That surely sounded like symphony for many but the problem with this new option available is that it can pinpoint your location with accuracy of around 1000 m; which certainly is not good enough. Though in certain cases accuracy has been reported to be around 200 m. But it still is good for those without GPS enabled handsets, something is better than nothing. This official Google video on Youtube explains the basics of this new feature.

Google maps’ new version is available for Java, BlackBerry, and Symbian S60 devices. It’s still in beta development stage but works reliably and is available for download here. Hopefully, we’ll see newer versions of Google Maps

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UTStarcom will distribute the CDM8630 to various CDMA carriers in North America and it would be available through Verizon Wireless. The clamshell-style CDM8630 incorporates many functions, which can be fitted with the lifestyle of senior customers. The handset comes with two-inch 262 color TFT display screen with easy-to-use menu in large fonts. In addition, the device has one-inch monochrome STN external display, which is specifically designed for easy viewing of incoming calls, alerts, digital clock, battery life and signal strength.

The dual-band CDM8630 has a special one-touch 911 button for emergencies and a special ‘In Case of Emergency’, so that users can store their emergency contacts and personal information for easy access. Supported with e911 service, the CDM8630 comes with special dial feature, so that users can dial ten numbers for one touch calling. The phone has in-built speakerphone with advanced voice activated dialing service to communicate with their friends and family with hands-free.

Weighing only 3.3 ounces and measuring 3.8″ x 1.8″ x 0.8″, the CDM8630 is light to carry. This unique handset is designed with visible, bright red charger jack located on the right hand side of the device so mature consumers will have no trouble recharging it. The CDM8630 comes with a Lithium Ion 920 mAh battery that lasts up to 221 minutes of talk-time, and 229 hours on stand-by.

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Sprint is offering Unlimited by Boost in more than 900 Wal-Mart stores in all 12 states, where the unlimited service is available. Currently, Unlimited by Boost is sold in RadioShack stores in California and Texas and soon it will expand to RadioShack location in the other 10 states.

The Unlimited by Boost service is available from $45 to $55 according to its calling option and location. With the Unlimited by boost service, users can make unlimited local and nationwide calls from their home calling area and are charged from 0.15 per minute for calls made outside their home calling area. Boost Mobile is also offering a limited-time promotion of a free month of service with the purchase of a new phone and activation of a new account.

From the November 12, 2007, Sprint will offer a wireless Web price plan, which includes unlimited voice, SMS, picture messaging and web browsing services starting at $55 per month, depending on the market.

After making its efforts to accelerate business in smartphone adoption, Microsoft is coming up with its wireless and rechargeable Black lit desktop along with its first rechargeable mouse.

The wireless rechargeable desktop called the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 is good combination of design and productivity enhancing features. The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 is just only 2.5 cm thick. With this Wireless desktop, Windows Vista users can accomplish everyday tasks and enjoy their entertainment options. The new features of desktop bring all functionalities of Windows XP and Windows Vista to user.

The new Wireless Desktop offers one-touch access button to the Windows start menu button with all search functionality, including:

1) In-built search functionality to search for Internet or the PC
2) A Gadget Button, which shows or hides the personalized information hosted in the Sidebar
3) A Media Center Start Button that enables users to instantly access media
4) Windows Live Call Button, which provides users to easily start an instant messaging session or video call.

Based on Bluetooth wireless technology, Wireless desktop 8000 comes with ‘First Connect Technology’ to ensure the desktop will work on PCs right out of the box and navigation pad on the keyboard, so that users can control the cursor. The transceiver of the desktop supports a variety of Bluetooth profiles for connections to multiple Bluetooth devices. The proximity awareness feature of the desktop allows to sense when is away from the keyboard. The rechargeable keyboard of the desktop allows user to power both the mouse and keyboard in one charging station.

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Screeplay technology will create a rich visual experience on smartphones with user interface, so that it can integrate high-definition video content, life like games and animation to smartphones. Manufacturers can use the ScreenPlay architecture to build graphically abundant applications, which use transition effects, transparency, and overlays. The new technology works in software of midrange devices and utilizes hardware acceleration on high-end devices.

The other technology is called FreeWay, a new Internet Protocol networking architecture in Symbian OS. It has the capability to create a broadband-like experience on smartphones, including superfast download speeds, high resolution audio and video streaming, and good-quality VoIP calls without latency and jitter. Depending on the availability of high-speed wireless services like WiMax and Long Term Evolution, Freeway the high bandwidth, which also known as 3G. With the FreeWay architecture, samrtphones would be able to switch among different types of networks without losing a connection. A key feature of FreeWay is its compatibility with existing applications like web browsers, allowing these to take advantage of the benefits of FreeWay without any additional development.

