Hotels.com, a hotel booking website, has launched two new smart phone applications for iPhone and Android phones. The two new applications, available in over 30 languages, allow travellers to search and book more than 20,000 accommodation deals from over 135,000 hotels around the world.

The apps act as an extension of the Hotels.com website, allowing travellers to log in as either a guest or they can create a Hotels.com account from inside the App to begin researching accommodation options, browsing two million user reviews, accessing hotel deals and booking and managing their accommodation choices.

The ‘sign in once’ feature, which applies to both Android and iPhone apps, automatically remembers users’ log in details so that travellers needn’t worry about logging in each time.

Even without a data connection, all past and future bookings can be accessed, which displays hotel address, phone number and map, with just one touch.

To strengthen its product line, Sony Ericsson will be adding several phones to its Xperia, Cybershot and Walkman series of mobile phones in the next quarter, a company spokesperson told ‘The Mobile Indian’.

Spokesperson said, “We will be strengthening our product line with more phones in Xperia and Walkman series, and with camera phones.”

The expected phones include W8 in the Walkman series, Xperia Mini and Mini Pro HD and Cybershot with a 16 mega Pixel camera.

Besides Android operating system, these will have traditional Sony Ericsson features. For instance, the Walkman series will have good music.

The Cybershot brand, which is known for its camera capabilities, is expected to make a comeback with full touch screen (it vanished after the launch of the Xperia series), and a 16 mega pixel camera with Xenon flash (these specifications are not confirmed, but are highly probable).

Walkman series, known for its music capabilities, will also make a comeback. This time, the phone will use Android operating system and will have a full touchscreen.

Sony Ericsson has already created a niche for itself in the Android Market with several PlayStation certified applications. It might be looking to add some more apps for the Walkman series.

Xperia series already has models such as X8, X10, X12, Vivaz, Mini, Mini Pro, Play and Arc. These are expected to be joined by Mini HD and Mini Pro HD.

It’s great to hear about Cybershot and Walkman series returning. The success of these phones will depend on how well they are executed as there will be practically no similarity between the forthcoming models and the Cybershots of older days.

It will be a challenge to match people’s expectations with a completely new platform (not new per se, but new for these types of phones). Pricing will be another important factor in their success.

Aircel and Airtel will be the first operators to bring the Apple iPhone4 to India, who have started the registration process through their respective websites to keep potential buyers informed about the arrival of the handset.

However, no launch date or special pack has been announced for this launch yet. iPhone 4 is the latest version of Apple iPhone and comes with features like Apple’s stunning Retina display, the highest Resolution display ever built into a phone and FaceTime for video calling. It was launched in the USA in June last year.

With a sleek, sharp and thinner design than its predecessor, the fourth-generation model of Apple iPhone comes with a 3.5 inch screen with 640 X 960 pixel resolution.

The phone’s operating system has also been upgraded and is now called iOS 4, which offers features like multitasking, spell check, folders and iBooks.
The phone comes in two versions (of 16GB and 32GB memory capacity), a 5 megapixel camera, up from 3 megapixel in the earlier version. The camera has an LED flash. It has a second VGA camera for video calling.

The phone’s connectivity options include WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI and GPS. The device promises seven hours of 3G talk time, six hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of WiFi browsing, 10 hours of video and 40 hours of music playback.

A flaw in the Android operating system, which allowed hackers to gain unencrypted data of a user over public WiFi networks, has been fixed up by the Google, the maker of the OS.
The security flaw was highlighted by a group of German developers and was reported by The Mobile Indian earlier too.

It was found that Android devices running on 2.3.3 or older versions are particularly susceptible especially when the one uses services such as Google Calender and Google docs to be sent over-the-air unencrypted over a public WiFi network. This may allow hackers, present in the network, to gain the user’s login ID and password.

Realising the gravity of the situation, Google has released a server side patch that will provide a solution for this issue in no time. Users do not need to do anything for installing this patch, it will be automatically pushed to the device.

The update process has already begun and Google expects the whole process to finalise within a week.

“Today we’re starting to roll out a fix which addresses a potential security flaw that could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data available in calendar and contacts. This fix requires no action from users and will roll out globally over the next few days,” said Google’s spokesperson to Computerworld.

In the latest release of the Android Gingerbread 2.3.4, this issue has been answered and users running the new operating system are not prone to any attacks through this.
However, the percentage of users using the Gingerbread OS is very thin and rest of the population was largely at risk before this patch.

Nokia could soon come out with yet another MeeGo device and it may be named as N9.
A purported video of the device was uploaded on the Youtube. However, the video was removed immediately by Nokia claiming copyright issues.

Notably, the Finnish handset maker had, during the Nokia 2011 Developer Forum earlier this year, announced that it would come out with another MeeGo based device soon.
Built on the same hardware platform as the Nokia N97, the N9 will feature a slide out QWERTY keypad and an angular placed screen along with an extended keyboard.

It likely to have a display of 4 inch or more of 360 x 640 Resolution with a capacitive touch. The Processor is expected to be in the 1GHz category and may feature a totally revamped version of the MeeGo interface.

The teaser video, which was accidentally put on YouTube, reveals that the N9 will come armed with integrated Near Field Communication and Augmented Reality capabilities. Social media will also be an integral part of the new User Interface.

The teaser said that Nokia is ready with the device and it is just a matter of time before it officially announces the device.