Smartphone Essentials Awards 2009

2009 has seen an outstanding range of new smart phone devices come to the market. These smart phones are not only mobile phones, but portable computers performing all kinds of tasks which would not have been imaginable a few years ago.

The Smartphone essentials awards 2009 are now looming upon us, and the nominations have now been revealed. So which handsets are fighting to be in the spotlight? Let’s have a look at the candidates.

The first category is the ‘Best Consumer Smart Phone’. This is where you will find the key players of the smart phone market, so this will be a tough area to judge. The Apple iPhone 3GS is the first nominee, which is probably the most obvious handset to be up for nomination. Offering double the speed than the iPhone 3G and other features such as video recording and editing, could the iPhone 3GS be the most powerful smart phone on the market? The Nokia N97 is also competing for the best consumer smart phone, and is a powerful multimedia computer thanks to 32GB of internal memory plus a memory card slot. The device puts all your favourite social networking sites on your home screen as interactive shortcuts so you can stay connected. The N97 also features a slide out QWERTY keyboard making it perfect for instant messaging and email.

The Samsung i8910 HD is the first and only mobile phone capable of recording HD video. The i8910 HD runs on the Symbian operating system, and with a 3.7 inch touchscreen display, this handset is pleasurable to use. An incredible 8.0 megapixel camera takes stunning photography, and the i8910 HD also benefits from Wi-Fi connectivity, GPS and HSDPA.

HTC appear to be dominating this category, with three of their handsets up for nomination. The first is the Hero, which runs on the Android OS allowing for numerous applications to be downloaded to fully customise the phone. A built in 5.0 megapixel camera creates quality images which can be viewed clearly on the 3.2 inch touchscreen display. The Hero comes in both Black and Pink, catering for a larger target audience. The HTC Touch Diamond2 is also up for consideration, and has a range of features available for users. Running on Windows Mobile 6.1 means users can synchronise with Outlook as well as open and edit word and excel documents. The Touch Diamond2 also sports a 5.0 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, HSDPA and GPS. Finally The HTC Magic runs on Android OS supporting Google services including Gmail, Google maps and Google search. The on screen QWERTY keyboard makes composing messages a lot easier, and a 3.2 megapixel camera which is great at capturing quality photos.

The second category is ‘Best Business Smartphone’. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is one of the candidates for this award, and can offer users a full QWERTY keypad which is ideal for firing off all of your emails, texts and other documents. BlackBerry push email is also supported so the 8520 can send and receive emails from a range of different accounts which are located all over the world. The HTC Touch Pro2 is also being marketed here as a business mobile phone. Running on Windows Mobile 6.1 you can access office documents 24/7, and the impressive 3.6 touchscreen display means that everything on screen can be read clearly.

Nokia E52 is another candidate and can offer up to 8 hours of talk time, and with a new and improved predictive text you can compose messages a lot faster. With the choice of both business and work home screens, you can keep work and play separate. The other handsets in this category include the HTC Snap and the Acer M900.

‘Best Value smart phone’ sees a range of handsets up for nomination, including the Blackberry Curve 8520 which has now been nominated for two awards. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is also up for consideration, which is a full touchscreen mobile hosting a 3.2 inch display. The 5800 also specialises in music, which recognises most digital formats including MP3 and AAC, and with an expandable memory you can be sure to have enough storage for all of your favourite tunes. Other handsets fighting for this title include the Acer F900 which boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera and runs on the WinMo 6.1 OS, the Nokia E63 which runs on the Symbian OS and has a 2.4 inch display and the O2 Xda Zest which also operates on WinMo 6.1 and has a 3.0 megapixel camera.

Some of the other categories include ‘Best SatNav system’ and ‘Best SatNav Software’. All handsets which have been nominated boast quality features and hold many opportunities for the user, so it is bound to be a hard choice to decide which mobile phones deserve to win. The results will be revealed in the next issue of Smartphone Essentials which is due 3^rd November.

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Blackberry Tour Available At Verizon Wireless

Blackberry recently introduced the new Blackberry Tour, the latest in their lineup of Smartphones. The full QWERTY keyboard Tour is now available at Verizon Wireless.

The Tour has all the great features that consumers have come to expect on their Blackberrys. Access to Email, the internet, the ability to access corporate information and access to Verizon’s 3G network. The Tour is manufactured
by Research in Motion.

Timothy O’Rourke, vice president, computer and information services at Temple University has used the device exclusively since it was introduced. O’Rourke said, “University faculty and administrators are very mobile these days. They need a dependable, easy-to-use device that keeps them in touch with students, e-mail and the university while they are out of the classroom. We also have faculty who travel to our international campuses in places like Brazil, China, France and even Senegal. The ease of use and the global capability of the BlackBerry Tour make it an easy device to recommend to our faculty and administrators.”

The Blackberry Tour is now available at Verizon Wireless communication stores and online. The Tour costs $199.99 after a $70.00 mail in rebate and requires a new 2 year customer agreement that includes voice and an Email plan.

For more information on the Blackberry Tour, please visit Verizon Wireless.

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Review: HTC Hero

The HTC Hero offers a refreshing break from the smartphone OEMs’ infinite attempts to reproduce the iPhone experience. With its focus on personalization, Sprint’s most recent – and only – Android addition forges its own unique path, and does so with pleasing results. The handset features one of the most responsive touch screens available outside of the iPhone.

The Hero comes equipped with a 5 MP camera, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, capacitive pinch-to-zoom touch screen, trackball and up to 32GB of expandable memory. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter integration is well done; each was easy to find and set up. The only thing that stuck out was the virtual keyboard’s relatively small keys.

