Introduction & Positioning

It is a little early to judge Sony Ericsson’s attempt to reach a larger market by creating smartphones running on different operating systems. However, this approach produced a larger range of devices than Sony Ericsson used to have in the past and has spawned some interesting phones.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not write this article without often referring to the other two X-series devices running Google’s Android OS – X10 and X10 mini, so let me apologise for this from the beginning.

Today I’ll take a look at the “professional” version of the X10 mini. This is one of the two “mini” versions that complete the series along with their big brother – the X10. Hence the name – X10 mini pro, which some may find a little… boring to say frankly. The only notable differences between X10 mini and X10 mini pro are the size and usability of the keyboard. So, let’s begin.

Design, Size & Controls

Sony Ericsson is trying to make the most out of the design used in X10. And when you look at X10 mini pro, you are likely to get mixed impressions. The design itself remains simple and clean, which in some people’s eyes is seen as an advantage, however the appearance of the sliding QWERTY keyboard has altered the device’s size for the worse. Sony Ericsson ended up with a device with small length and width that looks and feels a little…. chubby!

Similarly to X10 and X10 mini, this device has three functional keys on the front panel. Along with the earphone and the ambient light sensor these keys complete the… let’s call it ‘simplistic’ front side.

Power button and a 3.5mm audio jack are placed on the top side the phone. The audio jack is combined with the interface used in Sony Ericsson’s headsets to provide control for the device’s music functions.

The microphone and a loop for the wrist band are located on the bottom side.

On the right side you will find the volume controls and the camera button. Both these buttons are well placed and easy to use. On the left side we see the microUSB slot that is used for both charging the device and connecting it to a computer with the provided cable. However this microUSB slot is poorly placed to say the least. It sticks out from the phone casing and can be felt by your hand when you hold the device, no matter which hand you hold it with.

And lastly, on the back of the device along with Sony Ericsson’s logo and the XPERIA sign, we have the camera, LED flash and the phone’s single speaker.

Display

The phone has a 240×320 pixel TFT capacitive screen. Even though it does have a small diagonal (due to the small size of the phone), its quality is far from perfect and individual pixels are clearly visible. Apart from the resolution, there is another problem caused by the display. And I think that this is the first major disadvantage of the phone. X10 mini pro runs on Android 1.6, which supports only a limited number of colors. Colors look “washed out” and that, combined with a mediocre brightness, makes the screen feel much cheaper than the device’s price and market position suggest.

Keypad

Here is where things turn for the better – this is the Mini Pro’s main advantage over the X10 mini and in some respect even to its big brother X10 itself, since it does not have a keyboard either. With the sliding keyboard closed, when you hold the device in your hand you can’t avoid feeling awkward and trying to see what’s wrong. However, as soon as you slide the keyboard open and hold the phone with both hands you realize the difference. The keyboard itself is slightly small and keys seem squeezed together. Still, both the actual usability and the feeling from using the keyboard are exactly the opposite since it is much easier than some might think to enter text with it and the feedback from pressing the keys is more than just good. It almost gives you the impression of a much more expensive device.

Getting used to the small size of the keyboard will not take more than a couple of days and after that you will find that entering text and using the phone with the keyboard open is more than just another option, it’s more the only logical option for using this device.

Battery

The phone uses BST-38 battery with a nominal capacity of just 970 mAh. However, due to the small screen and impressive work done on power consumption, the battery manages to keep the phone running for a couple of days when you use most of its features and capabilities.

Memory & Memory Cards

X10 Mini Pro comes with a little more than 150 MB of internal memory available to the user, as pre-installed applications take up some space.

The phone supports microSD cards and does have a “hot-swapping” ability since the card is placed under the battery cover but thankfully not under the battery itself.

Connectivity

The device supports all of the ‘usual’ connectivity standards:

Bluetooth. All the profiles needed to use the device in almost every possible mode are supported here, except one. Although their big brother the X10 can send and receive files over Bluetooth, this functionality is not available in X10 Mini Pro and X10 Mini.

Wi-Fi. The module supports b/g networks and manages to connect to them easily and stay connected without problems.

