TechRadar: Mobile phone reviews

Review: Nokia 5230

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:13:00 GMT

One of the great truths about smartphones is that you should always match a phone to your actual needs. The Nokia 5230, despite falling short of expectations, is an intelligent device that offers a wealth of unique features. Whether these features match your needs is the real question.

Before covering the failings, let's cover the basic advantages of using this phone. The Nokia 5230 is the bargain-bin version of the flagship phone, the Nokia N97.

We say 'flagship' as a somewhat slippery term, because the N97 is by no means as powerful as, say, the Google Nexus One and is actually second-rate compared to the much faster Nokia N900.

Yet, the N97 is the touchscreen phone set to compete with the Apple iPhone and just about every Android, Palm and Windows Phone device.

As the entry-level version of the N97, the Nokia 5230 is about £118, or about half the cost of competing smartphones that run well over £200.

That's an attractive price point – one that provides all the functionality of a touchscreen device, apps galore, GPS, media playback, a 2MP camera with advanced options such as setting ISO level, and 4GB of storage (on an included microSD card).

No, the Nokia 5230 is not an iPhone or HTC Desire competitor, but does have some powerful features.

What you don't get is Wi-Fi, and that is one of the major problems with this device. Wi-Fi is useful because it means you can continue using the device inside when your carrier service goes AWOL or when you want to download huge files.

The Nokia 5230 also lacks a full hardware keyboard, runs a bit slow at times, has a confusing turn-by-turn voice nav for GPS routing (although the phone supports many languages), low camera quality at just 2 megapixels, and a few minor glitches.

In the box Nokia has included the typical charger, manual, and a pair of earbuds with a 3.5mm connector that you will likely discard for a much more adequate set. Our test unit included a 4GB card already inserted into a side compartment, which is included with every Nokia 5230.

It's no secret that the Symbian S60v5 OS is an acquired taste. Yet, millions have acquired it, and swear by it, so we won't debate all of the merits and demerits here.

Suffice to say, the OS does not work at all like an iPhone or Android phone. In some ways, it is akin to the Windows versus Linux debate, and Symbian is definitely more like Linux, where you can perform some functions that are not possible or difficult with other phones.

For example, when you install an app, it is easy to see how much memory it will use and the version number.

While this is a perk for an advanced user willing to pay more for the Nokia N97, it is a problem on the Nokia 5230 – intended for new smartphone users or at least those who do not want to pay big bucks for a phone that has every bell and whistle.

The Nokia 5230 interface does require a learning period. For starters, there are three hardware buttons along the bottom of the phone: a green Call button, a Menu button that shows you the installed apps and an End Call button.

At times, you might wonder if you should press the End Call button to back out of an app (in most cases, you should) or press the Exit or OK button on screen.

It's fairly inconsistent – you have to pay attention to what's on the screen a bit more than with other phones.

You also can't move apps around on the screen, hold down on one to see an option to delete it, or add widgets for, say, adjusting screen brightness quickly. What this means initially is some fumbling around to find basic options.

The Nokia 5230 is also not a tremendously speedy phone, at 434MHz, so there are times when you might press a button and the Nokia 5230 fails to register the click.

This can seem like a touchscreen quality problem, but the touch sensitivity is quite adequate – it is just that the phone is too slow to keep up with simple finger presses at times.

Navigating on the phone is a bit tough, but you quickly get used to basic operations. It's easy to fire up the GPS app (Ovi Maps 3.0) or press the green Call button to access the phone dialler.

There are a few cool tricks to using the phone. For example, there's a dedicated camera button you can use to start the camera app (which shoots photos and video).

This button is positioned on the lower right side of the phone (when in a vertical orientation) to encourage horizontal use.

Another perk is that the Nokia 5230 happens to have a well-implemented lock button on the right side of the phone. You just slide the button down.

This makes it hard to accidentally power up the phone when it is in a laptop bag or in your pocket, which saves on battery power. It also avoids the 'press this on-screen button to unlock' annoyance.

Anyone who is used to an iPhone or Android device knows you can easily flick on the screen to move down to see additional apps or more content on a website.

However, on the Nokia 5230, you have to drag a slider down to see more of the screen. You might find yourself swiping on the screen, only to realise you have started an app.

And, adding insult to injury, because the phone tends to run slow, this induces some frustration as you wait for the app to start and then close it. This is one of the 5230's most annoying quirks.

Call quality on the Nokia 5230 is outstanding for a bargain-level phone. With T-Mobile service, we never had any problems with dropped calls, faulty connections, or distortion either on the phone (what we heard) or the other end of the line (what our caller heard).

Adding contacts for dialling is also slick and easy, although the Nokia 5230 does not aggregate contacts from multiple social networks (like the Motorola Milestone or Palm Pre, or the upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices).

Nokia does offer a Facebook app for the Nokia 5230 and, really, social networking apps tend to pop up on the phone in unexpected places. For example, when you snap a photo, you can upload it to your Vox.com blog account.

Messaging

Messaging lives or dies by how well the soft keyboard works on phones without a real QWERTY keyboard, and the Nokia 5230 is definitely alive and kicking by this standard.

The keyboard is responsive and accurate. In fact, we had more problems with accuracy on an HTC Hero than on this phone.

The accelerometer that senses whether you are in horizontal or vertical orientation also worked well – it's important in those times when you really need to type a message in landscape mode with the full soft QWERTY keyboard.

There were a few times when the Nokia 5230 flipped back to horizontal when we nudged it in the wrong direction, something the Nexus One and iPhone rarely do – but a problem that plagues models by HTC.

For the most part, the messaging apps – for texting and email – worked well, but we did notice a slight lag on this phone for basic operations, such as composing a new message.

Once again, the slower-than-average processor is just not fast enough to keep pace with a fast-fingered messaging aficionado.

We decided to test this theory and did a side-by-side comparison between the Nokia 5230 and a Nokia N900 – with its speedy operating system and 600MHz processor. Sure enough, composing an email was much faster on the N900 smartphone.

One complaint here is that the Google Mail client for Symbian did not work correctly on the Nokia 5230 – it seems to assume you have a hardware keyboard and does not bring up the software version correctly.

The simple workaround is to access Gmail from the browser or configure the built-in email client to access your Gmail account.

The lack of Wi-Fi means email attachments take a while to download to your phone, but once they do, we had no problems opening Word documents and viewing photos on the Nokia 5230 – even if we had to wait a few seconds.

There were no huge surprises for internet browsing, other than a nicely configured home screen when you start the browser initially.

It shows links to several popular services, including Yahoo Mail, Facebook, news channels and Mapquest. Large icons for making bookmarks, typing in a URL and accessing browser settings make it easy to surf.

The only real gripe here is that the phone screen, at 640 x 360 pixels (about the size of two fingers side by side), is a bit small for reading text on a web page.

The screen quality – while bright and clear – does not match the sheer crispness and quality of the Google Nexus One, which uses OLED technology.

Of course, the lack of Wi-Fi rears its ugly visage here as well. Sites loaded slowly over a typical 3G connection, and not nearly as fast as they do over Wi-Fi.

And, while web page rendering worked fine for sites like ESPN.com and Gmail, there is a long lag on rich sites – like IGN.com – as they load in the background.

Combined with the slow processor, lack of Wi-Fi makes the Nokia 5230 a poor choice as a web device.

If the slow speed and lack of Wi-Fi keep coming up as problems on the Nokia 5230, one saving grace is the exceptional camera.

The quality is actually no better than an iPhone – at two megapixels, you won't be submitting your stunning images to a glossy photo magazine any time soon.

Yet, the Nokia 5230 provides some slick camera features beyond just setting the white balance (which helps you adjust lighting options so that subjects appear the correct colour).

For example, this is one of the only phones that lets you set exposure level (amount of light allowed in through the lens) and ISO speed (how quickly the shutter opens and closes).

The Nokia 5230 also has settings for a self-timer, multiple shots in sequence, colour and contrast level options, and sharpness level.

All of these settings do lead to better photos. In a scene with some ducks on a river, the exposure settings provided a slick way to brighten up a photo before ever using Photoshop.

With the self-timer, it was possible to take a family portrait without having to relegate one family member to being the photographer.

Unfortunately, like every other cameraphone except the beefier N900 and maybe the Motorola Milestone, the Nokia 5230 is just too light for serious photography. It's too easy to set up a nice shot, then nudge the camera a bit and take a blurry photo.

For video, this lighter-than-air problem is a bigger problem. It is difficult to hold the phone steady enough for any real video clips unless you rest it on a table or chair. Even then, it's hard to record a video that isn't jerky and unwatchable.

The Nokia 5230 is an entry-level smartphone, and this becomes readily apparent with media playback.

It's just too difficult to find music and movies, and the Ovi store is still a work in progress (at times, the Ovi apps even failed to open the store at all).

Lacking the Apple iTunes store or a robust partnership with Amazon for buying songs, the Nokia 5230 is just an average media phone.

Playback quality for music was fine, but videos tended to stutter a bit due to the slower processor.

The phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack and comes with a 4GB microSD card – which is expandable up to 16GB.

If you do load up a bunch of songs, the music player is just adequate – it lacks any useful album cover viewer (you can view album cover art but you can't flip through them like you can on the iPhone).

There is an FM radio on the Nokia 5230, and it worked well for several news and sports channels, but the music quality, even on earbuds, was just passable.

You can record voice memos to yourself, but the Nokia 5230 lacks the advanced features of, say, the Nexus One in terms of easily sharing these memos when you connect to your PC.

A light smartphone usually has one drawback: the battery is just not big enough to hold a charge.

Fortunately, the Nokia 5230 lasted all day (about 8 hours) playing music and video occasionally, making frequent calls – but otherwise having the device on standby – without seeing the battery die.

The Nokia 5230 battery life benefits from the slide lock button that prevent accidental power-ups, which can even occur on an iPhone.

Nokia says the Nokia 5230 will last for several days if you just use it for music and disable all of the other connections, such as 3G and Bluetooth.

Battery time over GSM is much longer – a rated 7 hours – compared to WCDMA, which lasts about four hours.

The tricky trade-off here is that it depends greatly on how many calls you make, whether you have music and video playing on the device, and if you use Bluetooth.

On the plus side, since there is no Wi-Fi, you won't drain the battery that way.

Organiser

The Nokia 5230 falls short when it comes to keeping you organised, for several reasons.

One is just the phone speed – there is often a delay when you pull up a contact or view your Google Calendar as the phone struggles to keep pixels moving on the screen.

There were times when it was easier to pop open a laptop and look up a web contact or check a task list on Plaxo than to try to visit these sites on the phone.

And, there are precious few apps available for business users who are serious about staying in contact, on schedule, and on task at all times. The Nokia 5230 is an ideal calling phone, has good media options, and lasts all day on one charge, but lacks business features.

There is an alarm clock that enables you to set up multiple alarms through the day, and an app for recording memos to yourself, but not the wealth of built-in apps for jotting down notes or managing voice mail like there is on other phones.

Connectivity

The Nokia Nokia 5230 connects to 3G and Bluetooth devices as expected. We were impressed with how the device connected easily to both Mac and PC laptops to upload and download files over a Bluetooth connection, a feature that the iPhone lacks.

We tested the Nokia 5230 with multiple Bluetooth adaptors and even in a car with Ford Sync technology and the Nokia 5230 paired quickly and efficiently.

The lack of Wi-Fi is an important issue, though, for those who need a speedier connection to download larger files, send images to an online photo service, grab large file attachments or stream audio with an app such as Pandora.

One of the great strengths of the Nokia 5230, however, is that it supports GPS navigation (with turn-by-turn spoken instructions) and Ovi maps.

Nokia calls this "lifetime GPS" because you never have to pay for the turn-by-turn instructions. The Nokia 5230 also has a free TeleNav app with voice nav, but only as a 30-day trial.

Other

It is also worth mentioning that the Nokia 5230 is a capable, if underpowered, gaming device. Our model included several commercial titles, including Guitar Hero 5 for mobile and Need for Speed Shift.

These games are colourful, control well, and have some entertaining gameplay features, but tend to run a bit slow on the Nokia 5230 compared to the N97 and other Nokia models.

A smartphone is a trusted gadget you rely on every day. It is not just an accessory you might need occasionally as you type away on a laptop.

As such, a phone must be capable of doing much more than just a simple calling device: it must be expandable (both with apps and with more memory) and easy to use.

We liked

As an entry-level model at an affordable price, the Nokia 5230 is a good choice for those who can live without some of the latest perks of more modern smartphones, such as Wi-Fi and a full-size hardware keyboard.

We disliked

We question some of the interface challenges on this device – menus you have to wade through to find the option you want.

And, slow processing speed meant running even simple apps such as the contact manager caused some frustration.

While this will be a major issue for more advanced smartphone users, it will only become a minor annoyance for those who primarily just need to access email and text messages, make calls, and browse the web a few times per day.

Verdict

The most important realisation with the Nokia 5230 is that it is not intended as a power user device and just does the smartphone basics.

However, in our final analysis, we found the Nokia 5230 to be an intelligent device that we would use if the iPhone, Nexus One, and other models were just a figment of our imagination.

Basically the Nokia 5230 would be an outstanding touchscreen phone about four years ago. Today, it is just an average buy for the price.

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Review: HTC HD Mini

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Hot on the heels of the excellent HTC Legend and the even more impressive HTC Desire, is the HTC HD Mini. But whereas the Legend and Desire both come equipped with Android 2.1, the HD Mini has to make do with Windows Mobile 6.5.3.

Don't be put off by the less-than-trendy operating system though, because if anyone knows how to make a Windows Mobile phone usable, it's HTC, and the HD Mini is a fine example of just that.

With HTC Sense UI thrown on top of Windows Mobile, the HD Mini is not just easy to use, but actually quite enjoyable.

So, has HTC managed to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? (Sorry Microsoft.) In a word, yes. But there's far more to the success of the HD Mini than the slick masking of Windows Mobile.

HTC has created a phone that is simply packed with features, while also being far more compact and pocketable than its direct competitors.

At just under 104mm tall, the HD Mini is noticeably shorter than the HTC Legend and even the disappointing Nokia X6.

At 57.7mm wide and 11.7mm thick, the HD Mini is also extremely comfortable to hold – in fact it feels far more like a traditional phone than, say, the Desire or iPhone. It's not too heavy either, coming in at 110g, which is 23g lighter than both the Desire and the iPhone 3GS.

HTC has gone down the industrial chic route for the design of the HD Mini and the results are pretty successful. The bevelled back has a tactile, rubberised finish that ensures you always have a good grip on the device.

A design highlight comes in the shape of the four visible screws in each corner, which remain in place when the back is removed.

And when that back is removed, you realise that HTC's designers aren't just about those clean industrial lines, because the whole inside of the phone is finished in bright yellow, with the bottom half translucent, no less!

It's a great design juxtaposition, like the glove box in the new Jaguar XJ Supersport being trimmed in bright purple velvet – you won't see it very often, but whenever you do, it will bring a smile to your face.

Another nice touch is that the microSDHC card slot is mounted sideways, so you don't have to remove the battery in order to access it.

There was no card included with our review sample, but if you're serious about music and video on your phone, it's worth investing in a 16GB card, which will set you back around £35 online.

The phone will support cards up to 32GB and although these are now available, you'll be looking at over £150 for the privilege.

The front of the phone is as sleek as you can get, with a single glass sheet covering its entirety. HTC has achieved this look by making the HD Mini devoid of any physical buttons.

Instead there are touch-sensitive controls for Call, End, Home, Windows Menu and Back. Although touch sensitive buttons can be a pain, the ones on the HD Mini are both responsive and accurate.

The 3.2-inch capacitive screen is bright, vivid and viewable under pretty much any lighting condition. It can be a struggle to see under very bright, direct sunlight, but then that could be said about almost any phone.

The screen feels larger than it actually is, simply because the handset itself is comparatively small. Although HTC doesn't state that the screen uses AMOLED technology, it does appear to be identical to the 3.2-inch example seen in the Legend.

PC connection comes via the microUSB port mounted in the base of the unit. It's worth noting that the port juts through a hole in the rear cover, which means that you can't take the back off while the phone is connected, unless you want to unceremoniously rip your USB cable out as well.

On the very top edge is a metal strip that houses the power button, while the 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the bevelled edge of the rear casing.

The only other control is a volume rocker on the left edge, which is again a solid metal strip, adding to the industrial design statement as well as the phone's overall quality feel.

The traditional HTC oblong box is used once again for the HD Mini, and it houses the usual array of kit – which is to say, not much.

As well as the handset itself, you get a mains charger with a USB port, a USB to microUSB cable for charging and connecting to your PC, and finally a stereo headset.

The latter isn't as bad as some bundled headsets we've seen, but if you have any real interest in listening to music on the HD Mini it's worth investing in a decent set of noise-isolating earphones.

Let's not beat around the bush here, Windows Mobile, even in its latest 6.5.3 build, isn't the most user friendly mobile phone interface.

In fact, compared to Android, Palm's WebOS and, of course, the iPhone, it's positively archaic. To make matters worse, we've seen what the future holds in the form of Windows Phone 7, and it looks very good indeed.

Unfortunately all that proves is that even Microsoft realises how far behind the curve its mobile OS currently is.

However, as we've already mentioned, HTC has moved mountains to ensure that the HD Mini offers a good user experience, regardless of the underlying OS.

We've seen before that HTC Sense can improve an already good user interface, on the Desire, but what it does for the HD Mini is nothing short of a revelation.

The key to HTC Sense is that it tries to keep a buffer between the user and the Windows Mobile OS, and for the most part it achieves this goal with aplomb. But good as the HTC Sense wrapper is, it still can't make the HD Mini as slick as its Android-based brethren.

Compared to the HTC Legend or Apple iPhone, the HD Mini just feels slightly sticky and clunky.

That's not to say that the user experience is bad, because it's not, but you can just feel Windows Mobile grinding away underneath.

The home screen is typical HTC, with a large clock dominating proceedings. Integrated into the clock is the weather widget, which gives you an animated indication of the weather, along with temperature and your current location. Below this you'll find shortcuts to your call history and calendar.

Although you don't get pages of app shortcuts to the left and right of the home screen, as you do with Android mobiles and the iPhone, you can swipe the home screen upwards to reveal a page of user-definable shortcuts. You can add programs, contacts or even browser bookmarks here – whatever you feel you may need quick access to regularly.

The main navigation is done horizontally though, via the home screen tabs that run along the bottom. Here you'll find essentials like SMS, email, contacts and calendar, along with less important fodder like stocks, music and weather.

The good news is that you can choose which home screen tabs you want, so you can streamline the interface to suit your personal needs.

Flicking through each home screen tab isn't quite as smooth as we'd like it to be, although if you set up your tabs so that what you need is generally on the horizontal list at the bottom of the screen, you won't need to do much swiping left or right.

Although the HD Mini is fully multi-touch enabled, the user interface doesn't always show this functionality off to best effect.

There was a time when Windows Mobile smartphones were the de facto choice for anyone that wanted to sync their email, calendar and contacts quickly and easily.

The integration with Microsoft Outlook worked brilliantly, so every time you hooked your device up to your PC, it would synchronise everything and you'd be good to go. These days however, things are very different.

Let's face it, who wants to sync their data by hooking up to a PC? If you can't do it over the air, it's simply not worth doing.

Modern smartphone users need to know that any changes they make on their home PC, work computer or mobile phone, will be instantly rolled out to every device they use.

For most non-corporate users, that usually means synchronising a Google Mail account.

Syncing the HTC HD Mini with your Google data isn't quite as easy as on an Android phone, but that's hardly surprising since Android is a Google product.

That said, it's not difficult either – in fact, it's a slightly simpler procedure on the HD Mini than it is on an iPhone.

Once configured, Active Sync will automatically synchronise the HD Mini with all the data on your Google Mail account, filling your inbox, your calendar and your contact list in a matter of minutes.

One slight annoyance is that the HTC HD Mini defaults your contacts to Last Name, First Name, regardless of how you have it configured in Google, whereas Android handsets will carry over your data in the format it was found.

You're not limited to using Google mail, and you can configure the HD Mini to access any email account.

Obviously if you're using POP for your email, you're not going to get the benefit of syncing your contacts and calendar, but if you're using any other type of Exchange service, you'll reap all the benefits therein.

If you're a social networking junkie, you'll probably lament the absence of HTC's Friend Stream, which amalgamates all your contact and friend lists, creating a method of seeing everything that someone has been up to, via any medium.

You still get Peep, HTC's Twitter app thrown in though, so if you simply have to tell the world what you had for breakfast, you'll be well catered for.

Hitting the People tab on the home screen is slightly annoying, since it defaults to a list of Favorites (that's Favourites for anyone who has a proper command of English).

The problem with the default Favorite list is that it needs to be populated manually, so if you're relying on Google, or any other Exchange service to populate your contacts, it's a slightly laborious process to then drag out the ones you think you'll need the most.

If you want to see your full contact list, you simply hit the All People button, which will then display a traditional scrolling list of names.

To make navigation quicker and easier, the alphabet is pasted vertically down the right-hand edge, so you can jump straight to the letter you need, iPhone style.

The HD Mini had no signal strength issues during testing, not once dropping below three bars.

Of course signal strength is as much to do with the network operator and location as the device itself, but using a Vodafone SIM, the HD Mini was always ready for voice and data duties.

Call quality was also first rate, and there was no hint of echo or interference of any kind. The sound quality at both ends of the call was clear and loud – even when talking outside in relatively noisy environments, the other person had no problem hearing every word.

Making a call is also quick and simple on the HD Mini. If you want to call someone you've spoken to recently, the Call History button on the home screen will do the trick.

Or if you want to phone someone that you call regularly, you can just make a shortcut to them, so it's just a matter of flicking down from the main home screen.

Here the HD Mini puts in a strong performance with multiple options to keep in touch with friends and colleagues.

However, this is also where HTC Sense and the underlying Windows Mobile OS occasionally clash.

As already mentioned, HTC has done a great job of making the HD Mini more usable and more polished, but ultimately what's underneath isn't quite so pretty and slick.

Take email for example. When you tap the email tab you're greeted with a snazzy, Cover Flow-like email reader, where each message looks like a sheet of paper that can be flicked off the screen to reveal the next message.

However, when you select a specific email for closer inspection, you're presented with a traditional page layout with a scroll bar down the side.

And if you want to go back to your inbox, you'll see a bog standard list of emails, which is functional, but nowhere near as pretty as HTC's reader.

As already mentioned, setting up your email on the HD Mini is a simple procedure, and shouldn't take you more than a few minutes. If you've opted for Active Sync, your email will be sent to the phone as soon as it arrives in your inbox.

If you choose to use a POP account, you can define how often you want the HD Mini to check for new mail. The email client does appear to have issues with special characters, as can be seen from the screen shot, where the apostrophes have not made it through unscathed.

You get text messages in a threaded view, but again HTC has tried to make things a little more interesting. When you select the messages tab it will display the latest SMS that you have received, then you can flick upwards to reveal each one of your received messages, regardless of sender.

If you then select a particular message, the display will then change to the full conversation trail between you and that contact.

When we had an early play with the HD Mini back in February, we commented that the keyboard wasn't quite as accurate as we would have liked, especially compared to the Legend.

Whether that sample was dodgy, or HTC has simply improved the screen accuracy since then is unclear, but typing on this particular HD Mini is a joy.

Not only are the keystrokes accurately registered, but the autocorrect function is very intuitive. Yes, the keyboard on the Desire is better, but more by virtue of the screen, and therefore the keys being slightly bigger.

Sending an MMS instead of a plain text couldn't be easier. You simply tap the paperclip icon, then choose the type of media you'd like to send.

If the picture is too big, the phone will offer to resize it for you before sending, something Windows Mobile has always been great at.

Being a Windows Mobile phone, you also get Windows Live integration. This is particularly useful if you're a Windows Live Messenger user, since you'll be able to chat with all of your friends and colleagues in real time without having to resort to some kind of third-party app.

Having used various third-party MSN/Windows Live Messenger apps on other phones, we can say that the integrated Windows Live support in the HD Mini is considerably better, and far more stable.

If all that isn't enough, the aforementioned Peep app will satisfy your Twitter needs and ensure that everyone who knows you is fully aware of what you're up to 24 hours a day.

As with the HTC HD2, the HD Mini has two internet browsers built into it – Opera and Internet Explorer.

HTC would clearly prefer you to use Opera, since that is set as the default browser out of the box, but if you delve into the Windows Mobile menu, you'll find IE pretty much near the top of the list.

When we reviewed the HD2 we noted two major differentiations between Opera and IE – Opera allowed multi-touch control, while IE didn't, and IE gave you Flash video playback while Opera didn't.

Things are slightly different with the HD Mini, since both Opera and IE sport multi-touch control, while neither browser seemed happy to playback any form of embedded Flash video.

That said, we'd still agree with HTC and recommend Opera as the browser of choice, simply because it seems to render pages faster, and more accurately.

Multi-touch navigation works – anyone who's used to a bit of pinching action will feel right at home – but it's nowhere near as smoothly executed as on the Desire or the iPhone.

When pinching to zoom we often found that it took several attempts to get the job done, although double tap zooming proved far more reliable.

A good old double-tap on text will produce a column view, providing larger text that's far easier to read, and will keep zooming the more you pinch and zoom inwards, much like the Desire.

The biggest annoyance, though, is clicking hyperlinks. Sometimes hitting a link simply doesn't work, regardless of how accurate you try to be or how zoomed in you are. You just end up stabbing at the screen until the browser gives in and takes you where you want to go.

This hyperlink problem afflicts both Opera and IE, so it's clearly a firmware issue of some kind. But the fact that it doesn't seem to rear its head in any situation other than web browsing is somewhat confusing to say the least.

As long as the HTC HD Mini has a 3G connection (which was all of the time in our experience), browsing is very fast indeed.

Obviously it depends on how efficient the page you're browsing is, but on the whole you won't be waiting too long for pages to load.

Like the HTC Desire, the HD Mini lets you store your bookmarks with thumbnails, so you can tell what they are via the briefest of glances.

You can then add your favourite bookmarks to your home screen shortcut list, making it even easier to get to your most visited websites.

The HTC HD Mini comes equipped with a 5MP camera that can shoot both stills and video. Unfortunately there's no integrated flash, which is a shame when you consider that the Desire benefits greatly from just such a feature.

Operating the camera isn't quite as easy as it could be, due mainly to the complete lack of physical buttons on the HD Mini - it's simply not as easy to hit the "touch button" on the screen, as it would be to press a real button mounted on the chassis.

The camera has auto-focus, which reacts quickly, making it easier to get those impromptu shots that make a good camera phone a worthwhile investment.

You can also manually select the AF point, so your subject doesn't have to be at the centre of the frame – ideal for a rule of thirds composition.

THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT: Here the colours of the cat and the rug he's sitting on are completely washed out

The results from the still camera are fair, but not wonderful. As is invariably the case, images taken with the integrated camera look far better on the phone's screen than they do when you transfer them to your computer and study them more closely.

Colours have a tendency to look slightly pale and washed out, which results in pictures losing a degree of impact.

PREPARE FOR TAKE-OFF: Again the grass looks pale and washed out, while the reds and blues on the helicopter also lack vibrancy

GREEN, GREEN GRASS: That's exactly the same lawn that the helicopter is sitting on, but this time it looks vivid and lush

In strong sunlight, detail can be lost in high intensity areas of the scene that become overexposed.

Subsequently, darker areas also lose most of their detail as the camera struggles to deal with an overly wide dynamic range. This can be seen in the picture of the two white cars, where creases in the bodywork on the left-hand car are lost in the oversaturated whiteness, while detail in the shadowed area of the car on the right is also conspicuous by its absence.

