Storm brewing......

Brace yourselves, guys! RIM has introduced the much awaited, and arguably the best looking Blackberry so far - the Storm, its 9500 series phone, also known by its code-name, Blackberry Thunder. Among quite a few truly innovative features, its on-screen tactile feedback stands out, being a radical departure from traditional touchscreen operation, and is bound to surprise anyone who lays his hands on this handset. Very impressive indeed, considering that this is the first ever touchscreen facility introduced by RIM. During this very first instance, RIM has changed the touchscreen paradigm by widening the hitherto thin line between navigation and confirmation. Meaning, while in present touch screen phones, you use flicks to navigate a page, and a gentle tap to activate a button/key, on the Storm, the tap is used to "select". To activate a button/key, you need to click the spot !! Yes, you need to press down on the screen, like you would, a button! This concept, originally named "ClickThrough" by RIM, has recently been renamed SurePress, probably in line with their SureType keyboard.

Ok, now with the excitement having reached a crescendo, lets get down to the basics. The Storm measures 112.5 x 62.2 x 14 mm and weighs 155 g. It has 128MB of RAM, and holds 1 GB of storage memory, expandable to 8Gb via a microSD card. The quad band phone can run on GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 frequencies and is also optimized for 3G networks on HSDPA 2100. However, a rather disappointing aspect is the lack of WiFi !

Design-wise, a Left Side Convenience Key is situated on the left side of the Storm, and also a MicroUB charging port. On the right, you have the Right Side Convenience Key, along with Volume keys, as well as a 3.5mm headset jack. Additionally, the top of the phone, has 2 hidden buttons - a dedicated lock key on the left as well as the mute key on the right which can be held down 2 seconds to enter standby mode. The front of the Storm is obviously, dominated by the huge display that covers almost the whole of its front, above which is the standard ear speaker. Lined below the display are the standard Call receive/end keys, the BB menu key, and an escape key. A 3.2 MP camera is situated at the back of the phone, covered by a lens cover.
An internal accelerometer enables the phone to be used in both portrait and landscape modes. The ability to tilt right or left in order to engage the landscape mode, makes it easy for both right and left handed people to use it with ease. RIM has provided 2 typing options on the keyboard. Landscape opens up a full qwerty keyboard, while you may use the SureType keyboard in portrait position. Either way, typing is a treat. The individual letters are sizeable icons on the display, and the lighting on them when you press the keys are fantastic. However, BB users would take a while to adjust to the new keyboard setup, but once through, fingers would easily play over the phone. Again, a reduction in typing speed is inevitable, due to its SurePress feature, where each letter is a "click", meaning you wait for the screen to rebound before going on to the next letter. Even then, I believe it shouldn't pose much of a problem.

If anyone plans to check out the phone, let me know what you think.............

HTC Touch Diamond

In May this year, HTC unveiled a classy, feature-rich phone, the Touch Diamond. The handset sports a stylish geometric angled design, and fits comfortably in your hand without any compromise on functionality. The front surface is necessarily flat, and has a glassy reflective look and feel, with a round toggle button situated at its lower end.

The 480 X 640 pixel display features complete touch screen, that can be operated with a stylus. An innovative aspect here is that the stylus is magnetic and clings on to the handset, reducing the risk of losing it. The touch screen functionality is based on HTC's proprietary Touchflo 3D technology, successor to the Touchflo based UI that came with earlier versions of HTC phones such as the Dual. Finger swipes enable a user to browse through photos, menu options, and even through the browser. The central toggle button can also be rotated during browsing, enhancing web capabilities.

The Diamond can run on a 3G network and can deliver a rich internet experience to the user, with its HSDPA 7.2 Mbps connectivity. A customized Opera based, browser enables the user to zoom and pan websites and on tilting the device, its display switches from portrait mode to landscape. The various applications aboard the Diamond sit on the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional platform, that promises enhances messaging capabilities, a better inteface, and an easier email and bluetooth set up. Apart from the main processor, the device has an additional video chip that drives the TouchFlo technology. On the applications front, the device has built in GPS, Pocket Office, MP3 player and motion based games.

HTC has loaded the Diamond with 4GB of internal memory, but without a memory expansion slot, it provides no option for additional memory. However, 4GB can hold lots of songs pictures, and videos, so this should be sufficient, though 8GB has become something of a norm these days.

A 3.15 MP camera sits on the back of the Diamond. This includes an autofocus lens that ensures pictures taken are high on clarity and consistency.

The Diamond has been rated for 5 and half hours talk time and up to 285 hours of stand by time.

A very sleek and innovative device from HTC..........

