Charging smartphones while driving could soon be a simple process using a special wireless mat rather than with cables or adaptors.

Toyota plans to introduce the system for mobile devices in 2013 in its new Avalon sedan, using a charging standard known as Qi (pronounced “chee”).

Chrysler wants to offer a similar option in its Dodge Dart model.

According to one analyst, the feature was likely to become mainstream in the months to come.

The wireless charging option will be a part of Toyota’s 1,950 dollars (1,200 pounds) “technology package,” said to be available from next spring.

To charge a device, a driver will simply have to place it on the mat, though the handset has to have a Qi protocol integrated in it.

Currently, Qi wireless charging is supported by 34 mobile phone models, including the LG Google Nexus 4, Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC Windows Phone 8X.

Source-ANI

Korean mobile maker Samsung has overtaken Nokia as the top mobile phone brand for 2012, says a research firm.

According to IHS iSuppli Samsung has also opened up a decisive lead over Apple in the smartphone market.

Samsung is expected to account for 29 per cent of worldwide mobile phone shipments, up from 24 per cent in 2011, according to the research firm , which said Nokia's share dropped to 24 per cent from 30 per cent.

The firm pointed out that this would mark the first time in 14 years that Finnish-based Nokia will not sit atop the global mobile phone business on an annual basis, News.com.au reports.

Samsung has also extended its lead over Apple as the top maker of smartphones worldwide, the survey released on Tuesday said.

Samsung will have 28 per cent of the market, up from 20 per cent in 2011, while Apple''s share will rise in 2012 to to 20 per cent from 19 per cent, the report added.

Source-ANI

A US judge on Monday denied Apple Inc’s request for a permanent injunction against Samsung Electronics’ smartphones, depriving the iPhone maker of key leverage in the mobile patent wars.

Apple had been awarded $1.05 billion in damages in August after a US jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad. The Samsung products run on the Android operating system, developed by Google.

After the jury verdict, Apple asked US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose to impose a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones, though any injunction could potentially have been extended to Samsung’s newer Galaxy products.

In her order late on Monday, Koh found that Apple had not presented enough evidence to show that its patented features drove consumer demand for the entire iPhone.

“The phones at issue in this case contain a broad range of features, only a small fraction of which are covered by Apple’s patents,” Koh wrote.

“Though Apple does have some interest in retaining certain features as exclusive to Apple,” she continued, “it does not follow that entire products must be forever banned from the market because they incorporate, among their myriad features, a few narrow protected functions.”

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on Koh’s ruling, and a Samsung representative could not immediately be reached.

In a separate order on Monday, Koh rejected a bid by Samsung for a new trial based on an allegation that the jury foreman was improperly biased in favor of Apple.

Agencies

The newly-released Google Maps for iPhone has been downloaded more than 10 million times within just 2 days of its launch at the App Store.

Jeff Huber, Google's senior vice president of Commerce & Local, confirmed the news on a post on Google+. “We're excited for the positive reception of Google Maps for iPhone around the world. Congratulations to the Maps Team on the recognition for the passion and hard work they poured into it, for this release and over the last seven plus years,” CBS News quoted Huber as saying.

According to the report, Google's Maps app quickly jumped to the top free app on the App Store after its release late last week. The software was a bit of a surprise, with reports of its arrival coming just hours before it went live. Google's app brings back some of the functionality no longer found in the built-in maps software, which Apple replaced with its own data and services as part of iOS 6, which includes Google''s Street View technology and public transit directions, while also adding new features like spoken turn-by-turn driving directions and vector-based map tiles, the report said.

To put the 10 million number in perspective: Apple in October said that more than 200 million users were running iOS 6, about half of the some 400 million iOS devices sold until that point. Users on iOS 5 and below continue to run Apple's mapping software that uses data from Google. Neither company has said just how long that functionality will continue, the report added.

Source-ANI

Australian police has warning citizens not to rely on Apple's new mapping system on its latest iPhone after a number of motorists were directed into life-threatening situations.

