TechRadar: Phone and communications news

Windows Phone 7 Series will run on HTC HD2

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:48:00 GMT

The confusion over whether Windows Phone 7 Series will be coming to older phones continues to rage as the HTC HD2 was shown running the OS.

Admittedly it was a hacked version of the operating system running on the device, with HTCPedia forum member Tom Codon behind the port.

But, apart from a slight amount of lag in certain operations thanks to some incompatibility issues with the graphics processor (which will apparently be resolved) the phone performs well.

Present and correct

The GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all perform correctly, which can often be a problem when shoving a new OS on a phone, and the web browser looks fine in early pictures.

The problem Microsoft is claiming that the OS can't be ported backwards, as it doesn't have the correct hardware specifications that future devices will be running to.

And despite this new hack clearly showing that it can work fine on legacy phones, we doubt Microsoft will be changing its tune any day soon.

BBC News and Sport iPhone apps face delay

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:08:00 GMT

The BBC's big push on to the iPhone is facing a delay, after the BBC Trust announced it is reviewing the broadcaster's mobile-based proposals.

The BBC made headlines last month, when it announced it was to launch free apps for its News and Sports service.

Both BBC News and BBC Sports Results are to be updated feeds of the broadcaster's web pages, with the sports app to offer real-time data of Premiership football matches and the like.

The apps were scheduled to launch in April (News) and May (Sports), but this is now not going to happen.

Uncertain times

"There remains some uncertainty about the potential significance of whether [the apps] constitute a change of service," said a spokesperson for the BBC Trust.

This news will be welcomed by the newspaper industry, with David Newell, Director of the NPA, saying: "This is not, as the BBC argues, an extension of its existing online service, but an intrusion into a very tightly defined, separate market."

There will be four main features that the BBC Trust will look at, before determining if the apps get the go ahead. These include: the financial implications of the apps, if the apps are seen as the BBC going into new areas of "untested activity" and how the apps will affect others in the market.

Virgin Media offers cheapest HTC Desire deal yet

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:40:00 GMT

Virgin Media has launched a new range of mobile phone tariffs as it mounts a new assault on the handset market.

The real cost savings are being offered to its current customers, making use of the 'quadplay' offering of TV, internet, landline and mobile bundles.

The headline deal for these customers is £5 off the standard 'high street' tariff for phones, or a shorter contract.

Cheaper deals

For instance, the HTC Desire will be offered by Virgin Media to the general public in the near future for £30 per month, 800 minutes and unlimited texts and internet on a 24 month deal.

But existing Virgin Media customers can get it on a £5 lower tariff, meaning a free Desire for £25 a month, or shorten their contract to 18 months at the full rate.

This deal applies to a number of new phones appearing from Virgin Media, such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Virgin Media is also offering SIM only deal starting at £10 a month, with inclusive Virgin Mobile to Virgin Mobile calls as it ramps up its mobile strategy.

Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk separate

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:47:00 GMT

Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk will officially 'demerge' today, with the ISP and retail chain splitting and being run as independent companies.

Ambitious plans for both companies – Talk Talk acquired Tiscali last year, while Carphone Warehouse has a 50 per cent stake in the European arm of Best Buy – already make this an interesting time for the two companies, but the split is also about risk.

ISP Talk Talk was apparently worth 60 per cent of the combined value of the company, but the might of the likes of Virgin Media and, most prominently, BT and the growing profile of superfast broadband means that tough times could lie ahead.

TALK and CPW

"The company will demerge into two entities; TalkTalk will list under the ticker "Talk" and new Carphone Warehouse will list as "CPW"," confirmed Reuters' stock watch report.

There is still talk that Talk Talk is ripe from a takeover by either one of the major mobile phone operators or even BSkyB, a company which is keen to extend its ISP reach.

Talk Talk is also one of the partners in the BBC-led IPTV partnership Project Canvas, which has been granted provisional approval by the BBC Trust and is currently being looked at by the Office of Fair Trading.

Is Apple's 'iAd' Steve Job's 'next big thing'?

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:11:00 GMT

While all of the current wave of Apple pre-launch hype is focused on next week's iPad launch, it is rumoured that Steve Jobs' "next big thing" is going to be a personalised mobile advertising platform, possibly called 'iAd'.

Online Media Daily reports that Apple's new mobile ad platform will be officially unveiled to the ad execs on New York's Madison Avenue on April 7 and has been described as "revolutionary" and "our next big thing" by Steve Jobs.

Jobs on Madison Avenue

As ever, Apple is not responding to requests from press for further information, but the fact that Apple bought mobile advertising developer Quattro back in January for nearly $300 million surely means that the Cupertino computing giant has some plans in the mobile ad arena.

"The war has been mounting ever since Google introduced its Android mobile operating system to compete with Apple's iPhone, and agreed to acquire mobile ad firm AdMob for $750 million, but it is expected to reach ballistic proportions following Apple's April 7th announcement, which insiders say will be every bit as important as other recent marketplace introductions, including the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad launches," writes MediaPost's Joe Mandese.

"Apple appears to have been more successful in its revenue diversification, developing substantial software and service businesses, including iTunes downloads, iPhone wireless subscriptions, and App Store downloads. And while advertising has always loomed as a huge possibility for Apple, it had essentially been unexploited as a business model until Apple acquired Quattro."

Jobs and Schmidt spotted in coffee shop

Is this why Steve Jobs was spotted chatting over lattes with Google chief and former Apple board member Eric Schmidt the other day?

The smart money is on Apple offering advertisers a hypertargeting capability for location-based advertising so that consumers get ads based on their locality at any given time.

"Everyone will be following this very closely," says Josh Lovison, the mobile lead at Interpublic's Emerging Media Lab, adding: "Given the way that Apple is able to package things up, with very slick presentations, it will be interesting to see what they do with that advertising."

Via MediaPost.com

Review: HTC Desire

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:26:00 GMT

After unleashing the massively impressive HTC Legend, its bigger brother, the HTC Desire, is here - faster, bigger and more powerful and still packing the Android punch.

It might be the Nexus One rebadged, but this is a behemoth of a phone in its own right; has HTC tried to do too much?

We reviewed a Desire from T-Mobile, which is first in line to offer the phone on UK release, but we also checked out our findings from another Desire review unit straight from HTC, to really find out how it compared to the competition.

While the Legend was all about style and functionality in one tidy package - the HTC Desire takes a slightly different approach.

Instead of the gorgeous aluminium chassis, we're given a slightly more low-key brown case and a huge 3.7-inch OLED capacitive touchscreen.

Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world today

But while the screen certainly is massive, the phone itself doesn't seem gargantuan. The screen reaches the edge of the chassis nicely, and the four buttons on the front of the HTC Desire are almost flush and set in attractive aluminium.

If you're looking for comparisons between this and the Nexus One, the first is highly obvious: the trackball is gone.

HTC has given the phone the Terminator eye once more (head back to the HTC Legend review if you want to know why we're glad it doesn't glow red and threaten humanity) which is basically an optical trackpad that registers finger motion over the sensor.

The phone is very slim indeed, with dimensions of 119 x 60 x 11.9 mm, and weighs in at just 133g. If you're counting, that's 2g heavier than the iPhone 3G and the exact same weight as the iPhone 3GS - and that makes it very pocket friendly indeed.

It has a rubberised chassis, which is a little hard to grip at times. We're not talking so slippy you'll be dropping it all the time, but it still can be a little difficult to hold in one hand, especially if you have dinky digits.

That said it sits very nicely in the hand, with a sumptuous curved chassis feeling very nice and making it easy to press the buttons on the front with the thumb.

There's actually very little button-wise on the HTC Desire, with only six in all. The front four buttons are standard HTC Android fare (Home, Menu, Back and Search) and the Terminator optical trackpad also clicks in as an enter key.

The up/down button on the left-hand side of the phone is flush to the chassis, as is the power button on the top - which sits next to the 3.5mm headphone jack atop the HTC Desire.

The power button also functions as the lock key, and is very nicely placed to press whenever necessary (and trust us, we've seen some horrors; we're looking at you, Samsung Galaxy).

That's it button-wise, as there's no camera key (instead the HTC Desire uses the trackpad to take a snap or two) which is a little sad - we still love a dedicated shutter button.

The USB slot is hidden at the bottom - no cover to keep the dust out, but on the plus side it's once again microUSB, banishing the memory of the horrid miniUSB port from HTC designs of old.

There's also a microSD card slot for extra memory - but that's hidden below the battery, and can't be taken out without turning off the phone.

The screen is simply to die for - we mentioned it was an OLED capacitive effort earlier, but that brings such glorious colour reproduction and 3.7-inch is a great size for media and the internet on a phone.

It's a little tacky under the touch - the iPhone for instance feels a little smoother - but we're being very, very picky with that, as it registers the slightest touch with ease.

The design is sleek, and the Desire certainly looks the business - sleek and compact, while still showing off the power of the OLED screen. Yes, it lacks the style of the HTC Legend, but we think it more than makes up for that in function.

In the box

HTC is excellent at keeping packaging minimal, and the Desire once again comes in a coffin-like box with the standard kit inside.

This means a microUSB cable, which plugs into an adaptor to make a wall charger, and the standard headphones which double as a hands-free kit.

HTC hasn't seen fit to update these, but they're functional and work well to use for calls and media, providing you don't have the same odd-shaped ears as us.

There's not a lot more, but with the minimal space in packaging you can see why HTC has kept the components down. We would like to see some PC software on a CD or memory card, but it can be downloaded from the site with ease.

The HTC Desire is rocking the latest Sense UI on top of Android 2.1, and if you're looking for the best reason why this phone is, in our opinion, far and away better than its Google Nexus One clone, this is it.

It simply works, and HTC has cooked in a few extra surprises as well (providing you haven't played with the HTC Legend as well).

The premise is simple - seven home screens (three each side of the default option) which can be customised with widgets, icons and apps as you see fit, to create a totally unique experience for each user.

It's the same principle Android 2.1 is built on, but HTC has added in a number of its own widgets and options to make things that little bit more special.

The large-display clock is included as a default, and below that is the weather in your location (drawn from cellular triangulation data rather than the GPS chip).

The weather will also flick across the screen too, which is also cool - if it's sunny the screen will shine, rainy and a windscreen wiper clears the water drops, foggy and the screen goes cloudy.

If you're showing the phone to someone that's never really seen a smartphone before, they'll think they've seen a phone from Narnia when you whip this feature out.

Android is a cool OS, because of the level of customisation on offer. If you want to add a widget, simply long-press the screen and a list of programs, widgets and folders will be presented to you.

HTC's widgets include Favourite friends (updated contact profiles from the phonebook and Facebook if enabled) and the Friendstream app, which draws in info from Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

These, like so many others, are offered in small, medium and full screen options, enabling you to keep space on your precious home screen allocation to a minimum.

If you want to get rid of anything, then you simply long-press on the icon and the rubbish bin comes up, enabling you to drop it in there and get rid of it - we wish it was this easy on Nokia's Symbian phones, like the Nokia X6.

This method also allows you to re-arrange the icons in the places you want or shift them around too.

Another desperately cool-but-pointless feature in Android 2.1 is the addition of Live Wallpapers. These are backgrounds to the home screen that react to a number of stimuli - be it your finger, music or simply the time of day.

Our favourite is (humorously) called Nexus: basically, it's a set of coloured lights running across a grid - tap the screen and dozens more explode out under your finger.

Utterly, utterly pointless and probably a tiny bit battery-draining... but we still cleared a home screen of widgets just so we could play with it.

Search throughout the phone – be it music tracks, text messages from a friend, or any file type – is available simply by hitting the search key twice to call up 'Quick Search'.

It's very similar to the iPhone's Spotlight option, but in our opinion it works faster and more comprehensively.

And the final cool thing offered by the new Sense UI from HTC on the Desire - Leap View.

Basically, pinch the screen in using multi-touch (yep, that's supported too) and you'll be able to see all seven screens at once.

Very handy if you're over on the far right screen and you want to check the weather on the far left - pinch and prod and you're there.

Leap View actually highlights the power of the HTC Desire really well - the processor chugging away under the hood.

From the simple swipe to web page panning, the Desire will react to any touch you throw at it no matter how hard you push the OS. Heck, even the weather widget spins through the different cities on offer with speed - we've never seen that before from HTC.

It's not that different from other HTC phones, as the Taiwanese company is adept at making its processors work well - but it means there's never a hint of slowdown.

Basically, the interface on the HTC Desire is great because it just does what you want it to do.

Combining the cool elements of Android (like being able to drag down from the top of the screen to see notifications) with widgets and changeable Scenes (the icons rearrange depending on what time of day or week it is so you can set Work or Home or whichever mode you want) the HTC Desire's interface is simply tops.

Often when we review a phone and we move to the calling section, it's a very easy task to explain. You press a button, select a name and call. Hang up after, if you want.

But the HTC Desire just blows that concept out the water. You get such a plethora of options for the contact information, and the call quality and reception is great.

Contacts

The main thing to know about the phonebook on the HTC Desire is the sheer volume of information you can throw in there. You can link a name with their Google account, Facebook, Flickr, Exchange... oh and the phone number too.

Basically, when you turn the Desire on for the first time, you're asked to log into Google, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (and T-Mobile's email service on our test device).

Not only does this give you access to your Gmail and populate Peep (the Desire's inbuilt Twitter application) it adds all the names from Facebook and Google contacts into the address book.

Now, here comes the science - you can then link the information all together. The phone will search for common phone numbers and email addresses, and link these profiles automatically - which is cool enough.

But then you're left with around 300 names that should go together, but aren't - a very time consuming task ahead.

Well, HTC has thought of this and while the problem isn't completely solved, there's help at hand.

Basically, the Desire will search through names and addresses and look for common themes and offer them as suggested links in the top right-hand corner of the screen - making linking a very swift process 99% of the time.

Yes, it takes around 30 minutes to set it up when you get the phone, but trust us - it's worth it.

From the linked profile, you get to see call history, Facebook updates, Flickr and Facebook photos, email conversations you've shared - simply by sliding your finger across the bottom of the screen along a different selection of icons.

Again, we're talking slick here - the HTC Desire never gives in and won't judder at all during this process, even when it's updating and populating.

However, there are a couple of issues - when you've linked up all your contacts, for some reason they split into two alphabetised groups in the phonebook list - we have no idea why.

And we'd like to be able to fire off a Facebook message directly from the profile - we can do it on the Motorola Dext and the INQ Chat 3G, why can't we do it here?

Calling

The HTC Desire was a little temperamental the first time we tried calling - it basically just hung there and then disconnected the call, which worried us a little bit.

But after that, it was plain sailing - quick connections and easy dialling. The 'Phone' tab is prominent on all the home screens, and pulls up the most recently called contacts as well as the number pad.

You can also use the dialler as a T9 dictionary to tap in a contact's name and it will be pushed to the top of the list - a feature nabbed from HTC's Windows Mobile days.

