Note: This thread would be updated as the event happens, don’t forget to check back:

• Threads: You can toggle between messages, chat up, and Windows Live Messenger, all in the same conversation

• Groups: Contact groups Tiles custom Live turns to see the latest statuses and quickly send a message to an email or instant message to the entire group, directly from the Start screen

• Better integration with social networks: Twitter and LinkedIn contacts are integrated into the card and can include up Mango check-in, also have available one nine facial detection software that makes it easy tagging your photos or posting them on the Internet

• Linked inbox: More email accounts in a secure inbox, conversations are organized so you can view the most recent mail

• Hands-free messaging: Built-in speech-to-text and text-to-speech, which allows writing messages and chat hands-free

• Connect App: By connecting and integrating applications on their search results in Windows Phone Hubs, including Music and Videos and Pictures, applications are visible when and where needed.

• Improved Live Tiles: You can get updated information without requiring applications to be open. Live Tiles are now more dynamic and can store more information.

• Multitasking: Applications can be rotated quickly and at the same time, others may run in the background, while retaining the performance and battery duration

• Internet Explorer 9: The power of a PC browser-based IE9 support for HTML5 and support for hardware acceleration

• Recognize local (Local Scout). Providing local results and recommendations for nearby restaurants, shops and suggested activities, present in a user-friendly guide

• Bing for Windows Phone: More ways to search the Internet, location based searches, including Bing Vision, Voice and Music Search, so that decision making is easier

• Quick Cards: When searching for a product, movie, event or place we provide a summary and relevant applications

Standby for more updates on WP7 as event proceeds.

We write latest and greatest in Tech Guides, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Android,  Open Source, Latest in Tech, subscribe to us @geeknizeron Twitter OR on Facebook Fanpage:

The developers of the mobile phone placed most emphasis on the high quality multimedia playback, such as music, and video. Central to this emphasis is the camera, which is located on the back of the phone, situated behind a slider. The camera itself features a xenon flash, for increase photo quality in darker conditions.

Even in the Era where Android and iPhones compete, Sony Satio has a unique identity of its own.

On the side of the handset, there is a shutter button, a button that allows switching between still and video modes, and a rocker switch for zooming in and out. There is a sliding lock button and a covered MicroSD card for increased memory on the opposite side. The front of the phone is dominated by a 3.5”, 16:9 ratio 360 x 640 TFT resistive touchscreen, and there’s an additional front facing camera for video calling, and video conferencing. At the bottom of the touchscreen are three small buttons, green, white, and red.

In terms of software, the Satio comes equipped with the Symbian OS 9.4 operating system, which has been designed by the Symbian Foundation. The smartphone also uses the PlayNow service, which is Sony Ericsson’s mobile content platform (part of the manufacturers new Entertainment Unlimited service). Connectivity has also been heavily developed for the Satio, which is Wi-Fi-enabled, and has a GPS chip for navigation and location-based services, there’s also full support for Flash (for video playback).

The design of the device is based upon solidity, and its build quality is reminiscent of Sony Ericsson’s metal based feature phones of the past. The camera slide is smooth, which is similar to other high-end Cybershot devices, and the Satio is not much larger than any other Sony Ericsson high-end smartphones, unlike the Xperia X10. Additional features include a Walkman, Cybershot, and Java gaming ability.

For great deals on this mobile phone and others check out Phones4U.

iPhone vs. Sony Satio Specs

For more Mobile, iPhone, iPhone apps, Android, Gaming, Tech News, catch us @taranfx on Twitter.

ThinkContacts is an app for the Nokia N900’s Maemo platform, which is able to dial a contact using only the power of thought.

Originally, the idea is to create an app for “Motor disabled person”  to enable them to make phone calls to a desired contact by himself/herself by using power of thought, alone. But if it gives good results, it can be made available to masses.

How it works

The app uses a special headset to read users’ brainwaves. These brainwaves provide brain activity giving valuable information which helps in determining determine which of three contacts on the screen the user wants to call.

