Motorola

Motorola H780 Specs:

• Dimensions: 1.9 x 0.7 x 0.5 inches
• Weight: 12 grams
• Battery Life: 7 hours talktime / 8 days standby time
• Price: $70 (Approx)

Review:

The Motorola H780 is a very compact headset. It has dimensions of just 1.9 x 0.7 x 0.5 inches which makes it one of the tiniest headset in that range. The design is rather plain with straight lines and the works, stylish nevertheless. It is also among the lightest at just about 12 grams. The gray-black color scheme should appeal to everyone though the younger generation would want to go with more modern and stylish designs. It has a carbon fiber body with a circular metallic button on the front. On the side, there is a volume rocker and a power switch. The earhook feels pretty comfortable and fits snugly around the ear providing a firm fit. It comes with lots of rubber earpieces of varying sizes. The build is pretty nice and durable. It should last long with careful use.

It can be charged using the bundled AC adapter. It has a range of about 32 feet with perfectly clear call quality. As the distance increases, the call quality goes on deteriorating. It has a rated talktime of 7 hours and a standby time of 8 days. It comes with Motorola’s Easypair technology which makes pairing it with phones a breeze. The sound quality is pretty nice, thanks to Motorola’s Crystal Talk technology which enhances the speaker’s voice and cancels out external noise. The noise cancellation works pretty good. The volume is pretty good, you can also hear the caller in noisy surroundings.

Pros:

• Long Battery Life
• Nice Volume
• Easy to Use

Cons:

• Not the Best Voice Quality

Our Rating: 3.5 / 5.

Blackberry Bold specifications :

• Dimensions : 114 x 66 x 14 mm
• Weight : 133 g
• Display : 2.6″ with 480 x 320 resolution
• Card slot : microSD
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 2.0 MP with LED flash
• GPS : Yes with A-GPS support
• Approx. price : $699

Blackberry Bold does not feature very high end features that one would probably find in the Blackberry Storm. It does however, have both the GPS and WiFi that have rarely coexisted together on Blackberry phones. It also has 3G connectivity to enable high speed browsing and downloads. The retail package has a meager 1GB memory card, microUSB cable and dual DC charger, carrying pouch and single earpiece handsfree.

Design, Display and Keyboard

The Bold has a round design which feels compact and holding it in hand is a nice feeling. Its dimensions are not large and hence it would make not your pocket bulge out, the weight is about average. The Bold is quite thin at just 14 mm, though it isn’t the thinnest Blackberry we have seen. The front is made up of glossy plastic difficult to keep clean and faux leather has been used at the back.

The 2.6″ display on the Bold has a landscape layout with a resolution of 320 x 480 with an aspect ratio of 3:2. The display quality is great with vibrant colors, bright display and great contrast levels. Sunlight visibility of the display is amazing and there is very less washing away of colors in direct sunlight. The landscape display makes way for a totally different experience and is easier to use than portrait ones.

The QWERTY keyboard is one of the best features of the Blackberry Bold. It has a four row layout that is a pleasure to work on. It is one of the best keyboards on a phone that you will find till date. The numeric keypad is on the left and is easy to access. The keys are almost identically sized with the space bar key being the only exception and the keys offer tactile feedback. Overall an excellent keyboard that will please typists.

Camera and Music Player

The camera on the Bold is a 2 megapixel camera with LED flash and no autofocus. It is a basic camera with hardly any manual controls to tinker around with. The camera interface is clunky and unpleasant to use. The settings are all buried deep inside menus making them inaccessible most of the times, although there ain’t too many of them. Some of them include white balance, color effects and image stabilization. Geotagging is possible with the inbuilt GPS receiver. The image quality is pretty bad and the shots turn out noisy with significant loss of detail. The contrast levels are low and color balance is off the mark making way for ‘watercolor’ photos.

Being a business class phone, multimedia isn’t a high priority and this reflects in the phone’s multimedia capabilities. The music player on the device isn’t great and just about fine for casual listening. Sorting the songs by artists, genre, albums etc is possible and it supports album art too. There are no equaliser presets and no ‘Repeat’ option too. The home screen does not show the currently playing track. The audio quality is the only saving grace and its great for a business class phone. The bundled earpiece is the last thing you should be using to enjoy your favorite tracks. Thankfully the phone has 3.5 mm jack to accept third-party earphones.

Web Browser and Organiser

The web browsing on the phone is excellent and trackball plays a important part in that. Input through the QWERTY keyboard is quick and precise. Zooming and panning can be accomplished easily and both work smoothly with the help of virtual mouse cursor and the trackball. The web pages are rendered perfectly and fit the browser window. More content is available on the screen due to its high resolution. The browser does not have Flash support, disappointing to say the least for such a magnificent browser otherwise. It gives strong competition to the likes of Nokia E71 that has been selling like hot cakes.

Organisation skills of the Bold are exceptional as expected from a phone of its class. It has a wide set of applications to manage time efficiently.The calendar has daily, weekly and monthly views and tasks can be added to it. Mobile Office comes preinstalled and supports document editing out of the box but the phone does not have a PDF viewer. Some of the other applications include Notes, alarm, To-Do manager, stopwatch, unit converter etc. The Alarm application can set only a single alarm at a time something where even dirt cheap phones fare better. To-Do manager is quite handy at managing your tasks. Overall the organiser has complete set of applications to manage your time efficiently.

Pros :

• Great display
• Excellent QWERTY keyboard
• 3G, GPS, WiFi enabled
• Responsive trackball
• Great web browser
• Excellent organiser

Cons :

• Poor camera
• Unstable WiFi connection
• Bit bulky
• No flash support on browser

Final Thoughts

The Blackberry Bold is targeted towards business class users and cares less about the music player or the camera. It has a great display, awesome QWERTY keyboard along with special emphasis on its web browsing and time management skills. The weight is on the heavier side but the relatively small dimensions compensate for it. It provides 3G, WiFi and GPS all in a single device that only a few Balckberrys can write off home with. The trackball plays an important part in phone navigation as well as enhance browser experience. The browser lacks Flash support though. Camera is poor and music player is passable with good audio quality but poor interface. Overall a good package for business users to invest in.

Rating : 4/5

BlackBerry Curve 8900 specifications :

• Dimensions : 109 x 60 x 13.5 mm
• Weight :  110 g
• Display : 2.4″ TFT with 480 x 360 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, HSCSD
• WLAN : Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 3.2 MP with autofocus and flash
• Card Slot : microSD
• GPS : Built-in with A-GPS support
• Approx. price : $550

Design, Display and Keyboard

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 gets an elegant design with comparatively small dimensions and weight than older BlackBerry models. The design is sophisticated and the build quality is solid. The phone is easy to carry around even in your pockets. The trackball is easy as use and have a navigation deck around it. Overall the new design adds elegance to the 83xx series of Blackberry Curves that have not been known for their designs but the Curve 8900 does a satisfactory job.

The earpiece is located centrally above the display with the LED status indicator on its right. Then there are the Call and End keys along with Back and Menu keys for navigation. The trackball is packed between the latter two keys. There is a special key on the left that can be assigned a custom function. The right side too has such a key along with the volume rocker keys and the 3.5 mm audio jack. The top of the handset hides the power keys and the silent key which are hardly visible. The bottom of the handset only has the microphone pinhole.

The 2.4″ display has a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels and a 4:3 aspect ratio. This translates to excellent display quality with vivid colors and high brightness and contrast levels. Very few phones int the market boast of high resolution on a small screen size. In direct sunlight, the visibility is great and the text is very much readable.

The Curve 8900 has a physical QWERTY keyboard that has generous spacing between the keys. Typing is a pleasant experience on the phone with good ergonomics. The keyboard has a four row layout with the numeric keypad situated on the left. The keys are of the same size except for the space bar. Wide spacing in between the keys make way for a pleasant typing experience.

Music Player and Camera

There isn’t too much to expect in terms on multimedia features from a business phone of its stature but it does deliver goods on that front. The music player can sort songs by artists, genres, albums etc. It also supports album art and has preset equalizers. The interface on the device isn’t amazing but it is pretty usable. There are no custom equalisers but you get quite a few preset ones to change between. When running in background, the home screen does not display any information regarding the track being played. The audio quality on the device is very good for a business class phone.

The 3.2 MP camera on the Curve 8900 has autofocus and LED flash. The interface however, is utterly disappointing as it is cluttered. Searching around for options can take up quite a bit of time. Also a portion of the  screen is always occupied by the menu, reducing viewfinder visible area which is annoying. The interface usability is limited by the unavailability of shortcuts and digging around menus for settings can be painful. There are not many manual settings to play around with though. Geotagging is however enabled, thanks to the inbuilt GPS receiver. The image quality is below average for a 3.2 MP phone and casual photography is what best fits the camera.

Web Browser and Organiser

The web browser for the device is an amazing piece of software and does an excellent job. Non-touch screen browsers have faced tough competition from the touch screen ones and this one surely does a good job. The trackball navigation is super smooth and QWERTY input is fast. Zoom can be user configured and panning is very easy that uses the virtual mouse cursor. Rendering issues are none and the browser displays all websites neatly with perfect fit. There is no Flash support on the browser, disappointing to say the least. High resolution of the display plays its part by accommodating more stuff on the small screen. Overall an excellent browser.

Organiser, the prime feature of the phone has been well thought out to include all the necessary applications required in day-to-day tasks. The calendar supports all the three views and tasks can be easily added. Mobile Office is bundled letting you view Documents, PowerPoint files, Excel sheets. PDF support does not bundled and application needs to be purchased separately. Some of the other applications include Tasks, To-do manager, Notes, Voice recorder, Alarm etc. The Alarm clock application allows you to set only one alarm at a time, plain ridiculous. Overall the organiser is great with a few niggles.

Pros :

• Great design
• Solid build quality
• Excellent display
• Built-in GPS
• Great web browser
• Excellent organiser

Cons :

• Poor camera quality
• No 3G
• No PDF viewer application installed
• Single alarm

Final Thoughts

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 brings in some nice changes to the design to make it look more appealing to the users, something Blackberry Curve series is not known for. The feature set is decent enough to attract the business users to upgrade from the older Blackberry model. The solid build quality, excellent display, great web browser and excellent organiser are some of its positives. It lacks 3G and camera performance is not up to the mark. The QWERTY keyboard is impressive especially. Overall, a complete package and well worth the price tag. The other alternative to the phone that you can consider buying is Nokia E71, that has its own set of pros and cons.

Rating : 4/5

Sony Ercisson C903 specifications :

• Dimensions : 97 x 49 x 16 mm
• Weight : 96 g
• Display : 2.4″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, HSCSD, 3G
• Card Slot : Memory Stick Micro (M2)
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 5 MP with autofocus and LED Flash
• GPS : Supported with A-GPS support
• FM Radio : Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• Other features : Accelerometer, secondary camera, geotagging

Design and Display

The dimensions of the phone are rather small considering it is a slider phone. The body of the C903 has been made entirely from plastic that has a glossy glow to it. It looks attractive in the hand but only if you keep wiping off the fingerprints that it attracts easily. The D-pad has metallic accent to it and is very usable. Infact, all the keys below the display are comfortable to use.

The 2.4″ TFT display with QVGA resolution occupies up majority of the space on the front panel. The lighting of the display is controlled by the ambient light sensor above the display. There is a secondary call camera besides the sensor too for making video calls. Made up of scratch resistant surface, the display does a good job. It isn’t as good as some of the latest Nokia displays or even from Sony Ercisson but its good enough. Sunlight visibility isn’t a issue at all with the display and images appear vivid and bright.

The keypad revealed by sliding the display up is dressed up in all-white. The keys are almost flat with ridges between rows to enhance usability. Typing isn’t a problem on the keypad, although it may seem so when you look at it. The backlighting on the keypad is strong enough for dark environments too. The back side of the C903 deserves a mention, the camera cover slides horizontally like the T-series Sony digicams.

