The hardware sees you get a 4-inch touchscreen display that dominates proceedings. Beneath this there are three additional buttons that allow you to access menus, the home screen, and skip back a step, and in between this there is even two white tiny LEDs that give you notifications as to what is going on although you will no doubt loose track over time. A dedicated camera button and volume controls pepper the side.

For the Droid or G1 fans out there, there is no slide-out keyboard. Get over it.

Around the back you’ll get an 8.1-megapixel digital camera top centre and beneath that a flash – something not present on the HTC Hero or Apple iPhone.

Although impressive, specs are nothing out of the ordinary, certainly not for your top-of-the-range model and that means you get virtually every tech acronym you can think of including HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DLNA, A-GPS, 3.5mm jack and Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Storage is provided by an 8GB microSD card in the box and connects to your computer/charger via Micro-USB on the top. Unfortunately we weren’t able to confirm what the storage allocation for applications is, but let’s hope it is more than 256MB as with the Motorola Droid.

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It is large, comparable to the Apple iPhone, but not as big as the HTC HD2. Underneath all that User Experience you get Android 1.6. Sony Ericsson are currently sending out mixed messages as to whether or not the handset will sport Android 2.0 when it eventually launches in February, with some spokespeople for the company saying it will and others not so sure.

What this means is that you will miss out on some features, like the ability to search the contents of your phone at the press of a button and Google Maps Navigation (US only). With a strong integrated interface in the guise of what Sony Ericsson is calling Nexus, you get, like the Sense UI from HTC, a lot more friendly functionality than Google offers as standard.

Of course you do get that “standard” approach. The Nexus UX Platform sits on top of Android 1.6 meaning you can run all the standard Android apps as well as apps designed for the phone and UX. Unlike Motorola and HTC, both of whom have also decided to customise the Android experience, Sony Ericsson is hoping for further development by releasing a WebSDK.

The move means that developers will be able to develop applications specifically for Sony Ericsson handsets (the X10 is the first of many) that work only for Sony Ericsson. It’s a brave move and one that will be interesting to watch. As a developer are you really going to be bothered to develop an app for an as yet unproven smartphone when you’ve got Apple, Android, Palm’s WebOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Samsung’s Bada and BlackBerry to develop for as well?

Either way in reality it seems that Sony Ericsson are playing the “you can play with us too” card and regardless of this forging on with their own apps to impress and improve on the Android OS.

In steps Timescape and Mediascape. Timescape is a communications app, which aggregates email, Facebook, Twitter, IM, and SMS into one big lifestream that you can navigate through. Each “event” is represented by a tile, which you can tap to view in more detail, or long-press to get a preview of. The experience is very “Aero” from Windows Vista and in practice not the easiest thing to read.

Each tile has a button marked with an “oo” infinity symbol. Hitting that will take you to related content – which could be content from the person in question, or it could be web content related to whatever is on the tile. It’s a bit like HTC’s contacts feature that shows you all the contact you’ve had with that person, however it’s no Xobni. The list can be filtered by medium, and you can reply to individual messages within the application.

Mediascape is the other “signature” application. It’s built around music, video and images and organises all three on your device. It incorporates players for all three, too, and can hook into various bits of online content. YouTube was named explicitly, but we’d expect Last.fm and perhaps Flickr to show up here too with talk of Spotify being banded around at our briefing (something that might be harder to do than Sony Ericsson realizes thanks to Spotify’s poor API).

Items in Mediascape also have an infinity button and pressing this will again summon related content. For a band, that could be songs on your device, YouTube videos, or even other artists that are similar to whatever you’re listening to. The overlaid controls of this section looked quite similar to the Zune HD’s UI, though that’s only a good thing.

Then there is the image viewer in Mediascape that supports facial recognition. What this means is that you can tag up to five people in a photo and then the handset will attempt to identify those people in other images too – the more you tag, the more accurate it is, very much like Apple’s face recognition feature in iPhoto. The feature can also hook in with your contacts list – you can tap a person in a photo to call them, for instance, however won’t talk to Facebook or Flickr.

Those apps, and others for the Nexus UX, will be available from the PlayNow store.

Elsewhere and it’s pretty standard Android fare for the handset. The software is, and acts, as you would expect for an Android 1.6 handset, however for some reason, one that continues to baffle us, is no multi-touch support. With a touchscreen so large with no keyboard we think it’s a catastrophic move, but then hey, what do we know?

As for performance? Well it’s a little too early to say. The models we looked at both in London and New York have all been pre-production, and early builds at that. It certainly wasn’t as zippy as we would have hoped, certainly for a device with a Snapdragon chipset, but then its too early to tell whether this is just because it’s early code, or because Sony Ericsson has baked in so many graphical, almost PS3-like niceties, that it’s buckled under the weight. We expect it’s the former.

The handset has a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen display, with an impressive 800 x 480 resolution. We can see why it is called the liquid as when the screen is turned off, it’s like peering into an inky pool. Power it up and the display really impresses: it is sharp, bright and the seamless finish across the front of the device is one we like.

Below the screen are the customary four controls you expect with Android – home, search, back and menu – and here they are presented as backlit touch controls, part of the display. If you like to get funky with your phone in the dark, it takes some stabbing around before you find the right key, as they are only illuminated when you touch them.

