Nokia Sues Apple Over iPhone

Mobile phone giant Nokia declared an intellectual property war against Apple today, alleging the iPhone infringes on 10 patents relating to wireless technologies and standards.

Of course, the lawsuit has nothing to do with Nokia losing smartphone market share to Apple, as the chart from AdMob indicates (Nokia owns Symbian OS), and the legal action couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Nokia’s latest earnings report. Last quarter, the mobile phone maker lost $832 million, sales declining 20 percent year over year. No, Nokia is going after Apple on “principle.”

The patents in question relate to GSM, UMTS, and wireless LAN standards covering “wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption.” Nokia states that more than 40 companies have entered into licensing agreements, but not “unprincipled” Apple.

According to Ilkka Rahnasto, VP of Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia, it is a “basic principle” in the industry that those contributing to technological development be compensated. Apple is “attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.” Supposedly, every iPhone introduced since 2007 uses technology that infringes on Nokia patents.

Considering Nokia didn’t sue Apple in 2007 and seek an injunction to stop the iPhone from being sold, it’s likely this lawsuit is a way of moving stalled royalty negotiations forward. Apple will probably settle. A guess of $10 per iPhone in royalties would be $210 million to date, not an insignificant amount, and a little less profit off each iPhone going forward, but someone has to help Nokia innovate.

Initial Pics of Nokia 5230

Phat^Trance at Dailymobile.se has posted some exclusive live pictures of the Nokia 5230 and looking at the pictures, it looks very similar to its big brother the Nokia 5800.

Nokia N920 Internet Tablet Leaked!

Nokia announced the Nokia N900 in September at Nokia World and it’s now about to hit the shops with pre-orders set to being full-filled in the coming weeks.But suddenly here’s a spy/leaked picture of another touchscreen Nokia phone. This phone is what some claim to be the Nokia N920 or the successor to the Nokia N900.

I doubt the fact that it is a successor but I’m not denying it. Anyway the device looks like an Internet Tablet with a colour scheme similar to the old Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The device looks slimmer and appears to have a larger screen. Some saying the screen measures 4.13″ and has capacitive technology.

It is also rumoured to be running on the Maemo 6 platform. One thing is for sure, this device wont be coming out in the near future and we will most probably see it only in 2010.

This looks like a Photoshop from a iPhone fanboy who dislikes Nokia designers

Samsung adds three new phones to Guru range 1160 , 2120 , 2130

 

Samsung has added 3 new phones to the Guru range of phones right in time for the festival season. The new models 1160,2120 and 2130 are priced between Rs2200 – Rs3600

Guru 1160

This is an entry level basic phone with 12 hours of talking time, FM radio , dual loudspeakers and a flashlight.

Samsung Guru 1160 Price – Rs.2249

Guru 2120 and Guru 2130

The 2120 and 2130 offer a Camera for the first time in the Guru Segment.

2120 comes with interesting features like a color display , bluetooth , VGA Cam, Music Key, Fm Radio with inbuilt antenna, GPRS and microSD Slot. One interesting feature is the Bike Mode in which users can prefer to automatically receive calls from preset numbers. 2130 is very similar to 2120 but is slightly different in the looks department.

Samsung 2120 Price – Rs.3240

Samsung 2130 Price – Rs.3600

The guru phones have helped Samsung grab a lion’s share of the entry level / low cost phone segment.

Anyone using a guru phone here ? Share your thoughts !

Samsung B7620 Giorgio Armani preview: First look

Thanks to gsmarena!

Motorola to launch 7 phones in India for the festival season

Its Festival Time Guys...! Need a cahnge...??

Motorola India plans to launch 7 handsets in the country in the next 3 months for the festival season.

The phones are expected to be priced between Rs.3500 and Rs.8000. The ZN300 is a cool looking slider phone with a 3 MP Camera and a stylish design. Motorola will be unveiling 6 handsets in the Yuva range along with the ZN300"The ZN 300 and the MotoYuva WX generation were created in response to the need to stay connected and the variety of ways in which we do it today. The result is seven handsets with a range of features that provide an option affordable to everyone," Motorola India Country Head (Mobile Devices) Faisal Siddiqui said in a statement.

