Samsung Tab 10.1

It may have been less than a year ago, but that's a long time in mobile phone world. And this one has shipped by the bucket load. Samsung surpassed its aim of selling ten million Galaxy S units back in January, and for the South Korean technology legend, it's the gift that just keeps giving.

Originally shipping with 2.1 Eclair, then upgraded to 2.2 Froyo and now given a new lease of life, rocking 2.3 Gingerbread, the Galaxy S is no longer Samsung's flagship – its big brother, the Galaxy S2, takes that crown.

But retailers are still selling it and punters are still buying it. A fantastic screen, surfing experience that really works and 5MP camera are just a few attributes that make the Samsung Galaxy S at least looklike it ticks all the boxes.

But is it really out of this world?

We know some Android fans won't like this, but sorry, there's one word we have to bring up here and we can't help it: iPhone.

Like it or not, the Samsung Galaxy S will be compared to Apple's offering.

In fact, when it was launched last year as Samsung's flagship device, it was probably the main challenger to the iPhone and the choice of those who didn't want to be locked into Apple's way of doing things, yet still wanted the benefits of a touchscreen smartphone with all mod cons.

More recently, it's been knocked out the spotlight by its own replacement, the Samsung Galaxy S2, but Samsung clearly believes this is a popular handset and it's now being marketed as a higher mid-level phone to those who don't want to compromise on features and go for a budget smartphone (such as the Galaxy Mini) but can't necessarily afford to go premium.

With a 1GHz processor, GPS, HSDPA/HSUPA, HD video recorder, generous built-in memory (8GB or 16GB) and the latest Android operating system, this could never be considered a slouch of a phone.

We found one retailer selling it SIM-free for £309 (not far off £200 cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S2) and contract-wise, you can pick it up for free at £20 per month on certain network deals.

Back to Apple, though, and there's no mistaking it – the Samsung Galaxy S and iPhone 3G/3GS could very easily have been separated at birth.

From the all-black shiny front, to the curved bezel around the frame, to the single physical button (albeit a rounded square rather than a circle) and even the glossy back in a choice of white or black, there is no way Jonathan Ive wouldn't have felt at least a little miffed (or flattered) when he saw the Samsung Galaxy S design for the first time.

It's not a bad thing – but apart from the Samsung logo just beneath the earpiece and a slightly larger screen, there's not much difference in the Samsung Galaxy S's appearance.

In terms of size, the handset measures 64.2 x 122.4 x 9.9mm. It feels significantly smaller than the Samsung Galaxy S2 – which it is due to the fact that it doesn't have the latter's huge screen.

Despite our love for the Samsung Galaxy S2, we actually found we preferred holding the Galaxy S, because the smaller size made it easier to grip. But it's definitely a trade off, and one that each buyer can evaluate, based on their own needs.

The Samsung Galaxy S does feel like a quality device in the hand – but it's also very plasticky. The glossy plastic rear cover is a fingerprint magnet, but at least it all keeps the weight down.

Because when we first picked up the Samsung Galaxy S, coming from aniPhone 4, we couldn't believe just how light it was. In fact, we opened the back thinking the battery must have been missing, but it was in there. At 119g, it feels great and not something you're likely to notice in your pocket.

With the Home button on the front, you also have two soft keys either side of it. They light up when the screen is on and register your interest with a little haptic vibration when pressed. The one to the left is the Menu/Options button, and a Back button is located to the right.

There's no dedicated search button like you might find on some other Android handsets. Likewise there is no dedicated camera button on the side of the Samsung Galaxy S, which is something we'd like to see because it makes the startup process and actual picture taking a lot easier, but we'll not hold that one against Samsung too much.

On the left side is a simple volume rocker, and the right-hand edge houses the lock button about two thirds of the way up. If you're left handed, you'll have no problems because you can hold the Samsung Galaxy S in your palm and reach around to press it with your index finger.