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That 3.5-inch display means the dimensions of the handset come in at 115 x 64 x 12.75mm, which is middle ground for a smartphone, close to the dimensions of the Apple iPhone. The weight of 135g isn’t a bother either: it feels weighty enough in the hand to be taken seriously, which is a good thing.

The construction of the handset is plastic – top, bottom and back – so it doesn’t have the premium look or feel that some rivals do. It doesn’t get a luscious Teflon coating like the HTC Hero and it does feel a little cheap. The plastic back isn’t so attractive and will creak a little under manipulation. As is often the Acer way, there is a touch of budget about the Liquid.

The bottom of the device features a Mini-USB for charging and syncing, covered by a flap that neither matches the rest of the plastic on the bottom, or seems sturdy enough to pass the test of time.

The left-hand side of the device gives you the power button, the right-hand side the camera button and volume rocker. The top features a 3.5mm headphone jack and a line of hidden status LEDs that illuminate with battery, message and a call indicator. It’s a nice touch and means you can see the status of your phone at a glance.

The positioning of the buttons is a little awkward. Set on the rear side of the curve making them a little difficult to press, especially the camera button. You need to use the power button to wake the device from sleep and for a button you have to use a lot, we wish it was better placed. Also, we were forever pressing the power button when using the camera, as a sturdy grip buts it right under your thumb.

Around the back is a 5-megapixel camera but no flash. Remove the back cover and you are presented with a 1350mAh battery that you’ll have to remove to access the SIM card and microSD card slots. With an internal memory of only 256MB available for storage, you’ll be needing that memory card. Our test device came with microSD to SD card converter suggesting that one will be bundled when you buy the device, although the actual microSD card was missing.

The Android experience presented by Acer is relatively free from customisation, fairly well removed from what you’ll get from HTC Sense or the Motoblur. Instead the homepage is a simple 3-page job, offering left and right swipes from the centre and a few widgets to get you going.

The homepages come with two of the widgets already deployed, and these give you media and browser carousels attached to the left- or right-hand side of the display. They do take up most of the page and limit what else you can add and we were almost wishing for another page. Cleverly the media carousel can be switched between video, music and photos, to quickly get to what you want.

Widgets also include a neat shortcut bar to give a one-button toggle to Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, background syncing and screen brightness and is well worth using. Besides widgets you can add the normal contact or bookmark shortcuts, as well as application shortcuts, for quick access to what you actually want.

There is some duplication of settings and applications, but we like the fact, however, that Acer have included an easy OTA checker for the Liquid to deliver updates. The liquid runs Android 1.6, but we don’t know for certain when or if an update to 2.0 will happen.

We originally reported that the Liquid would feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, but the included Qualcomm QSD 8250 has been throttled to 768MHz, rather than the 1GHz we’d anticipated. The Liquid is snappy, with applications loading quickly and multitasking with relative ease.

But not everything is perfect. There are some occasions when we’d open an application and be left waiting for something to happen with a blank screen, or options that we couldn’t select in some applications. We also found the camcorder application would crash with longer captures, suggesting something isn’t quite right. Crashes happen with all devices, so it isn’t devastating, but there is certainly space for some improvements here. We had troubles pairing it with our Mac over Bluetooth, again, an error cropping up, suggesting that something isn’t quite as it should be. The user manual comes bundled on a CD in the box, which suggest that drivers are also included for your PC, although they appeared to be absent.

Being an Android device you get all the benefits of Google integration at the core. Sign in with a Google (or Google Apps) account and your email, calendars and contacts will fall into place, integrating with Google Maps. It’s a cluster of applications that makes Android devices a pleasure to use and the Liquid is no different.

Where it is different from the likes of the HTC Hero and Motorola DEXT is how far the integration extends beyond Android. Those devices give you quick and easy access and integration of the most common social networks. Lurking in a sub menu of contacts we found Acer Social Networking.

Acer Social Networking is something of an anticlimax. It allows you to add social network information to your contacts: Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa and Twitter. (Facebook will run a search and pair up contacts, entering their Facebook identifier into the contact entry.) You can set an update schedule, but alerts appear alongside a contact, so you’re unlikely to see them if you know a lot of people.

We like the easy approach of HTC and Motorola in integrating your social networks – if you are a fan, then it works nicely. Here it doesn’t. Fortunately Android Marketplace will give you apps to cover pretty much everything anyway, regardless of what your contacts are doing. That means Facebook, Twitter, cross platform IM apps such as Nimbuzz and you’ll find yourself assimilated into your digital existence without issue.

Acer haven’t changed the Android keyboard, so it works very much as it was designed. We found that there was no predictive text option, or any sign of intelligent corrections (despite selecting these options in the settings). If we made a mistake, that’s what we got, making it a little cumbersome. The response was good so speedy typing is possible if you are accurate, but we found that reverting to make corrections did slow us down.

The browser hasn’t been touched either, so you don’t get multi-touch zooming, but you do get a browser that is relatively fast and handles full webpages well.

The Acer Liquid features motion and proximity sensors, so the screen will orient itself to landscape or portrait respectively, although both aspects aren’t supported in all applications. The proximity sensor will lock the screen when it is next to your face, and then present you with options mid call when you pull it away – like engage speakerphone, put a call on hold, dial someone else for an ad hoc conference call.

As a phone, callers reported no problems and came through loud and clear at our end too. The design does put a hard ridge across your ear however, so long calls can be a little uncomfortable.

Camera performance is typical for a 5-megapixel camera phone. Images lack sharpness of a real camera, but the autofocus works well enough. Some superficial settings options are presented. Video offers capture at 640 x 480 pixel resolution maximum and our test videos came in at 22fps, the results of which aren’t too bad.

The screen really lends itself to video playback, however, thanks to that sharp resolution. It supports 3GP, MPEG4, H.263, H.264 files, although as always you need to watch the codecs. nemoPlayer is pre-loaded (along with some other apps) to handle media and works well enough. Audio playback, once you bring in your own headphones is pretty good, although with multiple media players on-board, it can get a little confusing, and you might end up with tracks playing on more than one player at the same time.

The Liquid also has designs as a media server, allowing you to share content over your network. We could see it on a PC, but couldn’t access any of the content, so don’t get too excited just yet.

In typical usage (i.e., live, on the streets) we got about 12 hours from the battery. This included a typical use of data, emails, the occasional app, using the GPS to locate a venue and so on. We made calls sparingly, turning off Wi-Fi when away from a connection to conserve battery. Using the media player will draw further, so the battery life is average: you’ll still need to charge it every night and on a heavy use day, you might end up with a flat battery.

Verdict

Overall the Acer Liquid is an interesting addition to the Android portfolio. It gets some things really right: the screen is a good size and resolution and responsive enough and the essentials are covered: HSDPA, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. For those looking for an Android device that hasn’t been tinkered with too much, then this might be worth investigating, but beware what looks like some minor software bugs.

Acer really haven’t brought that much to the party. You don’t get the consumer-friendly approach of the HTC Hero with social networking, great keyboards with error correction and predictive text. For many this will be a deciding factor in which device to choose. We are still waiting to hear details on carriers, although the SIM RRP is £349; we’ll update you if we find out more.

The Acer Liquid is an enjoyable device to use, accepting some software foibles. On the whole it is a solid handset that delivers the easy Android experience, but could do with some updating.

Stock Expected week commencing 1st March 2010 

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The Sony Ericsson Vivaz mobile phone is here to deliver high performance, responsive touch control, multimedia, entertainment and connectivity just how you want it.

Open the window to your mobile world with a stunning 3.2 inch TFT touchscreen, with a huge 720MHz processor powering everything you do.  Don’t let the moments fade with the impressive 8.0-megapixel camera with everything from Touch focus, to smile detection and image stabilisation.  Get connected wherever you are with Wi-Fi, ultra fast 3G HSDPA, Push email and Bluetooth. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is ready to deliver and go beyond your expectations of a mobile phone!

• Incredible control and navigation with a stunning 3.2 inch touchscreen

• Get more out of your mobile with the Vivaz’ powerful 720MHz processor

• Capture premium quality picture’s with the 8.0-megapixel camera with amazing Touch Focus feature

• Browse the internet at broadband speeds with Wi-Fi connectivity

• When Wi-Fi is unavailable, access lightening fast HSDPA 3G internet

• Receive real time notifications with Push email

Key Features

Camera Features

Music Features

Standard Features

Connectivity

Display & User Interface

Applications

Memory

Messages

Technical

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As well as providing a great music experience, the Nokia X3 contains a whole host of features such as a 3.2-megapixel camera with video record, Nokia Maps, Email and instant messenger support and web browsing. Customise your Nokia X3 with access to the amazing Nokia Ovi application store, who said great phones couldn’t be affordable?

• Get the most out of your tunes with a high quality music player
• Expand your memory up to 16GB with MicroSD support
• Portable photography with a built-in 3.2-megapixel camera
• Choose from thousands of applications on the Nokia Ovi store
• No need to ask for directions with the handy Nokia Maps application!
• Use your favourite headphones with the handy 3.5mm audio jack

Key Features

Camera Features

Music Features

Standard Features

Connectivity

Display & User Interface

Applications

Memory

Messages

Technical

Summary:

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The Nokia X6-00 is the first Xseries phone from Nokia. It’s a touchscreen smartphone running the Symbian operating system, but it’s not based on the Nseries phones. Instead, the X series is an evolution of Nokia’s XpressMusic range, and this a welcome relief, as the XpressMusic phones seem to have been much more robust than the bug-ridden Nseries.

The Xseries moves the range substantially upmarket, and the X6 doesn’t come cheap. Nokia have taken the hugely popular mid-range 5800 and pimped it to the max. It’s physically almost the same size as the 5800, although a few millimetres have been shaved off, making it nice and slim to hold. At the same time the weight has increased slightly, lending it a purposeful and solid feel. It’s a good phone to hold, and certainly a lot less bulky than most touchscreens. In fact it’s one of the few touchscreen phones that you can easily operate single-handedly.

The display is a capacitative touchscreen, and is very responsive. It’s the same size and resolution as the 5800: 3.2 inches across and with 640×360 pixels. This gives it one of the smaller screen sizes amongst the high-end touchscreen phones, but that’s the price you pay for having a compact form factor. The screen isn’t the biggest, but it’s big enough to do the job. It offers a choice of virtual alphanumeric and QWERTY keypads with automatic display rotation. The user interface is nice, sharing much with the 5800, including the contacts bar which lets you easily access friends on your home screen. The contacts bar gives you access to dialling, call records and texts for up to 20 friends. The capacitative touchscreen is very responsive and we think that this is a very easy phone to use.

X stands for XpressMusic, so you’d expect the X6 to be pretty good in the music arena. And it is! The X6 comes with an Nseries music player and an FM radio. The music player handles most digital music formats, including MP3, WMA and AAC, and supports selection of songs by artist, composer, album and genre, with album graphics displayed. A dedicated audio chip and 3D surround sound from stereo speakers delivers excellent performance, especially when the bass booster, stereo widening and loudness effects are added. There’s also an 8-band graphic equaliser for additional control. Naturally a 3.5mm audio jack is included, so you can plug in your own headphones, and perhaps best of all is the massive 32GB of built-in memory. The optional Comes With Music feature gives you free unlimited music downloads for a whole year!

The X6 isn’t just a phone with a music player attached though. It’s also got an impressive camera. With 5 megapixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual LED flash, this is an excellent camera, and it punches above its 5 megapixel weight too. It’s the optics that matter most, and the X6 has quality, so don’t worry too much that there are cameras with more megapixels available. The X6 has a really excellent still camera. The video recording capability is good too, with recording at up to 640 x 480 pixels and 30 frames per second, which is standard definition TV quality. A second front-mounted video camera enables video calls to be made too.

A-GPS is included, which works with the new Ovi Maps. The phone has outstanding connectivity, with quadband GSM and triband 3G, so your phone will work wherever you take it on your travels. You should always have the fastest data connection too, with HSDPA giving downloads of up to 3.6 Mbps and WLAN available too for even faster data transfer in a WiFi zone. You can connect wirelessly via Bluetooth, or via USB cable, 3.5mm audio connection and a TV-Out socket.

Web browsing on the X6 is quite satisfactory. As mentioned, the screen isn’t the biggest available, but 3.2 inches is a respectable size, and the responsive touchscreen and fast data speeds make for a good mobile browsing experience overall. The X6 runs the same Series 60 5th Edition Symbian version 9.4 OS/interface as the 5800, so there are already a good number of apps available to download from the Ovi store.

The X6 comes with a massive 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery which gives very impressive performance. Theoretically the X6 is capable of 8.5 hours of talktime or 35 hours of music playback between charges. Although real world performance will never match this, it still means that you’ll be able to use the phone for several days between charges in most cases.

Overall, the X6 is a star performer. It’s a very high powered smartphone in a compact form, with a feeling of quality and durability. It may not have the biggest screen around, but the screen is by no means small, and is superbly responsive. The music player and camera are superb. The X6 ticks all the connectivity boxes and has outstanding memory and battery life to boot. And perhaps the best thing is that it’s built on a stable operating system that has been tested in the Nokia 5800, further refined and polished in the 5530 and now seems to be very robust and stable. Revolutionary it is not, but it is exactly what we’ve been wanting Nokia to do for such a long time: take an existing proven product and just make it better. With the X6, this is exactly what they have done. This will be mobile-phones-uk.org.uk’s last review before Christmas 2009, and we’re delighted to award the Nokia X6 a full 5 stars!

Features of the Nokia X6 include:

• Series 60 5th Edition Symbian version 9.4 3G Smartphone
• 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, 4x digital zoom and double LED flash
• Video recording (up to 640 x 480 pixels and up to 30 fps), 4x digital video zoom, front camera for 3G video calling
• Display: Touchscreen, 16.7 million colours, 640 x 360 pixels (3.2 inches) with automatic display rotation
• NSeries music player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA formats) with 8-band graphical equaliser
• FM radio with Visual Radio
• Stereo loudspeakers with 3D effect
• Ringtones: MP3 & video ringtones, 64-voice polyphonic ringtones, vibration alert
• Voice commands: speaker independent dialling and voice commands
• Voice recorder (digital stereo microphone)
• Integrated handsfree speaker
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (support for IMAP, POP, SMTP) plus attachments, Audio messaging
• Advanced Series 60 personal organiser functions, Flash Lite 3.0
• Integrated A-GPS with Ovi Maps 3.0
• Internet: HSCSD, GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA (3.6 Mbps), XHTML web browser
• Connectivity: WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, 3.5 mm audio jack, TV-Out
• Memory: 32 GB
• Flight mode
• Quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus 3G (WCDMA 900/1900/2100 MHz)
• Size: 111 x 51 x 13.8 mm
• Weight: 122g
• Talktime: 6 hours (3G) – 8.5 hours (2G)
• Battery standby: 420 hours
• Music playback: up to 35 hours

Motorola have unveiled their new secret weapon – the Motorola Milestone mobile phone!  This premium smartphone is ready to take on all of it’s competition head on and has the features and hardware to prove it.  The name of the phone itself ‘Milestone’ suggests that Motorola have set out to make new ground and push the boundaries with their latest release.

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• Fantastic resolution and detail with a 3.7 inch TFT touchscreen

• Interact with your Motorola Milestone easily and naturally with a full QWERTY keyboard

• Get more out of your mobile phone with the Android 2.0 operating system

• Capture pictures wherever you take your Motorola Milestone using your 5.0-megapixel camera with LED flash

• Find where you’re going and how you are going to get there with assisted GPS

• Ultra fast internet with Wi-Fi connectivity

Key Features

Camera Features

Music Features

Standard Features

Connectivity

Display & User Interface

Applications

Memory

Messages

Technical

Summary: The Samsung Omnia 2 is one of the greatest mobile devices ever! Running Windows Mobile, this is really a mobile office with full email and MS Office functionality, as well as a superb web browser, 5 megapixel camera, DVD-like video recording, video calling, GPS and motion games. It’s got a huge 3.7 inch display with the highest screen resolution currently available, and it can connect to just about anything via WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, 3.5mm audio jack and DLNA. It may be big and it may be expensive, but this is perhaps the most powerful smartphone so far released.

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Let’s declare some bias at the start of this review. At Mobile Phones UK, we’re fans of the Windows Mobile operating system, and we generally like the current generation of Samsung touchscreen phones. That doesn’t mean that they’re beyond criticism, but we tend to like them. Funnily enough, our users do too, which is why our user reviews consistently rate them at 4 or 5 stars on average. We loved the first Omnia, and so we’re really excited to be reviewing the new Omnia 2.

The Omnia 2 has been restyled, and looks almost identical to the Samsung Jet. It’s bigger and heavier than the Jet however. Bigger and heavier than the original Omnia too, making it quite bulky in fact. But there’s an upside to this increase in size: the screen has grown from 3.2 inches to a massive 3.7 inches, and the resolution has quadrupled to 480 x 800 pixels. Samsung have achieved this by replacing the old TFT screen with a crisp beautiful AMOLED display, which looks better and uses less power. Only the HTC Touch HD can rival the Omnia 2 in screen real estate. For power users, web browsers and mobile photographers, this can only be a bonus.

Apart from this outward change, the big change inside is the upgrade of Windows Mobile to version 6.5. Windows Mobile is a very powerful and robust computer-like platform for running a mobile phone. First-time users sometimes find it overly complex, but for power users it offers a very flexible and customisable experience. Version 6.5 brings some improvements such as My Phone, to sync text messages, photos, video and contacts to the Web; and Windows® Marketplace for Mobile, a new marketplace that will provide direct-to-phone mobile applications and can be accessed from both the phone and the Web. The new Windows Mobile 6.5 home screen provides a dashboard-like experience to items such as new emails, texts, missed calls and calendar appointments. It also includes an improved touchscreen interface, and an updated version of the Internet Explorer Mobile browser. Samsung have integrated this nicely with their own TouchWiz user interface, adding widgets to extend the functionality of the home page and providing quick links to applications such as facebook. We’re not disappointed by the user interface.

The Omnia 2 is a fabulous phone for all kinds of media. Whilst the camera hasn’t been upgraded, we can hardly complain. A 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, face detection, smile detection, auto-panorama and macro, the only weakness is the lack of a xenon flash. Instead the camera uses a power LED flash, which makes it trickier to get good exposure after dark, but otherwise takes excellent shots. The video camera is excellent too, and is capable of recording in 480p format at up to 720 x 480 pixels for DVD quality. The phone also supports video calling, unlike Android phones for example. When it comes to video playback, the high resolution screen is unbeatable, and there’s full multi-codec support including DivX support, so you shouldn’t have any format compatibility problems. The media player can also handle most kinds of audio format, and we are impressed by the audio quality. An FM radio with RDS is included. We also very much welcome the 3.5mm audio jack, which lets you plug in standard-fit headphones for the best possible audio experience. Top marks here!

The Omnia 2 has a superb implementation of the mobile web. With the highest resolution screen on the market, the latest release of Internet Explorer Mobile and fast 3G access using HSPA, you really couldn’t ask for a better browsing experience. Features such as one finger zoom make web browsing quick and intuitive. AGPS is included, with car and pedestrian maps and features such as geo-tagging of photos.If you get bored of all this, you can also try out the various games embedded in the phone. These make use of the touchscreen and motion sensor.

When it comes to office applications, the Omnia 2 has an edge, being based on Windows Mobile. Whether synching with Outlook or accessing push email with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, editing MS Office documents or running third party apps, you’ll find a real wealth of mobile office functionality here, that makes Windows Mobile 6.5 the best smartphone platform in our opinion.

The battery life of the phone is quite impressive, especially for such a powerful device. The use of a powerful 1500mAh battery and the OLED screen make all the difference here, although the downside is of course the size and weight of the device. The amount of memory available is also impressive, and has been increased to 16GB with an option to expand this to a humongous 48GB with a microSD card. This would let you store around 16,000 music tracks or 46 DVD-quality movies! The range of connectivity options covers all the bases: WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, 3.5mm jack, TV-Out and DLNA support. With 256MB of SDRAM memory and 512MB of Nand memory available for running apps, you’ll find that you can use the phone without any go-slow or crashes resulting from low memory, and the super-fast 800MHz processor packs enough punch to power the device without any noticeable lag.

Overall we’re just as impressed by the Omnia 2 as we were hoping to be. Samsung have made the device more powerful, yet easier to use at the same time. They’ve made the screen enormous, increased the memory, added a 3.5mm audio jack and updated the OS. The only issue is the size of the device. But it’s about the same as the iPhone 3GS, so we’d guess that isn’t going to be too much of a problem. No doubt about this one … 5 stars all the way!

Features of the Samsung Omnia II include:

• 5 megapixel camera with face detection autofocus, smile detector, auto-panorama, 4x digital zoom and power LED flash
• Video camera: 720 x 480 pixels, 30 frames per second / 3G video calling
• Display: AMOLED, WVGA, 480 x 800 pixels, (3.7 inches), 65,000 colours
• AGPS navigation with geo-tagging
• Music Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, Enhanced AAC+, WMA formats) plus FM radio RDS
• 40-voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
• Speakerphone
• Voice memo recorder
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, email
• Document viewer
• Java games
• Memory: 2GB, 8GB or 16GB, plus microSD memory card slot (up to 32GB)
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, Wi-fi, DLNA, TV-Out, 3.5mm headphone jack
• Internet: WAP 2.0, Pocket Internet Explorer / Opera 9.5 web browsers, GPRS, EDGE, 3G (HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps)
• Quadband (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus 3G (UMTS 900 / 1900 / 2100)
• Offline mode
• Size: 118 x 60 x 12.3 mm
• Weight: 125g
• Talktime: up to 12 hours (2.5G) up to 8 hours (3G)
• Battery standby: up to 430 hours

In a nutshell:

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The Palm Pre is a newcomer to the world of mobile phones. The Pre is the first smartphone to run the Palm webOS operating system. The first of anything often turns out to be lacking in a few ways (remember the first iPhone, the first Android phone, etc.) So we’ll be sniffing around to see if there are any “beta-testing areas” of the Pre.

The first thing to say is that the Pre is exclusive to O2 and it’s expensive. This definitely isn’t going to be a mainstream phone. It’s intended as a snazzy business phone with knobs on. The webOS was designed from the bottom up as a multitasking interface, and the Pre just positively oozes with the desire for you to multi-task. Go on, it dares you, open up yet another application. I can handle it. And what’s more I can make all those apps talk to each other too. So its various calendars talk to each other, the calendars talk to your contacts database, and the whole lot (Palm calls them “activity cards”, which sounds a bit pre-school) constantly interact, update and send you notifications. There’s a whole social whirl out there on your Palm even when you’re not using it! The Pre is a phone designed for the social network age. It integrates Facebook, Twitter, email, texts and all your Google stuff, and lets you keep track of everything in an easy to use and responsive fashion. It works best if you have plenty of contacts and an active online social life; otherwise you’re missing out on what the Pre has to offer. The user interface is very responsive, and you’ve no doubt seen the pretty TV ads with stuff zooming all over the Pre’s screen at breakneck speed. It’s fast, it’s intuitive and it gets the job done. And with a choice of a virtual touchscreen keypad or a slide-out real QWERTY keyboard, you can talk to your Pre just as rapidly as it talks back to you.

The Palm comes with a media player that supports most common formats, including MP3 and AAC audio, and MPEG4 video. The camera is rather poor though. It’s just a basic 3 megapixel camera that would be fine on an entry-level phone, but not on a device that costs this sort of money. The Pre has good connectivity, including USB, Bluetooth and WiFi, and comes with a GPS receiver too. It’s quite chunky in size and fairly heavy, but not too big for a smartphone. The disappointing factor is the smallness of the screen. At just 3.1 inches across, it could really do with being larger.

We can’t really find any areas where the new webOS platform falls over. It seems to be as well designed and capable as say, Android or OS X. The range of apps is limited at present, but that’s to be expected for a new OS. Where the Pre does fall down is in the hardware that supports the OS. It doesn’t offer the best value for money, in our opinion. The QWERTY keyboard, though welcome, is a bit small and plasticky, and in fact the whole phone construction is a little on the flimsy side. We don’t like the camera one bit, and the battery life isn’t impressive either. The pre certainly isn’t an iPhone killer, or anything like it. It’s the first of a kind and is best suited to technologically-minded early adopters who like the touchscreen gizmos, the multitasking and the social networking features, or who just fancy a change. mainstream users should approach the Palm Pre with caution. It will be interesting to see whether Palm can do what Apple managed, and release a mature product with a wealth of third-party apps. At the moment, this is not it.

Features of the Palm Pre include:

• 3 megapixel camera with LED flash
• Display: Touchscreen with 320 x 480 pixels (3.1 inches)
• Music player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV formats supported)
• Stereo FM radio RDS with Visual Radio support
• Built-in GPS
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, IM, Email (support for Microsoft Exchange)
• Memory: 8GB
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB, WiFi
• Web browser, EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA
• Quadband plus 3G
• Size: 60 x 100 x 17 mm
• Weight: 135g

Summary:

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The N97 does what it says on the tin. It’s a slimmed-down version of the Nokia N97. The N97 is Nokia’s flagship phone, so it can afford to have a few features shaved off in order to cut down on the size and the cost. There is no such thing as the perfect phone, but the N97 Mini acknowledges the compromises that have been made in cutting it down to a more manageable size, and the design is intelligent and very usable.

The N97 Mini looks almost exactly the same as the N97, except that it is smaller. The sliding QWERTY keyboard is just the same as on the N97, except that the 4-way navigation button has been removed to shave a few millimetres off the size. Even the funnily-positioned space bar is in exactly the same space, but the strange thing is that we’ve got used it completely and it feels quite natural now. The screen is smaller, but at 3.2 inches it is in no way a small screen, and is perfectly big enough for the job it has to do. It has the same ultra-high resolution as the N97 (640 x 360 pixels and 16 million colours) and is a superb display for watching videos, browsing the web or editing documents. Having the benefit of a physical keyboard makes the requirement for screen real estate less pressing, and the format works very well indeed. We’d prefer the N97 Mini’s keyboard plus touchscreen combination to a pure virtual touchscreen setup any day.

Like its big brother, the N97 Mini has an information-packed and customisable home screen, packed with widgets streaming live information such as facebook, email, texts, the date & time, weather forecasts and RSS feeds. Yes, we know it’s not an iPhone, but with the mature Symbian operating system backing it up, there are more than enough apps to keep most people happy. We love the way that the home screen gives one-touch access to most of the features that you’ll use regularly, and the integration seems to work very well.

Browsing web pages works very well. The screen is slightly smaller than the N97 of course, so the font can sometimes be rather small, but there are easy controls to scroll and zoom, and the web browsing experience is generally very good. The always-on 3G internet connection helps, and with HSDPA giving download speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps and WiFi offering 54 Mbps, you can almost imagine that your using a laptop rather than a souped-up mobile phone.

The camera is the same as the one on the N97, which in turn is essentially the same as the camera in the old N96. But it’s an excellent camera nevertheless, and outperforms most smartphones. The sensor is a respectable 5 megapixels, but it’s the quality of the Carl Zeiss optics that makes it perform so well. The dual LED flash isn’t as powerful as the xenon flash on the Sony Ericsson Satio, but it’s more than a match for most camera phones. Video recording is excellent too, with the ability to record at VGA format and 30 frames/second. A secondary front-facing camera is available for video calling too.

There’s a powerful Nseries music player included, and an FM radio with RDS too. As you’d expect, the music quality is top-notch, and not only is a good quality set of stereo headphones supplied, but the 3.5mm AV connection lets you plug in your own headphones too. The memory isn’t as large as in the N97, but still, with 8GB of built-in memory and the ability to add a 16GB microSD card, you can hardly say that the memory is small. The maximum storage capacity would give you enough space for between 6,000 and 10,000 music tracks or a couple of dozen full length movies!

The N97 Mini also has built-in GPS and a-GPS receivers, and you can use these to find your location, to geo-tag photos and to navigate. Nokia Maps is included, as well as a digital compass, and a 10-day trial licence of a Walk-and-Drive navigation system.

One compromise that the designers have made to reduce the overall size and weight of the device is to reduce the capacity of the battery. The battery is a 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery, instead of the 1500 mAh one supplied with the N97. Despite having a smaller LCD display, the N97 does suffer as a consequence, although the battery performance is no worse than comparable touchscreen smartphones.

To wrap up, we feel that the N97 Mini is a perfect example of an intelligent compromise. Yes, the screen is smaller, and yes, the battery life is shorter. But the phone is significantly slimmer, lighter and quite a bit cheaper too, bringing the power of the N97 within reach of a whole new market segment. The big bugbear with the N97 was probably the lumbering old Symbian operating system under the hood. Symbian phones often have a tendency to freeze or reboot at the most annoying times, and the N97 was no exception. The Symbian OS is still present in the N97 Mini of course, but it seems that Nokia have tweaked and polished it and the whole system feels more robust and stable. N97 Mini users can benefit from all those early adopters who beta-tested the N97 on Nokia’s behalf! It’s funny, but somehow the “lite” version of the N97 feels like a better product than the original. It’s proof that size and specification aren’t everything. By taking the time to test and to gather user feedback, Nokia have polished the rough edges of their flagship product and created a new and better one. Ah, now if only they could do that with every phone release!

Features of the Nokia N97 Mini include:

• S60 5th edition Symbian interface
• 5 megapixel camera (2592 x 1944 pixels) with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual LED flash, 4x digital zoom and geo-tagging
• Video camera: MPEG4/3GP VGA video capture at 640 x 480 pixels and 30 frames/second, 4x digital zoom and video light
• Front camera for video calling: 176 x 144 pixels
• Display: Resistive touchscreen, 16 million colours, 640 x 360 pixels (3.2 inches) with orientation sensor, proximity sensor and light sensor
• Digital music player (supports MP3/AAC/eAAC/eAAC+/WMA formats) with playlists and equalizer
• Stereo FM radio (87.5-108 MHz/76-90 MHz), RDS
• Built-in GPS navigation with Nokia Maps application and digital compass
• Speaker independent name dialing
• Voice commands
• Voice recorder
• Integrated hands-free speaker
• Speed dialing
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email (SMTP, IMAP4, POP3, Mail for Exchange)
• Viewing of email attachments – .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf
• Java games (DJ Club Tour included)
• Advanced contacts database with support for multiple phone and e-mail details per entry
• Memory: 8 GB plus microSD memory card slot (up to 16GB)
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, USB 2.0, TV-Out, (WLAN 802.11 b/g), 3.5 mm stereo headphone plug
• Internet: Full web browser with Flash video support, RSS reader, WAP, GPRS class A, WCDMA/HSDPA (3.6Mb/s download), WLAN (up to 11Mbps/54Mbps)
• Quadband plus 3G
• Size: 113 x 53 x 14 mm
• Weight: 138g
• Talktime: 240 minutes (3G) – 430 minutes (2G)
• Battery standby: 320 hours

Summary:

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The Sony Ericsson Satio has enjoyed something of a rollercoaster ride. Released just in time for Christmas 2009, the initial batch was so appallingly bad that it was withdrawn from sale by all of the main UK retailers. Sony Ericsson worked hard to fix the bugs, and it seems that the latest version does what it says on the tin. We’ve modified our review to reflect the ups and downs of the Satio, but we’re now confident that the phone works.

Sony Ericsson have been slow on the touchscreen front, dipping their toe in gently with the Xperia X1 and some limited touchscreen functionality on other phones. Meanwhile the rest of the world has charged down the touchscreen road at breakneck speed. Sony are now playing catch up with the release of the Aino (still only partially touchscreen) and the Satio. Still, they’ve gone in all guns blazing with the Satio – not only is it a full touchscreen media phone, but it runs the Symbian operating system and has a 12 megapixel camera and just about every feature that you could think of putting into a mobile phone.

The Satio is a fantastic phone to look at. A bit plasticky perhaps, but solidly built with a good weighty feel. It’s narrower than an iPhone and slimmer than an N97, and is a good size to hold. The widescreen display is a good size too, measuring 3.5 inches diagonally. That’s the same size as the iPhone, but with more pixels, so no complaints there. The touchscreen feels reasonably responsive, despite being of resistive type (unlike the iPhone’s capacitative touchscreen) but doesn’t have the speed of an iPhone or Samsung Jet. Behind the scenes lies the Symbian operating system, a powerful beast but with sluggish tendencies.

The camera is perhaps the headline feature of the Satio. It’s a 12 megapixel monster with a xenon flash for extra brightness in low lighting. The camera is an outstandingly good one, and the Satio is arguably the best camera phone released to date. It’s packed with features such as touch autofocus and face detection autofocus, as well as smile detection and BestPic, so there’s no excuse for getting an out of focus picture or missing the best shot. We like the way that Sony have integrated touchscreen functionality into the camera interface, making the Satio feel very much like a real Sony digital camera. The Satio isn’t a slouch when it comes to video either, using a LED video light to capture video after dark.

The Satio is an all-rounder, with full music support in addition to the outstanding camera. With a built-in FM radio, plus all the usual Sony gadgets like TrackID and album art, this has the potential to replace your MP3 player, although we’re disappointed to see that once again Sony have missed off a 3.5mm headphone jack, so you’re stuck with the supplied headphones or a Bluetooth headset. We’re also a bit miffed that the memory is limited to 128 MB, which is peanuts for a phone of this calibre. Of course you can use the microSD card slot to store your photos and music, but rival smartphones commonly have gigabytes of memory built in nowadays. I guess that we should be grateful that Sony Ericsson has bowed to pressure and made the Satio microSD compatible, instead of forcing their own proprietary Memory Sticks on us.

The Satio is packed with all kinds of other goodies, such as aGPS with Google Maps, a good web browser with fast HSDPA downloading, email support with Exchange ActiveSync and WiFi support. The battery power is not so great. With a huge TFT screen, GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth in action this shouldn’t be a surprise. Turn off the features that you don’t need to save juice.

So, it should be clear that the Satio is Sony Ericsson’s blockbuster phone. It’s got the lot, and now that the bugs have been fixed, it can rightly take its place as one of the best mobile phones currently available. We’re not giving it 5 stars just yet though. Just in case. One final note: most of the user reviews below were written in the days of the “old” Satio. You can read more recent Sony Ericsson Satio reviews at our partner website, RecommendedBuys UK.

Features of the Sony Ericsson Satio include:

• 12.1 megapixel camera with xenon flash, touch autofocus, face detection, smile detection, 16x digital zoom, BestPic, image stabiliser, geo-tagging, photo fix and red eye reduction
• Video camera with video light / video calling
• Touchscreen display: TFT, 16 million colours, 640 x 360 pixels (3.5 inches) with auto rotation
• Media player with PlayNow and TrackID support
• FM radio
• MP3/AAC ringtones
• Speakerphone
• aGPS with Google Maps
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email with Exchange ActiveSync
• 3D Java games
• Picture wallpaper
• Symbian OS
• Memory: 256 MB RAM plus 128MB flash memory plus microSD memory card
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB mass storage, WiFi, modem
• Internet: EDGE, 3G HSDPA, web browser, RSS feeds, YouTube support
• Flight mode
• Vibration alert
• Quadband GSM plus dual band 3G HSDPA
• Size: 112 x 55 x 13 mm
• Weight: 126g
• Talktime: 5 hours (3G) – 11 hours (2G)
• Battery standby: 340 – 360 hours