At this stage, app is at its early stages, and has high probability of achieving high accuracy. As per the official Wiki:

“The user controls the selection of the desired contact by controlling his/her level of meditation and attention. If the user’s level of attention is higher than 70% the software switches to the next contact in the list, if it is lower than 30% the software switches to the previous, otherwise the current contact will not be switched. If the user’s meditation level is higher than 80%, the software makes a phone call to the contact located at the center of the screen.”

Future of Input is Mouseless, it can be even that Intel will put chips in your brains, after all, Scientists are pretty near to simulating a Brain.  Fascinnating, isn’t it? Watch the video:

We write about Google, Twitter, Open Source, Programming, Web, Apple, iPhone,Android and latest in Tech @taranfx on Twitter or by subscribing below:

As per the report from AC Neilson, Android is rising way more quickly when comapred to iPhone. Android adoption is more serious with first time smartphone users. Google phones accounted for 27 percent of U.S. smartphone salesg leaving Apple iPhone down at 24%.

Related: iPhone 4 vs. Android – Why Apple has lost it

But Android isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon: Research firm Canalys estimates that Android handset sales grew 886 percent worldwide from the year ago quarter.

Its no brainer to say that Android really began to mature over the past year with Android 2.1 release, and the adoption had been rocket fast, since then. One of the most dominant reasons is Open Handset Alliance which includes choice of manfacturers: Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC, and others. Android may have brought little indirect profits to Google but surely brought fortune to HTC, Motorola. Motorola wirless division survived from a near bankruptcy state, HTC revenues were up 66 percent in June from a year ago.

Ironically, fastest growing smartphone OS doesn’t dwell the Most satisfied users. Nielson found that 71 percent said that they would buy an Android phone again. That sounds like a high loyalty rating, but it falls noticeably short when asking iPhone owners about their next handset — 89 percent are happy with iOS4 and plan to buy a future Apple handset. Fan following? Not really!

However, smartphone leader, RIM owns 33% of the smartphone market, and 50% of the current BlackBerry owners surveyed don’t want another RIM device in the Future. Blackberry 6 OS might slow down the falling state of Blackberry, but, it would still not convince everyone.

Even though Apple and Google are generation ahead of Nokia’s Phones, Nokia still beats both of them in sales.

Nokia saw a 41 percent growth rate over the prior year’s second quarter sales, which sounds positive, but when compared to Android’s 886 percent gain, Nokia’s growth pales in comparison. Android is catching up fast, but the market share difference is still Huge. Hopefully, more users move to a smarter choice, sooner.

Related: iOS 4 vs Android 2.2 – War is Over

For latest Google, Open Source, iPhone, Android, Tech news @taranfx on Twitter or subscribe below:

Everything is revamped and they call it “Flow UI”.

There have been rumors that the first volley of BlackBerry 6-powered devices showing off goodies likes aggregated social network integration, universal search, and — of course — the all-new WebKit-based browser, which would bring Android, iPhone identical browsing experience to Blackberry OS. RIM has only showcased on Multitouch devices, no one knows what happens to their popular form factor that made them famous – -wide screen, with wide keyboard.

In addition to the new fluid user interface, the video below illustrates a few of the new applications and features in BlackBerry 6 that are designed to provide users with a mobile experience that is fun and approachable, yet extremely powerful.

Watch the Official sneap peak video

For latest Google, Open Source, iPhone, Android, Tech news @taranfx on Twitter or subscribe below:

Yesterday at  Motorola Droid X release with Verizon, Eric Schmidt announced Launch of Android froyo and industry adoption of Android as high as 2 phones per second.

Android Froyo brings lots of new goodies, best one being the speed improvements with Android Dalvik JIT.

With some awesome features highlighted in iOS 4 vs Android 2.2, War seems to be Over!

Few Android Facts:

• Over 160,000 Android devicesAndroid devices activated per day. In Google’s words that’s nearly 2 devices per second .
• There are over 60 Android devices, through a network of 21 OEMsOEMs , 59 carriers in 49 countries.
• Android devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured.
• Android 2.2 Froyo is now being open-sourcedopen-sourced and made available to device manufacturers !

