The best part is that these cameras have a nice little animation to make sure that kids don’t refrain from staring at the camera and also give their brightest smiles to the lens. Both, the Samsung ST550 and ST500 are expected to be out in Singapore by the end of this month.
Mobile Phones and Electronic Gadgets News, Previews, Reviews, Photo Galleries and Video
Monday, August 17, 2009
Digital Camera: Samsung ST550 and ST500
LG Cookie and Lollipop phones available in new colors
Surely, this indicates that LG has been concentrating on improvements to existing versions of their phones, in addition to putting in some new releases. Nice!
BenQ V2200 Eco- World’s first 21.5” LED widescreen monitor
The energy-efficient, mercury-free LED panels of the BenQ V Series Eco consume approximately 36% less power than traditional CCFL displays. Additionally, the new models are lighter (-14.6%) and thinner (-21.2%) than CCFL displays of comparable screen size, which saves on packaging (+56%) and affords more efficient shipping.The BenQ V2400 Eco and V2200 Eco are certified TCO 5.0, RoHS, EnergySTAR 4.1, EuP Energy, PC3R, and EPEAT Gold, and will be certified advanced EnergySTAR 5.0 in Nov ‘09. The two new displays will be available worldwide starting in China mid-August.
Nokia Announces Three New Budget Phones: Nokia 7020 Flip, Nokia 2730 Classic and Nokia 2720 Fold
Nokia has announced their latest release in Finland on 18th May 2009. Surprisingly all the three newbies are mid-budget models, yet fully loaded with hi-end features. The best part of these newcomers is the comparatively lower price; all of them come with less than $135 price tag without any contract. These newfangled gadgets are dubbed Nokia 7020 Mobile Phone, Nokia 2720 Mobile Phone and Nokia 2730 Mobile Phone. Let us go, take a brief glance into these fresh units!!!
Nokia 7020 Flip Mobile Phone is the cute clamshell model that comes in hot pink and graphite shades. It sports a 2MP camera, speaker phone and a competent music player too. This compact mobile phone comes with GPRS and EDGE Technology to avail good connectivity. Nokia Maps are pre-loaded in this handset to avail GPS functionalities. Apart from the charger and connectivity cable, one gets a 2GB micro SD card along with this mobile phone.
Voice commands is realised in this mobile phone to make things easy and faster. This hand-held unit also features a personal organiser and wireless web browser. Messaging and e-mailing is quite simpler with 7020 flipper mobile phone! Moreover it is a quad band phone, and comes with 2.2” TFT display. In this cell phone one can organise the mails or text messages without any hassle with a single gentle tap in the secondary screen.
Nokia 2730 Classic Mobile Phone is the top scale version among the freshly launched trio. The major high spot of this unit is the 3G Support, that helps to provide fast internet access. It helps one to stay connected with the network anytime; moreover an affordable 3G phone may excite many of us, especially social media obsessives!!! This quad band GSM phone is capable of supporting all the four WCDMA bands, which makes it a “truely global” device. This mobile sports 2 MP camera, PC syncing, personal organiser and lots more exciting features.
GPS with Nokia Maps is yet another interesting feature of this handset. This candybar model is bluetooth compatible, and also sports a 3.5mm audio jack. Although 2GB memory card is provided with this gizmo, one can up the memory of this unit with the help of microSD cards. It also features a speaker phone, simple texting and e-mailing, an efficient music player and a wireless web browser as well.
Nokia 2720 Fold Mobile Phone takes us back to the flip-phone world. Nokia has taken the bold step of adding luxury to the entry level mobile phones; 2720 clamshell phone is one good example for it. Although it is a basic phone, it sports all major features like EDGE, GPRS, Nokia LifeTools, Ovi Mails, etc. The rich glossy finish dubbed “mirror effect design” adds dashing elegance to this mobile phone. The secondary display disguises as a smart glossy mirror, and with a soft touch in the side volume key it will spring back to life to display the calls and mails.
Available in two different colours(Deep Red and Plain Black), this smart device features 1.3MPcamera, a wireless web browser, Bluetooth, a music player, FM Radio, voice recorder, speaker phone, and also gives easy access to the useful info like agricultural tips and educational services without accessing the internet. Moreover it can operate in both the dual band versions named GSM 850/1900 and GSM900/1800. This mobile phone is mainly focusing the emerging markets in rural communities.
These newbies are expected to be available all over the world by third quarter of 2009.
