Latest Mobile Phone News

It’s just over a month before Mobile World Congress 2012 kicks off, and the smartphone rumour mill is in overdrive, with the latest leak suggesting LG will be among the first to unveil a quad-core smartphone at the expo. The new phone, currently known as the X3, will apparently ship with the new Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor under the glass, and a 1280×720 resolution, 4.7-inch display. Images of new powerful smart phone of LG have been leaked on web world and they are showing a slimmed down version of last year’s Optimus 2X, which includes LG’s standard trio of hardware navigation controls despite the X3 apparently running on the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android — software that includes the same controls in virtual on-screen buttons. The same rumours are also suggesting LG will include a 2000mAh battery with the X3, which would be a big step up from the 1500mAh battery pack in the Optimus 2X. In conjunction with the power efficiency promised by Nvidia in regards to the Tegra 3 chipset, the X3 could be a phone that runs all day long.

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Samsung has unveiled the latest additions to the Galaxy Y smartphone series, Samsung Galaxy Y Duos and Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos new dual-SIM Android smartphones. The two SIM cards indicate that you have got 2 phone numbers at your disposal, for instance: one for work and one for your personal life. You can use data according to your plan, regardless of the SIM. Samsung Galaxy’s Duos and Duos Pro phones run on the GSM technology (850/900/1800/1900 MHz bands) and are armed with Samsung’s TouchWiz software.

Samsung Galaxy Y Duos is equipped with a 3.1-inch QVGA (243 x 320) touchscreen, with a 3-megapixel camera, HSDPA modem, microSD storage expandable up to 32GB and an powerful 832MHz processor that runs on all-touch Android 2.3 Gingerbread, armed with a 1,300mAh battery. Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos runs the same Android version and has a full QWERTY keyboard on its candy-bar frame. Thus, the screen is a smaller 2.6 inches, further the smartphone is packed with a 3-megapixel camera on the back, with a front-facing VGA camera and armed with1, 350mAh battery.

Samsung’s Duos and Duos Pro are equipped with almost same features, under the hood. The company states that both the phones at first will launch in Russia in January. Later, the Galaxy Y Duos will strike the Europe, Latin America, CIS, Africa, Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Middle East, and China. While, the Galaxy Y Pro Duos will strike the Europe, Latin America, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, CIS, and Africa. Unfortunately, at the moment Samsung did not revealed any exact information regarding the price tag of Duos and Duos Pro smartphones.

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Though 50.000 is less than one-tenth of what Apple’s iOS App Store has and also a fraction of the more than 400,000 apps in Android Market, Microsoft’s ascent to 50,000 apps is a solid milestone given the time it took to get there. Windows Phone took 14 months to reach 50,000 apps. Android took 19 months to reach 50,000 apps and iOS took 12 months.  The 50,000 mark, which has been reached sooner than we estimated, is a key milestone, but more important is the accelerating growth of the Marketplace. It took just over a year to get to 40,000 apps, but just 40 days to add the next 10,000 apps. That bodes well for Windows Phone in 2012. There has been an uptick in submissions to Windows Phone Marketplace over the last several weeks. The report attributes this to the expansion of the geographic area available to the marketplace as well as to the release of Nokia’s first Windows Phone devices.

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Here strikes a new entry into the phone market from Samsung, which has released a dual-screen, clamshell Android smartphone known as Samsung W999. The new expensive Clamshell smartphone allow the user to opt either as a full touch screen phone, or you can use it as a regular clamshell phone, Flip to open. W999 is equipped with two OLED 3.5-inch displays, both of them at 800 x 480 resolution, running Android Gingerbread 2.3, powered by 1.2 GHz dual core processor. Samsung W999 Android smartphone measures at 17.8mm, weighing 206 grams, equipped with a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, capable to record 1080p video, with a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera. Armed with a 16 GB internal memory and features a micro-SD card slot for expansion, supporting Bluetooth 3.0, powered by 1500mAh battery. The most fascinating thing about the phone is the screen, where in the W999 unit not only flips up and out, it flips back. The new Samsung W999 Clamshell smartphone is set to go on sale in next month.

