Announced in November and yet to be released, the Sony Ericsson K660 is a polished 3G bar, which sneaks some high-end goodies into the midrange. Besides HSDPA and enhanced web browsing, the undoubted focal point, K660 offers a balanced feature set including Walkman Player 3.0, a QVGA display, the three-soft-key layout and the enhanced Media Center.
Sony Ericsson K660 offers quad-band support and EDGE, USB and stereo Bluetooth completing the connectivity options.
A quick glance at the specifications of the mid-range Sony Ericsson K660 shows a lot of similarities to the just released K630. A definite advantage of the K660 is the 262K color display of QVGA resolution and the quad-band GSM support. Both handsets offer 32MB of internal memory, further expandable through the Memory Stick Micro card slot. The camera module is also the same - a two megapixel snapper with no autofocus.
The K660 comes in the rather compact dimensions of 104 x 47 x 15mm, at a weight of 95 grams. The K660 runs on a 950 mAh Li-Ion (BST-33) battery. It's officially quoted at 330 h of stand-by, while the talk time is 9 hours
The Sony Ericsson K660 will be available in two color combos - "lime on white" and "wine on black". We had the latter for our quick preview of the Sony Ericsson K660.
Design
We liked the design of Sony Ericsson K660. Neat and elegant, it comes with sleek mirror like front panel made of plastic. The tiny round keys on the keypad brought memories of the K810, though with a distinct old-school feel. The black plastic buttons have nothing but the numbers on them, while the letters are in the ample space between the keys.
The back panel is also made of plastic. The sides have a metallic finish, divided asymmetrically by a line of black matt plastic.
Well, all those sleek surfaces and materials catch the eye but also are critically exposed to finger prints. Keeping the phone clean will definitely be a challenge.
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /sony_ericsson_k660-review-212.php
Friday, April 18, 2008
Sony Ericsson K660 preview: First look
MWC 2008: Samsung overview
The world's second largest phone manufacturer Samsung made sure it doesn't get left out of the spotlight at the World Mobile Congress. In Barcelona the South Korea-based company announced a hefty number of new handsets. Samsung also took the chance to show a few unreleased devices to the public.
Samsung G810
The most prominent announcement is undoubtedly the Samsung G810. The nice 2.6" display and 5 megapixel camera are just the icing of the cake. The phone also features xenon flash and 3x optical zooming capabilities.
The rich connectivity options of Samsung G810 include 3G with HSDPA support, EDGE, Bluetooth v2.0 (A2DP also included), USB v2.0 and even a 3.5mm audio jack. Add Wi-Fi and the GPS for navigation and geo-tagging and you get a very tempting gadget indeed.
The best part is that - unlike its predecessor, Samsung G800 - the G810 is a Symbian smartphone, running on the S60 user interface - much like Nokia N95.
You can find out more about our hands-on experience with the Samsung G810 here.
Samsung F480
Next Samsung's booth hosted the full-touch UI-based Samsung F480. The 2.8" 262K color display of Samsung F480 is really one of great quality. The phone also features a 5 megapixel auto focus camera, 3G with HSDPA and tri-band GSM network coverage. All that functionality is packed in the very small dimensions of 95.9 x 55 x 11.5 mm.
However, the best part about Samsung F480 is not functionality. Instead, the strength of this little baby lies in the great user interface, which is one of the best Samsung efforts so far.
Beside the eye-catching graphics, semi transparent overlays and the rich animations, Samsung F480 offers the so called desktop widgets. Those are info applications that reside on your desktop. They are fully configurable, and movable around the screen.
The navigation solution used at the bottom of the screen is also very interesting and pleasant to work with. It is very responsive and we really liked it.
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /samsung_mwc_08-review-215.php
MWC 2008: Sony Ericsson overview
The Barcelona early birds Sony Ericsson were the first to get the info-hungry press crowd busy. We joined the throngs flocking to the press conference, at which their latest models were presented.
The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. It's got a 3" touch sensitive widescreen display, a hardware QWERTY keyboard plus a touch-sensitive trackball - a combo that seems great for your multimedia purposes. Oh, did we mention that it's based on Windows Mobile 6 Pro? Doesn't sound that great now, does it?
