There’s HSDPA, GPS and Wi-Fi all here, for example, alongside a front facing camera for two way video calling, and the handset runs Windows Mobile 6.5. Samsung has overlayed its own TouchWiz user interface onto Windows Mobile, so that the handset looks to all intents and purposes like a pretty ordinary Samsung touchscreened mobile.

The three home screens have Samsung’s trademark usual bright plant related wallpapers for example, and there is a sidebar from which you can draw widgets onto the three screens.

The handset itself is quite small, measuring 107mm x 51.8mm x 13.3mm and weighing 109g. Unlike with some larger screened smartphones we had no trouble at all reaching all the way across the screen to use the Omnia Lite one-handed. We are fans of the fact that the microSD card slot is on one side of the casing. Protected by a hinged flap, its location means you can very easily get to it to hotswap memory cards.

Counteracting this is the fact that the supplied one-piece headset shares its microUSB connector with the mains power and PC connectors. There’s no 3.5mm option.

Under the screen there are Call and End buttons and what looks like it might be an optical navigation pad. In fact it is just a back button. That’s really no great loss – the touchscreen means you don’t really need a navigation pad of any kind.

The telltale sign that this is a Windows Mobile handset is the Start menu sitting along the top of the screen. Tap Start and the Windows Mobile ‘honeycomb’ apps menu pops up. There is an alternative in the shape of Samsung’s own side button invoked My Menu, which offers 3 x 4 grids of application shortcuts spread across four screens. The grids can be customised, and there is a task switcher here too.

Those not used to such dual systems might find things a bit confusing, but you’ll probably soon decide which of the two setups you prefer and stick to it.

Another case of doubling up comes in the shape of Samsung’s application store sitting alongside Microsoft’s own Windows Mobile one.

But the biggest oddity of all is the stylus. The touchscreen does, inevitably, pop up some quite small icons – too small to hit with a fingertip. We say inevitably because the screen measures just 3.0 inches across diagonal corners. Samsung has decided to provide a stylus, but not in the usual sense of giving one a space in the device shell.

Instead you get a nearly 80mm long plastic pen which you can hang off the phone via a wee lanyard. We hate it and resorted to using a pencil tip or struggling with fingernails.

Samsung has added several applications to the Windows Mobile standards including the Opera Web browser, an FM radio, a nice memo maker which supports both text and drawing, a digital picture frame app, a podcast manager and its own DivX and Xvid supporting video player.

The main camera falls a bit short at 3 megapixels and there is no flash. You can shoot in continuous mode and there are panorama and smile shot modes as well as a mosaic setting which lets you create larger pictures by combining single shots. You have to hold the camera quite steady for this to work.

We also found that the processor was a bit slow at times, with occasional waits for our fingertaps to be recognised and a general sluggishness throughout. Perhaps such limitations are to be expected, however, in what is a budget offering.

Price (as reviewed): £257
Web: www.samsungmobile.com

Essential Verdict
Performance: 7/10
Design: 8/10
Features: 7/10
Value for Money: 8/10
Overall score: 7/10

Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine. Written by Sandra Vogel.

If you want to be well known as a maker of modern smartphones then you have to be prepared to embrace the touchscreen. Nokia is aware of that fact, and it has already put a few toes in the touchscreen water.

While its previous attempts have had their good points, we never really got over the feeling that Nokia was sticking touch capability on top of a user interface, Symbian S60, that was designed for physical buttons. When set against something like the iPhone, this immediately put Nokia at a disadvantage before anything else had been taken into account.

Nokias X6 doesn’t do much to shake us out of that opinion. It is a nice handset with some good features which include HSDPA, Wi-Fi and A-GPS, but its S60 core holds it back. We felt the irritation during use that sometimes you have to double tap items and at other times only a single tap is needed. You do get used to the idiosyncrasy, but it is annoying during the early learning curve.

We do like the fact that Nokia has finally found itself able to put a capacitive touchscreen in a handset, though. This makes a big difference to responsiveness, and when we tapped we were always sure our interaction was being registered. It was disappointing therefore to find ourselves waiting for the phone to respond once to our commands in certain, often simple tasks.

