Hands on with the: HTC Hero, Blackberry Tour, Sony Ericsson Satio, Nokia N86 and E72.

June 25th, 2009

So I’m in New York right now and just got back from the Digital Experience show. While not every mobile carrier and manufacturer was there, I still got to see some newer phones; The HTC Hero, Blackberry Tour, Sony Ericsson Satio, Nokia N86 and E72. Please note that there are more pictures at the bottom of the article.

First off is the new HTC Hero. It’s got the same ‘chin’ as the Dream/G1. Apparently the ‘chin’ is meant to cause you to hold the Hero at an angle that will help reduce glare. It’s a solid phone. What’s interesting about it is that it allows you to customize the home screen. Check out this demo:

It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack. While it looks like some headphones might have trouble plugging in, all should work fine (check out the picture below to see what I mean).

Next we have the new Blackberry Tour, here it is next to my Storm. This one is from Sprint, the one on Verizon will have darker chrome on the sides (sorry I forgot to get a picture). This one’s running OS 4.7.1.31

At the Sony Ericsson booth they had the 12.1 megapixel, S60 5th Edition powered Satio. While it’s running beta software it’s still a very slick looking device. Here are some more specs: 3.5″ wide screen screen with 640×360 resolution with up to 16M colours, MicroSDHC card and Xenon flash. I tried the camera and it responds pretty quickly. Here’s a short video showing the UI.

Here is the Nokia N86, it has an OLED display like the N85 but it also has a 8 megapixel autofocus camera. The N86 is also a little easier to hold as I found the N85 tends to slip out of my hands way too easily.

The Nokia e72 is just as slim and sleek as the E71x but it adds a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that doesn’t turn all your pictures purple like the E71’s does plus it also has a 3.5mm headphone jack (hurrah!).

The yellow phone is the Sonim XP3. It’s a ruggedized phone that has a really over-the-top design. It will definitely appeal to the hummer crowd. Check out the back, you need a screw driver to take the battery off (or really thick finger nails).

Entry Filed under: Phones