Screen protectors are an accessory that used to be a required item on PDAs and smartphones that were stylus driven, but it would be a mistake to think that there is not a place for them on modern smartphones such as the iPhone or the non-touch BlackBerry’s.

There uses are many-fold and when you consider the price of a modern smartphone, a few extra pounds is not a lot to spend for the added protection. The one I am reviewing today is specifically designed for the BlackBerry Bold 9700 which may seem like a curious device to use a screen protector on. However, the screen is one of the major parts of any smartphone and in some cases the most susceptible to scratches. Even a phone like the 9700 which has a tough screen benefits from a screen protector because I have seen a couple of work with noticeable scratches on already. When you pay £400 for a smartphone, £5.95 extra to protect the vulnerable part is a no brainer.

The Expert Shield model comes with everything you need to start protecting your screen and is one of the easier ones I have applied in recent times. It uses the two sided method; you peel off one side, attach the protector to the screen and then peel off the second side. I had a moment after I applied it where I honestly thought that it was not there, but it was and with no air bubbles in sight. It is advisable to use a straight object such as a credit card to ease the process, but all on all it worked well for me.

Besides adding protection, a screen protector can stop glare which is particularly useful when driving using GPS. The model I tested here, however, is so clear that you really will not notice that it has been applied. For under £6 this is a very cheap way to protect your smartphone and one which ensures that the resale value will be higher when you come to upgrade- it is highly likely that you will add much more than the asking price on any future sale of your phone.

To sum up, the Expert Shield protector is simple, easy to apply and well priced. I have no hesitation in recommending it and even though I dread writing screen protector reviews, I have been more than pleased with the product.

Available from Expert Shield who also make protectors for the iPhone, HTC HD2, Nokia 5530 and many other devices

Get used to seeing some musings from David. He has kindly agreed to write for PDA-247 and here is his first article- a mini-review of the Palm Pre.

I’ve always loved Palm, I loved my m505, I loved my Treos, but do I love the Pre? Well, yes and no. I love the feel of it in my hand, they were going for the pebble feel and have got that just right but the build quality leaves a lot to be desired! The slide mechanism wobbles from side to side and sometimes won’t open and the keypad area feels cheap and nasty. The track ball thingy is a complete waste of time (and has been removed on the latest “Plus” models) and the screen is plastic, not glass, so will scratch quite easily. I do keep picking it up and turning it over in my hand, (and the last phone that made me do that was a Motorola MPX200), so they must have got something right.

All the usual suspects are here, 3g, GPS, Wi-Fi, accelerometer, camera and 8GB of storage, one missing feature is a memory card slot, but so far that hasn’t bothered me as much as I thought it would. One nice touch is the internal memory can mount as a USB disk, I wish the iPhone could do that. I also love the Touchstone inductive charger, I know it’s not that hard to plug in a wire, but there is something futuristic about just plonking the Pre down and watching it start charging.

I love webOS. It’s as easy to use as an iPhone, five minutes tuition and anyone can use it, and it’s the only mobile OS I’ve seen that makes multitasking so obvious you don’t even notice it: to steal a phrase, “it just works”. The built in apps are about average and with the latest OS update you get video recording, bringing it up to par with the opposition. OS updates are handled nicely, with the phone telling you when one’s available OTA, but application updates have to be looked for. The app store isn’t a patch on Apples, but most of the stuff you need is there and there is a healthy homebrew community, which Palm seem to encourage, so you can find a lot of patches and apps there as well, really adding to the phones functions.

The integration with Google and Facebook (Palm call it Synergy) is quite good, enter you details and a few minutes later all your calendar and contacts information is on the phone. But it could go much further and if you’re not living in Google’s world things are not quite as easy. Getting media on the phone is a pain since Apple blocked the iTunes route, you pretty much have to drag and drop or dig out a third party solution but that’s really no different to everyone else except Apple.

On the whole I think the Pre is a winner, apart from one thing- price. For o2 to try and sell it at the same price as the iPhone is crazy. It maybe almost as good, but the Apple hype makes it a non starter; at that price no one will even notice it. Offer it at half the price or for 99 quid on pay as you go and it will sell loads.

