Sony Ericsson Idou: 12 Megapixel Phone

Sony Ericsson Idou from GSM Arena on Vimeo.

But can you type with just your left thumb if you are eating your burger with your right hand, as you can with BB Bold?

Skyfire

If you really want to have a great browser, then get Skyfire. Shame they don't make one for Blackberrys. But they have just made one for Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Touch screen Nokias

Well it is better late than never Nokia. Why did it take them so long to get on the bandwagon?

But look at the clip closely, and you can see that his fingers slip. And that is the whole problem. It is not as easy as he makes it look.

I think that they should have a grid on top of the screen on which you can tap first, then the machine knows that that is the area you want to touch. You can then make it smaller or bigger and move it around to select in more detail. Just an idea that popped into my head.

I returned both the Storm and HTC, and Xperia devices, because even for someone small like me, it was hard to scroll without a ball like there is on G-1.

Revo Pico RadioStation: The Definitive Multi-Format Portable Radio

I used to be a short wave buff. I used to sit with my dad and listened to the BBC World Service, when all those horrible things were going on in Iran. And then I love good quality sound. So I bought a standard DAB radio. But if you find that you are stuck behind your computer, because it has tuned into stations like 1.FM Dance forever, then you need this baby below. Maybe they will put Short Wave in it as well one day.



PICO RadioStation is the ultimate incarnation of our multi award-winning PICO portable digital radio, and is capable of providing reception of a variety of radio formats including DAB and DAB+, internet radio and conventional FM.

Samsung NV100HD - 14.5 mega pixels and instant HDTV pictures

I am a Samsung fan. I love the company. They give you so much more for your money than the Jap equivalents. And it is not as if they make the same but cheaper, but they do make some major advances. Look at the NV11 camera with its innovative buttons. So much to do, and can do, and you do not have wheels to turn etc.

But as usual I spend my time reading other reviewers who take a cynical view of innovation. Most of the reviews of the new NV100HD are bad. I don't think one of their bad comments are valid. It is not heavy. It is light and very small. It is very bright, and the pictures are amazing.

Now many people who buy DSLRs have to defend the fact that they have coughed up at least £500 or three times the price of this 14.5 megapixel baby. The reviewers will tell you that you don't need it. But you do if you have a Samsung Full HD TV. This is how easy it is to impress people. Imagine a camera the size of your fingers. You shut off the flash, and you take pictures of your friends and family quietly. Then you drop it into the cradle and sit there with the remote control on a 50 inch massive high definition tv. How does that strike you?

Well folks that is what this little wonder can do. And nothing else can do it right now. Not at Full HD. I am not going into the other stuff it can do, I am just being really practical. Well maybe one other geeky thing. This camera has multifocus and the high pixel count means that you can really edit things afterwards. So buy a Samsung TV and this camera and you have an instant set up with no software or computers in the way, and later on when you are editing photos you can really zoom in because it is whopping 14.5 mega pixels but it is small and quite thin.

Superb.

From Blackberry Storm to Blackberry Bold again

Crazy isn't it. I have now done a full circle. A while back, I was really wound up on the new Bold. When it came, it looked enormous compared to my 8310. But now a bunch of new phones later, I can see where the designers are going.

The bold is bigger, but it is easier on the fingers, and the screen is not a compromise compared to the Storm. What the Storm lacks is cursor control. Actually I saw a colleague at work, who had just got a Google Phone or the G-1, and that have a roller ball. That is what the Storm should have done. Fiddling around on the screen with your fingers is useless. With a scroll, it can land on the smallest button or link, and make it work. Try hitting a small link with your finger. Now with the phones that have styluses like the Palm Treo Pro it is ok, but there you have other problems with the browsers and the email.

So the Bold wins big time. It does not have touch screen, but you need it, as much as you need touch screen on your computer. The email, and the browser, and in particular two particular add-ons are really neat. Read on.

