LG Viewty Snap, One Smile for Everybody

The LG Viewty Snap is a pretty old smartphone, it was released in 2010 but it still can put a smile on your face. It has an attractive design and is targeted at the younger audience. Its main attractions are the 3” WQVGA touchscreen and a 5MP Schneider-Kreuznach-certified camera with LED flash, it is also heavy SNS integrated in a world in which you don’t even exist without a Facebook account, unfortunately it lacks 3g but it compensates with its musical abilities. Let’s take a look:

LG Viewty Snap key features

• 3" 256K-color resistive TFT touchscreen of WQVGA resolution (240 x 400 pixels)
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Widget-enhanced interface and Livesquare home screen
• 5 megapixel Schneider-Kreuznach-certified autofocus camera with LED flash
• QVGA video recording @10fps
• micro SD card slot, up to 16GB
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Standard micro USB port (charging enabled)
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• Landscape on-screen QWERTY keyboard; Handwriting recognition
• FM radio with RDS
• Office document viewer
• Social networking integration
• Smart dialing (names and numbers)

 For full specs, clik here.                                             http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

The LG Snap measures  108 x 53.1 x 12 mm, almost  the same as the legendary Cookie, it is a compact smartphone which weighs a mere 87 grams, all these slim dimensions do not compromise the screen size, that’s the good news.

In terms of design, is similar to the LG Chocolate line, the main points of focus are the display and the camera, they pretty much define the style of the phone.
The touchscreen uses lo-tech resistive technology, it is a 3-incher of WQVGA resolution unit, anyway it’s a bright display with good contrast, the viewing angles are decent and overall it offers a lot for the money.
Besides the display, the front of the smartphone features three hardware buttons and the earpiece, on the left side we find the micro USB port used for both charging and data transfers, on the right there’s the dedicated camera key and the volume rocker, the top houses a 3.5 mm audio jack and the power/lock key and the bottom hosts just the microphone.

The back is the most interesting part of the LG Snap, there we can find the 5 megapixels camera with Schneider-Kreuznach lens and LED flash. Removing the back panel reveals a 900 mAh Li-Ion battery which offers almost 2 days of standby under pretty heavy use.

Also there are the SIM card/micro SD slots, the last one being hot swappable. The back of the phone is made of piano black plastic, just like the LG Chocolate, the build quality is good, the phone feels solid and very comfortable to hold in hand. It is also lightweight and sits nicely in any pocket.

The phone runs on LG’s in house software, customized with S-Class eye candy, there are widgets and home screens, including the Livesquare home screen.

The phone offers a clock widget, a FM radio, a music player, some Notes application, it features image slideshow, also an organizer with calendar and a few other items. I almost forgot the Facebook widget, but I’ll cover it later in the review.

The LG Snap also features multi tasking, it offers a Task manager which lets you run a number of Java/native apps in the same time and you can switch between them easily.
The social networking covers Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and MySpace but only Facebook and Twitter have apps (Facebook has a widget too).

As for telephony, the phone hands calls nicely, it supports smart dialing, the signal reception is good, also the in call sound quality. Messaging is very easy to use and intuitive, the email client is configured automatically.
The music player is very well implemented, you can filter tracks by artist, album etc., the phone comes with equalizer presets and a music recognition service. The video player is nothing to write home about, it can only play small resolution video in 3gp and mp4 format, forget the DivX/XviD.
As for audio output quality, the LG Snap does well for its league.

Web browsing is nice, page rendering is accurate and text is legible even when zooming pages, you can save pages for offline viewing, search on page, toggle full screen and landscape views.
The camera offers a maximum image resolution of 2592x1944 pixels, it offers autofocus and a LED flash, all camera settings can be accessed with a toolbar in the viewfinder, it provides some basic settings like ISO, exposure compensation, macro and so on. The pictures are pretty good, colors are accurate and contrast is ok, detail also is fine, the software processing plays a significant role in this department.

 The LG Snap shoots clips in QVGA resolution at 10 frames per second, a pretty poor performance from the Korean company but it compensates with a nice tool called Optic-all zoom, which allows the Snap to do digital zoom (up to 2x) without loss in image quality.

Final word, this is a pretty nice entry level smartphone, young at heart, with a nice design and interface, a good camera, with good native apps and social integration. You can play music and take pictures, upload them on Facebook and share them with friends, for most youngsters, this is as good as it gets, isn’t it?

