Blackberry 8800 Review

Here’s my review of the Blackberry 8800; the upgrade to the 8700r.

It’s a Blackberry with a QWERTY keyboard. The main differences are that it adds GPS, removable storage with media player, a new navigation roller and a more interesting appearance.

Make sure you check out the gallery for some pictures.

Physical Impressions:

The 8800 feels a little more solid than the 8700r when you squeeze it. This is due mostly to the fact that there are no seams on the side. The finish on the plastics is higher quality, feels smoother and more valuable. The sides have a chrome-mirror finish to them, similar to the back of an iPod.

The display is slightly brighter than the 8700’s though you won’t notice this unless you compare them side by side. By default, the 8800 will adjust the screen brightness based on the ambient lighting conditions. The display is difficult to see in bright sunlight.

The keyboard is about the same size as the 8700’s but I think it’s better. The keys are easier to find because they have small domes on them though I didn’t like the fact that they’re all joined.

Check the gallery for a shot of the 8800 next to some other QWERTY phones. Out of the bunch, I think the Motorola Q’s keyboard has the best feeling keys while the Nokia E62 has the best spacing. Still, you have to factor in all the Blackberry keyboard shortcuts so it’s hard to say which one is best.

Of course the biggest difference between the 8700 and 8800 is that the 8800 eschews the jog dial for the trackball first found on the Blackberry Pearl. If you haven’t tried the Pearl before let me describe what the trackball is like. Look at the picture below:

With a jog dial you’d have to do a bit of scrolling if you want to go to the menu choice directly below. With a trackball you can just roll down and go straight to the menu choice. Sure, other phones have been able to do this for years but still, it’s nice if you use Blackberries.

Hands-free usage:

There is support for Bluetooth headsets, 2.5mm stereo headphones (included) and a speakerphone.

The speakerphone’s maximum volume is about average (it’s not that useful in loud environments).

Included is the Voice Signal voice command software; you can activate it by pressing the button on the left side of the 8800. With Voice Signal, you can call phone book entries or dial numbers without having to train it first. The ability to launch programs seems to be missing.

Miscellaneous:

There is a mini USB connector on the side which you can use for charging. The connector doesn’t seem as picky as the one on the 8700. I was able to charge the 8800’s battery using my Motorola mini USB charger.

You also get a MicroSD slot that’s located underneath the battery cover.

Menus:

The menus are similar to the one found on the 8700. The standby screen is different in that it has a couple of menu items but the main menu and menu structures are otherwise identical. The fact that you can now scroll in 4 directions instead of 2 means you can now do crazy stuff like scroll straight to the menu item below instead of having to scroll an entire row of menu items. I guess RIM has finally caught up to virtually every other phone on the market in this regard. There’s still a back button but it’s now located on the front of the phone. There’s a menu button to the left of the nav roller.

Here’s how the menu works; scroll to the application you want to open. Press in on the nav roller to open it. You move around with the roller and press in on the roller if you want to open something. Press the menu button to bring up the app’s menu. It’s quite smilar to other Smartphones like S60 or Windows Mobile Standard (MS Smartphone) menus in this regard.

When browsing text you can almost always copy and paste using the trackball.

Phone Related Features:

If you type in a name or number from the menu, the 8800 will automatically start searching your phonebook. It’s very similar to Smart Dial on a MS Smartphone except you can start dialing even when you’re in the main menu.

The phonebook is easy to use. It syncs up with MS Outlook. Pictures in your Outlook address book synchronize with the phonebook.

There is support for profiles which allow you to quickly change the volume and sounds the 8800 makes.

Connected Features:

There’s a mini usb connector on the left side near the top. When you connect a usb cable to the 8800, it will prompt you if you want to go into mass storage mode. When the 8800 is in mass storage mode you can use your computer to manage files on the 8800 without requiring special drivers. I clocked the 8800 at a respectable 600kB/s.

RIM is best known for its push email so let me give you a super condensed run down of how it works…

If you’re an end user you probably have a POP3 or maybe an IMAP4 mail box. You log into a website, enter your email server settings into RIM’s web client so that it can check your mail box periodically. When you get a new email, the web client will push it out to your 8800. It’s cool but the thing is you’re actually getting a COPY of your email. So, if you’re the type of person who gets a lot of email and likes to keep track of them on both your Blackberry AND your computer then the web client isn’t terribly useful. When you reply/forward/delete a a message they don’t get marked as such on your computer. While not useless, I think the Blackberry is very overrated if you don’t have access to a BES.

Now if you have access to a BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) via work or you pay someone for BES hosting then the Blackberry is much more useful. Your emails will be sync’d with what you see on your computer plus your PIM apps will also be sync’d automatically on both devices - neat.

One cool feature is the ability to PIN other Blackberry users. It’s sort of like SMS but you get notification right away when the other person gets your messages plus you can view previous messages on the same screen. There is both a web and WAP browser. The web browser is really fast because surfing is done through a proxy (basically when you request a web page it gets pulled up on another computer, compressed and then sent out to your device). It’s not the prettiest browser - in fact it reminds me a lot of a text based browser that’s on steroids, but you get your information really quickly. There are multiple views; desktop where the 8800 renders a page so that you’ll probably have to scroll left and right to view everything or you can view the page so that everything can be read without having to scroll horizontally. There’s a page view feature where you can see a thumbnail of a lot of the page. This helps you scroll through the page more quickly while still having an idea of where you are in the page.

One nice feature is that you can select text from webpages while you scroll around by scrolling only one line at a time.

