And, with a few hours of sleep interrupt,  I’ve been playing with it ever since. For about 15 hrs. now. So I think it’s time to put it away for a while, and share some first impressions I got from playing around with Nokia N900.

The bottom line – I’m impressed. Very impressed. Really, really impressed.

On the other hand, I know understand why Nokia is insisting that N900 is more of a work in progress, “step 4 in a 5 step program”, that it’s a niche device and should be sold mostly to early adopters, who like to push the limits, but won’t mind  a bug or two, or some common elsewhere, but missing in N900 feature.

And Nokia N900 is certainly not a phone. While you can feel that most Nokia smartphones are designed as phones, with “smart” functions added on top and around, N900 feels the opposite. Like a small screen computer with a phone functionality added on top.

I will also mention, that the device I have is a pre-release handset, and Nokia is still ironing out minor bugs, so there’s a good chance that quite a few of the bugs/shortcomings I noticed, will be fixed/resolved by the time N900 hits the streets in a week or two.

Nokia N900 first impressions. Starting-up

Just like any new handset, when you boot it up, you are greeted with a screen to enter the things like time, date, language, regional settings, etc. After that, N900 launches, with a screen looking something like this:

and lets you play a “Get started” video, which does what it says pretty well, and quickly takes you through the main features and functions of the device.

Then it’s time to actually start exploring and playing with the handset. The 4 available desktop panels on Nokia N900 are somewhat filled up with the preinstalled widgets and shortcuts.  To find my bearings around N900, I just started sliding from panel to panel with a swipe gesture, tapping around and checking out what each shortcut or widget does.

The problem is, I managed to, unintentionally, but  very quickly, wipe out all the preinstalled shortcuts and widgets away from all the panels. I did it by simply by deselecting and then selecting again the active panels in “Desktop set-up”–>”Manage views” menu.

Which left me with a screen like this:

Completely empty spaces, without a single shortcut, widget or any other indication what to do. And remember, there is not a single physical or soft  key on the front of the device. Which, at first, confused and pissed me off a bit, but then turned out to be for the best.

Filling things back was pretty intuitive and easy. Just tap at the top of the screen a couple of times to get  to “desktop settings” menu, and start adding things back. Doing that without any hints and pre-conceptions of Nokia engineers of what’s important to me, allowed me to customize the 4 available desktop panels of Nokia N900, exactly the way I wanted.

Nokia N900 first impressions. Touchscreen, navigation and usability

It’s a conventional wisdom that resistive touchscreen will always be inferior to the capacitive one. Nokia N900 has a resistive touchscreen, so,  no matter what, it can not be very good.

And, like most conventional wisdoms, this one’s is also dead wrong. The touchscreen on Nokia N900 is very responsive, fast and easy to use. I did not have any problems with it so far.

Overall phone navigation is pretty well thought out too.

You have 4 desktop panels, where you can place any installed widgets, shortcuts to various apps, functions, or contacts. You can move through panels with a swipe gesture.

At the top left corner of the screen there is an “Applications menu”.

Tap on it once and it brigs up a dashboard where active/running  application thumbnails and notification about missed calls, messages, e-mails, etc; are displayed.

Tap twice, and you are taken to the application menu.

In the first open window of app menu, only main default N900 apps and functions are displayed. And the non scrollable area contains only 15 icons, so it can be a bit confusing at first - I got an impression that there’s only very limited amount of apps available. However, when you press the bottom right “More…” icon, another , bigger/scrollable page opens, where various installed and ready to be installed apps are displayed.

Tapping anywhere at the top of “app menu” screen, takes you back to active app dashboard. Taping anywhere outside active apps, takes you to the main desktops panels. Tapping on an active up,  of course, brings up that app.

Overall, it took me between 15 to 30 minutes to get used to it, and then I was able to navigate anywhere in the device extremely fast, with a few intuitive taps and swipes.

Next to the “Applications menu” you have a “Status bar” , where relevant connectivity/phone status symbols are displayed. Things like  – on-line offline, connected to 3G Networks, Wi-Fi data connection, remaining battery power, time, etc;.

Tapping on a status bar, brings up “Status menu”, where you can quickly adjust things like time/alarms, internet connection options, availability status on IM services, phone profile, Bluetooth, USB, etc;

Tapping anywhere else at the top of the touchscreen, brings up the set up options/menu for the active Window. If it’s the main desktop panel, options to add, delete and move around various icons and shortcuts, change background and themes,  appear. If it’s a browser window – you get various options for the browser, in phone app – telephone app set-up and so on.

Nokia N900 First Impressions.  Phone, SMS, VoIP/Skype and IM integration

Contrary to most of the other traditional smartphones, Nokia N900 is not centered around the phone function. There are no “Answer”/ “Hang up” buttons or menu keys on it, no default/compulsory phone access from the home screen. On Nokia N900, telephony is truly just another application. Not much different from Skype, Google Talk, Jabber and other instant messaging clients.

In fact, Google Voice, Skype, Nokia IM, Jabber and SIP clients are natively integrated in the phone  app. For now, I had a chance to try only Google Talk and Skype on N900. But those two worked like a charm inside the main phone/contacts app.

To get GTalk and Skype running on N900, I only had to add  them as “New accounts” with my login details. That’s it. All the contacts from both services were imported into my address book and the services are active whenever I am online.

When I want to contact a person, I just select a person and decide how I want to go about that: make a phone call, send an e-mail, send Skype/GTalk instant message or make a Skype call. There’s no functional difference, friction or difference in the telephony/contact app between any of these options. So you just select whichever is the most convenient mode of contact at this particular moment, and do it.

I already see my Skype (both free and paid) usage going through the roof with this, while at the same time reducing mobile phone bills too.

Well, there was one small inconvenience with all those multiple accounts merged into the phone book. Since I’m not too careful or diligent in maintaining contact lists on those services, the merged phone book got kinda messy, and required some manual cleaning and record merging. But it was worth it. And, also, with the option to delegate a desktop panel or two exclusively to the contacts I communicate with the most, I’m now in touch with them much better then I was before.

Nokia N900 first impressions. Internet browsing and multi-tasking.

Internet browsing and multitasking are probably the coolest features of Nokia N900.

For now, I think, the internet browser and overall Net browsing experience on Nokia N900 ,is probably the the best one among the mobile devices of similar size.

It is almost a full fledged, touch optimized Firefox browser with complete HTML,  Flash, Javascript and other  Web standard support. Simply put, websites on Nokia N900 look  the same (if only with a smaller symbols and elements) as they would look on a desktop PC with 800 pixel wide resolution display.

It takes a little time to get used to Nokia’s strange clockwise/counterclockwise finger rotation gesture for zooming. But once you get used to it, Internet browsing experience on N900 becomes the best,  compared to any other device around (iPhone included). Of course, it is still not a complete desktop experience, there is only so much you can do on a 3.5 inch screen. But it is the next best thing for now.

And Nokia N900  does a true, almost PC level multi-tasking without breaking a sweat.  Here’s a screenshot of of Nokia N900 dashboard with 6 open browser windows, 9 active applications (File manager, Phone app, Conversations app, Ovi Maps, E-mail app, Chess and Blocks games, PDF reader with an e-book open, Gallery app) and an mp3 podcast playing in the background.

And, with all that stuff running,  there was no significant slowdown in overall speed of the device.

Well, this first impression thing starts running pretty long. I think I’m gonna take a brake for now and will be back tomorrow with part 2. Today was all praises of Nokia N900, tomorrow I’ll talk about the things that piss me off about it and some conclusions.

Stay tuned.

• Nokia N900 review, pt2. First impressions. 6 things I hate about N900
• Nokia will integrate Skype into its handsets
• Samsung F480 review
• First screenshots of Nokia’s upcoming S60 Touch UI leaked ui
• Skype for Your Mobile in Beta

The Samsung Highlight T749 is one such phone. On T-Mobile and sporting the same Touchwiz UI as its older brethren Behold and Memoir, the Highlight doesn’t have much new stuff to bring to the table. But what it does bring to that table is rather solid.

For the Behold and Memoir the major focus was the camera. Samsung seemed to be in a competition with rivals LG and Sony Ericsson to see who could cram the most megapixels into a phone first. But the Highlight is a little more modest in its 3 MP camera as the focus appears to be on the phone as a whole, rather than on one specific feature.

Design of the Samsung Highlight

Samsung is on a roll with touchscreen phones, so it’s only natural that a lot of care and emphasis was put into the screen on the Highlight. I enjoy the 3″ LCD touchscreen that comes on the Highlight with a flavor of 240 x 400 pixels. The screen is bright and text is easy to read; colors are well-defined.

The sensitivity of the touch screen by default is perfect for me. My experience was good, as the screen itself offered enough flex when being pushed that I don’t feel like my fingers are being jammed into the screen every time I type on it.

As with most touchscreen phones, the presence of physical buttons is kept to a bare minimum. After all, what’s the point of a touchscreen if there are enough physical buttons to do the same job? Just under the screen we find the usual send and end call keys, as well as a go-back/clear key.

On the right side there is the unlock button on the top, charger port in the middle and camera button at the bottom end.

The only thing that clutters up the left side of the Highlight is the volume adjust button.

Under the battery you can see the SIM card and MicroSD slots; I still find it curious that so many phones continue to put the MicroSD under the battery itself. For me it’s okay to include it under the back cover as long as it’s still accessible without being forced to turn the phone on and off.

Speaking of back cover, the Highlight’s has a unique look with its blue criss-cross pattern, but it adds rather than detracts from the overall look and style of the phone.

Dimensions are incredibly similar to other Touchwiz phones; just as thin and as wide as the Memoir and Behold.

Features of the Samsung Highlight

Without going into large detail that would be identical to that of the Behold and Memoir, there were a few things that caught my eye on the Highlight that are worth mentioning.

One is the handwriting option when creating a new message. I always find this option intriguing when included, especially on a touch phone that does not utilize a stylus. I just don’t think it recognizes my handwriting very well, and half the time the screen doesn’t get the entire character I’m trying to write. After some time and practice I got better at it, but I just don’t see the point because typing on the full keyboard is still much faster for me.

GPS is present on the Highlight, and Telenav Navigator does come pre-installed on the phone when you purchase it. It still requires a monthly subscription to use, but it can come in quite handy for business and road trips.

The camera is 3 MP, which is becoming just nearly standard among midlevel phones. The interface on the camera is the same as the other Touchwiz phones, and offers the option to switch to camcorder as well. While there are five resolutions to choose from on the still camera that range from 400 x 240 to 2048 x 153, the max resolution for video is 320 x 240; not exactly the sharpest resolution for taking videos.

Certainly it’s easy to incorporate media into the Highlight with the ability to use MicroSD cards with up to 16 GB capacity. The same media player is used here as on the other phones so there is nothing different to report.

Games preloaded on the Highlight are limited — only Brain Challenge 2 and Midnight Pool 2, and even those are just the demo versions. Getting the full version will require purchasing the game.

While not a smartphone, you still get to see most websites in all their HTML glory. Because of the way the browser is set up, however, you still need to scroll left to right to see the full site.

Performance of the Samsung Highlight

The most irksome part of using the Highlight was the processor. I noticed delays when attempting to scroll through simple menus; while these delays were only a second each, this added extra time when looking through multiple screens. The transitions into apps were also a bit slower than I was expecting.

Battery life was above average for a touchscreen, as it was rated at an impressive 6.5 hours of talk and 432 hours of standby time. Moderate use of the phone went on for 3 days without needing a recharge; most standard phones are out within 1.5 days.

Call quality was excellent on the Highlight and I had no other problems with any of the device’s performance on any level.

Overall, the Samsung Highlight was an enjoyable experience. Good battery life and call quality, the Touchwiz UI is quite familiar to anyone with an Eternity or Behold, and doesn’t sway too far from the quality of its brethren. The design had its pros and cons but overall I was satisfied.

However, is that enough to justify getting the lukewarm Highlight over the Behold, especially if they are similar in price? I doubt it. It’s been seen and done before, so there’s nothing new being brought to the table in this particular Touchwiz incarnation.

Final thought? It’s worth buying if the price is right. When first released on T-Mobile it was being sold for $149, which was actually more than the 5 MP Behold. It just logically doesn’t make sense; thus when the price begins going down it will be worth keeping an eye on.

Check out the picture gallery below.

• Samsung Highlight to hit T-Mobile USA on July 15
• Samsung Highlight t749 available from T-Mobile USA
• Samsung Memoir finally available from T-Mobile
• T-Mobile’s Samsung Behold and Samsung Gravity now official
• Live pics with Samsung Highlight for T-Mobile USA

And it’s a pretty impressive update, with a new smoother TouchFlo 3D interface, more responsive touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, bigger and better 3.2” WVGA (480×800 px) display.

For now HTC Touch Diamond 2 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1, but as soon as WM 6.5 is out, free upgrade for this handset will be made available.

For those who prefer viewing video to reading, here’s a video review of HTC Touch Diamond 2:

For those who prefer text to video, read-on.

HTC Touch Diamond 2 design

The overall look of HTC Touch Diamond is in the current touchscreen phone tradition – a keyboardless candybar with most of the front surface used by the touchscreen display.

Only in this case HTC stayed true to the original Diamond design with the wholly rectangular shape, instead of a more rounded corners on most of the other touchphones.

The back of Diamond 2 is a bit different from the original – HTC decided to stay with traditional smooth back cover, instead of faceted diamond like  surface on the First Diamond Touch.  Less visual effect, but much more usable.

The touchscreen display and the zoombar at the bottom is covered with the protective plastic. The bottom part, including the front keys are from metal. The sides of the handset are metallic too. The backcover of Diamond 2 is made from the glossy plastic.

As mentioned before, the largest part of the front side is taken up by the touchscreen and the zoom touchbar below it. The latter is used for zoom function in maps, pictures, camera and other apps.

Touch Diamond 2 has 4 keys at the bottom- “Answer”,  “Windows/Start” key, “Back”, and “Cancel/Home”.

Interestingly enough, HTC decided to forgo the trackpad or joystick control on Diamond 2. I guess the reasoning was that this feature is not necessary on a full touchscreen phone and the space would be better used for a bigger display and zoombar. And, IMHO, the resulting combination works pretty well.

At the top of the front side there’s a power/message LED indicator, phone speaker, ambient light sensor and front camera for video calls.

On the right side of the device is a speaker, on the left side – volume controls. The top of the Diamond2 houses “on/off” power button. On the bottom of the device there’s  a mini USB port, that is used for charging, data/sync and headphones,  and a mic. On the bottom right side of the device we have a stylus.

The back of the device features 5 mpx camera with autofocus.

Opening the back cover we find a 1100 mAh battery, Inside of the device there’s a battery, with USIM card slot beneath it. On the right side of the device, next to a stylus is a microSD memory card slot.

The size of HTC Touch Diamond 2 is 107.85 x 53.1 x 13.7mm, weight – 117. gr. It fits comfortably into your hand or  pocket, is easy to hold and carry around.

HTC Touch Diamond2 Display

The display on HTC Touch Diamond 2 is really a good improvement over it’s predecessor (Original Dimanond). While 0.4” difference (3.2” vs 2.8”) doesn’t sound big and is not that important for normal phone operations, it gets noticeable when browsing or watching video.

The display itself is really bright and has a good WVGA 480×800 resolution. It fades some when in bright sunlight, but still remains readable.

HTC Diamond 2 Touch Interface and Software

HTC Diamond 2 features traditional TouchFlo 3D user interface with some minor updates.

The main difference from previous devices is a zoombar at the bottom of the display. By sliding the finger up or down on it you can zoom in and out in apps where these this functionality exists – e.g. browser, gallery, maps, camera. It works pretty well  most of the time, though we noticed some lagging in some instances when using gallery and maps.

HTC Touch Diamond has a nicely designed contacts and calling app. Among interesting featres of this app are nice 3D effects, name/picture integration, grouping of  messages and calls for each contact under  a single tab, integration between contact address and Google maps.

For Internet browsing, HTC  D2 comes with Opera browser and supports full HTML browsing, with zooming, panning and scrolling functions well optimized for finger touch interface and small sceen.

It also comes with auto screen rotation feature, native for multiple apps and has a full QWERTY on-screen keyboard that works pretty well.

For a more detailed overview of HTC Diamond 2 software check out the videos above.

HTC Touch Diamond 2 Camera and Gallery app

HTC Touch Diamond 2 comes equipped with a pretty good (for Windows Mobile devices) 5 megapixel camera. Of course, 5 megapixels is nothing special nowadays, but it’s really noticeable improvement over 3.2 mpx and allows you to take perfectly adequate pictures, similar in quality to those of lower end digital still cameras.

Here are some sample pictures taken by HTC D2:

Another improvement in Diamond 2 camera, over the one we had in original diamond is it’s speed. The camera on D2 is really fast and you can only barely notice any shutter lag time at all.

HTC Diamond 2 camera comes with autofocus, it also allows you to adjust the focus point manually. Just tap a finger on a part of viewfinder (touchscreen display) and the camera will focus on that point.

Digital zoom in camera app, controlled via zoombar,  works well and is pretty responsive in this case.

The gallery app in D2 is pretty nice and optimized for touch interface. You can slide through pictures in a gallery with a swipe gesture both in landscape and portrait modes. You can also zoom in and out and then move the picture around with a finger. The interface is really fast and responsive.

And, of course, if you need to quickly browse through a large collection of pictures, you can switch to a grid mode with pictures displayed as small icons.

HTC Diamond 2 Navigation

HTC Diamond 2 comes equipped with GPS sensor. It does not have it’s own Nav software, but is well integrated with mobile Google Maps app. The phone can plot your position on the map via GPS sensor and Google Maps functions, including search, directions, Google Latitude, etc; are available too.

Google maps are also integrated with a  contact app on Diamond 2, so when you press a map link in an address book, it will show you location of your contact on the map.

If you need something more, like turn-by-turn voice navigation, you’ll have to buy and install Windows Mobile compatible 3d party navigation software. But there’s plenty of those available in most markets.

HTC Diamond 2 Multimedia

Though it is more a business, then a consumer phone, HTC Diamond 2 has a pretty good multimedia features.

The music player is accessible directly form the home screen and is easily navigable. The song layout is a traditional for most music players and can be classified by artist, album, genre or playlist.

The sound quality is not excellent, but OK for a handset that is not primarily a music phone. The only problem I have is the lack of a standard headphone jack. If you want to use something else then a headset provided by HTC, you’ll have to get a miniUSB adapter for that.

HTC Diamond 2 has a built-in FM radio that you can access via FM Radio app. Nothing very interesting here, standard FM app interface with scan and radio pre-set functions. It works both in headset and speaker mode.

Built in video player can play WMV, ASF, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, M4V, AVI files. Video player interface is pretty traditional and video playback is good.

HTC Touch Diamond 2 review. Conclusions

Overall I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of my experience with HTC Touch Diamond 2. If you never used a Windows Mobile or HTC device before, it can take few minutes to get used to it.

But HTC is getting really good with full Touch interfaces, and HTC Touch Diamond 2 was a pleasure to play with. Adequate 5 megapixel camera, easy Wi-Fi connectivity and good multimedia performance make this a pretty good choice in mid to high end full touch smartphone category.

This review was made in cooperation with Dawid Gatti from Pda.pl

• #MWC09: HTC Touch Diamond2 preview video
• #MWC09: LG Arena preview video
• HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Touch Pro (Raphael) and HTC Touch Dual Pro coming
• HTC Touch Diamond2 announced for India
• HTC Touch Diamond is here

Verizon is one of those carriers that has been convinced. As such, the company with the most wireless subscribers in America has released the Verizon Wireless Network Extender.

Femtocells act as miniature cell towers within the walls of your home or office. They work by connecting them to any available wireless router; customers get much better wireless reception because the femtocell uses WiFi and GPS connections to attach to the network, instead of nearby towers.

This is especially helpful for any customers that live in areas of weak cell signals, or work in buildings that towers have a difficult time penetrating. It’s also helpful to the network because it takes strain and traffic off those towers.

Sprint and T-Mobile have already released similar services, with AT&T also coming out with its MicroCell femtocell solution sometime soon.

I recently had the opportunity to test Verizon’s Network Extender, made by Samsung, and found it to be a pretty interesting experience.

Design of the Verizon Wireless Network Extender

The Extender is a big black box that stands vertically, and is about twice as large as my wireless router. So by no means is it handy and portable. There are three different places to plug something in; power, router/ethernet connector, and a plug for the GPS receiver.

The GPS receiver is removable so that in case you can’t get the Extender to reach a window, you can install the included 23-foot extension cable to help get close enough to a window to pick up a signal. As far as I can tell, the purpose of the GPS is to ensure the device is not being used outside the US (which certainly would’ve been a nice workaround to the expense of international calling) and tracking you down for E911.

One area of design the Extender gets poor marks on is the lack of wireless connectibility. I would’ve preferred to have the Extender hooked up on my main floor for maximum GPS signal instead of the basement, where my router is currently located.

Using the Wireless Extender

I’m the kind of person that loathes reading user manuals, but I had to read it this time. With this being the first time I’ve hooked up a femtocell to my router, it was better to be safe than sorry.

There’s really not much to the setup process, however. Once all the cords are connected it takes around 15 minutes to start working properly. It was a lot easier process than I was expecting, and realized after a few minutes I didn’t even need the manual.

Once connected, I used the Samsung Sway to make some calls. Before the phone started ringing, I heard a double-tone indicating the Sway was connected to the Extender instead of the network.

It is recommended to be within 15 feet of the Extender for it to work well, but I found it to work from a longer distance. I didn’t try going next door to see if I got a signal, but it worked all over the house perfectly. In fact, I could hear a noticeable difference in sound volume and quality when I was using the Extender.

Up to three phones can use the Extender at the same time, with a fourth channel reserved strictly for emergency calls. Any other phones will be redirected to the nearest tower. If you leave the Extender’s range during a call, you will also be redirected to a tower if available. However, the vice versa doesn’t work; you cannot start a call outside range and then pick up the Extender signal during the duration of the same call.

An additional perk of using the Extender over the network is that since it is much closer to your phone than the tower is, much less power is used, thus saving a bit of battery life in the process.

Sadly the Verizon Wireless Network Extender does not support EVDO, so when connected to it you are limited to 1x data speeds if EVDO is not available in your local area.

Overall Impressions of the Extender

It’s nice to see devices like this on the market now. While my area is not hurting for Verizon coverage and thus is not a must-have for me, there are some parts of the country where this could come in very handy.

One other frustration in the use of the device is that you don’t get unlimited calling. It still uses up your regular minutes, even though you’re not using the network specifically. Perhaps this will change over time, but for now, don’t expect this to be a solution to get out of high bills.

We liked the improved cell reception and quality, increased battery life on the phones themselves, and the fact that you don’t have to pay a monthly fee like you do on the phones. We did not like the fact that it lacks wireless accessibility, does not include EVDO, and uses up regular minutes. We were also not fond of the size of the Extender, though we won’t complain too much about that.

If you’re in a area of fringe reception, the Extender is a life-saver, especially if you are in a situation where you need Verizon service for work, mobile-to-mobile calling, or any other reason. It will certainly save a lot of bottled-up frustration due to bad coverage. If, however, you’re in an area that is just fine in cell reception, there’s probably no urgent reason to get it.

