See you at Proto.in 2008

I m really excited as Im going to be attending Proto.in 2008 – An event to showcase startups in India.

Im interested in the Telecom and Mobile sectors and the first session tomorrow deals with these two sectors.

We might see some product launches and some cool new ideas being presented by Startups.

We will be covering most of the action here on FoneArena as we are an Online Media partner for Proto.in 2008.

Would be great to meet some folks over at Proto.

Latest Mobile Prices updated for January 2008

Hi Folks,

We have updated latest mobile prices of all phones on the site for January 2008 . The reason for the delay was due to a few price drops which happened in the new year. Continue reading “Latest Mobile Prices updated for January 2008”

Nokia E51 Review

Nokia E51 is a great upgrade to the old Nokia E50.Since a lot of readers are asking us about this phone we thought of writing a review about this latest entrant to the Nokia E Series . You might have seen my post on Nokia E Series in India

Simply put , Nokia wants to make its E Series devices as popular as the N Series ones

Nokia E51

Connectivity

Has got it all – Quadband , 3G, HSDPA – its a 3.5G phone infact. Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) , Bluetooth , USB are all present. Continue reading “Nokia E51 Review”

Mobile Innovations of 2008 winners announced

I never knew that Users would expect so much out of their mobile phone before kicking of Free Recharge contest where we asked the users 1 simple question. What feature would you like to see in your mobile phone in 2008 ?

We got about 65 Responses from users who had patiently written about the features which they would like to have in their mobile phone in 2008.

We really had a tough time picking the winners. Most ideas were good and we could not eliminate users easily. So we have picked 10 Users at Random as winners.

Congrats to the winners and A Big Thanks to all the participants.

Please find the list of winning entries below Continue reading “Mobile Innovations of 2008 winners announced”

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SMS the following to 567673434 to join through your mobile phone JOIN FoneArena

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SMS GupShup is a free group SMS service.

SMS GupShup through mobile phones is currently available only in India.

Nokia N95 8GB gets v15 firmware

All About Symbian is reporting that theres a major upgrade to the Nokia N95 8GB firmware available for download. You can see the screenshot below which shows the possibility to upgrade from version 11 to version 15.

Nokia n95 8gb v15 firmware

Highlights of the new firmware v15.

Faster Search

Increase in access speed of the internal 8GB memory.

Support for 3rd party themes

Flash Lite 3 and Flash Video suppor t. This is the most interesting feature addition to the phone.

Adobe launched FlashLite 3 with Video  some time back in October last year.

Continue reading “Nokia N95 8GB gets v15 firmware”

Nokia Siemens Networks bags multi-million Euro IVR deal from Bharti Airtel

If your on Airtel Network , You can expect a lot of Voice Based services from Bharti Airtel in the coming years

Nokia Siemens has just bagged a multi-million euro deal from Bharti Airtel for deployment of a single Interactive Voice Response (IVR) . Bharti Airtel awarded this pan India contract to Nokia Siemens Networks for deployment of a single Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform across all 23 circles. The three year turnkey and multi-million Euro contract includes designing, planning, systems integration and optimization services to enhance overall customer experience. The new IVR solution will enable Airtel to deliver Services such as Voice SMS, Televoting, Call Management Services (Reach-me service / Missed Call Advisor), Caller Ring back Tone (CRBT) and Voice Portal among others on a faster time-to-market basis, reduce OPEX costs due to optimized network utilization, and increase security by creation of a layered architecture towards Interactive Voice applications.

Nokia Siemens Networks will deploy and integrate the latest state-of-the-art platforms to provide a multi-technology, multi-vendor integrated solution that includes systems integration services. The platforms are HP OCMP (Open Call Management Platform), Video Gateway, Televoting Application and ASR/TTS (Automatic Speech Recognition / Text-to-Speech Engine. The solution will be ready for commercial operation by April 2008 and is expected to scale up to one billion minutes of usage per month in three years for Bharti Airtel. Continue reading “Nokia Siemens Networks bags multi-million Euro IVR deal from Bharti Airtel”

Happy new Year 2008 – Win free recharge voucher

Fone Arena is growing bigger every day. We would like to wish all our users a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year. May all your dreams come true in 2008. To Celebrate the New Year we are giving 10 Mobile Prepaid Recharge vouchers worth Rs.100 each. So you all have a chance to win Rs.1000 worth of prizes. To enter the contest. Please answer this question

Continue reading “Happy new Year 2008 – Win free recharge voucher”

Nokia betting big on E Series devices

I have never seen Nokia marketing the E-Series range of devices in India. But now, Nokia is Marketing E Series in Indian newspapers , TV Channels , Websites like never before. Though N Series is the major winner for Nokia in India , we can see that they also want to capture the professional / enterprise phone user.

