When I first got this phone in my labs it took me some time digest the name of the phone. Isn’t the name ‘Smiley’ a bit gay? They have even put the emoticon on the model name for this. I wasn’t too happy about the name and I certainly won’t recommend this phone to any of my male friends. The Samsung reps told me that there is a guy hired by the company who comes with all these names. If he is reading this review, I would like to tell him to think a bit harder before he comes up with the names. Other than the name, the phone is quite decent. Samsung Smiley has a slider design and you have to slide the phone up to reveal the QWERTY keyboard. The display of the phone is pretty decent. There is that emoticon on the home screen wallpaper which irritates me even more. I am just glad that Samsung didn’t engrave the icon somewhere on the back or front. The emoticon is there just on a wallpaper which you can change and get rid of it. Below the  [...]

It has been two years since we last saw a smartphone from Nokia. The manufacturer hasn't got any phones after E71 which was considered as the best Nokia phone ever to date. That was quite true simply because touch screen phones hadn't come that popular back then and people were fans of the numeric keypads. Nokia E73's keyboard could have been better though, it has straight rows. We'd preferred a curved layout like the ones seen on most QWERTY handsets like BlackBerry. The keys are well contoured but they don't have that satisfying click to them. Above the keyboard, there are the navigation keys which also look a bit weird. This is one area where E73 has gone one step behind E71; the shortcuts keys for Mail, Address Book, Calendar and Home are not delineated anymore. They are made up of the same plastic pieces as the soft and Send/End keys. At the center, you have the four way navigation pad along with an optical pad in the center. We thought Nokia got a bit too ambitious when they went  [...]

When AT&T came up with Mobile TV, one of the first devices to have that feature was LG Vu. It had a big three inch screen along with a TV antenna for improving the reception. We reviewed the phone back then and everything except the design went well with us. LG has now come up with its Vu Plus, and we are glad to see that the antenna has been chucked off. It also has a slide out QWERTY keyboard now. The camera has been upgraded along with HSDPA/3G speeds. This phone costs $149.99 and you have to sign a two year contract with the service provider. LG Vu Plus has a three inch display, just like the original one, but this now capacitive. The screen is made of plastic which feels a bit cheap. We wish for an iPod like sturdy glass. The phone lets you add haptic feedback to the touches. The intensity and length of the vibrations can be adjusted too. The screen looks really beautiful and crisp. The resolution is 240x400 pixels along with 262,000 colors.  [...]

LG Sentio is the first T-Mobile phone from this manufacturer for USA and we were surprised when we discovered this. Both the service provider and the manufacturer have been in the market for long enough and hence we were intrigued to see that there hasn’t been in the market with this combination. Every phone is going touch screen these days and it is because this interface is much easier to use than the physical buttons. The only exception to is the rugged phone which cannot have touch screen display because it makes the phone too delicate. On the front of LG Sentio, there is a big 3.2 inch color display which dominates the phone’s face. The display is quite good, the graphics look colorful and the screen is bright enough. We had some problems with the screen in environments with bright sunlight but this is not unexpected in LCDs. If you want a screen which can stand bright sunlight, you should check out those AMOLED screens. They come at a premium though and hence manufacturers  [...]

Samsung Captivate is a huge phone and by it looks, I certainly think it will be a direct competitor to the iPhone 4. Samsung has recently launched a whole new line of Galaxy S handsets and Samsung Captivate is one of them. The big display is really gorgeous and I was drooling on it for hours in my labs. Samsung just sent me the phone but they didn’t tell me the price or the release date so I really don’t know much about it. The company did tell me that they are going to release it this summer so if you are planning to buy a cell phone, I would recommend you to keep your check book closed and wait to see what this phone has to offer. I think, this phone is an excellent alternative to the iPhone. It has a gorgeous screen which is not as good as the retina display but still it will give you a great movie experience. The screen is four inches big. If you aren’t rubbing your eyes already, then let me tell you that the screen is based on AMOLED technology. For newbies, AMOLED screens  [...]

