Nokia rolls out another two phones for emerging markets

We're not keen on sharing our phones with other people, but Nokia is making a big deal out of it for the emerging markets. Its recent survey wants us to believe that more than 50 percent of the respondents in India, Pakistan and close to 30 percent in Vietnam are sharing, or would share, their handsets with family or friends.

One of the two handsets announced today--the Nokia 1209--comes with a multiple phonebook feature for that exact purpose. It allows up to five people to store their personal contact lists on a single phone. The other features are absolutely pedestrian, so we won't go into the specifics. The second phone is the 2600 classic. It comes with a marginally better feature set that includes an FM radio, VGA camera and swappable Xpress-on covers.

Both handsets are expected to be available in Singapore in February, with the rest of Asia looking at Q1 for the 2600 classic (65 euros before taxes) and Q2 for the 1209 (35 euros before taxes).

Phone with rollout display rolls out

If we were editors for a thesaurus, "brag" would become a synonym for "concept". Companies tease consumers all the time with digital renders of products that never make the light of day. This is why it came as quite a surprise that Polymer Vision, a spinoff from Dutch company Philips, has committed to bringing its Readius mobile phone with a rollout display to market.

This mobile phone is not much bigger than your regular candy-bar device. Even then, it manages to have a 5-inch display which can be folded out to one side. The screen is a monochrome one, but still, its size makes it great for reading e-books and other text documents. An earlier press release on the Polymer Vision site said it should have shipped by the end of 2007. We have contacted the company for a confirmation of that and whether it will be available in Asia Pacific. For now, check out some images of this not-just-a-concept-anymore handset.



Via NOTCOT

New phones from Toshiba surface

The Toshiba Portege series of mobile phones started out with two devices in Europe. It would be fitting then for the next two to be announced there, too, this time in Italy. The Japanese company has unveiled the G710 and G910, two Windows Mobile 6-based products which succeed the G500 and G900.

The G710 uses the WM6 Smartphone OS, which means it has no touchscreen. It comes with a keyboard that looks very similar to the one found on the Samsung SGH-i600. GPS is built-in but the specs don't say if it has 3G or HSDPA.
Read more »

Asus M930 landing in Singapore in March

So it's true. Everything that's said about the Asus M930 has turned out to be right, except that it isn't a Windows Mobile 6 Professional device. Instead, it's the Standard edition running the show. The quadband clamshell will ship with HSDPA and your usual wardrobe of connectivity options such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Blackberry support. Other features include a 400MHz TI 2431 processor, 512MB flash memory, 64MB RAM and a 2-megapixel camera.

Most of that look fine on paper, but we can't help worry for Asus that the M930 may end up looking like a second-class citizen. Its passing resemblance to a certain Nokia device aside, the 400 x 240-pixel WQVGA LCD seems like an awful waste of space. Granted that it may not be intentional and is probably a limitation of the OS, but that's no excuse for not trying to utilize the real estate.

So on the one hand, people are going to compare the M930 with the Nokia E90. On the other, some will wonder, why not go for the HTC S730 with a similar form factor, but smaller and sans the wide-aspect ratio LCD? It's not a big loss to us. I guess it's going to be a tough fight for Asus this time. More impressions when the smart phone launches in March.

Still no sight of 3G iPhone

The whole world may have descended on Macworld in San Francisco, but one thing's for sure: The 3G iPhone didn't show up. What Steve Jobs gave to a crowd of hopefuls was a software update that brings multiple-recipient messaging, Google Maps with location service, customizable home screen, etc., to the current-gen iPhone. These upgrades may be great, but there are still missing features like Bluetooth stereo A2DP, MMS, and video recording. That said, we are only two weeks into 2008 with 50 more to go, and Apple won't stay quiet throughout for sure.

In Singapore, the three telco operators told CNET Asia that they are in talks with Apple, but were unable to provide any more specific details. Expected local launch? A good window of 50 weeks.

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