android smartphones. Take our word of advice, be careful while using your smartphone in rains and have fun time playing a shutterbug!