So, on balance I do love the Pre, just not as much as my iPhone.

The iPhone app store is full of overly complex games, impressive apps and all manner of silly and serious software, but now and again something comes along that stops the world for a 6 year old girl. That girl is my daughter Alice and every night for the past few days she has been transfixed by the The Boy Giant.

The Boy Giant is an animated story which plays itself out on the iPhone, and one which has all the ingredients that a child’s book needs; humour, an engrossing story, beautiful illustrations and above all the right pace and length. The giant boy in the story is called Hujo and he is ironically born to Mr and Mrs Small which sets the tale off in the manner in which it delightfully continues.

The animations are sensitively implemented and the humour made my 9 year old son and I laugh out loud the first time we played it to Alice. You can choose to read it yourself or have it read to you which I personally prefer because the narrator has a much better story telling voice than I have. She just sits there transfixed as the story plays out and it is a joy to behold for a proud Father.

I now have a new weapon in my battle to make her behave (being naughty means no Boy Giant) and this is a simple app which is fun for the whole family. Even my 9 year old happily sits there listening to the story, although he doesn’t like to admit it, and I have to say that I have been more than impressed by the releases from Wotsamaflip for the iPhone so far and look forward to many more in the future, as does my daughter.

Available now on the App Store for a mere £0.59 / $0.99.

Over 6 months ago I reviewed Co-Pilot Live for iPhone and was more than impressed with the product. It was a beta build which had some features not available until quite recently and so I decided to upgrade to the latest version with the Live Traffic service: total cost £47.98.

Navigation is important to me because I drive more than 20,000 miles a year for work and it is one area where I have to have the best available. Living in the UK means that traffic is a constant problem, especially because the M25 is my gateway to everywhere, and thus traffic tracking is also a facility I rely on every week.

I wasn’t expecting anything remarkable in the new Co-Pilot except the loss of the messages I kept receiving when enabling the traffic feature because it had run out of time, but I have been more than surprised at how it has changed in the short period of time since the original release. The first change I noticed was how much smoother it is now and it really does feel like a dedicated GPS system in use; button taps are immediately recognised and the animation while navigating is now spot on. I used to see the occasional lag when leaving roundabouts, but after 4 long trips I have not noticed this once.

There are some more subtle changes such as the way speed cameras are notified and the onscreen setup works very well indeed; you are presented with the distance to the camera, your current speed and the actual speed limit you should be attaining. A ‘ding’ noise then sounds when you are clear to break the speed limit again (did I actually write what was in my head there?). Besides the speed camera display, the interface in general is one of the best I have seen on any GPS system- it strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and complexity yet cleverly offers all of the information you need to see in an easy to view system.

The core of any navigation system is of course the routes it takes you on and I have learnt to trust Co-Pilot, most of the time. Over the past few months I have been presented with many quicker routes than I knew about previously yet at times it can take me down roads which I know are slower than the shortcuts I have learnt over time. This tends to happen in busy towns and to be fair a TomTom with the much touted IQ Routes does exactly the same. No GPS software will ever be perfect, but I live in hope.

The traffic service has also added a sense of security to long trips and to date it has not failed me once. It diverted me off the M27 when a friend of mine got stuck for over an hour and did the same with the M25 travelling from Gatwick to Birmingham. The most poignant example was later in the Birmingham to Gatwick return trip when a sign on the side of the motorway declared the M23 to be closed. This sign kept popping up for 10 miles, but Co-Pilot showed no problems. As I reached the M23 turn off I put my full faith in Co-Pilot and merrily travelled along a fully open M23. When roadside warning signs get it wrong, you start to lose trust in any system.

To date Co-Pilot Live has performed flawlessly for me and finally broken the stranglehold TomTom had on my navigation needs. On the App Store there are conflicting views about Co-Pilot, as there are with all apps and games, but in my experience it has been just about perfect so far and extremely good value at the current price point.
Available from the iTunes App Store for £26.99

Clarity: PDA-247 has no commercial relationship with ALK.

