iPod speakers fall into two categories, they are either bog standard and fairly cheap, or they attempt to be iconic in their design. Sometimes this division is so great that they polarise potential customers into thinking it is either the best-looking thing in the world or the most fugly thing they have ever seen.

The Bayan Audio Bayan 7 sits, as you might have gathered from the picture, in the second of those two camps coming with a striking design.

"Interesting" design

The design starts with a large, square, box with a further four speakers on the front, mounted into a large sheet of clear Perspex.

Fo those who like tech specs, the Bayan 7 has a 120W power output through its twin amplifiers, a 5-way 2.1-channel stereo speaker setup and an 8-inch subwoofer for deep bass control. Then there is a pair of 2-inch mid-range and a 1-inch tweeters. Its frequency range is 30Hz - 47kHz.

The 7 is available in black or white, but whichever you choose, you end up getting a wall of speakers and docks with a big box behind it. The Bayan Audio Bayan 7 is more akin to a microwave than your usual iPod speaker.

That presents its own issues, in that it will take up most of a sideboard, and certainly be too big and too heavy for most shelves -  something to bear in mind if space is at a premium.

Size aside, design, as already mentioned, is something that you'll either love or hate. It's certainly striking, causing plenty of conversation to everyone we've shown. Personally we're not so sure it works. We prefer the more subtle lines of the B&W Zeppelin, but each to their own. We're sure the designer loves it.

Performance and sound quality

Get past the "kooky" design and you can start to enjoy some of the more unusual features of the Bayan 7. Like the two docking station slots on the front allowing you to charge two iDevices at the same time. Which means both you and your other half's iPhone can be charging together.

As well as being charged, you can switch between the two iThings via the accompanying remote control although that's as far as it goes. Would-be DJs: there are no fading options.

Each dock is designed to accommodate the array of iPods and iPhones on the market, but if you've got a iPad it won't fit without blocking the speakers above.

If you haven't got an iDevice, then you can still play with the addition of a Line-in around the back, and for Android tablet users there is a USB charging slot as well - a nice touch.

The remote, as you would expect, allows you to control volume - although we found this to be pretty slow to respond - and if you are using an iPhone or iPod you can skip through tracks and other standard playback functions.

While the remote has a bass and treble button, but no visual feedback on whether these were working, we couldn't notice any audible difference even after pressing the buttons violently to change the settings.

One thing we did notice was that, for some reason, the volume control wouldn't work correctly with our first-generation iPod touch. Annoying.

With the volume controls buried at the back out of quick reach - a strange decision - you'll have to control playback and volume either via the remote or with the Apple device itself.

So, what about the quality? Not surprisingly the Bayan 7 sounds really good. The speaker combination gives a clear sound, coping well with both bass and treble on the tracks we played via an iPod touch and iPhone 3GS we had in the office.

We tested a range of music from Adagio for Strings (Platoon Soundtrack), to Daft Punk, to more challenging tracks from NoFX and TaTu - All The Things She Said.

Sound is crisp and clean compared to the Zeppelin - which offers a more base-heavy feel. Volume is loud enough to fill a medium-size room comfortably. 

Tags: Audio Speakers Bayan Audio iPod speakers

Bayan Audio Bayan 7 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:53:00 +0000

The Nokia Lumia 710 is seems to be pitched as the poor man's Lumia 800, but can that be right?

We've been testing the two Windows Phone 7 powered Nokia phones together for the last two weeks to see how the 710 really lives up to the flagship Nokia smartphone, and whether you really are getting second best if you go for the Lumia 710.

Design

If you like the rounded edges of the Nokia Lumia 800, the one piece design, the overall "different" feel and approach to the Lumia 800 then although it hurts us to say this, but this isn't the phone for you. Get the Lumia 800 and be done with it. The 710 isn't in the same league when it comes to design. That's not to say it is an ugly phone, but it is more "traditional" in its approach.

Slightly bigger, although lighter than the 800, the 710 comes with the same size 3.7-inch screen that dominates the front of the smartphone. Rather than touch-sensitive buttons, you now have one large physical button beneath the screen that is spilt into three buttons. The buttons are the standard Windows Phone offerings of back, home, and search.

The side features volume keys and a dedicated shutter button for the camera, while the top offers a power button, a micro USB socket - that isn't covered like it is on the Lumia 800 - and a headphone jack. The micro SIM slot can be found inside, something you can access along with the battery because the Lumia 710 has a removable back cover.

It's the removable back cover that will also appeal to those that like to customise the phone as, just like you did in the 90s, you can swap out the cover and change the colour of your phone on a daily basis, if that's your thing.

Our review unit came with black, however there are a range of other colours available and planned including magenta and cyan. We've also seen patterned designs as well.

The Lumia 710 is by no means striking, nor is it the worst phone we've ever seen. It's built well, is solid, and most importantly, comfortable to use.

Insides

Strangely, from a core spec point of view - the processor and memory - the Lumia 710 is identical to the only other Windows Phone available from Nokia; the Lumia 800. That means you get a 1.4Ghz processor and 512MB of RAM to power your Windows Phone 7 experience. In our tests and having used the Lumia 800 extensively for the last three months, this is more than enough to enjoy the operating system and all that you can throw at it.

Whether it is playing games, loading applications, or merely surfing the web (the browser is hardware optimised) there's a plenty of power to go around. On the connectivity front you get Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.

So where have the corners been cut? Well for starters you only get 8GB of storage rather than 16GB as found on the Lumia 800. Then there is the screen quality, LCD over AMOLED, and finally the 5-megapixel camera instead of the 8-megapixel model found on the Lumia 800.

All that gives sucks the standard days worth of battery on a single charge, while we had no complaints or out of the ordinary praise for call quality either. As a phone the Lumia 710 acts as you would expect. 

LCD vs AMOLED

The single biggest difference you'll spot instantly when looking at the Lumia 710 is that it uses an LCD screen rather than a AMOLED one. That takes away the stunning visual impact you get from the Lumia 800 and presents you with a screen that is rather flat in its colour. The viewing angle isn't as great and in both the white and black themes of WP7, unless you are looking at it straight-on, there is a tendency to believe that the screen colours are somewhat under-saturated. It certainly isn't as vibrant.

Again that's not to say the screen is bad, it's just not as good as other Windows Phone handsets like the Super LCD-touting HTC Radar. What is instantly noticeable, however, is that extra .2-inch over the iPhone 4 and 4S. It really does make the Apple smartphone screen look small. 

Camera time

The Lumia 710 might only have a 5-megapixel camera with single LED but we were very impressed with its performance. As long as you are able to hold the phone still at the moment you press the shutter, you'll get good results regardless of light available. Failing to do so results in softer images, but then that's normally the case with many smartphone cameras. Pictures are processed immediately with little or no lag.

The success of the camera is down to the f2.4 wide-angle (28mm) lens that gives you plenty of room to play with. There is a digital zoom, but we would advise against using it.

Sadly, unlike the HTC Windows Phone 7 smartphones you don't get additional features like panorama or the ability to apply effects, but you can get panoramic apps like Pano and PictureLabs that will fill those gaps.

You also get 720p HD video recording.

App time, or not?

It's fair to say that apps aren't the strongest part of the Windows Phone 7 platform at the moment. But don't panic, because not only are there plenty of apps coming, but interestingly WP7 isn't as app-focused as the iPhone or Android. There are plenty of features built into the phone's operating system that means you don't need thousands of apps to let you do anything.

Nokia understanding this give you Nokia Drive; a very good turn-by-turn satnav app that will easily get you from A to B, Nokia Music; A free music service that will have you listening to the latest songs in seconds, and Nokia Maps; which is really just a better version of the phone's Bing maps feature.

There is also the promise in the coming months of Nokia Transport; a public transport planning app, Nokia City Lens; an augmented reality app to tell you which direction restaurants are nearby, and Nokia Pulse; a BBM clone that needs a few more people to sign up to Nokia phones to get it really work. 

That's Nokia, but we also know that there are new apps coming from Skype, supposedly Instgram, and many others, meaning that it is a winning rather than losing battle.

But as we said there are many times that you won't need a flashy app. Windows Phone 7 has been designed around hubs and those hubs do a good job of covering your basic needs. The People hub is exceptionally good for keeping track of everyone be it via your own contacts, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, while the office hub will sort out your document needs.

So who is the Lumia 710 for?

There are three Nokia Lumia models at the time of writing, and this is the model that will appeal to those looking for a cheap phone with low monthly costs.

What makes the Lumia 710 so appealing is that you get a phone that isn't sluggish, like the equivalent Android offerings. As well as one that comes with some great apps out of the box like satnav and music, without having to pay for extra apps. TomTom for iPhone is £50, and while Drive isn't as featured, it will certainly do for most. 

That should mean that the 710 does well when it hits the shops in February, and one that might help Microsoft lure those BlackBerry users away from their BB Curve. After all we suspect that they won't be able to afford an iPhone 4S and might struggle to understand or get frustrated by Android.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Nokia Nokia Lumia 710 Windows Phone 7 Microsoft

Nokia Lumia 710 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:43:00 +0000

With all new Apple laptops comes a new port - Thunderbolt. It promises to deliver super-fast transfer speeds to Thunderbolt drives or devices, so getting a file from A to B isn't something that takes you longer than getting across town on a Friday night in rush hour.

So can the super-fast, super-expensive Little Big Disk solve your storage needs?

Design

It's called the Little Big Disk because it is just that - an oxymoron - Big in file size, small in actual size - geddit? Anyway, random naming jokes aside, the small drive measures 85x40x145mm in size and weighs 650g. That's surprisingly heavy for the size of the box, and that's most likely down to the fact that it is made of metal. The metal is clever though, its ribbed design acts as a heatsink to save firing-up the internal fan constantly.

The front of the unit features the only button on the drive, and it just so happens that it glows blue when on. We suspect blue was chosen because red would remind you of HAL9000 and give you the hebegebies.

Memories of the scene "What are you doing Dave..." who echo in your mind every time you went to delete a file. Frightening.

Back to the design of the Big Little Disk and the back of the hard drive casing features the power socket, and two Thunderbolt ports. Frustratingly there are no other interfaces like Firewire or USB and that means that if you've not got a Thunderbolt port on your computer you're stuffed.

While that might seem like a stupid statement on a drive clearly advertised as designed for Thunderbolt, it means that if you want to plug your drive into your colleagues computer you had better hope they had upgraded to a brand new Mac.

Thunderbolt and the daisy chain

Thunderbolt technology was initially developed by Intel and originally called LightPeak. You can have up to six Thunderbolt devices connected to each other in a big daisy chain. That can be six hard drives, a couple of monitors (depending on which Mac you have), or a combination of the two.

While we weren't able to test the system with multiple Thunderbolt hard drives, we were able to test it with a standard monitor with a DVI to DisplayPort adapter. While our MacBook Air took a few seconds to recognise the connection, it works as it should. 

Performance

While the Big Little Disk looks pretty, we aren't too fussed about looks here. We want performance, and the knowledge that the drive is going to perform.

Rather than opt for a standard hard disk drive giving you a 1TB of data, here you get two 120GB SSD drives that work together to deliver 240GB of storage. That will either be on-par with the hard drive in your computer - if you are a MacBook Air user - or faster, if you are a MacBook Pro user who hasn't upgraded to an SSD already.

For testing purposes we used a 1.8GHz Intel Core i7 MacBook Air with 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM running the latest build of Mac OS X - version 10.7.2.

LaCie promises average data transfer rates of around 480MB a second and we easily achieved this. It took us under five seconds to transfer a 1.45GB file from the MacBook Air SSD drive to the Little Big Disk. On the return it took six seconds.

Transferring a 43.71GB iTunes folder with 8008 files took us 3 minutes 16 seconds. That's damn fast.

Our final test was to see how quickly we could create a Time Machine image of our system with the drive connected. The system backed up our 143.73GB image with almost 1m files in 57 minutes.

Software

In the box you'll get a handful of LaCie utilities including Intego and LaCie's own Backup Software even though the drive is Time Machine compatible. MacBook Air users be warned this comes on a CD.

Tags: Hardware Hard drives Storage LaCie Lacie Little Big Disk

LaCie Little Big Disk - Thunderbolt Series originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

You've eaten too much, you're feeling rather fat, and you need to do something about it. In steps Fitbit Ultra promises to track your movement before displaying it all on the accompanying website for you to digest.

So can something so simple really help you shave off the pounds? Or is it a device you buy during the madness of new year resolutions, and stop using two weeks in to January? To find out, we lived with the Fitbit Ultra for almost a month.

Design

The Fitbit Ultra is, essentially a high-tech digital pedometer in a small matte black clip. It's really tiny, with dimensions of just 55x19.5x14mm and it weighs a minuscule 11.34g. The idea is, it can be slipped into your pocket or, more likely, worn on your waist. For women Fitbit recommends you place it on your bra in between your cleavage, the idea is, to keep it central where it can be most accurate.

The device itself has a small OLED display that lights up when the single button is pressed. It allows you to scroll through the data from the device itself, but that's just one way to see how you've been getting on.

In Pocket-lint's case we've been wearing our Fitbit Ultra on our waist, underneath our belt. It's small enough to not to bother you, and light enough for us to have actually forgotten that we were wearing it at times.

That has its pros and cons. On the plus side you aren't going to notice it, and that's a good thing. On the down side, we found is diminutive size meant we forgot about it occasionally when switching trousers either at the end of the day, or when going for a run.

On the go data

While most of the data that you collect is best viewed online at Fitbit.com, you will be able to view some of the data on-the-go, via the device.

That list includes steps, distance covered that day, floors climbed, calories, a clock, something to encourage you (i.e. make you laugh), and a flower that grows the more exercise you do.

It's quick, at-a-glance stuff that lets you know how much you are walking, and it is surprising how quickly you can notch up a mile, just mopping around the house. The Fitbit has a battery that can sustain it for as long as a week too, which means you can collect plenty of data before recharging. 

Syncing

There are two ways to sync the device. You can either plug into the included docking station, when it comes to charge it, or just walk somewhere near the cradle when it is plugged into your computer. The Fitbit Tracker syncs wirelessly to the base station (included) using 2.4 GHz radio transmitter. That's a lot easier than faffing with Bluetooth and a lot less power consumption too.

Sync occurs automatically, anytime your Tracker is within about 15 feet of any base station, and relatively motionless. The base station plugs into your Mac or PC’s USB port and your computer just needs to be switched on for it to happen. It certainly makes the syncing process a lot easier.

Sleep time

If you aren't walking here, there, and everywhere, Fitbit Ultra can also track your sleep, as long as you are prepared to wear it on your arm.

There's a Velcro strap in the box and it's pretty uncomfortable. The system works by monitoring when you are still, and therefore asleep. In practice we found it not only uncomfortable to wear, but also rather pointless.  

Fitbit.com

So you've got the bug, you've decided to wear the Fitbit Ultra all the time, but what data to you get? The accompanying website lets you view and manage the data you are collecting.

In a move to "gamify" your exercise you will get to earn badges, medals, and virtual awards. These come in the guise of goals that you have to complete and doing so gets you pat on the back. As default you get a challenge to walk 70,000 steps a week, walk 35 miles, or climb 70 floors.

The game element is enhanced further with the ability to add your friends who are also using fitbit and see how you are fairing on a shared leaderboard. And there's nothing like the knowledge of your mate beating you to spur you on.

Aside from the gaming side, the website is a fully comprehensive affair. You'll get graphs on your steps, your distance, the floors you've climbed - it actually includes any time your altitude increases - and if you want to take it further: your weight. You have to enter that manually, along with the time you've slept, if you wear it in bed.

The whole site is incredibly easy to manage and incredibly easy to understand and use with plenty of ways to visualise the data to let you make the most of it.

Giving you more

While the Fitbit Ultra gives you walking stats and the like, there is also a focus on getting you to change your entire lifestyle to make it "fitter" all around.

That means that whilst the device won't track what you eat, or your weight, the site encourages you to track that information yourself and enter it online.

That means it can give you better overall stats, and help you achieve your ultimate goals. But it will require a lot more work on your part.

Food tracking is easy or hard depending on what you eat. If you're a "make your own food at home" kinda-person, tracking calories can be a real pain. If you eat ready meals with all that data on the back - not a great idea - then it is easy as pie. Sadly we are of the former of the two, and we don't own a set of scales either.

We do however use Runkeeper.com, and the you can connect the two services together to have your data from the Fitbit Ultra pumped into the running website.

Walking more

Very much like one of those electric meters that have been all the rage of late, showing you how you use the electricity in your house, Fitbit Ultra does the same. Whether or not that means you are going to walk more, or take the stairs more, is up to you. We haven't found ourselves opting for the stairs because of the Fitbit Ultra, however we have found it interesting to see how much we've been walking and how much exercise we are doing without realising it.

Tags: Sports Fitness Sports Fitness equipment Fitbit Fitbit Ultra

Fitbit Ultra originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:29:00 +0000

There's a saying in tech that when it comes to buying the latest computer you should always spend as much as you possibly can to make sure you get something that will last you as long as possible.

But with tough economic times ahead, that isn't always possible. The ViewSonic ViewPad 10e, available for just £199, seems like a fantastic way to have your cake, eat it and still have plenty left over. But is it money well spent or will you be angered by the corner cutting? Or, is this the best deal on the market?

Design

The ViewSonic ViewPad 10e sports a 9.7-inch TFT-LCD (1024x768 XGA) capacitive touchscreen. It is surrounded by a black bezel that features three touch sensitive buttons for menu, home, and back.

The front also houses the tablet's only camera; a 1.3 megapixel offering designed for video calling rather than taking pictures of things you see, but we don't see that as a bad thing. People who take pictures with their tablets are a strange folk anyhow.

Flip the ViewPad 10e over and you reveal a rather uninspiring matt black back complete with ViewSonic logo that fits in with the whole "budget" label ViewSonic has given this tablet. The device is thin (241.6 x 188.6 x 9.1 mm), so budget here doesn't mean ugly and fat, and the build quality is certainly better than many devices we've seen - including HP and it's phone and tablet offerings in the past; yes HP Pre, we are talking about you.

The main action happens on the top edge of the Android tablet. You get a power in (there is no USB charging supported), micro USB connector for side loading content from your PC, a headphone jack, mini HDMI out to connect it to a TV, and a micro SD card slot for expanding beyond the internal memory.

Android, or is it?

ViewSonic's approach to the 10e is that you are getting it for a price that is considerably cheaper than the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime for example, and there is a reason for that. The big difference with this tablet, over rivals, is the software. Asus, for example, runs software which is 100 per cent certified Android, from Google, the ViewSonic ViewPad 10e does not. Ah the wondrous joys of Android, certification, fragmentation, and being able to run the operating system without the 100 per cent approval of the company that makes and creates it. 

That means that you won't get the official Android Marketplace. You can load it on, if you are clever, via nefarious means - but it is a lot of faff though. As a result of all this,  you won't get all the Google apps pre-loaded as you might expect.

