You might have seen various bluetooth dongles over the years, ranging from the size of a thumb to the size of of a finger nail the Atomic Pico Bluetooth Dongle goes one step further and fits right into your usb port seamlessly

The device comes in a fairly large package considering its dimensions.

It supports Windows XP and Vista. We managed to get it working on Win7 and Mac too. Sorry Linux folks ! By the way It’s the smallest bluetooth dongle in the world!

The Atomic Pico Bluetooth Dongle from MobileFun costs 8.95 pounds and supports the following

Mobile Phone Software:

• Nokia PC Suite
• Sony Ericsson PC Suite
• Samsung Easy Studio
• Motorola Phone Tools, and many more!

Incase you don’t have bluetooth on your laptop or you want to turn you desktop into a bluetooth hub and say goodbye to data cables, this bluetooth is highly recommended !

The dongle will cost around Rs.700 in India

• Nokia launches three new Bluetooth Headsets
• Sony Ericsson W810 EDGE Walkman
• Review : Buy Bluetooth Wireless Headsets at Buy.com
• Nokia 6125 clamshell announced
• Bluetooth watch MBW-100 from Sony Ericsson

As you all know the Omnia HD is Samsung’s first S60 5th edition device and the third touch screen S60 phone to be launched. Samsung with a good experience in touch screen phones, has for some reason failed to deliver a product that sets it apart from an N97 or a 5800. Sure, in terms of the hardware and the camera performance, the Omnia HD is one helluva performer, but some downright silly niggles keep the Omnia HD from becoming a high seller. The good part of it, a firmware update can easily fix it.

So let me run you through the software or rather the OS of the phone. The Symbian based S60 5th edition is an OS designed originally for non touchscreen phones and later, adapted to touchscreen phones. This is very much evident from the manner in which the menu and options are designed. Samsung has on it’s part tried to customize it and make it more finger friendly, it has in some cases succeeded and in other areas failed.

The Omnia HD has two distinct icon sets working in tandem in a theme (Samsung LBS image and the above). This makes using the phone confusing initially and also points to a shoddy customization process. A single complete icon set should have been used instead of 2 different ones.

Our review device came with only two themes and none of them were exciting enough to have, I’m sure the Omnia HD could have been given some great themes, like the i450 had, once upon a time. The accelerometer also was programmed to work in the most vague manner I have seen. For example, when the screen was tilted to landscape mode, one would naturally, that the phone’s orientation would also change, but in the ‘Main Menu’, it refused to do so. If you were to tilt the phone in a sub-menu, it will work just fine. As silly and unimportant it may sound, this little niggle really irritated me. Every time I needed to do something with the phone, I would have to constantly rotate the phone. This made the phone an extremely impractical device to have. It also meant that taking screen shots in landscape mode was not possible and I could not get even a single screen shot in the landscape mode.

Another place where this auto rotation problem made things irritating and down right frustrating was the input via a QWERTY setup. The phone’s OS was not programmed to show a number pad which could be used to key in text. It kept on switching between a QWERTY (landscape) and the menu screen (portrait). This meant I sparingly used the keypad and relied mostly on a QWERTY device of Nokia for my typing needs.  I wonder why Samsung could not implement landscape view for the main menu, it did implement it elsewhere in the phone!

The browser is another area which disappointed me, why for the love of good things, could Samsung not implement fullscreen view as a default is beyond me. A 3.7 inch screen should have had default fullscreen view in the browser! I had to manually do it everytime for a good internet experience.

The Bluetooth option on the phone also has two distinct menus. Why did Samsung do that? I have no idea. While one involves a lot of touch input and every selection must be saved for the phone to process. This setup is simply ridiculous and makes one ponder why could this not have been automated. The other menu for bluetooth  seems to be the answer to that question. This UI execution for switching the bluetooth on and off is very simple and easy to use. It should be made mandatory in all phones. One has to tap the center of the screen, and the bluetooth is switched on, the ‘advanced’ settings are conveniently tucked away under an icon. Now why did Samsung not make this the only way to use bluetooth in this phone? Only Samsung UI designers would know.

