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BlackBerry Curve 8530

2010-03-15T14:24:00.001-07:00

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is the CDMA version of the new generation of Curve smartphones with an optical trackpad and music playback controls on top of the smartphone. We first saw this design on the BlackBerry 8520 GSM versions, and now the CDMA variants are available on both major US CDMA carriers: Verizon and Sprint. We take a look at the Verizon version in this review, but the hardware and the RIM bundled software are very similar on both Verizon and Sprint versions. The biggest difference is the carrier branded software and services.

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is a CDMA digital dual band phone with EV-DO Rev. 0 for data. The smartphone has WiFi 802.11b/g, a 2.5" QVGA 320 x 240 pixel display, a 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and an SDHC microSD card slot. Verizon currently offers the BlackBerry Curve 8530 in black and Smoky Violet colors; and Sprint offers it in black and Royal Purple.

The Curve 8530 runs BlackBerry OS 5 on a 512MHz processor with 256MB RAM and 256 megs of flash memory, of which 125 megs are free to store documents and applications. BlackBerry 5.0 OS has some new features including the ability to manage Exchange mail folders, view calendar attachments, forward appointments and more. If you are an IT professional or need more info on BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0, visit na.blackberry.com/eng/services/server/5/.

Design and Ergonomics

For current CDMA BlackBerry users, the optical trackpad is the biggest difference in the user experience from last generation Curve models. The optical trackpad uses a concept similar to the notebook trackpad except you use a small square pad to control the navigation on the BlackBerry. The optical trackpad takes a very delicate touch for navigation and works smoothly and agilely. For long time BlackBerry trackball users, this might take a little time to get used to, but the trade off is you won’t have to worry about dirt or grease getting stuck on the trackball. Just like the Curve 8520, the 8530 has a 2.46” QVGA display that supports 65K colors. The screen looks sharp and reasonably bright.

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 has an excellent QWERTY keyboard. The keys aren’t very large, but they are very useable with both audible clicks and tactile feedback when you press the keys. Like the Curve 8520 GSM version, the Curve 8530 has rubberized sides that make it easy to grip the smartphone, certainly a treat as more and more smartphones come in a slippery shiny form. The side buttons (volume and convenience keys) and the top music controls are all under the rubber cover or caps, and they are easy to use. The phone has a 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack and a microSD card slot for storing music and other media content. The microSD card slot is under the battery door, but you needn’t remove the battery to access it. The Curve supports SDHC cards up to 16 GB. The 2 megapixel camera lens sits on the top left corner on the back of the Curve.

Phone Features and Web Browser

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 has decent 1x reception and solid 3G reception. Voice quality is decent though not super clear, but the volume is very loud. Most Bluetooth headsets worked well with the Curve in terms of voice quality and volume, and all Hands-Free features worked smoothly. The smartphone’s address book integrates with VZ Navigator: there are options to navigate, look up or share locations using VZ Navigator inside of the address book. Like other BlackBerry devices, the Curve 8530 offers support for 10 email accounts in addition to your BlackBerry email account, and the push email experience is excellent.

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 has EV-DO Rev. 0 for data and comes with a full HTML browser that’s capable of displaying web sites in desktop style. Though the phone has a good 3G speed on Verizon, the browser is slow at loading full HTML pages with a decent number of images even with Javascript turned off in browser settings (Javascript continues to be the BlackBerry web browser’s downfall). If you turn JavaScript on, full HTML pages load even slower. We experienced some broken layouts when using the browser to display various sites including our own site. The browser integrates with Bing search. We look forward to RIM’s future web kit browser since their existing web browser still falls at the back of the smartphone pack.

Multimedia

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is a good music phone thanks to the loud speakerphone, the microSD card slot with SDHC support, integration with V CAST Music with Rhapsody and the support for BlackBerry Media Sync. There are several ways you can get music onto the smartphone: load your music onto a microSD card, buy tunes from the V CAST Music store or if you use iTunes, BlackBerry Media Sync (a free download for Mac and PC) offers easy iTunes syncing for songs and playlists. The Curve 8530 supports DRM-free music in MP3, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCELP EVRC, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA9 and Windows Media 10 Standard/Professional formats, and the phone comes with BlackBerry Media Player for music and video playback. The audio quality via the built-in speakerphone is quite good and the volume is super loud. The Curve also has a standard 3.5mm stereo audio out jack and it works with Bluetooth stereo headphones via A2DP. Other music tools on the Curve include VzwTones for downloading ringtones and VCast Song ID. The BlackBerry Curve 8530 also works with V CAST Video over EV-DO. When the 3G connection is strong, V CAST videos look smooth and audio is in sync with video.

The Curve's multimedia controls up top.

GPS

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 has a built-in GPS that works with BlackBerry Maps as well as VZ Navigator. BlackBerry Maps is a free application that gives you North America maps, and allows you to search locations and POIs as well as get directions. It doesn’t offer voice guidance, real time navigation and other services found in VZ Navigator. We tested the new VZ Navigator v5.1 and the Curve 8530 ran the services smoothly.

VZ Navigator v5 has a new user interface that integrates local POIs, movies, gas prices and weather on the home screen. When you launch VZ Navigator you get a slideshow of these local info pages centered on your current location. Trip navigation, turn-by-turn directions, 3D maps and voice guidance are still quite similar to the previous version of VZ Navigator. Route calculations are fast and re-routing is smooth. Though version 5 has a new UI, the POI database isn’t brand new. Like the older version, VZ Navigator 5 has traffic reporting, local search and location sharing with friends and family. The new version does have voice recognition that allows you to use “Say It” mode to verbally input destinations. This mode didn’t work on the Curve 8530 however.

Camera

Like the BlackBerry Curve 8520, the Curve 8530 also has a 2 megapixel camera with 5x digital zoom and a fixed focus lens. By default the right convenience key launches the camera application. For a smartphone, a 2 megapixel built-in camera is low end; but by 2 megapixel camera phone standards, the Curve 8530 takes decent photos. Still images look bright with saturated and balanced colors, but there is a good deal of noise in the photos. The image quality warrants web posting of snapshots, but for printing or fine photo processing, the quality on these images won’t impress anybody. The camera application offers settings for white balance, picture resolution, quality, color effect and geotagging.

The Curve 8530 can also record video with audio in either QVGA resolution or 176 x 144 MMS resolution. Videos look smooth and the audio is in sync with the video.

Battery Life

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 has a rechargeable cryptographic Lithium Ion battery that’s 1150 mAh in capacity. The battery life isn’t very good for a smartphone with push email, Wi-Fi, on-demand video playback over EV-DO and full featured navigation software. With moderate use you will need to charge the smartphone every other day. The standby time is average reaching about a week.

Conclusion

For Verizon users who have been waiting for the new entry-level Curve, the 8530 is finally here. The Curve 8530 is a solid smartphone with decent specs, and it has the new trackpad and the dedicated media control buttons on top. The smartphone feels fast running multimedia apps like music and video, and it supports the new VZ Navigator 5. The Curve 8530 has good voice calling quality and a loud speakerphone, an excellent push email experience, built-in WiFi and the latest Bluetooth v2.1 technology with a full set of profiles. The BlackBerry web browser still disappoints in terms of speed and rendering capabilities, and we wish the battery life was better.

Pro: Good trackpad and keyboard experience, good GPS performance.

Con: Battery life isn’t very good.

Price: $49.99 with 2-year contract after discount.

Web sites: www.rim.com, www.verizonwireless.com

Specs:

Display: 65K color transmissive TFT color LCD. Screen size diagonally: 2.46". Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels.

Battery: 1150 mAh Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. Claimed talk time: 4.5 hours on GSM. Claimed standby: 10.5 days.

Performance: 512MHz processor. 256 megs RAM, 256 megs flash memory with 125 megs available to store programs and data.

Size: 2.4 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches. Weight: 3.7 ounces.

Phone: CDMA Dual Band: 800/1900 MHz. CDMA Dual Mode: CDMA2000 1X with EVDO Rev. 0 for data.

Camera: 2.0 megapixel with fixed focus lens (no flash or self-portrait mirror). Can take still photos up to 1600 x 1200 resolution and video up to QVGA 320 x 240.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder, music and video player included. Has hardware playback controls on the top edge. Ringtones: 32 Polyphonic – MIDI, MP3, SP-MIDI and WAV. Music playback: MP3, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCELP EVRC, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA9 and Windows Media 10 Standard/Professional formats.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Bluetooth profiles: hands-free, headset, serial port, DUN (dial-up networking), A2DP stereo with AVRC, SIM access, Secure Simple Pairing and phone book access.

Software: BlackBerry OS v5.0. BlackBerry push email client. BlackBerry Messaging, SMS and MMS. BlackBerry Maps (free service), Documents to Go standard edition (view and edit but not create MS Office documents), web browser, media player for MP3 and video playback. PIM apps include address book, calendar, tasks and memo. Also alarm, clock, voice notes, calculator, Password Keeper. Games: BrickBreaker, Texas Hold 'Em Sudoku, Klondike and Word Mole. BlackBerry Desktop software for PC included for syncing and software installation (PocketMac for BlackBerry Mac software can be downloaded for free from RIM's site). Verizon apps and services include V CAST Music with Rhapsody, V CAST Video, VZ Navigator, Visual Voice Mail, Song ID and Tones. Also City ID and Bing search are included.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

In the box: Phone, battery, charger, USB cable, software CD and printed material.

Nokia E72

2010-03-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

The Nokia E72 has a hard act to follow in the much-loved Nokia E71. Though affordable, the E71 had excellent build quality, that Eseries liberal use of metal rather than plastic, plenty of features and it just plain old worked well. The NAM unlocked edition with US 3G HSDPA on AT&T's bands sold well here by no-contract phone standards, helped by the fact it was relatively inexpensive. Even AT&T eventually picked it up as the Nokia E71x, albeit with their usual liberal dusting of bloatware.

Like the E71 NAM, the E72 NAM is a quad band unlocked GSM phone with EDGE and 3G HSDPA on AT&T's 3G bands and Europe's 2100MHz band. It's EDGE only on T-Mobile in the US. Since it's an unlocked phone, you need not sign up for a new contract or extend your existing contract. Just pop in your SIM card, let the E72 automatically configure itself for your carrier's data, SMS and MMS settings and you're ready to roll.

It's been 1.5 years since the E71 launched, and Nokia has been teasing us with promises of the E72's much faster CPU, better camera (you could only go up from the E71's weak camera), updated design and improved multimedia in a still super-slim package. Unfortunately, some things stayed the same: namely the small QVGA display. Heck, it's 2010 and QVGA is feeling mighty dated-- even the once conservative RIM has moved up to larger, higher resolution displays. At 320 x 240 pixels, you'll be doing plenty of scrolling, and Nokia has at least made that task easier with their new optical d-pad that can also act as a traditional d-pad if you're feeling retro. The optical pad works well, and we vote it as an improvement.

The keyboard on the E71, though small, was uncannily usable. The E72's is even better and typing is a joy on this QWERTY messaging phone. If your thing is texting and email, the E72 has its eye on you. The keys are domed, clearly backlit in white and pleasantly tactile. There's now a dedicated Ctrl key and a few keys handle alternate functions like turning on the flash light and accessing Bluetooth. We did notice that typing sometimes lagged behind our key presses and hope that Nokia's fixes this in a future firmware update (Nokia can generally be counted on to release firmware updates for their S60 phones).

The phone comes with Nokia Email (2.1 on our unit) and it handles POP3, IMAP and MS Exchange via Mail for Exchange (MfE) and Gmail too. You'll get HTML email with MS Exchange 2007 and though some folks have had trouble setting up email accounts with Nokia's relatively new email client, we had no trouble with POP3, IMAP and Gmail account setup and operation. The email app also supports Yahoo, Lotus Notes Traveler and Hotmail among others. While it might not have the immediacy of the BlackBerry email push system, you don't have to sign up for an expensive data plan either. Nokia phones work just fine with inexpensive feature phone data plans on AT&T and T-Mobile (and other GSM carriers).

If you're into social networking, there's a decent Facebook app included and you can download free and paid clients to extend IM support, and add MySpace and Twitter (Gravity rocks for Twitter). These are available through the Ovi store on the phone.

Since the E72 runs the newest available version of Symbian OS and S60: Symbian 9.4 with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, you get stronger multimedia format support, a more flexible Active Standby home screen and and Modes (i.e.: Work and Home with different apps and background). The changes are subtle but do improve usability.

The Nokia N900, Nokia N97 mini and Nokia E72.

The usual S60 folder system is still there, which veteran Nokia fans often love (hey, it's familiar) and other folks find takes too many clicks. We won't argue that some tasks do take quite a few wiggles of the d-pad and clicks to get done, but if you're familiar and happy with S60 this likely won't bother you. Nokia seems to try out a new folder arrangements randomly, and it did take time to find where all those familiar S60 apps now live. You can move things around and create your own folders, of course.

Likewise, Nokia plays with their photo and video viewers, and this time it's all in the Gallery application. Once you enter Gallery you see a list of un-sexy folders for photos, video, songs, sound clips, streaming links and presentations. What music is doing here, we're not sure since it merely takes you to the Music Player application.

The Nokia E72 has a 3.5mm stereo jack up top.

Given the E72's impressive 600MHz ARM 11 processor, and the widened codec support, we expected a bit more from the video player. Yes, it supports MPEG4 and even WMV but VGA MPEG4 video encoded at mobile-friendly low bitrates (660 kbps) seems to strain the phone and we saw frame drops. It seems that QVGA video is the best bet, and these played well up to 900kbps. In truth, we're not sure that extended video viewing is something you'd expect to do on a relatively low resolution, 2.36" display. If that's your thing, go with an S60 5th Edition smartphone with a larger, higher resolution display like the Nokia N97 or N97 mini.

In all other tasks, the E72 is quite responsive and the faster CPU means quicker folder open times and generally improved application performance compared to the E71. Flash video playback via YouTube's desktop site is actually watchable even if blocky. It drops frames but it's worlds better than the E71.

Video Review

Here's our 7.5 minute video review of the Nokia E72:

Phone and Internet

The quad band GSM E72 will work with any GSM provider's SIM for calls and data on GPRS and EDGE. It has 3G HSDPA up to 10.2 Mbps for use overseas and with AT&T in the US. We tested it with both T-Mobile and AT&T SIM cards and the phone worked well and automatically configured settings to match each carrier. We primarily used the phone on AT&T since it has 3G on that carrier's bands. Call quality was very good, as per usual for Nokia E and Nseries smartphones. The rear-firing speakerphone, powered by a large mono speaker, wasn't all that loud but it was clear. We tested the phone with several Bluetooth headsets including the Jawbone 2 and Plantronics Discovery 925 and it worked well in terms of voice quality and connection reliability. Bluetooth range was average, and we got about 15 feet before voice quality began to degrade.

Nokia's excellent Webkit browser is on board with Flash support, and it does a good job of rendering full HTML sites accurately and quickly. Since this isn't a touch screen phone, you use the d-pad to move a virtual cursor around web pages. At QVGA resolution, you'll only see very small sections of desktop-oriented sites, so plan on plenty of scrolling. Though the browser is capable enough, the low resolution means we wouldn't recommend this smartphone to someone who plans to spend a lot of time web browsing.

GPS and Camera

The E72 has a built-in GPS with aGPS, and you can download the full version of Ovi Maps for free (Nokia made it free in January 2010). This gives the E72 and other recent S60 smartphones an edge against other smartphones that require you to pay for turn-by-turn spoken navigation. Nokia Maps' routing is decent, but their POI database is spotty in the US. You can use 3rd party navigation applications as well. We had no trouble with the GPS hardware at all, in fact it performed quite well and managed fast fixes and solid satellite locks.

The 5 megapixel autofocus camera is a vast improvement over the E71's lower resolution shooter. It isn't just the higher resolution; images are sharper and clearer with better exposure. The E72 still can't compare to Nokia's own Nseries phones and their superior cameras, but for a business phone, this is a decent camera. The phone can also shoot VGA video at 15 fps and there's a flash that's useful for close range shooting.

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 and the Nokia E72.

Conclusion

The E72, much as we'd anticipated it, is something of a let-down. It is by no means a bad phone and the features are good: it has a fast CPU, US 3G HSDPA, WiFi, a GPS, Bluetooth with a full set of profiles, an SDHC microSD card slot and an FM radio. But it just doesn't add enough to the Nokia E71 package to make us want to replace the E71. Yes, it's faster and the camera is better, but are those good enough reasons to spend $350? If you're not considering upgrading from an E71 but are looking for an unlocked GSM QWERTY-bar smartphone, the E72's definite good looks, quality design and strong keyboard are worth a look. But RIM's BlackBerry smartphones offer stiff competition, at least the higher end models like the BlackBerry 9700. The E72 just lacks that special something, be it updated software or cool new hardware, to make us rave. But it's a solid phone with all the features a business person needs, and it's a good looking piece in the hand.

Price: $359 (no contract, no subsidy)

Website: www.nokiausa.com

Specs:

Display: 24 bit QVGA 320 x 240 pixel color LCD. Diagonal screen measurement: 2.36 inches. Has accelerometer and ambient light sensor.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable, 1500 mAh (BP-4L). Uses the smaller round charger connector and not micro USB (uses micro USB for sync). Claimed talk time: 12.5 hours on GSM, 5 hours 54 minutes on 3G. Claimed video playback time (max): 13 hours. Claimed music playback time (max): 37.5 hours.

Performance: ARM 11 600 MHz processor. 128 megs RAM. 512 MB Flash ROM with 250 megs available to store applications and data.

Size: 4.48 x 2.34 x .39 inches. Weight: 4.51 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band unlocked 850/900/1800/1900MHz with EDGE. On the NAM (US version) 3G HSDPA 10.2 Mbps on AT&T's 850/1900MHz bands and 2100MHz for abroad. Supports VoIP calling.

Camera: 5.0 MP with autofocus lens and LED flash. Max photo resolution: 2592 x 1944. Max video resolution: VGA 640 x 480 at 15 fps. Has front-facing VGA camera.

GPS: Has GPS with aGPS and a compass. The GPS works with the now free Ovi Maps and other mapping and navigation applications.

Audio and Video: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Gallery, Flash Player, Real Player and music player included. Supported video formats: GPP formats (H.263), Flash Video, H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, RealVideo 7,8,9/10 and WMV. Supported audio formats: AAC, AAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AU, eAAC+, M4A, MIDI Tones (poly 64), MP3, MP4, RealAudio 7, 8, 10, SP-MIDI, True tones, WAV and WMA.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR with a full suite of profiles including A2DP stereo and DUN.

Software: Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

LG eXpo

2010-03-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

The LG eXpo is the HTC Tilt 2's competitor on AT&T. While the Tilt 2 features HTC's TouchFLO 3D that makes the smartphone much more fun and modern, the eXpo opts for impressive hardware like the 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU, good 5 megapixel autofocus camera, fingerprint reader and optional pico projector. Both sport a very ample slide-out hardware QWERTY keyboard and an 800 x 480 pixel resistive touch screen. The LG is a bit slimmer and more pocketable than the beefy Tilt 2, but it's still a large phone.

Our gripe with the LG eXpo is the very stylus-centric UI that's mostly vanilla Windows Mobile 6.5 Pro and the relatively small 3.2" display that makes for smaller on-screen targets. It's just not fun and finger-friendly compared to HTC's TouchFLO 3D Windows Mobile phones, Android smartphones and other modern OS phones. This is a business phone first, and fun isn't its prime directive but even LG's S-Class UI doesn't help it out of the doldrums. But for those of you who like Windows Mobile just fine, the eXpo has great appeal since it's currently the fastest US Windows Mobile phone (until the HTC HD2 hits T-Mobile in the spring of 2010). Not to mention the fingerprint sensor for security (remember that feature from HP iPAQ PDAs way back when?) and the optional projector that's great for incredibly portable PowerPoint presentations. Unfortunately, we didn't receive a projector with our phone, so we won't be able to cover that important business feature.

For a stylus-centric phone, we were surprised that LG uses a lipstick style external stylus
that attaches via lanyard and looks a tad feminine.

The smartphone's build is solid, and the eXpo looks like a quality piece of hardware, though it's nothing to speak of on the style front. The large QWERTY keyboard is excellent, though we still prefer the offset keyboard on the Tilt 2, which is the best keyboard on the market. Key travel is a bit shallow, and the d-pad likewise lacks travel-- but at least it has one. The d-pad seems to be disappearing from WinMo touch screen phones.

Specs at a Glance

The LG eXpo (don't blame us for the bizarre capitalization) is a Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional phone with a 3.2", 800 x 480 pixel resistive touch screen. It has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and a flash, a GPS that works with AT&T Navigator, Bluetooth and WiFi. It has 256 megs of RAM, 512 megs of flash storage and an SDHC microSD card slot that's conveniently located under a door on the phone's side.

Phone and Internet

The LG has very good call quality and the earpiece is slightly louder than average. This is a quad band GSM world phone with EDGE and 3G HSDPA 7.2Mbps on AT&T's bands and 2100MHz for 3G abroad. Reception on 3G is mediocre; it's fine in strong coverage areas but it's not the best phone for those in marginal coverage areas.

Opera Mobile has infiltrated quite a few high end Windows Mobile phones, but unfortunately not the eXpo which ships with the stock Internet Explorer Mobile 6. It's an OK web browser, but we suggest you purchase Opera or another browser if you spend serious time browsing.

Email is handled by the capable, if dated looking, mobile Outlook client. It handles POP3/IMAP and MS Exchange with Direct Push if your company runs a relatively recent version of Exchange Server. There's an IM client on board along with support for SMS and MMS.

Video Review

Here's our 8.5 minute video review of the LG eXpo that covers physical design, UI, web browsing, video playback and more.

Battery

The LG eXpo has a power-hungry fast CPU, 3G HSDPA, WiFi and those consume battery quickly. There aren't many US 3G Snapdragon phones on the market to compare, but I will say that the 1GHz Nexus One running Android lasts significantly longer. The LG seems to wake up and make brief connections to 3G even when no applications are running (not even Exchange email), and this may reduce battery life. With moderate use, we had to charge the phone nightly. With heavy use, we had to charge it by 3pm each afternoon.

Our Take

The LG eXpo has exciting hardware that's let down by dated software. If you're a fan of Windows Mobile's user interface, the eXpo will likely suit you well, but if you're tempted by other platforms and other manufacturers' updated user interfaces for Windows Mobile, the LG will seem dreary. That said, it's fast (you've never seen the Windows Mobile file explorer list all the files in its Windows directory this fast) and has a good camera, a very functional fingerprint scanner for security and a tightly integrated optional pico projector that just might save you from lugging a laptop.

Price: $199 with a 2 year contract

Websites: www.lge.com, wireless.att.com

Specs:

Display: 3.2" resistive touch screen with haptic feedback and proximity sensor. Resolution: 480 x 800, supports both portrait and landscape modes.

Battery: Lithium Ion polymer rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh.

Performance: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. 256 MB built-in RAM. 512 MB Flash ROM.

Size: 4.45 x 2.24 x 0.65 inches. Weight: 4.46 ounces.

Phone: Quad band GSM world phone 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands. 3G HSDPA 7.2 Mbps on AT&T's 850/1900MHz US bands and 2100MHz for use abroad.

Camera: 5.0 MP with autofocus lens and LED flash. Supports AT&T's Video Share one-way video conferencing service.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and proprietary stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder and Windows Mobile Media Player 10 included.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

Software: Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional OS. Both standard UI and LG's S-Class UI are available on the device. Internet Explorer 6 mobile, MS Voice Command, Java VM, Windows Mobile Marketplace, Adobe Reader, Sprite Backup and Windows Media Player Mobile. Standard MS mobile software suite: Office Mobile (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Mobile),, Email (POP3/IMAP/MS Exchange), File Explorer, PIM suite (contacts, calendar, notes and tasks), SMS/MMS client, BubbleBreaker and Solitaire. AT&T software: AT&T WiFi, AT&T App Center, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Music and trial games.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

HP iPAQ Glisten

2010-03-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

The more things change, the more they stay the same, or so the cliche goes. It's apt enough for HP's latest business smartphone, the Glisten, whose form and function aren't so different from the 2008 HP iPAQ 910c. The looks have gotten more modern and trendy, with a flush display and a black soft-touch casing, but it's still your basic Windows Mobile Pro QWERTY-bar business phone. What has suffered is one-handed and touch navigation thanks to Windows Mobile 6.5. WinMo 6.5 was designed with larger screens in mind, and it attempts to be more touch-centric, neither of which matches with the QWERTY bar smartphone. That means the traditional Start Menu that looked just like the one on your Windows PC is gone. A shame because that was easy to navigate using the d-pad, while the hex grid of icons that replaces it is a nightmare with the d-pad. Thank goodness for the touch screen, you say? Well, not so much. The small, low resolution display is hard to navigate with a finger, making the included stylus a must, and that feels very dated and inefficient.

What stands in the Glisten's favor are its sturdy build, grippable back and good QWERTY keyboard. Combine that with Windows Mobile's excellent integration with MS Exchange, and you've got a decent business phone. The HP Glisten is likely to appeal to veteran Windows Mobile users who accustomed to, if not fond of, that operating system's features and UI. It's otherwise unlikely that the HP would win in a contest against a BlackBerry. RIM's smartphones are easier to use one-handed and their UI is much better optimized to the hardware controls with myriad keyboard shortcuts and convenient home screen options.

The Glisten at a Glance

The HP iPAQ Glisten is sold by AT&T in the US and it has 3G HSDPA on AT&T's bands as well as 2100MHz for Europe and Asia. It's a quad band GSM world phone with EDGE for those places that are devoid of 3G coverage. It has a 2.5" AMOLED touch screen and it runs Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional. The Glisten is powered by a 528MHz Qualcomm CPU and it has 256 megs of RAM and 512 megs of flash memory. There's a fixed focus 3.1 megapixel camera on board as well as a full complement of wireless: GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR and WiFi 802.11b/g.

Design and Ergonomics

The iPAQ feels solid and well made, and we particularly like the grippy soft-touch back. The QWERTY keyboard's keys are laid out in a smile configuration and are relatively large: both pluses. But their slick surface makes typing faster but less accurate.The embedded number pad is clear in contrasting white and there are shortcuts on the bottom row for the web browser, calendar, email and AT&T Navigator. The chromed plastic sides have relatively few controls and ports. A 3.5mm stereo headset jack and micro USB port are on the right and the volume controls are on the left. The not terribly good or loud speakerphone lives under a small grille on the back. The HP isn't a thin phone by any means, and it's about the same thickness as recent BlackBerry Curve 8500 series models. To our eyes, it looks less plasticky and higher quality than the BlackBerry 8520 and 8530.

The AMOLED display uses less power and is more vivid than traditional LCDs, though the HP's isn't as vivid (or over-saturated) as recent Samsung AMOLED phone displays. It's a resistive display (Windows Mobile 6.5 doesn't natively support capacitive displays) and that means you can use a fingernail, a gloved finger or the included plastic stylus with the touch screen.

Phone and Data

While HP's smartphones have had excellent voice quality and volume since the hw6915 that preceded the 910c, the Glisten has average voice quality and its earpiece isn't particularly loud. Incoming voice is clear with very light background hiss but outgoing voice sounds digitized and this was augmented with many of the Bluetooth headsets we tested with the iPAQ. Volume is average for a GSM phone and it's fine for home and office but it can't combat very noisy public locations. The speakerphone isn't among the best we've heard, but it's suitable to increase volume in a loud place when the earpiece doesn't do the job, and it's fine for in-car navigation using the included AT&T Navigator's spoken directions.

Like all Windows Mobile phones, the Glisten ships with Internet Explorer Mobile and the mobile version of Outlook which is comprised of Messaging (for email, SMS and MMS) and PIM applications (calendar, contacts, tasks and notes). These sync to MS Exchange over-the-air flawlessly and the phone can also sync to Outlook on the desktop via USB. Messaging is a solid email client that works with POP3, IMAP, Gmail and other accounts well, and the Exchange experience is top notch.

Though many Windows phone manufacturers include the superior Opera Mobile browser, HP thinks you can make do with IE. Honestly, the screen is so small and the QVGA resolution so outdated, that we don't consider the Glisten optimal for web browsing anyway. If web browsing is important to you and you plan to do a lot of it, consider a smartphone with a larger, higher resolution display like the HTC Tilt 2. For full HTML sites, you'll see only a fraction of the web page on screen at a given time and selecting links, even with the stylus, takes patience.

Video Review

Here's our 7 minute video review of the HP Glisten:

Conclusion

The HP Glisten is literally a solid Windows Mobile QWERTY bar phone. It's well-made, sturdy and not bad looking as business phones go. But we can't say it adds anything new or enticing to the mix, and there's little that's changed since the HP 910c (which was a decent smartphone). What has changed is the OS, and unfortunately, Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional is less well suited to the QWERTY bar form factor than was Windows Mobile 6.1. One handed operation is limited and you often must touch the display to get things done. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if the display wasn't so small and the on-screen targets too tiny to easily tap with a finger. The iPAQ is definitely better suited to those who are comfortable with the stylus.

In terms of features and performance for the price, the HP does well and has all the bells and whistles you'd expect on a business smartphone at this or even a slightly higher price. The 528MHz CPU generally does a good job of keeping up with tasks and with 256 megs of RAM, you can leave several applications running simultaneously. Windows Mobile is often maligned, but it offers solid business features including strong MS Exchange support, a built-in Office suite, good security and compatibility with Windows desktops.

Price: $129.99 after rebates with a 2 year contract.

Websites: wireless.att.com, www.hp.com

Specs:

Display: 65K color 2.5" AMOLED color touchscreen. Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels.

Battery: Lithium Ion polymer rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1590 mAh. Micro USB charging and syncing port.

Performance: 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A CPU. 256 megs RAM, 512 megs flash ROM.

Size: 4.44 x 2.47 x 0.53 inches. Weight: 4.66 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band world phone 850/900/1800/1900MHz. 3G HSDPA on the 850/1900/2100MHz bands.

GPS: Has GPS and AT&T Navigator.

Camera: 3.1 megapixel, fixed focus lens. 5x digital zoom, no flash or self-portrait mirror.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR.

Software: Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

Samsung Mythic

2010-02-04T00:40:00.000-08:00

Samsung Mythic

When the Samsung Eternity came out for AT&T in November 2008 it sold like hotcakes. Samsung's TouchWiz UI was shiny and fun, the phone was responsive and its data plan cost half the iPhone's. After all, the cost of a phone isn't just the up-front purchase price but the ongoing plan price over a 2 year contract. It was one of the first touch screen phones to have Mobile TV, which is $10/month subscription digital TV that's broadcast over the air rather than via the phone's data connection. If you were lucky enough to live in a FLO TV service area, you saw better video quality than YouTube or AT&T's streaming video could offer at the time.

Since then, we've had the lower end Samsung Solstice which couldn't dethrone the Eternity and now the Samsung Mythic which we'd say is up to the job of replacing the iconic Eternity. Like the Eternity it runs Samsung's TouchWiz user interface; it's still intuitive but after more than a year it's looking a little old. Still, it's one of the better touch interfaces on a feature phone and there's little to no learning curve if you're upgrading from an older model.

The display resolution has increased to 360 x 640 pixels and measures 3.3"; a distinct improvement over the Eternity and the Solstice. It's not a super-vivid AMOLED display like the Samsung Impression TouchWiz phone with QWERTY keyboard though. Nor is it capacitive like the iPhone 3GS. That means it's not as sensitive or responsive, but among resistive screens it's quite good. And better yet, it works with fingernails and gloves.

The iPhone 3GS and the Samsung Mythic.

New phones always cost more, and so the Mythic costs more than the older Impression which arguably beats the Mythic if you don't want Mobile TV, and it costs the same as the 16 gig iPhone 3GS. We expect the price will come down, and as always 3rd party dealers will offer the phone for less, making it more compelling. Our only niggle with the Mythic is that it's not as peppy as the Eternity, something that's hard to forgive in a feature phone.

The Mythic has very good call quality on AT&T's 3G network and the earpiece is louder than average. Likewise the rear-facing mono speaker is loud and clear. The Mythic is a quad band GSM world phone and it's a 3G world phone too, with HSDPA on AT&T's bands and 2100MHz for Europe and Asia. The phone has speed dial and Nuance voice command.

Other features include a GPS that works with AT&T Navigator, a music player (same as that on the Eternity), support for AT&T's streaming video that's included with their data plan, a video player that can handle common formats like WMV and MPEG4, a WAP browser and a more full-featured HTML browser that's developed by Samsung based on webkit (the same browser engine used in the iPhone and Palm Pre). While the browser can't compare to the iPhone's in terms of rendering speed and finger control, it's pretty good by feature phone standards and can handle full desktop sites.

