The latest phones and gadgets tested and reviewed in our labs
Here is a Silicone case for the iPhone 4 that protects your device against Germs and Bacteria . It also offers protects the phone from scratches. Meet the SteriTouch iPhone 4 Silicon Case
Continue reading “Proporta iPhone 4 Silicon with SteriTouch Review”
When we set out to write the Nokia N8 review on FoneArena, we wanted to bring you a diverse, all-encompassing, balanced opinion of the first Symbian^3 device and the long time coming imaging flagship from the Finnish manufacturer. We were lucky to have had review units sent to many of our team members and that’s how, all throughout last week, we took you through a full Nokia N8 review from 6 different writers, each one discussing a certain aspect of it.Our team members in India, USA, UK , Europe and Middle-East contributed to this review.
We all hope you enjoyed the way we handled this review and plan to bring you more of the same in the future. I will be wrapping it up today and sharing some pros and cons, based on our previous coverage of the device, so that you can decide for yourself.
With the hardware review of the LG Optimus GT540 done, it’s time to take a look at the software on the Optimus
The LG Optimus runs the Android v1.6 OS. Wait a minute did I say 1.6? yeah I did! Why 1.6? Well I don’t know why did LG arm this rather good device such an archaic version of the OS. This is a factor that will hurt the sales as the Samsung Galaxy 3 & 5 have Eclair running on them. In fact this version of the OS relegates to the level of the Indian manufacturers’ offerings. Certainly LG above them. I, however, hope that there is an update hiding in the works.
Being a resistive screen device, the top status bar, which houses the notifications and more, is absolutely hard to get a hold of. I found this to be quite an irritating factor and was quite put off with it.
The homescreen on the LG, is bland at best. With hardly any custom UI layer, the plain vanilla is anything but cool. LG could have definitely ported some of their S Class homescreen UI onto the Optimus, it would have really helped the Android OS a lot.
On the flipside, the LG Optimus we got, came with a lot of apps pre-installed, and the best part – all of these apps are which one needs and are not available by default in Android. I’m referring to the Advanced Task Killer and many more such apps. This is a great move by LG and certainly going to pamper the Optimus user.
Cool Iris implementation of the Android OS makes the gallery on the LG Optimus stand out and look pretty. This is one aspect where the Optimus simply blows other non-Android phones out of the water!
One thing that put me off the Android was the lack of support to anything but @gmail.com email ids. If I have a non @gmail.com id but a Google Apps email id, shouldn’t it have been supported? Bad dog! no donut for you!
The lack of an equalizer is bothering and begs one to wonder why is it not there??? Though Android has not given this feature, why wasn’t it made available by LG? A mid range phone like the Optimus should have had this by default. If an 8k phone has it, why doesn’t the LG? Another aspect which I found rather disturbing was the size of the font displaying the time, it’s SMALL! I felt I was being punished by LG for doing something.
DivX playback out of the box is like godsend! I can’t help but applaud LG for integrating this feature into the Android Optimus. It’s a game changer at this price point. Though the UI seriously needs work, the video player UI is not at all responsive and this seems to be an Android 1.6 problem and not an LG one.
The camera app on the Optimus is pretty decent and the feature set is very good. Now if only the Optimus had a flash!
Google Maps is an amazing app to have and it can be quite a challenge to tackle, but fortunately in the mobile space we have Ovi Maps, which is a potent competitor. Google Maps allows web synchronization, which means that you select and save points on the PC version of the map and when you fire up the maps on the phone, it’s all there.
But given the online nature of Google’s services, one needs an unlimited plan to do all of this.
The video editor on the Optimus was a nice touch and reminded me of the LG BL40. The Social Networking Sites integration is very basic at best. This is the reality across manufacturers and LG is no different. A missed opportunity for LG to showcase how ‘advanced’ the Optimus could have been.
The onscreen QWERTY keypad is quite cramped mainly due to the small screen. Had this been a physical keypad, the story would have been the opposite.
Moving onto the web browser, it’s slow. I had the Dell Streak with me during the same time and having tested the browsers on both, I found that it took a considerable amount of time for a page to load on the Optimus. The browser on the Optimus definitely needs tweaking.
