Nokia E75 and E55 Officially Announced

Nokia E75 will be available starting March 2009, for an estimated retail price of 375 Euros, in three color versions: black, red and a rather odd light-brown.

Nokia E55 is a slim candybar that doesn’t have a full QWERTY keyboard, but only a SureType-like one. Its strong point, however, is the fact that it can provide up to 28 days of stand-by.

As expected, Nokia has just gone official with the E75 Eseries smartphone at MWC 2009. Even more, the Finnish manufacturer has also announced a second new Eseries handset, namely the Nokia E55.

Both smartphones come with Nokia’s brand new email user interface, as well as with Nokia Messaging pre-installed. Also, the handsets feature A-GPS, Nokia Maps and on-board N-Gage.

According to the company, Nokia E75 is inspired from the old Nokia 9300 communicator, although, apart from the fact that both devices pack two keyboards (QWERTY and alphanumeric), there aren’t too many resemblances between them.

Nokia E55 will be available for purchase in the second quarter of 2009, for 265 Euros, before taxes and subsidies.

Nokia N86 8MP announced at Mobile World Congress

Nokia may have announced the bulk of its devices yetsterday but it’s held back on last announcement, marking the Nokia N86 8MP being announced at Mobile World Congress as the fifth device to be brought to our attention in less than 24 hours.

The Nokia N86 8MP is clearly designed to be the flagship model of this conference, packing in a host of features to hush even the harshest of critics. The slide-away keypad and ergonomic design look amazing, allowing it to be folded away in your pocket when not being used.

The full metal body of the Nokia N86 8MP is matched by the scratch resistant glass of the 2.6-inch AM OLED (240 x 320 pixels) screen, while the 8-megapixel camera boasts Carl Zeiss Tessar optics for the best image quality of any smartphone on the market.

The Nokia N86 8MP manages to pack everything we’d been hoping for in a high-end Nokia smartphone in a full-metal body that weighs an impressive 149g. The screen can be used in Portrait or Landscape mode and with the slide-out keypad makes for a compact and tidy device.

Battery life is high on the agenda, with Nokia expecting the N86 8MP to deliver up to 25 hours music playback or up to 7 hours of video or gaming. What’s more, because this is N-Gage supported device you’ll be able to make the most of the accelerometer and the best in 3D gaming.

Other key features include Assisted GPS (A-GPS), while the digital compass provides fast and accurate location information. Using Nokia Maps 3.0, you’ll be able to use the phone when driving or walking, with voice guided car navigation when driving or a pedestrian-optimised turn-by-turn system

Nokia Rolls Out 5630 XpressMusic Phone

Nokia has announced a new member of its Xpress Music series, the 5630 XpressMusic. The candy bar handset also doubles up as a smartphone as it comes with Symbian S60 OS and can also be used to send, receive emails, browse Internet etc. Along with that, music, multimedia, gaming, messaging services are also provided.

The new Nokia mobile comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera with dual LED flash for snapping pictures and videos and these can be uploaded easily to Web-based services like Flickr, Facebook etc. It also has a 2.2 inch TFT LCD having 240 X 320 pixels resolution. Gamers will also like it thanks to support for N-Gage gaming. It is also compatible with Nokia’s ‘comes with music’ service which gives a user access to millions of songs from different music labels. It also has dedicated music keys and a “Say and Play” function where the user can just speak the name of the song or artist and the handset will locate and play that track. Other features include EDGE/GPRS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 and a 3.5mm earphone socket. The phone with comes with a 4Gb microSd card and it will support upto 16Gb.

The phone is expected to be available in the second quarter and the price would be around $250.

Nokia N96 Review

Nokia’s has announced for the popular N95, the Nokia N96 is really features packed than ever before in an smart phone.

Nokia N96 just like the N95, the Nokia N96 is also a two-way slider. Slide the phone one way and you see a standard numeric keypad while if you slide it on the other side N96 comes up with media control keys.

It has the large 2.8″ 320 x 240 pixel display. Nokia N96 has a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash and Carl Zeiss lenses. Just below the the large screen to an enhance navigation, it includes a pad and control keys.

