Posted by admin on December 30, 2010 under Mobile Phone Reviews | 
The first Android-based tablet to hit the UK shelves is the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It’s got a 7-inch screen, runs on Android 2.2, can make voice calls and has a pair of cameras for pictures and video calls. Is it an iPad beater? Or is it more of an oversized phone?
What we like
Contrary to what Steve Jobs has said, you don’t have to sand your fingers down to use the Samsung Galaxy Tab. The 7-inch screen works fine. So it’s not as big at the iPad’s 9.7-inch display, but it doesn’t feel as cramped as certain people would have you think.
Web pages, pictures, videos, eBooks and games all look fine on the Galaxy Tab. And, unlike the iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Tab’s browser supports Flash content. Web surfing can be done over Wi-Fi or 3G and pages load very quickly on either connection.
There’s something very satisfying about swishing left and right across the Tab’s homescreens, of which you can have up to nine. Naturally, you can customise these with app shortcuts, widgets and various trinkets downloaded from the Android Market.
Samsung has preloaded a number of apps and content hubs onto the Tab, from where you can download games, films, eBooks and music. We also really liked the Financial Times app, which displayes FT articles that have been formatted specifically for the Tab’s screen size.
As the Samsung Galaxy Tab runs on Android 2.2, you can do things like turn it into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, install apps to the SD card and edit Google Docs on the go. It’s actually not bad for writing documents and creating spreadsheets on, either on Google Docs or on the ThinkFree Office app which comes installed.
Along with the default Samsung keypad Swype comes pre-installed if you’re that way inclined. The touchscreen is very easy to type on; you can hold it in both hands and tap away with your thumbs in portrait mode or switch to landscape if you prefer.
Memory-wise the Samsung Galaxy Tab comes in 16GB and 32GB flavours, with a microSD card slot for further expansion. So you’ve got a lot of space for apps, games and movies as well as an easy way to transfer music from your old phone.
Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Tab comes with a pair of cameras; a 3-megapixel camera for taking pictures on the back, and a 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls on the front.
The 3-megapixel camera is pretty basic although we had fun with the panoramic shot mode, which takes eight pictures and magically stitches them together. Perfect for capturing that frozen snowscene or beautiful summer sunset. We liked that there’s an LED flash too – not the most powerful flash we’ve seen but better than nothing. Did we mention that the iPad doesn’t have a single camera, let alone two?
What we don’t like
So the Samsung Galaxy Tab can make calls and take pictures – things that the iPad can’t do. All well and good, but we found that the quality of voice calls was average at best and the pictures taken on the 3-megapixel camera to be not that great.
It should be obvious that, when being used as a phone, the Tab’s size works against it. It’s far too big to fit in anybody’s pocket and can only just about be held comfortably in one hand. Much like the Dell Streak (which has a 5-inch screen) you’re going to attract the inevitable Dom Joly comment if seen talking on the Tab.
We weren’t huge fans of Samsung’s TouchWiz custom UI before and the Galaxy Tab does little to change this. As well as not looking as good as the stock Android UI, it doesn’t offer much more in terms of functionality either. We’d have preferred it if the Galaxy Tab came with stock Android instead.
In fact, a lot of what we don’t like about the Galaxy Tab can be put down to presentation; it doesn’t look or feel very organised. As we’ve said there’s a huge amount of content waiting to be accessed on the Galaxy Tab.
Instead of there being one place where you go to get things (like iTunes), there’s a myriad of different vendors, requiring a myriad of different logins and accounts to be created. We can see this being confusing and frustrating for some and think it’d be more convenient if you just had to register one or even two accounts to get everything.
The Galaxy Tab can feel sluggish at times, despite being powered by a 1GHz processor. The accelerometer too, doesn’t auto rotate as quickly or elegantly as we’d like. Sometimes you have to keep on tapping it and turning it as you try to goad the screen into rotating the way you want it to.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Tab doesn’t offer a refined a user experience as the iPad and feels a bit unfinished. But then again it does a lot of things that the iPad doesn’t, such as take pictures and support Flash in the browser. As a portable email and web surfing device it works fine although you probably won’t want to use it as a phone; its below-average call quality and size make it impractical for this purpose.
Review courtesy of Recombu.com, this is not my work but I am providing it to help you get high quality, real life reviews on mobile handsets. To find more useful reviews visit Recombu.com.
Posted by admin on December 6, 2010 under Mobile Phone Reviews |
The Sony Ericsson Cedar is the latest phone to join the eco-friendly GreenHeart range. Read on to see if it’s green credentials stand up to those of the Elm and Hazel GreenHeart phones and what other features its hiding in its boughs.
What we like
The Sony Ericsson Cedar is a light and compact phone that fits comfortably in the hand. The curved back and the angled shape of the numeric keys make it easy to text quickly on. This coupled with the simple layout of the main menu means you can get to know your way around the Cedar in no time at all.
As with other phones from the GreenHeart range the Sony Ericsson Cedar lets is green credentials be known at every juncture. When you unplug the mains charger from the microUSB port a little message pops up on the screen, reminding you to turn off the socket at the mains, if you’ve not already done so. There’s a scarcity of paper manuals in the box, with all the set up guides being stored on the phone itself (under Settings > User help). This is to cut down on wasting paper on printed manuals. These are things we’ve seen implemented before on other GreenHeart phones and we’re glad to see them returning here.
