Dhruv Bhutani | Fone Arena

Qualcomm Q3 2012 results out

Qualcomm just reported its 3rd quarter fiscal 2012 results and profits have soared year on year owing to continued strong demand for 3G and 4G connected hardware. High sales and strong yearly growth have contributed to a bottom line of $4.63 billion in revenue.

Meanwhile net income is reported at $1.21 billion. MSM chipsets were the biggest contributors with 141 million units sold. Though sales were reported to be down 7% over the last quarter, the YoY growth is noted to be 18%. CEO Dr. Paul E. Jacob said that the sales drop was due to upcoming devices lined up for the holiday season.

Google’s in-browser weather feature comes to tablets

If you search for weather forecasts and conditions fairly often on your smartphone you might have noticed how Google displays the latest conditions depending on your location right in the browser itself. It has now extended this nifty addition to tablet browsers as well.

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Google Music receives major UI overhaul

The Google Music application has just received a major update bringing its user interface in line with the one shipping on the Nexus 7. The updated application follows the Holo UI principles similar to the Google+ app and there is a lot of focus on visuals with large images. In addition some useful additions like adding new tracks to a playlist queue have been included.

The update is available for all phones with Google Music on Android 2.2 and above via Google Play. The official changelog is listed below. Continue reading “Google Music receives major UI overhaul”

SuperGrip car mount review

As turn by turn navigation becomes a standard feature on more and more phones, there is a growing demand for accessories like car mounts to safely and securely attach a phone to the car. The SuperGrip is one such mount which comes in a fairly small package but is surprisingly solid. Read on for the complete review.

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Import ban on Motorola’s Android products goes into effect

We’d reported some time back on the International Trade Commission’s ruling that several devices from Motorola’s portfolio won’t be allowed to be sold in the US. The patent in question here is Microsoft’s innovation on email based meeting scheduling. This ban goes into effect starting today in the US.

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SoundWave SW50 Review

Speakers on most phones leave quite a bit to be desired when playing music out loud and more so when trying to make a call over a speakerphone. Bluetooth speakers come in quite handy in such situations. The SW50 comes in a very standard package and looks diminutive at first glance. But as is often said, looks can be deceptive. Read on for our impressions of the SoundWave.

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RIM granted patent for logic based text prediction in Blackberry 10

RIM has worked hard on the Blackberry 10 keyboard and it is not about to let anyone else copy its innovation. The keyboard on Blackberry 10 is now patented technology bringing users logic based text prediction.

In built word prediction keeps an eye out for typos and suggests new words as you type out the sentence while trying to complete commonly used phrases. For obvious reasons, this technology does not work in password fields. It seems that RIM might not have fully implemented this yet as it is a bit different from the keyboard on the Blackberry dev alpha device as we had reported recently. RIM has until early next year to refine the keyboard and deliver a solid product and a great keyboard should go a long way in that.

[Via – Engadget]

Nokia patents flexible hinge for foldable tablets

Nokia has been working on foldable electronics for a while now and has previously demonstrated the Nokia Kinect concept. The Kinect concept is a phone with a bendable screen which responds to both touch and twists.

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Blackberry 10 Developer Alpha impressions

Research in Motion has been showing off teasers of its upcoming Blackberry 10 OS for a while now but admittedly their bigger problem is to get developers onboard their fledgling platform.

To make it easier for devs to test out their apps, RIM has been distributing developer units running a customized version of Playbook OS which should allow them to test run their apps on actual hardware. We’ve been playing with one of these units in our labs these past few days and here are our impressions. Continue reading “Blackberry 10 Developer Alpha impressions”

Situations spun off as separate company, Makes a comeback with fresh interface

Ask any Symbian power user and they will have used Nokia Situations at some point of time. The application allowed users to automate profile changes according to various predefined conditions. The two core members of the application developed team have completed negotiations with Nokia and ‘Situations’ is the first app to be made available via their company, Pastilli Labs avoin yhtiö.

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Jolla partners with China’s D.Phone for distribution

Emerging Finnish smartphone maker Jolla has partnered with Chinese distributor D.Phone to bring its devices to the very important Chinese market. D.Phone has the largest retail network in China and has strategic partnerships with China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom.

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Exclusive : Dual SIM Micromax A90 with ICS and Super AMOLED display spotted

An anonymous tip just landed in our inbox with some details and photographs of what is believed to be the next big product by Micromax. Called the Micromax A90, the phone is expected to come with a large 4.3″ Super AMOLED display. Dual SIM card slots will also be making a showing in the handset.

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Google helping developers to bring native browser behavior to Chrome on iOS

Google’s Chrome browser on iOS has been getting rave reviews and currently ranks as one of the top free apps on Apple’s app store. With a 4.5 rating, a lot of users have been clamoring for a way to make it the default browser on their iOS device of choice.

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Qualcomm demos AR technology powered by Vuforia

At the recent TechLife event in Delhi,we got a chance to check out some really cool demos showcasing the best that Qualcomm has to offer. We got to witness some very interesting ways in which AR powered by Qualcomm’s Vuforia technology has been to put to use in the real world.

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Symbian Belle devices getting ‘Upload to SkyDrive’ option via Software Update

Symbian Tweet reports that an optional update being pushed out for Symbian Belle devices is bringing support for uploading images to SkyDrive. Users are required to authenticate their phone by entering their Live account details after which they will be presented with an option to automatically send photos to SkyDrive.

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