Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 30, 2011
Hands-On With Motorola’s @$#%ing Atrix Superphone
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LAS VEGAS Motorola in a Wednesday press conference introduced the Atrix, its first smartphone armed with a dual-core processor. Then the company opened a demo booth showing off the Atrix but refused to allow press to touch it.
I managed to score some hands-on time with the Atrix, but only after dropping several F-bombs, grabbing my camera away from an over-zealous product manager who put his paw over the lens, and nearly throwing a fist.
Eventually, a manager put in a phone call and gave me clearance.
So I held the phone. I photographed the phone. And here are my clenched-fist impressions of Motorola’s Atrix.
For a stupid @#$%ing phone, it’s pretty awesome.
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Brian is a Wired.com technology reporter focusing on Apple and Microsoft. He’s also writing a book about the always-connected mobile future called Always On (publishing April 2011 by Da Capo).
Follow @bxchen and @gadgetlab on Twitter.
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Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on January 6, 2011
Hands-On With Apple’s New MacBook Airs
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Apple has rolled out major upgrades for its puny MacBook Air–the machine that Steve Jobs believes is the “future of notebooks.”
“We think all notebooks are going to be like this one day,” says Jobs. The new notebooks will be available in stores right away.
Wired.com had some hands-on time with the Air, which now comes in 13.3-inch and 11.6-inch models. Follow along for our impressions and photos of the devices.
The Airs are mighty light: the 13.3-inch model weighs only 2.9 pounds, and its smaller sibling weighs 2.1 pounds. Both notebooks measure 0.68 inches at their thickest point and 0.11 inches at their thinnest point. The experience of holding one of these notes isn’t much different from the previous Air, however.
Immediately you’ll notice that launching an app is extremely fast on both of these notebooks, thanks to the usage of flash storage.
Safari launched in a fraction of a second; other apps were noticeably zippy with loading as well. The 11-inch model comes with either 64GB or 128GB flash storage, while its bigger sibling comes with 128GB or 256GB.
Other than size, a major difference is that the 13.3-inch model includes an SD card reader, while the 11-incher doesn’t.
Also, the 13.3-inch Air has a higher-resolution screen: 1440 by 900 pixels on the 13.3-inch model versus the 11-incher’s 1366 by 768 inches. For these reasons, I personally preferred the 13-inch model.
The MacBook Air costs between $1,000 and $1,600, depending on the screen size and storage capacity.
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Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 20, 2010
Windows Phone 7 Hands-On: LG Quantum, Samsung Focus, and HTC Surround
At the Windows Phone 7 event, Microsoft and AT&T have demo units of the three WP7 phones that will be available stateside next month. I had a few minutes to play with each of them; here are my first impressions.
More Windows Phone 7coverage on Gadget Lab:
A Humbled Microsoft Prepares to Boot Up Windows Phone 7
Microsoft Blends Zune Media, Xbox Live Into New Phone OS
Microsoft's Mobile Strategy Takes Aim at Apple, Google
Microsoft Tells Windows Phone 7’s App Story
LG Quantum: This is the slide-out phone with the QWERTY keyboard. It’s similar to a Blackberry phone’s layout, with two buttons on the left for “shift” and “function” (which for the most part you use to type in numbers). The hardware keyboard works very well, but I found using it in that mode a little confusing. Some apps move from portrait to landscape without a hitch. But the WP7 home screen, Marketplace and a few others don’t. In time, you could get over this guessing game; maybe users with more experience with slide-out landscapes know how to do this without a snap. The keyboard also made the phone quite thick, particularly compared to the touchscreen-only models on display.
Samsung Focus: This was by far my favorite of the three phones. It has a 4″ touchscreen with beautiful color fidelity. The three hardware buttons don’t depress, but each provide a little buzz of tactile feedback. I even found using the software keyboard and switching from portrait to landscape much easier on the Focus than on the other two phones. That extra half-inch really does make a difference — and the image quality shows off just how graceful the WP7 OS is.
HTC Surround: This was the most difficult phone to put through a full trial, simply because there weren’t games or movies available to play readily. I wasn’t able to listen to its much-touted Dolby Digital Surround speakers either. But otherwise, its interface was very similar to Samsung’s, although again with a much smaller and dimmer screen. Its three hardware buttons also had a similar tacticle feedback buzz, which the LG Quantum didn’t have.
