Free Calls by Rebtel Voucher - Bonus $10 Calling credit on first purchase

Free Calls are always sought after as the Internet Revolution is marching on. That is why we at Free Calls Hub believe that calls using mobile applications and computer programs (downloadable from the Andriod Play!, Apple App Store, the BlackBerry App World, and Rebtel's main page) are accumulating by the day. One of the most exciting and eye catching app would be Rebtel's excellent services. You can make free calls using Rebtel's services from your Android, Apple, Blackberry mobile phones, your personal computer, and mobile phones that does not support the major 3 mobile operating systems.

Thus, it would be foolish not to grab the existing offer where Rebtel is offering you and all the other users a 10 dollars worth of free calls; just follow our instructions below and you will be on your way to free calls; you would be able to call anywhere, even to faraway places like Swaziland or the Congo Republic. Now to the exciting part - we would be teaching you how to claim your Rebtel's Voucher for the ten dollars worth of free calls for you to use and call anywhere, any time. This service is provided to you with no frills and is a complimentary service meant for you to try Rebtel's services. Are you ready?

How to get $10 worth of Free Calls

• First, you would need to go to this exclusive page for our readers.
• Once there, you would need to register at that website. 
• That would be all to it for you to claim the voucher! Easy isn't it?

Click here and register now  

Rebtel Offers Great Voice Quality for all 

We know that Rebtel offers you and your friends many benefits which I wouldn't want to hide from you at all. First of all, Rebtel offers calling services that does not compromise the voice quality of you or the one that is opposite in the line. What this means for a concerned user like you, would be that whatever you hear on the phone would be as clear as glass; Rebtel only offers you genuine sound quality. 

If you are wondering what if Rebtel's phone services suddenly breaks down, we also noted the seamless customer services that Rebtel offers 24/7. This would mean that whenever you have trouble with Rebtel's Phone Service (I am not saying you would!), you would be able to contact a customer service operator almost instantly, solving that problem that you might have while talking to your friends on Rebtel's fantastic service. 

Rebtel offers cheap subscription to its services 

Another great part of Rebtel's services that would be the excellent rates provided by Rebtel. It is super cheap to subscribe and register with Rebtel; they boast the cheapest rates amongst all the Voice over IP (VoIP) providers and calling cards which would allow you ensured astronomical savings whenever you would engage with Rebtel's calling services. 

Rebtel vouchers also include SMS 

Another great part of Rebtel's services that we think would enhance your experience would be that you could send international SMSes using Rebtel's services. You could either send these SMSes through your phone or from the web. As such with Rebtel's Calling Services, their SMS services also provide a very cheap rate amongst all the countries meaning great savings wherever you send those messages to.

Read more »

NFC-enabled handset shipments reach 30 million units in 2011

According to a report by research firm Berg Insight, global shipments of handsets featuring Near Field Communication (NFC) has reached 30 million units in 2011 from about 3 million units in 2010. With 87.8% increase annually, shipments are expected to reach 700 million in 2016.

Nokia launched NFC-enabled 700, 701 and 603, Symbian smartphones last year with Nokia 808 Pureview coming this year. BlackBerry has also launched range of handset including, Curve 9350, Curve 9380, Bold 9900 and Bold 9790 last year. LG launched Optimus Net Dual with NFC support for select markets and Optimus LTE last year and has also announced range of NFC handsets this year.

Other manufacturers such as Sony, Panasonic, HTC and ZTE are expected to launch NFC-enabled phones in 2012. You can head to NFC World to get complete list of new and upcoming smartphones with NFC support.

Handset vendors launched more than 40 NFC-enabled handsets worldwide last year. At the beginning of March 2012, more than 100 models had been announced by nearly all leading vendors.

Press Release

Gothenburg, Sweden– March 26, 2012: According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global sales of handsets featuring Near Field Communication (NFC) increased ten-fold in 2011 to 30 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87.8 percent, shipments are forecasted to reach 700 million units in 2016. The global rise in smartphone adoption is also driving higher attach rates for other wireless connectivity technologies in handsets including GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN. These connectivity technologies are already a standard feature on high-end smartphones and most medium- and low-end models. Declining costs will also enable broader integration in the featurephone segment that is rapidly gaining smartphone-like functionality.

The attach rate for GPS among GSM/WCDMA/LTE handsets reached 31 percent in 2011 and grew to 38 percent for all air interface standards. Shipments of WLAN-enabled handsets have more or less doubled annually in the past four years and the attach rate increased to 33 percent in 2011. WLAN connectivity in handsets enables a range of use cases including offloading data traffic from increasingly congested mobile networks, media synchronisation and indoor navigation services. “Reliable indoor navigation systems for handsets need hybrid location technologies that fuse signal measurements from multiple satellite systems like GPS and GLONASS with cellular and WLAN network signals, together with data from sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses and altimeters”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that periodic calibrations using satellite and wireless network signals are necessary to compensate for the low data accuracy and high drift obtained from low cost sensors used in handsets today.

The NFC technology for short-range wireless point-to-point communication reached a breakthrough in 2011 when several leading handset vendors released more than 40 NFC-enabled handsets. NFC can be used for countless applications such as paring devices to establish Bluetooth or WLAN connections, information exchange, electronic ticketing and secure contactless payments. “Even though it will take some time before the stakeholders agree on business models for payment networks, other use cases such as reading tags and easy pairing of devices may well be compelling enough for handset vendors to integrate NFC in mid- and high-end devices already today” concluded Mr Malm.