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HTC Desire, The Legend Begins

One of the best phones released in 2010 is the HTC Desire, a smartphone that competes with many recently launched youngsters and really kicks their butts in terms of quality and design.

Key features:

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA
• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive AMOLED touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480x 800 pixel)
• Android OS v2.1 with kinetic scrolling and pinch zooming
• Slim profile and great build quality
• Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor
• 576 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging
• WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) video recording @ 15fps
• Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
• microSD slot, bundled with a 4GB card
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Optical trackpad which doubles as a button
• Smart dialing

Full specs here.                                                                         http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

Its box doesn’t leave much to be desired, as it comes with lots of stuff. We have here the charger, microUSB cable used for both charging and data connections, a single piece headset with music controls, a 4 GB microSD card and the user manuals.

The HTC Desire measures 119 x 60 x 11.9 mm and has a weight of 135 grams. Even if it sounds pretty much, the phone doesn’t seem big or heavy, it’s actually very compact, it feels comfortable in the hand and is pocket friendly too. The design is also one of the phone’s weapons, as HTC added high quality materials to its construction. The Desire is a strongly built phone and, besides being a tough guy, it’s also good looking. I really appreciated the soft plastic on the back, it feels nice and offers a good hand grip.
Let’s look at the screen. The HTC Desire comes with a 3.7 inches AMOLED highly responsive capacitive touchscreen which offers good sunlight legibility and viewing angles.

Above the screen are the earpiece and proximity and ambient light sensors. Beneath the display are the physical controls for Back, Menu, Home and Search with the optical trackpad in the middle.
The left side hosts the volume rocker and the right side is bare.
The top is home for a 3.5 mm audio jack and the Power/Lock key, meanwhile the bottom holds the mouthpiece and microUSB port.

HTC Desire comes with Android 2.1 Éclair, upgradeable to 2.2, and the friendly and good looking Sense user interface. Let’s see what’s going on the inside of the phone. We have here a Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon chipset, 1 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 200 GPU, 576 MB of RAM and 512 MB of ROM. All of these grant a wonderful user experience, as the Desire runs smoothly through the interface, without lagging.

In terms of telephony, the HTC Desire comes with some nice goodies: you have the People app as a phonebook, great in-call quality for both ends of the line, no reception problems and Smart dialing.
For messaging, the phone manages SMS, MMS and email. For texting, you have a comfortable on-screen QWERTY keyboard that is easy to use in both portrait and landscape modes. For emailing, you have Gmail and HTC Mail, while instant messaging is taken care of by Google Talk.
The connectivity package comes with support for  quad-band GSM, GPRS< EDGE, dual-band 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Wi-Fi Hotspot,  Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0.

The phone’s web browser has a very simple and nice user interface, supports double tap and pinch zooming, scrolling, text reflow, multiple tabs and switching between them, bookmarks, find on page and many others. Also here are HTML5 and Flash support. Pretty awesome if you come to think that this phone is almost 3 years old, isn’t it ?

Next, we’re going to talk about the camera. The HTC Desire comes with a 5 megapixel snapper that takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1936 pixels. It also has a LED flash companion and many settings, like auto focus, ISO speed, exposure compensation and others. The photos are taken fast and look really nice, with accurate colors and good amount of detail.
The phone shoots WVGA videos at 15 fps and offers a pretty average quality, I was expecting a little more. But it’s okay, the phone does a good job anyway.

For music playback, you have a cute, simple player with a Cover Flow-like interface. The music quality is absolutely brilliant, the audio output is very loud and clear. Also on board is a FM Radio with RDS support.
The phone’s video player also does a great job, having support for MP4 and 3G files. For XviD and DivX clips, you’ll have to get another one or convert them. The video quality is very nice.

Now, let’s see the app department. We have here the Quick Office application, for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint document files and there’s also an app for viewing PDF files. You also have Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Google Talk, Google Search, the Stocks app,  a voice recorder, World clock and others. If you’re still not satisfied, you have the Android Market at your service for more apps.
A GPS receiver is also on board the HTC Desire and it comes with A-GPS support. For navigation, you have Google Maps which allows you to plan routes, find points of interest, use the Street View mode and so on.

The phone’s 1400 mAh battery keeps it alive for a little over one day of intensive usage, but I think it won’t be a problem, given the fact that most smartphone users are already familiarized with daily charging their phone.

