Smartphones with Intel logo from April 2012

The Intel Inside logo, which consumers have always seen on laptops and PCs, will now be seen on smartphones, too. In April, mobile vendor Lava International will launch its first smartphone in India based on the Intel processors, expected to be priced around Rs 25,000.

Lava, which began working with Intel nearly nine months ago, will launch a new brand of smartphones based on Intel’s Atom processors. The first smartphone to hit the Indian market will be Xolo X900. “We will launch a total of five smartphones based on Intel processors in this financial year and have already put together a separate sales and development team for brand Xolo within Lava,” said S N Rai, co-founder and director, Lava International. Rai is confident the company can sell about 10,000 smartphone units within the first few months of X900’s launch.

Lava, informed Rai, is in talks with several Indian telecom operators to bundle data and content on the device at the time of the launch. Other OEM partners like Motorola Mobility and Lenovo, too, are building devices with Intel processors.

The silicon giant is eager to have its share in the mobile market and unveiled three processors at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The Intel Atom Z series (earlier codenamed Medfield) includes a single core processor Z2460, dual-core Atom Z2580 and a low-cost Z2000 processor that is designed for emerging markets.

Debjani Ghosh, managing director (Sales and Marketing), Intel South Asia reiterated that Atom Z2000 processor will address the demands of lower priced handsets in the emerging markets.

“The chip is a 1GHZ Atom computing processor unit and a modem that can run on 2G and 3G networks. We will begin sampling of Z2000 with our partners in the middle of this year and expect products in early 2013,” she said.

India, accounting for approximately 12 per cent of worldwide sales, is an important market for Intel. Gartner estimates suggest that smartphone sales in India made up six per cent of total device sales in the first three quarters of 2011, and this share is expected to increase to eight per cent in 2012. At a media briefing in Barcelona, Intel president and CEO, Paul Otellini highlighted plans to expand its smartphone System-on-Chip and communications product roadmaps for the performance and value- smartphone market segments.

Intel, the market leader in PC processors, is betting heavily on the new Atom Z processors to revive its fortunes in the smartphone processor market, which is currently led by ARM. Intel’s latest 32-nanometer processor has one advantage over ARM's — the CPU can run apps that would choke ARM processors.

“Therefore, Intel is likely to target the high-end market at first, since these users require superior performance,” reasoned Strategy Analytics’ Rahul Gupta.

While Gupta does not see Lava-Intel partnership in India as a big game changer in the smartphone market, he listed, “If there was a bigger handset vendor like Nokia, Research in Motion or Samsung, then Intel would have probably been on to something. There’s no compelling reason for the competition, Qualcomm or Texas Instruments, to worry about losing market share just now.”

Lava, which has a multi-year, multi-product strategy with Intel, is developing both phones and tablets based on Intel architecture, that means there won’t be any ARM devices from Lava soon.

“We have our hands full developing Intel powered devices and at least this year we don’t see ourselves developing any ARM devices,” said Rai.

Smartphones trends to watch in 2012

From a phone with a 41-megapixel camera to something called 'holopresence', Matt Warman brings all the news from the Mobile World Congress.

The latest and greatest new phones and tablets are shown off every year at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress - but 2012's show was like no other. Outside the Fira conference centre, flag-waving protesters screamed their anger at job cuts at shrinking giants such as HP. On Monday night, exhibitors and attendees leaving late were shepherded out of a side entrance by police who had only ever directed taxis in previous years. Mounted officers feared a riot and formed a barrier to keep the peace.

Even before the show, this was shaping up to be a Mobile World Congress about economics. Transport workers threatened a strike that would have caused chaos. Taking a somewhat harsher line than many European governments, the show's organisers said that any strike would mean that the MWC would find a new home for the future, denying Barcelona an important source of revenue. The workers relented.