Froyo is now Open sourced and here is some outline of upgrades from Google:

• Migration to Android Froyo: In order to make it easier for device manufacturers and custom system builders to use Froyo, we’ve restructured our source tree to better separate closed-source modules from open-source ones. We’ve made many changes to the open-source code itself to remove unintentional dependencies on closed-source software. We’ve also incorporated into the core platform all the configuration files necessary to build the source code of Android Open-Source Project on its own. You can now build and boot a fully open-source system image out of the box, for the emulator, as well as for Dream (ADP1), Sapphire (ADP2), and Passion (Nexus One).
• Device Support Speaking of device support, Google also open-sourced several additional hardware-related libraries that had been closed-source in previous releases, which will open the door to more contributions. Some examples are the recovery UI code for Dream, Sapphire and Passion, and the interface between the media framework and Qualcomm chipsets.

We are expecting to hear from news about the Android 2.2 compatibility from major Android handset makers like HTC, Motorola, Samsung !

For latest Google, Open Source, iPhone, Android, Tech news @taranfx on Twitter or subscribe below:

ARM currently controls a big piece of the mobile processing market, but Intel is attempting to make a comeback.

To give you an estimate of the power of the new processor, Intel demonstrated Quake 3 running lightning fast (100fps) on one of their custom smartphones powered by Atom-Z (Moorestone), a 45nm chip.

Without a doubt, such performance can also be used to offer flawless smooth HD video output, multitasking apps, and media-rich web browsing giving a desktop-equivalent experience.

Strong on Specs

Chip Power: They run from upto 2.0 GHz and have between 0.65 and 2.0 W TDP rating respectively that can dip down to 0.01 W when idle.

Multithreading, Caches, FSB: It features a 2-issue simultaneous multithreading, 16 stage in-order pipeline with 32 KB instruction L1 and 24 KB data L1 caches, integer and floating point execution units, x86 front end, a 512 KB L2 cache and data transferred at 533 MHz FSB (front-side bus).

Fabrication: The design is manufactured in 9M 45 nm high-k metal-gate CMOS and housed in a 441-ball µFCBGA package

Intel Atom Z vs. ARM Cortex

Intel claims that its latest Atom Z is a better option than popular ARM processors. As per the chip giant, Power consumption is 50x less than current Atom chips, and added advantage being for developers: ” No porting required”, all x86 apps would run as is.

Initially, the Atom Z will be seen in two variants: A 1.5GHz for smartphones, and a 1.9GHz model for Tablet devices, and both platforms run PowerVR 3D graphics acceleration.

Atom-Z Availability

Intel says devices will appear on the market in the 2ndhalf of 2010.

For latest Open Source, iPhone, Android, Hardware, Tech news @taranfx on Twitter or subscribe below:

As I write this, there are only couple of hours left till all those phones meet the graveyard. However, MSAI wants peeople to get their IMEI registered, a way to control the legality of Phone identification and usage upto the standards. Owners of the Chinese-made handsets are crowding authorized outlets to get the IMEI on their handsets.

As per the Times of India:

MSAI feels that even by conservative estimates, at least 2.1 crore [20.1 Million] mobiles may not get GII (Gemmological Institute of India) by Monday and are bound to go dead. NVS Prasad, who handles GII programme for MSAI in Bangalore, said the crowd has been overwhelming during the last week. However, no one is sure as to what next for Chinese handsets that will go dead after the deadline is past.

Overall Feel

The phone, looks large, but is actually not that bad to hold in the hand, thanks to pocket-friendly dimensions of 120.5x 67×11 mm.

HTC HD2 vs. iPhone

The phone is smooth and rubberized on the back, and feels nice to hold. It slips nicely into the pocket as well, thanks to slim design with 0.43 inches  thickness.

Specs

On the Technical side, Phone is powered by Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon mobile processor, the same that powers Sony Ericsson X10, X3.  Like HTC Hero, it also offers an HTC Sense user experience but on Windows Mobile 6.5 instead of Android. Other Specs include, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, a 5-megapixel camera with Flash, a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Multitouch, Apps & User Interace

Powered by a good 1Ghz processor, I expected it to do good with UI and Multitouch. And I must admit, I was deeply impressed. Opening applications was delight, they opened quickly, unlike other Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. The UI is amazing, especially the weather app. Photos loads quickly and is very responsive.  The Opera browser comes inbuilt that replace dirty Mobile IE. As a result,  websites rendered well and were available to scroll around, and pinching and zooming reacted almost instantly, this proves the capacitive touchscreen was a great decision by HTC. The experience is very similar to that of iPhone. But, because of a larger display, I might actually endup rating it better than iPhone.

