After a long wait, Nokia has finally announced their first 8 MegaPixel phone. The phone is called N86 and it will now compete with the likes of Samsung Memoir and Samsung Omnia i8910 HD. The phone comes with a wide-angle Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and can be compared to a high quality stand alone digital camera capturing brilliant and wide angle images.

It is a slider phone and resembles the N8X series. It has a 2.6 inch QVGA , OLED screen having 240 X 320 resolution and a scratch resistant hardened glass display. It is the first mobile device that comes with variable aperture which can produce good results even in low light conditions. The Camera also has auto focus along with Dual LED flash. Connectivity options include HSDPA, Wi-Fi, EDGE, Bluetooth with A2DP and USB 2.0. The phone also has GPS and A-GPS support and comes with 8GB of memory which can be extended to 16GB using microSD cards. FM radio with FM transmitter and 3.5mm AC socket is also present.

The phone will begin shipping in the second quarter of 2009 and the expected price is Rs 23,331 (EUR 375) before taxes.

Asus has launched a new P835 PDA phone for the PDA fans and business savvy professionals. The new smartphone provides a rich multimedia viewing and Internet browsing experience thanks to its large display screen, blazing fast download speeds and a responsive trackball.

The phone has a 3.5 inch touchscreen with 800 X 480 pixel resolution. The phone boasts of a HSUPA 7.2Mbps download speeds. It also comes with a unique trackball which helps during scrolling while browsing sites in the Opera Web browser. The phone is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 and enables users to switch between 12 key, half QWERTY and full QWERTY modes depending on there needs. The phone comes with a 5MP camera that also supports video recording and it can also play audio and video files in a variety of formats. Connectivity options include WiFi, Bluetooth and USB. The phone has 4GB of internal memory with expansion through microSD slots available. It also comes with Asus’s Glide interface and has GPS.

The pricing and availability of the phone is not yet known.

Last week, Skype and Nokia went on a deal to pre-install Skype on upcoming Nokia N-series devices. This news had been a big story of February 2009 and the geeks are just wondering around for the easiness of free calls over mobiles.

Skype is preparing to launch for Symbian Devices with the upcoming Nokia beast - The Nokia N97. The phone is expected to launch in Q3 of 2009 and will be the first Nokia symbian device ever to have Skype. Making Video calls over the phone will surely be fun but the question is “Will Skype bring the functionality of Video Calling over phone? If so, when?

Skype wont be shipping as a separate application but it will be deeply integrated in Contacts and other services of the phone. This deal seems to be good but the problem comes because of the bandwidth. If the users are in Wi-Fi zone and have access to it, it will be well and good as Wi-Fi is cheaper than 3G and GPRS. On the other hand the 3G network is very limited worldwide and even costly too. GPRS is widely available but cannot handle even voice calls as the connectivity speed is very low.

Still I consider this integration as a useful one because it will let those users who have sufficient mobile bandwidth, communicate for free. However, Skype should also produce a separate application for all the existing devices to make this deal really worth else it will take a longer time to establish themselves.

Fring is also a good alternative already available for the most of the smartphone devices. Not only Nokia but Fring already support a bunch of other companies like HTC, Samsung, LG, Apple’s iPhone and many more. Thus Skype will face a major challenge from Fring as it also supports other popular IM services like Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, etc. Fring has already started monetizing from its app and thus Skype is likely to do the same. Advertisements are finally helping VoIP to grow and provide free wireless communication.

Both Skype and Fring target to bring video calls in future smartphones but it is not likely to happen very soon. But once this is done and the bandwidth rates
are cutted, it will really make video calling very easy and economical.