eK-gadgets info

Three of 2009’s most popular consumer digital SLRs are likely going to be the Canon EOS Rebel T1i (also known as the EOS-500D), the Nikon D5000, and the Olympus E-620. Since it’s going to be a while before I review all three, I wanted to whet your appetite with some comparison photos of our standard test scene.

In order to keep things as simple as possible, the photos below are JPEGs straight from the camera, which were using default settings (save for white balance, of course). I’ll save RAW vs. JPEG comparisons for the actual reviews. The lenses used were the “kit” lenses that came with each camera: 18 - 55 mm for the Canon and Nikon, and 14 - 42 mm for the Olympus. Since these cameras will all produce clean photos at low ISOs, I started at ISO 400.

Be sure to view the full size images, as the crops only tell part of the story!

ISO 400

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Nikon D5000

Olympus E-620

ISO 800

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Nikon D5000

Olympus E-620

ISO 1600

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Nikon D5000

Olympus E-620

ISO 3200

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Nikon D5000

Olympus E-620 Via : dcresources

A New “Low End” BlackBerry That Rocks?!

Rumors of a new BlackBerry with the codename “Gemini” have been running around the interwebs since early 2009, evolving slightly with every new blog post made about it. After some back and forth on device model number (previously labeled as the  8325 after some initial confusion), the prevailing thought on what has been now named the BlackBerry 8520 is that would it would be a new “low end” EDGE-only addition to the popular Curve line. In other words, the Curve 8520 was not something to get too excited about.

However, this changed after seeing the first live shots of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 surface this past week, which showed off a slick looking device with the traditional trackball replaced in favor of an optical one… the “Gemini” was officially now a device we couldn’t wait to learn more about. And good news - it didn’t take us long to get our CrackBerry-addicted hands on one. So grab a bevvy, sit back, and read on to see plenty of photos, a video and our initial impressions on the newest Curve.

* Disclaimer: Like all of our pre-release reviews, please note that this is non-commercially available device which means things could change by the time it comes to market. *

Read on For Photos, Video and First Impressions of the BlackBerry Curve 8520 >>

As far as pre-release reviews go, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 in this hands-on feels very much like a production unit. The hardware is well put together and the OS is running smoothly. Edge devices like this are old-hat for RIM so that’s no surprise. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 reviewed here is running OS 4.6.1, but we expect (hope) to ultimately see this hit store shelves running OS 5.0 (click here to learn about the improvemens in OS 5.0). With it now being fairly clear that devices running an operating system version older than 4.6 won’t be getting an update to 5.0, it makes sense that RIM refresh the 83xx series into the 85xx series, which will get the newer OS. And like the Curve 8300 series, where you have your choice of one big feature (8310 for GPS, 8320 for WiFi, 8330 for CDMA), we expect to see more than just the 8520 be rolled out in the months ahead. Again, think Curve 8510 with GPS, Curve 8520 with WiFi, and Curve 8530 for CDMA carriers (this is unconfirmed… just think of it as logical speculation for now).

Many of you reading this will go “No 3G, Fail!” but you need to remember that there is and will be (at least for a little while longer!) a market for EDGE-only devices  and RIM needs to have a base model, full QWERTY Edge device in their next-generation styling to fill that need. Thus it seems logical that the 8500 series is simply the replacement to the Curve 8300 series. This also justifies why a base model device will be the first to introduce a cool feature like the optical trackball. The Curve 8300 series lineup has been hugely popular and has a lot of loyal users (Curve is the #1 Selling Smartphone in the USA) and there are likely a lot of existing owners out there who would make the jump up to this device.

As for attracting new users to BlackBerry, it has also been suggested by many people that the 8520 is device built with Pay as You Go in mind. We haven’t heard much yet in terms of carrier pickup for the 8520 (who’s getting it) so whether this 85xx series rolls out to a lot of carriers as a replacement to the 83xx series or becomes a prepaid play by a few select carriers, we’re honestly not quite sure at this point. Time will reveal all.

A few things are more certain though:

• With GPS and WiFi in one and overall better hardware specs (better camera, display, battery, etc.) the BlackBerry Curve 8900 is clearly the current flagship of the non-3G BlackBerry line. So the Curve 85xx device model falling in between 83xx and 8900 makes sense.
• For those of you upset with the lack of 3G here, keep in mind that’s simply not the point of this device model. If you read the BlackBerry blogs, you’ll know there are a lot of other upcoming rumored devices (who’s drooling for Magnum?!) that will fit into the 9000 series of BlackBerry devices sporting 3G. Hopefully we’ll see some new and exciting things in that lineup soon!
• Based on the unit reviewed here, while we don’t have any sort of concrete release date information on the 8520 at the time of this writing, we’d bet that it does get announced sooner rather than later. It feels good to go.