My final words are that the HTC Desire is still a great smartphone even if it’s almost 3 years old and it’s definitely worth buying if you want a reliable and good looking phone.

For a mobile phone deal, please visit our website.


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Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Eye Candy

I’m sure that a lot of people have waited for the arrival of the Galaxy Nexus back in 2011 and I can bet that most of them were so pleased, that they’re still in love with it after the passing of a year. You’ll understand why if reading the following review and comparing it with the other smartphone beasts. This new Nexus is in a different spot than its predecessor that was mainly a rebranded Galaxy S. Samsung packed this baby with high tech stuff, making it different from the current flagship (the Galaxy S2), with a different CPU and GPU and most of all, comes with Android ICS preinstalled.


Key features

• Quad-band GSM; penta-band 3G support
• HSDPA 21Mbps; HSUPA 5.76Mbps
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS with stock UI
• 4.65” Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution; 16M colors; oleophobic surface
• Slim profile at 8.9mm
• Dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU; PowerVR SGX540 GPU; TI OMAP 4460 chipset
• 16/32GB built-in storage; 1GB RAM
• 5 MP camera (2592x1936 pixels) with autofocus, LED flash; 1.3MP front-facing unit
• 1080p video recording @30fps; touch-to-zoom while recording
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
• DLNA; Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth 3.0 with ADP
• Charging MHL microUSB port with TV-out (1080p) support
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support
• NFC connectivity
• Accelerometer, gyro and proximity sensors; compass; barometer
• Back cover made of Hyper Skin material for increased grip
• Excellent audio quality

Full specs here.                                                                              http://www.mobilephonedeals.com/

Let’s see what’s in the box. We have here the charger, microUSB cable, the headphones with in-ear plugs and the user guides. Nope, no microSD card, because there’s no card slot; the Nexus holds 16 GB of internal memory, which I think is more than enough. It’s a phone, after all.

It measures 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9 mm and has a weight of 135 grams. It’s pretty compact and slim, you’ll be able to easily handle it with one hand and it will befriend your pockets too. Its design is very solid, the phone has its back covered by a high quality plastic called Hyper Skin and the screen has oleophobic protection, therefore, your phone won’t have any fingerprints issues.

The frontal part shares most of its room with the 4.65 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen which offers great, vibrant colors and very good sunlight legibility and viewing angles.
Above the display, you’ll see the earpiece, proximity and ambient light sensors and the front facing camera. Nothing beneath the display, the capacitive keys for Back, Home and Recent apps have been integrated into the OS.

The left side of the phone holds the volume rocker and on its right side hosts the Power/Lock key. Nothing found on the top, meanwhile at the bottom there’s a party going on: you can find here the 3.5 mm audio jack, microUSB port and the mouthpiece.
The Galaxy Nexus comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which looks nice and is very handsome and friendly. The phone is powered by a dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A9 processor within a TI OMAP 4460 chipset, has PowerVR SGX540 GPU, 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. Pretty neat, huh? It was one of the best phones of its time and still is a brilliant performer.

In terms of telephony, the Nexus offers a great in-call quality thanks to its secondary microphone for active noise cancellation, so, have no fear when making a phone call in a crowded, noisy place. The reception is also free of any issues.
When it comes to messaging, your phone organizes your SMS and MMS into threads that are displayed as conversations. You have the possibility of searching through your messages for a specific one or locking them against deletion.

For instant messaging, you have Google Talk, which is compatible with multiple clients, like iChat, Pidgin, Ovi Contacts and others. Emailing is taken care of by Gmail, which features batch operations and enables you to set multiple Gmail accounts and a generic email app that can handle IMAP or POP inboxes.
For typing, the on screen QWERTY keyboard is very easy to use in both Portrait or Landscape modes.
In the connectivity basket are a lot of goodies, like NFC, quad-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE, penta-band 3G with 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, microUSB 2.0 MHL.

For surfing the web, you have the Android Ice Cream Sandwich browser, which comes with a simple and cute user interface, but you can use Chrome, which is also available. You can open incognito tabs, switch between tabs, find on page, save for offline reading, pinch or double tap zooming and many others. The overall browsing experience is great, as the pages are loaded very fast and look nice on the big screen.
For taking pictures, the Nexus comes with a 5 megapixel snapper capable of producing photos at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It comes with a LED flash friend and you have settings for exposure compensation, white balance, scenes, geotagging, face detection and others. The image quality is brilliant, with accurate colors and very good amount of detail.
The video camera produces 1080p clips at 30 fps and borrows its sister’s interface, but adds some more stuff to its package. The video quality is also excellent.

For listening some music, you have the latest Music app here from Google, which comes with equalizer presets, allows you to customize one for yourself and when you plug in your headphones, you can enjoy the Bass Boost and 3D effect sliders. The audio quality is also top-notch.
The video player is decent enough, coming with DivX support, but if it was my phone, I wouldn’t settle for the standard video player and get something better from the Android Market.
Let’s get to the applications part. You have a document viewer for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files, YouTube, a Calendar, Google Talk and others. For more, you have the Android Market available which is pretty rich in very useful and cool stuff.

A GPS receiver is here too, with A-GPS support and Google Maps for navigation and Google Earth. You can plan routes, search for nearby points of interest, use the Street View mode and use the voice-guided navigation, if available in your area.
The Galaxy Nexus comes with a 1750 mAh battery which keeps your phone alive and kicking for about a day of intensive usage. It’s not much, but I think that most of us smartphone users are already used to recharging their device every day.

My final words are that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is quite a performer, having a lot of goodies packed in there for you under a sleek, good looking cover.

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LG Optimus M5e P30, Pedobear's Smartphone

The LG Optimus Me P350  is a teen oriented device. It looks very nice, it’s a compact smartphone that is shaped like a bar of soap and it comes with five colored battery covers so you can change its looks every day. The covers come in grey, pink, black, blue and red. In terms of hardware, don’t expect miracles, is a low end android actually, comes with the Froyo  2.2 Android OS and even comes with a 2 GB micro SD card in the package, so as far as I can say, it’s a cool droid.
As for inheritance, I can say he’s close related to the Optimus One, a very big hit for the Korean company, from which it uses the 600 MHz CPU. The question is if this little cheap droid will meet the expectations in the low end cheap androids market niche. Let’s find out.

 Full specs here.                                          http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

In terms of design, even if it’s a compact device, it’s pretty heavy and not as thin as you might expect from such a tiny device, the design team didn’t put much effort in this baby. It weighs a respectable 130 grams, actually is not much in real terms but it’ a lot for a smartphone which measures 113.5 x 59 x 13.3 mm.
 The LCD display is tiny also, with a diagonal of 2.8 inch and a resolution of 240x320 pixels which means a pixel per inch density of 143ppi.
Anyway, this little fellow, beside its bulkiness, feels very well built and solid in hand.

 The display is a very basic capacitive unit, don’t expect to be flabbergasted in any way, it doesn’t have a great sunlight legibility or a mind blowing contrast, due to its poor resolution it’s not great to look at walls of text in it also. Anyway, it’s a reasonable display for the price bracket, to be honest. Underneath the display we can find 4 capacitive  Android keys, the ellipse-shaped elongated key below them is a very nice feature, it serves multiple purposes like send/end/power/lock. The display also provides haptic feedback which is a nice feature to have on a touchscreen.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the battery cover comes in 5 colors, the back of the smartphone reveals a 3 megapixels camera lens with no flash. On the curved bottom of the LG we find the 3.5 mm audio jack, on the right side a volume rocker and on the left the micro USB port protected by a plastic lid. Overall, in terms of design, the LG Optimus ME is a pretty nice little droid, which inspires confidence and solidity.

 The LG Optimus Me is powered by an Android Froyo 2.2 version which is customized here and there by the Optimus User Interface.  This translates into some refreshed icons, a number of widgets and homescreens and so on.

 The Froyo 2.2 Operating System is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 Single core, 600 MHz, ARM11 MSM7227  Central Processing Unit and 140 MB of RAM, the interface runs decently smooth but sometimes lag is present, this is mainly due to the low RAM on board.
Browsing is possible on this little droid but the small screen and the lack of Flash don’t make it the best tool for the job. Anyway, the display supports multi touch, double tap zoom, nice features for an entry level smarty.
 The LG Optimus Me shines in the connectivity department, it comes fully equipped with 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, plus an FM radio.
 A full list of  connectivity specs :