Downloading applications from Android Market was easy. Most of the applications were useful and cheap, if not free. A download of the augmented reality browser, Layar was a joy to play with and demonstrated real-world use cases that are just the tip of the iceberg for this technology.

The Hero will be available on Oct. 11 for $179.99 after a $50 instant savings and a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year service agreement. Pre-registration for the Hero is currently available.

Bottom Line:
The Hero may be the finest example of Android’s promise going forward, as well as the closest competitor to the iPhone. While Palm’s Pre could have been a contender, it simply doesn’t currently offer the depth of available applications necessary for success in the smartphone market. As it stands, the easily accessible Android Market offers Hero users an estimated 10,000 applications, plenty to get your new device humming with possibilities.

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Verizon Wireless Motorola Rival in Purple

Looking for a great slide-up phone with the option of an integrated keyboard, then the latest offering from Motorola is definitely one you can’t pass up. With mobile texting growing in popularity nowadays, the phone has been developed to target this market. Designed to compete with its mid-range texting counterparts, the Motorola Rival has special features that gives its competition a run for their money.

The phone was basically designed for heavy texter’s in mind. Text messaging through mobile phones has been steadily growing with the young and school-aged population.

Marketed also as a fun phone, the Motorola RIVAL makes great use of its different features. The phone comes with a 2 MP camera that produces images and videos that are good for its range. The camera is capable of making five different picture resolutions. Other features included were settings for color effects, brightness, picture balance, self-timer and three distinct shutter sounds with an option for silent capture. Picture quality was at most decent and if you’re looking for a better camera you might start with some of its rivals.

Listening to your favorite music is no problem with the RIVAL’s 8 gig memory card. This gives you the option of storing thousands of your favorite tracks and images. Music quality was poor however and getting a better headset or set of speakers is recommended for better listening experience.

Keeping track of your friends is easy with its 1000 entry phone contact. Expand contacts details with five individual phone numbers or 2 email addresses. Quickly organize your contacts into groups for even better access. Standard phone features include speaker phone, world clock, stopwatch, calculators, voice messaging, vibrate mode and notepad.

Advance communications include an instant messenger interface coupled with its standard text and multimedia messaging. The phone supports Yahoo, AIM, and Windows Live messaging. Added features are voice dialing and wireless web browsing. Bluetooth support allows for hands-free operation, dialup networking, file transfers and Bluetooth headsets.

Keep track of your online communications with email support for major sites like Windows Live or Yahoo Mail. If your into streaming videos, the phone offers this feature at better than average speeds. Browsing though WAP pages was smooth and download times were minimal. The low point in video streaming was the phones lower than average display. Video was pixilated and viewing was less than expected.

Voice quality was clear and crisp. Average battery life was placed at 5.3 talk time and testing showed that real time battery use was at par.

Overall outlook for the Motorola RIVAL^TM A455 is average. If you’re looking for a phone specifically for online and mobile texting the Motorola is proving quite to be a great inexpensive option. With its slide-up QWERTY keyboard, it makes quick work of your messaging needs. The Motorola RIVAL A455 is a mid-range phone and there are certainly better products out there which easily beats it hands-down. But if you’re searching for a texting phone the Motorola could be the best inexpensive option for you.

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LG Chocolate BL40 Review

LG last week began teasing its newest Black Label phone, an upcoming model that will bear the Chocolate label, just like the original LG Black Label phone, the LG Chocolate. We last saw the LG Chocolate in the third version of the device, available on Verizon Wireless, and we've always appreciated the multimedia family. But with the newest iteration, LG seems to be kicking things up a notch. In what appears to be an official-looking promotional video, now on YouTube and first posted on Engadget, we get what could be a first look at the high-end feature phone that will take the reigns of the Chocolate family, and it looks like a stunner.

The LG Chocolate 4, also described as the LG BL40, could be a departure from the previous models with an ultra-wide touch screen dominating the front of the device. If rumored specs are true, this might be a 4-inch screen with an obscenely wide 21:9 aspect ratio. Although this ratio might seem a bit too wide, in fact the video shows how LG could use the extra space on either side of the screen to add soft keys and visual feedback, and still have plenty of room in the middle. The design in the supposedly leaked video is also in line with the official leaked shots of the upcoming LG Chocolate 4, though LG's official images don't show the screen in full view, or in fact any active applications running on the device.

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Samsung Behold II Review

T-Mobile continued its commitment to the Open Handset Alliance and introduced its fourth Google Android device, the Samsung Behold II.

The Behold II is scheduled to launch later this year, though a specific release date and pricing were not announced at this time. It's the first Android smartphone by Samsung to be released in the United States and joins the carrier's other Google devices, which include T-Mobile G1, the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, and the upcoming Motorola Cliq.

Just like HTC and Motorola, Samsung has put its own spin on the Android operating system by using its next-generation TouchWiz interface, which allows you customized three different home screens with various widgets and shortcuts. In addition, the Behold II features a "cube menu" that provides access to six multimedia features: music, photos, videos, the Web, YouTube, and Amazon MP3. You can interact with all of these features through the smartphone's 3.2-inch AMOLED touch screen.

Other highlights of the Samsung Behold II include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera, and up 16GB expandable memory via the microSD slot. Samsung stated that the smartphone follows on the success of its Samsung Behold and takes it to the next level with the addition of Android, bringing support for Google services and Exchange ActiveSync.

While a specific availability date wasn't released, T-Mobile said the Behold II will arrive in time for the holidays.

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