Widget Support is another area where the Omnia HD scores really high. The TouchWIZ based widget support means that many of the options and settings are available in the form of shortcuts and you can have them either on the sidebar or on 1 of the 3 screen panes. While it is not as novel a way as N97, this kind of design for the UI makes it possible to do much more on the homescreen, and that is a good thing. I did miss a certain setting found in the Nokia devices about cycling the wallpaper, and I hope it comes to the HD soon.

Another area, where Samsung have worked is in the music player area. The music player is application in the Omnia HD has been executed really well, it is clear Samsung did not want the standard Nokiaesque music player application to ruin the music experience. So all that can be made easily accessible to the listener in terms of settings was put up front in the form of buttons onscreen. What this allowed me as a listener was to play with the music settings and choose on the go how I wanted my music to sound without having to dig deep into the menu.  The landscape mode in this application revealed an iPhone sort of browsing of the tracks on the phone. The visualizations also were absolutely wonderful. Samsung’s UI designer have really worked on this part of the UI and delivered a superior experience when compared to a Nokia N97 or even a 5800.

The music on the phone with the presence of a Dolby 5.1 setting along with many other options made for a very very interesting and fun experience. I’ve never had so much fun listening to music on my phone. The customizations possible with regard to how your music sounds is really good and far more than what any other music oriented device offers in the market today. The speakers are loud and I mean really loud, the supplied handsfree is also very nice, but when connected to a high end full cup headphones, the quality of output jumps several notches. Full marks for music to the Omnia HD, it’s not as ‘loud’ as the N82 but is certainly much more clearer and refined. I wonder how this would have translated onto a proper home theater if the HD had an FM transmitter.

Now we know that Samsung has DivX and Xvid support out of the box, this support meant that I had a PMP and a phone built into the same device. This is where the Omnia HD beats every other Nokia touchscreen phone. The large AMOLED screen coupled with DivX support gives a superior viewing experience, one that I have never witnessed in other touchscreen phones. When it comes to entertainment Samsung seems to have a much better package than a certain company based in Espoo. Oh and the Omnia HD is extremely capable of playing the files uncompressed and is also capable of full HD playback if I am not wrong.

Overall the UI on the Samsung is really good, but as mentioned earlier there are niggles which only tend to frustrate and hold the device back. Then there are other things which seem to take the device ahead in terms of user experience. But this half finished work means that one is left wanting for more. I’m sure all of this can be fixed with one major firmware update, in  fact it should be, a superior product than it’s intended rival, the Omnia HD would then become the rightful heir to being the flagship of the Symbian S60 5th edition OS.

I would rate the software a high 7/10, capable of much a higher points, let down only due to a half finished UI.

After such an exhaustive overview of the software, I’ll be brief about the accessories that come with the Omnia HD.

The Samsung Omnia HD ships with a Micro USB charger, a data cable, a 3.5mm audio plug earphone (handsfree), a TV out cable and manuals and PC suite CD. What I liked about the last bit was that everything was packaged in small things, a mini CD instead of a regular CD, smaller handheld size manual instead of a booklet. Everything else was the same but the finishing was good and the cables did have smaller rubber enclosures at the ends, meaning that it wasn’t thick. This made them look really good. The handsfree that came with the Omnia HD was also very good. The earphones are of the kind that kill any outside noise, delivering a superior audio experience in a compact package. The output was good and it did not disappoint when listening to songs with the Dolby switch on!

I would give the Omnia HD a healthy 8/10 in this department.