Overall: It’s a very beautiful OS, and I think some people will find its working clean and intuitive right away. It may seem like an odd thing to get fixated on, but the landscape/portrait thing really stands out. There were plenty of times where text information trailed off the screen without wrapping in portrait mode, but you couldn’t turn it into landscape in order to see it; you had to swipe over to the next screen. Some of the applications, like QWERTY typing and gaming, seem built for landscape, but the primary navigation mode of WP7 is definitely portrait.
It’s probably somewhere in between the iPhone and Android in terms of customization possibility. There are more options than iPhone (including plenty of easy accessibility and mulitlingual options), and they’re a little easier to find. But I thought, for instance, I might be able to change the font, which is everywhere. No dice — at least on these floor models.
I loved the Focus (iPhone/iPad users will probably find it the closest to their experience and preferences), thought the keyboard on the Quantum was very well-made (and existing slide-out users again might find it even more appealing), and was and remain intrigued by the micro-sized media experience the Surround offers. It’s an extremely solid lineup of phones; at $199.99 each, users dead-set on WP7 will just have to decide which hardware and use experience they like the best.
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Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 11, 2010
First Look: Samsung Vibrant Rips Off iPhone 3G Design
Samsung’s latest phone, the Vibrant, has the body of an iPhone and the brains of an Android.
The Vibrant’s industrial design is shockingly similar to the iPhone 3G: The rounded curves at the corners, the candybar shape, the glossy, black finish and the chrome-colored metallic border around the display. The Vibrant even has its volume and ringer buttons in almost the same spot as the iPhone 3G.
But if you are willing to get past the derivative design, the Vibrant has some sweet tech specs. The Vibrant is part of Samsung’s new portfolio of Android devices collectively called ‘Galaxy S.’
The Vibrant has a 4-inch AMOLED screen that’s bright and vivid and the 1-GHz Hummingbird processor makes the device pretty zippy. There’s GPS, Wi-Fi and a 5-megapixel camera. Overall, the phone (weighing 4.16 ounces) feels remarkably light. By comparison, the iPhone 3G weighs around 4.7 ounces.
There’s one disturbing thing about the phone. The device comes packed with apps you probably don’t need: MobiTV, GoGo Inflight internet and Electronic Arts’ The Sims 3 game. Sure, you can always delete these apps if you don’t use them, but why bundle them into the phone instead of giving users the option to download the apps if they want them? We’d hate to see bloatware start to overwhelm brand-new phones with junk the way it does with most new PCs.
The Vibrant runs version 2.1 of the Android operating system. That means access to all the standard Google apps such as maps, YouTube and e-mail. Setup, as with most Android phones, is easy — just enter your Google e-mail address and the device unlocks access to your Google account and to the Android Market.
Samsung’s skin for the Android is clean and easy to use. But the square icons are, again, very similar in their looks to the iPhone 3G’s.
Samsung has created a Social Hub widget for the device that integrates Facebook, Twitter and MySpace feeds into a single window. That has its limitations, though. For instance, it’s easy to reply and retweet messages, but you can’t see @replies or direct messages from Twitter through the widget.
Samsung’s Vibrant will cost $200 (with a two-year contract) on T-Mobile when it comes out July 21. But there’s little to make the phone notable, apart from its striking similarity to the iPhone. Without that, the Vibrant is then just another Android phone, albeit one with a pretty good screen and surprisingly light weight.
Check out the photo of the Samsung Vibrant next to the iPhone 3G below.
Photos: Stefan Armijo/Wired.com
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 15, 2010
Hands On: Dell ‘Streak’ Tablet Feels Like a Supersized Phone
Dell’s new tablet called the Streak is set to make its debut in the U.S. this summer. But while temperatures have been soaring, there’s still no sign of the device. The Streak, which was launched in the U.K. last month for 450, is expected to be available on AT&T for $500.
Dell now says it has been testing the device and hopes to have it in the hands of U.S. consumers soon. The company still won’t disclose the exact availability. Meanwhile, Gadget Lab got some hands-on time with the U.S. version of the Streak.
Nearly 30 percent thinner than the iPhone 3G S, the Streak bills itself as a tablet but also offers the option of a SIM card in it so you can make phone calls. The device includes 3G connectivity and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
Think of it as a turbocharged phone.
“The 3.5-inch to 4-inch screen devices are optimized primarily around the phone experience,” says Kevin Andrew, product manager for Dell.”The Streak is for those who want something bigger than a phone but not something so big they have to carry it separately.”
The Streak fits the bill. It is ultra-thin, lightweight (7.8 ounces) and extremely easy to use. Read on for our hands-on impression of the tablet.