Well, the truth is Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X1 is a sleek gadget - compact, yet powerful. We didn't have a chance of giving it a test drive, since at this early production stage (release is due in more than 6 months) the showcased devices were rather limited in their functionality. No one but the Sony Ericsson folks was allowed to touch the units.
Nevertheless, we got a good glimpse of it and we were quite satisfied with the rich graphical experience the Sony Ericsson UI offers. We are yet to see though how deep it goes - we can't help the feeling that the ugly Windows Mobile interface would take over once you dig deeper in the menu system. We've seen that happen both on LG KS20 and HTC Touch.
Exciting as it sound, the XPERIA X1 is yet to see a full-fledged appearance. For now, Sony Ericsson representatives are reluctant to go into detail about the Windows platform that powers the whole thing. We do suspect though that HTC in supplying the internals.
Sony Ericsson are also adding two new UIQ devices to their portfolio. The new G-series include the G700 and G900 smartphones. They have a rather conservative (did anybody say boring?) design and construction. You would be surprised to know that Sony Ericsson are in fact extremely proud of this repetitive rectangular design. Can't help but love those guys and their persistency.
Sony Ericsson G900 is in charge of the duo with a 5 megapixel camera and Wi-Fi. Both devices come with the StickyNotes application that is supposed to ease up your daily tasks with handwritten notes and tasks in the shape of the all-popular sticky notes.
The next new player in the Sony Ericsson camp is Sony Ericsson W980 Walkman. It managed to win our team's hearts with its 8 gigs worth of memory, large touch sensitive music keys, cool light effects, and Shake control.
The W980 is also equipped with a FM transmitter so you can stream your music library to your car or home FM radio receiver. You can also listen to the radio without plugging headphones in to use as an antenna - now that's a first!
The new Cyber-shot family comprises of the Sony Ericsson C702 and C902. You probably remember the C702 from a photo leak on a Chinese website that we wrote of. Many of you suspected it of being fake, as it seemed almost too ugly to be true. Well, it is true and, thank God!, Sony Ericsson are offering a color alternative (black) to that cyan original.
Turns out the Sony Ericsson C702 also offers camera face detection, plus it can use its built-in GPS receiver to geotag your images.
"...The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. It's got a 3" touch sensitive widescreen display, a hardware QWERTY keyboard plus a touch-sensitive trackball - a combo that seems great for your multimedia purposes. Oh, did we mention that it's based on Windows Mobile 6 Pro?..."
The Sony Ericsson C902 has a 5 megapixel camera with face detection and a very interesting sliding top. Once you slide it up, the camera is revealed and you are ready to shoot. We didn't exactly like the flimsy sliding mechanism (no spring assist or anything), but we really dig the touch-sensitive camera shortcut keys laid out around the display.
It's definitely got a RAZR style keypad and it's a sleek looking all-metal chap. Powered by the NetFront 3.4 web browser, it offers a "magnetic" mouse pointer, landscape browsing, webpage minimap and hopefully, even faster panning and scrolling.
Well, that's all about this pleasant evening warm-up to all the major announcements by the other manufacturers tomorrow. Stay tuned and enjoy our live photos, while we head to a "tapas" bar night - those traditional Spanish appetizers make the sangria even better.
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /sony_ericsson_mwc_08-review-214.php
MWC 2008: Various brands overview
Hands-on with the Readius mobile phone
We think it's time we pay due respect to smaller brands. They quite deserve it for offering some exciting devices, which are sometimes capable enough to stand up to the big fish in the pond. First off, it's the Readius fold-away e-book, the iRiver GSM phone, the Garmin Nuvifone, Toshiba and their Widows devices, a Texas Instruments Android prototype, and others to follow really soon.
Polymer Vision announced the Readius mobile phone a few weeks back. The Raedius has a display as large as two business cards. In other words, the Dutch company has managed to squeeze a screen with twice the surface area of Apple iPhone in a device not much larger than most mobiles around.
The Readius secret is that it has a rollable display. You roll it out, read your email, and then roll it back again. Screen legibility is awesome and bright daylight won't hurt it either.
