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Posts Tagged ‘HTC’

May
06

Google Nexus OneGoogle is always a nice choice, and we kinda all have a pretty good impression about this label, so now let’s check out how well Google has done on their first smartphone, Google Nexus One.

 

With all these smartphones out there in the market, the Google Nexus One is still worth a second look.

 

It’s been weeks since Google released its Nexus One Android phone and you might have already read several if not hundreds of reviews. And those reviews may have given you various opinions and comments about the Nexus One, that you might find it pretty confusing. So, to add to your confusion as to whether you would get the Nexus One or not, here’s our take on the Google Nexus One.

 

First of all, Google Nexus One Design and Form Factor

 

Knowing fully well that I’m probably among the first owners of the Nexus One in the country where I am located, you can just imagine how proud I am when showing the Nexus One to my friends and co-workers. I’ve got mixed reactions. But those who are tech savvy enough usually comment on how beautiful the Nexus One’s form factor and design is as compared to the iPhone. And I couldn’t help but agree with them. Don’t get me wrong here. I loved the iPhone’s design and form factor when I first got hold of it. But after two years of using the iPhone, I felt the same thing when I got hold of the Nexus One. The Nexus One emits a sense of geekiness while the iPhone now gives me a sense of fun and entertainment.

 

The Google Nexus One is lighter than the iPhone but thicker by a small bit. I’ve seen several HTC manufactured phones before but none of them appealed to me than when I saw the Google Nexus One. The Nexus One’s body is composed of two different materials – a metallic bezel surrounding the front and side of the phone and a rubbery material that serve as battery cover and the bottom part of the phone. Gripping the phone with your hand is a pleasant experience thanks to its thin form factor and its curvy shape.

 

On the face of the Nexus One are five basic buttons, unlike the iPhone’s one-button interface. The five buttons include a trackball which is actually pretty useless except when it blinks when something is happening on your phone while on standby-mode. It’s not really useful as a scrolling device since you can practically use the Nexus One’s touch screen feature to scroll. The other four buttons are – for navigating to the Homescreen, back, menu and search. All buttons have haptic feedback when you tap on them. But don’t get your hopes so high for this button as most of the time they don’t respond well. iPhone’s touch control between the Nexus One in this department.

 

At the back of the Nexus One you can find the camera and the LED Flash, the Google trademark and the HTC brand. On the left side of the phone is the volume control while on the bottom side is the USB port.

 

Overall, Google (or HTC) has managed to come up with a well designed smartphone worthy of competing against the iPhone. Make no mistake both smartphones are great looking in their own rights. Putting the Nexus One beside my iPhone 3GS makes it look more the male while the iPhone as the female.

 

Secondly, Google Nexus One Software – the Android Experience

 

With the latest Android OS 2.1 running as its OS, Google managed to come up with a robust mobile phone platform that may not be more revolutionary than the iPhone but is definitely at par with it. One thing you’ll quickly noticed when using the Nexus One is its speed, especially if you are on Wi-Fi. Downloading apps from the Android Market is a breeze through Wi-Fi, faster than when downloading apps from the iTunes Apps Store on the iPhone.

 

Android OS 2.1 may not have offered something different than what the iPhone is currently offering but it is certainly a great mobile phone OS in its own right.

 

Now, when friends ask me what’s the difference between the iPhone and the Google Nexus One aside from their looks, I always cite one answer – the Nexus One’s Voice command capability. Whether it’s the voice-to-text function or voice-enabled searching. Don’t get me wrong here, these features are far from perfect and I have personally experienced inconsistency when transcribing what I’ve spoken but it’s still fun and exciting how the Nexus One recognizes and transcribes what I want to say when composing SMS. It’s the coolest feature that I know of the Nexus One so far.

 

Another notable feature of the Google Nexus One is the live wallpaper. It’s pretty cool but useless and just eat up your phone’s precious battery life. Those who prefer usability over eye-candy will definitely find this as a negative feature of the phone but for those who don’t mind this feature definitely rocks.

 

When viewing applications you can either view it similar to how the iPhone apps look or via a more organized grid-like manner that displays in 4×4 arrangement on your phone’s screen.

