We mentioned the other day about a ROM for the Touch HD that includes the new version of Internet Explorer Mobile. Well Pocketnow have installed it on heir Touch HD and have produced a video of it in action. It has support for Flash and AJAX, plus has a much improved rendering engine although it still seems a little slow and video playback was choppy in YouTube. Video of it in action after the break.
We recently started looking a a couple of Nokia handsets and have already reviewed the Nokia N96 and unboxed the Nokia N79. This time we are unboxing the new Nokia N85. The N85 is kinda similar to the N96, with a few exceptions, one being that the N85 doesn’t have the on-board memory that the N96 has.
Our reviewer, Dan, is trying out the N85 and N79 as we speak so the reviews will be online soon. For now here’s the unbox:
The Nokia N85 is pre-loaded with at least 10 made-for-mobile N-Gage gaming titles and a voucher to activate one full game license. Dedicated gaming keys light up when the device is in landscape gaming mode to further enhance the action-packed experience.
A state-of-the-art 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and bright dual LED flash captures clear, sharp images as well as DVD-quality videos at 30 frames per second. Combined with A-GPS it is possible to geotag favorite pictures to see where each photo was taken using the Nokia Maps application or online sites such as Share on Ovi or Flickr.
Each Nokia N85 comes with an 8 GB microSD card, up to 30 hours of music playback time and its high-fidelity sound means favorite tracks can be enjoyed virtually anywhere. You can even enjoy RDS radio or a wide selection of stations via the internet. The 3.5 mm audio jack makes connecting a top-quality headset simple and an in-built FM transmitter lets the Nokia N85 play wirelessly through a car or home stereo to really crank up the sound.Therefore the Nokia N85 is perfect for the mobile user, who wants top end fatures and functionality and complete connectivity when away from the office or home.
Nokia N85 Specification:
Posted by: Matt
[ Post Tags: Nokia, N85, Symbian, smartphone news, reviews, unboxing video, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]
So you’ve got your HD TV and Blu-ray player set up, ready to go, but without your favourite movies to watch on Blu-ray disc all that equipment is going to waste! Blu-ray delivers a viewing experience that is up to six times better than standard definition and supports 7.1 channels of sound, putting you at the heart of the action whether you are watching movies or playing games on the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™). Blu-ray players are backwards compatible, meaning you can still play your existing DVD collection, with the player enhancing the experience by making those DVD images even clearer!
We have partnered up with the Blu-ray Disc Association to give three lucky readers the chance to win five great movies on Blu-ray to start your collection. The Blu-ray discs included are: Transformers, The Dark Knight, Wall-e, Mamma Mia and Hancock. To be in with a chance of winning, simply answer the following question:
What can’t you do on your PS3™?
a) Surf the internet
b) Watch movies
c) Control your microwave
Simply send me your answer via our contact page, including ‘Blu-Ray Competition’ in the subject. We’ll run the competition for a month (In case you ger a PS3 for Christmas!) and will pick three winners at random. Winners will be notified by email.
EDIT: This competition is now CLOSED.
Posted by: Matt
If your a Windows Mobile user and use Windows Media Center with Vista you should take a look at The Digital Lifestyle’s video of the Sideshow gadget in action. Ian has put together a great video which looks at some of the features of the gadget including Now Playing, browsing the guide data, playing music and selecting pictures. We have the video after the break and if you into Media Center you should sign up at The Digital Lifestyle as it is a fantastic resource for all things Media Center and Windows Home Server.
As you probably know, we have looked at the HTC S740 a few times already with a video demonstration and a written review already on site. However, the units that we’ve looked at up to now have been prototypes and demo devices, several of you have asked for a proper retail unboxing video.
So that’s exactly what we have here. I just got my hands on the full retail unit and have a short unboxing video for you. In this video I don’t go in to a lot of detail about the S740 itself. If you want to see more of the handset itself please have a look at the other video demonstration or the written HTC S740 review.
