Cell Phone News from December 2009

With the name Opera the first thing that comes to mind is desktop browsers but what most people don’t know about them is that they are very if not equally strong in the mobiles world as well. They are all set to introduce the new Opera Mobile version 10 for Android and the BREW platform. Opera Mobile 10 has already been launched but only in the beta form for Windows Mobile and for Symbian and the feature phone favorite Opera Mini 5 beta 2 can be downloaded too.

So the much hyped Motorola MILESTONE has now finally hit the shelves in the UK and that too for a mere 450 pounds or so. It seems a good time as Christmas is just around the corner and Motorola can have all the sales that it likes. But unfortunately the Christmas shopping choice is a bit limited as it is only being offered by eXpansys UK until the end of the year. After that of course, who knows.

HTC HD2 is an excellent phone, blessed with a lot of good functional qualities except for a tiny problem that it has faced, the infamous *pink spot* issue that has been infecting every other unit, according to a recent review. But HTC, being the technological maestros that they are, have managed to come up with a solution which will definitely end all the worries of HD2 owners for good. HTC have recently launched a "Digital Picture Enhancement" for the HTC HD2 that will surely fix the whole issue.

The New Chocolate LG BL20 is not a very unique phone so to say and nothing significantly new is being offered by it. The original BL40 was an inspiring phone to say but the least but we can’t say the same about the new BL20 as it just seems to be a new version of the same phone; or let’s just say, the physical successor of the original thing. LG has lately been all about touch screens so it has been a while that any of their regular phones have gotten reviewed.

So we have heard a good news finally, first half of the 2010 HTC roadmap has been unveiled and it seems that the Taiwanese company will be releasing some new Android handsets within the next 6 months. But still even in this roadmap, the HTC Espresso has not been mentioned anywhere at all when we all know that it is in pipeline. The handsets are HTC Legend, HTC Salsa, HTC Bravo, HTC Tide and HTC buzz which are all Android.

As we have just mentioned in another news article of ours HTC Bravo is about to be released next year and so the hype is building up in the general public as they all want to see what the awesome phone is all about. So as with every other set that is much hyped up; HTC Bravo has also been bestowed with its share of leaked photos and videos. But it is by far the first time that we have laid our hands on something as good as this photo.

Samsung has just come out with their brand new Smartphone operating system, Bada, a thing that was eagerly awaited by many Smartphone enthusiasts. The OS revolves around Samsung’s TouchWiz User Interface, so much so that even the designs that they presented at the conference were strikingly similar to the Samsung Pixon12 UI. Now this OS can be used only on full-touch handsets only due to which we could be seeing a lot of new Smart phones spring up next year.

Along with the five Android sets HTC will also be launching three new Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets in 2010. These are HTC Trophy, HTC Photon and HTC Tera which all have Windows Mobile 6.5 as their OS and will be available in the first six months of the year 2010. The names are not real, just codenames. They will be changed when the handsets comes out next year. Following is our take on each of the sets one by one.

It has been sometime that Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition became available across various countries all around the world, and now it seems the awesome set has made its way to the USA, finally. The best thing about this is that the price is lower than elsewhere, the thing that usually happens! Now Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition is an upgraded version of the immensely popular Nokia 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen device and is equipped with a lifetime voice-guided navigation for North America and a car kit to make users able to mount it on a dashboard or windshield.

It has been sometime that Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition became available across various countries all around the world, and now it seems the awesome set has made its way to the USA, finally. The best thing about this is that the price is lower than elsewhere, the thing that usually happens! Now Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition is an upgraded version of the immensely popular Nokia 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen device and is equipped with a lifetime voice-guided navigation for North America and a car kit to make users able to mount it on a dashboard or windshield.

So this is Google’s own phone that we are talking about and no one can take care of Google search better than the maestro itself. Due to which they have been regularly upgrading their OS and have also come up with some new features for Android, called Google Goggles and What's Nearby. These features look promising but of course nothing can be said about them unless they’re tested fully. Google Goggles enables users to make use of their Andoid 1.6+ handset's camera to kick off Google search with an image, instead of making use of words.

The Samsung SPH-i350 Intrepid is one of the many candybar-style Smartphones which will be equipped with Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional. Sprint Network is offering the handset right now and also offers quad-band GSM connectivity for global travelers. This is a small review of the set together with the pros and cons of this set which can play a great role in deciding whether or not this phone should be bought. We take a look at some of the more obvious and significant specs below.

There are a lot of high expectations about the new Blackberry Bold 9700, as with a big name, come huge expectations. When you upgrade a phone of Blackberry’s standard, you just improve upon some mistakes; you improve completely so much so that it’s visible. iPhone usually does that and people don’t notice it much but for companies other than Apple, a lot of effort has to be put into it. They just can’t come out with just anything and get away with that.

