Tom Cruise? Nope, it is Touch Cruise, a GPS smartphone from HTC. It has a 2.8 inches display which gives a resolution of 320x240 pixels or 65k colors. The display is bright but isn’t as good as HTC Diamond. The LCD tends to go blank when seen in bright sunlight. We had problems checking out maps when in the car and had to turn to voice based directions for help. If the display was a bit bigger, it would have been better for map viewing. Just like other HTC phones, this model too has TouchFlo 3D which lets you browser through applications like e-mail, Web browser, multimedia and contacts. This handset is GPS-centric and hence comes with Map search and geotagging app. You get a lot of options for entering text – full QWERTY, compact QWERTY, Block Recognizer, phone keypad, etc. The built in accelerometer turns the orientation of the keyboard when you tilt the phone. We mostly used the phone in landscape mode but found that the keys were cramped  [...]

Nokia phones quite rare in the US and even if they do make it here, they come unlocked and so the price is quite high. Nokia E71x, a business phone, is brought to you by AT&T. This is a great phone because the price is kept low and it offers all the features that you need in a smart phone. The E71x comes will put you back by $99.99 and comes with a 2 year contract. The display of the phone is 2.36 inches big and has a resolution of 320x240 pixels. The screen doesn’t have a touch screen interface so you will have to use the navigation buttons to move around. The screen looks a bit smaller for smartphone but the images and text look sharp. Light sensing technology automatically adjusts the brightness of the screen depending on the environment. It also has 2 separate personal and business home screens. The latter is for your work applications and with the Personal mode, you get photo gallery and music on the home screen so you don’t have  [...]

This handset has a 3.2 inch WVGA display which gives a resolution of 854x480 pixels. The big resolution is great for watching movies, browsing the web and other phone activities. A big resolution exploits the big size of the screen to the fullest and we had no complaints with the display of this handset. The quality of the display too is good, it is sharp and bright and we had a great time watching videos on the handset. You can change the font size and the background on your Sidekick LX. The user interface isn’t changed much from its predecessor. You have shortcuts for media player, communities, T-Mobile MyFaves, Web browser, and e-mail. There is also a Quick find function on the handset. The navigation controls too are the same as the previous mode. On the left there are Jump and Menu buttons and direction keypad which is also the phone’s speaker. On the other side, there is trackball navigator, OK button, Talk and End keys and Cancel button.  [...]

The only thing that is appealing on the phone, is the ability to take 2 SIM cards at one time. But apart from that, this is a low feature phone with a cheap build. The call quality is good but you hardly get a phone these days with a bad call quality. The phone can take 2 SIM cards, which means you can call and send messages from two different numbers. You use a single phone and yet keep your personal and work life separate. The display of the phone is 2.8 inches big, it gives a 320x240 pixel resolution or 65k colors. The display is bright, the photos look sharp and the text can be read easily. The interface is icon based and it is a bit irritating. For instance, to open a photo, you have to navigate through the toggle, then select the photo and then click ‘open’. The capability to take 2 SIM cards at the same time is a unique feature of this phone. We welcome this feature but the phone has 2 separate inboxes for the SIM cards which  [...]

Shine II is the third phone from LG in the Shine series. The first two were Shine KE970 and Shine CU720. The former was unlocked and came at a price of $575 which was a bit costly but apart from that, the phone was good on features. This phone will put you back by $119 with a 2 year contract and after a $50 mail in rebate. If you want it unlocked, you can get it for $269. The display of the screen is 2.2 inches big and gives a resolution of 320x240 pixels or 262,000 colors. Graphics and colors are sharp, photos are clear and the text too looks good. You can change the font size and color of the menu, dialing font size, backlight time and brightness. LG hasn’t improved the navigation controls in the Shine II. It will take some acclimation, the soft keys are thin, the joystick is tiny and the four way navigation button is so big that it  [...]

Samsung Magnet SGH-A257 is a phone for people who need a good messaging phone but aren’t enthusiastic about other features much. Usually such intimidating full size QWERTY keyboard is seen on high end smart phones and Samsung has given us an entry level messaging phone with QWERTY keyboard. Phone manufacturers are mostly making slider phones for QWERTY keyboard and a candy bar phone with such full set of keys is rare. The display of the phone is a very tiny, it measures just 2.2 inches and gives a relatively small display of 176x220 pixel resolution. Considering this is an entry level messaging phone, the tiny screen will do. However, the display isn’t sharp, the text isn’t clear but it is still readable. You can change the backlight time, wallpaper, and menu themes and styles. Below the display there is the navigation array which consists of four way directional button with a center OK button, message shortcut, clear and back button, end  [...]

HTC Touch Diamond2 is a successor to the HTC Diamond phone and comparing the two phones, this one has a bigger and sharper touch screen, the TouchFlo interface has been improved which is great for navigation. Another significant improvement is presence of 5 mega pixel camera on this phone. The display of the phone is 3.2 inches big and has a resolution for 480x800 pixels. both the size of the display and the resolution is excellent for browsing through the web and watching videos. The quality of the screen is really great, images look bright, text can also be read easily. The display has built in accelerometer which changes the orientation from portrait to landscape. Though this feature is not available for all features, it is there when you need the most for applications like video, photo, e-mail and web pages. The TouchFlo 3D interface, though looks the same on the outside, has some changes for better user experience. For example you get  [...]

Google is proud of its latest offering, the Nexus One and with the downright sexy looks and high end features, we think Google are right when they said that the phone is not only a superphone but also a phone and web’s meeting place. The highlights of the handset include AMOLED display, super fast Snapdragon processor, Android 2.1 interface and never before seen feature of noise cancellation for calls. The voice dialing features have also been improved on the handset. However, it has some drawbacks like the unimpressive music player, applications can be stored only on the internal memory and no multitouch or tethering. The phone doesn’t have support for Outlook calendar syncing. But still we will call this phone an amazing piece of work from Google owing to the features inside. The phone is available as a CDMA model under T-Mobile’s service (Verizon Wireless will roll out its own version in early 2010) and you can buy it as an unlocked  [...]

Samsung Jack is the successor to Samsung BlackJack and the Jack is already famous with rock star Ozzy Osbourne flaunting it on your TVs during commercials. The new handset has some improvements compared to the previous one; it has a better camera and faster processor. This is a messaging phone, so care has been taken by Samsung to ensure that all your messaging requirements are fulfilled. The Jack is your for $99.99 with a two year contract and will lock horns with AT&T’s other ace, the Nokia E71x. We were equally impressed with both the phones. However, if you ask us to choose one, we will go for the Nokia because it has better keyboard whereas Jack has some downsides like slippery exteriors and a proprietary jack for charger and headset. The display of the phone is 2.4 inch big has 65k colors with resolution of 320X240 pixels. We thought the display was a bit small but it is bright and clear so text and pictures are clear. The home  [...]

Though the world has moved on to high end smart phones which sport lots of multimedia and messaging capabilities, there are still people who are not so enthusiastic about mobile phones. All they want is a device which can make call and send messages. A167 is a phone for such people. You can talk to people, text messages and take some photos with the low end camera on the handset. Being a clamshell phone, it has two displays, one on the lid and other one inside. The monochrome display on the lid gives a resolution of 96x96 pixels and it also gives you caller ID, signal strength, time battery life and date. The low end display doesn’t give a photo caller ID and neither does it work as a camera viewfinder. On the exterior of the phone, there is a volume rocker and a proprietary jack for putting headset and adapter. A single jack means that you get to use only one peripheral at a time. Asking for a 3.5 mm jack on an entry level phone like  [...]