I have spent a great deal of my time looking for hidden objects.

Big City Adventure is a huge time taker. The premise is simple and involves playing mini-games such as jigsaw puzzles to progress to the next part of town. When you reach the next part of town you have to find a series of hidden objects in a picture. This picture can be zoomed in to get a much closer look which involves lots of scrolling around and blurred graphics, but what appear to be failures at first quickly add to the fascination of the game. The first few plays are incredibly frustrating because it feels like looking at a meaningless picture with no logic involved, but over time it all falls into place and the process becomes very, very addictive. Objects are hidden inside pictures that pop up when you click a specific part of the main picture and others are found using cryptic clues. There are bonus coins for extra points, clues and other rewards and you gain extra points for finishing each level quickly. Think of it as a visual crossword and you won’t go far wrong.

So far I have progressed through 15 levels which leave 45 to complete, plus 45 mini-games along the way. It has taken me a week to clear these 15 and so I can expect at least another 3 weeks to complete the whole game, but the pictures get harder as the level numbers increase so the remaining time may also increase.

I simply cannot explain why hunting around pictures for objects is so addictive and why it is taking so much of my time, but the implementation is superb and everything from the clues to the clever placement of the objects come together to create a relaxing, yet at times frustrating, experience that I will be playing for some time to come. Big Fish Games has released many titles in this genre and I can see myself eventually buying all of them. I am completely and utterly addicted to the genre and these are the best implementations I have seen yet. If you are unsure, try one of the Lite titles and you will see what I mean. Prepare to be addicted…

Available from Clove for £528

More than 3 million Galaxy S 2′s have been pre-ordered to date in a very short space of time and that is remarkable given the number of different Android smartphones on the market. Something seems to be lifting the S 2 above the competition and it can’t surely be just those dual-core processors nestling within the super slim form? No, it can’t because people, on the whole, do not care if there is a billion gigabyte processor or an elastic band powering a phone so long as it works and can grab their attention.

The Galaxy S 2 grabbed my attention the first time I saw it and from the time I got one in my hands, it doesn’t seem to want to let me go. It isn’t, at first glance, radically different to the big screened Android competition, but there is something here that is different and I will try to understand what that is by the end.

I won’t be continually comparing it to the iPhone 4 or other Android competitors because I want to judge the S 2 on its own merits. A comparison against other devices will follow in a couple of days.

In the box

The box is standard Samsung; a black square affair that offers little indication of what is inside. When you open it the S 2 fills the entire top from left to right and top to bottom. This is not a small phone, but then again it sort of is. More on that later.

You get an AC microUSB charger, a microUSB sync cable, 1650mAh battery and a set of in-ear headphones with some extra buds. That’s your lot which seems a little tight considering the price of the phone. Would it have killed Samsung to bundle a screen protector like Sony Ericsson does? I guess the Gorilla Glass is a good reason not to, but it would still be nice to see.

First Impressions

Opinion is divided on the Galaxy S 2 and with good reason. On the one hand you have a phone that feels impossibly thin and which looks stunning in an understated way. On the other hand the backing has received criticism with some claiming that the phone is poorly built. There is without doubt an obsession with lightness going on here which is apparent when a 4.3″ screen comes in at only 116 grams. That is super light considering the specs and the form factor is one of those ‘How did they fit everything into this phone?’ moments.

To call it poorly built is disingenuous in my opinion. There are no rattles and it feels quite solid despite the lack of depth. The back plate is unbelievably bendy when you take it off, but once put in place again it fits like a glove. I think that some people expect metal and glass to make a phone look expensive, but are they the best materials for a smartphone? No they are not. Give me a good build quality and severe lightness and depth any day.

Care seems to have been taken to produce a phone that will survive the modern smartphone user. The Gorilla Glass is made from Gorillas (?) so must be tough and the back plate is easily replaced should it get scratched. Consider the minimal weight and much of the energy should be dissipated over what is a large area if the phone is dropped. It appears to be practically designed with minimal time taken on the aesthetics, but it still comes out the other side as a swan rather than an ugly duckling.

The S 2 is big, of that there is no doubt, and this offers many advantages. The large screen offers a mini-tablet experience for movies, games and complex apps and data entry is improved thanks to the larger than average keyboard. However, I have quite big hands which means I can usually hold a smartphone in one hand and use my thumb to interact with every area of the screen. On the S 2 it is a bit of a stretch to reach the top right hand corner which arguably shouldn’t happen on a ‘phone’. The problem is that we can’t have it both ways and the choice comes down to what is desired the most- a larger screen or complete one-handed use? I would go for the larger screen because, even at 4.3”, the S 2 feels good in the hand and the advantages are clear. It is the ultimate slab; so thin and light yet so large. We are one step closer to those devices Federation crew members used to walk around with on Star Trek and it is happening much quicker than the creators of the show probably expected.

There are few surprises in the button placements and the general form, but simplicity has been employed throughout. The on/off button is placed on the right hand side which takes some getting used to, but is absolutely perfect for right-handed people who hold a phone in their left hand. The positioning is ideal for the forefinger and soon becomes second nature in use. The headphone jack is at the top, the microUSB on the bottom side and the volume keys on the left so no real surprises there. The front buttons are slightly unusual in that there are just menu and back keys flanking the main home button. There is no search key, which I am guessing few people use anyway, and so making the main home button bigger makes a lot of sense. The menu and back keys are virtual and only light up when pressed which feels slightly strange at first. It all works well though and I have no real complaints, but I admit that I am someone who always prefers hardware keys if possible.

In use

So the hardware is pretty good in the hand and on the eye which is half the battle for many people, but how does it perform in the real world? I will go through each feature as normal, but not in huge detail. It’s all about the experience for me and I really do not care, or understand, if the camera struggles in specific areas or if the processors are pumping out a million tasks a second. It’s all about how it works for me.

Camera

I have been extremely impressed with the camera. The lack of a dedicated camera button is a shame because the camera itself works very well indeed, but the onscreen button is large enough to hit without thinking and it works well enough. The interface for the camera software is standard and access to taken photos, settings (which are high in number) and the zoom controls are logical enough for most to use them when a capture worthy moment arises. I was impressed with how quickly the camera starts up which is something that is often overlooked. The moment occurs and you want to catch it- there is nothing worse than a long delay starting the camera function up which is sadly something that happens on many smartphones.

I took my children out to a place called Nymans Gardens to test out the camera and a selection of photos is shown below. I played around with the effects, but on the whole left every setting at the maximum possible and the results were excellent. Photos were snapped in an instant and every single one was usable. I ended up taking 91, but won’t bore you with all of them. The photos below are scaled down, but should give a good idea of what the S 2 snapper is capable of. The last one shows how good the flash is as well (taken in complete darkness) which again is near the best, but not quite Nokia standards.

Video capture is rated at 1080p and 30fps and the results are pretty good. It is still obviously a smartphone video camera, but up there with the best available. Sound capture is quite good, but lacks the crispness found in some Nokia cameras. Again though, from a user experience point of view you are unlikely to be disappointed. A quick example is below-

As an aside, there is also a 2 Megapixel camera on the front for video calling which is a more generous specification that it may seem.

Screen

The dimensions will take most of the headlines because 4.3” is pretty big for any smartphone. Strangely this size is starting to become standard on high-end smartphones and all of the work is being done to reduce the depth rather than the footprint.

I do like this screen a lot for a variety of reasons. Size is a major factor for watching movies and navigating through the often muddled Android interface, but the colour presentation is just superb. It feels so alive and the viewing angles are as acute as you could hope for. Take it outdoors in the bright sunlight and you will still be able to see everything you need to and indoors it just shines. The touch side feels just right and is neither over sensitive or difficult to use and the resolution, at 480 x 800 pixels, looks crisp and clear for reading and every other activity.

It depends on your point of view regarding screen technology as to how you would rate this one. Do you need a Retina display (does anyone?) or do you need a large screen that is viewable in all conditions and one that reproduces colours vibrantly? Over the past few days I have used the S 2 to watch movies in preference to any other phone and I have to say that it makes mobile film watching feel much more real than on small screens thanks to the dimensions and colour reproduction.

General Performance

1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and 16GB of internal memory. It is an impressive set of pieces that make up the power puzzle here and you will not be found wanting with any standard task. Even video editing (editor app included) works without a glitch and I have not been able to find any problems here. Start up is quick from the powered off state although it can be frustrating; the screen pops up, but it continues to do stuff in the background and takes about 30 seconds all in all.

