Nokia N900-Full review-part 3

Wrap-up

We came into this review wanting to know as much about Maemo as a platform as we did about the N900 itself; after all, the N900's just a single phone that'll be dead and forgotten from store shelves within a year. That's just reality, the hustle-and-bustle pace of the modern handset release cycle. Maemo, however, will live on -- but in what capacity? Where does it fit (or could it fit) in Nokia's grand plan?

After having dug in, we're seeing glimmers of brilliance here that give us hope. Maemo 5 isn't the polished, consumer-friendly, all-encompassing solution that Palm, Google, and Apple are all selling today, but it's fairly evident that Nokia has built itself a stable, extensible platform that can reach those levels with a little tender loving care. The company's commitment to open source and the Maemo development community is commendable -- it's something that should absolutely continue -- but going forward, we'd love to see what kinds of magical things could happen if it took development to 100 percent feature completion internally with a full round of usability testing before handing it off to the eager geeks in the field. The mere thought sends shivers down our spine.
That said, for now, Maemo officially remains an experiment; there's no greater evidence of that than the N900's half-bakedness. And hey, calling the N900 half-baked seriously isn't a knock in this case -- it's just a realistic admission of where Maemo stands today. As it has with its predecessors, Nokia seems totally comfortable with that assessment, throwing this loosely-assembled box of high-power hardware and software at anyone who dares live on the bleeding mobile edge. The company continues to insist that Symbian has a huge place in its line and will continue to do so, but long-term, we see nothing about Maemo that leads us to believe it couldn't be Nokia's single platform of the future. Even if it takes high-end hardware to run effectively, you can't deny that today's high-end is inevitably tomorrow's low-end. Everything gets cheaper, and Maemo itself -- by its very nature -- is free for Nokia to distribute.

Let's turn our attention back to the N900, though, since it's the only Maemo 5-powered device available today. Is it a keeper? As a daily workhorse smartphone for your average Jill or Joe, it's impossible to recommend the N900 at this point; it's just missing too much functionality that's waiting to be written by some enterprising CS grad students with spare time on their hands. As a second, dedicated browsing device or a geeky weekend hobby, though -- possibly an upgrade from an N810 -- the N900 is a very compelling device indeed, as long as you remember one simple rule: it's a computer with a phone, not a phone that can compute.

Nokia N900-Full review-part 3 OF 2

Software part 3

Speaking of Ovi, how about the OVI Store? We just had a little bit of time to play with the live beta of Nokia's Maemo port of the Store which went live shortly before this review, and at this point, it's a little undercooked (hence the "beta" label, we suppose). The most glaring deficiency is in the usability of the UI; rather than make an actual Ovi Store app, Nokia has elected to simply point users to a mobile-optimized portal in the browser, which ultimately leads to more scrolling and tapping than you'd like. That's not the end of the world, though; the bigger problem in the short term is the availability of actual... you know, apps. We searched for a few common phrases ("IRC," for example) and were met with zero results; in all, the store has fewer than 100 assets as of press time, and many of those are images, videos, and themes rather than actual applications. Over the years, Internet Tablet users have grown accustomed to getting their free, open wares over both official and unofficial repositories, and injecting the Ovi Store's layer of commercialism in there is a new step that might not gel at first with folks upgrading from N800s and N810s -- that said, it's an absolutely vital step to taking Maemo mainstream, so we hope Nokia finds some creative ways to attract more high-profile devs to the platform.
Now, finally, let's talk about this handset's real treat, its crown jewel: the glorious browser. The Internet Tablet line has used a fairly capable Mozilla-based browser for ages, but between the latest tweaked code and the N900's thoroughly freshened internals, it's gone to an entirely new level. Almost without fail, sites were rendered faithfully (just as you'd expect them to look in Firefox on your desktop) with fully-functional, usable Flash embeds -- and it's fast. Not only is the initial rendering fast, but scrolling around complex pages (Engadget's always a good example) was effortless; you see the typical grid pattern when you first scroll into a new area, of course, but it fills in with the correct content rapidly. To say we were blown away by the N900's raw browsing power would be an understatement -- in fact, we could realistically see carrying it in addition to another phone for browsing alone, because even in areas where it gives a little ground to the iPhone or Pre in usability, it smacks everyone down in raw power and compatibility. In our line of work where 24 / 7 access to the web is of paramount importance, having the N900 in our pocket when we were away from our laptop was a comforting insurance policy. As with Ovi Maps, the one complaint we'd lodge here is that capacitive multitouch would've been a huge win, but we adopted to the resistive setup without too much drama -- and the inclusion of a creative "swirl to zoom" gesture certainly mitigates the problem. Just don't lose the stylus!

Nokia N900-Full review-part 2 OF 2

Software-part 2

You've got UI quirkiness to contend with, too. Maemo 5 dispenses of the left-anchored taskbar present in every version of Maemo before it, and even the status bar in the upper left (where you see time, signal strength, and so on) has a tendency to disappear rather frequently, leaving you without any bearing or sense of how to navigate between apps or elements of the platform. This is most clearly evident in the main menu, where you're presented with nothing but a full page of icons -- and it's not like the N900 has a front-mounted home or back button, so to a novice user, it's anyone's guess how to back out to the home screen or move to another app that's already running. As it turns out, the answer generally is to find a blank out-of-focus area and tap on it to go back one screen, but depending on the screen you're in, that occasionally leaves you hunting for a free area on which to tap. [You can also tap along the edge of the screen -- even if the home screen icon isn't visible -- and get back. -Ed.] Worst case, you can hit the power button up top to call up the profile menu, which will bump you out to the home screen underneath -- but it's not elegant by any stretch.

Speaking of UI quirkiness, this gets back to something we touched on earlier -- the N900's almost exclusive reliance on landscape mode. We get the argument that the 770, N800, and N810 didn't have portrait mode at all, but times have changed -- people walk and surf at the same time these days (particularly with devices like the N900 that have WWAN radios on board) and it's a lot more convenient if you can do that one-handed. Portrait mode, of course, lends itself to one-handed use. If you lump this in with Maemo 5's general usability roughness, you get the sense that the platform was rushed just a bit -- Nokia took it to 90 percent and said, "hey, this is open source, let's let the community fill in the blanks." We're guessing there are plenty of buyers that are delighted with that policy, but again, these are the kinds of things that keep Nokia from having a platinum best seller on its hands. Long term, it'll be interesting to see how close Maemo 6 comes to closing that gap and making the platform accessible to consumers at large.
About the only places the N900 officially supports portrait mode at this point are the Phone and Photos apps; you can hack it into the browser right now and we suspect the rest of the platform will get there soon enough, but we digress
It's a little weird, but we're thankful in at least one regard: the phone is the one piece of software here that absolutely, positively must be ready to use in portrait, particularly considering that the earpiece is at one end. As a phone, the N900's pretty basic -- again, Nokia considers this a MID with a phone bolted on, not the other way around -- but you get a finger-friendly keypad and full contact integration, which works swimmingly when paired with something like Google sync.
There is one key area where the N900's phone excels, though: Skype support. In fact, this is about the best Skype experience we've ever had on a mobile phone -- you add your account through the N900's control panel, which then keeps you connected and ready to take and place VoIP calls just as you would a GSM call. It's truly seamless and worked extraordinarily well. In fact, there was a point when we were on a GSM call and a Skype call came through on call waiting, which we could switch to and place the original caller on hold -- had we not known the caller was on Skype ahead of time, we wouldn't have been able to tell. Likewise, you can natively add contacts' Skype IDs in the address book. Ironically, the whole integration makes the N900 the closest the Internet Tablet series has ever been to not needing a GSM radio -- and yet it's the first to have one.
The N900 includes a Maemo build of OVI maps, a staple for most Nokia handsets sold today. Coming from Google Maps on Android and iPhone, Ovi Maps leaves a lot to be desired here. First up -- and this isn't Ovi Maps' fault, specifically -- we had an awful time with AGPS, which was totally unable to get even a rough lock without GPS line of sight. At this point, we're used to living in the world of instant location mapping that Google has brought to every platform that Google Maps has touched, and we really miss it here -- waiting for a satellite constellation is so 2005. As for the app itself, it's on par with something you might expect a couple years ago; it can map routes (and the latest firmware is supposed to speed that process substantially), but you don't have turn-by-turn navigation or cool add-ons like street view out of the box. Finally, map scrolling is one activity that's made measurably easier on a capacitive screen -- preferably with multitouch -- so no amount of user hacking or third-party development is going to fix that particular issue. On the plus side, the map renders quite quickly as you scroll (everything we tested on the N900 moved with hustle, really) and we appreciated the app's shortcuts for bouncing between common zoom levels (country, city, and so on).

