Micromax yesterday launched the latest addition to their Canvas series of Android smartphones. Micromax launched new handset called Canvas Music A88, targeted at music lovers. This handset is a treat to audiophiles since it comes with JBL Tempo headsets which for sure give them awesome music experience.

Micromax Canvas Music A88 is powered by 1GHz dual core processor and 512 MB RAM. The handset packs a 4.5 inch screen, a 5 MP camera and dual LED flash. There’s a 0.3 MP front camera as well. On connectivity front it has latest Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi and USB 2.0. The phone runs on both 2G and 3G bands. Canvas Music A88 comes pre-loaded with Android Jellybean 4.1.1 The phone sports 1800 mAh battery. For music lovers Micromax provides unlimited songs download via MLive.

Starting today, Canvas Music A88 will be available to purchase throughout the country. It’ll sell for Rs.8499 and you can also buy it online.

Recently we covered the announcement of Lumia 928, the flagship Nokia device for Verizon US and pointed out some differences between Lumia 928 and Lumia 920. We know how important is this device for Nokia and Microsoft to gain some mind share in the states which is considered as the indicator of global dominance for any given company. Since Verizon is the largest carrier in the states it is vital for Nokia to make sure Lumia 928 becomes successful. So does it have all the ingredients to be the best meal of the table? Yes it does, and the taste is awesome!

Lumia 928 features some amazing technologies that set it apart from the competition. Things that buyers will be happy enough to boast about. The years of researching and hard works of the inventors are now in the palm of your hand. So there is innovation and there are other handsets. Lumia 928 also carries the title of “World’s most innovative smartphone” like its big brother. And here is my little attempt to show people why Lumia 928 is unique, ahead of the competition and a must buy for Verizon consumers.

Design

With Lumia 928 Nokia brings a new language of design instead of their award winning Fabula. The corners are now a little more squarish while slightly rounded. However it’s still made of Polycarbonate with unibody built like its big brother. Nokia reduced the so called bulkiness of the Lumia 920, resulting slimmer and lighter body on the Lumia 928 although it still sports the same sets of feature as Lumia 920 in terms of hardware.

Lumia 928 sports Corning Gorilla glass 2 that will protect your phone’s screen from scratches & accidental drops. The front side is all Black and covered by the beautiful combination of protective glass, deep Black OLED screen and three mandatory windows phone buttons. Typical OEM and carrier branding are present. On back it has a brushed metal(Zirconium) camera strip with Pureview & Carl Zeiss branding. Nokia also added a big speaker(s) on the back. The buttons on the left are also made of Zirconium instead of regular plastic or aluminum. As a result it really stands out in the crowd of Droids and iPhones.

PureView Camera

Camera has been one of the major features of a smartphone since it’s first introduced and no one will ever doubt the fact that Nokia is one of the best phone manufacturers when it comes to imaging technology. They introduced some of the biggest innovations in the industry with their N series phones specially N8 and later the mighty Nokia 808 Pureview. The name PureView is not particularly a name of certain technology. It’s a brand that ensures the latest & greatest camera technologies are present in the device. For example Nokia 808 PureView features the biggest 41MP sensor found on any smartphones, with lossless zoom and oversampling it’s still considered as the king of camera phones. Lumia 920 which is the second instalment of PureView family introduced world’s first optical image stabilization resulting industry leading low light imaging and stable video recording, with Lumia 928 Nokia added a Xenon flash on the already awesome Lumia 920′s camera that also sports optics from Carl Zeiss. So if you want the best in class camera phone in your favorite network Verizon Lumia 928 is a no brainer for you.

Display

Display is the most important element of a smartphone because it’s the first thing that a user notices. Touchscreen phones are all about interaction with the display. So every company tries to provide the best available viewing experience on their smartphones. What’s Nokia have in their bag? A handful amount of goodnesses.

Lumia 928 sports an AMOLED screen that ensures deep Black,  infinite contrast with excellent viewing angle. Nokia increased the display frame rate to 60 fps thanks to their PureMotion technology, which will give you a blur free and pleasing viewing. It’s a 4.5″ unit with 1280 x 768 resolution giving you a crisp(334 PPI vs iPhone’s 326 PPI) display that you won’t notice a pixel. Wait the story isn’t finished yet, Lumia 928 features Nokia’s proprietary ClearBlack tech that helps you to read your screen under direct sunlight and with Super Sensitive touch technology you can use the phone with gloves on! Impressive, isn’t it?

