As per our earlier report, Acer has launched its latest Android 2.2 based Acer Liquid Mini smartphone in India. This is an entry level Android offering that competes directly with likes of LG Optimus One and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini.

One of the highlights of the phone is its design, which has rounded top and bottom with generous Chrome inserts. The phone is available in a wide range of colours including jet silver, royal blue, piano black, lime green and light pink.

The screen is a 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen with 360×640 Pixel Resolution and features ‘pinch to zoom’ function.

The Liquid Mini comes with the Acer user interface. It also gets GPS and A-GPS support, along with a 5MP camera, WiFi b/g with DLNA and WiFi hotspot technology, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP, stereo FM radio with RDS, and a 1,300 mAh Lithium-ion battery that is rated to deliver up to 400 hours of standby time, and, up to eight hours of talktime. It comes with a document viewer onboard as well.

The only major drawback of the phone is its Processor which at 600MHz (600 MHz ARM 11 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset) is not really fast.
However, it is at par with its competition at the price point of close to Rs 11,000.

Acer will also launch another smartphone with Android operating system, the name of which has not been disclosed. However, it is expected to be called as the Acer Iconia.

Chinese handset manufacturer G’Five plans to launch a number of Android operating system (OS) based smartphones in India.

While their hardware specifications are not known, the phones will feature Android 2.1 &#201clair, which is an older version of the OS.

Talking to The Mobile Indian, Jaideep Chopra, vice president, G’Five, said, “We will enter the Android smartphone space with multiple devices with different hardware options, but all phones will be based on Android 2.1 version.”

&#201clair seems to have been included to keep the cost low and therefore it is safe to assume that G’Five will have one of the cheapest Android phones in the market.

G’Five is likely to face tough competition from some Indian brands such as Micromax and Spice. Both of them have recently launched Android phones and have got good response.

However, since the company will bring in multiple models, there will be more expensive phones as well (though the phones will still be cheaper than most European and Korean brands).

Although the exact date has not been disclosed by the company it is expected that G’Five will launch the handsets within the month of May.

G’Five, which is one of the top three mobile phone brands in India, has said that it will also bring a tablet PC and laptops to India. It is in the process of opening 500 retail outlets across the country as well.

Huawei, a major Chinese telecom player, will enter the CDMA market in India with Open Market Handsets.

A Huawei spokesperson said, “We will be launching few CDMA OMH (open market handsets) starting June this year.” He however refused to disclose further details.
Until now, Huawei has sold its CDMA phones either through Tata Indicom or through Reliance Communications’ CDMA arm, but now the handsets will work on three CDMA players’ networks, MTS being the third.

Huawei has a wide range of CDMA handsets in its portfolio thanks to China being a major CDMA market. The company will come up with Android and touch screen Brew (Qualcomm’s OS) based phones.

Currently Huawei has only one handset in the Indian market. This is an Android based phone called IDEOS. The company has Android based tablets in other markets that are likely to be launched in India. However, there has been no announcement regarding this.

As far as OMH handsets are concerned, we expect a majority of them to be touchscreen devices and QWERTY keypad phones. We will not be surprised if some of these will have dual SIMs.

Sony Ericsson has unveiled its latest version of Walkman series phone, based on Google’s Android operating system, the W8.

It is contrary to speculations that it will be doing away with its Walkman series phones after the adoption of Android operating system.

While it is designed on the likes of its older Xperia smartphones, the W8’s user interface is similar to that found on the Xperia mini range of products.

“The Sony Ericsson W8 Walkman phone combines Walkman functionality with smartphone fundamentals such as apps, maps and email to create the most entertaining smartphones,” said Pawan Chadha, country head, India, Sony Ericsson.

The W8 comes with Android 2.1 OS with Sony Ericsson’s Timescape user interface. The 3 inch LCD display comes with a Resolution of 320 x 480 pixels and has a scratch resistant surface which makes perfect sense for its capacitive touch input system.

Based on Qualcomm MSM 2772 chipset, the W8 will feature a 600 MHz processor along with a dedicated Adreno 200 graphics engine, which is expected to give a better performance. The phone features 3G connectivity but sadly lacks a front facing camera.
In terms of connectivity, right from USB to Bluetooth to WiFi, all possible connectivity options are available on this device.

The company is claiming a whopping 23 hours of music playback time from this device between charges, whereas the Talk time remains to be on the lower side with 4.5 hours of talktime with a 1200 mAh battery pack.

The W8 is expected to hit the Indian market from the month of May. Pricing of the W8, however, remains a mystery as no official announcement has been made on that front so far. But looking at the specifications, it is expected to be announced with a price tag of up to Rs 12,000.

Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, has launched the BlackBerry Style 9670 CDMA smartphone in India.

It comes in a flip design and has a full-Qwerty keyboard. It also features the latest BlackBerry 6 operating system.

“The CDMA segment represents a significant portion of the overall mobile subscriber base in India and we are pleased to further our commitment to Indian consumers with the introduction of this powerful and stylish BlackBerry smartphone,” said Frenny Bawa, managing director, India, Research In Motion.

He added, “The BlackBerry Style is a new and exciting choice for customers, offering an attractive flip design and an intuitive user experience powered by the new BlackBerry 6 operating system.”

The BlackBerry Style has an optical trackpad. It also boasts two large displays, an external 2 inch screen with 240×320 Resolution for quickly viewing notifications/messages and a high-resolution 2.7 inch internal screen with 360×400 Pixel resolution.

Other features of the phone include a 5MP camera with flash and support for video recording, built-in GPS for location-based apps and geo-tagging, WiFi, and an expandable memory slot for up to 32GB of additional storage.

The phone supports 3G CDMA network (although it is not available in India as of now, though MTS plans to rollout such a network soon).

Preinstalled applications include YouTube, BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Also, the BlackBerry Style has enhanced multimedia capabilities including a redesigned media application for a richer experience with music, pictures and videos. It also features a new WebKit-based Browser that renders HTML web pages quickly.
The phone will be available without any operator bundling, so customers are free to choose their desired network from three options that is available (Tata Indicom, MTS, and Reliance Communication CDMA).

The phone is priced at Rs. 24,990.