Obviously the 2-megapixel camera isn’t the most powerful we’ve seen by a long shot. But all the same it’s pretty good for what it is. The Cedar takes and processes pictures quickly with no fuss. There’s a handful of colour effects (sepia, negative etc) and white balance settings and its easy to switch between standard camera and video mode as well.
There’s a 3.5mm headphone slot and a micro USB port for headphones and charging. We’re glad that Sony Ericsson is moving away from its proprietary FastPort connection – it makes more sense in general and especially on a phone like the Cedar which is all about cutting down on waste.
Getting your music onto the Sony Ericsson Cedar is a piece of cake as is making playlists. You can expand the memory by up to 16GB with a microSD card so the Cedar could work as an effective replacement for an MP3 player There’s an FM radio included as well, should you fancy a change from your playlists.
What we don’t like
Lack of Wi-Fi on the Sony Ericsson Cedar means that you’re also unable to take advantage of the growing number of open Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK. Web access over 3G is all fine and dandy speed wise but over GRPS or EDGE you might as well not bother.
The Facebook and Twitter apps in particular suffer when accessed on slower than-3G networks; scrolling through the main news feed feels like walking through Copydex in cement boots.
Surfing the web using the built in browser can also a be a cramped affair. Big websites get reformatted to fit the small 2.2 inch screen to the point where surfing familiar sites becomes a confusing mess of overlapping links and pictures.
The 2-megapixel camera, despite all its features and the nice layout of the menu, doesn’t compare to the 5-megapixel camera of its predecessor the Sony Ericsson Elm. There’s also no flash relegating you to daytime pics and well lit indoor shots.
Conclusion
The Sony Ericsson Cedar handles the essentials in style. It’ll appeal to those who want to reduce their carbon footprint and aren’t bothered about apps or accessing the web on the go. Social networking addicts may want to look elsewhere though.
Review courtesy of Recombu.com, this is not my work but I am providing it to help you get high quality, real life reviews on mobile handsets. To find more useful reviews visit Recombu.com.
Posted by admin on December 5, 2010 under Mobile Phone Reviews |
Ahh, the BlackBerry Bold 9700. It ranks highly among this reviewer’s favourite ever mobile phones. There’s something wonderful about the handset’s Qwerty keyboard and the satisfying design. So when the Bold 9780 was announced, we were understandably excited, if a little confused. It’s so similar to the Bold 9700 – what’s the point of it? A minor refresh it may be, but worthy of a look in its own right.
What we like
Ah, swoon. The full Qwerty keyboard on the front of the handset is just as good as that on the BlackBerry Bold 9700. It’s easy to use, the angled keys providing enough differentiation that once you become accustomed to the small layout you’ll be tapping out tens of words per minute.
The BlackBerry Bold 9780 ships running BlackBerry OS 6 which we first saw on the BlackBerry Torch 9800. It gives us access to our favourite applications from the home screen, as well as an updated media player and browser.
Speaking of which, the browser is excellent. Although the screen is very small compared to most smartphones available now, the auto-column function saves you scrolling across the page in order to read the full article when zoomed in. It’s also a great deal faster than the sorry web browsing affair on the pervious OS version.
The Bold 9780 is also rocking a slightly improved camera – up to 5-megapixels compared to the Bold 9700′s 3.2-megapixel affair. The quality of photos is slightly better, as you’d expect, and the camera feels quite a bit faster too.
It’s not something we’d use a great deal here at Recombu, but some people will appreciate the inclusion of Social Feeds – a handy built-in app which brings all your social networks – from BlackBerry Messenger to Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds – together in one place.
Although BlackBerry’s App World is less well stocked than the likes of Apple’s App Store and the Android App Marketplace, it still offers a good range of quality apps. The real downside is that BlackBerry apps tend to be quite a lot more expensive than those on other platforms.
What we don’t like
While we do still like the design of the BlackBerry Bold 9780 (it’s essentially the same as the 9700 with some very minor changes), it is beginning to look a little dated. We reviewed the white model, which is nice enough from the front but suffers from a terrible black stripe on the back, making it look cheap.
The screen is really small by today’s standards – particularly given the BlackBerry Torch’s comparatively huge 3.2in screen.
Media still isn’t amazing – we do appreciate the updates to the media player but it’s still not on a par with the iPhone’s iPod system, for example. Video capture and playback also leaves something to be desired – particularly on the teeny tiny screen.
Conclusion
Using the BlackBerry Bold 9780 isn’t a very different experience to using the Bold 9700, so 9700 owners should stick with their current handset and consider something new when it comes to upgrade o’clock.
But if you’re looking for a BlackBerry and don’t fancy the touchscreen stylings of the Torch 9800, then it’s definitely worth a look. With the latest OS and hardware features that have been optimised to take advantage of the software’s full potential, it’s a solid smartphone with brilliant messaging capabilities.
Review courtesy of Recombu.com, this is not my work but I am providing it to help you get high quality, real life reviews on mobile handsets. To find more useful reviews visit Recombu.com.
