Mobile Phone Reviews

Motorola originally started life as a manufacturer of car radios in 1930. In the early 1980s it began developing a range of Motorola mobile phones. Recently it has been struggling to make an impression in the marketplace. However, it has recently released some smartphones that have received favourable reviews.

The Motorola Atrix is one of the first dual-core smartphones to be released. It runs on Android 2.2 and has its own enhancements as well. Moto Blur keeps you up-to-date with Twitter and Facebook feeds. It weighs around 135g and feels solidly made. The screen is 4 inches with a resolution of 540 by 960 pixels. The camera has good specifications, with 5 megapixels and an LED flash. It can also shoot video in 720p HD. The GPS integrates well with Google Maps and other android sat nav apps. Its unusual feature is that it comes with a fingerprint scanner, and once set up you need to use this to unlock the phone.

The Motorola Defy is another Android smartphone. Its 3.7-inch screen has a high colour display. It weighs 118g and is 134mm in depth. It is also equipped with a GPS, which combined with Google Maps turns it into a reasonable sat nav device. The music player is capable of playing a variety of files such as MP3, WAV and AAC.

Motorola has also started producing some lower end phones with the Motorola Wilder about to come onto the market. This phone is designed to be tough and has a resistive touchscreen. It rounds out the current range of Motorola mobile phones. 

There seem to be mixed reviews on the HTC Wildfire.  On one extreme end of the spectrum users are disappointed, while at the other end, users consider it the best low-end phone they’ve ever owned.  Users who see it as a decent low priced handset occupy the middle ground.

How it adds up
Wildfire is a cheaper alternative to the Desire.  Both phones look the same but Wildfire carries a much smaller screen, less internal memory (512 MB) and a much slower processor (528).  It is small and surprisingly sturdy for a phone of its kind.

Call quality is good and silencing an incoming call is as easy as turning the phone over.  Features include WI-FI, USB, microSD card compatibility, Bluetooth, an audio player that supports eight types of files (including MP3, MA4 and WMA, a WMV, 3GP and MP4 video player, FM radio and 3.5mm headphone jack.  Additionally, the phone is sold with a decent 3.5mm headphone as part of the package.

Unfortunately poor battery life, constant freezing and bad screen resolution is a let down for some.  Also, although it comes with a 5mp camera, the picture quality can be poor.  Some users have a hard time using the apps downloaded, the friend stream widget can be slow and unresponsive, or offer outdated info.

In the end, the HTC Wildfire leaves a lot to be desired by tech lovers, however for those looking for a low end phone with some of the perks afforded by more advanced phones, it’s a good pick.  Overall, it’s worth the price.

In 2001, Japanese electronics giant Sony joined forced with Sweden’s telecommunications experts Ericsson to become Sony Ericsson. By 2009, the company had become the fourth largest mobile phone producer on the planet, and Sony Ericsson mobile phones remain one of the world’s market leaders. 

Famous for their Walkmans and megapixel camera technology, which they introduced to the mobile phone market from 2005, Sony Ericsson mobile phones are now trying to compete with the best smartphones the world has to offer. They offer cutting edge technology and all the apps, such as Android sat nav, that the world has come to expect from increasingly sophisticated mobile phones.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia range of phones, which includes the Sony Ericsson Arc and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X8, are among the newest batch of excellent and highly rated smartphones.  Featuring excellent design and smooth browsing alongside a range of top quality android apps, these Sony Ericsson mobile phones are helping to put Sony Ericsson back at the top of their game. Recent Sony Ericsson mobile phones include such technological advances as BRAVIA, renowned for excellent visual properties, and UIQ mobile phones, notable for their interfaces and touch screen capacities.

Other ventures undertaken by Sony Ericsson mobile phones towards the end of the noughties include the Greenheart branded models, which are noteworthy for their use of eco-friendly materials, products and apps. This was a new direction for the Sony Ericsson mobile phone market.

The LG Optimus Black is an Android smartphone. It is slim and light but doesn’t feature a dual-core processor like the Optimus 2X. However, you will be able to find much better LG Optimus Black deals available.