The Streak’s five inch touchscreen display is just a little bigger than the latest crop of Android smartphones (HTC Evo and Droid X sport a 4.3-inch touchscreen) but significantly smaller than the iPad’s 9.7-inch display. That puts the Streak in an awkward netherworld: too big to be a phone, too small to be directly take on the iPad.
But the Streak’s 5-inch display looks much better in real life than it sounds on paper. The screen is smooth, responsive and big enough to comfortably type and access different widgets.
The device itself is ultra-thin, just 9.9 mm thick compared to the iPhone 3G’s 12.3 mm thickness and almost on par with the iPhone 4. It slips easily into your jeans or the jacket pocket and doesn’t feel awkard if you hold it up to your ear to make a phone call.
The Streak has just one 30-pin connector and no USB port.
The Streak runs Android 1.6, which seems ancient considering that Google has released Android 2.2 or Froyo.
But Dell says it has created an enhanced version of Android 1.6 that puts it almost on par with Android 2.2 or ‘Eclair.’
“If you compare Android 1.6 on the Streak to Eclair, the only feature that is missing versus Eclair is the live wallpapers,” says Andrew.
The Android experience on the Streak is very similar to what we have seen on the latest Android cellphones. The Streak supports up to six home screens. The main screen (shown above) has icons for phone, calendar, messaging, browser, maps and market among other things.
A small round dot at the top left corner of the screen acts as a shortcut to applications. Streak users can download apps from the Android market.
The Streak has a 5-megapixel camera on the back and 0.3 megapixel VGA camera in the front. It can also shoot videos upto 720p (1280 x 720 pixels resolution). Sharing photos is easy and should be familiar to most Android phone users–click on the photo, choose the share button from the virtual menu and pick Facebook, Twitter or Flickr to upload it to.
Dells also offers an accessory dock, with an HDMI output that can be connected to a TV.
The Streak will have a user-replaceable battery, internal storage of 2 GB and additional storage using a microSD card for up to 32 GB.
Overall, the Streak is an exciting, well-engineered device that should appeal to consumers who want to super-size their phone. But that’s also means its unlikely to have Apple or iPad fans quaking. The Streak seems like a tablet for a very different audience than the iPad.
Photos: Dell Streak/Priya Ganapati
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 7, 2010
Hands On With the Motorola Droid X
The new Motorola Droid X phone, with its slim profile and striking display, doesn’t set a new standard in industrial design. But what it lacks in style, it makes up for with features, including an emphasis on high-definition video recording and playback.
The $200 Droid X (after a $100 rebate and with a two-year Verizon contract) will run Googles latest Android 2.2 Froyo operating system and will include Adobe Flash Player 10.1, following an update “late summer.”
There’s one key difference between the Droid X and the original Droid: The Droid X doesn’t have a physical keyboard. Instead its 4.3-inch display makes it one of the biggest touchscreens available among smartphones today.
The Droid X’s screen is gorgeous and incredibly responsive to touch. The display has a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels compared to 800 x 480 pixels on the HTC Evo. Placed side-by-side, the Evo’s display seemed brighter and more vivid.
But the Droid X’s touchscreen is a treat. It’s extremely responsive without crossing over into the annoyingly sensitive territory.
Unlike the Evo, which has its four Android buttons (Home, Menu, Back and Search) sleekly integrated into the frame, the Droid X has four physical buttons at the bottom of the phone and it is jarring. The matte black finish of the phone gives it a dull appearance compared to the glossy shine of the Evo.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on June 23, 2010
Hands On With The New MacBooks
Mark McClusky just got to spend a bit of time playing with the new line of MacBooks. Here’s what he had to say about his experinces:
On his initial impression: They’re really beautiful pieces of hardware. The milling eliminates the plastic gasket around the front — this makes a huge difference. The MacBooks now feel sturdy and super-solid, much more polished than the plastic version.
On the Macbook Pro: It’s thinner, yes, but in actuality, just a hair wider than my old (one year old) MacBook Pro.
On the displays: They’re very bright. Colors are vibrant and pop more naturally.
On the line-up as a whole: They’ve now got the same design language across their whole line…iMac, displays, and notebooks — all with that black bezel. This is a very solid update, and a lovely design tweak. But there are no huge game changers here. They’ve galvinized a lead, and let’s face it: no one can trigger object lust like Apple.
[Editor's note: Instead of waiting for review samples to become available from Apple we're going to just purchase a top shelf MacBook and MacBook Pro. Expect a set of reviews in a few days, Labbers.]
(Photos by Jim Merithew for Wired.com)
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by admin on October 15, 2008
