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.

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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.

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Sony Ericsson Vivaz, Point and Shoot!

Sony Ericsson has managed to emerge from anonymity with the launch of Vivaz. Even though it's been a while since they started selling this phone, I can say that Vivaz still is a good smartphone and rich in features. Symbian has its limitations, but it's not bad at all, actually is the most efficient OS, resource wise.

Vivaz can take eight megapixel still images and 720p video with continuous auto focus, from this point of view he have a predator of point-and-shoot cameras. Yet, this is not just a camera phone though, it’s a smartphone as well – a tricked out Symbian running on a 720MHz CPU with a 3.2” nHD display to show it all off. 

Key features

·         3.2" 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution

·         8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, face and smile detection, geotagging and touch focus

·         HD 720p video recording @ 24fps with continuous auto focus

·         Symbian OS 9.4 S60 5th, topped with a custom-brewed homescreen and media menu

·         720 MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX dedicated graphics accelerator

·         Quad-band GSM support

·         3G with HSDPA 10.2Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps support

·         Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS

·         microSD card slot (up to 16GB, 8GB card in the box)

·         Built-in accelerometer

·         Turn-to-mute

·         TV out

·         Stereo FM Radio

·         microUSB and stereo Bluetooth v2.0

·         Web browser has full Flash support

·         Preinstalled Wisepilot navigation software

·         Office document viewer

·         Decent audio quality

 For full specs, you can visit   Sony official website here.

The phone comes in a small box, nothing fancy about this, with strictly necessary accessories, that includes the charger, a stylus, data cable, hands free headset and many leaflets and manuals.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz is a model with a special design that is thinner on the top and bottom. Looks good and is very easy to hold. It has the usual dimensions for a smartphone with a length of 107 mm, a width of 51.7 mm and a thickness of 12.5 mm. Its weight is one of the smallest that I have seen on a smartphone, it weighs only 97 grams. The phone is available in many colors, namely pink, blue, black and silver. For its impressive list of features, it’s a very compact phone.

On the left side of the phone we find the micro USB port; It is protected against ingress of dust with a soft plastic cover. Here we can also find the 3.5 mm audio jack.

The rear camera has 8 megapixels with LED flash. Lenses are not protected against scratches. Under the back cover lies a 1200 mAh battery, which should provide a range of approximately 430 hours in 2G and 440 hours in 3G. Autonomy during calls is also very good, about 13 hours in 2G and 5 hours and 20 minutes in 3G. During testing the battery lasted for 3 days with pretty heavy use.

The body of the Vivaz is almost entirely made of plastic but this phone is among the rare few that don’t make us miss metal so badly.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz uses the Symbian S60 5th Edition. The user interface is the one we know from Nokia touchscreen phones. It is an operating system slightly dated but useable.

Most of the front of the Vivaz is taken up by the 3.2" touchscreen with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. The resistive unit supports up to 16M colors and is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the device. It has nice picture quality with excellent contrast for a TFT unit. Unlike other resistive touchscreens, the Vivaz screen response is excellent. The resistive technology is certainly not a drawback here.

In terms of telephony, I didn't experience any problems with the in-call performance of Sony Ericsson Vivaz. Reception levels are good on both ends of a call, the earpiece is loud enough and there was no interference whatsoever.

The phone has task manager, meaning that you can switch between applications. To do this, you must hold down the menu button and then choose the application you want to open.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz runs the Symbian OS 5th edition but you'd never tell by just looking at the home screen.

Vivaz’s 720 MHz processor is excellent in all applications; the OS is running smoothly all menus and all applications.

The phone has only 75 MB of internal memory for storing files, but you can expand it with a micro SD card up to 32 GB. The good news is that Vivaz comes with an 8 GB card included.

The Walkman music player is adapted for Symbian. The user interface is easy to use and has many functions. It can create playlists with your favorite songs and is able to run in the background. It is also easy to find a song name, artist or genre. It can recognize many of the most used audio formats, including MP3, WMA, WAV and AAC.