And it was money that talked once the show finally got going: every attendee's pass was held round their neck by a lanyard that was sponsored by the huge - and still growing - Chinese manufacturer ZTE. Google's stand featured a helter-skelter and fairground-style machine where players could compete to "grab" a fluffy Android toy. Delegates eagerly queued for the chance.

And Google's executive chairman used a keynote speech to argue that technology would enable a fairer world - he said that superfast broadband would enable a new future of "holopresence", where we could visit carnivals and concerts from our own homes. He warned against the first world ignoring what used to be called the third. Asked, however, if he would break US sanctions and offer services that he said were empowering to the citizens of Iran, Mr Schmidt was blunt. "No", he said, declining the chance to go to prison for his pains because "there's no bandwidth". Nevertheless, Google is today changing its privacy rules in defiance of an EU committee which believes the new rules to be unlawful.

Over at Facebook, meanwhile, the company wants users to pay for more goods and services with their mobiles, and is setting up what it hopes will become a global standard. Although payments was tipped to be a huge theme of MWC, money will talk only after such important infrastructure work is completed. In that sense, this is a conference where, for all the hyperbole and glamorous gadgets, everyone realises that the revolution has hardly started. It's obvious that the white heat of technology is hotter than ever, but five billion of the world's people have yet to take advantage of its most potent symbol: the mobile phone.

Cameras

The star of the show was arguably Nokia's phone that incorporates an unprecedented, 41-megapixel camera. As chief executive Stephen Elop has been demonstrating to his senior staff, that means you can zoom in on even the tiniest imperfections. Other brands, too, showed 13-megapixel devices that are now increasingly common. For now Nokia's innovation is, in the words of one analyst, "an amazing thing that nobody's going to buy", because it's based on an operating system that is falling rapidly out of favour in the developed world. Symbian was even described by Elop as "a burning platform", but in emerging markets it remains popular. Nokia will surely use its Symbian technology for its impressive Lumia phones at some point.

Screens

Apple's iPhone may have a screen that's just 3.5-inch, but it's hard at Mobile World Congress to find a manufacturer not excited about a device that's at least an inch bigger. With consuming media, from TV to movies, a growing part of revenue streams and advertising appeal for manufacturers, products of the moment include the newly announced Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, which features handwriting recognition, thanks to a stylus and 10.1-inch screen. Phones from Sony and HTC, which deliver prominent entertainment services, use sharp screens to do the content justice. The overall effect, however, is not to make devices bigger - screens simply stretch all the way to the edge, and Samsung's hotly anticipated Galaxy SIII is set to do away with a border altogether. Asus, meanwhile, is an innovative brand that emphasises design and is now making a gadget called the Padfone - your handset slots into a tablet, which slots into a keyboard; it takes some getting used to, but this is a multi-use device that deserves to do well.

Horsepower

As phones become increasingly versatile, the computer in your pocket needs more power under the bonnet. So processors are increasingly using four "cores", which make gaming and other intensive applications faster than ever. Huawei used its press conference to show that the functions most consumers want quick access to are the camera and photo galleries, and better processors make those as fast as they need to be. Intel, too, is emphasising its early success in the mobile market, in which it had been largely absent. Orange will be the first to launch an Intel phone, which the company calls "a Ferrari at a mid-range price". Mike Bell, a veteran of Apple, runs the firm's huge division focusing on "ultramobility", and he says more mobile phone "reference devices" are on the way. That will increase competition in the manufacture of smartphones, and that can only be a good thing.

Far East

Brands such as ZTE, Huawei, Asus, Fujitsu and more have a larger presence at MWC than ever before - these are Asian brands with little current European presence but who have huge cash reserves and an undoubted commitment to crack Europe. Only that will give them the global footprint to make smartphones really profitable in the long term.

To do well at home, these companies need to be aspirational brands. Indeed, Huawei's press conference for the Ascend D Quad was among the slickest of the whole show - even invoking a Pegasus as its mascot - and the company is making huge waves by producing a phone that promises two to three days of battery life, compared to rivals with less than one, while offering what it claims is the world's fastest smartphone.

