Windows Phone has apparently surpassed the iPhone marketshare in India to take second place behind Android. To be honest, this shouldnt really be that huge of a suprise since the iPhone cannot be bought on contract here, and is still way too expensive for most folks. On the other hand, Nokia has managed to sell windows phones as low as Rs 10,000 – 12,000 (about $160), which is what theLumia 520 retails for in stores right now. Nokia has also been voted the most trusted brand in India for years in a row, so the overall combination meant good news for Microsoft.

Overtaking Android though, yeah that’s going to be tough.

The Nokia Lumia 520 is an extremely popular smartphone, in fact it's actually the most preferred Windows Phone around. The device has also taken over the Indian Windows Phone market, according to previous reports released by AdDuplex. Today, news has begun circling around that Windows Phone has surpassed the iPhone in India to take second position behind Android.

The most affordable Windows Phone is still cheaper than the iPhone 5C, Apple's recent attempt to boost its efforts in the competitive smartphone market with a cheaper option. The Lumia 520 goes for around Rs. 10,000 (£100 / $160) in India, taking full advantage of the strong brand recognition Nokia has in the region. The Register also notes how Nokia was named winner of India's annual Brand Trust Report in February for the third year in a row.

This brings us back to the whole Microsoft and Nokia purchase. With the deal well in the works, Microsoft will have to get branding just right, should Redmond not wish to avertedly reverse the work Nokia has achieved thus far. Many consumers follow the Nokia brand strongly and how Microsoft will be able to carry that on depends on how the company decides to approach the change.

Source: Microsoft (India); via: The Register; thanks, Laura, for the tip!

Nokia’s Lumia designs so far have been very clean and modern, which set them apart from the ocean of black and white slates out there. Minimalistic styling has definitely gained popularity and is very ‘in’ right now, so it’d make sense that manufacturers are hustling to pump out products that follow that design. Coloud headphones have pretty much been the epitome of minimalistic design, so it’s no surprise that Nokia chose to partner with the Swedish company to create a beautifully crafted pair of headphones, which is what we have here, with the Coloud Boom headphones for Nokia.

Whilst I’m not a huge fan of the model name at all, the Boom has definitely turned out to be an interesting pair of headphones. Check out if it earns the ‘Boom’ name, in the review below.

The Unboxing:-

The Coloud Boom headphones come in a very uniquely shaped triangular box. It’s pretty light on contents, but its a pair of headphones after all, so you cant expect much, heh.

There’s a Coloud logo sticker and some literature, but that’s about it.

More details over in our Coloud Boom Unboxing.

The Design:-

When you pick up the Coloud Boom headphones from the box, one of the first things that you’ll notice, is how lightweight they are.

Admittedly it does feel slightly on the cheaper side because of all the plastic material used for the overall construction, but there’s a nice soft, smooth finish which means it can be very easily cleaned with just wiping it down.

As you can see, we got the cyan blue version, but you also get the Coloud Boom for Nokia headphones in Red, Yellow, Black and White. They all compliment Nokia’s Lumia line of devices very well.

In terms of design, things are really kept very simple. The Boom only has the essentials, with a headband and ear cups, and a tangle-free cable attached, which includes an in-line remote with a microphone built-in. There’s no obvious branding anywhere and even though you’ll notice the tiny inconspicuous Coloud logo on one side, you’ll see no Nokia branding at all on these, except for when you notice that one side of the remote has the Nokia logo, very inconspicuously.

The inline remote only has one center button, with which you can use to play/pause, skip songs, or answer and make calls. There’s no volume controls unfortunately but the built-in microphone does a pretty okay job.

The cable also has a tiny cable management system called the “Zound Lasso” but we’ll talk about that later on.

As nice as the simplicity of the Boom headphones looks like in images, there are some mild annoyances with the design in the real world. For one thing, the headband has sharp edges that can make carrying them a pain. It’s not a problem when you’re wearing them, though I wish there was more padding on the headband so that you couldn’t feel the not-so-awesome quality.

Thankfully, it’s lightweight enough so that it’s not a big issue, and they remained snugly on my head at all times. And as you can probably guess, they slide to adjust for bigger or smaller head sizes.

Moving on, the ear cups are pretty okay. I could have liked them to have been bigger perhaps, since it might be uncomfortable for folks with larger ears over extended listening sessions. They sat well enough on my, very averagely sized ears though. And there is enough cushioning as well.

Coming to the whole Zound Lasso deal, the unique cable management system means that you can wrap the tangle-free cable around using the flexible rubber end where the headphone jack is, securing your cable through a loop. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen/used this and while it doesn’t really look as clean as in promo pics, it does work. I’m surprised no other headphone company has thought of something similar, heh. As a result, they’re very easy to store in your backpack or purse, etc.

The Sound Quality:-

With a name like ‘Boom’ you have certain expectations out of this one. So how does it sound?

When you crank up the audio, the sound quality is definitely there. There’s very little distortion and things can get quite loud.

But that being said, the overall sound quality can be a little muddy with not much distinction between highs and mids. The bass isn’t as hearty as I’d have liked either. But considering the price tag, you cant really expect studio quality performance out of this one. Infact, for the price, it’s actually not too bad at all, and much better than the in-box earphones you get with the average phone.

The Conclusion:-

The Coloud Boom headphones have pros and cons. It might not be great for audiophiles or fans of intense bass, but they’re definitely going to sound better than most in-box phone headsets.

At the end of the day, they’re a very affordable pair of lightweight headphones with simple, minimalistic styling, that more than gets the job done and is solid value for money. If that’s what you’re looking for, these are the headphones for you.

At launch, the Home button on the iPhone 5S can be used to unlock your phone without you having to enter your PIN and it can be used to authenticate iTunes purchases without requiring you to enter your password. It wouldn’t be surprising to see such functionality eventually extended to third-party apps as well.

This has lead to the inevitable assumption that thieves the world over will be roaming the streets with cigar cutters, looking to anyone flashing an iPhone 5S.

The thieves will subdue you, chop your finger off, use it to unlock your phone, and then use it to purchase Herbie: Fully Loaded with your money. These thieves will preserve your severed finger for eternity, using it time and time again to download apps, movies, TV shows and songs until you finally go bankrupt.

You will call Apple first to see if you can “change your password,” at which point the rep on the other end will cackle, “Change your password? Your fingerprint is your password! You can’t change your fingerprint. Are you new here? Are you new to life?? This is your first day, isn’t it?!” *click*

Picture the same scenario, except instead of chopping your finger off, thieves do the old lift-your-fingerprint-from-a-glass trick and then manufacture a fake finger with your fingerprint on it, subdue you, steal your phone, and then download Herbie: Fully Loaded.

This is the future we’re about to enter, right? A bunch of people with missing fingers and stolen phones.

Except it’s apparently not going to work. The new breed of fingerprint sensors will require a live finger, according to Mary Branscombe over at CITEWorld.

