Archive

Posts Tagged ‘touchscreen’

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
28

Touchscreen Watch-Phone,IMobile C1000Cell phone is one thing we can’t live without, seriously, what will our life be liek if without cell phones? I just can’t imagine, so cell phone is literally necessary fro everyday use. So with so many phones out there, which one do you want the most, or what kind of phones do you like the most? Well, if you like your phone to as small as possible, then this touchscreen watch phone — IMobile C1000 is really worth a look.

 

IMobile’s C1000 (M600) is a GSM phone-watch. It features USB and Bluetooth (A2DP) connectivity, a 1.5 inch touch screen, and character recognition software, which sadly is only useful if you happen to be fluent in Chinese. It has multimedia functions (audio and video player) that rely on a measly 60MB of internal memory with no option for expansion, rendering said features quite moot. However, all this doesn’t take away the fact that it is the smallest touch-screen phone watch out there. So if you’re willing to pay the price (which is currently unknown) when it hits the market (which is an unknown as well) instead of waiting a couple of more years for what might be a better version, go for it!

 

This is indeed isn’t a very ’smart’ phone, but the convenient and small design makes up for all that weaknesses. Great phone who really want their phone to be extremely small, and don’t really care about other ’smart functions’.

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Feb
22

Motorola QUENCHYes, we’ve discussed pretty much about smartphones here, and here’s another one from Motorola. Very much like the others we’ve talked here before, it has a big touchscreen, the functions are pretty much alike too, and the difference can only be seen when we actually get our hands on. So, just view the previews!

 

The cellphone industry today is a little weird to me, looks like every company is trying to throw out a statement by making alike phones. As we all can see, Motorola is really going all out in producing more Android devices around the world. At the ongoing Mobile Web Congress, Motorola has just announced it latest Android-powered device called the Motorola QUENCH with MOTOBLUR. Well, to date the Motorola Quench is the eighth Android device from Motorola and it boasts of a sleek touch-screen design, with pinch and zoom navigation and a front-facing centrally-located touch pad.

 

The Motorola Quench also supports Adobe Flash lite complementing its 3.1-inch high-resolution touchscreen display, which means the internet surfing will be more enjoyable. It also provides full syncing support of contacts, post, messages, photos and more from your social networking services such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and work and personal email as well as last. Updates from these services are automatically delivered to the phone’s home screen.

 

Another exciting feature of the Motorola Quench is the Swype technology which makes it easier to enter text messages, allowing you to reply to text messages quickly. As we’ve been told, the faster the better! And with MOTOBLUR, the Motorola Quench keeps happenings, messages, news feeds and more readily available for browsing and responding on its customizable home screen. The phone’s contact information such as email addresses, profile pictures and phone numbers are automatically synced whenever you change them online. Other features of the Motorola Quench include – a connected media player, music search feature, streaming FM radio, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, voice-activated search, access to the Android market, 3G, Wi-Fi, aGPS, and stereo Bluetooth1.

 

The Motorola QUENCH is slated for a first quarter 2010 release worldwide. It will be called the Motorola CLIQ XT in the U.S. under T-Mobile. Well, this is what I’ve got so far, sounds like a nice phone to come. And personally, it looks like a nice phone too, I like these round corners and the smaller size, looks kinda cute, I think it’s a more suitable phone for girls. Anyway, we’ll still have to wait…

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Jan
25

Vivaz

There’s really a lot of smartphones out there in the market, and now here’s just another one. And if you’re interested, let’s see what’s different and new about this one!

 Sony Ericssson has just unveiled a new smartphone with full touch screen features – the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is a full featured smartphone with great features such as a high resolution camera that lets you capture video in HD quality. It has a dedicated video key that lets you shoot video quickly with continous auto focus. This phone also lets you review video content in standby panel or online via Wi-Fi on its 3.2 inch touch enabled widescreen display. You can also upload your videos to YouTube and Picasa directly over Wi-Fi. And since uploading takes time, you can let the uploading run in the background and use the phone for other purposes. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is also an open platform handset so you can personalize it with entertainment content and other applications that you can find from PlayNow and Symbian Developer Community. And it also has a GPS like many other smartphones do.

Design-wise, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz boasts of a design that can be attributed to what Sony calls as human curvature. The design was made to mirror the shape of the human body while at the same deliver a precise and compeling phone interaction. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz will be available in Moon Silver, Cosmic Black, Galaxy Blue and Venus Ruby designs.

However, no words on pricing yet. A exclusive nice phone, or just another smartphone? To me, I got really tired of these smartphones, and this one is just not my idea of a pretty cellphone. So how do you think?

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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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Dec
14

LG GD510 "pop"LG has just released the LG GD510 “Pop” , from the pic above we can see that it is of simple but elegant design as LG phones have always been.  Girls just can’t help loving them, since  they’re always related with delicious food like chocolate, ice-cream and cookies, also because they’re usually elegant with good touch feeling.

 

This time, LG probably want to reach the mid costumers who want to have a touchscreen phone, so LG GD510 “Pop”  comes with touchscreen technology,3-inch WQVGA,8GB memory,3 megapixel camera, USB and bluetooth and USB connectivity and more, and low price. It’s More than enough for daily use and also for entertainment. I think you should buy this phone if you have a low budget to get the new touchscreen phone. And since it’s really loved by girls, and Christmas is coming nearer and nearer, you can also buy it as a Christmas gift for girlfriends, wives and mums.

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