Reviews

Canon EOS-5D review

Canon are synonymous with high end professional cameras and the slightly Modified Canon EOS 5D is no exception. Yes, this beast has been around for a couple of years now but with a few cosmetic tweaks Canon have once again extended the life a little bit more.

Now, this camera is not your modern flashy electronics, multiple scenery mode, point and click camera – It is a serious high end professional camera built like a tank to take plent of scrapes and knocks I know it may not meet the needs of many of our readers. However, take a look at the paps on the streets and a vast majority of them will have this very camera in their hand.

Canon EOS-5D

Introduction

When we examined the Panasonic I commented that many purists may not like all the scenery options and shooting assists – Well, The Canon EOS 5D is as far away from this as you could possibly get. It’s a body only purchase as well (Although many suppliers are doing “Kit” deals with a number of lense choices) so don’t forget the lenses!

I hooked the 5D up to a pretty standard Sigma 500mm EF lens for the review.

What’s in the Box?

Very little! The camera body comes complete with battery, lens covers, leads and battery charger. The supplied software allows easy transfer of images via USB if required (To be honest I always use a CF Card reader as I feel this is faster).

Canon EOS 5D specification:

General

Built like a Tank with a Magnesium alloy body, you instantly feel this is a serious piece of kit with an extremely good build level and judging by the review unit can take a few knocks along the way. Never seen a camera so bashed!

Oh, and for Canon EOS users the controls are pretty much the same too…

One of the big additions the 5D provides is a full-frame sensor. Most consumer focused D-SLR’s are 2/3rds frame and use a much smaller sensor.

The biggest advantage of a full frame sensor are much higher picture quality, this is backed up in low light situations as well – However, you do loose the magnifying effect found on smaller sensor cameras.

Taking the classical EOS look and feel, with a much more solid body than say the 350D, the EOS 5D is one beast of a camera to hold and feel but I’m really interested in is how it works.

Looking at the now de facto Canon EOS controls top left shows the mode dial button.

Canon EOS-5D mode dial

The top right hand side of the camera houses the main camera setting display

Canon EOS-5D LCD Panel

This shows many of the camera settings such as shutter speed and aperture this can also be used when changing many settings. A handy back light can be switched on for those darker nights!

Other settings such as ISO, White balance and focus modes are changed with the collection of buttons encircling this LCD screen.

The camera has a few AF modes, from the standard One Shot mode to the AI Focus modes that keeps the camera focusing at all times. Useful for moving objects.

Of course, the shutter release is just to the front of these buttons.

In the centre of the camera is a pretty standard hotshoe. The camera uses E-TTL II Flash Metering. It’s important to note this camera does not have any integral flash (Or an AF assist lamp for focusing) but it will use any of these features on a compatible flash unit.

The left hand side of the camera has a small lift up flap allow access to the connections of the camera.

Canon EOS-5D connectors

Connections are provided for external flash synchronisation, Remote Shutter release, Video out and a USB 2.0 connector for linking with your PC.

The back of the camera looks almost like a 20D (or most other EOS cameras for that matter…)

Canon EOS-5D back

The immediate benefit however is the 2.5” LCD screen, somewhat larger than previous models. This screen is crystal clear and provides excellent reviewing of images and access to menu items.

The camera does not have Live View though, I didn’t think I’d miss this but for close up work I certainly did. I have to say the view finder was excellent though – The Full Screen CCD allows far more light, and with a larger mirror in the camera the view is really good.

To the left of the LCD screen are the common control buttons,

Just below the screen is the delete images button.

Above the power switch (incidentally the 5D is ready within a second after switching on) is the main jog wheel. This is used to move through menu items and controlling some of the camera settings.

On the right hand side of the camera is the CF Card slot. (Type II)

Canon EOS-5D memory card slot

Highlights and Lowlights

Using the camera on a day to day basis has shown a number of highlights and low lights:

Highlights

Lowlights

Canon EOS-5D battery compartment

REVIEW

I think I mentioned before, I do own one of the original Canon 10D’s so, again I have tried to remain unbiased during this revue. Bolting on some of my existing lenses was a great benefit and the EOS 5D made full use of all the standard AF features. I did miss the extra magnification that you loose with the full screen CCD so I guess I’d need to get a better lens if I was going to use this more.

It did make my wide angle lens behave exactly as it should though – 16mm was a true 16mm lens for once.

The camera is very well built, and in normal Canon style shows signs of being a stong resilient camera capable of taking many a knock. The image quality is quite breathtaking and using the RAW mode allowed minute changes to be made to colour balance directly on my PC.

I have to admit, I didn’t miss any of the scene selectors or automated imagery wizards that are now started to be found on some of the newer D-SLR’s. Give me the automatic mode for day to day shooting and happy with the ability to change my aperture and shutter settings for changing depth of field and such other trickery.

The fast switch on and warm up time of the camera means its almost ready the moment you take it out of the bag which gives very fast access to all features and taking shots. A must for those moments you least expect (or, to be honest ever see…)Can’t remember the last time I was walking through London and bumped into Madonna.)

I tried using some really high ISO settings on a few shots and was very surprised at the low levels of noise on the image, again, I think this is down to the full screen CCD reducing distortion etc.

I didn’t really do too much testing with a flash gun but the brief shots I took showed a reasonable response but I wasn’t using a canon flash, just a clone cheapo unit. I’d really advise going for a proper flash unit from Canon as they just seem to match the camera a lot closer.

The lack of an AF assist light does cause issues though, there are times you want a sharp picture taken in low light without the flash and I had to use manual focus to get the images correct.

