Techno Mania » News

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and Xperia Arc available in FlipKart

admin — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:33:44 +0000

As more and more European retailers push the release date of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play, an Indian online store FlipKart.com is selling both Xperia Play and Xperia Arc. The site lists both phones as available for order and promising a 4 day delivery. Xperia Play and Xperia Arc are Sony Ericsson’s flagship phones and it seems India is one of the first countries it is available. So if you were planning to buy one, you can do it by clicking on the picture below.

Galaxy S is available in FlipKart?

Will Microsoft Windows Phone 7 sales beat Apple iPhone’s?

admin — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:18:38 +0000

Interestingly, IDC (International Data Corporation) predicts, Windows Phone 7 sales will eventually beat iPhones. However this is not going to happen until 2015. The report predicts the existence of Symbyian platform will be almost nil and those users will be changed to Windows Phone 7. Android will be the most popular OS even then. Moreover, the report suggests that, smartphone vendors will ship more than 450 million smartphones in 2011 compared to the 303.4 million units shipped in 2010. Also, the smartphone market will grow more than four times faster than the overall mobile phone market.

WP7 passed another milestone earlier this month – hitting 10,000 applications in the WP7 market place. Microsoft only took four and a half months for that and it is faster than both Android and iOS. The alliance with Nokia seems to be good for both companies. Nokia was the leader in smartphones before the arrival of iOS and Androids. After that, the company was criticized for its aging Symbian platform which is hardly touch optimized and lacks a good application store. The biggest plus point of Nokia is the premium build quality of their phones and the excellent imaging capabilities. Still, Nokia N8 with its 12 MP sensor is the king of all smartphone cameras.

Imagine a smartphone with the same 12 MP camera in N8 and Nokia’s Clear Black AMOLED display coupled with the unique and beautiful metro user interface of the Windows Phone 7 ! I would love to buy that phone.

Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22762811

Galaxy S is available in FlipKart?

admin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:29:29 +0000

When I browsed flipkart.com today for checking whether Galaxy S2 is available for pre-order, it listed the older SAMOLED Galaxy S available for order. I am not sure whether it is old stock or the Galaxy S is still in production? Anyhow, it is the 16 GB version and the price is just 24,999 Rs. It is good value for money at this price. I was searching virtually everywhere to buy this phone 2-3 months ago and dropped the plan when the Galaxy S2 is announced.

If you still want better value for money, just choose the LCD version of Galaxy S – the Galaxy SL I9003 at just 19K.

Interestingly, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, Neo and Play are available for pre-order but Galaxy S2 is not.

(click on the images to check items in FlipKart.com)

Galaxy S II – The dream come true!

admin — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 20:55:39 +0000

Today Samsung officially announced the Galaxy S successor – the Galaxy S II (it is not written as Galaxy S 2) and this is really a dream come true device. 4.3 inches (4.27 inches to be precise) of Super AMOLED Plus display is gorgeous. The other specs are also excellent. The main specs are

4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus display with WVGA (800 X 480 px) resolution. Gorilla Glass protection
1 GHz dual core processor (Most probably the latest Samsung Exynos)
1 GB RAM
The latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Samsung’s Touch Wiz 4.0
8 MP rear camera wit full HD (1080P) video recording and 2 MP front facing camera for video call
Thinnest phone with just 8.49 mm thickness (mind you, iPhone 4 is 9.3 mm)
Wireless a/b/g/n with Bluetooth 3.0 HS (it promises the true Bluetooth 3.0 speed)
16 GB internal memory with micro SD slot (another 32 GB possible)
HSPA + (24 Mbps download speed. Now we might be able to test TATA Docomo’s claim of 24 Mbps download speed on their 3G network)
HDMI port

Photos

Videos

Full specs at GsmArena
More photos from Engadget
Official Samsung Press release

The best thing is, it is launching in Asia (hopefully that includes India) in this month itself. So, most probably by March 2011 it will be available in stores. Not sure about the price. But Samsung has an excellent history of value pricing. I would be going for this one as soon as it is available (insha Allah) even if the pricing is a bit high (Please Sammy, bring it under 35 K). Counting days … fortunately February has only 28 days

