You’re probably thinking that it can’t be all of Photoshop squeezed onto an Android phone, though. And yes, you’d be right, but as the video shows, it’s a slick app all the same.

See the video and more details after the jump.

The video of Photoshop for Android is below. It’s very comprehensive, though, so ends up being overly long, but it does walk you through pretty much everything the app can do.

In particular, Photoshop for Android will let you do the following:

• Crop, straighten, rotate and flip your photo
• Use image and colour correction filters, such as saturation, tint, and exposure, on it
• Add effects, such as soft focus
• Alter the colour of the photo (accentuating the photo’s blue, for example)
• Upload your pics to Photoshop.com
• Share them with your friends

What’s really neat is the way the app uses the Android user interface to its best effect. When changing colour tones, for example, you simply select the effect and then slide your finger over the screen to change the values you’re modifying.

Equally, the multitasking power of Android comes into its own, letting you upload one picture while editing another simultaneously – something the iPhone still can’t do.

Annoyingly, Adobe’s Photoshop for Android app can’t be found by my G1 in the UK, and the guys from Se-nse.net have had similar problems, so it may be only for the US at the moment.

It should be worth the wait, though, as the video below shows it to be one fine looking app!

You can download it yourself here (click the link on your Android phone and you’ll be taken straight to the App market).

[Source: Se-nse.net]

Garmin entered the mobile phone market a while back with its much-delayed Nuvifone. Unfortunately, the delay meant that Garmin missed the boat somewhat with GPS phones, with first Nokia and then Google stealing a march on the company with a plethora of GPS-based phones that all worked rather well.

More details after the jump.

Of course, Garmin went the extra mile, adding its superior knowledge of navigation technology and turn-by-turn sat-nav experience to the mix, but the Nuvifone itself wasn’t as much a success as it could have been.

Android to the rescue – again!

With an Android-based Nuvifone, though, Garmin may have found a platform that can enable their navigational nous to really shine through.

Android was designed from the ground up to encompass a range of sensors, and with its completely open architecture, any manufacturer is free to develop it in whatever way they wish.

For Garmin, this means complete turn-by-turn Sat-Nav functionality in a touchscreen phone that knows where it is in time, space, orientation (north, south, east or west), and altitude. That’s a powerful combination!

No details yet on the exact spec of the Android Nuvifone, but if the phone succeeds, Garmin can add its name, along with Motorola and Sony Ericsson, to an increasingly long list of phone manufacturer that Android has helped save from the brink.

[Source: Se-nse.net]

More details and loads of pics of the Sony Ericsson Kurara after the jump.

Sony Ericsson Kurara Overview

The Kurara, I’m happy to report, looks stunning, and reflects a real return to form for the company. I got bored of writing about CyberShot and Walkman phones as they had all ended up looking the same, each different from the other in just a few minor ways.

But the Kurara seems to be different. Not only is its feature-set looking good – Sony Ericsson camera phones take great pics and 8 megapixels bodes well for a quality camera – but the shape of the phone looks super-cool.

With its silver colouring and sexy curves, some people have compared it to the Sony Ericsson S700 from 2004, which is no bad thing, as this was a great looking phone for its time (I’ve still got mine!).

Sony Ericsson Kurara Specification

We don’t know much about the specs of the Kurara, but the following features have been leaked:

• 3.5 inch AMOLED screen
• 8.1 megapixel camera
• Symbian S60
• Sony Ericsson Entertainment Unlimited line
• 720p HD video recording
• Possibly the same user interface as the Sony Ericsson Satio.

The Kurara’s release date is expected early 2010, so we’ll know more soon. But even with this limited knowledge, coupled with the Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson looks like its back on the right path again, and should hopefully have a much more successful 2010 than it had in 2009.

[Source: Mobile-Review, I4u]

Pantech’s new phone emulates this part of the DuPont lighter with its own flip top, which, disappointingly, doesn’t reveal a flame, but instead reveals the lens of a 3 megapixel camera. It does at least make the same “cling sound” as the DuPont lighter, although whether this is real or an electronic sample, we’re not sure.

More pics after the jump.

The black and gold design of the DuPont gives it a distinctly classy look (well, classy in a Peter Stringfellow way, anyway!), which is just as well, as it’s being pitched as a designer phone, and so comes with a designer-like price of $830! Ouch!

For that, you get a 3″ inch touchscreen display, GPS, DMB TV, MP3 player, and email.

If black and gold isn’t your thing, Pantech will also sell you the Sky Snow, which is the same phone but in white, and apparently meant for women.

I’m not sure if a phone designed around a cigarette lighter would even be allowed in Europe, but in Korea, at least, it’s presumably seen as a very good thing!

[Source: UnwiredView, Aving.net]

Samsung have cut down on features with the Genio Touch to keep its cost low – you only get a 2 megapixel camera, for example – but software is free, so they’ve made sure the Genio Touch provides you with everything you need to do on the mobile Web, and all from an extremely responsive touchscreen interface.

Read on for our full Samsung Genio Touch review to see if it’s the phone for you.

Samsung Genio Touch overview

The Genio Touch (also called the Samsung Corby outside the UK) is an update to the Samsung Tocco Lite, another Samsung phone that became one of the company’s best sellers. The Tocco Lite was one of the first low-end phones to feature a touchscreen, and was aimed at users who wanted a good looking phone with a smartphone-like interface, but without the cost of a smartphone.

The Genio Touch also follows this approach, but with a much more engaging, fluid and responsive user interface, better integration with social networks, and a better looking body.

What you’ll like about the Genio Touch

The first thing you’ll love about the Genio Touch is the price – it’s a low-end phone, remember, so it’s been designed to fit perfectly with the tightened purse strings of the credit crunch economy. Check out the latest prices below to see just how much value the Genio Touch offers.

But is price at a cost of reduced features? Well, yes and no. Obviously the hardware has been slimmed down a bit to save costs; but as I said, software adds no cost at all to a phone, so Samsung have added lots of it to the Genio Touch! There are widgets that you can slide around with your finger, applications that let you do everything from ToDo lists and Email to easy access to MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

The screen’s also pretty good for a budget phone. Its 2.8″ in size, it’s a touchscreen display, and can display a huge 16,000,000 different colours.

The user interface, too, is a great achievement for such a budget phone. Samsung’s TouchWiz interface lets you copy widgets between the homepage and a toolbar on the side of the screen. You simply pick a widget up on the toolbar, drag it over the homepage, and drop it, where it boings into life. Widgets give you instant access to some of your favourite social networking sites, and will even notify you of status updates via a pop up message.

And all in a phone that’s like a touchscreen smartphone, but without the price.

What’s not so good

So how many features has Samsung got rid of to keep the cost down? Fortunately not too many, but the Genio Touch’s low price does reflect in its full specification.

For example, there’s only a 2 megapixel camera with no auto-focus, no 3.5mm headphone jack (though Samsung do supply a 3.5mm headphone jack converter with the Genio), and there’s no QWERTY keyboard, either virtual or real. You get the same predictive text-based numerical keypad as you do on most mobile phones, but in virtual form. Given that it’s a got a huge 2.8″ touchscreen, though, you’d have thought Samsung would have offered a virtual QWERTY option as well, but apparently not!

Apps and Multimedia

Fortunately, apps and multimedia come firmly under “software”, which Samsung have included by the bucket load! Although you can’t download apps onto the Genio touch (at least not yet), there are tonnes of apps and widgets pre-installed with it.

You can see your friends’ Twitter and Facebook updates, play music encoded in WMA, MP3, AAC, eAAC, and eAAC+ formats, browse the Web using a web browser that lets you zoom in and out of a Web page, and even view Microsoft Office documents.

As far as Multimedia is concerned, you can take photos and videos and store them on a microSD card of up to 16GB in size, which is enough for thousands of pictures, hours of video, and tonnes of tunes. The Genio Touch also comes with a music player and FM radio, so you can listen to your tunes wherever you are.

Video of the Samsung Genio Touch

Here’s a video of the Genio Touch to give you a better feel for the phone:

Samsung Genio Touch and, er, the Saturdays!

This has no relevance to the review, but Samsung did a big promotion with the Saturdays when launching the Genio Touch. So it would seem rude of me not show them in all their glory! And yes, that really is a Genio Touch they’re holding (no it is, honest ;)

Summary

I’m impressed with the Samsung Genio Touch. It’s a budget phone with budget features but it’s great to use. The touchscreen is impressive, the use of widgets that you can drag and drop all over the place, and the seamless way it connects to your social networks, all make the Genio Touch seem much more like a smartphone.

It’s a shame the camera is only 2 megapixels, but its curved looks, social network apps and touchscreen more than make up for it. The Samsung Genio Touch is a great phone for the budget conscious who want something stylish and who want to join the touchscreen revolution without breaking the bank. It’ll make the perfect Christmas present!

[Source: CellPhone Reviews]

The combination is simply stunning. In one phone, you get

• an 8 megapixel camera, aGPS, WiFi, HSDPA, 1GHz processor and stunning 4″ touchscreen display
• Android 1.6 smartphone operating system, complete with Google Search, Maps, browser, YouTube and access ot the Google the Android Market
• a stunning new user interface developed by Sony Ericsson that shows what interfaces will be like in the new decade.

And that’s just scratching the surface! Read on for our extended Xperia X10 preview, and more glorious pics and videos!

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 video

Before we begin, check out the Xperia X10 for yourself. Key things to note:

• the looks of the device itself – it’s stunning
• the fantastic user interface – it looks like something from a Sci-fi film!

Your jaw, by now, should be dropping. It looks glorious, and it’s feature-set is like a top-end Nokia N-Series, not a Sony Ericsson smartphone. Better still, it’s an Android-based smartphone, not one of the increasingly-dated Windows Mobile-based ones used in some Sony Ericsson’s previous smartphones.

