Wireless World

We have a good news for all Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 users who are anxious to upgrade the OS on their phones.

Sony Ericsson has announced via the company official Twitter feed that the 2.1 update will be on its way before the end of September. This is a little bit sooner than we expected, as the first announcements mentioned the upgrade release during the fourth quarter of this year.

At the moment all X10 are runnig on Android 1.6 and new version (2.1 Eclair)  will bring some significant improvements:

• optimized hardware speed
• five home screens (there 3 at the moment) to give you plenty of space for your shortcuts and widgets
• home screen thumbnail system -you can see small icons of all five home screens and tap directly on any one to jump straight to it
• live wallpapers – interactive backgrounds
• new Browser interface and HTML5 support
• improved virtual keyboard
• Support for more screen sizes and resolutions

We will let you know as soon as the upgrade is available.

New member of the Xperia family – X8 - is coming soon on o2. We’re excited to welcome it, as it will fill in the gap between “extreme” sizes of tiny X10 Mini and quite large X10. Screen size is 3 inches.

Sony Ericsson calls it a “great entertainment smartphone” which describes the phone pretty well. Xperia X8 is running on Android 1.6 (upgradeable to 2.1) with Timescape™ interface for easy access to all your messages, social networking sites and tweets. Access to Android Market™ offers thousands of applications to keep you entertained, but also to help you do the business. X8 features 3.15 MP camera, 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS.

To find out more visit the product page

New Blackberry Curve, replacing 8900 model is planned to launch on o2 in September.

It’s called 9300 or simply Curve 3G.

While hardware specs aren’t much different to the 8900 (see table below), the operating system is the novelty here – 9300 is Blackberry 6.0 OS ready.

Check RIM’s press release or product site if you want to find out more.

Nokia X2 seems to be a good option for people using the phone as a music player, as it features:

• dedicated music keys,
• FM stereo radio with the built-in antenna,
• dual stereo speakers,
• 3.5mm headphone jack,
• 2.0 USB for fast music transfer
• support for up to 16GB microSD memory card
• radio alarm clock
• and very important – good battery life: up to nearly 26 days on stand-by, up to 13.5 hours talk time and up to 26.8 hours music play (well with GSM idle/mid vol, but still impressive).

The slim X2 is equiped with 5 megapixel camera.

More info on Nokia website.

The phone is due to be available on o2 in September.

“Taking the best of the Nokia E71 and E72 and making something even better” - that’s what Nokia says about new E5 smartphone. So let’s have a closer look on the phone’s features, as it could become a new “classic” in business phones category.

The E5 is about the same size and weight as its predecessors and also has full QWERTY keyboard. The screen size is 2.4 inches. Below the screen are seven buttons: two hot keys; two dedicated buttons (for both the homescreen and messaging) and call start/answer and end buttons, as well as 5-way navigation key.

Eseries phones are running on Symbian OS and E5 is no different. It is equipped with all the tools a business phone needs to have: push email, expandable memory (250 MG internal and 2GB card in the box), 3G connection and Wi-Fi.

It features 5 MP camera and GPS with free walk and drive navigation.

And the battery life is pretty impressive: 18,5 hours talk time (in GSM mode) and 29 days standby time (you’d be wondering where you left your charger last time).

More info on Nokia website.

The new Cseries represents the core of Nokia portfolio, focusing on social interaction between friends and family. O2 is planning to release first smartphone from this family – Nokia C5 shortly.

Nokia C5 is a compact (2.2 inches screen) Symbian device focused on social networking features – 3.2 megapixel camera, a 2GB memory card included and high speed data connection for fast and easy uploading of photos and videos to services like Facebook, My Space or Ovi.

Instant messaging and email accounts from different email providers are available through Nokia Messaging. You can even see your friends Facebook’s status updates directly in the phonebook.

The phone also features GPS with free walk and drive navigation – of course including location sharing with Facebook friends.

But there are other two important things, which may place this phone on bestsellers list:

Battery life is it’s brilliant – up to 12 hours talktime (GSM) and it’ll stay on standby for nearly a month (26 days) and the anticipated retail price – before applicable taxes and subsidies is €135.

For full specs visit Nokia website.

Micro SIMs for iPad users are now available from O2.

There are two data plans:

24-hours Pass for €3.97 that gives you 500 MB allowance

and

30-days Pass for €19.90 with 5 GB usage allowance.

If you go over that limit you’ll be charged €0.02 per MB, and you also get free Wi-Fi with Bitbuzz.

N8 – is Nokia’s most advanced and also one of the most anticipated smartphones at the moment will be available on O2 later on this year. Like other N-Series phones is packed with cutting-edge technology features to let’s have a closer look.

N8 is the world’s first device running on Symbian ^3 – the biggest software update yet. New OS includes over 250 new features, to name few:

• Multiple touch – swipe to scroll, pinch to zoom, tap to open.
• Multiple personalised home screens, easily manoeuvred through by a simple flick.
• More efficient memory management allows more applications to run at once for a faster, more complete and efficient multi-tasking experience.
• Improved graphics to ensure the devices stay fast and responsive

The Nokia N8 comes in a slim monoblock design – a 3.5-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen within an aluminium casing available in different colours. It has only few buttons around – menu key, dedicated camera and volume keys and side lock-key.  Non removable battery will last for over 16 days (400h) on stand-by, nearly 6 hours talk time and up to 50h music play.

One of the most advertised features is stunning 12 megapixels camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash. It also features large sensor (rivalling those found in compact digital cameras), automatic red-eye removal, face recognition software, autofocus and plenty of manual controls as well as geo-tagging. You can also make HD-quality videos and edit them with an intuitive built-in editing suite.

You can easily plug the device to your home theatre system with an HDMI cable (comes with a full HDMI adaptor in the box) – to share your HD videos on the large screen with Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. It allows you to watch local & global internet streaming TV, supports Flash video and YouTube browsing and streaming.

The Nokia N8 comes with integrated GPS and free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation.

Internal memory capacity is 16 GB and it can be extended by microSD card up to 48 GB – that’s plenty for maps (180 countries take around 11 GB), music or videos.

The phone will work around the world on both 2G and 3G networks, also connects to the Internet via WLAN and has a capability to serve as data modem. It also features Bluetooth 3.0 and can be charged either via 2mm charging connector or Micro USB connector.  It allows full browsing of real web pages and social network integration.

Apart from many advanced multimedia features Nokia N8 offers a wide range of features for demanding business users. Let’s start with unified email client for multiple protocols: Yahoo!® Mail, Gmail™, Windows Live™, Hotmail and other popular POP/IMAP services, Mail for Exchange, IBM Lotus Traveler and support for MS Outlook synchronisation of contacts, calendar and notes. It also features HTML support for email and attachment support for images, videos, music and documents ( .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf, .zip) and allows to edit key office documents. To facilitate easy access to the email N8 has an email web widget for home screen. And if you’ll require a different application to increase your productivity – you can choose from thousands of apps from Ovi Store.

It seems like a list of the features is endless, so to find out more visit Nokia website and to see what “playing with the phone” literarily means watch the video: