Motorola Droid Review

This is a review initially posted by www.pcworld.com,with pictures from engadget.com that I found to be informitive, so I thought I would re-post it on my blog.....enjoy!!

The first Android 2.0 phone impresses with a strong suite of Web features and a stunning 3.7-inch display, but some users might have trouble with the shallow keyboard.
The first time you pick up the Motorola Droid ($200 with a two-year contract from Verizon; price as of 10/28/09), you'll notice its solid feel and heft--there's a lot going on behind the crisp, 3.7-inch touchscreen. Making good use of Android 2.0's new features, the Droid is a powerful Web surfing and communications tool that has a chance of living up to its hype. The Droid's biggest flaw, however, is in its hardware design: The keyboard is shallow and flat, which can make typing uncomfortable.

At 0.54 inch thick, the Droid is slightly beefier than the 0.48-inch-thick iPhone 3GS, but it still has room for a 40-key, slide-out QWERTY keypad. At just under 6 ounces, it's about an ounce heftier than the iPhone 3GS. When closed, the 4.56-by-2.36-inch Droid is almost the same size as the 4.5-by-2.4-inch iPhone 3GS.

Motorola is quick to point out that the Droid's 480-by-854-pixel display offers 409,920 pixels, more than double the 153,600 pixels that the 480-by-320-pixel, 3.5-inch screen on the iPhone 3GS offers. The Droid's resolution also compares well against that of Android 1.6-based phones such as T-Mobile's myTouch 3G, which has a 3.2-inch, 480-by-320-pixel display.

The Droid's keyboard doesn't occupy the full length of the phone; a four-way directional pad with a select button sits on the right side. The keys are backlit, but since they're mostly flat, you'll need to keep an eye on what you're typing until you get a feel for the phone. A small lower lip protrudes from the bottom when the phone is closed, revealing only the Verizon logo and the microphone. Like other Android phones, the Droid has an accelerometer and reorients quickly when you hold the display sideways.

Unfortunately, the handset has a few hardware-design quirks. The keyboard is so shallow--and the keys themselves are so flat--that our testers (with various hand sizes) had trouble using it. In addition, the top keys are very close to the ledge of the display, so your fingers are constantly knocking against it. The Droid is also missing physical Talk and End keys, which are pretty much standard on every other cell phone ever made. You must access these controls from the call application.

The Droid, which supports the 1900MHz and 800MHz CDMA EvDO bands on the Verizon Wireless network, comes with a 1,400-mAh battery rated at 270 hours of standby time and 385 minutes of talk time. It also has a preinstalled 16GB memory card and offers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 support, which includes the use of stereo headsets and a Wi-Fi adapter.

The phone provided excellent call quality, even in a New York hotel lobby full of noisy Phillies fans headed to Yankee Stadium for the World Series. Parties on the other end of my calls reported no problems.

Especially snappy is the Droid's Web browser, which loads images quickly thanks to the powerful 550MHz processor and speedy hardware-accelerated graphics. Though you are at the mercy of your 3G high-speed data network coverage, once you're in it, Web surfing is breezy and smooth. Video from sites such as YouTube looks equally impressive; the playback of a high-definition YouTube cartoon ("Sita Sings the Blues") was excellent, with no stalling or audio dropouts. Audio also sounded great piped through a pair of high-quality headphones. The straightforward music player supports playlist building, album art, and shuffle and loop playback modes. You can purchase DRM-free music at the Amazon MP3 store via the preloaded app on the device.

Preinstalled on one of the three home screens are icons labeled Messaging, Phone, Contacts, Browser, Maps, and Market. Notably absent on the Droid are Verizon's V Cast services, which include live streaming videos and other entertainment offerings. A new Power Control widget allows one-touch control over power-hungry features such as the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, the GPS receiver, and the backlight. You can turn off data synchronization to save additional power, too.

As in Android 1.6, in 2.0 a universal search from the phone's home page delves into the contact list, browser history, and other content in the phone, as well as on the Internet. And as with all Android devices, you'll need a free Google account to take advantage of the phone's key features, including the contact list and the calendar, which are synchronized with your Web-based account.

You'll also find the familiar notification bar at the top; you can expand it by touching it and dragging it downward. At the bottom (or the side, in landscape mode) is a slide-open launch window with icons for all of the installed applications and links to the settings menu and other phone features.

Android 2.0 builds on the Google Maps features introduced in Android 1.6 by adding a Layers option that lets you place extra location-enabled features on top of the map you're viewing. A Wikipedia layer, for example, generates icons for locations on your map that have Wikipedia entries.

Since Google Maps navigation is voice-enabled, you can say the name of your destination to get turn-by-turn directions. One nice aspect of the new navigation features is the nifty use of Google's Street View: As you approach your destination, an interactive photo of the actual location pops up with an arrow to point you in the right direction. Instead of having to look for a building number, for example, the Street View provides visual confirmation that you're in the correct place--or at least mighty close to it.

The dedicated camera button provides quick access to snapshot and video taking. The Droid's 5-megapixel camera includes a dual-LED flash and supports DVD-quality video recording and playback at 720 by 480 pixels. As in Android 1.6, in 2.0 you handle the camera and video capabilities in a single window. The camera has a respectable amount of advanced features, such as scene modes, color effects, and white balance controls. Snapshots that I took outdoors looked great, especially on the Droid's stunning display. Indoor shots, however, suffered from a significant amount of graininess. The dual-LED flash tended to blow out colors and details for indoor shots, as well.

Another nice touch is how the Droid interacts with its accessories. When you place it in its car-window mount (sold separately; price not yet announced), the Droid automatically enters "Car Home" mode, in which it looks more like a stand-alone GPS device. Large icons labeled View Map, Navigation, Voice Search, Contacts, Search, and Home fill the screen, and the display rotates as needed.

When you insert the Droid into an optional tabletop dock (sold separately; price not yet announced), it sits at a good angle for watching videos or just poking through e-mail. It immediately switches to a sort of alarm-clock mode and displays the time in large figures while providing other information, such as the temperature, in smaller type below.

The challenge for Android app developers is to take advantage of 2.0's new features, including its ability to link apps more closely to the contact list. As you view a contact, you will see a floating set of icons for the services the person is connected to, such as Facebook. Note that while most existing apps should run fine on Android 2.0, some that were optimized for Android 1.5 and 1.6 may have to be tweaked for the new version.

The Motorola Droid certainly stands out among the growing Android army due to its superior hardware and enhanced 2.0 software. But will the Android Marketplace catch up to the iPhone's App Store? Therein lies the key to success for the Droid. The Droid certainly lives up to its promises and does a lot of things the iPhone doesn't. The iPhone will probably keep its smartphone throne for now, but it will have to deal with a powerful new competitor.

cnet review - iPhone 3G S First Take

iPhone fans got what they were waiting for June 8 when the third-generation model of Apple's popular handset made its debut during the WWDC 2009 keynote. The iPhone 3G S, which will hit stores June 19, promises a faster iPhone with an extended battery life, more memory, and improved features. It looks exactly the same as the previous model, but both the 16GB ($199) and new 32GB ($299) models will come in white and black versions.

Though the jump from the iPhone 3G to the 3G S isn't quite as big as the jump from the first- to second-generation models, this latest handset still adds enough new features to make it a compelling upgrade for some users. And when you add in all the new features that will come with the iPhone OS 3.0 (available June 17), we finally get an iPhone that can run thousands of snazzy applications and do something as basic as send a multimedia message.

Yet, we still have some concerns. A faster AT&T 3G network isn't going to happen overnight, and some features, like tethering and the aforementioned multimedia messaging, won't happen right away. We also came away from the keynote without any mention of call quality, which, as any iPhone owner can tell you, remains far from perfect. But most importantly, the iPhone 3G S's price will vary widely depending on your eligibility. If you can get it at the lowest prices, it's worth your while. But if you're not yet eligible for a discounted upgrade, we suggest that you wait.

iPhone 3G S
(Credit: Apple)

Speed
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, promised that iPhone 3G S (the "S" stand for speed) will be faster in a number of ways. Not only will a new processor enable it to load apps faster, but it will also utilize an upgraded AT&T 3G network for speedier Web browsing. We expected both of these improvements, so we're not surprised that they are the new model's prime selling points. I'll start with the processor.

Schiller didn't provide any hard metrics on the new processor, but he said that the 3G S would open applications two times faster than the previous two iPhones. Honestly, this isn't something that we've been pining for--we would much prefer to get Palm Pre-style multitasking--but we'll welcome it just the same. We'll have to wait for a review model to see how much faster the 3G S is.

On the other hand, we've eagerly been awaiting zippier 3G speeds, so we're glad to hear that they're on their way. Here, too, Schiller was short on specifics outside of mentioning AT&T's forthcoming HSPA network upgrade to 7.2Mbps. That is an important qualifier considering that AT&T won't start rolling out the faster network until later this year. What's more, full deployment is scheduled for 2011. Though we expect that urban areas will be first, coverage will vary widely for the next year, at least. As such, we don't predict any miracles soon.

You can trim video clips right on the iPhone.
(Credit: Apple)

Battery life
Though battery life on the first iPhone was mostly satisfactory, the iPhone 3G sucks up juice rapidly. Indeed, you're lucky if your handset lasts longer than a day of heavy use. Luckily, the iPhone 3G S offers some hope. Schiller rattled off statistics that certainly sound promising. It should offer 9 hours of Wi-Fi battery life, 10 hours on video playback, 30 hours on audio playback, 12 hours 2G talk time, and 5 hours 3G talk time. Like with the processor, we'll have to wait for our review unit to see if these ratings hold up, but we like what we're hearing so far.

Camera
Up until now, the iPhone's camera has been good, but far from great. Though picture quality is decent, camera editing features on the first two iPhones are nonexistent. The minimalist shooters bothered us so much that we began to worry if Apple was leading a new trend of "dumbing down" cell phone cameras.

The iPhone 3G S, however, has helped put some of those fears to rest. Apple boosted the camera's resolution to 3 megapixels and it added an autofocus feature. In the future, you'll also get settings for white balance, exposure, low-light sensitivity, and a macro mode for close-up photos. The autofocus feature appeared to work well during the keynote so we're looking forward to testing it ourselves.

Use voice vontrol to make calls and play songs.
(Credit: Apple)

Video recording
When we last asked about video recording at the OS 3.0 announcementin March, Apple wouldn't comment on whether it would come to the iPhone. So we have to admit that we weren't expecting it to happen anytime soon. But thanks to its improved camera, the iPhone 3G S will offer the ability to record VGA clips at 30 frames per second. It also promises a nifty editing feature that will let you trim clips to your liking. And once you're done, you can upload them to YouTube with just a couple of clicks. Again, it looked good onstage so we're excited to check it out.

Voice Control
We've long berated Apple for not including voice dialing on the iPhone. So when we heard that it would be on the iPhone 3G S, our initial reaction was a cynical "it's about time." Yet, our hearts softened just the slightest bit when we saw that the new Voice Control feature will go far beyond just voice dialing and commands.

Sure, you'll be able to dial a contact using your voice, but you'll also be able to activate the iPod player by asking for a particular music track or artist. What's more, you can use Voice Control to identify a song by name and you can ask to play related tracks (as they're associated in the iTunes Genius feature). Seeing those additional features almost makes us forgive Apple for taking so long to add something as basic as voice dialing, but not quite.

Find your way with the digital compass.
(Credit: Apple)

Compass
We were a little skeptical when we heard that the new iPhone might offer a digital compass. Yet, Schiller confirmed that the rumors were true. Like any other compass it will automatically point to north, but it also will integrate with Google Maps to point you in the right direction. A nice touch, to be sure.

What didn't we get?
Fortunately, this list is getting shorter with each incarnation of the iPhone. Though OS 3.0 adds many notable missing features like multimedia messaging, turn-by-turn directions and stereo Bluetooth, there are a few capabilities still lacking. Flash support for the Safari browser, app folders for the home screen and USB mass storage are just a few. And hey, though we know that we'll never get it, we'll throw in a user-replaceable battery too.

So should you buy it?
Like we said earlier, the iPhone 3G S offers some notable feature improvements, but it doesn't offer quite the same leap that the iPhone 3G offered over the first-generation model. If you don't own an iPhone yet, and you've been waiting around to see what happens, now is the time to go for it. The same goes for iPhone Classic owners who never made the jump to the iPhone 3G.