Sony Ericsson Walkman - W980

Hi folks, this time, we take a look at a classy, stylish, music phone - the W980 from Sony Ericsson. The quad band handset, operating at 800/900/1800/1900 GSM frequencies, weighs around 100 gms, and measures 92 X 46 X 16.9mm, making it compact and pocket-friendly. Speedy downloads are enabled by its support for HSDPA. It has a whopping 8GB of internal memory which can house approximately 2000 average quality songs, providing you about 20 hours of music playback, but sadly, lacks an expansion slot for a microSD card or additional memory.

I particularly liked the mirrory, glassy look, and, with touch sensitive, basic music-management buttons embedded in its flap, this is clearly an innovative design from the manufaturers. It enables you to browse and select music, without having to access its menus. More importantly, an adjacent lock switch prevents the music player from skipping tracks, accidentally, when residing in your leather pouch or pocket. It is compatible with MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA and protected WMA.

The phone has a 240 X 320 pixels internal display with 256K colors, while the second external display mentioned above, has a resolution of 176 X 176 pixels. A distinct-looking feature, is the circular keys on the keypad, which have been neatly arranged, though the spacing between them could prove a disadvantage in terms of slowing down your speed of texting.

A 3.2 megapixel camera is situated at the back of the phone, which is activated using the centre navigation key on the front. However, this key is too high, and might cause a finger to accidently stray over the lens while, taking a snap. Also, the camera is pretty basic considering its lack of autofocus or flash, which is pretty disappointing.

As has been the norm with Sony Ericsson phones, there is no 3.5mm headphone socket, meaning you'll have to make do with an adapter. However, it has an integrated FM transmitter, which can stream music to your car stereo, for instance. This feature is not generally found in music phones, or in any mp3 player. The music quality is very good, with Sony Ericsson sprucing up its equalizer modes, which claims to reduce sound leakage between the left and right channels, while the Clear Bass technology clips and sharpens the bass range to minimize distortion.

All in all, an impressive music phone, though it scores some negative points with the camera and memory options. Expectations are high on the W902, which is due to release some time later this year. Lets see, how that one comes along.

HTC Touch....slightly touchy

Greetings, folks...The past few weeks have been very hectic, and so the holiday on Thursday provided a breather admist the mad frenzy.....Anyways, I'm back, this time, with the HTC Touch, a cute and refined looking phone from HTC.

This phone, which came out in June 2007, measures 99.9 x 58 x 13.9 mm, weighs 112 gms, making it one of the smallest touch screen phones available, and boasts a handsome curved design. Its display measures 2.8 inches diagonally, with 65K colours and a resolution of 240 X 320 pixels. The highlight of this handset, however, is the TouchFlo technology on which the display stands, which allows a user to switch screens by finger swipes.

As with most other touch screen phones, the display of the HTC Touch, covers pretty much the whole of its front. A five way navigation button sits just beneath the display, flanked on both sides by tiny Call and End buttons. The right side of the Touch houses a camera activation switch, and a microSD slot. A volume rocker and a mini USB port reside on its left, and the power button sits right on top. Finally, the phone's speaker and camera lens are located at the back.

The HTC Touch runs the Windows Mobile 6 Professional Edition, providing the complete Microsoft Office Mobile suite, which entitles you to view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. The embedded Direct Push technology assists in real time synchronisation with Microsoft Exchange server, for sending and receiving messages. Be that as it may, the small on-screen keyboard isn't a pleasure to use, and may cause some annoyance. Also, the TouchFlo screen has been found to be low on sensitivity, which means you may have to press down firmly for certain options. Apart from this, even the finger swipes have failed to bring up intended screens more than once. Occasionally, response times have been a source for concern too.

Other features include, smart dialing, voice commands, and text and multimedia messaging. It supports Bluetooth 2.0, and has EV-DO support. The address book can hold practically unlimited entries, with upto 12 numbers for a particular contact, with email, screen name, etc. You also have options to link a photo to a contact, and also one of 15 polyphonic ring tones. To call a friend, just tap his photo on the display, and the call is under way. Call quality has also been found to be pretty good.

HTC has added the Audio manager which basically acts like a music player sporting large buttons for on-screen use. It supports all the usual file formats that one would expect in a standard Windows Mobile 6 device.

Coming to the camera, the Touch has a 2 megapixel camera with a self-portrait mirror. It has a 5X zoom and provides a choice of five resolution settings and 4 quality settings. Video recording capabilities include support for MPEG4, Motion JPEG, or H.263 format. The results, sadly, are a bit on the poorer side. Images are not high on clarity, and videos experienced some quality concerns.