Video Review

Our Take

The Samsung Mythic is a nice touch screen feature phone, and given its lack of competition on AT&T, it's among the best. If you want a touch screen phone but don't want the more expensive smartphone or iPhone data plan, the Mythic is a full-featured choice, though we might still choose the Samsung Impression for its AMOLED display and QWERTY keyboard. But if you don't want the keyboard and added bulk of the Impression or if you do want Mobile TV, the Mythic is it. We just wish it was a little peppier.

Price: $199 with a 2 year contract after rebates.

Websites: www.samsungmobileusa.com, wireless.att.com

Specs:

Display: 262K color TST color resistive touch screen. Screen size diagonally: 3.3". Resolution: 360 x 640, supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer in some applications. Has haptic feedback and proximity sensor.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1150 mAh. Claimed talk time: up to 3 hours. Claimed standby: up to 10.5 days.

Performance: Undisclosed CPU, 189 megs flash storage. Phone book supports up to 2,000 entries.

Size: 4.49 x 2.06 x 0.5 inches. Weight: 3.8 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band world phone 850/900/1800/1900MHz with EDGE. 3G HSDPA on the 850/1900/2100MHz bands for AT&T, Europe and Asia. Has Nuance voice command and speed dial.

Camera: 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus lens and LED flash.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Music and video players included.

Networking: Bluetooth. Profiles: headset, hands free, serial port, DUN, A2DP stereo, FTP, Object Push and basic printing.

Software: Samsung TouchWiz UI. Java applications. Apps include Samsung's HTML web browser, WAP browser, Mobile Email, Mobile Video, Mobile TV (requires monthly subscription), music player, video player My Stuff (file manager), Music ID, XM Radio, Mobile Banking and more.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

Nexus One

2010-02-04T00:27:00.000-08:00

Nexus One

When Google formally announced their first Google-branded phone, the Nexus One, a day before the CES trade show in Las Vegas, they managed to distract technology buffs from the US' largest trade show. Google making and selling their own phone? What's up with that? Unlocked phones with no subsidy haven't sold like hotcakes here in the US where we want it cheap and forego features and freedom to get it cheap. But the Nexus One looked like one heck of a high end Android smartphone with a design that could make the ugly duckling G1 hide in the closet. Finally, an Android phone that still looks good when placed next to an iPhone. In fact, it's marginally thinner and lighter than the iPhone 3GS while finding room for a user replaceable battery.

As it turns out, the Nexus One is what Google calls a "super-phone", and they wanted to show the world what Android could do with really high end specs and a design to match. The hardware is made by HTC, who made the G1, which was the first Android phone. They also make the lovely HTC Hero, the Droid Eris, the lower end MyTouch 3G (aka HTC Magic) and plenty of high end Windows Mobile phones. While HTC's value added has been their Sense UI enhancements for recent Android models, this phone is stock 100% pure Android (Google's completely in charge of the software on this phone, after all). The Nexus One runs Android OS 2.1, and it's the first phone on the market to sport that new OS. It's incrementally better than 2.0 and 2.01 on the Motorola Droid (previously the phone with the latest, greatest OS).

What's really interesting is the hardware, which makes the otherwise mighty Moto Droid look like a mid-tier Android phone. It has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512 megs of RAM, 512 megs of flash storage and an AMOLED display. That CPU is currently the fastest on the market, and it makes appearances only in HTC's HD2 Windows Mobile Pro phone and in the LG eXPO. Android is a more lightweight OS than Windows Mobile, so this thing really flies. No waiting, no delays and no trouble playing fairly high resolution video. Sweet. 512 megs of RAM is unusually high and beats the HD2's 488 megs. No problem running concurrent applications, there's plenty of memory for that.

The Nexus One has a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, a GPS that works with Google Maps, an SDHC microSD card (a 4 gig card is included), WiFi and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo. Even more juicy is the 3.7" capacitive AMOLED display running at the now standard high end smartphone resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The display and OS support multi-touch ~~but Google hasn't enabled it in their built-in apps for the US version~~ (the Euro version does have multi-touch). Third party applications can and do support multi-touch: we tested the Dolphin web browser which supports pinch zoom and Simply Draw which supports drawing with two fingers (both are free and are available for download on the Android Market).

How You Buy it, How You get Support

The Nexus One is an unlocked GSM phone with quad band EDGE and 3G HSDPA/HSPA 7.2Mbps on the 900/1700/2100MHz bands. It will work with any GSM carrier, but there are no AT&T 3G bands, so that means EDGE only on AT&T. Google sells this phone directly via their website and there will be a version for Verizon this spring and there's a Euro/Asian model that's currently being sold in the UK and some Asian countries (sales will eventually expand to more European countries). Other than language differences and convenient localizations, we don't see a reason why the currently available Nexus One wouldn't work in all European countries. Google does not plan a phone with AT&T 3G at this time.

Google handles selling you the phone, using Google checkout (surprise). HTC handles device support and your carrier (T-Mobile in the case of US customers) handles network and connectivity issues. While phone carriers and manufacturers are well set up to handle support for phones marketed for a particular carrier, this one is a bit more complex. We'll have to see how well the three companies handle it. In the first week, things have been a little rocky according to forums on the Net, but we expect support routing should improve. The phone has a 1 year warranty and Google gives a 14 day trial period. Google applies a restocking fee only if you had it engraved, and if your state requires a longer return period you get longer.

You can buy the phone for full retail ($529) or you can get it with a T-Mobile contract for $179. If you're not out of contract on T-Mobile, there are higher subsidized prices depending on how long you have left on your contract. In Europe, the subsidy is with Vodafone.

The N1 is a well made, solid phone that's neither overly large (it's about the same size as the HTC Hero) nor too heavy at 4.5 ounces. It feels solid and has a pleasing weight in the hand, and the curves make it feel great. It is quite thin and rounded, so we found it easier to drop than some other phones. The bezel is metal as is the back strip where you can order custom engraving.

The front buttons are touch sensitive and they require a firmer press than does the display (as they should or you'd be accidentally pressing them with annoying frequency). We always love HTC's trackball and find it useful on the N1 for working our way through text. The trackball pulses slowly in white when you have a missed call, voicemail or reminder. It could pulse a bit more quickly because it's quite possible to glance at the phone and miss the pulse.

Is it a Superphone?

Well, we'd say it is, if you define a super-phone as a really high end smartphone that offers the best currently available in display technology, horsepower, wireless, modern OS and features. The iPhone 3GS, Moto Droid and Nokia N900 are also super-phones by that definition. Is it the best phone on the market? It's certainly one of the best, but we won't call it the very best since no phone can meet everyone's needs. For example, if you're one of those folks who can't live without a hardware QWERTY keyboard, it's not for you. If you want to spend serious time doing 3D gaming, the iPhone is currently the best. If you want a closed ecosystem that enables one simple and consistent UI and ease of use, the iPhone is for you. If you want the best web browser with real Flash support, the Nokia N900 is better (though Flash should be coming to the Nexus One before the spring of 2010). If you want a very attractive, well-made slate smartphone, one that's very fast, has a stunning capacitive display and full support for Google's myriad services including fast OS updates, then the Nexus One is your superphone. Aside from high end gaming, there are plenty of good apps on the Android Market to keep most folks happy and entertained, and 3D gaming should be forthcoming since Android 2.0 and higher has 3D APIs. Phones like the Nexus One and Moto Droid have the horsepower to handle those 3D games. While Android phones like the Nexus One aren't as super-duper easy to use as the iPhone, they're plenty easy to understand and use. But Android's greater openness and customizability are well suited to power users. For example, I want my calendar, weather and twitter feed on my home screen. I don't want to launch apps and do several finger-taps to see the info most important to me, I want them at a glance. Android wins here, as does the Nokia N900 while the iPhone fails.

The Nexus One's clearest competitor is the Moto Droid on Verizon. They have similar resolutions and screen sizes, and run Android 2 (currently the Droid is at 2.01 while the Nexus One is at 2.1). Their functionality and user experience are quite similar; I wouldn't say the Nexus One hoses the Moto Droid by any means. The Nexus One is however faster, and that's impressive since the Droid is very fast and is the second fastest Android phone on the market. Once I used the Droid, I found it hard to go back to the old technology 528MHz MyTouch 3G, a phone that hadn't seemed slow before. While the Moto Droid pauses ever so briefly when doing things here and there, the Nexus One never does. And the Nexus renders web pages faster, thanks to the 1GHz CPU (the Moto has a new technology 600MHz Cortex A8 CPU, like the also-speedy Nokia N900).

The Nexus One wins on the display front thanks to its AMOLED display which is much more colorful and vivid. Yet it's not overdone and warm tones don't bleed as they often do on mid-tier AMOLED phones. It's also a bit more sensitive than the Droid, which we like. The drawback with AMOLED displays is that they aren't as visible outdoors in bright light (there the Droid wins).

The Nexus One wins against the Droid and iPhone for camera quality, though it can't beat the excellent Nokia N900-- Nokia knows how to do a camera right. The Nexus One's photos and video are much better than the Droid's and its photos are much better than the iPhone 3GS'.

Battle of the super phones: Nexus One, Motorola Droid and the iPhone 3GS.

Phone and Internet

The quad band GSM Nexus One is best used with T-Mobile here in the US since it has 3G HSDPA 7.2 Mbps on T-Mobile's bands. It will operate on EDGE only on AT&T. We've been told that it's forward compatible with HSPA+, a 21Mbsp max data standard that T-mobile is currently trialing in Philadelphia and will deploy in more cities this year and next. Though T-Mobile claims to have upgraded their entire network to 7.2Mbps HSPA, here in Dallas in early January 2010, we're still on the 3.6Mbps standard so we couldn't test the faster speed standard (likewise our N900 and MyTouch 3G don't see 7.2Mpbs yet either, though their hardware is capable). Our data speeds averaged 600-1,000kbps, which is on par with our other T-Mobile 3G smartphones.

Voice quality is excellent thanks to Audience's new A1026 voice processor that works in conjunction with the Google phone's dual mics. It does an excellent job of reducing background noise while keeping voice clear and full. The Nexus One is at the top of the heap for outgoing voice quality. Incoming voice is clear and natural, with average volume. The mono speakerphone, though large, is unfortunately tinny.

The usual suspects are on board for all things Internet and Google: gmail, Exchange mail, POP3/IMAP mail, a very capable webkit web browser, a YouTube player, Google Maps, Google Voice and Google Talk. There is no T-Mobile @Home UMA calling-- Google seems to have avoided carrier-specific features since this is an unlocked world phone. The web browser supports YouTube via Google's YouTube player that plays mobile YouTube video rather than Flash. According to Adobe, Flash 10.1 will be coming to the Nexus One in a few months.

Video Reviews

Part 1 of our video review series covers unboxing, the phone's physical design and comparisons with the Moto Droid, Nokia N900, MyTouch 3G, HTC HD2 and the iPhone 3GS:

Part 2 digs deep into Android 2.1's new features, the web browser, YouTube playback, Google Maps, MPEG4 video playback from a microSD card and 3D gaming:

Android 2.1 New Features

We've covered Android's new features in our second video review, and these include the extended 5 screen home screen, new Google widgets for weather, news and wireless control and the new program launcher. One thing I'd like to underscore is the new speech-to-text feature. Since Android OS 1.6 Donut we've been able to do a Google search using speech rather than a keyboard. In OS 2.1, you can use speech pervasively: the on-screen keyboard has a mic key and if you tap this you can speak rather than type. This works very well and I found myself typing less and less. Obviously, if you're in a quiet place like a library or a very noisy place like a ball game speech isn't the best input method, but it works well most everywhere else. You can tell Google Maps what you're looking for, you can dictate an email or SMS message and voice dial. It takes about 5 seconds for the speech-to-text engine to turn what you've said into text, and we'd like to see this get faster, but that's our only complaint.

Camera

The Nexus One has a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus lens and a single LED flash. Image quality is better than other HTC phones (which might not say much) and is even a bit better than the HTC HD2's 5MP camera. It's still not as good as Nokia's better Nseries smartphones or the N900, but that's a tall order since Nokia makes some of the best cameras on the market.

The N1 lacks a dedicated camera button, so you'll want to put a shortcut to the camera on your home screen. You can take photos by pressing the on-screen shutter button or by pressing the trackball (the trackball method makes for less camera shake). You can't manually select the point of focus by touching the viewfinder, but you can set white balance, color effects, flash mode, resolution, quality and focus mode. The camera supports geotagging. Max video resolution is 720 x 480 at 20fps or higher and there's a lesser resolution for MMS. You can set white balance, color effects and duration.

Image quality is good, with excellent color saturation and balance. There's some visible interpolation (jaggies and overly smooth areas) that put it behind the N900, but it's better than most other smartphone cameras on the US market. Video quality is likewise good with excellent color and good frame rates. This is a camera you'll likely enjoy using.

Conclusion

Google and HTC have a winner with the Nexus One, the "be all that you can" Android smartphone. Google spec-d out a top of the line phone and at the moment, it is the one to beat among Android phones. The Moto Droid comes in a close second with a similar user experience but a weaker though still capable CPU and a lesser camera. Indeed, the Nexus One is a "super phone", but it's not the phone that destroys all others. It's simply got high end everything and the standard Google Android experience. It does run a newer version of the OS, but other Android phones will catch up. That said, Google doesn't have to worry about carrier control with this phone, and so we expect they'll push new OS updates to the Nexus One before other phones. That means by the time other phones catch up with OS 2.1, the Nexus One will probably have something even newer and better. Even if other Android phones come out with similarly compelling hardware, the Nexus One will likely maintain an OS advantage.

The drawbacks? You can't take this phone to your corner T-Mobile store for support. T-Mobile will handle network-related issues but the rest is in HTC and Google's court. Google isn't a company famous for quality human contact, and we'll see if they can handle being a retailer.

Pro: Fast! Very attractive and well made. Simply large and lovely AMOLED capacitive display. Good GPS and Google Maps performance, good camera, has WiFi 802.11b/g (the 802.11n isn't enabled, at least not yet). It's unlocked so you can use it with any GSM carrier, even if you buy it with a contract.

Con: MS Exchange calendar sync over-the-air is currently not working, support isn't as clear cut since this is marketed more like an unlocked phone, no AT&T 3G.

Price: $179 with a new 2 year contract on T-Mobile US, incremental pricing for those not yet out of contract and $529 retail with no contract. Phone is sold unlocked, even if you purchase it with a plan.

Website and where to buy: www.google.com/phone

Specs:

Display: AMOLED capacitive touch screen with haptic feedback and proximity sensor. Screen size diagonally: 3.7". Resolution: 480 x 800, supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1400 mAh.

Performance: Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz CPU (QSD 8250). 512 megs RAM and 512 megs flash ROM.

Size: 4.68 x 2.35 x 0.45 inches. Weight: 4.48 ounces.

Phone: Unlocked GSM quad band world phone 850/900/1800/1900MHz with EDGE. 3G HSDPA 7.2 Mbps on the 900/1700/2100MHz bands (3G for T-Mobile US, Europe and Asia). Forward compatible with HSPA+. Verizon version will be CDMA with EV-DO Rev. A. Phone is sold direct by Google and not offered through carriers, though it can be purchased subsidized with a contract on certain carriers.

Camera: 5.0 MP with autofocus lens and LED flash. Can capture video at 720 x 480 resolution, 20fps or better. Can geotag photos.

GPS: Has GPS that works with Google Maps (pre-installed) and TeleNav (downloadable). Has digital compass.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Music and video player (Gallery) included.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (supports A2DP Bluetooth stereo). The chipset supports WiFi 802.11n but it's not enabled.

Software: Android OS 2.1 (Eclair).

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

LG Lotus Elite

2010-02-04T00:11:00.000-08:00

In a competitive market of QWERTY texting phones, the original LG Lotus dared to look different. The square form stood out in a sea of candybar and slider QWERTY phones, and it found an audience among those who like their tech to look different. The Lotus Elite continues in that tradition, and the first model in the new LX610 series dresses in red and aims squarely at female phone buyers (don’t worry fellas, a black version is coming). The new Lotus Elite also adds a large QVGA external touch screen that matches the internal display in both size and resolution. You still get a 2.4” landscape screen on the inside, a built-in aGPS that works with Sprint Navigation, Bluetooth with A2DP, a microSD card slot with SDHC support, EV-DO 3G as well as access to multimedia content from Sprint Music Store, Sprint TV and games.

Design and Ergonomics

Compared to the original LG Lotus, the Lotus Elite looks more refined and better built. It has rounded corners, and the hinge looks strong and moves more freely. The keyboard and the keys also have more pleasing shapes that make the Lotus Elite look stylish. Measuring 3.43 x 2.44 x 0.73 inches, the phone is still quite wide and should be a handful for those with smaller hands. The biggest design change for the Lotus Elite from the original Lotus is the 320 x 240 pixel external touch screen. The internal display isn’t a touch screen but you’ve got the full QWERTY and plenty of hardware buttons to control the phone when the flip is open. We were glad to see that most built-in applications support touch control on the external display, and these applications include the music player, Sprint Navigation, Camera, video, Sprint TV and more. Applications that require the use of the keyboard such as the web browser, games and social networking don’t run on the touch screen. You can check your messages on the external touch screen but you’ll need to open the flip to type and send messages.

The QWERTY is spacious thanks to the phone’s wide body and the key layout is fairly standard. Since the Lotus Elite targets texters and social networking addicts, the phone has hardware buttons that can launch social networking sites, email and SMS with a single key press. The d-pad is large and works well for gaming. The microSD card slot is easy to access on the side of the phone, and there is a 2.5mm audio jack on the side as well.

The LG Lotus Elite has Sprint’s OneClick UI that launches most commonly used apps with a single click, and you can customize OneClick to include any applications you wish to see there. The carrousel of icons not only launches apps but also provides additional application related actions. For example, when you scroll to the Messaging icon on the carrousel you can actually see how many new messages, emails and voicemails you have; when you are on the Sprint Navigation icon you can go directly to options such as Drive To, Search, Maps and Traffic and Share and more.

Phone Features and Reception

The LG Lotus Elite has great reception and gets full bars in areas with good coverage and more than half of the full strength in areas with just OK coverage. The audio quality is excellent with very clear and loud voice on both incoming and outgoing ends, and it doesn’t have any background white noise. The Lotus Elite has a Contacts database that can store up to 600 entries with each entry capable of storing 7 numbers and full contact info. The phone can also store up to 98 speed dialing numbers and comes with excellent built-in voice dialing and voice command software. You can launch voice command by pressing and holding the Talk button or the Speaker button. The voice command software handles voice dialing, launching applications and checking the phone’s status.

The Lotus Elite supports text messaging, picture and video messaging as well as web-based IM (AIM, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger). The phone supports popular POP3 email services including AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail And Hotmail; and it works with Exchange for email and contacts. For accessing the web, the Lotus Elite comes with the Access NetFront web browser (v3.5.1). The browser displays full HTML pages with images and columns altered from their standard desktop layout. The web pages are readable with the default font setting but the browser squeezes the page’s width to fit the phone’s 320 pixel-wide display which results in columns that are one or two words wide but incredibly long (requiring lots of scrolling down and patience).

Video Review

Here's our 7 minute video review of the Lotus Elite:

GPS and Sprint Navigation

The LG Lotus Elite has a built-in aGPS that works with Sprint Navigation. The GPS gets signal and position fixes quite fast and Sprint Navigation loads quickly. Sprint Navigation has real time route calculation, re-routing and turn-by-turn directions with voice guidance. The Lotus Elite is generally quick to calculate routes except at the beginning of a real time navigation session. It takes a bit of time to catch up with the current location, but once it’s found you, it can certainly keep up with your driving. The screen looks good for viewing maps and the speakers are loud and clear for voice guidance. Sprint Navigation (powered by TeleNav) comes with a large selection of POIs and offers local searches and location sharing.

Multimedia

The LG Lotus Elite is a good music phone thanks to the front facing stereo speakers, the support for Sprint Music Store, the microSD card slot and the built-in music player. The phone’s speakers are loud and ringy; audio quality is clear though not terribly full. The Lotus Elite has touch controls for the music player on the external screen to match the outward firing speakers. The phone works well with the Sprint’s Music Store, and the built-in music player can play MP3, AAC, AAC+ and MP4A files. We tested tunes ripped in the iTunes and they played well on the Lotus Elite. The microSD card slot supports SDHC and we tested high capacity cards which worked fine on the phone. The LG Lotus Elite has a 2.5mm headset jack, but it doesn’t come with a headset in the box. The phone also works with wireless stereo headsets via Bluetooth A2DP. We tested the music playback using the Jabra HALO, and the Lotus Elite had some trouble streaming music via A2DP to the Jabra HALO though it had no problem streaming voice calls.

The Lotus Elite supports Sprint TV, a collection of on-demand TV shows, movies and music programs served over Sprint’s data network. The streaming speed is decent on the Lotus Elite, and the video playback has some frame drops but not too laggy as long as you are in an area with decent EV-DO coverage. Sprint TV videos look a little blocky, especially in the full screen mode. The external screen can play Sprint TV content with touch screen controls, which makes a good use of the front speakers.

The large keyboard and the landscape screen provide good controls and display for gaming. Most games play smoothly on the Lotus Elite with good audio and excellent controls. Games don’t usually play on the external screen.

Camera

The LG Lotus Elite has a 2.0 megapixel camera that lives on the hinge of the flip. The camera faces out with the flip closed and the external screen becomes viewfinder. Like the music player, the camera app has touch controls that works on the external touch screen. The camera lens faces in when the flip is open for taking self-portrait shots. Still images taken with the Lotus Elite are decent by 2 megapixel camera phone standards. They look reasonably sharp and bright on the phone’s 2.4” screen. They are good enough for posting snapshots on the web, but on a big computer screen the photos have a noticeable amount of noise as you would expect from a 2 megapixel camera phone. The camera application offers settings for resolution, quality, white balance, brightness and more; and it has a night shot mode.

The Lotus Elite can also capture QVGA video with audio in short length for picture mail or long for storing locally. The QVGA videos look smooth and audio is in sync with video. You can choose from three resolutions, brightness and white balance for the video clips.

Battery Life

The LG Lotus Elite has a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery that’s 1,000 mAh in capacity. The claimed usage time is nearly 6 hours and the claimed standby time is 16.2 days. In our battery tests, the phone lasted us two days on moderate to heavy usage including making phone calls for 30 minutes, surfing the web for 30 minutes, pairing with several Bluetooth headsets, using Sprint Navigation for driving directions for 1 hour and watching Sprint TV for 1 hour.

Conclusion

We are glad to see that LG and Sprint are keeping the Lotus line as these are very capable messaging phones with a unique look. The new LG Lotus Elite serves up more fluid lines in design and an excellent OneClick UI. The external touch screen is an interesting update and has great integrations with most applications. The phone has great reception and in-call audio quality, making it a great voice device as well a texting phone. It offers plenty of multimedia content and strong messaging and social networking functions. It’s not a particularly good web browsing phone as the screen resolution squeezes full HTML page layouts too much, and the phone’s 2 megapixel camera will not impress mobile photographers. Sprint is also offering the LG Lotus Elite at a lower introductory price ($99) than the original LG Lotus ($149) under the same contract terms and rebate policies. If you are looking for a 3G CDMA phone with a full QWERTY and a different look, the LG Lotus Elite is certainly worth some consideration.

Pro: More polished look and better build than the original model. Great reception and voice quality.

Con: Not a great web surfing experience.

Price: $99.99 with 2-year contract after mail-in rebate. $299.99 without contract.

Websites: www.lge.com, www.sprint.com

Specs:

Display: Internal LCD: 262K Color TFT, 240 x 320 Pixels, 2.4". External LCD: 262K Color TFT, 320 x 240 Pixels, 2.4", touch screen.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable battery, 1,000 mAh. Usage time: Up to 5.9 Hours. Standby time: 16.2 Days.

Performance: Phone book can store 600 entries.

Size: 3.43 x 2.44 x 0.73 inches. Weight: 4.8 ounces.

Phone: Digital CDMA phone. 800/1900MHz. EVDO Rev. 0 for data.

Camera: 2 megapixel with night mode and self timer. Still image resolutions: 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 pixels. Can take video with audio.

Audio: Supports Polyphonic ringers and MP3 music tones. MP3 player onboard to play music in MP3, AAC, AAC+ and MP4A formats. 2.5 mm stereo audio jack. Can record voice memo. Supports vibration alert.

Networking: Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR. Profiles supported: HSP, HFP, DUN, OPP, FTP, BPP, A2DP, AVRCP, PBAP, HID. USB 2.0.

Software: Sprint One Click UI. NetFront HTML browser and web-based IM on board. Links to Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. PIM tools include Contacts, Calendar, Calculator, Alarm Clock, NotePad, Document Viewer, World Clock and Stopwatch.

Expansion: 1 microSD card slot. Supports SDHC cards. A 1 gig card included with the phone.

In the Box: The LG Lotus Elite phone with standard battery, a red hand strap, a 1GB microSD card with an SD adapter, AC charger and printed guides.

Palm Pixi Plus and Palm Pre Plus

2010-01-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

Palm Pixi Plus and Palm Pre Plus

They're back, this time on Verizon and with a "Plus" tacked to the end of their names. Though nearly identical to the Sprint versions, the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, the Verizon versions add a few tweaks while keeping the contract price the same as Sprint's models. The Pixi Plus gains WiFi 802.11b/g and the Pre Plus doubles the Pre's storage to 16 gigs. Both models will be available on Verizon on January 25, 2010 and the Pixi Plus will sell for $99 with contract while the Pre Plus will sell for $149.

Our review of these two will be brief because honestly, you've read it all before in our Palm Pre review and Palm Pixi review. There's very little difference between the Sprint and Verizon versions beyond carrier customizations (e.g.: Sprint's products have Sprint Navigation while Verizon's version has VZ Navigator) and the increase in storage for the Pre and added WiFi for the Pixi. Our feeling is the same when it comes to picking between the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus: it's really worth the extra $50 to get the Pre Plus. It has a larger, higher resolution display that's noticeably more vibrant and bright, it has a better QWERTY keyboard and it can also play 3D games that the Pixi Plus can't.

Verizon's got another value-added for both the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus: Mobile HotSpot. This free downloadable application basically turns your webOS Palm smartphone into a MiFi. Run the app, create either an open or WPA/WPA2 WiFi network and turn on the HotSpot feature. Your Palm becomes its own WiFi network and it shares its EV-DO Rev. A connection with your notebook, PC or other WiFi enabled device. Gone are the torturous tethering setups over Bluetooth and USB. If you wish to use the Mobile HotSpot feature, you'll have to pay an additional $40 a month on top of the the Pre and Pixi $29.99/month unlimited data plan.

Palm's application store is now a reasonably lively place, and you can download free and paid apps directly to the phone. While the selection isn't as overwhelming as the iTunes store nor as robust as the Android Market, there are some good apps now including various weather programs, AP News, the New York Times webOS app and even good quality 3D games like Need for Speed for the Pre. If you wish to purchase applications, you'll do so using a credit card and your Palm's App Catalog program since there's currently no billing through the carrier. Many apps are 99 cents to $4.99, while tier one games like Need for Speed cost $9.99. Overall, there's quite a lot of fluff in the nascent App Catalog, but there are enough useful titles to keep one entertained and productive. Palm includes an Office suite so you don't need to purchase that.

Palm's Synergy is alive and well on the Verizon versions of these phones, and we still love its impossibly solid ability to sync PIM data from multiple sources without creating a bucket of duplicates or munged contacts. The Pre Plus and Pixi Plus can sync to Google, MS Exchange, Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo and it can handle POP3 and IMAP email too. Palm's webOS phones don't sync over USB or Bluetooth to your desktop computer-- it's all cloud syncing. But they do notoriously sync music via iTunes (though Apple frequently breaks syncing with iTunes updates).

After some time away from webOS, we have to say it's great to dive back in: it's a thoroughly modern and attractive operating system that handles multi-tasking with aplomb yet manages to be stable. It's not as customizable as Android and it doesn't have the huge ecosystem of applications that the iPhone does, but it's very visually appealing, powerful yet easy to learn.

Palm Pre Plus

While the Sprint version has a gloss back, the Verizon version opts for a soft touch finish that's less slippery and doesn't get mucky with fingerprints. We still like webOS and the Pre's decent speed even when multi-tasking, though it's a bit slower than the iPhone 3GS and faster Android phones like the Motorola Droid and Nexus One.

The 3.1" capacitive display is bright and so colorful you could mistake it for an AMOLED screen. The 320 x 480 resolution is the same as the iPhone's, and significantly lower than the Droid's and the HTC Imagio. But Palm's webOS is fresh, fun and easy to use, so hardware isn't everything. And the Pre's impressive 600MHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU is modern and among the faster smartphone CPUs. WebOS multi-tasks (take that, iPhone) and it's incredibly easy to switch between applications: just tap the illuminated touch bar below the screen to minimize an app. Throw its window up toward the top edge of the display to quit the program.

The smartphone comes with the usual webOS applications including a YouTube Player, Google Maps, a photo viewer, capable webkit web browser, memos, music and video players and PIM applications. The Pre Plus ships with VZ Navigator, Verizon's $9.99/month navigation and spoken directions application that works with the Pre Plus' GPS.

The Pre Plus has Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, a 3 megapixel fixed focus camera with a small LED flash, and a slide-down QWERTY keyboard with tiny, rubbery keys that aren't among the best for serious typing.

Palm Pixi Plus

The Pixi Plus is a lot like its big brother the Pre Plus, but it doesn't do most things as well. It has a smaller 2.63" capacitive touch screen that runs at a slightly lower 320 x 400 pixel resolution. Its display isn't as bright and vibrant as the Pre's, and finger control is slightly more difficult since the on-screen targets are smaller. The Pixi Plus carries the same list of features as the Pre Plus: WiFi 802.11b/g with Mobile HotSpot support, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, a GPS that works with Google Maps and VZ Navigator and a 3.5mm stereo headset jack. The Pixi Plus has a lower resolution 2 megapixel camera with a small LED flash and a fixed focus lens. Rather than the Pre's Cortex A8 CPU, the Pixi runs on a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7627 CPU. Though their clock speeds are the same, the Pre Plus is noticeably faster and has support for high quality 3D games which aren't available for the Pixi Plus. The Pixi Plus does run more responsively than the Sprint version did with the original firmware. Unfortunately, we no longer have the Sprint Pixi in house to compare them with the newest firmware.

Like the Pre Plus, the Pixi has tiny, rubbery keys. But the Pixi's are even smaller and the keyboard rows are straight rather than curved in a more ergonomic smile configuration.

The Pixi Plus targets folks who are upgrading from the once very popular Palm Centro, and it sports a modern version of the Centro form factor. If you like QWERTY bar phones and prefer a thinner phone, the Pixi gains points against the Pre Plus. But in all other respects, from display quality and speed to camera quality and QWERTY keyboard, the Pre Plus is the better phone. It's a fun and affordable smartphone, but as we noted in our review of the Sprint version, the Pre is the Pixi's biggest enemy.

Video Review

Here's our 7 minute video review of the Palm Pixi Plus and Palm Pre Plus:

Conclusion

Both the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus are fun, modern and enjoyable smartphones. Combined with Verizon's strong network and EV-DO Rev. A fast data, these phones are definitely worth a good, long look. Palm's webOS is capable and multi-tasks well, but we'd say its simple and non-customizable UI is best suited to smartphone novices and those who don't want to spend hours, days or weeks customizing their smartphone. If you're a power user who likes to tweak and have a customizable desktop, or craves a higher resolution display to better view web pages and MS Office documents, Verizon's Droid duo and their HTC Windows Mobile phones might be a better choice. But then, it's great to have choice, isn't it? And between the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, if you can afford the $50 additional, you know which we'd pick.

What about the Sprint vs. Verizon versions? Honestly, the phones are so close that we can't say the Plus phones are a really signficant improvement. We'd wager that WiFi on the Pixi Plus is a lot more important to most of you than the increased storage capacitity on the Pre Plus. What it comes down to here is choosing the carrier that suits you best in terms of service, features and price. Again, it's great to have choice.

Price: Palm Pre Plus is $149 after rebate with a 2 year contract. The Palm Pixi Plus is $99 after rebate with a 2 year contract.

Websites: www.verizonwireless.com, www.palm.com

Specs:

Palm Pre Plus:

Display: 24K color capacitive touch screen. Screen size diagonally: 3.1". Resolution: 320 x 480, supports both portrait and landscape modes in certain applications (has accelerometer). Has proximity and ambient light sensors.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable.