The 3.2 inch screen has a wide and thin aspect ratio (640 x 360 pixels), which makes it quite good for viewing video and looking at Web pages in wide mode – in theory. In fact for some odd reason when Web browsing in wide screen a vertical menu bar takes up something like a fifth of the screen space and you can’t close it down.

In tall mode the screen mitigates against easy text entry. In that mode you get just a phone style numeric T9 tappable keypad. You have to turn the phone in your hand to get a QWERTY keyboard. With this showing typing at speed is a lot easier.

There is a slide bar for zooming when looking at photos and Web pages, and you can double tap to zoom in Web pages too, the latter centered on where you tap, but there’s no multitouch which means no pinch to zoom or twist to rotate.

With 32GB of built in memory you might feel this handset is well featured for storage and be ready to take advantage of a bundled year’s worth of Comes With Music downloads (and the phone is now available in a 16GB without the CWM subscription as well).

But there is no flash memory card slot for adding more storage. The 3.5mm headset connector is a plus but Nokia’s provided headset is one-piece so you can’t easily have wired handsfree plus your favourite earphones. At least the provided headset has inline music controls. You can use the 3.5mm connector for TV-out but you’ll need to buy a lead.

The 5 megapixel camera benefits from a dual LED flash and the image quality was quite high, no doubt thanks to the Carl Zeiss optics. There are a fair few settings including a macro mode, sequence mode and sports modes, but no panorama mode which is a shame. There is a front camera for two way video calling.

You can get to the handset main menu by tapping a button between the Call and End buttons under the screen. If it is media you want, a small touch sensitive key above the screen calls up a menu for music, pictures, online sharing, video and the Web.

We really wanted to like the Nokia X6 but found this difficult. Simple things like a lack of a microSD card slot combined with more complex issues like an operating system that still feels like it has had touch bolted on and unimaginative use of wide screen mode in the Web browser simply aren’t up to scratch.

The X6 is clearly Nokia’s attempt at challenging the iPhone. The Comes With Music subscription adds some value in this respect, but otherwise the phone is more pretender than true contender.

Price (as reviewed): £449
Web: www.nokia.co.uk

Essential Verdict
Performance: 6/10
Design: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Value for Money: 8/10
Overall score: 7/10

Review originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine. Written by Sandra Vogel.

Understated is the key word: the Liquid does almost nothing that other devices do, and often quite a bit less, leaving it without much to shout about. Our review unit ran Android 1.6, rather than the newer 2.0; it has some basic support for social networking but nothing that can be compared to Android phones from HTC; the home screen and its widgets are augmented with little beyond the basic Android offerings, and there are no neat tricks like multi-touch on board.

Even the Snapdragon processor is pegged at 768MHz, rather than the full 1GHz that would have turned the Liquid into a true powerhouse.

But if there’s so little out of the ordinary, what is the secret of the Liquid’s success?

Well, at the heart of any smartphone, there is the screen. This is the Liquid’s one claim to fame, since it is the first Android device to have a WVA display (800×480 pixels). It is stunning. Bright, clear, vibrant, a real pleasure. The glossy coating is quite reflective in bright sunlight, but in most conditions it is absolutely fine. It’s incredibly responsive as well, thanks to its capactive layer, and the added oomph from the Snapdragon processor.

Because even though the processor is not performing to its full potential, it still handles every task with ease, while navigating through Android’s various screens and menus – so often an indicator of the speed of a device – is instant. Allied to this we found the Android 1.6 build on the Liquid to be rock solid as well – fast and stable. A update to version 2.0 of the OS will also be available as an over the air download.

Next up is the design, which is extremely elegant. Despite the device being available in various colours – our test unit was white, while red, and black versions are also available – they are classy rather than gaudy, again fitting with the whole understated theme. The unit is light on buttons, just a volume rocker and (rather stiff) camera button on one side and the power button on the other.

The top sees a 3.5mm headphone jack, and the bottom a covered mini-USB port for charging and that is it. The front itself is button-free, with responsive touch sensitive panels beneath the screen. There’s no d-pad or trackball as on other Android handsets, and the snappiness of the system means it isn’t missed either.

Acer has added a few extra apps to the software package to enhance the out of the box experience. For business users there’s the Documents To Go office file viewers and RoadSync software for Exchange email. For consumers the standout is nemoPlayer, a stylish media player that is a welcome alternative to the perfunctory built-in Android media apps.

