Handphone

T-Mobile G2x by LG

2011-04-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, a smartphone seems to have it all: good looks, serious speed, stability and a solid software bundle. The T-Mobile G2x by LG is one of those smartphones. It’s an elegant and well made Android superphone with a striking IPS display, dual core Tegra 2 CPU, 8 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p video and 4G HSPA+. Sounds great, but specs don’t tell the whole story; the Motorola Atrix, an Android phone with a Tegra 2 dual core CPU, slightly higher resolution display and HSPA+ also sounded superb on paper. It was a good phone but it lacked T-Mobile’s faster HSPA+ network, used standard LCD technology and it reeked of plastics. The Atrix was by no means a bad phone, but despite the hype, it’s not quite the phone the LG G2x (aka Optimus 2x overseas) is… that is unless you’re captivated by its nifty but expensive accessories like the Lapdock.

The LG G2x makes an excellent first impression: it looks like a quality phone with judicious use of metals and plastics that look like metal and feature complex curves. It looks like one of HTC’s better offerings, but with a less ardently masculine feel. The soft touch finish on the back feels good and makes the phone easier to keep in hand, and is a step up from the gloss black plastics used in the Samsung Vibrantand Nexus S Android smartphones. The bright and colorful 4”, 800 x 480 display dominates, and is the sweet spot for resolution relative to display size. The 5 ounce G2x (according to the specs, but 5.4 ounces according to our digital scale), has enough heft to feel like a quality piece in hand without being too heavy. The power button is up top where it belongs rather than on the side where it’s too easy to accidentally press like Samsung’s high end Android phones. It has micro HDMI out and a sexy metal strip on the back. Sweet.

Horsepower, OS and Battery Life

Even better, it runs standard Android 2.2 Froyo with no software overlays for slow-downs or UI bells and whistles you might not appreciate. Since it’s stock Android, it’s also very stable, and battery life is surprisingly good. The phone just works, and works well at that, with no lags, serious quirks or problems. Call quality and reception are good, and 4G speeds are double what we’ve seen with T-Mobile’s 3G smartphones and AT&T’s 3G and 4G HSPA+ smartphones.

The T-Mobile G2x runs on a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core CPU with graphics acceleration, and it’s a fast phone. It benchmarks at 2551 on Quadrant, and only the Atrix with the same CPU gets similar results. Other higher end Android phones benchmark from 950 to 1700 in Quadrant which tests the CPU, memory, 2D and 3D graphics. The single core 1GHz Nexus S benchmarks at 1648 while the myTouch 4G achieves one of the highest single core results with a 1796. The G2x feels every bit as fast as the speedy pure Google 2.3 Nexus S when navigating the UI, and it feels a bit faster than the myTouch 4G.

Battery life usually suffers with a large display and fast CPU weighing it down, but the G2x’s 1500 mAh Lithium Ion battery has surprisingly good stamina. It had no trouble lasting through the day with moderate use that included plenty of web browsing, scheduled email checks and 30 minutes of streaming video using Flash Player 10.2. Speaking of Flash, playback performance was good with none of the usual slowdowns and poor frame rates we’ve seen on single core phones. Demanding 3D games likewise play very smoothly (see our video review).

The phone has 8 gigs of internal storage with approximately 5.5 gigs listed as available. There’s a microSD card slot as well (take that, Nexus S) but no card is included. The G2x has ~ 1.3 gigs partitioned for application installation (more than enough and more than average for an Android smartphone). The phone has 512 megs of RAM to run programs and the OS, and that’s a reasonable amount since the T-Mobile G2x doesn’t have to support a custom UI as do HTC Sense Android phones, Motorola’s MOTOBLUR phones and Samsung’s TouchWiz phones.

Video Review

Here's our 15 minute T-Mobile LG G2x video review:

Phone and Data

The T-Mobile G2x is a quad band GSM world phone with 3G and 4G HSPA+ on T-Mobile's bands (T-Mobile's webpage incorrectly lists it as quad band 3G/4G). Call quality is good with clear voice on both ends and sufficient voice quality and noise canceling for outdoor calling. The speakerphone is quite loud and clear for both calls and multimedia. Reception is average and is similar to our Nexus S and Sidekick 4G. We had no trouble pairing with and using a variety of Bluetooth headsets and the phone worked well with our 2011 BMW's built-in Bluetooth car kit including address book transfer and advanced calling features.

Data speeds on T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ are excellent and are second only to Verizon’s LTE 4G network (to be fair, Verizon’s LTE network also has far fewer users since there are no LTE phones, only data sticks as of this writing). We averaged 5.5 megs down and 900k up on Ookla’ Speedtest.net app with a moderate -95 db signal. Market apps and updates download very quickly, Google Maps data won’t keep you waiting and web pages load quickly (also thanks to the fast CPU that improves web page rendering times). The G2x’s download speeds are similar to other T-Mobile 4G phones like the myTouch 4G and Sidekick 4G, and faster than the 3G Nexus S which averages 2.5 megs down in the same location.

The G2x can act as a WiFi hotspot that shares its wireless data connection with laptops, iPads and other devices. It also supports USB tethering. Download speeds using the LG as a wireless AP were good at 4.5 megs down (slightly slower than the phone itself) and 900k up. Samsung still has the edge for WiFi tethering with even faster download speeds: the Sidekick 4G managed 5.3 megs down using the same notebook in the same location. The G2x also supports WiFi calling, which means you can use a WiFi network to place a call if your cellular signal is marginal (calls still count against plan minutes).

The Nexus S and G2x.

Software

Since this is a pure Google experience phone, you get all the usual Google apps including Maps, Navigation, YouTube, Gmail, email, Market, Gtalk, search, Voice Dialer, Voice Search and News and Weather. The phone is upgradable to Android OS 2.3 Gingerbread, and we don’t foresee anything holding that up for ages since this is a standard Google phone.

LG and T-Mobile include Polaris Office which can read, edit and create MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, Swype, and SmartShare for dLNA home WiFi network media streaming. T-Mobile includes T-Mobile TV powered by MobiTV, a $10/month on-demand and live TV streaming that includes full TV show episodes. It worked well in our tests over T-Mobile’s 4G network. TeleNav is also on board for spoken navigation (also $10/month), as is the Zinio magazine reader. For video chat with the 1.3MP front-facing camera, T-Mobile bundles the usual Qik app and there’s WiFi calling and WiFi Mobile Hotspot and USB tethering for using the G2x as a high speed wireless modem. Since this is a powerful phone with an Nvidia CPU and GPU, Nvidia’s Tegra 2 Zone app is here for browsing the latest Tegra 2 optimized games and news. Need for Speed Shift, Asphalt 5 and N.O.V.A. are pre-installed for your gaming pleasure.

G2x Cameras, x2

The LG has a main rear 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera. The front camera produced good looking video in Qik, though outgoing Qik call volume was low. We had to speak loudly and angle the phone with the mic (button edge of the phone) toward our mouth to be easily understood. We hope that a Qik update increases mic gain since this doesn’t seem to be a problem with the phone itself—calls over the cellular and WiFi calling network have perfectly normal outgoing volume.

The main camera can shoot 1080p video in 3gp format. That’s not a very high quality format, and as a result we could see some blockiness in small detail areas like tree leaves. Colors are excellent and exposure is good, and frame rates are solid. Overall the video looks good and is a step up from the iPhone 4 for amount of detail, but falls short of Nokia’s N8 (nothing can compete with the N8’s camera). It’s still rare to find a phone that can shoot 1080p video, so LG gets a thumbs-up on that front.

Still images are sharp, very colorful and well-exposed. There’s some bias towards yellows and a tendency to overexpose indoors shots when the flash is set to auto with close-range subjects, but overall, we like the camera quite well. It takes better shots than HTC’s recent offers such as the T-Mobile G2 and HTC Inspire 4G, and slightly better shots than the Samsung Nexus S (Samsung has some nice cameras in their high end phones). As an imaging phone, the LG is a solid choice.

Conclusion

The T-Mobile G2x by LG has quickly become one of our favorite smartphones, and I can easily see it replacing my personal Nexus S. While LG phones in the US have been low to mid-tier plastic phones that didn’t inspire gadget lust, the G2x is an over the top smartphone that combines quality materials, great looks, 4G speeds, stability and dual core speed into the competitive $199 with contract space. We’d recommend this phone to anyone looking for a fast and clean Google experience on a high end Android smartphone. The dual core CPU, 4G, excellent IPS display and 1080p camera plus video chat camera offer a reasonable dose of future-proofing as well. Well done, LG. The only trendy feature not found here is 3D, and for our money we haven't seen a 3D handset that really made us wish we had that feature.

Pro: Excellent looks and build materials, fast phone in terms of CPU speed and data speeds, very lovely IPS display, good call quality, has HDMI out, WiFi Calling and solid GPS. Very good battery life for a powerful smartphone.

Con: When we find it we'll tell you.

Price: $199 with contract, $499 without contract

Websites: www.t-mobile.com, www.lg.com/us/

Specs:

Display: 4" IPS capacitive multi-touch display. Resolution: 800 x 480, supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer. Has an ambient light sensor and proximity sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh.
Performance: Dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU. 512 megs RAM, 8 gigs internal storage (5.5 gigs available) with 1.3 gigs reserved for application installations.
Size: 4.88 x 2.48 x 0.43 inches. Weight: 5 ounces.
Phone: GSM quad band world phone with 3G and 4G HSPA+ on T-Mobile's 1700/2100MHz bands. Can act as a mobile WiFi hotspot and supports USB tethering.
Camera: 1.3MP front video chat camera and 8 megapixel autofocus rear camera with LED flash. Rear camera can shoot 1080p video.
Audio and Video: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Has a micro HDMI port (cable not included).
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP.
Software: Android OS 2.2 Froyo (upgradeable to 2.3 Gingerbread). Standard suite of Google apps including Maps, Navigation, Gmail, Market, YouTube and News and Weather. Other software: Adobe Flash Player 10.2, Swype, Polaris Office, T-Mobile TV, TeleNav, Need for Speed Shift, Asphalt 5,N.O.V.A., WiFi Calling, TegraZone Games, Zinio, Twitter and Facebook.
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot (no card included).

HTC Thunderbolt

2011-04-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

The HTC Thunderbolt is in some ways Verizon’s answer to Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G that made a huge splash last year. In fact, the EVO is still going strong today, and that’s why other carriers have joined in with similar phones like the HTC Inspire 4G from AT&T and now the Thunderbolt. The HTC Thunderbolt has a trump card that leapfrogs this otherwise “we’ve seen this sort of thing before” smartphone ahead of the pack: LTE 4G. With the power not only of Verizon’s much lauded network behind it, but LTE too, we’ve got an insanely fast phone for all things Internet. LTE 4G is the fastest form of 4G currently available, and it blows away even T-Mobile’s otherwise respectable HSPA+ 4G network in terms of download and upload speeds. It beats WiMAX as well and is more than 4x faster in our tests.

The HTC Thunderbolt is one of the big boys that use HTC’s successful 4.3” display and slim form factor. This pocket-stretching phone packs a second generation single core 1GHz Snapdragon CPU (vs. the first gen CPU in the EVO 4G), plenty of RAM, a 32 gig microSD card and a sharp 8 megapixel shooter. It outdoes the Inspire 4G on AT&T by adding a front-facing video chat camera, and its 4G speeds are currently 4 to 8 times faster than AT&T’s fledgling HSPA+. So is the Thunderbolt the top dog Android phone? For the moment, it and the dual coreMotorola Atrix 4G on AT&T are the most impressive and cutting edge, though Sprint will be fighting back with the HTC EVO 3D this summer. The 4.3” EVO 3D (due out summer 2011) will have a glass-less 3D display (a dubious feature) and a dual core Qualcomm CPU as well as 3Dvideo recording.

The Thunderbolt is a good looking phone, as are all HTC phones using this design (HD2, HD7, EVO 4G and Inspire 4G). The casing is made of plastic that might fool you into thinking it’s brushed metal, and it feels great in hand. The Thunderbolt isn’t a super-slim phone but the back curves do have a slimming effect and make it more comfortable to hold.

Controls are logically placed; with the power button and headphone jack up top and the volume controls on the upper right side. The micro USB charging and syncing port is on the lower left side, and thus can’t be used when the kickstand is deployed for landscape viewing. The kickstand is solid with none of the disconcerting wobble we noted in the HD7 and the metal is thicker too. Thanks to the large 4.3” display, the Thunderbolt makes a nice mobile video player with the kickstand deployed.

The large earpiece has rounded and smooth edges and didn’t dig into our ear when talking on the phone (a complaint we had about the Inspire 4G). The loudspeaker fires from the rear and it lives under the kickstand. Volume and clarity are good even when the kickstand is closed and covers the speaker.

The display is sharp and colorful, though it lacks the wow factor of Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays. It’s nonetheless a good quality display with good color saturation and brightness (and much better than the T-Mobile HTC HD7’s). The bad news is that it fades quite a bit outdoors and we found it nearly impossible to see in direct sunlight.

The single core second generation Qualcomm Snapdragon puts on a good show: it might not touch the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core CPU used in the Motorola Atrix and recent Android tablets, but it’s much faster than previous Android phones, including those with first gen Snapdragon CPUs. Our review unit scored 1845 on Quadrant benchmark application compared to 2481 on the Atrix, 1714 on the Inspire 4G, 1255 for the EVO 4G running Froyo and 1127 for the Droid X.

With 768 megs of RAM Android and HTC Sense have plenty of room to breathe, and the phone has 8 gigs of internal storage with approximately 2.4 gigs free (HTC’s ROM restore image uses a great deal of internal storage). Verizon includes a 32 gig microSD card as well. So in terms of performance, the Thunderbolt represents a strong evolutionary step forward for 1GHz single core CPU Android phones. It feels responsive, doesn’t lag and is a pleasure to use. Even Adobe Flash 10.2 playback is watchable; something we don’t say about slower Android phones. For those of you who are in love with pure processing power or are looking for a future-proof smartphone, the only thing the Thunderbolt lacks is a dual core CPU.

But the real story here is 4G speed. That’s where the Thunderbolt currently blows all other phones away. It’s like being on WiFi, and very good WiFi at that (not slow public WiFi but your home setup if you have a fast access point and a 10Mbps or better broadband connection). In our tests using Ookla’s Speedtest.net app we saw download speeds ranging from 8 to 15Mbps down. Speedtest couldn’t reliably measure our upload speed since it showed a constant 25Mbps up which isn’t likely. When using the Thunderbolt as a WiFi hotspot (it can serve up to 8 clients), we got speeds ranging from 11 to 14Mbps down and 5-6Mbps up using our Windows 7 Acer TimelineX 1830T and 15” MacBook Pro. Sweet! Another bonus is that Verizon’s LTE network runs on the 700MHz band which means strong building penetration. If you’re not yet in a 4G LTE coverage area, the phone does 3G EV-DO Rev. A just fine, and we got download speeds of 1.5Mbps on Verizon 3G.

Verizon’s LTE network currently handles data only, and phone calls will route over their legacy 1x network. The good news is that you can now make phone calls and use data when you’re in a 4G coverage area. Take that, iPhone 4. Call quality and volume were better than average on the Thunderbolt, with clear voice on both ends. We did occasionally notice digitized sounding voice when using the (loud!) speakerphone, but voice was natural through the earpiece and Bluetooth headsets.

Video Review

Here's our 13 minute HTC Thunderbolt video review complete with comparisons and application demos.

Multimedia is a pleasure on the Thunderbolt thanks to its fast CPU with Adreno 205 GPU and large display. We had no problem playing 800 x 480 high bitrate MPEG4 video when we kicked back with the kickstand deployed. Mobile YouTube at HQ looked very good (that’s not hard to manage these days) and Flash video played with very watchable frame rates and reasonable responsiveness to controls. It’s not quite as fluid as dual core Tegra 2 phones and tablets, but it’s a decent experience.

The 8 megapixel main rear camera takes very pleasing photos that have good color accuracy, pleasing but not over-done sharpness and decent exposure. It’s worlds better than the Motorola Atrix 4G’s 5 megapixel camera for both still shots and video. The camera can shoot 720p video at 30fps via the main camera, and it’s good enough for YouTube upload. The Thunderbolt has a front video chat camera but unfortunately doesn’t ship with a video chat application. Skype Mobile with video chat is supposedly coming, and the existing voice-only client won’t run on the Thunderbolt.

Now to the bad news: the HTC Thunderbolt doesn’t have stellar battery life. If you’re a phone junky who reads all the news and leaks, you’ve likely heard about the Thunderbolt’s bumpy road to acceptable battery life and the delays that journey caused. The phone now has bearable battery life (hey, folks manage to live with the EVO 4G), but it won’t run hard all day on 4G without a daytime top-up. If you access email frequently, visit websites often and stream YouTube and Pandora as part of your daily regime, you’ll need to keep a charger handy, get a spare battery or purchase the ungainly extended battery that doubles battery life while giving the smartphone a Quasimodo hump. If you’re in a 3G-only area, the Thunderbolt’s 1400 mAh battery will easily last a full day. The phone doesn’t ship with a way to turn off 4G for those who wish to conserve battery power, but there are utilities and hacks on the Net that can do it.

