ELSE Ltd was born today along with their first handset, cunningly named the First ELSE. To clear things up ELSE Ltd was formerly known as Emblaze Mobile and today changed the name of the company as well as announcing their first device to the world. Pocket-lint were on hand to witness the unveiling, and have a close look at the new handset.

The company don't want you to call it a phone. They are pushing the First ELSE as a portable device capable of fulfilling a number of connected roles, but not centred around the phone. Company CEO, Amir Kupervas, called out Apple's iPhone, pointing out that it was named around the "phone" and that at all times the phone took prominence.

The differentiation perhaps doesn't go much further than marketing: it will be sold as a mobile phone, in mobile phone outlets and supported by the mobile phone network. We'll call it a mobile phone and so will everyone else.

In recent times we’ve seen a shift in mobile phone marketing to focus on applications and services, not just hardware. Windows Mobile is doing it with its giant application icons and Apple has been saying "there's an app for that" for yonks: it's fun, it's light hearted. The teaser video for the First ELSE plays out like something from a Tom Clancy movie. You expect to see Matt Damon stroking a PSG-1. It's the stuff of thrillers.

But is the handset itself thrilling?

The hardware specs are fairly typical. It measures 115.6 x 56.6 x 13mm, fairly average dimensions, if not a little on the long side. That gives you a 3.5-inch, 854 x 480 pixel resolution, display. It's a capacitive touchscreen and from what we've seen it seems responsive enough.

The widescreen aspect means that you don't get all the landscape space you might have wanted to reduce scrolling on websites, but it is sharp and the colours from sample images were certainly vivid, allowing of course for the fact that these were put in the device to do just that - show the screen at its best.

On the connectivity front you get UMTS/HSDPA (tri-band), GSM, EDGE (quad-band) as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It connects to the charger and your PC via a microUSB jack. A 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top.

Around the back is a 5-megapixel camera, but no sign of a flash or a LED illuminator. Kupervas used the opportunity in presenting the phone to take a shot at Sony Ericsson's Satio, asking the audience when they'd choose a 12-megapixel phone over the 5-megapixel Canon camera? We didn't get to see the First ELSE's camera in action, so we don't know how it stands up. Of course you get GPS too.

You also get 32GB of memory, so the First ELSE really punches hard into the storage area. Unfortunately there is no microSD card slot, so you can't just stick your music collection in on a 16GB card, something of an oversight in our opinion.

The First ELSE isn't about the hardware though. It is about the user interface, so everything that is written above you'd be encouraged to ignore, or so the company would have us believe. With the First ELSE comes a new operating system and platform for you to discover. It is based on an Access Linux platform at its core, with a user interface called ELSE Intuition.

ELSE claims that Intuition is the end of the "main menu". In practise it doesn’t look like this really is the case, as you have a number of different styles of menu operation in ELSE. There is a diamond style menu that accesses major application groups and then there is sPlay. It is all designed to be operated by a single thumb for one-handed operation, with sPlay fanning out options for phone, diary and media, as the name suggests. You simply highlight the one you want and lift your thumb off to select that option.

Of course, that one-thumbed operation, as our pictures show, is the right thumb. If you are left-handed, you'll have to snort in derision and get on with it as us lefties so often do. ELSE told us that First ELSE is designed for right-handed folk but perfectly usable by left-handers, with a planned "flip capacity" for future versions. As it is, if you're left-handed, your thumb will cover the menu options as they splay out.

All the usual suspects are here and the interface does look a world apart from the staid menus that plague many other phones. But do you have a problem with Apple or Android's icons? The overall effect on the First ELSE is something like you'd expect to see in The Terminator's HUD. It has a raw futuristic look to it that looks sharp and technical.

There are also a number of shortcut touch buttons running down the right-hand side of the phone, giving you access to the menu, up/down navigation, back, and cross-platform search. This is a feature that we've all been calling for and ELSE claims to offer both device searching and online searching in a single integrated area.

We didn't have the opportunity in our demo to evaluate how this will be in day-to-day use, but it is interesting, futuristic and looks great. We asked Kupervas what the inspiration was behind the First ELSE and the reply was simple: The Fifth Element and Minority Report. The idea that a sci-fi look and feel could be put into a device now drove Emblaze (as it was then) and Access to design the interface that the First ELSE gives us.

