Philippine Cell Phones

Manila / December 17, 2009 - LG Electronics (LG), a global leader and technology innovator in mobile communications, announced the market introduction of the new LG Chocolate phone (LG BL40), offering customers in the Philippines a closer look at the eagerly-awaited widescreen device. The new LG Chocolate is the fourth handset in LG’s Black Label Series and successor to the highly-acclaimed LG Chocolate.

Chocolate Phone

With the introduction of this bold new shape, the new Chocolate is essentially reinventing the way consumers view and use mobile phones. Designed with sleek sophistication, the strikingly unconventional 4-inchwide screen opens up an enlarged and more optimal space for “on-the-go” computing, allowing for an entirely new mobile experience that raises the bar of innovation.
Users will see things differently with the widened 21:9 panoramic display that establishes a new level of visual comfort for the reading of web pages and e-mail and dramatically brings videos and games to life with cinema-like screen. Going wide also allows for the dual screen era to finally be brought to handsets for enhanced usability, which when combined with LG’s upgraded and intuitive S-Class UI brings a whole new meaning to the words “user friendly”.

“Minimalistic and sleek, the new LG Chocolate will dramatically change the way we interact with our phones,” said Mr. Raymond Hernandez, Corporate Marketing Head of LG Electronics Philippines. “The new Chocolate reflects the originality and sophistication of the Black Label Series and like its predecessor; we are confident thatthe new Chocolate will create its own legacy and further enhance our standing in the market.”

Mobile web browsing is now a breeze with the new Chocolate’s 4-inch, 21:9 HD LCD that eliminates unnecessary side-scrolling; 7.2 HSDPA provides speedier internet and e-mail

Enjoy a panoramic multimedia experience featuring a theatre-like movie player and enriched image and document viewer through thewide screen

Utilize the extra space with Dual Screen UI that can intelligently display two different types of content simultaneously

Touch Things Differently

Enjoy simplified touch screen navigation with LG’s upgraded S-Class UI, which offers the best in finger-friendly 3D graphics, intuitive responsiveness, and easier accessibility to applications
with one-touch copy and paste, transfer content even more quickly and effortlessly

Thanks to the wider screen, discover a refreshingly new hands-on experience for a multitude of tasks ranging from texting to gaming

Style Things Differently

Irresistibly slim shape, glossy black finish and iconic red highlights create a sense of subtle, chic luxury that preserves the new Chocolate’s design identity

Curved scratch-resistant glass that seamlessly encases the phone and provides a smooth, elegant surface that will always look flawlessly clean and alluring

The 4-inch HD LCD opens up a wider space to showcase and accentuate your personal style; enhanced customization features allow you to express yourself through wallpapers, themes and ringtones created from your own multimedia content

[courtesy of LG Electronics Philippines and GreenBulbPR]

Here are the specs:

345 x 800 pixels, 4.01 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen
5 MP camera with LED flash, 2560 x 1920 pixels :
Schneider-Kreuznach optics, autofocus - supports geo-tagging, face, smile and blink detection, image stabilization and manual focus
Bluetooth 2.1
Wifi 802.11 b/g, DLNA
3G - HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
GPRS Class 10
EDGE Class 10
1.1 GB storage and microSD up to 32GB
Stereo FM radio
Battery on 2G: Standby time - 400 hours, Talk time - 6 hours

The LG BL40 is now being displayed in LG Concept Store in Megamall and has a reported retail price of Php26,000.

The Sony Ericsson Equinox covers the basics well, including great call reception and a receptive number pad. That said, the Equinox doesn’t handle music, the Web, or multimedia quite as well as other feature phones out there.

The flip phone is only 3.5 by 2 inches, and a half-inch thick when closed, which gives the phone a smooth, simple feel. The 2.2-inch screen is on the top shell, while the bottom shell has a concave touchpad, two context-sensitive tabs, the standard green Confirm and red Power/Cancel buttons, a camera tab, a backspace tab, and the keypad. The Equinox is light, about 3.5 ounces, and comes with a USB cord, a wall plug, headphones, and a decent-size, but manageable instruction booklet.