You get a built-in GPS. I used it with Telenav (it costs extra) and is pretty useful. The trackball is well suited for mapping programs since you can move diagonally.

Multimedia Features:

There’s no built-in camera on the 8800 though there is a built-in mp3 player.

The mp3 player is pretty basic. It can read ID3 tags. There is no built-in equalizer.

The best way to load music on the 8800 is by organizing your music into subfolders on the memory card.

While you can control the music player using the trackball, I preferred the keyboard shortcuts; ‘p’ for previous, ‘n’ for next, backspace to pause plus there are the volume buttons on the side. There is a background play feature though you can only adjust the volume when you’re outside the music player app.

The player is a little sluggish when it comes to skipping forwards/backwards.

Organizer Features:

You get an alarm clock, calendar, todo list, notes, calculator and password manager. A unit converter is missing.

Out of the box, the 8800 can’t handle MS Office files. Mind you there are 3rd party applications that add this functionality.

Impressions:

Incoming sound quality was not that great. People sounded slightly over processed, similar to how they sound on a typical CDMA phone. Over processing is usually the result of noise suppression but the 8800 also had noticeable hiss.

Mind you, incoming sound quality is still perfectly usable.

RF performance is about average. It’s about the same as the 8700r and not as good as the Sony Ericsson W600i in this regard.

Maximum earpiece volume is adequate.

I’m not sure if it’s just the unit I’m testing but I found I could only get 2 days of standby with the battery (Bluetooth was off).

Conclusion:

If you’ve ever wanted to try a QWERTY Blackberry but balked at it’s overly conservative looks then the 8800 is for you.

Compared to the 8700r, the 8800 is as good as or an improvement in most aspects; The keyboard is easier to use, the trackball is much more functional than the jog dial, you get GPS and like I said before you get a prettier face. The RF performance is roughly the same as is the sound quality. The only area where the 8800 really fails is when it comes to battery life (I only got around 2 days of standby with light usage).

Pros:

• Nice QWERTY keyboard
• Screen looks great
• Mini USB connector is less picky about chargers than the one found on 8700r
• Memory card slot

Cons:

• No WiFi
• No HSDPA
• No camera
• Sound quality

Discuss this review at HowardForums.com
See the gallery here
Written by Howard Chui 05.01.2007
This article may not be reproduced without the the author’s permission.

3 comments May 1st, 2007

Slingbox Tuner

Here’s my SlingMedia Slingbox Tuner review. It’s TV on your mobile device!

Most new products are meant to replace your old ones. So it’s not often a company comes up with something that you never knew you needed. A year or so ago, SlingMedia came out with the SlingBox (SB) and made me realize I needed to make space for it in my home theater.

If you’re not aware of what the SB is, it lets you watch your TV remotely using your internet connection. The original SB could connect to any device that had audio (2 RCA jacks) and or video (S-Video or RCA) connectors. It could control the device using the included IR blasters (they can send remote control signals). It would take the AV signal, buffer it a little, encode it and stream it over the net to your device. Of course you need a fast enough internet connection (dial up users can stop reading here). Originally there was only a viewer for Windows users but Sling added support for Windows Mobile (Pocket PC and Smartphone), Palm OS, Mac OSX plus there’s a client coming soon for Symbian devices.

It’s great for watching TV when you’re not at home. If you’re thinking of a reason to quit work consider watching your SB when your boss is around. Watch it on your Pocket PC/Smartphone when your wife takes you shopping, at weddings, etc. As long as you have a fast enough internet connection and a compatible device you’re good to go.

The SB is also pretty useful around the house since it allows you to watch TV in places you couldn’t before plus your home network probably has a lot more bandwidth to play with. After all more bandwidth = higher quality.

Today I’m checking out the SB Tuner. It’s strictly for cable users so if you have Satellite consider the SB AV or if you have HD or multiple devices - check out the Slingbox Pro. Make sure you check out my pictures here.

Unlike the original SB, there isn’t much to the SB Tuner. You connect to your cable so you can watch it remotely.

Included in the packaging are a high quality Regal brand 2 way splitter (many cable companies use Regal splitters), network cable, power adapter and a RG59 coax cable. The power adapter is a wall wart so make sure you have room for it.

You can connect a 2 way splitter to your cable and have one go to the SB Tuner while the other goes to your TV/cable box. The SB Tuner also has cable passthrough so you can connect your cable to the SB Tuner and then connect another from your Tuner to your TV/cable box.

Setup is ridiculously easy. Assuming you’re using a home DSL/Cable router - just make sure you have DHCP turned on (it usually is by default), plug the SB Tuner into your router and then connect the power. If you don’t have an ethernet jack there’s an available SlingLink ethernet over power (not power or ethernet) adapter so you can have your router in one room and the SB in another.

Next pop in the setup CD (or download the Player from www.slingmedia.com) and run the install. The SlingPlayer software can automatically find your SB. If you want to watch your TV outside of your home network, the SB supports uPNP. If you want to configure your router yourself, there are step by step instructions on how to setup port forwarding.

Next the software will ask you how the Tuner is connected to your cable and then it will scan to see what channels you can receive. Remember the Tuner is for analog channels only so if you subscribe to digital or HDTV cable services you won’t be able to see those digital/HDTV channels.

The player software is pretty well thought out. You can change channels by pressing + or -. You can dock the player to the left or right side of the screen plus there’s a full screen mode. There are channel shortcuts you can create along the bottom. Their interface is also skinnable.