The HTC has a GPS with aGPS and a digital compass. It worked well with both Google Maps and VZ Navigator X in our tests, though we did note that as with the HTC Inspire, it had trouble getting a fix indoors unless WiFi was turned on (it need not be connected to an access point). The large screen makes for excellent map viewing as long as you keep it out of direct sunlight where it glares and fades.

Conclusion

The HTC Thunderbolt is one of the best smartphones on the market right now. Its incredible 4G LTE speeds and WiFi hotspot sharing feature set it apart, at least for a few months until Verizon releases further 4G smartphones. It's hard to beat HTC's Sense UI for a tasteful and restrained customization of Android that packs a lot of utility; especially for those of you who dislike Samsung's TouchWiz UI and find vanilla Android dull or unfriendly. The Thunderbolt's 4.3" display sets the standard for big screen viewing, even if it's not hyper-saturated like Samsung's Super AMOLED displays, and the 1GHz second gen Snapdragon CPU is more than capable for video playback. As the cliche goes, nothing is perfect, and the Thunderbolt's weak battery life on 4G and single core CPU hurt. Not that the Thunderbolt isn't a very fast and capable phone, but specs still sell products as do promises of future-proof technology and a dual core CPU would have made the Thunderbolt an out of the park home run.

Pro: Extremely fast 4G LTE speeds, large display, elegant design.

Con: Poor battery life on 4G, a dual core CPU would make this phone a clear leader.

Price: $249 with a 2 year contract

Websites: www.verizonwireless.com, www.htc.com/us/

Specs:

Display: 4.3" multi-touch capacitive display. Resolution: 800 x 480, supports both portrait and landscape modes. Sensors: proximity, ambient light sensor and g-sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1400 mAh. 2750 mA extended battery available for purchase.
Performance: 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 CPU with Adreno 205 graphics. 768 megs RAM. 8 gigs flash ROM with 2.4 gigs available.
Size: 4.47 x 2.78 x 0.53 inches. Weight: 4.67 ounces.
Phone: CDMA dual band digital with EV-DO Rev. A and LTE 4G on the Verizon's 700MHz band.
Camera: 1.3MP front camera and 8 megapixel rear main camera with dual LED flash that can shoot 720p video.
GPS: GPS with aGPS and digital compass.
Audio: Built in speaker, dual noise-canceling mics, surround sound software and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Has FM radio.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
Software: Android OS 2.2 Froyo with HTC Sense UI and software. Standard Google apps including Google Search, Android Market, Maps and Navigation, Gallery, Gmail, email, YouTube player, Mobile Hotspot and more. Verizon, HTC and third party software: VZ Navigator, Bitbop, VCast Apps, Blockbuster video, Adobe Reader, City ID, Connected Media (DLNA), Flashlight, HTC Friendstream, Let's Golf 2, Quickoffice, Rhapsody, Slacker, TuneWiki, V Cast Media and Kindle.
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, 32 gig card included.

HTC Arrive

2011-04-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

The HTC Arrive is the first CDMA Windows 7 phone to hit US shores. When Windows Phone 7 started shipping in 2010, Microsoft’s new OS only supported GSM phones, so Sprint and Verizon had to wait for the first OS update (called “no-do”), which added support for CDMA networks. While ‘no-do” has ever so slowly rolled out for existing GSM models, the HTC Arrive ships with that revision which also adds a few features like copy and paste and improved Zune Marketplace search (searching for an app by name no longer brings up scads of song tracks and videos).

Solid Hardware

The Arrive joins the LG Quantum (that other keyboarded Windows 7 phone) as a QWERTY landscape slider. The phones are otherwise quite different, while the Quantum on AT&T was a plastic, feature-phone looking beast with a just OK 4 row keyboard, the Arrive looks and feels like a quality piece, and we love the 5 row keyboard with dedicated number row and very standard layout. HTC has a reputation for understated, classy design and solid quality, and that’s what the Arrive delivers. It employs a pleasing combo of plastics and metal with signature HTC design cues like grille style surfaces that surround the keyboard and display. The hinge is particularly interesting: it’s a unique design that’s unlike the troublesome HTC G2 hinge. Exposed moving parts are kept to a minimum, there’s no play and the phone slides, tilts and locks securely (watch our video review to see it in action).

In terms of standard specs, you won’t see anything different here, since manufacturers and carriers have all gone with Microsoft’s fairly decent minimum requirements: a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 16 gigs of internal flash storage, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that can shoot 720p video, WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth with A2DP and a GPS. Beyond design, one area where manufacturers do differentiate is the display, but the Arrive doesn’t excite us: the standard 3.6” LCD isn’t horrid but it’s not as sharp as SLCD nor ultra-saturated and bright like Samsung’s Super AMOLED display used on the Windows 7 Samsung Focus. Colors look decent head-on, but fade a bit when viewed from an angle. Text clarity is good, especially since the usual 800 x 480 pixels are packed into 3.6” vs. the 4” on the Focus and 4.3” on the HTC HD7.

OS: Same as it Ever Was?

We’re surprised that Microsoft isn’t more aggressive rolling out updates with new features that were sorely lacking in the original WindowsPhone 7 release. Just because Apple got away with it for the first iPhone and iOS 1.0, that doesn’t mean Microsoft can afford to take the same liberties 4 years later. The iPhone was a groundbreaking product with a user experience that was light years ahead of the competition when it released in 2007. Now we have the capable and evolved Android, the ever-impressive though low selling webOS phones and a more mature iOS. With Windows Phone 7 we’re still awaiting multi-tasking and full support for landscape orientation in all apps (particularly for a landscape QWERTY slider like the HTC Arrive). Happily we do get copy and paste, a URL bar in landscape mode when the keyboard is deployed for IE Mobile and a more intelligent Marketplace search.

That’s not say we don’t like Windows Phone 7: it’s remarkably easy to use, graphically attractive and the integration with Zune music and videos and XBOX Live is really brilliant. The number of apps in the Marketplace increases weekly, and there are over 10,000 apps, including popular mobile staples like Flixster Movies, Weather Channel, AP Mobile, CNN News, BBC News, ESPN Score Center and a bevvy of XBOX Live games that give the iPhone a run for its gaming money.

The OS is also quick and rarely bogs down. It responds well to touch and multi-touch for pinch zooming and the MS Office suite (read/edit/create) is handy for business users. The MS Exchange support is solid, as you’d expect from a Microsoft product, and it can handle POP email, Gmail and Hotmail. Facebook integration is pleasing and there are a few Twitter clients to keep you social networking types happy. For those of you who are upgrading from an old Windows Mobile 6.x smartphone, rest assured, Windows Phone 7 is a completely fresh and improved experience that requires no stylus or foot tapping when the phone lags.

Video Review

Here's our 12 minute HTC Arrive video review:

Call and Data

The HTC Arrive has good voice quality with enough incoming call volume to hear your caller when in a moderately noisy location. We heard no background noise and the DSP did an excellent job of filtering out background noise when we called from big box stores and other noisy places.
The phone has 3G EV-DO Rev. A (4G support is MIA in Windows Phone 7). Though there aren’t currently reliable test apps to measure download and upload speeds, experientially, the Arrive feels on par with other Sprint 3G Rev. A smartphones. IE Mobile is much improved over the old Windows Mobile web browser, but its rendering speeds still lag behind Android (#1) and iOS (#2). Pages often don’t appear as they download, and the browser waits until the page download is mostly complete before displaying anything, which makes it feel slower than it is. There’s no Adobe Flash, though Microsoft says it's coming at some point. The phone can play mobile-friendly video formats like YouTube Mobile.

Microsoft has two rules for Windows Phone 7: carriers must offer OS updates once Microsoft makes them available (a carrier can only refuse 1 update) and bloatware is to be kept to a minimum. That means the software experience is largely the same regardless of which Windows 7 phone you purchase. The HTC Arrive ships with HTC Hub (a sub-portal in the Marketplace where you can download a few HTC freebies and get your fill of HTC’s old flip clock + weather screen), TeleNav GPS navigation and Sprint Zone.

Camera and GPS

The 5 megapixel autofocus camera isn’t the Arrive’s best feature. Images tend toward outdoor over-exposure with some color shift indoors in low light (typically magenta), and they’re over-sharpened. The camera reminds us of older HTC 5 MP camera phones before they finally made great strides to improve their phones’ imaging capabilities. It’s not the worst we’ve seen, but the Samsung Focus and HTC Thunderbolt take better shots and video. Max video resolution is 720p with VGA and QVGA options available. The phone has an LED flash and like all Windows 7 phones, a dedicated camera button on the side. You can press and hold the camera button to wake up the phone and take a shot (no need to slide-unlock the home screen first).

The GPS works with the included Telenav and Bing Maps. It should also work with 3rd party solutions as they become available. We had no trouble getting a satellite fix and the phone provided solid turn-by-turn directions.

Conclusion

The HTC Arrive and Samsung Focus are currently our top picks for Windows Phone 7 smartphones. If you’re a Sprint customer who’s been hankering to try out Windows Phone 7, or you’re just loyal to Microsoft’s platform after years of being a Windows Mobile user, the Arrive is for you. It’s well made with HTC’s usual elegant design touches, has a robust hinge for tilted-mode use and call quality is solid. The display might be a little small by today’s mega-screen standards, and we wish it used a more cutting-edge tech, but overall the Arrive is a very good smartphone and Windows Phone 7 is enjoyable to use.

Pro: Top notch design and good build quality. Solid voice phone, Windows Phone 7 is easy and pleasant to use.

Con: Smallish screen of the old-fashioned LCD variety. Windows Phone 7 still waiting for important feature updates like multi-tasking and landscape support in all apps.

Price: $199 with a 2 year contract.

Websites: www.sprint.com, www.htc.com/us/

Specs:
Display: 3.6" TFT LCD capacitive display. Resolution: WVGA, 800 x 480. Supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer and keyboard deployment, has ambient light sensor and proximity sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh. Claimed talk time: 6 hours.
Performance: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor. 576 megs RAM, 512 megs flash ROM and 16 gigs flash storage.
Size: 4.63 x 2.32 x 0.61 inches. Weight: 6.5 ounces.
Phone: CDMA dual band digital, 3G EV-DO Rev. A.
Camera: 5 megapixel with autofocus lens and LED flash. Can shoot 720p video.
GPS: Has aGPS that works with TeleNav and Bing Maps.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice command software integrated into OS. Has FM radio.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR with headset, handsfree and A2DP stereo profiles.
Software: Windows Phone 7 OS. Standard apps include IE, MS Office Mobile, email client, Marketplace, Bing Maps and Search, Zune music and video player, alarms, calculator, XBOX Live Games, People (contacts, Windows Live and Facebook), Pictures and Settings. Sprint software: TeleNav GPS Navigator and Sprint Zone. HTC software: HTC Hub.

Expansion: None.

HTC Inspire 4G

2011-04-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

The HTC Inspire 4G is one of our favorite HTC Android phones to hit the market in the past several months. The Aspire 4G is the US counterpart to the HTC Desire HD overseas, and it packs high end specs and luxurious build materials for a very affordable $99 with contract on AT&T. The Inspire 4G has a monumental 4.3”, 800 x 480 SLCD display, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon second generation CPU, HSPA+ 4G (though not as fast as LTE 4G coming later this year to AT&T) and an 8 megapixel camera that shoots 720p video. The only things missing from a complete superphone recipe are a front facing camera and a dual core Tegra 2 CPU. Still, the Inspire is quite fast, and in fact it’s one of the fastest among Android phones shipping as of this writing. The HTC Inspire 4G will be available Feb. 13 2011.

The Inspire runs Android OS 2.2 Froyo with the latest version of HTC Sense software. Sense continues to be our favorite Android enhancement among manufacturer customizations. It’s tasteful, full of useful widgets and social networking software, and this latest version has a web counterpart you can use to back up settings, find your phone, remote wipe your phone and more.

Design and Ergonomics

It’s easy to see the Inspire 4G’s roots in the HTC HD2, HTC HD7 and HTC EVO 4G that use the same slim super-slab design with a 4.3” display and liberal use of metal. The HTC Inspire 4G’s casing is made of a single piece of metal—it’s a unibody aluminum alloy design that looks lovely and expensive. The battery door is less than lovely: it’s extremely hard to get off, at least the first few times, and it’s prone to nicks if you pry at it (as you must). The SIM card and microSD card slots are under another plastic cover that slides off toward the bottom. It’s firm but not nearly impossible to remove like the battery cover. Hint: to remove the battery cover, find someone with fingernails and have them pull from the volume rocker area rather than just from the inset pull-off area.

The phone has the usual Android backlit capacitive buttons below the display and they work quite well. The power button is up top and the large volume rocker is on the side. We greatly prefer this arrangement to Samsung’s where the power button is on the opposing side of the volume controls; you end up hitting both at once if not careful. Though large, the 5.78 ounce Inspire is comfortable to hold and it feels great in hand. Those of you who hate slippery plastic phones with find the HTC both attractive and easy to keep a hold of. If you haven’t owned a large display phone, it does feel like a pocketful; this isn’t a phone that tucks discreetly away in a tight front pocket.

4G and Calling

The HTC Inspire is AT&T’s first 4G HSPA+ phone. Some may argue whether HSPA+ with its 14.4 to 21MBps top download speeds is true 4G. The standards body has declared it so (perhaps begrudgingly), and on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ we’ve found it extremely fast. Though our phone says we’ve got HSPA+ coverage (there’s an “H+" in the status bar), we haven’t seen speeds comparable to T-Mobile’s 5 to 8Mbps down. Our phone averaged 1.7 to 3Mpbs down and 300k to 1Mbps up with a solid -77db signal: that’s in the range of a 3G HSDPA 7.2Mpbs phone like the iPhone 4 and Samsung Captivate on a good day. We’ll see if speeds increase as AT&T continues to build out their backhaul. That said, those numbers make for a fast Internet experience, and web pages, apps and email download very quickly. This is the first phone on AT&T to get the mobile Hotspot feature where you can turn the Inspire 4G into a WiFi access point that shares its 4G connection (the iPhone 4 will get this feature via an update on the Inspire’s 2/13/2011 release date). The feature is extremely easy to use and you can set encryption type, name the access point and assign a password. In our tests, we got up to 3Mpbs down and 1Mpbs up with our notebook using the Inspire 4G as its WiFi access point.

Call quality is excellent with full and clear voice on both ends. Volume is quite good as well, though we found the speakerphone a little thin sounding and we wish it were a bit louder for multimedia playback. As a voice phone, the HTC Inspire is up there with our top voice phones on AT&T such as the BlackBerry Torch and Samsung Focus.

Horsepower and Performance

The HTC uses Qualcomm’s second generation 1GHz Snapdragon QSD8255 CPU with a whopping 768 megs of RAM. The phone has 4 gigs of internal storage but only a bit over a gig is free for your use. As with the HTC T-Mobile G2, the Inspire has rather a large ROM that self restores if need be, and this uses a good deal of the internal flash storage. AT&T includes an 8 gig microSD card that’s pre-installed in the phone and you can use a higher capacity card if you wish.

The Inspire scored an impressive 1719 on the Quadrant benchmark app that tests the CPU, 2D and 3D graphics and flash storage performance. In comparison, the HTC EVO Shift 4G with a second gen 800MHz Snapdragon scored 1369, the Samsung Nexus S scored 1648 and the Samsung Captivate running Android 2.1 scored 869.

Subjectively, the phone feels very fast with no lags or slow downs. Flash playback showed better frame rates than we’ve seen in other Froyo + Flash 10.1 Android smartphones, and we found it actually watchable, though still slow to respond to on-screen player controls (watch our video review to see it in action). 3D games are fluid and locally stored video with MPEG4 files up to 800 x 480 resolution encoded at 2Mbps or higher played perfectly. Though you might not feel like the hottest geek in the office once dual core Tegra 2 Android phones hit the market, experientially you won’t suffer from weak performance with the Inspire 4G.

Video Review

Here's our video review of the HTC Inspire 4G. We take a look around the device, test out Flash playback, video playback, 3D gaming and show HTC Sense software.

Display and Multimedia

Who doesn’t love a large display? The 4.3” SLCD display on the Inspire is currently the largest used on traditional form factor smartphones. It’s perfect for watching videos and reading web page text without lots of pinch zooming or squinting. The display is very sharp with good looking text and colorful images. Though not as super-saturated as Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays, we didn’t find ourselves pining for our Nexus S with Super AMOLED. For those of you who’ve checked out out the display on the HTC HD7 (also 4.3”), the Inspire’s is much better with higher contrast, stronger colors and wider viewing angles.