• Samsung Omnia HD Review Part-2: Screen and Backlighting
• Samsung Omnia HD Review Part-1: Design
• Samsung Omnia HD and Omnia Pro launched in India get a Price
• Samsung Omnia HD i8910 makes a debut
• Samsung Omnia HD Photo Gallery

Sizewise, the N86 8MP is chubbier and shorter than the N82, due to its dual-slider form factor, as opposed to the N82’s candybar design. The materials used on the N86 are nice classy plastic with metal, and covered with non-scratchable glass on the front, whereas the N82 uses the old cheap and shiny black plastics that we saw on the N81, N96, N78, N85…

In terms of usability, the keypad on the N86 is miles better than the N82, with big, well differenciated and raised keys as opposed to the tiny plasticky ones on the N82. Also, the N86 has separated softkeys, call/end as well as menu and delete keys, whereas these are more joined in one big block on the N82.

The back of the devices features their prominent camera, with the N86 sporting a dual-LED flash and a wide-angle lens 8MP sensor camera, as opposed to the N82’s 5MP sensor with a Xenon flash. Both devices have a physical shutter. The N86 also has a kickstand right around the camera (shown later).

The left side of the N86 is clean with only a keylock key, on the N82 we have the microSDHC door (the N86 also has one, but it’s under the battery cover), a microUSB port and the 3-pin charging port.

The bottom of both devices is very minimal with only a microphone hole.

On the right side, both devices have the stereo speakers, volume keys and camera keys. The N82 also has the old Gallery quick access button.

On the top of the devices, both have the power button and a 3.5mm plug for the headset. The N86 also has a microUSB port that also serves as a charging port.

Last but not least, here are two artsy pictures showing the devices side by side, with the prominence of the N86’s Kickstand feature.

• Sony Ericsson Satio VS Nokia N97, 5800 XpressMusic And X6
• Nokia N86 8MP vs Nokia N82 Camera Comparison
• Nokia N97 vs N86 Picture Gallery
• Nokia N85 vs N82 – Part 1 : Hardware
• Nokia N82 Vs N86 8MP Camera Comparison

We performed a real-life comparison, and you can see the results below. First up, is a series of images taken on a picnic out in the Vincennes area in Paris, France. The N82’s images are on the left, the N86’s are on the right.

The first difference you should notice is how the wide-angle lens on the N86 makes you feel as if the pictures were taken further away from the point where the N82’s pictures were snapped. This isn’t the case in reality. I was holding the 2 phones next to each other and snapping the photos.

The second difference you should see, is that the N82’s images have much more of a yellow’ish feeling to them, which makes the colors look faded in most of the green areas (most visible on the 3rd photo comparison), but turns out a real nice picture in the Castle (4th photo comparison).

The third thing I’d like you to look at is these last 3 pictures taken at night. It’s true that the Xenon flash on the N82 has a very clear advantage indoors, but put it outdoors with objects far away and it fails to perform. This can be seen in the first two photos taken at night, where the buildings and the trees in the background are captured with more detail on the N86 thanks to its lens’ aperture size. While focusing on nearby objects (the can of coke), the N82 still outperforms the N86 but not by a huge margin.

All in all, I believe the N86 is a true successor to the N82, and the wide-lens, large aperture, bigger sensor, and video light advantages should be taken very seriously. You shouldn’t forget that it also has a Panorama mode built-in, and now with the v20, face detection and an improved camera performance.

What do you think of this comparison, and is the N86 in your opinion a great N82 replacement, or are you looking at other devices like the Samsung Omnia HD or the Sony Ericsson Satio?

• Nokia N86 8MP vs N82 Camera Comparison
• Nokia N86 8MP vs Nokia N82 Camera Comparison
• Nokia N86 vs N82 Picture Gallery
• Nokia N86 8MP is Shipping with a Groundbreaking Camera , Price Unknown
• Nokia N82 VS N95 The 5 Mega Pixel Camera phone Battle

The Goodies

• 800MHz CPU
• 3.1 inch AMOLED resistive touchscreen with 16 million colors with 800×480 px resolution
• TouchWiz 2.0 User Interface with Motion UI, Media Gate 3D
• Supports Quadband GSM Networksand Dual band 3G with HSDPA support
• 5 Megapixel Camera with DualLED Flash and AutoFocus
• Bluetooth , USB 2.0, Wi-Fi , GPS
• 8GB inbuilt memory plus microSD expansion.
• MP3 , 3.5 mm audio jack , FM Radio
• MP4, Divx, Xvid Video playback.
• Accelerometer , Proximity Sensor, TV-Out

The Looks

Hardware is solid and provides easy gripping. it has only 3 keys in the front  – call button end call button and a hexagon menu button in the middle . The Menu button minimizes the current running app and long press of this button allows users  to end all application in one go. The AMOLED screen is one of the best in the market and is very responsive even though its resistive. The display performs really well indoors but not very usable under direct sunlight.  The phone is prone to catch dust and finger prints easily. But this is the case with most touchscreen phones . The problem exists even in the iPhone 3GS and the HTC Hero which claimed to address the issue with  a Oleophobic screen.

On the left side of the device you will find the volume rocker keys. On the right side you will find the lock key and the camera key along with the 3D Cube key.

On the top you have the microUSB port an the 3.5mm audio jack. On the rear you will find the camera along with the flash.

The 800 Mhz CPU rocks for Multitasking

Response time of the phone was pretty good and with just a light press on the screen you get what you want. You need to press as its a resistive screen unlike the LG Arena which is the same league features a Capacitive screen.  Talking about the multi-tasking of Jet, I opened 18 applications simultaneously and the phone did not hang but on initiating 19th app it said “Not enough resources , close some applications and try again”. Its quite impressive that the 800 mhz processor does wonders for multitasking. Jet has a provision to end all the applications in one go , but it seemed there was a small bug in this feature if you consider it should end Wi-Fi and Bluetooth also or else you can consider it a feature.

File copy speed was impressive.I copied 1GB of data ( 873 photos-67secs , 350 pdf files-41sec, 53 vidoes-62 secs , 102 songs-64sec ) from Laptop(Lenevo S10 Atom processor )  to Samsung Jet , it took me 264 secs.

Music and Video Playback

Jet is a good all-rounder phone and the Music features are worth appreciating. The Audio clarity is pretty good and there are  lots of options and controls. The 3.5 mm jack gives the user an option to insert high definition ear phones to make your music experience even better.Syncing with Window Media Player is also possible.Etiquette pause was a real beauty as you just need to keep the phone with screen facing down and the music is paused. The best part was the music player widget which lets you play , pause , skip tracks right from the homescreen. There is FM Radio too incase you run out of Audio tracks and the interface was refreshing and there’s auto-tuning just in case you don’t remember the Radio stations. Video playback was flawless but it drained the battery quite fast. The support for Divx and Xvid video is worth appreciating.

Camera

The Camera on the Jet does its job very well and the pictures taken with the phone look pretty decent. While many Camera phones take lousy useless pictures, the Jet will not disappoint you .It has lots of options to customize your photo before and after the click and smile detection is a great addition.The phone allows Photo tagging which is becoming a part of most cameraphones. While the Jet takes good pictures it does not come close to the Nokia N97 , N86 or SamsungOmniaHD. We won’t complain as the the Camera is not the main selling point of the Jet. The phone records video at 30 frames per second at a 720×480 resolution which is decent.

3D Cube and Motion UI

It was a good move by Samsung by introducing 3d cube / Motion component. Tutorial given is self explanatory and users may get to used to it very easily if he really want to use JET by  Motion. It does have a learning curve and you might not understand how to use it the first time. Its all about minimizing the human effort and opening and closing the applications just by a snapping the phone to left or right while held in the hand. A photo gets clicked by tapping the phone twice and phone turns to silence if kept with screen facing floor. Moving the phone 3 times in right direction closes the open application or turning the phone upside down will open the application etc . These really added attraction to Jet but I was more comfortable while using phone in generic way that is though keys .But the new motion experience was unique.

Usability

Changing the wallpaper in the phone was never so easy as its in JET . We need to just move a finger on the Home Screen from left to right or right to left and your wallpaper is changed. Gestures unlock and application launch was cool. There is an interesting feature of Message Log , it means log for sent or received messages are maintained in the call logs , it cant be of much use to the end user but once you see your message entry in the log it feels good.

Connectivity

The phone is fully loaded when it comes to Connectivity options. Bluetooth , WiFi, microUSB , Mass Storage mode. It supports Quad band GSM Networks and does 3G on 1900/2100 Mhz. It supports HSDPA 3.6 Mbps also.

Browser – Jet has one of the best inbuilt browsers you would find on a phone running a Proprietary OS. The Dolphin Browser is based on WebKit and offers full flash support , one finger zooming, ad-blocker, Kinetic scrolling. It gives you a great mobile browsing experience as it  quickly loads web pages. It has left behind the two finger zoom of iPhone because here its now possible with 1 finger and that too in a fraction of seconds. Tap,Tap and zoom if you want to zoom into a section of the webpage. Scrolling had a bit of lag at times but responded pretty well. The browser supports multiple downloads also but it acts like Firefox’s sibling and eats up memory quickly.

Social Networking

Jet has an application folder called Communities and there you have access to  all our social networking portals at one place ex. Facebook , Picasa, Flickr , Friendster, MySpace and Photobucket.Sadly there is no way support for 3rd party apps like Fring and Nimbuzz.

Features worth a mention

• Samsung has broken the myth of large processor means less battery as we have normally seen in case of  other phones . With a 800 Mhz CPU battery performance is pretty good while you receive calls, tune to music or browse internet for decent amount of time.

• Voice Quality is good enough and one need not to hold the phone so close to ear to listen the voice.
• Reject a call if used can be helpful to avoid unwanted repeated calls and its well defined feature in jet. This feature used to be in some phones but Samsung has provided good interface to use these tiny softwares to be productive for the end users.
• Jet has its configuration settings at one place which gives user an ease to configure the device the way he wants the device to behave and user hardly gets confused about settings as all are well defined in one place.
• Features like Fake Call provided in JET do add value to the phone and I really enjoyed using this cool feature.
• Trimminga video reminds us of  some 3rd party software for our laptop/PC but yes this time its available in mobile too and JET has made it possible , Just shoot video and cut and upload .
• Smile detection , No I am not talking about my cybershot digicam but I am talking about smile detection available in JET , so just a smile and you are shot if you are in front of Jet.

The ugly

Samsung need to provide 3rd party application support which is currently very limited.This is where Samsung has to really push hard if it wants to compete with the big guns – Apple App Store,  BlackBerry App world , Nokia Ovi Store. Samsung does provide the option to download ringtones , wallpapers etc but user is already bored of this level and is looking for innovative apps.The phone had an option to add email accounts but please don’t give user the pain to enter incoming /outgoing server details manually. Widgets can be downloaded but the number is limited and they are also not according to Indian taste so high end localization is requiredJet is scratch prone and scratches become a part of jet very soon.So bit of care has to be taken. The unit we got maintains a weak connection with a Wi fi but yet the connection was succesfull.Whenever we put a sim card in a phone the operator settings are delivered on the handset but it dint happen in case of JET so I manually configured Airtel settings and browse the internet from the data services available from the operator.Users need to install a bulky 104 mb New Pc Studio for charging through USB and managing the device. For Managing its fine but we expect charging to work out of the box.

Conclusion

The Samsung Jet retails at around Rs.19500 now and for the price it does provide loads of features which are packed in a great form factor. The phone certainly has one of the best touchscreen displays in the market but a Capacitive screen like on the iPhone or LG Arena would be more than welcome.  The phone handles calls pretty smoothly and provides decent battery life.  Die-hard smart phone users might find it difficult to get used to the Jet due to lack of 3rd party software but the average user might find the phone above expectations !  I would recommend the Jet just for the Screen and the Features.

• Samsung OMNIA II and Jet Announced!
• Samsung Blogger Meet @ TGIF, Delhi

In the second part of the review, we focus on one of the most important aspects of the Omnia HD, it’s screen and also backlighting. We had earlier focused on the the design aspect.

