Offered to the market by Samsung mobile phones and one of two Google branded phones, Samsung’s Google Nexus S is an outstandingly rated phone. Powered by the latest Android 2.3, also known as Gingerbread, the Google Nexus S promises to deliver on many counts. Offering an incredible 100,000 apps to choose from, this is one of the new generation of smartphones and in many respects one of the best on the market.
The Google Nexus S contains vast amounts of inbuilt memory, and is powered by a super-fast processor, the 1GHz Hummingbird. Offering an improved keyboard and some popular Android features, such as Wi-fi hotspot and multi-tasking, the Google Nexus S is one of the fastest phones currently available. It is exceptionally smooth to run and includes cutting edge features, such as an integrated graphics processing unit.
As you would expect from Samsung mobile phones, the Google Nexus S is a good-looking handset and is beautifully designed with a curved glass screen. This has been specially designed to fit snugly into the palm of a hand, and also to follow the contours of your face when using the phone. A high contrast bright screen adds to the appeal of the Google Nexus S. This clever handset also supports Adobe Flash and has fast loading pages. It even has a noise reducing function, which is highly effective when using the phone in busy and noisy areas.
The HTC Desire HD is a follow-up to the HTC Desire, one of the most popular Android based handsets to enter the market.
The physical unit is 68mm wide by 123mm long by 11.8mm thick. The screen is 4.3inches, with four touch sensitive points located at the bottom. These take the place of the physical keys found on the original Desire.
While the front of the phone is taken up by screen, the back features an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash. Video can be recorded in 720 pixel high definition. While there is a speaker on the front of the handset, the one on the back seems to be the primary source of sound.
The HTC Desire HD uses Sense UI and features additional widgets and a series of home screens to play with. Navigation through the screens is made easy with a pinch motion, which brings up a screen overview page. The notification bar provides easy access to your most recently used icons. These are just a few of many new features.
For gamers, the HTC Desire HD comes with a built-in GPU, which means it can handle fairly heavy graphic processing.
Overall, the HTC Desire HD features a virtually flawless interface with superior web browsing capabilities; offering everything Android is best known for. The handset is let down by the battery life and some people will not like the size of the unit or the screen. However, for a latest and greatest phone that works well, HTC Desire HD is a good choice.
Android smartphones have become very popular over the last few years and are now the best-selling kind of smartphone available. Google and a consortium of other companies involved in the telecommunications market have developed the Android operating system.
Applications, or apps, have become a big market. Apple offers a huge range of apps for their mobile devices, which have not only enhanced the iPhone’s capabilities but have also provided companies with a new platform from which to sell their software. The companies involved with Android have not been slow to increase the amount of apps available for this system as well.
The Android Market is an online shop built by Google for the various software apps developed. An app called ‘Market’ is installed on nearly all Android phones. It enables users to download other apps created by a variety of third-party developers. By the end of 2010 there were around 200,000 apps, games and widgets available on the Android Market.
There are many different kinds of application available. Google has developed a number of different apps including; Google Voice, Google Finance, Sky Map; which is used for watching the stars, Google Translate, Listen; which is used to help users with podcasts, and many others.
One popular segment of the market is for Android sat nav apps. Many android phones come with an in-built GPS device. When combined with an app like Google Maps, the application transforms the phone into a sat nav device that can be used in a vehicle or just for directions when walking around. Google Locate is another Android app that enables you to share your location with friends.
Undoubtedly one of the best Motorola mobile phones around right now is the Motorola Atrix. It certainly feels to be somewhere between a mobile phone and a computer, and its processing power suggests just that. The 1GHz dual-core processor, coupled with 1GB of RAM, ensures that this phone can claim to be at the cutting edge of mobile technology, and is surely a sign of things to come from other manufacturers as they attempt to catch up to this superb smartphone.
As well as such high-end specs, Motorola has introduced the novel technology of fingerprint recognition to the Atrix, meaning that instead of unlocking the phone in a normal way, owners can train it to recognise their fingerprint to unlock the device for added security.
In a world where technological frontiers are constantly being pushed, with the latest smartphone just around the corner, it is safe to assume that the Motorola Atrix will stand up against the very best in a year’s time.
Motorola has been struggling with sales in recent years as emerging markets produce cheaper and better smartphones, and it certainly hopes that the Motorola Atrix will signal a reversal of fortunes. The American-based company cannot claim to produce a fantastic wealth of handsets, unlike competitors such as HTC or Samsung, but it can be confident that the Motorola Atrix is a quality device that will produce customer satisfaction.
The LG Optimus 2X is an Android phone with a dual-core processor, one of the first of this type of phone to arrive in the shops. The extra power of the processor provides the phone with a lot of functionality.
It is powered by a Tegra 2 chip, which is made by Nvidia. This makes web pages load faster, allows better multitasking and in general provides a better experience all round. The pinch-to-zoom feature works seamlessly and changing from portrait to landscape view is quick. The screen size is 4 inches, great for games or Google Maps.
The camera has 8 megapixels and a wide variety of features and settings. It can also shoot full HD video, 1920 by 1088 pixels. It comes with HDMI support, which enables you to watch your phone’s video clips on any HD Ready TV.
Games generally run very well on the phone, though there are the occasional graphical glitches. The amount of apps available for Android phones is growing, so you can find apps that you like. Battery life is perhaps not the best around at the moment, so you will probably need to take your charger with you if you intend to use the web or play games a lot.
If you like your phone to have lots of bells and whistles, you should look around for some LG Optimus 2X deals. This phone really has a lot of features, with the full HD making it really stand out from the crowd.
This Android smartphone from HTC is one of the latest from this company. It is part of their new ‘S’ range of phones initially revealed in Barcelona in February. It is pitched between the HTC Desire and the more powerful HTC Desire HD in terms of its specification and price.
The screen is reasonably sized and is fairly bright. There are two cameras, the front-facing camera perfect for videophone calls. It comes with the HTC Sense system. For those who don’t know what HTC Sense is, this is the graphical user interface now incorporated into all of the Android and Windows Mobile phones from HTC. Battery life on this phone is impressive. Memory storage is catered for with an 8GB microSD card, ideal for all the music and apps you could want.
The Android app market is obviously not as developed as Apple’s apps, but it is growing and there are some good android sat nav apps around. Some will unfavourably compare its looks to the iPhone 4, but this is a minor criticism. Although the camera has 8 megapixels, the pictures do not seem to be much of an improvement from previous phones.
At the moment this phone is only available from Carphone Warehouse, though there should be some HTC Incredible S deals available. This is a great phone despite a few minor faults. It is definitely worth considering if you want a new mobile.
The LG Optimus Black is the latest phone in the LG Optimus range, which offers handsets that vary from cheap models for the budget conscious to all out smartphones for those looking to buy at the top of the market. The LG Optimus Black is a part of the Optimus range which is aimed at the top end of the market, and as such sports a slim, lightweight design, a 5 megapixel camera and runs on one of the most recent versions of Google’s powerful Android mobile operating system. Perhaps the best feature of the LG Optimus Black is the screen, which is a powerfully bright 4′, that LG are so confident in claims it can be viewed clearly even in direct sunlight. Although the screen falls a little short in this boast, the screen is still definitely a highlight of the phone and one of the best on the market today.
The most popular of the contracted LG Optimus Black deals range from between £18 and £25. These generally offer around 500 free minutes as a minimum and at least 300 free text messages. Some also offer unlimited data allowances, however this varies greatly from contract to contract so it is best to read the fine print to be sure how much data transfer the deal allows. These deals almost universally offer the LG Optimus Black handset for free as a part of the package, however if you are looking to buy the phone SIM free it will set you back around £400.
When you look at the Sony Ericsson Arc, it is easy to see the inspiration for the phone. When the Sony Ericsson X10 was launched in 2010, reviews were mixed. Some found it to be too slow and cumbersome to be considered a high-end smartphone and Sony Ericsson listened to this feedback. The Arc is basically the revamped version of the X10 and it has been widely lauded as not only the best Sony Ericsson phone ever, but possibly the best smartphone yet.
The Sony Ericsson Arc is amazingly thin given the power inside the phone. Measuring just 8.7mm at its thinnest point, this phone is by far the skinniest around. Out of the box, the Arc comes with Android’s latest 2.3 operating system and boasts a stunning 8.1-megapixel rear-facing camera that ensures the Arc is capable of taking photos and video which leave many other manufacturers behind. HD video recording is available on the Arc at 720p resolution. While the quality is not quite as high as the LG Optimus 2X, Sony Ericsson has fitted the Arc with Sony’s BRAVIA TV technology to enable faultless video playback through HDMI connectivity.
Internal memory, however, is a problem for the Arc, with a mere 320MB of onboard memory. A MicroSD™ slot enables a possible 32GB of extra room, although with many Android apps not supporting SD movement, this could prove a problem for consumers.
There is no doubting that the Sony Ericsson Arc is a beautiful device and its size means it puts many other competitors to shame. The processing capabilities and huge 1500mAh battery also means it will not disappoint.
The Motorola Atrix is one of the most innovative smartphones on the market today, acting more as a hub for a person’s technological life than as a traditional mobile phone. While performing admirably as a mobile in its own right, combining sleek design, video calling capability, a powerful processor, up to 46GB internal memory and a 5 megapixel camera, the Motorola Atrix also doubles as a web book and media centre thanks to a number of accessories. The Motorola Atrix can be plugged into a special laptop containing just a keyboard and monitor and operate as a web book, allowing users to surf the web, watch movies and work on documents, while a media hub allows users to export an HDMI cable to a TV, has 3 USB ports and a headphone socket. However these accessories are expensive, with the laptop dock alone costing another £250 on top of the handset’s £500 price.
There are a huge variety of contracted Motorola Atrix deals on the market, however the most popular ones tend to be around £25-£40 per month. With these deals, customers can expect to receive around 400 free minutes, unlimited free text messages and a minimum of 500MB worth of data allowance. These deals also give customers the Motorola Atrix handset for free, with some costlier packages also providing the media hub free of charge as well. Lower cost contracts will still expect the customer to contribute towards the cost of the phone, usually up to £200.
The LG Optimus 2X is the bigger brother of the LG Optimus, a market leading budget smartphone offered by electronics giant LG. However, while the original LG Optimus may have cut corners in order to keep its price low, the Optimus 2X leaves nothing out and is an ultra-fast, top of the range handset. This Android powered phone has a crystal clear 4′ screen, 8 megapixel camera, super-fast dual core processor and wireless sharing of media via a DLNA connection. The super-fast dual core processor that the phone boasts also allows users to quickly install and run large applications downloaded from the Android Market and run multiple programs simultaneously. This added performance over the original LG Optimus does come at a price though, as whereas the Optimus costs less than £150 for the handset alone, the Optimus 2X phone will set you back in excess of £350.
Luckily, the most popular contracted LG Optimus 2X deals offer customers the phone for free. These contracts will typically cost around £20 per month and offer customers an average of 200 free minutes, at least 500 free texts and generous data transfer allowances. Customers looking for pay as you go LG Optimus 2X deals won’t be as lucky as to find a deal offering a free phone, and will have to pay the full price of around £350 for the handset.