The top holds a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro USB port for charging/syncing. Thoughtfully, Samsung has also fitted that port with a little sliding door – presumably to keep rain out because it's at the top of the phone.

It hasn't put one over the headphone jack though – we assume it thinks you'll have your headphones plugged in most of the time. Or it would be just too annoying to have it there.

The back holds the camera lens (5MP) and a speaker grill. There's no flash. Yes, no flash. On what was Samsung's flagship handset – and is still a mid-to-top level mobile phone – there's no light. Not even a little LED. Zilch. We'll go onto that in more detail in the Camera section. It won't be pretty.

There's also a rather curious bump along the bottom that protrudes – think the HTC chin found on various handsets such as the Salsa but on the back and sticking out the other way. Heaven knows why.

The MicroSD slot is located under the cover. But it's not behind the battery (hurrah!), which means it's fully hot-swappable.

The real surprise is when you turn this baby on. The Samsung Galaxy S screen is a belter – a 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED – and it's so vibrant. Not that we'd expect any less.

Samsung's screens have always been probably the best out there on mobile handsets – even back in the days of the T100 and D410 (we're speaking relatively, of course, compared to the competition at the time.)

Pixel-wise, it's not 100 per cent perfect – close up you don't get the clarity of, say, a retina display or the updated Super AMOLED Plus. But as for those colours, you really can't take your eyes off them. Vivid, bright and full of life is how we'd describe them.

We installed a free HD wallpaper on our review unit and thought it looked amazing. So much so, we kept fiddling and turning the screen on to look at it. It's probably the first sign of madness.

Blackberry Curve 8520

Even your phone has the right to breathe air of spring, so the time has come to put away your smartphone bookmark and replace it with anything livelier, which has whole thing you require anyway, and in this, who says you that you have to give up your favourite phone from the other benefits? Lovers of smartphones, I am ensuring they can not do without a BlackBerry, because once you’ve tasted the thrill you can not give it up. That’s why as the Blackberry the BlackBerry Curve 8520 four dissimilar shades of colors ranging from neutral White and Black, to the more Summer Frost and Violet. I confess that I personally ever have a preference the version in black, ideal for any occasion.

BlackBerry Curve 8520, which we have already spoken in detail at some other time, is the perfect phone for those who want to reside connected to the network, as it not merely enables simple access to mail and messaging services, but also you can access with a click of your social network library.

A smartphone is ideal for professionals and those easily looking for happiness, amusement and multimedia. Will in fact be very simple to access videos and music files loaded onto your Blackberry. In short, the Curve 8520 is what should be the most demanding customers: I’m ensuring you ladies opt the new version of Violet.

I have been a Nokia user for about 10 years. Ever since texting became a fad during my college days, Nokia became my phone brand of choice. But recently, another phone brand caught my interest – BlackBerry. Owning a BlackBerry became almost impossible at first because of the price but when an “affordable Berry” was released, I became excited.

The Blackberry 8520 was released in the Philippines at about August last year. It is also known as the “Gemini” and is the most affordable BlackBerry in the market today. It boasts of the “regular Blackberry” features minus the pricey tag. Among the features of the Blackberry 8520 are: Blackberry OS, 512 MHz processor and 256 MB memory, microSD capable, 2 MP camera with 5x digital zoom, GPRS, WiFi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth, micro USB and Quad band capabilities. Another feature of the Gemini is that it is the first BlackBerry that uses a trackpad instead of the trackball. All these plus a dedicated media key for easy access of pictures, music, and video playback. But the feature that sold me out the most was the promise of “out of box Mac compatibility” because I am a Mac user and interface with my Mac is an important feature I really wanted to have in a phone. 

Blackberry Torch 9800 Slider Phone

The GSM device is launching on AT&T’s 3G network (UMTS 2100 / 1900 / 850 / 800 MHz), though we would expect to see the handset eventually roll out to other carriers in one form or another.

