Mobile Phones

The luxury unit of Nokia has started selling a phone designed jointly with Ferrari for about 18,000 euros ($25,400) at its stores in London, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore, it said on Thursday.

The Vertu unit produced the Ascent Ferrari 60 phone to celebrate Ferrari’s 60th anniversary.

“We worked very closely to develop this limited edition of 60 phones. Detailing on the phone is inspired by detailing on a number of Ferrari cars,” said Vertu spokeswoman Elizabeth Maragh.

Luxury goods segments are benefiting from fast economic growth in countries such as China, India and Russia, while Middle East markets have strengthened as a boom in commodity prices has increased incomes.

Nokia and other cellphone manufacturers are increasingly teaming up with designers. Earlier this week Italian designer Giorgio Armani joined forces with Samsung Electronics to design a television and a mobile phone.

Designers Dolce & Gabbana have teamed up with Motorola for a gold-colored version of the RAZR mobile phone model and Prada has developed a phone with South Korea’s LG Electronics.

This story, tearing up the Digg circuit, says the iPhone’s “Main Problem” is that it is too slippery to hold. I have held it. It is not a greased pig; it is not a Hawaiian Tropic Model dripping with suntan lotion; it is not a crankcase bearing dipped in 10w40 synthetic Mobile One oil. It is not anymore slippery than an iPod. End of story.

Entire cities getting free WiFi used to be quite the sensation, but now the real hotness is in connecting up an entire nation. According to IndiaTimes, the government is proposing that all citizens of India receive complimentary 2Mbps internet by 2009, and the service would be provided by the state-owned BSNL and MTNL. Officials backing the plan are hoping that giving all residents access to high-speed internet would “boost economic activity” as the citywide free WiFi implementations apparently have in America. The nation’s department of telecom will purportedly be laying “an extensive optic cable network across the country, permitting the resale of bandwidth, setting up web hosting facilities within the country, and asking all internet service providers to connect to the National Internet Exchange of India.” Unsurprisingly, this issue has created very polarized camps, as consumers cheer on the idea, current telecom providers are shaking at the mere thought of all future telephone calls being converted into free VoIP dialogue.

Nokia has started shipping the N95. As Nokia has reminded its customers many times, the N-Series isn’t made up of phones, it’s made up of “multimedia computers”. One look at the N95’s impressive feature least with re-affirm the title. The most unique aspect of the phone is its dual-slide mechanism that either reveals number keys for dialing or music playback keys for tunes.
Features of the N95 are high-end to say the least:

* 5-megapixel camera
* HSDPA high-speed 3G data , EDGE and WiFi
* microSD card slot
* Integrated GPS
* Stereo Bluetooth
* QVGA screen with 16 million colors

All this can now be yours, Nokia has started shipments of the N95 in select European, Asian and Middle Eastern markets. Wider distribution is expected in a matter of weeks.

T-Mobile USA has launched the Motorola RIZR Z3. The slide-style handset meshes the styling that Motorola created with the RAZR with more up-to-date features.

The RIZR Z3 sports:

* 2-megapixel camera
* Quadband GSM
* Stereo Bluetooth
* Speakerphone
* microSD card slot (128MB included)

The Motorola RIZR Z3 is currently an exclusive with T-Mobile. It can be yours for $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and 2-year service contract.

T-Mobile USA has launched the Nokia 5300 Xpress Music. The 5300 is one of Nokia’s latest music devices and is available exclusively from T-Mobile. Unlike Nokia’s popular N-Series devices, the 5300 Xpress is designed for the mass market. It may be marketed as a music device, but it’s also much more of a regular phone than Nokia’s multimedia centric offerings.
Features of the Nokia 5300 Xpress Music include:

* External music playback keys
* Music player with MP3, WMA and AAC support
* 1.3 megapixel camera
* AIM/MSN/ICQ IM
* Speakerphone
* Stereo Bluetooth
* SD card slot (1GB card included)

T-Mobile USA is selling the 5300 Xpress for $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and 2-year service agreement. It’s available in both Lilac and Black.

LG has launched 2 phones for consumers that want to take advantage of the growing TV-on-Phone capabilities.  The LG Shine TV Slider Phone and the Shine Folder TV can be used on the T-DMB, a Korean standard for digital broadcasts that are outdoors.  This is very common in Korea and will ensure that the phones can support TV and digital video downloads or live feeds.  The 2 megapixel camera is pretty sweet and of course this phone comes with all the bells and whistles that you would expect.

The new Lonovo product is sure to be a successful one; this phone is made exclusively for the Chinese market and will run on the Windows Mobile 6 OS. The ET600 is packed with a ton of really cool features and stands out from the crowd with a 128MB usable memory capacity and a 2 Megapixel camera that you can use to snap photos of your friends and then upload them online to your favorite site like Flikr. This phone is sweet- and includes Bluetooth capability along with tri-band GSM technology.

If you have been thiking about getting a Zune and weren’t sure what color you wanted (between black and ugly tan/puke color) – This pink Zune may be the color for you! Microsoft has said that this Zune comes with a 30BG memory and built in FM tuner along with a wireless share feature that makes it possible to share Zune to Zune. These are pretty cool and finally Zune’s will come in a different and more realistic color.

This is one technology that has a lot of people asking how it works, and that is bone conduction technology.  Basically this allows sound waves to penetrate through your bone and then you’re able to hear music or any other audio.

Temco has a really cool headset that allows for hands-free bluetooth technology to be used while you can still hear the music that you want without having other people be disturbed.  Battery life is about 3 hours of conversation and up to 5 hours if you are listening to an MP3.

This is a must have for the next holiday season.