Connection as we said was pretty flawless, although we did have trouble shaking the HTC Desire off roaming networks at times.

Basically, it will sniff out an alternative network for data and voice at times - which is great for maintaining signal for calls.

But if you want high speed 3G data, that's not going to happen when roaming; but even when we knew we'd moved into a high 3G signal area, it struggled to jump back.

Not a major problem, but slightly irritating nonetheless.

The more important flipside of that is the HTC Desire is great when you suddenly pop back into signal - ie when you emerge from a tube.

Within seconds you're up and running again with a good few bars - we know that's important to a number of users.

Like calling, messaging can be a boring experience on some phones. But the HTC Desire offers a number of ways to stay in contact with your buddies, no matter which way you want to chat.

First of all, let's talk keyboards - the HTC touchscreen option is without par in our opinion (the same for the both the Legend and the Desire).

It's frighteningly intuitive, and it learns as it goes along - if you use a word often it will remember it and default to it when the relevant keystrokes come along.

And if you're taking your first worrying steps into button-less keyboards, we couldn't recommend this option more highly.

You can deviate miles from the intended buttons, and nine times out of 10 the Desire will work out the word you wanted by default.

And thanks to a large and expansive screen, the Desire is even easier to type on than the Legend.

Messaging is handled in a number of intuitive ways - from threaded conversations for SMS text messages to high end Exchange support.

Your inbox is divided into conversations with contacts, and you can simply tap in to see what's been said.

If you want to convert a text into an MMS, you simply add in elements like pictures, sound or a contact card - light years ahead of having to remember a number and tap it into a text.

Twitter is also well-used through the Peep application - one of the issues with the HTC Legend was the @replies took a long time to update and wouldn't appear, even if you're notified there is one.

Thankfully the latter has been fixed with the HTC Desire, although it can take a while to find out someone has tried to Tweet at you.

Google Talk is also included as standard, allowing you to chat to your buddies online.

Sadly there's no integration for Windows Messenger or similar out the box, and we're sure we're not alone in never having many of our friends on Google Talk at any one time.

As we mentioned email is a big part of this phone too - be it Gmail, POP3/IMAP webmail accounts or Exchange.

All three are easy to set up, with a few details all that's necessary for the HTC Desire to sniff out the relevant settings.

Exchange email is set up in the traditional inbox format, but sliding the finger along the icons at the bottom takes you to files with attachment and conversations, making it easy again to see what's been said in the chat so far.

Email addresses are highlighted within the mail itself so you can tap and use them - you can do the same with phone numbers, but these aren't highlighted.

Well, we say you can do the same, as it works for strings of numbers, but if there are spaces present the HTC Desire can't work out the full number to use.

You can choose the speed at which mail is pushed to the device from all these accounts, from Push email to timed downloading to only updating when manually forced to do so.

There's no lag at all with push email - and it just works well. We know we keep saying that, but it's a constant theme with the HTC Desire.

A couple of very minor issues with the Desire's messaging system - you can't save SMS messages to the microSD card (though you can to the SIM card) and you have to delete POP3 messages separately; you can't do it all at once to clear an inbox.

HTC has been working long and hard on its Android internet browser, and has continued to update it to keep it in line with the top level on offer with today's smartphones.

The LG Arena managed to have a full HTML browser with pinch and zoom navigation, but it was slow and clunky, so it's not a given that chucking in multi-touch will sort everything out.

But the HTC Desire's browser is tip top - pinching and zooming takes you in and out at superb speeds, and the text reflow software on the Desire is brilliant, like its HTC brothers.

Basically you can keep moving in further and further on the words, and the phone will keep reformatting the columns to fit the screen - it makes reading the longer articles very easy indeed.

The WVGA, 3.7-inch screen also look immense - zoomed out, you can see a huge amount of the web page, and in high detail as well.

The web browser also has copy and paste as standard too - simply long press on any bit of text and two little draggable pins will appear to select the text you want (with a little magnifying pane to help things out).

Like we've said before - this is a little bit iPhone-like, and we wouldn't be surprised if Apple included it in its current lawsuit against the Taiwanese firm.

Flash video is also present and very much correct on the HTC Desire. We navigated to a number of different websites with embedded video, and the HTC Desire showed the content within the browser or via a dedicated Flash browser.

We did encounter a slight issue - Flash video didn't want to work properly on the higher end sites and content. It wouldn't support iPlayer for example, and video on the BBC website was juddery.

Channel 4 On Demand on YouTube wouldn't work either - but other videos on the Google-owned video site functioned fine.

Either way this will likely be fixed in the next couple of months - Flash 10.1 is on its way for Android and should make all Flash video fine to use.

Bookmarking on the HTC Desire is also pretty darn cool - the visual thumbnails, based on the latest website content from your last visit, are a nice way of navigating through your favourites.

And if you forget to tag a favourite site, slide your finger along the bottom to find your most visited sites and history - making it easy to find oft-visited sites.

Other little titbits from the HTC Desire browser include easy downloading of images by simply long-pressing the image and selecting save.

You can also share text you've copy and pasted to the likes of SMS and Facebook - or the whole web address of the page you're looking at instead.

This is also really helpful for the integrated Peep Twitter app - if you see something you want to tell your buddies about and you're only three taps away from doing so.

The HTC Desire shows another progression for Taiwanese company – the camera is now streets ahead of previous models.

Be it the poor efforts of the HTC Magic and G1, or the odd halo effect on the Hero, HTC has never been one for camera power.

But the 5MP snapper on the HTC Desire will turn even the most mundane mo-pho (mobile photographer, of course) into a click-happy junkie.

We're not saying that the HTC Desire is the equal of anything like the Sony Ericsson Satio or the LG Viewty Smart, but the 5MP effort is easily as good as you'll need on a mobile camera.

The camera interface has been overhauled for the new version of Sense as well, with a number of options to tweak to improve your photos.

Options for brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness are all altered by spinning dials on the screen (brought out by a simple touch on the menu tab).

You can also mess about with the ISO settings, geo-tagging, face detection and more – as well as sepia, negative and posterise effects among others.

And the thing is all these elements make a difference – photos can genuinely be enhanced by playing with these settings.

LIGHT AND BRIGHT: The HTC Desire performs well in sunshine, with lots of detail and minimal washing out

Foreground focus:

Background focus:

ALTERED VIEW: Simply pressing on separate sections of the screen to take a snap makes a big difference to the brightness of a photo

WASHED OUT: Detail in brighter light can sometimes be a little washed out on the HTC Desire

WIDELY ACCEPTED: The Desire does well at picking out the full gamut of detail in panorama views

AUTO-MACRO: The Desire has no macro mode, but the auto focus more than makes up for it, with impressive clarity

FLASH, AAAAAH: Even in near total darkness, the flash is brilliant on the HTC Desire, focusing and lighting evenly

With high saturation:

With low saturation:

With high contrast:

With low contrast:

With high sharpness:

With low sharpness:

OBVIOUS EFFECTS: Messing around with the saturation, sharpness and contrast of the camera on the HTC Desire shows real differences in the snaps - these options aren't just gimmicks

While we're still lamenting the loss of the dedicated shutter button, the optical trackball is a good secondary option for taking snaps.

The camera automatically keeps refocusing on the scene in front of it, which negates the need for a half-press on the shutter key to bring the picture into sharpness.

You can either take a snap by pressing the optical trackpad, or long pressing on the screen - focusing and adjusting the white balance depending on your chosen area.

The latter option has been tweaked somewhat over recent versions, and a longer press is better as it means you don't accidentally set the camera off when trying to point to a section for the camera to focus on.

The video recorder comes in a variety of formats – both resolution and recording codec.

You can take video in QVGA (320 x 240), CIF (352 x 288), VGA (DVD quality, 640 x 480) or WVGA (800 x 480), and all four can be recorded to MP4 or H.263 formats, with the resulting file appearing as 3GP.

We're told that the HTC Desire records at 30fps, but as you'll see from the test video that seems a little far reaching. It's actually clocked at 15fps, but that's dynamic - the phone will increase the rate to over 20fps in other lighting conditions.

HTC is also only allowing audio recording to AMR, rather than the superior-quality AAC (which is supported by the Snapdragon processor). We're thinking this is something that may be tweaked in future updates, but isn't going to matter to most users in day to day action.

Some people we've spoken to have lamented the fact the HTC Desire doesn't have HD video recording as on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz – we don't think it's necessary on a mobile phone, especially when you have to wedge it into a chassis the width of a pencil.

It might improve resolution somewhat, but it's not that noticeable on the phone screen or when ported out to a larger display, so we don't think the Desire should be marked down for leaving it out.

The HTC Desire is an upgrade in the media department over the HTC Legend for a number of reasons - the first being the fact it has an upgraded audio performance in the shape of Dolby Mobile enhancement.

This isn't mentioned in the settings or anything, which makes us wonder if it's a big part of the audio experience - but in comparative tests, it seems to offer a richer bass sound and a nice mid range too.

The music player is the same decent effort as seen on other HTC phones - it features large, easy-to-hit buttons on the main player and cover art that you can swipe through in both portrait and landscape modes.

Navigating through tracks is segmented into Artists, Albums, Tracks, Genres and more, with the option to look at your purchased tracks as well - although we're yet to find out which store you're meant to purchase them from.

You can select the different methods of track navigation by simply sliding your finger along the bottom of the screen, as is common throughout the Sense UI.

The HTC Desire packs a 3.5mm headphone port as you might expect, but this is curved and not flush to the chassis - which leaves a section of the headphone jack uncovered.

It doesn't affect the performance of the phone, but it does leave your headphones exposed to possible damage.

The main music player is easy to use and works quickly on the HTC Desire - the 1GHz processor powering things along nicely under the hood meant there was very little track stutter or skipping when trying to browse through the phone's library.

The video player is, once again, hidden in the photos section. We don't know why, and HTC haven't been able to furnish us with a decent reason either - but at least the icon hints at it with a little video picture.

The photo and video gallery is easy enough to navigate too - you can see your files as images, camera shots and downloaded pictures, and the video is divided up into recorded movies and those you've slung onto the memory card.

Swishing through your photos is a really pleasant experience too thanks to the processor - it renders the images snappily and without a hint of slowdown, so you're not looking at a pixellated version of your mug for too long.

Video

The video is predictably sublime on the HTC Desire - you can imagine if you add widescreen VGA resolution to a 3.7-inch OLED display with a 1GHz processor the movies will look sumptuous.

There's sadly no dedicated GPU on board as far as we can tell, but that doesn't seem to matter too much when it comes to watching videos.

UPDATE: Apparently the HTC Desire does have a GPU, although we're still trying to pin down which is is as HTC hasn't released the full specs. But it does explain the great video and Google Earth performance (which we urge you to download).

The screen is a perfect size for watching video, and if you add in a Bluetooth headset, it's a great experience to wirelessly skim through some videos.

Talking of which, you can slide your finger through the movie by simply dragging it along the bottom bar and it will jump instantly to the right point in the movie - just as you'd expect.

However, there is a problem with the Bluetooth side of things, which worries us slightly. When using the new Jabra Clipper Bluetooth device (which allows you to use your own headphones wirelessly) the sound stuttered when using the music application.

It wasn't apparent when watching video, and it was a lot better than on the Legend, but it still niggled somewhat that we couldn't have flawless Bluetooth performance.

YouTube is also included in the Google stable of applications with the HTC Desire, and it works just fine, especially over Wi-Fi.

Using this connection it automatically seeks out the highest quality video, and that looked great on the WVGA screen.

It didn't like connecting as well over 3G at times, despite having a couple of bars of signal - although this was a rare occurrence.

The FM radio included was of average quality - it scanned and found all the major radio stations when first turned on, but sometimes struggled for clear signal.

It also took an age to turn on, and there's no RDS, meaning you have to name all the stations yourself, which is slightly irritating.

We'd have also liked to see the option to record radio as well, as is present on the Samsung range (such as seen on the Samsung Jet).

Overall though this is a powerful media device, and with an 8GB memory card in the box (expandable up to 32GB) it's a phone that has a load of media potential.

The battery in the HTC Desire was 'only' a 1400mAh effort - we'd have like to see a 1500mAh option there, as is the case with so many other smartphones at the moment.

We're also a little concerned about the battery life - it dropped rather quickly, and although you'll get a day's worth of use out of it under normal use (ie web browsing, calling etc) it can drop a little alarmingly fast at times.

We had a little look at what was munching on the power so much (thanks to the Android battery meter) and it seems to be the widgets (in particular FriendStream) and synchronising that's taking a lot of the power, along with the constant flicking to roaming networks and back to 3G.

We found a big increase in battery life if we stopped updating Peep, Friendstream and emails all day long, and when set to '2G networks only' the battery life also improved to three days' use without problem.

We'd also advise you download Advanced Task Killer from the App Market - it's a great way of shutting down running programs and thus saving you a lot of battery life.

We're used to having to charge a smartphone every day, so we don't see this as much of a problem, and it's good there are options to extend the battery life if you want it to last longer.

Google Maps, as you can imagine, is included as standard - we urge you to upgrade to GMaps 4.1 as soon as possible.

Basically, this has overhauled the UI so you can swipe through categories when clicking on an address - you can see information and reviews much more easily than before.

The GPS signal also locked on very fast with the HTC Desire, making finding yourself on a map very easy.

The UK still isn't deemed worthy enough to have the Google Navigation feature as yet, and we're starting to doubt if we'll ever have it, especially if it's a legal issue for Google.

It's a shame, as this could be a great Sat Nav with the bright and clear screen to play with - and the Nexus One is clearly set up to be just that in the US.

There's one last cool surprise with Google Maps 4.1: a new live wallpaper.

You set it up, and suddenly the background shifts to where you are, highlighted by a little dot.

And if you're friends are nearby and logged into Latitude, you can see that as well - creepy but handy if you don't want to have keep logging into maps to see what's going on in your area.

The HTC Desire packs the usual range of Android connectivity - Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, aGPS, 7.2Mbps HSDPA - the works.

The Wi-Fi is as good to set up as ever, and whenever you walk into range of a remembered network the HTC Desire will automatically connect.

It's better at maintaining signal than the HTC Legend, which as we mentioned before had a few issues connecting to Wi-Fi on the odd occasion.

Bluetooth is similarly good, with both methods of connection offering the same easy to use UI - basically turn it on and a list of connections pops up.

Simply tapping on these will link you in - no faffing about with separate screens for passwords or codes, it's all done on the same screen and once connected, Bluetooth will also auto-connect with devices in range.

GPS as we mentioned before is solid, allowing you to not only flick around Google Maps with ease but also geo-tag your photos in you're into that kind of thing.

The PC software was once again not present - downloading HTC Sync found the phone and registered it under the Desire name, but failed to synchronise or connect to actually back up the data.

At least you can perform this function on the phone by backing up data to the memory card - that way if the phone crashes and loses all its data (or you delete something important in a drunken fug) you can back it up.