HTC S740 Specification:
Posted by: Matt
[ Post Tags: smartphone news, windows mobile news, HTC, HTC S740, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]
Remember the days when projectors were large and expensive pieces of kit that you only saw at high-end presentations? They used to have three separate colour ‘guns’ for for RGB and each required time consuming alignment and focusing.
Things have come a long way since then and not only are projectors much smaller but that are also more affordable. Go in to the meeting rooms of many businesses and you’re bound to find a projector there somewhere.
A few years ago there was a lot of talk about making projectors so small that they would actually fit inside a mobile phone. While me might not quite be there yet the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector brings the concept a lot closer and provides us with a projector small enough to fit in your pocket!
The 10 second review:
Device: Optoma Pico Pocket Projector
Cost: £244.67 (Inc VAT).
Available from: Clove Technology (Go and buy one from here)
Summary: An excellent addition to your kit bag if you have to do unplanned presentations or want to show something off on a large screen but you’ll have to dim the lights is you want to use it to it’s full potential
Best of: Tiny size and battery life
Worst of: Poor built in speaker and relatively low resolution
What’s in the box?
If you want to have a more detailed look at what’s included with the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector or to see it in action, take a look at my demo video below:
Optoma Pico Pocket Projector specication:
General
Lets start off by taking a look around the projector.
The Pico Pocket Projector has a clean design and is made form black and silver plastic. Looking from above there are no controls, just a simple silver band and logo across the middle and a simple LED the indicates battery charge.
On the right hand side of the unit we have the AV input socket which is a 2.5mm 4 pole jack carrying both audio and video signals. In front of that we have a grille over a small single speaker and then a dial which controls the focus.
Looking to the left side we have the power control which has a full brightness, half brightness and off setting. Next to that is the mini-USB connector that’s used to charge the battery.
On the front is the lens out of which the projected image is emitted. There is no lens cap though.
On the bottom is a battery cover, which slides off backwards, and the screw hole for the tripod adapter.
Review
When I first heard about the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector I have to say I was rather skeptical, having owned several large projectors in the past, each of them having incredibly bright (and expensive) bulbs I couldn’t imagine how you could build a projector so small and have LED’s as it’s light source.
Having unboxed the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector I was amazed at how truly tiny it is, certainly it deserves it’s Pico name. At a little larger than most candy-bar style mobile phones it’s probably lighter than the vast majority of them.
As I mentioned in the video above, I quite often have to stand in front of groups of people and give presentations. Normally I arrange for there to be a projector or plasma screen at the venue but when this isn’t possible I take along my own portable projector. This last week I thought I would try the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector when I did a Powerpoint presentation to a small group of people. I put the slideshow on to my HTC Touch Pro and went along with the TV-out cable and the Pico projector. I have to say, this worked quite well for me. Sure, we did have to dim the lights in the room and there was already a proper projector screen at the venue but the eight people in the group were able to see the presentation quite easily. Imagine also how impressed they were when I pulled everything I needed to the presentation out of my jacket pockets!
At the heart of the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector is a DLP chip with a resolution of 480×320 (half VGA) while this doesn’t sound like a lot it does work quite well easily accepting PAL and NTSC signals as well as those output from many mobile phones. Lighting is provided by one or more (I’m not sure how many) bright white LED’s. The advantage of using LED’s is that they are efficient, run cool and have an amazing lifetime. Here the LED life is quoted at 20,000 hours. LED’s are also quite robust which is ideal for something portable.
The projector does have a small loudspeaker built in which combines both left and right input channels. The built-in speaker is probably the worst part of the projector. It’s range is fairly limited and it sounds really quite tinny with lower frequencies causing distortion to the middle and higher end. There’s also no volume control on the unit so if your source isn’t loud enough there’s nothing you can do about it. That said, I doubt that you’d buy the Pico projector for watching the latest DVD’s!
