SubscribeThe HTC Windows Mobile HD2 is the world’s largest. This is not necessary to say much, but HTC has made a mistake with Windows Mobile Custom UI in the fall so beautiful it seems the weather brings tears to my eyes. The HD2 is huge, is 109 millimeters (4.3 inch) screen, small icons on the mobile operating system from Microsoft is Tap. We will update this, prices for contracts as they become available, but in the meantime, you will have the HD2 SIM free for about the £500.
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Tag: WI-Fi
REVIEWS: Samsung Moment mobile phone
Can Speed win over style?
The spec sheet suggests that the Samsung Moment, available on?Sprint?in the USA should be one of the best?Android-powered handsets out there, with its AMOLED screen, fast processor and the “now” network. But can its specs live up to the dream? Read on to find out.
To say that the Samsung Moment is big would be an understatement; to say that it was ugly: a fairer statement; to say it is fast: that much is true.?That’s pretty much the best way to describe the new Android 1.5 smartphone, because whilst it’s one of the fastest Android handsets we’ve tested, it’s also one of the most unpolished in terms of “wow” factor t.
The decline and fall of the handset starts with the design. A landscape slider, the unit measures a rather bloated 4.6 x 2.34 x .63in and weighs a hefty 160 grams (5.6oz). A brick (Mrs Pocket-lint’s words not ours) is probably the politest way to describe it.
The rather impressive 3.2-inch AMOLED 320 x 480-pixel screen holds its own on the front of the unit offering up not only an array of touch-sensitive and physical buttons beneath but a gaudy strip at the top.
Sliding out to the side of the left screen is a QWERTY keyboard while the right offers a dedicated camera button, voice control and the Mini-USB socket. There’s also a 3.5mm socket covered by a bit of plastic that will break within 3 weeks and the standard volume keys.
Slide open that keyboard and you’ll hurt your eyes, especially if it’s dark. Looking like a beehive honeycomb, the keys are laid out over four rows with the numbers getting their own dedicated row.
That means that Samsung?has crammed the rest of the keyboard over the next three. The end result is that the spacebar is in-between the “V” and “B” something that is very off putting and unconformable for the touch typists amongst you. You might not realise it but you know where the keys are on a keyboard and throwing in random space bars for us just doesn’t work.
All this pales in significance however if you use it in the dark. The keyboard handily lights up, however all the function keys (there is one for every key) glow a strong blue. Confusing isn’t the word.
Back to the top side of the device and the touch sensitive buttons under the screen offer the usual home, menu and back features found on most Android handsets. Beneath that there is a call answer and hang up button and between those a touch-sensitive optical trackpad (like that found on other Samsung handsets and the BlackBerry Bold 9700).?The touchpad is actually one of the cooler elements of the handset as it allows you scroll through menus, icons on the screen or the web pages without touching the screen.
The only other tech on the outside is the 3.2-megapixel camera with flash. With Samsung dominating the megapixel race (it’s up to 12 megapixels) we’re surprised to see only a 3.2-megapixel offering and at the current state of play it looks like Sony Ericsson will be the purveyor of high pixel cameras for the platform with the Xperia X10 sporting 8 megapixels.
Connectivity is served by Sprint’s Dual-Band EVDO Rev. A 800/1900MHz offering and you’ll get Wi-Fi b and g along side Bluetooth. There is also GPS in case you get lost.
Power up the phone and that 800MHz chip running Android 1.5 is fast. Even though we’ve played with a 1GHz Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 (pre-production) the Samsung Moment appears (currently) to be faster.
One of the reasons for this, is that like the i7500 released in the UK, the Samsung Moment has no customisation what so ever. No Sense UI, no Motoblur, no Nexus UX – Samsung might have embraced the Android platform, but it hasn’t done anything to enhance the experience above and beyond what Google has offered in the OS.?In fact, beyond the big silver Samsung logo on the front and the second one on the back there is no trace of the Korean manufacturer.
As for Sprint, that’s a different matter. As an exclusive handset it gets an even bigger silver logo above the screen and the usual array of Sprint flavoured applications like SprintTV, Sprint Navigation (Google Maps Navigation?is only available for 1.6 and 2.0 based devices at present), and Nascar Sprint Cup (all as found on the Sprint?HTC Hero).
As for the rest of the applications, well it’s the usual story. The usual suspects are installed – Amazon MP3, Gmail, and Google Maps, with a further 10,000 available in Marketplace.?All this software or data that you create can be stored on the phone’s own internal 288MB of memory or an external microSD card, you get 2GB in the box.
Phone time is around 5 hours from a single charge, while the battery lasted the usual day in our tests, but is heavily dependent on what you do. Use it like a laptop and it will last like one.
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Verdict:
The Samsung Moment really is one of those handsets that looks so much better on paper than in real life. The specs suggest this will be a monster, and in fairness in performance it is. The trouble is that it is incredibly dull both in its software offering and its design.?This makes the T-Mobile G1 look good and that’s saying something.
It might be more powerful and faster than the HTC Hero from Sprint, however unless you are ready to be mocked by your friends when your phone rings we would avoid this from a street cred point of view at all costs.
That said, if you have no friends or don’t care, you can’t (currently) get much faster than this.
Tags:
Phones Mobile phones Samsung Android Google Sprint
Samsung Moment mobile phone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:45:11 +0000
REVIEWS: BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 mobile phone
Can this improve on the Storm?
When RIM launched the BlackBerry Storm in 2008 it was greeted with a mixed reception. Some loved it, others (like Stephen Fry) hated it. So can the second attempt fix the problems and give BlackBerry users a viable touchscreen experience? We’ve been using one for a couple of weeks to find out.
At a quick glance you’ll think it’s the same phone as last year. The design is similar, the form factor is virtually the same and the operating system doesn’t look too different either.
Of course it isn’t the same and RIM has worked hard to address all the minor and major issues associated with the first version of the handset. The software is faster and more responsive, the bottom buttons are now a part of the screen rather than separate, and overall it’s a far better experience than before. Say what you want, but this is how the original Storm should have performed.
So does that make it another contender for phone of the year? In short, no. While the Storm users we tracked down were impressed – noting it was much improved in performance levels – the world has moved on from the innovative, if not controversial, approach of the first handset.
If you are moving over from a Bold or Curve, with its hard QWERTY keyboard, then the notion of having to jab the screen to accept your commands (SurePress as RIM calls it) won’t be that annoying, but moving from a capacitive touchscreen device you will find it a shock.