CONNECTIVITY
• Bluetooth:
o
 2.1, EDR
o Profiles:
 Advanced Audio Distribution (A2DP), Audio/Video Control Transport Protocol (AVCTP), Audio/Video Distribution Transport Protocol (AVDTP), Audio/Visual Remote Control Profile (AVRCP), Dial-up networking (DUN), File Transfer (FTP), Generic Access (GAP), Generic Audio/Video Distribution (GAVDP), Handsfree (HFP), Headset (HSP), Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol, Object Push (OPP), Phone Book Access (PBAP), Serial Port (SPP), Service Discovery Application (SDAP), Service Discovery Protocol (SDP)
• Wi-Fi:
o
 Yes
• USB:
o
 USB 2.0
o Connector:
 microUSB
o Features:
 Mass storage device, USB charging
• Headphones connector:
o 3.5mm
• Charging connector:
o microUSB
• Other:
o Computer sync, OTA sync


For business users, the LG Optimus Me comes with an impressive office suite, called ThinkFree,  which is a complete solution on Android devices for viewing and editing any type of .doc and also for file management.
The 3 megapixels camera is about average, there are some color effects available, the UI also offers white balance, ISO and the said color effects, like Mono, Negative, Solarize, Sepia and Aqua, the pictures are in normal limits for such a 3 MP shooter, the quality is decent, please take in mind this is a fixed focus camera. In video recording, the LG Optimus Me is surprisingly good, the videos are captured in VGA resolution at a fluid 24 frames per second.
The music player and the photo gallery are the industry standard for Android, there are no customizations whatsoever, you can play MP4 video files up to 480/800 resolution and you also have support for DivX / XviD out of the box,which is cool enough.
In terms of telephony, the LG Optimus Me does well, the signal reception is good and the in call sound quality is above average, the volume in the earpiece is pretty loud.
 The battery is a 1280 mAh Li-Io power plant, rated at 7 hours of talktime in 3g networks and a standby time of up to 14 days.
 With this smartphone, the Koreans are giving a clear signal that they are focusing on the low end droid market  as much as they are innovating on the high end phones market, what we have here is a budget phone, a playful youthful design and character, with a nice candy bar shape and bright colors.

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Samsung Galaxy S Plus, No Cheap Shots

Let’s say hello to the Galaxy S’s son, the new Samsung Galaxy S Plus, which inherited its father’s qualities, but comes with a different, more powerful processor and a better GPU. If you fancy big smartphones, take a look at the following review, because I’m guessing you’ll come to like and finally desire this phone.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 4" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) resolution, PenTile matrix
• Super slim at 9.9mm
• Android OS v2.3.3 with TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization
• 1.4GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255T chipset
• 512 MB of RAM
• 8GB internal storage, microSD slot (up to 32GB cards)
• 5 MP autofocus camera with face, smile and blink detection
• 720p HD video recording at 30fps
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g and n support
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Great audio quality
• FM radio with RDS
• 1650 mAh Li-Ion battery
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Document editor and file manager come preinstalled
• Secondary video-call camera
• Swype predictive text input
• Full Flash support for the web browser


 Full specs here.                                                               http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

In its box, you’ll come across the charger, microUSB cable and a single piece headset. It doesn’t have a microSD card included, but the phone comes packed with 8 GB of internal storage.
When it comes to its appearance, you can hardly spot a difference between the S Plus and its predecessor, but if you take a closer look at the two, you’ll notice that the new one’s silver frame comes in a lighted shade and the back also has a different model. It keeps its father’s shape and measures, having 122.4 x 64.2 x 9.9 mm and a weight of 119 grams.

The phone’s frontal part is dominated by its Super AMOLED WVGA 4 inches display which has Corning Gorilla Glass protection and very bright colors, thus the sunlight legibility is great. The viewing angles are also okay.
Above the screen, you’ll find the earpiece, a front facing VGA camera and the ambient light and proximity sensors. Beneath the display are the touch-sensitive Menu and Back keys with the physical Home key in the middle.
On the right side is the Power/Lock key and the left side holds the volume rocker with a lanyard eyelet above it.

On the top, you’ll see the 3.5 mm audio jack and the microUSB port, which is protected by a plastic lid. Only the mouthpiece at the bottom.

In terms of software and hardware, the Galaxy S  Plus omes with Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread and is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8255T Snapdragon chipset, a 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 512 MB of RAM and 512 MB of ROM. It’s a plus, isn’t it ? Needless to say that the phone is a brilliant performer and the user experience will be awesome.

