Apple iPhone 4 – Successor to the popular iPhone 3GS

At June 7^th after a series of highly speculation and widely publicized leaks, Apple officially announced iPhone 4 the successor to the extremely popular iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 4 is this year’s effort, and overall, it’s a corker. Not everyone will be a fan of the iPhone’s new industrial look and feel. But I think iPhone 4 feels like a truly premium product, on a par with expensive designer handsets such as those made by Virtue. The iPhone 4 is certainly no exception -- in fact, it may be Apple's most successful launch yet.

The Apple iPhone 4 is everything that a new piece of technology should be. It's innovative, attractive, and ahead of its competition. It is the thinnest smartphone in the world, measuring 0.37 inch deep with the highest resolution display ever built into a phone handset. Its special “retina display” has four times the resolution of the iPhone 3GS, and Apple claims the pixels are so small that they can’t be detected by the human eye. That means that icons, text and pictures are pin-sharp on iPhone 4, with crisp, defined edges – making it significantly better the iPhone 3 GS.

It's just a tiny bit thinner from its left to its right edge, because the flat edges mean effectively less casing around the sides of the screen. The overall design screams elegance - from the rounded, individual volume up and down buttons that replace the plastic volume rocker on the iPhone 3GS to the ring/silent switch and the power/sleep button up top. The face and back are made of glass that is specially treated to withstand scratches and oily fingers, according to Apple. The side edging is aluminum, and doubles as the device's three cellular and wireless antennae.

The iPhone 4 uses Apple's A4 CPU, the same processor powering the Apple iPad, which gives you better performance and impressive battery life. As part of iOS 4, the iPhone 4 gains a bevy of capabilities. One of them--multitasking--feels long overdue, but as with Apple's long-awaited cut-and-paste feature, the company delivers on the promise of making multitasking work smoothly.

The iPhone 4 is the first iPhone to feature a flash on its camera (LED), and it also has a micro SIM slot (to save space for other essential inner workings of the handset). There’s also a front-facing video camera for video calling, so you can see - and be seen - by the person you are speaking to. Called FaceTime, it's a truly revolutionary advance in technology. The main camera is the subject of a “whole new camera system” – going from 3- to 5-megapixels, the camera also features a backside illuminated sensor which increases the quality of images shot in low-light. The camera also gains an LED flash, a backlit sensor, and an integrated 5X zoom. The camera now lets you shoot in high-def, at 720p, 30 frames per second; in addition, video gains the tap-to-focus feature already available on the camera.

If we are talking about the connectivity, iOS 4 adds persistent W-Fi, which means the iPhone 4 will stay connected to a hot spot even when it's in standby mode. This could have a negative effect on battery life so we'll be watching. With wake-on wireless, the handset promises to wake from standby when it comes in range of a cellular network. It's not something we were asking for, but we'll take it. Lastly, there's now support for using a Bluetooth keyboard. We haven't had the opportunity to test this feature yet.

So we can say that unlike the 3G and 3GS, the Apple iPhone 4 delivers the lip-smacking sense of anticipation of the original iPhone, and beats that handset for wow factor.

Sony Ericsson Elm - Great Value Mobile Phone

The stylish new Sony Ericsson Elm is a great value mobile phone, which is made out of recycled materials and comes with minimal packaging, is a feature phone that has a lot of the features you’d expect with a high-end smartphone, such as Wi-Fi, 3G, email, apps etc – just without the hefty price tag. Or we can say that, Sony Ericsson Elm is a new member of the Sony Ericsson Greenheart family of devices, handsets that have been produced to deliver a high quality user experience using products and materials that have a lower impact on the environment.

The design of the Elm follows Sony Ericsson’s new human shape design, first seen in the Vivaz and the Xperia X10. Flat on the front with a lovely curve to it at the back, the Elm actually looks great and is really comfortable to use. Furthermore, one can access photos, videos, music and movies via the fantastic Xross Media Bar. They’re stored on the 280MB internal memory, which can be expanded via the MicroSD card slot. 

If you are talking about the multimedia capabilities of the handset, like the phone features Sony's XMB (XrossMediaBrowser) making music, videos and photos easy to browse. It groups things together well, so dive into photos and you not only have the local device photos, but you can also access your Facebook photos there, as well as other web services that you can configure – Flickr , Blogger and Picasa.

The handset comes with GPRS and EDGE connections, both of which are class 10 in conjunction with both microUSB and blue tooth connections. Internet access is available through these handsets inclusion of both HSDPA and Wi-Fi connections that provide the means to access the web at speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps.

Another cool aspect of the Elm is that you can upgrade its storage capabilities to 8GB, which makes ample room for music, video and documents – although this will cost you. The Elm boasts both a high quality 5.0 Megapixel, enhanced by Sony-standard, high-quality Carl Zeiss lens, which includes auto focus and an LED flash. The light can also be used for video recording in low level lighting conditions. Face and smile detection are supported, and the built in GPS chip allows captured images to be geotagged.