The system works by floating the entire high-resolution 480 x 360 pixel 3.25-inch screen so you have to physically press it down to accept your command. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but if you’re looking to type a long email you will really feel like you have gone 10 rounds in a thumb fight: it’s hard work.?
Upgraded from a single hidden button underneath to four actuators in the corners of the screen you get a more responsive press and therefore feedback to your actions. It also means it doesn’t shift around as much as the first screen did in its cradle as it’s held in place at the four corners rather than the centre. It will allow for two finger pressing, but not pinching to zoom for example.
Hardware-wise it’s the usual story, following the “we don’t need Wi-Fi” stance on the Storm, the Storm 2 now has Wi-Fi. Personally it’s not that big a deal as Verizon and Vodafone’s 3G coverage is very good, but if you were upset by the lack of Wi-Fi you now don’t have to be. Wi-Fi joins 3G, CDMA (for Verizon) Bluetooth and GPS on the connectivity front. Multimedia wise, you get a 16GB microSD card inside to store your stuff on, a 3.5mm headphones socket, a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash, auto focus, image stabilization, and a 2x digital zoom as well as that very crisp screen ideal for watching movies and BlackBerry OS 5.0.
There’s also a bump in Flash memory (double in fact from 128MB to 256MB) and on-board memory for storing Apps goes up to 2GB from 1GB.
The Operating system is the same, obviously adapted for the touchscreen, as you’ll find on the latest BlackBerry handsets like the Bold 9700.?Those who have used a BlackBerry before know what they are getting here and the Storm on that front doesn’t throw up any surprises.
We tested a Verizon handset in the US, although it is available on Vodafone in the UK. Verizon pre-install their VCast Sony ID, VCast Videos and VZ Navigator as standard on the unit. You can choose to remove them if you want, and there isn’t any further customisation. It’s not as violent as carriers used to be with dedicated skins for example.
There are tweaks to the software over the original making it a better experience all around, but ones to note are the Inertial Scrolling w/Snap Back that means you can swipe down with your finger and watch the page carry on scrolling (just like the wheel of fortune) and we especially like the ability to now press on the network coverage logo and get direct access to the connections. It’s the same for the clock (i.e., alarms) and the volume, although you do get a physical volume button to mute it for when you hit that important “do not disturb” meeting.
Email is fantastic, giving you real power to search. Add that to Xobni’s BlackBerry app when it comes out and this, for communicating on the go, will be hard to beat. It’s what RIM do best after all, but that’s true of the BlackBerry family, not just the Storm 2.
However get into web browsing and the browser is incredibly slow on Wi-Fi and 3G, a shame as Verizon’s and Vodafone’s 3G coverage is very good. Pages seem to take forever to load and while you can opt for the nippier Opera browser you can’t set it as the default, which means you’ll soon forget about it when you go to open a link in an email or tweet.
Verdict:
The BlackBerry Storm 2 is a vast improvement on the Storm. It’s a better hardware design and better software build that gives you a better experience all around.
In the year since the Storm launched however, we’ve seen plenty of high-end smartphones hit the market in the UK and the US. The iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre, the HTC Hero, even the Motorola DEXT show us what can be done with touchscreen and slider devices. In a segment of the market offering great possibilities from a large touchscreen, the Storm 2 just can’t keep pace.
So the final result? It’s a condescending “well done” to RIM for making it better, but unfortunately it’s just not good enough when you compare it to the competition that’s now available.
Tags:
Phones Mobile phones RIM BlackBerry BlackBerry Storm 2
BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 mobile phone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:00:10 +0000
REVIEWS: BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 mobile phone
Can this improve on the Storm?
When RIM launched the BlackBerry Storm in 2008 it was greeted with a mixed reception. Some loved it, others (like Stephen Fry) hated it. So can the second attempt fix the problems and give BlackBerry users a viable touchscreen experience? We’ve been using one for a couple of weeks to find out.
At a quick glance you’ll think it’s the same phone as last year. The design is similar, the form factor is virtually the same and the operating system doesn’t look too different either.
Of course it isn’t the same and RIM has worked hard to address all the minor and major issues associated with the first version of the handset. The software is faster and more responsive, the bottom buttons are now a part of the screen rather than separate, and overall it’s a far better experience than before. Say what you want, but this is how the original Storm should have performed.
So does that make it another contender for phone of the year? In short, no. While the Storm users we tracked down were impressed – noting it was much improved in performance levels – the world has moved on from the innovative, if not controversial, approach of the first handset.
If you are moving over from a Bold or Curve, with its hard QWERTY keyboard, then the notion of having to jab the screen to accept your commands (SurePress as RIM calls it) won’t be that annoying, but moving from a capacitive touchscreen device you will find it a shock.
The system works by floating the entire high-resolution 480 x 360 pixel 3.25-inch screen so you have to physically press it down to accept your command. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but if you’re looking to type a long email you will really feel like you have gone 10 rounds in a thumb fight: it’s hard work.?
Upgraded from a single hidden button underneath to four actuators in the corners of the screen you get a more responsive press and therefore feedback to your actions. It also means it doesn’t shift around as much as the first screen did in its cradle as it’s held in place at the four corners rather than the centre. It will allow for two finger pressing, but not pinching to zoom for example.
Hardware-wise it’s the usual story, following the “we don’t need Wi-Fi” stance on the Storm, the Storm 2 now has Wi-Fi. Personally it’s not that big a deal as Verizon and Vodafone’s 3G coverage is very good, but if you were upset by the lack of Wi-Fi you now don’t have to be. Wi-Fi joins 3G, CDMA (for Verizon) Bluetooth and GPS on the connectivity front. Multimedia wise, you get a 16GB microSD card inside to store your stuff on, a 3.5mm headphones socket, a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash, auto focus, image stabilization, and a 2x digital zoom as well as that very crisp screen ideal for watching movies and BlackBerry OS 5.0.
There’s also a bump in Flash memory (double in fact from 128MB to 256MB) and on-board memory for storing Apps goes up to 2GB from 1GB.
The Operating system is the same, obviously adapted for the touchscreen, as you’ll find on the latest BlackBerry handsets like the Bold 9700.?Those who have used a BlackBerry before know what they are getting here and the Storm on that front doesn’t throw up any surprises.