It is a nice phone to hold and look at, with tapered sides on the back. It measures 9.2mm and weighs just 109g. It has a matt finish, which doesn’t mark so easily as other glossy phones. The screen is 4 inches and looks similar to an iPhone. The resolution of 480 by 800 compares favourably with similarly priced phones. The NOVA display technology provides for a crisp image, which is particularly bright.

Although it doesn’t have the dual-core processor, the phone seems capable of running apps and games well. It also comes with an FM radio tuner, which provides a good signal. The amount of apps for Android phones is a strong feature of this phone. 

It has some innovative interface enhancements. If you shake the phone while holding the ‘g-button’, it will answer incoming calls. Turning the phone over will mute it or stop the alarm as well. 

There are two cameras on the phone, a front-facing camera for video calls and a 5 megapixel camera which is rear-facing. This comes with an LED flash and an autofocus system. Battery life is good for this type of smartphone, probably lasting around 2 days before needing another charge. 

The Samsung Omnia 7 is the first Windows Phone 7 to be offered from Samsung mobile phones. Well designed with a slim casing and sensitive touch screen, this mobile phone from Samsung has an excellent four-inch Super AMOLED screen with superb pinch to zoom facility. The industrial chic design works brilliantly with its fabulous HyperReal screen with super-sharp graphics and picture quality. The Samsung Omnia 7 has a range of excellent features, including its Maps application, and the handset has a high quality feel.

The display quality of the Samsung Omnia 7 really elevates it to one of the best smartphones on the market. It also comes with all the standard Windows 7 features, such as GPS, 5-megapixel flash camera with many adjustable settings, an HD camcorder, and Wi-fi. The Samsung Omnia 7 also offers a user-friendly QWERTY style keyboard and a music player feature that enables the user to instantly transfer their favourite tunes onto their phone.

The touch sensitive buttons on the front of the Samsung Omnia 7 handset are extremely responsive, and integrated online messaging and social networking are easily accessible. It may not have the largest memory capacity on the market but the Samsung Omnia 7 makes up for this with its truly excellent display and fantastic high definition colour and picture quality. This is a highly recommended offering from Samsung mobile phones.

BlackBerry is a name that everybody in the world will recognise as a brand leader in the mobile phone market, but what is a BlackBerry phone? BlackBerry first made its name in the late 1990s as the business user’s mobile handset of choice. Designed and produced by a company called Research In Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry is a smartphone known for its internet and messaging capacities, including the highly popular BlackBerry Messenger service, more commonly known as BBM.

With a wealth of Wi-fi and communicative devices at the push of a button, the smart-looking BlackBerry original handsets came with an integral QWERTY keyboard that the company remains famous for. BlackBerry has become such an iconic brand that US President Barack Obama was even seen to use a BlackBerry for communicating during his famous 2008 presidential campaign. This celebrity endorsement could potentially have added millions of dollars to the company income due to its powerful advertising value. 

BlackBerry is known as a pioneer for its capacity to send and receive emails and instant messages, but new generation BlackBerry handsets have made more and more advances. The original smartphone BlackBerry was released in 2003. While retaining, in many cases, the traditional QWERTY keyboard, newer models have also adopted many of the characteristics and features associated with more modern smartphones, such as those pioneered by Apple, LG, Nokia and Samsung.

There is no denying the Sony Ericsson Arc is a beautiful phone.  Measuring an amazingly thin 8.7mm at points, it is by far the skinniest phone on the market.  Visually, this phone is superb, but does it measure up to the leading smartphones technologically?

The first thing to notice about the Arc is the screen size.  Measuring a massive 4.2 inches, it fills most of the front of the phone. The Arc runs a 1GHz Scorpion processor, which is standard for higher-specification smartphones, although the 512MB RAM definitely is not.  With most high-end smartphones harbouring at least 756MB, the Arc feels somewhat inferior.  Furthermore, with a tiny 320MB of internal storage, users could fill the memory very quickly indeed. Sony Ericsson has fitted the Arc with a MicroSD™ slot, which can support up to 32GB, although many apps do not support SD movement – a big problem for the Arc.

