Posts Tagged ‘latest phones reviews’

Phone Review: Nokia 6600 Fold

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

The 6600 Fold makes no bones about the fact it’s selling itself primarily on looks rather than stacks of high-end technology. Its regular clamshell design is spruced up by the use of bold colours (two-tone purple and pink or a shiny black for the more conservative) and a botox-smooth mirror finish, complete with hidden screen for added exclusivity.

Basic spec. It’s a 3G handset with standard issue Nokia Series 40 software onboard, including music and video players and a decent sprinkling of web-based applications and organiser functionality. It’s also equipped with a 2-megapixel camera, plus a secondary video call camera beneath the flip. But the 6600 Fold also has incorporated some stand-out design features to grab attention.

Sleek design. Tap the mirrored front twice, for instance, and an external display consisting of a clock (analogue or digital – your choice) along with any missed calls or received messages glows through alluringly. It also serves as a way to mute incoming calls or reject them altogether. Furthering the 6600 Fold’s design credentials, a side button activates an electromagnetic flip so there’s no need to break a nail opening the handset. It’s not exactly new technology, but there’s still something satisfying about it nonetheless. The action is smooth enough, but you get the feeling that it’s not built to last and we regularly got the message “Open fold manually” appearing through the opaque glazed front. Another area of concenrn is the back panel. Achieving a seamless look has its drawbacks, one of which being there’s no discernable way to remove the back so you tend to resort to brute force.

Generous keypad. Open up the handset and it’s a far more standard, conventional clamshell affair. But if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, because the large buttons and generously spaced keypad are a delight to use. Our only criticism would be that the central select button of the D-pad could be a bit bigger – but being a bright metallic purple on our review sample it stands out like an embedded jewel, so is not that easy to miss. The 2.13-inch QVGA screen is similarly eye-catching, with its 16-million colours and OLED technology making for excellent menu legibility. Like most Nokias, the menu itself comes with a choice of views depending on whether you prefer the grid or list layout, as well as the quick-access Active Standby option.

Back to basics. A standard Series 40 interface means the 6600 Fold isn’t graced by the presence of an extensive high-end feature-set – there’s no Wi-Fi or GPS recever, for instance – but getting around the decent standard set of features is nice and speedy. Among the familiar mid-tier menu options ia Nokia’s Maps app, which allows you to find your location by postcode, search for addresses and services, and get route information. But with no built-in GPS it isn’t capable of integrated satellite navigation. Opera Mini is another pre-installed app we’re getting used to on Nokia Series 40 phones, and is likely to be welcomed by fans of mobile web surfing. The browser reduces the size of web pages making them faster to load, and combined with 3G makes the whole process more bearable. It’s no HSDPA, but still quick enough to avoid a frustration-induced meltdown.

Disappointing photos. Multimedia features are rather sparse, with a basic 2-megapixel camera putting in a disappointing showing. Photos are grainy and colours muted, with the added problem of the lens being too close to your supporting finger – which often makes a guest appearance as a result. There’s also no dedicated shutter button. An 8x digital zoom and double LED flash make the specs sound more healthy, but the overall effect is unchanged. The poor quality of the camera is particularly frustrating given Nokia has pre-installed a Flickr app to make uploading images to the site quick and easy. But this handset simply isn’t geared towards imaging, and video fares similarly badly.

Impressive music player. Music is a different story, and Nokia’s adeptness in this field shines through with a decent player and FM radio including RDS. Good all-round functionality is enhanced by comprehensive format compatibility, including MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+ and WMA. There’s also a graphic equaliser to tinker with the bass and treble, a stereo expansion feature and A2DP support for Bluetooth stereo headsets. Nokia includes as standard a 512MB MicroSD card, as the 15MB of built-in memory won’t get you far. Naturally, higher capacity cards (up to 4GB) can be slotted in.