Apps

There are a variety of applications offered on the phone from the start, such as Facebook, a desk clock, PDF and QuickOffice as well as a motion-sensitive game in Teeter (which is a lot like labyrinth).

But the Application Store is becoming a real force in the mobile applications space - it may only have 25% of the applications that are present on the Apple App Store at the moment, but Google has promised that it will have 130,000 apps on its books by the end of 2010.

This means it will have more than enough apps to keep you occupied - and means that most of the big brands will probably have brought an application to the Android as well.

Considering that most will have this phone for two years, the fact the application Market might not be as well populated as the App Store isn't as big a deal - there are a lot of applications missing at the moment, but that will likely change in the next few months.

One of the problems is still not being able save applications to memory card - this means developers have to make games small, and therefore low function.

This should change in a near-future update to Android, thus opening up the application Market to a wider range of developers, and making applications a lot more interesting.

The HTC Desire is a feature-rammed phone with the hardware to support it. It's got a huge screen with the 1GHz processor underneath, and the Sense UI is a system that keeps getting better with every iteration.

Coming just after the HTC Legend, it improves on all the issues we saw with that (battery life, Peep and Friendstream slow to update etc) and adds in some decent extra hardware as well.

We liked

We liked nearly every single thing on the HTC Desire - it just works as you want it to as a phone and an internet tablet at the same time.

The Sense UI, Leap View and social network integration is all seamless and useful, the Live Wallpapers are super cool and the internet browser with pinch to zoom is fantastic.

Music and video playback was rich and simple, the camera is probably the best we've seen from HTC, the overall experience was fast and intuitive - in short it's easier to find things we didn't like.

We disliked

We'll level with you - there's not a lot wrong with this phone. The Bluetooth music playback is a little patchy and the battery will drop a little easily if you leave everything updating in the background.

Although the latter is a little annoying out the box (HTC wants you to use lots of updating widgets from the start) once you take some things down (or set them to manually update) the battery use is a lot better.

Verdict

In short, this is a phenomenal phone - one of the best we've ever had on TechRadar. Usually when we like a phone on the first use, we end up horribly disappointed after a little time with it, but the HTC Desire kept on performing and achieving when we thought it wouldn't.

The screen is lovely, the design is slick and processor makes everything happen in a flash - all you'd want from a smartphone.

Sure, some people will want slightly nicer design (we'd advise you check out the Legend) or a simpler home screen and richer app store at the moment (look at the iPhone 3GS) but as a piece of hardware it's without par in the mobile world.

A stunning phone, and one that will show the world that Android isn't just for the hackers and phone geeks any more.

Related Links

Spotify to get iPhone app refresh

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:53:00 GMT

Spotify is about to release a key update for its iPhone – with Last.fm scrobbling a key addition for the mobile service.

The update is 'coming soon' according to the Spotify blog, suggesting that those interested should keep checking back over the coming weeks.

Update desire

"It's been a little while since we first released our iPhone app to the public and many of you have been wondering when you're going to see an update," blogged Spotify.

"Well, we're happy to announce that earlier today we submitted a new version to the nice people over at Apple for approval.

"Along with a number of fixes to the app we've added a range of great new features. Those additions include Last.fm scrobbling, the ability to open and play Spotify links and support for lower bitrate streaming (96kbps) for slower connections."

Updates appear to be making it through the Apple vetting process a little quicker these days, so we'll keep an eye out for it arriving.

Updated: 15 best mobile phones in the world today

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Our constantly updated list of the best mobile phones on the planet

We've all got at least one mobile phone each, right? The trouble is, how do you decide which is the best phone for you?

Hopefully, TechRadar's extensive phone reviews section can help you with that. But if you're still stumped, you've come to the right place. Because here we have a constantly-updated list of the best mobile phones on the planet.

Whether you're after the best budget music phone or a high-end smartphone, the best ones are all here. And we've got in-depth reviews of all of them.

Here are our rankings for the best mobile phones in the world...

15. Nokia 6700 Classic

While the more meaty smartphones are dominating at the sharp end of the top 15, spare a thought for the excellent midrange handsets currently available.

The Nokia 6700 Classic may not be as feature-laden as the HTC Desire, but it's a brilliant candybar phone that may just surprise you.

While there are a few minor omissions in the handset, Nokia has largely included things that you actually need in a phone of this calibre (such as a decent camera and speedy internet browser), although a little more home-screen customisation would have been nice.

For the person who wants a decent phone at a reasonable price, and one that he or she can pull out without fear of it looking like the mobile equivalent of a woolly mammoth in three months time, they should seriously take a good hard look at the Nokia 6700 Classic.

Read: Nokia 6700 Classic review

If you like the Nokia 6700 Classic, you might also like:

| - Sony Ericsson Aino - | ------- INQ Mini 3G ------ | ----- Nokia 6303 ----- |

See all Nokia6700 Classic deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

14. Samsung Genio Slide

Samsung has fused elements of both the Genio Touch and the Genio QWERTY to come up with a hybrid device – the Genio Slide.

Unlike its predecessors, the Genio Slide is a 3G-enabled handset, with high-speed HSDPA mobile data support (up to 7.2Mbps) and Wi-Fi connectivity built in.

It also has A-GPS satellite-based location finding onboard.

Pitched at the youth market, the Samsung Genio Slide certainly delivers a terrific feature package for a low-cost touchscreen handset, with a roll-call of functionality you'd expect of a higher-end model.

Read: Samsung Genio Slide review

If you like the Samsung Genio Slide, you might also like:

| - INQ Chat 3G - | --- Samsung Genio Touch --- |

See all Samsung Genio Slide deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

13. Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

While the Nokia N97 and 5800 XpressMusic phones are clambering over each other to gain attention at the more expensive range of the market, the 5530 offers something refreshingly different.

It offers a 2.9-inch touchscreen with a music-orientated interface and while it doesn't have the capacity of the Nokia X6, it does only cost £130. Probably the best budget touchscreen phone available today.

Read: Nokia 5530 XpressMusic review

If you like the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, you might also like:

| - Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - | - Nokia 5730 XpressMusic - | - Nokia X6 - |

See all Nokia 5730 XpressMusic deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

12. HTC Tattoo

Alongside the T-Mobile Pulse, the Tattoo is all about catering for the more budget-conscious phone user who wants to utilise Android, but not pay over the odds for the privilege.

We're not talking about masses of money saved – a tenner a month off a contract here, a £100 off a handset there – but the arrival of the OS on the HTC Tattoo does point to a bright future for mid-range devices sporting Android.

The bottom line is: if you are interested in just what Android has to offer at a more than reasonable price bracket, then this is one Tattoo that you will not regret having.

Read: HTC Tattoo review

If you like the HTC Tattoo, you might also like:

| - T-Mobile Pulse - | - Nokia 5530 XpressMusic - | - Samsung Genio Touch - |

See all HTC Tattoo deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

11. HTC Hero

There's a reason why the HTC Hero has received so much praise over the past 18 months – it's brilliant. 2009 end-of-year award ceremonies aplenty named the Hero as best gadget, best mobile phone and so on, and rightly so.

For a long while, it was the most complete Android handset out there, and as such it was the only phone that could really claim to compete with the iPhone.

But in 2010, there are new kids on the block and they mean business. The Hero, therefore, is no longer top of the list. It's still a great phone though.

And let's not forget that you'll still be able to update the Hero with future versions of Android, so it's not dead yet. What's more, it'll soon become available on some of the cheaper contracts - and when it is, it'll be a bargain.

Read: HTC Hero review

If you like the HTC Hero, you might also like:

| ---- HTC Legend ---- | ---- Apple iPhone 3GS ---- | ---- HTC Desire ---- |

See all HTC Hero deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

10. LG BL40 Chocolate

Probably the most striking of all the phones on display here, the LG Chocolate BL40 is the world's first full-widescreen 21:9 phone.

The chassis is a combination of metal and glass, with vibrant red plastic at either end, with the top housing the 3.5mm headphone port and the power/lock key.

It's designed from the ground up to be a media phone, and indeed, watching movies is a pleasure, as is navigating large music collections.

Read: LG Chocolate BL40 review

If you like the LG BL40 Chocolate, you might also like:

| -- LG Chocolate BL20 -- | -- Samsung i8910 HD -- | -- Toshiba TG01 -- |

See all LG BL40 Chocolate deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

9. LG Intouch Max GW620

The first Android handset from LG, the Intouch Max GW620 has taken a different direction to its competitors - there are very few Android phones that have aimed at the lower end of the handset spectrum, and it's interesting that the Korean firm has chosen this tack.

However, while the costs have been kept down to make it a competitor to the HTC Tattoo, LG has still added a decent amount of innovation into the mix, by offering the choice of the vanilla Android experience or its own S-Class interface, offering a new level of functionality.

The phone itself is small - a 3.2-inch HVGA resistive pales in comparison with the Google Nexus One phone, with its massive 3.7-inch OLED capacitive screen - but the Intouch Max GW620 also brings a full keyboard and a decent array of buttons as well.

Read: LG Intouch Max GW620 review

If you like the LG Intouch Max GW620, you might also like:

| - Motorola DEXT - | - Samsung Genio Slide - | -Nokia 5730 XpressMusic - |

See all LG Intouch Max GW620 deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

8. LG Pop GD510

Aimed at mobile buyers after some touch control action on a budget, the LG POP GD510 is the smallest, lightest and one of the cheapest 3-inch touchscreen phones around.

After LG's success with the cash-conscious Cookie KP500 – which notched up over 10 million sales in just over a year – LG must be hoping for similar things from this stylishly slimline device, which at launch is selling for under £100 on a pay as you go package.

The LG POP GD510 doesn't try to be a do-everything smartphone. The POP is instead pitched at delivering a fun package, with a friendly user experience and the sort of features its target audience are after.

And that's why it slots in nicely here at number 8.

Read: LG Pop GD510 review

If you like the LG Pop GD510, you might also like:

| Samsung Tocco Lite | LG Cookie KP500 | Nokia 5530 XpressMusic |

See all LG Pop GD510 deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

7. Nokia N900

Not necessarily something we agree with, but Nokia is adamant this isn't a phone. Instead, it's saying that it's a small computer/slimmed-down netbook (depending on who you talk to) thanks to the new Maemo 5 operating system (OS), which is based on Linux.

Essentially, it's a unit with a 3G chip in it for voice and data with a similar form factor to a phone, so it's really just semantics what you want to call it.

As mentioned above, the N900 comes with the brand new Maemo 5 operating system which is designed to offer powerful options that we haven't seen on Symbian-powered devices before.

While Maemo has been seen on previous internet tablets from Nokia, this release is important as it makes the OS more finger friendly than ever before. It also allows a high level of customisation, a wider web browser and more location-based services too.

Read: Nokia N900 review

If you like the Nokia N900, you might also like:

| ------ HTC HD2 ------ | ----- Apple iPhone 3GS ----- | ------ T-Mobile G1 --- |

See all Nokia N900 deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

6. BlackBerry Bold 9700

Featuring an improved processor and latest UI, the Bold 9700 certainly has the specs but can it stop the iPhone and Android onslaught?

Well it's certainly a very good device, building on everything we've come to expect from the Canadian firm.

It's a little bit squished in comparison to the older device, but we don't think that's too much of an issue given the well designed chassis.

The sheer swiftness of the Bold 2 9700 is to be commended, as it's clearly a big effort from RIM to get that up to speed, and although App World isn't working for us yet thanks (probably) to T-Mobile, we're sure once that's up and running the Bold 9700 will be a very compelling business phone indeed.

Like the HD2, whether it's something the consumer will want/need, we don't know – it depends on the importance of easy to sync web mail we guess, as well as a stylish device to boot.

Read: BlackBerry Bold 9700 review

If you like the BlacKberry Bold 9700, you might also like:

| ----- BlackBerry Storm 2 ---- | ---- HTC HD2 ----- | ----- Palm Pre ---- |

See all HTC HD2 deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

5. HTC HD2

The HTC HD2's enormous 4.3-inch touchscreen is hugely impressive. And the HD2 is the first Windows Phone to come packing the HTC Sense overlay interface, as well as a capacitive multi-touch screen.

It smashes past the iPhone in terms of raw processing speed and the ability to handle Flash video.

And it dwarfs the Hero with a more responsive screen and its Wi-Fi routing ability too, and is far better than anything Samsung, LG or Nokia have come up with so far.

Read: HTC HD2 review

If you like the HTC HD2, you might also like:

HTC Touch Diamond 2 ----- | ----- HTC Hero ----- | ----- Apple iPhone 3GS ---- |

See all HTC HD2 deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

The X10 is a forthcoming Android-powered phone from Sony Ericsson.

The main selling points are the Android overlay (Timescape and Mediascape) and the usual range of multimedia-friendly hardware packed into the chassis.

The main thing when picking up the X10 is the sheer size of the thing - a four-inch screen (sadly not OLED, but looking pretty vivid nonetheless) makes up the majority of the phone, with a few buttons on the front and sides for company.

Our only worry is the sheer amount of stuff the phone is doing at once - it might have a 1GHz processor, but we've seen plenty of phones stutter to a halt when performing tasks like Facebook info-grabbing.

Still, we'll be getting a device in for a full review soon, so we'll bring you all the information about this dark horse in the 2010 race.

Read: Hands on: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 review

If you like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, you might also like:

| - Motorola Milestone - | - Apple iPhone 3GS - | - HTC Desire - |

See all Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

3. HTC Legend

The HTC Legend is the follow-up to the super-successful HTC Hero. For many months, the Hero was the top dog in the Android world. But with the arrival of the HTC Legend and Desire, that was always going to change in 2010.

Featuring a high-res OLED screen, as well as the latest version of Android from Google, HTC is clearly looking to jostle its way to the front of the best-selling phone queue with the Legend. The phone also packs a sumptuous unibody aluminium chassis - taking more than a few visual cues from Apple's MacBook range.

It's a great device, and one that we have to say is probably a match for the Apple iPhone. The only problem is that with the weight of the Apple App Store behind it, the iPhone takes some beating.

Read: HTC Legend review

If you like the HTC Legend, you might also like:

| ---- HTC Hero ---- | ---- Apple iPhone 3GS ---- | ---- HTC Desire ---- |

See all HTC Legend deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

2. Apple iPhone 3GS

What? What's this? The Apple iPhone in at number 2? That's right, folks – the iPhone is still in second place.

There's no denying the quality of the iPhone, and really it could just as easily have come out on top. Still though, we'll get to that on the next page.

The iPhone 3GS is a stunning handset. It's faster than the iPhone 3G and also has a better camera, so if you're thinking of getting an iPhone for the first time, we reckon opting for the 3GS is a no-brainer, even if the 3G is slightly cheaper.

Read: Apple iPhone 3GS review

If you like the Apple iPhone, you might also like:

| -------- HTC Legend ------- | -------- Palm Pre -------- | ------- HTC HD2 ------- |

See all Apple iPhone 3GS deals:

16GB: All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

32GB: All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

1. HTC Desire

The HTC Desire is essentially the same phone as the Google Nexus One, only with HTC's Sense UI overlay and a reworked chassis. Read: it's like a Nexus One only better.

For this reason, the HTC Desire has entered our top 10 at number 1, and the Google Nexus One has dropped out completely. It's tough at the top.

The Desire is a little on the large side thanks to its 3.7-inch OLED screen, but HTC has had a look at the few foibles the Nexus One has and sorted them out.

Messaging on the HTC Desire is a dream - despite not having a physical keyboard, the eerily responsive typing correction on this device is so sharp we could practically shut our eyes and mash our hands into the keyboard and still type a perfect message.

It's just a brilliant phone.

Read: HTC Desire review

If you like the HTC Desire, you might also like:

| ---- HTC Hero ---- | ---- Apple iPhone 3GS ---- | ---- HTC Legend ---- |

See all HTC Desire deals:

All deals | Pay monthly | Pay as you Go | SIM free

Related Links

Review: Nokia 7230

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:24:00 GMT

Not everyone needs a phone with a million apps and a 20MP camera.

Sometimes you just want to make calls, text and browse the internet for basic information, with a little style thrown in.

Something like the Nokia 7230 slider phone for example.

At only 10 x 5.5cm when folded, you're easily able to slip the Nokia 7230 into your suit or trouser pocket with ease.

But it still packs plenty of everyday essentials, including a featured 3.2MP camera, 3G connectivity, a media player with radio and a 2.2-inch screen for viewing everything from messaging and checking your email through to web browsing and fast access to Facebook and MySpace.

And there are apps too via Ovi if you want them, with a few demo games and utilities to get you going. All of that in a phone that's mostly free on contract or at £129 should you opt for pay-as-you-go, which isn't bad as a stylish-looking 3G phone.

Nokia 7230: Design

Small, functional and with smooth curves the 7230 is classic Nokia design. Sized at 98(h) x 48(w) x 14.75(d) mm and weighing in at 100g, the phone is small and light enough to fit into anyone's bag or pocket, with curved, chromed edges that contribute to an ergonomic shape for your hand.

Within the fairly minimalist design is a mini-USB slot (although the cable for hooking up the phone to a USB slot doesn't come as standard), a headphone point and those front facing controls for accessing/ending calls, along with an additional three menu-based controls for getting round the 2.2-inch TFT screen.

Memory card slot? That's located inside the handset, with a 2GB microSD down to come as standard..

The rear of the phone is devoted to photography, with a dedicated camera key on the side (or on top if you're taking pictures in landscape) turning your phone into a reasonable outdoor snapper in seconds.

The sliding mechanism is a dream, a 'glide' rather than a 'clunk', exposing a keyboard that's spacious enough for error-free typing and sufficiently responsive when you hit the keys. When you close the slide, the phone automatically locks, kicking off that lock when you flick it back open.

Running on the Symbian Series 40 platform, the Nokia 7230 has a functional, if unspectacular interface, offering up three ways of accessing the phone's main functions.

With a click of that central menu button, you'll see icons for all of the basic functions or alternatively, the left-hand selection key brings up the highlights on a scrolling list. The right-hand key offers quick access to your contacts.

Finally, opting for the Home Screen mode brings up mini icons for media and networking to scroll through.

Which one is best? To be honest, we found ourselves using all three randomly, with none of the menus offering quite what we wanted on first use.

But don't despair, you can change the shortcuts to your own preferences with a bit of time and effort through the menu settings, so if web access on the go is a big thing for you, just stick a quick icon to it on the home screen instead of Facebook.

But even allowing for that, the interface does seem a little messy purely by trying to cover too many bases.

Granted there isn't a touchscreen interface to play with, but one well thought-out way of accessing all functions (like on the lower budget Samsung Genio Slide) would certainly be better than the three different solutions currently on offer.

When you first log in, you'll also be offered the option to sign up to Ovi for phone-based email.

It's something Nokia is rightly proud of, but we found the experience slow and not without error messages.

We got there in the end, but with the thought that the Nokia 7230 might be used by first-time phone and email users, it is something that needs tightening up.

Nokia 7230: Calls and contacts

Nokia has been making mobile devices for as long as most of us have been alive, so as you would expect, the calling side of the 7230 runs as smoothly as a high-end sports car.

Voice calls are clear, with no obvious drops in the network as we were using it.

Accessing calls is also a doddle (just a slide and touch of a button), the ringtones, which are both available as presets and MP3, are loud enough to wake the heaviest of sleepers and the keypad is large enough to accommodate the biggest of fingers when fumbling to answer.

Setting up contacts is just a matter of entering details in a few fields, although you can augment your entries with personalised images and sounds, as well as web and email details. Accessing is just as easy, simply press the right hand soft key and you're flung into the contacts list.

There's a big, bold font for typing out and reading those texts and an equally large message when a call is incoming. No video calling, but we suspect you've already guessed that one on a handset for this price.

Once upon a time, mobile phones were all about calling and texting. These days, some sort of email access is pretty much an added necessity for communication and you'll certainly find enough options for email here. Whether it's sufficient for your needs is another matter.

As we mentioned earlier, the SMS functionality is simple, straightforward and pretty much faultless. With the added option of multimedia (MMS) messaging, bold message notifications and an easy-to-use keyboard, firing out and receiving random thoughts and images was a breeze.

If texting or sharing your latest photos is your thing, you'll find much to love here.

Email, on the other hand, is something that just might frustrate. As we alluded to earlier, signing up for Ovi wasn't without its problems, despite a fairly solid network reception at the time. But once there, we were able to send an email from that account without any further problems.

If Ovi isn't for you, there's also the option of logging into Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo or just about any other email service. But slowly. Very slowly.

The logging in process to all the services was time-consuming and once in, the wait to get anything but the mail headers was so slow, you wondered if it would be quicker to have sent or received a letter via Royal Mail.

Over a 3G connection, there's really no reason why email messages shouldn't load from a webmail service in a matter of seconds, no matter how much the phone costs.

If that's a disappointment, the added bonus here should be instant messaging via Ovi. Don't worry if you haven't got any Ovi mates, the service also allows access to friends on the likes of Windows and Yahoo Messenger, along with Google Talk.

If you've already signed up for the Ovi account earlier, just login with those details and you should get taken to the chat interface. Sadly for us, all our attempts to 'set up chat' after successfully logging in were greeted with a blank screen.

Does this mean there's some sort of incompatibility somewhere? We don't know. We've just marked it down as a big, fat fail.

Not one, but two email browsers are offered with the Nokia 7230, the Opera Mini browser and a separate on-board browser from Nokia.

Opera is always a solid web solution and that's certainly the case here.

A good zoom function works well with the relatively small screen, pages of our favourites sites render in a decent web-like manner and sites that give thought to mobile access (TechRadar and the BBC for example) come out particularly well.

Indeed, connectivity was brisk for most of the sites we loaded, even when the connection dropped from full 3G. Obviously you can bookmark your favourite feeds and sites, making the browser here a definite plus.

But if Opera isn't your bag, there's always the Nokia browser. It renders just as well, but nowhere near as fast and with far less options than Opera.

It also renders in 'full size', so you'll need to do a bit of scrolling around the page too to find what you want. But essentially it's horses for courses.

Try them both out, you'll certainly prefer one – just stick to that one in future.

Alternatively, if your web use is pretty much confined to using Facebook and MySpace, just load up the on-board apps for both services.

Yes, you can access the full selection of apps at the Ovi Store, which is just a click of an icon away, but Nokia knows its audience and offers the two social networks apps as standard. No Twitter? Sadly not, but two out of three isn't bad - although we're not sure if anyone really uses MySpace any more.

The Facebook app in particular is fairly strong, offering pretty much everything you get on the web-based service – messages, photos, networking, friend-finding – it's all here on the go, possibly even beating the inbuilt options on phones like the HTC Legend.

Likewise, MySpace offers up all the information and editing options, even if the layout of a little more functional.

To use a footballing analogy, the 3.2MP camera on the Nokia 7230 is very much a 'game of two halves'.

In general terms, the camera is incredibly simple to use, just hit the camera icon and you'll be able to capture stills in landscape or portrait format, with extras like a self-timer, white balance and effects (greyscale, sepia, solarise etc) giving your average low-end compact a run for its money.

Indeed, we were quite impressed with the detail of the snaps we took out and about compared to what we expected.

OUT AND ABOUT: A country walk captured with a good amount of detail

REDUCED LIGHT: Even in the woods, the amount of detail captured by the Nokia 7230 is impressive

But there's no flash on the Nokia 7230, making the camera here a reliable outdoor friend on a bright day, but less than able in a pub, club or simply around the house.

INDOOR PHOTO: A typical bright spring day outside, but the 7230 struggles to offer any kind of clarity on a room shot

INDOOR DETAIL: Quality improves indoors for detail rather than a wide shot, but still struggles for clarity

EFFECTS: A similar photo is much improved with the addition of the sepia effect for a follow-up shot

Video is a bonus, but don't expect to be the next Spielberg with it. Quality is shaky and colours a little off, nice for a quirky little clip of the dog in the garden, not great for recording a special birthday.

(Video: video0001.3gp)

IN THE PARK: Bright outside, but that's not easy to see with this grainy video footage

(Video: video0000.3gp)

IN THE WOODS: A lack of light makes the detailing of the video clip even harder to view

On the plus side, Nokia makes it nice and easy to share your moments. The previously-mentioned picture messaging is your obvious way of doing this, but you can also directly upload to Flickr (via the built-in app) or go for Nokia's own Share on Ovi, again pre-loaded onto the handset and all easy to use once you've signed up.

There's also a fourth option – with Bluetooth built-in, you can fire over to another device wirelessly. All a bonus, but you do wish there was some kind of flash too, because the camera could and should be a real selling point.

If we use the humble iPod as a benchmark for portable audio, it's safe to say that the media player on-board the Nokia 7230 isn't anywhere near that level.

Getting your music on the handset is a case of drag and drop (or transfer via Bluetooth). Note that a cable for connecting to your PC doesn't come as standard, which is slightly frustrating. Once music is on the phone comes another disappointment, the sound quality.

Playback via either the external speakers or the included headphones has a distinct echo and even at moderate volume, the audio starts to break up slightly.

On the plus side, if your MP3 or AAC files are tagged, Nokia's player does a neat job of subdividing your tunes, as well as allowing you to create your own playlists and making it easy to send (as a message), upload or transfer your tracks wirelessly.

In summary, the functionality is good, but the audio quality is distinctly average.

Video playback tends to suffer from the small screen. If you like the idea of squinting at a 2.2-inch screen for entertainment, it might be for you. It's also good for checking those mini movies you've just shot, but for us we would prefer our video on a larger screen, like the HTC Tattoo, as a minimum.

If transferring tunes sounds or squinting at video sounds like a chore, the Nokia 7230 also comes with an FM radio. We're not usually impressed with such things on a mobile, but this one is a bit of a gem.

Autotune comes at a touch of a button, reception is good, as is the sound quality in relation to your average home FM radio.

The only slight annoyance is the radio being a few clicks away from the media interface, really it should be operating in the same zone. Note also that the radio only works with the headset, so no blasting Chris Moyles all over the morning bus commute - although you can switch to speaker mode if you're that way inclined.

The one plus of having less multimedia options on a phone is less wear and tear on your battery. We've been hammering the camera, the video recorder, the music player and the web access and the battery has stood up to it very well.

Talk time is over four hours, with standby at a healthy 14+ days and even with using all those added features, we found the battery didn't need to be charged for three to four days of heavy use. If you like your phone in your hand rather than in a socket, you'll like the Nokia 7230.

Nokia 7230: Organiser

If you find life drifting away from you, the on-board organiser might offer just the helping hand you need. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a calendar with the option to add notes and view appointments by day, week or month and little audio reminders of what's coming up.

Simple and effective, but no syncing with any online calendars if you are looking for that - that's par for the course at this price, with others like the INQ Mini 3G missing out on the synchronisation game too.

Other added tools include a calculator, alarm clock, a 'to-do' list, timer and stopwatch, as you would expect, along with a conversion tool for weights and currency, as well as a size convertor, should you be shopping in a foreign land.

You know, the kinds of things you don't know you need until you actually need them.

Connectivity

Connectivity on the Nokia 7230 has been steady, if unspectacular. Basic connection never died completely, but for a 3G phone, we haven't seen that 3G symbol nearly enough.

Ok, that might be down to the local network, but having used other handsets in the same area, this particular phone is certainly no better and occasionally, seems worse.

No Wi-Fi on board the Nokia 7230 as you have probably guessed, so when it comes to web browsing and accessing email, the variable 3G might be a problem. We have certainly found it frustrating.

The phone does come with Bluetooth and it's very easy to use. Testing it with a Mac, it's just a matter of turning it on, pairing and you're away. Transfer speeds were very brisk, with an MP3 transferring in less than a minute.

Just as well really. The lack of a cable to hook up to a PC in the box means Bluetooth is pretty much your only way of transferring data to and from a PC/Mac when you get the phone. If you do plan on picking up a 7230, make sure you grab the additional cable off the shelf too.

Nokia 7230: Other

There's a welcome bonus in Nokia's Maps being pre-installed on the phone, which offers up both mapping basics and directions to your chosen UK location.

No GPS here, but if you just want directions, the app is very nippy and as a helping hand round an unfamiliar town, Maps offers a very useful (and free) bonus.

Games are always included and the 7230 is no exception. Take your pick between trial titles and free favourites, specifically Asphalt 4 Elite, Bounce Tales, Brian Challenge, Midnight Pool 2 and Rally Stars, plus Snake 3 and Sudoku.

The trial games are slightly frustrating in that you can only get so far, but to be honest, none of them made us want to go out and buy.

Finally, a voice recorder can record all those moments of inspiration you have on the move. Decent sound, easy to use, a nice thing to have.

Nokia 7230: Comparison

Comparisons are tough because the 7230 falls between the budget market and higher-end sliders, but you might also want to check out the Sony Ericsson Aino , which adds more bulk and a bigger price tag, but does come with GPS, a far better media player and BBC iPlayer out of the box.

Alternatively, messaging and networking on a budget is available via the INQ Chat 3G coming in at under £100.

Finally, if you want your slider to multi-task, do media to a high standard and offer up a touchscreen interface too, check out the Palm Pre.

To compare the Nokia 7230 with the cutting-edge touchscreens of the day is unfair. After all, it's a moderately-priced handset that comes without any claims of being a world beater.

We liked

It's small, it's fairly stylish and it offers up just about all the basics you could ask of a mobile phone, even if some of those functions are more successful than others.

There's also 3G connectivity, a big plus for the price point.

It also comes with a range of apps and extras you might not expect for a phone in its price bracket, a good quality outdoor camera and decent web interaction for example, not to mention solid apps for social networking.

We disliked

But in the end, the Nokia 7230 is simply punching above its weight. Scratch the surface and many of those features just don't cut it against the big boys.

There's no denying that the Nokia 7230 is an attractive handset offering a budget-friendly 3G experience, good calling and messaging functionality, a strong battery life and some decent tools for both web use and social networking.

But intermittent problems with Ovi, a flash-free camera, poor quality media player and disappointing email highlight just why the handset sells in this price bracket.

Related Links

Nokia rebranding Comes with Music as Ovi Music Unlimited?

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:49:00 GMT

Nokia looks like it's giving up on the Comes with Music branding for its unlimited tune download service.

The music service is being unveiled in India, but instead of the clunky 'Comes with Music' branding, we're now seeing Ovi Music Unlimited.

If you check the address bar of your browser on the site, you'll still see it labelled as Comes with Music, and we doubt Nokia has two unlimited MP3 download services.

Up to speed

It would make sense to re-brand the service to bring it in line with the rest of the Ovi stable, but we thought Nokia was trying to make CwM a separate brand in itself, so consumers knew what they were getting with their expensive phone.

But despite a huge investment at launch, Nokia's CwM offer has yet to be anywhere near a success - so could this be the beginning of the end for the unlimited music offering?

Nokia is set to launch a new wave of phones based on Symbian^3 at the end of the year, so perhaps this is gearing up for that and making music more central to its devices.

Review: Samsung Genio QWERTY

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:14:00 GMT

With a colourful chassis, full QWERTY keyboard and seriously budget price tag, the Samsung Genio QWERTY is squarely aimed at the younger social networker.

Available initially from Orange from under £70 on pre-pay, the Genio QWERTY is a very affordable alternative to BlackBerry-style message-centric devices.

It joins the low-cost touchscreen Genio Touch in Samsung's budget portfolio, with the Genio QWERTY leaving out the touch-and-swipe control interface and instead adopting a more conventional 2.2inch display and physical control system to wow its users.

It maintains the bright and colourful bodywork of the Genio Touch with swappable coloured back panels supplied in-box and others available as extras.

As well as emailing, texting and instant messaging capabilities, the Genio QWERTY is pitched at social network users.

The Orange-flavoured version we reviewed adds optimised online access to services via its Orange World portal, with links for services including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, Friendster and Photobucket.

There's no 3G to speed along online activity though (nor Wi-Fi, as you'd expect at this sort of price) – the Genio QWERTY is a quad-band GSM phone only, chomping through data at more modest GPRS/EDGE speeds.

The Samsung Genio QWERTY's onboard media capabilities include music and video player applications plus an FM radio – with a 3.5mm standard headphone jack so you can upgrade the supplied earphones.

Support for MicroSD card memory expansion is also included, and the Genio QWERTY's budget price tag is reflected in a modest 37MB of onboard storage.

The phone's camera snapping credentials are limited to a low-key 2MP camera on the back panel - but hey, you get what you pay for.

Design and handling

Samsung has trimmed costs with the display too. The 2.2-inch screen is a low-resolution (220x176 pixels) 65K-colour effort, rather than the sort of higher quality displays we've seen in recent Samsung devices.

That means graphics are a bit blockier and less refined, which is noticeable in graphic-rich applications such as web browsing and image viewing.

Like most BlackBerry-style devices, the display has a landscape orientation that's designed to be more messaging friendly on a wide-bodied device.

The Genio QWERTY's vital statistics – 110(h) x 59(w) x 12.9(d)mm and 94g – are slim and light enough to slip comfortably into a trouser pocket without questions over whether you're pleased to see people you meet.

The curvy plastic bodywork is reminiscent of several recent Samsungs including the Genio Touch, the Blade and the Jet.

Like the Genio Touch, its 'Fashion Jacket' back panel battery covers can be swapped. Included in our box were three such 'Jackets', in black, deep yellow and yellow with orange swirls, which work strikingly with the Genio QWERTY's glossy black with yellow and chrome trim front.

Side volume keys and the dedicated camera button on the side are splashed yellow, while the number keys on the QWERTY keyboard are also highlighted with yellow blocks, so you can quickly pick them out from the rest.

The 37-key QWERTY keypad isn't the most spacious we've encountered, although the four lines of keys are decently separated and contoured sufficiently.

This enabled accurate typing with one or two thumbs, and our large fingers didn't struggle too much in achieving reasonable typing speeds.

Among the QWERTY buttons are 'quick keys' for certain feature shortcuts, including new messages and the music player – although Samsung has also replicated some of these among its user interface shortcuts onscreen and via the navigation controls.

The control panel arrangement above the QWERTY keypad revolves around a typical navigation D-pad, which is nicely raised against the surface for quick and responsive thumb manipulation.

Immediately next to this are large softkey buttons, which initially feel oddly placed, as they're not adjacent to the relevant screen softkey options.

A bit of usage means you'll quickly get used it though. Call and End keys perch on either flank of the control panel, and again are pleasingly substantial.

Without touchscreen goings-on, the Samsung Genio QWERTY's user interface is based on a conventional type of Samsung menu system, with a grid format main menu and subsequent lists and tabs as you proceed through the phone using the navigation keypad.

The navigation pad also prompts the usual feature shortcuts – out of the box these include new message, music player, and a buddy list.

The buddy list allows you to display five of your favourite contacts, with photos, enabling you to make calls or send texts quickly and to view logs of your communications.

However, the home screen does have some customisation features, including a quick-access 'shortcuts toolbar', and a sidebar option which is enabled out of the box on the Orange version of the handset.

Both of these options can be switched on or off from within the menus, and if they're on, they restrict the navigation pad shortcuts.

These shortcut toolbar features are easy to operate and intuitive. Rows of feature icons are displayed, which can be browsed through and selected from the navigation pad.

They're not particularly whizzy or sophisticated like Samsung's TouchWiz touchscreen widgets.

The shortcuts toolbar, which runs in a strip across the bottom of the display, can be edited to your tastes; five shortcuts are pre-set (messaging inbox, new message, music player, organiser and alarms), though up to 15 can be used, and all can be assigned to one of a dozen features or applications.

It's a useful option to have to hand, though not a particularly special feature.

Oddly, it's switched on or off via the phone's wallpaper menu rather than the separate Shortcuts Toolbar menu (which is used for editing options only).

With the Orange sidebar activated, though, the Shortcuts toolbar option can't be selected, as they won't work together, like some sort of Sharks and Jets dance face-off.

The out-of-the-box Orange sidebar can be switched off or activated via the Home screen menu options, again quirkily located in the Phone Settings menu rather than in the Display and Light menus.

Navigation of the sidebar differs slightly from the simple highlight-and-select shortcuts toolbar.

As you scroll down the sidebar, you can also scroll across to get additional options for that particular icon – for example, different messaging options under the Messages icon, or links to different parts of the Orange World portal from that icon.

Again, it's not particularly innovative, but it makes accessing certain applications quicker and easier directly from the home screen.

Not that the Genio QWERTY's menu system isn't accessible enough in itself. Samsung's convention of using numbers next to sub menu options for quick selection is used again here, cutting down on having to continuously scroll as you drill down through the sub menus.

Apart from the quirkily placed shortcuts settings mentioned above, most of the Genio QWERTY's menus appear straightforward to work through and uncluttered, so shouldn't present too many issues for Samsung newcomers.

Although the numberpad is incorporated into the compact QWERTY keypad, it's not too difficult to accurately tap in new numbers.

The number keys are highlighted in bright yellow and arranged in conventional numberpad formation, so while they're not as finger-friendly as a generously proportioned keypad, they are easy enough to pick out.

Accessing contacts is straightforward, whichever shortcut set-up you opt for, and there are numerous fields you can add to the basic contact details on the handset.

As previously mentioned, you can set up a Buddy list as a shortcut, enabling you to view up to five favourite contacts on 'cards', with photo images assigned if available.

Selecting these enables you to call or text the individual contact, and you can see communications with Buddy contacts listed in chronological order.

The call performance of the Samsung Genio QWERTY came across loud and clear. We had sufficient volume at both ends and the earpiece sounded bright and pleasant during calls.

The phone also maintained a solidly reliable signal performance throughout our tests - something we're constantly noticing budget phones manage ahead of their much more expensive counterparts.

The core appeal of the Samsung Genio QWERTY is, of course, the QWERTY keyboard. While not everyone prefers these to a regular numberpad for texting, the Genio QWERTY does offer a very affordable option for those who do.

This style of keyboard, popularised by the BlackBerry, has been done by Samsung before, but the Genio QWERTY takes it down to mass market for those who want to pump out messages or do plenty of online social networking updates.

While the individual keys are quite tiny, they are sufficiently usable and we didn't have any major issues tapping away at it.

Sure, we'd have liked more room to stretch our fingers, but we found it accurate and were able to get reasonably good speeds with it, even with our large thumbs.

Changing texts to multimedia messages is a matter of pressing an Options softkey and selecting multimedia file to add from the phone (or memory card).

On the Orange-branded Genio QWERTY we reviewed, the Orange Messenger Windows Live Messenger-powered instant messaging application was pre-loaded, enabling users to get IM on the handset in a similar way to a desktop PC.

It also had Orange Email preloaded onto the phone's email client, which you can use to aggregate various email accounts into one account, if that appeals to you.

The email client also makes it reasonably straightforward to set up some regular web-based or ISP email accounts.

Settings are pre-installed for various popular email services, including Hotmail and Google Mail, and an email wizard takes you through the procedure to add your email account address, password and username for POP3 or IMAP4 email access.

If the email provider you want to use isn't included, you can type in details manually.

You can set up up to five different email accounts and switch between them when you select the email inbox option in the messaging menus.

The email user interface and functionality is pretty average though. It's a low-tier Samsung client, with a functional mobile phone look rather than being anything more desktop PC-style or BlackBerry-esque.

You can select headers you want to open, and basic no-frills text from the email is downloaded.

There was a limit, however, of 100 email headers at a time on our review sample, after which some had to be deleted – something many may find insufficient.

The phone does support attachment downloading and storing, although there isn't any document reader software to open them on the screen – you can view jpeg images, but not Word documents or PDFs, for example – which is a shame for a messaging-orientated device.

Overall, we'd have expected a bit more for a device clearly geared up for messaging as a priority feature.

The lack of high-speed 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity hampers the web browsing capabilities of the Samsung Genio QWERTY.

The phone sports a familiar sort of lower range Samsung Access NetFront 3.5 browser.

This works adequately at negotiating mobile optimised sites, including BBC News and network operator portals, where speed isn't a huge issue.

It does trundle along slowly when downloading other full webpages, such as TechRadar, and it doesn't support Flash.

We also got 'insufficient memory' messages when downloading some webpages. It isn't ideally suited if you're after an enjoyable browsing experience – the screen also lacks the resolution of standard issue mobiles so visually isn't that attractive.

In addition, with an average mobile menu based user interface for selecting options, it's a less than slick browser.

There is the facility to use online social networking services on the SamsungGenio QWERTY, with links to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, Friendster and Photobucket.

The Orange-optimised model we reviewed provides a selection of services via its Orange World mobile phone-optimised portal. They do work adequately, but some may prefer a slicker online experience.

The budget nature of the Samsung Genio QWERTY also becomes apparent when you turn to the camera. It's a low-key affair compared to some of Samsung's recent cameraphone efforts; it does the shooting essentials, but the 2-megapixel camera isn't high on quality imaging.

As you might expect from a down-range camera, it lacks autofocus and flash capabilities, so is more for casual fun snap-and-send shots than anything more serious.

The camera fires up in just a couple of seconds, displaying the viewfinder across the width of the landscape display.

You may find that this makes it slightly more intuitive to snap shots using the D-pad control rather than the camera side button.

The user interface is simple to operate, and includes a familiar array of regulation cameraphone settings options and effects to override the auto system.

These include white balance adjustment, multiple shots and mosaic images (which automatically shoot in low res), resolution setting options, night mode, timer, plus colour tinting effects and frames

Image results, though, are lacklustre and lack the level of detail you can get for a few quid more on other cameraphones. Colour balance is reasonable, and shots do look bright with natural colours.

MIXED SCENE: The 2-megapixel fixed focus camera on the Samsung Genio Qwerty is pretty basic – it's okay for snap'n'send images, but offers limited image detail and quality; here images are slightly soft and detail around trees and the sky is imprecise

CLOSE UP: The fixed focus lens means you can't choose the focal point for a shot, so close up images can't be sharply defined

STRONG LIGHT: Even in strong lighting conditions, images can be soft with subdued colour and lacking in detail

LONG RANGE: Longer-range shots aren't crisp, and in moderate lighting detail is poorly defined

MID RANGE: Mid-range shots also suffer from softness and lacklustre colour presentation

BRIGHT COLOUR: You can get okay shots reasonably close to the subject. Here, colour rendition is decent enough

MIXED SCENE: This street scene again shows a slightly subdued and soft image with a lack of definition

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT: For this grade of cameraphone, the autometering system does a reasonable job with artificial light in dark conditions, although without a flash in dark environments image quality is poor

In dark conditions, without a flash the night mode option doesn't offer much of an improvement to low light shooting, boosting gain but adding more noise to shots.

Overall, though, it's a low-grade budget snapper compared to other recent Samsung offerings.

Video shooting quality isn't up to much, with low resolution QCIF (176x144 pixels) recording at 15 frames per second providing basic quality images for even a low cost cameraphone.

The Samsung Genio QWERTY supports H.263, H.264, MPEG4 and WMV video file formats, although not DivX or Xvid files like some higher end Samsungs.

The screen space and resolution limit the quality and viewability you can expect from the player however.

The phone's music player provides a better than average audio performance however, with a 3.5mm standard headphone socket on top enabling you to upgrade the in-box ear-wear with your own earphones.

The supplied headset isn't bad, though – the in-ear earphones are a few notches above what you'd normally expect from a budget phone.

Sound quality is decent, delivering loud volume, plenty of low-end thump and an acceptable amount of detail.

It's not a particularly subtle performance, but it's more than you'd expect from a budget handset - and you can upgrade sound quality easily with better headphones.

The music player software is familiar Samsung stuff; tunes downloaded or sideloaded to the phone or slipped in on a memory card are automatically filed under appropriate categories.

The user interface is low-key but serviceable, and does the job. When playing, the D-pad takes care of control business in regular fashion, with cover art supported if available.

Among the other options, there are several equalizer sounds, shuffle control and so on. MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA files are supported.

No USB data cable is supplied in-box nor Samsung PC Studio software – they're an optional extra if you want to copy over music that way.

You can still copy files via Bluetooth, or slip them in on a MicroSD card – the Genio QWERTY can accommodate cards up to 8GB. Orange Music Store service is also supported on Orange-branded handsets.

On top of the music player there's an FM radio function with RDS covering 87.5Mhz-108Mhz frequencies.

As well as being a breeze to tune in and use, either automatically or manually, you can record clips from the radio to play back on the phone.

