Sony Ericsson to launch Its New Handsets in Feb 2011

Sony Ericsson seems to be working very hard to announce some new handsets in the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC) that is going to be held in Barcelona in February 2011. As from the various online reports that have come into picture, we can expect that Sony Ericsson will be going to expand its Xperia handsets category by adding some new models to it.

The models, which are going to be expected to line-up Xperia handsets portfolio, are Xperia Arc, Xperia Duo, and Xperia Neo models. We also came to know that Sony Ericsson would be also going to launch Xperia X12 and PlayStation phone. Sony Ericsson Xperia 12 is a hybrid version of Xperia X10 handset,  X12 will be powered by 1 GHz of processor and will be running on Google’s newest Android Operating System, Gingerbread.

The device is also supposed to have 8.1 Megapixel of camera that is capable of recording HD videos at 720p resolution and it also going to support a HDMI port. The detail of Xperia Arc, Xperia Duo, and Xperia Neo models handsets has not yet been announced but it is going to be released very soon.

Sony Ericsson has already trademarked Xperia Arc, Xperia Duo, and Xperia Neo models and they might be going to announce in MWC event.

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Facebook Might Launch Project Titan to Jab Gmail

Facebook has reportedly sent out invitations for a special invite-only event to be held on November 15 at St. Regis Yerba Buena Terrace in San Franscisco, US. Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch is betting that Facebook will unveil a new web-based email client codenamed Project Titan at this event. Internally, Project Titan is referred as "Gmail Killer" and is said to bring email address backed by @facebook.com domain name. Do you think Facebook can take over something as big as Gmail? Well, probably not but read on.

Earlier this month, Google had updated its API Terms of Service that allowed easy export as well as import of Contacts to a service or application only if the same is reciprocated. In a way, Google shut down Facebook's access to pull contacts from Gmail to protect the user data. To battle that, Facebook came up with a work around to download Gmail contacts as CSV files and then upload it to Facebook. Google wasn't happy with Facebook's move and criticized Facebook for not letting users get their Friend Lists and email addresses out of Facebook. 

This is not the first time both companies stood against each other for Friends/Contacts exchange matters. Back in 2008, Facebook suspended Google Friend Connect as the latter started re-distributing user information from Facebook to other third party developers without any user knowledge. Looks like that wound didn't heal even after more than two years have passed. But in a way, Google is correct for not letting a service simply take away Gmail contacts and not offering something in return to Google. All Google is asking Facebook to do is to let users pull out Contacts and Friends from Facebook to Gmail. Practice what you preach.

Now, to respond back to Google and kill the whole data protection issue, Facebook is rumored to launch its own email service with @facebook.com domain. It's pretty unlikely to kill Gmail but if Facebook launches its own email service, it would be interesting to see how other popular web-mail service providers react.

Facebook chat integration in several mobile apps has certainly made many Facebook users happy. But when Facebook Chat is used in the web interface, it's not that comfortable to use. Though the invitation obviously points that a new email/messaging service is on the anvil, I think Facebook might give a facelift to its Chat service. A much deserved facelift for users who have thousands of known and unknown friends. If Facebook chat is revamped with the ability to share photos, links and files, it will actually lead to loads of users remaining logged into Facebook for longer hours.

However, as of now, we have no confirmation on Facebook's deal. We've got to wait till November 15 for Facebook's official announcement.

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