Reliable performance. Nokia is a pretty safe banker – even in the current rather chilly economic climate – when it comes to phone performance. Yes, the 6600 Fold may not be bursting at the seams with high-end features, but what it does it does well and ultimately what’s more important? Call quality is great tonally – if occasionally on the quiet side – and gaining a decent 3G signal was never a problem during our time with the phone. Messaging options are plentiful and well laid out, with an email client, Yahoo Instant Messenger, Voice messages and Video messages all on offer. If it’s an eye-catching, reliable handset you’re after and you don’t care about the latest business apps and high-spec functionality, the 6600 Fold is definitely one to add to the list. It’ll get you noticed and won’t let you down when you need it. Job done.

Looks: 8/10
Ease of use: 9/10
Features: 6/10
Call quality: 9/10
Value: 7/10

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Phone Review: Nokia 6650

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Joining a rare breed of mobile phone – Nokia clamshell smartphones – the Nokia 6650 is a tidy-looking flip phone with some neat functionality onboard.

As well as the Symbian S60 smartphone operating system underpinning it, this device features high-speed HSDPA 3G connectivity and A-GPS Sat Nav functionality. But this T-Mobile exclusive also has an impressive supporting cast – though there’s also a few less than standout performances.

Reliable build quality. There’s more than a touch of the Motorola RAZR about the 6650’s design but Nokia hasn’t managed to achieve quite the same slimness. Actually, the 6650’s a bit of a bulky beast, measuring 99(h) x 47 (w) x 16(d) mm, but for all that it does have a strong, dependable build quality. The keypad, even with its nifty multicoloured lights, has a reassuring ‘Nokia‘ feel about it and is intuitive and responsive.

The fold design enables Nokia to include two screens: the main one being a 2.2in TFT QVGA (240×320) display that’s crisp and precise. The second – on the front of the handset – is a 1.36in TFT version, and can be used to browse the menu and activate features, including the music player, thanks to controls on the front of the shell.

Multimedia features. Handset spotters might also notice that Nokia has had a bit of a recycling moment, the 6650 model number having already been used once before – on the company’s first 3G phone, released in early 2003.

Mobiles have certainly come on somewhat since those early Third Generation days. The combination of Nokia’s S60 OS and HSDPA (with download rates of up to 3.6Mbps) provides the 6650 with strong multimedia functionality, allowing fast downloads of video and audio content, speedy web browsing, plus customisation of the phone’s software with numerous third-party applications available to download.

Along with a first-rate music player you also have S60 standards including RealPlayer for watching video clips, various web-based applications, plus a main 2-megapixel camera.

The Nokia 6650 only has a 30MB internal memory, but fortunately a hot-swappable microSD expansion slot means you won’t be stuck for extra storage space. A 1GB microSD card is included in-box, so you should have ample room to be getting on with anyway.

Headphones socket. A 2.5mm AV connector allows you to connect the supplied in-ear ‘phones to enjoy your music, videos or the FM radio. The quality is acceptable, though it would have been more elegant to have included a standard 3.5mm jack socket to allow you to plug in your own headphones without having to source an adapter. Nokia does this on some but not all of its higher end devices.

On a positive note, stereo Bluetooth does mean that you can ‘go wireless’ with a suitable headset.

Limited camera. However, the inclusion of a mere two-megapixel camera (with LED flash) casts a downer on things – a mood not helped by the pictures it produces, which suffer from over-exposure. Detail is limited too. A video clip resolution of 320×240 isn’t impressive, though a nifty video clip editing app does provide some much needed flexibility. It’s worth noting that the 6650 doesn’t include Wi-Fi either.

One further connectivity addition comes in the guise of the 6650 as a USB modem. Just plug it into a compatible PC and you’ll be able to benefit from mobile broadband over T-Mobile’s network. Nokia’s PC Suite software comes bundled with the handset.

GPS guidance. The 6650 features integrated A-GPS (Assisted GPS), which uses network based assistance to speed up the calculation off the coordinates of your location when your device is receiving signals from satellites. First time around GPS proved slow in establishing our position but in terms of maintaining it was very reliable.