BlackBerry Curve 8520 Overview

With its blacked-out look and optical trackball / trackpad thingamabob (I’m sure RIM will coin a term for it like SureScroll or SureTrack or something like that), I personally think the Curve 8520 is HAWT! But as stated above, when it comes to actual hardware specs, the 8520 is outclassed by its older brother the 8900. With the BlackBerry Curve 8520 some of the key points to make note of other than the optical trackball are:

• Edge device
• 320 by 240 display
• 256 megabytes of internal memory (same as 8900)
• 1150mAh battery
• 2 megapixel camera, no flash
• processor: not quite sure actually - more thoughts on that below

A hands-on look at the BlackBerry Curve 8520

If you follow RIM’s quarterly reports or talk to any analysts, you’ll know one of the areas of concern around companies that build smartphones is the margin they can get off each device sold. Picking up the Curve 8520, while it has a new look you get a bit of a sense of “recycling” of older (high margin!) parts. The display, battery and camera (minus the flash) appear to be straight off the Curve 8300 series. It’s kind of like GM tossing Cavalier door locks onto their H3. But honestly, it’s not a bad thing at all as the whole package is tight - the Curve 8520 is a real nice device to hold and play with.

BlackBerry Curve 8520 Video Overview

The Curve 8520 makes me think of Johnny Cash (one of my heroes!). He was the Man in Black, and seriously, this is the BlackBerry in Black. That said, I recorded the video below Sunday morning (and after Saturday night had no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt) hence the music selection. So take a watch to see the BlackBerry Curve 8520 and its optical trackball in action… I hope you enjoy the show!

BlackBerry Curve 8520 First Impressions

Picking up the 8520, you know it’s a BlackBerry Curve. Despite the visual changes and addition of the optical track-ball-pad, it maintains that user-friendly feeling and form factor of the Curve 8300s and 8900 in hand. And the whole package works well. I was scared to say goodbye to the trackball, but took to the optical sensor within a few minutes. And though I’m not sure what processor is in there, the OS experience is much improved over the Curve 83xx (if it’s the same processor, the additional memory must make a world of difference?!). While I’m more of a fan of high-end specs on gadgets, I could actually see myself leaving my Bold or Curve 8900 or Storm or 9630 at home some days and carrying around the 8520 just to enjoy the experience. It also makes me excited for what we’ll see from RIM in terms of their upcoming higher-end devices. If this is the look and feel of their base model device, then I’m thinking we should be wowed by their next generation of high end devices.

Form Factor - I personally really like the design approach Research in Motion has taken with the BlackBerry Curve 8520’s form factor. On the front, they’ve extended the LCD protector / covering / shiny stuff (don’t know what the actual term for it is but I’m sure you know what I mean) both up towards the top of the device and down over the buttons and right to the keyboard. Subbing out the trackball for optical trackpad, this combined gives the 8520 a more modern and sleek look. Though the Send / End / Menu / Back keys are still clickable, they are combined into one piece (the white lines are slightly ridged up so you always find and hit the right command). The rubber coating on the volume buttons and convenience keys also makes them seem more a part of the device itself. Along with the camera flash, another BlackBerry feature notably missing from the 8520 form factor are charging contacts - I guess there won’t be a BlackBerry charging pod for this one. Come to think of it, you probably won’t skin this device either since it sort of comes pre-skinned with it’s rubberized body (no charging pod, no need for skins… lends well to the theory of this being a prepaid play).

All in all, it’s a more unified design philosophy which I have a feeling may hold up better to wear and tear than previous BlackBerry smartphone designs.

More BlackBerry Curve 8520 Eye Candy

Optical Trackball - There are a couple of other smartphones on the market that use a similar optical trackpad for navigation, and I’m happy to say that RIM’s implementation of it on the Curve 8520 seems to be pretty smooth. You can watch the video above to see it in action. Just like the standard trackball, you can adjust the sensitivity of it under Options > Screen/Keyboard. With the Audible Roll setting on Mute, I was a little tripped out by the lack of noise while navigating. With no tactile/audible response, you’re really forced to look at the display to see just how far you’ve moved. I turned the audible roll onto Click, and from there felt immediately more at home. For navigating the OS and doing things like web browsing, the optical sensor works well. I guess it is an eight-way pad, as I could scroll diagonally while web browsing. And it does “click” down, like a regular trackball, for making selections. So far, the only place where I’ve found myself having a bit of difficulty with the optical input is playing BrickBreaker. I think the traditional trackball is probably better for quick, accurate motions. Though practice does make perfect. I’ve heard sweaty fingers and being in bright, bright light can cause issue with this kind of an optical input, but I haven’t experienced any issues yet. All in all, so far it’s a thumbs up from me. And with no moving parts, it should prove more durable than the traditional trackball.

Media Buttons - New to the Curve 8520 are dedicated media player buttons, located at the top of the device. While there’s no dedicated lock key on the 8520, holding down the Play / Pause button for two seconds does put the device into standby mode.

Comparing the BlackBerry 8520 to some of its siblings…

Display: The Curve 8520 features a 320 by 240 resolution display. I left all my older BlackBerry devices at home when I came out to Orlando for WES, so unfortunately while writing this don’t have an older device to compare to (will follow up next week with direct comparisons). I can say that while the display shows a decent picture and video, it is definitely a step down if you’ve ever used the Bold, 8900, Storm or 9630. And where you really lose out is in web browsing. 320 pixels just isn’t enough these days for those of us who like to browse the web on our smartphones.

Other Stuff: Be sure to click the images above to zoom in on the photos (I’ve left some descriptions beneath) and get a better look. You’ll see the keyboard is much like the 8900’s (which is kind of like the 8700’s) but with a slightly different bottom row. There are actually two notification lights. The battery door doesn’t feature a latch, but is sort of gently pried off.  It is easy insert and remove microSD cards into the media card slot (also underneath the battery door) and you don’t need to remove the battery to access it.

