HTC Touch multimedia smartphone

With a touch screen and gesture controls, the HTC Touch has some obvious similarities to other recent phones. Is it a Windows Mobile phone worth getting your hands on?

For many recent phone releases, comparisons to the Apple iPhone seem irresistible, even when misplaced. The HTC Touch, however, was launched in the build-up to the iPhone release, and features a touch sensitive interface, complete with gestures, laid on top of Windows Mobile 6. Besides iPhone comparisons, the Touch is a strange beast in the Windows Mobile world, as versions of the OS exist for phones with no touch screen, or touch screens with no phone, but not for a phone with a touch screen but no keyboard. Of course, everything works, thanks to the stylus and pop-up onscreen keyboard. Still, it was hard to tell when problems with the touch were due to design problems from HTC, or just the general weakness of Windows Mobile 6 in dealing with a keyboard-free phone experience.

Design – Good

It is a cute phone. Openly codenamed the "Elf," before its recent touch overhaul, the phone is smaller than either the Apple iPhone, or the LG KE850 Prada phone. The 2.8-inch QVGA display looks very sharp, though fonts can appear a bit jagged. The phone has a five-way button centered below the screen, and to tiny green and red "send" and "end" buttons. The red also acts as a Windows "OK" button. The screen has a very resistant glass cover that stretches well past the lit pixels. In fact, the gesture to activate TouchFlo, HTC's touch-sensitive Today screen, relies on dragging your finger from below the LCD, which took us quite a few tries to figure out.

Which brings us to the touch screen. Though it looks great, it seriously lacks in sensitivity, especially compared to the iPhone. Whether this is due to the screen's hardware, the phone's processor, or Windows Mobile 6 is beyond us. We just found the screen to lack sensitivity in every area, from activating TouchFlo to navigating windows to working with programs. Occasionally, there was a delay in responding to our presses, and often we had to press firmly to get a response. TouchFlo, which is supposed to jump to life at an upwards swipe, and switch between screens with sideways gestures, almost never worked properly. We usually had to swipe sideways seven or eight times to get the screen to rotate and change. Downward swiping to close TouchFlo never once worked.

And then, beneath every slick icon and menu on TouchFlo's surface, you find Windows Mobile 6, which is a functional OS, but a graphical letdown. The onscreen keyboard is the standard pop-up from Windows Mobile, which requires you to break out the stylus, a very un-touch-like procedure. Navigating the phone without a stylus, except for the few functions available on TouchFlo, was impossible. Thankfully, HTC has ported their activity monitor drop down menu to the Touch. We first saw this feature on the T-Mobile Wing, and immediately found it indispensable on Windows Mobile. Basically, it lets you close active programs from the Today screen, which is nice because WM6 lets open software pile up, and the Touch lacks the RAM to deal with a heavy workload.

Calling – Very good

Calls on the HTC Touch sounded very good on AT&T's network in central New Jersey. The Touch loses nothing from Windows Mobile 6's calling features, and speaker-independent voice dialing, Bluetooth, conference calling and a speakerphone are all included. There was no dedicated button for voice dialing, but HTC's Today screen allows you to assign programs top-level icons, which solved the problem. Unfortunately, one of the best Windows Mobile 6 features, live search, is hobbled by the Touch's keyboard-less design. Live search allows you to begin typing in many programs and returns search results as you type. From the Today screen, this usually means you can start typing a name and get the number quickly. The Touch doesn't offer a keyboard on the Today screen, so the feature is lost. On the TouchFlo screens, the contact list is easily the coolest looking feature. Basically a "Hollywood Squares" grid of your favorite faces, the contacts screen offers a great, fun alternative to speed dial, and is a feature that takes advantage of the touch sensitive screen in a cool way.