In keeping with other entry-level Nokia handsets you’ll find that Nokia Maps aren’t stored locally, instead they are downloaded when required. The map software is a touch fiddly but persistence pays dividends as this is a solid, dependable app.

Naturally with the web browser, you get fast access to T-Mobile’s web portal, so you can download tunes and videos and check out other t-zones content and services; of course you can also browse the full web using the rather nifty S60 browser, which is pretty efficient thanks to the HSDPA connectivity.

Exceptional call quality. Over our test period the 6650 maintained an impressive call quality, with superb clarity and definition. Interference is minimal and it was often a genuine pleasure to use the handset to make and receive calls.

Battery life was perhaps a little disappointing. The quoted standby is up to 350 hours, but after a handful of calls, the download of two full-length music tracks and 20 minutes of web browsing our test model packed up after around 60 hours.

While from a design point of view the Nokia 6650 might not set the world alight, it’s reasonable enough. But there’s more than enough multimedia functionality to keep most people happy. The camera remains a disappointment but elsewhere there’s plenty to be played with and enjoyed.

Network availability: T-Mobile

Looks: 3.5/5
Ease of use: 3.5/5
Features: 3.5/5
Call quality: 4/5
Value: 4/5

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Phone Review: Nokia 5220 XpressMusic

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Compared with Sony Ericsson’s rapid-fire succession of Walkman phones, Nokia’s XpressMusic roll-out has been distinctly low-key, with just a handful of models sporting Nokia’s music-majoring label. Now, with the launch of Nokia’s Comes With Music unlimited music download service, and its soon-to-arrive 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen smartphone, the spotlight is starting to shine on Nokia’s mobile music line-up. But as well as the top-of-the bill devices and services, Nokia is continuing to plug away at the lower end, with the 5220 XpressMusic one of Nokia’s latest low-cost newcomers.

Budget music mobile phone. Like the 5310 XpressMusic, Nokia’s debut Comes With Music device, the 5220 doesn’t have a wow-inducing set of high-end features – it lacks 3G connectivity, for instance, and has a pretty ordinary 2-megapixel camera built in. Instead, though, the 5220 XpressMusic’s appeal is based on getting the tune-playing performance right in an attractively slim design, and throwing in some decent additional features.

Slim design. The XpressMusic family look is obvious on this model, with the usual black bodywork with sharply contrasting electric blue or red trim, plus dedicated music player controls lined up the side of the display. But Nokia has given the 5220 XpressMusic a very distinctive twist. The body has an unusual asymmetrical design, with a sloping top and bottom that gives the phone a kind of funky retro-modern feel (Sagem did something similar with some of its phones back in the late 90s). It’s skinny too. Those variable sloped-shoulder dimensions work out at around 108(h) x 43.5(w) x 10.5(d) mm, and weighing a mere 78g it will slip easily into the tightest pockets. Another design touch is a strap hole in the bottom corner of the phone, for those who want to dangle rather than pocket their handset.

Handy headphone socket. It has an adequate 2-inch, 256K-colour QVGA (320×240 pixels) display, and the numberpad is well designed, with well spread, slightly raised buttonry that’s pleasingly responsive. It feels quite solid too, despite its glossy plastic fascia. One very welcome touch is the inclusion of a proper 3.5mm headphone socket on the top of the phone. While this should be normal practice for any would-be music phone, it’s often overlooked, but it gives you the scope to improve audio performance significantly by simply adding better earphones.

Nokia user interface. The 5220 XpressMusic runs on Nokia’s commonly used Series 40 user interface, so will be familiar to many Nokia devotees. Its standby screen has a row of changeable Active Standby shortcut icons that at a click give you fast access to key features and applications. There are also separate information updates lined up on the screen, plus music player and FM radio status info, so you can operate these from standby with the music buttons – play/pause forward and rewind – on the edge of the phone. Other softkey shortcuts are to hand as well, while the main menu system is typical Nokia, too, operated mainly with the phone’s nicely usable central navigation pad, and with an icon-based grid structure leading you into a host of sub menus.