We were hoping for three precogs hiding under the back cover, giving a psychic connection to the Internet, or Milla Jovovich wearing a few white straps, but it seems not. Instead the hardware sits on top of a Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor, the likes of which we've seen in the Palm Pre.

The First ELSE will also feature "silent communication", meaning you can turn your phone into your very own automated call centre. If you can't take the call, you can trigger a range of questions and responses for the caller, like "press * for urgent" or "press # to call back later".

The on-screen keyboard looked pretty futuristic too, boasting algorithms to workout what you are doing from your presses and predictive text entry to produce the words you meant. The switch from portrait to landscape seemed snappy too and works in most, but not all, applications.

The ethos behind the First ELSE is total integration. Rather than be a phone with a GPS, it is designed to behave like a standalone device. Kupervas named a number of companies whilst detailing the ELSE: iPod-like music system, BlackBerry-like email, TomTom-like GPS. Bold claims indeed, but as a marketing speech it sounds like the perfect device.

But then we come to the crunch, the single point which will likely define the success or failure of ELSE. All the above are supported by established systems whereas the First ELSE is starting from scratch. Almost. Looking at the supporting organisations brings out a few names that reveal what is behind ELSE. Navteq mapping, Emoze email, Alango to improve the voice communication, Nuance voice recognition, Red Bend OTA updating and so on.

ELSE told us that it has set up its own infrastructure for an easy out-of-the-box device that works straight away, but of course, we'll have to see it in action before we can pass a judgement on it. Whether that means you'll get cross-protocol IM or OTA Google Contact syncing, we don't yet know.

We were told that the SDK would be released when the phone comes out to allow third-party developers to generate apps. Given the success of the iPhone and growing success of Android, this has to be a primary concern. We were promised great things from the Palm Pre App Catalog, but that is still to put out the big guns in terms of apps.

Kupervas told us that third-party apps would be integrated to the core, so rather than a standalone app, you'd still get access to the live PIM and all the information there. Using Twitter as an example, Kupervas told us that rather than an extra Twitter layer, it would integrate fully with your existing contacts.

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Verdict:

ELSE made some bold claims with the announcement of the First ELSE. But you need to get people to take you seriously. The company is certainly pushing a different approach from a marketing angle, but ultimately it is joining a competitive marketplace full of smart devices demonstrating convergence and integration at an advanced level. There is nothing new here, per se, but the First ELSE aims to deliver the best of what everyone else is doing.

Companies like INQ Mobile have demonstrated that there is space for innovation and ELSE are certainly sending out the right messages here. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and unfortunately it looks like we'll be waiting to spring 2010 before we get our hands on it in the real world.

Check out all our hands-on pictures over in our gallery.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones ELSE Mobile First ELSE First look

First ELSE mobile phone - First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:35:32 +0000

The official availability maybe some time off, however that hasn't stopped us from getting a hands-on with the Android sporting Xperia X10 for a second time (this time in New York) so we can bring you a First Look (over two sittings) of the new handset from Sony Ericsson. Will it be a game changer that will bring the company back into the spotlight? Read on to find out.

On the surface the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is another Android 1.6 handset with a large screen and yet another user interface or User Experience (UX) as Sony Ericsson calls it, promising to improve the usability stakes over everything else.

The hardware sees you get a 4-inch touchscreen display that dominates proceedings. Beneath this there are three additional buttons that allow you to access menus, the home screen, and skip back a step, and in between this there is even two white tiny LEDs that give you notifications as to what is going on although you will no doubt loose track over time. A dedicated camera button and volume controls pepper the side.

For the Droid or G1 fans out there, there is no slide-out keyboard. Get over it.

Around the back you'll get an 8.1-megapixel digital camera top centre and beneath that a flash - something not present on the HTC Hero or Apple iPhone.

Although impressive, specs are nothing out of the ordinary, certainly not for your top-of-the-range model and that means you get virtually every tech acronym you can think of including HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DLNA, A-GPS, 3.5mm jack and Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Storage is provided by an 8GB microSD card in the box and connects to your computer/charger via Micro-USB on the top. Unfortunately we weren't able to confirm what the storage allocation for applications is, but let's hope it is more than 256MB as with the Motorola Droid.

