Samsung Galaxy S Advance, Midrange Performer

The Samsung Galaxy S Advance was released in April 2012 and holds some really nice features in its basket full of advanced goodies. Besides being an attractive and wise phone, it’s also available at an affordable price, so why not check it out in the following review ? There are some big chances that you’ll like what it has to offer and consider buying it.

Main specs:

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 4.0" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen of WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) resolution; Scratch-resistant coating
• Android OS v2.3.6 with TouchWiz 4 launcher
• 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU, Mali-400 MP GPU, 768MB of RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera with a powerful LED flash, face and smile detection
• 720p HD video recording at 30fps
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support; DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass
• 8/16GB of inbuilt storage, microSD slot
• Accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port
• Stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• FM radio with RDS
• Gorilla Glass
• 1.3MP secondary camera
• Document editor
• File manager comes preinstalled

Full specs here.

http://www.mobilephonedeals.com


In the phone’s box, you’ll find the user manuals, a charger, the microUSB cable, a pair of headphones with in-ear plugs and some additional differently sized buds. No microSD card, but the phone’s internal memory is of 8 or 16 GB, which is quite enough for most users.

The Galaxy S Advance is a good looking guy, measuring 123.2 x 63 x 9.7 mm and having a weight of 120 g. Even if it’s all made of plastic, it seems to be strongly built and looks great. I especially liked the interesting pattern on its back, which keeps the fingerprints away from sticking to it and looks nice. The phone has a curved back and can be easily handled with one hand, as it’s light and slim; your pockets will like it too.
The phone features a 4 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen that has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels and a 233 ppi pixel density. The contrast is very good, the colors are bright and vibrant, the sunlight legibility is great and so are the viewing angles.

Above the screen are the earpiece, a secondary camera for making video calls and the ambient light and proximity sensors.
Below the display are two capacitive haptic-enabled keys for Menu and Back, with a physical key for Home between them.
The left side of the phone holds the lonely volume rocker. Also lonely is the Power/Lock key, which can be found on the right side.
The top of the phone is bare, meanwhile the bottom is pretty crowded, hosting the microUSB port, a 3.5 mm audio jack and the mouthpiece.

The phone comes loaded with Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread and is upgradeable to v4.1 Jelly Bean. Also here is the TouchWiz user interface, which grants a wonderful experience. The Galaxy S Advance is powered by a NovaThor U8500 chipset, has a dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 processor, Mali-400 GPU, 2 GB of ROM and 768 MB of RAM. It’s very snappy and works just fine, without annoying you with lag or anything like that.
At the telephony department, you have a great phonebook that stores tons of info about your contacts and syncs with your social networking accounts. Smart dialing is available and the phone offers a very good call & reception quality.
At the messaging area, your messages are organized in threads and displayed as conversations.
Instant messaging is handled by Google Talk and for emailing, you have Gmail and a generic email app for your other accounts.
For texting, the Android virtual QWERTY keyboard is very easy to use.
The Galaxy S Advance has a rich set of connectivity features. You have support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3G with 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Hotspot, High Speed Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0.

Browsing is wonderful on the phone, as you’re being offered support for Flash 11, text reflow, multiple tabs, double tap and pinch zooming and others. The pages are loaded fast and fit the screen nicely.
The Galaxy S Advance is equipped with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and has a LED flash companion for assisting in low light situations. You also get settings for geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection and others. The image quality is very good.
The video camera also does a great job and is capable of producing 720p videos at 30 fps.

For audio playback, you have a nice TouchWiz player and some nice features, like the DNSs sound enhancement, several equalizer presets ( a user defined one included), the possibility of searching for a song on YouTube or Google and so on.
The video player is very capable, handles DivX or XviD files without a problem, has support for subtitles and more.

The Galaxy S Advance features the Polaris Office application for viewing and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. It can also view PDF files. Some other useful apps are the Memo, Mini Diary, Task, Voice Recorder, Calendar, Alarms and so on.
The phone comes with a built-in GPS receiver that has A-GPS support and Google Maps for navigation.
A 1500 mAh battery is on board and will keep your phone alive for a little over a day of intensive usage.