Before you panic and put aside any urge to buy the ViewPad 10e at all, for some it won't be as bad as it sounds. ViewSonic get around the sticky problem by pre-installing a third party app store called 1Mobile Market.

We looked through this alternative app store, and it seems to have most apps. But not all. There is, for example, no Skype or RockPlayer, but there is Angry Birds, Dropbox, Dolphin, and others that you'll want. The 1Mobile Market store also offers all the standard Google apps, so you can, after a couple of minutes of downloading, be up and running very quickly with the likes of Gmail, Google+, and Google Reader.

You can also download, via a browser, the Amazon App Store, and between the two stores you should be able to get apps you need. The Amazon App store has Skype for example, as well as lots of games, but like 1Mobile Market there are holes. Downloading Tiny Tower via 1Mobile Market didn't work and Amazon doesn't list it - shocking.

ViewSonic also goes some way to giving you some apps pre-loaded like Amazon's Kindle app and a movie player. Without doubt, however, you're going to need to start getting on those third-party stores to beef-up your collection of amazing apps. 

Our suggestions are: download a better keyboard (we recommend Swiftkey), download a browser that won't crash on you every couple of minutes - either try Dolphin or Firefox - and get Gmail on pronto if you plan to the ViewSonic for email.

Gingerbread

If the lack of Google certification will worry you, then you'll likely be even more disheartened to see manufacturers still putting Gingerbread on their tablets. With Google having explained that this version of the OS is unsuitable for large-screen devices, it's fairly concerning to see it still happening.

While some manufacturers, like HTC, can just about get away with older versions of the OS, due to the heavily customised interface, ViewSonic doesn't. It has tried, but it's not pretty. And the upshot is, you're running what basically amounts to a 9.7-inch phone, with phone software, without the ability to make phone calls.

It also means that you don't really get to benefit from the screen size to the same extent as you would if the 10e was running Google's dedicated tablet software - Honeycomb or the newer Ice Cream Sandwich. Gmail looks awful, for example.

Ice Cream Sandwich

ViewSonic acknowledge the lack of a tablet operating system on a tablet. It has confirmed to Pocket-lint that the 10e will be getting an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich in February 2012. But again, like the current OS (Gingerbread, Android 2.3), it won't be a certified version. That means, once again, no app store. 

But even so, £200 for an Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablet certainly seems appealing.

Performance

Niggles about software aside, how does the 10e actually perform? Sadly, slowly is the only answer we can honestly give.

For those that like to list specs the ViewPad 10e comes with a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB storage for apps, video, music, pictures and other files. While that should be enough to get you enjoying Angry Birds and watching low-res movies, it isn't enough to do anything substantial.

Film support includes MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVC, VC-1, Flash video, motion JPEG, VP6, DivX, XviD and WMV9. 

Overall, the menus seem sluggish with everything taking that little bit longer to perform than it should. Even when watching movies the array of different video playback apps installed on the device struggled with anything of any decent quality. If it's HD you wan,t forget it. This is a netbook circa 2009 experience.

It's not that the videos won't play, it's just that you'll notice jagged movement as the processor struggles to cope. The only improvement comes if you kill every other application running, and even then we aren't entirely happy with the end results.

Tags: Tablets Viewsonic Viewsonic 10e Gingerbread

ViewSonic ViewPad 10e originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:41:47 +0000

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime isn’t a robot in disguise, but it does have a few tricks up its sleeve that any Autobot or Decepticon would be proud of. This new Transformer improves upon the original version from earlier this year, adds more power and funky new styling. 

But is this update worth the substantial price - it's more than a budget laptop - and does it offer enough to be crowned the best Android tablet on the market?

Design on a diet

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime sports a new thinner design, is clad in metal and ultimately looks considerably better than its predecessor, the Eee Pad Transformer. Gone is the plastic outer case, and in its place, a new slimmer and lighter approach. It weighs just 586g and measures 8.3mm thick, resulting in a device that makes even the iPad 2 look like it needs to go on a diet.

As is typical on Android tablets, Asus has opted for a 16:9 aspect ratio 10.1-inch Super IPS+ (1280 x 800) display. Like so many new devices, it's protected from moderate knocks and scrapes by Corning’s Gorilla Glass.

Running Google Android Honeycomb, and eventually Ice Cream Sandwich, there are no buttons on the front of the tablet. The black bezel is perhaps thicker than it needs to be, although does give a good perch on which to hold the tablet without getting your fingers in the way. Only a front facing 1.2-megapixel camera breaks the darkness of the border.

The sides offer power and volume buttons, a hot-swappable microSD slot, headphone jack, micro HDMI port. There's also a docking port for connecting accessories and the all important power cable.

The back sports a brushed aluminium finish to match the company’s Zenbook, and is again only broken by the inclusion of an 8-megapixel camera and flash on the top edge.

The Transformer Prime is light, solid, comfortable to hold and use. You are unlikely to be disappointed.

Tablet transforms into laptop

Like the Transformer, the Transformer Prime also comes with a laptop dock that allows you to not only extend the battery life of the tablet, but also use it like a laptop. The "keyboard" comes bundled in the box, you won’t be able to buy the Transformer Prime without it, or so we're told.

The tablet slots into the dock and the result is well-designed and strong enough to pass off as a single unit, rather than two disparate pieces.

The island keyboard is easy and comfortable to type on and also comes with a smattering of shortcuts that can be used to speed up important functions. There is a large glass trackpad, the same ratio as the screen, that allows for more of a laptop-like experience, although we found it to be very sensitive.

Shortcuts will allow you to turn off the trackpad, toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, load up the settings pane, fire up the browser, as well as offering playback controls and volume.

The keyboard dock also gives you a USB port and SD card socket for transferring images, music, movies and files to the device quickly, be it from your camera or portable hard drive.

It's worth pointing out that as soon as you disconnect the tablet from the keyboard, access to any connected memory or devices is cut-off. You'll need to consider this when managing files, especially if you want something off the SD card when you don't have it docked.

As a pair the two work perfectly together. To the untrained eye, this is a netbook rather than a tablet with a keyboard, and there is enough weight in the base unit for the pair to be used on your lap, without risk of it over-balancing and toppling over.

Not just a pretty face

If you were wondering whether the Eee Pad Transformer Prime is just a visual "tarting up" of the previous model you would be wrong. Asus has worked hard to improve virtually every facet of the Transformer to create the Transformer Prime.

The Prime comes with a Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Battery life is promised at 18 hours with the dock - the keyboard contains its own battery - 12 hours without.

The Tegra 3 processor also gives you plenty of power on tap. The experience is silky smooth in daily navigation, with no sigh of lag or delay as you interact with Android. Games play extremely well and we've even had it playing 4k video smoothly. Unnecessary, perhaps, but undeniably powerful.

The biggest change, however, is in the screen. As the primary point for interaction, having a good screen on a tablet is critical. Here you get an IPS display, which is brighter - so offers better visibility outdoors - and great viewing angles. The display is scratch resistant - thanks to the Gorilla Glass - but it does still have a glossy finish. This can have an impact on how easy it is to see the screen when you're outside.

The brightness can be boosted with what Asus is calling "Super IPS+ mode". This essentially increases the brightness of the display at both ends of the scale. This mode can be toggled, and whilst boosting the brightness, it also appears to put some effort into conserving the integrity of the image displayed, rather than merely tinkering with the brightness and contrast settings. 

With potent graphics, the ability to play any game on the market at the moment easily, HDMI out, and USB gamepad support, you’ve got to ask yourself whether really you are buying a games console in disguise.

We played a number of games, and weren’t disappointed. Riptide with all that water, ShadowGun with its third-person shooting action, and other demos like Glowball all go to show what is possible with the graphics.

And it’s not just the graphics that are good, sound is excellent too. There's a good speaker on the back, ready to pump out sound effects and tunes, when needed, thanks to some dedicated "SonicMaster" technology.

Camera and video

We don't get too hung-up about cameras on tablets because they're unlikely to be set to any great task. But Asus have produced a camera that is actually very good, giving us an F/2.4 aperture lens and flash to get you out of trouble when it's dark. Photos contained plenty of detail, good colour balance, and we would happily share them with others.

On the video front, the Prime offers 1080p capture and we were very happy with the performance. Playback on the Prime is a breeze, with the tablet easily coping with 1080p footage you’ve recorded or imported from elsewhere.

Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and apps

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime currently runs Google Android Honeycomb 3.2.1, which is something of a shame, as there is a new kid on the block: Google Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich. Thankfully Asus has confirmed that the Prime will be getting the update as soon as it is available, but you guessed it, there is really no confirmed date yet.

Honeycomb is well-suited to the larger display of tablets, but isn't without its flaws and it's not uncommon for apps to crash occasionally. The Prime is no exception here, although that's a wider Android issue rather than something Asus is responsible for. We've covered both Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich operating systems in full reviews, so it's worth reading those if you want to know more.

A bigger issue perhaps is compatibility. It's a frustrating one too, because you know that, technically, there should be no barrier to a particular app running on a device, but it doesn't. For example, we downloaded BackStab HD, but it refused to play.

As for apps bundled and pre-installed, you’ll get the very good Polaris Office, SuperNote, @Vibe Music, and a host of dedicated Asus apps to help you share and save your files in the cloud, as you did with the previous Transformer.

Tags: Tablets Honeycomb Asus Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:02:00 +0000

You’ve got your iPad or Android tablet, but what about your kids? According to toy company Leapfrog, your children want a tablet too. But does the LeapPad Explorer, a tablet designed especially for 4-9-year-olds fit the bill, or will they still want your iPad or Android tablet instead? 

We gave the LeapPad to Pocket-lint test subjects William, aged three and three quarters, and Emily five and a half, to see whether or not the kids tablet could impress.

Design

Designed for kids, this isn’t a single sheet of glass and metal affair that you’ll find on grown-up tablets. Instead it's green and while plastic one with a 5-inch TFT resistive touchscreen display in the centre surrounded by buttons to access the home screen, change the volume, toggle the power, and a d-pad for use in some of the games.

In an attempt to make the touchscreen even easier to use, you also get a stylus that slots into a slot at the side of the device. Around the back are the camera and the device’s two battery compartments that hide four AA batteries in total.

You’ll be pleased to hear there is a headphones socket, a USB socket so you can connect it to your computer, very important, and a cartridge slot to load up additional games or educational apps. The slot can accommodate Leapfrog Leapster Explorer and the Leapfrog Explorer cartridges too. 

Compared to the iPad 2 or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 the LeapPad is big, heavy, and very bulky, but then it is also not designed for you. And it's not £400 either. It is, however, designed to take the abuse that all children's toys endure, and to have a miniature price too, 

Of course in a perfect ode to Apple it says “Designed in California, made in China” on the back.

Games and Apps

Turn the LeapPad Explorer on and you are presented with login page that allows multiple kids to play on the same tablet, and allows you to manage those accounts and track progress. You get three logins in total and a guest one so others can play.

Like your iPad or Android tablet, the LeapPad’s software layout and design is focused around apps and they're displayed on the homescreen for you select. You get Pet Pad, My Stuff, My Books, Sneak Peaks, eBook, Art Studio, and Story Studio, and you can add more as well.

Pet Pad for example is an educational game that lets you look after a pet. It’s a Tamagotchi type affair where you’ve got to keep your pet happy by playing with it, or keeping it clean by washing it. Within the game there are also challenges, like asking you to write letters or numbers. It’s great stuff and if you catch your kids at the right age it is really going to help with getting them ready for school.

My Stuff is where you keep everything you’ve been working on and likewise with My Books - again think Kindle bookstore or the iBooks book shelf.

The Art Studio is obviously where the fun starts. You get a blank canvas on which to paint and draw on with the ability to change the pens, brushes, and colours. There is plenty here, although it is basic and if you want you can work on your own pictures you’ve either imported on to the LeapPad or photos you’ve snapped with the camera.

Story Studio allows you to create a story with the picture and video you’ve made.

More apps

Just like your grown up tablet, the LeapPad only has limited appeal based on the pre-installed apps. They are designed to be a teaser rather than a complete offering, so it will be no surprise that Leapfrog has its own App store within the PC and Mac software that you install on your computer, allowing you to buy more apps and download them to your device.

Rather more expensive than the 69p offerings in the App Store, the apps range from eBooks to games and are priced between £5 and £15.

It is worth pointing out though that all the apps are very good, rather than something that won’t work or just not very educational, as they are all made by Leapfrog and follow their usual high standards.

No email or Internet, but that's a good thing

Because there is no wireless connectivity, you aren’t going to go and make a cup of tea only to come back and find that your child has bought more stuff on Amazon, emailed your boss, or started a Skype call with Grandma by mistake.

Camera and Video recorder

Press the camera icon and you or your little one can start taking pictures. The camera is basic and is controlled by tapping on the screen. Your kids will love it. There is no zoom, and pictures can’t be shared directly from the tablet, meaning you’ll have to connect the LeapPad to your computer. That’s handy if you’ve just been snapped stepping out of the shower, for example, or worse still, sitting on the loo.

Once you’ve snapped a shot you can then manipulate it on screen with the camera software. That means drawing extra bits, or stretching on the photos, rather than anything considered Photoshop standard. It is for kids after all.

Connect the LeapPad to the computer and images can be downloaded or instantly shared via Facebook. Very social.

Tags: Dad Toys LeapFrog Leapfrog LeapPad Explorer Tablets

Leapfrog LeapPad Explorer originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:32:50 +0000

Disneyland Adventures is the latest Kinect title for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 accessory aimed squarely at the kids, but can get you to fall in love with the magical kingdom all over again?

We doubt there are many kids who don't love the magic of Disney, and while it no doubt drives many parents mad with its merchandising. We have to ask, is this game more Toy Story, or Cars 2. We got the kids out to help us review the game.  

Meeting new friends

Core to the game is the ability to walk around the Disneyland park in Anaheim and all it has to offer. Aside from a good smattering of other visitors who are just there to get in your way, you’ll find a perfect replica of the Californian park; complete with rides, and more importantly the Disney characters - there are 40 of them.

When you aren’t going on the rides you can chase down your favourites, wave hello, dance with them, get their autograph and give them hugs. It's rather charming, and younger children will love it. 

Without a storyline - you don’t have to save Cinderella for example - it is here you get the interaction element to Disneyland Adventures rather than it just being a series of mini-games.

From the start Mickey has you on errands that he is too lazy to do himself. While they soon get boring for us older folk, you just know that to the target audience, your 7 year old, the thought that they are really helping Mickey is the best honour in the known universe.

This being a Kinect game, walking around the park isn’t a mere button press or moving a joystick. Thankfully it isn’t all on rails either. Instead you have to hold your arm out in front of you to run forward. Other controls include waving to talk to characters, giving the hug gesture to do just that, or holding your hand up high to access your inventory, be it a camera or magic wand.

Once you tire of the walking; there really is only so much you can take from the eternally happy Mickey, you can go off in search of the rides. To distract you along the way is the chance to collect coins. These coins can then be spent in any of the eight shops to buy more autograph books, clothes and other virtual memorabilia.

Cutting out the time wasting

If the walking around the park is the exploring element to the game, the 20 rides are the fun bit.

As with the real Disneyland, the rides are dotted around the map in areas like Tomorrowland and Frontierland, and you can either walk to them or as we found, simply talk to the game and tell them what you want to do next, thanks to voice support from Kinect.

Get to the ride of your choice and you are transported to a parallel universe where you get to do the ride, but in the characters actual environment. That makes it a lot more fun, a lot more engaging, and certainly better than a beaten-up, paint chipped ride and the 45-year-old man next to you screaming with joy.

The games themselves vary widely, although all are great fun. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad involves you riding an out-of-control mine cart through a mineshaft and is similar in gameplay to some of the levels on Kinect Adventure.

The Finding Nemo levels see you swimming up and down underwater with Nemo and Squirt the turtle. Winnie the Pooh’s levels are based in the 100 Acre Wood. And the Princess level is all about dancing with your favourite Disney Princess.

It is not just fun for one

Yep there is multiplayer as well, with the chance for anyone to jump in and play at the same time co-op style. There are no battle modes, this is family fun remember.

That means that if you’ve got two kids they can play together rather than having to sit there all glum faced. And what’s really nice, is that while the games have challenges there is never a real sense that you need to complete them to progress. You don’t collect all the coins, so be it.

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Disneyland Adventures Microsoft Microsoft Kinect

Disneyland Adventures originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

We loved the LG 47LX9900 for its design and 2D picture quality. We also really liked the LG Cinema 3D 47LW550T when it comes to watching 3D movies, so could a television that merges the two together be the best TV LG has ever made?

We're about to find out, because the 55LW980T is a screen designed to merge both 2D picture quality, with jaw-dropping 3D. Which we're hoping will make this a set ideal for home cinema fans. 

Design

The LG 55LW980T is designed to be thin, to be sleek, and to be as minimal as possible. And that it is. The television is just 27.5mm thick (the LX9900 was 31mm) and the bezel is virtually non existent (17mm) with the glass design going to the full edge of the display rather than a thick black bezel as found on most televisions including the one in your lounge right now.

There is an edge of course, just not one that you’ll need to notice or pay much attention to.

The 55LW980T or its smaller brother, the 47-inch 36LW980T, can be stand mounted or fixed directly on to a wall. The stand is simple, but functional, with some movement to help you get a better left and right angle. You can’t change the vertical positioning however.

Around the back there are a plethora of connections; four HDMI, two USB with DivX Plus / HD playback, a PCMIA card slot, component in, antenna in, optical audio out, RGB in, RGB out, LAN, and phono connection options too. There is also Wi-Fi connectivity as standard saving you having to worry about an extra wire and the proximity of your router to your TV for Internet connectivity.

All the HDMI ports face the side making it easy once you’ve positioned your TV on the wall to manage said connections especially those USB slots.

Touch sensitive power, volume and other selection buttons are found on the front, but disappear from view when the TV is on. You won’t notice them, nor are they distracting.

Online

The days of a TV just being a TV are long gone, and LG acknowledge this with a dedicated home on the TV for apps, games and other bits and bobs.

Smart TV features the holy trinity of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It also adds BBC iPlayer, something that helps it be genuinely engaging, alongside a bucket of other apps including a 3D video zone, Sudoku and content from AceTrax, the HIT Entertainment channel, Box Office 365, the Cartoon Network, iConcerts and Daily Motion.

Everything is controlled, including the basic web browser, via the accompanying remote or an iPad or iPhone app. Those expecting to get the company’s Magic Wand Wii Remote style remote shouldn’t, it isn’t included in the box, although you can spend an additional £50 to get it if you want. Having had one in our home for around six months now, and it never coming out of the draw, we honestly wouldn’t bother.

The iPad app is, however, worth the effort, especially if you plan on surfing the web - you get a keyboard for typing into the browser for starters.

As you would expect the BBC iPlayer works a treat. Whether you’ll venture into Google pictures app, Picasa, is another question.