It is large, comparable to the Apple iPhone, but not as big as the HTC HD2. Underneath all that User Experience you get Android 1.6. Sony Ericsson are currently sending out mixed messages as to whether or not the handset will sport Android 2.0 when it eventually launches in February, with some spokespeople for the company saying it will and others not so sure.

What this means is that you will miss out on some features, like the ability to search the contents of your phone at the press of a button and Google Maps Navigation (US only). With a strong integrated interface in the guise of what Sony Ericsson is calling Nexus, you get, like the Sense UI from HTC, a lot more friendly functionality than Google offers as standard.

Of course you do get that "standard" approach. The Nexus UX Platform sits on top of Android 1.6 meaning you can run all the standard Android apps as well as apps designed for the phone and UX.?Unlike Motorola and HTC, both of whom have also decided to customise the Android experience, Sony Ericsson is hoping for further development by releasing a WebSDK.

The move means that developers will be able to develop applications specifically for Sony Ericsson handsets (the X10 is the first of many) that work only for Sony Ericsson. It's a brave move and one that will be interesting to watch. As a developer are you really going to be bothered to develop an app for an as yet unproven smartphone when you've got Apple, Android, Palm's WebOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Samsung's Bada and BlackBerry to develop for as well?

Either way in reality it seems that Sony Ericsson are playing the "you can play with us too" card and regardless of this forging on with their own apps to impress and improve on the Android OS.

In steps Timescape and Mediascape. Timescape is a communications app, which aggregates email,?Facebook, Twitter, IM, and SMS into one big lifestream that you can navigate through. Each "event" is represented by a tile, which you can tap to view in more detail, or long-press to get a preview of. The experience is very "Aero" from Windows Vista and in practice not the easiest thing to read.

Each tile has a button marked with an "oo" infinity symbol. Hitting that will take you to related content - which could be content from the person in question, or it could be web content related to whatever is on the tile. It's a bit like HTC's contacts feature that shows you all the contact you've had with that person, however it's no Xobni. The list can be filtered by medium, and you can reply to individual messages within the application.

Mediascape is the other "signature" application. It's built around music, video and images and organises all three on your device. It incorporates players for all three, too, and can hook into various bits of online content. YouTube was named explicitly, but we'd expect Last.fm and perhaps Flickr to show up here too with talk of Spotify being banded around at our briefing (something that might be harder to do than Sony Ericsson realizes thanks to Spotify's poor API).

Items in Mediascape also have an infinity button and pressing this will again summon related content. For a band, that could be songs on your device, YouTube videos, or even other artists that are similar to whatever you're listening to. The overlaid controls of this section looked quite similar to the Zune HD's UI, though that's only a good thing.

Then there is the image viewer in Mediascape that supports facial recognition. What this means is that you can tag up to five people in a photo and then the handset will attempt to identify those people in other images too - the more you tag, the more accurate it is, very much like Apple's face recognition feature in iPhoto. The feature can also hook in with your contacts list - you can tap a person in a photo to call them, for instance, however won't talk to Facebook or Flickr.

Those apps, and others for the Nexus UX, will be available from the PlayNow store.

Elsewhere and it's pretty standard Android fare for the handset. The software is, and acts, as you would expect for an Android 1.6 handset, however for some reason, one that continues to baffle us, is no multi-touch support.?With a touchscreen so large with no keyboard we think it's a catastrophic move, but then hey, what do we know?

As for performance? Well it's a little too early to say. The models we looked at both in London and New York have all been pre-production, and early builds at that. It certainly wasn't as zippy as we would have hoped, certainly for a device with a Snapdragon chipset, but then its too early to tell whether this is just because it's early code, or because Sony Ericsson has baked in so many graphical, almost PS3-like niceties, that it's buckled under the weight. We expect it's the former.

Verdict:

So is this going to be the Android handset that you wish you waited for? At the moment it's too hard to say as the software wasn't (we hope) working at full speed. That said on the hardware front it really is just a screen with some buttons and every acronym you can think of, looks good and has the potential to perform well.

We get the feeling though, that as soon as HTC announce an HD2 with Android, probably called the HD3, that shininess – i.e., the 4-inch screen - will soon disappear.

