Sony Ericsson is set to upgrade the operating system of Xperia X10 smartphone to Android Gingerbread V2.3 from the beginning month of August.

However, the company has very harshly made it clear that the Xperia Mini, the Mini Pro and the X8 will have to stay with the current Eclair version only as none of these phones, other than the Xperia X10, “has the minimum possible required amount of RAM needed for successfully running the Gingerbread operating system”.

With the upgrade, the X10 will get the newly launched ‘Facebook Inside Xperia’ feature, which allows users to share, like and connect on Facebook in a faster and easier way through their mobile phones.

The UI with the desktop layout and pinch-to-overview gesture will be similar to the previous version, while Wi-Fi/USB tethering, and App storage on SD-card are included in the update.

Also the customisable horizontal app tray and the media experience widgets are in the update, including an integrated equaliser in the music player.

The update, however, also comes with a warning from Sony Ericsson that this update will only work with the generic kits and users with a customised Xperia X10 will not be able to use the upgrade.

MAXX Mobiles has a launched new phone for females, named as MAXX Vista (MS502), which is a slide out QWERTY phone with nice textured and curved body.

It is available in three colour themes of pink, orange and blue. The phone comes with a dedicated Facebook key and eBuddy applications.

Other features of this Java enabled phone include Opera Mini web browser, FM Radio with FM scheduling, MP3/WAV/AAC music player, and 3GPP/AVI/MP4 video player.

The MAXX Vista comes with a 3.2MP camera, dual SIM GSM support, MMS, WAP, and GPRS facility. On the connectivity front, it comes with Bluetooth, MySynch (PC suite) and USB Mass storage. The phone has a 1000 mAh battery.

The phone is priced at Rs 4,242 and will be available in Mumbai to begin with before launching across the country.

Ajjay Agarwal, chairman and managing director, MAXX Group said, “With the MAXX Vista handset, we have tried to cater to the needs of our female audiences who are looking for a trendy phone with social networking features.”

The phone will also be available through Planet M, Tata Croma, Hyper City, Star Bazar, Mobile & Gadgets, Indian Naval Canteen, Kings Electronics, Hotspot, Reliance Web World and NEXT electronics.

Nokia is working on a new phone which will be based on S40 operating system and will have a 1 GHz Processor along with a touchscreen.

Fernando Freytes, Nokia’s manager of marketing in Argentina, said this in a Twitter post.

S40 operating system was recently re-released by Nokia, at the same time as the new Touch and Type series based on the same operating system was launched.

According to a Twitter post, the new S40 phone will be running on a 1 GHz processor to begin with and will feature 512 MB of RAM. Besides, it will have a capacitive touch based clear black LCD display, and will be 3G HSDPA capable.

The S40 device also has access to a dedicated application store which is expected to be popularised more than the current S40 App store is, and the integrated WiFi in the device will make it easier for users to download software from the app store.

The phone, however, has not officially been announced by Nokia but is expected to be showcased in the upcoming Nokia Connection 2011 in Singapore.

A different kind of LG smartphone has been spotted at an event &#151 in fact it has turned out to be so different that die hard gamers have been left gasping for more information about it.

The phone was discovered by Pocket-lint at a London event. In the first instance, it looks like the usual smartphone but once the QWERTY keypad is slided out from the middle, another touchscreen surfaces, located right in the middle.

This is an Android based LG smartphone and it holds eight shortcuts in the newly uncovered screen. This twin touchscreen Android phone most likely doesn’t match any of the news stories circulating on the net so far. There is no information on the camera. Once the users tap the icon on the second touchscreen, the App launches on the main screen of the phone.

There may be more alterations to the design before it is released in the market, since LG labels its cameras and this isn’t the case with it. Probably that’s the reason why the phone was bulkier than usual, it didn’t seem to be ready for production.

If the icons on the second screen as given in the image by Pocket-lint are anything to go by, users may be able to customise all the icons on the second screen. The display quality was not all that good, so it may turn out to be one of the less costlier LG phones.

Nokia has showcased its next generation handset, the N9 running on MeeGo operating system, at the Nokia Connection 2011 event in conjunction with CommunicAsia 2011 event in Singapore.

The new Nokia N9 is a full touchscreen smartphone with no buttons on the front panel. Flaunting a new industrial design with vivid 3.9-inch Amoled touchscreen display, the Nokia N9 certainly is a worthy successor to N8 and a flagship MeeGo device. The N9 is expected to be made available later this year.