First Look : Pictures of Nokia XSeries

DUI DWI Lawyers Drunk Driving Attorneys

Apple iPhone 3GS vs Nokia N97 Comparison Pics

High quality pictures of Apple iPhone 3GS and Nokia N97

RIM Launches BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac Users

RIM told us during  the 8520 launch that the BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac OS will be out shortly. Now the official announcement is out . All Mac users can manage your Blackberry without having to run towards a Windows PC from tomorrow. You can sync data between your Blackberry phone and Mac OS and Apps using the new desktop software


BlackBerry Desktop Manager features


Sync Data with iCal, Address Book, Microsoft Entourage
Add and remove application
Schedule automatic backups and encrypt backup files
Install software updates for their BlackBerry smartphone.
Media Sync to sync you iTunes music collections with BlackBerry smartphone
Compatible with  Mac computers with Mac OS 10.5.5 and higher and supports BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry OS 4.2 and higher.
Press Release


New software makes it easy to sync data between Mac applications and BlackBerry smartphones; free download scheduled to be available on October 2


Mumbai — Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM, TSX: RIM) has exciting news for Mac® users that want an easy and reliable solution that syncs their contacts, calendar appointments, tasks and notes with their BlackBerry® smartphones. A new version of the BlackBerry® Desktop Manager software has been developed specifically for Mac users. The new desktop software is scheduled to be available for free download from www.blackberry.com/mac on Friday, October 2 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.


The new BlackBerry Desktop Manager software allows Mac users to smoothly and seamlessly sync data from Mac applications like iCal®, Address Book, Microsoft® Entourage® and others, as well as add and remove applications, schedule automatic backups, encrypt backup files and install software updates for their BlackBerry smartphone.


BlackBerry Desktop Manager Software also integrates BlackBerry Media Sync, enabling Mac users to sync their iTunes® music collections with their BlackBerry smartphone*.  From within the BlackBerry Desktop Manager software, users simply select the desired iTunes playlists and the music, including song information and album art, is quickly transferred onto their BlackBerry smartphone.


BlackBerry Desktop Manager software is designed to run on Mac computers with Mac OS 10.5.5 and higher and supports BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry OS 4.2 and higher.

Nokia 5130 XpressMusic - User Opinions!

• The java performance of 5130 is xcellent.this music phone is allrounder.even i've wathced my school and roof of my home using GOOGLE MAP.it operates G map very fluently.i m very happy with the java & music of the phone.

• Have u tested dat?how can u say dat without testing?gsmareana and mny other ppl proved dat it support 16GB.u can see mny other website as i've seen.all of thm published 16GB.Forget wat nokia says.it has been proved now.

• Any1 of you having display problems?my friend is also facing battery backup problem..complaining that battery backup is nt the same as b4..it has decreased..it needs to be charged almost regularly..previously it was nt so..can sum1 plz provide some solutions?

• I hate nokia phnz but this 1 caught my heart...i mean u cn do everytin in it tons of gamz,16gb memry support,3rd party full software support, no freezin(only chinese version freezes) n hey to all those battery maniacs out dre i play gamz for 1.5 hours, listen to songs 4 one hour,web browsing half-and hour,ebook readin half-and hour n still it givs a full day battery life support.Can ur lg do dat punk?n u talk about battery life..go to ur lg webpage.. ;-)

• All these Specifications like 2MP Camera, 3.5mm Jack and 1GB memory Card for Just 110$. Really amazing. Hats off Nokia. I will buy a one for my mom immediately after its launch.

• It's nearly the same but Nokia 5130 Xpress music is comparatively better in talk time and 1gb memory is included in it so no need to buy extra memory card for storing few songs.Also it is Eur10 cheaper than Nokia 3500. I would go for Nokia 5130 Xpress Music.

• Having 3.5mm jack doesnt make a phone music based. it should have something that can make music an important thing, like having a special audio chip, or louder sound, high storage of songs. but somehow Nokia is trying to satisfy the common people atleast with the name "Xpress Music"

• This phone is super. Made for everyone. This phone will be a very big rival to china phones. Nokia pls release this phone soonest so that I can discard my Nokia 3110c that is giving me headache.

HTC Hero Live Pics

The HTC Hero has been launched in India and you might know that the Hero is the first android phone to sport the SenseUI. You might have already seen the unboxing pics and video. But now here are exclusive picture of the phone courtesy of a Chinese mobile site – mobile01.

Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M preview: First look

The Samsung W880 ups the ante with a world's first 12 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom. Featuring a hardware Mode dial and a real zoom lever it does feel like a real camera and you may find yourself struggling to find the mobile phone under the digicam skin. Now while W880 is South Korea bound only, it's enough to give us a taste of what's coming in the shape of the rumored Samsung M8920, which should make it our way sometime next year - but with Wi-Fi and GPS on board.

Samsung SCH-W880 AMOLED 12M official photos

Designing a mobile phone (or any other portable gadget for that matter) is a balancing act - the engineers must juggle between cost, size and features, all the while being limited by the current state of technology.