USB. The microUSB slot allows the device to be connected to a computer to transfer files through the mass-storage mode or to be synchronized as a normal Android phone. It supports USB 2.0 and the transfer speeds reach up to 4 Mbp/s, which is quite impressive for a device of this kind.

Camera

The phone comes with a 5 MPx camera which is a bit of a mishmash. Let me explain what I mean.

Most, if not all, Android phones are not even close to capturing more than just decent pictures if that. Sony Ericsson’s phones tend to break this “tradition” and all of the X10 devices produce pictures that on one hand are better than most Android phones, on the other hand though, they lag behind the solutions offered by Sony Ericsson itself in other, even lower price segments.

The camera in X10 Mini Pro produces acceptable, even good pictures in normal daylight, however the same cannot be said for the images taken in low light conditions or even indoors.

The camera interface does its best to keep the “mixed” impression we mentioned above. It makes the most out of the clever user interface that SE created to make this small screen as usable as possible. Four buttons are located in each corner of the screen and each one of them performs one of the most commonly used camera operations. This applies to both the still image and video modes with the options changing accordingly. However (and here is where the strange part begins), if you need to change any other setting related to the camera, there is no way to do that from the camera application itself. You will have to exit the camera mode, go to the phone Settings menu and there choose the Application Settings.

While personally I cannot find a good reason for this kind of split in available settings, I suppose that Sony Ericsson has its reasons.

There is ONLY one available resolution for still images, which I suppose is the maximum one. In video mode you can select the video resolution to be either 640×480 pixels or smaller and adjust the length in order to send the videos via MMS.

Now that I think of it, all of these shortcomings and strange options destroy the impression made by the camera as a whole.

Entertainment & Social Networking

Apart from the camera, the phone offers all the usual entertainment options of music, video and games with the first two offered in a slightly modified Sony Ericsson version in comparison to the original Android one.

And, of course, there is the Timescape interface. This interface is aimed to combine all communication and social networking features in one place.

Let us start with music and video playback features.

The music player is a redesigned version of the MediaScape interface available on X10, which as a whole is not and will not be made available for both of its “smaller” brothers.

The application itself cannot be found anywhere in the phone menu and can only be launched from the corresponding option on the stand-by screen, which some may find a bit awkward.

Describing the music player as poorly designed would honestly be an understatement. Apart from the fast forward, rewind and, of course, the play/pause keys that appear on the screen, there are few other options. There is an option to display a list of all available tracks and another option to categorise tracks using Smart Playlists – just a clever name for Newly Added, Most Played, Never Played and In Alphabetical Order.

There are no Shuffle or Repeat options to be found anywhere and, most importantly, there is no equalizer of any kind available, not even as a separate application as it is in Sony Ericsson’s S60 5th edition based devices.

So… the music must not be an important feature for Sony Ericsson or they think that it’s not a key feature for the potential buyers of the phone. I can only guess about the first part, but as far as the second goes, I am sure that it is far from being true.

After seeing the X10 Mini Pro’s music player or, I suppose, after reading about it, no one would expect anything radically different from the video playback. And rightly so – there are no surprises there. The video player is nothing more than a list of videos available in the phone memory, both internal and external (memory card), since they are displayed together. Upon user selecting a video to play, the phone starts displaying it and offers just a play/pause button and a progress bar under it. There are no controls to move to the next or previous video.

While playing with the TimeScape UI I found that at least this part of the phone is more or less the same as the X10 and provides all of the options available there.

Unfortunately the phone’s small screen size does not make navigation through Timescape an enjoyable experience.

All of the current events are displayed as small windows, compared to the big ones in X10 and most of the key features are available through the four buttons placed on each corner of the screen.

The options are as follows: you can choose which of the available communications, events and social networking features you want to be displayed in the application and you can choose between Facebook and Twitter, messages and missed calls (not received ones though).

The second option gives you access to a list of all the e-mail addresses available on your Google account and the phone’s address book. The third option lets you update your status on Facebook or on Twitter or both and the fourth and the last one is simply an option to manually perform an update of the application’s status.

All of these features or applications (you can call them any way you want) are far from perfect and give you the impression of both a “pared” down version of the applications found on X10.

Using the multimedia features on this device is more work than fun.