Performance: ARM Cortex-A8 (TI OMAP 3430), 600MHz CPU, 16 gigs flash storage built-in.

Size: 3.9 x 2.3 x 0.67 inches. Weight: 4.76 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital 800/1900MHz with EVDO Rev. A.

Camera: 3 MP with LED flash. Takes photos but not video.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Stereo headset included. Can play MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCLEP and WAV files. Video player can play MPEG H.263 and H.264 formats.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP Bluetooth stereo profile.

Software: Palm Web OS 1.0.2. Messaging (SMS, Google Talk and AIM), web browser, email, photo viewer, video player, tasks, memos, music player, Google Maps, YouTube player, Amazon MP3, Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, Nascar mobile, calculator, MS Office document viewer, PDF viewer, clock and App Catalog.

Expansion: None. Micro USB connector.

Palm Pixi Plus:

Display: 320 x 400 pixel capacitive display, 18 bit color. Screen size diagonally: 2.63". Resolution: 240 x 320. Has an accelerometer, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1150 mAh. Claimed talk time: up to 5 hours.

Performance: Qualcomm MSM7627 600 MHz processor (dual core with 400MHz modem core). 256 megs RAM. 8 gigs flash storage.

Size: 4.4 x 2.2 x 0.4 inches. Weight: 3.26 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital 800/1900MHz with EV-DO Rev. A for fast data and fallback to 1xRTT.

Camera: 2.0 MP with LED flash (shoots photos only).

GPS: Has GPS that works with Sprint Navigation and Google Maps.

Audio: Built in speakers, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Has ringer silencer switch.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo.

Software: Palm web OS. Messaging (SMS, Google Talk and AIM), web browser, email, photo viewer, video player, tasks, memos, music player, Google Maps, YouTube player, Amazon MP3, Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, Nascar mobile, calculator, MS Office document viewer, PDF viewer, clock and App Catalog.

Expansion slot: None.

Nokia 7710

2010-01-23T10:20:00.000-08:00

Nokia 7710

Symbian Series 90 as a UI (user interface) platform has been discontinued. The much talked about Nokia 7700 based on Series 90 appeared only in previews and never saw production. However, one Series 90 device did make it to market, and that product is the Nokia 7710. Billed as both a PDA and a media device, the Nokia 7710 has a wide and bright touch screen, a megapixel camera, a built-in FM radio receiver and 90 MB RAM. Throw in Bluetooth, stereo audio, a full set of PIM (Personal Information Manager) applications and EDGE support, you've got the 7710.

The Nokia 7710 smartphone is also designed for business users. It comes with full set of office applications, email and messaging, local and remote synchronization with PC, and web browsing with Flash support. None of our US carriers sells the Nokia 7710, rather it's only available from importers such as TigerDirect.com and expansys.com. They sell the device unlocked and you can use any GSM carrier's SIM card in the 7710. This is a triband phone supporting the 900/1800/1900 MHz bands (no 850 MHz for Cingular and AT&T Wireless).

In the Box

The package includes the 7710 phone with a black plastic stand, USB sync cable, stereo headphones with FM radio antenna unit, 2 styli, 128 MB MMC card, 1300 mAh Li-Polymer battery, companion CD with PC Suite for synchronization and a printed user manual.

Design and Ergonomics

The Nokia 7710 is a giant among phones. With its 5 inch long and 2.7 inch tall body, the 7710 has a hefty presence. It's certainly still pocket-able although you will notice the weight in your pants' pocket or your purse. Even though big, the design of the Nokia shows a certain elegance. All the corners are slightly curved and the sides slope gently. Both the front and back plastic covers are in silver with some white highlights to create attractive accent lines. The case that houses the phone is black and it's not covered by the silver plates. Six function buttons along with a 5-way directional pad flank the device; three on each side of the display. The d-pad, menu key and desk UI key sit on the left side of the screen while the zoom key, switch key and the Esc key on the right. The earpiece lives under the front face plate between the switch key and the Esc key, and the mic is near the bottom on the left side of the device.

There are no buttons or ports on the left side of the Nokia 7710 and you will only find the Power On/Off switch on the right side panel. You will find the Call Send/Answer, Call End/Reject buttons along with a speaker switch on the top left of the device and a battery door latch on the top right side. The battery door covers the entire back side of the Nokia leaving only the camera lens and the back firing speaker uncovered. Underneath the battery door, you will find the MMC slot and SIM card slot next to the battery. The MMC slot is easy to access, however if you wish to swap SIM card you will need to take the battery out first to access the SIM slot. The charging port and the Pop-port connector for synchronization/headphone/FM radio live on the bottom edge of the phone. Stylus silo opens on the bottom right edge of the 7710.

Size comparison: Sony Ericsson T610, Palm Treo 650, 7710 and Samsung i730

Horsepower and Performance

The Nokia 7710 has an ARM based processor running at 150 MHz, slightly faster than the Nokia Series 60 devices such as the Nokia 7610 and the Nokia N-Gage QD. Applications launch with a slight delay compared to the instant loading on the Series 60 phones, but by no means unbearable. Working with Office files such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint files shows no sign of delay; however saving photos taken with the megapixel camera takes longer than on other Nokia phones. The speed lag also appears in the phone's boot up time and in web page rendering using the bundled web browser application.

The Nokia 7710 comes with about 90 MB of RAM for you to store your PIM data, messages and multimedia files as well as applications. That's a healthy amount of memory if you mainly need to store contacts, calendar, ringing tones and some photos. But if you have a large multimedia library with ton of videos, then you can utilize the MultiMediaCard (MMC) for additional storage space. The 7710 sales package comes with a 128 MB MMC card and the device supports up to 512 MB MMC.

Phone Features

The Nokia 7710 is a GSM cell phone that runs on the 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz bands. For those of you who aren't familiar with the US band support: Cingular and AT&T Wireless rely heavily on the 850 band and also use the 1900 MHz band. T Mobile uses only 1900 MHz in the US. The Nokia 7710 is sold only through importers in this country, not through any carriers, and the device is unlocked which means you can pop in any GSM SIM card and use the phone where service is available.

Like many Nokia phones, the 7710 has strong reception. It gets full signal strength in strong coverage areas and half signal strength in poor coverage areas where other brands struggle to hold a signal. The Nokia has an amazing microphone and earpiece and both incoming and outgoing call quality is very good. You can change the volume of the earpiece and speaker by tapping on the Audio Settings next to the phone dialer screen. The separate Speaker Switch hardware button makes it easy to turn on the speaker during a call.

Like many smartphones, the Nokia 7710 has a dialer screen that you can either launch from the "desk" menu or by pushing the Call Send/Answer button on the device. The dialer screen has two sets of functions depending on whether you are on or off the phone. While not in a call, the dialer screen shows a number pad that looks like the number keypad on regular phones. On the right of the number pad, you will find short cuts to Contacts and Recent Calls. If you have just answered a call and the incoming number isn't in your contacts database, the dialer application will give you an option to save it to your contacts or dial that number. During a call, the shortcuts on the dialer screen will change to Audio Settings and options to make another call or a conference call. When you have two lines in use, the dialer screen will show you both calls' info and you can put one on hold very easily. While providing these easy-to-use features, the dialer screen can also generate some hassle and confusion. To pack all the features into the application, the phone app makes you go through three drop-down menus to access the number pad, the speed dial screen and the call manager which has call send, end, answer, hold options. Doubtless, few of us wish to go through several different screens to handle these basic phone functions.

The Nokia phone supports voice dialing, conference call, call forwarding, call barring and setting various profiles. Voice dialing works well. It can be used in any language and it uses voice recognition so you should record the voice tags if you are the one who will be using the voice dialing feature. The Nokia comes with 6 default profiles including Flight mode, and you can add your own profiles and set ringtones and alerts for incoming calls, email, text and Multimedia messages and more. You have 8 empty slots for speed dial numbers and you can assign them and change them anytime you wish. Like most phones, the number 1 speed dial is reserved for the voice mail. The 7710 also supports unique ringtones for specific contacts and display of photo caller ID. While in a call, you can also access other applications such as taking notes, looking up other contacts, etc. without interrupting the phone call.

The Nokia 7710 has class 10 GPRS for data and EDGE. The phones gets throughput of 55k to 100k on T-Mobile network in our area where EDGE is available. The connection will maintain for a while even after you have stopped using the data network. While the data speed is desirable, web page rendering using the built-in browser is slow, especially when loading pages with a good number of images. Too bad Opera doesn't have a version of their excellent web browser for Series 90.

Display, Sound and Multimedia

Other than the Nokia Communicators such as the 9300 and 9500 series and the upcoming 770, the Nokia 7710 is one of the rare few with a luxurious 3.5 inch TFT wide screen that's made for web browser, working on Office documents and email and watching wide screen video clips. The touch screen sports 640 x 320 resolution and is capable of displaying 65k colors. The display is sharp and bright. Colors are reasonably saturated with a very slight blue tint. Surfing web pages and viewing photos on the Nokia is a joy, though the animations and video samples that come with the phone didn't show off the great screen quality due to the device speed.

The sound quality through the speaker and the headset is superb and the volume is loud. It's a rare thing to hear such excellent sound on a mobile phone. You can use the bundled Music Player to play MP3s. The phone supports AAC, AMR, RealAudio, WAV and MIDI ringtones. If you want to use your own ringtones, simply copy the sound file to the MMC and use the Profile to personalize the ringtones. Another use for the great sound quality is the built-in Pop-port FM radio. To listen to the FM radio, connect the Pop-port headset to the device and launch the Visual Radio application from your phone. The radio gets plenty of FM stations in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Visual Radio software provides you with interface to set up favorite channels, search for stations and more.

The Nokia 7710 supports three video formats: 3GPP standard H.263 profile 0 level 10 video codec with audio encoded in narrowband AMR, MPEG4 SVP level 0 video using the 3GP file format for playback only and RealVideo 8 RealAudio 8 for video streaming. The bundled sample videos on the MMC in these formats played fine on the Nokia. We tried some AVI and MOV files on the phone, none of the clips played. Video playback exhibited some rendering delays and dropped frames using the bundled RealPlayer.

Camera

The Nokia 7710 has good quality megapixel CMOS camera that's capable of taking still photos up to 1152 x 864 resolution with 2x digital zoom and live video with audio at QCIF resolution. Photo quality is similar to the excellent Nokia 7610 and beats many other camera phones on the market, though it can't compare to the Sony Ericsson S710's 1.3MP CCD camera. It does well in bright to moderate light but shows some noise in low light settings. You can set the Contrast and Brightness for the camera and select from three image and video quality levels to take pictures and videos. Nokia bundles a very capable image viewer for photo editing and viewing. You can edit the images, save them into folders, use them for Photo ID in contacts or send them via MMS. You can playback the videos in RealPlayer.

Bluetooth

The Nokia 7710 has integrated Bluetooth 1.1 with support for Serial Port, Dial-Up Networking (DUN), Object Push, File Transfer and Handsfree Profiles. The Bluetooth application is accessible via the Control Panel and provides step-by-step instructions on connecting the device to a PC or pairing it with a Bluetooth headset. To synchronize with the PC or transfer files via Bluetooth connection, you will need to install the PC Suite application on your desktop and then use SyncML for syncing or follow the transfer wizard for transferring data. Pairing the 7710 with several Bluetooth headset including the Motorola HS820 and the Plantronics M3500 proved to be quick and easy. The voice quality via these headsets is decent and the range between the headsets and the device reached over 20 feet.

Battery

The Nokia 7710 has a user replaceable 1300 mAh Li-Polymer battery. That's a healthy amount of juice for this phone. The battery lives under the back plate next to the SIM card slot. If you open the back plate to access the MMC, the phone will notice it and you won't be able to use the phone until you put the back plate back on.

The battery performs well supporting the large and sharp display, Bluetooth, the camera and other functions on the phone. The claimed talk time is up to 12 hours and standby time is up to 14 days. In our test, the phone didn't achieve these goals, but did very well compare to other smartphones with similar feature sets. You can get about 5 days standby time with Bluetooth radio turned off. The talk time is close to 7 hours. The camera and Bluetooth will use more power, of course.

User Interface and Software

The Nokia 7710 runs the Series 90 UI that includes an icon-based home screen that Nokia calls the Desk application, a well designed on-screen text input keyboard and handwriting recognition, a Control Panel that gives you access to over a dozen phone settings and functions as well as a file manager that works with many bundled applications. The Desk UI will look familiar to Series 60 users since it uses similar icons. The on-screen keyboard works very well as does the handwriting recognition. The keyboard will pop up automatically when you are in need of entering letters or numbers; this means you don't need to look for the keyboard or launch it yourself.

The Nokia bundles applications to work with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. You can create and edit Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with the applications on the Nokia, but you can only view or run slide shows with PowerPoint presentations. Most of the files we tested didn't need any conversion and ran straight from the MMC. Nokia also bundles a web browser that supports HTML, xHTML, Macromedia Flash 6 and SMS Tags. The Messaging application can send and receive text messages, multimedia messages and email messages. The multimedia messaging supports the 3GPP SML profile which allows you to send short presentations via MMS. Email support includes SMTP, POP3, IMAP4 and APOP protocols. The Nokia also supports WAP Push messages which means that the messages are received without constant connections through the WAP Stack into your Messaging Inbox.

For multimedia, the Nokia 7710 bundles Music Player for playing MP3, WAV and AMR files.; They include Images for viewing photos and editing images using the sketch function; and RealPlayer for playing videos. The Nokia supports Java technology for gaming and you can run games and applications developed for MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1. To work with the FM radio bundled with the 7710 Pop-port headset, Nokia provides the Visual Radio application for you to select channels, search stations, change volume and more. One of the most exciting multimedia features, though in its very early technology stage, is the support for the DVB-H mobile television format which allows you to watch real time broadcast TV. There is no such service yet in the US, some parts of UK have already begun the test runs.

In addition to the Office apps and multimedia tools, the Nokia comes with a full set of PIM (Personal Information Manager) applications. They include Contacts, Calendar, To-do and some useful tools such as Converter (currency, length, mass, energy and much more), Calculator, Clock and Voice Recorder. To sync the device with your desktop PC, you can use the PC Suite on the companion CD.

Conclusion

A stunning looking and unique phone that has Nokia's excellent reception and call quality. The unit is however rather large by phone standards, and the user interface requires too many steps for simple tasks. Call management is handled largely on-screen and many users will miss the standard phone hardware buttons. The 7710 boasts impressive multimedia features: 1 megapixel camera with video, FM radio, RealPlayer and Flash. However the device runs slowly when working with multimedia, despite the 150 MHz processor. Still, if you want a very large resolution touch screen smartphone that combines a PDA with Nokia's signature phone reception and strong Bluetooth, the 7710 is worth considering.

Web site: www.nokia.com

List price: Estimated US price from importers $589 unlocked.

Specs:

Display: 3.5 inch TFT wide screen. 640 x 320 resolution, capable of displaying 65k colors.

Battery: 1300 mAh Li-Polymer battery. Claimed talk time: up to 12 hours; claimed standby time: up to 342 hours.

Performance: 150 MHz ARM family processor. 90 MB RAM for storing data and applications. 128 MB MMC included and supports up to 512 MB MMC capacity.

Size: 5 x 2.7 x 0.74 inches (128 x 69.5 x 19 mm). Weighs 6.66 oz. (189 grams).

Camera: 1 megapixel CMOS camera capable of taking still photos and video with audio. Max. resolution: 1152 x 864 for still shots and 176 x 144 for videos. F 1:3.2 aperture.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and Pop-port stereo headset connector. Voice Recorder, Visual Radio and Music Player included.

Networking: Bluetooth 1.1, no IR port.

Phone: GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz. Class 10 GPRS and EDGE.

Software: Symbian OS version 7.0s, Series 90 UI. PIM applications include Contacts, Calendar and To-Do. Document, Sheet and Presentations bundled for working with MS Office files. Multimedia applications include RealPlayer, Music Player, Images and Visual Radio. Web browser and Messaging included. Other tools include: Telephone app for using with the phone features, Calculator, Clock, Converter and File Manager. PC Suite include for synchronizing with desktop PC.

Expansion: One MultiMedia Card (MMC) slot, supports up to 512 MB MultiMedia cards. A 128 MB MMC card included in the package.

Nokia N-Gage QD

2010-01-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

Nokia N-Gage QD GSM Phone and Game Deck

When is a mobile phone not just a mobile phone? When it's the Nokia N-Gage QD "Game Deck". Sure, mobile phones can be smart, offering some of the same features found on PDAs. They can all play games, but the ergonomics aren't up to snuff for an hour of action-riddled fun. The N-Gage QD aims to change that, with a design befitting a handheld game console that somehow manages to work well as a phone.

While the original N-Gage (no QD at the end of its name) acquired a collection of descriptive phrases such as the taco and side talkin' thanks to its ungainly design and oddly mounted speaker and mic which required you to hold it on end to talk, the QD is a new animal. Not that the innards have changed much, but the exterior has been completely redesigned. The QD is smaller, looks slick, works well for gaming and phoning and best of all: you hold it normally, flat against your ear and face to have a conversation.

Besides its impressive gaming capabilities, perhaps the most attractive thing about the N-Gage QD is its price. Symbian Series 60 GSM phones are generally pricey, but the N-Gage QD is a wildly affordable Series 60 beast with Bluetooth. What is Symbian Series 60? The Symbian operating system is the most widely used cell phone OS. Series 60 is at the high end of the Symbian OS lineup, offering several PDA-like features, an expansion slot for memory, and the ability to install add-on programs of all sorts (there are more than a thousand available). Such power comes at a price, and Series 60 Nokia phones generally cost between $300 to $500 US. The QD sells in the US for somewhere between free and $149 with activation and an unlocked version for use with any GSM carrier sells for $199 (no contract commitment required).

Not bad! Of course, the N-Gage targets kids who love gaming along with adults. That means the device had to be relatively inexpensive. To keep costs down, Nokia didn't load this with some of the features you'll find on their more expensive Series 60 phones such as the Nokia 7610 or 6620. The QD has only a 4,096 color display rather than the usual high end 65,000 color display (though games look very good), it lacks a camera and there is no cable syncing option and no IR port, so you'll need to suffer through Bluetooth syncing if you need to get your Outlook data onto the phone. If you can live without those features, are on a budget, or best of all are a hardcore gamer who doesn't want to carry two devices or be seen with a Nintendo DS on the commuter train, read on.

Design and Ergonomics

The QD looks like no other cell phone. That's a good thing, since the device doubles as a handheld game deck. Not a flip, not a candy bar, not even a taco; the QD fits well in the hand for use as a phone but has an overall design reminiscent of a game controller. The excellent 5-way directional pad lives on the left and the number pad (also used in gaming) is to the right of the color display. It feels great in the hand when gaming and the controls work perfectly. The d-pad supports diagonals and the domed number keys work well for gaming and dialing. The 5 and 7 keys have a different look and an added bubble-shaped dome on top making them easy to locate since they're used most often in games.

Above: the N-Gage QD and the original N-Gage.

The call send and end buttons flank the lower left and right sides of the front face, and the standard Nokia Series 60 application launch pad and "pencil" (turns on/off predictive text, changes to numeric input/text/symbols) buttons are there along with an action button located just below and to the right of the d-pad. The number pad's standard layout makes dialing and SMS-ing simple, and the keys are backlit. The headset jack and charger port are located on the top edge under a rubber flap, and the MMC card slot is located under a flap on the bottom edge of the phone. That's right: unlike the original N-Gage, the QD has a hot-swappable slot on the side rather than placing the MMC slot under the battery. That means you need not power down the phone to switch cards or games (games are sold on MMC cards). The earpiece speaker is located on the front face in the top right corner and the mic is located on the opposite end, so you can hold the phone normally in conversation. The speaker for system sounds, gaming and speakerphone is located on the bottom edge so it won't accidentally deafen you when holding the phone to your head.

The battery lives under a large door on the back of the phone, and the SIM slot is located under the battery as with most phones. The power button is on the right side under the rubberized surround that wraps the around the sides for a good grip. You do have to press the power button with some force due to the stiffness of the rubber surround. The phone can accept interchangeable face plates and the rubber grip is replaceable. Overall, it looks and feels solid and well made. Our unit has withstood months of gaming use and the buttons haven't lost their firmness or masking, and the casing is still in great shape.

While the QD is larger than today's "micro" phone offerings, it is not overly large and fits into pocket or purse. The QD is as small as possible without compromising gaming ergonomics.

Phone Features, Reception and Data

The N-Gage QD is a GSM device with GPRS for data. It comes in two flavors: an 850/1900MHz version for the US and a 900/1800MHz version for Europe and Asia. If you need a quad band world phone that works anywhere in the world GSM is available, look elsewhere. If you're not an overseas traveler, read on. GSM service in the US is offered by T-Mobile, Cingular and AT&T Wireless, all of whom offer the N-Gage QD at attractive new activation pricing. If you prefer, you can buy the unlocked version of the QD for use with any GSM carrier, no contract required. Just pop in your SIM and start gaming and calling. There is no CDMA version of the N-Gage, which means it is not offered by Sprint and Verizon, the two largest US CDMA network carriers.

The QD has all the features you've come to expect on a quality Nokia phone such as call logging, last number redial, speakerphone, call mute, speed dialing up to 8 numbers, voice dialing up to 25 numbers and support for conference calling. When in a call you can adjust call volume by pressing the d-pad left and right. Volume and mic sensitivity through the built-in mic and earpiece are good. The same can be said of the included dual mono earbud headset (unlike the original N-Gage, the QD doesn't have stereo output) and call quality through a variety of popular Bluetooth headsets. If you're gaming when a call comes in, the QD gracefully notifies you of the call and allows you to answer without any fuss, muss or crashing.

As with most current Nokia phones, reception is very good and near the top of the pack, beating out many other brands and bested only by the Nokia 7610 and palmOne Treo 650. Voice quality has been good, even in low signal areas. Incoming voices were sharp and clear by cell phone standards and our call recipients said we sounded great.

For data, the QD has GPRS class 6. That's not going to excite any data-happy geek, as class 6 is slower than the now more commonly used class 10 (the fastest standard GPRS implementation) and the phone lacks EDGE. Class 6 should give you about 37kbps, while class 10 averages 45 - 53 kbps and EDGE averages 100kbps. The good news is that connections are reliable with the N-Gage and it's very easy to use as a Bluetooth cellular modem with a PDA or notebook (commonly called DUN or dial up networking). Given the display size and rendering abilities of mobile phones, class 6 is more than adequate for browsing the web, though a faster data connection would improve the multi-player gaming experience. Speaking of browsers, Nokia includes their own XHTML web browser which supports WAP and HTML sites. In addition, you get a mail application that supports IMAP4, POP3 and SMTP.

Gaming

When it comes to gaming, the N-Gage QD is truly a rare breed. The combination of a great game deck design, top tier AAA tiles and multiplayer capabilities over GPRS makes this device unique and appealing to gamers who are serious about gaming on their cell phones. You won't find this combination of features on any PDA, not even the Tapwave Zodiac which lacks GPRS and a wide selection of top titles. Even handheld gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS and the upcoming Sony PSP (due out late March in the US) and Gizmondo (US release in Q1) can't compete on all fronts. To further differentiate the QD from the pack, Nokia hosts the N-Gage Arena where players can download game demos, play massive multiplayer games, participate in competitions and more.

Sims screen shot

No gaming device can survive without a solid game library and Nokia has built and continues to build an impressive line of games that will attract not only casual gamers but serious gamers too. Aside from the usual mobile gaming titles such as Snakes and Bomberman, you'll find very attractive ports and original games that can't be found on other handheld gaming devices. Sports games fans will find Madden, Tiger Woods, FIFA and SSX titles. First and third person shooters can get their fix on Pathway to Glory, Call of Duty and even Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. And let's not forget RPG fans who will drool over The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey, X-Men Legends and the first mobile MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) Pocket Kingdom. All games on the N-Gage are designed for you to play for ten minutes or the entire day depending on your schedule, true to the mobile purpose; and most support multiplayer over Bluetooth.

The games' mobile implementations work well and are well-mated to the N-Gage's controls. The game designs and ports have more streamlined sequences or story lines, suitable for the handheld portable gaming experience. In Ashen, a first person shooter game, you will explore 8 long levels with various types of terrain and hunt down monsters. The sequence is straightforward: explore the level, kill all monsters and get out. The movement and controls are easy even without the traditional shoulder buttons. Picking up weapons and shooting at enemies are equally effortless. The game has amazing audio that could startle you when a monster catches you by surprise hiding in an alcove or coming around the corner. It doesn't have as many types of weapons as you will find in Unreal Tournament, but with 4 multiplayer maps and a good number of weapons you'll feel the same adrenalin rush in death match and team death match modes.

The streamlined game design also works in more complex games such as The Sims Bustin' Out. The N-Gage version of the Sims changes the focus of the game from free play to goal/quest oriented play. You will unlock items by completing goals given to you by Sims and move into bigger and bigger houses along the way. The game adds more depth to the main quest by packing in a good number of mini games where you can become the most successful Sim. The number pad on the QD gives the Sims game plenty of control options and it doesn't have much of a learning curve before you get helplessly addicted. The multiplayer game allows you to trade or sell rare items through daily live auctions. There are many, many more titles, so check out a few more for yourself if you get a QD! Games are sold in many retail stores on MMC cards and average $29 to $35, and both the original N-Gage and the N-Gage QD can play the same games.

Comparing the size of the Nokia 3650, N-Gage QD, Sony Ericsson T610 and the Audiovox SMT 5600.

Display, Sound and Multimedia

The 2.2" 176 x 208 pixel 4,096 color backlit display may not be the best on the block but it manages to look darned good when playing games. It has good color saturation, brightness and contrast. It's not the ideal unit for photo viewing given the lack of color depth, but then the QD lacks a camera anyway.

Sound through the speaker is of good quality and can get plenty loud-- certainly great for gaming. Unfortunately it is a mono device (the original N-Gage was stereo) and it has no FM radio capability. While the QD can play MP3s, you won't be using it as an iPod replacement since it lacks stereo output. Hence the unit ships with a dual mono earbud headset and there is no stereo headset option. The QD supports MIDI and WAV ringtones but not MP3 ringtones.

Battery Life

The QD ships with the 1070 mA Nokia BL-6C Lithium Ion rechargeable battery and Nokia's standard compact world charger. That's a high capacity battery and the N-Gage has excellent battery life. When not gaming and talking on the phone for 45 minutes/day with Bluetooth turned on, the device lasts 5 days on a charge. Gaming reduces battery life and you'll get approximately 4 hours of pure gaming on a charge.

Bluetooth

The QD has integrated Bluetooth 1.1 class B. You can use Bluetooth for multiplayer gaming, sending and receiving files (OBEX profile), syncing (serial port profile) and headsets (hands free profile). Like most Nokia phones, the N-Gage's Bluetooth was solid and easy to use. We used it as a wireless modem over Bluetooth with a variety of PDAs and a notebook, exchanged files and contact records with desktops and PDAs and used it with several of the Bluetooth headsets reviewed on our site. The QD worked well with all the headsets we tested, offering easy pairing, reliable connections, good audio quality, volume and range. Syncing to Outlook using PC Suite over Bluetooth is a challenge so be prepared to spend some time getting that connection working. Also be sure to get the latest version of PC Suite available for the N-Gage, as each new version offers improvements in ease of use and reliability.

Software Bundle

The device runs Symbian Series 60, 6.0 version 1. Like all Series 60 phones, it comes with a generous helping of useful applications for PIM data, and apps such as a video player, image viewer, calculator, clock, voice recorder, ringtone composer, unit converter, screen shot, web browser and email client.

For PIM apps, the QD has Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and a Notes app too. The Contacts application has fields for first name, last name, company, address, telephone (home and work), web site, email address, mobile phone number (home and work), fax (home and work), pager, job title, notes, birthday and more . The Calendar has day, week and month views, and you can specify the default view and the starting day of the week. Of course it has alarms and you can create new entries categorized as Meeting, Memo or Anniversary. Calendar supports repeating events: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and yearly. To-do is a task management app that supports priorities and Notes is a note taking application. All of these sync to Outlook on the desktop using PC Suite on the desktop. Mac owners can give iSync a try.

Conclusion

If you're a gamer, this is an excellent device. There's a good selection of high quality titles and the device has great gaming ergonomics. It works well as a phone and is the most affordable current Symbian Series 60 smartphone.

Pro: Great for gaming and there's an excellent selection of titles. It's sturdy and will withstand plenty of gaming action. The device is attractive and portable. Strong compliment of mobile phone features and works well as a phone overall. A very affordable Series 60 device that works with the wealth of Series 60 freeware and shareware on the market. Bluetooth is reliable. Though only 4,096 colors, the display looks great when gaming. MMC slot is hot swappable and easily accessible (no need to pull the battery out). Very good battery life when used as a phone and organizer, respectable life when gaming.

Con: No cabled sync port for those who don't want to tackle Bluetooth syncing to the desktop for PIM data. Mono rather than stereo output. GPRS class 6 is not very fast by today's standards and likely hinders more bandwidth intensive multi-player game features. Speed dial only holds 8 numbers.

Web Site: www.n-gage.com

Price: $199 for the unlocked version for use with any carrier. Carrier subsidized versions available from T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless and Cingular for $149 and often much less (free!) with new activation.

Specs:

Display: TFT color backlit LCD. 12 bit color, 4,096 colors. 176 x 208 pixel display, 2.2" diagonal.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1070 mA Nokia BL-6C.

Performance: Symbian Series 60 OS, 6.0 version 1. 104MHz ARM 9 processor, 3.4 megs internal memory. Expandable via MMC cards.

Size: 4.65 x 2.68 x .87 inches. Weight: 5 oz.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 2.5mm headset jack. Audio is mono, and the phone will output dual mono with Nokia's headset. Supports Midi and WAV ringtones. Supports voice dialing and has speakerphone.

Networking: Bluetooth 1.1.

Wireless: GSM 850/1900MZ (US model), 900/1800 (Asia, Europe). GPRS class 6 (2+2, 3+1, class B).

Software: Symbian Series 60 OS, 6.0 version 1. Messaging (mail client for POP, IMAP and SMTP, MMS, SMS and threaded IM), web browser (WAP and xHTML), Contacts, Calendar, Notes, To-do, ringtone composer (midi), video player, calculator, clock, voice recorder, screen shot, image viewer, Converter (unit conversion), Profiles, Game Manager, call log, app manager, N-Gage Arena (multiplayer online gaming over GPRS).

Expansion: 1 MMC slot accepts MMC cards only (not SD). Card is hot swappable.

Nokia 7610b

2010-01-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

Nokia 7610b

Nokia, the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world, offers a wide array of phones from the most simple to power smartphones running Symbian Series 60. The 7610 is one of Nokia's high end beauties, running the new version 2 of Symbian Series 60 and offering just about every feature you could want. It's a GSM phone that comes in two flavors: the 7610 which runs on 900/1800/1900MHz bands (world phone) and the still hard to find 7610b which runs on the 850/1800/1900MHz bands for the US. The phone is widely available in Europe and Asia, and from importers in the US. As of late November 2004, Cingular will be offering the 7610b in the US: great news!

The 7610 caters not only to power users, but those who want a strong dose of style. Nokia makes many, many cookie-cutter candy bar phones; but they're also fond of playing with style, sometimes radically in certain models. Unlike the Nokia 3650 which had a round keypad design that was so radical it gave fervent SMS-ers apoplexy, the 7610's stylized keypad is striking but not impossible to use. The 7610 has a design that most folks find striking and very attractive and it turns heads wherever we go. It's available in black or white and as you'd expect, Nokia sells additional "Express On" covers should you feel like a color change. But the 7610 is more than just a pretty face, and features great reception, Bluetooth, a lovely 65,000 color 2" display and a stunning 1 megapixel camera capable of taking still shots and video.

Design and Ergonomics

This is a device that hopes to find its way into the Museum of Modern Art. The black version is particularly striking and has a gloss finish with silver (some versions add red) accents. It is perfectly symmetrical with right angles at the top left and lower right corners, and gentle curves on the top right and lower left. Turn it on its face, turn it upside down and the pleasing form will remain the same.

The silver insets around the large display swoop down to meet the keypad where they widen, forming the backdrop for the outer keys. The keypad features a sweeping radial design and the left and lower keys are larger than the rest. Though the keys aren't uniformed in size and don't line up in the usual rectangular pattern with the 4 key directly below the 1 key, the keyboard isn't hard to use. In two hours I found it easy to use the keypad for dialing and SMS. Though the keyboard has a visually distinct appearance, Nokia didn't alter the keys enough to create usability problems.

