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Verizon and Skype announced that those who carry certain smartphones to call anyone over Skype on the 3G network. The phones that will start next month are the Motorola Droid, Droid Eris, Motorola Devour and a number of Blackberry phones. It will later work on other smartphones.

Now, one can enjoy unlimited calls with the VOIP services like this from the collective effort from Verizon and Skype. Skype is an all time favorite for people who are into calls and they do like the sound quality of it. Thus, Verizon has made an effort to show that it can provide these kinds of services apart from only letting people surfing on internet.

Verizon will soon allow unlimited Skype calling over 3G networks. The time when Verizon announced that it would have a joint press conference with Skype at Mobile World Congress, we hoped that it would land up with some thing with providing unlimited Skype calling over 3G networks.

All the people calling microsoft’s phone as Windows mobile 7, a slight change in the name of it, it is now called as Windows Phone. So do not call it as Windows Mobile 7 atleast infront of the microsoft’s staff because the name has been given by Microsoft for its Gen Next phone as “Windows Phone”.

The phone sounds to be well built with all the features and Early hardware partners announced include Dell, Garmin-Asus, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and HP. While they’re hesitant to give any specific dates, Microsoft says to expect Windows Phone handsets to hit the shelves “in time for the Holiday season of 2010″.

As if now we heard that this phone has got many features and is much advanced than the previous version Windows Mobile 6.5. The folks who are waiting to get this phone in your pocket will have to wait till November for the “Windows Phone” to be released.

Microsoft today confirmed that the Windows Mobile 6.5.3 release launching first with the Sony Ericsson Aspen greatly improves the platform’s support for touchscreens. In addition to making buttons more touch-friendly, it adds support for capacitive touch of the sort seen in Android and the iPhone, making it much more responsive. Hooks have also been put in place for multi-touch, though this would still need phone builders to have an actual solution.

Most of the other changes center almost exclusively around touch and include a more consistent touch UI throughout the whole OS, such as the absence of tabs in many areas. Legacy apps even have a magnifier to reach buttons that were designed for a stylus, Microsoft says. Internet Explorer has been given smoother transitions in touch gestures as well as an overall speedup.

The improvements almost uniformly confirm the suspected nature of 6.5.3, which is to better position Windows Mobile as a competitor to hardware from Apple and Google’s partners until the launch of Windows Phone 7 by end of the year.

The aging Microsoft OS has only supported imprecise resistive touch and in many cases has required a stylus in most areas. Only one Windows Mobile phone currently supports capacitive touch, the HTC HD2, and does so through extensive changes to the user interface and drivers that render Windows Mobile almost unrecognizable.

source: electronista.com

Microsoft is allegedly set to unveil the “Zune Phone” later this month at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, according to the Spanish blog MuyComputer. The company has reportedly teamed with Nvidia to develop and launch the device, which is based on the Tegra platform. The handset will pair Windows Mobile 7 with Zune software for media management.

Detailed specs are unclear, although the phone is claimed to offer a 480×272 pixel display and HDMI output. If true, the display resolution would match Microsoft’s Zune HD media player which is also based on Tegra components. Weight is listed as 70g, which is 4g lighter than the Zune HD and almost half the weight of an iPhone.

A recent analyst report suggested a “Zune-like phone” is on its way, with a launch set for MWC or the CTIA spring event in March. Microsoft’s direct involvement in launching a device, however, would appear to run counter to the company’s previous strategy of unbiased marketing with its various hardware partners.

While putting Google’s Nexus One through its paces Reuters have discovered that the speech to text facility within the Nexus One will remove any profanities. If you try to transcribe and foul language the offending word is replaced by hashes e.g. that’s a load of bullshit, becomes: that’s a load off bull####.
When questioned as to why Google has chosen to take this stance on profanity, Google had the following to say:

“We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent,” said Google.

Korean phone manufacturer Pantech has rolled out their latest cell phone, the Sky IM-U560K. Designed for girls, the handset features a touchscreen display and an accelerometer allowing you to enjoy different games and application, as well as being able to completely manipulate its GUI via hand gestures and movements.

