HTC Droid Eris Review

July 30th, 2010 | HTC, Mobile Phone Reviews, Touchscreen

The Droid Eris, the HTC variant of the popular new Droid phone offers a slim, low profile design with a wide variety of features, high performance, and sharp display quality.  With the software support we’ve come to expect from the Android operating system, the Droid Eris has proven to be an excellent phone at an excellent price. With the HTC mobile phone range, it is possible to obtain cheap mobile phones without sacrificing quality or features.

While the Droid model phones have been the subject of mobile phone news for some time, it often comes with little information in terms of raw specs and figures about the device.  Most notably, the Droid Eris boasts a 3.2 inch HTC screen.  This screen performs excellently, requiring very little pressure to register a press, yet not reacting too harshly to quick movements on the screen.  Entering text is a breeze and multimedia looks excellent on this screen, and is one of the key features of the Droid Eris.

While this may be true, the Droid Eris isn’t without its faults.  Running Android 1.5, its operating system is sorely out of date, and is inherently less efficient than later Android versions.  The sometimes sluggish performance, especially when typing, can be frustrating, bringing the user’s experience down as a whole.

Despite the issues, the Droid Eris is one of the best mobile phone deals around, managing size, performance, display quality, and price all in one.  Negative aspects aside, the Droid Eris is a competent smart phone that can be purchased at an excellent price, filling its own niche quite well.

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Samsung Wave Review

July 28th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Reviews, Samsung Mobile Phones, Touchscreen

The Samsung Wave has been released by the Korean electronics giants as a top of the line model to compete with the market leading iPhone and Android smart phone platforms.

In order to try to compete, Samsung included the much heralded Super AMOLED screen on their latest mobile phone, which is by far one of the best on the market. The sharp and crisp display, along with the overall responsiveness, makes the screen one of the best of all of the new mobile phones on the market. In fact, the screen is so sharp that even the 5-megapixel camera can seem to produce low quality photos when displayed on it.

The phone is also lightening fast thanks to a speedy processor and custom programmed OS, meaning you will never have to wait for the Samsung Wave to catch up to your instructions.

Other common smart phone features such as the ability to sync contacts with Twitter and Facebook and a touch screen QWERTY keyboard which works in both portrait and landscape mode are also included.

Where the Samsung Wave falls down, though, is in its applications. As Samsung joining the smart phone market is only recent mobile phone news, very few applications are available from the Samsung store, and most of those are of poor quality.

The Samsung Wave also falls behind its rivals in terms of mobile phone contracts, with the best deals only giving away a few hundred minutes of free call time.

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De-clutter your draws – recycle your old mobile phones!

July 26th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Recycling

Recycling your old mobile phones is a good way to clear out some clutter from your home and make a bit of cash besides. It is thought that there are on average, four unused and unwanted phones in every household in the UK. This works out to be approximately 50 million phones nationwide. Every one of these phones could have a cash value.

Companies such as Fonebank and Mobile Phone Exchange offer a service that will value your phone according to its make and model and pay you that value if you return your phone to them. Obviously more up to date phones will be worth more, but if you are one of those people that upgrade their phone on a regular basis you can often get over £100 for your old phone.

If the phones you have lying around are not really worth anything, you can still make use of these services as they will take broken and older models in for recycling, free of charge. These phones will either be broken down for parts to be used in repair centres or sent on to specialist recyclers for the reusable materials to be extracted.

Using these services is a good way to extend the useful life of an old mobile and prevent the dangerous materials they contain from getting into the environment. So next time you’re offered an upgrade it’s really worth looking into getting your phone recycled, you could even make a bit of cash out of it.

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HTC Nexus One Overview

July 23rd, 2010 | Google Android, HTC, Mobile Phone Reviews, Touchscreen

The HTC Nexus One mobile phone now comes with the updated Android 2.2 (Froyo) OS, which means that it comes complete with Flash 10.1.  It has the ability to show embedded videos with superb quality.  As you would expect Android 2.2 is faster than the 2.1 and has an improved browser with the ability to install apps onto the SD card.

This phone, as with all other Android mobile phones, gives users the ability to multi task and runs quite a few applications simultaneously without the problem of the phone crashing and losing all your input.  It is however very power hungry and you need keep an eye on the battery whilst working.

The HTC Nexus One comes with all the features that we have grown to love and more.  It has a camera with LED flash and a video player.  There is Wi-Fi and an internal memory of 512MB.  It also has GPS and an email facility but most importantly it has a 3.5 mm headphone jack.  There are lots more features on this phone, and it provides up to 10 hours of talk time and 290 hours standby time.

The HTC Google Nexus One is a great phone that has lots to offer many mobile phone users.  Although it is not revolutionary it does stand out in its class.  The ability to download apps and run more than one at a time is very useful when out of the office or away from home and trying to juggle a very busy schedule.

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LG Arena Review

July 20th, 2010 | LG, Mobile Phone Reviews, Touchscreen

The LG Arena, also known as the LG Arena KM900, is a touch-screen mobile phone sold by LG Electronics. The LG Arena is a mid level touch-screen phone, featuring the new LG S-class 3D user interface.

The LG Arena measures 4.17 by 2.18 by 0.47 inches. It weighs 3.7 ounces. It has a talk time battery life of 4 hours, and a stand by battery life of 13 days. Its touch-screen is 480 x 800 pixels, and measures 3 inches. The touch-screen is capacitive. The LG Arena’s camera boasts 5 megapixels resolution with flash, autofocus, digital zoom and the CMOS image sensor.

The video function supports MPEG4, H.263, H.264, DivX, XviD, WMV, AVI, and 3GP files. The music player supports MP3, WMA, WAV, M4A (Apple lossless), MP4, AMR, 3GP, 3GPP and MIDI files. The LG Arena also has an FM radio access.

Internet access is through HTML, XHTML or WAP 2.0 browsers, and the LG Arena has Wi-Fi and 2.1 stereo Bluetooth. Email is through IMAP, POP 3 or SMTP. GPS comes as standard.

The LG Arena looks and feels great, is easy to handle and has a good sound and picture quality. The mobile phone allows for copying and pasting of text, which is not common in mobile phones.

A potential drawback of the LG Arena is that it locks itself after around a minute of inactivity, which can be annoying in the long run. LG Arena deals are mostly contract based.

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Nokia 5800 XpressMusic – Music anytime, anywhere!

July 16th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Reviews, Nokia, Touchscreen

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a touchscreen phone that is great for playing music but also manages to offer Wi-Fi, GPS and HSDPA (3.5G).

Although the handset is a touchscreen it still has that familiar Nokia style to it, so if you’ve had a Nokia before, you’ll easily navigate your way around the menus.  The touchscreen is not as responsive as say the iPhone and you do need a bit of practice using the on-screen keyboard, which does feel a bit clumsy.

It’s simple to browse the web, and you’ll soon be surfing your favourite websites although the web browser is not as good as Apple iPhone’s Safari browser, which includes multi touch pinch’n’zooming.

You can find your way around the world as the phone comes with GPS that works great with Nokia’s Maps service.  But the best feature of this phone is its music playing ability.  You can browse and buy from the company’s own store but it also works fantastically with the Comes with Music service that allows you to download unlimited tracks to the handset or your PC.

It has an FM radio and best of all a 3.5 mm jack meaning that you can plug in your favourite headphones.

The phone has a 3.2-megapixel camera complete with LED flash capable of recording still pictures and videos.

The phone is available free on contract from all the main networks with T-mobile offering 100 minutes and unlimited texts for £20 a month while Orange is offering 200 minutes, 3000 texts and £80 auto cash back for £20 a month.

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Sony Ericsson W580i Overview

July 15th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Reviews, Sony Ericsson

The Sony Ericsson W580i is a part of the Walkman range of cheap mobile phones that offer extra support for music lovers, featuring a slide-up design in a choice of white, black, pink, or grey.

Visually, the phone looks nice, with the exterior (slid down) featuring a five-way navigation key that is easy to use. Dedicated keys are also present so that you can play music without having to open the phone. Slide the phone up, and the exposed keypad has nicely shaped keys that are easy to use.

Music-wise, the W580i features Walkman 2.0 and includes an FM radio. A stereo headset is included with the phone, however it also supports Bluetooth. Internal memory is small – only 12 MB – but the memory is expandable to up to 4 GB.

The Sony Ericsson W580i features a 2 megapixel camera with video recording, which is adequate for the occasional shot, but that is about it. Other features include personal organiser applications, a pedometer, flight mode, vibration alert, web browser, sound recorder, and speaker phone.

Battery life is purported to provide nine hours of talk time and 370 hours of standby. This is a quad-band phone.

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention that many users of the Sony Ericsson W580i have reported problems with the keys cracking. However, due to the incredibly low cost of this unit, you may consider it worth the risk.

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What Is the Link Between Mobile Phones and Mother Earth?

July 12th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Recycling, Mobile Technology

The idea behind recycling is environmental protection. The benefits of recycling include everything from energy savings and reduced emissions to reduced volumes of chemical waste.

Mobile phones are a primary source of harmful chemicals that may cause toxic contamination of the surrounding water and land. Among these chemicals are copper, arsenic, zinc, lithium, manganese, mercury, nickel, cadmium, palladium, beryllium and lead. Add to this the fact that the number of mobile phones being used in the world has dramatically increased from 100 million units in 1997 to a whopping 4.6 billion units in 2009 based on the data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In America alone, the180 million mobile phones used in 2004 were estimated to contain 2,100 tons of copper; the 4.6 billion mobile phone units used by the world in 2009 could yield 53,600 tonnes of copper waste. Add to that the thousands of tonnes of other waste chemicals, and with only less than one percent of the millions of mobile phones discarded annually being recycled, the damage to the environment is expected to be severe and dramatic.

Toxic contamination caused by chemicals from mobile phones will lead to serious physical and physiological conditions ranging from simple poisoning to genetic mutations and increasing cancer rates. A bigger problem is that toxicity is transferred along the food chain with long-lived predators like fishes and even simple decomposers like bacteria acting as carriers of these metallic toxins.

It would therefore seem that one of the best ways to protect life would be to recycle metals and that includes the tons of metal in billions of mobile phones around the world.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Review

July 8th, 2010 | Camera Phones, Mobile Phone Reviews, Sony Ericsson, Touchscreen

When it comes to Sony Ericsson mobile phones, the Xperia X10 is one of the most promising, combining great specifications with the Android OS in one attractive package.

Sporting a full-wide 4 inch VGA screen, the Xperia X10 is a big phone, although the curved back design makes it fit nicely in your hand. The weight of the phone is also properly balanced, which makes it feel nice to carry. But it isn’t a thick phone, coming in at only 13 mm – so it is big, but not portly. (Still, if it’s too big for you, the Xperia X10 Mini is due out in June.) As to the screen itself, the image quality is 480 x 854 pixels with 65k colour support. The screen uses TFT technology and offers capacitive touch screen functionality.

In terms of physical appearance, the Xperia X10 is very glossy, which means it could be prone to scratching and smudges. On the sides, you find all of the connectors and buttons you’d expect in a smartphone including 3.5 mm headphone jack, camera controls, microUSB, etc.  Three buttons below the screen give you home, menu, and back functions. The 8.1 megapixel camera provides the quality of imagery we’ve come to expect from Sony Ericsson phones; the music player is also superb.

Out of the box, the Sony Ericsson X10 comes with Android 1.6; however, Sony Ericsson has added a few of their own modifications which make some of the 2.x benefits moot. While not yet quite up to Nexus standards, with the Xperia X10 Sony Ericsson is becoming a contender.

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Nokia 6500 Slide Review

July 6th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Reviews, Nokia

The Nokia 6500 Slide looks like the 6500 Classic but has a few more high tech features. 

The 6500 Slide comes with a decent 3.2-megapixel camera, together with autofocus, an LED photo light and Carl Zeiss optics making it comparable to other camera phones.  It has a video camera and a video player that supports MP4, 3GP and H.263 file formats.

The screen on the 6500 Slide is okay but you may find it difficult to read in bright light.

The audio player supports the most common file formats including MP3, MP4, AAC, eAAC and WMA and the sound quality is reasonable.  There is also an FM radio so you can tune into your favourite radio stations when you get fed up listening to your own tracks.  The 6500 Slide has a microSD card slot so you can add additional memory up to a max of 8 GB.

The handset is not the most attractive on the market and it is quite bulky with 47 x 97 x 16 mm dimensions and weighing 123 grams.  It has a talk time of up to six hours and a standby time of about 320 hours.

Because the 6500 Slide is a couple of years old, you can buy the phone SIM free but because it is unlocked it will be more expensive.  The phone is currently available from Nokia or PrePayMania from £175.00.

Other similar phones to check out are the Sony Ericsson W705 and the Samsung U600.

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