Above: side view of the Nokia 7610b. Below, a size comparison with the Motorola MPx220,
Sony Ericsson T610, the Nokia 7610 and the Nokia 3650.

The center directional pad is small and stiff, nested perhaps a bit too close to the surrounding keys. It's usable and works well one-handed but you'll need a bit of coordination and a day of use to become proficient at it. A two inch display dominates the upper portion of the unit, with the speaker located above the display. The Nokia Pop-Port is located on the bottom of the phone and the camera lens on the back. The lens is relatively large compared to some other camera phones and that's a good thing: a larger lens usually means better photos. Rather than the usual tiny round self-portait mirror found next to the lens, the 7610 has a large mirror that incorporates nicely into the design on the back panel. Those of us who like to check our hair on the go will love that mirror, while those who score low on the vanity scale might prefer a completely black rear casing. Regardless of which camp you fall into, you'll likely agree that the mirror and and surrounding pattern are striking. And after all, this phone is both a smartphone and a fashion phone. If you like the features and specs of the 7610 but don't want the novel keyboard or standout looks, consider the Nokia 6670 instead. The 6670 is a triband world phone with the guts of a 7610 and a more "normal" appearance.

Horsepower and Expansion

According to Psiloc System Tools, the 7610 has a 123MHz ARM processor which is currently one of the fastest you'll find in a Series 60 phone. It has 8 megs of internal memory, which doesn't sound like much, but it's more than adequate because Symbian apps are generally quite small. The phone uses the new Reduced Size MMC cards (RS-MMC) which are half the length of standard MMC cards. But you won't have to scramble to find a card for your 7610 because Nokia generously includes a 64 meg card with the phone. You'll find a variety of 3rd party software demo apps on the card which you can test, purchase or delete as you see fit. Nokia says that the phone will work with up to 256meg RS-MMC cards and that was the largest capacity available when the phone was released. Now there are 512 meg cards on the market and they work fine with the 7610.

The phone has Bluetooth, a Nokia Pop-Port connector but no IR. It comes with the DKU-2 USB cable which attaches to the Pop-Port for syncing and using the phone as a wireless modem for a PC or Mac over USB. As Windows user who's struggled to sync PIM data over Bluetooth using PC Suite can tell you, the cable is a much more reliable and less crazy-making method of getting you Contacts, Calendar, Tasks and Notes data synced to the phone. You can still transfer files to and from the phone via Bluetooth, but the 7610 doesn't support Serial Port Profile, so you will need to use the cable to sync PIM data.

A Bit about Bands and the 7610 vs. 7610b

As mentioned, the phone comes in two versions, the 7610 and the 7610b. The 7610 is a world phone that works anywhere GSM service is available. It has 900MHz (Europe), 1800MHz (Asia) and 1900MHz (US). The 7610b targets the US, and trades the 900MHz band for 850MHz which is a relatively new band used in the US by AT&T/Cingular. You'll still get reception in the US using the non-b version of the phone on the 1900MHz band. 1900MHz is used by every US GSM carrier, but some metro areas have been built out with added 850MHz service in the past year. Note that if you get the b version, you won't be able to use the phone in Europe. If you're a T-Mobile US customer, you don't need to worry about the 850MHz band because T-Mobile only uses 1900MHz.

Phone Features, Reception and Data

Nokia phones have great reception and the 7610b is no exception. In fact, it tops other recent Nokias we've tested including the 3650, N-Gage QD and the 6820. The phone gets a signal where other phones can't and shows very high db readings overall for signal strength. The unit hasn't dropped a call in two weeks of testing, even when in a very poor signal area with 1 bar. Miraculously, call sound quality was good even with 1 bar. We tested the unit with a T-Mobile SIM on the 1900MHz band in the US. No doubt, US customers with AT&T/Cingular on 850MHz towers will see even better performance indoors as will 900MHz users in Europe.

The 7610 has all the standard phone features you'll find on other Series 60 phones such as voice dialing using voice tags, a loud speaker phone, speed dialing for up to 99 numbers, support for conference calling, call waiting and picture caller ID. The phone's earpiece and mic volume are good and are loud and clear enough for use in public places. The 7610 ups the ante with voice commands that allow you to launch applications or even toggle Bluetooth on and off. You'll record voice tags for commands, just as you do for voice dialing. We did note that there's a longer delay after you hear the voice prompt before you can speak your command compared to other phones. Wait one full second after you hear the auditory prompt to speak your command or wait for the on-screen progress bar to start moving before you speak. Voice dialing and voice commands work darned near 100% if you wait and will surely fail if you don't.

Display, Sound and Multimedia

Certainly this is one of the nicest displays we've seen on a Nokia phone. The 2" TFT display is capable of displaying 65,000 colors and runs at the standard Series 60 176 x 208 resolution. The screen is contrasty and has very good color saturation. While there are LCDs that can display even more colors and are a bit brighter such as the Motorola MPx220, photos actually look more natural and show more gradations in contrast and intensity on the Nokia. Indeed the 7610's display is plenty bright and you can adjust the brightness if you wish but you can't change the backlight timeout which can be annoying if you like to surf, read ebooks and the like. There are utilities that will turn the backlight on indefinitely such as the free FExplorer, thank goodness.

Surprisingly, the 7610 doesn't have stereo output even though it can play MP3s and movies. What a shame. . . Sound quality when listening to music and videos with audio is good though but this unit won't put your iPod out of a job. The included earbud headset has low volume for multimedia and voice calls, so do consider getting a different Pop-Port headset or a Bluetooth headset. Volume through the speaker is quite good, as is volume through Bluetooth headsets. The 7610 supports MP3 ringtones which opens a entire realm of free and custom ringers.

RealPlayer is included for playback of MP3, Real Audio, Real Video and 3GP videos shot with the phone's camera.

Battery Life

For a smartphone, the 7610 had good battery life, lasting us about 2 days of moderate use per charge. It has a 900 mAh Lithium Ion BL-5C battery which is larger than some prior Series 60 devices' batteries, though not as large as the N-Gage QD's 1,000 mAh battery which will not physically fit in the 7610 in case you were wondering . In our tests we spoke for 30 to 45 minutes per day on the phone, surfed for one hour using the included web browser and Opera, used the phone as a wireless modem over Bluetooth with a Dell Axim X50v and an HP iPAQ hx4700 for one hour per day, watched a few short videos and played games for 30 minutes per day. Most but not all of our phone conversations involved Bluetooth headsets and we left Bluetooth turned on 80% of the time.

Software and Syncing

Thanks to the included USB syncing cable, syncing to Windows PCs is now easy. One caveat: ignore the version of PC Suite on the CD and download the latest version from Nokia's web site. Right now, that's version 6.4 and it not only works reliably with the 7610 but it has many new features and a spiffy user interface. You'll use PC Suite to browse the phone's contents, transfer files, sync PIM data to Outlook, play movies taken with the camera and more. If you prefer Bluetooth, you can transfer files but you won't be able to sync PIM data because the phone doesn't have the serial port profile.

Speaking of PIM apps, the 7610 has very strong Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and a Notes app too. The Contacts application includes a large number of fields and will suit most Outlook users nicely. The Calendar defaults to month view with appointments appearing as blue triangles, and has week and day views as well which you can switch to at any time or select as your default view. Of course it has alarms and you can create new entries categorized as Meeting, Memo or Anniversary. To-to is a task management app that supports priorities and Notes (nested in the Extras folder) is a note taking application. All of these sync to Outlook on the desktop

Camera

The Nokia has one of the best 1 megapixel cameras available on a phone. The only phone that beats it is the Sony Ericsson S700i which is a rather large and expensive phone that's sold only by importers in the US. It's capable of taking photos up to 1152 x 864 pixels resolution, uses a CMOS sensor and has 4x digital zoom. The lens is fast at 2:8 which is good for low light settings yet it does well in bright outdoor environments and doesn't white out brighter objects. Like other Nokias, the lens is a wide angle at 3.7mm which is roughly equivalent to a 28mm film camera lens.

While some phone and PDA cameras offer a plethora of settings yet take mediocre photos, the Nokia has relatively few manual settings but consistently takes excellent photos on the automatic setting. Of course, the phone won't replace your dedicated digicam but the photos are good enough to save, put on web pages and perhaps even print up to 4" x 6". Nokia clearly believes the photos are worth printing since they include software for printing photos to a Bluetooth printer. Outdoor shots show relatively little color fringing, have very good color and light balance, do not blow out and overexpose on sunny days, and have surprisingly little noise. They do have a bias toward the cyan on cloudy days but that's easily fixed using adjustments such as "Auto Color" in Adobe Photoshop on the desktop. Indoor shots under incandescent and fluorescent light are also quite good with the expected added warm tones under incandescent lighting. The camera has a low light setting that's very effective and will allow you to take decent shots with some added noise in a poorly lit room at night or an outdoors shot at dusk. Overall colors are slightly undersaturated on the 7610 but appear natural and realistic. There is absolutely no comparison when looking at photos taken with the Motorola MPx220 MS Smartphone and its 1.3MP camera. The Moto's photos are simply terrible compared to the 7610. Given that these phones compete neck and neck on features, the Nokia wins if camera quality is important to you.

Bluetooth

We generally expect a strong and reliable Bluetooth implementation from Nokia and the 7610 doesn't disappoint. Like all Nokias, it supports Handsfree profile but not headset profile. Since most all headsets and car kits made in the last two years offer the more feature-rich handsfree profile, we don't see this as a problem. The 7610 paired reliably with several headsets we tested and had good range, volume and call clarity.

In addition, the Nokia supports OBEX profile for file transfer between the phone and other phones, PDAs and Bluetooth enabled computers. Unlike prior Series 60 devices, it doesn't have serial port profile, and that's why Nokia includes their USB syncing cable. The phone has the dial up networking profile and worked perfectly as a modem for several of our PDAs and a notebook. Though the 7610 is only a Class 6 GPRS device capable of a maximum 40k throughput, it offered strong transfer speeds and we couldn't generally tell the difference between it and the Class 10 Motorola MPx220 and Audiovox SMT5600 (aka Orange SPV C500) when used as a modem for an HP iPAQ hx4700 and the Dell Axim X50v.

Conclusion

It's hard not to love this phone! It offers great style, yet maintains usability. Add a large, lovely color display, Bluetooth and a truly impressive 1MP digicam and you've got quite a phone. It has strong battery life for a smartphone and should last most users two days on a charge. The device feels reasonably snappy and is one of the fastest Series 60 devices we've tested. It has the latest version of Series 60 with several nice enhancements. Thanks to the included USB Sync cable, syncing PIM data to and from a PC is no longer a head-banging experience.

Pro: Great style and unique looks. Wonderful digital camera, large color display, good battery life, Bluetooth and PDA-like features such as PIM apps and the ability to install any of the many Series 60 apps available on the Net. It's available in two flavors to suit most users in the world.

Con: If you prefer conservative phones and a grid keypad layout, the 7610 may not be for you. Consider the Nokia 6670 instead which is basically the same phone in a conservative suit. The phone is not large by any means, coming close to the diminutive Sony Ericsson T610, but if you prefer very small phones, the 7610 may not please you. This isn't a quad band phone so you'll need to choose between the world band phone (900/1800/1900) which will work anywhere in the world but lacks the 850 band being rolled out in the US by AT&T/Cingular (not T-Mobile), or get the 7610b which is now offered by Cingular and lacks the 900MHz band used in Europe.

Web site: www.nokia.com, www.nokiausa.com

Price: approximately $500 US unlocked without contract, cheaper with Cingular contract.

Comparison Shopping: Where to Buy

Specs:

Display: TFT color LCD, 65K colors, screen size diag: 2 ". Resolution: 176 x 208.

Battery: Lithium Ion 900 mA rechargeable BL-5C battery. Battery is user replaceable.

Performance: 123MHz ARM processor. 8 MB built-in RAM. Comes with a 64 RS-MMC card.

Size: 108.6 mm x 53 mm x 18.7 mm(4.27" x 2.1" x 0.7"), 118 grams ( 4.16 ounces).

Audio: Built in speaker, mic, Pop Port jack and Pop-Port earbud headset. Voice Recorder and RealPlayer 9. Phone and headset output are mono.

Camera: Integrated megapixel (1152 x 864 pixels) camera with 4x digital zoom. Also records video with audio.

Network: GSM phone with GPRS class B, multislot class 6 device for data. 7610: 900/1800/1900MHz bands with auto-switching. 7610b: 850/1800/1900MHz with auto-switching. Bluetooth 1.1 included.

Software: Symbian OS 7.0s, Series 60 version 2.

Expansion: 1 RS-MMC card slot (Reduced Size MMC).

In the box: Phone, battery, charger, USB cable, Pop-Port headset, 64 meg RS-MMC card, printed manual and a cleaning cloth.

Siemens SX1

2010-01-22T04:43:00.000-08:00

Above: the SX1 and the Nokia 6600

Siemens SX1 Mobile Phone

In a largely Nokia dominated market, the SX1 is unique because it's the first phone not manufactured by Nokia to run the Symbian Series 60 OS in the Asian scene. It is also unique because it's the first phone to have an eccentric side keypad with the only function buttons located on the phone's front face. The Siemens SX1 has a candy bar design and is a GSM triband device that works on 900/1800/1900 bands. Thus it should work in any country that supports GSM, though it won't take advantage of AT&T Wireless' added 850MHz band in the US (the phone will work on their 1900MHz band).

As a PDA, the handset is equipped with basic PIM functions such as contacts, to-do list, calendar, notes application, and built in voice recorder. Internet browsing through GPRS supports WAP 2.0/xHTML. The email client supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP.

As a multimedia device, the SX1 delivers much with a 640 x 480 integrated VGA camera. Video recording at 15 fps is also supported at 176 x 144 pixels (QCIF). The handset is also capable of sending multimedia messages (MMS) in pictures and video or through the image editor which comes bundled with the handset.

The SX1's direct competitors are other Symbian Series 60 phones such as the Nokia 7650, 6600 and the 3650, the latter sporting an eccentric circular keypad layout which is also found in Panasonic fashion phones. The SX1 is roughly the size and weight of the 6600 and they share a similar wide form factor. The power of the Series 60 platform is further enhanced by the SX1, bundling several proprietary multimedia and PIM apps which usually have to be purchased from third party developers.

What does it look like?

Consumers will definitely look twice at the SX1 due to its novel design. The seven function keys (menu, two soft keys, two dedicated call buttons, shift and cancel) are located on the front face of the phone together with the 5-way d-pad. The twelve number keys are spread out evenly on the left and right sides of the phone. The prominent loudspeaker grill is located above the 176 x 220 pixel screen.

Flipping the phone to its right side, you'll find two dedicated buttons for taking snapshots with the 0.3 megapixel digital camera and for activating the voice recorder. The voice recorder button also doubles as the hands free activation when in a call. The MMC slot is located on the left side. SD cards are not supported, but you can hot-swap MMC cards.

The 0.3 megapixel camera lens is located on the back, on the upper left side. The IR port is located opposite the camera on the top side of the phone.

Inside the Box

Upon opening the box, I was greeted by the SX1 handset, a Lithium Polymer battery, standard wall charger, user guide, marketing photos, and the CD with product demo, interactive help guide and additional applications.

Bundled Applications

It is important to note that all Symbian Series 60 phones have the standard set of applications bundled with the OS. The calendar, to-do list, contacts, video recorder, and BT, IrDA and connectivity functions are all found in the Nokia 3650/7650 and 6600. The same applications are found in the Siemens SX1, with slight modifications and additions:

PIM Apps

Today - A summary of the list of tasks, messages and appointments is given on screen. It is very similar to the Today screen on Windows Mobile devices. You can customize the main function buttons to display the Today screen. From there you can view the day's summary of appointments and tasks as well as compose messages.

World Clock - Very similar to the 'world time' of the popular World Mate application for Palm, Pocket PC and Symbian which displays four different time zones apart from home time.

File Manager - A file directory browser which usually has to be bought separately for the Symbian OS. This proprietary version allows users to move files, create directories and transfer specific items via Bluetooth, IrDA or through E-mail via GPRS.

Multimedia Apps

MP3 Jukebox - The MP3 jukebox searches for MP3 files stored in internal memory and in the removable MMC card. Playing MP3 files using the phone's natural loudspeaker delivers a powerful audio experience. Bitrates of 64kbps play satisfactory especially with the headset. Siemens has their own proprietary connector for the headset which is sold separately. This means you can't use universal headsets sold elsewhere.

Radio - The FM radio can be configured manually or for frequency auto search. The frequency range is from 87.5 - 108 MHz with six customizable station keys. The radio will only work with the handsfree provided by Siemens which also doubles as an antenna. This accessory is sold separately.

Snap Shot - This is the camera application which allows for standard shots, small portrait shots and landscape view. Images can be saved to an MMC card or to the phone's internal memory, and can be edited using the Image Fun application. The quality of images is a lot better than early Nokia counterparts since the bluish haze has been fixed. These Images aren't very crisp but are colorful. The built-in camera can take shots at resolutions from 160x120 to 640x480 in standard mode. The camera has a light sensitivity of > 30 lux and focuses from 30 cm to infinity. It has a 24 bit color depth.

Image Fun - After taking photos with the built in camera, you can use the Image Fun application to edit photos to add distortion, haze as well as borders and text which can be sent wirelessly through Bluetooth, MMS and IrDA. Edited images are saved as separate files so users can always go back to the original pictures if they wish to edit them again.

Other Applications - The SX1 comes with several games and the ability to run J2ME applications. The most innovative game bundled with the SX1 makes use of the camera function: it uses the camera viewfinder window as the gaming screen, and animated mosquitoes fly around. The objective is to move the camera about and shoot the insects when you position them on the target reticule.

Below, sample photos shot at 640 x 480.

Click on an image to see the full size image.

Wireless Voice, Data and Connectivity

The SX1 is a tri-band world phone, supporting 900/1800/1900MHz bands. It is compatible with the US, Europe and Asia (except Japan). The natural loudspeaker delivers a powerful and clear audio which can be adjusted to fit the desired hearing volume.

For data connectivity, the SX1 has an internal modem capable of speeds up to 53.6 kbps. It sports GPRS class 10 and class 2 fax services.

The SX1 has both Bluetooth and IrDA, and sending files is a breeze thanks to the simplicity of the Symbian Series 60 platform. In addition you can use Bluetooth headsets with the Siemens.

Power and Expansion

The SX1 is powered by an OMAP processor at 130MHz. This is the fastest Series 60 smartphone with a 0.3MP VGA camera. It is good to note that the Nokia smartphones on the other side of the fence are powered by ARM processors, albeit with 109MHz of processing power. The volatile 4MB of internal memory can be increased through MMC expansion and be used to save images, video, contacts, multimedia messages and short messages.

With a Lithium Polymer 1000mAh user replaceable battery, charging time from empty to full takes less than three hours. Talk time with the standard battery is less than four hours and standby time less than 200 hours. I found that with moderate usage, the battery lasts a day and a half. Heavy usage however drains the battery in eight to twelve hours.

The SX1 is the first Symbian phone to support hot swapping of memory cards (a standard feature for Palm OS and Pocket PC devices). The slot is only compatible with MMC cards, and SD cards won't work (the same can be said for Nokia Series 60 phones). The OS gives a warning message when you swap cards saying that to prevent data loss, you must first stop running applications that are accessing the card. The phone stops running apps for you when you choose this option from the settings menu.

Synchronization

After connecting the SX1 to my desktop computer and installing PC Suite, I noticed that synchronization of contacts and appointments was rather slow despite the USB connection. An alternative is to try to synchronize using Bluetooth which I did via the Billionton BT USB Adapter.

What's great about the sync software is that it allows you to easily organize multimedia files, which was a pain to do in the older versions of the desktop software.

What's good about the SX1

Bundled software is always a plus for me. For the record, all Nokia Series 60 phone models do not come with a file explorer, mp3 jukebox, radio application and an enhanced organizer with Today screen. The front speaker is also very audible and the camera set at 640x480 still delivers colorful images, unlike the 3650 whose photos have a bluish haze. The hot-swap MMC slot also adds a tinge of convenience since you don't need to open the unit and remove the battery to get to the expansion card, as with Series 60 Nokias (other than the N-Gage QD).

What needs to be improved

Obviously the overall design turns me off. Having the keypads on both sides of the phone doesn't allow you to make use of it with one hand. Battery life need some work. Even though it has a 1000mAh battery, it doesn't compare well with the Nokias. The camera has no night mode. It is also a bit overpriced, and is more expensive than the Nokia 6600. It is only available in one color, "Ice Blue."

Conclusion

If you are looking for a phone that runs on the Series 60 platform that is packed with features and don't care much about the design, then this is the phone for you. Though battery life is on the weak side, Siemens compensates with a rich multimedia experience, booming audio and a good camera that rivals other smartphones on the market.

Web site: www.my-siemens.com/sx1

Price: ~$500 US unlocked. Available from importers and phone retailers such as www.expansys.com and www.just-talk.com.

Specs:

Display: Hi Res 16 Bit 64k Colors at 176 x 220 pixels.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable user replaceable at 1000 mAh.

Performance: TI OMAP 310 at 130MHz with 4MB of volatile memory (RAM).

Size: 109 x 56 x 19 mm, 116 grams.

Audio: Built in speaker with digital voice recorder. Music player supports MP3 format. FM Radio built in with frequency range from 20Hz - 20 kHz. Power output at 2 x 7.5 mW.

Networking: Bluetooth 1.1, IrDA.

Camera: Camera resolution at VGA 0.3 megapixels at 640 x 480 and 160 x 120 resolution with 24bit color depth. Video: Real Player bundled with phone. Formats supported are MPEG4, H.263, Real Audio, Real Video and AMR. Video capture resolution at 176 x 144 at 15 fps

Software: Symbian Series 60 OS. Java support. WAP browsers, Messaging application for email, Organizer functions with Today screen, Synchronization with MS Outlook 97, 98, 2000. Synchronization with PC via Bluetooth, IrDA and SyncML 1.0.1.

Expansion: 1 MMC (MultiMedia Card) slot (doesn't support SD cards).

Mobile Phone Network: GSM triband world phone (900/1800/1900MHz). GPRS class 10 for data.

Nokia 3650 Smartphone

2010-01-22T04:12:00.000-08:00

Nokia 3650 Smartphone: GSM Phone

Reviewed by Tong Zhang, Senior Editor

Available from AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile, the Nokia 3650 makes its debut in the US with loads of built-in features that make this unit much more than just a cell phone. The 3650 is that latest “Series 60” smartphone from Nokia and offers PDA-like features in a phone-centric design. It’s a tri-mode GSM world phone that also does GPRS for fast data transfers (~50 to 60k/s).

The 3650 has built-in Bluetooth and IR for wireless communications, a WAP 2.0/XHTML browser for accessing the Internet, PIM applications such as Contacts, Calendar, To-Do list, as well as multimedia applications such as RealOne player and more. The built-in digital VGA camera can take still images at 640x480 resolution, and capture video clips in .3GP file format with sound support.

The voice features include voice dialing, speakerphone, conference calling, voicemail, text messaging and alarm. The 3650 comes with 30 polyphonic ring tones and there are more available for download. Running on Symbian OS 6.1 and powered by an ARM processor, the 3650 will support Symbian OS applications and Java applications. Each carrier provides its own set of applications and games for download.

The 3650 comes with Nokia PC Suite software synchronization software with support for IR and Bluetooth (no cable syncing), a modem driver for notebooks, and the Nokia Multimedia Player.

What does it look like?

It looks like a TV remote control with a large display screen. I really like the design of this phone because I lose smaller phones like those tiny clamshell units. The Nokia 3650 is a candy bar style phone with a large 176 x 208 pixel color display capable of displaying 4,096 colors. The 3650 measures 5.1” x 2.24” x 1” and weighs 4.59 ounces. The circular number pad will either attract or turn off users who may be fond of the retro rotary phones or too accustomed to standard number pads. There is a directional pad/action button inside the number pad area for navigation. The camera lens is on the backside of the phone, on the opposite side of the display. The antenna is internal and is housed in the top of the phone. The power, cable and headset connectors are located in the bottom of the phone.

What comes in the box?

It comes with the 3650 handset, a 850 mAh Li-Ion battery, a 16MB MMC card, a charger, an ear-bud headset, a SIM card, synchronization CD and a User Guide along with several quick start guides.

What applications does it come with?

The 3650 comes with a suite of PIM applications including contacts, calendar, to-do list and more. You will also find applications that will work with your camera, images, videos and other multimedia functions. The connectivity tools include built-in Bluetooth, IR and wireless modem. There are also a quite few trial software packages on the storage card including Photobase, Goldminer, LogJam and more. Here is a close look at some of the built-in apps.

Contacts- There are two views in your contact list, one is the entire contact list, the other is groups. The info you are allowed to enter for a contact includes contact Name, Company, Telephone, Mobile, Fax and E-mail. You can also add a thumbnail-sized image as a photo ID attached to a contact. When you dial that contact’s number or that contact calls you, the contact name, phone number as well as the photo ID will show up on your screen. In addition, you can attach a full size image to this contact on the next page, which you can navigate via the D-pad. There is also a Search function, where you can search by name. Once you’ve selected a contact, you will have options to dial the number, send a text message (SMS), send a multimedia message (MMS), send email, duplicate, mark/unmark or send this contact via IR or Bluetooth. You can also assign a specific ring tone to an individual contact.

Calendar

There are three calendar views: daily, weekly and monthly view. You can set the default calendar view to any of these three views when you launch the application. When you enter a new event, the default selections are Meeting, Memo and Anniversary. You can set up an alarm for your event, which includes alarm date, time and repeat on/off. You can sync this event via text message, email, Bluetooth and IR.

Camera

There are three modes you can use the camera in: Standard, Portrait and Night. You can select the image quality as High, Normal or Basic, and set the default image name and where the JPEG images are stored (internally or on the MMC card). To take a picture, you can press the camera menu button and then press the action button (press down on the d-pad) to snap the shot. After capturing, the image will display on the screen. You can go to an image file anytime by accessing the Options-Go to Images. How is the image quality? BLUE! The camera deals with indoor lighting much better than daylight. Anything you shoot outdoors in bright daylight will have a blue tint, especially backgrounds. The night photos however have more accurate background colors and display on your phone without the blue tint.

Images

There are two views in Images, one shows the content in the phone memory, one shows the card. Once you select an image, you can send it via email, MMS, BT or IR. You can also set up an online photo album and send your images directly to the image server (an Ofoto service accessed via Nokia’s web site which you’ll have to pay for after the intro period). Nokia site offers step-by-step instructions on how to set up a Multimedia server for your phone. You can find that page here, which also offers instructions on setting up email and WAP services.

Video Rec

This is simpler than the camera. You can tell the phone where to store the video clips and give it a default name. The video recorder handles the frame rate pretty well (15 fps) and there are no blurs or trails when you move the camera at a reasonable speed. The video clips can be played back in either the video rec app or by using the RealOne Player which of course can also play streaming content. The 3650 unit I bought doesn’t support sound in video recording. I had to go to Nokia’s web site to download the Video Recorder Update software. This will enable the recorder to record video with sound.

To Do list

This is a very simple to-do list where you can add new to-do notes, view the current to-do items or mark to-do items as done. When you add a new to-do note, you can specify the Due date and Priority. You can change the Priority by using the D-pad, and you will see an exclamation mark (!) next to the notes with High priorities.

Connection

This includes Bluetooth, IR and Modem options. If you turn Bluetooth on, your phone will search for all Bluetooth devices. Select the device you wish to pair with and the phone will initiate the pairing. Everything is easy and painless. I tested the Bluetooth functions with a Palm Tungsten T, HP iPAQ 3970 and Compaq Presario laptop running Windows XP with a Belkin Bluetooth USB adapter. The IR function works very similar to the BT functions except it works with IR enable devices. You can set to use the modem either via the Bluetooth or IR.

Tools

This includes Settings for your Phone, Call, Connection, Data and time, Security, System and Accessory options. You can go through each of the settings to customize your phone. There is also an App Manager in the Tools folder for you to manage any installed applications on the phone. In addition, Tools also includes Message where you can access your message box and 1-touch dialing set up. You can assign up to 9 1-touch dialing numbers (1 is assigned to voicemail).

Profiles

It lets you set 5 profiles on the 3650 including Normal, Silent, Meeting, Outdoor and Pager. You can customize each profile with your choice of Ringing tone, Ringing options and Volume, Message alert tone, Vibrating alert, Keypad tones and Warning tones.

Synchronization Software

On installation CD, you will find software for setting up the modem, installing PC Suite software and Nokia Multimedia Player. You can install either IR or Bluetooth modem connection on your PC by following the installation walkthrough. You don’t need to install the sync software if you only need to transfer image files or application files since you can either beam them with IR or send via Bluetooth. But if you wish to sync your calendar and contacts, it might be a good idea to install the Nokia PC Suite software. The Belkin Bluetooth USB adapter is compatible with PC Suite (hint: when getting started, select all Bluetooth serial port checkboxes). File transfer and installation also work great using Bluetooth software on the PC rather than PC Suite.

Other Applications

There are other applications such as RealOne, Services for mMode (on AT&T network), games and more. RealOne player is a good solution for playing back the video clips you recorded or downloaded. But I don’t know how much people will use it for streaming content because of speed and cost issues. If you’re an AT&T Wireless customer, in the Service folder, you will find mMode apps that you can use to go online and browse the web or download apps. In the mMode, you can add bookmarks and find all your download files.

AT&T Coverage and Service Packages

It is amazing how fast AT&T has put up so many towers in a short time period. The GSM service on the phone so far has been excellent. Because the Nokia 3650 is a new phone, AT&T is doing a promotion to lower the price on the device. If you can find online or local store that offers additional rebates, you may get this new and exciting product for very little money. The AT&T voice plans offer standard packages at various levels, similar to other major cell phone carriers. The mMode GPRS data service offers 4 levels of packages. At the Mini level, you pay $2.99/month plus 2 cents per KB. At the Mega level, you pay $7.99/month which comes with 1MB of free download plus 1 cent per KB for additional data. The top two tiers cost $12.99 and $19.99 per month which comes with 4MB and 8MB free download respectively, and between .08 and .06 cents per KB for overage.

What I like about it

I like the form factor. It’s big enough so that I don’t misplace it or can’t fish it out when I put it in my bag. The plastic frame helps to absorb small impacts in your pocket or bag, and makes the unit not feel too cold compared to metal body phones. The camera takes decent quality pictures at high resolution. It deals with nighttime lighting better than I expected. Videos at 15 fps look quite smooth. The built-in Bluetooth works very well with PDAs, laptops, BT Access Points and accessories. It has good amount of storage space including 3.4 MB of available internal memory and an MMC expansion slot. With rebates, you can get this new phone for a very low price right now.

What I don’t like about it

Daytime photos have a blue tint. The round number pad doesn’t bother me at all except that there will be applications developed for square number pad. For example, if a game that uses certain number buttons as directional buttons, it won’t make sense on a circular number pad. If you have several storage cards and exchange them on your phone often, you will find it annoying when you have to take out your battery to access your storage card. It supports the hands-free profile rather than the much more common headset profile for Bluetooth.

Good FAQs:

http://www.nokiahowto.com/?./3600/3650

Suggested list price $399

Specs:

Display: TFT color LCD, 12 bit, 4096 colors. Screen resolution: 176 pixels wide x 208 pixels high.

Battery Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 850 mA. Claimed battery life: Talk Time 4 hours, 200 hours standby.

Performance: 32 bit ARM RISC processor. Processor speed: not disclosed by manufacturer. Total internal memory: 4 Megs, 3.4 megs available to user. Can be expanded using MMC cards.

size: 5.1” x 2.24” x 1” . Weight Approximately 4.59 oz.

Phone: GSM triband world phone (900/1800/1900MHz bands). GPRS for data.

Audio: Built in speaker. Mic with voice recorder functionality.

Software: Symbian operating system. Java support. WAP browsers, Messaging application for email, Image viewer, video player, Real Player, several games, Calendar and Contacts and more.

Expansion: MMC (Multimedia card slot). 16 MB memory included. You can use any brand and size of MMC card (SD cards not supported).

T-Mobile G1

2010-01-08T05:04:00.000-08:00

There's been quite a buzz about the world's first Google Android powered phone, the T-Mobile G1. Android is an open source phone operating system developed by Google, and the OS runs on the Linux 2.6 kernel with Java applications on top. Since the platform is open and customizable by manufacturers and carriers, we expect to see a wide variety of Android phones running the gamut from feature phone to smartphone. The G1 isn't quite your standard smartphone-- it's more like the Sidekick grown up. There are smartphone elements: a serious HTML web browser, syncing (limited) and the ability to install 3rd party applications. However, there's no Office suite, no direct syncing with Outlook or Exchange and no support for VPN or corporate email running on Exchange or BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Instead, the G1, somewhat like the iPhone, targets the tweeners: those who want customizability, add-on applications, a seriously good web experience and multimedia. Unfortunately, the G1 can't compete with the iPhone in terms of multimedia: there's a basic music player with no desktop syncing or DRM support, and no built-in video player. The G1 does have a YouTube player like the iPhone and HTC Touch Diamond. There's a free MPEG4/3GPP video player available on the Android Market, which improves the G1's multimedia experience, and we're sure more players will launch over time.

