Nokia 114 dual-SIM phone shows up on its Indian website

While Nokia is yet to properly introduce this new mobile phone to the press, their Indian website has already published its details. This is a dual-SIM mobile phone that should be extremely affordable, designed for families that use one device with swappable SIM cards. Unlike other mobiles, this one does not require the phone to be turned off.

This new entry-level mobile phone from the Finnish manufacturer has similar specs and design to the Nokia 109 which is revealed earlier. It has a 65K color display with a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels which is 1.8-inch in size. The key new feature introduced with this device is its dual-SIM functionality and Nokia might have also retained its various SIM profile capabilities which it revealed with its ASHA series feature phones.

The Nokia 114 is equipped with a 1080 mAh battery, which has a 20% less standby time than that of the Nokia 109, but it has two GSM radios inside which demand the extra power. It is also equipped with a VGA camera with QCIF video recording and it has Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity.

There is no information on the website regarding its launch and pricing, but one can expect these details to be announced soon, hopefully by the end of this year.

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Apple's popularity among gadget fans dropping

Apple, the company that changed the way to listening music and use phones is in danger of losing its fans. After a series of iPhone 5 missteps and delays in delivering products, the company’s popularity is diving and rivals are scooping up disgruntled Apple fans. The company’s share of the tablet computer market has fallen to its lowest mark, with figures this week revealing consumers flocking to Google. Apple has also lost the title of smart phone king to Samsung, news.com.au reports.

Apple’s latest blow came in the tablet market after ABI Research found its share fell to its lowest ebb since the iPad’s launch in 2010. According to the report, Apple iPads made up 55 percent of all tablets in the year’s third quarter, the company found, while Google Android-run tablet computers accounted for 44 percent. ABI Research senior practice director Jeff Orr said that Apple''s launch of the iPad Mini ‘acknowledged’ growing competition from Google tablets but the smaller device has yet to knock them out of the market, the report said. "It has failed to deliver a knock-out punch through innovation, pricing and availability during the most critical selling period of the year," Mr Orr said.

According to the report, Apple also lost the title of world’s biggest selling smart phone between July and September after Samsung's Galaxy S III pipped the iPhone 4S to the top spot, being snapped up by an extra 1.8 million people worldwide. -ANI

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NPD report: Windows 8 fails to boost PC sales

Market trackers NPD have released their monthly report, which this time includes three weeks of data since the launch of Windows 8. According to this report, sales of Windows PCs and tablet computers at US retail fell 21 percent compared with a year earlier. The markets have so far been indifferent to the arrival of machines loaded with Windows 8. As is quite evident in recent times, all of the spenders’ attention is held by smartphones and tablets by established players in the market.

Having said that, NPD analyst Stephen Baker commented that with the entire holiday season ahead, Windows 8 might still cause a bump in sales, and bring end-of-the-year sales closer to what was expected at the beginning of the year.

Having taken another go at establishing themselves in the mobile business, Microsoft is certainly sparing no cost to get the word out. A USB analyst called Mary Jo Foley has put the value of Microsoft’s Windows 8 campaign at $1 billion. While the company is known for spending big on marketing, this number makes it the most expensive ad campaign in its history.

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Surface Pro has half the battery-life of Surface RT

Microsoft’s Twitter account saw a post about the upcoming Surface Pro, which mentioned that the expected battery life of the x86 version will be about half of the ARM based model. This is not incredibly surprising, considering the Surface Pro model is a mightier beast than compared to Surface RT. The Surface Pro has an Intel Corei5 processor, a full-size USB 3.0 port, a mini-DisplayPort than can churn out 2560x1440px frames, and a 10.6-inch screen with 1080p resolution.

Surface Pro has been priced at $899 for 64GB model, and $999 for 128GB of storage, Touch Cover or Type Cover being sold separately.

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Facebook launches Photo Sync, an automatic photo uploading feature for iOS and Android

Facebook has now added the new automatic photo upload feature to its Android and iOS apps. This is an optional feature and the company calls this ‘Photo Sync’.

All the photos uploaded using the new feature go directly to a private album which is titled ‘Synced from Phone’. Every user will have a 2GB cap for this feature, which has been imposed by Facebook. It has an option to sync your photos only when the device has Wi-Fi connectivity, helping you save on your data costs.

This feature is quite similar to the one which Google announced with Google+ called Instant Upload, even in terms of its operations. The app also automatically disables the syncing when the phone has low battery.

By default this feature is turned off on all devices and it is now available for the iOS and Android Facebook apps.  One will have to navigate to the Photo settings menu to enable this feature.

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Skype for iOS gets an update, now supports 4-inch Retina Display

Skype's app for iOS has been updated and it now supports the new 4-inch Retina Display featured on the iPhone 5. The update also enables iOS users to integrate their Microsoft account with the contact list of the VoIP account.

The feature which merges your Microsoft account with Skype contacts will enable users to send instant messages and also call people from their Outlook, Messenger and Hotmail contact using Skype.

One can now edit instant messages simply by tapping and holding the text. There are a bunch of new smileys and animated emoticons which use the Retina Display. These features have already been present on the desktop and Android version of Skype

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Huawei T8830: Upcoming dual-core ICS smartphone goes on sale for $104 in China

Chinese OEM's have been able to introduce disruptive prices for their dual-core smartphones owing to the Mediatek MT6577 chip, which promised sub-$200 Android 4.0 earlier in the year. Some of these phones have trickled to India as well at nearly the same price point, the next disruption is likely to come from the MT6517 dual core chip, seen here on the Huawei T8830.

According to Gizchina, this ICS smartphone has a 4-inch WVGA resolution screen sheathed in Gorilla Glass, 512 MB of RAM, and a 3.2 megapixel camera. Apparently phones like the JiaYu G2 have better specs, but the T8830 will certainly be more superior to anything available at the same price point in India. 

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Steve Jobs was more 'Mac centered than iPod visionary', says ex-Apple engineer Fadell

American computer science engineer Tony Fadell, who created the iPod, which revolutionized the music industry, has revealed how Apple gave more importance to develop Macintosh computers, and not the portable media player. During an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Fadell discussed his experience of working with the tech giant and its visionary founder Steve Jobs. Fadell revealed that the iPod team he built was largely taken up with “the day job” of building the Macintosh. 

“When I showed the iPod to Steve and he said ‘It’s a go’ he meant to the next milestone. He didn’t mean we were going to even ship it,” the paper quoted Fadell, as saying. “This is a company whose business was the Macintosh. It wasn’t as if there’d been this big decision to suddenly turn this way,” he said. “We wanted to do everything at the cutting edge to the very best of our ability, but we didn’t have this grand idea,” he added. According to the paper, Fadell, who left Apple in 2008, agrees that Apple is a visionary company today, and does builds amazing products. But at the same time he is unequivocal, and says at the beginning “there was no vision of taking everything to a world of iPhones and iPads”. According to Fadell, there was an iPod visionary. He just doesn’t say it was Steve Jobs.

Fadell, however, agrees that Apple made the iPod and the iDevices what they are. “Without the computing platform of Apple, it could all have been swallowed up by a Sony and we wouldn’t be where we are,” the paper quoted him, as saying. -ANI 

Photo: REUTERS/Peter Morgan

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