WHITEOUT: The camera struggles with scenes of high dynamic range. Detail is lost on the brightly lit panels on the car on the left, while the shadowed area of the car on the right also suffers

The issues above can be improved upon in some instances by experimenting with the various white balance settings, but in reality there isn't enough manual control to make a significant difference. But this is a phone after all, not a dedicated camera.

You can throw a few preset effects at your photos for fun, like making them greyscale, sepia or even negative.

Far more useful is a setting specifically for labelling your contacts, and the ability to GPS tag your pictures, so you know exactly where you were when you took them.

Video resolution is limited to 640 x 480 at 30fps. The results aren't bad at all, and the integrated microphone manages to pick up a surprising amount of sound with good directionality. A nice touch is the ability to shoot video specifically for an MMS, which will save you having to do any conversion in order to send it over the ether.

The one area where the iPhone really does rise above its competitors is media playback. That's hardly surprising when you consider that Apple has simply squeezed an iPod touch inside the iPhone.

But the downside of both the iPhone and the iPod touch is that you have to use iTunes to get anything on or off your device.

Consequently, although other phones may offer less stylish media playback functionality, the fact that media can simply be dragged and dropped, goes a long way to redressing the balance.

The HTC HD Mini is just such a phone – all the media playback features are there, but they're not the most sleek and stylish examples.

That's not to say that HTC hasn't done its best to improve upon the Windows Mobile basics of course.

And let's not forget that if you want to put a new song on the HD Mini, you simply drag it over from your computer, transfer it via Bluetooth or even copy it straight to your microSDHC card – life without iTunes is just much less complicated.

The music playback application is decent enough. You can browse by cover art in both portrait and landscape modes, and the phone will even grab cover art for you if you don't already have it assigned to your music.

Strangely though, despite contacting the Gracenote database directly, and allegedly downloading the images over the air, the artwork didn't actually appear until after the device had been connected to a PC.

Music can be filtered by Artist, Album, Genre, Song Title or Composer – the latter is particularly useful if you happen to listen to classical music, where the composer is far more pertinent than the artist.

You can create playlists, or shuffle your tracks to keep you guessing as to what's coming next.

Sound quality is very good, especially if you marry the HD Mini with a decent set of headphones. We plugged in a set of Shure SE530 triple driver earphones and the results were very pleasing.

The HD Mini managed to playback Ronny Jordan's Blues Grinder as well as any phone we've used, including the iPhone.

Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones was equally impressive, and the HD Mini offers no shortage of volume, although with good, noise-isolating earphones, you don't have to crank things up too high.

You can also assign any MP3 file as your ringtone, and there's an MP3 trimming application preloaded, so that you can hear your favourite bit of your favourite song when someone calls you.

Video playback is smooth and suffers from little in the way of dropped frames or audio syncing issues. Video shot using the phone itself looks particularly good, but then you'd kind of hope it would.

The selection of MP4 content that we downloaded to the phone also played flawlessly, and the screen is definitely good enough to watch an entire programme or film while on a plane or a train.

Unfortunately there's no DivX support out of the box, but there's no shortage of free Windows Mobile apps that will add that functionality.

Despite being unable to make embedded Flash video play in either browser, the integrated YouTube app worked perfectly.

Playback is, assuming you have a decent data connection, excellent. Although there's the ever present "garbage in, garbage out" caveat with YouTube content, so how good it looks and sounds will depend entirely on how good the source material is.

The photo gallery is good, and may well have been ripped off by the PlayStation 3.

Flicking through what appears to be a bundle of real photographs enhances the whole experience, and when you want to look more closely at a particular picture, the multi-touch interface works beautifully.

The built-in FM tuner struggled to get any kind of signal lock while we were testing the HD Mini, but that's probably down to the general poor radio reception in our area than any failing of the device itself.

As always, the headphones act as an antenna for the radio, so if you're using Bluetooth headphones, you're out of luck.

The HD Mini comes equipped with a 1200mAh battery, which is very slightly smaller (capacity wise) than the battery in the HTC Legend.

It's always hard to accurately gauge battery life, because it really depends on what kind of user you are and how much you leave running and activated. That said, we got a good few days out of the HD Mini, with everything switched on and push email active.

That's significantly better than the HTC Desire, which struggles to manage a day and a half, despite having a larger 1400mAh battery.

If you require better battery life, it's fairly simple to improve things by limiting what you have switched on. If you don't need Wi-Fi on all the time, only activate it when you do. The same goes for Bluetooth.

You can limit how often the weather updates, or have your email fetched periodically rather than having it pushed. Ultimately though, it will be media playback and web browsing that will do the most damage to battery life on any phone.

Google Maps is well integrated and the integrated GPS locks onto your location quickly and accurately. Again, the multi-touch support works well here, and we experienced none of the issues that we saw with the web browser interface.

Zooming in and out of maps is smooth and responsive, while Street View works, but only in a portrait orientation.

ALK CoPilot Live 8 also comes pre-installed, but before you get too excited, you only get a 15-day free trial. That said, CoPilot is a very good turn-by-turn navigation system for Windows Mobile, so you may well find that you like it when you do give it a go.

If that's the case you can simply purchase an activation code and carry on using it.

Being a Windows Mobile phone, productivity is high on the agenda, which means that you get the full Microsoft Office Mobile suite thrown in.

So not only can you view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but you can create and edit them too. This can be particularly useful when someone sends you an attached document in an email and you want to edit it before you get back home or to the office.

It also gives you the option of giving a PowerPoint presentation without the need for a computer at all. OK, so these benefits are aimed more at the corporate user, but that's where Windows Mobile's roots lie.

HTC has stuffed the HD Mini with just about every connection option you can think of, and it does a pretty good job with all of them.

As already mentioned, the signal strength with this phone is particularly good, and data speeds over the 3G/HSDPA connection are as fast as we've seen anywhere.

Just remember that even though a phone can support HSDPA speeds up to 7.2mbps, it doesn't necessarily follow that your network operator does.

The phone prompts you to create a Wi-Fi connection during initial setup, making the process as simple as possible. Even if you don't set up your Wi-Fi at the beginning, the Wireless Controls are second on the Settings menu, so it's easy to find and a breeze to configure.

Once the HD Mini grabs hold of a Wi-Fi connection, it will hold onto it with all its might, offering a surprisingly expansive range.

You also get Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, so there are plenty of communication and streaming options.

One nice feature is that the HD Mini supports the SIM Access Profile (SAP), which means that if you have an in-car system that also supports SAP, you'll get the best possible hands free performance.

The difference between SAP and the standard Hands-Free Profile is that your in-car system accesses the SIM directly, then uses its own electronics, and antenna, resulting in much improved reception and call quality on the move.

The icing on the connection front though, is the inclusion of the wireless router technology that we first saw in the HTC HD2.

Basically you can configure the HD Mini to be a Wi-Fi hotspot, so that you can connect to it via any Wi-Fi enabled device and share its data connection.

Of course it can also do standard internet tethering over Bluetooth or USB, but the Wi-Fi router option allows more than one device to connect simultaneously.

Like it or not, Apple started a revolution with its App Store, and any mobile OS needs to offer a plethora of downloadable content for its users, even if most of it is totally useless.

Unfortunately the Marketplace on Windows Mobile is woefully inadequate. Not only is there very little on offer, but what is there is simply too expensive.

By comparison, Apple's App Store and Android's Market are stuffed full of free apps, so you can get your downloading fix without paying a penny.

On the flip side, given the long history that Windows Mobile has behind it, the internet is awash with free applications for pretty much every need.

OK, so you can't download and install them through the Marketplace, but it's easy enough to download them to your PC and install them to the HD Mini over USB. In fact, that's exactly what we had to do in order to get the screen grabs you see on these pages.

After the launch of the Legend and Desire, it was easy to think that HTC had given up on the Windows Mobile platform, but the HD Mini proves that assumption to be unfounded.

The 600MHz Qualcomm processor keeps things zipping along nicely, and the traditional Windows Mobile slowdown failed to rear its head.

Battery life is particularly strong for such a feature-packed handset, which is one area that the HD Mini puts some distance between itself and the more, er, desirable, HTC Desire.

We liked

The form factor of the HD Mini is the perfect compromise between size and usability. The screen is still large enough to do everything you want, but the physical dimensions of the phone itself make it easy to hold and pocket.

HTC shows once more that its Sense user interface really can make all the difference, literally papering over Windows Mobile and creating a truly user friendly environment.

The screen is excellent and the multi-touch interaction works very well in the vast majority of situations. Connectivity is also first rate, with the Wi-Fi router option being genuinely useful.

The class leading battery life will endear the HD Mini to road warriors and those who don't want to carry a charger for weekends away.

We disliked

Even with HTC Sense on top, it's still Windows Mobile 6.5 chugging along underneath, and it simply can't compete in a landscape dominated by Android and Apple.

The Marketplace is woefully under populated and the lack of free apps is disturbing. This needs to be seriously addressed before the launch of Windows Phone 7.

Browser navigation is tricky, with clicks not always registered and multi-touch gestures not always as smooth as they should be.

Verdict

We liked the HTC HD Mini far more than we expected to, and it has proved that Windows Mobile can't be written off just yet. After using the HD Mini for a while, devices like the Apple iPhone 3GS and HTC Desire just feel huge in the hand, and for many, size does matter.

The overall design of the phone is sleek, stylish and minimalist, with the yellow internals bringing some colour to the equation. Basically, it feels like a well designed, well built, high quality phone, in the same way that the Nokia X6 doesn't.

But is the HD Mini good enough to sway buyers from an Android or Apple handset? We're not so sure. However, if you were a fan of the HTC HD2 but felt that it was just too big, the HD Mini is the answer to your prayers.

This phone has all the features of its big brother (large screen aside), packed into a far smaller chassis.

Put simply, this is the best Windows Mobile handset currently available, and it makes us think that HTC will have something very special for us when Windows Phone 7 finally hits the street.

Related Links

Review: Nokia E72

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:13:00 GMT

The Nokia E71 certainly hit the mark for its target business audience, so it's little surprise that its E72 successor reprises much of what was good about that QWERTY keyboard-packing Symbian S60 smartphone, while updating it with extra power and performance.

The E72 features a sleek business-like design, sporting a BlackBerry-style full QWERTY keyboard across its wide body. Some eye-catching chrome trim complements the classically understated bodywork that's aimed squarely at serious business users.

Smartphone technology may have moved on rapidly since the E71 first wowed us as a business tool, but it seems there's still strong demand for devices like the E72.

This E-series model operates on the non-touchscreen Symbian S60 3rd Edition (v3.2.3) platform, so there's no screen-tapping action here – its 2.36-inch QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) landscape-oriented TFT display is, in fact, similar to the E71's.

However Nokia has upgraded the processor under the bonnet to a 600MHz ARM processor, making its work-rate that much quicker.

The E72 has also introduced an optical trackpad within the navigation D-pad, so light finger action can initiate movement on the screen.

The camera has been enhanced from the E71's 3.2-megapixel shooter, with a 5-megapixel camera taking care of imaging.

HSDPA connectivity has been boosted to download speeds of up to 10.2Mbps (suitable network capability allowing) and HSUPA upload at up to 2Mbps. Wi-Fi is safely onboard, as is A-GPS satellite navigation which supports Nokia's latest Ovi Maps free turn-by-turn sat-nav software upgrade.

Nokia has beefed up the messaging experience on the E72, providing support for Nokia Messaging, where up to 10 regular email accounts can be handled in a user-friendly desktop-style push email environment.

Nokia's Chat software also provides instant messaging connectivity for multiple services simultaneously. Other software enhancements are dotted throughout, bringing the enterprise user experience up to date.

So does the Nokia E72 still have what it takes do the business?

The refined bodywork of the E72 feels solid and looks a treat. Its dimensions are similar to the Nokia E71 – at 114(h) x 58.3(w) x 10.1(d)mm it's slimline despite its broad keypad-packing requirements. At 128g it's no pocket-sagger either.

The 2.36-inch display isn't particularly spacious by smartphone standards, though it's adequately bright and clear. The landscape format is tuned to the needs of messaging and email displays well on screen (even if a little extra room wouldn't have gone amiss).

The QWERTY keypad has been slightly reconfigured from the earlier E71. The keys still have a pleasingly tactile, rounded feel and are well defined for speedy, accurate typing.

There are a couple more keys available, however, as the space bar has been reduced from four- to two-key width, giving a 39-button keypad.

Above the keyboard, Nokia has consolidated the control panel into a sleek brushed metal-look panel. The keys – including a regular Call/End and softkey configuration – are again responsive and the design well judged for handling.

As has become standard practice on E-series models, the E72 also has four one-touch physical buttons set up for certain applications and tasks.

The icon-labelled keys can be user-defined if you prefer, but out of the box they're set up for Home, Contacts, Calendar and Email.

A short press will take you to the assigned feature, although a longer press can activate additional common functions – a long press of the Home key, for example, displays open applications, while a press of the Contacts key creates a new contact.

Similarly, a long press of the Calendar button initiates a new calendar entry and the Email key fires up a new email.

What's new on the panel is the optical pad that's built into the navigation D-pad. You can use the D-pad in the normal way, but the navigation key is designed to make it quicker and easier to navigate web pages in the browser or scroll through lists.

It acts as a trackpad, small touches and the speed at which you move your finger are reflected in the speed of on-screen action.

In practice, the finger room isn't ideal for subtle tracking, particularly if you have larger fingers. It takes a little getting used to if you want to maximise its potential.

It's generally okay, but for small movements it's often easier just to press the ridged D-pad surround, as we found that sometimes we could overshoot with the trackpad – something that can prove tiresome in some instances where you slip and select the wrong option.

Elsewhere around the bodywork, the E72 has a 3.5mm earphone socket on top that allows standard headphones to be plugged in – a boon if you want to get the best audio quality possible when listening to the music player.

A thin-pin Nokia charger is included in-box, although there's a microUSB port that can also take care of powering up, if necessary.

Next to this is a hot-swappable MicroSD card slot; Nokia includes a 4GB MicroSD card in-box, with cards up to 32GB supported. This supplements its rather paltry 250MB of onboard storage.

Round the back the chrome battery cover is smart and shiny. The camera is perched above it, protruding slightly with an LED flash partnering the lens.

The Nokia S60 3rd Edition Service Pack 2 user interface is familiar stuff for Nokia smartphones, in this instance configured for the landscape format of the display.

The icon-based menu system is, of course, not as slick as the leading touchscreen user interfaces that have overtaken S60 but will be recognisable for most Nokia users.

It can be long-winded to locate and use some options, taking numerous clicks to find stuff like the navigation key or notification light options or certain settings.

However, it's generally straightforward enough to manage in most places, and you can click from page to page rapidly.

The home screen setup follows the E-Series convention by offering two alternative home screen views you can switch easily between – one marked as 'Business', the other as 'Personal' (though these labels can be changed).

Effectively, this allows users to set up their phone to have either work or downtime home screen shortcuts, features and information displayed, depending on when the user is operating the device.

For example, in Business mode, you may want calendar, notes and work email shown, whereas in personal home mode you may prefer music or other media apps to be displayed.

Either home screen is customisable; six shortcut icons ranged towards the top of the display can be changed in the menus to pretty much any function or app the phone is capable of using, or set up to access any one of the browser's bookmarks.

Additional status information and access panels down the screen – such as Wi-Fi, email, instant messaging, calendar and so on – can be customised too.

Transitions between menus are fairly prompt, and the E72 can support multiple open applications without appearing ponderous. It's worth checking occasionally via the Home button though and closing down unused apps to optimise the performance.

Any business-orientated phone has got to get the basics of voice calling right, and the Nokia E72 achieves a first rate performance on this score.

We found it reassuringly reliable in our tests, with excellent call clarity and audio delivery. Volume in the earpiece was sufficiently loud too, as was the ringer.

Tapping in new numbers was quick and easy; the number buttons are highlighted on the central part of the keyboard, so are swift to locate, even in low-light situations.

In standby mode, pressing the keys automatically brings up a number rather than the letter, so there's no fiddly button holding required if you're entering a new phone number.

The phonebook offers a number of options to set up details for contacts stored on the phone. As well as the usual personal and professional details, you can assign a location for the contact using the Maps function.

VoIP is supported on the E72 too, with a Vyke Mobile download offered in the service menu set-up menu.

Another useful calling feature is the facility to mute incoming call alerts simply by turning over the phone, a feature also found on Samsung phones like the Genio Slide. This option also works for sending alarms to snooze.

Nokia E72: Messaging

With its QWERTY keyboard, messaging is naturally high on the E72's priorities. As mentioned earlier, the QWERTY keypad is well crafted for fast messaging.

Email is well catered for, with an inclusive subscription to the Nokia Messaging service enabling users to manage up to 10 email accounts with an easy-to-operate and intuitive desktop-style email interface.

This provides familiar drop-down menu options for managing email in folders and searching for messages.

The set-up procedure is a breeze. The Nokia Messaging application has presets for several popular web-based email services, including Yahoo Mail, Google Mail, Hotmail, BT Internet and Nokia's own Ovi Mail service.

Simply tapping in your account address and password is sufficient to set up the service for push email. And if you have other accounts with your internet service provider or other web-based mail service, the E72 can automatically set that up in a similarly easy way.

In addition, users can set up the phone to be used with corporate email, with Mail for Exchange and Lotus Notes Traveler support within the email configuration options.

The Nokia Messaging email set-up naturally handles attachments, with Quickoffice software onboard providing document viewing and editing.

The email look and feel is a cut above most non-touchscreen devices and delivers a decent user experience.

The E72 supports Nokia's Chat instant messaging application enabling users to simultaneously run IM sessions across different services in one application.

The Chat app allows you to sign on to Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and Ovi, with updates on the home screen, tabs to switch between services within the Chat application, and detailed options to manage accounts.

All neatly done and very user-friendly to negotiate.

Regular text messaging works comfortably and conventionally for an S60 device. It's a breeze to use, and adding extra files to convert texts to MMS messages is suitably hassle-free.

The keyboard is cleanly laid out, with the numeric keys arranged in the central part of the pad, and it doesn't feel cluttered.

As well as the usual shift, symbol and control buttons, there are useful one-touch keys that, for example, switch Bluetooth on or off and which also engage the LED flash on the back panel as a flashlight.

It really is a pleasure to use, with a fast action on the rounded keys making for swift and true text inputting.

Wi-Fi and HSPA connectivity provide high-speed data connectivity options when browsing at the home, office or when you're out and about.

The E72's browser is a fairly standard issue Nokia S60 affair, so you get none of the whizzy user interface tricks enjoyed on touchscreen smartphones such as the iPhone.

Flash Lite is supported, and pages render relatively promptly in mobile coverage and impressively quickly when connected to Wi-Fi.

The phone can utilise some keyboard-activated shortcut options, so you can zoom, bookmark, reload and so on with quick key presses.

However, the S60 browser user interface, with press-to-browse lists of options and histories, feels dated compared to top touchscreen smartphones and even some touch-operated feature phone browsers.

The optical navigation trackpad works effectively enough on webpages, although again, sometimes it's just as easy clicking the D-pad rim for precision aiming and firing at links.

Nokia has geared up the E72 for a spot of social networking too, with apps for Facebook, MySpace and YouTube pre-loaded which direct users to the respective online mobile sites.

With support too for Nokia's Ovi Files online service, the E72 can be used to view, download and send files that are stored on your home computer.

The Nokia E72 has a more powerful camera setup than its Nokia E71 predecessor, with a 5MP shooter on the back, equipped with an LED flash. There's no sliding cover gadgetry on this model, however – it rather juts out of the back.

A secondary video-calling camera sits inconspicuously on the front above the display, for anyone who wants a bit of face-to-face mobile chat.

Unusually for this grade of cameraphone there's no dedicated camera button on the side. The landscape oriented-screen is a probable reason, as most people will want to shoot in the same orientation as they hold the phone.

The optical navigation key takes shots once the camera has been booted up. It takes around four seconds from a softkey press to be ready for snapping action, which is a touch leisurely for our liking, but no deal-breaker in itself.

The E72 uses a familiar interface to other recent non-touch S60 phones, with a column of scrollable settings icons on the right of the viewfinder screen, and large autofocus frame in the middle.

Getting the autofocus system to lock onto exactly what you want is tricky using the navigation key trackpad.

It requires much more subtle handling than regular two-step autofocus (frame then snap) button pressing cameras. We found it hit and miss sometimes, particularly with our less than sensitive fingertip prodding, and you can end up taking simple point and shoot shots rather than nicely framed images.

The results from the camera can be pleasing, though the trickiness in controlling the autofocus can be frustrating for those used to more dependable Nokia cameraphones.

Nevertheless, colour rendition is rich and vivid, and detail is quite well handled for this class of device. Auto exposure control is dealt with competently too.

However, the flash is very limited, and you need to be close to get illumination – it's not particularly powerful and isn't a patch on the better xenon flashes some high-end cameraphones pack.

Overall, the E72 is capable of producing decent results, though it has its foibles that don't aid consistently satisfactory autofocus results.

A familiar set of camera settings options is available. These include a variety of scene modes for varying lighting and shooting conditions, with a close-up mode for macro shooting, plus landscape, portrait, night mode and suchlike.

White balance adjustments are available too, plus timer and multi-shot settings, and flash on/off/auto and red-eye reduction mode.

There's a reasonable panorama setting too that uses a sensor to help you stitch shots together for one continuous image.

Post shooting, images can be uploaded to a selection of image sharing online services, including Ovi, Vox and Flickr, and there are some editing tools for tweaking shots before posting, with effects and text options too.

SUNLIGHT: The five-megapixel camera on the Nokia E72 is capable of producing rich, vibrantly coloured images with a decent amount of detail

MIXED OUTDOORS: The camera is able to produce a good balance in tones and handle variations in light in an image pretty well

DETAIL: The autofocus system enables users to pick out details in subjects for crisper shots. Colours here are well defined with a nice balance and good contrast

AUTOFOCUS: Although the camera is capable of capturing reasonably good images, its autofocus system suffers from the limited control of focusing offered by the Navi key

LIGHT AND DARK: The camera can handle exposure well for light and dark portions of an image, with no impact on colour fidelity

SHADOW: A shot taken in shadow retains decent amounts of detail in the foreground while the strongly lit background isn't burnt

MOVING SUBJECT: The camera's auto-metering system does a decent job at capturing moving subjects when lighting conditions are favourable, though in poorer light sports mode can help with exposure

LANDSCAPE: The E72 can take reasonable long-range landscape shots too

FOCUS: The autofocus system does enable you to take interesting images by adjusting the element in focus, though it can be fiddly to get it right first time

FLASH: The E72's flash offers some illumination in dark conditions, but has limited effect and only at short range

Video capture performance is middle of the road on the E72; it can shoot at up to VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels) at 15 frames a second.

Although footage can look adequately bright and may be sufficient for casual online action, quality is limited and there is some slight hesitancy to playback.

Video playback is okay on the QVGA screen, and is smooth and bright, but the size and resolution of the screen limit the impact of video watching on this device.

As well as the media player, the E72 has the usual Nokia smartphone RealPlayer application onboard. Video file formats supported include MP4, AVC/H.264,WMV, RV, Flash Video and H.263/3GP.

Video clips can be shared online too, and the phone has Nokia's Video Centre application onboard for streaming and downloading content from the Ovi Store (some free, others paid for).

Although the E72 is geared up for serious business users, it's still capable of delivering a surprisingly powerful audio performance. The music player software is, again, standard issue S60 kit, so the user interface is functional rather than anything more elaborate.

Tracks are categorised in basic music player fashion, and playback is controlled in the usual way via the D-pad, with cover art presented on the screen if available. No surprises there, then.

As we mentioned, a 4GB MicroSD card is included in-box, providing a decent amount of storage to be getting on with.

Nokia supplies the E72 with a headset that present quite a lively soundscape with decent mid- and high-range presentation and solid bass. It's loud too – the buds come with optional silica surrounds for a snug noise-diminishing fit.

Usefully, the E72 has a 3.5mm standard headphone jack on the top, so any decent set of headphones can be whacked in for a further uplift in sound quality.

The loudspeaker is reasonable too for playback. All in all, not bad tune-playing for a business phone.

Should you wish to buy tunes online over the air, the Nokia E72 supports Nokia's Music Store service.

A separate Music Search function offers the option of hunting through music files using voice recognition to find a track, artist, album or playlist.

It worked surprisingly well for this sort of software, even if it wasn't always 100 per cent accurate.

An FM radio function is also built into the E72, playable with headphones attached as an antenna. Usefully it can download frequencies and details of local radio stations over the air as part of the regular set-up procedure. Alternatively, you can use auto or manual tuning if you prefer.

It's simple to set up and operate, and the sound quality is perfectly acceptable through the ear-gear supplied.

Another crucial factor for any business phone is battery staying power, and we were very impressed by the E72 on this score.

Despite its slimline profile, the Nokia E72 packs a hefty 1500mAh battery that Nokia estimates can deliver almost 6 hours of talktime or 576 hours of standby on 3G networks (in GSM-only coverage areas, the figures are 12.5 hours' talktime or 492 hours' standby).

We frequently managed a comfortable three days of normal usage before reaching for the charger, though, as usual how much you use such features as Wi-Fi and GPS will be reflected in individual battery life experiences.

Organiser

A comprehensive set of organiser tools and functionality is set up for the E72, emphasising its enterprise market appeal.

Its E-series calendar app offers plenty of functionality including the facility to create and receive meeting requests. Up to 1,000 contacts can be stored on the phone, dependent on memory availability, with multiple fields for storing detailed contact information.

Office tools include notes and active notes, clock, alarms, calculator and convertor functions, voice recorder and text to voice reader, plus a dictionary app that can read words to you and offer translations.

It also has an Adobe PDF document reader and a ZIP file manager.

In addition, a Quickoffice application provides a full suite of document reader functions for Word, Excel and PowerPoint file formats, plus the facility to edit and create documents.

The E72 also has a bunch of apps targeted at business users, including a business card/text scanner function and Psiloc's Wireless Presenter for wireless presentations to other suitably enabled Wi-Fi equipped devices.

Nokia has also loaded up Psiloc's World Traveller application for real-time updates to weather, travel information, currency rates and so on in whichever cities you choose worldwide.

Connectivity

Connectivity on the E72 is first rate, with Wi-Fi (WLAN 802.11b/g) and HSPA (up to 10.2Mbps downloading and up to 2Mbps uploading rates, subject to network support).

A Wi-Fi wizard helps you set up connections from the home screen, prompting you to select from visible networks within range and passcodes.

It's reasonably straightforward to operate and use, and you can get automatic reconnection established when you go out of and then back in range again of the network.

The E72 is a tri-band WCDMA handset (900/1900/2100 MHz) or out of 3G coverage it can operate on quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), with EDGE and GPRS data connectivity.

Bluetooth 2.0 is onboard too, with A2DP stereo streaming support for headphones, speakers and so on. USB 2.0 connectivity is also included, with a microUSB port on the side of the phone and a cable supplied in-box.

Over the air syncing via ActiveSync is supported, while the E72 is also kitted out for local synchronisation using Nokia PC Suite or Ovi Suite.

MicroSD cards are supported, with a 4GB card supplied as standard. Cards up to 32GB can be used with the phone.

A Home Media application also enables users to stream and share content via home Wi-Fi networks with other suitably equipped media devices.

Other

Our review sample of the Nokia E72 came with Nokia Maps pre-installed, although an upgrade to the latest version of Ovi Maps – which includes free voice-guided sat nav as part of an improved package and user interface – is available to download free of charge.

The in-built A-GPS location finding technology worked extremely smoothly in our tests.

From start-up, it locked on to satellites and pin-pointed our position rapidly, keeping accurate track of our movements. A compass also provides positioning orientation to help you find your way around.