Easy access music player. It’s an XpressMusic phone, so the music player is of course the headline act. It can be fired up and worked by pressing the illuminated control buttons on the side, or (the long way around) by popping into the menus. When it’s playing onscreen, the central navigation pad doubles up as a control panel, in a way that’s standard across Nokia handsets. The main benefit of the dedicated controls is when the music player’s running in the background; it’s easier to use these than keep tapping back into the menus.

Excellent audio performance. The music player doesn’t break new ground for Nokia, but its menus are sensibly constructed and work efficiently. You get familiar music player track categories (artists, albums, tracks, genres, videos, playlists), which you can scroll through to find tracks. It’s easy to create your own playlists, or to tweak sounds using the equaliser functions. Onboard storage is limited to 30MB of memory, but MicroSD cards are supported and Nokia includes a 512MB card in-box. And if you want to carry more tunes in the phone, cards of up to 2GB can be slotted in to the side. For any music player, it’s what’s in the grooves that counts and the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic is capable of an excellent audio performance. With decent earphones sound is rich and detailed, with plenty of bass.

Invest in better headphones.  Its supplied earphones don’t hit the top mark though – they’re reasonable for a phone at this price level, but not exceptional. But swap these for a higher quality set of headphones (plugging into the welcome 3.5mm socket) and sound quality is really lifted, making the most of the audio processing gadgetry Nokia has built in. It’s well worth trying – you don’t have to spend a fortune for decent earwear that will make a big difference. Stereo Bluetooth headphones are supported on this model too if you want a wireless option. On the other end of the tech scale, you can play back tunes surprisingly loudly via the in-built loudspeaker – though quality is typically bass-light and abrasive at higher volumes. You can listen to the FM radio through this as well, provided the earphones are plugged in; it puts in a decent performance.

Fully-featured camera. Less impressive than the 5220 XpressMusic’s tune-playing abilities, its camera is a run-of-the-mill 2-megapixel shooter. There’s no autofocus or flash but there is the usual tick list of standard phone tweakery and settings adjustments – white balance, colour effects, multi-shot options, and so on. It does a reasonable shooting job within its quality limitations; colour rendition is quite good, although picture detail is limited. Indoors, image quality deteriorates and low-light performance is poor, restricted by lack of added illumination. An option is available to upload snaps – and video – straight to online Flickr accounts, should you wish to. Video capture quality, however, is limited, with maximum shooting resolution restricted to 176×144 pixels, giving low resolution, typically stilted footage.

Additional application. For a low-range phone, Nokia has given the 5220 XpressMusic a good set of additional features – with a typical bundle of pre-loaded applications and tools. Although there’s a Nokia browser onboard, it has also pre-loaded the excellent Opera Mini browser, which provides a fine way of checking out full websites. Other familiar Nokia Series 40 phone added applications include Yahoo! Go – an app that provides information updates, news, online entertainment services, mapping info and email on one homescreen – and Nokia’s own WidSets widgets application – pulling together updated widgets from favourite websites and blogs on one screen.

Nokia maps. There’s no GPS capability on this handset, but thanks to Nokia Maps software, you can look up maps, search for routes and look for places of interest, with information updated over the air to the phone. You can also download maps from Nokia’s website to add to the phone’s memory card, if you prefer, via Nokia Map Loader software and a USB cable supplied. And if you connect it up to an optional Bluetooth-enabled GPS module, you can use the 5220 XpressMusic for precise location finding and routing. A Search facility – using Yahoo! or Windows Live Search engines – is another handy extra embedded in the phone’s software. In addition, the usual supply of organiser tools are in place, with a calendar function, to do lists, notes, various clock and timer options, calculator, world clock and voice recorder application. For a bit of added fun, Nokia has lined up four Java games and embedded a wallpaper creator tool.

