Thanks for the month off. I'm back with comments on how the latest cell phones grab people.
I'm starting with a winner: the LG Venus (Verizon). Even though I'm smitten with my BlackBerry Curve's keyboard, the Venus has a dual touch-screen design I came to like and found this phone feels a bit less chunky than the LG Voyager.
The lower of the two touch screens on the face is where you'll do your navigation. As someone who normally prefers a more tactile feel, I've become real comfortable with a quick finger press. But this touch screen has the advantage of changing modes to suit the task at hand. The upper screen where the results of your actions appear is clean and clear, although I'd have preferred a larger screen.
The Venus is a 3G EV-DO device and a capable media player, plus a 2-megapixel camera (though lacking a flash) so there is a cornucopia of usable modes you'll be accessing with that novel touch interface.
This phone is also a slider and when you do slide the touch-screen face upward, it reveals a very good T9 keypad with nice, large buttons.
Negatives are minor, but I just wish there was a raised bar between the screens to make opening and closing it smoother, such as the Motorola Z6 RIZR. Also, I would have negated the sleek, solid feel, but that's just personal preference. I could also do without the cheap plastic-leather upholstery on the back. It helps with comfort, but cheapens the look.
All in all, for about $200 with activation you could do a lot worse that the Venus if you're looking for a solid, fun, feature-packed, easy to use cell phone.
If all you wanted was a phone to connect you with someone, you wouldn't be reading this blog.
The Nokia Arte begs to be looked at as a work of art, a cell with sculptured style. Does it succeed in that quest? Absolutely.
Looking at the Arte, you notice the solid statement it's trying to make. It's modern. It's cutting edge. It's quite heavy, but that seems to be part of its appeal. That heft comes from genuine materials: glass and metal. Heretical approach in these plastic times.
Open it up and there's a comfortable keyboard that blends right in. But you won't even need it to mute an incoming call: Just put the phone face down and it silences the incoming annoyance instinctively. Tap the phone twice and you get the "analog" clock on the screen.
Your home screen (actually, everything on it) is simply brilliant. The colors jump out at you. The ringtones are exclusive, compelling.
They should be; this phone was designed by Kruder and Dorfmeister, who I'm told are two renowned Austrian remixer DJs.
The menu is easy to navigate and covers all you'd want in a cell phone, including settings for the 3.2-megapixel camera that enjoys access to 1GB of internal memory.
Hold the Arte in your hand and you become a magnet. Everyone wants to feel and hold it--then they hear the price and carefully hand it back: $1,400.
You saw that correctly. It's $1,400. I've been known to buy a lot of expensive phones from all over the world just to savor them (the Samsung Serene was no cheapie at north of a grand) but this even makes me swallow hard.
At that price, I'm expecting it to cook me breakfast. Next post we'll see if it does.
Better than peanut butter and chocolate: the N95 and a Slingbox.
If you've spent the money for the Nokia N95, a Slingbox is a must get. The company bought live spots on my program on KGO Radio months ago. My job was to read the copy, not test it. And from the commercials, to be honest, I wasn't totally sure what it did and how to use it.
Then I got one to try and now I totally get it. Wow! What Slingbox somehow does is enable you to take your TV room at home with you anywhere in the world. Whatever you can see at home, you can watch and control on a portable device. I have been doing it from a Nokia N95 smartphone, but more commonly the Slingbox was promoted as being used with a laptop, which of course gives you a larger screen and usually a faster broadband connection but just isn't as cool in my mind.
On the N95, system operation is just about perfect (an iPhone would be even better, but it's not set up for that yet), and the picture is flawless, too. The only negative is EDGE, which is a 2.5G network and just a bit slow. Watching on a Palm Centro with EV-DO is faster, but the screen is smaller.
Bottom line: This is one fun application. And for fun, realize that you can be watching TV in Tokyo while your family is watching the same program at the same time in San Francisco--but if you want to see another channel, you can control the set and change channels an ocean away! They probably won't think that's cool, but for you it's a hoot!
Another nice thing in this age of being fee'd to death is that the Slingbox is a product, not a service. So once you buy it and set it up, there is no service fee, it just uses the broadband connection you have at home to send you broadcasts. Bear in mind, however, you will be using a fair amount of data to watch that stream, so I'd recommend an all-you-can-eat data plan for your phone if that's what you'll be watching on.
Confession: This is obviously a cell phone designed for people age 30 and younger. Yet I've carried this Walkman phone for three days, and I'm in love.
First and foremost, the W580i is light. Very light. It doesn't even seem as heavy as the slight 3.3 ounces claimed. Yet, it feels solid.
Sliders being my weakness, this one has just the right spring action. If there's a glitch, it's that I wish it had a little thumb bar (like the Motorola z3 or z6), instead of needing to be pushed open from below the keypad. But closing it from the top is easy and makes that hefty sound that people notice and like.