You may be asking why a smartphone needs a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. So am I. There are few smartphone processes that can take advantage of such power currently and so the performance enhancements are not too noticeable in normal use, but it’s a bit like buying a home computer. You don’t buy one that can just about cope with your needs- most people buy the best they can in the consideration that it will be able cope with more intensive tasks and those that have not even been invented yet. The S 2 is specced to cope with the future and this is hard to criticise particularly because it will only use what it needs to most of the time.

All in all I have pleased with the general speed of the S 2 and suffered no slowdowns at all. However, I can say that about many other high-end smartphones so you won’t necessarily see a huge jump in speed on the S 2 because so many other phones are so fast. This is not a criticism because its true worth will be shown in time and I fully expect some remarkably complex and clever apps to take advantage of the power here in the next few months.

Media

This is a strong area for the S2, very strong. The processor and large hi-definition screen ensure a smooth video playback experience. It really does feel like a small tablet when watching movies and again the colours seem to jump out of the screen. One very clever trick is the outdoor brightness option which reduces the quality of video output slightly in order to offer a super brightness settings thus enabling use in virtually every weather condition.

Music is also excellent and a decent set of headphones makes a world of difference. It is up there with the very best, but the software interface could be a little more intuitive. It takes longer to navigate through tracks than it should, but this being Android means that there is a wealth of alternatives available. There are also many options built into the software such as effects, some of which are highly realistic, and you will find yourself playing around with various aspects of music manipulation just because it is there.

The external speaker is pretty good as well and a welcome change from the recent HTC efforts. To create a decent noise from a phone so thin is not easy, but Samsung has just about achieved it. It is slightly tinny which is most noticeable when playing music however and could possibly be improved with software alone.

There is an FM Radio, AllShare for those of you with DLNA compatible equipment and a video and photo editor thrown in for good measure.

This phone is designed with entertainment high on the agenda and Samsung appears to have succeeded. The amount of content available is also improving all of the time on Android and Google Movies should be the icing on the cake for this particular phone.

Data Entry

As you may know I am no fan of touch screen keyboards and am still waiting for a large screened Android or iOS device to incorporate a proper font screened or slide out keyboard. Android does a good job though of giving the user a variety of options of which Swype is the most well known. Swype can suffer from the problem of a finger hiding the screen and thus reducing visibility of each letter, but the S 2 alleviates this thanks to the size of the screen. In fact, the screen size helps normal data entry a great deal as well and I found that I struggled less than I normally do on Android phones.

I don’t believe that the stock Android keyboard is better than the iOS keyboard, even with the bigger screen, but I do prefer Swype to both alternatives. Add handwriting recognition and even more options hidden in the settings and most users should be able to find a solution that works quite well for them.

Battery

I haven’t found a smartphone yet that does well in all areas and the battery is usually the biggest culprit on high-end phones, but even this area is relatively positive. It’s a mix of good and bad and in my unscientific tests I would say that it could go as far as 2 days under average usage, but easily down to one if you push it hard. I have read elsewhere that the battery is excellent and I understand why people say that, but I would say that it is about average for a high-end Android smartphone. Then again, most high-end Android smartphones don’t come with a 4.3″ screen hence why it is overall quite positive.

Call Quality

The Galaxy S shone in the call quality stakes and was way ahead of the competition at the time of its release. The Galaxy S 2 is pretty good, but doesn’t quite match the original S for richness and volume. Don’t be disheartened though because it is still up there with the best.

Strangely the speakerphone is rich and vibrant with only a hint of distortion when the volume is cranked all the way up.

Signal

No problems here at all. HSDPA in my house, even on Vodafone, and full signal everywhere on 3. Again I haven’t been scientific about this, but suspect the radios built-in are pretty good. GPS also latched on quickly which is not always the case on some Android phones so no complaints from me.

Software

It’s Android through and through, but with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface over the top. Highlights include Google Navigation (of course), various hubs and some nice tweaks to the way the home screens can be managed. The edit function works very similarly to iOS and you can even take a screenshot on the device by holding the power and home key, like iOS. I will come back to the iOS similarities tomorrow when I compare this phone to the iPhone 4, but so far I have been mightily impressed at how well the minimal buttons and large screen present the Android operating system.

Like the Sony Ericsson Arc, it makes Android a much more pleasant mobile OS to use thanks to the hardware and the extra software is both useful and at times worthy of immediate deletion.

Other Stuff

I like Samsung Klies which can be used to transfer media to and from the S 2 wirelessly. It is slightly clunky to set up the first time and not the easiest to use, but once I understood the quirks I enjoyed the experience of not having to directly connect to a desktop.

Polaris Office is installed for Office document handling and does a good job. I prefer it to Documents To Go primarily because it feels more like a part of the OS rather than a standalone solution.

There is so much more that I could cover, but I would be here all day and I don’t think more words about apps and tiny features would add much to my impressions of the S 2.

Conclusion

The Galaxy S 2 is good. It’s very good and has almost no failings at all. It is the flagship Android phone of the moment- if a fleet of Android phones were sailing across the Atlantic to fight a fleet of floating iPhone and BlackBerry’s, the S 2 would be leading the way. It is big, bold and very impressive in so many ways.

It is admittedly similar to the Sony Ericsson Arc, but from a design point of view I feel that the S 2 wins and the power under the hood is likely to keep it ahead of the pack for some time to come. The Arc is easier to hold, especially next to the ear, and minimises the effect of a large screen better than the S 2, but the camera and media quality are ‘just’ about better on the S 2.

I said at the start that this phone has already shipped more than 3 million units. I can now see what. It appeals on multiple levels; geeky Android users who get strangely excited when they look at a specs sheet and the man and women in the street who hold it and feel something special. It is special, of that there is no doubt.

The first thing I noticed was the similarity in looks to the native calendar app. Many of the familiar elements were there across the top and across the bottom. From the calendar selector to the view sensitive date selector on the bottom of the page. But there are a few tweaks. I appreciate the thoughtful tweaks and details like the page marker and the nice use of larger fonts that take what Apple gave us and add much needed usability.

Week Calendar HD has four views: Day, Week, Month and Year. Information can be pulled from either the native app or synched with Google calendar. (This is the main reason I use it). You can create several calendars or even subscribe to other calendars such as holidays, sporting events etc. Each calendar display can be color coded so you’ll know exactly what calendar(s) you are looking ator hidden if desired. Each view has a contextual navigation bar across the bottom so yo can navigate to the day, week, month, or year needed. There is also a Today button on the bottom left that, when pressed, will take you back to the current day. It is a very clean and straight forward layout that is easy to use without having to think about where different features are located.

The Day view is divided in to two panels. The one on the left lists all the upcoming events for the month in an agenda format. Tapping on any appointment will display the appointment details. Tapping on any day will bring up that day on the right panel. The right side panel displays the day broken up by hour time slots; working hours shaded differently than non-working hours. There is a red line that marks the current time of day in the calendar.

The Week view gives you a nice quick overview of your week. The day names run across the top with the current day highlighted in blue. As with the day view, there is a red line showing the current time of day. If you have appointments that are not displayed there are small arrow indicators that inform you there are hidden items. The block style for appointments can be customized from a simple flat color block. to a more modern shiny one.

The Month view looks very much like the default iOS app and works pretty much the same. The weekends are shaded while the current day is highlighted in blue. Tapping on an event will bring up the details of the event. Double tapping on a page with bring up the day view. I would like the choice to switch between a text label (iOS) and the button type (WC). But this is a very minor thing in my opinion.

The Year view is one of the views that I hardly use but it is a useful tool for advanced planning. The current day’s date is displayed in blue. Any day with an event will show yellow and get progressively darker with each event added. If you have five events per se, then the day will be an orange color. It’s a nice little addition that I thought was a nice solution to that particular need.

If you are looking for an alternative calendar for your iPad that syncs up with Google calendar, check out Week Calendar. It is a great program that may not have all the bells and whistles as some of the other solutions, but in keeping with an idea of sophistication with simplicity, Week Calendar is awesome. It just works. It’s well worth the cost of $3 and is available now on iTunes.

Clark

The Samsung Ch@t is currently available for £49 without a contract and this is quite low when you consider what this phone is capable of.

