Huawei is one of the few Android manufacturers that has been slowly and steadily expanding its mobile phone portfolio. The Chinese multinational started with entry-level Androids to establish a foothold in the country and have now graduated to the mid-range and upper-mid range segment with the recently announced Ideos X5 Pro and Huawei Honor.

The Ideos X5 Pro is an improved version of Huawei’s Ideos X5 and understandably goes for the same moniker as the predecessor. The device boasts a similar look to the Ideos X5 but it’s under the hood is what matters the most. The phone now comes with a slightly faster 1GHz processor which promises an improved multimedia and processing performance. The new Ideos X5 comes with 512MB of RAM, 3.8-inch WVGA display, 14.4Mbps a 5MP camera, 720p HD video playback and recording, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, 4GB internal memory, microSDHC card slot and 1500mAh battery. The new Ideos X5 runs Android 2.3 OS, supports Huawei’s Cloud+ features that enables app and data backup, phone locator etc. It is priced at Rs. 13,800.

The Huawei Honor on the other hand, is the phone to look out for. Priced at just under Rs. 20,000, the phone is superiorly spec’d in its class. Honor’s USP is its battery and the fact that it can be upgraded to the latest Android 4.0 OS. Honor comes with a 1900mAh battery and coupled with Huawei’s proprietary battery management, the phone claims to last up to 3 days with a standby time of 3 weeks or up to 10 hours of continuous video playback.

It is powered by a 1.4GHz single-core Snapdragon processor, 512MB RAM and features a 4-inch FWVGA (854×480) which gives the best pixel per inch amongst smartphones in its price range. Additionally, it comes with an 8MP camera supporting HD video recording and HDR, 14.4Mbps HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB.

One of the best things to come out of LG’s press conference the other day was the OLED TV. It’s the world’s first 55-inch OLED TV and we managed to get a glimpse of the upcoming TV on the show floor at point blank range.

Needless to say, the picture quality looks awesome with richer colors and contrast. On the upside, the TV is power efficient and is thin as a pencil.

Nokia at an event in Bengaluru gave an exclusive look to its upcoming E6 phone. Nokia E6 is one of the two devices that are running on Symbian Anna OS and boasts a high resolution 2.46-inch VGA display that also supports touch.

The Nokia E6 is expected to hit Indian shores pretty soon but we managed to lay our hands on the pre-production device for some time.

Nokia E6 has a good solid feel to it, pretty much like we’ve in the Nokia E72. The design is similar to E72 and you could easily pass it off as the former had there not been specifc markings. And of course, the Symbian Anna UI.

Speaking of Symbian Anna, the first and foremost change you’d see is the updated icons. The icons are now more rounded and looks good, especially on the crisp display of the E6.

In addition to that, other new features found in the operating system are an improved browser, better VPN and Microsoft Exchange support, navigation that will come pre-loaded with India maps, a new music UI reminiscent to iPod’s Cover Flow and more.

At the back, Nokia has integrated an 8MP camera with dual LED flash. It can also record videos at 720p. Now the E6 camera is an EDoF one, which means it lacks auto-focus and fares badly when it comes to macro shots. You can check out few sample shots and video below.

Nokia hasn’t confirmed any price yet but it should be around the Rs. 25,000 range.

Google announced the cloud-based Music Beta service today at the Google I/O and along with it the new Music app for Android devices. The app is available on the US Android Market right now and can be used to play music stored online or even the music on the phone.

I managed to do the latter (waiting for the invite!) and get some hands-on time with the new Music app. I tried the app on HTC Legend and we’re happy to report that despite the initial snag of the app not able to detect music (a restart worked for me), everything went fine.

The new UI looks good and has some smooth transitions showing no signs of lags whatsoever. The EQ still seems to be missing but you’ve got basic features like playlist, shuffle and repeat options.

Nokia N8 was targeted purely at consumers looking for a better camera and entertainment purposes. Despite N8 boasting decent business-centric features, it lacked one major feature devoured by business users — physical QWERTY keyboard.

This is where E7 comes into picture. E7 is Nokia’s answer to business users seeking build quality of N8 but want business-centric features. Although Nokia has downgraded E7′s camera to 8MP from N8′s 12MP, E7 does add a larger 4-inch Clear Black AMOLED Display and a physical QWERTY keyboard.

E7 has a very clean design and comes in a metallic body akin to N8 that gives it a very solid feeling. Despite E7 being a tad larger than N8, the phone does feel good in hand. Nokia has also managed to shuffle placement of few keys like the keypad lock has moved to the left-hand side and the volume slider button taking its place on right.

The slider mechanism was also top notch that reveals its keyboard. The keys are spaced out well and has a raised key design, allowing to type better.

As for the phone’s performance, it runs on Symbian^3 and seemed pretty fast and responsive in executing commands. However, there are still a few issues with the phone not having portrait QWERTY keyboard, below par browser and fixed-focus camera.

There’s no word on price or avaialbility of E7 in India but the phone is rumored to launch in few weeks for a price of around Rs. 30,000.

Our group site Samsung Hub has published their hands-on impressions of the Nexus S. Released only in the US and the UK, Nexus S is always sold as an unlocked phone, and however you get a rebate if you buy it with a contract from carrier. In the UK Nexus S can be purchased with T-Mobile, Vodafone, O2 and orange. In the US it only retails on T-mobile. The one without contract costs $529 in the US and GBP425.99 in the UK.

The retail packaging of the phone comes with a phone, battery, USB cable, Travel Adapter, Manuals and a T-Mobile SIM card that can be activated till 2013.

Nexus S Hands-on

If you’re unaware, Research in Motion (RIM) is also in the tablet game and was at hand at the CES to show their latest Blackberry Playbook. We got some hands-on time with the tablet and are certainly impressed by what RIM has managed to do. Despite being a prototype, the Playbook felt really good and responded to all our commands.

The dual-core 1GHz and 1GB RAM powers this 7-incher that shows off crisp text with support of a resolution of up to 1024×600 pixels (SVGA) and a decent viewing angle. Playbook runs on QNX OS and not the Blackberry OS. However, the user interface felt a bit same if you’ve used a Blackberry OS 6 device before.

Another interesting thing, Playbook boasts is the capacitive bezel that can be used to perform different actions. You can check out the video below.

Last week we were invited by Apple India to try our hands on the new Macbook Air that has been selling for over a month in the United States and has recently gone on sale in India. Apple’s smaller Macbook had been rumored for quite some time but after playing with, we can safely say Apple’s 11-inch Macbook Air (MBA) is one fully blown computer in a very compact chassis.

The first thing to strike about the new MBAs is its size. It’s ridiculously thin, small and light. Apple engineers have crammed the latest hardware components in Macbook Air’s unibody aluminum enclosure. The unibody enclosure is similar to what we see in high-end Macbooks but the Macbook Air has also managed to carve the display from the same sheet, making it more durable.

Apple says the new Macbook Air is a culmination of what they learned while making the iPad and one thing they’ve adopted from the tablet is its flash storage. The new MBAs do not have a HDD but a NAND flash storage, which allows Apple to further shrink the notebook’s size and also offer improved performance as compared to a mechanical hard drive.

Other notable things we found are a large multi-touch glass trackpad and a full-size keyboard. Both work as intended but one (passable) gripe with the keyboard is that it does not have a keyboard backlight.

As for the performance, the 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM supported the base MBA model well. It managed to load up content quickly with less — or most of the times with no — waiting time. Apple says the smaller MBA can run for about 5 hours on a single charge but we think it’s pretty subjective considering the usage pattern is different from user to user.

The 11-inch Macbook Air starts from Rs.60,900 whereas the larger 13-inch Macbook Air starts from Rs.79,900.

At the EA Showcase we also managed to get our hands on the Sony’s latest motion controller, Move. It is a motion-sensing controller that functions with the help of PlayStation Eye Camera claims to give a 1:1 tracking.

On the design front, PS3 Move is ergonomically designed. The curved shape of the controller sits nicely in the hand and the control keys are placed at adequate distance so you don’t have to reach for the keys with your other hand.

We tested the controller on EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 and the least we can say is, we were impressed. Agreed, it took a bit of time for us to adjust but when it was done, the club of Tiger Woods responded exactly to how we swung the controller, corresponding with the speed of the swing. Imagine playing Cricket with the controller and harnessing PS3′s graphics prowess!

The PS3 Move pack and its individual accessories are available right now but Sony is also expected to launch a 320GB PS3 Slim bundled with PS3 Move Starter Pack this month for a price of around Rs.23,500.

The new Tegra boasts tremendous battery life which is possible with 8 different processors housed on the SoC that starts or stops according to the user’s needs. Tegra 2 can give up to 16 hours of full HD video playback or up to 140 hours of music on a single charge.

In addition to the official unveiling, Nvidia also showcased Adobe Flash 10.1 acceleration, Unreal Engine playing flawlessly on the reference Tegra 2 tablets and their partners with their prototype tablets.

Before we begin, I would like to point out that Nvidia also teamed up with Hungama Mobile to create an app that will allow users to buy, view or listen to exclusive content from Hungama ranging from thousands of music tracks to videos.

Notion Ink’s Adam, EAFT’s MagicTile and Compal’s unnamed tablet were on display. Although Notion Ink did not have a working prototype at the event, we did have a good fifteen minutes with Compal’s tablet and EAFT’s MagicTile.

Compal’s tablet specs sheet includes Tegra 2 processor, 4GB NAND Flash, 512MB RAM, 3MP camera, 7-inch touchscreen, microSD card slot, USB, HDMI-out and more. The prototype was running a stock version of Android but Compal promises to customize the interface before it hits retail. The tablet’s performance was very sluggish that often ended to force quit a running application.

On the other hand, Bangalore-based EAFT’s MagicTile looked quite promising. Although a rebadged version of ICD’s Ultra, the thing that could work in favor of EAFT’s MagicTile is its MagicTile UI, which is an easy-to-use icon based UI. The tablet was running on Android 2.1 and was pretty much responsive as far as screen responsiveness is concerned. EAFT’s target market is education and is working with some undisclosed educational content providers.

The MagicTile also runs on Tegra 250 chip and features 512MB RAM, 4G internal flash, 7-inch (1024×600) touchscreen display (capacitive optional), 1.3MP front facing camera, Bluetooth, optional GPS, microSD slot, 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI-out and full HD video playback.

The price of these tablets are unknown at the moment but the expected release is in Q3.