Until recently, phone buyers in the United States had to splurge on an expensive unlocked handset to get one with a camera offering more than 5 megapixels. Enter the Samsung Memoir, a touch-screen smart phone with an 8-megapixel camera available at a carrier-subsidized price ($250 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile). This is T-Mobile's third high-end camera phone; last year the provider released the 5-megapixel Motorola Motozine ZN5 and the Samsung Behold. But while the Memoir's camera certainly impresses, other aspects of the phone could be stronger.

At first glance the Memoir resembles a stand-alone digital camera more than a mobile phone. Measuring 4.1 by 2.1 by 0.5 inches, the Memoir fits easily into a pocket. Dressed in black plastic with silver trim and a leatherlike grip, it is quite light at only 4.4 ounces, but its build feels a bit chintzy.

The Memoir's design is very similar to that of the Behold. A gorgeous, 2.6-inch full LCD touch screen occupies the majority of the handset's face. Three physical buttons (Talk, Back, and End) reside below the screen, and the camera lens and flash sit on the other side. On the left spine are a microSD slot and a proprietary headphone jack; on the right spine you find a volume rocker, a dedicated camera button, and a lock button.

The Memoir's headline feature, of course, is its 8-megapixel camera, with 16X digital zoom and a Xenon flash. The camera has seven resolution settings, four image effects (black and white, sepia, negative, and watercolor), light metering, adjustable ISO, and a self-timer. It also offers three fun shooting modes (continuous, panorama, and mosaic), as well as a smile-shot mode that will take another picture if the subject is frowning.

The phone has 180MB of internal memory and a microSD slot for expanding the storage up to 16GB, so you have plenty of space for pictures. And don't worry if you happen to run out of memory: You can upload your photos directly to online services such as Flickr, the Kodak gallery, Photobucket, or Snapfish.

A Xenon flash, a feature we also saw on the Motozine ZN5, emits a stronger burst of light than an LED flash and is therefore ideal for indoor or dim-light environments. My indoor shots, however, were less than impressive. Even with the flash on, my pictures appeared dark, with some noise and blur. Photos taken outdoors in bright sunlight, on the other hand, were stunning, with bright and accurate colors and sharp detail. The only issue outdoors was the screen: Since its glossy face gave off a lot of glare, reviewing my photos after taking them was difficult.

The camera's touch menu is intuitive, and I liked being able to flick through my photos à la the iPhone. The Memoir uses Samsung's TouchWiz interface, also seen on the Behold and Omnia. Like the Behold, the Memoir is very responsive and user-friendly. The Today screen--the Memoir's home screen--has a widget bar running along its left side. You can arrange the widgets in any order, as well as drag one into the main part of the screen to launch its respective app. To end the application, you slide the widget back onto the bar. Available widgets include a calendar, a phone book, a music player, and a clock.

Other than rearranging widgets and removing them, you don't have a lot of room for customization; you can't add new widgets to the bar or buy new programs (there is no app store), which is disappointing. The Memoir has no Wi-Fi connectivity, either, which is unfortunate--sometimes, loading pages over T-Mobile's 3G network seemed slow.

Call quality over T-Mobile's 3G network was a mixed bag. I heard a faint hiss in the background of all of my calls. Parties on the other end of the line reported the same, but the majority didn't find it distracting. Voices sounded natural and clear enough, for the most part. One of my calls to a landline, however, was dropped--never a good sign.

Like the Behold, the Memoir doesn't come loaded with the Samsung TouchPlayer, an impressive media player that we tested on the Omnia. Instead, the Memoir offers a no-frills music player that supports album art and playlists, and has shuffle and repeat modes plus six equalizer settings. And like the Omnia, the Memoir is missing a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can't charge the phone and listen to music at the same time. On the upside, transferring music from your PC to the Memoir via the USB cable is a simple drag-and-drop process.

Camera-phone fans will love the Memoir, but I'm not so sure about everyone else. Its average multimedia features won't impress audiophiles, and its lack of Wi-Fi and an app store won't satisfy those folks craving a handset with smart-phone capabilities. But it does deliver what it promises: a feature-rich camera with above-average quality.

source : PCWORLD

The Omnia has an elegant look, thanks to its chrome finish and black matte plastic back. The phone's crisp, 3.2-inch, 640-by-480-pixel-resolution touch screen occupies most of the space on its 4.4-by-2.2-by-0.5-inch body. (The screen is just 0.3 inch smaller than the one on the iPhone.) End and send keys surround a smallish optical mouse at the bottom of the device. A volume rocker and a dedicated camera button sit on the left spine of the phone; a proprietary headphone and charger jack, and a stylus tether sit on the right. The Omnia carries 8GB of internal flash memory and a microSD slot that can accommodate a card with up to 16GB of external memory.

The Omnia weighs 4.3 ounces--that's 0.4 ounce lighter than the iPhone--and it feels comfortable in hand and in pocket. Call quality was consistently good over Verizon's 3G network, though I did notice a faint hiss on one call. The vast majority of my calls sounded loud and clear with very little background noise or distortion. We haven't yet finished our lab testing of the Omnia's talk-time battery life. Once the PC World Test Center completes its battery life tests, we'll update this review with a final PCW rating.

The Omnia has a landscape QWERTY keyboard and uses T9 predictive text entry. The T9 function often made the wrong prediction, however, so I took advantage of the key that lets you turn it off. The keys themselves are a bit narrow, and I frequently hit the wrong ones while typing long messages. Another annoyance is that the Menu key, which launches a menu of messaging options, can be difficult to access because it's located directly below the minuscule space bar. On the plus side, haptic feedback made the Omnia's keyboard much more comfortable to type on than many other touch-screen keyboards are. Still, the Omnia would have benefited greatly from having a physical, slideout QWERTY keyboard.

Like HTC with its TouchFLO 3D, Samsung has its own proprietary overlay (called TouchWiz) that runs over Windows Mobile 6.1. Though not as visually attractive as TouchFLO 3D, TouchWiz is user-friendly and responsive. The Today screen--the Omnia's home screen--has a widget bar running along its left side. You can arrange the widgets in any order you choose and drag them into the main screen. Available widgets include a calendar, a phone book, games, and a world clock. I wish that Samsung had included a weather widget, though, as the one offered by HTC is spectacular.

In my hands-on tests, TouchWiz was sluggish in some areas. For example, dragging the widgets back to their bar sometimes took multiple finger swipes. I also noticed a lag when I scrolled through my contacts in the Phonebook app. Similarly, the accelerometer reacted slowly and sometimes got stuck when switching between portrait and landscape modes. Another issue is that not all of Samsung's applications support finger scrolling; for those that don't, you must use the optical mouse, which is small and not always responsive.

Like all Windows Mobile devices, Omnia comes preloaded with the mobile version of Microsoft's Office suite. Consequently it was easy to set up my e-mail in Outlook, and the phone's calendar widget integrates nicely with my Outlook calendar. Setting up POP and Web-based e-mail clients such as Gmail is a breeze as well. The Omnia also has an IM client, which supports AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger, and ICQ. For Web browsing the Omnia offers Windows Mobile Internet Explorer and Opera 9.5. Pages loaded quickly over Verizon's 3G network and over the phone's built-in Wi-Fi.

The Omnia's 5-megapixel camera launches when you press the dedicated camera key on the device's spine. The camera has autofocus and a power LED flash, but it lacks optical zoom. It comes with a handful of advanced features, including white balance and shooting modes such as Sports, Sunset, Night Shots, and even one for shooting text. Image quality was very good, though I noticed some noise in several indoor, low-light shots. Video quality wasn't as good as the image quality of still shots, but adequate for sending short video messages.

The Omnia comes loaded with Windows Media Player and Samsung's own TouchPlayer, a touch-based player that supports album art and background music mode. Loading music onto the Omnia from a PC is a snap. And if you get tired of the music on your phone, you can listen to the Omnia's FM radio. Unfortunately, Samsung's failure to provide a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack undermines the device's potential as a music player--a shortcoming it shares with the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Fuze for AT&T. If these phones' makers want to compete with Apple's iPhone, they should at least throw in a standard headphone jack.

