Hottest Mobile Phones this Summer
Laptop Magazine previews and reviews five mobile phones they consider to be should-buys this summer, and they are as follows.
The Motorola Q. It’s a smartphone, and it says Windows Mobile 5.0 (up to you if that’s good or bad). Personally, I think this is cool, as you can do all sorts of wonderful stuff on a Windows Mobile powered smartphone, and I’m a fan of being able to seamlessly sync with Outlook. It’s like having a full-fledged Windows-based PDA in a mobile phone form factor. The phone even supports EV-DO connectivity, and has a 1.3 megapixel camera. Memory is also expandable via Mini-SD. Only disadvantage, though, is that the Moto Q doesn’t have touchscreen.
Retail price: $199 with 2-year contract.
Palm Treo 700P. It’s PalmOS-based so whether it’s good or bad depends on your OS preference. But Palm still lives by the KISS principle–that is, keep it simple, stupid! You get blazing power in your hands but with a simple and no-nonsense UI. You can connect broadband via Sprint’s EV-DO service or Verizon’s Wireless broadband service. The Treo 700P also sports a 1.3-megapixel camera for those days you forget to bring your real digital camera with you.
Retail price: $399 with 2-year contract and after rebate.
Sony Ericsson W810i. It’s a SonyEricsson, so the interface and operating system are proprietary. If you can live with that, consider that this, being a W-series phone, is a Walkman, and actually has strong portable music player features. You can even use your own earphones or high-fidelity noise-cancelling headphones as the phone uses a standard 3.5-mm stereo jack! It even has a 2-megapixel camera. Again, I’m not a fan of these itty-bitty things that take poor pictures, but it’s a convenient feature to have.
Retail price: $399.
Samsung SCH-a930. The a930 clamshell looks more like an MP3 player than a phone. But you might be able to forgive the design shortcomings considering the low price. For this price, you get dedicated music controls and a dedicated external screen for displaying track information. Memory is also expandable up to 1GB via MicroSD. You also get access to Verizon’s V CAST music service. Hey, you also have a 1.3-megapixel camera. IT rotates, this time, whatever you’d need that for (perfect for voyeur photography, I guess).
Retail price: $99.99 (after $50 rebate).
LG Fusic. Fus-what? Strange name aside, the Fusic looks interesting, but lacks appeal in design. It has that control wheel reminiscent of the iPod’s, but sports a protruding antenna, which I find un-cool. The Fusic works with the Sprint music store, or you can transfer MP3s and AACs via USB (sounds familiar). It also has Bluetooth stereo support and–yes–a 1.3-megapixel camera. What’s great is you can plug in the phone into your laptop for use as an EV-DO modem. I’m foreseeing a visit from Apple’s patent lawyers, though, with the way the Fusic mimics the iPod’s control wheel.
Retail price: $179 with 2-year contract.
Looks like it’s smartphones and MP3-playing phones for Laptop Magazine this summer.
Samsung A990
Popgadget takes a look at the Samsung A990, a clamshell camera phone that Verizon Wireless supports. While it is not really a review, they do put forth some interesting thoughts on the device.
My favorite new Samsung default feature is a translational text mode for business cards. Just shoot a photo of a business card and the phone’s software is able to interpret the text to automatically add a new entry to the phone’s contact list.
Verizon definitely has the right idea. The company has also been making a push to educate consumers on their VZ Navigator system that uses GPS chips in the phone to provide real-time driving directions. Seeing as how a single device is now able to provide a telephone, a high quality camera, mp3’s, web access, and driving directions, there may not be many other devices that I need to buy. Mark my words: the company that is able to reduce the number of devices I carry to exactly one will be the winner of the technology wars.
The A990 is a 3.2 megapixel digital camera slapped inside a small clamshell body. Currently, it is one of the highest, if not the highest, resolution you can get in a camera phone in the American marketplace. It also supports MP3 playback, basic video recording, and web access. It supports microSD and TransFlash memory cards.
Motorola C139
Cingular is getting a new phone from Motorola, the Motorola C139, a budget conscious phone for those that can’t afford some of the crazy mobile phones out there these days.
The C139 does not have many features, but it is not aimed at being the everything to everyone device. It includes a small 65k color LCD screen with a resolution of 96×65 pixels, which is tiny by today’s standards. It also supports polyphonic ringtones, not MP3 or other fancy formats, and has an iTap predictive text entry. You also get a calendar application inside of the tiny bit of memory on the device, but there is not much else worth mentioning.
For the low price of $39.99 USD, you can get it online through Cingular, which includes a $10 credit for GoPhone airtime. It does not get much more simple than this. Atleast the unit looks pretty nice though.
Cellphone Manufacturers to Standardize Charger Plugs
You know the feeling. You’ve just upgraded to a brand new phone, and you suddenly can’t use your previous phone’s charger because of mismatched plugs. Nor can you use chargers from your other, older phones, because they’re all of different brands!
With similar brands–such as Nokia, for instance–you could swap chargers across models. But most other brands will change charger ports and plugs as new models are released. And of course, you cannot use chargers across different brands.
This is such a pain in the backside, especially for people who own and use more than one phone (of different brands).
The Japanese mobile phone providers and manufacturers are in the lead in trying to unify mobile charger ports, and hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit.
The industry bodies of cell phone service providers and makers have informed the industry ministry of plans to unify specifications of cell phone sockets and battery charger plugs around 2010
…
The standardization would enable cell phone users to continue to use the same chargers even after replacing phones with ones marketed by different service providers, they said. At present, the specifications used for cell phones’ sockets by NTT DoCoMo Inc, KDDI Corp and Vodafone KK differ and their chargers are incompatible.
They should come out with something like the USB for the computer, which is standard across platforms and manufacturers. This would definitely make the world a better place. I’ve had my share of leaving my non-standard charger at home and running flat on the move, when everyone else is using a Nokia, and can borrow a charger from practically anyone.
Nokia 3250 Review
Pocket-lint reviews the twist and use Nokia 3250, an interesting little phone. Honestly, while I don’t know too much about the phone, I am impressed with a few of its features, especially for an MP3 player based phone.
The 3250 lets you combine the MP3 player and smartphone in one neat, if not entirely compact package.
It’s quite an unusual design, with that odd twisting mechanism causing a bit of a stir. It makes good practical sense though: rotating the block at the bottom either activates the phone mode, music mode or boots up the two megapixel camera depending on the angle of twist.
In the end Pocket-lint gives it a seven out of ten. They liked the amount of memory, coming in at a gigabyte of space, but they did not like the music software that it comes with, nor the bulky feeling design.
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