Review Earlier this year, Motorola was doing a very good impression of a company that, if not quite dead in the water, was certainly looking increasingly like shark bait. But then came its Android-powered Dext, with some advanced social networking capabilities and a clutch of high-end features, and the US company suddenly seemed to be back in the race.
Landmark offering? Motorola’s Milestone
Now with the Milestone it marks another, erm milestone, by being the first UK handset to run the new 2.0 version of the Android OS. Add in a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, 5 megapixel Camera, improved browser, Wi-Fi, and A-GPS with sat nav capability, and things are looking very interesting at Motorola.
‘Interesting’ is probably as good a word to describe the look of the Milestone as any. It’s not conventionally beautiful, with its block lines and that strange protruding lip at the bottom prevents any aspirations to cool.
It’s solidly put together though, weighing in at a surprisingly heavy 165g for its 60 x 116 x 14mm dimensions. The weight is partly due to its metal casing, which features a rubberised coating on the back to prevent it sliding around on smooth surfaces. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Over the last 12 months Acer has been spitting out smartphones like there is no tomorrow. Some of them, like the Tempo F900, have been quite good while others, like the beTouch E101, have been, ahem, less impressive. Yet none have really scored as a hit in our book, but that may be about to change with the release of the A1 Liquid, Acer’s first Android phone.
Fast and fuss-free: Acer’s A1 Liquid
Just the basic specs are enough to make your ears prick up. A 3.5in 480 x 800 capacitive touch screen, Android 1.6 OS – that’s Donut in Android’s confectionery obsessed parlance – a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 CPU running at 768MHz, a 1350mAh battery, quad-band GSM, HSDPA good for 7.2Mbps downstream and HSUPA good for 2.0Mbps up, assisted GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Available in either black, red or white – with rounded sides and slab ends design – embellishments have been kept to an absolute minimum. The end result is that the Liquid is handsome, but a bit dull. Considering its size and weight, the Liquid couldn’t be more like Apple‘s iPhone if it tried. At 115 x 62.5 x 12.5mm and 135g, the two are near enough identical. Read the rest of this entry »
Review LG’s 42SL9000 is billed as a ‘frameless’ set, and indeed the pictures on the website seem to give the impression of the picture spilling out of the frame, in an immersive manner that’s somewhat reminiscent of philips‘ Ambilight.
LG’s 42SL9000: when is a frame not a frame?
So it’s a bit of a disappointment on taking it out of the box to discover that ‘frameless’ really just means that the front is a single piece of glass, and that there’s still a black border – about an inch wide – around the edge of the picture. Still, it certainly lives up to the billing when it comes to slim, being only around an inch deep. However, if you don’t use the Desktop stand, with all the sockets on the rear it will certainly sit further from the wall than that.
The stand – which requires a few screws to put together – is about eight inches deep, but fairly unobtrusive. Also in the package are two remote controls – a full size, full featured one, with a stylish silver trim round the top edge, and a smaller one with just basic functions, for the more bewildered or less technically adept members of the household. The set has some buttons on the right hand edge for power, volume, channel and menu, should you lose both remotes.
As you’d expect at this price, it’s a full 1080p set and the connectivity is pretty good, with four HDMI slots, three on the rear, and one available at the side. There are two Scart inputs too, plus component, and an audio in for use with a DVI adaptor, as well as a PC RGB input. There’s the usual Common Interface slot for pay channels – though that won’t get you very far in the UK – together with a USB socket accessible from the side. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Toshiba’s 11.6in Satellite T110 makes you appreciate the fuss Intel makes about multi-core processors.
Toshiba’s Satellite T110: very, very glossy
The T110, you see, has a single-core chip, a 1.3GHz Celeron 743, to be precise, which sits on an 800MHz frontside bus and has 1MB of L2 cache. The 743 is one of Intel’s so-called “consumer ultra-low voltage parts” and that – plus the screen size – tells you the T110 is one of the laptops vendors are currently pitching as the kind of machine you want if you want to start creating the content you can view on a netbook.
Think of a compact laptop that’s slightly larger than a typical 10in netbook, but has a faster processor and more memory. It still lacks an optical drive, to keep the weight down, but it’s a machine, some vendors will tell you, that’s a “proper” notebook. Read the rest of this entry »
Kit of the Year Time was when the all compact cameras were much of a muchness, all designed for consumers seeking point-and-click simplicity, but with various degrees of manual control thrown in for enthusiasts. Nowadays, the compact market is segmented, with kit costing £150 or less for the holiday snapper, and the likes of the Canon Powershot S90 and the Ricoh GR Digital III for the serious photographer. And, of course, a stack of offerings in between those two extremes. Here are the ones from that category that we liked the most.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7
Even if you’re not interested in taking movies, the rest of the DMC-TZ7’s features – coupled with its performance – make this Camera well worth the money. If you are looking for a compact Camera to take along your travels or simply want one that is a cut above the average, then the DMC-TZ7 should be near the top of your list.