This is definitely not a smartphone, but not every phone needs to be. Consider the target market and the specs start to make sense; texting, emailing, snapping, social networking plus a bit of browsing. Too many people spend £35 / month or £400 just to do the above and so phones like this make a lot of sense. They won’t push the buttons of most of you reading this because they offer limited flexibility and expansion, but they are designed to undertake specific functions that the majority of people will need, particularly teenagers.

It’s never easy to review a budget phone when you are used to high-end devices because the natural tendency is to look at the bad parts, but I am going to consider it for what it is and try to be objective.

It is striking how like the Curve 8520 this phone is on first glance, and somewhat surprising given Samsung’s track record regarding unoriginal design. The keys are shaped like those found on the BlackBerry Bold 9700 to add to the effect and it is topped off with an optical trackpad which feels and works identically to the BlackBerry phones. Stand ten feet away from this phone and it is a BlackBerry, it seriously is.

When I hold this in one hand and hold my Curve 8520 in the other, one of them creaks and feels slightly flimsy. The Ch@t feels as solid as a rock in comparison which is crazy when the price is considered.

The keyboard is not bad at all and fairly well spaced. It takes some getting used to and is not of the same quality as the BlackBerry equivalents, but it isn’t far off at all. All of the punctuation is logically placed and there are shortcuts for email and symbols as well. Guess what- you can lock the phone by holding one key as well which is yet another nod to BlackBerry.

The 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top side next to the microUSB jack which uses a sliding cover to protect it when not in use (very nice) and besides the volume keys on the left-hand side that’s you lot. Two shortcut keys are placed either side of the optical trackpad to cater for the usual commands such as ‘menu’, ‘back’ etc. and these are flanked by call end and start buttons. It’s all very physical and feels good when you need to bang out emails quickly or make and receive calls.

From a form factor and build quality point of view, the Ch@t exceeds in almost every area and feels more like a BlackBerry than it should do. That of course is not a bad thing for the purchaser, but to deny the similarities would be bizarre. The screen is clear, but suffers in bright sunlight- it is just about viewable in heavy brightness, but only just.

The onboard software is not quite up to the level of the hardware, but there is a lot here and despite some inconsistencies there are some genuine highlights. It all looks rather basic, but attempts to offer much more than rival budget phones. Email support is generous with IMAP working perfectly well for me and social networking is high on the agenda here with automatic support for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Friendster, MSN, Yahoo!, Palringo and a neat feature called Bluetooth Messenger- that should be enough for any teenager. However, there are some bizarre quirks such as not being able to click links in tweets and the Wi-Fi connection settings being stuck in the applications folder. Some of the quirks work quite well- I like how emails, tweets and other notifications move from left to right so that you can read them without opening them and the games bundle is really impressive for such a lowly priced phone. The internet browser is poor at best, but adequate for basic browsing on mobile site and the overall selection of apps will cover most needs. The PIM software is a highlight and is supplemented by a dictionary, FM radio, voice recorder, file manager, memo app, world clock and the list goes on and on. You can change the themes, fonts and the home screens and even transition effects are available.

There is a backup manager and full security settings are available for good measure and it all comes together to create a pleasing interface for you, of your teenage child, to do what needs to be done.

Music quality is ridiculously good for a phone of this price, I really mean that. It is excellent and different effects are available such as classic, rock and jazz. Throw in the ability to share and rate tracks, create playlists, use Bluetooth headsets and see full details of every track and it is a hugely positive experience from a media perspective.

Video playback is of course not the best thanks to the low resolution screen and won’t be used for anything other than quick clips- it reminds me of the quality we saw in the early PDAs.

The camera is a 2 megapixel effort and is best overlooked. OK for quick snaps, maybe, but at this level you have to wonder why they are included. I guess that all phones have to have a camera nowadays whether it is worth including or not.

Call quality is better than expected, in particular the speakerphone, and this is another area that will be high on the agenda of anyone young enough to not know who Bruce Springsteen is.

One more thing- the battery is excellent which is probably because this is a 2G only phone. The lack of 3G is noticeable in some apps, but only serious emailers will notice the lag and at times Twitter can be slightly slow to load.

Conclusion

I love the Samsung Ch@t! It is cute, well built and the music quality is seriously good. It is far from ideal for most people, or is it? Most people want calls, texting, social networks and little else from a phone. If they can have a decent keyboard, good battery life (which this has) and a fun experience then the Ch@t will suffice perfectly well. It looks and feels like a BlackBerry Curve, but comes in at under £50. Price should never be a major factor when reviewing a phone, as the T-Mobile Pulse mini demonstrated by not even being worth £20, but the Ch@t is a steal at £49. Got a teenager? Don’t want to spend £120 on a phone they will lose anyway? Get them a Ch@t.

I have 9 dictionaries and thesauri on my iPhone and iPad. They seem to multiply like my cats. I look at one, it looks interesting. I look at another. It presents words in a different way. And so on. I’ve stopped looking because 9 is the maximum I can fit in a folder on my iPhone. Part of me hoped that Apple doesn’t increase the limit.

This isn’t a review but a look at how dictionaries can present words. What’s the big deal, you say. A dictionary is a list of words in alphabetical sequence with meanings attached. And if it’s a thesaurus, each word has a list of similar words. That’s the basic idea. But words can be presented in different ways. When you’re looking for a way to describe something, having a list of words is one thing, but if they’re presented in different ways, it’s easier to choose the right word to convey what you want to say. Or maybe realize that you don’t want to say what you thought you wanted to say.

I can’t remember which one I bought first. And I look at some of them now and ask myself why I bothered. They must have looked good at the time. So I’m going to go through the ones I have and describe what I saw in them. I’m not necessarily recommending them other than for the way they present words. Also, some of the free ones are supported by advertising which is somewhat strange in a dictionary.

Oxford Deluxe (ODE & OTE) by Enfour

You have to have an Oxford. There are a number available. As I understand it, this is the Shorter Oxford which is normally two volumes and a couple of thousand pages. It’s quite expensive as Apps go, but significantly cheaper than the paper version. Layout and presentation is what you expect in a top level dictionary. There’s also audio pronunciation with a British accent. I also use this for British/Canadian spelling. It usually has the American spelling as well. There are other Oxford English Dictionary Apps, but this one seemed to get the best reviews.

American Heritage Dictionary by Enfour

Similar to the Oxford Deluxe, but American English oriented. At work, our documentation must use American English spelling, so having a good dictionary is a requirement. This one also has audio pronunciations, but in a North American accent. To me that means almost no accent. I also find that there are some words that are accepted in North America that I don’t find in the Oxford and vice versa.

Dictionary.com – Dictionary & Thesaurus by Dictionary.com

I think I picked this one up because at the time it was free. Definitions tend to be brief which can be useful. Again, the presentation is your typical dictionary. The thesaurus has a brief definition as well as a list of synonyms (of course) and antonyms.

Advanced English Dictionary & Thesaurus by jDictionary

This one has a different UI compared to the typical dictionary. It breaks out words in boxes with the type of word, noun, verb, etc., on the top of the box. It also has more general and more specific words as well as opposites. Each definition is in its own box along with related words so they are directly related to the particular meaning.

Meriam-Webster Dictionary by Meriam- Webster

I picked this one up because it was free at the time and it is Webster’s. Again, this is a traditional dictionary presentation and has synonyms and antonyms as part of the word definition.

Advanced English Dictionary and Thesaurus by Mobile Systems

This one also combines much of a dictionary and thesaurus in one, so you don’t have to switch. There’s a definition as well as a number of phrases showing usage. Then there are antonyms and synonyms. There are also related words which can help home in on what you want to say. As well, there may be hypernyms and hyponyms, words that are more general and more specific than the focus word.

WordBook English Dictionary & Thesaurus by TransCreative Software

This one has the usual definitions and origin, but you can then tap a button to get to a traditional thesaurus and also a links button which contains synonyms, more specific and more general words, and related words. You can also use the word in a Google search and define websites to use as links, such as Wikipedia.

WordWeb Dictionary by WordWeb Software

Another traditional layout but when you’re searching, related words that are included with the definition of the current word drop down in a little box. This one also has links to external resources such as Google and Wikipedia.

English Dictionary & Thesaurus by Ultralingua

Here the definitions are also quite short and to the point. I found some of the related words to be interesting choices. For example, I looked up the word “swim” in all the dictionaries to compare them. In the thesaurus, this one has “swim” as a verb with be light, float, and lighten as some of the related words. The antonym given is “gravity”. I would have expected “sink” but I did want a different view after all. One nice touch in this dictionary is that verbs are conjugated. Most dictionaries just have a single word showing the different tense. This one shows the complete conjugation (I, you, he/she/it, we, they) as well as more tenses than I knew existed.

