Archive for the ‘Product Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
If you’ve read our Ultimate Guide to GPS on Mobile Phones you’ll know that GPS isn’t all about Satellite Navigation and turn-by-turn directions. Using a Bluetooth GPS receiver with your mobile phone will open it up to a whole range of applications that will allow you to do things you may not even realise were possible on a mobile phone.
This guide will run through some of the free and paid apps for Symbian, Java, Windows & BlackBerry phones for each of the 5 types of application – Sat Nav, Tracking, Mapping, Location Aware & Geo-Tagging.
Sat Nav | Free | All Phones that support Java, Windows Mobile & BlackBerry
amAze GPS is probably the best free Sat Nav application available. While it’s not quite as pretty to look at, the features of this amazing free app really make up for it. It has detailed maps of Europe, North America and Australia, and unlike most applications that store all this map data on your phone, taking up valuable space, it downloads the maps as and when you need them. amAze will automatically rotate the map in the direction that you’re driving, and will even overlay your route with a satellite image of where you’re driving. Weather updates are included at no cost. If you want to reduce the amount of data being used, you can also switch to a simple mode that will just display an arrow pointing the way instead of downloading the detailed maps. Speed Camera alerts aren’t available just yet, but are coming soon. amAze GPS is easy to download and install.
The application is free, but as it relies on an internet connection and downloading very small amounts of data, we’d recommend adding an internet bundle to your account to prevent any nasty surprises on your bill.
amAze GPS works on almost any phone
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Tags: amaze gps, blackberry sat nav, free gps spftware, free sat nav, free software, gps applications, gps apps, gps software, gps tracking, iphone sat nav, nokia sat nav, tomtom,
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Friday, July 10th, 2009
Nokia have always produced fantastic fitted car kits but their plug & play car kits have been good, but not really anything to shout about. The Nokia HF-310 and Nokia HF-510 have just been announced as replacements for the HF-200 and HF-300, but are they any better? What have they got that makes them different to the ones they’re replacing? I wasn’t too sure either, as at first glance a bluetooth car kit is just a bluetooth car kit, right?
I grabbed a Nokia HF-310 and tried it out to see how the new Nokia car kit shapes up.
In the Box
With most ‘plug and play’ Bluetooth car kits, you normally get the loud speaker, visor clip and a charger of some description, you get the same with the Nokia HF-310, but you also get a couple of extra items – a windscreen suction holder and a suction pad that you can use anywhere in the car. The charger that the HF-310 uses is a Nokia DC-4, the same 2mm car charger that most of the current Nokia handsets use, so you won’t need to buy a seperate charger for your phone.
Nokia HF-310 Box Contents
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Tags: car kit, n97 car kit, nokia 5800 car kit, nokia bluetooth, nokia bluetooth car kit, Nokia Car Kit, nokia handsfree, nokia hf-310, nokia hf-510, nokia hf310, nokia hf510, nokia speakerphone, nokia visor,
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Thursday, July 9th, 2009
Stereo Bluetooth Headsets haven’t always been the most popular accessory in the world, but now that mobile phones are becoming focused on music and video playback, more and more people are finding a need for a way to listen to their music in stereo, but without wires tying them to their phones.
Stereo Bluetooth Headsets allow you to listen to your music over a bluetooth connection and generally have a range of around 10 metres. This means that you can put your phone down and wander freely around your house with out having to take your phone with you – great if your phone is on charge but you want to listen to your music without having to sit on the floor next to a plug socket!
The big names in Stereo Bluetooth headsets tend to be Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Jabra as these all tend to have a large range of headsets available. Other manufacturers such as Samsung also make stereo headsets but tend to concentrate on just a couple of models, and I’m going to review one of them here – the Samsung SBH-650 Stereo Bluetooth Headset.
Samsung SBH-650 with iPhone 3G
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Friday, June 26th, 2009
The Qstik EVO Q is more than just a standard Bluetooth Headset. It may not be made by a big household name, but that doesn’t mean that the Qstik EVO Q is missing out on features – if anything it has more than some headsets by Nokia and Sony Ericsson. I’ve been using the Qstik for the last week in place of my usual Stereo Bluetooth headset, to see how it measures up against its rivals. In this review I tested the headset using the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music and the Apple iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.0.