Annoyingly, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 release date isn’t until Q1 2010, so you won’t be able to get it for Christmas. But as the first super-phone of the next decade, it’s certainly something worth waiting for. Just check out its features to see what I mean.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 features

Camera

Sony Ericsson have packed the X10 with the biggest and best camera of any smartphone on the market today. Where the original Android phones and the iPhone had a 2 megapixel camera, and the current iPhone 3GS has a 3 megapixel one, the X10 comes with a whopping 8.1 megapixel camera complete with a plethora of features usually found in dedicated CyberShot camera phone.

For example, the X10 offers you:

• 8.1 megapixel camera
• Up to 16x digital zoom
• Auto focus
• Intelligent face recognition features
• Geo tagging
• Image and video stabilizer
• Photo and video light
• Send to web (photo and video upload)
• Smile detection
• Touch focus
• Video recording
• Recent shot tray

Smartphones have always been a bit lacking in the camera department – not any more!

Performance that matches the power of the new user interface

Smartphone users also need to worry about a phone’s processor and its screen. A fantastic user interface is one thing, but if the processor’s too slow, or the screen is too small, the whole experience simply becomes unusable.

Recognizing this, Sony Ericsson have equipped the X10 with the latest Qualcomm SnapDragon processor running at 1GHz – that’s twice the speed of the T-Mobile G1 – and a whopping 4″ touchscreen display.

Android phones already offer a great web browsing experience, but with such a powerful processor and huge screen, mobile Web browsing is just as good as it is on the dekstop.

The power of the X10 also offers super-fast responsiveness across the whole phone, as well, with transition effects from aplpciation to application being rendered smoothly and fluidly.

Indeed, this is one the of the major selling points of the X10 – its brand new user interface.

How good is the X10’s new interface?

We’ve seen leaked shots of the X10’s new user interface for some time now. Formerly known as Rachel, the user interface has been developed especially for Android and will be used by Sony Ericsson in a range of new Android phones it’ll be releasing throughout 2010.

Timescape

Timescape is similar to Motorola’s MotoBlur, and aims to provide you with access to all of your communications with your friends in a centeral place. With great effects and animations, Timescape will let you search for friends, see threads of conversations, Facebook and Twitter status updates, and even pictures of them, all from the same screen.

Mediascape

Related to Timescape is the new Mediascape application, which, as its name suggests, offers a nifty new way of viewing and listening to all of your media.

Mediascape will access all of your pictures and videos from anywhere – your phone, YouTube, Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow service – and present it to you from the one screen with rich media effect providing glorious animations as you scroll through your content.

The new Infinity Button

More impressive still is the Infinity button. This combines the features of Timescape and Mediascape to aggregate all of your interactions with your friends from across dozens of different Web apps and your phone. You can think of it as friend hoover, sucking up all the interactions you’ve had with a friend from across your phone and the Web, and presenting it to you in one screen.

The Wow factor!

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of what the X10 can do with your content.

Using intelligent face recognition, it’ll look at a photo, recognize up to five faces in it, and then automatically connect them to their content in your phone book, on facebook, Twitter, emails – even other pics and videos.

In other words, you can take a photo of your friend and have the X10 pull all the information about your friend that it can find, either from your phone or from across the Web, and display it to you instantly.

There are nno reports on how well this works yet, but if it works as well as Sony Ericsson are claiming, it be a game changer. Suddenly, the world became just that little bit more tightly connected, and all the info, pics, videos and memories of your friends became that little bit closer to hand.

Really looking forward to seeing how well this works!

Summary

Details of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 have been leaked so often that the official announcement was in danger of being greeted by shrugged shoulders. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened – the X10 looks set to be a fantastic new Android phone, possibly even the market leader when it’s released in Q1 2010.

It’s a shame it’s missed being released in time for Christmas 2009, but with a phone that lokos this good, with sucha great range of features and a stunning new user interface, somehow it seems appropriate to leave it for the next decade.

The Noughties clearly belonged to Apple and Nokia. Somehow I think the next decade will belong to Android, and Sony Ericsson have made a bold claim to be leading the charge.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 specifications

Music

• Album art
• Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)
• Media player
• Music tones (MP3/AAC)
• PlayNow™
• TrackID™

Web

• Bookmarks
• Google™ search (from standby)
• Web feeds
• WebKit web browser

Communication

• Sony Ericsson Timescape™
• Speakerphone
• Vibrating alert

Messaging

• Conversations
• Email
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®
• Picture messaging (MMS)
• Predictive text input
• Text messaging (SMS)

Design

• Auto rotate
• Gesture control
• Picture wallpaper
• Touchscreen

Entertainment

• 3D games
• Media browser
• Infinite button
• Video streaming
• Video viewing
• YouTube™

Organiser

• Alarm clock
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Flight mode
• Infinite button
• Office suite
• Phone book with dialer
• World clock

Location-based services

• A-GPS
• Google Maps™
• Wisepilot™ turn-by-turn navigation* (free trial version – may not be available everywhere)

Connectivity

• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Bluetooth™ technology
• Micro USB connector
• Synchronisation
• USB support
• Wi-Fi™

Preloaded applications

• Sony Ericsson Timescape™
• Sony Ericsson Mediascape
• Sony Ericsson Home with clock widget
• Sony Ericsson Sync
• Android Market™ Client
• Gmail™
• Google Calendar™
• Google Maps™ with Street View
• Google Media Uploader
• Google phone-top search
• Google search widget
• Google Talk™
• Google Voice Search™
• Network Location Provider
• Set-up Wizard
• YouTube™

Screen

• 262,144 colour TFT touchscreen
• 4.0 inches
• 480 x 854 pixels (WVGA)
• Scratch-resistant

Accessories
In-Box:

• XPERIA™ X10
• Battery
• Stereo portable handsfree
• 8 GB microSD™ card
• Micro USB cable for charging, synchronisation and file transfer
• User documentation

Optional:

• Hi-Fi Wireless Headset with FM Radio MW600
• Car Charger AN300
• Screen Protector ET902

Facts:

• Size: 119 x 63 x 13 mm
• Weight: 135 grams
• Phone memory: Up to 1 GB
• Memory card support: microSD™
• Memory card included: 8 GB
• Operating system: Google™ Android Donut, version 1.6
• Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ QSD8250

Availability and versions

Networks

• UMTS HSPA 900/1700/2100
• GSM GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900

• UMTS HSPA 800/1900/2100
• GSM GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900

Colour

• Sensuous Black
• Luster White

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 release date is Q1 2010

And I do mean bits – the video’s infuriating as it tantalises us with the odd glimpse of the X10 without showing use the whole.

Fortunately, we won’t have to wait to too long, as the release date of the X10 has just been announced.

Check the video out after the jump.

Sony Ericsson X10 overview

The X10 was originally known by its prototype name of Rachel. Sony Ericsson then called it the Xperia X3 before randomly rechristening it the X10.

Whatever it’s called, the X10 is not only Sony Ericsson’s first Android phone, it’s shaping up to be a glorious new smartphone.

It’s got the looks, it’s got the software, coming with Android 2.0, and it’s got the features too. Just check out this feature list that was leaked a few weeks ago:

• 4” touchscreen, capacitive display, with WVGA (800×480) resolution
• 8 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, image stabilizers, smile and face detection
• Quadband GSM/EDGE/GPRS, HSPA/HSUPA (900/2100 MHz)
• Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi b/g
• aGPS
• Android 2.0 with Custom user interface
• 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor

Mmmmm, tasty! It’s rare that a smartphone combines superb software with superb hardware, but with a 1GHz CPU and 8 megapixel camera, all tied together by Android 2.0, the X10’s achieved it.

Sony Ericsson X10 Release Date

Fortunately we won’t have to wait too much longer to see the X10 in the flesh. Sony Ericsson have been hinting heavily that it’ll be launched on November 3rd. We’ll have full details, so subscribe now, or follow us on Twitter for the latest info.

This is going to be one mobile phone release you won’t want to miss.

[GHacks.net]

What features are they? Read on after the jump to find out.

LG Pop in more detail

LG have a knack of giving their phones memorable names. Rather than naming their phones with a random selection of numbers, LG has long given their phones names such as Arena, Cookie, Chocolate, and Viewty.

Now, we can add the LG Pop to the mix.

Since the iPhone, people love the idea of a touchscreen phone, but many people either can’t afford one or don’t need the features that such smartphones come with. The idea of a touchscreen is great – in fact, it’s the perfect way to operate a phone – but syncing your email contacts with your phone and desktop, constant connection to the mobile Web, turn by turn Sat Nav navigation, and all the other gubbins that come with smartphones simply aren’t needed for a lot of people.

So the LG Pop has been designed to give people the best of both worlds – an extremely easy to use touchscreen phone without all the features of the smartphone, but which is still extremely usable, classy and fun to use. It’s also a lot cheaper, which is one reason why the LG Cookie sold so well!

So, is the LG Pop underpowered? Not at all! This is 2009, remember, and even low-end phones have the same features as the most sophisticated phones of just a few years ago!

LG Pop features

The LG Pop comes with the following:

• 3″ WQVGA touchscreen
• 3 megapixel camera
• MP3 player
• Video player
• Single button for call activation and cancel, which is extremely intuitive
• Web browser
• Video camera

In short, everything you need from a mobile phone, all accessible using an extremely intuitive touchscreen user interface.

You won’t get an all-singing all-dancing feature phone with the LG Pop, but you will get an extremely stylish touchscreen phone that’s exceptional value for money.

Is the LG Pop the right phone for you?

LG have a habit of releasing phones that are outstanding value for money. The LG Cookie, for example, was a touchscreen phone that was light on features, but it was incredibly cheap, and it made its competition look like outdated dinosaurs form the 20th Century.

The LG Pop GS510 is set to do the same. It’s got much better features than the Cookie, yet still follows the same philosophy – keep it simple, keep it good value, yet make it better than its competitors.

“Our high-end phones like the Black Label Series New LG Chocolate (LG BL40) may be getting all the attention but there’s a gap in the market for affordable touchscreen phones that we want to fill,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “The LG GD510 delivers all the essentials in communication, multimedia and entertainment and comes in a compact form factor as well.”

If you’re looking for a touchscreen smartphone that can take on the iPhone, then you need to look elsewhere. But if you want an extremely good touchscreen phone with a minimal set of features that looks great and is super-cheap, then the LG Pop is the phone for you.

