Verdict of HTC Desire Android smartphone

When it comes to looks, the HTC Legend may have got the lion’s share, but the HTC Desire got the brains – with a super fast processor and deliciously responsive capacitive touchscreen it impressed us straight off the bat. Can it out-do its sister product, the Google Nexus One? And just how will that battery hold up?

Pros

Pictures of the HTC Desire just don’t do it justice – it’s so much more aesthetically pleasing in the flesh. It may not have the aluminium uni-body stylings of its brother, the HTC Legend, but its smart dark-bronze detailing and rubbery matt-black casing are elegantly understated. The huge 3.7-in AMOLED screen is sharp and the colours are vibrant. It’s light and slim, but feels really nice to hold in the hand.

The Desire is lightning fast. Both online and off we had no problems with lag. Web browsing is quite possibly the fastest and most pleasurable we’ve seen to date; loading times were negligible and the large screen was a joy to browse with. The 1Ghz Snapdragon processor added to the phone’s responsiveness and ensured multi-tasking didn’t slow us down.

Getting set up was a breeze with the Sense UI’s set-up wizard which guides you through the essentials the first time you switch on – it gets your email up and running, as well as social networks, phone book contacts and time, date and location.

The Desire does away with the Nexus One’s trackball, opting instead for an optical trackpad for scrolling and acting as the enter button for some functions. We didn’t tend to use it a great deal because the capacitive touchscreen was so responsive, but when we did it was easy and accurate.

Another great Sense addition is the Leap thumbnail mode – by zooming out from the home screen it gives you a quick and easy overview of your setup and you can quickly navigate between home screens without swiping. Customising home screens is just as easy peasy – and you’re not likely to run out of space with seven home screens to play with. There are also some HTC-built widgets to take advantage of, like Friend Stream, which amalgamates your social networks into one handy feed.

The onscreen keyboard is very good indeed; on a par with the Legend, which we described as the best we’ve ever used, but because the screen is even larger than the Legend’s 3.2-inch offering, you’ve got more space to play with. The haptic feedback was not intrusive, with its reassuring little vibrations letting you know when you’d made proper contact. There’s even a little wizard to help you get to grips with it.

Superior GPS made Google Maps a joy, the 3.5mm headphone jack means you can use any headphones you like with the handset and the music player, while not the most beautiful or intuitive we’ve ever used, is as user-friendly as the rest of the phone.

The 5.0-megapixel camera was far and away the best of the HTC cameras we’ve seen to date; while it’s still not the best quality camera we’ve seen on a phone, it’s much better than that of the Hero and other older HTC models. With a plethora of options and effects to play with, as well as a passable-quality video recorder function, it should more than satisfy as a camera phone.

Cons

Sometimes that beautiful screen was a bit too responsive – particularly when scrolling through menus and galleries, even the slightest touch would send the icons racing across the screen. At times like these we defected to the optical trackpad for more accurate control.

When we used the Desire intensively for a long time (about 45 minutes), it did get very warm. At this point we started seeing error messages and forced closes, and the Wi-Fi connection became a little wobbly. However, after a short break it was back to its old self – it’s not clear if these issues were recurring, however, as we didn’t experience them a second time.

The screen lock/activate button is housed on the top side of the handset – we’d have liked to see another of the buttons on the front of the chassis doubling as an unlock button, for the convenience of checking the time without having to pick the handset up.

What really lets the handset down is its battery life – we were lucky to get one day of use out of it without charging, even with just casual use. The battery indicator wasn’t hugely reliable either, with it seemingly quite full until it suddenly ran right down to the red.

Verdict

There’s just not much wrong with the HTC Desire. Like most feature-heavy smartphones, battery life was something of an issue but there’s always the option to turn the 3G off to save battery and cut down on widgets.

We fell completely in love with the HTC Desire – it seemed to know everything we wanted to do, and made it all ridiculously quick and easy to do. And, with the killer combination of speed, grace and that deliciously touchable AMOLED screen, it’s a winner.

source: http://www.androidappmobile.com/

About Motorola Droid Bionic android smartphone

The Motorola Droid Bionic is a 4G-enabled smartphone that will be one of the first to run on Verizon's 4G LTE network. Droid Bionic sports a speedy 1GHz dual-core processor with 512 MB of RAM and 2048MB of ROM. The phone also includes 14GB of internal storage and it can take a MicroSD card up to 32GB.

It comes with a 4.3 inch qHD (540 x 960pixels) display. A rear-facing camera (8megapixels) with HD video capabilities, dual LED flash, and a front-facing camera (0.3megapixels VGA)will make video calling a breeze. Entertainment is well covered with Adobe Flash and HTML 5 support, as well as with HDMI output to your large screen TV. Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.

A feature that Motorola is calling "Mirror Mode" will simultaneously stream video to the TV while it plays back on the phone, all in 1080p HD quality. As for the rest, there's 512MB RAM of internal memory and support for Adobe Flash.

Dimensions: 4.96 x 2.63 x 0.52 (125.9 x 66.9 x 13.3 mm). Weight : 5.57 oz (158 g)

Talk time with the Motorola Droid Bionic's 1930mAh battery is rated at 9 hours.

source: http://www.androidappmobile.com/

About LG Revolution android smartphone

LG Revolution android smartphone has a respectfully-sized, 4.3-inch touchscreen, while a front-facing camera will let you do video chats. The main camera unit on the rear of the device has a 5MP sensor with autofocus, HD camcorder, and an LED flash. Data speeds that the LG Revolution is expected to achieve on Verizon's LTE network are as follows: 5 to 12 Mbps for download, and 2 to 5 Mbps for upload. The handset is able to act as a Mobile Hotspot, so it'll allow you to share the data network via Wi-Fi with up to 8 other devices. Other goodies on board include Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI port and DLNA..

LG Revolution sports 1GHz Qualcomm processor, it ships with Android 2.2 Froyo.

LG Revolution sports the solid industrial design– which is comprised of a gunmetal finish complemented by soft touch surfaces on the top and bottom of the handset. Granted that it might look a little bit on the larger size, thanks partly to its massive 4.3” capacitive touchscreen, but its overall solid construction clearly makes it a favorable handset to flaunt. As for the display, it's more than detailed and crisp, but lacks the visual appeal when compared to something like Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus displays.

In following the revolution that Verizon is bringing forth with its LTE rollout, the LG Revolution will be one of the handsets in the near future to enable consumers to experience 4G LTE speeds on a smartphone. Furthermore, there's a healthy dose of impressive specs that will easily appease the early adopters out there – such as a 1GHz chipset, 5-megapixel auto-focus camera, front facing camera for Skype calling, Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA support, and an HDMI-out port. And for those who prefer a relatively untouched Android experience, you'll surely come to appreciate the Android 2.2 Froyo experience it has to offer – which appears to be mostly stock.

Again, the LG Revolution's support for 4G LTE with Verizon is undoubtedly going to be a huge draw for those looking to move up to a super phone.

About Motorola Xoom android tablet

The Motorola Xoom tablet is one of the most powerful iPad rivals out there.With a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor beating with two 1GHz chips, it’s a powerful little grunt-nugget, and the 1280×800 resolution display is a great size at 10.1-inches, making it very much an iPad rival, especially when you consider the similar black bezel is a little thinner.

The dual-core chipset looks like it will really help power along both video and operation, and the early finger responsiveness was excellent, although a little juddery at times. Things like hitting the menu unlock, which asks you to move a padlock icon out of a circle, wasn’t the smoothest. There’s a front-facing video camera for Google Talk (or whichever video calling app you’d like) and a rear facing 5MP offering with dual LED flash for awkward tablet picture-taking – all pretty nice on the spec front so far.

What are missing are the front buttons – no need for them here, as Google has built them right into the Android 3.0 operating system beating at the heart of the Motorola Xoom. A 3G SIM slot as well as a microSD opening adorn the top of the Xoom, although the latter actually isn’t supported by Honeycomb as yet.

The Xoom actually can be used one-handed in both portrait and landscape mode, although we don’t recommend it if you don’t want to run the risk of dropping it all over the place. Still, it’s good to know you can have a spare palm around if you need it.

Motorola’s gone a little dock happy this time around, and the Xoom has one to go with it, although the only addition is a USB port to plug in peripherals to connect up to the device and watch films or similar.

The new features of Android 3.0 look very good though; here’s a run-down of what you can expect: Google Mail is now divided into two sections, allowing you to see your inbox as well as reply to mails in the same pane. This interface morphs depending on what you’re doing, so if you looking through your various mail folders the right hand pane will show previews of the messages contained within.

Books – the 3D carousel looks very spiffy, and all your titles will be stored on the cloud, rather than the device. You’ll cache them as you read, which means that should you go out of signal you won’t lose the book you’re ploughing through, and if you open the same book on another machine (your PC, for instance) then you can simply pick up where you left off. The books can be read in both portrait or landscape mode, and while we’re not sure that ebooks on tablets are the most natural way to read prose, it’s perfectly acceptable and large enough.

Video should be pretty good on a device of this size and resolution – the test selection we were shown was impressive enough, although it didn’t blow our socks off in the way some video looks on smaller screens. This is natural given the larger size, but the slightly visible buttons at the bottom of the screen looked a bit scrappy UI-wise.

We’re told that other applications will still stretch video to the larger size for the screen, even though they’re not optimised for Honeycomb as yet – nice work from the development team at Google and good way to keep the applications up to date and relevant.

Google Maps – the same as we’ve seen on other devices, Google Maps 5.0 looks great and speedy on the Motorola Xoom. 3D mode rendered very quickly, and the snap into Streetview was almost instantaneous – the Motorola Xoom has a three point accelerometer, gyroscope and barometer on board, so we reckon Google Maps could make use of this extra functionality in the future and make some even cooler leaps forward. YouTube – the whole UI for this has been re-developed for the Android 3.0 update, and it certainly looks good. We’re looking at related videos while the main movie is playing, and a 3D carousel of all the current titles related to our search too. A double tap will bring the main video to the fore, and shows that YouTube video streaming is definitely moving forward to an acceptable point for tablets as well.

Google Talk – as we mentioned earlier, the front-facing 1.3MP camera now enabled video chat on the tablet, and works well on the slate form factor when docked. The Google Talk application is the best place to get the video chat for the tablet, and you can use both the front and rear cameras for chatting to someone in another place and still see each other.

We’re told it works well over both 3G and Wi-Fi, but we’ll reserve judgement about that until we get the chance to play with it out and about, as there would have had to be some serious optimisation to get 3G video calling working to an acceptable level.

Overall, we’re impressed with the Xoom, and look forward to having a more in-depth play with it than the one Motorola would let us have at the demonstration.

The power and new OS bode well, and certainly offer the chance of better battery life and functionality than the Galaxy Tab, which has failed to impress us despite the level of hype generated by its launch.

Verdict of LG Optimus T-burgundy (T-Mobile)

The LG Optimus T runs οn thе latest οf Google’s Android software, whісh іѕ Froyo version 2.2, аnd hаѕ a built-іn 3.2 megapixel auto focus camera, music player аnd high-alacrity Internet аnd Wi-Fi connectivity.
Design
Measuring 4.47 inches long by 2.32 inches wide by 0.52 inch thick, the Optimus T is a minimalist touch-screen-only phone, with rounded corners and a slightly curved back coated in a soft-touch material. The phone is relatively lightweight at 4.5 ounces, and has a nice comfortable feel in the hand. It comes in two colors: burgundy and titanium gray.

Dominating the front is a 3.2-inch, 16.7-million-color LCD display. While it's not made out of glass, and its 320x480-pixel resolution is not as high as some other Android phones (like the Droid Incredible or the MyTouch 3G), we think it looks great. Graphics pop with color, and text is legibly crisp. You can adjust the brightness, the screen timeout timer, and the animations when opening and closing applications. The capacitive screen feels very responsive for the most part, and we're glad to see that it has multitouch and pinch-to-zoom support. The phone also has a proximity sensor and an internal accelerometer.

The Optimus T ships with the stock Android 2.2 user interface, so there shouldn't be any surprises for longtime Android fans. You get the usual five customizable home screens, along with three shortcuts along the bottom to the phone dialer, the main menu, and the messaging in-box. The phone dialer app is pretty self-explanatory, with a roomy virtual keypad and access to the call log, the contacts list, your favorites list, and a new text message. We're also happy to note that the Optimus T comes with the Swype keyboard in addition to the default Android virtual keyboard.

Underneath the display are the usual Android hot keys--the menu and search keys are on the left and right side, while the Home and Back keys are housed within a center panel. On the right spine is the volume rocker, the 3.5-millimeter headset jack and screen lock/power key are on the top, the Micro-USB port is on the bottom, and the camera lens is on the back. The microSD card slot is located behind the battery cover.

Features
As we mentioned above, the LG Optimus T ships with Android 2.2, which is quite impressive for a supposedly entry-level smartphone. Android 2.2 has plenty of improvements over 2.1, which include voice dialing over Bluetooth, app storage on a memory card, a new camera viewfinder, app sharing, and Facebook integration. However, due to hardware limitations, Flash 10.1 is not available with the Optimus T's browser even though Android 2.2 technically supports it.

But all is not lost, as the Optimus T has not only Wi-Fi and 3G, it also has tethering and Wi-Fi hot-spot capabilities. The Optimus T will also be one of a few T-Mobile smartphones to let you make calls over Wi-Fi, though the feature is not available at launch. Other connectivity features include Bluetooth with A2DP support, and GPS. If you decide not to use Google's own navigation feature, the phone does come packaged with T-Mobile's TeleNav GPS Navigator app.

Other apps preloaded on the Optimus T include demo versions of Diner Dash 2, Doodle Jump, and Pac-Man, DriveSmart, ThinkFree Office, Twitter, and YouTube. Of course, it also supports the full suite of Google services, like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, and Google Voice Search. In addition to the Android Market, the Optimus T also has T-Mobile's own "AppPack" store that features recommended apps. The Optimus T works well as a phone, with quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, conference calling, voice dialing, text and multimedia messaging, and visual voice mail. The phone book is limited only by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts), and there's room in each entry for multiple numbers, e-mail addresses, IM handles, and so on. You can merge contact information from multiple e-mail and social networking accounts, such as Exchange, your own POP3/IMAP servers, Facebook, and Twitter.

The multimedia features on the Optimus T are nothing unusual. The music and video players are the standard Android fare, with basic support for most music and video file formats. It comes bundled with the DoubleTwist syncing software, which is nice. The phone only has 170MB of built-in memory, but it does come with a 2GB microSD card for extra storage. The maximum card size is 32GB.

Last but not least is the 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera. Settings include five different resolutions, an adjustable ISO, white balance, color effects, a timer, brightness, six scene modes (Automatic, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night, and Sunset), four focus modes (Auto, Macro, Face tracking, and Manual), and 2x digital zoom. There's also a video camera here that can record VGA, QVGA, and QCIF quality video, but no HD. Picture quality was actually quite decent for a 3.2-megapixel camera. Images looked sharp, though colors seemed muted and dark, especially in indoor shots.

Verdict of Motorola Droid X android smartphone(Verizon Wireless)

The Motorola Droid X Android smartphone rocks a brilliant 4.3-inch touch screen display supporting 854 x 480 pixels resolution , 1GHz TI processor , running with Google Android 2.1, and offers some great multimedia features, including an 8-megapixel camera with HD video capture, HDMI output, and DLNA support.

Design
Measuring 5 inches tall by 2.6 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick and 5.47 ounces, it's a hair taller than the HTC Evo 4G, but also slightly thinner and lighter. It also makes for a tight squeeze in a pants pocket, but without a slide-out keyboard like the Droid's, it's doesn't feel quite as bulky. The backside also has a nice soft-touch finish, and the Droid X feels like a solid handset overall. The Droid X's display actually looks deceptively bigger than the Evo 4G's because of a thin border around the edge that blends into the screen, but it's the same size at 4.3 inches. It has a WVGA (854x480 pixels) resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio and looks absolutely brilliant and crisp. There's also a proximity sensor and a built-in accelerometer that was pretty responsive in changing the screen orientation. The Droid X offers two keyboards: a standard virtual keyboard and Swype. Below the display, you get the four standard Android shortcut keys--menu, home, back, and search--but unlike on the Evo, they're hard buttons and not touch-sensitive. On top of the device, you'll find a power/lock button as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack, and on the left, the Micro-USB port and the HDMI port.

Features
Motorola Droid X ships with Android 2.2 Froyo . Given the large screen, it's no surprise that multimedia plays a huge part. The smartphone offers a dedicated Blockbuster On Demand app where you can preview and download movies--to rent or to own--on the go. Once purchased, you can watch the video on another connected device, such as a TV, a Blu-ray player, or a PC, using Blockbuster software.

You can make your own movies, too, since the Droid X has an 8-megapixel camera that's capable of capturing 720p HD video. In addition, the smartphone has a three-mic system for capturing the best audio for the situation. This option is available in camcorder mode under Scenes, and you have four choices: Everyday for capturing audio from all directions; Outdoors to reduce wind noise; Narrative for when you're, well, narrating a scene; and Subject to capture audio from the person you are filming--can't say we've seen this on any other camera phone. The camcorder, as well as the camera, also offers effects, face detection, dual-LED flash, autofocus, and digital zoom. The one thing you don't get is a front-facing camera like on the Evo 4G, but Motorola has said it will add this feature in future devices.

The Droid X has 8GB of onboard memory and ships with a 16GB microSD card, but the expansion slot supports up to 32GB cards, so you can essentially have 40GB of storage. You can share photos and videos through the usual avenues--e-mail, multimedia message, Bluetooth, Facebook, and so forth--but you can also display content on your HDTV via HDMI output or through a Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)-compatible device. If you're not familiar with it, DLNA is a standard that makes it easier to move content, like movies, photos, and music, from device to device. Since the Droid X supports this technology, you can stream media from your phone to other DLNA-compliant tech, like the Xbox 360, without having to go through a whole setup process.

Moving away from the multimedia and back to some of the core functions of the smartphone, the Droid X supports Gmail, and POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts, and it offers native Microsoft Exchange synchronization out of the box for e-mail, calendar, and contacts with access to global lookup. Corporate users will also be glad to know that the Droid X has security protocols for remote password control and wipe. Gmail aside, you can view your various e-mail accounts in a unified in-box or choose to keep them separate.

Voice features include a speakerphone, speed dial, voice commands, conference calling, Skype Mobile, and text and multimedia messaging with threaded chat view. Bluetooth, 3G, GPS, and integrated Wi-Fi are also onboard, and the Droid X can be used a mobile hot spot for up to five devices.

We used the Droid X as a hot spot for a number of devices, including a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 and a MacBook Pro, and measured download and upload speeds using Speedtest.net. We conducted tests throughout Manhattan and averaged download speeds of 1.75Mbps and upload speeds of 0.46Mbps. It was adequate for getting our work done, but we got kicked off the connection several times, which was frustrating.

About Motorola Droid 2 Global android smartphone(Verizon wireless)

Motorola Droid 2 Global Android smartphone with support for CDMA 800/1900, CDMA EV-DO Rev. A 800/1900 , WCDMA 850/1900/2100, and quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks. The World Edition Droid 2, like the original droid/Milestone and Droid 2, has a side-slide QWERTY keyboard and a 3.7-inch 480×854 capacitive touchscreen.

As for CPU, the Global gets a boost from 1GHz to 1.2GHz. It runss Android 2.2 OS with Adobe Flash Player 10, Swype keyboard, Google apps and 3G Mobile Hotspot function built-in. The phone supports Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and WiFi connectivity. It has a 5 Megapixel camera with dual LED flash and video recording, a GPS/GPS with Google Maps Navigation, and 8GB onboard memory and pre-installed 8GB microSD card. The Motorola Droid 2 Global’s 1420mAh offers up to 500 minutes of talk time and up to 230 hours of standby time.

Features
The Motorola Droid 2 Global is a world smartphone. It offers dual-mode technology, which means it supports both CDMA and GSM networks. Here in the States, it will continue to run on Verizon's CDMA/EV-DO Rev. A network as usual, but once abroad, the phone will automatically detect and switch to a GSM network. The Droid 2 Global comes with a SIM card preinstalled, but Verizon has a policy that ensures it will unlock the SIM provided that you've been a customer for more than 60 days and are in good financial standing.

Voice and data coverage are available in more than 200 countries, and 3G data is available in more than 125 countries. You can check out Verizon's international coverage map, and also be sure to check out the roaming rates before you leave, so you're not in for a surprise when you receive your next bill.

In addition to the world-roaming capabilities, the Droid 2 Global offers a number of other features that will be useful to business customers. This includes the option to use the smartphone as a mobile hot spot for up to five devices.

The smartphone supports multiple Exchange accounts, including calendar and contacts with global directory lookup. It comes with a VPN client; the QuickOffice Suite for creating, viewing, and editing Office documents; and file and task managers. Running Android 2.2, the Droid 2 Global also has Google Maps Navigation, Voice Actions, and other Google services. Verizon services preloaded on the device include VZ Navigator and Skype Mobile.

All work and no play makes for a boring smartphone, so there are some multimedia extras thrown into the mix, such as Amazon Kindle for Android, Blockbuster's mobile app, and a demo version of EA's Need for Speed Shift. The Droid 2 Global also comes with Android's stock media player, which isn't very sexy, but gets the main job done. The player supports AAC, AAC+, MP3, H.263, H.264, WMA10, MPEG-4, MIDI, and AMR NB music and video codecs. The smartphone has 8GB of internal memory and ships with an 8GB microSD card, but the expansion slot supports up to 32GB cards.

The Droid 2 Global smartphone is equipped with a 5-megapixel camera with a dual-LED flash. Picture quality was decent. Subjects were easily identifiable, but indoor shots could have been just a tad brighter (adjusting the brightness only washed out the image) and more vibrant. At the highest resolution (720x480 pixels), recorded video was clear but suffered a bit from the halo effect. You can share media via e-mail, MMS, and social networks, as well as through other mediums. The Droid 2 Global also has DLNA support, so if you have a compatible device, you can wirelessly stream content from your phone to that product.

Verizon packages the Motorola Droid 2 Global with a charger, three international adapters, a USB cable, a preinstalled SIM card, an 8GB microSD card, and reference material.