Author: Sajin Seethi

HTC has always been my favorite when it comes to hardware specifications. We know almost all the new phones from them sports a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and atleast 512MB of RAM. And if you thought you had it all, then you may wanna read this. HTC Thunderbolt(teaser pic above) has been speculated to feature a 1.2GHz dual core Snapdragon, the MSM8960 to be precise. The specs showed up on a German HTC fan blog called HTCInside, which got them from a German retailer’s inventory system. And the rest of the list is just as crazy. 4.3 inch touchscreen, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, 8MP camera with dual LED flash and 1080p video recording, a 5MP front camera, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS, LTE and a 1800mAh battery. 16GB of internal memory plus a microSDXC slot that supposedly takes cards upto 128GB!!

Before you get too excited, theres a catch. Qualcomm has said the MSM8960 will only start sampling in 2011 and ship in 2012. So either somebody typed the wrong chip name into that system or this whole thing is a bad rumor.

The Thunderbolt, earlier known as the Incredible HD, is supposed to be Verizon’s first LTE phone. The sheet also lists O2, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, so a GSM version may be on the cards too. Verizon is expected to announce it at CES next week. Stay tuned.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: techcrunch.com, slashgear.com, thenextweb.com, gsmdome.com, bgr.com.

Skype needs no introduction. This little lovely app provides one of the best voice calling solutions for free(skype to skype) and for cheap rates(skype to other phones). Two days back we heard rumors about Skype video calls and now its here. The new Skype app version 3.0 bring two way video calling over Wifi and 3G to the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and the 4th gen iPod touch. Yes, 3G!! FaceTime still needs Wifi, so this is a big deal. You can video call other iPhones or Skype on Windows and Mac, and it works in both portrait and landscape.

If you have an iPad or a 3rd gen iPod touch, you can only receive video since there is no camera. 3GS users only get the rear camera since there is no front camera on it. And there is no iPad optimized version yet, sadly. You need iOS 4.0 or above.

Skype says video was about 40% of all Skype to Skype minutes in the first half of 2010, so this was long overdue. Engadget tried it and says Wifi calls work fine but 3G to 3G was quite poor, and the battery went from 66% to 61% in about 10 minutes. We will test it and let you know. Skype also has more video announcements coming at CES next week, so stay tuned. The app is free on the App Store.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: engadget.com, macrumors.com, theregister.com, slashgear.com, macrumors.com.

Two of the best Android phones from HTC are the Desire HD and Desire Z. Desire HD is available for purchase right away from flipkart for Rs 27499/- and now the same site is showing HTC Desire Z for preorder with a shipping date of 3rd Jan 2011. Now thats going to be a nice new year gift for those of you who have been waiting for a proper QWERTY Android phone. The preorder price is Rs 25799/- which is a bit less than the Desire HD.

If you were wondering, the Desire Z is the one with the slide out QWERTY keyboard on that Z shaped hinge. It runs Android 2.2 with the new HTC Sense on top, has a 3.7 inch 800 x 480 display, 800MHz Snapdragon processor and a 5MP camera with 720p video recording. A decent QWERTY on Android has been a rare thing so far.

Back in October, Vodafone had said both phones would come to India from November, with the Desire Z expected around Rs 27000/-. Then earlier this month we heard the Desire HD would arrive within a week and the Desire Z would follow with no clear timeline. So this is the first solid date we have seen. Its only a tentative date though, so dont be surprised if it slips a bit. We will let you know once it starts shipping, so stay tuned.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: fonearena.com, fonearena.com, fonearena.com, fonearena.com, fonearena.com.

Airtel Launches HTC HD7 in India at Rs. 29,990/-. The phone is a multimedia beast with its 4:3″ SLCD screen, 16gb internal storage, multimedia kickstand for handsfree movie experience and underlying Zune Music experience. Purchasing the phone from Airtel makes you eligible to enjoy mobile internet (2GB data download per month) for 6 months at a special price of Rs. 300.

This is officially the first Windows Phone 7 device to launch in India. Ajay Sharma, HTC’s country head for India, called WP7 “an entirely fresh mobile experience” and Airtel’s CMO Shireesh Joshi sounded just as happy about the tie up. Under the hood you get a 1GHz Snapdragon, 576MB RAM and a 5MP camera with dual LED flash that does 720p HD video.

Now about the price, Rs. 29,990 sounds a bit steep when the phone has already been floating around in the market for about Rs. 27,000, and Flipkart is listing it at Rs. 28,999 with free home delivery. But the Airtel route gets you the data pack, so pick your poison!! The phone is available at all authorised HTC resellers across India. We’ll try to get our hands on one soon, so stay tuned.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: fonearena.com, telecomtalk.info, dazeinfo.com, digit.in.