There is no doubt the camera of the Arc is superb.  At 8.1 megapixels, 720p HD video recording is also supported and the HDMI connectivity of the device means recordings can be played through any HD-ready TV.  Keen to exploit its BRAVIA TV technology, Sony has fitted this feature to the Arc in what is becoming more common across the Sony Ericsson range.

For a consumer, the Sony Ericsson Arc should definitely be on any wish list.  While it does not possess a dual-core processor, or the storage capabilities of some rivals, it is a fantastic-looking device that has been widely described as one of the best smartphones yet.

What is HTC Sense?  According to the Taiwanese giants, HTC Sense is an experience designed around many little original and insightful, yet simple, ideas.  So is HTC Sense an ideology?  A way of thinking?  Or merely corporate jargon?  In reality, HTC Sense is the interface that HTC uses for its Android, Brew and Windows Mobile devices.  However, even HTC itself often seems confused as to what exactly HTC Sense is, sometimes calling it the user interface (UI) and at other times insisting it is not.

Stock applications and widgets are a massive part of HTC Sense and, out of the box, HTC hopes that its highly customisable features will deter consumers from deferring to an alternate UI.  Due to this, HTC is constantly updating its UI in order to ensure customers stay loyal to HTC Sense, despite the free-market mentality of Android as competition.  Recent additions to HTC Sense include maps that synchronise with the phone’s compass in order to rotate in unison with the owner, previewing the route ahead while using navigational applications and the ringer turning off when the phone is flipped.  It adapts to the lifestyle and location of its owner, allowing technology and connectivity to contacts to combine for the modern age. 

Ideas such as these, which HTC are offering, will meet the wishes of today’s consumer, who is free to choose between the countless number of free UIs offered on the Android market.

When making the Optimus 2X, LG decided to introduce a dual-core processor.  For a home computer this is standard, but for a mobile phone this is anything but.  Only a couple of phones are powered by dual-core processors and this ensures that such models are most definitely regarded as ‘premium’.  The introduction of such a processor means that smartphones can now perform tasks that were only dreamt of 12 months ago.  Take HD video recording as an example.  Most smartphones of today are capable of such recording, although at 720p resolution, you can’t help but notice the difference in quality between ‘real’ HD recordings and mobile HD.  The LG Optimus 2X is different.  Due to the powerful processing capabilities, LG is now able to offer full 1080p HD video recording and, coupled with the HDMI connectivity of the device, recordings can be streamed to any HD-ready TV with superb results.

The LG Optimus 2X comes installed with Android 2.2, although by following on-screen prompts the 2.3 version is easily installable.  Bizarrely, LG has decided to fit the LG Optimus 2X with a TFT screen instead of an AMOLED display.  This is especially surprising given the processing capabilities of the device, and the TFT resolution unfortunately takes away some of the sharpness and clarity of the display.

This phone is surely a sign of things to come.  With new smartphones being released almost daily, it will not be long before a dual-core processor is the norm, along with full 1080p HD video recording.

A phone without a sat nav application nowadays seems quite unimpressive.  Virtually every new smartphone is fitted with a GPS receiver and thus the ability to use sat nav apps is nearly universal.  Before Android, there was Apple’s iPhone operating system and the iPhone became one of the first smartphone models able to receive a GPS signal.  The Android Sat Nav system works in exactly the same way as its predecessors; the GPS receiver in the phone picks up various satellite signals to pinpoint the user’s location and this location is then synchronised with the navigational app.

Satellite navigational applications are an area which Google has moved into in recent years, following the huge success of its mapping and route-planning features.  Google Maps is now a standard feature of most new smartphones, a trend which has continued from its inclusion on the iPhone 3G.  More recently, Google Maps Navigation has been launched, in order to keep up with other competitors offering both free and paid-for sat nav apps.

Android Sat Nav apps are changing.  Recently the supermarket chain Tesco announced plans to introduce an in-store navigational system for consumers.  Customers simply compile a shopping list on their mobile, and when the user enters the store Tesco’s app will guide the shopper around quickly and efficiently.

While Tesco’s app does not use a GPS system (Wi-Fi is preferred due to an inability to pick up GPS signals indoors), this is surely a sign of things to come, as app developers constantly battle to persuade smartphone owners that their apps are superior to the competition.