Police said that iPhone users who have upgraded to the system''s new iOS 6 operating system are at risk of ending up off the beaten track.

According to News.com.au, the alert follows revelations that the mapping system lists Mildura in the middle of the Murray Sunset National Park, about 70km away from the actual location of Mildura, a regional city in northwestern Victoria.

Local police have been called to assist distressed motorists who have become stranded within the Murray-Sunset National Park after following directions on their Apple iPhone, the report said.

Police are extremely concerned as there is no water supply within the park and temperatures can reach as high as 46 degrees, putting lives at risk, it added.

The report quoted inspector Simon Clemence, as saying said it took one man 24-hours to make contact with the outside world after following the application''s directions.

Police have confirmed five vehicles have become stranded in the park, with many more people presumed to have become lost, but found there way back to civilisation. 

Source-ANI

FULL REVIEW

Tablets have been the prime essentials in the market and are soon slated to make laptops redundant. Penta tried to achieve the same with the Penta T-Pad IS703C but has failed at it. The T-Pad IS703C is Penta's way of entering the entry level tablet market and take over it's Chinese counterparts. Let's see how they fare at it. 

DESIGN

The  IS703C has one of the most disheartening designs in the market. Comparatively sturdy, it fails in other aspects. The buttons aren't well placed and are wobbly from the word go. All the edges are curved and give a decent grip. Unfortunately the front-facing camera is placed on the curve and hence shows only half of your face, and when you try to 'Face' the camera, the screen gets tilted beyond visibility. Horrible R & D from Penta's part. The screen has a decent resolution and offers Full-HD 1080P and HDMI support. It has a microSD slot for memory expansion, WiFi, and 2G and 3G dongle support via USB. The accessories along with the tablet are of sub-par quality as well.

PERFORMANCE

The Penta T-Pad IS703C is loaded with Android 4.0 Icecream Sandwich and performs in a fairly decent way. The 1 GB RAM makes it run smoothly, stutter-free and can handle a few apps running simultaneously. The touch screen does malfunction once in a while and fails to understand a gesture. The front facing camera is 0.3 megapixel and does the job for it's price. The battery life is strictly okay and lasts for 2-3 hours with heavy usage.

VERDICT

The Penta T-Pad IS703C is a sad tablet to own. The hardware running this insipid thing is perfect, albeit the outer shell and the build quality is where it takes all the beating. The pricing is perfect along with the other entry-level tablets, but the competitors are a winner in this part. We really hope the rest of the Penta tablet range is better than this one, and expect Penta to buck up and start rolling some better well research and developed products in the future. Give the Penta T-Pad IS703C a miss and go for some other ones available in the same price range.

Source-ANI: The habit of traditional SMS-messaging among Americans has slowed for the first time ever, a new study has suggested.

The number of SMS messages sent per customer each month dropped 3 percent to an average of 678 texts in the third quarter, according to a report by independent mobile analyst Chetan Sharma.

However, that doesn’t mean Americans are turning their backs on emoticons and LOLs completely, as customers are just looking for cheaper ways to text, the New York Daily News reports.

According to the report, services like Apple’s iMessage, Viber and Jaxtr SMS allow customers to send SMS-like texts at a much lower cost than the major U.S. carriers, which charge as much as 20 cents for a single text.

We haven't seen her yet, much less had the opportunity to trace her features with our own fingers but the rumuor mills been so abuzz with Apple's iPad Mini launch in the last few weeks that we feel rather well acquainted with the lovely lady anyway. In that vein, here's our summarization of what you need (might want) to know about the Apple family's new 'baby.' 

It's been known for a while that Apple was going to flood the market with a smaller, portable tablet but it made sure it wouldn't be even considered as competition for any budget Android tablets out there as far as pricing was concerned. It's far too (ludicrously) expensive for that. Anyway, here's what you need to know about the sleek, shiny new tech toy. 

