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.

Nokia N8 Review

After releasing the ahead-of-its-time N95 in 2007, Nokia did not keep pace with Apple, HTC, Motorola, and various handset-makers. Now, Nokia has rolled out the N8, whose 12-megapixel camera puts it at or near the surface of all smart phones with regards to still and video-recording capabilities.

Design
The N8 measures 4.3 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches and weighs 3.7 ounces. Its rounded edges are similar to the apple iphone, but the two ends of the N8 taper in slightly. The N8's camera and flash protrude jarringly from the back, but the device's dark aluminum case looks stylish and is particularly comfortable to keep.The front of the N8 is covered with the touchscreen; one particular home/menu button is below in the bottom left corner. The left side incorporates a microSD slot, a Sim slot, as well as a microUSB charging port. The right side incorporates a volume bar, a sleep button, as well as a physical camera button for carrying pictures.

Keyboard
The horizontal virtual keyboard is really a full QWERTY one that is quicker but has small input keys that are all the same size. Both keyboards have haptic feedback, which had been sufficiently strong enough to note, and not overwhelming. Still, Android smart phones and the iPhone have both portrait and landscape QWERTY keyboards, making it simpler to type it doesn't matter how you possess those devices.

Display
The display offers a built-in accelerometer and pinch-to-zoom support. The responsiveness of both features is a little inconsistent. On occasion, it can be quick or instantaneous, and at additionally, there can be hook delay. This is also true of the touch screen on the whole. For the most part, it registered our touches but there was occasions where it just didn't respond or that it was so slow to answer that individuals thought there were a dilemma. Also, scrolling through lists and home screen panels isn't quite as smooth or zippy as it is some competing phones.

User Interface
Nokia chose to use the new Symbian^3 operating system for the N8, which is essentially the earlier version of Symbian OS optimized for touch screens. It adds in home screens, multitouch, and HDMI outputting, but it still lacks the intuitiveness and sophistication of competing mobile OSes. Each screen can be customized with widgets just like an e-mail preview or shortcuts for apps, but the process involves several more steps than Android does. Say, one example is, you desired to feature the camera shortcut to the screen. First, you have to press and hold the screen thirty seconds until it buzzes; a box and plus sign might appear for you to include a wigdet.

Performance
The Nokia N8 has a 680-MHz ARM 11 processor and 256MB of RAM. The latest Android devices and various smartphones typically carry 1-GHz processors and twice that level of RAM. When all apps are closed, the N8 runs smoothly, specifically when flipping the orientation from landscape to portrait (the phone posseses an accelerometer) or flicking between the three homepages. But after you adapt apps and some are open, the device decelerates and mars the experience.

Multimedia and Camera
The best feature of the N8 is its 12-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with flash, which produced several of the best photos we have seen at a camera phone. The camera targets its subjects quickly, and there's a plethora more selections for modifying white balance, exposure, ISO, contrast, and color tone. Furthermore, it has facial recognition software that even conditions posters of people's faces.Outdoor photos with good sunlight looked gorgeous with plenty of detail and eye-popping color. Specifically, a picture of dogs playing within a park looked fantastic--we often see the detail of their fur. The N8 took photos over a par with the iPhone; within a shot of flowers outdoors. The video abilities on the N8 are usually top-of-the-line. 720p HD videos look sharp, specifically when shot outside with decent lighting. Videos were steady with few artifacts and heavy variety of detail besides poor lighting. Sound also came through loud and clear. Rrt had been uncomplicated to connect the N8 to a HDTV via HDMI using the included adapter; we had arrived watching our home movies on the hd right away, and were impressed using their smoothness

Call Quality
The call quality on the N8 was simply OK--not great, and not bad either. Using both AT&T and T-Mobile over 3G, voices sounded slightly bare but the volume may get plenty loud in the earpiece. Callers said we sounded fine, but slightly fuzzy. The speakerphone is additionally just decent. The main speaker is on the backside of the phone, close to the camera speaker also it can the simple to accidentally cover it up if you are holding the phone with speakerphone enabled.

Battery life
Considering the specs for the Nokia N8 the process under way fret about the battery life when you consider it's only 1200mAh, this is a lot below its competitors, many of which pick a 1500mAh power cell. However, the nice thing is the Nokia N8 belies this spec and actually will outlast plenty of its peers with regards to battery prowess.

