BOB SHARE

The year last year, or more specifically the second half of the 2009, was gratefully decorated with major smartphone announcements. Just to name a few lets bring up in mind iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre coming one after another and followed by the mobile hero of the year - the HTC Hero. Then the long awaited Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 and Motorola Droid made their appearance. By now we have Nexus One added to that lot. iPhone 3GS, despite being a revamped one and a half year old second-gen iPhone is holding very strong to its positions and better still beats the newcomers by an immense rate when it comes to loading a web page, as our colleagues were lucky to discover. If take a look in the future however we might see there an eye-pleasing glow of iPhone 4G coming out in May, 2010. At least this is what rumor mill has erected.

It is hard to be precise knowing that the point about Apple iPhone 4G is based on unofficial information, speculation about it and generalized wishlist which Apple definitely follows through evolution branches of all of its products. But we have the approximate release date - May, 2010. We also have the announcement date - that should be January 27th - the day when Apple introduces their not any less rumored tablet to the public.

Design, hardware and software have even thicker layer of fog lying upon them. But as far as we know, a significant hardware updates are planned for the next-gen iPhone. They include recently released SGX545 graphic processor, OLED touchscreen, 5 Megapixel camera or better, 4G chip. All of that as Im sure you know requires radical of changes in software and rewriting the current version will not be enough. iPhone OS 4.0 should be the answer and plausibly with multitasking feature.

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All along, June 2011 was the anticipated launch month for the 2011 Chevrolet Beat Diesel, as confirmed by General Motors India officials themselves. However, there seems to be a slight delay in the Beat Diesel’s launch, which now will in July 2011. While we don’t know why exactly GM India has postponed the launch to July 2011, our sources tell us that the Beat Diesel is ready for launch with the conclusion of all the required testing and certification of the car.

When it will get launched, the Chevrolet Beat Diesel is expected to be cheapest entry level Diesel car in the Indian market, even under cutting the Tata Indica eV2. The launch of the Chevrolet Beat Diesel could also herald a new era of value priced diesel cars in India with fuel economy as the main selling point. This, as the petrol prices hovering at the INR 70/Liter mark has forced many car  manufacturers to do a major rethink on their car development plans as diesel engined cars are set to become the volume pullers in the near future.

So, a sub INR 4 Lakh price tag for the Chevrolet Diesel Beat could be a very strong possibility. The Beat Diesel will come with a 3 pot CRDI Engine producing 57 Bhp and 140 Nm of torque, tuned mainly for driveability and fuel economy. What remains to be seen is how smooth and vibe free the three pot diesel engine can be as most three cylinder engines suffer from higher vibration levels necessitating the use of a balancer shaft to keep the intrusive vibes away.

All said, the arrival of the Beat Diesel could do to General Motors India, what the Figo has been doing for Ford India. In short, create a big spurt in volumes which, at a time when car sales are experiencing a slowdown, could do a world of good. So, the Beat Diesel will essentially unleash the full potential of the zany looking small car whose sales, despite the availability of an LPG variant have been tepid to say the least.