Audio quality is also very good when using headphones, but the external speaker is not very loud. The stock cans in the package are decent, but you can upgrade for an enhanced audio experience, thanks to the 3.5 mm audio jack.

The camera has 8 megapixels, autofocus and LED flash. It is able to take pictures at a resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels and record 720p HD format. Camera application is rich in features and shooting modes. You also have access at plenty of settings such as white balance, ISO and others. Sony Ericsson Vivaz produces splendid photos. The colors are vibrant and rich, the amount of resolved detail is very good and the noise levels are low.

The video recording is in HD resolution (1280 x 720) with 24 fps. Probably the best new feature of the Vivaz is the continuous auto focus during video recording.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz offers a complete and high-speed connectivity, there's quad-band GSM and EDGE support, as well as 3G network compatibility. The Vivaz has dual-band 900/2100 MHz support for worldwide coverage, as well as an American version at 850/1900/2100 MHz. Data speeds reach up to 10.2Mbps HSDPA and 2Mbps HSUPA.

Local connectivity offers the obligatory Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. Vivaz also comes with Wi-Fi, which includes DLNA support. The wired connectivity relies on the microUSB port.

The Web browser for Symbian S60 is standard. It displays pages correctly and loads them quickly enough. The high resolution is also welcome here, as it allows more content to fit on the screen. 

For business users, Vivaz has QuickOffice preinstalled; it can open Word, Excel, and PDF or PowerPoint files. Documents load quickly.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz has a GPS receiver. The phone uses the Wisepilot navigation application. Maps have enough detail, and the application supports voice guidance.

 If you like Symbian, Vivaz is one of the best phones you can lay your hands on. The display is sensitive, the CPU is speedy and the camera is excellent - and hard to beat really.

You can have one for free on a monthly contract deal here.

continue reading "Sony Ericsson Vivaz, Point and Shoot!"

LG Optimus 4X HD, Fire in the Hole!

Optimus 4x HD plays ball in a pretty rarefied league, the quad-core phones. Alongside the LG Optimus 4X HD are HTC  One X and Samsung Galaxy S III.
There are some similarities  between HTC One X and LG. Both are based on a quad-core Tegra 3 processor at 1.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM + GeForce ULP as a graphics accelerator.   LG was the first company worldwide to sell a dual-core smartphone - LG Optimus 2X. Now I suppose they want  to deliver a completely  new product with a bang :  Full name - LG P880 Optimus 4X HD.
Let’s see the the hardware and the strong points of this south koreean baby. Their ambitions are big  and I suppose they do not like to stand in the shadow of Samsung smart phones.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support
• 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 4.7" 16M-color True HD-IPS capacitive touchscreen of 720p resolution (720 x 1280 pixels), ~312 ppi; Gorilla glass
• Android OS v4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich with Optimus UI v3.0
• 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 CPUs, low-power companion core, ULP GeForce 2 GPU, Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset
• 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB (12.26 GB user accessible) of storage
• micros card support (up to 32 GB)
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; face and smile detection , geotagging and image stabilization
• 1080p and 720p video recording @ 30fps with stereo sound
• 1.3 MP 720p-capable front-facing camera for video-chat
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n and DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Accelerometer, proximity sensor and auto-brightness sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• micro USB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v4.0
• MHL TV-out (requires MHL-to-HDMI adapter)
• DivX/XviD video support
• High-capacity 2150 mAh Li-Ion battery
• Smart dialing, voice dialing
• NFC support
• LG SmartWorld app

 Full specs here.



Optimus 4x comes in an extra solid cardboard box with a slip-on lid with glossy black 4X imprints that opens halfway. Here we find the smartphone, a charger, the micro USB cable - USB 2.0, a set of 3.5 mm in ear headphones and the manual. What's missing is a memory card, although the inbuilt storage of 16 GB is more than enough to get you started.