Maps for the UK and Ireland are pre-loaded on the supplied memory card, so map refreshes are seamless. We'd recommend users whose phones aren't already set up for Ovi Maps with satellite navigation to upgrade as soon as possible.

The user interface of the upgraded software is much more like an in-car sat nav setup, and more intuitive than Nokia's previous version of its mapping app.

Free sat nav is another useful bonus, plus you can get Lonely Planet and Michelin guides free over the air.

The enhanced GPS experience certainly adds more to Nokia's smartphone appeal.

Standard Nokia voice control software is complemented by a pre-loaded Vlingo voice-control application for messaging, emailing, texting and web browsing.

Additional apps include a search facility for scouring the phone's content or searching online, while two gaming applications are included too.

There have been huge changes in the smartphone world since the Nokia E71 first landed. But with the E72, Nokia has evolved and refreshed its messaging-heavy enterprise phone offering rather than coming up with something revolutionary.

The E72 is a sleek and attractively designed QWERTY keyboard-packing smartphone, with a tremendously solid feel to it.

It offers some neat upgrades to the spec of the E71, with a faster processor under the bonnet, and presents a powerful email and all-round messaging solution for corporate users.

Its QWERTY keyboard is a pleasure to use for this kind of device, accurate and responsive, while the messaging software onboard is easy to set up with an appealingly user-friendly interface.

Additional features, such as the camera and A-GPS functionality, have been toned up too, providing a decent amount of downtime consumer appeal.

The S60 3rd Edition platform's menu structure can, of course, be long-winded and the non-touchscreen user interface far from slick, but the familiarity of the typical Nokia smartphone system will no doubt appeal to some loyal Nokia buyers.

We liked

The QWERTY keyboard is tidily designed and nicely implemented for a great thumb-typing experience. It's well laid out, with a very responsive action that makes message writing a breeze.

A strong suite of messaging applications underpins the appeal of the E72 for the business user, as does a generous helping of enterprise-orientated applications and features. It also has fine connectivity options, including Wi-Fi and HSPA.

Excellent build quality and a stylish yet understated chrome-edged design give the E72 some added substance and visual appeal.

We welcomed the responsive A-GPS technology and upgraded Ovi Maps sat-nav software, which worked a treat on the E72.

In addition, the music player, while not overly sophisticated, puts in an admirable audio performance. A 4GB MicroSD card and decent earphones in-box, plus the phone's 3.5mm headphone socket, are also welcome.

We disliked

The E72's 2.36-inch display isn't the largest on a smartphone, and we'd have liked a touch more room.

We liked some elements of the optical navigation key trackpad control, although we felt it wasn't quite hitting the mark for ease of use and precision in some applications. We didn't like its use in camera mode, in particular.

As usual, getting to some settings in the S60 third Edition menu system can be convoluted, and it can take plenty of clicks to negotiate the numerous menu structures. Still, long-standing Nokia smartphone fans will find the phone's user interface very familiar.

The camera's image quality wasn't bad, but the camera results could have been improved with more robust autofocus control.

Verdict

The Nokia E72 delivers a measured upgrade to the E71, enhancing its capabilities and boosting performance all-round without radically altering the essential QWERTY-keyboard template.

It provides a powerful messaging package with a very usable keyboard, complemented with an assortment of solid smartphone functionality and business apps.

It may not have the glamour of an iPhone, but it has plenty of appeal for the enterprise user looking for a reliable messaging device.

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Review: HTC Desire

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:26:00 GMT

After unleashing the massively impressive HTC Legend, its bigger brother, the HTC Desire, is here - faster, bigger and more powerful and still packing the Android punch.

It might be the Nexus One rebadged, but this is a behemoth of a phone in its own right; has HTC tried to do too much?

We reviewed a Desire from T-Mobile, which is first in line to offer the phone on UK release, but we also checked out our findings from another Desire review unit straight from HTC, to really find out how it compared to the competition.

While the Legend was all about style and functionality in one tidy package - the HTC Desire takes a slightly different approach.

Instead of the gorgeous aluminium chassis, we're given a slightly more low-key brown case and a huge 3.7-inch OLED capacitive touchscreen.

Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world today

But while the screen certainly is massive, the phone itself doesn't seem gargantuan. The screen reaches the edge of the chassis nicely, and the four buttons on the front of the HTC Desire are almost flush and set in attractive aluminium.

If you're looking for comparisons between this and the Nexus One, the first is highly obvious: the trackball is gone.

HTC has given the phone the Terminator eye once more (head back to the HTC Legend review if you want to know why we're glad it doesn't glow red and threaten humanity) which is basically an optical trackpad that registers finger motion over the sensor.

The phone is very slim indeed, with dimensions of 119 x 60 x 11.9 mm, and weighs in at just 133g. If you're counting, that's 2g heavier than the iPhone 3G and the exact same weight as the iPhone 3GS - and that makes it very pocket friendly indeed.

It has a rubberised chassis, which is a little hard to grip at times. We're not talking so slippy you'll be dropping it all the time, but it still can be a little difficult to hold in one hand, especially if you have dinky digits.

That said it sits very nicely in the hand, with a sumptuous curved chassis feeling very nice and making it easy to press the buttons on the front with the thumb.

There's actually very little button-wise on the HTC Desire, with only six in all. The front four buttons are standard HTC Android fare (Home, Menu, Back and Search) and the Terminator optical trackpad also clicks in as an enter key.

The up/down button on the left-hand side of the phone is flush to the chassis, as is the power button on the top - which sits next to the 3.5mm headphone jack atop the HTC Desire.

The power button also functions as the lock key, and is very nicely placed to press whenever necessary (and trust us, we've seen some horrors; we're looking at you, Samsung Galaxy).

That's it button-wise, as there's no camera key (instead the HTC Desire uses the trackpad to take a snap or two) which is a little sad - we still love a dedicated shutter button.

The USB slot is hidden at the bottom - no cover to keep the dust out, but on the plus side it's once again microUSB, banishing the memory of the horrid miniUSB port from HTC designs of old.

There's also a microSD card slot for extra memory - but that's hidden below the battery, and can't be taken out without turning off the phone.

The screen is simply to die for - we mentioned it was an OLED capacitive effort earlier, but that brings such glorious colour reproduction and 3.7-inch is a great size for media and the internet on a phone.

It's a little tacky under the touch - the iPhone for instance feels a little smoother - but we're being very, very picky with that, as it registers the slightest touch with ease.

The design is sleek, and the Desire certainly looks the business - sleek and compact, while still showing off the power of the OLED screen. Yes, it lacks the style of the HTC Legend, but we think it more than makes up for that in function.

In the box

HTC is excellent at keeping packaging minimal, and the Desire once again comes in a coffin-like box with the standard kit inside.

This means a microUSB cable, which plugs into an adaptor to make a wall charger, and the standard headphones which double as a hands-free kit.

HTC hasn't seen fit to update these, but they're functional and work well to use for calls and media, providing you don't have the same odd-shaped ears as us.

There's not a lot more, but with the minimal space in packaging you can see why HTC has kept the components down. We would like to see some PC software on a CD or memory card, but it can be downloaded from the site with ease.

The HTC Desire is rocking the latest Sense UI on top of Android 2.1, and if you're looking for the best reason why this phone is, in our opinion, far and away better than its Google Nexus One clone, this is it.

It simply works, and HTC has cooked in a few extra surprises as well (providing you haven't played with the HTC Legend as well).

The premise is simple - seven home screens (three each side of the default option) which can be customised with widgets, icons and apps as you see fit, to create a totally unique experience for each user.

It's the same principle Android 2.1 is built on, but HTC has added in a number of its own widgets and options to make things that little bit more special.

The large-display clock is included as a default, and below that is the weather in your location (drawn from cellular triangulation data rather than the GPS chip).

The weather will also flick across the screen too, which is also cool - if it's sunny the screen will shine, rainy and a windscreen wiper clears the water drops, foggy and the screen goes cloudy.

If you're showing the phone to someone that's never really seen a smartphone before, they'll think they've seen a phone from Narnia when you whip this feature out.

Android is a cool OS, because of the level of customisation on offer. If you want to add a widget, simply long-press the screen and a list of programs, widgets and folders will be presented to you.

HTC's widgets include Favourite friends (updated contact profiles from the phonebook and Facebook if enabled) and the Friendstream app, which draws in info from Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

These, like so many others, are offered in small, medium and full screen options, enabling you to keep space on your precious home screen allocation to a minimum.

If you want to get rid of anything, then you simply long-press on the icon and the rubbish bin comes up, enabling you to drop it in there and get rid of it - we wish it was this easy on Nokia's Symbian phones, like the Nokia X6.

This method also allows you to re-arrange the icons in the places you want or shift them around too.

Another desperately cool-but-pointless feature in Android 2.1 is the addition of Live Wallpapers. These are backgrounds to the home screen that react to a number of stimuli - be it your finger, music or simply the time of day.

Our favourite is (humorously) called Nexus: basically, it's a set of coloured lights running across a grid - tap the screen and dozens more explode out under your finger.

Utterly, utterly pointless and probably a tiny bit battery-draining... but we still cleared a home screen of widgets just so we could play with it.

Search throughout the phone – be it music tracks, text messages from a friend, or any file type – is available simply by hitting the search key twice to call up 'Quick Search'.

It's very similar to the iPhone's Spotlight option, but in our opinion it works faster and more comprehensively.

And the final cool thing offered by the new Sense UI from HTC on the Desire - Leap View.

Basically, pinch the screen in using multi-touch (yep, that's supported too) and you'll be able to see all seven screens at once.

Very handy if you're over on the far right screen and you want to check the weather on the far left - pinch and prod and you're there.

Leap View actually highlights the power of the HTC Desire really well - the processor chugging away under the hood.

From the simple swipe to web page panning, the Desire will react to any touch you throw at it no matter how hard you push the OS. Heck, even the weather widget spins through the different cities on offer with speed - we've never seen that before from HTC.

It's not that different from other HTC phones, as the Taiwanese company is adept at making its processors work well - but it means there's never a hint of slowdown.

Basically, the interface on the HTC Desire is great because it just does what you want it to do.

Combining the cool elements of Android (like being able to drag down from the top of the screen to see notifications) with widgets and changeable Scenes (the icons rearrange depending on what time of day or week it is so you can set Work or Home or whichever mode you want) the HTC Desire's interface is simply tops.

Often when we review a phone and we move to the calling section, it's a very easy task to explain. You press a button, select a name and call. Hang up after, if you want.

But the HTC Desire just blows that concept out the water. You get such a plethora of options for the contact information, and the call quality and reception is great.

Contacts

The main thing to know about the phonebook on the HTC Desire is the sheer volume of information you can throw in there. You can link a name with their Google account, Facebook, Flickr, Exchange... oh and the phone number too.

Basically, when you turn the Desire on for the first time, you're asked to log into Google, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (and T-Mobile's email service on our test device).

Not only does this give you access to your Gmail and populate Peep (the Desire's inbuilt Twitter application) it adds all the names from Facebook and Google contacts into the address book.

Now, here comes the science - you can then link the information all together. The phone will search for common phone numbers and email addresses, and link these profiles automatically - which is cool enough.

But then you're left with around 300 names that should go together, but aren't - a very time consuming task ahead.

Well, HTC has thought of this and while the problem isn't completely solved, there's help at hand.

Basically, the Desire will search through names and addresses and look for common themes and offer them as suggested links in the top right-hand corner of the screen - making linking a very swift process 99% of the time.

Yes, it takes around 30 minutes to set it up when you get the phone, but trust us - it's worth it.

From the linked profile, you get to see call history, Facebook updates, Flickr and Facebook photos, email conversations you've shared - simply by sliding your finger across the bottom of the screen along a different selection of icons.

Again, we're talking slick here - the HTC Desire never gives in and won't judder at all during this process, even when it's updating and populating.

However, there are a couple of issues - when you've linked up all your contacts, for some reason they split into two alphabetised groups in the phonebook list - we have no idea why.

And we'd like to be able to fire off a Facebook message directly from the profile - we can do it on the Motorola Dext and the INQ Chat 3G, why can't we do it here?

Calling

The HTC Desire was a little temperamental the first time we tried calling - it basically just hung there and then disconnected the call, which worried us a little bit.

But after that, it was plain sailing - quick connections and easy dialling. The 'Phone' tab is prominent on all the home screens, and pulls up the most recently called contacts as well as the number pad.

You can also use the dialler as a T9 dictionary to tap in a contact's name and it will be pushed to the top of the list - a feature nabbed from HTC's Windows Mobile days.

Connection as we said was pretty flawless, although we did have trouble shaking the HTC Desire off roaming networks at times.

Basically, it will sniff out an alternative network for data and voice at times - which is great for maintaining signal for calls.

But if you want high speed 3G data, that's not going to happen when roaming; but even when we knew we'd moved into a high 3G signal area, it struggled to jump back.

Not a major problem, but slightly irritating nonetheless.

The more important flipside of that is the HTC Desire is great when you suddenly pop back into signal - ie when you emerge from a tube.

Within seconds you're up and running again with a good few bars - we know that's important to a number of users.

Like calling, messaging can be a boring experience on some phones. But the HTC Desire offers a number of ways to stay in contact with your buddies, no matter which way you want to chat.

First of all, let's talk keyboards - the HTC touchscreen option is without par in our opinion (the same for the both the Legend and the Desire).

It's frighteningly intuitive, and it learns as it goes along - if you use a word often it will remember it and default to it when the relevant keystrokes come along.

And if you're taking your first worrying steps into button-less keyboards, we couldn't recommend this option more highly.

You can deviate miles from the intended buttons, and nine times out of 10 the Desire will work out the word you wanted by default.

And thanks to a large and expansive screen, the Desire is even easier to type on than the Legend.

Messaging is handled in a number of intuitive ways - from threaded conversations for SMS text messages to high end Exchange support.

Your inbox is divided into conversations with contacts, and you can simply tap in to see what's been said.

If you want to convert a text into an MMS, you simply add in elements like pictures, sound or a contact card - light years ahead of having to remember a number and tap it into a text.

Twitter is also well-used through the Peep application - one of the issues with the HTC Legend was the @replies took a long time to update and wouldn't appear, even if you're notified there is one.

Thankfully the latter has been fixed with the HTC Desire, although it can take a while to find out someone has tried to Tweet at you.

Google Talk is also included as standard, allowing you to chat to your buddies online.

Sadly there's no integration for Windows Messenger or similar out the box, and we're sure we're not alone in never having many of our friends on Google Talk at any one time.

As we mentioned email is a big part of this phone too - be it Gmail, POP3/IMAP webmail accounts or Exchange.

All three are easy to set up, with a few details all that's necessary for the HTC Desire to sniff out the relevant settings.

Exchange email is set up in the traditional inbox format, but sliding the finger along the icons at the bottom takes you to files with attachment and conversations, making it easy again to see what's been said in the chat so far.

Email addresses are highlighted within the mail itself so you can tap and use them - you can do the same with phone numbers, but these aren't highlighted.

Well, we say you can do the same, as it works for strings of numbers, but if there are spaces present the HTC Desire can't work out the full number to use.

You can choose the speed at which mail is pushed to the device from all these accounts, from Push email to timed downloading to only updating when manually forced to do so.

There's no lag at all with push email - and it just works well. We know we keep saying that, but it's a constant theme with the HTC Desire.

A couple of very minor issues with the Desire's messaging system - you can't save SMS messages to the microSD card (though you can to the SIM card) and you have to delete POP3 messages separately; you can't do it all at once to clear an inbox.

HTC has been working long and hard on its Android internet browser, and has continued to update it to keep it in line with the top level on offer with today's smartphones.

The LG Arena managed to have a full HTML browser with pinch and zoom navigation, but it was slow and clunky, so it's not a given that chucking in multi-touch will sort everything out.

But the HTC Desire's browser is tip top - pinching and zooming takes you in and out at superb speeds, and the text reflow software on the Desire is brilliant, like its HTC brothers.

Basically you can keep moving in further and further on the words, and the phone will keep reformatting the columns to fit the screen - it makes reading the longer articles very easy indeed.

The WVGA, 3.7-inch screen also look immense - zoomed out, you can see a huge amount of the web page, and in high detail as well.

The web browser also has copy and paste as standard too - simply long press on any bit of text and two little draggable pins will appear to select the text you want (with a little magnifying pane to help things out).

Like we've said before - this is a little bit iPhone-like, and we wouldn't be surprised if Apple included it in its current lawsuit against the Taiwanese firm.

Flash video is also present and very much correct on the HTC Desire. We navigated to a number of different websites with embedded video, and the HTC Desire showed the content within the browser or via a dedicated Flash browser.

We did encounter a slight issue - Flash video didn't want to work properly on the higher end sites and content. It wouldn't support iPlayer for example, and video on the BBC website was juddery.

Channel 4 On Demand on YouTube wouldn't work either - but other videos on the Google-owned video site functioned fine.

Either way this will likely be fixed in the next couple of months - Flash 10.1 is on its way for Android and should make all Flash video fine to use.

Bookmarking on the HTC Desire is also pretty darn cool - the visual thumbnails, based on the latest website content from your last visit, are a nice way of navigating through your favourites.

And if you forget to tag a favourite site, slide your finger along the bottom to find your most visited sites and history - making it easy to find oft-visited sites.

Other little titbits from the HTC Desire browser include easy downloading of images by simply long-pressing the image and selecting save.

You can also share text you've copy and pasted to the likes of SMS and Facebook - or the whole web address of the page you're looking at instead.

This is also really helpful for the integrated Peep Twitter app - if you see something you want to tell your buddies about and you're only three taps away from doing so.

The HTC Desire shows another progression for Taiwanese company – the camera is now streets ahead of previous models.

Be it the poor efforts of the HTC Magic and G1, or the odd halo effect on the Hero, HTC has never been one for camera power.

But the 5MP snapper on the HTC Desire will turn even the most mundane mo-pho (mobile photographer, of course) into a click-happy junkie.

We're not saying that the HTC Desire is the equal of anything like the Sony Ericsson Satio or the LG Viewty Smart, but the 5MP effort is easily as good as you'll need on a mobile camera.

The camera interface has been overhauled for the new version of Sense as well, with a number of options to tweak to improve your photos.

Options for brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness are all altered by spinning dials on the screen (brought out by a simple touch on the menu tab).

You can also mess about with the ISO settings, geo-tagging, face detection and more – as well as sepia, negative and posterise effects among others.

And the thing is all these elements make a difference – photos can genuinely be enhanced by playing with these settings.

LIGHT AND BRIGHT: The HTC Desire performs well in sunshine, with lots of detail and minimal washing out

Foreground focus:

Background focus:

ALTERED VIEW: Simply pressing on separate sections of the screen to take a snap makes a big difference to the brightness of a photo

WASHED OUT: Detail in brighter light can sometimes be a little washed out on the HTC Desire

WIDELY ACCEPTED: The Desire does well at picking out the full gamut of detail in panorama views

AUTO-MACRO: The Desire has no macro mode, but the auto focus more than makes up for it, with impressive clarity

FLASH, AAAAAH: Even in near total darkness, the flash is brilliant on the HTC Desire, focusing and lighting evenly

With high saturation:

With low saturation:

With high contrast:

With low contrast:

With high sharpness:

With low sharpness:

OBVIOUS EFFECTS: Messing around with the saturation, sharpness and contrast of the camera on the HTC Desire shows real differences in the snaps - these options aren't just gimmicks

While we're still lamenting the loss of the dedicated shutter button, the optical trackball is a good secondary option for taking snaps.

The camera automatically keeps refocusing on the scene in front of it, which negates the need for a half-press on the shutter key to bring the picture into sharpness.

You can either take a snap by pressing the optical trackpad, or long pressing on the screen - focusing and adjusting the white balance depending on your chosen area.

The latter option has been tweaked somewhat over recent versions, and a longer press is better as it means you don't accidentally set the camera off when trying to point to a section for the camera to focus on.

The video recorder comes in a variety of formats – both resolution and recording codec.

You can take video in QVGA (320 x 240), CIF (352 x 288), VGA (DVD quality, 640 x 480) or WVGA (800 x 480), and all four can be recorded to MP4 or H.263 formats, with the resulting file appearing as 3GP.

We're told that the HTC Desire records at 30fps, but as you'll see from the test video that seems a little far reaching. It's actually clocked at 15fps, but that's dynamic - the phone will increase the rate to over 20fps in other lighting conditions.

HTC is also only allowing audio recording to AMR, rather than the superior-quality AAC (which is supported by the Snapdragon processor). We're thinking this is something that may be tweaked in future updates, but isn't going to matter to most users in day to day action.

Some people we've spoken to have lamented the fact the HTC Desire doesn't have HD video recording as on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz – we don't think it's necessary on a mobile phone, especially when you have to wedge it into a chassis the width of a pencil.

It might improve resolution somewhat, but it's not that noticeable on the phone screen or when ported out to a larger display, so we don't think the Desire should be marked down for leaving it out.

The HTC Desire is an upgrade in the media department over the HTC Legend for a number of reasons - the first being the fact it has an upgraded audio performance in the shape of Dolby Mobile enhancement.

This isn't mentioned in the settings or anything, which makes us wonder if it's a big part of the audio experience - but in comparative tests, it seems to offer a richer bass sound and a nice mid range too.

The music player is the same decent effort as seen on other HTC phones - it features large, easy-to-hit buttons on the main player and cover art that you can swipe through in both portrait and landscape modes.

Navigating through tracks is segmented into Artists, Albums, Tracks, Genres and more, with the option to look at your purchased tracks as well - although we're yet to find out which store you're meant to purchase them from.

You can select the different methods of track navigation by simply sliding your finger along the bottom of the screen, as is common throughout the Sense UI.

The HTC Desire packs a 3.5mm headphone port as you might expect, but this is curved and not flush to the chassis - which leaves a section of the headphone jack uncovered.

It doesn't affect the performance of the phone, but it does leave your headphones exposed to possible damage.

The main music player is easy to use and works quickly on the HTC Desire - the 1GHz processor powering things along nicely under the hood meant there was very little track stutter or skipping when trying to browse through the phone's library.

The video player is, once again, hidden in the photos section. We don't know why, and HTC haven't been able to furnish us with a decent reason either - but at least the icon hints at it with a little video picture.

The photo and video gallery is easy enough to navigate too - you can see your files as images, camera shots and downloaded pictures, and the video is divided up into recorded movies and those you've slung onto the memory card.

Swishing through your photos is a really pleasant experience too thanks to the processor - it renders the images snappily and without a hint of slowdown, so you're not looking at a pixellated version of your mug for too long.

Video

The video is predictably sublime on the HTC Desire - you can imagine if you add widescreen VGA resolution to a 3.7-inch OLED display with a 1GHz processor the movies will look sumptuous.

There's sadly no dedicated GPU on board as far as we can tell, but that doesn't seem to matter too much when it comes to watching videos.

UPDATE: Apparently the HTC Desire does have a GPU, although we're still trying to pin down which is is as HTC hasn't released the full specs. But it does explain the great video and Google Earth performance (which we urge you to download).

The screen is a perfect size for watching video, and if you add in a Bluetooth headset, it's a great experience to wirelessly skim through some videos.

Talking of which, you can slide your finger through the movie by simply dragging it along the bottom bar and it will jump instantly to the right point in the movie - just as you'd expect.

However, there is a problem with the Bluetooth side of things, which worries us slightly. When using the new Jabra Clipper Bluetooth device (which allows you to use your own headphones wirelessly) the sound stuttered when using the music application.

It wasn't apparent when watching video, and it was a lot better than on the Legend, but it still niggled somewhat that we couldn't have flawless Bluetooth performance.

YouTube is also included in the Google stable of applications with the HTC Desire, and it works just fine, especially over Wi-Fi.

Using this connection it automatically seeks out the highest quality video, and that looked great on the WVGA screen.

It didn't like connecting as well over 3G at times, despite having a couple of bars of signal - although this was a rare occurrence.

The FM radio included was of average quality - it scanned and found all the major radio stations when first turned on, but sometimes struggled for clear signal.

It also took an age to turn on, and there's no RDS, meaning you have to name all the stations yourself, which is slightly irritating.

We'd have also liked to see the option to record radio as well, as is present on the Samsung range (such as seen on the Samsung Jet).

Overall though this is a powerful media device, and with an 8GB memory card in the box (expandable up to 32GB) it's a phone that has a load of media potential.

The battery in the HTC Desire was 'only' a 1400mAh effort - we'd have like to see a 1500mAh option there, as is the case with so many other smartphones at the moment.

We're also a little concerned about the battery life - it dropped rather quickly, and although you'll get a day's worth of use out of it under normal use (ie web browsing, calling etc) it can drop a little alarmingly fast at times.

We had a little look at what was munching on the power so much (thanks to the Android battery meter) and it seems to be the widgets (in particular FriendStream) and synchronising that's taking a lot of the power, along with the constant flicking to roaming networks and back to 3G.

We found a big increase in battery life if we stopped updating Peep, Friendstream and emails all day long, and when set to '2G networks only' the battery life also improved to three days' use without problem.

We'd also advise you download Advanced Task Killer from the App Market - it's a great way of shutting down running programs and thus saving you a lot of battery life.

We're used to having to charge a smartphone every day, so we don't see this as much of a problem, and it's good there are options to extend the battery life if you want it to last longer.

Google Maps, as you can imagine, is included as standard - we urge you to upgrade to GMaps 4.1 as soon as possible.

Basically, this has overhauled the UI so you can swipe through categories when clicking on an address - you can see information and reviews much more easily than before.

The GPS signal also locked on very fast with the HTC Desire, making finding yourself on a map very easy.

The UK still isn't deemed worthy enough to have the Google Navigation feature as yet, and we're starting to doubt if we'll ever have it, especially if it's a legal issue for Google.

It's a shame, as this could be a great Sat Nav with the bright and clear screen to play with - and the Nexus One is clearly set up to be just that in the US.

There's one last cool surprise with Google Maps 4.1: a new live wallpaper.

You set it up, and suddenly the background shifts to where you are, highlighted by a little dot.

And if you're friends are nearby and logged into Latitude, you can see that as well - creepy but handy if you don't want to have keep logging into maps to see what's going on in your area.

The HTC Desire packs the usual range of Android connectivity - Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, aGPS, 7.2Mbps HSDPA - the works.

The Wi-Fi is as good to set up as ever, and whenever you walk into range of a remembered network the HTC Desire will automatically connect.

It's better at maintaining signal than the HTC Legend, which as we mentioned before had a few issues connecting to Wi-Fi on the odd occasion.

Bluetooth is similarly good, with both methods of connection offering the same easy to use UI - basically turn it on and a list of connections pops up.

Simply tapping on these will link you in - no faffing about with separate screens for passwords or codes, it's all done on the same screen and once connected, Bluetooth will also auto-connect with devices in range.

GPS as we mentioned before is solid, allowing you to not only flick around Google Maps with ease but also geo-tag your photos in you're into that kind of thing.

The PC software was once again not present - downloading HTC Sync found the phone and registered it under the Desire name, but failed to synchronise or connect to actually back up the data.

At least you can perform this function on the phone by backing up data to the memory card - that way if the phone crashes and loses all its data (or you delete something important in a drunken fug) you can back it up.

Apps

There are a variety of applications offered on the phone from the start, such as Facebook, a desk clock, PDF and QuickOffice as well as a motion-sensitive game in Teeter (which is a lot like labyrinth).

But the Application Store is becoming a real force in the mobile applications space - it may only have 25% of the applications that are present on the Apple App Store at the moment, but Google has promised that it will have 130,000 apps on its books by the end of 2010.

This means it will have more than enough apps to keep you occupied - and means that most of the big brands will probably have brought an application to the Android as well.