She writes:

[L]ike the sensor in the iPhone 5S, the sensors that will be in laptops and keyboards and other phones can detect the ridge and valley pattern of your fingerprint not from the layer of dead skin on the outside of your finger (which a fake finger can easily replicate), but from the living layer of skin under the surface of your finger, using an RF signal. That only works on a live finger; not one that’s been severed from your body.

This will protect you from thieves trying to chop off your finger when they mug you for your phone (assuming they’re tech-literate thieves, of course), as well as from people with fake fingers using the fingerprint they lifted from your phone screen.

This new breed of sensor is unlike the ones you may have used on previous laptops, for instance (or the Motorola Atrix, if you owned that smartphone). There’s no swiping involved this time around. Apple purchased fingerprint sensor maker Authentec a while back, which used to make these swipe-style sensors, though Branscombe points out, “Ironically, Apple might have helped speed up the switch to the new style of fingerprint sensor in PCs by telling PC makers they could no longer buy the old fingerprint sensors from Authentec after it bought the company.”

Here’s hoping would be thieves get the memo that the tried and true finger chop isn’t going to work. They’ll need to do things the old fashioned way: bully you into unlocking your phone and downloading Herbie: Fully Loaded for them.

For all the ways in which the world of technology changes at a breakneck pace, there are plenty of respects in which it hardly seems to change at all. Here’s one: There’s never a shortage of people who are absolutely positive that Apple must do something right away — usually involving adding a feature or hitting a price point — to avoid being rendered irrelevant by the rest of the industry.

Here’s another: Apple seems to take active pleasure in ignoring those people. While it sometimes does stuff in the general ballpark of addressing the competitive issues at hand, it does so on its own timetable, and usually not in the exact fashion the chorus of experts insists is absolutely necessary.

Long ago, the theory emerged that Apple needed to offer not an iPhone but iPhones — multiple models, including a budget-priced version. The theory turned into a rumor that such a move was imminent. Instead, the company continued to introduce only one iPhone a year, and catered to the price conscious by keeping older models around at lower prices.

But now, years later, Apple is doing something in the general ballpark of addressing the competitive issues folks thought would force it to introduce multiple iPhones. And hey — whaddaya know! — it’s done it on its own timetable, and not in the exact fashion the chorus of experts insisted was absolutely necessary.

What it’s done, for the first time ever, is unveil two distinctly new phones at once: the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c. The 5s is a new iPhone of the traditional new-iPhone sort, improving on last year’s model at the same starting price of $199, with a two-year contract. The 5c fits into the lineup where last year’s model has traditionally sat, starting at $99. Both go on sale this Friday in the U.S. from all four major wireless carriers.

Let’s look at the software first, shall we?

Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 7, comes on both new iPhones as well as new iPads and iPod Touches, and is available as a free upgrade for recent-model iOS devices. It’s the most sweeping makeover Apple has ever given its mobile software, and is therefore at least as newsworthy as the hardware it runs on.

Until now, iOS has retained nearly the same look as the software Steve Jobs demoed onstage back in 2007 when he announced the original iPhone. It was full of textures, gradients and other fussy little details designed to mimic aspects of the real world. At times they went way, way over the top, like the shredder which sliced Passbook tickets to smithereens when you deleted them.

iOS 7 — the first version overseen by Apple’s minimalism-loving hardware guru Sir Jonathan Ive — deep-sixes nearly all of this fancy stuff. The clean new look is far more of a digital counterpart to the streamlined aesthetic of Ive’s hardware work: black text, simple colors and lots and lots of white space. Most of the pizzazz is provided through animation and transparency effects.

In iOS 7, just about everything which could look different than it does in iOS 6 does look different. It’s a little as if someone remodeled a house and replaced everything from the front door to the silverware.

Me, I wouldn’t have squawked myself if iOS had kept its old interface indefinitely: There are few features as valuable as familiarity. iOS 7 is just so plain different that it requires some adjustment, and you’ll need to train your thumb to perform a few gestures differently. (Getting to the Spotlight search feature, for instance, now involves dragging down on any home screen rather than swiping to the left on the first home screen.)

Life in iOS is different enough that for the first time, I’d recommend that owners of existing iOS devices wait to perform an update until they have some free time to acclimate themselves to the new experience. Still, I think that most people will like it once they’ve gotten comfortable.

Visually, iOS 7 is so overwhelmingly new that you might slip into the assumption that it’s short on substance. And as usual with iOS upgrades, operating-system junkies will have a list of features they’re sorry Apple didn’t add. (Me, I wish it allowed for more customization — such as the ability to pick something other than Safari as the default browser — and made the on-screen keyboard smarter.) Actually, though, there’s lots that’s new — none of it revolutionary, but much of it awfully handy. Such as:

Swipe up from the bottom, and you get a new feature called Command Center, reminiscent of similar features on Android phones. It lets you do stuff like adjust brightness, switch Airplane Mode on and off and control music that’s playing in the background. There’s even a built-in flashlight, which leverages the camera’s flash.

In iOS 6, it’s easy for the Notification Center to get so overloaded with alerts from your apps that it’s intimidating rather than useful. In iOS 7, new “Today” and “Missed” views grind down the volume of information into something you can actually parse with a quick glance.

Double-tapping on the home button lets you bop back to recently-used apps, as before. But now you see jumbo-sized thumbnails of their screens as well as icons. In a feature that Palm’s late, lamented WebOS originated and everyone else has been ripping off ever since, you can drag any one of these thumbnails off the edge of the screen to close the app in question.

The new Photos app makes it far easier to swiftly find photos you’ve taken in the past, even if you’ve got thousands of them. It lets you skim through tiny thumbnails, clusters pictures into groups intelligently geo-tagged with their location — such as “San Francisco — Financial District” — and allows you to jump directly to a particular year in the past.

The camera app now has Instagram-style filters built in, as well as a square-picture option that was presumably designed in part for Instagram fans (although I prefer to think of it as “Polaroid mode”).

Siri, Apple’s voice-controlled assistant, has learned a bunch of new tricks. Her voice now sounds less robotic, and if you’d prefer her to be a him, you can switch to an equally personable male voice. The service also calls on new sources of content, including Bing (sorry, Google fans) and Wikipedia, and is more likely to show you information directly rather than bumping you out to another app.

All of the third-party apps I tried with iOS 7 seemed to work fine: That’s a relief given that major operating-system upgrades often break existing software. But programs will retain their old-school interfaces until their developers update them to match iOS 7. (That’s true even of Apple’s own iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, Numbers and Keynote — five extremely useful apps, which now come for free on the 5s and other iOS devices.)

O.K., enough about iOS 7 — on to the iPhone 5s.

If you pay even glancing attention to Apple’s iPhone launches, you know what the company does in odd years such as 2013: It releases an iPhone which keeps the screen and industrial design of the previous model, but which packs a faster chip, a better camera and other technical improvements. So it shouldn’t shock you that the 5s is a dead-ringer for the iPhone 5, with the same 4″ display, but that it’s faster, takes better pictures and incorporates new technologies. (You do get a new color choice: gold, along with a silver version and a gray one that’s lighter in color than the iPhone 5 variant most people thought of as being just plain black.)

