News

It’s HTC Desire time!

This is the one we have been waiting for!

The HTC Desire is now in our possession and over the coming days Matt will be posting the unboxing video and also putting together an in depth and extensive review of the device.

We must however point out a couple of things regarding the Desires out there at the moment, although we certainly do not wish to discredit anyone else’s reviews.

We have been informed by a reliable source that some HTC Desires have been out for review for several days now, but these devices did not come from the same source as ours. These early versions did not contain the final ROM that we have been waiting for and I am reliably informed that those devices will have essential features missing. They have also had problems with the OS crashing and serious battery issues which is clearly down to the fact that Google had not completed the ROMS when the devices were shipped.

The batch of HTC Desires that we have had ours from have been in the UK for over a week now but were unable to be released pending the flashing of the final ROM. Its been a frustrating week waiting for Google to authorise the ROM but now its done the fun can begin.

Stay tuned to tracyandmatt.co.uk over the weekend as we will be bringing you some demo videos as well as the usual stuff. Please do interact with us via the forum too!

Posted by: James

HTC Legend and Desire stock update

If you are waiting to order a sim free HTC Desire or Legend then the good news is that next week both will be available from devicewire.com

The HTC Desire will be in stock on Monday and the Legend from Wednesday.

If you have not placed an order yet I suggest you head on over to devicewire.com as I have a slight suspicion both of these handsets may be rather popular.

If you have not read our review of the HTC Legend you can do so here. The Desire review will hopefully be done before the device is released however HTC have not released any review devices yet.

In addition to ordering online you can call devicewire free on 0800 198 0000 or alternatively use their ‘Live Chat’ service on the site.

Posted by: James

Samsung i9000 Galaxy S on video

Yesterday we brought you the announcement details of Samsungs new flagship Android device, the i9000 Galaxy S.

The guys at mobileburn managed to get a hands on with the device and below you will see their video.

As you will see, the Super AMOLED screen on the Galaxy S is truly amazing and possibly the best screen we have seen to date. Although the technology is the same as the Samsung Wave, that I had a chance to play with at MWC, the Galaxy S has a massive 4 inch capacitive screen to wins on size.

Being able to video record in HD and then watch the video back in HD on that screen will be the deciding factor for some perspective buyers. I know the below video will not do the screen justice but it looks unbelievably vibrant.

This is going to sell like hot cakes when it’s released this summer.

Enjoy the video.

Samsung announce the Galaxy S

Today Samsung have announced what sounds like a beast of a phone, the Galaxy S.

The Galaxy S GT-I9000 has a 4-inch Super AMOLED display running at WVGA 800 x 480 resolution, together with a 5-megapixel autofocus camera, 1GHz processor and the company’s own custom UI.

The camera is also capable of video recording 720p HD at 30 frames per second. Fingers crossed it will do a better job than the Sony Ericsson Vivaz did that I reviewed last week.

As well as that nice big super AMOLED screen the Galaxy S also comes with A-GPS, Bluetooth 3.0 USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi b/g/n. Onboard storage will be either 8 or 16gb and external storage of up to 32gb, nice.

Sounds like a serious contender for the Google Nexus One and HTC Desire?

More photos of the BlackBerry Pearl 9100

We posted some pictures a while ago of the BlackBerry Pearl 9100 and today we are lucky enough to find some more. The guys at  Blackberrysync.com have managed to get some nice new shots of the device and I must say its looking pretty nice.

We don’t know a tonne about the 9100 although it will have 3G unlike its predecessor, the Pearl 8100. At Mobile World Congress RIM were reluctant to discuss the 9100. I did mention it and they pretended to not know what I was talking about. They knew alright!

Earlier this month there were some rumours going around on various sites saying that the BlackBerry 9100 may get a full QWERTY keyboard. Looks like that one is not on the cards. The keys would have to be seriously small if that was the case.

We do not have any expected release dates or carrier news on the 9100 but as soon as we do we will let you know.

Sony Ericsson X10 Mini and Pro release dates?

I’m sure you will have seen our coverage of the new Sony Ericsson X10 Mini and Mini Pro both from MWC last month and also from the press event. Both of these little handsets look like being winners, they’ve certainly been attracting a lot of attention between them!

So you may be wondering when you might be able to go out and buy one of these mini Android marvels, and we’d love to know that too! Today we popped over to eXpansys.com and were presented with the X10 Mini on the home page. If you head over there now you’ll see that you can pre-order the X10 Mini for £299.99 or the Mini Pro for £339.99.

Personally for just £40 difference I’d be going for the Pro, at least then you have the option of whether or not to use the QWERTY keyboard.

Both handsets are now showing a shipping date of the 24th May though, still some way off and that firmly puts them in Q2. Seems that SE are experiencing some delays with their handsets lately, lets hope that’s not indicative of any issues!

Head over to eXpansys to learn more about pre-ordering.

Posted by: Matt

[ Post Tags: Sony Ericsson, Experia X10, Vivaz, Vivaz PRO, X10 Mini ]

BlackBerry OS 6 screen shots leaked

OS 6 for BlackBerry has been on the cards for sometime and this morning BlackBerryLeaks have posted a few pictures of what is allegedly the new OS.

The cheeky chap at BlackBerry Leaks has teased us overnight here in the UK. Before I went to bed he tweeted that he had something big to show us. I decided I couldn’t stay up and wait and when I got up this morning he himself had not got home from work and so I was up in time.

What he has posted are the below images.

ROM Upgrade for HTC Touch Diamond2

If you own the HTC Touch Diamond2 then head over to the HTC website as it’s ROM upgrade time.

The new Diamond ROM apparently contains Sense 2.5 which in my opinion is a huge bonus. Not having a Diamnond2 I’m not able to check it out so please use the forum to let us know your thoughts.

Also available is an update for the HTC Touch Pro2 although I don’t think this one includes Sense. I’m off to give that one a try right now.

You can download both by clicking here.

Remember to back up all your data and remove your microSD card as all information left on the device will be lost.

Posted by: James

tracyandmatt BBM Group

If you use a BlackBerry, and I know thousands of you do, you may want to join us over in our new BlackBerry Messenger group!

If you have not used the group feature in BBM then to cut a long story short its a place where anyone can jump into an ongoing chat. You don’t have to talk about BlackBerry. Anything goes but please keep it clean!

To join the group just open BBM on your BlackBerry and select ‘Scan a group barcode’ and point your camera at the barcode on this page. Simple Pimple!

Matt has even taken the plunge and is this week carrying a BlackBerry Bold 9700 as well as his iPhone! Will he keep it? He is warming to the idea!

See you over in the group if you fancy it. Otherwise you can add Matt by his PIN, 21619458, and he’ll throw you a group invitation.

Posted by: James

No copy and paste on Windows Phone 7 Series

No, I am not joking. Yesterday at MIX 10 in a Q&A session Microsoft said that clipboard operations would not be supported in ‘7’.

Further to that, the guys at Engadget confirmed this with Microsoft and they said that copy & paste would definitely not be present.

There is a data-detection service built into the text-handling API that will recognize phone numbers and addresses, but Microsoft says most users, including Office users, don’t really need clipboard functionality.

I have never heard anything so stupid in all my life. I have used Windows Mobile for years, and now a BlackBerry, and I use copy/paste every single day. Not having this feature will affect a lot of professional people in my opinion. I know the iPhone didn’t have this originally but it also was one of the main things that iPhone customers wanted on there phones.

What’s next? A Smartphone that doesn’t make phone calls?!

Posted by: James