The three main smartphone’s out there at the moment are Android, Apple and Windows Phone 7, of course there is a lot of makers of these phones (apart from the iPhone, only Apple make them). It just so happens that I have to hand three phones to compare, this been the HTC Hero (Running Android 2.1), a slow and small phone by today’s standards but it does give me a chance to compare. The wife has the iPhone 4S and I got a new work phone, the HTC Trophy, A Windows 7.5 phone. Is there a clear winner here? Will the iPhone wipe the floor with the rest? Onward to battle.

HTC Hero

Before we continue, this phone is well below the specs of the other two. The screen size of 320×480 and the fact it is only running from a 528 MHz ARM 11 means it is slow. One of the great beauty in my eyes of the Android OS is the fact you can find pretty much any type of program you need and normally for free. You can side load any program just by putting in a memory card and installing it that way.

While not relevant on this phone, you can get Skype and many streaming type applications to broadcast anywhere. The other fact is you do not need to sync this phone (you can if you want) to a computer, just put what you need on a memory card and you are good to go. It can do all the major function such as Sat Nav, Mapping, act as a camera, a music player and a whole lot more besides. My main gripe though was how fragmented Android got and for this I see this platform as a failure for now.

iPhone 4S

There must be very little I can write that people do not already know but my first and foremost thought on this phone is the fact that while many applications are free, most cost money. You have to Sync the phone initially with a computer running iTunes and if you own a Mac and a Windows Box, you cannot just plug into any, you have to sync with the computer you choose at the start.

While not important to me, the things that mattered on this phone was the ability to be easy to use (it is – it has one main button to press), notifications (just added with ios5) and be easy to type on. Siri to me (and my wife) seems to be a fun gadget to use but once the 5 minute of playing has been done, it is back to the keyboard.

HTC Trophy 

Recently I swapped my Windows Mobile 6.5 phone (HTC mini) for this model and it came running version 7. It seems you need Zune software to do anything with the phone and updating to latest (7.5) took many hours indeed. It reminded me of Windows actually, doing one update, rebooting then finding another update.

The speed of the phone is very fast indeed, the Metro OS is easy to use and has live updating tiles. There is no dedicated phone button so calling someone means you have to press one of the tiles, I made sure this was placed right at the top. I like the fact I can see if I have any emails, messages and upcoming appointments. The App Store (Market place) has quite a lot of programs, I was surprised as to how many there was.

What was missing though was the programs I might need such as Skype, any sort of Streaming type application and others. It has voice input (rather like Siri) and on my testing it worked better than I expected and I guess it has to do with accents. Siri for example got some things wrong as did this phone but at least when I search for Pizza, this phone actually brings the goods (Not working on Apple in the UK as of yet).

Thoughts?

The iPhone and the Windows Phone both have fixed storage which means I have to micro manage what I put on there. They also both need a program to sync things which means I have to use the one fixed computer. I much prefer the flexibility of have a SD Card to shove on what I want, increase the storage and so forth. I actually find the Windows 7.5 phone very functional indeed and much better than I thought it would be, it sort of does multitasking but only in the fact it suspends applications. It has no Front facing Camera on the HTC Trophy and the quality is not as good as the iPhone.

If I had to choose one phone out of them all from this list then? The answer of course would be the Apple iPhone but the windows phone comes a very close runner up for now.

Recently on my travels looking for a tablet computer, I noticed that they have dropped the price of the BlackBerry Playbook. It comes in 3 models 16GIG – £249, 32GIG – £329 and 64GIG – £409. If you were just to look at this from a normal ‘person on the ground’ view point, you  could argue that at £249 it is £150 cheaper than the iPad, smaller which means easier to carry around and it all does the same thing right? While I have not bought one as of yet, this is what I found out so far about the device.

Applications

No matter how good a device, without having any decent applications to run on it means it will be left sitting idle a lot of the time. I spotted it had dual camera’s, so lets go through some specifications.

7″ LCD running at 1024×600, 425g in weight, 1GHz Dual core CPU, 3MP front facing camera, 5MP rear facing camera.

When thinking about a use for this, Skype comes to mind but my searching on the internet left me with no way to run skype on this thing. There is a webage you can go to and get it that way but no native application you can get right now.   As the Playbook supports flash what about Google+ Hangout feature? Well again this requires an install of a plugin so this is also a no go.

Is the price right?

While dropping the price is a good thing, it tells me that the device is failing and they are trying to get rid of them quicker. More devices out there means more people writing applications for the thing. If they had the price as £150 at the very max, it ‘might’ have sold more but maybe not. I noticed they dropped the Xoom to £329 (from £399) but by the time I went back in, they had already removed it from the shelf.

The fact of the matter is quite simple, I saw not a single person looking at the tablets or the netbooks and the floor space they give to these things are shrinking fast. I can only see the two main runners been Apple with iPad 2 and some of the higher end Android based tablets. The end result is I will give this device a miss, it looks nice but without any major applications, it is a waste of money to me.