We tested a Verizon handset in the US, although it is available on Vodafone in the UK. Verizon pre-install their VCast Sony ID, VCast Videos and VZ Navigator as standard on the unit. You can choose to remove them if you want, and there isn’t any further customisation. It’s not as violent as carriers used to be with dedicated skins for example.
There are tweaks to the software over the original making it a better experience all around, but ones to note are the Inertial Scrolling w/Snap Back that means you can swipe down with your finger and watch the page carry on scrolling (just like the wheel of fortune) and we especially like the ability to now press on the network coverage logo and get direct access to the connections. It’s the same for the clock (i.e., alarms) and the volume, although you do get a physical volume button to mute it for when you hit that important “do not disturb” meeting.
Email is fantastic, giving you real power to search. Add that to Xobni’s BlackBerry app when it comes out and this, for communicating on the go, will be hard to beat. It’s what RIM do best after all, but that’s true of the BlackBerry family, not just the Storm 2.
However get into web browsing and the browser is incredibly slow on Wi-Fi and 3G, a shame as Verizon’s and Vodafone’s 3G coverage is very good. Pages seem to take forever to load and while you can opt for the nippier Opera browser you can’t set it as the default, which means you’ll soon forget about it when you go to open a link in an email or tweet.
Verdict:
The BlackBerry Storm 2 is a vast improvement on the Storm. It’s a better hardware design and better software build that gives you a better experience all around.
In the year since the Storm launched however, we’ve seen plenty of high-end smartphones hit the market in the UK and the US. The iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre, the HTC Hero, even the Motorola DEXT show us what can be done with touchscreen and slider devices. In a segment of the market offering great possibilities from a large touchscreen, the Storm 2 just can’t keep pace.
So the final result? It’s a condescending “well done” to RIM for making it better, but unfortunately it’s just not good enough when you compare it to the competition that’s now available.
Tags:
Phones Mobile phones RIM BlackBerry BlackBerry Storm 2
BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 mobile phone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:00:10 +0000
REVIEWS: First ELSE mobile phone – First Look
Looking for something ELSE?
ELSE Ltd was born today along with their first handset, cunningly named the First ELSE. To clear things up ELSE Ltd was formerly known as Emblaze Mobile and today changed the name of the company as well as announcing their first device to the world. Pocket-lint were on hand to witness the unveiling, and have a close look at the new handset.
The company don’t want you to call it a phone. They are pushing the First ELSE as a portable device capable of fulfilling a number of connected roles, but not centred around the phone. Company CEO, Amir Kupervas, called out Apple’s iPhone, pointing out that it was named around the “phone” and that at all times the phone took prominence.
The differentiation perhaps doesn’t go much further than marketing: it will be sold as a mobile phone, in mobile phone outlets and supported by the mobile phone network. We’ll call it a mobile phone and so will everyone else.
In recent times we’ve seen a shift in mobile phone marketing to focus on applications and services, not just hardware. Windows Mobile is doing it with its giant application icons and Apple has been saying “there’s an app for that” for yonks: it’s fun, it’s light hearted. The teaser video for the First ELSE plays out like something from a Tom Clancy movie. You expect to see Matt Damon stroking a PSG-1. It’s the stuff of thrillers.
But is the handset itself thrilling?
The hardware specs are fairly typical. It measures 115.6 x 56.6 x 13mm, fairly average dimensions, if not a little on the long side. That gives you a 3.5-inch, 854 x 480 pixel resolution, display. It’s a capacitive touchscreen and from what we’ve seen it seems responsive enough.
The widescreen aspect means that you don’t get all the landscape space you might have wanted to reduce scrolling on websites, but it is sharp and the colours from sample images were certainly vivid, allowing of course for the fact that these were put in the device to do just that – show the screen at its best.
On the connectivity front you get UMTS/HSDPA (tri-band), GSM, EDGE (quad-band) as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It connects to the charger and your PC via a microUSB jack. A 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top.
Around the back is a 5-megapixel camera, but no sign of a flash or a LED illuminator. Kupervas used the opportunity in presenting the phone to take a shot at Sony Ericsson’s Satio, asking the audience when they’d choose a 12-megapixel phone over the 5-megapixel Canon camera? We didn’t get to see the First ELSE’s camera in action, so we don’t know how it stands up. Of course you get GPS too.
You also get 32GB of memory, so the First ELSE really punches hard into the storage area. Unfortunately there is no microSD card slot, so you can’t just stick your music collection in on a 16GB card, something of an oversight in our opinion.
The First ELSE isn’t about the hardware though. It is about the user interface, so everything that is written above you’d be encouraged to ignore, or so the company would have us believe. With the First ELSE comes a new operating system and platform for you to discover. It is based on an Access Linux platform at its core, with a user interface called ELSE Intuition.
ELSE claims that Intuition is the end of the “main menu”. In practise it doesn’t look like this really is the case, as you have a number of different styles of menu operation in ELSE. There is a diamond style menu that accesses major application groups and then there is sPlay. It is all designed to be operated by a single thumb for one-handed operation, with sPlay fanning out options for phone, diary and media, as the name suggests. You simply highlight the one you want and lift your thumb off to select that option.
Of course, that one-thumbed operation, as our pictures show, is the right thumb. If you are left-handed, you’ll have to snort in derision and get on with it as us lefties so often do. ELSE told us that First ELSE is designed for right-handed folk but perfectly usable by left-handers, with a planned “flip capacity” for future versions. As it is, if you’re left-handed, your thumb will cover the menu options as they splay out.
All the usual suspects are here and the interface does look a world apart from the staid menus that plague many other phones. But do you have a problem with Apple or Android’s icons? The overall effect on the First ELSE is something like you’d expect to see in The Terminator’s HUD. It has a raw futuristic look to it that looks sharp and technical.
There are also a number of shortcut touch buttons running down the right-hand side of the phone, giving you access to the menu, up/down navigation, back, and cross-platform search. This is a feature that we’ve all been calling for and ELSE claims to offer both device searching and online searching in a single integrated area.
We didn’t have the opportunity in our demo to evaluate how this will be in day-to-day use, but it is interesting, futuristic and looks great. We asked Kupervas what the inspiration was behind the First ELSE and the reply was simple: The Fifth Element and Minority Report. The idea that a sci-fi look and feel could be put into a device now drove Emblaze (as it was then) and Access to design the interface that the First ELSE gives us.