To stand out in the iTunes App Store, especially in the gaming category, is far from easy. To get almost perfect reviews from every user is even more difficult, but Space Miner: Space Ore Bust has achieved both quite easily. John Moore emailed me and asked if I had tried it to which I replied that I hadn’t even heard of it. I get lots of recommendations for iPhone games and so had a quick look on the App Store and was surprised at all of the rave reviews so £1.19 later it was installed on my iPhone, took a while, and I ready to play.

Needless to say that 4 days later my son and I are both completely and utterly hooked on Space Miner. It is a cut scene adventure game which marries action and strategy well to form a deep and long experience which builds up at the perfect pace. There is a sense of achievement throughout and the humour keeps things sane when you have been staring at the screen for far too long. I would love to go into every detail of the game, but that would serve little purpose. What I can say is that this is not one to miss and that it is worth every last penny.

I have not played an iPhone game so far that has kept me going for so long to reach one goal and I am struggling to find fault anywhere. The only slight annoyance is that the ship is not always easy to control, but the frantic pace on some levels could be responsible for this rather than a design issue.

What I can do is thoroughly recommend this game as one of the very best in the App Store and would say to buy this if you have a spare pound or a couple of dollars. The first ten minutes feel a little slow, but after that it is fun all the way. Simply superb!

Check out the trailer below to start to understand what it is all about.

Motorola Milestone Review (part three)

Available from www.clove.co.uk for £398.33

OK, time for the final part of my Motorola Milestone review. This is a difficult phone to judge as a whole because it includes so many facets that the at times contradict with other. The slide-out keyboard should be an advantage, but it is so poor that I have found myself using the onscreen keyboard nine times out of ten and as such it is an unnecessary addition due to its design. This is a real shame because Android is a great OS in my opinion and the inclusion of a decent keyboard would greatly enhance its corporate potential and the user’s ability to manage PIM to the extreme.

There is little doubt that the Milestone is built very well indeed and that it is near the top of the pile when it comes to specification and that its provides a near flawless Android experience, but the looks are another detracting factor which will put many in Europe off. Ugly phones still seem to do well in the US and the looks are of little consequence to many users. I can’t work out if Americans simply look for the functionality and are not fooled by the looks of a phone or if some just have no taste. I suspect it is more the case that many people like me are just too shallow to get past the looks.

In my time with the Milestone it as proved to be highly practical; the battery is excellent, the screen works well almost everywhere and the voice quality is ‘just’ good enough for my needs. It is not perfect, but when I consider the needs of someone who wants practically, fun and the ability to tweak a smartphone until their fingers bleed this is a dream device. Is it worth the asking price? Oh yes. For all of my grumbles about the keyboard and the looks I can’t help but like the Milestone. It has shown me just how good Android can be and the potential of the OS is huge. Of course some of the apps available are a little shabby and there is a lot of junk out there, but this is a trait seen on the iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and all other mobile operating systems.

The Milestone is one of the very best smartphones I have used to date, but I can’t help feeling that the Nexus One and next iPhone will push things forward once again and date it quite quickly. However, if you need a powerful smartphone that is fun and one which offers multiple data entry options, that you are prepared to get used to, look no further.

Motorola Milestone Review (part two)

Available from www.clove.co.uk for £398.33

I have spent more time playing with the Milestone so far than almost any other phone I have reviewed in the past year. It is a schizophrenic mix of oddly shaped hardware and an OS which keeps me coming back for more and as such I am struggling with my feelings towards this phone. I normally split my reviews into paragraphs looking at each feature of the phone and in this case it is very apt because there are some marked differences between each function which all come together to make a phone the like of which I have not seen before.

Screen

The screen is lovely to use and works well in all conditions, but it does seem to attract smudges very easily and within minutes a thin film of finger stuff was laying over the screen. I could eventually remove it, but if ever a phone needs a screen protector it is this one. The sensitivity is good and the WVGA resolution makes everything from the OS interface to video playback a pleasure, but not all third party apps have been scaled to cope with it yet. 8/10

Battery

The battery is not something I would have been expecting to be good, but it is very good. In my rather limited tests I have managed to get through two days with no need for charging and this includes constant push email, lots of Wi-Fi surfing and app downloading and some tests with the GPS system. In my experience it is much better than the iPhone 3G as a comparison and seemingly ahead of the HTC Hero. Impressive. 8/10