The Omnia's other applications include a podcast organizer; VZ Navigator, a GPS app; TVOut viewer, which lets you connect the Omnia to your TV; and ShoZu, a picture-sharing service. Surprisingly, the Omnia lacks support for Verizon's multimedia V-Cast hub, which is included even on low-end Verizon phones.

Despite a few kinks relating to the interface and a few omissions in the design, the Samsung Omnia is a high-quality handset that delivers a generous array of features

source : PCWORLD

The BlackBerry Bold 9000, Research in Motion's formidable contender in the 3G market, has finally arrived. And though the Bold boasts a sleek design, a sharp display, and high-speed connectivity, it fails to impress in other areas--particularly, its call quality and its camera's image quality.

The most stylish BlackBerry yet, the Bold comes with a removable black leatherette cover that gives the phone a classy, sophisticated look and makes the handset comfortable to hold. (You can personalize the back cover with an optional blue, brown, green, gray, or red back.) At 4.5 inches by 2.6 inches by 0.55 inch, the Bold has roughly the same dimensions as its predecessor, the BlackBerry Curve 8300; it also has curved corners and a glossy face. The phone weighs 4.8 ounces, making it heavier than the the BlackBerry Curve 8320 (which weighs about 4 ounces) but equal in weight to Apple's iPhone 3G.

The Bold lacks the iPhone's touch screen, though that feature will appear on RIM's forthcoming BlackBerry Storm. But the Bold does have a terrific keyboard and the various corporate e-mail and infrastructure-friendly characteristics that the BlackBerry platform is known for.

The Bold also has superior battery life. In our lab tests, its battery provided 7 hours, 56 minutes of talk time. That's longer than any other 3G phone we've tested; the iPhone 3G's battery only provided five hours, 38 minutes of talk time.

Unfortunately, the Bold's call quality disappointed me. For some reason, while calls to landline phones sounded clear, calls to other cell phones (on various carriers) consistently suffered from background hiss. And though voices had ample volume, they sounded somewhat tinny. Meanwhile, the people I called on the Bold reported hearing a lot of background noise, as well as some distortion in my voice; one of my contacts said that I sounded robotic.

Though it takes a lot for a handset's QWERTY keyboard to impress me, the Bold succeeded. For this model, RIM revamped its keyboard with sculpted keys designed to minimize finger slippage. Thin metal dividers akin to a guitar frets separate the keys and enhance the keyboard's usability. The result is a roomy, ergonomic typing area that makes texting and e-mailing a breeze.

The BlackBerry operating system gets a makeover as well. Now in version 4.6, the interface looks cleaner and more attractive than it did in previous iterations. The home screen features background wallpaper, and a customizable application-shortcut view, also known as the Ribbon. Pushing the dedicated menu key takes you to the main application screen, which is populated with spruced-up new app icons. Sometimes it's a bit hard to tell what a particular icon symbolizes; many of them look pretty similar. But when you roll over an icon with the Bold's handy trackball, a label appears in a text line beneath, clearly identifying the icon's function.

The phone supports 3G, tri-band HSDPA and quad-band EDGE data connectivity. Accessed over AT&T's 3G network, Web pages loaded quickly on the Bold's browser. NBC.com's home page loaded in 21 seconds, as did PCWorld.com; and Amazon.com loaded in 31 seconds. Wi-Fi performance impressed, too, with NBC.com loading in 18 seconds, PCWorld.com loading in 14 seconds, and Amazon.com loading in 21 seconds.

The phone's display wowed me: Images and video looked spectacular on the Bold's 480-by-320-pixel VGA display (with support for over 65,000 colors). That's twice the resolution of the BlackBerry Curve, and it matches the iPhone's resolution (though not its screen size). Video playback looked great, and ran smoothly with little pixelation or blurring.