We were hoping for three precogs hiding under the back cover, giving a psychic connection to the Internet, or Milla Jovovich wearing a few white straps, but it seems not. Instead the hardware sits on top of a Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor, the likes of which we’ve seen in the Palm Pre.
The First ELSE will also feature “silent communication”, meaning you can turn your phone into your very own automated call centre. If you can’t take the call, you can trigger a range of questions and responses for the caller, like “press * for urgent” or “press # to call back later”.
The on-screen keyboard looked pretty futuristic too, boasting algorithms to workout what you are doing from your presses and predictive text entry to produce the words you meant. The switch from portrait to landscape seemed snappy too and works in most, but not all, applications.
The ethos behind the First ELSE is total integration. Rather than be a phone with a GPS, it is designed to behave like a standalone device. Kupervas named a number of companies whilst detailing the ELSE: iPod-like music system, BlackBerry-like email, TomTom-like GPS. Bold claims indeed, but as a marketing speech it sounds like the perfect device.
But then we come to the crunch, the single point which will likely define the success or failure of ELSE. All the above are supported by established systems whereas the First ELSE is starting from scratch. Almost. Looking at the supporting organisations brings out a few names that reveal what is behind ELSE. Navteq mapping, Emoze email, Alango to improve the voice communication, Nuance voice recognition, Red Bend OTA updating and so on.
ELSE told us that it has set up its own infrastructure for an easy out-of-the-box device that works straight away, but of course, we’ll have to see it in action before we can pass a judgement on it. Whether that means you’ll get cross-protocol IM or OTA Google Contact syncing, we don’t yet know.
We were told that the SDK would be released when the phone comes out to allow third-party developers to generate apps. Given the success of the iPhone and growing success of Android, this has to be a primary concern. We were promised great things from the Palm Pre App Catalog, but that is still to put out the big guns in terms of apps.
Kupervas told us that third-party apps would be integrated to the core, so rather than a standalone app, you’d still get access to the live PIM and all the information there. Using Twitter as an example, Kupervas told us that rather than an extra Twitter layer, it would integrate fully with your existing contacts.
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Verdict:
ELSE made some bold claims with the announcement of the First ELSE. But you need to get people to take you seriously. The company is certainly pushing a different approach from a marketing angle, but ultimately it is joining a competitive marketplace full of smart devices demonstrating convergence and integration at an advanced level. There is nothing new here, per se, but the First ELSE aims to deliver the best of what everyone else is doing.
Companies like INQ Mobile have demonstrated that there is space for innovation and ELSE are certainly sending out the right messages here. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and unfortunately it looks like we’ll be waiting to spring 2010 before we get our hands on it in the real world.
Check out all our hands-on pictures over in our gallery.
Tags:
Phones Mobile phones ELSE Mobile First ELSE First look
First ELSE mobile phone – First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:35:32 +0000
REVIEWS: HP Mini 311 notebook
Can this be the HD netbook you’ve always wished for?
As netbooks continue to grow in popularity, so do the lines that define them. The HP Mini 311 spec sheet reads more like a traditional notebook rather than something only costs ?349 in the UK and $399 in the US. But is it trying to punch above its weight??
HP has over the last 12-18 months started making a radical change to its design ethos and it’s finally starting to show. Gloss plastic in its design, it’s no HP Envy, however that isn’t to say it’s Ugly Betty either.?Aesthetics are swish and stylish with a patterned top, silver interior and gloss black framed 1366 x 768 resolution, 11.6-inch, screen that is crisp and the highlight of the netbook. It really is sharp.
That screen pretty much determines the 11.4 x 8.0 x 1.2in dimensions and the 1.45kg (3.2lbs) weight. Ports and sockets are displayed down both sides rather than the back or front. The left gives you a single USB and HDMI output, while the right gives you a SD/MSPro/MMC/xD Card reader, a further two USB sockets, headphones and line-in socket, VGA out and Ethernet. Those looking for an optical drive won’t find one.?
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<!– The trackpad has been changed making it easier to use –>
With a 92% keyboard typing is tight, but by no means impossible and the trackpad has been improved over previous netbooks from HP thanks to the extra space created by the bigger screen. What that means in practice is that the two click buttons are now found underneath the trackpad rather than to the side.
In use and the trackpad is considerably easier to use as the buttons sit ready to be clicked by your thumb. Larger than previous outings, it has a software-based vertical scroll element to it (on the right-hand side) making it easy to scroll up and down web pages for example. What doesn’t help though is that it’s made from the same material as the rest of the chassis and this can mean that you slide off it or go to click without realising that your thumb or finger has moved elsewhere.
Centre top there is a webcam for video calling and aside from the power on key the only other button is a Wi-Fi toggle switch. Clicking it off changes it from blue to orange. It will let you save power quickly without having to find a software tab (not hard) or help you prove to the air hostess that you really have gone into airplane mode.
Peer inside and the HP Mini 311 can come with a 1.6GHz or 1.66GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, integrated Nvida ION graphics chip, 1GB RAM upgradeable to 3GB, a 160GB, 250GB, 320GB hard drive or 80GB SSD, Wi-Fi connectivity g or n, Bluetooth, and the option of a mobile broadband module.
The netbook now comes with Windows 7 Home Premium as standard over the previous XP when it first launched in at the beginning of October 2009.
The ?349 / $399 is the base model and that will get you the 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, wireless g connectivity and no Bluetooth or mobile broadband. Those looking to save some cash can opt for Windows XP over Windows 7.?Maxing out on everything gets you to almost $1000.
In performance and the Mini 311 does well on day-to-day tasks with the Atom processor working hard to make your experience as best as it can be. Microsoft gives it a Windows Experience Index rating of 2.3 let down by the processor.
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<!– HP have opted for Windows 7 Home Premium rather than the Starter edition –>
We tested a model with Verizon’s built-in SIM card allowing you to surf on the go. The software lets you manage your connection and once you’ve run through the initial set-up, a very quick process to getting online. The benefit as with all netbooks that have built-in connectivity is that you don’t have to fuss with a 3G dongle that sticks out of the side.
Of course where this netbook appeals is that it packs the Nvidia ION graphics chip, which promises to deliver better video and graphics performance, with the graphics processor taking over on the tasks normally assigned to the main processor (in this case the Intel Atom chip) which isn’t really up to the job.
The biggest and easiest test to see what can be achieved is playing back HD content. While a 11.6-inch screen is going to give you minimal benefit from going “HD”, the built-in HDMI out socket means you can pump it out to an HD Ready TV screen in your home, office or shed.