Music & Audio

If you’re into music (which you probably are) you definitely gonna love Lumia 928. From hardware to software Lumia 928 have all the features that a hardcore music lover wants to have in a smartphone. Let’s start with the hardware. Lumia 928 sports a very unique speaker(s) on its back, while it’s still a mono unit it produces industry leading up to 140 dB(vs HTC One’s 89 dB) sound. Go to concert frequently or like to record your own voice with your phone? Forget other phones, Lumia 928 will give you the perfect audio result using its HAAC mic technology that reduces the noise and gives you distortion free aural experience and it has 3 of them.

Music junkies also need great software support along with high class hardware. Nokia knows that. Enjoy over 22 million songs for free using Nokia music and store up to 4 tracks offline without any subscription. Musicaholics, you know which phone you want.

World phone

Now the folks who travel a lot. Since lumia 928 supports penta band and has both GSM & CDMA radio you don’t have to pay additional roaming charges or carry another phone while travelling. If you don’t want to switch your favorite carrier and still want to have this phone this is a great opportunity for you. However you might face lower data speed or network signal strength so I don’t suggest you to do this unless you’re confident. The most interesting fact is you won’t need an unlock code for using it abroad, all verizon GSM phones come factory unlocked!

Value

Unlike other 32GB phones Lumia 928 has a way cheaper price tag of $99. What’s more cool about it? You can get one outright at just $499! Starting from May 16th you’ll get $25 worth free Windows phone store credit to buy your favourite games & applications. And with $50 mail in rebate this is definitely a stellar deal. So the value of this phone alone can play a good roll to attract potential buyers who don’t need high specs or don’t care about above goodnesses at all.

Verdict

There are more things that I’d like to tell you in brief. I haven’t said much about its core, its OS, Windows phone(you can blame this long article). Windows phone is a matured OS now, with 1,45,000+ apps, great Microsoft support, Nokia’s free lifetime Navigation and offline map service this’d be a once in a lifetime experience for many. However you’ll still find some drawbacks and lack of apps. Just keep in mind, nothing is perfect. Windows phone ecosystem is growing, everyday new apps are coming on the store, carriers/OEMs are unveiling new hardwares. So it’s a win win situation for Windows  phone users, developers and enthusiasts. We know average person don’t care about apps but it’s a vital for a OS to provide its user the necessary ones. Windows phone pretty much has them all.

Lumia 928 provides better hardware & software optimization than most other flagship smartphones currently offer. A good looking phone with great camera, display, OS and hardware are all that a consumer wants. Taking everything into account I can confidently say we have a winner here!

Nokia did it again! Once again they listened to the consumers. Yesterday they launched the brand new Lumia 925 in an official press event in London. It is an aluminium made unibody Lumia with way lighter and thinner form factor than Lumia 920. On other words Lumia 925 is like an alter ego of the flagship who goes to gym. Since Nokia-AT&T 6 months exclusive is over Nokia now pushing their innovation to more people, people who love to have choices. With this release Nokia omitted the most criticised factor of Lumia 920(its weight & thickness) while adding some additional goodness. Evidently it’s just another variant of their current flagship and not meant to replace it. Starting from July T-Mobile(USA), Vodafone(EU), China Mobile, China Unicom are going to carry it exclusively.

Lumia 925 shares the same internals with the Lumia 920 so we’ll not bother to write the specs down instead we’ll point out the improvements from its older brother. It features an additional optical lens(mind that hump) which makes it World’s first phone with six lens camera module. It is significantly lighter(139g vs 185g) and thinner(8.5mm vs 10.7mm) than Lumia 920. It’s built around an aluminium chassis while sporting a traditional Polycarbonate back. However Nokia ditched embedded wireless charging but there is an option to get it back via snap on cover.

Lumia 925 is a result of creativity, innovation and fine craftsmanship. We’ve learned that Nokia had it planned back in September when they announced their first WP8 Lumia smartphones. It’s a shame that such beautiful device is coming out late than it was supposed to but it’s better late than never. As it’s not their new flagship(which will come out later this year) we certainly can’t expect much from it compared to Lumia 920. The goal of this phone is to giving people more options. We know many people liked the look of Lumia 920 but didn’t buy it for its bulkiness. Nokia now has a phone for them that offers the same amount greatness as it predecessor. Personally I like aluminium devices so I prefer it over other Lumia handsets, period. And I think many will agree with me.