The left part of the phone has Fast Port without any protective cover, so keeping it clean will a pain. The M2 memory card is beneath the cover but it is hot swappable. The loudspeaker grill is tiny and goes almost unnoticeable. The right side has the volume rocker along with camera controls. The camera button that also acts as autofocus key is positioned ergonomically. The other two keys are for opening camera mode and gallery mode. The top part is completely free of any buttons or ports. The bottom has slider for opening the back cover.

Music Player and Camera

The music player found on the C903 is a slimmed version of the Walkman 3.0 music player. It supports auto rotation of the screen with the help of built in accelerometer. The player has all the goodness of the Walkman 3.0 player such as large file format support, background support, MegaBass equalizer etc. The Now Playing screen shows all the details related to the track being played currently. Features missing are SensMe and Shake Control that take the music experience to a new level, but there absence re-iterates that this is a camera phone. The audio quality is good but below what you get from a Walkman phone.

The C903 has a 5 MP sensor with autofocus and LED flash. We fail to understand, when will Xenon flash become a standard atleast on Cybershot phones. The LED flash just doesn’t cut it when taking pics in low lighting conditions. The camera however, is as capable as any other Cybershot phone and has all the goodness in the form of smile shutter, face detection, image and video stabilizer, BestPic, auto-rotate, macro mode, spot metering along with geotagging of photos.

The menu system consists of pop-up sub-menus that have icons as well as Multi Menu packaging and is easy to use. The camera toolbar houses all the scene modes, flash, focus, picture size, white balance, effects settings. ISO setting is notably missing from the camera settings. The camera has image stabilizer which is purely software based and isn’t as effective as optical image stabilisation. The camera has both face and smile detection.

BestPic mode has proved it mettle before and works well on this phone too.  Smile Shutter technology is used to detect smiling faces and snap a picture when they are detected. Geotagging works flawlessly using the inbuilt GPS receiver. The image quality of the phone is excellent and it does not disappoint. Images turn out with vivid color, sharp and crisp. Noise levels are high for low-light conditions as expected due to weak LED flash. Overall the image quality is brilliant for a 5MP phone.

Web Browser and Organiser

NetFront v3.4 with extended home screen is the browser pre-installed on the C903. There are loads of shortcuts that lead to free content on Sony Ericsson’s site. Rendering is great and complex sites are rendered perfectly on the browser. Full screen mode is replaced by auto-rotate that uses the built-in accelerometer. Panning and zooming of pages is quick without any lags. Virtual mouse pointer is present that enhances the browsing speed greatly. Terms can be searched on a web page using the “Find on Page” option. Opera Mini can always be installed if you are not satisfied with the default browser.

Time Management applications are plenty for accomplishing various tasks. The bundled applications include File manager, Applications, Video call, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator, and Code memo. Calendar offers daily, monthly and weekly views. Overall a good collection of application for the organiser.

Pros :

• Good design
• Great sunlight visibility of display
• Decent Music player
• Excellent camera
• Great browser
• Great organiser

Cons :

• Fingerprint magnet
• Uncovered Fast Port
• Poor video recording capabilities

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson C903 offers an excellent camera with decent music capabilities. It has a good design and the display is good but not great. The camera is its highlight and it outperforms providing excellent images. Browser and organiser are two another great aspects of this phone. However it is a fingerprint magnet, has uncovered Fast Port and video recording capabilities are dismal.

Rating : 4/5

Sony Ericsson W995 specifications :

• Dimensions : 97 x 49 x 15 mm
• Weight : 113 g
• Display : 2.6″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Camera : 8.1 MP with autofocus and LED Flash
• Card slot : Memory Stick Micro M2
• Connectivity: GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSPDA, HSCSD
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Other features : Accelerometer, Stereo speakers, FM Radio with RDS,
  3.5 mm audio jack, Video call camera

Design and Display

The dimensions of the phone are quite small considering the huge display that is has. The weight is just about fine at 113 g. Although the phone comes in three colors, black suits the phone the most and is surely going off the shelves sooner than others! When you slide the phone open, you are reminded on the Nokia N95 that had the same slick slider but a fat body, although it does not have the dual-slider mechanism.

The D-pad and other buttons beneath the display have been borrowed from older Sony Ericsson phones. The semi-circular buttons at the edges are not user friendly at all and Sony Ericsson should avoid them. The display itself is a beauty and the 2.6 incher has crisp graphics. The display runs at QVGA resolution and produces vivid images. The sunlight legibility is fine under direct sunlight.

Above the display is located the earpiece and adjoining it are the ambient light sensor and the video call camera. The phone has inbuilt accelerometer for auto-rotation of the display and works smoothly. The keypad revealed by sliding the display up has nicely laid out keys with large spaces between them. However, the keys are too subdued that reduces the tactile feedback. Overall, typing on the keypad is fun and after you have got used to it, there is no looking back.

The Walkman key is located on the left and is large and easy to access and along with it is the Fast Port connector. The card slot although is located underneath the back cover, but it is hot swappable. The right side is jam packed with buttons starting with the volume rocker key, camera key and the dedicated music control keys.

Music Player and Camera

The device has the latest Walkman 4.0 music player with all the extras included. The player has skin support for those who want it. Sony Ericsson phones see the light of 3.5 mm jack which had eluded them till now. A large number of file formats are supported along with various preset equalizers. Filtering of tracks by artists, genre, album etc or using the SensMe feature to select a particular bunch of tracks depending on the tempo. The accelerometer is put to good use by the Shake Control feature. D-pad is made in-charge of the controls and does an effective job. Then there are dedicated music keys too at the right hand side too that offer flexibility to control music when the music player is running in the background. The Now Playing screen shows the detailed information about the track currently being played. The audio quality of the player is exceptional and matches the Apple iPod Touch 2G audio quality.

The line between Cybershot and Walkman phones is blurring day by day. The 8 megapixel camera on the device does point towards that direction but the image quality certainly isn’t at par with the Cybershot phones. The camera has various settings such as face detection, geotagging, image stabilizer, BestPic etc, exposure metering, auto-rotation etc. ISO setting is notably missing from the menu. The lens has bee left without any protection. The flash used in PowerLED flash which is just another name for LED flash. Face detection works fr up to 3 faces at a time but there is no smile detection feature. Geotagging works great as it uses the internal GPS receiver. The BestPic mode has slow and fast modes and they take 7 pictures in a row at 0.8 sec and 1.7 sec interval with no option to use flash in this mode. The picrure sadly isn’t as good as we have seen in CyberShot C905 which is a 8 MP phone. The detail is lesser, pics are oversharpened and purple fringing is also present. Video recording is also disappointing as 30 fps @ QVGA with no VGA mode present.

Web Browser and Organiser

NetFront v3.4 is the bundled browser on the phone which is quite capable. Rendering is accurate even for complex web pages. Full screen landscape mode is turned on by tilting the display and accelerometer does the rest. Zooming and panning pages is fast without any lags. Virtual mouse pointer is enabled making browsing so much easier. Overall the browser does a good job.

The Sony Ericsson W995 offers a wide variety of time management features that would suffice for your day-to-day needs. Some of the applications include Tasks, Notes, Alarms, Calendar, Stopwatch, Light, Calculator, Syncronisation, File Manager etc. There is no office suite bundled which is disappointing. Calendar can be viewed in both monthly and weekly views and tasks can be scheduled as either Tasks or Phone Calls. Overall the organiser offers a good set of applications.

Pros :

• Great display
• Small dimensions
• Walkman 4.0 player
• 8 MP camera
• Excellent browser
• Good organiser

Cons :

• Average image quality
• No office document viewer

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W995 delivers on the promise of a great music with decent imaging capabilities. The Walkman 4.0 music player does not disappoint and has all the features that one would desire from a high-end Walkman phone. The 8MP camer is a bit of downer as the image quality isn’t as good as expected. Web browsing is excellent with the NetFront browser installed on the device. Organizer does it job well but lacks the office document viewer. Overall the phone is definitely a winner!

Rating : 4/5

Sony Ericsson W595 specifications :

• Dimensions : 100 x 47 x 14 mm
• Weight : 104 g
• Display : 2.2″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• Card slot : Memory Stick Micro (M2)
• Camera : 3.2 MP
• Bluetooth : Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
• Other features : Stereo FM with RDS, TrackID music recognition,
  Accelerometer sensor, SensMe, Shake Control
• Approx. price : $250

The retail package of W595 has the usual accessories included. These are charger, USB data cable, bass-reflex headphones and a 2GB memory card has also been included . It also has a big Stereo Share adapter that lets you connect up to two earphones simultaneously to share music with your friends.

Design and Display

design of the phone is slider form factor inherited from W580. The surface is rubbery and has metallic edges and the D-pad too has metallic accents. The ergonomics of the phone are great and it won’t slip out of your hand easily. The weight of the phone is just above 100 g that makes it easy on the pockets. Both the top and bottom are curved that adds to the aesthetics of the phone.

The display has QVGA resolution and the 2.2″ screen does a splendid job. The pictures produced are crisp and the brightness and contrast levels are high enough for dark environments too. The keys below the display are large enough for comfortable use.  The keypad is revealed by sliding the display up and the keys are easy on fingers as they offer tactile feedback. The keys have sufficient space in between them and SMS junkies would find them easy to use.

The Walkman key is located on the right side of the phone but is a bit too small for our liking. The stereo speakers are located at the top and the bottom for surround sound effect. The logo in embedded inside the phone leaving the phone flat on its back. The back cover is made up of thin plastic so don’t fiddle around with it too much or else it might crack. The memory card slot is located underneath the panel making hot-swapping impossible.

Music Player and Camera

Walkman 3.0 has become the standard music player on Walkman phones. The music player supports a wide variety of formats along with preset equalizers. The player has all the extras included making it one of the best possible music players out there. The player supports Album Art and features such as Shake Control that use the phone’s inbuilt accelerometer. Visualizations on the music player are supported too. Now Playing screen gives you all the song information of the currently playing track. D-pad is used to control the functions of the music player. Animations get tuned on home screen when music player is running in the background depending on the Flash Lite theme enabled.  SenseMe and Shake Control are two features that take the Walkman experience to a new level. The audio quality of the music player is great as expected and the external loudspeakers do a decent job.

The camera has a 3.2MP sensor without any autofocus or flash, but still manages to do a decent job. The camera settings are limited and only a handful are present to fiddle around with. But there are nifty features such as auto-rotate, geo-tagging that add to the limited settings. The camera supports geo-tagging of images using cell-ID which is fairly accurate within city limits. The interface uses a pop-out menu system and the settings are neatly categorized. Some of the settings include  self timer, while balance, scenes. picture size, effects etc. The image quality is just about average  with fair amount of detail and no purple fringing. However, at time there is excessive sharpening of the images. The video quality could have been better than QVGA resolution and 15 fps.

Web Browser and Organiser

The web browser bundled with the phone is NetFront browser with extended custom home screen. The browser does a good job but the browsing experience is limited by the small screen size of the display. The browser has loads of shortcuts that are listed on the home screen. You also get access to free content such as clips, tracks etc from Sony Ercisson’s website too. Rendering has never been a problem with the browser and pages of all kinds fit perfectly in the browser. The zooming and panning speeds are good. The accelerometer works in the browser switching from portrait to fulls screen landscape view or vice versa. Search is bundled with browser letting you search for any word/phrase on the loaded page. Overall the browser does it job well but is limited by the screen size.

Time management features are plenty on the device and it has applications such File manager, Video Call, Alarms, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator, Memo etc. Calendar offers both monthly and weekly views. Alarms can be set to repeat on certain days. Voice Recorder’s recording capabilities are limited only by the space on the memory card. There is however, no office document viewer bundled with the phone. The organizer lives up to the reputation and does its job efficiently.

