Sunday, September 14, 2008

Samsung Tocco Review


Reviewed by: Frank Lewis

When it comes to phones, buttons are out and touch sensitivity is most definitely in. Unfortunately, Samsung's previous touchscreen mobiles -- the Armani and F700 -- were slightly awkward to use.

Not to be defeated, the company is back with the Tocco, a new touchscreen handset that's available at Carphone Warehouse for free on a monthly contract or for around £350 SIM-free. It boasts a wealth of cool features and a completely redesigned user interface called TouchWiz. Is it a case of third time lucky for Samsung?

Strengths
Some of the style and panache of Samsung's Armani phone has obviously rubbed off on the Tocco, as the two look remarkably similar. Like the Armani, the front of the handset is dominated by the large touchscreen, with only three physical buttons -- call answer, call end and main menu -- to break up the clean lines.


The Tocco's touchscreen is capacitive, making it a lot more responsive to touch than previous Samsung touchscreen phones

We've criticised Samsung's touchscreen phones in the past for their drab, monochrome-style interfaces, but the new TouchWiz interface is a breath of fresh air in comparison. It's faster and more responsive and also has adjustable haptic feedback where the phone vibrates slightly when you touch menus or icons.

The interface looks great on the 71mm (2.8-inch) display and features a cleaner layout with more colourful icons. We also really like the slick animations when you move between screens. For example, when you switch from the main menu to the new widgets screen, the display revolves with a pleasing 3D animation.


On the back of the Tocco, there's a 5-megapixel camera with an LED photo light

This new widgets screen is probably the most innovative aspect of the handset. It features a dock on the left-hand edge from where you can drag various applications on to your home screen to personalise it. Widgets range from a music player to digital and analogue clocks, as well as games and a picture viewer. Up to seven widgets can sit on the home screen at any one time. We love it because it provides a neat way of grouping together the stuff that you want to access most often.

There's plenty more to like about the Tocco. It supports HSDPA so you get fast Web access at speeds of up to 7.2Mbps and there are dual cameras for video calling. The main camera is also very impressive. It's a 5-megapixel model and besides autofocus and an LED photo light, it has face detection and smile detection. The latter automatically takes a picture when it spots a grinning mug in the shot. Add in extras like an FM tuner, RSS reader and 223MB of onboard memory and microSD card slot and you've got a feature packed handset.

Weaknesses
As the Tocco is a touchscreen handset, comparisons with the iPhone are inevitable. For the most part, it stands up well, but there are areas that could be improved a lot.


Right underneath the touchscreen are three hard keys that let you send and end calls, in addition to accessing a shortcut menu

In particular, the browser is poor compared to Safari. Whereas Safari makes full Web pages easily readable on the iPhone's small screen, the Tocco's browser struggles to pull off the same trick. The main problem is that there's no zooming feature to let you quickly hone in on areas of text or graphics. While you can move the page around by swiping your finger on the display, it's not as intuitive or as responsive as on Apple's handset.

There's no doubt that the TouchWiz interface is a huge improvement on Samsung's previous efforts, but we think it could still be tweaked further. Although it's mostly speedy, there are times when sluggishness creeps in to spoil the party.

Also, even though the smaller screen size on the Tocco means that it's a more petite handset that fits comfortably in your palm, the lack of screen real estate means that it's not quite big enough to fit a virtual keyboard. Instead, all input has to be done using T9, which isn't ideal when entering Web address or composing emails.

Conclusion
While the Tocco isn't quite an iPhone killer, it does look very stylish and offer up a plethora of great features, including an impressive camera and HSDPA support for speedy Web downloads. In our book, that still makes it one of the best touchscreen phones around at the moment.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk


LG KF700 Review


Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

It seems that the South Koreans have taken note of the iPhone's success and are heading into touchscreen territory faster than you can say, "hmm, that looks a bit like the iPhone". If you're not keen on Apple products, you may want to check out the LG KF700. It not only features a touchscreen but also comes with HSDPA (3.5G) and a slide-out keypad. Can it compete with the Jesus phone?

It's currently available on O2 from free on a monthly contract.

Design
The LG KF700 falls somewhere in between the LG Chocolate and the LG Prada. It's not particularly large compared to a phone such as the Nokia N73, but it will take up space in your pocket. We didn't find it too heavy to carry around and it felt solid enough to handle a few drops and hits.


The LG KF700 has a large touchscreen that gives you access to all the phone's features

On the front of the KF700, there's a large touchscreen similar to the Prada's. Hidden underneath, you'll find a standard keypad, and Chocolate owners will be familiar with its layout. It's not the most inspiring of designs, but it is functional. The keypad works well when you need to text and the screen is good for quickly jumping to apps and content.