What's the Android Market? It's the Google phone counterpart to the App Store in iTunes. You access the store via the phone (no desktop access), and browse applications by category. Apps are ranked by popularity and there's an alternate sort by release date. As of this writing, the G1 isn't even released, yet there are about 50 apps in the Market including a few good games. These are free but commercial apps should show up in the Market by late January 2009.

Again, like the iPhone, you've got to set up and log into an account with the OS maker. You can't use the phone until you've created an online account with Google. We suspect that most folks who purchase an iPhone are already iPod users, and thus have iTunes accounts, making this somewhat less onerous for iPhone buyers (though we're still not thrilled with any phone that makes you create and use an online account). Though Gmail is popular, it doesn't have quite the reach across demographic groups as iTunes and the iPod, and Google's other account-based services, great though they may be, are less popular than Gmail. That said, Google has made it pretty easy to create an account using the G1, or otherwise log in with an existing Google account during initial setup.

There's yet another reminder that you've just signed on to become a part of the Google ecosystem: PIM syncing. The concept here feels similar to the Sidekick, with email (in this case Gmail), contacts and calendar data and syncing to the cloud (Google's servers). Once you log in with your Google account, your Gmail, contacts and calendar are automatically downloaded and thereafter synced with Google's online services. If you don't use Google's contacts or calendar features, you'll need to enter the data via the web interface (likely using a computer), or check out 3rd party services that pipe Outlook and Exchange data to Google. This rules out business users who 1) don't want to store their PIM data on Google's servers, 2) are married to MS Exchange, 3) are married to BlackBerry BES or BIS, 4) prefer to sync to Outlook (or the Mac OS X counterparts) over USB or Bluetooth. For Mac users, there's a Google app that will add your Google calendar to iCal (only items entered into the Google calendar will sync back to Google), and a sync to Google option in the latest version of the Mac OS X address book (this requires syncing to an iPhone or iPod Touch in addition).

Design and Ergonomics

The G1 is manufactured by HTC, a well-known and respected Windows Mobile phone maker, and quality is up to their usual good standards. The G1 has a SideKick-style slide-up keyboard, but there's only one hand grip on the right side. It's easy enough to hold the device without dual grips zones, but the right hand prominence, where the buttons and microSD card slot reside is a bit bulky. The phone's design is both interesting and plain-- it won't win any beauty contests. It's currently available in brown (reminds us of a UPS truck) and black (Editor's note: it's now also available in white with a gray back). The black model is all black while the brown version has a silver keyboard with mid-gray letter masking that's hard to see. The black version's keyboard has white letter masking that offers better contrast.

The brown G1 with silver keyboard.

The 5.6 ounce Google phone is on the large side, but Sidekick and HTC Wing users will feel right at home. The soft plastic back has a subtle soft touch finish that helps it stay safely in hand and the handset feels balanced in both portrait and landscape orientations. There are buttons for call send and end, but the call end button doesn't close applications as it does on most phones; it merely turns the screen off, and if long-pressed turns the phone off (with and additional confirmation dialog). Instead you'll use the Home button or back key to return to the home screen or back out of an application. The left side has volume up/down buttons and the right side has the camera button. The HTC ExtUSB port (same as that used on recent HTC Windows Mobile phones) is at the bottom. This port is used for charging, USB and for the included stereo earbud headset. Alas, there's no 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack, which is unfortunate since the phone also lacks Bluetooth stereo A2DP support.

To access the SDHC compatible microSD card slot, you must slide open the display to reveal the keyboard, since the display section blocks the edge of the slot cover. You can hot swap cards without using the rooted-in-Linux unmount card option in settings. The phone can also format the card and provide information about free space. The G1's camera application requires that a card is installed before you can take photos. No idea why it won't save images to internal memory.

Video review

Here's our 10 minute video review of the T-Mobile G1, covering the web browser, maps with GPS, games, Android Market (application downloads) and the user interface.

Phone Features

The T-Mobile G1 is a quad band GSM phone with EDGE and 3G HSDPA on T-Mobile US' 1700/2100MHz bands. The SIM card lives under the back door and the phone is locked to T-Mobile. The G1 has good reception on EDGE/GSM compared to a range of T-Mobile and unlocked GSM phones. HSDPA reception in the Dallas metroplex has been good, though we still have relatively little to compare it to since T-Mobile has few 3G phones given the newness of that network. The phone supports common call features like call waiting, call hold and it even has a voice dialing application. When the keyboard is closed, you'll use a large on-screen dial pad to make calls. When the keyboard is open, you must use the keyboard which has a traditional computer keyboard top number row rather than an embedded phone-style number pad. We're not sure why HTC, Google and T-Mobile decided to kill the on-screen dialer when the keyboard is open.

Texters will likely love the hardware keyboard, and in fact that's the only option-- there's no on-screen keyboard in any application! That may come as a part of the "Cupcake" branch of Android OS updates some time in 2009. Likewise A2DP and video recording might come if and when Cupcake makes it to the G1.

Call quality is excellent on both ends when on 3G and even GSM (3G offers better voice quality than GSM). Call recipients commented that this was one of the loudest, clearest phones they'd heard, even when we were using a Bluetooth headset.

Display, web, messaging and email

The G1's 320 x 480 display is sharp, bright and a pleasure to use. When set to max brightness, the display is as bright as the iPhone's, though this setting will reduce battery life, and half brightness looks plenty good enough. Though the phone has an accelerometer, the OS and built-in applications don't make use of it to set screen orientation. Instead the display is set to portrait mode when the keyboard is closed and landscape when the keyboard is open. The G1 changes screen orientation quickly and graphics are responsive overall. 3rd party applications can make use of the accelerometer: for example we downloaded a free video player that switches to landscape mode when the G1 is turned on its side.

This is one of the few touch screen phones whose screen is viewable outdoors in sunlight-- good going, HTC. It's a capacitive touch screen, which means it needs your touch to work, or at least something organic. That means a finger, elbow or pear will work but not a stylus, pen butt or fingernail. The 3.2" display is large enough to make photo viewing pleasurable and web pages easy to read without zooming. Unlike the iPhone and Nokia S60 webkit based browsers, Google's web browser doesn't rely on page overview mode. Initial web page views are zoomed in to a section of a web page at a readable resolution. When you touch the screen, zoom in and out buttons appear, and you can scroll by dragging the page with your finger or using the excellent jog ball that reminds us of the BlackBerry.

iPhone 3G and the -Mobile G1 Android phone.

The web browser does an excellent job of rendering full HTML web sites, and you get the full version of sites like CNN and the New York Times by default. T-Mobile's 3G network is alive and kicking in our area and web pages downloaded reasonably quickly over their network. We averaged 900kbps on the DSL Reports mobile speed test, which is pretty good, but found that pages didn't download as quickly as they did on the iPhone 3G. This has more to do with the browsers' rendering speeds than the network connection, since the same was true over WiFi.

The iPhone 3G and T-Mobile G1 displaying the New York Times home page.

Google has two email clients on board: one for Gmail and another for POP3 and IMAP email accounts. The Gmail client is lovely, handles HTML email beautifully and it can view Office but not PDF attachments. The other email application can't view the same attachments-- go figure. There is no Office suite on board, something that will likely turn off hardcore smartphone and business users. There's also no support for MS Exchange, BlackBerry email or VPN connections. We love the notification icons and quiet tones that notify you of new Gmail, email and text messages among other things.

The T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Fuze.

Like the Sidekick, the G1 is a messaging demon. The included IM application handles Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo and AIM. All the important items are here: friend lists, new message notifications (visual, auditory and vibrate) and the app can run in the background.

GPS

Like the iPhone (we get to say that a lot for this review), the T-Mobile G1 has Google Maps and an internal GPS. By default, the GPS is turned off in settings and the phone instead relies on cell tower triangulation to estimate your location. Turn on the GPS to get an exact location, and you'll see a little symbol in the top menu bar in Google Maps indicating the phone is using its GPS chip. We have two G1 phones in-house for review, both running identical firmware. Oddly, one was quite poor in terms of GPS reception while the other was average compared to other non-SiRF GPS-enabled phones. We'll use the better one for our discussions here and assume something was amiss with the weaker unit. The GPS has a hard time getting a satellite fix indoors, but did a fine job outdoors with clear access to the sky. Cold fix times were ~45 seconds while warm fixes were 20 seconds or less. Google Maps works much like it does on other smartphones and the iPhone. You can tell it to locate you, and it will download a zoom-able map of your area. There are options for text-based and map-based directions (no spoken directions), compass display and several maps views. These include map, satellite, traffic and street view. This is the first time we've seen street view on a phone-- very cool and useful if you're trying to ID landmarks at a new destination. There is no charge for using Google maps, though you must have a T-Mobile data plan to use it when away from a WiFi access point (so it can download maps).

Camera

The T-Mobile G1 has a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus lens. Still image quality is similar to HTC's Touch Diamond and HTC Fuze whose cameras have identical specs. Contrast and sharpness are higher on the G1 however, and it loses the ability to shoot video. Likewise gone are camera settings of any kind! The only settings available pertain to saving GPS info with pictures and whether to prompt to save/delete after capture. Thus all JPEG photos are shot and saved at the highest quality setting, which averages between 400 and 800k per image. The camera only saves images to a microSD card, which is unusual. There's no flash, so forget night shots.

WiFi and Bluetooth

The Google phone has WiFi 802.11b/g with support for WEP and WPA encryption. In our tests it made reliable connections with good transfer speeds and good range. Given T-Mobile's small initial 3G footprint, WiFi is an excellent consolation, especially indoors where the 3G signal may not penetrate well since it runs at the high end of the spectrum. WiFi does impact battery life, and the G1 doesn't have the best battery life to start with. In our 3G coverage area, the G1 barely made it through the day with moderate to heavy use and no WiFi. With WiFi on, we had to charge the phone by 4pm. Keep in mind that with light to moderate use, the phone should last the day, even with an hour of WiFi use.

Bluetooth profiles are limited, though Google will likely add more in the future. Right now there's only support for Bluetooth headsets. In our tests with a variety of mono Bluetooth headsets, the G1 had good audio quality and volume (HTC generally does a good job with Bluetooth headset support).

Battery Life

The G1's 1150 mAh Lithium Ion battery has less capacity than the average smartphone battery and it shows. As we mentioned, the phone lasts just a day with light to moderate use, and less than a day with heavy use. WiFi and the GPS really drain the battery fast, so turn those off when you don't need them. Likewise, if you turn of automatic PIM syncing, battery life improves a bit (though you'll have to remember to sync manually to get updated contacts and calendar items from the Google cloud). The battery lives under the back cover and is user-replaceable, but finding a spare seems impossible even several months after the G1's launch.

Conclusion

The T-Mobile is a great start for Google's first Android phone. While it might lack features like video recording, A2DP and a built-in video player, usability is top notch and the core functions work well: phone, web and basic email. The G1 isn't a good fit for business users given its lack of desktop and Exchange syncing and its Gmail, POP3 and IMAP-only email support. But for the casual phone user who wants a good touch interface and more application expandability than a feature phone offers, the G1 is a good choice. It's not the multimedia maven that the iPhone is, but it does have copy and paste and you can add your own ringtones easily .

Pro: Fast and responsive, very easy to use, easy to download applications via the Android Market directly to the phone. Very good capacitive display, good camera photo quality and obviously excellent Gmail support. Excellent call quality.

Con: No 3.5mm headphone jack, can't shoot video, no A2DP, keyboard on brown model lacks contrast. On-board multimedia applications are weak other than the good mobile YouTube player. No desktop or Exchange syncing.

Price: $179 with 2 year contract, $299 with a 1 year contract. Also available on FlexPay no-contract plans for full retail $399.

Web sites: www.t-mobile.com, www.htc.com, code.google.com/android

Specs:

Display: Color TFT 3.2", 320 x 480 resolution capacitive touch screen that supports both portrait and landscape modes.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1150 mA. Claimed talk time: 5.8 hours on 3G and 6.76 hours on GSM.

Performance: 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201A processor. 192 MB built-in RAM. 256 MB Flash ROM.

Size: 4.60 x 2.16 x 0.62 inches. Weight: 5.6 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band with EDGE, dual band 3G HSDPA on the 1700/2100MHz bands. Up to 7.2 Mbps download with support for 2.0 Mbps HSUPA uploads. Sold SIM locked to T-Mobile.

GPS: Yes, internal GPS and can use tower triangulation as well.

Camera: 3.2 MP with autofocus lens.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and HTC ExtUSB stereo headphone jack. Music player included. Ringtone formats supported: AC, AAC+, AMR-NB, MIDI, MP3, WMA, WMV.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR.

Software: Google Android operating system running on Linux 2.6 kernel (open source). Software included: alarm clock, calendar, contacts, g-mail application, e-mail application (POP3 and IMAP), music player, youtube player, web browser, Google Maps, Android Market, IM client, SMS client, MyFaves, Amazon MP3 store, calculator, voice dialing, photo viewer and settings.

Expansion: 1 microSD card slot, SDHC high capacity card compatible.

In the box: G1 phone, slip case, world charger, stereo earbud headset, strap, getting started guide.

Samsung Moment

2010-01-08T04:41:00.000-08:00

Suddenly Android phones are popping up everywhere (OK, except on AT&T as of this writing): Verizon has the Moto Droid and T-Mobile has three Android phones. The Samsung Moment is Sprint's second Android Google OS phone, following up on their September 2009 release of the very capable HTC Hero. What does the Moment offer that the Hero doesn't? An 800MHz CPU, hardware QWERTY keyboard and a vivid AMOLED display. What does the Moment offer that no other Android phone in the US offers to date? That obscenely colorful and striking AMOLED screen. Though we expect the Samsung Behold 2 on T-Mobile to offer an AMOLED display (but no keyboard) when it ships sometime later this year.

The Moment is a vanilla Android phone running Google OS 1.5 Cupcake. That means there are no customizations like HTC Sense found on the Hero and it's up to you to customize the home screen and other aspects of the phone. Not that this is a bad thing since there are free widgets aplenty to liven up your home screen and a solid selection of free and paid apps in the Android Market. At the same time, this is a new phone yet it runs an older OS than the Google OS 1.6 MyTouch 3G on T-Mobile and the OS 2.0 Droid on Verizon. That means you miss things like enhanced search from 1.6 and Google Maps with spoken navigation and native MS Exchange sync from 2.0. As a consolation, Google's voice directions are in beta and aren't as reliable as Sprint Navigation and Samsung has included Moxier's Exchange ActiveSync solution on the Moment.

The Samsung's specs are good: an 800MHz ARM 11 CPU (previous Android phones went with the ultra-common 528MHz Qualcomm CPU, except the Droid which has a spiffy Cortex CPU), a 3.2" capacitive touch screen running at the same 320 x 480 resolution as HTC's Android phones and the iPhone 3GS, WiFi, a GPS that works with both Google Maps and Sprint Navigation, EV-DO Rev. A, a 3.2MP autofocus camera and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo. Not bad for $179 with a 2 year contract after rebates.

The T-Mobile myTouch 3G by HTC and the Samsung Moment.

Design and Ergonomics

In terms of looks, the Samsung isn't sexy nor is it slim. It's solid and functional: call it the Toyota Camry of phones. There are plenty of Samsung TouchWiz phones that look similar (Samsung Rogue, Samsung Impression), so you won't be unique on the information and telecommunication superhighways but you know you can trust your ride. Samsung does nothing to hide that this is a plastic phone but it doesn't scream "plastic" like the MyTouch 3G. The downside is that the Moment feels chunky and brickish, though it's really not huge; rather the design isn't slimming. The smartphone may not be huge but it is large, and that affords a decent keyboard that's better in terms of key travel and spread than the Moto Droid. The keys are clicky and grippy and the layout is mostly normal. This is a 4 row keyboard with a dedicated number row and the oversized space key sits in between the v and b keys. The Fn key nudges in on the left, shifting the a key to the right a bit which doesn't take all that much getting used to. There's only one shift key (left) and four arrow keys on the right that don't require an Fn key press.

The slider mechanism feels good and locks open securely while having a little play when closed. The soft touch finish on the back is much appreciated since it's grippy and doesn't show fingerprints as do gloss phones. The volume buttons are on the left side and dedicated camera and voice command keys are on the right. The Samsung Moment has a 3.5mm stereo jack up top under a rubber cover. It has a Samsung blade connector for charging and USB data transfer (there is no syncing over USB with vanilla Android phones, the phone's SD card merely mounts as a mass storage device).

The phone has standard mechanical call send and end buttons and touch sensitive (non-moving) Home, Menu and Back buttons. These work fine but unlike the Moto Droid they lack haptic feedback so you get absolutely no tactile feedback when touching them which is disconcerting. The AMOLED display is stunningly colorful and bright-- hands down it's the prettiest Android display on the US market, though it's not the highest resolution-- that award goes to the 480 x 854 pixel Droid. Photos and videos look better than they really are and web pages pop.

Phone and Internet

The Moment has mid-level reception and very good voice quality. Calls are clear and natural sounding on both ends and the volume is good. Nuance's very good voice command software is included and there's a dedicated button for safe dialing on the go. Nuance uses speech recognition so there's no need to record voice tags. The phone supports Bluetooth headsets as well as stereo headsets using the A2DP profile. Android phones support favorites and you can put shortcuts to folks in your address book on the 3 screen desktop. There's a proximity sensor on board so the phone's screen turns off when you hold it against your face and turns on again when you move it away from your face. Bye-bye cheek dialing.

Data speeds over Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A network were good as per usual and the Moment loads web pages quickly. WiFi is there just in case you're out of Sprint 3G service range and we had no problems connecting to public and encrypted WPA WiFi networks. The Samsung uses Google's Webkit-based browser and it does an excellent job of rendering desktop sites accurately and quickly. You can zoom using on-screen controls or by double-tapping a web page (there's no multi-touch pinch and zoom). Android doesn't yet have Flash support but it does support mobile YouTube format via the dedicated YouTube player and for videos embedded in web pages. The high quality setting looks quite good and fills the screen. As per usual with Android, there are separate icons for Gmail and email. You can set up multiple email accounts in the email client and Samsung includes Moxier's Exchange ActiveSync client that supports push email with Exchange Server 2003 and 2007 as well as contact, calendar and task syncing. If you use the MS Exchange feature you'll also get an icon for work mail and work tasks. Finally there's Messaging which handles text and MMS (Picture Mail in Sprint-speak).

Sprint and Samsung include an all-in-one IM client that handles AIM, Yahoo and Windows Live IM, and as always with Android, Google Talk is built-in. A Facebook widget is included and you can download Twitter and MySpace clients from the Android Market.

Multimedia

Nope, there's no easy media syncing here. Drag your music and videos to a microSD card or buy and download tunes from the included Amazon MP3 player store. It's obviously not hard to drag MP3 and AAC files to a card, but those of you who want to quickly and easily sync several hundred songs will be bummed with the state of Android. Want to insert or remove the microSD card? You'll have to pull the battery to do so. Video format support is pretty slim with MPEG4, H.264 being the format of choice. Fortunately that's a popular format that's used to rip movies and videos to iPod and iPhones, so there are plenty of how-to's on the web and ready made movie trailers in that format. The Moment's 800MHz CPU really helps with video playback and we had no problems with a 720 x 360 MPEG4 trailer encoded at 1,000kbps-- something that choked the T-Mobile G1 (the first Android phone).

Sprint TV is on board-- they manage to get this client on every one of their phones, no small accomplishment. Video fills the screen but tends to break up into a blocky mess for a second or two every 30 seconds, which isn't that unusual with Sprint TV. When we tested Sprint TV we had half full bars and a decent -db signal. Doubtless with a very strong signal, we would have seen less blockiness. Still, Sprint has a great selection of channels with sports, news, TV shows and movies that will fill the void that commutes and long lines create.

The 3.5mm stereo jack is under the rubber cover on the Moment's top edge.

Music playback sounds good through the stereo jack and Samsung's speakers are as per usual, very good. The phone's loudspeaker is really loud and clear. The Android music player is a decent application that supports cover art, playlists and the usual sorts by artist, album and title. The Moment supports microSD cards up to 16 gigs, so you could carry a large library of music and video with you.

GPS and Navigation

Since this is a Google phone, Google Maps is included. It supports mapping, POIs, on-screen directions, street view maps but not spoken directions (that's in beta and is currently available only on the Droid). We don't have to sell you on Google Maps-- it's great stuff and you've likely used it before on the desktop or on a phone. Sprint Navigation powered by Telenav is also on board and the service is included with Sprint's Simply Everything plans (it's $10/month without). In our tests the phone's GPS got a fix quickly and held onto it in our built-up mixed suburban/urban haunts. Spoken directions are loud and clear thanks to the Moment's good speaker.

Battery Life

The Samsung Moment should be a power hungry phone given the large display, fast CPU and multiple radios, yet it lasted about as long as other Sprint touch screen smartphones. We got 3 days with light use (a few short phone calls, 30 minutes/day web surfing and only Gmail for our email use). With heavy use that included 20 minutes of navigation, 20 minutes of phone calls, playback of a 30 minute Sprint TV episode and Exchange turned on, the phone lasted the day with no problem. Samsung includes a 1440 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's user replaceable.

Conclusion

If you're a Sprint customer and you want an Android phone with a keyboard, the Samsung Moment is it. If you just want a smartphone and don't care about the OS, then Sprint offers quite a few competitors including the HTC Touch Pro2, BlackBerry Tour and soon the Palm Pixi. But we'd say that Android is worth the look: it's a modern OS that's fun and easy to use (though not as brain-dead easy as the iPhone). For those who enjoy Google's services such as Maps, Gmail and YouTube, Android is worth a very serious look. And the Samsung Moment has some good things to offer including a vivid AMOLED display, a decent QWERTY hardware keyboard and a fast CPU. It doesn't stand out in terms of software enhancements as does the Hero or super-high end hardware like the Moto Droid, but it's that Camry that will get you where you want to go with plenty of creature comforts.

Pro: Wonderful AMOLED display, decent QWERTY keyboard, good speaker and has a 3.5mm stereo jack. Fast CPU.

Con: Uninspired looks (though not ugly like the G1), must remove the battery to access the microSD card slot. With Android OS 1.6 and 2.0 devices on the market, we feel a little left out with the Moment's 1.5 OS.

Websites: www.sprint.com, www.samsung.com

Price: $179 with a 2 year contract after rebate

Specs:

Display: 320 x 480 capacitive AMOLED touch screen. Screen size diagonally: 3.2". Supports both portrait and landscape modes, has accelerometer.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1440 mA. Claimed talk time: up to 5 hours.

Performance: 800MHz ARM11 processor. 260 megs available internal storage.

Size: 4.5 x 2.34 x 0.63 inches. Weight: 5.67 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital 800/1900MHz with EV-DO Rev. A and fallback to 1xRTT. Comes with Nuance Voice Command software.

Camera: 3.2 MP, can take photos and video with audio.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo, AVRC, handsfree, headset, Object push, PBAP, SDAP and GOEP profiles.

Software: Android OS 1.5 (Cupcake). Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube mobile player, Android webkit-based web browser, email (POP/IMAP/MS Exchange using Moxier's Exchange ActiveSync), Nuance Voice Command, Sprint TV, Amazon MP3 Store, Sprint Navigation, Sprint NASCAR Mobile, Sprint NFL Mobile Live, MS Office document viewer, Visual Voicemail, IM (Google Talk, Yahoo and AOL) . Samsung alarm clock, notepad, world clock and stopwatch.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot. 2 gig microSD card inluded.

In the Box: Phone, battery, charger, USB cable, 3.5mm stereo earbud headset, 2 gig microSD card and printed materials.

Droid by Motorola

2009-12-28T11:08:00.000-08:00

Motorola's in big need of a smashing success and Verizon needs to prop up its line of smartphones: is the Droid by Motorola the answer? Verizon's huge marketing campaign claims so, with the usual anti-iPhone rhetoric (which we could do without) and mysterious bites of the Droid's high end features. Indeed the Droid is a phone to be reckoned with and adds that special sauce to Verizon's recently much improved smartphone lineup. The Droid runs Android OS 2.0 hot off the press, and this adds more syncing options such as MS Exchange, Google Maps 2.0 beta with spoken turn-by-turn directions and a few other tweaks. This is a vanilla Android phone with none of the customizations that HTC has done with the HTC Hero or Samsung has done with their upcoming TouchWiz-ified Behold 2. So the phone must stand on its hardware strengths, and those are good: a large 3.7" capacitive touch screen sporting the highest resolution yet on Android: 854 x 480, a hardware QWERTY keyboard, slim design, ARM Cortex A8 CPU (the same CPU found in the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre), GPS, EV-DO Rev. A, WiFi, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera and Bluetooth. Not bad, particularly the large display and ARM Cortex A8.
Design and Ergonomics

The Droid is a modern minimalist phone, lacking the trademark styling of HTC's Hero or the slim stone look of the Palm Pre. It's a basic rectangle, but it's very slim for a QWERTY slider and it looks like a high class piece. It's solid and well made, and the slider moves with a smooth motion that clicks when opened or closed fully. The battery cover is made of metal with a grippy soft touch finish. The Droid is a phone for sophisticated types and business people, while the Motorola Cliq on T-Mobile is more of a plastic youth messaging device that happens to run Android OS (ver. 1.5). At 6 ounces the phone feels weighty in a good way, and it's in the same size class as the iPhone, HTC Imagio and Samsung Moment Android phone on Sprint (though the Droid is thinner than the Moment). It's infinitely more pocketable than the HTC Touch Pro2 on Verizon since it's gobs thinner, though it's wide and tall enough that you'll want to be careful when sitting down.

the BlackBerry Storm2, Droid and HTC Imagio (all on Verizon).

The 3.7" capacitive touch screen dominates the front face with just a small bezel and touch sensitive haptic buttons below. These buttons are: back, menu, home and search. Sorry, there are no hardware call send and end buttons-- you'll need to use the on-screen phone shortcut for that. . . a dangerous proposition if you're on the move and need to keep your eyes ahead of you rather than on your phone. The display is responsive and a pleasure to use, which is true of most Android phones, and it won't leave you longing for an iPhone. Though the resolution is very high at 854 x 480, the OS scales well so text isn't painfully small and images are reasonably sized. The display is very sharp and clear but not as bright and color-rich as the Palm Pre or Samsung's AMOLED display phones like the Moment. It has an auto brightness setting that keeps things on the dim side-- turn it off and manually adjust brightness for a better experience unless battery life is an issue for you. The Droid has an accelerometer that's responsive without being too twitchy and a proximity sensor for calling without cheek-dialing.

The keyboard is surprisingly small since Moto left plenty of room for a not terribly needed d-pad on the right. The size didn't bother us as much as the incredibly short key travel-- the price we pay for a thin phone. Thus typing isn't an absolute joy and the keyboard isn't as useful as the Samsung Moment's, but it's better than on-screen pecking using the default Android keyboard. The black keys are backlit with white masking and are easy to see in the dark, and there are shortcut keys for search and menu and the @ symbol requires no Alt key press.

Video Review

Here's our 10 minute video review of the Droid that includes comparisons with the Samsung Moment and Motorola Cliq Android phones as well as the HTC Imagio Windows Mobile 6.5 touch screen smartphone on Verizon.

Phone and Data

The Motorola Droid is a dual band digital CDMA phone that works with Verizon Wireless in the US. It has EV-DO Rev. A for fast data and fallback to 1xRTT. Wifi 802.11b/g is on board when you're not in a good EV-DO coverage area, but keep in mind you must get a data plan with this phone. Google's webkit-based browser (Safari on the iPhone and the Palm Pre browser are also webkit-based) does an excellent job of rendering full HTML sites in desktop fashion. It's also fast at rendering, and thanks to the Droid's very fast CPU, it's as fast as the iPhone 3GS. Flash support should come sometime early next year, but for now the integrated YouTube player that serves mobile versions of YouTube videos does the trick. Videos embedded in web pages such as the one you're reading right now show up in the Android browser, and when you click on the video it opens in the Droid's YouTube player (similar to the iPhone's handling of Flash video). The dedicated YouTube application is standard on all Android phones and offers standard (meh) and high quality (very good) playback options. We had no trouble streaming YouTube video at the high quality setting over Verizon's EVDO Rev. A network with half signal strength (-101 db).

Speaking of signal strength, like many Moto phones, the Droid has excellent reception. Our office is in a Verizon black hole and most phones barely hold onto a bar of 1x and EV. The Droid never dropped EV, always had good data throughput and 1x stayed steady at about 50 to 60% signal strength. If you're in a marginal coverage area, this is the smartphone to get.

Call quality, even with a good signal was OK but not great. Callers said our voice sounded nasal but not underwater. On our end calls were loud and clear but sounded mechanical and digitized. We wouldn't call it bad, just artificial sounding. The speakerphone is uncannily loud. Unless you're at Yankee Stadium during the World Series just after Hideki Matsui hit a homer, you'll have no trouble hearing calls, music and video on this phone. The large speaker grille lives on the back, but we didn't have to turn the phone over to improve volume or quality. The Droid works with Google Voice, Google's calling service that works over data networks rather than Verizon's voice network. You must have a Google Voice account to use this feature, and the service is still running in invite-only mode.

Software and Android OS 2.0

The Droid is a full "with Google" phone which means it hasn't been heavily customized like the "powered by Android" HTC Hero and Moto Cliq. In theory this means the smartphone should be eligible for Google OS updates that are managed by Google and the carrier rather than requiring a customized new OS version created by the manufacturer (Motorola in the Droid's case). It also means vanilla Android, and that's not a bad thing given the operating system's freshness and pleasant UI, but we do long for a bit of that special sauce as with HTC's Sense UI. There's no MOTOBLUR here, and that's likely a good thing for the older and more business-oriented market the phone targets. That doesn't mean you can't social network your heart out. Facebook is pre-installed and in fact integrates with contacts beautifully without creating duplicates. It has a home screen widget so you can keep track of your friends. You can download Twitter clients with and without widgets and a variety of IM clients. Google's own Google Talk is the only pre-installed IM client.

Android OS 2.0 syncs with MS Exchange as well as Google. There's support for syncing to other sources, for example Facebook. MS Exchange syncs calendar and contacts and picks up Exchange email. Android 2.0 still has that strange separation between Gmail and other email; there's a Gmail icon and an Email icon. Likewise SMS/MMS Messaging lives in the Messaging application. If you sync your MS Exchange calendar, that data goes into a separate Corporate Calendar application. HTC's integration on the Hero is tighter and they added syncing over the cable to Outlook in Windows in their customized Android build-- sorry Droid, you're second best.

Media syncing is still nonexistent. Want music or video? Load them onto a microSD card yourself-- there's no mollycoddling iTunes treatment here. The Droid has a decent music player that supports MP3 and non-DRM iTunes AAC format tunes. The Gallery handles video playback with limited format support: basically MPEG4 encoded in H.264 format. Fortunately that's a popular format and the same commonly used to rip content for the iPod and iPhone. Again, thanks to that Cortex A8 CPU, the Droid handled video playback from the microSD card very well. We tested it with a 720 x 360 pixel video encoded at 1,050 kbps and it played perfectly. That's better than the HTC Hero and MyTouch 3G, both of which use and old and dreary 528MHz Qualcomm CPU.

As a business phone, the Droid does a decent job thanks to MS Exchange support but it falls behind Windows Mobile since it lacks an integrated Office suite that can edit and create MS Office documents. You can buy Documents To Go for Android for $15 via the Market if you need to edit and create MS Office documents. Quickoffice 2.0 is included and it can view MS Word, Excel and PDF documents (but not Office 2007 format files ending with .docx or .xlsx). it renders documents beautifully, including those saved as email attachments. PDF documents look great with full support for images. If you want to carry documents on a card for reference, you'll need to install a free file manager from the Market since Quickoffice doesn't have an icon and thus there's no way to access documents.

The Motorola Droid and the Motorola Cliq (T-Mobile) Android phones.