Considering that most will have this phone for two years, the fact the application Market might not be as well populated as the App Store isn't as big a deal - there are a lot of applications missing at the moment, but that will likely change in the next few months.

One of the problems is still not being able save applications to memory card - this means developers have to make games small, and therefore low function.

This should change in a near-future update to Android, thus opening up the application Market to a wider range of developers, and making applications a lot more interesting.

The HTC Desire is a feature-rammed phone with the hardware to support it. It's got a huge screen with the 1GHz processor underneath, and the Sense UI is a system that keeps getting better with every iteration.

Coming just after the HTC Legend, it improves on all the issues we saw with that (battery life, Peep and Friendstream slow to update etc) and adds in some decent extra hardware as well.

We liked

We liked nearly every single thing on the HTC Desire - it just works as you want it to as a phone and an internet tablet at the same time.

The Sense UI, Leap View and social network integration is all seamless and useful, the Live Wallpapers are super cool and the internet browser with pinch to zoom is fantastic.

Music and video playback was rich and simple, the camera is probably the best we've seen from HTC, the overall experience was fast and intuitive - in short it's easier to find things we didn't like.

We disliked

We'll level with you - there's not a lot wrong with this phone. The Bluetooth music playback is a little patchy and the battery will drop a little easily if you leave everything updating in the background.

Although the latter is a little annoying out the box (HTC wants you to use lots of updating widgets from the start) once you take some things down (or set them to manually update) the battery use is a lot better.

Verdict

In short, this is a phenomenal phone - one of the best we've ever had on TechRadar. Usually when we like a phone on the first use, we end up horribly disappointed after a little time with it, but the HTC Desire kept on performing and achieving when we thought it wouldn't.

The screen is lovely, the design is slick and processor makes everything happen in a flash - all you'd want from a smartphone.

Sure, some people will want slightly nicer design (we'd advise you check out the Legend) or a simpler home screen and richer app store at the moment (look at the iPhone 3GS) but as a piece of hardware it's without par in the mobile world.

A stunning phone, and one that will show the world that Android isn't just for the hackers and phone geeks any more.

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Review: Nokia 7230

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:24:00 GMT

Not everyone needs a phone with a million apps and a 20MP camera.

Sometimes you just want to make calls, text and browse the internet for basic information, with a little style thrown in.

Something like the Nokia 7230 slider phone for example.

At only 10 x 5.5cm when folded, you're easily able to slip the Nokia 7230 into your suit or trouser pocket with ease.

But it still packs plenty of everyday essentials, including a featured 3.2MP camera, 3G connectivity, a media player with radio and a 2.2-inch screen for viewing everything from messaging and checking your email through to web browsing and fast access to Facebook and MySpace.

And there are apps too via Ovi if you want them, with a few demo games and utilities to get you going. All of that in a phone that's mostly free on contract or at £129 should you opt for pay-as-you-go, which isn't bad as a stylish-looking 3G phone.

Nokia 7230: Design

Small, functional and with smooth curves the 7230 is classic Nokia design. Sized at 98(h) x 48(w) x 14.75(d) mm and weighing in at 100g, the phone is small and light enough to fit into anyone's bag or pocket, with curved, chromed edges that contribute to an ergonomic shape for your hand.

Within the fairly minimalist design is a mini-USB slot (although the cable for hooking up the phone to a USB slot doesn't come as standard), a headphone point and those front facing controls for accessing/ending calls, along with an additional three menu-based controls for getting round the 2.2-inch TFT screen.

Memory card slot? That's located inside the handset, with a 2GB microSD down to come as standard..

The rear of the phone is devoted to photography, with a dedicated camera key on the side (or on top if you're taking pictures in landscape) turning your phone into a reasonable outdoor snapper in seconds.

The sliding mechanism is a dream, a 'glide' rather than a 'clunk', exposing a keyboard that's spacious enough for error-free typing and sufficiently responsive when you hit the keys. When you close the slide, the phone automatically locks, kicking off that lock when you flick it back open.

Running on the Symbian Series 40 platform, the Nokia 7230 has a functional, if unspectacular interface, offering up three ways of accessing the phone's main functions.

With a click of that central menu button, you'll see icons for all of the basic functions or alternatively, the left-hand selection key brings up the highlights on a scrolling list. The right-hand key offers quick access to your contacts.

Finally, opting for the Home Screen mode brings up mini icons for media and networking to scroll through.

Which one is best? To be honest, we found ourselves using all three randomly, with none of the menus offering quite what we wanted on first use.

But don't despair, you can change the shortcuts to your own preferences with a bit of time and effort through the menu settings, so if web access on the go is a big thing for you, just stick a quick icon to it on the home screen instead of Facebook.

But even allowing for that, the interface does seem a little messy purely by trying to cover too many bases.

Granted there isn't a touchscreen interface to play with, but one well thought-out way of accessing all functions (like on the lower budget Samsung Genio Slide) would certainly be better than the three different solutions currently on offer.

When you first log in, you'll also be offered the option to sign up to Ovi for phone-based email.

It's something Nokia is rightly proud of, but we found the experience slow and not without error messages.

We got there in the end, but with the thought that the Nokia 7230 might be used by first-time phone and email users, it is something that needs tightening up.

Nokia 7230: Calls and contacts

Nokia has been making mobile devices for as long as most of us have been alive, so as you would expect, the calling side of the 7230 runs as smoothly as a high-end sports car.

Voice calls are clear, with no obvious drops in the network as we were using it.

Accessing calls is also a doddle (just a slide and touch of a button), the ringtones, which are both available as presets and MP3, are loud enough to wake the heaviest of sleepers and the keypad is large enough to accommodate the biggest of fingers when fumbling to answer.

Setting up contacts is just a matter of entering details in a few fields, although you can augment your entries with personalised images and sounds, as well as web and email details. Accessing is just as easy, simply press the right hand soft key and you're flung into the contacts list.

There's a big, bold font for typing out and reading those texts and an equally large message when a call is incoming. No video calling, but we suspect you've already guessed that one on a handset for this price.

Once upon a time, mobile phones were all about calling and texting. These days, some sort of email access is pretty much an added necessity for communication and you'll certainly find enough options for email here. Whether it's sufficient for your needs is another matter.

As we mentioned earlier, the SMS functionality is simple, straightforward and pretty much faultless. With the added option of multimedia (MMS) messaging, bold message notifications and an easy-to-use keyboard, firing out and receiving random thoughts and images was a breeze.

If texting or sharing your latest photos is your thing, you'll find much to love here.

Email, on the other hand, is something that just might frustrate. As we alluded to earlier, signing up for Ovi wasn't without its problems, despite a fairly solid network reception at the time. But once there, we were able to send an email from that account without any further problems.

If Ovi isn't for you, there's also the option of logging into Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo or just about any other email service. But slowly. Very slowly.

The logging in process to all the services was time-consuming and once in, the wait to get anything but the mail headers was so slow, you wondered if it would be quicker to have sent or received a letter via Royal Mail.

Over a 3G connection, there's really no reason why email messages shouldn't load from a webmail service in a matter of seconds, no matter how much the phone costs.

If that's a disappointment, the added bonus here should be instant messaging via Ovi. Don't worry if you haven't got any Ovi mates, the service also allows access to friends on the likes of Windows and Yahoo Messenger, along with Google Talk.

If you've already signed up for the Ovi account earlier, just login with those details and you should get taken to the chat interface. Sadly for us, all our attempts to 'set up chat' after successfully logging in were greeted with a blank screen.

Does this mean there's some sort of incompatibility somewhere? We don't know. We've just marked it down as a big, fat fail.

Not one, but two email browsers are offered with the Nokia 7230, the Opera Mini browser and a separate on-board browser from Nokia.

Opera is always a solid web solution and that's certainly the case here.

A good zoom function works well with the relatively small screen, pages of our favourites sites render in a decent web-like manner and sites that give thought to mobile access (TechRadar and the BBC for example) come out particularly well.

Indeed, connectivity was brisk for most of the sites we loaded, even when the connection dropped from full 3G. Obviously you can bookmark your favourite feeds and sites, making the browser here a definite plus.

But if Opera isn't your bag, there's always the Nokia browser. It renders just as well, but nowhere near as fast and with far less options than Opera.

It also renders in 'full size', so you'll need to do a bit of scrolling around the page too to find what you want. But essentially it's horses for courses.

Try them both out, you'll certainly prefer one – just stick to that one in future.

Alternatively, if your web use is pretty much confined to using Facebook and MySpace, just load up the on-board apps for both services.

Yes, you can access the full selection of apps at the Ovi Store, which is just a click of an icon away, but Nokia knows its audience and offers the two social networks apps as standard. No Twitter? Sadly not, but two out of three isn't bad - although we're not sure if anyone really uses MySpace any more.

The Facebook app in particular is fairly strong, offering pretty much everything you get on the web-based service – messages, photos, networking, friend-finding – it's all here on the go, possibly even beating the inbuilt options on phones like the HTC Legend.

Likewise, MySpace offers up all the information and editing options, even if the layout of a little more functional.

To use a footballing analogy, the 3.2MP camera on the Nokia 7230 is very much a 'game of two halves'.

In general terms, the camera is incredibly simple to use, just hit the camera icon and you'll be able to capture stills in landscape or portrait format, with extras like a self-timer, white balance and effects (greyscale, sepia, solarise etc) giving your average low-end compact a run for its money.

Indeed, we were quite impressed with the detail of the snaps we took out and about compared to what we expected.

OUT AND ABOUT: A country walk captured with a good amount of detail

REDUCED LIGHT: Even in the woods, the amount of detail captured by the Nokia 7230 is impressive

But there's no flash on the Nokia 7230, making the camera here a reliable outdoor friend on a bright day, but less than able in a pub, club or simply around the house.

INDOOR PHOTO: A typical bright spring day outside, but the 7230 struggles to offer any kind of clarity on a room shot

INDOOR DETAIL: Quality improves indoors for detail rather than a wide shot, but still struggles for clarity

EFFECTS: A similar photo is much improved with the addition of the sepia effect for a follow-up shot

Video is a bonus, but don't expect to be the next Spielberg with it. Quality is shaky and colours a little off, nice for a quirky little clip of the dog in the garden, not great for recording a special birthday.

(Video: video0001.3gp)

IN THE PARK: Bright outside, but that's not easy to see with this grainy video footage

(Video: video0000.3gp)

IN THE WOODS: A lack of light makes the detailing of the video clip even harder to view

On the plus side, Nokia makes it nice and easy to share your moments. The previously-mentioned picture messaging is your obvious way of doing this, but you can also directly upload to Flickr (via the built-in app) or go for Nokia's own Share on Ovi, again pre-loaded onto the handset and all easy to use once you've signed up.

There's also a fourth option – with Bluetooth built-in, you can fire over to another device wirelessly. All a bonus, but you do wish there was some kind of flash too, because the camera could and should be a real selling point.

If we use the humble iPod as a benchmark for portable audio, it's safe to say that the media player on-board the Nokia 7230 isn't anywhere near that level.

Getting your music on the handset is a case of drag and drop (or transfer via Bluetooth). Note that a cable for connecting to your PC doesn't come as standard, which is slightly frustrating. Once music is on the phone comes another disappointment, the sound quality.

Playback via either the external speakers or the included headphones has a distinct echo and even at moderate volume, the audio starts to break up slightly.

On the plus side, if your MP3 or AAC files are tagged, Nokia's player does a neat job of subdividing your tunes, as well as allowing you to create your own playlists and making it easy to send (as a message), upload or transfer your tracks wirelessly.

In summary, the functionality is good, but the audio quality is distinctly average.

Video playback tends to suffer from the small screen. If you like the idea of squinting at a 2.2-inch screen for entertainment, it might be for you. It's also good for checking those mini movies you've just shot, but for us we would prefer our video on a larger screen, like the HTC Tattoo, as a minimum.

If transferring tunes sounds or squinting at video sounds like a chore, the Nokia 7230 also comes with an FM radio. We're not usually impressed with such things on a mobile, but this one is a bit of a gem.

Autotune comes at a touch of a button, reception is good, as is the sound quality in relation to your average home FM radio.

The only slight annoyance is the radio being a few clicks away from the media interface, really it should be operating in the same zone. Note also that the radio only works with the headset, so no blasting Chris Moyles all over the morning bus commute - although you can switch to speaker mode if you're that way inclined.

The one plus of having less multimedia options on a phone is less wear and tear on your battery. We've been hammering the camera, the video recorder, the music player and the web access and the battery has stood up to it very well.

Talk time is over four hours, with standby at a healthy 14+ days and even with using all those added features, we found the battery didn't need to be charged for three to four days of heavy use. If you like your phone in your hand rather than in a socket, you'll like the Nokia 7230.

Nokia 7230: Organiser

If you find life drifting away from you, the on-board organiser might offer just the helping hand you need. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a calendar with the option to add notes and view appointments by day, week or month and little audio reminders of what's coming up.

Simple and effective, but no syncing with any online calendars if you are looking for that - that's par for the course at this price, with others like the INQ Mini 3G missing out on the synchronisation game too.

Other added tools include a calculator, alarm clock, a 'to-do' list, timer and stopwatch, as you would expect, along with a conversion tool for weights and currency, as well as a size convertor, should you be shopping in a foreign land.

You know, the kinds of things you don't know you need until you actually need them.

Connectivity

Connectivity on the Nokia 7230 has been steady, if unspectacular. Basic connection never died completely, but for a 3G phone, we haven't seen that 3G symbol nearly enough.

Ok, that might be down to the local network, but having used other handsets in the same area, this particular phone is certainly no better and occasionally, seems worse.

No Wi-Fi on board the Nokia 7230 as you have probably guessed, so when it comes to web browsing and accessing email, the variable 3G might be a problem. We have certainly found it frustrating.

The phone does come with Bluetooth and it's very easy to use. Testing it with a Mac, it's just a matter of turning it on, pairing and you're away. Transfer speeds were very brisk, with an MP3 transferring in less than a minute.

Just as well really. The lack of a cable to hook up to a PC in the box means Bluetooth is pretty much your only way of transferring data to and from a PC/Mac when you get the phone. If you do plan on picking up a 7230, make sure you grab the additional cable off the shelf too.

Nokia 7230: Other

There's a welcome bonus in Nokia's Maps being pre-installed on the phone, which offers up both mapping basics and directions to your chosen UK location.

No GPS here, but if you just want directions, the app is very nippy and as a helping hand round an unfamiliar town, Maps offers a very useful (and free) bonus.

Games are always included and the 7230 is no exception. Take your pick between trial titles and free favourites, specifically Asphalt 4 Elite, Bounce Tales, Brian Challenge, Midnight Pool 2 and Rally Stars, plus Snake 3 and Sudoku.

The trial games are slightly frustrating in that you can only get so far, but to be honest, none of them made us want to go out and buy.

Finally, a voice recorder can record all those moments of inspiration you have on the move. Decent sound, easy to use, a nice thing to have.

Nokia 7230: Comparison

Comparisons are tough because the 7230 falls between the budget market and higher-end sliders, but you might also want to check out the Sony Ericsson Aino , which adds more bulk and a bigger price tag, but does come with GPS, a far better media player and BBC iPlayer out of the box.

Alternatively, messaging and networking on a budget is available via the INQ Chat 3G coming in at under £100.

Finally, if you want your slider to multi-task, do media to a high standard and offer up a touchscreen interface too, check out the Palm Pre.

To compare the Nokia 7230 with the cutting-edge touchscreens of the day is unfair. After all, it's a moderately-priced handset that comes without any claims of being a world beater.

We liked

It's small, it's fairly stylish and it offers up just about all the basics you could ask of a mobile phone, even if some of those functions are more successful than others.

There's also 3G connectivity, a big plus for the price point.

It also comes with a range of apps and extras you might not expect for a phone in its price bracket, a good quality outdoor camera and decent web interaction for example, not to mention solid apps for social networking.

We disliked

But in the end, the Nokia 7230 is simply punching above its weight. Scratch the surface and many of those features just don't cut it against the big boys.

There's no denying that the Nokia 7230 is an attractive handset offering a budget-friendly 3G experience, good calling and messaging functionality, a strong battery life and some decent tools for both web use and social networking.

But intermittent problems with Ovi, a flash-free camera, poor quality media player and disappointing email highlight just why the handset sells in this price bracket.

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Review: Samsung Genio QWERTY

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:14:00 GMT

With a colourful chassis, full QWERTY keyboard and seriously budget price tag, the Samsung Genio QWERTY is squarely aimed at the younger social networker.

Available initially from Orange from under £70 on pre-pay, the Genio QWERTY is a very affordable alternative to BlackBerry-style message-centric devices.

It joins the low-cost touchscreen Genio Touch in Samsung's budget portfolio, with the Genio QWERTY leaving out the touch-and-swipe control interface and instead adopting a more conventional 2.2inch display and physical control system to wow its users.

It maintains the bright and colourful bodywork of the Genio Touch with swappable coloured back panels supplied in-box and others available as extras.

As well as emailing, texting and instant messaging capabilities, the Genio QWERTY is pitched at social network users.

The Orange-flavoured version we reviewed adds optimised online access to services via its Orange World portal, with links for services including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, Friendster and Photobucket.

There's no 3G to speed along online activity though (nor Wi-Fi, as you'd expect at this sort of price) – the Genio QWERTY is a quad-band GSM phone only, chomping through data at more modest GPRS/EDGE speeds.

The Samsung Genio QWERTY's onboard media capabilities include music and video player applications plus an FM radio – with a 3.5mm standard headphone jack so you can upgrade the supplied earphones.

Support for MicroSD card memory expansion is also included, and the Genio QWERTY's budget price tag is reflected in a modest 37MB of onboard storage.

The phone's camera snapping credentials are limited to a low-key 2MP camera on the back panel - but hey, you get what you pay for.

Design and handling

Samsung has trimmed costs with the display too. The 2.2-inch screen is a low-resolution (220x176 pixels) 65K-colour effort, rather than the sort of higher quality displays we've seen in recent Samsung devices.

That means graphics are a bit blockier and less refined, which is noticeable in graphic-rich applications such as web browsing and image viewing.

Like most BlackBerry-style devices, the display has a landscape orientation that's designed to be more messaging friendly on a wide-bodied device.

The Genio QWERTY's vital statistics – 110(h) x 59(w) x 12.9(d)mm and 94g – are slim and light enough to slip comfortably into a trouser pocket without questions over whether you're pleased to see people you meet.

The curvy plastic bodywork is reminiscent of several recent Samsungs including the Genio Touch, the Blade and the Jet.

Like the Genio Touch, its 'Fashion Jacket' back panel battery covers can be swapped. Included in our box were three such 'Jackets', in black, deep yellow and yellow with orange swirls, which work strikingly with the Genio QWERTY's glossy black with yellow and chrome trim front.

Side volume keys and the dedicated camera button on the side are splashed yellow, while the number keys on the QWERTY keyboard are also highlighted with yellow blocks, so you can quickly pick them out from the rest.

The 37-key QWERTY keypad isn't the most spacious we've encountered, although the four lines of keys are decently separated and contoured sufficiently.

This enabled accurate typing with one or two thumbs, and our large fingers didn't struggle too much in achieving reasonable typing speeds.

Among the QWERTY buttons are 'quick keys' for certain feature shortcuts, including new messages and the music player – although Samsung has also replicated some of these among its user interface shortcuts onscreen and via the navigation controls.

The control panel arrangement above the QWERTY keypad revolves around a typical navigation D-pad, which is nicely raised against the surface for quick and responsive thumb manipulation.

Immediately next to this are large softkey buttons, which initially feel oddly placed, as they're not adjacent to the relevant screen softkey options.

A bit of usage means you'll quickly get used it though. Call and End keys perch on either flank of the control panel, and again are pleasingly substantial.

Without touchscreen goings-on, the Samsung Genio QWERTY's user interface is based on a conventional type of Samsung menu system, with a grid format main menu and subsequent lists and tabs as you proceed through the phone using the navigation keypad.

The navigation pad also prompts the usual feature shortcuts – out of the box these include new message, music player, and a buddy list.

The buddy list allows you to display five of your favourite contacts, with photos, enabling you to make calls or send texts quickly and to view logs of your communications.

However, the home screen does have some customisation features, including a quick-access 'shortcuts toolbar', and a sidebar option which is enabled out of the box on the Orange version of the handset.

Both of these options can be switched on or off from within the menus, and if they're on, they restrict the navigation pad shortcuts.

These shortcut toolbar features are easy to operate and intuitive. Rows of feature icons are displayed, which can be browsed through and selected from the navigation pad.

They're not particularly whizzy or sophisticated like Samsung's TouchWiz touchscreen widgets.

The shortcuts toolbar, which runs in a strip across the bottom of the display, can be edited to your tastes; five shortcuts are pre-set (messaging inbox, new message, music player, organiser and alarms), though up to 15 can be used, and all can be assigned to one of a dozen features or applications.

It's a useful option to have to hand, though not a particularly special feature.

Oddly, it's switched on or off via the phone's wallpaper menu rather than the separate Shortcuts Toolbar menu (which is used for editing options only).

With the Orange sidebar activated, though, the Shortcuts toolbar option can't be selected, as they won't work together, like some sort of Sharks and Jets dance face-off.

The out-of-the-box Orange sidebar can be switched off or activated via the Home screen menu options, again quirkily located in the Phone Settings menu rather than in the Display and Light menus.

Navigation of the sidebar differs slightly from the simple highlight-and-select shortcuts toolbar.

As you scroll down the sidebar, you can also scroll across to get additional options for that particular icon – for example, different messaging options under the Messages icon, or links to different parts of the Orange World portal from that icon.

Again, it's not particularly innovative, but it makes accessing certain applications quicker and easier directly from the home screen.

Not that the Genio QWERTY's menu system isn't accessible enough in itself. Samsung's convention of using numbers next to sub menu options for quick selection is used again here, cutting down on having to continuously scroll as you drill down through the sub menus.

Apart from the quirkily placed shortcuts settings mentioned above, most of the Genio QWERTY's menus appear straightforward to work through and uncluttered, so shouldn't present too many issues for Samsung newcomers.

Although the numberpad is incorporated into the compact QWERTY keypad, it's not too difficult to accurately tap in new numbers.

The number keys are highlighted in bright yellow and arranged in conventional numberpad formation, so while they're not as finger-friendly as a generously proportioned keypad, they are easy enough to pick out.

Accessing contacts is straightforward, whichever shortcut set-up you opt for, and there are numerous fields you can add to the basic contact details on the handset.

As previously mentioned, you can set up a Buddy list as a shortcut, enabling you to view up to five favourite contacts on 'cards', with photo images assigned if available.

Selecting these enables you to call or text the individual contact, and you can see communications with Buddy contacts listed in chronological order.

The call performance of the Samsung Genio QWERTY came across loud and clear. We had sufficient volume at both ends and the earpiece sounded bright and pleasant during calls.

The phone also maintained a solidly reliable signal performance throughout our tests - something we're constantly noticing budget phones manage ahead of their much more expensive counterparts.

The core appeal of the Samsung Genio QWERTY is, of course, the QWERTY keyboard. While not everyone prefers these to a regular numberpad for texting, the Genio QWERTY does offer a very affordable option for those who do.

This style of keyboard, popularised by the BlackBerry, has been done by Samsung before, but the Genio QWERTY takes it down to mass market for those who want to pump out messages or do plenty of online social networking updates.

While the individual keys are quite tiny, they are sufficiently usable and we didn't have any major issues tapping away at it.

Sure, we'd have liked more room to stretch our fingers, but we found it accurate and were able to get reasonably good speeds with it, even with our large thumbs.

Changing texts to multimedia messages is a matter of pressing an Options softkey and selecting multimedia file to add from the phone (or memory card).

On the Orange-branded Genio QWERTY we reviewed, the Orange Messenger Windows Live Messenger-powered instant messaging application was pre-loaded, enabling users to get IM on the handset in a similar way to a desktop PC.

It also had Orange Email preloaded onto the phone's email client, which you can use to aggregate various email accounts into one account, if that appeals to you.

The email client also makes it reasonably straightforward to set up some regular web-based or ISP email accounts.

Settings are pre-installed for various popular email services, including Hotmail and Google Mail, and an email wizard takes you through the procedure to add your email account address, password and username for POP3 or IMAP4 email access.

If the email provider you want to use isn't included, you can type in details manually.

You can set up up to five different email accounts and switch between them when you select the email inbox option in the messaging menus.

The email user interface and functionality is pretty average though. It's a low-tier Samsung client, with a functional mobile phone look rather than being anything more desktop PC-style or BlackBerry-esque.

You can select headers you want to open, and basic no-frills text from the email is downloaded.

There was a limit, however, of 100 email headers at a time on our review sample, after which some had to be deleted – something many may find insufficient.

The phone does support attachment downloading and storing, although there isn't any document reader software to open them on the screen – you can view jpeg images, but not Word documents or PDFs, for example – which is a shame for a messaging-orientated device.

Overall, we'd have expected a bit more for a device clearly geared up for messaging as a priority feature.

The lack of high-speed 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity hampers the web browsing capabilities of the Samsung Genio QWERTY.

The phone sports a familiar sort of lower range Samsung Access NetFront 3.5 browser.

This works adequately at negotiating mobile optimised sites, including BBC News and network operator portals, where speed isn't a huge issue.

It does trundle along slowly when downloading other full webpages, such as TechRadar, and it doesn't support Flash.

We also got 'insufficient memory' messages when downloading some webpages. It isn't ideally suited if you're after an enjoyable browsing experience – the screen also lacks the resolution of standard issue mobiles so visually isn't that attractive.

In addition, with an average mobile menu based user interface for selecting options, it's a less than slick browser.

There is the facility to use online social networking services on the SamsungGenio QWERTY, with links to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, Friendster and Photobucket.

The Orange-optimised model we reviewed provides a selection of services via its Orange World mobile phone-optimised portal. They do work adequately, but some may prefer a slicker online experience.

The budget nature of the Samsung Genio QWERTY also becomes apparent when you turn to the camera. It's a low-key affair compared to some of Samsung's recent cameraphone efforts; it does the shooting essentials, but the 2-megapixel camera isn't high on quality imaging.

As you might expect from a down-range camera, it lacks autofocus and flash capabilities, so is more for casual fun snap-and-send shots than anything more serious.

The camera fires up in just a couple of seconds, displaying the viewfinder across the width of the landscape display.

You may find that this makes it slightly more intuitive to snap shots using the D-pad control rather than the camera side button.

The user interface is simple to operate, and includes a familiar array of regulation cameraphone settings options and effects to override the auto system.

These include white balance adjustment, multiple shots and mosaic images (which automatically shoot in low res), resolution setting options, night mode, timer, plus colour tinting effects and frames

Image results, though, are lacklustre and lack the level of detail you can get for a few quid more on other cameraphones. Colour balance is reasonable, and shots do look bright with natural colours.

MIXED SCENE: The 2-megapixel fixed focus camera on the Samsung Genio Qwerty is pretty basic – it's okay for snap'n'send images, but offers limited image detail and quality; here images are slightly soft and detail around trees and the sky is imprecise

CLOSE UP: The fixed focus lens means you can't choose the focal point for a shot, so close up images can't be sharply defined

STRONG LIGHT: Even in strong lighting conditions, images can be soft with subdued colour and lacking in detail

LONG RANGE: Longer-range shots aren't crisp, and in moderate lighting detail is poorly defined

MID RANGE: Mid-range shots also suffer from softness and lacklustre colour presentation

BRIGHT COLOUR: You can get okay shots reasonably close to the subject. Here, colour rendition is decent enough

MIXED SCENE: This street scene again shows a slightly subdued and soft image with a lack of definition

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT: For this grade of cameraphone, the autometering system does a reasonable job with artificial light in dark conditions, although without a flash in dark environments image quality is poor

In dark conditions, without a flash the night mode option doesn't offer much of an improvement to low light shooting, boosting gain but adding more noise to shots.