Conclusion

The Canon 5D is an excellent camera with superb quality shots and ease of use. The full screen CCD puts this camera in between high end consumer based D-SLR’s and full blown professional D-SLR’s such as the EOS 1D. You will however find many of the features and a reasonably close picture quality from some of the lower prices cameras in the EOS range such as the 400D or the upcoming 450D – The 450D for example has the same 12MP resolution and throws live view into the bundle for quite a lot less money.

You do however get what you pay for and the EOS 5d is no exception. The full screen CCD and build quality wins for me but, I’m not a professional so I may just be tempted to move down the range slight to say the 450D and spend the extra money on that special lens.

Review by: John

[Post tag(s): smartphone, Pocket PC, canon, EOS 5D, DSLR, Tracy & Matt]

Living with the HTC Shift (Part 3)

The HTC shift a week in:

I’ve been using the shift in anger for a week now and I am staying happy with the device overall, there are a few reservations which take the shine of the device but I have to say I don’t think if I had parted with my hard earned cash that I’d be suffering any of the technology disenchantment which is always a risk after a significant purchase.

I’ve got used to the keyboard, I’m not up to my usual speed with a full size keyboard but It’s perfectly functional for extended use even on longer documents, no more accidental screen swipes and if I wasn’t going back and forth between a full size and shift keyboard I’m sure my speed would improve.

HTC Shift keyboard

In any case with the on board USB port and D-SUB out you’ve got the ability to connect to an LCD and full size USB keyboard when clattering away in Vista. The only hiccough is that this stays connected whilst using the Windows Mobile chipset so if you forget and tap away on the attached keyboard you can get some interesting additions to documents.

In Windows mobile the Wi-Fi components of the main chipset are not available which means you are left with cellular only for your connectivity, not so bad however there are still areas I regularly visit (like my mother’s house) that HSDPA or 3g just isn’t available and GPRS is patchy at best here the ability to use the built in Wi-Fi would be perfect but is denied.

The Wi-Fi and 3G interaction in Vista is also interesting, the only way I have been able to make the device connect via 3G under Vista is to disable the Wi-Fi connection manually, until you do this the cellular modem doesn’t even appear in the network connections list and the device won’t connect via cellular until this process if completed.

The touch screen I moaned about early last week has actually turned out to be a real benefit as I can easily navigate around the screen without resorting to the mouse pad and buttons on the Shift itself, so much so that I find myself prodding LCDs when using none touch enabled screens at Home.

The key I have been using a lot is the screen resolution changer, this give you the ability to flick back and forth between 1024 x 600 and 800 x 400 screen resolutions. Again a little anomaly is that when switching resolutions the keyboard input is suspended rather than buffered.

Battery life has been OK windows mobile is great for this, the shift managed to go all over the weekend with windows mobile usage, however without Paul’s liberate Windows mobile would be so crippled as to be useless and I’m sure I would have to resort to Vista far more frequently as it is I can get by in Word, excel and internet explorer without too much difficulty now they have been restored.

The biggest problem I have is the interaction between the windows mobile and Vista, to say the shift ‘does’ both Vista and Windows Mobile is a bit misleading, it’s really more like two distinct devices within the same packaging certainly in default settings.

With liberate this is improved a little in that at least you can see the windows mobile device from Vista ( I know we are cheating by having pocket Office installed but to be honest this is really the Shift’s USP and HTC have somewhat compromised their main differentiator out of the box)

Overall I’m happy the Shift is very man portable, reasonably good looking, although in windows mobile mode it does look all the world like some shocking great PDA, and sufficient for most of my daily needs. I’m travelling a lot more this week so I am hoping that the shift will really come into its own, watch this space.

Go back to Part 1or Part 2

Posted by: Alasdair

[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, Orange, HTC, HTC Shift, Microsoft Communicator]

i-mate JAMA 101 review

The i-mate JAMA 101 – it’s a mini JAMin!

10 second review:
Device: i-mate JAMA 101
Cost: SIM free only: £199.95
Available from: Devicewire
Summary: a mini version of the popular JAMin but needs a little work to be a as much of a star as its predecessor
Best of: size and looks
Worst of: can be slow at times

i-mate JAMA 101

The Full Review

Hot on the heels of the x150 reviews we featured a few weeks ago we’ve had a hands on with the consumer equivalent the i-mate JAMA 101 the JAMA range is i-mates first foray into the consumer marketplace after the dissolution of their relationship with HTC so it’s quite key to their brand image, we’re going to look at how the JAMA measures up. The 101 is an upgraded version specs wise and styling wise over the original JAMA.

I-mates HTC devices have stood them in good stead, the JAMA looks just like a mini version of i-mates HTC JAMin which was a massive favourite of mine. The JAMA certainly turned heads the styling and size are fantastic, the screen is a little smaller than is ideal but you’re getting a really compact PDA here with Windows Mobile 6 professional on board.

What’s in the box?

The usual bits and pieces come with in the box with the JAMA and you can see more in Matt’s JAMA unboxing video but the basics are:

i-mate JAMA 101 specification:

Environment
My usual enterprise environment exchange 2003 server using exchange activesync

Highlights:

No Lights:

Lowlights:

REVIEW

The JAMA 101 is a really really good looking device, a great size, great finish and a real tactile feel; it looks the entire world like a smaller version of the JAMin.

The JAMA is a real eye catcher and elicited a great deal of comment, it’s a very compact and attractive device, the matt black finish is traditional i-mate and the JAMA sits nicely in the palm.

i-mate JAMA 101 next to HTC TyTN II

Form Factor – The design cues
Physically, notwithstanding the keypad and the slight difference in screen size the two devices are identical the arrangement of ports and buttons follows the same scheme on both the x150s:

Simple LED notification at the top – strangely inactive on the review device

i-mate JAMA 101 top view

MicroSD card slot cover and external antenna on the left hand side

i-mate JAMA 101 left side

Stylus, camera button and volume rocker to the right

i-mate JAMA 101 right side

Headset and USB sockets covered by plastic flaps, Mic and reset buttons to the bottom

i-mate JAMA 101 bottom view

The keypad is set out logically

i-mate JAMA 101 keypad

And the expected camera and self portrait mirror with handsfree / audio speakers to the rear

i-mate JAMA 101 back

The JAMA has the nice high impact matt black plastic finish no fingerprint problems here.

Connectivity

The JAMA is a bit light on connectivity options, GSM and GPRS not 3G and HSDPA and no WiFi USB 1.1 not 2.0, I suppose this is the price you pay for the compact form factor but I think the omission of WiFi in a non operator device is a disappointment.

Operation

Frankly the JAMA was a bit flaky in operation, the processor and memory are a bit under specced the device came close to a reset a couple of times, but never actually needed one.

Configuration

Despite its compact side the JAMA is well laid out the only criticism I have is that the camera button is a bit too central and you obscure a fair bit of the screen with your hand when using the camera. The screen is small and the onboard keyboards need the stylus for successful operation.

Look and Feel

The interface is pretty much vanilla Windows Mobile 6 Professional, there’s an i-mate themed today background but nothing fancy, if you are used to the WM6 interface then there are no surprises here either.

Applications

There’s nothing unusual in the loaded applications on the JAMA the only surprise is the profile controller which allows the user to assign profiles much as in windows mobile 6 standard phone devices.

i-mate JAMA 101 settings

Profile controller is pretty self explanatory

i-mate JAMA 101 profiles

Stability

Stability was a little disappointing, the JAMA locked up a few times but came back), when handling documents the device grinds a little, never actually needing a reset but very nearly getting the stylus treatment a couple of times. The biggest problem for was Bluetooth which kept turning itself off for no apparent reason a real pain when driving and using a headset.

Overall Assessment

The JAMA was a real pleaser initially and the styling certainly gained a positive reaction, however the lack of 3G and WiFi were a bit of a disappointment and with continued use the lack of visual notification and the fiddly on screen keyboards were a bit of pain. I wouldn’t replace my current devices with the JAMA at the moment but with an update to iron out the stability issues the JAMA could be a real winner.

Review by: Alasdair

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, i-mate JAMA 101, i-mate]

Garmin XT review

Devicewire have kindly sent us a review copy of Garmin Mobile XT. Since the biggest player in sat nav no longer bother with our industry, it’s left to the others to put together decent sat nav solutions for phones and PDAs.

Garmin is one of the bigger names, and the latest release has plenty of nice features. Installation is nice and easy providing you use the original microSD card, or the supplied card-size adaptors. I have been using the Garmin software with the memory card installed in my Nokia N95 8GB. We’ve since found out that Garmin wont allow you to transfer the software to another memory card, in case you need a larger one, which means you’ll have to card swap if you have stuff saved on another card. Garmin – you need to sort this out!

The install size is on the large side – so there really isn’t much room on the supplied card for much more.

Installation and setup is a breeze, when you insert the memory card the software automatically starts up and installs. After that I simply enabled “Integrated GPS” and off it went. Similar options are available for Garmin Bluetooth, and Other bluetooth gps devices.

Down to business then. The startup time is not particularly quick – in fact it’s quite slow on the N95 but I’m told that it’s much quicker on Windows Mobile devices. However once running, things seem quite fluid. The main menu, and most of the menu area is pretty simple. However I would say that the Garmin boys really need to do more design work as, compared to other sat nav products out there, the UI isn’t very pretty.

Garmin XT main menu

The GPS signal is shown, with options for tools and settings and a quick link to the main map screen.

Garmin XT settings

The “Where to?” screen looks somehow worse than the main menu – horrible white backgrounds, incomplete titles for buttons, and changing font sizes. However, despite the bad looks, it is quick and easy to understand.

Garmin XT where to?

The software really falls down on inputting an address – it’s just too long-winded. Firstly, despite being the “GB and Ireland” version of the software – the country selection screen has “England” or “Spell”.

City selection is similar, and combined with Postcode search – and seems to be fairly quick. You can either type in a postcode, or search for a city and then find the street.

The built in POI seems to be fairly well researched, and in plentiful supply. Weirdly, they are helpfully located within the “Food and Hotels” section(!) – I have no idea what was wrong with “POIs” like everyone else uses!

I easily managed to set up a route, and proceeded to mess around and go the wrong way. It copes admirably and recalculates routes quite quickly.

Garmin XT map view

One nice feature I found in Garmin – Free traffic information! – via GPRS, so required a nice data package and compatible phone – but free all the same. It’s a bit more limited than other sat nav packages, and won’t update mid-journey.

However, it’s a nice free service – but perhaps this could be improved in future versions. I’m not sure where the traffic information is sourced from in the UK.

As with many sat navs, the 3D interface looks pretty cool, and is a decent representation of the road ahead. The view will zoom in and out, depending on both speed, and whether there are any turns required ahead. Although this sounds similar to TomTom, Garmin really zooms out – big style. It seems that it will zoom out until the next turn is visible on screen.

Routing options are available, but again seem to be hidden away, with no way of forcing it to ask me every time whether I prefer a short, or fast route. It does have extra routing functions for different types of vehicles – an area where it easily beats TomTom software.

Another cool Garmin feature is “Track logs” which as you might guess, tracks your every move to the SD card, allowing input into Google Earth and other mapping tools. It will also allow you to replay a route. This single feature could be a winner for a lot of people – since TomTom have never bothered with it.

Simulate route is Garmin’s carbon copy version of TomTom’s fantastic “View Route Demo” function. However, although it works well, is very annoying having to turn off GPS whenever I wish to use it. I’m not sure why.

The Garmin XT software has a couple of key selling points:

Free Speed Camera updates forever! – TomTom charge about £50 a year for this feature and with the Mobile XT it’s free. With TomTom’s version as well it’s not that accurate when driving down a road with a camera near by. Garmin can work out what road you are on and if there is a camera on a road close by it ignores it.

Another thing that could be useful that’s included is the ability to SMS your location to anyone – those with Garmin Mobile XT installed will see the option to navigate direct to the person who sent the message – those without the software will get the lat/lon position that can be put in to Google Maps or similar.

Conclusion

Garmin Mobile XT is a good piece of software. It works on all sorts of devices from a single card. Granted there are some differences between versions but it does mean that changing your phone or PDA probably wont mean having to buy new sat nav software.

My criticism is sadly due to the lack of thought put into some of the design work, and default settings. The navigation screen also updates far too slow – sometimes, but not always, to the point of being useless. This does depend on the device though – and you will need a decent CPU on board to get the most out of it.

However, what makes Garmin get a positive conclusion from me, is purely and simply the price. £50 is cheap, and makes Garmin XT very much a bargain purchase. It’s no TomTom, but since that company has all but ditched mobiles and PDAs, it’s good to see Garmin have stuck around, and are improving their software with each release. If you are buying your first GPS enabled device then adding Garmin XT to your purchase is an inexpensive way to get started with proper sat nav software.

When you consider the cost of the Garmin XT software and the fact that weather and travel features are included free of charge then it’s well worth considering!

Review by: Mark

[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, Garmin, SAT NAV, GPS]

Living with the HTC Shift (Part 2)

Second day in and the HTC Shift is still impressing, at least part of the time.

The HTC Shift is still with me, managing to replace my laptop for almost all of the regular daily functions, there are a few things that are a little annoying.

I’ve recently bemoaned the fact that the OQO e2 had a capacitive pen rather than an actual touch screen I have to admit I was wrong and OQO were right.

The HTC Shift is equipped with a fully touch screen, great when in windows mobile as with your thumbs you can access the entire screen no problems. Email triage is easy as you like just a couple of thumb touches to get rid of the chaff from your inbox its great.

Using the tablet features are no problem as the handwriting recognition panel means it’s simple to enter even cursive text however when using OneNote with a fully sensitive screen or any application that doesn’t use the input panel unless you hover your hand over the screen in a cramp inducing posture you end up with scrawls all over the screen. A Capacitive pen would solve this problem to be honest this means that using the Shift for note taking in meetings isn’t as simple as I’d hoped.

The keypad is still too fiddly, so much so that I’ve taken to using my stowaway Bluetooth keyboard for more accurate and comfortable input, I will persevere but it’s not as usable as I’d hoped.

Battery life is also a problem using vista for even 30 minutes you lose a great deal of your windows mobile time, you need to have the power supply to hand as even with less than an hour of Vista use you get less than 24 hours windows mobile use.

This sounds like I don’t like the Shift, however for such a compact device it’s managing very well, the niggles are just that, niggles and the Shift is performing above expectations. Despite the little issues the HTC Shift is still winning for me.

Part three soon.

Go back to Part 1 or on to Part 3

Posted by: Alasdair

[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, Orange, HTC, HTC Shift, Microsoft Communicator]

Living with the HTC Shift (Part 1)

Part one of my daily report on HTC’s Windows Mobile / Windows Vista Hybrid

I’ve been looking forward to this review for a while, ever since the Shift was announced I’ve been eagerly awaiting it’s arrival at Tracyandmatt towers. Well late last week it arrived and I’ve had the weekend to start to set it up as I’d like. This week I’m going to try and use the Shift as a laptop replacement and give you daily updates on my progress.

So part one of living with the shift:

The shift is not quite what it was made out to be, I’d been expecting a device with Vista and full Windows Mobile 6 as oppose to windows sideshow. As widely reported elsewhere what you actually get is Vista and a cut-down version of Winmo called Snapvue which actually doesn’t do too much more than sideshow and email. There’s no browser, no office mobile, not really much of anything at all. Paul over at MoDaCo has fiddled with his Shift and managed to restore a semblance of the full winmo experience however I’d initially decided to try and get on with Snapvue, but all too quickly decided that I couldn’t.

The idea of the suggested week long standby Winmo device which I can use for a great deal of my daily routine was just too appealing (you don’t get a week either) so on went Paul’s liberate pack to restore the start menu, explorer and office mobile. It’s a breeze to do this, following Paul’s instructions it takes about 20 minutes to sort it out and you get a system that will really do most of what you want.

Other additions are:

Under Vista:

The licensing situation is a bit sketchy at the moment as it’s unclear if HTC have actually paid Microsoft for full Winmo, if they have and have decided to cripple it so badly by implementing Snapvue that’s actually even more incomprehensible. In any case this is being typed in Outlook 2007 in Vista so no naughtiness here. 🙂

The keyboard is quite fiddly, too fiddly perhaps, the keys are pretty small, I haven’t tried handwriting recognition for any length of time just yet, the biggest problem however is the fact that when I’m using the top row of the keyboard my fingers keep catching the bottom of the screen and moving the cursor to a different part of the document I’m working on, I’m sure I’ll get used to this over the week.

Size is pretty good, the device is a little heavier than I expected but it feels very sturdy and looks like it can take a bit of a battering.

So far the device has performed well, vista doesn’t grind, at least not yet (aero is off and the windows experience index is 2.1 based on the CPU) , the shift experience has been a happy one so far.

Watch this space for more updates!

EDIT: Part two of the Living with the Shift series is now live.

Posted by: Alasdair

[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, Orange, HTC, HTC Shift, Microsoft Communicator]

Sony A820 Walkman review

Can the new Sony A820 MP3 player restore the Walkman brand name to its former glory?

Introduction

Back in the 1980’s everyone had a ‘Walkman’. The name itself was used to refer to all personal cassette players in much the same way as the iPod name seems to be used today to refer to all MP3 player devices.

The A820 isn’t Sony’s first Walkman branded MP3 player but previous models seem to have gone under the radar. In fact it wasn’t until i started my research for this review that I realised just how many Walkman branded MP3 players Sony had released over the past few years. So could this latest player be the one to put Sony back on the map?

Sony A820 Walkman

What’s in the box?

If you’ve seen my Sony A820 Walkman unboxing video you’ll know that I’ve been looking at a pre-release version of the player that came in a plain white box. Although the A820 hasn’t made it to retail just yet you can expect to find the following in the box:

It has been suggested elsewhere that the A820 may ship with a set of bluetooth headphones although it’s not yet known if this would be standard equipment or if there will be a basic and a deluxe package.

Sony A820 Walkman specification:

GENERAL

The A820 is a fairly converntional looking MP3 player. We are obviously looking at the black version but once released the A820 will also be available in white, silver and pink.

On the front of the A820 you’ll find the basic controls. There’s a d-pad style navigation control with play/pause button in the centre. Either side are the home/back and power/option buttons. These controls take up only a small amount of space below the 2’4″ QVGA display.

Sony A820 Walkman controls

The bottom of the device is home to the headphone socket which is a standard 3.5mm jack socket so you’ll be able to use your favourite headphones. Also on the bottom is the proprietary sync/charge connector.

Sony A820 Walkman bottom

On the right of the unit are the other controls. Here you’ll see an up/down rocker for volume control, a bluetooth button and a lock switch. The bluetooth button enables the bluetooth connection to a paired device while the lock switch disables the other buttons to stop you accidentally turning the device on or off.

Sony A820 Walkman right side

There are no other buttons or controls on either the top or the left of the device.

The only other button is on the rear of the device. It’s a simple reset button that you’ll need either a pin or a sharp pencil to press.

Sony A820 Walkman back

REVIEW

When unboxing the A820 the first thing that struck me was just how small and light it is. It sits quite comfortably in the palm of your hand with all of the important buttons laid out so that you can reach them easily with your thumb. Although one thing to mention here is that the A820 is definitely designed for right handed use. Not a bit deal perhaps but the volume control is on the wrong side for left handed use. I mention this as I’m a lefty!

As I mentioned earlier, the package I received from Sony was a pre-release PR model so the package contents will differ slightly to the ones supplied. For example there was no manual or getting started guide in the box I received. To be honest I didn’t really need these to get up and running. It’s pretty easy to plug in the USB cable and connect the player to a PC. Having done so the Walkman is detected as a media player device and I’m offered several options, one is to browse and upload music. All I did here was open the device up in My Computer and drag and drop the files on the music folder on the device.

File transfer time was reasonably fast thanks to the USB 2.0 connection and despite me wanting to copy several gigabytes of sample music to the device this was done in just a few minutes. This is a good thing as this was the 16GB model, plenty of room for my limited music collection, but there will also be 8GB and 32GB models in the future.

Once you power the device up everything is laid out in a nice simple format. The main screen has just 9 icons that you can navigate easily with the d-pad style control. The icons include settings, photos, videos, music and Bluetooth. Using the various options is quite intuitive.

The other thing that impressed me about the package from Sony was the fact that a pair of Sony MDREX85LPB In-Ear Headphones were included. These really are excellent headphones and normally cost over £35 on their own, that said, these headphones actually out-performed my expensive Etymotic Research headphones to the extent that I went out and bought another set of the Sony’s. I just hope that Sony include these headphones in the retail package!

Sony MDREX85LPB headphones

The Sony EX headphones, coupled with the A820 make a great combo. and I didn’t realise just how bad MP3s sounded on my old MP3 player until I used the Walkman. Despite using exactly the same MP3 files the Sony is seems much more capable of playing them back than some other players that I’ve tried. One of my colleagues commented that the sound was much clearer than his iPod Nano and asked where the Walkman could be purchased.

The A820 isn’t just an MP3 player though. One of the reasons Sony has included a 2.4″ QVGA display on the device is that it’s also designed for playing videos. I have to say that the TFT display on the unit is striking. It’s bright, sharp and evenly lit.

Having downloaded a few sample MPEG-4 files from the web I have to say that video play back is impressive, there are no signs of motion blur as a result of poor refresh rates. I’d also say that the screen quality surpasses that of the Sony PSP. Clearly Sony has learned something since they made the PSP!

With 16GB of storage space at your disposal you’ll be able to get a fair few hours of video on there!

Setting up the Bluetooth connection on the A820 is also a breeze. You simply go into the Bluetooth menu and create a partnership with your Bluetooth audio device. I used my Philips Stereo BT headphones and they worked very well. A few people asked me whether or not you can transfer audio files to the Walkman over a BT connection. I tried this a few times and wasn’t able to make this work. This is a time when the manual may have been helpful. I’m still not sure if you are supposed to be able to do this but I wasn’t able to.

So on to the battery life. I used the A820 for just over 2 weeks for around 3 to 4 hours a day. During that time I only had to charge it twice. However, during the time I used it I didn’t use BT while listening to music so you should expect battery life to be quite drastically reduced if using BT and further reduced with video playback.