Nokia N9 will certainly sweep many off their feet with its slim (7.6-12.1mm) unibody and curved glass display, stuck together to form one slab of a smartphone. The precision crafted polycarbonate unibody is just one piece that packs the battery and the other hardware inside it.

The N9 has a 3.9-inch AMOLED curved glass touchscreen display with 854×480 Pixel resolution. You can expect to see 16.7 million vibrant colours and crisper text on the screen. The N9’s AMOLED touchscreen is built using the scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass technology.

Internally, the Nokia N9 houses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 architecture based ‘Texas Instruments OMAP 3630’ processor, with PowerVR SGX530 graphics chip. It is the same combination used in the recently available Samsung Galaxy S LCD 4GB GT-I9003.

The Nokia N9 packs massive 1GB RAM and comes in 16GB or 64GB storage options.

The Nokia N9 features the volume rocker and lockscreen buttons on the side. At the back panel lies an 8-megapixel camera with Wide-Angle Carl Zeiss optical lens coupled with dual LED flash. Supporting the imaging in 16:9 aspect ratio, the camera has a digital shutter and comes with continuous Autofocus while recording a 720p HD video. One can enjoy the digital 4x zoom while clicking a still image or shooting a video. The camera optics are powerful enough to give great performance under low light conditions thanks to its larger f/2.2 Aperture and dual LED flash.

There’s a camera at the front panel for making video calls. To stay put with latest generation of smartphones, Nokia has put the Near-Field Communication chip inside it.

Nokia boasts of its new swipe philosophy where the users can browse through the smartphone’s user interface with finger swipes. Running MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan operating system, the user experience has been developed with the help of the Qt cross-platform application and user interface framework. With system-wide swipe gesture implementation, users can go to homescreen any time by swiping in any application.

Nokia has designed three different home screen views and offers live multi-tasking. Open Applications feature shows the number of apps running in a card style panel interface where users can multi-task between them.

Being the MeeGo flashship device, Nokia has also added free maps and turn-by-turn based Navigation with voice guidance. The dedicated Drive App has been optimised to be used as the GPS navigation system in cars and also features public transport routing. Apart from that, N9 also supports corporate email with ‘Mail for Exchange’ and comes pre-loaded with Ovi Store and Music along with support for Facebook as well as Twitter.

Nokia N9 features a fast mobile web Browser built using Webkit 2 technology and offers wide HTML5 support for using rich web apps and smoother video playback. In sound department, N9 supports Dolby Headphone and Dolby Digital Plus that enables personal surround sound audio experience with any pair of headphones connectable via 3.5mm audio port.

For network connectivity, the N9 features quad-band GSM and penta-band WCDMA support. Apart from that, wireless connectivity is ensured through Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

The N9 features a 1450mAh battery that offers talktime of up to 11 hours on 2G and up to 7 hours on WCDMA. One can play 720p HD videos for up to 4.5 hours and music playback is up to 50 hours &#151 better than the Apple iPod touch. The N9 will be available in black, cyan and magenta colours.

With mind-blowing design, contemporary specifications and intuitive interface, Nokia N9 certainly is a flagship MeeGo smartphone. So far there are no details on the availability and pricing but expect to be blown away whenever they are official.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 smartphones will soon be able to install third party apps compatible with their handsets as the company has now approved a jailbreak tool for enabling the installation of homebrew (open source) software on its devices.

The ChevronWP7 team, the trio who developed the first jailbreak for Windows Phone 7 devices, has announced in a blog post that a Windows Phone 7 unlocking service approved by Microsoft will be launched as part of the ChevronWP7 Labs.

ChevronWP7 team’s announcement that the new Windows Phone unlocking service will be approved by Microsoft is quite surprising for many.

The ChevronWP7 Labs website states that the team will be delivering a solution “in collaboration with Microsoft” and that it will charge developers a small fee via PayPal. Microsoft has obviously won brownie points over Apple and Sony, who have always been against jailbreaking hack developers.

It seems that the ChevronWP7 device-unlocking service will most likely be available to developers for a fee. This solution won’t be available for free like the ones on iOS and on Sony devices. Do note that jailbreaking a device is legal in the USA.

Tomorrow, Nokia is expected to announce and show its first Windows Phone 7 handset in Singapore. Microsoft will then have yet another major handset maker for its Windows Phone 7 platform.