Spice Launches Its First Handset of 2009

Spice Mobiles has announced their first launch of 2009 - the Spice S-590 - that the company claims is a very affordable video-camera phone. Along with this new handset, Spice has also launched an interesting voice prompt application, which makes it a “Talking Phone”.




The handset features -

* an FM with recorder
* Mp3 player
* Torch
* Expandable memory upto 2 GB via microSD cards
* GPRS
* Mobile tracker
* Call blacklist
* SMS scheduler

The voice prompt feature christened POPAT (ha ha ha) transforms the phone into a talking parrot which speaks out the number of an incoming call, phonebook and keys pressed on keypad. POPAT can benefit the people who cannot read or write, prove to be a utility for the blind and disabled or an interesting fun feature for the youth.

The Spice S-590 is available at a price of Rs. 2,499 (MRP).

Nokia Announces New XpressMusic Handset

It’s been a while since Nokia has been in the news but that could also be because of LG’s KM900 and Samsung’s plethora of handsets making their way to MWC. Nokia has in fact announced an addition to their music range of handsets – the 5630XpressMusic.





This candy-bar styled, rather simplistic looking handset runs on a Symbian OS with an S60 UI and is equipped with -

* a 3 megapixel camera AF camera (LED flash)
* 2.2-inch TFT LCD (240 x 320 pixels)
* N-Gage Gaming
* MicroSD card support (up to 16GB)
* 3.5mm earphone socket
* Wi-Fi
* EDGE/GPRS, 3G (HSDPA)
* Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0
* FM radio with RDS

Apart from these, the 5630 will also feature Nokia’s 'Say and Play' function that will let users simply speak the name of the song or artist and the handset will locate and play the track. This handset is also bundled with Nokia’s 'Comes with Music' tag where it’s available already.





The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic’s new tweaked homescreen shows the Contacts Bar that allows direct access to up to 20 friends or business contacts straight from there and provides a full communication history with these contacts including recent emails, messages, phone logs and photos shared. A shortcuts bar at the bottom of the homescreen also gives quick access to the most frequently used applications including music, radio, Web, N-Gage and photos. This is all very similar to the 5800’s but in a more confined space of course.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic should start making its way to shelves by the second quarter of this year with a price tag of about Rs. 12, 575 (200 EURO) exclusive of subsidies and taxes and a bundled 4GB microSD card.