Pros :

• Good display
• Accelerometer
• 2GB bundled memory card
• Stereo speakers
• Great browser
• Good organiser
• Geotagging

Cons :

• Small display size
• Average camera quality
• No office document viewer

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W595 is a nice upgrade to the W850. The display has good quality but is small in size. Also the phone has all the goodness of a Walkman phone and comes bundled with a 2GB memory card. The music capabilities are undoubtedly good but the camera quality is average. The organiser and the web browser are great. Its biggest drawback is that it does not compel you to upgrade. Overall a phone targeted towards music lovers with decent imaging capabilities.

Rating : 3.5/5

Sony Ericsson W902 specifications :

• Dimensions : 110 x 49 x 11.7 mm
• Weight : 100 g
• Display : 2.2″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE, 3G
• Camera : 5 MP, autofocus, flash
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Card Slot : Memory Stick micro M2
• Other features : Accelerometer, Shake Control, SenseMe, FM Radio
• Approx. price : $375

Sony has included all the usual stuff in the retail package. One can find the USB data cable, stereo headset with 3.5 mm remote and of course the charger. Sony Ericsson has been generous enough to include a 8GB memory card in the package.

Design and Display

The dimensions and the weight of the phone are rather tiny. At just 11.7 mm it feels quite slick and the grip is quite strong in the hands. It feels like feather at just about 100 g and would hardly be felt in the pockets. The overall design is however a bit letdown as there isn’t a refreshing feel about it and it looks just like another Walkman phone. The phone has dedicated music buttons which is a welcome change. These are located on a bar at the right side of the phone. The keys thought are a bit too tiny for comfort and would take time to get used too. The edges on the phone are not curved, the way we prefer. The proprietary port is located on the left side and is not accompanied by any other button or port.

The 2.2″ TFT display with QVGA resolution is very good. The display clarity is crisp and the brightness and contrast levels are fine. Indoors, the display is a charm too use but the goodness is diluted when outdoors. The sunlight visibility is good but not great.

Music Player and Camera

The phone is media centric and that truly shows with the Media Center bundled with the phone’s interface. It manages all the media files, be it images, audio or video files at a single place. The interface is intuitive and the navigation is pretty simple. The auto rotation feature works with the application perfectly.

The music player included is Walkman 3.0 that has proven its worth before. The player can be accessed by hard pressing the dedicated music keys too apart from the main menu. The player supports a wide variety of formats and has various preset equalizers. Tracks can be filtered through various preferences and Album art support is also present. Now Playing screen has all the necessary information such as track name, duration, artist, album etc. One can choose from various visualisations too instead of album art.

The home screen is lit up with visualisation when the player is running in background, an excellent feature that we admire. And not only that, it also shows the song information on the home screen too. This is possible only when you have a Flash Lite theme enabled though.

Shake Control is another interesting feature that we have seen before. It allows you to change tracks by flipping your hand forward to skip to next track and flip backward to listen to previous track. Both the actions have to be done while pressing the music key though. Doing both the actions together will shuffle you playlist. Tilting the handset while holding the key can change the volume. Nice use of accelerometer there.

SensMe is another feature that has completely taken me over since it was first introduced. It can sort tracks based on the tempo. So, if you are in the mood to listen to some slow tracks but don’t have the time to go through your whole library searching for them, put SensMe to task. It creates a galaxy of tracks according to tempo and you can choose the radius of circle and place it according to your mood.

Walkman phones have never boasted of great cameras, that task had been left off to the Cybershot series. But the Sony Ericsson W902 is set to change that by integrating in a great 5 megapixel camera in the device. The camera features autofocus and has LED flash. The camera is a full fledged application with every feature that is present in Cybershot phones. These include BestPic mode, auto-rotate, geo-tagging(cell-ID), macro mode etc.  The geotagging works fine in city due to close proximity of cell towers but same does not hold true for remote areas. The image quality is amazing is great detail and good clarity. Some images though, do suffer from excessive sharpening and purple fringing. The video recording though is average at QVGA resolution at 30 fps.

Web Browser and Organiser

Web browsing on a small screen is never pleasnt, no matter how good the browser it and W902 suffers from the same drawback. W902 uses Access NetFront browser v3.4 found on many other Ericsson phones. The renddering is good for almost all kinds of pages. Panning and zooming is fast enough for comfort. Accelerometer auto-changes the view mode to landscape and back depending on orientatiion. It  also has a virtual mouse pointer making navigation so much easier.

Organiser has so many bundled applications such as File manager, Calendar, Notes, Tasks, Alarms, Syncronisation, Calculator etc. Calendar has monthly and dialy views. Alarm application can set up to five alarms at a time. Voice recorders capacity is limited to free space on memory card. Tasks application can be used to handle your tasks. Overall it does a good job of managing your time effectively.

Pros :

• Great display
• Sleek and light weight
• Great music player
• Excellent camera
• Good organiser

Cons :

• Old design
• Small display
• Tiny dedicated music keys
• No GPS, WiFi

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W902 has a lot of stuff going in its favor. It has a great display that is only limited by its size. The phone is sleek and light weight with great multimedia capabilties. The camera just sweetens the expereince in a Walkman phone. Sony Ericsson needs to consider bringing in refreshing new designs. The price is definitely on the higher side as it lacks both GPS and WiFi.

Rating : 3.75/5

LG KP 500 Cookie Specs:

• Dimensions: 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm
• Weight: 89 gms
• Display: 3.0 inches TFT touchscreen, 256K colors, 240 x 400 pixels (WQVGA)
• Memory: 48 MB (Internal) with 16 GB MicroSD support
• Connectivity: GPRS Class 10, EDGE Class 10
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth v2.1
• Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048 x 1536 pixels, Video Rec (QVGA at 12 FPS)
• Battery: Standard Li-Ion 900 mAh Battery
• Other Features: Flash UI, Accelerometer, FM radio with RDS, Java MIDP 2.0, Document viewer (DOC, XLS, PDF), MP3 / WMA / AAC player, MPEG4 / 3GP video player

Design and Build Quality:

The LG Cookie KP 500 sports a nice, simple and cute design. It is very appealing and is reminiscent of the recent generation of touchscreen smartphones with its huge display and a minimum number of buttons. The phone feels nice and the design is well thought of. The KP 500 Cookie has dimensions of 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm and weighs just about 89 gms. The build quality is also very nice, it should easily last you for years with proper usage. The dsign should appeal to almost everyone – casual users as well as business users.

The front face consists of the 3.0 inch display and three keys – Call, Launcher, End. Above the display, you will find the earpiece. On the left edge, there is the volume rocker and the connectivity port. On the right is the camera shutter key and the lock key as well as the MicroSD slot. The stylus slot is located at the bottom. On the back of the phone, the 3 MP camera stands alone.

Display:

The LG Cookie KP 500 comes with a 3.0 inch touchscreen display with a WQVGA resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. While the resolution is no match for the likes of the Nokia 5800′s 360 x 640 pixels, it is still pretty decent and looks great with the Flash UI. The display has nice nrightness and contrast and also realistic, vibrant colors. Watching a movie should be a joy on the Cookie. The touchscreen is a resistive one like Nokia 5800 and offers nice response and sensitivity. Once you get used to it, navigating through the interface is fun. The display supports haptic feedback – vibrations when a click is made. The display is one of the strong points of this phone. It has decent sunlight legibility as well. Generally, you don’t expect good displays from low cost phones but the LG KP 500 Cookie sets an exception.

Interface:

The LG KP 500 Cookie sports a custom Flash based UI by LG. It is very cute, easy to use and reminds you of the iPhone OS. It is very similar to interfaces sported by the LG KC910 Renoir and the LG Prada with slight cutbacks in functionality. It is very intuitive and user friendly. The interface is very responsive and fast with no lags or delays. The interface is divided into 4 tabs – Communicate, Entertainment, Utilities and Settings. The UI animations and manu transitions are very pleasing and will definitely be liked by everyone. It has dual homescreens – the first homescreen supports widgets and the second one lets you arrange contacts around the screen. You can customize the homescreen with all the widgets you like. The flash UI with the widgets etc is superb, though it doesn’t support OS-native 3rd party applications. You can install Java MIDP 2.0 applications and games though.

Text input on the KP 500 Cookie is easy to use, the virtual keyboard is fun to use once you get used to it. The alphabets are large enough so you can click them easily. The Cookie also supports handwriting recognition if you prefer to write your messages. The font is big and pleasing, messaging is a breeze on this phone.

Multimedia:

The LG KP 500 Cookie can easily double up as a multimedia device. The large display facilitates video playback, but it doesn’t support the standard DivX, XviD formats so you will have to transcode all your files. The video playback quality is nice though, you can also play videos in the landscape mode as well as full screen. You can also take screenshots of your video. The built in audio player has a superb interface. The music player supports album art and also has EQ presets. It supports all the features any normal music player would – it can sort tracks according to artist, album, genre, and recently played etc. You can also create custom playlists. The music player can also be minimised and run in the background as a widget. The audio quality is very good and should satisfy all your casual music needs. The only qualm we have is that there is no standard 3.5 mm audio jack so you can’t plug in earphones of your choice directly.

The KP 500 Cookie also comes with an image gallery to view all your image files. The interface again, is very cool and stylish. You can browse images in portrait or landscape modes, zoom into them, and perform some basic editing. This is one of the most feature packed image gallery we have seen. You can edit the brightness, contrast, color, hue and saturation, sharpness, blur etc. It also has red-eye removal as well as color effects.

Camera and Other Features:

It also comes with an FM Radio with RDS support. The FM reception is quite good. It also has a 3 MP camera which captures images at a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. It records video at QVGA resolutions at 12 FPS. There is no flash with the camera so night shots are ruled out. The camera capture quality is pretty decent. The colors are accurate and the images bright with good contrast. There is minimal noise. The camera interface is also pretty easy to use and covers all the basic features.

It isn’t really very good with connectivity stuff – it lacks Wi-Fi and 3G. The built in web browser is decent. It also comes bundled with some games. It is powered by a standard Li Ion 900 mAh battery. The phone lasts about 2.5 days with moderate usage. The battery life is a bit less than we would have liked. The LG Cookie KP 500 comes bundled with a phone charger, a data cable and a wired handsfree. Apart from that, you get the required manuals and guides.

Pros:

• Priced Cheap
• Nice Design, Build
• Superb Interface / OS
• Nice Display

Cons:

• No Wi-Fi / 3G
• Average Camera with no Flash
• No 3.5 mm standard jack

Final Words:

The LG KP 500 Cookie is a nice phone overall with nice features and a pleasing interface. It is priced very intelligently and should become very popular among the masses who want a cheap but functional touchscreen smartphone which is also good to look at.

Our Rating: 4 / 5.

LG KF900 Prada specifications :

• Dimensions : 104.5 x 54 x 16.8 mm
• Weight : 130 g
• Display : 3″ TFT touchscreen with 240 x 400 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSCSD
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 5 MP, autofocus and flash
• Other features : Accelerometer, FM Radio, TV Out
• Approx. price : $550

The biggest change has come in the form of a full QWERTY keyboard attached to the Prada. Although its always good to have one but bulkiness and thickness isn’t the USP of the Prada, LG could have done without one. There are other upgrades to media, connectivity and user interface too.

Display, Keyboard and User Interface

The display on the device has remained unchanged and is still a 3″ display with capacitive touch. The quality of the display is good but the sunlight visibility isn’t the best we have seen. The display’s brightness can be adjusted but not he contrast. The resolution is on the lower side and does affect the picture quality. However, the touch works beautifully and there were no hiccups in that regard.