She's got the look…

Good genes run in the family and she's certainly inherited them. Sleek, thin and light, this 7.9-inch-long tablet is resplendent in all its anodized aluminum and glass glory. At 0.68 pounds and 7.2 mm in width it's the size zero of tablets that all the others will strive to achieve now. It has a larger surface than the Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire HD, close competitors in the size bracket. 

In any case, it's 53% lighter than the fourth-generation iPad. 

But is her beauty only skin-deep? 

Only a deeper look at the iPad Mini's features will answer this particular question. 

-As far as storage goes, it's the same ol' story as with all iPads. It comes in 16GB, 32 GB and 64 GB flavors. 

-It has a 16.3-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery which boasts a 10-hour-long batter life even while surfing the web in Wi-fi, watching videos or listening to music. This is a fair bit longer than other mini androids available in the market. 

-Camera happy? We think so. The FaceTime HD Camera it comes with is far better than the iPad 2's. It supports face detection like its predecessor and is 1.2 megapixels. It also has a 5 megapixel iSight camera on its back which is a feature no other mini tablet can claim to have.

-It's armed with a dual-core A5 processor chip. It is also enabled with 4G LTE  as well. 

-Screen resolution is 1024 * 768 pixels making it around 163 pixels per inch. There is however, no retina display quality like the iPad 3 and 4th generation iPad. 

Willing to pay for her keep?

And finally, as always, it comes down to the pricing with this heftily priced apple product as well. Sure she's seek, shiny and undoubtedly well-endowed with features we'd all like to see in our mini tablets but considering pricing starts at $329 for the wi-fi only 16GB version and goes up to $429 and $529 for the 32 and 64GB versions, not to mention an extra $130 for LTE connectivity, we're not sure if users will find she's worth her pricy keep. 

Especially when pitted against the likes of more budget tablets like Google's Nexus 7 (a close competitor in terms of looks and capabilities) it really depends on whether people compare the price tags or not. Only time will tell the fate of this PYT. 

If the iPad Mini floats your boat, pre-orders started on October 26 and shipping too begins on November 2. Log onto the apple website to check out more features to help with your decision. 

Source-ANI: Consumers who purchased Microsoft’s new Surface tablet have expressed outrage over the gadget’s faulty touch cover screen.

A number of early buyers of the product, including several tech writers and developers, have reported issues of the screen splitting and exposing an internal wire after just a few days of use.

“My touch cover, in the middle at the join to the screen is peeling, like the top layer has come loose and is ruffling up,” a report by the Guardian quoted one Surface buyer, as saying.

“I am worried its going to get worse as I use it more,” the buyer added.

According to the Daily Mail, it is unclear whether the screen problems are due to a bad batch or are part of a bigger issue with the gadget that will become more apparent as more people use the Surface tablet over a longer period of time.

Full Review:

A]. Design: 

The design of these earphones is possibly the most disappointing thing about them. For the dizzying price, we'd have expected something a little less understated and with a better overall finish. The area around the earbuds is plastic and there's a metallic colour finish but we took issue with how the actual ear plugs sit. After prolonged periods of time, it seemed prone to slipping out (definitely a no-no for runners) but since this might be subjective according to people's ears, we simply suggest you spend a good amount of time with them before purchasing to avoid this. We did like that the fit was extremely comfortable and didn't put any pressure on the ear whatsoever, quite a feat for in-ear technology. 

Now here's an interesting design addition—the metallic part of the ear phones has two small screws which can be used for tweaking the sound between neutral and an increased bass. The cable is long enough for all utility purposes but it seems a bad bargain that the earphones don't have any volume control device on itself. All in all, the design is not spectacular but it is comfortable which gets a decent amount of points from us.

B]. Features:

This one has plenty of interesting features as stated below.

- A carry case that has storage for everything including the different sized tips that come with it but it's a bit bulky for portability purposes and definitely too big for earphones this tiny. 

- Then there's the above-mentioned dials that allow users to control the sound. Definitely a winning feature in our opinion and it worked well too. 