The Equinox’s outer shell is particularly slick. Close the phone and a digital display gives the time, battery power, and range. Get a text or a phone call and the semi-translucent back will start to pulse, flashing the contact’s name/number and playing your selected sound. It’s a cute effect.

The Equinox keeps a clear, uncluttered screen. Pressing the touchpad will open up six self-explanatory menu options: Call History, People, Messaging, Media, Settings, and Organizer. Smartly compartmentalized, the Equinox menus are easy to navigate and manage.

Using the GSM/EDGE networks, the Equinox excels at making and receiving calls. The concave numbers respond well to even the lightest touch, and reception was solid. Unlike with other recent phones, dialing the numbers will automatically put you into phone mode.

Secifications:

Size                93 x 50 x 14 mm

Weight                95 g

Screen                240 x 320 px, 256K colors

Networks            900 / 1800 / 1900

Bluetooth            Yes

Camera                3 Megapixels

MP3 Player            Yes

Memory Card            MS-Micro

Java Support            Yes

Radio Support            Yes

The fancy shell and phone calling aside, the Equinox is a pretty mediocre phone when it comes to texting, photos, or anything multimedia-related.

Its texting, e-mailing, and Web browsing depend on the traditional “abc” multiple-button press system, which is to be expected. The problem is that the keys are not intuitive: The backspace button is a key labeled “C”; moving to and fro along the text requires entering multiple menus; and doing consecutive letters on one button (say, ab) is very difficult. Even numpad texting veterans will probably be frustrated by the setup. Text conversations are displayed in an instant-messenger-style interface, but that’s an unwanted consolation prize next to easy texting. Web browsing is through the T-Mobile web2go browser, which offers only a kind of Internet lite because it can’t handle more-complex Websites. Along with the rough key presses, the limited Internet options make Web browsing a chore.

The 3.2-megapixel camera is about average, as is the camcorder. There is a general dimness to the Equinox’s pictures. Its other problem is that the Equinox doesn’t have a particularly high mic, so the camcorder mode doesn’t pick up on sounds as well as it should. Video can’t be transferred onto the phone, but recorded movies can be transferred to computers, sent via e-mail or uploaded to YouTube.

The music capabilities are straightforward and average. No music software here: Use the included USB cord to plug the phone to your computer and drag and drop your tunes. Compatible with MP3 and AAC files, the music player has the traditional touchpad setup (rewind, play/pause, skip ahead) along with playlists, shuffle, and repeat options. It also holds audiobooks and podcasts. Music sounded weak belted out of the phone’s external speaker and slightly better with the included headphones.

The Sony Ericsson Equinox isn’t a bad phone, but the rough texting/e-mailing setup, mediocre camera, and average music capabilities pale compared with those of competing feature phones. The low price of P2500-P3000, however, helps mitigate the shortcomings.

The Hero is HTC’s 3rd handset to run Google Android OS (after Dream and Magic). I would think of the Hero as HTC’s fix to the Magic.

Qualcomm MSM7200A 528 MHz
Android 1.5
512 ROM, 288 RAM
3.2 inch screen @ 320×480 pixels
3G/HSDPA 7.2Mbps
WiFi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth 2.1
Internal GPS
5MP camera
3.5mm audio jack

The HTC Hero’s form factor is a little odd with the bottom part bent crooked inward. In a way, it make sense when you make a phone call since the mic is placed closer to you mouth. On the other hard, I found it hard to get a case for the Hero just because of the form factor.

The handset’s build and construction is pretty solid with a combination of brushed metal finish and a smooth rubbery surface (feels likeTeflon coating but earlier reports say only the white model has it). Not thin but not too thick (14.4mm) as well — fits snugly with one hand and not that heavy for its size (135g, exactly same weight as the iPhone 3GS).

Aside from having a nice oil-resistant capacitive touch screen, the Hero has a number of physical navigation buttons including a trackball that glows when there’s a new message or alert on the phone. There’s the call button and the end call button that also serves as the power button situated on both ends. There’s the home button and the menu button in the middle. The second row has the plastic trackball at the center, a back button and a special search button.