BlackBerry Curve 8520  - Some Closing Thoughts for Now…

The rubberized casing makes it easier to build a “House of BlackBerry Smartphones”
As was correctly rumored, looking at the specs the “Gemini” isn’t what you’d consider a top of the line smartphone. And that’s ok - it wasn’t designed to be and I’m sure it won’t be marketed to compete as such. I will be curious to see how RIM ultimately positions the device - whether the 85xx will be picked up by carriers as a straight update to the Curve 8300 series or if instead this will be sold outright for use on prepaid BlackBerry plans. Either way, I really like the 8520. It looks good, feels good and the optical trackball seems to fit well and work well on a full qwerty BlackBerry (I wonder if it will become the new standard input method or if we’ll still see new models with trackballs??).

via : Crackberry

This right here people is the day you’ve been waiting for. The two best Windows Mobile devices out there; the Sony XPERIA X1 and the AT&T HTC Fuze. We put them head-to-head in a bunch of tests and categories just so we could help make your decision a little bit easier. They are both fabulous phones, both are manufactured by HTC, and both are practically identical in terms of hard specs. But which one comes out on top? Which one are you going to drop a weeks pay on? Well, hit the jump and see what’s really hood with the X1 and the Fuze!

Screen:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The XPERIA uses a WVGA resolution for it’s 800×480 display, and while it’s absolutely gorgeous, we couldn’t help but feel as if it might be a little too big. The menu items are pretty small, and while it’s ok to use if you’re banging away on the soft key buttons on the front of the device, it’s kind of tricky to use your finger to select these most of the time. What we love about the XPERIA’s display is that there are no grainy artifacts, and the screen barely requires any pressure to register input. Not a bad thing, a good thing. But that might come down to personal preference.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

Ah, good ol’ VGA. The Fuze rocks out with a 640×480 display, and while it’s not as roomy as the Sony X1, it’s more than big enough to cram whatever you want into the screen. Most applications look great in this resolution, and hey, even Skyfire works! The only downside about the Fuze’s screen is that while it’s very, very nice, it’s a little grainy if you want to get nitpicky, and the pressure required to register a touch can get a little annoying.

Keyboard:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1 makes use of a 3-row QWERTY keyboard (the fourth row being the spacebar, extra buttons like “OK”, etc). We said some pretty harsh words about it in our mini-review back in the day, but we’re actually loving the keyboard now. Our gripes were that the keys were a little too flush with the case, but it seems as if that has been cleared up now. The keyboard by no means protrudes, it’s still very flush, but it’s a lot better than the unit we toyed with previously and we have no problem banging out emails or IMs on here. The only complaint would probably have to be that there isn’t quite enough room to type 100% perfectly on the top row of keys. We would have loved a tiny bit more space in between the key and the front sliding mechanism, but once you get used to it, you’re pretty much good to go.

Final critique would have to be the backlighting. We understand the keys are metal and everything, but there is really no excuse. Once you have the layout sort of memorized you’ll make out alright, but the lighting is very dim unless you are in total darkness and it doesn’t even fully light up key like it should.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

The Fuze uses a 4-row QWERTY keyboard and is pretty much what you’d expect from HTC. The keys are not rubberized like they were on the Herald or Tilt, but they feel really good. There’s enough tactile feedback to minimize mistakes and the layout is near perfect. But there are a couple things that bug us, though… For starters, while we love AT&T for kicking the crap out of whoever designed the initial Touch Pro keyboard and making them add Start and OK buttons, there is also a negative. Instead of the numbers being at the top row of the device they are placed in a standard number pad format over the keys. That’s all well and fine, but what this did is push the letters to the side of the keys so they could fit the numbers in. If you’re not typing in perfect daylight this can kind of get annoying because when you go to hit a letter to type, you actually hit the very edge of the key and not the middle of it since the letters are pushed over. It’s not the end of the world, just a minor annoyance that we would have liked to be fixed. All in all, it’s a very good keyboard; one of the best keyboards on a Windows Mobile device

OS:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

While Sony doesn’t come close to offering anything like HTC’s TouchFLO 3D, they have made great use of something called “Panels.” There are about eight pre-loaded that range from the standard Windows Mobile homescreen, to a Google homescreen, to even a Facebook homescreen. The Facebook panel is straight up addicting. Like crack addicting. Really. Why do you think it took us so long to write this review? In addition to the aforementioned panels, there is also a music player panel, and customized homescreen ones where you can add in some RSS feeds and have them display right there. Very sneaky, very cool. Navigation on the XPERIA is just the regular Windows Mobile stuff, though, and Sony didn’t do much in terms of customizing the OS. For an expert WinMo user this is obviously not a problem, in fact, you might even prefer this, yet we can’t help but think how many additional sales Sony would have gotten if they had done a little more. Well, they probably would have got a lot more sales if the damn thing was shipping and wasn’t $800, so let’s not kid ourselves there.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