Lumia 925 is priced at 469 euros in Europe and will be available in Black, Grey & White. Price & availability for T-Mobile USA is still unknown though you can register one here

Source: Nokia

Product page

Today Nokia announced their much anticipated smartphone Lumia 928 for the biggest carrier in US, Verizon Wireless. It’s now their new flagship device in the States since Lumia 920 is already 6 months old. Apparently Lumia 928 is not so different from Lumia 920 in terms of hardware. Although they’ll both stand out when you hold them in hands. Nokia did some amazing job by reducing the extra weight of the Lumia 920 as a result Lumia 928 is only 162 gm, quite an achievement!

We’re going to split our comparison into several parts. That of course starts with the housing of the device. Although both look quite similar but there are some differences that we’d like to point out. Lumia 928 features a little boxy type of design with squarish rounded corners vs curve unibody design of Lumia 920. Big differences on display technology since Nokia upgraded(!) the display to AMOLED in the Lumia 928 resulting brilliant deep Blacks & infinite contrast.

Same thing applies to the cameras. Both sport same 8.7 MP sensor with PureView branding on board but we reckon Lumia 928 will outperform Lumia 920 since Nokia might have tweaked the hardware a bit. On the other hand Xenon flash is back with splash! We’ll see how the duo of Xenon-LED performs against other smartphones in the market. Glorious results, we expect.

Now the internals! No change here, the absolute same hardwares. But there are some small criteria we’d like to tell you about. Lumia 928 features a Lithium-Polymer Battery. So expect some fast charging action along with longer talk time and standby. Big difference on color selections. Lumia 928 is only available in classic Black & White.

Since Lumia 920 is 6 months older than Lumia 928, the former one is going to be replaced by the latter one as a flagship. Lumia 928 has some big advantages over Lumia 920. It’s on the biggest carrier of USA, the country where Nokia is struggling to gain some traction. As reported earlier Nokia only sold 400K Lumia smartphones in the stateside in last quarter. So their luck is now up to Lumia 928. Whether Nokia will be relevant in the state or not time will tell. Hopefully Nokia & Verizon will sell millions of them. As Nokia has never been shy when it comes to innovation. We want fortune favors the brave.

The wait is now over for us. Nokia has been teasing us with it for long time and now it’s official. Yes, Lumia 928 the next “hero” Lumia is now official. The handset will sell on biggest US carrier, Verizon Wireless. Lumia 928 stands as a upgrade to the now ex-flagship Lumia 920 which is selling on AT&T exclusively. For the long time Verizon subscribers were waiting for their turn. The Lumia 928 brings the same PureView and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) tech while replacing LED flash with Xenon flash.

We saw Lumia 928 in just too many leaks before it was officially announced today. Just few days back Nokia even put up the official site for and outed the video comparing the PureView tech with iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4. Recently, the Nokia CEO also said that next Lumia handset will have “hero” status with a leading carrier, merely confirming the existence of the handset.

So coming to the Lumia 928 it’ll sport following features. It’ll have the same 8.7 MP PureView camera with Carl Zeiss lens which is famous for low-light photography with highly regarded OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). The camera will be able to record 1080p videos. Along with that,it’ll also sport Xenon flash, first time in Lumia series. There’s separate LED for recording video in low light. Lumia 928 will have 4.5″ OLED HD+ (1280×768)screen unlike IPS LCD on Lumia 920. It’ll also carry goodies like curved Gorilla Glass protection and ability to use the screen even when you’re wearing gloves. The Lumia 928 will allow rich recording,thanks to high performance (HAAC) microphones.

Lumia 928 will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz dual core processor and 1GB of RAM. The front camera will have 1.2 MP resolution with the ability to record videos in 720p mode. The Lumia 928 will have 4G LTE radio as well. The handset will run on Windows Phone 8.

The design has been revamped too. For very long time, flagship Lumia’s have been using the same design with little variation. Nokia Lumia 928 sports new design while it still uses unibody polycarbonate construction. We’re hoping for aluminum wrapping here. The Lumia 928 will also feature wireless charging.