In an effort to present the ideal Tablet / small computer for mobile staff at work, one of the computers we tried was the Viliv X70. While it is not obious form the picture above, this runs Windows XP, has a built in webcam (as you can see on the right) and is touch screen. Around the back is insteresting as it has some sort of a bracket which I imagine you can get a car kit for and maybe use it as a rather large GPS?

Specifications

It features an Intel Atom Silverthorne 1.33Ghz CPU. The Screen is a 7” touchscreen which runs at 1024×768.  Storage is a choice of SSD (8/16GIG) or HDD (30/60GIG). It has WiFI (b/g) and WiMAx plus Bluetooth along with GPS. Battery life is quoted as 6 Hours continuous movie playback and 200 Hours standby time. As for dimension – 210(W) x 117(H) x 22.5 (T) mm. The thing weighs 600G

In Use

I tested the time it took from switching it on till the OS was ready and this was in fact only 60 seconds max, this is of course windows not loaded with various programs or any AntiVirus to slow it down. The problem came when you try and use it – the fact the screen is so small means you will struggle to press boxes to close programs or windows and that joystick which you *think* is a mouse does nothing of the sort. The A Button is left Mouse while the B Button is Right mouse.

I have always stated that Windows is not designed to be tablet friendly and this is where the likes of Android or iOS comes into play. As this is a standard computer of sorts, you can load any version of Linux you wanted bia memory stick which might work out better for you.

How much is this costing me?

If you look at this device and think, this is a Netbook in fact with a touch screen and the keyboard ripped out – you would be expecting to pay in the order of £250 to £300 right? What if I told you it would come in at the wallet busting £647 ( Well over $1000).

While a company can withstand that cost if the product fills the need, I am not 100% sure that consumers will be too happy parting cash for this one. Looking at how heavy this is I was surprised that in fact it is slightly lighter (and only just) than the iPad (which weighs 680g) but then again the iPad is 9.7” while this is only 7”.

I would have done a much more in-depth review of the device but given the fact most are not going to be buying this anytime soon when there is just so much better (and cheaper) devices out there, I have chosen to list only the basic’s. What else can you do with this device? You can load some form of routing software and as it has a GPS – you can mount it in your car and job done but most mobile phones do this anyhow plus a TomTom is just so much neater and cheaper.

One of the failing I always felt of the Galaxy Tab as a supposed iPad Killer was the price – it was about the same. The device while it had some features missing (such as the screen size been smaller than the iPad), it did come with stuff that the iPad just did not have – these been the dual cameras (Skype Video Calling), a browser that supported Flash, a lot of Free apps that did the job very well indeed (compared to the mostly paid-for apps on the iPad) and of course the ability to take a Sim which means you can use it on the go and as a phone. It seems that the price has indeed dropped and you can now pick this up for £359.20 Sim Free from Tesco or the same price from Amazon.

What does the Galaxy Tab bring to the Table?

It Features a 1Ghz CPU which means it will be able to cope with most you can throw at it. The screen run’s at 1024×600 and from expereince of running windows at this on my netbook – it means some things might be squashed but as this runs Android as the Operating system, it might work out not too bad. Given that it is only 7” Tablet – this makes it a lot more portable than the iPad in my eyes. It has a VBGA port – you can run it from a monitor or your LCD Tv for example and add to this VNC application and you have a very portable machine for remote support.

Which should I buy?

I looked at three devices, the £150 10” Tablet from Toy’R’us will probably be pretty bad for what you want to use it for and you do indeed get what you pay for. This sits now in the middle and I personally would pay that extra money to get a decent Android Tablet and finally if you have the money and can live with the limited use of the iPad, then you won’t be disappointed. If I had to lay my money on the table? I would be buying the Samsung tab.

While hybrid laptop / Tablets PC’s are nothing new, they seem to have resurfaced with everyone wanting the portability of a Tablet PC but giving the full power of a normal laptop. Dell currently make the Latitude XT2 and while this is by no means the cheap option, it may be the very device you are looking for. Unlike the Apple iPad which runs iOS or the Samsung Tab which runs Android – this laptop is quite normal in that it runs whatever operating system you want to install on there such as Windows 7 or Linux for example.

Tech Specs

While reading the Sunday Paper, I come across an Advert for a InTempo Tablet PC which was going for a low price of £179.99. Of course the Specifications left a lot to be desired – 400Mhz CPU, 2MB Ram, 7″ Screen (800×480) and finally Android 1.9? I never knew there was such a thing as 1.9 – probably the same as 1.6 right? While looking for a review of this unit though, I cam across more devices of the same price – this been the Disgo Tablet 6000.