Video: Browsing Speed Comparison Nokia N97 vs iPhone 3GS
Comparison video between Nokia N97 vs iPhone 3GS, comparing the web browsing speed on their built-in browser.
I guess i’ve posted many comparison videos between these smartphones here. So, you guys can always hit a search to see the other videos.
Anyways, let’s check out this video.
Fujifilm V1 3D photo viewer releasing this month
Video: HTC Hero vs iPhone 3GS
What’s up guys! Here’s another comparison videos for us to enjoy. This time is between HTC Hero vs iPhone 3GS, and these nice videos are from the phonedog team.
Curious about the result from these two? Let’s jump in and enjoy the videos.
Comparison Part 1
LG BL40 Chocolate Black Label Photos
Nokia Surge 6760 Photos
First of, i think i’ve made a mistake on this phone’s name. Before this one got official, i’ve known this device as the Nokia 6790 Surge. But after Nokia announced this phone, it’s called the Nokia 6760 Surge eversince. So, i’m really sorry for that.
Okay, back to the device. Here are some new live photos of the Nokia 6760 Surge.
New Music Phone from Nokia - The Nokia 5320 Xpress Music
The newly launched music centered handsets from Nokia — the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic. The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is a Symbian S60 smartphone, while the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic is a S40 UI candybar musicphone with an untraditionally design.
The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic features a new application called “Say and Play”, which is a voice controlled feature. With this feature, users will only need to say the artist’s name then the phone will search and play the track. It’s actually a cool feature. What’s more is the SMS reader, which will do a text-to-speech to your sms.
Not only on music, the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic also focused on mobile-gaming. For the purpose, an optimized 8-way D-Pad and 2″ 16M TFT color display at QVGA resolution are packed to give a great gaming experience. And also, the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is armed with a 2 megapixel camera (no auto-focus) and a microUSB port. In addition, it’s pre-installed with Yahoo! Go, Yahoo! Messenger, Flash Lite 3.0 support, Windows Live, Flickr, etc
The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic will start selling in Q3 2008 at around 220euro, available in Black-Blue and Black-Red color version.
Here’s a quick review video of The Nokia 5320 Xpress Music
Nokia 5220 Xpress Music Phone Review and Video
The newly launched music centered handsets from Nokia — the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic. While the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is a Symbian S60 smartphone, the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic is a S40 UI candybar musicphone with an untraditionally design.
Though it’s not as smart as its brother — the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic — the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic offers a unique asymmetrical shape design on its clean-smooth slim body at only 10.55 thick.
And ofcourse, being a music oriented device, the Nokia 5220 XpressMusic is packed with lots of cool features; including the light-effects that pulse rhytmically with the music, a 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth with A2DP profile, FM radio, microSD card-slot which can be use to expand the storage space up to 2GB for your music and videos, some dedicated music keys, also a powerful battery promising up to 24 hours of music playing.
The Nokia 5220 XpressMusic is also armed with a 2 megapixel camera, 2″ QVGA 262k TFT color display, and microUSB port. But there’s more! An organic wallpaper that will automatically changes based on the time of the day. And oh! It’s pre-installed with Yahoo! Go, Yahoo! Ready and Opera mini which support for flash website. I believe all of you guys love YouTube, right?
Nokia 5220 XpressMusic is scheduled to hit the market in Q3 2008, at around 160euro (before subsidies and taxes).
Check the review video below.
* * * * * *
Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 now Available
The highly discussed Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 — a WindowsMobile 6.1 based PocketPC — is finally available.
This high-end device from Sony Ericsson sports a 3″ WVGA touch-screen display at 800×480 pixel resolution, along with the optical joystick for navigation, and almost all of todays-must-have connectivity features are packed inside the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1; including the Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G with HSDPA-HSUPA support, Bluetooth with A2DP profile, FM radio, Media-player, 3.5mm audio jack, and more are on-board.
Check out these live pictures of the XPERIA X1.
With that sweet slide-out QWERTY keyboard, typing is unmatchedly great.
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 armed with a 3.2 megapixel camera, and comes with 400MB internal memory which is expandable via microSD cardslot. Powered by a Qualcomm 7200A 528MHZ CPU and supported by 128MB of RAM.
Nokia Trio - Nokia 6600 Fold, Nokia 6600 Slide and Nokia 3600 Slide
Nokia has just launced their new Trio mobilephone, bringing the motto “Beautiful to Use”. And they are: the Nokia 6600 Fold - the Nokia 6600 Slide - the Nokia 3600 Slide; which all of them designed exclusively and built from great materials with nice features.