Websites actually looked glorious on the phone. And the good part, it supports Flash. The HTC Sense UI experience is far better than HTC Hero. It’s now more realistic and smoother multitouch. Apps like Facebook, Weather, outlook, blah are integrated well and works like charm.

Here are few Videos from Other Sources that will give you better idea:

Verdict:

Personally, I have never liked Windows Mobile phones unless they are powerful. This one is indeed top of the line, with rich set o features and possibly the best Windows Mobile Phone ever created. this Phone Proves that HTC has ripped off bad parts of windows Mobile and replaced them with custom solutions with touchFlow and SenseUI. Overall, we’re very impressed especially with the great Visuals, UI, High resolution, large Display that does multitouch too. How Does it compare to Motorola Droid vs. iPhone? We will compare 3 of them soon.

HTC HD2 is already Launched in Europe, Asia, and and US too.

I would highly recommend one.

Don’t forget to subscribe to us below:

The First Else phone comes from a Israeli company Emblaze Mobile, supposed to hit stores next year.

On the Specs part, Phone has 3.5-inch (480 x 854-pixel) touchscreen display, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and 5-megapixel camera (capable of 480p video at 30fps). The device looks like to be powered by  Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor, which means it would run at a clock around 550Mhz. (same as Motorola Droid). As far as battery goes, it’s quiet good one: 1450mAh battery. Other specs include:  32GB internal memory, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, HSDPA 3G and EDGE (no CDMA) and GPS.

Have a look at his Else Futuristic UI:

The OS is based on Linux-based, and most of the navigation goes with one-thumb wheel. The advantage is  that it avoids digging through menus. operating system is Access Linux Platform, which was announced back in 2006. but has never appeared on any actual device on the market.

It seems that other Linux-based mobile operating systems like Android and webOS will soon have a new competitor.

As per the manufacturer:

ELSE INTUITION™ is a complete mobile platform developed by ACCESS and Emblaze Mobile. Thanks to the combination of ACCESS Linux Platform v3.0 and an advanced user interface engine, jointly developed by Emblaze Mobile and ACCESS, ELSE INTUITION™ delivers a highly compelling and differentiated user experience, coupled with state-of-the-art hardware, accelerated 2D/3D graphics and elegant transition effects. ELSE INTUITION™ takes advantage of ACCESS Linux Platform v3.0 to provide advanced flexibility and configurability, enabling users to run multiple applications simultaneously, switching between them with ease. All data and content, including contacts, appointments, videos and photos can be rendered anywhere, not just within a single dedicated application, giving users faster, easier and more consistent access to their information

At this time there is no word on pricing, availability. But you can subscribe to us below, and we will make sure you will be aware to the tip.

Here comes the hyped and long waited Google’s Mobile OS 2.0. This software is expected to officially debut first on Verizon’s Motorola Droid smartphone next month.

Android: HTC Desire, available before Black Friday. There are already some rumors on this. It could be called Hero too.

Others:
• RIM BlackBerry Curve 2, before Black Friday
• RIM BlackBerry Storm 2, before Black Friday
• Casio C731 Rock, mid-November
• Casio C741 Brigade, late October
• HTC Imagio, on October 20
• Motorola V860 Barrage, “soon” (it’s already available online in Verizon)
• Motorola Tao or Droid, available before Black Friday.
• Samsung Saga 2, early November
• Samsung Omnia 2, early November
• Pantech TXT8030 Razzle, early October

• LG VX8575 Chocolate Touch, first or second week of November

Here is the original source:
via Gizomodo

In reality, the new W880 is currently a smartphone which more of a real digital camera.

Here are the detailed Specs:

3x optical zoom, in addition to digital.

Dial mode photos, videos, macros, etc.

