BlackBerry Z10 review

BlackBerry Z10 review

The BlackBerry Z10 is the first handset from the company formerly known as RIM, now renamed BlackBerry, to run its new operating system BlackBerry 10, and there's much more on the line here than simply making a few pennies – arguably the company's survival rests on the success of this device and the BlackBerry Q10.

It's no secret that BlackBerry has been on the rocks for the past year or so, with the company even admitting that it hasn't been in the best shape of late, and the 4G toting Z10 is the start of what is hoped to be a successful revolution.

Since its launch a few months ago the BlackBerry Z10 has received a software update which has seen things become more stable, plus the app store has also witnessed some new arrivals, so we've taken the time to update the keys parts of our review with the latest information.

In the UK the handset has witnessed a slight price drop since launch and you can pick up the Z10 free on contracts starting at £32 per month, while you'll need to fork out a still princely £470 if you want it SIM-free.

The US was only treated to the BlackBerry Z10 in late March, available for around $199.99 on contract and about $630 SIM-free.

Sporting a 4.2-inch 1280 x 768 display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and its steep price tag, the BlackBerry Z10 finds itself jostling for position with the Nokia Lumia 920, Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5

Lock eyes on the BlackBerry Z10 and you'll notice it's an unassuming slab of black glass and plastic that mimics the general aesthetical design of many a smartphone these days.

The Z10 is a little bezel-heavy with a sizable gap above and below the screen, and that's before we even get to the additional plastic chunks stuck on both ends of the handset.

It all seems a little unnecessary but luckily it doesn't make the BlackBerry Z10 overly cumbersome, with the handset measuring a comfortable 130 x 65.6 x 9mm (5.1 x 2.6 x 0.4 inches).

Weight wise the BlackBerry Z10 finds a happy medium – weighing 137.5g (4.85 oz), it's nowhere near as heavy as the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, yet it's not as feather light as the iPhone 5.

*We liked

The BlackBerry Z10 is a decent all round phone sporting a pleasing 4.2-inch HD display, a camera which can take some good shots and a messaging hub which could be the envy of some other platforms.

Web browsing deserves a special mention as we were seriously impressed with the speed of the BlackBerry Z10 when it came to loading pages.

It's great to see a free mapping and navigation solution on board the Z10, even though it may not be the best service on the market.

The expandable storage, removable battery and Adobe Flash support are all small wins for the Z10 and will help as it tries to stand out in a crowded market.

*We disliked

The jury is still out on BlackBerry 10. On one hand it's great to see an exciting new operating system but on the other it's a completely new learning curve for everyone, and some may not be willing to learn.

BB 10 came across a little confusing a times, with the lack of a clear back button leading us to question how we return to the previous screen, while gestures took some time to fully grasp.

As the BlackBerry Z10 is set to be the flagship phone for BlackBerry and its new BB10 platform, we were a little disappointed with its obviously plastic case, which doesn't exactly exude premium quality.

BlackBerry said that the BB10 keyboard is the best typing experience on a touchscreen smartphone, but we weren't bowled over by the offering on the Z10.

It's a perfectly serviceable option, but in our eyes it doesn't quite hit the mark in the same way as the likes of SwiftKey on Android.

The lack of apps in BlackBerry World will remain a concern until we see the big hitters turn up, while some of the stock BlackBerry 10 apps seemed to lack features such as the camera, music and video applications.

Final verdict

The Z10 is a decent smartphone offering up a strong range of features and a fancy new operating system that may catch the eye of the technologically adventurous.

It does pretty much everything we'd expect from a high-end device and there are no major flaws to go running to the presses about.

That said, the Z10 also lacks any killer selling points. It's hard to find reasons why we'd recommend this over say the iPhone 5, Sony Xperia Z or Nokia Lumia 920 - all of which are around the same price as the Z10.

Things haven't been helped by the Samsung Galaxy S3 getting a healthy price cut after the announcement of the Galaxy S4, meaning the more powerful, bigger screened and featured packed handset is now £100 cheaper than the Z10.

The unproven operating system and severe lack of headlining applications will turn a lot of consumers off at point of sale, and it's the image of the BlackBerry brand as a whole which needs to be worked on fast if it stands a chance of winning back the hearts of the general public.

The BlackBerry Z10 has the weight of a whole company on its plastic shoulders. It's holding up, but we're not sure for how long

Via : http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/blackberry-z10-1128348/review posted from Bloggeroid

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HTC Windows Phone 8X review

The HTC Windows Phone 8X breaks into a Windows Phone 8 market that has been dominated by Nokia since the OS was released last October. In fact, HTC is the only other major manufacturer to have sent us a Microsoft-based handset in that time.

It was well worth the wait, though, because the 8X makes a fantastic first impression. It's built using the same manufacturing process as HTC’s One X range of handsets, and the polycarbonate shell used for the 8X looks superb: the gently contoured rear curves around the phone’s edges to create a border for the screen, and it’s finished in a comfortable soft-touch plastic, which is available in four colours (blue, black, yellow and red).

Build quality is on a par with the Nokia Lumia 820, which until now was our favourite Windows Phone 8 handset. Significantly, though, the HTC is 30g lighter, at 130g.

It’s a strong start, but it’s not all good news: the sealed polycarbonate shell prevents access to any of the internals, so there’s no way to replace the battery. There’s no microSD card for expanding the storage, either.

The 8X has the same size screen as the Lumia, but it packs in more pixels: a resolution of 720 x 1,280 is squeezed into its 4.3in diagonal. It impresses elsewhere, too: the 8X’s 366cd/m2 maximum brightness is higher than the Nokia’s 301cd/m2, and, although the Nokia’s AMOLED screen means it has better contrast and highly saturated colours, we prefer the more natural tones of the HTC’s IPS panel.

Another similarity between the 8X and the Nokia is the CPU. Both are powered by a dual-core, 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Plus, which means an impressive SunSpider score of 913ms and excellent real-world performance. The HTC coped well with top-end games – Asphalt 7 and Mirror’s Edge ran without a hitch – and the Windows Phone 8 UI was responsive and smooth. There was a slight judder when switching from the homescreen to the app list, but we noticed this on the Lumia also.

The Windows Phone 8 app situation is slowly improving, too. Spotify has now been released for the platform, and the BBC has confirmed it’s working on a version of iPlayer that’s optimised for the Windows Phone 8 browser. There’s still no sign of Instagram or Dropbox, however.

As for the rest of the specification, there’s dual-band 802.11n wireless and NFC, 1GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage, twice the capacity of the Nokia. The 8-megapixel camera is excellent, too, producing far sharper snaps than the Lumia 820, with better contrast and colour reproduction.

The HTC 8X’s one weakness is battery life. Its 1,800mAh power pack had 50% of its capacity left after our 24-hour run-down test, which is below average for a modern smartphone. That said, the Lumia 820 is no better.

Of the two phones, then, the HTC is the clear winner. Its screen has a higher resolution, the camera is superior, its exterior is sturdy and appealing and it’s lighter. If you want a Windows Phone 8 device, HTC’s Windows Phone 8 flagship is our new favourite.

Via: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/smartphones/380482/htc-windows-phone-8xposted from Bloggeroid

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HTC Windows Phone 8S review

At first sight the HTC Windows Phone 8S looks almost identical to its more expensive cousin, the Windows Phone 8X. Both have brightly coloured, soft-touch rubberised cases that feel robust and very well-made, but there are some important differences.

The 8S comes in a variety of colour-combinations such as blue and dark grey or yellow and light grey. A small rear panel slides off the pack giving easy access to the micro SIM card and micro SD memory card slots. The latter is useful for bolstering the built-in 4GB of storage and is a feature missing from the pricier 8X.

Our small hands appreciated the more compact dimensions of the 8S. This is thanks to the 4in screen which makes the 8S easier to hold and use single handed compared to smartphones with bigger displays. The downside is that HTC has opted for a relatively low-resolution of 800x480 pixels, but it's still bright and reasonably crisp.

Call quality in central London on the Vodafone network was clear with little distortion. The built-in noise-cancelling microphones managed to filter out the background noise of a busy West End road so that it was barely audible to the person on the other end of the line.

Even better was the battery life. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the 8S lasted nearly 30 hours when used for making a few calls, navigating using GPS and browsing the web over both Wi-Fi and 3G. This is roughly six hours longer than many more expensive smartphones.

Apart from a few occasional slow-downs the Windows Phone 8 interface and various apps felt smooth and responsive thanks to the 1GHz dual core processor. We suspect the slow-downs may be due to the relatively meagre 512MB of memory. This may prove troublesome when running especially apps, such as games, in the future. More expensive smartphones have at least 1GB. We also suspect the relatively small amount of memory is responsible for the web browser's inability to have than a handful of tabs open at the same time. This makes tabbed browsing more irritating to use for heavy web surfers.

Photos taken in low-light using the five-megapixel rear camera are far too blurry and smeared to be of any use. Photos of landscapes and buildings taken in daylight were better, although finer details were still lost. Portraits needed lots of light to produce acceptable results - otherwise lots of noise crept into the image producing unrealistic looking skin tones. Overall, a rather average smartphone camera at best.

HTC have made surprisingly few compromises with the Windows Phone 8S making it a good alternative to inexpensive Android smartphones like HTC's own One V. Although Android has a wider selection of apps, Windows Phone 8 is slowly catching up with new releases such as Spotify and the 8S feels more responsive and faster than many cheap Android phones. Overall the HTC Windows Phone 8S is a good budget smartphone.

*Good points

Inexpensive; Colourful and sturdy; Long battery life; Good call quality

*Bad points

Relatively low resolution screen; Low amount of memory; So-so camera

*Suggested price

£216 without contract

Via: http://www.computeractive.co.uk/ca/review/2252195/htc-windows-phone-8s-review posted from Bloggeroid

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HTC One review

Disclaimer: After this review was published we received an email from a third party (not HTC) saying that our HTC One sample was not running final software. We have contacted HTC's UK PR team to find out when the final software will be available and what changes it will contain, and will update the review when we have this information and have tested the handset with the new software build.
We encountered no problems with functionality or performance when testing the handset.Last year it was 720p, now Full HD 1080p screens are becoming the norm on top-end smartphonesThe HTC One wins out when it comes to web browsing performance. It has a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, and completed our Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in a super-fast 1,123ms. This is far faster than the 1,890ms we saw from the Xperia Z, but we think much of this is down to the speed of the Xperia Z's browser. For comparison, we ran the same test using the fast Dolphin browser, and the HTC One remained ahead of the Xperia Z with a score of 1,120ms compared to 1,357ms.This difference was borne out in our subjective web browsing tests. Both phones rendered graphics heavy web pages at a similar speed, but when zoomed in and panning around a web page, the Xperia Z would stutter when coming across a large image – a problem we didn’t have with the HTC One.Luckily, HTC has provided a huge 2,300mAh battery to power the fast processor and bright screen. The handset managed 8h 32m in our continuous video playback test, which is a strong result and bodes well for all-day battery life.A now a few quick thoughts, now that we've got the HTC One away from the show floors and into a more intimate setting. (We've turned down the lights and lit a few candles for this guy.)
Know that startup noise you get when turning on a phone for the first time? The HTC One just about blows you away. That's the first sign of how good these speakers are.It's going to take a little used to reaching to the top left to turn the power off and on. That's user error, though. Not the phone's fault.I'm pretty quickly digging the new font in Sense 5.Damn, it feels good in the hand.Super LCD 3 display -- should be on every smartphone.This is a European version, so no AT&T LTE, but HSPA works just fine. If you're worried about BlinkFeed getting in the way of a more standard Android experience, don't be. One quick swipe and you're at the usual home screen.Speaking of BlinkFeed, I quickly get the feeling that the key is going to be not overloading it with feeds. Find what's really important and stick with it.Still not sold on the home button being in the bottom right, but figuring it out for Google Now and multitasking is simple enough.I've yet to try to tap the HTC logo. But that's because I'm consciously reminding myself that it's not a button.Wondering how long it takes me to scratch up the aluminum body. Gotta go play with that camera now.via; http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-one-house

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LG Optimus G Pro mini review

The LG Optimus G Pro is, shall we say, inspired by the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Let's just get that part over with. There's absolutely no way not to see it, nor has LG really done anything to make us want to think otherwise. One begat the other. End of story.I've never been a huge fan of the larger Android smartphones. That's not to say there's not a place for them (there is), and that's not to say they haven't sold well (in Samsung's case, they've sold very well). But they've always been just too wide for me. And the display resolution never did it for me, given the size of the screen itself. (We'll save the whole pen input thing for another time.) But after getting an intimate, sit-down look at the Optimus G Pro in a restaurant in Barcelona, Spain, well away from the bustle of the show floor, it started to grow on me. Maybe it was the wine (I don't think so). Maybe it was meat (possible). Maybe it was the flashing neon ringing the home button. (OBEY.)Chipset: 1.7GHz Quad-Core Qualcomm? Snapdragon™ 600 ProcessorRAM: 2GB DDRMemory: 32GB / microSD (up to 32GB)Display: 5.5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels / 400ppi)Camera: Rear 13.0MP with LED Flash / Front 2.1MPOS: Android 4.1.2 Jelly BeanBattery: 3,140mAh (removable / wireless charging capable)Size: 150.2 x 76.1 x 9.4mm As is the case these days, we're working with a customized version of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean.via; http://www.androidcentral.com/lg-optimus-g-pro-mini-review

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