What actually gives the HTC Hero an edge is the Android OS. You can read about my review of the Google G1 Phone and my impression of the Android OS here. The Hero has version 1.5 pre-installed and got more improvements from the previous version. It now has 5 panels you can easily switch with a flick of the screen or roll of the trackball — customize each panel to hold shortcuts, widgets and folders (mine has the Calendar, Weather, Home, Twitter and Contacts).

There are a number of HTC Widgets and Android Widgets you can use but I liked the toggle widgets for connectivity as it allows me to turn on or off the settings for 3G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth very quickly. It helps save me on data charges and battery life.

With over 10,000 apps in the Android Marketplace, you have access to almost any imaginable application
for the phone — a feature that closely competes with Apple’s iTunes Store.

The phone is very responsive and can run multiple applications all at the same time. However, I sometimes notice the handset to slow down when a lot of apps are open or running so the Task Killer widget come in very handy when that happens. The Hero has a 528 MHz (Qualcomm MSM7200A ARM11) processor and 288MB RAM that perform quite well with multi-tasking though I wish they added more RAM.

The touch screen is very good and responsive as well; the oleophobic coating of the screen makes it immune to oily finger fingerprints. Video playback is smooth and clear with very wide viewable angle (around 130-150 degrees IMO). The speakers at the back is a bit small and not loud enough for open playback. You will likely need the earphones most of the time.

The 1350mAh battery gives me a decent 2 days with casual internet and phone calls but if you turn on WiFi and 3G and leave apps for Twitter, GMail and Facebook open, expect the device to be totally drained by end of the day.

The HTC Hero has its fair share or shortcomings as well — no large internal storage so you have to reply on a microSD card for that (hard to find 16GB around here so I only have an 8GB in place) which means you have to shell out more money, no FM Radio tuner and no front-facing camera for 3G video calls.

Over-all, the HTC Hero performs really well and is the closest (and even better in some areas) to the iPhone in terms of touch implementation performance, usability and added features (the Android Marketplace is a big plus). Bad news is that it’s as expensive as the iPhone. I got my HTC Hero from Hong Kong for $642 and some local stores have been selling them for Php33,900 (pretty close to the prepaid price of the iPhone 3GS).

Update: TJ Manotoc tells me the official suggested retail price of HTC Hero is Php33,999 with a free 2GB microSD card. I ordered a 16GB microSD card from one of the shops in Virramall, Greenhills and they quoted me a price of Php3,800. That means a 16GB HTC Hero can fetch up to Php37,799.

LG today officially unveiled the new Chocolate BL20 mobile phone . We have earlier covered LG BL40 Chocolate with huge 4.0 inch display , exciting looks and features . LG BL20 Chocolate come with slightly similar styling , but smaller screen size and inferior features . Chocolate styling is preserved in this model with elegant black -cherry red color combination and keypad orientation . Though there’s no touch UI , LG BL20 Chocolate uses touch sensitive navigation keys and slide out keypad .

Specifications:

LG BL20 Chocolate includes a non-touch 2.4 inch TFT screen with support for 262K colors .Touch sensitive navigation keys .

5 mega pixel autofocus camera in LG BL20 Chocolate comes with Schneider-Kreuznach optics and LED Flash . This camera shots images on maximum quality 2560 x 1920 pixels and videos at 15 fps .3G,GPRS ,EDGE ,60MB internal memory .

Other features :

Normal FM radio , Bluetooth  with A2DP ,Li-Ion 900 mAh battery ,HTML web browser

The Nokia X6 is a ‘Comes With Music’ device, so it provides unlimited access to the Nokia Music Store. With ample on-board storage you can discover, download and keep all the music you could ever ask for.

Also perfect for people who like to snap, tag and share photos and videos. Superb image quality comes from a 5 mega-pixel camera with Carl-Zeiss optics. With its built-in features to edit videos, show them on TV or online, sharing your memories has never been easier.

The large 3.2-inch display enables you to fit 20 shortcuts onto a personalized home screen - offering one-touch access to the web, your photos, videos and music library - and favorite social networks such as Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and more.

