News

Nokia announced that it has acquired certain assets of  Plum Ventures, Inc, a small privately held company with offices in Boston and San Francisco. The company develops services such as cloud-based social media sharing and messaging for groups like families, neighbourhoods, schools, etc.

Nokia will implement these assets into it's services unit. No financial details were disclosed.

Today Motorola unveiled the MOTOPURE H15 and the H780 headsets. The The 14g H15 features an active flip microphone boom that lets users power up the headset and answer a call in one quick flip, high quality wind suppression technology and Motorola's industry topping noise suppression technology named CrystalTalk.

The H780 features the same basic technology as the H15, but in a slightly larger package that lacks the wind noise prevention system. The H780's extra bulk allows it to contain a battery that is good for a solid 7 hours of talk time rather than the 4.5 hours that the H15 is capable of. Even with that extra size, though, the H780 is still lighter than its brother, coming in at a feathery 11g. And while it lacks the folding boom of the H15, the H780 has a very easy to use sliding power switch that lets you see at a glance whether the device is powered up or not.

The first Nokia 'Comes With Music' phone will go on sale on October 17th. The Comes With Music package lets users download as much music as they care to from the Nokia Music Store during the course of a year. After the year ends, the users still get to keep and use all of the music they had downloaded previously.

Nokia currently has deals inked with Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner Music Group - three of the largest music publishing houses in the world.

The HTC announced earlier this morning an update of its HTC Touch - Touch 3G. One new feature is an impovement of the connectivity options, sporting not only quad-band GSM/EDGE, but also dual-band (900/2100MHz) HSDPA powered UMTS connectivity that is rated for downloads up to 7.2Mbps in speed.

The other features are un upgraded camera to 3.2 megapixel unit, a 256MB of built-in storage that is backed up by a microSD memory card slot, and gives its applications 192MB of RAM to operate within, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS and runs the latest Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system.

The Touch 3G's 1100mAh battery is rated for up to 6 hours of 3G talk time, or 6.7 hours of GSM talk time. The battery should also be good for over 2 weeks of standby time when left alone.

HTC expects the Touch 3G to be available in a number of different markets starting in early October of this year.

Samsung has recently announced the new SGH-a837 Rugby for AT&T, a ruggedized clamshell tested against Military Standard MI-SID-810F to withstand vibration, rain, humidity, solar radiation, dust, and extreme temperatures.

The device features a 1.3 megapixel camera for snapping photos and video and supports quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) and dual-band 3G (850/1900MHz).

The Samsung SGH-a837 Rugby is available now from AT&T in black colour scheme, priced at $129.99 with a 2-year commitment, after a $50 mail-in rebate.

The new HTC Touch HD appeared online, destined to be the ultimate iPhone rival.

Based on Windows Mobile 6.1, the new HTC Touch HD measures 115 x 62.8 x 12mm and it has a large display (that's now confirmed as a 4-incher) with the overwhelming resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. It also seems to be running TouchFLO 3D.

The HTC Touch HD is powered by a 528Mhz CPU courtesy of the Qualcomm 7201A platform. There are 512MB flash memory and 288MB of RAM.

Of course, goodies like GPS, Wi-Fi and HSPDA go without saying, but the HTC Touch HD also has a 5 megapixel camera (without a flash though). Unfortunately, video recording is not that high-end as it maxes out at QVGA@30fps.

The Touch HD is due this Christmas.

Sony Ericsson Alicia went live today for the first time. The front surface has two displays, one small square one on top of the larger circular one, which also acts as a control pad for music, weather, and other apps. This makes the Sony Ericsson W707 the first GSM to feature three screens.

Yesterday RIM officially announced the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220, its first clamshell cellphone. This handset comes with a QWERTY keyboard and features a 2 megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, Bluetooth, USB v2.0 and a microSD cards for expanding the internal memory.

The internal display of the Pearl Flip 8220 features QVGA resolution and there is a secondary external display with a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels.

The new BlackBerry Pearl Flip measures 101.1 x 50 x 17.5 mm and weighs 102 grams.

The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 will become available at the beginning of this fall. The pricing details are to be announced at a later date.

A few day ago Sprint and LG unveiled the new LG LX600 Lotus, a QWERTY messaging cell phone. the handset comes with One Click home screen, which provides quite access to messaging, navigation, and even Sprint TV and the Sprint Music Store and features Bluetooth 2.0 support and a 2 megapixel digital camera with video recording ability.

The LG Lotus will be available in black and purple colorur schemes in October for US$149.99 with a two year contract.

Samsung has introduced the new Highnote, a dual-slider with numeric keypad featuring a 2 megapixel camera for quick photos and a microSD card slot on board. The Highnote's support for the Sprint Music Store makes it easy to load up your favorite tunes.

The Samsung Highnote is set to be available on October 19th in red or blue colour schemes and will be priced at $99.99 with a 2-year commitment, after a $50 mail-in rebate.