Archive for the ‘Mobile Phone Reviews’ Category:
BlackBerry Bold 9000 Review
The New Definition of Professional Looking
RIM has dramatically improved the looks of its devices in recent years, and the Bold is a new high point. Its rounded corners and leather-textured back make it somehow both professional and sexy.
And the higher-resolution screen is great, too. The Bold has a 320-by-480-pixel display, which is at least twice the resolution of the earlier RIM models, like the Curve. This is a beautiful screen that makes everything you do with the Bold look great, but especially watching movies.
This smartphone is wider than many of its competitors, but it’s also relatively thin. And its width allows the aforementioned screen to be larger, and also makes room for a bigger keyboard. This isn’t as wide as the landscape-oriented keyboards you’ll find on some smartphones, but it’s large enough to be comfortable to type on. There’s no separation between keys, but each key has a raised area that makes it easier for you to be sure you’re hitting just one at a time. Sadly, the Bold doesn’t fix one of my biggest complaints with BlackBerry keyboards: there are no keys dedicated to the most frequently used punctuation marks, including the period and the comma.
Between the screen and keyboard is the trackball. As the Bold doesn’t have a touchscreen, you’ll do much of your interacting with it through this, and it’s up to the job. After a couple of days of use, I began to think that a trackball is a better option than a D-pad and definitely superior to the old BlackBerry track-wheel.
There are programmable keys on both the left and right sides of this device, which is another thing I’d like to see on other smartphones.
There’s also a button on top you can use to mute incoming calls. This doesn’t answer the call or send it to voice-mail, it just quickly shuts off the ringing sound. You can use this same button to put the Bold in standby mode, which locks the keys and turns the screen off until you hit this button again. It will still take calls, so it’s a good way to carry your smartphone around.
HSDPA, At Last
The BlackBerry Bold is the first model from RIM with HSDPA, the latest version of high-speed wireless networking used by GSM carriers. This is welcome news for AT&T customers, but isn’t going to impress Verizon or Sprint users, as their BlackBerries have had equivalent data transfer speeds for a long time. But like I said, AT&T customers are going to enjoy a noticeable speed increase when accessing web sites.
And the Bold’s web browser is a pleasant surprise. I’ve used some miserable browsers on BlackBerries over the years, but this one is significantly improved. It’s not amazing or even cutting edge by any stretch, but it’s more usable than the browser on any BlackBerry I’ve seen before.
This smartphone is also one of the first from this company with Wi-Fi, which can be used to speed up your browsing when you’re in range of a hotspot.
It also has Bluetooth. This is primarily intended to let you use wireless headsets and car-kits, and it does this job nicely For any of you who aren’t familiar with this term, it refers to the ability to make your phone act as a wireless modem for another computer.
What separates a smartphone from an ordinary mobile phone is good software. Fortunately, the BlackBerry Bold is well supplied with this.
Like all RIM’s models. this device supports push email. Messages can come from a company’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server, but AT&T also offers a version of this service for consumers, too.
One of the best new features is the bundled version of DataViz Documents To Go. This is a suite of applications for working with Microsoft Office files. It does a decent job of letting you see files in their original format, and edit them, too. It doesn’t support all the formatting options Word does, but if you edit and re-save a document with formatting DocsToGo can’t display, the unsupported formatting won’t be affected.
Sony Ericsson W595 Review
The finish has a rubbery texture though not a rubbery look, and ensures that the phone feels secure in the hand. The slide mechanism is smooth, and opening the slide doesn’t leave the phone feeling top or bottom heavy.
For my taste the handset is a little on the tall side. I think Sony Ericsson could have shaved a few millimetres off without too much fuss. For the record the phone is precisely 100mm tall when closed, 47mm wide and 14mm thick. It weighs 104g and when opened I measured it at 130mm tall.
There isn’t anything to get a grip on when you open the slide, so fingerprints inevitably gather on the screen. This is ever so slightly recessed which makes wiping it down your jeans to clean it a little bit awkward.
