First Open market CDMA phones

Spice Mobiles has announced a strategic collaboration with Qualcomm that promises to bring highly differentiated 3G CDMA (CDMA2000 and WCDMA) devices to the Indian market.

As a mark of the association, two new Spice handsets: S-950, claimed to be the first Indian-branded 3G device; and C-810, touted as a full-featured CDMA2000 device, were unveiled by actor Katrina Kaif.

Speaking on the occasion, Dilip Modi, vice chairman of Spice Mobiles and group president (Global Operations) of Spice Corp, said, "We are launching the first Indian 3G-enabled device based on our cutting-edge technology, through our technical association with Qualcomm. The Indian CDMA market has been limited to operator-dependent handsets. We take pride to be the first to offer open-market CDMA handsets."

Adding to it, Kanwalinder Singh, president of Qualcomm India and South Asia, said, "We are pleased to collaborate with leading Indian mobile company Spice Mobiles in introducing the first Indian branded 3G handset and an open market CDMA2000 handset."

Spice Mobile S-950 is based on Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM6245 chipset solution meant for 3G devices. A stylish slider, S-950 is claimed to be a feature-rich 3G WCDMA device that supports wideband services including high-speed Internet, high-resolution video, and enhanced image transmission. It has a 2 mega pixels camera, 262K color screen, music player (mp3/AAC/AAC+), stereo bluetooth, built-in stereo FM radio, video playback, JAVA, expandable memory support along with backward compatibility with EDGE/ GPRS/GSM. Value-adds come in the form of applications like Google Search engine, Opera Mini browser, and NGPay for banking and ticketing.

Meanwhile Spice Mobile C-810 is based on Qualcomm's QSC6020 chipset, and is touted to be the first-of-its-kind multimedia handset offering 15-days standby and 10-hours talk time, and storage capacity of up to 500 songs or 1,000 images. The C-810 also comes with a 2.2-inches display, 1.3 mega pixels camera, music player (mp3/AAC), built-in FM radio/video player, Bluetooth, BREW, and expandable memory support.

Both Spice Mobiles: S-950 and C-810 are immediately available across the country.