You can adjust the video quality and manually specify how much bandwidth the player consumes.

The SB now encodes video at 640×480 (as opposed to 640×240 with the original) plus the bit rate can go as high as 8mbps (previously it was 2mbps). Image quality is amazing; if you’re at home and have a fast enough network you don’t lose anything quality wise over using your TV - Incredible! See a screen shot comparison here.

Notice the extra resolution in the guy’s mustache and the edges of his suit. Take a step back and notice that the picture from the original Slingbox is slightly foggy. The colour on the Tuner seems a little more intense also (both players have the colour settings at default).

Of course, the image quality is dependant on how good your analog cable looks. If you live in an old house with RG59 cabling everywhere and are splitting your cable with 10 other TVs, chances are your quality isn’t going to be good. If that’s the case consider getting a digital box and hook up a SB AV to it instead. Digital cable has error correction which should result in better image quality.

When connected to your local network channel, changes take about a second so it can be pretty tedious if you’re channel surfing.

When you’re viewing your SB from outside your network on a computer, the quality really depends on how fast your ISP at home is. If you can keep the bit rate over 300kb/s, the quality will be watchable though some scenes with lots of fast movement will be blocky. 600kb/s and you’re doing pretty good.

So you’re probably wondering what happens when you’re connection quality drops. If your bit rate drops, the SB will dynamically throttle the bit rate so that the video quality gets worse - that way you can still hear what’s going on. If the connection is really bad then the video may skip. I’ve noticed the SB will sometimes speed up playback slightly so that it can catch up. You never get buffering messages (because it skips instead).

If you only have a limited amount of data transfer, you can tell the SB the maximum bit rate.

For the mobile device portion of my review, I tested the Tuner with my HTC TyTN. Does the new 640×480 resolution translate to better quality on mobile devices? Not really. When I was testing the SlingPlayer, the resolution was usually 220×176 which doesnt require that much bandwidth. As long as you got around 300kbs, the video looked okay enough though you’ll have trouble reading small text. You can manually choose bit rates of up to 600kb’s so my guess is the maximum support bitrate is that.

Like I said, quality is pretty good but the controls can be quite sluggish. It can take a few seconds if you’re switching between full screen and regular mode.

Remember that SlingPlayer Mobile is not included with the Tuner so after a 30 day trial period you’ll have to fork out 35 bucks Canadian (30 USD) for it. When you buy it, you’ll get a key that will activate your copy. So if you change devices often this might drive you crazy.

If you’re someone who uses their SB a lot at home and has a fast network with a strong, good cable signal, the Sling Tuner is a great upgrade. However, if you’re someone who uses the SB mostly with their Pocket PC/Smartphone, you won’t notice much of a difference.

If you don’t own a SB already, the Tuner is the least expensive SB you can buy. That said you’re probably better off getting a digital cable box or satellite and using it with a SB AV since analog TV days are numbered.

Pros:

• Great picture quality
• Very easy to setup and use

Cons:

• For analog cable only
• Player for mobile devices costs extra

See the gallery here
Written by Howard Chui 04.16.2007
This article may not be reproduced without the the author’s permission.

Add comment April 16th, 2007

Helio Drift Review

Here’s my Helio Drift review. It got delayed a while because I had mixed feelings about the Drift and was unsure about my conclusions. Make sure you check out my Drift picture gallery for pictures related to this review.

The Drift is Helio’s newest phone. It has similar features to the Hero and Kickflip plus it throws in stereo Bluetooth support so you can use it with Bluetooth headsets and headphones.

Physical Impressions:

While the drift isn’t a flimsy phone, it doesn’t have that ‘dense plastic feel’ that other Samsung phones have. Still, despite this and despite the fact that it’s a sliding phone, the Drift passes my squeeze test with flying colours. Some of this is due to the fact that the Drift’s battery cover is built into the battery.

Size-wise the Drift is a lot smaller than the Hero. Look at the gallery pics to see what I mean.

While the keys are a good size and easy to find the placement of, the back button is awful. Whenever you press down on a button there’s a very good chance that you’ll also get the back button. It’s truly maddening.

There are a bunch of buttons on the side but there are also a lot of slot covers which makes things a bit confusing. On the left you have a volume, play/pause, voice and a memory card slot cover. On the right you have a headset jack, charging port and camera button.

The display is nice, big and easy to look at.

The battery release button is on the bottom. I found it was far too easy to accidentally pop the battery off if you close it by holding the phone with your thumb on the bottom and your middle finger on the top.

Hands-free usage:

You get a speakerphone, 2.5mm headset connector (on the right) and support for Bluetooth headsets.

Miscellaneous:

There is 128MB of built-in memory which is a lot but you can easily get MicroSD cards that are way bigger then that. The MicroSD slot is located behind a door on the left side.

Menus:

The top level menu has been customized so that it resembles the menu on other Helio phones. It’s laid out in a 3 x 3 icon grid.

If you press the buttons really quickly when you’re navigating the menu, it can be little confusing. Here’s what I’m talking about (it’s a little hard to understand). If you’re at the standby screen, go to the menu and press right rapidly. You will first move right, then you will start scrolling around the outer menu choices in a clockwise pattern. The same thing goes if you press left. So sometimes left is right and vice versa. However, if you stop pressing for a second, then the menu will operate more predictably in that if you press left then you’ll move left and vice versa. It’s really strange - an answer to a question no one asked.

The display has a resolution of 240×320 so icons and text look great. When you’re entering numbers the text is very large.