You can buy the LG Pop now for free, and choose from dozens of freebies thrown in, including an XBox 360, Nintendo Wii with Wii Sports, a Playstation PSP – or even £180 cashback! Told you it was a bargain :)

A bold claim? Perhaps, but ask yourself if the following has ever happened to you:

• A perfect sunset has been lost forever as your camera’s at home and your cameraphone doesn’t work in the dark
• Your friend’s birthday goes unrecorded as all the cameraphone pics you take end up blurred
• You spot the perfect picture – your baby’s first steps, your cat falling into your fishtank – but you miss the moment as your cameraphone takes too long to activate
• You take some cracking pictures on holiday, only to be disappointed with their insipid colours and fuzziness when you print them out

In short, your camera phone is letting you down, and losing you valuable memories that you could be looking back on for years to come.

You don’t need a gimmick – you need a camera phone that’s genuinely as good as a digital camera.

Step forward the Samsung Pixon 12, Samsung’s latest feature-packed phone, and its best camera phone to date.

In fact, as the following Pixon 12 review shows, as far as picture quality is concerned, it’s the best camera phone on the market today – it’s even won awards to prove it! Read on to find out why.

Samsung Pixon 12 – taking camera phones to the next level

Remember when you needed to take a photo right then and there, of a memory you wanted captured forever. All you had with you was your camera phone, though. You knew its photos weren’t great, but you had no choice, as you had no other camera on you.

So you took the photo – and hoped. It looked OK on the phone’s screen, so maybe it’d look OK when printed out?

But when you did print it out, your heart sank. You know the feeling: the sense of anticipation of seeing your memory in glorious technicolor, only to be replaced by disappointment as a dimly lit blurred photo stares back at you.

Happily, Samsung have a solution for you: The Samsung Pixon 12. As the name suggests, it’s a 12 megapixel camera phone, but it’s more than that .

Much more.

The Samsung Pixon 12 is a breakthrough camera phone whose pictures are genuinely as good as a dedicated digital camera’s.

And that’s not just some meaningless sales spin from Samsung’s PR department. As you can see from some of the example pics below, the Pixon 12’s photos have been compared to the Canon PowerShot A590 digital camera, and you simply can’t tell the difference. It’s more phone-camera than camera-phone!

If you’re looking for the best camera phone on the market today, the Samsung Pixon 12 is it.

The trouble with camera phones

The trouble with camera phones is that despite their claims to huge megapixels, the quality of the camera itself has never been all that good. Flashes are weak, image stabilization poor, colours are insipid, and the attention to detail that goes into a digital camera to get its pictures looking so good just doesn’t go into a camera phone, as the manufacturer has so many other features to worry about.

The result? Well, on my fist trip to Las Vegas I only had my camera phone with me, and despite all the glorious sites that I saw over there, the only memories I have are grainy, muddy looking little snapshots that are OK in a scrapbook, but nowhere near good enough for printing out.

I’m sure the same has happened to you, if not on holiday, then at the pub. Taken any cameraphone pictures in a darkened pub or club lately? Not exactly great are they?!

How the Samsung Pixon 12 solves these problems

The Samsung Pixon 12 is different though. It’s not its 12 megapixels that solves the grotty picture problem (though that certainly helps).

It’s the attention to detail, superb image processing technology, and an unrelenting focus on making the Pixon 12 the best camera phone on the market that really takes the Pixon 12 to the next level.

Here are just some of the things it will give you:

• Capture all the action no matter how fast it happens – the Pixon 12 takes just three seconds between pictures even with the flash on
• Capture memories wherever they happen – with both a class-leading Xenon flash and a separate LED flash, the Pixon 12 takes great pics even in total darkness, and it doesn’t drown out colour like poorer-performing flashes do. Just check out the sample pics below to see for yourself
• See your memories as you remembered them in full vivid colour.
• Print out your memories in super-sharp detail – with variable aperture and ISO settings adjustable up to ISO 1600, the Pixon 12 takes photos in stunning clarity that can be safely blown up to poster-sized proportions
• Forget blurry pictures forever – the Pixon 12 features dynamic auto-focus, which tracks a moving object in real time ensuring it’ll never be blurred. Just touch the screen on the object you want to focus on, and the Pixon will track it, with its cross hairs moving across the screen as the object itself moves!
• Take photos near and far – the Pixon 12 has a wide angle lens, while its macro mode will let you take great pics of even the smallest things.

Throw in face detection, smile detection, blink detection, geo-tagging, and sophisticated image stabilization technology to reduce blur, and you can see why the Pixon 12 won the Mobile Choice best camera phone award for 2009.

But what if you want more than just a camera with your phone, even if it is the best camera on the market?

Don’t worry – Samsung thought of that too!

Will you be wanting Wi-Fi, GPS, Web browsing and touchscreen with that, Sir?!

Samsung have never exactly been tight when it comes to the features on their phones, and the Pixon 12 is no exception. In fact, Samsung seem to have thrown just about every feature they can at it to make it a true class leader.