Nokia joins hands with Microsoft to build better smartphones

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:04:00 +0000

All those rumors and the leaked memo were true. Today Nokia and Microsoft announced their plan to join hands to compete against Android and iOS. The highlights of the announcement are,

Windows Phone 7 becomes the primary smartphone OS for Nokia
Nokia OVI Maps will become a core part of Microsoft’s Bing mapping services
The present Nokia Ovi Store will be merged into the Microsoft Marketplace
Nokia will work closely with Microsoft in the future development of the Windows Phone 7 platform by using its expertise on hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale

Stephen Elop (CEO, Nokia) and Steve Ballmer (CEO, Microsoft) penned together that,

“There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them. There will be challenges. We will overcome them. Success requires speed. We will be swift. Together, we see the opportunity, and we have the will, the resources and the drive to succeed.”

Future of Symbian & Meego

Nokia promised it will continue Symbian support and Meego will become open source. We can also expect a Meego device later this year.

“Symbian becomes a franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value. This strategy recognizes the opportunity to retain and transition the installed base of 200 million Symbian owners. Nokia expects to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the years to come”

“Under the new strategy, MeeGo becomes an open-source, mobile operating system project. MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices, platforms and user experiences. Nokia still plans to ship a MeeGo-related product later this year.”

Whatever Nokia says, Symbian is going to be dead. May be by 2012, there won’t be any Symbian phones (unless some other big company decides to use the open source Symbian which is unlikely). This is also the case with MeeGo. Other than the promised MeeGo device by end of this year, there won’t be any. One unlikely chance is, Nokia may use this platform for tablets.

Future of Qt (cute) platform

Nokia made clear that it is not possible to develop applications for Nokia Windows Phone using Qt. They will need to use the Windows Phone Developer Tools (Visual Studio 2010, Expression, Silverlight and the XNA Framework) to develop WP7 applications. Qt may be continued to use to develop in Symbian and MeeGo platforms. Once the Symbian and MeeGo developments are stopped, Qt will also become dead.

What can we expect?

Nokia is known for its build quality and imaging strengths. It will be very interesting to see the power of Nokia N8′s 12 MP camera in a Windows Phone 7 device. I think Nokia made the right decision to join hands with Microsoft. It is said that Nokia has given some exclusive rights to customize the OS (no other manufacturer has the right to customize the Windows Phone UI) though extensive customization is unlikely. Microsoft also has some advantages because Nokia is a renowned brand in many countries and it will surely help the WP7 platform in its growth.

One thing is fore sure, WP7 platform is here to stay. With Microsoft’s software technology and Nokia to back up the platform with proper hardware, Windows Phone 7 platform has a good chance to fight against the existing platform giants like Google Android and Apple iOS. The best part is, these war will surely benefit the end user. As the end user we’ll have the option to select the best phone from a variety of platforms and devices.

This year is really interesting!

Samsung Application Store Finally Supports i8910 Omnia HD

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Finally the much awaited thing happened! When I browsed application store today and accidentally checked the supported device list, I was surprised to find I8910 Omina HD in the list. At present there are 125 applications including 26 free applications – Not a big list, but great to start with. This will surely increase the I8910 Omnia HD sales.

This will be good news to many of the I8910 Omnia HD customers who wanted something like the Nokia OVI Store. I am expecting some great applications soon.

Check Samsung Application Store

Look, who is tweeting… it is Microsoft

admin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:35:30 +0000

Microsoft has officially started using Twitter. When I checked just before writing this, they have around 4000 followers. But there are only 3 tweets so far and the last one is updated 7 hours ago.

Url: http://twitter.com/microsoft

It’s Twitter day at Microsoft, apparently. Not only did the software giant announce that it would start adding tweets to its Bing search results, the company actually started officially using Twitter today.

To be clear, Microsoft had a rather large presence on Twitter before through its various departments/products/services, but now it’s using the main /microsoft account to tweet. The account is being run by its corporate communications team, consisting of four people.