Data Input

The onscreen keyboard is much better than I expected and as easy to use as the iPhone setup. For someone like me that means it is not easy to use at all, but I am someone who will never get on with QWERTY touch screen keyboards because I need to do too much quick data entry during a standard day. Fortunately there is the slide-out hardware keyboard which could be so much better than it is. The strange placement, the horrible gold navigation button and the small flush keys make the typing experience slow and often inconvenient. It doesn’t always seem to fit the OS either and at times I was getting lost in data input fields. It is such a shame that the keyboard functionality appears to have taken second string to keeping the device slim. 6/10

Connectivity

All good here apart from the occasional lag on some web pages when the Milestone doesn’t quite seem to realise that it is using a 3G SIM card. The GPS antenna strength is very good and pickup was almost immediate when using it in MOTONAV or for GPS enabled apps. All in all, there is nothing missing here and I found most connectivity aspects, especially Wi-Fi, to work flawlessly. 8/10

Browsing

The web browsing experience is exceptional and despite some small issues with having to manually set the width of text it is probably the best mobile browser I have used to date. This is the first phone I have used which offers a sense of the real internet on a mobile phone. Compatibility with many web standards also makes it ideal for managing secure web services wherever you are. 9/10

Camera

The camera specs promise a lot of sort of deliver. I was pleased with the video capture quality outdoors, but inside they sometimes came out grainy with poor colour definition. It is a similar story for the stills camera, but it is possible to capture some exceptional shots if you have the time. Time is a factor because it is also not the quickest camera in the world either. 7/10

Entertainment

Music playback is very good and I was fairly impressed with the included headset, and this translated well to the mobile video experience. The navigation of music and video files could be better and downloading an app or two will help you out here. Ultimately it is the quality that counts and as such I have to rate it highly in this section. 8/10

Apps

Third party apps are the major battleground in the smartphone race at this time and Android is starting to encroach very slightly into Apples dominance in this area. Actually on second thoughts it isn’t, but my first few days with the Milestone suggests that the quality is improving all of the time and in the Android Market. I found many free apps and games of good enough quality to keep them installed and there are examples of games which rival the iPhone in quality. More time is needed here, but the potential is great looking forward. 8/10

Tomorrow I will finalise this review by looking at the remaining features, including the all important OS experience, and concluding my overall thoughts on the Milestone.

Motorola Milestone Review (part one)

Available from www.clove.co.uk for £398.33

Highlights-

Integrated sliding QWERTY keyboard
3.7 inch WVGA Display
Fast Internet access with rich content availability
5 Mega Pixel with 4 x digital zoom and image stabilization
AGPS with Motonavfind-products/phones/5530xpressmusicgamesedition

The Motorola Droid was proclaimed by many websites to be an iPhone killer when it was released in the US and seen as a return to form for Motorola who had not had any real successes since the RAZR mobile phone many, many years ago. For us in the UK the Milestone represents our chance to get in on the action and see for ourselves just how good this ‘wonder phone’ really is.

Hardware

Initial impressions are close to what I expected, but it is important not always judge a book by its cover. The problem here is that the cover is in my opinion opposed to what we expect a smartphone to look like in 2010. With the Nexus One, iPhone and Acer Liquid being examples of how full screen smartphones should look in 2010, the Milestone is verging on industrial in its design. It has sharp edges and a look that screams function more than anything else. I have no issue with phones that focus on function because that is of course most important, but there is no excuse not to lend some time to styling a device as well. I wouldn’t go as far as to call the Milestone ugly, but it isn’t far off and it reminds of the dark days of Fujitsu-Siemens and i-mate when their design departments seemed to be having holidays.

The Milestone is actually quite slim for a slide-out keyboarded unit and makes good use of the hardware features within. The 3.7” screen is delightful and compliments the Android interface well with just the lip of the keyboard sticking out at the bottom. I don’t understand why the back has to be longer than the front because the screen may as well have been made longer or the buttons below the screen larger- if anything it lacks uniformity especially when the keyboard is open. Below the screen are four flush buttons for return, menu, home and search and the obligatory camera and volume keys are well placed on the right-hand side. The on/off button on the top is awkward to use at best and its positioning right next to the 3.5mm audio jack could be better. The microUSB charging port is high up on the left which is a pet hate of mine- these things should be on the bottom edge.

