8 MP Nokia N86 Officially Unveiled

Nokia has officially unveiled its new 8 MP Nokia N86 phone at Mobile World Congress yesterday. It’s the first 8 mega-pixel phone in N-Series. It seems that Nokia has finally woken up from its slumber because other mobile phone manufacturers were racing ahead in packing more megapixels in the mobile phones.
The Nokia N86 8MP camera phone is a dual slider with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and auto-focus. It features a super vibrant OLED QVGA 2.6-inches screen, making it an ideal window for showcasing your shots. However, this 8 megapixel S60-powered Nseries is more keenly focussed on enabling you to share you photos further afield via services such as Share on Ovi and Flickr. Plus, it comes with on board Assisted GPS, geared towards letting you geo-tag your photographs with location information before you share them.
Other Features include Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi connectivity and 8 GB of internal memory expandable via microSD card in sizes up to 16 GB. Running on Symbian S60, the N86 also includes a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, connectivity via microUSB and media uploads via Ovi Share.
The design of N86 seems to be drawing its roots from both the Nokia N97 and the Nokia N85 so it’s a handset that looks fairly good. For the moment, there’s no word on when Nokia will fully unveil the N86. It will be available in the second half of this year.

Nokia Phones will now have Skype

At the Mobile World Congress, Nokia has revealed that they are collaborating with Skype in order to bring Skype telephony application to the Nokia mobile phones. The much hyped Nokia Nseries mobile devices will be the first to have built in Skype and the Nokia N97 will be the first among the Nseres handsets to offer Skype.

This development should particularly amuse folks who tend to hop from one place to another as calls on roaming as expensive. Users will be able to see their Skype contacts, message them and also talk to them skype-to-skype voice calls using 3G and WiFi.
Some users are already using Skype through Fring while now users will be able to access Skype directly. This move should help both Nokia as well as Skype as Nokia will be able to boast ablut one more significant feature while Skype might be able to win more paid users. Nokia N97 bundled with Skype will be available in the markets by the end of third quater of 2009.

LG GD910 to be sold at £1,000 in Europe

LG GD910 was launched sometime back and it made some news for being the world’s first 3G touch screen watch phone. The same phone is now all set to be sold in the European markets and before you start screaming in joy, you should hear the insane price of £1,000.

LG GM730 Windows Mobile Smartphone

The LG GM730 phone presented at the MWC 2009 is poised to be the first smartphone to use the latest version of the Windows Mobile OS. It is also said that this will be the most functional and the easiest to use smartphone till date since the latest Windows Mobile 6.5 OS is integrated with LG’s 3D S-Class User Interface.

Gmail Themes can be customized now

After giving users the ability to customize iGoogle themes, Google has also enabled the same theme customization feature in Gmail too. Gmail had introduced themes some time back. Gmail users can now customize the color, look and feel of the Gmail by changing the colors and shades. They can access the theme customization dashboard by folloing Gmail -> Settings -> Themes.

LG GD900 Transparent Phone launched

At the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, LG Electronics has unveiled GD900, a mobile phone with a transparent keypad design.The mobile phone indeed looks great but most of these phones end up becoming a fashion accessory as they don’t offer anything compelling when it comes to features.

Matrix Pro Dual Slider announced by AT&T & Pantech

Pantech officially unveiled its Matrix Pro smartphone for AT&T which runs the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard edition operating system. Though it bears the name of the more recent Matrix feature phone, the Matrix Pro is very much the successor to the Pantech Duo that was launched in October of 2007.

Web Applications On Call

New software lets cell-phone users search the Web and hear messages during a call.

When working online, it's a simple matter to open a new browser tab and quickly look something up, or to send an instant message to a friend. Ditech Networks, based in Mountain View, CA, hopes to bring the same kind of functionality to phone calls. The company has developed technology that lets users access certain applications in the middle of a mobile phone call.
The divide between the Internet and the phone system has already begun to blur. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology allows voice to run alongside other kinds of Internet traffic. Smart phones that offer easier access to the Web have introduced Web applications with voice functionality--for example, Google's voice-activated search iPhone application or a voice-based note-taking service that works with any cell-phone, offered by Seattle company Jott.
Ditech hopes to let users access many more applications without even having to take the handset away from their ears. "What we're really doing is . . . starting to make voice and phone calls truly a digital technology," says Todd Simpson, CEO of the company. Ditech's system, called the mStage platform, is a layer of software that a mobile carrier adds to its network. Once mStage is installed, users can access a voice service by saying certain keywords. For example, in the course of a conversation about meeting for dinner, a user might want to search for the nearest pizza place. A keyword, such as the name of the pizza chain, could trigger a menu from which the user could select a search application to return results within the call. The platform can also insert a quick message into a user's phone call--for instance, briefly breaking in to whisper a meeting notification in the user's ear.
To demonstrate how other software could connect to the mStage platform, Ditech has created a compatible Facebook application. Assuming mStage is implemented by cell-phone carriers, the app will show when a user is on the phone and let her friends send messages into those calls. Simpson says that this could serve as a way to quickly update a friend about evening plans, without completely interrupting her current call.

One of the big challenges of creating such a system is that it has to scan through a large volume of calls in order to "hear" relevant commands. "The processing on the voice has to occur in real time," Simpson says. "We want to offer the service to anybody at any time, and so you have to be inside of every conversation in the network." He says that Ditech built upon existing technology that the company developed to improve the voice quality in mobile calls, which requires a similar level of processing across a network.
Despite processing the content of so many calls, the company stresses that it is careful to safeguard users' privacy. Hossein Eslambolchi, Ditech's technical advisor, says, "There is no recording in the whole conversation process at all." He adds that users will be able to set rules that determine when the mStage platform can access the contents of a call. Beyond that, the system only activates in response to keywords, and then only to invoke the necessary application.
Rebecca Swensen, a research analyst with IDC, says that the communications industry is at a turning point, given the emergence of so many voice-activated Web applications. She points to BT's acquisition of Internet telephone company Ribbit last year as a sign that carriers are looking toward Web technologies. "The traditional carriers are really starting to understand that they need to do something to catch up," she says.
Ditech's mStage platform could well be attractive to phone networks, Swensen adds, since it opens a network to third-party applications, but still provides them with a measure of control over the services being offered and the overall security of the system. However, Swensen notes that it's equally important to consider whether people are ready to use services like this: "Consumer behavior's always going to be an obstacle," she says.
Simpson says that the mStage platform will be ready for carriers to start testing in about three months. The service won't be available until a carrier decides to incorporate mStage and offer it to its customers, but Ditech hopes to grab the attention of some carriers when it demonstrates the technology next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Microsoft SideWinder X6 Keyboard

Now that Microsoft has two gaming mice in their newly resurrected SideWinder line, they can rest easy right? Wrong! Any gamer knows that the mouse is only half of the equation, and a good keyboard can make or break the pairing. Enter the SideWinder X6 keyboard, which is meant to both compliment and be a companion to the SideWinder gaming rodents. The new keyboard features the same colour scheme, in the form of a black body with red backlighting. It also sports a few extra features that many gamers and enthusiasts look for in such a keyboard.

Special Features of the Sidewinder X6

The first and most apparent feature of the X6 keyboard is the removable number pad. Microsoft has designed the X6 keyboard so you can position the number pad on either side of the keyboard. This allows for ultimate customizability, and also plays well into the other major feature of the X6, which is it’s extensive programmability.

20.2 in x 9.2 in x 1.8 in, 2.9 lbs, External, PC, USB, 4 pin USB Type A, Keyboard, Wired

Price - INR. 4300