For gPhone watchers, this has been quite a long wait. The gPhone supposed to be released on August is now expected to be released in September or by mid of October.

The phone design played a large role in influencing various companies to join the Open Handset Alliance. Now with HTC planning on a commercial version for gPhone, a lot of rumors and expectations have surrounded it. It is been reported that T-Mobile would be selling it for a pre-sale price of $150. The handset would be available at this price only for T-Mobile existing customers. The October plan for T-Mobile customers would include an out-of-budget data plan and a costly price tag of $399.

Apart from the Google-HTC mobiles, HTC is also working on a non-Qualcomm 3G device which is also on a scheduled launch late 2008 or by early 2009. The device would be used on WiMax/TD-WCDMA Handsets but unlikely that the 3G device would be used by Google with its open-source banner.

Bangalore STD Code: 080

Other Karnataka City codes are listed below:

Apple iPhone has been launched to the public and New Zealander Jonny Gladwell spent a record 60 hours in freezing temperatures to get his hand on the first sold 3G iPhone.

Well, as you are aware, the new 3G iPhone has nothing great that the other phones do not have. Well, it certainly has the looks. But just great looks do not matter much to a tech freak. Might go well with a fashionable show off person. Though the iPhone still lacks a decent camera, the much hyped phone has still got a lot of fan following.
Gladwell, excited about the purchase of the first ever sold 3G phone, well many readers might think what’s that great in it? mentioned AP, “I’m going to put this on charge, have a play around with it, and have a nice long sleep.” Well, he needs to or he would have to land up with a psychiatrist.

Not just the crazy Gladwell, there were many others too who queued up the stores in New Zealand. Now you know that looks alone can matter. The sales started off midnight on July 11th Friday in New Zealand.

Well, craziness does not end in New Zealand. It spread. In Tokyo, iPhone was launched with buyers lined up outside the Softbank store which sells iPhone in Japan. The 8GB model was sold for $215 and the 16GB at a cost of $320. There were more than 1,000 people lined up which obviously led to declaration of sold out stocks.

In USA, the phone was launched for $199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB versions ahead of the big weekend. Customers flocked the stores in UK in a orderly manner at the flagship O2 store.

Though the phone does not have any great feature than its competitor’s like the Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson Xperia or the HTC Diamond, it has a far better look and a large display which has brought in the cult following. As I said, for many, looks alone matter.

All you have heard is that there are thousands dying of hunger in India. This is a different story. There are 10,000 mobiles sold every hour states an IDC India report.

The report states that there were 85 million mobiles sold this year 66 million units sold in the last fiscal year which is a 28.9 per cent increase.

Nokia tops the list of handset manufacturing and sales with 52.8 per cent largest market share followed by LG with 10.2 per cent. Samsung ranks third in sales with 8.3 per cent of total mobile phones sold in India as per quarter end March 31, 2008.

IDC India, a subsidiary of CyberMedia Country Manager Kapil Dev Singh stated that “This growth comes on the back of a burgeoning mobile services market and lower entry barriers across various customer categories, as average selling values (ASVs) of handsets continue to fall in the wake of a highly competitive landscape populated by close to 25 vendors.” 

Intel announced its launch of the Atom Processer recently. The processer titled, Intel’s smallest processor is built with the world’s smallest transistors. The processer targets latest mobile internet devices the nettops and netbooks. This would also yield to the new Intel® Centrino® Atom™ processor technology, which is a collection of chips to enable good Internet experiences among pocket devices.

The Intel Atom processor is the follower of Silverthorne which was released specifically for mobile Internet devices (MIDs). The Atom processor measures less than 25mm x 25mm x 1.6mm. Intel has used the micro-architecture which is based on 45nm high-K metal gate technology. The atom consists of 47-million transistors together.

Intel has launched two Atom models. The  Atom N270 is for cheap notebooks/netbooks and the Atom 230 is targeted for low-power desktops/nettops.