HTC improves upon the basic Android media players and that’s a good thing. The music player features a cover flow presentation and sound is enhanced with Dolby + SRS Mobile. Dolby adds a bit of bass and improves channel separation (noticeable with headphones more than the speaker). The Inspire has an FM radio with good reception that as per usual uses the wired headset as its antenna but you’ll have to supply your own headset since none is included. The video player is tweaked to add a Dolby button and as we noted, playback of locally stored MPEG4 movies was flawless.

AT&T includes their Live TV app, powered by MobiTV. This includes streaming content from news and sports sources and on-demand downloadable full TV episodes. The service costs $9.99/month and requires a WiFi connection for downloadable full episodes and we’d love to see it on the HTC’s large display, but the service wasn’t ready before the device’s official release.

The HTC Inspire supports DLNA but there’s no HDMI port for output to a TV or projector.

HTC Sense and Other Software

AT&T used restraint and didn’t litter the Inspire 4G with bloatware. AT&T Navigator, AT&T Family Locator, AT&T Barcode Scanner, myAT&T, Live TV and YPmobile are on board from AT&T, and we count only YPmobile as bloatware. AT&T and HTC have also included Twitter, Facebook, Blockbuster, Adobe Reader and Quickoffice (MS Office suite).

HTC’s Sense software include their well-known home screen clock with embedded weather widget (yes it snows on the home screen), Friendstream (an excellent social networking widget that streams Facebook, flickr and Twitter updates), wireless control widgets, an RSS reader widget with lots of pre-loaded options but weak controls for adding non-stock feeds, Voice Recorder, HTC Likes, HTC Hub (download free widgets, themes and sounds) and Footprints. Other goodies include a call history app, caller blocking, a very cool desk clock with day and night modes, flashlight and HTC’s customization of contacts (People) that does an excellent job of linking your contacts with your social networking pals (you can choose which contacts to link).

The usual Google apps are here including Google Maps, Navigation, Latitude and Places, Gmail, email (POP3/IMAP and MS Exchange), the webkit web browser, voice dialing, YouTube, Reader (Google’s eBook Reader), Google Search/voice search and Gtalk. The Android Market is here for app downloads but alas, as per usual AT&T has blocked installation of non-market apps. That means you can install apps from the Android Market to your heart’s content but you won’t be able to install from alternative markets or test beta software that’s available on the developer’s website rather than the market.

GPS and Camera

The good news first: HTC’s 8 megapixel shooter with dual LED flash takes very good photos and videos when lighting is decent. The dual LED flash is reticent and we wish it would fire more often indoors to prevent blurry and grainy shots. That said, the flash is blinding when it does fire and it tends to white out light colored objects. You can select the focus area by moving the green focus box around the viewfinder using your finger and you’ll take a photo by pressing the on-screen shutter button. Given the phone’s large size, it’s easy to accidentally move the phone when taking a photo, so use extra care to keep it still. The camera application has a full array of settings and is intuitive to use. The camera can shoot video up to 1280 x 720 and video looks quite sharp.

The Inspire 4G’s GPS was spot on indoors with decently quick fixes as long as we left WiFi on (you need not be connect to an access point, just leave it turned on). When we turned WiFi off, fixes were pitifully slow indoors, if we got a fix at all. Strange. Outdoors when driving the GPS managed to obtain and hold a fix perfectly and both Google Navigation and AT&T Navigator performed well in our tests.

Battery Life

The HTC Inspire 4G has a 1230 mAh Lithium Ion battery, and that’s not a terribly high capacity battery for a powerful smartphone with a large display. We found we had to charge the phone by 10pm with moderate use. Heavy use (watching 45 minutes of video, several email accounts checking email, and hour of calls and 30 minutes of navigation) killed the battery by 7pm. If you get significantly poorer runtimes, download a task manager and check to see what’s eating your battery.

Conclusion

AT&T and HTC have a winner in the HTC Inspire 4G. It’s a high end phone with a mid-tier price, and the quality, speed, materials and grand display are simply wonderful. Call quality is top notch and data speeds are solid though AT&T hasn’t yet reached T-Mobile’s HSPA+ or Verizon’s LTE speeds. The Inspire can handle MS Office, email and the web as well as serious multimedia playback, making it the perfect crossover device. We’re a little worried about the GPS’ problems obtaining a fix indoors when WiFi is off, and we wish the loudspeaker was as impressive as Samsung’s offerings for multimedia playback, but there are workarounds (turn on WiFi when using the GPS indoors and use headphones for a fuller experience). Battery life isn’t stellar, but the HTC Inspire 4G can last a day with moderate use and certainly beats the HTC EVO 4G for runtimes. All in all, the HTC Inspire 4G is a steal.

Pro: Fast, huge display, elegant materials at a low price. HTC Sense software is our favorite. Very good camera.

What's not: 4G HSPA+ on AT&T isn't impressing us yet. GPS on our unit had issues indoors but was fine outdoors, battery life just passable.

Price: $99 with 2 year contract

Websites: www.htc.com/us/, wireless.att.com

Specs:

Display: 4.3" 800 x 480 capacitive multi-touch display. Supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer, has ambient light sensor and proximity sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1230 mAh.
Performance: Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8255 CPU with Adreno 205 graphics. 768 megs RAM and 4 gigs flash storage (1 gig available).
Size: 4.47 x 2.78 x 0.53 inches. Weight: 4.67 ounces.
Phone: GSM quad band world phone with HSPA+ on AT&T's 850/1900MHz bands.
Camera: 8 MP with autofocus lens and dual LED flash. Can shoot video up to 720p resolution.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
Software: Android OS 2.2 Froyo with HTC Sense software. HTC software includes clock/weather widget, RSS news reader widget, Friendstream and Footprints. AT&T software: Live TV, AT&T Navigator (TeleNav), AT&T Family Map, myAT&T and YPmobile. 3rd party software: Blockbuster, Adobe Reader and Quickoffice (MS Office suite).
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, 8 gig card included.

Samsung Galaxy S 4G

2011-04-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

Last year’s Samsung Vibrant, T-Mobile’s version of the Galaxy S, was a hit: T-Mobile sold large numbers of what was then an Android Superphone with a Super AMOLED display and fast 1GHz Hummingbird CPU. Roll around to early 2011 and the Vibrant is looking a little long in the tooth. While few phones are actually shipping with dual core CPUs now, they are sporting 4G, front cameras and multimedia streaming services. And that’s just what Samsung has dished up with the Galaxy S 4G: it’s a Vibrant with a front-facing video chat camera, 4G HSDPA, a higher capacity battery and both Samsung’s Media Hub and T-Mobile TV. The 4G Samsung runs Android OS 2.2 Froyo with Samsung TouchWiz 3.0 software. If you’ve used the Vibrant, Captivate or other Samsung Galaxy S family phone, you’ll feel right at home. And if you’ve been waiting endlessly for Froyo, it’s finally here.

Specs at a Glance

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4G has a 4”, 800 x 480 multi-touch capacitive Super AMOLED display with the usual deep, deep blacks and super-saturated colors. It runs on a 1GHz Hummingbird CPU (ARM Cortex-A8) with hardware graphics acceleration and approximately 190 megs of internal storage. A 16 gig microSD card is pre-installed in the slot located under the back cover, and the movie Inception is pre-loaded. The phone runs Android OS 2.2 Froyo with TouchWiz 3.0 and Flash 10.1. It has WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth and a GPS. Like the Vibrant, it has a 5 megapixel autofocus rear main camera with no flash and a front VGA video chat camera. The phone has a 1650 mAh Lithium Ion battery and it’s quad band GSM with 3G/4G on T-Mobile US’ 1700/2100MHz bands.

Design and Ergonomics

From the front, the Galaxy S 4G looks nearly identical to the Vibrant, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s an attractive slab with chrome accents and a 4” display that dominates the front. The Vibrant drove use crazy with its fingerprint-loving gloss black plastic back that got mucky quickly and made the thin curvy phone as slippery as a bar of soap. The Galaxy S 4G has a very interesting matte plastic back with a faux metallic finish that changes as you move it under the light. It’s almost iridescent and though not expensive looking it is cool. The surface texture and raised ridge make it easier to keep safely in hand.

Unfortunately, the power button is still on the right side, directly across from the volume controls. It’s far too easy to accidentally press the power button when pulling the phone from pocket or purse and when using the volume controls. Please Samsung, start putting the power up top where it belongs. The micro USB port lives under a sliding door as it did on the Vibrant, and the 3.5mm jack is up top. Though there’s just a small speaker grille on the phone’s back, it’s incredibly loud and full sounding.

The faintly masked Android capacitive buttons below the display are unchanged from the Vibrant, and they remain hard to see when backlight is off. The front-facing video chat camera that works with Qik sits above the display to the right of the earpiece.

Video Review

Here's our Samsung Galaxy S 4G video review:

Calling and 4G

T-Mobile has aggressively rolled out 4G HSPA+ across much of the US, and we have solid coverage in Dallas. The Vibrant was no slouch on data speeds, though it technically is an HSDPA 7.2Mbps 3G phone that could make some use of HSPA+ enhancements. The Galaxy S 4G has HSPA+ 21Mpbs (that’s the max speed, it doesn’t mean you’ll get 21 megs for download speeds), while the myTouch 4G has 14.4Mbps HSPA+. Our download speeds as measured using Ookla’s Speedtest.net Android app averaged 3.5Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up with a solid but not exceptional 4 to 5 bars and -89 db signal. We saw peaks of 10.5Mbps down and 4Mbps up! Those figures rival LTE—color us impressed. In contrast, our 3G HSPDA Samsung Nexus S managed 2.6 megs down and 1.4 megs up in the same location.

Voice quality is solid on both incoming and outgoing ends. Volume is good and we had no trouble hearing our caller when we stood in a noisy big box store. Reception is also good, and we got a slightly stronger signal (2 to 5 db) than with our Samsung Nexus S and Vibrant.

WiFi Calling and Mobile Hotspot

The Galaxy S 4G is capable of WiFi calling and it has the WiFi hotspot sharing feature where you can turn your phone into a WiFi hotspot that shares the 3G/4G connection (T-Mobile charges $15/month for WiFi hotspot). To use the WiFi hotspot feature, simply go into wireless settings and activate the Mobile AP feature. You can assign an access point name and set encryption to none or WPA2.

With WiFi calling, you can place a call using WiFi rather than the cellular connection, though the call still uses your plan minutes. WiFi calling sounds crystal clear and is a handy option if you’re in an area with WiFi coverage but little or no cell coverage.

Multimedia and Performance

The 1GHz Hummingbird is one of the faster smartphone CPUs on the market, though Qualcomm’s second generation Snapdragon is making strong inroads. Froyo offers speed improvements over previous Android versions, and that helped the Galaxy S 4G achieve a 970 on Quadrant. That’s a better showing than the Vibrant, but not as good as the very impressive 1796 we got with the myTouch 4G running on a second gen Snapdragon CPU. In terms of feel, the Galaxy S 4G feels responsive with very little lag despite the demands of the TouchWiz user interface. It’s faster than the Vibrant and we don’t get those odd occasional pauses we noted on the Vibrant.

Samsung as always does an excellent job with multimedia on their Galaxy phones, and the 4G has enhanced music and video players as well as Samsung’s own Media Hub where you can rent or buy movies and TV show episodes. T-Mobile TV (MobiTV) is also on board for streaming live video and TV episode downloads. The service costs $10/month and it performed well in our tests with reasonably high quality full screen video and a wide selection of popular TV shows.

Video playback is a pleasure both via the YouTube app and for high quality locally stored content like the included Inception full length movie. The Super AMOLED display makes video look fantastic thanks to deep blacks and vivid colors. Flash 10.1 playback is similar to what we’ve seen on other single core CPUs from the Hummingbird era: controls are slow to respond and frame rates average 15 to 18fps. Honestly, we prefer using the YouTube player when possible.

The rear 5 megapixel autofocus camera is much the same as the Vibrant’s in terms of still photo quality. It renders sharp photos with very good color saturation but we miss the flash for low light shots. The 720p video camera is improved with surprisingly good detail and color. The front camera works with the included Qik software for video chats over 3G, 4G and WiFi. Quality is acceptable but not great over 3G and it improves greatly with a fast WiFi connection.

GPS

Good news: the GPS troubles that plagued some Samsung Vibrants and Samsung Captivates are gone. The new chipset works wonders and the phone gets a GPS fix nearly immediately even indoors, and holds onto that signal when driving. The phone also has a digital compass (handy for walking) and both Google's navigation and TeleNav are on board.

Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G’s upgraded 1650 mAh Lithium Ion battery provides more staying power than the somewhat smaller Vibrant’s. With heavy use, the Vibrant just made it through the day while the 4G had some juice left in reserve. Like most high end smartphones, you’ll want to charge nightly if you use the phone heavily. With moderate use, the Samsung lasted us 2 days on a charge.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G is an evolutionary upgrade to the Vibrant. Think of it as the Vibrant with 2011 tweaks: 4G, a front video chat camera and Froyo with Flash 10.1. If you already own a Samsung Vibrant, you likely won’t want to shell out the out of cycle upgrade price for the Galaxy S 4G, but if you’re coming from a lower end Android phone like the myTouch 3G or a feature phone, the Galaxy S 4G has major appeal. The vivid 4” Super AMOLED display, fairly fast 1GHz Hummingbird CPU and Samsung’s newbie-friendly TouchWiz software make for a compelling experience. Your toughest choice will be deciding between the also capable myTouch 4G by HTC and the Galaxy S 4G. The Galaxy wins hands down for display quality but the HTC phone is faster (and also $50 more expensive at press time).

Price: $199 with 2 year contract after a $50 rebate

Websites: www.t-mobile.com, www.samsungmobileusa.com

Specs:

Display: 4" Super AMOLED multi-touch capacitive display. Resolution: 800 x 480. Supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer. Has ambient light sensor and proximity sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1650 mAh.
Performance: 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird CPU (ARM Cortex-A8). Approximately 190 megs internal storage.
Size: 4.82 x 2.54 x 0.39 inches. Weight: 4.16 ounces.
Phone: GSM quad band world phone with 3G and 4G HSPA+ on the 1700/2100MHz bands.
Camera: 5MP autofocus rear camera, can shoot 720p video. Front VGA video chat camera that works with the included Qik application.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth.
Software: Android OS 2.2 Froyo with Flash 10.1 and Samsung TouchWiz 3.0. Google apps including search, Maps, Navigation and Places, YouTube player, Gtalk, Gmail, email and webkit web browser. Samsung apps: Media Hub, Mini Diary, Voice Recorder, AllShare (DLNA), Desk Home, widgets and Write and Go. T-Mobile and 3rd party software: My Account, TeleNav, Qik Video Chat, WiFi Calling, Slacker, ThinkFree Office, T-Mobile T, GoGo in-flight WiFi, Kindle, Amazon MP3, DoubleTwist Air Sync and DriveSmart.
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot. 16 gig card included.

HTC EVO Shift 4G

2011-04-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

The HTC EVO 4G was an iconic Android smartphone: it was one of the first with 4G, it had a huge 4.3" display and Android running on a fast 1GHz CPU. It sold out quickly, and was hard to find in stores for months. It was, and remains, best of breed until dual core Tegra 2 smartphones start shipping by mid-2011. Several months after the EVO 4G's supremely successful launch, the HTC Shift EVO 4G is here, the anticipated keyboarded companion to the first EVO. And now that it is here, we're a little confused why Sprint would sully the EVO name with a less than flagship device. The Shift 4G is a decent upper-middle range Android phone with an 800MHz second generation Qualcomm CPU, Android OS 2.2 Froyo with HTC Sense software and a 5 megapixel camera. It makes a good alternative to Sprint's ever wide range of entry to midrange Android QWERTY phones, but unlike the EVO 4G, it's not quite a superphone.

The HTC EVO Shift 4G has WiMAX for 4G service as well as 3G EV-DO Rev. A and the usual collection of wireless radios for WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. It shares DNA with the solid and understatedly attractive HTC T-Mobile G2 on T-Mobile, but it lacks the G2's good looks, metal back and superior keyboard. The Shift 4G does lose the unusual keyboard Z hinge mechanism which may be a good thing given complaints about wobbles and jiggles, but the Shift 4G's slider is stiff and unassisted, making it seem less than high end. On a positive note, it's solid with no wobble or play. Granted, the Shift 4G does sell for $149 rather than the $199 or higher price tag we see on their Android superphones, making it clear that Sprint didn't intend the EVO Shift 4G to compete directly with the Samsung Epic or HTC EVO 4G.

Design and Ergonomics

The EVO Shift 4G has a blue soft touch finish that feels good in hand. We're not fans of the chrome display and earpiece surrounds or the smoothed but angular bulging back. The phone looks slightly dated, and reminds us of older Windows Mobile QWERTY sliders.

The keyboard isn't as impressive as the T-Mobile G2's; there's a nearly useless d-pad on the lower right corner that's a bit stiff and seems to lack a center press function. We'd rather that space had gone to a right shift key and arrow keys. Tactile feedback is good despite the relatively short travel today's tightly designed phones demand, and we appreciate the @ symbol having its own key and the ".com" that's only an Fn key press away. Complaints aside, it's one of the better Android keyboards on the market.