Call reception is outstanding and battery life is huge. I've gotten 7 hours, though it claims 9 hours talk time. Speaker is clear and volume is just fine.
But let's remember, this is a Walkman phone. That means music and song quality need to be great, and I think they are. It's got gimmicks that aren't very businesslike. (You can flick your wrist to hear a new song and the sides light up in 1 of 16 color selections when you get a cal.l) But then nothing about this phone is supposed to be businesslike! It's fun.
The buttons on the side of the phone are for volume (or brightness, in photo mode) while most all other controls are accessed via a menu and the highly unconventional array of buttons that are mediacentric when the phone is closed. When opened, a more typical T9 phone keypad is exposed.
Also exposed by sliding is the unusually mounted 2.0 megapixel camera, which I find takes quite good images. It peeks up like a periscope when you use the slider--and that's the only way to use it, so you'll find yourself opening and closing this phone a lot.
If there's a weakness, it's storage space: 12 megabytes won't get you far, and expansion is via Memory Stick, which is statistically less likely to be found laying around the average user's desk drawer.
By the way, there's an unwritten rule: If you're an adult, get the W580i in gray, not the white that makes it look like a little Imperial Stormtrooper.
Overall, I shouldn't love this phone. But I do. There. I've said it.
(This blog entry was revised on 12/21/07 to sort out inconsistencies in photos and detail references.)So I'm back from vacation where I tested the Voyager for twelve days. You know I love to take phones into the wild and really live with them. It was very revealing in this case.
Being on vacation I used the camera a lot. The pictures were acceptable, not great. I expected better phone quality. Isn't that quaint? But it's very important to me and the Voyager didn't have the greatest. Along those lines, I found you can't use the speakerphone unless the Voyager is in its rather ungainly open clamshell mode. Overall the Voyager is a hefty handful. And I really hated not being able to sync to my Mac; for me, that's a deal breaker. (See Tom Krazit's piece on Mac user passion!)
Now the good: I'm not a huge touch-screen fan, but this one works really well. I may be in the minority, but I like the haptic feedback feature that makes screen buttons feel a little bit like real ones. Cool and helpful.
You always have the option of opening the Voyager and essentially having a mini-desktop. Its physical keyboard is far better than the iPhone's touch version, reason enough to choose this cell if you plan on doing a lot of input. The GPS technology is fast and reliable. Music sounds great. And if you find the well-hidden antenna, it's a very usable TV under Verizon's VCast service.
Bottom line: Do I like it? Yes. Would I buy it? No, not even under the current promotional price that brings it in $100 less than an iPhone. Outstanding voice quality matters to me, and if you cross my Mac we're off to a bad start, regardless!
These are a stream of consciousness, but given the high expectation level of the LG Voyager, immediate impressions are important: Beautiful front screen, clean icons...comfortable keyboard under the flip lid, yet takes getting used to, especially for those of us who love the BlackBerry Curve...hmm, a bit heavier than I expected...wow, excellent call quality...EV-DO better than EDGE, but Sprint EV-DO on Palm Centro seems noticeably faster accessing Web sites...
Tell me that outside touch screen doesn't taste iPhone-ish!
(Credit: LG)...perfect, quick text messaging--I could become a teenager with this thing...hmph, no Wi-Fi...easy voice dialing...no flash, yet solid camera...I like the haptic feedback, a little like a game controller...I'm concerned it might be too easy to accidentally hit unlock icon--we'll see if I butt dial in the next few days...finally, before fully testing, I'd say if the iPhone had EV-DO, I'd take that over the Voyager. But it doesn't, so this LG VX 10000 is in the lead right now.
No need to rely on a touch screen with this guy.
(Credit: LG)Now to use it for a few days to see if my first impressions last!
Rarely have I looked forward to trying a phone and had more disappointing results. I don't want to trash the Sidekick Slide; let's just say it's one I'll never carry after living with it a couple of days.
The Sidekick Slide is slimmer and has a screen that slides up instead of swiveling.
(Credit: T-Mobile)With almost all new cell phones, thinner is a given and just happens with each new model. For whatever the reason, that's barely the case with the Slide. It's about 0.6 inch thick, which is about 25 percent thinner than the traditional Sidekick, but that was a brick! For comparison, 0.6 inch is about the thickness of a Treo 650/700. Not exactly wafer thin.
And the Slide just feels like a Toys R Us phone for your 10-year-old. In spite of the spacious keyboard, it doesn't seem weighted for an adult. You don't feel the stability you'd get from a BlackBerry Curve, for example. And it's a good thing if you don't need to use numbers; the standalone keys snuggle right up to the base and are uncomfortable to punch unless your fingers are small enough to have just finished fishing the toy surprise out of a box of cereal. (The electric blue and purple color choices don't do much to distance it from Barney either.)
