Bharadwaj Chandramouli | Fone Arena

Google Nexus 5 coming soon to India, Play Store prices 16 GB version for Rs. 28,999

The just announced Google Nexus 5 has been spotted on the Indian Play Store, with it listed as “coming soon” to India along with the price tags of Rs. 28,999 for the 16GB version and Rs. 32,999 for the 32 GB version. The Nexus 5 was just announced by LG and Google, but had leaked like a broken cauldron over the internet for the past few weeks and even months. The phone has a 5 inch full HD IPS screen with LG’s own in-cell touch technology and is powered by the blazing fast Snapdragon 800 processor, among many other hardware features. It also runs on the latest version of Android – 4.4 KitKat which has been spruced up with new user interface changes, a changed dialer, and a lot more under the hood for developers to take advantage of. Now that the phone has been announced, we think it might not take long to arrive in India as the listing has already shown up on the Indian Play Store.

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Nokia highlights Refocus and RAW with great camera samples

Apart from the marquee product launches of the Lumia 1520, the 1320 and the Lumia 2520 Windows tablet, two other announcements stood out from the Nokia World event, and the both were related to Nokia’s forte – imaging. The company announced a new imaging app for its Lumia smartphones called the Nokia Refocus, and also announced that the Lumia 1020 and the upcoming Lumia 1520 will be getting RAW support. With these announcements, the gap between Nokia and other companies in the imaging department became way wider than it is already. Especially with RAW, which is considered a landmark announcement for serious photographers who like to play around with the whole sensor’s data. Refocus too, kindled the “shoot first, focus later” mantra that the Lytro popularized. What you see above is a new sample from Nokia highlighting just that, and here is a fully interactive sample of the same picture above, using which you can change the focus –

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Intel to make 64 bit ARM chips starting next year

Intel is gearing up to start making 64 bit ARM chips starting next year. Before you jump to conclusions, do know that Intel is planning to fabricate 64 bit ARM chips for its partner Altera, signaling a huge wave of change for the company. It is very well known that Intel is struggling in its mobile business, only recently making strides with the Clovertrail and Baytrail SoCs, and they are all based on the x86 architecture. Intel does not only make its own chips, it does fabrication for other companies too, like Altera for example. The current market leader for ARM fabrication is undoubtedly TSMC, which does fabrication for most companies from Nvidia to Qualcomm. So, in perfect sense, Intel is now a competitor to TSMC rather than Qualcomm or Nvidia.

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Spice Pinnacle Stylus Mi-550 Unboxing

Spice might have concentrated more on the retail side recently, but the phones do keep coming. Among the newer ones that released recently is the Spice Pinnacle Stylus Mi-550 that comes with a 5.5 inch screen and more importantly, a stylus. Priced at Rs. 15,999, this is easily a direct competitor to the Micromax Canvas Doodle 2 that comes with similar specifications. So, how does the Pinnacle stylus look and what does it have in its retail box? Watch our unboxing video and find out –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2734zd1Png

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Qualcomm Powerful Processors Giveaway #3 – LG G2 Winner Announcement

The final giveaway of the Qualcomm Snapdragon Powerful Processors series is coming to an end. With the contest spanning just over three weeks, we are happy to say that the response has been nothing short of stunning, and that says a lot about the phone and the processor inside it. We have gone through thousands and thousands of entries and tweets to pick a winner for this contest, are you ready to find out if you are the lucky one?

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Ashton Kutcher is Lenovo’s new Product Engineer

That 70s show, Jobs and Two and a Half Men star Ashton Kutcher has been hired by Lenovo as its new Product Engineer. While the job title might be reaching, Ashton’s role in the Chinese company seems far more detailed than the other celebrity associations in the past have been. Lenovo is fresh off the announcements of its new 8 inch and 10 inch Yoga Android tablets, with a refreshing design and an affordable price point, and they actually did a live stream from YouTube Space LA with Ashton Kutcher playing host. There was a promo that played during the live stream which clearly wanted to showcase Kutcher’s geek chops, which is not surprising, having known for being a tech investor.

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More than 250 million Smartphones shipped in Q3 2013, market posts a record 38.8% growth – IDC

We have been taking a look at the Smartphone market through the regular analyses from the folks at IDC, and the report for the 3rd quarter of 2013 is now out. The key takeaways from this quarter is that the overall smartphone market has grown at a record breaking pace, with 38.8% growth. The total Smartphone shipments are now at 258.4 million, higher than the earlier record last quarter, which was 237 million. The overall mobile phone market is now at a healthy 467.9 million shipments, with over 55% of the shipments being Smartphones. We saw smartphones surpass the feature phones this year, and the gap has widened even further. This is all attributed to the explosive growth in China, which contributes to more than 1/3rd of the total smartphone shipments.

