No Nokia N96 review worth its salt would be complete without referring to its spiritual daddy, the hugely popular Nokia N95. The Nokia N96 offers similar features and a similar form factor to the N95, but with a much more mature platform (in other words, unlike the N95, it actually works without crashing!). However, it's not, apparently, designed as the N95's successor (largely because the N95 is still on sale!) Rather, it's a video and mobile TV phone that just happens to include much of the N95's functionality!
However, whereas the N95 was a revolutionary phone, the N96 is more evolutionary. The features of the N96 aren't as world-shattering as they were when they first appeared a year earlier on the N95, leading some to question whether it was actually a boring phone.
Boring? GPS, 5 megapixel camera, mobile TV, video, HSDPA, WiFi, etc., etc., and we call that boring?! The N95 really did set the bar high!
Still, if you're going to buy a new mobile phone, you need to know whether it's going to be the phone for you. Only one way to find out - read on for our comprehensive Nokia N96 review!
Samsung have announced the new Samsung P960 mobile TV phone. Rather than being destined for the South Korean market, though, as Samsung's previoius mobile TV phones have tended to be, the new P960 is aimed fairly and sqaurely at Europe, with Samsung proudly boasting that the P960 supports both the Euopean mobile TV standards (Digital Video Broadcast - Convergence of Broadcast and Mobile Service (DVB-CBMS) and Open Mobile Alliance Mobile Broadcast Service Enabler Suite (OMA-BCAST), in case you were wondering!)
The Samsung P960 is a slider, and you'll be pleased to know that it has a few other tricks up its sleeve, too. An MP3 player with Bang and Olufsen amp, for example, a three megapixel camera, and a plethora of nifty mobile TV features, such as Tivo-esque time shifting and Picture In Picture (although quite how you see a miniaturised view of a TV programme on a screen that's already only 2.6" in size is anyone's guess!)
More details and pictures of the Samsung P960 after the jump.
The Samsung Soul is the first mobile phone review I've done in a while, but I felt it deserved more coverage as it's an intriguing mobile phone. Not only does it look stunning (which is a nice new trend that Samsung have managed to keep up throughout their entire Ultra range of mobile phones, of which the Soul is set to be the last), but it comes with some cracking features as well.
The Samsung Soul is the flagship phone for Samsung for 2008, so you'd expect it to be feature-rich, but feature-rich and good looking? That takes some doing!
The question is, how well do the features on the Samsung Soul work? Read on to find out with our comprehensive Samsung Soul review.
Samsung's latest flagship phone, the Samsung Soul, is now on sale at the Carphone Warehouse. The Soul, in case you've forgotten, is set to be the last in Samsung's glorious Ultra range of mobile phones, and quite possibly the best of the entire range as well. Featuring a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, image stabilizer and face detection, the Soul is right up there amongst the best of all camera phones.
Better still, it offers HSDPA for super-fast data transfers, a Bang & Olufsen-powered MP3 player, FM radio, and superb OLED keypad that makes the Soul one of the best looking mobile phones on the market today. So, fantastic features, great looks, and a cracking price of £35 per month. Seriously, what are you waiting for?!
Posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm by Mike Evans
Filed under
Apple,
News,
iPhone
Just when you thought the Apple iPhone hype had died down, we have surprising news that there are no more 8GB iPhones on sale in the UK. Carphone Warehouse has completely run out of stock, all online stores are telling their affiliates not to promote it anymore (no point, really, as there aren't any to sell!), O2 only have a few more left in their stores, and no more additional stock is expected. What's going on? Is this the end of the iPhone in the UK?...
Sony Ericsson have launched two new phones, and for once, they're not CyberShot or Walkman phones! The Sony Ericsson G502 (above) and Z780 are low to mid-range phones that are similar to the Nokia 5320 and 5220 in that they bring super-fast HSDPA connectivity down to an affordable level. Although both phones are different in appearance, they're very similar underneath, offering 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, HSDPA and Google maps already installed.
The Z780 is the slightly more advanced model, though, in that it comes with aGPS, letting you navigate easily across Google Maps (either road view or satellite view). It also comes with a weather application that takes advantage of the high speed Internet connectivity and built-in GPS to tell you what the weather will be like in your area for the next three days.