Platform & Performance

The phone is built on Qualcomm’s MSM 7227 platform and makes use of all the chipset’s abilities ranging from GPS receiver to the embedded light sensor.

Aided by the screens small resolution and quite good work that Sony Ericsson has done optimizing the OS, the phone is fast, with no noticeable freeze-ups and slowdowns.

However it is a shame that Android 1.6 cannot make use of the chipset’s embedded video decoder and some other features that are used in competing solutions based on the same platform, but running the 2.1 version.

The phone has 128 MB of RAM memory of which almost 50 MB are available to the user to run applications.

Navigation

Since there is a built-in GPS receiver, accompanied by the A-GPS function, the phone is expected to have the ability to find its location and guide you.

Sony Ericsson keeps offering Navipilot as an extra application for navigation. The phone comes with a trial version of the application installed and you will have to pay for it after the trial period is over.

I must say that this option is far from perfect and lags behind the solutions offered by others and especially Nokia’s free to all policy in S60 devices.

All of that along with the phone’s small screen does not make it even a compromise as a navigation solution and probably you will find yourself forgetting about this feature after a couple of weeks.

There is always an option to download special applications from Android Market to make use of GPS for measuring your speed for example, but I highly doubt that this can replace the core functionality of a GPS system as a navigation solution.

Software

While I’ve made some references to the software, let us try to put it all together here.

The phone runs on the Android Operating System, version 1.6.

More than a year ago this version was anticipated by almost everyone and thought to be the best version available. A year has passed and many things have changed. The latest version available at the moment is the 2.2.

Some parts of the 1.6 version were left unfinished by Google, and while some of them can be corrected by a device manufacturer, others cannot. The lack of the necessary Bluetooth profile for File Exchange is the one that could be changed by Sony Ericson, but, unfortunately, it was not.

The limited color palette used by the system cannot be changed or bypassed.

On top of that, some key functions are missing and the number of new applications for this version on the Android Market is decreasing. And this situation is about to get worse since some of the devices that come with version 2.2 are getting very popular and that makes most developers devoting their time and efforts to this version.

I must admit that this situation is mostly Google’s fault and not Sony Ericsson’s. This is because Google releases new versions quite fast, leaving phone manufacturers with a hard decision to either release new devices based on the latest version of the operating system, or to develop an update to the newer version for existing devices, or even both.

In my opinion Sony Ericsson’s fault lies only in the fact that the company does not have the resources to support more than one operating system. And until they are continuing to waste time without deciding which system to support, this situation will continue to exist.

The company is trying to make Timescape and Mediascape run without problems on version 2.1 in order to be able to provide it as an update for the devices that will be released in Q3 or even at the start of Q4 of 2010. This is the time when every other manufacturer will either be updating their devices to version 2.2 or designing and announcing, if not releasing, new devices based on this version.

As it stands today, all three devices from Sony Ericsson based on this OS are lagging behind and the company’s effort to hide this fact behind the heavily advertised Mediascape and Timescape UI is failing in the eyes of the consumers. This holds true for the X10 itself more than fot its two little brothers since it is sold in a higher price bracket, where it has to compete with many other offers by HTC and Samsung in particular . As for the X10 mini and the X10 mini pro, their lower price and their positioning in general makes them look less outdated.

Conclusion

Qualcomm eh… sorry, Sony Ericsson taught us to expect devices with excellent reception, good speech quality and the X10 mini pro is no exception.

The phone vibration function is powerful enough, perhaps a little too powerful and the speaker ringing volume is loud without many distortions.

In general the device manages to leave a positive impression, mostly due to its small size and straightforward design, even though it is not flawless. Based on an outdated version of a popular and pretty stable operating system, it manages to stay afloat, but barely, thanks to some optimisations made by Sony Ericsson that, although not capable to eliminate the shortcomings, made it at least acceptable and more than just usable.

If only it had made it to the market along with its brothers a little sooner the situation would have been radically different and favorable for this device.

Nowadays it is nothing more than an average solution making as much use of some distinct features as possible to justify both its existence and price.

I have my doubts about its success on the market since there are way too many competing solutions and the sliding keyboard by itself cannot differentiate it from most of them.

