Micromax forays into the premium segment of Droids with the A85

Micromax has just released what seems to be the cheapest dual-core Android money can buy. For the rather affordable price of 18990 INR ($380), you are treated with a delectable 3.8-inch WVGA TFT screen in addition to 8GB of on-board storage expandable via a micro SD card to a total of 40GB. The dual-core in question is NVIDIA's very own Tegra 2 SoC which has proven it is no slouch at least amongst the current crop of dual-core toting phones. RAM comes in at 512MB and the usual trio of connectivity options including Wi-Fi, 3.5G and Bluetooth, all exist. The rear camera is a 5MP unit. The phone also sports a front-facing camera of VGA resolution which should hold good for making calls over Wi-Fi or 3G. The only low for this device which otherwise looks really good on paper, is its 1500 mAh battery. Consequently, Micromax advertises only 3.5 hours of talk time. Additionally, the phone ships with Android 2.2 (Froyo) which is a little behind the curve as most Android devices are running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Not to mention, Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is on the horizon. Nonetheless, it seems an update to Adroid 2.3 is in order sometime before the year ends. All these aspects make this phone almost an impulse buy. For the feature set this phone offers, there seems to be great value in the purchase. This phone, as of this writing, is only available in some Asian countries.

Press shots courtesy GSMArena.

NVIDIA's Tegra 3 comes to Android

It seems as if we have our first glimpse at a quad-core packing smartphone in the form of the HTC Egde. The device is said to be packing the Tegra 3 SoC, this time at 1.5 Ghz and will come with a gig of RAM. It is rumored to come with 32GB of inbuilt memory to boot. Physically, the phone is going to be monstrous as it features a 4.7 inch HD screen measured across the diagonal. The phone is also rumored to come with an 8MP shooter with f/2.2 and will be capable of full 1080p video recording. On the radios front, BT 4.0 is expected along with the usual suit of Wi-Fi b/g/n. There is no news out on LTE yet but the phone will be capable of 21Mbps HSDPA speeds. It is almost a given that the phone will come with Google's latest OS for Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. The phone is expected to arrive in late Q1 or early Q2 next year.

Source: pocketnow

NVIDIA's Tegra 3 SoC benchmarked

Asus' upcoming Transformer Prime has been benchmarked. The tablet packs NVIDIA's new Tegra 3 SoC which has four cores running at 1.4 Ghz. Details apart from this are sparse as of now. As can be seen, the tablet comes out on top among a host of devices, some hitherto unreleased (read: Galaxy Nexus). The screen below shows the tablet running the AnTuTu benchmark and is roughly 2x faster than last gen tabs like the Motorola Xoom.

Photo courtesy: GSMArena Blog.