Say cost doesn't matter - that still leaves only so much that can reasonably be crammed into a mobile device. Progress is made, technology advances, which results in things getting cheaper, smaller and with more features. And quite soon, things that seemed impractical a few years back can now be released as a consumer device.

This is how the Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M came to be - it contains all the mechanical elements of a point-and-shoot camera, but still has enough room left for the phone parts. It's not the first phone to achieve that but it's the first 12-megapixel one and the added 3x optical zoom and xenon flash pretty much put it on par with a typical point-and-shoot camera.

The Samsung W880 has some high-end imaging functions too - tracking touch autofocus, 720p@30 fps video recording, 3.3" big AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with WVGA resolution. That's not something you see every day on a cameras and it's top notch in mobile phone terms. Even the degree of control over how a photo is taken beats out consumer cameras, let alone cameraphones.

Now, keep in mind that the we're previewing a prototype here and it's a prototype of a phone meant for the South Korean market only and although it has tri-band GSM and support for UMTS, those are meant for roaming only - the AMOLED 12M is for South Korea and South Korea only.

So, why bother with a preview then? Well, there's a global version coming in the beginning of next year and that might actually land in a store near you. It will look just the same but will drop the T-DMB TV receiver, which has little use outside of South Korea anyway, swapping it for the more practical Wi-Fi and GPS. Supposedly, the global GSM version will be allegedly called Samsung M8920, but that has yet to be confirmed by an official source.

Nokia E55 review: Five by five

Sometimes, a phone is nearly perfect, except for that one small thing you want to change. If you felt that way about Nokia E52, the E55 claims to have the answer. Don't get us wrong - the E52 has killer looks and specs. And the E55… well, like we told you, it's the same phone save for that one little thing.

If QWERTY keyboards are for heavy texters where does half-QWERTY fit? Some would say it's the same target but different goal. You know, like heavy texting is a bad habit and half-QWERTY is the therapy. Now, now, no need to be too smart. But does it really make typing faster or slower, and how hard it is to learn the new layout? We ran a test to find out.

But more on that later. Thanks to the excellent connectivity options and Office editing out of the box, the E55 keeps your office at arm's length - whether you're out to lunch or out of town. Emails, presentations, spreadsheets, memos - you can bring all that everywhere you go. But hey, we're not saying you should. Thanks to Modes, switching between Business and Personal homescreens makes sure you don't have to bring work home.

Texting and email go without saying, but the Nokia E55 is one of the best-equipped Symbian devices around. Here's the rundown:

Key features

• Compact metallic body and extra slim girth (9.9mm)
• Quad-band GSM support
• 3G with HSDPA 10.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps
• half-QWERTY keyboard
• 2.4" 16M-color display of QVGA resolution
• Symbian OS, S60 UI with FP2
• 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, DLNA support
• Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS support, digital compass
• Accelerometer for screen auto-rotation and turn-to-mute
• One-touch shortcut keys mean "business"
• 3 megapixel enhanced fixed focus camera with LED flash
• Secondary videocall camera
• 60 MB of internal memory, microSD expansion, ships with a 2GB card
• microUSB v2.0
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• FM radio with RDS
• Class-leading audio output quality
• N-Gage gaming support
• Ovi Maps preinstalled with trial turn-by-turn navigation license (10 x 1 days, to be used within 3 months) and lifetime City Explorer license
• User-friendly Mode Switch for swapping two homescreen setups
• Office document editor (with free MS Office 2007 update)
• Remote lock/wipe over-the-air
• Comfortable keypad
• Smart dialing
• Great battery life

Main disadvantages

• Disappointing camera features and performance
• Video recording maxes out at VGA@15fps
• No DivX or XviD support (can be installed, possibly requiring a purchase)
• No TV-out functionality
• Keyboard takes some time getting used to (not too long though

Nokia E55 live shots

The Nokia E55 has something of a split personality. The business features are complete but wait till you see what it offers for recreation. N-Gage support gives you access to a host of games, the audio quality is up there with dedicated music players and the huge battery won't run out of juice until after hours of games and music.

The weekend getaway is also covered - just punch in your destination into Nokia Maps, and the E55 will take you there. It'll even suggest a list of local attractions.

Head to the next page where we open the box and share our experience with the Nokia E55 and its keyboard.

Nokia 6600i slide review: I slide, you slide

A while back Nokia released the 6600 pair - the slide and the fold - which we fell for, big time. The seemingly more popular sibling got an update and the 6600i slide will keep on cashing in. Slightly revamped, it brings a beefier camera and a new paintjob to boot.