But, if you're a current iPhone 3G owner, the answer isn't so clear. If you're eligible to upgrade at the cheaper prices ($199 or $299), then we suggest doing so, as long as you remember that a new two-year contract is required. If you own an iPhone 3G, but are not eligible for the upgrade yet, then we recommend waiting. As much as the iPhone 3G S brings, it's not worth the extra $200 that both the 16GB and 32GB models will cost you. In the meantime, you will get the new OS 3.0 features when they're released for the iPhone 3G on June 17. But not only that, you'll have extra money to spend on apps.

Moto Q Smartphone Review - As posted by Exploding Robot.

Moto Q Smartphone

Phones are for function, not fashion. That's fact, not opinion—ask any serious stylist. Yet still we see thousands of impeccably dressed businessmen wearing their Blackberries on their belts like some sort of off-kilter techno Batman belt buckle.

While the function-not-fashion rule still applies to the Moto Q, it's so slim and pretty that one could almost forgive an executive for choosing to holster it on his waist. Almost, but not quite. Especially since, at just 11.5mm thick, it perfectly fits in the breast pocket of a jacket, or, if need be, one's trousers. And, of course, that's saying nothing of how easily it would slide into one of the many lined pockets of a woman's purse. But go ahead and wear it, showboat.

But form factor is just one of many reasons to get excited about the Q, the first smartphone to pose a serious challenge to RIM's dominating Blackberry when it comes to mobile email.

Simply put, the Q's email functionality is terrific. It runs on Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone Edition, using Outlook Mobile for an email client, which means anyone familiar with the desktop version of Outlook will be right at home. It's simple, intuitive, and—most importantly—quick. Checking and composing email is fast and easy, even if you work with multiple accounts.

Another key factor in judging a device's mobile email capabilities is means of text input, and the Q's QWERTY keyboard is one of the best on the market. The buttons are backlit, slightly raised, and tacky to the touch (providing good grip for fingertips). We suffered very few typos in our tests.

While the email functionality is attractive, hardcore business users may be turned off by the Q's lack of office productivity applications. But Motorola left out these apps on purpose. The company isn't positioning the Q as a replacement for Blackberries, which are targeted squarely at the corporate world, but rather as a hipper platform geared for consumer and light business use. And it meets the needs of that market perfectly.

Indeed, its consumer applications are almost limitless. The Q sports terrific photo and video capabilities with its 6x digital zoom camera. The massive, bright, colorful screen makes the Q a great mobile platform for capturing images (not coincidentally, the Q was used by amateur filmmakers at this year's Toronto International Film Festival in a workshop for the creation of mobile movies). It lacks the still and video editing capabilities of a phone like the Nokia 6682, but the WMA and JPG files it outputs are easy to work with using a PC-based application.

It does a nice job with music as well. The Q uses Windows Media Player Mobile as a player, and its interface will feel intuitive to anyone with experience with the desktop version. The Q's small stereo speakers are surprisingly powerful, though predictably tinny. It's best with headphones, obviously-which, to service provider and handset vendor Telus' shame, don't appear to be included in the off-the-shelf package.

One final note regarding multimedia capabilities: the Q has less than 100MB of accessible onboard memory for all applications, which means if you plan on receiving a lot of email, taking plenty of photos or videos, or using the Q as a music player, you'll need to invest in a Mini-SD card to increase storage capacity. That's right; the MotoQ has extendable memory capability, unlike many other smartphones. Nice touch.

Turning to performance, calls were clear and loud, and data transfers were fast and reliable (the Moto Q comes EV-DO ready). We didn't conduct any formal battery tests, but Motorola rates the Q for 200 minutes of Talk Time and 200 hours on standby. We used the Q extensively, making calls, sending and downloading data, and testing the photo and video functions, before it petered out, and were left with the feeling that battery life was perfectly acceptable.

It seems as though a critical review should have a few more criticisms, but, simply put, there's not much to dis'. It might not meet power business users' needs for document authoring and editing, but that's a design choice, not a flaw. The only other downside is price of use: smartphone service plans are more expensive than they should be, but, again, that's not the Q's fault. People in the market for a smart phone will have a tough time finding a more compelling alternative, however. Telus offers the Q for $600 without a plan, or $250 with a three-year contract (plans range from about $30 to $170 per month, plus additional bandwidth/minute fees, in some cases).