In terms of telephony, the Galaxy S Plus does a great job, not that I would have expected anything else. The call quality is good for both parties and I didn’t experience any reception problems either. Smart dialing is enabled and you can also have video calls thanks to the secondary camera.
When it comes to messaging, the phone handles SMS, MMS and comes with a generic email application and Gmail, both of them having support for multiple email accounts. The on screen QWERTY keyboard is also very good, coming with support for Swype.

The connectivity basket comes full of goodies. You have here quad-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE, tri-band 3G with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA, 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP and USB 2.0.

For surfing the web, you get a great Android browser that supports HTML, Flash, double tap and pinch zooming, text reflow, multiple tabs and switching between them, bookmarks and many others. The pages are loaded fast look beautiful on the 4 inches display, offering you an enjoyable browsing experience.
The S Plus comes packed with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, capable of taking photos at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It also features a simple and friendly user interface, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection and others. The image quality is quite good, with accurate colors and decent contrast.

The video camera shoots 720p videos at 30 fps and also offers a pretty good video quality.
For audio playback, you have the TouchWiz music player, which looks very nice and offers lots of stuff, like some equalizer presets, the possibility of searching a song on YouTube or Google and so on. The audio quality is loud and clear, I was quite impressed and you’ll surely share my opinion when listening to music on it.
On board is also a FM Radio with RDS support.
The video player does a great job, coming with support for DivX, XviD, MKV, MP4 and WMV files. Watching movies will be a treat on the big screen.

Let’s check the phone’s applications , as it comes loaded with quite a bunch. You have YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration, Gmail, Google Search, social networking integration, the ThinkFree Office – an application that handles both viewing and editing document files, a Calendar app, Voice recorded, Clock (which manages alarms, stopwatch, timer and world clock). If you still aren’t satisfied, feel free to browse the Android Market for more, as it offers a big variety of applications.

If you get lost or something, a GPS receiver is here for you and comes with A-GPS support. For navigation, you have Google Maps, which helps you find your way around with voice guided navigation, the Street View mode (but only if they’re available in your area). You can also plan routes, search for points of interest and things like that.

The phone comes with a 1650 mAh battery, which guarantees a day on intensive usage. I used it for calling, browsing, taking pictures and music playback for a sum of 5 hours or maybe more and it was still alive when I got to sleep, but it passed away during the night.

I was overall satisfied with the phone’s performances, as it’s a powerful and wise device and if you’re into big displays and also want something smart and reliable, I think you’ll become close friends with the Samsung Galaxy S Plus.

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Samsung Galaxy S, The Birth of a Super Star

The Samsung Galaxy S is the first super smartphone from the Korean company. It was released in 2010, two years ago, as a direct competitor to the iPhone 4 from Apple (and what a game changer was that iPhone 4 folks, let’s be real), and what a battle it was. One total stranger vs. the iconic object of adoration, the trend setter, you know, the IPHONE.
 Anyway, Samsung managed to create a pure beast roaring high tech and sheer power, with impressive hardware for that time and a very slick design. Let’s take a look:

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 4" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) resolution
• Android OS v2.1 with TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization
• 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird CPU; 512 MB of RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera with face, smile and blink detection
• 720p HD video recording at 30fps
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g and n support
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass
• 8/16GB internal storage, microSD slot
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• FM radio with RDS
• 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery
• Great audio quality
• Slim waistline at only 9.9mm thickness
• Document editor
• File manager comes preinstalled
• Secondary video-call camera
• Swype predictive text input
• Excellent choice of preinstalled applications
• Full Flash support for the web browser (after 2.2 update)

Full specs here.                                                                              http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

 The Samsung Galaxy S featured the largest Super AMOLED on the market, courtesy of its maker of course, it had a 1 GHz processor under the bonnet and a HD capable 5 megapixels camera, not to mention the 2.1 Eclaire OS onboard, man, all the geeks were having a boner, trust me folks.
 First things first, the beast was pretty big for its time, at 122.4 x 64.2mm and 118 g, featuring a huge 4 inch display  and a very slim 9.9 mm  waistline. Anyway, the Galaxy S fits easily in your pockets and is very easy to use.
The smartphone is entirely made of plastic which attract fingerprints pretty easy, it’s a questionable decision from Samsung but it kept the price in the low bracket, it was the stuff under the hood that make the difference.

