Author Archive: Matt

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.

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 handset

1100mAh Battery

Manual

Warranty card

Mains charger

Stereo wired headset with microphone

Pouch

USB Sync/Charge cable

CD-Rom with ActiveSync etc.

TomTom 6

Spare Stylus

HTC P3470 specification:

Size: 108 x 58.3 x 15.7 mm

Weight: 122 g

Connectivity: GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

Operating system: Windows Mobile 6® Professional

Display: 2.8-inch QVGA flat touch screen

Camera: 2 megapixel with macro focus

Internal memory: 256 MB flash, 128 MB RAM

Removable memory: microSDTM slot

Bluetooth: 2.0 with EDR

GPS

Interface: HTC ExtUSB (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 Full-Speed)

Battery: 1100 mAh

Talk time: GSM: up to 350 minutes

Standby time: GSM: up to 240 hours

Chipset: TI OMAP 850, 200MHz

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Clean, minimalist design

Click + scroll wheel

Built-in GPS

TomTom 6 included!

Lowlights

No WiFi

No 3G

Price

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.

Manual

Frame

External weather sensor

Batteries for external sensor

Power adapter with both 2 and 3 prong adapters

Remote control with battery already fitted

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

screen is bright and clear

matt black finish of surround is pleasing on the eye

remote and menus are easy to use

built in weather station

mosaic mode (see conclusion)

Lowlights

no onboard memory to keep favourite photos on the frame

screen resolution and aspect ratio

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]