Both types of user will likely welcome the addition of Acer Sync, a solution for syncing the phone with a PC, should you not want to keep your data solely in the cloud. The cloud is, of course, catered for with the full gamut of Google applications. Add a few more choice offerings from the Android Market and you’ve got a well packed smartphone on your hands.

There are inevitably one or two quibbles. As well as the camera button being stiff, the 5MP camera itself is mediocre. There’s no flash, so is of limited use in all but the best light, and there is also some shutter lag, which is hardly ideal when taking pictures of moving objects.

Probably our only complaint about the hardware design is that the battery needs to be removed in order to add a microSD card. We also found the phone to get quite warm with heavy 3G or GPS use, although that is by no means unique to this device.

Even though the Acer Liquid doesn’t do much that can separate it from the crowd, it still remains a hugely impressive device. It’s a phone that is not trying to be something that it’s not, but rather to simply be good at what it is. And with the Liquid coming in at a firmly mid-range price, it’s hard to argue that this is not the right approach.

In fact, we would be inclined to say that this is our favourite Android smartphone to date.

Price (as reviewed): £330
Supplied by: www.clove.co.uk

Essential Verdict
Performance: 9/10
Design: 9/10
Features: 8/10
Value for Money: 9/10
Overall score: 9/10

The Today plug-in ensures instant access to all the key components, and even better is fully customisable. Users can hide or rearrange items and customise the plug-in to add the shortcut they want. The contact manager uses big, bold buttons for easy intuitive navigation and includes a clever, but simple social networking feature.

Users can login to facebook and instantly assign all their online contacts, with pictures, to the contacts database.

Today plug-in
To give easy access to Contact Manger’s features the software installs a Today plug-in. By default, there are five items per row. Tap, hold, tap Row Items and select the desired number.

Customise plug-in
Tap and hold anywhere in the Today plug-in and select Customize. This will add a red minus sign to all current items. Tap to remove unwanted items. To add tap the green plus icon and select from the list.

Add a contact
Tap the contact icon on the Today screen and tap Contacts>New Contact. Now add a name, tap Select a picture…, locate and tap to add. Now complete by adding remaining details.

Contact details
To view specific details tap the contact once. This offers a range of call options, Send SMS or eMail. Tap to activate any option. Tap Details to view categorised details. Alternatively, tap Menu to Edit, Delete or Send Message.

Facebook contacts
To automatically add Facebook friends first tap Contacts>Assign Facebook. Now login to Facebook, add details and tap Login. All facebook Friends will automatically be displayed, tap Auto-Assign to add or tap contact to add manually.

Locate on Map
To view the location of a contact via Google Maps tap the desired contact followed by Details and Home Or Business. Tap the address, select Locate on Map and wait for Google Maps to load with location.

This month in Smartphone Essentials magazine we’re casting our eyes over Apple’s latest creation, the iPad. Is it worthy of the unprecedented levels of hype that greeted it? And if you already own a smartphone that does everything the iPad can do, do you really need one?

We also have the first official Google Phone, the Nexus One, reviewed in full – is this the best Android device to date? And for those who have picked up a Nexus we have a handy guide to getting started with the Android OS.

Also featured this month:

* Reviews of the Motorola Milestone and Nokia E72 amongst others, as well as a group test of business-oriented smartphones.
* A feature on GPS software for the iPhone
* Productivity tips for the smartphone user
* Plus, round-ups of the latest accessories, and a wealth of news, hints and tips for every smartphone platform.

Smartphone Essentials issue 98 is on sale now from all good newsagents, or you can buy or subscribe online at www.imagineshop.co.uk.

Press the gray arrow at the bottom of the main Home screen. Select the Market icon. You will see featured apps listed first, and several categories to choose from.

The best way to find an app is to perform a search by selecting the Search option. Otherwise, once you find an app you want to install, select it review the description.

Once you determine you want to install the app, select the Install option. You might see some warnings about how the app uses your phone, accept them and wait for the install to finish.

Side by side, the new Nokia N97 mini and older N97 aren’t obviously different – the N97 mini’s screen is a little smaller (3.2” rather than 3.5”), and it’s a couple of millimetres shorter and thinner – but it’s tempting to wonder why Nokia bothered to create a new variant.