Conclusion

The Sony A820 Walkman is a great example of a device where the whole really does exceed the sum of its parts. There are literally hundreds of MP3 players on the market but few offer such a comprehensive list of features and even fewer are able to excel in each department.

I really enjoyed using the A820 but to be honest it’s been quite difficult to put my finger on the real reason that I like it so much. It’s fairly nice to look at, has a good screen, good battery life. It comes with excellent headphones and sounds great. The menus are easy to navigate and use and it’s dead easy to find that track you are looking for. Perhaps the real reason for liking the A820 is that it does all of the things mentioned above in such a small package weighing just 58 grams!?

If Sony can release the A820 at a realistic price-point then I think it will be a winner. If its price in on a par with the likes of Apple and SanDisk then I will definitely be considering one myself!

Review by: Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, NWZ-A820, WALKMAN]

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 review

Panasonic have some of the most innovative digital compact cameras on the market, but how does their latest “suits-all” camera fair?

INTRODUCTION

Let’s start with some honesty – I really like Panasonic cameras. I use my personal TZ3 camera often, and absolutely love it. The LS80, along with most in the range share a lot of common features, and a standard UI within the menu.

Although the LS80 is more entry level than my TZ3, I was interested to find out what Panasonic had updated and improved in this latest addition to the range.

You’ll also notice that I’ve deliberately written this review in a rather non-technical way. The reason for this is that the LS80, although a capable camera, is designed to be a simple to use non-technical camera. So if you are looking for complex features then the LS80 probably isn’t for you.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80

What’s in the Box?

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 Specification:

General

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 is a fairly conventional looking digital compact camera. The rear of the camera houses a generous 2.5″ TFT colour screen which displays both live and saved images as well as the cameras menu system. Also on the back you’ll find the main controls for the cameras settings.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 back

On the right hand side you’ll find a flap covering the SD/SDHC memory card slot.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 right side

The left hand side has a rubber flap covering the USB/AV connector. The connector is proprietary as it carries both USB and AV signals.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 left side

As with every other camera on the market, the top right of the camera has the zoom and shutter release controls as well as the power switch and e.Zoom button (more on that later).

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 top

REVIEW

The first thing I noticed when unboxing Lumix DMC-LS80 was the lack of the customary (And propriety) Panasonic battery. 2 standard AA batteries are included instead, and although I’m guessing this could vary, my opinion is that this is decent improvement. Although replacement batteries weren’t expensive, I’d much prefer the AA standard batteries – if only for an emergency dash to the supermarket to buy replacements. Obviously the chances of finding a specific Panasonic battery on the high street are very slim.

I’ve also used an FX12 camera from Panasonic, and although another great little camera, the LCD display was a little lacking in some aspects, especially as none of the mentioned cameras have viewfinders. The LS80 has a large, higher quality 2.5 inch screen which is as good as I suspect you will ever need.

The camera is nearly completely menu-driven. The dial switch found on most Panasonic compact’s is missing here, and instead you need to use the menu. Some functions, old and new, do still have dedicated buttons.

Almost all new camera’s in the Panasonic compact range include an extended zoom function. It sounds straightforward – lower the megapixels, and use the spare to increase the zoom. Strangely I believe only Panasonic bother to add this as a feature. While it may not be a regularly used features, I’d rather than that, than the utterly pointless digital zoom techniques found elsewhere. In this instance, e.zoom takes the acceptable 3x zoom, upto around 4.5x.

As mentioned, the screen is much improved, and extremely high quality. Extra modes are available for high level shooting, and a full-brightness setting (expect this to kill batteries!)

For a ‘cheap’ £100 camera, the shot quality is excellent – as you might expect from a Vario lens. Colours are produced well, and images while slightly soft in some cases, are hard to beat with anything close to this price bracket. At 8.1 megapixels, it won’t be “out of date” anytime soon, and will be an excellent first camera, or a secondary “put-in-pocket” camera as well.

It’s hard to find any real faults with it considering the price point, although personally I think it’s a shame to have lost the dial mode switch. I guess the main reason for this, is that the dial simply doesn’t fit within the chassis anymore!

The menu system and associated scene selection screens work as easy as any other. Lists are clear and easy to understand, and the layout of options are clear and concise. The “new” dedicated switch between record and playback is a good move, especially as it wasn’t always completely clear (believe it or not) on some of last years models. Weirdly the TZ3 I have has 2 different playback modes, each with a subset of the other’s functions!

Highlights:

Lowlights:

Conclusion

In the price bracket, for me the Panasonic quality and Vario excellence makes this a no-brainer. Buy it as a new large megapixel camera, or buy it as a second camera to shove in your pocket when your DSLR is too big. Its an exceptional camera, with many features you’d only expect higher up the range.

The new, and older Panasonic-exclusive features are actually genuinely useful, rather than just another pointless acronym and sticker on the box. If this is the standard for Panasonic’s 2008 cameras, I’m looking forward to getting a TZ5 from them to review soon! 😉

Review by: Mark

[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, panasonic, LS80, Digital Camera]

HTC P3470 review

The 10 second review:

Device: HTC P3470
Cost: SIM free: £304.95
Available from: eXpansys
Summary: Small, stylish and practical. Clean design with some very nice features but doesn’t overwhelm too much. Lack of 3G and WiFi will be a problem for some but bundled TomTom 6 will be attractive to others.

HTC P3470

The Full Review

First seen at MWC back in February the HTC P3470, previously known to us as the HTC Pharos, promised to be a “Feature-rich Touchscreen phone” and has been hailed by many as the device that will bring the GPS Windows Mobile phone to the masses. Now that sounds like a pretty tall order so how well have HTC done with this new entry-level, affordable(?) product?

