Android Hand Sets Launched by UFone

Ufone has formally stepped into Smartphone handset business. Earlier, Ufone has already tried selling low-end phone and we know the experience has been remarkable, except that the phones used to get unlocked.

Today, in a single go, Ufone has launched 3 android based handsets, which come with 30 MB of free Free GPRS Usage for 18, 15 and 6 Months based on phone model.
All three handsets are manufactured by Huawei and comes with network locked setting. Ufone claims that its Image Phone (U8800) is unlock-able.
Ufone has arranged hands-on for all the android handsets at its main service centers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad (F-7).
We managed to catch Mr. Waqar Nayyar, AM Devices and Special projects for Ufone, who briefed us about the Android handsets that Ufone launched today.

Ufone Image (U8800):

Ufone Image sports a 3.8-inch capacitive touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, Bluetooth, GPS / A-GPS and WiFi connectivity.
Ufone Image Android Phone is powered by a 800MHz Cortex-A8 processor with 512MB RAM.
It has 4 GB of internal memory and supports microSD / SDHC expansion.
Specifications:

• Android™ 2.2 (Froyo) OS
• 5 MP Auto Focus Camera with LED flash
• 3.8” full touch screen supporting auto rotation
• G-sensor
• 720p HD video capture and playback
• WIFI with portable hotspot support
• GPS/AGPS
• Google Software Suite
• Web browsing with Flash support
• 512 MB RAM + 4GB Memory
• Price: Price: Rs. 24,999
• Free 30 MB GPRS, Every month for 18 months

Ufone Verve (U8500):

Ufone Verge runs on the Android operating system, and comes with a music and video player supporting H.264, H.263, MP4, eAAC+, WMA and MP3 file types.
This model sports a 262K color touchscreen measuring 3.2-inches; you also get features such as an Optical trackpad, Accelerometer sensor, Bluetooth, 3G and a memory slot for up to 32GB MicroSD cards.
Specifications:

• Android™ 2.1 OS
• 3.2” full touch screen
• 3.2 MP Camera
• Google applications
• G-Sensor
• Optical Trackpad
• FM Radio
• GPS/AGPS
• Price: Rs. 15,499
• Free 30 MB GPRS, Every month for 15 months

Ufone Ideos (U8150):

We are familiar with Huawei Ideos, which is now brought by Ufone as well. Ufone says it is offering Black Ideos, which is otherwise not available in Pakistan. In addition, Ufone is giving away one free casing with all Ufone Ideos (until stock lasts).

• Android™ 2.2 (Froyo) OS
• 2.8” full touch screen
• Micro SD Card support upto 16 GB
• G-Sensor
• GPS/AGPS
• Google Software Suite
• Price: Rs. 11,999
• 30 MB Free GPRS for 6 months

Russian Wooden Mobiles

If every country had it’s own type of cellphones, Russian ones could look like this. It could be made of wood which is cheap and is available everywhere in Russia, it has simple functions like call and bye, it would be made in Finland cause everyone in Russia knows good phones are made in Finland (like Nokia) and one additional option is a must – a beer bottle opener from the backside of the phone – very handy!



 One Russian man builds new cases for mobile phones from apple tree wood. He fully disassembles the new devices and carve a piece-of-art wooden cases for them, each small part gets its own wooden case – the antenna, the sim-card, the battery.

A disassembled phone…





A battery is hidden inside a wooden bar.



A sim-card comes in the smaller bar..



And antenna is also… wooden. And the author believes that sooner or later gadget manufacturers wood turn to wood too.

Wooden Cell Phone Charger

We’ve mentioned these wooden cell phones made in Russia before, but now there is a charger that could fit it well by design, it’s below:





Actually this charger was used by Chechen troops hiding in woods without electricity they were using such devices to charge their phones.