A simultaneous launch of all the three devices would have saved the situation a little in the way that Sony Ericsson would offer more than one choice to someone willing to stay loyal to this phone manufacturer. Now, most of these people will go for the already available X10 and try to forget it’s disadvantages both in hardware and software, while some of them will naturally and logically choose a phone from either HTC or Samsung if they are Android fans first of all things. This leaves a few potential buyers for the X10 mini and even less for the X10 mini pro.

[images via Sony Ericsson]

[via androidcentral.com]

Verizon and Motorola have teamed up yesterday to announce the new Android smartphone – Motorola Droid X. Main features of the handset include:

• Display: 4.3-inch display with resolution of 854 x 480
• Processor: TI OMAP3630 1GHz,
• Misc: HDMI out
• Camera: 8 megapixel with dual LED flash and 720p video capture
• Storage: 8GB of onboard storage with expansion of up to 32GB (you get a 16GB card in the box)
• Operating System: Android 2.1 with an all-new UI skin

All of his is stuffed in a package 9.9mm thick. Software wise, Droid X features an integrated mobile hotspot with support for up to 5 devices connected over WiFi, DLNA support, and a legit multitouch keyboard with Swype technology. It won’t launch with Android 2.2 Froyo, but that will come later this year as an upgrade along with Flash 10.1 support. The phone will be available in the US on July 15 for $199.99 on contract after rebate, while the mobile hotspot service will run $20 extra a month with a 2GB cap and 5 cent per MB overage (data consumed on the phone itself is unlimited). Mirroring AT&T’s move with the iPhone 4, all Verizon customers with upgrade dates in 2010 will be pulled up so they are eligible for the new Droid X as soon as it’s available.

Below is the first hands-on video from engadget:

[via engadget]

At the recent Computex trade show Acer announced a number of new Android smartphones. The announcement included company’s new flagship model called Stream, and a number of inexpensive phones. There was not much information available about these new models, but yesterday Acer sent out an official press release about the new products. Let’s look at them.

Acer E120

If you look at the characteristics of this phone you will see that this is an average low-cost Android smartphone. It is better than the Acer E110, but simpler than the Liquid and especially Stream.

• Operating System: Android 1.6 (Donut)
• Networks: GSM / EDGE, UMTS / HSDPA
• Processor: ST Ericsson PNX6715, 416 MHz
• RAM: 256 MB
• Memory for program storage: 512 MB + microSD card
• Interfaces: Wi-Fi (802.11 b / g), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, micro-USB. 3,5 mm headphone jack
• Screen: Resistive TFT, 2.8″ with a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels (QVGA)
• Camera: 3 megapixel
• Navigation: GPS with A-GPS support
• Additional: FM-radio, G-sensor
• Battery: Li-Ion 1500 mAh
• Dimensions: 104,5 x 54 x 13,2 mm
• Weight: 105 grams

E130

Also an inexpensive smartphone. It is build in blackberry-style with a full-size QWERTY-keyboard below the screen.

• Operating System: Android 1.6 (Donut)
• Networks: GSM / EDGE, UMTS / HSDPA
• Processor: ST Ericsson PNX6715, 416 MHz
• RAM: 256 MB
• Memory for program storage: 512 MB + microSD card
• Interfaces: Wi-Fi (802.11 b / g), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, micro-USB. 3,5 mm headphone jack
• Screen: Resistive TFT, 2.6″ with a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels (QVGA)
• Camera: 3.2 MP
• Navigation: GPS with A-GPS support
• Additional: FM-radio, G-sensor
• Battery: Li-Ion 1500 mAh
• Dimensions: 115 x 62,5 x 11,5 mm
• Weight: 109 grams

Both devices look quite boring to me. It is rumored that there will be two colors available – black and white, but it will probably not be enough to make them more appealing. I believe that price will be the main factor that can affect the popularity of these devices. This definitely applies to E130, as there are not many Android phones in this form-factor on the market, except for unusual devices like Motorola FlipOut.

In this post I will review the low-cost Android smartphone from HTC that was announced few weeks ago. The name for this phone was selected via a poll on Facebook, and it might sound a bit funny for a phone – HTC Wildfire. The phone might have an unusual name, but it offers a good set of features and specifications for a small (that is small for a HTC product) price. I will start with the market positioning and will continue with the description of the device.