Using the phone reminds you that calls are not why you get this device. Even with all the bars, it still sounded hollow and uneven at times. Far better, of course, is its IM capability; no complaints there. AOL, Yahoo and Windows IM clients are all built-in, as is POP3 and IMAP e-mail.
The music and camera features are a bit below average, but OK. But the big hitch is the lack of video playback--that makes the Slide seems dated already. And at $300 with activation, yikes!
Here's my overview: You'll like the Sidekick Slide--as long as you're not old enough to get a driver's license.
Part of my problem with the Nokia N95 is everyone who has one is in love with it. I like it, but not as much as my friends do.
This is minor, but know what drives me crazy? When you get a call, there's no finger bar to grip when you move the slider up like on the Motorola z3 or the Samsung G600. So, there's always a slight lag before I get it right. And as I wrote in the first part, the spring mechanism is on the soft side.
Although it feels great to hold while conversing, if you're looking to make a fashion statement, the N95 is lacking. It's chunky, though with all the features, it's amazing it isn't even bigger.
Yet rereading this, I realize this is coming off far more negative than it deserves.
Now that's navigation! With the keypad hidden, you might mistake the N95 for a PND device. Upper right is the low-res camera lens.
(Credit: Nokia)The N95 is more than a smartphone. Its mediacentric applications are state of the art, and its cameras are at the core of that. There are two of them, including a basic 1-megapixel snapshot device on the front and the fabulous 5-megapixel camera on the back. It has an excellent auto focus and Carl Zeiss glass (is it really glass?). Still images come out at 2592x1944 size, and in video mode you'll get MPEG-4 files at 30 frames per second and close to DVD resolution. When you're done, there's integrated photo and video editing inside the N95. Bottom line: you may be done carrying your Nikon Coolpix when you travel!
Speaking of traveling, the N95's GPS technology provides onscreen nav second to no other phone I've used. When you're bored on that plane or train, the MP3/video player is equally superb. Speakers are OK but you'll really be blown away by the sound through headphones. It matches any MP3 player I've ever tried in terms of sound quality. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only adds to the N95's attractiveness.
Bottom line is it's an 8 out of 10. So why I am I not over the top? At $699, it should be at least a 9 out of 10. Although the N95 could be the standard for the next full year, at its price point you have to love it--not just like it--to buy it. I just like it.
The N95 has a hidden set of media buttons if you slide its faceplate the other way.
(Credit: Nokia)Second only to the iPhone in hype, the Nokia N95 has finally made it to the U.S. And like the iPhone, there's lots to like, some negatives, and the same qualified recommendation from me so far.
The mp3/video player is strong, the 5-megapixel camera is outstanding, the GPS is superb, call quality is perfect, the display is clear, the feel is balanced...so where's the downside?
For one, despite that balance, there's kind of a toy-like tactile build quality overall. I think I feel that way mostly because the slider(s) don't lock with the firmness I like. I say slider(s) because it has two of them--sort of. You slide the faceplate one way to expose the phone keypad. Slide the other way and you expose a set of buttons for media playback.
The Symbian OS still doesn't feel comfortable to me yet, and there seems to be a bit of lag-time switching applications. And overall the N95 is thick, like a deck of cards, and by my rough calculations, it's about 35 percent greater volume than an iPhone.
Side-by-side thickness of the iPhone (l.) and the N95 (r.) Big difference.
(Credit: Apple Inc. (l) and CNET Networks Inc. (r.))And then, of course, there's the price. At $699 and so far not supported or subsidized by any U.S. carriers, huge expectations have to be met, including admiring looks and words from others--and that hasn't materialized yet for me.
But this is one that's going to need some more daily use before a final opinion. Give me a few more days and I'll have more to say.
The Haier Sterling
(Credit: Haierpower.com)At first glance, you'd think the Haier Sterling is a joke--at less than 4 inches from end to end, it looks like a child's toy. But you'd be wrong. It not only turns heads, but it delivers too. You realize that when you turn it on and hear the loud, clear sound of glass breaking.
It features a 1.8-inch color screen, 1.3-megapixel camera, integrated headphone jack, FM radio, room for 500 contacts, Bluetooth and a microSD slot. Talk time is 3 hours; standby time is up to 200 hours. But what really distinguishes it is style. The finish is highly mirrored and clean, and it's navigated by a little black keypad and surrounding buttons.
Here's the part I like a lot less: I played with this phone at CTIA in San Francisco, but it wasn't available yet, still delayed from a planned July launch. The sales page for the Sterling indicates it has been delayed until about October 2007. (We're now into November.) It doesn't seem to have any carrier support and is sold a la carte as an unlocked phone, so you're paying full freight. I use the word "sold" charitably here because, as of this writing, you can only pre-order one for a non-refundable deposit of $199, with the mystery balance due upon shipment--and there's no indication how much that balance will be.
But if you like jewel-like tech, and mysteries, this phone may be for you.