I don’t normally mention this but I liked the sounds the Drift makes when you open/close it, press the buttons, etc. They’re interesting without sounding too silly.

The top and second level menus are easy enough to use but sometimes I found it kind of confusing to change settings. Take the alarm clock for example. There are all these choices but there’s no on screen choice to save (to save press the center button on the nav pad).

Phone Related Features:

When you’re dialing a number, the Drift will look for matches in your recent calls list and phonebook which is kind of neat. If you’ve ever used a Microsoft Smartphone (now named Windows Mobile) you can liken it to Smartdial.

The phonebook can store up to 1000 numbers. You can sync the phonebook with your PC using PCLink Pro. There’s no Outlook sync but you can import Outlook contacts into PCLink Pro. Phonebook entries can be organized into groups.

There’s also an over the air phonebook sync that I didn’t get a chance to try.

Connected Features:

There’s a USB cable in the box plus the Drift supports Bluetooth.

You can download both PC Sync software and file management software for free download on Helio’s site. PC Sync software lets you sync the Drift’s phonebook with the software. You can IMPORT your MS Outlook phonebook into the software which you can then sync with the Drift but you CAN’T sync the phone with Outlook directly.

When it comes to transferring stuff to the Drift, it clocked in at about 123KB/S (72.2MB in 590 seconds) which is really slow.

There appears to be Bluetooth support to send and receive files or connect your laptop to the internet but those features appear to have been disabled.

There’s no built-in email client but there is a link to Helio’s online email service.

You can download Helio’s H.O.T. app which turns your phone into somewhat of a RSS reader. It’s different from other RSS readers in that it takes over your standby screen and automatically updates the feeds as you’re using it. It works well - I found it pretty useful when I was taking the bus.

The browser is pretty standard fare. You can’t use it to browse HTML sites.

Multimedia Features:

If you want to use your PC to transfer music and videos to the Drift you’ll need to download Helio Media Mover. You can’t just take the MicroSD card, pop it in your memory card reader and copy mp3’s to it. Instead Media Mover has to first convert all your music to mp4’s and videos to 3g2 files which is kind of annoying since it can take a while. It’s like iTunes when copying files to your iPod in this respect.

It’s a compromise. I hated having to wait for my files to be re-encoded but I liked how Media Mover can handle both music and video plus it’s a pretty simple program to use. I also liked how it would resize your videos.

There is a side mounted play button which is useful if you’re doing something else and want to pause… unfortunately you can only really access the text messaging menu when you’re listening to music which is totally lame. Also, the side mounted buttons are locked when you close the drift so if you want to pause playback you have to press and hold pause for a second or two and then tell the Drift you want to unlock the keys.

Stereo Bluetooth support seems pretty standard. If you have a pair of A2DP headphones, you can start the musicplayer by pressing play. The A2DP buttons (play, pause, volume, skip forwards/backwards) work even when the Drift is closed.

I said it before but I’ll say it again. It totally sucks that you can’t listen to music and say use H.O.T. at the same time.

The camera has a resolution of 2.0 megapixels. There’s a flash and a self portrait mirror. Like most camera phones, pictures looked great when viewed on screen but they’re not so hot when you download them to your computer. There’s pretty good resolution but pictures are quite noisy. Colour balance varies but it’s generally okay.

The camera takes a few seconds to start up. I liked the camera user interface; it gives you a lot of information without seeming cluttered. It’s also responsive and there are numeric shortcuts for popular functions.

Pictures can be transferred to your PC using PCLink Pro. You can also save the pictures to your MicroSD which you can then pop into your computer.

Organizer Features:

Included is a calendar, to-do list, wake-up call, alarm, calculator, world time, unit converter, notepad, stopwatch, user memory and voice memo.

The calendar and to-do list sync with your computer using PCLink Pro but don’t sync with MS Outlook. I also don’t see the Drift on Apple’s iSync webpage (support for it will probably turn up much later based on Apple’s previous track record).

I’m not sure what the difference is between wake-up and the alarm clock.

It’s nice to see that there is a built-in unit converter.

Impressions:

RF performance is so-so. The Drift is programmed so that if you’re in an area where Sprint has a weak signal, it will constantly be trying to get on to Sprint which can be bad for service.

Sound quality is average. It doesn’t sound as clean as some other CDMA phones but it does sound more lively.

Conclusion:

I thought the Drift’s battery could be better. I’m basing that comment on my experiences with the Drift when I’m in the States (when I use the Drift in Canada it’s constantly look for it’s home network so of course battery life is going to be bad).

While the Drift has a nice spec sheet, I didn’t feel it worked all that well. Most of this is due to the fact that the music player sucks because you can’t multi-task (besides text messaging) when you’re using it.

The back button was a constant source of annoyance and was one of the reasons why my Drift review took longer than usual. I just couldn’t stand the device because I was constantly hitting back by accident.

I’m not crazy about the Drift. When I think about it, it’s not that bad a phone but it doesn’t really make me want to use it like some phones can.

Pros:

• A2DP Bluetooth support
• Large display
• Lots of built-in memory

Cons:

• Back button is inconveniently placed
• No background music play

Discuss this review at HowardForums.com
See the gallery here
Written by Howard Chui 02.19.2007
This article may not be reproduced without the the author’s permission.

2 comments February 19th, 2007

HTC S310 Review

I just finished up my review of the HTC S310. They’re entry level Smartphone. Make sure you check out my S310 picture gallery too.