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<!– This video shows the HD performance at 720p and 1080p –>
To be able to enjoy HD content via YouTube (i.e., Flash) you’ll have to download the newly released Flash Player 10 so you can benefit from the GPU (the ION) doing some of the work rather than just leaving it all to the main processor. Failing to do so will get you nowhere.
You don’t need Flash Player 10 to watch HD content you’ve got stored on the computer. We played 720p footage with no problem, something that isn’t really possible on a regular netbook, however pushing the machine to the limit and playing 1080p does give it trouble.
In our tests 1080p DivX HD files weren’t watchable by any stretch of the imagination, while a 1080p trailer viewed in iTunes lost lip sync very quickly. Footage stuttered violently. YouTube wasn’t much better, and neither was VLC for 1080p footage.?Back to what it can do – this is a sub ?350/$400 netbook after all – and we could happily watch 720p footage without qualms.
But what about games? We fired up the recently released Left 4 Dead 2 to see how it would cope. We were able to enjoy a full online experience running graphics at 16:9 1280 x 768 without any drop in performance. While we weren’t able to run it with all the settings on, the graphics performance was more than good enough for gaming on the move. 10 years ago this rig would have cost you over ?1000 for graphics performance like this: that’s how far we’ve come.
While we wouldn’t recommend this replacing a dedicated desktop rig or your more powerful laptop, if you are an occasional gamer, or one that isn’t playing high-end first person shooters this will be more than enough juice to quench your thirst.
Verdict:
The HP Mini 311 looked impressive in our First Look and after using it for a couple of weeks now those first impressions were spot on. As a netbook that lets you surf the web, write the odd email it performs as you would expect and good enough to be one of the top performing netbooks out there. The fact that HP has gone with a standard version of Windows 7 (Home Premium) rather than Starter is also welcomed.
But where the HP eases out over the rest of the pack is the inclusion of the ION chip from Nvidia allowing you to push the limits of what has until now not been possible on a netbook.
There are limitations to the HD element and the 3D gaming. This isn’t the answer to everything, however if you want to watch or play movies and games on occasion, as long as you aren’t too demanding (1080p or full graphics settings), then the HP mini should serve you nicely.
Tags:
Hardware Netbooks HP HP Mini 311 Nvidia Intel Verizon Mobile broadband
HP Mini 311 notebook originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:02:37 +0000
REVIEWS: Kodak ESP 5250 all-in-one printer
A printer that can save you money?
Kodak’s latest all in one printer, copier and scanner is a compact, attractive looking, machine that combines a scanner, copier and photo quality printer combining low ink costs with good photo output and nice scans if you just need relatively small sized scans of your flat originals.
The ESP 5250 sits between Kodak’s ESP 5 and ESP 7 all-in-one models, in the range. It also continues Kodak’s policy of charging that little bit more for the machine and less for the ink, with Kodak claiming the overall cost of ownership, over a year, can enable a saving on ink of around ?75.
The 5250 is a neat and compact, black liveried device featuring a nice 2.4-inch LCD screen and a large, clearly buttoned control panel graces the top. The 100-sheet paper feed tray sits in the front of the device, so paper must be loaded upside down; it is fed into and back out on top of the unprinted, waiting paper.
Paper guides can be moved to adjust for paper of varying sizes easily, though if you put photo paper on top of plain paper, the 5250 had a tendency to drag in the plain paper along with the photo paper, which is very frustrating indeed, so only one type of paper at a time.
The print head and dual, single black and combined five-colour pigment based inks slot home easily into a removable print head carriage, which sits beneath the scanner/copier platen. Once in place, the 5250 primes the ink and will print an automatic head alignment sheet.
The software’s easy to install (I tested the printer on my G5 Intel Mac laptop) and once up and running, connecting to my Wi-Fi network proved a simple case of selecting the connection method on the 5250’s colour screen, entering the password and that was it. Almost as easy as connecting via the USB connection, and like the other ESPs I’ve tested in the range, this makes for a refreshing change.
The direct print control panel is simply laid out and the menus are clear and easy to follow on the colour screen allowing copying, printing and scanning as a standalone device, or you can control the device from your computer.
The ESP 5250’s supplied software drivers are simple enough to follow, the print dialogues for the printer are easy to understand and the 5250 can automatically select the print quality depending on the paper type used. This makes the machine undoubtedly easy to use for the less technical minded users out there, but you do have manual controls over print quality too, within the printer’s advanced driver options.
Kodak’s Ultra Premium Photo Paper being the best quality paper for best photo prints but you can “force” the printer to use the higher quality settings, though more ink will be used and it may not provide the best result depending on the exact media types.
As with other ESPs in the range, Kodak’s Dot Replacement print mode allows for better quality output on specific paper types, that is providing you don’t want to print borderless, as disappointingly and like the other ESPs, Dot Replacement does not support borderless printing. However, print quality on the better quality papers is superb, Dot Replacement or not, but it’s a shame you cannot access this setting for borderless prints.
One frustration of that Dot Replacement mode is where I could select to use the Dot Replacement technology, even with the incorrect paper setting (borderless) and it is only as the paper was fed into the printer that the error was picked up by the machine’s paper sensors and print driver. At this point it would alert you to the incorrect paper selection and abort the print process spitting the paper out untouched.
However, print quality on other, lesser, photo papers drops quickly and even the Premium Photo paper prints with distracting visible dots, akin to blotchy white coloured noise, within the plain paper prints. Printing text documents or graphics is excellent though, text looking very “laser-like” and graphics packing a colour punch.
Copy quality left something to be desired as copied images are copied with blocky looking darker areas, such as shadows. Text is well copied though but scanning photos, at photo quality settings provides prints that are full of filed in detail and odd, magenta-looking colour casts.
In terms of print times, the claimed print speeds of 29 colour pages per minute or a 6 x 4-inch photo in around 29-seconds are only possible at the lower quality settings on offer. An A4 borderless photo print took 13-minutes while a 6 x 4-inch photo, also borderless, took 2 minutes and 39 seconds. Use the Dot Replacement technology, and the print length for a 6 x 4-inch print leaps to 7 minutes and an A4 top quality print to around 17-minutes.
Scan speed and quality, like all the timings here, will be dependent on the system you are using. However I was pleasantly surprised by the scanning which took just over 6 minutes to scan (using Wi-Fi) an A4 photo at 600ppi creating a 89MB file. Scan quality is good (up to optical 2400ppi) with faithful colours and good detail.
