A netbook that seems to be gaining a lot more attention than most is Nokia’s new Booklet. It’s an impressive little machine and Phonearena have had a chance to sit down and have a look at it. 10.1-inch 1280×720 pixels display, smooth 720p video playback, 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, 1GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM, 120 GB hard drive, Wi-Fi, 3G modem.
Yet another new device announced by HTC, today it’s the HTC Touch2. This one come as a bit of a surprise to be honest! The main highlight is Windows Mobile 6.5 OS (at last).
Appears to be a good looking handset and one we’ll obviously be trying to get our hands on for review.
HTC Touch2 specification:
HTC Corporation today introduced the HTC Touch2™, a compact and stylish smartphone that is one of the first mobile phones to include Microsoft’s new Windows Phone software. Utilizing Windows Mobile 6.5 and new Windows Phone services like My Phone and Windows Marketplace, HTC Touch2 delivers a full touch experience that enables you to do all the things you want on your phone easily. The Touch2 expands HTC’s portfolio of touch-based phones and is focused on delivering an advanced touch experience to a broader group of people.
“The HTC Touch2 delivers a familiar touch experience that millions of people have come to expect and rely on from HTC in their daily lives,” said Peter Chou, Chief Executive Officer, HTC Corporation. “Whether it’s making a call, checking in with a friend or simply responding to an important email, the HTC Touch2 puts you in touch and in control.”
The HTC Touch2 ensures that everything is at your fingertips in a compact design that fits comfortably in your hand. An advanced smartphone with everything you expect and more, the HTC Touch2 includes a variety of HTC enhancements including TouchFLO, an enhanced user interface that includes integrated weather updates and quick touch access to a variety of the most popular applications. In addition, the Touch2 includes Google Maps for Mobile, YouTube and more.
As a new Windows phone, the HTC Touch2 showcases the powerful messaging, browsing and productivity capabilities delivered by the new Windows Mobile 6.5. Offering a best in class e-mail experience complete with the ability to synchronize with Microsoft Exchange, you have the ability to check and manage multiple email accounts.
With the Re-designed Internet Explorer Mobile, the Touch2 accurately displays desktop style Web pages, allowing people to experience content in the way it is meant to be viewed. The HTC Touch2 includes a zoom bar for reflowing text to an optimum size. In addition, you can pan and zoom to find and enjoy what you are looking for more easily. Internet Explorer-Mobile also supports Adobe Flash, enabling Flash video content, like YouTube, to be viewed easily.
With Windows phone you can now easily find and download a wide variety of applications onto the HTC Touch2 via the new Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Microsoft’s new My Phone service enables you to automatically back up and synch photos, music, contacts and text messages for free from the Touch2 to the web.
Availability
The HTC Touch2 will initially be available to customers on October 6 with broad availability in a variety of European and Asian markets in early Q4 2009.
So what do we all think of this one?
Posted by: Matt
A phone with a transparent keypad, surely not. But yes that’s the major selling point behind LG’s latest creation, the LG GD900 Crystal. The question is though, is it any good or just a selling gimmick?
The ten second review:
Device: LG GD900 Crystal
Price: £339.99
Summary: A fun packed feature phone with a crazy transparent keypad.
Best of: HSDPA, WiFi, Easy to use.
Worst of: Keypad/Touchpad, No GPS.
What’s in the box?
Have a look at Matt’s LG Crystal unboxing video for more details.
LG GD900 Crystal Specification:
General:
The design of the LG Crystal is rather nice. The phone feels fairly heavy in the hand, which I like, and sturdy. The slide out keypad is made from clear plastic and with it “closed” it covers most of the back of the device and gives it a quite unique feeling. Good or bad I’m not really sure but combined with the shiny metal around the edges of the handset it looks pretty nice.
The top of the phone contains only a power on/off switch.
The left hand side has only the USB socket.
The right of the device houses an up/down volume rocker and a dedicated camera key.
On the front of the handset is the send/end keys and cube menu button at the bottom and at the top is the speaker grill, front facing camera and a proximity sensor.
The rear of the phone is flush when closed but when opened it reveals the lens for the 8MP camera and also the flash.
Highlights & Lowlights:
+ HSDPA
+ WiFi
– No GPS
– No 3.5mm Headset Jack
Review:
Clearly the most obvious feature of the LG Crystal is the clear keypad and this is what will attract potential buyers to the device. This is basically another touch screen for the device with numbers etched onto the plastic. Unfortunately I am starting on a bad point as I found the keypad to be way too sensitive. Its so sensitive it cost me £1.50!
The first thing I wanted to test out on the device was the web browser. Now, when the browser opens a small mouse arrow appears on screen. This is controlled by the clear keypad much the same as a touchpad on a laptop. First thoughts were “this seems quite nice” but with seconds I had unintentionally clicked a link on my Orange home page and purchased a calling tone! This is something that has never happened before on any device and it’s clearly down to the fact that the slightest tap on the touchpad acts as a click/select option.
As you can imagine I wasn’t too impressed but it could have been worse. At least I bought Knight Rider and not the Teletubbies!!!
The keypad does however have a couple of cool features. When web browsing you can use pinch-to- zoom like on the iPhone and this works pretty well. The other feature is that you can use the keypad to set up gesture shortcuts.
The LG Crystal runs the S-Class UI that has also appeared on the LG Arena and Viewty devices. I recently reviewed the LG Arena and was fairly impressed with this new UI.
Like the other devices the Crystal has four home screens which can be accessed by a swipe action either on screen or using the keypad. These can be customised and therefore can contain your most used programs/contacts etc.
At the bottom of the screen are four on screen buttons. These are phone, contacts, messaging and a link into the main menu.