Wildfire positioning

Not all new devices have a potential to be game changers for the whole market. I believe that HTC Wildfire is such a device.

Big events are always the sum of the smaller ones. I am almost certain that most you will not be even interested in this device, nor will you lose sleep over it. Wildfire is not the cheapest device on the market – you will always find a cheaper Chinese device if price is your main deciding factor. It does not have any new or revolutionary features. However, this device has the same qualities that made Nokia 5800 the bestseller at its time. These qualities are – right price and perfect timing. This smartphone will be hit the market in Q3 2010, and will cost around 250 Euro in Europe (few weeks after the release you should be able to find it even cheaper). Is it a little or a lot for a this device? Metal inserts in the body, design, similar to HTC Desire and related to other (more expensive) HTC models, 5 mega-pixel camera with Auto Focus, HTC’s Sense UI. The device has a 3.2” screen, but the resolution is quite low – in my opinion this is Wildfire’s weakest point, but it might not be in the eyes of the market. You might be wondering why is this phone so important…?

The answer to your question is that starting with HTC Wildfire, Android devices enter the 200 Euro market segment. Motorola tried to become the first company to get into this market, but did not succeed in Europe, its products can not be found in European stores, and all its energy is concentrated on the US market. Sony Ericsson has the X10 Mini, but the price there is higher, cheaper models will come later. Samsung plans to release Android devices in this price bracket in the middle of winter. With all major competitors still working on their devices, HTC managed to push the first stone from the mountain, the stone that will most likely lead to an avalanche. The company dived into the inexpensive Android smartphone market first and that makes it the instigator of the events to follow later.

All major Android phone manufacturers use a very simple strategy – they start from the top pricing tiers. On their way down to cheaper price segments they ‘steal’ bits and pieces of the market from other mobile operating systems and other manufacturers. Companies with biggest market share suffer the most, Nokia’s S60 platform is the prime example of this. The Finnish company was forced to shift its focus to the lowest price bracket of the smartphone market to be able to counter touchscreen products from the Korean manufacturers. Nokia lost the battle in the top pricing tier, as its products are not as interesting as the competing solutions and platforms. By entering the 200 Euro market segment HTC is opening the new market for itself, but also it opens the gates for other Android manufacturers into the new price segment which was dominated by Nokia. Will the situation change after the Wildfire hits the market? I don’t have any doubts about that. All big manufacturers will start to offer Android smartphones in the 200+ Euro market. As a result, the choice of models will grow, there will be alternatives. Considering the quality of the Sense user interface, all manufacturers will be forced to get their devices to the similar level or lose the race.

HTC Wildfire might not be interesting for some buyers, but it will set the first stone in establishing the new, low price market for Android phones. The future models will mae this market even larger, but that will only happen at the end of 2010, beginning of 2011. Wildfire is a nice, cool, interesting device, one of the most interesting for the money. Evolution continues. Android is marching forward.

Design

The company is clearly trying to make low-price models look like the top of the range ones. Samsung was the first company to try this strategy. They were releasing budget sliders looking like the top-of-the-range product. We are talking about cloning the looks of the most expensive device and transferring it to some of the cheapest, so the analogy with Nokia N97 and Nokia N97 mini does not work here, but one with Samsung E250 and D900 does.

Wildfire clearly has the design elements similar to the current HTC’s Android flagship – Desire. Wildfire has a very similar body shape, the same metal insert around the screen, similar location of controls. Yes, the design is not exactly the same, but when you will see the Wildfire you will likely be reminded of the Desire.

The body is made from matte, rubberised plastic, the battery cover has a metal plate inserted, the front is also metallic to touch. The phone will be available in 4 colours – black, dark grey, white and red.

Dimensions

Size wise this is one of the most compact Android devices in HTC’s lineup. It feels comfortable in the hand, and you can easily control it with the same hand you hold it in.

Controls and Body Elements

Wildfire has an optical trackball, just like HTC Legend and Desire. Control buttons are located above the trackball, they are sensory just as on Google Nexus One. This is not the best solution, but you can get used to it. From the left to the right we have Home, Menu, Return and Search buttons.