The screen itself measures 2.2in diagonally. This isn’t a vast size by any means, but it is large enough for what is on offer here, and as ever with Sony Ericsson the TFT is sharp and bright, the 240 x 320 pixels clear. Sony Ericsson has thrown in a motion sensor so that when you twist the phone in your hand the screen swivels round. As ever this is great for things like photo/video viewing and web browsing.
The D-pad has built in music controls and, when you are in camera mode the central button shoots photos while pressing left and right flick between video, stills shooting and the gallery.
Music is at the core of what this phone does and a key on the side of the casing drops you right into the Walkman software. It also doubles as the shake control key. Hold it down and you can shake left and right to switch tracks, up and down to change volume. Sony Ericsson should really ditch this feature. It isn’t as accurate as using the easily accessible D-pad controls, and in my view you’ll look demented while doing it.
SensMe, which has been around for a while on Sony Ericsson handsets, helps you choose music to match your mood. Memory runs to 40MB with a 2GB Memory Stick Micro also included.
Sony Ericsson simply can’t get rid of its proprietary, side-mounted, headset connector, but in this case it ends in a chunky 3.5mm splitter. I’m getting images of lovey-dovey types sharing their favourite tracks on the train and people doubling up to listen to a podcast so they can share the laughter/information/whatever. It’s sweet to think that Sony Ericsson cares so much, but you might find it annoying to carry bulk at the phone end and the 3.5mm end of your headset.
Nokia E71 Mobile Phone Review
The screen isn’t particularly stunning, only 2.36-inches diagonal, QVGA and none-too-bright, but it certainly gets the job done and leaves room for all that QWERTY. Battery life is basically a non-issue, with 20 days of standby, and 10.5 hours of GSM talk, though the 4.5 hours of 3G talk might pose an issue. We didn’t really put the processor to the test, but load times for just about everything were quite zippy, especially compared to the E62’s consistent sluggishness in loading up simple things like recent calls and the address book.
Overall it’s all about your OS of choice and what exactly you want to do with your phone. If music and video playback are key, the E71’s screen and interface are going to pose a challenge, and if typing is paramount you might need a slightly larger QWERTY keyboard — though our typing speed after about a day was roughly equivalent to our iPhone speed after about a year of use. As for accomplishing what it sets out to do, the E71 manages it all with style, providing a plethora of features in a speedy, beautiful and miniscule device. Since Nokia won’t be working with American carriers right away on subsidizing the E7
HTC Touch HD review
Welcome to the HTC Touch HD, can it live up to all the hype, is it really the device that can pull me away from the iPhone 3G and condemn it to my sock draw, read on to find out.
What’s in the box
This device screams minimalistic from all angles so don’t expect lots of hardware buttons. On the top we have a 3.5mm headphone socket, not recessed at all and fits all headphones with a 3.5mm jack, nice one HTC about time too. To the left of that we have a simple on/off button and a tiny green led which flashes when you have a missed call etc.
The mail tab is very similar to the messaging tab but purely concentrates on email, here you have access to your email inboxes, I have three shown but they have no titles so you have to guess which one is which until you get to know their order, you can create new messages from here and also click individual messages which opens up the standard Windows Mobile Outlook screens. As this is a Windows Mobile device the email integration is top draw with support for full HTML email and if you have an Exchange account, push email, contacts and agenda all work flawlessly. This is where Windows Mobile excels.
The Internet tab has quick access to the pre-installed Opera 9.5 Browser, YouTube application and favourite bookmarks. The browser works well and renders pages as fast as the iPhones’s Safari browser but I found the interface mainly due to the resistive screen to be harder to use, maybe practice will change my perspective. When your used to pinching and expanding two figures to zoom in and out having to pull up a toolbar and a slider to do the same does not seem as natural to me. The browser although being a newer version than the one seen on the HTC Diamond or the Touch Pro still has no support for Flash.