These two new technologies are further enhanced with Symbian’s Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) on Symbian OS. These two technologies offers ‘performance on demand’ to maximize battery life and multimedia user experience on future converged mobile devices with multi-processor chipsets.

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Microsoft has launched the Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 to meet with the demands of its customers. The new Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 is mobile dedicated server product, which helps companies to manage Windows Mobile phones like Windows based laptops and PCs. Companies can use the Mobile Device manager to deliver new applications to mobile phones over the air and also connect with people through Mobile VPN with security-enhanced access to critical data like expense reports or customer information.

In addition, Microsoft has also announced a strategic partnership with Enterprise Mobile to build, deploy and manage custom-made solutions, which will work variety of mobile operators and phone manufacturers. This joint venture will help in more business purchase and manage more mobile phone deployments. Initially, phones like HP, HTC, i-mate, Intermec, Motorola, Palm Inc. and Samsung will support Mobile Device manager, which would be available in the second quarter of 2008.

Microsoft, AT&T and Samsung have also unveiled the Blackjack II, which would be available in more than 30 Windows mobile phones. The new Blackjack II comes with GPS to support Mobile Device Manager.

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Google has also admitted that not all documents are easily viewable on mobile phone screens. With the Google Docs Mobile, you can also navigate through your different folders in this stripped-down version of Docs. Users can also hide and unhide rows and columns temporarily, which makes easy navigation for large spreadsheets.

Google has also modified the look of spreadsheets to make it more user-friendly. The HTML view spreadsheet is specially formatted for display mode. By default, it is only a list of single column but it also allows you to click through to the next column or jump straight to a specific cell. You can also list the contents in just a single row, which can be displayed vertically instead of horizontally.

Like the mobile version of their calendaring service, Google has spent a considerable amount of time optimizing Docs for iPhone. Previously, iPhone users are the only group who gets mobile access to the freshly launched presentation service.

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Apalya Technologies has partnered with BSNL to provide TV signals on BSNL enabled mobile handsets. With the ‘TV in mobile handset’ service, BSNL GSM customers will be able to watch 12 television channels, including NDTV, CNBC, Aajtak, Times Now, Zoom, Bindaas, ETV and TV9 on their compatible mobile devices.

However, by the end of 2007, BSNL aims to incorporate a total of 32 channels in the ‘TV in mobile handset’ service.

Initially, the BSNL ‘TV in mobile handset’ service would be available on selected Nokia handsets. Later, the service would be extended to Sony Ericsso and Motorola handsets. In order to view the TV content via their mobile phones, BSNL customers will have to go to the mobi.tv website via their phones. The BSNL ‘TV in mobile’ service will be free for the next 30 days. The service is available in three plans:

1) A per day plan for Rs 10/- : Customer can enjoy one channel for 24 Hrs.
2) A Per month plan for Rs 50/- : Customer can enjoy one channel for 30 days.
3) A Per month plan for Rs 150/- : Customer can enjoy all channels for 30 days

Currently, the service is available in the eastern and north-eastern regions of India.

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Mozilla is planning to include mobile devices to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla 2, the company’s open source Internet application suit, which comes with a web browser, e-mail and newsgroup client. Mozilla is also rolling out a version of Mobile Firefox, which can run Firefox extensions on mobile devices. Developers would be able to develop to build rich applications for Mobile Firefox using extensible user-interface language (XUL), a markup language based on XML.

As a part of company’s strategy, the company is hiring small team of full-time employees to focus on mobile technology and applications from testing to user interface design.

Mozilla browsers are already available on Nokia N800 smartphones. Mozilla is also offering mini Firefox browser, Minimo to its users with a variety of Windows Mobile based smartphones. With Joey service, Firefox brings web content to mobile devices. Joey service allows users to use Firefox to send text clippings, pictures, videos, RSS content and live bookmarks to their phone and accessed on the phone’s web-browser.

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Its designers have done a wonderful job with the handset which is about three quarter to the size of the P990i with more advanced functions. Based on Symbian OS v9.1, Sony Ericsson P1i uses UIQ user interface, which is controlled through the micro keyboard, stylus and jog dial. The imple candy bar, Sony P1i measures 106 x 55 x 17 mm and it is quite comfortable to hold at 124 grams.