Nokia N900-Full review-part 2

Software

Hardware aside, it's really the N900's platform -- Maemo 5 -- that has people buzzing. There are plenty of reasons to believe that what we're looking at here is a very early incarnation of what will some day be Nokia's premier smartphone operating system (regardless of whether Symbian soldiers on in emerging markets and the lower end of the mainstream), so it behooves us all to pay close attention as this thing evolves both in Nokia's labs and in the open source community where Maemo was born and raised.
The first thing, and perhaps the most prominent thing, that a user sees regardless of device or operating system is the home screen. Coming from S60 5th Edition's restrictive grid-based widget placement, you might expect some limitations on the N900 -- but you'd be wrong. In fact, the N900 has one of the most extensible, customizable home screens of any mobile device we've ever used; you can drop widgets, bookmarks, and contacts exactly where you want them right down to the pixel, and you've got a total of four panels that loop around as you swipe (unlike Android, which stops in either direction). The system works well and does a great job of maximizing the handset's available screen real estate.

Tapping the icon in the upper left takes you to the main menu (more on that in a moment) or, if you've got any apps minimized, a display that Nokia calls the "dashboard." Basically, it's yet another interpretation of the so-called "card interface" popularized by webOS, and it works well here -- you see miniaturized views of all your open applications in one place. Minimized applications smoothly glide into the grid of cards, and tapped cards smoothly glide open to full screen again -- a testament to the power of the N900's hardware, we suspect.

Beyond the home screen, system notifications are a pretty hot topic, too, considering how well Android and webOS handle them and how poorly the iPhone does by comparison. Fortunately, Maemo 5 does a pretty great job here. New text messages, emails, and the like are briefly displayed as a yellow bubble in the upper left of the display; tapping it will take you right to the source of the notification (the new SMS, for example). If you let it go, though, the notification will persist as a "card" within the N900's multitasking dashboard, taking up the same space that a normal application would. You might think this would be confusing, but it's not for a very simple reason -- notifications appear as bright yellow squares, the same color as when they first appeared. So unless you've got an app minimized here with an entirely yellow background, you won't have any confusion.
If nothing else, Maemo 5 is pretty -- Nokia's prettiest platform ever, in fact, by a wide margin. We're sure that's due in no small part to the fact that the N900 is the first in the company's Internet Tablet line to employ a modern ARM Cortex A8-based core, making screen transitions and effects fast enough to accomplish their intended function: beautify the UI without sapping away precious seconds of the user's time. Out-of-focus screen elements are actually visually out of focus, which looks great (photographers, think "nice bokeh" here) and applications zoom and fade as you open, close, and minimize them.

"Pretty" doesn't cut it, though -- at least, not without a healthy dose of usability and functionality to go along with it, and in this regard, the N900 is much, much more raw. Indeed, Nokia has been surprisingly (and wisely) forthcoming about the fact that this is not a smartphone for the masses; it's for tweakers, hackers, geeks, nerds, and people who want as much control on their handheld device as possible -- and aren't afraid to get their hands dirty in the process. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that the N900 is a proof of concept -- a reference platform for Maemo that just happens to be sold in stores. Evidence of the N900's geeky aspirations are strewn about the platform from the X Terminal icon preloaded in the main menu, to the lack of an app store at launch (more on this shortly), to the fact that you need to connect the handset to a PC and run shell commands just to perform a hard reset.

Nokia N900-Full review-part 1

Hardware

Your personal take on the N900's look and feel depends almost entirely on how you approach it. As a phone, it can only be described as beastly -- but as a dedicated internet device, it's one of the smaller, sexier, and more practical devices in this tweener category to come to market. Physically, anyone coming from anN810 will immediately notice what Nokia has done here -- they've essentially traded height and width for thickness, probably a fair swap now that the latest model has made the leap from a pure MID to a smartphone with MID tendencies. After all, as a phone, it has to fit in your pocket without much drama, and shaving over 17mm off the width and 12mm off the height certainly helps Nokia meet that goal.

That said, it really can't be overstated: the N900 is thick -- thick enough to put a bulge in even the loosest pocket. Carrying it around reminded us of toting our trusty N95 back in the day, and a quick lookup confirmed that they're nearly the same thickness -- the N95's actually a couple millimeters beefier, believe it or not -- so if you're used to carrying something of that girth, it could actually be a pretty smooth transition. On the other hand, owners of most modern WinMo devices, iPhones, and even Nokia's own 5800 and N97 will have more of an adjustment period.
For better or worse, the N900 carries over some very uniquely Nokia-esque elements, notably the spring-loaded slider for toggling standby mode and the power button mounted dead center along the top edge. They're complemented by a volume rocker, 3.5mm headphone jack (doubling as a TV-out), two-stage camera button, and micro-USB port along the sides. Oh, and of course, there's a stylus tucked in the corner for actuating the resistive display. It's decent -- you won't find any metal bits or mind-blowing design here (HTC typically does a better job with that), but more importantly, it's long and comfortable enough to nearly resemble a standard writing utensil.

You'll notice in the last paragraph that we refer to the right edge of the N900 as the "top" edge. That's because the device is very much landscape-oriented -- a throwback to its Internet Tablet roots and the evolution of Maemo, which predates today's trend toward full-touch handsets that are fully functional and equally usable in any orientation. We'll talk about this a bit more in the software section, but for now, bear in mind that the controls are generally placed in a way that favors landscape use.

Tearing off the back gets at another Nokia quirk -- you really do have to tear it off, like so many Nokias before this. It doesn't slide at all, you just dig your fingernail in there, pull, and hope for the best. That's fine, we suppose -- generally speaking we're uncomfortable about doing anything to our gadgets that involves tearing at a fastened cover, but as long as it's designed to do that and it doesn't break, we're cool. Underneath you've got direct access to the microSD slot, meaning that you can technically access it without pulling the battery. Speaking of the battery, it's a BL-5J, the same 1320mAh unit employed on the 5230, 5800, and X6. Underneath you'll find the SIM tray, and those three nooks and crannies are about the only reasons you've got to be in this area of the device.

Going back to the resistive display: all things considered, it's not bad at all. It's certainly not the brightest we've seen, but we found it bright enough to use in every situation we threw at it. Interestingly, we never really noticed the phone's ambient light sensor working, but maybe that's the best-case scenario for an automatic brightness adjustment mechanism -- you should never have to think about it or let it disrupt you as you use the device, as long as the screen's bright enough to read without getting blown out in dark environments. In our earlier Preview of a pre-production N900, we had issues with sensitivity that we didn't seem to have here -- in all likelihood, we owe that more to the fact that we've simply re-learned how to properly use a resistive display than any material change in the final retail unit's screen. Put simply, you'll be fine here as long as you remember to stick to your fingernail and the stylus; Maemo 5's UI elements are more or less exclusively large enough to be finger-friendly, and we found the experience a good deal more satisfying than what you get with S60 5th Edition. Unless we're using a drawing app, we'd almost always prefer being able to reliably use our fingertip to a fingernail -- capacitive still wins for ease of use -- but Nokia seems to have done the best it could here.
Sliding the N900 open reveals a full QWERTY keyboard comprising three rows of well-domed keys. Unfortunately, we've seen countless better mobile keyboard designs -- we really don't have a good explanation for why Nokia did it this way. The first problem is that the N900 only slides about 40 percent of the way open, a far cry from something like the Touch pro 2 which ends up closer to 75 or 80 percent exposed in the fully locked, tilted position. That explains, in part, why they've only gone with three rows here when four gives you considerably more layout flexibility. The next issue is that the space bar is pushed all the way over to the right side, making the learning curve unnecessarily steep; the N97 and N97 Mini are both configured the same way, so we suppose Espoo has no intention of addressing this in the short term for whatever reason. For most of our time with the phone, we found ourselves typing "M" when we meant to type a space; don't get us wrong, we're certain you can get used to it, but the question is why should you have to? We weren't terribly happy with the slider mechanism itself, either; it felt beefy enough and it'll probably survive through a typical user's abuse, but it didn't have the smooth, gliding, beautifully spring-loaded response -- nor the satisfying "click" -- that you feel on many higher-end portrait QWERTY sliders these days, including Nokia's own N97.

How about battery life? 1320mAh isn't too shabby for a device of the N900's specs, but we came away with mixed results. Moderate data and light voice use while connected to both WiFi and T-Mobile 3G consistently yielded a solid day (as in a full 24 hours) for us in the States, and we were thinking that a heavy user wouldn't have much issue making it through a day -- but a second review unit connected to T-Mobile Netherlands was consistently managing about 13 hours with middling use. Of course, the N900 charges off a standard micro USB port and BL-5Js are relatively easy to find, so you've got options if you need extra juice midway through the day.

LG optimus 7 full review-part 3

Performance

If you've been following our coverage of Windows Phone, you'll know that our experience with all of the WP7 range of handsets has been universally excellent, and the Optimus 7 is no exception. From the time you unlock the screen to the moment you lock it again, you'll experience smooth graphic transitions and good performance both in the menus and within all of the core apps. The only time you will come across any lag in the navigation is when the phone is pulling down data from the web, like Facebook status updates when you enter the People hub.

A standard business day of use wasn't enough to fatigue the 1500mAh battery in the Optimus 7, though for us a standard day includes up to an hour of talk time only. If you were to add another hour to this, or exceed our two hours of daily web browsing, you might need to keep a charger at work.