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Viber for Windows Phone 8 updated with redesigned UI and Viber desktop support

Viber is a well known app, popular mainly for its VOIP services and chat. The company has been having its own Windows Phone 8 app for a while but it lacked some much needed features. With the announcement of the new desktop app, the integration was curiously missing out on the Windows Phone platform with the 3.0 update, but finally, the app has been now updated with a nicely refreshed UI with custom backgrounds support and better integration with Viber desktop that lets you take calls and transfer them over to phone from the PC or vice versa. You can download the update from the Windows Phone Store here.

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Man who stole more than $12 million worth of LG G2 smartphones caught

Just a few days after we reported of the stolen LG G2 truck incident, the thief, or at least one of the thieves that managed to hijack a truck full of LG’s G2 smartphones, seems to have been caught today. It is believed that the truck was spotted in Louisville after the driver of the stolen truck foolishly crashed into an utility pole. This is akin to getting busted on a single star wanted level in GTA V.

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Sony Xperia C Unboxing

The Sony Xperia C was launched way back in June, with aspirations of reaching the mid range with a similar design language and decent internals. It was one of the first phones from Sony to sport a MediaTek MTK6589 processor, which was a marked change from their earlier associations with ST-Ericsson, but perhaps for the better? We will be finding that out in our review, but here’s a quick unboxing of the retail package and its contents of the Sony Xperia C –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSP8kdHglL0

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Apple iPhone 5c official case unboxing

The official Apple iPhone 5c (check out our review!) case is here! After facing much ridicule over its similarities with the popularly hated Crocs flip flops, it has landed in our office, in a matching blue colour that actually goes nicely with our blue iPhone 5c. Like all the official cases, we must say that this case too, is made of high quality materials. But of course, you wouldn’t always be content with just text or photos, we know, so here’s an unboxing video showing the case in its dotted glory –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGE4R1PHuHc

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Micromax Windows Phones to arrive mid of next year, says co-founder

Is Micromax working on a Windows Phone? Well, the second largest smartphone manufacturer in India by volume recently made big news when it unleashed a series of promotions featuring Hugh Jackman for the Micromax Canvas Turbo, and also announced its plans to enter the European markets like Russia and Romania, but a Windows Phone that is currently dominated by Nokia? The company’s co-founder Rahul Sharma has admitted in an interview that they are indeed working on them, and claims to have them ready for a launch mid next year. Above image is just a mock up we did to see how Windows Phone might look on the recently launched Micromax Canvas Turbo.

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Apple iPhone 5c Dock Unboxing

Every iPhone needs its own dock, that’s Apple’s mandate and the newly launched iPhone 5c is no exception. But there are a couple of reasons why there’s a new dock for the iPhone 5c, which is seemingly just a plastic shell with the same internals as the 5. Well, technically yes and I have answered the question right there. It’s a new plastic shell and with difference in build comes difference in thickness and weight. But the thickness is more of the concern here. While you might be able to use the iPhone 5’s dock for the 5S, it is impossible to do so for the 5c, and hence why we picked one up from Hong Kong for our blue iPhone 5c. Take a look at the unboxing and hands on video here –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYFeNF2IcxY

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Half of the Angry Birds games go free for Windows Phone 8

Angry Birds has been a longstanding mega hit gaming franchise from Rovio and usually, a copy sells for 99 cents, or 55 Indian rupees, in the local currency. There was a time when the original game went free for a while, as a part of Nokia’s promotion, but suddenly now, half of the collection has gone free. We are not sure if this is a store glitch or something, but exactly half of the Angry Birds collection has gone free in the Indian Windows Phone 8 Store. The games that have gone free are – Original Angry Birds, Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Star Wars II, while the Seasons, Rio and Space are still showing as paid.

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Grand Theft Auto: Truck carrying 22,500 LG G2 Smartphones stolen in Indiana

“Bring me the LG G2, a truck load.” said Mrs. Phillips, and Trevor did, only to return and find his mom missing. But that was in a weird alternate reality gaming universe where “Deludamol” was called LG G2. But in reality, a bizarre incident reveals its similarities with the former, where not one, not two, but a truck, full of LG G2 Smartphones(total 22,500), has been stolen in Indiana, USA. CNet reports that the theft happened when the truck driver, who was on his way to one of the Sprint distribution centers in Kentucky, was taking a bathroom break. Seemingly confirmed by a LG spokesperson, the damage due to this theft is roughly around 12 million USD. That’s a lot of money.

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