However, pick the two smartphones up and the N97 mini immediately feels a lot smaller in the hand, thanks to a thinner battery and, most of all, thanks to an ultra-thin stainless steel battery cover, replacing the chunky plastic offering on the older N97.

In short, the N97 is for the person who wants the maximum functionality with size no object, while the new arrival is the N97 for the rest of us, who want something which still feels phone-sized and which will be at home absolutely anywhere.

A side benefit of the change in materials is that overall build quality is better. And the extra six months development has enabled improvements in other areas. The (still innovative) hinged screen now reveals a better designed qwerty keyboard with more key travel and better haptic feedback. And getting rid of the plastic camera glass protector on the back also avoids the self-scratching problems experienced by many on the original N97.

Under the N97 mini’s hood, the original low sensitivity GPS antenna has been replaced by something with better signal to noise ratio, resulting in faster and better position locks. Finally, the problematic N97 disk C: has been bumped up to a whopping 512MB – no-one should now run out of space on their system disk.

However, there have been compromises in order to get the overall size down. The smaller screen may be an issue – 3.2” isn’t far off the 2.8” of the 2007 N95 8GB and looks a little small as we move into 2010, when some smartphones now squeezing in 4” displays. Whether you can live with the N97 mini’s screen will depend on your age and eyesight, we suspect! Colours are good though, with Nokia’s designers opting for a standard TFT display, easy on the eye indoors but blacking out in sunlight (the original N97’s display was transflective and more of an all rounder).

Also downgraded are the mass memory and battery, to 8GB and 1200mAh respectively (from 32GB and 1500mAh in the original N97). The first is obviously more marketing-inflicted and the second forced by physical restrictions.

Although both are probably good reasons for an existing N97 owner not to ‘downsize’, an 8GB mass memory (plus microSD) is still more than enough for most people, and the N97 mini’s battery will match that of most other smartphones on a daily basis.

The final significant omission is the FM transmitter, presumably for space reasons (and possibly because of the amount of metal in the N97 mini’s back). It’s a shame, because this has proved a real boon on car journeys, with the likes of the N97, N86 and N79 (among others) all able to broadcast music, podcasts and navigation instructions out to a car radio. This alone may sway some Symbian fans away from the N97 mini.

The base specification and capabilities are unchanged, however (HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and more). The combination of full-face touch and then full qwerty when needed is still a winner and the hinge mechanism still impresses. The 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera remains one of the best phone cameras in the world and the dual LED flash doubles as both a video light and a torch for finding your way home from the pub.

S60 5th Edition has been commented on a lot in the last year, but it should be noted that the N97 mini comes from day one with the new ‘kinetic scrolling’ version (now also available for the N97 via firmware update) – this makes a huge difference and, while not in the same class as the iPhone, genuinely makes both N97 smartphones pleasant to use.

Feeling a million dollars in the hand, the metal-backed N97 mini is currently priced at a premium, but for the connoisseur of quality smartphones, it’s a top pick.

Price: £400 SIM-free
Web: www.nokia.co.uk

Essential Verdict
Performance: 9/10
Design: 10/10
Features: 9/10
Value for Money: 7/10
Overall score: 9/10

Written by Steve Litchfield. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

The original BlackBerry Bold got heads turning thanks to its snazzy looks and superbly ergonomic keyboard. The new Bold 9700 builds on that success, helping to further consolidate Research In Motion’s place in the pockets of consumers as well as business people.

The new Bold is smaller and lighter than its predecessor 109mm x 60mm x 14.1mm and 122g (as opposed to 114mm x 66mm x 15mm and 136g) and while it still feels a little bulky we reckon RIM couldn’t go much further without compromising the usability of the superb mini keyboard.

While it is a little smaller than on the original Bold we still think the keyboard rocks. We’d go as far as to say the Qwerty keyboard on the Bold 9700 is one of the best mini keyboards we’ve ever seen. The keys are relatively large and very nicely shaped so that the tactile feel is great. They depress well too, giving off the teeniest of clicks.

The familiar line of shortcut keys sits between screen and keyboard – Call, End, Menu and Back. In the centre, though, the Bold’s mini trackwheel has disappeared, to be replaced by the optical trackpad that RIM currently favours.

