Earlier, we had brought to you news about the Dell Benzine Smartphone set to release in China. Well now, Dell has made it official that they are set to release a series of smartphones under the Dell Mini 3 branding.

Since most of Dell’s products follow the naming technique in accordance with the screen size, we are led to believe that these phones will have a 3″ screen. Dell hasn’t announced any specifications yet though.

We have the pictures of a Dell Mini 3 smartphone which we previously stated as the Dell Benzine. It runs on the OPhone OS (Chinese Android OS). It is set to release later this month. The Chinese version will lack Wi-Fi and 3G due to regulations.

The specifications that we can are sure of  right now are:

• 3″ Full-Touchscreen
• mini-USB Port

Other features are mostly the same as what we mentioned before in the link below.

Dell Benzine

Pricing is still unknown and we will bring you more information as it becomes available.

Source

• Dell Benzine Smartphone Leaked!

One of the main gripes of Motorola’s latest flagship beast is it’s problem with getting a proper auto focus with its 5 Mp shooter. This has been the case since it’s launch and it now seems, to have been magically(through a silent over-the-air update actually) to have been fixed, until the 11th of December that is.  The strange thing is that according to Dan Morrill, from Google’s Android team, the bug is related to a time-stamp bug:

“According to Google Engineer Dan Morrill, there is an unfortunate bug in the Droid’s auto focus routine. It improperly rounds a timestamp used in the calculations, which somehow throws the entire focusing process off. Today it works, and tomorrow it will work…but 24.5 days from now, the bug will be back.”

Meaning to say that after the 11th December, if you do not update your droid, the camera’s autofocus will automatically go bonkers. But according to Verizon’s 5 page treatise on the Droid’s known issues, their firmware update will be coming with a permanent fix which should solve most of the droid’s software related bugs.

Still, its a little creepy in the way how the Droid got updated so silently and without the knowledge of the consumer. But for the year of 2009, were there an award for the weirdest bug, this auto-focus bug would surely win it…

Sources:

TechCrunch, Engadget

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Ranesh was a Nokia fan for a long time and had owned few Nokia’s including an E70. But he made the transition to Verizon for a decent deal on a Voyager two years ago (because he likes qwerty keyboards and that was the only one he liked at the time). Ranesh couldn’t wait for a decent Nokia device to hit the market he liked, so he took the plunge. When he tested out the N97, he was terribly disappointed with the overall OS and decided to hold out for the Christmas season of this year to see what was around the corner and settled on the Motorola Droid running the Android 2.0 OS.

Nokia is readying the release of their flagship handset, the N900. Unfortunately, Nokia posted it’s first loss in 10 years.(We know Nokia Siemens Networks was to blame.) The problem wasn’t lack of phones worldwide but the Chinese “bandit” or known as “shanzhai” manufacturers eating away at Nokia’s bottom line. Several of these manufactures including Shenzhen Evien Co., Ltd., SZ Telstar Co Ltd., T-Link Industrial Development Company Limited, ZTE Corp., Lenovo and Huawei Tech have already infiltrated the Chinese market with a variety of cell phones. This doesn’t include big boys like HTC and Dell, among others that are making a splash into the worldwide market.

Nokia is the largest mobile phone manufacturer but is feeling the confined spaces of the Mobile market more than ever. RIM’s Blackberry (the business mainstay), Apple’s iPhone (of course) and Palm’s Pre (and soon to be Pixi line), have all cut into Nokia’s overall market share. Not to mention Google’s Android is having huge success with HTC building some great quality phones and across other manufacturers too. While still fighting off fierce competition in the high end cell phone range, Nokia has to contend with middle and low end all at the same time. A feat never before performed for his Helsinki, Finland company.

Step in Maemo: Nokia decided to strike back with the flagship N900 which runs its latest OS based off of Linux called Maemo. This new handset is set to change the direction for Nokia in the mid to higher end device range. Nokia began shipments on November 10^th and are expected to hit retailers shortly, for an estimated price of EUR 500 ($746.00 USD).

