Reviews

Samsung Omnia II review

The original Samsung Omnia i900 was an extremely popular device and I loved mine when I first got it. Unfortunately as time goes on and smartphones get better and better it didn’t actually take me very long to swap my Omnia for a bigger and better device. Lets see how Samsung’s new offering, the Omnia II, compares in a market that is being pretty much flooded with new devices at the moment.

Samsung Omnia II i8000

What’s in the box:

• Handset
• Battery
• Charger
• USB Cable
• Software/Manuals
• Case

Take a look at Matt’s Samsung Omnia II unboxing video to see what the device has to offer.

The Ten Second Review:

Device: Samsung I8000 Omnia II

Price:£408.25

Summary: Pretty much everything you could want from a phone plus more!

Best of: Nearly everything!

Worst of: On screen keyboard

Samsung Omnia 2 Specification:

• Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
• 8GB Internal Memory (17GB available)
• Processor – 800 MHz
• Amoled Resistive Touchscreen, 65000 Colours, 480 x 800 Pixels, 3.7 Inches
• Operating Frequency – 2G Network – GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G Network – HSDPA 900/1900/2100
• HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
• Wifi – 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS
• MicroSD socket supports up to 32GB
• DixX / XviD / MPEG4/ H.263/ H.264/ WMV player
• Camera – 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, Auto-focus, Dual Power LED flash
• Li-Ion 1500mAh battery
• Stand-by Up to 430 h (2G) / Up to 430 h (3G)
• Talk time Up to 10 h (2G) / Up to 10 h (3G)
• 118 x 59.6 x 11.9 mm
• Weight – 117 grams with battery

General:

The top of the Omnia II contains the 3.5mm headset jack and also the USB slot.

Samsung Omnia II Top

The left side of the device houses only the up/down volume rocker.

Samsung Omnia II Left Side

The lock switch and camera button can be found on the right. In addition there is a cube menu shortcut button.

Samsung Omnia II Right Side

On the back can be found the 5MP camera lens and flash.

Samsung Omnia II Back

On the front of the device are the send/end keys, the menu button and at the top can be found the front facing camera.

Samsung Omnia II Front

Highlights:

• Wi-Fi/HSDPA
• Camera
• OLED Screen
• UI
• 8/16 GB Storage + MiceoSD

Lowlights:

• On Screen Key Board
• Finger Print Magnet

Review:

A few months ago I did the review of the Samsung Jet and was extremely impressed with it, so I was looking forward to the Omnia II and expected good things.

First impressions out of the box were positive. The device feels great in the hand. Its fairly large but lightweight and I imagine would sit unnoticed in a pocket. Due to its nice rounded edges it actually feels smaller than it is.

In terms of build quality the device feels solid but very plasticy (is that a real word?) The phone is defiantly a finger print magnet but at least with the new OLED screens, that Samsung are now using, a swift wipe on a shirt sleeve will remove these marks.

All the buttons on the handset give a real click/press and feel like they will stand the test of time.

Like when I reviewed the Jet, once I turned on the Omnia II I was amazed with the screen. The colours are super vibrant and sitting beside my HTC Touch Pro2 it really put my phone to shame!

The screen is also wonderful to use. Its really smooth and makes gliding your thumb/finger on it feel almost effortless. Good work Samsung.

When it comes to the user interface on the Omnia II you have two initial options. You can go with the new Windows homescreen or use Samsungs Touch Wiz interface.

Windows Mobile Home Screen

The Windows Home screen as seen above is made up of a list of most common features and you can either scroll the whole list up and down or scroll the highlighted bar that selects the feature you require. The OLED screen make this a wonderful action. The home screen picture can obviously be customised. The device didn’t come with the above eye. I just liked it!

TouchWiz

The TouchWiz option is like on many other Samsung devices and comprises of three homescreens that can be changed but flicking the screen left or right. You will see three bars at the top of the screen which shows you which screen you are on. On the left hand side of the screen is the widgets bar. From here you can drag and drop widgets of your choice onto the homescreens giving you access to common features. These can be positioned anywhere on the screen you like. The new addition on the Omnia II homescreen is the block of features at the bottom of the screen. Again these can be customised and you can have up to 10 applications here.

Both options work well as the screen is so responsive. It just comes down to personal choice which one you use. I preferred the TouchWiz option, sorry Microsoft.

When going into the menu on the phone you again have two options. You can either press start on the top left of the screen and like on all the new Windows 6.5 phones this will show you the new improved menu.

6.5 Menu

Option two is to press the hexagon between the call send and end buttons. This will pop up Samsungs own menu which is made up of four screens that can be scrolled left or right.

Samsungs Menu

As you will see above there are three option keys at the base of the screen. The “others” tab takes you into another screen that contains mainly the Windows apps that Samsung have not included in there menus, such as Facebook, Marketplace, MyPhone and Bing. Why they didn’t just put it all together baffles me but that’s just the way it is.

The cube option presents you with a onscreen cube that you spin using touch and it has multimedia features on each side of the cube. Use this if you are not in a hurry to find what you are looking for. I found it it be a bit of a novelty.

The “edit” tab does exactly as you would image. You can remove items from the menu screens and add others if required.

Both menus do the job but the Samsung one lets you edit properly and therefore I think you will find the desired app quicker than using the Windows menu where the only edit option is to move an item to the top of the screen.

Another nice feature that Samsung have brought to the Omnia II is the quick access connectivity manager.

Connectivity Manager

By touching the top of the screen it gives you quick access into Bluetooth, volume control, power options and the wireless manager where you can manager things like airplane mode. This Samsung add-on is a welcome option and makes getting to the connectivity tabs quicker than on other Windows Phones.

As the Omnia II is a phone I thought I had better cover the phone options. The home screen gives you quick access into both contacts and the dialer. The dialer is really nice to use. The keys are big and sensitive. The contacts section of the device has been tweaked by Samsung and gives a few added options over some other Windows Phones. At the top of the contacts page is a bar with five tabs on it.  These are phonebook, category ( where you can put contacts into groups), speed dial, reject (where you have the option to reject or accept all calls) and search.  As with all Windows Phones the amount of contacts you can store is virtually unlimited. Another nice touch Samsung!

Messaging on the Omnia II is pretty straight forward. You can set up multiple email accounts very easily and using SMS was as simple as expected. However I did have one problem. Although the Omnia II has an accelerometer I only managed to get it to work in a few applications excluding messaging, so when compiling emails or texts I had to use the keyboard in portrait mode and this caused me problems.