Sony Ericsson P1i comes with QWERTY keypad, 2.6 inch touch screen produces rich images in 262K colors across 240 x 320 pixels. The device has 160 Mb of shared memory, 128 Mb RAM and another 256 Mb ROM. Another 512 MB external memory card is shipped with standard pack. The hnadset comes with unlimited phone book entries and call records. The Sony Ericsson P1i includes hand recognition technology, business card scanning and various other features, which will help you to work while traveling. Other features of the Sony Ericsson P1i are:

1)It comes with office applications with organizer, Voice Memo and Sync ML
2)The Sony Ericsson P1i comes with media Player and FM radio
3)The primary camera module of the Vodafone Sony Ericsson P1i is 3.2 megapixel, which is good enough to take high-end images.

Image: TechThree

Micronet SP916N WLAN Broadband router is compatible with IEEE 802.11b/g/Draft-N wireless LAN, which provides high Internet access up to 300Mbps and provides wireless security with 64/128-bit WEP, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK encoding. The SP916N WLAN Broadband router shares a single cable of xDSL Internet connection with four wired LAN ports (10/100M) plus one WAN port (10/100M).

To set up an easy IP address with advanced network and security features, including DMZ, virtual servers, access control and firewall, the product supports DCHP. The device allows you to monitor various router statuses, including DHCP client log, system log, security log and device/connection status. The SP907N also supports WEP, WPA, and WPA2 encryption with USB 2.0 interface for easy installation. The SP916N WLAN Broadband router is equipped with following:

1) 32-bit PCI interface
2) Detachable antenna
3) 2T3R MIMO Technology Radio Modulation
4) Frequency band of 2.4000 ~ 2.4835GHz.

Image: Tech Shout

But now the problem has become so rampant that several mobile phone subscribers are surrendering their phone connections or opting for a new service provider ever so often that it is reflecting on the revenue and brand image of service providers. This has prompted them to take steps to implement a new technology which will provide this call restriction facility.

The pioneering company to start moving towards offering this facility has been Vodafone Essar which has started offered Call Filtering service. BPL Mobile is just getting testing their software and will put it into practice soon. Other players including the state-owned Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and private conglomerate Aircel are also considering offering this service.

We received several queries from subscribers seeking blocking of incoming calls from specific numbers, as these were unwanted calls. These are not telemarketing calls, but calls made by people who know the user. Most of the seekers of this feature were either film stars or cricketers,

says Harit Nagpal, Director (marketing & new business) Vodafone Essar.

Despite Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) launching its Do Not Disturb Registry (DNDR), the harassment to users continues. Owing to repeated complaints Vodafone Essar decided to be the first and rolled out the service.

The major advantage users derive from this service is the ability to activate on any model of handheld. The feature can be activated in both post- and pre-paid plans. Being the pioneer Vodafone Essar is levying a fee of of Rs 99 per month for the service.

BPL Chief Executive Officer S. Subramaniam is in complete agreement with his competitor.

We have received several complaints of repeated harassing calls from certain numbers. Though the proportion of the calls have been very little, we have decided to install a suite to block rogue callers,

says Subramaniam adding that this facility facility will be available to their subscribers very soon.

Speaking about the technical aspects of the service, Subramaniam explained that this works similar to the spam blocking facility on e-mail, but will initially be available only for voice calls. Subscribers can specify a series of telephone numbers from which he does not want to receive calls and give the list to the service provider, who will block all calls from these numbers to the subscriber. One can block about 10-15 numbers. The calling party will get a busy tone or a pre-recorded message.

India’s largest private sector telecom company Reliance Communications has evolved a distinctly different way to block harassing calls. It has a spam controlling software installed in most of its handsets. The users can himself control which numbers he/ she wishes to block.

Most of our handsets come with a pre-loaded spam blocking facility. This enables us to offer the service without charging the customer, any additional fees,

says S P Shukla, president (personal business), Reliance Communications.

Technology comes with its disadvantages too. There are serious queries from loan recovery agencies, direct selling companies and banks. ‘If a loan defaulter blocks all our numbers, we will not be able to get in touch with him? This will make it difficult to recover dues from unscurpulous customers. Even if we use 10 different lines to call defaulters, they can block all of them,’ says a loans recovery executive of a leading multinational bank.

Only time will answer whether the software is truly beneficial to users or it is just another marketing gimmick of cellular service providers.