Watching TV

Navigating the TV begins at "Home", which is made up of six pop-up icons presented along the bottom of the screen. Choose "TV guide" to display a simple, high-res, 8-day EPG for Freeview HD, which floats over the current channel and shows schedules for 2 hours over five channels - and in a highly readable, large, font.

Other shortcuts reach an inputs screen, which only shows live devices - such as an attached Blu-ray player and a USB stick in either of this set’s two USB slots. NetCast takes you to LG’s nice-looking online content portal. and then there's "MyMedia", which accesses digital files via either USB or Wi-Fi. Every single test file of ours played quickly and stably, including DivX HD and WMV HD files.

2D screen quality

Working to improve the screen technology over its 2010 flagship, the LX9900, LG has also used Nano Full LED technology that creates brighter, clearer and smoother pictures.

What does that actually mean in non-marketing gobbledygook? Well the main tech used here is direct LED lighting behind the panel. This gives the set more backight control, which should enable it to produce much better black levels. It does this by only lighting up certain areas of the screen, rather than pushing light from the edges of the screen. 

The TV sports an IPS panel. For those without a degree in television technology, that's a technology that allows the TV to be viewed from a wide range of viewing angles. This is great if you don't watch TV sitting directly in front of the screen. A 400Hz processing mode will help keep flicker to a minimum and ensure that motion looks as smooth as possible - as long as you pick the right settings, something that isn't all that hard. 

Both the 2D and 3D images are very good indeed. For 2D we tested it with a number of different sources and footage including Frozen Planet in HD via Sky HD, Tron on Blu-ray, and Uncharted 3 on the PS3.

We were impressed in all cases with the TV, it copes exceptionally well with the blacks and bright colours of Tron, and the fast-moving action in Uncharted 3 (video game) and the whites and blues in Frozen Planet.

3D image quality

While the industry continues to argue over active versus passive glasses, LG has stuck its neck on the line and opted for the later. This TV uses the company’s Cinema 3D technology, which uses passive glasses to produce a 3D image.

That’s a marked change from the LX9900, which used active glasses, but we think it's the best move.

Having used both at home, passive is certainly easier on the eyes and easier to get glasses for - your local cinema for one - even though purists will cry that the resolution isn’t as good. And, it has to be said, from a technological point of view, they're right. 

The difference can be summarised thus: active sets send a Full HD image to each eye, so show more detail from 3D Blu-ray. Those TVs depend on using heavy, active (hence the name), 3D glasses that cost £50 each, are often uncomfortable and need to be regularly charged.

Passive, however, halves the resolution. In theory, this means you aren't gertting an image that's as sharp as from an active set, but you really aren’t going to notice, unless you really look closely. In the end, the comfort and cost of passive glasses is a big deal, especially for families.

In the box you get seven pairs of specs, yes seven, to get you started and as they only really cost 50p not £50 it’s easy to bulk up if they are damaged or you are having a party. Critically, you can still watch all 3D content, including 3D Blu-ray, Sky’s 3D channel - passive is Sky's choice of 3D tech anyway - Virgin’s Eurosport 3D channel, PlayStation and Xbox 360 3D games and more.

For 3D we tested it with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Meerkats via Sky 3D, Avatar on Blu-ray 3D, and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on the Xbox 360.

When we tested the LX 9900 we loved the 2D screen quality, but felt a bit let down by the 3D offering. Here, that isn’t the case, with all our 3D content performing as well as the 2D content. Sit in the wrong place in your living room and you’ll notice plenty of ghosting, but sit in a normal, head on, position and you’ll be fine. If you are wall mounting make sure you angle the TV down towards your eye line for best results.

Gamers will also be able to benefit from dual-screen mode that, combined with special glasses, will allow two players to both enjoy full screen gaming on the LW980T at the same time. Sadly we weren’t given access to those glasses for this review.

Sound

Sounds good enough. There's enough power to get you by, but we suspect that if you’ve just laid out £2500 for a brand new 55-inch television you are going to have a sound system to match. LG makes its own system to match the design, or you can check out the hundreds of different options out there on the market instead.

Tags: Televisions Home Cinema LG LG 55LW980T 3D 3DTV

LG 55LW980T originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:17:00 +0000

If you were to head to the shops to buy an iPhone dock you would be spoilt for choice. There aren’t just dozens, there are hundreds, nay thousands to chose from. They range from pocket options, full blown speaker systems, to ones that even look like pigs.

Try and do the same for your Android phone and you will come up a little short. Aside from the Sonos system that has Android support, getting your tunes from your phone, to a speaker, so you can boogie isn’t easy. We're hoping that the Fidelio will change all that. 

Design

The Philips Fidelio AS851 from Philips is the flagship Android speaker dock from a new range from the company. Based on the company’s popular iPhone range, the speaker design and construction is virtually identical.

Your Android phone, or tablet, sits center stage, while the large speaker sits behind it blasting out tunes. The black grill on the front covers up the ugly speakers behind, and at the bottom is a small console with controls for volume, power and indicators for connectivity status.

Around the back of the speaker is the power socket and a 3.5mm jack so you can connect other, non-Android phones.

The speaker’s footprint is large enough to take up a shelf on your bookshelf, but not big enough to dominate any room you put it in. If space is an issue you could always opt for the smaller and cheaper Philips Fidelio AS351.

Where the Fidelio AS851 differs to the iPhone and iPad version of the Philips dock is the bit that makes it Android friendly. The first is a technology you can see, the second is a technology you can’t.

Android Friendly

The crux of the Philips Fidelio AS851 is a spinning, turning, rotating, sliding, moving micro-USB connector that can be manipulated into fitting all manner of Android phones and tablets out there, regardless of where the micro-USB charger is situated on the phone.

We tried out the speaker on the HTC Legend, The Samsung Galaxy S II, the Motorola RAZR (2011), and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. All worked perfectly, although it has to be said that the Motorola RAZRs positioning means that it sits upside down, while Sony Ericsson (and some HTC) users will have to sit their phones sideways.

Within the connector there are two supporting feet that can be raised or lowered to create a better fit with the phone and all in all it works surprisingly well, giving plenty of support to your device.

The second part of the Android friendly technology is Bluetooth. Which Philips has chosen because Android phones don’t have a standard connector in the same way the iPhone does. It's also there because, as the ultra-geeky amongst you know, micro-USB doesn’t support audio.

To get around the boring element of having to pair the speaker each and every time Philips has created a dedicated app to make the pairing process simple. It is so simple that it will auto launch every time you dock your phone so all you have to do is press play to get the music started.

Philips Fidelio: the app

The app is simple affair, handling the pairing and giving you time and weather updates. The added benefit of turning your phone into a clock is a nice idea, it also means it can double up as an alarm. You don’t have to use the app once you’ve paired your phone to your speaker, and you can head over to Spotify or another online music service instead. 

It also provides in-built access to Songbird, as long as you have it installed, and if you don’t, it will prompt you to do so. SongBird is easy enough to use, you just have to point the app to your music collection on your phone and you get all the usual features. The app also comes with an Internet Radio player too, which is ideal when your phone is charging and connected via Wi-Fi to your internet connection.

It is also worth pointing out that to make it even easier to get the app, Philips have included a QR code on the device that you can scan. Although we're not sure how much easier that is than using the Android Market. 

Step away from the vehicle

Being paired by Bluetooth has its benefits. It means you can remove the phone altogether from the dock and still listen to the music. Usual Bluetooth rules apply - so you’ve got about 10m to play with - but rather cleverly you can use the volume controls on the phone to control the volume of the speakers.

But if you leave your phone docked, you can still control your music from the sofa using the supplied remote control. This is a terrific feature, and gives the dock far more use for us than a dumb speaker. 

It gives full control over your phone, including the ability to pause, fast forward and more. It's a little small though, and there's every chance you'll lose it down the back of the sofa, or your dog will eat it for lunch. 

Sound

All these treats; the design, the Bluetooth, and the remote will count for nothing if the system doesn’t sound good though. Fortunately for Philips the Fidelio AS851 doesn’t disappoint, happily filling a room with sound that is rounded, and full of base, but not overly so.

We tried the AS 851 in a number of locations around the house and were happy with the results in every room. It is certainly ample enough for your bedroom or your lounge, rather than just being something for the kitchen, where so many docks end up. 

Tags: Audio Android Philips Fidelio AS851 Philips Android speaker docks

Philips Fidelio AS851 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:52:09 +0000

When I first played and completed Halo I was about to get married. Tony Blair was the UK Prime Minster, George Bush was in the White House and the Apple iPod had just been announced. The Xbox 360 wasn’t even a twinkle in Microsoft’s eye not coming for another four years.

So it is a strange nostalgia trip 10 years later to be playing the same levels once again, albeit on a new console, a much bigger TV, married, with the kids tucked up in bed. Gosh, a lot has happened since then.

That lot has seen a number of changes to the Halo game, and a number of features remain the same. Think of this as a Redux version if you will.

For all intents and purposes the game is identical. The storyline, the voices, the poor game physics and the rather stupid Covenant are all still present. What’s different is that you can play it on the Xbox 360 for the first time, it has had a massive graphics overhaul, and that you even get a 3D mode thrown in even though the Xbox 360 still isn’t officially supporting 3D - we suppose it is now.

Nostaliga time

10 minutes in and we are already feeling a sense of déjà vu. We’ve been here before, on the same sofa sitting next to the same Mrs Pocket-lint dodging through dark service corridors to flank the invading aliens, on a spaceship that is in trouble. The only difference is that our trouser size is beer belly has grown.

The new graphics, it has to be said are a vast improvement. The walls have texture, the explosions and fire more explosive.

The controls are the same though, and it is fascinating how the moves come flooding back. X to reload, hold down the fire to get the secondary fire on the alien weapons. We love it.

Halo - Before and After

15 minutes in and we’ve started to mess around with the Nostalgia button as we are calling it.

So keen to show you how the developers, 343 Industries, have worked to improve the graphics to 2011 levels (it’s more 2009 to be honest) you can switch between what it looked like on the Xbox and the remastered version today all at the press of a button.

You can dash between the two modes at any time by pressing the select button and waiting a couple of seconds for the code to switch over.

Yep it’s something that you are unlikely to use in the thick of battle (you’ll end up dead), but at the same time it’s going to be incredibly handy justifying to Mrs Pocket-lint - that’s exactly what we did - why you’ve just spent another £35 ($39.99) on a game you’ve previously owned and previously completed.

An hour in and you’re racing around a now far more impressive looking beach on the Warthog sliding as you do as if you are half eaten hamburger being slid across an ice rink. Yes the warthog is still a dog to drive.

Two hours in, and the boring repetitiveness of the game that was so cutting edge starts to take sink in. The nostalgia, like thinking it is a good idea to download the original Sonic on your phone, sets in and you realise that videogames have moved on, moved on a lot. Unless you really have the horn for Master Chief there are better things to be doing with your life and your cash.

Kinect support

Trying to deviate from that notion that it is all a waste of time Microsoft have added Kinect support into the mix. Those who own the Xbox 360 accessory will be able to use the sensor to throw grenades, switch between classic and modern graphics, activate Analyze Mode (for the final scenes inside the Halo), and more.

Sadly we’ve as yet been able to try out Kinect integration, as the feature isn’t being added by Microsoft until after launch, but Microsoft tell us that gamers will be able to reload weapons or throw grenades using their voice. We will update this part of the review shortly.

Single player done and dusted – you’ll know all the shortcuts so it won’t take you long you get to venture into new ground – you’ll move on to Multiplayer maps.

Multiplayer

While the succeeding Halo titles added multiplayer support, the 2001 original on the Xbox didn’t (it was pre-Xbox Live). That’s all changed however with multiplayer support added.

For starters you can relive the nostalgia with a mate via Co-op mode fighting against the Covenant as if it was Halo 2.

But thankfully that’s not all. You also get six detailed remakes of the most loved Halo multiplayer maps, plus a new map thrown in for good measure.

The maps are remastered in the Halo: Reach engine and inspired by maps from Halo and Halo 2.

For those foaming at the mouth, the maps are Damination, Beaver Creek, Prisoner, Timerbland, Headlong, Hang ‘Em High, and Installation 04.

If you’ve played Halo: Reach and wee suspect you will have, you’ll know what to expect.

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Halo Halo Combat Evolved anniversary Microsoft

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

"I can't dance" sang Phil Collins in the '90s. He's not the only one, because here at Pocket-lint, we're quite famous for having the exact opposite of snake hips. Probably something like elephant hips. Sadly, with Dance Central 2 likely to be a hugely popular game with those who can, and do, dance, we thought it only fair to have a go.  

On the plus side, being so useless on in the "throwing shapes" category, we're well-placed to look at the game and discover how enjoyable it is for those not blessed with any sort of rhythm. And find out if it's an inclusive experience for everyone. 

Dancing on the Ceiling

As the name implies, Dance Central 2 is the follow-up to the hugely popular Dance Central Kinect title from 2010. It brings with it a number of new features, including two-player mode so you can finally challenge a friend, which is a far more inclusive experience. 

Power up the game and you are presented with a number of options: Dancing, Crew Challenge, Fitness, and the ability to buy new dances.

On-screen menus can be controlled via a quick swipe of your hand in the air - they are the most responsive we’ve seen on the Kinect to date - or by you talking at your TV. Very handy if you need to pause the game mid-dance off.

Let’s Face the Music and Dance

Dancing can either be done solo, or with another player, and you can play co-op mode too, so you can work together, or even against each other, to see who really is the best dancer.

Once you’ve decided, you’ve got to chose a song and those songs come with a variety of different moves to master and learn. Britney Spears’ Toxic - strangely not sung by her - is one of the hardest there is here, while Darude’s Sandstorm one of the easiest. Each song has a further three-level difficult rating, which makes the game grade you more harshly, on the top setting, and requires your moves are nearly perfect. On the lower setting, it's more forgiving.  

The mix of songs is incredibly random with a barrage of the latest dance tracks smattered with classics like Haddaway’s What is Love and Bobby Brown’s Prerogative. There were many that we didn’t recognise with a strong focus on rap tracks from the 90s.

As you would expect, all dances expect you to get jiggy with it, completing the moves at the same time as your character does on screen. Match the on-screen model and you’ll get rewarded. The more you get, the better your score and the more features you get to unlock.

To help you improve there's a Break It Down section where you can practice set moves and the game tries its best to get you involved and encourage you to do better. Get the move right, but not in time, and you will get you an “Almost” message for example.

Crew challenge is pretty much the same as the dancing area, but sees you battle against the various make-believe “crews” of the game.  You can play solo, or with a friend, and the best way to think of the gameplay is a dancing version of Street Fighter.

Dirty Dancing

You can use the game to lose a little weight or stay in shape too, and those who think they are fit enough can opt to play in the fitness area of the game. Here you can either enable fitness mode for the whole game whereby it will track your calories, or participate in a timed workout, ranging from “Sweat-in” to “Long-haul”. The later is almost 50 minutes. By the end, unless you are über-fit, you will be aching.

Having played the game for weeks, you’ll soon run out of dances - there really is only so many times you can dance to Bananarama without losing your mind - and like SingStar on the PlayStation – you can buy more tracks. They cost 240 Microsoft points and are downloadable in-game. You’ll get a 240 points voucher in the box to get you started.

Murder on the Dancefloor

It’s not all dance, dance, dance you know. For the two player to work, you have to be in the same room, and the game can be pretty unforgiving on tracking your moves. Harmonix, the games developers has said that it completely re-worked the tracking code from the last game, because it wasn’t as actuate as they wanted.

You’ll also find that the dance selection isn’t for everyone. There were a lot we had never heard of, or would want to play, rendering those tracks useless to us. Any playlist is going to be questioned, but we would have expected some more classic tracks rather than just the odd Gaga or Bieber.   

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Dance Central 2 Microsoft Microsoft Kinect

Dance Central 2 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:38:37 +0000

Nokia is dead, long live Nokia. Having been written off in the Western world, Nokia is throwing all its eggs in one basket and hoping that its latest phone, the Windows Phone 7 powered Nokia Lumia 800, has what it takes to wow.

We’ve been testing it ahead of the UK launch to find out whether your next phone will be a Nokia.

A brief history

The fact that the Lumia 800 looks like the N9 might not mean much to many people. The N9, the last handset before the Lumia, was a beauty that ran the new MeeGo operating system.

Despite being something of a return to form for Nokia, the N9 was dead before it went on sale. But it's also one of the things that caused Nokia to partner with Microsoft to create a Nokia Windows Phone. And the resulting handset takes its cues from the N9, and in our view, that's no bad thing.

Nokia isn't back on top yet though, and there are still some questions to be asked, like: why there is no front facing camera, or Near Field Communication (NFC) for cashless payments.

Design

The Nokia Lumia 800 is hewn from a single piece of black, pink, or cyan coloured polycarbonate that gives you a seamless design. It has curved edge that snugly fits your grip with the screen and the phone’s innards have been slipped into the shell as if it was Cinderella and the glass slipper.

The Micro SIM and Micro USB charging socket are found under covered compartments at the top of the device next to a 3.5mm headphones jack. You'll find a speaker at the bottom of the handset and it offers a good loud sound.

The micro USB charging cover is going to be your biggest complaint of the phone and the part that you are likely to break first as you fiddle to plug in your phone.

We think Nokia has missed a trick in missing out a dock connector. The idea of being able to slip it into a docking station or speaker is very appealing, and there are lots of other phones, like the HTC Rhyme or iPhone 4S where this works brilliantly. Had Nokia included this, you would never need to faff about with silly plastic covers. Also annoying is the fact that the battery isn’t accessible or replaceable and there isn’t a microSD slot either.

The polycarbonate surface is broken with a Carl Zeiss 8 megapixel lens and dual LED flash on the rear. Three buttons on the side of the phone that offer volume, power, and a camera shutter. And there's a gorgeous 3.7-inch AMOLED screen on the front.

The screen

Along with the curved design, the screen is the highlight of the device. It is stunning and by far the best we’ve seen on a Windows Phone 7 smartphone to date, and is good enough to impress even your iPhone 4S owning friends. It is only really challenged by the display on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

The screen is ever so slightly curved, and that gives you a very different experience to the flatness of the iPhone for example.

Where it really shines though, is the fantastic viewing angle. It's so good that we would suggest being careful about reading private emails on the train as other passengers will be able to read them easily.

The vivid colours that Windows Phone 7 offers together with the super-vivid AMOLED display means everything pops out of the screen.

Beneath the screen are the three standard buttons; back, home, and search. While these aren’t part of the active screen, the glass does cover them. They come with haptic feedback buzzing as you press them, something that many we have shown really liked.

The inside

Beauty is one thing, but without a decent bit of tech inside, it's as unfulfilling as dating a shop manaquin. Thankfully Nokia has packed the Lumia 800 with enough kit for you to enjoy the experience.

A 1.4Ghz Qualcomm processor gets the ball rolling and means that it's no slouch. The phone is fast, and while the HTC Titan pips it to the post, you aren’t going to notice it in day-to-day running.