The Fuze uses HTC’s TouchFLO 3D which runs on top of the standard Windows Mobile junky OS. HTC has done wonders in this regard, and they don’t plan on stopping. If you’re not familiar with TouchFLO, you could sort of think it as a very complex skin, but the whole purpose of it is to minimize the actual user interaction with Windows Mobile as a whole. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. You can always just rip into the regular Windows Mobile until your heart is content, but TouchFLO is the best Windows Mobile experience out there. In the OS department, where the Fuze differs from the X1, is that HTC has pretty much combed through everything to try and bring it up to snuff. You can’t polish a turn (well, you actually can) yet HTC has been able to deliver an amazing product that makes Windows Mobile far more usable. For instance, the soft keyboards. Instead of having to slide the phone open like the XPERIA to enter text (unless you want to use the atrocious standard Windows Mobile keyboard, or one of the other rudimentary text entry options), you can just quickly touch type and be on your way. For a longer typing engagement, just slide out the keyboard. This approach works wonders, and it’s actually one of the big complaints we had with the T-Mobile G1.

Battery:

The X1 makes use of a 1500mAh battery while the Fuze uses a 1350mAh battery. No question which one lasts longer, right? Well, not so fast. We’d say they are practically equal in terms of battery life, and if they aren’t exactly equal, the Fuze beats the X1 by a tiny bit. This as usual depends on your usage patterns, but we found both handsets lasting well into the late evening from an early morning full charge. If you’re a power user, you’ll want to pickup a second battery or car charger for either device.

Connectivity:

Both handsets are practically identical in this regard — quad-band GSM/EDGE, tri-band HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IrDA, etc. We noticed that the Fuze holds onto a 3G signal a tad bit better than the X1 but this wasn’t really a concern as both units 99% of the time mirrored each other in the signal department, and both would hold onto low signals in fringe areas very well. The only part where we can see these two differing in the connectivity department would be Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi just plain sucks on the X1. We’re not sure why. It might be the placement of the Wi-Fi antenna, it might be the semi-metal casing — we’re just not sure. But even standing 5ft away from one of our wireless routers wouldn’t yield better than a 1-2 bar signal. Wi-Fi dropped every so often, and it just wasn’t a pleasant experience in general. The Fuze fared much better and we really don’t have anything to complain about there. At least in terms of connectivity.

Speed:

Hard specs on the X1a:

• 528MHz Qualcomm CPU
• 512/384MB ROM/RAM

Hard specs on the Fuze:

• 528MHz Qualcomm CPU
• 512/288MB ROM/RAM

As you can see, they are pretty much identical. But how do they fare in real world usage scenarios? It’s tough to compare them, but we’d say overall the Fuze is a tad bit more responsive and polished. Neither device has crashed on us so far, and that’s very impressive seeing as how we’ve put both through the ringer.

Sexiness:

Beauty is the eye of the beholder, right? This one’s going to be tough to judge as y’all probably have more than your own opinions (anyone ever looked at our comment sections before?), but if we had to give you our take, we’d say the X1 is simply the sexiest Windows Mobile device out there. That’s not an insult to HTC either, they built the thing. The Fuze is a little more understated from the front, but we love the diamond back, though some people would have preferred the flat one that didn’t pickup an ant’s fingerprints, we dig it.

The X1’s backside is a little too “Sonyish” for out tastes, it reeks of the P-series, and while that might not be a bad thing, it sort of takes away from the beautiful aspects of the phone. The triangle front navigation keys, the sexy-crafted angled aluminum keyboard, and the very sleek polished aluminum bezel around the handset.

The Fuze isn’t an ugly duckling, and the all polished device really looks professional yet sexy. The all black theme works wonders for it as well. And while the casing is metal on the Fuze, we’d have to go with chrome/polished aluminum over gun-metal glossy black. But hey, we’re just speaking for us. Go on with your bad self and lust over whichever device you want to!

Navigation:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1 uses the beloved (at least by us) optical joystick. You won’t see an onscreen cursor here, but you will be able to do pretty much all your navigating with the optical joystick. Some nice tweaks by Sony (or HTC, we might add) include using the optical joystick to scroll in the browser in a page up / page down mode instead of selecting individual items. This works great because you can scroll to wherever you want to go, and then when you need to actually select something, hit the up/down/left/right key and select with the optical joystick (yes, it’s a real button also, that pushes in). There are no arrow keys on the keyboard however, and at first this is pretty annoying. Once you get used to navigating with the optical joystick though, it’s really no problem. You just keep one hand on the joystick instead of on the non-existent arrow keys on the keyboard.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

Out of the box, the Fuze offers a 5-way directional pad with a circular touch wheel. The problem is that the touch wheel doesn’t really do anything besides zoom in and out in Opera, or increase text size in emails, and so on. To get it to work like a scroll wheel, you have to hit up XDA and get your freak on. That’s fine with us, but for the average user that just buys a phone and keeps it stock, that won’t work so well.