In conclusion, if you’re looking for a reliable, smart, good looking phone that’s also available at an affordable price, the Samsung Galaxy S Advance will definitely satisfy you and you won’t regret making the decision of buying it.

continue reading "Samsung Galaxy S Advance, Midrange Performer"

Nokia Lumia 820, Need Backup?

The Nokia Lumia 820 was released in November 2012, at the same time with its stronger sibling, the Lumia 920 and, even if it isn’t the Nokia’s champ, it doesn’t stand in its shadow either. The Lumia 820 brings a lot of impressive skills and is also available at an affordable price (considering what it has to offer). If you’re thinking about trying the Microsoft WP 8 and you’re also searching for a wise and reliable device, this fellow over here might be the best choice you can make. Follow the next review and find out if the Lumia 820 fits you!

Nokia Lumia 820 Essentials :

    Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support

    Quad-band 3G with 42 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA support

    4.3" 16M-color ClearBlack AMOLED display of WVGA resolution

    8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, 1080p@30fps video recording

    VGA front-facing camera

    Windows Phone 8 OS

    1.5GHz dual-core Krait CPU, Adreno 225 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8960 chipset, 1GB of RAM

    Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band

    GPS receiver with A-GPS and GLONASS support

    Free lifetime voice-guided navigation

    8GB of inbuilt storage, expandable through the microSD card slot

    Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic

    Built-in accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor

    Standard 3.5 mm audio jack

    microUSB port

    Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP and EDR, file transfers

    SNS integration

    Xbox Live integration and Xbox management

    NFC support

    Digital compass

    Nokia Music 

For a good deal on a Nokia Lumia 820, just visit here.

Let’s start with its accessories. In its box, you’ll find a charger, the microUSB cable, which serves at both charging and making data connections, a nice headset with in-ear buds and the user manuals.

The Lumia 820 looks very nice and is really heavily built, reminding me of those good ol’ Nokias, popular for their amazing shock resistance. I’m sure everybody knows what I’m talking about. But let’s carry on. The phone measures 123.8 x 68.5 x 9.9 mm and has a weight of 160 g, so it really isn’t a light or slim device, but it won’t seem like a brick either. I personally appreciate it – “heavy is good, heavy is reliable” – this quote surely holds a lot of truth in it. The phone feels comfy in your hand and the matte finish on its back will offer a good hand grip and keep your fingerprints from sticking to it.

The phone features a 4.3 inches AMOLED capacitive touch screen that has a resolution of 899 x 480 pixels, a 217 ppi pixel density and offers some nice viewing angles and a great sunlight legibility.

Above the display reside the earpiece, a secondary camera for making video calls and the proximity and ambient light sensors.

Beneath the display stand three touch-sensitive keys for Back, Windows and Search.

The left side doesn’t hold anything, meanwhile the right one is hosting a party. You’ll find here a Power/Lock button, the volume rocker and a dedicated camera button that can launch it when the phone is locked.

The top is home for a 3.5 mm audio jack and at the bottom, you’ll see the microUSB port and a speaker.

The Lumia 820 features Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 OS that has a friendly user interface, offers multitasking, enables you to control it through voice and more. It’s powered by a Qualcomm MSM8960 chipset, having a dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait processor, Adreno 225 GPU, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal memory, which can be expanded with a microSD card of a maximum capacity of 64 GB. The phone goes smooth through the interface and won’t raise any lag issues, freezes or annoying stuff like that.

At the telephony department, you have the People Hub serving as a phonebook and doing a wonderful job while at it. It stores lots of info about your contacts, syncs with your social networking accounts and more. The voice quality during a call is very good and the reception is free of issues.

At the messaging area, all of your messages are gathered together and displayed as conversations.

For emailing, the OS offers you a unified inbox.

Typing is very easy and comfortable on the phone’s virtual QWERTY keyboard that offers sound feedback.

At the connectivity department, you have support for NFC, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, quad-band 3G with 42 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n with DLNA,Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 3.1 with EDR and A2DP, microUSB 2.0.