But here’s a surprise: The most significant new thing in the iPhone 5s may be a security feature. The phone’s home button now doubles as a fingerprint sensor, via a feature Apple calls Touch ID. It’s optional, but I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to use it, since it makes securing your phone and entering your iTunes password not only painless, but very nearly fun.

Training Touch ID to recognize your fingerprint or thumbprint involves tapping your digit on the sensor repeatedly, adjusting the angle and varying your grip as you go. (You can train the sensor to recognize up to five prints — I taught it about both of my thumbs — and they don’t have to all be on one person’s hands, which is handy if you want to give your spouse access to your phone.) The phone still makes you set up a four-digit passcode just in case, and stores

Anyone who’s owned a laptop with a balky fingerprint scanner knows that making the technology work is no cakewalk. The 5s’s scanner works remarkably well. I’ve used it dozens of times so far, slapping my thumb against the home button without making any effort to be precise. Only once has it failed to identify my thumbprint on the first try. At the moment, it only lets you unlock your phone and sign into iTunes; other capabilities, such as the ability to log into password-protected websites, will presumably show up at some point.

The second most significant thing about the iPhone 5s is its camera. It’s got 8 megapixels, just like the iPhone 5 did. But if you’re not yet convinced that the quantity of megapixels doesn’t have much to do with the quality of photographs, the 5s is an education in why this is so true.

Apple increased the sensor size, the size of the pixels and the size of the aperture, all of which make for better images, especially in low lighting. It gave the camera a new kind of flash, with a white LED and an amber LED that can be used to handle a thousand different lighting environments, according to Apple. It added image stabilization to reduce blur from jittery hands and moving subjects. And if you hold down the shutter button, the camera will shoot off ten pictures in quick succession — then choose the one it thinks looks best.

There’s also a new slow-motion mode, which captures 120 frames a second. After you’ve saved a video, you drag around little dividers to specify which parts should be played at normal speed, and which should be in slo-mo. At first blush, I worried that Apple was succumbing to Samsungitis — a word I just made up to describe the tendency to stuff a phone’s camera with features that sound neat but aren’t all that useful in real life. Then I remembered that only weeks ago, I was playing with the Sphero robotic ball and wanted to shoot it in slo-mo. I did, but only by buying a third-party app that isn’t as simple to use as the 5s’s new feature.

We’re fortunate enough to live in an era of phones with great cameras. It’s possible that Nokia’s Lumia 1020, with its 41-megapixel sensor, is the best of the bunch in terms of raw technical specs, and it takes outstanding photos. But smartphone picture taking is about multiple things: the quality of the camera and flash, the available features and whether they add practical value or merely gimmicky clutter, and the speed with which you can go from deciding to take a photo to having taken one. The iPhone 5s is the smartphone I’d most want to have in my pocket if photo taking were important to me.

A couple of other improvements to the iPhone 5s involve really technical matters, and are somewhat theoretical until apps show up to take advantage of them. The phone uses Apple’s A7 chip; as usual, the company is boasting that it’s up to twice as fast as its predecessor. And as usual, even though the difference may be perceptible, it’s not like anyone disliked the previous iPhone on the grounds that it was too slow.

This time around, however, the new processor isn’t just faster. It’s also based on 64-bit technology rather than the 32-bit version used by other iPhones and all other smartphones. That lets it handle intensive number-crunching jobs more quickly, but also requires that apps be rewritten in 64-bit versions. Fancy 3D games such as Infinity Blade III, which was part of Apple’s media event, should benefit, as may heavy-duty video and photo programs.

But the 64-bit capability is less about immediate benefits to 5s owners and more about Apple kicking off the process of moving the whole iOS platform ahead. If the iPhone 8 or iPhone 9 run amazing apps we can’t even imagine right now, it’ll be in part because the iPhone 5s started the 64-bit transition.

The other improvement that’s a really technical matter may have more short-term impact. The 5s sports a new chip called the M7, devoted entirely to logging data from the gyroscope, accelerator and compass. It can then relay that data to apps, informing them about the phone’s movements — even whether you’re walking, running or riding in a car. And it can do that while the phone’s in your pocket while the main A7 chip stays powered down, preserving battery life. It opens up the possibility of Fitbit-like apps, but with the iPhone serving as the, well, bit. Nike is working on an M7-ready fitness app called Move; others will probably show up, too.

As usual when Apple announces an iPhone, there’s been a fair amount of moaning that the new model isn’t different enough from the old one, and will therefore leave the iPhone as just another smartphone. It’s true that the competition is fiercer than ever and that lots of rational people prefer Android — or even the scrappy underdog known as Windows Phone — to the Apple way of doing things.

And then there’s the matter of screen size. More than ever, it’s a bright line that runs between the countries of iPhoneland and Androidica. If you think that the 4″ display on the 5s (and 5c) is skimpy, that’s a perfectly reasonable stance, and you’ll be happier with an Android phone such as Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 or HTC’s One. The biggest argument for the iPhone’s size, diminutive by current standards, is that you can easily use the phone with one hand without fear of spraining your thumb.

But you know what? The iPhone 5 was already the most polished phone on the market, and the wares in the App Store still beat those in Android’s Google Play. (Even when there’s an Android version of something, which there usually is, it often shows up long after the iOS version is available.) When it comes to the things Apple cares deeply about — and which matter to plenty of smartphone users — the iPhone 5s is a meaningful advance on the iPhone 5, and comfortably ahead of any phone that doesn’t have a picture of a piece of fruit on its backside.

As for the iPhone 5c, it may be a whole new kind of iPhone, but it’s also a pretty simple one to understand. 

It’s the technology from the iPhone 5 stuffed into a plastic shell — available in five vivid colors — with a few minor updates such as a better front-facing camera and a heftier battery. For all the ways in which the 5s has a technical edge over the 5c, there are only a couple of great big immediate benefits you give up by choosing the 5c:. It doesn’t have Touch ID, and it doesn’t have the improved camera with the better sensor, smart flash and slo-mo mode.

Jony Ive implicitly acknowledged that plastic doesn’t exactly have the world’s classiest reputation when he was moved, in a video Apple showed at its media event, to defend the 5c as “beautifully, unapologetically plastic.” And indeed, it’s a really nice plastic phone — on a par with Nokia’s plastic Lumia handsets, which have never felt chintzy, and much more solid-feeling than the iPhone 3G and 3GS, the only previous plastic iPhones. iOS 7 looks particularly nice on it — Apple even customizes the color scheme of the home screen to match the shade of the 5c you bought.

People always say that Apple products are designed in a way that makes the hardware and software seamless, but I’m not sure if that’s ever been as true as it is with the 5c.