The Bang & Olufsen Serenata mobile phone is also known as the Samsung SGH-F310. Serenata comes with 4GB of internal memory, a music player and display, which is placed below the dial pad. Serenata is good combination superb sound quality with all advanced features of mobile phone. With the Serenata, you can enjoy various kinds of music from pop and rock to classic music through stereo EarSet 3. The device comes with in-built stereo speaker system, which outstanding voice quality. Serenata also handles playback in various formats, including MP3, WMA, and AAC.

If you want unique music, then Serenata is bringing special ring tones, designed by Bang & Olufsen for you. You can receive various types of sound from wind chimes, triangle and different types of woods. The phone comes in two modes, one is phone mode, which comes in Blue, and other mode is music mode, which comes in Red. In addition Serenata comes with 2.26 color LCD display, designed by Samsung and with touch-sense technology. Other features of Serenata are given below:

1) The Samsung brings High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) connectivity to Serenata
2) The 3.5g connectivity of the devices allows you to enjoy the full multimedia features, including music and video, e-mail, MMS and instant purchase and download of music tracks.
3) The 4GB memory allows you to store digital music and data.

Image: Gizmodo

uClick has joined its hands with famous cartoonist Michael Jantze to launch the hit comic book, ‘The Norm’ on mobile phones. uClick is bringing the ‘The Norm’ with new mobile chapters added weekly and wallpapers on .

The main lead of the story is Norm who is designer working in advertising company while his wife, Reine is high-powered businesswoman. The story describes the early days of their relationship and marriage.

uclick Manager of Product Development Harold Sipe, stated that it is trill for company to bring daily strip on the web. The online cell phone platforms are a new way to discover the strengths of the comic strip art.

Image: GoComics

Garmin International Inc. a member of the Garmin group of companies, pioneers in design, manufacture and marketing of GPS technology-enabled navigation, communication and information gadgets and software for aviation, automotive, mobile, outdoor and marine markets, on October announced the launch of their latest software solution for mobile phones. This is a unique, completely-automated state-of-the-art solution that turns compatible GPS enabled mobile phone models into most-modern Garmin navigators.

The brand new software solution marketed under the name of Garmin Mobile XT is poised to give users Garmin software experience on their GPS enabled handhelds.

This is a direct response to the increasing trend of including GPS technology in modern handhelds by mobilephone manufacturers. Available as an optional upgrade, Garmin is hoping to bank on this new trend and make their offering a market success.

“This software seamlessly connects the phone’s built-in GPS with Garmin’s software so that customers can derive all the benefits of navigation anywhere in North America or Europe. Apart from providing seamless navigation, Garmin Mobile XT gives free access to Garmin Online(TM) where users have free access to dynamic content such as real-time traffic alerts and fuel prices,” says a Garmin spokesperson.

The software comes pre-loaded in a microSD card, with miniSD and standard SD card converter, and includes Garmin navigation software for United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Europe. Users can choose between Puerto Rico or Europe based on their requirements, but US and Canada is common for both packges.

Commenting on their latest offering soon after the launch Charles Morse, director of mobile and PND marketing, Garmin Inc said that their product was a revolutionary application, thus far unheard of in the mobile phone market. “Garmin Mobile XT is easy-to-use and affordable, with no monthly charges. It’s a one-time investment that gives customers full-featured GPS navigation on their smartphone whenever and wherever they need it, including areas outside of wireless network coverage,” said Morse.

There is no complicated installation or set up process to start using the Garmin Mobile XT, all that a user has to do is to insert the microSD card into the compatible mobile phone and the application launches immediately and loads Garmin’s “Where to?” and “view map” welcome screen. With a few button taps, customers can easily route to a specific street address or choose from millions of points of interest — such as restaurants, hotels, ATMs, and gas stations. In addition to turn-by-turn, voice prompted directions, users will also see their exact position on a detailed moving map.

Garmin Mobile XT comes pre-built with excellent features including travel guide support, topo maps and custom points of interest, route planning and saving and trip logs. Garmin Mobile XT also includes PeerPoints(TM), a powerful feature enabling users to send their position to any other phone as well as view and navigate to the location of other Garmin Mobile XT users.

Priced at $99, Garmin Mobile XT is currently available in the US and includes a complete NAVTEQ-provided map of all the 52 states. The European version of Garmin Mobile XT features map data for 30 countries of the continent. Pricing of the application for UK is not revealed yet.