Adding to the screen and keypad, a scroll wheel at the back of the KF700 gives you access to various features, such as the Web browser and music player. You can also use the scroll wheel to search through your contacts and music, which is useful if you want to look through a long list quickly.

Features
Similar to the LG Prada and Viewty, the KF700 uses a simple, icon-based interface that's fairly easy to understand. When you start the KF700 up for the first time, it gets you to align the touchscreen using your fingers or thumb, and there's no need for stylus. Vibrating feedback ensures that you know when you've tapped the screen.

An interesting feature on the touchscreen -- we've seen it mirrored on the recently launched Samsung Tocco -- is the ability to add widgets to the KF700's home screen. These include two clocks, a calendar and a notepad for taking quick notes. You can only have one widget up at the time but you can change them quite easily by opening the widget menu on the side of the screen.


On the back of the KF700, there's a scroll wheel that gives you quick access to certain apps and also lets you scroll quickly through your contacts and music

Once you've calibrated the touchscreen, you can get on with using the KF700's star features. These include HSDPA for accessing the Web at up to speeds of 7.2Mbps. To our disappointment, the KF700's browser doesn't render pages well, making full sites look like WAP sites. Plus, the browser interface feels clunky.

The KF700's music player fares better than its browser, providing a straightforward interface that allows you to create playlists, shuffle your music and display album art or visualisations with relative ease. Audio quality from the headphones is acceptable and you have the option to plug in your own cans using an in-line adaptor.


Although it's flat, the KF700's keypad is easy to use when texting

Rounding off the KF700's multimedia offerings is a 3-megapixel camera on the back that boasts autofocus, a relatively fast shutter speed and an easy to understand interface. Disappointingly, the LED photo light only worked okay for close up shots and didn't perform well at over a couple of metres, which meant photos of mates in dark pubs and clubs didn't come out well.

Something we did like was the photo editor. It's pretty basic, but lets you add effects and text to your pictures. You can quickly scribble text over a photo using your finger or the keypad, which is useful if you want to caption a shot and then send it to a friend.

Performance
Battery life lasted for around two days with intermittent use of the browser and music player. The battery was drained very quickly if we used HSDPA a lot, which is something you should watch out for if you're a mobile Internet addict. On a separate note, although the interface worked smoothly, there was a slight lag occassionaly.

Conclusion
The LG KF700 is definitely not the most exciting touchscreen handset out there, but it does work. Being able to use the keypad or touchscreen is useful -- neither is the epitome of greatness, though. In a market packed with better-featured touchscreen phones, the KF700 will struggle. If you're not bothered about owning a super phone, then it's worth a look.

Unless you're living under a rock, you'll know that Apple's new iPhone 3G will be available on 11 July as an alternative. You could also try the Samsung F700 that has similar features and boasts a full Qwerty keypad.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk


E-TEN glofiish M810 Review


Reviewed by: Frank Lewis

The glofiish M810 is E-TEN's attempt to take on the raft of Windows Mobile smart phones with slide-out keyboards that have appeared lately. It's got plenty of extras, including an onboard GPS chip, but at around £435 SIM-free from expansys, it's not exactly cheap. Is it worth your hard-earned dosh?

Strengths
The M810 may not be the most exciting Windows Mobile phone to look at, but it certainly feels like it's built to last. The graphite-style finish on the front looks suitably professional for a phone that's likely to find its most comfortable niche among business users.

Push the phone apart and it opens with a satisfying clunk to reveal the full Qwerty keyboard that hides inside. The keys on the keyboard could be better, but they're reasonably large and much easier to use than the onscreen virtual keyboard when you're composing emails or sending text messages.

The M810 really can't be faulted when it comes to connectivity. Not only does it support HSDPA for speedy Web downloads, but you also get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. On top of this, E-TEN has added an onboard SiRF Star III GPS chip. There's a basic GPS application provided that shows your current coordinates, but if you want to really make the most of it, you'll need to invest in some navigation software.

The phone may primarily be aimed at business users, but E-TEN hasn't forgotten the fun stuff. For starters, it's added a 2-megapixel camera with autofocus and a flash for taking pictures as well as a secondary camera on the front for making 3G video calls. The main snapper isn't going to replace your digital camera, but the pictures are reasonable with natural-looking colours.

The phone also comes with a pair of decent headphones so you can listen to tunes via the Microsoft media player. If you get bored of your own selection of music, you can fire up the FM tuner to listen to Radio One.

The M810's call quality is excellent too, thanks to its loud speaker and good quality mic. The battery life isn't too bad either. You can expect to get around six hours talk time from it, which isn't bad for a Windows Mobile-based handset.

