First Look: The Nokia X6

Stunningly pretty

More delicious candy for gadget freaks - Finnish mobile giant Nokii lifted the veil off its X6 handset at the Nokia World conference held in Stuttgart, Germany.

The Nokia X6 is more or less a successor to the 5800, and while the latter was loaded with some impressive specs, it unfortunately didn't look quite as attractive as other smart phones as the Iphone. The Nokia X6 fixes that as it looks absolutely mouthwatering, with a slim 14mm frame and 3.2-inch 640x480 touchscreen. The rest of the specs are quite close to what the 5800 packs; the X6 features a trendy 5-megapixel camera, 32 GB of storage, and 35 hours of music playback.

But the one thing that makes the Nokia X6 stand apart is the direct access to Facebook. “With direct access to Ovi Store, the Nokia X6 is a hive of activity that brings 20 friends and virtual communities, like Facebook , to your homescreen.” the nokia press release said. Also included is 'Lifecasting', another social networking feature which ets you publish your location and status updates directly to Facebook from the home screen of the phone.

According to Nokia, “Lifecasting goes beyond just publishing your status – it is about building deeper and closer connections between people. It triggers new kinds of communication patterns, such as sending messages or status updates or even navigating to a friend or a place. Lifecasting will premiere on the new Nokia N97 mini, companion to the successful Nokia N97.”

No word on when it releases in India or pricing, but we know that it costs about €459 in Europe, which makes it a full €200 cheaper than a 32GB iPhone 3G.

Sony releases sexy new A-Series Walkman

Thinnest Sony Walkman ever!

The gadget wars between Apple and Sony continue as the latter has just announced some a truly saucy new Walkaman, named the A-series.

The new candy comes barely a month after Sony released the S-Series and the E-Series, but what is so special about the A-series? Just that at 7.2mm, it happens to be the thinnest Walkman from Sony.

The A-Series can be snapped up in three flavours - the 16GB (NW-A84), the 32GB (NW-A846) and the 64GB version (NW-A847). Weighing just 62 grams, they are all packed with a 2.8 inch OLED screen at 240x400, FM radio and TV-out. Also included are MPEG-4, AVC and WMV video support, and MP3, WMA, ATRAC, PCM and AAC. The Walkman is compatible with Sony's Playstation 3 and you will be able to drag and drop to auto-transcode video from your computer.

The Sony A-Series boasts a playback time of 29 hours for music and 9 hours of video. Prices though are not very attractive as the 16GB would set you back $226, the 32GB $332 and the 64GB $443. All three models will be available in two colours, jet black and brown. In comparison, the Sony S-Series boasts 42 hours of music playback and up to 6.5 hours of video playback and costs $130 for the 16GB unit.

The A-Series will launch in Japan on October 31st, but no news on when it will launch in India or any other part of the world for that matter.

Second Take: The HTC Hero

Costs Rs 31,990 in India

A week ago Taiwan-based handset maker HTC Corporation launched the Android-juiced mobile phone HTC Hero in India.

Priced at Rs 31,990 the HTC Hero is loaded with 3.2-inch display and a 5 megapixel camera. Many have called the Hero as the best Android phone yet; the gadget has also been nicknamed as the G2, a successor of Android's very first phone, the G1.

HTC Hero's vital stats are 112 x 56.2 x 14.4 mm and it weighs just 135 grams. The 3.2 TFT touchscreen displays 65k colours at 320 x 480 pixels. Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and trackball have been included as bells and whistles. The camera with Touch focus (via software update) has a max resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and can record videos at 15 frames per second.

The HC Hero boasts a standby time up to 440 hrs (2G) and up to 750 hrs (3G); while the talk time is allegedly up to 8 hrs (2G) / Up to 7 hrs (3G). The Hero is distinctive for its shape, which is mostly rectangular with an angled "chin" bar at the base. The design of the Hero is very clean with just six buttons below touchscreen. The six buttons are for making a calls, a home key, menu key and a hang-up key. The other two are for "search" and "back" and are placed to the bottom right of the phone. Apart from these six keys all input on the screen is through the touchscreen interface or the trackball.

There is a 3.5mm jack port on the top side and a recessed volume rocker switch on the side. In addition to the dedicated YouTube player the Hero also includes a media player that is mostly unchanged from previous releases. The audio player does, however, support a broad range of formats including MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, Real Audio and Ogg Vorbis, which makes it one of the most capable phone audio players around.

Google Chrome OS Screenshots Leaked

It has hardly been two days since Google announced the Google Chrome OS and now its screenshots have been leaked on the web. Google Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel and is an open source project that is currently supported by Acer, Asus, Adobe, Freescale, HP, Lenovo, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

An anonymous person created a Chrome OS Leak blog and posted screenshots of the private developer beta of the OS. As per the blog post, Google representatives visited the Acer team to show distinct features of the Chrome OS. The Google Chrome OS installation on Acer Extensa 4620Z laptop took about 10 minutes. Here are a few highlights that were shown in the Chrome OS Demo.

The 'Chrome Bar' or the task bar, which auto-hides, appears at the bottom of the UI just like Apple Mac OS X's dock. Navigation is powered with 'Exploration' that is like a file explorer, and 'Browser', which basically is a web browser with search options. If configured, even the Chrome Bar can feature search bar. Apparently, Google Talk was the only application installed and it had a different logo.

Also, whenever Chrome OS based netbooks come out, the netbooks will carry the Chrome logo in place of the current Windows logo.