The display uses the electric ink technology and thus brings amazing power saving capabilities. Once a certain screen is displayed no more energy is needed to display it until the image changes. The other most obvious effect is that the fold-away form factor makes a color screen implausible. Instead, the 5" QVGA display is a 16-grayscale unit.
Once you roll the screen up, it becomes a pretty compact device that can amazingly fit into any pocket.
By the sound of it, Polymer Vision will be challenging the Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, since the grayscale display will not do for watching videos or browsing photos.
The Readius mobile phone comes with UMTS/HSDPA connectivity for downloading all the content you might want to read - including your emails and messages.
The other connectivity options of the Readius include USB v2.0 and Bluetooth v2.0. There is also a built-in microSD slot with support for high capacity memory cards.
The Readius mobile phone is powered by a 400MHz ARM processor and has only 8 hardware keys that are used for all its features.
Unfortunately, the phone dialling funtion of the Readius is rather limited. You are confined to using your Outlook-synced contacts - dialling a phone in numeric mode is not posible as there is no keypad of any sort.
The Readius is expected to set foot in stores worldwide in mid-2008 with the company currently set to conclude some high-profile contracts. Price is not yet known, but should be in the vicinity of high-end mobile phones.
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /various_mwc_08-review-219.php
MWC 2008: Motorola overview
Motorola has been going through some tough times recently, so we couldn't have been more curious about what they're up to. Their booth at the MWC 2008 in Barcelona needed to provide answers to some serious questions. From a high enough authority, the company is still committed to its mobile division and upping sticks is out of the question for now.
Motorola Z6w
We saw a few handsets on the Motorola stand in the MWC, including three that were fresh announcements at the congress itself. Now, a warning is probably due for those of you that are after top-of-the-shelf gadgets. Sadly, you won't be too impressed.
Motorola Z6w was just announced yesterday and is basically a Wi-Fi-enabled version of the Motorola Z6. It comes in the slider form factor and has support for all the four GSM bands. The 2" 262K-color display sports QVGA resolution, the straightforward midrange choice.
Motorola E8
The Motorola handset to see the most of the GSMArena team appreciation was the bar shaped phone ROKR E8. Announced last September, the quad-band device almost passes for a true novelty, thanks to the new and unique user interface. The haptic-enabled touch-sensitive keypad offers commendable feedback. Vibrations tend to be shorter than what the LG Viewty offers for example, and we happen to like it better this way.
The best part about the phone is the keypad, having no actual etched labels on the keys. Instead the virtual keys change depending on context. In the music player for example, the music controls appear, while letters surface in texting mode. The touch-sensitive semi-circle of a D-pad also helps a lot here, as it makes forwarding and rewinding real smooth.
Motorola E8 is equipped with a 2" 262K-color QVGA display, which had very good picture quality. This may not hold true in brightly sunlight but it was good enough for us indoors.
We have a nice walkthrough video for you presenting the Motorola ROKR E8.
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /motorola_mwc_08-review-218.php
MWC 2008: Motorola overview
Motorola has been going through some tough times recently, so we couldn't have been more curious about what they're up to. Their booth at the MWC 2008 in Barcelona needed to provide answers to some serious questions. From a high enough authority, the company is still committed to its mobile division and upping sticks is out of the question for now.
Motorola Z6w
We saw a few handsets on the Motorola stand in the MWC, including three that were fresh announcements at the congress itself. Now, a warning is probably due for those of you that are after top-of-the-shelf gadgets. Sadly, you won't be too impressed.
Motorola Z6w was just announced yesterday and is basically a Wi-Fi-enabled version of the Motorola Z6. It comes in the slider form factor and has support for all the four GSM bands. The 2" 262K-color display sports QVGA resolution, the straightforward midrange choice.
Motorola E8
The Motorola handset to see the most of the GSMArena team appreciation was the bar shaped phone ROKR E8. Announced last September, the quad-band device almost passes for a true novelty, thanks to the new and unique user interface. The haptic-enabled touch-sensitive keypad offers commendable feedback. Vibrations tend to be shorter than what the LG Viewty offers for example, and we happen to like it better this way.
The best part about the phone is the keypad, having no actual etched labels on the keys. Instead the virtual keys change depending on context. In the music player for example, the music controls appear, while letters surface in texting mode. The touch-sensitive semi-circle of a D-pad also helps a lot here, as it makes forwarding and rewinding real smooth.
Motorola E8 is equipped with a 2" 262K-color QVGA display, which had very good picture quality. This may not hold true in brightly sunlight but it was good enough for us indoors.
We have a nice walkthrough video for you presenting the Motorola ROKR E8.
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /motorola_mwc_08-review-218.php
MWC 2008: Nokia overview
Market leaders Nokia were naturally among the key news makers at the Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM). The Finnish company revealed four new high-end devices today, including the dual slider Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic.
Nokia N96
Nokia N96 is a quad-band handset with dual-band HSDPA support for worldwide coverage. It runs on S60 3rd edition, FP2 and has a 2.8" QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) TFT display with 16M colors. Other features of this true powerhouse include GPS with A-GPS support and geo-tagging for photos, Wi-Fi, the stunning 16GB of onboard memory, plus a microSD slot. If that feature pack doesn't grab your attention, hardly anything will.
Nokia N96 has a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss optics and powerful dual LED flash. It also records video in VGA resolution at 30 fps.The connectivity set sports Wi-Fi b/g with UPnP support, microUSB v2.0, DVB-H class C, a 3.5mm stereo headphone plug and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP stereo audio.
Nokia N96 weighs 126g, and did feel a little bulky in our hands. The display however seemed on par with the Nokia N95 8GB (read: great).
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /nokia_mwc_08-review-216.php
MWC 2008: LG overview
LG managed to surprise us with almost a dozen of brand new handsets. While not all are high-end devices, each one has its own appeal, and we were eager to scour the LG booth for some quality time spent with them.
But before we proceed with the handsets, a little timeout is due with an enigmatic timepiece by LG. They presented a behind-the-glass teaser of their soon-to-be LG Watch phone. The teaser gadget is locked up and off limits to us, but at least we snatched a few shots of it. For what we’ve seen (no touch), it’s got a Shine-like navigation scroller, media player, touch screen (we guess) and, well, analog-style clock. But enough clever talk, check out those shots.
LG KF700
Next we continued our booth tour with the spanking novelty LG KF700 or otherwise known as LG Virgo - a multimedia slider, which stands out with its multiple control-and-navigation methods. The handset puts together a 3" touchscreen display, slide-out standard keypad and the novel Shortcut Dial at the back, which somehow resembles the LG Viewty's Jog in its functionality.
LG KF700
LG KF700 sports a full featured Web browser integrating Google Search, Blogs, Gmail, Maps and Youtube. HSDPA enhances web browsing and makes video calls possible. Other goodies include an MP3 player, MPEG4 video player, 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and image stabilizer, Bluetooth and microSD memory expansion.
The tri-band slider offers a 3" 262K-color touchscreen display with a resolution of 240 x 480 pixels.
Here's a short video walkthrough of the LG KF700.
The thing we liked the best about it is that in terms of user interface speed and responsiveness it's way beyond what LG Viewty can offer. Otherwise the user interface is the same as the Viewty's but improved in graphically. The Home screen can now accomodate several widgets - beside Calendar and World clock, there is also a Notes application.
"...LG KF700 sports a full featured Web browser integrating Google Search, Blogs, Gmail, Maps and Youtube. HSDPA enhances web browsing and makes video calls possible. Other goodies include an MP3 player, MPEG4 video player, 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and image stabilizer, Bluetooth and microSD memory expansion..."
We were dissapointed by the slider action - if you drag your finger downwards on the screen, the slider begins closing down, then when you let go, it goes back up and as a result all the downwards movements of your thumb along the screen create a jitter in the slider mechanism.
Another disappointing thing is the side scrollwheel. The user interface reacts so slowly to the scrolling that we would go as far as blacklisting the scrollwheel as a viable navigation solution.
The LG KF700 will start selling in Europe towards the end of 1Q 2008, before it gets available in other markets.
source:
http://www.gsmarena.com /lg_mwc_08-review-217.php