Atom N270 has a clock speed of 1.6GHz with a  front side bus speeds of 533MHz and packed with a 512KB L2 cache. The N270 also has a Thermal Design Power (TDP) with 2.5 watts. For netbooks, the Atom N270 would be enabled with Mobile Intel945GSE Express chipset capable of handling a 256MB or 512MB RAM, 2/4GB flash-based storage drive or an optional Intel Z-P230 PATA Solid-State drive. The processer can be used to install an open source Linux or Windows XP Home operating system. Estimated price would be US $250

The Atom 230 also has the same clock speed of 1.6GHz with similar bus speeds of 533MHz. The Atom 230 features a 512KB L2 cache and has a Thermal Design Power (TDP) rating of 4.0 watts. The Atom 230 processor can be assembled along with Intel 945GC chipset. This configuration can be used effecienly for low-power desktop configuration. Estimated price of a Nettop - $200 - $300

Nokia has launched a new application Nokia Maps which is a free tool for selected mobile devices. This Map tool which is compatible with most Nseries mobiles helps you download maps which makes it easy to locate interesting places or find out where you wish to go.

Nokia Maps also provide lot more interesting features than just a simple location service. With Nokia Maps, you can share the location of specific places with your friends and also plan on the best routes between two places.

Additional options with Nokia Maps include a full-fledged navigation system service and a whole lot of valuable city guides with vast information.

You can easily find your destination and plan on your route either by street by street or from city to city. A different perspective can be obtained with satellite, hybrid or street views like how Google Maps works.

Not just that, the Nokia Map also has a world-class navigation to help you with clear view of the road ahead giving turn-by-turn visual and voice guidance.

The Nokia N95 has a large 2.8” screen and a stunning resolution. However, N95 has a vertical screensaver option. Any screensaver file chosen would be vertical which cannot be changed. This means all your screensavers would be displayed vertically.

There are two options to resolve this issue:

1. Change your flash or gif file from vertical to horizontal using a GIF Animator or Macromedia Flash
2. Use the TyScrSvr(TY Screensaver) and use a customized mbm file instead of the default file. However, TY Screensaver would need proper Certificates and Keys signed. If the certificate is not signed, you would get a message when you try to Rotate.

The second option would require some technical knowledge and a bit risky. However, worth the try.

How to activate animated screensaver in Nokia N95?

Download a picture file on N95 that you would like to use as a screensaver. A GIF animated screensaver or a SWF flash screensaver would look awesome than a normal JPG image. Once downloaded, follow the steps below to activate it.

1. Open the main menu of N95
2. Choose the “Tools” folder
3. Select “Settings”
4. Go to the “General” option
5. Choose “Personalization” and choose “Themes”
6. Now select “Power Saver” and choose “Animation”
7. You can now select the particular file that you have chosen as a screensaver by hitting the “options” tab and choose “change”, “Animation file”.

Now keep the phone idle till the screensaver is activated. Wow, you now got an animated screensaver for your Nokia N95.

Microsoft on last Tuesday announced that it has now facilitated advertisers to display banner ads on Hotmail Windows Live Messenger to mobile internet users. MSN mobile advertising is now available in U.K, U.S, France and Spain.

In today’s connected world, the mobile device is emerging as a prime opportunity for advertisers to reach their audience,” said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of Mobile Services at Microsoft. “This announcement is evidence of our commitment to providing advertisers with further opportunities to connect and engage consumers throughout their ‘digital day’ — at home, at work and on the go across multiple platforms, devices and geographic regions.”

“FedEx is committed to servicing our customers across mobile devices and creating awareness of our mobile applications so we can service them anytime, anywhere,” said Steve Pacheco, director of advertising at FedEx. “As we profile our innovative application, mobile.fedex.com, working with emerging media platforms allows us to communicate broadly with our customer base.”

Microsoft also announced its further plans to expand mobile advertising in Live Search Mobile. Advertisers can create keyword campaigns through Microsoft adCenter for customers using Live Search Mobile.

JumpTap, a leading mobile search and advertising provider in Europe announced opening new offices in Spain, Madrid, Sweden and Stockholm. JumpTap’s mobile search and ad network with range of ad formats have been useful for brands and agencies.

JumpTap’s Search and Ad Solutions would benefit agencies by flexibility to choose from large portfolio of ad formats. It also enables advertisers to reach their targeted demographic audience leveraging global practices for increased performance and optimize the customer experience through relevant advertising.

JumpTap has its operations across globe in Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Norway, Telefonica Spain and Lithuania to manage its on-portal search and display advertising.