The phone is characterized by rectangular shapes, it has right angles slightly rounded at the corners. Straight lines dominate, it’s a minimalist design.
LG has managed to make the most compact quad-core smartphone with a 4.7-inch display, at least in width. That is why it seems easier to handle.
Build quality is very good, even if the case is entirely made of plastic, LG managed to fit a massive HD screen in a slim body keeping the weight in normal limits.
Optimus 4x ‘s display is a True-HD IPS  of 4.7 inches with a resolution 1280 x 720 pixels, 312 pixels-per-inch  density, features Corning Gorilla Glass-protected glass.
It is an excellent screen,  the colors are displayed naturally with impressive detail and crisp. The display of the LG 4X HD is brighter than AMOLED and uses a RGB matrix with a full set of sub pixels, as opposed to the PenTile panel in AMOLED.
Sunlight  legibility is decent, even if not as good as in AMOLED screens, no surprises here.
Above the 4.7" screen is the earpiece, along with proximity and ambient light sensors. Below the screen are the three capacitive controls - Back, Home and Menu. At the top side we have a 3.5 mm headphones jack and a secondary microphone, at the bottom the micro USB port (which allows HD TV output) and the main microphone in the corner.

On the back we have the 8 Megapixels with a single LED flash camera and the loudspeaker grille. The back panel has leather like texture, looks and feels cheap; I was disappointed in this regard.

 Underneath the back cover we find a big strong 2150 mAh battery, a Micro SD card slot and a regular size SIM. This is the biggest battery I have ever found in a mobile phone so far and it features  SiO+battery technology  for better performance.

Unlike the One X, the LG 4X HD has a removable battery (using a new advanced technology at that) and expandable memory.

Optimus features Android 4.0.3 ICS with the custom Optimus UI 3.0 on top, the LG customized interface which looks pretty nice.

 Telephony is very good; I had no trouble holding on to signal even in areas of poor coverage and the in-call audio is consistently good too.

The audio quality doesn’t shine, it is mediocre at most and that’s a bit of a bummer, it’s nowhere near what you would expect from flagship smartphone. The music player is ok though.

The video player is excellent, it has a simple interface and it plays everything,  DivX, XviD, MKV and MP4/MOV up to, and including, 1080p resolution. The AC3 audio codec (among lots of others) is supported, so you don't have to worry about the sound either. There are no limitations for the bitrate, file size, etc.

The camera has 8 Megapixels and it’s capable of capturing 3264 x 2448 resolution images. In terms of picture quality, the phone is doing rather well; the photos have plenty of detail and accurate colors. The Video recorder is capable of shooting 1080p videos at 30fps.

 In terms of connectivity, Optimus has quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for global roaming and three-band HSDPA with 21 Mbps of download and 5.76 Mbps of upload. Wi-Fi is dual-band with a/b/g/n support, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and Hotspot capabilities. There is NFC and Bluetooth 4.0 too.
SmartShare is an app that lets you control a DLNA network - you can play media from other devices (e.g. NAS) on your phone or play something from the phone onto another device (e.g. a DLNA-enabled TV).

Also, you get an excellent web browser, minimalist and competent, that’s the Google way. The powerful quad-core hardware enables the Optimus 4X HD browser to play 1080p Flash video without a hitch. That was truly impressive stuff considering a lot of netbooks would choke on something like that.  You also have Google Maps and Navigation.

Final words, the Koreans managed to offer a really solid smartphone with focus on the essentials, with no weak points and at an attractive price. It has the latest hardware in terms of processing power and display quality but it costs less than its direct rivals.

 You can get one free on a monthly contract deal here.

continue reading "LG Optimus 4X HD, Fire in the Hole!"

iPhone 4s, My Future Ex?

A man’s worst nightmare after a break up is a chick that looks exactly like your ex. You’re having second thoughts, it's too early perhaps to end it, and maybe you should give it one more chance. 

 You two did look great together, your iPhone 4 and you, I mean. In fact you still do. Should you go next? 4s, I mean? Well, let’s see about that.

 Apple iPhone 4S was launched in October. As always, expectations were very high, rumors about this phone’s features started many months before. 4S is not a revolutionary phone, comes rather as an improvement to iPhone 4 . Perhaps this is why many aficionados said they were disappointed when they saw the phone, expecting perhaps a completely new iPhone 5 . The iPhone 4S is the half-point type. There probably is nothing special about it. At least, not on the outside. You can see it for yourself, first hand if you decide to buy one here on a monthly deal.

Many of the features of iPhone 4 were improved. The processor is faster, Internet through HSPA is also faster, and it features a better camera, including HD 1080p video recording capability. Siri, the iPhone 4S digital assistance, presents a very interesting technology, even if there is premature to say it will permanently change the way we use the phone. Apple phones have been criticized many times they are behind the competition in terms of hardware, but iPhone 4S is now almost as well equipped as the latest Android smartphones.

View the full list of specifications and features of Apple iPhone 4S

Appearance

Apple's new phone comes in a small box, which contains only strictly necessary accessories. Apple put inside the charger, USB cable and a hands free headset. The box also contains a device that helps you remove the SIM card and the user manual. Apple makes lots of money from the sale of apps and accessories, so if you want a protective cover or other cables, you must pay separately paisan, no freebies here.

iPhone 4S looks identical to iPhone 4. The exterior does not betray any difference, which was surprising to many who expected a radical new design. Dimensions are still extremely small, the phone has a length of 115.2 mm, a width of 58.6 mm and a thickness of only 9.3 mm. It is definitely one of the thinnest smartphones.  At a weight of 140 grams is not exactly light as a feather, but it’s nothing out of ordinary either. The phone feels great in hand, is solid and the materials used are of high quality. Apple, as always, doesn’t disappoint in this regard.

The front of the phone shows off the 3.5 inch display, a single button below the screen, the speaker above the screen, a secondary camera and proximity and ambient light sensors.

The right side houses the SIM card only. To open the slot you have a dedicated tool that comes in the box, but you can also use a paperclip. Or a hammer.

The left side has volume buttons and a mute button. These buttons are one of the few design changes to the iPhone 4, they were moved a few millimeters from the old position. The button that increases the volume is also used when shooting pictures.

Top includes a headphone jack and the power button to turn off the screen. While not very visible, here is a second microphone, which eliminates ambient noise in calls.

 On the back we can find only the 8 megapixel camera, with LED flash. Battery is non-removable and you don’t have a Micro SD slot, ergo you don’t have access to the phone’s back cover.

At 1430 mAh, the battery has a generous capacity. According to the manufacturer, it holds up to 200 hours of standby or up to 14 hours in 2G talk time and 8 hours of talk time on 3G newtorks. In reality it depends very much on how you use the phone, in the hands of a hardcore user battery will last for one day, with a moderate use, maybe you get 2 days.

 Internet and GPS consumes the most battery life, playing music is more conservative with the battery (if you keep the screen closed).

Use

iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5, the newest version of Apple's operating system. iOS 5 brings more news from IOS 4, making the phone more user friendly. Siri Virtual Assistant is probably the most interesting. Siri is a new way to interact with the phone. Instead of searching through the applications, you say what you want, and Siri helps. For example, you can dictate to your phone to add a date in the calendar, to call a contact or send a message. Voice recognition works quite well, although it is still in beta.

Another important novelty is the notification menu. Since Apple introduced the possibility for applications to run in the background on IOS, there always was an issue that notifications appeared above the current application and interrupted what you were doing. Apple was inspired here by the way notifications work on Android, they now appear in the top bar, without having to interrupt your current application.

Another important thing is that iOS 5 can update the phone directly over the Internet. Upgrades are thus much faster and more convenient.

