Samsung Fascinate Guide

Seeing that Samsung's Galaxy S cellphones have landed at AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint, Verizon Wireless is last in line--which is not necessarily a bad thing, considering Verizon customers have many strong Android phones from which to choose, including the Droid X, Droid 2, and Droid Incredible. So what on earth does the Fascinate provide the party on Big Red? This handset has the same vibrant AMOLED screen we loved on the earlier models, and in contrast to AT&T's Captivate and T-Mobile's Vibrant, this model includes an LED flash and mobile hotspot feature.

Design
In the of the Galaxy S devices, the Samsung Fascinate most closely resembles the Vibrant. The handset comes with a clean and attractive slate design with rounded corners, which is slim and lightweight at 4.92 inches tall by 2.53 inches wide by 0.39 inch thick and 4.1 ounces. Though we dubbed the Vibrant as the sexiest of the series, in a few ways the Fascinate is much better.

Display
Like with the other Galaxy S devices, the Fascinate's AMOLED screen is, well, fascinating. Its 4-inch display dimensions are between the Droid 2 (3.7 inches) and the Droid X (4.3 inches), even though it contains a lower 800 x 480-pixel resolution when compared to 854 x 480 for the two Motorola devices.

Keyboard
The Fascinate offers two strategies for input: Swype or the stock Android keyboard. The latter is not hard to work with, even in portrait mode, but after you experience how quickly you possibly can compose messages using Swype, it would be tough to switch time for whatever else.

Interface
Like the remainder of the Galaxy S series, the Fascinate runs using Android 2.1 with Samsung's TouchWiz 3.0 interface. The latter is obviously improved from previous versions, with some enhanced functionality and also a more polished look. To start out, you will find new widgets, including one called Feeds & Updates and another called Buddies Now. Feeds & Updates streams updates from Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, and you will tend to display content derived from one of,two, or all three of the social-networking sites, and also set the refresh rate, ranging from 30 minutes to once per day. Buddies Now could be such as a favorites list and lets you immediately call or text those contacts, and also reply to any one of their updates.

Music and Video
The TouchWiz mp3 music player is touch-friendly and simple to navigate. It showcases album art nicely, too, with an iTunes Cover Flow-style user interface. Sound was clean over my own earbuds, and decent via the external speakers. One among the most intriguing features of the Fascinate is the Samsung Media Hub, which could accompany all the Galaxy S phones. Media Hub is Samsung's reply to iTunes, a store for choosing music and video. Unfortunately, Media Hub is not yet on the market to users at the moment; as outlined by my contact at Samsung, Media Hub will launch this fall. Customers will be able to download the service via an over-the-air update.

Camera
The Fascinate contains a 5-MP camera, but unlike those two phones, the Fascinate carries with it an LED flash that worked well; even in a totally darkened room, the flash provided enough light to use fairly decent pictures at short range. In the light, pictures were more desirable. The Fascinate's camera also did a great job adjusting the aperture when we moved the phone from the street to the bright blue sky; the street wasn't shrouded in darkness, nor was the sky beaten up.

Battery life
The Samsung Fascinate ships that has a 1,500mAh lithium ion battery that has a rated talk-time of 7 hours and up to 13 times of standby time. In our battery drain tests, the smartphone provided 6.5 hours of continuous talk-time using one charge. During our review period, however, there we were able to get an entire day's use outside of the smartphone--e-mail, Web browsing, music playback--before the need to recharge at the end of the night. Read another cellphone review.

HTC ThunderBolt Article

The HTC ThunderBolt. Without a doubt, the ThunderBolt has been advertized as the must-have device, with fast internet data speeds, a 4.3" display, along with a 1GHz processor. Verizon is banking on early-adopters at this time; people not wanting to delay for other 4G smartphones, like the dual-core Motorola DROID BIONIC, LG Revolution, or the (un-named) Samsung 4G LTE cellphone with Super AMOLED Plus display

Design
At 4.75 inches tall by 2.44 inches wide by 0.56 inch thick and 6.23 ounces, the Thunderbolt isn't for those who prefer dainty devices. The smartphone is large as well as slightly thicker and heavier than the Evo, however it is manageable and the tapered back and soft-touch finish cause it to comfortable to hold on to in the hand.