Face detection for still photos

Xenon Flash just like Pixon 12

Video:  720p HD 30 fps (Awesome)

Display: 3.3-inch WVGA AMOLED Touchscreen

Cellular network: UMTS/HSDPA UMTS / HSDPA

Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

GPS

microSD card slot

Possibly will ship with Windows Mobile 6.5 powered by an ARM processor clocked around 750Mhz.
This phone has really remarkable specs. The best camera phone ever. . When we don’t know yet is the price and markets in which it will be sold. It’s scheduled for 2010.

Bookmark the page and check back for further updates.
Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to RSS for further updates.

Now, Google has made the latest Android SDK available, introducing a complete view of all the new features that “Donut” (Android 1.6) will provide.

Google had been revealing future plans as they proceeded, this is the first time they have been presented to the public bundled into a single package.

What’s New – Feature Breakdown

Android donut search home screen

New Android Market- This update, as mentioned earlier, completely redesigns the Android Market. It features new Top Apps pages, adds screen-shots to app descriptions, adds more intelligence to searches, thereby  improving the overall shopping experience.

Custom Gesture Support – A new tool in the SDK called GestureBuilder gives the developer the power to create entire libraries of new app-specific gestures. This will encourage developers to leverage Full MultiTouch int he new applications.

Better Camera App: The native camera app has been overhauled in design and get’s new features. User can now switch between still and video camera modes easily, and look through the gallery. Additionally, it’s faster, camera launches 39% faster, and there is 28% less time lag between consecutive shots.

Text-to-speech API- A multi-lingual speech engine called Pico made by SVOX is included in Donut. This was one of the earliest features shown off for Donut at Google I/O this year.

Previously, Google had removed the support of gesture control on Apple’s request. But now as they became offical Rivals, it’s here to compete.

CDMA networks- The CDMA mobile stack is now supported, in addition to the previous support for GSM. iPhone seriously lacks on this.

Universal Quick Search Box- Quick Search is like the iPhone’s “Spotlight” OS 3.x search. Quick Search Box framework lets users search through the phone as well as the Web, pulling up browser history, bookmarks, music, contacts and other data along with results drawn from the Internet.

Battery “fuel gauge”- This new feature lists the battery consumption of each running application and service, letting the user fully streamline his battery consumption.

VPN support- Google finally thought about Enterprise. Users can configure and connect to L2TP/IPSEC pre-shared key-based or certificate-based VPNs, L2TP only VPN, or PPTP only VPN. This is agreat move for Enterprise corporate customers.

Minor Kernel Upgrade: The Linux Kernel has been updated from 2.6.27 to 2.6.29, the OpenCore 2 media engine is now supported, as are a greater number of screen resolutions such as QVGA and WVGA, and new accessibility plugins such as tactile or aural feedback.

Google‘s Xavier Ducrohet today said, “You can expect to see devices running Android 1.6 as early as October. As with previous platform updates, applications written for older versions of Android will continue to run on devices with Android 1.6. Please test your existing apps on the Android 1.6 SDK to make sure they run as expected.”

Motorola is into Do or Die situation. With most of the departments already declared bankrupt and business shutdowns, Motorola stands ont he edge trying it’s last Hope:

After the roundup of layoffs, Motorola has finally laid down a plan- A Plan that could save the Company and the Brand. It’s unveiling Android devices, designed to turn around the company.

Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola, has had to revamp the company’s mobile portfolio. The biggest bet by Jha: Become the biggest supporter of the Android operating system.

For Motorola, the future of the handset unit rides on the Google’s Android OS. For Google, a wave of Android devices are about to hit the market. Motorola-Google could be the duo that gives Apple’s iPhone a run. So far, no one has reached upto iPhone’s level.

Jha delivered the keynote at GigaOm’s Mobilize conference. It’s available here via a LiveBlog.

And what do we get? A new Mobile CLIQ (via Gearlog)

Originally codenamed Morrison, the Cliq will be exclusively available on T-Mobile, Motorola has deemed the Cliq the “first phone with social skills.” The Cliq is aimed at the T-Mobile texting-enthusiatic crowd who came to the network for handsets like the Sidekick.

The phone features 3G connectivity, a 5-MP camera with 24 FPS video, and the “best-in-class HTML browser.” The device will be available internationally on a number of carriers including Orange, America Movil, and Telefonica.