So we all know iPad 2 is coming. We were expecting it to be out around April, but a we have a news from a source that it will be arriving this January. And this time its not Magical, but Mind Blowing. This news as real as it sounds could also be a misleading one, so take it with a pinch of salt. The story comes from the Japanese blog Macotakara, who say they got it from an anonymous source in China. According to them the iPad 2 keeps the same 9.7 inch screen but the bezel gets 3mm smaller. The back will be flat like the iPod touch instead of the curved one we have now, and there will be a wide range speaker covered with metal mesh at the bottom. That matches the cutout on those leaked iPad 2 cases from earlier this month, maybe a bit too nicely!!

Now for the bad news. The same blog says the two cameras rumor (front cam for FaceTime and a rear one for video) is unreliable info. Also the January date is when the factories are supposed to start shipping, so it may still line up with the April launch everyone was talking about. Digitimes had said earlier that Foxconn would ship the first 400,000 to 600,000 units within 100 days. So dont sell your iPad just yet. Watch the video and stay tuned.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: marketplace.org, engadget.com, techcrunch.com, gizmodo.com, techcrunch.com.

Apple Remote App has been updated to version 2.1 to support Apple’s latest Airplay feature along with some other improvements. The new update brings • AirPlay video support to control iTunes on your computer to stream videos to an Apple TV • Internet radio control to play thousands of internet radio streams in iTunes on your computer • And you can now control iTunes to play movies and TV shows you rented from the iTunes Store. Apple also says its fixed the issues with connecting to an iTunes library or an Apple TV, plus the usual stability and performance improvements.

If you were wondering, Airplay itself came in only a month back with iOS 4.2 and the 4.1 software update for the new Apple TV, both on November 22nd. So this is Apple getting the Remote app caught up with it. What you get now is your phone telling iTunes on the Mac or PC to push a video across to the Apple TV, which sounds like a long way around for one video, but we want to try it before complaining.

The app is free and its a universal one, so the same download works on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. You need iOS 3.1.2 or later. This is the second update in three months for Remote, version 2.0 landed on September 28th with iPad and Retina support. Grab it from the App Store and stay tuned.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: 9to5mac.com, iclarified.com, appleinsider.com, macworld.com, engadget.com.

A new update for wordpress for iOS is available in the app store. The new version 2.6.3 brings a lot of bug fixes for better functionality. The main fixes include fix for multilogin issue, fixes for several crashes in different circumstances and other improvements.

The announcement went up on the WordPress mobile apps blog on the 20th, where the team calls it a ton of bug and crash fixes plus some performance improvements. The login one is listed as the multisite login issue, so thats for you if you run a network of blogs. Four of the twelve fixes are crashes and we had hit a couple of these ourselves. The app used to die when you deleted a media item, tapped the Pages tab after deleting a draft, opened settings while adding a blog, or replied to a comment.

Self hosted users get something too. The occasional “Communication Error” and NSXMLParserErrorDomain messages on WordPress.org blogs are sorted, XML-RPC handling is improved and HTTP Auth is no longer switched on by default. The rest is a mixed bag. Video uploads to WordPress.com without a VideoPress upgrade now work, and theres a favicon refresh fix and corrected contributor permissions.

Thats the third point release since 2.6 arrived in September. Its still one universal app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The team wants feedback in the forums and on Twitter, so go shout if something is broken.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: wpmobileapps.wordpress.com, wpmobileapps.wordpress.com, wpmobileapps.wordpress.com, wordpress.org, wpmobileapps.wordpress.com.

Its finally here. Google voice service from a simple HTML5 Web app is now available as a native app for the iPhone. The app features Cheap rates for international calls Free text messaging to U.S. numbers Voicemail transcription Display your Google Voice number as caller ID when making calls In addition to these features, you can turn on push notifications, so the app pings you the moment a new voicemail or text lands, which the web app never did. Calls go out over Direct Access Numbers now, so they dial quicker, and it reads your iPhone contacts so you dont have to type numbers in.

Its free and needs iOS 3.1 or later. Its not VoIP either, when you dial it hands you over to the regular Phone app and the call goes out on your carrier minutes. Bad news for us though. Google Voice is still a US only service, so unless you have a spare US number theres not much here yet.

And the wait?? Google submitted this thing about a year and a half ago and Apple sat on it long enough for the FCC to start asking questions about why it got rejected. Apple loosened its App Store rules in September and the app finally went through. Google says iPad and iPod touch support is coming later, so stay tuned.

Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: macrumors.com, googlesystem.blogspot.com, techcrunch.com, venturebeat.com, fortune.com.