Nokia Debuts Three Symbian Smartphones

Nokia announced three new smartphones, which will run Symbian Belle. Photo: This Is My Next.

Nokia hasn’t quite completed its transition to Windows Phone 7, so it’s still got a few Symbian phones up its sleeve … even if Symbian is all but dead here in the United States.

Nokia announced three new handsets Wednesday, each with a specific claim to fame and running Belle, the latest version of Symbian OS.

The Nokia 600 is the cheapest of the bunch. It features Nokia’s loudest speaker to date, which can blast tunes at 106 phons, and an FM transmitter. It also is said to have a 60-hour battery life.

The Nokia 700 is Nokia’s tiniest smartphone. The third model, the 701, is said to have the brightest display on the market (even in direct sunlight): a 3.5-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display. It also sports an 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting HD video. The 700 and 701 both feature a 1-GHz processor.

Earlier this year, Nokia announced it would abandon the Symbian OS in favor of Windows Phone 7. That stunned a lot of people and left Symbian developers feeling alienated. Following the announcement, Nokia said it had a 12-month timeline for the OS swap, so we won’t be seeing Nokia WP7 devices until 2012. The company said it would release about 20 Symbian smartphones in the interim.

All three models announced today have NFC capabilities, which makes it dead easy to wirelessly share photos and videos, connect to accessories like speakers, or share contact information with Nokia-toting friends.

The 600, 700, and 701 are each available in a variety of hues, ranging from metallic gray to eye-popping flamingo pink, and will be priced at €180, €270 and €290, [$260, $390 and $419] respectively.

via This Is My Next

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Samsung Debuts Middling Phone for Middle Incomes

The Samsung Comment is available for $90 with service provided by Cricket. Photo courtesy of Samsung

Samsung debuted the Comment on Wednesday, a middle-of-the-road smartphone with an emphasis on texting and cheap calling plans.

The BlackBerry-esque design has a full qwerty keyboard and a center joypad for navigation around the plain-vanilla Cricket operating system. There’s also Bluetooth connectivity, the obligatory back-facing camera (1.3 megapixels), and Cricket’s proprietary app storefront. Other than the expected niceties, the phone has little going on inside.

Though the Comment’s $90 price tag feels a tad high for a phone with relatively few features, Cricket’s monthly plans are a cheap alternative to a pricier Android or iOS phone and plan. Picking up an Android or iPhone 4 handset will set you back around 200 bones, not to mention around $90 a month for services. Cricket’s monthly plans float around the $40 range, which is just about right for the cellular company’s target audience; most Cricket customers fall in the 35-and-under category, with an income of less than $50,000 a year.

If recent buying trends continue in the United States, phones like the Comment may end up a relic of times past. According to a recent Nielsen survey, a majority of cellular phones bought in the United States right now are smartphones despite the availability of cheaper alternatives. Compare that to just three years ago when less than 20 percent of all phones sold were smartphones.

It seems that mobile customers are getting used to having the world inside a glowing glass rectangle. The single-function phone of yore, for which SMS and basic web browsing are the apex of these models’ ability, seems to be waning in popularity.

If the Comment has one thing going for it, it’s the appeal of a solid, middle-of-the-road plan with anytime minutes, long distance calling, picture messaging, and mobile web access.

source : wired.com

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UFO Appears Back in the UK + Video

Earlier, the BBC had also reported seeing UFOs hovering in the sky. A few days later, the UFO is back up and caught on camera.Latest video clearly shows, a ball of white light through the skynear
Stansted Airport, Essex, England. Several balls of light thenappeared and away from the center of light in different directionsat high speed.

Ufo at the border of Essex andHertfordshire 2011

Ufo Hertfordshire 2004

Video recorded on the M11 in Essex and Hertfordshire border isadjacent sports reporter reports BBC Radio 5 Live's Mike Sewellwho also saw the UFO there. On the other hand, many critics who claim the UFO hoaxes. The video was uploaded on July 29, fivedays before the BBC, by alvinolâ" 36. UFO expert Nick Pope said, â € œVideo is very interesting. Tell me this video the original, obviously, video is becoming one of the most bizarrevideos I've ever seen. " [

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