Specifications

• Screen: Full Touch 7″ High Resolution TFT
• Screen resolution: 800 x 480
• Built-in 2 x 0.5W speaker
• 1500mAh Rechargeable Polymer Battery
• 2D/3D Graphic Accelerator
• Flash User Interface
• Support Multiple Audio, Video & Image Files
• WiFi RIEEE 802.11 b/g/n
• Processor: iMAPx200, 1GHz, 16KB L2 Cache, 266MHZ operation frequency
• Memory – Internal: DDR2 256MB/ 2GB MLC, External: Micro SD card (2GB card included)
• Ports: Mini USB x 1, OTG x 1, MicroSD card slot x 1 (up to 32GB), Earphone jack x 1 (2.5mm), DC jack x 1, HDMI x 1
• Format Decoder: FullHD (1920×1080)
• H.264 up to 1080P resolution
• H.263 up to D1 resolution
• VC1 up to 1080p resolution
• MPEG2 main profile up to 1080p
• DIVX4/5/6 up to 1080p resolution
• File Format Supported: Audio: MP3 / WAV / WMA / AAC, AAC+
• Video: HD support/ MP4 SP/ AVI (XVID, H.264, DIVX)/ 3GP
• Image: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
• CERTIFICATE: CE / WEEE / ROHS

Thoughts

You can buy one HERE from Play.com for £179.99 and this includes the Free Delivery. The CPU seems fast enough (when compared to a Android phone) but the resolution seems to be left wanting (800×480). As it is only running Version 2.1, as I found with my HTC Hero, you will miss out on a lot of software. Can it run flash for example (which requires 2.2) to enable people to Look at the live streams on Justin.TV, there is already a viewer for Ustream and of course YouTube.

My other thought, is this a better buy then say a Netbook? I can install any OS on my Netbook but no touch screen. I think it is one of those items that might be a impulse buy (as my netbook was) or maybe people should just save the money and buy an iPad instead.

Netbooks are often seen as not only been very portable but lasting longer then the equivalent laptop and one of the reasons I bought one all them years ago was to save me from having to carry out a normal sized laptop which never seen to last the stated life span on battery. Recently I choose to install Jolicloud onto my said netbook and while I was there, I wanted to see just how long it might last me on battery power – the results were a lot less then I expected.

Acer Aspire One A150

I bought this netbook when they first come out and I remember making sure I bought one with the least amount of Ram but a decent sized hard drive (120Gigs). The Specifications reads Intel Atom N270 / 1.6 GHz, 1.5Gig Ram, 120Gig Hard Drive, 8.9″ TFT running at 1024×600, a 3-cell Lithium Ion battery with a claimed run time of upto 3 hours and it is 1KG.I have replaced the wireless card in this with a Dell Wireless N Model (when I was using this as a Hackintosh).

The test

I ran BBC iPlayer which played a movie (dawn of the dead) which is using the screen, the wireless and the hard disk as it streams the movie. From a full charge, 30 Minitues later and the battery is down to 50%, so given this, if you wanted to watch a movie on battery alone – you will run short way before the movie is finished, in fact you will get half way through.

Hibernation

I closed the lid and it put the laptop into hibernation mode, thus saving battery, upon opening the lid, nothing happened. I had to press the power button for the netbook to wake up. It was a shame it never had some sort of quick suspend feature as this is one of the reasons why an Apple laptop is so good on battery, if you close the lid on an Apple Laptop, it is saves power and goes to sleep – open the lid and it is back to life.

I know a friend of mine took a train journey to Scotland – a good 5 hours I think to get there and he managed to use Apple Laptop all the way (on and off) and even had enough power left when he got to the other end before it needed power – yet here we have a netbook seeming to struggle keeping alive for one hour.

6 Cell Battery

You can get a 6 Cell Battery which is claimed at 8-9 hours, this adds of course weight and bulk to a small computer. You have to think how they test these laptops to get to the claimed 3 Hours, maybe that’s how long it lasts if it is doing nothing?

Tuesday Seagate introduced the world’s first 1.5 TB 2.5-inch portable external drive, costing a rather meaty $249.99 at select retailers and online via Seagate.com. The new portable drive follows the release of Seagate’s 3 TB GoFlex Desk drive and the Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive.

According to the company, the new 1.5 TB FreeAgent GoFlex drivewill ship with a USB 3.0 interface cable, allowing data transfers up to 10x via a compatible USB 3.0 port when compared to USB 2.0 connection speeds. The drive will also come packed with the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 cable for plugging the device into USB 2.0 ports.

In addition to the cables, Seagate threw in other items such as an NTFS driver for Macs, allowing the device to store data from both Windows and Mac platforms without formatting, and pre-loaded backup software with encryption. The external drive is also compatible with other Seagate products like the GoFlex Net media sharing device and the GoFlex TV HD media player.

