Updated 24 May, 2012, 11:34 am IST

Upcoming High-End Smartphones

09 Aug, 2010, 9:27 am IST | by Shayne Rana

Here are a few of high-end smartphones that will soon be hitting the Indian shelves.

When it comes to smartphones the choices are vast and making a choice isn’t easy. Manufacturers are kicking it into high gear, the competition is getting downright nasty and the choices are getting harder.� Here are some of the upcoming smartphones that will have us chewing our nails in anticipation and then chewing what’s left trying to decide which one to buy.

Nokia N8 – Rs. 27,000 (Est. Price)
Nokia is aiming at turning things around for their fans with the N8. It’s their first mobile phone that’s equipped with a 12MP camera with a Xenon flash and features like face-detection etc. They’ve also incorporated an AMOLED display as well as DivX and XviD codec support for the handset and HDMI out, all of which will make this quite a difficult option to dismiss. The N8 will be the first to feature the updated Symbian OS ^3. It’ll also be available in vibrant colour choices.

The N8 is loaded with -

3.5-inch AMOLED, scratch resistant touchscreen sporting 360 x 640 pixels, multi-touch
3G, EDGE/GPRS Wi-Fi,
GPS with A-GPS support, free Ovi Maps preloaded
Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, USB 2.0 (micro)
12MP camera, Xenon flash and LED for video, face/smile detection. 720p video recording
FM radio
DivX and XviD video support
TV Out via 3.5mm handsfree
Dolby Digital Plus via HDMI Out (converter cable included)
16GB internal memory plus microSD card support

iPhone 4 - Rs. 38,000 (Est. Price)
The iPhone has already had a longstanding perch at the very height of the mobile phone segment. Even with it’s shortcomings it seems it can do no wrong and the iPhone 4 is not going to give up that position easily. The latest version has taken on a slightly new look with a super high-resolution mobile display Apple has dubbed the Retina Display. The processing power has been upped and so has the operating system. We should expect to see the iPhone 4 in India by October latest, is what we’re hoping. Although Airtel and Vodafone will be the one’s ushering it in, we can always hope we too, like the UK and Canada may be an unlocked devices.�

The iPhone 4 has -

a 3.5-inch touchscreen (Multitouch) with a 640 x 960 pixel resolution
3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi
GPS with A-GPS, Google Maps
Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, USB 2.0
5MP camera (LED flash) with Geo-tagging, 720 video recording
16GB and 32GB models
3.5mm handsfree with support for TV Out

HTC Desire – Rs. 30,000 (Est. Price)
The promise of the Nexus One reaching our shores wasn’t kept and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing considering the handset didn’t far all to well. Thankfully we can hope to see the next best thing i.e. the Desire make it’s official debut here soon. With its 1GHz processor, large AMOLED display and of course HTC’s Sense UI, the Desire is definitely a ‘desirable’ (excuse the corniness) handset. Android’s next update, Froyo will also be along shortly to ‘sweeten’ the deal. The Desire also comes equipped with an Optical trackball like the HTC Legend, to be used for navigating the menus and features. If only it had a higher capacity of internal memory.