The Nokia X6 is no slouch in the beauty stakes either, with its slim, curved-edge profile and a 16:9 widescreen interface providing a slick, finger-sensitive touch operation, optimized to give a great viewing experience. It all adds up to a coolly powerful, stylish and entertaining device to express yourself with.

Key Features

* It’s all about your music - the Nokia X6 has a superb quality music player and built-in FM radio. Listen over Bluetooth stereo audio with a compatible headset like the new Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-505 with its cool, sporty headband. Or plug your choice of headphones into the standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
* Nokia Music Store is all yours - As a Comes With Music device, the Nokia X6 gives direct access to millions of tracks online. Download for free and yours to keep forever*. Stores thousands of tracks with 32GB out-of-the-box memory.
* 5 megapixel camera with Carl-Zeiss optics autofocus and dual LED flash for truly fantastic image quality.
* Customisable homescreen - add up to 20 shortcuts for one-touch access to Facebook, Nokia Music Store, Email, Contacts, Maps, Games - whatever you choose!
* Stroke-sensitive touch-screen interface - Nokia’s smoothest, slickest interface ever - with a 16:9 widescreen made specially to give the best photo and video viewing experience.
* Social networking - supports easy access to Facebook, Ovi, Windows Live!, Yahoo IM, YouTube, MySpace and more.
* Brilliant web browsing - built-in Flash player and auto-landscape orientation means you really get the best out of online video and movies.
* 3 premium games on-board - Nokia X6 ships with Asphalt4 and DJ Mix Tour by Gameloft and Spore by EA.
* Nokia Maps - The Nokia X6 comes with A-GPS with compass and integrated Maps so you can find your way to friends and venues quickly and easily with turn-by-turn, voice-guided navigation. Geo-tag your photos with Ovi to remember and share those great moments.
* Other Ovi services include push-email and IM with Nokia Messaging, N-gage games, downloadable Java applications and widgets, Ovi Contacts and Ovi Files for keeping your personal stuff safe and sound.
* Easy email - simple steps to set-up your email and combine multiple accounts into one inbox. Supports popular email clients such as Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and most other POP3/IMAP email - plus a lifetime license for Nokia Messaging, Nokia’s mobile email and IM service.
* Video editing and sharing - includes video center and video editing plus support for online-share and TV-out. So, you can make your clips perfect, then upload them to your social network page or play to friends and family at home.

Product Specification

* Size: 111 x 51 x 13.8 mm
* Display: 3.2 inch 16:widescreen nHD, 231 ppi
* Camera: 5 megapixels with Carl-Zeiss optics and dual LED flash
* Music player supports MP3, SpMidi, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, MTP formats
* Video: Recording and playback with TV-out support, video editing and online-share
* Full web browser (OSS) v7.0 with Macromedia Flash Lite 3.0
* Email support including Nokia Messaging
* Built-in GPS with Assisted GPS (A-GPS) support, compass and Nokia Maps
* 3D stereo ringing tones and video ringing tones
* Memory: 32GB internal memory
* 3.5mm AV connector for stereo headphone jack
* Data Connectivity: High speed MicroUSB connector, WLAN (China WAPI), Bluetooth 2.0, WCDMA, GPRS/EDGE, HSDPA
* Talk time: Up to 8 hours
* Standby time: Up to 406 hours
* Music playback: up to 35 hours
* Video playback: up to 4 hours

The latest addition to Nokia´s music device portfolio is ideal for people who like to express themselves through their music and their communities.

The Nokia X3 is a sleek and stylish slide phone with dedicated music and volume keys to control your sounds. It also has a combined send/end key and camera-shutter key for quick and easy operation. The design also features lighting effects around the dedicated ‘Navi’ key.

Priced for mass-market appeal, it is the first S40 device - the classic Nokia interface loved by millions - to offer direct access to Ovi Store. Using the store’s catalogue of applications no two X3’s need ever be the same.

As one of Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ devices the X3 enables users to discover, download and keep any and every track they want from the millions available in the Nokia Music Store*. The Nokia X3 also supports side-loading from PC - and comes pre-loaded with sample audio tracks and music videos from leading artists.