“Today’s announcement is a ‘triple-crown’ of consumer technology—packaging record breaking capacity, blazingly fast USB 3.0 connectivity and the bonus of movie entertainment—making the 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive an unprecedented and innovative solution,” said Darcy Clarkson, vice president of Global Retail Sales and Marketing for Seagate.

As of this writing, Seagate has knocked $20 off the price, making the 1.5 TB FreeAgent GoFlex drive a slightly cheaper $229.99 at Seagate’s online store. The drive is available in the States now–a global release is slated for “later this year.”

A very brief review of the Dell Latitude 2110 Netbook (USA people click HERE). There is a few good reasons why this might suit your needs over the Acer and others out there and the price range is $400+ or £289 – a lot depends on the specs your choose of course such as operating system, memory and hard drive etc. This is just an overview as I only had one day to take a look at this device and get it ready with Windows XP.

First the Specs

It is running an Intel Atom N470 which runs at 1.83Ghz with 512KB L2 Cache.

The Chipset is Intel NM10 Express

Display options are all 10.1″ but can either be 1024×600, 1024×600 with touchscreen or 1366×768 TrueLife LED

Graphics is powered by Intel GMA 3150 (optional Broadcom Crystal HD media accelerator

Memory can be up to 2 GIG Ram DDR2 (One slot)

Hard Drive is 250 GIG or 64GIG SSD

3 x USB, VGA port, Network port, Audio.

Built in Webcam

The beast in action

Model Tested

The model I had to get ready was the 10.1″ 1024×600 with touchscreen and 3G card fitted (for mobile broadband) with 2 GIG ram and 250GIG Drive fitted plus the 6 Cell Battery. It came pre-installed with Windows XP Pro from Dell and pre-built with all there apps.

Initial testing

The screen size presented a problem (as it does with all netbooks) and the first task was to update windows with every single update and this process was very slow indeed. After the first round of 23 updates and a restart, Explorer would crash upon starting and finally fixed this by de-installing Explorer 8 and reverting to 7 until it self updated itself later. Dell had managed to install Windows Search which made a already slow laptop slower and more work to get rid of all the junk.

3G Problems

With a sim fitted – it stated it could not find the 3G Card (that’s the hardware not the sim) and eventually had to get on the phone to Dell who took control and 3 engineers later – finally they installed some Vodafone software, they could not explain why there software did not work.

What about the laptop?

It has a rubberised coating both top and bottom and feels quite durable and the chic keys are something you either love or hate. The speed of the device felt very sluggish though this might have something to do with all the junk Dell like to Install. The only user serviceable parts is when you take off the battery allowing you to slot in a SIM Card for the broadband. What if you had a lot to built – this is were another call to Dell comes into play…

Getting down and dirty

I was un-sure how you took the hard drive out and called Dell – they were shocked I needed to remove the hard drive and questioned me why. After explaining that I need to make an image and build a lot – they soon got the manual out. You have to remove that battery, remote Two screws and now the Keyboard comes out, unclipped the connected flat cable of course. Now you need to remove 3 Screws and flip the thing over, remove another 4 and now the Laptop comes apart - revealing the motherboard. From here you need to take another 4 screws out of the hard drive and you can now image that beast. I am not looking forward to repeating this over and over again – Why on earth did Dell not make it easier?

Thoughts

The battery (6-Cell) forms a sort of stand and lasts quite some time and the touch screen is sort of responsive but not amazing. I personally think it is no better then any of the other Netbooks out there and seems to cost more. The 3G built in is a nice feature though and may suit some people.

Puppy Linux is a small and fast Linux Distor designed to run from a USB Drive with the goal been to plug into any computer (say at work) and then work outside the confines of Windows plus take your work with you. In line with Cloud OS – I choose to give this a try and see how it coped and was it a workable system?

Download the ISO

The first thing I did was download the ISO and instead of trying to follow various guides on installing this a USB Stick or wasting a CD-R, I went for plan F – I Installed it inside a Virtual Machine (VMWare in my case). One it had booted up, there was an option to install to a USB Sitck, I had already mounted a 512MB Stick (first thing I picked up) and followed the screens.

Now to test it

I Booted a Laptop from USB and it went through the very same screens as the ISO did – seleting Keyboard and the like but at the Video screen, where the virtual machines worked fine – this fell over, maybe as it had ATI Gfx card? I did get a graphical screen up but it was low resolution and very slow – I am missing the point of this program, can I not plug it into ANY machine and it works?

Thoughts

Thee is already a way to make Ubuntu 9.10 run from a USB Stick and use some of the space for Virtual memory / Harddrive, this works better then this Puppy Linux thing for sure. There is two train of thoughts here for portable Operating Systems:

• Cloud based to run inside a browser on any machine – using the OS already installed to run from (Google OS etc)
• Bootable USB version – by-pass the installed OS to run a version of Linux – all work is local.