Looks have changed just a bit and we honestly think they did it right. The consciously minimalist design of the original didn't leave much room for frills anyway. Alright, the 6600i slide is a no-frills package overall, but don't go saying we didn't warn you. It's enjoyable and addictive.

Key features:

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support, dual-band UMTS
• 2.2" 16M-color QVGA display
• 5 megapixel camera, autofocus and LED flash
• VGA video recording at 15fps
• S40 user interface, 5th edition
• Bluetooth (with A2DP)
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microSD card slot (up to 16 GB), 1GB included
• Ovi Maps for S40 come preinstalled
• Ovi Contacts, Share on Ovi, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook applications preinstalled
• Really compact and extra smooth metal body
• Sweet oval shapes and neat slider design
• Accelerometer for tap-for-time and tap-to-mute

Main disadvantages:

• No HSDPA
• Display brightness is quite low
• Poor browser and no Opera Mini preinstalled
• Memory card slot under the battery, no hot-swap
• No dedicated shutter key
• Below par camera quality
• No 3.5 mm audio jack or a two-piece headset in the box
• No smart dialing
• No multi-tasking, especially uncomfortable in Ovi Contacts and the social networking applications
• No office document viewer
• Loudspeaker loudness is only marginally improved

No need to tell you, the "i" in any Nokia model designation is there to save face. It's like Nokia saying: here's a phone that sells big, so be our guest - keep on buying it. It's more of a relaunch than an update. And we're not pointing fingers here - if you have a massive seller the first thing on your mind would be to keep it rolling.

Just remember the 6300 - it did wonders for the Finns, so the 6300i followed in due course. Yes, it added Wi-Fi to its predecessor's feature set but that can really be seen as an exception and was meant for select markets only. And by the way, Nokia might have a point. The 3G-enabled 6600 slide can do without WLAN and a better camera will perhaps serve its market better.

Anyway, "i" models are incremental updates - they build on the previous device rather than turn it into something completely new. In that sense, the last people to be viewed as potential customers are current 6600 slide owners. If we were to upgrade from Nokia 6600 slide, we'd probably be considering Symbian - or maybe an all-in-one feature phone like the 6260 slide.

Accordingly, the real job of the 6600i slide is to pick up the customers the original missed and serve the Nokia midrange more in keeping with the time.

Nokia 5800 Users in India will get New Firmware Update in October

Some good news for all 5800 users in India. Nokia will be offering a firmware update for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic by early October. We got this info from a very reliable source at Nokia India. It would coincide with the release of the N97 mini in the market and also the v2.0 update for the N97

Not much is known about the change log of the new firmware but we guess it might bring kinetic scrolling to lists like we saw in the 5230 video. While we dig deeper for more info . Let us know if you are happy with the firmware updates for your 5800 so far and do you have any problems with the phone ?

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“:

1. It now has support for both CDMA as well as GSM.
2. It now supports more screen resolutions, which in return will allow Android apps to work on more devices.
3. The new APIs include a gestures framework and text-to-speech engine.
4. Donut now provides access to the new and improved Android Market.
5. It now provides a Quick Search Box for Donut Users, which allows searching directly from thehome 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:

1. How to adapt your applications to support different screen sizes
2. Integrating with Quick Search Box
3. Building gestures into your apps and
4. Using the text-to-speech engine.

Aircel and RIM partner to offer BlackBerry Services

Aircel which is one of India’s fastest growing operators has partnered with RIM ( Research in Motion) to offer Blackberry services in India. Aircel will now offer black berry services to its enterprise and individual customers. It will also offer a range of 4 BlackBerry smartphones to start with.

Mr.Gurdeep Singh, COO, Aircel said, “We have gained significant momentum in expanding our operations in India and the launch of the BlackBerry solution is of strategic importance for Aircel’s growth. With the availability of a wide range of BlackBerry smartfones on our network, our customers can find the right model for their work and personal needs.”

Ms. Frenny Bawa, Vice President, India at RIM said, “We are pleased to partner with Aircel and extend the many personal and business benefits of the BlackBerry solution to their consumer and enterprise customers in India.”

Services

• BlackBerry Enterprise Server to Corporates which supports IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise
• BlackBerry Internet Services for smaller businesses and individuals,allows customers to access up to 10 supported corporate and personal email accounts.

Handsets offered

• Bold 9000
• Curve 8900
• Curve 8310
• Pearl 8110

Blackberry Data Plans

• Business Plan 2500
• Business Plan 1350
• Unlimited Blackberry Data Plan 999
• Data Plan 499

Aircel Blackberry services are available in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Rest of Tamil Nadu (Coimbatore), Hyderabad, Bangaluru & Kolkata.