Battery performance. Music may be the major key for the 5220 XpressMusic, but for voice calling it also puts in the a solid, high quality performance. Its power usage is also not bad; Nokia reckons that in best-case network coverage users can achieve up to 5.25 hours of talktime or 406 hours of standby time. Alternatively, using the music player alone, it can run for up to 24 hours between charges. In our tests, with average levels of usage, we managed a decent three and a bit days between charges, though naturally this declined faster if we listened to more tunes.

Looks: 3.5/5
Ease of use: 4.5/5
Features: 3/5
Call quality: 4.5/5
Value: 4.5/5

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Posted in Nokia | 1 Comment »

Phone Review: HTC Touch HD

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Fully-featured phone. The HTC Touch HD comes packed with all the goodies familiar from recent HTC models, including Wi-Fi, HSDPA 3G (with up to 7.2Mbps downloads, speed fans), A-GPS with Google Maps, microSD memory expansion, easy web browsing and of course Windows 6.1 Professional working away quietly in the background, with the sensitive user protected from most of its oddities by HTC’s TouchFLO 3D interface. This offers a practical yet fun menu set that can be manipulated with one thumb. There’s a 5-megapixel camera on board too but the HD’s biggest draw is surely its phenomenal touch screen.

Impressive screen. The biggest available on any Windows Mobile device, it’s 3.8 inches and packs in 480×800 pixels, which makes the iPhone’s 480×320 pixels seem measly by comparison. It’s ideal for viewing downloaded video files though it’s not to be confused with true HD, and though it’s capable of delivering very good pictures in full frame mode, you’ll probably need to experiment with your sources, as it can be quite unforgiving of poor quality compressed files. There isn’t much room for these in the 512MB onboard memory but if you get your HD from Orange they’re throwing in an 8GB microSD card (it will take up to 16GB).

Sluggish camera. The camera, with 5 megapixels is at least a serious photographic instrument, unlike the iPhone’s effort, but it suffers with comparison to the likes of Nokia’s Nseries and Sony Ericsson’s C-series big-hitting cameraphones. Speed is an issue, since it takes the best part of ten seconds from accessing it on the menu to taking a pic but the results are decent enough if taken in good light. There’s no flash, so low light isn’t really an option, though there is autofocus. Video fares rather less well however and tends to look blurry if there’s any fast movement involved. There’s also quite a bit of screen drag when you move the device around, which never looks good. Viewing pictures is a fun experience though, as like other HTC models you can zoom in or out by twiddling your finger on the pics and move though your albums by brushing your finger across the pics.

Easy browsing. Browsing with the HD is probably the best on an HTC Windows device so far and equal to that of the iPhone or the T-Mobile G1 (which incidentally is made by HTC). There’s a stylus which clips magnetically into the casing but there’s really no need for it, since you can operate all the HD’s onscreen controls by finger touch. The browser (Opera by default, with no Explorer on board as far as we could tell) flips the screen from portrait to landscape automatically when you turn the device on its side and there’s a zoom button in the corner. When you press it, a scroll bar pops up which allows you to adjust pages to any size you like and you can also move them around by brushing them across the screen with your finger.

Great battery life. The music player allows you to view album art and sorts your tracks in the usual way, but this time, thankfully, there’s a 3.5mm jack plug so you can replace the deeply average supplied ones. There’s an FM radio on board too with 20 presets for your favourite channels. Battery life was impressive for such a highly specced phone giving us two days of average use, though as with all Windows Mobile devices you can also stretch this by switching off non-essential apps and reducing the screen’s brightness.

Other devices might offer better cameras, and better data input facilities (there’s only an on-screen keyboard) and even fit better in the pocket, but all-in-all, and while the first generation Android device comes very close, the HTC Touch HD is the best alternative iPhone we’ve yet seen.