The Omnia HD has one of the biggest screens you will find in smartphones today. At 3.7 inches, it is nothing short of gigantic from the perspective of phones. Since the Omnia HD is a touchscreen device, the screen is what makes the device so big and hard to pocket. It’s almost like a huge bar of chocolate. While that may be a shortcoming, the increased screen real estate means that things are easier to read and maneuvering through the menu too.

The benefit of the AMOLED screen also makes itself visible, with richer renditions of the 16 million colour palette, watching a video or a photo is nothing short of ecstasy. Movies on this screen are absolutely a treat to watch (Entertainment capabilities will be reviewed in another part so sit tight!) on the huge screen. Pity a kickstand was not provided.

The capacitive touch on this screen is also a good inclusion. It makes navigating through the menus and other things easier and less of a hassle. But I did find that, the feedback one gets on the N97 while touching or navigating through a list is much superior than on the Omnia HD, whose screen feels rather lifeless in that respect. Samsung could have improved the touch feedback on this baby, in it’s current form, I don’t like it. Another thing, which seems missing on the Omnia HD is the option to control the sensitivity on the device. This is a feature that’s not there on the N97 too, but given it’s capacitive screen, I feel it should have been included, as the screen is far too sensitive at times.

That, then goes without saying that operating through the menus is not at all a hassle as even the slightest touch is registered, making it easy to operate the phone. This is where the Omnia HD beats the N97 hands down.

I’d give it a strong 8.5/10 when it comes to screen. Some niggles do exist, but they can be corrected.

With the screen being so impressive, one would expect that the backlighting would also be great. Well, for the screen it is exceptional. AMOLED screens are one of the best technologies for screens, though their legibility in direct sunlight is absolutely pathetic. It is no different for the Omnia HD too. It is however the backlighting for the keys, which is absolutely shocking. Samsung has not given backlighting to a single key on the phone. This is one of the biggest omissions one could have for a phone. With not a single key being back-lit, one is often left helpless. This omission is most evident when you need to take a call, as you tend to be left wondering where the call key went. I find this omission a critical drawback in an otherwise good phone.

In the night, one would have to feel their way to unlock, start the camera or increase/decrease the volume. I am wondering how could Samsung forget this necessity in an expensive phone like this and provide it in its cheapest models??

I won’t give it a score, simply as there is no backlight. 0/10.

Stay tuned as we put the Omnia HD through its paces!

• Samsung Omnia HD Review Part-1: Design
• Samsung Omnia HD and Omnia Pro launched in India get a Price
• Samsung Omnia HD Review Part-3: Software and Accessories
• Samsung Omnia HD i8910 makes a debut
• Samsung OMNIA HD vs HTC Touch Pro 2 Photo Gallery

Recently, Samsung has begun to look at it seriously, with the i8510 and the i8910 HD, it has renewed its commitment towards the Symbian platform. The Omnia HD is one beast of a phone. It is by far the biggest S60 device (touch) available in the market today, big enough to make the N97 seem small.

This first part of the review will throw light on the design aspect of the Omnia HD.

The Samsung Omnia HD is relatively straightforward in it’s design. Almost rectangular in shape, Samsung had played it safe by not experimenting with this simple design, and that’s good. The screen is surrounded on all sides with a chrome strip which also houses the ‘Call’, ‘Menu’ and the ‘End/Power’ keys at the bottom. These three keys are not back-lit at all, which is bad, it seems as if Samsung expects the owner to use the AMOLED screen as light for the keys. How could the keys not be back-lit is actually beyond me, I thought that it is a standard must have on any phone. A secondary VGA camera and the light and proximity sensor are on the top left side of the phone.

On the left side of the phone one can find the volume keys and the Micro SD card slot. To the right is the lock key, the Micro USB port and the camera key. The top and the bottom house the stereo speakers, quite a weird position to have the speaker. On the top of the phone one will also find the 3.5mm audio jack and the lanyard cable slot. The rear houses just the camera and the LED flash. Our review device had already taken a few knocks before it reached us. It is grazed from a few corners.