As we said, the Torch sports a 480 x 360 capacitive display, which is adequate for the device but already a generation behind the competition in terms of resolution and pixel density. In fact, almost every smartphone we’ve reviewed this year — save for a few low-end models — sport a higher res display than the Torch. We’re unclear as to why RIM didn’t bring the screen up to at least 480 x 800, but we suspect it has something to do with backwards compatibility with apps. Compared to other displays, text looked blocky, and images didn’t have the clarity we would have expected from a smartphone in 2010. Touch sensitivity wasn’t outstanding on our review unit, making for a real lack of confidence when it came to finger tracking. We feel like there’s polishing to be done on the software side that would greatly improve the experience, particularly when attempting more precise pinch-to-zoom and swipe gestures (more on that in a moment). Oh, and SurePress? Nowhere to be found on the Torch.

Inside, the phone packs 512MB of RAM (doubling that of the Bold 9700 but the same as the 9650) and 4GB of hardwired storage, with a microSD slot for additional storage up to 32GB (you get a 4GB card in the box). As you would expect, there’s 802.11b/g/n WiFi on board along with Bluetooth 2.1 support, as well as an AGPS chip for when you get lost. Disappointingly, RIM is still using the same Marvell CPU found in the 9700, clocked at 624MHz (though the company claims this is a newer generation chip). In our testing, performance was sluggish in some areas, and we can’t help but wonder if it was a fault of the software or the slower processor speed. Not to harp on this, but with competition like the Nexus One and Droid X, it seems logical that RIM would put a little more horsepower into these phones.

The Torch has a 5 megapixel camera along with an LED flash, which is certainly a contemporary arrangement. There’s nothing particularly notable about the lens itself from what we could discern, though it’s clear that RIM has put a lot of time and energy into making the photo-taking experience on the Torch a more seamless experience than on its previous phones. It’s certainly easier to pick from a variety of preset modes, like portrait or sports, though we found the default setting to be fairly bad at capturing steady looking shots. For some reason, the camera was set to shoot in “continuous” mode, when single-shot provided much better results. As far as the photo quality goes, the device does an excellent job of capturing images — particularly close-ups, though colors and black details looked a bit washed out to our eyes (you can see a selection of shots in the gallery below).

On the video front, the camera can shoot up to 640 x 480 resolution clips, still not competitive with most top-tier smartphones hitting the market right now (720p at 30 FPS is quickly becoming the standard). Again, here’s a spot where we can’t help but think that a faster CPU might have allowed RIM to take it up a notch — instead the company is just treading water with its offerings.

The updated pictures app on the phone makes it easier to organize your collections, though we were a little bothered by the time it takes to render zoomed-in views of shots taken. One nice addition is pinch-to-zoom in the gallery viewer, since RIM is keeping up with the Joneses.

Call quality and speakerphone

Calls on the Torch were crisp and clear, and as with previous BlackBerry devices, getting into and out of calls was a breeze. We also found the speakerphone quality to be reasonably high, though the midrange of the audio felt a bit shrill at high volumes. Overall, making and receiving calls on the phone was a pain-free and most importantly fast experience.

As far as antenna concerns go, we didn’t notice any outstanding issues with signal loss or an unusual amount of dropped calls. We suspect that we’re in particularly good range of a cell tower, but our guess is that most users’ experiences with the phone will be similar. We don’t see an Antennagate cropping up for RIM.

Software

Of course, the real story with the Torch is not the hardware. Rather, it’s RIM’s next play in the OS department — BlackBerry 6. While it’s not the radical departure some were hoping for, the revamped operating system takes some extreme steps to deal with issues that have plagued BlackBerry phones for quite awhile. In particular, the company has canned its awful web browsing experience in exchange for a new Webkit-based browser, and Webkit also serves as the new underlying framework for email on the phone, as well as a new class of applications coded using web standards (sound familiar?). Additionally, RIM has gone to great lengths in 6 to reduce the “menus within menus” experience of the previous operating system and has included a powerful universal search alongside a social networking tool which allows you to aggregate RSS feeds and services like Twitter or Facebook into a single view. There are a lot of changes, so we’re going to go step-by-step through what we consider the biggest changes for the BlackBerry platform.