Storm II, cheap Curves coming to Blackberry

Storm II, cheap Curves coming to Blackberry

As reported by IT News, Research in Motion is working on a new version of the Blackberry Bold that combines a touch screen with a QWERTY keyboard, a low-cost version of the Curve and a successor to the Storm featuring a tactile touch screen, according to sources.

There were officially no new handhelds announced officially at RIM's Wireless Enterprise Symposium this year, but behind closed doors RIM has been briefing some of its closest partners on a slew of new devices that are in the works.

Sources present at these meetings told iTnews that RIM plans to abandon the trackball in all future models of the Blackberry, which will be replaced on all models by a laptop-like sensor pad.

Within six months RIM will also announce a new device that combines Blackberry's signature QWERTY keyboard with a touch screen.

The device will be the successor to the Blackberry Bold but no decision has yet been made on what this device will be named when it comes to market.

RIM is shortly expected to also announce a second version of the consumer Blackberry Storm device. Storm's successor will be far more enhanced than its predecessor, which has not been the most practical or ergonomically friendly device RIM has ever released.

The new Storm will feature tactile touch - users will not only be able to navigate via touch but also push their fingers against the screen to "click" on content.

Finally, while RIM founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis told iTnews the visionary handset manufacturer had no plans to release cheaper devices to accommodate tough economic times, sources told iTnews RIM is planning a cheaper model of the popular Blackberry Curve, expected to be priced at under US$300 and released before the end of the year.

RIM declined an invitation to comment.

"The Boy Genius Report" - Review of Nokia E71

Nokia E71 review
Posted by The Boy Genius on May 25, 2008 12:09 pm


So there’s this phone called the Nokia E71. It magically showed up on our doorstep yesterday (shout out to FedEx Sameday!) and was begging for us to review it. Well, we’re not going to disappoint you. In fact, there will be no disappointment at all as you’ll see in our review. The Nokia E71 has officially entered the ring, and it’s coming out fighting. Spoiler Alert: we love this phone. Full review is after the break!

Design:

Obviously this is subjective, but this could really be one of the sexiest damn phones we’ve seen in a very long time. We could do without the tacky pattern on the back battery cover, but we’ll let it slide this time. The entire phone is chrome and while it’s definitely a fingerprint magnet (just have your assistant wipe it down for you) it looks really sharp in person. Everything is proportionate and sort of just works well together. The middle select key actually serves as the notification light, too. So when you have a missed event, the border around the middle key will glow white until you cleared the event, or until the expiration time you set for the notification light expires. It’s a nice touch and a creative way to get rid of the annoying older-fashioned status light. Oh yeah…did we mention this thing is thin? Seriously, we don’t know how they did it. Especially with everything that’s packed in here…man, that BlackBerry Bold is just huge compared to this. Everyone is going to have to step it up after this because as of now, we can’t find one single thing Nokia sacrificed to make the device this thin and compact.

Screen:

There’s a 320×240 screen on the E71 and it looks very sharp. It’s not as bright as the N95, but it’s very clear and easy on the eyes. Screen real estate isn’t a problem at all as we find it more pleasurable to use than an N95. Pictures and video look very detailed and clean. There’s a decent amount of contrast when looking at media, and you’ll especially appreciate the screen during some heavy web browsing.

Connectivity:

The world must be changing. Remember when Nokia would hold every single feature above your head and never give you the perfect phone? Well, we’re finally getting past that. We’re not positive if there’s support for the 2100MHz band here, so for now, we’ll assume it doesn’t have it and there will be a US NAM model, and European model. In terms of the hard connectivity specs, you’ve got a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone with 850MHz/1900MHz UMTS/HSDPA support, Wi-Fi 802.11 a,b,g, Bluetooth 2.0, and GPS. Like most recent Nokia’s, the GPS is assisted by the network, but fret not because there still is a physical GPS chip in here.

Sound:

Like the E61 and E61i before it, the E71 houses a single speaker in the upper left of the phone. It seems louder than the E61 and it’s pretty clear for ringtones and alert sounds. Music sounds fine on it, but it’s not perfect. Bass is seriously lacking and you do get a “tinny” sort of sound. It is very, very loud, though, so you can be sure that alarm is going to get your ass out of bed in the morning.