Last year, it was American brand Motorola making that claim. Now in the process of being bought by Google, it's one of a shrinking number of companies that is set to compete in what is a truly globalised market, where huge corporations will make devices used around the world. But it's worth remembering - whoever makes the handset or tablet, the vast majority of these new gadgets will be powered by Google's software.

Two Joysticks to Beat Smartphones at Games

Sony's PS Vita Tries to Offer Almost Everything, but Game-Focused Features Are Still What PlayStation Does Best

 Portable gaming devices have plenty of reason to sulk in the corner. The job they once dominated—rescuing people from boredom while on the go—is now done by smartphones and devices like the iPod Touch. Smartphones offer casual games like "Angry Birds" and "Words with Friends" that cost little or nothing to download, and also make phone calls, and send email and text messages.

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Sony's PS Vita is the first portable game to come with two joysticks; on the screen, apps are represented by playful bubblelike icons.

This week I tested the newest gaming device that tries to do many of the things a smartphone does, short of making phone calls: Sony's PlayStation Vita. It has front- and back-facing cameras; a Web browser; a store for downloading movies, TV shows and games; a music player; and an optional AT&T 3G network connection. This spring, Sony plans to add its own music-streaming service, Facebook, Skype and Foursquare. Netflix, Flickr and Twitter apps are slated to work on the device on Wednesday, when it's available in stores. All these features are still secondary to the main reason a person might plunk down $299 (3G and Wi-Fi capable) or $249 (Wi-Fi) for this device: gaming.
Sony's PS Vita is the latest move by a portable-game maker to gain some ground back from smartphones. Nintendo's 3DS, which I reviewed last March, now has a Netflix app and other smartphone characteristics. The company also plans to add Hulu Plus to the 3DS later this year.
Not surprisingly, I found the PS Vita did best with games and pretty well with the programs over which it seemed to have the most control. Other features seemed like they were added just for the sake of adding them and didn't work nearly as well.
The PS Vita's pre-loaded Near app has a whimsical interface that showed 28 people near me who were signed into the PlayStation Network. The PS Store was easy to navigate and clearly displayed details about each downloadable item. But the Web browser can't play Flash and only partially supports HTML 5, which will make it impossible to see content on many websites.
It lacks an email program, so users are limited to sending things via the PlayStation Network to people using PlayStation. Photos I took with the device could only be sent this way and a workaround of hooking my PS Vita into a PS3 or a PC to offload photos seemed antiquated.

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The device's rear touch pad, lets users control games with fingers on the back.