Now, $99 (with a two-year contract) is not exactly a breakthrough price for a smartphone; there are plenty of Android models around with more features for the price. (You don’t even have to pay it to get an iPhone: Apple is keeping the two-year-old iPhone 4S around, with 8GB of storage, intending for it to be offered for free on contract.) Andthe $100 you’ll save if you choose the 5c over the 5s is peanuts compared to the cash you’ll turn over to your wireless carrier over the course of a two-year contract.

But I suspect that the iPhone 5c will find a large and enthusiastic audience of people who crave the iPhone’s simplicity and style, don’t care much about specs and are not members of the Bigger Screens Are Better Club. People like my brother-in-law, who’s never owned a smartphone until now, but who’s already pre-ordered the 5c.

Apple is never going to be a company that makes a phone for everybody. That’s fine, because everybody who isn’t smitten with its products has other worthy choices. But with the iPhone 5s and 5c, Apple is finally offering new models for two different types of somebody. Just as important, anyone with an iPhone 4, 4S or 5 can upgrade to iOS 7, Apple’s freshest thinking on what a smartphone operating system should be in 2013 and beyond. Which means that the news isn’t just about two new iPhones. It’s about a whole new iPhone, period, and millions of people who thought they had old iPhones will be along for the ride.

Yahoo hires Google’s Technical Lead for Android’s Open Source Project. Jean-Baptiste Queru, Google’s Technical Lead for the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) for nearly six years, is now a Yahoo employee. Queru announced the move via Twitter on Tuesday and Yahoo tweeted a welcoming confirmation. The employer change for Queru, also known as JBQ, won’t shock those who paid attention to Queru’s Google+ page: Last month, he said was “quitting” his AOSP involvementamid challenges with hardware partners and driver support

At that time, Queru posted his frustrations publicly, writing:

“Well, I see that people have figured out why I’m quitting AOSP.

There’s no point being the maintainer of an Operating System that can’t boot to the home screen on its flagship device for lack of GPU support, especially when I’m getting the blame for something that I don’t have authority to fix myself and that I had anticipated and escalated more than 6 months ahead.”

Clearly, there were internal issues at play back then and from the sounds of it, Queru had raised them to deaf ears.

Queru’s LinkedIn profile page actually lists the termination of his Google employment as of last month; it wasn’t clear when he “quit” AOSP if he took another role at Google or not. Based on LinkedIn, it appears not. It’s not clear what his role will be at Yahoo, but here’s what he did at Google:

“I was responsible for the technical aspects of the Android Open Source Project. My primary role was to manage its source code, releasing Google’s contributions to the Open Source world and importing public contributions into Google’s releases.

I also worked on improving Android performance, and I originally wrote the Android Download Manager which allows to reliably download large amounts of data in a constrained environment and over unreliable connections.”

As they say, everyone is replaceable, but this is still a big loss for Google and potentially a nice win for Yahoo which is trying to reinvent itself in the mobile space.

We knew last week that Asus was planning a refresh of its PadFone Infinity and now it’s official. The package consists of a powerful 5-inch Android 4.2.2 smartphone that slides into a 10.1-inch tablet display; both of which are full HD resolution. This a truly modular approach as the tablet display has no processor of its own. Instead, the phone powers the tablet, while at the same time getting a re-charge from the tablet’s internal battery.

Engadget already got some hands-on time with the device to show the updates, the main one being a processor boost to a 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 chip. Take a look at this video to see how quickly an app on the docked phone appears on the tablet. (Jump to the 4:27 mark to specifically see that)

The modular implementation looks well done and brings a number of benefits. You don’t have to sync data between your phone and tablet since everything is stored in one place, for example. You’re also getting a cost benefit since you don’t have to buy two unique devices that both have similar internals. And your phone can run longer on a charge without being plugged in: Just dock it to the tablet to get more juice.

Engadget says the PadFone Infinity handset will cost around $640 off-contract while the tablet display shell adds another $240 to the package. Those prices are converted so it’s possible the actual prices will vary by country.

This is a better implementation than the Motorola Atrix….but beware as it might just fail for the same set of reasons and folks will be left with useless hardware.

As a tech reporter, I hear from female founders in Silicon Valley and its British equivalent, “Silicon Roundabout,” that it’s an ongoing challenge to fund a business, hire talent, and gain the respect of male peers.

Also at play, they say, are the shortage of female mentors and that women do not receive the gilded invitation to network the old boys of venture capital. Just 4.2 percent of venture funding goes to women-led businesses, according to Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research.

This topic has been debated ad nauseum for years, but it reached a fever pitch in 2010 when Silicon Valley commentator Vivek Wadwha wrote a blog post condemning the tech industry for having a “gender problem.” And yet, the numbers refuse to budge. A 2012 report by the Kauffman Foundation found that women form only 3 percent of U.S.-based tech startups and represent less than 10 percent of venture capitalists.

Still, there is some cause for optimism. A small group of female founders are already proving that their tech startups are more efficient with money and capable of generating higher revenues. These women are forming close bonds and networks, like Women 2.0 and Women who Code, and are laying the groundwork for future generations to succeed in tech.

Considering joining them? I caught up with startup founders, U.K.-based Debbie Wosskow and Silicon Valley-based Ruzwana Bashir, to share their tips for launching and building an internet business.

Meet the entrepreneurs

Wosskow and Bashir recently succeeded in raising several million dollars in startup capital for their companies, a process that Bashir describes as “really stressful for anyone.” They are also both graduates of Oxford or Cambridge (“Oxbridge”), and they each have a unique personal style and a knack for accumulating air miles.

Peek CEO Ruzwana Bashir

That’s where the similarities end. The entrepreneurs chose to headquarter their respective startups, Peek and Love Home Swap, in different cities. If you’re not yet familiar with these, Peek is a social travel site to discover things to do in any city. Love Home Swap is one of a handful of home exchange marketplaces, a “next generation timeshare,” as Wosskow likes to call it.

Wosskow, 39, just opened a new office in hip Shoreditch (which is in the East End of London); Bashir set up shop in foggy San Francisco, a mere train ride away from the major venture firms of Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road.

Both women work long hours. Wosskow is a single mother with two kids who juggles school runs with the day-to-day tasks of running a global business. Bashir is a few months shy of her 30th birthday and regularly mingles with some of the most successful investors and entrepreneurs. She’s become a fixture in the style and business pages, having made Forbes’ most recent “30 under 30“ list and the cover of the New York Times‘ style section.

How did the two get started as an entrepreneur?

Wosskow got started with her first company at 25. She believes that it’s possible to be an entrepreneur at any age, but it’s easier when you’re young. “The attitude you have then is about wanting to give something a go,” she says. “That’s a very American trait.” Another hurdle later in life is the sky-high cost of child care, which is a constant struggle for Wosskow. Meanwhile, Bashir formed the idea for Peek in her mid-20 as a graduate student at Harvard Business School, and she subsequently moved to Silicon Valley to raise capital and grow the company.