The Shift has capacitive buttons on the front and we found the placement just right for accidental presses. Likewise the volume keys are placed where we accidentally hit them when we opened the keyboard slider. The power and 3.5mm stereo headphone jack are sensibly placed up top while the micro USB jack is at the lower left side. Unfortunately, the 2 gig microSD card lives under the battery, so you'll want to go with a USB cable and mass storage mode rather than powering down the phone just to remove the card and insert it in a card reader.

The smartphone has an ambient light sensor, proximity sensor and a digital compass. You need not deploy the keyboard to switch to landscape mode in most cases since the accelerometer handles this. We did note that in the settings applets and a few other places the accelerometer didn't switch orientation and we had to open the keyboard to change to landscape mode. You can disable the accelerometer if you wish.

Speedy, Keep Making Sense

The second generation Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU is very fast, as we noted in our T-Mobile G2 review. It isn't just about megahertz; the 800MHz Snapdragon in the EVO Shift is faster than some 1GHz CPUs used in other smartphones. It scored an impressive 1367 in Quadrant benchmarks, placing it near the top of the fastest Android phones. Experientially it feels fast and fluid, and we didn't suffer unexpected pauses or stutters. Android OS 2.2 Froyo targets speed improvements, and it shows in the Shift 4G.

HTC's Sense software is always a welcome addition to Android, and it didn't cause any problems or clutter the user interface as do some other manufacturers' customizations. HTC adds social networking software, their usual beautiful flip clock with weather and more. HTC Sense and HTC's overall build quality have bolstered HTC's reputation such that the HTC Shift 4G gets a leg up over Sprint's mid-range QWERTY Android phones.

Call Quality and Data

Call quality is very good and volume is average. Both incoming and outgoing voice sound natural and full. The speakerphone didn't overly impress us, though it sounded less hissy and tinny than the G2's. As a voice phone the EVO Shift 4G gets a thumbs up. In terms of reception, the Shift 4G gets a bit weaker than average reception according to the bars, but HTC and Sprint have removed the usual Android settings applet where you can view actual signal in decibels on their 3G EV-DO Rev. A network. We did note that the signal as meansured in bars, jumps around quite a bit on the EVO Shift.

Our first review unit had problems with extremely slow 3G data, and it seems some early review units need a firmware re-flash or radio re-program. Our second review unit worked fine and we saw accepible though not admirable 3G speeds averaging 500kbps down according to the Speedtest.net app (this is actually average performance for our area). 4G worked fine in our tests and we got 2.5Mbps down and 1Mbps up according to the Speedtest.net applicaton. That doesn't compare well with Verizon's LTE and T-Mobile HSPA+ speeds, but it's certainly a marked improvement over Sprint 3G. If you happen to live or work very close to a WiMAX tower, you'll see speeds up to 5 or 6Mbps down.

The phone has the 3G/4G Mobile Hot Spot feature where your Shift 4G can act as a high speed wireless WiFi hotspot for up to 8 devices such as laptops, tablets and cameras (we expect speeds to be quite slow if you actually try to use 8 clients at once though).

If you're in a 4G WiMAX coverage area, you can use 4G for data while on a voice call, something that 3G EVDO can't do. If you're not in a 4G coverage area, you'll still have to pay Sprint's WiMAX tax; an additional $10/month on your bill for 4G (or potential 4G) service.

Video Review

Here's our 9.5 minute video review of the HTC EVO Shift 4G:

Camera and GPS

The Shift 4G's camera takes pleasing shots with decent focus speeds and a friendly user interface. The 5 megapixel autofocus camera has an LED flash and it can shoot video up to 480p. If you're coming from the EVO 4G, you'll notice an improvement in image quality, though it's not an earth shattering improvement. Sorry, there is no front-facing camera for video chats.

The GPS gets a tenacious fix, even indoors in a residential building. The phone comes with Google Maps, Navigation and Places as well as TeleNav (formerly known as Sprint Navigation). Both offer spoken turn-by-turn directions and POIs, and we rank Google higher for POIs and TeleNav better for spoken directions.

Conclusion

Despite our many niggles and complaints, the HTC EVO Shift 4G is a solid midrange to better than midrange Android QWERTY smartphone. HTC Sense software is excellent, Android OS 2.2 Froyo is fast and fairly recent even if it's not the latest and call quality is very good. We've based our star rating on an EVO Shift 4G with working 3G data-- should our problems with extremely slow 3G data turn out to be widespread, we'd take at least a star away and decline to recommend the phone.

Pro: Solid build, excellent HTC Sense software on top of Android OS 2.2, fast CPU and overall performance, good keyboard.

Con: Chunky design, smallish display, not terribly useful d-pad taking up space on keyboard deck.

Price: $149 with a 2 year contract (requires Sprint's additional $10/month 4G data add on in addition to standard data package)

Websites: www.sprint.com, www.htc.com/us/

Specs:

Display: 3.6", 800 x 480 capacitive multi-touch display. Supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer and keyboard deployment. Has ambient light sensor and proximity sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh. Claimed talk time: up to 6 hours.
Performance: 800 MHz Qualcomm MSM7630 Snapdragon processor. 512 megs RAM, 2 gigs flash memory with ~370 megs available.
Size: 4.6 x 2.3 x 0.6 inches. Weight: 5.9 ounces.
Phone: CDMA dual band digital with 3G EV-DO Rev. A and 4G WiMAX. Has 3G/4G Mobile Hot Spot feature.
Camera: 5 MP camera with autofocus lens and LED flash.
GPS: Has GPS with aGPS and digital compass. Works with Google Maps and Navigation and TeleNav.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
Software: Android OS 2.2 Froyo with HTC Sense software. Full suite of Google apps including Google Maps and Navigation, search, Gmail, YouTube and the Android Market. Sprint software includes Sprint Navigation (TeleNav), NASCAR Mobile, Sprint Football, Sprint TV and Sprint Zone.
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, 2 gig card included.

Motorola Atrix 4G

2011-04-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Upon release, the Motorola Atrix 4G on AT&T is the highest spec Android smartphone on the market. While this garners some temporary attention, it’s fleeting since top dog smartphones hold that title at best a few months before a new model with even better specs comes along. So Motorola’s going for novelty and innovation with the Atrix: it docks and turns into a laptop of sorts. Seriously cool and definitely attention-getting. In case that’s not your thing, Moto has an HD Multimedia Dock with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and HDMI that turns the Atrix into your home computer (of sorts) or HD TV companion.

Excellent on both counts, and Motorola knows it: they say all of their future high end Android smartphones will have this transformative capability, powered by Webtop, a lightweight Linux environment that’s also used for instant-on applications in notebooks. Innovation always comes at a price, and that means the Lapdock is keenly pricey at $500 without contract and $300 with a 2 year contract that requires AT&T’s $20/month tethering data plan. We suspect that Motorola’s hardware margins are quite high on the Lapdock (an 11.6” shell of a notebook with no CPU, RAM or GPU), and hope the price comes down once they’ve milked the early adopters. The HD Multimedia Dock is a more reasonable $189 (no contract required or offered) and it includes the Bluetooth mouse, keyboard and a remote. Motorola also offers just the HD Dock for $99.

The Phone

But first, let’s look at the Motorola Atrix 4G itself: the Atrix is a very capable Android OS 2.2 Froyo phone with the less than adored Motoblur UI and social networking services. It runs on a dual Core 1GHz Tegra 2 CPU (the first smartphone to ship with the Tegra 2), and it has a higher resolution display than other Android phones: 960 x 540 pixels vs. the usual 800 x 480. It has 4G HSPA+ on AT&T’s network (not as fast as LTE 4G but potentially faster than HSDPA), a gig of RAM, dual cameras and a 4” LCD. Pretty nice for $199 with contract.

The Atrix is a good looking phone that fits nicely in hand despite its 4” display (it’s not much bigger than the iPhone 4). It’s a plastic phone though, and lacks the chic look of the Moto Droid and Droid X. The black back has a diagonal houndstooth pattern in silver and it’s not glossy or slippery. The micro HDMI and micro USB ports are together on the phone’s left side (both ports interface with the lapdock and HD Multimedia dock and basic dock) and the 3.5mm stereo jack is up top. The Atrix has a biometric fingerprint scanner, a feature we haven’t seen on a consumer handheld since the old HP iPAQs. The scanner is up top and doubles as a mechanical on/off/wake-sleep switch. Just press the scanner down until it turns the phone on or wakes it.

The micro HDMI and USB ports.

AT&T and Motorola don’t include a video chat app for the front facing camera. So far Fring doesn’t work and Gtalk doesn’t yet support Froyo but the new and free Qik for Atrix does work. The main rear 5 megapixel autofocus camera takes passable shots, but the camera isn’t as good as the HTC Aspire 4G’s or the Motorola Xoom tablet’s. 720p video quality is fairly good, and the Atrix has a bright dual LED flash.

The 4”, 960 x 540 LED backlit display really packs the pixels in. The result is sharp text and good looking photos but icons and text are smaller and harder on the eyes compared to the 4” 800 x 480 Samsung Captivate and 800 x 480 HTC Inspire 4G with its 4.3” display. If you’ve grown accustomed to Samsung’s surreally color saturated Super AMOLED displays, the Atrix’s panel likely won’t wow you, but it is nonetheless a very good display. Like all high end Android smartphones, it has an ambient light sensor, an accelerometer and a proximity sensor.

In terms of horsepower, the Atrix has plenty. It’s an extremely fast phone, and it benchmarks at 2481 in Quadrant vs. 1704 for the single core Inspire 4G (that’s a really great number for a single core 1GHz CPU) and 1512 on the Dell Streak 7 tablet with a Tegra 2. The phone has a gig of RAM (that’s a lot for an Android smartphone), 1.47 gigs of application storage and 10.7 gigs of internal storage as well as a microSD card slot (no card is included).

How does it feel? Fast. No lags, no pauses and the only other phones that come close are the HTC Inspire 4G and Samsung Nexus S (the Nexus S has a single core Hummingbird but runs a clean version of Android Gingerbread). If you’re a power user who bogs down Android phones with lots of running apps, the Atrix is a fine choice. If you’re thinking of upgrading to a Captivate, yet the Atrix is faster.

The Nvidia Tegra 2 has a hardware GPU, and the phone performs well with 3D games. Thanks to the fast CPU and GPU, Adobe Flash 10.1 is actually useable and we didn’t experience any of the annoying slowdowns when playing full Flash video embedded in web pages (watch our video to see it in action).

AT&T Navigator, AT&T Family Maps and Google’s Maps, Navigation and Places are bundled. With all we found the GPS to be quick to get a fix and reliable when traveling. The speaker is loud but distorts near max volume, though it remains clear enough to be heard in a sedan.

Though we’re not fans of Motoblur and its required Blur account creation (who needs yet another account?), it doesn’t get in the way of using the Atrix 4G. Motoblur widgets can be turned off and speed isn’t impacted (it does use about 20 megs of RAM, but with a gig, who cares?). As per usual with AT&T, installation of non-Android Market apps is blocked. That means you can install apps from the Market to your heart’s content but you can’t side load apps from an SD card or from other sources such as unofficial app markets or beta sources. Those of you who are technically savvy can root the Atrix and enable installation of non-Market apps (visit XDA-developers.com for that info).

Call quality is excellent: Motorola has impressive voice and DSP technology and our calls were loud and clear on both ends. The Moto is a nominally 4G device with HSPA+ rather than LTE. T-Mobile uses HSPA+ and we’ve seen some very good numbers in bandwidth tests, but so far, despite the H+ symbol on our home screen and the supposed presence of AT&T HSPA+ in our area, we got no better than typical 3G HSDPA download speeds between 1.5 and 2.5 megs down and 300k up (though the phone has HSUPA, AT&T is currently capping upload speeds on all phones except the iPhone).

Battery life should be wonderful thanks to the 1930 mAh Lithium Ion battery since that’s a very high capacity battery for a smartphone. But we found we had to charge the Atrix nightly with moderate use. Granted, it does a bit better than the HTC Inspire that has a relatively low capacity 1230 mAh battery, but our Atrix didn’t trounce the HTC.

Video Review

Here's our 22 minute Motorola Atrix video review where we cover the phone, Lapdock and HD Multimedia Dock.

The Lapdock

The Motorola Atrix is currently the best Android smartphone on AT&T (the HTC Inspire 4G comes quite close and that’s a tight race). But its real selling point is the super-accessory options that turn the phone into something more than a phone. The Lapdock sells for an absurd $500 without contract and $300 after $100 rebate with a 2 year contract and added data tethering plan. That’s a crazy amount of money for a shell of a notebook with an 11.6” display, battery and no brains. That’s right, there’s no CPU, GPU or RAM inside. It’s a MacBook Air-thin device with a lovely design, smallish chiclet keyboard, USB ports and a sharp and acceptably bright display. It has a somewhat larger footprint than 11.6” notebooks and netbooks thanks to the extended back area that houses the swiveling phone dock.

The Atrix does all the heavy lifting; providing the computing and memory to run the Lapdock. It does this via the Webtop app on the Atrix that provides the Linux version of Firefox complete with Flash and a file manager. Dock the Atrix at the back and up comes Webtop in a fairly quick and stable manner. We applaud Motorola for getting this working so seamlessly and automatically—no geek skills necessary. The Webtop launcher at the bottom of the Lapdock’s screen (similar to the Dock at the bottom of Mac OS X) has icons for Firefox, the file manager and a handful of Android apps like contacts, the phone app and Facebook. You can run all Android apps installed on the phone on the Lapdock display either in windowed mode or stretched out.

The Lapdock has its own battery and it charges the Atrix even when not plugged in: lovely. It weighs just under 2.5 lbs., which is less than the average 11.6” ultraportable and is slimmer than an issue of Martha Stewart Magazine. The USB ports support USB host, and that means you can plug in flash drives and USB mice and keyboards. USB 3G/4G modems won’t work because there are no drivers to make them work on the Atrix and Webtop.

No doubt, this is the future of computing where our key files, social networking apps and identities and favorite web sites fit in a smartphone that only needs a keyboard and larger display to do real work. But for now, even a dual core mobile CPU isn’t smart enough to power a wide range of non-mobile apps, so we’re left with browsers and file managers—no Photoshop for you. You can indeed watch native Flash videos in YouTube and Hulu with performance that’s on par with a netbook. Frame rates aren’t great but videos are mostly watchable. Using Google Docs on the web proved quite slow, so we’d suggest you stick with the Android Quickoffice that’s pre-installed on the phone. As you can tell, we love the innovation and idea behind the Lapdock, but we wouldn’t spend more than $199 on it given what it can do.

The HD Multimedia Dock Kit

The HD Multimedia Dock Kit does the same things that the Lapdock does, but it’s designed for more stationary use. The kit includes a dock with USB ports and HDMI out, a lovely Bluetooth Moto keyboard (sold separately as well for $70), a Bluetooth mouse, charger and multimedia remote. Plug in the Atrix and you can use Webtop on your monitor or TV, or select straight multimedia out to play videos. Both sound and video route out through the HDMI port and the Atrix comes with an HDMI cable. You can plug the Atrix directly into a TV or projector for multimedia presentations and video, but it won’t run Webtop without the Lapdock or HD Multimedia Dock (though XDA Devs may find a way to enable it via a hack). The HD Dock kit isn’t a bad deal at $189 and you get a very nice Bluetooth keyboard in the deal. Motorola sells the HD Multimedia Dock separately as well, though we haven’t seen it stocked in AT&T stores as a solo item.

Conclusion

The Motorola Atrix 4G is one of the best phones on AT&T. It’s the first dual core 1GHz Tegra 2 phone and it’s very fast. The resolution is quite high, though it may be too high for those with poor eyes. It has a large 1930 mAh battery, dual cameras (video chat finally moves beyond the iPhone 4 on AT&T) and plenty of storage. But the real kicker is the Lapdock and HD Multimedia Dock. Though expensive, the Lapdock gives you notebook ergonomics and Adobe Flash on a larger display. It’s certainly expensive, but it sets the Atrix and future high end Motorola Android phones apart from the superphone pack.

Pro: Fast, high resolution display, fingerprint scanner, works with innovative accessories like the Lapdock.

Con: Motoblur still isn't our favorite manufacturer enhancement of Android. Rear camera takes just OK photos.

Price: $199 for Atrix with 2 year contract. $499 without contract. $499 for Lapdock ($299 with contract and tethering data plan add-on). $189 for HD Multimedia Dock kit.

Websites: wireless.att.com, www.hellomoto.com

Specs:

Display: 4" capacitive LED backlit LCD. Resolution: 960 x 540. Has accelerometer, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1930 mAh.
Performance: 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core CPU. 1 gig RAM, 10.7 gigs flash storage.
Size: 4.6 x 2.5 x 0.4 inches. Weight: 4.8 ounces.
Phone: GSM quad band world phone with 3G/4G HSPA+ on AT&T's 850/1900MHz bands.
Camera: 5 megapixel autofocus rear main camera with dual LED flash. Front video chat camera.
A/V: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Has micro HDMI port (cable included).
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
Software: Android OS 2.2 Froyo with Motoblur software Webtop Linux environment for Lapdock and HD Multimedia Dock.
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot.