Unlike the T-Mobile G1 and the iPhone 3G--which display large album art and are highly visual--the Bold incorporates a fairly plain native music app that leaves much to be desired. You can view your library by song, artist, or genre. During playback, a miniature album thumbnail appears. The app also has playlist and shuffle features and a headphone equalizer.

The Bold comes with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack (the T-Mobile G1 does not), which boosts its potential as a media player.

The 2.0-megapixel camera includes some advanced features, including a flash and 5X digital zoom. But in my hands-on tests, the flash was blindingly bright, causing indoor pictures to look grainy and overexposed. For such an expensive smart phone, the Bold seems weak on megapixels (3.0 would have been a more suitable number) and extras (such as white-balance controls and a self-timer, both absent here).

The BlackBerry comes preloaded with Mobi4Biz (a subscription-based on-demand video service), as well as a few games. RIM's BlackBerry Storefront, due to launch in March 2009, will provide a centralized online market for BlackBerry apps, to compete with Apple's iPhone 3G App Store and the T-Mobile G1's Android Market.

The BlackBerry Bold delivers high-speed browsing and powerful messaging capabilities, and it represents a major step up in form and function over existing BlackBerry models. But faults such as mediocre call quality and an unimpressive camera impede its potential to compete with the iPhone and the Android-based T-Mobile G1. In addition, its high price will make competing for consumers' attention even harder for the Bold.

O2 may have the iPhone all to itself in the UK, but that hasn't stopped the company from continuing with its own Xda range of smart phones. The Xda Zest is the latest addition to the clan but, instead of being targeted at business types, this time O2 is aiming the handset at pay as you go users. As such, the handset is available for the relatively low price of around £250, without the need to take out a hefty contract.

Positives
The first thing you notice when you start up the Zest is that, although it uses Windows Mobile 6.1, the menu system looks completely different. This is because O2 has loaded the Zest with its own touch interface (a reworked version of Spb's Mobile Shell), providing you with a 3D grid interface with large, chunky buttons that you can press with your finger. It's easy to use, responsive (thanks, no doubt, to the handset's speedy 624MHz Marvell processor) and does a good job of hiding away most of the traditional, wonky Windows Mobile menus.

The phone's screen may be small, but it's still impressive. Thanks to its 480x640-pixel resolution, photos and Web pages look sharp, and, because it's bright, the screen's easy to read even in direct sunlight. With both Wi-Fi and HSDPA support, it's no surprise that Web pages load very quickly. O2 has also sensibly pre-loaded the Opera Mobile browser on the phone, which is much more useable than the usual Internet Explorer Mobile.

The handset also has built-in GPS and comes with a trial version of the Co-Pilot Live 7 navigation software. This works for two weeks before asking you to shell out £50 to activate the full version.

On the storage front, you get 256MB of Flash ROM and 128MB of RAM, so there's plenty of space onboard for storing extra applications and data, and you can also add more space via microSD cards.

When it comes to call quality, the Zest puts in an excellent performance, and battery life is good too. We got around two days' use out of it before it needed a recharge.

Negatives
The Zest's styling is rather workman-like and certainly won't turn any heads. It's quite wide and also relatively thick -- no-one could describe it as sleek. The glossy rear panel also tends to pick up smudges from fingerprints and the like.

At 71mm (2.8 inches), the screen is on the small side compared to many other Windows smart phones, and the SD card slot is rather awkwardly placed underneath the SIM card holder, which means you have to take out the battery to swap memory cards.

The phone's camera is also relatively basic. Although it has a decent, 3-megapixel resolution, there's no flash so, while shots taken in sunlight look okay, those taken indoors in pubs and clubs descend into a sea of blocky, dark pixels.

Conclusion
The Zest isn't the sexiest-looking smart phone on the market at the moment, but it is easy to use and a great little performer. We love the simple interface O2 has tacked on over the top of Windows Mobile, and the broad range of features on offer is surprising, given the handset's relatively low price. If you're looking for a cheap and cheerful smart phone, make sure to check it out.

source : http://www.cnet.co.uk/

RIM rarely veers away from its classic screen and Qwerty keypad combo which has done so well over many years. Making sure that it doesn't fall behind though, RIM has produced the BlackBerry Storm that features a touchscreen. But, unlike any other touchscreen, this one clicks.