- And lastly, something we wish ALL earphones would feature, it has the ability to change cables in case something goes wrong without having to replace the entire earphones. 

C]. Performance:

If you're a bass head you definitely need to pick these up because the best part about them is the superior bass, its clarity and the ability to control it by means of a dial. And no, the bass doesn't 'boom' too much either. The overall sound detail is good too but just as they wow with their bass, the treble is a bit compromised so in our opinion, that finesse of balance was missing. 

It comes with a wide selection of tips and depending on which ones you use (should definitely experiment a bit) the ambient noise blocking is good as long as you're not used to way superior quality sound blocking. 

The next big thing in technology to hit our market is Microsoft's own baby, the Surface. Simply put, the surface is an ultrabook. What's new, you may ask. In a nutshell, it is manufactured by Microsoft itself. A new venture from the company, Microsoft was known to be software-centric and leave the hardware game for the rest. So this will be a new playground for Microsoft. Another biggie? It'll run on the all new Windows 8.

If that wasn't all, the Surface comes with a detachable wafer-thin 3mm keyboard, and has a kickback stand the main body to well, make it stand. A tabloid-ultrabook hybrid, the Surface will definitely take the world by storm. It barely weighs 1.5 lbs and comes with a 32 GB and 64 GB version. Geared with a Quad-Core Nvidia Tegra 3 and a 2 GB RAM, this beauty will take it all that you give, and more!

For a simple user, the surface is more than sufficient to do mundane tasks on the go, and keep oneself entertained throughout. 

Apart from this, Microsoft has yet another surprise up it's sleeve. They will be launching two models for Surface. The above mentioned rig will be for the recently launched Surface RT, but a much more heavy-duty called the Windows 8 Pro.

A much more powerful beast, the Pro comes loaded with the 3rd Gen Intel Core i5 Processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000 and 4 GB of RAM. If that wasn't all, it has USB 3.0 and two HD cams! The Windows 8 Pro is for a taskmaster looking for a handy portable powerhouse. Releasing in 2013, the Pro has everything that it takes to challenge it's competitors, and we believe it'll rightfully win!

Codemasters has released the follow up to its highly popular F1 game. But the real question is whether this one is a major improvement over the 2011 version.

F1 2012 features a new Young Driver Test mode as well a tutorial that many real-life drivers have said resembles the real driving environment accurately to a great extent. This important feature allows you to really get a hang of the mechanics as well as the racing track and rules of the game. Considering this is not a simple start to finish line game, this feature becomes doubly important for novices who want to get a real hang of the game. For seasoned players, and especially ones who have broken their thumbs swerving the turns on the 2010 and 2011 versions of the game, this is an easy way of easing into the game.

The game also has a Champions Mode that features the likes of Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and big daddy Michael Schumacher for you to match up against. The career mode packs in a lot of flexibility as well as time. You can keep playing this game for much longer than most other games. A full season allows you multiples races, practice sessions and all the other racing paraphernalia that F1 is known for. However, if you’re eager to show off your driving skills, you can nominate a rival in Season Challenge mode (also new) and if you win best-of-three race against him, you get his title and car. Theoretically, you can jump levels to achieve a Season Championship.

The main menu to select from various options has also been refurbished with lesser clutter than before. The gaming environment during the race too is much clearer and navigation is enhanced because of the the little kinks in the engine that have received a boost.

Racing the cars is a delight in itself. But much more satisfying is knowing that the cars actually simulate the racing environment to the tee. Handling, as such, is more difficult than with other racing games but make no mistake F1 is the ultimate racing experience out there. The sheer reality of the venture is most easy when you race the same car in the same circuit with different environments during laps. While bright sunshine will make you conscious of the steep curves along the track, rains will mean maneuvering the car in such a way that it doesn’t skid off.

It is this mix of brains and adrenalin that ultimately make this game a winner. Holders of F1 2011 may find the changes in this version cosmetic but make no mistake, F1 2012 is a delight in more ways than one, and if you’re a hardcore fan then it’s definitely worth the investment it demands.