The calendar on the Optimus allows for Google calendar syncing, which can be described in one word – wOOt! (Like you didn’t know Google calendar)
The Gmail client on the Optimus was good and the ability to view HTML by default was welcome and overall the experience was consistent with the web experience, given the contraints of a small screen.
The apps on the Optimus which you download and install gets listed separately, which is a nice way for you to know what’s a part of the box and what’s not. Good thing to have.
Weather widget is probably the only widget that I liked a lot.
Given all of this I’d give the Optimus a 7/10. The Android based device seemed quite capable of upping it to 8-9 had they done a couple of things – use the latest Android version & 2nd add features that Android does not have natively.
Whilst all this was being tested, we also had a chance to see how good or bad the Optmius fared when it came to battery life. Turns out that the Optimus has a rather good battery life. Heavy Users should be able to pull a bit more than a day… but not a day and a half. Going by how Android device battery life usually is, this is rather good. I’m sure Eclair or Froyo could bump the timings more, let’s hope something happens.
No phone review can be considered over until we’ve tested how good is it. The LG Optimus’s voice clarity is decent, there wasn’t anything different in it, but at the same time LG devices are know to make devices
Hello and welcome everyone to the Nokia N8 Review Week here on Fone Arena! Each day of this week, one of our team members will cover one area of Nokia’s imaging flagship with all the do’s and dont’s. This should make for an exciting week and we’re all looking forward to that! Today is Sunday, my name is Rita El Khoury and I’m going to tell you about the Nokia N8 connectivity and what you can expect of it. Enjoy reading along and if you have any questions on that matter, leave a comment!
Continue reading “Nokia N8 Review Week – Day 7 – Connectivity”
Hello and Welcome to N8 Review Week here on FoneArena! Each day of this week, one of our team members will cover one area of Nokia’s imaging flagship with all the do’s and dont’s. This should make for an exciting week and we’re all looking forward to that! Today is Saturday, my name is Sloan Bowman, and I will be covering the N8’s Phone, Messaging and Email features . Enjoy reading along and if you have any questions please feel free to comment.
Continue reading “Nokia N8 Review Week – Day 6 – Phone Calls, Messaging, Email”
Hello and welcome everyone to the Nokia N8 Review Week here on Fone Arena! Each day of this week, one of our team members will cover one area of Nokia’s imaging flagship with all the do’s and dont’s. This should make for an exciting week and we’re all looking forward to that! Today is Friday, our names are Jon Choo and Gaurav Hasabnis, and we have joined hands to tell you about the Nokia N8 apps and what you can expect of it. Enjoy reading along and if you have any questions on that matter, leave a comment!
Continue reading “Nokia N8 Review Week – Day 5 – Apps , Ovi Store and Ovi Maps”
The folks atHyperMac sent us the HyperMac Micro for review. The device serves as a portable charger for the iPhone and iPad. This is one of the most attractive devices we have seen and it does not look like a battery at all unless you get really close. On the inside it packs a 3600mAh battery which promises to recharge your iPhone 4 upto 3 times. It also works with the iPad but only extends the life by about 5 hours. That’s fine because the iPad packs a monstrous battery which won’t event charge via normal USB port. We are more interested about how this device works with the iPhone and it worked pretty well.
Continue reading “Review : HyperMac Micro Portable Battery Charger for Apple iPhone and iPad”
Hello and welcome everyone to the Nokia N8 Review Week here on FoneArena! Each day of this week, one of our team members will cover one area of Nokia’s imaging flagship with all the do’s and dont’s. This should make for an exciting week and we’re all looking forward to that! Today is Thursday, my name is Sandeep Sarma, and I will be covering the N8’s multimedia features . Enjoy reading along and if you have any questions please feel free to comment. Continue reading “Nokia N8 Review Week – Day 4 – Multimedia”
Hello and welcome everyone to the Nokia N8 Review Week here on Fone Arena! Each day of this week, one of our team members will cover one area of Nokia’s imaging flagship with all the do’s and dont’s. This should make for an exciting week and we’re all looking forward to that! Today is Wednesday, our names are Rita El Khoury and Sloan Bowman, and we have joined forces to tell you about the Nokia N8 software and what you can expect of it. Since the software/UI is a very objective and personal matter, we thought we would give you two real-world opinions of it, sometimes we’ll agree, other times we’ll have radically opposing impressions. Enjoy reading along and if you have any questions on that matter, leave a comment!