The scanner and copier is also very quiet as is the printing, though the printing getting ready to do its stuff, prior to a print say, is a tad noisier.
But there is one more possible clincher, the cost of ownership. The ESP 5250 costs a penny shy of ?130, so not particularly cheap compared with some similar Lexmark models on the market. But the inks are ?6.99 for the black cartridge and ?9.99 for the five-colour ink tank, which is where Kodak claims you’ll get the savings it claims.
Kodak claims this provides the “lowest ink replacement costs in the industry” and can save you around “?75 a year” compared with similar products from other manufacturers. Allowing the printer’s systems to control the print quality help these savings but you get inferior prints. Set-up the printer manually you use more ink than Kodak’s figures would suggest. So the cost of ownership varies on how satisfied you are with the 5250’s print quality on lower specified papers and all auto settings. Kodak’s figures show a black document will cost 1.6p per page, a 6 x 4-inch photo will cost 6.4p per print and colour document will cost 4.8p per page.
Verdict:
The Kodak ESP 5250 is a nicely made and easy to use all-in-one device, the low ink cost is important in your purchase consideration, even if you see cheaper machines on the market, compare ink costs as well. Some manufacturers’ devices cost less than a new set of inks for the same machine.
Print quality is good and so is the scan quality, copies are just okay though. The ease of set-up impressed me, particularly the wireless printing which took only a few minutes. It’s a shame the printer is much slower than the claimed speeds Kodak use, at least for a reasonable photo print and it is also frustrating you can’t use Dot Replacement on borderless prints. Nevertheless, this is a reasonably accomplished all-in-one device worthy of close consideration.
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Printers All-in-one printers Kodak Kodak ESP 5250
Kodak ESP 5250 all-in-one printer originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:04:12 +0000
REVIEWS: Nokia N900 mobile phone
Will this revive Nokia’s fortunes?
The N900 drops the moniker of “internet tablet”, choosing to push forward with “mobile computer” as this model comes in to supplant the N810, released back in 2007. 2-years along and the landscape of internet-savvy mobile devices has changed greatly. Can this Nokia pocket computer trade blows with the best of them?
In the hand the N900 is something of a chunky monkey measuring 110.9 x 59.8 x 18mm. Lined up against the likes of the Motorola DEXT/CLIQ, it’s is rather fat, weighting 181g, towards the top end of pocket devices.
The construction is good overall showing the wealth of experience that Nokia has. Finished in a neat matte black, the body stays free of dirty prints, except for the screen, of course. As a side-slider the opening action is critical. Forgoing any dodgy curves or angles, the straight-up slide opens with reassuring punch and is nice and tight in its construction: there are no wiggles or twists to worry about here.
The N900 wants to be used in landscape, taking advantage of the 3.5-inch, 800 x 480 pixel, resistive touchscreen display, which fits its side-sliding design. The keyboard has rubberised keys of a reasonable size, more on which later, but built with reassuring quality.
Sticking in a landscape format and working around the body of the N900 you’ll find the left-hand side offering a Micro-USB socket and one of a pair of stereo speakers, matching another on the right. The right-hand side also gives you a rather unusual sliding screen lock, a 3.5mm AV jack and the stylus, which runs along the bottom edge.
The top then gives you a dedicated camera button, a small central power/device control button, and the volume/zoom rocker. That central button is really useful, letting you lock/unlock the N900, access the phone functions, change the profile and so on.
You’ll notice that we’ve been talking around the phone in landscape. That’s because the N900 really isn’t a happy puppy in portrait; there is limited support for portrait interaction. With the N900 closed you’ll get the phone in portrait mode, but little else, not even the customizable homepage. We are used to having the content of our devices change to suit how it is being held. There is an accelerometer on-board, however, as your photos will change aspect. It’s an odd move and hopefully something that Nokia will address to offer more options when you want to use the device single-handed on the train.
As a phone it works nicely, with easy access to contacts on a large on-screen dialler. A proximity sensor kills the screen when it is next to your head: pull the phone away and you are presented with in-call options. Audio quality was good, but a hard rim around the screen is a little uncomfortable.
Recent announcements have revealed Nokia is looking to move its N series devices over to Maemo 5, an open source Linux platform, which is what the N900 is running on. Unfortunately at the time of writing this review, you won’t find wide application support, so at present it doesn’t compete with the likes of the iPhone or Android in terms of bringing in new apps. The Nokia Ovi Store for Maemo is yet to launch.
The N900 operating system gives you several layers. The top layer is a neat desktop which slides from side-to-side, giving you effectively four pages to customise. These can be filled with shortcuts, bookmarks, contacts and various widgets. So you get the usual offering of weather, Ovi shortcuts, media player, RSS and calendar widgets, with a neat mapping “where am I?” widget. They are live and seem to run well enough.
You can add contacts and once you have fed in the information, contacts are rich and full of detail and presented practically. Dump a contact shortcut and you’ll have their picture (with online status if connected to one of your IM accounts) – a quick press and you have a full screen contact sheet, giving you the option to phone, message, call with Skype and so on.
The Facebook widget is a bit of a standalone feature: you still need to login to the webpage to use Facebook proper and to get your Facebook images to marry up with your contacts you’ll need another app (Hermes). It’s connected, but in a rather disconnected way, and doesn’t go as far as HTC Sense or Motoblur.
You can login to Skype, Google Talk account, Jabber, SIP as well as Ovi by Nokia. You do get the option to import contacts from those services, but not your entire Google contacts or access other calendars for example. Merging contacts is easy, then giving you access to multiple avenues of communication for each individual.
IM conversations are handled rather well, as are text messages, in the Conversations area. This pulls SMS and IM threads into the same place, so you can open up a chat you were having with a contact. It’s much better than having to open each different application individually.?
Email isn’t handled in the same integrated inbox however. Setting up email is easy, whether you are gunning for Exchange, IMAP or POP mail. As with other Nokia devices, it will intelligently figure out your settings for common email services too. Received attachments are handled well, launching DocsToGo where necessary, or a PDF viewer.
One oddity, however, is that the send button is at the top of the message and as you write an email, it will vanish off the top, so you’ll have to scroll back up to send it. Meanwhile at the bottom of the screen you’ll get the option to change the font, colour and other such nonsense. If you want to attach a file or insert a picture, you’ll have to open a menu to do so. It doesn’t really seem to address the need of power emailers who want core features at their fingertips: we’d rather see font colours buried in a menu to be forgotten.
