ZTE are a company that specialise in selling very good-for-your-money phones and the ZTE Libra is another well priced addition to their line-up.
ZTE aren’t a well advertised phone maker, in fact, before this review, I hadn’t personally heard of them myself. But I shall definitely be taking a look at their future line-up after using this phone.
The Vodafone 858 Smart is an entry level Android device from the network itself. The phone is entering a seriously crowded market with competition from the Samsung Galaxy Europa and the Orange San Francisco but what sets the device from the crowd is it’s extremely competitive price of £60.
The small Huawei-made handset may be cheap but does the price offset some of the relatively poor specs or is it worth spending a little more on a higher-spec device? Read on to see!
One of the most interesting phones to come out of Mobile World Congress from HTC was the HTC ChaCha. The Market hasn’t been kind to front facing keyboard, Android devices and there has never been a hit model for this form factor.
Instead of going the whole hog and building a much rumoured Facebook phone, HTC decided to cover both popular form factors, the Candy bar and front facing keyboard, and focus on a heavier Facebook integration. To date the front facing keyboard has only been address by Samsung and Motorola in a more professional yet lower quality approach. HTC saw a gap in the market and pushed out a higher quality, yet cost conscious front facing, Qwerty keyboard phone.
Combining their popular HTC Sense over a popular texting form with the social network manic in mind, how could HTC fail?
When HTC announced 5 new phones at MWC earlier this year there was some criticism that there wasn’t a dual-core model there in the lineup. With LG and Samsung there with handsets featuring dual-core CPU’s the expectation was that HTC should at least be following the competition, lets face it, HTC are more accustomed to being leaders rather than followers.
However, maybe the critics should have had a little more faith that HTC had something up their sleeves as less than two months after MWC, HTC were holding their own press even here in London to announce the new HTC Sensation. Not only does it include the much coveted dual-core CPU but includes a 540 x 960 resolution QHD display which is the first to have a Gorilla Glass screen that’s curved on all edges.
Other new features such as HTC Sense 3.0 and the 8 mega-pixel camera with instant capture technology and 1080P video recording means that not only is this certainly HTC’s flagship handset but it’s also one of the best specified on the market today.
I’ve been using the sensation for a little over a week, so if you want to find out what I think of it you’ll have to read on!
Samsung rocked the Android world last year with the original Galaxy S, which quickly became one of the biggest selling phones of 2010. But now the Korean giant has come out with a successor under the originally named moniker, the Galaxy S II. Samsung’s 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, a 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus screen, a 8MP camera with 1080p video recording and 1GB of RAM are just some of the amazing features packed into the sequel to Samsung’s most successful Android handset to date.
Arguably the most anticipated phone of 2011 but it it is truly worthy of that title? Is this handset a worthy successor to last years model? And can it compete with other dual-core smartphones such as the HTC Sensation?
Well, you’d better read on to find out!
The Xperia X8 was unboxed a good few months ago, but now here is the review with one small but important difference. It’s now running the 2.1 Éclair update which may not be the latest but it’s still better than 1.6 was. That has now brought it up to scratch with other options for cheapish midrange Android handsets, but it’s not alone – the likes of the Wildfire and the San Francisco sell like hotcakes, a trend which Sony Ericsson would no doubt like the X8 to follow.
The X8 slots in somewhere in-between the daddy X10 and the X10 mini & mini pro but with specs more like the minis, its actually a very similar experience but in a slightly larger form factor and that could well be a good thing. The X10 minis received excellent reviews with the main criticism that it was too small – but the X8 is the answer to that call.
Does it have enough to compete? Read on to find out!
The Galaxy S is without doubt the highest specced device Samsung has produced to date. With it running Android 2.1 and with an expected upgrade to 2.2 in the coming months it is perfectly placed in a market where the Android platform is growing on a daily basis.
With recent Android flagship devices being released by the likes of HTC and Motorola and also the new Apple iPhone 4 is the Samsung Galaxy S a contender for top place?
Only one way to find out and that is to read on.
Having been announced less than a month ago I was initially surprised to see the HTC Wildfire arrive in the office here so soon. Granted, we’ve already seen the Wildfire go on pre-order sale (SIM-free) at some retailers and some UK carriers announce that they too will stock it but we still thought it was some way off.
The HTC Wildfire appears to be HTC’s attempt to break in to lower end of the market. HTC’s recent wave of handsets have been at the upper-end at around the £400 mark for the HTC Desire and a little less for the HTC Legend. The Wildfire then is much less expensive than the HTC Desire which is widely regarded as the Wildfire’s bigger brother. This is a smartphone with a ‘feature phone’ price tag.
If you saw my HTC Wildfire unboxing video a few days ago you may have noticed that I said we’ll be doing something a little different with this review. Whilst the top section of the review will follow our normal format and will keep everything factual with just a little of my opinion in there the lower portion of the review will introduce comments from James, Tracy and possibly a few other members of the team, we’re going to try making it a broad view.
(a word of caution, there are a LOT of images but you can click on any one for a full-sized view.)
Ever since I first saw the HTC Desire, a week before MWC, I’ve been thinking that it could well be the handset that I’d use on a daily basis. Indeed there has been some discussion here at tracyandmatt about who will be doing the review. However, as I was the one to review the Nexus One I’ve pulled rank and it’ll be mine to review!
I’m sure that many will look at the HTC Desire and think of it as being simply HTC’s own version of the Google Nexus One and I guess in some respects that could be a fair assessment but is it as simple as that? There are a few differences under the hood and plenty within the user interface that make the HTC Desire look and feel quite different. We’ll talk about those differences as we go but probably the main differences are the optical trackpad and buttons on the Desire where the Nexus One has a trackball, single mic on the Desire vs the dual noise-cancelling mics on the Nexus One and finally HTC’s own sense UI on the Desire where there is a more ‘vanilla’ Android experience on the Nexus One.
So does the HTC Desire meet expectations? Read on to find out… (a word of caution, there are a LOT of images but you can click on any one for a full-sized view.)
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