Looks: 3.5/5
Ease of use: 4.5/5
Features: 4.5/5
Call quality: 4/5
Value: 4/5

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Phone Reviews: Blackberry Storm 9500

Friday, November 7th, 2008

The first thing to note about the BlackBerry Storm 9500 is that while this handset features the first touchscreen from RIM, its design was specified by Vodafone – so the mobile network is obviously taking some of the kudos for what really is a very slick handset. The home screen is similar to the ‘normal’ BlackBerry experience, and the four buttons at the bottom, the BlackBerry key, return, call and terminate combine with the touchscreen to allow interaction with the device. The 3.25in half VGA screen is marvellous, and more than what you’d expect on any other BlackBerry device. It really signals RIM / Vodafone’s attempt to aim this device not just at the business market, but the consumer too. User defined buttons are present in portrait mode, and pressing the BB key will bring up the entire icon menu. The user can also turn the device into landscape mode to get the full range as well, which we found to be a nice touch.

Best touchscreen ever. But then we got to use the touchscreen, and finally, finally a company has come up with a competitor to the iPhone’s efforts at touchy-feely interaction. If one criticism could be levelled at the iPhone’s touch screen, it was the lack of feedback. Haptics help the problem somewhat, but the Storm’s click-screen is a stroke of genius. The screen is mounted on a clickable dome, which we were told uses heat sensitivity to work out where the input is coming from. The results were startling. We composed a message using the landscape QWERTY mode and the accuracy was somewhere around 80 per cent. This will obviously improve over time, but even the first go made us feel like we were using the next step in touchscreen interaction. Using the touchscreen on the web was very good as well, though the lack of multi-touch a la the iPhone meant it was pushed into second place… albeit a pretty close one, as the link hitting accuracy was far greater in our opinion, and the movement of the webpage was easily as good as the iPhone’s.

However the lack of Wi-Fi is very disappointing. Vodafone pointed out to us that it has invested significantly in its 3.5G network, so it thinks there’s no need to pack Wi-Fi into the handset when there’s a 3G signal all around… we think the company is missing the point, and it’s a bit unfair to make customers eat into their data plans when many people are used to using Wi-Fi on their BlackBerries for downloading large files. Messaging is obviously a strong point for the BlackBerry Storm, and was much as expected. The company has kept things simple for text input, allowing you to have the Pearl-esque Sure-Type system or the standard T9 texting in portrait mode, as well as the previously mentioned QWERTY in landscape. Messages and emails are pushed straight to the phone from the usual email sources, including Google and Yahoo Mail.

Another interesting innovation is the Facebook App, which has previously been seen on a couple of other BlackBerries but Vodafone is obviously making a big song and dance about. Any pokes or messages or wall scribblings are sent straight to your home screen where a small blue F pops up to let you know you have alerts waiting to be read.

Media frenzy. As we said before, RIM and Vodafone clearly want this to be a phone that is as good for media as other top end handsets, and again, it has built on the great experience from handsets like the Bold to deliver. The thing that irked us most was the lack of inbuilt storage… if you’re going for the multimedia market, and the hi-def screen clearly says the handset is aimed at such, then give us more than 1GB of storage. Yes, you can add in up to 16GB through an extra microSD, but with the likes of Apple and Nokia throwing 16GB in handsets out of the box, then we’d have hoped to see RIM and Vodafone follow suit.

Snapper. The camera wasn’t anything to write home about though. 3.2MP is good enough in our opinion for most phones, but the snaps taken on the Storm didn’t exactly rock our world, as well as taking an age from when the shutter button was pressed for the picture to actually take. However, the amount of applications, including the finest mobile YouTube experience we’ve seen after the iPhone, as well as the little tweaks like ‘bedside mode’ for the alarm clock, really make the handset stand out at a time when every company and its dog is releasing a touchscreen ‘iPhone killer’. The UI was slick and probably the best we’ve seen in a BlackBerry, but we’re sure all you addicts out there will have your own opinion. Basically, and this is said with a great amount of rationality, the BlackBerry Storm 9500 is up there with the iPhone 3G as the phone of the year. Depending on your preferences or point of view you’ll probably side with one or the other, but the touchscreen interaction is simply marvellous and can’t be beat.

The size, operation and sheer functionality of the device brings the entire BlackBerry brand messaging strength and packages it up in a way that consumers will love.

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Posted in Vodafone | No Comments »