LG optimus 7 full review-part 2

Features

As with all of the other WP7 phones we've reviewed over the past few weeks, the Optimus 7 matches Microsoft's required hardware spec, and is limited by it as well. It supports a full range of connectivity options, with HSPA network compatibility, Wi-Fi including wireless N, A-GPS, Bluetooth, plus it adds to the basic suite with DLNA media streaming (but not receiving).

Like the 7Q, the Optimus 7 also has twice the on-board memory of its competition, with 16GB of non-expandable storage. Its 5-megapixel is the basic spec for WP7, but the quality of the sensor is quite good, and the LED flash does a good job of illuminating dark scenes and acting as a fill flash. Its digital zoom feature is basically unusable, but then, digital zoom is always pretty rubbish.

You also get access to a range of exclusive LG-created apps, which are by far the best we've seen from the manufacturers so far. Pre-installed on our review unit were a panoramic photo stitching tool and an augmented-reality nav app, similar to Layar. A quick glance at the Marketplace and we discovered a half dozen more, including music rhythm games and a Tool Kit with a range of mini apps within. We've also been told by LG that it plans to co-develop up to 10 new apps every quarter and that these are exclusive to LG WP7 handsets.

LG optimus 7 full review-part 1

Design

LG may not be known for producing class-leading smartphones, but it does regularly release some pretty sexy handsets. The Optmius 7 is no exception; its 3.8-inch LCD touchscreen is the centrepiece in this design, but it's the attention to detail we appreciate most. We like the way the ends taper outwards, the brushed metal finish on the battery cover and the trim around the 5-megapixel camera lens. But if there's one part of this phone we like above all others, it's the real, mechanical buttons below the screen.

The first round of Windows Phone handsets are uniformly plagued by a lack of mechanical buttons. HTC, Samsung and LG have all opted for touch panels for navigation rather than mechanical keys, a choice that trades off a level of usability for an assumed aesthetic appeal. The Optimus 7 differs in this regard, below its screen are three depressible navigation keys. This will seem like the height of nit-picking to some, but after you've accidentally quit out of applications more than a few times you'll understand why we regard this feature so highly.

The screen is a WVGA resolution TFT display, and though this pales in comparison to Samsung's Super AMOLED technology (literally), the screen on the Optimus 7 still does a fine job of displaying clear, colourful images.

There's a 3.5mm headphone socket on the top of the handset, alongside the screen-lock key, and you'll find a dedicated camera shutter button on the lower right side. The battery cover is removed with a nifty ejection switch on the back of the phone, and returns to its original position nicely, laying flush with the rest of the handset, following its curves seamlessly.

HTC 7 Mozart full reveiw-part 3

Performance

With one Live and two Gmail email accounts set to sync every half hour, the occasional phone calls and text messages and social networking, the Mozart battery life lasted slightly over a day of use on a full charge. This is comparable to other smartphones, but given the fact that you can't sync social-networking apps automatically on the Mozart, we expected it to perform a little better.

Call quality was good and we didn't experience any dropped calls during our period of testing. The speakerphone on this handset was good, loud and sufficiently clear. Audio for videos was also decent, though we would suggest using headphones instead of firing up the speakers when in public — it's more civic-minded to do so.

However, on a few occasions, we were not able to connect to the cellular data network in spite of good reception at the location. We tested the network using the same data plan on an iPhone 4 and it worked fine.

Speed-wise, the Mozart performed fine with its 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 576MB RAM. Transitions were smooth and all common tasks such as test messaging and bringing up the address book were done snappily. Loading times were a little long for Xbox Live games, but that slowness has been felt on all the WP7 devices we tried so far.

HTC 7 Mozart full reveiw-part 2

Features

Connectivity-wise, you get the usual crop of options available to a high-end smartphone. These include HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS for satellite navigation.

At the software end of things, we know Microsoft has dictated how the interface should look, so there's no chance of HTC adding its Sense UI to the Mozart. To differentiate itself from other vendors, the Taiwan manufacturer has included a few proprietary apps.

The starting point of getting a unique HTC experience on the Mozart is through the HTC Hub program. The first thing you'll see upon firing it up is the time and weather — this looks just like the most prominent widget found in every HTC Android phone with Sense. Apart from that, it gives thumbnails of other exclusive HTC apps, which will take you to the Windows Marketplace to download.

Of the available apps, the one we found most useful is called Attentive Phone. This gives the handset extra features for handling phone calls. For example, the "quiet ring on pick-up" option detects when you pick up the Mozart from a table when it's ringing and lowers the ringing volume. The other options include "flip for speaker", which activates the speakerphone during active calls when you turn the phone over; "flip to mute ringer"; and "pocket mode", which detects when your device is in a pocket or bag and increases the ring volume accordingly. These features have all been implemented in the Android-based HTC Sense and we are glad to see them in HTC's Windows Phone handsets.

Other apps include Photo Enhancer for adding effects to images, Sound Enhancer for an audio equaliser, Stocks for checking your quotes, and other extras like a unit converter, notepad and to-do list program. There is also a Flashlight app, but take note that this won't work with the Mozart's Xenon flash as it cannot be turned on persistently like LED lights.

With an 8-megapixel sensor and Xenon flash, the Mozart's camera has the best specifications of all the WP7 launch models. The camera app is pretty responsive and focuses quickly. It also gives options such as portraits, sports and candlelight for different shooting scenarios. Fun filter effects including sepia and negative can also be added.

Taking a photo in auto mode was a bit of a challenge. The Mozart tended to lower shutter speed to compensate for dim lighting. This gave properly exposed shots but also increased the incidences of blurred photos. Typically, it's hard to hold a lightweight camera phone very still, especially when you have to apply pressure to press the shutter button, adding to the difficulty of getting a sharp image without hand-shake blur. We would have preferred it if the camera allowed for a slightly underexposed shot as a compromise for dim lighting.

Of course, using the Xenon flash does go some way to alleviating hand-shake problems. One issue in its implementation is that the shutter sound goes off before the shot is actually taken. A user may instinctively move his hand down before the image is captured, resulting in a missed or blurred shot.

When you do get your shot, images looked decent with accurate colours. Using the sports mode helps to solve the slow shutter speed without flash issue, but image noise becomes more apparent. The HTC 7 Mozart can take 720p HD-quality videos. Click here to see some images and clip.

Overall, we were not impressed with the indoor performance of the Mozart's 8-megapixel shooter. It seems some of these issues could be solved by a software update and we hope HTC releases one soon. It would be good, too, if HTC could add a sweep panorama mode for taking landscape shots, like on the LG optimus 7.

HTC 7 Mozart full reveiw-part 1

Design

With a 3.7-inch WVGA screen, aluminium chassis and curved edges, the Mozart looks a lot like the HTC Desire from the front. Those who love metallic materials will be pleased to see that the aluminium extends all around the back, save for two plastic portions on the top and bottom. We feel the non-symmetrical ridges and cut-outs of the unibody design are quite cool-looking, but admit that not everyone will take a liking to it.

Unlike the Desire, the Mozart has touch-sensitive buttons on the front. These are the Back, Start and Search keys as required by Microsoft. While they work well, and we like the haptic feedback we get when we used them, we would have preferred physical shortcut keys as found on the Desire. This would reduce the occurrence of accidental presses when playing games holding the phone in landscape orientation — when we were playing Rocket Riot, the Search key was unintentionally activated, kicking us out of the game. Since Xbox Live is a big part of what makes WP7 attractive, we feel physical keys will reduce the chance of such occurrences.

The Mozart does have some physical buttons around the edges. These include the power toggle on the top, camera shutter on the bottom right edge, and volume controls on the left.

The 800x480-pixel LCD display was bright and showed text and images well. We had no issues with it whether indoors or out in bright daylight.

Like the HTC Legend, the plastic cut-out on the base has to be removed to access the removable battery. The Mozart doesn't come with a memory expansion slot, but you do get 8GB of built-in storage.

Samsung f480 review-part 3

Performance
Unlike the Samsung Omnia, the F480 has fewer feathers in its cap, but we've been mostly impressed with how each of these features has performed. Making and receiving calls is good with a loud, if slightly muffled, speaker at your ear. Creating messages is a breeze due to a well-designed onscreen T9 keypad. Some people may be disappointed to discover the F480 doesn't use a virtual QWERTY keyboard, but from our experience with other touchscreen phones, this is not a feature we'd make use of anyway.

The speed of menu navigation and processing in applications is mostly sufficient. The time between selecting an option or application and seeing the results is typically about one second. This pause is smoothed over somewhat by animated transitions, though these tend to stutter and lag.

The F480 does an excellent job of behaving like a portable media player, though with matching file recognition and no significant internal storage or 3.5mm headphone socket on the phone (it does come with a cumbersome 3.5mm extension adapter), it's hard to recommend the F480 over the iPhone as a media player.

On the other hand the F480 may be the best Telestar next G handset we've come across. Watching Foxtel TV on this phone truly shows off how great this service is; the streaming is fast and without interruption and the picture and audio is as good as to be expected — which is about YouTube video quality.