Neither model will set the world on fire, but in terms of good quality phones with a good range of quality features, all for an affordable price, they'll be hard to beat. With the addition of HSDPA, they're also another indication of how the mobile Web is steadily coming of age.
More details and pictures of the Sony Ericsson G502 and Z780 after the jump.
Nokia have announced the new Nokia 5320 and 5220 Xpress Music phones. The Nokia Xpress Music range has traditionally been pitched at the lower end of the market, and the new 5320 and 5220 are no exception, selling for between 160 - 220 Euros. What is exceptional, though, is the quality of the features that Nokia has been good enough to squeeze into them. Not only do you get a dedicated music device with 3.5" headphone jack and dedicated audio chip for superior sound quality, but with the 5320, you also get HSDPA for super-fast downloads of your music direct to the phone.
As if all that wasn't enough, you can also install the N-Gage platform to take advantage of the new range of games that Nokia are selling under the N-Gage brand, and storage of up to 8GB.
More details of the Nokia 5320 and 5220 mobile phones after the jump.
Samsung have launched the new Samsung Soul, a new mobile phone from the company that actually has a name, rather than an awkward array of seemingly arbitrary letters and numbers (who could forget the charmingly-named Samsung SGH-P310 for example?!). Samsung chose the name Soul as it stands for "Spirit Of ULtra" (yes, really!), and it apparently "honours the completion of its exclusive 'Ultra Edition' series." Not entirely sure why "soul" denotes the end of something, but it does imply that this will be the last in the extremely successful and highly-rated Ultra Edition range of phones, thereby paving the way for an ever better crop of phones from Samsung for the rest of the year
The Soul is Samsung's new flagship phone, meaning it's a high-end monster packed full of features. Better still, continuing Samsung's recent theme, these aren't just gimmicks - each feature is designed to work and work really well, rather than just acting as padding for the spec list.
More pics and full details of the Samsung Soul after the jump.
Posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 8:23 pm by Mike Evans
Filed under
LG KF700
LG have launched the new LG-KF700, a new touchscreen mobile phone that comes with no less than three different input methods. In case the touchscreen wasn't enough for you, you can also use an alphanumeric keypad or a shortcut dial. Which, if you think about it, is a bit odd. If the touchscreen is up to scratch, you shouldn't need the other two forms of input. It's like adding a high-tech Tiptronic gearbox to a car, and then bolting on both a manual and an automatic gearbox just for good measure!
LG's reasoning is that not everyone likes a touchscreen. We realize that touchscreens are a wonderful advancement, but they are not the solution for every problem or every user," said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company. "We looked beyond just touch when designing the LG-KF700 and studied how people actually use their phones. The LG-KF700's three separate input methods provide unmatched convenience and mean that users don't have to give up anything to gain a touchscreen."
But surely the idea of a touchscreen is that you give up the older forms of input becaus ethe newer one (the touchscreen) is actually much better? In other words, you're not actually giving anything up, you're gaining an enhanced experience. Just ask an iPhone owner. No matter what you think of the Jesus Phone, its touchscreen interface is almost universally loved (at least for standard numeric input and menu navigation).
Forgive me for being cynical, but this seems a bit like a tacit admission by LG that its toucshcreens aren't all that good, and are a bit, well clunky.
But enough of the cynicism. More details of the LG-KF700 after the jump.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 is one of the most-anticipated new smartphones to come from Sony Ericsson in years. Previous smartphones from the company focused on their P-range, with the P900 and its successors perhaps the most well-known. Although these have always been well-regarded, I've also found them a bit too fiddly to use. You either had to rely on stylus-based hand-writing recognition, which only recognized a single character at a time, or a keyboard so small only a 5 year old child could use.
The Xperia X1 changes all that, as it comes with a slide out keyboard similar to other manufacturers' smartphones (such as HTC's range or the Nokia E90). Better still, Sony Ericsson have had the good sense of stuffing the X1 with every conceivable feature they could think of!
Read on for a sneak preview of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 in action.
