Sony Ericsson Closing Facilities and Laying Off Employees!

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After removing 450 employees from the payroll last September, Sony Ericsson is now planning to close down four of it’s facilities and lay-off 2000 employees worldwide.

The facilities that are planned to be shutdown are the facilities in RTP (North Carolina), Small Facilities(Miami, Seattle and San Diego), Sweden and Chennai. 2000 employees will be laid off and some of them will have the option of getting transfers to other places like Atlanta or California. Continue reading “Sony Ericsson Closing Facilities and Laying Off Employees!”

Fly Unveils 2 New Dual SIM Handsets – MC 160 and E106

Fly Mobiles have announced the launch of 2 new Dual SIM touchscreen handsets in India namely, the MC 160 and the E106.

MC160

MC160

The MC 160 based on Yamaha Chipset, features a QVGA touchscreen with a 262k color TFT display, Other features includes a phonebook which has hold upto 2000 names, 3 megapixel camera with Video Recording, 87MB Internal memory with support for expandable memory using microSD cards, Has support for GPRS, EDGE, A2DP and Bluetooth. The phone has a talk time of 4 hrs and a standby time of 200 hours. The Phone also has a mobile tracker with remote control capabilities and privacy protection feature and is decently priced at Rs. 6,000. Continue reading “Fly Unveils 2 New Dual SIM Handsets – MC 160 and E106”

Airfone Launches A Range of Dual SIM Mobile Phones In India

Airfone Logo

JV Airfone India Pvt Ltd, a new player in the Indian Mobile Market has introduced its new range of mobile handsets. Airfone is now offering a striking collection of multi-feature, incredible looking mobile handsets reasonably priced for almost every niche which will feature dual SIM facility in all handsets, MP3 player & TF Card support in all its models.

Continue reading “Airfone Launches A Range of Dual SIM Mobile Phones In India”

Interview with Jon Tetzchner of Opera Software

At Symbian Exchange 2009 FoneArena got a chance to interview Jon Tetzchner CEO of  Opera Software. In this 20 minute interview , we talk about a lot of things ranging from Opera Mini, Opera Mobile and Opera Unite and also Google Chrome , Internet Explorer.

opera-interview

Continue reading “Interview with Jon Tetzchner of Opera Software”

Nokia N900 Enters USA at a price tag of 649 USD

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Today, we come with great news for many of you. The Nokia N900 will start selling in the USA starting from today. The Nokia N900 has already begun shipping to customers who had pre-ordered it. The N900 is also expected to hit other countries in the coming weeks. Continue reading “Nokia N900 Enters USA at a price tag of 649 USD”

Droid Autofocus bug is the weirdest bug. Ever.

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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.” Continue reading “Droid Autofocus bug is the weirdest bug. Ever.”

N97 Mini wins GSMA Award for Best Mobile Handset

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The GSMA has announced the Winners of its 2009 Mobile Awards and a real good surprise for Nokia. The N97 Mini which has been launched in India recently has won the Award for the Best Mobile Handset Best Mobile Broadband Handset/Device . I played with the Mini at Nokia World and most recently at the Nokia N-Tourage Event in Blore and this handset is very impressive in terms of build quality , speed and kinetic scrolling and much better than the big brother. Continue reading “N97 Mini wins GSMA Award for Best Mobile Handset”

GSM Association announces winners of Asia Mobile Awards 2009

You might have seen the nominations for the Asia Mobile Awards for 2009 and now The GSM Association has announced the winners at the Mobile Asia Congress Networking Party and Awards Celebration at Hong Kong’s famed Happy Valley Racecourse.

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“We are delighted with the number of high quality entries we received for this year’s Asian Mobile Awards and Mobile Innovation Grand Prix – Asia Tournament,” said Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the Board for the GSMA. “These awards reflect the strong growth of mobile communications in Asia – in the last year alone mobile connections in the region have risen by 370 million, and this growth is driven by innovative new services, applications and ever richer mobile content. These awards recognise the leaders, pioneers and innovators that are making this happen. Our congratulations to the winners, and our thanks to all those who participated.”

The winners of the Asia Mobile Awards 2009 are: Continue reading “GSM Association announces winners of Asia Mobile Awards 2009”

Opera Mobile 10 Comes to Windows Mobile after Symbian

Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile phones is now out for immediate download on a WinMo phone after the Oslo based Software Company announced the Symbian version of the browser earlier this month. This version for Windows Mobile aims to transform mobile browsing to a desktop-like experience

Opera mobile 10 windows mobile
Opera mobile 10 windows mobile

Continue reading “Opera Mobile 10 Comes to Windows Mobile after Symbian”

Nokia N-Tour-Age in Bangalore

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Nokia India has planned a tete-a-tete with Mr. Jonne Harju, Senior Design Manager, Nokia Design Studio in Bangalore today in an event named as “Nokia N-Tour-Age“. For the people who don’t know him, he is a part of Nokia Nseries global design team and works with a team of experts and researchers. He has also been responsible for designing the Nokia N97 Mini, which got launched in India yesterday. Continue reading “Nokia N-Tour-Age in Bangalore”

We Meet – A Location Aware, Group SMS Application

We Meet Application 01

Last week, we were invited to visit the Nokia Research Center located in Bangalore, where the Nokia Research Team demoed us a pilot project called “We Meet“, a Location Aware SMS Based application. Continue reading “We Meet – A Location Aware, Group SMS Application”

Nokia E72 is finally in stores

Good news y’all ! Nokia E72 is finally in stores after some delays

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Some users are also reporting that their pre-orders have been shipped in the UK and Europe

Press release

Espoo, Finland – The highly-anticipated Nokia E72, a device tailor-made for business and personal messaging is now available in stores. To coincide with the arrival of the Nokia E72, Nokia has also released research* revealing that more people rely on email than on traditional phone calls or text messaging when sending and responding to critical information. Continue reading “Nokia E72 is finally in stores”

Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition launched

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition, an entertainment hub that combines mobile broadcast TV (DVB-H), social networking, music and gaming in one compact 3G device. With mobile broadcast TV consumption on the rise – by 2012 there will be over 300 million people worldwide watching TV on their mobile phones – this handset offers easy access to anyone wanting to enjoy an exceptional live, on-the-move TV experience.Nokia vice president Mark Selby said, “The introduction of the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition responds to the arrival of DVB-H broadcast mobile TV networks in new markets and offers an affordable device for new and existing customers alike. Customers are increasingly watching a variety of programmes on their mobiles, such as drama programs, news and sport, for a longer period of time. The Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition has the sound and image quality to hold audiences captive.”

Are new operating systems in the smart phone field hurting Nokia?

My friend, Ranesh Kumar considered picking up a new Nokia handset before he heard about the new Motorola Droid. Just last week, he bought two Motorola Droids from Verizon, one for himself and one for his fiancée.

Nokia_e70Ranesh 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. Continue reading “Are new operating systems in the smart phone field hurting Nokia?”