Motorola Xoom

2011-04-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Motorola Xoom is the third hot tablet to hit the market, following the wildly successful iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. Like the iPad, the Xoom is large, though not quite as large as the iPad despite its larger 10.1” display (the iPad’s is 9.7”). The 7” Samsung Galaxy Tab is a different animal that’s more portable but lacks the wow factor for multimedia and web browsing given its significantly smaller display. Not that we don’t love the highly portable and powerful Galaxy Tab; it just suits a different set of needs.

The Xoom currently has the best specs on the market, good enough to ensure a healthy dose of future-proofing. It has a dual core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor with hardware graphics acceleration, a gig of RAM (that’s a lot for an Android tablet), 3G with free upgrade to 4G LTE, dual band WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth, a GPS and both front and rear cameras. Its 10.1” multi-touch capacitive display is extremely responsive and boasts an iPad-beating 1280 x 800 resolution that’s more often found on laptops. It’s the first tablet to ship with Android OS 3.0 Honeycomb, an OS that’s designed for tablets rather than smartphones. The Xoom sells for $599 with a 2 year Verizon Wireless contract (starting at $20/month) and $799 without a contract. Motorola plans to release a WiFi-only version that will sell for $599.

Honeycomb

If you’ve used an Android phone, the user interface will look familiar enough that you’ll feel at home, despite the serious tablet redesign. There’s the multi-page, swipeable home screen, application drawer and largely familiar selection of built-in apps like contacts, calendar, Gmail, Google Maps and the YouTube player; but these have been amended to make use of the larger tablet display. Gone are the hardware buttons: all navigation is done using software buttons on the bottom task bar and upper right corner app drawer icon. This works just fine, and we don’t miss the hardware buttons one bit. The user interface is a joy to navigate with touch and we had more than one Minority Report moment when swiping through all sorts of apps, widgets and screens with a light pass across the screen.

Android OS 3.0 is extremely fast, at least on this dual core beast of a tablet. Every interaction is quick and we found it a bit faster than the first gen iPad. Even with several heavyweight applications running in the background (a 3D game, Office suite, web browser, Gmail, Flixster and lesser apps), the Xoom remained extremely responsive. In terms of stability, we only experienced application force-closes when running apps that didn’t scale to the display size or get along with Honeycomb, and these didn’t crash the OS itself. The Android Market runs just fine with an update that’s automatically pushed once you’ve booted up the tablet for the first time. The crashes we and other reviewers saw before the Xoom’s release date were due to the older Market application. Speaking of the new Market application, it’s very cool. There are sections for tablet-specific apps (Google is still working on populating this since apps are coming out so quickly) and a filter for apps vs. Google books. It makes excellent use of the added screen real estate, is intuitive and graphically attractive.

The Motorola Xoom and iPad.

The home screen looks Tron-like with neon outlines around each pane and visual effects that would fit right at home in that video game and film. Menus have been cleaned up and are much more straightforward, and we can see the influence of ex-head UI designer Matias Duarte, who defected from Palm after developing the delightful webOS to join Google. Unlike iOS and to a certain extent webOS, Honeycomb is less directed in possible interactions, which will please the technologically adventurous but may present a learning curve to those less inclined to explore user interfaces. Where iOS presents you with a permanent fixed palette of application icons (you can’t stray too far), Android still presents you with a customizable home screen and more menus to navigate. I prefer the customizable nature of Android and the useful widgets on the home screen, but I know some of you may not. To see the new OS in action, watch our video review below.

Motorola Xoom Design and Display

The Motorola Xoom looks smaller than the iPad, though it’s not that much smaller and at 1.6 lbs. weighs the same as the 3G + WiFi iPad. Black is slimming, as are the tapered edges and 0.5” thickness. The Xoom feels balanced in hand when held in landscape orientation, but is a bit heavy in the hands when held in portrait mode. It has a 4-way accelerometer that handles screen rotation, but you can disable this if you wish. There’s also an ambient light sensor, gyroscope and barometer inside. The look is modern and attractive, though not wildly distinctive. It looks like a quality piece; much more so than the plastic Galaxy Tab. The frame and larger rear panel are metal alloy, with a short strip on the upper back made of plastic to reduce wireless antenna interference. The rear aluminum alloy panel is coated with a soft touch black finish that somehow manages to attract fingerprints. That said, all in all, Motorola has made an excellent piece of hardware.

The display uses Corning Gorilla Glass just like many high end smartphones and is supposed to resist breakage (happily the LCD is not fused to the glass should you ever need a repair). The display dominates, and the bezel is quite small, which is good for typing on the large on-screen keyboard. If you have large fingers, you may accidentally trigger on-screen elements however, if your fingers move beyond the thin bezel. The LCD is sharp at 160ppi and colorful, though not over-saturated and hyper-contrasty like Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays used on smaller screen devices. The auto brightness setting is a bit dark for our tastes, and overall display brightness is acceptable but we wouldn’t mind a higher max brightness setting for outdoor use. The display is worlds better than the Streak 7’s, but not as bright and colorful as the iPad’s. The pixel density is higher than the iPad’s 132ppi, and slightly lower than the Nook Color’s 169ppi. It’s a very good display but not tops.

The Xoom has a sealed back, but it’s relatively easy to disassemble (though this may void your warranty, visit iFixit.com for disassembly details). Since it ships without a working 4G module, Motorola will be taking your Xoom apart when you send it in for the free 4G LTE upgrade (this process takes up to 6 business days and is expected within 3 months of the launch date Feb. 24, 2011). The upgrade doesn’t require a data plan change, nor will it cost more. The Xoom ships with a dummy 4G module inside and it has an LTE SIM card slot under a plastic door on the top edge (there’s a clear dummy SIM card in the slot).

The HDMI, micro USB and tiny charging port are on the bottom edge, while the oddly small volume controls are on the upper left side. The power button is on the back, and it’s a large round affair that’s well positioned for easy access when holding the tablet in landscape orientation with 2 hands (we never pressed it by accident). Also on the back is the main 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash and stereo speakers. The optional folio case has a large cutout that exposes these for play-through use. The speakers have moderate volume but tend to distort when set near max. There’s a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack up top, and Motorola sells an optional speaker dock with HDMI out.

Motorola Xoom Video Review

Here's our 23 minute video review of the Motorola Xoom where we take a deep look at Honeycomb, web browsing and 3D gaming and compare the Xoom to the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Apple iPad.

Internet and Data

Verizon offers a 2 year contract in trade for a $200 discount on the Xoom, or you can go with a month-to-month postpaid contract with no ETF and no hardware discount. Plans start at $20/month for 1 gig of data, though we recommend the $35/month 3 gig plan if you plan to use the Xoom much when away from WiFi access points since it pulls full web pages and high quality video. Plans with even higher data allowances are available for a higher monthly fee. There is currently no pre-paid data option for the Xoom or Verizon’s other tablets.

Data speeds on Verizon’s 3G EVDO Rev. A network were surprisingly good and we averaged near 2Mpbs down and 780 kbps up according to Ookla’s Speedtest.net app. Web pages load quickly and email download speeds are likewise good. YouTube and video trailers streamed fine and we saw decent video chat quality using Gtalk’s new Android video chat feature. Good job, Motorola and Verizon. Speeds should be absolutely wonderful with 4G LTE based on our tests with the LG VL600 USB 4G modem on Verizon (we got 15Mbps downloads with it).

Should you wish to use the Xoom without a data contract or simply prefer to take advantage of WiFi speeds, the Motorola has dual band (2.4 and 5GHz) WiFi 802.11n with 802.11b/g too. As with all Android devices, you can turn each wireless radio on and off easily. The Xoom supports VPN connections and it has the WiFi Hotspot sharing feature where you can turn the tablet into a high speed wireless modem that shares its data connection as a WiFi hotspot.

As with most US tablets, the Xoom works with data only, not voice. That means no cell phone calls over Verizon Wireless’ network, but you can use VoIP and video chat applications over 3G, 4G and WiFi. That includes Google’s own Gtalk video chat feature in Honeycomb. Your call recipient need not use a Honeycomb tablet to receive calls, they can partake in Google’s video chat using a computer web browser via their iGoogle web page or Gmail page. There is no text message (SMS) app on the Xoom.

Horsepower and Performance

The Xoom joins the Dell Streak 7 Android 2.2 as the first 2 Tegra 2 tablets. The LG G-Slate on T-Mobile and other higher end tablets will share their 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU later this year, but for now, the 7” Streak 7 and Xoom are the only Tegra 2 models on the market and the Xoom is the only Honeycomb tablet. The Xoom does considerably better than the Dell Streak 7 on the Quadrant benchmark which tests CPU, file system, 2D and 3D performance. We suspect Dell has used very conservative settings with the Streak 7 to improve its weak battery life, and that may be the culprit.

Benchmarks:

Quadrant: 2005 (Dell Streak 7: 1517, Samsung Galaxy Tab running Froyo: 1005)

Linpack: 36.86 MFLOPS

As we noted, the Moto is very fast when swiping through screens, launching apps and rendering web pages. The included 3D game Dungeon Defenders runs fluidly and MPEG4 video encoded at 720 x 480 plays perfectly with a variety of encoding settings. If you want to play 1920 x 1080 video (higher than the Xoom’s resolution but suitable for HDMI out), you must encode your video using the Baseline H.264 format (the 1080p Baseline requirement seems to be a Tegra 2 issue).

The Xoom has a gig of RAM and 32 gigs of internal flash storage. There’s a microSD card slot located under a plastic door up top (the 4G LTE SIM card slot is beside it). It seems that Motorola rushed the Xoom to market, and an SD driver wasn’t ready at product launch. As far as we know, Google needs to complete the SD card driver before it can be released (or pushed via OTA update) to the Xoom.

Battery Life

A large tablet with a dual core CPU isn't the kind of tech you'd expect to get good battery life. We were pleasantly surprised by the Xoom, it managed 8.5 hours of video playback with brightness set to 50%, and easily lasted through the day when using it for a mix of web, email, word processing and music playback. The Xoom has a 3250 mAh, 24.5 watt-hour Lithium Ion Polymer battery that's sealed inside the case. Battery life rivals that of the also excellent iPad and handily beats the Dell Streak 7.

As a Multimedia Device

The 10.1”, 1280 x 800 pixel widescreen display and HDMI out port make the Xoom a promising portable movie player. We have no issues with the Tegra 2’s limitation to Baseline profile for 1080p MPEG4—that looks plenty good enough to our eyes even when outputting to a large HD TV, but we know some of you videophiles might want Blu-ray level quality. Android doesn’t support a wide range of video formats out of the box (then again, neither does iOS and the iPad), so you’ll need to rely on third party players and codecs if you stray far from MPEG4 and H.264. We generally encode in H.264 with AAC stereo since that format works on pretty much all mobile devices currently on the market, and we’ve been very pleased with the Xoom’s ability to play our ripped videos.

When it comes to streaming, Android doesn’t currently support Netflix (this is a DRM issue with the platform), but it will support full Adobe Flash 10.2 within a month, according to Adobe. For those of you who miss Flash playback on the iPad, this is a big plus. In the meantime, there’s the built-in YouTube player that handles the mobile Flash format, and it looks pretty decent but not super-sharp. There’s no Hulu yet, but Hulu says Android support is coming for Hulu Plus. There’s no video rental or purchase store on the Motorola; a big hurt when competing with iTunes.

Android's deadly dull music player got a makeover for Honeycomb, and it now sports a cover flow style interface with some really neat graphics effects in album view that make use of the accelerometer and your finger interaction. The Xoom's rear-firing stereo speakers sound full and have reasonable volume unless you crank it to near max when distortion creeps in. Sound output via the 3.5mm stereo jack is excellent and the tablet works with Bluetooth speakers and A2DP headphones. Motorola sells an optional HD Speaker Dock with good sounding small drivers and an HDMI port.

As an eBook Reader

If you’re in the LCD rather than E-Ink camp, the Xoom is an excellent ebook reader that works with Kindle, Nook and Kobo’s apps as well as Google’s own Books app. It’s easy to browse and download books from Google Books, and these are in the standard ePub format. Google’s Books app is very attractive and has portrait and facing-pages landscape views, text and line height settings and more. Oddly, it lacks bookmarking capabilities though it at least remembers the last page you were on for each book in your library.

Though Kindle and Nook aren’t yet updated with large tablet support, they display perfectly well and work fine. Thanks to the large, high resolution display, the Xoom is the LCD counterpart to the Kindle DX Graphite and is perfect for reading books with illustrations. Likewise, we downloaded the free Adobe Reader for Android and found that PDF books and files formatted for the standard 8.5 x 11/computer screen looked great. We tested Aldiko for reading DRM-free eBooks and as of this writing it wasn’t ready for large screen tablets like the Xoom; text ran off the page. The free FBReader did just fine.

As a Laptop or Netbook Replacement

The Xoom is much more of a netbook replacement than the iPad. It has easily accessible storage via USB and a microSD card slot so you can easily transfer all types of files back and forth. The Chrome-influenced tabbed web browser, upcoming Adobe Flash, larger screen and higher resolution make for a very computer-like browsing experience (it has the same resolution as many notebooks and a higher resolution than basic netbooks). The web browser does a simply excellent job of rendering sites, and we found ourselves forgetting that we were using an Android tablet rather than a notebook. Given the 1280 pixel wide display, we didn't need to use pinch zooming when viewing web sites in landscape mode-- cool!

The Gmail and Email clients are very full-featured with an Outlook or iOS (depending on your view of the world) presentation complete with folder lists, message view panes and address book integration. This competes well with Samsung’s excellent customization of the email client on the Galaxy Tab which otherwise would have been relegated to the basic phone version of Email.

Once tablet-friendly Office suites are on the Android Market, the Xoom will be very capable of doing Word and Excel files on the road as well as PowerPoint presentations (hello HDMI). Interestingly, there’s a QuickOffice HD app on the Xoom that you can find using a file manager, but there’s no icon or way to launch that capable Office suite. You can use Motorola’s $69.99 compact Bluetooth keyboard with the Xoom (the same keyboard offered with the Motorola Atrix 4G), or any other Bluetooth keyboard you wish.

How does the Motorola Xoom compare to the iPad? Read our iPad vs. Motorola Xoom Comparison.

How does the Xoom compare to the iPad 2? Read our iPad 2 vs. Motorola Xoom comparison.

How does the Xoom compare to the Galaxy Tab? Read our Samsung Galaxy Tab vs. Motorola Xoom comparison.

Conclusion

No doubt, the Motorola Xoom is currently the best Android tablet on the market. It’s supremely fast, runs Android OS 3.0 that’s optimized for tablets and has a sharp, high resolution display that’s a good stand-in for a notebook viewing experience. If you get a Xoom right now, you’re buying into the future, just like early iPad adopters. There are only 20 apps designed for high resolution Android Honeycomb tablets on the Android Market, but we’re sure that as with iTunes, the apps will come out in impressive numbers quickly. You can run non-Honeycomb apps and some run fine, while others run in a small window (similar to the iPad without the pixel doubling option). The tablet’s hardware and software are certainly ready for primetime, but you can tell Motorola and Verizon rushed it to market since it shipped without the much-vaunted Adobe Flash, 4G LTE or a microSD card slot driver. While Flash will soon be here and we hope the SD card driver will be as well, that means you’re still buying today and waiting for that figurative tomorrow for key features. Would that stop me from buying a Xoom? No. It’s all together too capable and sexy to pass up.

Pro: Quite fast, large high resolution display, computer-like web browsing experience, dual band 802.11n, available with and without contract, free upgrade to 4G LTE, solid GPS, Bluetooth with wide variety of profiles, has WiFi mobile hotspot feature for sharing the 3G/4G connection over WiFi with computers and other devices, Honeycomb nicely optimized for tablets and is fun to use. We expect a large selection of tablet-centric apps to hit the Android Market this year. Attractive with excellent build quality and materials. Nice accessory selection including a folio case, Bluetooth keyboard and speaker dock with HDMI port.

Con: Rushed to market without Flash 10.2, microSD card driver or LTE module. Expensive enough to compete with laptops.

Price: $599 with a Verizon 2 year contract, $799 without contract

Websites: www.hellomoto.com, www.verizonwireless.com

Specs:

Display: 10.1" capacitive multi-touch LCD. Resolution: 1280 x 800, supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer.
Battery: Lithium Ion Polymer rechargeable. Battery is not user replaceable. 3250 mAh, 24.5 watt-hour.
Performance: Dual core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU. 1 gig RAM, 32 gigs flash storage.
Size: 9.8 x 6.6 x 0.5 inches. Weight: 1.6 pounds.
Phone: CDMA dual band digital EV-DO Rev. A 3G. 4G LTE free hardware upgrade coming.
Camera: 5 megapixel rear main camera with dual LED flash and autofocus lens. Front 2 megapixel video chat camera.
Audio: Built in stereo speakers, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.
GPS: Has GPS that works with the included Google Maps and Navigation.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g/n (dual band) and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
Software: Android OS 3.0 Honeycomb. Google apps: search, voice search, Maps, Navigation, Places, Gmail, Email, web browser, Gtalk with video chat, Books (Google ebook reader), Gallery, YouTube, Music, Clock, Calculator, Contacts, Calendar and Latitude. Third party apps: Cordy and Dungeon Defenders (games) and QuickOffice HD (MS Office file viewer).
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot (not usable until a software driver is available).