Apple iPhone 4, as you all might be knowing, is the newest product by Apple and it is the device that everyone's been waiting for. It has plenty of features and the design too has undergone a lot of changes. To start off, the box is changed and the new packaging looks quite attractive. Inside the box, you have the instruction manual, power plug, USB cord and the headphones with microphone built in. As compared to the iPhone 3G, the new iPhone is quite thin, actually, it is 25 percent thinner. Apple says that this is the thinnest smartphone out right now. This is true for now but you never know because there are lots of smartphones coming in the market all the time and hence you might get a thinner handset tomorrow. The competition in smartphone market is very stiff. Apple iPhone 4 is clad with glass on the front and back and we noticed that the phone attracts a lot of fingerprints particularly on the back. You might want to carry a cleaning cloth  [...]

Samsung follows the rule 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' with this new phone. The feature set and design is quite similar to its predecessor. Both have the same rugged design but the Rugby II has better call quality and it also has voice dialing feature which is getting increasingly popular these days. There are a few drawbacks though, there is no 3.5 mm headphones jack yet. The cost of this device is $99 and you have to sign a two year service agreement with AT&T. The phone is also available without the contract for $249. The external display shows photo caller ID, signal strength, battery life, time and date. The external display is bigger than what you normally have on clamshell phones and this screen also shows recent call log. You cannot use the external display as a viewfinder for the self-portrait photos which is a bit disappointing. On the phone's left, there is the volume rocker and PTT button. You can find these buttons easily during  [...]

AT&T said that they would be introducing an AT&T phone at CES 2010 and they have now come up with HTC Aria. The design is quite similar to HTC HD Mini and it based on Android 2.1. The feature set is all there and you also get to use HTC Sense's user interface. This is not the most powerful Android mobile phone in the market right now and if you yearn for power, you might want to skip this phone for Samsung Captivate – which will be arriving soon. AT&T has also blocked third party app downloads which is another bummer. However, the Aria is a good mid range smartphone and it is better than AT&T's other Android phone, the Motorola Backflip. This phone will cost you $129.99 after a $100 mail in rebate and you have to sign a two year service agreement. We think that the price is a bit high for the feature set it offers but it is not outrageous. HTC Aria has a 3.2 inches screen with resolution of 320x480 pixels. This is a bit small considering  [...]

There are a smartphone craze going right now across the country but AT&T is concentrating on just messaging phones right now because they think there is a lot of demand for 'smartphone lite' handsets. AT&T calls these gadgets 'quick messaging phones' and one of them is the Pantech Pursuit. This is the first touch screen phone from Pantech and it has a slider design for the keyboard. The feature set too is impressive. On the front, the Pantech Pursuit has a 2.8 inch display which dominates the front face. The screen size is a bit smaller than other handsets and it is not that good especially because you need a bigger real estate for touch screen phones. However, on the bright side, the screen looks crisp and colorful. The resolution is 320x240 pixels with 262k color support. The text is well rendered and clean. We also liked the choice of fonts and graphic icons that it had to offer. You can change the font style, menu theme, backlight time  [...]

Sony Ericsson Satio appeared just as a concept at Mobile World Congress and it has now reached the market as a final product. This handset is offered unlocked thus it will make a big hole in your pocket with its huge price tag. The biggest feature of the phone is the 12.1 megapixel camera. If the resolution doesn't make you drool then the plethora of options that the camera offers certainly will. We, as cell phone reviewers, have never seen so many features offered in a camera phone. There is also the music player, Sony's traditional Walkman, to keep you entertained while you are on the move. Sony has been known for its stellar sound quality on both the its MP3 players and cell phones. The display of this phone is 3.5 inches big and you get a resolution of 360x640 pixels. Images look very nice on this display and the text is quite easy to read too. The built in accelerometer automatically changes the orientation of the screen when you tilt the device.  [...]