The 5-megapixel camera certainly seems to have all the settings and adjustments that have become common across the higher-specced camera phones. The F480 has a variety of shooting modes and white balance settings, picture quality and focusing mode adjustments. In the field we found the camera took photos that represented the colours we saw well, but tended to flare in sunlight and often struggled to focus. As far as 5-megapixel camera phones go the F480 is a mid-range shooter and will pass the test for Facebook bloggers, but not so for people who may want to print these photos down the track.

Samsung f480 review-part 2

Features
Comparisons with Apple's iPHONE are inevitable, on the merit of the touchscreens and colour menus mostly, but there are important differences to note. Firstly, the F480 isn't a smartphone. It runs on Samsung's proprietary operating platform and as such you cannot develop or install third party applications to this phone, other than Java-based software.

Also, the F480 doesn't include Wi-Fi hardware or a GPS receiver, like Apple's smartphone. Instead the F480 sports strong consumer phone features, including a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash and access to Next G services and mobile Foxtel.

In unison with 7.2Mbps HSDPA data speeds the F480T has an excellent pre-installed web browser. Its interface is simple and clean, and it does a great job of rendering pages in a single column mobile view, which is lucky because zooming requires more keystrokes than the finger gestures iPhone users will be accustomed to.

The F480 supports a range of multimedia including DRM-free MP3 and AAC music files and MPEG4, H.264 and H.263 video files. The music player interface is serviceable, but it has nothing on the slick iPod Coverflow menu found on the iPhone.

Samsung f480 review-part 1

Design

Think Samsung's Ominia but squatter. It's no surprise that two Samsung touchscreen handsets released in short succession should look so alike. There are subtle differences in the shape and size of the mechanical keys, and the Omnia's 3-inch display is a 2.8-inch touchscreen on the F480, but otherwise these guys are like twins separated at birth

The F480 has a pleasing weight and its brushed metal finish feels nice to hold. Samsung has opted for a capacitive touchscreen in the F480, as opposed to the resistive touchscreen technology it tends to employ, and while these technologies are vastly different, the end result subtly favours the F480. Capacitive touchscreens react to fingers only (or contact with any part of your body), so you cannot use a stylus, but the upside is a more responsive display.

Samsung has designed a good touchscreen interface for this handset. Incorporating the company's TouchWiz widgets homescreen and large colourful menu items, we've had no significant difficulty in navigating the menus or performing basic phone functions. We're still not sold on the usefulness of the TouchWiz widgets, though our review unit came with four Telstra widgets which are great links to Next G services.

ipHONE 3g review-part 9

Call quality
When we reviewed the original iPhone, we withheld our Editors' Choice Award largely over middling call quality due to low volume and a slight background hum. The iPhone 3G corrects these problems--our tests revealed louder volume and clearer audio. We also noticed that we could hear better at a variety of angles, whereas the first iPhone had a sensitive sweet spot. Reception didn't vary between GSM and HSDPA calls.

iPhone 3G also improves speakerphone calls. The phone's external speaker creates louder output, and callers said they can hear us better. Voices don't sound quite as natural, but that's typical on a speakerphone. Automated calling systems could understand us via regular or speakerphone calls. The iPhone's signal remained strong during our initial testing period in our San Francisco office, but we'll test it in more environments over the coming days.

Apple rates the iPhone 3G's battery at 5 hours of talk time over 3G and 10 hours over AT&T's standard cellular network; 6 hours of Internet time on Wi-Fi, or 5 hours over 3G; 7 hours of video playback; 24 hours of music playback; and a standby time of 12.5 days. We'll conduct a full round of battery tests over the next few days, but for the moment the battery life does seem to drop faster than on the original iPhone, particularly while using the 3G network. That's to be expected, but we noticed that after a half-day's use, the battery life dropped by about 30 percent.

ipHONE 3g review-part 8

Camera
We hoped that the iPhone 3G would throw in an improved camera, but we got the same 2-megapixel shooter as in the original model, although with perhaps a slight improvement in photo quality. (We'll take more shots in different conditions over the next few days.) Camera features remain equally minimal and the blatant lack of multimedia messaging and video recording continue to rub us the wrong way.

What else is new?
The IPhone 3G offers a host of additional new features, from the noteworthy to the trivial. For the enterprise, there's remote wipe (to erase data in case of a stolen or lost phone) and integration with Cisco IPSec VPN for remote network access. You'll also find calendar colors and a new interface for entering passwords. (Now the screen temporarily displays the last character you entered so you can verify that you haven't mistyped.) We found the new ability to take screen captures (by holding the Home button and pressing the power/sleep key) especially useful. Screenshots end up in the camera's photo gallery.

What's missing?
We've mentioned already that Apple has stubbornly left out multimedia messaging, stereo Bluetooth, and video recording. But we also wish we'd gotten a landscape keyboard, cut and paste, voice dialing, Flash support for the Web browser, tactile feedback for the touch screen and a memory card (or at least a 32GB model). Perhaps those additions will come in time. We'd also like the capability to send calendar appointments to contacts and an easier way to transfer files to the iPhone. Because there's no way to transfer them via iTunes, you'll have to e-mail files to yourself to access them on the iPhone. And even then, there's no accessible mass file storage.

ipHONE 3g review-part 7

3G
The iPhone 3G's support for AT&T's wireless UMTS/HSDPA wireless broadband network comes too late for original iPhone buyers who grew frustrated with the slow Web surfing speeds of the 2.5G EDGE network, but it makes for a much more satisfying second-generation device. The Safari consistently delivered speeds of about 300 to 500Kbps and even faster at times in our tests. That's a huge jump over the typical EDGE speeds of less than 100Kbps. Web pages that used to take minutes took only seconds to load via 3G. We'll do more scientific comparison Web testing (3G versus EDGE) over the next few days and post the results on our review.

Of course, the 3G experience is all relative. Your experience will depend on many factors including 3G coverage in your area, the number of people on the network at a given time, and the kind of pages you're trying to access--as a rule, busier pages will load more slowly. Also, it's absolutely essential that you test 3G coverage in your area using another AT&T 3G handset before buying the new iPhone. AT&T can give you guidance, but there's no substitute for real-world experience. Outside of the United States, the iPhone's tri-band (850/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA support will deliver 3G coverage around the world.

ipHONE 3g review-part 6

GPS
While the current iPhone location services find your position by triangulating among nearby cell phone towers and satellites, the iPhone 3G uses Assisted GPS supplemented by satellites, which better pinpoints your location. It also offers live tracking so that you can monitor your progress as you drive (or walk) along. We'll expand more on the tracking feature as we test it. Even with these additions, however, the iPhone's GPS features can't compete with a standalone GPS device. Google Maps provide point-to-point directions on the iPhone 3G, but the phone doesn't support turn-by-turn directions in real time, and it's unclear whether that capability will come later from third-party applications. Apple's SDK prohibits location-based services "designed or marketed for real-time route guidance," but that doesn't mean we'll never see them.

ipHONE 3g review-part 5

Contacts search
A search bar now appears above your contacts list. Typing in any portion of the same will take you immediately to that person. The software update also added a special Contacts to the home screen, which is something we weren't expecting.

iWork documents and PowerPoint
We haven't tried iWork documents just yet, but we were able to view PowerPoint e-mail attachments. The attachment was rather large (1.3MB), but it didn't take very long to download.

Bulk delete and move
This works in your e-mail boxes only. In your in-box you'll see a small "edit" button at the top right-hand corner. When you press the button, a small circle will appear next to each e-mail. Touch the circle to highlight as many messages as you like and then select the "delete" or "move" options.

Scientific calculator As Steve Jobs said in his WWDC keynote, you'll now get a scientific calculator when you turn the phone on its side. You'll see a lot more buttons that will set a mathematician's heart aflutter. Jobs said a lot of people asked for this but again, I'd like to know who they are.

Parental controls
You now will find a "Restrictions" selection under the General tab of the main Settings menu. There you can restrict access to the Safari browser, explicit songs, YouTube, and the iTunes and iTunes Apps stores. You can select as many restrictions as you like.

Language support
The software update will brings language support and typing keyboards in French, Canadian French, U.K. English, German, Japanese (QWERTY and Kana), Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, and Polish. You can select as many languages you want by opening the "International" selection under the General tab of the main Settings menu. For Chinese you choose from Pinyin or a graffiti-style application for writing characters. As you enter characters, suggestions will appear to the right. To change between menus, choose from the small globe icon next to the space bar.

ipHONE 3g review-part 4

Mobile Me
The iPhone 3G supports Apple's new MobileMe service, which synchronizes from MAC's Mail, Address Book, and iCal applications: contacts, calendar appointments, e-mail messages, photos, and browser bookmarks. One advantage of MobileMe is that it allows you to sync personal and work calendars, and contacts. We'll test MobileMe on the phone once we get it up and running.

Apps store
When you select the iTunes Store, you're taken to the Apps Store main menu, which somewhat resembles the mobile iTunes store in design. You search applications by name and category and you can browse through the lists of Featured applications or the Top 25. There also is a feature for seeing if your purchased applications have any updates.

We purchased a few apps for the iPhone. Downloads over Wi-Fi were pretty quick; most apps took just a few seconds, but keep in mind it will vary by the size of the app. Though you can purchase iTunes songs wirelessly only through a Wi-Fi connection, you can download applications over a 3G network and even over EDGE (if 3G isn't available). Downloads over 3G took about the same time as they did over Wi-Fi, give or take a few seconds, but apps over EDGE are quite pokey. We also purchased applications through the online iTunes (7.7) store. We downloaded Super Monkey Ball and then synced it to our phone--a new applications tab appears under the iPhone menu. The process was quick and painless. What's more, navigation through the online apps store is easy.

What's most remarkable about the online applications store is the sheer breadth of titles available. As of this writing, there are 27 pages available in a staggering range of categories. If there is one thing about the software update that changes the original iPhone for the better, it's the Apps Store--even if not all the applications are keepers. Of course, before you get carried away, remember that some apps are free but others will cost you.

ipHONE 3g review-part 3

Features
The iPhone 3G hangs on to all the original iPhone features and throws in a few more, so we'll concentrate on what's new. Lucky for first-gen iPhone owners, most of the impressive array of additions--save 3G support and enhanced GPS--come along with the free 2.0 software update. For more on the organizer features, stocks and weather widgets, YouTube app, notepad, threaded texting and visual voicemail.

Exchange server support
Worker bees worldwide have awaited the iPhone 3G's full support for Microsoft Exchange server. In our tests, adding an Exchange account was ridiculously easy once we had the correct settings from our IT department--simply choose to add a new e-mail account in the main Settings menu, and you'll be taken to the standard list of available e-mail systems. "Microsoft Exchange" and "MobileMe" (we'll try that later) will appear at the top of the list just above the choice for Gmail. You'll then be prompted to enter the applicable e-mail address, domain/username, server, and password. The authentication process took just a couple of minutes. Installing CNET's security certificate posed a bit of a challenge, but we eventually succeeded by mailing the certificate to ourselves through Yahoo Mail.

Once you're ready to go, the iPhone will sync your Outlook e-mail, contacts, and calendar. Be advised that while the iPhone can support multiple POP3 accounts at once (two Yahoo accounts, for instance), it syncs with only one Exchange server and, worse, will only with one calendar or contacts list at a time. If you have a separate personal calendar, your work calendar will replace it once you start the sync. (You'll be notified before it happens.)

As an alternative, though, you can sync e-mail without syncing your contacts and calendar. Also, you can keep work and personal e-mail accounts open at the same time, although you'll have to switch between the two (unlike on a Blackberry). MobileMe is another way to work around this restriction, but we'll talk about the later.

When using Wi-Fi, e-mail syncing went quickly. As new messages came in, the iPhone registered them almost immediately. It seemed to bog down when we received a large clump of messages at one time, however. In those cases, we had to update the phone manually. In one instance, an update took a couple of minutes--long enough that we thought the phone had frozen. We also noticed that if the iPhone loses its Wi-Fi connection, the syncing is interrupted even if the phone has 3G service. Even with these caveats, however, the experience was satisfactory. The Syncing via 3G was just as quick; if there was a difference, we didn't notice it.

When we deleted a message on our phone, the same e-mail vanished on our PC just a couple of seconds later. Messages deleted on the PC took longer to disappear from the phone; typically, we had to do a manual update to see them gone. Messages deleted on the phone will show up in your PC's Recycle Bin and vice versa.

You can access all folders in your in-box and move messages from your in-box to a specific folder. You can't search for messages, but you can call a contact if they include their phone number in their e-mail. Opening attachments worked as promised, and we like how the software update now lets you save attached images directly to your photo gallery simply by tapping the image. To e-mail photos, you will need to do so in the traditional manner by opening the photo, selecting the e-mail option, and choosing which account you'd like to send from.

Though according to AT&T, using Exchange server support on the iPhone 3G will require the business data plan (the one that costs $45 per month), we're not sure how AT&T will enforce this rule. The iPhone does not prompt you of this restriction in any way.

ipHONE 3g review-part 2

Design
You'd be hard-pressed to notice any design differences on the front of the iPhone 3G. The minor changes--the silver rim is thinner and the speaker sports silver mesh--are so minimal we didn't notice them for a few hours after picking up the device. Turn the phone on its side, however, and you'll see more changes. Apple has replaced the aluminum silver back with a plastic face in either white or black. The black version (our review model) is attractive, but we admit that we miss the original silver, which shows fewer fingerprints and smudges than the shiny black version. We haven't seen the white model in person, but the thought makes us cringe.

The iPhone 3G's edges are slightly tapered to accommodate the curved back, making the device thinner around its perimeter than its predecessor, but a hair thicker (0.48 inch versus 0.46 inch) in the gut. Unfortunately, the curved back makes the iPhone 3G wobble slightly if you use it while resting on a table--which quickly becomes annoying. The phone's height and width measurements (5.5 inches by 2.4 inches) remain the same except, though it weighs just a tiny bit less (4.7 ounces versus 4.8 ounces).

At 3.5 inches and 480x320 pixels, the display is the same size as its predecessor, but displays slightly more dots per inch (163 vs.160), and still cranks out brilliant colors, sharp graphics, and fluid movements. The layout of the home screen is identical to the first version's, though you'll see two new icons from the outset: a Contacts icon takes you directly to your phone book and the Apps Store icon opens the iTunes Apps store. The display's glass surface, touch interface, and secondary menu remain the same.

The iPhone's 3G controls reveal a few changes, but none will surprise a current iPhone user. The Home button sits below the display, while the Volume rocker and handset lock switch rest on the left spine. The Power switch rests on top of the phone in its normal position. All controls are now silver instead of black. The SIM card slot hasn't moved either, and Apple now includes a SIM removal tool in the box. The bottom of the iPhone houses the speaker, the microphone, and the charger port, but you'll also notice two tiny screws on either side of the charger jack. Think maybe you'll be able to replace your own battery now? Bummer: the battery is still not user-replaceable, so we don't recommend trying it.We're very pleased that the iPhone 3G's 3.5mm headset jack now sits flush with the surface of the phone allowing you to use any 3.5mm headset you like; you're no longer restricted to a headset that can fit in the previous phone's inane recessed jack.

In the box you'll find the syncing cable, a display cleaning cloth, a headset, user documentation, the aforementioned SIM removal tool, and an electrical outlet plug. The plug is pleasantly smaller than on the original iPhone's, but it's compatible with a standard USB cable. On the downside, you don't get a syncing dock. If you want one, you have to shell out $30 for it (boo!), and Apple made sure the iPhone 3G won't fit in the first iPhone's dock.

ipHONE 3g review

INTRODUTION

With the iPhone 3G, Apple appears to have fixed some call-quality performance issues we had with the previous model--in our initial tests, the volume is louder with less background buzz than before. We're worried about battery life--some early reviews indicate that the iPhone 3G lasts only a day--but we'll run full tests over the next couple of days and report our results on this page.

Price may well remain our largest concern. New AT&T customers and most current AT&T customers can buy the iPhone 3G for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. If you don't qualify for that price--check your AT&T account to find out--you'll pay $399 and $499 respectively. Either way, you'll pay $15 more per month ($74.99 total) for a plan comparable with the original iPhone ($59 per month). So while you'll pay less outright to buy the handset, you'll make it up over the course of a standard two-year AT&T contract.

So should you buy an iPhone 3G? If you haven't bought an iPhone yet and have been holding out for a new model, now is the time. If you're a current iPhone owner and you're yearning for a faster cellular network, then you should take the plunge. But if you're an iPhone owner who won't use 3g, then you should stick with your current model

Samsung galaxy 3-part 3

Performance

The 667MHz processor and 256MB RAM in the Galaxy 3 kept things chugging along fine. The browser slowed down a little when loading graphics-intensive pages, but this was expected so we weren't too concerned. However, it's a pity Android 2.2 isn't available for the I5801 as this latest version will improve CPU performance, including making the browser more responsive.

For such a small phone, the Galaxy 3 comes with quite a large 1,500mAh battery. This kept the smartphone going for about two days on a single charge with two email accounts on push, Twitter running with hourly notifications, some phones calls and occasional text messages.

We had no issue with voice call quality, though the speaker wasn't as loud as we wished it would be. Video calls are not supported.

Samsung galaxy 3-part 2

Features

TheI5800 has no lack of connectivity options. It comes with HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even A-GPS for satellite navigation. All these put it in good stead to take full advantage of the Android operating system (OS) as applications such as the browser and Google Maps are best used with fast connections and location awareness.

The version of Android found in the I5800 is 2.1 (Eclair). This is good because more new applications are requiring phones to have at least version 2.1 of Google's mobile OS. Samsung was unable to confirm if there would be a firmware update that will bring Android 2.2 (Froyo) to the Galaxy 3. We are not too hopeful of this happening as low-end products generally do not enjoy sustained attention from manufacturers' research and development teams.

The interface has been modified with Samsung's custom software, TouchWiz 3.0. This gives a different home and menu layout from vanilla Android, as well as custom Samsung apps. Though we don't mind having TouchWiz, its inclusion didn't greatly improve the experience--standard Android 2.1 is already very competent. Samsung does need to put more work into making TouchWiz less finicky. One annoyance was that the text message notifications refused to go away even after reading the message. This was discussed in greater detail in the Galaxy s review.

Text input is done using onscreen keyboards. Aside from the Samsung virtual keypad, the third-party Swype, which lets you trace words using one hand, is also included. We found the latter text input method more suited for the Galaxy 3 compared with the Galaxy S, as this budget phone's screen is smaller, which makes tapping on tiny keys with the thumbs more difficult.

Music and video playback are supported. We tried playing some DivX files and they played fine without any conversion. Those who like music from the airwaves will be glad to know that an FM tuner is built into the I5801.

Samsung galaxy 3-part 1

Design

While it isn't as slim as its high-end cousin, the Galaxy s (9.9mm thin), the Galaxy 3 is quite compact at 113.5 x 55 x 13mm. Even then, the screen is not sacrificed--it has a 3.2 inch LCD, which is a reasonable size for a phone in this category. The resolution of this display is 240 x 400 pixels (WQVGA), which gives a little more screen estate compared with the more common QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) resolution. In comparison with other phones bearing HVGA (320 x 480-pixel) panels, text and images don't appear as sharp. But given its target segment, we found the phone perfectly acceptable.

A single physical Home button is found under the display, flanked by touch-sensitive Menu and Back keys. There is no directional pad, which makes accurate positioning of a cursor during text editing a little difficult.

On the top of the I5801 are a standard 3.5mm audio jack and a covered micro-USB port. A power button is also found here. Though made primarily of plastic, we found the Galaxy 3 to be solidly built. Its black battery cover stays on the phone firmly without wobble but can still be easily removed to reveal the 1,500mAh battery and microSD card slot.

The 3-megapixel camera on the back of the Galaxy 3 has an autofocus feature, but doesn't come with an LED for lighting up dark subjects.

SAMSUNG OMNIA 7-Part 2

Downside

Compared with LG and HTC's flagship WP7 models, the Omnia 7 is the most expensive. It will retail for S$998, which is even costlier than the HD7 with a larger 4.3-inch screen. Of course, what users will eventually pay out is dependent on operator subsidies, too, so the effect of this high price may not be so pronounced at point of sale.

Outlook

AMOLED displays can really impress the viewer because it outputs vibrant colors, making videos and images a joy to behold. This will work greatly in the Samsung Omnia 7's favor when early adopters pick a WP7 handset to buy. Its release date is currently set for end-October. Click hare to see which operators in Asia will be getting the Omnia 7.

SAMSUNG OMNIA 7-Part 1-chart

Model/Specifications	LG Optimus 7	Samsung Omnia 7	HTC HD7
Screen	3.8-inch 800 x 480 LCD	4-inch 800 x 480 Super AMOLED	4.3-inch 800 x 480 LCD
Dimensions/weight	125 x 59.8 x 11.5mm/TBC	112.4 x 64.2 x 10.99mm/138g	122 x 68 x 11.2mm/162g
Connectivity	HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS	HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS	HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS
Camera	5 megapixels	5 megapixels	5 megapixels
Built-in storage	16GB	16GB/8GB	16GB
Battery	1,500mAh	1,500mAh	1,230mAh
Price	S$888	S$998 (16GB)	S$938

SAMSUNG OMNIA 7-Part 1

Upside

One of the biggest advantages Samsung has when it comes to making phones is that the company also makes its own Super AMOLED displays. This screen technology boasts a higher contrast and lower power consumption compared with traditional LCDs.

The chaebol hasn't been able to make enough panels for everyone, but is consistently rolling out smartphones that come with its Super AMOLED screens. The Omnia 7 is one of those phones. It comes with a 4-inch WVGA panel, similar to what's on the company's flagship Android handset, the Galaxy s.

Even with its large display, Samsung has kept the Omnia 7 slim at just 11mm. It is also quite light at 138g.

One of the things we really like about Samsung phones is that the micro-USB port is covered by a sliding door. This may seem like a minor feature, but it helps to keep pocket lint out of the connector and is less fiddly than rubber protectors which can break after repeated use.

Like the LG Optimum 7 and HTC HD 7, the Omnia 7 comes with 16GB of built-in storage. What's good is that Samsung will also have an 8GB version, giving users a lower-cost option. This was the same for the Galaxy S. That Android smartphone was first made available with 16GB of storage, later followed by an 8GB version, making the Galaxy S accessible to price-sensitive customers.

SAMSUNG OMNIA 7-upcomming

SAMSUNG OMNIA 7

Samsung's first smartphone with the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) operating system (OS) is the Omnia 7. For this initial round of devices, Microsoft has dictated strict guidelines for the hardware. However, there's still some leeway for variation. Let's see what Samsung has done to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack.

Motorola charm-part 3

Performance
We tested the Motorola Charm in Singapore using M1's service and found the call quality good. According to the specs, the device supports CrystalTalk technology for noise reduction and has dual microphones for noise cancellation. We experienced spotty data connections (for example, problems signing in to Twitter and slower load speeds for Web pages) even in places where we knew we shouldn't run into such problems. One thing to note: The phone doesn't support video calls.

The Charm has a 600MHz processor which while not blazing-fast, was capable of handling the various tasks we threw at it, including running multiple (six to eight) applications in the background. There were slight lags when switching between programs, but nothing crippling.

According to the specifications, the Motorola Charm has a 1,170mAh lithium-ion battery with a rated talktime of 5 hours and standby of about 14 days. With two Gmail accounts on push, Facebook and Twitter on 2-hourly syncs and light text message and phone calls, we managed to get up to 1.5 days of usage.

Motorola charm-part 2

Features

With Android 2.1, the Charm supports multiple user accounts, Microsoft Exchange, adaptive dictionary, speech-to-text, voice dictation, live wallpapers, seven homescreens, etc. The Motorola also runs a revised MotoBlur overlay with 10 proprietary widgets. They include individual toggles for Airplane mode, Backtrack, Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, as well as standalone Weather, Sticky Note, Photos, Date and Time, and Music Player mini apps. They are resizable (tap and drag to adjust the size) on the home screen, but given that there isn't much screen estate to being with, the display gets cramped pretty fast. Of course, you'll also get the usual repertoire of Android widgets preinstalled.

The Charm won't blow you away with its features, but it's certainly equipped to handle most connectivity tasks via the HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth A2DP onboard. There's also support for handwriting input and little conveniences like auto-punctuation, but we find the onscreen keyboard (yes, you can enable that) functionally useless since it takes up most of the screen. Because of the landscape-type display, certain applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, which are designed to run in portrait orientation, brought about some inconveniences. And it had nothing to do with the built-in accelerometer, which automatically rotates the screen display. We could also download the popular game Angry Birds on the Charm, which ran rather smoothly on the phone save that some parts of the screen were chopped off, again due to the resolution limitation of the display. See assistant editor John Chan's take on Android fragmentation.
We also liked the Phone Portal app, which let us transfer content between the handset and computer using USB or Wi-Fi. Setting up the connection over-the-air was seamless and the app worked brilliantly. All we had to do was key in the unique URL and login with our username and password before the data on our phone appeared on the browser.

The basic 3-megapixel camera didn't charm us, though. Colors from our pictures were dull and displayed a slight poster-color effect. There were no autofocus and built-in flash, which ran down the imaging aspect of this Motorola. See some of our test pictures here.

Motorola charm-part 1

Design

When it comes to design and aesthetics, the Motorola Charm is like the Peek email handheld (which never really took off), save that the former does more than just messaging. With squared-off sides, an oblong footprint and a wide face, the Charm stands out amid other candybar phones despite its short frame. The plastic backlit keyboard has an ever so slight bounce and the distinctively domed keys make typing a breeze. The build quality is also admirable since there are no moving joints. But prying open the battery cover never fails to make our heart skip for fear that we'd break the backing.
because of its compact footprint, almost everything is reduced in size. The landscape touchscreen on the Charm measures just 2.8 inches diagonally and packs a 240 x 320-pixel resolution. This is standard fare for an entry-level smartphone and nothing to shout about. It'd suffice for messaging and emails, but Web browsing would have to take a backseat. The display, according to Motorola, is a Gorilla Glass panel, which is resistant to impact and scratches. We didn't subject the LCD to any grueling tests, but we did leave it in our pockets and bags with a bunch of other stuff and the screen came away unscathed. That said, the limited pixel estate means a lot of scrolling is involved.

Aside from a capacitive touchscreen and four-way cursors on the keyboard, the Charm is also the second Motorola phone that features Backtrack, which is a touch-sensitive area about half the size of our thumb and found on the back of the device. In theory, this makes use of your two index fingers to navigate the screen without obscuring it. The feature works as advertised, but never really caught on with us as the less-than-precise scrolling often made us doubt its reliability. Backtrack's good for one-hand usage for short periods of time (you can double-tap to bring up the selector for clicking on items), but we doubt it'll grow to become a primary mode of navigating menus. If you're not used to it, or refuse to learn it, you can switch Backtrack off altogether in the settings.
Below the display are the touch-enabled Menu, Home and Back keys, which double as LED notification lights whenever you have incoming calls, text messages or emails. There's quite a bit of empty space between them, but we figured keeping these keys apart may be a good thing to prevent accidental touches. We like the predefined shortcuts on the keyboard for Messaging, Camera and Search, but there're more in the settings. We can also assign application launchers with a combination of keys. For example, Search + B could activate the browser, or could double-tap Home to get to the voice command interface. Once you've configured these, it's pretty convenient to have most of the applications a click or two away.

Around the back are a 3-megapixel camera and an onboard speaker strip with a yellow grille. Rounding off the sides, you'll find a 3.5mm audio jack and power/keylock at the top, as well as volume controls and a micro-USB port along the left edge. When plugged into a power source or computer, the micro-USB port lights up in lime green, which is a pleasing touch to an otherwise entry-level handset.

Nokia n8-part-4

Performance

We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Nokia N8 in New York using AT&T service, and call quality was decent. For the most part, conversations sounded clear on our end, with very little background noise, but there were times audio would cut off the end of a sentence. Our friends reported good results and didn't have any major complaints.

Speakerphone quality was pretty good. It didn't sound quite as tinny or as hollow as other speakerphones, so we had no problems hearing our callers, and there's plenty of volume to hold a conversation in noisier environments. We also had no issue pairing the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

We got reliable 3G coverage from AT&T in Manhattan. We didn't experience any dropped calls, and data speeds were satisfactory. CNET's full site loaded in 35 seconds; the mobile sites for CNN and ESPN came up in 7 seconds and 5 seconds, respectively. We were able to play YouTube videos from the browser, and clips loaded within a couple of seconds and played back without interruption. Our own MPEG-4 videos looked great on the N8, with good quality and synchronized picture and audio. We also enjoyed rich-sounding music playback through our On-Ear Bose Headphones.

The N8 did well as a navigator. The phone was able to get a GPS lock in less than a minute, and it accurately tracked our position even as we trekked through the urban canyons of Manhattan. Also, because the maps are downloaded to the device, redraws were quick.

General performance on the N8 is a bit sluggish. It's equipped with a 680MHz ARM11 processor, and we encountered some delays launching and switching between apps. Though it never crashed or froze on us, there were a couple of occasions where the lag was significant enough to make us think there was a problem.

The Nokia N8 ships with 1,200mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 12 hours (GSM)/5.8 hours (3G) and up to 16 days (GSM)/17 days (3G) of standby time, and as we noted earlier, it's not user-replaceable. We are still conducting our battery drain tests but will update this section as soon as we have final results. So far we've been impressed with the battery life. With moderate use--checking email, Web browsing, and some music playback--we've been able to go about a day and a half before needing to recharge. According to FCC radiation tests, the N8 has a digital SAR rating of 1.12 watts per kilogram.

Nokia n8-part-3

Features

The Nokia N8 offers quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, speed dial, conference calling, voice dialing, a vibrate mode, and text and multimedia messaging with threaded chat view. The phone's address book is only limited by the available memory, and the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts. There's room in each entry for multiple phone numbers, work and home addresses, email addresses, birthday, and more vitals. For caller ID purposes, you can assign each contact a photo, a group ID, or a custom ringtone.

Unlike other operating systems, the N8 doesn't automatically pull and sync contact information from your various email accounts and social networking sites. It does so for Exchange, otherwise you have to use other tools, such as the Ovi service or an iSync plug-in, to get the rest of your contacts synced to the N8, which is annoying.

The N8 is compatible with multiple email protocols, including Exchange, Lotus Notes, and POP3/IMAP accounts, and offers HTML and folder support. We set up our Exchange and Gmail accounts, and we were able to receive and send email without problem. As we noted in the User Interface section, accessing options isn't always easy or obvious. For example, if you want to get to your folders, you need to tap the Inbox tab at the top of the screen and then choose Folders from the drop-down list. It's not the biggest of problems, but again, it goes back to the usability issue.

Wireless options are well-represented on the Nokia N8, with Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n), GPS, and five-band 3G support (WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100). This means you'll get 3G whether you use AT&T or T-Mobile, which is great. The N8's WebKit-based browser is decent. It offers support for Flash Lite 4.0 and multiple windows, and it renders pages quite well. Navigation, however, could be much better. A simple task like entering a new Web address requires you to launch a separate menu, enter the URL, and then press Go To, and we think it really shouldn't be that complicated. (For more about the browser, check out Performance section).

The Nokia Nseries has always been known for its multimedia capabilities, and the N8 certainly continues that tradition and even does it better. With Symbian 3, the music player gets a nice makeover with a Cover Flow-like interface for browsing music. It offers basic functions, such as shuffle and repeat modes, on-the-fly playlist creations, and support for MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, AMR-NB, and AMR-WB music codecs. There's also an FM radio.

Hands down, the N8's best feature is its 12-megapixel camera. With Carl Zeiss optics, a Xenon flash, and numerous editing options, the N8 delivers some of the best picture quality we've seen from a camera phone. Images came out ultrasharp with vibrant and rich colors that showed details not visible on most photos taken by a phone. The camera was also able to handle shots taken in various environments--indoors, outdoors, action scenes--with very little problem.
In addition to photos, the camera can record HD video and once again, the quality is impressive. Unlike some other smartphones that offer HD video recording, the N8 produced clips that were clear without any type of haziness or yellowing. A preloaded video editor, as well as a photo editor, is available if you want to cut clips or add music and text, which you can then share on your HDTV via the HDMI port. There's also a front-facing VGA camera, which you can use to make video calls with apps like Fring.

Other apps preloaded on the N8 include the QuickOffice suite, a PDF reader, a ZIP manager, a voice recorder, a dedicated YouTube app, and Ovi Maps, which offers free turn-by-turn navigation. You can search and download more apps from the Ovi Store. The store's catalog consists of around 15,000 titles, which is a far cry from the 80,000 or so apps in the Android Market and 250,000 apps in iTunes, but Nokia has done a nice job of cleaning up the store's interface. The N8 offers 16GB of internal memory and an expansion slot that accepts up to 32GB cards.

Nokia n8-part-2

User interface

One of our chief complaints about the Symbian S60 platform was its poor user interface. The inconsistent touch interface, the archaic-looking menus, and the clunky navigation all contributed to a frustrating user experience. Symbian 3 corrects a number of those issues, and makes the N8 a dream to operate compared with previous Nokia smartphones. However, it still trails the competition in a number of respects, but let's start with what's good first.

Symbian 3 now offers a single-tap interaction model across the user interface, so you'll no longer have to go through multiple steps to complete a simple task or muddle through the confusion of which menus require one tap or two, as we experienced on past S60 devices like the Nokia N97 mini. This uniform system goes a long way into making the phone easier to use, but still, work can be done to more quickly access options within an app. For example, to reply to an email on the N8, you must first hit Options and then choose reply. In Android, the reply option is on the same page as the email.

The home screen now consists of three panels, which you can customize with various widgets, including those for your messages, social networks, music player, favorite contacts, RSS feeds, and so forth. The widgets can provide you with a quick preview of the latest information, and if you want to see more, you can tap on the widget to launch the individual application.

The main menu is pretty much the same, presenting a grid view of your applications (you can change to list view if you prefer). A particularly useful features is if you long-press the menu key below the screen, it will bring up a thumbnail view of all your running applications. From there, you can scroll through the list to switch between tasks or exit out of an app completely.

In all, the Nokia N8 with Symbian 3 provides a much better user experience. The simplified touch experience and added customization options were much-needed features. That said, it simply doesn't compare with the ease of use, flow, and polished look of competing operating systems, namely Android and iOS.

Nokia n8-part-1

Design

For the most part, Nokia has always produced some great hardware and the Nokia N8 is no exception. As soon as you pick it up, you'll notice the high-quality construction with its metal finishes and glass display. At 113.5 x 59.1 x 12.9mm and 135g, the smartphone is a nice size: Big enough to have a sizable screen but thin and compact enough to make it easy to carry and hold. The camera housing on the back sticks out just slightly, taking a bit away from the streamlined design, but it's not a big deal.

Gracing the front of the phone is a 3.5-inch, AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. With a 640 x 360-pixel resolution and support for 16.7 million colors, the display is bright and clear, and we were able to see the contents of the screen outdoors. That said, it's not as sharp as some of the latest smartphones. Compared with devices like the HTC Evo 4G and the Samsung Galaxy S series, text and images don't appear as smooth and the pixels are more visible. It doesn't hamper the phone's use, but you definitely notice the difference.

The display offers a built-in accelerometer and pinch-to-zoom support. The responsiveness of both features is a bit inconsistent. At times, it can be quick or instantaneous, and at other times, there can be a slight delay. This is also true of the touchscreen in general. For the most part, it registered our touches but there were occasions where it simply didn't respond or it was so slow to respond that we thought there was a problem. Also, scrolling through lists and home screen panels isn't quite as smooth or zippy as it is some competing phones.

For text entry, you get an onscreen keyboards in portrait and landscape modes, but you only get a QWERTY option in landscape view. This means that if you want to type any messages in portrait view, you'll have to peck away on an alphanumeric keypad.

Aside from the touchscreen, there are a couple of controls to help you navigate and perform other functions on the phone. Below the display, there is a lone key that brings you to the main menu or the home screen if you're in another application. On the right side, there's a volume rocker, a lock switch, and a camera activation/capture button.
Other features of the Nokia N8 include a power button, an HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on top of the device. The left spine houses the SIM card and microSD expansion slots and the micro-USB port. On back, you will find the 12-megapixel camera and Xenon flash. Curiously, unlike other Nokia phones, the N8 doesn't have a user replaceable battery. Though we found battery life to be pretty good, this is still disappointing.

The Nokia N8 comes packaged with a good number of accessories, including a travel charger, a USB cable, an HDMI cable, a USB on-the-go adapter, a wired stereo headset, and reference material. Though the included charger features an international adapter, the phone can be powered by a charger with a micro-USB connector. The N8 is also available in five different colors: Dark gray, blue, green, orange, and silver white.

Nokia E5-part 4

Conclusion

Like the E63 was a budget alternative to the E71, the Nokia E5 is the E72's cheaper cousin. With this S60 smartphone, you will be able to get your emails, make calls, surf the Web a little and take some photos. As long as you don't require the latest and greatest games and apps and don't mind the dated Symbian interface, the Nokia E5 will get the job done.

Nokia E5-part 3

Outlook

The 600MHz processor and 256MB RAM did well to keep things chugging along smoothly. We did not feel significant slowdowns when using the smartphone even with the browser, Tweets60 (for Twitter), email and the Bloomberg app all running in the background.

Battery life was good, giving us over two days of use on a single charge. Considering most touchscreen smartphones these days require daily charging, this is a very good show from the E5. However, remember that the dwindling third-party support for S60 also means apps are not as compelling. For example, the preloaded Facebook app is very hard to use compared with the Android and iOS versions. Because of lower-quality apps, we ended up doing fewer social-networking activities (such as tweeting and checking in using Foursquare) and spending less time using the browser. That had a part to play in extending the battery life of the E5. The 1,200mAh battery, according to the specifications, has a rated talktime of 18.5 hours on GSM and standby of up to 29 days.

Call quality was good. We were able to hear and be heard clearly and no dropped calls were experienced during the course of our review.

Nokia E5-part 2

Features

The E5 runs the same S60 3rd Edition software with Feature Pack 2 like the E72. However, there are a number of differences beyond that. The E5 has a lower 18-bit screen color depth (24-bit on the E72), 50cm to infinity camera focus range (10cm to infinity on the E72), and lacks an onboard accelerometer. On the bright side, it has twice the amount of RAM at 256MB and a larger F2.4 aperture (F2.8 on the E72). The fixed-focus camera on the E5 also has the Extended Depth of Field feature, which increases the distance of the depth-of-field, keeping more objects in focus.

On the connectivity front, the E5 comes with HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS for satellite navigation. Its maximum download and upload speeds over the cellular network are 10.2Mbps and 2Mbps, respectively. Take note that these are theoretical limits and actual transfer speeds will depend on your operator's network.

The interface on the E5 will not confuse anyone who has ever used a Nokia S60 device. There are six different options for the home screen. The different versions are the default panels from older versions of the S60 interface, so we expect that most users will be able to find one they are familiar with.

Pressing the Home button will bring up the familiar grid-style menu interface. Folders can be created and apps rearranged to your liking. As it has been capable of for years, Nokia's Symbian OS allows multitasking--just press and hold the Home button to see a list of programs running in the background.

Though the browser is usable, the small 320 x 240-pixel display means Web surfing isn't very enjoyable. Third-party applications are available for Symbian S60, but these aren't as plentiful as what's found on the iPhone and Google's Android OS. If games and programs are important factors in your buying decision, going Symbian probably isn't the best idea.

To Nokia's credit, it has made getting your email on the smartphone a simple task. The setup wizard has presets for the most popular email services including Gmail, Yahoo, Exchange and Lotus Notes. You can also configure a service manually if the preset is available.

The 5-megapixel fixed-focus camera on the E5 gave decent image quality with acceptable sharpness and good color rendition. We noticed a slight blue cast in the middle of the photo in our test shot, but this should not be too obvious for small, Web-quality snapshots.

Nokia E5-part 1

Design

The look and feel of the E5 is completely different from the current E72. That's probably more good than bad since the E71 and E72 are barely distinguishable in terms of the hardware. In fact, we initially wondered if the E5 was a Nokia at all--it looks very much like the old Palm 500v, a Windows Mobile phone from the now HP-owned company.
The E5 weighs 126g with battery included, which is a mere 2g lighter than the E72. But in the hands, the predominant smooth matte plastic of the E5 gives it a gentler, even pebble-like and less sharp appearance. This is complemented by a convex wave contour at the back, which probably added to the girth of the phone. The biggest and probably only hint of metal you'll get on the E5 is the battery cover. Nonetheless, the solid build quality ensures this smartphone doesn't feel cheap. In fact, we would say it looks more expensive than its actual budget price.

There are also differences all around for the E5. The spacebar now spans the width of four letters on the keyboard compared with two on the E72. If you look further back, the keyboard on the E5 follows more closely to the configuration of the E71. Holding down the Sym, spacebar and Ctrl keys activates Bluetooth, torchlight and silent mode, respectively. Instead of four shortcut buttons for Home, Calendar, Contacts and Messaging on the E72, the E5 now has just two keys for Home and Messaging. The feel of the keyboard is very similar to the E71, so you will get a generally good typing experience when it comes to tactility and key spacing.

The E5 doesn't have a front-facing camera since it doesn't support video calls and the primary 5-megapixel shooter at the back is now recessed, unlike the protruding module on the E72.

The E5 has a 2mm connector port for charging, although the micro-USB port could also be used to juice the battery. The latter option would be more convenient for those who want to charge and synchronize their phone with the computer at the same time without running two cables out from the device.

Nokia X6 --part 5

Conclusion

If music is your passion, the Nokia X6 offers an inexhaustible supply of tunes, thanks to its Comes With Music service and huge 32GB of memory. The capacitive touchscreen isn't as zippy as we'd like, but the X6 is a huge improvement on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in terms of functionality and looks. An excellent camera and standard 3.5mm headphone jack are the gravy on top of this tasty package. Overall, the X6 is proof that Nokia is sorting out its touchscreen troubles, although it still feels rather late on a scene now crowded with less-expensive touchscreen competitors.

Nokia X6 --part 4

Shutterbug

The X6's 5-megapixel camera is a pleasure to use, thanks to its fast shutter speed. You can capture snapshots without having to wait around, even when shooting at the highest quality settings. For a phone, its photos are excellent too, with bright colors and sharp edges, although they can't compare to photos taken with a proper camera. The two LED photo lights are harsh, but do a good job of illuminating dark situations in which you'd otherwise get no shot at all.

Nokia X6 --part 3

Ovi blown

Music isn't the only thing you can download onto the X6. Slowly but surely, the Ovi Store is developing into a handy place to get apps for Nokia phones. The X6 makes it easy to get started, providing links on the home screen to the Ovi Store and other Ovi features, such as email and an online calendar.

Ovi is still hit and miss. You can't sync your Ovi calendars with other online calendars, like Google's, for example. But it's a good service to have if you want to back up your photos online or manage your contacts on the Web instead of on the phone.

Nokia X6 --part 2

Music magic

The X6 sports an epic 32GB of memory and Nokia's Comes With Music service, so you can fill it up with a year's worth of free downloads, choosing from zillions of music tracks. The tracks are chained-down with DRM, so you can't listen to them on your other music players, but you can keep them on the phone even if you choose not to renew your subscription to Comes With Music after your free year is up.

Nokia has released yet another version of its desktop syncing software to help you get music on and off the phone, and it's an improvement on previous versions. Now called Nokia Ovi Suite, the software is a good attempt at creating an iTunes-style music store. We found downloading tracks easy, and syncing the phone was surprisingly simple. We particularly like the ability to sync the phone over Bluetooth, so, if your laptop has built-in Bluetooth, you may never have to break out the USB cable once the phone is set up. You can also download tunes directly onto the phone when you're on the move.

Once you've helped yourself to some free music, you can listen to it on your own headphones, thanks to the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. We weren't blown away by the audio quality, though, especially at low volumes, and even when we were using high-end cans. The volume settings also leap too quickly from tinny and quiet to deafeningly loud.

Calls don't benefit from this music phone's pedigree. In our tests, they sounded tinny both to us and the recipients of our calls. Nevertheless, with its huge storage and access to endless free tracks, the X6 makes for a top-notch music phone.