BlackBerry 7290

2011-02-10T18:19:00.000-08:00

Add Bluetooth and an extra radio band to an established line up of solid corporate messaging device and you have the Blackberry 7290 from Research in Motion. For those who missed the Blackberry mobile revolution, the Blackberry is the quintessential mobile messenger. Long before Microsoft, Nokia et al dreamt of combining phone and PDA RIM was peddling their own unique blend of PDA coupled to an always on data connection over the air-waves. The early units, in the late 80's, relied on the slower paging networks but still created the same always-on email experience that the newer phone-based units offer.

This Blackberry comes from T-Mobile at a cost of $349 plus $30-80 per month for the plan, the 7290 adds $50 to the previous non-Bluetooth model. The 7290 is also available from Cingular with similar pricing. Is it worth the extra cash? That depends one whether you use the phone features. Read on…

Design and Ergonomics

Today's Blackberry owes its design more to a long and proven linage of screen and keyboard combo than any new-age art inspired design; it's a corporate device and as I'll say a few times in this review is born of that goal; to be a mobile messenger in a corporate world. Its high points are that it's been refined and refined to such a height that it's no surprise that it works so well ergonomically. Every button has its purpose, there are no extra buttons, switches, dials or 'flappy' bits to break off. This year's model features a lighter smarter metallic blue-grey color finish than the Black and Blue models of last year. It retains a smooth curved form that fits the pocket far better than many 'stylish' phones and PDA's that feature sharp squared off edges. It spreads its weight out evenly over its size to ensure that no part presses into you; a neat trick that hides its 139g/4.9oz weight giving the impression of a much lighter unit.

The Blackberry 7290 works well in both the left and right hands; navigation is via a side mounted scroll-wheel and most operations can be completed single-handedly; the optionally backlit screen is just enough at 240x160 (65mm diagonal) resolution but there's no touch screen so many operations require a few intuitive pushes of the wheel to get the desired action. Heavy users may develop a small callous on the wheel finger!

The keyboard is great, it has a responsive enough feel without too much resistance and flat keys that allow the thumbs to slide from key to key; not as fancy as Palm or HP keyboards but more efficient for it.

The plastic construction is tight and solid, the door to the removable battery fits closely and the lack of touch screen frees the 7290 from that fragile, 'don't scratch my screen!' feel that Pocket PC's have and lends to the units overall 'pocket-ability'.

On the side you'll find a nice standard mini-USB connector for charging, upgrades and desktop sync; There's also a compact charger complete with US, Euro and UK adapters reinforcing the world-phone feel.

The kit includes a 'desktop stand', this isn't a docking station but incorporates a inset where you can press in the included USB sync cord. It's decidedly low rent.

Also of questionable need is the belt holster; it features a magnet and switch that causes the Blackberry to switch modes for Ringer and notification when holstered. However, in the holster on your hip I don't think that you're necessarily making the right fashion statement.

Phone Features and Reception

The difference between this model and the previous is all in the radio department; Quad-band GSM ensures better coverage across both of the US GSM frequencies; 850 and the older 1900Mhz plus full coverage in Europe on the 900 and 1800Mhz bands, but here is where later Blackberry's had a chance to win the Phone/PDA combo battle… but lost. There are a couple of problems with the Blackberry's Phone feature, the first is a weak radio and the second a poor phone user interface. It's a shame as I'd consider the Blackberry my only device if it were stronger in this area. In the US where GSM coverage is still light there are areas where I can pull in enough of a signal on most phones and PDA/Phones to hold on but the Blackberry is noticeably weak. I've tried a few units so don't feel this to be mine alone. The problem is that it's too far under the bar to rely on, it doesn't handle calls in the car and at home where I have usually one to two bars the Blackberry is 'Searching…'. Careful positioning gives me a bar to receive my email with but that's no use for calling. Unless you're in a great area and don't plan to take calls whilst traveling this isn't a device that you can conduct telephone business on.

On a recent trip to the UK, where five bars are the norm, the Blackberry made the grade with call quality on a par with most phones and better than some; the larger case affords a reasonable speaker giving depth and volume. No speaker phone though. So if you plan a trip around Europe, you could get away with packing only one device… along with your tooth-brush.

The user interface for the phone is not strong; it is, like the rest of the software a bit, well, 'agricultural'. In a world of icons and animation the Blackberry is a little 'MSDOS' for want of a better term. I don't mean to say that I don't like it, it's actually a little retro but its heavy text based displays and its limited navigation options leave it bereft of the now expected neat features like T9 dialing and an easily accessible speed-dial. I do believe that these features could be implemented.

Where the interface claws back some ground is that you can call contacts from the Contacts feature as well as from email and web pages. Once on a call an optional Bluetooth headset works well allowing you to hold the unit either in front of you so that you can tap in notes about the call, or in my case above your head at a 73.5 degree angle by the back window where I get a signal.

The GSM phone also hosts the GPRS data connection required to receive email; at fast modem speeds it's not EDGE, EVDO or Wi-Fi throughput but that doesn't matter as the email flows in continuously and is very compressed. Web pages on the integrated browser strain the bandwidth the most but again they're compressed and well, you're on a tiny pocket device; it's good enough!

Horsepower and Performance

Want to know why the battery life is so good? A. The CPU is as fast as a Tortoise… but, that's ok, it is, as Rolls-Royce would say when asked about the horsepower from their engines "sufficient". The only time I could outrun it was whilst carrying out a full re-sync of all my mail, contacts and calendar, only then where key presses unresponsive. In day-to-day operation it does make very good use of the CPU, one thing that you don't immediately notice is that it is always on, the display never goes off, the CPU is always running, constantly receiving messages, something that you just can't do with a fast and power hungry processor. When needed the operating system has its priorities right too, when a call comes in the unit instantly comes alive and switches to the Phone application, something that some other Phone/PDA's struggle with.

Storage is integrated only (no expansion slot); 32Mb of usable memory for emails (plain-text), calendar and contact information. It is, 'sufficient' for thousands or contacts and a month of emails.

Display, Gaming and Multimedia

Gaming? The Blackberry comes with a whole host of games; 'Email', 'Calendar', 'Contacts' to name but a few. Each one performs very well and, they even throw in a Tetris type game for when you've finished emailing… oh wait a minute no, how about we SMS a few more times? One thing the Blackberry doesn't need is a suite of games; it hasn't the CPU or display to keep up. I was pleasantly surprised though to discover just how much extra business software titles you can get for the Blackberry; there are RSS readers, enhanced word processors and even financial charting packages. One of my favorite add-ons is the Instant Messenger application from RIM themselves; the always-on GPRS connection really makes IM work on a mobile device.

Guess what software you can't get for the Blackberry? Answer: anything multimedia. As there is no storage option there is no where to store MP3's and video so the hardware has never supported it. It's a shame as a little mini-SD slot and a nice music player would be a great touch.

The screen is 65mm (2.5") diagonal and has a resolution of 240x160; it's just enough for emails and the built in fonts make good use of that modest resolution. The strong point for the display is that it can operate without its backlight in all but the dimmest light. This adds battery life and simplifies use; you don't have to press a button to read email, you just glance at it.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth support in the 7290 is new to this form factor Blackberry having first seen the light of day in the more phone like 71xx series. It's again a bit of a text based implementation but, it works and works well. Support for Headset and Hands-Free is good… it works which is more than can be said of the Microsoft Stack in the PocketPC and Smartphone. It has an odd additional switch for each paired device; 'Trust' that set to the default 'No' requires user confirmation when any device tries to attach, a small problem.

The Bluetooth implementation doesn't support OBEX so we can't send contacts yet. Nor does it offer itself as a Dial-up device so it won't add GPRS to your laptop.

Battery Life

With a modest battery that looks about 750mAh you'll get a good 4 hours talk time and a week on standby, and remember that standby includes receiving emails… Now do you want that fast processor? No, I didn't think so. It's quite liberating to know that I can take a two day trip over the weekend without taking the charger. A spare battery will not break the bank and nor would a simple 5-volt car charger.

In typical day-to-day use the Blackberry should see the charger every couple of days, more to avoid disappointment should that disaster occur that keeps you on the phone for hours than for the Blackberry's benefit. If you don't use the phone feature, you could probably charge it at weekends only!

Software

As shipped the unit came with an older OS, a free update to Blackberry firmware 4.0.2.32 can be downloaded and applied.

The Blackberry works by connecting to the Blackberry Servers, not, as is often thought, your server. To get email, contacts, calendar and tasks to the handheld you have to send them to Blackberry for onward transmission. Out of the box, the included desktop software allows you to synchronize with most desktop PIMs though only email is synchronized over the air, calendar, contacts and tasks require that you sync with the included USB cable. Don't forget though that to sync email your PC must be left on and logged in so it's no good for laptop users! In this mode, a Blackberry can be used by anyone but really, the Blackberry was groomed for the corporate world and whilst you can use web mail and sync from your desktop, an investment in Blackberry Enterprise server is the way to go. Using software that runs on a Windows Server, the Enterprise software will collect mail, calendar, tasks and contacts from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes and deliver it to the Blackberry system for delivery to your handheld. In this mode the Blackberry works; as an IT manager you can add a user to the Enterprise server, have them pick up a Blackberry where ever they are and simply enter email address and password and they're off, there's little in IT that's simpler than that. A home user is not going to get that level of simplicity and convenience, another area in which I feel that Blackberry sell themselves short.

Always-on Push Email

Blackberry make a lot of their always-on push email service and it is neat to watch email arriving in real-time but, it's only 'neat' I'm not totally sold on it's advantages, my Pocket PC devices check each hour during the day and with time flying by I seem to have new messages each time I look so I wouldn't rule anything out that didn't do 'Push' email.

Other than PIM functionality the Blackberry doesn't include any additional software, however look outside and you'll find a whole raft of business oriented applications to boost functionality.

Conclusion

If you're looking to loose your phone and PocketPC or Palm powered PDA in exchange for a Blackberry, you may be disappointed, especially if you're any kind of power user; you'll miss the MP3 player, the word processor and the ability to load up fancy GPS software. If you plan to keep your mobile phone but need to add remote email and calendaring to your life and especially if you're the type that buys technology for the job rather than for fashion then you're in luck; the Blackberry offers strong email, calendar and contact management in a tough and pocket-able form that doesn't need a tech-head in tow to keep it running and, having recently seen them in the hands of the FAB-5 and George Clooney you might hit the fashion note too.

Specs:

Display: 2.5" 65k color display. Resolution: 240 x 160 pixels.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 900 mA. Claimed talk time: 4 hours. Claimed standby: 9 days.
Performance: 32 MB Flash ROM and 4 megs RAM.
Size: 4.5 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches. Weight: 4.9 ounces.
Phone: Quad-band: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM for voice and GPRS for data.
Audio: Built in speaker and mic (for phone use) and 2.5mm standard headset jack. Supports vibrating alerts, on-screen notifications and LED flashing.
Networking: Bluetooth, supporting headset and hands free profiles.
Software: RIM's own operating system and basic application suite including messaging/email, PIM applications and web browser. Push email requires BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry desktop software.
Expansion: None.
Input and Navigational Aids: Backlit 33-key QWERTY thumb keyboard and thumb operated trackwheel and escape key on right side of unit.

RIM BlackBerry 7280 Review

2011-02-10T03:53:00.000-08:00

The BlackBerry line revolutionized messaging several years ago when pagers were the lackluster standard. Since then models have evolved and now function both as mobile phones and email-anywhere devices. RIM's ever-popular thumb keyboard has remained much the same over the years, and that's a good thing. You can check and send emails and SMS messages anywhere you have coverage, and the unit will let you know when new emails have arrived. While you can do email on the go using smartphones, none offer the BlackBerry push email feature out of the box.

While the BlackBerry doesn't fit the classic definition of a PDA, it does offer good PIM support and desktop syncing. Unlike a PDA or smartphone, it doesn't double as a pocket multimedia player and you won't find a wealth of 3 rd party consumer oriented software to extend the platform in the manner of Palm OS and Pocket PC devices.

Understanding the BlackBerry Flavors

RIM makes many BlackBerry devices for most of the carriers in the US . The BlackBerry 7200 series work on GSM/GPRS networks while BlackBerry 7700 series has models that work on either GSM or CDMA networks. RIM also makes the 7510 for Nextel networks.

The BlackBerry 7200 series is available through all major GSM carriers in the US . RIM released the device to each carrier with a different model number. Here is the break down:

The BlackBerry 7210 works on 900/1900 MHz and is available on AT&T network.

The BlackBerry 7230 works on 900/1800/1900 MHz and is available on T-Mobile network.

The BlackBerry 7280 works on 850/1800/1900 MHz and is available on both AT&T and Cingular networks in the US and Rogers Wireless in Canada . The Blackberry 7290 replaces the 7280.

Ergonomics and Design

Though it's called BlackBerry, the 7200 series devices actually have a deep marine blue casing with a silver screen bezel and keys. The design is clean with rounded edges and no external antenna. The display and thumb keyboard are located on the front of the unit, with an integrated speaker located above the display. The integrated mic is located on the bottom edge of the unit.

Display and Battery

The BlackBerry has a 240x160 color screen that's capable of displaying 65K colors. Though it uses a limited color palette and has a matte display, color saturation is amazingly high to the point that it looks like picture painted on the screen. The deep colors and large icons make the display extremely easy to see both indoors and out. You will not only find shortcut icons for Message, Phone and PIM applications on the main display screen, but also icons for keyboard lock, turning the wireless off and power off functions.

The battery is user replaceable (sorry, RIM does not disclose its capacity in mAh). The battery life is amazing on this device, provided you don't talk on the phone for hours everyday. We found that the claimed 4 hours talk time and 10 days standby time is on target.

The Double Identity

The beauty of having a BlackBerry is not only to get email pushed to you anywhere at anytime, but also to integrate your currently email accounts with BlackBerry so that you can receive and send email from your existing corporate email account or ISP email account.

If you are integrating your ISP/POP3 email account, the wireless carrier will provide the services for you via BlackBerry's Web Client. You can add up to 10 email accounts on a single BlackBerry with Web Client, including Outlook, Lotus Notes, MSN, Hotmail, AOL and IMAP accounts as long as your carrier supports it. To add additional applications to your BlackBerry, you will need to install the Desktop Manager from the included CD, which gives you an Application Loader. You can sync the handheld with the desktop using Intellisync in the Desktop Manager and configure the content you wish sync. The Desktop Manager also has Backup and Restore applications.

If you are using corporate email accounts on the BlackBerry, your IT department can set up your handheld with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server or you can use the BlackBerry Desktop Redirector to configure your account settings.

Applications

BlackBerry has a very simple and easy to use interface. When you turn on the device, you will see the icons for all the applications on the screen. Use the Trackwheel to select application and press the Trackwheel to launch it. As you highlight the icons, you will see the name of the application displayed below all the icons. Above the application icons, you will find battery meter, signal strength and GPRS status as well as date and time.

Messages

When you launch this application, you will actually see your email messages, PIN messages as well as call logs displayed by date. You can check and compose email, PIN messages (to other BlackBerry handhelds with PIN numbers) and SMS messages as well as place a phone call in this application. There is also a very nice search function, which makes it easier to pinpoint the email you are looking for if you have long list of emails.

After you open an email, you can perform regular email functions such as reply, forward, delete, save, etc. In addition, if the email body includes a phone number, email address or web URL, you can use the Trackwheel to highlight it and make a call, send an email or open a web page directly from that email. Very convenient! Another convenient feature in this application is that you can type notes to your call log, as well as copy/paste the phone number in the call log to your address book.

To send messages, you can type in a new email address, PIN number or SMS address or use an address in your Address Book. BlackBerry even lets you send messages to email addresses on a web site or in the messages you receive: all you have to do is to highlight the email address, then click on Email to send a message. Reply, Forward and Delete message functions work similarly to desktop email applications. You can choose to not include the original message when you reply to an email. You can also include Copy list and Blank Copy list in your messages. If you delete messages, you can set options to have them deleted only on handheld or both handheld and desktop, and to assign over-write in a conflict situation for either the desktop mailbox or the handheld. You can easily delete all messages prior to a date you set.

BlackBerry supports attachments. You can receive and view MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat PDF files as well as .txt and .wpd files. You can also view html and zip files if your Enterprise Server is 3.6 SP 1 or later. You will have options to set the display format for the attachment files as well as cache sizes. The viewer actually gives you considerably amount of freedom in configuring the format and layout of the documents.