GPS Navigation

The Pixon 12 comes with a built-in GPS receiver and a plethora of GPS-based software. As well as automatic geo-tagging of your pictures, it also comes with full Sat-Nav software in the form of the Samsung Mobile Navigator. This gives you all the usual maps and directions you’d expect, plus turn-by-turn voice guided navigation, weather service, travel guide and traffic info, including info on speed cameras.

Mobile Web browsing

Liking the look of the Pixon 12, but feel you also need a phone that’s as smart as an iPhone? No need to worry – the Pixon 12 has been designed to handle the mobile Web as well as it handles taking pics.

Using the same WebKit browser that the iPhone, Android phones and Nokia’s N-Series phones use, the Pixon 12 offers the same level of Web browsing as a smartphone.

Its browser has been customized by Samsung and has complete support for Java and Flash, meaning you can watch YouTube videos within a Web page, just like you can on your desktop. There’s even a built-in Ad-Blocker (which Google will be cursing!), and you can have 5 different Web pages loaded in different windows at once.

You can move easily around a Web page bly sliding it around with your finger, and there’s even one-touch zooming in and out of a Web page to get closer to the action.

So that’s ease of use taken care of – what about download speed?

Well, with built-in support for WiFi, Bluetooth, and HSPDA (which lets you browse the Web at speeds of up to 7.2Mbps), the Pixon 12 is fast. In fact, it’s one of the fastest mobile phones on the market when it comes to transferring data.

Which is handy, really, as 12 megapixel cameras take huge photos! You don’t want to be waiting hours to upload your latest pic, and fortunately with the Pixon 12, you won’t have to.

Super slow-mo video recording

Like to take videos as well as pictures? How about recording them at 720×480 resolution with crystal clear colours, super-sharp focus and no jitter? Good, because that’s what you get with the Pixon 12!

You can also record your videos at a faster frame rate than the default 30 frames per second so you can play them back in slow motion.

And in case you’re wondering, 30 frames per second is the same rate that DVDs use, while 720×480 is widescreen TV-sized. No postage stamp-sized jerky videos for the Pixon – it’s as good at video recording as it is at taking still pics.

Smartphone-like touchscreen and a smart phone interface

I know what you’re thinking – the Pixon 12 sounds like its the camera phone you want, but you’re not sure how easy it is to use all of its functions. Fortunately, sophisticated phones have come on a long way in the past couple of years, and Samsung have spent a lot of time and money on something called TouchWiz II – their touchscreen-based user interface designed specifically to make their phones much easier to use.

TouchWiz has been around for nearly a year, but with the Pixon 12, Samsung have really refined it with a new improved version. The Pixon 12 is so powerful that the user interface is super-fast. You can drag icons, screens and windows around with your finger on the touchscreen, and the interface will respond to your requests smoothly and extremely quickly.

You can add widgets to your homescreens or see what applications are open with the touch of your finger, and choose between them by sliding your finger around the screen. Just check out the video below to see how easily the Pixon 12 lets you use it.

So what’s the downside?

Ironically, the one area where the Pixon 12 lets itself down is …phone calls! Seems Samsung spent so much time making every other feature work well that they forgot that it’s actually a mobile phone!

It’s not that the call quality is bad – it’s just that voices don’t have the same vibrancy as on other devices and sound a bit muffled.

There’s also no standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Samsung provide an adaptor to convert the Samsung headphone jack that’s built into the Pixon 12 to your standard 3.5mm headphone plug, but it would have been much better if it was built into the phone itself.

The user interface is certainly an improvement over the first version of Samsung’s TouchWiz. However, it’s not as good as other user interfaces out there. Samsung have always focused on features first, though, and I guess this shows with the Pixon 12: its feature-set is absolutely first class, and has clearly been the main priority in the phone’s development. While good enough, the user interface hasn’t quite received as much love on it as on other touchscreen phones.

Finally, the ergonomics aren’t all they could be, either. Although the on-screen user interface is good, some of the exterior buttons are either a little unwieldy, or just not where you think they should be.

Still, as problems go, I wish mine were that small!

What other people are saying about the Samsung Pixon 12

By now, you should be able to see why the Pixon 12 has won awards and plaudits from all across the Web. But don’t my word for it – here are what other people are saying about it:

PhoneArena love it:

“Let’s face it, the Samsung Pixon12 M8910 is by far probably the best camera phone on the market – hands down. It packs some improvements in hardware and software over the original [Pixon] to really make this a worthy successor. With such robust offerings like a stellar camera quality, quick interface and a gorgeous screen, the Pixon12 has everything going the right way. We are confident to say that this will leave a mark on just about anyone who uses it. One of the best things about it is that it combines two handy products into just one that has an overall pocketable form factor. We’re not going to say that it will replace high-end digital SLRs, but point and shoot cameras will have to bow down and hail the Samsung Pixon12 as their equal.”

GSMArena do too:

“With the Pixon12, we’re looking at a handset that has plenty to offer. The vibrant and sensitive screen, lively and snappy interface and rich connectivity make it a great package all around…The Pixon12 is winner stuff…”

Gaj-it are fans, too:

“The sleek-looking Pixon 12 M8910 has really broken through the semi-decent convergent technology mould, and we’ve ended up with a top quality cameraphone packed with features that would do any jeans pocket proud.”