Better place to found a company: Silicon Valley or Silicon Roundabout?

London is as good as any place to start a company, but it hasn’t always been. Wosskow wouldn’t consider relocating to the U.S., at least for the time being, as her professional network is primarily based in the U.K. She views her network of girlfriends as her “power collective,” who will always fight her corner. However, her primary complaint about the London startup scene is that it can feel a bit limiting, perhaps even stuffy. Success is often more about who you know (and your college at Oxford or Cambridge) than anything else.

For Bashir, Silicon Valley afforded her access to the top investors and the brightest technical minds. “I wanted to tap into the investors, the talent, and be part of a thriving ecosystem,” she told me. The only drawback is that people can get a bit too obsessed with tech, and Bashir will often find herself at dinners, deep in conversation about her favorite iPhone app.

What’s it like being the only woman in the room?

The entrepreneurs agree that you can make the most out of being in the minority, but it’s not easy. “You are more unique, but you have to fight certain assumptions,” Bashir says. Wosskow feels less alone than she used to, as she’s made an effort to seek out and form close bonds with other female entrepreneurs. “It’s a funny life to choose [and] it can distance you from your peers,” she says.

What are the management philosophies that you live by?

Bashir hasn’t had a troublesome time expanding her team, which currently stands at 20 employees. Many of her standout hires discovered the site on their own, got hooked, and reached out and asked for a job. To make sure her workers feel valued, she sets aside an office hour in the morning where she’ll hear out any problems and discuss potential product ideas. She also sets up “brown bag” lunches, where employees are invited to teach the team a new skill-set, like “Photoshop 101.” Outside experts are occasionally brought in to the office for a Q&A session; Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey recently stopped by for a chat.

What was it like to raise capital for your startup?

Fundraising is one of the most challenging processes for any entrepreneur regardless of gender or location. The tech press has speculated that the “Series A crunch” has become acute in recent years, meaning that many early-stage companies will have a hard time securing funding.

It all depends where you choose to raise capital — the pitch will differ depending on whether you’re intending to reach investors in Europe or in the United States.

“In the U.K., I’ve noticed that not many funds want to do venture; most want to do growth,” says Wosskow. “The U.K. story is, Tthis is what we’ve done so far; this is the revenue, and here’s our projections,’” she says. Meanwhile, American investors are eager to see the product and understand the big vision.

How important is it to network?

Networking is crucial — startup founders will need to be prepared to liaise with investors and others with cash. When Bashir formed the idea for Peek, she reached out to friends in the startup world, and several of them cut her a check in a matter of months. Meanwhile, Wosskow has developed her professional network of trusted friends and allies over 20 years.

“If you didn’t have the network, I don’t know how you’d go about raising money and building a company from scratch,” she says. Wosshow runs regular tech events, like Collaborative Consumption Europe, and recommends that budding entrepreneurs make the effort to attend.

Any tips for maintaining a work-life balance?

Wosskow is an early riser — she’s typically up at the crack of dawn so she can respond to a few e-mail and go on a run before she drops the kids off at school. She can never fully switch off and will often have to take late night calls to the U.S. and Australia. With the company in full expansion mode, she jets off to America or Australia at least twice a month.

Bashir also works around the clock and admits that it’s a struggle to main any kind of balance. She is at the office 15 hours a day, six days a week. Saturday is her only day off, as Sunday is a “strategic day” to reflect on new ideas and the long-term vision. “I’m pumped out this opportunity to make a difference, so it’s easy to lose track of time and find myself still working at 3 a.m.,” she says.

That’s the thing about startups — it’s risky, arduous work, but there’s never a dull moment.

This story originally ran in the Daily Telegraph‘s Wonder Women section

The iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C were announced not too long ago, but for those who prefer getting a walkthrough of either device and some of its features without having to read a wall of text, Apple has recently uploaded a trio of videos that gives viewers a brief idea on what to expect from the iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C, and theTouchID sensor that will make its debut in the iPhone 5S. 

The videos are obviously a marketing tool so they are a bit flowery and attempt to sell you the product not so much based on its hardware specs or its performance, but rather what the phone will be able to do for you, which we guess might be more entertaining than hearing tech specs and numbers being rattled off. In fact if you might recall, a couple of weeks ago there were some parodies of videos that many expected Apple to unleash when their new products were announced, and sure enough they were pretty spot on.

iPhone 5c is more than just a color phone. It's an entirely new expression of what iPhone can be. - Says Apple. Do you agree?

Semiconductor giant AMD has revealed details on one of its first chips based on ARM's Risc architecture.

The chip, codenamed Hierofalcon, is a 64-bit system on a chip (SoC) based on ARM's Cortex A57 processor core and will be available from the middle of 2014.

The 28nm SoC will be available with four or eight cores and support 10 Gigabit Ethernet, error-correcting code memory and PCI Express 3.0. Power consumption will range from 15W to 30W TDP.

It will be targeted at network and storage infrastructure inside the datacente, a market Intel hopes to serve with its C2000 series of Atom SoCs. AMD will also release a separate ARM-based chip, codenamed Seattle, which is aimed at servers.

AMD also today announced new x86-based embedded SoCs to be released early next year. The Steppe Eagle SoC is based on two to four "enhanced" Jaguar cores and the Radeon HD 8000 series GPU, and is the next iteration of AMD's low-power G-series of APUs. Bald Eagle is based on two to four Steamroller cores and AMD Radeon HD 9000 series GPU, and is a continuation of AMD's high-performance R-series of APU/CPUs.

At the end of the year the company will also launch a new discrete GPU for embedded applications. The GPU, codenamed Adelaar, will be based on AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture, feature 2GB of GGDR5 memory and have 72GB/s memory throughput. It will be available as a PCIe add-on card, as a multi-chip module or mobile PCIe module.

LinkedIn is the number one social network for professionals, so naturally, it can be a great social network to use to generate income in many different ways. We know you’ve read plenty of posts about how to create your profile, create a company page, and generate traffic back to your website, so we’re going to skip all of that and dive right into ways you can use LinkedIn to make money online by growing your mailing list, selling products, offering services, finding advertisers, increasing book sales, promoting affiliate products, and getting hired for your dream job.

(By the way, if you want tips like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for the MonetizePros free email newsletter. Or, if you’re a power user, you may wish to join MonetizePros [100% free!], so you can get access to our library of Web monetization e-books and post on our discussion forums.)

 

Grow Your Mailing List

Everyone knows that the money is in the list, whether you are selling your own products and services or marketing affiliate products. Here are some ways you can build your mailing list on LinkedIn.

Create a LinkedIn group around an interesting and relevant topic. You can email new group members using a custom welcome template when they join and once per week. Grow your mailing by using welcome and announcement emails to promote free content giveaways, webinars, and autoresponder educational sequences to get your group members to your list.

If you can’t convert people from your LinkedIn group to your mailing list, just remember to copy the most important email you send to your list each week (if applicable) and paste it into a weekly announcement email to your group.

