Symbian just made itself open as it vies with the other mobile OSs in the market mainly eyeing the potential challenger Android. As the smartphone industry gets progressively competitive each day, Symbian is in no mood to stay behind. This seems quite evident as the Symbian Foundation has announced its plans to bring handful of cheap, Symbian smartphones by the end of 2010.

At the Mobile World Congress, Executive Director of Symbian Foundation, Lee Williams announced, “this year we will see a few products hitting that point.” We have no details of any features the handsets will carry except that they will be priced around the $140 (Rs. 6,500) mark. It is also being expected that the likes of Qualcomm and Infineon will play a key role by driving down costs through manufacturing scale and technical innovation. Again no news as to whether Nokia will be the manufacturer or not as, Sony Ericson and Samsung too use the Symbian platform in their handsets.

The move will be well acknowledged in the entry-level smartphone market and will also allow a broader section of the consumers to use smartphones that even today by far are associated to having expensive phones. And as Samsung too has big plans with its Bada platform, it will be interesting to watch them battle for supremacy. At the end we as consumers will be the real gainers.

Source: Reuters

Image source: mobileshop

Owning a smartphone has been made lot more easier as companies roll out low end handsets for the common masses. Joining the league is UK-based mobile service provider, Synchronica with its all new $99 MessagePhone .

Synchronica along with the Korean manufacturer KC Mobile has today unveiled two models of the MessagePhone that provides smartphone like features at very low costs. “The new MessagePhones offer advanced features such as Push Email and Synchronization services, mobile Instant Messaging, a full HTML web browser and access to social networking sites,” according to the company.

The two models, QS150 and QS200, look very similar to the traditional BlackBerry handsets, that offer 2.2″ colour screen and full QWERTY keypad with dedicated ‘read’ and ‘compose’ buttons for emails, 1.3-megapixel camera, SB connection and optional Bluetooth radio  The QS150 supports tri-band GPRS-GSM, and has 10MB of user memory while the QS200 has a faster CPU, quadband GPRS/EDGE-GSM cellular, and 32MB of user memory. The internet browser is Bitstream’s BOLT that displays full PC-style web pages on all types of mobile devices. Also the handsets carry a MicroSD slot and promise 5.5 hours of talk time and 17 days standby time.

Well its not shaking Apple, RIM and other smartphone giants but is an amazing option and has great potential in the developing nations and the emerging markets.

We already know LG’s plans of rolling out 20 smartphones in 2010 and we can see the Korean manufacturer working really hard to achieve the goal. As it continue the journey towards attaining its set targets, the company has just announced a new smartphone, the LG GD880.

Touting its as the smallest and the thinnest smartphone ever, the  ‘LG Mini’, comes with a 3.2-inch touchscreen and a 5-megapixel camera without flash but with face detection. The device also supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and the connectivity options include WiFi, A-GPS and Bluetooth. The 99 grams of smartphone   is only 48mm wide by 11mm deep and stands at 102mm tall. A Social Network Connect tool , secondary front camera and microSD card are also on the list of features.

The real deal or more precisely a major drawback is the company’s decision to ship the device with its S-Class OS. This is a rather upsetting surprise as Android power phones are actually taking onto the market quite swiftly and lucratively. But LG has something else to say.

“We developed the LG Mini in response to specific requests from actual consumers who were unhappy with current full touchscreen phones that are too bulky, too clunky and too expensive,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.

The LG GD880 Mini will arrive in Europe first next month and we hope it succeeds to entice the LG fans and the others with its slim profile.