Physical Impressions:

I wasn’t impressed when I picked up the S310 for the first time. The plastic on the S310 felt kind of cheap compared to HTC’s other offerings. I think it’s the battery door which is the source of this problem - it feels really thin.

The keys are nice, big and feel okay when you press them. The only problem I have with them is the bottom row (the *, 0 and #). The bottom of the S310 slopes along with the keys which makes them difficult to press if you’re holding the S310 with one hand.

Lately all the Smartphones that I’ve tried have 320×240 displays so I was surprised when I picked up the S310. It has a 220×176 screen which took some getting used to. Once you get used to the lower resolution it’s not so bad since the S310 doesn’t really ship with any apps that really take advantage of the higher resolution

The display measures 2.0″ so it’s kind of small compared to other Smartphones. The size of the display makes the S310 look like a regular phone.

Another thing I noticed is that the S310’s viewing angle isn’t that great. While it’s not so bad that you can’t see anything unless you’re looking at it straight on it’s bad enough to be annoying. Even though it’s a TFT display I kind of wondered if it was a STN display of some sort.

Hands-free usage:

You get a speakerphone, USB headset connector (on the bottom) and support for Bluetooth headsets.

Miscellaneous:

You get 64MB RAM + 64MB ROM. It’s not as much as some other Smartphones but it should be enough for most users.

There is a miniSD card slot located behind the battery so you’ll have to turn the S310 off if you want to switch cards.

Menus:

The menus are standard Microsoft Smartphone. Top level icons are arranged in a 3×3 icon grid. You have to click ‘more’ if you want to see more icons. Icons have numeric shortcuts which you can use to quickly jump to a menu item. The speed dial can be used to launch programs.

The standby screen is called the Today screen. Besides showing standard standby screen info (network info, time, date, etc) you can launch programs you’ve used recently near the top.

Phone Related Features:

When you’re dialing phone numbers Smartphone has a feature called Smartdial. As you type in numbers, the S310 will search for matches in your phonebook and recent call lists - pretty neat.

The phonebook syncs up with Outlook on your PC.

When you’re entering phone numbers in your phonebook, the items are listed in one giant list. The address field is located pretty far down so if you want to enter that you have to do a lot of scrolling.

Connected Features:

There is no WiFi - only Bluetooth.

The Bluetooth does support A2DP which is a nice touch.

Sometimes you’ll notice the lack of WiFi because the S310 only supports EDGE. This can make the S310 less useful around the home or office.

There’s a mini USB connector at the bottom of the phone that’s used for charging, computer connectivity and headsets.

You can connect the S310 to your PC using Active Sync. With Active Sync you can manage files on the S310 and the memory card, install programs and synchronize the contents with Outlook.

The Email client supports pop3 and imap. You don’t get push email support. If you’re not using MS Exchange, the lack of push email isn’t a big deal.

Multimedia Features:

There is a 1.3 megapixel camera on the back. It doesn’t take the best pictures. The lens is slightly foggy and colours are off.

I like how the camera menus look. If you access the menu, it will remember the last item you were looking at which is a nice touch.

Music and video are handled by Windows Media Player. WMP can sort your music by album, artist, genre. If you are using Windows Media Player on your PC you can use that to load music on the S310.

WMP lacks an equalizer. The included headphones are thin sounding and there isn’t much you can do about this. If you listen to a lot of music don’t throw out your mp3 player just yet.

As I mentioned earlier there is A2DP support which is a nice touch given the S310’s price point.

WMP has a background play feature but if you want to change tracks you have to switch back to it which is kind of annoying.

Organizer Features:

You get a Voice recorder, alarm clock, calendar and todo list. Also included is ClearVue Document, ClearVue PDF, ClearVue Presentation, ClearVue Worksheet. Document, PDF, Presentation and Worksheet are Excel, Word, PDF and Powerpoint viewers respectively. You don’t get a timer or unit converter.

The calendar and todo list synchronize with your computer using Active Sync.

Impressions:

RF performance is pretty good.

Incoming sound quality not that great. There’s a lot of background hiss. People’s voices were slightly shrill sounding. Maximum earpiece volume is quite good.

Outgoing sound doesn’t have as much background hiss but voices are still quite shrill.

Living with the S310:

I liked that the S310 is small and light. It really doesn’t look like a Smartphone and I’m sure a lot of people will appreciate that.

If the S310 locks the keypad due to inactivity it will show the time in large text if you press any of the S310’s keys. This is really nice if you use it as a watch.

I could complain about how the S310 only has 64MB of RAM, how the display has a resolution of only 176×220, how the screen is only 2″, how it has no WiFI (same thing) but really I can live with all those compromises. I guess phones in general are at the point where even cheap phones have enough features. The screen’s limited viewing angle was kind of irritating but once you get used to this, it’s not so bad.

I hated how cheap the S310 felt in my hand. The feel of the S310 and its display are reminders that sometimes when you pay less you get less. The keypad was a constant source of annoyance. Whenever I had to check my voicemail and press the * or # buttons I felt like I was going to accidentally drop the phone.

Conclusion:

If you’ve wanted to try a Smartphone but balked at the price or perhaps found they were too nerdy for you, the S310 might be your ticket.

I wish I had a lot of technical things to say about it but at the end of the day, the S310’s strength is that it’s a sleeper. It’s like wearing contact lenses instead of glasses.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Light and compact
• Good RF
• Long battery life
• A2DP

Cons:

• Music is thin sounding
• Feels cheap
• Screen has poor viewing angle
• Sound quality is poor

Discuss this review at HowardForums.com
See the gallery here
Written by Howard Chui 02.06.2007
The HTC S310 in this review was supplied by Superior Gadgets
This article may not be reproduced without the the author’s permission.

1 comment February 6th, 2007

Nokia 6275i Review

I just finished my up my review of the Nokia 6275i from Virgin Mobile. Make sure you check out additional pictures of it which can be found at my gallery here.

When I first think of Virgin mobile I think of hip advertising campaigns (okay, I’ll be honest; I think of nurses and hanukwazachristmas), prepaid service and cheap phones.

The Noka 6275i breaks from that tradition in that it’s a mid range phone with a cheap price.

Physical Impressions:

While not tiny, the 6275i is a pretty compact phone. You can see pics of it here. The large 2.2″ display makes it seem bigger than it really is.

When you squeeze it, the battery cover squeaks a little - otherwise it feels pretty solid.

The keys are quite large and easy to use. They depress with a nice click. There is a camera plus volume buttons on the right side.

Like I mentioned earlier, the display is pretty big (for a regular phone) at 2.2″. It has a fairly high resolution of 240×320 and can display up to 262K colours.

Unlike most Nokia phones, the 6275i doesn’t have a dedicated power button. To turn the 6275i on or off, just press and hold the END button.

Hands-free usage:

Like most newer phones, the 6275i has a built-in speakerphone (it’s kinda loud), headset connector (you actually get 2; a pop port connector plus a regular 2.5mm one on the right side) plus it supports Bluetooth headsets.

Miscellaneous:

There is 24MB of built-in memory plus a MicroSD slot behind the battery.

Menus:

The menu layout is typical of Nokias. The icons have been customized so they’re more hip. Take a look at my 6275i gallery to see what I mean. I thought Virgin did a great job with them.

The display has a resolution of 240×320 so icons and text look great.

Phone Related Features:

You get Nokia’s easy to use but fully featured phonebook. There can be numbers and information per phonebook entry (just like every other phone). When you’re searching for an entry you can type part of the name as opposed to just the first letter (again, most phones can do this now).

One thing I noticed is that the numbers are really big when you’re typing in phone numbers. That’s good if you can’t see very well. Still, most of the rest of the phone uses a fairly small font.

There is a voice dial feature but no voice commands.

Connected Features:

You do get Bluetooth support but its pretty disappointing as it’s basically for headsets only. You can’t use it to connect to your computer or do much else with it.

Connection to your computer is possible using a pop port data cable (my 6275i didn’t come with one). When you connect there are three different modes; the first is for syncing, second one is for printing while the last one lets you access the MicroSD (USB mass storage).

Speed wise, I transferred a 174MB file in about 9 mins 15 seconds which translates to about 313kb/s which isn’t very fast though it’s so-so for a phone.

Absent is a built-in email client and the browser seems to only support WAP sites.

Multimedia Features:

There is a built-in 2 megapixel camera. Pictures look amazing when you view them on the phone but they don’t look so great when you’re viewing them on a computer. Images are fairly noisy and the colour is slightly off at times.

Low light performance is pretty good. The 6275i can boost the signal so that you can see the subject you’re taking though it will be extremely noisy.

There is a built-in music play. It doesn’t let you sort your music by artist, album, genre, etc. so things can get messy if you have a lot of music. An equalizer is included so you can customize the music to your taste. Please remember the 6275i doesn’t come with a memory card or headphones so you’ll need those if you want to listen to music.
You will need compatible headphones if you plan on using the built-in FM radio since they act as an antenna. Either pop port or 2.5mm headphones will work with the radio.

Organizer Features:

The following organizer related features include: Voice recorder, alarm clock, calendar, notes, todo list, calculator, countdown timer and stop watch. You also get a unit converter, translator and world clock (they’re in the applications menu under games and apps).

The calendar, to do list and notes synchronize with Outlook on your PC if you have a pop port data cable and Nokia PC Suite. As usual there’s no iSync support for the 6275i at this time (wait a few months and I’m sure Apple will add it).

Impressions:

RF performance is very good.

While most CDMA phones are very clean but processed sounding, the 6275i is much less processed but slightly rough sounding.
Maximum earpiece volume is quite good.

Conclusion:

While I was disappointed with the 6275i’s lame Bluetooth support and user unfriendly music player, overall I enjoyed using the 6275i. It’s easy to use, has a great display with visually appealing menu icons, good battery life, memory card support and all at a pretty good price point.
It’s not a high end phone but it’s pleasant to use and has enough features to make it an interesting phone to use.

Pros:

• Large high res display
• Fairly small
• Good RF
• Long battery life
• Cool looking menu
• Memory card support

Cons:

• Sound quality is rough
• Bluetooth is only for headsets

Discuss this review at HowardForums.com
See the gallery here
Written by Howard Chui 01.26.2007
This article may not be reproduced without the the author’s permission.

70 comments January 26th, 2007

T-Mobile’s exclusive white Blackberry Pearl

T-Mobile has officially launched the White Pearl. The Blackberry Pearl features a newer slimmer design with Suretype QWERTY keyboard, trackball wheel, 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD memory card slot and media player. 

You can pick up the White Blackberry Pearl for only $149.99 with two year contract at all T-Mobile USA stores now.

“The BlackBerry Pearl has set the bar for combining the functionality of a full-featured BlackBerry phone and the ultimate in style, all at an affordable price,” said Mike Butler, Chief Marketing Officer, T-Mobile USA. “Now, the white BlackBerry Pearl provides our customers with another effortless, yet stylish, option to stay connected with loved ones.”