Weaknesses
Is it just us, or do Windows Mobile handsets seem to get bigger as time goes on? The M810 follows this trend and is not only very tall, but also very thick and heavy too, tipping the scales at nearly 180g. Bizarrely, although it uses quite a speedy processor – a 500MHz Samsung chip – it actually feels quite sluggish. Screen updates are especially slow and it seems to take an age to switch between portrait and landscape view when you slide out the keyboard.

The keyboard itself isn't wonderful either. Rather than proper keys, the letters are laid out on a flat plastic surface with raised edges around them, reminding us of the bygone days of the Sinclair ZX81. In fact, the controls in general aren't great, as even the hard buttons are on the small side and the telescopic stylus feels uncomfortable to hold.

We have to say that after using the Safari browser on the 2G iPhone, going back to Pocket Internet Explorer on the M810 is like travelling back in time. It really is spectacularly poor in comparison to the intuitive touch controls and speedy page zooming abilities of Safari.

Conclusion
To make an impression against the likes of the HTC TyTN II, the M810 really needed to offer something special. Apart from the onboard GPS chip, however, it's a pretty pedestrian effort with the iffy keyboard, sluggish screen updates and bulky dimensions all letting the side down.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk

Nokia N78 Review


Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

With more multimedia-toting smart phones entering the market, Nokia's N-series is certainly less lonely than it was when it launched. Two years ago, handsets such as the Nokia N73 were topping the charts. Can Nokia repeat the same success with the Nokia N78 in today's feverish smart phone market?

The Nokia N78 is available SIM-free for around £300 and will be available shortly for free on a monthly contract.

Design
The Nokia N78's design harks back to the candy-bar roots of the first N-series phones. But while this design reminds us of the two-year-old N73, the N78 is much thinner than its predecessor and its glossy front and silver, curved border stands in line with Nokia's new design direction. We like the different approach, but some people have said they prefer the older, more boxy look of the N95. Preferences aside, one sure thing is that the glossy surfaces make it a fingerprint magnet and there's plenty of flat space to leave smudges.


The Nokia N78 has a large screen with a light sensor that adjusts its brightness depending on ambient light

The cancel, menu, send and end keys are flat but click when you push them, making them easy to use. Instead of a standard four-way navigation key, the N78's navigation key can be used like an iPod's scroll wheel. It works well for speeding through long lists, such as contacts or music tracks, but it's not very accurate when you move slowly. The navigation key is also fiddly to press up, down, left or right and detracts from the overall user experience.

One of the most interesting design features on the N78 is its keypad, which is made up of four horizontal lines. It looks like it shouldn't work well, but it's surprisingly easy to type on and much better than the N73's. Our only issue with the keypad area is that the cancel key is on the bottom right of the N78, which feels unusual compared to its normal location up at the top; fortunately, you do get use to it after a while.

Features
The N78 is like the N82's thinner cousin, boasting almost all of the same features. You'll notice when you start using the N78 that although it runs on S60 3rd edition, Nokia has tweaked the interface slightly so that it looks more flashy. When you go from one app to another, for example, there are transitional effects with an Apple OS X feel to them.


While the keypad looks weird, it's actually easy to use. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the navigation key

But it's not just about a fancy interface. HSDPA (3.5G) and Wi-Fi help you stay connected to the Internet almost everywhere you go and you can download third-party apps such as the Opera Mini browser for a desktop-like browsing experience.

Navigating around town is made easy using the N78's A-GPS; it picks up satellites very quickly using a combination of cell and satellite data. Navigating using Nokia Maps works well, particularly if you want step-by-step information, although you need to pay for certain services such as voice guidance. You might also want to try using Google Maps -- it's free and offers an aerial view option, which we really like.


The N78 comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera that disappointingly only comes with an LED photo light instead of a xenon flash

You can easily load up your N78 with music by dragging and dropping tracks via the PC software. Plus, there's a microSD card slot for adding extra storage space. A built-in 3.5mm headphone jack lets you plug your normal headphones straight in, which is a small but very important feature as it cuts out all the messing around with adaptors. The N78's stereo speakers pump out ample sound, but they certainly won't replace your hi-fi.

We're disappointed with the 3.2-megapixel camera on the N78. It can't compete with the camera on the N82, as the picture quality isn't very clear. There's no xenon flash either and without a camera cover, you have to wonder why Nokia has bothered.

Performance
Battery life lasted for about two days with medium to heavy usage, which is good going when you keep in mind how many features the N78 has. GPS and HSDPA hogged much of the battery, but if you're not planning on using them a lot, then there shouldn't be a huge problem.

Conclusion
The N78 is a mixed bag. It packs more features than most phones, but the camera is underwhelming and the navigation key is fiddly to use. It's by no means a terrible phone, but it's not a great one either.

Compared to the similarly-specced N82, we don't think it holds up very well. Sure, it's thinner and it'll help you find your way around as you browse the Web and listen to music, but the overall user experience isn't what we expected. With a few crucial tweaks, it could have been a much better phone.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk


Nokia E71 Review


Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

The Nokia E series has traditionally been an uninspiring collection of boxy phones, but last year saw a dramatic upturn in its fortunes. The Nokia E51 and E65 took the market by storm -- and it wasn't just businessmen buying them. The E series is beginning to look as attractive as its multimedia N-series siblings.

The Nokia E71 is the Finnish giant's latest addition to the E series and will be available in July. Pricing is set to be around €350 (around £280) SIM-free, and it will most likely be free on a monthly contract. But will it be another email knockout?

Design
The E71 is one of Nokia's most attractive smart phones to date. Many phones with Qwerty keypads lack a certain finesse, but the E71 wouldn't look out of place in an Aston Martin. Not only does it look good, its attractive metal casing feels very classy and it's not too heavy or too light.

A 10mm thick profile ensures it fits inside a pocket comfortably, even though it's wider than your average handset. The screen and Qwerty keypad are well laid-out -- a series of shortcut keys below the screen make it easy to access your emails, calendar and contacts. Although the keys are small, they're very usable, because each is raised, making it easy to distinguish between them. In fact, the E71's keypad is one of the best Qwerty keypads we've ever laid fingers on.


The E71's Qwerty keyboard is one of the best we've ever used

We inadvertently dropped the E71 a few times from waist height and it carried on working as if nothing had happened, thanks to its resilient casing. It truly is a stunning looking phone that will stand the test of time.

Features
Email-centric, business-oriented phones can be dull as ditchwater, but the E71 isn't lacking exciting features. Like the Nokia E90, this smart phone boasts more features than your average Nokia.

Having said that, it gets the basics right first. We can happily say that setting up your personal email, such as Gmail or Yahoo, is really easy. All you have to do is put in your email address and password -- that's it. The E71 also supports Microsoft Exchange, although it's a little harder to set that up, so you might want to get some help from your office IT guy, depending on your phone skills.

Connecting to the Internet to receive emails and browse Web sites is possible almost everywhere you go, via HSDPA (3.5G) or Wi-Fi. Using the built-in Wi-Fi scanner, it's easy to find a hotspot and connect to it. To save battery life, you should turn off Wi-Fi scanning when you're not using it.

Surfing the Net is better than with most built-in browsers. Pages are displayed in full and, interestingly, the E71's browser supports Flash and lets you watch YouTube videos, although it's fairly sluggish -- audio streams faster than video.

Because it runs on the S60 operating system, you can download a variety of programs, including our favourite mobile apps, Opera Mini and Google Maps. The E71 packs GPS, so you can use Google Maps' sat-nav feature to accurately track your location and get directions.

You can also use the pre-installed Nokia Maps for navigating around town. It does everything that Google Maps Mobile does, but with a few extras, including being able to save a screenshot and voice navigation, but you will have to pay for the latter.

A small but noteworthy feature is the E71's start page. It cleverly lets you display emails, apps and other features, but that's not all. You can set up one start page for home and one for work, flicking between the two depending on what you're up to. It's useful if you like to keep certain aspects of your life separate, such as work and personal emails.


The 3.2-megapixel camera is not the best of its type

The only feature that left us very disappointed was the 3.2-megapixel camera. Its shutter speed was slow and it took blurry photos. We hope the next model in the E series offers a better camera.

Performance
For a phone with so many features, we were really impressed with how long it could last on one charge. In our real-world testing, we used GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA regularly throughout the day, and we managed to squeeze two days out of the battery before it needed recharging. If you want to expand battery life even further, switching off all non-essential connections, such as Wi-Fi and HSDPA, helps significantly.

Conclusion
Most business phones leave you yearning for something a little more refined, something that will get the job done but also work well as a phone for home. The Nokia E71 is the business phone we've all been waiting for.

It looks gorgeous, it works well and most importantly it packs enough features to deal with a smorgasbord of situations. We're disappointed with its camera, but we think this is one of the best Nokia email phones to date, and highly recommend it if you're looking for a phone with a Qwerty keypad.

Edited by Nick Hide

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk

Sony Ericsson W350i Review


Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

In 1999, Ericsson brought out the classic -- and popular -- T28 flip phone. With a nod to its past success, Sony Ericsson has released a new budget Walkman handset.

The Sony Ericsson W350i is a Walkman entrant with a retro appearance and pseudo-candy bar form factor. It's out now on a range of networks, coupled with both pay as you go or for free on contract price plans.

Design
The W350i's retro appearance is the result of the seldom seen flip phone design. When open, the flip panel reveals an easy-to-use glossy keypad comprising fairly large, smooth buttons. When closed, concealing the keypad, it plays host to dedicated Walkman buttons on its exterior, making the handset much more like a Sony MP3 player when in standby.

The flip panel does its job well enough, but it's quite flimsy and actually bends -- a result of Sony Ericsson's desire to keep this handset just 11mm thick, though the rest of the handset is reasonably rugged and should survive the odd drop.

We also found it to be a nice phone to use -- it's ergonomic, fairly lightweight and sports an attractive finish in a range of colours. While small, the 176x220-pixel screen is bright and clear.

A small annoyance: while the Walkman buttons on the front of the flip panel allow you to play, pause and skip tracks, you have to fold it down to navigate to other albums or artists.

Features
Slightly annoying too is that unlike almost all MP3 players, neither protected nor unprotected WMA files are supported -- only MP3 and AAC files are compatible, including DRM-free iTunes Plus downloads.

You can use Windows Media Player or Sony Ericsson's bundled media manager software to sync content and the latter supports podcast subscriptions. You can also simply drag and drop content using Windows.

Aside from weak audio compatibility, there's a rear-mounted 1.3-megapixel camera without a flash for still images only, plus FM radio, stereo Bluetooth, email and RSS support, games, but sadly no 3.5mm headphone socket. This is a standard seen across the industry, despite our constant complaints.

Bear in mind that this is a 2.5G handset, not 3G, and as such Internet browsing speeds won't blow you away. Installing Opera Mini would be a good move if you plan on using the Internet on this phone.

Performance
Of course, this slow network performance is the result of this phone being geared almost exclusively towards music playback, despite the sparse audio format support.

After a very slow file transfer (roughly 15 to 20 seconds per song, 3 minutes or so per album), we started listening to some tunes and heard pretty decent sound quality -- as long as MP3s are encoded at a decent bit rate (at least 192Kbps). We used our high-end reference headphones, but you'll at least want to replace the rubbish bundled earphones with a decent pair.

Dashboard Confessional's nicely recorded Fever Dreams had warm and decent detail through the W350i and its general sound quality was on par with a good standalone MP3 player.

We did feel though that Dream Theater's Take Away My Pain sounded cleaner through Creative's Zen with subtle background sounds just slightly less well defined though the W350i. If you don't plan on using earphones any better than the bundled pair, though, you'll probably -- and sadly -- never notice this.

It's a fun phone to use with simple menus and reasonably large fonts, so phone addicts and newbies alike should enjoy using it. Call quality is good as well, though we've heard louder -- it might not be ideal if you plan on using it in mostly loud environments.

As a pocket camera, it's fine for quick snaps, but it can't compare to even slightly more capable handsets in terms of image quality (example here). Don't forget there's no flash, either.

Conclusion
Considering its price, its ease of use and its generally decent performance, it's hard not to like this compact little handset. But it's still no match for a dedicated MP3 player, which we'd choose over solely using the W350i for music in a heartbeat.

Still, few handsets -- bar the iPhone -- offer music playback capabilities to rival dedicated MP3 players, but if you fancy a better camera and more phone features, Sony Ericsson's more costly models will cater and are still the best of the bunch as music handsets.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk

HTC Touch Diamond Review


Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

The HTC Touch Diamond is a brave new product that tries to capture some of the iPhone's popularity by featuring a finger-friendly interface that looks better than anything we've seen on a Windows Mobile handset before. But can HTC apply Apple's success by using Windows Mobile and a fancy new interface?

The HTC Touch Diamond will be available soon on most major networks for free on a monthly contract.

Design
The HTC Touch Diamond looks fantastic compared to any Windows Mobile phone we've seen before. It's not too large or small and has a thin profile, which makes it easy fit into a pocket. Unlike previous models, HTC has added an attractive twist to the design of the back of the phone by using a prism-like surface. It looks less boring that your traditional smart phone.


The HTC Touch Diamond has a glossy front that looks good, but picks up fingerprints very easily

The Touch Diamond's VGA (640x480 pixels), 71mm (2.8-inch) touchscreen is very sharp and displays pictures really well. Unfortunately, it's very glossy, so you may struggle to see what's going on in bright light. Another disadvantage of the Diamond's glossy surfaces is that they pick up unsightly fingerprints on the back and face grease on the front. Expect to clean this phone often if you want to keep it looking good.


Considering how many features the HTC Touch Diamond has, it's very thin and fits into a pocket

Underneath the touchscreen, you'll find a set of flat, clickable keys. Interestingly, the four-way navigation key doubles up as a touch-sensitive scroll wheel in certain apps such as the photo viewer, letting you zoom in and out of pictures. Bizarrely, the scroll wheel doesn't work everywhere, which is a shame, particularly since we would have liked to use it to scroll through long contact lists or music tracks.