Camera and GPS

The Moto has a very good 5 megapixel autofocus camera with an LED flash. It takes sharp shots, particularly in well lit settings since the flash is overwhelming in dim settings. The camera UI is intuitive and fresh: there's a slider to switch between photo and video mode and a grab handle (a common Android convention) to pull out the drawer of settings. Images and video are saved to the microSD card and there are a wide variety of exposure, effect and quality settings. Our only complaint: autofocus is a tad sluggish.

Video recording is the star and the Droid can record 720 x 480 pixel video at 25fps (there's a lower quality MMS setting too). Video quality very good as long as the lighting is adequate. Dark settings equal blocky video but well lit scenes are natural.

Rare for a Verizon phone, there's no VZ Navigator; in fact the only pre-installed solution is free! Google Maps 2.0 beta is on board and it adds turn-by-turn spoken directions. Google Maps on Android has always been one of the best mapping and POI solutions on the mobile platform, but it lacked spoken directions and for that you had to use a paid service like VZ Navigator or Telenav. Since this is beta, we expect improvements over time, but as per usual with Google, it's a great start. The guidance voice is a speech synthesized female who sounds robotic (somehow appropriate) but intelligible. Though Google's splash screen warns you the service is in beta and it might tell you to turn left into a creek or hop on a ferry, we found its directions logical and sane (and the same as what VZ Navigator would offer). It handled re-routing well but suffered a mini-meltdown when we chose the back entrance to a big box store (the kind that's so big it has entrances on 3 streets). Google Maps wanted us to circle around an adjacent block to get to the front entrance even though it knew we were on a street that formed the perimeter of the store and that we could have simply turned right to enter the parking lot or taken a right turn 100 feet down to reach the main entrance. Bad robot.

Battery

The Droid ships with a 1400 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's user replaceable. For a very large screen EVDO phone with a fast CPU, the Droid had very good battery life, easily lasting a day of moderate to heavy use. In addition to Google cloud services sync we had it check other email accounts at a 15 minute interval during business hours, took a 5 mile trip with the GPS, watched several YouTube videos, surfed the web for an hour total, talked on the phone for 30 minutes total and played music for an hour.

Conclusion

It's hard not to like Moto's new robot. The Droid is a smashing smartphone that gives Verizon's lineup a serious lift. The hardware's look might be polarizing-- folks seem to either love it or hate it, but it's got a clean, modern and slim design. It's well made with one of the nicer slider mechanisms on a phone and that huge display makes you feel like you've got a mini computer disguised as a phone. Reception is excellent and data speeds and web page load times are likewise tops. Android could use some help in the friendly multimedia department with desktop media syncing and more supported video playback formats, but with a little effort the Droid is a very good music player and portable video player (drag them to a card yourself and convert videos to MPEG4 H.264 format first). Unless you have serious business needs that require BlackBerry push email or strong MS Exchange and Office support, the Droid is a top pick among Verizon's smartphones.

Websites: www.verizonwireless.com, www.motorola.com

Price: $199 after rebates with a 2 year contract. $559 with no contract.

Specs:

Display: 3.7" capacitive 16 million color touch screen. Resolution: 480 x 854, supports both portrait and landscape mode, has accelerometer, haptic feedback and a proximity sensor.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1400 mA. Claimed talk time: 6.4 hours.

Performance: 600MHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU (TI OMAP 3430). 256 megs RAM, 512 megs flash ROM with 250 megs available as internal storage.

Size: 4.56 x 2.36 x 0.54 inches. Weight: 5.96 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital with EV-DO Rev. A for fast data with fallback to 1xRTT.

Camera: 5 megapixel with autofocus lens and dual LED flash. Shoots video with audio up to 720 x 480 pixels at 24 fps in .3GP format (MMS size video option also available). Max photo resolution: 2592 x 1936 pixels. Has 4x digital zoom.

GPS: Built in aGPS that works with Google Maps.

Audio: Built in stereo speakers, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR supporting headset, handsfree and A2DP stereo. Tethering not yet supported.

Software: Android OS 2.0 (Eclair). Google apps: Gmail, Google Maps, Google Voice Search, Webkit-based web browser, YouTube player and voice dialing. Verizon applications: Visual Voicemail.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, 16 gig card included.

HTC Hero (Sprint)

2009-12-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

I love it! I don't get to say that very often, but the Sprint version of the HTC Hero really stands out as one of the best smartphones of 2009 and so it's won our Editor's Choice award. Google's Android itself is very compelling and both HTC and Sprint's customizations send it over the top. Thanks to the Hero, HTC Touch Pro2, BlackBerry Tour and Palm Pre, Sprint has the best smartphone lineup on the market among US carriers so far this fall. The HTC Hero features a 3.2" capacitive multi-touch display, Android OS 1.5 (Cupcake) with HTC Sense software, a 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3.5mm stereo headset jack and a microSD card slot (2 gig card included). It has EVDO Rev. A (Sprint's version of 3.5G) for fast data, a GPS with Sprint Navigation and Google Maps as well as Sprint TV.

The HTC Hero was first released in Europe in a more angular form reminiscent of the Windows Mobile HTC Touch Diamond2. Sprint's version takes its design cues from the T-Mobile myTouch 3G (also running Android and also made by HTC). It's curvy and relatively small, but it loses HTC's signature Android "chin". We like the brushed metal front face that gives it a classier look than the plasticky HTC Magic (that's the code name for the myTouch 3G and the marketing name for that phone overseas). Front buttons are the same as the Magic, but they're in different locations. These are the home button, menu button, back, search, call send and call end/power button. There's also a very useable trackball in the center of the button cluster. The volume controls are on the left side, the mini-USB port is on the bottom and the 3.5mm stereo jack is up top. The microSD card slot is under the back cover but you need not remove the battery to access it. The phone's curves and non-slippery back make it feel good in hand and the size is manageable-- it's much smaller than the HTC Touch Pro2 and smaller and lighter than the iPhone 3GS.

This is the first Android phone to ship with multi-touch enabled, and needless to say we love pinch zooming web pages, just like the iPhone. And the Android web browser is as lovely as ever and we'd put it on even footing with Apple's Safari on the iPhone.

What makes the Hero stand out are HTC's software customizations that don't merely dress up Android but add useful functionality such as the 7 page vs. 3 page home screen, HTC's own widgets for the desktop, a launcher bar, weather, stock reports and more. Even better, HTC has answered our prayers with expanded syncing: now you can sync to all Google cloud services (standard on Android) and MS Exchange and Outlook on the desktop via cable. That gives the Hero a much wider audience. The only drawback is that firmware and OS updates must come from HTC rather than being a part of Google's OS update cycle (so far, HTC has already released one firmware upgrade for the overseas Hero, so that may not be an issue).

The HTC Touch Pro2 for Sprint, HTC Hero and T-Mobile myTouch 3G.

Sync City

Standard Android phones sync only with their maker. That means all things Google: Google contacts, Google calendar and Gmail. In fact when you turn on an Android phone for the first time you must log into your Gmail account or create one before you can use all the of the phone's features. The iPhone does something similar, but there you must create or enter an existing iTunes account. While we love Android's cloud syncing, it's just not nice to have to create or enter account information if you want to do anything more than call 911. HTC's customizations in HTC Sense take care of this pet peeve: you turn on the phone, you use the phone-- all apps work except the Android Market and Gmail, and you can call anyone, not just the folks at the 911 call center. That does mean that you won't have any PIM data or email on the phone until you select your sync source(s) and initiate a sync. Under settings you can select sync sources and these are Google (Google's Gmail, contacts and calendar), MS Exchange using Exchange ActiveSync (email, contacts and calendar) and USB cable sync to Windows (contacts and calendar). Sorry Microsoft Outlook and Exchange users, there's no tasks and notes sync and no email sync with the desktop.

Exchange ActiveSync works much the same as it does with the many other phones and smartphones that support this feature. HTC's cable sync requires PC installation and a few steps. Here's how that works...

HTC Sync handles syncing via USB with Outlook in Windows. If you connect the phone using the included cable it should show up as a mass storage device and the included 2 gig microSD card has the HTC Sync installer. That said, our Hero's drivers loaded and Windows Vista thought the microSD card mounted as a volume but we couldn't access it. So we used a card reader to do the job instead. Once we did install the software, Windows loaded new drivers, but still the Hero didn't mount correctly. The installer warns you to disable your anti-virus software before running the installer (not always the easiest thing to do since many anti-virus programs do their best to avoid being turned off), but we had no problems installing when we left AVG running. Once we got HTC Sync installed and running (plug in the phone and then use the taskbar sync notification on your Hero to get things started rather than the sync section under settings) it worked fine. Note that HTC Sync supports Outlook versions 2000 through 2007 along with Windows Calendar and Windows Contacts, and it syncs only contacts and calendar items. The desktop sync application has options to repair synchronized data and it has an application installer-- an unexpected feature since apps are usually gotten from the Android Market application on the phone itself.

Sense UI

Sense UI has quite a few features, chief among them the 7 page home screen (swipe sideways to move back and forth between them), HTC Scenes, which are 5 different home screen layouts each with different widgets and HTC's Social Networking (integration with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr and HTC Footprints for keeping a log of favorite places you've visited using geo-location and the camera), A video tells a thousand words, so here's our video review of the HTC Hero for Sprint, with a focus on Sense UI and Sprint's TV and Navigation services. You'll also get a walk around the phone and see how responsive the phone is. If you're completely new to Android and don't know what the standard Android user interface looks like, check out our review of the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and its video review.

Sure it does a lot, but does it work as a phone?

There are lots of smartphones on the market, and not all excel at voice service and voice quality. It seems that we sometimes forget that the phone is still a phone. Happily, the Hero has excellent voice quality, good volume and strong reception on Sprint's voice and 3G EVDO Rev. A network. While it's not horribly difficult to make a call on an Android phone, the feature doesn't exactly jump out at you (the same can be said of the iPhone which beckons with everything except dialing). Instead of pressing the call send button and then switching to the dialer tab or hunting for the Dialer icon on the home screen, just tap the big "Phone" in the center of the launcher bar at the bottom of the screen. You'll be greeted with a large on-screen dial pad that has a list of the 3 most recent calls above and shortcuts to call history and favorites below. This is a smartphone even my mother could use for calls. The phone works well with Bluetooth headsets, has voice command and dialing (reasonably accurate) and Visual Voicemail.

The HTC Hero for Sprint is a dual band digital CDMA phone that's locked to Sprint. It has EV-DO Rev. A for data with fallback to 1xRTT. Data transfer speeds and web page download times were excellent. Likewise applications downloaded quickly over Sprint 3G via the Android Market.

The myTouch 3G and the HTC Hero.

Performance

Like most Windows Mobile and Android smartphones, the HTC Hero runs on a 528MHz Qualcomm CPU. It has 288 megs of RAM and 512 megs of flash memory with approximately 125 megs free for your use. That internal storage is important since Android currently only supports installing applications to internal storage (you can put photos, documents and everything else on a microSD card). When the Hero first came out in Europe several months ago, everyone loved HTC's enhancements but they did slow down the phone. HTC recently released a firmware update for the overseas versions and that fixed speed issues. Good things come to those who wait, and the Sprint version has those fixes in place, so the Sprint Hero is a peppy phone. The touch screen is responsive with no lag when scrolling or dragging, applications open quickly and widgets update fine. Our only complaint is that after 3 days of use the Hero does slow down, and a reboot fixes that. The demands of Sense UI and Android's memory management (or seeming lack of it at times) are likely to blame. Android doesn't exit applications by default; it just puts them in the background. That means they'll open very quickly the next time you need them but it also means memory can get full.

Sprint TV, GPS Navigation and Android Market Apps

Sprint TV plays like a dream on the HTC Hero, using the full screen and showing less digital breakup and sync loss than we've seen on many other Sprint phones. The UI has been customized to work easily with the touch screen and we found ourselves spending way too much time enjoying this feature. It's interesting to see video playback beyond YouTube on an Android phone, since Android itself lacks a video player (there is a free basic one available for download on the Market). Now that we've seen Sprint TV, clearly the platform is capable of some good multimedia fun. The Hero has a custom HTC music player that has album art, playlists and all the usual sorts (artist, song title, genre, album). The phone is compatible with cards up to 32 gigs so you can carry a very large library of tunes.

Sprint Navigation works well on the Hero and it got a fix indoors near a window and outdoors in our suburban location. This TeleNav-based service provides spoken turn-by-turn directions, on-screen directions, maps and POIs. Since this is a Google OS, Google Maps is on board with driving and walking directions, maps in standard view, satellite view and traffic view and support for their Latitude service. We downloaded Google's free Google Sky Map which makes use of the Hero's digital compass, GPS and tower triangulation to show you the night sky on screen complete with constellations and stars mapped out. Point the phone at Ursa Major or the Big Dipper and it will show you those constellations on-screen along with a view of the surrounding night sky and it's stars. Very cool!

There are currently over 8,000 applications in the Market and many of them are free. Though that number pales compared to the iPhone ecosystem, there are plenty of useful applications and some decent games, though nothing that competes with the advanced 3G games for the iPhone. HTC includes one of the 2 major Office suites for Android: QuickOffice (Documents To Go is the other). QuickOffice displays MS Office files up to Office 2007 but it can't edit them.

Battery Life

The HTC Hero for Sprint ships with a 1500 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's swappable. For a very full-featured smartphone with 4 wireless radios and push email, the Hero did surprisingly well, lasting us about 2 days with moderate use, just over a day with very heavy use and 3 to 4 days with light use. Sprint claims 4 hours of talk time which was on target in our tests. The GPS and Sprint TV will drain the battery more quickly, so expect shorter runtimes if you use those services heavily.

Conclusion

It's hard not to love a Hero, the HTC Hero on Sprint in this case. It's replete with features and those features work well. HTC's customized Android is a joy to use: it's fun, efficient, full-featured and highly customizable. The phone is responsive (though it needs a reboot every 3 days or so to keep things moving quickly) and it has one of the best web browsers on a smartphone. The capacitive 3.2" display is sharp and we love the multi-touch feature when zooming in on web pages. Though it lacks the serious business clout of the HTC Touch Pro2 with its full MS Exchange support, very complete Outlook syncing and an Office suite that both reads and writes MS Office files, the Hero should do for those who don't need Windows in their pocket. Well done, Google, HTC and Sprint.

Web sites: www.sprint.com, www.htc.com/us

Price: $179 with 2 year contract

Available: October 11, 2009

Specs:

Display: Capacitive multi-touch color LCD. Screen size diagonally: 3.2". Resolution: HVGA 480x 320, supports both portrait and landscape modes. Has accelerometer, light sensor for auto-brightness (can also use manual brightness) and a digital compass.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh. Claimed talk time: up to 4 hours.

Performance: Qualcomm 528MHz CPU, 288 megs RAM, 512 megs flash ROM with ~ 125 megs free.

Size: 4.46 x 2.22 x 0.54 inches. Weight: 4.5 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital with EVDO Rev. A for fast data.

Camera: 5 megapixel camera with autofocus lens, no flash. Can shoot video.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder included.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR.

Software: Android OS 1.5 with HTC Sense UI and HTC Footprints. Standard Google Android apps including email, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, calendar, contacts, web browser, camera, clock, Market, Amazon MP3 store and YouTube player. HTC's Sense adds user interface customizations and multiple email/PIM sync sources, HTC Weather, HTC Stocks, music player and QuickOffice (MS Office file viewer). Sprint software: Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, Visual Voicemail, NASCAR and NFL Mobile Live.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, compatible with cards up to 32 gigs. 2 gig card included.

HTC Droid Eris

2009-12-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

Though the HTC Eris might not conjure up the visceral envy that the Greek goddess Eris was known for, it is a more than worthy partner for the Motorola Droid on Verizon. The Eris, or Droid Eris by HTC as Verizon calls it, offers better portability and more phone-like ergonomics than the pocket computer Moto Droid. If you crossed the HTC Touch with the HTC Hero, you'd have the Eris whose black soft touch finish and curved lines matches the Touch while the software (Android with HTC Sense UI) match the Hero. Not a bad match at that: the Eris has all the great usability and syncing features of the Hero with a more attractive and grippable casing.

At launch, the $99 Eris costs half what the Moto Droid does with a 2 year contract, making it appealing if you want to get into the Android smartphone experience but don't want to shell out the big bucks. If you buy it retail with no contract the prices are closer. If form factor and looks are your main concern, the Eris is smaller, arguably more attractive (looks are subjective) and lighter. You do forego the Droid's hardware keyboard but the Eris' on-screen keyboard and capacitive display with haptic feedback are a passable stand-in. That said, email addicts will likely be better served by a hardware keyboard or the iPhone's impossibly good on-screen keyboard. But the keyboard is more than adequate for entering URLs, composing text messages and the like.

The Eris and Moto Droid.

Features at a Glance

The Eris runs Google's Android OS 1.5 (Cupcake) with HTC's Sense UI and software enhancements on top. It has a 3.2" capacitive touch screen that's bright and sharp, WiFi, a GPS that works with Google Maps, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR and a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus lens. Like most Android phones, the resolution is 320 x 480 (same as the iPhone 3GS) and it runs on a 528MHz Qualcomm CPU. The Moto Droid out-specs it with an unusually high resolution 480 x 854 pixel, 3.7" display and an ARM Cortex A8 CPU that's much faster (though the nominal clock speeds are similar). The Eris has EV-DO Rev. A and it weighs just 4.23 ounces.

The Eris has traditional mechanic call send and end buttons and HTC's excellent trackball that lights up for alerts. The strip of buttons just above are electrostatic touch sensitive buttons with haptic feedback. Sounds cool, right? It is if you're not trying to use the phone while moving: you need to get your finger squarely and flatly on these buttons or they won't register your touch. With an hour of use, we managed to get it right most of the time, but still wished they were easier to trigger.

Android and HTC Sense

If vanilla Android is for power users and thosethat are thrilled to find their own widgets and tweaks to customize the phone, HTC Sense is for those who want a bit more structure and a few creature comforts. It offers a large on-screen analog clock with the weather embedded (it uses the GPS to provide weather wherever you are at the moment as long as you have a data connection). Sense does away with the single drawer handle at the bottom that opens up the programs window (a grid of icons like the iPhone and pre-Windows Mobile 6.5 phones). Instead a trio of controls beckon: the arrow that opens the applications drawer, a larger phone button and a + sign that's your shortcut to adding more Android widgets, HTC widgets, application shortcuts and folder shortcuts to the desktop. Speaking of the desktop, HTC has extended it to 7 screens vs. standard Android's 3 (swipe your finger sideways to move from screen to screen). Since HTC offers a range of their own tempting widgets, the added screens are virtually an absolute necessity to avoid clutter and afford a means of organization. For example, you can have a screen dedicated to email and messaging, another to application shortcuts, another for news and sports and yet another for social networking. HTC provides a few home screen options, but we like their default one best.

Other goodies include weather and stock apps that are dead ringers for the same on HTC's TouchFLO 3D Windows Mobile touch screen phones, Peep (a Twitter client that chirps like a bird when tweets come in), and more robust syncing than Android 1.5 and 1.6 offer. As with the Hero, the Eris can sync to MS Exchange over the air and to Outlook on Windows PCs. Native Exchange sync came to Android 2.0, which so far has only appeared on the Droid and there's no native cable syncing. Overall, the software enhancements and more robust syncing make for a much more polished and turnkey experience-- as always, great going, HTC. To see Sense in action, watch our video review below.

Android comes with attractive PIM applications including a contacts application that supports favorites, the Android Market (that's where you'll get additional applications), SMS/MMS, email and a separate Gmail application, Google Maps, Google Talk, YouTube, a calculator, music player, voice dialing and voice search. HTC and Verizon include the free version of Quickoffice that allows you to view MS Office and PDF documents.

Video Review

Here's our 8.5 minute video review of the HTC Droid Eris that covers physical design and comparisons with the Moto Droid, MyTouch 3G, the UI, web browser, Google Maps and YouTube playback.

Phone and Data

It's hard to fault Verizon's excellent 3G network and the Eris downloads applications, web pages and email quickly over EV-DO Rev. A. It doesn't render web pages as quickly as the Droid since its CPU isn't as fast, but it's certainly on par with the Hero on Sprint (also EV-DO Rev. A and a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM CPU). YouTube standard quality streams well and HQ video plays decently with occasional loss of audio sync. We could see a difference in video quality when using a WiFi connection instead: HQ video was absolutely crisp and clear with no blockiness or loss of sync. Android's Webkit based web browser is excellent and comparable to the iPhone's-- thanks to HTC's customization that adds pinch to zoom (only the Hero and Eris currently offer this feature).

Voice calls sound natural and full and the volume is good, but I could hear my own voice coming back at me through the earpiece. Since there was no delay it wasn't the usual echo experience and thus is less annoying. Reception is middle of the road: it's not a reception demon like the Droid and BlackBerry Storm2, but it's not among the worst Verizon phones. If you frequent areas with modest to poor coverage, you'll feel it with the Eris.

The Eris works with mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets and it has a 3.5mm stereo jack (no wired headset included-- Hades will freeze over before AT&T and Verizon include one in the box). Android comes with a Voice Dialer that does a good job-- just remember to say your contact's name as entered in the address book (if the sort is last name, first name you'll have to say it that way).

Multimedia and GPS

Here we go again. Since we've reviewed a slew of Android phones in the past few months, we're getting tired of telling you that it's plain old lacking in the multimedia department. The music player isn't bad and does support album art and playlists along with MP3 and AAC (plus AAC variants) formats, but there's no syncing. Get out that USB cable or card reader and drag non-copy protected songs to the card yourself. There's no V Cast Music but there is the usual Android Amazon MP3 store.

Video applications are still oddly lacking on Android, but there's built-in support for MPEG4 encoded in H.264. You can play videos from the microSD card. Verizon kindly includes an 8 gig card that's pre-installed in the phone (remove the back cover to access it). So you can carry a decent library with you-- just stick with MPEG4 and VGA resolution or lower for best results. The phone doesn't have V Cast video support: Sprint's Hero wins on that point since it comes with all the Sprint services from music to video to NFL Mobile.

The 3.5mm stereo jack is up top.

The smartphone has a GPS that works with Google Maps (all Android phones come with Google Maps). We were surprised that Verizon's VZ Navigator wasn't included-- it's rare to see a Verizon phone without it. That means no turn by turn spoken directions until Google adds it (there's a beta version of Google Maps with spoken directions on the Droid). HTC's Footprints is on board for a camera plus GPS combo that you can use to record where you've been, favorite places, restaurants and etc. with photo and location saved.

Speaking of the camera, it's not as good as the specs might lead you to believe. The Eris has a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that can take still photos and video up to a lackluster QVGA resolution at 15fps. Since there's no flash, dim indoor shots yield noisy, overly warm photos. Outdoor shots have very nice color saturation (a pleasing over-saturation) and decent color accuracy. But even at the highest settings, there's obvious software interpolation making up the details-- not just in tree leaves (that kind of fine detail is often a little fudged) but cars, signs and buildings show a level of detail we'd expect from a very good 3 megapixel camera rather than 5. Outdoor images look much better when resized down: this improves the apparent sharpness and the colors look great.

There's no dedicated camera button (boo!) so you'll have to resort to the desktop camera shortcut to launch the application and press the trackball (who thought pressing a rolling part was a good idea, HTC?) to snap the shot. Though a help bubble pops up telling you to press the trackball to take a photo, you can thankfully press and hold the screen to take a shot (though this is slower). When using the trackball to take a shot, the Eris' camera is faster to focus and capture than the Moto Droid. The trackball also functions as the digital zoom control. There are plenty of camera settings to fiddle with and images are saved directly to the card.

The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, HTC Eris, Moto Droid and HTC Imagio.

Conclusion

The Droid revolution has come to Verizon, starting with the Moto Droid and the HTC Eris. While the Moto Droid captivates us with its seductive display, strangely modern industrial design (where ugly almost merges with sleek) and very fast CPU; the Eris says "I'm a phone and I'm friendly to use and hold". HTC's industrial design has been spot-on lately and the Eris is attractive and ergonomic. And HTC's Sense UI polishes Android's rough edges with user-friendly software customizations, useful widgets, apps for popular things like weather, twitter and stocks and it greatly expands Android's syncing capabilities. This is a smartphone that can almost hold its own against HTC's Imagio-- we say almost because Windows Mobile, despite its slow march forward, is more polished in terms of software features (Android is still a very young platform and it shows) like multimedia playback and syncing. And the Imagio has VZ Navigator while shockingly, the Eris lacks it. In fact, Sprint's HTC Hero is stronger on the multimedia front since it crams in Sprint TV, Sprint Music and every other Sprint service currently available on their phones. But the Eris is a fun phone with a spanking new UI that's fresh and fun. It works well as a phone and clearly is tops for working with Google's myriad services like search, Maps and Google Talk.

Pro: Looks great and feels great in the hand. Fairly easy one-handed operation. Display is quite bright and sharp. Capacitive display is responsive and HTC has added pinch zoom in the web browser. Great web browsing, excellent support for Google services, can sync to MS Exchange and Outlook on the desktop. Very customizable. We still love Android's elegant and unobtrusive notification system.

Con: Media players lacking and there's no media syncing (you'll have to drag files to the microSD card yourself). No corporate grade security features like remote wipe. Android Market is weak in the games department. No VZ Navigator or V Cast services.

Websites: www.verizonwireless.com, www.htc.com/us/

Price: $99 with a 2 year contract, $469 with no contract.

Specs:

Display: 262K color capacitive touch screen. Screen size diagonally: 3.2". Resolution: 320 x 480 pixels. Supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer. Has haptic feedback for touch sensitive buttons on bezel and for on-screen keyboard. Has proximity sensor.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1300 mAh. Claimed talk time: up to 300 minutes. Claimed standby: up to 373 hours.

Performance: Qualcomm MSM7600 528MHz processor. 288 MB built-in RAM. 512 MB Flash ROM with 145 megs available for storage.

Size: 4.45 x 2.19 x 0.51 inches. Weight: 4.23 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital 800/1900MHz with EV-DO Rev. A and fallback to 1xRTT. Has speakerphone and vibrate mode.

Camera: 5.0 MP camera with autofocus lens. No flash. Can shoot video with audio up to QVGA resolution at 15fps.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC and WMA. Has mono speakerphone and vibrate mode.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR with headset, handsfree, A2DP stereo and phonebook profiles. Tethering not yet supported.

Software: Google Android OS 1.5 (Cupcake) with HTC Sense. Google Webkit based browser with support for Flash Lite, Gmail, email, MS Exchange email, YouTube, Google Maps, PIM applications (contacts and calendar), Peep Twitter client, Facebook client, music player, Amazon MP3 Store, HTC Footprints, Google Talk, PDF viewer, Quickoffice MS Office document viewer, HTC weather and stocks, calculator, photo album, camera application, clock and SMS/MMS messaging application.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot (under back cover), 8 gig card included.

In the Box: Phone, battery, USB cable, charger and quick start guide.

iPhone 3GS

2009-12-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

Another year, another iPhone launch from Apple. The 3rd generation iPhone is still exclusive to AT&T in the US and it's still the hottest phone on the planet in terms of user interest (err, obsession?) and hype. Even the recently released Palm Pre (an excellent touch screen smartphone) can't seem to keep up with Apple's latest hotness. The iPhone 3GS looks and feels like the iPhone 3G, which Apple and AT&T are still selling but at a lower price. Like the 3G iPhone, it's available in black and white and in two storage capacities, upgraded from the 3G to 16 and 32 gigs. The white is available in both sizes this time around. The iPhone 3GS 16 gig sells for $199 and the 32 gig is $299 with a 2 year contract. AT&T charges $200 if your contract isn't yet up for renewal, and you can buy it at retail price ($599 and $699) if you don't want to extend your contract. The outgoing iPhone 3G 8 gig isn't going out just yet: AT&T and Apple are selling it for an incredibly cheap $99 with contract.

Everything that was in the old iPhone 3G is in the iPhone 3GS: accelerometer, 480 x 320 pixel capacitive touch screen, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor (turns off the display when the phone is against your face), a non-user replaceable battery (still have to send it back to Apple if you need a new battery), WiFi, Bluetooth and iTunes music and video players. Since the 3GS shares the same ports and dimensions, your iPhone 3G accessories will work: cases, chargers and more.

Video camera built-in

So what's new? The iPhone 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and it can (finally!) shoot video. And not little crappy MMS style video; it can shoot VGA video at 30fps. There are still no software settings or controls for the camera, just point and shoot with the added focus feature: tap the viewfinder where you want the camera to focus and then hit the virtual shutter button. Still photo quality is markedly better than the iPhone 3G's with more detail and sharpness, though colors are a little over-saturated (some folks will like this) and brightly lit outdoor shots can blow out. Want to take club photos? Sorry, there's still no flash, so darkly lit scenes look dark and noisy.

Video on the other hand is remarkably good, nearly rivaling the standard bearer Nokia N95 and the new Nokia N97. Colors are accurate, exposure is good and video is smooth with plenty of detail. Nice. And the iPhone 3GS has basic video editing features and you can upload video directly to YouTube.

S stands for speed

Honestly, the iPhone 3G didn't strike us as slow. Granted the keyboard would lag once in a while and 1,000 contacts could add a second or two to opening the contacts app, but the iPhone 3GS is noticeably faster. Faster at loading a large contacts database, faster at loading an email inbox with 100 messages, faster at loading heavy HTML web pages and much faster at loading resource intensive games. Here are the results of our speed tests:

Load New York Times homepage (desktop version of their site) over 3G HSDPA:
iPhone 3G: 28 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 15 seconds

Launch Billy Frontier:
iPhone 3G: 28 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 15 seconds

Launch Zen Pinball:
iPhone 3G: 29 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 7 seconds

Launch Assassin's Creed (to cut scene):
iPhone 3G: 15.4 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 10 seconds

The iPhone 3GS has a Samsung S5PC100 600MHz ARM processor (Cortex A8 platform-- cutting edge and fast) and 256 megs of RAM, while the iPhone and iPhone 3G had a 412MHz processor and 128 megs of RAM. There's also a new graphics chip in the S model-- no wonder this thing is faster. Yet battery life is supposed to be better with the faster phone-- impressive since CPU speed and battery life are usually inversely proportional. While the iPhone 3G struggled to make it through a day with heavy use, the iPhone 3GS succeeds.

There's another element to speed and that's network speed. The iPhone 3G supported HSDPA 3.6Mbps while the iPhone 3GS supports 7.2Mbps. AT&T is in the process of rolling out that faster 3G standard and it will take them about 1.5 years to complete, but we'd hope to see it rolled out in some of the larger metro areas later this year. That means even faster web page and email downloads. But in our area (Dallas), download speeds are no better than the iPhone 3G running the new 3.0 OS. That OS sped up download times considerably: DSL Reports mobile speed test reported 360k on the iPhone 3G with the 2.0 OS and 1064k on the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS running OS 3.0.

Reception and Call quality

Sorry, there are no great improvements here. The iPhone 3GS gets average reception and measures the exact same as the iPhone 3G using Apple's built-in field test that measures signal in decibels (smaller numbers are better, use the keypad to enter *3001#12345#* to get a reading on your own iPhone). Call volume and quality are the same with the exception of Bluetooth headsets: range is improved as is voice quality.

Not there quite yet

New for OS 3.0 which is pre-installed on the iPhone 3GS and is available as a free upgrade via iTunes download for the older iPhones, is MMS (picture and video messaging) and tethering (using the iPhone as a high speed wireless modem for a notebook). Unfortunately, AT&T isn't ready to support these new features out of the gate but they should be available later in 2009.

Drive safely: voice dialing

The iPhone wasn't the safest driving companion: no speed dial and no voice dialing -- oh my. New for the iPhone 3GS (and not available as part of the OS 3.0 upgrade for older iPhone models) is voice dialing. Press and hold the iPhone's center button (that's the only button on the phone other than the power button) to launch voice dialing and voice command. Yes, you can say "call Juan Doe mobile", and in fact you better say that because the iPhone won't match partial names and if you've got more than one number for a contact it will prompt you on screen as to which number to call (you must look at the screen to notice this, but you can say "home", "mobile" or "work" without touching the screen). To call folks start the command with "call". To digit dial a number, start your command with "dial". To find out what song is playing, say "what song is playing". Of course if you're going to press and hold the center button, you could just as well look at the screen and see what song is playing. But if iTunes is playing the song in the background (yes it can do that and the iPhone can indeed multitask when Apple wants it to) this feature is more useful.

The good news: it's very accurate, though some Chinese names threw it for a loop. The bad news? There's no voice dialing over Bluetooth-- doh!

Other new goodies

Also new for OS 3.0 (not just the iPhone 3GS) is Bluetooth A2DP stereo. Finally, the world's foremost music phone with all its iPod goodness, can play music through Bluetooth stereo headphones and headsets. And boy is it loud. . . and it sounds good too; better than average for a music phone. New for the iPhone 3GS is Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with multi-point technology, which means it can pair with multiple headsets. It played well with a variety of current Bluetooth headsets and supported most call features except voice dialing.