Good news for all you Samsung Corby out there, we recently reported that Corby is about to get a Wi-Fi- upgrade, but we have only just come to know that Samsung is going to launch a new Samsung M5650 Lindy as well, which is being touted as Corby’s little sister. It has everything we want, 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi and an awesome camera with a price that is pretty affordable, which makes it seem just like a dream.

A recent leak has revealed the specs of the second HTC Android phone which shows the presence of a QWERTY keyboard as well; called the HTC Espresso, the images are just in time to confirm an HTC spokesperson who confirmed the arrival of an HTC phone in February. HTC Espresso is the codename for the phone, which was first found in the company's latest leaked Android ROM. HTC’ s Sweden exec, Patrik Andersson, recently said in an interview that half of company devices to be released in 2010 are the ones which run the Android OS.

Now to say that we have had GPS navigation before won’t be too fair as Nokia has brought GPS navigation to a whole new level. This new handset has certainly been launched for the common people who want to get a phone on budget. This S40 handset supports Nokia Maps and a lifetime navigation license and it won’t burn too! It is basically a very simple phone with not a lot of high-end features so to say but one thing is for sure this mobile screams class.

In a previous news article of mine I wrote about the Sony Ericsson Satio’s new firmware; it seems that Aino and Yari are also going to be getting their turns now. The best thing about Sony Ericsson is that they’re too quick to realize a problem and then start working on solving it as well. Sony Ericsson has been having problems with battery consumption (lower), GPS, WLAN and Bluetooth. Also if you are a game lover you will be able to enjoy a new one - Loco Roco.

Nokia E72 has been around in Europe for around a month or so now but it has found its way through to the American soil just recently. The price at which is being offered there is also mouth watering as it is relatively lower than the other places, considering it has been imported there. Nokia E72 came out in the middle of November and it is being called a great communication tool by most of its users; an improvement over the original thing.

The latest with Sony Ericsson is that their Windows Mobile equipped X2 will be released around January 2010 now and the launch was delayed due to some problems that the company was facing time and again. It can be seen that the company has been suffering from a lot of problems lately especially if you take in consideration the suspension of Sony Ericsson Satio sales in the UK and the touchscreen issues that Aino had.

Nokia has also come out with their plans for the year 2010 and this include major improvements of the Symbian user interface and coming out with the very first Maemo 6 device! So we are assuming it is going to be one good year for the company and of course for the users as well. Some of the UI changes were also shown to the media present there. It is being said that next year Nokia will incorporate some of the capacitive touchscreen technology in its Symbian S60 UI so that it is equipped with multi-touch capabilities.

Sony Ericsson Satio has been facing some real problems lately due to which it was taken off the shelves of many shops but not it seems that Samsung have finally been able to get rid of most them with the help of latest firmware update R1CA037. Some sources have stated that the new batch has already been stocked and they should be available for sales in a very short period of time. Even Sony Ericsson has recently confirmed the story.

Ok this is just based on rumours, some really string rumours, but it is being heard in reliable circles now that the extremely successful not to forget popular, Samsung S3650 Corby will be released in Wi-Fi version soon! How lucky can you get!! Now this was evident by the S3650W certification papers into the Wi-Fi alliance database. The best thing about the S3650 Corby is the fact that it is a luxury phone for the common man and not just that it is hugely popular among the not so common as well!

Here’s the good news, Nokia N97 Mini is now available on Amazon and Dell! You can get your own Nokia N97 mini from Amazon for around 479.99 US dollars (317 euro), that too at least 99 dollars lesser from what they are offering at the Nokia USA online store. You can get this set at the same price at Dell too; that too along with a coupon resulting in a deal which will be 100 dollars off the list price as well!

Nokia went public about its OS distribution strategies at the annual Capital Markets Day event yesterday. Apparently Nokia has finally become certain about the fact that the Maemo OS is the next best thing in the mobile world and that the S40 UI is something that not many people will prefer in the coming days now. So their strategy apparently is to cut down on the devices that have S40 as an OS and focus more upon Smartphones.

The HTC Touch lineup has been a pretty popular one and is now about to get a new HTC Touch.B, which if rumours are anything to go by will be run on Android. We have seen various photos of the HTC Touch.B, codenamed Rome, on the net but to our utter disappointment they look no different from the HTC Touch2 in a better shape and with Android parts put on. If that’s not enough, you can get a better look of what we are saying by putting the HTC Touch2 and the HTC Tattoo side to side and then compare.