 Source: T-Mobile

Add comment January 19th, 2007

HTC P3300 Review

Here’s my review of the HTC P3300 (click read more to see it).

Make sure you check out additional pictures which can be found at the gallery here.

Pocket PC’s hardware is very interesting to track. Back in 03 (or was it 02), Pocket PC phone edition came out. Basically the devices were Pocket PC with a phone slapped onto them. Since then, they’ve gotten incremental upgrades like faster processors, more memory, different types of memory, smaller memory cards, brighter screens that can display more colour, etc. They’ve also gotten added features like a built-in camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, QWERTY keyboards.

Anyways, the newest feature is a built-in GPS. Kind of like the one you’ll find in HTC’s P3300 (aka the Artemis). But GPS isn’t the only trick up the P3300’s sleeve. It has a new navigation pad which HTC calls.

New features are nice provided they work well. Read on to find out if this is the case with the P3300!

The P3300 I’m reviewing has been supplied by Superior Gadgets.

Physical Impressions:

The P3300 feels pretty solid and is surprisingly light. This is probably due to the fact that the P3300 lacks a built-in sliding QWERTY keyboard. Despite the lightness, the P3300 easily passes my squeeze test.

It’s covered with a rubberized paint job. It doesn’t feel cheap but it’s not as ‘grippy’ as the one on the Nokia 6126 but it is nicer than the Glofiish x500’s.

While there is no QWERTY keyboard, there are enough buttons scattered around the front to allow for easy one handed operation.

The front button layout works well. Notice the Windows, OK, GPS and browser buttons. There are power and camera buttons on the right side, a voice button plus a volume switch on the left.

One of the P3300’s special features is it’s navigation pad or should I say lack of a navigation pad. Instead you get what HTC calls the ROLLR. It’s basically a dial plus a trackball. There are two modes of operation. One uses the dial to scroll mostly while the other lets you use the trackball.

When you use the trackball mode there’s an on-screen pointer. It’s neat but from my experience it’s not very useful unless you’re using the included TomTom navigator (more on that later). Anyways you get an on screen pointer but I found it was easier to just use the corner of my thumb rather than the trackball. You can press in on the trackball to select something. Using the dial in this mode is pretty pointless since rotating it will scroll through menu items but pressing in on the trackball will select whatever the pointer is pointing at (scrolling doesn’t move the pointer). For example, if the pointer is on the top right of the screen but you use the dial to choose a menu item you can’t select the item by pressing in on the dial since the pointer is in the top right of the screen.

When you’re in dial mode, rotating the dial scrolls between menu items and pressing in on the trackball will select whatever you were pointing it at. It’s just like a regular navigation pad in this mode.

The P3300 passes my squeeze test with flying colours. While it’s light it’s also very solid feeling.

There is a stylus holder located on the bottom right. The stylus is skinny and doesn’t telescope. An extra stylus is included in the box.

The display is 2.8″ measured diagonally with a resolution of 240×320 and can display up to 65,000 colours. There are 4 levels of brightness. The screen is easy to read in all lighting situations and looks great.

Hands-free usage:

As far as hands-free usage goes, the P3300 has a built-in speakerphone (it’s pretty loud), a mini USB headset connector plus it supports Bluetooth headsets.

Miscellaneous:

There is 128MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM built-in. The P3300 is powered by a 201Mhz OMAP processor. Performance is about average though it feels really slow when you’re using Tom Tom (more on that later).

There’s a MicroSD behind the SIM card so you can’t change it without first removing the battery cover, battery and SIM card first. If you change your memory card frequently you’ll find this to be really irritating (make sure you get the highest capacity memory card you can afford).

The mini USB connector at the bottom is used for syncing, charging and headset duties.

The battery has a capacity of 1200mAh which is kind of small for a Pocket PC phone. Still, I found I got a few days of standby with light use.

You get a black horizontal holster with the P3300. It clips to your belt and works well.

Navigation:

Included with the P3300 is the Quick GPS program which downloads satellite location information so that you can get a GPS fix quicker.

Navigation duties are handled by Tom Tom. You get one free map with the P3300 but I could not seem to find a map for my city (Toronto) from the list of free maps.

Tom Tom is pretty easy to use. When you’re searching for an address, it seems to juggle the order of things around which sort of makes it easier to use.

See, when people give you an address it usually goes, street number, street name, city, province, postal code/zip code. With Tom Tom, you enter the city, then the street name and then the number. As you’re entering in the address, Tom Tom will present you with a list of possible choices (kind of like how Pocket PC/Smartphone’s smart dial works). As you keep typing, the list keeps narrowing. It’s kind of neat but the on screen keyboard could be a bit bigger.

When you’re searching for a point of interest, it follows a similar paradigm; you start with the city and go from there.

Tom Tom is somewhat easy to use. The big problem with it is that the spoken navigation tends to tell you about upcoming turns at the most unexpected times. It gets really irritating.

Another problem (that’s not necessarily confined to the P3300) is that the device feels kind of sluggish when you’re using Tom Tom. The nav roller kind of exasperates this problem.

Tom Tom likes to keep running even when you turn the screen off so if you forget to exit the program when you’re done, it has a nasty habit of draining your battery completely.

Menus:

HTC doesn’t include a special launcher program with the P3300 (like all their Pocket PC phones). Anyways, the P3300 has a windows key in front so you don’t really need a launcher.

Like all HTC PPC phones, there’s a communications applet which you can use to turn off the GSM radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, push email, volume, etc. You can access it from the today screen.

