Nokia announced an update to their Sirocco line of fashionable handsets. The Nokia 8800 Sirocco Gold comes with 18-carat gold plating.

Named after a Sahara desert wind, the Sirocco line offers expensive, luxurious devices in the Nokia portfolio. Equipped with a 2 megapixel camera, a 262K colors TFT display, FM radio and Bluetooth, along with a smooth sliding mechanism, the Sirocco handsets as always tend to speak more of their owners than your usual feature phone.
The Nokia Sirocco 8800 Gold comes in stylish golden color further enhanced by white gold trimming, thus creating a truly luxurious piece of mobile device. The product also comes with a Bluetooth headset with a matching design.

Today Sony Ericsson announced several interesting handsets. The highlight is Sony Ericsson T650 - the successor of the successful T610 midrange handset. The Sony Ericsson S500 is an innovative thin slider, while the Sony Ericsson T250 is a stylish budget solution with a complete metallic finish. The new handsets design is nowhere near the last lineup by the manufacturer and surely manages to impress by counting on classic looks and stylish materials.

The Sony Ericsson T650 comes with a stainless steel finish and full 3G support with video calls. At only 12.5 mm, the bar-shaped handset also boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus. The 1.9″ 262K color TFT display with a QVGA resolution, a scratch-proof mineral glass and an innovatively brighter colors and a wider viewing angle. Feature-wise it’s got all that it takes to rank with all current mobiles - stereo Bluetooth support, USB and a Memory Stick Micro M2 slot. The T650 also comes with some nice illumination effects which are linked to on-screen animations.
The Sony Ericsson T650 will be available in green and blue as of Q3 2007. The Sony Ericsson S500 is an innovative slider with a thickness of 14 mm. It is targeted at the Americas and so it has a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 networks support. It comes with a 2 megapixel camera, a 2″ 262K color TFT display with a QVGA resolution plus Bluetooth, USB and a Memory Stick Micro M2 slot. Other interesting features include the new Sony Ericsson Ever-changing theme and some nice illumination effects to go with it.

The Sony Ericsson S500 will be available in green and yellow as of Q2 2007. The Sony Ericsson T250 comes as an example that a budget handset can too look the part, when dressed in a compact metallic body with a thickness of 12.6 mm. It features a VGA camera, FM radio and a 1.7″ 65K color TFT display with a 128 x 160 pixels resolution. The stylish handset will weigh only 82 g and will have dual-band GSM/GPRS support.

Today we saw the new super smartphone by Sony Ericsson finally officially unveiled. Just as when everybody thought that it would be named P700, the manufacturer announced it as Sony Ericsson P1 - but mind you, it’s still the same handset we all eagerly waited.

The next step in the Sony Ericsson P-series development is finally officially unveiled - after months of sneak previews and information leaks. The Sony Ericsson P1 is based on the Symbian 9.1 OS and runs with the UIQ 3.0 interface. It doesn’t boast some revolutionary features, but it’s all about the complete set of function it offers.

Those include a 2.6″ 262K color touchscreen TFT display with a QVGA resolution, a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus, 3G support with video calls and Wi-Fi, just to name a few. The goodies don’t end here and they continue with stereo Bluetooth, QWERTY keyboard (like the one seen in Sony Ericsson M600), USB, FM radio and a Memory Stick Micro M2 slot.

System wise, it has a 208 MHz processor just as Sony Ericsson P990 and Sony Ericsson M600, but carries twice the RAM (128MB) plus it has 160MB of integrated memory available to the user. As with all UIQ 3 smartphones it is equipped with handwriting recognition system, MS Office documents viewer/editor and it even has a business card scanner application, that as we saw in P990 works reliably to scan a business card and to insert the data from it directly to your Contacts list.

Motorola officially unveiled the Motorola RAZR2 V8 and V9 models. These are the descendants of the highly popular Motorola RAZR V3 which paved the way for the ultra slim trend in the mobile world.