The new OS adds (don't fall down now) copy and paste. It only took 2 years and three OS revisions to get this basic feature, but now that it's here, we must admit it's the best implementation we've ever seen on a mobile device. It's very easy to control and works like a charm. It copies more than just text too: you can highlight a section of a web page with text, graphics and hyperlinks and paste it into an email message and it's all transferred intact and pretty.

Apple has added iPhone-wide search. Swipe your application screens to the position that would be before the first screen of icons and you'll see a search screen (see below). It searches email (headers only), contacts, calendar and more.

There's a compass (magnetometer) that looks just like your Boy or Girl Scout tool of old. For hikers, map geeks and the like it's a nifty feature but the rest of the world will have to wait until applications like navigation programs put this to general purpose good use.

iPhone 3GS vs. Palm Pre

The Palm Pre is the new kid on the block and he's off to a very promising start. Running Palm's new Linux-based webOS, the Pre, like the iPhone, is very easy to use and full of eye candy. In fact, the Pre has even more special effects and animations in the OS, and while those do nothing to improve functionality, they are fun and attractive. Here are some comparison points:

Both have capacitive multi-touch displays that are wonderfully easy to use (the Pre's is more colorful). The iPhone has a larger display and that makes a difference when viewing web pages, movies and photos.
But that smaller screen means Pre is smaller and a little easier to fit in your pocket.
The Pre has a hardware QWERTY keyboard. . . but it's pretty bad and isn't a real improvement over the iPhone's on-screen keyboard unless you're really allergic to touch screen typing.
The iPhone can take advantage of the iTunes app store's obscenely large number of programs-- most of them very inexpensive or free while Palm's developer SDK won't be ready until September 2009, so we won't be seeing lots of apps for some time. Those 3rd party Pre apps will be written in HTML (the same code that's used to make web pages) and that means there's less potential for powerful applications (true .exe's in Windows-speak).
The Pre can sync to multiple PIM data sources-- that means you can sync you calendar and contacts to more than one Exchange server, Google's calendar and more (mostly without dupes), which is a unique feature.
The iPhone can sync directly to a desktop/notebook computer for PIM (contacts, calendar, tasks and notes) using Outlook or the Mac OS X address book and calendar. The Pre syncs only to the cloud (online services like Exchange and Google).
Both can sync to iTunes, but if Apple makes changes to iTunes, Pre syncing could break until Palm updates their syncing software on the Pre.
The iPhone is currently exclusive to AT&T while the Pre is exclusive to Sprint. Sprint's exclusivity will likely run to the end of 2009, while AT&T has had the iPhone exclusive for 2 years and will for at least another year. Only you can decide which carrier works best in your area and meets your budget requirements. Both charge $70 as a starting point, but at the moment, Sprint throws in unlimited text/MMS.
The iPhone 3GS doesn't have stellar battery life, but the Pre is even worse.
The Palm Pre multitasks while the iPhone doesn't allow 3rd party apps (generally) to run in the background. On the iPhone you can play music in the background, put a call into the background so you can take down notes or view maps in Google.
The Pre currently does not ship with voice dialing while the iPhone 3GS has voice dialing.

To buy or not to buy?

If you own an iPhone 3G and aren't eligible for the fully subsidized upgrade prices, then the iPhone 3GS may not be worth the $400 and higher cost of entry. But if you have an iPhone 2G (the first model) run, don't walk to get this. This is a darned fast computer for your pocket that's also the easiest to use and the camera is a big step up. If you like new toys and want to upgrade your 3G there are enough excuses to do so: faster performance (especially in demanding games and big web page download times), VGA video recording with YouTube uploads, faster graphics CPU (some detailed 3D games in the future may only be compatible with the 3GS). Voice dialing is also invaluable for those who make calls on the go (stop looking at your iPhone and drive!). And HSDPA 7.2Mbps doesn't mean much today but you'll notice the improvement when it comes to your area.

Prices:
16 gig: $199 with 2 year contract ($399 if you haven't reached upgrade time yet on your existing iPhone plan and $599 retail with no contract extension)
32 gig: $299 with 2 year contract ($499 if you haven't reached upgrade time yet on your existing iPhone plan and $699 retail with no contract extension)

Websites: www.apple.com, wireless.att.com

Specs:

Display: 3.5" color display, 480 x 320 pixels, 163 ppi. Touch screen, gesture-aware and multi-touch aware. Your finger's flesh must contact the glass, a stylus, gloved finger or fingernail won't work.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is NOT user replaceable. It must be sent to Apple for replacement or taken to an Apple store. Estimated battery life according to Apple: 300 to 400 full charge cycles. Claimed talk time: up to 5 hours in 3G mode, 12 hours in GSM mode. Claimed standby: up to 300 hours. Claimed Internet use time on 3G is 5 hours (9 hours on WiFi), claimed video playback is up to 10 hours and claimed music playback is 30 hours. Supports USB charging.

Performance: 600MHz ARM CPU (Samsung S5PC100, Cortex A8 platform), 256 megs RAM. 16 and 32 gig capacities available. Has flash memory, not a hard disk.

Size: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.48 inches. Weight: 4.8 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band 850/900/1800/1900MHz world phone with EDGE for data. Triband 3G HSDPA 850/1900/2100MHz. Locked to AT&T, you can't use other carriers SIM cards with the iPhone unless someone finds a way to unlock it.

GPS: Yes, integrated GPS with a customized version of Google Maps.

Camera: 3 megapixel camera with autofocus lens. Shoots photos at 1536 x 2048 resolution and video with audio at VGA 640 x 480 resolution at 30fps. Supports geotagging (GPS location is embedded in photo data).

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Stereo earbud headset with inline mic included (frequency response 20Hz-20KHz, 32 ohms impedance). Full iPod capabilities, including video playback. Audio specs for iPhone: frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz. Audio formats supported: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 1, 2, and 3), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV.

Video: Plays all iTunes videos (TV shows, movies and etc.). Video formats supported: Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR.

Software: iPhone OS 3.0 (customized version of Mac OS X operating system). Safari web browser, e-mail client (POP3, IMAP, MobileMe and Exchange), RSS reader, calendar, contacts, Google Maps, iPod music and video player, voice recorder, calculator, alarm clock, timer and more. Compatible with Mac OS X computers running 10.4.11 and later as well as Windows XP and Vista. Uses iTunes 8.2 or later to sync music, video and PIM information.

Memory Expansion Slot: None.

Connector: 30 pin iPod dock connector.

In the box: iPhone, USB cable, charger, stereo headset, documentation, cleaning cloth, SIM eject tool.

Sony Ericsson P800

2009-12-27T16:08:00.000-08:00

Sony Ericsson P800 Symbian OS GSM Smartphone.

The Sony Ericsson P800 has been one of the most anticipated smartphones released in the past year. Why? It has a relatively large display, runs Symbian OS 7, supports GPRS, has Bluetooth and a VGA camera. If that isn't enough for you, it's one of the few Symbian phones that runs UIQ and has a touch screen that allows you to use the stylus or your finger to navigate and enter data. It's a GSM network phone that suports GPRS for data, and you can get it from Sony Ericsson directly as well as other dealers. It should work with any provider's SIM card (our review unit ran on the AT&T Wireless network), and it's a world phone that works on 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz bands.

Size, Looks and Ergonomics

No doubt, this is an attractive phone. The metallic sky blue and silver finish is beautiful. These tones and the phone's sleek lines give it a tastefully modern and clean look. While the casing and flip are made of plastic, it doesn't look the least bit cheap and feels reasonably sturdy.

The phone was much smaller in person than I'd expected, fitting well in the range of larger candy bar phones. It's actually a bit shorter than the Nokia 3650, and a wee bit thinner than the otherwise smaller Kyocera 7135.

To use the P800 as a phone, you can simply dial using the flip cover in the closed position, as shown in the top left picture. If you prefer, you can use the on screen soft dialpad instead if the flip is open. You can even remove the flip if you prefer to have the large screen always available and set the phone to use the on screen dialer interface as its default.

The Memory Stick Duo expansion slot is on the right side of the phone, below a blue translucent plastic panel that pops out. This panel has a pen like tip at one end because it acts as the stylus! An ingenious design, though it doesn't make the best stylus being too light and flat. It does however stay securely in place, so you're not likely to need the included replacements. Also on the right side of the Sony Ericsson P800 you'll find a camera button which launches the camera app and acts as the shutter button.

The left side of the phone has a jog dial, headset jack, IR port and the power button. The back is where you'll find the VGA camera lens.

What's in the Box?

You get the phone, battery, a slim and well made sync cradle, a CD with PC Suite, another CD with multimedia apps and games for the P800, a 16 meg Memory Stick Duo card, extra stylii, wired headset, an excellent printed manual and a pouch style case. What is a Memory Stick Duo? It's yet another new memory expansion card format that looks like a regular Memory Stick but is only about 1/2 as long. The P800 can accept cards of up to 128 meg capacity.

Phone Functionality

The Sony Ericsson P800 has good reception and call clarity. It's not as good as the Nokia 3650 which has excellent RF reception and doesn't pull in as many bars of signal strength (we have both phones and both are on AT&T Wireless which offers the best GSM reception in our area). However, calls do sound good and I haven't dropped any calls or heard any mentionable digital distortion in lower signal areas.

To make a call you can use the flip or the virtual dialer display which looks indentical to the flip. Instead of send and end buttons, you'll use the OK button to send a new call, answer a call or end a call. The flip isn't backlit, but since it's made of translucent plastic, the light from the display shines though to illuminate the keys. You can also voice dial using the included headset or Sony Ericsson's Bluetooth headset, and initiate a call from the phone book by tapping on your contact's number.

PDA Functions

The P800 come with CIC Jot for handwriting recognition and this does a very good job of allowing you to enter data using natural print characters. There's also an on screen keyboard you can call up to enter data. Like any PDA, the P800 has all the standard PIM (personal information manager) applications: Contacts, Calendar, Tasks and a memo pad supporting ink notes. The Contacts app supports a good number of fields, including home, work and fax numbers, email address, web address, home address, work address, notes and an image for each contact. You can create categories for your contacts and assign specific ring tones to your contact. The calendar has day, week and month views, and indicates appointments in week and month view as a blue box. You can set all day appointments, repeat events and assign categories to calendar entries. The Tasks app allows you to assign priorities, due dates, alarms to your task and you can mark it completed. Jotter is the memo app and you can enter text via handwriting recognition or the on screen keyboard. You can also draw and write ink notes, and specify the color and thickness of your lines. You can send your Jotter notes via MMS, SMS, Bluetooth or IR. You also get a calculator and a messages app for viewing received MMS and SMS messages and sending/receiving email (POP3, SMTP and IMAP are supported).

Additional Applications

There's a file manager for working with files on internal memory and the Memory Stick, a video player, audio player, picture viewer (for looking at the JPEG photos you shoot with the built-in camera) and MS Word viewer application. The P800 has a voice recorder which records in pretty decent quality, and you can record over an hour on a 16 meg stick. Voice memos can be used as ring tones and sent as MMS messages— pretty cool! Opera is included for Internet browsing and it's quite capable, supporting SSL, JavaScript, CSS, cookies and frames. The P800 supports PersonalJava and J2ME for you gamers.

Syncing and Bluetooth

PC Suite, the standard desktop apps for Symbian smartphones, is included, as is a desktop USB sync cradle. You can sync, transfer files and backup the phone using PC Suite. If you don't wish to use the cradle, you can sync using IR and Bluetooth. It runs on Windows ME, 2000 and XP, and works with Outlook 98/2000/2002, Lotus Organizer 5 and 6 as well as Lotus Notes 4.6 and 5. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to sync and install files using Bluetooth, and I didn't go crazy setting it up. I used Anycom's new USB-220 USB adapter on Windows 2000 and was able to pair and sync right away. I just received Anycom's latest adapter and gave it a try with the P800 hoping for the best, and all went well.

To connect the P800 to another device such as a laptop or headset, you'll go into the control panel and select Bluetooth from the connections tab. You can make the phone discoverable and initiate pairing here, and specify whether the phone will ask permission before connecting to paired devices. The phone supports the relatively new hand's free profile and works well with Sony Ericsson's own HBH-60 Bluetooth headset.

Built-in VGA Camera

As if the P800 didn't do enough, it also has a built-in digicam capable of taking shots at VGA (640 x 480) resolution at your choice of three quality settings. It can also take shots at 324 x 240 and 160 x 120 resolution. You can tweak the brightness, contrast and lighting settings (Auto, Fixed, Indoor, Outdoor and Flourescent). How's the image quality? Pretty good for a VGA digicam. It compares favorably to accessory digicams for PDAs, and does a good job of setting proper exposure and color balance. It does display noticable artifacts on indoor shots that aren't very well lit. Below you'll find a few sample photos. The full size images have not been edited, while the smaller thumbnails displayed on this page have only been reduced in pixel dimensions.

Comparing the Sony Ericsson P800 to Other Smartphone Platforms

The Sony Ericsson is both a phone and a PDA. That said it's more in the phone camp than the PDA camp. Functions and ergonomics are phone centric, though it does offer full-featured PIM applications and some nice basic multimedia apps. When comparing the Symbian Series 60 Nokia 3650 to the P800, the P800 is certainly a more formidable PDA thanks to the strong application suite, larger screen and handwriting recognition. The 3650 just squeaks by as a smartphone, while the P800 definitely tackles basic PDA tasks. Plus, the P800 offers a touch screen and handwriting recognition while the 3650 and once very popular Nokia 9290 Communicator do not.

As you might expect, the Palm OS smartphones such as the Samsung I330 and Kyocera 7135 offer a much fuller PDA experience with greater expandability via accessories and the myriad commercial, shareware and freeware Palm OS apps available. The same can be said of recent Pocket PC Phone Edition models such as the T-Mobile and Samsung i700 models. Though you won't find as many software titles for Pocket PC OS as Palm, there are still several thousand applications to choose from.

Above, size comparison of the Nokia 3650, Kyocera 7135 and the Sony Ericsson P800.

Side view of the P800 with flip open. The Memory Stick Duo card goes in the side under the translucent blue cover which pops out to act as a stylus.

If you're a user who's looking for a convergence device that will allow you to carry one device instead of two, and you have basic PDA needs, then the P800 should do the job admirably. If you're a PDA power user, or are interested in exploring the rich world that PDAs offer, then the P800 may not be your device.

Battery Life and Display

The P800 comes with a user replaceable 1,000 mA Lithium Ion battery that was good for 2 days of average use, and a week or more of standby time.

The display is a front lit TFT LCD with a resolution of 208 x 320 pixels when the flip is open. While it's not breathtaking, it is an adequate color display that is visible in daylight.

Suggested list price $699

Pro: Attractive, and surprisingly light weight for a full-featured Symbian smartphone. Symbian OS is reliable and stable: you won't have to worry about losing your data due to crashes. Offers handwriting recognition and on-screen QWERTY keyboard. Good battery life, large color display, Bluetooth plays nicely with other devices. built-in digicam takes nice pix. Con: PC Suite can be a challenge at times for syncing, though generally once you get it working, it will be reliable. Not as many apps and expansion possibilites compared to Palm OS and Pocket PC phones make it a weak choice for PDA pro's.

Specs:

Display: TFT color LCD, 12 bit, 4096 colors, Screen Size Diag: 3", Resolution: 208 x 320 pixels (flip open).

Battery Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1,000 mA. Claimed battery life: Talk Time 5 hours.

Performance: ARM 9 processor running at 156 MHz, 12 MB built-in RAM available to user. One 16 meg Memory Stick Duo also included for memory expansion.

Size: 117mm x 59mm x 27mm. Weight Approximately 158 grams.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and standard 2.5mm mono headset jack.

Software: Symbian OS 7 and UIQ 2.0 user interface. Standard PIM apps included, along with image viewer, camera app, video player, Opera web browser, message app for email, SMS and MMS, games and more. PC Suite for desktop syncing and more.

Expansion: 1 Memory Stick Duo slot. 16 meg card included, can accept up to 128 meg cards.

Network: GSM with GPRS. Tri-band 900 MHz (Europe), 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz (US) freqencies.

Samsung Mondi

2009-12-26T15:28:00.000-08:00

I get the whole handheld computer and ultramobile device space, from the Samsung Nexio of old to the Nokia N810 to today's Samsung Mondi. I don't believe these devices are the answer to a problem nobody had. There are indeed folks who need lightweight mobile computing in their pocket: in the physical sense and in the OS sense. The Mondi is larger than a smartphone but only an ounce or so heavier. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Classic so it's instant-on, unlike netbooks. The 4.3" screen is much better suited to web browsing, document viewing and video playback than small-screened phones. The large hardware keyboard makes email and remote access easier. But here's the dilemma: smartphones have gotten larger and more powerful and now they too can handle the jobs done by MIDs (Mobile Internet Device) and make phone calls too (the Mondi doesn't have a cell radio). Samsung knows this too, and so the Mondi has a trump card: WiMAX 4G for faster wide area networking.

Why WiMAX?

Alas, Samsung makes the device but not the network so they're counting on the likes of Clear (Clearwire) and soon Time Warner and Sprint to make that network hum. It ain't there yet, and we're not sure it will ever be compelling now that HSDPA 7.2Mbps is hitting metro areas with HSPA + (21Mbps) coming in 2010 on T-Mobile and LTE looming for Verizon and AT&T. When WiMAX was first touted more than 3 years ago the speeds sounded impressive to a world plodding along on EDGE and EV-DO Rev. 0, but now it's nothing special. Clear's service is currently available in Portland and Salem Oregon, Boise, Las Vegas, several Texas cities including Dallas, Atlanta, the Seattle metro area, Greensboro, Charlotte, Raleigh, Philadelphia, Honolulu and Maui. Though Clear offers home (indoor) and mobile coverage packages, we haven't gotten a decent signal indoors yet in the Dallas and Portland coverage areas. WiMAX requires significant base station density (more dense than cell networks) and at 2.5GHz it's high enough in the spectrum to have trouble with building penetration. Outdoors in a car or at a sidewalk cafe we had no problem getting a 50% signal, but in a house we managed maybe 1 bar with service drops if we wandered too far from a window. Forget hanging out in a large corporate building or big box store unless there's a WiMAX repeater. We hope things will improve, but it's going to take time and money to build out a strong WiMAX network.

Clear has quite a few service plans (and enough overlapping ones to be confusing) but there is a specific Mondi unlimited plan that's currently $35/month for the first 6 months and $45 for the remaining 1.5 years. Download speeds aren't limited as they are on some of Clear's other plans (current max download speeds are approximately 6Mbps (which is slower than WiFi 802.11b's 10 Mbps) and 1 Mbps upload speeds. There is no data cap on this plan. The bad news? They're doing things cell phone style and Clear requires a 2 year contract to get these rates. Month to month rates are higher. Clearly at this point, you're paying a fairly expensive monthly fee for broadband wireless that's not available in many metro areas, nor is it blisteringly fast.

The iPhone 3GS and Samsung Mondi.

A Closer Look at the Mondi

Enough about WiMAX, let's take a look at the Mondi itself. The device looks and feels well-made though we wouldn't call it chic and stylish. It's solid, the QWERTY slider is robust and the keyboard is quite good. It certainly feels worth the $449 price, which is comparable to a touch screen smartphone price without contract extension. The Mondi reminds us of a larger Motorola Droid, with its black rectangular business looks and slide-out QWERTY. The Mondi's keyboard is much better than the Droid's: it's larger and the keys have more travel and tactile feedback. The devices have similar display resolutions but the Mondi's LCD is larger at 4.3", making text easier to read without zooming in. This is a resistive display rather than a capacitive display like that of the Droid and iPhone. That means you'll need to press harder and there's no multi-touch pinch zooming. The good news is that you can use a stylus (Windows Mobile 6.1 is easier to use with a stylus since it's not touch-optimized) or your fingernail to tap on small links and close boxes.

The Mondi has stereo speakers on the top edge that sound reasonably good for a mobile device, a mic, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack (handy not just for music but also VoIP calls), a dedicated camera button and an easily accessible microSD card slot under a plastic door. The Samsung has a micro USB port for syncing and charging and like any Windows Mobile device it can sync over USB to Outlook and wirelessly to MS Exchange servers. A pop-out arm functions as a stand so you can watch videos with the Mondi on a desk or tray table (the Mondi supports a wide variety of video formats including Flash 8) and there are volume controls on the right side.

Though the Mondi is larger than today's bigger smartphones, it's clearly much smaller than a netbook and is pocketable if you have roomy pockets in loose-fitting garments. At 5.39 ounces, it weighs less than you'd expect of a device this size.

The Mondi is not a phone and it doesn't have a cell radio. That means no voice calls unless you use VoIP services like Skype. We tested the Mondi with Skype over both WiMAX and WiFi and it worked fine, even when using the built in speakers and mic (your caller will hear their voice echo back if you don't use the headset though). To use Skype on Windows Mobile you'll need to download and install the application. Each time you wish to use Skype you'll need to run the app and sign in-- there's no turnkey integration with the phone app as there is on the Nokia N900 since there is no phone app on the Mondi (once again, this isn't a phone).

Video Review

Here's our 8.5 minute video review of the Samsung Mondi that shows off the hardware, Samsung custom user interface, WiMAX speeds, the Opera web browser and more.

Performance and Horsepower

The Mondi uses Samsung's own ARM11 family S3C6410 CPU running at 800MHz. That's a lot of high-end processing power and the Mondi makes good use of it when playing back fairly high resolution video in MPEG4, DivX and other formats. We were surprised that the device sometimes lagged in Samsung's custom home screen, whose UI is attractive, finger-friendly and intuitive but not so full of eye candy that it should drag on performance (see our video review to check out the home screen UI). TouchWiz, Samsung's UI for touch screen phones is also on board and we have to wonder why: it really doesn't add to the experience and really slows down the device (fortunately, you need not run it).

After using the HTC HD2 with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and noting how that CPU helped speed Opera rendering times (making its EDGE connection feel much faster) we're surprised that neither the 800MHz Mondi nor Samsung Omnia II show much speed improvement in Opera Mobile 9.5. Opera runs about as quickly as on the average 528MHz Qualcomm CPU-- decent but not seriously fast. Samsung customized the Mondi and Opera to support Flash 8 content in the browser (no need for an external player). YouTube uses Flash 8 but Hulu uses Flash 9, so that means YouTube but no Hulu for you. Even over a fast WiFi connection, YouTube standard resolution video played jerkily at about 12 frames per second-- not ideal, but maybe better than nothing. Opera supports a max of 3 windows and oddly it won't let you run Opera and Internet Explorer Mobile concurrently though the OS and device otherwise support multi-tasking.

The mobile equivalent of Windows programs that are standard on Windows Mobile are on board. Office Mobile and Outlook run quickly enough, and the high resolution screen makes reading and editing MS Office documents a pleasure. As a mobile office, the Mondi does the job. For those of you who are still very new to mobile computing, Windows Mobile runs mobile versions of Microsoft applications that have many but not all features of the desktop versions. You can't install programs meant for true Windows PCs and notebooks on a Windows Mobile device. You can download and install additional programs made for the WinMo platform, but you'll need to do that minus the Windows Mobile Marketplace which currently only supports Windows Mobile 6.5 (the Mondi runs 6.1 and there's no word of an upgrade).

The Mondi has 4 gigs of internal flash storage (nice) and an SDHC microSD card slot so you can carry plenty of business documents, maps and multimedia content on the device. It has 256 megs of RAM with 81 megs free at boot, which should be enough memory to keep the device running smoothly. We did notice instability when heavyweight applications were running. For example, we switched out of Route 66 navigation to turn on the WiMAX connection so we could look up POIs and the Mondi slowed to a crawl and had difficulty drawing the home screen background and Start Menu icon.

Camera and GPS

First: the good news. Samsung includes all the hardware you need to use the Mondi as an in-car GPS system: windshield mount and car charger. In fact, these items are handy if you work in a vertical market and need access to your device for any reason while in the car. The Mondi ships with Route 66 navigation software with maps of the US and Canada. Route 66 is more popular in Europe than the US but it nonetheless gives good turn-by-turn directions and has sharp maps. The bad news? The Mondi's GPS seems weak and we had difficulty getting a satellite fix. Indoors there was little hope but outdoors we could get a position fix. Tall buildings and heavy tree cover caused problems for the Mondi on the road but with clear skies it managed to keep up with our location.

The 3 megapixel main (rear) camera has an autofocus lens and it takes reasonably good shots for a camera of that resolution. The camera has face detection, smile detection and panorama mode as well as geotagging. It can shoot decent quality video with audio at VGA 640 x 480 and QVGA 320 x 240 resolutions at approximately 25 fps. The front-facing VGA webcam is for video conferencing though we couldn't find an application to make use of it.

Conclusion

The Samsung Mondi is a powerful handheld, but it feels a bit behind the times now that PDAs have been eclipsed by powerful smartphones that are smaller and equally as capable. The Mondi is the first 4G handheld and that should give it a leg up: it might not have a cell radio but it's capable of fast data connections. Unfortunately, the Mondi is a bit ahead of its time in that respect since WiMAX 4G is currently available in very few metro areas and the download speeds and connection reliability suffer due to poor building penetration. But if you want a very large-screen Windows Mobile handheld to be your mobile office, the Mondi fits the bill and adds a good QWERTY keyboard too. It has WiFi for local area connections when WiMAX isn't available, but if you want Internet anywhere and not just at WiFi hotspots, check the WiMAX coverage maps carefully before taking the plunge.

Pro: Solid build quality, large and sharp high resolution display that's easy on the eyes. Plenty of built-in storage. As always with Windows Mobile, you get excellent MS Exchange support and desktop syncing to Outlook too.

Con: Gets sluggish at times, GPS isn't the strongest, hard to find a good WiMAX signal indoors. WiMAX coverage areas are currently very limited.

Price: $449

Web Site: www.samsung.com

Specs:

Display: 4.3" resistive touch screen. Resolution: 800 x 480 pixels. Has an accelerometer (used mainly in the Opera web browser) and haptic feedback. Has Etiquette mode (turn the device face down to silence alarms).

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh. Claimed WiMAX usage times: up to 4 hours. Claimed WiFi usage time: up to 5 hours.

Performance: 800 MHz Samsung processor (ARM11 compatible S3C6410). 256 megs RAM with approx. 81 megs free RAM. 4 gigs internal flash storage.

Size: 4.88 x 3.03 x 0.63 inches. Weight: 5.39 ounces.

Camera: 3MP autofocus main camera, front-facing VGA camera. Main camera features smile shot, panorama mode, anti-shake and face recognition.

GPS: Has GPS and comes with Route 66 navigation software and pre-loaded maps for the US and Canada.

Audio and Video Playback: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder and Windows Mobile Media Player 10 included. Video codecs supported: DivX, XviD, FLV3.1, 3GP, AVI, WMV, MP4, H.263,H.264, MPEG-1, RealVideo. Audio formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, RealAudio and WAV.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth with A2DP stereo and headset/handsfree profiles and WiMAX.

Software: Windows Mobile 6.1 Classic operating system. Microsoft Mobile Office suite including Mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint (view only), Internet Explorer, and Outlook. Also, Terminal Services, MSN Instant Messenger for Pocket PC, Windows Media Player 10, Solitaire, Bubble Breaker (game), Voice Recorder as well as on-screen keyboards. Additional applications: Opera Mobile 9.5, Camera, WiMAX connection manager, JBlend Java VM, Fring, Smart Converter, PowerCalc, GyPSii, ShoZu, Photo Slides, TaskSwitcher, Samsung custom home screen and Samsung TouchWiz UI.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

In the Box: Mondi, battery, charger, stylus, headset, software DVD with ActiveSync 4.5, Windows Mobile Device Center and Navigation software, car charger, car mount and printed guides.

HTC Snap

2009-12-16T21:29:00.000-08:00

In late 2006 T-Mobile picked up the HTC S620 Windows Mobile non-touch screen phone, and named it T-Mobile Dash. It became one of the best selling Windows Mobile Standard smartphones in the US. Fast-forward three years and HTC now has the HTC Snap as the replacement device for the HTC S620/T-Mobile Dash. This time around three U.S. carriers picked up the smartphone, and it became the T-Mobile Dash 3G, the HTC Ozone for Verizon and the HTC Snap for Sprint. The three variants share the basic hardware specs and designs with minor differences. Among them, the T-Mobile Dash 3G remains most faithful to HTC’s original design for the Snap, and has a super useable BlackBerry-like trackball and textured menu keys. The HTC Snap for Sprint however loses the trackball and textured menu keys; instead it gives us a slippery square d-pad and equally slippery menu keys. The HTC Snap for Sprint makes up for these shortcomings with its fast processor and very strong software and service offerings.

The HTC Snap for Sprint runs on the Qualcomm 7625 processor at 528 MHz. The phone has 192 MB of RAM and 256 MB of flash ROM. The HTC Snap is a CDMA digital dual band phone with EV-DO Rev. A for 3G data. The HTC Ozone on Verizon is a CDMA plus GSM quad band phone for travel outside the U.S., but the HTC Snap for Sprint is a CDMA phone only. In addition to Windows Mobile business-focused software such as ActiveSync for Outlook and Exchange, a mobile version of the Microsoft Office suite, IE 6 mobile and Windows Media Player mobile, the HTC Snap for Sprint also includes a suite of HTC applications. These applications include Comm Manager, YouTube player, MP3 trimmer, Quick GPS, Album photo viewer, RSS Hub, Inner Circle and Streaming Media. Sprint also adds its popular services to the mix and these services include Sprint Navigation which works very smoothly, Sprint TV which doesn’t and Sprint NFL.

The HTC Snap for Sprint runs Windows Mobile 6.1 standard edition (non touch screen edition), and has a 2-megapixel camera, built-in GPS and Bluetooth with A2DP and a microSD card slot. Those who are fond of Wi-Fi will be sad to know that the HTC Snap for Sprint doesn’t have built-in Wi-Fi.

Design

Measuring 4.59 X 2.42 X 0.47 inches, the HTC Snap for Sprint is a slim phone that can easily fit in a pocket. It has a roomy 4-row QWERTY keyboard and the keyboard keys, though not as large as those on the T-Mobile Dash 3G, are very useable thanks to the domed design and good travel. The keys make an audible (but not too loud) clicking sound when you press them, which also helps with typing. The keyboard has several dedicated keys that can launch the camera, messaging, IE and HTC Inner Circle, making the Snap easier to use one-handed. The menu keys and the square d-pad have good size, but they are flat and slippery. Too bad Sprint didn’t go with HTC’s trackball design and textured menu key surface as T-Mobile did. The phone has a 2.4-inch LCD with LED backlighting in QVGA 320 x 240 resolution. The display looks bright and it’s easily viewable outdoors.

The HTC Snap for Sprint has a two-tone back: shiny on top and soft touch on the bottom. We prefer the soft touch back found on the T-Mobile Dash 3G to the Snap’s since the shiny portion latches onto fingerprints and is more slippery. The rear firing speakerphone and the 2-megapixel camera (no flash) live on the back. The hot-swap-able microSD card slot lives under the battery door. The HTC Snap has the HTC ExtUSB connector at the bottom of the unit, and comes with a dongle that has syncing/charging port, 3.5mm and 2.5mm audio jack as well as HTC’s mini-USB audio connector.

Phone and Web

The HTC Snap for Sprint gets good signal strength and has very good voice quality. Like the T-Mobile Dash 3G, the HTC Snap for Sprint comes with the powerful Microsoft Voice Command which isn’t a standard bundle for all Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphones. Like other Windows smartphones, the HTC Snap has good contacts integration such as smart search (just start typing a name from your database in the dialer screen and the contact will show up after a few letters), creating a contact entry from dialer screen (type a new number in the dialer screen, you will have an option to create a contact entry based on that number), and more.

The HTC Snap has a sliding panel UI with HTC Home Screen, which is conducive to one-handed operation. The HTC Home Screen has quick links to your messages, web pages, weather and more. By sliding the panel with the d-pad you can launch applications with one button press or get info right on the panel panes. The smartphone supports most email services including Outlook, POP3/IMAP4 and web-based email. The device can also work with VPN and Exchange, and it comes with ActiveSync 4.5, Windows Mobile Device Center and MS Outlook 2007 60-day trial on a CD.

The HTC Snap for Sprint has Internet Explorer 6 Mobile which loads web pages fairly quickly. IE 6 Mobile does a better job of rendering full HTML web sites and it supports more advanced features than the last version of IE. The Snap handles most web page layouts well with images and tables intact, and the phone has Flash Lite 3.0 support.