So there you have it. As I said, a brief look at what makes these different. One thing’s for sure, I’m never at a loss for words.

Bob

Then there are the price drops. That’s more interesting because it often gives you a chance to try something for free or pick up something that you were waffling on for a reduced price. I’m starting to watch this more closely because there are some deep discounts available if you can catch them.

Some of the sites I frequent highlight price drops and Apps gone free. It is one such freebie that prompted this piece.

On one site that regularly highlights Apps Gone Free, I noticed a paint program called Inspire that was rated quite highly. It was down from $4.99 to free for the day. Now I am no artist. I don’t consider that I have very much creative ability, at least not in what people would consider art. However, for free, I figured what the heck. Let’s see what can be done.

I’ve seen paint programs on Windows and the Mac. In fact I have some. Mostly I use them for photo editing, but occasionally, I need to change a splash screen or something for work. I can use them that way, but I would never consider them for real art. Just like my feeling about mind mapping Apps, using a mouse is to far removed from the App.

So I downloaded Inspire. It’s an iPhone App but I loaded it on my iPad. The iPhone is too small to let things flow. And I started playing. Way cool. I said I was no artist and an App isn’t going to make me one, but this was fun. There are a zillion options for brushes, textures, amount of paint on a brush (gee, just like the real thing), and so on. I checked out the iPad version and it looked even cooler. But it wasn’t cheap. Since I was just playing, I couldn’t justify the price.

But my curiosity was fired up and I started doing some research, as I tend to do a lot. I checked out various sites with reviews and comparisons of painting and drawing Apps. I downloaded some free ones to get a feel for them and the various interfaces. And I made a list of Apps I want to keep track of for price drops.

One of the Apps had some very basic tutorials. One of the reviews mentioned them but complained that they were much to simplistic to be of much use. But it occurred to me that there must be lost of free tutorials on the Web if I was interested, just like there are for almost any subject you can think of.

And there it was. It actually occurred to me that it might be fun to learn something about painting. I don’t think I had ever given this a first thought before, never mind a second one.

I had the same thoughts about music when I got my MacBook and played with GarageBand. And then GarageBand on the ipad brought it even closer. But I wasn’t a complete stranger to music although I’m no musician. I did play with a guitar some when I was younger. That was the 60s. You had to play the guitar!

So Steve Jobs is correct when he says that the iPad (and similar tablets, but we won’t tell Steve) is magical. It’s a transformative type of magic. Alchemy if you will. It has the ability to change no interest into curiosity into a fun learning experience.

I’m looking forward to retirement in a few years. I’ll have absolutely no trouble filling up the extra time. I’m adding art and music to my list of things to try. Who knows what else I’ll magically be attracted to.

Bob

If you are a person who likes to input data and communicate on a smartphone using a real keyboard your choices are limited. RIM is the king of keyboarded smartphones and has built its hardware, software and everything else BlackBerry related around this setup. For all of the problems RIM is suffering, data entry and sheer speed of use are unquestionably at the peak of the smartphone market at this time, and a lesson for some others to learn from. The smartphone world is dominated by slabs of screen and finger touch phones that bring with them the kind of data entry that cannot keep up with the specifications powering them. What is the point of a 1.2GHz dual-core processor if it takes too long to type a simple email reply? There is a massive drive towards faster processors, clever screen technology and all sorts of other bits and pieces that let you do almost anything with your smartphone, but data entry has been left behind by most hardware manufacturers and software developers. To be fair to Apple, the iPhone keyboard is very good, but people like me still hanker for a hardware keyboard for the simple reason they are quicker and easier to use.

Nokia, HTC and others use hardware keyboards from time to time and the results have been mixed. The landscape HTC keyboards on Android phones have been less useable that they should be given their size. Windows Phone isn’t optimised for landscape yet, which hasn’t stopped some manufacturers releasing phones anyway, and the Nokia phones often have excellent keyboards fronting Symbian, which is the main problem for me. Hardware and software should complement each other and every part of the operating system should fit every feature of the hardware, and vice versa.

There are countless examples where this does not happen and they all have one thing in common; the HTC 7 Pro home screen does not switch orientation when the keyboard is pulled out which is unforgiveable in a +£400 smartphone. Yes, Windows Phone 7 does not support landscape, but that is no excuse for making such a device. The HTC Desire Z supports Android more fully, but the keyboard itself can be tricky to use and is extremely flat when pulled out. The commonality they share is that one company makes the software and another makes the hardware, and this is all too obvious.

Software and hardware only work seamlessly in iOS and BlackBerry. The iPhone has no physical keyboard of course, but the software is designed to blend perfectly with the hardware it is running on. There is of course far too much written about Apple software, to the point that every aspect of the interfaces is drooled over, but you can’t deny how well it works with the single home button and touch screen. It’s also hard to deny how well BlackBerry OS works on a front-keyboarded smartphone, but it hasn’t been as successful on touch devices like the Storm and Torch. BlackBerry smartphones like the Curve and Bold remain the only phones that take full advantage of the front-keyboarded form factor.

And then the Samsung Galaxy Pro arrived.

The Galaxy Pro is on average priced at £249 from the likes of Carphone Warehouse, but 3 is currently offering it for just £149 + top-up which puts it in direct competition with the Curve 8520. At first glance it looks like a pure business-centric unit, but that does not mean that teenagers won’t be buying this phone like they have so much of the BlackBerry range. The combination of a keyboard and an emphasis on social networking alone is likely enough to turn the heads of many and we could see this phone selling very well if the current price point becomes the standard.

It is a curious mix of a professional form factor married to relatively cheap materials, but somehow it retains a likeability factor in use. It looks metallic, but is covered from head to toe in plastic and is extremely light which offers a sense of the budget sector it is aimed at. It is quite odd, but follows the current trend for Android handsets to use fairly cheap outer materials to create lightness. It seems that lightness is becoming a fascination with Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others and while this is beneficial, it can make a phone feel slightly cheap.

Keyboard

The keyboard benefits from the wide form factor and the keys are larger than on most competing front-keyboarded devices. Looking at it, it is easy to expect a clunky and difficult experience, but it works very well indeed. There are some quirks such as the @ key being located on the left and a small space bar, but the build of the keys and the mechanical action of each overcomes these quite easily. The space bar is a mere two keys wide, but I have yet to miss it so a small thumbs up for creating a smaller space bar that actually works.

Overall, this is one of the best keyboards I have used on a smartphone and there are significant advantages to having one built in. The QuickLaunch feature makes opening apps super quick. For example, press the search key and ‘C’ and the calculator opens immediately and you can also define different apps for each key. It reminds me of the BlackBerry method and this is far from a bad thing. The only other addition is the use of 4 arrows keys which you can use to navigate in the home screens and in web pages etc. There are times when this is useful, but I did find myself using the touch screen quite a lot which is surprising because on the BlackBerry Torch I hated jumping between the keyboard, the trackpad and the touch screen.

The keys just above the keyboard are real keys as well which also work well; menu, home, return and search are standard although the placement would benefit from swapping home and menu in my opinion. As with most things though, a short period of time makes them feel perfectly natural and you will soon get used to them. The on/off button is strangely placed on the right-hand side and there are no call start / end keys which makes sense when space is considered- how many people will make and receive enough calls to justify using space for two keys that rarely get used?

This is a very good keyboard and care has been taken to make sure that the space available has been used effectively. It is one of the highlights of the Pro and I don’t think many people will be disappointed with the data input mechanism available here.

Screen

The screen is potentially the Achilles heel of the Galaxy Pro when you consider the specs; at 320 x 240 pixels and measuring only 2.8” you would be forgiven for believing that it will make for a poor Android experience. There are of course compromises to be made, but over time I have managed to get around most of them. Don’t get me wrong- this phone needs a higher resolution to offer a better general experience, but I liken it to the Curve 8520 which works brilliantly with the same type of screen. The Bold 9700 feels nicer with a higher resolution, but what you achieve with both is ultimately the same.

This may sound bizarre, but I kind of like the fuzzy text look of a lower resolution screen because it makes text feel more real. I am not trying to drag an advantage out of the lower resolution here because it needs to be higher, but it does just work on the busy Android interface and the way the keys can be used to manipulate and access the system speeds everything up.