Read more »

LG Optimus Net Dual P698 Review

Box Contents

• Charger
• Stereo Ear Microphone
• USB Data Cable
• User Manual
• 2GB Memory Card
• Additional back- cover

Hardware

The phone has similar features as the single SIM version such as 3.2-inch (320 x 480 pixels) capacitive touch screen display, 512MB RAM etc.

It is 11.mm thick and slightly heavier than the Optimus Net at 124g.

The LG logo is at the top below the ear piece.

There is a Dual SIM branding below the display. There is physical menu button, home button, back button and a SIM switch button instead of search button in the single SIM version.

The volume rocker is on the right side.

USB port is on the left, protected by a plastic cover.

The 3.5mm audio jack is at the top.

The lock/ power button is next ti the 3.5mm audio jack.

The 3MP auto focus CMOS camera is at the back.

When you open the plastic back cover you can see the 1500 mAh BL-4JJN Li-Ion battery. You also get an addition silver back cover other than this black colored one. When you remove the battery you can see theSIM 1 slot at the top and the SIM 2 slot at the bottom. The micro SD slot is at the top next to the camera that supports up to 32GB.

Camera

The phone has 3 MP CMOS auto focus camera with VGA video recording at a maximum of 640 x 480 pixel resolution. The camera takes decent shots but not great while focusing an object nearby and there is no macro mode.It has options to change image size, ISO settings (Auto, 400, 200 and 100), White Balance (Auto, Incandescent, Sunny, florescent and Cloudy), Timer, Image quality, Shutter sounds and Geo tagging. There are also on-screen camera options such as digital zoom (up to 4x), Contrast and scene modes (Mono, Negative, Solarize, Sepia and Aqua). There is no dedicated camera button or LED flash.

Here are some camera samples for you to check out.

Software

UI

The phone has similar UI as the other touch screen LG phones with slide to unlock feature. You can pinch the screen to add home screens or set one as default. It support maximum 7 screens, and one home screen could be set as default.

To add widgets, shortcuts and folders or change the wallpaper, you need to long press the screen that would list the widgets and shorts and you could simply touch them to add it on the screen. There is a Dual SIM status widget that shows the name of active connections. You can also add apps and folders in the similar way that would place them in the grids.You can press and hold the downloaded apps to move it to other position or click the app to uninstall.

The notification bar has shortcuts to control the Sound, WiFi , Bluetooth , GPS and Accelerometer.The music player is present below and could be turned-off if needed. You need to slide up to unlock the screen, that is similar to other LG phones.

Apps

The phone comes with ebuddy, eBuddy SMS, Gmail, Google Search, Polaris document Viewer (Excle, Power Point, Word, PDF) and YouTube. SmartShare app enable you share music and video to DLNA compatible media devices. The utility apps include Calculator, Calendar, Clock and Voice Recorder. There is Social+ widget to connect to Facebook, Twitter and Myspace from a single place.

The recent applications could be viewed from the home screen when you press and hold the home button. There is no app manager in the recent app list like some of the other LG phones but you can access it from the settings. The application manager lets your view running and installed app and shows the RAM usage. There is LG World and Android Market place to download more apps. Even though you can move apps to the SD card, 160MB internal memory seems less.

Media Player and FM Radio

The Music player plays MP3, WAV, AAC, AMR and WMA pretty good. There is party shuffle but no equalizer is present . The sound quality is good with the bundled headphones but not very loud in the loudspeaker. The loudspeaker grill is actually not visible. The Video Player supports .avi, and .mp4 but doesn’t support .mkv and high-resolution 720p videos.

The FM Radio has auto scan option and has pretty neat UI with channel shortcuts at the bottom. You can also edit the station name manually and can change to loudspeaker / headphone using listen via button below.

Browser

The browser is the normal Android webkit browser. There are tabs support and it can remember passwords. There is no flash support.

Dialer and Messaging

The Dialer is similar to other Android dialers. You can press the SIM switch button to call from either SIMs. The call log display recent incoming, outgoing and missed calls. You can Sync from your Google contacts and import contacts from either SIM cards and export it to SIM or MicroSD card. Since it has dual standby, you can receive calls on both the SIM cards.

The phone has default LG e-mail support (Microsoft Exchange, Others, Google Mail, AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail) other than the Gmail app.

The text messages inbox shows the SIM card number to know from which SIM the message has come from. You can use the SIM switch button to send a message from a particular SIM.

Connectivity

The phone has 3G support with HSDPA up to 3.6Mbps, Wi-Fi b/g/n with hotspot feature, Bluetooth 3.0 and a Micro USB port. You can keep one SIM as 3G and other SIM in 2G network. You can switch the data to either SIM cards using the SIM switch button.

Verdict

The phone looks good even though it is made of plastic. The Dual SIM with Dual standby with active 3G connection in one and 2G in other is a great advantage. The 512MB is sufficient to run background apps without any problem, but the 160MB internal memory is less.The battery lasts for a day for heavy users on 3G with few phone calls, SMS, few hours of audio playback and lasts for more than a day with average usage. The loud speaker output is average, otherwise this is a good Dual SIM Android phone with SIM / Data switch button that is absent in other Dual SIM Android phones in the market.

Pros

• Dual SIM with dual standby
• Dedicated SIM switch button
• 512MB RAM

Cons

• Below par loudspeaker output
• Average camera quality

-->

Read more »