According to Global Telecom Business, the Indian government is concerned about the fact that phones from China could come with “spyware or malware that offers intelligence agencies across the border access to telecom networks in India” – and that’s the reason for the ban.

Manufacturers like ZTE and Huawei, which used to sell lots of phones across India, will certainly be affected by the decision.

Indian telecom operators are also put in a difficult situation, as many of them have ordered phones from Chinese manufacturers and now they have to search for other suppliers. On the other hand, India-based phone makers should be quite happy about all this.

Companies like Nokia, Samsung, LG and Motorola may see a rise in sales across India following the banning of Chinese handsets. Ironically, lots of the phones that come under these big brands are actually manufactured in China.

Via Pocket-lint

If you’re fans of Opera Mobile, you’ll think again before choosing this mobile browser over Skyfire, a pretty good rival in this segment. In the video below you can see Skyfire 1.5 going head to head against Opera Mobile 10:

Opera Mobile 10 uses the Speed Dial system, showing a series of thumbnails with quickly accessible links, right from the start page, while Skyfire 1.5 will only show a list of quick links from its main screen. You’ll access the Settings menu both on Opera and Skyfire, as the last option of the bottom row, with the first browser providing the “Advanced” option.

Skyfire has a simple one page Settings menu and if we’re talking about similarities, know that the virtual keyboards on both browsers have some resemblances. Moving on to the real duel, the video above shows a comparison between the speed of Skyfire 1.5 and Opera Mobile 10, both loading the careace.net site.

As you can see, Skyfire loads the site 5 seconds faster than its rival and, as a difference between the two, we can notice that Skyfire doesn’t come with a “forward” option for its web pages, sticking with “back”, but also adding a zoom in/out function at the bottom of the screen.

[via wmpoweruser]

As you might already know, the Opera Mobile 10 browser has been released in its Android version and with this occasion, Opera has been provided as a cross-platform UI and development platform for most handsets. This includes device that run Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android, but also feature phones running S40 and more.

Opera mentions that its widget-based app environment will decrease the development costs, while the time it takes for software to reach the market will also be decreased. The user experience will be improved and the resulting UI will be more attractive, among other features.

The idea of a browser-based UI was approached by the folks of Access before, through the Netfront browser, but it’s only now that the concept gets developed and seems feasible. OEMs and carriers will be pleased with the news, specially thanks to the lowered costs, but we’re really worried about the lack of user-friendliness and lag of the resulting interface.

[via wmpoweruser]