Archive for October, 2009

By October 13, 2009 Read More →

Touch Pro2 and Snap get 6.5

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Today HTC has released the 6.5 rom for the HTC Touch Pro2. Having the device I am currently installing it and experiencing a few problems/errors here and there.

The main problem seems to be with MyPhone. The version included in the ROM is an older version and I have seen a couple of errors pop up before the auto update kicks in.

I’m going to attempt to record the podcast this evening whilst updating. I will try not to swear.

Windows Mobile 6.5 for Finnish version fo the Touch Pro 2

Windows Mobile 6.5 for WWE versions of the Touch Pro 2

Windows Mobile 6.5 for WWE versions of the Snap

Posted in: Phones
By October 13, 2009 Read More →

Orange / Microsoft Windows Mobile application development support programme

Lancement-de-la-TV-HD-mobile-chez-Orange-1

Are you developing Windows Mobile applications, or would you like to?

If you’re new to Windows Mobile, or you’re an existing Windows Mobile developer, this programme will give you technical support and architecture assistance to get your idea or app into the
Orange Application Shop
(including incorporating the latest Windows Mobile 6.5 features and touchscreen capabilities).

If you don’t want to take part in the programme, and have a Windows app ready for commercialisation, then use our normal submission processlink arrow

[Source Press Release]

Posted in: Phones
By October 13, 2009 Read More →

How iPhone should handle multitasking

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I really hope someone at Apple sees these concept interfaces from Ocean Observations. They’ve taken the best elements of the Pre’s card system, combined them with Cover Flow, and created an awesome vision of multitasking on the iPhone.

Posted in: Phones
By October 13, 2009 Read More →

HTC Touch2 Review

The HTC Touch2 is one of the first Windows Mobile 6.5 devices to hit retailers but with so many nice alternatives available and more coming very soon how does the Touch2 do and where is its place?

 Touch2-angled-left

HTC Touch2

What’s in the box:

  • Phone
  • Battery
  • Charger
  • Wired Headset
  • USB Cable

Also take a look at Matt’s HTC Touch2 unboxing video to see what the device has to offer.

 

The ten second review:

Device: HTC Touch2

Price: £285.20

Summary: A small yet feature packed Windows Phone.

Best of: WiFi, A-GPS, TouchFlo

Worst of: Size, Video Recording

Buy it now from: Clove Technology

 

HTC Touch2 Specification:

  • Operating System – Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
  • Processor – Qualcomm MSM7225, 528 MHz
  • Memory – RAM – 256 MB / ROM – 512 MB
  • Display – 2.8-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with QVGA resolution
  • Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Europe/Asia: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
  • Bluetooth 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
  • Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b/g
  • 3.5 mm audio jack
  • HTC ExtUSB (11-pin mini-USB 2.0)
  • Internal GPS antenna
  • microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
  • Audio supported formats AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV, MIDI, M4A
  • Video supported formats WMV, ASF, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, M4V, AVI
  • 3.2 megapixel colour camera with fixed focus
  • Zoom bar
  • Up to 370 minutes for WCDMA
  • Up to 440 minutes for GSM
  • Battery – Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery 1100 mAh
  • Dimensions – 104 X 55 X 12.9 mm (LxWxT) (4.1 X 2.16 X 0.51 inches)
  • Weight – 110 grams (4 ounces) with battery
  • Warranty – 2 Years

 

General:

The top of the device contains only the 3.5 mm headset jack.

Touch2-top

HTC Touch2 Top

 

The bottom house the USB port and the microphone.

Touch2-bottomHTC Touch2 Bottom

 

The microSD card slot and the up/down rocker is situated on the left side of the phone.

Touch2-left

HTC Touch2 Left 

The right side is empty apart from the stylus at the base of the handset.

Touch2-right

HTC Touch2 Right

On the back of the device is the camera lens and also the speaker grill.

Touch2-back

HTC Touch2 Back

 

Highlights:

  • WiFi
  • A-GPS
  • Windows Mobile 6.5

Lowlights:

  • May be too small for some people
  • Video capture is not good at all.

 

Review:

Wow, my first Windows Mobile 6.5 device to play with. I was a little excited when Matt told me the HTC Touch2 was on its way. If you have read many of my reviews you may of noticed I’m a big fan of HTC!

In this review I am not going to focus too much on the changes that 6.5 has brought us but instead will be focusing on the device in general.

First impressions when unboxed were pretty good. The device looks nice. Its a little different than many of HTCs other devices as it has a kind of satin silver band around the front of it. The back cover is also silver and extremely smooth. Below the screen is the zoom bar which is a touch sensitive strip allowing users to zoom as much or as little as required on certain features on the phone, such as web browsing of viewing photos. This bar has been on a few HTC handsets now and although I tend not to use it myself it does work.

Under the zoom bar are the phones hard keys. These consist of a send and end key, a back button, a windows button and finally a home key. These are a new design for HTC and we will also see them in the HD2 (Touch2s big brother) which is due out very shortly. The keys are flush with the device but all give a proper click when pressed. They work perfectly and feel nice to use.

Touch2-front

Touch2 Front

 

As I was writing this I remembered I hadn’t opened the MicroSD card slot so I gave it a try. Could I do it – NO. After a minute of faffing about I realised I needed to remove the battery cover. Now not only is this a bit of a pain as I have not had to do this on any of my previous HTC devices but the little door that covers the card slot feels really cheap and bad quality. Once opened it dangles on a bit of plastic and I thought to myself that I wonder how long this is going to last. I know that most users will not be swapping SD cards very often but you never know.

When it comes to the homescreen on the Touch2 you have two options. The first is to use the new Windows Mobile 6.5 screen. This is much better than the previous version and has no real similarities.

Home

6.5 Home Screen

As you will see above, the screen gives you a list the most common features and this allows quick access to them. Each header can be swiped left or right to give more options. For example if you press on the pictures tab you can swipe to see the next picture (and you will see a thumbnail of the image) and so on.

The second option is to use HTCs TouchFlo which I prefer.

HTC_Touch2_Front

TouchFlo

This gives access to similar features as the Windows version but in a different format. There are a couple of changes in TouchFlo now. The first is that the weather is incorporated into the main screen and sits below the clock. This can be set to update automatically if required. The other main change is that the tabs at the bottom are now in colour. Prior to the Touch2 these were just white on a black background.  The whole homescreen now looks a lot more colourful and modern. You can swipe along the 11 tabs really easily and its so smooth. I love it!

Pressing the windows key on the device is the same as pressing the on screen start key at the top left hand side. This drops you into the main menu where the icons are set out in a new format. Again these are super colourful and look great. You can rearrange the order of them but it is done in a strange way. When you select the icon you wish to move the only option that is given is to move it to the top. Not perfect but I can live with that. On the TouchFlo tab bar there is a “favorites” option where you can store up to 18 of your most used applications. This certainly makes life easier!

The resistive screen on the Touch2 is only 2.8 inches which in this day and age is small for a smartphone, however it works very well. Its responsive to touch and glides well. The main reason for Microsoft upgrading the software to 6.5 was to make it more finger friendly and they have. The Touch2 does come with a stylus and I have only used it once which is good news as I hate using them.

As the Touch2 is a Window Phone it comes with all the stuff you would expect. You can view, alter and create Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote docs, you can have practically unlimited phonebook entries and messages. Contacts and calendar can be synced with Outlook. Windows Live and Messenger are included as well as Adobe Reader.

There is a nice YouTube client which is the same as on other HTC devices and its great! An added bonus is that a CoPilot Live 8 trial is thrown in for good measure. You can use it for 15 days free of charge. Please see my review of CoPilot for further details.

Social networking apps work a treat with the Touch2. From the new Windows Marketplace I downloaded Microsoft’s  Facebook and MySpace apps and they are pretty good. There are also many Twitter apps for Windows Phones and I used both Pocketwit and Twikini on the device and they did there job well. If you use Twitter please follow us – twitter.com/tracyandmatt for regular updates.

Web Browsing on the Touch2 was not bad. It comes pre-installed with the latest Internet Explorer as well as Opera browser.  Opera is the one I prefer but again this comes down to personal choice. As its Windows, if you don’t like either of these then there are lots of other browsers you can use.

I was expecting the music player on the Touch2 to be good like on there other devices and I wasn’t wrong. Through the speakers the quality was reasonable and fairly loud but through the headphones the quality was outstanding. Good job HTC!

The camera did a pretty good job to for a 3MP. It took pictures very quickly and it uses the same interface as on other HTC phones. The quality was better than expected (click here for sample),  but when it came to viewing some videos I had taken, on my PC they were so so bad! It looked like I had used a mobile phone from when video recording was first introduced. I don’t know how it can go so wrong!

Watching movies on the device is a different ball game altogether. As its a Windows Phone you can download software that will allow you to watch pretty much any format. I convert my DVDs to MP4 format and can then watch them on my phone whenever the need arises.

Messaging was simple on the handset. Although the screen is only 2.8 inches the various onscreen keyboards are great. There is the standard WinMo compact qwerty which can only be used with the stylus, a phone keypad giving you three letters on each key and finally a full qwerty which is my preferred choice. All use haptic feedback.  I was surprised how good the keyboard worked on such a small screen.

 

Conclusion:

The HTC Touch2 is a great little phone. If you want a small, pocketable device that does pretty much everything then you cant really go wrong with it. It will never compete with the forthcoming HD2 or the recent HTC Touch Pro2 or HD but it’s not supposed to. A fantastic little device HTC, you’ve done yourselves proud again.

 

Posted by: James

Posted in: Reviews
By October 13, 2009 Read More →

How to Tattoo your Tattoo

HTCs newest Android device is now available to buy on contract and it wont be long until it can be bought sim free as well.

tattoo2

HTC Tattoo

 

However, HTC are from today offering an additional service. www.tattoomyhtc.com offers users of the Tattoo handset the option to customise the outer shell of there handset, hence the name Tattoo.

Users have two options. They can either pay 11.99 Euros for a pre-designed cover or pay 14.99 Euros to design there own, either by using the Tattoo Studio or by uploading there own images.

tat1 tat2

tat3 tat4

Sample Designs

As you can see above there are some nice designs available but I think the real beauty will be designing your own and making it unique, like a Tattoo.

An interesting concept HTC and I’m sure it will be popular. I am certainly going to Tattoo my Tattoo when I get one!

 

Posted by: James

Posted in: News
By October 13, 2009 Read More →

N900: Video Unboxing

 

The Nokia N900 was the stand-out device from Nokia World back in September, and we’ve been tracking the Maemo 5 smartphone ever since.  Imagine our surprise, then, when a pre-release N900 dropped onto the SlashGear test bench today; the hardware is final, so the 5-megapixel autofocus Carl Zeiss camera is onboard, together with HSPA, WiFi b/g, a 3.5-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

 

 

The Nokia N900 is currently available to preorder in the US and UK, priced at $649 and at £499 respectively. Early suggestions give a October 19th release, though Nokia UK are currently suggesting the N900 won’t arrive until November 2009.

Posted in: Phones
By October 12, 2009 Read More →

Sony Ericsson W395 Review

The Sony Ericsson W395 was first announced back in February this year and is part of the Walkman family. Is it a worthy music device though?

W395-angled-right

W395

What’s in the box:

  • Handset
  • Battery
  • Charger
  • USB Cable
  • Headphones
  • Manual/Warranty

 

Sony Ericsson W395 Specification:

 

  • Dimensions – 96 x 47 x 14.9mm
  • Weight – 96g
  • Display TFT 256 colours
  • Speakerphone with stereo speakers
  • Internal Memory – 10mb
  • External Memory – Memory stick micro, up to 4Gb
  • GPRS
  • Edge
  • Bluetooth V2 with A2DP
  • Camera – 2MP
  • Video Recording
  • SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, IM
  • Browser – WAP/2.0 xHTML, HTML (openwave), RSS Reader
  • Radio – Stereo FM with RDS
  • Games
  • Java
  • Battery – Stand-by up to 480 hrs, Talk Time up to 8 hours.

 

General:

 

The top of the W395 contains only the memory card slot.

W395-top

Top

On the left is just the Charging port.

W395-left

Left Side

The right hand side houses the up/down volume rocker and also the camera key.

W395-right

Right Side

The back of the device has only the camera as a feature but it also has some nice logos!

W395-back

Back Side

The front of the device is where the action is at.

W395-front
Front

 

Highlights:

  • Easy to use
  • Lightweight
  • Flashing Purple Light!

 

Lowlights:

  • No 3G/Wi-Fi
  • Bad music sound Quality

 

Review:

To be honest I have never been a huge fan of Sony Ericssons but that doesn’t mean I wont give this device a honest review. The handset certainly feels nice in the hand, extremely lightweight and well balanced when in its open position. Build quality feels reasonable although the battery cover does feel a little flimsy.

The keys on the front of the device are nice and easy to use. They are evenly spaced making light work of finding the one you want without looking at the device. The centre key is surrounded by a D-Pad which has a nice purple light set behind it. Looks great in the dark!

As expected there are dedicated music keys. The one on the top left takes you straight into your music folder to allow you to choose a track and the other music key, bottom left, drops you into the music player itself. The music quality using the stereo speakers is certainly loud and of not bad quality. The purple light flashes when music is played, cool! With the headphones plugged in I was a bit disappointed. The quality was not great. In fact it was worse than most other phones I have tried and that’s a lot! Considering this is meant to be a music device its a bit of a poor show. The headphones may contribute to the bad sound but as Sony Ericsson insist on using there own USB connecter thingy I could not try the device with my own headphones. Also the headphone connector is massive and adds a good bit of bulk to the width of the device. Pretty flashing lights though!

For those of you that like to listen to the radio on a mobile device you wont be disappointed as the W395 has one and it works fine, although the sound quality isn’t great.

The camera was to be as expected, not great. With no flash low light images are a no no.

Text messaging was fairly painless. The number pad on the phone is nice. The buttons are raised in the centre and dip on the edges to help guide you across them when speed texting.

Connectivity is a bit limited. No 3G or Wi-Fi means web browsing is slow and using the browser on the device felt like I had gone back in time about five years.

There are some quite nice applications in the organizer section. The calendar is decent and creating events is simple. As expected there is also an alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, tasks and calculator.

One feature that I wasn’t expecting to find on this device was flight mode. Good job Sony Ericsson – the kids can play there music on the plane.

 

Conclusion:

Overall I think the target market for this device is most defiantly children. If having never owned a mobile before then this is not a bad choice. At under £60.00 on pay as you go its reasonable and it must be popular as I found it for sale with all four major UK networks.

My main overall reservations about the W395 were that it just felt a bit dated and although its a Walkman phone the music quality was not what I expected. I’m sure you get what you pay for and it just happens to be that this is a low end device.

Posted in: Reviews
By October 12, 2009 Read More →

Blackra1n now available

blackra1n

Geohot’s done it again! Beating the iPhone Dev Team to the punch, he’s just released an iPhone 3.1.2 jailbreak dubbed as blackra1n that not only works on the iPhone 3G S, but all versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s even compatible with the 3G iPod Touch though tethered. To boot it, you’ll have to rerun blackra1n again. This time around, it’s Mac users turn to be left in the dark as this maiden version of blackra1n only works with Windows. Geohot also reasserts the warning issued by the iPhone Dev Team for all those who have unlocked their iPhones – don’t upgrade to firmware 3.1.2 using iTunes. Once you’ve done this, the baseband can no longer be downgraded, and in effect, cannot be unlocked anymore.

So, are you ready to take this iPhone 3.1.2 blackra1n jailbreak for spin? If you do muster up the courage to try this out, don’t forget to hit us up in the comments section below as we’d certainly love to hear your take on this latest iPhone jailbreak.

[blackra1n, PMPtoday via bgr]

Posted in: Phones
By October 11, 2009 Read More →

Samsung B7620 Giorgio Armani

GSMarena have acquired some nice photos of the new Giorgio Armani phone from Samsung.

The Samsung B7620 is the third device released in the Armani range and is targeted at those designer business types to look cool with there expensive suits!

B7620

B7620
 

The device itself is the colour gold which is defiantly different but in the designer world it needs to stand out. Apart from the colour it actually looks quite a nice phone. 

B7620 4

B7620 beside Omnia Pro B7610

As you will see in the above picture the B7620 seems to be based on the New Omnia Pro 7610 and has some nice specs to match:

  • HSDPA 7.2Mbps
  • Slide out and tilt QWERTY
  • 3.5 inch AMOLED screen
  • Windows Mobile 6.5 with Touch Wiz UI
  • 8Gb internal storage with extenal memory up to 16Gb
  • 5MP Camera with auto focus and dual LED flash
  • Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, A-GPS and TV-Out
  • 1500 mAh Battery

The B7620 has a few specs which are better than the Omnia Pro, such as 8Gb internal memory compared to 1Gb in the Omnia. Also the screen tilts like on the HTC Touch Pro2, nice!

Although prices are not confirmed yet I would imagine that sim free this device will be about £700.00 which seems a lot to pay just because Giorgio Armani designed it. Each to there own though!

 

Posted by: James

Posted in: News
By October 11, 2009 Read More →

T3’s Windows Mobile 6.5 round up

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T3 has been working for a while on group test of four of the most popular Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets on the market. Weighing up the pros and cons and it makes for an interesting read. Check out the highlights after the break. Confusingly they have a picture of the Touch Pro2 over the Touch2 section. Even from the review it is difficult to judge as to whether with are reviewing the Touch Pro2 and Touch2, however given the lack of mention of the Qwerty keyboard I guess they mean the Touch2 and have merely posted the wrong picture.

Posted in: Phones
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