So how can Sony Ericsson hope to win your hearts? By getting developers to embrace the Nexus UX platform or for Sony to roll out as many apps as it can including dedicated apps like a PlayNow store, PSP emulator and PS3 Remote Play. Now wouldn't that be nice?

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is expected to be available in February 2010.

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Related links:

• Photos - Sony Ericsson Experia X10 hands on

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Sony Ericsson Android First look Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mobile phone - First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

How thin is thin? That's the question Dell has asked itself with the launch of the Dell Adamo XPS. The answer it seems is 9.9mm, but has the journey to make a laptop thinner than a CD jewel case meant corners have been cut? We grabbed a gander at the new model ahead of the official announcement.

The first thing you'll be thinking is "where did it all go?" the Adamo XPS is thin, very thin. To get an idea of how thin it really is you need to stop reading for a second. Yep you heard that right. Now go find a CD jewel case you've probably got floating around the office or your house and awe that a computer can be thinner. At its thinnest point it's 9.7mm at its thickest its 10.3.

To give you the full dimensions they are 340 x 273.9 x 9.9mm with a weight of 1.44kg.?To achieve that thinness, Dell has done something drastic, it's taken the keyboard and made it fit into a recess the size of the 13.4-inch screen.

In real terms it means that the hinge isn't at the base of the screen, as it is in normal laptops, but slightly further up - say by about 100mm (see pictures). The payoff in placing the hinge higher up in the design is that the metal chicklet keyboard doesn't actually sit flat on your desk - a rather strange experience - but at a 30 degree angle. In use it's surprisingly comfortable and reminiscent of how keyboards used to be before they became super flat.

Back to that design and you'll find that when folded, the keyboard slots into a recessed screen area, allowing it to claim the overall thinness and enabling you to gloat at your friends. It's very clever.

To keep things to a minimum the Adamo XPS isn't loaded with ports, sockets, buttons or other paraphernalia. You get a DisplayPort socket, power socket, headphone, line out jack and two USB ports that are neatly placed down either side. Like the MacBook Air, it loses the Ethernet socket as well as an optical drive, both of which (Blu-ray included) are offered as external devices.

Aside from the ports, the laptop is fairly void of detail. The aluminium casing oozes MacBook Pro chic. Big brash logos are left to be etched into the underside of the device rather than blazoned on the back of the screen. There is branding of course, but it's small and discrete, just like the button to open it.

We say button, though that's not strictly the case as there isn't actually one. Instead you'll be expected to stroke your finger in a certain place to release a latch. What happens when the power runs out? You can't open the laptop, but then Dell's response is logical - why would you want it open, the battery is dead.

Back to the underside and you get a couple of fan holes, a webcam and a removable battery that Dell says will give you a rather disappointing 2 hours 36 minutes. Those looking to hit the road should go elsewhere.

So we've got past the design, but is that it? Luckily not. The specs read quite nicely too.

The glossy screen is a 13.4-inch HD WLED 720p (1366 x 768) offering, while Dell has turned to Intel bringing its Intel Core 2 Duo ULV (1.4GHz) processor to power this size-zero machine. Memory comes in the guise of 4GB DDR3-800MHz and the hard drive is a Solid State 128GB model as standard.

XPS might have been Dell's gaming line once, but no more. With an Intel GS45 integrated graphics card, this isn't going to be a gaming machine, but then gamers are not the target here. Dell has confirmed to Pocket-lint that XPS now means power over gaming and with the Alienware brand going strong they've got that market sector covered.

Connectivity is offered via Wi-Fi a/g/n standard and there is Bluetooth 2.1 in there too.?Power the machine up and you'll get Windows 7 Ultimate edition as standard. Windows 7 is leap years ahead of Windows Vista or XP and therefore by no means a negative.

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Verdict:

Our play was brief, which is why this First Look focuses on the hardware and design implementation rather than speed and performance of the laptop in a real-life situation.

As we move away from CDs and DVDs the need to have an optical drive isn't as vital as it once was. We can't actually remember the last time, apart from installing the OS, we actually used our laptop's optical drive anyway.

There is a concern that the battery life will be the Achilles heel here, but at least you can replace or swap it out if you are attempting a road warrior moment. Yes it should last longer, but that is clearly a payoff to the size and weight. There is a larger 40WHr battery that promises 5 hours 17 minutes.