The device is powered by Motorola’s Android skin, MotoBlur. The OS promises to sync together information across a plethora of social networks and other online services. MotoBlur features a number of “live widgets,” such as Social Status, which lets users update statuses across sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace.

More via Gizmodo
Software

Motoblur logs into all your different networks and accounts, from mail to Twitter to Facebook to anything in between, serving you the content in a single feed, on the phone’s front page. Widgets pop up on the main screen, allowing you to respond to messages and updates with one click. It will be included in future Motorola Android-based smartphones. Here’s a summary of features:

• Customizable home screen with Happenings, Status and Messaging widgets deliver status posts and more
• Customizable RSS news widgets keeps you up to date
• Messaging with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter Direct Messaging
• Address book synchs personal and work contacts, and connected social networks
• Caller ID shows caller’s name, number, status and profile pic
• Photosharing in MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa, Facebook

And if your cellphone gets stolen, you can automatically restore everything in a new phone—while remotely wiping all the information from the missing one.

Hardware

The 320×480-pixel 3.1-inch screen Motorola Cliq has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard with a D-pad. You know, for games. It also has a 5 megapixel camera, with autofocus and 24 and 30 frames per second video recording. They have included a 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as the usual 3G connectivity, and the obligatory integrated GPS with turn-by-turn directions.

Surprisingly, however, it doesn’t seem to have Wi-Fi connectivity. On the wireless department, apart from the 3G, it only has 2.0+EDR stereo Bluetooth. Bad, Motorola, bad! That’s not the only uh-oh point: It comes only with a 2GB MicroSD card as its only form of storage. Of course, you can always expand it to 32GB on your own. Maybe this will make it cheaper than the competition, but we don’t know yet, as pricing has not been disclosed yet.

It may not have Wi-Fi or internal storage, but it will come in two colors for the holiday season, winter white and titanium. Internationally, it will be called the Dext, or, as Motorola will surely put it, “MOTODEXT!!!!!”

Further Plans

Later, Jha is also likely to talk up Motorola’s Android devices at a Deutsche Bank conference Sept. 14.

As per Piper Jaffray analyst :

Our checks indicate two different Android smartphones will launch in the near future. We anticipate one model will launch for T-Mobile with a separate form factor launching for Verizon. Finally, we believe another unique product will launch for AT&T in Q110, and we anticipate this model could sell to several global carriers, including the Chinese market in time for Chinese New Year.

Device design to go along with Android will matter for Motorola, but another key theme is marketing.

Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdhry writes:

Contacts have seen the new Motorola Android Phone, and all feel the phone is extremely well designed, and probably may be a winner. Contacts tell us that it is slimmer than iPhone, capacitive touch screen seems more precise than iPhone and feels faster than iPhone. The native processing of code on Motorola is much faster than anything out there.

The Challenge

Motorola has to market the device correctly. Chowdhry guesses that Motorola will spend as much as $70 million on marketing. A year from now, Motorola will either be busy restoring its status as a mobile handset leader or just another company that files on chapter 11.

The Pixi, WebOS based smartphone,  is the thinnest ever phone from Palm. It’s 10% thinner than iPhone 3G S and 20% thinner than Pre.

Like the Pre, it also has a full QWERTY keyboard but rather than sliding, it’s bare open body. Other specifications include 8GB of onboard storage, a 2 megapixel camera equipped with flash, AGPS, a 2.63 inch capacitive display with a 320×400 pixel resolution, 3.5mm headset jack, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and…no WiFi.

Features include MicroUSB port (both data and charging), proximity sensor, light sensor, accelerometer, ringer switch, and the same 1150 mAh battery as found in the Pre. The Pixi uses a brand new Qualcomm processor: the MSM7627. The exact specifications of this chip are as of yet unknown. RAM figures are unknown too.

The Pixi comes in the candybar form factor, which makes it incredibly small, thin, and light: it’s 10.85mm thin, 111mm tall, and 55mm wide, and weighs in at a mere 99.5 grams.