Touch:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1’s screen, like we said before, requires a much lighter touch to register touch input and this is really preferred in this neck of the woods. You get very fluid touch movements that are easy to control. This makes it more prone to user error if you aren’t careful, but once you get used to the thresholds, it’s very nice to use. The X1 does use a form of TouchFLO for scrolling, so you can simply swipe in any directions and phone will continue that touch interaction for you. One of the negatives about the touch screen really doesn’t have to do with the touch screen at all, rather how it’s placed. The screen isn’t flush with the casing, and while it doesn’t make or break the phone, it does make it a little annoying when you can’t seem to hit the start menu or “X” button just right because it’s sunk in the corner of case.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

HTC’s Fuze requires a stronger touch to register input, and while it’s cool that you can get away with lightly touching the screen to wipe it clean, or not accidentally hitting buttons while you are talking on the phone, we think it requires a little too much force. We’ve begged HTC to integrate capacitive touch screens into their Windows Mobile phones, and while that might be a pipe dream (there’s too many damn tiny check boxes in the OS to make a capacitive screen effective at this point), the touch should require so much… touch. The good news is that HTC’s screen is flush with the front panel and this makes our problems with the X1 seem like much bigger problems — the layout is great here on the Fuze.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, what phone is better? That’s the ultimate question isn’t it? I personally crowned the AT&T Fuze as the best Windows Mobile device out there. Am I sticking to it? More or less, yes. Here’s why… The XPERIA X1 is a fantastic Windows Mobile phone. But the more we use it and evaluate it, the more we think its target market shrinks. Not so much because the device is sub-par, it’s quite the opposite. It’s just that we feel the only consumers interested in the X1 will be prior Windows Mobile users that know what they are doing and know how to handle the shortcomings in WinMo. Then there’s the $800 price tag which will certainly push a huge segment of the target market away. Like real, real fast. Looking at both of them from a consumer’s perspective, there really isn’t any reason to not go with the Fuze. Even if you’re not on AT&T, paying $500 for an unlocked unit is still better than paying $800.

The Fuze offers a much more complete experience than the X1, and that combined with the price really makes this a winner. If we eliminated price altogether, which one would we choose? That’s really tough, folks. The fact is we’d be happy with either one of them, but at this point we’d probably just go ahead and choose the Fuze. It’s much more streamlined, the entire OS is cohesive in terms of what HTC has done (everything from the volume up/down screen, to the Connection Manager, to TouchFLO, to well, you get the point) and it’s just an all-around more usable phone out of the box. If you want to man up and get your hands dirty with customizing the X1 and making it suit your needs better, more power to you. We’ve pretty much raped this handset and got it up to snuff, we just don’t think that many people want to be bothered with doing that. Not with Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and the iPhone around.

Via : BGR

Being another first for BlackBerry, RIM has delved into the widely competed touchscreen market.  Not wanting to be sucked in as “another iPhone wannabe” however, RIM has developed several unique technologies in an attempt to diverge from the traditional touchscreen stigma.  So how does this phone actually fare in-hand, and how does it stack up to its competitors?

After the break, we find the answers to this question, AND we smash the thing apart for some good ol’ teardown analysis.

BlackBerry Storm Review

Greats

First things first, at first sight, this phone is gorgeous.  We think its one of the better looking phones on the market today.  It’s got slants to the device, along with metallic backings - a first for BlackBerry.  Not only that, but the battery door ACTUALLY WORKS.  It’s buttons are well placed, the piano black/matte black/metallic black trims complement each other very well, and the chromed sides actually don’t feel like cheap plastic.  If this is any indication at what the Javelin will look like, then I’ve got good feelings about it.

Next off, the screen is another winner.  Although it doesn’t have the brightness nor the sharpness and pixel density to match the Bold, its HVGA screen on a 3.25″ screen seem to work just fine for movies, tv shows, browsing (we’ll get to that), and anything else that requires lots of screen real estate.  Visuals are obviously accompanied by sound, and while the sound is definitely capable of producing loud obnoxious noises, it doesn’t match the Bold’s quality; it doesn’t have much depth and just sounds like pure treble.

Media experiences in general, on the Storm, are fantastic.  It’s built in way more codecs for audio and video, has a decent interface for finding and playing music, and works as music player.  In fact, though their SurePress technology isn’t mentioned in this review’s “Greats”, it works really well for controlling your music.  RIM has mentioned countless times their intention to dive into the consumer market, and with these capabilities, it definitely works.

Luke Warm

Luke warm features are features that aren’t good, nor are they bad.  The first feature on the Storm to receive this fairly mediocre grading is, you guessed it: SurePress technology.  RIM has attempted to really give BlackBerry owners a touchscreen alternative without feeling frustrated by their keyboard.  By giving tactile feedback, you understand the timing for typing, and once you get rhythm, you get rhyme speed.  It’s implementation works rather well for menu selections, the dialpad (it’s honestly fun to type numbers), and as mentioned, the media player.  Unfortunately, typing, even on a gigantic landscape keyboard, just doesn’t feel right.  It’s mucky, because once you gain speed, you instantly hit an error.  This is due to the touchscreen not being able to recognize another finger while the button is being depressed.  If it had multi-touch functionality, letting you place your finger while you’re pressing another finger, we bet that implementation would be glorious.  For now, however, we got to stick with infuriating spelling mistakes from going too fast.  Not only that, but typing on the screen takes a lot more effort than a traditional QWERTY keyboard, and a regular touchscreen keyboard — you have to press the WHOLE screen down.  It’s easy near the edges, because the radius from the centre gives you easy torque, but anything middle-to-top-row is becomes a pain when you’re hammering out gigantic emails.