Messaging – Mediocre

There are simply better choices for phones if you want to type. Typing on the Touch, however, is miserable. The phone does an excellent job displaying messages, and thanks to Windows Mobile 6, you get threaded SMS conversations and HTML e-mails, both of which were long-awaited. Still, if you have to reply to an e-mail in more than a few words, you're going to want to wait until you're back in front of the desktop, as tapping out letters on the Touch's tiny, boxy keyboard gets tiresome quickly. Windows Live brings MSN messenger support, but other IM protocols are lacking. Probably for the best, as we can't stress enough that the Touch should be a read-only affair.

Productivity – Mediocre

The HTC Touch isn't lacking any of Windows Mobile 6's excellent productivity tools, they simply aren't as usable on the device without a keyboard. You get the full Office Mobile suite, but we can't see using the device for creating, or even seriously editing, a document, though reading worked very well. For scheduling, you get the standard Outlook calendars, which pack robust features, but again, you probably won't find yourself creating too many appointments on the Touch, thanks to its lack of keys.

Multimedia – Very good

To improve on Windows Media Player, HTC has added the Audio Manager app, which basically acts as a music player with large buttons, to facilitate using it on the touch screen. Otherwise, the phone has all the synchronization options you'd expect on a standard WM6 device, and can play all the usual file formats. The touch screen isn't really sensitive enough for good shuttle controls, and of course the Windows Mobile software lacks the visual flourish of numerous competitors. Still, it gets the job done.

The same can be said of the Web browsing experience. Though Internet Explorer is just as capable as we've seen on any WM6 phone, scrolling through pages on the touch screen was not smooth. Occasionally, we'd get a grab-and-throw sort of action like we saw on the iPhone. Some times, though, only the scroll bars worked properly, and these were small enough that our fingers had trouble tapping them accurately. Also, we wish HTC would have tied zooming into the touch features, as Apple did.

Getting one

The Touch is available unlocked, and will work with local EDGE networks. Even better, the phone uses Wi-Fi, so internet access won't be hard to find. We found our review unit through Dynamism, at Mobile Phone Shop. At the moment, Dynamism can get one for you for $530, with a lead time of less than a week. We've had no technical problems with our review unit, but Dynamism stresses their lifetime customer service if you have any problems with your device.
Source:http://www.infosyncworld.com/

A touch of convenience

For anyone eyeing Apple's iPhone in this part of the world, HTC's Touch is the only game in town so far. We get a feel for it and wonder if it'll leave us hungry for more.

Under its new HTC banner, the former Dopod company has just released the Touch, a Pocket PC phone that tries to be a little different from the rest.

What makes the Touch different is that HTC has redesigned the usual Pocket PC interface to be a little more finger-navigation friendly.

This means that comparisons to the also just-released Apple iPhone, which shares a similar finger-centric design, are inevitable.

It might actually be a coincidence actually, since product development cycles are such that it would be next to impossible to design and ship a product like the Touch from the date of the iPhone announcement.

However, as we'll see in the review, finger navigation is where the similarity ends, since the implementation of the interface in the Touch is completely different from the iPhone's.

Also, both products have a completely different operating system from each other.

Touch me

Setting aside the interface enhancements for the moment, I have to say that the Touch is a very pretty device – it's very small (smaller than any Pocket PC that I can think of) and so thin that it is slimmer than most candybar-style cellphones.

Then there's the finish. The Touch comes with the silky, matte-black finish found on Motorola's RAZR phones, which means you can not only get a good, non-slip grip on it, but it is also a hard-wearing finish that can withstand scratches.

The other thing you'll probably notice is that unlike most Pocket PCs, the Touch's screen is flush with the rest of the body.

This makes it easier for fingertip navigation since your finger is never stopped by a raised bezel on the side of the screen when swiping, but this also means that the screen is pretty much unprotected if the phone ever falls to the ground.

Look closer and you'll be forgiven for thinking that the Touch doesn't have a memory card slot – actually it does but you first have to slide off the battery cover at the back, then open a silver door on the side of the device to access the MicroSD card slot.

It is a bit of a hassle, but thankfully you don't have to turn off the Touch to gain access to the memory card slot.

Source:http://star-techcentral.com

The Nokia N95 and ultra convergence

Ultra convergence, as exemplified in the Nokia N95, is a topic I've commented on in the past, and not always in a positive way. Read on for some thoughts on the recent v12 firmware upgrade and a link to a very relevant essay...


The story so far: the Nokia N95 gets released, with v10 firmware and, while everyone applauds the sheer wonderfulness of the hardware, there are problems. The battery life is very disappointing, there are a number of serious camera bugs, GPS lock took an eternity, the limited RAM impinges on almost everything you try and do, from zooming into an image to using Web, I could go on.

The result was that I used the N95 for a short while and then got frustrated, switching to a less complicated smartphone, the E70 (which itself has had a bit of a chequered firmware history, but that's another story!)

Ah. A month later, v11 firmware appears on Nokia Software Updater and I upgraded in and instant and tried using it day-to-day. Not bad, RAM use seemed better, crashes were less frequent, but the GPS was still very slow and some camera bugs remained. The N95 got shelved once again, while I played with the E90 (something of a Nseries to Eseries theme seems to be developing here....)

Another month goes by and v12 appears. With Assisted GPS, with the N95 using a data connection to bring down the time taken to find the satellites, to great success. And even RAM usage seems a lot better, with terrific image zooming and Web use with almost no memory limits. And the camera 'sharpness' bug was finally fixed, hoorah.

Unfortunately, new bugs have crept in. There's now a hugely annoying missing-keypress bug, in which one in every couple of dozen keypresses gets err... 'missed' by the OS. And doing 'Search by category' inside Nokia Maps causes the phone to restart. Just as bad, I was using the camera last night to take some video at my daughter's school open day and, ten minutes after finishing shooting, the N95 was still very warm, symptomatic of some software process inside the device that's still running flat out, with the battery seemingly having gone from full to one bar inside half an hour, I've seen this sort of behaviour before on my old N93. Removing and reinserting the battery seemed to do the trick, with the phone obviously now returning to normal temperature and even showing three bars of battery left now that the rogue processor load wasn't present.

So, reluctantly, for the third time I've had to set the N95 aside, yet again for an Eseries device(!), this time the E61i.

Which is the one I picked in this week's hardware consensus article, if only because it's a one piece design that's virtually bulletproof and none of its features are so cutting edge (read N95-alike) that they're still immature.

You'll remember that I bemoaned the complexity of modern smartphones (and yes, even the new iPhone reportedly crashes quite a bit) in 'The way of the modern world', six months ago, in which I tried to rationalise the way that modern devices are now so complex that they can't be expected to work perfectly 100% of the time. Although at the time I was referring to the N93 as my main example, the same essay holds true today for the Nokia N95.
resource:http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/5579_The_Nokia_N95_and_ultra_conver.php

Top Ten Motorola Mobile Phone Accessories

Music and multimedia phones like the Motorola Q, Samsung Blackjack, BlackBerry Pearl and LG Chocolate require more power and memory than traditional cell phones, which is driving our memory card, charger and extended battery business.

The emergence of certain wireless innovations like A2DP Bluetooth is also driving interest in newer accessory technology, like stereo headsets and high-performance batteries specifically designed to support the significant processing power found in the new smartphones.

list of Top Ten Cell Phone Accessories this summer:

1. Motorola H350 Bluetooth Headset (all colors)

2. Car and Travel Chargers (particularly for RAZR, BlackBerry Pearl, LG Chocolate and Samsung Blackjack)

3. Cases and Holsters (particularly for RAZR, BlackBerry Pearl, LG Chocolate and Samsung Blackjack)

4. Jabra BT125 Bluetooth Headset

5. Kingston 1GB Micro SD Memory Cards

6. Anycom Aris-21 Bluetooth Headset

7. Motorola H500 (Project Red)

8. Motorola Mobile Phone Tools 4.0 Software

9. Seidio High-Performance Extended Capacity Batteries (for Treo, BlackBerry and other smartphone devices)

10. Wi-Ex zBoost Wireless Signal Boosters

The appearance of Motorola's Mobile Phone Tools 4.0 on the top ten list indicates a change in the way cell phone users view their phones. In offering a powerful synchronization solution, Mobile Phone Tools is perfect for people who store entire address books, calendars and other personal information on their cell phones, and consistently send data from PC to cell phone, or vice versa. Also, many phones now come with A2DP Bluetooth, which means they stream stereo sound to Bluetooth Stereo headphones. Customers that take advantage of these phones and headphones can listen to their music without a cord.