Sliding out the keyboard reveals a setup which somehow managed to rival the Nokia N97 in its stupidity. The keys are tiny and flush with the casing and do not use the space afforded to them properly. Throw in the large navigation key to the right and you end up with a hardware keyboard that so far has proved very difficult for me to use. The positioning of the keys on the left, however, makes lots of sense and feels quite natural, but I will need more time with the phone before I conclude my keyboard thoughts.

Specifications

You can’t knock the specifications on this phone- HSDPA, AGPS, Wi-Fi, 5Mp camera with DVD quality video capture and a whole heap more means that you are getting a smartphone more than capable of coping with the relatively efficient Android OS. MOTONAV gives you turn-by-turn navigation out of the box and the rest of the software will take some time to cover, but that is far from a bad thing.

First impressions were not good, but second impressions suggest to me that the Milestone could be something special. There are aspects of this phone which I have not seen on any phone before and some of the features put every other smartphone on the market to shame. Come back tomorrow for part two which will explore these features in more depth.

I am a big fan of diary apps, but until recently it has been hard to find any that are worth even downloading let alone buying. The best I had used to date from DayNotez from Natara on Palm OS which allowed the inclusion of photos with each daily entry for that special personal touch, but on the other platforms it is very hit and miss. I searched for a decent BlackBerry diary app and there was nothing of note and under Windows Mobile the situation is the same, but Momento for the iPhone / iPod Touch is a completely different story.

Momento is about as good as it gets in terms of ease of use, design and value for money and immediately struck me as being a well crafted piece of programming that succeeds in every aim that it has. It manages to bring together the quickness required when adding a daily entry and also the ability to import up to 8 photos per day to truly remember the moment. The interface feels like a diary, acts like a diary and in essence is a diary, but the killer feature is the integration with social networking sites which will automatically keep a history of your Tweets, Facebook updates, Flickr additions and even your Last.fm loved tracks. The simplicity of setting up each feed is as you would want it and you just let the app do the rest for you.

Twitter and Facebook can be a pain to scroll through, but with Momento you get an automated history of what you have shared with the world sensitively added to each day’s events. This is a short review because there is not much else I can say. It takes a couple of minutes to setup, but will potentially be with you for months to come. A simply superb mobile app.

Every now and then a game comes along which is not very interesting at first, but which quickly becomes a daily event as you try to beat your previous score… over and over again.

Flick Cricket is a free game which basically involves you having to hit the ball by flicking your finger; the direction and power are determined by how you flick and it is a rarity in that you genuinely do get better bit by bit over time. I am now at the point where I can regularly get over 100 from only 5 overs, but I am still coming back for more.

One alternative aspect is the ability to play Facebook games, but from what I can see this merely tells other Facebook users that you have completed a game and includes your friends in the line ups for both sides. However, it is a nice touch and I can’t complain too much because it is free and it has given me much enjoyment over the past few weeks, enjoyment that I did not expect and still in some ways don’t understand.

Anyway, all I can say is to give it a try and see what you think. You may well be playing it a lot more than you expect over the next few weeks.

The Samsung GT-B3410 is one of a number of new feature phones which include many functions you would normally expect to find only in a smartphone. The GT-B3410 can now be bought for under £80 unlocked with a pay as you go SIM card and the main features stand out for people like me who expect certain things in any phone-

A slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 2.6” TFT LCD touch screen, 2 Megapixel camera, MP3 / Voice recording, Built in instant messenger, Social networking out of the box, Email setup wizard.

Can an £80 phone really cut it as a smartphone? Well I have to say that the answer is yes if you are happy with more caveats than I have time to quote here. The B3410 is very easy to use and the touch screen is ultra responsive with the clever interface making you feel that you are using a phone which costs at least twice as much. The build quality is good and sliding out the keyboard produces an immediate change of orientation that makes some of the Windows Mobile devices feel sluggish in comparison. Sadly the keyboard is somewhat dowdy and doesn’t provide much feedback, but it is still better than most touch screen keyboards.