The Lumia 928 will sell exclusively on Verizon Wireless for a killer price,$99 for 2 years contract. It’ll be available for purchase from 16th May. Buyers will get $25 credit too for purchasing apps in Windows Phone Store. It’ll come in only two colors, black and white.

We’re hoping to see Lumia 928 in the event that’s going to take place on 14th May, next week. But it has arrived bit earlier. Now the question remains is what will see next week. It’ll be another Lumia for sure. Could it be next camera flagship? Or just global variant of Lumia 928? We’ll find out next week. So stay tuned.

During an event held at Delhi,India, Nokia has announced the latest handset in the Asha lineup, Asha 501. With the introduction of Asha 501, Nokia has also overhauled their Asha platform making it more suitable for smartphone functions. Asha 501 is a full touch phone featuring 3″ screen and a 3.2 MP camera. The phone also has dual SIM capability which runs on 2G networks only. Nokia has tried pack as many features as possible with the addition of WiFi and inclusion of 4GB memory card in box. User will also be gifted a pack of 40 free EA games. The Asha 501 adopts new design language which closely resembles to the high-end Lumia phones. We saw it in the leaks earlier this year.

The new Asha platform carries heavily from the MeeGo interface we saw on Nokia N9. The new Asha platform brings the same Swipe or gesture based interface to the users which makes it very simple to use the phone. The Asha 501 has just one “back” button on its face. The new Asha UI is the fruit of the Smarterphone, the company Nokia acquired last year. There are two parts of the UI, Home and Fastlane. The Home is the traditional menu featuring your apps. The Fastlane view shows the recently accessed apps and other activities such as music, contacts etc. Both of them can be accessed with just one swipe. The new UI also has new features that you’d expect from high end phones like music controls and notifications on lockscreen. We saw that on N9 as well and from our experience we can certainly say that it’s one of the best feature. And then there’s Nokia sleeping screen too.

Nokia has also partnered with Facebook and carriers to provide free access to Facebook (you won’t be charged for the data usage). Nokia Asha will come in six colors. Besides it features exchangeable shells so that you can swap them to match your mood. The Asha 501 will be start selling for $99 or INR 5,400 before taxes.

Check out the Asha 501 Intro and Hands On videos below,courtesy of Nokia Conversations

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In other news, HTC has announced the Chinese variant of their flagship handset, HTC One with some really useful extra goodies. Unlike, the international version, HTC One for China has dual SIM as well as microSD card support. Both of them reside under the separable back cover. So no unibody construction anymore. But the battery still remains unreachable for us. This is just another case where the flagship phone gets some extra stuff that leaves us jealous. And we also wonder if it would have been too difficult for HTC to make the same version of One available for international markets. This is not fair.

HTC has not announced the pricing for it. The handset will supposedly go on sale on April 26.

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Asha 210 comes equipped with a 2 MP camera, no AF, no flash. It has got the basics covered. Well the good news is it has Wi-Fi b/g/n so you don’t need to worry about crossing your data plan limits. Nokia has added its own set of technologies to make it smarter. For an instance, though the phone doesn’t have front camera, the phone has voice guidance so that you can take right self portraits. Then there is Nokia’s own Slam technology which lets you transfer files among two compatible devices without pairing. Another plus point is that it has dual SIM variant as well. It has 64 MB of internal memory and you can use additionally 32 GB microSD card. There will be usual social apps preloaded And for those fancy colors, this one comes in various colors like cyan,magenta,yellow etc. Asha 210 will sell for around $72 or Rs.4,000 before any subsidies or taxes and it’ll start selling from this quarter. Check out the the hands on video by Nokia,

This AOSP for Xperia Z project is being led by Johan Redestig and Björn Andersson, senior software engineers at Sony (respect!). Sony is famous for their active contribution to developer community and these AOSP projects are a part that. The current build has SD-card, Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth™, GPS, LED light, and sensors working (partially). Sony has Camera and Modem working as well internally but since both require proprietary binaries by Qualcomm, they won’t be published to developers just yet. There are some Xperia Z binaries available though to get you started. In the coming days Sony will be providing alternatives to proprietary binaries to the devs and will be working to fix the NFC. Again, we remind you that though anyone can use it, it’s not ready for your daily usage but devs should be happy to have it anyways. Check the video of the AOSP running on the Xperia Z below,

The AOSP build is available on Git Hub here and bug tracker can be found here.

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