We are taking this one with a huge rock of salt but it is simply too irresistable to pass off. Mobile Review, which has access to a Vodafone presentation that re-confirmed the LG GD880, also gleaned off this interesting MID that supposedly goes by the name of Vodafone 360 Krystal.

What's so special? Well, to begin with, it has two displays, the one on the back being of the e-Ink variety. But that's not all, it also apparently acts as a scanner and as you can see in the picture on the left, it can scan the page of a magazine in another language, translate it into English and display the translated version on the main screen!

Now for that real-time scanning to happen, the whole back display will also have to be a camera of sorts to be able to scan the surface. And that, our dear readers, sets us scampering for the biggest rock of salt we can find.

Reportedly, there are some sort of widgets for the display on the back and it also does some sort of augmented reality while navigating. Just sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

We had first reported about the LG G880 aka Mini for Europe almost two months ago and today, Mobile Review has posted details of the device from a leaked Vodafone presentation. It also reveals that the GD880 will have a metal body along with rubber-finish back cover and edges to provide a scratch-resistant finish. Features include a 5.0 MP camera, GPS and possibility of HD video recording.
Our original source had also indicated the same features with some more details like:

Dimensions: 102x47.2x9.95 mm
Battery: 900 mAh
Display: 3.2 inch, 480x854 pixel touchscreen TFT
Camera: 5.0 MP
Memory: 100 MB internal, expandable up to 32 GB
Frequency: Quad-band GSM, Dual-band UMTS
Others: A-GPS, FM radio, Document viewer, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.1

We should expect some sort of official confirmation early next week at MWC in Barcelona.

Nokia is planning to launch cellphones for as low as Rs 500 under its service Nokia Life Tools, reports The Economic Times. So far through this service, the handset vendor has been offering tips to the rural population regarding agriculture, education and entertainment.  

Also in the pipeline are phones priced at under Rs 1,000. At the moment, the cheapest Nokia phone is available at around Rs 1,300 in India. Recently, Nokia has been facing a lot of competition from new Indian handset brands that are offering sub-Rs 1,000 phones to cater to rural markets.

We would expect the announcement to take place in Barcelona next week, where Nokia is organising its own event that will run parallel to MWC.

The Symbian Foundation has completed the open source release of the source code of the Symbian OS, according to a press release issued by the Foundation. The release, which was planned to happen in mid-2010 comes four months ahead of schedule and will now enable just about anyone - device manufacturers, developers - to tweak and use the OS.

Pretty neat so far. But the real challenge for the Foundation would be to ensure that the OS does not die a slow death with partners like Samsung and Sony Ericsson relying more on Android for their next generation of smartphones. At the moment, Nokia is the only major handset vendor that is utilising Symbian for its smartphone portfolio. It remains to be seen whether this release of source code would change this situation, though we won't be betting our chips on that happening any time soon.

Uninor is offering a new plan in Andhra Pradesh which offers the lowest tariffs per minute by far in the market. The ‘Local On Net’ pack lets Uninor subscribers to call other local Uninor subscribers at 3.2 paise-per-minute.

To avail this scheme, users need to buy a recharge of Rs 32 that provides 1,000 free on-net local minutes.
 

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It comes as no surprise that we are seeing at least one new Moto Android phone every fortnight or so. After all, the handset vendor plans to launch more than a dozen Android smartphones this year alone!

And the latest find has been this unannounced, unnamed device that looks very much like an affordable (we are talking about Rs 10,000 or so) Android smartphone that runs Moto's own UI called Blur.

The device was spotted by Gizmodo in Brazil and it is unfortunate that we know nothing about it apart from the fact that it runs Android OS 1.5, which to be honest, doesn't sound all that exciting.

Many are calling this the Motorola Zeppelin, though we have our doubts whether it is just an internal codename or is in fact the commercial name. There is no word on its availability either, though there are some folks out there claiming that this will be out on the streets of Rio in March. Hell, we can't wait any longer to get our dirty mittens on Moto's Android goodies.

With Mobile World Congress less than a couple of weeks away, we are approaching that time of the year when complete product roadmaps are leaked before their official announcement. And to start things off, we have the Nokia C5, which will be a part of a new series of phones that the Finnish handset vendor is expected to announce on February 14.

The C5 is expected to have a 2.2 inch QVGA display, HSDPA connectivity, GPS, 50 MB of internal memory, 3.2 MP shooter and a 3.5 mm audio jack. Plus it will run on the S60 third edition (FP2) OS. A QWERTY keyboard version also found its way to the Internet earlier, which might belong to the same series. Everything over here fits well with Nokia's theme for the event - connecting people - which will focus a lot on emerging markets.

We expect the C5 to launch at less than Rs 10,000, which will make it the cheapest smartphone available in the market.

Hit the source link below for more pics of the C5.

Source

Nokia has announced a new version of 6303 classic. The newbie 6303i Classic has nothing new on the physical front. We mean, the camera, the weight, the dimensions are all the same.

But on a close reading of specs, we found that the new version has got slight changes on the specs front. The talktime has been increased by an hour; the in-built memory is upgraded to 55 MB from 17 MB. Also, in case of new version, the memory is expandable up-to 8GB instead of 4GB in the former one. It has got Ovi maps 2.0 pre-embedded while the former one did not. And there has been addition of two more colour schemes in 6303i Classic – white/silver and khaki/gold.

The Nokia 6303i classic will be available in the selected markets sometime around Q1 this year.

Sony Ericsson has announced Aspen, the first smartphone to run on WinMo 6.5.3. The Aspen has a 2.4 inch capacitative touchscreen for multi- touch and multi-tasking and a full QWERTY keyboard..

With the new version of WinMo installed on Aspen, users will see the ‘Start’ menu moved to the lower left corner like on a Windows desktop. Other changed features are: a revamped UI (more touch-friendly), inclusion of an on-screen keyboard and threaded e-mails in Outlook. WinMo 6.5.3 also adds support for multi-touch on capacitive displays.

Other specs include a 3.2 MP camera with digital zoom and multi-shot, 4 GB of inbuilt memory which is expandable up-to 16 GB with a microSD card, 3.5 mm audio jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS, office apps such as Microsoft Office and Outlook. It offers a talk-time of up-to 10 hours.

The handheld will hit selected markets sometime around Q2. Users will be offered two colour choices - iconic black and white silver. You will also find an eco-friendly energy-saving mini-charger, EP800 bundled along.

On January 21, Nokia officially announced that the new version of its Ovi maps would be downloadable free of cost and till 31 January, there have been 1.4 million downloads of this free navigation service. At the moment, Nokia is getting one download request every second!

At present, 10 Nokia smartphones are compatible with this service while the to-be launched GPS-enabled devices will have Ovi maps pre-embedded.

Looking at the current stats, indicating more-than-a-million downloads, its certain Nokia has taken a sigh of relief as for now. But we still think it would have been better had Nokia had offered free navigation since day one (the company charged users by making them purchase a licence if they wanted to use turn-by-turn navigation).