Mobile Phone Reviews : The Regulars

The Sony Ericsson X10 is the first phone to be released by the company which runs Android, Google’s powerful mobile phone operating system. As a result, the X10 is signalling its intent to compete with the best and latest mobile phones in the market today.

The Sony Ericsson X10’s most striking feature is its large, 4-inch touch screen which is brilliantly responsive while still holding great clarity in all lighting conditions. Equally impressive is the handset’s 8.1-megapixel camera, which also boasts a digital zoom, focus and white balance.

The Sony Ericsson X10 also comes with two handy applications called Mediascape and Timescape, where different pieces of information are accumulated and presented to the user in one bundle. In Mediascape, a user’s videos, photos and audio are all presented in one neat place, while Timescape collects updates from various social networking sites and presents them in one application.

Where the Sony Ericsson X10 does fall down, though, is in its functionality as an actual phone. The call quality on the X10 leaves much to be desired, while the awkward touch screen keyboard and cumbersome predictive text make writing messages a painful process. The battery life and charging times are also disappointing.

Many users are also upset with Sony Ericsson’s interpretation of Android. The company tried deliberately to alter their version of Android and make it look unique; however the end result is not on par with other Android versions on similar new mobile phones.

For individuals looking for cheap mobile phones, the Nokia 6700 Slide is a combination of smartphone and feature phone in one.

The phone is nice to look at, featuring a slide opening design with touch screen. When closed, the phone measures 9.52 cm tall by 4.61 cm wide and 1.59 cm deep. The weight with battery is 100 grams. The touch screen is a 2.2-inch TFT screen displaying 16 million colours. Beneath the screen is a series of external keys which are spacious and easy to use.

The phone feels sturdy and the slide action is nice and smooth. When first turned on, the Nokia 6700 Slide walks you through a set up to help personalise your user experience. This includes importing contacts and personalising wallpaper and ringtones.

As to the touch screen, home screen widgets include Nokia Ovi Store and shortcuts to Facebook Mobile and email. Email is quick to set up and general browsing is fairly quick, although there is some lag when trying to connect to the Ovi Store.

The phone includes a 5 megapixel camera which supports high quality Carl Zeiss optics.

Overall, while the Nokia 6700 Slide isn’t an advanced smartphone, as a feature phone it isn’t bad. Best for the user looking for a basic mobile with a few extras, this phone is great for casual photography, the odd short text message, checking email, and occasional web browsing.

For mobile phone deals on the Nokia 6700 Slide, carriers include T-Mobile, Orange, 3 Mobile, Vodafone, O2, Virgin, and Talk Mobile.

The BlackBerry Bold 9000 focuses mainly on providing mobile email services. The mobile phone was released in 2008 and is the successor to the BlackBerry 8800. BlackBerry mobile phones generally are associated with email services targeted at the business market segment; the BlackBerry 9000 falls within this category.

The BlackBerry Bold 9000 measures 4.49 by 2.60 by 0.59 inches. It weighs 4.8 ounces. Its battery life is five hours of talk time, and 13 days (312 hours) of standby time. The screen has a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels and measures 2.6 inches.

The BlackBerry Bold 9000’s camera has 2-megapixels resolution, with flash and digital zoom. In terms of multimedia applications, the mobile phone has video supporting files in H.263, H.264, DivX 4, DivX 5, XviD and WMV formats and a music player supporting files in MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, and WMA formats.

Impressively, the inbuilt memory is 1024 MB. The operating software is BlackBerry OS 4.6x. The BlackBerry Bold 9000 has a full QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, 2.0 stereo Bluetooth and GPS. Its email service works with IMAP, POP3, SMTP, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino or BlackBerry Connect.

The high quality of the screen and the ease of use of the keyboard both feature strongly in the BlackBerry Bold 9000’s reviews. The mobile phone is exceptionally easy to use. On the downside, the mobile phone is quite bulky and may not suit everybody’s taste.

BlackBerry Bold 9000 deals are mostly two year contracts offered by the major networks.

The HTC Magic has been around for a little while now; although not the most up to date as technology and styles change so fast these days, it is still an elegant and easy to use touch-screen phone. Contract and sim free mobile phone deals are likely to mean considerable discounts over when it arrived on the scene last year.

The Magic is a great phone to use and with lots of home page and set up variations, personalising it will give hours of entertainment. Its navigation ball means you can quickly and surely find your way around the screen and the one touch menu tab allows you to straightforwardly monitor all your apps.

It comes with a versatile audio player and 3.2mp camera but it does not have a flash or the much valued 3.5 mm headphone point. It has good connectivity and its 512MB internal memory can be extended with a microSD card. When comparing it with other mobile phones the nearest is probably the T-Mobile G1 – their features pretty much match up but the Magic is lighter and has a longer battery life and more memory space.

If you put aside its shortcomings and realise this is not an iPhone then the HTC Magic is a decent looking mobile to have. Many of the problems that it has have been resolved in the later models but for price and usability it will not let you down for either style or phone quality.

With an 8 megapixel camera and impressive photo features, the Sony Ericsson C905 has made mobile phone news as the first handset with such a powerful camera.  Aside from its capable camera function, the C905 has all the useful data and communication elements that users would expect from Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

Pros

The C905 is about more than just a load of megapixels; there are several neat photo features.  There’s an LED light and powerful Xenon flash to help users take great shots in low lighting.  The phone also has face detection, instant red eye reduction, and image stabilisation systems that are usually found only on digital cameras.  There’s also the proprietary BestPic system and a macro mode.  HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity makes uploading to the internet quick and easy.

Cons
Due to the high resolution of pictures taken with the C905, file size is on the high end as well.  This cuts down on the phone’s battery life, and it’s significantly shorter than most other new mobile phones.  Users who employ the camera feature frequently will find they need to recharge the phone often.  Still, when one considers the excellent quality photos the phone takes, the trade-off is tolerable.

Conclusion
Users who compare mobile phones for camera capabilities are sure to be delighted with the C905.  With one of the most powerful cameras and some of the best picture quality available in a mobile handset, the C905 is miles beyond the competition despite its rather disappointing battery life.

The LG Cookie KP500 is a budget touch-screen mobile phone, costing (without a SIM card) around £100. This makes it a cheap mobile phone featuring touch-screen technology. LG mobile phones generally are marketed to budget users.

The LG Cookie KP500 is 4.19 by 2.18 by 0.47 inches, weighing just 3.14 ounces. It has a battery life of 3.5 hours of talk time and 15 days standby time. Its touch-screen is resistive, has a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels and is 3 inches large. The mobile phone’s camera has a resolution of 3 megapixels. Multimedia features include MPEG4, MP3 and FM radio. The memory slot has an inbuilt capacity of 48 MB. Internet connectivity is WAP 2.0 and the mobile phone has USB 2.0 and 2.1 stereo Bluetooth.

The LG Cookie KP500’s main selling point is that it looks and feels more expensive than it actually is. The touch-screen is of a good quality and pictures can be displayed both horizontally and vertically by turning the handset.

The fact that the touch-screen is resistive can lead to some annoyance, as it requires more effort to operate than a capacitive screen. The mobile phone lacks 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS, detracting from its overall functionality.

LG Cookie KP500 deals are very common across the major networks including T-Mobile, Orange, 3, O2, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile and Talk Mobile. Altogether, there are over 1700 different combinations of deals to choose from, with contracts from 12 to 18 to 24 months.

The Samsung Monte is one of the best value new mobile phones on the market today, as it is affordable at around £120 on pay as you go deals while still offering tremendous value when compared to other contract mobile phones.

Despite its relatively cheap price tag, the Monte is one of the best Samsung mobile phones on offer. It offers integration with leading social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and MySpace, although only one programme can be run at a time, as well as instant messaging services via Palringo IM.

Although basic, the media offerings on the Samsung Monte are neat and tidy. The phone comes with a serviceable built in music player, and the presence of a 3.5 mm jack means that any headphones can be used. Meanwhile, the BBC iPlayer is also available to stream video over Wi-Fi networks.

There are also features included which you wouldn’t expect to find on a model such as the Monte, including a well thought out photo editing suite and GPS navigation via Google Maps.

Despite the abundance of features on the Samsung Monte, it does fall down in some places as it tries too hard to imitate the top of the range, latest mobile phones. At times, the processor power is lacking and the phone can lag, while some basic functions such as email suffer from ease of access issues. There is also the lack of a QWERTY keyboard, which can make typing long messages a chore.

The Samsung Solid Extreme is not a phone for people who love the technology included with the latest mobile phones, as many functions on the handset are either lacking or older generation. Instead, the Samsung Solid Extreme is a mobile phone for people who lead an active lifestyle and need a handset which can keep up.

Unlike most Samsung mobile phones, which are usually criticised for their build quality, the Samsung Solid Extreme’s best feature is its sturdy design. The handset has been designed to withstand huge abuse, including shock, rain and even solar radiation. Because of this, looks have taken a back seat to durability as the handset is heavily set in thick casing.

Due to the emphasis on durability, the functionality has also suffered as only a basic 1.3-megapixel camera, low quality music player and FM tuner are available on the handset. However, due to the presence of a microSD card slot, large amounts of songs and photos can be stored on the phone without space becoming an issue.

Because of the emphasis on durability rather than technology with the Samsung Solid Extreme, it is surprisingly cheap compared to other contract mobile phones with some deals being available from just £10 a month.

However these cheap mobile phone contracts are often severely limited in the amount of free calls you can make and texts you can send, although for a phone designed to be used on the go this may not be a major issue.

The Motorola Motocubo A45 is a stylish slide phone available in a white enclosure.  The device is a tidy manageable size with dimensions of 82 x 61.5 x 16.6 mm, and weighing 110 grams.  The phone was released by Motorola in October 2009 and has been one of the company’s best sellers since.  Users of Motorola mobile phones are impressed by its sleek and compact image.

The handset comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, although they keys are placed quite close together making typing a little bit awkward.  It offers Organizer, T9 and dial functions and Voice memo; the menus are easy and quick to navigate. 

The TFT display screen is vivid and sharp, measuring 2.5 inches and has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and 256K-colour support.  The camera is not one of the key features of the phone, being only 2-megapixels but the pictures are of reasonable quality.

The Motocubo is powered by a Li-lon 930 mAh standard battery and will give you 8.5 hours of talk time and up to 350 hours of standby time.

You can keep in touch with your friends with emails, SMS and MMS.  The Motocubo supports WAP 2.0/xHTML as well as Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, GPRS, EDGE, micro USB v2.0 and HSCSD.   You can browse the web and switch applications quickly and easily.

You can store up to 1500 contacts in the phone book, and display the last 20 dialled, received and missed calls.

An FM radio and an MP3 and an MP4 player can be listened to through your own headphones thanks to the addition of a 3.5mm jack.

The Pop Pink is one of the latest mobile phones from LG, most notable for its compact and bright appearance; it’s a budget phone with a few extra features here and there. It’s one of the smallest LG mobile phones available, yet the screen is a sizable three inches.  A very slim, yet solid feeling unit, at first glance it seems that this phone may very well do all it needs to do at a very low price.

Most notable about the LG Pop Pink other than its bright pink exterior, is the size of the unit and screen. The touch screen absolutely dominates the face of the unit, and is clearly the focus of the device. Despite only supporting EDGE data transfer at low data rates, this phone is still quite capable of surfing the internet, as well as sending messages through both IM clients and through social networking sites.  The phone works well with the existing applications designed by LG for their phones.  While this is to be expected of all LG devices, these applications still run smoothly even on weaker hardware.

While there are many good things to be said about the LG Pop Pink, the battery life is another story entirely.  Supporting just 200 minutes of talk time on a single charge, the phone simply will not cut it for some. This combined with the total absence of Android are the greatest concerns about this phone, however in most every other way, the Pop Pink still manages to exceed expectations and is a welcome addition to the cheap mobile phones market.