Sony has launched the Vaio Flip 13 hybrid laptop in the country at Rs 99,990. The convertible laptop has a hinge mechanism that allows the touchscreen to be flipped over such that the model can be used as a tablet. 

This mechanism also enables the device to be used as a kickstand (which Sony calls Viewer mode). Sony Vaio Flip 13 has a 13-inch Triluminous Display with 1080p resolution and runs on Windows 8.1 operating system. 

The model has a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB flash drive and Intel HD Graphics 4400 GPU under the hood. The model weighs 1.31kg, has an 8MP camera and offers battery life of 7.5hours. The company also launched a 14-inch and two 15-inch laptop-cum-tablets in the same series.

LG has launched its first curved screen smartphone, G Flex, in India. With a price tag of Rs 69,999, it is the most expensive Android smartphone in the Indian market.

When sufficient force is applied, the smartphone’s screen bends a little as well. The G Flex is also the first handset in the world to feature a self-healing back panel, which repairs minor scratches and cuts on the back automatically.

The new LG G Flex has a 6-inch 720p display that curves across the vertical line and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). Other key specifications of LG G Flex include 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon

If you want to revisit your long ignored Orkut profile, now is the best time to do so. Google is going to shut down its Orkut social network on September 30, as it had announced earlier. Orkut was the search giant's first foray into the social networking space, which failed to take off due to tough competition from rival services such as Facebook and Twitter.

Google later launched another social network called Google+, which may not be giving sleepless nights to Facebook, but turned out to be far more popular than Orkut. While Orkut wasn't a big success across the world, it was very popular in India and Brazil.

In a blog post, Google had said, "Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell."

If you want to save the data you have on Orkut, we've written a complete guide on how to download your Orkut scraps, testimonials, and photos.

Google had said that it would save an archive of all Orkut communities after it shuts down the service on September 30. The company had asked people to remove their Orkut account from Google permanently if they didn't want their name or posts to be included in the community archive.

Both Orkut and Facebook were launched in 2004. While Facebook has become the world's largest social network with over 1.2 billion users, a Reuters report said Google declined to comment on the number of users Orkut has.

Orkut's fortunes floundered a few years ago and it is finally being closed.

At the launch of the BlackBerry Passport on Monday, we got to spend a little time with the device and formed some early impressions about the device. The BlackBerry Passport will go on sale at retail from October 10 at Rs. 49,990, but at the launch event, the company announced that the handset will be available for pre-order on Amazon.in and at BlackBerry Exclusive Stores from Monday.

Buyers who pre-order the phone will also get a Rs. 5,000 gift voucher on Amazon.in which can be used towards any purchases, and also 5,000 frequent flyer miles from Jet Airways.

The price tag seems pretty steep, but it competes directly with the top flagships of other well established brands, a point BlackBerry India Managing Director Sunil Lalvani was quick to make at the launch event. But does this unusual phone from BlackBerry measure up to the competition?

The first thing that you'll notice when you see the BlackBerry Passport is its massive size. The phone has a 4.5-inch display, which sounds small, but due to the square display the display seems larger. At over 3.5 inches wide, the phone is also wider than much larger phones. For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which has a 5.7-inch display, is 3.1-inches wide.

The square screen takes up most of the phone, but there's a short three-row keyboard below the display. The space bar has gone into the third row, and a few other keys like shift and symbol are missing altogether. If you're a long-time BlackBerry user, the new layout can feel jarring and counter-intuitive at first, but the company is positioning the keyboard as one of the biggest selling points of the Passport.

For one thing, it feels tough. The BlackBerry keyboards have always been comfortable to type on, and if you're holding the phone with both hands and thumb typing, then you can really type accurately at a very high speed without even looking at the screen. But the keyboard also doubles as a touchpad, which is where it gets really interesting. You can still flick up while writing a word to autocomplete, flick down to reveal numbers and special characters, or swipe to the left to delete one word at a time.

BlackBerry also claims that its shape allows the phone to display 60 characters in a single row, which is the same standard e-book readers also use. This sounds great, but in our very short hands-on, it didn't really seem to be a game-changer. Responsive design means that websites are quite easily read on other phones as well, including the BlackBerry Z10 which is this correspondent's primary phone. Our opinion may of course change when we have a chance to spend more time with the device.

The company also showed off some tweaks that the new BlackBerry OS 10.3 brings, including a dedicated home screen, and the Amazon Appstore pre-installed. There's also the BlackBerry Assistant, which can make appointments, read out your emails, search for contact details and more quite effectively.

The build quality of the phone is extremely good. It felt solid but not heavy and the keyboard felt great. The specifications of the phone are also in line with other top end devices as well. The screen is running at a resolution of 1440X1440 pixels, and there's a 13-megapixel camera that seemed to be pretty good though a little slow to focus. A 2.2GHz processor and 3GB of RAM, along with 32GB of storage round out a pretty good device, on paper.

The actual experience of using the phone was a little awkward thanks to its size, and even for a regular BlackBerry user, the new keyboard comes with a learning curve. The BlackBerry World app store also remains pretty limited, although the Amazon Appstore does widen the net. Not all Android apps (notably Google's like Maps) are available on Amazon though, which could still end up being a deal-breaker for many.

Add to that the reputation BlackBerry has gained for dropping prices in short order - something the company vehemently denied on Monday - and buying the Passport at its launch price may sound like a bad idea to many.