So what's the bottom line? If you want to impress, this is clearly going to be the device to do it with. The decision to give it a powerful processor over the Intel Atom offering and the ability to swap out the battery, for us, makes this one to watch if you are after style and want substance.

Tags: Hardware Laptops Dell Dell Adamo XPS Intel First look

Dell Adamo XPS notebook - First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000

Another carrier, another handset, that is pretty much the story with the?Droid Eris, now on its third iteration from the?HTC Hero?launched in Europe back in May. So what has?Verizon?brought to the table and for American's, should you opt for this one over the?Sprint HTC Hero?

We haven't seen the official press release, but no doubt when it does arrive on our desk it will say the new design oozes a black finish never before seen, and one that is tactile to touch over the silver shimmers of the Sprint offering.

In reality there is very little between the two in terms of design. The Verizon Droid Eris sports a black shell with a slightly more rounded bottom curve. The Home, menu, back and search buttons are now in a single line. Touch-sensitive, they've been built into the same casing as the screen. The only physical buttons underneath the multi-touch screen are a call and hang-up buttons an a trackball as found on the MyTouch 3G and G1 handsets.

That trackball is very responsive, not that you'll find yourself using it that much.?Why? The touchscreen above.

The screen remains at 3.2-inches, the same as the Sprint model. Compared to other smartphones on the market it is slightly larger than the Palm Pre's 3.1-inch screen and slightly smaller than the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen. Either way the smaller hyptic-enabled screen means a more compact phone that won't take up as much real estate in your pocket, but one that is still very usable.?

Like the Sprint handset the phone offers a 3.5mm jack, volume buttons and a 5-megapixel camera on the back. There is no flash. Slip the case off and you'll find a microSD slot.?

Keeping on the technology front, you'll get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity as well as GPS so you can find your way home. This being Verizon the handset runs on the CDMA network. However with no GSM support you won't be able to travel to Europe with it. This is not a world phone.

Of course this isn't just an identical phone in a different colour for a different operator. HTC doesn't do that. So the offering is slightly thinner, which in turn means that the battery is slightly smaller. While HTC wouldn't, in our play, be drawn on what this would mean to the overall performance, it confirmed that users would notice very little difference (it's 1300mAh compared to 1500mAh for those wanting the numbers).

On the upside the company has fixed one of the underlining bug bears from the original version and added a proximity sensor so when you put it up to your head the screen turns off. Handy.?

Running Google's Android 1.5 OS, the Droid Eris is Verizon's second handset, the Droid by Motorola is the other. Like the Sprint HTC Hero, HTC has once again taken the Android OS as a starting point, and put their own special sheen on the operating system. Called the Sense UI it basically gives you a graphical skin over the Android OS giving it a more grown-up experience.?

In reality you'll mostly experience this through a series of customised screens giving you quick access to a number of the key features. Whether it's work, play, social networking or all of the above, the screens are incredibly easy to use, stylish and the key to the phone's simplicity.?

In our brief play the Droid Eris was quick and nimble, most likely benefiting from the HTC Hero update recently rolled out to the Sprint variant. It's fast enough that you won't find yourself struggling with whether or not you've pressed the button or flipped a screen. And as flipping through screens is something that you'll find yourself doing a lot, it only fair to expect good performance. We weren't disappointed. ?

Software-wise you'll get all the usual apps, with Verizon only choosing to install its Visual Voicemail service on the phone. Like the Motorola Droid, this is a clean handset.

Verdict:

Software wise there is very little different between the HTC Hero released in Europe, the HTC Hero on Sprint and the Verizon version. Where the difference appears is in the hardware and cosmetic design of the handset.

Whether you choose the Sprint HTC Hero or the Verizon HTC Droid Eris is going to be down to networks and what you are happier with. Both carriers have left the handset pretty unfettered, both haven't done anything crazy with the hardware to make them stand out from each other either.?

One deciding factor however is likely to be the price. The Droid Eris is at the time of writing $80 cheaper.?

For the non Apple or Palm believers, this is one to strongly consider.?

Tags: Phones Mobile phones HTC Verizon HTC Hero Droid Eris First look

Droid Eris by HTC mobile phone - First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000