The left side has traditional volume controls and microUSB slo. There is nothing on the right side. The On/Off button (just like on Desire and Legend) and a 3.5 mm headset jack are located at the top.
The phone speaker is located above the screen. The ‘ringing’ speaker and 5 megapixel camera with a flash are on the back. The quality of the pictures is on a level close to HTC Desire and Legend, because same camera module is used in this device.

Display

HTC Wildfire has a capacitive type 3.2” touch screen with 240×320 (QVGA) resolution. The screen is the weakest part of the phone, but thanks to it the phone is relatively cheap. A few details need to be pointed out. First of all, the screen does support multitouch. Second, the execution of the touch is not much worse than on AMOLED screens used in Desire and Legend. And third, due to the standard (not widescreen) proportions, even with the same diagonal size of the screen as on Desire and Legend, the display on the Wildfire is de facto bigger.

Screen keyboard is easy to use, and it is easy to type text on it. In my opinion, Wildfire’s screen keyboard is much easier to use than the one on Hero or Legend because of the larger screen. The keyboard is very comfortable for typing.

Platform and Performance

The phone is built on the same platform as HTC Tattoo. It has a Qualcomm MSM7225 528 MHz processor, 384 MB RAM and 512 MB for software installation (less than half of it is available to the user). There is a microSD slot located on the left side, under the battery cover. You don’t need to turn the phone off to swap the card.

Technically, besides the low resolution screen, HTC Wildfire copies the functionality of the senior models: Desire and Legend. Smartphone works in 2G/3G networks, there is Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, built-in light and proximity sensors, digital compass and gyroscope. And FM radio.

Wildfire runs on Android 2.1 with latest version of HTC’s Sense UI. Specially for the Wildfire release HTC added one nice feature to the Sense – you can now exchange the links to Android market programs with your friends, emailing them or using Twitter. Considering that finding a good program in the Market is not always easy, this could be a really useful feature.

I have not noticed any performance issues. Having said that it is hard to imagine that a device l with a good platform and low resolution screen would have any performance issues. In my opinion, Wildfire is faster than Hero or Tattoo and has a performance similar to Desire and Legend.

Impressions

The model will hit the shelves in Europe and Asia in Q3 2010. So what is so special about it? This is a smartphone with a low resolution screen and typical set of wireless interfaces (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS) in a compact body.

It device is special because this is one of a few HTC smartphones that will not be overpriced at the start. Wildfire is a great value even in the beginning of its lifecycle. It is cheaper than HTC Hero (with a price sticker at the Tattoo level), but it is much better than either of these two in every respect: metal in the body, reliable optical trackball, large screen, new version of Android and Sense UI. The new HTC smartphone will cause a bit of an explosion among the low and medium priced Android devices .

The trick is that unlike other manufacturers, who, when releasing inexpensive solutions, are cutting corners here and there, HTC saved money on one element only – the screen. Yes, it is not the best of the screens by far – only 240 x 320 pixels, but even this LCD is capacitive and supports multitouch. The speed of the LCD reaction is on the same level as Desire and Legend. Same applies to the wireless interfaces, camera, Android version, Sense UI (this phone has a newer version).

The only possible competitor today is Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica. But it is quite difficult to compare the two – with a little lower price, Samsung is weaker from a technical standpoint: screen and camera are worse, Android is older, and there is no Sense UI.

So at the end we have the first truly affordable Android smartphone, with all the chances to become a massive bestseller.

Specifications:
• Class: smartphone
• Body materials: plastic, metal
• Operational system: Android 2.1 with HTC Sense User Interface
• Networks: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, EDGE/GPRS, UMTS/HSDPA 900/2100
• Platform: Qualcomm MSM7225-1, 528 МHz processor
• RAM: 384 MB
• ROM: 512 MB + microSD (hot swappable)
• Interfaces: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR (A2DP), microUSB (USB 2.0) for charging and sync, 3.5 mm headphones jack
• Screen: touch, capacitive, 3.2” 240×320 pixels resolution (QVGA)
• Camera: 5 MPx with Auto Focus and Flash
• Navigation: GPS based on Qualcomm gpsOne chipset (support of A-GPS)
• Misc: proximity sensor, light sensor, gyroscope, digital compass
• Battery: removable Li-Ion 1300 mAh