The Messiah phone cometh

Andrew Lim previews Apple's 'revolutionary' iPhone handset

This week Apple's highly anticipated iPhone will hit US shops, arriving in Europe at the end of the year. Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, announced the 'revolutionary' handset back in January at the Macworld Conference & Expo. Ever since its unveiling the iPhone has generated an unprecedented level of media coverage for a mobile phone, impressively picking up nicknames such as the Messiah phone, the Jesus phone and even the God phone.

To the uninitiated it may all seem a little over the top but Apple claims to have ‘reinvented the phone' and given its pedigree and Steve Jobs' eye for detail, the iPhone could indeed be the phone that everyone's been waiting for. It combines Internet, music, telephony and video access with a large 3.5-inch colour touchscreen, in an attractive package that looks like it will fit in well with the rest of Apple's trendy product portfolio.

Unlike any mobile phone touchscreen you may have used before, the iPhone's touchscreen is far more finger-friendly, letting you tap it, brush it sideways and simultaneously touch it with two fingers, expanding or contracting images using a pinching motion. Turn the screen on its side and it automatically changes the screens layout from portrait to landscape, which is particularly useful when you want to view content in widescreen.

While the majority of mobile phones claim to have music players, Web browsers and other similarly useful apps, the iPhone appears to deliver on this promise. The on-board iPod app, for example, which you can listen to using a standard pair of headphones, has all the features associated with a standalone iPod but integrates iTunes' Cover Flow feature, and lets you search through tracks by flicking your finger up and down an album or track list on the screen.

Mobile phone users have traditionally used WAP sites. These are typically ugly and useless stripped-down versions of real websites. Even those with a more advanced phone are still forced to stare at a small portion of a full sized page, scrolling around a site as if peering at it through a tiny peep-hole. Apple have gone some way to changing this. The Safari browser displays the whole page at a reduced size and lets you zoom in on the bits you want to see properly by tapping the screen. Safari on the iPhone also supports Web 2.0 apps, although none have been officially announced yet.

Other noteworthy applications include Google Maps that lets you find directions and obtain location based information. If the iPhone has a 'killer app', it may be YouTube. Given how popular the video hosting site is and how good the videos look on the iPhone's large screen, Apple may find that 'Tube-addicts' lap this product up. If you want to send a friend a link to a funny video, then you can do it via the iPhone's email client. The email client supports POP3 and IMAP accounts, including Google Mail and Yahoo.

Let us not forget that this is also a mobile phone and compared to other phones it offers some pretty impressive services. The user interface is geared towards making calling and messaging straightforward. There's the option to set up a favourite contacts list, giving you quick access to your nearest and dearest. Conference calling is a cinch and you can go through your voicemails in a list format, selecting the specific one you want to listen to rather than have to listen to them all.

Add to all the above, 8GB (or 4GB depending on what model you buy) worth of on-board memory that can store up to 2000 songs, Wi-Fi connectivity, a snazzy docking station and a pair of headphones that lets you listen to music and make or receive calls, and what you have is a very impressive device indeed. But every silver lining has a cloud and many sceptics have pointed out a few flaws with the messiah phone that could possibly see it tumble from the heavens.

For starters, touchscreens can be fiddly to use and don't provide the reassuring tactile feedback you get from mechanical keys. There have also been murmurs about the 3.5-inch widescreen display getting scratched and phone geeks are angry about the piddly 2-megapixel camera, the relatively large design, the lack of 3G connectivity and FM radio and the hefty price tag that stands at £250 for the 4GB model and £300 for the 8GB model, not including network charges.