Qstik Evo Q Bluetooth Headset
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Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
This year we’re going to see a lot of high end phones all trying desperately to compete with the iPhone and each other. The iPhone, love it or hate it, has completely changed the way that manufacturers and users think about their phones. Its not just all about what it looks like, but what it does, and how it does it. Over the last 2 years, the number of touch screen handsets available has gone through the roof, with just about every manufacturer now making full touch screen, finger friendly devices.
Samsung have had massive success already with the Omnia and the Tocco, and LG did brilliantly with the Viewty. These two manufacturers have always been fierce rivals, always wanting to out do the other one, so with them both releasing new handsets at the same time, I thought I’d put the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition up against the LG Arena to see how they compare.
Now, like most people in the mobile phone world, I’ve known these two phones were coming for a while, and always thought they were going to be 2 versions of the same thing, but when I powered them up I realised this wasn’t the case.
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Saturday, April 4th, 2009
iPhone software 3.0 Beta 1 is now available to developers, and as we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it, we asked our guest reviewer Darryl Mitchell to have a play with the new software and let us know what’s new and if it’s any good. This is his review:
I’m going to start with the Home screen and work my way through. The new things about the home screen that are noticeable so far is there are a few new icons. Its not all that noticeable, but the phone icon, the ipod icon and the messages icon have changed, and now have a more contemporary brushed effect. You’ve also got the new spotlight feature which is really helpful if you want to search for songs, emails or contacts, it searches everything. You just swipe to the right and it brings up the spotlight search screen. Its a really good feature and is surprisingly fast, I thought it was going to lag for quite some time, but it’s quick and snappy. That is it for the new home screen.
Moving on to the phone features, there’s not much added to the this bit, however, when you get a missed call or it shows you your recent calls, it now shows you what they called you from, for example if you called them on their mobile, or work phone you can now see this in the Recent calls screen. So that’s a really easy way of showing where they called you from.
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Monday, October 27th, 2008
Barely a month goes by with out at least two handsets going head to head. Over the last year or so, most of the battles have been against the iPhone, with manufacturers trying desperately to out perform it. 
Interestingly, Nokia haven’t yet taken it on with a touch screen device, but its on the cards with the launch of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. I don’t know about you, but I’m almost fed up of reading about "this phone’s better than the iPhone", so I thought I’d pay more attention to a more serious battle thats about to commence between Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung. The Battle for the best 8MP Cameraphone.
Samsung have the edge here, they were first to release an 8MP camera phone, the INNOV8 i8510. The i8510 is full of features and comes with either 8GB or 16GB of internal memory. In terms of the phones design, its not really anything we’ve not seen before. It looks like a more stylish version of the Nokia N95, and runs the same operating system. I’m not going to focus too much on the spec, I’m more interested in the camera, so for detailed information on what all of these phones can do, head over to the
comparison page. The i8510 has some cool camera features such as
geotagging,
automatic panorama shooting,
face detection,
smile detection, and
blink detection. Face detection means that the camera will keep the faces in focus, while smile and blink detection will only take the photo once everyone is smiling and their eyes are open. Clever stuff.
The Samsung i8510 is available now in both 8GB and 16GB versions and is priced from around £500.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to see 3 more 8MP cameraphones make their appearance – The Sony Ericsson C905, LG Renoir and the Samsung Pixon.
The LG Renoir is a touchscreen device that builds on the style and popularity of the LG Viewty. As with all of the phones mentioned here, the spec is pretty impressive with high speed internet and a flashy touch based interface. The camera is good, but feature-wise, hasn’t got as much on it as some of its competitors. The interface is the same as was on the LG Viewty, but with the addition of a few new features and a Xenon Flash. One of its best features is the touchscreen focus. This allows you to focus on any object in your image, simply by touching the screen of the phone. The LG Renoir has smile and face detection, but unlike the i8510, its single face only, so group shots are a no go. It also features Blink Detection, but again, not in the same way as the others, rather than not allowing you to take a photo if the eyes are closed, the Renoir will warn you after you’ve taken the photo that someone blinked. I can’t really see the point of this though.