The keyboard has a nice neat layout with sufficient gap between two adjacent keys. The keys are slightly raised from bottom and give enough tactile feedback. The top row keys suffer due to close proximity to top edge. The mode automatically changes to landscape when the keyboard is flipped out. The lighting on the keyboard is adequate for low light conditions. Overall the QWERTY keyboard does a good job, better than Sony Xperia X1.

The user-interface on the device is Flash based developed by LG. The same user interface has been previously used in the older Prada, Viewty etc. The biggest change however comes in te form of multi-touch support which was till now exclusive to the Apple iPhone. The interface has got a performance boost and responds much faster. The menu has fixed layout and the accelerometer changes the orientation but only in selected applications. There are multiple home screens pretty much like the iPhone and you can select the application shortcuts to put on them. The rest of the interface is mostly unchanged and we like the way it is.

Music player and Camera

The music player on the device is good with extensive search options based on artist, genre, album etc. The music player however does not support visualizations but has support for album art. The home screen gets a dedicated widget when the music player is running. The player gets equalizers which were missing in previous versions but still there is no custom equalizer option though. Now there are dedicated buttons for repeat, shuffle, sound. The Prada 2 also has FM Radio with RDS support that can store upto 50 stations. The quality of the music player is great and the sound produced is rich in detail.

The camera has a 5 megapixel sensor and Schneider-Kreuznac lens  a big improvement over the minuscule 2 megapixel sensor in earlier Prada. The interface is same as LG Renoir which was not much appreciated by us but it has some improvements such a full screen mode that make it better. LG fails to utilize the space left at the sides that puts various settings buried deep in to the menu making it less user friendly. The camera has three shooting modes, normal, burst and panorama. The resolution however, decreases successively when the multiple shots are increased by 3, 6 or 9. Other settings include white balance, ISO, exposure compensation, self-timer, color effects etc.

The image quality of the camera is average which is disappointing. The images lack detail and the contrast is also low. Color reproduction is fine but there is a fair bit of noise in the pics. The video recording however completely rocks as it manages to record videos at a high resolution of 720 x 480 @ 25 fps. The videos have some problem with getting the aspect ratio right, but that should be corrected in future firmware updates.

Web Browsing and Organiser

Browsing on the Prada 2 is a nice experience on its 3″ capacitive touchscreen that has multi-touch support too. It has the legendary pinch to zoom gesture but it takes quite some time to zoom in and out unlike the iPhone. The controls pop up at bottom that auto hide after a few seconds and a single tap on the screen brings them up again. Orientation is changes automatically, thanks to the accelerometer. The browser has tab support but is limited to two tabs only. The browser can search for words and shows the first result along with total number of results, a feature missing from MobileSafari.

The organiser on Prada 2 has all the necessary softwares to help you manage your time efficiently. Calendar offers both monthly and weekly views. One can schedule alarms a week in advance. To-Do application manages your tasks efficiently. Date finder is a small and neat application that finds the day, date after say 11 days from now. Calculator, Unit Converter, World Clock, Voice recorder are some of the other applications on the Prada 2.

Pros :

• 3″ capacitive touchscreen
• Physical QWERTY keyboard
• Multi-touch support
• Good video recording
• Great flash-based interface

Cons :

• Bulky
• No GPS
• Average camera

Final Thoughts

The LG KF900 Prada is definitely an improvement over the earlier Prada with multi-touch support, physical keyboard and higher resolution camera. It has a nice Flash-based interface that has been optimised for touch experience. The display is gorgeous and has multi-touch support too. But it does miss out on GPS and the quality of the camera is average. Video recording however is great with a resolution of 720 x 480.The web browser is a treat to work on and has tab support and search option too. Overall the Prada 2 is a much improved phone that delivers the goods. It does leave room for some improvement that we can expect when Prada 3 gets released.

Rating : 4/5

LG KS360 specifications :

• Dimensions : 101.5 x 51 x 16.8 mm
• Weight : 108 g
• Display : 2.4 inches TFT
• Display resolution : 240 x 320
• Card slot : microSD
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE
• Camera : 2.0 MP
• Bluetooth : v.20 with A2DP
• Other features : FM Radio, QWERTY keyboard
• Approx. price : $400

The device has a slide out QWERTY keyboard and that adds a lot of thickness to the device. The corners of the phone are round and so are all the buttons on the phone. The round buttons on the keyboard and elsewhere make it look like a complete toy. LG has included minimal accessories in the retail package. Charger, data cable and headset is all your can expect to find bundled with the phone. No memory card is included, so you have to spend extra on that too.

The device is targeted towards teens who like to flaunt the device, atleast the design and color combination suggest that! The cell phone fits in to the pocket rather easily despite being thick. The weight is on the lower side at just 108 g. The left side of the phone has the LG universal port for connecting charger, headset etc. The microSD slot is also located on the left side. On the other side are the volume rocker and shutter keys. The overall build quality is good in spite of it being all plastic.

Display and Keyboard

The cell phone has a 2.4″ TFT touchscreen display that occupies most of the front panel. The display has QVGA resolution that is fine for a display of that size. The display has limited touchscreen functionality that is available in the phone dialer. The display is great with accurate color reproduction and nice contrast. The sunlight visibility though is pretty average.

Below the front panel are the Call/End keys as well as navigation keys. The keys on the front panel are cramped for space that takes a toll on the ergonomics. The keyboard has flat keys that are widely spaced. The QWERTY keyboard does look like a toy with those round keys but it does have good ergonomics. The orientation of the display is automatically changed when the keyboard is flipped out. The keyboard duplicates the front controls so to as make navigation easier while holding it with keyboard flipped out. The backlight is probably the only problem with the keyboard as the blue light is not strong enough in dark environments.

Music Player and Camera

The music player on the device is pretty basic and has limited features. Sorting tracks by artist, album, genre etc is not available. You can however, search for tracks and it does have equalizer support. Playlists are supported on the music player too and Favorites and recent are the two automatic playlist options. Not much to say about the sound quality as it is just above average. The phone does have FM Radio integrated, but the interface for the same is too elementary for our liking.

The camera has a 2.0 MP resolution but it does not have either flash or autofocus much like the Apple iPhone. The camera interface is neat and has quite a few manual options. These include white balance, exposure compensation, color effects etc. It also has self-timer and multi-shot option that can takes 3, 6 or 9 images in a go. The camera quality however, is much better than the iPhone and it manages to churn out good quality images for a 2.0 MP camera. The detail is not compromised and the contrast level is just about fine. The video recording option on the phone is below average with it recording @15fps in 3GP format, good enough for sending MMS.

Web Browser and Organiser

The web browser is pathetic to put it straight. LG has done a horrific job with it with both the engine and the interface. The pages on the browser load slowly on EDGE connection and the rendering does not match the screen resolution for most websites. It takes ages to pan the page or to zoom in or zoom out. You would be better off installing Opera Mini on the phone.

The organizer on the device has loads of stuff to help you manage your time and tasks. Calendar, Alarm clock, Memo application, Voice recorder, calculator, stop watch, unit converter, world clock application are some of the standard applications. The Alarm application can handle five alarms at a time. World Clock application lets you view time across different time zones. It also has a document viewer that supports office files such as DOC, PPT, XLS, TXT as well as PDF files. The performance of the document viewer is flaky as it sometimes loads documents slowly.

Pros :

• Great display
• Physical QWERTY keyboard
• Ergonomic keyboard
• Respectable camera quality
• Great organizer

Cons :

• Buttons look childish
• No 3G support
• No LED flash, autofocus
• Basic music player
• Limited touch functionality
• Pathetic browser

Final Thoughts

The LG KS360 is a cell phone for the young generation with its funky looks. The slide out QWERTY keyboard along with a good display are some of its strong points. It however lacks a lot of features and the touch input is also limited. Its negative points are far more than its positive ones putting it in the league of ordinary phones. Apart from the looks, it misses out on 3G support and a better camera. The interface for music player, FM Radio is too basic. The web browser is inefficient with slow browsing speeds and bad rendering. LG could have done a much better job with the phone. The price is on the higher side, and you can get much better cell phones in that range.

Rating : 2.5/5

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic specifications :

• Dimensions : 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm
• Weight : 109 g
• Display : 3.2″ TFT touchscreen with 360 x 640 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 3.2 Megapixel, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, flash
• GPS : Built-in with A-GPS functionality
• Card slot : microSD, upto 16GB
• Other features : Accelerometer, proximity sensor,
  handwriting recognition
• OS : Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60
• Approx. price : $420

The phone generated a lot of hype when it was first announced by Nokia. The euphoria of Nokia launching an iPhone rival brought the Nokia community to go gaga about it. Nokia has taken special care of the accessories that it bundles with the phone. 8GB memory card, TV-out cable and protective case are the accessories worth noting.

Display and User Interface

The dimensions of the phone are not too large and the thickness at 15.5 mm is just about fine. The length of the phone is rather large considering the 3.2″ display it has. The phone is comfortable to hold in the hand and has got a good grip. The back of the phone has a soft rubbery feel rather than the fingerprint prone glossy plastic. The Nokia 5800 has a subdued design but yet it looks elegant.

The 3.2″ display is recessed in to the body while the keys on are pretty similar to the ones found on Nokia N-series. The display has a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels which is better than Apple iPhone 3G. The better resolution clearly shows when viewing images combined with the richness in colors and great brightness and contrast. OLED displays although are much better in brightness and contrast but the 5800XM has the regular TFT screen. Sunlight visibility that has Nokia strong point does not hold true for 5800XM and the display is poorly visible in bright light.

The touchscreen used on the device is resistive rather than capacitive. This translates to applying extra pressure on the screen to accept input but it also means one can use stylus with the phone. The touchscreen has haptic feedback that has three adjustable modes of vibration. Nokia hasn’t bundled a stylus with the phone but surprisingly a plectrum! We certainly don’t see people preferring to use that thing over fingers.

Symabian 60 has been a great platform for years and the strength of Nokia phones for years now. Nokia has now brought the same platform to its first touchscreen phone with the interface optimised for touch input. Being the first iteration of touch optimised S60 interface, it does not seem as polished as some of the other touchscreen interfaces one can find. Nevertheless, the interface is quite usable and the goodness of Symbian 60 platform is still intact.  The main screen is a big letdown as it still has small icons and a lot of un-utilized has been left. The main menu also has only a single screen of shortcuts. Overall, the interface needs much improvement to be match the highly polished iPhone interface.

Music Player and Camera

The music player interface is pretty similar to the 3rd edition Symbian OS but it has been optimized for touch experience. It still has all the goodness of the Symbian OS music player with large number file format support and great sound quality. The music player can sort music by artists, genre, albums etc. Tracks can be added via PC suite or directly copy-pasting on to the device but that requires a library refresh. The audio quality sets the 5800XM at the top of the league with exceptional sound quality. It simply blows the competiton away and has set new benchmark for music phones.

The camera on the device has a 3.2 MP sensor with autofocus and flash. The interface has been completely changed but it isn’t exactly the best we have seen though. The screen reserves the right-side for touch sensitive controls leaving the rest as the viewfinder. The camera has many manual settings to tinker around with ranging from white balance, ISO, exposure compensation, contrast etc. Geo-tagging isn’t supported inspite on inbuilt GPS. The image quality is decent but we expected it to be much better. The camera is good enough if you snap pics once in a while. The camera can record videos as VGA resolution which is definitely a bonus.

Web Browser and Organiser

As with other components, the web browser is similar to S60 3rd ed. devices. But it too lacks proper touch optimisation that makes the browsing experience average. Zoom is controlled by taps on screen and panning is the only feature to support gestures. The back-end technology such as page rendering etc remains unchanged for the good as it was just about perfect for mobile devices. The browser has both Flash and Java support.

