A poptart of a mobile phone

It shows how far the mobile world has come when even the most budget-friendly

phones can pack some touchscreen action. We’ve seen a few devices try and go

down the smartphone route on the cheap (the HTC Tattoo) and some offering bog-

standard touch at rock-bottom prices (Orange Vegas we are looking at you), but

LG’s latest money friendly endeavour, the LG Pop, tries to bridge the gap

between price and functionality.

Popping on to the scene for a snip under £100, the LG GD510 Pop has a

surprising amount of decent features on offer. On-board there’s a 3.2-megapixel

camera, a 3-inch WQVGA screen, wireless FM radio and expandable MicroSD memory.

But it’s also surprising the lack of features it houses, some that you’ve come

to expect on even the most standard of devices –3G and to a lesser extent Wi-Fi

are both missing in action. Size-wise the phone is the Kylie of the mobile

world: small but perfectly formed.

Size matters

While it measures a mere 97.8 x 49.5 x 11.2mm, it does boast the biggest

touchscreen on a phone this size, something that will come as relief to those

with fumble fingers. In an attempt to make things as simple as possible, real

buttons are scarce. What you get is three in all: one on the Pop’s front which

acts as a home screen button; one on the side of the handset which, when

pressed, transports you to your favourite apps and also moonlights as the

shutter button for the phone’s camera; and finally there’s one on top which

powers the GD510 down.

The main interface of the Pop is an interesting one. You can cram it as much as

you want with widgets available on the phone. If the UI looks to be getting a

bit cluttered, then shake you’re the Pop to align them. It’s a great little

feature which gives the phone a bit of character.

Wee widgets

Those who have played with the LG Cookie will be right at home with the Pop.

Like the Cookie, default widgets on the homepage include a clock, calendar and

access to this internet – although all of these can be toggled to your specs.

Flick the screen to the left and you will notice that there are two more ‘home’

screens to add things to. One of these is for your contacts, while the other

can be an extension of your original homepage. This is where the Pop shows off

its true colours. With access here to avatars for your contacts and even a

virtual farmyard, LG is definitely pitching the phone at younger social-

networkers.

Being a budget-friendly device means that the phone’s touchscreen is a bit of a

’mare to use. The resistive touch is sluggish and accessing widgets took longer

than expected to open. Sometimes it did take two to three attempts to perform a

task which was a tad annoying.

Handy features do keep popping up to make you think the device is offering more

than its budget price suggests. Things like the Status Summary page, which

points out how much battery memory you have left is great, and from here you

can also toggle Bluetooth on and off.

Pop tart or pop star?

Drill into the phone a bit more though and it does become apparent though that

what you are using is a low-end device. Opening up and playing songs and movies

is far too sluggish for our liking and while it’s great there’s an on-board

camera and camcorder the footage you get from both doesn’t exactly set the

world on fire. It’s a shame the phone wasn’t smarter as there’s a mountain of

features available. With around 32 apps to choose from, the phone is perfectly

packed to make your on-the-go life that little bit easier.

In the end, the LG GD510 Pop teases you with the amount of features it’s got

but never really delivers. It’s great for those who have never tested the

touchscreen waters before but for those who can spot a resistive screen from 12

paces may want to look elsewhere.

by Marc Chacksfield

Samsung’s latest flagship handset, the Samsung Jet S8000, was released to massive fanfare around the world, and the General Manager for the UK said that he thought it was better than the Apple iPhone 3GS – but can a non-smartphone really compete?

The Samsung Jet S8000 is billed as ‘Smarter than Smartphone’, a direct comment on the fact that while it uses Samsung’s proprietary feature-phone UI, the TouchWiz 2.0 OS, it still packs some mean hardware under the hood.

And we’re not just being complimentary of the specs by saying that, we’re talking an industry-leading 800MHz processor powering the performance from a dinky frame (108.9 x 53.5 x 11.9mm) on a 3.1-inch AMOLED screen.

While it’s hard to see where this might rival the iPhone in the mobile phone market, bar having a touchscreen, it’s certainly cheaper than most of its smartphone rivals, with users getting a free phone and paying less on their contract and up to £150 less to pick up the handset SIM free.