Another luke warm feature is the browser.  Without going into performance metrics, the browser still isn’t up to par with its webkit-based friends (i.e. Safari/Chrome-Lite-ish).  While it’s true that it’s drastically improved over previous generations, it’s nowhere near the level of Safari.  Format pages like IGN still give it your good ol’ lists of links and text for you to scroll around.  This bring us to our next point: capacitive touch.

What’s annoying about Verizon phones is that their capacitive touch phones (including the Motorola Krave) always come with a STICKY screen protector.  It leaves a nasty sticky feeling to the screen, which totally harps on first impressions.  What the Storm needs is a good glossing of the screen - it’ll just generally feel more touch-accepting.  The use of gestures is also inconsistent, and without the rubberband effect deployed by other phones, scrolling feels, lacking.  Viewing any relatively long page will have you scrolling like a mad man, because the screen stops when your finger is lifted off.

Gripes

Applications.  Back in the old days, BlackBerry was competing against Palm for the enterprise space, and even then, the distinction of Palm was its better third party support.  Storm seems to be the first to really try and break this stigma, but… it fails (obviously, since its in the gripes section).  What Apple and Google have done was generate application “outlets” in which you can download and install third party apps, with the latter even focusing their entire handset around this concept.  RIM has developed an “Applications Centre”, which was carrier specific.  This was a poor choice, as carrier-specific applications (namely, VZ Navigator, and other VZ products) are pretty useless, and aren’t anywhere near as diverse as the App Store and the Android Market.

Finally, performance.  This is what totally kills the device in our opinion.  Everything about this phone lags.  Ever since the videos were leaked showing its UI, people have been complaining about the animation lag and hoping that everything would sort itself out by launch.  Unfortunately, even with the last-minute flashing of devices, nothing has changed.  Right on the main menu, scrolling through applications gives a choppy feeling.  Even the media application takes a while to boot, and you end up double clicking in an attempt to get things going.  When I plugged the unit into the computer attempting to sideload, even that dragged in performance.  Typical BlackBerrys have been awesome at sideloading when enumerated through Mass Storage Class, but this one, in traditional Verizon fare, runs on MTP mode for syncing with Rhapsody and Windows Media Player.  Transferring movies to watch on your phone, just plainly sucks.

Conclusion

Everything about BlackBerry is defined around efficiency and its ability to get things done.  The Storm stays true in its ability to feel connected, with perfect integration of corporate e-mails, personal e-mails, texts, contacts, Facebook, My Space etc.  Unfortunately, actually using the device, causes an uprising of frustration.  It doesn’t flow well, and goes against what all the other BlackBerry’s have been so good at.  I feel that RIM pushed this out the door for the holiday season, when it actually should’ve been released in 2009.

phoneWreck Score for the BlackBerry Storm: 7 wrecks out of 10.

BlackBerry Storm Teardown

Enough about the phone!  Let’s dig into the juiciness of the Storm.  Remember how I said that the Bold was one of the easiest devices to teardown?  The Storm is the complete opposite.  There are a bunch of hidden screws that require prying off areas such as the camera plexiglass cover, the chin of the device, and the stickers that surround the back.  Also, the shielding around the ICs are even harder to get at than before.  You’ll need some razor sharp wire cutters to get through that (or you could solder the sides off if you’re that keen on it).  But if you were intending on opening up this device, without a scratch in the end, I wish you good luck.

Nevertheless, we got the thing open for you all to see.  The PCB is actually ridiculously small.  And everything actually fits on there including the processor, memory units, all the transceivers and power amps, and things like Bluetooth ICs.  There’s some random spots of circuitry on the other spots of the phone as well, but its amazing how well everything is integrated.  We’ve put the block diagram out below.  Note: several things on here are educated guesses.  We’ve noted these with the asterisks.  Unlike previous teardowns, the ICs on this device seem rather hard to identify.

Most important to note is the implementation of Qualcomm’s latest MSM7600 processor.  When you view the datasheet, its pretty easy to guess what’s wrong with this phone.  There’s just too much functionality jammed integrated into the processor, including audio codecs, graphics processing, and even GPS functionality.  Samsung’s memory MCP from the Bold makes another notable appearance.  Avago takes care of the CDMA Power Amps, but the GSM Power Amps seem unmarked, which makes it hard to find.  We’ll update this if/when we find out though.

This being primarily a CDMA device, Qualcomm brings their entire chipset onto the line including its RF Transceivers for both CDMA/EV-DO, an integrated GSM/UMTS chip, and its PMIC.  TriQuint Semiconductors also makes an appearance.  They’ve previously been used for Duplexers in previous mainstream devices, but its difficult to identify what this IC does, so we’ve assumed that it’s something to do with managing power.  Bluetooth functionality is again won by CSR, while SiRF is notably absent due to the GPS integration into the processor.  A West Bridge chip is also notably absent, with USB functionality also being driven by the processor.  STMicroelectronics seems to have developed the Accelerometer, as the chip in this phone seems eerily similar to one of their other Accelerometer chips in a previous breakdown.  Finally, with Synaptics boasting much of its multi-touch capabilities, we’re making guesses that the BlackBerry Storm uses a Synaptics IC for driving the capacitive touch.  It’s possible that a full multi-touch can be implemented on this hardware, but whether it’ll require updates to the actual hardware or just the firmware, remains to be seen.

