Cell Phone News from April 2010

We just laid our hands on the first quarter report of HTC and it seems that it is a delight! The company has been doing very well and we can say that as the Revenue announced by them is approximately 1.2 billion US dollars of revenue which of course is much better than what they projected at the start of the year. Now that exactly makes at least 19.3 percent more than what HTC earned same time last year in quarter one.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 has recently gotten itself the planned MR1 software update, which means a Windows Mobile 6.5.2 in sight. This update will definitely improve the overall touch performance, UI rotation and camera performance of the handset. Some other improvements are better speed and touch responsiveness of the soft keyboard. Other changes are better audio streaming, stability of panels, the up gradation of the shortcuts menu, SlideView, to version 2.0, which offers a new design and features.

Of all the big names, Samsung was by and large a slow starter. Now it seems they have caught up the speed. Their awesome Galaxy Spica has just been upgraded to Android 2.1. In some areas, the Galaxy Spica is known by the name of Galaxy Lite and it has a much faster CPU than the original Galaxy and, as a matter of fact, 800 MHz is better than most droids get. This phone is not as big news as its up gradation to the 2.1 version is.

For those of you who have missed this significant piece of information, Nokia added free voice-guidance to their Ovi maps SatNav application earlier this year. But this update was only available to the most recently released Nokia smartphones. Nokia has since been working to resolve this issue and it sees that they are about to resolve this all important issue soon. It has just been announced that Nokia E66 and Nokia E71 will be getting free voice navigation soon.

One of the much loved qualities of Samsung Corby is its array of colors! It gives you a much needed splash of youth and eccentricity due to which the set is popular amongst young and old alike! Spring is here, as we all know, and with it come different colors, refreshing and revitalizing in many ways. Now Samsung has decided to come up with some more paint jobs in accordance with the vibrancy of the spring season.

We all want to use Samsung’s new Bada platform. Yes, we do and Samsung Wave S8500 is about to hit the shelves soon! But this handset comes with a price tag, a big one. So those of us who cannot afford a set like have been left in the middle of nowhere. Well there is good news for them; Samsung has announced that it will be coming up with some cheaper sets based on BADA too! Samsung revealed this plan at an event in Russia recently.

We have not heard much from Apple as far as the launch date of the next-gen iPhone is concerned, but much to our surprise and delight of course, they have just announced when the next iPhone OS will be coming. On the 8th of April, the iPhone OS 4 will be unveiled and the best thing about it will be that it will finally bring video calls to the iPhone! This was one feature that all iPhone users were waiting for.

Palm has recently released some Plus models which happened to be their latest WebOS powered handsets. They are just going to release these models in Europe and are looking towards none other than Vodafone to be the official carrier of the phones. They could also release it O2, which has been carrying the original Palm Pre model, but it seems that Vodafone will be sealing the deal after all. We must also remember that Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus were carried by Verizon Wireless in the US.

Netflix subscribers can fulfill their dream of being able to enjoy its vast library of streaming movies on a portable device which is anything but a laptop or netbook. The launch of iPad to some extent makes this dream come true but this is something that has been a desire of iPhone owners for a long time now. But it seems that with iPad getting this app; things might be looking up for Apple’s much loved product iPhone as well!

The last three years have been extremely dynamic for mobile phones and the way they are used all over the world. People are more into smartphones these days and feature phones are almost on their way out of the market. Now with the increasing use of smartphones, it is almost natural that the data access is also on the rise as compared to mere phone calls. Telecom consultant Chetan Sharma just recently came up with a survey in which he found something very interesting if not completely unexpected.

Whenever we buy a mobile we really fall in love with its shape and yes, its looks! And we very much like it to retain its immaculate figure for all time. But of course nothing lasts forever, least of all the outer perfection as normal wear and tear starts taking a toll on these beauties. But no matter what it still is a bit too early for (only) the 2 month old HTC Nexus One as there has been reports that some users have already started facing problems with its paint job.

SkyFire is a browser which has been giving its users the joys of page loads at a speed fast enough to put lightning to shame with the basic aim of replicate the desktop browsing experience on a mobile handset. These are the wonders only proxy-based web browsers can offer though! Now it seems that they have decided to come up with a version especially for Android users. Android has been fortunate enough to have always been blessed with some of the premier web browsers in market and now SkyFire!

LG have not been very much interested in producing Android phones it seems. The company’s first phone the LG GW620 is just too much focused on social networking and it seems that the phone will largely appeal to the regular LG users only. Well if you are new to Android, LG GW620 just might appeal you. Many of its shortcomings can be forgotten quite easily that way. Then it is basically for people who want to have a good Android phone at a lower price.

Since the advent of Android 2.1, ever other set has been waiting to get this much wanted update. But it seems that the European HTC Hero will have to wait two more weeks for this happens. HTC Desire, which has just launched and is new to the markets, has been blessed with it. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it?! We’ve also written a review on this sometime back stating that HTC released the new ver. 1.15.405.4 Desire software as an over-the-air (FOTA) update.

Motorola BACKFLIP is an Android smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard but in a form which is not very common in many Android phones; i.e. the QWERTY keyboard flips backward. Now we know that it should be available in Germany (Amazon.de and Mobil.com) any day now at a retail price of 439 and 499 euro respectively! You can get it from Amazon by preordering it although we are hearing that it should be in stock too and that too pretty soon.

So the long awaited fusion of Moblin and Maemo is at last complete. According to the rumours there are three MeeGo test images ready for downloading - one for the Nokia N900, one for Atom-based netbooks and one for Moorestown Atom handsets (think LG GW990). Before we raise a lot of hopes we must tell you that this is only for testing purposes and for geeks who’d love to have an insight. We still don’t have the top layer though which will eventually put all this to work on a variety of devices.

Nuvifone M10, the latest navigation-centered device of the Garmin-Asus alliance, is the first smartphone in India to come with Windows Mobile 6.5.3 out of the box. There are many rumours according to which man stores all over India are already keeping the phone! So let’s see what the future unfolds. One thing is for sure though; the phone will be very well-received. The Garmin Asus nuvifone M10 was released a while back and it seems that the phone is already hot property in India.

BREW has been much underestimated when it comes to smartphones. Now, the HTC Smart is launching in India, which is one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets and from the looks of it BREW would be accompanying it. The launch of HTC Smart was announced this January, and it is based on Qualcomm's BREW platform and with a bit of fairy dust from HTC. Now this handset will give you Sense UI, including widgets, Friend Stream and other good stuff.

GPS navigation apps for the iPhone are already can be counted on fingers and we can be sure of one thing at least that none of these come equipped with voice guidance. So in this regard, MapQuest 4 Mobile has the honour of becoming the first one to add voice guidance to it; something which has already started making people happy about the iPhone. The MapQuest 4 Mobile is one of the best known Google Maps alternatives but now since the voice guidance addition, it really does feel a whole lot better.