For surfing the web, Internet Explorer is a very good companion, featuring support for multiple tabs, among others, and more. You’ll definitely like browsing on this phone, as the pages are loaded fast and fit the screen beautifully.

The Lumia 820 features an 8 MP snapper that takes really great pictures, being helped by a 26mm wide-angle Carl Zeiss lens and a dual-LED flash in low light conditions. You’re also being offered options for scenes, effects, ISO, geo-tagging and more.

The video camera is also wonderful, being capable of producing some nice 720p and 1080p videos at 30 fps.

For audio and video playback, you have some very capable players. When listening to music, you’re being offered, among others, some equalizer presets and the Dolby Headphone enhancement. Watching movies is also enjoyable, as the player supports all the popular formats, like Mp4, DivX, XviD and others.

The Lumia 820 features the Microsoft Office app for viewing and editing Word and Excel documents and it’s also capable of viewing PowerPoint files. 

Another useful functionality is the Kids Corner, which enables you to lock your important data when giving the phone to your kids.

The phone holds a GPS receiver and features A-GPS and GLONASS support. For navigation, you get Nokia Drive and Nokia Maps. The first is very handy, as it works offline, offers voice guided navigation and much more.

The Lumia 820 holds inside a 1650 mAh battery, which will keep it alive for approximately two days if you don’t frequently abuse it with games, videos and stuff like that.

Overall, the Nokia Lumia 820 is an impressive device, having a lot of talents and ambitions, managing to be a wise, good looking and obedient companion on one hand and, on the other hand, a really tough guy. 

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LG Optimus 3D, First of Its Kind

The LG Optimus 3D was launched in July 2011 and was the first smartphone with a 3D display. Besides having a cool screen and 3D effects, this fellow over here is also a wise guy, literally. Want to find out some more about what this sweetheart is capable of ? Follow the next review!


Most important features:

Quad-band GSM and 3G support
21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
4.3" 16M-color capacitive LCD stereoscopic touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
Android OS v2.2 Froyo with LG 3D UI
Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor, PowerVR SGX540 GPU, TI OMAP4430 chipset
512 MB RAM
8GB internal storage
Dual 5 MP autofocus cameras, LED flash; stereoscopic 3 MP pictures, face detection and geotagging
1080p@30fps video recording, stereoscopic 720p@30fps videos
Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
GPS with A-GPS
microSD slot up to 32GB
Accelerometer, proximity sensor and an auto-brightness sensor
Front facing camera with video calls
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
microHDMI port
Smart dialing, voice dialing
DivX/XviD video support
Office document editor
Innovative gesture controls
Adobe Flash 10.3 support
Dolby Mobile and SRS sound enhancement

In the phone’s box, we have a charger, the microUSB cable which is used for charging and making data connections, a pair of headphones with in-ear buds and some user manuals.

The phone measures 128.8 x 68 x 11.9 mm and has a weight of 168 g. Its design isn’t something you’ve never seen before, but the phone still remains an attractive piece of work. It’s all made of plastic, but offers the impression of a strongly built device. The rubberized plastic from the back helps a lot by offering a better hand grip and keeping them fingerprints away from sticking to it.

The star of the show here is the 4.3 inches 3D LCD capacitive touchscreen that has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, a 217 ppi pixel density and Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The viewing angles are okay and the sunlight legibility is great. The 3D effects are wonderful, but only available in the landscape mode, for the applications compatible to them.
Above the phone’s nice screen, we have the earpiece, a proximity sensor and a secondary camera for making video calls.
Below the display stand four capacitive keys for Menu, Home, Back and Search. They offer haptic feedback and are backlit.

On the left side of the phone, we have the HDMI and microUSB ports, protected by some plastic lids.
The right side is home for a volume rocker and a dedicated 3D button for launching the 3D interface.
At the top, you’ll come across the Power/Lock key, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a secondary microphone.
The bottom features the primary microphone.

The LG Optimus 3D comes loaded with Android 2.2 Froyo and is upgradeable to v4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. The user experience is pretty enjoyable and you have some nice 3D apps and a guide that teaches you about creating, viewing and sharing 3D stuff. The phone is powered by a TI OMAP 4430 chipset, having a dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 processor, PowerVR SGX540 GPU, 8 GB of internal storage, which can be extended by a microSD card with a maximum capacity of 32 GB and 512 MB of RAM. The phone does a wonderful job and you won’t be having any issues with lag, freezes or anything like that. I didn’t.

In terms of telephony, you get a smart phonebook that stores a lot of information about your contacts and syncs with your online accounts. You have Smart and Voice dialing, the possibility of making video calls and a very good in-call quality. The secondary microphone for active noise cancellation does help a lot. I did not have any reception issues either.
At the messaging section, your SMS/MMS messages are displayed as conversations between you and your contacts.

For emailing, Gmail offers batch operations and you have a generic email application for your other accounts.
For typing, you have the phone’s on screen QWERTY keyboard and the dialpad. The virtual QWERTY keyboard is very easy to use in portrait mode, but if you have really chubby fingers, the landscape mode will come in handy.
In the connectivity package, the phone has support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band 3G with 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, Wi-fi b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and EDR and microUSB 2.0.
For surfing the web, you have a simple and friendly browser that supports Flash, multiple tabs, double tap and pinch zooming, text reflow, bookmarks and more. The overall browsing experience is great, you’ll be very pleased.

The Optimus 3D comes equipped with a dual 5 megapixel snapper that takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and has a LED flash companion for helping in low light situations.
The camera interface offers settings for geo-tagging, face detection, touch focus, scenes, effects and more. The 2D and 3D photos are quite good, but that’s all.
The video camera is very capable and offers some nice videos in 2D, at 1080p and 30 fps and in 3D, at 720p.
For audio playback, you have a hot looking music player that offers several equalizer presets when you have your headset plugged in, the possibility of looking up a song or album on YouTube or on the Internet and others. The audio quality is pretty good with or without your headphones.
The video player is great, as it supports all kinds of formats, 3D videos, of course, subtitles and more. I bet you’ll be thrilled by the video player!

In terms of apps, the LG Optimus 3D comes with the Polaris Office for viewing and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. It can also view PDF documents.You also have the Calendar, Alarm app, that includes a Timer, World Clock and Stopwatch, a voice recorder, some 3D goodies, like four 3D games and more.
A built-in GPS receiver is on board and features A-GPS support. For navigation, you have Google Maps, which has offline rerouting, searches for points of interest, plans routes and more.
The phone comes with a 1500 mAh battery and will require a daily recharging. But that’s not something bad, as I’m sure that most of us smartphone users are used to that.

In conclusion, if wanting a good 3D smartphone, the LG Optimus 3D is a good choice, as it has to offer a lot besides the 3D capability.


For a FREE Lg Optimus 3D just visit http://www.mobilephonedeals.com .

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Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo, Shot in HD!

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo was launched almost two years ago, in February 2011, but still remains a cool smartphone to have, as it looks great and holds a lot of features inside. Follow the next review and see what it has to offer – and I promise you: it’s quite a lot, given the fact that this fellow is almost two years old.

Key features

•    Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
•    3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
•    3.7" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) on Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
•    Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread
•    1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
•    512 MB RAM
•    8 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geotagging
•    720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus
•    Front facing VGA camera, video calls
•    Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
•    GPS with A-GPS
•    microSD slot (32GB supported, 8GB card included)
•    Accelerometer and proximity sensor
•    Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
•    Stereo FM radio with RDS
•    microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
•    Voice dialing
•    Adobe Flash 10.2 support
•    microHDMI port

In its box, you’ll see the charger, a microUSB cable used for both charging and making data transfers, an 8 GB microSD card, the headphones and some user manuals.