The Elm’s excellent music player offers support on a large variety of file formats, including MP3 and AAC. Another big audio application, and new to a non-Walkman handset, is SensMe also included in this handset. SensMe scans your music collection and generates play lists according to a song’s tempo and mood, taking the hassle out of listening to music to that fits your mood. The device also offers video playback, with support for H.263, H.264 and MP4 playback, as well as a You Tube application.

Alcatel OT-808 – Phone with Notebook Look

Alcatel releases another entry-level handset with the Alcatel OT-808 that has a notebook look and feel which should throw anyone off. In another words, we can say that, OT-808 is a clamshell, a style not used as often now as it once was. But this is a clamshell with a difference: a small, slender square shape that resembles a handbag powder compact. This has its benefits and disadvantages. While the square shape allows more room for a strong QWERTY keyboard, it's not comfortable to use. Due to its compactness, there are no designated numeric keys; instead, pressing the shift key turns the left-hand side of the keyboard into keys 0-9, but this is only a minor irritation.

The phone supports a 61mm (2.4-inch) screen and blue-backlit keyboard. Built-in widgets include a calculator, an organizer, a currency converter and a voice recorder. It's an MP3 player and FM radio too. There's a 2-megapixel still and video camera which doubles as a webcam, streaming audio and video to the Internet. It supports microSD up to 8GB and plays H.263 and MPEG-4 video.

Other specs of the OT-808 include social networking integration, e-mail, instant messaging and the Opera Mini Browser, which is about the only real game going in the dumb phone mobile browsing space. Otherwise, you’re looking at the usual features including Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, an integrated FM radio and dual-band GSM connectivity.

A thin strip of an OLED display on the outside of the phone keeps you alerted to missed calls and new text messages. The internal display is an adequate 2.4 inches and is vibrant and colorful. That screen makes internet pages clear, with quite a large amount of content displayed. The superb Opera Mini browser is preloaded, so you will get web pages especially optimized for mobile that load quicker and show you more of the page. Unfortunately, though, you have to rely on slow EDGE access speeds.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz - Multimedia Expectations

The first thing you’ll notice about Sony Ericsson Vivaz, and most definitely appreciate is that it is sleek, elegant phone with a curved design across the whole phone. Sony Ericsson calls it ‘human curvature’ and we found it most pleasing.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the Japanese-Swedish tech team’s latest handset running on the Symbian S60 v5 platform, replete with snazzy 8.1 megapixel camera and HD video recording, supporting autofocus, with touch focus, face and smile detection and geotagging.. Essentially a successor to the 12MP-packing Sony Ericsson Satio, it’s been billed as the latest in a long line of cool camera-phones from the mobile manufacturer. The main focus of the Vivaz is easy sharing of user generated content, high quality video and images, which can be shared via messaging and the web with family, friends, and anyone else. The open platform also allows users to personalize their entertainment experience by downloading great applications through PlayNow™ and the Symbian Developer Community.

At a relatively small 52x12.5x107mm and weighing lightweight 97g, this device is umber pocketable, yet doesn’t skimp when it comes to the display, serving up a 3.2inch, 360x640 pixels TFT touchscreen.  The Vivaz is shorter, narrower, slightly slimmer which weighs only ninety seven grams & its overall measurements are 10.7cm tall by 5.2cm wide by 1.25cm deep. This handset is easy to hold, carry & use, due to its neat size & overall shape of the casing, making it much easier on a trouser or jacket pocket.

We mentioned media as another plus point - this is mostly down to Sony Ericsson adding in a 3.5mm headphone jack into the mix. It's the second phone the brand has done this with (the first being the W995) and is a real plus point, seeing as it was missing on the Satio.

This gorgeous looking Smartphone comes in a wide selection of colours which include a cosmic black, galaxy blue, venus ruby & a moon silver version. The touch screen has a screen resolution of three hundred & sixty pixels by six hundred & forty pixels & the user can view up to sixteen million colours on this clear touch screen. There are three keys located just below the touch screen which are neatly built in to the casing to enhance both the overall design & usability, as the user can access their call keys with ease.

The device is a quad band GSM phone for complete roaming coverage in all GSM countries and for data the Vivaz utilises HSPA, with uploads at up to 2Mbps and downloads at up to 10.2Mbps supported on the phone. Class 10 GPRS and EDGE support backs this up when outside 3G coverage, and the handset also includes WiFi 802.11 b/g with support for DLNA which should mean integrating your device into an already existing WLAN should be a simple process. For local connectivity the Vivaz supports Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, and there is, almost uniquely for a Sony Ericsson device, a MicroUSB port for connecting to a PC.

Messaging was also pretty good - the screen is smaller than other phones out there, and the resistive screen can be hard to text on, but overall using the phone in landscape mode made for some pretty swift messaging - and push Exchange email from RoadSync is pretty handy as well.