GPS

The HTC Snap for Sprint has a built-in GPS that works with Sprint Navigation. Like most HTC smartphones on the market, the HTC Snap comes with HTC’s Quick GPS app that gathers satellite info and speeds up the position fixes. The Snap indeed gets fixes very fast and has good speed for trip routing. The route calculations are accurate, and turn-by-turn directions and real time maps are right on target. The phone has a loud speakerphone for voice guidance; when the volume is turned to max the phone can overcome highway noise. Sprint Navigation services aren’t free ($9.99/mon.) but it does offer some extra services other than routing and directions. These services include traffic info, POI search, share addresses with friends and family, a compass and more.

Multimedia

The HTC Snap for Sprint is actually a good music player thanks to the included wired stereo headset, A2DP Bluetooth stereo, Windows Media Player and the ability to shop music from Sprint Music Store over the air for $0.99/song. Music playback is loud and has good audio quality via the built-in speakerphone, but it sounds a lot fuller with stronger bass via the included wired stereo headset. We also tested music playback through Bluetooth stereo headsets via A2DP and liked the audio quality. Over-the-air music downloads are fast thanks to EV-DO Rev. A data speeds (the CDMA network version of 3G), and Sprint Music Store sells most tracks for $0.99. Window Media Player can play music in AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3 and WMA formats, and video in WMV, MP4, AVI and 3GP formats. Novice Windows phone users should know about some of the quirks in Windows Media Player Mobile. For example, after you insert a microSD card loaded with music or download music tracks over the air, the player doesn’t automatically scan for and see these newly added tracks. You must go to Menu/Update Library first to add the new tracks.

Above: the Sprint HTC Snap and the Dash 3G.

The HTC Snap for Sprint supports Sprint TV, but these on-demand videos don’t play smoothly on the Snap. There are very noticeable frame drops and long delays in refreshing so parts of a video get skipped as the phone tries to catch up. This happens to both short videos like news bits and full-length TV episodes even when the EV-DO signal is strong. If Sprint TV is a must for your smartphone, check out the Palm Pre which has better Sprint TV video performance.

HTC is kind enough to include their own YouTube player on the HTC Snap for Sprint. The YouTube player allows you to stream YouTube video without using a web browser, and the videos play smoothly with the correct aspect ratio and audio in sync with video.

Camera

The HTC Snap has a 2-megapixel camera with a fixed focus lens and no flash. Photo quality is good by 2 megapixel camera phone standards and pleasantly surprised us. Still images are pleasing with noticeable over-sharpening, but colors look balanced. Outdoor photos look a little overexposed. The lack of flash hurts a bit in poorly lit environments. The Snap also can record video with audio at QVGA resolution. The videos look reasonably smooth with audio in sync to the video.

Battery

The HTC Snap for Sprint has a removable and rechargeable Li-Ion battery that’s 1500 mAh in capacity. The claimed talk time is 4.6 hours, which was on target in our tests. The claimed standby time is 13.3 days, and we got just a little over 10 days in our standby tests. The battery drains faster in poor coverage areas, if you use the GPS a lot or if you watch Sprint TV frequently.

Conclusion

We’ve waited a long time to see a follow-up device to the T-Mobile Dash, and the replacement doesn’t disappoint. This time around three U.S. carriers jumped on board. The HTC Snap offers Sprint customers the newest Windows Mobile non-touch screen smartphone with a nice HTC slide panel Home Screen, updated Internet Explorer mobile, tons of HTC software and popular Sprint services. Sprint still offers the Samsung Ace because that’s the only Windows Mobile non-touch screen smartphone that’s also a world phone with GSM outside of the U.S.. Sprint’s price for the HTC Snap isn’t particularly competitive against the HTC Ozone on Verizon but it is better than the T-Mobile Dash 3G. The Sprint version of the Snap doesn’t have built-in Wi-Fi or GSM for International travelers. We wish every HTC Snap variant had kept the trackball design and the smooth soft touch back. But if you are a Sprint customer looking for a non-touch screen Windows Mobile phone, the HTC Snap is hard to pass up.

Pro: Slim phone, good QWERTY with dedicated keys to launch most used apps. Strong software bundle. Sprint Navigation works smoothly with the GPS.

Con: No trackball, Sprint TV isn’t smooth. No Wi-Fi.

Price: $149.99 with a 2-year contract after mail-in rebate. $399.99 without a contract.

Web sites: www.htc.com/us/, www.sprint.com

Specs:

Display: 65K color TFT color LCD. Screen size diagonally: 2.4". Resolution: 320 x 240, landscape orientation.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh. Claimed talk time: 4.6 hours. Claimed standby time: 13.3 days.

Performance: Qualcomm MSM 7625 processor running at 528MHz. 192 MB built-in RAM. 256 MB Flash ROM.

Size: 4.59 x 2.42 x 0.47 inches. Weight: 4.23 ounces.

Phone: Dual-band 800/1900 MHz, CDMA2000, 1xRTT and EV-DO Rev. A.

Camera: 2.0 megapixel with fixed focus lens (no flash or self-portrait mirror). Camera can also record video with audio.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and HTC ExtUSB stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder and Windows Media Player 10 Mobile included for your MP3 pleasure.

Networking: Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR.

Software: Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Edition (Smartphone edition). HTC software includes Album photo viewer, Quick GPS, RSS Hub, Comm Manager, YouTube player, MP3 Trimmer, Inner Circle, Voice Recorder and Streaming Media. Microsoft software includes IE 6, Windows Media Player Mobile, Office Mobile and Live Search. Adobe PDF reader also included.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot supports up to 16 GB cards.

In the Box: Phone, battery, printed guide, software CD, world charger, USB cable, stereo earbud headset, dongle adapter that allows you to charge the phone while using a headset (also has 2.5mm and 3.5mm headset ports).

Samsung Comeback

2009-12-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

Full QWERTY phones always sell well here in the U.S., and a full QWERTY with bright colors? Even better. With a chic pearl white casing and a bright red or purple keyboard (two colors are available), the Samsung Comeback t559 looks hip and attractive. In addition to the cool looks and full QWERTY keyboard, the phone has dual displays with a large landscape internal screen, built-in GPS that works with TeleNav, Bluetooth with A2DP, a 2 megapixel camera and a microSD card slot. The Samsung Comeback also works on T-Mobile’s 3G high-speed network and comes with the very capable Netfront web browser.

Compared to current QWERTY feature phones, the Samsung Comeback is much smaller than the giant Samsung Impression but slightly larger than the LG Xenon from AT&T. Measuring 4.33 x 2.20 x 0.73 inches, the Samsung Comeback is noticeably wider and thicker than the Samsung Gravity 2. But what really makes the Samsung Comeback stand out from the pack is the landscape flip that bears a resemblance to the T-Mobile Sidekick minus the swivel hinge. The Samsung Comeback is a good messaging phone, a very decent music player and an adequate GPS navigator.

Design

The Samsung Comeback’s design is playful yet with a dash of elegance, and it doesn’t look like “just another QWERTY messaging phone”. The phone has some heft at 4.6 ounces and feels good in the hand, though it does scream “plastic”. The front external display is the smaller one of the dual display, and is 128 x 128 65K PMOLED screen that looks decent in sunlight as well as indoors. The front keypad has slim but wide number keys, and 6 menu keys flank the 5-day d-pad: shoulder menu keys, call send and call end buttons, camera launcher and the back key. The square d-pad is easy to control in most tasks including gaming.

Open the side flip to reveal the larger internal display that’s bright with 240 x 400 resolution and 262K colors. The QWERTY keyboard shares the space with another 5-way d-pad and 5 menu keys (call send, call end, messaging, camera and back). While the menu keys and the d-pad are large enough for most people, the keys on the QWERTY are on the slim side and folks with large fingers might find it hard to type fast on this keyboard. The four-row keyboard offers dedicated keys including “www/.com” for your web browsing convenience and an emoticon launcher. There are also two shoulder menu keys on the inside of the flip just above the keyboard, but oddly they live closer to the center instead of closer to the edges.

The Samsung Comeback has a mono rear-firing speakerphone next to the 2 megapixel camera on the back. The battery covers up both the SIM card slot and microSD card slot. So no hot swappable media cards for you! Side buttons only include the volume rocker and the charging/headset port. There is a strap holder for those who use charms on their phones.

Phone and Web

The GSM quad band + 3G Samsung Comeback doesn’t have very strong reception even in good coverage areas, but it never drops a call. Voice quality is good but not superb. The phone has an address book that can store up to 1,000 contacts and each contact entry can have 5 numbers, 4 email addresses, 3 IM addresses, notes, birthday/anniversary and more. You can also have 8 speed dial numbers. The Samsung Comeback has Nuance’s voice command software that works reliably, but there is no quick way to launch it. Oddly the application lives under Organizer menu and it takes 2-3 key presses to get to the application which isn’t idea for someone who is driving. The easiest way to launch it is via Bluetooth headset. We tested several Bluetooth headsets with the Samsung Comeback, and voice dialing via Bluetooth worked well. The Nuance voice command software can not only voice dial but also launch apps, find contacts for messaging and more.

As a messaging-centric phone, the Samsung Comeback supports SMS, picture messaging with the option to add audio (audio postcard), attaching video to messages, web-based email and IM. The phone comes with a good number of options to set up your message sending and receiving options, templates and more.

The Samsung Comeback has the very capable Netfront v3.5 web browser and it can display full HTML pages with images and layouts intact, though some advanced Javascript still isn’t supported. Web page downloads are fast thanks to T-Mobile 3G HSDPA. Even large pages (like our home page) load reasonably fast (15 seconds). Happily, the Comeback is sold with T-Mobile’s cheaper $9.99/month web2go unlimited data plan rather than their more expensive 3G data plan. You need not get any data plan with the phone, if you have no need for it or want to save money.

Software

There are two ways you can navigate through the applications and launch the most used tools on the Samsung Comeback. With the flip open and the large internal display available, the Samsung Comeback offers a quick launch menu bar that can launch your inbox, the web browser, application list (games, TeleNav, Voice recognition, etc.), my account info and the music player with just one click. With the flip closed, you lose this handy quick launch menu bar on the smaller external screen. Instead you get a Menu key (left shoulder key) that launches a traditional menu structure. Menu labels are bit different in the traditional menu from the quick launcher menu, and all applications are grouped under either the Organizer or Media menu. The lack of consistency means more initial memorization, but it doesn’t ruin the phone’s user experience.

Music and GPS

The Samsung Comeback has a built-in media player that can play music in MP3, AAC/AAC+ as well as WMA and streaming audio formats. The mono speakerphone sounds average for music playback, but thankfully T-Mobile includes the wired stereo headset which has very good audio quality for music playback. The Samsung Comeback also works with Bluetooth stereo headsets via A2DP, and the audio quality is excellent via Bluetooth stereo with good clarity and strong bass. You can either store music on microSD cards using a card reader or copy music files via USB though the phone doesn’t come with a USB cable.

The Samsung Comeback has a GPS and the excellent TeleNav for real time navigation. It’s not free however ($9.99/month), but you get a free trial with the Comeback. The GPS gets fixes reasonably quickly and it gets accurate positions. Route calculation is speedy but the spoken turn-by-turn directions lag just a few seconds behind the real time location when driving at highway speeds. Voice guidance is right on target and you also get POIs searches and traffic reports.

Camera

The Samsung Comeback has a 2 megapixel camera with 2.5x digital zoom but no flash. The camera takes surprisingly good photos by 2 megapixel camera phone standards. Still images look sharp with accurate colors and pleasing contrast. Outdoor shots don’t have a lot of white out and indoor shots, even without a flash, have accurate colors and good exposure though more noise. The camera phone offers the usual white balance, effect settings andit has multi-shot mode. The Samsung can also record video with audio. The quality of the video clips is good for a non-camera-centric phone and playback is smooth with audio in sync with video.

Battery

The Samsung Comeback has a rechargeable Li-Ion battery (AB463651BA model) that’s 960 mAh in capacity. The claimed talk time is up to 5.5 hours and the claimed standby time is 12.5 days. Our test phone didn’t match the claimed battery life, getting about 4.5 hours of talk time and a week of standby on T-Mobile’s 3G network (GSM/EDGE should have better battery life). If you are consistently using the GPS with TeleNav the battery drains quite fast and the phone gets hot. But music playing hardly adds any extra load for the battery.

Conclusion

In the sea of QWERTY messaging phone on the U.S. market, the Samsung Comeback dares to look a little different; and T-Mobile subscribers who have been eyeing the LG enV3 for its form factor now have an answer in the Samsung Comeback. Like the enV series, the external display on the Samsung is nothing to write home about, but the main (inner display) is larger and brighter. The strong messaging features including push messages mean that the Samsung Comeback will compete with the Sidekick LX 2009. The 3G data speed and Netfront web browser make for a good web surfing experience. GPS plus TeleNav services, camera, music and mobile gaming make this a competitive mid-tier feature phone. We don’t dig the external display and people with large fingers won’t like the slim keys on the QWERTY keyboard.

Pro: Cool looks, though plasticky. Good internal display, HTML web browser, very good 3G speed for web surfing, messaging and app downloading. Nice to have TeleNav (though not free) to go with the phone’s built-in GPS.

Con: The keyboard has slim keys, and the external display looks grainy.

Price: $74.99 with a 2-year contract after discount and mail-in rebate. $249.99 without a contract.

Web sites: www.samsungmobileusa.com, www.t-mobile.com

Specs:

Display: 262K-color TFT. Screen size diagonally: 2.6". Resolution: 240 x 400 pixels.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 960 mAh.

Performance: 80MB internal memory. Phone book holds 1,000 entries.

Size: 4.33 x 2.20 x 0.73 inches. Weight: 4.6 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band world phone with EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz) and 3G HSDPA on T-Mobile's US bands: 1700/2100MHz.

Camera: 2MP fixed focus lens with no flash. 2.5x digital zoom. Can shoot photos and video with audio (320 x 240 and 176 x 144 pixel resolutions).

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and Samsung blade stereo headphone jack. Stereo headset included. Has music player that supports MP3, WMA and AAC formats.

Networking: Integrated Bluetooth with headset, handsfree, A2DP stereo, serial port, FTP, basic printing, OBEX (object push), SIM access and DUN profiles.

Software: Traditional grid/rotating menu along with quick launch menu (on internal display mode only). Nuance voice command and voice dialing software included. Netfront 3.5 web browser, SMS/MMS messaging, web-bases email and Instant Messaging, calendar, contacts, tasks, Memo, media player, world clock, stopwatch, timer, file manager, RSS reader, TeleNav Navigator (trial version), alarm clock, calculator and unit converter.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot compatible with cards up to 16 gigs.

In the box: the Samsung Comeback phone with standard battery, AC charger, wired stereo headset and printed manuals.

Sony Ericsson W705a

2009-12-16T18:45:00.000-08:00

For Sony Ericsson phone fans, the last couple of months have been fruitful: first Sony Ericsson released the unlocked Sony Ericsson W995a Walkman phone with U.S. 3G, then AT&T released the Sony Ericsson C905a killer camera phone and the Sony Ericsson W518a Walkman flip phone. The Sony Ericsson W995a tops the Walkman phone specs among the U.S. models with an 8.1 megapixel camera, U.S. 3G (on AT&T ‘s bands), GPS with Google Maps, a 3.5mm stereo audio jack and more, but it also carries a list price tag of $599. If you don’t care to have a higher megapixel camera on your phone or built-in GPS, you can save yourself $200 and get the Sony Ericsson W705a. The mid-tier W705a Walkman phone has plenty to offer: the same Walkman Player 3.0 with the shake control feature and Sony’s popular XMB user interface, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with stereo A2DP, FM radio as well as U.S. 3G on AT&T’s bands. Most of the software found on the W995a comes on the W705a as well, and they include the NetFront 3.4 web browser with RSS, YouTube player, PhotoDJ, MusicDJ, VideoDJ, Track ID, Walk Mate and several games. While there is no built-in GPS, the W705a has Google Maps preinstalled.

The Sony Ericsson W705a is a quad band GSM world phone with 3G UMTS/HSPA on the 850/1900/2100 MHz bands. The phone will work on AT&T’s 3G network in the U.S., but it’s EDGE for T-Mobile rather than 3G. The phone has a 2.4” QVGA display, a Memory Stick Micro (M2) card slot and a 3.2-megapixel camera that shoots decent photos and video with audio.

Design

Like the W995a, the Sony Ericsson W705a is also a very compact phone. Measuring 3.74 x 1.88 x 0.56 inches, the W705a is a bit thinner than the W995a. The phone has a modern Euro candy bar style: the silver faceplate and the coffee-colored soft touch back give the phone a classy, modern-minimalist clean look. The W705a weighs 3.45 ounces, and it feels good in hand and looks well built. The display is reasonably bright and color saturated. The d-pad and front menu keys feel sturdy and easy to press. The phone has a slide-out number pad; though flat, the keys are very easy to use and have good tactile feedback when pressed. There is a large strip of speaker grille on the back of the W705a, and the camera with an LED flash also lives on the back. The battery door is very easy to open thanks to a mechanical latch that locks and unlocks the cover. The SIM card lives under the battery door and requires the removal of the battery to gain access. The M2 storage card slot is also under the battery door, but it’s a spring-loaded slot on the side that doesn’t require battery removal. Sony Ericsson includes a 4GB M2 card with the W705a Walkman phone.

The Sony Ericsson W705a has minimal side buttons: only the volume rocker and the camera/camcorder/shutter 3-in-1 button are on the right side of the phone. The Sony Ericsson proprietary Fast Port syncing/charging/headset port lives on the left side, and the phone comes with an in-line adapter and 3.5mm wired headset. The tiny button on top of the W705a is the Walkman Player launcher, and when the music player is launched, the d-pad doubles as music playback controls. There is a phone charm holder on the bottom of the W705a.

Phone and Web

The Sony Ericsson W705a has a better reception than the W995a, getting full signal strength in most places around the Dallas area on AT&T. Voice quality is quite good and the W705a supports most common call features such as call forwarding, call waiting, conference call and more. The phone offers 9 speed dialing numbers as well as voice dialing. Like many Sony Ericsson phones, the W705a’s voice dialing software requires that you record voice tags. The voice recognition works well as long as the same person records and uses voice command. The contacts database can hold 1,000 entries and each entry can have up to 7 numbers. Other PIM software included are Calendar, Calculator, Alarm, Notes, Stopwatch, Tasks and Timer. The Sony Ericsson also has an email client that works with POP3/IMAP4 email accounts, and the phone comes with Sony Ericsson PC Suite and supports MS Exchange ActiveSync. Web-based IM is also on board.

The Sony Ericsson W705a has the Access NetFront 3.4 web browser that’s capable of displaying full HTML pages with all the layout and images intact. Web pages loaded reasonably fast over AT&T’s 3G, but much faster over our Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n network (the phone supports 802.11b/g). While the Wi-Fi speed is very good, the range is poor. We could get no more than 10 feet between the phone and our Wi-Fi router before the Wi-Fi speed slowed down considerably.

Music and Video

Standard on the current Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, the Walkman Player 3.0 can play music in MP3, AAC, WMA and other formats as well as podcasts and audio books. The W705a has the intuitive Sony Xross Media Bar (XMB) UI for music, video, gaming and other media content navigation. The Walkman music player supports the accelerometer, album art, Clear Bass, Clear Stereo, SenseME and Shake control. The built-in speakerphone is loud and the audio quality sits between the W995a’s speaker and the W518a’s speaker: it’s less tinny than the W518a but it has less powerful bass than the W995a. The music playback is excellent via the included wired stereo headset: it has clear channel separation and powerful bass. The phone also works with Bluetooth stereo headsets via A2DP. Both podcasts and audio books sound good via the wired headset. If you are a fan of listening to FM radio on your phone, the W705a won’t disappoint. Using the included headset as its antenna, the Sony Ericsson works well as an FM radio with RDS info.

The Sony Ericsson W705a can play video in MPEG-4, 3GPP and WMV formats, and comes with a YouTube player. We tested YouTube video playback via Wi-Fi and found video played smoothly with decent audio by mobile YouTube standards.

Camera

The Sony Ericsson W705a has a 3.2-megapixel camera with fixed focus lens and an LED flash. The camera takes good photos as long as you keep the lens cover clean. The phone has a cheap plastic window over the camera lens that attracts fingerprints and grease, which can result in some flare and white haze in outdoor shots and indoor shots that have localized bright halos. But when the lens window is clean, the photos look sharp and colors are balanced. Some outdoor shots have slight over exposure. The camera software offers 4 shooting modes including Panorama and night shot modes, white balance, effects, self-timer and more. The camera phone can also record video with audio in QVGA resolution at 15 fps. Video clips look reasonably sharp and audio is usually in sync with video.

Conclusion

A very strong music phone at a more reasonable price, the W705a is a good all around phone for those who want a Walkman phone but don’t want to sign a 2-year contract or spend $599 list for the W995a. The phone has most of the bells and whistles of a high-end Walkman phone including Walkman Player 3.0, FM Radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, 120MB internal memory and a Memory Stick Micro card slot. It also has U.S. 3G and a 3.2 megapixel camera that takes very decent photos for a camera phone in that class as long as you keep the lens clean. You don’t get the GPS and real time navigation on the W705a but Google Maps is pre-installed for maps and directions via cell tower triangulation. Reception is actually better on the W705a than the W995a, and both phones run the same NetFront web browser. With retail discounts we are already seeing, the W705a is a strong competitor in the unlocked Walkman phone segment.

Pro: A stylish phone that looks and feels well built. Strong reception. Good music experience.

Con: Wi-Fi range is poor.

Price: $399.99

Web site: www.sonystyle.com

Specs:

Display: 2.4” QVGA 240 x 320 pixel display with accelerometer, 262k colors.

Battery: Li-Polymer rechargeable, 3.6V (BST-33 model), 1000mAh.

Size: 3.74 x 1.88 x 0.56 inches. Weight: 3.45 ounces

Phone: Quad band unlocked GSM world phone 850/900/1800/1900MHz with EDGE. 3G HSDPA on the 850/1800/1900MHz bands.

Camera: 3.2-megapixel camera with fixed focus lens and LED flash. Takes video with audio in QVGA at 15fps and in MMS resolution.

Audio: Music tones and Polyphonic 72 ringtones supported. Built-in speakerphone, wired stereo headset included, music track controls and volume controls, dedicated Walkman launch key. FM Radio with RDS. Walkman Player 3.0 supports 3GP, AAC, MP4, M4A, MP3, AMR, AMR-WB, WAV, SMF, iMelody, XMF and WMA formats. Has vibrating alert and voice recorder.

Networking: Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR supporting hands-free, A2DP, AVRCP, file transfer and printing profiles. Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.

Software: Sony’s Xross Media Bar UI. Access NetFront 3.4 web browser, Walkman Player 3.0, PhotoDJ, TrackID and Walk Mate included. PIM tools include contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, timer, stopwatch, calculator, light, code memo and alarm clock. Google Maps and YouTube player preloaded. Also included in the package: Sony Ericsson PC Suite 5.0 and Sony Media Go software.

Expansion: 1 Memory Stick Micro (M2) card slot supporting up to 8GB cards. A 4 gig card is included with the U.S. version of the phone.

In the Box: The Sony Ericsson W705a with standard battery, AC charger, audio dongle adapter, 3.5mm wired stereo headset, 4GB M2 card, USB cable, Sony Media Manager software and PC Suite, and printed user documentation.

BlackBerry Curve 8520

2009-12-16T00:58:00.000-08:00

The BlackBerry Tour (Sprint) and the BlackBerry Curve 8520.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 aims to go where no 'Berry has gone before, a land with no trackball. RIM's trackball is beloved and like the BlackBerry line, addictive. It's responsive, accurate and more efficient than the much more common d-pad. So why axe it? The trackball does pick up dirt which can affect performance (and require an alcohol rub-down to get working), gets dingy and involves several moving parts (moving parts are more likely to break down). The Curve 8520 instead has a small optical trackpad in place of the trackball and miraculously it works nearly exactly like the trackball. And it moves down and clicks for the center-press action-- nice. No small engineering achievement on RIM's part, the trackpad is great. For those of you who've used the optical pads on Samsung phones such as the Omnia and some imports, this isn't the same animal: it's much more precise and controllable.

The Curve 8520's other new hardware feature is the music playback control cluster that lines the phone's top edge. All the Berry's edges are rubberized, giving it a rugged feel and the top music controls for track forward, track back and play/pause are under rubber. The controls are easy to use, as are the other under-rubber buttons for volume, camera and voice command.

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 replaces the Curve 8320 on T-Mobile and it's smaller and sleeker looking. The smartphone is available in black and "frost" which is a very dull battleship gray. In black it looks quite good, in frost it looks dull and cheap to us. The Curve 8520 joins the excellent BlackBerry Curve 8900 in T-Mobile's lineup, and that's the 8520's biggest problem. Currently priced at only $20 less, the 8520 has weaker specs in several key areas: lower display resolution, a lower resolution camera and no GPS. If and when T-Mobile drops the 8520's price relative to the 8900, it will make much more sense in their lineup.

The 8520 is a quad band GSM world phone with EDGE for data. It has WiFi 802.11b/g with support for UMA calling over WiFi and T-Mobile's @Home service. As with most UMA phones on T-Mobile, it works very well and call hand-offs are seamless. The phone has a 2.46" QVGA 320 x 240 pixel display, a 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR and an SDHC microSD card slot.

The Curve runs BlackBerry OS 4.6.1 on a 512MHz processor with 256 megs of flash memory, of which 125 megs are free to store documents and applications. It's responsive and stable.

Looking at the hardware

The BlackBerry 8520 has a few changes in the control cluster: rather than raised buttons for call send/end, menu and back, there are no buttons but rather mechanical switches under the smooth surface. Two raised ridges make it easier to find the "buttons" which would otherwise be lost to the blind finger. The switches do click nicely so you know you've hit the button. The look is modern and trendy, and we've seen the same thing on several recent Nokia S60 N series smartphones.

The QWERTY keys are raised and have a good tactile click. As BlackBerry phones get smaller, so do the keys but we found the Curve 8520's manageable and easier to type on than the Curve 8900's. The key surfaces aren't slippery and they're flat rather than the "wave" style. The keyboard's keys are backlit in white and the control cluster is also backlit in white except the call send and end buttons which are green and red, as you'd expect.

As mentioned, the sides and top and bottom caps are rubberized. A little inspiration from Nextel? But unlike the ruggedized and rubberized Nextel phones of old, the BlackBerry 8520 doesn't look like it was designed to live on a construction site-- it's subtle. Obviously the rubber makes the phone easier to hold onto, and it makes the phone look less monotonous. The front face and rear battery door are shiny plastic. There's no real or faux metal back door here, no Bold leather treatment and the battery door doesn't even get a release latch-- you pry at it to get it off. And yes, those shiny parts latch onto fingerprint grime like crazy, making the 'Berry look hazy.

The microSD card slot is under the battery door, but you need not remove the battery to access the card.

The music playback controls on the top edge.

Video Review

Here's our 7.5 minute video review of the BlackBerry Curve 8520:

Phone, email and Internet

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is a GSM quad band world phone with EDGE. It will work anywhere GSM service is available. You can make calls over the GSM network or over WiFi if you subscribe to T-Mobile @Home service. The phone hands off calls to and from WiFi seamlessly and automatically uses UMA and the WiFi network if in range of a known and saved hotspot/router. Call quality is good and the volume is good as well. Both incoming and outgoing voice are clear, though call recipients could tell we were on a cell phone (it can't compete with the BlackBerry Bold's simply awesome call quality, but it ain't bad either). Reception is good, and a bit better than the 8900 we reviewed, and the speakerphone is very loud and clear. The 8520 supports T-Mobile's myFaves service and has a theme that puts MyFaves on the standby screen.

The browser is very similar to other recent BlackBerry phones released in the past year. It does full HTML web rendering along with WAP and it offers separate settings for WAP, HTML and Hotspot (WiFi) browsing modes. RIM's browser is showing its age, and it's more prone to Javascript-related slowdowns (this is likely why Javascript is turned off by default), CSS misrepresentations and general layout mayhem. Many full HTML sites look fine, but enough of them have text block overruns, or strange layouts when Javascript is turned off that it's time RIM came up with something that competes with the webkit browsers used on the iPhone, Android and Nokia S60.

BlackBerry email on the other hand, is still the best game in town. If you want push email, support for multiple accounts and that sense that you'll never, ever, ever be out of touch for a moment, the Crackberry is for you. There's also the usual inter-BlackBerry Messenger, SMS, MMS and a host of IM services: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo and Windows Live. T-Mobile's BlackBerry unlimited data plan (BIS) currently costs $25/month and is required with a new contract. Their unlimited Enterprise data plan (BES) is $30/month and there are versions with text message bundles too.

Display and Multimedia

The Curve's 2.46" QVGA display is clear and sharp, though not quite as bright and vivid as the Curve 8900 and Bold's display. It is easier on the eyes compared to the 8900, whose high resolution on a small screen makes for tiny text. The Curve 8520's speaker is very loud and clear, and we had no trouble hearing the soundtracks that accompanied video. The music player obviously works best with a stereo headset (one is included) or A2DP Bluetooth stereo headphones/headsets. The speaker sounds good but no phone's speaker can replace good audio out. The new hardware audio controls work well and certainly are handy, but the media player remains unchanged. RIM's media player is attractive and capable though, and it handles video, music, photos, ringtones and voice notes as well as podcasts. The phone had no trouble playing locally stored MPEG4 videos encoded at QVGA resolution, 650kbps.

The 2 megapixel camera, alas, takes mediocre photos. It has no flash and a fixed focus lens, and indoor noise is particularly notable. Outdoor shots lack good dynamic range and colors are somewhat muted. If photography is your thing, consider the BlackBerry Curve 8900 with its 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera.

Battery

The BlackBerry 8520 has an 1150 mAh Lithium Ion rechargeable battery that's user replaceable. Since the 8520 lacks a GPS and 3G, two battery-killers, battery life is good. The phone easily lasted us 3 days on a charge with moderate use. UMA calling and WiFi are well optimized and the phone lasted 1.5 days with WiFi on and UMA calling active-- better than the first crop of UMA BlackBerry smartphones on T-Mobile.

Conclusion

The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is a solid phone and we found little to dislike. Really, it's hard to imagine a "poor" BlackBerry-- RIM's products are always solidly functional. It looks good in black (you know what we think of the "frost" color), and is sturdy and stable. In fact, it's more stable than the Curve 8900 was at release. The slim feature set might appeal to budget-minded BlackBerry buyers, but the problem is that the more full-featured and higher spec BlackBerry Curve 8900 is currently only $20 more on contract. At that differential, we have to recommend the Curve 8900 over the 8520. But if the prices start to diverge and the 8520 drops to $50 less, then we would recommend it to budget buyers who don't need a GPS or better camera. And if you want to buy a new 'Berry without a contract extension, the retail (no contract) price of the Curve 8520 is $150 less, which makes much more sense.

Price: $129 with a 2 year contract, $299 retail with no contract

Websites: www.blackberry.com, www.t-mobile.com

Specs:

Display: 65K color transmissive TFT color LCD. Screen size diagonally: 2.46". Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels.

Battery: 1150 mAh Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. Claimed talk time: 4.5 hours on GSM. Claimed standby: 17 days.

Performance: 512MHz processor. 256 megs flash memory with 125 megs available to store programs and data.

Size: 2.4 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches. Weight: 3.8 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band with EDGE 850/900/1800/1900MHz. Supports UMA calling- T-Mobile @home service.

Camera: 2.0 megapixel with fixed focus lens (no flash or self-portrait mirror). Can take still photos up to 1600 x 1200 resolution and video up to QVGA 320 x 240.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder, music and video player included. Has hardware playback controls on the top edge.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. Bluetooth profiles: hands-free, headset, serial port, DUN (dial-up networking), A2DP stereo with AVRC, SIM access and phone book access.

Software:BlackBerry OS 4.6.1. BlackBerry push email client. BlackBerry Messaging, SMS and MMS. BlackBerry Maps (free service), Documents to Go standard edition (view and edit but not create MS Office documents), MyFaves, web browser, media player for MP3 and video playback. PIM apps include address book, calendar, tasks and memo. Also Alarm, clock, voice notes, calculator, Password Keeper. Games: BrickBreaker, Texas Hold 'Em Sudoku, Klondike and Word Mole. BlackBerry Desktop software for PC included for syncing and software installation (PocketMac for BlackBerry Mac software can be downloaded for free from RIM's site).

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

In the box: Phone, battery, charger, USB cable, stereo earbud headset, software CD and printed materia