BenQ has recently released one if its new 3G mobile phones, the BenQ E55 clamshell. The phone sports some pretty basic features.

The E55 clamshell weighs 95 grams and, tri-band connectivity (GSM 900/1800/ 1900), a 2 inch TFT internal display with 262K colours, a 96 x 64 pixel external display, a dedicated media player (with support for MP3, AAC, MP4 and 3GP), Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, FM radio, a 2.0 megapixel camera, secondary video-call camera, SMS and MMS capabilities, WAP 2.0 browser, 45MB of internal memory and microSD card support (up to 2GB).

The retail price of BenQ E55 is 6,990 Taiwanese dollars (around RM 746), for the moment, the E55 is available only across Taiwan.

Read more..."BenQ E55 released in Taiwan"

Written by Richard MacManus

Nokia isn't finished with its acquisition spree just yet. Tonight the Finnish company announced a plan to acquire the 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn't already own and make the platform open source. Nokia clearly aims to challenge Android, the open source mobile operating system of Google. Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says that it wants to create "the most attractive platform for mobile innovation and drive the development of new and compelling web-enabled applications".

The Symbian operating system is currently the leading open platform and it powers Nokia's smartphones, as well as those of a large number of other hardware manufacturers.

All of the major stakeholders in Symbian, including Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, and Siemens, have accepted the offer, representing approximately 91% of the Symbian shares. Nokia doesn't have a definitive answer form Samsung Electronics yet, but expects them to accept the offer as well.

Read more..."Nokia Acquires Symbian; Takes on Google's Android"