The 4S's screen is 3.5 inches and offers a resolution of 640 x 960 pixels. It is called Retina Display, with one of the largest resolution available on a mobile phonethe. The honest truth is few can match the Retina for its crisp graphics, vibrant colors, deep blacks and remarkable sunlight legibility and viewing angles. . We must admit this is one of the strong points of the phone, the high resolution makes any image, video or text a delight to see. The screen is scratch resistant.

As I previously said, in the hardware department we have a major improvement over Iphone 4. We now have a dual core processor of 1 GHz, making all applications to move faster. There is a dedicated video processor too, which is excellent for any application that uses the video resources intensely and makes them run smoothly. RAM is 512 MB.

Basic functions

iPhone 4s telephony department works great, unlike its predecessor. Importantly, the GSM signal reception problems were solved. This was one of the biggest problems of the iPhone 4. Fortunately, Apple’s problems have been forgotten or ignored by fans everywhere; else the phone would have had very low sales. 4S now uses two antennas instead of one, so that even you’re accidentally touching an antenna, the other takes over immediately,  reception is assured.

A nice touch of the iPhone 4S is noise reduction, made possible by a second microphone. With this function, you may speak in a crowded, noisy place with no problems at all.

iPhone 4S uses the same simple main menu that shows all available applications. User interface is extremely intuitive, which is also one of the proven qualities of IOS.

Agenda lets you add any contacts you want, and now you can  associate a phone book contact to a profile on a social network such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Messaging is another strong point of this phone. Obviously 4S supports both SMS and MMS, and email. iMessage is probably one of the most interesting features, which allow you to send free text messages to your friends who also have an iPhone. iMessage is actually an instant messaging application, but what makes it so successful is the integration with regular SMS application. When you’re writing a new text message, the application checks if the receiver   also has an iPhone and if so, it sends the SMS through the Internet instead, so you do not have to pay for the SMS. Everything happens automatically of course, the SMS application gives you a hint though, if the Send button is green it means that you are sending a regular SMS and blue means that   you are sending an iMessage.

The email client is also very good. You may set up multiple accounts POP3/IMAP and organize your messages in many ways.

Multimedia

4S does not support micro SD cards and that's sad, but comes with more internal memory than its predecessor, so you have enough room to keep your multimedia files. When you buy the phone, you can opt for one of the versions of 16, 32 or 64 GB.

The gallery is, as usual, excellent. Photographs can be seen on the screen on high resolution, the transition from one picture to another and is quick, also zooming is lightning fast and the phone has included a photo editor that helps you edit photos.

The music player is also excellent, as we expect from the company that invented the iPod. You can organize your music into categories, you benefit from a graphic equalizer that helps you change your sound at will and you can buy music from iTunes directly from the phone. Music playback quality is very good, as I expected. Headphones in the package are pretty good, no need for an upgrade here.

Breaking news, iPhone 4S has FM radio, at last. That's a relief. (nope, just kidding, too high tech)

The video player plays 1080p but suffers from poor codec support. Videos look pretty good on the high resolution screen of the phone, including HD 1080p clips, running smoothly. Unfortunately it lacks support for DivX or Xvid.

The camera is one of the biggest improvements over the iPhone 4. The 8 megapixel sensor changed picture quality radically; pictures are now extremely vivid in terms of contrast, the level of detail and colors. LED flash helps in low light photography. It is definitely one of the best 8 megapixel camera on a mobile phone, you can kiss your old dedicated camera good bye.

Video recording is another strong feature of the phone. iPhone 4s records at 1080p resolution with 30 fps, which means Full HD movies with excellent quality. Videos are saved in MOV format and will take a lot of space due to very high resolution, but then you can compress them with the video editor included in the software bundle. 4S 's camera excels in terms of image stabilization, so if you’re shaking your hand when shooting, phone compensates and creates a stable image.