On top of a great music experience, the Nokia X3 offers a full set of features including a 3.2 megapixel camera, video recording and editing, email and instant messaging, web-browsing, and navigation with Nokia Maps. It even comes pre-loaded with the Guitar Rock Tour mobile game from Gameloft.

Key Features

*  Excellent music experience - high quality music player, FM radio with RDS and stereo speakers. Control and listen to music over Bluetooth or use the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Switch to Flight-mode to listen without interruption. Customize the media player and radio skin with a theme to suit your style.
* Massive memory for music - supports up to 16GB of memory with a removable MicroSD card (not supplied).
* 3.2 megapixel camera takes good quality photos and video clips. Shoot, edit and share video clips with the on-board software, geo-tag and upload to sharing sites like Ovi Share and Flickr.
* Active home screen - lets you see your contacts, friends or the track you are playing. There are also animated wallpapers to show signal and battery strength.
* Great for social messaging - supports Nokia Chat, Windows Live! Messenger, Yahoo Go! and other popular instant messaging clients.
* Mobile email made easy - it is easy to set-up your email and, with Nokia Messaging, users can combine all their inboxes into one, including support for Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL Mail and most other POP3/IMAP email clients.
* Brilliant web browsing - built-in Flash player and auto-landscape orientation means you really get the best out of online video and movies.
* Great games on-board - comes preloaded with Guitar Rock Tour by Gameloft, plus a range of Java games including City Bloxx and Snake III.
* Nokia Maps - integrated A-GPS navigation and Nokia Maps provides turn-by-turn, voice-guided navigation driving or walking.
* Ovi Store makes it easy to download games, videos, podcasts, applications and much more for your mobile. It has never been so easy to find something to suit whatever you want to do on the go.

Product Specification

* Size: 96 x 49.3 x 14.1 mm
* Display: 2.2 inch QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) with up to 262K colors
* Camera: 3.2 megapixels with full focus and 4x zoom
* Video recording at QVGA quality 30 frames-per-second
* Memory: Up to 46 Mb user memory and supports up to 16GB MicroSD
* Data Connectivity: GPRS/EGPRS, 3GPP Rel 4, GSM Quadband
* Talk time: Up to 7.5 hours
* Stand-by time: Up to 380 hours
* Music playback: Up to 26 hours

The Samsung M8910 Pixon 12 is a 12 megapixel touchscreen phone that is due to hit Europe in June, followed by other regions in August. Coming just days after rivals Sony Ericsson announced the 12 megapixel Satio, the Pixon 12 is notable because it will beat the Satio to market, and will probably be the first 12 megapixel camera phone on general worldwide release.

It also includes a 28mm wide-angle lens and Xenon flash. As well as stills, the M8910 shoots 720×480-pixel video at 30 frames per second. Which all sounds great, but we’ll wait until we’ve had a hands-on and seen some test shots before we get really excited — after all, there’s still the matter of that tiny little phone-sized image sensor.

With HSPA and built-in Wi-Fi, you’ll get instant upload to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and the like. According to today’s reports, it’ll pack quad-band GSM/EDGE, dual-band UMTS/HSPA, Bluetooth and GPS.

Closely resembling last year’s M8800 Pixon, the most obvious improvement is in the camera area. The 12 megapixel camera aims to be every bit as good as a dedicated digital camera. Samsung have concentrated on giving the Pixon 12 a high-quality lens to ensure optimum image quality, there’s also a Xenon flash and the M8910 has an intelligent autofocus system where the user can select the focal point of the picture by touching an object on the screen. Samsung say that the Pixon 12 is fast too, and users can move from shot to shot in about 2 seconds. This handset can also automatically adjust to different background and lighting conditions, and Samsung camera phones usually come with a load of other goodies too.