The PS Vita embraces multi-touch gestures on its responsive, bright screen. A peeling-back gesture reveals the home screen and can be used to close any program. A bubble in the top right can be tapped to see download progress or device notifications, and swipes up, down, left and right help users navigate around screens. Playful bubble like icons represent all apps.
The design of the PS Vita is obviously related to its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable. It has game controllers that flank the right and left sides of its 5-inch touch-screen, and its top right and left corners double as buttons. At 7.2 inches by 3.3 inches, the PS Vita looks like it could eat an iPod Touch for lunch. Its 3G model weighs twice as much as the iPhone 4S.
This is the first portable gaming device to have two joysticks instead of one. Sony says the "dual analog sticks" offer better gaming. When I played "Uncharted: Golden Abyss," the right joystick adjusted my vantage point and the left moved my character.
People can control games using their fingers on the screen or—in a novel twist—on the back of the device. A rear touch pad lets fingers operate from where they naturally rest when holding the PS Vita. I played Sony Computer Entertainment America's $30 "Little Deviants" game by rolling a ball-shaped creature through mazes, controlling where the ball moved with my fingers touching the back of the PS Vita. While playing the $40 EA Sports "FIFA Soccer" game, I used the touch pad to aim and shoot the ball. I found the touch pad so sensitive that it was hard to use, but this might get easier over time.
In the $50 "Uncharted: Golden Abyss" game, I guided the main character up a wall by moving my finger on the touch screen rather than using multidirectional buttons. Likewise, I balanced my character as he walked across a plank of wood using the PS Vita's built-in motion sensor; aiming a gun works with the motion sensors rather than a joystick.
Plenty of PS Vita games are geared toward the serious gamer, with 21 of the 26 games launching with the PS Vita costing $30 or more. (These can be downloaded through the PlayStation Store or bought as PS Vita Cards at retailers.) "Uncharted: Golden Abyss" comes with a 43-page digital instruction manual, which I had to read to get anywhere in the game. There are 275 PlayStation Portable games playable on the PS Vita and available for download, and pricing for those starts at 99 cents.
(Games for Nintendo's $170 3DS portable gaming device range from $2 to $40 apiece. The most expensive game you can buy for Apple's $499 iPad is the $17 "Final Fantasy III" game by Square Enix.)
Wirelessly downloading content from the PS Store only works in Wi-Fi, but the 3G model can download files smaller than 20 megabytes over 3G. I downloaded a demo mode for one game from the PS Store and 26 minutes later, it was on my PS Vita. Downloading a movie was harder: I used a $25 gift card and bought the $14.99 standard-definition (HD wasn't available) version of the movie "Tower Heist," but an estimate told me that it would take over 3,000 minutes to download, and I gave up shortly after the download started.
Battery life is estimated at three to five hours for gaming without network features in use. I played in shorter intervals and didn't have any trouble with battery life.
At times, the PS Vita seemed a bit slow to respond. As I initially set up my PlayStation Network account for use in "Friends," a built-in social-networking app for interacting with other PS Vita and PlayStation 3 users, I waited several seconds. A polite "Please wait" message appeared far too often.
Gamers will like the PS Vita's double joysticks, while non-gamers will feel more comfortable with its motion and touch controls. But instead of competing with smartphones, this device should stick to what it knows: games.

Smartphones Most Popular Among Young, Wealthy

If you fall between the ages of 24 and 34, or make more than $100,000 a year, there is a good chance you own a smartphone, according to a new survey from Nielsen.
The survey of more than 20,000 mobile consumers found that smartphone ownership is closely related to age and income, with the young and wealthy most likely to own one of the coveted devices. In the survey, 48 percent of respondents overall said they owned a smartphone.
When broken down by age, those between 24 and 34 years old were most likely to own a smartphone, despite the income bracket in which they fell. Sixty-six percent of 24 and 34 year olds overall own a smartphone, according to the survey. Moreover, 80 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 who bought a new phone in the past three months chose a smartphone.
Besides age, a person's income also plays a significant role in whether or not they own a smartphone, according to Nielsen.
"When age and income are both taken into account, older subscribers with higher incomes are more likely to have a smartphone," Nielsen said. "For example, those 55 to 64 making over 100K a year are almost as likely to have a smartphone as those in the 35 to 44 age bracket making 35 to 75K per year."
Interestingly, however, the survey also found that making less than $15,000 a year did not stop a majority of 18 to 24 year olds from owning a smartphone. Fifty-six percent of respondents in that age range and income bracket said they have one. In many cases, however, low-income Americans turn to smartphones for Internet access because it's cheaper than paying for broadband and a computer.
On the other end of the spectrum, meanwhile, just 38 percent of those over 65 years old who make more than $100,000 own a smartphone.

Sagging Nokia turns to cheaper smartphones

Nokia will next week unveil a new, cheaper smartphone using Microsoft's Windows Phone software, targeting a wider market, two sources close to the company said.

Cheaper phones are the key for Nokia and Microsoft in their battle to win a larger share of the market, analysts say.

In addition to the new Lumia 610, Nokia also will unveil at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona a global version of its high-end Lumia 900 phone, which AT&T is scheduled to roll out in the United States, the sources said.

Nokia is set to unveil the phones at a news conference Monday.

Nokia last year dumped its own smartphone software platforms in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone, which has had a limited effect due to the high prices of phones using it.

