It seems RIM has decided to bring a touch interface to it’s wildly popular BlackBerry Bold smartphone. The leaked video shows the pinch-to-zoom feature being used on Bold’s 2.8 inch screen. Pretty small for multi-touch eh?

This puts Android in a great position, as the operating system which sells the most phones attracts more providers to manufacture phones that can be used with it. Whilst Nokia ruled the mobile phone world in the late 20th century, the times they are a-changing. Nokia are the soul manufacturer of phones on the Symbian operating system, which is fine if you love the N7 but for those of us wanting more choice and variety the wide range of handsets available on the Android platform makes operating system choice a no brainer.

Whilst the Android platform apps market is still playing catch up to Apples thriving App Store, with around 90,000 apps available on Android compared to over 300,000 in the App Store, there are significantly more free apps available for Android and a wider choice of developers working on new ones. Android phones support a wider range of file formats for music, video and documents, although they do lose out on Apples Lossless audio file format, which allows super compression of CD quality music into MP3 sized files without losing any of the audio playback quality.

As the number of manufacturers supplying the OS increases, the price of the handsets gets driven down. The latest mid-range offering from popular manufacturer HTC, the HTC Gratia promises to be one of the smallest, most powerful smartphones available for the money. Whilst it is not in the same league as the much revered iPhone 4, the HTC Gratia outstrips the performance of most of the handsets in its class and with a price tag of less than half that of the iPhone. And with ever better and cheaper phones becoming available on the Android platform, such as the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Ace, the competition is going to have to up its game if they are to keep up with Google’s wonder horse.

With the likes of the HTC Gratia and the Samsung Galaxy Ace setting the bar for smartphone providers, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Blackberry are going to have to work hard to catch up with the value for money these little phones and many others like them can provide on the Android
platform.

Sony Ericsson‘s upcoming Xperia Arc is surely making waves these days. The 4.2 incher will come with Android Gingerbread and will be available in black and silver. The device looks really slick and sexy and comes with Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine display. Sony Ericsson has not kept the Timescape and Mediascape UI and has rather scaled them down to mere widgets, making the UI snappier. Check out the video below for a preview of the device.

The above is a video that can be an early, leaked teaser for Nokia‘s MeeGo based N9. While we can’t authenticate it as real but the video’s production quality is fine and the design of the slider phone resembles the N8.

Check out the video for yourself.

Recently got a Nokia N900 and I just have one word for it – ‘awesome’. This phone deserves to be called the best from Nokia.

I’ve not done a very detailed review of the the N900 but here’s a short summary of what I’ve felt about the device during my recent use.

Design:
When I saw the pics of the phone on the web I was concerned about it’s size, particularly the bulk but now having the phone in my hand I can say that it’s a really good, solid device. The phone fits comfortably in the hand and has a nice design too. The N900 also has a slide-out 3-row backlit QWERTY keyboard. The keys may be a little squashed together but it’s perfectly fine to use.

Display:
The device has a 3.5″ 800×480 pixel resistive touchscreen display. The touchscreen is quite responsive and the overall display is gorgeous. The display has a nice UI and transformation effects. You also get to have 4 desktops that you can switch between and customize.

OS and Applications:
The N900 is based on the Linux based Maemo 5 Operating System. The OS is quite fast andsupports multitasking. I haven’t experienced any slowdown or freezes till now. (Hope this continues!)

There are not many apps available for the device as of now but that’s no big deal as the device is new and apps are come up. Still, there are some cool applications available at the official Maemo website.

Camera:

The phone has 5 MP, 2576×1936 pixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Dual LED flash. The camera has a lens cover and the shutter button is also at the right place. I found the camera quality to be good. The camera interface is a little limited with only a few options but for a normal user that should suffice.

Multimedia:

With 32GB of onboard memory you get to store loads of media on the device. The audio quality is great, thanks to it’s stereo speakers. The in-ear earplugs bundled by Nokia sound great too.

Watching videos on the 800×480 pixel screen is also a pleasure. Another cool thing about this device is the support for a large number of video formats. So forget about first converting your videos before adding them to your phone.

Mozilla is also going to officially release Firefox for the N900. The beta version is currently available for download.

Nokia has got it right with the N900 this time. Almost everything seems to be in place. This looks like some serious competition to the iPhone.

I’ll keep you updated with more on the device.

Here’s the unboxing video of the new Nokia N900 and the packaging is super awesome. The device is in a shiny cube and the only way to get into the box is to plug it to a PC, establish a link, and then type in the right terminal command to unlock the lid. Wow!

And what’s the command?

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It’s the company’s motto – ‘Connecting People’!

Check out the video to experience it.

Check out the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 with a newer software build that’s dramatically faster and more responsive.

Looks like the guys over at Engadget found some pics of the upcoming Nokia XpressMusic 5900. Compared to the 5800, the 5900 is said to have a slightly larger 3.5-inch display, a 5MP camera and a somewhat similar build of S60 5th edition, all packed in a slightly thinner case.

For now, that’s all we have on the 5900. Keep checking out for more on this device in the future.