See the LG Renoir full specification.
The LG Renoir is expected to be released towards the end of October for around £360.
The Samsung Pixon is closer in specification to the Renoir than it is the i8510. From the back it looks more like a camera than a phone, but to be honest, although the camera is great, it’s not an all singing all dancing phone like you might expect. The user interface is the "le croix" menu system that is found on the Samsung Tocco and F490, so its pretty simple to use. Its not a high spec phone like the i8510, so if like me you’re a gadget lover who wants your phone to do everything, then this may not be the phone for you. The camera works really well. It has a similar focus system to the Renoir, where you just touch the screen to focus on the object you’re taking the photo of, and like the i8510 has face detection, smile detection, and blink detection. In addition, the Pixon also has a nifty little feature that most facebook users will be familiar with – the ability to tag people in the photos! By tagging the people in your photos to the names in your address book, you can text or call them while looking through your photos. Its different, and probably of limited appeal, but is an extra camera feature over its competitors.
See the Samsung Pixon full specification.
The Samsung Pixon is expected to be released towards the beginning of November for around £370.
The Sony Ericsson C905 for me is the best of the bunch. The joint venture between Sony and Ericsson is really starting to bring some major advantages to the Sony Ericsson Cyber-Shot range. The imaging censor in the C905 is the same as the one used in a Sony Digital SLR Camera, and you really can tell. The images are clearer and sharper than the other 8MP handsets, and some of the camera features can’t be beaten. For night time shots, the C905 excels as it is one of the few cameraphones on the market that features a Xenon Flash, this gives much better lighting at night, more accurate colours and allows photo’s to be taken at a greater distance than an LED flash. All cybershot phones feature Bestpic, where a series of 7 images are taken in quick succession, allowing you to save the best. The C905 now lets you use the flash when taking photo’s using BestPic. A new feature for the C905 is Smart Contrast, without getting too technical, this is where the camera will take an image, and combine with an under exposed and over exposed version of the same image to create the best possible photo. Another cool feature that the C905 has is support for DLNA which in simple terms allows you to playback your photos over a wireless network to any other DLNA enabled device such as TV’s or Laptops. The C905 has Face Detection, geo-tagging and supports panoramic photos.
See the Sony Ericsson C905 full specification.
The Sony Ericsson C905 is expected to be released towards the end of October for around £400.
All of these handsets seriously raise the bar when it comes to camera phones and all of them could easily replace your existing digital camera. If I had to choose just one of these handsets, then without doubt it would be the Sony Ericsson C905. The i8510 is an excellent phone, but if you don’t need all the bells and whistles and the extra functionality on it then the C905 will suit you perfectly. As anyone here will tell you, I’m an Apple fan, and rave constantly about my iPhone, but as much as I love it, the C905 is the one handset that would tempt me away from it – and not just for the camera. Its well built, the software on the phone works well and is the tried and tested Sony Ericsson menu system with a few extras. I’d miss the touch screen, but not for long as the ability to take excellent photo’s will easily compensate.
Sample photo’s will be available here soon.
Tags: 8 mega pixel, 8mp, blink detection, c905, cyber-shot, cybershot, face detection, i8510, lg, LG KC910, LG Renoir, Photo, pixon, renoir, samsung, Samsung i8510, Samsung Pixon, Sony Ericsson C905,
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Monday, October 27th, 2008
Check out the table below to compare features on the latest 8MP Camera phones. Click on the image of the phone for the phones full specification.