Features
Considering its size, the Touch Diamond is packed with features. It's one of the most feature-rich Windows Mobile phones out there and boasts almost everything you'd need on the move. There's GPS that you can use with Google Maps -- it looks great on the Diamond's screen, too -- and HSDPA and Wi-Fi, which makes browsing the Web and picking up emails fast and possible almost everywhere you go.

A customised version of Opera Mobile also makes surfing the Internet enjoyable. It lets you see an entire page and then zoom in on the parts you want to see properly. Opera Mobile also lets you open new tabs, which means you can navigate through a few different pages without needing to open new windows. It's one of our favourite apps and it works well on the Diamond's ample touchscreen.

Another customised app offered on the Touch Diamond is provided by YouTube. You can watch YouTube videos via Wi-Fi or HSDPA and search through YouTube's directory or just check out the latest videos. It seemed to load videos slowly using HSPDA and worked better using Wi-Fi. Picture quality on the Touch Diamond was much better than any previous HTC incarnations, thanks to its VGA screen. Still, it didn't look as good as on an iPhone because the screen isn't as large.


The lack of a flash on the camera mean that shots in low light don't come out very well

If you're not in the mood for videos and fancy games instead, the Touch Diamond comes with a ball and hole game. It's simple, but very fun: you use the phone's motion sensor to navigate a ball into a hole by moving the whole phone. You can 'feel' the ball bumping into the sides of a wall and the pressure of it dropping into the hole. New games using the Diamond's motion sensor have yet to be announced.

This is by far HTC's most consumer-oriented handset to date, so we were keen to see how good the music player and camera were. Joining these features together is a proprietary interface called TouchFLO 3D. It's more attractive and finger friendly than the standard Windows Mobile interface but -- and this is a big but -- it doesn't run very smoothly. While we'd like to say that HTC has cracked the touchscreen smart phone with its fancy new interface, we think that it's still got a long way to go.


As you can see, the glossy bottom surface has a distinct style, but also picks up smudges

The TouchFLO 3D's music interface looks similar to Apple's Cover Flow, but it's fiddly to use and at times froze up. You're better off using the Windows Media player. Annoyingly, you have to use the proprietary headphones to listen to music, which didn't impress us at all.

As for the 3.2-megapixel camera, it took passable shots in daylight, but the lack of a flash meant that photos didn't come out well in low light. Compared to phones such as the Nokia N82 or the recently-announced Sony Ericsson C905 -- both of which feature better cameras and xenon flashes -- we really think HTC has to up its game.


http://reviews.cnet.co.uk

Samsung Solid Review

Reviewed by: Sandra Vogel

Samsung is a prolific producer of mobile phones. Its range extends from consumer-focused handsets through to high-powered smart phones. The company has recently produced its first rugged handset, the Samsung Solid (or more formally, the SGH-M110). It's available from O2 and Orange for free on a monthly contract.

Design
The Samsung Solid isn't a fully rugged mobile phone. It meets the IP54 standard, which means it's designed to survive water splashes and some knocks and drops. However, it's not intended to survive immersion in water or to suffer the indignity of being driven over, trodden on or otherwise treated with extreme harshness.

With that in mind, the Solid isn't the chunkiest of mobile phones either, although its rubbery outer shell is distinctive. The mostly matte black finish lends the phone a certain industrial look and also has a practical use in that it helps with grip. This is particularly apparent when you're wearing gloves. The material used is much easier to grip than the shiny plastic or metal used for many handsets.

A key consideration for any rugged device is how the ports and connectors are protected. The Solid has only one connector, which is shared by the mains power adaptor and headset. It's proprietary, protected by a cover hinged on one side. As far as we can see, there's no protection against dust or water when the port is uncovered; even when covered, water could seep around the seal.

The only other control around the edges is a volume rocker. This is not moulded into the rubber shell but is a separate button. Again, it looks as though water could seep in.

The front is the hardest zone to protect against ingress of foreign matter. Most of the buttons on the front are protected by a single piece of soft rubber. This covers the number keys, call and end keys, and soft-menu keys. The navigation pad and its central button are separate, as are two silver keys to the far left and right of the navigation pad. The left one activates the handset's speakerphone, while the right one is a delete key and also has a second function, which we will come to shortly.

The backplate is held firmly in place by a rotating lock. There looks to be a good seal between it and the main body of the device.

During testing, which included a long weekend of use involving rain, snow, sleet and mud, the screen became slightly scratched, but not to a significant degree. Our main concern with the screen is its small size. At just 38mm (1.5 inches) across the diagonal, the screen does not offer a great deal of viewable information at once, and its 128x128-pixel resolution is low.

The screen technology is CSTN, which is not often used in mobile phones these days. Nevetheless, it proved perfectly adequate during testing as far as brightness and visibility were concerned.

Overall, the Samsung Solid is a little larger than the usual candybar mobile phone at 48 by 109 by 18mm. It's light at 95g. It comes with a stereo headset and a clasp that's fixed to the phone via a lanyard and can be used to tether the phone to a belt loop or otherwise secure it about your person.

Features
The Samsung Solid is a relatively basic handset as far as features go. It's a dual-band GSM phone with GPRS support. Bluetooth is built in, but perhaps not surprisingly, there's no Wi-Fi.

It also lacks a flash memory card slot for expanding on the 2MB of internal memory. Space is allocated for 500 phone-book entries. Each entry can include a landline, mobile, office and fax number as well as an email address and one number designated as 'other'. You can add a text note to an entry and assign individual entries to a group; it's also possible to append an image to an entry and assign it a ringtone.

Applications include a voice recorder, WAP browser, calendar, to-do list, memo utility, clock, three alarms, calculator, unit converter, timer and stopwatch. There's an FM radio, but no music player.

The camera at the back shoots stills at up to VGA resolution (640x480 pixels), which puts it a long way behind even a mid-range smart phone. Picture quality is poor, with shutter lag making it difficult to take photos of anything moving. It may suffice for basic image capture tasks.

We mentioned that the front-facing delete key has a second function. This relates to the flash, which sits next to the camera lens. Press the delete key for a second or so and the flash is turned on permanently so it can be used as a torch. Press the key again and the flash is turned off. This doesn't work when the keypad is locked. Since the keypad locks after about five seconds unless you disable the feature -- and to unlock it takes about five seconds, too -- this can be irritating.

The phone incorporates an SOS feature. If you tap the front-facing volume button three times, an SOS message is sent to a nominated person. Once this has been sent, the next call to the handset is automatically answered. This feature is clearly intended primarily for those engaged in challenging outdoor activities, but could have wider appeal.

Performance
The rubberised casing helps protect this handset against knocks and drops, although we doubt it would survive being trodden on or driven over. If nothing else, the screen may be vulnerable to shattering.

The outstanding feature of the Samsung Solid is probably its battery life. Samsung claims 8 hours of talk time and up to 400 hours on standby. During testing, we got 15 days of usage between charges and this included making a relatively small number of phone calls, sending some text messages and listening to the radio in short bursts.

Conclusion
The Samsung Solid has limited appeal because of its realative paucity of features compared to a smart phone. It could fit the bill for those who work in trades where dust, dirt, water and occasional drops are a perennial problem.

Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk

Toshiba Portege G810 Review


Reviewed by: Frank Lewis

With the Portege G810, Toshiba is trying to coax smart phone users to go without a trusty stylus. Instead, it wants them to rely on its touch interface that it's grafted on top of G810's Windows Mobile OS. It's a similar tactic to that adopted by HTC with its Touch range of phones -- including the HTC Touch Diamond we recently reviewed -- but can this £360 handset pull off the same trick?

Strengths
There's been a spate of chunky Windows Mobile devices dropping through our letter box of late, but thankfully, the G810 bucks this trend. Instead, it's a rather petite machine that's only slightly shorter and thicker than the iPhone.

The handset runs the latest version of Microsoft's smart phone OS, Windows Mobile 6.1, so you get some improvements like full page zooming in Internet Explorer and the cleaner Home screen.

However, you won't see much of the latter because you'll be using Toshiba's own touch interface that sits over the top of Window Mobile. It's designed specifically to be used with your fingers rather than a stylus and presents most functions as large, easily-pressed buttons on the phone's 71mm (2.8-inch) touchscreen.

In use, the handset feels pretty sprightly, thanks to the 400MHz Qualcomm MSM7200 processor and with 256MB of ROM and 128MB of RAM, there's a decent amount of storage space on offer. You can increase this all the way up to 4GB if you like by adding cards via the microSD slot on lefthand side of the phone.

Connectivity is excellent too. The phone supports HSDPA up to a maximum speed of 3.6Mbps and it also supports HSUPA, which offers faster upload speeds of up to 2Mbps on networks that support this feature. Naturally, the old stalwarts of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are also included.

Toshiba hasn't forgotten the fun stuff either. The handset is supplied with stereo headphones for listening to tunes either via the phone's media player or the onboard FM tuner. There's also a 3-megapixel camera, complete with LED flash and a micro mirror. It takes quite decent snaps and is backed up by a second VGA resolution camera on the front so you can use the phone to make 3G video calls, if you want.

Weaknesses
With the addition of its own touch interface, Toshiba has tried desperately to make Windows Mobile not just more finger friendly, but also more user friendly. It does work in parts as the large, friendly icons are much nicer to work with than the usual Windows Mobile menus. However, the big problem is that you frequently find yourself tapping on a large user-friendly button only to be dumped back into the more usual Windows Mobile interface, which really requires you to fall back on the stylus.

Matters are made worse by the fact that Toshiba has given this phone possibly the worst stylus we've ever come across. It's actually part of the case that clips off, rather than a neat stylus with its own slot. When you unclip it, you'll find that it curves around at the end, making it almost impossible to hold straight, let alone use.

It's not the only problem that afflicts this phone as the handset also suffers from poor battery life. Although it'll run for around eight days in standby, when you start actually making calls on it, the handset gives up the ghost after just 4 hours. That's poor even by smart phone standards.

Conclusion
The G810 is packed full of great technology. It supports HSDPA for speedy downloads, has a decent camera and great connectivity with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. However, although Toshiba has tried its best to make the Windows Mobile operating system more user friendly with its own touchscreen interface, the result falls between two stools. At the end of day, the G810 simply feels like a phone that's using the wrong OS.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday


Motorola Rokr E8 Review


Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Sony Ericsson's Walkman handsets may be something of a household name when it comes to music phones, but as they consistently lack standard headphone sockets or support for common music file formats, it shouldn't be too difficult for another company to leap ahead.

Motorola's Rokr E8 is pitched -- purely and simply -- as a phone for music and a phone for the style-conscious. It's available for free on a monthly contract from O2 and Orange.

Design
When it's switched off, you'd be forgiven for thinking the E8 is simply a large, black slab. With its lights switched off, the handset appears to have no buttons and few controls.

The haptic keypad is pressure-sensitive -- sort of a cross between a physical button and typical touch-sensitivity à la iPhone. It mimics a physical keypad really well, making speed texting reasonably easy.

We were thrilled to see a 3.5mm headphone socket, meaning any decent headphones you have will work fine. There's also no unsightly slots dotted around; the microSD slot sits next to the SIM slot inside the handset -- good for aesthetics, bad if you swap cards a lot.

We initially took issue with the screen, as at 51mm (2 inches) diagonally, it's hardly huge. But it's very crisp, very bright and extremely pleasant to read.

Features
This isn't a 3G handset, so if you plan on browsing the Web, either don't buy this phone or be prepared to browse very slowly. Alternatively, you can install Opera Mini. It works with EDGE and GPRS, plus quad-band compatibility makes this a good phone for use around the world.

A 2-megapixel camera sits on the back of the handset, though it's not backed up with any flash. Inside, you'll find 2GB of onboard memory, which could be better, but it can be expanded with microSD up to 4GB in capacity.

Even better, these two pools of memory are automatically combined, meaning music stored in the phone's memory is combined with music stored on microSD within the main music library, itself accessible with a dedicated music key.

Compatible music formats include MP3, AAC, WMA and WAV, but the E8 doesn't support protected WMA/AAC from the likes of Napster or iTunes. What is supported can be played through headphones or wirelessly via stereo A2DP Bluetooth.

Performance
Using the E8 takes some getting used to, particularly if you're joining the Motorola scene after using a Nokia or Sony Ericsson handset. After about a week of adjustment, it becomes pretty simple.

There's a noticeable amount of lag when navigating menus -- split-second delays between item selections and menu scrolling makes lightening-fast browsing somewhat difficult. The touch-sensitive scroll 'wheel' does make long lists easy to browse, happily.

Texting with the pressure-sensitive keypad is actually much more fluid than we initially expected. Predictive typing modes are hit and miss in terms of the accuracy of their predictions, but on the whole, it's a pretty enjoyable experience -- not what you'd assume considering the handset's lack of physical buttons. Motorola has done an excellent job at harnessing the haptic technology it's used.

As a music player, we found the E8 to be superb in terms of audio quality. Through our reference headphones and using uncompressed CD-quality WAV files, the E8 offered a full-bodied, powerful sound when playing Dream Theater's 6:00.

With the Freemasons' remix of Shakira and Beyoncé's pop duet Beautiful Liar, we again heard excellent audio performance -- good bass, a strong mid-range and although a little harsh at higher volumes, an acceptable and bright treble.

Good too was call quality, although it's not the single loudest earpiece we've come across. It wouldn't go down as the most ideal phone to use if you're perpetually working with drills and jet engines.

Conclusion
There's no doubt in our mind that this is a great handset and a smashing music phone. It'll take a while to get used to it and its laggy navigation makes it annoying at times.

But its great sound quality, 3.5mm headphone socket and decent file format support absolutely make it a cut above the rest. As of right now, it's one of our favourite music phones, even though it's not quite a solid replacement for a dedicated MP3 player.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk