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Sprint HTC Hero Review

Kaitlin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:41:24 +0000

I have mixed opinions about the HTC Hero. In theory, it’s amazing. In practice, it can use a little work.

The phone, of course, comes without a physical keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is decent, though a little more cramped than that of the iPhone. Basically, it would be disastrous without the predictive text. With the predictive text, it’s actually pretty good. With one word, I typed every letter wrong and it still knew what I meant. Impressive, right?

Then there’s the messaging. To me, messaging is the most important function of any phone. It’s all I do every day. It’s somewhat of an improvement over my last phone, as the messages are grouped together into conversations where instead of viewing one message at a time, you can see a whole thread of them. It also allows you to send messages that are more than 160 characters. There is also this really cool feature where the phone tries to guess when messages you received were sent, and insert them in the correct place on the timeline. For example, if someone sends a message a minute before you but you don’t receive it until after send yours, the phone will insert it before your message. Unfortunately, sometimes this messes up and it can be confusing because the phone will show someone answering your question before you actually asked it.

The phone includes a 5 Megapixel camera. Although it does not have a flash, it takes beautiful pictures outdoors and indoors, as long as there is enough light. This camera has autofocus, which helps eliminate blur. Sometimes the camera will bring up an error and refuse to open, but usually all you have to do is restart the phone and it will start working again.

The Hero has multitask capabilities. You can have many different programs open at once, though as other reviewers will tell you, it will start to lag if you have too many programs open.

Lag is a major problem with this phone. Even when you only have messaging and mail open, it will sometimes start to lag. Generally turning it off for a few minutes will fix this too. Most problems on this phone can be fixed with a restart.

Battery life is about as to be expected for a smartphone. If you use it heavily (such browsing YouTube for six hours straight), you might have to recharge it when you get home from work or school. Otherwise, you should be fine if you plug it in to the charger nightly.

Overall, it’s a pretty good phone. It’s multitouch and multitasking, with a beautiful camera and a fairly intuitive interface. Unfortunately, it likes to lag to the point where it takes 10 seconds for the text message to catch up to your typing. I’ve yet to decide if the delay is worth all the things it can do.

Camera Test

Quick Review of the Palm Pixi

Kyle — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:19:16 +0000

First off let me say this, I have always been a major fan of webOS. The GUI is absolutely gorgeous, and the way it handles multitasking is lightyears ahead of the rest of the market. The Pixi comes preloaded with the latest build of webOS and with it comes Yahoo integration.

I had to go to a Sprint retail store since Palm is unreliable with their review units. We received an email shortly after the release of the Palm Pre from Palm’s marketing department letting us know that they would be sending us a unit to review ASAP, but to this date we have still not received it.

The Pixi is extremely tiny. As you can see in the picture, my hand dwarfs the entirety of the device. While having a small device might seem convenient and appealing at first, you should know that the keyboard is way too cramped and the screen is hardly manageable with its 2.63-inch multitouch screen with 18-bit color, 320×400 screen resolution Sub-HVGA display.

While it lacks WiFi, Sprint’s network is very capable of handling most of your data needs. The web browser on the device is in my opinion second only to the one found on the iPhone. Like the Pre, it also features over-the-air backup, restore, remote erase, and software updates.

Applications are all the rage these days. The App Catalog found on the Pre and Pixi is still quite undeveloped when compared to other devices. With that in mind, their new Ares SDK has just left private beta testing and now is in public beta. Hopefully this will breath some life into the App Catalog and catch it up to par.

All in all the device really is not that bad. My only faults with it are its small screen and cramped keyboard. I am extremely bias though because I am used to the iPhone with a bigger screen and have never really liked keyboards. I would recommend this to a first time smart phone user or somebody who is in love with webOS’s brilliant GUI and maybe just does not want a slider phone (Palm Pre).

Why You Shouldn’t Get the Droid (Motorola)

Kyle — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:36:52 +0000

Verizon is really counting on the Droid to steal some of iPhone’s massive market share. For a while now we have seen Verizon’s iDon’t commercials. The truth is that all they hype that has been built up ended with a big letdown.

Multitouch is a feature that is just expected on most capacitive touchscreen phones these days. Many of the Droid’s key applications lack this feature. For example the onscreen keyboard does not offer multitouch. This is a big deal for typing accuracy for onscreen keyboards. Another application that does not have multitouch is the web browser. You can zoom in by double tapping though, which is a new feature for Android 2.0.

The hardware keyboard is a complete failure. The keys are very hard and are not contoured at all. Also the keys are very cramped and not separated at all. Also while having a D-Pad is nice, it was not implemented well in this device. It caused the keyboard to be off center and making it feel less natural to type on.

Droid packs a 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus and dual LED flash. On paper that sounds quite nice but in use the camera does not perform very well. Launching the camera takes a somewhat frustrating amount of time. Also after taking one picture it takes a bit to save it and let you take another picture. It is just overall slow and not the amazing.

This is a matter of personal preference but I have never understood the purpose of soft key buttons. The main benefit of having a touchscreen is that you don’t need to have dedicated space for controls. You can still have hard keys at the bottom for things like call and end functions though. These aren’t dynamic like the screen is, so they do not offer anything special by being touch sensitive rather than physical. Personally I believe it is a downgrade compared to physical keys.

To be fair I have never been a fan of Motorola’s phones. They don’t ever seem to hold up to the rest of the market. I am however a huge fan of Android. Android 2.0 is an excellent operating system and I can’t wait to see it on more capable devices.

iPhone 3G Review

Kyle — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:37:37 +0000

The iPhone 3G launched in July 2008 and in the past year tens of millions of units have been purchased. The 3G is still for sale on AT&T for $99 on contract. This is perfect for those who do not need some of the iPhone 3G S’s features such as the digital compass.

Apple has always been known for really sleek looking devices and the iPhone 3G is no exception. It is pure simplicity with just a simple white or black back with a chrome finish and only one button. The device is easily pocketable and very comfortable in the hand due to the rounded back which makes if feel smaller than it really is.

In America AT&T is the only carrier you can buy it on but I don’t have any complaints with that (except for the delay of MMS and tethering). It runs on AT&T’s 4.0 network. I have actually noticed an increase on the speed of 3G, sometimes over 2 Mbps.

Unfortunately the iPhone 3G does not have a video camera. The phone is actually capable of it but Apple decided not to include that in the 3G. You also do not get autofocus like the 3G S does. The 2 MP camera on the 3G does get the job done quite well though.

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Downloadable applications are a must for phones these days. The iPhone has the largest and probably the best app store out there. There are over 50,000 apps available for download. A lot of those apps are free and most of the ones that aren’t are under $10.

Push capabilities greatly increase the value of the iPhone. While it is no substitute for multitasking it is appreciated. Probably one of the most useful apps that push has been implemented into is the instant messaging apps.

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Visual voicemail is almost a must have these days. Being able to see who the voicemail is from and what time it was left is pretty amazing. So many times my phone has been off and someone would leave me a voicemail and I would not have the slightest clue who it was.

Now you can find your iPhone if it gets lost. I should note that this only works if you purchase MobileMe but if you have the money to spend then it could just be worth it now with the addition of find my iPhone. In addition to telling you where the iPhone is located you can send a message to the phone telling them to give it back or just remote wipe all the data off of it.

Your iPhone works as an excellent GPS device for traveling. Now you can download turn by turn applications like TomTom. Even if you don’t want to spend all that money for these apps the included Google Maps application does wonders. Just press the button on the lower left hand corner and it will show your location and update as you move along the road. Since I’ve gotten the iPhone I haven’t gotten lost.

While email isn’t as good as on a Blackberry it is still very good. It works with Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and mort IMAP and POP mail systems. The iPhone offers both push and fetch to deliver the mail. Push sends the new emails to the phone as soon as it is received on the server and fetch checks for mail at certain time intervals.

Over the iPhone 3G is an excellent choice for a phone. It is not as powerful as the iPhone 3G S but does almost the exact same thing as it, and for half the price. You can’t go wrong with either of them though.