The organiser on the phone is top-notch. It has various time management features from settings tasks in calendar to setting up a multiple alarms. It comes with Mobile Office and PDF Viewer to view files on the move. Calculator,Voice recorder, unit converter are some of the other utilities. Organisers have matured enough on Nokia phones to please almost anyone and Nokia 5800XM is no exception and with the huge application library available for S60 there should never be a problem.

Pros :

• Great display
• Good accessory bundle
• Good GPS
• Nice music player

Cons :

• Average camera
• Poor sunlight visibility
• UI immature
• Web browsing needs improvement

Final Thoughts

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a good offering from Nokia but has quite a few week points it needs to work on. The display has always been Nokia’s strong point along with music player. Camera quality is average when it could certainly have been better. Touch optimisation is what the device lacks and is evident at lots of places such as the browser.  The price tag is the deal clincher for me and it is worth the price it comes at.

Rating : 4/5

LG KC910 Renoir specifications :

• Dimensions : 107.8 x 55.9 x 14 mm
• Weight : 114 g
• Display : 3″ TFT touchscreen with 240 x 400 resolution
• Card slot : microSD
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• Bluetooth : Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Camera : 8 megapixel with autofocus, xenon flash
• GPS : Built-in GPS with A-GPS support
• Other features : Accelerometer, Flash UI, FM Radio
• Approx. price : $499

The cell phone seems attractively priced considering the amount of features it manages to stuff in. Also there are only a handful 8 megapixel camera phones in the market right now. Samsung Pixon is it closest competitor having a 8 megapixel camera.

Design and Display

The dimensions of the phone are by no means big and the weight is just about right. LG has left a lot of empty space on the front panel when it could certainly have gone with a bigger display. The packaged accessories include stylus, charger, USB cable, 3.5mm jack adapter. A generous 8GB memory card also comes bundled.

The front part consists of the 3″ display along with three buttons at the bottom that look like jewels. The earpiece is above the display in the center and is flanked by sensors on it left. The body has been made out of high grade plastic giving it a nice feel. The stylus can be used for handwriting recognition but otherwise fingers are sufficient for navigation.

The display is a 3″ touchscreen with a resolution of 240 x 400. When turned off, it has mirror effect which hampers its visibility in direct sunlight. Otherwise the display offers nice image quality and brightness and contrast levels are good.

Music Player and Camera

The music player on the device is similar to LG Viewty. The user interface is flash based and LG has done a good job with it. Music can be sorted according to artist, album, genre etc. You can control the music player through a widget on the home screen when it is minimized. However, the music player does not have the equalizer settings to tinker with but does support visualizations though in the form of album art or animations. You can create playlists on the music player itself. The audio quality of the device is very good but sadly no equalizer settings to tweak sound to your taste.

Camera is the main focus of the cell phone and it surely excels in this department. It has a dedicated shutter button and is placed strategically making it easy to use. It also features digital image stabilization and there is a hardware control to toggle its setting. The camera uses the Xenon flash but it has no LED flash to be used during video recording. The camera has manual cover that triggers the camera application when opened.

The interface is extremely easy to use and has loads of manual settings. The viewfinder is spread out on the big screen and landscape is the default view. The interface uses semi-transparent menus that house all the options.There is no help text to accompany the graphical icons. The manual settings include white balance, exposure compensation, ISO settings, preset modes, color effects, self-timer etc.

The camera also has burst mode that shoots seven full resolution pictures in a short span of time. Panorama mode is also available on the camera allowing to you capture panoramic images by combining images together. Geotagging is possible, thanks to the inbuilt GPS. Face detection is another feature which was found in digital cameras till now.  Smile detection feature saves you the hassle of capturing again if you missed the person smiling as the camera automatically clicks the picture when it detects the smile. Some other features include manual focus, backlight compensation, beauty shot etc.

The image quality is exceptional and certainly the best 8 megapixel camera till date.Although the camera has Xenon flash, it is not as powerful as seen in Sony Ericsson phone or the Nokia N82. There is no sign of purple fringing or blurry edges in the images captured. The noise levels are well within acceptable levels. There is over sharpening on some of the images but not too pronounced. The camera also takes great VGA videos at 30fps.

GPS and Web Browser

The inbuilt GPS on the device uses Google Maps as the default application for accessing the feature. There are other available software that you can install too. There are no voice-guided navigation present and no third-party application supported on the device has that feature. Otherwise Google Maps does the job perfectly.

The web browser on the device is good but not great. It is responsive and has all the basic features you would expect. Scrolling and panning can be easily accomplished just like the iPhone. The built-in accelerometer auto rotates the screen from portrait to landscape and vice versa. Controls are hidden while browsing but pop-up with a single tap on the screen. A certain portion of the page can be zoomed in to by a long press. It supports two tabs and supports pages to saved for viewing later offline. The browser does not support Flash however.

Pros :

• 8 megapixel camera
• 3″ touchscreen
• 8GB memory card included
• Built-in GPS
• Excellent camera quality

Cons :

• No equalizer in music player
• No stylus compartment
• No Flash support in browser

Final Thoughts

The LG Kc910 Renoir is a great cell phone from LG. It has all the making of a true winner. The camera hogs all the limelight with its extensive settings and exceptional image quality. The touchscreen offers good display clarity and can be operated through fingers too. 8GB memory card is bundled with the phone, enough for most of us. The inbuilt GPS is average though and the music player lacks equalizer settings. The web browser is good but does not support Flash. Overall the phone is value for money keeping in mind its features and an excellent 8 megapixel camera.

Rating : 4.25/5

HTC Touch HD Specs:

• Dimensions: 115 mm x 63 mm x 12 mm
• Weight: 146 gms
• Display: 3.8 inch TFT touchscreen, 65K colors, 480 x 800 pixels
• Processor: Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 Mhz
• Memory: 288 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
• Connectivity: GPRS class 10, EDGE class 10, 3G HSDPA 7.2 MBPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, USB v2.0
• Camera: 5 MP camera, 2592 x 1944 pixels with autofocus, Video recording – CIF at 30 FPS, Secondary videocall camera
• GPS: Built in GPS receiver with A-GPS
• OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional with TouchFLO 3D UI
• Battery: Li-Ion battery, 1350 mAh
• Other Features: 3.5 mm audio jack, Stereo FM radio with RDS, Pocket Office, Java MIDP 2.0, Accelerometer

Design and Display:

The HTC Touch HD sports a stylish design dressed fully in black. The major part of the body is occupied by the huge 3.8 inch display, and the rest is covered with polished black. At dimensions of 115 mm x 63 mm x 12 mm, it is slim and portable, though obviously a bit larger than other Touch handsets, thanks again to the display. The designers have tried to minimise the dimensions by removing the D Pad altogether. The build quality is superb and the phone has a very nice feel. It weighs about 146 gms which is relatively higher compared to other smartphones in this range, but that can be completely discounted if you consider the superb display and the ample amount of features. The body offers a good grip and feels ergonomic.

The front of the phone sports the 3.8 inch display and 4 touch sensitive keys – the Home, Back, Call and End keys beneath it. Above the display you will find the earpiece and the secondary videocall camera. On the left edge, you will find the volume rocker while on the top, there is the power button and the standard 3.5 mm jack. The right edge is totally empty while the bottom has the USB port and the stylus compartment. On the back of the phone, you find the 5 MP camera located on top of a silver metal plate. Despite being a 5 MP, it doesn’t have flash which is a bit of a letdown.

The touchscreen display is superb and supports 65k colors and has a maximum resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. It is one of the best displays ever seen in smartphones, and the biggest touchscreen display. The brightness and contrast is just perfect and the color reproduction superb. It is very responsive and has nice sensitivity. You can safely throw away your stylus and operate the phone using only your fingers, thanks to the large icons in the TouchFLO 3D UI. The size of the display and the high resolution improves the usability of the phone a lot. The display is perfect for watching movies and videos and provides a video experience second only to maybe the Sony PSP 3000 and the iPhone 3G (totally subjective, I would go for the HTC Touch HD).

OS and User Interface:

The HTC Touch HD is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. It comes with an improved version of HTC’s popular TouchFLO 3D UI. The TouchFLO 3D user interface has improved greatly since its first version in the HTC Touch. It is now more fluid, more responsive and looks better visually. It is almost the same as TouchFLO 3D in the Touch Diamond, just more spacious due to the increased screen real estate. It is very closely integrated to the underlying Windows Mobile 6.1 OS and can look like a totally new OS to newbie Windows Mobile users. The homescreen allows you to access your contacts, messages, email, Internet, music, photos and videos, weather and settings etc with a click. Most of it is the same as that in the Touch Diamond. The Touch HD sports nice hardware specs – Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 Mhz processor, 288 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM etc which is capable of running Windows Mobile 6.1 and the TouchFLO 3D UI with utmost ease.

Multimedia:

You can access your images and videos through the Photos and Videos tab on the homescreen. The gallery interface is similar to that of the Touch Diamond, but is more responsive. You can view your images in landscape mode (with auto screen rotation too), as a slideshow, you can zoom into it all using finger gestures.

You can view videos on the built in video player. You can also use any of the large number of applications available for the Windows Mobile platform. The video playback is superb on the brilliant spacious 3.8 inch display. It provides one of the best movie watching experience in smartphones.

You also get the Music Player built in, it supports all the popular formats and offers a nice cool interface to work on. You can sort tracks according to artist, genre etc, create your own playlists etc. Browsing through your music collection is truly a joy on the Touch HD. You also have a custom EQ to play with. The audio quality is great, the Touch HD is both a multimedia oriented and a business phone – it offers the best of both worlds. The Touch HD also has a FM Radio with RDS enabled. The FM reception is nice.

The Touch HD sports a 5 MP camera which can take shots at a max resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It comes with autofocus, but surprisingly no flash. The image capture quality is superb, much in line with the best 5 MP shooters – the Nokia N82 and others. It is great at day shots. It can also record CIF video at 30 FPS. The video recording quality is decent. It also has a Secondary videocall camera located at the front. The camera interface is very easy to use and offers a range of standard features to choose from.

Other Stuff:

The HTC Touch HD is powered by a standard Li Ion 1350 mAh battery which has a rated talktime of about 7 hrs. It can power the Touch HD for about 2 days easily with moderate usage. This is quite an achievement considering it has a huge 3.8 inch display which can be a power guzzler. The call reception quality is very nice, hardly a deciding factor in most phones these days. It also features loads of connectivity options like GPRS class 10, EDGE class 10, 3G HSDPA 7.2 MBPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, USB v2.0 etc. It also has a GPS receiver with A-GPS. It also bundles Quick Office using which you can edit and view all your Office documents – Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.

Pros:

• Superb 3.8 inch Display
• Nice Design and Build Quality
• Great Hardware Specs
• 5 MP camera
• TouchFLO 3D

Cons:

• No Flash
• No Geotagging
• Slightly Bulky

Final Words:

This is the best Windows Mobile phone yet, and possibly the best smartphone ever. Personally, I would prefer it over the iPhone 3G. In other words, a must buy.

Our Rating: 4.5 / 5

Sony Ericsson G705 Specifications

• Dimensions: 95 x 47 x 14.5 mm
• Weight: 98 gms
• Display: 2.4 inch TFT Display, 256K colors, 240 x 320 pixels
• Memory: 120 MB Internal Memory, 1 GB Memory Stick M2
• Connectivity: GPRS class 10, HSCSD, EDGE class 10, 3G HSDPA, USB v2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with DLNA, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048 x 1536 pixels with LED flash, secondary videocall camera
• GPS: Built in GPS with A-GPS, Geotagging
• Battery: Li Po battery 950 mAh, BST 33,
• Other Features: Java MIDP 2.0, FM radio with RDS, TrackID, Netfront, HTML browser, Accelerometer

Design, Build Quality and Display:

The Sony Ericsson G705 has a nice sleek design and a slider form factor. At dimensions of 95 x 47 x 14.5 mm, it is pretty slim, though not as slim as other sliders like the Nokia E66. It is also fairly light at just 98 gms, it is one of the lightest sliders available. While it looks quite nice, the build quality is just average. The body is mostly made of plastic, which has a okish feel, but feels a bit cheap compared to other phones with a metallic feel. Compared to the superb design of the Nokia E66, its main competitor, it feels incomplete. It is available into two colors – Gold and Black. The Black is the better looking one. The slider action is nice and feels smooth.