One other thing that lets the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector down a little is the lack of keystone correction. For those of you that don’t know a keystone effect is caused by attempting to project an image onto a surface at an angle, as with a projector not quite centred onto the screen it is projecting on. It is a distortion of the image dimensions, making it look like a trapezoid. In the typical case of a projector sitting on a table, and looking upwards to the screen. Most projectors have some kind of keystone correction whether digitally controls or through a control that shifts the lens. The Pico has neither of these but I guess this down to the size constraints.
If you do choose to use the projector to watch a video, perhaps from your phone or your iPod then it does perform quite well, especially if you can turn out all of the lights and project on to a proper projector screen or a plain white wall. I’d suggest that you allow your video source to output the audio or at the very least use headphones. Under these conditions I was impressed with the detail in the image and the contrast ratio, even fast-moving scenes, where you might expect to see motion blurring, were displayed rather well.
In all, when you consider how small this thing is the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector is impressive!
Highlights
Lowlights
Conclusion
The Optoma Pico Pocket Projector is a great little device which is ideal for anyone that travels to meetings regularly but would rather travel light. It’s great for ad-hoc presentations and showing off your latest photos and videos to your mates without having to plan it. It performs amazingly well for something so small!
However, if you are doing professional presentations then the Optoma Pico Pocket Projector wont replace more expensive and brighter projectors out there.
Review by: Matt
Qik has been out for sometime now, and has yet to receive a real threat in the industry to rival its video streaming service for the iPhone. However, if this video is to be believed authentic, then we might just have a worthy alternative to Qik.
The China-only Lenovo OPhone is the best cellphone so far we’ve seen that will be running on Google Android. The specific OS is a tweak of Android dubbed the Open Mobile System. Specs haven’t been made available but the word is that this will likely replace the much-delayed and perhaps permanently aborted Chinese iPhone:
We haven’t looked at too many Nokia handsets here on T&M but it seems that the gap between Nokia and Windows Mobile is closing rapidly in terms of Web and Email functionality so we thought it was about time that we covered more. Here we are looking at the Nokia N79 which it a neat looking candy bar style device with a fixed numeric keypad. We’ll also be looking at the N85 soon and, if you are a regular here, you’ll know that we also reviewed the N96 recently.
As always, we’ll road test the N79 for a week or so and will come back with out review once we’ve had a chance to use it in the real world. For now, take a look at the unboxing and quick tour video below.
Sorry for the abrupt ending to the video above, the last 10 seconds of the recording were corrupt on the camera’s memory card. Not much missed though, just the last items on the specification (which you can see below) and the summary.
The Nokia N79 has a 5 mega-pixel camera & Carl Ziess optics that lets you capture moments in amazing clarity. The dual LED flash lets you take photographs even in the poorest lighting conditions. Geo Tag support automatically records the location of your photos, see when and where your photo’s were.
With an intuitive design to suite your look you can choose between the colour schemes thanks to three cool colour combinations which magically match your cover and your theme. Move and your screen moves with you.
Explore the world and share your discoveries with the Nokia N79. The built in AGPS technology & Nokia maps software provides instant navigation, on foot or by car, letting you find your way to a destination quickly and easily. An extensive POI (Points Of Interest) database lets you find new places around you, find cinema’s, clubs, bars or even cash points.
The Nokia N79’s high speed 3G (HSDPA) and Wi-Fi connectivity let you stay in touch. Whether it is downloading your emails or the latest news articles from BBC the fast connections on board mean you are always connected.
With a 4GB microSDHC memory card provided there is plenty of space to store all your music or media files. So whether it’s the latest songs, downloaded straight to your mobile of photos captured on the 5 megapixel camera you are unlikely to run out of sufficient storage space for such.
Nokia N79 specification:
Posted by: Matt
Thanks to a new, free, web-based service launched today, you can now cut and paste text snippets between Safari and Mail on your iPhone. With the launch of pastebud, a free service that doesn’t require you to download and install anything from the iTunes App Store or to jailbreak your iPhone, and it works on either the iPhone or the iPod Touch. The Registar have put together a full walkthrough of how to set it up which at first glance seems a little complex however once done they think using it becomes very straight forward. There is a video of it in action after the break and the full guide is right here.
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