The Xperia Neo measures 116 x 57 x 13 mm and has a weight of 126 g, so it’s pretty slim and light, feeling comfortable in your hand and pockets. Even if it’s entirely made from plastic, the phone seems to be pretty well put together. Its design looks quite nice, having a sleek and a little bit glossy appearance, but standing far from giving a cheap impression. The only thing you’ll notice to be not so pleasing about it is that your fingerprints stick to it and you’ll have to clean it every once in a while or buy a cover for the back.
The frontal part of the phone’s body is dominated by a 3.7 inches LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen that has a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels and a ~265 ppi pixel density. It’s powered by the Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine and has, for protection, a scratch resistant glass. The colors offered by its display are pretty nice and vibrant, the contrast is good too. You’ll have no problems when looking at it under direct sunlight, as the phone offers a decent performance.

Above the screen, you’ll come across the earpiece, a front facing VGA camera for making video calls and the ambient light and proximity sensors.
Below the display are the hardware controls for Back, Home and Menu.
The left side holds nothing, meanwhile the right side is home for the volume rocker, Power/Lock key with a status LED next to it and the shutter button.
At the top reside the microHDMI and microUSB ports, which are protected by plastic flaps, and the 3.5 mm audio jack.

The Xperia Neo comes loaded with Android 2.3 Gingerbread (which is upgradeable to v4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich) and the Timescape user interface, which gathers your call logs, SMS, MMS, email, Facebook and Twitter updates. You can filter the displayed content by type, this way getting only what’s important for viewing. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset, holding a 1 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 320 MB of internal storage and 512 MB of RAM. Having these specs, the phone’s overall performance is great, offering a very pleasing user experience, without any lag issues, freezes and annoying stuff like that.

At the telephony department, we have a nice phonebook that’s capable of keeping tons of informations about your contacts, syncs with your online accounts (Exchange, Facebook, Twitter) and also has the quick contacts functionality. You have voice calling too and the possibility of making video calls.
The call quality was very good for both parties and I didn’t experience any reception problems either.
At the messaging section, your SMS and MMS are organized into threads and each thread is displayed as a conversation between you and your contact. You can copy, paste, lock your messages against deletion and even search for a certain message in your conversations.
For instant messaging, Google Talk has you all covered up, being compatible with clients like Pidgin, iChat, Kopete and others.

For emailing, you have Gmail, which supports batch operations, and a generic email application, that supports your other email accounts.
Typing is nice and comfy on the phone’s on screen virtual QWERTY keyboard offered by Gingerbread.
The Xperia Neo’s connectivity set features support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5/76 Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, microUSB 2.0.

For surfing the web, you have a great browser that has support for Flash 10.1, double tap and pinch zooming, text reflow, multiple tabs and switching between them, bookmarks, find on page and others. The overall browsing experience is very nice, as the pages are loaded fast and look nice on the phone’s screen.
The Xperia Neo comes packed with an 8 megapixel autofocus camera that’s capable of taking pictures at a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels and has a single LED flash for helping in low light situations. The camera’s app offers settings for touch focus, face and smile detection, geo-tagging, white balance and others. The image quality is very good, with accurate colors and good amount of detail.

The phone’s video camera is also very capable and it produces 720p videos at 30 fps.
For audio playback, the phone offers you a nice looking music player, which features several equalizer presets, the Infinite key for searching your tracks on YouTube and others. The audio quality is more than decent.
An FM Radio also resides here and comes with RDS support and supports the TrackID app for music recognition.
For watching videos, the phone’s video player only support MP4 and 3GP videos, so you might want to get another one, I suppose. Nevertheless, the image quality is excellent, thanks to the phone’s very capable display.

The Xperia Neo comes with the Office Suite for viewing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF document files. Some other useful apps are the classic Calendar, Calculator, Alarms and others.
A GPS receiver is also here and has A-GPS support. For navigation, the Google Maps application is at your service.
The Xperia Neo has a 1500 mAh battery inside and will stay alive for almost a day and a half of moderate usage (at least, that’s how long it lasted in my hands).

