With Diwali just around the corner, Fly Mobiles has announced 6 New Dual SIM handsets namely the DS100, DS150, DS 200, V170, V180, and MC 160.
Continue reading “Fly launches a series of Dual SIM handsets for Diwali”
Author: Vikas SN
A Complete Mobile freak. Regularly Blogs about Mobiles at Techknots.com and Tweets as @tsuvik
Mobile Users to soon get per second pulse option now
After the immense success of Tata Docomo’s per second pulse plan which made it the top operator in terms of user additions, TRAI is now considering the idea of introducing the same throughout all the operators now.
According to TRAI, all the telecom operators may be soon forced to give the option of paying based on the usage per second pulse instead of the current per minute pulse.
JS Sarma, Chairman of TRAI said that they will soon come out with a paper on this subject and invite suggestions on making this plan mandatory or not.
TRAI is also reconsidering the clause in current regulations which allow the mobile phone operators decide the tariffs and plans.
Some of the major Mobile Operators like BSNL and Aircel have already started offering per second pulse in select states like Karnataka, AP, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal etc and other operators like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are expected to follow suit soon.
What do you think? Would you prefer to pay by the new per second pulse or are you happy with your existent per minute pulse rates? Do Pass on your comments.
MindTree to develop Mobile Phones now
MindTree, the popular IT Solutions Company is now getting into the development of Mobile phones now.
This new division in MindTree called N!Mo (Next in Mobility) will deal with conceptualizing, designing,and developing white-label mobile devices for different service providers and OEMs who will in turn brand them and sell it in the global forum.
Samartha Raghava Nagabhushanam, the founding director of Kyocera Wireless India, which MindTree acquired recently, will head the N!Mo division in MindTree.
This new division in Mindtree is expected to bring in revenues of $9 Million (42 Crore Rupees) in the next 6 months and help MindTree in achieving the $1 Billion target by 2014.
(Source: The Times of India)
First Images of Android Powered XPERIA X3 leaked
The first pictures of the forthcoming Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 codenamed “Rachael” have been leaked and looking at the pictures, the phone does look damn interesting.
Considering the fact that this phone will be Android based and sports a huge 4″ screen and a 1GHZ Processor, it has created quite a buzz with all the mobile enthusiasts. Also seeing at the pics, it can also be observed that the phone is nearing towards a worldwide launch soon.
So all you XPERIA fans, drool on!
Tata Docomo Launches Blackberry Services
Tata Docomo has recently launched its blackberry service offering both the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve 8900 smartphones to its customers in India.
Tata Docomo currently offers two different plans for the BlackBerry data service — the “Do 299” plan and the “Do 899” plan.
The “Do 299” plan offers unlimited data usage for e-mail and instant messaging, whereas the “Do 899” plan offers unlimited data usage for Internet, e-mail and instant messaging.
However, the Voice plans have to be subscribed separately by the user.
How to copy paste from webpages in E71/E61i using Opera Mini 5
Yesterday we had told you about the copy paste feature of the new Opera Mini 5. However many of the people were facing difficulties doing the same, in mobile devices which had a QWERTY keypad eg E71, E61i etc. The difficulty arose because Opera Mini is a Java Application and hence the normal CTRL+C and CTRL+V does not work in Opera Mini 5.
Gerry Moth from Nokia Addict has now found out the correct way to copy paste from webpages on E71 and E61i.
How to Do Copy Paste:
You just have to press 1 or hold the OK d-pad key down for a while and then you will be able to select text/copy text or paste the text.
For more Opera Mini shortcut keys in E71, just head over to Nokia Addict’s Article.
Update: If inline editing is disabled, then the native phone UI in E71/E61i takes over and CTRL+C / CTRL+V will start working again. To disable Inline editing, just go to the “Settings -> Advanced ->Inline Editing” in Opera Mini 5.
Android 1.6 SDK is now available for download
The Android Team has just released its SDK for Android 1.6 codenamed “The Donut”.
So whats new in the “The Donut“:
- It now has support for both CDMA as well as GSM.
- It now supports more screen resolutions, which in return will allow Android apps to work on more devices.
- The new APIs include a gestures framework and text-to-speech engine.
- Donut now provides access to the new and improved Android Market.
- It now provides a Quick Search Box for Donut Users, which allows searching directly from the home screen with suggested results while a person is typing.
Devices with Android 1.6 running are expected to be out as early as October ’09. Apps developed for older versions of Android will continue to run on Android 1.6. However do test your existing apps on the Android 1.6 SDK to make sure they run as expected.
Android Team also added that over the next several weeks, they will publish a series of blog posts to help the developers get ready for the new developer technologies in Android 1.6. The topics on which posts will be covered are:
- How to adapt your applications to support different screen sizes
- Integrating with Quick Search Box
- Building gestures into your apps and
- Using the text-to-speech engine.
In the meantime you can also check the official video of Android 1.6 along with its new features below:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRFkLKRwFw
Nokia Mixed Reality – An Awesome Futuristic Concept
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGwvZWyLiBU
This innovative concept introduced at Nokia World ’09 allows to you to experience immersion and effortless navigation in an Augmented Reality environment. New types of interactions involving near-to-eye displays, gaze direction tracking, 3D audio, 3D video, gesture and touch. Through these new types of social linkages people will be connected in innovative ways between the physical and digital worlds.
With Mixed Reality, we would no longer face the ambiguity of having to choose between either the physical world or the virtual world at a single point of time. We could enjoy a virtual chat or to exchange any file with your friends/family when we are outside. Also, we could catch up with the latest updates/tweets/messages from our friends if we are travelling anywhere and still reply to them.
This might also help in building physical connections as well. If a virtual friend/acquaintance is physically close to us, his picture would pop up and start following him as he moves around.
Since its based upon eye movement, Mixed Reality would also make our presence on the internet a much more intuitive experience. When your eyelids are closed and doesn’t reopen for a period of time, the system detects it and goes either offline or into sleep mode automatically and hence would not disturb you while sleeping. It would later retrieve your offline messages when you are awake again, irrespective of the time period.
What do you think about this new concept? Do you think it will revolutionize the way we live and interact now? Do Pass on your comments.
You can read more about “Mixed Reality” at Nokia Research Website.
Win a N900 by Hacking it at Push N900
After the mega launch of Nokia N900 at the Nokia World ‘09, Nokia has come up with an interesting contest for all the developers, hackers and modders called “PUSH N900“.
Nokia describes Push N900 as “An unique design, hacking & modding project from Nokia. We want to give designers, hackers, modders, creatives and artists the chance to get their hands on, and heads inside, the new Nokia N900 & the Maemo platform – the most powerful pairing we’ve ever created”
Event brief
You will have to tell Nokia how you would hack and mod the N900 & Maemo to connect the N900 to something you love. An expert judging panel will be selecting winning submissions and the groups behind the winning entries will receive N900 devices, funding and support to develop their PUSH idea. And once they’re complete, we’ll share them with the rest of the world with a series of installations in Nokia Flagship Stores across the globe.
Already a lot of buzz is present around Nokia N900 and this event is just going increase the buzz by many folds. Just imagine the quality of apps which will be created with a lot of hackers, modders and artist getting together to create apps for the Maemo OS.
Few companies like Hyper and Tinker.it have already got together and started working on a sample project for the PUSH N900 launch event. A project which dealt with a mashup of a Speak ‘n’ Spell, a Rolodex, 80’s radio tagger/Last.fm integration and 3D ViewMaster camera.
A Speak and Spell was used to text a message to a member of the audience, a Rolodex then identified a contact’s details after being manually spun and automatically pulled it up on the phone, an FM radio hack then identified any ‘80’s musician texted to the phone and connected to Last.fm to pull up the relevant cover art as you tuned the radio to a station playing the selected artist’s music, and finally a View-Master which used Nokia N900 to create custom 3D photos.
Interested to create a similar mashup or create another unique application for Nokia N900? Then rush with your ideas/proposals here.
Submissions for Nokia PUSH N900 are accepted until October 5th 2009. The proposals can be either a video proposal, or a written proposal or even visual proposal. The winning submissions and the winners will be announced on October 25th 2009.
Opera Mini 5 Beta is out. Download Now
One of the most popular mobile browser, Opera Mini is out with a new beta version, Opera Mini 5 Beta.
Bing Visual Search: An Awesome Search Engine for iPhone Apps
Bing recently launched a new feature called Visual Search through which you could search for any gadget/movie/books etc visually, whose names you finding it difficult to remember.
So you might ask, how is this relevant in a Mobile blog? Well, Bing’s Visual Search has a specific section for iPhone apps as well wherein you can find applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch without opening up the iTunes App Store.
Continue reading “Bing Visual Search: An Awesome Search Engine for iPhone Apps”
Nokia 5800 gets a new firmware upgrade, reaches v31.0.008
Good News for all the Nokia 5800 fans! It has just got a new firmware update (v31.0.008) via OTA and as well as via NSU (File size being 6MB and 100MB respectively).
The new firmware update (v31.0.008) brings along with it a lot of known bugfixes and improved sensitivity of the touchscreen. The firmware has been released for several product codes in European countries today and shall be rolling out for others in the coming few days.
To update your firmware via Over The Air method, just type *#0000# from the dialler and then press ‘Options => Check for updates‘. And if you are lucky, the update dialog would pop up, else you will have to wait for few days for the new firmware to get rolled up worldwide.
However, before proceeding with the firmware upgrade, we advise you to backup all your important phone data as usual, even though 5800 has UDP (User Data Preservation).
The Changes in the new firmware v31.0.008 are as follows:
- Nokia Maps has been updated to Ovi Maps 3.1
- The Ovi Store client has been updated to v1.05(231)
- Performance Improvements has been observed which means more free RAM and better memory optimisations.
Did you get the new update? Did you find anything extra which was previously not there in 5800? Do Pass On your comments.
iPhone OS 3.1 is out
Apple has just announced the release of iPhone OS 3.1 in its Rock And Roll event that happened today.
The new update brings in many important changes like:
- Genius Recommendations for Apps = Get recommendations for apps you might like based on apps you’ve already bought/downloaded from the App store.
- Genius Mixes = iTunes can now create up to 12 playlists based on what’s already there on your iTunes library. and unlike the Genius feature, you now don’t have to choose a sample song as well.
- A Brand New Ringtone Store = Choose from a wide variety of ringtones on the iTunes store with over 30.000 ringtones available for 1.29$ / each ringtone.
- Organize Apps in iTunes = You can now use iTunes to drag and drop apps onto your virtual Home screens on your computer, then sync them back onto your iPhone/iPod Touch.
iPhone 3.1 Update also brings in many other changes like:
- Improved syncing for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and photos.
- iTunes U content organization.
- Redeem iTunes Gift Cards, codes, and certificates in the App Store.
- Display available iTunes account credits in the App Store and iTunes Store.
- Save video from Mail and MMS into Camera Roll.
- Option to “Save as new clip” when trimming a video on iPhone 3GS.
- Better iPhone 3G Wi-Fi performance when Bluetooth is turned on.
- Remotely lock iPhone with a passcode via MobileMe.
- Use Voice Control on iPhone 3GS with Bluetooth headsets.
- Paste phone numbers into the keypad.
- Option to use Home button to turn on accessibility features on iPhone 3GS.
- Warn when visiting fraudulent websites in Safari (anti-phishing).
- Improved Exchange calendar syncing and invitation handling.
- Fixes issue that cause some app icons to display incorrectly.
It is available for download right now! So if you have an iPhone/iPod Touch, I would recommend you to upgrade to version 3.1 now.
However if you have a unlocked and jailbroken iPhone, I would recommend you to not update to OS 3.1 right away and hold on for a while until the you hear anything from the iPhone Dev Team.
A sneak peek into Spotify’s S60 Client
After iPhone and Android Apps, Spotify is now gearing up for an S60 Client.
For the people who dont know, Spotify is a subscription based music streaming service which allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with almost zero buffering delay.
To give you a basic idea of what to expect from the application, Spotify has released a video demo of its Client running on S60 which is currently in development and will be out soon.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipygzjcEyRU
Spotify Mobile Application will be soon available to all its premium subscribers shortly.
For more details on the S60 client, you can head over to Spotify’s Official Blog.
Nokia Lifecasting – Broadcast your life now
Along with many services Nokia launched at the Nokia World 2009, one of the most interesting thing Nokia released was the Nokia Ovi Lifecasting.
It is basically an application which lets people publish their status updates, share photos etc directly onto their Facebook account along with their location with the help of Ovi Maps, right from the home screen of their phone.
However, the only devices that currently support Ovi Lifecasting are Nokia N97 and the new Nokia N97 Mini. So if you have a Nokia N97 or N97 Mini, rush now to download this application, since there is a limited entry for the beta testers of this exclusive application.
Here is a video preview of Ovi Lifecasting and how it works:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFQKZPANM70
To know more about Ovi Lifecasting and How to Install it, check here.
So did you try Lifecasting? How is it? What can be done to make it better? Do Pass on your comments.