We miss the good looks of the trackball, but the mini trackpad is efficient and responsive – for the most part. We did find it took a little while to work accurately with it in the Web browser.

The screen measures 2.4-inches across diagonal corners and it sports 480 x 360 pixels. It really is very clear and sharp and while it is obviously small compared to the likes of the screen on, say, an iPhone, it does a very good job.

The sliver and black chassis is very much in the BlackBerry mode, though the faux leather on the backplate looks a little out of place to us. It is, however, arguably the only trademark ‘Bold’ feature on a handset that could easily sit in the Curve range.

Side buttons and connectors sit on a rubberised panel and the buttons are also rubberised which helps with grip. They include a pair of convenience keys on the left and right edges which you can assign to whatever apps you want, a microUSB connector on the left edge for mains power and PC connection, volume rocker on the right and 3.5mm headset jack, rather unfortunately located on the left edge.

That jack is awkwardly located and we found it jarred in our pocket, but it can’t go on the top edge as this is neatly curved and houses mute and lock buttons.

The core BlackBerry services are all here. Strong mobile email support with up to ten POP accounts catered for is of course at the core. But with support for the likes of FaceBook and Twitter available for download via the app store you can kit the device out for your more social-media aware functions easily enough.

The camera is a bit low on raw power at 3.2 megapixels but it is easy to shoot photos and emailing and MMSing are both enabled as soon as you’ve captured a shot. There is a flash but the camera feature are a little behind the times. You can use black and white or sepia effects, but there’s no macro mode, face detection or panorama mode, for example. You can, though, use the built in GPS to geotag images.

As well as GPS the Bold 9700 sports Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, of course. It is an HSDPA device with Quad-band GSM under its belt too. There’s a microSD memory card slot under the backplate. You don’t need to remove the battery to get to it, but we found it mighty fiddly to get cards in and out. A 2GB card came with our SIM free device.

In truth the Bold 9700 does little that last year’s model couldn’t do just as well, and is a sign of how difficult it is becoming to differentiate between the various top-end handsets. Still, it would be foolish for a company to not play to its strengths, and the result is certainly the best BlackBerry to date.

Price: £380 SIM-free
Web: www.blackberry.com

Essential verdict
Performance: 9/10
Design: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Value for Money: 8/10
Overall score: 9/10

Written by Sandra Vogel. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

You can always tell a platform has truly ‘arrived’ when the first adult titles start showing up. And while Ninja Assassin may not be a genuine game ‘nasty’, it’s certainly the goriest we’ve seen on iPhone. Based on the forthcoming (at the time of writing) movie, be prepared for slice-and-dice graphics and bonus points for severing limbs.

The single-player game is split into four acts and 12 levels, roughly aping the movie plot as your lone ninja seeks justice for his pre-sliced pal. In spirit this is genre-standard stuff, mirroring everything from Shinobi to Kung Fu Master, but it’s undeniably stylish to look at with a hand-drawn look and striking blood splashes.

It’s fun to play too, with the gesture-based controls allowing you to swipe across the screen to attack.

So, what’s the problem? Well, the shortish campaign won’t take long to complete although this is balanced by a Survival mode that gives you access to a variety of blades and shurikens to wreak havoc on waves of oncoming grunts.

Ninja Assassin is bloody good fun but with more variety and a steeper learning curve it could have been even better.  Still, at the price it’s well worth a download.

Web: App Store
Price: £2.99

Verdict: 7/10

The Desk Genie is a multi-talented non-slip charging desk stand.

The magic lies in the strange, grippy mat that takes up the front of the stand. The surface doesn’t look or even feel like it could hold a coin, but it can hoid more than that. We tried an iPod, mobile phone and a hefty smartphone and all stuck to the pad as intended.

You are now probably asking yourself why? The non-slip holds a device which is then plugged into the stand which is plugged into a USB port ready to charge up the attached device. The Desk Genie comes with a plethora of connectors offering support for pretty much every mobile device available.

The stand is also more than just a stand. The base incorporates 2 x USB ports and 4 memory card slots, ideal for transferring files to the connected desktop.

The Desk Genie is a neat and almost understated device, if not a little cable and connection crazy. And we have to say it’s definitely worth your hard earned cash.

Web: www.mobilefun.co.uk
Price: £14.99

Verdict: 8/10