Users give the phone a just above average rating with some of them even, saying it has exceeded their expectations....a mixed response there. Ofcourse, that depends on what their expectations were ;-) The Touch has been rated for approximately 4 hours of talk time and up to 10 days of stand by time.

LG comes out with Dar(e)ing features !!

Ever since Apples' iPhone walked into limelight, stalwarts of the cell phone manufacturing industry have jumped into the fray with their own versions of touch screen phones sporting amazing features such as mobile TV and 3G connectivity. Whats more? They even mirrored the looks of the iPhone. This includes LG who has come out with its LG Dare, also known as the VX9700.

This glamorous phone has a multitude of innovative features, not seen on other touch screen phones available today. For instance, it has a drag and drop feature, a 3.2megapixel camera, and proximity detection capabilities to name a few. Users can navigate the menu with flick of a finger, and can browse through their contacts list for speedy texting, emailing and phoning.

The front surface of the Dare is covered almost fully by its display with just 3 buttons - the Call, Voice command/Clear, and End/Power keys - lining its bottom edge. It is considerably smaller than the iPhone, measuring 4.1 inches long by 2.2 inches wide by 0.5 inch thick, and weighs 3.76 ounces. The 3-inch wide display has a 240 x 400 pixel resolution, exhibiting a colourful screen with loads of clarity. The left side of the phone has a Hold key to lock the phone when not in use, a micro-SD card slot, a speaker phone key and a USB charging jack. On the right side is a volume rocker and a dedicated camera button. A 3.5mm headset jack sits on top of the phone, and the back houses a 3.2 megapixel camera with a Schneider Kreuznach lens featuring excellent photo quality.

A light tap on the screen, brings up the Main Menu from which selected icons can be dragged and dropped onto the home screen for direct access. Can customization get any easier?? Even within the main menu, or the Favourites Menu, applications can be re-arranged in the required order, using the drag and drop feature, with the "scattered" menu layout option. On selecting menu options, the Dare gives a small vibration confirming the selection, a very helpful feature of this phone. The level and type of vibration can be adjusted, using a calibration application, which also enables "vibration when scrolling".Coming to dialing/texting options, the phone interface has a convenient numeric keypad, a voice command button, and a handwriting button which can be used to "write" numbers on-screen. Flipping the phone 90 degrees counterclockwise, brings up a horizontal QWERTY keyboard, on which the letters can be tapped for typing in text. It has a dedicated space bar, and a shift button to turn on capital letters, and other symbols. Highlighting can be done by running the finger along a particular text and hitting the copy button, making it very easy to copy and paste. This keyboard, also comes in handy, when typing in URLs, during internet browsing. In addition to the vitual keyboard, a virtual T9 keypad is also available, for those who would like to follow the conventional method of SMS-ing.

A drawing pad enables users to draw pictures, using a variety of brush sizes and colours, which can then, be sent across to contacts and friends via multimedia messaging.

Other essential features include text messaging, a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, a calculator, a calendar, an alarm clock, a stopwatch, a world clock, and a notepad. Advanced features include full Bluetooth support, with which the phone can be used as a Bluetooth modem, a proximity detection sensor, that switches of the LCD display during calls, to conserve battery life, and file transfers.

However, the best feature of the Dare, is in its 3.2-megapixel camera, with an excellent Schneider-Kreuznach certified lens. It presents five resolutions, five white balance presets, five color effects, four ISO settings, and six preset scenes, to choose from. Images are sharp, with excellent photo quality and focus. These can be then edited with a range of image-editing options such as zooming, rotating, cropping, changing the contrast, sharpening, and blurring. A notable aspect is the face detection capability that keeps a persons' face in focus during shooting, a feature first seen in the Sony W-series digital camera. Another remarkable characteristic, is what LG calls, SmartPic technology which enhances images with face color compensation, as well as light compensation - especially in low light situations.

This very camera makes video-recording a pleasure. Videos can be recorded at 120 frames per second and can be played back with 15 frames per second in slow motion. However, some blur and jerkiness have been observed. As with images, video-editing options are also available.

Music capabilities are quite the same as with other phones. The interface is pretty appreciable, with more shorcut keys, and it features something called the Background Mode Music, which plays music, in the background while doing other stuff. The music automatically pauses, on receipt of a call and resumes playback, upon call disconnection. This ofcourse, is a feature available in most of the phones in the market, and I don't see any relevance with the specific name that has been attributed to it. The microSD card slot can expand the storage to an additional 8GB.

The LG Dare has a rated battery life of 4.6 hours talk time and 15 days of standby time. With these features detailed above, its is but obvious, that this phone betters the iPhone in many aspects, meaning, the Dare joins the league of iPhone killers........