The touch aspect of the screen is excellent and I hit the right spot every time and the marriage of keyboard and touch screen works well here. Brightness is good with some washout in bright sunlight. However, I haven’t struggled to use the phone yet in any conditions and this is surprising when you consider the overall price and screen technology used. You will need to spend time working out what works best because on some third party apps such as K-9 Mail the default text display is too small to tap easily. I like K-9 Mail and so upped the text a little, but also use the arrow keys to navigate through messages, sort of like a BlackBerry. Hooray!

There is one other aspect to this screen and that is the unusual landscape 320 x 240 resolution. This offers some challenges in terms of compatibility with apps and I have noticed some, games in particular, that work on the Galaxy Pro, but in portrait mode. This means that you have to use the phone on its side to play the game with the touch screen.

That all sounds dreadful and I can already hear the sniggers from some readers. However, this still leaves Galaxy Pro users with thousands upon thousands of apps available to them and a large number have already been coded to support the landscape form. On the first day I downloaded the following-

Angry Birds (all 3 versions)
K-9 Mail
Twitter
Evernote
iPaper
Dropbox
Chess Free
BBC News
Drag Racing
Wikipedia
Pool Master
Retro Camera

All of the above worked perfectly with the exception of Chess which, as I said earlier, was turned 90 degrees. This is an example though of random apps downloaded and installed, and they all worked. I suspect some high-end games will struggle with the resolution, but at 2.8” I am not convinced many users will consider gaming as part of their buying decision.

General Performance

The 800Mhz processor will send a shiver down the spine of those whose minds can only comprehend a smartphone with ‘GHz’ somewhere in the specs. However, it all works perfectly well in normal use. When I installed the apps mentioned earlier I had them all running at once and not a blip in performance occurred.

This is not a powerhouse smartphone and will not be able to cope with multiple high-end processes running at the same time, but it will cope with almost everything any normal person throws at it. A device like this does not need a 1GHz processor, actually I can’t think of any smartphone that needs one, and the power built in appears to be perfectly adequate for this particular phone.

Camera

This is a turn up for the books. This phone makes no pretentions to offer a decent photography experience, as the specs highlight, but it isn’t bad at all. Video capture is limited to VGA (320×240) and 30 frames per second. I expected appalling results, but was surprised at how smooth the videos were. You won’t be doing much with the results, but for catching a moment it works better than expected. Example below featuring a beautiful princess…

The still camera has no flash and is limited to 3 Megapixels, but Auto focus, Face detection, Smile detection, Digital zoom, Effects and Panorama are thrown in to make the experience more usable. The camera interface is quick and easy to use and ‘quick and easy’ is how I would describe the photo taking process. It all works well and the results are not bad at all, even close-ups. Check out the examples below.

Battery

Good again. The prediction of 11 hours talk time and 620 hours standby is high, but it seems as though Samsung has decided to aim for the corporate market and produce a phone that is capable of easily delivering a full day of use. Voice calls obviously cut the battery life, but not the extent that I have seen others and I could see this phone managing two days of my normal usage which is quite intense at times. It is another area that makes me wonder if Samsung looked quite closely at the BlackBerry’s before designing the Galaxy Pro.

Software

Android 2.2.2 (Froyo) is installed and works as efficiently as would be expected. I’m not sure of this is standard or an addition by 3, but 4 icons are static on the right-hand side which makes sense given the landscape orientation of the display. It does, however, limit how much space you have to play with widgets and icons and so I quickly installed LauncherPro which worked perfectly.

The keyboard makes using many of the apps a much more productive experience than on a touch screen; messaging, the calendar and any apps requiring data entry are greatly improved and the touch screen is still there for apps that need touch to work well.

Samsung has, for no good reason it seems, bundled in quite a lot of extra software which is mostly not worth keeping. Here is a list of the extras I found-

• Memo (quite good for a very basic notes app)

• FM Radio (this has a sweet interface, but requires using the supplied headphones- they are not good at all)

• News and Weather (provides basic weather forecasting and some new feeds- not bad)

• Crazy Penguins, The Sims 3, Win Cash! And Bejeweled (not sure why these are here when the Android Market offers so much more, but shouldn’t complain)

• Samsung IM / Social Hub (these work to provide an integrated social networking experience which is useful, but could be slightly more professionally presented)

The usual goodies are here of course including Google Navigation, Maps and everything else you expect in Android and it all works as it should, but with the consideration that the low resolution screen makes some of the apps slightly more difficult to use than would normally be the case. Like most things, a few days adjustment makes a world of difference.

Call quality

The call quality to the ear is unusual, but very clear and will suffice for the majority of people. Even at high volumes there is almost no distortion and the speaker phone is not too bad either. There is a slight tinny tone to voice, but it verges on acceptable.

Signal

3G and 2G are fine and I had no problems at all. Full signal everywhere for me, but the Wi-Fi seemed a little weak. It all worked OK, but I was showing 2 bars compared to the iPhone 4′s 4 bars. To be fair it isn’t easy to believe just the bard so some more testing will be required.

Media

Don’t expect great things here because it simply isn’t designed as a pure media smartphone. Then again the music quality isn’t too bad, but you will of course have to use your own headphones because none are supplied. Video playback was acceptable, but only just because of the QVGA screen.

Conclusion

I must emphasise that when I first used the Galaxy pro I was disappointed by what I saw. It felt a little cheap and the design somewhat old fashioned, but over the following days it all started to click into place. The keyboard, screen (to a point), processor, form factor, camera and almost everything else worked as well together as I have seen in any other smartphone.

There is more than a hint of BlackBerry in how the Pro feels to use and the number of shortcuts available helps a lot. This phone is potentially very important because it proves that Android can work on a keyboarded landscape phone. Actually it does work, and it works very well, but the low resolution of the screen hampers the experience just a little and is the one area that feels lacking in a phone that offers a huge amount for the price. At £150 it is an absolute steal and puts many other budget Android smartphones to shame, but if the Orange San Francisco can sport a high resolution screen I see little reason why the Galaxy pro cannot.

The HTC ChaChaChaChaChaChaChaCha is soon to be released and benefits from a 480 x 320 pixel screen which should look much cleaner. The 600Mhz processor, 2.6” screen size and the potential for HTC to once again screw up vital areas mean that it may be a lost opportunity though. At some point a manufacturer will release an Android handset that feels as good to use as a BlackBerry Bold 9700 (they could do it today if they wanted to), and at that moment Android will gain a huge advantage over the competition. RIM will suffer greatly because the Galaxy Pro proves that Android works in this format and that means Android will find a place in the hands of those who require a hardware keyboard for quick communication and the entertainment that Android will potentially bring.

The Galaxy Pro is a very good smartphone, and particularly good value at just £150, but more than anything it shows that an even better version will be brilliant. It does what most people will need particularly well and makes for a decent alternative to the BlackBerry Curve 8520. Make it an alternative to the Bold 9700 and Google, Android and whoever makes it will be laughing. I am keeping the Galaxy Pro and can see myself using it quite often, and not many phones end up in my ‘keep’ category.

Available from 3 for £149 + top-up

UPDATE: It appears that the Galaxy Pro is already unlocked when bought from 3 on PAYG.

It is extremely difficult to balance the need to note down your tasks in a way that does not mean you spend longer organising than ‘doing’ and this is a trap I have seen many people, including myself, fall into. Calendars can get complicated and reoccurrences can start to annoy rather than remind and very soon you find yourself stuck in the trap of noting down everything you need to do using a method that is not designed to allow quick management of tasks. To do lists can also suffer from over complexity and it is all too easy to create long lists of tasks that get put back time and time again or become hidden below the bottom of the screen because the lists are too long.

I always use a calendar because I can’t get my head around To do lists. I just forget that the tasks are there and end up with lots of useless information that is of no value to me. I use a calendar because of the reminders and the ability to get an overview of what is coming up. It works well for me and the only downside is the time needed to input new entries and the fiddling around that occurs when I need to change appointments.

And then Notificant appeared. Of all the solutions I have seen to date this one seems to strike the perfect balance between keeping the user informed of what needs to be done while making the creation process as easy as possible. All you do is type a note and set the time and date to be alerted and that’s it. You can choose how you want to be alerted and on which devices and you can even choose to have an email sent to you at the appropriate time.

There is a limit of 160 characters which is slightly too low in my opinion, but I guess this makes sense to keep the simplicity at the forefront while you are using the app; it is all about speed- type in a note, set the time for the notification and choose where you want the notification to be sent to. You then get on with your life and when the alarm sounds, you do what it asks you to do and move on.

There are apps available for the iPhone and Mac and also the ability to create and manage notifications on the web. The web side works very well in Firefox, Chrome and Safari, but is problematic under Internet Explorer. I asked the developer about this and here is the reply-

“Thank you for purchasing Notificant. The problems you are experiencing are there because you are using Internet Explorer, which is wildly noncompliant of web development standards.

Notificant is a sophisticated web application and has been coded in accordance with those standards and it therefore fully supports modern web browsers such as Apple’s Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

One day, perhaps, we will go back and make the modifications necessary to support Internet Explorer, but as it stands today, it is a fairly daunting and expensive task and we’d rather focus our resources on moving forward instead of supporting outdated browsers like Internet Explorer.

If your situation allows you, we urge you to switch to a more capable web browser like the ones mentioned above. Not only will you be able to use Notificant to its full potential, but your whole web browsing experience will become significantly richer.

If you’d like any more assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us again.”

They are of course quite right, but it would be nice to see an update because many people are stuck with using IE at work and it makes the process more convoluted. The main problem under IE, besides the presentation, is that you cannot choose a time and date when creating a new notification- you have to created it and then go back in to edit it to amend it. Not the end of the world, but it could be better.

I haven’t bought the Mac app yet because I really don’t need it. The web app works so well under Firefox that it would be an expense, albeit a small one, that would give me little more than an even cleaner interface to play with.

Over the past week Notificant has completely changed the way I managed what I need to do. I get things done, but don’t have to look at lists of tasks the way I do with a calendar. There is of course a list of future notifications, but this method of presenting them immediately puts the ‘one moment in time’ approach into the user’s head. You see the notification and you deal with it, and you don’t worry about what else you need to do until it happens. If you are struggling with organising yourself on a daily basis you really do need to take a look at Notificant.

The specifications were irrelevant. Look above, that is simply beautiful. No phone before or after has come close to reaching the level of acceptance the original RAZR received and it was all down to the aesthetics. From the one-handed opening mechanism to the subtle speaker grill to the metal built it was, and still is, the nearest we have come to the perfect mobile design.

It made me feel good long before mobile technology was supposed to. It felt like luxury at a price point that most people could afford and Motorola truly struck gold by selling more than 110 million RAZRs over 4 years. The main problem for Motorola was that it didn’t move from the original design, but merely tweaked it with various new models and has never recovered since. The company is starting to come back, but the RAZR remains the highlight for a company with the longest tradition of all in the mobile industry.

This isn’t a long review because there isn’t much I can say about the RAZR except that it is still the pinnacle of mobile beauty and will be for as long as the touch screen smartphone dominates.

Of course, the 7 inch screen just looked stupidly small next to my iPad. A point of sale display nearby boastfully proclaimed “Amateur Hour Is Over” (presumably a sly dig at the iPad), but all I could think of when I picked up the device was how it felt like a Fisher Price toy. It felt too light and too plasticky. It just isn’t a device that is in the same class as the iPad and I found it hard to take it seriously.

My deep reservations about the form factor aside, the good news is that the QNX software is fast and fluid. It’s far more responsive than Android on the Galaxy Tab and far more polished than Honeycomb on the Motorola Xoom. Seeing all your open applications running live in the “card” view is really quite cool, but I didn’t get a chance to push the multitasking to the limit to see if performance would suffer in real world use.

I hunted around for an app which would allow me to test the onscreen keyboard, eventually stumbling upon Word to Go (which looked pretty similar to the iPad version, I have to say).

Unfortunately, that is where the similarity ended. Firing up the application and attempting to type in landscape mode was an exercise in frustration. Not only did the keyboard take up half of the already small screen, but the keyboard itself was only a three quarters of the width of an iPad’s and each key about two thirds the height. Worse still, there was no autocorrect, resulting in a large number of typos, even in the few short sentences I managed to type.

Switching to portrait mode, I was more successful. Thumb-typing is definitely the way to go on the Playbook – it feels really, really comfortable when held that way. The lack of autocorrect is still a handicap, however, with the keyboard depending upon complete accuracy when typing – so the typos persisted. It felt great, but it didn’t work great. Moreover, can you imagine sitting in a business meeting with a Playbook held up in front of your face while taking notes?

Overall, I think $499 is a steep price to pay for a device which is basically no more than a BlackBerry accessory. It may indeed find a market with some of the BlackBerry crowd, but the form factor alone severely limits its usefulness. My iPad has replaced a laptop for me; I couldn’t imagine the Playbook doing the same.

Trevor

Available to pre-order for £466

Highlights-

Symbian 3 for Nokia
Full QWERTY keyboard
4” AMOLED touch screen
8 mega pixel camera with dual LED flash
720p high definition video recording
Full web browsing of real websites
HDMI connection
Bluetooth 3.0

Software

When I first powered up the E7 I was greeted with a plethora of boxes, icons and widgets that covered the gamut of what a smartphone can do. From BBC iPlayer to Facebook to email, it is all on the home screen(s) and can be confusing for new users. What surprised me most was the lag when swiping between home screens- this is a review device with no extra software installed and yet there was still a noticeable lag when moving around.

The entire interface is fiddly and far from intuitive. There is a lot of screen real estate here, but Nokia has still managed to cram it full of stuff and make it feel cluttered. This desire to offer as many apps and features to a new user as possible is being done away with by others such as Sony Ericsson and Samsung and Nokia needs to carefully consider how they set up new Symbian phones because it isn’t quite working at the moment.

I could go on about the software, but it would take too long. I haven’t used Symbian for a while, but there are multiple areas where the interface and performance could be speeded up. The web browser, for example, is very slow to load complex pages and when I first started it up I wanted to enter a URL. I was greeted with a basic list of bookmarks and no URL bar. I then had to press ‘options’, then ‘go to’ at which point a new menu appears with the following options; New web page, web search and web feeds. I then had to tap ‘new web page’ and I could enter a URL. As it happens the display of text on web pages is not great either with tiny fonts that are far too thin to read easily.

There are too many areas where extra steps are needed, even in third party offerings. Little things annoy me like entering my email address in the Gmail app- once typed in I had to click options and then choose from ‘OK’, ‘Add from Contacts’, ‘Editing Options’ and ‘Writing Language’. If I had just typed in an email address I would presume that OK should be available with one tap. That particular solution gets worse by the way, but I couldn’t face using it any more so gave up.

I decided instead to set up my main email account. I went to the front screen and then tapped applications which brought up the mail app. I chose to set up a new account and a box for the email address popped up. There is an ‘@’ at the start of this box- type the first part of the email address and then jump over it to complete the address. Add your password and then enter everything else manually. I haven’t had to manually enter my mailbox settings on a smartphone for a year now so why here?

Anyway, I entered all of the settings correctly, it went off to check the settings each step of the way, and when I got to the main mailbox page it wouldn’t connect and told me to go off and check my settings. Two days later it still won’t connect.

It is remarkably frustrating to use, in almost every area, and has highlighted to me that Nokia is right to move away from Symbian. Sadly it has also highlighted that Nokia does not understand how to make hardware or software that normal people will want to use. Everything about the software is frustrating and the power button became more annoying as time went on as well. It is tiny, flush to the surface and just about impossible to hit without some serious thought. This isn’t software related, but is a pain when the screen keeps turning off after a few seconds (despite being set up to turn off after longer periods). AAAARGH!!!!!

General Performance

There is a general malaise about the way the E7 works which can be summed up in two words- it’s slow. Little delays take away the feeling of a high-end device powered by good quality innards. It isn’t underpowered at all, but the software doesn’t seem to quite fit the hardware in this instance. A shame.

Camera

Oh well. At least we can expect a Nokia camera to be great.

It is good of course, but not as good as I was expecting. In bright sunlight it struggled to catch colours the way the N8 does, but in dark conditions the flash is excellent and produced photos you rarely see from a smartphone.

Video capture also performed brilliantly in darker conditions and the 720p output was very good indeed. It is a Nokia so we would expect a decent camera, but I wonder how important this feature is to people within the target market for this phone.

I would have added some example photos, but am still struggling to set up my email account to buzz them over.

Battery

Good for 2 days use with moderate usage. Heavy Wi-Fi use pounds it a bit, but it is typically Nokia in this area and pretty good.

Call quality / signal

No problems here. Read any of my previous Nokia reviews and you know what to expect. Nokia got these areas sorted long ago and has, rightly, seen no need to change things.

In my Nokia N8 review I wrote- “Symbian^3 is by far the most complicated to use OS of the bunch and is at times unusable unless you are a hardened Symbian user who is completely familiar with the way the system works. It is not even close to defendable and in direct comparisons to iOS, Android, Windows Phone and even BlackBerry OS 6 it feels like an OS from 3 or 4 years back.”

Sadly that is still true and so I will conclude here with an unfinished review. Despite a form factor that is near perfect for me and a keyboard that is truly excellent, the software and the way the hardware is built consign the E7 to being merely a footnote in the history of Symbian. The lack of an expansion card slot and a fairly low screen resolution don’t help. One for hardened Symbian users only.

Available to pre-order for £466.80

Highlights-

Symbian 3 for Nokia
Full QWERTY keyboard
4” AMOLED touch screen
8 mega pixel camera with dual LED flash
720p high definition video recording
Full web browsing of real websites
HDMI connection
Bluetooth 3.0

As you can see the price is high and the specs are impressive. This phone is without doubt aimed at those who want to communicate and undertake multiple tasks throughout a normal day and those who have a need for a quality photography experience. It is a serious device and displays this in every part of the design.

When I first picked it up I was impressed by the quality of the build and there is little doubt that Nokia can make a phone that feels solid as nails. The sheer quality throughout the device is exceptional and there are no creaks or rattles in sight. It is almost perfectly constructed.

But…

The consequence of using metal in every part of the design is that the phone is not easy to hold. It feels incredibly slippery and makes you grip it harder than you would most other phones. This is compounded when you try to slide open the keyboard; the mechanism is very tough and requires some force when you first use it, a force that cause me to drop the phone 3 times when I opened the keyboard initially.

It’s a case of good and bad because this mechanism makes for an extremely tough feel when the keyboard is open, but getting there could be easier. UPDATE: I eventually worked out how to open the keyboard without applying too much force and this makes a difference, but should I really have to scratch my head and work out how to open out a keyboard on a phone? UPDATE: And I have dropped the phone a further two times…

Anyway, the hardware is seriously tough and the design is a love it or hate it affair that will gain the affections of some and the loathing of others. To me it looks great when the keyboard is open, almost futuristic, but with the keyboard shut it is incredibly bland and offers almost zero personality. It is black metal tapered at each end with a few buttons dotted here and there and a business-like approach from every angle. I can only presume that Nokia is aiming this phone at business because the design will not sell itself to the average person on the street. Then again, if that is the case why is there an 8 Megapixel camera here?

It’s a confusing design which doesn’t quite add up, and one that leaves me with one question-

At the end of 2010 Nokia had 132,000 employees. The E7 is one if its flagship phones and is thus important to Nokia. If we presume that those 132,000 employees work 35 hours a week that is a total of 4,620,000 hours worked per week. Why did no-one in Nokia give this phone to one employee for 30 minutes (or 0.0000108225% of the Nokia working week) and ask them how it felt to use?

What kind of corporate culture lets a phone with such a hard to use design have so much money invested in it?

The irony is that the keyboard is not too bad to use and the viewing angle of the screen is perfect, but the opening mechanism and materials used on the outside of the phone defy logic to me.

The box contents are quite steady with an HDMI cable, AC charger, sync cable, half-decent headphones and that’s your lot. Not a great bundle, but enough to get you started.

Rounding off the hardware, the buttons are very good indeed. From the quirky volume slider to the camera shutter button they are easy to hit and of extremely good quality. The top side is busy with the headphone jack, on/off key, HDMI and microUSB slots all crammed together. It does all work well though and makes for a setup that is easy to use yet will not cause problems should you carry it around in your pocket.

I will detail exactly how well, or not, the E7 works in part two and that will include the screen, software and everything else, but it is safe to say that from a hardware point of view Nokia has used some great materials and then stuck them together to build a quirky design that you will either love or hate. There is no in-between here.

There is little doubt that the Arc made a very positive impression on me in the first 24 hours. The design hit me between the eyes like a smartly designed bullet with an Xperia logo on the side and 3 days later I am still in awe of the way it looks and feels.

Anyway, I need to move on from my smartphone glee and look at what is inside.

Camera

The camera is very impressive for stills. Even thought it is rated at 8 Megapixels this is rarely a guarantee on a smartphone that good pictures will come out of it, but here the story is in the quality of the output. Examples are below-

Video capture quality is also impressive and I would put it at a similar level to the iPhone 4. It is different, but largely similar in output. Shapes in dark conditions tend to be smoothed out more, thus losing minor detail, but you do get to see clearly what you are capturing which is not always the case with the iPhone 4.

All in all though this is one of the best smartphone cameras I have seen on an Android phone and very likely the best yet.

Battery

It seems that Timescape is a bit of a battery hog at times and it is worthwhile playing around with the sync frequency, but even on high I managed two days use before a charge was needed. This is good for me and better than I can managed with the iPhone 4 under the same conditions. Very heavy usage will require a daily charge, but at least you can feel secure knowing that a day of extreme usage is possible.

Screen

Very, very good. Indoors it is wonderful for media and the 4.2” size makes for an immersive movie watching experience. The Bravia engine is supposed to bring better definition and colours to images and I guess it works. It is, however, hard to tell because everything looks great on this screen.

I tested it outdoors on a very bright day and could still use it for everything I needed to. It isn’t the best in bright conditions, but it matches up to the Super AMOLED experience on the Galaxy S.

General performance

On the whole the experience is smooth and hassle free. I noticed the occasional slow down in Timescape (I wouldn’t use it personally no matter how well it is presented) and when many apps were open, but standard to power use should present no problems at all. The performance is particularly strong though when rendering complex web pages with Flash or high encoded videos.

Voice and signal quality

The call quality to the ear is vibrant and works well even in windy conditions. The speaker phone is also good, but a little tinny when the volume is pumped up to the maximum. It says something that a good quality sound can still be produced from the external speaker in a phone so slim when others struggle to match up on much thicker phones.

Signal is good with the magic ‘H’ appearing almost constantly at home, work and on my journey to work. It still isn’t BlackBerry level, but is adequate for what most people will need.

Media / web browsing

As I said earlier video playbook looks great on the huge screen and the viewing angles are terrific. Music quality is decent even with the supplied headphones, but a better set brings out the pedigree that Sony obviously has in this area. Throw in a lovely gallery app and a high visual music interface and the whole experience feels much better than you see on most Android phones.

Web browsing is even better. We all know that the default Android browser is good, but I spent a lot of time testing this on the Arc and little things like watching Flash videos on the BBC website add a lot to the experience. I have to say that I didn’t experience any glitches at all and the performance was excellent throughout. I am sure that some sites will present a problem, but I would expect them to also present a problem on my Mac Mini as well.

The debate about Flash and its performance on smartphones is of course valid, but all I can judge is from what I experience and Flash makes for a big positive on the Arc.

Software

Sony Ericsson has sparingly added a couple of widgets and left the operating system alone. There are some clever themes included which make the interface feel more organised and it all works well together. I could write three more parts to this review if I wanted to go into each app because there are some brilliant tweaks that have been made to contacts and many of the other standards. I think SE has got the balance right here between offering standard Android with just enough additions to add genuine usability.

Mediascape and Timescape are wonderfully presented, but heavy Timescape use could slow down the device a little so your mileage may vary. When I say slow down I am talking relative here because on the whole it is extremely quick and any tiny stop is more noticeable than it would normally be so you can rest assured that the software will work near perfectly with the hardware on the Arc.

I didn’t get enough time to fully explore all of the differences in this version of Android, but tested Navigation, PIM, the Android Market and every other app I could find. One word- flawless. Android is coming of age and as each release passes more pieces of the puzzle fall into place. This is by far the best Android experience I have had so far and could quite happily use it every day.

Data Input

This is my favourite part of any touch screen phone to complain about, but even here I am struggling a bit to shake off the positivity. The large screen aids data input greatly and there are various options built in to auto-correct words etc. I have to say that the auto-correction could be better though because some times it does fly off at a tangent. Remember though that you can substitute the standard keyboard with others from the Android Market.

Conclusion

The Arc is without doubt an all round superb smartphone. It does almost everything right and I am left wondering how so much was crammed into such a small space. The improvements in Android are gradually starting to work together to create a more rounded experience and when it is sensitively squeezed into a piece of hardware like this something special happens. This is my new favourite smartphone.

When I was told that I would be received the Xperia PLAY and the Xperia Arc for review I was tempted to just ask for the PLAY due to lack of time. The Arc looked like just another in a long line of Android smartphones designed to offer a large screen and all of the specifications countless other Android phones include. The design also looked like a poor attempt to make it different by including a needless curved back for no other reason than aesthetics. But…

The iPhone 5 will need to be more like the Xperia Arc than the iPhone 4. HTC, Samsung, Motorola and the rest should take a long hard look at the Arc because it feels like a svelte slab of science fiction and it makes my iPhone 4 feel positively chunky in comparison.

This isn’t hyperbole. This phone is so undeniably different to anything I have used before that it really does feel like the first of a new generation of smartphone. It is a slab that is all screen and the weight is distributed so evenly that the size is barely noticeable when you are holding it. The arc at the back is a touch of design genius because you feel like you are touching the back of the screen when in the hand thanks to the thinnest part being so slim. Many phones look good in the marketing photos, but lose their balance when in the hand and are either top or bottom heavy. This phone feels perfectly weighted in every area.

In the box you get a healthy selection of goodies; 8GB MicroSD card, stereo in-ear headset, microUSB cable, Micro HDMI to HDMI cable, AC charger and 2 screen protectors (one pre-attached). Sony Ericsson has been making some real efforts with box contents, as was also seen with the Xperia PLAY, and hopefully this will spur others to bundle a little bit more with their smartphone. After all we are talking about spending more than £400 on the products.

So it looks great and it feels great, but what is it about the design that makes it feel so special? I can’t quite put my finger on it which I suppose is a sign of good design, but I believe it to be the minimal weight married with the large surface and super thin form. Words are hard to rummage up when describing the feeling so I would advise you to pop along to a local mobile phone shop and hold one for yourself. You will see what I mean.

All of the above is nice, but we are still looking at a high-end Android phone here that should perform roughly the same as the other large screened Android handsets from the likes of HTC and Samsung. The thing is that it doesn’t perform like them and for one very important reason; this is the first non-iPhone that feels as good as an iPhone to use.

I cannot overstate how important that last sentence is. Every single phone I have reviewed over the past year has felt like a phone and I could sense what was happening beneath the screens every time I touched them. I thought this was down to the operating systems or the clever screen / OS marriage of the iPhone, but it seems as though Android is perfectly capable of recreating the ‘magic’ that Apple is so fond of talking about. When I pick this phone up I just start using it without thinking. That is exactly what I, and almost everyone else, expects from a smartphone in 2011.

Looking closer at the physicals, there are only 3 buttons below the screen with the search button missing and the back button is on the left. SE also did this on the PLAY and it is a different setup from other Android smartphones. It isn’t a big deal, but some consistency would be nice (forced by Google perhaps?) to make the switching experience easier. Arguably the back button makes sense being on the left, but I am used to it being elsewhere and so some acclimatisation was required.

The 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top left-hand side and this is a logical position, but the positioning of the other buttons left me slightly bemused. The on/off button is on the top side, but over to the left which I found quite tricky to use. This is a big phone and I am right-handed (as everyone who isn’t a witch is) and even with my large hands my thumb could not reach the top to turn it on. The natural position for the on/off button is top right so that a finger can be used, as shown below-

I have gotten used to using my finger over to the left, but the more natural position is still over to the other side in my opinion. The HDMI slot is over to the right at the top, which could of course have gone to the left, but that’s what we have so some adjustment is needed. I do like the fact that it is a proper on/off button and not one of those flush efforts that makes finding it difficult so there is an upside. The MicroUSB slot is top right which is not ideal for the future development of cradles and below that is a rather small volume key- this could do with being bigger. Finally there is a camera shutter button logically placed bottom right and this again is a proper button and not a hard to find flush effort.

Even though the button placements only take a matter of hours to get used to I do feel that SE could have used more logic when positioning them. It may be that the design could be the reason for this and if so I am prepared to forgive a lot because I seriously love the design of this phone.

That’s it for the first part of this review. I will jump into the meaty stuff in part two, but safe to say my first day with the Arc has been one of wonderment. It’s lovely.

OK, part one of my Xperia PLAY review was mostly filled with positives. Positivity surrounding the build quality, general performance and sheer novelty of a smartphone that is also attempting to be a proper games console.

I am going to breeze by the Android experience because it is all pretty good. The PLAY is fast, even when coping with multiple apps open at one time, and the screen lends itself well to the touch experience. Sony Ericsson has bundled some extras such as the excellent Timescape which brings all of your social networks together and some skins which de-clutter the Android interface which is something other manufacturers tend to get wrong.

As I moved around the software I gradually realised that the build in the PLAY is more vanilla than you will find in the offerings from Samsung, HTC and Motorola. There is no complicated overlay to confuse the interface, no novelty apps that add little except a boost to the app number count and a setup which appears to be very carefully considered.

The stills camera is very good and far exceeded my expectations. Here are a couple of test shots taken at night with the flash-

As an Android smartphone the PLAY is up there with the best. The screen could be clearer and it is a surprise that the absolute best technology was not used in what is supposed to be a revolutionary gaming phone, but it is usable in most conditions and I personally feel that the criticism levelled at this screen in other reviews is slightly over the top.

The form factor is all about the Playstation gaming though and as such compromises have had to be made concerning weight and depth. Is the compromise worth it though?

I have to say that it is despite some niggles that suggest speed to market was one of the prime considerations when releasing this phone. The phone comes bundled with some classic Playstation titles; Bruce Lee, FIFA 10, Star Battalion HD, and The Sims 3. There are some omissions within these titles, such as instructions pointing to the ‘A’ button in Fifa, but something happened when I first started playing these games. I can’t quite work out if it is the hardware or the games themselves, but I felt like I was playing a small games console.

That doesn’t sound like much of a statement, but I have always felt like I was playing games on a phone when using the iPhone or Android handsets. The fact is that the buttons make a huge difference to the experience and the way the games are handled. My fingers are no longer taking up screen space and most parts just click to create a more immersive experience. The games themselves don’t look brilliant and pixels are evident, but it is obvious that there is a difference between games designed for a console than for a phone.

As it stands there is still work to be done to make the Android / Playstation games selection a viable setup to compete with the thousands of games available in the mobile market. There are currently very few Playstation titles available and a handful of Android games that take advantage of the PLAY hardware, but one problem is knowing how to find them. Some titles are labelled with ‘Xperia PLAY’ so that you know, but otherwise it is a bit of a guessing game when perusing the Android Market.

And then I found the following video on YouTube which demonstrates what can be done with Android and the PLAY-

From what I can deduce the hardware buttons do make the biggest difference when playing games from the Android Market or ports of classic Playstation titles, but there is a definite gap between the Playstation and pure Android titles which makes for a more rounded experience.

This is all about potential at this time because Sony Ericsson has not managed to make enough titles available and Android developers have not jumped on the bandwagon yet, but the fact is that all of a sudden then is a gaming option within the Android ecosystem that is better than what is available in iOS. If the potential is fulfilled, this will be the very best smartphone available at this time for serious gamers.

Conclusion

The Xperia PLAY is an expensive smartphone. There is little here that is not available in most other +£400 smartphones and despite the specifications being at the high-end there are better specified phones on the market at slightly cheaper prices.

However, this isn’t just a smartphone. It also isn’t fully a games console yet either so we are left with conflicting thoughts; is this a smartphone and a portable games console or a smartphone that adds a feature that isn’t fully realised yet? I am tempted to believe that this is a smartphone with console abilities, but that more development is needed to port a decent selection of games to the phone. When a good selection of games is available it will become a powerful mobile gaming system and will retain all of the smartphone abilities you expect from other smartphones near to this price point.

Because of all of the above I can’t help, but like the Xperia PLAY. It is well built, performs well in most areas and has a lot of personality. It is different enough to lift it from the mass of Android clones and this helps it to show off what Android can do. This is a very good smartphone which has the potential to be a competent workhorse and one of the most entertaining portable devices you can buy. To expect a perfect smartphone and a perfect games console in one unit is unrealistic, but Sony Ericsson has struck the balance well here. It just needs to ensure that the games can match up to the hardware and then we are looking at a whole new experience.

I would have added some screenshots of the gallery and gaming sections, which look amazing, but they all came out with a strange pink hue. Likely my fault so apologies for that.