The Sony Ericsson Arc is an excellent and super stylish smartphone, one of the new generation of Sony Ericsson mobile phones which aims to keep up with the latest smartphones on the block. Visually brilliant, this Android touch phone is packed with a raft of gadgets, apps and user-friendly features. This is definitely a contender for Sony Ericsson’s best mobile phone ever and is up there with the best of Android smartphones. In addition, there are plenty of great Sony Ericsson Arc deals on the market.
Ultra slim and lightweight, The Sony Ericsson Arc runs on Android 2.3 (with an option to upgrade to 3.0), this is an elegant and sophisticated handset with a fabulous 4.2 inch touch screen, that supports a brilliant sixteen million colour display of exceptional quality and resolution that works well even in bright sunlight, plus it benefits from Sony BRAVIA TV technology.
This phone is supremely easy to use, with seamless integration of social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and email, and there are a multitude of apps to choose from, including Android sat nav apps such as GPS and Google Maps and Google Street View, as well as up to 100,000 to download.
The Sony Ericsson Arc scores highly for its connectivity, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB, and it offers brilliantly quick 3G data access. It also boasts an 8.1 megapixel camera which is as good as most on the market. A decent battery means there are approximately 7 hours of talk time, plus a bonus noise shield feature which cancels out annoying background noise.
This re-engineered smartphone from Palm is a sliding phone offering a full QWERTY keyboard and touch screen. Encased in an attractive curved pebble-like casing, it is 60mm wide and offers integrated digital media player, GPS receiver, Wi-Fi hotspot and digital camera. Pocket sized and user-friendly, it does not offer as many apps as other Android smartphones but scores highly in other areas.
The Palm Pre 2 offers a fantastic ‘pack of cards’ style feature, whereby several apps can be open on the home screen at the same time as thumbnails, and the user can simply swipe between cards to switch the apps or swipe the apps to the top of the screen to close them down. The screen offers decent resolution and a gesture-sensitive control panel, which makes internet browsing simple and fun.
The Palm Pre 2’s upgraded spec means that its search feature, previously named ‘Universal Search’, has been remodelled as ‘Just Type’, and this excellent feature means you can access any app or messaging service simply by typing the words onto your home screen. The Palm Pre 2 also comes with improved battery life, and an innovative wireless charger called the Touchstone. The 5 megapixel camera with LED flash is also an excellent addition to this mobile phone.
With elegant looks, an exceptionally efficient user interface and some great Palm Pre 2 deals, the Palm Pre 2 is managing to hold its own in a crowded marketplace.
The first smartphone in the world to be offered with a dual-core processor, the LG Optimus 2X is a highly impressive model. Coming complete with an inbuilt 8-megapixel camera and high quality HD video recording facility, the LG Optimus 2X is a sophisticated and sleek-looking phone supporting an Android 2.2 system (easily upgradeable to Android 2.3). Highly rated by experts, the LG Optimus 2X has an excellent touch screen and scores highly on its graphics, faster web browsing and multi-tasking abilities.
A brilliant quality camera with LED flash, and D video and music player technologies add to the fantastic experience offered by the LG Optimus 2X. It also comes with 8GB of inbuilt memory and the capacity to add more with a micro SD card. Well priced within the marketplace, the LG Optimus 2X has fabulous graphics and many apps from Google Maps to Angry Birds, all of which are simple and easy to access and use. It also offers a vast battery capacity of 1500mAh, which could last you up to several days without recharging, and there is great connectivity with Bluetooth, Wi-fi and USB as well as a bonus HDMI connector.
The LG Optimus 2X certainly matches many of the best smartphones currently available on the market, not least for its superb camera and HD recording features, multi-touch zooming and web-browsing capacity. Standard Android apps are also easily accessible and the LG Optimus 2X comes with its own inbuilt apps for Twitter and Facebook.
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.
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.
The Samsung Omina 7 is Samsung’s first attempt at a Windows 7 phone and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. The huge 4-inch super AMOLED display is superb and the 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and HD video-recording capabilities mean that the Omina 7 is a real heavyweight of smartphones.
As you would expect, the Omina 7 comes with a 1GHz processor, as with many premium smartphones, and 8GB of internal memory. Surprisingly, the phone does not come with a MicroSD™ expansion slot, a big disadvantage when many phones today have at least a 32GB capability.
As Windows phones are relatively new it is perhaps unsurprising that the app marketplace is not as comprehensive as Android’s or as varied as Apple’s. This can be annoying for users who are not prepared to wait for Windows to catch up, although judging by the size of the company it should not be long before it does.
Samsung mobile phones has fitted a massive 1500mAh battery to the Omina 7, and claims that it has up to a 390-hour standby time and a 6-hour talk time. Given the problems HTC has had with its poor battery life, the Omina 7 could well steal some disgruntled customers from the Taiwanese giants with its battery capabilities.
The Samsung Omina 7 is simply a triumph for smartphones and the first attempt at producing a Windows 7 phone has yielded promising results. While the app market is not the biggest, nor the best, owners of the Omina 7 are sure to be rewarded for their patience.