Okay, let’s have the first. The Nokia 6600 Fold is a clamshell device which considered as the flagship among the three, offering a smooth one-click opening mechanism (using a dampened hinge), and also packed with a 2.13 OLED display support to 16 million color in QVGA resolution, and a 2 megapixel snapper with a dual LED flash. The material is a rather unusual, combining a smooth back and glossy front.
The Nokia 6600 Fold is a quad-band device with 3G support, and runs on S40 UI. With a support of microSD cardslot, users will able to expand the storage space up to 4GB for their multimedia collections.
Nokia 6600 Fold is planted with an accelerometer, which allow users to double-tap it to snooze an alert, to silence or even to reject a call. In standby, a double-tap on the Nokia 6600 Fold with wake-up the clock in the hidden external display (128×160 pixel). Check out the video below to see more of it.
This unique clamshell device planned to start selling in Q3 2008 at price of 275 euro, available in Mysterious-Black and Sophisticated-Purple color version.
Here it goes our second. The Nokia 6600 Slide only shares the well-known 6600’s name, but not the smartphone function.
Offering a unique double-tap features just like the 6600 Fold, and also an unusual material combination of glossy and steel surface.
Features a 2.2″ TFT 16M color display at QVGA resolution, a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, FM radio, Bluetooth, and microUSB port.
In term on connectivity, the Nokia 6600 Slide supports 3G, great for video-calls.
The Nokia 6600 Slide will start selling in Q3 2008 at price of 250 euro.
And the last one here is the Nokia 3600 Slide.
This slider has high gloss finish and gradated colors plus some metallics on its surfaces. Packed with QVGA 2.2″ TFT color display, a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera, 2.5mm audio jack which doubles as a TV-out port, microSD card slot supports up to 4GB of additional storage, and Bluetooth.
Unfortunately, there will be no 3G support on this device.
A nice feature of the Nokia 3600 Slide is the background noise cancellation, giving an incredible sound quality.
The Nokia 3600 Slide is scheduled to start selling in Q3 this year at price of 175 euro, available in Wine and Charcoal color variant.
Nokia N82 Review
The Nokia N82, newest entry of N-series device which comes in a traditional candybar form factor, was proudly announced recently by Nokia. Armed with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera along with a Xenon flash, an integrated GPS receiver, WiFi, Bluetooth, HSDPA support, and more features packed inside its solid-silver body - build mainly to match the N95 8GB flagship.
Coming in the most popular form-factor, candy-bar, the Nokia N82 have an advantage which other form-factor don’t have.
The traditional candybar form-factor are known as the most solid and strongest one, capable to stand up to drops - pressure - or any other abuse. In this case, we can’t or maybe don’t need to doubt the strength constructed on the Nokia N82’s body.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Review: Acer Aspire One 751
Review Summary
The Acer Aspire One 751 excels in most areas making it an excellent all-round 11.6” mini-netbook. Great bright, high resolution display, excellent sound quality, large keyboard and 5.5-6.5 hours of battery life. The only major downside is the slow Atom Z520 processor.
If it had a more integrated battery that didn’t stick out and had an Atom Z530 processor (at least), it would easily become the best mini-notebook ever.
Pros
- Plays 1080P HD video (certain files)
- Good battery life at 5.5 - 6.5 hours.
- Excellent sound quality
- Large keyboard
- Bright 1366 x 768 Display
- Silent (
Fanless- I’ve been told there’s a small fan in here) - Easily Upgradable
Cons
- Gets very warm, maybe even hot.
- Atom Z520 processor feels sluggish (outside of web browsing)
- 6-Cell Battery juts out, is ugly.
- Linux unfriendly
Introduction
The Acer Aspire One 751 is the first 11.6-inch netbook, or mini-notebook as I like to call anything larger than 10-inch, to hit the market. The main issue with the 751 is the relatively slow Atom Z520 processor used. Is it fast enough?
There’s now the ASUS Eee PC 1101HA Seashell and the Gateway LT3100 series netbook on the 11.6-inch market now, and I will test the 1101HA in a few weeks to see how that compares to the 751 but for now lets take a good look at the 751.
Technical Specs
Memory, OS and battery specs are going to vary. Some models have Windows Vista Home Basic, some have 3-cell batteries. You want to get the XP models, not Vista Home Basic.
