Review The original BlackBerry Bold 9000 cut quite a dash when it debuted last year, signalling clearly to any doubters that Research in Motion was moving the BlackBerry out of the boardroom and into the pockets and handbags of consumers who had need for its exemplary e-mail service in their day-to-day lives.
Yet, times move fast on planet mobile, and already we’re looking at the update, which offers a sleeker case, better screen, new track pad, upgraded Camera and more besides. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 – also known informally as the BlackBerry Bold 2 – is a slimmer and sharper looking device than its predecessor.
At 109×60x14mm and 122g it’s lost a good 6mm off the sides, 5mm from top and bottom and a sliver under 1mm in thickness. It’s also 16g lighter, which is all to the good. All this millimetre shaving leads to noticeably sleeker looking handset, that wears its Qwerty keyboard considerably lighter than its predecessor, so it looks less like standard office drone issue and more like a style-led purchase. Even so, it’s unmistakably a BlackBerry.
‘Twixt keyboard and screen sit the usual hard buttons – call start and stop, menu and back – but the track ball has now been replaced by the optical trackpad that BlackBerry has been including on recent models such as the Curve 8520. Supposedly, this choice offers longer life due to there being no moving parts, but with no loss of sensitivity. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The E72 is the latest in Nokia’s line of Qwerty handsets, beefing up the popular E71 with a slightly sleeker look, improved software and some interface tweaks. It’s very slim – only just over 1cm thick, 58.3mm wide, and 114 tall, weighing 128g. The 2.36in screen is only QVGA, though arguably on a unit this size, a higher resolution wouldn’t make much difference.
Fast talker: Nokia’s E72
Below the screen are two soft keys, call and end buttons, plus four dedicated buttons. The home/menu key can’t be reassigned, but the others can, with one function for a short push, and one for a long one. By default, for example, pressing the calendar button briefly shows the calendar, while a long press creates a new entry.
Between these is the Navikey, a standard looking four-way navpad. However, it’s not entirely standard, as it has an optical sensor as well. So, you can scroll through menus and lists by wiping a finger or thumb over it, which makes for much faster navigation – although some third party apps did seem to be a little confused by it at times. On the whole, it works well, and is a good improvement. Read the rest of this entry »
Review While the price and diversity of e-book readers is still some way off achieving the sort of critical mass that put an MP3 player in nearly pocket, the number of devices appearing on the market is increasing at a healthy rate.
A good read? iRiver’s Story
While not exactly a household name here in the UK, iRiver can usually be relied upon to cook up a quality product that’s a little different from the norm. Entering the e-book reader market with the Story, this all-white device looks a lot like Amazon’s Kindle. On more careful inspection its obvious the similarities are simply down to the colour and the presence of a full Qwerty keyboard below the 6in electronic paper screen, rather than any shared heritage.
At 127 x 203.5 x 9.4mm and weighing 284g the Story is par for the e-book reader course. Even if the white plastic case lacks the cool, machined finesse of Sony’s aluminium Readers, it still has a solid and substantial feel to it and will only flex or groan when subjected to some pretty severe torque. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Back in August 2009, Hitachi announced that it was “shipping the industry’s first 2TB 7200rpm Desktop hard disk drive” in the shape of the Deskstar 7K2000.
Hitachi’s Ultrastar A7K2000: better duration specs than the Deskstar
That statement may have been accurate, depending on your definition of ‘shipping’, but we received a 2TB 7200rpm WD Caviar Black – reviewed here in September, and it has taken Hitachi this long to deliver its own 2TB drive.
Imagine our mild surprise when we opened the box Hitachi sent us and found a 2TB Ultrastar A7K2000 rather than the Deskstar 7K2000 that we had expected. Imagine our shock when we discovered that the Ultrastar sells for a pricy £243 while the Deskstar has a tiny price tag of £130.
To put that in context, the 2TB WD Caviar Black drive with 64MB of cache cost £204 at launch and has actually risen slightly in price since then to around £215 now. If you find a 2TB Caviar Black on sale for £169, you can be sure it’s the old version with 16MB of cache, but the difference between what Hitachi and WD are both now charging seems ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »
Review With smooth, curved edges and an eye-pleasing design, the 15.6in X520 slips into Samsung’s new X-series range. There are two other X-series models: the 11.6in X120 and 14in X420. The focus is on mobility here and, as such, all feature so-called CULV – Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage – processors and integrated graphics from Intel.
Samsung’s X520 – a robust offering?
When first announced at IFA earlier this year, Samsung made something of a bizarre marketing move by proudly proclaiming the batteries powering the X-series will not explode. Good news for those with an adverse reaction to spontaneous combustion then, and we’re happy to confirm the X520’s battery remained free of flames during testing. As well as not exploding, Samsung also claims the battery will last a nine-hour road trip from Paris to Barcelona. We’ll come to our own battery tests in a moment.
According to Samsung, the X520 is extremely robust and “doesn’t need any extra protection”. We wouldn’t go quite this far, and while the chassis is by no means flimsy, it does have some weak points – pick it up with a firm grip and you’ll hear a bit of creaking, especially around the optical drive. Read the rest of this entry »