The screen is capacitive multi-touch, smaller than that of the Pre (3.1″ 320×480) or that of the iPhone (3.5″ 320×480). The multitouch part extends below the screen into the gesture area (a prerequisite for the webOS, it seems), but the centre button of the Pre has been replaced by a gesture area tap. The lower resolution is no problem for the webOS and its applications, as it was designed from the start to handle different resolutions. The multitouch also appears to be slightly more responsive than on the Pre.

Design: video

It’ll also come in many different colors and designs as part of something called the Palm Pixi Artist Series, which will offer a selection of limited-edition back covers for the device. As far as price goes, since Pixi is Pre’s younger brother, it’ll probably be lower than $149.99 which is how much Sprint is currently asking for the Pre.
In a move reminiscent of the Pre launch, Palm has unveiled its second webOS mobile phone today, ahead of Apple’s music/iPod event. The Palm Pixi is a candybar incarnation of the Pre, but is clearly positioned below its big brother; smaller screen, and more worryingly, no wifi.

The keyboard sports better tactile feedback.

The Pixi will be available before the holidays… But only on Sprint for now. So, here we are, two webOS phones, tied to Sprint, and only available in the US and Canada.

But No WiFi and a smartphone? Some one is joking.

We know another XPERIA phone is coming, called X3 which will be running Custom UI Android.

This shouldn’t be much of a surprise for X2, as the upgrade is as predictable as the name would imply. The Xperia X1 ran Windows Mobile 6.1 and was actually the company’s first Windows Mobile device. It featured a unique “panel-based” touch interface, a QWERTY keyboard, a 3″ VGA touchscreen with handwriting recognition, and a 3.2 megapixel camera, 30 fps VGA video recording, and Memory Stick Micro (M2) storage up to 8GB.

The X2 has kept the Touchscreen/QWERTY slider design, bumped up to the newest Windows Mobile, kept the panel interface (though it now comes with 13 pre-loaded panels,) upgraded the camera to 8.1 megapixels, and ditched M2 in favor of MicroSD up to 16GB. It will come in two versions: both will support GSM/GPRS/EDGE and UMTS, but one model with support HSPA 850, and the other will support HSPA 900.

Later today, Sony Ericsson will publish the full specs in the Xperiances blog where we will get to find out (hopefully) what is powering this device and how much it will cost. The Xperia X1 is equipped with a respectable 528 MHz ARM 11/QDSP-5 and had a frightening Price of $799.

Will you buy it ?

The GD900 Crystal is a slider phone and features a 3-inch touch screen, with a hyped transparent keypad that lights up when opened. The keypad is a touch-sensitive controller which means you can use it to move through menus, navigate the Web, and even write using handwriting recognition.
LG has thrown in gesture support too. It looked to me like iPhone/iPod controls. You can launch applications with a swipe around the keypad. This includes multitouch, as does the main display, so you can pinch your fingers to zoom in to a photo or map.
If this is a touch-happy overload, you can also use it normally, to dial phone calls, and there’s vibrating feedback to let you know when you’ve hit the flat numbers.
Photos: Looking through the LG GD900 Crystal

So what’s the point of having two touch screens? The reasoning goes that if you’re basking in the glory of the GD900’s screen watching a video, for example–you don’t want to block the action by waving your sausage fingers over the screen to zoom or rewind. And it’s pretty freaking cool, too.
The GD900 uses the same S-class user interface we’ve seen on the LG Arena. One of our biggest complaints about the Arena was that the touch screen wasn’t as responsive as we’d like, but based on the phones we tried, it’s running with more vim and vigor on the GD900. The little spinning cube is still useless, but there are about five different ways to access each feature, and adding gestures means there should be a user-interface option for every user, if they can be bothered to learn them all.
We found gestures and handwriting recognition were accurate and responsive, and although we wouldn’t use it for long texts, we could see handwriting coming in handy when you want to enter a few words in a Web form without fiddling with predictive text on the alphanumeric keypad. Like the Arena, the transparent handset is no slouch when it comes to features. There’s also an 8-megapixel camera, expandable memory up to 32GB, Wi-Fi, and HSDPA for speedy Web surfing.
It’s not sure whether the phone will ship with a tempered glass keypad or a hard plastic one, we’re rooting for glass, although the plastic version we saw looked fine but either way, we’re looking forward to looking at stuff through it.
The see-though wonder will be available starting July for UK. It’s not yet available with any U.S. carriers, but consumers in the States should be able to buy it unlocked.