The Motorola RAZR2 comes in two versions - the first one is the Motorola RAZR2 V8 which has quad-band GSM/EDGE network support, while the second one is the Motorola RAZR2 V9 which is a quad-band GSM/EDGE/3G/HSDPA-enabled device. Other than that, feature-wise and design-wise the two are almost identical. There will also be an EVDO CDMA version, named RAZR2 V9m but it is out of the scope of this article.
The Motorola RAZR2 comes equipped with a main 2.2″ 262K color TFT display with a QVGA (320×240 pixels) resolution plus a really large secondary 2″ 262K color TFT display with a QVGA resolution too. It would practically mean that there would be no difference between using any of the two. What is more, Motorola are promising a handy messaging function that would allow user to compose and send messages without even opening the clamshell.

Design-wise, the RAZR2 has received an enormous facelift in both looks and style. It is thinner than every previous RAZR model and it has a new flushed-out metallic design with some hardened glass to protect all those square inches of displays that it offers.

The Motorola RAZR2 will have full support for stereo Bluetooth, it will have a microUSB slot for data connections and attaching headphones (makes us sorry for losing the standard miniUSB) and would certainly appeal with its 2 megapixel camera, which unfortunately doesn’t feature autofocus.

In the final part of our initial E90 coverage Steve looks at the Nokia E90’s GPS and navigation capabilities. The navigation features are good, but there is room for improvement too. Steve also rounds up a few software odds and ends before summarizing his summary  of the new Nokia E90 Communicator.

We’ve covered the Nokia E90 in some details in the previous parts of this review series: Nokia E90 - the Early Verdict, Nokia E90 - Adapting the Applications, Nokia E90 - Web and Work and Nokia E90 - Camera and Multimedia.

At a press conference in India, Nokia has launched seven new mobile phones, that provide functions and features specifically designed for consumers in emerging markets. “India is very important to Nokia and to the global mobile communications industry as a whole,” says Soren Petersen, Senior Vice President, Mobile Phones, Nokia. “One of the fastest growing markets in the world, India is also home to several Nokia facilities, including R&D and manufacturing. We’re very proud to be part of their growth.”

Nokia 2630

The thinnest handset in Nokia’s portfolio at 9.9 mm, the Nokia 2630 balances a modern design with a full range of features to meet the needs of emerging market consumers. A camera combined with Bluetooth technology. Convenient productivity tools such as email, MMS, calendar and a calculator satisfy the work side of life, while features such as an FM radio, with direct access shortcut key and MP3 ringtones satisfy the entertainment side

Nokia 2760

The Nokia 2760 features a digital camera, giving many consumers their first experience with digital photography, and Bluetooth technology to make it easy to share the photos that they capture. The Nokia 2760 also features video recording, video playback, and FM radio. The combination of Bluetooth and GPRS creates a convenient way to access data on the go for email and Internet. It also features extra large storage to save up to 1000 contacts in the phonebook.

Nokia 2505

One of Nokia’s sleekest fold-style phones for the CDMA market, the Nokia 2505 offers a unique smooth-back design. The Nokia 2505 is expected to be available in selected markets in Asia/Pacific, Middle East, Africa, China and Latin America during the 2nd quarter of 2007. The phone meets practical needs as well with easy-to-use functions including text messaging, speaker phone, calendar, a personalized voice reminder and an alarm clock. Other features included with the Nokia 2505 include pre-loaded games, a 300-contact phonebook, up to 3 hours of talk time and 156 hours of stand-by time.

Nokia N95, a much-awaited smartphone with a unique handset design has started shipping in India.

Its front slides up to reveal a traditional numeric phone keypad and can also slide down providing access to a row of dedicated multimedia playback control buttons, automatically switching the screen to landscape mode and launching the multimedia menu.

Hardware: It is powered by the fastest processor currently used in the Symbian operating system devices and is faster than Dopod D600, a Windows Mobile 5 PDA.

The Nokia N95 sports the regular 64 MB RAM (E90 claims to offer almost 80 MB of free operating memory) and about 160 MB internal storage memory and can be expanded with microSD cards to 2 GB.

