LG Fusic Review
Digital Trends has a review up on the Fusic from LG, a very stylish little cell phone.
Inside you’ll find an advanced series of features, aside from the music player, which we’ll get to in a minute. On the phone side, Fusic is a broadband EV-DO dual-band CDMA phone for the Sprint network, equipped with text, voice and multimedia messaging, voice memo recording, and speaker-independent voice control. On the digital camera side, the 1.3 megapixel imager can snap stills at up to 1280 x 960 resolution and 15 frame-per-second 3G2-format videos, matched with a 15-step digital zoom and PictBridge for PC-less picture printing via the included USB cable. There’s a microSD flash memory slot, and LG included a 64 MB card to get you started.
In the end they gave it a 7.5 out of 10. In the con’s list, the Fusic is nocked down a notch because of frustrating music management, and seperate Bluetooth 1.1/stereo connectivity. I would love to have one of these small phones, and I think the con’s for me would be of little consequence.
Nokia N91 Smartphone Review
MobileTechReview has a review up on the Nokia N91, a smartphone that includes a four gigabyte hard drive, thus allowing it to be more than just a phone.
Nokia is taking aim at the iPod and while that might seem like risky business, it’s not when that device also converges a mobile phone and PDA features into a very sexy package. Though large and heavy by phone standards, the N91 feels good in hand and oozes quality thanks to its beautiful stainless steel casing. This triband GSM smartphone has a 4 gig hard drive which holds approximately 1,000 songs, similar to the higher capacity iPod nano. It supports MP3, WMA and AAC formats among others and can sync to iTunes on the Mac and Windows Media Player 10 on Windows.
In the end they say that if you are looking for a device that mixes a portable music player, a cell phone and a PDA, the Nokia N91 is worth a look. I think the style of the handset is also very interesting though I don’t like the way the number pad keys look. They list the drawbacks to the phone being the size, weight and price tag, but say that if you compare it against three devices it could replace it is lighter, smaller and a deal.
LG Chocolate Phone LG-KG800 Review
Pocket-lint reviews the LG-KG800, better known as the LG Chocolate phone, and they seem to love its style and ease of use.
The front as we’ve said hides a mirage of buttons that all you to navigate around the phone, make calls and influence people. In use and the interface is incredibly light to touch, but once you’ve got the hang of it easy to master (think iPod click wheel). Slide the slider back and luckily LG has opted to keep things simple and straightforward and it was surprising and pleasing to see that the number keypad hasn’t been messed with, that feeling soon ends however when you see the numbers appear on the screen is a plethora of colours as if someone has been let loose with a tube of Smarties.
In the end they give the LG-KG800 a seven out of ten, though users so far have given it a five and a half out of ten. While it is not the LG Chocolate phone, I’d say that the Motorola L7 is just as nice, though maybe not as fasionable or trendy, its features are pretty slick.
Samsung E900 Review
Pocket-lint has a reivew up on the Samsung E900, a small Samsung slider that looks a fair bit like the LG KG800.
Slide the bright crisp 2-inch 240×320 262K Colour TFT screen back and you are presented with a small, but easy to use keypad with no additional buttons - these are on top. Realising that any phone with either a camera or MP3 player must have direct access buttons, Samsung has tucked these out of the way on the side of the handset.
Featuring a 2 megapixel camera, the E900 is keen to promote itself as more than just a phone images can be stored on either the phone’s internal 80MB memory or directly on to an optional micro SD slot.
They give the phone an 8 out of 10 as the E900 is able to capture a positive feeling thanks to its bright screen, touch sensitive panel, and two megapixel digital camera.
HTC MTeoR 3G Review
The MTeoR is headlined as the first 3G Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Smatphone, and is one of two new phones from HTC.
Looking a lot like something from Motorola, the MTeoR is a candy bar design that weighs in at 120g. Pocket-lint takes a look at this European phone.
However its thin credentials and name is where the similarities stop. The MTeoR sports a very large 2.2-inch crisp and bright TFT display as well as a 1.3 megapixel camera, however not a second camera for video calling.
However while the screen is perhaps its most impressive element visually, the phone somehow manages packs an entire OS into is shell.
The HTC MTeoR features Windows Mobile 5.0 and that means, Direct Push technology for immediate synchronization of email, calendar and notes plus document viewers for PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
In the end you get a phone that is worth an 8 out of 10 on their rating scale thanks to its 3G functionality, slim shape and its ability to run Windows Mobile 5.
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.
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.
Blackberry 7130g Smartphone Review
Pocket-lint has a review up on the new Blackberry 7130g, a smartphone that many are very interested in.
Now you’ve got even less of an excuse for not taking the office every where you go. The latest BlackBerry offers pretty much everything that the last model – the chunky 8700g does – but it does so in a form factor that’s not much bigger than your common or garden smartphone.
This obviously allows the 7130g to slip into your pocket more easily, and even takes it to the stage where you don’t need to have to consider a second phone for the weekend – something I’d have to do with the larger devices.
Pocket-lint has given the 7130g a seven out of ten on their scale, due to the slimmer form factor and the push e-mail service. The downsides were the compressed keyboard, and the ease of use is not as easy as other people have claimed.
Motorola Q Review
Mobile Burn has a review up on the Motorola Q a device much like the BlackBerry from RIM that everyone loves, and that is what they compare it to many times throughout the review. It has been recently released on Verizon Wireless’ CDMA EV-DO network.
Physically, the Motorola Q is much like a traditional RIM BlackBerry that has been stretched a bit longer, narrower, and thinner. It measures 116mm x 66mm x 12mm (4.6″ x 2.6″ x .5″) in size. When compared to the Palm Treo 700p we just reviewed, the Q is 3mm longer (if you ignore the 700p’s stub antenna), 6mm wider, and about half as thick. When you consider that the Q weighs only 122g (4.3oz) with a miniSD card inserted, you end up with a very pocketable device that weighs 15 to 50g less than the competition. That’s something that Motorola can be proud of.
In the end they gave it a rating of highly recommended as it is compact, light, slick looking, is EV-DO enabled, and has a reasonably easy to use QWERTY keyboard. Some of the downsides of the unit include a short battery life, mediocre camera, and the lack of any WiFi abilities.
Sony Ericsson K800i Review
3G.co.uk recently reviewed the Sony Ericsson K800i, a Cyber-Shot branded cell phone.
The K800i is the first Sony Ericsson handset to sport the Cyber-shot brand name from Sony’s famous standalone digital camera series. Sony Ericsson has enlisted the science dudes at Sony imaging to help develop the Cyber-shot phone series and make it the closet yet to your dedicated digital shutterbug in terms of features and functionality.
The K800i accommodates a 3.2-megapixel lens with autofocus, built-in Xenon flash, image stabilising technology and a splendid new shooting mode called BestPic (see ‘Take your best shot’ box out for an in-depth look). Not to mention that it hurtles around at 3G speeds.
In the end they gave the K800i a rating of 91%, as its only negative points were really the lack of an optical zoom for the camera, and a new MemoryStick format that you’d need to get a card for.
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