Mobile Phones UK also love the Pixon 12, giving it 4/5:

“The Samsung Pixon 12 is the world’s first 12 megapixel camera phone. Not only does it have an outstanding photographic capability, but it comes with virtually every other high-end feature that you might expect. Whilst not a smartphone, it’s a 3G touchscreen phone with a media player, FM radio, full screen web browser, GPS with Google Maps, WiFi and support for memory cards up 16 GB. On the negative side, it’s expensive and has below average battery life, but it still gets our thumbs up.”

Sample pictures

OK, enough of the raving – Samsung have done a good enough job with the Pixon 12 that you don’t need me to tell you how good it is – you can see for yourself. The pics below show the Pixon 12’s in a variety of different situations, and also compared directly with the Canon PowerShot A590.

These pictures come directly from PhoneArena, who have many more. Go check them out to see for yourself how good the Pixon 12 is, and check out the video review below as well. Pictures (and video!) paint a thousand words (remind me of that, next time I write such a long review ;)

Samsung Pixon 12 pictures

Samsung Pixon 12 vs Canon PowerShot A590

Samsung Pixon 12:

Canon PowerShot A590:

Samsung Pixon 12:

Canon PowerShot A590:

Samsung Pixon 12 Video Review

To see the Pixon 12 in action, check out the video review below.

And there’s more!…

Blimey, this review’s gone on longer than I thought! That’s the problem with feature phones – there’s just too much to write about! I haven’t even mentioned:

• Great quality video playback with DivX XVid support
• TV-Out, so you can see all your pics and videos on your TV screen
• 2GB storage expandable to 32GB microSD
• Accelerometer that switches the screen between portrait and landscape automatically
• Stunning AMOLED 16 million colour screen
• Microsoft Office support
• Email

Summary

You might be thinking by now that I’m a little bit biased about the Samsung Pixon 12 – that I’ve been raving about it a bit too much.

And it’s true – I have. But the reason is, it’s finally a phone that can take on a digital camera and compete with it in picture quality. For too long, camera phones were all about the number of megapixels and not enough on the quality of the resultant image.

The Pixon 12 has changed all that.

Sure, it’s also got a huge number of megapixels – but they’ve been put together in a camera unit that uses them superbly, better than any other phone on the market today.

Couple this with the superb set of features that Samsung have also included into the Pixon 12, such as glorious AMOLED touchscreen, WiFi , GPS, 7.2Mbps downloads and Microsoft Office reader, and the Samsung Pixon 12 has been placed firmly in the category of “must buy”!

If you’re looking for a camera phone that takes the best pictures on the market, then buy the Samsung Pixon 12. For once in life, the decision is that simple!

Remember the last time you were in a hotel room with absolutely nothing to do? Crap TV in a foreign language, or films so expensive they cost more than the price of the room. Or what about the time you were on a train that slowed to a crawl…for seemingly hours on end?

We’ve all been in situations where we’ve cried out for something interesting to do.

Sometimes you need something to keep you entertained – a comedy, a film, even all 24 episodes of 24, anything to ease your stressed out, overloaded, or just plain bored brain!

LG must have thought that too, as they’ve just released the LG BL40 Cinematic phone – and blimey does it blow away the boredom blues!


I once spent ten days in Finland with nothing to watch but Finnish TV where the only words in English that I heard were the Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony. The only entertainment from the TV was unintelligible, while the only entertainment from the hotel was inedible pizza!

Worse, I’ve also spent $8 in a hotel in San Francisco just to watch a 45 minute episode of Mythbusters because it was the only thing on TV I could afford – and I’d already seen it twice!

If I’d have had the LG BL40 with me, none of this would have been a problem. LG’s new feature phone has been designed to provide best in class entertainment wherever you are – and it really delivers the goods.

Here are just some of the things it can do for you:

• Watch films in cinematic quality – wherever you are
• See the films you want to watch. Your own films, whether downloaded or from DVD
• Watch the TV you want on your hotel TV – for free
• Watch every episode of the Apprentice on the train

Not bad so far. But there’s more – much more!

• Pump your tunes through your stereo without wires or expensive docks
• Shoot your mate’s stag do adventures in DVD quality, then upload them to YouTube in seconds
• Out-iPhone your mates with a huge 4″ multi-touch screen with 3D interface
• Never lose your holiday pics – the LG BL40 records when and where they were taken, so you can upload them to Flickr and find them again by date or location

Of course, other phones offer similar features, so why should you go for the BL40?

Why the LG BL40 is so good

Watch films how they were meant to be seen

When you play your film, you’ll see it in stunning proportions on the BL40’s huge 4″ 20:9 widescreen display. You’ll see crystal clear colours, ultra-smooth motion and no black bars either side of the picture – exactly as the Director intended it.

The phone is fast so the film is smooth, while the size of the screen means you won’t even notice you’re watching your film on a phone – so no squinting, and with the BL40’s cinematic dimensions you’ll be absorbed in the Director’s world.