Read our review to see if a clickable touchscreen is the best thing to ever be invented or if you're better off with the BlackBerry Bold. If by the end of the review you think you want a Storm, then you can pick one up from Vodafone for free on a monthly contract.

Design
Whether or not you're a veteran BlackBerry user, the first time you see the Storm you'll want to try it out. Its large touchscreen invites you to touch it and a sleek, curvy design slips easily into a pocket.

Similar to the BlackBerry Bold the BlackBerry Storm feels like a quality product made up of a combination of metal and high-quality plastic. It's solid enough to take a few tumbles and isn't too heavy or too light.

While many touchscreen phone manufacturers seem to borrow heavily from the iPhone's design the Storm manages to retain a strong BlackBerry identity and fits in well with the rest of RIM's portfolio.

The Storm's large touchscreen is one of the brightest and sharpest we've seen so far, providing a great video viewing experience. As touchscreens go, the Storm's is responsive to even gentle taps but you need to click it fully in order to select an option.

At first we found the clickable screen difficult to get to grips with, particularly when texting because you need to click each key and that can slow things down -- eventually we got used to it. Compared to the iPhone the Storm's clickable screen is definitely slower to use.

If you desperately want to make the transition to a standard touchscreen but like using mechanical keys then this could be the halfway house you've been looking for. We're not convinced that it's the best touchscreen system out there and feel it can be clunky at times.

Another concern we have regarding the Storm's screen is that there's a gap around the edge so that it has enough space to pivot, which we think will get filled with dust and dirt after a while and may cause aesthetic damage.

We're very glad to see that there's a 3.5mm headphone jack on the side of the Storm making it simple to plug headphones straight in and start listening to music -- a feature we would like to see on many more phones.

One area of the Storm's design that we weren't overly keen on are the mute and lock keys at the top that curve in and aren't always easy to find in your pocket, which is annoying if you're trying to silence a call in the middle of a meeting.

Features
The BlackBerry Storm runs a touchscreen version of the BlackBerry OS with necessary touchscreen additions, such as an-on-screen touchscreen keypad that can be set to be a standard 'Multitap' keypad, put into predictive 'SureType' mode or a full Qwerty keyboard.

When you hold the phone upright during texting you automatically get a standard or SureType or Multitap keypad and when you hold it sideways you get a full Qwerty one. We actually found the SureType (predictive) mode the easiest of the bunch and the full Qwerty took us a while to master.

RIM's attempt at porting the BlackBerry OS is far more finger-friendly than Windows Mobile on a touchscreen, featuring large icons so that you can tap them with ease. The interface is a little cluttered though and an overal simplification of the menu structure wouldn't go amiss.

Another change we would like to see made is that the accelerometer that changes the screen from landscape to potrait mode seems to be overly sensitive. On several occasions the screen put itself into landscape mode when we didn't want it to and occasionally froze.

An interesting addition to the menu is the Application Centre that allows you to access apps for the Storm, such as Flickr and Facebook, in a similar way to the iPhone's app store. It's straightforward to use and a sensible move by RIM.

In order to download apps you need to connect to the Internet which you can only do via HSDPA as disappointingly there's no Wi-Fi, which may annoy some users. If for example you want to stream video content 3G isn't always the best option.

The Storm's browser displays full pages which you can scroll through using your finger. Zooming in and out of pages has to be done using specific keys, which isn't as intuitive as the iPhone's pinch system and disappointingly there's no option to open a new tab or a new window.

In terms of the Storm's email capabilities it's fairly easy to set up but you may need to ask your IT administrator for help. The Storm supports BlackBerry Servers and Microsoft Exchange, in addition to Web-based email clients such as Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

The Storm's media player supports all the major formats and offers an interface that echoes the iPhone's, such as a scrolling list of songs, artists, etc. It's easy to play music or video and video footage looks fantastic on the Storm's large crisp screen.