[images from HTC]

Similarly to its Australian representative, Boost US is one of the cheapest mobile providers on the market, offering unlimited texts, calls, and data for only US$50 per month.  The major problem for the company so far has been a small selection of subsidised phones along with the lack of high quality phones.  This is about to change with the addition of the Motorola i1.  This is definitely a high quality smartphone. It comes with a 5 mp camera, a 3.1 inch HVGA display, Android 1.5 with the pre-installed Opera 5 Mini Web Browser.  The camera has an autofocus, flash, and is capable of taking small videos – all of the features of many of the top-of-the-range phones.  The phone has Wi-Fi capabilities along with SWYPE integration for even faster texting than ever before.  This new smartphone also comes with a 2 GB microSD card, but supports up to a 32 GB card if required.

The Android powered Motorola i1 will be available at Best Buy on launch for $349.  It will also still come with the walkie-talkie feature, which has become the norm for all phones across the Boost Mobile network. Not sure whether this feature will be offered by Boost Australia. The main drawback is that the phone ships with Android OS version 1.5, which of course, is quite old.  This means it might not be as secure, or user friendly as other devices with the latest version of the operating system.  There are not that many differences between the new version and the old 1.5 version, so it might not be that big of a deal, but it is definitely worth noting in case you might notice some differences between other new Android phones and the i1.  Other than that, the phone comes fully featured on a reliable network that is more affordable than the rest, so when (and of course if) the phone comes  to Australia, and you don’t mind trying a new mobile operator, the Motorola i1 might not be a bad choice to at least give a try.

Overall, the design is quite average; not the ugliest thing ever seen, but certainly not the best one either.  The features are pretty vast due to the Android OS. SWYPE technology makes this phone different from other similar devices, at least for now.  So, the verdict on the Motorola i1 is still very much in the air. We might take a closer look at this phone if it ever comes to Australia.

So, a lot of you are most likely wondering just how good the upcoming HTC Evo 4G is? Does it live up to it’s hype, or does it leave a lot to be desired? These days, you are probably wondering how it could be bad after all, these phones are usually pretty good, right? Well, here is the quick lowdown on the new Evo. The upsides, the downsides, and all of the information you need to know before you make a decision to buy.

Upsides

First of all, the 4G works pretty well and connection speeds are quite impressive. You will also be able to connect up to eight various devices using the mobile hot-spot feature. This is not only a good feature, but it is one that works pretty well. The camera has a resolution of 8 mega pixel, which is useful for video recording, as well as for video chats. The phone ships with the Youtube HQ video player too, as well as with Android 2.1. These features work well, and you will be pleasantly surprised with how this phone performs basic functions relating to Internet and video.

Downsides

Once released, Evo 4G will be available only to Sprint customers. As far as I know there are no plans to make it officially available in Australia. There will certainly be few ‘grey’ import devices available on Ebay, but as with all the grey stuff there will probably be no warranty, etc. On top of that, none of Australia’s big carriers offer 4G at this time, so you will not be able to utilise the biggest benefit of this device. Another downside is the fact that the 4G connectivity drains the battery at a pretty fast rate.

There has definitely been some hype surrounding the HTC Evo 4G. Since this is one of the first 4G smartphones, people are very anxious to see how it turns out. It rolls out on June 4^th in US, and there will no doubt be a lot of people in line to try it out. But the question is, will people be happy or disappointed with it? From all basic signals, it seems like it has a lot going for it. It is no doubt going to be the best smart phone to be released by Sprint to date, and it is also very close to being the best Android phone on the market. As far as the 4G, even though there are some complaints about the speed, it is a step up in the world from 3G, so how can you really complain about that?

Yesterday HTC announced their new Android smartphone – Wildfire.  This phone is likely to have the best price / features ratio among other solutions for the next 3 or so months. Price-wise it will probably be positioned between HTC Tattoo and HTC Hero. Its technical characteristics are better than both Tattoo and Hero, and are similar to HTC Legend.

Technical characteristics:

[via pocketnow]