Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Motorola Razr V3 Mobile Review

The Motorola Razr V3 cell phone is both very distinctive and also very attractive.
Combining its classy and stylish appearance with quadband GSM service, super-strength Bluetooth, color displays on both sides of the flip, long battery life, and a camera, it seems to have everything anyone would want..

Capabilities and Specifications:

The manual which comes with the phone is surprisingly silent about the phone’s technical specifications, and some of the other reviews on the Internet quote incorrect data. I’m basing my facts and figures on the material on Motorola’s own site, except where it too is wrong.

The V3 measures 3.5″ x 2.1″ x 0.55″ when folded closed and weighs 3.4 ounces. This makes it moderately - but not very - compact in terms of length and breadth; its most notable feature being how thin it is.

The phone came with four different manuals - a warranty brochure, a quick start guide, a service guide, and the main user manual. Interestingly the main user manual was very much shorter than the V600 manual - a mere 104 pages compared to 268 for the V600.


Battery Life and Related Issues:

Reviews commonly seem to quote battery life of as much as 200 hours of standby time or three hours of talk time. Another source (Amazon) claims 6.67 hours of talk time or 250 hours of standby time. Motorola itself says Talk Time: Up to 200 to 430 minutes Standby Time: Up to 180 to 290 hours Standard Battery: 680 mAh Li-ion Motorola’s reference to a 680-mAh battery is rather surprising. Although I’d assumed that Motorola’s own website would be the best source of official data, the fact is I have never seen a 680 mAh battery. Out of perhaps 50 V3s that I’ve inspected, all have had a 710-mAh battery. Some other reviewers have even referred to a 750-mAh battery, but I’ve never seen one of those, either.

Limitations:

The phone is very attractive, and in some respects (eg quad-band and color) full featured. So what are the limitations that you might encounter and be frustrated by.

It has no removable memory card. It has just over 5MB of internal memory that is shared between the phone book, ring tunes, pictures and video clips, and downloaded files and programs. This can quickly fill to overflowing. In contrast, I have a removable 128MB memory card in my ‘old’ Nokia 3650 (released in mid 2003) so it never runs out of capacity.

A basic fixed focus low resolution camera - 0.3 Megapixels, inadequate these days when other cameras offer 1 MP and some offer 2MP.No video recording.

Reasonably large in terms of length and breadth, although definitely very thin Basic and clutzy phone book/contact manager Proprietary iTap rather than industry standard T9 text entry meaning you have to learn a whole new interface for efficient text messaging

No IR port and data connectivity is usually sold as an extra rather than as an included feature No high speed data capability such as EDGE Can’t add an external antenna How best to buy a Motorola Razr V3

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Sony Ericsson W595 Review

he W595 is a simple upgrade to some of Sony Ericsson’s other Walkman handsets. In fact you might say it’s the same as an earlier model the W890, only in a different form factor. The Specs are almost identical with a few minor distinctions. Take a look.

Design
Little of significance has changed since the W580 — the devices genuinely look like brothers from the same mothers. The camera has shifted positions, the USB socket has moved, and the overall enclosure has a slightly different shape. But if you’re looking for ground-breaking changes, keep walking, ‘cos there ain’t nothing to see here.

It’s still a decent design though, with a fine key layout. Speed texting is easier on some other handsets, but it’s nothing a week of practice won’t solve. Our biggest, most epic complaint is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone socket. You may remember this criticism from many, many other Walkman phone reviews.

We feel it almost wasn’t worth updating this phone unless you were going to add something as game-changing as a place to put headphones without a repugnant plastic adaptor. And reattaching the battery cover gave us several minutes of annoyance thanks to some tiny, easily breakable plastic positioning clips.


Performance
If you’ve used any Sony Ericssons over the last couple of years, you’ll have no problem working this one. It’s essentially the same phone in a new case. There are various menu themes, most of which are clear and easy to navigate.

We have no complaints over sound quality, but bear in mind the bundled sound-isolating earphones, while above average, are still pants compared to a decent pair costing as little as £40. The phone sounds much better than the earphones let it, so upgrading is advised.