For size and form factor the B3410 feels almost perfect and offers a reassuring if slightly chunky feel in the hand. I have little doubt that it will survive that harshest of handbag and briefcase environments. The 3.5mm headphone jack shows that entertainment is high up on the list of priorities here and music and video playback are acceptable, if not of the level of most other devices. The microSD expansion does mean though that you can carry a large selection of music and videos with you whenever you like which is a bonus.

There is a lot of software included and the PIM side is usable at best. The notes application and calendar do the job quite well with the contacts app feeling more than a little clunky, but the inclusion of tasks, memos, a world clock, calculator and a converter will no doubt be all that the target market will want on a phone. Other apps are included with Google and Facebook being the most notable alongside an FM radio, voice recorder, communities (MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Photobuscket and Picasa) and some trial Java games for good measure. Sadly you will be relying on Java apps for expansion, but again I suspect the target market will not need to download much (patronising I know).

The communication side is weak with no 3G or Wi-Fi and only EDGE support offers usable internet browsing. However, this phone is all about messaging and keeping in touch and for that you can easily get away with 2G so it will still suffice for what it really needs to do.

The B3410 is a basic phone which knocks on the door of the smartphone world, but ultimately provides a voice experience which is too weak to be classed as a serious contender. It feels slightly cheap and this goes against the great screen and usable keyboard which are the highlights here. It is a hugely likable device with a good battery though and will serve its purpose well. For £80 it is a demonstration of what is possible in 2009 / 2010 and I suspect we will see a feature phone which deserves the title ’smart’ before 2010 is over with.

The Acer Liquid A1 has surprised me in so many ways and is a complete departure from what Acer has made before. Acer has a habit of making competent phones which have advanced features and which somehow fail to inspire. The A1 is completely different and the screen makes Android come to life in more ways than I thought possible.

From the fashionably cool design through to the screen and the general speed of the unit I have struggled to find significant failures. The entertainment capabilities take it to a whole new level and make it a genuine competitor for the HD2 and iPhone. Indeed, it is sort of a marriage of the two- you get lots of expansion, a highly customisable OS and iPhone style entertainment.

The words ‘iPhone killer’ are far too often written, but in this case I would go as far as to say that the A1 is close. The voice quality is the main issue, but that is because I am seeing it on a unit which does almost everything else near perfectly.

The A1 is without doubt the best Android device I have used to date and the mixture of all of the parts (hardware, OS and software) make it better than the HD2 in my opinion, and even the iPhone. It truly is an excellent smartphone and much better than I ever expected. Acer is finally in the game.

Available from Clove for £328.90.

Over the past three days the Acer Liquid A1 has continued to impress in ways which I never expected. It manages to pull off the trick of being a reliable workhorse while offering some excitement which is rare these days. We tend to see devices which can do one or the other well, but rarely one that does both. The fact is that Android is a joy to use given the right hardware and Acer has managed to intensify the sensation by including a WVGA capacitive screen which looks fantastic indoors and which works well in bright conditions. When HTC invented Sense UI many of us felt that it would be needed to enhance Android use, but the Liquid A1 proves otherwise. Let’s look at the individual features-

General Performance 8/10

The speedy 768Mhz processor works alongside 512MB of ROM and 256MB of RAM and in my experience so far feels slightly quicker that the HTC Hero. Without all of the fancy pages that HTC offers there appears to be little room for areas where it will lock up and so far I have not experienced any slowness at all.

Screen 9/10

For completeness I will cover the screen again and this is without doubt the highlight of the device. It is as good as any I have seen to date and feels immediately responsive to touch. There is a slight quirk when inputting data in that you have to press slightly harder on the lower onscreen keys to register input. This is obviously because they are near the edge of the screen, but is something you will need to adjust to when you start typing- I am guessing a software fix could solve this.

Battery 8/10

Judging battery life over a few days is never easy because they tend to take time to bed in and produce optimum performance. However, I managed 2 hours of calls on the first day and some intensive Wi-Fi use with the battery dropping down to 60%- I am guessing that heavy users will need to charge every day, but this is not unusual for touch screen devices now. I will follow the battery rating up in a week or so.