Of course, what you’ve came here to see is not just the circuitry.  You wanted to see how the actual button looks like, no?  Here it is, in plain view!  It’s a regular button, pushed by a marked Magnesium Alloy plate with a bump.  Enjoy responsibly.

Via : Iphonewreck

Sure, we hit up the press event and got some early hands on action, but there’s nothing like a really solid review, right? We’ve been using the T-Mobile G1 for around a week and we’ve literally combed through the entire device. So much so that we split up the sections piece by piece and separated it into hardware and software. If you’ve got a G1 on the way or are passionately considering scoopin’ one up, you are out of luck they are all sold out might want to take a gander at what we’ve put together.

Hardware:

The hardware part is a little tricky. The phone has supposedly been in development for years, yet we can’t get beyond the feeling that this device is a little bit too prematurely at the prime-time stage. The black model especially just looks like a prototype in a couple areas. One being the four physical buttons on the banana end of the handset. Those are send, home, back and end/power. While the tactile feedback of those buttons is fine, you often times try and select one, and it doesn’t register anything. That’s because of the small size and physical surroundings if you will. They are basically flush with the case, thus making it difficult sometimes to accurately push one of them.

The screen is very crisp and actually offers the second best touch-screen experience ever, yes, compared to the iPhone at number one. For all you Storm lovers, we haven’t officially reviewed the Storm yet so that is why it’s not in this list if it did in fact make it on. It’s a capacitive screen which means that force isn’t necessary. Essentially the touch panel registers the minute electrical pulses in your fingers instead of looking for an actual physical touch input. That works great and we’re happy to say the screen has a high-quality feel all around. It’s not glass, rather a very hard plastic which we love using.

Now onto the probably one of the G1’s biggest features — keyboard time! There are two parts to this; the keyboard is better than most, but not quite perfect. The reason is that the keys are about 1-2mm too flush with the case. There is a bunch of room under the flip, and we really would have loved to see HTC jump up the ‘board a little bit. If they could, they probably would, so it’s most likely not their fault, but that would have made for one of the nicest QWERTY typing experiences to come along in a pretty long time. The layout is completely fine and you won’t have any trouble navigating at all. That includes a very clean white backlighting on the keys and the actual hard/soft plastic feel the physical keys have.

When you take the battery cover off the G1, the first thing you might see is the vibrate mechanism. It’s actually the first time we’ve ever seen one exposed on a mobile device and it gives off a weird vibrate feeling. It’s sort of a rough ass vibrate that makes you feel like the phone is going to explode. Ok, well maybe not that bad, but we guess a stronger vibrate is better than a weak one? That’s what she said.

The speakers are another big important feature of the G1 as this is pretty much a consumer-targeted phone. The placement is again, (noticing a trend here?) flush with the casing. There’s a tiny raised dot which theoretically would help divert sound off a flat surface when resting your phone on, but it honestly does little to remedy the muffled sound you’ll get. The actual speakers are pretty decent when not on a flat surface, but we had trouble hearing alert sounds when the phone wasn’t right next to us or when it was in a pocket.

The camera isn’t all too bad, but for some reason we were expecting more out of a 3 megapixel + camera. Performance even in daylight didn’t work out too well for us, and pictures never got that sharp and crisp look we were looking forward to. Forgot about low-light performance. Without a flash, that’s a non-starter.

Now, onto the actual flip mechanism… it works very well. HTC has made this thing really durable and it slides out with ease, and the same goes for closing it. It’s pretty violent (read: not smooth) but we don’t have any qualms about it. Put it like this… if people are experiencing hardware problems with the G1, we highly doubt it will be with the flip assembly.

Summing up the hardware bit, we’ve just got to get this out of the way; WHY IN THE HELL IS THE DAMN THING ANGLED AT THE BOTTOM LIKE A BANANA? Can someone please enlighten us? This does absolutely nothing for the handset, it just makes its more difficult to hold and carry in a pocket or something else. It really annoys the crap out of us that it isn’t just flat. Heck, everything on the device is flat — buttons, camera, speakers — why not keep in the tradition of flatness?

Software:

There’s no real task manager. Sure, you hold the home button and get a recent list of open apps, and you can install a 3rd party program that makes it easier to switch applications with shortcut keys, but still, sometimes you just want to completely close something. In all fairness, the G1 and specifically Android does a pretty decent job at managing memory, but we have run into a couple “wait for application to respond or close” errors while putting the phone through it’s paces.

We realize this is just the beginning and we’ve got more hope in the platform itself than we ever had before, but for something that was being cooked up for so long, and something practically started by the Sidekick king himself, we can’t understand why there are so many general inconsistencies and non-existent functions.

For instance, the device has an LED in the earpiece to designate charging status (orange for charging, green for full), yet that can’t be used as a notification light for missed events. There’s no keyboard options like key repeat rate, delay, no trackball sensitivity options, and worst of all, when you set a lock for the device, there’s no timeout option! Let’s repeat this. When you set a lock password for the phone, which isn’t a password at all, it’s a specific drawing on the screen which is pretty cool yet highly insecure, the phone will lock and require a password each and every time the screen goes off. For people who the screen set to a 15 second or 30 second timeout, that means you’ll have to unlock the phone by pressing the power button, the menu button, and then drawing your pass-phrase on the screen every single time. Absolutely ridiculous we say.