In conclusion, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo is a pretty capable smartphone and will serve you well when it comes to taking pictures, browsing, watching movies and so on, being available at an affordable price.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Active, Not for the Couch Potatoes

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Active is that kind of a phone made for kicking the butts of its competitors. Literally. This soldier over here can survive under water for half an hour, is dust proof and shock resistant and, besides being a tough guy, the Xperia active is also smart and you’ll find out what I’m talking about if reading the following review. Let’s take a look at the main specs:

Key features

•    Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
•    3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
•    3.0" 16M-color LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480 pixels) at around 192 ppi
•    Bravia Mobile engine
•    Dust and water resistant, wet-finger tracking
•    Dual back cover design for increased protection
•    Arm case and wrist strap in the bundle
•    Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread
•    1 GHz MSM8255 Snapdragon processor
•    512 MB RAM
•    5 MP autofocus camera, single LED flashlight, Geo-tagging, image stabilization, smile detection, touch focus
•    720p video @ 30fps
•    Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot functionality and DLNA
•    GPS with A-GPS, Wisepilot navigation
•    microSD slot (32GB supported, 2GB card included)
•    Accelerometer and proximity sensor, notification LED
•    Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
•    Stereo FM radio with RDS
•    TrackID music recognition
•    Relevant package of apps
•    MicroUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
•    Adobe Flash 10.3 support
•    1200mAh Li-ion battery

 Full specs here.

http://www.mobilephonedeals.com

In its box, you’ll find the charger, a microUSB cable used for both charging and making data connections, a pair of headphones with in-ear buds, an exchangeable rear cover, a 2 GB microSD card, a wrist strap, an arm case, some ear hooks for your earphones and the user manuals.

 Wow, that’s really something, isn’t it ? In this package, you’ve got everything you need for taking your phone everywhere you go and not worry about it.

When reading all the above, I bet you expect this phone to be a heavy and bulky device, but it’s not. It measures 92 x 55 x 16.5 mm and has a weight of 110.8 g, so it’s not heavy at all. It feels comfortable in the hand and your pockets will like it too. Its design is nice and sporty, you’ll find it to be an interesting device to look at and handle. Its back is curved and rubberized, feeling nice in the hand and it also keeps your fingerprints away from sticking to it. The most important thing about it is that you won’t be afraid of dropping it on the floor or in your soup ( I wanted to say toilet, but that would be kind of gross).

The Xperia active comes with a 3 inches LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen that has a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels, a ~192 ppi pixel density, scratch resistant glass and is also powered by Sony’s Bravia Mobile engine. Its colors are bright and vibrant, the contrast is great and the sunlight legibility is wonderful – as it should be, as a matter of fact, because the phone is made for being used mostly outdoors.
The screen can be handled with wet fingers and is still very responsive. How cool is that ? You’ll be able to make phone calls and stuff like that in the shower, or if it rains – this fellow is not afraid of water.
Above its screen are the earpiece, a status LED and the proximity and ambient light sensors.
Beneath the display are the microphone, three capacitive keys for Back, Home and Menu and a strap eyelet.
The left side of the phone is home for the lonely Power/Lock key.
On the right side of the phone reside the volume rocker and camera key.
There’s nothing at the top, meanwhile at the bottom, you’ll see the 3.5 mm audio jack and the microUSB port.

If you take out the phone’s battery cover, you’ll find.. another battery cover. Under these two are the SIM and microSD card slots and the battery.
Now that we’ve seen how strong it is, let’s check out the Xperia active’s brain. It comes loaded with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and is upgradeable to v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It also has the Timescape user interface, which gathers your call logs, email, SMS, MMS, Facebook and Twitter updates and enables you to filter the contents and see the important information only.
Our little champion is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon processor, having a 1 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 1 GB of internal memory (but only 320 MB are user available) and 1 GB of RAM. The overall performance of the phone is great, as it’s very snappy and won’t bug you with lag issues, freezes and stuff like that.

In terms of telephony, the Xperia active comes with a smart phonebook that remembers tons of information about your contacts, syncs with your online accounts, has the quick contacts feature and voice dialing. The phone has a secondary microphone for active noise cancellation, so, the in-call quality is great, with the voices being loud and clear for both ends of the line and the reception was also free of problems.
At the messaging section, your SMS and MMS are organized in threads and displayed as conversations between you and your contacts. You can copy, paste, lock your messages against deletion and search within them for a certain one.
For instant messaging, Google Talk is here for you and supports clients like Pidgin, iChat, Kopete and others.
Your emails are managed by Gmail, which supports batch operations, and by a generic email application, that handles your other email accounts.