Interface
The HTC ThunderBolt uses the latest version of the HTC Sense user interface, that is certainly seamlessly layered over Android 2.2.1 Froyo. If you've not used at all it before, HTC Sense will take a certain amount of acclamating yourself with, yet it's forget about challenging than using stock Android. In truth, it's easier. The Sense UI perfectly adheres to the needs of social networking happy those with its Friend Stream app, and it's accompanying desktop widget, that aggregates content out of your Facebook and Twitter accounts. the ThunderBolt will not be supported by the HTCSense.com web site, this means you can't use its features, however, you can download the HTC Sync program, which they can use to sync the phone using your PC's contacts, images, and music files via USB connection.Despite the fact that dual-core processors were here, the included 1GHz single-core Snapdragon processor (Qualcomm MSM8655) and 768MB of RAM on the ThunderBolt allow the software to realize its full potential, as opening programs is fast, with almost no delay. Moving between the 7 homescreens can also be as fluid as can be.

Performance
The an area that many of us will not be thrilled about with the HTC ThunderBolt has the call quality. The sound is decent for the greater degree, however there is a dose of buzzing if we turn the call volume all the way up with someone talking.Signal reception remained good around south FL, and showed 2-3 bars the vast majority of the time, though we're not certain whether it is showing indicative only for 4G 700 MHz reception, or perhaps is also taking into consideration standard voice cellular 800/1900MHz reception.

Camera and Camcorder
The Thunderbolt's 8-MP camera makes a good first impression. It started in under three seconds, and it snapped a pretty detailed shot of a fruit stand.Indoor shots showed considerable grain, however, you can invariably engage the flash.To try out the 720p camcorder we shot footage of a fountain in Bryant Bark. On our desktop the video looked sharp, and the Thunderbolt handled transitions from lighter to darker areas fairly well.the Thunderbolt incorporates a front-facing camera, there isn't much you can apply about it. Skype told us it is actually working together with Verizon to integrate video calling, but couldn't impart us with a timetable. The front-facing camera also doesn't support video chat apps like Oovoo and Qik (or at least not).

Battery life
Thunderbolt will often have short battery life,involves surfing the most in-demand sites continuously on Forty percent brightness, this handset lasted only 3 hours and 56 minutes over its 4G LTE connection. Read more cellphone tips.

Motorola Atrix 4G Laptop Dock Smartphone

The Motorola ATRIX 4G is the fastest mobile phone not on the market. Come March 6th, however, it will likely be. AT&T has landed a screamingly fast Android device thanks to Motorola, and that's its not all. The device is really powerful it can power a laptop with full Firefox browser, and spit out 1080p video like it's nothing. We've spent almost per day time with the phone and think it is sufficient for your review, so read more past the break for which we believe, alright?

Design
Touch-screen smartphones undoubtedly are a dime endless weeks of frustration, and yes it might appear to be issues seen one, you've seen 'em all, but that is definitely not true. Each design have their own highs and lows, and the same is true for the Motorola Atrix 4G. Thankfully, there's much more to love than dislike here. The Atrix is sleek and light-weight at 4.6 inches tall by 2.5 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick and 4.8 ounces. The handset's slim profile makes it simplallows you to slip to a pocket sized, and the rounded corners and tapered edges allow it to be comfortable to support.

Display
While it is not quite as hi-res as the iPhone 4's Retina display (960 x 640 pixels), the Atrix 4G's qHD screen is incredibly bright and crisp. Web sites displayed sharp images while hi-res YouTube videos possessed numerous brightness and vivid colors. Viewing angles take any presctiption an elemen with big-screened devices for instance the Evo 4G and the Droid X, with image quality deteriorating because you angle the display away.

Interface
Running Android 2.2, the Atrix 4G provides the usual level of flexibility users have arrived at expect with the platform, including 7 customizable home pages. Sitting on top of Android is Motorola's Motoblur UI, allowing users to quickly save and link personal account settings to the device. Like other phones with MotoBlur, the Atrix 4G features Motorola widgets built to display information in no time. Some examples are messaging, Social Networking, and Weather. While handy, they did not feel quite as robust as offerings from competitors, for instance HTC's Sense UI.

Performance
The first Android smart phone we've tested ahead with Nvidia's new dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, the Atrix 4G sure meets the concept of superphone. The powerful handset also includes a full 1GB of RAM plus 16GB of ROM. A sd card slot, competent to accept cards as much as 32GB, provides additional storage. In everyday tasks, the Atrix 4G felt speedy. For example, we were competent to launch the camera in only 1 second, in comparison to the 3 it took the Inspire 4G.