The entire phone is covered in high quality gloss, which makes this the biggest finger print magnet of all times. Also for some odd reason, Samsung has neither provided a kickstand in the device nor any sort of ‘grip’ to hold the phone or open the battery cover. Which is silly and downright irritating. I found, opening the battery cover in the Omnia HD very irritating and cumbersome, it’s as if, Samsung doesn’t want you to open the device at all and insert a SIM even.  Absence of a lens cover on the Omnia HD is another thing which I did not like.

Overall the phone has very good build quality, it is a very sturdy device. The design is minimalist which adds a bit of class to this device. Samsung have played it safe with the design of this device and it has almost worked for them. Below is a gallery of the Omnia HD from various angles.

I’d give it an 8 on 10 for the design. Good phone with clean design and a few silly niggles.

Stay tuned for the next part of the review – we will be focusing on the imaging aspects of the OmniaHD as the name itself indicates HD quality video recording capabilities

• Samsung Omnia HD Review Part-2: Screen and Backlighting
• Samsung Omnia HD Review Part-3: Software and Accessories
• Samsung Omnia HD and Omnia Pro launched in India get a Price
• Samsung Mobiles aiming for 20 percent market share in India , bringing 7 new models
• Samsung Omnia HD i8910 makes a debut

The Guys at MMMOOO have now released a new version of MyPhone named “MyPhone exceeding iPhone” with lot of new improvements and new features.

The major changes are:

1. iPhone like SMS Conversations i.e. Grouping of SMS’s according to sent and replied conversations easily to read or delete SMS.

2. Ability of scheduling the SMS with the senders list. i.e. You can now send an SMS to anyone on your contact list on a preset time and date.

3. Addition of any 3rd party applications and its corresponding thumbnails (icons) on the MyPhone’s Main Menu.

4. A fully revamped Weather Application which now covers a lot of Cities wordwide.

So if you want the power of Nokia 5800 with an iPhone interface, I would definitely recommend buying MMMOOO’s MyPhone v2.2 for Nokia 5800.

You can buy this application for $12.99 by visiting this link or else if you are still not convinced and want to try this app, then you can download the free trial here.

Note: All the previous users of MyPhone are automatically eligible for a free upgrade to MyPhone v2.20.

• Turn your S60 Phone into an iPhone with Mmmooo’s MyPhone
• MyPhone Adds New Features, Releases Version 2.40
• Is The iPhone The Ultimate Windows Mobile Device?
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Firmware Update – v20.0.012
• TweetS60 Twitter Client – An Exclusive Review

FoneArena presents the LG Arena Review

The LG Arena is the latest full touchscreen multimedia smartphone from LG mobiles.Interesting features include a 5 Megapixel Camera with Flash, DVD Quality video Recording , Dolby Mobile Music, 8 GB inbuilt Memory, DivX Movie Playback. This is just a short review but will try to cover the major areas. We have a Video review at the end of the post just in case you want a quick look !

Package Contents

• LG Arena Phone with Battery
• USB Cable which acts as charger as well.
• In-ear headphones.
• Manuals , DVD

We didn’t find a wall charger in the box , perhaps it’s present in the retail pack as ours was a review unit.

Hardware

While the Arena was compared a lot with the iPhone first gen device, they have a lot of things in common. But after using the phone, I don’t feel it’s a blatant copy of the iPhone. It does somethings even better than the iPhone but it lacks the punch in a few areas.

And it’s smaller than E71 and just larger than a credit card !

The LG Arena is thicker than the iPhone First-gen but thinner than the iPhone 3G which is thick ! The Arena feels really good in the hand and the build quality was top notch except for the lack of the camera lens cover and a standardized microUSB connector.The phone does not feel cheap at all and looks good for the price.

Display

The phone has a 3 inch WVGA touchscreen display which is a pleasure to view. It sports a 480x800 pixel resolution and can handle about 16 million colours.While the display was awesome indoors , it’s difficult to use in bright conditions. Would appreciate a slightly larger display as they have cranked up a lot of pixels in 3 inches.