Without 3G or higher spec power-hungry features like GPS or Wi-Fi to sap juice, the Samsung Genio QWERTY puts in a decent battery performance.

Samsung reckons on its 800mAh power pack clocking up up to 7.5 hours of talktime or up to 390 hours on standby.

In our tests, the handset doggedly kept going for 3-4 days between recharges with our normal phone usage. Extensive use of the music player or online services, though, could soon see you slim that performance down, however.

Organiser

A regulation set of Samsung organiser functions are loaded onto the Genio QWERTY, including calendar, memo, tasks, world clock, calculator, converter and alarms.

All are straightforward to use and intuitive, with a functional layout and operation. A voice recorder, stopwatch and timer are also included.

Connectivity

The Samsung Genio QWERTY is a quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 handset, and doesn't support 3G data connectivity, relying on GPRS/EDGE for online connectivity.

This limits its online speed for browsing and uploading or downloading content.

The handset supports stereo Bluetooth with A2DP, so you can use wireless stereo headsets and stream music to other Bluetooth devices such as wireless speakers.

While the phone supports USB connectivity via a MicroUSB port on the top of the phone, there's no USB cable included in-box (presumably for cost reasons).

No software disc for PC syncing is included either, though you could download the relevant Samsung PC Studio software online.

As mentioned previously, the Genio QWERTY does support MicroSD cards up to 8GB. The slot is under the back cover and requires the battery to be removed for access.

Other

The Genio QWERTY doesn't do too much extra fancy stuff. There are a trio of demo versions of games, which you can buy if you like them.

A typing training application is included, just in case you've bought a QWERTY keyboard-packing phone without knowing how to type.

On the Orange version of the Genio QWERTY there's an Orange Widgets application that enables you to get online updates and headlines for sports, news, entertainment and weather, plus an online search facility.

The updates are effectively a series of RSS feed consolidated into one Widgets application, so nothing groundbreaking.

Bringing a full QWERTY keyboard to the budget mobile market, the Samsung Genio QWERTY is device that will interest a particular type of buyer rather than have mass appeal.

The relatively cheap QWERTY keyboard is the chief draw, with a sprinkling of messaging functionality in that's aimed to grab the cash-strapped youth market.

A decent music player and colourful swappable casings add to the attraction.

However, it is a limited handset. The email messaging functionality is budget rather than top drawer, its browser is run of the mill and there's no 3G.

It doesn't have the largest or most detailed display and its camerawork is mediocre. Its social networking credentials aren't as well integrated either as a device such as the INQ Chat 3G, which costs a bit extra but delivers a better all-round package.

We liked

The QWERTY keyboard is small but perfectly manageable, even with our large fingers typing away.

The conventional menu layout is easy to follow and intuitive to operate, so newcomers should have no problems using it.

The music player offers a decent audio performance, with higher grade than average earphones supplied plus a standard 3.5mm headphone socket for easy upgrading to higher quality headphones, should you prefer to.

Colourful casings offer something a bit different to the normal business orientated BlackBerry look most QWERTY-equipped handsets adopt. Battery life was good too.

We disliked

The display was disappointingly low resolution. The lack of 3G hampers the connection speeds for browsing and online services – some of the supposed attractions of the handset.

The browser, too, is standard issue average mobile browser that's functional but limited.

We were surprised that the email client wasn't more sophisticated for a messaging-centric handset.

It'll disappoint those expecting a near-desktop style experience. A lack of a USB cable and software reflects its budget status though we'd have liked to have them in-box for syncing.

The camera is a mediocre entry-level 2-megapixel shooter, with a poor video capture performance.

Verdict

Samsung is aiming at a particular type of youthful buyer with its colourful, QWERTY keyboard-packing Genio QWERTY.

It does the basics well and its compact keyboard has a fast enough action for speedy mobile typing.

It offers some decent features, such as a good music player, though others, such as the camera, are limited and down-range.

Its messaging credentials are reasonably good for a budget model, if not the best around, and it is one of the cheapest models you can get if a QWERTY keyboard-equipped handset is what you're after.

Related Links

In Depth: 'Symbian and MeeGo are quite separate'

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:20:00 GMT

With MeeGo set to launch on ARM-based and Intel Atom-based devices this month, we grabbed a few minutes with Peter Schneider from Nokia recently to talk about MeeGo, the first fruit from the Nokia-Intel joint venture announced last June.

MeeGo itself was announced at Mobile World Congress last month. It brought together the Moblin and Maemo operating systems from the two companies into a single open source OS.

At the time, a joint statement said the open software platform "will accelerate industry innovation and time-to-market for a wealth of new internet-based applications and services and exciting user experiences."

Schneider heads up the marketing effort at Nokia for MeeGo. The project is hosted by the Linux Foundation.

Where does this leave Symbian?

We asked Schneider, who has beenat Nokia since 2000, what the new OS meant for Symbian and future devices – will they still run Symbian?

"We see Symbian and MeeGo as being quite separate. Symbian is strong...and will continue to have success on smartphones. MeeGo covers a different market. MeeGo is a new operating system, while Symbian is well developed."

At the launch of MeeGo, Nokia's Vice President for Devices, Kai Oistamo, said that "the two operating systems would co-exist" and that MeeGo will run on "multiple processor architectures."

He then added that Symbian and MeeGo would share some "forward compatibility."

Nokia wants MeeGo to take full advantage of its open source status by getting as much interaction as possible. "We want MeeGo – like Maemo – to be really collaborative," says Schneider.

"Maemo was the result of a big community effort and we have thousands of [open source] developers working on lots of projects." Symbian has also recently moved to an open source model.

Atom and ARM-support

Schneider was coy about the types of devices being developed for MeeGo, but it's clear from various comments – not least those of Oistamo - that many types of devices will be able to support the OS.

MeeGo will be able to run on Intel Atom as well as ARM-based devices. So we could see it running on some budget netbooks as well as high-end mobiles like the N900.

Schneider also maintains "it doesn't compete" with smartphone operating systems such as Android or Windows Phone 7 Series. Instead, it's more likely to be compared to Chrome OS when that hits the streets later in the year.

Even though the project is fully collaborative, changes to source components of the software are made by a joint Technical Steering Group.

Review: Samsung Genio Slide

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:09:00 GMT

Samsung has fused elements of both the Genio Touch and the Genio QWERTY to come up with a hybrid device – the Genio Slide.

The Samsung Genio Slide combines a 2.8-inch touchscreen display and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and sports the colourful swappable back panels and youth-targeted features – with an emphasis on social networking – that mark the previous Genio models.

However, the Genio Slide packs a far more powerful feature punch than its Genio mates – and consequently has much wider appeal.

Unlike its predecessors, the Genio Slide is a 3G-enabled handset, with high-speed HSDPA mobile data support (up to 7.2Mbps) and Wi-Fi connectivity built in.

It also has A-GPS satellite-based location finding onboard.

Cranking up the downloading and uploading speeds opens up the Genio Slide's potential for a quicker and more enjoyable online media experience than the EDGE/GPRS-only Genio Touch and Genio QWERTY.

For instance, as well as faster applications such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, in the UK the Genio Slide comes with a BBC iPlayer app already installed, offering live and catch-up TV and radio programmes.

It also has pre-loaded links to mobile TV streaming services.

Onboard 3G also allows for video calling on this model, with a front-facing camera complementing the main 3.2-megapixel camera on the back of the phone.

In addition, Samsung aims to keep mobile music listeners happy by providing a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on top of the bodywork.

The review sample we tested also arrived with a 2GB MicroSD card included in the box, and memory cards up to 16GB are supported.

Initially, the Samsung Genio Slide is debuting in the UK for free on contract deals and £120 on pay as you go, where it's currently being offered by Vodafone and Tesco Mobile.

Like the others in the Genio series, the Genio Slide has a smooth, curvy build, similar to recent Korean offerings, like the Samsung Jet and Samsung Blade.

The Genio Slide has a broader girth, thanks to the sliding keyboard tucked away behind the screen, but the phone's dimensions – at 105(h) x 56.9(w) x 15.68(d) mm and 135g – give it a compact and solid feel.

It's impressive that despite it bringing a full QWERTY keyboard, it's no pocket bulger, so you won't get anyone asking if you're pleased to see them.

Pitching for the youth vote, the Samsung Genio Slide comes with swappable 'Fashion Jacket' back panels, adding a bit of customisation potential for would-be buyers.

Three of the clip-on covers are included in-box – with our sample we got a business-like black cover, plus two white ones, one with a retro swirly pattern on it.

It's hardly a deal-maker, but some users may welcome the chance to get away from the normal black touchscreen look and go a bit funk-a-delic.

From the front, though, the Samsung Genio Slide does have an archetypal Samsung touchscreen design – it's glossy black minimalist, with just Call, End and a central Menu button under the display.

The 2.8-inch QVGA (240x320 pixels) touchscreen display is a resistive type rather than a higher-end iPhone 3GS-like capacitive one, so doesn't have multi-touch and the smooth flowing action of Apple's headliner.  

The 2.8-inch screen isn't as lengthy as some we've seen and its wider dimensions are similar to those of the Samsung Blade.

Around the sides is a familiar combination of camera, screen lock/unlock and volume/zoom controls, plus a Micro-USB port and that useful 3.5mm headphone socket on the top of the phone.

The slide-out QWERTY keyboard is the real design eye-catcher though. While not exactly novel for a touchscreen phone, it's still quite rare at this sort of price point.

The sprung slider action is smooth and easy but feels firm in place ready for twin-thumb tapping.

Slipping it out immediately switches the screen orientation from portrait to landscape. The metallic red keypad uses almost the length of the slider tray, so despite minimal gaps between them, the 42 buttons on the keypad have sufficient room.

Keys are slightly contoured to differentiate between them as you're typing away, and the key action is responsive.

It's possible for finger tapping messages while resting on a desk, though we expect thumb-typing in-hand will be the favoured input method for most people.

We found the keypad accurate enough for brisk, fluent typing of messages, and generally we had no major gripes about its user-friendliness.

Keys are sensibly arranged and labelled well enough, and the Samsung Genio Slide also contains a couple of keys for quickly opening up new messages or launching the browser.

As with any phone keyboard, it takes a little getting used to if you want to improve your speed.

Initially we didn't find it quite as comfortable as the larger (and much more expensive) Nokia N97 Mini, for instance and the Samsung text input system occasionally doesn't feel as intuitive when you're adding punctuation. But very quickly we got decent thumb-typing speeds up on it.

The Samsung Genio Slide uses a version of the TouchWiz user interface Samsung has rolled out on many of its touchscreen models, which incorporates onscreen widgets for the phone's home screen.

Brought up onscreen by a tap of the central menu button or one of three onscreen buttons at the foot of the display (marked Keypad, Phonebook and Menu), the main menu system is arranged in familiar grid formation.

Rather than one menu screen, however, there are three main menu screens, with up to 12 icons on each screen representing applications and features (again similar to the Samsung Jet).

Users can slide between screens with a sideways finger stroke, bringing a nicely usable spread of features to hand without having to delve too deeply into sub-menus to find useful apps.

As well as being visually attractive, it's more intuitive to see key apps laid out like this.

The main menu icons can easily be rearranged to suit how you use the phone, so you can cluster certain applications together if you prefer.

Four buttons remain consistently at the base of the display as you swipe through the main menu – Keypad, Phonebook, Messages and Exit – giving handy access to core functions.

The resistive touchscreen responds well enough to finger action. The user interface allows enough room for fingers to select and scroll without any major mis-pressing issues.

The screen isn't as slick to the touch as the iPhone 3GS or the HTC Legend or other higher end models, and doesn't gave the kinetic scrolling feel of such devices, but it isn't noticeably laggy, and haptic feedback acknowledges presses.

It feels comfortable enough to use without being particularly whizzy. We'd have preferred visible scroll bars in some sub-menu lists (these appear only when you're scrolling) so that you don't miss options as you flick through, but otherwise the menu system was straightforward to handle in a functional way.

Users can choose whether to install widgets on the home screen or not. A variety of widgets can be selected from a pop-out toolbar on the side of the display (or bottom if the phone's held sideways with the keyboard out).

They can be dragged onto the main area of the screen, enabling users to open up and use plenty of applications and services directly from the home screen.

As many widgets as are available can be placed on the home screen – though practically, users will probably limit these to avoid clutter.

Like other Samsung touchscreen phones, the home screen set-up actually comprises three linked home screen pages that can be flicked between using a simple swipe of the finger.

This allows users enough screen space to arrange as many widgets as they fancy without the compact screen looking too busy – and users can choose to arrange home screen widgets under the three pages as effectively separate 'categories'.

It adds a bit of flexibility, although you can't copy the same widgets to more than one of the home screen pages at any one time.

Out of the box, there are around 30 application widgets you can bring up onscreen. These range from functional features such as various clocks, calendar, memo and profile functions to music player, Wi-Fi, FM radio and photo viewer controls.

In addition, there's a range of widgets for online apps. These range from the BBC's iPlayer service to a host of social network and content sharing services – including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Bebo and so on.

These provide fast access to services for uploading content, managing accounts and updating profiles.

Other online services include an AccuWeather.com weather forecasting app, Bloomberg news, and a More Widgets app to help you find and download additional widgets for free directly from Samsung.
 The widget interface is very intuitive and easy to operate.

A tap of the screen opens up the widgets toolbar, from which you can drag and drop any number of widgets with a finger stroke, swap them around in seconds and re-do any time you fancy.

They can provide regular updates on the home screen from social networking sites and enable you to manage accounts and profiles quickly and easily using the native applications.

Other widgets provide access to useful information and shortcuts to activate or control functions (such as music, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth activation) straight from the home screen, potentially reducing finger work for many functions you regularly use.

From the home screen or main menu, it's simple to make calls either by tapping the onscreen phonebook or keypad buttons, as appropriate, or selecting your recent call log by tapping the Call button beneath the display.

You can dial using the slide-out keyboard too, tapping the top row number buttons in standby.

The phonebook can be browsed with a speed-scrolling tab that enables you to jump through contacts by initial letter, or you can tap in names using the (real or soft) keyboard in a similar way to the LG Intouch Max GW620.

There are multiple fields for contact details in the phonebook which provide for a variety of work and personal information to be added.

Doing the basics of making and taking calls, the Samsung Genio Slide delivers an assured performance, providing good quality audio reception at a consistently high level.

We had no issues or complaints from those receiving calls during our tests. Network reliability on our Vodafone-optimised sample was as good as we needed – it connected when needed without problems.

Naturally, with a sizeable QWERTY keyboard slipping out from the side, messaging ability is one of the key selling points of the Genio Slide.

As mentioned previously, the smooth keyboard action and sensibly sized layout make it a comfortable, accurate and speedy text tapping experience.

Directional arrow keys also aid corrections to text or inserting words rather than having to rely on accurate touchscreen pressing mid-word.

You can type out messages without sliding out the keyboard. Instead, a soft phone-style numberpad appears onscreen, which works pretty efficiently.

