The best part, of course, is that while the price is low, you still get an awesome-looking phone. The Xperia U follows the new Sony design principles seen in the Xperia S with that little transparent panel, which houses a new antenna among other technologies. What’s more, it can change its colour depending on the dominant colour on your screen at any point – a cool feature, but ultimately useless. And you can also change the bottom cap to give your phone a new colour.

Of course, it’s a fantastic handset even without these design elements, but it does have one major flaw: There’s no expandable microSD slot, so users are restricted to the 4GB of internal memory that the handset has to offer. With your phone becoming your mobile data point, this is a major restriction, if you ask us.

But still, the rest of the specs are quite brilliant and at Rs. 17,399, the Sony Xperia U is a bargain.

– It Tracks You: The Samsung Galaxy S III uses its built-in sensors and technology very smartly to figure out what you are doing, and adjusts itself accordingly. For example, its front camera tracks your eyes to figure out what you are doing, such as reading a book, and will adjust its screen accordingly, keeping the screen awake and not letting it go to sleep. And if you open up a contact in your Phone Book and hold it to your ear, the device will recognize this with its smart sensors and dial the person automatically.

– Pop Up Play: A new feature that allows you to play even an HD video while simultaneously running other tasks, like searching for info on that video. And the whole time, the video shrinks to a smaller pane, letting you watch it alongside. The multi-tasking feature eliminates the need to close and restart videos when checking new emails or surfing the Web.

– Buddy Share: The 8-megapixel camera comes with a Burst Shot mode to capture 20 photographs quickly, like a DSLR. But the cool part is that it can identify people in your photos based on your Facebook friends, and tag them automatically. And right after that, it’ll give you options to quickly share the photo with your friends!

Of course, these are just three of the many features that the Samsung Galaxy S III boasts of. Here’s the spec sheet, and don’t forget to check out our huge gallery of 30 high-def shots of the SGS 3:

@TifosoTuli The Galaxy Nexus will not be launched in India. Watch this space for the next big thing!

— Samsung India (@Samsung_India) May 2, 2012

The Galaxy Nexus is Google’s current flagship phone, coming with a dual-core processor, 4.7-inch touchscreen and a camera with a super-fast shutter. And of course, it was the first mobile to run on Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with no frills attached.

Still, the Galaxy Nexus is easily available in the grey market in India. Last we checked, the price was at Rs. 23,000, but you can expect it to shoot up a little after Samsung’s announcement.

Speaking to The Financial Times, Nokia’s chairman Jorma Ollila said that the company is looking to launch a range of tablets and “hybrid” smart devices. Although he did not clarify what “hybrid” meant, we would assume it to be tablet+keyboard combinations like the Asus Transformer Prime, and not ‘phablet’ devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note.

Nokia has signed a deal with Microsoft to back the Windows operating platform on its devices, which would mean that these tablets and hybrid smart devices would run on the upcoming Windows 8 OS, expected to be launched in June.

Previously, Nokia’s design chief Marko Ahtisaari has admitted to spending a third of his time on creating a new tablet that stand out among hundreds of iPad-challengers. DigiTimes reported in March that the company was getting ready to launch a 10-inch Windows 8 tablet with a dual-core processor later this year.

Ollila also admitted in the interview that Nokia had missed out on the smartphone revolution even after identifying it as a key trend in the mid-2000s.

Source: The Financial Times

The Nokia Asha 302 runs on the Series 40 operating system and comes with a 1GHz processor, 2.4-inch screen, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a 3-megapixel camera (but no flash). There’s no touchscreen here, like the Asha 303, but when compared to the Asha 200, it does bring added connectivity and a faster processor.

Still, it doesn’t seem like a great deal when you consider that for Rs. 1,000 more, you can get touch-and-type Android handsets like the LG Optimus Pro and Motorola Fire, and even Nokia’s own Asha 303.

Would you buy the Asha 302 for this price? Let us know in the comments below…

Traditional touchscreens come with a three-layer design. At the bottom sits the LCD screen itself, on top of which sits the touch panel, and which is further covered with Gorilla Glass. The touchscreen works by detecting either a change in light or pressure, both of which happen when the user touches the glass surface over the touch panel. But it is this touch panel which is doing the work of detecting the ‘touch input’ of the finger. The touch panel is needed because traditional LCD screens only have the capability to ‘display’, but not ‘sense’.

That’s where Toshiba’s innovation of In-Cell Touch Panels comes in. By running a circuit through the LCD screen, it was able to detect and sense touch input just as capably as a traditional touch panel.

Lighter & Thinner

Not only is the in-cell touch panel is not only more accurate, but by eliminating the need for a touch panel, it also makes the overall ‘touchscreen’ much lighter and thinner.

When Toshiba first demonstrated these panels last year, it showcased pieces that were 7 inches with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels. Compared with current-gen products that require an external surface, the thickness of the in-cell touch panel was 43% thinner at 1 mm, and the weight was 48% lighter at 225 grams.

Better Sunlight Legibility

If you have often been disappointed with how your screen looks in direct sunlight, chalk that up to the current physics themselves. Conventional touchscreens have a gap between the LCD panel and the touch panel. This gap reduces viewability and can cause parallax.

But again, eliminating the touch panel has the effect of reducing parallax and increasing viewability. In fact, Toshiba claims it offers a 10% reduction in the light reflected off the surface.

“In the coming months, we will (be) adding one entry level Android phone that will be around Rs. 10,000 ($200/150 euros) and a mid-range smartphone that will be in price range of Rs. 15,000 ($290/220 euros),” said Sunil Raina, Business Head – Xolo, Lava International, while talking to The Mobile Indian.

The two new phones are expected to be launched in 2012 as the co-founder and director of Lava International, Mr. Vishal Sehgal, was also quoted as saying, “Lava will be launching two more handset based on Intel chipset under Xolo series by the end of this year.”

The current Lava XOLO X900 features a 4-inch touchscreen, 8-megapixel camera with shutter-burst mode and the new Intel Medfield processor with a clock speed of 1.6GHz. Even on its single-core processor, its benchmarks have rivalled the likes of the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. More about it here.

Source: The Mobile Indian

According to a new report from DigiTimes, Apple is thinking of adopting the in-cell touch panel developed by Sharp and Toshiba Mobile Display. The company’s current touch panel supplier, TPK Holdings, has been said to be working on an alternate tech called ‘Touch on Lens’.

What Is An In-Cell Touch Panel?

Without getting into the technicalities of what makes an in-cell touch panel superior, the brief explanation is that the properties of the capacitive touchscreen are performed by the pixels themselves. This is possible due to a new circuit inside the panel that is capable of detecting capacitive change.

Traditional touchscreens work when the panel detects either a change in light or pressure, both of which happen when the user touches the glass surface over the panel. By potentially eliminating the need for such a second glass surface, the new in-cell touch panels are more battery efficient as well as considerably thinner and lighter.

When Toshiba first demonstrated these panels last year, it showcased pieces that were 7 inches with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels. Compared with current-gen products that require an external surface, the thickness of the in-cell touch panel was 43% thinner at 1 mm, and the weight was 48% lighter at 225 grams. And it’s also better for sunlight legibility, offering a 10% reduction in the light reflected off the surface.

So if the iPhone 5 does go in for an in-cell touch panel, you can expect it to be thinner, lighter and be easier to read in harsh light – a win for every consumer out there.

Of course, there’s no indication yet of what the iPhone 5 will look like, but we hope it’s closer to this iPhone Steve Jobs concept we had seen earlier.

Source: DigiTimes, Tech-On

The Medfield chipset from Intel is the company’s first foray into mobile phones, and it has already been touted by many to be as powerful in its single-core avatar as some of the dual-core processors out there. In fact, Anandtech’s benchmarks saw it beat the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy Nexus.

The new platform also lays some emphasis on camera performance. The camera’s burst shot mode claims to let you take a series of ten successive photos, snapped automatically at 15 frames per second. Impressive!

The device can be ordered from its official website, xolo.in, or purchased from a Croma outlet from April 23. Here’s a full spec sheet as well as a couple of images:

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