The first thing that hits you when you pick up the Samsung Jet S8000 is just how small it is. While the dimensions will give you an idea just how dinky it is, it’s very hard to describe just how diminutive this feels in the hand.

This is a double-edged sword for the phone: on the one hand, the Samsung Jet S8000 fits very well in the pocket and is a real pleasure to carry around compared to some of the other chunka-phones on offer.

However, on the other hand, the plastic chassis and the 110g weight count against it, as it feels a little lightweight and, dare we say it, cheap in the hand.

We like the shiny red prismatic effect on the back of the phone though, and the AMOLED screen just screams colour no matter what you’re displaying on the screen, but there’s something about the build quality that doesn’t shout ‘we’ve spent £5 million on a global marketing campaign for this handset’.

We’re not saying the plastic-feel of the Samsung Jet S8000 is a bad thing, as it’s certainly very pocket friendly which is obviously very important for a number of people these days. It’s just that a little bit of brushed aluminium or stronger materials would have probably added to the overall appeal and feel of the phone.

That said, the phone is well designed and all the buttons are within easy reach thanks to the smaller proportions. We’re utterly delighted to see another 3.5mm headphone jack stuck on the top, and Samsung has managed to do this without adding a huge amount of depth to the device. However, when using headphones plugged into the Jet S8000 it’s very difficult to use the full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode and watching video is a little tricky too, as the jack is a little too far to the left in our opinion.

Actually, this is something Samsung does very well (packaging things all together in a compact handset) and makes us wonder why a company like HTC keeps maintaining it can’t do a headphone socket and a flash.

But we think you’ll find that with the Jet S8000 Samsung has managed to do all the above AND improve the camera to a dual flash version… this shows there’s room for improvement, HTC (although well done for putting a 3.5mm jack on the Hero).

USB CHARGER: The Samsung Jet S8000 uses a standard micro USB charger

The Jet S8000 is one of the first Samsung phones to make use of the Cubic-style menu interaction (more on that later) and in honour of this, it has placed a 3D-cube style button on the front which carries the same sort of functionality as the menu button on S60 devices.

It’s a little large and garish for our tastes, but at least it brings some unique style to the front of the phone and, let’s be honest, this is a phone Samsung hopes people will pick up for the way it looks, as much as the hardware. The likes of 2GB of internal storage and 30fps VGA video camera will act like gadget sirens (the ones from Greek mythology, not on top of police cars).

It’s an interesting idea to place the button that calls up the spinning cube next to the camera button, but one that works surprisingly well, with very little confusion as we might have predicted before trying it.

It’s got a slightly similar footprint to the Palm Pre in being deceptively small, which means it fit snugly in the hand rather than dominating it in the style of the iPhone 3GS, although it would have been nice to feel a little more weight or strength in the chassis.

by Gareth Beavis – TechRadar

Sony Ericsson has brought out another version of its Xperia line up, the Xperia X2, and hopes to capture the interest of those looking for a phone that crosses the line between business and leisure.

The new phone echoes the design of the original X1, but improves in nearly every area, with Sony Ericsson taking the lead on construction for the new X2.

The new phone is a compact device with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, and the panels system developed for the original X1 also remains.

The build quality of the X2 is actually pretty high – it feels plasticky but not in a cheap way, and the design is such that it fits nicely in the hand for one finger use, but slides out with a pleasant action to reveal the full QWERTY keyboard.

There’s an 8.1MP camera on the back with single LED flash, although it’s more a high-end bit of hardware bolted onto a business phone, as it doesn’t carry the full CyberShot branding or anything (although that doesn’t mean it’s a poor effort).

And for navigation there’s now an optical trackpad, like that seen in the recent BlackBerry Bold 9700, and for the most part it allows some pretty simple navigation through the phone.

The phone is based on Windows Mobile 6.5, but like most manufacturers Sony Ericsson has reskinned the OS heavily, while maintaining the raw power it packs.

The bright and wide OLED screen is resistive, which means use of a stylus is mandatory for some elements.

As we said, the panels system is again used here – you can have nine on view at once, and each of them ranges from a full Android-a-like home screen with icons to place everywhere, to a heavily optimised YouTube interface.