Checkout the video:

When this was done with iPhone, apple took some time to respond. It’s unclear at this point how Palm will respond. Over the weekend, Palm reportedly asked one developer forum to end discussions of how to hack the phone so a notebook PC could connect to it, via USB cable or wireless, and use the Pre as a cellular modem.

The Web site, Pre Dev Wiki, announced it had been “politely cautioned by Palm (in private, and not by any legal team)” that tethering talk would likely spark complaints from Sprint, the Pre’s sole U.S. carrier. Palm then “would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.”

Palm has not yet responded to an inquiry about this event, or about the company’s stance with regard to webOS hacking in general.

Palm seems to be making webOS updates mandatory, through automatic background downloads and a requirement that they be installed within a week of the download (apparently the phone can install the updates automatically after that), according to Nilay Patel at Engadet, who referenced Palm support documents. “Sure, we can understand why Palm would want all of its devices to be updated, and we know that a lot of webOS system foundations are in flux while the Mojo SDK is being finalized, but forced updates seem extremely heavy-handed to us,” he writes.

But in the meantime, Pre hacking has apparently become the principal entertainment for a sizeable number of folks. Some of them have managed to port a version of Doom, the classic PC-based first-person 3D shooter game, to the new Pre. That’s a big deal, says Eric Marthinsen, partner with Lexington, Mass.-based Agile Commerce, a custom software house that’s been working with Palm’s webOS and Mojo SDK.

“It does demonstrate that whoever got it working was able to interface with the system at a pretty low level,” he says. “I have seen Doom for the iPhone, but on the iPhone you have lower-level access, which is why there are a ton of 3D apps for it. The Pre doesn’t really have any 3D capabilities that are exposed through Mojo. I’m extremely eager to develop some 3D apps for it, so this is especially interesting to me.”

In fact, activating the Pre’s tethering may already be old hat. A poster at the Pre Central forum revealed a possible tethering workaround over the past weekend and it’s already circulated widely. Eric Nguyen, at the Is You Geeked Up blog, gives a detailed account of how to enable tethering with Bluetooth.

But, as Nguyen notes, this kind of work requires root access to Palm’s webOS, which turns out to be pretty easy, according to developers. Pre Dev Wiki has rooting instructions already for Windows and Mac OS X, once you’ve downloaded the entire webOS software image. A YouTube video shows a Pre being rooted in less than 40 seconds once everything is in place.

Among other things, rooting lets developers make use of 1,700 command line Linux programs that are part of the Optware project. Tim Carrol, at Palm Infocenter, posted a IRC transcript of his recent online chat with Rod Whitby, an Australian Linux developer who runs the NSLU2-Linux and Optware projects. Optware includes Web servers, protocol analyzers, compiler tool chains, and applications such as the Asterisk open source PBX and BitTorrent. All will run alongside Palm’s own programs without interfering with them or webOS, according to Whitby.

These are all command-line programs at present, until Palm makes public its Mojo software development kit, allowing GUI front-ends to be created for them, according to Whitby.

Carroll also provided a link to a webOS dissection by Matthew Garrett, a U.K. developer, who summed up his impressions: “I’m impressed. There’s a few rough edges and some obvious short-term hacks, but overall the Pre has the appearance of being a well-engineered distribution. It’s recognisably Linux in a way the Android isn’t. Since it seems to be possible to gain root by entering the developer mode, I suspect that modifying the firmware image isn’t especially difficult.”

Garrett says the embedded modem firmware, for both CDMA and UMTS networks, “looks awfully like the firmware for the Qualcomm Gobi dual-CDMA/HSDPA chipset used in a bunch of modern laptops.”

He predicts that unlocking the phone for use on different networks will be difficult. “Unlocking the device will presumably be similarly difficult to the iPhone – someone will need to find a flaw in the Qualcomm firmware that allows the network lock to be skipped. The PmModemFactory command will let you unlock the phone, but you’ll need the appropriate code to do so and can (I guess) permanently lock it if you enter the wrong code too often,” he writes.