We’ll explain the inconsistencies for you so you know what to expect and get an idea for how we say the phone is definitely v1. In maps, you can press menu + z to bring up the zoom keys, but you can’t do that in any other application like the web browser, for instance. Just plain stupid. Android could be at least 40% better if all these inconsistencies were addressed and actually let you do more with less, instead of making you work harder to get to the same place.

What about an on-screen keyboard? You’re out of luck. It’s way stupid in our opinion that you can’t pull up a T9 layout and fire off some quick 4 or 5 letter word to a friend in an SMS. You are forced to slide the phone open, and bang out your sentences using the physical keyboard. This can get extremely tiring seeing as there’s practically no way to send off a quick message when it’s closed. Heck, we would have ever appreciated some canned pre-loaded responses. That would have probably held us over for a bit, but nope, there’s no way to basically enter any information other than dialing a number when the phone is closed.

Let’s look at Wi-Fi on the G1… it works pretty well most of the time, but we have run into a couple occasions of the phone staying connected to a much weaker saved network rather than switching to a stronger saved one. The biggest issue you’ll run into using Wi-Fi on here is that it absolutely murders the battery. Even when the phone is locked your battery is dying rather quickly. You’d be lucky to get around three hours of semi-rough usage with Wi-Fi. On the other hand, if Wi-Fi is off, the battery life should really impress you. It’s got a 1150mAh battery which is definitely decent and should power you though the day. We were just a little depressed about the Wi-Fi situation as our Bold and iPhone are both on Wi-Fi and have no issues whatsoever, especially when they are just in standby mode.

Phone calling is pretty straightforward here, and the speakerphone sounds great when it’s not obstructed. The interface is clean and is one of the areas where the G1 looks really, really polished. It’s semi-iPhone like with a swap call button, merge call button, speakerphone button, and keypad button. Call quality was also very good with the G1 in our limited calling tests.

One of favorite applications on the G1 is the SMS app. It’s just very natural to use and makes texting seem fun again. You could think of it as a unified MMS/SMS inbox since everything that is sent to you will show up in message threads in that application. It’s very natural and logical to have such a clean interface where text messages along with photo messages, audio, voice notes, and slides all are seen in one conversation. Big ups to Google for that one, we likes. But what about email? We’re sad to report that emailing is probably one of the worst things the G1 does. It’s clunky, slow, and unresponsive if you are on EDGE. Plus shortcuts are pretty much non-existent.

But, if we go back to the whole unity thing for a second, we’re just not sure why Sidekick king failed to address the issues of inconsistencies and a general lack of usability in some areas, while adding great features in others. Unless we’re seriously missing something, and we doubt we are, there’s no way to instantly flip in between messages, or anything like that. On a Sidekick you have the left and right shoulder buttons to flip through conversations in an application and that applied to every application; IM, SMS, email, even the web browser. But there’s nothing like it here. What’s the point of having 4 dedicated hardware buttons and a full keyboard when there’s basically no shortcuts? It really hinders the overall user experience and will cause people a lot of unnecessary headaches.

Speaking of instant messaging, how is it? As far as smartphones go, it’s one of the worst experiences we’ve had. Google Talk is the best out of AIM, Yahoo, Live Messenger and Gtalk (no surprises there, right?) but it’s still not that good. Reconnects rarely worked for us, we would get signed in and out for no reason, you can’t hide offline buddies, and while you can press menu + space to flip between conversations, the whole thing is clunky at best. So, how are the rest? They work over SMS, people. Utter. Fail. One of the stupidest things we’ve seen in a long, long time. Now, there’s been some debate over AIM and the other clients using data or SMS, but even if they don’t use SMS they are still horrible. Messages take forever to come in, you have very limited options in terms of communicating (read: text only, no media), and again, reconnects aren’t smooth. This should be the “killer app” on the G1 out of the box. Yes, there will be 3rd party solutions, but that doesn’t negate the fact that so many things are just unpolished and rushed here.

There’s the whole theory that basically anything can be added by a 3rd party developer, and for the most part that’s true. We’ve seen applications wonderfully throw themselves in the mix on the phone, and that was incredibly refreshing to see. But, when you have a base package and are leaving a lot of what makes an OS great (intuitiveness, cohesion, user-interface, consistency, and polish) to 3rd party developers, that’s probably not the smartest idea. Why? Well, you might like green and your friend likes blue. Someone might like a putrid mix of green blue and yellow, too. Just because what one developer thinks is the right way to craft a UI for something doesn’t mean another one will feel the same way. That’s going to be the biggest uphill battle for Android in our opinion. Forget about the corporate market for a second, think about how fluid the iPhone is. Heck, think about how consistent a BlackBerry is? Since your first BlackBerry up until now, did you ever have to look at it twice, or did you instantly know what you were doing? Now take the fact that nothing is seamless across even Google’s own OS applications, and let’s now throw in about 5 different form-factors, and 15 different hardware configurations, and 3 different navigational configurations. See what we’re getting at?

How in the world could someone perfect the Android experience across that broad range of hardware when even the first unit doesn’t do that? In the meantime, we think the up-and-coming mobile consumer/prosumer will love the G1 as long as they know what it is. It’s not a BlackBerry, it’s not a Sidekick. You could think of it as the adult Sidekick though, and that, my friends, is what people have been waiting for, for a very long time.

via : BGR