The front of the phone sports a 2.4 inch display with the ambient sensor, earpiece and secondary videocall camera above it. Below the display, you find a D pad with the usual array of control keys – the left and right select keys, the call and end keys and the shortcut menu and cancel key. Below the slider is the keypad. The keys are nicely spaced and dont feel cramped at all. The key feedback is nice and the backlighting looks great. The right side of the phone has the volume rocker and the dedicated camera key. The left side has the just the fast port. On the top is the new Music key using which you can play / pause music playback. On the back, you find the 3.2 MP camera with the LED flash and sensor. The design is clean and simple.

User Interface and Multimedia:

The Sony Ericsson G705 sports the same user interface as all new Sony Ericsson phones. One department where Sony Ericsson needs to do something refreshingly new is in the user interface department. A complete overhaul of the user interface would help it more in competing with Nokia’s smartphones. Having said that, the interface is very intuitive and easy to use. It is improving a lot with new iterations and has some visual improvements. It supports Flash themes using which you can customise your phone and adjust it to your own personal experience. It also offers some basic multitasking functionality through the activity menu.

The Sony Ericsson G705 has nice multimedia capabilities – it comes with the Music Player 3.0. The interface is nice and easy to use with nice visual effects and auto rotation. The audio player supports a wide range of popular formats like MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC +, WAV, WMA, M4A etc. It can be minimised and be run in the background with some other applications. The music player also supports the famed Megabass and stereo widening features. It also sports a custom EQ. It also has the TrackID feature using which you can identify and download tracks easily.

The video player is also quite nice and supports all the basics like fullscreen viewing, fast forwarding, rewinding etc. It plays the MP4 and 3GP formats. You can also take screenshots of the videos and save them. The image gallery is also very nice and fast. It supports a lot of viewing modes – grid, list, thumbnail etc just like the older versions. You can zoom into images and also view them as slide shows. You can also geotag the images directly and inscribe geographical coordinates on them. The G705 also sports the FM Radio with RDS.

Camera:

The Sony Ericsson G705 has a 3.2 MP camera with a LED flash. It can shoot images at a max resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. The camera quality is quite nice, just as you would expect from any 3.2 MP camera. The camera interface is much like the Cyber Shot interface and again offers many customizable features in an easy to use way. You can tweak the control shoot mode, picture size, LED flash, self-timer, white balance, and other effects. The LED flash is quite decent. The camera doesn’t sport autofocus which is a shocker coming from Sony Ericsson. You can also record QVGA video at a measly 15 FPS.

Other Stuff:

The call reception quality of the G705 is superb. Sony Ericsson has improved greatly in this department. The voice is crystal clear. The Sony Erisson G705 sports a 950 mAh Li Po battery which has a rated talktime of 10 hrs and a standby time of around of 400 hrs. It lasts about 2 days easily with moderate usage. The GPS reception is also good and a GPS lock down takes just a few seconds. The Google Maps application works quite nice, and offers two views – map and geographic. It also sports a lot of connectivity options like GPRS class 10, HSCSD, EDGE class 10, 3G HSDPA, USB v2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with DLNA, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP etc. The bundled Netfront 3.4 HTML browser is quite good but not as good as the number one Opera mobile browser.

Pros:

• Nice design
• Good Feature list

Cons:

• Just a 3.2 MP cam with only QVGA video recording
• Average build quality

Final Words:

The Sony Ericsson G705 is a nice phone with good features but doesn’t offer any new features. Personally, I would choose the Nokia E66 over this phone.

Our Rating: 3 / 5.

Samsung i8510 INNOV8 specifications :

• Dimensions : 106.5 x 53.9 x 17.2 mm
• Weight : 136 g
• Display : 2.8″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Memory : 8/16 GB inbuilt
• Camera : 8 MP, autofocus, image stabilizer, flash
• Card slot :  microSD
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• GPS : Inbuilt with A-GPS support
• Bluetooth : Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• OS : Symbian OS v9.3 , Series 60 rel 3.2
• Approx. price :  $800

Samsung i8510 INNOV8 isn’t the first 8 megapixel camera phone in the market but the first one you should seriously consider buying. It is equipped with Symbian OS which none of the others are and has a big screen screen along with loads of other features to make it a deadly device. In the retail package however, Samsung hasn’t included anything special and it contains just the headphone, DC charger, custom ear-buds,

Design and Display

The INNOV8 has a design that it simple yet elegant. Its dimensions are rather large and it is a bit bulky too. It comes dressed in all black and the matte finish at the back prevents fingerprints. The slider works perfectly smoothly without any creaking sounds. Above the display are the loudspeaker, ambient light sensor and the video-call camera. Display occupies the most of the space at the front and the rest is occupied by the six navigation buttons and the D-pad.

On the left side is the 3.5mm audio jack, volume rocker and the microUSB port. The cell phone can be charged via the microUSB port too.Volume rocker doubles up as a camera control for zoom function. On the right side is the microSD card slot along with the camera key.

The INNOV8 has a 2.8″ TFT display with 240 x 320 resolution. The display produces sharp and bright images and overall is a great experience. The movie playback is smooth and 2.8″ screen is just fine to stuff movies into its large internal memory. In bright sunlight, the display performs much better than its predecessors and now is quite visible, not as good as its Nokia counterparts though.

Keypad and User Interface

The keypad of the i8510 is flat but has good ergonomics. The keys are large enough even for big fingers and have enough space between them to prevent typos. They present good tactile feedback making it a SMS junkies phone. You hardly find such good keypads in slider phones.

The phone has the latest Symbian OS installed with Feature Pack 2. This is the same OS found in the latest offering from Nokia, however Samsung has customized it to make it look different. There are a couple of active standby modes you can choose from. It has built-in accelerometer leading to automatic screen rotation except in the main menu and the home screen. It has transition effects too while changing the orientation, a nice touch.

The task manager pop-ups at bottom and has improved graphics. The phone does have any hardware acceleration but while navigation you can not notice the difference. The Symbian OS has obvious advantages over other OSes due to its vast library of available applications and to a extent ease of use too.

Music Player and Camera

The Samsung INNOV8 is not only a powerful imaging house but a great multimedia device too. The music player is exceptional and has loads of features ranging from various audio formats support to displaying album art. The music player has support for a wide variety of formats, so just put your audio file on the device and fire up the music player! It support three different visualizations, album art and sorting songs by genre, artists, composer, tracks etc. It has a large number of preset equalizers along with the option to create a custom equalizer. The songs can be transferred directly or via the PC Suite application.

The camera, the main aspect of the phone outperforms other 8 megapixel phone cameras. The camera has autofocus but Samsung missed a cue by including Xenon flash for this monster.  The UI of the camera application is tab based which is easy to use. Help snippets are included with almost every function. There are plenty of manual settings to play around with which include Wide Dynamic Range, white balance, ISO, sharpness, contrast, saturation etc.  The image quality of the camera is exception for a camera phone and can easily give the dedicated ones a run for their money. The images produced are sharp, have depth and apt amounts of brightness and contrast.

Web Browser and Organizer

The phone has Symbian browser which is among the best available options for a cell phone. It offers full range of features right from a virtual cursor to a mini map. The pages fit beautifully on the screen and zoom levels can be adjusted in a flash. The browser has Flash and Java support unlike Apple’s Safari for iPhone.

Organizers have always been Symbian specialty and it helps you manage time with ease. Calendar can be viewed in three different modes : Monthly, Weekly and Daily. Tasks can be scheduled in four different types and show up on your active standby screen. Mobile Office is another great application to view Office files on the move.  Other useful applications include Zip Manager, business card scanner, unit converter, alarm etc.

Pros :

• Neat design
• Great display
• Ergonomic keypad
• Massive inbuilt memory with card slot too
• Symbian OS
• Good music player
• Excellent camera

Cons :

• Large and bit bulky
• No Xenon Flash

Final Thoughts

Samsuung i8510 INNOV8 is an excellent product from Samsung that does everything right. Packed with a 8 megapixel camera, Symbian OS, huge inbuilt memory and other stuff to make it an awesome device. It has the best camera ever on a cell phone. It is a bit large and bulky and absence of Xenon flash are its only two disadvantages. Go grab it as soon as you can!

Rating : 4.5/5

Nokia E63 Specs:

• Dimensions: 113 x 59 x 13 mm
• Weight: 126 gms
• Display: 2.36 inch TFT Display, 16M colors, 320 x 240 pixels
• Memory: 110 MB Internal memory, upto 8 GB via Micro SD
• Connectivity: GPRS class 32, HSCSD, EDGE class 32, 3G, USB v2.0 Micro USB
• Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth v20 with A2DP
• OS: Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI
• Camera: 2 MP camera, 1600 x 1200 pixels, Flash, video recording – QVGA @ 15 FPS
• Battery: 1500 mAh Li-Po Battery BP-4L, 440 hrs standby time
• Other Features: QWERTY keypad, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3 / AAC / MPEG4 player, 3.5 mm audio output jack, Office applications, FM radio

Design:

The Nokia E63 sports a very similar design to Nokia E71, only slightly inferior in terms of build quality – the materials used. The design is almost the same as the E71 with some layout changes, but the body is made of plastic instead of metal. At dimensions of 113 x 59 x 13 mm, it is 3 mm thicker than the E71 and weighs just 126 gms, more or less the same as the E71. Both the E63 and the E71 are visibly thinner than the previous gen E61. While the build quality is not as good as the E71, it is very good when compared to the standard in its category. The plastic its body is composed of is very durable and feels strong. It is available in two colors – red and blue.

On the left of the device, you will find the MicroUSB connector and the Micro SD slot. The top sports a 3.5mm headphone jack while on the bottom edge, there is just the 2 mm charger socket and a lanyard eyelet. The right is totally clean with no sockets. The front of the phone is adorned with the 2.36 inch TFT display and the ambient light sensor and the earpiece above it. On the back, you find the battery cover, the 2 MP camera and the Flash.

Display and Keypad:

The Nokia E63 sports a 2.36 inch TFT display much like the E71. It has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and supports 16 M colors. The display quality is nice with decent brightness. It offers nice contrast and the sunlight legibility is also quite good. While the display size is a bit small compared to any QWERTY device, it is definitely usable.

The QWERTY keypad is the main highlight of the E63 as it is meant to be a business offering. The keypad of the E63 is quite nice and the keys are big enough to be pressed easily. They also offer nice feedback. The keypad is very ergonomic and easy to get used to. The keypad and key layout is very similar to the E71, with just two keys more and the size of the space key reduced. It is more like the E61, just nicer once you get used to it. You can easily type significantly faster using this keypad than normal phone keypads. It is one of the better QWERTY keypads I have seen. The keypad has a white backlighting which is helpful when typing in the dark.

Above the kaypad you find some buttons – a Menu, Calendar, Contacts and Mail. You can also see the regular Left and Right select keys, the Call and the End key. In the center, you find the navigation button.

