India Magazine

India’s major CDMA and GSM mobile service provider ADAG Reliance Communications (RCOM) has tied up with Taiwan based mobile handset manufacturer HTC to sell HTC’s Android based smartphones in India. As per the partnership HTC’s new Android based smartphone HTC Wildfire will soon available in India.

HTC Wildfire is a mid-range smartphone running with Android 2.1 and soon will be upgraded to Android 2.2 version. Some major features of HTC Wildfire are Better browsing with full flash support, Recommend Apps directly from your phone, 3.2” 240x 320 QVGA Display, Android 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense, 512MB ROM, 384MB RAM and up to 32GB microSD support, 5 Mega pixel camera with flash, geo-tagging and auto focus etc

HTC Wildfire expected price in India : Rs 15,600/-

Currently HTC Wildfire is powered with Android 2.1 but soon expected to get the latest Android 2.2 or Froyo.

Reliance will also provide free 500 MB data access for first six months with this handset.

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Android is an operating system developed by Google based on the Linux Kernel – mainly used it mobile phones, tablet computers and netbooks. Initially Android Inc developed this mobile OS and later Google purchased it. Now Open Handset Alliance – a business alliance of 65 companies including Google, Intel, Dell, Motorola, Samsung, LG, T Mobile, HTC is now handing development works in Android platform.

Currently more than 1 lakh Android based smartphones sold per day worldwide and 50,000 Android based apps available. Blackberry OS is the leading OS in mobile platform developed by Blackberry and Android comes in the second position followed by Apple’s iOS.

At present most of the Android based devices works on Android 2.1. Latest (7th) version  of Android was released in March 2010 code named “FroYo” based on Linux Kernel 2.6.32.

Some important enhancement in Android 2.2 are

• Improved Speed with Dalvik JIT compiler (expected 2 to 5 times faster than 2.1)
• Install apps on SM memory card
• Faster Browsing experience with V8 javascript engine
• Improved security and numeric or alpha numeric password option
• Adobe Flash 10.1 and AIR support
• Apps Auto updating after download
• Synchronize music collections
• General Android OS speed, memory, and performance optimizations
• USB tethering and WiFi hotspot functionality
• Quick switching between multiple keyboard languages and their dictionaries
• Increased Microsoft Exchange support

Currently Android based smartphone and tablet manufacturers are either upgrading their devices to support Android 2.2 or releasing new devices based on it.

Another major version of Android (3.0) code named Gingerbread is expected by end of this year.

Gadgets, Software Android, Froyo, netbook, smartphone, tablet

HTC Legend is an android based smartphone from HTC with 3.2 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen, 5 mega pixel camera, 3G, GPRS, gravity sensor, Bluetooth, FM Radio etc

• 3.2” AMOLED (Active-Matrix OLED) capacitive touch screen with pinch-to-zoom capability, 320 X 480 HVGA
• Android 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense and 600 MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 Processor
• 512MB ROM, 384MB RAM and microSD support up to 32 GB
• micro USB, GPRS, EDGE and IEEE 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi
• 3G : Up to 7.2 Mbps download speed, Up to 2 Mbps upload speed
• Bluetooth® 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate
• 5 megapixel color camera, Auto focus and flash, Widescreen photo capture, Geotagging
• G-Sensor, Digital compass, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor
• Bookmarks, Calendar, Clock, Footprints, Friend Stream, Mail
• Photo sharing on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter
• Facebook Integration, Video sharing on YouTube
• AVRCP, GAP, GOEP, HFP, HSP, PBAP, SPP
• Lower ringer tone while pick up
• 300 mAh battery Up to 490 mins talk time and Up to 440 hours standby time
• GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Internal GPS antenna, Google Maps, HTC Footprints
• Internet sharing through USB
• A2DP for wireless stereo headsets

HTC Legend Price in India : Rs 23,500/-

HTC Android, HTC, htc legend, smartphone

Finally yesterday Google confirmed about its own mobile handset called Nexus One which is going to hit market by 2010. For past many weeks rumors were spreading about a possible handset from Google.

Nexus One being manufactured by HTC for Google and based on Android 2.1 with all latest Smartphone features.

As per some reports Google has already handed over some Nexus One phones to employees for testing.

With the launch of Nexus One Google is entering the Smartphone market dominated by Apple’s iPhone and Nokia.

Google is planning to sell the Nexus One in the open market like a normal phone with SIM card so that customer can change the operator any time by inserting a new SIM.

In US Apple iPhone comes with long term service contracts from service providers like AT & T. So the customer cannot change the provider till the contact ends. But this helps Apple to sell iPhone at subsidized rate.

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iPhone 3GS is the latest Internet and Multimedia enabled Smartphone from Apple Inc. 3GS is a modified version of the successful Apple iPhone 3G.

It was officially released in US and Europe on June 19, 2009. (Rumors are spreading now that Apple is working on Apple 4G).

Major Changes in iPhone 3GS

3M Camera with Video : The main difference in 3GS is the camera. Compared to the 2 Megapixel camera in 3G version now apple bundled a 3 Megapixel camera in 3GS with Autofocus,macro mode and auto white balance with VGA Video Recording @ 30fps and on-device video editing facility.

Voice Control : Voice Control recognizes the names in your Contacts and knows the music on your iPod.

Improved GPS : In addition to the A-GPS support in 3G, Iphone 3GS comes with Digital Compass and Google Maps which helps to find out the location and direction easily when you are on the move. 

3G Upgrade : Compared to HSDPA @ 3.6 Mbps in 3G now iPhone 3GS equipped with HSDPA @ 7.2Mbps even though we cannot expect this much speed in India soon.

Internal Memory : Apple iPhone 3GS comes with 16GB internal memory compared to 8GB in 3G.

Since iPhone 3GS contains a faster processer compared to its predecessor, Apple claims that the 3GS works 2X times fasters compared to 3G.

Price : in US iPhone 3GS 16GB is priced at $199 and 3GS 32GB at $299 (with a two-year contract).

Iphone 3GS Price in India : Now iPhone 3GS is available in many retail stores in India and the latest pricing as on Nov 09 is – Rs 42,000 for Iphone 3GS – 16 GB and  Rs 48,000 for Iphone 3GS – 32 GB.

Another great feature of Apple phone is App Store, which now contains around 1,00,000 Apps exclusively designed for iPhones.

In India Apple official partners for selling iPhones are Bharti Airtel and Vodaphone.

Definitely iPhone is a great device if you love gadgets but still it lacks many features compared to other top mobile phones available in the market like a low megapixel camera and  low resolution video recording.

For eg Sony Ericsson Idou comes with 12.1-megapixel camera with Xenon flash, Samsung i8510 Innov8 (8MP),Samsung i8910 Omnia HD (8MP Stills, HD Video at 720×480), LG KM900 Arena (5MP still camera and 720×480 video) and Nokia N97 (5MP).

But photos taken with iPhones are in top position in photo sharing sites like flickr, may be because of the convenience and popularity of iPhone.

Anyway mobile phones produce lowest quality photos compared to point and shoot cameras and DSLR cameras and megapixel is not the correct parameter to judge camera performance.

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