Unlike on some longer screen handsets, the number keys don't spread the full width of the screen – a row of control buttons are on the right of the 3, 6 and 9 keys – but there is still adequate finger space to avoid mis-hitting buttons. We found it easy enough to operate.

Predictive text guesses what you're typing and presents options to complete words, though you can switch this off if you prefer.

Samsung addresses the correction/word insertion issue for touchscreen phone by using a directional arrow option among the control keys – so users can position the cursor quickly and accurately without requiring pinpoint finger pressing accuracy on the touchscreen.

It's a decent system – maybe not as quick for speed texters as a regular phone, but it's good for a touchscreen phone with this 2.8-inch screen size.

Also included are two onscreen handwriting input options, which work reasonably well if not effortlessly smoothly; as usual, a bit of practice helps pin down accuracy.

Email is supported on the phone, although the email wizard on our review sample didn't provide fully automatic settings installation – we still had to input POP3 and SMTP server details as well as email account name, password and username.

We were also very impressed that Microsoft Exchange, via ActiveSync, was supported on the phone as well; work emails for £120 is a pretty good value offering.

The email user interface is fairly standard issue for a mid-level Samsung touchscreen phone.

It's no replacement for a BlackBerry and isn't as sophisticated as some smartphone offerings, but it does enable you to view emails, create your own and manage your account.

Account and messaging options are mainly menu-based though there are onscreen buttons for the basics of operating the messaging system.

Email attachments are supported, with onboard document viewer software enabling you to look at PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint and Excel documents.

This viewer app also allows documents sideloaded to the phone or slipped in on a memory card to be viewed onscreen (although editing isn't possible).

The Genio Slide supports instant messaging too, with a Palringo IM software client pre-installed that works with all the major IM services, enabling you to keep contacts all on one list, get updates on status, share content and location information.

The Genio Slide is stocked with a good helping of online applications, with its bundle of social networking applications complemented by some useful additional applications such as BBC iPlayer.

The iPlayer works very tidily over Wi-Fi connections, enabling users to view live TV and listen to radio shows online, and to catch up with radio and TV shows via its streaming service, with decent quality video playback.

The Genio Slide uses Samsung's Webkit-based Dolfin Browser v1.5, and with both HSDPA 3G connectivity (up to 7.2Mbps) and Wi-Fi onboard, users can enjoy a swift browsing experience.

The touchscreen control button presents an intuitive user interface for a mobile phone browser.

It doesn't match up to the iPhone in terms of slick usability, but it does better than most browsers of its budget touchscreen class, and it does support Flash Lite.

Occasionally, however, we did get 'memory full' messages when loading larger webpages - irritating and harking back to the earlier, darker days of touchscreen phones when breathing on the device would send it into a RAM-crushing frenzy.

Its controls include an address bar, forward and back buttons plus reload and bookmark buttons, while you can scroll with a finger movement or zoom in and out with a long finger press onscreen, then moving up or down.

It's not pinch-to-zoom smooth but does the job in an unfussy way. As you'd expect, the browser can be viewed in full landscape mode too, plus there's an RSS reader function in the software (accessible by the menu).

The Samsung Genio Slide's 3.2-megapixel camera has a very user-friendly touchscreen user interface – consistent with Samsung's higher-grade cameraphones – but its fixed focus shooter is a middle of the range shooter in terms of overall image quality.

The camera takes only a couple of seconds to fire up from standby, with a press of the side-mounted camera button. The camera automatically switches into landscape view, with eight control icons dotted either side of the display.

The camera has a reasonable set of function options for this grade of snapper – it incorporates functions such as a Smile Shot (when engaged it waits to spot a smile before the snap is taken), multi-shot shooting, and a rather neat motion sensor accelerometer-aided panorama shooting mode that stitches together shots with barely any effort from the user.

A bunch of modes are available for different kinds of lighting environments or shooting situations including a night mode and sports mode for fast moving objects.

Timer and brightness controls are included, plus regular settings adjustments for white balance and a series of colour-tint effects.

You can use image editing software to tweak snaps and add post-shooting effects, text, captions, clip art and so on, with easy to use onscreen tools

OUTDOORS: The Samsung Genio Slide has a fixed focus 3.2-megapixel camera that offers a decent user interface but limited shooting performance. Images are reasonable for this sort of camera but detail and quality are limited

TONES: Colour reproduction is rich for snaps, and it handles tones reasonably well, though the shot appears slightly soft

NATURAL LIGHT: Again, it produces colourful snaps with a decent tonal range, but it is somewhat soft where you may be expecting crisper detail

CLOUDY DAY: It takes reasonable shots in murky conditions, dealing effectively with changing contrast and lighting conditions

FOLIAGE: The lack of focus control means you have to shoot and hope when it comes to getting objects in focus. Here, the colours look acceptably vivid, but it's not capable of selecting the foreground branches to be in focus

OVERCAST: Taken in subdued overcast conditions, colours look fine, though there is a bit of burn out of the trees against the sky in the background

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT: Without any sort of flash or LED illumination shots taken inside in artificial light are soft and unsatisfactory

LOW LIGHT: In darker conditions, like this shot in the early evening, the camera is unable to produce more than a basic low quality shooting performance with grainy images

PANORAMA: The panorama shooting mode works really well – using the automatic motion sensor inside, the camera can quickly match up frames and stitch them together for easy panoramas. You can't get full the highest quality images in this mode, however

SPORTS MODE: There is a sports mode for capturing moving subjects

As is common on mid-tier Samsungs, it's also possible to upload images straight to online services and social networking sites – all you have to do is select which you want from a pre-defined list of services.

With a 3.2-megapixel camera with a fixed focus lens, you can't expect superb shooting results, but for this grade of cameraphone, the Genio Slide puts in a respectable performance.

Of course, with no focus control you can't get beautifully focused compositions, but the camera is able to take decent snaps with naturally rich colour rendition, competent automatic handling of exposure and contrast plus a reasonable level of detail for this sort of camera.

With no flash or photo light of any description, however, low light shooting isn't great, and in dark environments results are poor.  

The Genio Slide can also capture video, although shooting at maximum QVGA quality (320x240 pixels) at 15 frames per second, it is limited in terms of playback quality. It'll do for online uploads perhaps, but it's pretty lacklustre low-grade phone level.

Video playback on the Samsung Genio Slide's large screen is acceptable. Of course, anyone who wants a richer media experience may prefer a larger, higher-grade touchscreen model, but it does an adequate job within its 2.8-inch QVGA limitations.

It supports H.263, MPEG4, WMV, WAV and DivX file formats, and the media player user interface is very straightforward and simple to work.

The BBC iPlayer application provides a pleasing entertainment extra too. It delivers radio and TV programmes from the BBC's excellent online service direct to the handset via Wi-Fi (although sadly nothing from 3G).

Streamed content from the online iPlayer service looks pretty good on the screen, although the Genio Slide's screen ratio means the playback is slightly letterboxed.

However, it's another useful source of free online entertainment for Genio Slide buyers. Its user interface is simple to follow and operate, while a Widget option for the home screen allows you to access it quickly from standby.

The music player's controls are uncomplicated too. It supports MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA formats, and tracks can be downloaded over the air or sideloaded onto the phone, using supplied Samsung Kies software or synced with Windows Media Player on a PC using the in-box data cable.

Alternatively, you can load tracks straight on to a MicroSD card and slip it in – the music player software automatically adds tunes to its list of tracks.

The 2GB MicroSD card supplied with the handset is particularly welcome, boosting the phone's 100MB of onboard storage.

MicroSDs of up to 16GB can be used with the handset. Bluetooth is also supported and can be used to transfer tracks.

The music player doesn't do anything particularly novel or eye-catching. Its UI is simple but is functional and works efficiently enough. Tracks are listed in familiar categories and the control includes large touch buttons plus a draggable timeline and cover art support for easy choon navigation.

As with the Genio QWERTY and Genio Touch, Samsung has included a 3.5mm standard headphone socket on top of the phone, so users can easily plug in their own headphones if they want to upgrade the supplied earwear.

Samsung has boxed a decent quality in-ear set of earphones with the Genio Slide, however, so you can get a very acceptable performance out of the box.

Through the in-box ear-wear – which comes as a two-piece headset with snug fitting plastic earbuds – audio quality is pretty good, with a well-balanced range with good mid and high frequencies plus a substantial bass presence giving a decently rounded sound with plenty of dynamism.

The phone also comes with a built in FM radio function; again it delivers a solid performance and is easy to tune and operate with an easy to follow touch user interface.

It can also record sound clips from the radio as files you can listen back to later. A song identification application is also included which will sample tracks you hear on the radio and deliver details over the air back to the phone.

This Find Music application can also be used with songs you hear around you, with the app slotted into one of the Main Menu screens.

We got a decent battery performance out of the Genio Slide. It has plenty of functionality inside that can sap battery power, but it delivered an acceptable amount of juice during our tests.

The 960mAh battery back is expected by Samsung to deliver up to 390 hours of standby time on 3G networks (or 560 hours in GSM-only coverage), or up to 230 minutes of talktime on 3G (490 minutes on GSM-only networks).

We managed 2-3 days between charges with minimal Wi-Fi usage, though with more online activity we did find ourselves charging more frequently; how exactly you use the phone will determine what mileage you get before a refill is required.

However, the Samsung Genio Slide outperformed much more expensive smartphones with nearly 40% larger batteries, so on that aspect alone it can't be faulted.

Organiser

The Samsung Genio Slide packs a standard set of organiser tools for a Samsung mid-tier model.

These include calendar, memo, voice recorder, task, calculator, convertor, world clock, calculator and world clock functions.

There aren't many gimmicky elements to the organiser tools; they're generally functional and work effectively with the touchscreen interface, without much graphical eye-candy to distract.

Connectivity

The Samsung Genio Slide is a dual-band (900/2100 MHz) 3G handset, utilising HSDPA mobile data connectivity boasting data download of up to 7.2Mbps (although average real life speeds are always lower on any phone).

Operating outside of 3G coverage, the phone is a quad-band GSM model (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), supporting lower speed EDGE and GPRS data connectivity.

Higher speed 3G data connectivity may make the Genio Slide a much more attractive proposition than the Genio QWERTY or Genio Touch for those that want to use its online-focused services.

But the addition of Wi-Fi really seals the deal on that score, providing high speed connectivity on home Wi-Fi networks, on office WLANs or via public Wi-Fi hotspots.

It makes it a more versatile device than others in the Genio range, and can deliver a far more satisfactory experience and better services than those handsets.

Bluetooth 2.1, featuring wireless stereo streaming A2DP for wireless headphones, speakers, etc., is included.

The phone also supports USB 2.0 connectivity, using a microUSB port multi-connector socket and there's a USB data cable packaged in-box.

Exchange ActiveSync is supported for over the air syncing of contacts, calendar events, email, and tasks with a remote Microsoft Exchange server.

Samsung Kies software suite is supplied on CD, enabling back up and transfer of personal information management data with a Windows PC plus content management and sharing of content. Over the air online backup using ActiveSync is supported too.

For the price, Samsung Genio Slide users get a very attractive set of features. Among these is A-GPS satellite positioning technology built in.

Google Maps v3.0.2 is pre-loaded as part of a suite of Google services which include Google Search and Google Mail applications.

Google Maps provides the usual mapping information, over the air route planning and navigation, plus search options for local information on businesses and services.

The software works effectively with the touchscreen interface and is intuitive to operate, while the A-GPS works smartly enough at locating positions.

It's an extremely useful app to have to hand, and you can get Street View and opt into Google Latitude from the handset.

In addition, if you get a Vodafone-branded Genio Slide, it comes with Telmap application pre-loaded that enables you to get online Sat Nav capability on the handset. Unfortunately our review sample wasn't recognised so we couldn't trial it.

In addition to the BBC iPlayer software mentioned previously, the Genio Slide's array of native social networking services mention earlier give this device plenty of appeal for its target audience looking for a touchscreen experience on a budget.

Other features include a raft of control options familiar to mid-tier Samsung handsets, including etiquette pause (you turn over the phone and the current sound of an incoming call alert or alarm is muted) and its quirky Fake Call feature (at the press of a button you can initiate a fake incoming call with a recorded message).

Samsung's Smart Unlock system, which uses pre-defined character strokes onscreen to unlock the display or launch specific features, is included too, while a batch of games – mostly trial versions – are pre-loaded.

The Samsung Genio Slide is the most attractive of Samsung's Genio clan to date, packed with the sort of features you wouldn't normally expect of a phone at this price.

With 3G HSDPA and Wi-Fi, its collection of social networking options are decent enough to use. A-GPS is a welcome bonus, while its entertainment options – including a fine-sounding music player and native BBC iPlayer application – add to the appeal.

You also get a fair amount of in-box memory card storage and good earphones as standard.

The slide-out QWERTY keyboard has a finger-friendly action that's good enough for a device of this sort, while this touchscreen phone package is compact enough to carry around without overloading your pocket.

Sure, its resistive touchscreen won't give you the enjoyably slick finger-flicking pleasures of an iPhone or other capacitive screen-equipped high-enders.

The control set-up is more functional than flash, although there are some useful touches like the TouchWiz home screen widgets.

At this sort of price point, though, the Genio Slide offers a terrific amount of functionality.

We liked

The amount of features you get for your money makes the Genio Slide stand out. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard combined with the touchscreen control are the immediate headline grabbers, and we were pretty happy with the keyboard action.

But high-speed connectivity using Wi-Fi or HSDPA and the addition of A-GPS give this handset a significant edge over it range mates and other rivals in the price bracket.

The online functionality of the handset – including a reasonable touchscreen browser, Google Maps, a crop of social networking apps and an easy to use BBC iPlayer app – provide the phone with plenty to entertain.

It also sports a pleasing music player (and a 3.5mm headphone jack socket!), and comes with a 2GB memory card in-box... and let's not forget you can swap back panels if customisation is your thing.

We disliked

It would have been good to have had a capacitive multi-touchscreen, but you can't get everything at this sort of price point.

The 2.8-inch screen isn't the biggest either. The dimensions affect some control elements, such as the space available for widgets and the text numberpad layout– although the QWERTY keyboard deals with the latter issue.

Generally, though, there was a reasonable amount of space to work fingers onscreen.

We occasionally found the multi-screen home screen swiping trying, as we attempted to avoid dabbing widgets as we stroked our way through the busy screens.

We'd have preferred a better email wizard for automatic settings installation, too, on a messaging-centric device.

The 3.2-megapixel camera has a decent interface, but image results were limited by its fixed focus lens and lack of additional flash illumination.

Although we found the browser easy to operate, it felt underpowered sometimes when rendering large rich pages.

Verdict

It's miles cheaper than the similarly-specified LG Intouch Max GW620 Android phone, and manages to offer similar functionality in most places.

Its slide out QWERTY keypad and social apps mark it out as a messaging and social networking heavy-hitter but it also delivers plenty of entertainment and loads of useful gadgetry for your bucks.