 Anyway, the stellar 4 inch super AMOLED compensated for the mediocre body, it was one of the best displays in the industry at that time, a pleasure to look at, both indoors and in the sunlight.
The sensitivity of the capacitive touchscreen is flawless even for today’s standards, below the excellent display there are the minimalist Android keys, the power/screen lock key is located on the top of the device, on the left you can see the volume rocker, also on the top we find the 3.5 mm audio jack and the micro USB port protected by a plastic lid.
The back of the Galaxy S is blue dotted and it houses the 5 megapixels camera lens, removing the back cover reveals a hot swappable micro SD card and the 1500 mAh battery which can run for 3 days with heavy usage, again, stellar performance keeping in mind we are dealing with a state of the art technology here.
The Samsung Galaxy S is a very well built phone, with perfect assembly quality, it looks and feels solid in hand, and ergonomics are top notch.

 The Operating System is Android Eclaire 2.1 customized by Samsung’s own TouchWiz, they actually did a marvelous job. The interface runs fast and smooth, we have a real performer here in terms of hardware, thanks to the S 1 GHz Cortex A8 CPU and the 512 MB of RAM make all the difference, everything runs flawless.

The phonebooks is also impressive, with unlimited capacity and provides any functions you can think of, you have all your SIM and Google contacts stored in it, you can use photos for contacts and all kinds of cool features.
Telephony is great on the Galaxy S, there are no problems with holding to signal or reception quality, the in call sound is loud and clear, you have smart dial and due to the proximity sensor, the display shuts down during calls.

 Messaging is yet another feature in which our baby excels, the UI is fast and simple, the phone supports anything and everything, from SMS to MMS to email, thanks to the Gmail app.
The G-Talk takes care of your Instant Messaging, being compatible with most clients, i.e. Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts.
For text input, the virtual keyboard comes with SWYPE (you will love this app) and works like this: instead of tapping on keys you sweep a finger across the keyboard.

 The video player in the Galaxy S is one of the best in the Android family, it comes with full support for DivX and Xvid and that’s a rare treat folks, the performance is great, you can play 720p videos without breaking a sweat, the phone comes with TV-Out and DLNA enabled so you can use it as a real media player around the house.

 The interface is minimalistic and well thought the phone can playback almost 8 hours of video on a single charge. The music player is also pretty cool, the UI is tabbed, features equalizer presets and you can search for a song via Google/Youtube. There is also an FM radio built in with RDS.

 The audio output quality is near perfect. The camera is a 5 megapixels shooter, it features geotagging, touch focus and face detection, yet no flash. The interface is simple and intuitive, the menu offers all you can imagine, blink detection, image stabilization, geotagging, smile detection, face detection and auto contrast.
Video recording is in HD 720p, an excellent feature, the clips are captured in 1280 x 720 pixels resolution at 30 fps.

Of course, when we are talking connectivity, we have a champ here, with  quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band HSPA with download rates of up to 7.2 Mbps and upload at 5.76 Mbps, Wi-Fi (b/g/n), the new Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP support and USB v2.0. The USB interface is standard microUSB.

Web browsing is a pleasure on that 4 inch wide super amoled, the Android web browser is the best in the business and the one from Galaxy S shines with Éclair, the UI is minimalistic, in the Google tradition, it supports dedicated buttons, double tap and multitouch pinch-zooming and is Flash enabled.

As a business tool, you get everything you need, with an exhaustive organizer, featuring ThinkFree Office preinstalled, which enables both viewing and editing any kind of file. You also benefit from GPS navigation, with Google Maps and StreetView.
 If you need more, the Android Market is just around the corner.

Final word, this is one of the best Android smartphones ever made, it was the king of the hill in its time and still now, it can put a smile on your, face, it has anything you will ever need from a mobile device, even if it doesn’t have a dual core processor, it’s still a good choice even for a hardened geek.

 For a mobile phone deal, please visit our website.

http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

continue reading "Samsung Galaxy S, The Birth of a Super Star"

HTC Wildfire, Downsizing With A Twist

The HTC Wildfire was released in May, 2010, and is an entry-level phone, made for those who aren’t familiar with Android, but want a decent smartphone to attend to their needs. It’s a little bit unusual for HTC to make such a tiny and simple device, we were used to high end devices but this is like a breath of fresh air and also easy on the budget, it’s a nice move from the taiwanese manufacturer for the regular Joe on the smartphone market. Let’s take a look at the main specs, shall we?