Overall, if you’re a BlackBerry user coming off of a OS 5 device, you won’t feel totally freaked out when you see the homescreen on 6, though there are some notable differences. RIM has cleaned up and smoothed out a lot of the iconography and text in the UI, making the whole OS feel much more cohesive and consistent. Graphically, BlackBerry 6 occupies the same space as OS 5, though it feels softer, more polished, and a bit more upscale. Nearly every part of the interface has been altered in some way, though the most notable changes are present in the homescreen.

In the previous version of the BlackBerry OS, you had two basic views, the first being a screen with your favorite (or top) apps, time, date, and message alerts, and quick access to sound profile settings. The second screen was basically your entire collection of apps and folders with little information otherwise (think: the iPhone homescreen). RIM has now joined these two views together by stealing a move from Android’s playbook: a window that slides up from the bottom of the display showing your apps. You can notch this window into place to show everything (four rows), or any variation between all and nothing. We kept ours at the standard view of four apps at a time (one row), though it’s easy to toggle between sizes. Not only can you bring this window up onto your homescreen and scroll vertically through it, but you can also swipe side to side for different groupings of apps, like “favorites” or “media.” You can also swipe on the top bar of this window when its reduced to move through groups of apps. RIM has also added a persistent notification alert to this screen via a small row of icons at the top of the page. This allows you to see social networking, email, SMS, call, and calendar alerts all in one place. Like Android, this drops down a separate window showing your most recent activity, and each notification can be clicked on to transport you to the app.

Blackberry Playbook Tablet

BlackBerry were once titans of technology – a company that produced products which did everything their users needed. Then along came Apple, Google, even a resurgent Microsoft and the Canada-based company looked a lot less lustrous because email was no longer enough. Where their business-chic products were once aspirational, they started to look like a stuffy power-suit next to their cooler, business casual cousins.

Yet in fact, a generation of young people is so addicted to BlackBerry’s instant messenger tool, BBM, that Apple has even seen fit to copy it. And the loyalty of BlackBerry’s existing customer base cannot be over-estimated. They, for now, are the target audience for the company’s first tablet, the PlayBook. Manufacturers Research in Motion may be down, but they're not out yet.

At 7”, the PlayBook is more portable than the best rival tablets, all of which are currently around 10”. It is as well built as the iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tab and its screen makes for a bright, sharp viewing experience whether you’re playing games or watching movies. So it looks and feels like a really professional-grade device. You could justify paying £399 for it.

That’s until you turn the thing on. A series of shorthand gestures – swipe one way to get to a certain menu, another to get to another – is supposed to make using the PlayBook effortless. In practice it takes so much getting used to that one could be forgiven for giving up. Browsing the web is fine, but that's really a basic requirement.

As has been much reported, the PlayBook also lacks the thing for which makers Research in Motion are so famed: email. If you tether your phone to your BlackBerry handset, software called Bridge means your email and calendar appear properly. Without a handset, you are left simply to access email via the web, as you could on any other device.

The logic behind this is that it’s more secure to keep your email on just one device, and simply use the PlayBook as a larger screen. This may be the way to the heart of a corporate IT manager, but users deserve better. Confronted with a security problem, BlackBerry have bodged a workaround rather than provided a solution. That's a real pity, because the operating software itself is slick, whether its editing documents or playing music.

When it comes to apps, the secret to the iPad’s success, there simply aren’t enough for the PlayBook. Yet.

