Limited Edition Porsche Design P’9981 BlackBerry Unveiled

RIM and Porsche took off the wraps from the P’9981 today. The phone is  a limited edition Blackberry OS7 based smartphone to be sold only at select Porsche dealerships.

What sets apart the phone ? The forged stainless steel frame, hand-wrapped leather back cover, sculpted QWERTY keyboard, and “crystal clear touch display.” It will ship with an exclusive Porsche Design UI and a bespoke Wikitude World Browser augmented reality app experience and also premium Blackberry PINs. The spec sheet includes a 1.2Ghz processor , NFC capabilities , microSD card , 8GB of onboard space and HD video recording. The phone is expected to sell for around $2000.

Motorola Droid 4 spotted in the wild

Droid-Life have got their hands on a photograph of a handset said to be the Motorola Droid 4. The Android based smartphone comes with a slide out 5 row QWERTY keyboard. The design is highly inspired by the recently launched Droid RAZR.

The phone is running Android Gingerbread 2.3.5 but should hopefully get an update to Ice Cream Sandwich soon after launch. Tentative specs include 4″ screen , HD 1080p video recording. A front facing camera is present but the Droid has lost its removable battery. The phone is said to support LTE connectivity alongside Webtop functionality. The phone should be announced in time for Christmas.

[Via - Droid Life]

Nokia Kinetic concept phone with flexible display hands-on

Nokia is demoing a concept phone with flexible display at Nokia World 2011 in London. The Nokia Kinetic by Nokia Research division works by bending and twisting the device in each corner in order to register input.

The Nokia Kinetic is a landscape device with two working applications, Music and Pictures, no doubt created as proof of concepts. For example bending in the device towards you will open the application.

Below is a video demo of the Nokia Kinetic and how it works. There are currently no plans to bring this screen technology to the market but this is merely a sneak into what Nokia has in store for us.

iOS developers noted to make more profit from app sales than Google makes from its mobile business

Adhering to Google’s third-quarter earnings report in the previous week, David Barnard, founder of App Cubby, established an intriguing observation on his company’s blog, Google declared a run rate of $2.5 billion for its cellular ad revenue based on third-quarter earnings, up from $1 billion a year previously.

While that feat is extraordinary, Barnard stated that Apple paid developers about $500 million between July 7th and October 4th for a run rate of $2 billion. Adding to that the money third-party ad networks like Milennial Media and Admob pay out to iOS developers over the course of a year, and “the iOS developer run rate is likely higher, maybe even significantly higher, than Google’s mobile run rate.” This means that developers who figure and retail their apps for Apple’s iOS platform will, on a whole, make lots more money over the next year than Google will earn from its complete mobile business.

Source: BGR

Co-founder of SIRI, Kittlaus departs from Apple

As per a new report that has come in, claims have been made that Dag Kittlaus (co-founder of Siri), who was in charge of overseeing Apple’s augmentation of the service, has departed from the Cupertino, Calif.-based company as the iPhone 4S is in the market and ready for sale.

Siri – is a personal assistant application for iOS, was founded in 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (VP Engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/VP Design), mutually with Norman Winarsky from SRI International‘s venture group. It has been insinuated that Apple amassed Siri for a whopping $121 million. Albeit the Siri team at Apple has departed with a talented leader, other executives that played a vital role in the progress of the app will still be at Apple.

As per All Things Digital, Kittlaus departed from Apple, right after the iPhone 4S was released previously this month. The reason that is given is that Kittlaus wants to spend more time with his family in Chicago and to set up newer ideas, reported by AllThingsDigital.

The crux of the Apple’s iPhone 4S, Siri aids users in sending e-mails, placing calls; search the Web, to give out voice instructions to the iPhone, which are then processed by the service.

Source: AllthingsD

Nokia Lumia 710 hands-on

It’s Nokia World 2011 and all eyes seems to be on Nokia’s new Windows Phone 7.5 flagship, the Lumia 800. But based on my conversations with other tech journalists here, many believe the real show stealer is the understated Nokia Lumia 710. Read on to find out why.

The Lumia 710 is Nokia’s promise on making Windows Phone cheaper and accessible to the market. At a retail price of EUR270 before taxes and subsidies, the Lumia 710 is currently the cheapest new Windows Phone 7.5 smartphones with a faster than 1 GHz processor.

Like the Nokia Lumia 800, the Lumia 710 runs on the same 1.4 GHz processor and graphic accelerator. In essence the  key differentiators that set the two apart are the design, screen technology used and camera. While the Lumia 800 shares the same body as the Meego-powered Nokia N9, the Lumia 710 is a Nokia 603 after undergoing a Windows Phone transplant.

While the 710 is larger than the 800, it is also a bit lighter. Despite the liberal use of plastic, the 710 feels great in hand. My only complaint was, despite the use of hardware front buttons, the buttons do look and feel cheap. It does get the job done, even if the tactile feedback was almost none-existent.

The screen is 3.7″ in size, the same as the Lumia 800. Unlike the 800 however, the Lumia 710′s screen is LCD TFT variety. Even then the Lumia 710′s screen looks awesome and has great colour saturation and contrast level. It is easily one of the best LCD displays on a mobile phone I have ever seen. I honestly thought it was an OLED display I was looking at.

The 5MP camera will not set the world alight, but at least it comes with an Autofocus lens. The camera is quick and easy to use, as are on all Windows Phone 7 devices.

Despite the differences in hardware, the Lumia 710 works the same as the Lumia 800, or indeed all Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices. Nokia does differentiate a little by providing some key exclusive applications, such as Nokia Drive – the only voice navigation application on WP7 that works offline as well.

Alongside with Nokia Drive, Nokia has also announced their Spotify competitor – Nokia Music, a music discovery app that allows you to download playlists, basically pre-packed radio directly onto their phone. It is well integrated with the OS and takes advantages of Windows Phone 7 features such as Live Tiles.

Of all the phones I played with today, the Lumia 710 is the most exciting one. It is not only affordable, the design is fresh (even if it isn’t too exciting like the 800). This is Nokia’s answer to pushing Windows Phone smartphones onto a larger market and will help them at getting into that all important mid-range market. It also plays well with their next one billion strategy.

The Lumia 800 is no doubt the phone to get, if you can afford one. It is EUR150 more after all, and it won’t get you much more than you can get with the 710. Expect to see these in stores from Q1 2012.

Nokia Asha 200 : Dual SIM , QWERTY enabled S40 device announced

The Nokia Asha 200 is a dual SIM enabled device which allows for Easy Swap ie it is possible to change the SIM card without turning off the device. You also get shortcuts for social networking , email , IM , Orkut and Flickr amongst others.

The phone can support upto 32GB microSD cards allowing users to store thousands of tracks. The phone is rated for 52hours of audio playback. A 2MP camera is also present at the back of the phone.