Add your free giveaway (e-book, report, white paper, etc.) to the publications section of your LinkedIn profile. People will be able to click through directly to your squeeze page. This is a relatively new section, and not part of the typical lineup. You’ll see it in the right sidebar under “Recommended for you” when you go to your LinkedIn profile and click the Edit button.

Don’t be tempted to add your LinkedIn contacts to your mailing list. LinkedIn does not offer the option to export your contacts’ information so you can add them without consent to your mailing list.

 

Sell Info Products

If you are marketing your own information product, LinkedIn can be a great place to do it. Here are some ways to use LinkedIn to get people into your sales funnel and onto your sales page.

Create a free piece of content. Free training videos, white papers, reports, and e-books are an easy way to get potential customers into your sales funnel. Share a link to your squeeze page with your LinkedIn connections and groups.

Invite people to a webinar. Webinars promising free, valuable education (even if people know a sales pitch is coming at the end) are also easy to promote to your LinkedIn connections and groups.

Offer LinkedIn discounts. People love the idea of saving. Create a special offer code for your new product and share it with your LinkedIn connections and groups.

Add your new product under the projects section of your LinkedIn profile. The projects and publications section of your LinkedIn profile are the only ones that offer the ability to directly link to your website.

Take advantage of the promotion section of groups you belong to whose members would be ideal buyers of your info product.

Find and connect with influential members of LinkedIn in your niche to see if they would be willing to write a review or become an affiliate of your info product. Look for people with lots of endorsements and recommendations as they will likely be the people others look up to and trust for advice.

Know of similar info products that offer a private networking group on LinkedIn for members? Find that LinkedIn group. Even if you can’t join, you’ll see a list of the members that are in your network. Contact them to see if they might be interested in your info product.

 

Sell Physical or Digital Products

Does your business sell physical or digital products? Here are some ways to use LinkedIn to increase your sales.

Take advantage of the products section of your LinkedIn company page. Create individual product listings on your company page and fully utilize features such as banners visitors can click to go to your landing pages, variations that target specific types of customers, a YouTube commercial or explainer video, and people to contact to learn more.

Encourage people to write a recommendation for your product by adding the recommend button to your product page. This will add social proof to your products when people discover them on your company page.

Add a presentation, commercial, or explainer video as a media element to your LinkedIn profile’s summary section. Make sure that your media has a strong call to action and link.

Get involved in discussions within groups whose members are most likely to buy your product. Reply to posts publicly or reply privately when an answer could lead to a sale. If you are a helpful member of the group, it won’t even feel like a sale pitch.

 

Offer Services

Freelance writers, social media consultants, and other service providers can use LinkedIn to connect with companies who need them in the following ways.

Optimize your LinkedIn profile to be discovered by those wanting to hire you. Add your primary keyword (SEO consultant, freelance writer, etc.) to your profile’s headline, current and past job titles, summary, skills, and other areas. This will increase the chance of someone discovering you in LinkedIn search results.

Add skills to your LinkedIn profile. This is how people give you quick endorsements, and you also have the chance of showing up on a LinkedIn skills page.

Take advantage of the services section of your LinkedIn company page. Create listings for each of your services and fully utilize all of the features such as banner images that link to your website, variations of your service description that target specific types of customers, video testimonials, and people to contact to learn more.

Define your ideal customer (industry, interest, etc.) and join groups they would participate in, such as real estate groups for those wanting to promote their real estate marketing service. Being knowledgeable and helpful can lead to job inquiries, and sharing the same group means that people can message you without a premium membership.

If you don’t want to wait for potential clients to message you, message them when they ask the right lead-in questions. If you create Facebook pages, and someone asks how to create a Facebook page, answer their question with some basic steps publicly and reply privately to let them know you also offer this as a service.

Join groups for complimentary service providers. These are not your direct competitors, but rather people who may need your help from time to time. For example, SEOs might need graphic designers to create infographics for them. Freelance writers might need editors to go over their latest book. Network with these people in the group and you’ll be on their radar for the next time they or their clients need help.

Increase Book Sales

Do you have Kindle books on Amazon or e-books on your own website for sale? Here are some ways you can use LinkedIn to boost sales.

Let your contacts know when you publish a new book. You can send personalized messages to each of your contacts (recommended) or send private messages to up to 50 contacts at a time. Add an invitation to interview you in your message to increase the chance for people to write about you and your new book on their blog.

Add books and e-books to the “Publications” section of your LinkedIn profile. The best part — you can include a link to books on Amazon or e-books on your website so people can click through to purchase.

Join groups relevant to the topic of the book. Monitor discussions for the right opportunity to mention your book. To keep from looking like a spammer, consider using the reply privately option to just let people who ask questions within the group related to the book about it.

Create a video trailer for your book. Add that video to YouTube and then add it as a media element in your LinkedIn profile’s summary section.

Write an awesome post on your blog about your book. Be sure to add the LinkedIn share button to that blog post and then share it with your LinkedIn connections in a status update. If your post gets a lot of LinkedIn shares, let the LinkedIn business development team know so you have the chance of beingfeatured on LinkedIn Today.

Define your book’s ideal audience and create an ad campaign toward LinkedIn users that match that definition.

Find Direct Advertisers and Sponsors

If you offer advertising on your website or sponsorship opportunities for company events, LinkedIn makes it easy to find potential candidates.

Keep an eye on advertisements in the LinkedIn sidebar, footer, and other areas throughout the website. These same businesses may also be looking for advertisements on websites or willing to sponsor events for professional audiences.

Use LinkedIn’s search page to find potential advertisers and sponsors. You can narrow the results by industry, company size, location, and other criteria.

Find the right people to contact on the company page by looking under Employees on LinkedIn. If it’s a small company, you can browse through to find the appropriate point of contact. Otherwise, you may want to invest in a premium account so you can use the advanced search filters and InMails.

Promote Affiliate Products

If you use affiliate marketing to generate income online and write great reviews, then here are some ways you can promote those on LinkedIn to increase your affiliate sales.

Share your affiliate marketing review posts as answers to applicable questions within groups. If someone asks how to choose the right WordPress theme, and you have a post comparing different premium themes (with affiliate links), this is a great opportunity to share it. If the group doesn’t allow links, reply to group members privately.

If you have your own group, be sure to email them about new review posts on your blog and any specials that they might be interested in, such as limited time offers, discount codes, and new product launches.

Don’t have any publications under your belt? Use the publications section of your LinkedIn profile to link to your latest affiliate product review posts.

Get Hired

Don’t have your own business yet? No problem. LinkedIn can help you secure your dream job so you love what you do from 9 to 5. Here’s how.

If you’re looking for a specific type of job, then gear your LinkedIn profile to impress employers looking to hire. Really aim to wow them in your summary section by talking about the passion, experience, and results you bring to the table for that position. Use the media elements to add samples, testimonials, and other impressive content.