Critics, however, would be foolish to write off the PlayBook. Corporate apps, from RBS to many others, are already impressive because the company has capitalised on rich relationships in those sort of markets. Accessory makers, too, are excited by the PlayBook because its users are likely to be well-heeled. Proper email is coming soon as well. RIM are playing a longer game here.

So the PlayBook is in some ways a lovely device, whose fine hardware is wasted on today’s software. If you’re a BlackBerry aficionado, it is a product you may well want to buy. You should. Probably sometime just before Christmas, when it’s been fixed. RIM had better hope the world doesn't pass them by.

BlackBerry Playbook specifications:

Operating System: BlackBerry Tablet OS

Dimensions (WxDxH): 19.4 cm x 1 cm x 13 cm

Weight: 425 g

Display: 7" TFT - 1024 x 600 - Multi-Touch

Processor: 1 GHz ( Dual-Core )

RAM: 1 GB

Memory: 16 GB integrated

Wireless: 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1

Digital Camera: 5 Mp rear + 3 Mp front; 1080p video record

Apple Ipad

Dual-core A5 chip.
It’s fast, times two.

Two powerful cores in one A5 chip mean iPad can do twice the work at once. Multitasking is smooth, apps load quickly, and anything you touch responds instantly. And with up to nine times the graphics performance of the first-generation iPad, everything on iPad 2 is even more fluid and realistic, from gameplay to scrolling through your photo library.

Instant On.
Touch and go.

Pick up your iPad, press the Home button, and it wakes from sleep instantly. That’s because iPad features fast, efficient, and reliable flash storage that lets you access data quickly. So everything effortlessly springs to life.

Battery life keeps on going. So you can, too.

Even with such a thin, light design, iPad has an incredible 10-hour battery life.¹That’s enough juice for one flight across the ocean, or one movie-watching all-nighter, or a week’s commute across town. Because iPad hardware and software are made for each other, the power-efficient A5 chip works with the iOS software to keep battery life from fading away.

Two cameras. And a big hello to FaceTime for iPad.

You’ll see two cameras on iPad — one on the front and one on the back. They may be tiny, but they’re a big deal. They’re designed for FaceTime video calling, and they work together so you can talk to your favorite people and see them smile and laugh back at you.³ The front camera puts you and your friend face-to-face. Switch to the back camera during your video call to share where you are, who you’re with, or what’s going on around you. When you’re not using FaceTime, let the back camera roll if you see something movie-worthy. It’s HD, so whatever you shoot is a mini-masterpiece. And you can take wacky snapshots in Photo Booth. It’s the most fun a face can have.

Nokia c5-05

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	Announced	2011, October
	Status	Coming soon. Exp. release 2011, Q4

SIZE	Dimensions	105.8 x 51 x 13.8 mm, 65 cc
	Weight	93 g

DISPLAY	Type	TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	360 x 640 pixels, 3.2 inches (~229 ppi pixel density)
		- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate - Handwriting recognition

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration; Downloadable polyphonic, MP3 ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Detailed, max 30 days
	Internal	40 MB storage, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM
	Card slot	microSD, up to 16GB

DATA	GPRS	Class 32
	EDGE	Class 32
	3G	No
	WLAN	No
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, v2.0 microUSB

CAMERA	Primary	2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels
	Features	Geo-tagging
	Video	Yes, VGA@15fps
	Secondary	No

FEATURES	OS	Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5
	CPU	600 MHz processor
	Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, IM
	Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds
	Radio	Stereo FM radio
	Games	Yes + Java downloadable
	Colors	Black/Aluminium grey, Black Lilac, White Lilac, White/Graphite grey
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support; Nokia Maps
	Java	Yes, MIDP 2.0
		- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player - MP3/WAV/еAAC+/WMA player - Photo editor - Organizer - QuickOffice document viewer - Voice command/dial - Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 - Predictive text input

BATTERY		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh (Bl-4U)
	Stand-by	Up to 600 h
	Talk time	Up to 11 h 30 min
	Music play	Up to 35 h