Microsoft's share of the smartphone market fell to 2 percent last quarter, from 3 percent a year earlier and 13 percent four years earlier, according to Strategy Analytics.

World's first quad-core smartphones to be launched at MWC this Feb

This year's World Mobile Congress (WMC), which kicks off in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 27, will feature the world's first smartphones that run on quad-core processors.

LG Electronics and Taiwan's HTC plan to unveil their Optimus X3 and Endeavor, respectively, equipped with a quad-core instead of dual-core CPU, offering more than twice the processing speed of existing smartphones.

Also of note will be Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Note 10.1, a tablet PC featuring a 10.1-inch screen, which the company believes will highlight its differences from California-based Apple.

Samsung is hoping to repeat the success it achieved with its Galaxy Note, which saw sales of more than two million units in just three months after its release last year.

"It is true that our tablet PCs have not sold as well as Apple's iPad," said a Samsung Electronics executive. "But the Galaxy Note 10.1 is quite different from the iPad in terms of both function and price."

The MWC is one of the two biggest events of the year for manufacturers to showcase the latest IT products along with the Consumer Electronics Show, which takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada, every January.

If the CES focuses on home appliances, the MWC is the premier forum for mobile phone manufactures and other communications service providers, but Apple does not take part in it. Around 1,470 companies are participating in this year's event.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 is expected to cost more than W1 million (US$1=W1,123). Unlike the company's previous tablet PC, the Galaxy Tab, which more closely mirrored the iPad in terms of price and functions, the latest gadget uses a stylus that enables the user to draw intricate pictures and take notes.

The trade show will also see many other new products unveiled that increasingly blur the boundary between smartphones and tablet PCs. One of the standouts will be LG Electronics' Optimus View, which features a large 5.3-inch screen yet weighs just 168 g and is only 8.5 mm thick.

Samsung’s Out To Get Apple With A New Nexus

It seems that Samsung has make it its purpose to bring Apple down. The patent war and products that visually do resemble Apple’s only show that Samsung’s having a good time playing with the Silicon Valley based company. Now, the latest news from Samsung will surely reignite the war on patents, as the company will released a new Nexus.

Samsung bothers Apple for several reasons: it’s an advocate of Android, the sworn death enemy of iOS, it continues to market tablets and smartphones that resemble iPhone or iPad. On top of that the defiance Samsung has towards Apple’s statements and legal actions, has surely taken its toll on its executives.

Now, AT&T announced that it accepts pre orders for Samsung’s new Galaxy Note, a 5.3 inch smartphone and tablet hybrid that will hit the stores on February 19th. AT&T features the phone at $299.99 in pre order with a two year subscription.

The Galaxy Nexus is the first smartphone to carry Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, four months after its release. It brings the user a 1.2 GHz dual core processor, 1GB of RAM and a 5.3 inch Super AMOLED display with HD 720p 1280x8000 resolution. Top that with a 5MP camera and a choice of 16GB or 32GB of internal storage and you’ve got a great gadget.

But the good news aren’t over. There’s one more thing about the new Galaxy Nexus that will surely make customers to say the least curious about. The device comes in Carbon Blue and Ceramic White, again an obvious hint to Apple.

And the Galaxy Note Super Bowl ad surely caused some seizures in the Apple headquarters. The ad starts with some Apple fans waiting in line to get their latest iPhone, but then they see a Samsung Galaxy Note. The glorious device makes them break down Apple Store barricades, throw their iPhones and join a group dance number to praise the Galaxy Note. “I believe in a thing called love” is the song and the ad ends with the tagline: “The next big thing is here. Again”.

In other news, or more like rumors, it seems that the upcoming iPhone and Galaxy will be waterproof, challenging the myth that smartphones fear water.

Tabs Gobble Netbooks ..But Ultrabooks To Kill The Lot?

Tabs are killing netbooks and smartphone are gobbling PCs up.

That's according to analysts Canalys, whose latest figures show dropping demand for traditional PCs, including netbooks and desktops, which are suffering at the hands of tablets like the iPad and Acer Iconia Tab. 

26.5m tabs were shipped globally in Q4 last, while netbooks lagged with just 6.7m.

Although notebooks still stayed ahead of the game with 57.9m shipments, meaning the new Ultrabook category – a brainchild of Intel – could do the business for non-tab PCs this year. 

Desktops shipments too were sluggish last quarter at 29.1m - just 3m more than its mobile rival, the tab.

And the mobile invasion continued in the smartphone arena last year with demand for iPhones, Androids and the likes outstripped PCs for the first time in Q4, which analysts say is a "significant milestone."

487.7m smarties were shipped (62% growth), while above 70m less PCs left factories in total last year, or 414 million.

And although this marks an increase in PC demand, it was driven almost exclusively by tabs (+186%), growth in smartphone numbers was far higher.

Also, the growth in tabs didn't appear to affect smartphones shipments either, suggesting the dynamic duo of tablet and smartphone are complementary (well until tabs can start making phone calls - cue Samsung's Galaxy Note, due in Oz soon).

"In 2011 we saw a fall in demand for netbooks, and slowing demand for notebooks and desktops as a direct result of rising interest in pads," said Chris Jones, Canalys, Principal Analyst.

"But pads have had negligible impact on smart phone volumes and markets across the globe have seen persistent and substantial growth through 2011."

In the space of a few years, smart phones have grown from being a niche expensive product to becoming a "truly mass-market" proposition, helped by cheaper models.

However, Canalys expects to see the smartphone market growth slow in 2012 as vendors exercise greater cost control and discipline, and focus on profitability.

Vendors conquering the low-end phone space like Huawei, ZTE and LG, now have their eye on the higher end of the market where the likes of Apple and Samsung reign.

And speaking of the smartphone kings vendors did well last quarter, as per other analysts findings.

But analysts say all is not lost for RIM owners BlackBerry, suggesting its demise has been "overplayed."

"RIM's demise in 2011 has been over played by some, with the company ending the year as the fourth largest smart phone vendor and delivering annual unit growth of 5%," said Canalys Principal Analyst, Pete Cunningham.

"There is no denying that RIM has had a tough year. But when you consider that it is transitioning to a new platform it has done well to increase volume while remaining profitable; the latter point being something that many other vendors struggle with.

The appointment of Thorsten Heins as CEO will bring "new energy" to the company although 2012 will become even more competitive year than 2011, he added. 

A rollercoaster and two new smartphones

THAT Research in Motion (RIM) found itself for much of last year an unwitting passenger aboard a particularly nasty rollercoaster of market share and stock prices is something that has been dutifully chronicled by the tech media.

There were the widely-reported outtages involving its popular e-mail and messaging services. There was the market’s lukewarm reception toward its entry in the tablet landscape. There was the announcement that its future platform, BlackBerry OS 10, will be delayed till late this year.

And then, the multinational telecommunications giant headquartered in Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, greeted the new year by announcing a management shuffle, with co-chief executives and founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis stepping down from their posts and COO Thorsten Heins taking over the reins. Unfortunately for Heins, the ink had barely dried on his new appointment papers when he himself created a stir with statements that seemingly flew in the face of shareholder and market demands for profound changes to make the BlackBerry brand desirable once more.

All this comes amid reports that RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones are rapidly losing market share to both the iPhone and the myriad of Android-based smartphones available, with the 23-percent market share RIM started out with in 2011 reduced to 14.9 percent by year’s end.

However, none of this was apparent in late 2011 when RIM hosted the global launch of two new key products in its portfolio in not the usual suspects in North America or some European capital, as these launches typically go, but in Jakarta, Indonesia. Drawing the tech media from all over the Asia-Pacific region for the by-invitation-only unveiling of the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and the BlackBerry Curve 9380, RIM’s launch underscored the importance of the region to its growth, particularly Indonesia where, according to Gregory Wade, RIM regional managing director for Asia Pacific, the smartphone maker’s market share would hit a 42 percent high by the end of 2011 based on estimates by reseach firm IDC. Even better, added Wade in an interview with Jakarta Globe, “By 2015, the annual shipment of BlackBerry smartphones to Indonesia would reach 9.7 million, in front of Android and Windows [Phone] smartphones. We are very optimistic about it.”

Such optimism may be more than warranted. After all, not only does data reveal that subscription to the popular BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS), saw a huge uptick over the last two years, but when RIM opened its first so-called experience shop in a major Jakarta mall the day after the media event, a mammoth crowd turned up to take advantage of the hefty discount being offered to early adopters of the BlackBerry Bold 9790. Although there were no untoward incidents we witnessed during the grand opening of the experience shop in the AM, which was attended by no less than Balsillie, apparently things got a little ugly later in the day as rumors spread that there would not be enough discounted units to meet the demand. As the dust settled on the resulting chaos, dozens had to undergo treatment for minor injuries.

The things people would do for an excellent smartphone—and at a price that can’t be beat at that.

And, yes, BlackBerry fans and those eyeing to upgrade to their first smartphone will be mighty pleased with the Bold 9790, which retains the muted and sophisticated corporate stylings of its predecessors, while coming not only in a more pocketable size—its dimensions come in at 110x60x11.4 mm and weighs only 107 grams, while its immediate predecessor, the Bold 9900, stacks up at 115x66x10.5 mm and weighs in at 130 grams—but also boasting of the same hybrid touch-and-type paradigm first seen in a Bold in the 9900.

Adding to that pleasurable feeling is the fact that the Bold 9790 also packs in BlackBerry 7, the latest iteration of the OS that has been powering the BlackBerry experience for users for many years now, but which RIM has heavily tweaked and tricked-out to make it even more user-friendly than previous versions. The upsides are most apparent in the browser, which the company claims is 40 percent faster and real-world use on Globe Telecom’s BlackBerry Max prepaid plan more or less lived up to RIM’s claim.

Although we only spent a few precious minutes with the BlackBerry Curve 9380, we quickly fell in love with it—not only because of its touchscreen, which some may find a bit too cramped at only 3.2 inches but is nonetheless dazzlingly vibrant, but also because it belies its Curve assignation, which is supposedly the more affordable BlackBerry brand. Its discreet styling and solid build give it a decidedly premium feel, and BlackBerry 7 just looks and feels better on a bigger screen.

All in all, the new smartphones that RIM launched in Indonesia late last year are solid additions to its portfolio.

Of course, the question is: Are the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and the  BlackBerry Curve 9380 enough to quiet the naysayers in the tech media? Perhaps not—BUT they are excellent smartphones that should keep the millions of BBM addicts around the world happy and not feel like poor cousins to the iPhone and Android users out there, and that should buy RIM enough goodwill until they are good and ready to reclaim their place in the smartphone landscape with BlackBerry 10.

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In Photo: The Blackberry Bold 9790 and the Blackberry Curve 9380 are the latest additions to Research in Motion’s portfolio of solid smartphones.

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Why don't smart phones work any more?

It seems like not a day goes by without something going wrong with the latest kit. Everything's in beta nowadays, whether it's the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia Lumia 800 or the Apple iPhone. And it's all Apple's fault. And Android's. And ours. And yours.
Products that somehow didn't work used to be embarrassing anomalies that led to mass recalls. But not now. Now, phones and tablets and what-have-you are released with bits missing, or simply not working. But it's OK, because "there's an update coming".
An update? Well whoop-de-do! In that case I will definitely lay out three, four, five hundred quid for an iPhone that won't make calls, a Samsung Galaxy Nexus I can't hear, a BlackBerry PlayBook that doesn't email and a Nokia Lumia 800 that won't charge. Hooray!
It feels like every major release has something wrong with it. Is anything actually ready for release these days? Everything's in beta, and it does my head in.
I may be looking back through rose-coloured glasses, but I remember a time when everything did what it said on the tin. While some gizmos were marginally easier to use or produced marginally better results, they rarely came with egregious flaws.
But then smart phones came along and ruined everything. The iPhone made apps the next big thing, so the idea of getting a gadget and then personalising and altering and continually customising it took hold even in everyday, non-geeky folk.
The idea that you could buy a gadget and continually alter it quickly extended to the operating system itself. An Apple iOS update is a simple operation, where everybody plugs in their iPhone and iPad and shortly thereafter everyone has the same new features. Then Android took that to new levels.
Today who knows what version of Android your phone will have? Laid out a couple of hundred quid for the latest Android handset? That's no guarantee you'll have the latest version of Android -- and no guarantee you'll ever have the latest version.
Continually upgrading your phone or gadget is a great idea -- as long as it works perfectly in the first place. The problem is that the ability to improve a gadget has led to a "that'll do" attitude. The software update has become a get out of jail free card.
And it's not just software.
The first iPhone didn't have 3G. You'd forgotten that, hadn't you? Even before smart phones were the norm that was an unbelievable omission. Apple's stated philosophy has always been to release a product only when it's perfect, but then came the great iPhone 4 antenna debacle. How did nobody at Apple try making a phone call with their left hand?
Since then, we've had the Samsung Galaxy Nexus volume bug and the Nokia Lumia 800 battery problem. We've had the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet arrive without email. They simply weren't ready for prime time, but it's OK: let's bang out a software update. We'll fix it in post.

It's our fault, too -- you and me. We clamour for the latest thing, and in this accelerated information age, we're feverishly searching for the next latest thing almost before the current latest thing has been switched on for the first time.
No wonder manufacturers knock this stuff even when it's not ready to satisfy our insatiable gadget lust. Maybe we should be happy with the stuff we have; maybe then everyone can take a deep breath and stop knocking out products that aren't ready.
Of course, many gadgets have been works in progress before iPhone apps and Android updates came along. We've long been comfortable with the separation of hardware and software in computing, each ready for upgrade or physical modification. But the fact that we could download a new image editor, add some more RAM, or soup up an engine didn't mean computer or car manufacturers shrugged and just started releasing products that weren't really ready.
When you buy a car, you don't want to hear that it's a work in progress. You want to know for certain that bad boy has been bounced off walls enough times that you'll be broadly okay should some eejit try and bounce his car off yours.
Nobody wants a car that's still in beta. Hey, sorry your ride just steered into a river. We're planning an update that'll fix that. Oops, sorry your washing machine just ate all your smalls. The next iteration definitely won't do that.
Sure, with some gadgets the stakes are different. A car that decides to stop working as you scream down the motorway could do you a serious mischief. Even worse, a washing machine that fails at its job could leave you with no trousers to go to work in. While a phone that fails at the crucial moment is just annoying.
But you look at a phone constantly, so you want it to do its job or you'll experience a drip-drip effect of frustration and annoyance that leads, inevitably, to your head actually exploding.
Seriously. We've seen it happen. A head just bursting like a melon, spattering viscera all over your stunned spouse, making a right mess of the couch -- and all because the map app freezes every time just when you come up to the turning, or you've never got a signal even in the middle of town, or the battery's already on 38 per cent when you only bloody charged it an hour ago.
And of course, before this thing pops your head like a brain-filled waterballoon, you're paying through the nose for the privilege of having this thing drive you nuts.
Something that costs up to five hundred quid shouldn't be annoying. Something that removes thirty quid from your wallet month in, month out shouldn't frustrate you on a daily basis. It should delight your senses and tickle your fancies every time you get it out of your pocket and poke at it.  
Look, it's not unreasonable to expect stuff should just work, alright?
Everything's beta nowadays. Why can't everything be better?