Battery life has also been vigorously questioned, particularly since the iPhone aims to be everything to everyone. If you listen to a couple of hours worth of music during your daily commute, make phone calls throughout the day and watch YouTube videos in the evening while you sip a pint with your mates, then how long is the battery life really going to last?

In an attempt to appease any pre-launch doubts, Apple recently released a tour-guide-style video on its site that shows how easy the touchscreen is to use, and announced that the display will be protected by optical-quality glass, which should lessen the chances of it getting defiled. They have also put up a battery life chart that shows the iPhone's battery life supersede that of several major competitors and expressed confidence that their pricing plan is fair, comparing any raised eyebrows with the reaction to early iPod price plans.

As for the other issues, there are rumours that a 3G model will be available by the time the iPhone reaches the UK but unfortunately, no word on an FM radio or improvements on the camera. Regarding the iPhone's size, speculation is rife that Apple has already designed a nano version of the iPhone, which will be made available possibly some time next year.

Whether or not any of these potential problems get in the way of Apple taking over the mobile phone market, as they did the MP3 player market, has yet to be seen. If there are any major problems with the iPhone, people and in particular journalists will be quick to raise the alarm. But if the iPhone fails it won't break Apple, it will just tarnish its clean and fresh image. Judging by how excited people have got over a product they have never seen in the flesh, the Messiah phone should find itself rich in disciples.

Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Motorola Introduces The Vista Of Music In Mobile Handsets

Motorola, Inc. the renowned frontrunner in wireless and broadband communications and also the mobile sponsor at the Music Matters 2007 forum in Hong Kong today announced here of a key upgradation to its motomusic.com.cn portal. It has been found giving an open call to an assortment of leaders of the music business to join with Motorola and mobile network operators around Asia for the creation of a music renaissance.

Motorola is renowned throughout the world for its innovative techniques and leadership in wireless and broadband communications. Being inspired by the vision of Seamless Mobility, the name of Motorola has become synonymous to get and stay connected simply and seamlessly to the people, information, and entertainment. The company excels in this by designing and delivering "must have" products, "must do" experiences, and powerful networks -- along with a full complement of support services.

The announcement of its new ROKR brand of music-optimized handsets and accessories and highlighted by the powerful ROKR Z6 was followed by the announcement of its upgradation and expansion of its online entertainment portal. It has come to the knowledge that the MOTOMusic site in Mainland China is at present offering over 100,000 music tracks for the sake of purchase and download while making safe the portal's position as the one of the most important online commercial music services in the entire country.

Speaking on the occasion to the Press gathering Michael Tatelman, the Corporate Vice President and President of Motorola Asia Pacific Mobile Devices said, "In the face of the changes that digitization has wrought on the music industry, we must work together to create new ways to experience the music we all love, ways that are relevant to the way Asians live today." "Making that happen is going to take more than outstanding mobile devices – it demands that manufacturers, operators, artists, labels, and service providers share a vision that recognizes that the future of music is mobile, and that we must make mobile music even better than the music experiences we grew up with, " he added.

From the official sources it is revealed, that Motorola's accomplishment in the delivery of an impeccably integrated music experience is indebted at best to the work the company has undertaken for the building of a comprehensive mobile music ecosystem.
Source:http://www.wallstreetactivist.com/motorola/motorola_introduces_the_vista_of_music_in_mobile_handsets_20070607_164_121.html

Big Brother Mobile Phone: Samsung u600

After seeing this phone a few times on big brother 8 I am left wondering “What Features does the Samsung U600 have?“, well as this has been the main phone on all big brother 8 advertisements I thought we best give it a mention.

On the 25th of May Phones Review reported that the Samsung U600 Ultra Edition II is the number one top seller in the UK which knocked the Nokia N95 of the top spot.

Now with the heavy promotion of the Samsung U600 mobile phone on Big Brother 8 this phone is just going to get more popular.