May be India is just a part of the Nokia’s Asia Pacific market as the website which is promoting these devices is nokiaforbusiness.com/apac/eseries/

The E series starts from the E50 priced at Rs.8000 to the E90 Communicator priced at Rs.35000

Continue reading “Nokia betting big on E Series devices”

Man gets mobile phone bill for 34 lacs

Imagine you get a mobile bill for Rupees 34 lacs !! You can even buy a Merc or an apartment for that kind of money.

An 22yr old Oil Field worker from Calgary,Canada -Piotr Staniaszek got an whooping 85000 dollar mobile phone bill . It was due to his mobile browsing charges. He had signed up for a $150 unlimited data service from Bell Canada

He happily connected his phone to his computer and downloaded tons of data including movies and games. Continue reading “Man gets mobile phone bill for 34 lacs”

Vote for the best mobile startup

The 2007 Crunchies is an annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year.

The nominees include

AdMob

admob

AdMob is the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace. Founded in 2006.

Fring

fring.gif

 Fring is a free mobile VOIP application that lets you make free voice calls via Google Talk , Skype using your phone.It works over Wifi and GPRS. It also support instant messaging networks such as MSN,Google Talk.I have tried Fring and it seems impressive.The initial version used to kill my battery but the latest version seems to have solved the problem.

Loopt

loopt.png

Loopt is a mobile social mapping application that works only in the USA as of now. It display the location of users on a mp using GPS and other data.Users can interact with each other, exchange info etc.

Shozu

shozu.png

Shozu is a great mobile photo and multimedia application.I personally use it to upload photos from my phone to my flickr account. We had already covered Shozu as a part of the Killer Mobile Apps

Twitter

twitter

Twitter is similar to Jaiku and is one of the Micro Blogging platforms. It lets users post short status messages which can be read by other users who are following. The entries are archived and can be viewed in the future. Continue reading “Vote for the best mobile startup”

10 Reasons why the Apple iPhone wont hit India

Apple iPhone is creating waves across the globe and the Time magazine has named the iphone as the invention of the year of 2007

No doubt that iPhone is a great device , Its a revolutionary phone – much more than a phone

But the sad part is that the iPhone has not come to India so far. Its available in the Grey markets for under Rs.30,000 but without warranty. Anyone buying it / already bought it ? I wanted to highlight why the iPhone wont be coming soon to India.

Users dont spend much on Value Added Services

I was just comparing the various mobile markets in the world where the iPhone has been introduced – USA, UK,Germany and France. These markets are places where purchasing power is more. In this context Im referring to the amount of cash the users burn on their mobile phones and related services such as ringtones,songs etc. We Indians spend a lot on phones for sure but mainly for calls and messages nothing more. Continue reading “10 Reasons why the Apple iPhone wont hit India”

India added a whooping 8.3 million mobile users in November 2007

The no of mobile users in India is increasing again month after month. A TRAI report suggests that India added a whooping 8.3 million mobile users in November 2007 compared to the 8 million odd added in October.

Land line usage is declining due to the portability factor and Mobility is playing a vital part in India’s growth story.Total telephone user base is expected Continue reading “India added a whooping 8.3 million mobile users in November 2007”

Youtube on your S60 3rd Edition phone with emTube

Are you a Youtube addict ? There is a m.youtube.com which is a mobile version of the most popular video site on the web.

But sadly not all videos are not available on the mobile website of Youtube.

youtube-mobile-emtube.jpg

Now the good news – If you own a S60 phone which is built on the S60 3rd Edition platform then you might be able to view full length videos on your mobile phone and even download your favorite phones to your phone or memory card.

emTube ( M Tube ) lets you do all of this for free.

It works even behind a firewall and works over wifi/gprs /edge

It worked smoothly on my E61i. Heres the screenshot Continue reading “Youtube on your S60 3rd Edition phone with emTube”