Buttons 7/10

The hardware buttons are often overlooked when reviews are done of smartphones, but they are very important during day to day use. The side buttons are neatly positioned albeit preferable for left-handers and the virtual buttons below the screen are highly responsive. I am not a fan of virtual buttons, but I am growing to like these and thus they just about receive a thumbs up from me.

Entertainment 10/10

Music and video are now more important than ever before and you shouldn’t be making a smartphone with a 3.5” screen and then implement poor entertainment capability. Acer has jumped up to a new level with the A1 and produced a phone which easily rivals the iPhone in the quality of music and video playback. I have never seen this on any other phone before, but this one is a rival to the iPhone in this area and I could go as far as to say it is slightly better.

The inclusion of Spinlets brings a world of streamed music and video to the equation and is well implemented. You can also share your personal media with others at the click of a button. Playing music and video on the Liquid A1 is a beautiful experience. Now I have picked myself up off the floor I will move on with the rest of the review…

Web 9/10

The goodness keeps on coming with a web browser that is super quick and exceptionally easy to use. It is all too easy to compare to Safari running on an iPhone, but I will do so and proclaim it to be just as good. The lack of finger zoom is strange at first, but the way it handles pages and zooming actually has some advantages here- clicking the zoom (+) key will make the text bigger without ruining the layout of the page and I found it quick on almost every site I used. The web experience is second only to the entertainment side.

PIM 7/10

The PIM side is more important to me than almost any other which is why I use a BlackBerry every day. The calendar view is lovely and cleanly shows everything that is coming up and is one of the few that comes close to the simplistic visuals of the early Psion experience- adding new entries is not the easiest though and too many fields are required in my view.. Contacts is as you would expect- it looks nice and just about does what it needs to and is similar to the efforts on other operating systems such as iPhone and Windows Mobile. Tasks takes a similar line and offers basic management, but remember that there are many third party enhancements available so you have room to experiment.

Data Entry 6/10

You will never get a high rating for data entry from me unless it has a physical keyboard. The data entry setup on the Liquid is similar to the Hero and most other touch screen devices and landscape typing is supported throughout. Haptic feedback is included and suggested words so you will know what to expect. It’s as good as the rest and is usable, but my personal issues with onscreen keyboards leaves me airing on the negative side.

Voice 5/10

The voice quality is not good, especially the speakerphone which is not very loud and which breaks up when you attempt to crank it up to its loudess setting, which as I said is not very loud anyway.

It reminds me of the quality of some of the lesser Windows Mobile units and is the main drawback with the Liquid A1.

Camera 7/10

The 5MP camera with auto-focus is acceptably good and produces some decent snaps, but the process of taking pictures can be slow. This is not a camera that you can whip out of your picket, capture the moment and then carry on- it takes some effort to reproduce good quality snaps.

Video capture is better than I expected, but the sound appears to be limited to just those noises near to the phone. This camera setup reminds me of many others- works OK for most purposes, but could be better.

Tomorrow I will conclude my thoughts on the A1, but you can no doubt already tell how I feel about it.

Available from Clove for £328.90.

Available from Clove for £328.90

The HTC Hero and Motorola DROID have received much praise in recent months and are considered to be the best Android powered handsets on the market. They are indeed impressive, but the DROID does not have the best design in the world and the Hero has a slight quirk in its design which is not to everyone’s taste. However, they have proved to be tough competition for any new entrant into the Android smartphone world and it would take something special to compete with them, let alone beat them. Is the Acer Liquid A1 a worthy contender?

In the box

Acer Liquid A1, Battery (1350mAh), 2GB microSD Card, Screen Protector, Stereo Headset, Mains Charger (UK), Data Cable, Software CD, Quick Start Guide.

The box contents are not too bad with a screen protector thrown in as an extra. It would be nice to see this addition with more devices, particularly for large screened units like the HD2, and even though the quality of the protector is not the best in the world it is welcome. The 2GB microSD card is another bonus, albeit one that you will likely upgrade very quickly, and the rest of the kit is what you would expect from Acer- functional, but not mind blowing.