The Verizon Wireless Network Extender hardware costs $249 and there is no monthly fee to use it.

• Verizon launches Network Extender device for enhanced indoor wireless coverage
• Verizon expands, buys SureWest Communications for $69 million
• AT&T’s 3G network upgrades cause 2G customers to suffer
• Verizon to start deploying next-generation LTE in 2009
• 3G networks of AT&T, Sprint and Verizon compared

Samsung Ultra Touch has quite an interesting mix within it – 8 megapixel camera, full touchscreen interface and physical T9 keypad.

It is not the first TouchWiz UI equipped Samsung phone – they have already  been selling like hotcakes throughout 2008.

But this kind of feature combination is the first for the Korean vendor. In a closed position, you may never guess that UltraTouch S8300 is not just another touchphone – the sliding keypad does not significantly alter the overall size of the device.

Slide it open and you get a normal feature phone with a familiar keypad, which is a really nice bonus. You can easily get by  without ever opening the slider, but the keypad comes in handy quite often - actually, I found myself using  it a lot. Even answering calls by opening the slider is a much more intuitive thing than tapping a touch button.

The construction of Samsung Ultra Touch is not the only thing that sets it apart from other handsets. New generation of widgets, photo contact application, great video capabilities…  I could go on and on, but let’s dive into the details already.

Samsung Ultra Touch Design

Both the inside and the outside of Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch are very good. The overall design is pretty striking, but not too flashy, and gives the Samsung S8300 almost a premium look.

When closed, UltraTouch looks like any other grey-metallic  Samsung phone,  the nice red bezel being its only distinguishing feature. Open the slider and its colorfulness emerges. The colors are bright, but not too much so they don’t transform the Ultra Touch into a girly phone. It’s a fully “unisex” handset, that both you and your girlfriend can carry  around.

The chassis of Samsung Ultra Touch combines metal and plastic, with the prevalence of metallic parts and some plastic elements. The upper sliding body is fully metallic, while the keypad and battery cover are made from plastic. Samsung has used good quality materials to make the UltraTouch S8300, thus the handset has a nice tactile feel overall.  It also does not get any smudges or dust, even after extensive use.

Well, except for the display, but the screen is very easy to clean as well.

Samsung S8300 UltraTouch Display

Samsung S8300 UltraTouch’s display is one its distinguishing features. The S8300 is one of the few handsets today that comes equipped with an AMOLED screen. The pictures on it look very good, with really bright and lively colors. Even in bright sunlight the display dims only a bit, and can be easily viewed. The display has 2.8 inches and a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels, which is common for Samsung’s latest handsets.  It might feel a bit small for Net browsing, but most multimedia needs are served nicely on a display of this size.

User Interface, Usability & Ergonomics of Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch

From the usability point of view, I cannot find any beef with it. By now, Samsung has got the TouchWiz UI working pretty well and it’s very easy to use.

On the UltraTouch,  Samsung has made its desktop area  span beside the actual visible area of the device’s screen. By swiping a finger you can scroll up and down through it to access additionl widgets.

One of the most interesting applications on the Samsung S8300 is PhotoContacts. It allows you to associate people in the pictures with contacts in the address book.  After doing that, you only need to click on a contact’s photo to make a call or send SMS to a particular person.

Any problems inherent in full touchscreen phones, on Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch  are easily remedied by the physical keypad and numerical navigation options. So even when wearing gloves (capacitive touchscreen does not work with covered fingers), the phone is pretty easy to use. The only thing that I found to complain about is a separte unlock key, but you get used to it pretty quickly.

Samsung UltraTouch camera

So what does this beauty have inside of it?  Well, tons of very nice things.

Let’s start with the camera on Samsung UltraTouch. Maximum resolution on it is 3264 x 2448 pixels, which gives you a total of 8 mpx. The pictures at this resolution are pretty “heavy” – 2 megabyte a piece, so be sure to use a big memory card if you plan to take a lot of them.

The camera settings are quite extensive and should fit the needs of most of the creative types. You can set white balance, autofocus parameters (macro, face and smile recognition, panorama focus), manual ISO (100-1600) settings and digital image stabilization.

Samsung S8300 has a GPS chip inside and is able to use EXIF geotags on the photos, so you can sort your pictures by location on most of the popular photosharing sites and applications. Samsung UltraTouch can manually or automatically upload your pictures to Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and other services.

The camera of Samsung S8300 also has pretty good video shooting capabilities. It records at 30fps, 720 x 480 resolution, and has 3 different compression modes.

Samsung UltraTouch’s camera is operational only in open slider mode, with the slider mechanism serving as a lens cover too.

Multimedia on Samsung Ultra Touch

The music player on Samsung S8300 is pretty good and easy to use. The only problem is the lack of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, but that should be remedied by the adapter.

The videoplayer cand play all major video formats, including DivX at VGA (680 x 480 pixels) resolution and 1.5 Mbps bitrate – which is really great for a mobile phone.

Samsung UltraTouch has a built-in accelerometer and switches between portrait and landscape mode automatically both in video and browsing modes. Unfortunately, it does this only in one direction – left. If you turn the phone on its right side, you still get the landscape mode, but picture will be upside down.

Conclusions

When Samsung UltraTouch S8300 was first announced, it looked like just another 8 megapixel slider. This time from Samsung and, again, with its TouchWiz UI.

But a closer look at the phone left me impressed. Great design, some interesting new approaches, and a very good usability makes the Samsung S8300 UltraTouch a very good choice if you are in the market for this type of feature phones.

• IFA 2007 Report: 5 megapixel Samsung SGH-G600 cameraphone
• Samsung S8300 UltraTouch gets a new Onyx Gold version
• Samsung B7300 specs show up
• Samsung S8300 Comes to UK March 19
• Samsung Anycall U608 Slimmest Slider Starts Shipping in Asia

What does this mean for the mobile phone industry? Up until now, phones have featured sub-par cameras with okay quality.

Since the Memoir is sporting a camera with better better megapixel count than my own personal digital still camera, and actually takes better pictures, it means phones and legitimately good point-and-shoot digital cameras can all be merged into one device.

And this is just the beginning. Sony Ericsson is quick on Samsung’s heels by announcing 12 MP Idou, set to be released in the second half of this year. LG is planning one as well. This means we can expect to see a lot more phones with really high camera resolution in the near future.

Of course, megapixel count ain’t everything, and may not even mean much beyond certain point. Though every little bit helps. Your camera phone probably won’t ever be as good as even average DSRL, but that old point-and-shooter you’ve been bringing to trips and parties? That may well be coming with you in your phone very soon, if not now.

In the meantime, the spotlight is all on the Memoir, so let’s focus on that!

I was genuinely excited to see the Memoir show up at my doorstep. The buzz on this new phone has been overwhelming and is a great offering for T-Mobile, which (with the exception of the G1) seems to get passed by on many hyped-up phones.

T-Mobile Samsung Memoir User Interface

The Samsung Memoir features Touchwiz UI. Touchwiz is an easy to use interface which is largely defined by its customizeable drag-and-drop widgets. The widgets are meant to work as convenient shortcuts for the user — pick which widgets would be used the most, and then simply hold your finger over it and drag it onto the main screen and place it wherever you would like.

Examples of widgets include Bluetooth, Web, calendar, voice dial, and SMS, though there are around 15-20 different types of widgets you can choose from. You can use all or none of them, if preferred.

I did not have any problems finding my way around the Memoir because of the Touchwiz. My one frustration is that Touchwiz, without the right OS to back it up, does not have much of a selection of applications. This could potentially be a large concern since many rival manufacturers are announcing methods of downloading apps. I even tried to download Google Maps and discovered this was not possible. While it doesn’t have to be a smartphone, I would find it much more beneficial to have extra options available.

Design of the Samsung Memoir for T-Mobile

In many ways, the Memoir is essentially a Samsung Behold with 3 more megapixels added to the camera. But there are some differences in outward appearance. For instance, the Memoir was designed to look more like a digital camera. Touchscreen phone on front, 8 MP camera on back.

When compared to other touchscreen phones the screen size of the Memoir is average. I sized it up next to the HTC Touch Pro and iPhone 3G, both well-known touchscreen powerhouses. The Memoir’s screen was larger than the Touch Pro but smaller than the iPhone.

Also, the camera lens on the back is a bit bulky. In fact, the Memoir won’t even lay completely flat because of the camera bulging out the back. It’s not a noticeable difference unless the phone is laying on its back.

In addition to the touchscreen, the front of the Memoir offers 3 physical buttons — send, end, and previous.

On the left I find a charger port and expandable memory port.

The right side has the volume, lock, and camera buttons.

Ultimately the phone design is unique in that the back almost doubles as a Samsung digital camera — which is the whole point. The front of the phone itself does look somewhat boxy, with the Behold featuring more of a curvy design than the Memoir.

The Memoir was a bit lighter than I expected, weighing in at 4.4 ounces and is sized up at 4.17″ x 2.11″ x 0.55″.

Features of T-mobile Memoir

Camera — Certainly the camera was the whole focus of the Memoir. The 8 MP camera is no old-school offering. Here is an example of a picture taken with the Memoir camera.

The camera also features a spectacular Xenon flash. Pictures taken in pitch black still turn out really well.

Needless to say I came away very impressed by the quality of the flash. Also, red-eye reduction helps, especially for a guy like myself that wears contacts or glasses.

The camera comes loaded with 16x digital zoom, video recording, auto focus, multi-shot, panoramic mode, self-timer and support for uploading all your pictures directly to Flickr or Snapfish from the phone (without having to email or other apps). Lastly, the camera features antishake — meaning, the camera won’t actually take a picture while the phone is moving. This prevents you from having to retake the same picture over and over again just to get one that isn’t fuzzy.

So, how good is the video recording on such a nice camera? The camcorder takes 30-frames-per-second video plus it has a slow-motion mode to capture 120-frames-per-second video. Not too bad at all, I’d say.

Here are some of the pics I took with the Memoir; one of the pics of me was taken in complete darkness, but I’m sure you’ll figure out which one it is. (click on thumbnails to see full sized image)

The pics of the mountains were shot in landscape scene, whereas the pics of me were shot in portrait scene (the one of me on the left looks a little creepy). There are several different scenes for different styles of photography.

This next pic is a zoomed-in version of the first pic I showed off.

One hesitation I have about the Memoir’s camera is that it’s a bit on the slow side. It takes 3-4 seconds to start up, and 6-7 seconds between taking pictures. Also, the shutter lag is somewhat slow as well; I noticed that when taking pictures it took a couple seconds to actually take it after pressing the button. A couple times I attempted to press the shutter a second time because I thought I hadn’t pressed it well enough.

Is the camera good enough to get rid of your digital camera? The jury’s still out on that one. It’s a great camera but, any way you look at it, it still is a camera in a phone, and will have its limitations as a result. The technology will improve over time, and phone cameras will continue to get better and closer to digital camera quality. The Memoir is certainly a good start.

Multimedia — Another strong point of the Memoir is its multimedia capabilities. In fact, there is a widget specifically made for the media player that you can put on the main screen, rather than having you going through the main menu.

I watched Ice Age on the Memoir with no complications. While the movie itself didn’t cover the entire screen, it was still refreshing to be able to watch a movie with the .avi format on a non-smartphone. Very convenient for keeping the kids busy or relaxing when the kids are asleep. Or if no kids are involved whatsoever. We’re not picky!

Speaker sound quality was excellent when watching the movie, and I did not require headphones to aid the sound.

Keyboard — Choose to have the QWERTY style in landscape mode or alphanumeric style when in portrait.

Email — The Memoir supports T-Mobile’s Mobile Email application, which gives access to Gmail, Yahoo, Windows Live, AOL, and support for many smaller companies such as Juno and Earthlink. I must emphasize that this does not provide push email; rather, it is a style of pull email that notifies you when a new message has popped in your inbox, at which point you hit the link to the Email app. Really it just adds an extra step to retrieving your email.

The Memoir will not support corporate email.

Internet — The internet browser on the Samsung Memoir is actually a HTML browser. I was able to look up several websites and have them look almost identical to how they would appear on Firefox or IE. It was nice to be able to switch from landscape to portrait if the website looked better that way; the only negative about browsing on the Memoir is that with the screen being smaller, not the entire website will fit. This is something easy to get used to for a tech geek such as myself, however, that uses mobile internet as much as I use it on my computer.

Fortunately T-Mobile chose to add 3G service into the Memoir to allow for faster internet and email downloading, but unfortunately for me my local area does not have T-Mobile 3G yet. Thus I could only judge internet speeds by T-Mobile’s EDGE network. It still wasn’t terrible, but I would love to hear comments from anyone who does live in a 3G area.

GPS — Since the Memoir has a-GPS built in, it is easy to get Telenav set up on the phone. I was able to utilize the Navigation system and get step-by-step directions spoken to me as I drove around to different places.

Memory — The Memoir holds 100 MB internal memory and has support for up to 16 GB external memory via MicroSD. There is a 1 GB MicroSD card included in the box, but if you are buying the phone mainly for the camera, I strongly recommend getting a larger card to hold more high-res pics and videos as well as put a little music on there if you want.

Performance of Samsung Memoir

Battery life — On a standard battery the phone is rated to get 5.5 hours of talk time and up to 300 hours standby. I would say that is a rather accurate estimation, as the 3G network and high-res camera will suck up a lot of juice. Again, if you are using the camera religiously, get a car charger just in case; chances are you’re going to need it often.

3G – The jury’s still out on this one as I did not have the opportunity to play around with the 3G network. EDGE worked decently, as expected.

Sound quality – I love the speaker on the Memoir. The calls I made came out very well and quite clear.

Touchwiz UI — It does take a little getting used to the new UI. It performs well, with only a slight half-second delay between screens. I do wish that Touchwiz offered more widgets, perhaps as a downloadable update. But that’s really my only complaint.

Overall I was impressed by the Samsung Memoir. The camera is of course the most notable feature and, with it being better than my own digital camera, made my mouth water. The thing is, though, that Samsung did not just slap a phone onto a camera; I feel that Samsung did a great job fusing two of their best consumer electronics together into one. It really isn’t a surprise though, since Samsung has already done this on several phones prior to the Memoir and has had plenty of time to get it right.

The Memoir is now available on T-Mobile for $249.99 with two-year agreement. For a phone and 8 MP digital camera together, that’s still a pretty good price. Please let us know your thoughts on the Memoir in our comments section!

• T-Mobile kind of previews the Samsung Memoir
• Samsung Memoir finally available from T-Mobile
• 8MP Samsung T929 Memoir approved by FCC
• T-Mobile Samsung Memoir release date announced: February 25
• 8MP Samsung Memoir, a US version of Samsung Pixon?

Today, Unwired View reviews the Samsung Propel, which has been boosted by a large advertising campaign featuring Ozzy Osbourne and is one of the hottest phones on the market now.

The Samsung Propel is geared toward the young folks; there is a large emphasis on texting, multimedia messaging and listening to music. Let’s see if the phone’s design makes the grade. And, like always, I bring pictures!

Design of the Samsung Propel

The Samsung Propel is a bit wider than the usual dumbphone because it features a full QWERTY keyboard eerily similar to that of the Blackjack II. As a way of reducing its size, Samsung turned the keyboard into a slider. In other words, the Propel is essentially a wide, full keyboard version of the A737.

We find the number pad as part of the keyboard itself.

Upon looking closer, most of the keyboard shortcuts are the same as the Blackjack II, with dedicated camera and profile buttons. On the top part of the front we can see the usual suspects — green and red buttons, direction pad, soft keys for the screen, backspace and a messaging button.

Turning the phone to its left side reveals a MicroSD slot and volume keys. Oh, and a spot to attach your precious lanyard on so it can dangle from…well, from wherever you want it to dangle from.

On the right side of the Propel, we see a standard Samsung charging port and shortcut button. This button toggles phone, messaging, Media Net and the music player.

There isn’t much to the back of the Propel; just the 1.3 MP camera peeking out from behind the slide mechanism, so it doesn’t accidentally take pictures of your pocket or purse.

I can tell that Samsung did its best to condense the Propel enough to handle it well, but still keep it large enough to not cram the keys together in a way that only the skinniest of fingers can type on it. There certainly is a lot of give and take involved in making a phone of this nature, and I believe Samsung pulled it off pretty well.

The UI of the Propel is practically identical to that of every other AT&T Samsung phone made in the past year, but I have always been satisfied with the simplicity of Samsung’s interface. It seems to be one of the easier types of phones to learn.

Also, the color choices were thought out. The blue, white/red and green/black Propel colors are all done well and quite complementary.

The Propel is a little more square than we hoped for — no sleek or sexy curves involved here — but it’s not larger or smaller than it needs to be, and really that’s the most important part of designing a new phone.

Features of the Samsung Propel

The Propel is a great multimedia phone geared towards the texting generation, so there doesn’t need to be a whole lot under the hood besides the multimedia stuff. For specs, the Propel features:

• 1.3 MP camera with camcorder and video share capability
• GPS and AT&T Navigator
• 50 MB internal memory
• Quad-band GSM/EDGE, 850/1900 HSDPA
• Hearing Aid compatible: M3, T4
• Voice memos

In addition, the Propel does bring the standard speakerphone, calculator, calendar, and other tools. We also found that it does offer some syncing capabilities via USB or Bluetooth with the proper software downloaded into your computer, but were unable to test it as of this writing.

This phone also features such AT&T-centered features like Mobile Email, which offers access to most personal email accounts, and Cellular Video, a video-streaming service which showcases several TV clips, music videos, and trailers.

Performance of the Samsung Propel

Within the Propel lies a 1000 mAh battery which allows up to 5 hours of straight talk time and over 10 days of standby. Not terrible for a 3G phone. Call quality was quite natural-sounding without any tremendous amount of static.

The Samsung Propel is currently one of the best text-centric phones AT&T has offered. The size, compared to the other text phones, is much more reasonable and easier to handle. The UI is simple to learn, especially if you have used a Samsung phone previously. I do wish the keys of the QWERTY keyboard were larger, but it’s rather difficult to find a way to make the keys larger without making the entire phone much larger in the process.

By no means is this phone a perfect solution for the text-hungry generation, but it gets the ball rolling in the right direction. It means we have the opportunity to show the phone companies how important these types of phones are by purchasing them. When they know the market is strong for this style, they will be able to find new and innovative ways of making phones.

Is this phone really the best of its kind for AT&T? That’s up to each individual to decide. If you have used it, played with it, knows a distant relative who touched it once, or are currently using it as your main phone, please leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

• Samsung Propel Pro to hit AT&T sometime soon
• Samsung Propel Pro, Impression and Magnet announced by AT&T
• #CTIA09: Samsung Propel Pro Hands-on
• AT&T Samsung Propel Pro available starting today
• Samsung Propel and Samsung Gravity headed to Canada, via Rogers

Save for the yet unreleased Nokia 7100 Supernova, the 7210 is the cheapest Supernova phone to date and also the one that offers the most modest pack of features.

But this doesn’t mean it can’t be a good phone for customers who don’t need a myriad of high-end capabilities, right? Especially since Nokia sells the 7210 for a retail price of around €120 ($150), depending on the country you buy it from.

Nokia 7210 Supernova design

Unlike the other Supernova phones, the 7210 doesn’t come with changeable Xpress-On covers. Instead, it features a pretty cool color transition effect, visible on the left and the right sides of its display.

The phone is only 11 millimeters thin (10.6 mm, to be precise) and it somehow resembles the 5310 XpressMusic, another ultra-slim Nokia candybar.

To be honest, I think the 7210 Supernova looks better than the Nokia 7610 Supernova, although the latter is the Supernova flagship. Of course, when it comes to features, 7610 Supernova is better, but that’s another story.

Overall, Nokia 7210 Supernova has a simple look, mainly because it has no buttons on the sides whatsoever. It only has a charger connector on the left side and, on the top, a 2.5mm Nokia AV connector, a Micro USB port and a backcover-release key.

The back of the phone is also simple, with a 2MP camera and a loudspeaker.

The keypad of Nokia 7210 Supernova may look cool, but it’s kind of hard to get used to. It has rubber-like stripes between the keys, which really don’t help when you are typing something. I believe it would have been better if Nokia had opted for an entirely-flat keypad, but that’s just my opinion.

Anyway, some might find the keypad to suit their fingers perfectly, but only if they don’t have large thumbs.

Display & interface

The display of Nokia 7210 Supernova is among its best features. It’s only a 2-inch one, but it has 320 x 240 pixels and supports 256K colors, so the images and animations look good. Even more, I’ve noticed that, under the sunlight, the display of 7210 offers a better image quality than the display of the 7610 Supernova flagship.

The handset runs on Nokia’s popular Series 40 user interface, so it’s as simple and straightforward as it gets from this point of view.

7210 Supernova’s menu lets you discover its features with ease, but if you want quick access to various applications you should turn on the Active Standby mode.

There are 5 themes that can be used to change the interface’s look, and you can download more if you like.

Connectivity, call quality

Nokia 7210 Supernova features tri band GSM connectivity only (900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz), with GPRS (Class 32, 88 kbps) and EDGE (Class 32, 296 kbps).

The phone further features Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and USB 2.0, and it can be connected with a PC via Nokia PC Suite.

In terms of signal reception and call quality, the handset performs well, which is no wonder, since it’s a Nokia.

Multimedia, camera

The music player of Nokia 7210 Supernova can play MP3, AAC, WMA and MIDI files. It won’t stun anyone with its aspect, but it’s cool that it can run in the background. An equalizer is also featured, to let you choose the sound style you like best. Unfortunately, the phone has no dedicated volume keys, and I really don’t understand why Nokia didn’t include them.

To let us make use of that 2.5mm jack right away, Nokia offers a pair of headsets with the 7210 Supernova. They’re nothing great in terms of sound quality, but I didn’t expect them to be anyway.

The headsets also function as an FM radio antenna, so whenever you want to listen to the radio (which has RDS, by the way), you have to insert them into the above-mentioned 2.5mm jack.

The 2 Megapixel camera packed in Nokia 7210 Supernova doesn’t have autofocus or flash. However, the outdoor photos are not that bad, and I think most of the users will be quite happy with their quality (considering the phone’s price, of course).

A not so great thing is that there’s no dedicated camera button. Also, the camera is kind of slow: every time you take a picture, you have to wait about 5-6 seconds for the phone to save it, and that’s not quite cool.

The phone can also record video at 176 x 144 pixels and 15 fps, but the resulted videos are obviously of poor quality.

Web, games, others

The 7210 Supernova comes with a WAP 2.0 browser only, thus you won’t be getting any full HTML browsing experience on it. However, you can install Opera Mini if you feel like a WAP browser is not enough.

You can send and receive emails on the phone, via POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail accounts. Also, you can chat through various IM services.

The phone’s organizer provides a nice calendar, a notepad and a set of alarms that will surely get you up in the morning if you keep the phone’s volume at its maximum.

A nice and useful application is the Flickr one, which obviously lets you upload photos to the Flickr website, provided that you have an account there.

There are also several pre-installed games (3D Snake included), plus Nokia WidSets, Yahoo! Go, size converter, world clock and other stuff like this.

Memory, battery, SAR value

Nokia 7210 Supernova has a built-in memory of 30MB, but you can use only slightly over 20MB. The phone’s package doesn’t include a MicroSD card, but, if you want to, you can install cards of up to 2GB. Note that you need to take off the phone’s back cover in order to insert a card.

The battery of 7210 Supernova is a BL-4CT one. Theoretically, it’s said to last up to 2 hours in talk time or up to 250 hours in stand by time. I’ve found these values to be pretty close to the truth, which means that a regular user will have to recharge the phone once in 2-3 days.

As for the SAR value, the user manual of Nokia 7210 Supernova says: “The highest SAR value under the ICNIRP guidelines for use of the device at the ear is 1.29 W/kg.”

Availability & Conclusion

Nokia 7210 Supernova should be easily found in most of the cell phone stores from across Europe (and I believe Asia too). As I already said, its price is of €120 – or even less – hence we are not wrong calling it a budget phone.

All in all, if you don’t want to spend more than $150 on a handset and you have nothing against Nokia 7210 Supernova’s keypad, this tiny and thin 3G-less candybar could be a good choice for you.

• Nokia 7310 SuperNova gets official
• Nokia 7100s (Supernova) details emerge
• New colors and better services for Nokia’s Supernova phones
• UMA enabled Nokia 7510 launched by Rogers
• T-Mobile USA to launch the Nokia 7510 Supernova in January

So Nokia’s best shot at bringing back its dominance and repairing its damaged reputation is the 6650. Essentially, the Nokia 6650 for AT&T replaces the N75 and does a good job of it. Still using the S60 platform, the 6650 is skinnier, thinner and better looking — complete with additional features to make it more attractive on the inside, to boot.

Design of the Nokia 6650

As mentioned already, the N75 was big, boxy, and plain. Its successor is quite the opposite — the 6650 is easier to handle, lighter, thinner, and skinnier. The only negative is that this results in a smaller keypad, but otherwise makes this a much nicer phone to look at.

The phone is offered in both silver and red colors. On the front we find what seems to be a normal viewing screen but in reality is a touchscreen with basic features. More on that in a later section.

Also from the above pictures it’s easy to pick out the 2.0 MP camera with flash tucked right underneath.

On the right side of the AT&T Nokia 6650 we find a slot for the MicroSD card (a must have as the 6650 only offers 30 MB internal memory), a 2.5 mm jack, and the standard tiny Nokia charger port.

Not much to talk about for the left side of the Nokia 6650, but we find a handy Micro USB port for data connections and syncing — a big plus for this device — as well as volume controls and a shortcut button.

As you can see, my first impressions of the phone are very good. While I’m not a huge fan of clamshell phones, I love the look and style of the 6650. The biggest sell for me is the stainless steel on the faceplates and back cover. I feel that every phone should be made with similar-quality (if not better) materials, instead of the standard cheap plastic that plagues so many phones. The 6650 simply feels like a solid phone.

Opening up the phone reveals a very nice-looking keypad.

On this keypad we find dedicated camera/camcorder and GPS buttons, as well as the standard soft keys, call and end, and menu button found on every Nokia S60 phone so far. The numbers themselves are still large enough to handle easily, and are not raised.

Features of the AT&T Nokia 6650

The Nokia 6650 is certainly packed with goodies, as any S60 smartphone should. First, let’s get the bad out of the way; it only packs 30 MB of internal memory. So it’s essential to get a MicroSD card for it to hold any respectable amount of information, whether it be videos, pics or music. The 6650 will take up to 8 GB, so don’t be making a mad dash for the newest 12 or 16 GB cards coming on the market now.

We find that the 6650 is quad-band GSM/EDGE but only dual-band 3G. The US version lacks the 2100 mHz band.

Other features of the 6650 include:

• Hearing-Aid compatibility
• Reads most popular audio formats including any iTunes format
• Stereo Bluetooth
• 2.0 MP camera and camcorder with flash, and video share support
• Email attachment support for Office docs, plus zip and PDF files
• OMA data sync support for contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, etc.
• AT&T Navigator through aGPS
• Push to Talk capable

I also like the external touchscreen. While nothing fancy or extravagant compared to other touchscreen phones, it does offer up touch controls for music player as well as other basic applications such as calendar. It’s definitely worth a look to see if this would come in handy for you, but I felt it was a nice touch (no pun intended).

The Nokia 6650 also comes with a nice internet browser, for having such a small screen.

Impressively, the internet browser still shows full HTML and comes with a cursor to assist in navigating it. While I’m sure there’s a way to change the browser settings to not show full HTML and thus all fit on the screen, it’s nice to know the choice is yours.

One unique thing about the browser is that when you hit the back button, minature versions of the most recently viewed pages pop up, allowing you to quickly jump to whichever page interests you the most.

Performance of the Nokia 6650

This is the area that Nokia has struggled in recently. Its latest handsets have had terrible battery life and okay call quality that’s nothing to write home about (although, if you have a cell phone you probably wouldn’t be writing a letter home about it I suppose. But I digress). How does the 6650 stack up?

The battery life of the 6650 is rated at 4 hours talk time and 14.5 days of standby. I would expect better from a 1500 mAh battery, to be quite honest. In calling tests, the sound quality was excellent. The 6650 features a 369 MHz ARM 11 processor which keeps the OS from slowing down as long as you don’t have too many applications open at the same time.

Also, the speakerphone and ringtones were loud enough to hear well, but as always the ringtones that come on the phone by default aren’t necessarily going to win any Grammy awards. Look into bringing some of your own ringtones into the phone via PC Suite or by downloading them directly from AT&T’s site.

In my review of the Nokia 6650 I find that Nokia has made a great successor to the N75 and is one step closer to getting back on the right track. This is one of Nokia’s better looking clamshells and the inclusion of S60 was a wise decision to help keep the handset maker a valid competitor in the mid-range market.

The Nokia 6650 can be found at any AT&T retail location or online for $69.99 with two-year contract.

• Nokia 6350 announced by AT&T, only $29.99
• Nokia 6750 spotted with AT&T’s logo on it
• Slim Nokia 6300b with “push-to-talk”, Yahoo mail and IM comes to U.S.
• Nokia opens up Point & Find, launches Management Portal
• Nokia Booklet 3G to be a Best Buy exclusive in the US

After having the opportunity to play around with it for a while, I could understand why that was the case — because there’s really not much to it other than being a LG touchscreen Windows Mobile phone. Allow me to share with you my experience with the LG Incite.

First Impressions of the LG Incite

My first overall impression of the Incite? A bit boxy and larger than it needs to be. It features a 3.0 inch screen, which is not much smaller than the 3.2 inch screen the Eternity packs in. However there is a lot of unused real estate bordering this screen, so in my opinion the phone could’ve been either smaller to condense the space, or they could have made the screen much larger to fit the extra space.

Other than that, I was glad to notice the Incite has both GPS and WiFi, as well as quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band 3G, as well as a 3 MP camera to go along with it. Frankly, any smartphone that does not have these features is pretty much obsolete at this point, so I find it crucial for it to have these features. Otherwise it should be a lot less than the $199.99 price tag after contract.

The Incite was also thicker than I was hoping. For a smartphone with touchscreen only, LG needs to get an edge on competition by making their device thinner. Otherwise, slap a slide-in keyboard on the thing.

AT&T LG Incite Design

Most of the design issues I touched upon in the first impressions, mainly because they are quite noticeable. Boxy, thick, and contains a touchscreen that should be larger for the body it was put into.

But I’ll set that aside for the moment. On the left side I was pleased to find a scroll wheel, thus adding another option of navigating through WinMo, as well as MicroSD port and menu and camera buttons.

The right side is a bit more simple: a hole for resetting the Incite, MicroUSB port and volume control.

Not much to the back of the Incite. Camera is the only real thing keeping the back from being completely blah and boring. The back is certainly nice and shiny, though, I’ll give LG that much.

The front offers just two physical buttons, a call and hang up button. Everything else is done on the touchscreen itself.

For physical dimensions, the LG Incite weighs 4.23 ounces and the size is 4.21 x 2.2 x 0.55 inches.

One other major flaw of design, in my opinion, is the stylus. When I first used the Incite I instinctively began looking around for the stylus. I figured it had to be somewhere in it, just tucked away perhaps. Wrong. The stylus is in the box, but the only way to attach it to the Incite’s body itself is via lanyard. As you see in the above picture, the stylus has a cap as you would normally see on a pen; whenever you’re done using the stylus you attach it to the cap that’s attached to the phone. In other words, when you’re not using the stylus, it’s just dangling off the side of the Incite. That’s just not my cup of tea.

LG Incite Features

The only truly unique feature this particular smartphone has is a favorites bar at the bottom of the today screen.

This bar gives you some much-needed shortcuts; quick buttons to the phone screen, messaging, as well as a couple other options as well. I do find this convenient so as to not have to go through the Start menu for some of the basic functions of the phone.

The LG Incite also offers up Bluetooth 2.0, a-GPS with AT&T Navigator, Cellular Video, Direct Push capabilities, and accelerometer. It also includes the other typical features of Windows Mobile 6.1, such as ActiveSync and media player.

One thing I do find interesting is the use of the accelerometer to make the today screen more user-friendly in landscape mode. Turn the Incite to its side, and the today screen transforms into a LG Vu-style menu, which I find more effective.

Same goes with texting in landscape mode.

LG Incite’s Performance

I have always been impressed with the performance of LG phones, and the Incite appears to be no exception. It is rated at up to 8.7 hours of talk time — unheard of on a 3G device — and 21 days of standby.

The touchscreen is heat-sensitive, so there are times I had to push a little harder than usual on the screen to get it to work. This didn’t seem to happen all the time, but it was noticeable. I also experienced some lag, which I wasn’t sure if it was due to the OS or the phone’s processor. Perhaps both.

My verdict is so-so. I wasn’t a big fan of the overall look and design, but the device itself performed okay. Though there wasn’t anything brand new or innovative compared to the Blackberry Storms and HTC Touch Pros of the world, it is a decent WinMo offering.

Here at Unwired View, we love comments. If you have used an Incite or are thinking about getting one, let us know your feelings!

• LG GT810 – WM 6.1 Incite headed to South America
• Sony Ericsson BeiBei pics in the wild, again
• LG Incite announced for Korea too
• AT&T launches the LG Incite smartphone, $200 on contract
• #MWC09: Giga-Byte Gsmart S1200 hands-on review and video demo

This device is also known as the Samsung i907, and had been rumored to be coming out on AT&T’s network for several months. The Epix is the U.S. version of the i780. While originally whispered as the Blackjack 3, we have since discovered that it is not the rightful successor to that namesake. Rather, the Epix is its own new monster.

Enough history. Let’s get down to brass tacks.

First Impressions of the Samsung Epix

Upon first look of the Epix, one gets the initial impression that it is, indeed, a Blackjack; the keyboard, not to mention the entire frame of the phone, looks eerily familiar. However there are a couple things that make this particular model stand out of the Blackjack crowd.

For example, the Epix uses Windows Mobile Professional. Yes, it is a touchscreen! It also features an optical mouse — essentially, a trackpad for your smartphone.

I loved the size of the screen as well. It seems a little bigger and brighter than the Blackjack series.

AT&T Samsung Epix Design

The Epix fits two different styles well. It has a great touchscreen that you can use either your finger or the included stylus on, and there are several handy shortcuts on the keyboard and soft keys above it.

We find the optical mouse in the center of the phone, surrounded by the soft keys, Start menu button, OK button, as well as the call and end buttons. On the keyboard itself we can see shortcuts for messaging, camera, internet and CV.

We can tell the Epix was made to last. We didn’t feel as though it was going to break apart in our hands, which is always a great sign when looking at purchasing a new phone.

On the right side of the Epix there is the standard charger port and MicroSD slot. On the left side, simply a volume toggle and left convenience button.

Not much to the back, just the 2.0 MP camera hanging out there.

Features of Samsung Epix for AT&T

With the WinMo 6.1 Professional and included touchscreen, it also comes with handwriting recognition. This is a Graffiti-style ability in which you can draft documents, texts and emails by simply writing it in your own handwriting instead of bothering with the physical keyboard. While I love this option, I go much faster typing normally than I would with handwriting.

My favorite original feature on the Epix is the optical mouse. This is something that’s been used in Europe for a little while now, and has finally made its way into the States. The mouse acts as a sort of trackpad for your smartphone, and when touched the cursor will appear and move around with the acts of your fingers.

The Samsung Epix also packs in GPS AND WiFi — a practice that is suddenly becoming more common with AT&T. This is wonderful news, as I feel it shouldn’t be much more expensive to add both options into the phone.

In addition, the Epix also features:

• Quad-band GPS/EDGE and tri-band 3G/HSDPA for access around the world in every country
• 624 MHz processor (wow!)
• 2.0 MP camera with video record
• 1800 mAh battery for extended usage
• Full HTML browser

The full browser looks a bit like this, and is easy to navigate through.

Needless to say, the Epix also comes loaded with Bubble Breaker, as any good Windows Mobile device does. Don’t play too long, lest you become addicted.

AT&T Samsung Epix Performance

The overall performance of the Epix is not too shabby at all. Battery life is rated at 7 hours of talk time and 336 hours (14 days) of standby, mainly due to the monstrous battery Samsung generously included.

I love the processor. You cannot find another phone with a processor faster than 624 MHz at the time of this writing, so this will genuinely be one of the faster phones on the market. I recommend putting in a memory card so as to not limit the amount of available memory for the large processor to take advantage of.

I do wish the Epix had better ringtones by default, but Windows always seems to lack somewhat in the ringtone category.

One thing I was disappointed to discover with the Epix is that there are only proprietary Samsung cords available; there is no spot for a normal data cable. In this day and age, it should be rather simple to include a standardized connection for each phone model, so why not include something?

But overall, not a bad smartphone for AT&T to bring out in the superb lineup for this holiday season. It lives in the shadow of the HTC Fuze and Blackberry Bold, but this is a pretty good alternative to look at as well.

• Samsung i907 Epix Now at AT&T
• Samsung i907 Epix for AT&T leaked
• Samsung SGH-i780 possible Black Jack 2 spotted in Dubai
• Cingular/AT&T BlackJack 2 from Samsung launched
• Samsung Jack i637 officially announced by AT&T

It certainly looks good, and has some pretty nice features, but I’ll be the first to say that I find its familiar slider form factor quite boring. I find it hard to believe that this is the best a joint venture such as Sony’s and Ericsson’s can do for a new model.

Not to be mistaken with the Sony Ericsson W705, the Sony Ericsson G705 is not a Walkman phone. Although, both of the phones just mentioned are actually one and the same, only with a few features swapped or completely taken away.

Before anything else, here are the Sony Ericsson G705’s key features:

– GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS/HSDPA 2100 support
– GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS/HSUPA 850/1900/2100 support for US edition
– 3.2 megapixel camera
– GPS receiver with A-GPS support
– Wi-Fi connectivity with DLNA certification
– Built in accelerometer with web support
– Stereo bluetooth
– FM radio with RDS
– Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support
– 1GB M2 memory card

Here is the handset pictured with the slider closed. The 2.4 inch QVGA display is bright as usual for a Sony Ericsson, and it shows a once again familiar user interface. The exact same one found in many other recently released Sony Ericsson handsets, actually. The menu can be accessed by pressing the round button dead center, and every key press triggers a quick vibration that sort of feels like haptic feedback.

Beneath the display, there’s an array of hotkeys, including left and right softkeys, a 5-way d-pad, customizable shortcut key and on/off switch. Pressing any of these keys, too, triggers a mild vibration.

Turning the handset on its back, we are greeted with a standard 3.2-megapixel camera. There’s nothing special about it, just an aperture through which a user can see and capture photos, and it’s accompanied by a round LED-flash.

Picture quality was so bad that I couldn’t get anything worth posting, but maybe the fact that the camera lens had a plastic sheet covering it had something to do with it. And no, I couldn’t remove that plastic sheet, even if I wanted to. If that’s the case, then expect picture quality from the G705’s camera to be on par with other 3.2-megapixel camera-equipped Sony Ericsson phones.

Though it’s not a dedicated Walkman phone, the Sony Ericsson G705 features a dedicated music key on top, where the on/off switch of a gadget is usually found. This comes in handy when you need or want to listen to music without pressing too many keys. And as for the sound quality, well, I wasn’t disappointed. But then again, I didn’t expect much, since it wasn’t a Walkman that can be expected to blast out sounds of the best quality.

I wasn’t able to try out the Web browser, but with HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity, doing so should be pretty speedy. I doubt if it will be any good for the user-experience, though, since Sony Ericsson phone web browsers hardly have any commendable features.

Overall, this handset will serve right for the mid-end market, though it will probably leave some users wanting more. It’s got a camera, but it’s not a Cyber-Shot. It’s got a music player, but it’s not a Walkman. It’s got Wi-Fi and GPS, but it’s not a smartphone. Only those users which are fairly easy to please will find satisfaction in the Sony Ericsson G705’s apparent appearance as a jack-of-all-trades.

Peek at more hands on photos of the Sony Ericsson G705 in the gallery below.

• W660i Walkman Phone from Sony Ericsson
• Sony Ericsson W880/W888 Walkman Phone Released
• Affordable Sony Ericsson W610 Walkman Phone
• Sony Ericsson W595 leaked and spec’d
• Extensive Sony Ericsson W890i review done in Poland

The Quickfire is made by UTStarcom, which used to be known as Audiovox; this is the first phone from that brand that AT&T has sold since the 5600 nearly 3 years ago.

AT&T Quickfire Design

Upon first seeing the phone, I discovered it is rather large when compared to other text-centric phones. I believe that it was designed this way on purpose so that those who text a lot can grip onto the device with both hands. While AT&T Quickfire could be used with one hand, it would be quite uncomfortable to text this way. Especially since the screen would be slid out to expose the keyboard. I did notice, however, that it seems to be easy enough to grip with one hand when the screen is slid shut.

AT&T Quickfire keyboard is a good size. The buttons are large enough and there is enough space in between each button to help distinguish what you’re typing as to limit the number of mistakes made while texting. The only buttons available when the keyboard is slid shut are the three at the bottom: one for answering/making the call, one for ending the call, and the button in the middle to access a quick menu with options for calls, messaging, email, and internet.

The Quickfire slides open to reveal a spacious keyboard.

The touchscreen on the AT&T  Quickfire is huge. There is no mistaking what you’re trying to push, as the font is large enough for everyone to see. The response time is pretty good for a mid-tier touchscreen phone.

The screen is large, bright and easy to see.

On the top of the Quickfire we find the charger port, microSD slot and power button; the left side offers volume controls and the right side sports a Voice Command button along with camera button. The Quickfire battery and battery cover are fused together so no need for extra parts, and SIM card slot has its usual place underneath the battery.

The Quickfire weighs in at 4.8 oz and has dimensions of 4.3″ x 2.2″ x 0.7″.

AT&T Quikfire Features

Screen/OS:

The Quickfire’s OS is proprietary – AT&T made the interface very simple to figure out. When you slide the keyboard out, you are greeted with 5 options: Email, IM, Messaging, Address Book, and “more”. Pressing “more” will open up the main menu with all the available options. When the Quickfire keyboard is slid shut, the screen changes from landscape mode to portrait, and provides you with the full menu.

Using the AT&T Quickfire touchscreen itself works pretty well, though it took me a little getting used to. There is no haptic feedback that vibrates when something is touched. You can scroll up and down through the menus, but works a little different than the iPhone-style screens in which your finger “grabs” the screen to scroll; to scroll down, simply slide your finger down, and vice versa to slide up as well.

AT&T Quickfire Specs:

Here’s a listing of what else the Quickfire has to offer.

• aGPS with AT&T Navigation
• Quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band 3G (850, 1900 and 2100)
• MicroSD support up to 32 GB
• 29 MB Internal Memory
• QVGA screen
• 1.3 MP Camera
• Music player syncs with Windows Media on PC, supports MP3 and AAC+ formats
• CV (Cellular Video)
• IM clients for AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo

To enhance your Quickfire music experience, stereo bluetooth has been added. Other profiles for bluetooth include A/V Remote Control and DUN, which allows you to tether your AT&T Quickfire as a modem for your computer via Bluetooth.

The Quickfire offers games such as Sudoku and Jewel Quest, and gives you the option to listen to XM radio from your phone for a monthly fee. Mobile banking is also offered.

AT&T Quickfire’s internet feels reliable and hassle-free internet surfing. I pulled up Unwired View on it and the page loaded within seconds; it showed the page as you would see it on your computer’s browser.

AT&T Performance

The AT&T Quickfire has a paltry battery life, rated at 3 hours talk time and 12 days of standby. We didn’t have the chance to test out the battery on our own, but we do hope that the battery will last longer when pumping out the large number of texts the phone’s destined to be used for.

We found the Quickfire speaker plenty loud and ringtones were easily heard from across the room. The ringtones that come on the phone are certainly designed for the younger generation but are still MIDI tones, so be prepared to download a couple custom MP3 tones. There were no issues that we could find with the Quickfire call quality.

To be honest, part of me expected the phone to feel cheap, as if it would break into two pieces in the first month. But I came out more impressed with the AT&T Quickfire, and am certain it will be an absolute hit for any hearty texters that enjoy AT&T’s network but yearn for a Sidekick. The Quickfire is now available at any AT&T stores as well as online for $99.99 with 2-year contract after rebates.

• AT&T Quickfire now available officially
• AT&T Quickfire now available for $149.99
• AT&T Quickfire has overheating problems, could burst into… fire
• Samsung i780 review
• First BlackBerry Thunder live pics surface

So I scoured the whole universe to its very depth in order to find a one-click solution. It turns out, I needn’t look no further than the Internet. For it is where I’ve found my latest favorite app for S60, MCleaner.

What’s so good about MCleaner?

MCleaner addresses but a very simple issue. If you’re like me, who doesn’t want to be disturbed by messages from unknown senders, or face the hard task of getting interrupted by your local telco trying to sell you ringtones, then MCleaner will be a godsend.

From the very first time you fire it up, it’s going to work its magic. And every message your phone receives from an unknown sender will be automatically sent to the MCleaner quarantine–where it will be kept until you check it yourself to read, reply, or delete it. It’s very neat.

Customizable settings, scheduled monitoring

If you want to customize the app settings, you may do so by accessing “Setup” in the Main Menu. In Setup, you will be able to change basic settings such as:

- White List and Black List sorting
- Actions to be taken for specific types of messages, calls, or data received
- Use (or non-use) of a password
- Scheduled monitoring time

Whenever you receive a message from a black listed number, a blue, unopened envelope signifying it will appear on the upper right corner of the screen, just beside the battery life bars. All calls, including those from unknown numbers which should be black listed, will be accepted by default (though this setting may be changed through the Setup).

Usage and hiccups

In my experience, MCleaner was great. I never had any problems using it, and it always screened messages from those whom I did not want to receive messages from and threw them to the quarantine section with the lot. However, I found that MCleaner identifies numbers with the international standard (that includes country code and/or area code) and so even though my contacts were supposed to be on the White List, they kept appearing on the Black List because I had saved their numbers using the local format (i.e. 09214506479 instead of +639214506479). If you save your contact’s numbers using the international format, you should not encounter this hiccup.

Conclusion

In all, MCleaner is a worthy SMS/call black list app. It’s available as a free download with a limited trial and can be upgraded to the full version for an inexpensive amount. I have tried it once and was convinced: I don’t need anything else for the purpose that it serves.

• Google testing Gmail SMS Chat in Labs
• Samsung D880 DuoS Dual SIM card phone
• Nokia Ovi Mail Setup app for S60 available now
• “Curse of Silence” exploit prevents Nokia S60 phones from receiving SMS/MMS
• iPhone App review: fring

And to help you decide whether it’s worthy your attention or not, we already have a full AT&T Fuze review for you.

I had the opportunity to get my hands on an AT&T Fuze a couple days ago to demo and review in time for the anticipated launch of November 11. The AT&T Fuze is Big Blue’s version of the HTC Touch Pro, a device that has already been available outside North America and was launched recently by Sprint. This particular phone is replacing the year-old AT&T Tilt that overall was a good phone but due for a face lift.

My impressions of the Fuze are largely based in comparison to the iPhone, which I have been using as my primary phone for the last 3 months. As such I have developed a bias against Windows Mobile devices in general, but must be perfectly honest when I say my first impressions of AT&T Fuze have been much better than originally expected.

Let’s dive in.

AT&T Fuze Design

The Fuze is quite a bit smaller than the Tilt at 4.02″ x 2.01″ x 0.71″. It is still a little more weighty (5.8 oz) than I hoped, but I did enjoy the fact that it easily fits in the palm of my hand without feeling bulky or clunky. HTC opted for a more glossy black look this time, with a rectangular look instead of rounded. The back of the Fuze has a style similar to that of the Touch Diamond, with triangles positioned in a interesting manner. I felt it was a unique twist and a bold move, considering the Fuze’s target audience will be more business-oriented.

On the front we see the touchscreen using up most of the real estate with a basic 4-button interface on the bottom: home, previous screen, call and end. In between the buttons we find the direction pad; there is no joystick or optical mouse on this one, just a simple 4-direction pad with a select button in the middle.

Sliding out the screen is a smooth process, and will reveal the QWERTY keyboard in a 5-row design instead of the 4-row designs of previous models — thus, the keys are a little smaller. While the keys are smaller, they are raised and distinct in order to make your typing experience better. On the AT&T version there are plenty of shortcut buttons that can send you to various programs with ease, such as messaging, Windows Media Player, email, and calendar, among others.

The AT&T Fuze's slide-out keyboard

A stylus is included, even though it’s just as easy to use your finger on the touchscreen, iPhone-style. It is designed in a way that, when the phone is on standby, pulling the stylus out will awake the Fuze from its slumber. The stylus is also magnetic, which means when you put the stylus back into the phone, the magnet will help push it back in for you.

Under the back cover, you will find a microSD slot — under the cover but above the battery, thank heavens — as well as your battery and SIM card.

AT&T Fuze Display

Upon turning the phone on for the first time, I discovered a breathtaking view. The screen of the Fuze has full VGA resolution — in comparison, the Blackberry Bold’s screen is only half VGA (and even on that screen I loved the clarity). It’s bright and easy to see, and the colors come out brilliantly.

The touch aspect of the screen works out rather well, though it took me a little while to get used to. Having used an iPhone for a few months, I was used to a higher amount of sensitivity; on the Fuze, the screen is not as sensitive so it takes a more firm touch to get a reaction. Interestingly enough, it’s just as easy to use your finger on this touchscreen as the included stylus.

AT&T Fuze on-screen keyboard

Cleverly, the touch keyboard can employ several different styles to fit your needs. By default you can type on the QWERTY the normal way, or change it to the numbers screen and you can choose numbers or 8 screens’ worth of symbols just in case you need a special one. You can also choose to do letter recognizer — a graffiti-style input method — or go with the numeric keypad and do predictive text. I also enjoyed the auto-correct functions that predicts what you are really trying to say, thus allowing you to type faster without worrying about having to back up and retype a word you spelled wrong.

I had few problems using the keyboard with my fingers. From time to time I typed the wrong one, but I feel this is something I would get used to after a few days of general use. However, if I’m typing a long message or email, I will just slide out the physical keyboard instead. But the touch keyboard is great for faster messaging.

AT&T Fuze TouchFLO

While the TouchFLO interface is nothing new, it was my first experience using a TouchFLO device. TouchFLO differs from a normal touchscreen in that it allows the user to slide their finger up/down, left/right and have the screen move with it in a smooth “flowing” manner. I found the TouchFLO to be a breath of fresh air in comparison to other Windows Mobile touchscreens I have used in the past.

A first look at the TouchFLO Interface

When looking at the Today screen, I found a bar on the bottom (just above the soft keys) with several tabs, each one highlighting a different application. By touching the bar and sliding my finger to the right, I was able to get quick access to my email, internet, texting, and pictures via these tabs.

TouchFLO adds a lot of animations and other finger gestures to Windows Mobile to increase the user experience. For example, accessing the internet takes you to Opera which gives you full HTML webpages, and to zoom in you just need to double-tap the area you want to zoom in on. The weather app is an amusing use of animation; on a rainy day, raindrops will appear on the screen and a windshield wiper brushes them off for you.

Unwired View as seen on the Fuze's Opera browser

Overall, TouchFLO is a must-have for a Windows device. The fluid movements and animations certainly made me feel more at home.

Features

I want to take a moment to go over some of the features that stand out on the Fuze.

• 3.2 MP camera with video capability
• YouTube application (an “easter egg” — you have to dig deep into File Explorer to find it, but it’s there!)
• Business Card scanner using the phone’s camera
• On-device printing app — both USB and Bluetooth connections so you can print directly from the phone
• Voice recognition and voice notifications
• TV Out capability — show powerpoint presentations on a projector via the Fuze
• Internet Sharing feature — tether phone to computer for use as a modem without downloading AT&T’s software. Your computer will automatically recognize your phone as an internet source
• Accelerometer — comes included with games that emphasize this feature
• Automatic sound profile — sets phone to vibrate during your appointments, turns it back to normal at the end
• Blackberry Connect and Direct Push support in addition to Exchange

Not to mention there are thousands of third party applications out there that amplify the usefulness of the Fuze.

GPS and WiFi come included, as well as pretty much every Bluetooth profile you can think of.

AT&T Fuze Music Player

With the aid of TouchFLO, the music tab looks eerily similar to Apple’s CoverFlow, and the library itself is easy to manuever around. The tabs on the bottom are geared toward finding the music you want to play by artist, song, album, and even allows you to make a playlist directly on your phone.

Worried about space? While the Fuze packs around 512 MB of internal space, it allows for MicroSD cards with up to 32 GB capacity. This means it can be used as a primary music player if needs be, as well as a video player.

In the box I found a headset adaptor with 3 ports: 2.5 mm, 3.5 mm, and USB. While it would be nice to have all these ports in the phone itself, I do like the fact that HTC took the time to include an adaptor giving me the ability to listen to music through my normal headphones while charging up the phone at the same time.

AT&T Fuze Camera

The phone’s camera is wonderful. It is 3.2 MP with autofocus and a light (not true flash, but at least there is a light). I was also able to take panoramic shots and record video. As a way of showing off how crystal clear the pictures come out, most of the pictures in this review were taken with a AT&T Fuze.

AT&T Fuze Voice notifications

This neat feature gives you the ability to have a virtual assistant inform you when an email or text comes in, who is calling you at the moment, or that an appointment is approaching; this is all done vocally.

AT&T Fuze Performance

Under the hood we find a 528 MHz MSM7201a processor which, for my use, was plenty fast. I did not have any troubles with the OS freezing on me, though that may have just been because I didn’t have too many apps open at the same time. Speaker volume was high and I didn’t have any trouble with others recognizing my voice during calls.

While I did not have the chance to test out total battery life, it is rated for 6.3 hours of talk time and 462 hours (19 days) of standby. Not bad for an all-purpose device that has so much going on. It’s actually rather surprising, as the included battery is only 1320 mAh — though an extended battery should be made available not too long after launch.

In conclusion, I cannot say whether I have found an “iPhone killer” — that will be for each individual to decide — but I came out very impressed by the features, functionality and performance of the Fuze. The TouchFLO interface was easy and smooth to use, the multimedia functions worked like a charm, and was easy to sync up with my computer.

• AT&T HTC Fuze is finally available, only online for the moment
• AT&T Fuze Out This Week?
• AT&T Fuze spotted at FCC
• Experience HTC’s Touch Flow 3D on all Windows Mobiles
• HTC Touch Cruise now upgradeable to Windows Mobile 6.1

In typical S60 fashion, a lot of the core functionality from older models remain, while new and improved features are seamlessly integrated on top. The Nokia N79 runs on Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, and as expected there are a lot of things that remind one of older models with the same operating system.

Nokia N79 key features and design

But first things first: what are the Nokia N79’s key features? Well, it’s got a 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, 2.4-inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi, GPS, and accelerometer. But it holds much, much more under the hood, and so, I guess it would be better to elaborate, bullet-point style:

• Quadband GSM/Dualband UMTS
• FM radio with RDS and FM transmitter
• Touch-sensitive Naviwheel
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Supports up to 8GB microSD cards (4GB microSD card included in the box)
• Xpress-on color covers with support for automatic changing of theme
• Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth with A2DP
• Stereo speakers
• Built-in accelerometer with auto-screen rotation
• 1200 mAh battery

And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the Nokia N79 is the Nokia N78’s successor. Yep, so if you just bought the Nokia N78, you’re pretty much screwed. A comparison between the Nokia N78 and Nokia N79 will commence! Later…

For now, let’s talk about the Nokia N79’s face. It’s assembled in typical Nokia candybar fashion: a 2.4-inch QVGA 16 million color screen sits on top, crowned by an earpiece, VGA video-calling camera and ambient light sensor, while hotkeys and an alphanumeric keypad are laid out beneath it. Strangely, the Nokia logo is drawn sideways on the right side.

The screen is no doubt large, but ever since the iPhone’s 3.5-incher, I’ve been spoiled. So for me, though it’s definitely clear and bright, the Nokia N79’s screen is no good. The great web browser is let down because of the small screen real estate, not to mention the need to perpetually scroll down while reading any type of document. This is especially annoying when you consider that the space for the oft-useless front VGA camera could have been used to extend the screen even just 0.2-inches more.

However, if you don’t consider a small screen to be an impediment, it works quite well in coordination with the ambient light sensor. Graphics and fonts are definitely readable under direct sunlight, and in the dark, the screen looks great. I just can’t get over the fact that it’s way too small to be useful as anything other than a phone and music player. It’s usable, but I wouldn’t prefer it over other devices that I currently use.

The Nokia N79 is well-built all over. At the back, the camera lens is safely hidden behind a slide-down cover (which is also used to activate it). And the plastic used in assembling it isn’t thin and flappy.

It looks robust, but it’s actually lightweight, and definitely solid when you hold it in the hand. Everything from the buttons on the side to the screen to the keypad feel great. This is surely one aspect at which it trumps the Nokia N78.

Nokia N78 and Nokia N79: Camera

I’ve pictured the two phones in question here to compare their cameras, and obvious differences come afloat. The Nokia N79 comes with a dual-LED flash, as opposed to the Nokia N78’s single-LED one. Also, the Nokia N79 has an upgraded 5 megapixel camera, compared to the Nokia N78’s 3.2 megapixel cam. Videos are captured at 30 frames per second.

Both appear to take the same quality photos, though, with the only obvious difference being in the resolution of their captured photos. Long-term usability will be better expected out of the Nokia N79, which comes with a lens protector.

The keypad is another area in which it beats the Nokia N78. They keys on the Nokia N79 are wide, evenly spaced, and well-lit. Tactile feedback was present, as was a complete set of Nokia hotkeys, including a special key for the multimedia menu.

What I didn’t expect was the little learning curve involved in using the new, noodle-like left and right softkeys. Otherwise, the alphanumeric keypad as a whole proved very good.

Nokia N78 and Nokia N79: Keypad

The Nokia N79 and Nokia N78 keypads compared. You may also notice that the 5-way d-pad slash touch-sensitive Naviwheel is a whole lot bigger than that on the Nokia N78. It’s that much more useful in real life, and the hiccups in scrolling found on the N78 are gone.

Music, memory, and connectivity

The Nokia N79 had no problems in connecting with any sort of network or device. Wi-Fi scanning is good, and even hidden hotspots can be detected, while the FM transmitter is also present to broadcast music that’s currently playing on the device’s music player.

It supports Bluetooth with A2DP and uses a microUSB connection to connect with a computer. The microUSB port is hidden behind a latch on the left side which also houses the microSD card, pictured here. It’s an ingenious feature, but not that appealing in the real world.

Here are some random screenshots from the N79. If you notice, there’s an app for the aforementioned FM transmitter feature here, which is used to activate it. It’s quite difficult to find a frequency from which to start broadcasting, but it works well once you’ve finished setting it up.

The music player can also be used to toggle the FM transmitter feature. Otherwise, sounds will come out from either the headphone port, stereo speakers, or Bluetooth headphones. Being stereo, sound quality turned out great on speakers. But it wasn’t as loud as I had expected.

It’s also possible to use your own theme with the Nokia N79, which is what I did here with the Fire theme.

Speaking of user themes, the Nokia N79 comes with smart XpressOn color covers that have electronic chips embedded in them to change the themes automatically. Every new Nokia N79 purchase comes with three different XpressOn color covers, which change the color of the currently applied theme to their own color. The icons remain the same, though, so it’s basically just a quick and fancy way to switch theme colors. Additional XpressOn color covers can be purchased separately.

Final Thoughts

For those who want to experience the next generation of Nokia devices without waiting for 2009, the Nokia N79 is a great choice. It’s quite affordable, and has a lot of features that you would only normally expect on very expensive phones.

And it shouldn’t be forgotten that it’s not just a phone, but a combination of a music player, FM radio, mobile Internet device, digital camera, GPS device, office-on-the-go, and a whole lot more. With the additional power-saving features enabled by S60 3rd Edition FP2, its 1200 mAh battery lasts well over a day–sometimes even 2 days–in use. And it’s not like charging a phone every other day is hard work; in fact, it’s very practical.

It’s also worth noting that the Nokia N79 is cheaper than the Nokia N85. And when you take into account that about the only difference there is between these two handsets is that the Nokia N85 can charge through USB, it’s obvious that the N79 gives the most bang for your buck.

If you would rather have a slider phone, the Nokia N85 is the great alternative. But if you’re OK with a candybar, the N79 offers a very sweet deal.

• Nokia 5610 XpressMusic 3G phone
• Triple slider idea from Nokia
• Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone
• Nokia N75 Nseries cellphone/multimedia computer launched
• Stylish Nokia 5330 XpressMusic slider

Although it’s a flagship product, Nokia 7610 Supernova is not a high-end phone. It’s only a mid-end one, thus its features are accordingly. And speaking of features, I must say the 7610 is not a smartphone, so stuff like GPS or Wi-Fi are not included. The handset runs on an S40 platform and not on the mighty Symbian S60 OS.

The 7610 is rather a multimedia phone.

The handset comes with a Theme Colouriser unique feature (I’ll detail about it later) and two Xpress-On covers in the box. The covers are made out of soft plastic and are easily changeable, allowing you to fit the phone’s look to your mood. Similar covers are offered together with the other Supernova phones (save for the 7210 model), this being one of the things that make them “fashionable”.

Nokia 7610 Supernova design

As I already said, the 7610 is a slider. It has a metallic front case that’s combined with a plastic-made trim. On the back, a 3.2 Megapixel camera proudly presents its dual-LED flash, while a loudspeaker is positioned a bit lower.

The phone’s upper side hosts a charger connector, the power button and a 2.5mm headset jack.

On the right side, we have volume keys, a music player key and a camera key. On the left side there’s only a micro USB connector, hidden under the plastic cover.

When you open the 7610, a standard alphanumeric keypad welcomes you. The keys are not among the largest I’ve seen, so if you have thick thumbs you might not find them too friendly.

Overall, Nokia 7610 Supernova looks nice, but I think the Finnish manufacturer should have added something more spectacular to its design.

Display & interface

The QVGA display of Nokia 7610 Supernova is OK, save for the moments when you’re out in the sun. The screen loses its brightness right away if you take it out on a sunny day. That’s too bad, because it supports up to 16 million colors and it looks really good indoors.

Another complaint is about the display’s size: Nokia should have made it of at least 2.2 inches and not of only 2.0 inches.

I already mentioned that the handset has an S40 interface. It’s a simple and user-friendly interface, as many of you might already know, since it’s embedded in lots and lots of Nokia phones.

The navigation through the S40 menu is generally fast and smooth, so there’s not much more to say here.

A nice thing is the Active Standby mode which, when activated, almost transforms the 7610 into a smartphone. That’s thanks to the fact that it adds, on the “home screen”, a list of features that you use the most, like calendar, messages and so on.

Connectivity, call quality

Nokia 7610 Supernova is not a 3G phone, unfortunately for those in need of high speed data transfers. The device offers quad-band GSM connectivity (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz) with GPRS and EDGE.

The call quality is good and I think no one will experience problems from this point of view.

The 7610 features Bluetooth with EDR and A2DP, which worked well both when transferring files to another phone and when listening to music via wireless headsets. You can also connect the phone with an external GPS device via Bluetooth.

Music on Nokia 7610 Supernova

The loudspeaker on the back of Nokia 7610 Supernova provides an OK sound quality. Unless you set the volume at its maximum level, when the songs or ringtones will sound a bit noisy. But I don’t see any reason for someone to want the volume at its maximum level, since the speaker is pretty loud without doing that.

I’ve said earlier that the 7610 Supernova has a 2.5mm headset jack and not a 3.5mm standard one. Obviously, Nokia has included a pair of headsets in the package to fit into that 2.5 millimeters jack. The headsets offer a good sound quality (bass included), even when you pump up the volume to the maximum.

Nokia 7610’s music player has various themes and an equalizer. A “stereo widening” feature, effective when you’re listening to music via headsets, will give the sound a deeper stereo effect. If you don’t like that, you can turn the feature off, obviously.

The phone also has FM radio with RDS, but you can only turn it on if you insert a pair of headsets into said 2.5mm jack.

Camera & Theme Colouriser

The 3.2 Megapixel camera of Nokia 7610 lets you take photos at a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. The camera has autofocus and a dual LED flash, as I mentioned earlier. It can offer satisfying results, both outdoor and indoor.

The dual LED flash is also good, and if you want to take pictures of a close object in low-light conditions it does its job well. However, if the object you want to capture is farther than 2-3 meters, the flash won’t help too much.

The camera interface is not at all complicated. You can switch between portrait and landscape mode – whichever suits you best. You can also edit photos, although the editing options are limited, including stuff like cropping, text insertion and adding frames.

Nokia 7610 can also shoot videos – the maximum resolution is VGA (at 15fps) and the image quality is mediocre.

Colourise Theme – this is one of the main attractions of Nokia 7610 Supernova, although some might not see its utility.

The Colourise feature lets you choose a set of colors from any caption that you make with the phone’s camera. These colors can then be used into any of the phone’s themes. The feature also lets you choose colors from an image that’s already stored into the handset.

Basically, the Theme Colouriser allows you to create unique themes for the 7610, and this is something I haven’t seen on any other phone.

Perhaps a negative side of the feature is that, each time you capture a set of colors for a theme, a photo is automatically saved on the memory card the phone comes with. So if you will play around a lot with this feature, don’t forget to frequently delete the resulting images, because you’ll soon wake up with no more space on the memory card.

Web, email, games, others

Nokia 7610 Supernova has Yahoo! Go preinstalled, so you can search the Web, download maps, check weather reports and so on. Opera Mini is also preinstalled, but since the 7610 only provides EDGE connectivity, the browsing speeds may not be as you would wish them to.

The phone provides access to POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts. You first have to set-up an account, obviously, but this is easy.

Other stuff that Nokia 7610 Supernova comes with include: WidSets, to-do list, unit converter, currency converter and so on.

On the fun side, the 7610 has four pre-installed games: Snake 3D, Sudoku, Sea Sweeper and Bounce II.

Memory, battery, SAR value

Nokia 7610 Supernova has 64MB of internal memory and a 512MB card that’s already installed in the phone. To change or remove the card you first have to remove the back cover. You don’t have to turn off the phone, though, as the card can be changed without removing the battery. Just make sure you aren’t running any application from the card the moment you get it out.

The 860 mAh Li-Ion battery of Nokia 7610 Supernova should, officially, last up to 5.4 hours in talk-time mode or up to 300 hours in stand-by mode. The truth is that, if you talk for about 1 hour a day and you also use the phone’s camera and music player a lot, after two days you’ll surely need to recharge the battery. At least that was the case with the unit I reviewed.

For those interested in the 7610 Supernova SAR value, Nokia says: “The highest SAR value reported under this standard during product certification for use at the ear is 0.81 W/kg and when properly worn on the body is 0.65 W/kg.”

Price & availability

Nokia 7610 Supernova has a retail price of around 220 Euro. Perhaps that’s bit too much for what it can do, but, after all, fashionable phones were always a bit more expensive. And there’s no denying in the fact that Nokia 7610 Supernova is a fashionable handset.

Nokia 7610 Supernova is currently available in lots of countries from Europe and Asia. It is also released in North America, where, according to Nokia, users get it with a 2GB card included in the box. 

Conclusion

For a non-smartphone, Nokia 7610 Supernova is a pretty good handset. If you don’t need 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS or a document reader into your phone and are looking for a fashionable device, the 7610 might just be your thing.

• Nokia 7100s (Supernova) details emerge
• Nokia 7310 SuperNova gets official
• New colors and better services for Nokia’s Supernova phones
• Nokia 7210 Supernova review
• T-Mobile USA to launch the Nokia 7510 Supernova in January

Take this application from Moo-Cow-Music, for example. It’s called Band, and it could quite possibly be one of the best applications ever created for the iPhone’s multi-touch platform.

If I’m not mistaken, Band is the very first iPhone app to mess with multi-touch and music creation, combining different instruments and a few other extras all on the same place. It provides the user with a very straight-forward user-interface that’s easy to learn, and once you get the hang of it, it will be quite difficult to get yourself to stop using Band.

The basics

Every time Band is launched, the user is presented with a very simple settings page. The SETUP tab brings up settings for individual instrument volume and pan, as well as global volume for all installed instruments. The LOAD/SAVE tab lets users load any of the three pre-loaded demo songs, while the HELP tab brings up a useful collection of hints in using the application.

Settings for Metronome, Tempo, and Beats per minute can also be found and tinkered with, but this option is only recommended for advanced users.

The instruments

And now, on to the instruments!

Band features five pre-installed instruments, not counting the Audience, which you can also tap to produce sounds of cheering. Those five instruments are the Rock Kit Drum Pad, Funky Drummer Drum Set, Grand Piano, Bassist, and 12 Bar Blues. All these are actually fairly normal instruments, although I have to admit that this is the first time I’ve heard of the 12 Bar Blues. It turned out to be pretty awesome.

Using the instruments turned out to be as easy as it looked. Just tap on any portion of the instrument, like say, any key on the Grand Piano, or any string on the Bass guitar, and you’ll be producing eargasmic music in no time. Of course, you’ll have to know exactly what notes in the octave each key represents, or what type of sound comes from each particular drum type to make really great music, but Band is a great and unique way to learn if you have no experience playing instruments in the real world. You can even manipulate the fake audience to cheer you on even though you suck. It’s that cool.

Band also provides a pseudo music lesson in playing the Grand Piano, 12 Bar Blues and Drums, with its three preloaded demo songs which you can add to or base your work from. I learned playing Fur Elise just by watching as one of Band’s demos. I also managed to feel and later on memorize the keys to the song Happy Birthday too. And I’m still learning.

The verdict

All in all, Band is an app for people who want to learn how to make music the easy way. You will only be able to make somewhat childish music on this app, but then again, the overall feel of the app is a bit childish in itself. And the output really depends on how much a person is willing to put into it as a user. For what it’s worth, Band is highly-recommended download, and if you don’t end up creating music that the whole world will want to hear from it, at least you had a lot of fun.

• Sony Ericsson W700i Walkman phone announced
• Mobiado Grand Line collection debuts with the QWERTY-equipped Grand 350PRL
• Mobiado Grand 350 Pioneer luxury phone pays homage to NASA
• Stylish Nokia 5330 XpressMusic slider
• iPhone App Review: Flycast

It is first and foremost a fashion phone; HTC Diamond is not for techies or gadget fans, but for those users who want the coolest looking, most feature-packed device.

It’s probably safe to say then that HTC’s flagship phone for 2008 will be competing not with other Windows Mobile handhelds, but with devices like iPhone and iPhone 3G.

HTC Diamond design

The smartphone comes in keyboard-less candybar form factor case made from glossy black plastic. The front is mostly taken up by the 2.8” touchscreen, while the back has faceted, diamond-like surface – a little similar to Nokia Prism.

The phone really looks quite stylish; all those glossy surfaces, however, are also extremely prone to getting smudges and prints on them. You will literally have to put up with cleaning it all the time if you want your gadget to look as shiny as new.

Although we have heard that the commercial version of HTC Diamond might have regular soft touch plastic used for its back panel (making it less prone to smudges and easier to grip) the image of the phone would suffer slightly as a result.

HTC Touch Diamond controls

The phone has a power button on the top edge and volume control buttons on the left side. Stylus is hidden on the right edge. At the bottom edge the phone is equipped with HTC’s universal port which looks a lot like miniUSB, and more, is compatible with it. Regrettably, there’s no standard 3.5 mm audio jack.

The front panel has four standard buttons that you will know from other Windows Mobile devices; they’re Home, Back, and Accept/Deny as well as the navigation wheel.

Interface of Touch Diamond

The interface is easily the most important part of the phone, and HTC has put in a lot of work here. While some Windows Mobile devices are infamous for being inconvenient to use (without a stylus, especially) that can’t be said about HTC Diamond, thanks to its TouchFLO 3D interface (an evolution of TouchFLO used in earlier Touch devices).

There are several tabs at the bottom of the desktop, such as Home, People, Messages, E-Mail, Internet, Photos & Videos, Music, Weather, Settings, and Programs. You can move between these by selecting a specific one or simply dragging your finger along the screen to switch between them one-by-one.

The Home tab contains some standard information like a stylish-looking clock, date, carrier logo and a link to recent call list. People tab contains your contact list; if available, photos are shown with a cool 3D effect for each person. The Messages are implemented in a way similar to iPhone: messages from the same sender are grouped into “conversations”. The text content of e-mails can be previewed in a 3D perspective, and double clicked for a more traditional view. 3D effects are also used when listing through photos or video clips.

Opening the Internet tab gives you a scrollable list of bookmarks and, of course, a shortcut to the browser. It is very user-friendly and functional Since HTC adapted Opera Mini for the Touch Diamond. You can view pages either in mobile or full view; when using the latter, the navigational wheel might be used for zooming in and out by moving your finger in a circular motion.

The music player interface is also very interesting and what’s more, easy to use. HTC Diamond has 4 GB of built-in memory, so using it as a music player is completely feasible. It comes with a stylish headset; the sound quality, while nothing incredible, is more than satisfactory.

The Weather tab will give you a scrollable list of cities and display weather forecasts for each, as well as an indication of last update.The Settings tab has all the basic settings and options of the phone that you might want to play with. Finally, the Programs tab is essentially a big list of shortcuts to various applications.

The TouchFLO 3D interface allows the user to access almost all functions of the phone without having to interact with Windows Mobile operating system directly. Everything from making phone calls to reading your text messages looks simply amazing on Diamond’s VGA display. While some people might say that HTC ripped the concept off iPhone, even they won’t be able to deny that the graphical interface of this phone is awesome.

The downside is that the device sometimes becomes unresponsive for a short time and there are occasional delays when moving between tabs or items. Simply put, the interface is sluggish, which ruins the overall impression a little. Hopefully HTC will fix this problem in their future products.

Conclusions

HTC Touch Diamond is a communicator phone with an astonishing design and a graphical interface that both looks gorgeous and is very user-friendly.

At the beginning of the review, we already mentioned that the phone is not targeted at people who normally buy communicators, but for those who want the best feature-packed phone available.

HTC Diamond might lose to Apple’s iPhone in usability department – mainly due to its often sluggish interface, and inferior implementation of finger-based control – but it’s still well worth the price if you’re looking for a device like this, and fills its niche perfectly. HTC Diamond has more features and technological capabilities than the iPhone, and you can safely say there’s no equal to it among Windows Mobile or Symbian devices.

• #MWC09: HTC Touch Diamond2 preview video
• HTC starts shipping the Touch Diamond
• HTC Touch Diamond2 announced for India
• Microsoft announces huge list of Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, HTC HD2 included
• Verizon’s Touch Diamond2 leaked; HTC Mega and Tachi also show up

You notice that at least some of this is true right away, as KM500 is the first phone from LG which has a 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting headphones without the need for any adapters. Regrettably, it is located at the bottom left of the phone, and when headphones are connected the wire dangles on the side awkwardly. Another downside that should be noted is the memory card slot being located under the battery.

The location of the 3.5 mm audio jack is somewhat inconvenient:

When talking about regular phone functions, the KM500 is nothing special – a typical LG device, really. The music capabilities of this phone are much more interesting, however. The music really sounds quite good; granted, it’s nothing amazing, but for an LG phone it could even be considered a breakthrough.

The player is easy to use and functional enough, but there are some drawbacks. For example, there is no equalizer – a pretty strange fact, especially considering that a fashion phone like LG Secret has it. There is, however, a sound enhancer called Natural Sound.

The menu and default applications of KM500 will look familiar to the owners of other LG phones, except perhaps for the slightly improved player:

The navigational buttons can be used for controlling the player; they also show light effects when a track is playing. Album Arts is supported, but you will need to both put the image file into according folder and add a tag for the song.

When you first access the player after inserting a new memory card, the phone will require some time to update the playlist.

You can block the keyboard of the phone no matter which menu are you browsing currently – a nice and useful feature.

Your KM-500 will display some interesting light effects when you listen to music:

The phone does look great when the keyboard backlight is on:

LG KM-500 is a nice mid-sized music phone with plastic case (except for the battery cover which is metallic). The quality of the sound it produces is on-par with gadgets from other companies. Even though It doesn’t sound as good as Nokia’s N91 or Motorola’s ROKR E8, it’s still a viable choice for your next music phone purchase.

• LG KM710 and KM380
• Samsung F480 review
• LG KF510 review
• Nokia 6135i, Nokia 5500 sport and Nokia 7370 L’Amour approved by FCC
• LG KF300 review

Samsung F480 comes with a leather battery lid that also covers the front of the phone in order to protect its display; alternatively, you can use a simple metallic battery cover. The back of the phone has a textured metal finish; the lens of the built-in 5 megapixel camera is located at the top left side.

The metallic battery lid can be replaced with a leather cover that also protects the display from scratches:

The front panel is taken up almost entirely by the big display (which is prone to finger smudges like any other touchscreen). Samsung F480 has a memory card slot (hot swap enabled) on the left side, and the data/headphone ports on the opposite one. The hold button for blocking touchscreen input is located at the top edge, and the Accept/Deny as well as one additional button for launching the menu are just below the display.

SGH F480 has a big, 2.8″ touchscreen display:

The memory card slot is conveniently located on the side, enabling you to replace memory cards on the fly:

The phone is surprisingly thin for a candybar and fits in your hand nicely. It is also easy and comfortable to use, as we’ve learned in our testing. The vibration force feedback of the touchscreen helps a lot in this area.

Samsung F480 would probably be nothing more than yet another touchscreen phone from Samsung, if it weren’t for the highly customizable desktop. A number of widgets (profiles, player, time, carrier logo, time, events, radio, applications, gallery, and games) can be accessed from the sidebar on the left and moved to any location of the desktop using drag-and-drop. Naturally, the player can be controlled straight from the desktop; profiles can be changed on the fly, and so on. This way the user can customize the desktop however he wants – by putting all the needed functions there, or even emptying it entirely. While this is really great, there are only a limited number of widgets (the ones listed before) and you cannot add new ones.

From left to right: desktop with drag-and-drop widgets; using Hold key to lock the touchscreen; main menu (white background is also available):

Another good news is that F480 is apparently the first touchscreen phone from Samsung which is capable of running Java applications. These can also run in background (that is to say, they can be minimized) and you can launch multiple apps at once – multitasking works perfectly. You can control the applications by means of virtual keyboard that appears at the bottom of the screen.

The additional button that we mentioned earlier brings the ‘fast launch’ menu to the screen which lists shortcuts to the music player, messages, call function, internet and the main menu. It can be called from any screen or application, which is a great feature. Same can be said for the keyboard blocking button which again can be used no matter what screen or menu you are in.

From left to right: music player; fast launch menu; camera interface:

The main menu is a standard-looking 4×3 grid, which lets you access functions like call list, phone book, music player (which is rather convenient, by the way, and supports Album Arts too), browser (great and easy to use), camera, bluetooth, applications (both standard ones like FM radio, World clock or Music recognition and Java applications installed by user), alarms and settings.

The Bluetooth menu deservers a separate note – all the devices the phone was connected to are displayed in a nice graphical visualization that both looks cool and is very fun and easy to use.

The 5 Mpx camera has both autofocus and face recognition features, and can be controlled comfortably with touch. The quality of the photos isn’t bad either.

Samsung SGH-F480 turned out to be a fashionable, interesting and attractive multimedia phone. It will undoubtedly be sought after thanks to its great features and positive user experience.

• IFA 2007 Report: Samsung SGH-i550 with GPS navigation and Google apps
• LG KM500 review
• Samsung S8000 and M8000 touchscreen phones leaked
• Samsung AT&T Eternity Review
• Samsung F200 and Samsung F210 Music Phones launched

R300, the first of the two models, is a simple-looking candybar phone built on an old platform that is miles behind the A100 both in looks and functionality.

Sony Ericsson R300 is a simple-looking, standard monoblock phone:

The phone menu is presented in a basic 3×3 grid:

The only interesting function that it – and the second phone in the series, the R306 – have is TrackID which allows you to find out the names of the songs you record from any source, and the ability to use parts of the tracks played on the radio as ringtones. The back of the phone is stylized like a small radio receiver; there are additional memory buttons for your favorite radio channels, and a speaker which takes up a large part of the back panel.

The back of the phone is stylized to look like a small radio:

Sony Ericsson R306 is the second model in the R series. It comes in clamshell form factor and has an interesting and unusual keyboard, something Sony Ericsson often puts in their flip phones. Compared to the R300, it has a slightly bigger display and a more powerful camera, but still runs on the same old software platform.

R306 is a clamshell phone with a catchy keyboard:

Sony Ericsson R306 runs on the same software platform as it’s brother, R300:

As for the design, R306 also has a stylized radio receiver on the back with all the additional buttons necessary for controlling it. The reflective cover does look good, but it’s very prone to finger marks. There’s also a small monochrome display that is enough for displaying station info or the number of the caller; it is visible in almost all lighting conditions.

The back of the R306 is designed to give an impression of a radio receiver; unlike R300, it also has a small monochrome display and two speakers on the sides:

Both R300 and R306 have little knobs on the sides which allow you to stand them on a flat surface, making the phones look like nothing else but radio receivers. Naturally, you need to connect the headset for the radio to work, since it performs the function of the aerial. While there were some rumors floating around about the integrated aerial that these two radio phones were supposed to have, they are all false.

Both R306 (left) and R300 (right) double as simple FM/AM radios:

Both of the phones are simple, smart-looking, and perform their main function – that of a radio – well enough.

• Sony Ericsson 2009 line-up: Yue, Frances, Athena and Filippa included
• Sony Ericsson T303 Daisy Edition hits the UK
• Sony Ericsson W760 gets more expensive MTV Edition
• AM Radio-equipped Sony Ericsson R300 approved by FCC
• More details on Sony Ericsson’s new naming system for mobile phones

MotoZine ZN5 design

Motorola ZN5 is rather large and its powerful camera only adds to that, protruding noticeably from the back of the phone. The design is overall unusual and quite attractive. The case is mostly made from plastic; only the back lid is metallic. The memory card slot is located under it, and you need to take out the battery in order to swap the card.

The design of Moto ZN5 is simple and yet appealing:

The phone looks quite impressive due to the large and noticeable camera:

You can clearly see a big Kodak logo on the lens cover which emphasizes the collaboration between them and Motorola in building the ZN5 Zine. There’s also a powerful Xenon flash and a speaker for playing the ringtones on the back of the phone.

You can clearly see both Motorola and Kodak logos on the back of ZN5:

On the right side there are two volume control buttons and a toggle for blocking the keyboard (you’ll recognize it from the ROKR E8) as well as a camera launch button of an unusual design. On the opposite side there’s a loop hole for attaching a strap, a standard 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting headphones, and a microUSB port. The latter is covered with a small plug; unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to close it properly.

The right side…

…and the left side of the phone:

Keyboard and controls of Motorola Zine ZN5

The stylish, flat keypad might remind you of Motorola’s ROKR series, but instead of touch sensors it uses simple flexible plastic. This solution reminds of Sony Ericson’s W950, but in Motorola’s credit, the keyboard of ZN5 is much easier and more comfortable to use. The phone also has a 5-way navigational wheel, Accept/Deny buttons, two function keys and two additional buttons, one of which launches the gallery and the other sends you to the screen you were previously in. It takes some time to get used to, but like I mentioned before, it’s quite easy to use.

Software platform of Motorola ZN5

The phone is built on LJ (Linux/Java) platform which will be familiar to users of Motorola’s RAZR 2 & 8, ROKR E8 or Pebble U9; it doesn’t have anything new or unusual. The only exceptions are a separate menu item for instant messaging, and the “Kodak gallery”, which allows members of this free Kodak service to instantly upload photos to their online accounts. The phone is also interesting in a way that it’s the first non-smartphone from Motorola which has WiFi. Naturally, the built-in browser as well as all Java applications such as Opera Mini will be able to connect to the web via WiFi.

Users of other LJ-based phones will find the menus of ZN5 familiar:

Music playing capabilities of Moto Zine ZN5

The media player deserves a separate note; while it doesn’t compare to that of E8, the music capabilities of Zine are good enough and it can compete with Nokia’s or Samsung’s counterparts. The quality of playback is rather good, and like I mentioned before, you can also connect your own headphones via the 3.5 mm audio jack.

Camera of Motorola ZN5 Zine

Before we move on to the main part of the review and test out that digital camera, it must be noted that we had our hands on a prototype, and the camera will work slightly differently in the commercial version. Our device asked for confirmation to save after making each photo; this is one of the things that you won’t see in the official release. We also encountered occasional lock-ups that I’m sure you won’t have to see if you buy the phone.

The phone switches to camera mode automatically after you open the lens cover. The control interface is simple and easy to use. The navigational joystick allows you to access camera functions such as Night View, Flash, Focus, White Balance and others. For example, you can first select Flash and then set it to Automatic, Always On/Off, or Red eye reduction modes.

The camera can be controlled easily using the navigational wheel:

The camera possesses a number of good qualities, one of which is fast autofocusing. You will be able to make high quality photos with Moto ZN5, and it will probably be one of the best camera phones of the market, comparing easily even to Nokia N82. Throw WiFi, good music playback capabilities and interesting design into the mix and you’ll get a very attractive offering for those looking for a good camera phone. The name “Kodak” is bound to help in building the popularity of ZN5 as well, especially in the US.

Conclusions

ZN5 “Zine” is an excellent camera phone from Motorola and a great present for the followers of the company. It is also a viable choice for anyone looking for a phone with a 5 megapixel camera. The many qualities of Moto Zine ZN5 include a great camera, good music playback, big display, WiFi data link (a true gift for active internet users!) and an interesting design. There are some minor downsides as well, such as the unsuccessful plug covering the microUSB port, or the accumulation of dirt under the lens cover (which is very hard to clean).

And also there’s one big issue with the connectivity options on Motorola ZN5 – it does not have 3G! Yes, MotoZine ZN5 is supports only 2g GSM, GPRS and EDGE networks. Wi-Fi connectivity somewhat compensates for it, but not always.

Still, it’s a very good, high end camera handset, and if you do not plan to do a lot of net surfing and data transfers while out of reach of Wi-Fi,  MotoZine ZN5 might be a good selection.

Hope you enjoyed our Moto ZiNE ZN5 review – the phone should appear in the market very soon!

• First picture of Motorola Z12 Zine 5 megapixel camera phone?
• 8 Megapixel Motorola Z12 Zine coming next summer?
• Motorola MotoZine ZN5. A bit more info
• Motorola ZN5. Another, a bit better picture appears
• Short hands-on Motorola ZN5 review

We were watching all the LG KF750 Secret pre-launch hype, with early KF750 leaks and official LG KF750 Black Label Series 3 pre-announcement leading up to official unveiling of LG Secret a bit sceptically.

We know that Black Label series phones are THE major sellers for LG, but for us, mobile geeks, it’s just another pretty lame mobile fashion phone. So we expected LG’s Secret to be nothing more but a bit soaped up Shine or Chocolate – yet another fashion gimmick for the girls.

Well, we were wrong. There was a lot of reason behind LG’s excessive marketing hype for LG KF750/KF755 Secret. It’s a great great looking, feature rich phone , that would give any high end mobile handset a run for it’s money. And it has plenty of cool and unexpected features that we’ll talk about in the following review.

LG Secret KF750 / KF755 Video Review

As they say, the picture is worth a thounsand words, so let’s start with the video review of LG Secret KF750:

And, if you are not inclined to sit through 10+ minutes of my rambling, read on further.

LG Secret design and materials

LG Secret KF750 is a slim slider that not only looks impressive, but is made from quality materials as well. The face panel is completely covered with tempered glass which is very resistant to scratches – scissors didn’t leave any mark on ours. There’s a sleek and shiny metallic frame all around it except for the top of the phone, where leather-textured plastic takes place. The sides and the bottom of the phone are made from rubbery Soft-Touch plastic for easier grip, and the battery cover is produced from carbon fiber – same composite material like the one used in spaceships. On top of this all, the quality of assemblage of the phone is also very good.

The face panel of LG KF750 Secret combines scratch-resistant glass with leather-textured plastic and sleek metal frame:

Next to the second built-in camera which is used for video calls, there’s a an ambient light sensor that allows the phone to adjust the contrast of the screen and the keyboard backlight automatically.

LG KF-750 Secret controls

The main control element of the phone is a touch panel with haptics/vibration force-feedback; it also responds to commands with blue illumination. The “OK” button in the middle is mechanical; so are the three buttons (“Accept”, “Decline” and “C”) below the touch panel, and, naturally, the keypad itself. The latter is made from plastic; the keys aren’t very large, but comfortable and usable enough.

The touch panel of LG Secret is equipped with haptics:

On the left side of the phone, there’s only the port for connecting the charger or the headset. On the opposite side we have a volume control scroll, a camera button and two rather interesting keys which open the “secrets” of the phone (pun intended) – but we’ll talk about them a bit later.

Left side:

Right side:

LG Secret KF750/KF755 software

The menu of the LG KF750 Secret looks typical for an LG phone, with the exception of a new item “Google” which lists all popular services of this company such as Search, Mail, Blogger, Maps and YouTube.

The browser installed on the phone is pretty interesting: it is functional enough, and can also change the screen mode from portrait to landscape and back depending on the orientation of the device (horizontal or vertical).

One of the cool points of LG Secret – is it’s multi-tasking capability. E.g. you can launch several applications on the phone, minimizing inactive ones to the tray to run in the background. Granted, LG Viewty had this capability as well, but with LG Secret KF750 you can launch and minimize as many apps as you want, so long as you don’t run out of memory. If you do, new applications simply won’t launch – you won’t even get a warning or anything like that.

It’s debatable whether this is true multitasking or not (as minimized applications don’t actually work in background), but it’s progress on LG’s part nevertheless. You can freely switch between minimized applications and listen to music with your MP3 player simultaneously. As for the MP3 player itself, it became more functional as well, finally getting an equalizer and support for Album art.

The menu of LG KF750 Secret will look familiar to you if you’ve used LG phones before:

But these features are not the main “secret” of the phone, either.

Who would have thought that an ordinary fashion phone like LG Secret would have a touch-screen display as well. Especially when touch features doesn’t normally reveal themselves at all!

To enable the Touch media functionality, you have to press “Touch media” key – one of the two “magic” keys on the right side of LG Secret that I wrote about earlier (the first key starts the Task Manager, for multi-tasking features).

This will make the phone switch to Touch mode and enable you to use applications optimized for finger touch, such as Music, Photos (which too have automatic switching between landscape and portrait modes), Documents (Secret can view .doc, .xls and .pdf files), FM Radio, and finally, M-Toys. Like the name suggests, it is a collection of very interesting games, most of which make use of the built-in accelerometer as well.

The menus are transformed when in Touch media mode to allow for easier navigation:

LG KF750/KF755 Secret Camera

The built-in camera of LG’s KF750 Secret not only has good specifications (5 MPx resolution and an autofocus), but great video capabilities as well. Besides the high-speed video recording function that Viewty had (120 frames per second), KF 750 Secret is also capable of slow shooting mode (recording at 7.5 FPS and then speeding the clips for viewing at standard 30 FPS).

LG Secret is equipped with a good 5 megapixel camera:

Conclusions

LG Secret KF750 / KF755is the first model of the company in a very long time that has managed to really impress me. LG KF-750 Secret is a premium fashion phone that looks and feels great; at the same time, it’s also packed with almost every feature and function that LG is capable of putting on their products. The design, friendliness towards the user and the functionality are all outstanding.

There also are some downsides that need to be noted. The capacity of the battery is a bit disappointing – it only lasts 24 hours under heavy use (music, wireless data, camera, video, etc;) . Another substantial downside is the cost of the LG KF750, which in the beginning will be somewhere around $650.

Still, overall it’s a great handset. If you are searching for a very good looking, feature rich mobile handset, and have some money to spare – LG Secret is a great choice.

• LG Secret soon in four new colors
• LG KF750 Secret now available from O2 in UK
• LG KF750, LG KF240 and LG KF300 "Fashion" phones in the works
• Not the best kept LG Secret KF750
• LG Secret launched in Korea

While both phones have a very advanced photography features, they are very different in almost everything else.

Samsung G800 is a feature camerphone with Samsung’s own OS, while Samsung G810 is a Symbian S60 smartphone which happens to have a very good good camera, and tons of other advanced features as well.

With SGH-G810, Korean company decided to take a risky gamble, aim for the throne of the Symbian empire and unseat currently reigning Nokia N95. Samsung G810 model is more functional than Nokia’s N95 and packs a 5 MPx camera with a Xenon flash and a 3x optical zoom.

Comparisons between the G810, N95 and other high end Nokia smartphones are inevitable, so expect a lot of these in the review.

Samsung G810 design

Samsung SGH-G810 looks solid and business-like, made to fit the tastes of as many users as possible. It is similar in size to N95, but has more rounded edges. There’s something missing in the simple look of the phone – the Samsung G810 doesn’t stand out at all, and would probably have benefited from some bolder design decisions.

On the other hand, the plain looks may appeal to a wide audience not looking for a latest fashion gimmick, but preferring a solid and feature rich business smartphone instead.

Samsung G810 is mostly metallic, with front and back panels made from aluminum. There is also a nice looking, textured metallic cover around the camera lens. The quality of assemblage is very good – all covers stay securely in place. Samsung deserves a praise here, as phones made by them are often assembled much better than their Nokia counterparts.

The only unusual accent in the design of Samsung G810 are the stripes of textured plastic on the sides of the phone:

The metallic back cover has a plastic “lining” which makes it stay securely in place and prevents it from bending in:

Sasmsung SGH-G810 ergonomics

Samsung G810 doesn’t have touch sensors – only the good old mechanics. Despite the size of the device, the buttons on its keyboard are pretty close together, especially the navigational ones. They are pretty stiff and go in only a short way when pressed; as a result, it feels like the phone is reacting to the actions of the user reluctantly.

Samsung G810 keyboard is pretty large and convenient enough, but the decorative frame does not serve any function; moving the Call and Cancel buttons down to the keypad might not have been the best decision either. It would also be nice if the control buttons were marked for what they are:

Thanks to the rounded edges, Sasmung G810 fits in your hand nicely. The slider opens very smoothly, although the spring is pretty tight. There’s no special handle for your finger, so you have to lean either on the bottom edge, or the joystick; thankfully, the latter is pretty stiff and that saves you from accidental usage.

The Samsung SGH-G810 slider when opened:

Opening the lens cover turns on the camera and switches the phone to photo mode automatically. Unlike the other moving parts in the device, it is too light as merely taking the phone out of the pocket often results in the cover opening partially or even completely.

Samsung G810 interface

Samsung G810 possesses the standard ports, such as microSD memory slot and a 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting headphones. What’s unusual is the fact that it also has a MicroUSB port; it is a standard that is quickly gaining popularity among other producers like Nokia and Motorola as well.

As a result, finding accessories for the Samsung G810 should be easier than for the other smartphones of the company, as these are only equipped with Samsung’s own interface ports. It is also important to note that this phone can be charged through the USB, while similar models from Nokia can’t. Wireless interfaces of the Samsung G810 are also standard for top range smartphones and include WiFi and Bluetooth.

Samsung SGH-G810 functions

The basic business and multimedia functions of the Samsung G810 are defined by its operating system. The Address book, Organizer, a client for all kinds of messages, browser, music player, Quick Office suite and a number of other utilities all come with the S60 platform. However, it is not out of the question that in the future the phone will have additional software.

Note that unlike in Nokia’s N-series phones, you won’t find applets which give you access to online services here.

Samsung G810 camera

Turning on the camera on Samsung G810 takes a few seconds – about as much as in the Nokia N82 – and initialization of the transfocator (zoom converter) takes a second or two more. Focusing is done by means of pressing the start button halfway, which is more convenient than expected. Zoom is controlled with a little scroll on the same side of the phone and a bit closer to the lens; its sensitivity is just right, too.

Unlike the camera of the Samsung G800 which was typical for a Korean camera phone, the one built in Samsung G810 is more like cameras in the newest generation of Nokia devices. Even the artifacts found in zoomed-in photos made with N82 and G810 look similar. You get the impression that Samsung engineers received the camera from Nokia together with the S60 platform, and only added their own optics to it.

What does this mean for the Samsung G810? Like mentioned before, photos made with this phone are very much like the ones made with latest Nokia smartphones. The Samsung SGH-G810 doesn’t have the old problem with determining the white balance that plagued most of Samsung camera phones: on the contrary, it has accurate focusing, proper exposure meter, and optimal balance between picture detail and level of noise, which shows correct functioning of sharpening and noise reduction algorithms.

The Samsung G810 camera exposure setting was raised a little by default in the options of the device we tested; as a result, the photos were slightly brighter than the ones made with N82. However, we’re talking about exposure correction here, not errors in determining the lighting or the color detection. Samsung is fully capable of producing vivid colors in images without losing details in brighter parts of the picture. As for exposure, you can set it manually, not to mention that the producer will be able to change it in the next version as well.

The optical zoom works fast enough, zooming in to 3x smoothly and without any problems. There’s also another new function in the G810 – face recognition, which detects the important area for portrait photos with almost 100% accuracy.

The textured ring around the lens and the Xenon flash make the G810 look like a real digital camera:

The location and the sensitivity of the shutter button is perfect:

Comparison of photo quality of Nokia N82 and Samsung G810

Both camera phones were used to make photos of the same scenes in fully automatic mode. Here are the results we got:

• The phones produced great, detailed pictures but in strongly lit environment the slight overexposure of Samsung G810 led to a loss of detail.
• Strong backlight caused no problems for Nokia N82, but resulted in a vertical lens flare in the optics of the camera of G810.
• Both camera phones worked well in average room lighting, using the flash to light the scene when needed.
• Taking pictures of architecture in overcast weather produced great, detailed photos; however, no camera phone could cope with the uniform gray sky.

Here’s some sample pictures taken with Samsung G810 – Sample 1, Sample 2, Sample 3. And you can compare them to the pics made with Nokia N82 – Sample 1, Sample 2, Sample 3. :

Samsung G810 Navigation

The performance of Samsung’s and Nokia’s “navigational phones” is almost identical – they both need nearly 5 minutes for a “cold start” and up to 10-15 seconds for a “warm start”, which is quite acceptable for pedestrian navigation. The accuracy is usually around 20-30 meters. Granted, devices using the SiRF Star III chip can boot up much faster and are more accurate, but they’re also usually bigger than the Samsung G810, too.

Nokia Maps is the default navigational application in the S60 platform, but the user can optionally install other software, such as Garmin Mobile XT or iGo on Samsung Navi G810. It’s unclear yet what Samsung is going to choose for the commercial model, but according to the last news, it might be Route 66.

Samsung G810 Navi also has geotagging – a function which applies a tag to the photo with the name of the location where it was made.

Samsung G810 phone and PC synchronization

Samsung’s PC studio software is used for connecting the Samsung G810 to a computer; it also supports all other Symbian based company’s products.

I say “Samsung’s”, but it is in fact Nokia PC Suite with minor cosmetic changes. Note that if you already are using Nokia PC Suite, Samsung’s PC Studio will outright refuse to install – this might pose a big problem if you use both Nokia and Samsung smartphones and want to use the synchronization function.

Similarly to Nokia smartphones, the Samsung G810 can synchronize it’s data with Outlook; you can even enable automatic data exchange on each connection. Just to remind, the Samsung SGH-G810 can also be charged through the USB, while Nokia devices cannot.

Conclusions

Samsung SGH-G810 is a rather successful product, with the powerful built-in camera as its highlight. It is slightly inferior only to the very best mobile imaging devices out there; what’s more, it has something that its competitors do not – an optical zoom. From my experience with digital cameras, even an average user should find it useful.

This model was clearly created as an alternative for Nokia N95, with a goal to overtake it in terms of features and functions in mind. This idea might not be the best one, as the consumer often chooses a product which came out first; besides, the N95 isn’t the big thing anymore: nowadays most people buy either N82 or N95 8 GB (which, by the way, loses in some areas to the Korean smartphone and wins in others). As a result, the buyer has to make a difficult decision. It might have been easier if the G810 had a more unique design and at least 8 GB of built-in flash memory. Nevertheless, this new model from Samsung is, on many counts, right there at the top with the leaders.

The estimated price of the Samsung SGH-G810 is $580.

• Samsung G600 5 megapixel slider phone in the works
• 12MP Nokia camera phones coming in 2010?
• Short hands-on Motorola ZN5 review
• Nokia selects Samsung for 5 megapixel CMOS sensors
• IFA 2007 Report: Samsung SGH-i550 with GPS navigation and Google apps

We are used to the fact that usually the sliders from Samsung are meant for women. It’s a different case with the Samsung Soul U900, however: it has a solid, serious look, not to mention the impressive size (although dimensions are not that much of an argument, now that you see females with big phones like N95 all the time).

The phone should be popular among both sexes, granted women won’t mind the business-like design and guys will put up with the unique control element. The possible problems lie not in the fact that a touch panel is used here – you won’t surprise anyone with these nowadays – but in its implementation. We’ll try to find out how well the control elements are realized in the Samsung U900 Soul in this review, among other things.

Samsung Soul U900 Design

While the phone looks unusual enough to stand out from other models of the company, it is still very much Samsung-like. There are a lot of metallic elements in the Samsung U900, as expected from a fashion phone. The weight and size are well-balanced: the phone doesn’t feel like a toy, and at the same time is not too heavy. Samsung Soul display takes up the most of the face panel; it is finger mark-prone, and the fact that you need to touch it when closing the slider makes the situation even worse. The little touchscreen which serves the function of navigation buttons suffers from the same problem.

The display takes up the most of the face panel:

The camera and flash are hidden behind the back panel when the Samsung Soul is closed:

There is a slot for a microSD memory card in the right side of the phone:

When the slider is open, the overall look is slightly spoiled by a large hollow beneath the camera, and the opening mechanism protruding from it:

Samsung SGH-U900 Soul comes in two versions: metallic silver and black. Note that black only applies to the plastic parts; all the metallic elements will retain their color.

Samsung U900 Soul Display

The image quality and viewing angle of the display in Samsung Soul are both excellent thanks to the quality matrix installed – as expected from a Samsung phone, really. The reflective coating, however, brings its own problems – the screen is almost unreadable in bright sunlight, especially if you are using a dark theme.

Samsung Soul SGH-U900 ergonomics and controls

We’ll start with the Samsung Soul keypad, leaving the most interesting part for later. It is a solid plastic plate, with engraved labels and metallic insets separating the rows of keys. These help a lot in finding the correct buttons without looking, but I still wouldn’t call the keyboard completely comfortable.

Reaching the bottom row of the keys might be difficult due to the construction of the device – the phone leans forward:

As for the navigation block, it takes some time to get used to. The unexpected (but not bad, by all means!) design decision was to use mechanical navigation buttons together with a touch panel. Normally you would expect touch-sensitive buttons to come with it (like it is with E900, E950 and LG products), but there you go.

Samsung Soul touch panel itself works surprisingly well; it has an adjustable vibration force feedback and takes only half an hour or so to get used to. We didn’t experience any problems whatsoever with it – what’s more, different modes of operation help a lot, especially when using the camera.

Samsung Soul Features

The Samsung Soul U900 is feature-packed, with the biggest emphasis on multimedia. It has a pretty good music player which gives you more than acceptable functionality and sound, an FM radio receiver, and a 5 Mpx built-in camera with autofocus. You can make okay-looking photos with it (provided the weather is good) and share them right away or post them to your blog by using the integrated ShoZu client. It’s also possible to edit photos and videos on the phone, and it actually comes in handy sometimes – for simple tasks like cropping, anyway. You can see some screenshots of the camera software and the music player below:

Using the Samsung U900 Soul

We encountered only one real problem when using the phone, and that’s the display and the touch sensor being extremely finger mark-prone. Since it is a widespread problem among all modern phones, however, we can’t even give the Samsung Soul U900 lower marks because of it.

All the other aspects are in order: the ringtone is loud enough, and the battery life is as expected. Fully charged, the phone will hold for around two days with average usage.

Conclusion

The Samsung SGH-U900 Soul is an interesting product, and without a doubt, the flagship of Samsung phones in 2008 (smartphones aside). This model is largely targeted towards male audience because of its size, but it’s not impossible to imagine it fitting in a women’s purse either. Personally, I think that the phone lacks a sale point, some kind of a “wow-factor”. Knowing the aggressive marketing policies of Samsung, however, Soul will undoubtedly sell well.

• Cheaper Samsung S7330 Soul pops-up
• Some thoughts and Samsung U900 Soul review
• Samsung SHG-u900 Soul Now Available
• Samsung Soul U900 completes Ultra Edition
• Samsung U900 Soul released through Orange in the UK

Samsung SGH-D880 DuoS, released last year, was the first attempt at conquering “people too important to use only one SIM card and ready to spend good money for it”.

It’s now followed by two cheaper models – Samsung SGH-P240 DuoS and DuoS Samsung SGH-D780.

And these indeed seem to be two different models. At least by the number, because I still can’t figure out the difference from the looks and specs. Maybe different markets, or something?

Two SIM cards, one Samsung P240 DuoS

I’ve tested the Samsung SGH-P240 DuoS, which is in fact almost identical to SGH-D780.

It is a mid-range phone, aimed at people who want a little from each handset category. It has a bit of multimedia in it, a few organizer features and, most importantly, it can handle two SIM cards.

The dual SIM Samsung P240 is definitely a looker, with its slim shape and silvery side buttons, and it looks pretty robust, too. Nothing moves, everything is well in place. The only problem is that opening the back lid can be a bit of a drag because of this. After you managed to do that inserting the two SIM cards is quite easy and, the second you start it, the phone will ask for the PIN codes.

And just as you were about to say “that was fast!”, Samsung P240 will keep you waiting for more than a minute before actually starting… Boring, but worth the wait, because after that things run quite smoothly.

The two SIM cards work at the same time and you can receive calls and messages on both of them. Sound quality is really good, both at the receiving and the sending end. The only problem is that you will only be able to initiate calls from one of the cards, the “Primary” one, as the dual SIM P240 calls it. If you want to call someone from the other SIM, you’ll have to push a button on the side of the phone, select it as the main SIM, and the phone will restart – another minute of waiting…

Menus
The menus are pure Samsung style – nothing too fancy, but functional and quite easy to use. It shouldn’t be a problem to find a specific thing in them, even if you’ve never owned a Samsung before. If you don’t like their looks, the Samsung SGH-P240 comes with three predefined themes for you to tamper with.
But strange things do happen here, too. You’ll get the impression that the file manager doesn’t “see” the microSD card you insert in the slot. Well, it does, but switching from “Phone memory” to “Memory card” can’t be done with the directional key; oddly enough, you’ll have to use the * and # keys for this.

Multimedia
Entertainment wise, Samsung P240 dual SIM does pretty good. The music player isn’t fantastic, but it does its job and the phone can also play 3gp and mp4 video files. I’ve tried getting a file converter and I realized that TV series episodes are quite watchable on dual SIM SGH-P240’s bright 2-inch display.
And since the internal speaker won’t get you too far, you’ll have to use the headphones, which are quite uncomfortable and, thanks to the lack of a 3,5 mm jack, can only be switched with a Bluetooth stereo handset (yes, it does support AD2P).

Music can be organized in a few playlists, but the strange thing is that, even though you have more of these, only a limited number of tracks can be added to each of them (30). If you’re bored of trying to organize it, you still have the FM radio.
The 2 megapixel camera is perfect for snapshots in bright sunlight, as image quality does seem to get lower once the light isn’t so bright. Here are a few examples of pictures taken with it (click on the images to see them full size).

Bottom line
Taking into account that it is a fairly good phone, with a fair amount of features, the fact that the Samsung SGH-P240 has dual SIM capabilities only makes it more interesting. If both SIM cards could be used for calling at any time, it would be even better.

• Samsung D880 DuoS Dual SIM card phone
• Samsung D780 DuoS coming
• Samsung D980/D988 – DuoS with touchscreen
• Cheap Samsung P240 DuoS coming. Samsung P720 DuoS Armani canceled. WM 6.1 DuoS Smartphone this year too
• Samsung C3212 DuoS candybar shows up

We liked it quite a bit and our conclusion was that “SE G900 is a great smartphone for people who want usual mobile phone functionality to come first, but still retain all the smartphone gimmicks too.”

What we did not mention then, was that we also had shot an almost 10 minute Sony Ericsson G900 video, while doing a review. It took a bit longer to process and make it ready for publication, so the G900 video did not make it into an original review.

But now here it is. Enjoy Sony Ericsson G900 video review:

• Sony Ericsson Kate to be launched as Sony Ericsson C510
• Sony Ericsson C903 Frances unveiled – MWC 2009 should make it official
• Sony Ericsson working on new 5MP K750 successor?
• Sony Ericsson 2009 line-up: Yue, Frances, Athena and Filippa included
• Sony Ericsson Hikaru to bring an 8 MP camera, 8GB of memory; Sony Ericsson Twiggy in the works too

Keyboard

The buttons of the keyboard are rather small – so small, in fact, that it’s unclear where the company intends to put localized labels, as the buttons can barely fit two symbols at the moment. For entering information in non-English languages, you will need to use the virtual on-screen keyboard; it’s entirely possible that the commercial version of the phone will have this downside as well. Here’s how it looks:

Design

The phone is pretty compact for a communicator; when compared to, say, Nokia’s E61i, the i780 is significantly narrower and slightly longer. Its dimensions are entirely acceptable for a phone of this type and it fits in your hand nicely; you can also reach all the buttons of the keyboard with just one hand. You will only need your other one if you’ll want to use the stylus. Speaking of which, the stylus is telescopic and pretty convenient to use.

There are two additional buttons on the sides of the phone – the volume control on the left, and a programmable button on the right. The memory card slot and the standard Samsung port for connecting headset or the USB data cable are located just above it. You can see all that in the photos below:

The back panel of the phone is made from rubbery Soft Touch plastic. Under it, there’s a pretty large battery. The capacity wasn’t specified on it, but I expect it to be at least 1200 mAh. The back cover when closed stays secured in place without any hint of squeaks or looseness. The speaker and the lens of the built-in camera are located at the top. A photo coming right up:

Continuing with the design of the phone, the block of navigational buttons deserves a note. There are your standard red and green buttons for accepting or dropping the call and a navigational button on each side, as well as Start and OK buttons. What makes it interesting is the touchpad – yes, a touchpad –in the middle. It works similarly to touchpads in notebooks; you can control the cursor on the screen with it, and it’s quite convenient and easy to use. You can set the sensitivity level for it, and it also works as a clickable button.

Display

The phone has a pretty unusual square display using 320×320 resolution (having in mind that most communicators use either 320×240 or new 640×480). Since the aspect ratio is different, there are problems with some software. Several applications, like those from PBS software, either don’t launch at all or don’t fit into the screen completely. Opera, on the other hand, works just fine. If you plan to buy this phone, you need to keep in mind the fact that some software won’t work properly.

Conclusions

The i780 is a good business device with wide possibilities for entering data. Note that if you will only be using the Latin alphabet, you’ll be fine; otherwise, the QWERTY keyboard will be mostly useless to you as it’s very doubtful that Samsung will manage to localize it.

• First BlackBerry Thunder live pics surface
• Sprint Samsung Ace i325 phone. Live pics and more details
• Samsung SGH-i780 possible Black Jack 2 spotted in Dubai
• IFA 2007 Report. Samsung i620 Windows Mobile Slider
• Samsung U960 Rogue and U450 Intensity coming to Verizon on September 8

Design

The front panel is made from plastic; a transparent layer, and under it another textured one which gives the phone’s face cover a nice reflection effect under light. A downside is the front panel being prone to finger marks – then again, it’s a problem of most modern phones.

The phone has a shiny, reflective faceplate:

There’s a small metal stripe located at the top of the front cover, which in my opinion doesn’t fit the overall design very well. Not that it looks bad or anything – it just feels like something’s missing when you look at the front panel of the KF300. There also are similar metal stripes with chrome finish along the edges of the phone. The back panel is made from soft-touch plastic, pleasant to touch and nothing out of ordinary.

The back panel of the phone is made from rubbery soft touch plastic:

Now for the problems we noticed. First of all, the back cover stays a bit loose. Second, the memory card slot is located unconveniently under the battery, so you need to turn of the phone to swap it. Typical problems with many LG models, these two. Another problem we encountered was the color chiping off the volume control buttons on the side of the phone after fairly short time of use; hopefully this will be corrected in commercial versions, although I’m afraid it might stay this way, too.

We encountered a problem with color chipping off the volume control buttons:

As for the inside of the phone, it looks very interesting. First thing you notice is the keypad with simply enormous (for a modern mobile, anyway) buttons and big, clear labels on them. The KF300 would obviously be a good choice for a present for an elderly person who won’t be using it for anything much besides phone calls and will appreciate the ease of dialing a number. The navigational buttons are also proportional in size to the number keypad and large enough to be used comfortably by almost anyone.

The KF300 has a huge keypad, which looks unusual on a mobile phone:

What’s more, the KF300 has separate buttons for launching what LG thinks are the most important functions of the phone. I agree with the choice of Alarm Clock, but I’d question whether Organizer will be widely used by the consumers the phone is targeted at. There’s also a button for Images and one for Favorites, which allow you to add any function you want to the list.

Software

Now let’s move on to the menu. What I’d like to note right away is one of the LG “things”: the company has good concepts in their phones, but they’re incomplete. That’s the case with the KF300 as well: while the keyboard is big and easy to read, and the clock displayed on the external screen is huge, the menu font is tiny (be it menu icons, messages or anything else). You’d think they would go all the way in making the phone as accessible as possible, but like I said – good idea, yet not realized to it’s full potential.

The menu fonts are standard-sized and don’t fit with overall idea to make the phone more accessible:

As for the menu itself, it’s very similar to that of KF320, but the menu choices are arranged differently and the applications are located in different submenus. That’s usually the case with LG models, where the menu varies slightly from one model to another, depending on what the company considers the most important features of the phone are (these are usually put forward as the first menu icons). I don’t really think that’s the right strategy, because a fan of LG phones would probably like to find his new device from the company as familiar and easy to use as his old one, like it is with Nokia, Sonny Ericsson, and to an extent, Samsung phones.

Conclusion

LG KF300 is a standard mid-range model with a 2 megapixel camera, player application and FM radio. If you don’t need superior multimedia functions, and mostly use the phone for calling or writing SMS messages, you should find the phone interesting. The reason is first and foremost the big, comfortable keyboard; the 2.2” display is large enough too. Besides, the design is not bad either. Personally, I’d only buy such a phone as a present for an elderly person, or someone who has a bad eyesight and is primarily interested in using the phone for talking or writing messages.

• Sony Ericsson Z555i review
• LG KF510 review
• Sony Ericsson G900 review
• Sony Ericsson Z770i review
• Verizon LG Venus – a glimpse into the next generation of Chocolates

The phone is done in slider form factor, is quite slim and looks rather attractive. The case is fully metalic, including the back lid. The design is very smart and compact; the memory card slot is positioned in the upper back of the phone, and the SIM slot is hidden right under the battery, in a small pull-out tray.

Changing the SIM card is a pretty complicated process, so there’s even a 4-step instruction drawn right on the case above the tray of how to do it right.

The microSD memory card slot:

There is an instruction on the phone for changing the SIM card:

The back cover is supposed to be secured in place with a small clip, which regrettably isn’t very reliable; the cover stays a little loose.

There are MP3 / camera launch and keyboard block / power on buttons located on one side of the phone, with the port for connecting the headset or the data cable below them. On the other side, there’s the volume control scroll and a loop hole for attaching the phone strap.

The right side of the phone with the button to launch the MP3 player or the camera:

When the slider is closed, the Camera button on the side will unblock the keyboard if you press it twice; you can also set it to launch the audio player with one click. It won’t turn on the camera unless the phone is open.

The phone needs to be slid open for the camera to work:

KF510 front shot, open…:

…And closed:

One of the features of the phone that definitely deserves to be mentioned is the touch sensor plate with the block of navigational buttons. It has a vibration force feedback system and uses a lot of interesting effects, reacting to every press of the button with a swirl of colors (that’s the so called “Interactive Touch Lighting” system at work). It’s not only nice but also easy and convenient to use; for example, simply clicking one of the arrows will move the cursor on the screen, while dragging your finger in the same direction on the touch sensor will move the cursor much faster. It also displays some effects during an incoming call.

The touchpad of KF510 uses some interesting effects:

As for the menu, it’s the usual one from LG, with it’s traditional 12 icons and lists inside each. It’s easy to understand and use, only the positioning of some menu items might be slightly different from other LG models.

The menu in KF510 is very similar to that of other LG models:

The phone displays date and time in big, glamorous letters with 3D effect by default; you can, of course, choose to display your own image instead.

Conclusion

The phone turned out to be quite interesting, especially because of it’s design. Like it was with Chocolate and Shine models, the KF510 is first and foremost a phone for women, or at least the Sunset Red color scheme that we tested is. There’s also a black/silver gradient version that looks manlier, but not all guys will find it fitting. Suffice to say, I ran a mini-survey asking my friends about it, and they all said that the phone fits the target market perfectly.

• LG KF300 review
• Samsung F480 review
• Sony Ericsson W890 review
• LG Secret KF750/KF755 review
• Sony Ericsson G900 review

Simply put, the phone is superb. Honestly, I haven’t seen such an impressive handset in a while, and it’s probably the first Motorola in a long time which I really wanted to get. As much as I didn’t like Z8, I loved the E8 – granted, it’s not without some reservations, but still.

Let’s start with the fact that this phone doesn’t have a conventional keyboard. It has a touch sensor tablet instead, with small knobs in place of the buttons so you can still feel them without looking. The touch sensors have force feedback: they vibrate when pressed, and it works great, giving you a good idea of what button you pressed exactly. There’s no mechanical movement: the panel is rigid and doesn’t bend at all when you press the keys.

The stylish navigational scroll at the top is called the Omega Wheel:

It’s a fun phone to play around with your friends; you give them the E8, let them use the keypad for a while, and look at their surprised faces when you turn the phone off and the keys “stop moving” – minutes ago, they could have sworn that the buttons moved mechanically, but that’s not the case. I won’t dig too deep in how that feeling is achieved, but the important thing is that it works, and it works great.

Turn the phone off, and the keyboard is gone:

The dynamic, morphing labels of the buttons deserve to be mentioned as well – depending on what you’re doing with the phone at the moment, the look and functions of the keys change completely. The first mode is the “ordinary” one (you can see English and Chinese symbols on the buttons since I tested a prototype). The second one is camera mode, and the third one is for music. All of the unneeded buttons are turned off, and only the essentials for that particular mode light up – an impressive and convenient solution. See the detailed photos below.

Keyboard of the Motorola ROKR E8 in the ordinary keypad mode:

Keyboard of the Motorola ROKR E8 in the camera mode…:

…and, the music mode:

Now a few words about the musical functions. It’s a first phone in a quite long time that can compare to my Sony A816. You don’t need to make any compromises with your ears – the sound is really high quality. Of course, there’s a 3.5 mm jack on the phone to connect your headphones, and it’s positioned pretty conveniently, too – on the upper side of the case. Somewhat weak output signal is a downside – in most cases the volume is enough, but I’d like to have a little backup, too. There’s 2 GB of built-in memory, plus you can connect a memory card; the phone worked fine with a 4GB microSDHC.

Side and back of the phone:

Now a little bit about the weak points of the E8. In my case, the phone was very laggy. I didn’t manage to do as much as write an SMS while listening to the music at the same time, and launching Java applications was pretty much out of the question. Perhaps the phone being a prototype is to blame – the RAZR2 had such problems in it’s time, too. Let’s see if this is fixed in the commercial version. I will say only this: a strong player has appeared among the music phones, one that can win the hearts of many users.

• First BlackBerry Thunder live pics surface
• Motorola Crush touchscreen phone announced for US Cellular
• Motorola ROKR E8 gets official
• Official pics of Motorola EM326g and the MOTOROKR S7-HD Bluetooth headset emerge
• Motorola KRE8 – the ultimate music phone concept?

Design and materials

Naturally, the phone is first and foremost interesting because of its design. The L310 doesn’t have an external display; it has a sort of an indicator on the front panel instead in form of an abstract flower that flashes when there’s an incoming call. Obviously, it can’t show who the caller is, but at least you will know that someone’s calling when the sound is turned off.

Flower icon that lights up when someone is calling:

Another form of indication is a small red icon just below that “flower”, which lights up when there’s an unread text message. The phone has a USB port on one side of the phone, and a memory card slot on the other; both are covered by small plugs.

Open USB port on the side:

The phone’s case is made from glossy plastic that picks up finger marks very fast. The L310 might look great, but it gets greasy in an unprecedented amount of time – I had to wear gloves when filming the review for this phone, and even that didn’t prevent it from getting smudges all over. I’m not sure if the package will include some sort of wipe for cleaning the phone, but the future owner will need one for sure. This problem extends to the inside of the clamshell as well (the material around the screen and keyboard). This is a problem of many modern handsets, yet the producers don’t seem to mind much since the consumers buy their phones anyway.

The back of the phone already has some visible smudges:

The clamshell has a shiny, metallic stripe along the edges that sort of reminds of a purse or a handbag. Opening the phone is no easier because of it, however, and you will need both hands for that. There’s a flowery ornament on the back lid as well as on the inside of the phone, above and around the screen. Another interesting element of design is the decorative stripe around the lens of the built-in camera that’s positioned at the top of the front panel of the phone. The design is overall refined and complete, and would be close to perfect, if it weren’t for that finger mark problem. What’s more, the phone is assembled reliably, the materials are of high quality and there are no squeaks of any kind; the phone feels solid an pleasant to hold.

Functions and software

The functionality of the phone is average in all areas; it’s obviously not one of the leader models of Samsung. The camera is nothing much; 2 MPx one, only suitable for making photos to be used in your MMS messages. The music capabilities aren’t anything worth noting, either.

The phone looks just as stylish when open, but the software functions aren’t much:

The phone has some special applications designed for women and grouped in a menu section called “Lifestyle”. These include apps like Fragrance types, Biorhythms, Height/Weight ratio, Calorie calculator, Pink calendar and Shopping list. According to many surveys, very little women actually use applications like these, yet the producers insist on putting them into their feminine phones; it’s unclear if this is done merely to be able to market the phone as a model “for women”, or if they simply don’t care whether someone will be using those or not.

Bottomline

There’s not much else to be said about the phone, so let’s wrap up our review now. It’s surprising that despite the average functionality of the L310, it will cost quite a lot – more than 200 Euros, in fact. Whether such a price is adequate for a phone with nice design, yet poor features and lack of an external display is a question yet to be answered. Time will show, but as an expert, I believe the sales of this phone won’t be high.

• Samsung Soul U900 review
• Retro clamshell phone concept designer thinks about our future
• Eclipse phone concept doesn’t involve sun, moon
• LG KF300 review
• Pantech launches IM-U300K Neon-Sign Phone through KTF

The case is fully metallic, unlike the one of W880 which had the sides of the back panel made from ‘soft-touch’ plastic. You can see the two models compared in the photos below.

Front side (W880 on the left, W890 on the right – note the wider keys of the latter):

Back side (note the metallic back lid of W890):

Let’s leave the comparison between the two phones at that and concentrate on reviewing the W890 now.

Design and materials

Like I said before, the case is fully metallic and it has that brushed metal look which looks very good. The phone comes in two colors: a brownish one with a hint of bronze – that’s the one you can see in the video – and your usual silver. Both look quite interesting, but the brown is more appealing. The back lid is secured in place by two stops on the sides of the device. You will have to take it off when you want to put in a memory card, but you can change them on the fly without having to turn off the phone. The battery is a standard Li-Pol from Sony Ericsson that is good for up to 360 hours of stand-by and 9 and half hours of talk time. Once again, you can see in the video that the back lid is made from metal without any kind of plastic parts.

Controls

The W890 is controlled with your usual keypad and function buttons. It has a button to launch the music player on the left upper side, and another one to turn on the camera on the lower right side, as well as a volume control above it. Like in all recent models from Sony Ericsson, the headset port is on the side of the phone, which isn’t very convenient because the wire is going up and sticks out a lot. With the headphone adapter connected, the W890 doesn’t look as elegant as before because the connector is almost twice as thick as the phone itself; it isn’t very comfortable to hold in your hand, either. Here’s a photo which illustrates the said problem:

The company should do something about this outdated solution, especially now that Samsung and Nokia have come out with phones that have 3.5 mm headphone jacks right on the case. I’ll return to discussing the headset when I review the music player.

There’s a second camera that is used for video calls on the front of the phone. UMTS is implemented in the device, and HSDPA data transfer is supported, so the W890 is a full blown 3G phone. As for the keypad, I already mentioned in the beginning that it’s better than the one of W880. The keys are still quite small and pretty close to each other, but it’s definitely and improvement over the older model and you should like them more. The block of function keys has been improved only slightly, and for those with thicker fingers it could be hard to use some of the smaller ones near the ‘answer’ and ‘drop’ buttons. Now let’s move on to the software functions of the phone.

Multimedia

The W890 belongs to the new generation of Sony Ericsson phones, so it has both green ‘answer’ and red ‘drop’ buttons instead of the ‘back’ and ‘C’ as in older models, as well as two function buttons on each side. There are now three choices on the bottom of the screen corresponding with the function keys: Contacts on the right, Menu in the middle, and Multimedia on the left. The phone runs Walkman 3.0 software. There’s no accelerometer built in, so automatic switching between landscape and portrait modes like in the W910 is impossible; you will have to set the screen mode in phone settings. In the Multimedia menu, there are choices for photos, music, videos, TV (if you have an online TV subscription), and settings. The music menu is your usual one, with separate choices for albums, artists and tracks. The player is quite easy to use; it supports album covers and you can also choose a visualization to go with the music. There’s nothing especially new or different in this area: everything is familiar and convenient. There are no special hardware controls for the player – when music is playing in the background, you can switch between tracks with the scroll, and control the volume by pressing it.

Now let’s return to the headset as promised. When the adapter is connected, it allows you to connect any 3rd party manufacturer headphones to the 3.5 mm audio jack. There’s a clip on the wire to fix it to your clothes. There are no controls on the adapter, only an ‘answer’ button and the microphone – which is another drawback of the device. The W890 is, at the moment, the top Walkman model besides the smartphones, so lack of a remote control is surprising. Right now, a remote control comes with only one Walkman model, the W950, production of which is, by the way, discontinued. It would seem that Sony Ericsson wants the consumers to buy them separately; granted, they only cost around $15-$20, but it still seems strange that a top model like W890 comes without one.

As for the stock headphones, they are pretty comfortable and come with two pairs of soft linings of different size, so you can choose the one that fits your ear better. The headphones aren’t amazing, but they are pretty good, and definitely better than what most competitors include with their music phones. They will be more than enough for your average user, but hardcore melomaniacs will want to switch them for something more serious. We’ll leave the review of musical capabilities of the phone at that and see what other functions it offers.

Software

Going through the menu, it is almost identical with other Sony Ericsson models. The Messages menu is your usual one, with SMS, MMS capabilities and a RSS reader that fetches you the RSS feeds and lets you read them on the phone without even launching the internet browser. The e-mail client is pretty convenient and lets you save even attachments unsupported by the phone, such as .zip files – naturally, you can’t open them, but you can save them and later transfer them to your PC through Bluetooth or a USB cable. Other functions such as PlayNowtm or the internet browser are, again, familiar and seen on many other phones of the company, so there’s not much point to linger on them any longer.

Impressions

Personally, I liked the phone a lot – it’s a good, adequate model. Now, if I had a W880, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to switch – the 3.2 Mpx camera over the 2 Mpx and the added radio are good improvements, but the two phones are too similar. Also, the musical functions of the W890 aren’t so accentuated , so If you want a classy, purely musical phone, perhaps you should try the new products from Nokia which have built-in 3.5 mm audio jacks and better overall sound quality. Otherwise the W890 is a great choice: it’s a slim and stylish phone with a sleek metallic case. If you only listen to music occasionally and don’t terribly mind the awkward headset adapter with a dangling wire on the side, I daresay you will find this phone interesting.

• Sony Ericsson BeiBei pics in the wild, again
• Sony Ericsson W600i cellphone review by C-Net
• Sony Ericsson T303 Daisy Edition hits the UK
• Sony Ericsson W800i mobile phone review by C-Net
• Sony Ericsson W707 Alicia looking alive and well in live pics

You don’t need to be a prophet to be able to tell that for most mobile phone vendors, this year will be the year that they are able to start really competing with the iPhone.

Each one of them is reacting to the success of Apple in one way or another, and presenting their own version of “iPhone killer/wannabe” to the market.

Even if competing with the iPhone isn’t the company’s intention, the users will do it for them anyway, drawing comparisons between the iPhone and any phone at least a bit similar to it – especially the ones with a touchscreen.

A number of people had seen Samsung’s new model – SGH- F490, as a competitor to Apple’s product right from the start.

Frankly, that number includes us as well; the first impressions were just like that. However, after learning more about Samsung F490 phone, we can say with confidence that these two handsets won’t be competing for a multiple reasons.

Samsung SGH-F490 beats the iPhone in most areas, with the exceptions of Net browsing and WiFi. The “phone” part of it is much better, probably because of Samsung’s experience; the camera is more powerful, the Bluetooth connection is fully functioning, and there’s a tactile feedback from the touchscreen.

However, the main things that ensured the success of the iPhone are missing –

• the “WOW” factor that came with a truly new interface and captured the imagination of both users and media, giving the iPhone hundreds of millions worth of media exposure
• the army of dedicated fans, who are blind to all flaws of the product, merely because it’s the creation of their idol

Thus, we won’t even try to compare the two models, but simply review the new phone like any other, ignoring its similarity to the American bestseller.

Samsung F490 review. Look&Feel, materials and controls

Samsung SGH-F490 phone looks unusual and attracts attention.

All of the front surface is covered in a glossy, reflective glass and lacks any mechanical controls whatsoever. The three keys at the bottom seem to be touch-sensitive.

Fortunately, Samsung hasn’t got rid of all traditional controls in F490; several buttons are located on the side surfaces of the phone. Traces remain on the front surface from touching; the good thing is, it’s as easy to clean, as it is to get it dirty.

The external case of the phone is made from plastic, and the black cover has a texture reminding of rough metal.

The camera lens, the little mirror for self-portraits, and the lens flash are located on the back, in a small deepening near the battery cover. Dust accumulates inside said deepening; what’s more, when you are holding the phone in your hand, your index finger often travels there, further dirtying the lens.

Samsung SGH-F490 review. Display

The 3.2” display of SGH-F490 is the biggest of all mobile phones at the moment. Like expected from Samsung, the colors and the viewing angle are both good.

The readability in sunlight leaves more to be desired; the cause of this isn’t only the specs of the display matrix, but also the glossy surface, which glitters a lot under the direct sunlight.

Samsung F490. Functionality

Samsung SGH-F490 is built on the same software platform like Armani P520 phone – that’s the new Samsung Croix interface.

It isn’t so much different from the usual Samsung platform, with it’s intersecting lines in the menu that draw a cross which helps slightly when using the phone.

The new Samsung F490 music player, while being optimized for touchscreen control, isn’t very convenient; however, by connecting your own headphones (fortunately, there’s a 3.5 mm jack right there on the case), you can enjoy music of pretty decent quality. You will be able to talk to someone by putting the phone to your mouth, and hear the speaker in the headphones.

The business functionality of this model does not differ from the most high end handsets coming from Samsung.

For users of Google services, the Samsung F490 has a separate menu with three choices: Google Search, Gmail and Google Maps. Unfortunately, these aren’t separate applications, but merely links to the their websites that are opened using the built-in browser.

The latter is quite functional, letting you view websites in portrait and landscape modes, zoom in and out, browse in the usual “desktop”, or the mobile views (putting all website into a single column).

There’s also an option to open a full site map; visually, it reminds a lot of Nokia phone browser in the Series 60. Samsung also managed to add a pretty convenient scrolling control on top of all this – something that had proven to be a problem for most touchscreen models, but more on this later.

Few words about Samsung F490 camera. Until Samsung come up with a similar touchscreen camera phone, SGH F490 is positioned to compete compete with LG Viewty KU990.

Frankly speaking, if you look at the specs, the quality of photos and speed of the camera, you can surely say that there can not be any competition here, because Samsung F490 loses on all fronts. It could be expected: after all, Samsung F490 is not a dedicated camera phone, and the 5 megapixel resolution is nothing more but a marketing gimmick.

The lack of Java support is the drawback of this phone. If we remember the Armani phone, which didn’t have Java support either, we can make a conclusion that the company’s engineers haven’t yet solved the problem of controlling Java applications without the usual hardware keypad.

Theoretically, watching videos on such a large screen should be quite comfortable. Unfortunately the company hasn’t yet released a version of Samsung Media Studio for this model, which could convert video clips to it’s non-standard 240×432px resolution.

As soon a good software solution for that purpose is available, it should work great as a media player.

Samsung SGH F490. ergonomics

Looking at the big picture, with all its combined features, all should be well with the ease of use of Samsung F490 phone.

The touchscreen works perfectly, the vibration feedback can not only be turned off, but it’s intensity can also customized according to your needs, the interface software is well optimized to work with the touchscreen, and so on.

However, it has one big drawback.

The problem lies in the fact that the screen is automatically locked during phone calls (which is logical, as its done to avoid accidental clicks) – however, the touch sensitive keys are blocked too, and you need to unblock them in order to end the call.

Still, this is merely half of the problem. During an incoming call, the screen is locked as well, and you need to unlock it just to answer the call.

As a result, all these paranoid key locks can drive you crazy, as you can’t turn them off.

This seems rather incomplete: perhaps they shouldn’t have removed all of the traditional mechanical keys on the front, or, found a new solution to this problem. As it is, the phone is only recommended to calm and composed people.

Samsung F490 review. Conclusions

One cannot say that with SGH – F490, Samsung created an unsuccessful model: it’s interesting and attracts attention, pleasant to use, and functional. However, it still lacks something – perhaps the “wow” effect that the iPhone has.

On the other hand, the parameters of the camera don’t give this model a chance to compete with the Viewty. This way, while trying to kill two rabbits with one stone and make a phone that could compete with all others at the same time, Samsung created a phone that can’t compete at all.

Of course, Samsung F490 will get its share of users, but just how many, is a big question.

The survey that the company held at the MWC 2008 about Samsung F490 model should give you a pretty good idea.

The visitors of the Samsung booth had to answer a number of questions about the features of the phone, choosing between “like” and “dislike”.

The majority of people voted “like” on almost all features, but still, most answers to the last question (“What would you rather choose, F490 or an iPhone?”) were not in favor of the Samsung phone.

• Samsung F480 Games Edition unveiled
• Vodafone brings down iPhone 3G price in India by $47
• Samsung SCH-B900 touchscreen phone introduced in Korea
• Samsung i6330 touchscreen phone leaked
• Samsung F490 and Samsung P720 outed in Ukraine

Merely the first version of it sold over 50 million units, and the list of all the existing modifications seems endless.

But all good the things come to an end and, truth be told, Motorola has been playing RAZR card far too long.

That’s why RAZR successor – RAZR² , introduced late last year, was more then welcome. The first model of the series -RAZR² V8 , built on a new software platform called LJ (LinuxJava) has been selling actively and quite successfully for a while now.

However Motorola learned it’s lesson with V3, which dropped in price more then 300 EUR over it’s lifetime, and decided to take preemptive steps to keep the RAZR2 prices from falling too fast.

To do that they found an elegant solution in a Motorola RAZR² V8 Luxury Edition: just add some cosmetic changes and minor improvements to the base model, use precious materials in its production and position the handset as a luxury/prestige item, where cost doesn’t really matter.

This allows the company to keep the prices of the phone high over long periods of time. The result of this strategy is a premium product that’s quite interesting and looks like a good alternative to Nokia 8800 and all its modifications.

But enough with the let’s get reviewing it. And let’s start with a video review.

Motorola Razr2 V8 Luxury Edition Video Review

Motorola RAZR² V8 LE. Design and materials

The design of the RAZR² Luxury Edition is entirely consistent with its image: not only it is expensive, it also looks expensive. An abundance of gold plated accents, the stylized back panel covered in a snakeskin texture, and the engravings on the sides radiate an inexpressible charm that’s very hard to resist. However, let’s put the poetry aside and move on to the specifics.

The case of the Luxury V8 is gold and black. The outer part of the clamshell is glossy and has a long box of glass behind which the external display and a rather original decorative design element – pin stripes which shimmer in the light – are hidden. It’s difficult to describe this beauty in words, but you can see how it works in video review part.

On the front top part of RAZR² LE, there’s the lens of the built-in camera, and, inside a concentric circle with the same shimmering-in-the-light cuts on it, the company logo. Regrettably, part of the effect is lost due to the surfaces inevitably getting greasy from touches on the materials like the ones used – you need to clean the V8 Luxury Edition phone surface regularly.

The back panel, like the rest of V8 LE case, is metallic, but covered in a snakeskin-like texture that looks interesting and feels pleasant to touch, contrasting nicely with other surfaces.

At the bottom of the phone there’s the little slot for the speaker, and a small hollow going downwards from it to the bottom of the case, enabling the free flow of the sound even when the phone is put on a smooth hard surface.

When the RAZR² V8 Luxury Edition handset is open, it looks no less impressive. However, the problem we mentioned with screen getting greasy from touch, applies to the inner display as well – and, in fact, to all the inner surface of the clamshell.

All it takes is putting the phone to your cheek, and you already have to clean it thoroughly.

You can get carried away while describing all the fancy stuff and forget such a parameter as the dimensions. And these are by no means small, except for the thickness. While the phone isn’t small even when closed, RAZR2 LE becomes simply huge, when open.

To get a proper perspective, here’s Motorola RAZR2 Luxury Edition next to Nokia E90 communicator, which, as you know, sports a full QWERTY keyboard and big 800×352px display, when open.

However this size, and the noticeable weight, don’t pose a problem – on the contrary, the phone feels quite comfortable in your hand. What’s definitely inconvenient though, is opening the phone with a single hand.

Despite the deepenings on the both sides of the case, opening the V8 LE clamshell with your fingers is pretty difficult, and those with long nails will definitely not like that.

Motorola RAZR² V8 LE. The display

The RAZR² V8 Luxury Edition, like it is expected from a modern clamshell, is equipped with two displays. The size of the external display, at 2”, is great. Up until now, most clamshells used displays of this size for the main, internal screens.

With Motorola RAZR² V8 Luxury Edition, you can change the style of the alerts, read the incoming messages and even answer them using one of the simple templates without ever opening the phone.

The controls for these functions – are three buttons on the side of the phone.

When the MP3 is playing, a sensor strip which lets you control the playback appears on the bottom of this display.

The screen has good characteristics, such as the number of colors and the visible angle, but the glossy display makes it hard to read anything in the sunlight. The display darkens in the stand-by mode, except for the clock.

The inner screen is 2.2” 262K color QVGA display. It looks excellent and the picture displayed is without a fault. However, despite the considerable size of the display, it still looks pretty small on such a large phone. One of the pre-installed themes is called Gold, and it fits the overall concept of the phone perfectly.

Motorola RAZR² V8 Luxury Edition. Interface, functionality and ergonomics

Motorola RAZR² V8 Luxury Edition is built on LJ (LinuxJava) 6.1 platform.

The menu can be displayed either in a list or as a 3×3 grid; the submenus, however, can only be displayed as lists. The menu items are numbered, so you can navigate between them fast using the keyboard.

The interface is very intuitive, and the situation where you actually need to search for some function occurs very rarely. The new platform V8 LE became both much better in appearance and more ergonomic than the old p2k used in the 3G version of the RAZR² – the V9.

There are three themes pre-installed on the this handset; two of them standard and seen in other Motorola models, and one created specifically for the Luxury Edition. These themes include not only the wallpaper and the background colors, but the menu icons and sounds as well.

The multimedia functionality of the phone is nothing special – in fact, it’s quite standard for most modern phones.

The built-in camera has a matrix resolution of 1600×1200 and lacks the autofocus feature. The view during the shooting takes almost all of the display. If you close the phone while the camera is on, then the external display is used, and you need to click the “smart button” on the side of the phone to start the shutter. Such a method can only be useful for taking self-portraits, because no other settings besides the zoom are accessible. The zoom function on the device is digital, up to 8x – there are no particular reasons to ever use it.

The music player on RAZR² V8 LE, lets you sort the tracks by several parameters (such as Album, Artist, and so on) and create your own playlists. There are several sound effects available, like the Bass Boost, but regrettably there are no equalizer controls at all.

The player works in the background, and you use a separate button to bring it on the screen. Nevertheless, you would be hard pushed to call the device a musical phone, as there is no way of connecting 3^rd party headphones to it: the V8 Luxury Edition only has the standard micro-USB jack, and doesn’t come with any adapters included. The standard headset which comes with the phone isn’t anything special.

The phone has 2 GB of built-in memory for storing user content, and no way to extend it. This would be more than enough for most users, so you can’t say that the lack of a memory card slot is a drawback.

As for the ergonomics of the phone, the only problem, like it was said earlier, is the difficulty in opening it with just one hand. The rest is great: the interface is easy to understand, and the keyboard is very convenient and without any faults. The battery life of RAZR² Luxury Edition isn’t very long: the most you can expect is two days of uptime, and if you use it actively, you will need to get used to charging the phone every day.

Impressions and conclusions

Motorola RAZR²V8 Luxury Edition fills its primary role – the role of a fashion phone – perfectly. It is pleasant to touch and hold in your hand, looks excellent, and attracts attention – like you would expect when you buy a luxury phone like this one.

What’s more, it does not lack any functionality; while it doesn’t stand out in any area, it’s still a full-fledged modern phone.

• Motorola RAZR2 V8 Antique Rose phone revealed
• Motorola RAZR2 V9 Ferrari Edition in the works
• Motorola RAZR3/Ruby canceled
• Motorola RAZR V3c review by C-Net
• Motorola Aura Diamond Edition announced, costs $5,730

All rights to this User Interface software belong to Nokia, so it’s really hard for Samsung (and others) to come up with something their main rival hadn’t thought of yet.

Frankly speaking, until recently the Korean handset maker didn’t have any Symbian smartphones worth a look and the ones it had, didn’t have much appeal.

However this fall, Samsung introduced two interesting new smartphones: Samsung SGH-i550 and Samsung SGH- i560 models.

Among these two, i550 is in a better position to succeed in the market as a standalone model, due to its unusual navigation/control device (a trackball) and an overall better look. And especially now that Samsung i550w got it’s own Wi-Fi.

The prospects of the SGH-i550 ain’t that bright- it just doesn’t have that one thing that should sell it. And built-in GPS definitely is not it.

GPS in Samsung i560 – a fashionable gimmick. Not a must have feature. Yet

To understand the reasons, let’s make a few steps back and try to see, who would find a GPS built into a device like Samsung i560 useful, and why.

Who uses GPS navigators in their daily lives? Well, drivers, for sure. Would such a navigation device work for them?

Certainly not: the display is too small, and the set doesn’t include the needed car accessories. What’s more, car owners that don’t have a built-in navigation system, tend to prefer standalone GPS equipment anyway.

Thus, we come to the conclusion that GPS in Samsung i560 might only be useful to a pedestrian who needs one; how many such people are out there is a big question. For now, we can safely say that a GPS on a mobile phone is nothing more but a fashionable gimmick.

It’s fun and cool for the owner to carry around and show it off, but otherwise useless – much like those early low resolution cameras, when they started putting them on mobile phones for the first time.

GPS may become a must have feature in future phones, when location based services are mature enough. But not just now and not soon enough for Samsung SGH-i560.

But let’s put these theoretical questions aside, and return to our review of the Samsung i560. And for those who prefer watching to reading, let’s start with:

Samsung i560 video review

Samsung SGH-i560. Overall design, camera & ergonomics

The phone is built in a typical Samsung style: it’s a quite big slider in standard black and silver, with a metal frame around the front. Which is surprising, as Samsung rarely uses metal in it’s phones, preferring plastic with a metallic finish. The rest of the casing is made from plastic that is pleasant to touch; the quality of the assemblage is excellent like always.

As with the most products of the Korean company, the front side of Samsung SGH-560 is easy to scratch. There are no special stops for opening and closing the phone, so you are forced to touch the screen all the time, which makes it dirty faster.

The lens of the built-in camera is located at the back of the Samsung i560; it stays visible when the slider is closed, and sticks out slightly. The lens flash and the speaker is positioned at the sides of the lens cover; where there’s also a label showing off 3.0 megapixel resolution of the camera. The latter is pretty odd, since the camera is a pretty vanilla for this kind of phone, and the space would have been much better used to show off GPS capability of the Samsung i560.

Besides the usual function buttons, there is a special fast launch button on the front panel of the slider. By default, it’s programmed to launch Media Player, RealPlayer and Radio applications. Again, this looks rather odd, because it would have been more logical for it to give the user fast access to the GPS navigator.

All the buttons are convenient and big enough – no problems here. The keypad is rather stylish – it’s a RAZR-like single sheet with horizontal dividers. The only problem is that it will be hard to feel the right keys without looking. Unusually positioned at the top of the dial keys is the on/off button; it also lets the user to change profiles fast.

Unlike most Samsung phones, the i560 has two communication ports: one of them is the universal interface port to which you can connect the data cable, the charger, and a headset, and the other one is the standard 3.5 mm audio output jack for third party produced headphones.

The memory card slot is located on the right side, and covered with a very solid panel.

The design, materials, and the controls leave the most favorable impressions; the only drawback in the design of the Samsung SGH-560i is the fact that it looks almost the same as all other Samsung models and doesn’t stand out in Samsung phone line-up at all.

The display of this phone is quite impressive 2.4 inches, with bright and realistic colors. It’s still barely readable under direct sunlight.

Samsug i560. Overall functionality and music phone features

Sasmung I560 runs the latest version of Symbian/S60 OS, and right now that’s Symbian OS 9 S60 Third Edition, Feature Pack 1.

Overall User Interface is largely the same as in Nokia 6120 classic, Nokia N95, and other phones. The only change, it seems, is the look of menu icons and GPS software –unlike Nokia, Samsung seems to be using Navigon software in i560.

Regrettably, there was no navigational program preinstalled in the device we were given to test; according to the representatives of the company, the negotiations with the software developer aren’t complete yet. We will update this part of the review as soon as we get the new device for testing with official Nav software installed.

Now, let’s get to the music functions in Samsung i560, which deserve additional attention in this handset. While SGH-i560 isn’t being marketed as a good device for music playback, it seems like it actually is such.

There is a fairly functional music player installed, a separate jack for connecting your headphones directly to the phone, without the need to use any kind of adapters, and a high quality signal output ensured by a separate sound chip.

Unfortunately we didn’t have the chance to directly compare Samsung i560 with the Samsung SGH-i450 dedicated music phone, which uses a chip from Bang&Olufsen to process sound. However, the memory tells me, that even though i450 may sound a bit better, the sound quality difference is so small as not to be noticed by most.

Anyway, the sounds produced by the Samsung i560 are comparable with such musical phones as Sony Ericsson Walkman W910i and Nokia 5310 XpressMusic.

The whole set-up works like this:

• After you connect the headset which ships with Samsung SGH-560 through the universal port, you can listen to music or talk on the phone. The quality of the sound is mediocre; the headset is nothing special.
• However, if you connect any headphones to the 3.5 mm jack, the sound changes drastically for the better. The signal is strong enough for headphones with resistance up to 64 Ohm, and the volume level is quite good. If there’s an incoming call while you are listening to music in this mode, you will be able to hear the caller with the headphones and talk into the speaker of the phone; a bit unusual but quite convenient.

SGH-i560 GPS phone also has no problem reading memory cards of up to 8 GB (despite the announced 2 GB limit), so you won’t run out of storage for your music, either.

Samsung i560 supports full HTML browsing over high speed HSDPA 3.6 Mbps networks. It comes with a pretty functional, full HTML browser preinstalled, supporting both landscape and portrait browsing modes. Of course, when Opera 9.5 for Symbian phones finaly comes out, you will probably want to switch to it ASAP.

The phone uses a 1100 mAh capacity Li-Ion battery, which, when fully charged is usually enough for two-three days of fairly intensive use in GSM network. However, if you often transfer data through HSDPA, or use the GPS navigator, it’s quite possible to “kill” the battery within 3-5 hours.

Samsung SGH-i560. Conclusions

Despite all the good quality and cool features in Sasmung i560, we can safely say that a a dim fate awaits it as a standalone handset in retail: the sales will be low, and many customers will never even learn of its existence. There are several reasons for this.

• uncertain market positioning of i560 GPS phone. It’s unclear what is the target market of this product, and who it was made for. If it’s the for early adopters/geeks who like getting the latest thing – it’s doubtful they will choose Samsung SGH-i560 among the wide variety of smartphones; if it’s for the typical consumer, it’s unlikely they would prefer a smartphone to the simple and easy to use native Samsung OS.
• lack of focus on some single key area. While the phone has every function you can think of, and should theoretically appeal to almost anyone, it doesn’t excel in any one area, and looses to more specialized models of the competitors.

With the tentative price of 350 euro, Samsung i560 can hardly hope for any commercial success of this model; unless it can convince mobile operators to give an additional push for this handset.

• LG KM500 review
• Sony Ericsson Motion Activated Headphones MH907 announced
• IFA 2007 Report: Samsung SGH-i550 with GPS navigation and Google apps
• Samsung F200 and Samsung F210 Music Phones launched
• Dolby at CES, Offers Surround Sound for Phones

But during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, I found one really interesting device maker, that just might have already caught up with Apple, at least when it comes to the responsiveness of the touchscreens.

It’s Neonode and their new handset Neonode N2.

While looking at their PR materials I was pretty skeptical about the possible user experience of such a small device. After all, you do require a sizable display for finger touch interface to work.

And Neonode N2, which with it’s 47×77x14,7 mm dimensions, 60 g of weight and 2″ touchscreen display is smaller then a credit card, hardly seemed up to the task.

Well, having played a bit with it, I can say that it works. At least on first impression. Instead of capacitive or resistive touch, used in iPhone and other touchscreen phones, Neonode has developed it’s own optical/infrared touchscreen technology called ZForce, which hardly requires any touch to work.

Just swipe a finger gently over the display or tap it and you are scrolling through address book, selecting menu items, dialing a phone or typing a text message.

And the small size of the device has actually it’s own advantages. Thank’s to it, very responsive touchscreen and internally developed “neno” interface, single hand operation actually works very well on Neonode N2. That is, you can easily hold N2 in one hand and use it’s thumb to operate the phone and perform any functions on it. Just like you do on a non touch phone keypads.

Here’s short video of Neonode N2 in action:

Of course, Neonode N2 is not that good as a media player or the net browsing device.

But used for it’s primary purpose – as a mobile phone, it works great.

And it’s really portable. Instead of worrying where to carry it, you might be spending more time figuring out into which pocket it went, when you need to make a call.

• Neonode Inc’s Swedish subsidiary files for bankruptcy
• Neonode N2 gets software upgrade
• Nokia is exploring 3D multi-touch interface
• Nokia Clamshell with display and touchscreen
• RIM files for hybrid capacitive/ resistive Blackberry touchscreen patent

During Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, I had an opportunity to check it out live. And I have not changed my opinion – Nokia N96 is boring.

However, I had an epiphany while playing with Nokia N96. It turns out, that except for us geeky/blog newsy types, boring is actually very good.

When Nokia N95 hit the market, it had multiple bugs, was slow, used to crash, did not really felt right in the hands, the slider on it sucked, as did the battery life. We, early adopters, actually became beta testers for a new device and even shelled out some serious money for the privilege.

But all was forgiven in the name of all these cool gimmicks like GPS, 5mpx camera, Wi-Fi and others, that worked more often then not.

With Nokia N96 it’s a completely different story. You can feel that the N95 platform had a year to mature just by holding device in your hand.

Smooth shiny surface, really well implemented slider hinge, big clear screen, fast responses and small details like touch pad navigation or built-in quick stand for watching video, makes using Nokia N96 much more pleasant experience then a year old Nokia N95 in my pocket.

But, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words and a moving picture should be worth even more. So here’s a video demo of Nokia N96:

You might not see it in this video, but the movie quality that Nokia N96 is really great. Thank’s to built-in video accelerators, N96 is able to support video bit rates of well above 1.5 Mbps (up to 5 Mb’s ?!), while conserving the power use at the same time.

I also have to take back what I said about Nokia N96 in my previous post.

2.8″ screen is not too small and, given enough bitrate/video quality, it is actually quite good for watching movies and TV shows on it. Nokia N96 should give a run for the money to any flash based portable media player around.

Other cool feature on Nokia N96 is 5 megapixel camera with geo tagging functionality (Via GPS). When enabled it automatically tags the images with the GPS location coordinates, which you can later use when sorting the pictures on your PC or online photo service.

Nokia N96 also comes with 16 GB of built-in flash memory and microSDHC memory card slot, where you can fit 8 GB memory card for a total of 24GB of storage.

One thing I’m not sure about – is the battery life. The 950 mAh battery in Nokia N96 is the same as in N95, and we all heard about the troubles with battery life that N95 had.

Let’s hope that newer, more efficient chips and software in N96 gives it much longer durability then it’s predecessor.

Full specs of Nokia N96 include:

• WCDMA2100/900 (HSDPA) / EGSM900, GSM850/1800/1900 MHz (EGPRS) connectivity
• DVB-H Class C, 470-750 MHz
• S60 3rd edition, FP2 UI
• 2.8” QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) LCD TFT display with up to 16 million colors
• 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and auto-exposure
• Dual-LED camera flash, video light, recording indicator, auto-focus assist light
• Secondary VGA (640 x 480 px) camera for video calls
• Video capture in MPEG-4 up to VGA at 30 fps
• Digital Video Stabilization
• Built-in GPS/A-GPS
• WLAN – IEEE802.11 g/b
• Stereo FM radio (87.5-108MHz, 76-90MHz) with RDS
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0 with Micro USB type B interface
• 3.5mm stereo headset plug , TV-out support (PAL/NTSC)
• Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP stereo/EDR
• 950 mAh battery with up to 220 min talk, 220 hrs standby time, 5 hrs video, 14 hrs music or 4 hrs TV playback
• Dimensions: 103×55x18 mm
• Weight: 125 g

All- in-all, Nokia N96 is a great, feature packed mobile handset. Initial retail price for Nokia N96 will be around 550 Euro, which is OK for it’s category.

The only problem is that Nokia N96 is expected to start shipping only in Q3, 2008 – and that’s about half a year from now. Which is way too long a time to make me happy.

• Nokia N96 specs leaked in Germany. Boring
• Nokia N85 multimedia powerhouse launched
• Nokia N81 and Nokia N81 8GB oficially launched
• Nokia N79 gets really official
• Nokia E52 introduced – affordable Eseries smartphone

There wasn’t a whole lot of new cellphones displayed during IFA Consumer Electronics show in Berlin. But among those that were there, LG KU990 Viewty certainly was the most impressive.

Even before going to IFA I already had great expectations for LG Viewty KU990 . First, it’s the looks and the fact that it’s a successor for LG KE850 Prada full touchscreen phone.

Then it’s the specs:

• 3.6 Mbps HSDPA connectivity
• 3″ 400×240 px touchscreen
• 100MB of internal memory
• microSD memory card slot extendable up to 2GB
• dimensions 103.5×54.4×14.8 mm
• Weight: 112 g

and, of course, 5.1 mpx camera with Schneider Kreuzenach optics, Xenon Flash, manual/autofocus modes, image stabilzer, ISO800 SmartLight, face tracking and high speed 120 fps video recording capability.

With a specs like these, how can LG KU990 go bad? And it didn’t.

LG KU990 Viewty review. Camera

Here’s the picture made by LG Viewty in manual focus mode:

As you can see the quality of the picture, that was taken from about 70 cm, is really good for camera phone. The other shooting options for LG Viewty KU990 camera include: autofocus, panorama, burst shots (9 fps) and a frame shot.

Another cool thing about taking pictures with LG Viewty is the speed with which they are saved. On your usual cameraphone it can take from 5 to 10 seconds between the moment you hear the click of picture being taken and when it appears on screen. LG Viewty does that in less then 2 seconds.

And that circle that you see around the camera lens? It’s actually a jog dial, that you can use to (digitally) zoom in and out in a camera mode or focus the camera in manual focus mode. And it doubles as a volume control when you are talking on the phone, or a scroll wheel to scroll through music tracks and menu options.

In video camera mode, in addition to shooting VGA resolution clips at 30 fps, you can also take pictures in 120 fps fast video recording mode and then play video in slow motion at up to 15 fps. LG Viewty also has a dedicated microphone to capture sound during video recording.

Here’re the effects that you get with video recorded at 120 fps on LG Viewty and played back at 15 fps:

It’s been made under pretty lousy lighting conditions, but you should get the general idea how slow motion effects can look on LG Viewty, even in a low light.

And if you want to know more about camera capabilities of LG KU990 Viewty phone, the guys from InToMobile.com has pointed me to this great video made by the girls from ShinyShiny.TV:

LG Viewty KU990 review. Multimedia&Navigation

For your media, in addition to all traditional formats like Mp3, AAC, 3GP and others, LG KU990 Viewty has the media player that supports MPEG4/Divx video file playback, so you’ll be able to watch downloaded clips, TV shows and movies on your phone.

Between the touch controls and the Jog Dial, the overall navigation and interface of LG Viewty is very intuitive . I was easily browsing through the media files collection and menu options within minutes.

LG KU990 Viewty review. Text entry&dialing

Dialing numbers with the onscreen numeric keypad is no harder then on a normal phone. Writing SMS or e-mail with with onscreen QWERTY keyboard is even better.

The best thing about the number and text entry on LG Viety KU990 is the tactile feedback. You can feel vibration every time you press a key on Viewty, making the process as intuitive as on any normal phone. Thank’s to incorporation of Immersion’s VibeTonz technology, LG was able to solve the problem of tactile feedback, that plagued early touchscreen devices, pretty well.

LG KU990 has onscreen drawing/handwriting recognition feature too. You can draw pictures on a touchscreen, and Viewty will even recognize the numbers and characters, if that is your preferred data entry mode.

LG Viewty KU990 review. Other

LG Viewty KU990 model displayed at IFA was still a prototype, so there were some things missing to it.

E.g. it was really awkward to try handwriting or draw pictures with a finger on a touchscreen. And there was no stylus available. But LG manager told me that stylus will be added in LG Viewty sales package. Unfortunately there’s no place for it in the body of the phone, so carrying it around might pose some problems

LG KU990 Viewty and other LG phones on display at IFA were not connected to GSM network, so I was unable to test phone/data functions for now. Among the features that Viewty will support, but were not available for testing are:

• Full HTML browsing via Obigo browser
• Tight mobile Google apps integration. Following Google applications will be preinstalled/integrated in LG Viewty:
  • Google Maps
  • Google Search
  • Gmail Mobile
  • Blogger Mobile
  • YouTube, with a single click video uploads

  Also, from discussions with LG representatives it looks like some cellular carriers are not too enthusiastic about integrated Google apps. So do not be too surprised if your carrier subsidized LG KU990 Viewty will be missing some of them.

LG Viewty KU990 review. Conclusions

LG KU900 Viewty is a great mobile phone with outstanding camera capabilities, easy navigation and operation and lot’s of other cool features, like on screen editing and drawing, MPEG4/Avi file playback, tactile feedback, tight mobile Google apps/YouTube integration and high speed data transfers.

It may not have Multi-Touch features or the sleekness of the iPhone, but touch interface combined with JogDial on LG Viewty KU990 is still is very easy to use. And what it lacks in fancy gimmicks, LG Viewty certainly makes up in features and overall functionality.

There is one drawback to Viewty phone as well. LG Viewty KU990 is not a smartphone. It is a very good phone with good collection of additional applications, fast Internet browsing and the best camera features I’ve seen. It will also be able to run mobile JAVA apps. But if you are looking for rich third party software ecosystem like Symbian or Windows Mobile phones have, LG KU990 Viewty is not for you.

On the other hand, how many of us do really need a smartphone in their pocket? I got my wife Nokia E65 a few months back. She likes the form factor, but really hates the complexity around it. According to her, there’s too many options, too many choices and very often it’s just too hard to find the one simple thing she needs at the moment.

I usually end up fixing the things that got somehow messed up, every couple of weeks. Oh, and she never asked me to install a single third party software app.

According to LG, KU990 Viewty is due to be out by mid October in Europe. So I think I know already, what I’ll be getting my wife for Christmas.

Overall LG Viewty KU990 is one of the best phones I have tried and certainly the best one among the phones displayed during IFA Consumer Electronics show.

Get the best deal on LG Viewty KU990 5 megapixel camera phone in U.K. Click here!

• LG Viewty KU990 – 5.1 megapixel, 3.6 Mbps HSDPA Prada successor
• LG Viewty Smart available this month in the UK. 12MP LG phone re-confirmed
• LG Viewty Smart GC900 is finally official
• LG Viewty gets Hot Red
• LG Viewty II GC900 in live pics