If you have a lot of endorsements for skills related to the job you want, move that directly below your summary. This can be especially if you don’t have a lot of job experience, education, or recommendations.

Consider investing in a premium LinkedIn account for job seekers. Your applications will be moved to the top of the list and you’ll have a premium icon on your profile to make it stand out. You will also get access to premium search filters that will allow you to search for jobs with specific salary levels.

Want to work for a particular company? Follow their company page on LinkedIn and comment on their updates. Also see if they have any groups, join them, and participate. Keep an eye on the Careers tab of their company page and the Jobs section of their group for open positions.

Professionally stalk decision makers at companies you want to work for in groups. Go to the company page, click on the people you are 1st and 2nd degree connections with. Then visit their profiles to see what groups they belong to. Join those groups and start participating!

Join recruiter network groups on LinkedIn and demonstrate your expertise in front of the people most likely to get you into a new job.

Use LinkedIn Advertising

If you have some money to invest, you can use LinkedIn advertising to increase your income from the above methods in a variety of ways.

Create an ad campaign to market the free giveaway for your list. Use the targeting options to get different LinkedIn users’ attention. For example, if you have a Twitter guide, create ads like “Twitter for CEO’s” and “Twitter for Small Biz.” Directing visitors to a custom squeeze page to match your ad text will greatly increase your chances of converting.

Create an ad campaign aimed at your target customer demographic for your info product. Entice them into signing up for free content that will convert them into buyers, or create a sense of urgency with a special offer for a limited time.

Create an ad campaign aimed at your target customer demographic for your physical or digital product. Include a discount code, specific result that can be achieved, or other copy to get them to click through to purchase.

Create an ad campaign targeted toward the companies and people most likely in need of your services. Include copy that tells the potential employer what the main benefit will be if they hire you.

Unfortunately, you can’t use LinkedIn ads for affiliate marketing according to the guidelines. So while it may be tempting, avoid doing this. A workaround, on the other hand, would be to create a free autoresponder course for new subscribers. For example, advertise a free 10-day course to build a WordPress website. Within each part of the autoresponder series, add affiliate links to hosting companies, themes, tools, plugins, e-books, and premium training courses.

Create an ad campaign targeted toward people at companies you want to work for to let them know that hey, you’re available! You can even create a landing page for them like the Google, please hire me guy.

Bottom Line of the author:-

As you can see, there are lots of ways you can earn money using LinkedIn. Do you have some additional tips and strategies you use to make a living through LinkedIn? If so, please share them in the comments!

If you think Pinterest is just a place to post pictures of wedding dresses and baby photo ideas, think again. Pinterest is a great network to tap into to sell to people who prefer the more visual side of things. We know you’ve read plenty about how to set up your Pinterest profile, create boards, and build followers. So we’re going to skip all of that and dive right into ways you can monetize your Pinterest account by using it to grow your mailing list, sell products, offer services, increase book sales, and promote affiliate products.

(Interested in learning how to monetize your other social media accounts? Check out our recent guides on how to make money on YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And for even more Web monetization tips, sign up for the MonetizePros free email newsletter.)

Grow Your Mailing List

Want to build your mailing list through Pinterest? While you can’t put an opt-in form directly on your Pinterest boards, you can encourage people to subscribe. Here are some tips to transition Pinterest users to your mailing list.

Pin an image of where people can go to subscribe. If you have a well-designed opt-in page, take a screenshot of it, upload it to Pinterest, edit the link to point back to your opt-in page, and tell people why they should describe in the description. This way, people who only follow you on Pinterest will know where to go for more information.

Focus on making the giveaway. If you have an incentive for signups, make sure you have some great images to represent it. This could include quotes from inside an e-book, stats from a whitepaper, or a sample of a free video training course.

Go with eye-catching stock photography. If you don’t have a giveaway or fancy opt-in page, find an image that gets people’s attention. Then make the description for the image count and, of course, link it to your opt-in page.

See what other businesses are doing to encourage signups from Pinterest by searching for call-to-action words like “sign up” and “join our mailing list.” You’ll get a lot of great ideas by checking out what others are doing.

Sell Digital Products

Whether you are selling an information course, app, or software, you have several options to promote it on Pinterest.

Share some statistics in an image. If there’s a great stat that would encourage people to buy your product, put it in a visually-appealing image, and pin it. For example, if you sell a mobile app that helps people get fit, share some statistics about fitness.

Turn your sales page into an infographic. Infographics are popular on Pinterest. Create a stunning infographic that takes people through a specific problem and how your product will help them. Then link the infographic to your real sales page.

Create an explainer video. This is a video that walks potential customers through identifying a specific problem and showing how your product will help them solve it. Remember that people’s attention spans are short; so you’ll need to make your points clearly, but also quickly. Include a link to your sales page in both the video and in the pin itself. That way, even if someone repins the video, your link will be with it regardless.

Offer a preview on Pinterest. If you have a video course, share one of the videos from the course on Pinterest, and link the video and your pin back to your sales page so people can learn more.

Sell Physical Products

Physical products are the best sellers on Pinterest. Here’s how to photograph yours to increase the likelihood of click-throughs and sales.

Show your product in use. In addition to traditional product images, show your product in use. If it’s home decor, photograph it in an appropriately decorated room. If it’s a makeup product, show someone applying it. If it’s clothing, show someone wearing it in a real-life situation, like a business suit in a meeting. Show people what it would be like to own the product.

Repin your customer’s photos of how they use your products. Get additional content for your Pinterest boards that work like testimonials. Offer customers an incentive if they share a pin they have posted of them using your product. This will show potential customers visiting your profile even more real-life applications of your product.

Take advantage of Pinterest’s rich pins functionality. This will help your product — and your business — stand out on Pinterest.

Offer a discount with a product photo. This way, people will not just see the product, but will also get excited about the discount, potentially generating more sales.

Offer Services

Do you have a service-based business? If the answer is yes, you can promote it on Pinterest in the following ways.

Create a portfolio board with examples of your work. Edit each pin and link it back to your portfolio page or your sales page for that particular service.

Turn customer testimonials into fancy quote images and pin them to a testimonial board. Edit each pin and link it back to your testimonials page or your sales page for that particular service.

Pin video testimonials from your customers to that same testimonials board.

Share small tips. For example, if you’re a Web designer, maybe you could have a board with a “tip of the week” for small business website design such as adding a beautiful footer design to your website. If businesses who follow you can’t implement your design tip, they might call upon you to do it for them.

Increase Book Sales

Do you have a book or e-book for sale? Want to spread the word (pun intended!) on Pinterest? Try these tricks!

Create a board on your Pinterest profile for your books or e-books. This way, people visiting your profile can get to know you as an author and easily find your work.

Create those fancy images with a great quote in them. Upload them directly to Pinterest, then edit the pin to add a link to your book or e-book.

Better yet, create a landing page on your website for the book. On that page, include a section of pinnacle quotes, and encourage visitors to share them on Pinterest using the Pin It button and a call to action. Think of it like the movie websites where they offer desktop wallpapers, but pinnacle images for your book instead.