Source: Washington Post

Microsoft has also decided to include tweets from selected profiles in its Bing search results.

Today we’re unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres. This includes Tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest.

Source: Bing blog

Windows 7 beta will shutdown in every two hours from today

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:21:36 +0000

Windows 7 beta will shutdown in every two hours from July 1st 2009. If you want to continue using Windows 7 you will need to download the Windows 7 RC1 (release candidate version). It will work till March 2010. From March onwards it will also shutdown in every two hours and will expire on June 2010.

I think this is a fair game by Microsoft. If you want to test Windows 7 before buying it, you have plenty of time to do that by testing Windows 7 Ultimate edition. Microsoft also gains from this policy because most users will upgrade or buy Windows 7 as they won’t like to switch back to the buggy Vista.

Windows 7 will be available from October 22nd. But you can safely buy a Vista(retail version or pre installed) PC now as you can freely upgrade it to Windows 7 when it will become available (offer not valid for Vista Basic).

The estimated retail prices for upgrade packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99
Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99

And the estimated retail prices for full packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99

Source: Microsoft

Don’t want to spend anything ? Don’t like bi hourly shutdowns ? Download and install Ubuntu 9.04 for free or request a free installation CD

Firefox 3.5 final version released

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:30:00 +0000

The much awaited browser from Mozilalla is released finally after a long time. Mozilla had released three release candidate versions before releasing the final one. It is time for another ‘war of the browsers’ – Internet explorer 8, Firefox 3.5, Opera 10, Google Chrome 2 and Safari 4.

Download: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Some of the excellent features are,

The fastest browser released by Mozilla (Mozilla claims that it is two times faster than Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2)
A complete private browsing mode
Built in support for open video and audio (open format Ogg Theora)

You can also watch the video below – Mike Beltzner (Director of Firefox Development) gives a quick preview of what’s new and exciting in Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5 makes surfing the Web easier and more enjoyable with exciting new features and platform updates that allow Web developers to create the next generation of Web content. Native support for open video and audio, private browsing, and support for the newest Web technologies will enable richer, more interactive online experiences.

Performance. Firefox 3.5 includes the powerful new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which delivers unprecedented performance with today’s complex Web applications. Firefox 3.5 is more than two times faster than Firefox 3 and ten times faster than Firefox 2.

Open Video and Audio. Enjoy video and audio content from within your browser, without the need for plugins. Video is a vital part of the modern Web, whether it’s used to communicate, educate, or entertain. Firefox 3.5 delivers the first native integration of audio and video directly into the browser. Now everyone can easily watch open format Ogg Theora videos.

Web developers can use these technologies to design pages that interact with video content in new and exciting ways, offering richer interactive experiences beyond controlling playback and volume.

Privacy Controls. Firefox 3.5 includes features designed to protect your privacy online and provide greater control over your personal data.

While using the new Private Browsing mode in Firefox 3.5, nothing you encounter on the Web will be stored from that moment on during your browsing session. Unique to Firefox 3.5, the new Forget this Site feature can remove every trace of a site from your browser. If you want to remove all private data or activity from the past few hours, Clear Recent History, another Firefox-only feature, gives you full control over what stays and what goes.

Location Aware Browsing. Location Aware Browsing saves you time by allowing websites to ask you where you are located. If you choose to share your location with a website, it can use that information to find nearby points of interest and return additional, useful data like maps of your area. It’s all optional – Firefox doesn’t share your location without your permission.

Source

Manufacturing cost of iPhone 3G S and the price of iPhone 3G in India

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:58:28 +0000

Manufacturing costs of the latest iPhone 3GS 16GB is calculated as $178.96 (Around 8,700 Indian Rs). Interestingly, the priciest part is the memory – 24 $. Check the below table for full details (Source: iSuppli).

Price in India – Is it justifiable ?

In India, the older iPhone 3G 16GB is selling for around 36,000 Rs (740 $) which is 4 times higher than the manufacturing cost of the more advanced iPhone 3G S. Airtel or Vodafone didn’t change the price after the release of iPhone 3GS. How can anyone justify this – charging more than 4 times of the manufacturing cost? This is called robbing.