 

Of course, you all know that the Nexus One also features a virtual keyboard like the iPhone. And if you’re fond of texting, this is very important. To be straight about it, I have more luck with typing the correct words on the iPhone than on the Nexus One. The keys on Nexus One’s virtual keyboard are placed so close to each other so much so that those with bigger fingers would often find it a pain to type messages. It’s a good thing that I don’t send SMS messages often, so I won’t have to deal with this problem most of the time. A quick fix would have to be downloading another virtual keyboard at the Android market.

 

Overall, software-wise, the Nexus One is also short of introducing something new and revolutionary into the market. Most if not all of its features are already with the iPhone and other touch-screen smartphones, except of course for the voice-enabled commands.

 

Thirdly, Other Important Information that You Should Know about the Nexus One

 

Very important – how’s the Nexus One’s battery performance? Quite surprisingly that Nexus One’s battery performance is pretty good. It could last you one whole day of normal use. This if of course pretty standard among smartphones with touchscreen features. If I have to compare it with the iPhone’s battery performance, the iPhone wins for a good couple of hours more.

 

Camera features – With a 5 megapixel camera, the Nexus One takes pretty decent shots. Nothing exemplary but good enough for what it is capable of given its extent. Of course it beats the iPhone’s camera in terms of resolution and output. But the one thing it failed to beat though is the iPhone’s camera speed and touch to focus feature. The Nexus One’s camera is slow. Perhaps an Android update would make it faster later on. But then, it’s the main reason while you would want to have this phone, anyway.

 

Photo Gallery – I believe the Nexus One’s photo gallery uses Cooliris. So there’s some coolness factor into it. Not as great as the iPhone’s photo gallery of course but is good enough to make it different from other mobile phones.

 

Lastly, Conclusion

 

When rumors leaked out about the Nexus One, expectations were high over the fact that it is a Google Phone. Now that it’s out in the open, did Google meet these expectations? It varies from every user. As for me, I am more than happy with my Google Nexus One. I wasn’t really expecting too many features that my iPhone 3GS could not do. In fact, I wasn’t expecting it to be an iPhone killer. But now that I’ve used it for a couple of days, I would have to say that it is NOT AN IPHONE KILLER, but more of an iPhone rival.

 

The question is, if you’re an iPhone owner, should you replace your phone with the Google Nexus One? Definitely not. Unless of course you’re tired of using your iPhone anymore. If you’re not an iPhone user and would like to use an Android phone, you might as well get the Nexus One instead of the other Android phones. Why? For the simple reason that it is a Google phone, and Android happens to be a Google platform.

 

If own an iPhone and you have the money to get another smartphone just for the heck of it, go and get your unit now. You certainly won’t regret it.

 

Well, this is how we think of this Google phone, what’s you opinion on this?

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Apr
20

HTC Droid IncredibleWe’ve talked about the MOTO Droid earlier, and now let’s forget about MOTO Droid, and get ready for the Droid Incredible! Well, Droid is admittedly quite a nice phone, so maybe you don’t want to totally forget about it, and it’s OK, you don’t have, I mean, just take a look at this Droid Incredible, and then it’s you call to forget the MOTO Droid or not.

 

HTC and Verizon Wireless today announced their new Android phone called – DROID Incredible. This latest Android device will be available through Verizon Wireless starting April 29 and boasts of a topographic design made possible with craftmanship and precision (Well, that’s really something).

 

The New DROID Incredible also boasts of HTC’s latest Sense technology, a 7-panel home screen with interactive widgets, seamless integration with Exchange ActiveSync, access to Flickr and of course to the Android Market. What makes the DROID Incredible quite interesting is the fact that it will be loaded with Qualcomm’s 1GHz superfast Snapdragon processor – a first for Verizon Wireless phones. In addition, the DROID Incredible also happens to have an 8 megapixel camera, again another first among Verizon’s stable of smartphones.

 

Another great features to expect from the DROID Incredible are Verizon Wireless’ own mobile apps – NFL Mobile and Skype Mobile.

 

Other key features and specs of the DROID Incredible include – 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive touch screen, optical joystick, dedicated keys for home, menu, back and search functions, proximity sensor, light sensor, digital compass, integrated GPS, Wi-Fi, and 3.5 mm jack.

 

The DROID Incredible will be available for pre-order starting April 19 on Verizon Wireless website. It will arrive on Verizon brick and mortar shops on April 29. Price tag is at $199.99 with two-year service agreement.

 

So many ‘first marks’ and so many wonderful features, I’m really looking forward to this Droid Incredible! How about you? This is a more beautiful and powerful version of MOTO Droid that will probably serve you incredibly!

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Mar
10

Apple and HTC lawsuitI mentioned it before that the world’s most popular smartphone company-Apple suited world’s No.1 smartphone manufacture-HTC, and we’re sure that this is going to be a very long fight. So people just start to think, why this lawsuit happens now and what for? And whenever there is a question, there will be someone to answer it. So here’s the voice of Fortune.

 

Fortune just quoted Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner, who thinks Apple’s patent infringement suit against Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone manufacturer HTC was a warning shot meant to disrupt competitors’ roadmaps: ”Starting in January, Apple launched a series of C-Level discussions with tier-1 handset makers to underscore its growing displeasure at seeing its iPhone-related IP [intellectual property] infringed. The lawsuit filed against HTC thus appears to be Apple’s way of putting a public, lawyered-up exclamation point on a series of blunt conversations that have been occurring behind closed doors.

 

Our checks also suggest that these warning shots are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.”

 

And will they make it? Let’s just see what have already changed: “Top-tier handset makers continued to avoid implementing multi-touch, but Apple could safely assume that they were hanging back to gauge Apple’s response to Motorola and HTC. If there wasn’t one, the OEMs would likely read the silence as a green light, especially after Google also moved to enable multi-touch on its Nexus One phone.

 

It was likely in order to counter that perception that Apple began reaching out to handset OEMs in January and explaining in no uncertain terms that it was now ready to do battle–and not just on multi-touch. It was ready to press its case along a number of axes that had made the iPhone experience unique, from the interpretation of touch gestures, to object-oriented OS design, to the nuts and bolts of how hardware elements were built and configured.”

 

By now, he believes it’s working, and might end up driving people away from Android and… towards Windows Phone. Yeah, nice, but there’s something I have to say: Windows and Microsoft may in the end be more of a difficult opponent than Google and Android. So is this lawsuit really important, or is this the right thing to do for Apple?

 

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Mar
03

Apple iPhone iBookIt’s all about patent, and despite their occasionally arrogance (like name their salesman Genius) Apple do have brilliant designs. The appearance of iPod, Mac and iPhone do pleases us and there’s really something going on, for we can see replica phones everywhere. And now it’s a big battle between two big companies.

 

Apple filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware. “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

 

Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone, and did it again in 2008 with its pioneering App Store, which now offers more than 150,000 mobile applications in over 90 countries. Over 40 million iPhones have been sold worldwide. Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

 

This is the long glorious history of Apple, and honestly I don’t really see so much innovation in Apple today! They used to mock Microsoft on their Windows OS, but the Windows 7 is actually good and a really big step, and look at Leopard, nothing innovation indeed! Fighting for Patent, it’s a good thing, we do need originality and innovation, but seriously, pay more attention to the real thing!

 

 

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Dec
22

htc phone

As iPhone and BlackBerry are taking over the American SmartPhone market, still there comes a nice windows mobile. The undisputed leader on the Windows Mobile smartphone market, HTC, is about to make their newest attempt at changing our view of Windows Mobile with the upcoming release of the HTC HD2.

 

The new cell phone titan once again relies on brute force, although this time carries everything to excess, being equipped with a gigantic 4.3-inch capacitive screen, 1GHz processor and 448MB RAM. As a backup for its muscles, however, the HD2 comes with an improved version of the TouchFLO 3D interface that borrowed the name of its Android sibling – Sense. Now, let´s take a closer look at the ambitious newcomer and see if it’s destined to emerge victorious from the sea of Windows phones we´ve been drowning in lately or will remain one of the many nice smartphones, just like its predecessor.

 

So, let’s just get this clear: in terms of hardware, the Touch HD2 is the nicest phone in the world. It’s ostentatiously huge and amazingly slim; it’s business-savvy and utterly pornographic. But hardware like this deserves better. Built from the finest pieces imaginable and burdened with a categorically disappointing OS, the Touch HD2 have not got enough good applications for most of  the smartphone carriers. This is really kinda of  tragic event. So terrible or great, it’s your call!

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