Email:

What good would an E-Series device be without email? Besides the normal POP3/IMAP supported protocols, Nokia’s Mail For Exchange comes with the device out of the box and is incredibly easy to setup. The handset supports BlackBerry Connect (though we didn’t actually try it) and we’d imagine Goodlink as well. The messaging application had a little bit of a visual makeover, and it’s for the better. Text is extremely readable and emails look great. We’d have loved to see support for HTML email, but oh well.

Keyboard:

If there had to be one negative to the E71 (relax, it’s not the end of the world) it’s going to be the keyboard. Again, not a huge deal, but if we had to pick one thing to single out it’s the keyboard and it quite possibly won’t bother you. It did annoy us, though. Think of the physical keys on the E71 the same as the E61, just a lot smaller. They’re also not as squishy which is nice, and they’re pretty easy to press once you get it down. Our issue is, again, Nokia has not learned the basic keyboard layout and we personally can’t stand it. On a normal QWERTY keyboard the letter “z” is not directly under the letter “a”. It’s either under the letter “s” or somewhere in between the two. This makes typing a royal bitch if you’re not looking directly at the keyboard and is totally unnecessary. All they had to do is stick the damn period key in front of the “z” key and all would be well. Again, this might not be a big deal to you if you’re coming from a QWERTY E-Series already, but for us hardcore freaks who bang away constantly on the keyboard, we’d like the normal layout that’s used on basically every other QWERTY phone on the planet. Fix it please, Nokia. The keys have a nice white backlighting which makes them very easy to read. Just like the other models, the actual keys don’t light up, just the letters and symbols which makes for a very clean and sexy look.

Something also interesting is the inclusion of predictive text on here. You might be thinking why you’d ever need predictive text when you’ve got a QWERTY keyboard, but it actually helps more than it gets in the way. It sort of works like how the iPhone does. If you’re typing fast and accidentally misspell a word but keep typing and hit the space bar, it will auto correct and suggest that word for you. It can also save you a good amount of typing time as it will suggest words for you when you are halfway through them and a simple press of the space bar selects the suggested word and keeps you moving.

Expandability:

There’s a microSD card slot right above the microUSB port on the handset, so you should be able to expand the memory of the phone to the largest microSD card you can find. We haven’t checked data transfer speeds to the memory card over USB yet, but we’re assuming it’s on par with the rest of the Nokias.

Call quality:

Nokia and call quality go together like ham and burger. Kool-Aid and sugar. The E71 doesn’t disappoint. We’ve had such a pleasurable experience with it that we’ve been calling people randomly just to talk on the phone. In all seriousness, it meets or exceeds what we’ve come to expect and love from Nokia. A phone that excels as a phone, as it should. It actually went toe-to-toe with our BlackBerry Curve in terms of holding onto a signal in low coverage areas. And all you BlackBerry lovers out there know that RIM makes one hell of a cell radio in those things.

Battery:

There’s a 1500mAh battery in the E71, and with a full day of heavy use like constant email, phone calls, web browsing, and all around messing with the phone, we’ve still got around 2 bars left. There should be no concern with the battery life here.

Conclusion:

We’re at the end of the review, but by now, you’ve seen how impressed we are with the phone. It takes a lot to get us excited but the E71 has done it. This thing, in our opinion, is the best phone Nokia has made to date. That’s a very bold statement, we know. But this really is going to be the phone to beat by a lot of manufacturers. From the design, to the specs, to the size, the feel — it has the entire package. It’s not for everyone, though. Some people prefer a straight up phone like a flip phone, but in terms of a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard, this takes the cake. It is just striking compared to the shit device the E61 was. It’s ok, we still love y’all that carry the E61, but this puts it to shame. One thing I personally can’t get over is the awesome dimensions of the device. It’s so perfectly thin, yet incredibly comfortable to hold and use. We just hope Nokia doesn’t wait too long to bring this to market as they need to strike now. Like right now. This second. After seeing all of the detailed shots and our impressions, how do you guys feel about the phone? Are you foaming at the mouth waiting for it or ice-grillin’ us?

Blackberry 8330 (Curve)

The Blackberry 8330 (Curve)is less business like compared to the version of their Blackberry 8830 smart phone. It has a "pearl" track ball, and has a 2MP (1600 x 1200) camera for still photographs and video. It also a media player to view pictures and videos, and play music.