After tackling the Hardware and Camera in the previous days, two aspects where the Nokia N8 excels by anyone’s standards, we come to the most controversial aspect of the N8, the software or Symbian^3 and its UI. Symbian^3 is the first major software leap since Nokia brought S60 5th Edition on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Upon introduction, Symbian^3 was described as an evolutional not revolutional progression, meant to fix all the major issues that plagued Symbian’s first iteration with a touchscreen UI, and which were most heartfelt on the Nokia N97. Continue reading “Nokia N8 Review Week – Day 3 – Symbian^3 And UI”
Hello and welcome everyone to the Nokia N8 Review Week here on FoneArena! Each day of this week, one of our team members will cover one area of Nokia’s imaging flagship with all the do’s and dont’s. This should make for an exciting week and we’re all looking forward to that! Today is Tuesday, my name is Sandeep Sarma, and I will be covering the N8’s camera . Enjoy reading along and if you have any questions please feel free to comment.
Hello and welcome everyone to the Nokia N8 Review Week here on Fone Arena! Each day of this week, one of our Team members will cover one area of Nokia’s imaging flaghsip with all the do’s and dont’s. This should make for an exciting week and we’re all looking forward to that! Today is monday, my name is Michael Hell, and i’ll tell you a bit about the Nokia N8 hardware and what you can expect of it. Enjoy reading along and if you have any questions on that matter, leave a comment! Continue reading “Nokia N8 Review Week – Day 1 – Hardware”
Presenting a review of the BlackBerry Torch 9800 for AT&T
When you think of BlackBerry the first thought that comes to your mind is either email or full qwerty keyboard. The last thing that users think about is touch screen and user interface. For years BlackBerry has been known for their stellar solutions that provide seamless push service like email, web , contacts, and calendar all in a small productive device. Each year new devices come out typically with minor enhancements to adjust from any user complaints from the previous models. Very rarely do we see an entirely new form factor from the Canadian company Research In Motion. The latest change that was arguably a success was the BlackBerry Storm which boasted a new technology named surepress, allowing users to feel the screen click as they pressed on the user interface elements. The Storm may be popular by volume but it wasn’t the game changing device that BlackBerry wanted it to be. Continue reading “BlackBerry Torch 9800 Review”
I’ve been recently hooked up with the Samsung Galaxy S by the friendly people of Vodafone Austria’s press department, anxious to see if this Phone lives up to its hype. I know quite a lot of people who talk good things about it, so i just had to find out what all the fuzz is about. I’ve had quite some Experience with Android before, spanning from the T-Mobile G1, over the HTC Hero, Acer BeTouch E110 to my current HTC Desire, which i bought when i switched providers. While i always loved HTC for the good specs and it’s Sense UI (yes i love that), i usually had a hard time with their Entertainment Hardware, meaning camera, speakers and overall Multimedia Compabilities. Of course, the last term can be improved massively with Apps from the Market, but none of the other. Wit that, and my huge background with Nokia Devices, i went out and tested the Galaxy S for about 2 weeks now and here’s what i thought about it. Keep in mind, those are my personal opinions, which might differ from your own.
Spot poll: Who doesn’t like some new gear, especially when the new pieces of bling sport the bitten fruit logo ‘round the back? This week, A Byte of Apple takes a long hard look (see our Exclusive Photo gallery as well) at the 2010 lineup of iPods – the nano, the touch and the shuffle – and this what we came back with. If you’ve been putting off the decision to pick one of these babies up, this should seal the deal for you! Continue reading “A Byte of Apple : 2010 iPods Reviewed!”
A few days ago we had the LG Optimus arrive at our office for review and we even had an unboxing of the LG Optimus.
The LG Optimus is an inexpensive Android offering from LG, designed to fit into that sweet spot of sub 15k price point. This after all the spot at which the smartphone market starts looking competitive, very much like the 600cc engine segment in motorcycles. At this point one expects almost everything – smartphone OS, big camera, touchscreen/QWERTY, WiFi, GPS, etc. Continue reading “LG Optimus GT540 Review: Hardware”