What’s in the box?

t mentioned in his P3470 unboxing video, we are looking at a pre-release version of the device. So while the final specification will not change the ROM build we are reviewing may well be different to the retail product and it will come in a much nicer box. However you should get the following:

HTC P3470 specification:

General

The styling of the P3470 is pretty typical of an HTC device. There’s the 2.8” 240×320 touchscreen below which you can find a number of standard buttons. Two soft-keys sit on the left and right along with the send and end phone keys and Windows and OK buttons. Right in the centre of the keypad block is the ‘d-pad’ style control. This had a round disc on the outside that rotates and can be used to scroll though on-screen menus and ‘jog’ though emails. The d-pad can also be used as a regular up, down, left and right pushbutton as well as having an action button in the middle.

HTC P3470 controls

In a departure from the HTC-norm, there’s no jog wheel or rocker, instead, the left hand side of the device just has two simple up and down buttons that are used a volume controls in calls and can as a scroll mechanism when looking though your emails.

HTC P3470 left side

The right hand side of the P3470 is also quite ‘clean’, there is just a simple push button for the camera control to be found here.

HTC P3470 right side

On the top of the unit you’ll find the power button.

HTC P3470 top

And the bottom is home to the mini ExtUSB connector used for Sync, Charge and Audio connectivity. Next to this is a reset button and the stylus.

HTC P3470 bottom

As you would expect, the 2.0 megapixel camera is located on the back of the device. HTC have opted to use the slightly older camera on the P3470 and you’ll find a switch on the outside of the camera lens that allows you to change between macro and normal photos. There’s also a mirror which allows you to take photos of yourself, if that’s your thing. There is no flash, however.

HTC P3470 back

The sides of the phone are ‘glossy’ look, and the back of the device is rubberised which adds a lot of extra grip.

The Screen appears to be smaller than on the Vario 3 and, as with other HTC devices in the past, has a slight yellow hew to it.

Highlights

Lowlights

REVIEW

First impressions are that the device seems quite capable and despite the relatively slow CPU (just 201 mHz) it seems to run along quite smoothly, probably aided by the 128MB of RAM. The lack of 3G and WiFi is a bit of a disapointment which is only offset slightly by the integrated GPS. I feel that over £300 may be a bit too high to really consider the HTC P3470 a ‘budget’ device.

Using the device as my day today phone, I’ve had no major problems or gripes, the P3470 has been stable and has not required a soft reset during the two weeks that I’ve used it.

The GPS works well with the bundled TomTom 6 software but works equally well with Google Maps. From cold it takes a while to acquire a position fix, about 3 or 4 monutes initially but subsequent uses of the GPS gets a signal much faster. Placing them side-bt-side it’s a little better than my Vario3 for getting satellite lock.

Using it as a phone, it’s about the same as every other phone I’ve used in the past 4 years. The call quility is good and the signal strength seems about right only dropping out in areas that I know to be a problem.

The camera is ‘ok’. It’s never going to be close to the 5mp cameraphones and it’s not going to replace your digital compact camera. However, it takes reasonable pics in decent lighting but it’s interesting that HTC seem to have installed one of their ‘older’ cameras in this device as there is a manual switch on the outside of the camera for toggling between normal and macro photography.

I really like the clean styling, it grows on you, I first thought it was a little ‘plasticy’ and cheap looking, but the longer I look at it and compare it to the silver of the Vario the more I like it. It feels surprisingly sturdy and well put together. It sits nicely in the hand, and is weighted evenly.

The click wheel, takes a little time to get used to, but works well. It makes scrolling more like the iPod than the clunky WM click, click, click we are used to.

The software included on the phone is the standard HTC WM6 build, with some more tweaks, the ones I noticed (and liked) are the large start menu, and improvements to the quick menu and options on the end call button.

The things I didn’t like about the phone? It’s a short list, the screen has a slight yellow tint to it when compared to my Vario 3, this was a common problem with HTC devices in the past. Also when turning the phone on I kept hitting the camera button, which was quite annoying. I guess it’s something I would get used to over time but lead me to disable the camera button in the end!

The battery life is good, without using push email, I managed to get 5 days standby before getting battery low messages and with push email enabled I could get 2 days which I think is very good, the lack of 3G does have some benefits in this department.

Conclusion

The HTC P3470 has been a pleasure to use over the past few weeks. There are times where I’ve missed 3G but overall I like this device.

Having been given the chance to review this phone after spending so much time ‘out of the loop’ it has been refreshing to see how far the windows mobile phones have come. Comparing this to the Good old E100, HTC have got a lot more stylish, Microsoft have made a lot of improvements to WM. The big question is would I Buy one?
Probably but it depends on my needs for the phone.

The main questions to ask are:
Need high speed data (WiFi and 3G)? Then no, there are better Smartphones available
Need something small and light? Yes
Need something for email and web access on the move? Yes
Need GPS and a phone? Yes

Comparing this to the Vario3, the bigger and heavier phone has more features but is more of a brick. Comparing this to the HTC Touch, the Touch has better looks and feels lighter in the hand but lacks the satnav edge.

The HTC P3470 fits between the HTC Touch and the Vario 3 quite nicely, it’s got some very nice features but doesn’t overwhelm too much.

And the most important factor is how high the WAF (wife approval factor) is, and the light of my life says……. “Yes”

Review by: Owen

[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, HTC, HTC P3470, HTC Pharos, GPS]

Polaroid 7″ Digital Photo Frame with Weather Station review

Okay then – another day, another picture frame – but wait this one also predicts the weather.

The Polaroid 7″ Digital Photo Frame with Weather Station.

The name says it all really, it’s a 7″ photo frame with a weather station built in, made by Polaroid.

What’s in the box?

Exactly what you’d expect really, nothing more, nothing less. Nicely packaged for safe transit.

Box contents

Specifications

The photo frame has a 7″ LCD with a native resolution of 480×234 (more on this later). It accepts SD, MMC, MS Pro, MS Duo and USB memory sticks and has a brightness of 250 cd/m2 with a contrast ratio of 250:1

The weather station has 2 sets of information, indoors and outdoors.

Indoors
A temperature range of 0 – 50deg Celsius, and a 0%-99% humidity reading.

Outdoors
A temperature range of -50 – 70deg Celsius along with a weather forecast display.

The outdoor sensor has a range of up to 25m depending on the number of walls and amount of interference in the way.

[Although the weather LCD appears to have space for Farenheit I couldn’t find any way to change to it instead of Celsius]

GENERAL

As you look at the main face of the device you see the widescreen LCD and the weather display bar, and in-between them is the IR sensor for the remote control.

As you look around the frame you find that on top there are buttons for controlling the image viewed and an exit button to get back to the previous menu / mode. There is also a brightness wheel which by default is at max and personally I can’t really see why you’d want to change it.

On the back there is a nice obvious power slider to turn the Photo frame on or off – this leaves the weather station running as long as there is power attached – and a stand to prop the frame up.

And on the side you’ll see the memory stick holes and what looks like a very bulky lump to plug the mains into. This bulky lump is actually the sensor for the indoor temperature and humidity information.

It’s also worth noting that on the bottom of the device is a brass screw thread to allow the frame to be put on a bracket – though no bracket is included in the box.

The remote is fairly obvious to understand even when you look at it for the first time, and in general controls work exactly as you’d expect.

Review

So here we are with another digital picture frame, this time from Polaroid and with a built-in weather station display as well – let’s see if it has what it needs to lift itself out from the pack.

Photo frame

For handling the photos Polaroid have gone with a 7″ LCD with a native resolution of 480×234, which seems to be a common specification for lots of digital photo frames.

The first thing you notice when switching the frame on is that it has no onboard memory.

The upside to this is that there are no awkward menus to transfer photos from your memory cards to the device.

The downside is that you have to have a memory card in the device when you want to show photos, which means that memory card can’t be out and about taking more photos. This means that you are likely to make you own memory card for general photo cycling, and then unplug that for on the spot shows of shots you’ve just taken.

[Curiously though, there is a built in ‘Screensaver’ that does have some pre-stored images which you can’t access]

So if you insert a memory card and then turn the frame on, by default it starts an auto slideshow of the images that it finds on the card. All very easy for auto use – just the sort of thing to make it easy for family to bung in cards to show people.

You can go into the setup menu and change all the timings and effects on the slideshow as with most digital photo frames.

You can even ‘tag’ photos as favourites and have the slideshow only run through those.

For static browsing of photos you can also change the aspect ratio of the viewed image, zoom in up to 4x (though this zoom is of the resized image, not the original) and rotate the image (this is a temporary effect and the rotation is NOT stored).

When you go back to the memory card selector screen and then into a memory card it presents you with thumbnails of the images that it finds on the card. Unlike some other frames it doesn’t show you anything about the file structure of the card, it just adds any compatible images it finds to the display list.

On the whole I found the remote control and the interface in general to be really simple to use, not something I can say for all the other frames out there 😀

The one curio that I would mention about the controls is that that manual has been written with the controls on the frame in mind (it talks about << and >> and play/pause controls). These buttons whilst on the frame are not marked the same was on the remote. I would have thought that the markings on the frame and remote would be consistent if only for ease of understanding.

Weather Station

Not sure how to review this functionality really. It’s a case of add batteries to external sensor, place sensor somewhere where it wont get direct rain on it, and away you go.

The indoor information comes up immediately after plugging the mains power in, and the external information a little while later.

Whilst the weather forecasting also comes up fairly quickly the manual does say that it will take 4-8 hours to collect and analyse the atmosphere to then give a forecast that is good for 24 hours.

For me personally it’s a nice enough feature, but not something I’d use really. Though if you’ve chosen to get this frame instead of just a straight picture frame then I’d imagine it is more important to you than it is to me.

Highlights

Lowlights

Conclusion

This is not a slight on this frame specifically, more of a comment on frames of this resolution and aspect ratio.

Personally I still think that this is too low a resolution to show photos, even with the best onboard rescaler imaginable images tend to be a little too blocky for my personal tastes.

The fact that it is landscape instead of 4:3 ratio like all my existing photos also adds to my frustration. The answer here apparently is that future digital cameras are going to be taking the widescreen images as their default – but that still doesn’t help me with my current photos.

As an aside I figured I would try resizing my images to the native resolution of the screen in my graphics package to see if I could get better results than the on board hardware – and to my suprise the image did not fill the screen. In 16:9 mode they were stretched horizontally and in 4:3 mode they were letterboxed like a widescreen movie on a 4:3 tv (and then placed in the middle of a widescreen display). This is obviously something to do with the software on the frame – so after that I didn’t bother trying to make my photos better myself.

In what may appear to completely contradict the above statement about image resolution, there is an option in the settings to use what is called ‘Mosaic View’ that I really liked.

What this mode does is divide the LCD into quarters so when the slideshow it run it changes 1 quarter of the image with the next slide before moving to the next quarter image for the next slide and so on.

Even though this results in even lower resolution images the effect is that that you get more of a ‘flavour’ of the images as a whole, and I found that I could forgive the low resolution for the feeling this invoked as a memory of the photos as a group.

I still don’t think that it’s a suitable resolution for showing the photos to other people mind, I just liked the effect 😉

Review by: Iain

[Technorati tag(s): smartphone, Pocket PC, polaroid, Digital Photo Frame, Tracy & Matt]