Spice Gets Sporty With Their M-6 Dual SIM Handset

Spice has just launched another new handset – the M6, that’s targeted at the young sports enthusiast. The M6 is designed for these users to stay connected to their sporting news or information of choice while simultaneously being connected with their friends. Its rugged look gives it a very outdoorsy feel.

The phone has a dedicated “Sports Zone” with applications such as Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Tennis, Yahoo Formula 1. In Social Networking the phone supports Facebook, Yahoo & Nimbuzz. It also features Opera Mini web browser and Video sharing application Vuclip. This Dual-SIM (GSM + GSM) phone is black in color which gets accentuated by dashes of green or Orange on side to add to the sporty look. It’s loaded with a 1000 mAH battery that’s supposed to deliver a talk time of 5 hours.



It also features



a 2.2-inch QVGA TFT Display with 262k colours,

GPRS, WAP

Stereo Bluetooth, USB

a 1.3 MP Camera with Digital zoom

FM Radio with Recording

up to 4GB of expandable memory via microSD cards

The Spice M-6 Sports mobile phone is available across India through more than 50,000 retail points including the 750+ Spice HotSpot retail network. It’s priced at Rs. 4499.

Rs. 1600 Computing Device Looks Good on Video

In our previous posts, we’ve seen the minimum functionalities of the low-cost-computing device (they are still contemplating as to what to name the product). Now, what we’ve got here are just the guidelines that manufactures have to work with in order to keep the price low… and sales high. We still haven’t heard a peep about the actual specs of this $35, Rs. 1,600 miracle priced computing solution.

Specifications



Suitable motherboard/system on chip to provide the mentioned expected functionalities.

QWERTY keyboard, a mouse and, a minimum display size of 7-inch color LCD/TFT (the touch interface is optional). Also, an all-in-one projection system is optional.

Minimum 2 USB (2.0) ports and USB hosts

RF, Certification – all “CE Certificate” (according to FCC guidelines)

Minimum three hours battery life

Battery charger with adapter or a hybrid super capacitor quick charger

SD card slot with support for minimum 8 GB

RGB / HDMI display options to enable connectivity with a projector

Support for an external hard drive (minimum 32 GB)

Ethernet port

WLAN card (Wi-Fi a/b/g/n)

Alternate battery support: Via solar cell / Hybrid capacitor

Webcam

Adequate RAM and hard drive / NAND flash

Shock resistant casing of suitable form factor for the device

Operating temperature: Zero to 48 degrees. Max humidity – 80%

ROHS compliant

Operating system: Linux

Seeing as this device is designed for the education sector and we’re all for the betterment of our outdated education system, I still don’t see how anyone could make even a base model with minimum functionalities at such a ludicrously low price. Sure we have cheap touchscreen mobile phones that can do quite a lot but the cheapest model is still in Rs. 4000 range.



The Ministry has invited manufactures and developers to an ‘Innovate’ conference so they break bread and crack heads on how they can make this $35 device for just $10. Wow! Call me a skeptic but I just don’t see it. It doesn’t seem viable for any manufacturer to offer a device with a 7-inch screen (unless it’s monochrome) that’s touch sensitive or comes with a possible slide out Keypad or even 2-4GB of memory for just Rs. 1,600. And let’s not forget it has to have some sort of connectivity option so we’ll have to add that to the price too. Wi-Fi isn’t high-priced, but it don’t come cheap either. Unless of course all this is only the manufacturing cost they’re talking about and the actual product price or MRP is much higher, which is something we’re still in the dark about.

And to top it all off, here we are discussing this ‘fabulous’ and seemingly unrealistic product that is promising so much for so little and we don’t even have a model number or name for it.



We’d like to know, readers, what’s your take on this new gadget that’s making big waves. Do you think manufacturers can pull it off and keep the price that low whole trying to make it lower? Or are you as skeptical as we are? Let us know your thoughts via our comments section.



We’d also like to know, if it were up to you, what would call this device. Let your imagination run wild techies.

iPhone 4 Hits Indian Shores in September!

The iPhone 4 will officially hit Indian shelves this September. The two main carriers will be Vodafone and Airtel. The 16 GB is expected to cost Rs. 35,000 and the 32 GB is expected to cost Rs. 41,500.


This makes India part of the 88 countries originally scheduled to have the phone.

Want to Test Your Eyesight With Your Mobile Phones?

MIT Media Lab researchers have created a quick, simple, and inexpensive way to use mobile phones to measure refractive errors of the eye, including nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and age-related vision loss. Until now, these measurements have only been possible using specialized equipment operated by a trained professional.




This new system, called NETRA (Near-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment), is a project of the Media Lab's Camera Culture research group. A small plastic device—which currently can be produced for less than US$2—is easily clipped onto a mobile phone screen. To use it, simply hold the device up to the eye, look into it, and use the phone’s keypad until two patterns overlap. This is repeated several times per eye, with the patterns at different angles. The whole process takes about two minutes, during which time software loaded onto the phone computes and provides the data needed to create a prescription.






The small size and low cost of the device make it especially well-suited for use in the developing world. As many as two billion people worldwide have refractive errors of the eye, and according to the World Health Organization, these errors, left uncorrected, are the world's second-highest cause of blindness.

iPhone 4 Unveiled: Steve Jobs at WWDC

Exciting new features were unveiled with arguably the most anticipated product this summer.








For one, the design's different. At 9.33mm thick, it is 24% thinner than the iPhone 3GS. It is currently the thinnest smartphone on the planet. It is made of a glass and steel combo; the stainless steel is for strength and the glass is for optical quality and scratch resistance. On the design, there is a front facing camera, LED flash, microSIM, headset and a second mic for noise cancellation.






The display is better than ever. Apple uses what they call Retina display which uses 4 times the pixels in the same given space. There are 326 pixels per inch. The human eye can process not more than 300 pixels per inch. Once you go retina, you can't go back. The new display is all about precision. Existing apps will look better. Retina is better than OLED.






The battery life's better too. The phone promises 40% better battery. 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing. 10 hours video. 40 hours of music. 300 hours standby.






Next is the motion sensing. They've tied the gyro, accelerometer and GPS for 6-axis motion sensing. This makes gaming a way better experience than before. To demonstrate this, Steve played a game of virtual Jenga.






The camera's upped! It now is a 5 MP camera (up from a 3 MP camera). Comes with a backside illuminated sensor, 1.75 unit sized pixels, 5x digital zoom, tap to focus and LED flash. Here's the coolest part though. The camera now records in HD video. Wait, here's the cooler part. The video is EDITABLE on the phone. The iPhone 4 can carry iMovie which can cut, trim, edit, add music, transitions and geolocation information to video on the go. The application can be bought for $4.99.






The next part is the OS. The new OS will be called iOS4. A quick summary of its features: Multitasking, folders, Retina Display integration, Unified inbox and threading in Mail, enhanced camera and photo apps, deeper enterprise support, new features everywhere.






They've added both Google and Yahoo! as search engines as well as Bing!. Google will however, remain the default search engine.






iBooks is also coming to the iPhone. iBooks lets you buy books from the iBookstore, it will connect wirelessly to the iPhone, iPad and iPod, you can download the same book to all your devices at no extra charge, it automatically syncs place, bookmarks and notes. iBookstore connects to both the App store and iTunes store.






A new feature is iAds. This is primarily to earn developers money. iAds keeps you in your aps and is built into Apple iOS4. Apple sells and hosts the ads. 60% of revenues go to the developers. Payment via iTunes Connect. Some of the brands that are using iAds are Nissan, Citi, AT&T, GE, Target and Best Buy. Nissan will be giving away a car through their ad. iAds will be on all iOS devices on July 1st. $60 million has already been committed from advertisers.






A very exciting feature (and the major point behind changing the camera and design) is video calling. You can video call using Wifi only in 2010 while Apple works with cellular networks to make video calls. This feature is called 'Face Time' and can be had iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only. This is going to be an industry open standard. You can use both the front and the back cameras during the video call.






In terms of price and availability, the iPhone 4 comes in black and white and will be priced at $199 in the US for 16 GB and $299 for the 32 GB models. The phone will be on sale on June 24th. The 3GS in the meantime will go for $99 and 3G is no more. Pre-order will start from tomorrow. The number of countries will keep increasing by the month and by September, the iPhone 4 will ship to 88 countries. There are still speculations about when India will get the phone.