Talking attachments you really get to see the power of the N900 when you start saving pictures from websites, cropping them, and reattaching to emails to send out again. It’s simple and a level of advanced file handling that many devices don’t offer.
A big part of what the N900 is about is multitasking. The second level the OS offers is a neat icon-based breakout of your running application windows (behind which sits a third level in the form of a simple icon-based menu). Once you reach 12 windows however you’ll need to start scrolling the page, so you’ll never find what you are looking for.?
A top status bar (when not in fullscreen mode) displays the time, battery and data connections, with a neat pop-up menu where you can change profiles, volume, data connection or your availability for IM. In applications the top of the screen gives you access to menus, to close windows or to jump back into the multi-panel view.
The Maemo browser is easy to use and renders full HTML, thanks to its origins with Mozilla. You get Flash support too, something that hasn’t yet appeared on rival devices. Flash video playback is a little haphazard, with the first play often just giving you an audio track with a few frames. A few plays would bring the frame rate up, but in all our tests over Wi-Fi, we were left wanting for better performance overall.
The high-resolution screen means that you can read full web pages, but the lack of conventional multi-touch interaction via a capacitive screen is glaringly obvious. Double tap zooming is a little random, but you can use the volume rocker to zoom web pages in their entirety. It’s a little frustrating, but you do get used to it, especially as the swirly zooming alternative is unreliable. Selecting boxes for text input can be frustrating: sometimes you feel like you are being ignored until you zoom right in and stab it hard with your finger.
Multitasking does have an impact on the response of the N900 too. When pushing the device it will get sluggish. You’ll often also find that background activities throw the N900 out of its comfort zone. When it can’t connect to a particular messaging service it will pop-up a message telling you whilst everything else slows painfully.
The lack of applications (currently) means that things are more complicated than they need to be. In the absence of a solid consumer-ready Twitter application you’ll find yourself using the website and another service for images, in another full webpage. It’s a big draw on resources compared to a lightweight app, but does show you the power options that the N900 offers and that’s the ultimate caveat: if there isn’t app support for an online service, you’ll almost certainly be able to easily use the web original.?Only 265MB RAM is dedicated to apps, but it is boosted to 1GB by virtual memory.
The keyboard itself is good, but the layout isn’t the best. Every key has an alternative function in blue accessed by depressing the blue arrow key, on the left side. Shift is only on the left-hand side as well, whilst the space bar is offset to the right. The right has a set of cursor keys, which can be useful and we’d rather have them than not. Overall we didn’t find it as fast as a BlackBerry keyboard, but once you get used to the layout, it is responsive enough.
Impressively there is a degree of UPnP support on the N900, as it found our Cisco Media Hub and Mac running Orb on our network. Navigation is slow and we had little success with video or photos, but we did get playback of audio files. Video out, with a cable in the box is a nice touch, reminding us that there is 32GB of storage available here, as well as the microSD card slot hiding under the back.
Media support is generally good, with MPEG4, AVI, WMV, 3GP all claiming to play (H.264, MPEG4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 codecs), but in reality we had to be selective with which video formats we used. Music support gives you WAV, MP3, AAC, eAAC, WMA and M4A. You also get access to internet radio through the media player and there is an FM transmitter too.
Around the back is a 5-megapixel camera, with Carl Zeiss optics, which performs nicely in daylight, but suffers when the light dips resulting in noisy images. The dual LED flash will illuminate your subject but won’t result in a nice picture at the end. Shutter lag is terrible, so blurring is often common as the subject moves on, or you forget to stand still and wait for the camera to catch up with what you were doing. Some sample shots are included with this review.
Video capture gives you the single option of 848 x 480 pixel resolution, which is fair in daylight shooting. The 20fps frame rate is a little choppy and it does tend to drop frames and sometimes deliver patchy audio too, suggesting some optimization is needed in this area. Low light video is poor.
Geotagging is an option on images using the on-board GPS and there is a degree of photo editing possible. We found that cropping was no problem, but the option to change the brightness and contrast caused the phone to get very laggy, so is best avoided.?The N900 comes with Nokia’s Ovi Maps included, which is a heavy-weight application, giving you 3D map views to get the most out of the GPS.?
Battery life, however, is a weakness. Nokia admits to a 1+ day of connected use, but we’ve found that it starts complaining from low battery levels within the day (and mostly only using Wi-Fi or 2G). Step-up to 3.5G and you need to stay near the power. A day of heavy use will see you out of battery during your working day.
We were testing a pre-production sample of the N900, so accept that it might still be needing some updates before it really hits the market. Hopefully this explains away a couple of restarts that the device executed off its own back.
Verdict:
The Nokia N900 has been a highly anticipated device and with the divide between the internet tablet and mobile phone having closed, many have expected it breathe life into the struggling phone giant.
To a certain extent it achieves these aims. The N900 is an extremely capable handset, which will let you do some very clever things and too many to cover in this review. But would we choose it over the best smartphones the rivals have to offer? Probably not.
The N900 will do a lot, but you feel like you are working for it and as a consumer you are likely to get more satisfaction from some of the more recent Android devices, which still have the open source goodness, but with a community that is a little more established. At the same time, we can see that the N900 has the potential to go a long way. Resource-sparing apps to make your life easier, combined with the wealth of options here and you could have a very accomplished handset.
The ball is really in the court of those supporting the handset. It needs aspect switching for the home pages, it needs the Flash support enhancing and it needs to develop the app offering. Until these things arrive the N900 is a supporting role, rather than the star of the show.
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Phones Mobile phones Nokia Nokia N900
Nokia N900 mobile phone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:44:49 +0000
American Airlines launches online widget to sniff out WiFi-equipped flights
You may bang on the legacy airlines, but American Airlines has a good thing going here with Gogo. The outfit has just completed installation of in-flight WiFi on 150 of its MD-80 aircraft, and in order to give you a better idea of how to prepare, it’s now launching an online widget that’ll let you know if your bird will enable web surfing when you get on. The tool is completely web-based, so any PC or smartphone can access it; the only real knock is that it only informs you of a “yes” or “no” 24 hours prior to departure, so it’s still impossible to book a flight 3 months out and know for certain if you’ll be able to hop online. This is definitely something that should be adopted by the other airlines (pronto!), but we can’t help but dream of the day when something like this is unnecessary due to in-flight internet becoming completely ubiquitous. Ah, the future — how you tease us so. Demonstration vid is after the break.