Connectivity

No complaints here, as usual. You can connect to high speed internet Wi-Fi b / g / n, and by up to 14.4 Mbps HSPA download is 5.76 Mbps upload.

 The web browser is an upgraded version of Safari. It is very fast, it loads web pages correctly, which make browsing a pleasure. I liked the Reader function, which extracts only the useful content of Web pages, for example an article and associated photos, displaying only this useful content full screen, somewhat like pages of a book. You get rid of advertising and stuff that is irrelevant for you and also eats up memory. Reader mode is activated by pressing a button on any page in which the browser detects compatible content.

The phone has Bluetooth 4.0; you can use it to connect hands free or other accessories. Unfortunately, Bluetooth file transfer is not possible, at least not without a separate application. Sucky.

iPhone connects to the computer using the USB cable supplied in the package. The phone uses a proprietary port, but the USB cable provided helps you connect it to any computer.

Applications

Applications are an important part of any iPhone aficionado, one of the reasons we buy one. Besides the many applications preinstalled, you can download thousands of free and paid applications from the App Store.

Organizer functions of the iPhone 4S are excellent. Its calendar can be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar. "Reminders" is the new application that allows you to add reminders to alert you at a certain time/location that you have something to do. Simple, but useful, this application Reminders lets you associate a reminder with a location. For example, you can configure your phone to notify you when you get to a certain location that you have something to do, like kissing the secretary at the office, you get the idea.

Because almost all of us are watching YouTube on the go, the iPhone comes with an application for it.

 We already know the iBooks, the application that lets buy and read eBooks on iPhone. It is preinstalled and looks great, including a free book.
 4s comes with GPS and the application preinstalled for navigation is Google Maps.  In App Store you may find a lot of applications for GPS navigation, so you can use your GPS device instead of the cars.

Conclusion:

 Apple's iPhone 4S is undoubtedly one of the most desired phones of the moment.   For true believers, getting the latest Apple tech is not just an upgrade, they get elevated to a new level of well-being and fulfillment. 4s is blazing fast, thanks to the new dual core chip and the graphics chip. It will serve you right for a long time from now, the camera is one of the best in the industry, both in terms of pictures or HD recording. With IOS5, you’re making a difference, with iCloud, iMessage, Siri, OTA updates and all the goodies from the brilliant appstore, not forgetting the looks of the original iPhone 4.

For millions of people though it will be between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. Tough one we know. But hey, there's an app for that:

USER: Do you know a better phone than an iPhone 4S?

SIRI: Wait… there are other phones?

Key features

•        iOS 5 with iCloud integration

•        Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA

•        Dual-band CDMA and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO support

•        3.5" 16M-color LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 960 px resolution

•        Scratch-resistant glass front and rear, with fingerprint-resistant coating

•        1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, Apple A5 SoC

•        512MB of RAM

•        Voice recognition, Siri virtual assistant

•        8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and touch focus

•        1080p video recording at 30fps

•        Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotpsot

•        GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass

•        16/32/64GB storage options

•        Accelerometer, proximity sensor and a three-axis gyro sensor

•        Active noise cancellation with a dedicated secondary microphone

•        Standard 3.5 mm audio jack, stereo Bluetooth v4.0

•        Excellent audio quality

•        Slim waistline at only 9.3mm

•        Secondary front-facing VGA camera

•        Built-in Picture and Video editors

•        Rich AppStore

•        New antenna design and improved signal reception in poor signal areas

Main disadvantages

•        MicroSIM card support only

•        No Flash support in the web browser

•        No true multitasking for all applications

•        FaceTime video calls work only over Wi-Fi

•        No file transfer over Bluetooth or USB Mass Storage mode (independent from iTunes)

•        No FM radio

•        No stereo speakers

•        No microSD card slot

•        Non-user-replaceable battery

•        Siri still a beta, location services not enabled outside US

•        Stuck with iTunes for loading content

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