Overall, though, it's a low-grade budget snapper compared to other recent Samsung offerings.

Video shooting quality isn't up to much, with low resolution QCIF (176x144 pixels) recording at 15 frames per second providing basic quality images for even a low cost cameraphone.

The Samsung Genio QWERTY supports H.263, H.264, MPEG4 and WMV video file formats, although not DivX or Xvid files like some higher end Samsungs.

The screen space and resolution limit the quality and viewability you can expect from the player however.

The phone's music player provides a better than average audio performance however, with a 3.5mm standard headphone socket on top enabling you to upgrade the in-box ear-wear with your own earphones.

The supplied headset isn't bad, though – the in-ear earphones are a few notches above what you'd normally expect from a budget phone.

Sound quality is decent, delivering loud volume, plenty of low-end thump and an acceptable amount of detail.

It's not a particularly subtle performance, but it's more than you'd expect from a budget handset - and you can upgrade sound quality easily with better headphones.

The music player software is familiar Samsung stuff; tunes downloaded or sideloaded to the phone or slipped in on a memory card are automatically filed under appropriate categories.

The user interface is low-key but serviceable, and does the job. When playing, the D-pad takes care of control business in regular fashion, with cover art supported if available.

Among the other options, there are several equalizer sounds, shuffle control and so on. MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA files are supported.

No USB data cable is supplied in-box nor Samsung PC Studio software – they're an optional extra if you want to copy over music that way.

You can still copy files via Bluetooth, or slip them in on a MicroSD card – the Genio QWERTY can accommodate cards up to 8GB. Orange Music Store service is also supported on Orange-branded handsets.

On top of the music player there's an FM radio function with RDS covering 87.5Mhz-108Mhz frequencies.

As well as being a breeze to tune in and use, either automatically or manually, you can record clips from the radio to play back on the phone.

Without 3G or higher spec power-hungry features like GPS or Wi-Fi to sap juice, the Samsung Genio QWERTY puts in a decent battery performance.

Samsung reckons on its 800mAh power pack clocking up up to 7.5 hours of talktime or up to 390 hours on standby.

In our tests, the handset doggedly kept going for 3-4 days between recharges with our normal phone usage. Extensive use of the music player or online services, though, could soon see you slim that performance down, however.

Organiser

A regulation set of Samsung organiser functions are loaded onto the Genio QWERTY, including calendar, memo, tasks, world clock, calculator, converter and alarms.

All are straightforward to use and intuitive, with a functional layout and operation. A voice recorder, stopwatch and timer are also included.

Connectivity

The Samsung Genio QWERTY is a quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 handset, and doesn't support 3G data connectivity, relying on GPRS/EDGE for online connectivity.

This limits its online speed for browsing and uploading or downloading content.

The handset supports stereo Bluetooth with A2DP, so you can use wireless stereo headsets and stream music to other Bluetooth devices such as wireless speakers.

While the phone supports USB connectivity via a MicroUSB port on the top of the phone, there's no USB cable included in-box (presumably for cost reasons).

No software disc for PC syncing is included either, though you could download the relevant Samsung PC Studio software online.

As mentioned previously, the Genio QWERTY does support MicroSD cards up to 8GB. The slot is under the back cover and requires the battery to be removed for access.

Other

The Genio QWERTY doesn't do too much extra fancy stuff. There are a trio of demo versions of games, which you can buy if you like them.

A typing training application is included, just in case you've bought a QWERTY keyboard-packing phone without knowing how to type.

On the Orange version of the Genio QWERTY there's an Orange Widgets application that enables you to get online updates and headlines for sports, news, entertainment and weather, plus an online search facility.

The updates are effectively a series of RSS feed consolidated into one Widgets application, so nothing groundbreaking.

Bringing a full QWERTY keyboard to the budget mobile market, the Samsung Genio QWERTY is device that will interest a particular type of buyer rather than have mass appeal.

The relatively cheap QWERTY keyboard is the chief draw, with a sprinkling of messaging functionality in that's aimed to grab the cash-strapped youth market.

A decent music player and colourful swappable casings add to the attraction.

However, it is a limited handset. The email messaging functionality is budget rather than top drawer, its browser is run of the mill and there's no 3G.

It doesn't have the largest or most detailed display and its camerawork is mediocre. Its social networking credentials aren't as well integrated either as a device such as the INQ Chat 3G, which costs a bit extra but delivers a better all-round package.

We liked

The QWERTY keyboard is small but perfectly manageable, even with our large fingers typing away.

The conventional menu layout is easy to follow and intuitive to operate, so newcomers should have no problems using it.

The music player offers a decent audio performance, with higher grade than average earphones supplied plus a standard 3.5mm headphone socket for easy upgrading to higher quality headphones, should you prefer to.

Colourful casings offer something a bit different to the normal business orientated BlackBerry look most QWERTY-equipped handsets adopt. Battery life was good too.

We disliked

The display was disappointingly low resolution. The lack of 3G hampers the connection speeds for browsing and online services – some of the supposed attractions of the handset.

The browser, too, is standard issue average mobile browser that's functional but limited.

We were surprised that the email client wasn't more sophisticated for a messaging-centric handset.

It'll disappoint those expecting a near-desktop style experience. A lack of a USB cable and software reflects its budget status though we'd have liked to have them in-box for syncing.

The camera is a mediocre entry-level 2-megapixel shooter, with a poor video capture performance.

Verdict

Samsung is aiming at a particular type of youthful buyer with its colourful, QWERTY keyboard-packing Genio QWERTY.

It does the basics well and its compact keyboard has a fast enough action for speedy mobile typing.

It offers some decent features, such as a good music player, though others, such as the camera, are limited and down-range.

Its messaging credentials are reasonably good for a budget model, if not the best around, and it is one of the cheapest models you can get if a QWERTY keyboard-equipped handset is what you're after.

Related Links

Review: Samsung Genio Slide

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:09:00 GMT

Samsung has fused elements of both the Genio Touch and the Genio QWERTY to come up with a hybrid device – the Genio Slide.

The Samsung Genio Slide combines a 2.8-inch touchscreen display and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and sports the colourful swappable back panels and youth-targeted features – with an emphasis on social networking – that mark the previous Genio models.

However, the Genio Slide packs a far more powerful feature punch than its Genio mates – and consequently has much wider appeal.

Unlike its predecessors, the Genio Slide is a 3G-enabled handset, with high-speed HSDPA mobile data support (up to 7.2Mbps) and Wi-Fi connectivity built in.

It also has A-GPS satellite-based location finding onboard.

Cranking up the downloading and uploading speeds opens up the Genio Slide's potential for a quicker and more enjoyable online media experience than the EDGE/GPRS-only Genio Touch and Genio QWERTY.

For instance, as well as faster applications such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, in the UK the Genio Slide comes with a BBC iPlayer app already installed, offering live and catch-up TV and radio programmes.

It also has pre-loaded links to mobile TV streaming services.

Onboard 3G also allows for video calling on this model, with a front-facing camera complementing the main 3.2-megapixel camera on the back of the phone.

In addition, Samsung aims to keep mobile music listeners happy by providing a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on top of the bodywork.

The review sample we tested also arrived with a 2GB MicroSD card included in the box, and memory cards up to 16GB are supported.

Initially, the Samsung Genio Slide is debuting in the UK for free on contract deals and £120 on pay as you go, where it's currently being offered by Vodafone and Tesco Mobile.

Like the others in the Genio series, the Genio Slide has a smooth, curvy build, similar to recent Korean offerings, like the Samsung Jet and Samsung Blade.

The Genio Slide has a broader girth, thanks to the sliding keyboard tucked away behind the screen, but the phone's dimensions – at 105(h) x 56.9(w) x 15.68(d) mm and 135g – give it a compact and solid feel.

It's impressive that despite it bringing a full QWERTY keyboard, it's no pocket bulger, so you won't get anyone asking if you're pleased to see them.

Pitching for the youth vote, the Samsung Genio Slide comes with swappable 'Fashion Jacket' back panels, adding a bit of customisation potential for would-be buyers.

Three of the clip-on covers are included in-box – with our sample we got a business-like black cover, plus two white ones, one with a retro swirly pattern on it.

It's hardly a deal-maker, but some users may welcome the chance to get away from the normal black touchscreen look and go a bit funk-a-delic.

From the front, though, the Samsung Genio Slide does have an archetypal Samsung touchscreen design – it's glossy black minimalist, with just Call, End and a central Menu button under the display.

The 2.8-inch QVGA (240x320 pixels) touchscreen display is a resistive type rather than a higher-end iPhone 3GS-like capacitive one, so doesn't have multi-touch and the smooth flowing action of Apple's headliner.  

The 2.8-inch screen isn't as lengthy as some we've seen and its wider dimensions are similar to those of the Samsung Blade.

Around the sides is a familiar combination of camera, screen lock/unlock and volume/zoom controls, plus a Micro-USB port and that useful 3.5mm headphone socket on the top of the phone.

The slide-out QWERTY keyboard is the real design eye-catcher though. While not exactly novel for a touchscreen phone, it's still quite rare at this sort of price point.

The sprung slider action is smooth and easy but feels firm in place ready for twin-thumb tapping.

Slipping it out immediately switches the screen orientation from portrait to landscape. The metallic red keypad uses almost the length of the slider tray, so despite minimal gaps between them, the 42 buttons on the keypad have sufficient room.

Keys are slightly contoured to differentiate between them as you're typing away, and the key action is responsive.

It's possible for finger tapping messages while resting on a desk, though we expect thumb-typing in-hand will be the favoured input method for most people.

We found the keypad accurate enough for brisk, fluent typing of messages, and generally we had no major gripes about its user-friendliness.

Keys are sensibly arranged and labelled well enough, and the Samsung Genio Slide also contains a couple of keys for quickly opening up new messages or launching the browser.

As with any phone keyboard, it takes a little getting used to if you want to improve your speed.

Initially we didn't find it quite as comfortable as the larger (and much more expensive) Nokia N97 Mini, for instance and the Samsung text input system occasionally doesn't feel as intuitive when you're adding punctuation. But very quickly we got decent thumb-typing speeds up on it.

The Samsung Genio Slide uses a version of the TouchWiz user interface Samsung has rolled out on many of its touchscreen models, which incorporates onscreen widgets for the phone's home screen.

Brought up onscreen by a tap of the central menu button or one of three onscreen buttons at the foot of the display (marked Keypad, Phonebook and Menu), the main menu system is arranged in familiar grid formation.

Rather than one menu screen, however, there are three main menu screens, with up to 12 icons on each screen representing applications and features (again similar to the Samsung Jet).

Users can slide between screens with a sideways finger stroke, bringing a nicely usable spread of features to hand without having to delve too deeply into sub-menus to find useful apps.

As well as being visually attractive, it's more intuitive to see key apps laid out like this.

The main menu icons can easily be rearranged to suit how you use the phone, so you can cluster certain applications together if you prefer.

Four buttons remain consistently at the base of the display as you swipe through the main menu – Keypad, Phonebook, Messages and Exit – giving handy access to core functions.

The resistive touchscreen responds well enough to finger action. The user interface allows enough room for fingers to select and scroll without any major mis-pressing issues.

The screen isn't as slick to the touch as the iPhone 3GS or the HTC Legend or other higher end models, and doesn't gave the kinetic scrolling feel of such devices, but it isn't noticeably laggy, and haptic feedback acknowledges presses.

It feels comfortable enough to use without being particularly whizzy. We'd have preferred visible scroll bars in some sub-menu lists (these appear only when you're scrolling) so that you don't miss options as you flick through, but otherwise the menu system was straightforward to handle in a functional way.

Users can choose whether to install widgets on the home screen or not. A variety of widgets can be selected from a pop-out toolbar on the side of the display (or bottom if the phone's held sideways with the keyboard out).

They can be dragged onto the main area of the screen, enabling users to open up and use plenty of applications and services directly from the home screen.

As many widgets as are available can be placed on the home screen – though practically, users will probably limit these to avoid clutter.

Like other Samsung touchscreen phones, the home screen set-up actually comprises three linked home screen pages that can be flicked between using a simple swipe of the finger.

This allows users enough screen space to arrange as many widgets as they fancy without the compact screen looking too busy – and users can choose to arrange home screen widgets under the three pages as effectively separate 'categories'.

It adds a bit of flexibility, although you can't copy the same widgets to more than one of the home screen pages at any one time.

Out of the box, there are around 30 application widgets you can bring up onscreen. These range from functional features such as various clocks, calendar, memo and profile functions to music player, Wi-Fi, FM radio and photo viewer controls.

In addition, there's a range of widgets for online apps. These range from the BBC's iPlayer service to a host of social network and content sharing services – including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Bebo and so on.

These provide fast access to services for uploading content, managing accounts and updating profiles.

Other online services include an AccuWeather.com weather forecasting app, Bloomberg news, and a More Widgets app to help you find and download additional widgets for free directly from Samsung.
 The widget interface is very intuitive and easy to operate.

A tap of the screen opens up the widgets toolbar, from which you can drag and drop any number of widgets with a finger stroke, swap them around in seconds and re-do any time you fancy.

They can provide regular updates on the home screen from social networking sites and enable you to manage accounts and profiles quickly and easily using the native applications.

Other widgets provide access to useful information and shortcuts to activate or control functions (such as music, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth activation) straight from the home screen, potentially reducing finger work for many functions you regularly use.

From the home screen or main menu, it's simple to make calls either by tapping the onscreen phonebook or keypad buttons, as appropriate, or selecting your recent call log by tapping the Call button beneath the display.

You can dial using the slide-out keyboard too, tapping the top row number buttons in standby.

The phonebook can be browsed with a speed-scrolling tab that enables you to jump through contacts by initial letter, or you can tap in names using the (real or soft) keyboard in a similar way to the LG Intouch Max GW620.

There are multiple fields for contact details in the phonebook which provide for a variety of work and personal information to be added.

Doing the basics of making and taking calls, the Samsung Genio Slide delivers an assured performance, providing good quality audio reception at a consistently high level.

We had no issues or complaints from those receiving calls during our tests. Network reliability on our Vodafone-optimised sample was as good as we needed – it connected when needed without problems.

Naturally, with a sizeable QWERTY keyboard slipping out from the side, messaging ability is one of the key selling points of the Genio Slide.

As mentioned previously, the smooth keyboard action and sensibly sized layout make it a comfortable, accurate and speedy text tapping experience.

Directional arrow keys also aid corrections to text or inserting words rather than having to rely on accurate touchscreen pressing mid-word.

You can type out messages without sliding out the keyboard. Instead, a soft phone-style numberpad appears onscreen, which works pretty efficiently.

Unlike on some longer screen handsets, the number keys don't spread the full width of the screen – a row of control buttons are on the right of the 3, 6 and 9 keys – but there is still adequate finger space to avoid mis-hitting buttons. We found it easy enough to operate.

Predictive text guesses what you're typing and presents options to complete words, though you can switch this off if you prefer.

Samsung addresses the correction/word insertion issue for touchscreen phone by using a directional arrow option among the control keys – so users can position the cursor quickly and accurately without requiring pinpoint finger pressing accuracy on the touchscreen.

It's a decent system – maybe not as quick for speed texters as a regular phone, but it's good for a touchscreen phone with this 2.8-inch screen size.

Also included are two onscreen handwriting input options, which work reasonably well if not effortlessly smoothly; as usual, a bit of practice helps pin down accuracy.

Email is supported on the phone, although the email wizard on our review sample didn't provide fully automatic settings installation – we still had to input POP3 and SMTP server details as well as email account name, password and username.

We were also very impressed that Microsoft Exchange, via ActiveSync, was supported on the phone as well; work emails for £120 is a pretty good value offering.

The email user interface is fairly standard issue for a mid-level Samsung touchscreen phone.

It's no replacement for a BlackBerry and isn't as sophisticated as some smartphone offerings, but it does enable you to view emails, create your own and manage your account.

Account and messaging options are mainly menu-based though there are onscreen buttons for the basics of operating the messaging system.

Email attachments are supported, with onboard document viewer software enabling you to look at PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint and Excel documents.

This viewer app also allows documents sideloaded to the phone or slipped in on a memory card to be viewed onscreen (although editing isn't possible).

The Genio Slide supports instant messaging too, with a Palringo IM software client pre-installed that works with all the major IM services, enabling you to keep contacts all on one list, get updates on status, share content and location information.

The Genio Slide is stocked with a good helping of online applications, with its bundle of social networking applications complemented by some useful additional applications such as BBC iPlayer.

The iPlayer works very tidily over Wi-Fi connections, enabling users to view live TV and listen to radio shows online, and to catch up with radio and TV shows via its streaming service, with decent quality video playback.

The Genio Slide uses Samsung's Webkit-based Dolfin Browser v1.5, and with both HSDPA 3G connectivity (up to 7.2Mbps) and Wi-Fi onboard, users can enjoy a swift browsing experience.

The touchscreen control button presents an intuitive user interface for a mobile phone browser.

It doesn't match up to the iPhone in terms of slick usability, but it does better than most browsers of its budget touchscreen class, and it does support Flash Lite.

Occasionally, however, we did get 'memory full' messages when loading larger webpages - irritating and harking back to the earlier, darker days of touchscreen phones when breathing on the device would send it into a RAM-crushing frenzy.

Its controls include an address bar, forward and back buttons plus reload and bookmark buttons, while you can scroll with a finger movement or zoom in and out with a long finger press onscreen, then moving up or down.

It's not pinch-to-zoom smooth but does the job in an unfussy way. As you'd expect, the browser can be viewed in full landscape mode too, plus there's an RSS reader function in the software (accessible by the menu).

The Samsung Genio Slide's 3.2-megapixel camera has a very user-friendly touchscreen user interface – consistent with Samsung's higher-grade cameraphones – but its fixed focus shooter is a middle of the range shooter in terms of overall image quality.

The camera takes only a couple of seconds to fire up from standby, with a press of the side-mounted camera button. The camera automatically switches into landscape view, with eight control icons dotted either side of the display.

The camera has a reasonable set of function options for this grade of snapper – it incorporates functions such as a Smile Shot (when engaged it waits to spot a smile before the snap is taken), multi-shot shooting, and a rather neat motion sensor accelerometer-aided panorama shooting mode that stitches together shots with barely any effort from the user.

A bunch of modes are available for different kinds of lighting environments or shooting situations including a night mode and sports mode for fast moving objects.

Timer and brightness controls are included, plus regular settings adjustments for white balance and a series of colour-tint effects.

You can use image editing software to tweak snaps and add post-shooting effects, text, captions, clip art and so on, with easy to use onscreen tools

OUTDOORS: The Samsung Genio Slide has a fixed focus 3.2-megapixel camera that offers a decent user interface but limited shooting performance. Images are reasonable for this sort of camera but detail and quality are limited

TONES: Colour reproduction is rich for snaps, and it handles tones reasonably well, though the shot appears slightly soft

NATURAL LIGHT: Again, it produces colourful snaps with a decent tonal range, but it is somewhat soft where you may be expecting crisper detail

CLOUDY DAY: It takes reasonable shots in murky conditions, dealing effectively with changing contrast and lighting conditions

FOLIAGE: The lack of focus control means you have to shoot and hope when it comes to getting objects in focus. Here, the colours look acceptably vivid, but it's not capable of selecting the foreground branches to be in focus

OVERCAST: Taken in subdued overcast conditions, colours look fine, though there is a bit of burn out of the trees against the sky in the background

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT: Without any sort of flash or LED illumination shots taken inside in artificial light are soft and unsatisfactory

LOW LIGHT: In darker conditions, like this shot in the early evening, the camera is unable to produce more than a basic low quality shooting performance with grainy images

PANORAMA: The panorama shooting mode works really well – using the automatic motion sensor inside, the camera can quickly match up frames and stitch them together for easy panoramas. You can't get full the highest quality images in this mode, however

SPORTS MODE: There is a sports mode for capturing moving subjects

As is common on mid-tier Samsungs, it's also possible to upload images straight to online services and social networking sites – all you have to do is select which you want from a pre-defined list of services.

With a 3.2-megapixel camera with a fixed focus lens, you can't expect superb shooting results, but for this grade of cameraphone, the Genio Slide puts in a respectable performance.

Of course, with no focus control you can't get beautifully focused compositions, but the camera is able to take decent snaps with naturally rich colour rendition, competent automatic handling of exposure and contrast plus a reasonable level of detail for this sort of camera.

With no flash or photo light of any description, however, low light shooting isn't great, and in dark environments results are poor.  

The Genio Slide can also capture video, although shooting at maximum QVGA quality (320x240 pixels) at 15 frames per second, it is limited in terms of playback quality. It'll do for online uploads perhaps, but it's pretty lacklustre low-grade phone level.

Video playback on the Samsung Genio Slide's large screen is acceptable. Of course, anyone who wants a richer media experience may prefer a larger, higher-grade touchscreen model, but it does an adequate job within its 2.8-inch QVGA limitations.

It supports H.263, MPEG4, WMV, WAV and DivX file formats, and the media player user interface is very straightforward and simple to work.

The BBC iPlayer application provides a pleasing entertainment extra too. It delivers radio and TV programmes from the BBC's excellent online service direct to the handset via Wi-Fi (although sadly nothing from 3G).

Streamed content from the online iPlayer service looks pretty good on the screen, although the Genio Slide's screen ratio means the playback is slightly letterboxed.

However, it's another useful source of free online entertainment for Genio Slide buyers. Its user interface is simple to follow and operate, while a Widget option for the home screen allows you to access it quickly from standby.

The music player's controls are uncomplicated too. It supports MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA formats, and tracks can be downloaded over the air or sideloaded onto the phone, using supplied Samsung Kies software or synced with Windows Media Player on a PC using the in-box data cable.

Alternatively, you can load tracks straight on to a MicroSD card and slip it in – the music player software automatically adds tunes to its list of tracks.

The 2GB MicroSD card supplied with the handset is particularly welcome, boosting the phone's 100MB of onboard storage.

MicroSDs of up to 16GB can be used with the handset. Bluetooth is also supported and can be used to transfer tracks.

The music player doesn't do anything particularly novel or eye-catching. Its UI is simple but is functional and works efficiently enough. Tracks are listed in familiar categories and the control includes large touch buttons plus a draggable timeline and cover art support for easy choon navigation.

As with the Genio QWERTY and Genio Touch, Samsung has included a 3.5mm standard headphone socket on top of the phone, so users can easily plug in their own headphones if they want to upgrade the supplied earwear.

Samsung has boxed a decent quality in-ear set of earphones with the Genio Slide, however, so you can get a very acceptable performance out of the box.

Through the in-box ear-wear – which comes as a two-piece headset with snug fitting plastic earbuds – audio quality is pretty good, with a well-balanced range with good mid and high frequencies plus a substantial bass presence giving a decently rounded sound with plenty of dynamism.

The phone also comes with a built in FM radio function; again it delivers a solid performance and is easy to tune and operate with an easy to follow touch user interface.

It can also record sound clips from the radio as files you can listen back to later. A song identification application is also included which will sample tracks you hear on the radio and deliver details over the air back to the phone.

This Find Music application can also be used with songs you hear around you, with the app slotted into one of the Main Menu screens.

We got a decent battery performance out of the Genio Slide. It has plenty of functionality inside that can sap battery power, but it delivered an acceptable amount of juice during our tests.

The 960mAh battery back is expected by Samsung to deliver up to 390 hours of standby time on 3G networks (or 560 hours in GSM-only coverage), or up to 230 minutes of talktime on 3G (490 minutes on GSM-only networks).

We managed 2-3 days between charges with minimal Wi-Fi usage, though with more online activity we did find ourselves charging more frequently; how exactly you use the phone will determine what mileage you get before a refill is required.

However, the Samsung Genio Slide outperformed much more expensive smartphones with nearly 40% larger batteries, so on that aspect alone it can't be faulted.

Organiser

The Samsung Genio Slide packs a standard set of organiser tools for a Samsung mid-tier model.

These include calendar, memo, voice recorder, task, calculator, convertor, world clock, calculator and world clock functions.

There aren't many gimmicky elements to the organiser tools; they're generally functional and work effectively with the touchscreen interface, without much graphical eye-candy to distract.

Connectivity

The Samsung Genio Slide is a dual-band (900/2100 MHz) 3G handset, utilising HSDPA mobile data connectivity boasting data download of up to 7.2Mbps (although average real life speeds are always lower on any phone).

Operating outside of 3G coverage, the phone is a quad-band GSM model (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), supporting lower speed EDGE and GPRS data connectivity.

Higher speed 3G data connectivity may make the Genio Slide a much more attractive proposition than the Genio QWERTY or Genio Touch for those that want to use its online-focused services.

But the addition of Wi-Fi really seals the deal on that score, providing high speed connectivity on home Wi-Fi networks, on office WLANs or via public Wi-Fi hotspots.

It makes it a more versatile device than others in the Genio range, and can deliver a far more satisfactory experience and better services than those handsets.

Bluetooth 2.1, featuring wireless stereo streaming A2DP for wireless headphones, speakers, etc., is included.

The phone also supports USB 2.0 connectivity, using a microUSB port multi-connector socket and there's a USB data cable packaged in-box.

Exchange ActiveSync is supported for over the air syncing of contacts, calendar events, email, and tasks with a remote Microsoft Exchange server.

Samsung Kies software suite is supplied on CD, enabling back up and transfer of personal information management data with a Windows PC plus content management and sharing of content. Over the air online backup using ActiveSync is supported too.

For the price, Samsung Genio Slide users get a very attractive set of features. Among these is A-GPS satellite positioning technology built in.

Google Maps v3.0.2 is pre-loaded as part of a suite of Google services which include Google Search and Google Mail applications.

Google Maps provides the usual mapping information, over the air route planning and navigation, plus search options for local information on businesses and services.

The software works effectively with the touchscreen interface and is intuitive to operate, while the A-GPS works smartly enough at locating positions.

It's an extremely useful app to have to hand, and you can get Street View and opt into Google Latitude from the handset.

In addition, if you get a Vodafone-branded Genio Slide, it comes with Telmap application pre-loaded that enables you to get online Sat Nav capability on the handset. Unfortunately our review sample wasn't recognised so we couldn't trial it.

In addition to the BBC iPlayer software mentioned previously, the Genio Slide's array of native social networking services mention earlier give this device plenty of appeal for its target audience looking for a touchscreen experience on a budget.

Other features include a raft of control options familiar to mid-tier Samsung handsets, including etiquette pause (you turn over the phone and the current sound of an incoming call alert or alarm is muted) and its quirky Fake Call feature (at the press of a button you can initiate a fake incoming call with a recorded message).

Samsung's Smart Unlock system, which uses pre-defined character strokes onscreen to unlock the display or launch specific features, is included too, while a batch of games – mostly trial versions – are pre-loaded.

The Samsung Genio Slide is the most attractive of Samsung's Genio clan to date, packed with the sort of features you wouldn't normally expect of a phone at this price.

With 3G HSDPA and Wi-Fi, its collection of social networking options are decent enough to use. A-GPS is a welcome bonus, while its entertainment options – including a fine-sounding music player and native BBC iPlayer application – add to the appeal.

You also get a fair amount of in-box memory card storage and good earphones as standard.

The slide-out QWERTY keyboard has a finger-friendly action that's good enough for a device of this sort, while this touchscreen phone package is compact enough to carry around without overloading your pocket.

Sure, its resistive touchscreen won't give you the enjoyably slick finger-flicking pleasures of an iPhone or other capacitive screen-equipped high-enders.

The control set-up is more functional than flash, although there are some useful touches like the TouchWiz home screen widgets.