In portrait mode the keyboard looks nice but I found myself making so many mistakes it was ridiculous. When tapping a key it does give you haptic feedback and also pops an image of the key you have pressed above where you have pressed it, but I struggled. I recently reviewed the HTC Touch2 which has a smaller onscreen keypad but I was much better with that one! In landscape mode its fine but if you cant use that when messaging it kind of sucks. Maybe I have missed something in the settings but I did have a look on the internet and found some other people that had the same problem.

The camera on the Omnia II was better than I expected. The interface is very nice with lots of on screen options. You can have the flash on, off or on auto. Focus options include macro, face and auto. You can change the exposure so in low light conditions you can let more light into the lens. There are many shooting modes including, single, continuous, smile, mosaic, panorama and action. All work well. There are also many scene modes – portrait, landscape, sunset, dusk & dawn, night, text, sports, indoors, beach & snow, fall colour (autumn), firework and candle light. Samsung really want you to get the best results possible. Its a shame the other major manufactures cant supply as many features with there cameras! In the settings you can alter white balance, effect, ISO, contrast, saturation, sharpness, metering and quality. There is a timer and an anti shake option as well.

Samples – click image for full screen

Sample in auto mode (no sunshine)

Sample in macro mode

The video recorder was not quite as good as the camera but that’s no surprise. The videos were okay and looked great on the phone but once on my PC they were a little grainy.

Watching online videos on the Omnia was great. It has a built in YouTube player that is fantastic. The Omnia II supports many formats but as its Windows Mobile you can always download Coreplayer which plays pretty much any format.

Music was another superb feature. Through the speaker the music was loud and of good quality. The music player interface it pleasant and easy to use. The supplied Samsung headphones do a great job and really boost the quality of the music. Its wasn’t the best quality I have had on a mobile but not far off. The “Metallica” test was a big success! If you prefer to use your own headphones you can do as the Omnia II comes with a 3.5mm headset jack. Bonus!

The calendar was also very nice on the Omnia. I think we are finding out that most things are! Its very easy to use and there are multiple ways to view it, by month, week or day. Entering appointments was simple and nice work Samsung for re-skinning the calendar interface. It looks real good.

MSN weather comes pre installed on the device. Here you can set up numerous cites and see them in a list showing the current weather. Click on the city and it will give you a five day forecast. Nice!

The clock options on the Omnia II have also been heavily tweaked by Samsung. As well as the normal multiple alarms you get with a Windows Phone there are also tabs for anniversaries, world clock and a stopwatch. All which are really easy to use.

If you listen to podcasts the Omnia II has a podcast application. It does comes with the standard WinMo RSS reader but having a dedicated podcast app really is a bonus as podcasts are becoming more and more popular.

Being Windows the device comes with Office Mobile. This allows you to not only view, but create Word, Excel and OneNote documents. You can also view PowerPoint shows you either put on the device or receive via email. And its free of charge unlike some operating systems!

The device comes loaded with two different web browsers. The first is the latest version of Internet Explorer which I am not so keen on. The second, and better one,  is Opera Mobile. This was one of the best features on the phone. As the Omnia screen is so good, web browsing looks fantastic. Scrolling is super smooth and it scrolls faster than some other smartphones. You have the option to view the web pages like you would on a PC or you can select “mobile view” which takes away a lot of the adverts on certain websites and presents the page to fit the phone screen allowing you to only scroll up or down. I prefer browsing this way and the Omnia rendered the pages beautifully.

An added bonus, which I was not expecting,  is that the Omnia II supports flash. For example – when viewing tracyandmatt.co.uk I scrolled down and found an unboxing video. Now on a lot of phones you cannot watch the video but on the Omnia II you can just click play and the video starts just like on a PC. The video quality is not the best but its better than the other option of nothing!

The Omnia II comes with some nice games as standard. As you would expect from a WinMo device you get Solitaire and Bubble Breaker but in addition Samsung have also included three others. The first isn’t really a game. Its a set of dice. Shake the phone and the dice spin. Handy I suppose if you play a lot of board games. Next we have Asphalt 4 which I was expecting to be rubbish but its actually really good. You race a Mini around circuits and use motion to control the cars movements. Tipping left and right to steer, tipping away and down to use boost and pulling up and back to brake. I think I will have another go when I have finished writing this! Last is Crayon Physics which is a bit odd! Its a puzzle game which involves drawing on screen different shapes or lines to complete the puzzle, Its quite clever but not my cup of tea. Maybe I would have a good crack if I was really bored.

Conclusion:

The Omnia II is an amazing device. Its a million miles away from the original Omnia. That one was good but this one is supa-doopa with a cherry on top!

The screen is without doubt the best I have seen to date. Windows Mobile 6.5 works flawlessly and a lot of the time you wouldn’t even know it was a Windows Phone.

The Omnia II offers pretty much everything you would expect from a high end device. If you are happy with a touch screen only device then at this moment in time I think this is the one to get, however there is some competition coming very soon – the HTC HD2 with some impressive hardware and a 4.3 inch screen.

Let the battle commence!

Posted by: James

Nokia E55 Review

The Nokia E55 is compact, stylish and designed with messaging in mind. It’s is geared towards the business men and women out there, and as it’s a Nokia phone it should be quite easy to use.

  The Nokia E55

What’s In The Box?

• Nokia E55 handset
• Nokia Charger AC-10
• Nokia Charger Adapter CA-146C
• Nokia Battery BP-4L (1500mAh)
• Nokia Stereo headset HS-48
• Nokia Connectivity Cable (CA-101) supports charging
• Nokia 2 GB microSD card (MU-37) inside device
• User Guide
• Nokia PC Suite (v7.2) in microSD card

See also Matt’s Nokia E55 unboxing video.

Nokia E55 Specification:

• Dimensions: 116 x 49 x 9.9mm
• Weight: 98g
• Talk Time: 480 mins
• Standby Time: 672 hrs
• Display: 320 x 240 pixels/2.4 inch
• Network: GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band)
• Camera: 3.2 mega-pixels (auto-focus)
• Video: Hi-Resolution VGA Video Recording
• Music: Supported formats: MP3, AAC, eAAC+ & WMA
• FM Stereo Radio (RDS)
• Nokia Music Store
• Messaging: SMS / MMS (with video)
• E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, MS Exchange)
• Memory: 100MB (internal) / microSDHC (external)
• microUSB
• Nokia 3.5mm AV connector
• Bluetooth (2.0)
• Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11g)
• AGPS
• Nokia Maps
• Flash Lite 3.0 Support

General:

Front – First of all there is the 2.4 inch QVGA screen. Next are the left and right soft keys. Below these keys are the home, calendar, messaging and back button shortcut keys. Next are the send/receive (or call/hang up) buttons.