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.

BlackBerry Torch Review

With only Two decades of cellphones behind us it's to refer to the legacy on the brand name and its products the way one might when speaking about an antique car. But if i was to increase this concept to phones, then BlackBerry would surely have earned this honour. The BlackBerry Torch is similar to a Rolls-Royce, it's beautifully built plus it drives like a dream.

Design
Certainly one of BlackBerry's strengths has always been the amount it is possible to customise its devices. This is certainly through BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) - where the employer customises it along with little control - or BlackBerry Online sites (BIS), to change around you want. Indeed, when you're from an iPhone into a Blackberry, you recognise precisely how closed Apple's technique is.But can you've too much of a good thing? The answer is probably yes.One example is, changing the ringtone is straightforward enough, but customising profiles is an intense experience, with the amount options also a power user is left reaching for the smelling salts. Setting up ringtones, text alerts, MMS alerts, email alerts, Twitter, Facebook, the browser, IM, BBM and many others gets confusing after you realise just many options you've, and also you end up quiting halfway through.One huge omission has been created using the Torch. Once we opened the box, i was thrilled with the various accessories (including standard BlackBerry international chargers), but where was the case? Close inspection says this phone doesn't include one, which we discover unforgivable.BlackBerry has bundled one with nearly all phone it's stated in the last few years then there's a cause for your - that will the holders protect the phone from bumps, additionally automatically stop running the screen and set the phone into standby, helping the battery last even longer. If the phone is in your wallet or bag, it prevents you accidentally dialling an e-mail.

Keyboards
The full QWERTY keyboard may be sacrificed somewhat to support this radically different form factor, and we'd have got to agree. Alongside with the Bold 9700, the Torch's keyboard is noticeably (if marginally) slimmer, with less width to share per of their 35 individual buttons. Thankfully, there's also a virtual keyboard option, and between the two we haven't struggled excessive to receive our emails and SMS out.

Display
The screen on the Torch can be a not the same proposition; this is a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen, featuring a portrait orientation and also a HVGA pixel resolution. It features a decent viewing angle on both the horizontal and vertical axis, but most importantly the touch proponent is quite responsive. You'll find it carries a few key advantages of the BlackBerry faithful. It supports multi-touch, by way of example, helping you to opt for a directory of unwanted messages by touching the bottom and top of the list simultaneously and after that deleting them en masse.

Performance
That has a 624-MHz processor and 512MB of RAM under the hood, the Torch doesn't have as much muscle as the latest 1-GHz Android phones or the A4 chip inside the iPhone 4. The device opened apps immediately, but we saw the dreaded clock icon (which tells you the device is working) quite a few times during our testing. Where storage goes, the Torch is sold with 4GB of installed memory (so you'll have lots of space for apps), along with a 4GB sd card for a total of 8GB. You can expand that into a total of 32GB.

Camera and Camcorder
The all the phone remains much like the 9700, with a 5-megapixel camera and LED flash on the back, a 3.5mm headphone socket (these times on the right instead of the left), the same duo of handset lock and mute buttons ahead, and also a micro sd card alongside the SIM under the battery cover.

Music and Video
RIM has graced its ipod with a Cover Flow-like makeover, making album art more prominent. The presentation looks slicker, and you will even sync your collection over Wi-Fi with a desktop PC using the Remote Media Sync feature. Additionally you can sign up for many techniques from NPR and The Onion to Crackberry.com in the Podcast app. On the video front, the YouTube app is simply redirect to the mobile site, but we found the playback being adequate after we thrilled theTron: Legacy trailer.

Call Quality
Associated with pension transfer BlackBerry devices, the Torch delivered clear and reliable call quality in The big apple and New Jersey. When reaching calls on the street (with background noise) we wished there seemed to be a little more volume on our end of the line, but overall other callers preferred the sound of our voice about this phone to the iPhone 4. Plus, the Torch carries a superior speaker, making it an even better choice for conference calls (not forgetting GPS and music).

Battery life
The Torch also lasted longer using a charge than the iPhone 4. After unplugging the device at 1 p.m. and after that using the phone pretty heavily throughout the all the day for navigation, web surfing, streaming Slacker, and capturing, we still has a quarter of the battery life remaining by 8 p.m. The Torch carries a rated talk time of 5.5 hours and also a standby time of 17 days.