Fri
5
Mar
The new Sony Ericsson Vivaz is full of media promise – an 8MP camera, HD video recording and an 8GB memory card, combined with a full touchscreen interface, make this a real contender for Sony Ericsson.
Fri
29
Jan
So we can finally put the rumours to bed – Apple’s tablet is here, and it’s called the iPad.
With a 9.7in LED screen and an accompanying iBooks store, the iPad is effectively is a giant (but 13.4mm thick) iPhone that’s here to replace netbooks and e-readers as your mobile media weapon of choice.
You’d have to have been hiding under a rock for the past week or two to not notice Google is making its own phone and it’s finally here: the Nexus One.
Manufactured by HTC but sold by Google, the phone has had early adopters and the casual user alike interested in what it will be like, so read on to find out how the UK version fared in our hands.
A lot has been made of the screen, and it’s probably a bit overhyped. Yes, at 3.7-inches it’s a little large, but it’s not the biggest: both the Toshiba TG01 and the HTC HD2 beat it comfortably.
Fri
1
Jan
Just like its forerunner, the TG3, Sony’s stylish new Full HD shooter is a camcorder with the ‘wow’ factor. The Sony HDR-TG7 takes the pistol-grip camcorder design and refines it so that you get a trim, slim, easy-to-use model – with an intriguing twist being added by a built-in GPS receiver.
To clear up any confusion right from the start, this is also the Sony HDR-TG5 as that’s what this model is called over in the United States.
At the moment Sony is the only major manufacturer to jump on the GPS-camcorder bandwagon. It’s a costly investment for consumers too: the TG7 is available for around £700, while Sony’s other GPS shooter, the XR520, can cost over £1,000, whether we see more models like this depends on the success of our Sony duo.
The HTC HD2 is the world’s first Windows Mobile-toting phone with a capacitive screen, and also packs the world’s largest mobile phone display too.
It’s also the first WinMo phone to use HTC’s Sense UI, previously used on the company’s Android handsets, bringing with it Facebook integration and direct Twitter access, as well as masking well the operating system beneath it.
Running Windows Mobile 6.5, it certainly makes use of the all the good bits of the upgrade, but HTC decides to do its own thing on around 95 per cent of the HD2.
Sat
26
Dec
Nokia’s powerhouse N97 touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard-packing smartphone may have arrived to mixed reviews, but its new, rescaled Nokia N97 Mini stablemate offers a refreshed take on the device.
Its ‘Mini’ moniker doesn’t mean this is a heavily stripped down version of the original N97, however.
While it does pare down some elements of the N97 – such as a smaller screen and reduced internal flash memory from 32GB to 8GB – the N97 Mini is still a big hitter in the pure feature count department.
The N97 Mini is a full touchscreen smartphone device, running on Nokia’s Symbian S60 5th Edition platform – previously seen on recent models like the N97 and 5800 XpressMusic.
It has a 3.2-inch display, and has a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard with a tilting screen, and, geared up to be a web-orientated multimedia device, it supports high-speed HSDPA mobile data as well as Wi-Fi connectivity.
Sat
26
Dec
While Motorola might have been feeling pretty happy about actually releasing a phone again in the Dext, it clearly wasn’t the handset to re-launch the brand. So step forward the Milestone (Droid to our US users), the latest Android phone – but can it be Moto’s greatest?
The first thing you’ll notice about the Motorola Milestone is the build quality – compare it to some Android phones out there and you’ll feel that it’s much better than the plasticky options available from some companies (including itself – the Dext had an element of low quality about it).
Fri
11
Dec
The latest addition to the Nokia family is the first device running Maemo 5, a new OS that takes the best of Nokia’s internet tablet range and stuffs it into a phone-sized chassis. Featuring a huge 3.5-inch screen and full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, it’s also packing a seriously strong engine under the hood to power things along. Will the N900 shed the ageing image of Symbian and bring Nokia to the next level to match the likes of the iPhone?
The first thing you notice about the N900 is its size. It’s certainly hefty at 110.9 x 59.8 x 18mm, and the weight of 181g means it’s not going to win any slimming contests either. But it’s worth pointing out that Nokia hasn’t once said that the N900 is a phone, a successor to the N97 or anything along those lines – it sees it as super-charged internet tablet with phone capabilities, rather than the other way around.
Mon
7
Dec
Compare the pain of dragging three thickset Booker Prize candidates to the south of France with you with the 220g weight of the Sony Reader Pocket Edition and you’re halfway to understanding the appeal of eBooks.
But with Amazon’s Kindle arriving in the UK imminently, should you burn your bookshelves just yet?
Small, light and very good looking are three ways to accurately describe Sony’s gorgeous device. It’s just one centimetre thick and the screen is a pleasure to behold.
It measures 5 inches diagonally, and despite the low sounding resolution of 800×600, text displays much more crisply than it does on the finest LCD.
Better yet, because the Pocket Edition uses E Ink, it only draws power from the battery when it’s asked to refresh the screen. That means you can leave it on the same page almost indefinitely and the battery won’t die – Sony claims the battery lasts up to “nearly” 6,800 page turns.