Performance
Audio quality from the music player is loud an clear, made even better by the fact that you can plug your headphones straight in and don't need to use an adaptor. That said, it is a shame that the jack isn't at the top of the Storm instead of the side, which means the headphone pin sticks out.

If you get lost you can use the Storm's GPS with Google Maps or BlackBerry Maps to find your way. We found it fairly easy to pick up satellites, but it won't pick them up indoors of course.

Finally, at first we thought Storm's 3.2-megapixel camera performed well and then we slowly started to realise that it wasn't the case all of the time. In daylight it takes clear shots if you hold it very still, but in lowlight conditions shots mostly came out looking blurry.

Battery life is quoted at 15 days standby and six hours using 3G. We found that with moderate use it lasted for around two days before needing to be recharged, which is impressive compared to certain other smart phones.

As we mentioned earlier, audio quality during music playback was great as is audio quality during calls. The loudspeaker is loud enough to use as a handsfree solution but you're better off using a Bluetooth headset.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, a mobile device for music that brings innovative new features to the mass market. Delivering on Nokia's vision to provide the best total music experience possible, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be among the first devices to support Comes With Music, Nokia's groundbreaking service which offers one year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a S60 5th Edition device with a resistive touch screen and tactile feedback. The device has variety of input methods: stylus, plectrum and finger touch support for text input and UI control (alphanumeric keypad, full and mini qwerty keyboard, handwriting recognition). Use the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic to connect to mobile broadband using WLAN or HSDPA (3.5G). Supported WCDMA frequencies depend on the region where the device is available. Find directions and locations with the integrated A-GPS and included maps.

When it comes to music phones, people all over the world want a device that is a great music experience - with more memory, loud and powerful speakers, easy synchronization - and must still work well as a mobile phone with direct access to important contacts and content. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic delivers on all counts and allows consumers to access and share content.

Media Bar, Contacts Bar - putting people first
Taking advantage of touch screen technology, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic introduces the 'Media Bar', a handy drop down menu that provides direct access to music and entertainment, including favourite tracks, videos and photos. The Media Bar also offers a direct link to the web and to online sharing. Because the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic supports Flash content, individuals can surf the entire web, not just pieces of it. In addition, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offers all the music essentials, including a graphic equalizer, 8GB memory for up to 6000 tracks and support for all main digital music formats, and a 3.5mm jack. Built-in surround sound stereo speakers offer the industry's most powerful sound.

Ensuring a seamless music experience, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic also provides easy access to browse and purchase tracks from the Nokia Music Store, where applicable, while the newly updated Nokia Music PC software allows for easy drag-and-drop transfer of songs and management of any music collection.

The innovative 'Contacts Bar' lets consumers highlight four favorite contacts on their home-screen and, through a single touch, track a digital history of recent text messages, emails, phone logs, photos and blog updates.

For the best screen resolution available on a mobile phone, the 3.2" widescreen display brings photos, video clips and web content to life in vibrant color and true clarity. With a 16 by 9 aspect ratio and 30 frames-per-second playback and recording, the device is ideal for VGA quality video recording and playback.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic also features a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and, with a single touch, images or videos can be shared via a favorite online community, such as Share on Ovi, Flickr, or Facebook. Music playlist song titles can also be shared through Bluetooth, MMS or online sharing.

Music for the masses
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic supports 60 languages worldwide, which covers nearly 90 percent of the world's population. As people around the world use their phones in different ways, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offers a variety of input methods including a virtual alphanumeric keypad, a virtual computer-style QWERTY keyboard, a pen stylus and for true music enthusiasts, a plectrum are all available.

Additional features include Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, and USB 2.0 High-Speed.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be available worldwide beginning in the fourth quarter of 2008 for an estimated retail price of 279 EUR before taxes and subsidies. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic featuring Comes With Music will be available early next year. Pricing details to follow.

source: www.mobile88.com