Samsung M8910 Pixon12 at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar
• Dimensions: 108 x 53 x 13.8 mm, 120g
• Display: 3.1 inch 16M color WVGA AMOLED resistive touchscreen
• Platform: Latest TouchWiz 2.0 UI with Smart unlock
• Memory: 150MB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• Camera: 12 megapixel auto focus camera with Power LED flash and xenon flash, wide-angle 28mm lens, object tracking auto focus, automatic lens cover, geo-tagging, image stabilization, Smart Auto mode, face detection, Beauty Shot, Smile Shot and D1 video recording at 30 fps with auto focus and face detection
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, TV out
• Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate and turn-to-mute, FM radio with RDS, DivX/XviD video support
• Battery: 1000mAh Li-Ion battery

A weak point with many Samsung camera phones is the video capture quality. Samsung haven’t said what the resolution is on the Pixon 12, but on the old Pixon it was 720 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per second, which is certainly good enough for fullscreen playback or uploading to YouTube.

There’s a 3.1″ AMOLED display, although Samsung have not said what resolution it is. It is either a 240 x 400 pixel panel, or a 480 x 800 pixel panel.. and our guess is that it is the latter.

There aren’t many other details available at present, except that this is a 3.5G device with both HSDPA and HSUPA high-speed data support plus WiFi. Does it have GPS?  Well, the old Pixon does so expect to see it here too. Is it a smartphone? No, this is an “M” series handset running the TouchWiz interface. As for size, weight and price.. well, hopefully Samsung will come out with some more details in the next few days.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Rachael

What is even more exciting is that along with the official shots that have obviously popped up a little prematurely, we also received a short video-demo of the Sony Ericsson Rachael UI.

The original resolution of the video is 852 x 480 pixels, which suggests that this will also be the resolution of the Rachael display. Coming with the sweet 16:9 aspect ratio this is the highest resolution screen we have seen so far on a mobile phone.

It seems that Sony Ericsson have put some extra hard work in customizing the Android UI, adding some nice touches of their own. Messaging and social-network integration is pretty duly covered, as suits a full QWERTY-enabled handset.

In case you need a quick memory refresh of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Rachael features known so far, here it goes. The phone is based on the Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon platform that provides a 1GHz CPU and dedicated graphics acceleration. The connectivity options of the chipset are also top-notch with Wi-Fi, GPS and 3G with HSDPA all onboard.

The fully-touch operated phone comes complete with an 8-megapixel autofocus camera, a 3.5 mm jack and a standard miniUSB jack. Probably the best part of the Sony Ericsson Rachael is its 4″ touchscreen.

The touch screen responds very well to the fingers though the stylus does not work properly in most cases. The front panel of the S5603 has earpiece just above the screen as in most of the mobile phones and the light sensor and the secondary video call camera on the right. The calling keys, the back button and the power buttons are properly placed below the screen. The back button looks like a D-pad and can be mistaken as navigation key. Since the S5603 does not has a navigation key so the users need to manually browse through the menu with their fingers.

There is an all in one jack for the USB connection, charging and the hands free which is a big disadvantage since nothing else can be used while the phone is getting charged. The left side of the phone has got the volume rocker which doubles up as zooming rocker for the text and the camera. On the right side of the phone is placed the screen-lock key and below that the camera key. The back has got a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash and speakers at the bottom left. The S5603 has got a slot for the MicroSD card (expandable upto 16 GB) behind the battery. In addition to that there is an Internal storage of 80 MB.

The menu is simple and user friendly and quite easy to recognise which menu clubs with other sub-menus. The quick menu on the right of the screen gives users quick access to the common menus. The quick menu can be dragged and dropped to the main screen/home screen. The photo gallery is a lot of fun as the phone recognises which side it is tilted when viewing in landscape mode. The absense of QWERTY Keyboard is a little disappointing.