Nokia N95

Even though the Nokia N95 has been around for quite a while, I reckoned, this amazing, feature-packed phone definitely deserves a mention here. And guys, as we go ahead, at length elaborating on its features, make sure you dont get thrown off balance, taking it to be a PDA/smart phone; the N95 IS still a phone, even though its capabilities may suggest otherwise !! This quad-band phone, exhibits high call quality with plenty of volume and clarity.

Though not very sleek in appearance, this phone has a boxy, yet appreciably handsome look. It houses a two-way slider, that exposes the alpha-numeric keypad on sliding upwards, and music player controls on sliding downwards. This dual functionality is pretty attractive and unique. Calls can be answered as well, with the upward sliding, though sliding it back into place does not disconnect the call. Alternatively, you may use the traditional Call receive and Call disconnect buttons, located beneath the display, alongwith 2 soft keys, the Gallery and Menu shortcuts, a Clear key, and an Edit key.

Talking about display, the N95 has a splendid 2.6 inch VGA TFT screen rendering a 320 X 240 pixel resolution. Images and text are displayed with high clarity levels, and sharp definition. Interestingly, the screen has a surrounding light detector that automatically adjusts its backlighting against your environment. A very useful feature, if you're moving through varied lighting environments.

The foremost, principal feature of this phone is a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens - a feature not available in any smart phone available even today!!! If any of them do have a similar or better feature, you guys gotta let me know.... This camera is loaded at the back of the phone, accompanied by a sliding activation switch. On sliding the shutter open, the display automatically shifts to camera mode in landscape. The camera activation button on the right side of the phone, will be on top, when held horizontally, and in this position, the phone gives the look and feel of a digital camera. Astonishingly, the camera features aren't lesser either. With 7 shooting modes, and 5 quality settings, you have most of the options that come with a digital camera!!

The device has a 3.5mm headset jack, into which you can plug in a pair of earphones, to listen to your favourite music, the volume of which can be controlled by the volume adjustment on the right side of the phone. An integrated music player is available, that supports MP3, WMA, and W4A among other audio formats. Additionally, RealPlayer comes onboard the N95 with video streaming support.

Yet another blockbuster feature is the GPS receiver built into the N95, along with a mapping application, that helps you with route planning, on trips. However, the quality of the service may depend on your service provider.

With so many useful and astounding features, the Nokia N95 is still one of the best phones available in the market today. You wouldn't regret it, if you got yourself one....

BlackBerry Curve 8330 from RIM

The BlackBerry from Research In Motion(RIM) often projects a feel of business and corporate life. Interestingly, this time around there's much more its got to offer. Enter the BlackBerry Curve 8330. A sleek, silverish smartphone, with a touch of chrome, this device packs in robust multimedia capabilities, a GPS, and a sharp two-megapixel camera.

It features a built in media player, the Desktop Media Manager, which allows you to listen to your favourite MP3, WMA, and MIDI music files, among others, and also MPEG4 and WMV video clips. The audio output is appreciable, and allows you to connect to wireless headsets, Bluetooth headsets, and handsfree kits. Voice features include a speaker phone, voice-activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling and speed dial. The Curve is a quad band world phone and features advanced audio technology that has the ability to cancel out background noise and echoes, and can stunningly adjust its volume based on the environment you are in.

The 2 mega pixel camera housed at the back of the smart phone enables you to capture highly detailed photographs and incorporates a 5X zoom with a built in flash. Three picture sizes and three quality options are available, but a disappointing aspect is the abscence of video recording capabilities.

RIM has managed to incorporate a full-sized backlit keyboard, making the Curve noticably wider, at the same time, simplifying the usage of the BlackBerry's killer app: email ! Like other BlackBerry models, the Curve 8330 is compatible with the BlackBerry Enterprise server with support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise to deliver corporate e-mail in real time. In all, the device can support 10 accounts, including POP3, IMAP4 e-mail accounts, and an e-mail wizard guides you through the set up process. It also has a spell check which will aid you with spellings in your messages before you send that important document across to your management. Attachments in many popular file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc, can be opened and viewed. Similar formats can also be attached with outgoing e-mail messages from the phone.

Topping it all is the GPS feature that enables you to use the Curve as a handheld navigation device, to which a location based service, or navigation software such as Google Maps for Mobile, can be added. This app can track your present location and provide you with directions to the destination of your choice, on sharp and colourful maps. Aiding this, is a text-to-speech functionality that verbally voices street names permitting you to concentrate on the drive, than following the path on the phone's screen.

The BlackBerry Curve is rated for 4 hours of talk time and around 17 days of standby time. Pretty robust a phone, and worth its price range of $199.99-$579.99.