For typing, you get the Gingerbread on screen virtual QWERTY keyboard for portrait and landscape modes and a numeric pad that’s available only in portrait mode. Typing is pretty easy if you don’t have sausage-fingers, but even if you do, the landscape mode will be of a real help.
At the connectivity department, the phone has support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and EDR and microUSB 2.0.

For surfing the web, you have the Gingerbread standard browser that comes with support for Adobe Flash 10.3 and has a simple user interface. It also features text reflow, double tap and pinch zooming, multiple tabs and switching between them, bookmarks, find on page and others. The pages are loaded fast and the overall browsing experience is very pleasing.
The Xperia active comes equipped with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that takes pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and has a single LED flash for helping in low light situations. The camera interface features geo-tagging, touch focus, image stabilization, face detection and others. The image quality is very good, with accurate colors and decent amount of resolved detail.
The video camera is also very capable and produces 720p videos at 30 fps.
For audio playback, you get a fancy music player which is very similar to the Walkman players and features several equalizer presets, the Infinite key for searching a song on YouTube, the xLOUD enhancement for boosting the loudspeaker volume and others. The audio quality is great.
For watching videos, you don’t have a dedicated player, as the videos reside in the gallery, but you can easily download one.

In its basket of goodies, the Xperia active carries some nice applications, like the WalkMate for counting your footsteps during a day, the iMapMyFITNESS+ for information about your training, which are sent to your mapmyfitness.com account, which is free. For viewing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files, you have the Office Suite. You also have Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Calculator, Alarm  - which has the desk clock and night modes. A Facebook app is also on board.
A built-in GPS receiver is also here and has support for A-GPS. For navigation, you have Google Maps.
The Xperia active holds inside its tough body a 1200 mAh battery and it endured almost a day and a half on moderate usage.

In conclusion, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active is a great choice if you’re living an active life. If you’re going hiking, for example, this phone is going to be your best buddy and you won’t have to worry about it if it rains cats and dogs over you or if you drop it into a puddle of mud. This fellow is both a survivor and a smart guy, so you’ll definitely grow feelings for it and keep it close in your adventures.

continue reading "Sony Ericsson Xperia Active, Not for the Couch Potatoes"

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro, Miracle Midget

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro was launched in May 2011 and is a cute, reliable phone which offers some nice features, given the fact that it’s almost two years old. If you’re not a big fan of huge screens and big phone-brains, you’ll like this sweetheart over here. It’s small, looks nice and comes with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that’s a real blessing when you’re texting. Want to find out more about this promising guy? Check out the following review!

Key features

•    Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
•    3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
•    3" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen, HVGA res (320 x 480), Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
•    Full four-row, slide-out QWERTY keyboard
•    Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread
•    1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
•    512 MB RAM
•    5 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geotagging
•    720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus
•    Front facing VGA camera
•    Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
•    GPS with A-GPS
•    microSD slot (32GB supported, 2GB card included)
•    Accelerometer and proximity sensor
•    Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
•    Stereo FM radio with RDS
•    microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
•    Voice dialing
•    Adobe Flash 10.3 support




For a good deal on a Sony Xperia mini pro, you may visit http://www.mobilephonedeals.com.

In the little fellow’s crib, I mean box, you’ll find the charger, a microUSB cable that serves for charging and making data connections, a 2 GB microSD card, the headphones and some user manuals.
The Mini pro measures 92 x 53 x 18 mm and has a weight of 136 g. You’ll think of it as being a fatso - at least, I thought that when I first read about its measuring, but I’ve changed my mind after seeing it. It is a little chubby, but it didn’t bother me when handling it. Your pockets will befriend it too. Even if the phone is entirely made from plastic, it seems to be very well put together and its design is also cute. If you’re not a fan of virtual keyboards and prefer the physical ones, you’ll love the Xperia Mini pro, because it’s just what you need when it comes to fast typing. But I’ll bring that into discussion a little later. Let’s find out some stuff about its display, shall we?