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
• Android OS v2.1 (Éclair) with Sense UI
• 3.2" capacitive touchscreen of QVGA resolution
• Multi-touch support
• Qualcomm MSM 7225 528 MHz CPU, 384 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
• 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and touch focus
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and GPS receiver
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
• Turn-to-mute, lift-to-tone-down
• Proximity sensor
• Smart dialing
• Standard miniUSB port for charging and data
• Bluetooth with A2DP, file transfers
• microSD card slot, a 2GB card in the box
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Social network integration: Facebook, Twitter and Flickr through Friend Stream
• Flash-enabled browser
• Direct access to the official Android repository
• Stereo FM radio with RDS

 Full specs here.                                                                          http://www.mobilephonedeals.com/


Now,let’s take a look in its box. We can see here a microUSB cable, a charger head, a single-piece headset and a 2 GB microSD card.

It measures 106.8 x 60.4 x 12 mm and weighs 118 grams. I consider it to be very compact, as it fits and feels comfortably in my hand, being also pocket friendly. It has a classy look and its design seems to be solid enough and reliable.

Its front part is taken by 3.2 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen that has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and comes with Corning Gorilla Glass protection. It offers decent viewing angles and sunlight legibility.
Above the display, you’ll find the earpiece, a status LED and the proximity sensor. Beneath the screen are four touch sensitive keys for Home, Menu, Back and Search. Under the keys is an optical trackpad.
On the left side, you’ll come across the volume rocker and microUSB port. Surprisingly, there’s nothing on the right side. I wonder why didn’t they place a shutter key here. Oh well…

The top is home for the Power/Lock key and 3.5 mm audio jack. Only the mouthpiece at the bottom.
The HTC Wildfire comes with Android 2.1 (Éclair), which is upgradeable to 2.2 and powered by a Qualcomm MSM7225 528 MHz ARMv6 processor, with 384 MB of RAM and 512 MB of ROM. The phone runs smoothly, without lagging through the Sense user interface and you won’t have any problems if you don’t push it.

The call quality is very good and I didn’t experience any reception problems either. The phonebook is replaced by the very cute People application, you also have the Quick contacts functionality and Smart dialing.

Your messages are organized into threads, each thread is displayed as a conversation. Typing is easy on the on-screen QWERTY keyboard, but if you have big, fat fingers, you might want to use the landscape mode instead of the portrait.
You have Google Talk for instant messaging and for emailing, you have two clients: Gmail and HTC Mail.

The connectivity package comes loaded with quad-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE, dual-band 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0.
For surfing the web, you have a simple and friendly browser that supports multiple tabs, switching between them, bookmarks, text copying, find on page, double tap and pinch zooming, text reflow and many others. The pages are loaded fast and look quite decent enough on the small 3.2 inches screen. HTML and Flash support are also here to improve the browsing experience.

Our next stop on the review is the phone’s 5 megapixel camera, which comes with a LED flash at takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1936 pixels. You have, at your service, features like geotagging, effects, settings for brightness, white balance, saturation, contrast and so on. The image quality is average, don’t expect anything spectacular.
The video camera is also mediocre, shooting CIF videos at 15 fps. You also have several options for the video resolution, recording limit, exposure compensation, contrast, saturation, sharpness, white balance, effects and others.

The music player comes with a good-looking user interface and supports MP3, WAV, WMA and eAAC+. The audio quality is very good.

The video player supports only 3GP and MP4 files, so, you’ll have to convert videos if you want to watch them on your HTC Wildfire. 
Now, let’s talk about its applications. For document files, the Wildfire comes with a PDF viewer and a Quick Office app for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. For editing, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid application. Other useful apps are Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Friend Stream, Stocks and the common World Clock, Stopwatch, Timer, Alarm clock and others. For more, you have the Android Market.

The HTC Wildfire comes with a GPS receiver on board, with A-GPS support. Google Maps is at your service for navigation and it offers voice guided navigation, the possibility to plan routes and go into the Street View mode.

The 1300 mAh battery kept my phone alive and kicking for almost two days of moderate usage: I made a few calls, surfed the web for about an hour, snapped some pictures and listened to a little bit of music.

All over, the HTC Wildfire is a decent phone, with a strongly built design, aimed towards people who don’t have high expectations from their phone and use it mostly for calling, messaging, emailing and surfing the web – this phone is quite good at those things and would be a good choice, as it’s also available at a small price.

For a mobile phone deal, please visit our website.

http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

continue reading "HTC Wildfire, Downsizing With A Twist"