Sending and receiving SMS messages on the BlackBerry is easy and fast and the built-in keyboard really shines. You can choose a phone number in your Address Book, call log, messages or type in a phone number to send an SMS. The SMS display screen on the BlackBerry is simple and clean. You can scroll through all messages using the Trackwheel. If the list is getting too long, you can delete them using the Remove History function. In addition, you can specify the number of previous messages to appear on your SMS screen. You can also easily forward or resend SMS messages to other phone numbers in your address book or a new number.

Address Book

Address Book on the BlackBerry is a quite flexible application. It provides fields for all basic contact information and you can have up to 3 email addresses, 4 user fields as well as adding notes to the contact record. The Address Book supports Group function where you can categorize and group different types of contacts. You can email to a single email address or to a group of email addresses. The Address Book is also integrated with the Phone, Message and web browser so that you can take actions in these applications using the contact records in the Address Book. If you've stored addresses on your SIM card, you can import them to BlackBerry Address Book easily. You can sort your contacts by First Name, Last Name and Company. If your handheld is set up for Remote Address Lookup on your Enterprise Server, you can even search address in your company database.

Calendar

There are four views in the BlackBerry Calendar application: day view, week view, month view and agenda view. Use the Trackwheel to navigate through your scheduled items, times and dates. When you add a new appointment in the Calendar, you will go to day view and input the subject, location, mark for all day event, start/end date and time, duration, time zone, set reminder and recurrence as well as adding notes. The week view also has time display, and you can select any day and click on New to enter an appointment for that date and time. Very nice layout and an easy way for inputting a schedule. If your handheld is set up to sync to your desktop and your Enterprise Server is 2.1v or later, you can invite attendees to your scheduled meetings on the BlackBerry. Attendees who received your invitation can email you with their responses (accept or decline).

Tasks, Memo and other PIM apps

Tasks and Memo are simple applications in the PIM group. Tasks allows you to create to-do items with Status, Priority, Due date and notes. Status includes Not Started, In Progress, Completed, Waiting and Deferred. Priority includes 3 levels. You can sort your Tasks by Subject, Priority, Due date and Status.

MemoPad allows you to write notes and memos. You can add, edit and delete memos in this application. Alarm application gives you the option to set daily alarms including weekend/weekday options.

Phone Functions

The Phone application on the BlackBerry is a very capable and full-featured. You won't feel that you are giving up any telephony features for an email-centric device.

You can dial a number from your Address Book or in a message or on a web page. When you launch the Phone application on the BlackBerry, the left side of the keyboard, which also occupied by numbers on top of letters, will turn the numeric mode on automatically. You don't need to hold the shift key to be in numeric mode like you would when you are in message mode. If you need to dial a phone number that does not exist on the BlackBerry yet, press the Space key to bring up a pop-up dialing window. The nice thing about the BlackBerry is that you can use extensions with phone numbers: when you get to the automatic recording on the main line, the BlackBerry will automatically dial the extension for you. Once you have a number, you can access the menu by clicking on the Trackwheel which offers to call that number, SMS that number, copy the number, add to address book, and more actions. The menu also gives you instant access to the Address Book as well as to Call Voicemail. You can adjust volume via this menu when not on a call or use the Trackwheel during a call.

The BlackBerry comes with four profiles: Loud, Discreet, Quiet and Default. It supports only midi ringtones. When an incoming call reaches your BlackBerry, you will see a pop-up window giving you choices of Answer, Answer and Hold, and Ignore. If the person calling is in your Address Book, the BlackBerry will display caller ID info. During a call, you can push the Trackwheel to bring up menu selections to end the call, put it on hold, mute it or to take some notes. BlackBerry makes it very easy to swap calls if you have someone on hold while talking, and to make conference calls if you subscribe to that service. You can add or disconnect any caller during a conference call. Very impressive! You can even type messages during a call, but you can't send them until the call ends.

BlackBerry also offers other phone features such as call logging, call barring, call forwarding in additional to call waiting. You can choose what types of calls to log or block, and set a call barring password. Call barring is only available for SIM cards that have this option. You also have the option to turn off your caller ID.

Web Browser

There are two browser types on the BlackBerry: one allows you to open web pages using your service provider's gateway, and other one uses your corporate Mobile Data Service. You will likely be limited to WAP if you use the browser out of the box via the carrier's service. The web browsing shines when you have Enterprise Server set up with Mobile Data Service. You can download applications directly to your handheld via web browser. It also supports bookmarks, history, and clear cache options.

Conclusion

Pro: The integrated email accounts and always-on wireless email technology are the most attractive features on this device and make it the de facto standard for push email. Sending and receiving messages and attachments is easy thanks to the built-in apps. Very readable screen, comfortable keyboard and long battery life are big winners for this email-centric device. Con: weak browser if you don't have MDS set up. No polyphonic ringtones. Could stand more profiles.

Specs:

Display: 240x160 high resolution, 65,000 colors, backlit. Viewable indoors and outdoors.
Battery: User replaceable Lithium Ion.
Performance: RIM does not disclose processor information. 16MB flash memory plus 2MB of SRAM. Runs RIM OS, Java-based.
size: 4.4 x 2.9 x 0.8 in. 4.8 oz.
In the Box: The BlackBerry, 2 standard Mini-USB cables, world travel charger, a standard battery, an ear-bud headset, a plastic swivel holster and a desk cradle.
Phone: Tri-Band: 850/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS.
Audio: Built in speaker and mic. 2.5mm standard headset jack. Notification: Tone, vibration, on-screen and LED. Midi ringtones.
Software: Comes with BlackBerry Message app for email and attachments, Phone app for telephony, Address Book, Calendar, Tasks, Memo, Calculator and alarm applications for PIM. It's bundled with a WAP browser. Also comes with BrickBreaker (a Breakout clone). BlackBerry Desktop v3.6.

HTC Inspire 4G

2011-02-10T03:46:00.000-08:00

Design and Ergonomics

4G and Calling

Horsepower and Performance

Video Review

Here's our video review of the HTC Inspire 4G. We take a look around the device, test out Flash playback, video playback, 3D gaming and show HTC Sense software.

Display and Multimedia

The HTC Inspire supports DLNA but there’s no HDMI port for output to a TV or projector.

HTC Sense and Other Software

GPS and Camera

Battery Life

Conclusion

Pro: Fast, huge display, elegant materials at a low price. HTC Sense software is our favorite. Very good camera.

What's not: 4G HSPA+ on AT&T isn't impressing us yet. GPS on our unit had issues indoors but was fine outdoors, battery life just passable.

Specs:

Samsung Epic 4G

2011-02-10T03:33:00.000-08:00

Some of you can't live without keyboards, and that's OK. Samsung's thrilled in fact, since their Epic 4G is the only keyboarded high end Android phone on Sprint. And while all 4 major US carriers offer or will offer a Galaxy S phone, the Epic 4G (aka Galaxy S Pro) is the only version to have a hardware keyboard. Even better, the Epic 4G has a really, really good QWERTY keyboard. It's roomy and it has an embedded arrow pad, a number row and Android function keys for home, menu, search and back. Since the Epic 4G is a large smartphone with a slider that deploys on the long side, the large keyboard works best for those who have large hands. If your idea of keyboard heaven is the BlackBerry Bold 9650 or the Palm Pre, the Epic will seem positively ripe with suburban sprawl.

This Android 2.1 smartphone has a 4" Super AMOLED display and the phone is about the same size as Sprint's other 4G Android superphone, the HTC EVO 4G. Though the EVO has a slightly larger 4.3" display, they share the same 800 x 480 resolution. The Epic's slider mechanism and larger bezel surrounds (primarily on the top and bottom) even out the size between EVO and Epic. Like the EVO, this is a Hummer of a phone: hold one in your hand first if you can. Imagine it in your pocket if you're a phone-in-the-pocket kind of person. It makes the iPhone 4 seem petite.

The Motorola Droid 2, HTC EVO 4G and Samsung Epic 4G.

When closed, the Epic looks a little like its keyboard-less cousin the Samsung Vibrant on T-Mobile. It works nicely in the hand as a big slate phone and the on-screen keyboard is quite good, as is Samsung's Swype keyboard input. The phone isn't flashy but it's reasonably attractive and modern looking, particularly the front face. The back is slightly sparkly gray plastic that's fairly grippy and fingerprint-proof but not chic. Given the keyboard slider mechanism, the phone isn't all that thick at 0.6". The slider mechanism is solid with no play and it locks into place at each end of its travel.

Battle of the high end Android keyboards: the Motorola Droid 2 and Samsung Epic 4G.

The Epic 4G has the same four front-facing touch sensitive buttons found on other Galaxy S phones. That's not a good thing since these buttons are all but invisible when backlighting is off. Memorize their order and location or tap the screen to turn on backlighting. We noted that the Epic's buttons require a firmer press than the Captivate and Vibrant. That means you won't activate them accidentally but you must linger on them longer when you do want to use them.

Again, like other Galaxy S phones, we love the sliding cover over the micro USB port, but wish that port wasn't at the top. The location makes it very awkward to talk on the phone while it's charging. Samsung has made one improvement over the other two Galaxy S phones that we love: it has a notification LED!

The Epic 4G has a roomy keyboard with raised, discrete keys that we love.

Software

As with the Captivate and Vibrant, the Epic 4G runs Samsung's restrained version of their TouchWiz UI. It's unobtrusive and pleasant. Samsung customizes the icons, giving them backgrounds, organizes the app drawer into pages and provides shortcuts at the bottom of the home screen for the phone dialer, contacts, messaging and applications. The home screen is extended to 7 screens and an indicator at the top tells you which screen you're on (and allows for quick switching). Samsung's social networking software helps integrate Twitter and Facebook with your address book and their widget provides status updates on the home screen. Samsung's Daily Briefing widget has weather, stocks and AP news info (you control the update interval) and Program Monitor helps you manage running applications. And of course, all of Google's usual Android goodies are here including Maps, the Android Market, Gmail, Gtalk, YouTube, Google Voice command and search. Sprint adds Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, NASCAR and Sprint Football. The phone can act as a high speed wireless modem and WiFi hotspot and Sprint Hotspot is the app for that (this feature requires an additional monthly data fee).

Phone and Data

The Epic is Sprint's second 4G smartphone, thus it has WiMAX 4G. Clear is Sprint's partner for WiMAX, and the coverage area is growing, but it still has a relatively small footprint with several major metro areas left out such as New York City. Nonetheless, you're going to pay $10 extra for data on the Epic 4G, just as you must with the EVO 4G. Here in Dallas, one of the first WiMAX coverage areas, we still have trouble getting a 4G signal indoors because WiMAX uses very high spectrum with poor building penetration. When you do get a good 4G signal, data speeds are a pleasing 3 to 5 megs/sec for downloads-- significantly better than EV-DO Rev. A 3G at 1-2 megs/sec average. When the signal is weak, you'll actually get better data speeds using 3G. Fortunately, you can turn off 4G (as well as the phone's other wireless radios). 4G does eat battery, so we suggest you turn it off when you don't need it. Likewise, if you're not in a 4G coverage area, turn off the radio so it won't hunt for service. The Epic switches seamlessly between 3G and 4G when both radios are on, so you need not manage the handoff yourself.

Voice quality is good on both incoming and outgoing ends, and call volume is average. The speakerphone is loud and full, and it only distorts at 90% volume and above. The phone dialer application is stock Android with tabs for the call log, favorites and contacts. When in a call you can easily transfer sound to and from a Bluetooth headset, mute a call, turn on speakerphone and start a conference call.

The Epic runs Google's excellent Webkit web browser and the Epic 4G's 4" capacitive multi-touch display makes web browsing a wonderful experience (and just as good as the iPhone's). Colors jump out and clarity is very good thanks to Samsung's Super AMOLED display. The display is viewable outdoors and has a wide viewing angle too. The smartphone has Google's YouTube player but no support for desktop-style Flash FLV video (that requires Android OS 2.2 Froyo and Flash 10.1 which should reach the Epic sometime this fall).

The Samsung works with Gmail, POP3/IMAP email and MS Exchange Email. Google Talk is standard for IM and you can download IM clients for other services from the Android Market.

Multimedia and GPS

Samsung has done a good job of improving on Android's rather pedestrian music and video players. The multimedia apps have gotten a facelift and additional features that make the Galaxy S phones more competitive with the iPhone than most other Android mobile phones. The phone can handle 720p video playback easily and with a large storage card you've got plenty of room for music and video files. Sprint TV didn't fare well when we produced our video review a week earlier, but the kinks are now worked out and Sprint TV performs well, even with a middling signal. We received the phone 2 weeks before launch, and it's not unusual for a carrier's multimedia streaming services to not quite be ready.

Video Review

Here's our 10 minute video review of the Samsung Epic 4G. We test out the browser, Sprint TV and TouchWiz

and compare the phone with other high end Android smartphones.

The 5 megapixel camera with autofocus lens and an LED flash takes sharp photos with pleasing colors. This is the first Galaxy S phone we've seen with a flash in the US, and it's a welcome addition. Low light shots were a lost cause with the Vibrant and Captivate, while they come out decently with the Epic 4G. The phone can shoot up to 720p video and the quality is more than good enough (with good lighting) for YouTube uploads.

The Epic has a front-facing VGA camera; a rarity in US phones but seemingly standard on Sprint 4G smartphones (if 2 phones can be considered a trend).

The GPS has been an issue with the Galaxy S phones and Samsung should shortly release an update to tweak the GPS on the Vibrant and Captivate. Samsung says the problem is largely due to Google's new requirement to ship the phone with location services turned off. If you go into settings and turn on location services, the Galaxy S phones' GPS problems diminish (we have noticed that the setting doesn't always stick). Our Epic 4G's GPS behaved normally and we got a location fix within 6 meters in 30 seconds on a cold start (the phone had just been rebooted). In the week we've used the Epic, the GPS hasn't lost it when running Google Maps and Sprint Navigation. We do have few tall buildings in our area and a generally good view of the sky, however.

Battery Life

Superphones with large displays, WiFi, 3G and 1GHz CPUs aren't Energizer bunnies. 4G only makes it worse, and if you use 4G, the phone will barely make it through a full day. If you stick with 3G, the Epic should make it through a full day. The 1500 mAh Lithium Ion battery is user replaceable, and as with other Galaxy S phones, the battery meter's graphic doesn't match the actual percentage of charge remaining (49% looks like two thirds full according to the menu bar graphic).

Conclusion

Sprint's second 4G Android smartphone is a winner, and we continue to be impressed with Samsung's Galaxy S line. The keyboard is wonderful, the display is dreamy and build quality is solid. Though 4G coverage and speeds aren't sending us into paroxysms of joy, Sprint's 3G EV-DO Rev. A coverage is solid and fast enough to thoroughly enjoy this largely Internet-centric Google phone. And the 1GHz Hummingbird CPU is extremely fast-- there's no lag here. If you're looking for a high end Android smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard, the Epic 4G has few competitors beyond the Motorola Droid 2, and no competitors on Sprint. We have a feeling that even if the Epic faced greater competition, it would still come out at the top or near the top of the superphone heap. Our only complaint? The $10/month additional data plan fee that hurts your pocket more than the $50 higher price vs. competing smartphones.

Specs:

Display: 4", 800 x 480 capacitive multi-touch Super AMOLED display. Has accelerometer and ambient light sensor.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh.
Performance: 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird CPU, ARM Cortex-A8 with PowerVR 3D accelerated graphics. 1 gig internal storage.
Size: 4.9 x 2.5 x 0.6 inches. Weight: 5.47 ounces.
Phone: CDMA dual band digital with EV-DO Rev. A 3G. 4G WiMAX.
Camera: Main (rear-facing) 5.0 megapixel with autofocus lens and LED flash. Can shoot HD 720p video. Has front-facing VGA camera.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Google Voice Command software, Samsung customized music player and video player. Has virtual Dolby 5.1 sound.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1.
Software: Android OS 2.1 Eclair with Samsung TouchWiz 3.0 and the full suite of Google apps. Sprint apps include Sprint Navigation, Sprint TV and Sprint Football.
Expansion: SDHC microSD card slot, 16 gig included.
In the Box: Phone, battery, charger, USB cable, 16 microSD card (installed in phone), microSD card adapter, stereo earbud headset and printed guide.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

2011-02-10T03:16:00.000-08:00

Sony Ericsson hasn’t had an easy few years; the smartphone is eclipsing the feature phone and even SE’s higher end imaging phones haven’t garnered much attention. Years ago they chose the UIQ smartphone platform which is now defunct, and then they moved to Windows Mobile for very expensive unlocked phones like the Xperia X1a. The Windows Mobile 6.x platform is on its way out as Microsoft readies for the release of Windows Phone 7 at the end of 2010, so Sony Ericsson is now trying their hand at Android. Android is a hot, fresh platform and Sony Ericsson chose well this time. The folks at SE know how to make uber-sexy high end hardware and the X10 fits into this category. This isn’t a recession-friendly phone, at least not if you get it unlocked without a contract, and no US carrier has announced plans to offer the Xperia (yet). Rogers in Canada is offering the phone and they share 3G bands with AT&T in the US. That means Sony Ericsson has an X10a model with AT&T compatible 3G, and we assume that they’ll offer it unlocked in the US sans contract subsidy. Though Sony Ericsson also lists a T-Mobile US 3G compatible version, they tell us this doesn’t mean that phone will be produced. They merely list all possible variants that they might make. Sorry T-Mobile customers.