Ups:
Good Battery Life
Camera is decent
Audio player is good
Entertaining games and apps

Downs:
Rear panel is extremely difficult to open
No hot swap for M2 card

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Nokia 5730 XpressMusic Mobile Review

A 2-inch QVGA screen, backlit keys, a 1,000mAh battery good for 4.5 hours of yappin’, EDGE data, inbuilt GPS, 128MB of RAM, a microSD card slot, USB / Bluetooth and Symbian S60 running the show. Expectation of launching it in European markets is coming April month for €220 ($289), though worldwide availability remains a mystery.

The only reason why they have thrown the Nokia 5730 into their music-minded line-up is that Nokia are trying to sell the same phone and form-factor in to two different flavors so as to win as big a share as possible. In fact, it wouldn’t be a mistake to say that they are forging a new segment of side-sliders with thumbboards, instead of assessing every Nokia-branded phone of this kind separately. So, if they’ll manage to reach some good numbers in terms of aggregated sales – the whole segment will get a green light.

While the Nokia 5730 won’t face any sort of direct competition, this fact alone doesn’t guarantee it will be sell in droves. In fact, its predecessor, the Nokia 5320 didn’t have any rivals either, but it never became a particularly popular offering. On top of that, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be hard to compete with, given that they will be only 60 Euro away from each other price-wise.

Design, Size, Controls
The phone will be available in two standard XpressMusic colors – blue and red. As you have already noticed, we got our hands on its blue edition. The top edge is metallic and really resembles that of the Nokia N810. But don’t let it deceive you – the rest of the phone is made of plastic. Its glossy front fascia sports a bog-standard keypad that is quite a fingerprint-magnet among all other things.

Perched on the left is the volume rocker along with the dedicated camera key. Sitting on the bottom edge of the phone is the 3.5 mm audio jack, while the 3.2 MP camera lens (Carl Zeiss) and a LED flash are mounted on the back side of the phone.

Display
The phone ships with a 2-inch QVGA display (240×320 pixels, 31×42 mm). This screen offers 16 million colors, along with a juicy and vibrant picture that is readable in various environments. All in all, it’s a likable display that won’t give you any trouble whatsoever. It accommodates up to 8 text and 3 service lines all written in a convenient font. Just like you’d expect, you can alter the font size in certain menus (like Messaging, where amplified fonts do much better) and reach 14 text lines as a result.

Keypad
The 5730 XpressMusic sports a sizable navigation cluster with medium-sized, yet soft-to-press buttons. All in all, it is a breeze to work with. The keys here are lit in relatively dim white. Also, the navigation pad houses a touch-sensitive pad.

The bundled QWERTY keyboard is comfortable to use as well; the best thing about it is that you can type using both hands and your fingers won’t bump into each other, since it’s spacious enough even for people with big fingers.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

LG Cookie KP500

LG Cookie KP500 The highly promoted LG touchscreen has hit the markets with an aggressive pricing. The Cookie (KP 500) for me is an update to the previous attempt to cash in on the Touch hype - “Prada”. While the LG Prada was an early attempt, the Cookie is much more impressive.

Form Factor
The KP500 has a large 3-inch TFT touch screen display featuring a 240 x 400 pixel, 256K color resolution. Just under the display are a set of 3 keys - Call take, end and a center shortcut menu key that can also be used as a sort of ‘End task - Task Manager’ option to close all active applications. The stylus is neatly concealed and located at the bottom but slides out from the side. This extremely slim handset (11.9mm) has a microSD card slot on one side followed by a screen lock key and a dedicated camera key located below that. On the opposite side is where you’ll find a proprietary port for the handsfree, charger and USB and volume/zoom keys. A 3 megapixel camera is located at the rear.


Features (Specifications):
* 3 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom (Video supported)
* 3 TFT LCD, 262k colours, 240 x 400 pixels
* Handwriting recognition (Stylus operation)
* Music player (MP3/AAC/AAC+/AAC++/WMA formats) with FM
* Document viewer (TXT, PDF, DOC, PPT, XLS)
* Ringtones: 64 voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
* Java 2.0 games
* Phonebook (1000 names)
* Memory: 48 Mbytes plus microSD memory card slot (up to 8GB)
* Connectivity: USB 2.0, Bluetooth
* Internet: WAP 2.0, GPRS, EDGE, web browser
* Vibration alert
* Quad band
* Size: 107 x 55 x 12 mm
* Talktime: 3.5 hours
* Battery standby: 350 hours

Pros:
Great designWell priced

Cons: Touch sensitivity and accelerometer are erratic

Saturday, January 10, 2009

New handset unveiled by SONY Ericsson “XPERIA”

The XPERIA™ X1 combines a 3-inch clear wide VGA display and a full QWERTY keyboard within a quality metal-finish body. With Windows Mobile® inside, the XPERIA™ X1 lets you choose from a dynamic range of activities at anytime and anywhere; from enjoying your favourite entertainment content to working efficiently on-the-move. Access a world of experiences simply by touching the XPERIA™ panel on the screen.