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More mobile phone reviews

Announcement: TechRadar launches new extended mobile phone section

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:50:00 GMT

Hello!

This is a quick update to tell you that from today, TechRadar has a new, expanded section devoted to mobile phone news and reviews.

You can find it on the tweaked main navigation under the News tab – click on Phones@TechRadar to see the new pages.

We've gathered all our mobile phone content in one place to make it easier for you to find the latest news, reviews and price/deals information for specific phones and specific phone brands, and introduced new ways to find information about phones or phone brands more easily.

And there are now more ways to find the right phone deal for you with extra links on every relevant page.

We've also introduced tags to TechRadar for the first time, which will hopefully make it easier for you to find related stories.

Have a look around and tell us what you think, or suggest areas we can improve, by emailing me.

Visit the new pages now!

Update: we're aware of a few minor teething problems which we are working on at the moment.

Cheers,

Nick,

Editor in Chief

James Cameron: 'Watching Avatar on an iPhone is dumb'

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:24:00 GMT

Director James Cameron has been speaking about the upcoming April Blu-ray release of Avatar, where he explained his dislike of watching movies on a small screen.

At the Avatar Blu-ray press conference, he announced that the best way to watch the movie was in 3D, despite the film not being available on the Blu-ray 3D format until November.

He doesn't, however, recommend watching the movie on the Apple iPhone.

"I don't feel that I'm making movies for iPhones," he explained. "If someone wants to watch it on an iPhone, I'm not going to stop them, especially if they're paying for it, but I don't recommend it.

"I think it's dumb, when you have characters that are so small in the frame that they're not visible."

And it's not only phones he has problems with, but laptops too.

"To me, there's a limit that you wouldn't want to go below," Cameron noted.

"I don't know. I've never watched Avatar on a laptop. I guess it probably works, but I don't recommend it.

"What I recommend is getting the coffee table out of the way and sticking your couch about four feet from your TV."

Shame to hold back

Cameron and co are hoping that the non-3D release of Avatar will plug a hole until the 3D Blu-ray version hits the shelves this winter.

To make it more appealing, there will an 'interactive' Avatar programme that consumers can join – a code will be given with purchases.

This will bring first-look bonus materials, special content and money off the 3D version of the movie.

Cameron explained the reasoning behind the lack of 3D Blu-ray, saying: "There just aren't that many players and screens yet. We have more of a long-term strategy, in that area.

"But, I think it would be a shame to hold back the Blu-ray when people want it now, and I love it. I think it's a great format."

He also gave some sage advice of how you should watch 3D in the home, telling the journalist-filled audience: "If you're going to go 3D, go big. Get the biggest set you can, and then sit as close as you can stand.

"That's my advice. Get the coffee table out of the way and slide the couch over, right in front of the TV."

Exclusive: Virgin Media to launch rival to Sky Player in 2010

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:23:00 GMT

Virgin Media has confirmed that it will be launching a rival to both the BBC's iPlayer and Sky Player by the end of 2010, with subscribers accessing content both online and through their mobile devices.

Speaking at the IPTV World Forum, Virgin Media's Alex Green – the Executive Director, Commercial, of TV and Online – twice stated that the Virgin Media Player would arrive this year and would offer the 'highest quality experience'.

"We'll be launching this year our player," said Green.

"This will deliver a super high quality click to watch experience for our subscribers to see their favourite on demand shows online and on their mobile.

"We're determined to get the experience right in terms of viewing quality and usability and we're taking advantage of the way technology has developed in the past couple of years to do that."

HD featured?

The announcement by Green suggested that HD could well be a feature of the Virgin Media Player.

"It…allows us to build on our recent slew of HD TV announcements like ITV Eurosport, Discovery, E4, Film 4 and others," he added.

"We have a strong HD line-up and our onus is to offer the highest quality experience on demand on TV, online and on mobile."

Full steam ahead

Although a Virgin Media Player was always likely, it seems that the company is going full steam ahead to get it out and available by the end of 2010.

This is also the time-line being given for the launch of Virgin Media's TiVo-enabled new set top boxes – which would suggest that the two services will tie together.

In the mobile realm, Virgin Media appears to be putting much greater onus on getting top quality phones – like the HTC Desire for instance – rather than simply offering cheap handsets that can be bolted on to the company's other offerings in broadband and television.

Magazine producers unsure about iPad prices

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:17:00 GMT

The Apple iPad launch is imminent, and to coincide with that a number of magazine providers are trying to work out the best pricing strategy for their publications.

According to Engadget, the Wall Street Journal will be coming for $17.99 (£12) per month, whereas the print version is $29 (£19.50) every 30-odd days.

Word is that the WSJ has had its very own iPad to tinker with for a few months (which makes sense, rather than just coding and guessing).

Is 30p enough?

Sources close to the WSJ (just to confuse matters) have also been given some tip-offs about what magazines are thinking of charging for their iPad-content, with some pricing more aggressively than others.

For instance Esquire will be coming in at $2.99 (£2) for the iPad version, where it's $4.99 (£3.30) on the newsstands.

But Men's Health has decided that working out new prices is just, well, too darn tricky and will be leaving both the physical mag and the iPad version at $4.99.

Moto bringing Android 2.1 to Milestone by April

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:18:00 GMT

Motorola might be releasing approximately a bagillion phones per minute these days, but that hasn't stopped it keeping it an eye on the older ones.

Well, we say older, as the Motorola Milestone only launched at the tail end of last year – hardly ancient in phone terms.

But it 'only' launched in the UK with Android 2.0, which is so last year – it's all about Android 2.1 these days, with all them fancy things like interactive wallpapers (trust us, they're awesome).

Upping the ante

So the good news if you're in Europe and have forked out the moolah for the Motorola Milestone: it will be getting the upgrade in a matter of days.

It's currently available for the Hong Kong and Macau markets at the moment, so if you can't wait and know a thing or two about modding your device, you can download it directly.

Otherwise, be patient and you'll be using a faster and more slick Moto Milestone before the end of Easter.

Dell finally comes clean with Aero Android phone

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:13:00 GMT

Dell has unveiled the western version of its Android phone - the Dell Aero.

The new Aero is apparently the lightest Android device in the world – which is hardly a headline grabber, but at least it's something.

It's running Android 1.5, but with a hope of a 2.1 upgrade in the near future, and it's also packing a 5MP camera.

When's it coming?

The Dell Aero has been seen in numerous spy shots in the past, as well as being released in China as the Mini 3i – it was also present at CES this year, but with no information on when it would be coming to other territories.

The main selling point the Dell Aero has is its overlay to the Android OS – we've not seen a great deal on what this will look like, but companies like HTC and Sony Ericsson have already been hard at working bringing similar things to the OS for much longer.

It's always nice to have another player in the market, but sadly we don't have a definite UK release date for the Dell Aero, but we hear it is coming in the near future.

Digg's native iPhone App arrives

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:42:00 GMT

[UPDATE - the new Digg app for iPhone is now available at the App Store]

Digg's highly anticipated native iPhone application is set to hit the Apple App Store at some point later today.

Mashable got the exclusive tip on the launch of the new Digg application for iPhone, which is sure to be a hugely popular news app for the hardcore news junkies amongst us.

Search, bury, comment

Digg's Kevin Rose first mentioned that they were planning an iPhone app late last year, with the new app supporting browsing popular, upcoming, and recent stories across topics and giving users the chance to dig and bury stories from within the app.

The app also offers users options for navigating comments and related stories.

Digg has offered an iPhone-optimised version of its site since 2007, so the app is sure to be a welcome addition to most Digg-er's iPhones

We'll be sure to keep an eye on the App Store for the new Digg app and let you know when it finally arrives.

Mozilla shuts down Firefox for Windows Phone 7

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:06:00 GMT

Mozilla has announced it is shutting down development of its Firefox Mobile platform for Windows Phone 7 Series.

The company has a long history of coding its mobile browser for Microsoft's handset platform, but since the redevelopment of Windows Mobile, Mozilla has had to shut down its development.

This is due to the fact Microsoft is not supporting native third-party application development on its platform, concentrating instead on working with its own components like Internet Explorer for Mobile.

Heavy heart

Technical Leader of the Mozilla Mobile team Stuart Parmenter wrote on his blog that he hopes the project can be started up again in the future:

"While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications.

"Because of this, we won't be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don't know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold.

"While I hope that we do see Microsoft provide us with a way to build Firefox for Windows Phone 7, we will continue to focus on the things that we can control: building a great consumer product on both Android and Maemo."

On the plus side, Parmenter says all the knowledge gained will serve other platforms equally as well, but it shows the Microsoft is taking a very hard line over this reboot of its mobile service.

HD2 finally converted to Android as HTC Evo

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:57:00 GMT

HTC has unveiled another Android super smartphone – the HTC Evo, the first 3G/4G handset in the world.

And if you liked the HTC HD2, you'll love this: a 4.3-inch screen, a 1GHz processor and a huge 8MP camera, the first from the Taiwanese firm.

The camera is also HD-capable with HDMI-port, making this a real spec-heavy device capable of downloading data much faster than the average 3G mobile.

HTC Sense is predictably plopped on top of the Android 2.1 experience, much likes its Legend and Desire brothers, so Facebook and Twitter integration will be offered as standard.

Google Goggles is offered in the box as well, making it easier to search for things in the real world, and there's also a forward facing camera to enable easy video conferencing.

Memory, all alone in the moonlight...

It will come with 1GB of internal memory as well as 512MB RAM, with an 8GB microSD card in the box too.

We knew there would be a phone like this coming from HTC after all the rumours and pictures of the HTC Supersonic – it's just a shame that name wasn't actually used.

The Evo is being brought to the US by Sprint, which offers 4G networks in 27 territories in the US. This is slightly worrying to us British-type folk, as we're currently without the high speed 4G goodness.

But don't worry, we'll be poking around to find out whether there will be stripped down version coming our way – come on, who doesn't want an Android version of the HD2?

Samsung fights back with new Android Galaxy S

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:39:00 GMT

Samsung has unveiled the next in its Android-powered line of smartphones – the Galaxy S.

The new phone packs a huge four inch screen with Super AMOLED technology – meaning a wider viewing angle, more vivid colours and a more 'immersive' experience according to Samsung.

The Galaxy S also comes with a 1GHz processor – bringing it up to speed with the likes of the HTC Desire and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 – which should mean lightning fast loading times.

It's Android 2.1-enabled right out the box, which means some cool extras like Live Wallpapers, and Layar augmented reality browser is included as well.

The camera side of things is taken care of with a 5MP snapper and forward facing video camera, although there's no mention of an LED flash.

Pocket-light

Dimensions-wise we're looking at 64.2 x 122.4 x 9.9mm and a weight of 118g, so not too bad in the pocket at all. Plus Samsung is throwing in either 16GB or 8GB of onboard storage with a microSD card slot for extra movies.

Add in all the natural Android extras – GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 etc - and you're looking at a pretty well-specified phone. Well, it needs to be to erase the memory of the Galaxy and Galaxy Portal, which were pretty snooze-worthy from Samsung.

The bad news is that while this is definitely going to be a worldwide release, there's no UK release date and certainly no UK price as yet for the Samsung Galaxy S – but all will become clear soon, we reckon.

In Depth: How much of Silverlight is in Windows Phone 7?

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:56:00 GMT

The Silverlight browser plug-in started out back in 2006 as a project called WPF/e – Windows Presentation Foundation Embedded – or as the team also called it, WPF Everywhere.

The idea was that it would ship for the browser in 2007 and then on Windows Mobile by the end of the year. Although Microsoft has demonstrated Silverlight Mobile several times since then, it's only just arriving on mobile.

The Symbian beta is available now and Windows Phone Series 7 treats it as much more than an add-on; it's one of the only two ways to write Windows Phone apps.

The version of Silverlight that will be on Windows Phone (that you can already try out with the emulator in the free Windows Phone Developer tools) is closer to the desktop version than you might expect (and it's hardware accelerated like Silverlight on the desktop).

"This isn't Silverlight 'lite', it isn't Silverlight 'different', it is Silverlight," corporate vice president Scott Guthrie told TechRadar. It includes "all the APIs of the current Silverlight version 3 and quite a bit of Silverlight 4; it's a superset plus some extras".

The difference is less about what the phone can run and more about thinking about what you need on a phone. "Pretty much all the features that we think are mobile-specific, that you'd want in the phone, are there," says Guthrie.

"There are features like printing and more business features that don't necessarily make sense in the phone, but all the graphics, the access to the webcam and microphone, those we already have."

Optimising Silverlight for phones

Microsoft has also done a lot of optimisation of the way Silverlight is rendered on Windows Phone, mainly, says Guthrie, "because on the phone you have ARM processors typically and instead of one giant one you have about four cores the more work you're doing on a processor - one quarter of an Arm processor - the slower your app is going to be. So we did a lot of work to partition the graphics operators out across multiple CPUs, and the animation system. We have to do that because otherwise you can't get above 12 frames per second."

Interestingly, he promises that those improvements will make their way back to desktop Silverlight; "probably in an update to Silverlight 4 and certainly by [the next version]".

The other main difference between Windows and Windows Phone is that Silverlight on the desktop supports multi-tasking (it's based on the Windows standard .NET components); although Guthrie says the Windows Phone OS is "a multi-tasking OS" third party Silverlight apps won't run in the background.

One reason is battery life: "As soon as you allow arbitrary apps in the background, you run things down".

The other is stability: "typically," he claims, "when Windows crashes, it's a driver – but you don't blame your USB mouse, you blame Windows. We're trying to be careful in terms of not providing a hand grenade for people to play with and not realise they can blow themselves up. We're trying to make sure the user experience is good out of the box."

For users frustrated by the notion that, say, the route in their navigation app would go away if they answer a phone call, he promises that the team is listening to feedback and "we're going to continue to innovate and learn".

Opera Mini browser submitted to iPhone App Store

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:31:00 GMT

Opera's super-speedy Opera Mini mobile browser has finally been submitted to the iPhone App Store.

We first got wind of the iPhone-flavoured browser at Mobile World Congress, where Opera noted it is "six times faster than Safari".

For this reason, it will be interesting to see if the browser is accepted, considering Apple rules its app store with something of an iron fist – especially when it comes to allowing web browsers on the store.

Customised and stylised

"The Opera Mini for iPhone sneak peek during MWC told us that we have something special," explained Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software in the company's release.

"Opera has put every effort into creating a customised, stylised, feature-rich and highly responsive browser that masterfully combines iPhone capabilities with Opera's renowned web experience, and the result is a high performing browser for the iPhone."

The Opera Mini browser is already on the Android Market and for BlackBerry handsets, albeit in beta form. It's also available as a full version for WinMo phones.

One of the features the browser seems to be lacking is the ability to use the iPhone's pinch-to-zoom feature.

But it seems that this could be something that is added to the app later on. If there is a 'later on'.