3D S-Class UI

The 3D S-class UI is something unique from the rest of the competition. But it lacks perfection and can be confusing at times. The Accelerometer was too sensitive when displaying the icon grid. Even though the UI is Unique ,  no one can deny the inspiration comes from iPhone’s UI and HTC’s TouchFLo(especially the transitions). The Widgets were fun to use but found it difficult to use them in the beginning.

Camera

On the back you will find a 5 MegaPixel Camera with a LED Flash which does take some great pictures especially in daytime.

Image Quality

for more samples chk out the camera samples of the lg arena

Video Recording

The phone does really good video recording but it saves the recorded video in a almost outdated .3gp format.Another problem is zoom did not work in the video mode whereas it worked in the image capture mode. Even the microphone is  powerful and picks the sounds very well. Make sure you watch the below video in HD Quality and you will certainly appreciate the quality.

Multimedia and Music Playback

Music playback is great and whats cool is the stock in-ear headphones . It does come with a 3.5mm jack so you can plug in your own pair of headphones.

chk out our dedicated post about the music playback of the phone

You can choose the album by picking it on the screen. The player didn’t have a problem recognizing our mp3 files. Playback was clear and loud and reached the peak of around 100 decibels which is worth a mention.

FM Radio gets a trendy new UI and is fun to use. Watching movies should be a treat as the phone supports full screen playback of DivX movies.

Keyboard

The is no physical keypad on this phone and you have to stick to the onscreen keyboard be it the dialer , sms or browsing. The capacitive screen does make typing feel easy, the keyboard is not perfect and misses a few key strokes. This may be due to the small screen and my large fingers. But on the whole you will get used to it.

There are 3 touch sensitive keys(call ,home, hangup) below the screen and they light up when the phone is in use.

Connectivity and Calling

The phone features Wi-fi, 3G and GPRS/EDGE and also supports Quad Band GSM Networks. Wi-fi worked really well.  Calling worked flawlessly and the audio quality was brilliant. The phone is also 3G ready ,in case we get 3G soon, Arena will be compatible. Google Maps and Email support is also bundled. We could get the Maps working but not Email. Browser was good but font-size was a bit small and also there was a lag between the page loads

Battery Life

Considering the fact that the Arena is a multimedia smart phone , users are certainly going to use the phone for much more stuff than plain vanilla calls and sms. The 1000 mAh battery lacks the juice and the phone barely lasts a day. That being said, the talktime depends on your usage.

Conclusion

Pros

• Screen
• 3D S-Class UI
• Build Quality
• Multimedia Support
• Music Quality
• Camera
• 8 GB In-built memory
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• FM radio with transmitter
• Data Transfer Speed
• Plenty of Connectivty options

Cons

• Smaller Screen
• Lack of microUSB port
• Memory Card slot under battery cover.
• Video Recording format is .3gp

check out our extensive photo gallery

• LG Arena Preview -- Music Playback
• LG Arena KM900 going to be announced at MWC 2009
• LG Arena crosses one million sales worldwide
• LG Arena KM900 Photo Gallery starring Nokia 5800 , Apple iPhone and iPod
• Blackberry Storm Preview

F-Secure have released their latest  F-Secure Mobile Security software. it will help make your smartphone safe for today’s connected life and protects your important data against mobile malware.

it’s features include:

• Anti-theft
• Anti-virus
• Anti-spyware
• Firewall
• Automatic Updates
• Light and Efficient

The F-Secure Mobile Security can be purchased or downloaded for trying out for a limited period. To purchase the full-version of the software, it costs 29.95 British Pounds which is around 56 US Dollars or 39 Euros or Rs2500.

F-Secure Mobile Security Official Site

The company states F-Secure Mobile Security is better than the offerings of it’s competitors due to the following features:

• Firewall, Anti-virus and Anti-spyware provides comprehensive protection
• Anti-theft lets you remotely lock your phone and wipe off the data. You can open the remote lock if you get it back.

None Found