Our review unit has final production hardware but not final production software. We found the phone stable and well-behaved overall and we’d guess the firmware is reasonably close to release candidate status. Those issues that we do have with the X10a aren’t the result of bugs but rather design choices, and we’ll detail those later. As you’d expect from a phone with a 1GHz processor, the Xperia is a fast phone, even with pre-release firmware. *Editor's note: we've updated this review to reflect the final release version that's offered by AT&T.

Specs at a Glance

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10a (the “a” stands for Americas and indicates that it has US compatible 3G bands and is meant for sale in the Americas) is an Android 1.6 (donut) smartphone. It has a 4” capacitive touch screen with 854 x 480 resolution, an on-screen keyboard and an accelerometer. It has WiFi, Bluetooth and a GPS that works with Google Maps. The phone has a gig of internal storage with approximately 425 megs free for your use and a microSD card slot (an 8 gig card is included). The processor is Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon—one of the fastest mobile CPUs available as of this writing. It’s boatloads faster than the old 528MHz Qualcomm CPU used in many Android phones like the Hero and MyTouch 3G. It’s the same CPU used in the Nexus One and HTC HD2. Sony Ericsson is known for their great camera phones and the X10 has an 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus and an LED flash. Sony Ericsson includes software customizations that are pleasant and non-intrusive.

A walk Around the Phone

This is a large but not ungainly phone. Quite the opposite, it’s one of the most attractive Android handsets we’ve laid eyes on. That said, it's a plastic phone and doesn't feel quite as high end and rugged as the Nexus One. It’s available in black and white and we have the black model for review. The front face is dominated by the large 4” touch screen, with three chromed mechanical buttons below. These buttons are more like bars so they don’t add to the phone’s height. They’re easy to use and have good tactile feel. They handle the standard Android menu, home and back functions (the usual fourth Android search button is MIA).

Side controls are simple: volume buttons and a dedicated camera key on the right side. The 3.5mm stereo jack, micro USB port (under a rubber door) and power button are up top. The phone’s plastic back has an attractive matte finish and it curves at the sides to feel great in the hand. It’s a yank-off style back and there’s a small groove at the bottom where you’ll start pulling it off. The microSD card slot is under the battery door and unfortunately you must remove the battery to access the card.

The 4” capacitive display is very bright (once you disable the very conservative auto-brightness feature) and sharp. This is one of the larger displays on the phone market: lovely. We miss the multi-touch support and will have to wait for OS 2.1 to get it. No fault of the screen itself, the unlock screen makes us want to shriek. You must do a long arcing diagonal sweep from the bottom to the upper right section of the display (Pythagoras tells us they couldn’t have found a longer path). That’s way too long a motion and you have to do it quickly (but not too quickly) or it will bounce back. Argh! Sony Ericsson’s custom on-screen keyboard makes us want to throw the phone out the window. I have used, with few complaints, many Android phones’ on-screen keyboards and never had problems. With the SE keyboard the best we got was 50% accuracy in both landscape and portrait modes—yeegads. Switching to the standard Android keyboard helps (press and hold on the 123 button to select a different keyboard) but I still found the Nexus One and others easier to use. That’s strange since the larger the screen, the easier typing should be.

Software

The Xperia X10a runs Android OS 1.6 which is little old since the Samsung Captivate (in fact all Galaxy S phones), Motorola Droid X and Droid 2 ship with 2.1 or newer. Not that Sony Ericsson is the only manufacturer that’s guilty of shipping 1.6 or even 1.5 recently: the Motorola Cliq XT, Motorola Backflip, and the Acer Liquid all shipped with older OS versions too. Generally, if the manufacturer heavily customizes Android, it takes time to rework those customizations to work with the new OS, hence you don’t always get the latest OS. Though Sony Ericsson’s customizations are subtle, there are plenty of them, so we’re a bit understanding. However, Sony Ericsson tells us that the Xperia X10 won’t get an OS upgrade to 2.1 until Q4 2010. At that point, the SE will still be behind Android phones running OS 2.2 Froyo.

Video Review

Here's our video review of the pre-release Xperia X10. We show the hardware in detail and take a look at Sony Ericsson software such as Timescape and Mediascape as well as built-in Google applications. It's a great way to see Sony Ericsson's Android customizations in action.

In our second video review we cover the AT&T branded version of the Xperia X10:

So what are Sony Ericsson’s customizations? The most salient are Mediascape and Timescape, both of which we like. Timescape is a timeline of activities: Facebook updates, Twitter feeds, MySpace status updates, messages, call log, photos you’ve taken and music you’ve played. It uses a flappable deck of cards metaphor and is easy to use and fun. If you don’t want or need certain items, you can remove them from Timescape. You can use it as your home screen or stick with the standard Android desktop and access it via shortcuts at the bottom of the home screen. The same goes for Mediascape; it’s available as an icon at the bottom too. Even if you go with the default Android desktop, you’ll get a Timescape widget that shows the latest item. If you tap on it you’re taken to the Timescape screen and you can flip through the cards. If you don’t like the widget, you can remove it from the desktop just as you would any Android widget. Watch our video review to see Timescape in action.

Mediascape is a multimedia application that looks clean and is intuitive. It provides access to photos, videos and music. The music player has online access to PlayNow and the photo viewer has access to Facebook and Picasa. Since the standard Android 1.6 multimedia players are weak, we welcome Sony Ericsson’s Mediascape.

The web browser

is the standard Android webkit browser. There’s no Flash support and there’s no pinch zooming because that feature was added in Android 2.1 unless a manufacturer wanted to write their own driver (as did HTC for the Hero and other Android phones). Likewise there’s no voice input for Google search in 1.6, but Sony Ericsson did manage to get the newer version of Google Maps on the phone so you can get spoken navigation.

Other software includes Sony Ericsson Sync (it claims to sync your PIM data to SE servers) and Moxier, an excellent MS Exchange client. Wisepilot was included with our unit and it’s a GPS, mapping and navigation application. The application is tailored for use in Europe; for distance and speeds are metric only, and only Scandinavian countries are available for business searches. But the app can download maps and POIs for US locations when using the “near me” search option and directions are clear and logical as long as you can think in meters. The AT&T version supports remote wipe and has even more robust MS Exchange syncing support that handles contacts and calendar items including meeting invites.

Phone and Reception

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10a is a quad band GSM world phone. It has 3G HSDPA on AT&T’s 850/1900MHz bands. The unlocked version of the smartphone automatically configured itself with the correct data settings when we inserted our AT&T SIM card and we were then able to use all data services. The AT&T version comes pre-configured to work on AT&T. Reception on 3G was average among AT&T phones. It has better reception than the iPhone 3GS: using the same SIM at the same location the Xperia had a -95db signal vs. the iPhone’s -101db.

Voice quality is loud and clear, and the Xperia behaved well as a phone. Data speeds were likewise very good. Here in the Dallas area we have AT&T HSPA 7.2Mbps service and the Speedtest.net app reported an average of 3,000kbps for download speed and 700kbps for uploads. The Xperia actually did better on the Speedtest.net application than did my iPhone 3GS using the same SIM at the same test location (the iPhone 3GS averages 2,500kbps down and 280 up).

Camera

It’s hard to argue with a Sony Ericsson 8.1 megapixel camera phone. As you’d expect, it takes lovely photos and it has options for single autofocus, multi autofocus, macro, face detection and infinity focus modes. You can select from a variety of scene modes such as portrait, night, beach and snow, sports, party and document and you can tweak the exposure. The camera has scene recognition, smile detection and touch capture options, and that’s it for photo settings.

The video camera can shoot at VGA, wide VGA, YouTube optimized, QVGA and MMS resolutions. That’s pretty much it for video settings. VGA video averages 25fps and as we’ve noted in prior comparisons, the Sony Ericsson does well against most phones except Nokia Nseries phones for video quality.

Battery Life

What happens when you combine an extremely fast CPU, large display and 3G wireless? The battery says “ouch”. The 1500 mAh Lithium Ion battery lasted us a day on a charge with moderate use (not using Moxier push email and Exchange sync). This is a phone you’ll have to charge nightly unless you’re a very light user. Other smartphones with similar specs like the Nexus One and Samsung Captivate are also battery hogs, though we found the Nexus One lasted longer than the Xperia X10a. It did last as long as the Captivate. Fortunately, you can get a spare battery and swap it in during the day if you’re heavy user.

Conclusion

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10a is undeniably a solid high end Android phone. It’s great looking, well made and the specs are positively top notch. The camera handily beats the Nexus One and the Samsung Captivate. Our review unit had stronger cell reception than the Nexus One and similar reception as the Captivate. But the Samsung Captivate is the brighter shining star: it has a newer version of the Android OS, it's faster, it has that fantastic Super AMOLED display and it's thinner.

We like Timescape and Mediascape, and just in case you don’t, you don’t have to use them. There’s nothing like flexibility. We also appreciate the inclusion of solid MS Exchange support since Android 1.6 lacks Exchange syncing (and even 2.2 isn't a solid solution fo Exchange sync). Google Maps has navigation and AT&T Navigator are there for turn-by-turn directions. We sorely miss multi-touch support; it’s not pleasant to go back to using on screen zoom buttons and single-touch keyboard input. Speaking of keyboards, the Sony Ericsson software keyboard isn’t pleasant, but you can switch to the standard Android keyboard that isn’t tops but it works. Lastly, AT&T has locked out non-market app installations, and that means you'll only be able to install applications from the Android Market.

Pro: Top notch hardware and good looking too. Excellent 4” capacitive touch screen, top-of-the-line 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, great camera, enjoyable software customizations. Solid reception and fast data speeds on AT&T’s 3G network. Very good audio quality for multimedia and capable video playback.

Con: Ships with old version of Android OS, battery life is so-so, the unlock screen and Sony Ericsson software keyboard make us want to bang our heads.

Specs:

Display: 4" capacitive touch screen (scratch resistant). Resolution: 480 x 854 pixels, supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer.
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh.
Performance: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor. 1 gig Flash ROM with ~ 425 megs available.
Size: 4.7 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches. Weight: 4.8 ounces.
Phone: GSM quad band world phone 850/900/1800/1900MHz with EDGE. 3G HSDPA 7.2Mbps on the 850/1900/2100 MHz bands (works on AT&T and overseas).
Camera: 8.1MP camera with autofocus lens and LED flash. Can shoot video up to wide VGA resolution.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth.
Software: Android 1.6 OS (Donut). Sony Ericsson applications and Android enhancements: Timescape, Mediascape, Sony Ericsson Sync and Sony Ericsson Home with clock widget. Standard Google Android software: complete standard package including Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube, Android web browser, email client, Google Maps, Android Market and Google media uploader. 3rd party software and AT&T software: MS Exchange sync ("Work Email" by Futuredial), OfficeSuite (MS Office viewer by Mobile Systems), MobiTV, AT&T Maps, AT&T Radio, AT&T Hotspots, AT&T Family Map, Where, YP Mobile, Mobile Banking, Mobile Video (CV) and AT&T Navigator.
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot. 8 gig card included.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro

2011-02-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

They're cute, they're incredibly small yet they're full-featured Android smartphones. They're the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro. They each measure 3.5 x 2 x 0.7 inches or less and the mini weighs only 3.1 ounces while the keyboard-equipped X10 mini pro weighs 4.2 ounces. Both phones run Android 1.6 Donut (alas still behind the times like their big brother the Xperia X10a), but unlike the full-sized Xperia X10a, these have 600MHz Qualcomm CPUs rather than a 1GHz Snapdragon.

The X10 mini pro and X10 mini.

The mini phones aren't meant for power users; they're for those who care more about portability and fashion. The X10 mini has a rainbow of back covers-- something to match nearly every outfit (especially if you're into bright colors or monochrome) while the X10 mini pro has a black soft touch back. They undeniably look like plastic phones, though they're stylish and solid. We take a look at the X10a mini versions which have 3G HSDPA on AT&T's 3G bands as well as 2100Mhz for Europe. The non "a" models have 900/2100MHz 3G for overseas use only, but all are quad band GSM world phones with EDGE. The models we have for review are not locked to any carrier, and we don't yet know if Sony Ericsson will sell them direct with no carrier involvement or if AT&T might offer them.

The X10 mini back collection.

Both models have small QVGA displays (240 x 320 pixels) with accelerometers. That's low resolution by Android standards where base phones are generally 320 x 480 and high end phones 800 x 480, but the resolution is appropriate to the display's size. Anything higher would have been unreadable. The drawback is that some apps don't support the lower QVGA resolution, though most do.

Above and below: the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini.

Though small, these phones are smart. They run full Android with Google Maps, Gmail, Android Market, YouTube and all the rest of Google's goodies. They have Sony Ericsson's Timescape software that we first saw on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10a superphone headed for AT&T. Timescape is social networking software that uses a card metaphor to keep you up to date with Facebook and Twitter. Despite the lower CPU speeds, the mini models handle Timescape just as well as the Xperia X10.

The mini and mini pro have a GPS that works with Google Maps and the included Wisepilot, WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 and a good 5 megapixel autofocus camera with flash that can shoot video at VGA 30 fps resolution. Not bad for absolutely tiny phones.

The Xperia X10 mini pro has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that's very useable, though it lacks backlighting. The hardware keyboard, slightly larger size and user replaceable battery are the only differences between the mini pro and the mini.

Video Review

Here's our video review of the Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro and mini:

Phone and Reception

Both tiny Xperia phones have average reception on AT&T, managing a -93 db signal where our iPhone 3GS got -97 and our BlackBerry Torch managed an impressive -81db (you go, RIM!). That's typical as SE phones typically have middle of the road reception and RIM's flagship GSM phones have excellent reception. Voice quality is good with clear audio and moderate volume (again typical of SE). The speaker may be small, but it's loud and clear enough to hear driving directions in a sedan (a convertible or sports car would be a stretch).

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro.

The web browser is the usual excellent Google webkit browser that handles full HTML sites with aplomb. The YouTube player is here and the phone can play mobile YouTube but not FLV Flash video meant for computers (look to Froyo 2.2 Android devices with the Flash Player plugin for that). Gmail and an email client for POP3 and IMAP email are on-board, but there's no Android support for Exchange Sync in this old version of the OS.

Multimedia

We like Sony Ericsson's customized music player-- they certainly know how to do a media player right. The video player performs well (watch our video review to see it in action), even with high bitrate content, but these phones are hardly video-centric given their small, relatively low resolution displays. That said, the displays on each are sharp and bright. The capacitive display is responsive to touch, though the on-screen keyboard on the mini can be a trial since the virtual keys are so small.

Conclusion

We can't give a final star rating to these two charming baby Android phones since Sony Ericsson wasn't able to provide us with ballpark pricing. Our guess is that they'll sell for $300 to $350 without a contract, and if that's the case, we give them a thumbs-up if you're looking for an incredibly pocketable Android smartphone. They're certainly a novel response to the Jumbotron run of Android superphones, and we know that some of you still want something that will fit in your pocket and not require charging twice per day. In our tests, the Xperia X10 mini and mini pro easily lasted two days on a charge with moderate use. The phones have decent reception, sharp call quality and a solid 3G web experience on AT&T Wireless.

Specs:

Display: 2.5" Capacitive multi-touch display. Resolution: QVGA 240 x 320 pixels, supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer (and keyboard deployment on the mini pro).
Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable 930 mAh. X10 mini pro battery is user replaceable, X10 mini: battery isn't user accessible.
Performance: Qualcomm MSM7227 600 MHz processor. 128 MB built-in RAM.
Size: X10 mini: 3.3 x 2.0 x 0.6 inches. Weight: 3.1 ounces. X10 mini pro: 3.5 x 2.0 x 0.7 inches. Weight: 4.2 ounces.
Phone: GSM quad band world phone 850/900/1800/1900MHz. The X10a version have AT&T 3G HSDPA on the 850/1900MHz bands plus the Euro 2100MHz band. Non-"a" version has Euro 3G only on the 900/2100MHz bands.
Camera: 5 MP with autofocus lens and LED flash. Can shoot VGA video at 30fps.
GPS: Has aGPS and Google Maps. Wisepilot also installed.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP.
Software: Android OS 1.6 Donut with Sony Ericsson custom software including Timescape. Sony Ericsson music player, TrackID, Wisepilot GPS navigation software, NeoReader bar code scanner and demo games. Standard suite of Google software, including Google Maps, YouTube player, Gmail and Gtalk.
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, 2 gig card included. Has micro USB connector.

Samsung Intercept

2011-02-08T03:09:00.000-08:00