The main menu is fairly nice. It consists of four rows of icons that can be swiped left and right to view all the icons on the row. If the phone is turned into landscape mode the icons shrink to show all 32 icons on screen at once.
The screen on the Crystal is very responsive and using the screen was for me a nicer option than using the keypad/touchpad. The best test for this was messaging. Messaging was simple and with me not wanting to use the keypad I had a choice of a standard 12 key on screen keypad or when rotated a full QWERTY option.
Like a few other handsets out there the Crystal also supports handwriting recognition and like those other devices using it takes far too long and it’s not really an option for sending a quick text/email.
Disappointingly the camera and the video capture on the Crystal was not as good as I thought it was going to be. After reviewing the LG Arena a short while ago I presumed the camera on the Crystal would be as good if not better. I took several photos and videos in sunny daylight conditions and although they looked great on the device once on my computer they appeared a little bit grainy, even though I was using the highest settings. Shame.
Listening to music was good though. Using the speaker didn’t sound fantastic like on the Arena, but with the headphones connected it was rocking! The Crystal does not come with a 3.5mm headset jack but at least LG supply a converter with the device so you can use any headphones if the LG ones are not to your liking.
Connectivity is super on the Crystal. Web browsing is as quick as it can be with the options for either using HSDPA or WiFi. Of course Bluetooth is built in, but so is A2DP which will allow you to listen to your music using a Bluetooth headset if preferred.
The other let down for me was the lack of GPS. Google maps come pre-installed on the device but without GPS it will never be spot on.
Conclusion
Overall the LG Crystal does what is says on the box. I strongly believe that that anyone buying this device will soon get bored of the clear keypad/touchpad as in my opinion it’s a bit of a novelty.
If you are a fan of LG phones I would suggest purchasing the Arena or the Viewty and if you are open to other manufactures then go get a Samsung Jet. It does the same job as the Crystal only so much better.
Sorry LG, better luck next time.
Review by: James
You may have already heard, but if you haven’t, HTC have today announced the HTC Touch2. The upgrade to the original HTC Touch, the Touch2 keeps a similar form factor but comes with some enhancements, most noticeably, Widows Mobile 6.5!
Codenamed HTC Mega, the HTC Touch2 is available for order from Clove today!
Long time Symbian analyst Chris McFann and senior editor at Symbian Freak has published an article that does its best to explain the sometimes confusing direction Nokia is heading and why decisions made nearly 3 years ago have now put them in the position to execute what Nokia hopes will be market dominance and to infect every part of your digital world with the services portal, Ovi.
An enlightening read even if your remotely interested in the mobile landscape and ammo for Nokia fans the world over. Just be sure your drink is ready as the incisive read spreads over two pages.
The Nokia N900 gets previewed by the Italian blog kiamanokia.it. It was about time someone uploaded a real video of the N900 on YouTube with a nice run through of the desktop and browser. Expect more videos and pictures of the N900 tomorrow when Nokia World 2009 starts!
You can find the HQ version here
Via Daily Mobile
What are you offering PlayStation3 users in your upcoming range of phones?
Aino is one of the first handsets in Sony Ericsson’s new Communications Entertainment proposition. It offers a unique multimedia experience for all PlayStation3 fans as they can seamlessly access and control their PS3 media content anywhere, anytime using Remote Play.
Remote Play with Aino lets you turn your PS3 on and off, browse and control the XMB and access the internet browser from anywhere in the world. Remote Play also lets you control and access the HD Drive’s media content on PS3 using the built-in WiFi or 3G connections via Aino.
You can also access PlayStation Store via Remote Play or chat with friends via PlayStation Network. It is also possible to buy and download a new game from the Store via Aino so it is ready and waiting for you when you get home.
Looks like HTC will be releasing a new Android device according to this post from Phonearena. Hopefully this will not just be another Magic/Hero combination and will be something new.
We just received a new screenshot of a Verizon computer and guess what – it looks like there is a new Google-powered HTC device on its way! It is dubbed the HTC Desire 6200 and according to our source, it will be Google-branded, which unfortunately means that we don’t have a chance of seeing the manufacturer’s good-looking Sense interface on top. No other information is currently available about the Desire, but we promise to keep you posted when we know more. Are you excited about new Google-powered devices coming to Verizon? Sound off in the comments!
In just five weeks, you’ll have a bunch of new Windows phones to choose from. But before we show you some of the cool, new phones that will be coming out, I want to explain how we’re trying to make phones even better with Windows.
When we started work on Windows phones, we met with people all over the world who were likely to buy a smartphone and talked with them about what’s important to them in their phone. Looking at the U.S. market, for example, we found that about 15 million people in the next year will buy a new smartphone.
Apple has a huge one, Palm has a little one, Nokia has a decent looking one, and Microsoft, well, we’re still waiting for them to finally reveal theirs to the public. What are we talking about? It’s app stores of course. Aside from those we’ve already mentioned, you can now also add Samsung to that growing list as they’ve just announced their Application Store set to be launched on September 14th. It will initially be available in the UK and France will roll out to Germany, Spain and 30 more countries thereafter. Sadly though, only two devices will be compatible with this new service at launch time, the Samsung Omnia and Omnia HD in particular. Both the upcoming Omnia 2 and Omnia Lite will follow later on. More than 300 apps will be readily available when it goes live next this month, but they are, however, already boasting that it will top 2,000 when 2009 comes to a close. With industry giants like Gameloft, Electronic Arts, and TAITO already on-board Samsung’s latest venture, we’re pretty sure they won’t have a hard time reaching that goal of theirs.
Safe to say, the mobile app market game just got a lot more intense with Samsung now joining the fray.
[unwiredview via PMP Today]
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