Will Nokia be able to break through the obstacles of intruders into its once dominant domain? The N900 comes packed with plenty of features WAY ahead of phones in its class: ARM Cortex-A8 processor, up to 1GB of total application memory. widgets, contacts and shortcuts all on the desktop,. Pictures and videos taken with the 5Mpx Carl Zeiss camera automatically are tagged where they were taken, SMS and IM, standard built-in 32 GB storage is big enough to store up to 7,000 songs or 40 hours of DVD-quality video, and it can be expanded up to 48GB with an external microSD card.

Image Courtesy of tnkgrl

The phone is amazing and packs an MMA like punch compared to other phones in the market place at this time, but Nokia will have to bring the beautiful Maemo OS down to the mid and perhaps even lower range handsets to regain what market share has already been lost. If anyone can do this, Nokia can and with the N900, where they proved that they are listening to the consumer.

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Motorola might be on the road to recovery with their new handset. The Motorola Droid which is the company’s first Google Android device and an Apple iPhone Competitor.

The device had tremendous hype even before its release starting with rumours, leaked pictures etc. Now a week has passed since it’s release and sources say that Motorola might have sold as many as 100,000 Motorola Droid phones over the weekend.

Motorola is providing the Droid t customers through the Verizon Wireless network. The sales isnt anywhere close to the 1 million sales the Apple iPhone had in it’s opening weekend. But it is a very good figure for Motorola as it’s been sometime since the company has had a successful product.

The Motorola Droid costs $199.99 with a two-year agreement after a $100 mail-in rebate whereas Apple’s basic iPhone costs $99 with AT&T, while its newer 3GS model costs $199.

Motorola expect a rise in sales and even to hit the 1 million mark very soon.

Source

• Open Handset Alliance adds 14 members including Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and Vodafone
• Are new operating systems in the smart phone field hurting Nokia?
• Droid Autofocus bug is the weirdest bug. Ever.
• Google bets that Android will outperform Apple iPhone
• HTC G1 coming to India, shows up on Univercell’s site

After making waves on the iPhone , the Photoshop.com app has made it’s way to the Android market

You need to signup for a free Photoshop.com account to share photos. Do you want to adjust the colors in your photo or apply effects/ crop them ? Just use your fingers on the Photoshop.com app

You can also configure the app to automatically upload your pics even when the app is not running – thanks to multitasking on android .

You can grab the app from the Android market for free. Have you tried it ?

• Adobe unveils Photoshop.com Mobile App for iPhone

We had a chance to play with the dummy of HTC Tattoo also known as HTC Click . This variant was called the Tattoo Ink and is from UK operator Orange. This is one of the very first mass market android phones and might see a large pool of users exposed to the Google Android Operating System

HTC Tattoo Specs

• Android OS
• WiFi, Bluetooth
• MP3 Player, FM Radio
• 3.2 Megapixel Camera
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• microSD Expansion slot
• 2.8 inch touchscreen display
• Quadband GSM and Dual Band 3G Network support
• Standy Time – 10 days
• Talktime – 2 hours according to this placard but 6.5 hours according to HTC , but this can be a deal-breaker

One great feature worth a mention is the SenseUI

The phone also comes integrated with the Android market place so that you can download apps of the app-store. But we really don’t know how many apps are compatible with this phone .

The phone has customizable panels and it comes with a cute little android mascot aka android robot on the back of it .

HTC Tattoo Price and Availability

The Tattoo is expected to have a price of Rs.16-20000 in India depending on where you are located.  The handset will be free with a  contract in UK and Europe.

• HTC Leo and Click Leaked!

Many analysts have called it the game over for Sony Ericsson but this is not stopping the folks at SE from innovating.The SE Satio was an impressive handset considering the Symbian implementation. And now the SE Xperia X10 with Android. Nice to see a brands going with multiple platforms these days. All this means healthy competition and more choice for the consumer. Hope prices are realistic !  Here are some SE X10 pics straight from the SE HQ

The X10 might come to India as we got an email about the handset from SE India and also the SE india site features the handset.

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Here is what the X10 has got .

• Size: 119 x 63 x 13 mm
• Weight: 135 grams
• Phone memory: Up to 1 GB
• microSD Memory card included: 8 GB ( sony finally ditches memory stick)
• Operating system: Google™ Android Donut, version 1.6
• Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon
• 480 x 854 pixels (WVGA) TFT Scratch-resistant touchscreen with 262,144 colours
• 3.5 mm audio jack , microUSB,Wi-Fi,Bluetooth
• 8.1 megapixel camera with 16x digital zoom

The XPERIA X10 will be available in selected markets from Q1 in the colours Sensuous Black and Luster White. Hope India is one of them

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Well the day is finally here. Sony Ericsson is set to unveil the Sony Ericsson Rachel/XPERIA X10. There have been numerous leaks on the internet about the device.

Even Sony Ericsson had given us some sneak previews of the phone. So we decided to refresh your mind with details, pictures and videos of the phone before it’s announcement.

First things first. Sony Ericsson has created a site called What’s Next as a sneak preview to the XPERIA X10.

Here’s the link

Secondly this is the sneak preview video that Sony Ericsson have supplied us with:

Now another video which shows the Media UI of the phone:

Now onto the features of the phone that you can expect:

• 1GHz Snapdragon Processor
• Google Android OS
• 4″ Touchscreen Display with 854*480 Resolution
• 32GB Internal Memory, micro-SD Card Slot, 256MB RAM
• Accelerometer, 3.5mm Audio Jack
• 8 Megapixel Camera with Autofocus, Geo-Tagging, Face-Detection and Touch Focus
• GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, HSUPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, DLNA, mini-USB
• Black and White Colours

We will inform you with the latest news on the XPERIA X10 as Sony Ericsson announces it.

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Lots of people including Me have heavily relied on Google Maps Mobile to get directions to any unknown place that we may land upon. However, sometimes getting only the directions don’t work since you cannot see them while you are driving.

To solve this issue, Google today released Maps Navigation (beta), A highly upgraded version of the present Maps software which will be free and available on all Android 2.0 devices by default.

This new release comes along with everything you would want in a navigation system similar to GPS Devices , like 3D views, Turn-By-Turn voice guidance and Automatic Rerouting taking advantage of your phone’s GPRS/EDGE/3G connection.

Important Features of this Release are:

1. The Most Recent Map and Business Data: Your phone now automatically gets the most up to date maps and business listings from Google Maps which is continuously improving, all thanks to various user contributions and businesses activation.
2. Search in Plain English: You can now simply enter the name of a business, a landmark or just about anything you want to find into the built in search box, and Google will find it for you. Then show you the direction upon the button press “Navigate“.
3. Voice Search: You can also voice search your destination instead. Just hold down the search button to activate voice search, then tell your phone the place, you want to find and navigation will start automatically.
4. Traffic view: Google Maps Navigation now gets live traffic data over the Internet. you can get the current traffic conditions via traffic indicator light present at the corner of the screen which glows green, yellow or red according to the traffic conditions. you can also get more details on the traffic conditions by tapping the light to zoom out to an aerial view showing traffic speeds and incidents ahead. And if the traffic looks very bad, you can also choose an alternate route.
5. Search along route: You can now also search along your route specific businesses like gas stations, restaurants or parking to give you results that falls on your route.
6. Satellite view: Google Maps Navigation now provides you the same satellite imagery as Google Maps Desktop. Just turn on the satellite layer for a high-resolution, 3D view of your upcoming route.
7. Street View: You can now just double-tap the map to zoom into Street View, which will tell you the turn as you will see it, with your route overlaid.

Here is a Video Demo of the new Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0

Google Maps Navigation will feature first on the upcoming Moto Droid from Verizon and will be initially available for free in the United States.

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