Run a contest where people have to pin a book they want to win and explain what they hope to learn from it. Not only do you get entrants excited about the book and ready to buy if they don’t win it, but it creates mini-Pinterest testimonials across the network. Be sure that your contest doesn’t overstep thePinterest contest guidelines.

Promote Affiliate Products

Affiliate marketing on Pinterest can be tricky. There was a time when you could pin an image from an affiliate link or edit the link associated with the image to an affiliate link. But while there are no official rules in the Pinterest Terms of Service about whether or not you can use affiliate links, they do fight them. For example, if you have an Amazon affiliate link to a product you’ve pinned, Pinterest will strip the “tag=youraffiliate-20″ from the link when it forwards Pinterest users to Amazon.

An alternative to this was to post a bit.ly (or other) shortened link to the item instead, but now Pinterest either warns users about the link before they get redirected to the site or blocks it all together. This also goes for redirect links that you create on your own website.

So how do you promote affiliate products on Pinterest? Here are some tips.

Test the affiliate link first. Pinterest strips tags from known affiliate networks like Amazon, but smaller networks and websites may make it through. Until someone reports them at least.

Pin images from your review post about a product. This way, people can click the affiliate link from your review post instead.

Pin images from list-style posts like “My 50 most recommended favorite marketing books of 2013.” People love lists, and if each of your items has an affiliate link, then you’re likely to get sales.

Pin a YouTube video review of an affiliate product with an affiliate link. While Pinterest strips tags and causes problems for links on Pinterest, this link will come from YouTube and can’t be monitored by Pinterest.

Bottom Line of the Author:

Pinterest requires you to get creative about the ways you visually represent your mailing list, products, services, and affiliate products. It’s all about the image. only great images will see likes, comments, shares, and click-throughs from this audience.

The Android Smartphone industry is rapidly improving . The OS has a whooping 79% market share. With the ever increasing demand ,big players in the Android industry like Samsung , HTC , LG are delivering promising technology to the people. Everyone would want a bite of the “Sweet” Operating System. With the flagship phones costing over $500 – the people who cant afford them are missing out.

World Class 10 Best Android Phones Under $300

So today we at TechAudible have compiled an useful list of the top 10 Android Phones that available in the worldwide market under a price tag of just $300. So, here goes the list:

1. LG Google Nexus 4

This flagship Nexus Device which was released last October still holds a decent position among the recent arrivals.

For those of you who are not familiar with the “Nexus” Program – Nexus Devices run Vanilla Android and receives Android updates from Google the moment it is announced.

Key Features of the Nexus 4:

4.7-inch WXGA (1280 x 768) True HD IPS Plus Display

Photo Sphere Camera

2100 mAh Sio+ Battery

Snapdragon S4 Pro 1.5 GHz Quad Core Processor (Adreno 320 GPU)

8 MP Primary Camera with LED Flash and 1.3 MP Secondary Camera

16 GB Internal Memory

Wireless Charging (Use any Qi-compatible Charger)

Android v4.3 (Jelly Bean) OS

2GB RAM

Current Price of Google Nexus 4: $249

2. Samsung Galaxy S2

Key Features of the Samsung Galaxy S2:

8 MP Primary Camera

4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus Capacitive Touchscreen

Full HD Recording

Android v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) OS

Expandable Storage Capacity of 64 GB

2 MP Secondary Camera

1.2 GHz Dual Core Processor

Wi-Fi Enabled

Current Price of the Samsung Galaxy S2: $290

3. Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini

Key Features of the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini:

Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen,480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches (~233 ppi pixel density)

microSD, up to 32 GB,8/16 GB, 1 GB RAM

5 MP, 2592×1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v4.1 (Jelly Bean)

1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9,Mali-400

Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery

Current Price of the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini: $255

4. LG Optimus L9

Key Features of the LG Optimus L9:

IPS LCD, capacitive touchscreen,540 x 960 pixels, 4.7 inches (~234 ppi pixel density)

4 GB Storage, 1 GB RAM

5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), upgradable to v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean)

TI OMAP 4430 , Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 , PowerVR SGX540

Li-Ion 2150 mAh battery

Current Price of the LG Optimus L9: $260

5. Sony Xperia P

Key Features of the Sony Xperia P:

LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen , 540 x 960 pixels, 4.0 inches (~275 ppi pixel density)

16 GB (13 GB user available), 1 GB RAM

8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), planned upgrade to v4.1 (Jelly Bean)

Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 , Mali-400

Non-removable Li-Ion 1305 mAh battery

Current Price of the Sony Xperia P: $300

6. Sony Xperia Sola

Key Features of the Sony Xperia Sola:

LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen , 480 x 854 pixels, 3.7 inches (~265 ppi pixel density)

microSD, up to 32 GB , 8 GB (5 GB user available), 512 MB RAM

5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), upgradable to v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 , Mali-400

Non-removable Li-Ion 1320 mAh battery

Current Price of the Sony Xperia Sola: $240-$270

7. Huawei Ascend G700

Key Features of the Huawei Ascend G700:

IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen , 720 x 1280 pixels, 5.0 inches (~294 ppi pixel density)

8 GB, 2 GB RAM , microSD, up to 32 GB

8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v4.2 (Jelly Bean)

Li-Ion 2150 mAh battery

Current Price of the Huawei Ascend G700: $290

8. Lenovo P780

Key Features of the Lenovo P780:

IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen , 720 x 1280 pixels, 5.0 inches (~294 ppi pixel density)

4 GB, 1 GB RAM ,microSD, up to 32 GB

8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v4.2 (Jelly Bean)

Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7

PowerVR SGX544 GPU

Li-Po 4000 mAh battery

Current Price of the Lenovo P780: $290 (Best Price)

9. HTC Desire X

Key Features of the HTC Desire X:

Super LCD capacitive touchscreen , 480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches (~233 ppi pixel density)

4 GB, 768 MB RAM , microSD, up to 32 GB

5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), upgradable to v4.1.1 (Jelly Bean)

Li-Ion 1650 mAh battery

Current Price of the HTC Desire X: $290

10. Xiaomi MI-2

Key Features of the Xiaomi MI-2:

IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen , 720 x 1280 pixels, 4.3 inches (~342 ppi pixel density)

16/32 GB, 2 GB RAM

8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Android OS, v4.1 (Jelly Bean)

Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon , Quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait , Adreno 320 GPU

Li-Ion 2000 mAh battery

Current Price of the Xiaomi MI-2: $300

The Phones are listed in no particular order. The Best Buy of the 10 would be the Nexus 4 but people have their own priorities. So these are the choices you have to get a decent Android smartphone under $300. Have a recommendation to add into this list of the top 10 Android smartphones under $300? Do let us know your recommendation (s) in the comments, so that our readers can get advice from your personal reviews and experience with the particular device.