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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Sony Ericsson Aspen Overview

July 3rd, 2010 | Mobile Phone Reviews, Mobile Technology, Sony Ericsson

The Sony Ericsson Aspen – also known as the Sony Ericsson ‘Faith’ – is the third Windows Mobile OS device offered by Sony Ericsson. The phone, which will be released shortly, is aimed at business users with a plethora of features designed to keep people who are always on the go never out of touch.

One of the key marketing features of the Aspen is its Greenheart certification. Greenheart is the series of phones from Sony that deliver top-of-the-range mobile phone technology in an eco-conscious package. What this means is that, not only is the packaging minimal, the phone itself is mostly made from recycled materials.

Visually, the Sony Ericsson Aspen is a nice-looking candy bar design, with a style similar to a traditional BlackBerry or the Nokia E71. The display is a 2.4-inch resistive TFT touch screen that sits above navigation keys and a full QWERTY keyboard. Because the screen is resistive design, it works well with a stylus. There is also handwriting recognition support and an auto-rotate feature.

As to connectivity, all of the major messaging suites are supported, including push email and onboard applications for Twitter, Skype, Facebook, and YouTube. Pocket Office allows viewing of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and PDF files. For those moments in-between work, there is a full media player and FM radio.

The camera included is 3.2 megapixels with smart contrast support and video recording capability. The phone is GPS enabled and comes with Google Maps pre-installed.

The release date for the Sony Ericsson Aspen is forth-coming.

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Cheap Mobile Phones – Samsung Galaxy

July 1st, 2010 | Google Android, Mobile Phone Reviews, Samsung Mobile Phones, Touchscreen

If you are a fan of Samsung’s, then you’ll probably like the Samsung Galaxy touch screen from the start. It has that traditional “Samsung feel” about it – with the trademark OK button surrounded by navigation and four soft keys – thus eliminating much of the learning curve that often accompanies the purchase of a new mobile.

All in all, the Galaxy isn’t a bad phone – although there are a few things we don’t like (mentioned below). One of our favourite features is navigational: an easy to get to window navigates you to a screen where GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Auto-sync can be turned off or on by the tap of a finger. Another is the Android operating system, which gives you access to all of the brilliant applications offered up on the Android Market.

On the negative side, the 5.0 megapixel camera is far too sensitive when it comes to light. If the source of lighting isn’t spot on, your photos end up looking too bright and washed out. Typing text messages can also be difficult on the Galaxy when working in landscape. If you’re not careful or your fingers are too thick, you end up with an endless string of unwanted letters, which are difficult to delete because the delete key is so awkward. Another negative is the fussy lock key, which can be frustrating when you’re trying to unlock the phone to actually use it. Of course, many of these things could be rectified with an Android OS update.

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LG Chocolate BL20 Review

June 30th, 2010 | LG, Mobile Phone Reviews

The LG Chocolate BL20 is the latest addition to LG’s chocolate line of mobile phones.  Like previous Chocolate phones, the Chocolate is known for supporting a bright, well lit display, as well as a striking design for its face buttons.  While the Chocolate models of mobile phones have typically had a heavy focus on total product design and downright good looks of the phone, this does not mean that the Chocolate BL20 fails to deliver plenty of features and excellent overall performance.

The Chocolate most notably is a very small device.  Measuring just 4.21 x 2.00 x .48 inches, it remains a sleek, slim device that supports the high processing speeds and overall performance the Chocolate line is known for.  This modern smart phone supports HSDPS data transfers as high as 3.6 Megabits per second, an excellent rate for almost any web application. In addition, the built in camera takes excellent photographs at 5 megapixels, while supporting features such as auto focus, digital zoom, and a very bright LED flash.

The LG Chocolate BL20 is an excellent 3G capable phone that is sure to not disappoint.  Beyond the lack of Android applications and a relatively short battery life of just 4 hours, there’s little reason to avoid at least checking this phone out.  While the chocolate rarely stands out in any one category of its own, it consistently delivers a bundle of high performance hardware tailored to meet the needs of most people, and should therefore be considered by most everyone in the market for an internet capable smart phone.

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