Nokia N97

The long waiting time is over and we can finally say something about the so much acclaimed N97 smartphone – the iPhone’s main rival suggested by Nokia. At first glance, besides the innovative design, the new top of the line touchscreen smartphone manufactured by the Finnish giant has been gifted with almost the same features as the older Nokia 5800 XpressMusic handset. That means it includes the same operating system, processor, HSDPA 3.6Mbps, Wi-Fi, built-in GPS receiver, and the list can go on. Still, the main things that differentiate the two handsets are the full QWERTY keyboard of N97 and the bigger touchscreen. If Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was released as the first Nokia smartphone to feature a touchscreen and an updated Symbian operating system that could go with it, the N97 should have been a piece of art from this point of view.

There were lots of bugs present in 5800’s platform and the OS seemed rather rudimentary, but Nokia managed to solve most of them by a wide sequence of firmware updates. Still, the graphical interface, as well as the basic control of the menus remained the same. This shouldn’t be that bad, but when you intend to compete with one of the most successful smartphones on the market, the iPhone, you must provide something that has at least equal value. Either Nokia managed to do that with the N97 or not, we will see in the following review, so read and judge for yourselves. Read more

Nokia E63 Review

The Eseries from Nokia continues to spawn new devices on the handset market, this time a cheaper version, but with enough up-to-date features to have some success. The Nokia E63 smartphone competes with its more rich-featured brother E71. If you’re looking for a business phone and do not have the amount to acquire the top of the line E71, then the new Nokia E63 can easily take its place. While there are some design and feature differences between the two, the latter is definitely excellent value for money.

Announced in November 2008, Nokia E63 was made available on the market just in time for Christmas, in December 2008. The price of the smartphone is pretty cheap compared to what it can do – 250USD. The phone was launched in three colors: Ultramarine Blue, Ruby Red and Black. Read more

LG KP501 Cookie Review

One of the cheapest touchscreen phones on the market, the new LG KP501, also known as Cookie, should not be considered a low-budget one. Slim and lightweight, the handheld uses the same proprietary LG flash UI, which has been improved lately. The affordable touchscreen phone was introduced by Orange into its network distribution line thanks to the huge success that the previously black Cookie (LG KP500) had since its launch in November 2008. Simple and elegant, LG KP501 promises great value for money, but also more colors available for customers.

Following the overwhelming market success of LG KP500, dubbed Cookie, LG decided to launch a sequel in partnership with Orange. Announced in January 2009, the new LG 501 Cookie was made available the next month, in February, and can be acquired for around 150 USD, free of plan, but can also go as low as 20 USD with a 24-month contract with Orange. The phone is available in a wide range of colors: Anodizing Silver, Capri Green, Pink and Black. Read more

Nokia E71 smartphone review

Nokia’s E-range is aimed firmly at corporate users, with the E71 offering a full QWERTY keypad to make emailing easier, and loads of features that help to make it a great out of office tool.

Build quality is among the best that we’ve seen to date on a smartphone, with aluminium used on the front and rear to create an incredibly stylish yet robust finish. The most surprising aspect of this handset is just how thin it is, however, making it appear a lot smaller than it actually is.

It’s also narrower than rivals such as RIM’s Blackberry Bold, leading to a keyboard that may be too cramped for some users. Raised centres to the keys make it easy to get up a good typing rhythm, however, striking a good compromise between portability and usability. Read more

LG GT810 and LG BL40 Spotted

One LG mobile phone that returned into the spotlight is the LG GT810. The handset, expected to come with a touchscreen display, has been spotted in the wild for the first time at the beginning of the ongoing year, and now we learn that it should be heading towards the Central and South America.

The device sports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA connectivity, and should come with Windows Mobile 6.1 as its operating system. In addition, there is the 3-inch touch screen that can offer a 240 x 400 pixel resolution, along with Wi-Fi connectivity, a 3-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, and 256 MB of internal memory coupled with a memory card slot with support for up to 8 GB of additional storage space. Read more

WiFi to Replace Ancient Radio Waves Technology

Although these things have been around for quite some time now, I’ve only recently decided to give some more though and attention to the WiFi Radio concept, and I was pretty impressed to find out that’s it’s actually a lot more popular and widespread than I previously thought. I have never been a classic radio fan, since most radio hosts annoy me to the point that I just want to smash the radio with a baseball bat. But over the years I have tested some Internet radio stations and I can’t say I was disappointed. After Yahoo launched their new Messenger 9, I also had a brief “stint” at listening to some Yahoo music stations. Read more

Asus Smellbook

You’ve got to admire Asus for pushing back the frontiers of laptop design. From the genuinely revolutionary Eee PC, which launched the whole Netbook craze, to the slightly odd bamboo-cased laptop there’s seems to be no end to its creativity, at least that was until we heard about the F6Ve series notebooks. This is a range of ‘fragranced’ laptops, that’s right, they smell, you can choose from a pink coloured ‘Floral Blossom model costing around £649, or a glossy ‘Musky Black machine, which starts at £799. Basic specs are a 13.3-inch screen Intel Centrino Core 2 processor, wi-fi, choice of 120, 160, 250 or 320Gb drives, up to 4Gb RAM, web cam and Vista pre-installed. Incidentally, someone at Asus has obviously been doing some research into smells and national characteristics and in the US you can get models entitled Aqua Ocean and Morning Dew – make of that what you will. Read more

White Space gets Go-Ahead

You may recall that back in March we ran a story about messrs Microsoft, Google, HP, Intel and others campaigning to use the so-called ‘white space’ or gaps between broadcast television channels for high-speed broadband. Well, the White Space Coalition, as it’s known has just received the thumbs-up from the US Federal Communications Committee (FCC). The new spectrum will be unlicensed and it promises much greater range than current Wi-Fi systems, opening up the possibility of taking broadband to remote areas not served by existing cable or phone systems. The FCC says that the technology will be closely regulated and strictly policed; to avoid interference with TV broadcasts but coalition members have worked hard to prove that the system works and their efforts have been rewarded. Read more

Fit For Purpose?

What’s all this then? At first glance it looks like it might be some sort of wireless gadget but believe it or not it is a complete PC, and no, that’s not a giant key. It’s called Fit-PC Slim and the whole thing measures just 10 x 11 x 3cm, which isn’t much larger than a pack of 20 cigarettes. Inside the box they have managed to squeeze an AMD Geode CPU running at 500MHz, there’s 512Mb RAM, a 60GB hard drive, Wi-FI and audio adaptors plus all the usual inputs and outputs. It comes pre-loaded with Linux or XP; there’s no fan, so it’s completely silent and all it needs to run is a simple 12-volt power supply. Amazing stuff, though you might now be asking why, and I have to say that I have no easy answers, but for someone out there it’s just what they’ve been waiting for!

Fruity PC Comeback

Those of you who have been around computers for a few years may well remember the Fruit Wars of the early 1980s, indeed one of the very first home computers I wrote about was the Tangerine, back in the late 1970’s. In fact it was little more than a very large printed circuit board, smothered in logic chips, and you had to add your own keyboard and light bulbs, but it was a start… Anyway, soon afterwards we had more useable machines from the likes of Apple, and Apricot, not to mention quite a few lemons, though to be fair I don’t remember anyone actually using that name. But the rest, as they say is history, with only one fruity PC maker managing to survive.

Anyway, this preamble is by way of reintroducing the Apricot brand, last owned by Mitsubishi though by the late 1990s it had all but disappeared. Read more

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