Watch what you want to watch on your hotel’s TV

If you just want to veg in your hotel room, then fine – plug the BL40 into the room’s TV and watch the film or TV programme you want to watch wherever you are – for free! Using the phone’s TV-Out socket, you can see anything you have stored on the phone on any TV around the world, usually in better quality.

Can you really watch anything? Certainly can -the LG BL40 supports DivX and Xvid (amongst others), which are the video formats used to record films and TV series onto DVD.

So download your film (legally!) or rip your DVD onto your PC, copy it onto an SD card and take it with you.

Imagine: any film, TV series or DVD to watch wherever you want, whenever you want.

Listen to your tunes your way

It’s not just films that the BL40 excels in. It’s also pretty nifty in the music department. You can listen to your tunes with any headphone, thanks to the standard 3.5mm headphone jack, while the built-in FM transmitter will stream your tunes wirelessly to any radio in your house or car.

The sound quality is really good, too, thanks to its use of Dolby Mobile. No tinny bass or annoying hiss with the BL40 – hook it up to some decent headphones or a decent HiFi and you’ll love the way it sounds.

Take perfect pictures and make your friends look lovely

The LG BL40’s camera is also something else – it actually helps you take the perfect shot:

• The BL40 can identify faces, ensuring they’re always in focus
• It can detect when your friend’s smiling, refusing to take the photo until she stops gurning
• It’ll even recognize when she’s blinked, and take the shot microseconds after she’s opened her eyes again
• If she’s still looking ugly, its Beauty and Art shots will put a soft focus on her, making her look much better than real life (but dont tell her that!)
• You can take drunken shots with the BL40, as its image stabilization feature compensates for your unsteady hands
• No need to tag a photo with random tags such as “holiday in Benidorm” – it knows where a photo was taken thanks to its built-in GPS, and tags the pic with the time and location – automatically.

In short, you don’t need to do a thing – just press the button, and the LG BL40 will get the best picture it can for you, no matter how bad your hands are shaking, or how ugly your friend is!

Surely it can’t be the perfect phone

Of course, the LG BL40 isn’t perfect. It doesn’t have many faults, but the main ones seem to be size and user interface.

Is that an LG in your pocket?

Now you might be thinking that the LG BL40, with its 4″ screen, is a huge phone – far too big to carry in your pockets. But its size is deceptive. At 128mm x 51mm x 10.9mm, it’s very similar to the iPhone (115mm x 61mm x 11.6mm).

I’ve used large phones for some years now (from a huge Nokia E90 to my current T-Mobile G1), and the size has never been a problem. They’re designed to fit into your pocket as comfortably as in your hand, so if you think the iPhone’s size is fine, you won’t have a problem with the LG BL40.

How do I use it?

The BL40 has LG’s new 3D S-Class user interface, which has been designed especially for touchscreens. Unfortunately, with so many features, it can be easy to get lost and forget how to access a particular function.

It’s not that difficult, though, and whizzing through a hefty interface when you’ve mastered it always adds to the cool factor of any piece of tech. Besides, since when was having too many features a problem?!

Even more features

I could go on about the great features of the LG BL40, but I’d be here all day. For example, I haven’t mentioned:

• the BL40’s unique dual screen effect
• its multi-touch capacitive touchscreen for super-responsive intuitive use
• its great and super-fast Web browsing abilities
• its quad-band GSM, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth and USB connectivity options
• its accelerometer, proximity detector and aGPS unit that lets it know where it is, which way it’s going, and how fast it’s moving.
• 1GB of on-board memory, expandable to 32GB via microSD card

Phew!

What other people are saying about the LG BL40

CNet are big fans of the BL40:

“The LG Chocolate BL40 is unlike any other touchscreen phone we’ve come across. Its stunning, ultra-wide display has a true cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio and gives the handset a very distinct tall-and-thin profile.”

GSMArena are also pretty pleased with LG’s new gadget:

“The BL40 New Chocolate has a gorgeous display and its user interface is among the best in the “touch feature phone” class. With a more polished and more customizable UI, a nice music player and excellent video playback support, the LG BL40 New Chocolate is much closer to what the LG Arena should have been in the first place…[we] love to see technology evolve and lately LG have been giving us quite a few reasons to celebrate.”

Finally, PhoneArena give the BL40 a thorough going over, and come out raving about it:

LG definitely managed to attract attention with the LG New Chocolate BL40. This is the first handset that comes equipped with a touch sensitive display with widescreen 21:9 aspect ratio. With its stylish, offbeat design and proper functionality up to today’s standards, the New Chocolate BL40 has what it takes to become the new fashion icon and even overshadow the PRADA.

Summary -The phone to finally end boredom

LG have really pulled something out of the bag with the BL40. It’s a phone unlike any other on the market, with great looks, superb features, and a real shot at being the best multimedia phone on the market today.

If you travel a lot, get bored easily, need to entertain the kids on a long journey or just want to be entertained, then order the LG BL40 – it’ll be your very own sanity saviour!

Update – Mobiles.co.uk are currently doing some cracking Web-only deals: but they don’t last long!

Amazon also do some great deals on microSD cards that work with the LG BL40.