Dopod D600 comes in with built-in 128 MB ROM, 64 MB RAM that gives N95 a close run.
Bells & Whistles Nokia has topped the N95 with a GPS receiver. And a 5 megapixel (sufficient for even 11×14-inch sized prints), autofocus camera can deliver delightful pictures. Dopod’s D600 is a 2 MP camera, but when viewed on D600’s 71.1mm TFT LCD display, it can put other business phones to shame.

While Nokia has put in a secondary camera to support video calls, despite being a PDA D600 seems to have omitted it. Although DVD quality is certainly an exaggeration by Nokia, but video recorded on N95 definitely offers quality of amateur single-sensor mini-DV camcorders.

You won’t be able to instantly identify a Blackberry anymore. Research in Motion, makes of the wildly popular multimedia phone, are going to start sharing some of their software with other mobile phone makers, specifically those that make phones that run Windows Mobile 6.0. If you have one of those phones, you can download RIM’s software and turn your phone into a hybrid, able to run on both platforms. (No word yet on whether Palm is going to join the party.)

The advantage of this from a user’s point of view is that you get to benefit from both platforms, which run differently according to the function. The new RIM software wouldn’t bridge the gap between the two platforms but rather allow one user to use both on the same handset (but not both at the same time).

RIM says a target date for such software to be commonly available is September, by which time many more phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 might very well be available to make the transfer.

Even though the Nokia N800 received a rather major upgrade recently, that hasn’t stopped the Finnish developer from working on the handheld’s successor. What you see before is the rumored follow-up to the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. As I’m sure you can see, this time around they’ve included a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, clearly responding to the feedback Nokia received on the first N800.

With the keyboard the way it is, the next-gen Nokia N800 — whatever they’re going to call it (N801?) — bears a striking resemblance to the several Pocket PC devices created by the team at HTC, except that the new Nokia will be quite a bit bigger than a regular Pocket PC phone.

The super shiny, almost chrome or stainless steel-like finish is also very attractive. We’ll have to stay tuned and keep our eyes peeled for any details as they arise. I’d imagine that Nokia has quite a bit in store for us.

Nokia Corp. introduced Skype Internet-calling software for its N800 Wi-Fi tablet on Wednesday, providing another alternative to using a cell phone, while a debate in the U.S. over what networks such devices may be able to use in the future heated up.

When the N800 was introduced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, Nokia and eBay Inc.’s Skype Ltd. division said they were working on including the popular software in the device. Nokia delivered it on Wednesday with an upgrade to the N800’s software. Current owners of N800s can download the software from Nokia’s site.

Skype, with a claimed 196 million registered users, has expanded from its roots as a popular PC-based free calling system and offers text messaging, video calling, and low-cost dialing to and from traditional phones. There are already Skype clients for mobile devices and even some cellular smart phones, but some mobile operators try to block VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls because they can eat into their voice business.

Unlike the Apple Inc. iPhone — available in the U.S. only through AT&T Inc. — the N800 doesn’t have cellular connectivity, only Wi-Fi and short-range Bluetooth technology. So the device can access the Internet in a home or office, at a public hot spot or on a municipal Wi-Fi network, but not in the vast areas covered by cellular data networks. The N800 is available at retail stores and Nokia’s Web site for a list price of US$399.99.

EBay is among a group of companies calling on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to encourage more competition against incumbent mobile operators when it auctions off prime radio spectrum in the 700MHz band. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is advocating setting aside part of the spectrum for a network that would allow use of any application on any device, getting away from carriers’ limited handset offerings and “walled gardens.” But Skype’s parent has joined consumer groups in calling for rules that would force spectrum holders to sell access to their networks wholesale to competitive service providers.

In addition to the Skype client, the new software version includes an Adobe Systems Inc. Flash 9 Web browser plug-in and lets customers use larger capacity memory cards up to 8G bytes. The N800 has slots to accommodate Secure Digital (SD), MicroSD, MiniSD, Multimedia Card (MMC) and Reduced-Size MMC cards. The Linux-based device also has a built-in camera and an on-screen touch keyboard and uses the Opera browser.