Specification: A GPS Navigation3 Megapixel Camera with LED FlashVideo Player (MPEG4, WMV, H263 & H264)2.8 Inch 16 Million Colour Touch Screen (240 x 320 Pixels)Stereo FM Radio RDS3G HSDPA Technology3G Video CallingBluetooth® with A2DPUSB, GPRS, EDGEQuad Band (GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900)WAP 2.0XHTML, HTML80 Mbytes Memory Plus MicroSD™ Memory Card Support Up To 16

3.0 Megapixel Camera with Smile Detection
3G/ EDGE/ GPRS/ HSDPA
2.8 inch Touch Screen
TouchWiz User Interface

S5603 Camera Performance
The 3.0 megapixel camera is pretty standard, though the viewfinder quality is quite nice and clear. It can shoot 9 consecutive shots with a single click. The Paranorma feature can stitch upto 6 frames. The Smile Detection feature also comes in handy. There are 6 scene modes including text mode, where users can capture pictures of mewspapers and magazines for a clearer view of the text. The max resolution can be set to 2048×1536. Videos can be shot at 15 frames per second with a 320×240 resolution. Pictures can be added to the phonebook for photo contacts.

Overall, the camera’s performance is one the best among all the 3.0 megapixel camera phones. Sometimes though the LED flash spoils the image due to over exposure, but it also comes less battery as compared to the Xenon Flash.

Entertainment Features
The Samsung Star 3G S5603 is a full fledged media box with enough storage due to the expandable MicroSD card. Its FM reception is pretty good, though at higher frequencies sometimes there is are a lot of disturbances. The voice recording is also quite good.

For the game lovers, the phone is loaded with games like Tumbling Dice, Party Bubble Popper, Crazy Penguine, Pyramidbloxx and Monopoly World. These games are entirely based on motion and touch detection. Though most of the games are only trial versions. I really think big mobile manufacturing companies should load their phone with full version games.

Making Connections
The Samsung S5603 has nice connectivity features. Its Bluetooth pairing with other devices is exceptionally fast. The GPRS, HSDPA and EDGE features give the device an advantage over many other phones in the same range. The FM receiver as we mentioned is very good at lower frequencies and quite good at higher. The 3G enabled tag is an added advantage, however, the absense of Wi-Fi is a big drawback. One other thing which we checked was how the Google Maps work on it, and it was just about perfect.

Overall we can say that the Samsung Star 3G S5603 is a feature packed phone alongwith with sleek  looks and performance. The talktime backup battery time might be a disadvantage but at around Rs. 14000 ($290) its a good buy. It would get good competition from the likes of HTC Touch Viva and the LG’s Cookie.

The Viewty KU-990 is a 5.0 megapixel candybar camera phone from LG which is feature-filled and has full touchscreen capability, HSDPA 3.5G and a flurry of features.

Design
The Viewty is covered in two-tone material with black plastic material and silver etchings. The form factor is a candybar design, and despite all we have heard about big phones, the Viewty is ergonomical and lightweight.

The faceplate is a 262K TFT colour 3-inch display covering the front of the phone. The three buttons on the front of the phone are the call and end buttons. Meanwhile the cancel button is between the two. The faceplate is the typical easily soiled/smudged material but LG decided to give a complimentary screen cover to counter this problem.

On the right spine of the phone, the KU 990 has digital camera functions, where there is a dial to push between photo, video and gallery options. The camera shutter button is here too, as well as the hardware lock/unlock key, which doubles as the camera’s image stabilizer.

Interface
The Viewty KU 990 user interface is based on Flash technology, and while not a smartphone- the proprietary OS has some neat functions and features. The home screen has battery status, main menu and the ringtone profiles on top.

The bottom of the homescreen has four shortcut keys to access the main menu, the dial function, messaging and phonebook. The homescreen can also display either clock or calendar or both at the same time, or you can tweak it to show a clean screen.

If you look closely at the homescreen, there will be arrows pointing to both ends of the screen like a neon sign pointing towards a burger, flicking either of them brought us to a quick menu for the Viewty. It has a 3×3 grid to frequently used programs. When you are done with the quick menu, with another flick the grid slides neatly and quickly back in.

Messaging
The Viewty messaging department gets a nifty feature, namely handwriting recognition. You can use the stylus to input text or you can even edit text that has already been typed.

There are several text input methods - keypad, QWERTY keyboard, handwriting on the screen, and handwriting in box.

Unfortunately, the handwriting recognition doesn’t score as high as it suppose to. It is slightly unresponsive and needs little getting used to when writing quickly, which we don’t recommend. The handwriting in box is another feature we don’t understand- the box doesn’t serve any purpose either than to box up our letters.

The QWERTY keyboard is perhaps the most functional for messaging, as you switch the phone into landscape mode and type into it using your thumbs. The keyboard is slightly reminiscent of the iPhone but we won’t knock something that works. It’s easy to get the hang of and especially if you are familiar with the PC’s keyboard.

The final one is the keypad function which is basically a virtual version of a keypad. SMS junkies will find the virtual keypad with less tactile feel compared to a physical one.

Specifications
2G Network             GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network             YES
HSDPA                 YES
Video Call             YES
Dimensions             103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8 mm
Weight                 112
GPRS                 YES
Bluetooth             Yes, v1.2 with A2DP
USB                 YES
Internal Memory         100 MB shared memory
External Memory         microSD (TransFlash), up to 2GB
Camera     DUAL
Camera Resolution         5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, video(VGA 30fps, QVGA up to 120fps), strobe flash;secondary VGA videocall camera
Camera Resolution Search     5M
Flash                 LED
Display Type             TFT touchscreen, 256K colors
Display Size             240 x 400 pixels, 3.0 inches
Type                 BAR
Touch Screen             YES
OS                 LG
Messaging             SMS, EMS, MMS, Email
Browser             WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Battery Type             Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh
Stand-by             Up to 430 h
Talk time             Up to 4 h
MP3                 YES
Video Support             YES
Speaker             MONO
Games                 Yes

Camera/Video Performance
The Viewty’s 5.0 megapixel Schneider-KREUZNACH camera is the main highlight of the phone. It comes with ISO technology and an Image Stabiliser to assist with taking photos. The camera is able to snap up to 2592×1944 pixels of resolution with a 10 second self-timer. As mentioned, the Viewty has a hardware jog-dial at the camera lens, which works manual zoom in/out for the camera.

The gallery application launched by this switch is really wonderful - all your images and videos are shown as a shuffled deck of pictures. A touch on any of the images brings it to the front; a second touch on the image corner displays image info.

The camera interface has wide-ranging settings. You can use several preset scene modes (landscape, beach, party, portrait, night, sport, high sensitive), plus there are some special shooting modes (continuous shot, panorama and frames).

The Continuous shot mode shoots several pictures at the same time, while the Panorama mode makes panorama images out of several consequent shots. Meanwhile, frames mode is for comedic purposes. You can fit your best friend’s face in a pirate wardrobe.

The photos really impressed us, as pictures came out with much of the colour intact. At maximum settings, the quality was pretty close to a digital camera quality.

The Viewty’s video recording is compressed with the DivX 5.0 encoding, to ensure a balance between video quality and video size. The Viewty’s also records up to 120fps, which is extremely high framerate compared the usual 24fps.

At 120fps, the recording switches to slow-motion recording, LG calls the mode QVGA QVS and while the capture occurs at 120 fps, the resulting AVI file is stored at 15 fps slowing down the recorded action 8 times.

Multimedia
The LG KU990 comes with a good 100MB of internal memory and a microSD memory card slot. It’s really mind-boggling why the memory card slot is not available to the user without removing the battery as this represents a serious hit on user-friendliness. The file manager appears as a My stuff item in the menu. It includes separate factory-preset folders for different multimedia content. You can copy or move files to the external memory or send them via Bluetooth, and for all of those options you can rely on multiple selection. However, we did notice a huge lag in folder browsing, once the memory card started to fill up. The LG plays DivX videos, but not Xvid though. The Viewty 3-inch screen is prefect for videos. Thought the internal memory does scream for an upgrade for movie files, which the average size mostly stands at 700 MB.

The Muvee studio is also a fun little program, which automatically sync pictures you have taken to preloaded MP3s. It is extremely easy to use, just click the pictures you want to put in, choose your music and the program will churn out a video.

Connectivity
As far as network connectivity is concerned, the phone features tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz), GPRS, EDGE plus HSDPA 3.6 Mbps. There is also Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP stereo support.

Via mobile88