Google Sync is a cool tool if you want to truly release the mobile phone from the computer. Actually come to think of it, I have not connected my new Bold to the PC and etc. Why? Because I just downloaded Google Synch and all my Gmail contacts and appointments were synchronized over the air. And speaking of Over The Air or OTA, this is where Blackberry is really winning. The OTA software make the Blackberry mobiles truly independent.

And the very best OTA software has to be the Opera Mini. Download that into the Blackberry Bold 9000 and you have a superb mix. WOW! Now you don't have that error I spotted and posted all over the net. The one where the text does not indent automatically when posting on bulletin boards or forums. Opera opens another window, you edit it and it just posts it in the forum box. Superb. Especially if you are addicted to Newsnow.co.uk.

So there you have it. If you want to Blog and post on the web and don't want to use a computer, you can do it in a Blackberry Bold 9000. And the best network, with the most helpful people are the folks at Vodafone. They have put up with all my switching. Hats off to all of you.

From Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 to Blackberry Storm 9500

So in the video, Kevin visited four sites, NYTimes.com, WSJ.com, CrackBerry.com and ArsTechnica, he made certain that both phones had Javascript enabled. The results were as follows: NYTimes.com - iPhone 3G wins, WSJ.com - BlackBerry Storm wins, CrackBerry.com - BlackBerry Storm wins ArsTechnica - BlackBerry Storm wins.

My saga continues. Oh lord, when will I finally settle down, and be content. The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 turned out to be really good for music. Those panes are a joke, as you cannot customize them. You can get a couple more at the Windows site. But the whole point was to put your own links, and I could not do that. The Vodafone Business Email sucked bad. I called Vodafone and they said they do not support it for the X1. And finally the internet browsing was slow, and jammed all the time, such that I had to soft boot it all the time. Oh also, that metalic keyboard reflects unwanted light that makes it really hard to type in day light. So that was that, and it had to go back.

Now I asked them about the new Storm, and whether that Business Email was supported, and they said that that is supported by BB themselves. So they arranged an exchange within the 14 day trial. So folks I have now the new Storm.

My first impressions are not completely great. There is a marketing con going on with the BlackBerry Storm right now. The ad clearly states that you press on the button, it turns red, and you feel a response. Now wait a minute. It makes you think that you feel the button or the button that glows red. The fact is that you do not feel the button. You feel the whole glass move down. So the way to use the device is to move your finger over the button you want, and unlike the iPhone you do not type a letter that you did not want. But what you get is a moment to see if the red glow is going to go on another button, just in case your finger is too fat, and then you press the glass down. So the BB ad department is out of line.

So what does the typing experience feel like with avid Bloggers like me. Well the large screen is great. I can see a lot, and zoom into the pages nicely in page or column format. The trouble begins when you try to tap on a link that is on a list of other links. The software is so clever that it zooms in until the button is as big as the whole screen, and then it can be selected. Now if you use the cursor on the Blackberry Curve, it will just select the link and then you press the pearl. It is so much faster, and you do not have your own finger in the way of the area you are looking at. I think the next version of Storm should have a pearl on it, so that you can do both if you want to.

The sound is fantastic, and the cut and paste is really neat. I am still struggling trying to get all the applications to run. Also the battery needs a couple or so full discharges to get good. It really needs a beefier battery, but then the weight comes in. I like it being a bit big. It is not flimsy and feels as if it will last a long time. The leather pouch has stitches that are not done too well, such that pieces of leather get caught on the buttons as you are sliding it in, lifting the buttons and tearing them off. So I squeezed the sides to make it loose, and I think I messed up the contact, and so it does not open the email as soon as I pull the body out of the pouch. Then one other thing. Let's say you want to delete a whole bunch of emails which you have already read on the web, then what. You need to go through each one. On the curve or WM 6.1 device you just run your fingers over the lines and click mark opened. That is not there.

All of this in just two days. I hope someone can benefit from this report so far.