The Xperia Mini pro comes with a 3 inches LED-backlit LCD capacitive touch screen that has a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels, a ~192 ppi pixel density, has a scratch resistant glass and is powered by the Sony Bravia Mobile Engine. The screen is highly responsive, its colors are pretty bright and the contrast is good too. The viewing angles are decent and the sunlight legibility is great. 
Above the screen stand the earpiece, a status LED, the proximity and ambient light sensors and a secondary front-facing camera for making video calls.
Below the screen, you’ll see two haptic enabled capacitive keys for Menu and Back. Between them stands the Home hardware control.
The left side of the phone hosts a small opening for removing the battery cover.
On the right side are the volume rocker and a shutter button.
The top is home for the Power/Lock key, 3.5 mm audio jack, microUSB port and a secondary microphone.
At the bottom stands a lonely lanyard eyelet.

If sliding the phone, you’ll see its full QWERTY keyboard, which is great for texting, having a nice placement for its keys. If you have really big hands, it’ll take some time for getting used to it, but you’ll get there.
The Xperia Mini pro comes loaded with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the Timescape user interface. It’s upgradeable to Ice Cream Sandwich. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset, holding a 1 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 512 MB of RAM and 400 MB of internal storage. The user experience offered is quite nice, as the phone runs smooth through the interface and I didn’t experience any lag issues or stuff like that.
The Timescape gathers your call logs, emails, SMS, MMS and your Facebook and Twitter updates. It allows you to filter the information displayed by type and, if it doesn’t get you completely satisfied, you can download some plugins and upgrade it.
The Xperia mini pro has a nice phonebook, which remembers tons of information about your contacts, syncs with multiple accounts, has the quick contacts feature and others. There’s no smart dialing available, but you still have voice dialing.

The in-call quality was very good for both ends of the line – we have to say thanks to the secondary microphone for active noise cancellation. I didn’t experience any reception problems either.
The phone is a real expert when it comes to messaging. It organizes your SMS and MMS into threads and displays them as conversations between you and your contacts, offering you the possibility of copying, deleting them, locking them against deletion, searching for a certain message and others.
For emailing, you have Gmail, which supports batch operations, and a generic email application that manages your other email accounts.
For instant messaging, Google Talk is here for you and is compatible with clients like iChat, Pidgin, Ovi Contacts and others.
For typing, you get two on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboards – one for each mode: portrait and landscape, but I seriously doubt you’ll be using them, as the phone has a great physical QWERTY keyboard.

In its connectivity basket, the Xperia Mini pro carries support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, DLNA, Bluetooth  2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0.
For surfing the web, you have the Gingerbread browser, which comes with a simple user interface, has support for Adobe Flash 10.3, double tap and pinch zooming, text reflow, bookmarks, multiple tabs, find on page and others. The overall browsing experience is very nice, as the pages load fast and look quite nice even if the phone doesn’t have a big screen.

The Xperia Mini pro comes equipped with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that has a single LED flash and is capable of producing pictures at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It also offers settings for image stabilization, touch focus, smile and face detection, geo-tagging and others. The image quality is fine.
The video camera is also quite capable and produces 720p videos at 30 fps.
For audio playback, you have a good looking music player that has some nice features, among them being some equalizer presets, the xLOUD functionality for boosting the speaker volume, the Infinite key, which searches a song on YouTube and others. The audio quality is great.
An FM Radio is also on board and comes with RDS support and Track ID for song recognition.
For watching movies, I recommend downloading a video player that knows some things about formats and stuff.

When it comes to applications, the phone has the Office Suite for viewing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. We also have the Calendar, Calculator, Alarms.
A built-in GPS receiver is on board and has support for A-GPS. For navigation, you have Google Maps.
The Xperia mini pro holds a 1200 mAh battery inside and will endure almost two days of moderate usage.

My final words about the Sony Xperia Mini Pro are that even if this little fellow seems like an old, fusty phone (compared to the smartphone-beasts that are wandering out there), I give you that it’s pretty smart and capable enough for answering your needs.

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