Sony Ericsson XPERIATM X1 – energised communication, the premium experience.

* Convergence of multimedia entertainment and mobile Web communication
* Windows Mobile® capabilities
* Unique arc slider with wide pitch easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard
* XPERIA™ panels - arrange as you want for easy access
* Enjoy multimedia entertainment on bright wide VGA display

XPERIA™ panel interface – experiences just the way you want them
Enjoy access to different experiences – Web, multimedia, applications – from your desktop. Navigate with the tip of your finger. Configure and have your XPERIA™ panels just the way you want them.

Multiple navigation – the choice is yours
XPERIA™ X1 lets you interact with your phone in different ways. Touch, full QWERTY keyboard, 4-way key and optical joystick navigation. Switch seamlessly between operation modes.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Handset Review


Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, a mobile device for music that brings innovative new features to the mass market. Delivering on Nokia's vision to provide the best total music experience possible, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be among the first devices to support Comes With Music, Nokia's groundbreaking service which offers one year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue.


The design

Design Nokia 5800 is easy to describe. Monoblock without any design seek symmetrical shape, a minimum of controls, the bulk of the surface is the big screen, and the distance to the edges of the shell is very small. In fact, the screen and determine the dimensions of the phone, its appearance. Screen size - 38h70 mm (diagonal - 3.2 inches), he was gaunt, has a 16:9 aspect ratio. The display looks like the best of all, this ratio has resulted in a small width of the device. It is too much width becomes a negative factor for many vehicles, the same iPhone markedly greater good is at hand. The screen is not recessed into the body, which is meant primarily paltsevoe administration, however, and a stylus, which is hidden in the hull. At the edges Kant corps passes, which is above the hull for a couple of millimeters, it protects the screen from contact with the surface. Above the screen is touch a button multimedia menu, which consists of five points. Key is located conveniently, accidental clicks No, but the menu is achievable in just one touch.

On the left are two slots, cover plugs. One - under the memory card, the second card SIM. But that does not mean that the SIM-card can be changed on the fly, this device does not support. In order to pull it, the battery will need to lift and push through a special hole card. You can use the stylus, any sensitive subject. In the same end of two dynamics are located. The holes are very small, setochki that they cover, also slightly visible. Meanwhile surprising that these dynamics - one of the most powerful and high-quality, they are clearly benefiting from the Nokia N82, for example. On the opposite side - the volume keys and camera button and the slider lock.

Media Bar, Contacts Bar - putting people first
Taking advantage of touch screen technology, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic introduces the 'Media Bar', a handy drop down menu that provides direct access to music and entertainment, including favourite tracks, videos and photos. The Media Bar also offers a direct link to the web and to online sharing. Because the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic supports Flash content, individuals can surf the entire web, not just pieces of it. In addition, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offers all the music essentials, including a graphic equalizer, 8GB memory for up to 6000 tracks and support for all main digital music formats, and a 3.5mm jack.

For the best screen resolution available on a mobile phone, the 3.2" widescreen display brings photos, video clips and web content to life in vibrant color and true clarity. With a 16 by 9 aspect ratio and 30 frames-per-second playback and recording, the device is ideal for VGA quality video recording and playback.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic also features a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and, with a single touch, images or videos can be shared via a favorite online community, such as Share on Ovi, Flickr, or Facebook. Music playlist song titles can also be shared through Bluetooth, MMS or online sharing.

Music for the masses
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic supports 60 languages worldwide, which covers nearly 90 percent of the world's population. As people around the world use their phones in different ways, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offers a variety of input methods including a virtual alphanumeric keypad, a virtual computer-style QWERTY keyboard, a pen stylus and for true music enthusiasts, a plectrum are all available.

Additional features include Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, and USB 2.0 High-Speed.

The pricing is what excited us the most; Rs 21839 only!