OS and Interface:

The E63 sports the Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI. While this is not the latest Symbian OS version, it performs just as well as the latest. The OS is almost the same as the v9.1 with some performance and visual improvements, as well as some added features. It comes with a ARM 11 369 MHz processor and 110MB internal memory. You get about 70 MB freememory using which you can easily multitask about 7-8 applications. You can expand the internal memory using Micro SD cards upto 8 GB. It comes with lots of applications – most notably Quick Office using which you can view, edit and create new documents. Most of the other features are the same as in other Symbian OS versions, so we won’t be elaborating much on that. It also sports Wi-Fi and other connectivity features but misses out on GPS which is present in the E71. The call reception quality is pretty nice as in all other Nokia phones.

Camera and Multimedia:

It comes with a 2 MP camera which takes shots at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. The image quality is nice with semi accurate color reproduction which is good enough for casual shots. The camera is nice and takes decent shots. It can also record QVGA video at 15 FPS. The camera is good enough for casual shots, if you are a camera enthusiast, you will need to look at other 5 MP phones or preferably a digicam.

The display is nice enough for watching videos using Smartmovie or some other Videoplayer. The default player is the same as in E71 and can play 3GP and MP4 videos by default. The sound quality is nice and the speakers are adequately loud.

Battery:

The E63 sports a 1500 mAh Li Po battery rated at 440 hrs standby time and 10 hrs of talktime. In reality, the actual values are almost the same as these. The battery will last you about 3-4 days easily with moderate usage. It is one of the most powerful batteries in Nokia smartphones.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Nice Build Quality
• QWERTY Keypad

Cons:

• No GPS
• 2 MP Cam

Final Words:

The Nokia E63 is a superb deal at just around $250. It is almost as good as the tried and tested Nokia E71 except in some cases, but the reduction in price totally compensates for that. It should probably be Nokia’s next bestseller after the N73. If you want the power of the E71 but cant afford to have it, get the E63.

Our Rating: 4 / 5.

T-Mobile G1 specifications :

• Dimensions : 117 x 55.7 x 17.1 mm
• Weight : 158g
• Display : 3.2″ TFT touchscreen, 320 x 480 resolution
• Keyboard : Full QWERTY
• Camera : 3.2 MP with autofocus
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, HSCSD, 3G
• Card slot : microSD
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : Bluetooth v2.0
• GPS : Built-in receiver
• OS : Android OS
• Extras : Digital compass, handwriting recognition, trackball
• Approx. price : $200

Design and Keyboard

As the phone has been designed by HTC, it has a lot of resemblance of other smart phones designed by the company. G1 has a plain looks that score very low on attractiveness. The display is narrower than the iPhone but the phone features a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. Below the display there is a row of buttons for which HTC has used up a lot of space. This extra space hinders in the use of keyboard, discussed later. HTC could have done a much better job with the designing, disappointing.

The slide-out QWERTY keyboard is something iPhone users are surely missing. Although Apple has done a good job with the on-screen QWERTY keyboard but iPhone but nothing beats the feel of real keys. The keyboard is accessed from the side by sliding the display to the right. The sliding mechanism is smooth without any creaking sounds etc. The keyboard has separated buttons which helps reduce typos. Typing on the keyboard is easy but the extra portion to the bottom of display does affect the ergonomics.

Display and User Interface

The G1 has a 3.2″ display, smaller than the iPhone, with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. The display is crisp and sharp with vivid colors. The display is capacitive like the iPhone, responding to only finger touches. It also supports haptic feedback for certain actions such as the long press. The long press is pretty useful as it reduces clutter without losing out on functionality. The display however does not have multi-touch, so now pinching to zoom in and zoom out.

The user interface is an important factor in a touchscreen phone and Google has done a lot of hard work to come with a nice and easy to use interface for the G1. You can customize the home screen by choosing the applications you wish to display there. The trackball is really helpful in navigation. Intuitiveness is something it lacks due to its deep menus. The interface is completely different from iPhone and a comparison would be unfair.

Music Player and Camera

The G1 is meant to be a cell phone rather than a music player. The music player application will not impress music enthusiasts which does all basic tasks fine but lacks the extra features. It can sort your music by genre, artist, album etc. and you can create playlists on the fly. No CoverFlow but still you can view the albums in list format. Shuffle, repeat functions are supported too. Songs can be converted to ringtones with the built-in option in the player.

Amazon store has tied up with Google to provide its DRM-free music on the G1. But the store can download songs only via WiFi and not the 3G/EDGE networks. Amazon store is as good as its iTunes counterpart and buying songs is also as easy. You can transfer songs from your PC too in the various audio formats that the G1 supports including MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG, MIDI, AMR, WMA. Only 1GB microSD card is bundled with the phone although it supports upto 8GB.

The G1 has a 3.2 MP camera with autofocus with strangely does not support video recording like the iPhone. The camera quality is much better than the iPhone. The camera app does not have any manual settings to change. Camera takes blurry shots even with slightest movement. The images captured are above average but certainly not the best we have seen with 3.2 MP cameras in cell phones.

GPS and Web Browser

The built-in GPS receiver has A-GPS support making it accurate and fast. Google Maps is the default application which comes as no surprise. Turn-by-turn directions are supported but are no real-time and lag by a few seconds. The GPS however has some bugs which need to be ironed out. It sometimes can not find out the location even when in open. People also report that it shows completely different location than where you are. Apart from these bugs, the application is good with Street Views and digital compass adding to its functionality.

The web browser is based on the Webkit engine, that is used by Safari too. The browser has full HTML support along with Java support, but flash is not supported. Panning across the page is easy with the finger, double tab zooms in on the page, zoom buttons come up at bottom of the screen. Both the portrait and landscape modes are supported. No onscreen keyboard is there and you need to slide out the QWERTY every time to key in data. Overall the browsing experience is average compared to the iPhone.

Pros :

• Physical QWERTY keyboard
• Great display
• 3.2 MP camera
• Digital compass
• Customizable Android OS
• Amazon Store is great
• Java supported browser

Cons :

• Unattractive design
• No 3.5mm jack
• Buggy GPS
• Average music player
• No manual camera settings
• Video recording not supported
• No flash support in browser

Final Thoughts

The T-Mobile G1 brings in a lot of new stuff to the table and differs from the iPhone. It has a physical QWERTY keyboard, great display and customizable Android OS that will attract a lot of users. HTC should have worked more on the design to make it attractive. No 3.5mm jack, buggy GPS and no video recording are big turn-offs. Overall the phone is a good alternative to the iPhone and new iterations will surely make it much more better.

Rating : 3.5/5

The Nokia N97 was unveiled by Nokia today in its Nokia 2008 World event held in Barcelona, Spain. The Nokia N97 has created flutter all around the world with its brilliant design and specifications. A device from Nokia was long due that would take on the iPhone and other touch monsters such as the T-Mobile G1 and Sony Xperia X1 and it hopes to go one up on them.

Nokia in its keynote converted a Nokia N95 into Nokia N97. It even took a dig at Apple iPhone’s camera calling it a “toy” which has been placed at the corner of the device. Even Google wasn’t spared and its Google Maps came under fire for its static nature unlike the new Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch which now have dynamic elements.

So is Nokia N97 worth the hype? Read on to find out how it stacks up against the Apple iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1 and the Sony Xperia X1 which have set new standards in the rapidly developing mobile industry.

Nokia N97 specifications :

• Dimensions : 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9-18.3 mm
• Weight : 150g
• Display : 3.5 inches TFT touchscreen
• Display resolution : 360 x 640 pixels resolution
• Sensors : Proximity sensor, accelerometer, digital compass
• Keyboard : Full QWERTY
• Memory : 32GB internal
• Camera : 5 MP, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual LED flash
• Card Slot : microSD up to 16GB
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, HSCSD
• 3G : HSPDA, 3.6 Mbps
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g with UPnP
• GPS : Inbuilt with A-GPS and Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch
• Bluetooth : Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
• USB : microUSB v2.0
• OS : Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5
• Battery : Li-ion, 1500 mAh
• Other Features : Handwriting recognition, 3.5mm jack, Stereo FM Radio, Stereo speakers
• Release date : Q2 2009
• Approximate price : $700

Design

Design is an important aspect for any cell phone and it has been taken special care of by Nokia in the N97. The Nokia N97 has a design that is very similar to the Sony Xperia X1. It has a 3.5″ TFT touchscreen with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. First glance at the N97 reminds you of the Apple iPhone with a huge screen and  only a single button at the bottom. There are a couple of touch buttons too which function as Call and End keys.

Nokia N97 dimensions : 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9-18.3 mm

Apple iPhone 3G dimensions : 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm

Sony Xperia X1 dimensions : 110.5 x 52.6 x 17 mm

T-Mobile G1 dimensions : 117 x 55.7 x 17.1 mm

Comparing the four, N97 is the tallest but the slimmest slide out QWERTY touchscreen we have had till now. It is narrower than the Apple iPhone and you can easily make out the difference when both are placed side by side. However slimmest just to say on the advertising boards as its thickness goes up to 18.3mm when measured near the camera. Not much to choose in terms of dimensions as they stack up with minor differences.

A lot of people have complained about it being thick and not easy to carry around. To put it straight, you put in a QWERTY keyboard in there, it will take up space and add to the dimensions to the phone. Take it or leave it.

Weight

Nokia N97 weight : 150g

Apple iPhone 3G weight : 133g

Sony Xperia X1 weight : 145g

T-Mobile G1 weight : 158g

Coming on to the weight, we again have no clear winner here. The N97 is about 5g heavier than the Xperia X1 but 8g lighter than T-Mobile G1.

The slide out QWERTY keyboard sits at a pretty angle that makes viewing a hell lot easier. The Xperia and the G1 has flat slide out QWERTY keyboards that require you to adjust your viewing angle in landscape mode. N97 receives a thumbs up here from our side.

Overall, the Nokia N97 has a polished design that looks much better than T-Mobile G1 and might give Apple iPhone a close competition in that department.

Display

Nokia N97 display : 3.5″ TFT touchscreen, 16M colors with 360 x 640 pixels resolution

Apple iPhone 3G display : 3.5″ touchscreen, 16M colors with 320 x 480 resolution

Sony Xperia X1 : 3″ TFT touchscreen, 65K colors with 800 x 480 resolution

T-Mobile G1 : 3.2″ TFT touchscreen, 65K colors with 320×480 resolution

Nokia N97 touchscreen betters its Apple counterpart by improving the resolution. Although Sony Xperia X1 has a better resolution, having just 65K colors and smaller size limits its ability. 3.5 inch screen seems just right to view movies at full glory on a hand held device. But again N97 does have multitouch like iPhone which will be big factor especially when browsing on the device.

Nokia probably missed a cue by not having a OLED display known for great contrast and pitch black color but then the price could well have been a few hundred dollars more.

User Interface

Touch phones demand a user friendly interface without cluttering up things. This has been the main reason why Apple has managed to sell 10 million Apple iPhone 3G devices round the world.

If you look at iPhone’s interface you would notice that it makes everything so simple without losing out on functionality. The Xperia X1 interface was slow which was its biggest drawback along with its lack of intuitiveness. T-Mobile G1 has a simple and functional interface that has quite a lot of things going right about it. Also being open to development, one can expect some big changes to its way sooner than later. The UI elements strike a chord with the end-user shooting up the sales for the device.

So what does Nokia has to offer? Nokia has its latest Symbian OS loaded on to the device which was first spotted on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone.

First look at the Nokia N97 hands on video posted on Engadget gives a good idea on what to expect from the user interface. The interface has a lot of things one can do from a single screen but still it is uncluttered. The touch seems to work smoothly on the device. But Nokia seems to have compromised on simplicity in order to stuff in more features on a single screen. The functionality of the single button below the display also remains in question till we get our hands dirty with the device.

It is going to be a very close fight between the two and only time will tell whether Nokia’s interface can match to that of the iPhone’s and the G1′s.