NOKIA WOODEN MOBILE

Earthfirst titles a post " Nokia Cell Phone Made of Sustainably Harvested Wood", thinks it a lovely idea and quotes Cellphone Beat, which writes in Nokia goes green with wooden body phone " This Nokia eco-friendly concept flaunts a wooden body made from sustainable timber. The design features an 8-megapixel camera, bluetooth, speaker and a Symbian S60 Operating System."

Cellphone Beat continues: "Mobile phones with metallic bodies, which in the designer mode are even seen studded with diamonds and crystals, will have an environment-friendly competitor, if the eco-friendly wooden Nokia concept is realized sometime in the distant future. The natural soulful look of the phone, fitted with advanced technical features, will make it the most sought after device by environmentally-conscious, cell phone users, looking for a phone that does not contaminate the environment with its toxic elements." and links back to Concept Phones, which writes in Nokia 8 Megapixel Cameraphone Concept, Designed by Nokia’s Eco-Team: Yes, the device is branded Nokia, but the details are extremely scarce… 
 
The handset looks more like a camera than a phone to me, but it’s equally hot. Turns out that it features Bluetooth, Symbian S60, a speaker and tons of eco-friendliness. This concept phone is made of wood from sustainable forests, so Mother Nature won’t suffer as you take your pics with the aid of the handset."
Concept Phones links back to its source on Flickr which is titled "Nokia eight mega pixel phone (concept phone by Nokia's eco-team)" and the only copy is "The first Nokia eight mega pixel phone? I guess we'll have to wait some time for that... Only a concept made of wood from sustainable forests at this stage but fun anyway. "


hmm, that pattern of dimples looks awfully familiar. could Singgih Kartono be in a joint venture with Nokia, carving sustainable phones in Malaysia?
So from one line of commentary under two Flickr photos by a guy from Birmingham who appears to have visited Helsinki we end up with a hundred websites blooming with Nokia's new green eco-phone with tons of eco-friendliness from sustainably harvested wood. A cautionary tale of broken cellphone.

Nokia E7 Review And Specifications

Business as usual for the Eseries is a cliché – thank you very much. But the kind that makes the world feel right. The Nokia E7 could’ve been just another Eseries phone. Oh well, that wasn’t meant to be. The latest is implicitly the greatest but, in the case of the E7, the latest may simply be the last.

Symbian is just about to be knocked off the top-spot as the market-leading smartphone platform. Worse yet, while loyal users are still sitting on a fence about replacing their E71/E72s Nokia is deciding whether to euthanize Symbian. Question marks have been hanging over the platform’s approach to touchscreen since day one. And now it’s got WP7 at its very doorstep. It’s the worst of times for the Nokia E7. But it’s up to it to show that the Eseries are still open for business.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Penta-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA
• Anodized aluminum unibody
• 4" 16M-color ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
• Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display
• 8 megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash
• 720p video recording @ 25fps
• Symbian^3 OS
• 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 256 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• microHDMI port 720p TV-out functionality
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
• Digital compass
• 16GB of on-board storage
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
• DivX and XviD video support
• Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS, FM transmitter
• microUSB port with USB On-the-go
• Flash and Java support for the web browser
• Stereo Bluetooth 3.0
• Good quality audio
• Smart and voice dialing
• Office document editor preinstalled

Main disadvantages

• Symbian^3 is still behind Android and iOS usability standards
• Ovi store content is inferior to Android market and App Store
• Fixed-focus on an 8 megapixel camera is just wrong
• Camera interface is decidedly outdated
• Battery is not user-replaceable
• No microSD card slot

Now, Nokia reconfirmed their commitment to Symbian in the short-term, but that doesn’t mean much. If the platform is to be scrapped, users will learn it the hard way when regular updates stop coming in. Occasional bug-fixes is the best they can hope to get. And good software support is among of the main reasons why people still choose Nokia.
However, how much short-term can stretch depends on the success of the current Symbian^3 devices. So if the Nokia E7 does at least as well on the market as the N8, it might as well buy the platform a few extra years.
Nokia E7 is basically a larger N8, trading the camera bulk for a a larger and better display and a full QWERTY keyboard. To be honest though, when we reviewed the N8 it was mostly the camera we were delighted with. Then, that was five months ago and the bar is set higher now.
The Nokia E7 certainly won’t have an easy ride throughout this review. Let’s see how it handles the pressure.