This version of the Curve also has a built-in GPS . However, using GPS, you have to download maps online, which in turn uses up data. The 8330 also works on the EVDO network which is faster than EDGE. Unfortunately there is no wi-fi capabilities on this phone, so everything you do online will require the use of a data plan. You can however, insert a microSD(HC) card for extra memory. The fact is you will need a microSD card to record video. The built-in memory is very minimal.

As for the other features, it has the same old regular Blackberry features.

The Blackberry Curve has the smallest of the full-QWERTY keyboard that they've made. The unit is thinner, smaller, and lighter than the other models. It also feels cheaper, because of how light it feels in your hand. The previous models had a heavy-hard plastic feel to it. Making it rugged & reliable.

The Blackberry interface was well thought. First time users may find there's a learning curve. Guaranteed though,you'll end up a Crackberry addict.

There are new features on this phone compared to previous generation Blackberry. You are able to customize your home screen. You can set it up to have only a few main icons, or more. If you prefer to access everything, you can change the layout to display all. Every item on the menu can be swapped out and moved, or hidden to suite your desires. With the menu button it's easier to customize the front. You can also customize almost every application.

The software applications are basically the same. All Media is accessed through the Media application. You can listen to mp3s, view videos, view pictures, and listen to your voice notes. The Music Player allows you to view your mp3s by artist, albums, genres, and you can create playlists. The music can also be played through the speaker phone.

With the Voice Notes Recorder you can save notes as an mp3, and then access it from your computer.

With the Video Camera you can record small videos. It tends to be a bit laggy at times, as the screen fails to refresh quickly, especially if items are moving a lot. which causes heavy pixelation. One good thing is that this camera has a light which is used for flash, and also for video.

The Curve has a 2 megapixel camera which produces 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution images. It is sufficient, and the norm for most cameras. You can adjust the digital zoom to 3x and 5x.

So over all, the Blackberry 8330 (Curve), is a solid, well rounded phone, that will support the needs of most.

Cheers for now,

dokken2007

The Acer Aspire one, Notebook PC, is it right for you?

Hey All,

I purchased an Acer Aspire One notebook last fall, as I was traveling to Northern Alberta to work in the Oil Patch, and needed a small compact laptop. The Acer Aspire One fit just that bill.

It is relatively small, with a screen dimension of just 8.9", and an overall dimension of 2.79cm Height x 24.89cm Width x 17.02cm Depth, and weighing just 2.4 pounds, it makes it an ideal travel laptop.

It runs on an Intel Atom Processor, with a 1.6GHz processor speed. Making it more than fast enough for all of my needs. It boasts a 160GB Hard Drive, and 1GB of memory.

It does how ever lack a DVD Drive, so the Acer Aspire One is well equipped with ports; three USB, plus VGA, Ethernet, headphone, and microphone jacks surround the system. Acer includes a 5-in-1 card reader (for transferring photos, music, and other files) on the right side of the unit, and an additional SD Card slot on the left.

Physically, the Aspire One is very similar to the slightly larger, pricier 10-inch MSI Wind, with a reasonably large keyboard that's much easier to use than the tiny almost smartphone-like keys found on the Asus Eee PC 901 or the Sylvania G Netbook. This is because the Aspire is wider than the Asus, and is a few ounces lighter. This is due to only having a small 3-cell battery. It includes a dedicated page-up and page-down keys, which are especially useful on devices with smaller screens that require lots of scrolling to get through long Web pages.

The touch pad is wide, but not very deep, similar to the one found on the HP 2133 Mini-Note. It's reasonably easy to use, at least as far as the small touch pads on Netbooks go. The mouse buttons are positioned to the left and right of the touch pad--not below it--which I personally do not care for, and find it somewhat difficult to get used to due to its small size.

The 8.9-inch wide-screen LCD offers a 1,024x600-pixel resolution, similar to other 9- and 10-inch Netbooks, such as the MSI Wind. It is wide enough to display most Web pages correctly.

Software includes Windows XP Home (with Service Pack 3),including several Windows staples such as McAfee Internet Security Suite, Microsoft Office 2007 (60-day trial), Windows Media Player, and Outlook Express 6.

Overall the Acer Aspire One is a well rounded, user friendly netbook. It is definately not a replacement for a full sized computer system, but is rather a compliment, or shall we say " a little brother" to.

Cheers for now,

dokken2007