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The app, which pulls information from Facebook and Twitter accounts, turns friends’ updates into nicely formatted, perusal-friendly pages. Flipboard also delivers a couple dozen aggregated content sections (news, finance, music, tech, etc.) selected by Flipboard’s creators. The iPad app is popular for its attractive magazine-style presentation of headlines, story blurbs, and photos. The iPhone app adds a feature called Cover Stories, which Flipboard says learns from a reader’s interactions with the content and helps them quickly catch up with some of the most interesting news, updates, and photos being shared at that moment. While the iPad app allowed users to flip through magazine-like pages, the iPhone app uses a vertical flip that allows users to navigate pages while holding their device in one hand.

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Motorola has launched its first 720p HD native resolution display based smartphone, Motorola Dinara officially known as the xT928. However, it was currently announced exclusively for China. Well, after Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus with 720p HD native resolution display, it is now with LG Nitro HD 4G LTE and Motorola XT928 Dinara to take the challenge officially. Motorola’s new Android smartphone xT928 is equipped with a 4.5 inch touchscreen display with 1280×720 pixel resolution (manufactured from Corning Gorilla Glass), an enhanced audio output with Dolby Digital Plus sound technology, called Smart Actions, which automates different profile settings, MotoCast, and a Webtop. Quite Interestingly, the Webtop application allows you to use a full-screen web browser, external monitor, smartphone apps and USB peripherals all at the same time. While the Dolby Digital Plus audio technology will serve as an ultimate multimedia package.

This Motorola XT928, which is similar to Droid Bionic, is powered by a powerful a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, together with 1GB of RAM, and runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Moreover this phone as well features dual-mode and dual-standby as a result it could be a dual-networks supporting handset. Motorola Dinara xT928 smartphone is known for its 13.1 megapixel camera, which is capable of capturing of 1080p full HD video and high quality images with Wide Dynamic Range. The phone further also has a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera for video calling.

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AT&T stole some of LG’s thunder last week when it unveiled the company’s LTE flagship — the Nitro HD — before the handset’s official coming out soirée. Well, tonight LG’s gone and thrown that fete anyway, introducing us (once again) to its 4.5-incher. But you have to wonder why the company’s even bothering to roll out yet another Gingerbread-baked device when Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus is already out of the gate and leading the Android charge with ICS — not to mention the current availability of rival heavyweights like the Rezound and Droid RAZR. Still, the phone’s packing some very respectable specs, with a “true” HD 1280 x 720 IPS display, dual 1.3 / 8 megapixel shooters, a hefty 20GB of storage and a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm APQ8060 processor running the show. Is it too late in the game for LG to make its beast matter?

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Sony Ericsson announced that its Xperia arc S and Xperia neo V are now available unlocked in the United States from Sony Store locations. The Xperia arc S runs Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) and is equipped with a 1.4GHz processor, an 8.1-megapixel camera, a 4.2-inch “Reality” display and support for 3D and 2D sweep panorama photography. The Xperia arc S is available in white, black, blue and silver for $529.99 without a contract. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia neo V also runs Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) and has a 3.7-inch display, a 5-megapixel camera and a front-facing camera for video chats. It is available in white, silver and blue for $349.99 unlocked. Both phones will be available from other retailers, such as Newegg, beginning in early December. As a side note, Sony Ericsson also recently announced that its 2011 family of Xperia-branded smartphones will all be updated to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) at a later date, so both the Xperia arc S and Xperia neo V should receive the update at some point.

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The World’s Largest Mobile Manufacturer from Finland Nokia Corp. has another successive net loss in the third quarter; although it was better than the earlier quarter and all the credit goes to low end mobile phones. After Apple and Samsung taking over the Smartphone market the other companies are struggling hard to push their line of smartphones sales. Nokia has been one the dominant companies and held the top spot in making mobile phones for more than a decade, but since two quarters the company has been falling down and down with sales. But this quarter was better than the last after the shares jumped over 8%, as results highlighted an increase in shipments of its cheaper feature phones owing to strong sales of dual-SIM handsets, which allow users to have multiple phone numbers. Nokia shipped 89.8 million feature phones in the quarter, up 8% from a year earlier.

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Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, is likely to ease the fragmentation of the operating system, some device executives said on Thursday. Google unveiled Ice Cream Sandwich last month in the Galaxy Nexus, set to go on sale this month in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The new OS achieves much of what device makers have been trying to achieve by augmenting earlier Android releases on their own, which has created differences among versions on the market, according to some speakers on a panel at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco. Device makers and carriers have customized Android for their own purposes since it was introduced in 2007.