Continue reading American Airlines launches online widget to sniff out WiFi-equipped flights
American Airlines launches online widget to sniff out WiFi-equipped flights originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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REVIEWS: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mobile phone – First Look
Will this be the Android handset to get?
The official availability maybe some time off, however that hasn’t stopped us from getting a hands-on with the Android sporting Xperia X10 for a second time (this time in New York) so we can bring you a First Look (over two sittings) of the new handset from Sony Ericsson. Will it be a game changer that will bring the company back into the spotlight? Read on to find out.
On the surface the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is another Android 1.6 handset with a large screen and yet another user interface or User Experience (UX) as Sony Ericsson calls it, promising to improve the usability stakes over everything else.
The hardware sees you get a 4-inch touchscreen display that dominates proceedings. Beneath this there are three additional buttons that allow you to access menus, the home screen, and skip back a step, and in between this there is even two white tiny LEDs that give you notifications as to what is going on although you will no doubt loose track over time. A dedicated camera button and volume controls pepper the side.
For the Droid or G1 fans out there, there is no slide-out keyboard. Get over it.
Around the back you’ll get an 8.1-megapixel digital camera top centre and beneath that a flash – something not present on the HTC Hero or Apple iPhone.
Although impressive, specs are nothing out of the ordinary, certainly not for your top-of-the-range model and that means you get virtually every tech acronym you can think of including HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DLNA, A-GPS, 3.5mm jack and Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Storage is provided by an 8GB microSD card in the box and connects to your computer/charger via Micro-USB on the top. Unfortunately we weren’t able to confirm what the storage allocation for applications is, but let’s hope it is more than 256MB as with the Motorola Droid.
It is large, comparable to the Apple iPhone, but not as big as the HTC HD2. Underneath all that User Experience you get Android 1.6. Sony Ericsson are currently sending out mixed messages as to whether or not the handset will sport Android 2.0 when it eventually launches in February, with some spokespeople for the company saying it will and others not so sure.
What this means is that you will miss out on some features, like the ability to search the contents of your phone at the press of a button and Google Maps Navigation (US only). With a strong integrated interface in the guise of what Sony Ericsson is calling Nexus, you get, like the Sense UI from HTC, a lot more friendly functionality than Google offers as standard.
Of course you do get that “standard” approach. The Nexus UX Platform sits on top of Android 1.6 meaning you can run all the standard Android apps as well as apps designed for the phone and UX.?Unlike Motorola and HTC, both of whom have also decided to customise the Android experience, Sony Ericsson is hoping for further development by releasing a WebSDK.
The move means that developers will be able to develop applications specifically for Sony Ericsson handsets (the X10 is the first of many) that work only for Sony Ericsson. It’s a brave move and one that will be interesting to watch. As a developer are you really going to be bothered to develop an app for an as yet unproven smartphone when you’ve got Apple, Android, Palm’s WebOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Samsung’s Bada and BlackBerry to develop for as well?
Either way in reality it seems that Sony Ericsson are playing the “you can play with us too” card and regardless of this forging on with their own apps to impress and improve on the Android OS.
In steps Timescape and Mediascape. Timescape is a communications app, which aggregates email,?Facebook, Twitter, IM, and SMS into one big lifestream that you can navigate through. Each “event” is represented by a tile, which you can tap to view in more detail, or long-press to get a preview of. The experience is very “Aero” from Windows Vista and in practice not the easiest thing to read.
Each tile has a button marked with an “oo” infinity symbol. Hitting that will take you to related content – which could be content from the person in question, or it could be web content related to whatever is on the tile. It’s a bit like HTC’s contacts feature that shows you all the contact you’ve had with that person, however it’s no Xobni. The list can be filtered by medium, and you can reply to individual messages within the application.
Mediascape is the other “signature” application. It’s built around music, video and images and organises all three on your device. It incorporates players for all three, too, and can hook into various bits of online content. YouTube was named explicitly, but we’d expect Last.fm and perhaps Flickr to show up here too with talk of Spotify being banded around at our briefing (something that might be harder to do than Sony Ericsson realizes thanks to Spotify’s poor API).
Items in Mediascape also have an infinity button and pressing this will again summon related content. For a band, that could be songs on your device, YouTube videos, or even other artists that are similar to whatever you’re listening to. The overlaid controls of this section looked quite similar to the Zune HD’s UI, though that’s only a good thing.
Then there is the image viewer in Mediascape that supports facial recognition. What this means is that you can tag up to five people in a photo and then the handset will attempt to identify those people in other images too – the more you tag, the more accurate it is, very much like Apple’s face recognition feature in iPhoto. The feature can also hook in with your contacts list – you can tap a person in a photo to call them, for instance, however won’t talk to Facebook or Flickr.
Those apps, and others for the Nexus UX, will be available from the PlayNow store.
Elsewhere and it’s pretty standard Android fare for the handset. The software is, and acts, as you would expect for an Android 1.6 handset, however for some reason, one that continues to baffle us, is no multi-touch support.?With a touchscreen so large with no keyboard we think it’s a catastrophic move, but then hey, what do we know?
As for performance? Well it’s a little too early to say. The models we looked at both in London and New York have all been pre-production, and early builds at that. It certainly wasn’t as zippy as we would have hoped, certainly for a device with a Snapdragon chipset, but then its too early to tell whether this is just because it’s early code, or because Sony Ericsson has baked in so many graphical, almost PS3-like niceties, that it’s buckled under the weight. We expect it’s the former.
Verdict:
So is this going to be the Android handset that you wish you waited for? At the moment it’s too hard to say as the software wasn’t (we hope) working at full speed. That said on the hardware front it really is just a screen with some buttons and every acronym you can think of, looks good and has the potential to perform well.
We get the feeling though, that as soon as HTC announce an HD2 with Android, probably called the HD3, that shininess – i.e., the 4-inch screen – will soon disappear.
So how can Sony Ericsson hope to win your hearts? By getting developers to embrace the Nexus UX platform or for Sony to roll out as many apps as it can including dedicated apps like a PlayNow store, PSP emulator and PS3 Remote Play. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is expected to be available in February 2010.
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Phones Mobile phones Sony Ericsson Android First look Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mobile phone – First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000