Scrolling of your app list whizzes, all of the interactive live tiles - which give you up-to-date info via the home screen - seem to be more interactive than the recently tested HTC Radar. And thanks to hardware acceleration in IE9 web pages load quicker, even if you are in a poor signal area.

The phone comes with 16GB of storage space for apps, music, video, and photos and isn’t expandable via microSD, something that is a limitation of Windows Phone. Even so, that should be plenty unless you are a real music or movie hound. But if you are, then Nokia has you covered on the music front with a streaming music app called Nokia Music.

Connectivity wise you get all the usual offerings; there's Bluetooth for pairing speakers or a headset, Wi-Fi for surfing the web, and 14.4Mbps HSDPA.

Battery

Depending on what you do, and how you do it, will affect how long the battery lasts. Day one, with a number of location-based apps running we struggled to get past 4pm. However after we had reined those pesky apps in, we got considerably better results.

Owners of the Lumia 800 should expect to get a full day of life from a single charge, even using a combination of the phone's features, including GPS. Windows Phone 7’s battery saver certainly helps.

Official stats from Nokia suggest you’ll get 9.5hrs talk time, 7hr playback time, 55hrs music playback time, and 335hrs standby time. We'll tell you now, you aren’t going to get two weeks battery life from this phone.

The Mango user interface and apps

Following the announcement with Microsoft in February, this is the first of a range of new phones from Nokia that come packed with Windows Phone 7 and in particular Windows Phone 7.5, and updated version, with lots of new features. In fact, Microsoft claims it has over 500 new features over the original release.

This means that the operating system as a whole has had a vast improvement. Now you get a faster, better browsing experience, Twitter and LinkedIn integration, better management of groups in the people hub and plenty more. It is by no means perfect, but compared to the original WP7 from October 2010 it's light years ahead. If you're interested, we have a full review of Windows Phone 7 Mango for you to read.

Unlike with Android, Windows Phone manufacturers can't change the interface design. They are, however, allowed to add apps or enhance settings options, but that’s all. The Nokia Lumia 800 comes with a number of dedicated apps including Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Music, App Highlights, and Contacts Transfer.

App highlights is designed to give you highlights of the best apps in the Microsoft Marketplace. An "editor’s pick" if you like, and therefore encourage you to see what’s new and hot.

Contact transfer is an app designed to let you suck your contacts out of your old phone - as long as it has Bluetooth. It's simple to use and for those still rocking an Nokia N95 with hundreds of contacts stored on your phone, rather than the cloud, this will come in very handy.

As for other apps, Microsoft and Nokia are doing well to appeal to developers and there are new apps appearing all the time, but it's by no means perfect. There are a lot of apps that just aren't there yet. There's no Spotify, no Tiny Wings, no Amazon shopping app and probably no "whatever your favourite app is on iPhone" either. It's getting better, but it is something to take into account.

Like the iPhone there is no Flash support, and sadly no BBC iPlayer app to catch-up on TV shows you've missed. That means if you want to watch movies or TV shows on the Lumia 800 you've got to load them in yourself via the Zune software on a PC or Windows Phone 7 Connector on the Mac. Supported video formats include .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .m4v, mbr, .wmv. Not a brilliant selection.

Lumia 800 app features vs other Windows Phones

While Nokia has focused on getting the core offering of the phone right, there are things that other WP7 smartphones will offer than Nokia doesn’t.

That includes a bevy of free apps installed that come as standard with a HTC Windows Phone 7 device; Flashlight, Unit converter, and Notes, for example. However, before you panic, all are available from other developers in the Marketplace.

The biggest surprise, though, is that there is no internet sharing. So you won't be able to turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot to support your other devices.

Nokia Drive

Nokia Drive is a free turn-by-turn navigation. It comes with voice guidance, the ability to download and install maps on the go from anywhere in the world, and the ability to add extra mapping data via 3G, if you stray too far from your route.

To help you find that route, Nokia has included 69 million places within the service. It claims that you’ll never be lacking suggestions for places to visit, and in our tests it never failed to work out where we wanted to go, be it a postcode, street address, or just a pub. As you might expect, there's a landscape view for using the app in the car, and the option of switching between 2D and 3D views.

A drive around the Berkshire countryside proved easy. Directions are spoken to you, so you get the right turning. The mapping display and interface is very clear and easy to understand and we're very impressed by the performance.

If you are the sort of person that only needs a GPS occasionally, rather than all the time, this is certainly going to be up your street (sorry we couldn’t resist).

Nokia Music

The other key, new, app included is Nokia Music, a twist on Microsoft’s Music hub and Zune offering. Rather confusingly sitting separate, but also linked to the Microsoft Music app, Nokia music is a free app only available to Nokia users. It consists of a number of features and is, in reality, the rebirth of the company’s failed Comes With Music offering of yesteryear.

The key selling point however is a feature called MixRadio, a free, global, mobile music-streaming application that delivers hundreds of channels of locally-relevant music to be streamed or saved, for offline listening.

Offline listening is restricted, of course, but not overly so. Users can download up to four stations and up to 14.5 hours of music at any one time. That’s around 200 tracks in total all stored in the AAC+ format.

There will be 100 channels, built according to genre and each contains 50 songs, which are refreshed, once a week. So if you just want to listen to new releases, there’s a channel for that.

To help it create those personalised track lists the app will also scan your music collection (via a website). It uses this to tell what kind of music you have and then makes suggestions, to help you find other music you'll like, but perhaps haven't yet discovered.

But it is not just MixRadio that music fans should look forward to. Also integrated in Nokia Music is Gigfinder, which allows you to find live, local, music and buy tickets from your phone.

Those are the more exciting features of the new app. You can also buy music from Nokia’s 15m track collection, as well as stream Internet radio stations and listen to your own music.

The Nokia Music app is fully integrated into the Windows Phone experience. You'll see your Nokia music in the Zune interface, including the music you've heard most recently.

In practice, it's very good. Within seconds you can be listening to free curated music on your phone. No sign-up. No subscription. No faff. We love it.

Nokia Music is helped even further by a decent speaker in the phone and while it isn’t going be good enough to match your Hi-Fi is good enough to get the party started in a hotel room or just on your desk. Bass fans will probably be disappointed however.

Camera

Historically, as well as making phones to call people with, Nokia has also had impressive camera technology. And the camera on the Lumia 800 doesn’t disappoint either, which is terrific news.

Nokia has packed in a Carl Zeiss 8-megapixel f2.2 camera and a dual LED flash. There's a dedicated camera button on the top of the device and you get a more camera-like feel than you do with an iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy S II. That feeling is compounded by a half press to make the camera focus, before you snap the final picture.

Our test shots were on the whole good, coping with what we threw at it. Inside and the flash can be overbearing if your subject is too close, and without the flash the pictures can be a tad noisy. Get the right lighting and the results can be very good indeed.

On the video front you get 720p resolution at 30 fps. The video performance is good, although you don’t get to zoom.

Sadly features like panorama and burst mode, as found in the HTC Radar and Titan, aren’t available on this phone.

You do however get auto-fix, which does what the name suggests to your pictures. For 79p we would recommend the Pictures Lab app that gives you a number of Instagram- and Hipstamatic-like filters too.

Nokia Nostalgia and the famous ringtone

One of the biggest things we’ve noticed while we’ve been testing the Nokia Lumia 800 is the huge amount of nostalgia that the phone evokes in people. Upon seeing the phone, people instantly start reminiscing about their Nokias of yesteryear and how they always have a soft spot for the company.

That nostalgia level goes to 11 when you get a call and the ringtone of your youth comes blurting out. Nokia has changed the der der der der, der der der der der tune, slightly softening it, and there will be a dubstep version coming out soon, for those too-cool sorts.

Beyond the famous Nokia ringtone the company has added dozens of others too.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Nokia Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone 7

Nokia Lumia 800 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:26:00 +0000

Thunderbolt and lightening is supposed to be very very frightening, but can it also be the be-all and end-all to your desktop needs?

We’ve been living with the Apple Thunderbolt Display, a monitor that lets you turn your MacBook Pro or Air into an iMac, for the last month. Is it worth the expense of a new monitor, or does it really only offer the same as a regular screen? We looked closer.

Design

Looking like a giant iPad, just without the home button, the Apple Thunderbolt Display offers a glossy 27-inch IPS LED backlit screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. As you'd probably expect, it has a 16:9 aspect ratio and an impressive 16.7 million colours. It also has a wide viewing angle of 178 degrees both horizontal and vertical.

That screen, plus the bezel gives you a monitor 49.1 x 65 x 20.7cm in size with a weight of 10.8Kg. It’s big, but it's also pretty.

From the front, the design is typical Apple minimalist with no lights, no buttons, and no faff to clutter the stylish fascia. There are just two marks; an HD webcam at the top and the Apple logo sitting bottom centre in the bezel, finished in silver. It doesn’t glow, it doesn’t double as a power button, it just sits there looking pretty and advertising one of the world's most valuable brands.

The bottom of the panel includes a 2.1 speaker system (49 watts) that is hidden within the monitor. It sounds good, and is perfectly ample for music while sitting at your desk. Don’t, however, expect it to fill the room with music.

The back, which still looks like an iPad, is clad in metal, has a large L-shaped stand protruding from the rear that allows you to angle the screen, up to 20 degrees, and features a number of connections and ports. What it doesn’t have is power button - yes we went mad trying to find it when we first got it out of the box - or any other button for that matter.

There is no power button, because the screen automatically comes on when you connect a laptop to it, and no other buttons, because why would you need them?

As for those connections, there are plenty: Three powered USB 2.0 ports; one FireWire 800 port; a Gigabit Ethernet port so you can benefit from a faster connection rather than rely on your Wi-Fi only MacBook Air, and a Thunderbolt port to connect a suitable hard drive or another Thunderbolt display.

There are two cables that trail out of the back. One for the power, the other to connect your MacBook's Thunderbolt port.

What is Thunderbolt?

If you’re wondering what all this talk of Thunderbolt actually is, here is a quick recap. Apple's latest lineup of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops are the first products to feature Thunderbolt, which Apple describes as "the most powerful, most flexible Input/Output technology ever [put] in a personal computer". What that means, in reality, is that if used in a hard drive you can transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds, far quicker than USB 2.0. In fact, its more than 20 times faster than USB 2.0 and more than 12 times faster than FireWire 800. And if you thought that was fast, then you'll be pleased to hear that the technology has the potential to become even quicker in the future – all backwards compatible of course.

Here the monitor uses the technology in place of VGA and DVI ports (Digital Visual Interface) meaning you can plug a Mini DisplayPort screen straight into the Thunderbolt port, or connect DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI or VGA displays using an adaptor. This reduces the number of holes you need on the side of your laptop's chassis. It also means that you can treat the monitor as a docking station.

Ready to dock

Aside from being a mammoth screen, one of the key reasons to get the Apple Thunderbolt Display for your desk is to take advantage of the de-cluttering effect it will have on your desktop. One cable, with a twin end, does the same as sending audio and video to the monitor, while powering your Mac via its power port. This is very neat, and very Apple. But it also makes for a much nicer working environment.

Currently though, only the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops have Thunderbolt. Plugging it into a MacBook Pro is easy as both the power and Thunderbolt connectors are on the same side. For MacBook Air users you will have to plug in the power on one side and then loop the cable behind the screen and plug in the Thunderbolt cable on the other. It is easy stuff and there is plenty of cable, but we would have thought Apple would have designed the Air to have both connectors on the same side. Yes that’s us being a bit picky, but we do expect such forethought from the mighty Apple.

Once you’ve got yourself plugged in you can then start loading up the monitor with your USB drives, devices and the like. The whole thing turns the static monitor into a handy hub for your ultra-portable laptop. It makes a lot of sense, but forgoes the traditional hideous docking station that a lot of PCs expect you to use. 

If you’re a laptop user who also sits at a desk all day this, saves you having to plug in and out your main peripherals every day, day-in, day-out.

Get your makeup on and tidy your house

Above the screen, you’ll get Apple’s HD FaceTime camera and a built in microphone that offers 720p recording and a very wide recording angle so you can get in not just you, but a couple of other faces as well.

That’s great if you’ve got the family gathered around your new Thunderbolt Display, not so great if you’ve got an untidy office, as we soon realised when we started making video calls.

In practice and the camera works well, is crisper than the one fitted to the MacBook Air, and nobody we called complained about quality.

The only complaint we do have is that when using Skype it didn’t automatically know to switch to the FaceTime camera in the monitor, forcing us to have to do it manually every time we connected the monitor to our MacBook Air. Annoying.

Screen time

When the Apple Thunderbolt Display isn’t being a docking station or a videophone it is, first and foremost, a monitor. And a very good one too. 

The resolution is stunning, the clarity brilliant, and the overall performance very good with blacks reproduced well. All tasks are carried-out with aplomb, whether it’s writing a letter, watching a movie or playing a game.

That resolution helps too with fonts, which look incredibly crisp and detailed. The main side affect is that, at the maximum resolution, everything is so small. We’ve found that means typing in word at 16- rather than 12-point and sometimes having to zoom in on webpages - especially if they use a small font.

Calibration options in OS X include brightness, colour temperature, gamma, and contrast, although these are rather buried in your Mac OS settings, with Apple opting to set this for you at the start. 

Gripes

It isn't all perfect, perfect, perfect. We initially experienced issues with the monitor sometimes not turning on, because it had not been recognised by our laptop. Something that now seems to have been fixed via a recent firmware update. Additionally it is also worth pointing out that you won't be able to use the display on non-Thunderbolt devices. For us that isn't really a problem - it is like complaining that you can't put petrol in a diesel engine - but it is worth noting if you plan to use this with older MacBook models that aren't Thunderbolt ready. 

Tags: Monitors Apple Apple Thunderbolt Display Apple MacBook Air Apple MacBook Pro

Apple Thunderbolt Display originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Kinect Sports was one of the must-have games on for the Xbox 360 Kinect, and showed us that games didn't have to be all about sitting on your sofa getting fat. But can the follow up, Kinect Sports: Season Two, match and build on the first outings success?

We’ve been getting energetic in front of our TV to find out.

What sports do you get?

There are six sports to master in the game; American football, skiing, baseball, darts, golf, and tennis. Each has single player and multiplayer matches in front of your TV, and Xbox Live matches with others elsewhere around the globe.

Each sport takes on a serious approach, however each also has a fun challenge as well - golf, for example, has Ocean Driver that sees you driving the ball from a cruise liner as far as you can.

Furthermore you get opt for "challenges". These, as the name suggests, allow you to throw down the gauntlet to your friends, and gives a competitive challenge. When you issue a challenge, your friend will see it the next time they log in. As there is no rivalry like the rivalry of mates, it can be a great way to prove that you're better than your friends. Or get your rear-end handed to you, if you're not. this gameplay element only works if you know your mate is hooked on the game too though.

It is all about voice

When Microsoft announced this year’s selection of Kinect games, there was a strong emphasis on talking to your console over waving your hands in front of it like you were trying to hail a cab. Kinect Sports: Season Two takes advantage of that in the menu system, and some elements of the gameplay by letting you talk your way through the options in front of you. Say: “Xbox... Select a sport…Golf…One player… Play” and you are teeing off in no time at all. 

Playing on our own and with friends we found the system works well, although understandably it was better when there was no one else in the room. It certainly puts the system on an equal footing again with a combination of quick button presses, but it also means that grandparents could navigate through the menu quickly, without having to work out what or where the “A” button is on the Xbox 360 controller. ­­

You’ll be videoed

Throughout the entire experience you’ll be videoed. Once your humiliation is over, the game will then up the ante and humiliate you all over again by showing you the video. It's a laugh though, as long as you aren't too worried about looking a bit silly. Parents will love this, their kids will not.

The videos can then be uploaded to Kinectshare.com and downloaded to your computer so you can YouTube or Vimeo them or send them instantly, via Facebook.

American Football

American Football will be a new one for UK readers and a game they haven’t probably played before. It's also a hard one for a single player, although Kinect Sports: Season Two does its best to make it fun.

Having explained what’s going on, and the basic rules, you play the quarterback in the crouch position ready to catch the ball. You’ve then got to throw it down field and run vigorously on the spot to avoid being “sacked”. We sure you can imagine what this looks like, and it's every bit as ludicrous as you might think. 

To speed the whole process up you don’t have to defend, and plays can either be barked at you by the coach, or you can chose your own.

Gameplay-wise, the games can be quite long. You’ve got four quarters to get through and plenty of plays within each quarter. That said it moves along quickly, and once you beat the rookie you get to take on pro and then champion, giving you plenty of challenge, and that’s before you get started on the multiplayer.

We especially like the bit where you get to scream “Ready, Hike” at the TV to start the play (you can wait for the countdown timer if you are embarrassed).

Baseball

Two innings, three strikes and you're out. Three players out and you change sides. If you’re good, just like a good baseball game, you can go on for ages and the mix between batting and pitches brings plenty of variety. Batting and you’ve got to swing your arms like you mean it, pitching and then catching means you’ve got to follow the commands given - a slow ball, fast down the middle - so-on and so-forth.

Catching is very easy, and probably the dullest part of the game. Really, it's just a matter of sticking your arm out at the target. But it means you get to get through the fielding part quicker, and then it's back to the batting, which is more fun.

Skiing

This is one of the more arduous of the six games, and one that will require you to actually put in some effort. The Grandparents didn’t like this one especially.

However it was also one of the most fun, engaging, and one that everyone who played it said was like Wii Ski without the faff of the balance board. They're right too, and If you’ve played Wii Ski then you’ll be right at home here.

The premise is downhill slalom, and that means testing your thigh muscles to the maximum. The more your bend your legs the faster you go, and the jumps give you star-jump practice for good measure. Then there's the leaning from side to side to get between the flags.

A couple of runs and you’ll be aching. We certainly were.

Tennis

The racquet game in the first Kinect Sports was Ping Pong. Here it gets replaced by Tennis, and the tracking engine has been improved significantly. That means top spin, volleys, lobs and plenty of other moves are possible, with the gameplay tracking your wrist movement to pull off all the relevant moves. It's not perfect all the time and sometimes you feel that the game doesn’t follow the shot you wanted, but nine times out of ten we were happy with the results, even if that meant missing the serve.

Think Wii Sports Tennis and you'll get the picture, but the Kinect sensor does allows for a greater experience.

Darts

If ever there was an excuse to play Kinect and have a pie and a beer in the other hand its got to be Darts. Here the gameplay pace is completely different to the dashing around that you’ll have been doing on the other games. But that doesn’t mean it is any easier, and like a dart board in the pub, it slowly draws you in, so much so that we audibly let out a yelp when we won - crazy times.

Thanks to the new precision tracking, the Kinect sensor how knows where your hand is and therefore where you are about to throw your dart. The game helps you by first explaining what’s going on, but then highlighting where on the board you're supposed to be aiming for (you can turn it off). Trying to get that double 16 has never been so tense.

Golf

One of the more successful sports within the game, you get to play a series of made-up holes that enjoy water more than land, for the most part.

Aside from swinging your way to victory there are some clever tricks you can use. Raise your hand to your forehead for example lets you view the course ahead more closely. The same happens when you crouch on the green, while at any point you can step away from the ball to perform a practice shot.

Add that to the ability to slice and dice your shot and the game mechanics are actually quiet good. Not good enough to improve your real life handicap, but enough to benefit those who have played over those who have not. 

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Microsoft Kinect Sports games Kinect Sports Season Two

Kinect Sports: Season Two originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Windows Phone 7 Mango is here and that means a selection of new smartphones to choose from. The new version of the OS is aimed at users who are either upgrading from the first batch of 2010 handsets, or moving over to the platform for the first time.

The HTC Radar is a pretty risk-free handset. It has not got the massive 4.7-inch screen of the HTC Titan, nor is it as small as the iPhone 4S. The question is, does the Radar have anything to offer an increasing sophisticated mobile phone audience? We've been using one, so let's take a more detailed look. 

Design

The Radar is designed to replace the HTC 7 Mozart and HTC 7 Trophy. It introduces a number of new features, while at the same time offering a mid-range entry point into the wonderful world of Windows Phone 7. While the Titan will impress high-end users, those early adopters that like to show off their gleaming phone at the first chance, the Radar is going to be a subtler offering, and the design reflects that.

Measuring 120 x 61.5 x 10.8mm and weighing 137 grams it is not the thinnest phone, the fattest phone, or even the sexiest phone. It comes in white and silver, or gun metal grey, and at first glance is similar in design to the company’s HTC Desire and Desire S handsets.

The 3.8-inch Super LCD screen has a resolution of 480 x 800, and it is this that occupies the majority of the phone's front surface. You'll find the three standard Windows Phone 7 buttons beneath it, as you will on any Windows Phone 7 device.

The screen is crisp and the HTC Radar doesn’t suffer from the same resolution problems as the larger-screened Titan. That’s because the Windows Phone 7 resolution is set the same across all devices, so larger screens have to stretch the same resolution over a larger surface. Somewhat silly, but this helps Windows Phone maintain a unified look on all phones. 

There is also an extra, double chin underneath the buttons, at the bottom. It's a lot more pronounced on the white model and is created by the SIM card casing. Were this an Android phone, then you would also expect to find a microSD slot and removable battery here. Sadly neither are present meaning it is an awfully big case with little flexibility, aside from the ability to change the SIM card. 

Around the back you'll find a 5-megapixel snapper with a single LED Flash. The front offers a VGA-quality front-facing camera. There is also a dedicated shutter button to make taking photos easier.

Inside

Inside and the HTC Radar does get a boost over the Mozart and Trophy, but it is pretty mediocre in terms of specs. You'll get the same Qualcomm MSM 8255 1GHz processor from last year and 512MB of RAM to power it. It is not as fast or as nippy as the HTC Titan with its 1.5Ghz processor.

On the storage side of things, you'll get 8GB for all your pictures, apps, movies and the like. The phone comes with the usual connectivity options: Wi-Fi, HSPA, Bluetooth and GPS. New for 2011 is DLNA, allowing you to share your music or video with compliant devices and computers. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack, for headphones. What you won't get is Near Field Communications (NFC) for touchless micro-payments or microSD expansion.

The phone’s aerial reception seems good. We’ve tested it in Berkshire, Surrey, London, and San Francisco and not had any problems. We are happy to report we’ve had no issues with the call quality, either making or receiving calls. 

On the entertainment side of things there is SRS and 5.1 surround sound enhancement available, for which you'll want to connect your headphones. The built-in speaker is situated on the rear of the phone next to the camera, and for a phone, it produces a good rounded sound. It has not, however, been enhanced with Dr Dre's "Beats Audio" like the new Sensation models from HTC.

Camera

The HTC Radar comes with a HTC's 5 megapixel camera with 28mm lens F/2.2 aperture and LED flash. The front has a VGA forward-facing camera so you will be able to make video calls when Skype makes its inevitable arrival on the Windows Phone platform.

Burst mode does what is says, lets you take five pictures in quick succession so you can capture a moment as it happens. Panorama automatically stitches three shots together, producing a super-wide image. What's helpful is that the screen shows you when to pause and when to move, but also uses the phone's sensors to add in a horizontal "spirit level" so you can try and take as level a picture as possible.

The camera is really easy to use, and offers little or no lag when it comes to snapping a picture. Photos are instantly stored to the side so you can see what you've taken with a swipe from left to right, and as long as you don't smudge the lens (something that is easily done on all phones) you have the chance to take some really great photos. Given the right light colours are vivid, and in low light situations we found the sensor coped well enough, but it's not perfect and there can be a lot of noise in the images. The camera on the Titan is noticeably better.

After you’ve snapped your picture you can apply an auto-fix to it. This does its best to improve the picture's colour (more akin to HDR) or load up HTC’s photo enhancer application and start adding effects like cinnamon colour washes.

In terms of video capture you get 720p video recording and autofocus, although it is locked off once you start recording. There is a zoom, but this and all other controls are also locked off once you press the record button. Once you are finished there are a number of sharing options, however you can't share it to YouTube or Vimeo for example.

Image quality is good for a phone, better than the Trophy, but not up there with the best camera phones on the market, especially devices like the iPhone 4S. You won’t be disappointed, nor will you be excited.

The Mango user interface and apps

The new HTC Radar comes with Windows Phone 7.5, which was codenamed Mango. It offers over 500 new features over the previous version of Windows Phone 7 and that’s very much welcomed.

Those new features mean that the operating system as a whole has had a vast improvement. Now you get a faster, better browsing experience, Twitter and LinkedIn integration, better management of groups in the people hub and plenty more. It's by no means perfect, but compared to the original WP7 from October 2010 it is light years ahead. Rather than detail all the new features here in our HTC Radar review, we’ve reviewed Windows Phone 7 Mango as a separate entity.

Unlike Android there is no chance for the phone manufacturer to change the design, add, or customise the user interface. A manufacturer like HTC is able to add apps or enhance settings options, but that’s all. The HTC Radar comes with a number of dedicated apps. Some are pre-installed, others are available via a dedicated area of the Microsoft Marketplace.

Internet Sharing, for example, lets you turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot so other devices, be it your laptop or tablet, can share the internet connection. Setup is incredibly easy and it works too. The HTC Hub emphasises the time and the weather and gives you quicker access to stock reports and news.

Other new apps include HTC Locations, HTC Connected Media, and HTC Watch. HTC Locations is an app that allows you to pinpoint your location and then send that data to friends. It is an "I’m in the pub" kind of thing and lets you bookmark places for quick retrieval. A press of a button and you’ll instantly get directions from where you are to where you are going.

HTC Connected Media is HTC’s answer to LG’s DLNA offering found in the LG Optimus 7 and uses the technology to let you connect and stream music, photos, and video to a DNLA enabled device. For us that was the new LG Cinema 3D display. The app worked perfectly, letting us stream music, photos and videos to the television without any hassle. Setup was easy, however we found in our tests that the time from pressing play on the device to it playing on the TV was on the slow side, however once it started playing we experienced no problems. Cleverly the HTC Connected Media App does allow you to control the volume on the television.

As for "other apps", Microsoft is doing well to appeal to developers and there are new apps appearing all the time, but it's by no means perfect. There are a lot of apps that just aren't there yet. No Spotify, no Dropbox, no Tiny Wings, no Amazon shopping app and probably no "whatever your favourite app is on iPhone" either. It is getting better, but it is something to take into account.

Like the iPhone there is no Flash support, and sadly no BBC iPlayer app to catch up on TV shows you've missed. That means if you want to watch movies or TV shows on the Radar you've got to load them in yourself via the Zune software on the PC or Windows Phone 7 Connector on the Mac. Supported video formats include .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .m4v mbr, .wmv. Not a brilliant selection. 

Battery

The battery life compared to the Trophy is vastly improved. We were able to get a good weekend worth of battery life from the phone while it happily survived a heavy day of use out and about. With a non-replaceable battery, however, we wouldn’t recommend going over night without charging.

Docking station

As an optional extra you'll be able to get a docking station for the HTC Radar. It is a first for a Windows Phone 7 handset and HTC has created a dedicated docking app to benefit from the landscape cradle.

When docked not only will it charge your phone, but also automatically fire up the dock mode which gives you access to the media controls, time and other bits and bobs within the HTC Experience. The problem comes when you exit the app, because the Windows Phone 7 menu system hasn't been designed for a landscape viewing, so you'll need to tilt your head 90 degrees to make sense of anything.

Tags: Phones Windows Phone 7 HTC HTC Radar

HTC Radar originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:24:00 +0100

Whether it's Greek mythology or astrology, the notion of the titan is well established. The name brings with it a sense of size, a sense of power and a sense magnificence. But can the new HTC Titan, a Windows Phone 7 smartphone sporting a whopping 4.7-inch screen, live up to such a billing?

Coming in with screen real estate that surpasses rival devices, is it just a little too big, or can this monster phone be big and beautiful?

Design

Everyone we have shown the HTC Titan to has said two things: wow look at that screen and wow look how big it is. It is bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S II and it is bigger than the previous Windows Phone 7 whopper, the HTC HD7. In real terms, the dimensions are 131.5 x 70.7 x 9.9mm with a weight of 160 grams.

The screen dominates proceedings and the rest of the phone casing is as minimal as possible. There is a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera to take advantage of new video calling features in Mango and three Windows Phone 7 buttons: back, home, search at the bottom as found on all WP7 smartphones.

There is a volume button on the right-hand side (the same as the HTC HD7, but the opposite side to the HTC Trophy) and a small camera button that if you blink you will miss. The left-hand side features a Micro-USB socket for charging, while the top offers a power button and 3.5mm headphone jack.

Around the back is an 8-megapixel camera with F/2.2 lens, dual LED flash, and a backside illuminated sensor.

Unlike some phones, even from HTC, the company has designed the back metal casing to be removed so you can access the SIM card and the battery. Like the HTC Sensation XL, which sports the same screen size but runs on Android, the entire rear casing comes off revealing the phone's carcass.

Build quality is very good, with the phone feeling solid in the hand. The size doesn't mean it has gone soft in any areas, and as we've become accustomed to from HTC, it feels like a good solid device.

Screen

The reason for the Titan’s massive size is the 4.7-inch display that HTC has opted to use here. Diagonally it is .4-inches bigger than the SGSII, .4-inches bigger than the HTC HD7, 1.2-inches bigger than the iPhone 4 and 4S, and almost 2-inches bigger than the BlackBerry Bold 9900 screen. To say that the screen dominates the proceedings here would be an understatement. The phone is the screen.

The screen itself is a Super LCD 4.7-inch screen with a resolution of 480 x 800. That’s Windows Phone 7 standard resolution and while that is lower than the 960 x 680 resolution enjoyed by Apple iPhone 4 or 4S users, it is still very crisp although there is noticeable jagging and aliasing issues on the fonts on all areas of the Windows Phone 7 operating system, something the larger screen highlights. A higher resolution would have been appreciated here but that is the fault of Microsoft and not HTC. It is just working with the tools to hand.

Font reproduction concerns aside, the screen quality is very good. The blacks are black and the vivid colours of the Windows Phone 7 interface certainly punch out at you. This is a really good "hero" device and one that will allow you to show off how colourful Windows Phone 7 really is against the barrage of icons from iOS and Android.

Innards

Aside from a lack of NFC, the phone has most of the latest tricks and features you would expect. On the engine room side of things you now get a single core Qualcomm 1.5GHz processor, a .5GHz increase on the first wave of HTC Windows Phone 7 devices.

You could argue that it’s not dual-core like some of the latest Android handsets, but it’s all about how you use that power rather than just shouting about specs. You aren’t likely to notice any difference, it’s still very nippy. Load times for apps are noticeably improved over our other WP7 phones in the office (Trophy, Optimus, Quantum) as is general scrolling and daily use of the phone. In some cases it's over 3 seconds faster which might not sound a lot, but in day-to-day use just means you get to the game or the app you want to use quicker. Time is money and all that.

Where the extra speed really helps is browsing. Microsoft has designed Windows Phone 7’s Internet Explorer browser to be hardware accelerated. That means the software will take advantage of the hardware you’ve got.

In a test of the HTC Titan (1.5GHz) vs the HTC Trophy (1GHz) both running the same build of Windows Phone 7, the Titan was between 7-9 seconds faster when loading pages from various websites. That’s a big difference and one that we’ve noticed time and time again in our testing. If you’ve got the network coverage the pages load quicker. Time is money and all that.

But the innards aren’t just about the processing speeds. For pictures, music and movies you’ll get 16GB of storage space. That’s nice, although given the size of the screen and the urge to watch movies on it we were hoping for a 32GB option, especially as after the OS install you’ll really only get 12.63GB to play with. Sadly with no microSD card support either you won’t be able to expand this either, but that's common to all WP7 devices.

On the connectivity front you get HSPA up to 14.4Mbps connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS and a plethora of sensors like gyro, proximity and a digital compass.

The phone’s aerial reception seems good. We’ve tested it in Berkshire, Surrey, and London and not had any problems, although we have noticed that the Wi-Fi aerial, like the SGSII, could be stronger in performance. A couple of times in our house it has dropped Wi-Fi connectivity while other devices, like the iPhone 4, have remained online. We are happy to report we’ve had no issues with the call quality listening to or talking to people. 

On the entertainment side of things there is SRS and 5.1 surround sound enhancement available, for which you'll want to connect your headphones. The built-in speaker is situated on the rear of the phone next to the camera and for a phone it produces a good rounded sound. It has not been enhanced with Beats Audio like the new Sensation models from HTC.

Camera

As we’ve said, the HTC Titan sports an 8-megapixel camera with F/2.2 lens, dual LED flash, and BSI sensor. The camera is easy to use with a number of settings to help you get the most out of your shots. While HTC has refrained from going the full hog that we saw on the HTC MyTouch 4G Slide you do get controls over ISO (100-800) white balance, contrast, brightness, sharpness, saturation and metering.

There are further controls for scene modes and adding basic effects but nothing like Hipstamatic. New to WP7 is a burst mode feature that lets you take a series of pictures quickly and then choose the best one and Panorama. There is also face detection that will detect multiple faces. Tap to focus and tap to take are present and half pressing the hardware camera button will focus as you would expect.

In use and the camera is really easy to use and offers little or no lag when it comes to snapping a picture. Photos are instantly stored to the side so you can see what you've taken with a swipe from left to right, and as long as you don't smudge the lens cover (something that is easily done on all phones) you have the chance to take some really great photos. Colours are vivid, and in low light situations we found the sensor coped really well. The camera's capabilities really shine when you've got good light on your side. 

After you’ve snapped your picture you can apply an auto-fix process to it, which does its best to improve the picture's colour (more akin to HDR) or load up HTC’s photo enhancer application and start adding effects like Cinnamon colour washes.

In terms of video capture you get 720p video recording and autofocus, although it is locked off once you start recording. There is a zoom, but this and all other controls are also locked off once you press the record button. Once you are finished there are a number of sharing options, however you can't share it to YouTube or Vimeo for example. 

Image quality is good for a phone, better than the Trophy, but not up there with the best camera phones on the market. You won’t be disappointed, but it is not going to replace your point and shoot camera for "proper" shots anytime soon.

User interface and apps

The new HTC Titan comes with Windows Phone 7.5 or Mango, as you’ve probably heard it referred to over the last 6 months. Mango offers over 500 new features above and beyond the previous version of Windows Phone 7 and that’s very much welcomed.

Those new features mean that the operating system as a whole as had a vast improvement. Now you get a faster, better browsing experience, Twitter and Linked In integration, better management of groups in the people hub and plenty more. It's by no means perfect, but compared to the original WP7 outing from October 2010 it is light years ahead. Rather than detail all the new features here in our HTC Titan review, we’ve reviewed Windows Phone 7 Mango as a separate entity. 

Unlike Android there is no chance for the phone manufacturer to change the design, add, or customise the user interface. A manufacturer like HTC is able to add apps or enhance settings options but that’s all. The HTC Titan comes with a number of dedicated apps. Some are pre-installed, others are available via a dedicated area of the Microsoft Marketplace.

Internet Sharing, for example, lets you turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot so other devices, be it your laptop or tablet, can share the internet connection. Setup is incredibly easy and it works too. The HTC Hub emphasises the time and the weather and gives you quicker access to stock reports and news.

Other new apps include HTC Locations, HTC Connected Media, and HTC Watch. HTC Locations is an app that allows you to pinpoint your location and then send that data to friends. It is an "I’m in the pub" kind of thing and lets you bookmark places for quick retrieval. A press of a button and you’ll instantly get directions from where you are to where you are going.

HTC Connected Media is HTC’s answer to LG’s DLNA offering found in the LG Optimus 7 and uses the technology to let you connect and stream music, photos, and video to a DNLA enabled device. For us that was the new LG Cinema 3D display. The app, although working perfectly letting us stream music, photos and videos to the television without any hassle. Setup was easy, however we found in our tests that the time from pressing play on the device to it playing on the TV was on the slow side, however once it started playing we experienced no problems.

Cleverly the HTC Connected Media App does allow you to control the volume on the television.

Other new bits from HTC are the move of the attentive phone app into the settings menu and the ability to enjoy panorama and burst mode from the camera.

As for "other apps", Microsoft is doing well to appeal to developers and there are new apps appearing all the time, but it is by no means perfect. There are a lot of apps that just aren't there yet. No Spotify, no Dropbox, no Tiny Wings, and probably no "whatever your favourite app is on iPhone" either. It is getting better, but it is something to take into account. 

Movies and reading

One of the big reasons for opting for such a big screen is to watch movies or read books on the go. To help you get the most out of that HTC has brought HTC Watch to Windows Phone 7 and that means you’ll be able to buy movies to watch on the go - Zune in the UK doesn't currently offer movie downloads. There are a good couple of hundred films currently available, however in the UK that service hasn’t been turned on for Windows Phone 7 users so all you get is trailers at the moment. 

You can of course side-load your own content to the smartphone via the Zune software on your PC or the Windows Phone 7 Connector on the Mac. Playback controls are simple, but the larger screen certainly lets you enjoy your movies. It is here that you really appreciate the extra screen space. For the train it will save you having to get out your tablet.

Like the iPhone there is no Flash support, and sadly no BBC iPlayer app to catch up on TV shows you've missed. That means if you want to watch movies or TV shows on the Titan you've got to load them in yourself. 

Where the big screen also helps is when it comes to reading books via Amazon’s Kindle app (not pre-installed but available via Marketplace). The screen is about the same size as one of those little pocket dictionaries you used to have a school, or a prayer book for the religiously inclined. That means reading a novel on it is surprisingly easy and we’ve enjoyed reading Carte Blanche, the latest James Bond novel, over our week of testing. It is certainly better than the reading experience on smaller devices like the iPhone 4.

Battery

With all that screen you would expect the battery to last around 10 minutes. Thankfully that isn’t the case. With light weekend use we went a day and a half without the need to find power. In heavy use using services like Flux (an RSS reader), and Rowi (a Twitter client), plus email, phone calls, GPS and a bit of reading via the Kindle app, we got through to about 10pm after an 8am start. The battery saver feature (new in Mango) did help us greatly.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones HTC HTC Titan Windows Phone 7 Microsoft

HTC Titan originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:12:00 +0100

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Mango update is now here and that means a bevy of new treats and features for you to play with. We've been playing with Mango since the start of June, have gone through a couple of updates and have been living with the final build since the beginning of September.

Should be excited about upgrading? Is it going to make you want to switch from the iPhone, BlackBerry or Android device you've currently got? Read on to find out. 

We tested the new Mango update first on the, rather clunky, Asus developer phone for 24 hours and after that an HTC 7 Trophy. We've lived with the phone as our only device, ditching our Samsung Galaxy SII and the Apple iPhone 4.

Design

It would be easy to say that design-wise nothing has changed. That's wrong of course, but to those unfamiliar with Windows Phone 7, if we showed you a Windows Phone 7.5 Mango device you aren't going to tell it apart from the original release.

The operating system's core Metro UI is still two panes - the home screen with the interactive tiles and an alphabetically ordered list of apps. Within the applications themselves the ethos is still about scrolling through panoramic vistas of information. It's very different to Android. It's very different to iOS 4 or 5. It is very different to any phone OS out there at the moment.

Look slightly closer and there are changes however. The homepage tiles have become more interactive with developers given greater control over what, and how often, information can be displayed and changed. BA's new app is a good example, with the live tile giving you gate information and other bits and bobs of data. An improvement over the static BA logo you'll see if you use the app on WP7. Similarly, Flux's RSS reader app will highlight the latest story on the tile or tell you the number of unread stories you have. 

Other design elements that have been added include a stronger use of the search button. Now, it is everywhere, so much so we aren't really sure how Microsoft can insist on a dedicated hardware button. A new search button on the apps list not only lets you search for the app on your phone, but also lets you search for the app in Marketplace - handy if you can't remember whether you have a weather app or not. That search button also speeds up trying to find a contact in the "people" pane. 

The design is clean and intuitive and integrates apps throughout the phone. Like the original release of Windows Phone 7 you never have to think about opening an app, it's just there, and that's a very different philosophy to the other operating systems.

The social network

Being social on Windows Phone 7 is now considerably easier and with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn integration firmly at the centre of the phone. Both Twitter and LinkedIn are tied to your Windows Phone Live account and then can be linked to contacts. LinkedIn is by far the most useful, and if your followers have added their email or phone number you can access that too.

Like Apple's iOS 5, Twitter will be "baked-in" to the operating system giving you a chance to share and interact with your Twitter followers without having to resort to the app.

Facebook - already available and up-and-running - has had a host of new features added too. These include Facebook events being automatically added to your calendar, the ability to choose whether you show just events you've accepted or everything you've been invited to. Facebook Chat is also included, handy for people who use this as their main instant messenger. The last is the most interesting though, as Microsoft has integrated it in such a way that you can have a threaded conversation with someone over text, Microsoft IM, or Facebook Chat all in the same window. It is an approach that is very "webOS" admittedly and very people - rather than app - focused. The person you are talking to might be darting from machine to machine or app to app, but you're just there in one thread. It's pretty impressive and demonstrates Microsoft's belief that apps are too linear and this way - the Mango way - is considerably "big picture" focused.

The end result is that we've been conversing more on Facebook and certainly more on LinkedIn than we ever have with the iPhone or Android handsets, and yet haven't actually installed the dedicated Windows Phone 7 Facebook app. We aren't even sure why you would bother with Facebook as the social network is so pervasive there's no need.

Where they really work well is the People hub that allows you to group your friends, family, and colleagues off into subset, but also select which social feed you want to see, be it just Twitter or all of them. Thankfully if you are one of these people who follows thousands on Twitter you can set it so only those in your address book are shown. 

People

It's funny that we said there needs to be a way to manage the flood of information, because that's exactly what a new feature within the People Hub lets you do. Microsoft has introduced Groups, a feature we just can't get enough of. It allows you to block out the noise that little bit easier - especially at weekends. The idea of Groups is that you select a group of people - Apple calls them Favorites - and then that gives you access to them, and only them, in isolation of everything else going on in your life.

We set up one for the Pocket-lint team, one for the family, and then one for close friends. The result is that we could easily see, at any given moment, what those people were up to without having to filter through all the other Facebook status posts. You can also pin the group to the start page to make it even easier to see. Add Twitter into that, and you can see the power of it, especially if you use either for work and then want to dip in over the weekend without feeling like you're going to end up getting dragged back into the "office". 

But it's more than looking at status updates. You can email and text those in the group, making communicating so much easier - surely the point of a modern phone. It even tells you if people within the group don’t have a phone associated, so you know they aren’t going to get the message. We love it.

We also love the new history feature that lets you see when and what you last said to someone be it a text message, an email, or chat.

Me, myself, and I

If you hadn't already worked it out, if you're into Twitter,  Facebook, LinkedIn, or into any social networking platform you're a bit of an egotistical, narcissistic, kind of person that loves to gloat about what you do and why you are doing it. You might not agree with that but Microsoft has you covered with something called "Me" that has been enhanced for Mango.

That's right, you're so important that you've got your own live tile to see what is happening with you in case you forget who you are. 

New is the ability check in via Facebook as well as set your Windows Live Chat Status. It's like you have a quick access button to tell the world that you're at the funky exclusive restaurant and they’re not with you.

Twitter or Facebook mentions pop up and are displayed on the live tile so you can see what's happening and you can cross post to the relevant social networks clicking and choosing as you please. 

If that wasn't enough to tickle your "I'm more important than you" fancy you can use the same area to find out who is commenting on your status updates, and what you've said in the past just in case you're trying to piece together the last 24 hours of your life. If you love yourself, or even if you don't, you'll find this is a good way of getting social on your phone and that can only mean one thing - those that follow you are about to get a lot more messages from you in the future.

The catch here is that you can't post pictures (you have to do that from the pictures hub) and you can't see peoples' tweets or Facebook messages in context. Still as a quick - "oh I've been mentioned" it is great. 

Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Mango has the latest iteration of Internet Explorer 9. If you've used an iPhone or Android you'll know that the browser is really the key element and here it's no different. For Mango, the browser has been expanded and improved.

It now has hardware acceleration support meaning the better the phone's hardware capabilities the better your browsing is going to be.

We doubt it's been an influence, but the browser has a strong similarity to Firefox for Android in that it believes that the accompanying faff should be ditched. The address bar is now at the bottom - easier to access - the menu is hidden, and the only other key is the refresh button. That leaves plenty of space for the web page you're looking at and little to clutter the screen. Windows Phone 7 smartphones to date have already benefited from a bigger screen, and Apple's suggestion that you always need to know the network you are on, your battery life, and the time, seems rather redundant.

Other new features of note include the ability to now share the page via messaging, email, or social networks. We can't believe this wasn't here before but it's welcomed. Surprisingly while you can still pin a website to the start screen, it still takes the image of the page to that tile without updating it. That's confusing, especially if your favourite websites look similar, and we would much prefer Microsoft to take Apple's approach and use the website’s favicon or Windows 7 start bar icons instead, which we believe would have created a much cleaner, more dynamic, look to the homepage tiles.

All the above aside, the Internet Explorer browser works, works well, and does what you expect.

Bing

Part of your internet experience on any smartphone will be search. Whether you are an iPhone or Android user searching for stuff, be it a local bar or just the answer to something to prove your mate wrong, is key to your day-to-day mobile life. It's here then that switchers will find the biggest challenge. You've got to use Bing.

In our initial play we struggled with Bing having to install gMaps and Google search. Bing is getting better, but we would still recommend installing the Google products as a back up. 

It's a shame because beyond the basic search there are some really nifty features here. Bing Music for example gives you Shazam-like capabilities that will let you record a snippet of music in a bar, tell you what it is, and then give you the option to download it straight from the Zune Marketplace.

Bing Vision likewise is a fantastic feature that is Microsoft's equivalent to Google Goggles letting you take pictures of text, be it a menu or industrial espionage, and have it translate or merely put into text you can then edit later. Then there is Bing Voice that like Google's Voice Search lets you search for queries just by saying them. It's quick. It's simple. It works.

But best of all is Local Scout that by pressing gives you a list of places to eat and drink in your near vicinity, what to see and do, where to shop, and highlights of the area you are in. Once you've got that list you get something Microsoft calls Quick Cards. For restaurants that's key details like a phone number, an address, and reviews pulled from the web.

With so many websites opting for Flash-based content with pictures of polished cutlery and big glasses, getting to the information quickly and then offering a single press to make a call is very welcomed.

Taking it one step further is App Connect that means that third party apps can connect into that experience. Although we don't have any "Connected" apps on our device to see this in action, numerous chats and talks with Microsoft highlight that this will allow apps like Top Table to integrate into the experience allowing you to find extra information - or in the case of Top Table - actually book a table in the restaurant you've found. Sadly in the 4 months we've been using Mango we've yet to see this in action. 

The only hindrance? The information isn't always 100 per cent up to date and that only highlights how frustrating Bing can be. The feature is a fantastic idea, the results not so much.

Photos

If Nokia are going to bring their camera expertise to Windows Phone 7, then you'll want decent photo options within the operating system and Microsoft seem to have acknowledged that. New to Mango is Face Detection and People tagging that will let you tag people before you upload if you are sharing that image with Facebook or Microsoft's SkyDrive.

That's handy if you're into social networking, not so much if you don't care. None the less, no other OS lets you tag people in your photos at the point that you take the shot. Well done Microsoft.

You also get auto-fix, something that HTC users already have, but now it's available to everyone straight after you've taken the shot rather than having to load the dedicated app. Apple is set to offer this too in iOS 5, so it's good that Microsoft have made sure it is here. The results are, as you would expect, compensating for low light and generally pumping up the "fill light" levels. That means you'll be able to see what's going on in those dodgy pictures at the end of the evening.

Video can now be shared, alas not to YouTube, and you'll be able to go straight to the camera by holding down the dedicated shutter button on the phone. That dedicated shutter button can also be accessed when the phone is in locked mode, and for those that worry that might be accidentally taking pictures of your pocket don’t worry, you can turn it off.

Xbox

There’s the new look for starters, bringing the design into line with what the Xbox 360 interface will look like later this year, but also really just a move to include all the features in the Extra’s app into the main app. That means you get a 3D avatar that likes to bounce around, greater control over your achievements, profile and messaging.

It looks clean and easy to understand, and if you’re a gamer, welcomed. It’s one of those areas you are going to use to show off your phone, and Windows Phone 7 needs more of those.

Multitasking

Probably one of the most ugly elements of the phone. Mango embraces multitasking letting you zip between apps - or tasks - at speed. It's ugly because it seems so disjointed from the experience that the rest of the OS gives.

Accessed by holding down the back key you get a webOS like view of what's running as if they were cards in Texas Hold 'Em with you having the ability to slide between them. That's fine, but not only does it not really look that pretty, but there are no real options available to you other than choosing which bit of the phone to go to next. We expected the ability to kill apps or tasks, or at least do something more, instead we get something that is incredibly basic. From the multitasking apps we've seen the system works well continuing where you left off. You need to make sure the apps are updated to support this feature and not all are, however the apps that are multitasking-ready work well.  

Email, Calendar, and Office

By now you're probably wondering what hasn't been updated for Windows Phone 7 Mango. Email and Office get a look in too, with new features designed to make working from your phone even easier.

On the email front the biggest change is Linked Inboxes that allow you to join together a number of email accounts into one tile. It’s handy if you’ve got a couple of personal accounts or a personal and work account on the phone and just want to see what’s coming in in one go. Linking them is incredibly easy, as is unlinking them. Gripes? You can’t set a default email account within the Linked inboxes meaning you’ll have to choose every time from a drop down list of which account you want to send it from.

The other major improvement is threaded conversations. If you're used to Gmail that is a big plus and it goes as far as showing you the emails you've sent too within that list. Delete the conversation and the emails are deleted while yours remain. Clever.

Other email treats include the ability to read Rights Protected emails - handy if that is something your work uses. We weren't able to test this on our device however we did see in on our Microsoft contact's phone. You'll be able to read those emails, but neither send them on or copy and paste from them. We also like the ability to "Pin" email folders to the start, allowing you to highlight a group of emails be it from someone in particular or a project on your home page as a tile.

As for the Calendar there is now a To Do list that lets you set Due Dates. It’s handy if you’ve got to remember to do something later in the week/month and will no doubt be loved by the forgetful.

Sadly you can't add a shared calendar, however we have found a work around (here) for Google calendar users, but even then, while you are able to see it, you can't update it. 

On the office front there is greater support for Microsoft's SkyDrive service (now with 25GB of storage) and Office 365 support (this service isn't live at time of testing). There is also support for Lync, but again we don't have a means of testing this. Excel gets formula assist for those doing auto sum - it works - while Word gets better comments usage for marking up documents. All in all it's just easier to access your documents and then work on them.

Settings and boring stuff

Not all of the new features of Windows Phone 7 Mango are about giving you stuff that is quickly noticeable. Microsoft says there are hundreds of new features to improve the OS and some of those have to be hunted out.

Take the battery save feature. Not something that you are going to brag to your friends about but none the less useful. Like the power saver mode found on the Samsung Galaxy S II, Microsoft's new update has the ability to go into "please last until I get home" mode. You can either set it to always be that way, or just as a one-off until you next find power. Enabling it means that you won't automatically receive email and apps won't run in the background when you are low on power.

As with other phones we found ourselves struggling to get through more than a day of heavy use and so this mode means that we've still got enough juice to text Mrs Pocket-lint to let her know that we have caught the last train home and aren't passed out in a gutter in Shoreditch. The page also gives you real information beyond stuff like 23 per cent left. Like how long in hours you've got left and how long it's been since your last charge. It's not ground breaking, but it is useful when you are worried you aren't going to make it to power soon.

Other new treats worth mentioning are the ability to add custom sounds to emails, Smart DJ that works in a virtually identical way to Apple's Genius playlists within iTunes, the ability to see download progress via the apps list after you've exited Marketplace, and the chance to speak your text messages to the phone with Microsoft working out what you’ve said and then writing it up for you. 

A different mind-set

With so many new features adding to those already available, it's hard to find what's missing and where Microsoft needs to improve. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement. The biggest problem and the one that will stop you moving over to Windows Phone 7 Mango is that there is still a lack of apps that you are probably using on a daily basis on the iPhone or Android, and that for the most part you have to re-wire how you use your phone.

The first one is fixable. We are already starting to see the bigger names come to the platform - Evernote, Flickr, BA, Angry Birds and others are big app titles that will only help propel the platform forward. Aside from a few apps that we miss we've pretty much replaced everything we had running on the iPhone and Android with alternatives. Rowi is a fantastic Twitter client much better than the official one, while Flux is a great RSS reader. Other apps on our Start page include Kindle, Phone Analytics for Google stats, and WP shortcuts for Wi-Fi connection management and Weather Bug for the latest weather where we are. 

Come Christmas we would expect that more will create apps to make that not really an issue, and once services like Spotify, Dropbox, and even Sky see this as something that's worth developing for that will open the floodgates to others getting on board. Microsoft buying Skype will help too.

However the biggest challenge for any would-be user is going to be a move away from Google to Bing. That might sound strange but Google is, whether you like it or not, in your life every day, and more importantly probably at the core of your internet usage. Whether it's searching on the desktop, using Google Maps on your phone, it's the move away from the company's services and apps that has had us most at a loss.

We've taken to Facebook just being there, or using a different RSS Reader, but it's the search and mapping that's been the hardest one to re-programme ourselves on. It is happening, but there are times it still lets the side down. 

What's missing?

There isn't any real "Cloud" backup. No re-downloading of apps if you loose your phone, or saving of those Groups and tiles you're going to create. In swapping phones (three times in fact) through our test it was easy to see, even in the short space of time we've been using iOS 5 and the longer use of app backup in Android, how switching phones in Windows Phone 7 isn't as easy.

For many that shouldn't be a problem yet, but it's going to be something that Microsoft should fix for the next update. We don’t want to have to re-setup the phone when we upgrade. Apple's iCloud, and Google's app backup features, are nice and it's a shame they are missing here.

With data at a premium, especially for those that travel, we also wanted the ability to turn off certain areas of the constant updates and notifications. It's something none of the mobile operating systems do very well, and Microsoft is no exception. When abroad you might not want Facebook or Twitter, but you do want email.

Elsewhere there is Internet Sharing, something that is coming to the new handsets like the HTC Titan and HTC Radar, but isn't available for HTC's 2010 / early 2011 releases. HTC have promised it is coming, but if you are upgrading don't expect it from day one. 

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Windows Phone 7 Microsoft HTC LG Samsung Dell Nokia

Windows Phone 7 Mango originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:40:38 +0100

If you're anything like us, then your gaming days are over and you now have to sneak in a quick blast of Gears 3 when the family has gone to bed. The trouble is, playing that late means you can’t really turn up the volume and enjoy the visceral gunfire or high-pitched gear changes. If you're really considerate, or married to a light sleeper, then you probably struggle to hear your game over the console's fan. 

To help you, Creative has generated a product with the most absurd name in the world: the Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Omega Wireless headphones. These headphones have more to offer than an over-long name though, as they promise to work with your console too.

Design

The headphones, like their name, are no small package. They are big and weighty, but very comfortable. They consist of a large headband – padded of course – and two even larger leather padded cups that encase your ears. They are well built with little flex and can be adjusted to fit different head sizes.  

The left cup features a clip in boom microphone for voice chat, but this can be removed if you’re not much of a talker. The left cup also features a volume, mute and power buttons as well as inline volume socket for Xbox 360 users. The headphones are, as we mentioned, wireless and are charged via micro USB. The good news is, you can continue to use them while they are charging.

The Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Omega Wireless headphones are minimal in design although do feature a glowing blue circle on each cup when on. But seeing as you’ll be wearing them alone and in the dark, you won’t really be interested in any of this will you?

The headphones are just one part of the package. The other is the wireless dongle that you connect to your PC, Mac, PS3 or Xbox 360. It's the size of a coaster and about the height of a bar of soap and it’s the gadget that sends the digital audio signal through the air. It does this on the 2.4Ghz frequency range, -the same as many wireless mice- and doesn’t need a line of sight to work.

There's also a third element; a stand, and both the wireless dongle and the headphones sit nicely upon it, ready to be used for a midnight fight when you next need them.

Hardware

The Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Omega Wireless headphones promise THX TruStudio Pro sound, 50mm drivers and bass to make your rib cage shudder. In reality the THX TruStudio Pro sound is only capable if you use the Creative software and drivers with your PC or Mac. Console users won’t get it.

We tested the Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Omega Wireless headphones on the Mac, the Xbox 360, and the PS3.

Mac

With no drivers in the box you’ll have to nip over to SoundBlaster.com to get started. The drivers are easy to find and at 27MB aren’t going to take an age to download. Once installed you get a control panel that lets you manage the sound of your new headphones.

The software offers you the chance to tweak the THX TruStudio Pro settings, change and enhance the Equalizer, mess around with a voice changer, and change the intensity and pulse levels of the glowing blue lights on the side of the device. It’s a piece of software you'll open once and then never use again.

For our tests we listened to a variety of music from Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy via Spotify to Johnny Cash via iTunes. We also had Skype conversations to test out the microphone capabilities. Overall sound is very good with bass and treble well represented. At the loudest volume settings there was no distortion. The ‘phones coped very well with “Hurt” dealing with Cash’s voice and the guitar fighting against it.

The people we phoned on Skype said that our voice was clear and easy to hear, but not any clearer than other headsets they had used or been at the other end of. There could be a number of reasons for that but it’s worth noting that if you are talking to friends online with these, the performance won’t disappoint, they just won’t blow your mind either.

Xbox 360

Our first problem was connecting the Wireless dongle to the console. We have an Xbox 360 Slim and connect it directly to our television via a HDMI cable that not only handles the picture, but the sound as well.

For the Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Omega Wireless headphones to work you have to intercept your Xbox 360 or PS3’s composite AV cable with one from Creative. This sends the sound signal to the wireless box, which gets fired over the air to the ‘phones on your noggin.

Sounds easy enough, but the Xbox 360 S is designed in such a way that you can’t have the composite and HDMI cables plugged in at the same time. That means either downgrading your picture quality or finding a different way to do it.

For the Xbox 360 you can connect the headset to the Xbox 360 controller via an inline volume control, but then you’ve started introducing wires into the mix, and we aren’t really sure that fulfils the “Wireless” promise in the product name.

Once we had got it working through a bit of cable work around the sound is good, and the performance is good enough to enjoy those crashes, bangs, and wallops. We tested the headphones with Gears of War 3, and Forza 3.

PS3

Installing the headphones on the PS3 was a lot easier. The cables can work side-by-side and we had no problem listening to music and keeping the HDMI for HD gaming. We tested the headphones with Resistance 3 and were, once again, impressed with the sound the headphones produced.

Battery

A full charge, which takes around 8 hours will give you 10 hours of gaming and you can listen and charge at the same time. That’s not fantastic, especially for the hardened gamer, but it’s better than a smack in the face with a wet kipper. 

Tags: Audio Headphones Creative Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Omega Wireless Xbox 360 PS3 Gaming

Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Omega Wireless headphones originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:37:00 +0100

The TomTom Go Live 825 sits at the bottom of the Go Live range of GPS devices from market leaders TomTom, but don’t let that fool you. It has more to offer than the Via and Start models and comes packed with plenty of treats. But do you need something so advanced? It is really worth paying £200 plus for a GPS unit when you can get basic navigation on your phone?

We took the Go Live 825 on a quick 1000-mile jaunt to France and back to see how it faired.

Design

The TomTom Go Live 825 features a 5-inch resistive screen that has a matte coating so you can see it when it’s bright in your car. The design, like previous models, is slim and simple. The windscreen sucker has been designed to fold in to the back of the device, meaning it can be folded flat; handy for glove compartments.

Having the sucker designed in this way is beneficial because you wont forget or lose the sucker. It's a pain if you want to fit the TomTom in your jacket pocket though. While it certainly isn't as big as Satnavs of the past, the combination of that 5-inch screen and the sucker, which isn’t detachable, means that you’ll notice if you put it in a trouser pocket of a pair of combats.

There’s a power button around the back and a micro USB charging socket. And that’s it. Settings and other options are all managed through the touchscreen. That’s both good and bad. What's good is that the user interface is really easy to use, it's bad because it’s a resistive screen that's nowhere near as responsive as your mobile phone. At times, we found ourselves pressing the screen hard to get it to respond.

Navigating

TomTom is all about getting you to where you want to go with minimal fuss and minimal button presses. Turn the device on and you are presented with a map. Press anywhere on the map and you are asked to “Navigate to:” your destination.

Here there are a number of options; Home (set by you, although we'd recommend that you don’t set it to your actual address in case a a thief nicks your car and then decides to break in to your house too), favourites, an address with postcode support of course and recent destinations. You can also perform a Google local search, for a point of interest, one of the great features of the live functionality. You can also opt for a point on a map, latitude and longitude co-ordinates, a spoken address or position of a previous stop.

There isn’t an excuse in not being able to type in or speak an address of where you want to go. On the whole, the navigation and mapping suggestions where very good, but not perfect.

For example TomTom refused to acknowledge the existence of the Channel Tunnel, suggesting that we go via boat to France even when we were in the Tunnel car park. Very Annoying.

Once you have entered your final destination the TomTom Go Live 825 gets to work mapping out a possible route. Depending on how far that is will depend on how quick the answer appears. Our road trip to Tricolore country (La Rochelle) took some time to work out (understandably), but a quick trip 60 minutes down the road is almost instant.

Before you get to say “yes” to the route, you can check it out to see whether you agree. This will show you more detailed, step-by-step instructions, a map of the route and current traffic. You can even change elements of the route, should you wish to take in some local points of interest.

One feature we did like was the ability of the TomTom to remember were you were last with the GPS and therefore plot the route from that address. This allows you to get started before it detects a GPS signal. For this feature to work though, you have to use the TomTom all the time, regardless of whether you know where you are going or not.

Back to the route screen; you’ll be given the length of your journey, any details about accidents on the way, thanks to HD Traffic, and how far it is. You’ll also get to see what the weather is like at the destination, if that’s important to you -and if you're British, it jolly well should be.

Because the route changes depending on what time you are leaving, you can also set the departure time to see what difference it makes, only, however, in 15 minute increments. You can also plan a route in advance, but that’s tucked away in a menu elsewhere. When you're en route you'll notice that the screen is clear and easy to understand even though there is plenty of information fighting for your attention.

At the bottom of the screen is the main body of information – speed, next turn, time you’ll arrive and the remaining journey time. As this is a LIVE model you’ll also get HD Traffic, and that dominates the right hand side of the screen keeping you up-to-date about any multi-car pile-ups on the M25.

The TomTom Go Live 825 also has Lane Assist and all the usual TomTom software gems like Live Services that give you map corrections, Speed cameras, Google Local Search and Weather.

HD Traffic

We’ve talked about HD Traffic a lot on Pocket-lint before and it’s what makes the TomTom GPS units stand out from the crowd. For those not sure what it is or what it does, it automatically tracks traffic on your route and then helps you avoid it by automatically re-routing you around the problem.

If you live in France, and use the autoroutes, traffic will be alien to you. If, however, you fancy a quick drive down to Southampton you may find it ends in tears and hours in the car just because someone has flipped their caravan on the M27. 

Major traffic instances that will add a couple of minutes to your journey are shown on screen with a small icon to give you an idea of what they are – roadworks, heavy traffic, etc. It also lets you know how far you’ve got before you hit that traffic.

If your journey suddenly becomes slower than an alternative, TomTom tells you and then asks or can automatically re-route you. We’ve seen the magic in action and have to say that it’s lovely, although at times can be a little disconcerting. 

HD Traffic is a paid service although the TomTom Go Live 825 comes with the first year free. It's worth remembering this, as Android phones have Google maps navigation, which also has superb live traffic information. 

Battery and Bluetooth

That big screen, constant data connection for traffic and live services (all included in the yearly subscription cost) means that the battery isn’t terribly good. You’ll get about two hours if you want to keep your car free of cables to the cigarette lighter.

One of the other things that helps those two hours go even quicker is having Bluetooth for handsfree calling. You can pair your phone so you can talk away to your hearts content without breaking the law. Disappointingly people we phoned on the device said that the quality wasn’t great. Our in-car handsfree device wins over the Tom-Tom any day. What we did like, however, was that you can set the Go Live 825 to automatically answer the call after a preset time to save having to dig your phone out of your pocket. Just don't forget the charging cable. 

Tags: Car And GPS GPS TomTom TomTom Go Live 825

TomTom Go Live 825 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:43:25 +0100

"The Flip is dead, long live the Sony Bloggie". Are the words probably uttered by the Sony pocket camcorder team when they heard the news earlier this year that Cisco had ditched the popular Flip camcorder.

Trying to fill the space, Sony has slowly trotted out a number of different Bloggie models that are aimed at capturing the moment via a dedicated pocket camcorder normally as good as, if not slightly better than, your mobile phone.

While that is a market that is constantly under pressure from phone cameras merely getting better, Sony hopes that you are more likely to opt for their Sony Bloggie 3D, a pocket camcorder that has two lenses on the back so you can record 3D video and capture 3D stills when you’re out and about, because it’s something that only a handful of phones currently offer.

Completing Sony’s vision of a 3D world from creation to viewing, the Bloggie is one of the last pieces of the consumer puzzle – until Sony Ericsson launches a 3D phone. But can the Bloggie 3D recreate your 3D world? We’ve been testing it out to find out.

Design

The Bloggie 3D, or MHS-FS3 to give it its more boring name, looks like any of the pocket camcorders on the market. The front is adorned with a 2.4-inch glasses-free 3D screen, a trio of buttons and the usual d-pad for navigating around the menu system. There's also a big red button for recording.

On the side you get a shutter button for still shots, a power on/off switch, and a pop out USB dongle that allows you to connect the camcorder directly to your computer without having to faff around looking for a cable.

For those looking to just enjoy the content on their 3D TV there is also an HDMI out, for which you will need a cable. Finally there is a tripod thread, to get your shots rock steady, something very important for 3D video. Sadly, there's no way of plugging in an external microphone, but then you normally can’t with any of the other pocket camcorders on the market either.

Around the back are two Sony f2.8-f4.1 autofocus lenses and an LED light for when it comes to filming in low light conditions. Inside and you get 8GB of storage space to store all your movies and photos.

Shooting and watching 3D

The Bloggie 3D is capable of recording 3D 1920x1080p MP4 HD video with 2 megapixel still images.

3D video is saved as MP4 files which are the most widely used and readable files in the world of 3D at the moment. To record the third dimension, it’s simply a case of pressing the button. You can switch between 2D and 3D quickly, although not while filming.

Filming in 3D does come with plenty of limitations. The zoom functionality is turned off, you can only shoot stills at 2 megapixel in a 16:9 aspect (the camera supports up to 5 megapixels in 2D) and film 3D footage at 1080/30p (Full HD). In fact you really only get the chance to turn that LED on, or set the timer to delay the start of the recording by either two or 10 seconds.

In 3D filming you will get around 80 minutes worth of recording space and the battery does well to keep up with that.

Of course the beauty of the Bloggie 3D is that not only can it record in 3D, but you can also watch the footage you’ve recorded back, in 3D, then and there, rather than having to hunt down a 3D television.

The screen works like the LG Optimus 3D, the HTC EVO 3D, and the Nintendo 3DS. You have to align your eyes in the right position to see the 3D effect.The viewing angle is surprisingly very good though and means you can move the camcorder -or your head- around without losing the effect. This isn't the case with devices like the HTC EVO 3D. The screen isn’t fantastic in bright sunlight, especially if you are hoping to see the 3D effect, however it’s not a complete waste of time either.

Shooting and watching 2D

While Sony will have you believe that 3D is the future, it’s not the only option, or the only way. The Bloggie 3D can also do 2D recording as well. With 2D your capturing choices get a little wider. Aside from a 4x digital zoom and face detection (up to 8 faces), you get 5, 3, or .04-megapixel shooting modes for stills.

For video you get more shooting resolutions as well. There’s 1080/30p, 720/60p, 720/30p, and 270/30p. Although 720/60p is a standard HD resolution -more common in the US than here, it also has uses for slow motion video, as you can post-produce video to 50% of the original speed. 

For users hoping for creative control, it's worth pointing out that there is no manual white balance or manual focus options. This really is a point and shoot camera, aimed at people who want to be able to easily shoot 3D.

Recording times at the highest settings are 80 minutes for 1080/30p footage working their way up to 240 minutes for 720/30p footage.

As for actual video quality, it is good. Colours are accurate, there is little noise and the results are pleasant rather than stunning. Movement is also crisp.

Tags: Cameras Camcorders Sony Sony Bloggie 3D MHS-FS3 3D

Sony Bloggie 3D originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:48:00 +0100

HTC released five Windows Phone 7 powered smartphones in 2010, but for 2011 the tactic is going to be different. That’s the theory anyway and to kick off the Windows Phone 7 Mango update it’s launching just two smartphones, the HTC Titan and the HTC Radar. 

Pocket-lint was given a chance to play with the new device, codenamed HTC Omega, before the official launch on the 1 September so we could let you know what’s what. So should you be putting the HTC Radar on your radar?  

Design

The Radar is designed to replace the HTC 7 Mozart and HTC 7 Trophy. It introduces a number of new features, while at the same time offering a mid-range entry point into the wonderful world of Windows Phone 7. While the Titan will impress the high-end users, those early adopters that like to show off their gleaming phone at the first chance, the Radar is going to be a more subtle offering, and the design reflects that. 

Measuring 120 x 61.5 x 10.8mm it’s not the thinnest phone, the flatest phone, or even the most sexiest phone out there. Coated in white and silver the design mirrors the company’s tablet, the HTC Flyer, and we are surprised that we haven’t yet seen this design on an Android handset, so as to complete the set if you have both. 

The 3.8-inch screen dominates the front with the three standard Windows Phone 7 buttons beneath that. There's also an extra, double chin underneath that. It’s a strange bit of design that, for us, doesn’t really work. It’s not as pronounced as the HTC Hero from 2009, nor is it enough to warrant being there, and considering the phone isn’t that flat we wonder what it's purpose is. 

Double chins aside the rest of the phone is standard HTC “inner strength” design with a metal case, white plastic to allow the antenna to do its work. There's a slip-off cover at the bottom which slides off to reveal just the SIM slot. Yes, that's right, the battery isn’t user-replaceable. 

Around the back you’ll find a 5 megapixel snapper with a single LED Flash. The front offers a VGA-quality front-facing camera. There is also a dedicated shutter button to make taking photos easier. 

Innards

If the outside isn’t that hot, then maybe the inside will offer more hope. Sadly, whilst the HTC Radar does get a boost over the Mozart and Trophy, it’s pretty mediocre in terms of specs. You’ll get the same Qualcomm MSM 8255 1GHz processor from last year and 512MB of RAM to power it. 

On the storage front you’ll get 8GB to store your pictures, apps, movies and the like. The phone comes with the usual connectivity options; Wi-Fi, HSPA, Bluetooth, and GPS. New for 2011 is DLNA, allowing you to share your music or video with compliant devices and computers. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack, for headphones. What you won’t get is Near Field Communications (NFC) capabilities for touchless micro-payments or microSD expansion (as standard for Windows Phone 7). 

Although we weren’t able to test the battery life, the phone has a 1520mAh battery. That’s the same size as the HTC Sensation battery which in our tests just about got us through a days use and bigger than the Windows Phone 7 powered HTC Trophy which can also last a day. All of that means, in theory, that this phone should manage the same, given average usage. 

Cameras

We weren’t able to fully test the camera either. We were able to take pictures in the darkish room in which the phones were demoed to us, but we weren’t allowed to email them to ourselves. That said we were able to try out some of the new camera modes HTC has added including Panorama Sweep and Burst mode. 

The HTC Radar comes with a HTC’s 5 megapixel camera and it likely to be the same as found on the HTC 7 Trophy (also a 5 megapixel sensor). The front has a VGA forward-facing camera so you will be able to make video calling when Skype makes its inevitable arrival on the Windows Phone platform.

Burst mode does what is says, lets you take five pictures in quick succession so you can capture a moment as it happens. Panorama automatically stitches three shots together, producing a super-wide image. What’s helpful is that the screen shows you when to pause and when to move, but also using the phones sensors adds in a horizontal 'spirit level' so you can try and take as level a picture as possible. 

Images on screen looked okay, although not perfect, but this could have been done to poor light, pre-release software, or a host of other factors, so we aren’t going to judge the picture quality just yet. 

Docking Station

As an optional extra you’ll be able to get a docking station for the HTC Radar. It’s a first for a Windows Phone 7 handset and HTC has created a dedicated docking app to benefit from the landscape cradle. 

The idea is that you’ll be able to have this by your bedside and when docked not only will it charge your phone, but also automatically fire up the dock mode which gives you access to the media controls, Time and other bits and bobs within the HTC Experience. The problem comes when you exit the app, because  the Windows Phone 7 menu system  hasn’t been designed for a landscape viewing, so you'll need to tilt your head 90 degrees to make sense of anything. 

Still, if you want a nifty way of charging the phone by your bedside, then this is certainly one way to do it. HTC has yet to price the new docking station. 

Mango 

It goes almost without saying that the new HTC Radar is running Mango. According to the device menu, the official name is Windows Mobile 7.5. Microsoft has done plenty to improve WP7 over the current iteration adding multitasking (if the app supports it), greater live tiles, front facing camera support, Wi-Fi hotspot creation and stacks of other useful stuff. 

If you're after more detailed information about Mango, then take a look at our detailed First Look: Windows Phone 7 Mango review.

HTC Experience 

With Microsoft locking down the Windows Phone 7 experience, HTC has to be clever in how it adds value, as a phone manufacturer, to the eco-system without it just turning into a hardware fight. 

Building on what it achieved in 2010 with the HTC experience, HTC has enhanced its apps to take advantage of Windows Phone 7 Mango as well as add some new apps. 

The biggest and best of these new features is HTC Watch, the company’s movie download and rental service. Already live and active on the latest wave of HTC Android handsets, it's a nice addition to the Zune Marketplace, which has yet to launch a movie download or rental feature yet. In our quick hands-on, playback over the Wi-Fi network was near perfect. Purchases made on the HTC Watch service will be cross-platform. So if you also have an Android device downloads will work on both platforms.

Aside from HTC Watch there are the new features we’ve talked about in the camera app, new enhancements to the Notes app - it now has Evernote support, and better live tile support. This includes the current weather displayed on the HTC Hub tile. The Sound Enhancer is boosted with greater emphasis on Dolby 5.1 and SRS too. 

Also coming across from HTC’s Android offerings is HTC Footprints which lets you create, and share footprints that contain information about your life and where you've been, so people can find you. You can also use the mapping to track down other HTC Footprints users you happen to know, assuming there are any. 

Tags: Phones Windows Phone 7 HTC HTC Radar First look

First Look: HTC Radar originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:30:00 +0100

HTC has announced the launch of the HTC Titan, a Windows Phone 7 smartphone, that sports a mammoth 4.7-inch screen, making it one of the largest smartphones on the market. 

Pocket-lint was invited to test out the new phone ahead of the official announcement, and these are our initial feelings about this interesting new device.  

That screen

It really is big. It’s bigger than the iPhone, it’s bigger than the HTC Sensation, it’s bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S II. If you’ve got small hands this isn’t going to be the handset for you. But by God is the screen impressive. It is bright because of the Super-LCD technology and crisp thanks to the WVGA resolution making it one of the best screens we've seen HTC produce.

That makes Windows Phone 7 jump right out of the screen (not literally you understand) and really makes reading emails easy, playing games colourful, and watching movies very sharable (more on that in a bit). 

The design 

Once you get over the wow factor, your mind will immediately turn to "how the devil will I get that in my pocket"? 

Measuring 130.6 x 70.63 x 9.9mm in size means the Titan is thin (only slightly larger than the Samsung Galaxy S II, which is 8.5mm) and it shouldn't be a problem for the average jeans-wearing man. We tried it, it works. If you like your trousers skinny then you might want to get something a little less massive. 

HTC has designed the Titan to be just the screen and little else. There is no bezel bulk, unlike the one found around the Dell Streak's 5-inch screen, and that makes a huge difference. HTC has also, sensibly, opted not to include a kickstand to avoid adding extra bulk. 

The back houses the phone’s 8 megapixel camera, accompanied by a dual LED flash (found at the top and in the centre). The 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera can be found, not surprisingly, on the front. Remove the back plate, which makes up the phone’s entire back cover, and you’ll reveal a replaceable battery and a SIM slot. There is no microSD card slot for expanding on the built-in storage. 

The build quality, as we’ve come to expect from HTC, is very good. It’s solid, with very little flexibility in the chassis. 

Internals

If you are naming your phone the HTC Titan, it has to be a titan inside, as well out and HTC seems to have managed this tricky task. As Windows Phone 7 doesn’t support dual-core processors, like those found in the Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC has chosen to use a Qualcomm MSM8255 1.5GHz processor instead, and beefed it up with 512MB of RAM. The instant effect is a much smoother experience over the company’s 2010 Windows Phone 7 range and noticeably faster than the HTC Trophy we’re using as our Mango handset in the office.

In our time with the Titan it was clear that the processing power has helped massively. Games loaded faster, while performance showed an overall improvement. If you’ve been put off by a sluggish Windows Phone 7 handset then the Titan could be the phone that persuades you to take the plunge.

Of course the phone is also loaded with the latest connectivity options including DLNA, something that HTC missed out to LG with the first range of WP7 phones. For those who still prefer a wired connection the Titan sports a micro HDMI socket , like the HTC Evo 3D, for connecting it to an external display or television. 

Less ground-breaking technology built-in includes: Bluetooth; Wi-Fi; HSDPA and GPS as well as a 3.5mm audio jack. The HTC Titan also comes with a generous 16GB of storage but like other Windows Phone 7 handsets isn’t expandable via a microSD. There is also no near field communication (NFC), so you won't be using this phone to pay for a sandwich any time soon.

Although we weren’t able to test the battery life, the phone sports a 1600mAh battery. That’s bigger than the HTC Sensation's which in our tests just about got us through a full day, and bigger than the Windows Phone 7 powered HTC Trophy which again gets us through the day. We can infer from this that we'll see around the same life on the Titan. That said that bigger screen is likely to have an impact on the total battery life. We will be sure to test this properly when it comes to a full review.  

Cameras

HTC has been moving towards better cameras in its phones, most notably with the recent launch in the USA of the MyTouch 4G Slide which sports an 8 megapixel camera. It looks like the company has included the same camera lens here, with an F/2.2 aperture and a wide 28mm focal length. This means you can get more in a picture compared to previous HTC smartphones.

We weren’t able to fully test the camera, sadly, but we could take pictures in the darkish room we were in (as you can see below). We were not, however, allowed to examine them off the phone, which is the true test for one of these devices. That said we were able to try out some of the new camera modes HTC has added including Panorama Sweep and Burst mode. 

Burst mode does what is says and lets you take five pictures in short succession so you can capture a moment as it happens, rather than just missing it. Panorama mode automatically stitches three shots together, giving you a super-wide finished image. What’s helpful is that the screen shows you when to pause and when to move, but also using the phone's sensors adds in a horizontal spirit level so you can take a level picture. 

Clearly with such a large screen (bigger than anything in the traditional camera space) it’s a real boon to see the image on a 4.7-inch screen. That, combined with many of the same features found on the MyTouch 4G Slide (yes an Android phone), shows that HTC is focusing on its built-in cameras too. 

Images on the screen looked good, although not perfect, but this could have been down to poor light, pre-release software, or a host of other factors. We'll leave our judgement until the final hardware is released. 

On the front of the HTC Titan is a 1.3 megapixel camera for self-shooting and video calls. Although we didn’t have any apps on the device that we could test it with, we liked what we saw through the Windows Phone camera app and the image quality looked good.  

Mango 

Of course it goes without saying that the new HTC Titan is running Mango. That’s Windows Phone 7.5 according to the 'about phone' page built in to the OS. Microsoft has done plenty to improve WP7 over the current iteration, adding multitasking (if the app supports it) and support for better live tiles, front facing cameras, Wi-Fi hotspots and stacks of other features.

You can learn more about the changes, and whether or not you’ll want them, by reading our extensive First Look: Windows Phone 7 Mango review that focuses just on Microsoft's new mobile operating system and its upgraded functionality. 

HTC Experience 

With Microsoft locking down the Windows Phone 7 experience, HTC has to be clever in how it adds value as a phone maker to the eco-system without it just turning into a hardware fight. Building on what it achieved in 2010 with the HTC experience, HTC has enhanced its apps to take advantage of Windows Phone 7 Mango as well as adding some new ones. 

The biggest and best of these new features or services is HTC Watch, the company’s movie download and rental service already live and active on the latest wave of the company's Android handsets. 

Thanks to the Titan’s huge screen the HTC Watch interface really shines here with movie playback over the Wi-Fi network nearly perfect. We could easily see this doubling-up as a movie playback device on the train - more so than the iPhone - because of the sheer size of it. And with a screen nearly the same size as the one found on the Dell Streak, You won’t need a tablet either. 

Purchases made on the HTC Watch service will be cross-platform, so if you also have an Android device they will work on that as well. All-in-all it’s a good service to complement the Zune Marketplace, which has yet (at time of writing) to launch a movie download or rental service. 

Aside from HTC Watch there are the new features we’ve talked about in the camera software, new enhancements to the Notes app - it now has Evernote support - and better live tile support, including the current weather displayed on the HTC Hub tile. HTC has also said that it has improved Sound Enhancer with greater emphasis and support for Dolby 5.1 and SRS although no Beats just yet. 

Also coming across from HTC’s Android offerings is the Footprints application. While Nokia is boasting better integrated maps, HTC’s approach to location is to let you create, and share, footprints so people can find you. You can of course also use the new app to find other friends using the service and it will give you directions and a map. 

Tags: Phones Windows Phone 7 HTC Titan HTC First look

First Look: HTC Titan originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:30:00 +0100

The Sonos wireless music system is great. It allows you to stream music from the Internet be it Spotify tracks, the radio, or your own collection, in multiple rooms at the same time all controlled by your iPhone, iPad, Android smartphone or a dedicated controller. 

There has always been one big problem though: the cheapest component, the Sonos S5 (now called the Sonos Play:5 in part of a major rebranding of the company), isn't cheap and isn't small. 

The Sonos Play:3, is a new smaller, more compact offering from the company that hopes to take the wireless music system mainstream. But does a smaller size mean a smaller sound? Does it still offer the same experience as previous models within the family, and should you get one regardless of whether you are already running the system? Read on to find out. 

Design

The Sonos Play:3 is available in black or white and measures 132 x 268 x 160mm (5.2 x 10.6 x 6.3 inches) and if you are familiar with the S5 is about half the size - think child's shoebox. 

The speaker doesn't just dominate the front of the box, it is the front of the box. The sides and top tapers downwards towards the back and it's on the top that you'll find the controls. We say controls, but really it's just a volume up and down, and a mute button, and nothing more. How do you control it? Via the iPhone, iPad, Android smartphone or dedicated controller more of which we will cover in a bit. 

Around the back are power and Ethernet sockets allowing you to power the speaker and connect it to the Internet if you haven't either bought the Sonos Bridge that lets you connect to the Internet wirelessly. Unlike other Sonos gear there is only one Ethernet socket so you can't pass through your network connection.

Set-up is easy peasy. Plug it in, create an account, and you're off. The system lets you stream music via your computer (if it's on), via a hard drive connected to your network, via the Internet with services like Napster, Spotify, Deezer, and Last.fm, as well as thousands of Internet radio stations all as long as you've got a broadband connection. 

Controlling it all

As we've said controlling the system is all done via an app on your phone, via a dedicated controller sold by Sonos (optional extra), or software on your PC or Mac. The idea is that once you connect your speaker to the Internet as a solo device or within a bigger system you download the free app and start playing. 

However you access the music, it's the same experience throughout. Android users get a few extra bits like voice search, while the iPad users will get a more magazine style look and feel as the app uses all that extra screen space. Sadly there isn't an app for Honeycomb or Windows Phone 7 devices as yet. 

Adding to a current system is a case of pressing two buttons.

Speakers

The Sonos Play:3 features three integrated speakers - one tweeter, two mid-range drivers, and one bass radiator. Each driver of the product is individually powered by a dedicated amplifier that blast out of the front of the unit. We tried a number of different tracks and have been using it to supply the music in our office (around 20 square metres) for the past week 9 hours a day. 

Tracks have included everything from the Tron Legacy soundtrack to Dave Matthews Band to Nirvana to Foo Fighters as well as Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newton and a stack of other artists too. Basically, we've been using this as our main music provider. In all cases the music sounds great. It's not as punchy as the S5/Play:5 understandably, but it has been more than enough to fill the room with music, and without getting anywhere near the high volume levels. 

Like the S5 the sound is slightly on the soft side - it's certainly not as natural as the Hardon Karman systems, but that isn't a bad thing. It's not as bassy and booming as the Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin and overall gives a nice rounded sound that most will enjoy.

The Play:3 happily coped with the high vocals of Smells Like Teen Spirit for example while still coping with the low bass. Running a series of bass testing tracks also proved the speaker could cope amply.

Landscape or Portrait 

One of the biggest problems of placing a speaker in the room is where to put it and unless you've got a sideboard, as they do in the lifestyle shots, that normally means it's crammed onto a bookshelf. Realising this might be the case, Sonos has designed the product to sit lying down or standing up. 

Surely that will change the dynamic of the sound, you ask, meaning that standing it vertically if it has been designed for landscape orientation will mean it doesn't sound as good. You would be right, however to combat this Sonos has added an accelerometer, as found in your smartphone, that automatically knows the orientation of the speaker and adjusts the sound accordingly. Very clever. Sadly the logo doesn't orient with it. 

Two is better than one

Like the Play:5, Sonos has allowed you to pair two Play:3 speakers together to get true stereo sound. It isn't just a case of the music you play being louder, but the speakers taking dedicated sides - left and right. Something like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is really good. 

Why would you want to join two together? Well apart from the better sound, it wouldn't be too far fetched that you could use two Play:3 speakers as the front speakers of your home cinema system either side of your TV - wall mounted of course (there is the option to do that you just need a bracket).

Sonos Play:5 owners don't get too excited, you can't mix and match Play:3 and a Play:5 speakers together to achieve the same effect. 

Limitations

It's not all amazing, amazing, amazing. The system does require an Internet connection to work and if you haven't got a router or Ethernet cable where you happen to want to put the Sonos Play:3, like your kitchen or bedroom, you'll need to spend another £40 buying the Sonos Bridge that connects to your router to create a wireless network for the Sonos speakers to work on top of the £259 you've just laid out for the speaker in the first place. 

You'll also need to have a smartphone or tablet to get the most of the service as well and if you've only got the one, and that's in your pocket, and you're at work, those left in your house can't use the service. You can get a dedicated controller, but it's another expense. 

Tags: Audio Sonos Speakers Sonos Play 3 Connected Hi-Fi systems Connected hi-fi

Sonos Play:3 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:20:00 +0100

Apple has updated it's MacBook Air laptop promising boosted performance in an elegant and slim design. But is it enough for you to want to upgrade from your current MacBook model or ditch your Windows machine altogether? We got the 13-inch Core i7 1.8GHz model in to see what's what.

Design

For the most part the design is identical to the previous version of the MacBook Air. There are two models - an 11-inch and 13-inch - and they both come with a full-sized keyboard, large glass touchpad and very thin design. For the purpose of this review we are going to focus on the 13-inch model rather than the 11-inch version. Differences include on SD card slot on the 11-inch model, a shorter battery life, and slower processor; 256GB flash memory is an upgrade rather than standard.

For those that need a quick recap, the 13-inch MacBook Air is an all metal laptop from Apple that measures 32.5 x 22.7 x 1.7cm that tapers down to 0.3cm (h). It weighs 1.35kg. If you've ever found yourself overcome with envy at how thin your mate's MacBook Air is, nothing will have changed. That all metal design is thin, it's light, and whether you agree with Apple and the way it does things or not, it's very impressive.

Ports, spilt down both sides of the laptop, include two USB (one for each side) a headphone socket, SD card reader and new for 2011 is the addition of a Thunderbolt port replacing the DisplayPort. There is still no Ethernet socket - a pain if you travel a lot to hotels with only an Ethernet socket in every room - however you can get an optional Ethernet dongle, just remember to pack it in your bag.

While the keyboard is the same as you'll find on any of Apple's laptops, it is now backlit allowing to you see the keys when the lights go down. It sounds stupid, but it's amazing how much it makes a difference when on the sofa watching television. Meanwhile the touchpad is very good. It is responsive and more than big enough to cope with the plethora of gestures you'll now be performing thanks to Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X Lion.

The screen is still the same glossy 1440 x 990 pixel resolution display as found on the 2010 Apple MacBook Air. Yes, it is still reflective in the sun, however the brightness is able to combat most problems outdoors or next to windows. It would be nice to have a matte option here like you can opt for on the MacBook Pro models, but that's a niggle for the select few.

Above that luscious screen is a "FaceTime camera" for video calling - don't worry it works with Skype as well of course. Performance is dependent on your broadband speed, however those that we have called via Skype have been impressed with the quality. The angle is fairly wide allowing you to get lots in, but disappointingly it isn't Apple's FaceTime HD camera found in the MacBook Pro range.

Inside

The biggest change to the MacBook Air range is on the inside with the range getting a considerable performance boost. We've been testing the daddy of the lot, the MacBook Air 13-inch 1.8GHz dual core Intel Core i7 processor, 4GB of onboard 133MHz DDR3 SDRAM and the 256GB flash hard drive. This model, which isn't a pick up in store model, will cost you £1449.99 in the UK ($1599 US) and is available from Apple's online store.

If you aren't able to push the boat out completely, or merely want to walk in store and grab one, there are more affordable options. The standard off the shelf model comes with a 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5. While you can opt to have a smaller 128GB hard drive with the Core i5 model, you can't with the Core i7 offering. All configurations come with wireless 802.11n and Bluetooth connectivity.

On the graphics front Apple has ditched the Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics card found in the 2010 MacBook Air and replaced it with Intel's HD Graphics 3000 processor with 384MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with the main memory (that 4GB number from earlier). Unless you are a heavy gamer we suspect you won't notice. HD video playback at 1080p via YouTube or film downloads from iTunes was flawless. Videos certainly look nice on that crisp high-res screen. The MacBook Air just about coped playing Half Life 2 with all the settings turned to maximum, running at the native 1440 x 990 resolution.

As you might expect the speakers are rather lacklustre in their performance, but not excessively so. They are good enough to listen to music while you work, or provide the soundtrack to that movie you're watching in bed, but it's not going to beat a pair of cheap desktop speakers or be enough to provide the soundtrack to a party in your hotel room. Positioned in the same place as the 2010 model, the sound comes out the back just beyond the keyboard and bounces off the screen back at you.

Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt is Apple's new port that allows you to write to Thunderbolt hard drives considerably faster than you would with a standard USB 2 or USB 3 connection. Sadly Thunderbolt drives aren't out on the market yet so we've been unable to test the new MacBook Air at home with any to see if they work. However have seen them demoed at various Apple events - they are as fast as all involved claim.

Where Thunderbolt will also come into its own when used in connection with the new Apple Thunderbolt Display. If you can stretch the budget a further £849 you'll not only get a 27-inch LED-backlit screen, but the mother all of docking stations too. That Thunderbolt cable is enough to power the FaceTime HD camera, FireWire 800, Gigabit Ethernet and a further three USB 2 sockets in the Display, all via a single cable. Of course we plan to review the Apple Thunderbolt Display when they go on sale in September.

Performance

Needless to say, our Core i7 model is beefy. Beefy enough to cope with most tasks that we've thrown at it. Be it editing video, editing photos with Adobe Lightroom or just about playing Half Life 2 (old school). Unless you've bought a brand new MacBook Pro in the last couple of months, chances are this will be faster than older models and that's an impressive feat given the MacBook Air 2010 model which many felt made you give up performance for that thin design.

To really test the MacBook Air we've been running a mirror of our standard system on it and using it as our sole computer in the office. Only when we asked it to run Half Life 2 with everything turned on did we see the "spinning beach ball of death", but for the most part it's taken everything we've thrown at it with ease even when we've had a series of applications open - Mail, Safari with multiple tabs, Twitter, Spotify, Adobe Lightroom, Skype, Pages and Word, as well as Fireworks, Fetch, and TextMate open all the time and occasionally other programmes too including iMovie and other Adobe products.

As you might expect, running all that at the same time did occasionally cause the fan to kick in - mainly when we were downloading large files from the Internet while exporting photos in Lightroom while playing a HD video (we like to push things to the limits). Incidentally we also noticed that the MacBook Air didn't run as hot on the lap as our 2009 MacBook Pro. 

Unless you are really doing some "heavy lifting" this will suffice for most of your office-based tasks with some casual gaming thrown into the mix too.

Battery is always a funny one and will vary massively depending on what you do with it and how you use the laptop. Apple claims over 7 hours from a single charge for the 13-inch model. Small print will give you a slightly different picture. That 7 hours is wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50 per cent.

If you're doing video editing, watching movies, playing games, and have that brightness whacked up full that 7 hours quickly becomes a lot less. Even then, in general office and home use since we've got the laptop, we've been able to get a good 5 hours worth of battery out of a single charge. If you turn off the Wi-Fi and just use an app like Pages with the screen brightness down really low you can push this much even further.

Mac OS X Lion

The MacBook Air comes with a spanking new operating system - Apple Mac OS X Lion - and that means a whole host of goodies to enjoy, learn and in some cases get annoyed by. We aren't going to go over the operating system here in any detail. If you want to see what we think about the new OS from Apple we would recommend you read our detailed review of Mac OS X Lion.

Needless to say the Air makes good use of the new OS. As we've said, the big touchpad has plenty of space to perform those gesture commands, and the addition of a new Launchpad button (F4) in place of a dedicated Dashboard button will appeal as well.

The new OS only enhances the experience rather than detract anything from it.

Tags: Laptops Apple Apple MacBook Air Hardware

Apple MacBook Air (mid 2011) originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:31:00 +0100