In the middle of this is the D-pad for navigation through the phone. In the centre of this is the select button.

Nokia E55 – front view

Keyboard – Compact QWERTY keyboard

Nokia E55 – keyboard view

Top – There is a 3.5mm headphone/handsfree connection and power button on the top of the phone.

Nokia E55 – top view

Bottom – All there is here is the microphone is and the hole for a lanyard/wrist strap.

Nokia E55 – bottom view

Left – There isn’t much on the left side except for the sync/charge connection.

Nokia E55 – left-hand side view

Right – From the left you can see the dedicated camera button, then there is the up/down rocker buttons with a voice control button placed between them.

Nokia E55 – right-hand side view

Back – The battery, sim card and microSD card are housed under the back cover. You can also see the 3.2MP camera and flash. Under this is the loud speaker.

Nokia E55 – back view

Highlights:

• Stylish design
• Light weight
• Good in-call sound quality
• Great battery life

Lowlights:

• Camera quality is disappointing
• The compact QWERTY keyboard take a lot of getting used to

General:

The Nokia E55 is Slim and stylish. It’s lightweight yet feels robust and of good quality. Battery cover is metal with a discrete pattern on it which provides a bit of extra grip. 
As far as I’m aware the E55 is available in two colours. This black and chrome one that I’m reviewing, and a plain chrome one.

The Nokia E55

The screen display is bright and sharp It can sometimes be slightly difficult to view the screen in bright sunlight, but this can be expected with most phones.

In-call sound quality is quite good. It’s active noise reduction helps to eliminate background noise. I made and received a few calls on this phone and I’ve not complaints on the call quality.

The button between the up/down volume keys on the right side of the phone acts as a mute button when on a call. As this phone is directed towards the business market you can imagine that this is quite idea having the mute button so accessible.

The compact QWERTY keyboard was definitely not my cup of tea. I’m just not used to it. Takes quite a bit of getting used to and feels very awkward to use at first because of this. Liking/disliking the keyboard on the E55 will just come down to personal preference though so best to make up your own mind on this.

The Nokia E55 has Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 OS. The home screen can be switched between and business and personal profile/mode so you can set up shortcuts on the home screen to suit. Then you can just toggle between the two modes. The home screen can look quite cluttered. Of course this has been thought of. So, you can select a basic theme which will provide you with a clean home screen.

Although it’s aimed at business users Nokia have still provided N-Gage support so that you can access the vast range of games, and with the 3.5mm headphone jack you can use your own headphones if you want. I normally prefer to use my own headphones so the 3.5mm jack is a plus point here for me.

The Nokia headset/handsfree that comes with the phone has pretty good sound quality too. You do sometimes find that headsets that are packaged with phones can lack quality – not in this case. So, when playing games and listening to music you can make the most of the great audio quality. What’s more – the Nokia E55 has an impressive battery life which means you will get a generous number of hours out of it.

There are quite a few handy applications on the phone . For example, Nokia’s Ovi maps, FM radio, video player, Calendar, etc.

One change from other Nokia handsets is the Mobile Office package. You would normally expect to pay extra in order to be able to edit documents. With the E55 you immediately have the capability to edit documents straight out of the box. It even supports the Office 2007 file formats. This is definitely a phone that means business! 

The E55 also includes a pre-installed dictionary. The English language pack is provided by default but you can download other languages from the Nokia website.

For connectivity, the Nokia E55 offers 3G, WIFI, GPS, Bluetooth and USB connections.
Emailing and messaging seems pretty straightforward. If you use Gmail all you have to do is enter your Gmail user name and password and the phone does the rest for you. It’s simple to navigate through and I would be even better is I could just get used to the compact QWERTY keyboard! The email client also supports other personal and corporate email types such as, IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo! mail, etc.

The browser is not too bad but it can’t compete with the likes of Safari, or Google’s browser. But this is a candy bar style phone so I wouldn’t expect it to be brilliant. It is adequate enough though. It even supports Flash Lite which means that some flash content can be displayed.

As you can probably imagine, the camera on the E55 isn’t one to write home about. But, the phone is designed with business and messaging in mind. It is a 3MP camera and has an LED flash. There is no auto-focus and the pictures taken with the camera are not brilliant. In good lighting you can get a decent picture from it though.

Video recording isn’t any better with the E55. But again, the phone wasn’t designed for this.

Conclusion:

The Nokia E55 is a great looking phone. Amazingly slim and light, yet still feels pretty robust.

The battery life is excellent and the sound quality for media and calls is great.
As marketed, this phone is designed for messaging. I would definitely agree. It’s simple to use and navigate through. Of course, if texting/messaging is something you do a lot the compact QWERTY keyboard will definitely be a big decision maker if you’re considering this phone.

Reviewed by: Emma

Samsung Omnia II unboxing video

Samsung seem to be getting a lot of mileage from the Omnia brand, this time launching the Omnia II complete with the new Windows Mobile 6.5 OS. This is the first non-HTC device that we’ve seen with WM 6.5 so it’ll be interesting to see what they have done differently.

The Samsung Omnia II (GT-i8000)

The Omnia II (GT-i8000) is similar in size and design to the HTC Touch HD, virtually the same size screen and almost the same form-factor, however, Samsung have given the Omnia II more power with a 800mHz CPU and obviously have it powered by WM 6.5. Samsung have kept their desktop widgets that have proven to be popular on the original Omnia and have skinned the Start menu and settings screen in a similar way to HTC to the point that there is virtually no need to be exposed to the Windows Mobile screens and menus if you don’t want them.

James will be reviewing the Samsung Omnia II over the next week so please do feel free to post your question over on the Omnia II forum post if there is anything specific you would like to know or that you would like covered in the review.

Have a look at the unboxing video below to see the handset in a little more detail and to have a quick overview of the OS and UI.

NOTE that the handset in the video is a pre-release model and you’ll see that it has Windows Mobile 6.1 installed – the final retail version will have Windows Mobile 6.5 and our review will be of the 6.5 version. Sorry for the confusion!

Samsung Omnia II specification:

• Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
• 8GB Internal memory (16GB Available)
• Processor – 800 MHz
• AMOLED resistive touchscreen, 65K colours, 480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches
• Operating Frequency – 2G Network – GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G Network – HSDPA 900/1900/2100
• HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
• Wifi – 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
• Built-in with A-GPS
• MicroSD socket supports up to 32GB
• DixX / XviD / MPEG4/ H.263/ H.264/ WMV player
• Camera – 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, Auto-focus, Dual Power LED flash
• Li-Ion 1500mAh battery
• Stand-by Up to 430 h (2G) / Up to 430 h (3G)
• Talk time Up to 10 h (2G) / Up to 10 h (3G)
• 118 x 59.6 x 11.9 mm
• Weight – 117 grams with battery

Posted by: Matt

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?

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.

HTC Touch2 Top

The bottom house the USB port and the microphone.

HTC Touch2 Bottom

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

HTC Touch2 Left 

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

HTC Touch2 Right

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Top

On the left is just the Charging port.

Left Side

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

Right Side

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

Back Side

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

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.

Hisense 1080p HD Media Player Review

The Hisense  HD Media Player is a simple proposition really, it lets you browse your media without needing a PC running in order to do so.

Your media can be on USB keys/drives or on your network as this little box says it can handle them all – lets find out.

What’s in the box

• Hisense Media Player
• Remote control (with batteries)
• Power cable
• UK adapter
• Composite AV cable
• Component cable (according to manual, though not in our review box)

Specification

• HOST: CPU MIPS 400Mhz CPU
• Flash memory: 16MB
• SDRAM: DDR2 128MB
• Video codec:
  -MPEG1
  -MPEG-2 up to 1080P
  -MPEG-4 (720P/1080i/1080P) ,Xvid
  -H.264 up to 1080P
  -WMV9/VC-1 up to 1080P
  -RealNetworks(RM/RMVB)8/9/10 up to 1920*720(720P)
  -Flash Video
• Audio codec:
  -MPEG-1 Layers I,II and III and MPEG-2
  -LPCM,ADPCM,FLAC,AAC,WAV,and OGG Vorbis
  -DTS HD Master Audio,LBR
  -Dolby digital Plus,TrueHD
  -RA1/RA-cook/RA-lossless WMA/WMA Pro
• Photo: HD JPEG,BMP,TIFF,PNG,DNG
• Video/Audio output:
  -Video YPBPR / HDMI out
  -Audio RCA stereo out(L/R)
  -S/PDIF
• Network: RJ45 for Ethernet x 1
• USB port: USB 2.0 x 2
• Power supply: AC 100~240V / 50~60Hz, DC12V,2A
• Dimension: 210 x 170 x 32mm
• Weight: 315g

General

Tradition dictates that a quick tour around the outside is the first thing we should do.

Not much to report on the front view, just an led that lights up in the center. Red if the unit is off, green if the unit is on.

On the left hand side we find two USB 2.0 ports. You can’t really tell from the picture above, but they are recessed slightly into the body of the casing. Not enough to make them completely inaccessible, more to make them ‘discrete’

Around the back is where we will find all the connections. From left to right – Component RGB, audio left + right, S/PDIF audio out, HDMI, RJ45 Network and power in.

There is nothing on the right hand side so we’ll skip that and show you the remote.

We’ll be discussing this further in a minute.

Highlights

• It happily handled most media that I threw at it
• Up-scaling is very watchable

Lowlights

• Remote
• Interface

Review

The first thing that struck me about the Hisense HD Media Player as I took it out of the box was its weight. It’s as light as the proverbial feather. I suspect the connections on the rear are the only thing making the box the size it is – at this weight there can’t be an awful lot in there. Not to say that the resulting package is large, it’s not – it’s footprint being just slightly larger than a DVD box.

Setup couldn’t really be any simpler – just connect the power and your choice of output cable – I went with HDMI as it saves messing with audio and video separately.

Whilst mentioning the setup, I must just say that the UK power adapter included in the box is the ugliest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Most devices these days have ‘clip-in’ pieces for the basic power adapter ‘lump’, allowing you to select the one applicable to your region. The Hisense HD Media Player does not, it comes with a fixed two prong adapter which you then connect into a UK convertor plug – it’s very like a black moulded version of a travel adapter and not very pretty at all.

Anyway, back to the functionality.

On first ‘boot’ you are greeted with the Hisense logo and then the main menu screen – all in Chinese. A quick press of the setup button on the remote and a fairly obvious guess let me quickly change everything to English. (Curiously the button is marked ‘Setup’ on the remote, yet it’s called ‘Settings’ within the menu itself). The manual enclosed in our review box was also Chinese.

Once everything was in a language I could understand, the settings menus, though fairly basic, seem to offer most of the things that the average user is going to want to control.

‘Audio’ settings are a choice of RAW or LPCM output.

‘Video’ settings has some more options on hand. You can change aspect ratio (also changeable on the fly with the remote), the brightness and contrast (and yes I was surprised to see these being changeable within the unit itself instead of having to change the TV itself), Digital Noise Reduction on or off, and finally, the selection of resolution that you want to output at – ranging from basic NTSC or PAL all the way up to 1080p.

‘Network’ settings allow you to set the IP of the box by connecting to a DHCP or else you can give it a fixed IP, entering the IP, Subnet and Default Gateway yourself – which is the only reason for the remote having number keys as far as I can tell.

‘System’ settings allows you to change the menu language, text encoding, update the firmware or do a reset to default settings.

The final sub-menu is ‘Other’ which is primarily used to change the settings for automated slideshows of images – timing can be set from Off up to 2 minutes, transitions can be set to a single personal choice or set to random, background music can be on or off. There are additional settings in here for Resume Play, Movie Preview and Screen Saver.

So once you’ve finished fiddling with all the settings you can get on with actually looking at your media.

The browser interface for media selection is best described as ‘functional’. It’s not all bells and whistles, it just does the job. The presentation is really just a list of files and folders, which you can limit to be just photos, just movies, just audio or all media that it recognises. Alongside the list is a preview frame, and guess what, that’s a preview of the media file currently selected – if Movie Preview is set to On in the settings, then it will actually start to play a movie file in there, otherwise it’s only actually used for images and to tell you the file size and encoding of the media in question.

Once you choose your media it will ‘play’. Images will behave as a slideshow as per your settings, music will play within the browser and movies will play fullscreen.

Not really much else to say on images – it handles large JPG’s just fine and that’s likely to be it’s main use (it doesn’t like RGBA PNG’s, displaying the alpha as either on or off instead of 256 levels). You can zoom and pan around the current image, but everything else is really controlled by the slideshow settings.

Audio playback is very basic, there are no visualisers or anything fancy, it just plays the file. Don’t think this is going to be a common use tho, more of an easy thing for the engineers to add as all the MP3 decoding is already in place for the movies.

So, onto the primary use for the box – video playback.

I tried DivX, XVid, MPEG and MOV files that I had to hand, ranging from low resolution all the way up to full 1080p HD and the Hisense HD Media Player handled them all easily. I was outputting at 1080p 60Hz with Digital Noise Reduction turned on and I never saw a glitch, all the sound was in-sync – just exactly what you’d expect the player to do really.

When a video is playing you can fast forward and fast rewind up to 32 times normal speed – though there is no slow-mo functionality which surprised me a little. I imagine that it’s something they could add with a firmware patch, but out of the box it’s not there. You can also skip to the previous or next video in the current folder with a single button press.

You can change the video ‘zoom’ settings with a press of the remote whilst playing as well, so if your videos include 4:3 and 16:9 you can always find a setting that best shows the video in question.

You can also change the audio output settings on the fly as well – not something most people are going to use, but it’s nice that it’s there as an option.

The only other real option during playback is an information bar that you can call up to see some basic information about the movie you are playing – how many minutes into the file you are and the number of files in the current directory. It doesn’t tell you how many remaining minutes, which is frustrating if you are used to that sort of functionality from other media players (as I am).

So that’s a quick rundown of how everything works, what did I actually think of the player.

First off, I’d like to say that the hardware in the player itself seems to be very capable of the job that it’s asked to do. Apart from RGBA PNG’s, everything else I tried worked just fine – and I was very happy with the upscaling and DNR in general.

I was able to play videos off USB keys and over the network without any real problems. The only time I saw anything not working was when I connected to a Buffalo drive over the network. It didn’t seem to be able to retrieve the file information, so it couldn’t tell me the file size and encoding as it did with other sources – but it would play them just fine. On the same drive it didn’t like me selecting the Buffalo ‘filing system’ instead of the raw folder structure, it just hung, but once I went back to the raw folders things were fine.

The remote is the first thing that lets  the player down. It’s a very basic thing, on first look it reminded me of a remote control for ceiling fans or those really cheap VOIP ‘phones’. The keys themselves feel nasty as they are obviously just buttons directly onto ‘switches’, there is no softness in the tactile experience. On top of that sometimes a button press selects a different option, so you can be watching a video and press a button to fast forward and it will pause or completely stop the playback – it’s not a bug that happens every single time, but it happens enough to become very annoying very quickly. The shape is also very boxy, nothing at all to make it nice to hold.

In general the remote feels cheap and as that is a large part of the user experience it’s going to taint your thoughts on the player itself.

Another important part of the experience is the user interface, and again this was disappointingly basic.

The settings menus are fine, but the browser where you are going to spend the majority of your time is about as basic as it comes – it literally is just a file and folder list, there are no thumbnail previews within that folder for example, you only see a preview of the currently selected item. A little more effort here would make a huge difference to the user experience. To be fair, in general you can indeed get to all your media but to navigate up and down through folder structures feels a little laboured and is certainly not helped by the remote itself. The actual selection of a file can take a moment, as whilst it let’s you browse up and down the list as fast as you wish, it insists on checking the file information before it will let you select play – which leads to more frustration if you as you want to get to your files.

All this is a shame really as the actual player itself is very capable of doing the playback.

Conclusion

I’ve used the Hisense HD Media Player for about a week now and I think it’s a shame that the unit is let down by it’s user experience.

When it’s actually playing the media it does the job in fine fashion, but the second you actually want to do something the interface and remote really start to get on your nerves.

The problems I’ve described above could be fixed with a new remote and a better thought out interface, but as it stands the player is a little frustrating to use.

O2 XDA Venn review

Introduction

The Venn is one of the latest XDA’s from O2. A Windows Mobile 6.1, dual sliding phone with built in QWERTY keyboard. Could this be a contender in the business class of phones?

The O2 XDA Venn

The Venn has been on sale for a while in the USA as the Pantech Matrix Pro on the AT&T network and is also known as the Pantech Mustang 2. For those of you unfamiliar with the Pantech or the Venn it has a unique trick up its sleeve in that it has a dual slide action with both a numeric keypad and and full QWERTY keypad.

What’s in the box?

• AC travel charger
• Battery
• Headset
• USB cable
• Quick start guide
• CD Full user manual
• Fabric sleeve

Have a look also at Matt’s O2 XDA Venn unboxing video.

O2 XDA Venn Specification:

• Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard
• Qualcomm 528mHz CPU
• 128MB RAM
• 256MB ROM
• 2.4" QVGA (240×320) transflective display
• Quad Band
• GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, HSUPA
• Bluetooth 2.0
• MicroSD memory card support
• 2.0 megapixel camera
• GPS(?)
• Weight: Dimensions: 106 x 51 x 21mm (H x W x D)

General

Front: LCD Display, menu buttons, phone speaker

Rear: Battery compartment, camera, loud speaker

Left side: Volume controls, REC button, QWERTY flip

Keyboard/keypad:

Right side: Camera button, charging port

Bottom: Keypad flip, microSD slot

Highlights

• Very good battery life
• Dual sliding
• Looks
• Solid, robust feel

Lowlights

• Bulky
• No WiFi
• microSD card slot difficult to insert card
• No camera flash
• Non standard charger/data connector

Review

When I first saw the Venn, I couldn’t help but think it was a bit on the bulky side but with a nice blue metallic Motorola-esque finish. The keypad sprung up with a nice solid action to reveal the flush fitted keys. The keyboard also opens with the same reassuring robustness. The raised keys are nicely spaced out, slightly larger than my Blackberry Bold, and with some spacing between each key. I tried to insert my microSD card into the covered port at the bottom of the unit, and ended up having to ask my wife to get it to lock as my fingernails were just too short. The charger/data port is not of the mini USB design so you will have to add another cable to your collection.

In its closed form, it is a thick device but it also has a stealthy factor, with its metallic paint and smooth lines, it is quite an attractive phone. The Windows Mobile is an established, reliable platform which is simple to use without too many of the thrills, you wont find anything like Touch Flo here. The camera is average as far as 2MP goes but 2MP really doesn’t cut it these days where 5, 8 and 12MP camera phones are becoming the norm and I don’t think that saying "it’s a business phone" is a resonalbe excuse either. A flash would have been nice too.

My biggest gripe with the phone was the lack of WiFi. I thought that something like that would have been standard, especially as it is trying to sell itself to the business market.

The battery life is really good, stated at 5 hours talk and 250 hours standby, this is a very good selling point as most of the ‘all singing, all dancing’ phones tend to suck the battery dry a lot quicker. I think 250 hours is optimistic for day to day use, but I have not needed to charge it for 3 days and that is very good going.

Matt did mention GPS in his unboxing video and there is mention of GPS in the specification online (depending on which you read) however I can find no evidence of GPS on the Venn that we reviewed here. I can only assume that the Pantech Matrix Pro has GPS and that some of the specs. listed elsewhere online have not been updated to reflect the UK hardware. If anyone else can confirm this then let us know!

Software

Being Windows Mobile you do have access to the Microsoft office software, internet explorer and mediaplayer (the sound from which is pretty good). It makes the transition from your desktop to your phone an easy one.

Conclusion

A good texting/emailing device for the Windows Mobile lovers, with a very good battery. This might not be as good as the blackberry’s for emails, the iphone’s for toys or better at taking pictures than the 5-8MP phones out there, but as an all rounder it fairs well. All in all, a robust phone on a robust platform.

Review by: Gary

Samsung i7500 Galaxy Review

Samsung’s first Android device which was initially released in Germany is now available here in the UK. It has certainly got some stiff competition as HTC’s Hero is now well established and getting pretty good reviews all round. Does the Galaxy stand a chance against the other Android devices already on the market or is it worth waiting for a forthcoming one?

Samsung i7500 Galaxy

What’s in the box:

• Handset
• Battery
• Pouch/Case
• Charger
• Earphones
• USB Cable
• Software

The Ten Second Review:

Device: Samsung i7500 Galaxy

Price: £435.99

Summary: An Android device sporting a 5MP camera, WiFi, GPS and a 3.2 OLED display.

Best of: WiFi, GPS, OLED Screen

Worst of: Unlock Key, Function Buttons

Samsung i7500 Galaxy Specification:

Samsung GT-I7500 Galaxy specification:
Dimensions:- 115 x 56 x 11.9mm
Battery:- Capacity: 1500 mAh
Display:- 320 x 480 pixels/3.2 inch AMOLED Display
Network:- GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band) / HSDPA (7.2Mbps)
Camera:- 5 mega-pixels (auto-focus)
Power LED Flash
Video:- Video Streaming
Music:- Supported formats: MP3, AAC, eAAC+ & WMA
Messaging:- SMS / MMS (with video) / E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, GMail) / Instant Messaging (Google Talk)
Memory:- 8GB (internal) / microSDHC (external)
Connectivity:- microUSB / 3.5mm AV connector
Bluetooth (2.0)
Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b/g)
Navigation:- AGPS / Google Maps / Google Street View / Google Latitude
Features:- YouTube / Google Calender / Google Search

General:

The top of the Galaxy houses the USB port and also the 3.5mm headset jack.

Galaxy Top

The front contains send/end keys, a menu key on the left, a back button and a home button on the right. In the centre is the D-Pad.

The Galaxy’s keys

The left side contains only the up/down volume rocker.

Left side

On the right can be found the unlock button as well as the camera button.

Right side

On the back of the device is the speaker grill at the base and the camera and flash at the top.

The back of the Galaxy

Highlights:

• WiFi
• Camera
• OLED Display

Lowlights:

• Unlock Button
• Bad key positioning

Review:

I was really looking forward to getting the Galaxy for review as I have had very limited time to use Android devices. Luckily I have a friend who has a HTC Hero and I have been able to have a good go, so I guess I will be comparing the Galaxy against the Hero as well as other operating systems.

Straight out of the box the Galaxy felt great in the hand. Like the Samsung Jet its plastic back cover is super shiny and feels well made. Once turned on and the screen kicks into life the device looked amazing. The OLED display really is so crisp and bright. I’m sure its only a matter of time until other manufactures are also using the same screens. On the forum one question I was asked was how easy the screen was to see in bright conditions. To be honest compared to my Windows devices I would say its on par. Neither are fantastic but I have managed.

Unlike the HTC Hero, the Galaxy runs the standard Android user interface like on the HTC Magic and T-Mobile G1. This consists of three home screens which are all totally customisable. By holding down a point on the screen a menu pops up which allows you to add shortcuts, widgets, folders or change wallpaper. These options are great as it allows you to only have the stuff you really use on the homescreens.

At the top of the homescreen is the notification bar. It also houses important information such as signal strength, battery life and the time, however if you get a notification such as a sms or voicemail a symbol will appear in this bar. To access the information you grab the bar with your finger or thumb and drag it down. This will open the notification bar into a full screen page giving to quick access to messages etc.

At the bottom of the screen is a grey tab button with an arrow on it. By sliding this arrow up it opens the main menu. Again the menu looks great as the icons are on a black background which really makes the coloured icons stand out. I had one major problem with the menu though. I was missing the Android Market icon (Androids app store). So, I thought that it must be located somewhere deeper in the menus but I was wrong. It was not on the handset full stop! I contacted Matt about this and he emailed Samsung who actually phoned him and discussed the problem. They kindly agreed to find out how to resolve the issue and get back to him. Did they call back – NO. Shame on you Samsung. So I now have an Android device which I can not customise with app’s from Android Market. Kind of defeats the whole point of buying the device if you ask me. Although O2 are selling the handset we have failed to actually locate a store that has a Galaxy in stock. So will the retail version have the Android market or not, or have all the handsets gone back to Samsung to be fixed???

Although the Galaxy looks a nice design I don’t think that the buttons on the front of the handset are very user friendly. The left hand side is okay but on the right they have squeezed an extra button in (the home key). It just feels like these buttons are a bit to close together and using one handed feels a little bit odd.  The other button which got really on my nerves is the lock key on the right hand side of the phone. Each time I wanted to do something I had to hold down the lock key for about three/four seconds which when picking the phone up dozens of times a day gets rather frustrating. Most other touch screen devices I have used have had a simple on screen unlock which takes a quarter of the time to complete. I also wasn’t too keen on the D-Pad. Although it does its job I didn’t like it as much as the track ball on the HTC Hero and to be truthful im not sure either handset actually need this feature as its so easy to change screens using the screen itself.

On to a positive feature, the camera. Although the cameras interface is not the best and using the soft keys to get through the menus is a pain, the camera takes good pictures. Outdoors, the pictures are as good as any other 5mp camera phone and indoors the flash does a brilliant job. The quality is without doubt good enough for printing. The video feature also is pretty good but like most phones it looks great on the device but not so hot once on a computer!

Listening to MP3s was also positive. The Metallica test was a huge success! The speaker is fairly loud but listening with the Samsung earphones was fantastic and I would say on par with my ipod. Samsung have always made a good job of there earphones, in my opinion, and they supply these ones with several of there handsets which is good news for music fans. With 8Gb of storage the Galaxy will hold a massive amount of music tracks.

The music interface is also very nice on the Galaxy with simple large on screen buttons. In addition to the album coverwork being displayed also the artist, album and song title are shown.

One thing that does concern me though is the lack of Bluetooth file transfer. Im not sure why this has been left out but I believe its an Android thing. Im sure this will change in time.

With a nice big screen web browsing has to be one of the Galaxy’s selling points and Samsung have not let us down. The OLED screen makes viewing images amazing and although there is no pinch zooming the onscreen zoom options are simple pimple!

A nice feature with the browser is multi tabbing. You can have four tabs open at a time and with a click of the menu button you can see all four tabs on one page, quarter screen, giving you the easiest way to choose which page you wish to return to.

Like most browsers there are numerous settings options such as choosing text size, blocking images, remember passwords and blocking pop ups.

A good browser all round!

Messaging is fine and dandy on the Galaxy. As the phone is an Android device you can easily import GMail contacts and there is a separate app for using GMail. Alternatively you can use any email address and the Galaxy will automatically detect the settings. I set up my Yahoo account and it worked just fine. Typing on the Galaxy is a bit tight in portrait mode but in landscape its relatively easy. The added haptic feedback is a nice touch. I am used to a physical keyboard but I soon picked up typing on the Galaxy and although not as fast as on my Touch Pro2 I surprised myself.

The Galaxy comes with a couple of nice app’s pre-installed. The first being google maps, which seems to be standard now on smartphones and secondly a YouTube client. Both worked well and its a shame I couldn’t download any others!

Conclusion:

So do I like the Galaxy as much as the Hero – No, and I cant see many people disagreeing with me once they have used both. It does what its meant to do and it does it well but its just not as nice. I was bitterly disappointed with Samsung’s failure to sort out the Android Market issue and had I been able to download other app’s then maybe the race would have been a bit closer.

Its still early days for Android and the best is yet to come but at the moment the Hero is still in the lead, for the time being at least.

If you have any questions regarding this handset please use the forum and I will do my best to answer.

Review by: James

i-gotU GT-120 Review

The i-gotU GT-120 from Mobile Action is a GPS logger and receiver which you use in conjunction with your camera for geotagging your photos.

The i-gotU GT-120 from Mobile Action

You may have seen a few reviews in the past on tracyandmatt.co.uk of photo geotagging devices. Well, I think I may have been given the tiniest one out there to try out! Good timing really as I’m off to Spain for a week so perfect to try this out!

What’s in the box?

• i-gotU GT-120
• USB cable (Proprietary connection to the device)
• Mini-CD with software and manual

The i-gotU GT-120 – packaging

i-gotU GT120 Specifications:

• Dimensions: 44.5 x 28.5 x 13 mm
• Weight: 20g
• SiRF StarIII 65nm GPS low power chipset
• Built-in GPS patch antenna
• 16M flash memory to store 65,000 way points
• Built-in 230mAh Lithium-ion battery
• 2 LEDs for on/off/charge/logging status status indication
• Average acquisition time: Cold start: < 35 seconds
• USB 1.1cable for charging and PC connect
• Operation temperature: -10 to + 50 degrees centigrade

System requirements:

• PC with Windows 2000, XP, Vista
• PC with USB 1.1 or 2.0

General:

This is such a simple device with just a proprietary USB connection on the bottom of the i-gotU GT-120 and the button on the front of it.

  The i-gotU GT-120 from Mobile Action

Highlights:

• Size – small and lightweight
• Simple to use
• Water resistant

Lowlights:

• Can take some time to locate GPS signal

Review:

Although I’ve seen geotagging devices I’ve never used one before. The i-gotU GT120 looks simple to use from the outset.

The software “@Trip” needs to be installed. You can get this off the Mobile Action’s site as well which is handy if you lose the mini CD. The installation is pretty quick and the software looks quite straight forward, but I’ll come back to this later in the review.

To switch the i-gotU GT12 on you just hold down the button until you see a blue light appear and flash on the front of the device (you can’t see when it’s not on as it’s located under the plastic). Now, here is my only moan about the device – you may have to wait a minute or two. or three.(you get the idea) until the device fixes on a GPS signal (and you have to be outside – but this is normal). You’ll see when the GPS signal has been found as a red light will then start to flash along with the blue one.

This is where I got confused! Any one who has used one of these before will be laughing at me now! I was convinced that there was more to it – Like pressing the button when you take a photo to track that specific position or something – but no, that was it! It logs data roughly every 5 seconds to track your movements. simple huh?!

To switch it off you just hold the button down again until the red light flashes a few times on its own.

The next step is to upload the data from it to your pc using the USB cable.

The software isn’t the most exciting looking but it is easy to use.

@Trip software for the i-gotU GT120

Uploading the data only takes a few clicks. The ‘Import’ button at the top left opens another window with an import wizard which guides you through the process. Once the data is uploaded you will then be able to see the tracked data. Google maps are used with this application.

Of course, this is then where your photos come into it. Any photos can be added to the map. The clever part is how they are positioned in the right place on the map. The i-gotU GT120 tracks the time when logging the GPS data. The software then synchronises the time that the picture was taken against the data tracks of the GPS information and then places your pictures accordingly on the map.

There are a few map interfaces. One of them is a sport view, where speed, trip time, total distance, etc are added to a bar at the bottom.

Conclusion:

My only real complaint was that it can take quite a time to fix on a GPS signal when you switch it on. This became annoying if i found something that I wasted to take a picture of quickly and the device was switched off.

But, otherwise, the small and lightweight i-gotU GT-120 from Mobile Action definitely impressed me!

Review by: Emma

Viliv S5 Premium 3G review

Introduction

A while ago now, Matt produced an unboxing video for the first UMPC review device we’ve had for some time. Ultra Mobile PC’s have seen their market shrink rapidly in the face of cheaper and cheaper netbooks on one side, and feature rich mobile devices.

So can Viliv provide me with a reason to use a UMPC again?

The Viliv S5 Premium 3G

Viliv S5 premium 3G specification:

• Viliv S5
• CPU type: Intel Atom (Silverthorne)
• CPU speed: 1300 Mhz
• Graphics: Intel GMA 500
• OS: Windows XP Home
• Display Size: 4.8" 1024 X 600
• Hard Disk: 30 GB
• Battery capacity: 23 (Wh)
• Weight: 395gm / 13.9 oz.
• Size (w/h/d mm): 154/84/24 mm
• Physical Interfaces
  USB2.0
  Docking connector
  Line-out / Headphone (3.5mm)
  Mini USB 2.0 (client)
• Wireless Interfaces
  802.11b/g
  BT2.0
  3G option
• Additional Specs and Accessories (can vary)
  GPS

Have a look at Matt’s Viliv S5 unboxing video to see the product in more detail and to see what other accessories are supplied.

General

My first impressions were very positive. I’d never heard of Viliv, but the packaging was on a par with any of the big name device manufactures, and really did make me sit up and think "hmm… this looks impressive kit". My positive vibes continued when I took a first look at the device itself – sorry Matt, I must have missed that unboxing video!

In the box there’s a couple of quick start guides, one of which basically details the XP setup process (its installed, but you need to do that stage with the annoying music for yourself). The second quick guide is a list of hardware button combos which control how the on screen keyboards work, how to enter the BIOS, and a rescue option if things go wrong!

Under the device itself, complete with mini stylus on a lanyard, there is an AC adaptor, a set of industrial looking ear phones, and yet another "quick start guide", but one which looks more like a decent manual for the device.

That pretty much completes the boxed product, so we’ll move onto the unit itself. Its actually very impressive. I was never a fan of UMPCs but when I saw the S5 I was staggered by the size of it. It is still big, but it will genuinely fit quite easily in a jacket pocket, and unlike most similar devices, it is genuinely portable. The device has a matt finish throughout, and looks exceptionally good.

The front of the screen houses the large 4.8" screen centred horizontally, with a 5 way joystick on the left side, located above a ‘Menu’ button – more on that later. To the right of the screen there’s another 3 buttons – ‘OK’, ‘C’ (for cancel) and a strange icon on a button that has a few uses – but primarily brings up the on screen keyboard. To the extreme left and right of the front panel, are small but decent quality stereo speakers. The Viliv logo and ‘ULTRA PC PMP’ is seen at the bottom edge of the touch screen.

Front view of the Viliv S5 with its ‘plectrum’ stylus

Moving to the top edge, and there are hardware buttons for volume control and a ear phone socket. There’s also a small tab, which on closer inspection, and a bit of pushing and pulling, turned out to be hiding a telescopic aerial. I was quite exited by this, but having read the manual it turns out its a "DMB Aerial"… and only useful in Korea 🙁 Boo Hiss!

Viliv S5 top view

The bottom edge is just home to a couple of heat dissipating grills, and the back is equally as plain as it consists of a huge slab of battery pack! Removing the battery allows access to the USIM socket.

Viliv S5 bottom view

On the left side, there is a rubber cover over a selection of input and output ports. Firstly there is a ‘multi-i/o’ socket which apparently outputs video via a selection of cables. A bit disappointing there is no standard port, but its always difficult on small devices. Theres also a full size USB port, and microusb to connect to a computer. The device is seen as a removable storage device, but the manual does insist – in bold – that you should read the manual first. I didn’t bother, and I’m still alive to tell the tale.

There is also a reset button under the cover, but the AC power socket is located just down from the cover.

Viliv S5 left side

The right hand side houses the power switch (lock, off, on), and the battery release slider.

Viliv S5 right side

The battery takes up the whole of the back of the unit and has a simple ‘Viliv’ logo on the back. Removing the battery reveals the SIM card slot for 3G connectivity.

The back of the Viliv S5

Highlights

• High-res small screen. Clear vibrant and ultra sharp, accurate touchscreen and easy on the eyes.
• Atom processor – it might be aging somewhat now in netbooks, but its a beast in devices like this

Lowlights

• Minor software issues. Touch keyboard software could do with an update
• Size – I don’t have an answer to the problem, but its still a little bit big!

Review

The device actually powers on very quickly – which is not bad going for XP, and you arrive swiftly at the desktop. Our review device came with a desktop full of apps. Some appear to still be in testing – “Mobile Partner” for example. You also get the usual office trial, and either Viliv, or a previous reviewer had installed all the Windows Live apps. Google Earth and a number of other popular apps were included.

There’s a start menu replacement app called the ‘Viliv Cube’ – which is nice enough, but oddly only shows the app names rather than the nice shortcut names. For example “winword.exe” rather than Word 2007.

The hardware Menu button though, oddly defaults to the built in Windows Start Menu. I don’t like these silly menu replacement systems, so it suits me, but it seems odd that Viliv don’t have it using their own software.

So I moved on and connected the device onto my wireless network. A painless experience, but thats often the case as long as you use the built in Windows Wireless Zero Configuration tool, rather than any manufacturer tools! Firefox and Internet Explorer were installed, so I went ahead and launched Firefox.

I pressed the keyboard button on the right hand side, and up popped a semi-transparent touch keyboard. This is shown on top of the bottom portion of the screen, which is generally a nice idea. However I did spot a potential flaw. If you open up the keyboard and begin typing a web address, the firefox history bar drops down on top of the keyboard, rendering it a bit useless.

That was pretty disappointing but having spoke to Viliv they did point out that I can install a number of open source and paid-for touch-screen keyboard systems. These are compatible with Windows – and indeed other operating systems – and are of various qualities. The built-in keyboard does however work fairly brilliantly elsewhere. You can actually write or edit a document on this with ease.

In fact that brings us neatly onto the screen. On such a tiny device, a resolution of up to 1024×768 is pretty impressive. Annoyingly the resolutions don’t all seem to match the aspect ratio of the screen. I eventually realized the best resolution to use was actually 1024×600 – which is still massive for such a small screen. However, text is still readable, and the screen and touch keyboard both make the device extremely usable on the move.

The usability extends beyond the touch screen though – the Viliv comes with a stylus as well, which might not be the most earth shattering news you’ve heard today, but… its on a strap! Moving on anyway… there’s also the joystick/jog dial control, which makes moving around buttons and fields within dialog boxes very quick, and very easy. No need to hit the button with your finger or the stylus, so once again Viliv have added to the usability of the device very well.

The battery life was also mightily impressive considering the size of the screen, and the built in hardware – which includes GPS and Bluetooth.

In terms of the built in GPS I can report that the hardware performs quite well. There is an option to download updated AGPS data which certainly helps with a GPS fix. Having used it at home I can can get a GPS fix even while sitting indoors. Where the problem with GPS lies is in the SatNav software that’s available for the PC. There are lots of titles out there that will work quite happily with the Viliv, Google Earth for example works just fine. The problem I found is that many of the turn-by-turn SatNav products out there do not have UK maps available. The only ‘big name’ product out there that has a UK map is Garmin Mobile PC – but that’s for another review – the Viliv itself works fine!

Conclusion

Viliv have really gone to town on the S5 and come up with something that could be quite special. The software package is a little bit rough around the edges, but the hardware itself is fantastic. Software, of course, is fairly easy to fix anyway and an alternative keyboard might be a cheap fix as well.

I really didn’t think I’d get on with an UMPC device, but as soon as I opened the box I was impressed with the build quality of the kit, and the styling. I realise this is a small market, but if you are after a UMPC, go get this one!

Review by: Mark