And if that’s not enough for you, there are 25 in all, so you can select your favourites as and when you please.

We’re not convinced about the panels system to be honest – as although it’s great in practice, it seems to stress out the 528MHz processor a little bit, like it did to a greater degree on the Xperia X1.

Sony Ericsson assured us that this was only because it’s a pre-production unit, and while we’ve heard such claims before, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt in this case.

The Windows Mobile interface is still sporting some of the nasty trademark tiny icons we really hate, such as tiny crosses in the corner of the phone to shut down application windows, which ruins things a little bit, especially when we’ve played with the HTC HD2 which does a bang up job of hiding it all.

But there are a lot of cool features on the Xperia X2 as well – such as being able to re-order your panels by timeline, so basically changing your home screen depending on what you’ll be doing at that tim

There’s also a cool tiled interface that links through to other applications, and while this might not be the most constructive way at looking for the program you’re after it’s still nice.

And the keyboard, which has been overhauled for this release, is a lot better too, as it’s no longer flush with the surface (which made it very difficult to hit indeed). This keyboard will give a lot more accuracy, we reckon, and that will be another big problem fixed from the X1 to the X2.

Overall, we’ve got mixed feelings about the X2. We weren’t fans of the X1 and while this appears to be a pretty good upgrade, the judder of the software made us think that we’ve got another WinMo worry on our hands.

But there’s still time before the launch at the end of the month, and if things are speeded up by then Sony Ericsson will have a pretty nifty device to launch through Vodafone.

By Gareth Beavis

Sony Ericsson Satio 12 MP cameraphone

A few megapixels to much?

The Satio is Sony Ericsson’s first 12-megapixel cameraphone. You don’t actually need that many pixels in a stills camera – let alone a phone, but everyone else is making them, so is Sony Ericsson.

At 13mm deep the Satio feels solid and (thanks to the slide-back lens cover) a little chunky, but it’s comparable to smartphone rivals.

A highlight is the bright 3.5in 640×480 screen, which is fantastic for playing back photos (rotating automatically) and watching back programs via the iPlayer.

Running Symbian 5th edition, the Satio is frustrating to use. Unfortunately the touch screen is frustrating – it’s noticeably slower then the iPhone and you often have to jab the screen several times before getting a response. Some commands are hard to find and the tiny virtual keyboard takes getting used to before you’ll be typing smoothly. Wisely you get solid call and cancel buttons, as well as a volume control on the side.

The highlight of the phone is undeniably the 12-megapixel camera. Taking pictures with the Satio is a joy; the shutter is fast so you can even capture a moving subject. It’s quick at focusing too, with an accurate face-detection mode and you can even focus simply by tapping the screen. Skin tones are excellent, displaying tonal changes accurately and the Xenon flash works well too, easily illuminating indoor shots. However, indoors image noise creeps in, even when the sensitivity is as low as ISO 200.

Photos, music and video are accessed via the fantastic Xross Media Bar. View photos in a carousel which you can scroll through, although annoyingly instead of going smoothly from picture to picture, we accidentally opened a menu screen.

On-board memory is just 128Mb, but the phone comes with 8GB mini SD card – yes SE are finally conforming and including a card format people might actually already own. Unfortunately there’s no 3.5mm jack, so you’re stuck with Sony Ericsson’s propriety connector, although a 3.5mm jack is supplied. This is a massive oversight, especially considering SE’s pedigree with music phones.

Download games and apps from the Sony Ericsson PlayNow Arena. It’s intuitive enough to use, but currently choice is limited to around with only six free apps, including fring and GetJar. It pricier then the Android Marketplace or Apple App Store too – you’ll pay £5 for an RSS Reader, £8 for a Stephen King book and £2.50 for 99 Dumbest Jokes.

Connectivity is excellent, with WiFi, A2DP Bluetooth and HSDPA. You also get aGPS and Google Maps

If you’ve been hanging on for a well-featured smartphone with a camera, the Satio is the phone for you. Unfortunately, while multimedia features are good, in usability it lags behind rivals like the HTC Hero and Apple iPhone 3Gs, and the App Store really needs time to develop. But this is still a solid handset.

Reference