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HTC Corp. edged out Samsung Electronics Co. to become the largest smartphone vendor in the U.S., capitalizing on the Android platform’s popularity and a lull in demand for iPhones to overtake Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. A 10 percentage-point jump in share from a year earlier gave Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC 24 percent of the world’s largest smartphone market in the third quarter, ahead of Samsung’s 21 percent, Palo Alto, California-based researcher Canalys said in a statement yesterday. Apple fell to third at 20 percent while RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, had 9 percent. HTC, which made the world’s first phone using Google Inc.’s Android in 2008, benefited from strong relationships with U.S. carriers and made different models for each operator. Apple’s iPhone 4S and new devices from Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung may help the two global smartphone leaders gain share in the U.S. this quarter as HTC forecasts its first shipment decline in almost two years.

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The market for new technology hits a peak at Christmas time due to the release of an array of new devices and gizmos. It’s also a peak time for the mobile market with many people buying mobile phones for Christmas presents, or spending their Christmas cash on a new phone. There is always a host of new phones entering the market in the lead up to the New Year with some raising more excitement than others. One of the most sought after mobile phones this year will undoubtedly be the new iPhone 4S.

Each new edition of this revelatory piece of technology seems to offer an exciting new gimmick, although Apple could rarely be accused of gimmickry. Their product range seems to offer genuinely useable new features that raise the bar for the rest of the market to follow. Apple’s technology seems like a real glimpse into the future of practical technology. Read the rest of this entry »

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No discussion of current mobile phones would be complete without mentioning the newly released iPhone 4S. As with any new Apple release, there is an insatiable public appetite to be the first to own the latest gizmo. We have become familiar with queues outside the Apple stores, and the frantic clamour from Apple fans to experience the newest technological advances. The iPhone 4S is no different, with the iPhone being a cornerstone of Apples product range and a flagship for their innovations.

It would be easy to pass off some of the advances in mobile phone technology as a passing fad, but it would be difficult to level this accusation at Apple. Apple’s hallmark is intuitive technology; practical technological advances with genuine uses. Siri is the latest of these advances – the name of Apple’s groundbreaking new piece of voice-control technology. Read the rest of this entry »

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RIM is betting the future of its smartphone, tablet, and embedded systems on a new operating system: BBX. But there’s no word when it’ll be available, or what devices it will support. At its BlackBerry DevCon Americas conference in San Francisco, Canada’s Research in Motion officially announced BBX, an new single operating system RIM says will run on all its hardware platforms: smartphones, tablets, and embedded systems. RIM is touting BBX as combining the best elements of its existing BlackBerry OS with the best of QNX (which powers the PlayBook tablet), combined with cloud service capabilities and an emphasis on high-performance HTML5 development. DevCon being a developer conference, RIM also rolled out a bunch of tools for BlackBerry developers, including the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps on the PlayBook as part of a beta of PlayBook OS 2.0. The upshot is that PlayBook users may soon begin to tap into the very large (and fast-growing) world of Android apps. What is BBX, how is it distinct from RIM’s previous operating systems, and — perhaps most importantly — will it help RIM recover market share and profits lost to the likes of Android and Apple’s iOS?

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Presenting the brightest screen in its class, the new Nokia 701 has a 3.5 inch ClearBlack display which makes it Nokia’s brightest smartphone ever launched. It’s the touchscreen display that stands out giving it an elegant and stylish look. The ClearBlack display creates a great combination of brightness and contrast making it perfect for indoor and outdoor use. It is a sleek and slim smartphone with active noise cancellation for the clearest sound quality making it perfect for people looking for daily phone efficiency. Nokia 701 is NFC enabled and runs on the latest Symbian upgrade; Symbian Belle. NFC technology has some remarkable peer-to-peer communication capabilities, which allows transfer of information by simply bringing two phones close and tapping each other.

This is a tremendously convenient feature for individuals uncomfortable with technology and find Bluetooth and transfer information like business cards and music time consuming and cumbersome. NFC also has a reader which allows an NFC enabled device to upload and download any information that is on an electronic NFC enabled board. Nokia 701 is equipped with a powerful 1Ghz processor and a 8 MP full focus camera with dual LED flash, 2 X digital zoom and HD video capture. Additionally, it has an 8GB internal memory which is expandable upto 40GB with a 32GB microSD card. Available in colours dark steel and light sliver, the Nokia 701 is a classy smartphones for people looking for simplicity and the latest technology in their mobiles.

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