- 11.6” 1366 x 768 (16:9 Ratio) Glossy LED backlit Display (200 nits)
- Atom Z520 (1.33GHz) Processor
- Intel US15W Chipset + GMA 500 Graphics
- 1GB RAM (2GB max)
- 0.3MP Webcam
- 160GB HDD (2.5” SATA)
- Stereo Speakers, Dolby Headphone
- 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 10/100 Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
- 6-Cell Battery (5200mAh, 54Wh)
- 5-in-1 Card Reader, 3x USB 2.0, 1x VGA, Audio Jacks, Kensington Lock, RJ45
- 284 x 198 x 25.4 mm Dimensions
- 1.37 kg / 3.0 lbs Weight (6-Cell battery weighs 325g)
- Windows XP Home SP3
As with all other Acer netbooks, there’s no recovery DVD, but there is a recovery partition on your HDD, so make a backup!
Layout
On the left: LAN port, power plug, 2x USB, audio and microphone head jacks. Labels on top of the chassis is a great touch. I don’t need to fumble around figuring out which audio jack is which.
On the right: VGA out, kensington lock, 1x USB and card reader.
On the front: A switch for Bluetooth and one for Wi-Fi.
On the back. You have your battery, which juts if you have a 6-cell battery. I find this rather ugly, but your opinion may differ. There’s a SIM card slot for 3G enabled models. Mine is a dummy since 3G models are not available in Japan. I don’t think they’re available in the US just yet either.
Opening up the device: Power button on the top right, with LED status indicators next to it.
One the screen bezel at the top is the webcam, with a microphone to the left of that.
Upgradability
Excellent. Access panels for everything. You have access panels for the hard drive, RAM and Wireless card. Unfortunately, I’m unable to open them due to warranty stickers covering all the screws, which is pretty disgusting and shocking. (Japan only).
I’m only able to open the Wireless card slot and it looks like there’s room for one more card:
Size & Weight
In terms of weight, if you’ve ever handled an ASUS Eee PC 1000H/HE/HA, then this is how the Acer Aspire One 751 pretty much weighs in terms of weight, though, with the 6-cell at least, it is heavier.
Now, I am really surprised by the size of the Acer Aspire One 751. It has the same footprint as the 10” ASUS Eee PC 1000HE (with a 3-cell battery) except the 751 is a tad wider. (there was a YouTube video comparing the two). The 751 is very thin, more so than the 1000HE. The 751 has no trouble fitting into my 10-inch non-stretchable Zeroshock sleeve with some room to spare.
Also, if you take a look at the screen bezel it’s extremely thin especially at the sides which tells you Acer have tried to keep the 751 as small as possible.
Power brick is small, but do you have a thick power cable which makes up most of the bulk.
Keyboard
The 751 has a roomier keyboard than you would find on any 10-inch netbook and it is much easier to type on too. Nice to see the keyboard take up the full space on the chassis, with no wasted space.
No shrunk down keys, apart from the cursor keys. The keys are flattish and somewhat similar in style to the keyboards found on the HP Mini and Dell Mini netbooks.
Though, tactile feedback wise it’s not the best keyboard and I feel like it’s lacking something. Maybe deeper key presses.. I’m not sure. I’ve seen some reviews mention flex in the keyboard, but have noticed very little and I absolutely hate keyboard flex, even just a little.
Overall, a very good improvement over any 10-inch netbook keyboard.
Display
The 751 display is glossy and very bright. Just seems like any other netbook with a glossy display, really. I don’t notice anything different, except the HIGHER RESOLUTION. 1366 x 768 pixels on this 11.6” display.
This makes the netbook a joy to use! I do get frustrated sometimes with the puny 1024x600 resolution you get on 10-inch netbooks. Also, the dot pitch is perfect and I don’t have to squint or lean in closely like you have to on 8.9-inch netbooks. It’s all very comfortable. This is one of the main reasons to get this mini-notebook.
I did wish the brightness could be lowered a little more at the lowest level for pitch dark rooms, but having a lamp on nearby helped alot in reducing eye strain.
Here are some pictures of Firefox webpages in normal and fullscreen mode (Hulu and Digg) on the display:
Have a look below at how far the lid goes back:
Touchpad & Buttons
I find the touchpad decently sized, after you max out the movement. Surface feels good and slick. Scrolling on the right edge is extremely responsive. The best I’ve used on a netbook. There are also pinch and swipe gestures which work okay, I wouldn’t say super responsive like with the scrolling though.
The button is a single rocker bar and is average for a netbook, a bit stiff and noisy but not ultra stiff like on the old Eee PC netbooks (1000H/901) that had the silver buttons. I haven’t had any problems with it.
Noise
Extremely quiet. Even in a quiet room. I can’t even recall ever hearing a fan, but checking right now, I see that it is fanless! No wonder. The cannot hear the buzz and clicking of the hard drive unless I put my ear against the keyboard. Excellent. The 751 joins of super quiet, fanless netbooks. Being fanless it does have me worried about heat though.
Heat
So, the 751 is fanless and I have noticed that the 751 gets extremely warm, dare I say, hot? The hottest netbook / mini-notebook I’ve layed my hands on. Even if the 751 is just left idling for a couple of hours the bottom gets very warm. Might be an issue if you are running the CPU at 100% for hours on end, though for most people I don’t see this as much of an issue, unless you place it on a bare lap where it will get uncomfortable. For me, I’d take fanless over a little heat anyday of the week.
Webcam and Microphone
I made a business Skype call with audio only and the whole ordeal went smoothly. Oh boy, the microphone is one of the best I’ve used on a netbook and was extremely sensitive without picking up noise. This meant I didn’t have to put my mouth right up to the speaker and shout like I have to do on some other netbooks. Some netbooks have really poor microphones that will barely pick up anyone’s voice.
The webcam is also excellent, producing a great image even in low-light situations, which is pretty much my whole apartment even during the brightest of days.
Audio
I am really amazed by the sound quality on the 751, both the speakers and through the headphones, which is powered by DOLBY HEADPHONE technology.
The dolby headphone technology is kind of like an equalizer applied to the sound, like you’re listening to the sound in a hall or something. Usually I hate these kind of equalizers and never use them but here it works extremely well.
Speaker sound is excellent. This has the best sound quality I’ve heard on a netbook / mini-notebook, or at the very least joins the top rank in terms of sound quality. Excellent clarity and bass. The sound comes out of speakers on the bottom left and right sides, so placing it on a surface can reduce the volume ever so slightly and really helps to introduce more bass.
Battery Life
I have the 6-cell 5200mAh, 54Wh battery.
First I did some benchmark testing:
5/10 brightness, Wifi OFF, Bluetooth OFF and Sound 50%
6:22 - Batter Eater Classic
6:19 - Battery Eater Classic (overclocked)
5:50 - Looped 480P movies
Then, actual real life usage:
5/10 Brightness, Wifi ON, Sound 50%, Bluetooth OFF
6:03 - Web browsing mixed in with YouTube viewing. (Windows XP)
Overall, I think on most occasions you will get 5.5 - 6.5 hours out of the 6-cell battery, on a single charge, which is very good, though many hours behind netbooks with the best battery life. None of them are 11-inchers though.
Performance
Now, this is the big one. How does the Acer Aspire One 751 perform with the measly Atom Z520 processor? Note, I only had 1GB of RAM through the whole review. Windows 7 may become faster with 2GB of RAM. I don’t know.
For general use, performance is acceptable if slow. That is with Windows XP though. I find performance on Windows 7 to be a tad slower, but that is due to the graphical effects of the GUI, once you turn those off, it’s much more responsive. I keep Aero off, it’s just too slow even with the latest GMA500 graphics driver that was released this month (June). The latest driver in use, in Windows 7, is glitchy but usable. (Window redraw issues)
When opening up several programs at the same time or just in general trying to work with several programs at the same time, the Acer Aspire One 751 slows down to a crawl. You can really feel the slowless of the Atom Z520 processor on these occasions.
Windows XP performs the best in terms of performance.
Overall, I can get by with the Acer Aspire One 751’s performance, but only just. If I were on the market for another netbook / mini-notebook, I would be really hesitant to pick up another with the Atom Z520 processor, but given that these 11.6-inch mini-notebooks have a 1366x768 display makes the decision very difficult.
1080P HD Video
It’s great to know that the Poulsbo chipset can handle 1080P video and the Acer Aspire One 751 is no exception. It handles 720P video flawlessly and certain 1080P HD videos are a piece of cake. I will cover this in a how-to article shortly following this review (and I’ll link it here).
Overclocking
You can slightly boost the CPU frequency without having too much an impact on battery life. (see above battery life benchmarks). Following advice over on the AspireOneUser forums, I am able to overclock from the default 1330 MHz up to a stable 1449 MHz. I don’t perceive any improvement on speed though. Feels the same. I’ll cover this in a separate article, following this.