You don’t get a battery status icon that appears on every screen - just the today screen (and the power app). Since I rarely look at my today screen I find this to be really annoying.

Phone Related Features:

Not much has been changed from previous HTC Pocket PC phones with regards to the phone features.

You can bring up the dial pad and switch to the phone app by pressing the ’send’ button. After you dial, the virtual keypad disappears. I found that kind of irritating although you can always bring it back by pressing the left soft key.
When browsing the phonebook, you can quickly jump to an entry by typing part of their name. The P3300 will automatically search the first and last name fields.

Phonebook information (including Caller ID picture) synchronizes with Outlook.

There is a voice dialing feature but no digit dialing feature.

There are two separate volume controls on the P3300. One for system sounds and one for the phone.

One thing you don’t get with the P3300 is a profiles feature to let you quickly how the phone behaves when it makes a sound. Still, you can quickly change the volume by pressing the volume icon that’s found at the top of each screen.

Connected Features:

Like I mentioned earlier, you can turn off the P3300’s connected feature (i.e. WiFi) using the included Comm manager program. If you move around a lot and need to turn features on or off a lot I suggest you remap one of the keys to start this program. It would be nice if you could access this program by tapping something at the top of the screen. There is A2DP Bluetooth support so you can use the P3300 with your stereo Bluetooth headphones.

The messaging client supports SMS, email (imap and pop3), MMS and Hotmail. If you want to configure Hotmail, you’ll have to do it from the Pocket MSN menu, then you can check it using the messaging app. If you want to start a new message and take a new picture for it, you’ll have to take the picture first.

The P3300 supports push email if you have access to Microsoft Exchange 2006 (I don’t so I didn’t get a chance to test this).

Internet browsing is handled by Pocket Internet Explorer. PIE hasn’t changed much in the past couple of years and its beginning to show its age (for example it doesn’t support frames). You can rotate the screen 90 degrees so that it’s wider which should make pages a little easier to read though you’ll have to do this via the system menus so it takes a few steps. This is actually a feature of the operating system. It would be nice if PIE had a menu option which let you rotate the screen instead of having to go to your settings to do this.

PIE renders pages somewhat quickly, has multiple viewing options, plus the bookmarks can sync with your Windows desktop. There are three viewing options: One Column, Default and Desktop. With ‘Desktop’, web pages are rendered like they would appear on a desktop computer (you’ll have to do lots of horizontal scrolling). ‘Default’ draws pages so that columns are usually one screen wide so you can read text more easily. ‘One column’ renders everything in line so you don’t have to do any horizontal scrolling at all. Also included is a Terminal services (aka Remote Desktop Protocol) client.

Multimedia Features:

There is a built-in 2 megapixel camera. While images are somewhat noise free (for a camera phone) there isn’t that much resolution. Using the camera is really slow; I’m talking about accessing the menus, using the zoom, that sort of thing.

There is no built-in flash. You’ll really notice this when it’s dark since the P3300 won’t boost the signal to the sensor enough to compensate.

You get an FM radio. To use it you’ll need to plug the headphones in since they act as an antenna.

Music is handled by Windows Media Player. There is no equalizer so you can’t customize the music to your taste. You get A2DP (bluetooth headphone support) but watch out because music sounds really really thin when you use that.

Organizer Features:

Like all other Pocket PC’s, the p3300 comes with Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Powerpoint Viewer, Calculator, Calendar, Notes and an alarm program (it’s in the settings menu under ‘Clock & Alarms’. You also get a PDF viewer and a zip file manager.You can view and edit word documents with Pocket Word. Pocket Excel handles Excel spreadsheets. The Calendar and Notes programs can synchronize with Outlook on your computer.

The calculator is a very basic one and doesn’t do unit conversions.

You don’t get basic stuff

Impressions:

RF performance is very good. It’s not quite as good as a Sony Ericsson phone but it’s better than the ETEN x500’s.

Incoming sound quality is okay. People’s voices are slightly boxy sounding. It’s not terrible but I’ve heard better. Maximum earpiece volume is adequate.

One thing that stuck out when I was testing the incoming was that the P3300 doesn’t feel that nice when you’re pressing it against your ear.

Outgoing sound quality isn’t terrible but it isn’t that great. People kinda sound like they’re on a speakerphone.

Conclusion:

While the ROLLR is a really neat feature I didn’t find it was any better than a navigation pad. Still I am pretty amazed by the size of the P3300. It has pretty much every feature with the exception of a slide out keyboard and HSDPA support.

The P3300 is a really nice phone but at the same time I just wasn’t that into it. Sure it has Quad band GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth, built-in GPS, 2 megapixel camera and all these other nice features but I didn’t really enjoy using it.

I think it has something to do with ROLLR. It was kind of neat at first but after a while, it started to get to me. Sure, it can function just like a navigation pad but I just didn’t find it as efficient to use as a nav pad.

Pros:

• Pretty good RF
• Very compact
• Built-in GPS
• Pretty good sound quality
• Easy one handed operation

Cons:

• Navigation roller isn’t that great
• Sound quality
• Phone is uncomfortable to use
• Memory card is inconveniently placed

Discuss this review at HowardForums.com
Written by Howard Chui 01.18.2007
This article may not be reproduced without the the author’s permission.

5 comments January 18th, 2007

Just posted my Samsung CES 2007 picture gallery

I just posted a small gallery of some interesting phones I saw at Samsung’s CES exhibit.

You can see all of them here

2 comments January 17th, 2007