When the iPhone 3G was announced, unlike Airtel, Vodafone made no formal announcement that it would be bringing the much awaited mobile phone to India.
Apple, though, confirmed this by mentioning that India would get the iPhone 3G through Airtel and Vodafone.

Now Vodafone has announced that people can pre-register for the iPhone with them, indicating that the iPhone will be available soon. The company is tight-lipped on the question 'How soon?'. All they are willing to divulge is that the iPhone will be compatible only with the 2G networks and some of the iPhone 3G's features may not work here.

Airtel too is inviting people to book their iPhone with them.

As portable music players get smaller and smaller, manufacturers are paradoxically trying to incorporate as many features into them as possible. The big question is: can they sustain all the functionality and still offer the quality you’d expect for the price? A good example that will help us answer that question is the Sony NWZ-S616F Walkman Video MP3 Player.

Form Factor
When it comes to the design of a music player, personally I’ll admit I’m a stickler for style. But looks aren’t everything. The Sony NWZ-S616F is quite a neat looking device with a superbly clear 1.8 inch QVGA display sporting a 240 x 320 pixel resolution. It has a 3.5mm earphone socket on the top of the player, a hold switch for the keypad on one side, and volume controls on the other. For charging and PC connectivity Sony uses a proprietary connector located at the bottom.What I liked most abut the 616F is the simplicity in the navigation controls. A single button for returning to a previous menu, a sub-menu key for accessing additional features in different modes, and a five-way nav-pad that's large enough for my fat fingers to use with ease. It’s also quite a slim player at about 11mm and weighs a measly 50 grams. Users will have no problem carrying this baby around.
Features and PerformanceThe NWZ-S616F is quite the little do-it-all PMP. From video to radio and images and a load of music-centric options, it's guaranteed to make your music experience more interesting. To start off, the interface and menus are large and clear, and the navigation is as smooth as a hot knife though butter. Feature-wise the 616F has a JPEG or image viewer, and with the resolution it has, the images look brilliant. Users have the option of viewing the images in a slideshow format, but that’s nothing new. It’s compatible with DCF 2.0/Exif 2.2 file formats.The FM radio reception is really quite good. In Auto Preset mode, depending on the scan sensitivity you opt for, it takes the 616F no more than 15-20 seconds to locate and save all the available channels. Of course, you can’t expect crystal-clear reception while commuting, but in most places you’ll have no issues whatsoever.

Portable speakers seem to be in. My review of the X-mini Capsule speakers caught the attention of a lot of readers, and my inbox is inundated with curious folks asking if there are any more where this came from. The good news is, yes! I've been busy scouring the streets of Mumbai, and over the next couple of months you can expect at least one portable speaker review every week.
Over the last few days, talks with importers of such gadgets has yielded excellent results. This corroborates some valid concerns made by readers in the comments section of the X-mini review – that of fakes. Yes, one needs to beware of fakes, for the market is aplenty with such products. But I would like to point out that while many fakes do come from China, not all Chinese products are suspect.Today we shall look at the iDuo Hamburger speakers, which are most definitely Chinese, but ingenious nevertheless. It picks up where X-mini’s story ends: stereo sound. For those who have been wondering if monaural is really the way the go, I would say the iDuo come highly recommended for those stereo sounds.

The speakers can attach to each other thanks to the magnetic base, and this makes transport easy. While playing you only need to remember to make the right connections. Amidst the cabling, you will find the rather radtastic enmesh of the connection cable. This entails mini-USB twins at one end, and a standard USB interface on the other. The two mini-USB pins go into slots on each speaker, and the USB leads into the computer (use only while charging).

Sony India has brought their latest PMP - the NWZ-A726 Walkman player to the country. The players were launched at the beginning of this year. The player, like all PMPs, supports music, photo, and video playback.

The A720 supports WMA, AAC, linear PCM and MP3 music formats, plus JPEG files for photos, in addition to the AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline Profile and MPEG-4 video codecs. It also comes with Sony's four clear audio technologies - Clear Bass, Clear Stereo, Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE), and 13φ EX Headphones. These particular features have been incorporated by Sony to enhance the audio quality by filling in the high tones that can be lost during file compression. They will also help enhance the bass, minimize distortion and maintain a consistent channel signal creating a better listener experience. Of course that’s something we have yet to test.


The NWZ-A726 has a 2.4-inch QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) LCD screen that displays video at 30 frames per second either in landscape or portrait view. Also audio and video files are automatically bookmarked when the player is stopped or shut down. It has a four-way nav-pad with an 'Options' and 'Menu' key as well. Other keys are located on the side of the player along with Sony’s proprietary USB connection port.

According to Sony the NWZ-A726 can provide users with 36 hours of audio playback and 10 hours of video. Retailed in a black metal casing across select Sony stores, the 4 GB NWZ-A726 MP3 Walkman is priced at Rs. 8,990.

Yahoo Inc. is offering free e-mail accounts under two new designations in an effort to attract Web surfers unhappy with their current addresses.

The Sunnyvale-based company expects to begin registering new addresses under the domains of "ymail" and "rocketmail" around noon PDT Thursday at http://mail.yahoo.com.

It will be the first time that Yahoo has offered e-mail accounts under umbrellas other than its own company name since it became a correspondence conduit in 1997.

Yahoo began offering free e-mail shortly after its $80 million acquisition of Four11 Corp., which included the rocketmail domain. Rocketmail users at the time of the acquisition were allowed to keep their existing accounts, but Yahoo hadn't accepted any new addresses under that name until now.

The diversification into new e-mail designations is being driven by the difficulty that people are having as they try to find an appealing e-mail handle under the Yahoo domain.

Most people prefer an e-mail address that's easy to remember - like the first letter of their first name in front of their last name - or reflective of a personal interest, like a hobby or favorite sports team.

But the popularity of Yahoo e-mail had narrowed the range of choices, forcing users to perform too many mental gymnastics to come up with an e-mail handle that hadn't already been taken.

"We realized we needed to expand the universe of Yahoo mail," said John Kremer, a vice president in charge of Yahoo's e-mail.

Yahoo is hoping the additional options created with the ymail and rocketmail will help boost its e-mail growth. Although it's given away, e-mail is considered an important product because it fosters user loyalty and spurs frequent visits that create advertising opportunities.

With 266 million worldwide users in April, Yahoo is the e-mail market leader, according to the latest data from research firm comScore Inc. Microsoft Corp., which unsuccessfully tried to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion, is a close second at 264 million users.

But e-mail accounts at both Yahoo and Microsoft have been growing at a slower pace than Google Inc.'s Gmail, which has added more than 30 million users in the past year. About 101 people used the Internet search leader's Gmail in April, comScore said.

E-mail under the ymail and rocketmail designations will offer all the same features as the Yahoo domain, including an unlimited amount of storage capacity.

When it entered the e-mail market, Yahoo provided just 3 megabytes of free storage per account. But Google changed the competitive landscape in 2004 when it introduced gmail with 1 gigabyte of free storage under its Gmail service. Gmail now offers more than 6 gigabytes of free storage.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division today announced the addition of a 128GB solid state drive (SSD) into the Portégé laptop series. The company says that this move makes its 2.4 pound(2) Portégé R500-S5007V, the world’s lightest laptop with a 128GB SSD and DVD SuperMulti drive and one of the world's thinnest with a SSD and DVD SuperMulti drive.“With seven world’s first technologies the Portégé R500 series has served as a technology launching pad and redefined the ultraportable marketplace with its world’s first technologies and ‘green’ attributes, such as a transreflective LED backlit indoor/outdoor viewing display, the industry’s highest rated EPEAT Gold laptop and Energy Star 4.0 compliance,” said Jeff Barney, general manager and vice president, Digital Products Division, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. “First to incorporate a 128GB solid state drive is another major accomplishment for Toshiba and illustrates how the company is committed to delivering solutions that meet the needs of our customers.”

Utilizing the industry’s largest solid state drive capacity of 128GB, Toshiba’s Portégé R500-S5007V provides ample storage space for carrying critical company data and sensitive personal data while traveling. To further reduce the weight and slimness of the laptop, Toshiba has equipped the laptop with a 7mm DVD SuperMulti drive. Furthermore, for enhanced outdoor viewing, the Portégé R500 series incorporates the world’s first widescreen 12.1-inch transreflective LED backlit display, a feature that embraces the variety of lighting scenarios in which laptop computers are used including direct sunlight.

Measuring as thin as 0.77-inches, the Portégé R500 series also uses Toshiba’s proprietary High Density Mounting Technology process to enable dual-sided motherboard component mounting. This technology produces a motherboard that is one-third the size of a mainstream 15.4-inch notebook’s motherboard, while still providing users the same functionality.

Sprint Nextel Corp. will be taking on the iPhone with a lower price for its own touch-screen smart phone, the Samsung Instinct.


The carrier said Wednesday that the Instinct will cost $129.99 when released on Friday. That compares with $199 for the cheapest model of the new iPhone, which goes on sale July 11 with AT&T Inc. as the carrier.

The Instinct shares many features with the new iPhone, including access to a fast wireless data network and a GPS receiver. Sprint was unusually involved in the phone's development, and plans to promote it heavily.

The new iPhone costs half as much as the old one, since AT&T is now subsidizing the hardware, much like carriers do for other phones. Previously, Apple had a unique arrangement with AT&T under which the phone was sold at full price, but Apple got a share of wireless service revenue from the carrier.

Before the announcement of the iPhone price cut, Sprint had indicated that the Instinct would cost more than $200. Afterward, it said it would match the price. Wednesday's announcement lowers the price further, and points to the intense competition in the smart-phone market, which has been very strong the last six months.

The Instinct's price is with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

The purchase price of a smart phone is only a fraction of the total cost of ownership, since the phones require a data plan. The cheapest monthly plan for the Instinct will cost $69.99, which ends up closer to $80 with taxes and fees. The cost for two years of service is then about $1,900.

Adidas tied up with mobile giant Samsung to bring miCoach, the mobile phone dedicated to the fitness freaks and mobile connoisseurs alike, and now Nike has come up with a way for people to use their mobile phone’s camera to help customize their shoes and are calling it PhotoiD.
Mobile phone users can take pictures with their mobile phone's camera and send the image as an MMS to Nike’s service. The company will then analyze the image, pick out the two main colors in the picture and using their classic 1985 Dunk high-top basketball sneakers as the core design incorporate them into the shoe.

Nike will then send the image of the customized shoe with the chosen colors back to the user for preview and the image apart from being usable as a wallpaper on the handset, can also be the actual shoes that the users could purchase.



Nike PhotoiD is created by digital agency AKQA. It will launch in nine European territories today - the UK, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Nike earlier tied up with Apple for their Nike + iPod system for the iPod Nano video.

It's official. Motorola and KODAK’s collaborative 5 megapixel auto-focus camera phone the MOTOZINE ZN5 has been launched. Unveiled in Beijing, the ZINE ZN5 is the first mobile phone to combine Motorola’s ModeShift Technology and Kodak Imaging Technology. With Kodak Easyshare Software and easy access to Kodak Gallery or other web sharing sites, pictures are easily moved off the device, allowing consumers to print, share and enjoy their favorite photos whenever they want.

“Today’s creative consumers not only want to be the photographer, but also the retoucher, the exhibitor and the critic,” said Jeremy Dale, corporate vice president, mobile devices marketing, Motorola, Inc. “The MOTOZINE ZN5 lets them be all the things they want to be.”


The ZN5 also comes with a Xenon flash and optimized settings for low-light environments. The built-in Kodak Imaging Technology combined with Kodak Perfect Touch Technology, should enable the handset to take some really vivid images. Other camera features include multiple capture modes, like multi-shot and panorama, which automatically stitches together continuous shots taken on the horizon line into a single, extended image. Pictures can also be uploaded via Gallery Link in one click and instantly sent to the Kodak Gallery to be viewed, stored and shared. Users can transfer pictures to a computer via USB, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and print wirelessly on Bluetooth-compatible Kodak All-in-One Printers and at Kodak Picture Kiosks.
In phone mode, ZN5 features Motorola’s patented CrystalTalk technology to help callers hear and be heard, even in noisy environments. With dual compatibility for GSM and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), users can connect in more areas around the world and enjoy high-speed wireless connections to surf the Web via a full HTML browser. To complete the communications experience, ZN5 also supports SMS, MMS, IM and personal e-mail.

MOTOZINE ZN5 will be first available in China in July 2008 and is expected to roll out around the globe throughout the remainder of the year. No prices have been made available yet.