Camera

Nokia N97 camera : 5 MP, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual LED flash, VGA@30fps

Apple iPhone 3G camera : 2 MP

Sony Xperia X1 camera : 3.2 MP, autofocus, LED flash, video@30fps

T-Mobile G1 camera : 3.2 MP, autofocus

There is no point comparing the cameras as you can already see who the clear winner here is. Nokia has put great cameras on its multimedia devices and Nokia N97 is no exception. It has Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and DVD quality video recording that puts Apple iPhone’s camera to shame.

The Xperia X1 and G1 have 3.2 MP cameras that are respectable compared to Apple iPhone. The Xperia X1 also has DVD quality video recording.

Nokia seems to favor dual LED flash over Xenon flash even for its top of the line multimedia phone which is utterly strange as Xenon flash is much better than dual LED flash. This is the only drawback of Nokia N97′s camera.

GPS

All the four devices come with inbuilt GPS receiver with A-GPS functionality. Apart from Nokia N97, all others use Google Maps software for navigating around the world. Nokia with this device has come out with a new version of Nokia Maps called Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch. According to Nokia, it goes up one up on Google Maps by adding dynamic nature to its maps. More information on it is awaited but one can add elements to the maps to make them more functional and useful.

Nokia maps has the advantage over Google Maps that one can avoid data charges as maps can be downloaded over to the device. The voice navigation feature is pretty good with Nokia Maps with Google Maps on its heels. Route calculation algorithm works well with both too. So can the “dynamic nature” beat Google Maps? One will have to wait to find out.

Other Features

Sensors are another thing which made it big with the iPhone. The Nokia N97 has both the accelerometer and proximity sensor that the iPhone has, but it also includes the digital compass included in the T-Mobile G1.

Memory is another area where it beats all of them. It comes with 32GB inbuilt memory with the ability to add 16GB more through a microSD card slot.

Other than that it has the goodness of any other Nokia N-series device!

Final Thoughts

It is turning out to be a great battle between Nokia N97, Apple iPhone and the T-Mobile G1 but with Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 nowhere in picture due to its ridiculous pricing and other cons. Nokia has managed to put together a great device that has almost everything going right about. Pricing is close to Apple iPhone (without contract), its biggest competitor.

However, if you find Nokia N97 too expensive for you, then Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is something you should definitely look at.

Nokia N97 videos

Nokia N97 Demo

Another Nokia N97 Demo video

Engadget’s video on Nokia N97

Nokia N85 specifications :

• Dimensions : 103 x 50 x 16 mm
• Weight : 128g
• Display : 2.6 inches OLED, 240 x 320 resolution
• Memory : 8GB memory card included
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSCSD
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology
• OS : Symbian OS 9.3 S60 rel 3.2
• Camera : 5 megapixel with autofocus
• GPS : Built-in A-GPS
• Card slot : microSD

There has a void in the market for good handsets from Nokia and N85 seems to fill that up. Nokia N96 is too expensive and there have been many good mid range handsets from the company. But between that, there was no serious competition. Nokia N85 is priced in that range and is worth the price it sports. Read on to find out why.

Design and Packaging

The Nokia N85 borrows its design from Nokia N81 but with subtle improvements. The display occupies most of the space at the front. The dual slider mechanism has worked quite well and there have been no issues with it. Fingerprint is still an issue with the handset as we had with Nokia N81 too. But the build quality had improved and the keypad is a whole lot better.

The ambient light sensor and the front camera are located at the top of display along with the ear piece. The microUSB port, 3.5mm audio jack and power button are stuffed at the top. The D-pad has the Call and End keys along with Multimedia key. They are too tiny for comfort.

The retail package of the N85 is quite good. The highlight of the package is the bundled 8GB microSD card. Some of the usual accessories include the two piece headset, charger along with manuals and DVD. Nokia has also included a TV Out cable along with the data cable.

Display and Keypad

Display is truly amazing of the phone, thanks to the OLED technology it is based on. OLED displays have great contrast and deep black color. Brightness isn’t as good though but respectable. The display has good visibility even under direct sunlight but not as good as with other Nokia displays. Indoors, the display is as good as it gets.

The keypad is pretty much average with it not living up to our high expectations. The buttons offer good feedback are separated by ridges. But they are a bit small for our liking. Nokia should have worked more on the ergonomics.

Music Player and Camera

The music player is another strong point of the phone. The player supports a large number of formats. You can sort the songs by Artists, Genre, Album etc and also search for a song by typing in a few characters.

Album Art is supported but you can not change the skin of the player. Song addition hasn’t changed and you can add directly via USB or through the PC Suite. Equalizers can be created and it comes inbuilt with five preset ones. Dedicated keys help in enhancing the music capabilities on the phone.

The audio quality of the phone has improved over older Nokia handset. The change can be felt in the audio quality when listening through one of the better earphones and not the default ones. The loudspeaker quality is above average.

The camera has a 5 megapixel sensor with dual LED flash. The camera has active lens cover and supports autofocus too. Geotagging is supported in the camera application and makes use of the inbuilt GPS. The camera application is intuitive and is loaded with settings you can tinker around with. UI of the camera application is great and well organized.

The camera takes great shots but certainly not the best we have seen from a five megapixel phone. The photos have over saturation and sharpness is on the higher side.

GPS and Organiser

The inbuilt GPS receiver in Nokia N85 comes with three months free voice guided navigation. Getting a satellite lock from cold start is slow and can take over 2 minutes even in optimal conditions. But with A-GPS the subsequent navigation becomes faster. Nokia Maps is the default application for using the GPS. Hence it is easy to download maps off the Internet and save them on to your mobile. These maps come in four different view modes including hybrid and satellite. Route planning works as advertised and most of times finds the shortest route. Overall the GPS system on N85 is good but it could have been better.

Organisers have been forte of Nokia phones and Nokia N85 is no exception. It has all the applications that you would need to accomplish daily tasks. The calendar has three different view modes and it can save endless tasks in four different categories. Mobile Office is the bundled application for viewing office files. ZIP manager allows you to extract compressed files straight on your phone. Calculator, unit converter, voice recorder, Notes are some of the other applications.

Pros :

• Better build quality than N81
• 8GB microSD included
• TV Out cable included
• Excellent display
• Great audio quality
• Geotagging supported
• Great organiser applications

Cons :

• Keypad not ergonomic
• Not the best 5 MP camera
• Sunlight visibility not great
• Slow satellite lock

Final Thoughts

The Nokia N85 tries to rectify the mistakes of Nokia N81 and does succeed in a big way. The 8GB bundled microSD card will be good enough for most people. The great display is its biggest selling point along with its music capabilities. Keypad and camera need to be worked upon a bit, though camera can be fixed through a firmware update. The audio quality of the player is great. The GPS comes with 3 months free voice guided navigation too. Overall a good phone and worth buying in its budget.

Rating : 4/5

Sony Ericsson W902 Specs:

• Dimensions: 110 x 49 x 11.7 mm
• Weight: 99.8 gms
• Display: 2.2 inch TFT, 240 x 320 pixels, 256K colors
• Memory: 32 MB internal memory, 8 GB Memory Stick Micro M2 card
• Camera: 5 MP Camera (2592 x 1944 pixels) with autofocus, flash, Video recording (QVGA 30 FPS), Secondary Videocall camera
• Connectivity: GPRS class 10, HSCSD, EDGE class 10, 3G HSDPA, USB v2.0
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Battery: Standard Li ion battery, 930 mAh, Rated standby time- 380 hrs
• Other Features: Java MIDP 2.0, Walkman player, FM radio with RDS, Geo-tagging, TrackID music recognition, Shake control

Design and Build Quality:

The Sony Ericsson W902 has a slim candybar formfactor with a simple design. There is nothing flashy in the design, but it will still appeal to some people, like me. It is available in Black and Red color schemes as of now. With dimensions of 110 x 49 x 11.7 mm, it is rather slim and very portable and it weighs just slightly less than 100 gms. The weight and dimensions are in line with similarly positioned handsets. The build quality is nice and the handset feels sturdy and durable. The body of the W902 exudes a rugged feel and it should easily last a couple of years.

The front face of the phone sports the display, the keypad just below it and a secondary cam and ambient light sensor above it. The fast port slot is nested on the left side, while the right side sports the volume rocker, music controls and the dedicated camera button. The Walkman button is located on the top of the phone.

Display and Keypad:

The Sony Ericsson W902 sports a 2.2 inch TFT display, with a native resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and supports a max of 256K colors. The display is no different from other Sony Ericsson displays. While it has nice brightness and contrast levels and good sunlight legibility, it cannot match the new N85′s superb OLED display. It is way smaller than the Nokia 5800′s 3.2 inch display. We would have preferred atleast a 2.4 inch display. The sunlight legibility is nice and the display quality crisp and clear.

Below the display lies a standard keypad with adequately sized buttons and a round Navigational button. The keypad doesn’t feel cramped at all and the buttons offer nice feedback. The keys are nicely backlit.

Multimedia:

The Sony Ericsson is primarily a music “Walkman” phone and comes bundled with Walkman 3.0. The Walkman 3.0 comes with a few enhancements, mostly visual. It features a few nice features like SensMe – a type of automatic visual playlist creation and Shake COntrol – used to change tracks. The Walkman 3.0 supports both the MSC and MTP protocols and can play a wide range of formats – MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV, WMA and M4A. You can sort tracks according to Artists, Albums, Tracks, Genre and Playlists. It also sports the TrackID feature to identify and download tracks. It also has a custom EQ.

The sound quality is quite nice and lives up to the Walkman tradition. The phone has loud speakers and comes with the HPM 77 wired headset which offer very good sound quality. It is one of the best bundled music headsets. You can also minimise the media player and hence do some form of multitasking by running some apps together. Even in this case, the similarly priced Nokia N79 and the Motorola ZN5 outperform the W902 by a small margin.

It also has a FM radio with RDS to view additional information over a data network. The FM reception is quite nice.

Camera:

The Sony Ericsson W902 sports a 5 MP camera which shoots pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It has autofocus and comes with a LED flash. It supports video recording at a 30 FPS in the QVGA resolution, which is a downer as most 5 MP phones record VGA video at 30 FPS. It also sports a secondary camera in the front which is primarily only for video calls. The camera interface is nice and offers a lot of features. You can customize settings like the shutter sound, white balance, image effects, night mode etc.

The image quality is nice but it can’t compete with the superb cam of the Motorola ZN5, it’s flagship 5 MP camera phone. It fares slightly better than the Nokia N79 especially in night shots. The image quality of the W902 is detailed and is sharper with accurate color reproduction. It also supports Geo tagging but you have to enter the co ordinates manually.

Performance:

The Sony Ericsson is very fast and responsive with no lags or delays when it comes to opening interface menus or opening applications and games. The menu transitions are nice and slightly improved over earlier versions. Other than that, there is nothing much to speak of about the interface. It supports the Java MIDP 2.0 profile and is compatible with all Java applications and games.

Battery:

The Sony Ericsson W902 sports a 930 mAh Li ion battery – the BST 38 which has a rated standby time of 380 hrs and a rated talktime of 9 hrs. It should last for about 2 days easily with decent usage. The Camera, Music and Video playback drains the battery a lot faster. The battery life is quite good and as long as any other phone in this range.

Pros:

• Nice design and Build Quality
• Good Sound Quality
• Nice Camera

Cons:

• No Wi-Fi
• No GPS

Final Words:

The Sony Ericsson W902 is a nice phone but the Nokia N79 and the Moto ZN5 prove to be much better in terms of features and sound and camera quality. The W902 lacks two major features – Wi-Fi and GPS and also lags behind the N79 and ZN5 in terms of software support. So while it is a good phone with nice features, we wouldn’t recommend getting the W902, especially when you can get relatively much better phones in the same price range.

Our Rating: 3.5 / 5.