Samsung U600 Features Include:

* Up to 3 hours 30 minutes talk time
* Up to 250 hours standby time
* Yahoo search, Business card recognition, Organizer, Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) plus Voice memo and Built-in hands free
* FM radio, Java MIDP 2.0, T9
* MP3/AAC/eACC/WMA player
* 2.2 Inch TFT, 256K colors - 240 x 320 pixels Display
* GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth with A2DP and USB
* 3.2 MegaPixel Camera with 2048×1536 pixels
* 81 Grams - 103.5 x 49.3 x 10.9 mm
* microSD (TransFlash) Card Slot

Source:http://www.product-reviews.net/2007/06/08/big-brother-mobile-phone-samsung-u600/

Nokia Launches Three New Phones

Beyond the fashionable surface attributes of the Nokia 8600 Luna, the new handset offers several useful features, including a micro-USB port that enables charging, audio, and data connectivity through one connection. In addition, the Nokia 8600 Luna offers quad-band GSM, EDGE, GPRS, and HSCSD, as well as a 2-megapixel camera.

Mobile phone Nokia maker added a moon goddess, a slider, and a classic to its lineup on Thursday. One model, the 8600 Luna, is a high-priced, stainless-steel-and-glass "fashion phone," and the other two, the 6500 classic and the 6500 slide, are intended for the midrange of the market.

Using language more often employed to sell a hot new sports car, Nokia describes the 8600 Luna as having a "mysterious allure." Beneath a semi-opaque smoked glass case, "a gentle keypad illumination pulsates" like a "heartbeat" as this "organic, virtually alive form" waits for a call.

Nokia Senior Vice President Heikki Norta said that the company had an "obsession" for every detail in this device. "We took painstaking effort to ensure that the experience delivered by every surface -- from the smoothness of glass against the face to the warmth of the stainless steel in the palm to the superior tactile feedback of the keypad -- would surpass any and all expectation."

Nokia's Fashion Statement

Beyond the surface attributes that Nokia compares favorably to its namesake, the Roman goddess of moonlight, the Luna offers several useful features, including a micro-USB port that enables charging, audio, and data connectivity through one connection. There is support for quad-band GSM, EDGE, GPRS, and HSCSD, as well as video-recording capabilities, a music player, and a 2-megapixel camera.

The cell phone is "the most personal of personal technologies," said Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis. "You carry it with you all the time, so manufacturers can differentiate it primarily on the basis of fashion." He compared the mobile world to the car industry, where, once users could assume all cars had the ability to provide basic transportation, differences emerged and purchase decisions were often driven on the basis of style.

"Nokia has done extraordinarily well with the fashion phone," he noted, "especially in Asia." Greengart said that the U.S. market, in contrast, is dominated by the carriers, and the carriers don't generally offer fashion phones.

Greengart noted that the Luna is the successor to Nokia's 8800 series, which has sold "well over a million units." In contrast, he said that Motorola started with the fashionable Razr and "turned it into a volume play" by lowering the price. But now, he suggested, Motorola is left "with no fashion phone" because the Razr price is so low and the model is so widely accessible.

Classic and Slider Phones

The other two new Nokia phones, the 6500 classic and 6500 slide, are being touted by Nokia as having been created "with maximum usability in mind." They feature large keys, "ergonomically correct dimensions and surfaces," and WCDMA technology.

The 6500 classic offers a seamless case of anodized aluminum, dual-band 3G for fast connectivity, quad-band GSM for roaming worldwide, a 2-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, a music player, a micro-USB connector, and 1 GB of memory.

In the 6500 slide, a 3.2-megapixel camera is equipped with Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, and 8x digital zoom. A TV-out jack enables images or video to be seen on any TV set with RCA inputs.

The 8600 Luna is expected to go on sale in the second quarter for 700 euros (or about $940), with the 6500 slide and classic following in the third quarter. The classic will be about 320 euros ($430) and the slider about 370 euros ($500).

Source:http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Nokia-Launches-Three-New-Phones/story.xhtml?story_id=00100040PGOA