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Sony Ericsson C905
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Samsung i8510
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Samsung Pixon
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LG KC910 Renoir
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| Size (mm) |
104 x 49 x 18
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106.5 x 53.9 x 17.2
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107.9 x 54.6 x 13.8
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107.8 x 55.9 x 14
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| Weight |
136g
|
140g
|
121g
|
114g
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| Screen Size |
2.4″
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2.8″
|
3.2″
|
3″
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| Screen Resolution |
240 x 320
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240 x 320
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240 x 400
|
240 x 400
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| Camera Resolution |
8MP
|
8MP
|
8MP
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8MP
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| Auto Focus |
|
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| Xenon Flash |
|
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|
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| LED Flash |
|
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|
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| Image Stabiliser |
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|
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| Smart Contrast |
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|
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| Geo Tagging |
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| Address Book Tagging |
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| Lens Cover |
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|
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| TV Out |
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|
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| DLNA Support |
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|
|
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| Panorama Mode |
|
|
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| Face Detection |
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|
|
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| Smile Detection |
|
|
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| Blink Detection |
|
|
|
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| BestPic |
|
|
|
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| 30 fps Video Record |
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| 120fps Slow Motion Video |
|
|
|
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| Video Light |
|
|
|
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| Internal Memory |
160MB
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8/16GB
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200MB
|
100MB
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| Expandable Memory |
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| GPS |
|
|
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| Wi-Fi |
|
|
|
|
| HSDPA Speed |
7.2Mbps
|
7.2Mbps
|
7.2Mbps
|
7.2Mbps
|
| Talktime (minutes) |
540
|
510
|
220
|
180
|
| Standby (hours) |
380
|
310
|
310
|
264
|
| Price |
|
|
|
|
Tags: 8 mega pixel, 8mp, cyber-shot, cybershot, ericsson, LG Renoir, pixon, renoir, samsung, Samsung i8510, Samsung Pixon, Sony, Sony Ericsson C905,
5 Comments
Friday, July 11th, 2008
This week we are comparing two of the most talked about touch screen phones around - the iPhone 3G and the HTC Touch Diamond.
By HTC Touch Diamond Fan – Mark Hadley
"The tiny size is the first thing that you notice when you first hold a HTC Touch Diamond in the palm of your hand.
But don’t think this constrains its use as the TouchFLO interface is a joy to use. Navigating through menus and websites is a very simple process. Flicking through photo albums has a nice touch when using your finger and the accelerometer mean that when you turn the phone on its side, the screen automatically rotates to landscape mode so your photos fill the whole screen.
It looks great – the back of the phone has many faceted edges, resembling the surface of a diamond. This gives the phone a special feel and makes it look classy! Also a cool little feature is that the slot that the stylus is stored in is magnetized, so the stylus is ’sucked’ back into the slot when inserting the stylus.
Overall, internet browsing is a simple, enjoyable experience with the large 2.8" inch screen and full Internet Explorer functionality giving you a classy user experience."
For those of you who are interested in buying the HTC Touch Diamond, we have a SIM free version available. If you already have the HTC Touch Diamond, why not check out our great range of accessories.
By iPhone 3G Fan – Andrew Simpson
"When the original iPhone launched last year, I was all set to get one. 
That was until I saw the spec and realised how limited it was in regards to the choice of network operator (only available on 02), the lack of 3G and the price. Knowing Apple as I do, I knew it wouldn’t be long until they brought out an upgraded model and that it would be the one I’d get. I use my phone a lot for browsing the internet and for email, so having a phone only running on O2’s Edge would be painful. The Edge network was poor but I’ve noticed that over the last few months, coverage has increased and you can now get HSDPA signal pretty much everywhere you go – equating to speeds of around 3mbps.
Although there have been loads of "iPhone Killers" launched over the last 12 months, none of them have come close to the iPhone. Their touch screen interfaces tend to be sticky and uncomfortable to use, where as the iPhone is slick and easy. iPhone 3G also comes shipped with the latest version iPhone 2.0 software, which adds support for third party applications and games. This was something that was only possible on earlier versions if you unlocked you iPhone. The iPhone 2.0 software is also rumoured to act as a remote control for iTunes, so no more running around the house to change tracks – great if you use airport express at home to stream your music around the house.
Visually, there's not much difference between the new version and the old iPhone, other than the introduction of a white 16GB model. The best news for me now is that i'm not going to have to shell out £269 for it as I can get this iPhone for free!"
See the full range of iPhone 3G accessories.
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