General	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100
	Announced	2010, September
	Status	Available. Released 2011, February

Size	Dimensions	123.7 x 62.4 x 13.6 mm, 104.9 cc
	Weight	176 g

Display	Type	AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	360 x 640 pixels, 4.0 inches
		- Nokia ClearBlack display - QWERTY keyboard - Multi-touch input method - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate - Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display

Sound	Alert types	Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

Memory	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Detailed, max 30 days
	Internal	16 GB storage, 256 MB RAM, 1 GB ROM
	Card slot	No

Data	GPRS	Class 32
	EDGE	Class 32
	3G	HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
	Bluetooth	Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0, USB On-the-go support

Camera	Primary	8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, fixed focus, dual-LED flash, check quality
	Features	Geo-tagging, face detection
	Video	Yes, 720p@25fps, video stabilization, check quality
	Secondary	Yes, VGA

Features	OS	Symbian^3 OS
	CPU	680 MHz ARM 11 processor, Broadcom BCM2727 GPU
	Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS
	Games	Yes + downloadable
	Colors	Dark Grey, Silver White, Green, Blue, Orange
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support; Ovi Maps 3.0
	Java	Yes, MIDP 2.1
		- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - Digital compass - TV-out (720p video) via HDMI and composite - Dolby Digital Plus via HDMI - MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA player - MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player - Voice command/dial - Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Video/photo editor - Flash Lite 4.0 - Voice memo/dial - Predictive text input

Battery		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1200 mAh (BL-4D)
	Stand-by	Up to 432 h (2G) / Up to 480 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 9 h (2G) / Up to 5 h (3G)

Misc	SAR US	0.93 W/kg (head)     1.23 W/kg (body)
	SAR EU	0.56 W/kg (head)

LG Chocolate Touch VX-8575 Phone probably the best phone ever

Some of people never try LG Chocolate Touch VX-8575 Phone. This happen because they never knew what is best features in the phone.
Only the owner of the phone know the truth of LG Chocolate Touch VX-8575. I’m very hard to please, and I also have owned two other LG music phones but didn’t liked either of them. This phone is unique: it’s the best phone I’ve ever owned.
It has every feature I need in a phone, in a beautiful package that is very user-friendly.
Simple to use to master and simple to operate. The touch screen is logical and is easy to navigate without ever looking at the manual. I simply wish I bought it thru Amazon and not VZW website. I’d have saved $$$. One drawback: This doesn’t appear to be compatible with my Mac. I cannot download songs from my iTunes to the phone. But I’ve my iPod for music, and really didn’t need the phone to play music.
- Great battery life
- Great quality of sound
- Good speakerphone
- A 3.5mm audio jack
- FM radio
- Music player that has a well-designed user interface
- Great photo and video viewer
- USB data cable integrated (!)
- The ability to plug-and-sync automatically, even with non-Rhapsody music players(!) such as Windows Media Player or MediaMonkey (which supports podcasts