First Impressions

The very first impressions are surprising indeed. Gone is the standard Acer feel of fairly cheap plastic and boring design which has been replaced with a sleek shape created out of high quality materials which come together perfectly. It sort of feels like a slimmer Palm TX and although this version is in white (not a preference for me) the screen dominates everything about the look. Build quality also feels very good indeed and there are no moving parts to offer a sense of insecurity in use. It is all a bit slippery in the hand, but the white plastic means that fingerprints do not show up at all.

The buttons below the screen are completely flush, but do work well enough which lots of spacing around each to ensure accurate thumb pressing. The power key is on the left, not the best place for it, and on the right you have the volume keys and the camera shortcut key lower down. This setup is almost more suitable for left-handed people who would tend to hold the phone in the right-hand, but it is not a killer problem. The microUSB port is at the bottom and is protected by a swivelling rubber flap which is great for stopping dust getting, but slightly awkward when you are charging the phone.

I have to say that from a hardware perspective the Liquid A1 is a seriously smart piece of kit and one of the nicest smartphones I have held in my life. It looks fashionable in a way that is not obvious i.e. it is so cool that this kind of look has not been taken onboard by the majority of manufacturers yet. It is the kind of device that would look good in smarter establishments and not necessarily in an office. When the black one is available it will look great everywhere.

This is the first smartphone I have used that has the singular feel of the iPhone in that it really does feel like one slab of material that is honed together perfectly and I would go as far as to say that it has much more style. The use of plastic is a curiosity because some metal here would take it to a whole new level.

This is just a quick first look, but the Liquid immediately feels better than the HTC Hero in many ways. Tomorrow I will be looking at the OS and how well the phone copes with some serious use. It is looking much better than I expected so far.

Accessing online information on a smartphone is a dominating process these days and it effectively brings a world of information into the palm of your hand whenever you require it. However, it is not always as convenient as we would wish for and dependencies such as network coverage and speed play a part alongside the quality of the mobile browser you are using.

WikiPock takes the issues above out of the equation by bringing over 3 million Wikipedia articles to the device itself. You will need a big expansion card to cope with the data (over 4GB for the English version), but once it is loaded this is a smart way to have all of this data with you all of the time.

Once you have purchased the app you have to install the app on your smartphone and then download the data from the developer’s website which will take some time. I have a very fast Broadband connection and it took over 3 hours from start to finish, but at least this is a one off process which you do not need to repeat. The next step is to move the data to your expansion card which unusually you can put it anywhere on the card.

Now the fun bit- open up the very basic looking app and start typing. A list of results will pop up and you can then choose which one you want to read. The entire process is very quick and compares very well to a standard 3G connection. You will not get images because the size of the database would be prohibitive if they were included. However, clicking ‘Go to web definition’ in the menu will take you straight to the online Wikipedia version of the article.

I noticed that clicking hyperlinks in articles results in a small delay of a couple of seconds, but again the comparison to online viewing is impressive. The articles themselves are well presented and only look a little strange if there are a lot of hyperlinks included at the top of the article. Formatting is included such as italics, bullet points and bold and as a source of information WikiPock works very well indeed.

There are two purchasing options for WikiPock with one including updates for the next 12 months and I would suggest you go for this one. I went for the basic version and am already pondering an upgrade so that the information available is as relevant as possible. One other feature I should mention is the Random Page option which when clicked will obviously present a page from the database- I played around with this the other night and an hour later I had to stop because I was just wandering around picking up snippets of information I never knew before.

It is available for Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile, in 18 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Catalan, Turkish, Finnish and Czech) and even pre-loaded onto an SD card direct from www.wikipock.com.

WikiPock is an excellent solution for bringing a massive amount of information onto your smartphone which is easily accessible whenever you need it. It is the kind of application you will re-visit time and time again and has proved invaluable and a source of fascination to me over the past few days. I like the idea of having over 3 million articles stored directly on my phone and not having to rely on a mobile internet connection. Maybe it is sentimentality, but it works for me and is extremely good value.

You can purchase WikiPock from the following links- Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile.