Archive for December, 2009

By December 16, 2009 Read More →

LG GD510 POP Review

The LG Pop has followed today’s common market theme of being a touch screen phone. There is a big difference here though, and that’s the price. It’s much more affordable than other touch screen phones.

Pop-angled-right The LG GD510 Pop

 

What’s in the box?

  • LG GD510 handset
  • Battery (Li-ion 3.7V)
  • USB cable (proprietary connection to the handset)
  • Mains charger (USB cable used)
  • Stereo headset/handsfree (proprietary USB connection)
  • User guide

For more information you can check out Matt’s LG GD510 Pop unboxing video

LG GD510 Pop specification:

  • Display: TFT touchscreen 240 x 400 pixels – 3.0 inches
  • Memory: 42MB internal storage
  • Card slot: up to 8GB
  • Dimensions: 97.8 x 49.5 x 11.2 mm
  • Weight: 87g
  • 2G: GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900
  • Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels
  • Radio: Stereo FM radio with RDS
  • Bluetooth: v2.0 with A2DP
  • USB: microUSB

General:

Front – 3″ touch screen display and multi-function button

Pop-front LG GD510 Pop – Front view

Top – Power button and lanyard loop

Pop-top LG GD510 Pop – Top view

Left – Up/down rocker button for volume and USB socket

Pop-left LG GD510 Pop – Left side view

Right – Camera button (also used as a quick app button)

Pop-right LG GD510 Pop – Right side view

Back – 3MP camera (the battery, sim card and memory card are located under the back cover)

Pop-back LG GD510 Pop – Back view

Highlights:

  • Affordable price
  • Compact
  • Lightweight
  • Quite simple to use
  • Optional solar panel back
  • Good battery life

Lowlights:

  • Touch screen not very sensitive
  • No camera flash
  • No 3G
  • No Wi-Fi
  • Too small? (or lack of stylus)

 

Review

My first impressions of the LG Pop GD510 were quite mixed. It looks quite nice. It is pleasing to the eye, compact, and pretty light weight. But, at the same time it looks quite plastic. It looks nicer than the LG Cookie mind you.

The size of it really stands out. Very slim, and not much bigger than a credit card. This can be either a good or bad aspect. I think people with relatively big hands may find this phone a bit fiddly.

Pop-angled-left LG GD510 Pop

One great feature of the LG GD510 Pop is the optional solar panel battery/cover (purchased separately). I didn’t have this to try out but I think the concept is a good one.

There is a downside to this though. The panel is of course on the back of the phone. So in order to charge the battery using the panel you have to place the phone screen side down so this would increase the chance of scuffing or scratching the screen.

lgGD510Pop LG GD510 Pop with solar panel

I didn’t seem to warm to the touch screen. It didn’t seem to be sensitive enough. Even a bit temperamental at times. When scrolling it seemed that an awful lot of pressure was required whilst dragging your finger across the screen. The screen also feels soft. There’s a slight bit of give when pressing on the screen which makes it feel a bit flimsy. This is very noticeable if you use a phone like the IPhone, or HTC Hero. I think that if you haven’t used a touch screen phone before this you won’t mind these aspects of the Pop’s touch screen.

The display is ok. It’s clear and bright enough but not anything special. I remember commenting on the LG Cookie’s display which was very good. So, when it comes to the Pop, I feel a bit disappointed that LG didn’t keep the high quality screen.

There are three desktops on the home screen. You just slide your finger across the screen to get to each one. You can place widgets, contact and shortcuts on the desktops which comes in handy for your most used features.

The menu looks a bit busy at first but is actually quite organised and very straight forward. The items in the menu are set in categories. Each line of categories can be scrolled through separately. This isn’t necessarily helpful in any way but it’s a nice touch. If you don’t like this slide menu you can select a tabbed layout which has fixed icons.

lgGD510Pop-menu

The built in accelerometer is quite impressive. The response time when switching to phone from portrait to landscape mode (by turning the handset) is extremely quick. I must admit that I didn’t expect this at all.

Texting is very simple in portrait mode using the T9 setting and the text is very big! Makes life easy for anyone who’s sight isn’t perfect! I found that you could type away quite quickly without any problems. However, you can also choose a qwerty keypad. This is a nightmare to use! The screen is just a bit to small for this, and the buttons on this qwerty keypad are very small. LG really could have not bothered having this feature on the phone, or at least provided a stylus.

 

The LG GD510 Pop has good call quality. The sound is clear and background noise doesn’t cause any problems, and the people I spoke to using this phone said that they could hear me clearly. The dial pad is brought up on the screen with on click of a shortcut screen that is on the home screen icon bar (along with other main buttons such as your contacts, messaging and menu)

 

You can see in the menu picture a range of applications and tools. There are of course more hidden away which you can see if you scroll/slide though the menu. Applications such as the browser, Yahoo search, email, etc are available and great for those wanting a slide phone that has all these features for an affordable price. The huge let down here is that the GD510 Pop does not have 3G or Wi-Fi capabilities. If you’re going to use these applications you’ll need to be patient because it is pretty slow! What a disappointment.

 

The music player is simple to use and looks pleasing to the eye. Sound quality through the stereo headphones is average (but expected for standard boxed headphones).

The handset supports a microSD card upto 8GB which means you can fit shed loads of music (or what ever else you want) onto the phone. But, there is no 3.5mm jack which is a shame as you can make the most of the music player by using your own headphones. I’m sure it’s not just me who like to do that. The USB socket on the side is used for both the headset connection and for charging the phone. Of course, this means that you can have both plugged in at the same time.

 

The camera is unfortunately very disappointing. It’s a 3MP camera with no auto-focus or flash. As always, in good lighting you can take a pretty decent picture. But, as there is no flash, as soon as the light goes the camera is next to useless.

You can take videos with the camera. The frameset is very low though which means that you won’t be getting the best of footage from the Pop.

 

One thing that did impress me was the incredible battery life. From being fully charged it lasted almost three days before I had to charge it again.

 

Conclusion:

The LG GD510 Pop is a nice looking and adequate touch screen phone for the price. It may be too small for some but looks quite stylish because of its size.

The touch screen is ok if it’s your first touchscreen phone but I wouldn’t recommended it if you been used to a high quality and sensitive touch screen as you will be pretty disappointed or at least frustrated!

The optional solar panel for charging the phone is a great idea and definitely fits in with the energy saving focus that we have, and let’s face it, it will also save on your electricity bill in the long run.

Over all, it’s not even near the standards of many of the touch screens on the market but for a low-cost and entry level touch screen phone the LG GD510 Pop is well worth considering.

 

 

Reviewed by: Emma

Posted in: Reviews
By December 16, 2009 Read More →

Google Nexus One Specification Leaked

Where would we be without the ROM hackers of this world?

The techy intelligent folk over at These Are The Droids have managed to break down the 2.1 rom system files only to find some of these features:

  • Proximity Sensor
  • Ambient Light Sensor
  • Accelerometer
  • Magnetic Compass
  • WiFi
  • Stereo FM Speaker
  • Noise Cancelation Chipset
  • OpenGL ES 2.0-capable graphics
  • Auto-focus camera with LED flash (which shows that I was right on the money)
  • Possible Snapdragon Processor
  • 802.11n wireless chipset

If the phone really has the features above then we can be certain that the phone will top speeds of 1GHz for processing and gaming fans now have an i-Phone similar device  as far as graphics go.

On another note, if you have not yet seen the start-up video that has been floating around then here it is.

 

Posted by: John

Posted in: Rumours
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

Mobile Tech Addicts Podcast 52

Web banner

Our latest podcast, Episode 52, is now available for download. This week we hit upon the Acer A1 Liquid, overseas calling, WebOS 1.3.5, the Google Phone and ducks. We also answer a couple of listener questions.

Direct Download

iTunes

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Posted in: Podcast
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

Sony Ericsson Xperia X2: DELAYED

Those of you looking to get your hands on the new Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 will now need to wait until somewhere around the first week in January 2010 according to the official Sony Ericsson Xperia blog.

sony ericsson xperia x2 
Xperia X2 Delayed Release

The Xperia X2 is the company’s second Windows Mobile smartphone and although not directly the reason for the delay they have said that there were some issues when they started to integrate it with some of the network specific apps. According to the blog posting the changes are all minor and include things like extending the battery life and speeding up aspects of the software.

If you cast your mind way back to the X1 release it also faced massive delays before hitting the market so who knows where the future of Windows Mobile and Sony Ericsson lies.

Posted by: John McKenzie

Posted in: News
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

TeliaSonera launches the first 4G network in Scandinavia

For a lot of people in a lot of countries 3G is still the most amazing thing since.. well, sliced bread but now if you live in either the Sweden or Norwegian capital cities (Stockholm and Oslo) you can get yourself this new spangled 4G 100mbps network.

OK, I hear you ask when we are getting it but don’t get too excited because there aint even a phone on the market yet that can make use of this new network, although I’m more than positive that they will come very soon (maybe not at the top speed though). Although the handsets aren’t there yet they do offer the connection to laptop users through Ericsson in Sweden and Huawei in Norway.

So what’s next? Well Finland will have their 4G network up and running in Q1 of 2010, and O2 is already testing theirs in the UK, with the disappointment there being that they aint allowing me to test it for them.

Only time will tell and I for one can’t wait for the time when we can have a mobile network 10 times faster than that of HSPA enabled 3G networks of today.

Posted by: John

Posted in: News
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

Google’s Mystery Clock

Not sure if anyone has seen it yet but when you go to http://www.google.com and leave the search field blank then click I’m feeling lucky you get hit with a countdown clock.

google

With basic mathematics it looks like this is the countdown to New Year in seconds however there are some weirder theories out there like the countdown to Nexus One or even the Countdown to the End of the World.

I’m sure you will have your own theory on it and we would like to hear them.

Posted by: John McKenzie

Posted in: Editorial
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

SPB Weather 2.0 blows in for Symbian

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SPB Software, a leading maker of mobile applications, announces the release of SPB Weather 2.0 for Symbian, an important addition to its quickly expanding line-up of software for the world’s most popular smartphone platform – Symbian. SPB Weather is the most powerful Symbian weather forecast program. It combines the detailed everyday forecasts for more than 10,000 cities worldwide with the beauty and friendliness of up-to-date satellite images on a 3D Globe. With all these and many other attractive features, the Windows Mobile version of SPB Weather currently holds the status of WM’s best-selling weather app.
SPB Weather 2.0 has been mainly designed with the latest touchscreen-enabled S60 smartphones in mind as those are rapidly gaining customer attention. However, it is compatible with any non-touchscreen Symbian smartphone based on S60 3rd edition FP1 and later. To support the touchscreen trend, SPB Weather for Symbian offers users a striking finger-friendly interface, as well as a home screen widgets for Nokia Symbian-based smartphones.

Posted in: Phones
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

HTC releases official Messaging update for HD2

HTC have just released another official update for their new flagship HD2 handset, this time addressing SMS related issues.

This update comes immediately on the back of a camera/imaging related update that was made available last week.

It has been reported elsewhere that this messaging update addresses some issues (complaints?) from customers saying that they could not hear or see when they received an incoming text message. However, we wonder if this update may also have something to do with some SMS issues that were reported just after the launch of the HD2 where many complained that text messages sent from their new HD2’s were being delayed and and some cases not being delivered until 24 hours later despite the handset reporting a successful send.

We’d love to hear from any of you that actually apply this update!

So you can grab a download of this messaging update from the HTC site.

 

This update for HTC HD2 messaging lets you reach out to your friends and family with instant notifications. Keeping in touch has always been very important, and this update delivers just that: fast and reliable SMS messaging.
Installation Instructions:

Note: This update is only applicable to ROM version is equal to 1.49.XX.X, or lower.

 

Now this update looks to be a pretty straightforward hot-fix but may be worth backing up your important files before applying!

 

Posted by: Matt

Posted in: Phones
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

Vodafone simplifying overseas charges

vodafone-logo4

From 14 January 2010 Vodafone UK is simplifying country call zones and standardising zone pricing, making it easy for business customers to understand call costs when they are overseas.

Business customers who are not on one of Vodafone’s specific roaming price plans will soon benefit from a simpler regional structure of just three zones instead of the current six, and a standard price per minute rate on calls which is not dependent on the network on which they are roaming. The new zones are now Europe, USA/Canada and Rest of World.

“Our business customers tell us that when working overseas, staying in touch with colleagues and customers is essential. But if they do not travel often enough to justify a roaming package on their price plan, the current zone structure can be confusing”, says Peter Kelly, Enterprise Director, Vodafone UK. “With these changes, businesses without a roaming package will be able to budget for voice calls more effectively.”

Posted in: Phones
By December 15, 2009 Read More →

HD2 gets ROM update

htc-hd2

Today the UK HTC website has added a new ROM (1.48.405.2). It adds several improvements – Opera now switches easily from portrait to landscape mode, flipping back and forth through songs on the HTCmedia player is now easier plus there’s enhanced audio quality in calls.
This is a generic update, so we’ve got the usual wait for owners of network-supplied HD2’s, but hopefully we’ll be seeing the appropriate update online soon.

Source Coolsmartphone

Link – HTC HD2 ROM Update

Posted in: Phones
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