Smartphones to run operators into the red in 3 years

Rocketing smartphone use could drive mobile operators into losses in three years unless they rapidly adopt technology to capture more revenue from data services, according to a US network company.
Rising investment costs to handle exploding data traffic combined with lower revenue per unit of data could begin to drive some operators into the red in as soon as two years, Tellabs said it calculated based on independent analyst data.
"Carriers can spend themselves bankrupt well before users run out of hunger for capacity," said Tellabs chief executive Rob Pullen.
"Our study shows that simply adding dumb capacity is unsustainable. To avoid the 'end of profit', carriers must bring intelligence to their networks -- it is critical to carrier survival," he was quoted as saying in a statement.
A number of industry players expect mobile data traffic, driven mostly by smartphones, to nearly double each year for the next several years.
While operators are investing heavily to add capacity and roll out fourth-generation networks, they are having difficulty earning money from data transfer and forecasts see falling revenue per unit of data transferred if current trends continue.
Dozens of companies such as Tellabs are offering mobile operators solutions to manage network traffic, reducing needed investments and opening possibilities to capture more revenue through priority services.
"Mobile carriers face a stark choice about their business models: it's either the smart mobile Internet or an unsustainable dumb-pipe business," said Vikram Saksena, Tellabs' chief technology officer.
Tellabs' findings come days before the mobile industry holds its annual gathering in Barcelona, where a smartphone-driven boom in data traffic overwhelming networks and capturing revenue from data are set to be at the top of the agenda.
Tellabs did not analyse specific mobile operators, but used a model that generalised costs and revenue structures in three major regional markets.
It found that operators in North America were most vulnerable to changes wrought by mobile Internet and that some could plunge into unprofitability as soon as the beginning of 2013, others at the end of that year based on median cost and revenue assumptions.
For developed Asia-Pacific markets, operators would enter the red from the third quarter of 2013 to the third quarter of 2014.
Western European operators are forecast to enter unprofitablity from the beginning of 2014 or 2015.

Canada vows no limits on Internet downloads

Canada's industry minister vowed Thursday to overturn a regulatory ruling that effectively put an end to small Internet service providers offering unlimited downloads.
"It is unacceptable that this decision stands and we will reverse this decision," Industry Minister Tony Clement told the House of Commons.
"It is important to protect consumers, innovators and creators, as well as small and medium-sized businesses," he said.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, ruled last week that telecommunications giant Bell can charge wholesalers that lease bandwidth on its network based on usage.
Many of these smaller service providers offered their customers unlimited Internet access at set rates, relying on bandwidth Bell and other big operators are required to lease to them.
Major telecommunications firms Bell and Telus, as well as cable companies Rogers, Shaw and Videotron do not offer unlimited plans and Bell suggested those offered by smaller service providers were congesting its networks.
Nearly 360,000 Canadians signed an online petition calling for the decision to be overturned, fearing it could lead to higher prices as consumers download more and more data such as high resolution movies or play games online.
Earlier CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein defended the ruling, telling a parliamentary committee: "Ordinary Internet users should not be made to pay for the bandwidth consumed by heavy users."
He noted that a very small percentage of consumers are heavy Internet users.
According to the CRTC's Communications Monitoring Report, Canadians used on average 15.4 gigabits per month in 2009.
Likening the Internet to a public utility, von Finckenstein added the CRTC's view remained "that usage-based billing is a legitimate principle for pricing Internet services."
Clement told reporters he felt the CRTC's ruling "would have a huge impact on consumers and would hurt small businesses, would hurt innovators and creators."
He said he understands that bandwidth capacity is a problem, but usage-based billing "is the wrong way to do it."
The CRTC "must go back to drawing board," Clement also tweeted.

In Pakistan 40PC import duty on telecom equipment

 
Daily Times reports that the Central Board of Revenue has widthdrawn the 40 percent import duty imposed on telecom equipment.

In its latest Customs General Order 22/2006, the CBR had announced the removal of two telecom equipment from the list of other products that could be imported without paying a penny as duty, industry sources said.

Before this order only imports from China were considered duty free by CBR. Here are some interesting sections from the article that point to why only Chinese imports might have been allowed duty-free imports previously:

“It appeared that the government privileged the Chinese products on grounds that some of the Chinese companies are manufacturing telecom components locally and duty-free import would not hurt the local industry’s business scope.”

“Before the fresh order, only China’s ZTE remained the main beneficiary of the duty concession, which has been operating as vendor for the PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunication Company) for the past two years and fulfilling its almost all telecom equipment supply orders.”

“The PTCL has hired a Chinese firm to computerise its billing and customer care operations at a cost of Rs 1.8 billion almost a year ago,” said the source. “Under that contract, ZTE will be responsible to automate the whole system within 18 months and complete the task in accordance with international telecom standards.”