The Sky IM-U560K features a 2.6-inch screen, a DMB TV tuner, an MP3 player, and a Korean to English TTS (Text to Speech) Translator. Too bad, there is no info on pricing of this cell phone.

Word has it that Microsoft will launch the Zune phone later this year. Jefferies analyst, Katherine Egbert, states that Microsoft will be debuting its own phone sometime in the next 2 months, probably at Mobile World Congress (MWC) or CTIA in Las Vegas.

She also believes that the Zune Phone will feature a 5MP camera and 720P video support. Stay tuned for more updates.

Japanese mobile phone operator, KDDI has introduced a new clamshell phone from Toshiba namely the E08T.

Featuring a waterproof enclosure, the E08T offers a 3-inch FWVGA display, a 3.2MP camera with autofocus, a 100MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot, GPS, infrared, BREW OS and supports both GSM and CDMA connectivities.

The Toshiba E08T will become available in Japan this month for unannounced price yet.

Samsung has announced the availability of Samsung Genio Slide (aka CorbyPro B5310) in the UK market via Vodafone. The handset is sold for free with a 2-year contract agreement of at least 15 per month, or an 18-month contract of at least 25 per month. So here are the specs, a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen display, a sliding QWERTY keyboard, a 3MP camera, a 120MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot (up to 16GB), an FM radio, WiFi, GPS, HSDPA 3G, a 3.5mm headset jack and provides quick access to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

T-Mobile will release the myTouch 3G Fender Edition on January 20, 2010. T-Mobile has teamed up with legendary guitarist Eric Clapton to promote this special edition cell phone.

In case you didn’t know, the myTouch 3G Fender Edition features a 3.5mm headset jack and an included 16GB MicroSD card. The phone comes preloaded with Eric Clapton hit songs like “Wonderful Tonight,” “Layla,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Heart” and “My Father’s Eyes.”

There are also several songs from Avril Lavigne, Wyclef Jean and Brad Paisley. The T-Mobile myTouch 3G Fender will cost $179.99 with a 2-year contract agreement.

The upcoming Google Android smartphone from Lenovo is an utter beauty. The official stills that have been released all over the web, clearly speak high of this astoundingly gorgeous high-end phone, and which don’t overdo it at all.

LePhone features a stunning detachable full QWERTY keyboard, sporting remarkable cuts and curves and a navigation D pad at the center. The over all design here seems quite similar to Lenovo IdeaPad, which has a detachable tablet.

The 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen, dual 3.2 MP, the Skylight OS, WCDMA radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, GPS and a 1GHZ Qualcomm processor are among it most striking specifications. In nutshell, LePhone is a smartphone which is equally beautiful. So far, LePhone has just been announced for China.

As expected, Google Nexus One phone was officially announced on Jan 5 2010 in California.
The Nexus One runs Android 2.1, comes with features including 3.7-inch 480 x 800 touchscreen, GPS, accelerometer, light, proximity sensor, microSD card slot (up to 32GB), 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, and powered by the 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

Kyocera today announced the availability of both the Laylo and Domino via MetroPCS. The Laylo is a slider handset that comes equipped with a 2.2-inch high-resolution contoured display, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and a hidden vanity mirror. Meanwhile, the Domino is a stream-lined candy-bar phone that shares a platform with the Laylo. Both handsets support WAP 2.0 browser, Bluetooth 2.0, and share the ability to run BREW-based apps, a full set of features offered by MetroPCS including news, sports, email access, instant messaging, and contact management. The Kyocera Laylo is priced at $100 before rebate, while the Domino retails for $70 before rebate.

The Sharp HYBRID W-ZERO3 is a new Windows Mobile 6.5-powered handset that will be launched in January 2010. The phone boasts a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, a Qualcomm 528MHz processor, a 5-megapixel camera, on board GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a microSD memory card slot. Unfortunately, there is no info on pricing at this time.