Cell Phone News from December 2009

It seems that the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is bent upon passing every FCC testing ground. When it was tested the first time, the report indicated that indicated that it was the T-Mobile version whereas the new report points out towards it being an AT&T version. How do we know that? Well the listed 3G frequencies are 850/1900MHz, which are shared by companies like AT&T, Bell, Rogers, Telus, etc. Now a mere test does not necessarily give them a certificate that they will acquire the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10a, but it definitely increases their chances manifolds.

There has been an inquiry going on by FCC about Verizon regarding its sudden increase in the Early Termination fee to no less than $350. Well, Verizon has responded and it seems a rather justified decision as according to there are a lot of risks associated with offering subsidized phones and high-speed mobile broadband, due to which it was inevitable to increase the Early Termination Fee to $350. This was reported recently by the Wall Street Journal.

Ok now Vodafone UK is going to start offering iPhone 3G and 3GS from 14 January. This was eagerly awaited by each and everyone in the UK. Also there are awesome rewards; you could grab a 16GB 3GS for free on 45 pounds monthly on a two-year contract. Now pre-ordering it will result in everyone receiving free Vodafone calls for as long as the contract goes! How awesome is that! Vodafone has also come up to a plan which is to launch the new generation Apple iPhone 3G and 3GS on 14 January.

Motorola is on its way to release three very identical Android-powered handsets in China, and Motorola has gotten it all set as each one of these will be released by a different Chinese mobile service provider; needless to say all of three service providers chosen are at the top of their game. These phones are the Motorola XT800, XT701 and MT710. Basic features that they come with are touchscreen bar form factor and a 3.7" touchscreen displays with 854 x 480 pixels resolution, matching the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 and Motorola MILESTONE.

T-Mobile is finally going to come out with two Sony Ericsson Snapdragon-powered phones with gigantic touchscreens; and it is being said that this is definitely going to attract their customers a lot. Also the two sets that are being offered right now; the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 and the HTC HD2 have passed the FCC test and are going to be offered by T-Mobile in the USA sometime very soon. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 however still has to take one more test; the 3G test.

The release of the Samsung stunt (SCH-r100) has been the focus of many conversations lately, which were put to rest when Samsung announced the release of its SCH-r100 Stunt for MetroPCS a couple of days back or so. Don’t worry, the Stunt is not something weird, as the name suggests, in fact is a pretty plain bar shaped phone that features a slim design and a carousel-like menu of icons, which is easily accessible from the standby screen.

Sprint has recently announced that its version of the BlackBerry Curve 8530 has now hit the markets and can be purchased easily. Blackberry Curve 8530 is basically the same as 8520 with the exception of it being a CDMA version. T-Mobile were offering this set for the last couple of months. It is not an exact copy of the 8520 though as instead of the 3.2 megapixel camera of the Curve it is equipped with a simple 2 megapixel camera.

As we have discussed previously as well, Google is now focused on finding out exactly what versions of Android are the ones hitting the market more frequently, so that developers can focus upon creating applications for them. Google is doing this by detailing the fragmentation of the various Android versions and the frequency with which they are being distributed all over. This was recently mentioned in a company blog post. Now Google has started this thing by charting Android Market visit statistics for the first two weeks of December.

Smartphones are everywhere practically; every major company is coming up with one, Palm Pre and Palm Pixi have also been one of the successful ones. But a strange thing has happened as fiscal reports of the second quarter have been released lately, Palm has suffered from a loss and it is being rumoured that this all has happened basically due to a general drop in Smartphones sales. Whatever the reason for that is, we don’t know, but Palm is definitely the one to suffer here! Read on.

Ah! Our beloved Android family; can’t get enough of it and of course it keeps growing as the public is loving these handsets. Google has just come up with a device dashboard. Also it has just been discovered that their mobile web apps will now be better, faster, and stronger. Also HTC has released new Sense UI widgets for the Hero and Droid Eris for their better performance. So all over the world good things are happening with our beloved Android handsets. Let’s delve more into what exactly this is all about.

Guess what? Synaptics have decided to create the Synaptics Fuse concept full -touch phone with the help of a few other companies. The basic aim of it will be to try and take phone interfaces to the next level by combining a touchscreen with other technologies; so that one hand usability is improved and the need to look at the screen again and again is reduced to a great extent. The different thing about Synaptics is that they have supposedly covered the whole phone with a range of sensors.

The Motorola Backflip is an Android phone which is not official yet, but is very interesting as it was designed by a person completely lacking spatial awareness. Now the Motorola Backflip is a rather interesting phone and the name suits it too as you will see on seeing the pictures. There is nothing very different from Motorola CLIQ (or Motorola DEXT MB220) but still the charm of a Motorola phone and that too backflip is enough to draw customers.

The newest sensation these days, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Pureness has finally hit the shelves. Like the Vertu phones this one too gets to have a screen that’s transparent. Of course if you are getting something that resembles the Vertu at a relatively cheaper price, there is nothing wrong with getting one for yourself. There are a lot of new features of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Pureness like "Video streaming & viewing" which are now available along with the phone.

Facebook was the first social networking service brought to the world of Smartphones by Nokia Messaging; now it is being heard, Twitter is also joining ranks. The beauty of these social networks s basically the fact that you can stay in touch with even the oldest friends who were once very much part of your life. But before you try and download the service to your Smartphone, you must read what we have written below very carefully.

Ok this is as legendary as the phone itself. First good pictures of the much talked about phones are already here and are all over the internet. From the pictures it can be easily made out that it looks like HTC Hero successor, only much better specs and design. The company is all set to have an official launching the HTC Legend some time through the MWC 2010 in February. Previously it was leaked but of course now that we have better pictures of the phone; it can be termed as a good shot by the company.

Sony Ericsson has recently come out with their latest environmental achievement, two tree-hugging phones, named after trees themselves, Elm and Hazel. Of course them being environmentally inclined does not necessarily mean that they are deprived of any good features. They are aptly equipped with Wi-Fi, GPS, together with awesome sound technologies like Noise Shield, Clear Voice and Intelligent Volume Adaptation. These phones have splash-resistant bodies and curved designs basically meant to fit in your palm; just like the hugely successful XPERIA X10.

Who would have thought that the Samsung I8000 Omnia II would be updated with HTC Sense UI by a hacked firmware? As much as it seems to be a ridiculous thought, fact is, it has already been done and not only this but the phone has been updated in style. You can get the phone in ceramic white now too! Isn’t it just amazing! Some brand new photos have of this white set have also been roaming around the internet which we have managed to lay our hands onto.

Future is right here and we know it as TeliaSOnera is all set to make LTE (the 4th gen networks) commercially available. This all is happening of course when even the most reliable of the networks are trying their level best to come up with good reliable 3G networks. There are any publicly available phones that can make use of it but those will certainly come sooner rather than later. Of course this offer is only limited to the people with LTE-supporting laptop modems; other phones will be able to use this facility in a while.

This is a small preview of yet another touchscreen, as if we hadn’t had enough of them already! Enter the Samsung S5560 flaunting itself proudly with a 5MP camera and Wi-Fi. There is one drawback though, the Samsung S5560 is equipped with Wi-Fi connectivity but there is no 3G connectivity. This is also one of the handsets made to attract a less fortunate audience. Let’s check out this little initial preview of the phone to see what it’s made of.

The Nokia 5230 is a smartphone but a phone that is affordable to the lower segment of the market very easily. Nokia have a range of low key smartphones waiting to be released as according to them everyone should have an access to smartphones easily. The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic was a great hit with the music lovers so it is being suspected that the same will be the case with the 5230 . It will be available both ways through retail stores and carriers.

Everybody is excited about this Google Phone release which seems to be all over the internet right now. We don’t know for sure if it’s right or wrong but we know this much that something is definitely cooking and it is interesting! Now Google has not been very vocal about this and so nothing can be confirmed right now. According to reliable sources a set is in the works definitely which will be sold by Google itself.

It has been long suspected that there might be some sort of connection between brain tumor and cell usage but this 30-year old study denies this and based on this very study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, some Scandinavian researchers have also concluded that there has been no increase in brain tumor diagnoses from 1998 to 2003. "We did not detect any clear change in the long-term time trends in the incidence of brain tumors," said Isabelle Deltour, a researcher in the Danish Cancer Society.

The first live photos of this most awaited phone are here and they look impressive as well! Like it or not, this is one Smartphone that has the ability of actually changing the way we think about Smartphone. These first pictures usually do not come out very nicely, but the amazing result that these pictures have shown can promise one thing for sure that the real thing is worth looking forward to. There are a lot of customizable features on this phone that are worth mentioning.

Not a lot of interest is being shown in smart phones running Google's Android software these days by the buyers, as many of them do not have any idea as to what they are. Research group IDC reported that even though Google's market share increased to 5.4 percent from 4.2 percent in the third quarter for a market as major as the Western Europe, the buyers are having trouble understanding what it is all about.

Nokia has again announced an updated version of Nokia 5230, which will now be updated with the newest trend, Comes With Music; and the device is quite rightly named Nokia 5235 Comes With Music. It is basically based on the Nokia 5230, but is now equipped with Nokia's new all-you-can-eat music download service, Comes With Music. The main features of this new phone are almost the same, not much difference there. the 3.2" resistive touchscreen with nHD resolution (360x640 pixels), the built-in GPS with A-GPS and Ovi Maps etc.