Codemasters has really come up with a winner in F1 2012. The game is smart, beautiful and easy to handle after a point. While fans of the sport will definitely salivate over this one, we hope the wider community of sports fans will also give this game a try.

You won’t be disappointed with this one. Trust us.

Full Review:

Android phones breaching the Rs 10000 mark is not such a big deal today. However, the Stellar Craze Mi 355 from Spice goes one up by introducing a dual SIM Android phone at a very attractive price.

Design:

In keeping with the trend, this phone sports a glossy back panel with white being the dominant theme colour. Surprisingly, the colour was able to withstand scratches and other marks for the two-week duration we had to test it. Except for the volume adjustment feature, the phone has no other buttons at its sides. The Power as well as 3.5 mm jack are situated right on top. The phone seems to have a tendency to switch off too soon and requires a steady hand to get used to it. The back panel features a 5 mega-pixel camera that also packs a dual LED flash.

The screen size of the phone is a solid 3.5 inches but the resolution is a disappointing 320 by 480. This makes the phone almost useless under bright sunlight and has to be held in front of your eyes for optimum usage.

Performance:

The Stellar Craze runs Android 2.3.6 (Gingerbread) and as such the interface is pretty smooth. Moving between applications is simple and the phone handles day-to-day tasks quite effectively. The default theme is also quite attractive. The phone runs a 800 Mhz processor and features 512 MB of RAM. This is decent for normal daily apps. Considering this is an entry level smartphone, we think the specifications are quite up there.

However, the phone tends to get sluggish after a few hours of charge. Accessing phonebook and messages can take up to half a minute at times and opening and closing applications shows you how sluggish this phone can get. The phone’s camera, too, is nothing home to write about with even normal daylight photos not doing justice to a 5 MP camera. The bundled earphones, too, are well below the mark and require further investment for a good sound experience.

Verdict:

By itself, the Stellar Craze Mi 355 is a good phone. There is an urgent need to introduce phones at this price range for audiences outside metros to adopt smartphones. However, with the number of sacrifices this phone makes in terms of performance, resolution and camera, this one is difficult to recommend.

Research In Motion (RIM) announced its first simultaneous Asia Pacific (APAC) wide Hackathon – BlackBerry JamHack.

BlackBerry JamHack is scheduled to take place in ten different cities over two consecutive weekends.  Winning teams from each city will then have the opportunity to represent their country at the JamHack finals that will take place at BlackBerry Jam Asia on November 29 and 30, 2012.

The 40-hour event will provide an opportunity for four-member teams of developers, UI designers, and/or marketers to work on apps for BlackBerry 10.

The ten winning teams that come from each city’s event will receive an all-expenses paid trip to BlackBerry Jam Asia in Bangkok. At BlackBerry Jam Asia, the teams will have the opportunity to represent their city and compete at the Asia Pacific Finals. Not only will each team be assessed by a panel of judges, but attendees of BlackBerry Jam Asia will also be able to cast a vote to identify the most compelling winner.

The winning team will win the grand prize of US$10,000 in cash and an all-expense paid trip to BlackBerry 10 global launch.

Source - IANS: Mass production of a smaller and cheaper version of Apple's iPad tablet computer has started, according to various media reports. Asia-based LG Display and AU Optronics have already began manufacturing the LCD screens for Apple's new device in September, Xinhua quoted The Wall Street Journal as saying.

Apple has kept the screen size of its iPad unchanged at 9.7 inches since the product debuted in January 2010. In comparison, a smaller Apple tablet will feature a 7.85-inch liquid-crystal display with a lower resolution than the latest iPad, according to the Journal.

The launch of a smaller iPad is seen as Apple's move to stay competitive against rivals such as Google and Amazon, which have introduced 7-inch tablets at just $200. The cheapest iPad starts from nearly $400.

Fortune magazine has reported that Apple is rumoured to be sending out press invitations on October 10 for a special event that might be held a week later on October 17 to unveil a smaller iPad. Apple has not yet commented on the reports.