Nokia N96 comes with integrated aGPS (advanced GPS). Nokia improved the N96’s satellite navigation capabilities and they are now much better than the original N95.

Nokia N96 also includes the DVB-H digital TV receiver. This means that the N96 can be used to watch live broadcast TV over the air, if you have DVB-H coverage in your area.

Internal memory is a massive 16GB, expandable to 32GB using a microSD memory card. Nokia N96’s Multimedia capabilities are impressive. The Nokia N96 can play back MPEG-4, WMV9 (Windows Media), Flash Video and H.264 video, plus MP3, AAC and WMA audio types.

Apart from the Nokia N96 DVB-H receiver, and it also comes with a FM radio with RDS. The N95 has a standard 3.5mm jack plug for audio output plus TV output.

Samsung's iPhone clone

Samsung has unveiled a new mobile phone that features some of the sleek design and functions of Apple's much-hyped iPhone.

Samsung's Ultra Smart F700 will be exhibited at next week's 3GSM World Congress, a telecommunications exhibition in Barcelona, Samsung spokeswoman Sonia Kim said on Friday.

Mobile phone makers have been scrambling to match the iPhone, unveiled last month by Apple CEO
Steve Jobs. The device, which will be available starting in June, marks the iPod and
Mac computer maker's entry into the mobile phone business.

The ultra-thin iPhone is controlled by touching the screen a large touch screen, plays music, surfs the Internet, and runs a version of the Mac OS X operating system, among other functions.

Samsung said the Ultra Smart F700 also has a full touch screen as well as a traditional QWERTY key pad that slides out "for users who are not yet familiar with a touch-screen-only user interface."

The phone can also access the internet, play music, take pictures, show videos, handle e-mail and share photos, said Samsung, the world's third-largest manufacturer of mobile phone handsets.

Its third-generation (3G) technology is considerably faster than the iPhone's EDGE system, and its 5-megapixel camera outclasses the iPhone's 2-megapixel camera.

"The Ultra Smart F700 is a good example of how (the) mobile phone will evolve in the future," Choi Gee-sung, president of Samsung's Telecommunications Network Business, said in a statement on Thursday.

LG Chocolate coming to Telecom

Yesterday a mysterious "save the date" e-mail made the rounds. With words such as "...taste of new mobile phone for 2007", and "Technology has never been so delicious and decadent." on a rectangular brown box that reminds me of a chocolate bar I could only think of one thing:

Seeing that LG Chocolate is a 1.9 GHz CDMA PCS, 800 MHz CDMA (digital dual-band), I think this handset will be available through Telecom New Zealand.

Sink your teeth into the luxury and innovation of the Chocolate by LG – now available in black, white, red, and green. With its minimalist-inspired style and silky-smooth slide design, the Chocolate offers a rich array of features that include V CAST Music, a glowing, touch-sensitive keypad, superlative music/video player, luxurious 1.3 megapixel camera/camcorder, Bluetooth capabilities, and a microSD memory port for extra storage. Chocolate. LG’s newest mobile treat.

Nokia N82 Multimedia Computer/Mobile Phone

Make way for another 5 megapixel camera - umm, make that cameraphone - from Nokia. The new Nokia N82 is the latest “multimedia computer” optimized for photography, and the ability to share photos instantly. Boasting Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash, the N82 is the N95’s successor. The phone also features A-GPS and comes pre-installed with Nokia Maps. Depending on your location, you will also have an option to purchase free voice-guided navigation as a trial.

The N82 apparently takes great photos even in low light, and with a dedicated autofocus assist lamp, can easily replace another gadget in your backpack. Add to it the already popular high-quality video recording and you have one converged device with the N82. A 2GB microSD memory card is supplied with the phone - good for 900 hi-res photos or about 84 minutes of video.

With Wi-Fi support, you can conveniently upload all your photos onto the many, many online communities. A new 3D multimedia menu is now available, and the phone features an orientation sensor that switches the UI between portrait and landscape