At this sort of price point, though, the Genio Slide offers a terrific amount of functionality.

We liked

The amount of features you get for your money makes the Genio Slide stand out. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard combined with the touchscreen control are the immediate headline grabbers, and we were pretty happy with the keyboard action.

But high-speed connectivity using Wi-Fi or HSDPA and the addition of A-GPS give this handset a significant edge over it range mates and other rivals in the price bracket.

The online functionality of the handset – including a reasonable touchscreen browser, Google Maps, a crop of social networking apps and an easy to use BBC iPlayer app – provide the phone with plenty to entertain.

It also sports a pleasing music player (and a 3.5mm headphone jack socket!), and comes with a 2GB memory card in-box... and let's not forget you can swap back panels if customisation is your thing.

We disliked

It would have been good to have had a capacitive multi-touchscreen, but you can't get everything at this sort of price point.

The 2.8-inch screen isn't the biggest either. The dimensions affect some control elements, such as the space available for widgets and the text numberpad layout– although the QWERTY keyboard deals with the latter issue.

Generally, though, there was a reasonable amount of space to work fingers onscreen.

We occasionally found the multi-screen home screen swiping trying, as we attempted to avoid dabbing widgets as we stroked our way through the busy screens.

We'd have preferred a better email wizard for automatic settings installation, too, on a messaging-centric device.

The 3.2-megapixel camera has a decent interface, but image results were limited by its fixed focus lens and lack of additional flash illumination.

Although we found the browser easy to operate, it felt underpowered sometimes when rendering large rich pages.

Verdict

Pitched at the youth market, the Samsung Genio Slide certainly delivers a terrific feature package for a low-cost touchscreen handset, with a roll-call of functionality you'd expect of a higher-end model.

It's miles cheaper than the similarly-specified LG Intouch Max GW620 Android phone, and manages to offer similar functionality in most places.

Its slide out QWERTY keypad and social apps mark it out as a messaging and social networking heavy-hitter but it also delivers plenty of entertainment and loads of useful gadgetry for your bucks.

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Review: Nokia X3

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:00:00 GMT

The Nokia X3 is a slim, budget offering from the Finns. With no touchscreen and modest memory, it still has pretensions of being an attractive music device with a low cost to boot.

While the recent Nokia X6 touchscreen topped the rebranded X-series music phone bill with smartphone functionality and a heavyweight 32GB of onboard memory, the Nokia X3 is a much more modest affair.

It works the signature Nokia XpressMusic design look again, sporting bright red or blue music player controls down the side of the display, and comes with a 2GB MicroSD memory card in-box, a standard 3.5mm headphone socket, in-ear earphones and an FM radio.

However, there's no high-speed 3G connectivity, let alone Wi-Fi or GPS functionality, and its onboard camera is an average 3.2MP shooter.

Initially available for around £90 with various pay as you go deals (or £129 SIM-free), the Nokia X3 is clearly aiming for the cash-conscious music phone buyer after a smart-looking device, pitching it squarely against the likes of the Sony Ericsson W395.

Design and handling

The Nokia X3's bodywork is tidily proportioned, measuring 96(h) x 49.3(w) x 14.1(d) mm closed and weighing 103g.

It has an average-sized 2.2-inch 262K-colour QVGA display dominating the front that's reasonable for this sort of handset.

There are no touchscreen controls – under the display is a regular navigation D-pad flanked by a standard issue quartet of soft key and call end buttons on a flat glossy black front control panel.

These buttons are adequately spaced for hassle- and error-free navigation, although the glossy front is a touch plasticky.

But the metallic red or blue music controls and trim bordering the display and the matt black bodywork used around the rest of the phone add a sharp look to the design – not HTC Legend levels of design, but not bad for 90 of your English pounds.

These three thin music control buttons (forward, rewind, play/pause) enable users to operate the music player when it's playing in the background, although they're aren't essential for controlling the phone - the navigation D-pad can take care of that too.

The slide-out keyboard is a bit of a throwback to Motorola RAZR styling, with a flat brushed metal pad separated by illuminated ridges. It's sufficient for texting at decent speeds, though it doesn't have the super-light touch of the best texting phones, and larger-fingered users should be wary of straying thumbs.

Around the sides are routine camera key and volume buttons plus a MicroSD card slot, covered by a fairly tight plastic bung.

The standard 3.5mm headphone socket sits correctly on top of the phone, next to a microUSB data connector and thin-pin charger socket.

All-in-all, it feels slim in the hand and pocket, and is comfortable to handle – what more do you really expect from a £90 handset? LG is doing the same thing with the LG Pop – so we're glad to see Nokia is playing in the right area as well.

The Nokia X3 user interface is Nokia Series 40 rather than the S60 smartphone platform, so is standard issue, uncomplicated and straightforward to operate.

It's based around the usual type of grid main menu, which drills down into basic sub-menu option lists – all of which should be very familiar to anyone who's packed a Nokia mobile before.

The home screen setup is standard stuff too; in fact, there are two home screen set up options you can choose between.

The out-of-the-box default home screen has a row of five scrollable icon shortcuts towards the top of the display and additional lines on the screen for media player and radio status and info, calendar and message updates plus other information.

These home screen shortcuts and info/content options can be user-defined – as can further D-pad shortcuts – with dozens available to select as shortcuts including functions, applications and even any bookmarked web pages – intuitive for a cheaper handset like this.

Alternatively, you can de-clutter the home screen by switching that mode off in the settings menu and sticking with a simpler setup that utilises the D-pad and softkeys only for shortcuts.

It's up to you, although the default home screen does provide more immediate information.

Within the menus, the Nokia Series 40 6th Edition user interface is easy to navigate and operate. The functionality isn't such that the menus are overloaded with confusingly laid out options, so it should be undemanding for any Nokia newcomers too.

We found call quality on the Nokia X3 not quite up to the usual high standards we expect from Nokia handsets.

Outgoing calls were often muffled and audio sometimes ropey even in areas where signal strength was good.

It was surprising on our review sample, as we usually have no problems with Nokia's high standard calling performance. For instance, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is not that much more expensive, but has a much higher level of call quality.

We tried the phone in a number of places with varying signal levels, and its performance was average at best.

Volume level was good enough, however – it can be cranked up enough to cope with noisy urban conditions.

The keyboard is perfectly manageable for tapping out numbers, and the typical Nokia Series 40 phonebook allows for numerous bits of contact information to be stored for each entry.

The Nokia X3 puts in a decent messaging performance, supporting the usual text and multimedia messaging plus email and instant messaging.

The flush, one-piece keyboard provides a reasonably responsive way of tapping in texts with some proficiency.

Texts can easily be upgraded to MMS messages, with a toolbar of icons ranged along the bottom of the screen for adding photos, sound clips, video clips, and so on. It's easy to operate and intuitive to use.

Messages are presented in 'conversations', with a threaded string of incoming and outgoing messages for each contact you've recently been in touch with.

The X3 uses the Nokia Messaging Mail email client, which enables you to set up email for a new Ovi Mail account or set up details from an existing POP3/IMAP4 email account.

Settings are pre-loaded for several services, including Windows Live Hotmail, Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail – you just need to tap in your email address and password - and you're away.

Other email provider accounts can be set up quickly and easily in a similar way – settings details are taken care of automatically.

The email user interface is reasonably attractive for a budget handset, and emails are sensibly ordered and headers viewable in lists on the screen.

Some attachments, including JPG images, can be viewed, but not all file types are supported (we couldn't view PDFs, Excel and Word documents, for instance). You can send documents from the phone though.

With no 3G, large attachment files can take some time downloading or uploading, but then again that's not really what the Nokia X3 is designed to do.

The email client has a fair selection of options to manage accounts, including the facility to send instant messages directly from your email account, and you can use the number pad keys as shortcuts for certain options.

You can also send quick replies to emails, with 9 preset messages available that can be selected and sent in a couple of key presses – useful for fast acknowledgements of incoming mail.

Multiple email accounts can be stored and accessed in the Nokia Messaging Mail application, and you can set the phone to regularly check email accounts automatically for new messages.

Instant messaging is supported on the Nokia X3, with Nokia's own IM application enabling you to use Ovi IM, and support for Windows Live Messenger in a separate IM app in the messaging folder.

You can send and receive short messages to other IM users online easily and speedily, and leave it running in the background.

Nokia once again doubles up on the browser front in the Nokia X3, including Opera Mini software as well as Nokia's own-brand browser.

Lacking 3G or Wi-Fi to fire up online speeds, the X3 relies on 2.5G EDGE/GPRS data connectivity.

On mobile-optimised sites the onboard Nokia browser goes along at an acceptable pace, rendering sites efficiently enough, with a useful progress bar running along the bottom of the screen.

As with other Series 40 phones, the Nokia browser operation is based on selecting from menu options rather than an on-screen toolbar or shortcuts, so it's not the slickest browser around compared with some of the budget touchscreen phone browsers now in play.

There's only one windows and no tabs. It does support Flash Lite though, and can render pages reasonably well, if a little languidly.

The Nokia X3 has pre-loaded bookmarks for a selection of online services, including Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, which take users to mobile-optimised versions of these sites.

However, streaming video clips from YouTube is hit and miss – and if you're out of EDGE coverage, forget it.

Opera Mini provides a more fluid and slicker non-touch browser experience that has a more desktop-style appeal.

It includes address and search bars and history on the home screen, plus a full web page overview when you land on a site and controls for zooming as a softkey option.

It's a more intuitive – and quicker – browsing experience, and pages render very well on the Opera app.

Other online applications on the Nokia X3 include Nokia's Ovi Store application download shop (the first Series 40 phone to support it), and a Web Search function that enables you to tap in and search via Google or Microsoft's Bing search engine.

A Flickr application is also included, which takes you to the Flickr mobile site, allowing users to view, upload and manage Flickr image accounts online – although this is woefully slow over EDGE connection.

You can upload images directly to Flickr accounts once you've taken shots too, or alternatively to Nokia's Share on Ovi service; settings for both services come pre-loaded.

The camera used on the Nokia X3 is a run-of-the-mill 3.2MP snapper, lacking a flash and autofocus system.

It has the typical sort of functionality you'd expect from a mid-to-lower end Nokia Series 40 handset, with nothing remarkable about the fixtures and fittings - or performance.

Pressing the side camera button, the screen flips sideways into viewfinder mode within a couple of seconds.

Nokia has set it up so that a long press of the camera key takes you straight into video mode, while a short press fires up the camera - a neat touch we're surprised more manufacturers haven't cottoned onto.

However, this does mean you have to be aware of how long you're tapping the button – something that's tricky with its almost flush position on the side – or you can find yourself starting to video record when you meant to snap a picture.

Although this can initially be disconcerting, if you are in the wrong mode the D-pad can be used to toggle sideways between camera and video recorder functions (an icon in the corner display's what mode it's in).

The on-screen user interface is somewhat basic, if adequate. Settings and effects can be chosen by opening up the Options menu and toggling through it.

You can adjust white balance to cater for lighting environments, add a few colour effects, use a timer and tweak image quality, but it's quite rudimentary by Nokia's high cameraphone standards.

The fixed focus camera produces reasonable snaps that can be colourful and bright, but they do lack the crisp sharpness you can get from some autofocus cameraphones in the same class.

Also, in subdued overcast conditions, the camera can produce murky images with flat tones and so-so colour.

Overall, its shooting performance is OK for quick snaps, but modest and limited in detail and quality.

Under low light conditions indoors, the auto metering adjustments mean images can be soft, although they're better if the camera is held steady.

Reasonable snapper: The Nokia X3's 3.2-megapixel camera is an average lower range shooter, offering limited detail and a fixed focus lens. It can take reasonable snaps in good lighting environments, however, although don't expect stunning clarity when printing out

Click and hope: The fixed focus camera means you can't choose which particular part of the subject you want in focus – you just press and see what comes out

Brighter is better: The camera performs best in bright lighting conditions, rendering colours in vibrant tones. There is though a lack of subtle detail in the background sky in the way the blue colours and clouds are reproduced

Patchy effort: The camera does reasonably well at close-in shots, producing some detail in the foreground, although the blue sky and clouds in the background are patchily rendered

Soft and noisy: This shot at dusk is soft and detail is limited with plenty of picture noise apparent

Its video recording performance isn't great. The low-grade camcorder option can record footage at maximum QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) resolution at 8 frames per second, so playback is stilted, or at lower QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution at up to 15 frames per second.

That's a low quality budget effort. Should you wish to, these clips can be uploaded too to online video hubs.

Of course, the most upfront feature of the X3 is its music mobile credentials. The music player controls on the outside mark out this territory, while a 2GB memory card supplied with the phone provides a decent amount of in-box storage for a budget music phone.

Nokia's also boxed it with an above-average set of in-ear earphones and it has a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on top for music fans who want to upgrade their ear-ware.

The media player software inside, though, is low-key and functional rather than novel.

The X3 uses a standard Series 40 media player, so it has a familiar mid-tier phone look and feel: a list of regular media player categories (all songs, playlists, artists, albums, genres and videos) and a player interface that doesn't break new ground.

The D-pad can operate the controls in normal phone fashion, and there's a draggable elapsed time section to help navigation, plus album cover art (if available).

The music player controls on the side of the display aren't needed unless the music player's working in the background; if so, they're handy, but don't exactly redefine the mobile music experience.

Some settings can be tweaked, with equaliser presets you can assign as you're playing. In addition to shuffle mode and the like, you can also choose to have lighting effects on the D-pad to go with the music - snazzy if you're putting on a disco for mice.

The supplied in-ear earphones put on a fine show. They fit snugly, with extra plastic buds in-box to get a close fit, reducing outside noise interference.

They can deliver a surprisingly heavy-duty music performance, with plenty of bass presence coming through loud and clear, and good definition on high and mid frequencies.

It's not subtle, but it's impressive for a budget music mobile.

The media player automatically slots any new tunes loaded up or slipped in via a memory card. MicroSD cards up to 16GB will work in the phone's side-mounted memory card slot.

Tunes can be downloaded over the air, or copied over from a PC using the supplied Nokia Music software and USB data cable.

Nokia's PC Suite's Music Manager software can also be used to transfer tracks, and the phone can be synchronised with Windows Media Player on a PC.

Tracks can also be dragged and dropped in mass storage mode, or sent via Bluetooth to the phone - so to sum up, there's a variety of ways to bung your favourite tunes on to the Nokia X3.

Some mobile network operators will also be offering the Nokia X3 as one of Nokia's Comes with Music range, which enables unlimited downloads, although UK availability of this service on the X3 is still to be confirmed at the time of writing.

In addition to the music player, more free music and entertainment is available via the phone's FM radio.

Unusually for a mobile phone, you don't need to plug in headphones as an antenna to listen to tracks – you can simply switch it on and listen to it through the phone's loudspeaker.

The loudspeaker, which can of course also be used with the music player, is loud and clear and not too tinny. It does lack on the bass front, as usual with mobile speakers, but is better than most with its punchy delivery.

The radio interface is a doddle to set up and use, with automatic tuning taking care of station finding, and sound quality is pretty good if you plug in the earphones.

With a relatively small 2.2-inch display, the Nokia X3 isn't set up to be your ideal video-playing device. However, it's OK to watch clips in full screen mode.

The media player supports video playback and streaming in a number of file formats including H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 and WMV9.

Without stacks of potentially battery-sapping high-end 3G functionality, we found that the Nokia X3 delivered a handsome battery performance under regular conditions.

The X3 arrives with a standard 860mAh Li-ion battery pack that Nokia reckons can deliver (under optimum network conditions) up to 7.5 hours of talktime or up to 380 hours of standby time.

We managed to go a steady 3-4 days between charges with normal phone usage, though naturally if we used the music player heavily, this figure dropped accordingly.

Of course, the music player functionality is the key selling point of this phone, so users are likely to hit play often; Nokia estimates that using the music player alone (with the phone switched to flight mode), users can get up to 26 hours of music player power – which seemed to hold up pretty well in our tests.

A routine set of Nokia Series 40 organiser tools and applications are ready for action on the X3. These functional tools, which are standard fare, include alarm clocks, calendar, to-do lists, notes, calculator, stopwatch and timer apps.

A couple of convertor apps and a world clock function are also slotted into the phone's application folder.

Nokia X3: Connectivity

The Nokia X3 is a quad band handset, capable of running on GSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks. Without 3G or Wi-Fi the X3's data connectivity relies on lower speed EDGE or GPRS, which limits its online prowess.

USB 2.0 connectivity is supported, via a microUSB port on top of the phone and a supplied data cable.

The X3 has Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity too, with stereo audio profiles (A2DP and AVRCP) enabling streaming to wireless headphones, speakers and other suitably enabled Bluetooth gadgets.

Also included in-box is a Nokia Music software CD. This PC software (there's no Mac support) enables users to manage and synchronise music between the phone PC and other devices.

Nokia X3: Other

Although the X3 isn't kitted out with internal GPS gadgetry, Nokia does include its Maps software onboard the phone.

It can be used with a separate optional Bluetooth GPS receiver module, although we'd guess anyone that keen for satellite location finding is likely to choose a phone with GPS inside in the first place.

Although it doesn't use GPS – or the cellsite-based location approximation system of Google Maps – users can do searches for addresses, locations, businesses and services, get routing information and maps over the air.

Without GPS, the setup can feel a bit clunky as some menu options aren't available, as the Nokia X3 firmware appears to have been ported from a more generic version of the OS.

Mapping downloads can take a while too if you're in marginal coverage, and generally in its GPS-less truncated state, and without fast map updates, it's a far from compelling proposition.

Among its other features, the X3 also has support for over the air software updates, with 10 games included too.

The Nokia X3 is decently equipped as a budget music mobile without having that 'must-have' X-factor.

The music player software is standard issue Nokia, so functional rather than flashy, but it puts an impressive audio show for a low-cost phone, with enough in-box to make it an attractive slim-line slider package.

Elsewhere, the X3 has a low-key set of features – there's no 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS or smartphone gadgetry, and it has a limited camera – but if music is the focus, the X3 does the job fine.

The mediocre call performance on our review sample was a concern, however.

What we liked

The music player puts in a punchy audio performance, with decent sound quality through the better-than-average in-ear bud earphones supplied.

The 3.5mm headphone socket offers easy upgrading too, while the 2GB MicroSD gives decent tune room out of the box at this price.

Being able to use the FM radio without having headphones attached is also welcome.

The X3's design is slim and quite attractive, and the Series 40 interface is typically straightforward-to-use Nokia stuff.

We liked the additional Opera browser to enhance its online performance. The email client is easy to set up too. We were also pleased with the phone's sturdy battery performance.

What we disliked

The call performance was surprisingly lacklustre. The lack of 3G connectivity limits data speeds when using online applications, although the Opera Mini app pre-loaded does offer a speedier alternative to the Nokia software.

The camera put in a mediocre performance – image quality is limited and video recording is distinctly low-grade. Without GPS technology inside, the Maps software is limited too.

Verdict

The Nokia X3 is a tidy budget music mobile that concentrates on the audio performance and music player features.

Slim on other higher-end features and lacking 3G, it doesn't demand centre stage, though some will nab it based on its tune playing highlights alone.

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Review: Samsung Galaxy Portal i5700

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:08:00 GMT

Samsung, the famed Korean jack-of-all-technologies, is having another go at mastering the Android phone scene, after making a bit of a mess of it with last year's original Galaxy.

The i7500 Galaxy was a brave first attempt, but Samsung threw it away, alienating early adopters by not bothering to update the phone past its basic Android 1.5 operating system.

Seriously, there are petitions all over the place. Some men are still very angry about it all.

And now, learning from past mistakes, comes the Samsung Galaxy Portal - which looks pretty much identical and features... Android 1.5. Oh well. Let's give it a chance.

First impressions of the Portal are good. Nobody's going to be won over by black plastic in this day of hyper-alloy unibody combat cases and NASA-derived coatings, but at least the Portal feels solid - and the grippy, rubberised-effect of the back cover should minimise dropping/pavement catastrophes.

In fact, the Portal manages to be thicker and generally chunkier than last year's Galaxy, measuring 13.2mm thick compared to last year's model's 11.9mm.

The OLED screen of the previous Samsung Galaxy i7500 has been dumped, in favour of reliable old LCD technology - coming in at a thoroughly middle-of-the-road 3.2-inch in size.

It's bright and big enough, and if you haven't yet used a modern smartphone you'll be staggered by the HVGA resolution.

The phone's button layout is a slightly tweaked version of the original Galaxy's control array, which sees acres of the finest black plastic bent into a curved, yet unintelligible collection of icons you might expect to see on the command console of an alien space vessel.

You don't get a trackball or optical pad - directional controls are taken care of by a clickable d-pad reminiscent of old video game controllers.

But this is actually fine - text editing is much easier with a reliable, clicky button.

Moving the cursor back three characters to correct a typo in an important, what-time-is-dinner-related text message is much easier when you can simply BASH-BASH-BASH a button three times, rather than fiddle about scrolling a little wheel into position - or even worse, trying to poke the screen at the relevant point.

The screen is also impressive to use - capacitive tech means it's solid and glassy, and it's every bit as occasionally patchy as most other touchscreens out there.

You'll soon get used to pressing a bit harder around the edges. Even Apple hasn't mastered that yet with the iPhone.

The standard Android buttons are all present, but there's no explanation of what they do. The 'Menu' button doesn't say 'Menu' - all you get is an icon that looks a bit like a tray with an arrow on it.

The Home button is easy to comprehend thanks to the little house illustration on it, but we can't help but pity some poor old dad who's going to get given one of these as a free upgrade and be left utterly confused by it all.

The handset also feels very 'bottom heavy' - trying to press back or home while holding it in one hand is fiddly, and worse still is the unintelligible approach to button placement - there's thousands of them. Metaphorically.

You get a separate 'lock' button on the top-right edge of the case to wake it up and send it to sleep, a camera button on the bottom-right side, and the volume up/down clicker to the left - picking the Portal up without accidentally pressing something requires forceps and a very steady hand.

If only Samsung would bite the bullet and copy HTC's idea (like on the HTC Hero) of having the power buttons also acting as your screen lock - it'd then be possible to do away with at least one plasticky button, shaving fractions of a penny off the manufacturing cost, too.

At least there's a dedicated key for taking photos, which removes the utterly awful concept of operating a camera using a touchscreen button.

If you're not experienced with Android, you'll find the Portal a confusing phone to get to grips with.

For those of you who've only experienced Android via a quick fiddle on a demo phone in Carphone Warehouse at lunchtime, the operating system's basically reminiscent of a simple touch-enabled version of Windows.

The desktop, which Google calls Home, spans three screens in the Portal's standard Android 1.5 (some providers skin this to give you more Home areas and Android 2.1 comes with five), so you're able to curate three separate collections of shortcuts.

This means you can have a page full of all your social tools, a page for your web stuff, then a third desktop space with boring work links.

There are two types of Android Home button - icons and widgets. Icons are straightforward shortcuts to apps, a pretty simple concept. Widgets are a little different, coming in all sorts of sizes and offering interactive content.

You might download a Twitter widget that sits on your Home screen, taking up three icon slots and letting you watch a live stream of Tweets without having to fire up a custom app.

Or there are news apps that load RSS feeds directly onto your Home page, giving you the latest important business (or meaningless celebrity) news without having to open an app at all.

Which is the great thing about Android. The Portal's rather bland and featureless default installation is a blank canvas that can be changed beyond all recognition thanks to a good hour of app downloading through the Android Market, and you'll soon ditch the bland analogue clock for something much more swish.

The Portal's faster-than-many 800MHz processor (including the Sony Ericsson Satio and iPhone 3GS) means loading apps and swiping your way through pages is very quick, with the Settings and Applications lists populating themselves with data much quicker than they do on some slower Android phones.

The phone comes out of standby mode in an instant, and you're able to pull the menu tab up to start browsing your phone's content as soon as it's woken up. Using it's a breeze.

However, the overall feel of the Samsung Galaxy Portal's interface lacks the smooth gloss of the likes of HTC's Sense overlay - it just feels a little sparse and featureless.

There's no flashy TouchWiz (like that used on the Samsung i8910HD) or Sense overlay on the Samsung Galaxy Portal; all you get to manage your calling and contacts business is the standard, barely updated Android default system.

The Android Contacts list is not your boring old list of numbers. Each entry has a separate field for mobile, home and work numbers, plus you can add as many extra fields as you like, if you have very, very well connected friends.

It supports fields for storing instant messaging IDs for your chums as well their postal addresses, and from the Contacts tab you may specify a separate ring tone for each caller if you want advance warning about who it's going to be on the other end.

If you're sociable and have lots of friends, there's a separate Favourites list pulled up from a tab within the Contacts, where you can access the numbers of people you call the most - you can also add people to this by pressing the star next to their name in the main listing.

You also get a call log of all incoming and outgoing calls, for keeping tabs of who the wife's been talking to.

Calling quality was fine, the same as on the HTC Magic or T-Mobile Pulse - not too digitised and more than loud enough.

Sending a message brings up Samsung's only software enhancement on the Portal - the Samsung keyboard.

It's basically a slightly larger version of the default Android keyboard, along with a customised dictionary, T9 predictive text options and the option of using a 123/ABC numeric style keypad.

If you're a bit old and still stuck in your T9 ways, it's handy to have your old numeric mobile typing style replicated - but this does run a bit slower than the stock Android keyboard, with the auto-suggest taking a fraction of a second to pop up its possible words.

Elsewhere, it's a standard Android 1.5 phone. Messaging is, therefore, pretty cumbersome. You send text messages by opening up Messaging or picking a name through the phone's Contacts, bumbling through way too many message screens in the process and wondering why texting is suddenly 100 times harder than it was on your old Nokia.

But that's not Samsung's fault. And if you don't like it there are numerous other text interfaces available on the Android Market - you just have to sift through them a bit to find them.

Your Gmail account is handled seamlessly by entering your username and password on startup - the inbox is automatically downloaded and messages update at very frequent intervals (especially if you're one of those popular sorts we hear so much about).

Non-Gmail email is also handled incredibly well. Android's email client supports numerous external providers, and it seamlessly connected to our Hotmail and BT accounts through its own tool in seconds.

It certainly beats the traditional living hell that is guessing your POP3 settings when setting up email on other gadgets.

And the other bit of good news - when the expected Android 2.1 lands to turn your Samsung Galaxy Portal into the Google super phone you always dreamed of, that will probably come with Exchange functionality as well.

Here's a rare area where the Samsung Galaxy Portal shines. Its 800MHz processor helps kick web pages into view very promptly indeed - and lets you scroll around them with ease.

This is a lot better than the likes of the T-Mobile Pulse or HTC Magic - which aren't slouches themselves when it comes to web browsing.

It's also a darn sight more fluent than the Samsung Jet - which also has an 800MHz processor, but fails to render web pages well at all.

One of the areas the Android OS really shines is its web browser, which somehow manages to be so simple you hardly even know it's there.

Android's default browser is the model of simplicity. Pages load up without any visible tabs, toolbars or anything else on the display, giving you a full 3.2-inch window into the internet.

For keeping track of what you've been doing - and to save you having to retype URLs on the touchscreen - you get History and Most Visited tabs, accessible by pressing the Menu button, plus you can organise your own bookmarks through the Menu as well.

And no, there's no "pinch to zoom" - but when you touch the screen while browsing it pops up a magnifying tool, letting you zoom in and out in increments or hit a button to shrink the entire page to fit on the screen, which then gives you a magnified square you can use to examine the page in detail.

Also, it's here you get a great impression of how accurate and responsive the Samsung Galaxy Portal's touchscreen is - selecting tiny text links from a list is easy, with the most delicate and precise of finger touches selecting what you need.

Install one of the alternate Android browsers like Dolphin or Opera and you soon realise how little point there is in trying to do anything too complex on a touchscreen.

More buttons and more options means mo' problems, to misquote the famous hip hop song.

And if you're really after 'pinch to zoom' on pages you know which phone to flit off and buy instead, don't you?

The Samsung Galaxy Portal's camera quality is surprisingly good for a 3.2MP snapper that's been rammed into the body of a mobile phone.

The focus is a bit slow, with the phone pausing, steadying its view, doing a bit more auto-focusing then waiting for you to release the button - and then waiting a little bit longer before deciding to capture what you're pointing at, if it's still there.

It takes a while, so don't go expecting to capture anything on the spur of any moments, but at least there's a dedicated camera shot button, which makes using the clunky default Android camera tool a little bit more bearable.

Photos come out at a decent 2,048 x 1,536 resolution, although, as with every mobile phone camera in existence, it's quite poor in low-light conditions.

WIDE SHOT: The camera's a bit over-eager to emphasise the brightness of things. Shadows are wiped out in favour of exaggerated colours when shooting in good light, with shots often coming out more bright and enhanced than necessary

CLOSE UP: The auto-focus, while slow, does a good job when taking pictures up close - the sample shot we took of our emergency backup Nokia 6680 mobile was surprisingly sharp, even with the camera held around 30cm away from the trusty last-gen brick

NO MACRO: There's no macro option, so don't expect to be able to take detailed pictures of the back of your hand, but as an all-rounder the Samsung Galaxy Portal's camera performs very well

LOW DETAIL: Detail tends to fall apart into abstract blotch territory when shooting complicated things like, er, grass and trees, but the output is decent enough to more than handle your social networking photo sharing needs

STRAIGHT LIGHT: Shooting straight into bright light is not advised on the Samsung Galaxy Portal, with very little detail captured

You can also select "camera nightmode" from the camera menu to enhance brightness, if you don't mind your shots looking like you've taken them within the blast radius of a nuclear detonation.

However, the lack of any sort of flash won't help you snap compromising photos of friends drinking specialist cocktails in specialist bars.

Another feature added in is Android lets you upload photos simply, but just clicking on them and sending them to Facebook or Gmail or whatever else you've installed. It's clever like that.

The Samsung Galaxy Portal's videos are recorded in 3GP mobile format and look passable, appearing in a fuzzy, blocky resolution of 352 x 288 - and VLC tells us they run at a frame rate of around eight or nine frames per second.

We also encountered error messages about not being able to play the video's sound on our PC due to a missing Samsung audio codec.

When it comes to media on the Samsung Galaxy Portal, there's Google's Android YouTube client, which is pleasingly simple and uncluttered, while music playback is handled by the bland default Android tool.

It is not glamorous, but will make 'Bad Romance' spew out of your headphones in an emergency.

The Music Player widget takes up four icon slots on a Home page and is alarmingly simple - you can pause or skip to the next track, that's it.

Tapping the widget takes you to the main Music Player menu, and from there it's as easy as long-pressing on a song to add it to an existing playlist or to create a new one from scratch.

The supplied headphones have a flimsy 'Pause' button on the wire, but if you want to offend the artist's integrity by skipping album tracks there's no option but to get the phone out and use the touchscreen.

At least the phone's volume control works while the screen is in standby mode, so you're able to adjust sound levels without having to de-pocket your mobile.

If you can live without a way to skip tracks without poking the screen, the Samsung Galaxy Portal's a workable MP3 player option - but you might need to upgrade the supplied 1GB microSD card if you get bored easily of the same few albums.

The photo gallery is the standard old Android one, so don't expect to be blown away - unless you get very, very easily blown away by things like grey tabs. It also confusingly houses videos as well.

If you're into doing it yourself and downloading video content through 'unofficial' channels, the Samsung Galaxy Portal copes well.

It was able to play an off-the-internet MP4 of Doctor Who, scaling down the original file's 640 x 368 video size and making it look superbly sharp on screen - and it played with no glitches whatsoever.

A 720 x 416 resolution AVI file of Relocation Relocation (don't ask) played just as well, despite Samsung only listing MP4 and 3GP formats on its official Samsung Galaxy Portal spec sheet.

The other video playback option on the phone comes via DivX, which supplies its DivX VOD Player.

To activate it on your phone you must first install the latest DivX Player on your PC or Mac, then synch it with the Samsung Galaxy Portal by copying across a registration code, then play a sample video on your phone.

And then, once you've gone through that significant kerfuffle, you're greeted by the option to pay for and stream DivX content on your Samsung Galaxy Portal. We doubt many people ever will.

A very capable video player, as long as you don't mind the rather basic front end.

It's your standard Android 1.5 default suite on here, with only a few nods to the year 2010.

Samsung has, for some odd reason, decided to pre-install a copy of location-based app Layar onto the phone, so you're able to do such clichéd tasks as look for branches of Starbucks or search for pizza delivery companies in the vicinity.

But honestly, who really uses these tools outside of TV adverts? Who thinks to themselves "I fancy a pizza, I'll fire up my mobile phone and point it at the sky to see if there's one nearby"?

Of far more use are the other Google services you get as part of the Android spec. You need a Google account to activate the Gmail stuff (and access the Android Market), and it's essential that you do - as it's through your Gmail account that all your Contacts are backed up and synchronised.

You might not think you need that if you've not had an Android phone before, but you really do, as once you're all synchronised it's possible to edit your contacts on your PC and have them all automatically copied back to your phone nice and neatly.

Need someone's number but left your phone somewhere else? Google's got a copy on your Gmail Contacts list. That's a life-saver, if you're the sort of person who still makes actual phone calls.

Elsewhere under the Apps tab sits a Facebook and MySpace button, if you're into boasting about your life to people you never really liked 10 years ago.

The only other time-saving tool pre-installed by a lackey in the Samsung factory is the Switchers app, which handles shortcuts to quickly toggle settings for Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and Google's Autosync option.

This means you can turn everything off if you're in a sulk and want to avoid everyone. Or save a bit of battery through killing the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when out and about.

Get ready for a shock - the Galaxy Portal has a surprisingly decent battery. Samsung's previous Galaxy, was lambasted by all and sundry for eating battery life willy-nilly, despite having a supposedly more efficient OLED screen.

The tables have been turned here, with the Samsung Galaxy Portal's regular LCD screen somehow staying alive for a full day of in-bed, on-train, in-office, on-train then in-bed-again casual Twitter and web action.

Battery enthusiasts will know there's a good scientific reason for all this - the Samsung Galaxy Portal has a 1500mAh battery, slightly larger than the usual 1400mAh versions or lower you find in other phones. Every little helps.

You'll still spend most of your time worrying about unnecessary apps running in the background guzzling power and leaving you without text access at unfortunate moments, mind - but that's all part of the modern smartphone game.

Battery makers need to get their act together, basically, as they're seriously holding back technology - although there are some free task-manager applications on the Android Market that can seriously help maintain battery life.

You'll be doing all your home browsing and Tweeting while connected via Wi-Fi, and the Portal does a fine job of instantly hooking itself into your router without whining for attention, then slipping surreptitiously back onto 3G when the signal disappears.

There's a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the phone, which is welcome, but the awful, awful supplied headphones, which are the type you have to physically force down your ear canal, are crackly right out of the box.

At least ours were - instant upgrades are recommended, and at least there's no proprietary adaptor to worry about.

Sound quality was tinny even with the in-brain headphone fully rammed right into our poor little earholes - Samsung's headphone quality is usually pretty good, so we're not sure what's happened here.

You'll be wanting some proper headphones, or, better still, a proper MP3 player - as Android 1.5's default music-playing software isn't the greatest or most user-friendly tool in existence, and you don't want to hammer the battery of a smartphone any more than necessary.

There was a 1GB microSD card in our Samsung Galaxy Portal box, along with a large-size SD Card adaptor if you've left your Micro-USB cable in the wrong house and need to copy off some photos.

The PC situation is a weird one - on the original Samsung Galaxy i5700, the phone came with Samsung's New PC Studio in the box.

Not so with the Samsung Galaxy Portal - but no worry, as this can be downloaded from Samsung's website to give you all manner of connectivity.

Well, no actually, because it appears that like its bigger Android brother, the Galaxy Portal is not supported by NPS as yet. We've no idea why Samsung seems to secretly hate mating a PC and an Android phone, but it clearly does.

At least you can drag and drop files to the SD card via the microUSB cable - this means getting media onto the phone is a cinch.

Samsung is playing an odd Android game. Korean rival LG is playing the budget-Googlephone game with the likes of the Intouch Max GW620, and across the water HTC is bringing out better and better Android phones like the Legend seemingly every day.

But Samsung seems to be happy to wander around making basic Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy Portal and then shouting about its new Bada platform instead.

Given that both are based on a Linux kernel you have to question whether Sammy's heart is really in the Google game.

We liked

Performance was robust. Our Portal never crashed or got bogged down with multiple apps open, while the battery lasted significantly longer than this reviewer's ladylike HTC Magic routinely manages.

Turn Wi-Fi and GPS off and you'll easily make it through a full day of semi-pro use.

The capacitive touchscreen is responsive, bright and the phone feels reassuringly heavy and solid. The 3.2-inch screen size is right in the Android 'sweet spot' - big enough to see and use, small enough to slip into the tightest of trouser.

Android 1.5, although visually rather basic, runs fast and does what a smartphone needs to do - and you can, of course, customise the hell out of it through the Android Market.

Plus there's a beta version of Android 2.1 for the European version of the Portal (known as the Galaxy Spica) floating about online, so an official update for the Portal ought to be imminent.

We disliked

While Android 1.5 runs the majority of apps on the Android Market, the lack of a few headline modern tools that require Android 1.6 and above will kill this phone stone dead for hardcore Android nerds.

If it doesn't get an update soon, the Portal will be yesterday's news.

The button layout is a mess. Anyone new to Android will be utterly bewildered by the black plastic nightmare beneath the screen, while the Home button, which is squeezed right into the edge of the case, is tricky to press if you're a right-handed phone user.

Left-handed people will love it, though. Perhaps left-handed people is the mystery demographic Samsung is targeting with this amazingly average phone?

Verdict

There's nothing wrong with the Galaxy Portal, but there's also nothing exciting about it.

Offering the same spec a mid-range Android phone would've shipped with 12 months ago, there's little here to boast about - especially when we've been bombarded by hype regarding dazzling new HTC glamour-phones for the last few months.

Even Samsung itself seems desperate to make the Portal seem more exciting than it is, claiming in print adverts that it comes with a "visual search engine" - when in fact that refers to the Layar app that's comes pre-loaded, and is freely available on every Android phone via the Android Market.

However, the Portal is tough and perfectly functional. The fact it ships with Android 1.5 and Samsung's poor history in offering updates will put off the geeks, but for the average punter looking for an affordable 'in' into Android, it's ideal.

It does come in for £20 a month on T-Mobile (that's for 24 months, unless you want to pay £360 for the phone), but it's the Vauxhall Astra of Android - dull but will get you where you need to be.

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Review: Sony Ericsson Vivaz

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:10:00 GMT

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the HD-video-shooting successor to the Swedish-Japanese firm's flagship Satio model.

With an 8.1MP camera that can also record 720p HD video, it is designed to thrill YouTube-rs with its easy video upload features as well as the bundled 8GB memory card for ample storage.

The touchscreen phone has been ergonomically designed to fit the contours of the hand and with social networking and multi-media features galore, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is set to give the likes of the Nokia X6 and the LG InTouch Max GW620 a run for their money.

The handset itself has been ergonomically designed and does feel really nice to hold.

Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world today

The curve of the back fits nicely into the palm and although it's a light handset, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz doesn't feel insubstantial. It has an abundance of very smooth surfaces, so we did find we dropped it quite a few times.

Aside from the LCD display, the handset is very plastic-heavy and does leave something to be desired in the design department.

Available in four different colour combinations, we tested the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Moon Silver with silver back panel with dark blue sides.

The touchscreen is resistive, unfortunately, but it's probably one of the best we've seen and gives the LG InTouch Max GW620 a run for its money.

Although it's not as smooth or accommodating as the capacitive screens found on handsets like the iPhone and HTC Legend, it is still quite responsive and swiping through menus doesn't require much pressure on the screen.

There is a sensible number of buttons on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. The call, end and menu buttons are on the front of the handset, with volume/zoom and two camera buttons on the right side panel, and power/lock on the top.

However, the latter can be a little fiddly to hit when holding the Vivaz in one hand, with some juggling needed - this means you run the risk of dropping it.

We're glad to see a 3.5mm headphone jack and microUSB port, given Sony Ericsson's previous love for its proprietary Fast Port connector instead of a basic headphone socket.

In the box

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz comes with the basics – a plug, separate USB to microUSB cable to connect to the plug or to your PC, a pair of Sony Ericsson headphones and a standalone stylus.

The headphones don't come with sponge ear buds, nor in-ear fittings to accommodate different sized ears, but do double as a handsfree kit thanks to the built-in microphone.

Given the HD recording function of the handset, Sony Ericsson has also seen fit to include an 8GB microSD card - we would have preferred some inbuilt storage too, but at least this is a generous addition.

The Symbian S60/S^1 operating system is traditionally associated with Nokia handsets, found on devices like the Nokia 5800, N97 and X6.

Despite this, the look and feel of the Vivaz interface is still very 'Sony Ericsson.'

The menus are well laid out and easy to navigate, but because the Vivaz is limited to just one menu screen, some sub-menus are packed with options.

You can avoid venturing into the menus too often if you invest some time customising the home screen.

The default set up offers a row of five widget tabs across the top of the screen. These can be assigned different functions depending on your preferences.

For example, we had tabs housing our favourite contacts, social networking apps, menu shortcuts and a favourite image acting as wallpaper.

Scrolling between the tabs is easy and satisfying, but is slightly less elegant than the traditional Android home screen set up.

The tabulated layout of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is much tidier than the more crowded approach taken by the X6 and N97 Mini, although there is less information available at a glance.

For those craving a simpler life, fewer home screen options can be set using the Standby Themes in the settings menu.

There's a nice level of customisation on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, but it's more constrained than some of its contemporaries, particularly the Android-toting HTC Tattoo and LG InTouch Max GW620, where a plethora of widgets are on offer.

Making and taking calls is very straightforward thanks to the dedicated call and end buttons, but we wish we could say the same for locking and unlocking the screen and keys.

Locking the keys should be a one-button affair, but not so with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.

After hitting the power/lock button you have to either select the lock option on the screen, or hit the power/lock button again.

This might not sound like a chore, but the power/lock button is not particularly easy to press as it's almost flush with the panel it sits in.

When you're not sure if your press has been registered, it's all too easy to press the power button too hard and switch the handset off.

What makes that even more annoying is that the Sony Ericsson Vivaz takes its time closing down, and starting up again isn't exactly lightning fast.

The other danger was forgetting to choose any option from the menu and leaving the keys and screen active in your pocket or bag, from which anything can be tapped and accessed thanks to a resistive screen.

Even after several days of use, this was still grating on us.

Speed of use is an area where the Vivaz also lets itself down. Aside from being slow to start up, the temperamental auto-rotate takes a second or two too long to kick in.

We also had issues with the handset's multi-tasking – although we definitely welcome it as a feature and had no problem switching between applications, it's a little too tricky to close things down entirely.

Simply using the menu or end buttons keeps them open in the background, so you end up with several unnecessary things running, slowing the handset right down and taking away all the advantages of the Vivaz's fast processor.

It is possible to download new apps for the home screen via the PlayNow app store.

This provides music, game and wallpaper downloads as well as apps, but they're generally not cheap and there are very few free options, unlike the wildly successful Apple App Store and Android Market.

Searching through the store is a bit of a chore as it isn't hugely intuitive, but downloading is fairly straightforward direct to the handset - perhaps we're just spoilt by the plethora of much better portals on offer.

One of the things we really like about the Vivaz is the quick and easy access to the dial pad – something that is often hidden away on touchscreen phones.

On the Sony Ericsson Vivaz it sits at the front of the home screen as a grid - you won't know what it is the first time you take the phone out the box, but it's handily placed.

There are also various simple ways to access the contacts book - through the menu, dial pad or by hitting the call button.

Sound quality when making and taking calls with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is fair, we didn't experience any major issues.

Both the caller and the recipient's voices were clear and comfortable to hear, although there was some occasional buzzing on the Vivaz's end.

The contacts book is pretty basic, just an alphabetical list of names, but there is the option to segment them into groups.

The individual contact entries are a bit more exciting, with room for multiple numbers and email addresses as well as company information, job title and photo to help you remember who's who.

Favourite contacts can be saved to one of the five home screen tabs for quick and easy access. But unlike the INQ Chat 3G and other phones of this calibre, there is no option to synchronise your phone book with your social networking profiles.

The messaging menu features a dazzling array of options, from regular SMS, to an email inbox, an SMS conversations view (which shows your messages in threaded conversation format) and a range of granular message settings.

It may seem like a bit much at first, but once you are used to the layout, it's really convenient to have all that messaging paraphernalia in one obvious place.

We can't fathom why the standard SMS inbox does not just use the conversations layout, though - instead it makes you look at the 'normal' inbox and then scroll through the menus to view the conversation in the threaded view.

Setting up email on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is basically painless. We set up a Gmail account and, after inputting the account name and password, the handset did most of the hard work for us, with the email list presented simply.

Setting up Exchange email was relatively easy too and didn't take long to sync with the server, but does require you to input the settings manually.

Push email isn't configured by default (although you can schedule the phone to update at specified times) so the inbox only refreshes when it is physically opened – not ideal if you expect instant real-time email.

Typing isn't too heinous a task, despite the resistive touchscreen which we've struggled with on handsets like the Sony Ericsson Satio.

The screen is quite slim, so it's easier to opt for the landscape QWERTY layout - although the number pad layout coupled with predictive text does a passable job too.

There is no autocorrect function, which is a real annoyance for minor mistakes. Of course, you can opt to use the stylus - but sorry, we're not in 1995 any more and this isn't a PDA.

If you MUST use the stylus, there is a mini-QWERTY option which squeezes the whole keyboard into the width of the vertical screen position – really too small to use unless you're blessed with 20:20 vision or a really good magnifying glass (and third hand).

As with all stylus-bearing phones, we find it a fiddle to rummage around for another piece of equipment when all we want to do is send a quick message - we're not sure why Sony Ericsson is persisting down this route on a high end phone.

As the Sony Ericsson Vivaz isn't a smartphone to rival the likes of the iPhone 3GS or HTC Hero, it is fairly conscientious about its internet use and only connects when you open an application requiring the internet.

Great if you're on a budget or don't have an unlimited data plan, but quite annoying if you do.

The Vivaz asked what connection we wanted to use every single time we accessed any internet application, despite the fact that we had set post-pay internet as the default connection.

This got very frustrating very quickly, and the three dialogue boxes to go through made even a quick glance at Twitter a chore.

The plus side is that switching between 3G and Wi-Fi is really very easy.

Browsing web pages over the SIM card data connection was changeable – at times it was very speedy to load image-intensive web pages, but at other times it took up to a minute to download all the images with seemingly the same levels of reception.

Wi-Fi, though a little slower, was much more constant.

To avoid using the stylus while browsing the internet, the zoom function (denoted by two magnifying glasses) is great.

It allows you to zoom right in on web pages, but not onto specific bits so you have to scroll around to get to the part you want to see.

Another helpful addition is the 'find' function so you can locate the relevant bit of the web page once you have zoomed in.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz isn't Flash compatible, so Flash-based sites will just render as plain text.

We were really impressed with the mobile version of YouTube, however – as a widget option in the Vivaz's video player, clicking through to YouTube was quick and the videos loaded without much delay.

We also applaud the in-menu BBC iPlayer web shortcut, although this requires a Wi-Fi connection to let you download content to your mobile.

Social networking apps generally work without a hitch, although having set Twitter as a tab on the home screen we were disappointed to have to repeatedly enter log in information - in fact, it was a terrible way to work with a phone that offers 'native Twitter'.

It also lacks access to DMs, @replies or anything else other than the last 20 or so updates in your timeline, so you tend to be better off using the mobile site.

The camera is where Sony Ericsson intends the Vivaz to shine, with 8.1-megapixels to play with on still shots and the ability to shoot 720p HD video.

There are separate buttons to launch the video and still-shot camera functions, as well as the on-screen option to swap between the two.

Despite the one-button process, the camera is a little slow to get up to speed.

Using the camera functions was a breeze, with on-screen icons showing the current setup at a glance and housing menus for swapping between different features.

There is a whole range of shooting options available on the Vivaz, on a par with a number of mid-range compact digital cameras.

Although there's no manual focus you can choose between full autofocus, or specialist options for specific types of shots; macro for close-ups, infinite mode for landscape shots and portrait mode.

TEST SHOT: Infinite focus for landscape shots – the colours here have come out slightly washed out

TEST SHOT: The panorama function is really nice to use, with instructive on-screen motion detection helping you get a seamless shot

TEST SHOT: The camera didn't fare so well on moving objects, even in sports mode, with images coming out fuzzy and, in some cases, pixelated

TEST SHOT: Direct light was not handled brilliantly, with the whole image coming out much darker than it should have

TEST SHOT: Macro focus is useful for close-up shots, although we found on other shots that it tended to focus on the wrong things – like objects further from the lens

TEST SHOT: Using the camera's light in low light was very effective, although the 'low-light' mode came out slightly grainy

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz 8.1MP camera also has built-in effects. These are the solarise and sepia effects - although the latter is not as rusty as we'd like it to be.

The camera also handled colours well, even in incandescent light.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz HD Video

Click here to see the full resolution video

Sony Ericsson Vivaz SD Video

The sound quality is better in the HD recording here, as is the image which is much crisper and doesn't suffer from the visual noise in the SD clip (QVGA 320 x 240). While the SD clip looks like it was taken with a camera phone, the HD clip does not.

Click here to see the full resolution video

This was shot indoors in low light using the camera light which washes the van out a little as it's close to the lamp. You can also see the camera trying to auto-focus throughout; this is a nice touch in the right circumstances, but can get a little annoying.

On a number of separate occasions, recording would begin but get stuck on a single frame – sound would continue to record but the images wouldn't.

This was frustrating when filming one-off occurrences like a couple of randy squirrels frolicking through the park, and happened more than three times rendering it really quite unreliable.

On other occasions however, the video function would work without a hitch.

Comparison to Samsung i8910HD

It's hard to work out which of these phones is better - on the one hand, the price of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is around £70 cheaper than the older Samsung i8910HD - but the latter offers a lot of extra features.

On the media front, both can capture 720p video, and both can do so at 24fps. We're tempted to say that the Vivaz looks slightly better on the PC screen, but once you run them both through a TV there's very little to choose from.

Add in the fact that the 8MP camera on the i8190HD is, we think, a touch better than the Vivaz's, and the fact it has a massive OLED screen to watch media on, and we still believe Samsung's media behemoth is the better option.

With a heritage in music-playback devices like the Walkman, we always expect Sony-branded products to have an advantage over other handset manufacturers on the media side of things.

Usually we're a little disappointed, with previous Sony Ericsson handsets using the proprietary Fast Port headphone connector, last seen on the Sony Ericsson Satio.

We're glad to say that Sony Ericsson has done away with the Fast Port connection on the Vivaz, which houses a 3.5mm headphone connector flush to the left-hand side of the handset, bringing the brand squarely into 2010.

The music player interface on the Vivaz is also much more user friendly than older Sony Ericsson offerings like the clunky W205.

With a slick interface complete with animated background, the monochrome player plays host to all the traditional options – artists, albums, playlists, audiobooks and podcasts, as well as your own voice recording files.

Artists are arranged alphabetically, and while it's a shame that artwork doesn't appear in this list to give it a bit more colour, the artwork is available in the album list view and during playback.

Creating playlists on the fly is also very simple if you fancy a compilation approach. We did find the music a little bass-heavy at times – sadly there is no equaliser function to try and remedy this.

A handy widget on the home screen keeps you up to date with track names and offers easy access to skipping tracks when you have music playing in the background.

The media player makes switching to video playback or the photo library very easy as it's all part of the same application. Going to a video simply pauses the music playback, so you can return to the same place later.

Sound quality when playing music through the handset itself is less tinny than we've come to expect from phones at this level, although it is still a little crackly and no substitute for headphones.

Using a pair of Sennheiser in-ear headphones gave audio playback more depth and less audible noise.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz also has an FM radio player located in the Apps folder. You can set this to play either through the headphones or the phone's loudspeaker but you have to have headphones plugged in throughout as they act as the antenna.

It's not the most intuitive radio player we've used, with radios on even very basic handsets like the LG Brio proving easier to use.

You can leave the radio playing in the background while using other functions on the Vivaz, but it's not possible to record the sound, as is offered on the Samsung Jet.

The onboard memory is around 75MB, but that won't store much alongside an HD video file, so the Vivaz can support up to a 16GB microSD card and comes with an 8GB card in the box.

Sony Ericsson states that the Vivaz can delivery up to 5 hours 20 minutes of 3G talktime, 2hours 30 minutes video call time and up to 430 hours of standby life.

We reckon that talktime estimation is probably a little optimistic but not way out. After an intensive day of use, including watching and filming HD videos, the Vivaz was about ready to give up the ghost.

But we also managed to get a good two to three days of more casual everyday use out of it before it needed recharging.

Organiser

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz has a whole folder dedicated to organisational apps and functions, but don't look for the calendar here – that has its own menu option.

It's nothing to write home about, but allows you to set reminders and tasks with alerts and deadlines as you'd expect.

In the organiser folder you'll find the clock and alarms function where you can set recurring alarms, like a weekday alarm that doesn't go off at weekends.

There's also a fairly standard note-writing app, calculator, file manager and document readers – although the document readers require licences and therefore payment.

Other handy features to keep you ticking over are the converter app which can tell you plenty about how many kilocalories are in a kilojoule, but only has 'Home' and 'Foreign' options when it comes to currency.

This means you have to set your own rates – we'd have liked this to sync with current conversion rates online, but you can't have everything.

You can, of course, download more apps from the PlayNow store, offering apps from web-publishing through to weather forecasting, although as we said earlier there's not a huge amount of choice there.

Location-based services include Google Maps and GPS positioning. Symbian-based Google Maps is pretty good (although not up to the speed and feature-base of the Android range) and the GPS found us fairly quickly.

Directionally it wasn't too bad either - we navigated between tube stops in the outer reaches of London without getting lost, which is something that still happens far too often due to our rather addled brains.

Media-wise there is an onboard music identification programme called TrackID which works in a similar way to Shazam, as well as a sound recording app for vocal notes-to-self or for recording interviews and so on.

Finally, for the DIY enthusiast, there is an onboard spirit level - good luck getting an accurate reading using either edge of the phone though, there are too many protruding buttons on each.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz connects to a computer via USB cable. Installing drivers onto a PC is very easy as the necessary software is stored on the handset.

This means no messing about with CDs or going to websites to download executable files. The PC companion suite lets you move files quickly and easily between your phone and computer, but it's not essential.

The software doesn't work on Mac computers, but transferring files between the phone and computer is still possible using the handset as a mass storage device and if you know your way around a computer file then you shouldn't find it too taxing.

Setting up the Wi-Fi connection was easy enough, but assigning a default connection proved difficult. In the end we were forced to select a connection option manually each time we connected.

We also had trouble maintaining a data connection while out and about, even around central London. We often had to just abandon attempts and seek out Wi-Fi.

The phone's GPS fared a little better on-the-go, with the onboard compass proving handy when our feeble sense of direction let us down.

Comparison

Like the Sony Ericsson Satio, this phone puts all its eggs in the camera basket; but the Vivaz manages to keep its other functions up to scratch somewhat better than the Satio, thanks in part to its faster processor.

We were sorely disappointed that the Satio didn't have a 3.5mm headphone socket, so it's a very welcome addition on the Vivaz, and the touchscreen has certainly improved.

It's a shame Sony Ericsson didn't opt for a capacitive screen, but it does keep the costs down.

The ergonomic design of the Vivaz also puts it ahead of the Satio and will feature on all of Sony Ericsson's upcoming handsets.

Given the Vivaz's superior camera, sleek design, ergonomic build and user-friendly music player, it wipes the floor with Nokia's X6, despite the X6's capacitive screen.

The resistive screens of the HTC Tattoo and LG InTouch Max GW620 don't quite measure up to the Vivaz's screen which is surprisingly responsive.

Despite this we'd have welcomed a physical QWERTY keyboard in the style of the GW620, although we can cope without. It's the range and quality of apps we miss most though, with the Tattoo and GW620 both privy to Android's superior marketplace.

This is Sony Ericsson's second effort at a touchscreen phone after the disappointment of the Sony Ericsson Satio, so there's a lot of pressure riding on it.

HD video recording is the headline grabber, but the rest of the phone needs to impress as well in this smartphone-heavy age.

We liked:

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is lovely to hold – that ergonomic design really does pay off and the near-HD screen also plays a part in making it look and feel like a quality phone.

The touchscreen does a great job considering it is resistive, and the camera quality is high – not solely for recording HD video; still shots using the 8.1-megapixel camera come out very nicely too.

The clean and tidy home screen pleased us, and the tabbed functions were handy for quick access to our favourite apps and media.

We disliked

For all its nice design and screen, we couldn't help but feel the chassis was still a bit too plastic, particularly the back panel which gives it a slightly cheap feel.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz also has quite a few little glitches and niggles – not least the frustrating screen and key lock mechanism.

Also having to constantly reassure the handset that yes, we do want to connect using the default internet connection made our techno-hackles rise.

The Android-esque interface lends itself to apps, so we'd have liked to have seen more good quality, low-cost apps in the PlayNow app store, but these may come with time.

And, although it may have been one of the best resistive touchscreens we've seen, it's still not a patch on a capacitive screen.

Verdict:

For a mid-to-high range feature phone, we were pleasantly surprised by how much we liked the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.

As a phone it performed well and we were impressed with the music player and camera functions – the main features of the phone.

Such a shame, then, that little things let it down; we were constantly annoyed by the key lock function, the temperamental auto-rotate and the schizophrenic internet settings.

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Review: HTC Legend

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:32:00 GMT

After the success of the HTC Hero, the Taiwanese firm is back again with the first of its duo of Android 2.1 phones, the HTC Legend.

Featuring a full aluminium chassis and high-res OLED screen, as well as the latest version of Android from Google, HTC is clearly looking to jostle its way to the front of the best-selling phone queue with the HTC Legend and Desire.

The HTC Legend features a sumptuous unibody aluminium chassis - taking more than a few visual cues from the MacBook range, and refining the lines of the HTC Hero to produce a sleek and very aesthetically pleasing phone.

Despite being one of the first mobile phone releases of the year, the HTC Legend is likely to end 2010 as one of the best looking devices, with the silver aluminium frame sitting very well in the hand.

Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world today

However, there is one slight problem with aluminium chassis - if you leave it in your pocket with keys or coins, it scratches up pretty easily. We're not overly looking forward to having to mention this when we return the review unit...

If you're one of those that like to put a phone in a protective pouch, then there's definitely a case (sorry) for doing so with the HTC Legend.

The 3.2-inch screen has been beefed up as well - while it's the same size and resolution (HVGA) as the one used on the HTC Hero, the bezel has been reduced to give the impression of a wider screen.

And the display itself is now an OLED, rather than LCD, screen. This not only gives incredible colour reproduction, but also displays stunning contrast ratio thanks to not needing a backlight (which also helps with the overall thickness of the phone).

After some reports of the Google Nexus One (also produced by HTC) performing poorly in direct sunlight, that's not the case with the HTC Legend.

As long as you don't have the screen brightness turned down to the lowest setting, it's perfectly easy to use the phone even in sunny climes.

The frame and display aren't the only aesthetic improvements either - the overall layout has been upgraded to make this phone stand out to those browsing prospective handsets in shops.

The trackball has been replaced with an optical trackpad, which looks kind of futuristic (and a little Terminator-like - we're glad it doesn't glow red...). This makes HTC Legend look a lot more refined, and also reduces the risk of the trackball failure, which is a common problem.

As reception enthusiasts will know, a metallic unibody design isn't the best for getting mobile signal, which is why HTC has crafted a little slide-out panel to get the battery and SIM card in to the unibody design.

A little rubberised segment sits behind the lip, and using a cute little hinge mechanism, the battery slides nicely into the phone, with the SIM and MicroSD cards following it in with a little click.

While we're loathe to constantly draw a comparison, this kind of attention to design is something we haven't seen from anyone bar Apple - we challenge you to not enjoy slotting the battery in this way rather than wedging it under the battery cover.

Every port on the HTC Legend is designed to add to the overall look of the phone, and this has been achieved well.

The headphone slot is flush to the chassis at the top of the phone, next to the power/lock button, and the phone speaker has been crafted with an appealing grill, which also houses a small LED light that gives notifications of new messages and low battery.

Another bit of good news - the HTC Legend finally comes with a miniUSB connection - bringing it in line with future EU regulations and meaning universal chargers will work with it too. It's the equivalent of using a Nokia charger in the 1990s... everybody had one... we think they grew in drawers.

The right-hand side of the phone is devoid of buttons (we would have liked to see a dedicated camera shutter here) and the lower part of the chassis is taken up with the rubberised section we mentioned earlier.

The left-hand side of the phone holds the up/down buttons, with nothing else in sight - sleek is the only real way to describe it.

The front of the phone is minimal too - the silver and black combo is nice, and the four buttons (Home, Menu, Back and Search) are crafted in shiny black plastic and melt into the chassis.

The optical trackpad (which is clickable, by the way) is the only other element on the front, and again, it still scares us with the Terminator style look to it.

But the main thing to say about the HTC Legend is that this phone sits nicely in the hand, and just looks sublime - we're sure it will be bought by a few people based on the looks alone.

In the box

HTC is as minimal as ever with the bits and pieces it's thrown in the box - there's a phone cable, a converter to turn it into a wall-plug charger and some simple headphones.

We're not fans of the latter, as they're quite basic for headphones - but they do also function as an adequate hands-free kit, which is good to see included in the box.

HTC has been low key in its packaging again, offering the HTC Legend in a small case rather than swathes of cardboard and packaging - we're fans, and not just for environmental reasons.

The Android 2.1 upgrade may have been seen already by our US cousins, but over here in the UK this is the first time we've seen this version of Google's OS.

And in a double hit of Android goodness, we're also getting the first look at HTC's upgraded Sense UI, which offers up a smorgasbord of extra functionality.

The HTC Legend 'only' has a 600MHz processor, but still manages to zip through a huge amount of tasks without any hint of slowdown. Apple, we hope you're reading and taking note.

For those uninitiated in the ways of HTC's Android/Windows Mobile interface, the main thing this offers is a large range of home screens and a large number of widgets to dump on them.

The Sense UI on the HTC Legend offers seven home screens to play with, and when you first turn on the phone a few are already installed - the large clock with location-based weather (worked out from your mobile phone signal) is the first one you'll see.

Exchange email is presented in an easy to read way, with a scrollable list of all your messages, and Friendstream is also plonked on another home screen.

Friendstream is new, as it allows you to log into Flickr, Facebook and Twitter and see all the updates in one long stream (you can guess where the name came from, we guess).

This is a new addition from HTC, and apes the idea from Motorola's MOTOBlur, although with Friendstream it feels a little easier to see all your friends in one place thanks to the customisation options.

'Favourites' is also included by default - this allows you to put your favourite buddies as little icons in a grid and assign an automatic function to them - if they're on Facebook and linked in to their contact profile (more on that later) then their profile picture will also update.

The home screen is more than just detailing which widgets are already present on it though - it's about customisation. Whether you are simply long-pressing on a widget and dragging it into a bin to remove it, or the fact that the screen will get cloudy if the weather is overcast - this UI just works.

We've long been evangelists of HTC's method of laying things out, and this new Sense UI takes things up a notch - HTC has clearly noted the success Apple has had with its products, and followed the same 'form is as important as function' ideology.

Another cool addition to the overlay is HTC Leap - pinch the screen in and all seven home screens will be displayed at once (this can also be achieved by pressing the home button twice).

It's little touches like this that will make those that don't know about Android coo over the phone - and if you want to make waves in terms of mobile sales, attracting those that don't know about your brand is key.

The HTC Legend also has a top notch capacitive screen, as we've mentioned before - the 3.2-inch display wasn't too small, and the capacitive sensitivity is amazing - easily as good as anything out there, if not better. It registers the slightest touch, and performs just how you'd expect a touchscreen to - pivotal when you're trying to impress your Mum with your new phone.

And lest we forget - this is all built on top of Android as well, which already has a pretty good interface as it is.

Elements like being able to pull the notifications tab down from the top of the screen to see message previews or interact with your music is awesome, and the menu is accessed by tapping a small button at the bottom - with applications and icons listed in an easy-to-view grid.

We're sure that this might not suit every mobile phone owner, as some prefer the simplicity of a menu with all the icons in one place - if that's you, then you should probably think about getting an iPhone.

But if you want to play with widgets and be able to customise your experience as much as possible, then Android, and more importantly the HTC Legend, should be your first port of call.

Part of the Android 2.0 upgrade was a stronger focus on social networking within the contacts menu - but HTC has been doing that for months now, and the HTC Legend is no different.

The main thing about the contacts menu with the HTC Legend is that we're seeing an integrated view - it doesn't add in your Twitter friends as well, but the upshot of that is you're not left with loads of contacts in your phonebook.

We would have perhaps preferred to see something like Motorola does with MOTOBlur, where you can choose to pop in your Twitter friends if you want to, but don't have to see all of them - it makes it easier to see their updates that way.

There are five different distinct contacts you can have in the phone book - those from the SIM, Google, on the phone, Exchange and from your Facebook list.

While we appreciate Google asking you to download your contacts from Gmail when you use the phone for the first time, we don't recommend you do unless you've spent some time organising them, as you'll end up with reams of single email address entries with no name.

There is an option to only see those names with phone numbers, but that's only apparent afterwards and the sheer number of entries might confuse some people.

But if you want to make use of the phonebook options from Google and Facebook, then prepare to spend a good amount of time with the phone - you'll need to first of all merge all your phone numbers, names and email addresses together online, and then once those are downloaded to the phone, link them to the relevant Facebook account.

In fairness to HTC, it has spent a long time working out how to make Facebook integration as simple as possible - wherever someone has a phone number on their online profile, and that matches an entry on the phone, the HTC Legend will automatically merge them together.

And after that, it will make accurate suggestions based on email addresses too, so as you go through the phone linking up the profiles, you'll be able to simply press 'Link' to get the suggestions and tie the two together.

Where there is no email address listed, you'll have to do it manually, which takes some time, but when you've sorted out Google and Facebook then the integrated approach really comes to the fore - status updates, emails, text conversations, call history - even your friend's Facebook and Flickr photos are visible from the phonebook entry.

The Facebook link will also update the person's profile picture on the phone based on their online profile - which we mentioned earlier.

The list of friends is for some reason divided into two - we think it's those with emails and without, but it's annoying that we can just see our friends all in one easy-to-see list, alphabetically.

It would take a very long time to list all the features packed into the HTC Legend's phone book - but the Taiwanese firm has made it very, very easy to see everything from one contact in a variety of ways, something that has come from its heritage in Windows Mobile.

Call quality is also good on the HTC Legend - although we're not sure the design of the phone is right for pushing against your ear.

The fact the phone is made from aluminium means it has some fairly sharp edges - if you're ever trying to listen hard to someone, then it can be painful.

The speaker is loud and audible though, with a nice design as mentioned.

Call coverage is pretty good as well - the 3G signal is on a par with most. It's not going to offer you reception in places you've struggled with in the past, but it rarely dropped and we didn't have any instances of randomly dropped calls, which is always a plus.

The HTC Legend also supports smart dialling – bash the virtual numbers as if you were writing in predictive text, and the list of corresponding names comes up.

This feature is on a number of high-end smartphones, and we're surprised that more don't include it - it's actually now irritating when they don't.

In the phone book, we mentioned the sheer amount of options to connect with people - well, that's apparent as well with messaging too.

The HTC Legend offers (deep breath) the chance to interact over Exchange email, Webmail, SMS, MMS, Twitter and Facebook.

Well, less of the latter beyond seeing Facebook status updates, but the rest of it is offered natively within the phone.

We're a little annoyed Facebook messaging isn't offered from the phone itself without connecting to a web portal – it seems like an easy element to integrate, especially when Twitter is there already. The Motorola Dext, INQ Chat and Mini all manage it, so why not here?

Anyway, at least the rest of the messaging options work well – emailing is a dream. Your Google mail is set up when you activate the phone for the first time and you log into your Google account, so that's nice and easy.

And for others, be it Exchange or Webmail, the process is as simple as entering your username or email address and password, and the phone will automatically seek out the setting for you.

Texting is similarly easy – the best way of achieving it seems to be to go to the person's contact details in your phone book, as you can also see the message history with them, or start a new conversation.

Text conversations are threaded on the HTC Legend, which means that you can easily monitor correspondence without needing to flick backwards and forward through the inbox and sent box.

With each message a little icon of yourself and the person comes up with their picture (be it through Facebook or one you've added manually). This is another cool feature that adds to the overall slickness of the HTC Legend.

Twitter is also included thanks to the HTC's Peep - this gives instant access to elements like @replies, direct messages and favourite Tweeters - notifications of mentions and DMs to your account (which you set up when you turn on the phone) also appear in the notification bar.

And we've saved the best until last – the virtual keyboard. We don't know why HTC hasn't put together an Android phone with a physical set of keys to type away on, but with a touchscreen option this good, we don't really need one.

We've told you how good HTC's Android touch keyboard is before – in our opinion it was industry-leading.

But somehow the Taiwanese firm has managed to go one better with the HTC Legend – it's spectacular.

Put it this way – out of the box we managed to type out a whole text message without even spelling a word wrong or having to correct it.

Well, to be more precise – we spelled nearly EVERY word wrong, but no matter how far you deviate from the intended word, the prediction engine on the HTC Legend will put you right.

If you've ever shied away from a touchscreen because you hate texting on it – the HTC Legend is the phone to convert you, such is the power of the touchscreen keyboard.

The web browser is built on the same WebKit base as most other Android phones, but once again HTC has added its own little touches to the system on the HTC Legend to make it a different experience to other phones of its ilk.

The main interface is simple - web pages are presented as expanded options, allowing you to take a gander over the whole site without needing to zoom out to check things out.

Another thing we're pleased to see is the addition of pinch to zoom functionality, meaning expanding text is as easy as you could hope for.

And HTC has also included its own text reflow software in there too - for those that don't know what that means, you can basically keep zooming into text and the HTC Legend will keep resizing the text to make the words fit onto the screen.

This means you're not governed by the phone's choices of what you're supposed to be able to read - great news for those with slight sight deficiencies or the picky among us.

One slight downside - we've let iPhone users play with the HTC Legend (we know, sacrilege) and they've said the text resizing takes longer than on their phone - if this doesn't apply to you, we doubt you'll notice it.

And the speed of the internet browser on the HTC Legend is also definitely industry leading - we tried websites that are notoriously poor to view on the mobile web, and we were able to sprint through them - this phone is seriously adept at browsing the mobile web.

The screen - which as we mentioned is HVGA resolution - still renders web pages well and in good detail, meaning we never put the phone down to hit the full web browser instead on a PC.

Another high-end treat on the HTC Legend: Flash video is included by default, with both in-browser viewing and a full screen option available by double tapping on the screen.

The bad news - the Flash video on the phone is choppy and pretty unwatchable. It's not likely to be a deal-breaker for long, as Flash 10.1 is coming for mobile phones soon to the HTC Legend and this will likely fix the problem.

But at the moment, the Flash video might as well not be there - all it does is slow down websites we're trying to browse.

Other little web elements we like: the Legend will organise your bookmarks by visual thumbnails, which sit on the home screen - making them much easier to browse through.

It will also remember which sites you visit the most as well as grouping your history together nicely - the former makes it easy to add in your fave sites when you keep forgetting to do so when you're actually in them.

Cut and paste is also included by default, and it's easily the match of anything out there on the market today.

You're able to see the text in a little magnification pane, with little pins to drag to select the text you're after exactly. We're not experts in patent law - but this looks mightily similar to Apple's method unveiled last year.

This is a good thing - that system worked, and this one adds in the option to copy the text to a clipboard, search the web for the phrase, or share the site with others via social networking.

Android has always excelled at mobile web browsing - but HTC has just raised the game with the browser on the Legend.

If you're an HTC enthusiast (and we mean you own the phones, not that you've been kicked out of one too many shops for playing with them) then you'll know that the company has never been too strong on photography.

With the HTC Legend, the company has gone some way to remedying that problem, with a 5MP camera with LED flash, supported by a number of neat camera features.

This isn't a rival for Sony Ericsson's Satio or Vivaz - in fact it's not even in the same league.

But it does have some nice touches - for instance, while there's no dedicated camera key (boo) the main Terminator button (this is a phrase that will catch on, you watch) allows you to half press it to auto focus, meaning it functions like a 'proper' shutter button (yay).

The auto focus is pretty good too - the camera is able to focus on any point on the screen you wish, simply by tapping it - the HTC Legend will then automatically take the picture for you, which is a neat touch.

There's no dedicated macro mode for close up shots, but our tests showed that this is likely already integrated into the system, as we found it very easy to take pictures of nearby items.

The other elements, such as being able to use sliders to control colour saturation, white balance and contrast, all show that HTC has upped its game in terms of being able to take a better picture when you're out and about, and while the flash is a little stark, it's certainly an upgrade on the flash-less Hero.

MIXED SCENES: The HTC Legend managed to pick out levels of detail despite mixed lighting conditions

HALO EFFECT: We were surprised at the photo quality when shooting directly into very bright sunshine

DARKER IMAGE: The HTC Legend also handles distant objects without losing too much quality

BRIGHTER SCENES: The Legend is at its best shooting well-lit subjects

CLOSE UP ISSUES: Although the auto focus is good, the noise level increases dramatically with closer objects

FLASH IN THE PAN: The HTC Legend has a bright enough flash, but can't focus well in the darkness

Video recording isn't much to write home about though - but don't think that's a bad thing.

We'd much prefer a brand to spend time making a phone work well with the basic things like calling, texting or browsing the web - 30fps HD recording isn't necessary, and this smooth-ish VGA capture option on the HTC Legend is more than enough to take the video you want to share with your friends (in MP4 or H.263 formats).

The HTC range, and Android too, has never had media at its heart - although there are finally signs that things are starting to get better, and that's certainly true on the HTC Legend.

The music player sits apart from the video gallery, which for some reason is bundled under 'Photos'.

With the HTC Hero, we saw a distinct improvement in the music player - in the HTC Legend that improvement has continued.

We've mentioned before that the basic Android music interface, used on the likes of the LG Intouch Max GW620 (WHAT a snappy title) is just too bog standard - we want more than album, artist and title.

Thankfully, we've got it here: the HTC Legend music player offers up not only a full screen music player, but also the choice of artists, albums, tracks, playlists, genres and even purchased music from online services.

This makes sorting your tunes a much more pleasant experience than before - and the audio experience is also comparable to most other phones on the market as well.

We think Sony Ericsson still leads the way in terms of decent music phones, but there's nothing wrong with the sound on the HTC Legend.

There's no equaliser to play around with sound if you're having trouble with a tune and the speaker's not up to much - but for general use there's very little wrong with the HTC Legend.

The video player is also just fine for its purpose too - nothing over the top to blow your mind, but it performs all its tasks in a Ronseal-esque manner.

We tested a few video codecs on the phone - MP4, AVI and H.264 all worked fine with no judder. We're not sure about DivX, but early signs are that this isn't supported within the native Android player - we're sure the App Market can help out with that though.

Video on the 3.2-inch OLED screen is pretty nice - it's quite apparent this isn't a high-res WVGA screen, which we're becoming used to on high-end smartphones. Video looks fine, but lacks that extra pixel clarity.

The OLED does help matters though - the contrast ratios were lovely and the colours well represented.

But 3.2-inch screen isn't any good for things like watching full length movies - we weren't even that comfortable watching half hour videos.

Whether it's the thinner bezel or something else, we found ourselves pining for something larger - and the phone felt very tiddly in the palm for video.

The main other media elements lay with the FM radio and the YouTube application. The former is only OK - the sensitivity of the antenna (for which you have to connect the headphones) is pretty low, and couldn't find a few mainstream stations.

It also lacked RDS, which means you have to manually add the station names - which is irritating.

The YouTube application is cool though - not only do you have the option to watch videos in high quality over both Wi-Fi and 3G (although the latter is pretty slow) you can also rate, comment and share the video link all from the video itself - another example of the next-generation functionality Android is now offering.

It's difficult to know how to rate the HTC Legend in terms of applications - do we look at it as a standalone device, with a pretty well-stocked Android Market app portal, or do we compare it to the iPhone with its gargantuan App Store?

The thing to note is that while Android Market is around seven times smaller than the App Store, it's growing quickly and also offers more developer freedoms - this means more will start coding for the platform as time goes on.

But this is also about the applications on the HTC Legend already too - and these aren't insubstantial at all.

We've covered the excellent Peep app, but there are others on there from HTC and Google that just rock.

For instance, the version of Google Maps on the HTC Legend is awesome - you get all the best features that the likes of Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone users can only dream of.

For instance, you get access to Google Labs, which adds in elements like compass direction, measurements and terrain scaling as well - plus the addition of layers to give you Wikipedia and transport links on the map.

The GPS receiver is so fast on the HTC Legend as well, finding you in a matter of seconds when you're out and about - it even worked near windows too, and the maps loaded really quickly over 3G.

There's no Google Navigation for the UK sadly - but until Google sorts out whatever wranglings are going on behind the scenes, we wouldn't hold our breath for free turn-by-turn navigation on our Android phones.

The other cool application on the phone is the weather app - this is a favourite of HTC CEO Peter Chou, who loves showing off the fact that the weather widget will even cloud up the screen or speckle it with rain depending on the current conditions.

You can add in other cities and locations too, and the cool thing is you also get a four-day forecast as well - making it a really handy too.

There's a desk clock as well, which has a night mode for bedside viewing - without a dock this is a little pointless, but hey - it's a nice touch.

The clock also comes with a stopwatch and countdown timer as well - something so few phones manage to bring.

The Android 2.1 Market portal is slick too - the categories are clear and well defined, and the definition between free and paid-for apps shows the plethora of applications available for the HTC Legend.

Here we come to one of the downsides of the HTC Legend - the battery life isn't up to much.

Our take on smartphones is that they should be charged up every day, and the HTC Legend manages to last that long - but only just in most cases.

Put it this way - we tried to push it as hard as we could to see how long the battery would hold out for.

This meant from fully charged, we activated Bluetooth music playback, browsed the internet constantly, downloaded applications, streamed video, downloaded a 164MB file and played with Google Maps repeatedly to see how long the battery could hold out.

We also pushed the screen to full brightness with no time out, activated push email and set Twitter and Facebook to update as often as possible.

The HTC Legend managed to hold out for eight and a half hours before dying completely - which we suppose is average.

What is weird is that if you turn off the background apps - music, Bluetooth and so on - the HTC Legend still managed to drain completely in nine hours.

Under average use, this do-it-all phone will last a day, but it's certainly not industry-leading - the iPhone is probably just a little bit worse, and that's nowhere near a compliment.

But on the other hand, this is a phone that you want to keep playing with - you buy it based on that fact, and we challenge you to find a phone that you'll want to play with this much with a much longer battery life.

Other features

The HTC Legend comes with a few other neat features that we like - the calendar is brilliant for instance.

It synchronises with both your Google and Exchange calendars as soon as you tell it to, and any upcoming meetings will come up as notifications on the phone - with the alarm for this lowering dramatically in volume when you pick up the phone, recognising that you're probably with company and embarrassed.

Quick Office is also included in the package, giving easy access to Word, Excel and Powerpoint files - however, we couldn't see an option to edit these, so we'd imagine hardcore business users might want to download something a little more powerful.

A PDF viewer is also included in the menu as well, with an easy-to-use interface allowing you to quickly zoom in and out.

The HTC Legend might not have the organisational power of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 for instance, but we'd challenge the average worker not to have all his boxes ticked here.

Perhaps a hot-swappable microSD card would be nice (you have to open the battery cover to get to it, and this turns off the phone) but that's about all we can think of.

The connectivity options on the HTC Legend are the same as on any other Android phone - this means the usual suspects of Wi-Fi, 7.2Mbps HSPDA fast download speeds, Bluetooth and GPS.

Wi-Fi is a little suspect on the Legend - when in direct sight of the router, we still didn't have full signal, and there have been some anecdotal reports of Wi-Fi dropping out at times when moving further away.

Similarly Bluetooth was also pretty poor - listening to music over the A2DP stereo connection using Jabra Halo headphones was a very, very patchy affair.

This meant that audio constantly stopped and stuttered - it was listenable, but only just... we wouldn't recommend the HTC Legend as a Bluetooth headphones device to anyone.

GPS, as we mentioned just now, is pretty good though - it's capable of quickly locating you, even with trees or buildings around.

The a-GPS, used to give your weather location on the home screen, is less effective though - often taking time to refresh where you are, and therefore making the updated weather information hard to come by.

But the 3G signal was good and strong, with files downloading quickly and maintaining a couple of bars throughout long train journeys, which is always a good sign.

The PC Sync options were nice as well - you could either charge the phone, use it as a modem to access the internet, connect it as a mass storage device or use HTC Sync.

Sadly we were unable to back up our HTC Legend using the Sync option – whether it was because the phone hasn't been released to the public yet or something else, but it kept telling us it was disconnected.

The HTC Legend is the Taiwanese firm's latest effort at making a high-end smartphone - the sheer number of features and care taken with the interface should prove that.

We liked

Where do we start? The design is lovely - the unibody chassis is going to win a fair few fans, we bet.

The screen is clear and responsive; the Sense UI overlay adds a huge amount of functionality to the Android OS, and the 600MHz processor whips along.

The web browser is among the fastest out there, the touchscreen keyboard is industry-leading, and the ability to merge contacts and see elements like Facebook photos from your phonebook is superb.

Nearly every single aspect of the HTC Legend was either class-leading or rubbing shoulders with the leaders - it's so clear that a lot of thought has gone into its construction.

We disliked

However, there are a few niggles. We managed to crash the weather widget a couple of times, and the Friendstream application took a while to update at times.

The battery life is pushing right on the limits as well - we're not sure anyone will ever be able to use it up completely in day-to-day use, but it will irritate some people that the meter drains quicker than most.

The screen could be a little bigger, and pack a higher resolution too - but that's very much a subjective opinion, as many won't be upset about that.

Verdict

We had a really, really long think about the mark to give this phone, as it's so good in so many ways that we felt it deserved five stars.

But to give it that would mean recommending it over the iPhone - and while we believe it to be a better phone, it doesn't have the weight of the App Store behind it - and that's going to put a lot of people off.

If you're someone that doesn't really care massively about apps or gets irritated by a day-long battery life, we couldn't recommend this phone more.

And as a standalone device, we get a really strong feeling this is going to be our phone of the year - and if not, 2010 is going to be a really, really good year for smartphones.

The HTC Legend is not quite the phone to persuade the masses Android is finally an adequate iPhone replacement - but it's awfully, awfully close.

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