In the heated comments section of the HTC Evo 4G vs. myTouch 3G Slide game, there’s a bit of debate going on about the Evo’s battery life. It’s true that in our anecdotal tests we found that the Evo ran out of juice by the end of the workday with normal use on 3G. But with a few simple tweaks you can make the Evo 4G or any Android phone last a lot longer and you don’t have to give up usability or the fun parts of the UI. Those people claiming 14 hours of use aren’t crazy.

Blogger Jenn K. Lee of Good and Evo put together 25 battery-saving tips that range from the mostly obvious — #1 Lower screen brightness — to tips that less-intense Android users might not know about — #4 Disable “always on” mobile data — to those that might not occur even to power users but make perfect sense when you think about them — #9 Change auto-sync frequency.

Lee points out that users shouldn’t have to sacrifice user experience to get long battery life: “a device at the lowest screen brightness setting with all wireless radios turned off may as well be a paperweight as far as I’m concerned.” On this we definitely agree.

I only followed 11 of the tips using our Evo 4G unit and found that I could unplug it at 9AM and still have about 50 – 40% battery 12 – 15 hours later. I didn’t shut off any of the UI elements I liked and left Wi-Fi on so that it used my home and work wireless instead of 3G most of the day. That’s a definite improvement over the default settings.

I also like that several of these tips are useful for all Android phones, not just the Evo, so don’t skip it just because you’re rocking the long-lasting Droid X. Click here to read all of the tips.

Evo owners, do you have any other tips for saving battery life?

In our review of the iPhone 4, we noted that the Facetime app worked fairly well, on a par with netbooks’ webcams, but Apple has limited its use to iPhone 4’s connected to a Wi-Fi network. But what if there were a way to jury-rig it so that we could use Facetime via 3G?

We found the answer in one of the iPhone 4’s main competitors, the HTC Evo 4G. By using the Evo 4G’s Hotspot feature, we connected one iPhone to it via Wi-Fi, tricking the iPhone into thinking it was using a broadband connection rather than 3G. To cut down on variables, the second iPhone was connected to a real Wi-Fi hotspot.

So, how’d it do?

In summary: Not well. Steve Jobs was right to limit Facetime to Wi-Fi connections. Audio came through only in patches, and video was like a slideshow at best. We somewhat expected this – we had the same experience when using Fring and Qik over 3G. So for now, limit your smartphone videoconferencing to Wi-Fi.

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The official announcement came today, but it’s no surprise given that this has been in the works for a while. Hulu Plus, the $9.99/month paid service, is now open to a select few users at a time. The company blog hints that those who follow Hulu on Twitter or Like them on Facebook will get first crack at weekly invitations, but you can also request one here.

For $9.99 a month users will get access to all episodes of a number of popular shows. How is this different from Hulu before Plus? Now you get to pay. To be fair, some shows will be new to the Hulu service and other shows that only offered a few episodes at once will now offer the entire series run. But non-paying customers can look forward to fewer episodes on the free side of the pay wall and likely a smaller window for watching them.

Since the web-based Hulu isn’t giving up the Flash-player anytime soon, iOS4 devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) get an app to access Hulu Plus along with certain web-enabled Samsung TVs and Blu-ray players. Access via PlayStation 3 and XBox is coming soon, as are other, unnamed devices. Do you know which devices I do not see on that list? Android phones. Thanks, Hulu.

Another thing I do not see are the words “commercial free” anywhere. That’s because Hulu Plus users will still have their shows interrupted by commercials. I wonder if that means non-Plus users will have to sit through more of them? That’s something to look forward to. But hey, 720p HD viewing makes up for that, right?

For now I think I will stick with Netflix On Demand. For $5 I can watch commercial-free TV shows and movies, and I still get DVDs to boot.

If our Android Cup is anything to go by, Samsung hasn’t yet released any Android phones worthy of note. But that changed in a big way with the announcement of the Galaxy S family of phones, now hitting U.S. shores. We got a chance to spend a bit of time with the devices at Samsung’s launch event tonight and compared them to a few other recently released super phones.

Our video hands-on and comparison will be up soon, but in the meantime here are our first impressions:

The Display: Samsung is not playing around with these Super AMOLED displays. They are bright and vibrant, and we really dig the color depth. The icons and background really pop on the home screens and both video and still images look amazing. The image below doesn’t do it justice, but does show the difference in quality between the HTC Evo 4G (on the left) and the iPhone 4 (on the right).

The UI: All of the Galaxy family phones will ship with Android 2.1 and will get upgrades to 2.2. Samsung did a bit of tweaking to the user interface to give it more of an iPhone-esque feel. The icons are all square, and instead of scrolling up and down when looking at the list of all applications, you have to swipe right and left. The overall effect is nice, though veteran Android users might feel a little disoriented at first.

The Performance: We’ll obviously go deeper into this when we do our reviews of the phones, but in our short time using them we experienced snappy performance and fast response to taps. HD video not only looks amazing on the device, it also plays without a hint of hitching or distortion. We fired up the 720p trailer for Avatar on YouTube and played it back in high quality — really gorgeous.

The Design: Though they all come from the same “family”, each phone has design differences. The most drastic is the Epic 4G for Sprint which comes with a slide out keyboard. The raised keys provided decent tactile feedback and were comfortable to press even with fingernails. The Epic 4G and the Fascinate (for Verizon Wireless) both have front-facing cameras for face-to-face video chats. The T-Mobile Vibrant’s rounded corners and chrome accents around the edges reminds us of the iPhone 3GS — not a bad comparison. The AT&T Captivate didn’t appeal to us as much in this department.

The Multi-Carrier Attack: We’re impressed that Samsung was able to launch a phone with each of the major carriers as it gives consumers the opportunity to snag one without having to switch. Though it will be interesting to see which phone/carrier combination will offer the best features and experience.

Check back for a video of these phones in action.

One of the first things I do when I review a notebook is to install Google Chrome (or Firefox) so I don’t have to use Internet Explorer. It’s not that I think IE is necessarily slow or is lacking in features, although the upcoming IE9 is supposed to be all kinds of accelerated. It’s all that junk up top. Seriously, look at the screenshot above for The New York Times I took on a brand-new Acer Aspire One. It’sВ В littered with space-hogging toolbars.

I know that Microsoft didn’t necessarily insert these pieces of browser crapware; one is probably paid for by McAfee, which supplies a trial of is security suite on the Acer machine. Ironically, a Google Toolbar also takes up a ton of real estate on the notebok I used to capture this screen. Perhaps Acer and other notebook makers believe these things add value, but I can’t remember the last time I used a toolbar of any kind.

As you can see below, Chrome is much cleaner, and lets you see a lot more of a webpage at a time.

With IE, you can’t even see the main headline on the New York Times page without scrolling down, whereas you can view a lot more content above the fold in Chrome. Several studies have shown that many users don’t even look below the top half of a given webpage, so that wasted real estate is not only hurting users, it’s hurting content providers.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the speed of Google Chrome, and I also find it be quite stable. But I think sheer simplicity is its biggest selling point. Just this week StatsCounter reported that Google’s browser surpassed Apple’s Safari browser in the U.S. (8.9 vs 8.8 share). That same firm says IE still has a commanding market share of 52 percent to 28.5 percent for Firefox. However, IE is down 15 percent over the past two years.

It almost doesn’t matter what features Microsoft’s includes in IE 9. Unless it forces its partners to kick those crappy toolbars to the curb and takes more control of the user experience, it will continue to hemorrhage share.

Ok, we’re nearing the end here. In the last round, Moto Droid owners dominated the voting, and we bid adieu to the Hero. Up in the first semifinal match is the myTouch 3G Slide, which upset the Evo 4G in heavy voting the last round. But how will it do against the Google Nexus One? It’s all up to you.

The tale of the tape between the
Nexus One and the MyTouch 3G Slide

Which phone should move to the final? Voting closes at midnight tonight.

If the name of this semi-monthly column didn’t give it away, I’ll reveal a little something about myself here. I’m a huge computer geek! And part of being a computer geek, is loving not just any technology, but computer technology and the PC experience. Yes, I love my smart phone and I’m craving an Android tablet, but I couldn’t disagree more with people who say theВ PC is dead. What’s made Android devices so compelling is that they offer the most PC-like experience available on a phone or tablet.

For me, the ultimate mobile device is not a giant iPod Touch, but one which takes all the power and flexibility I get on my desktop or notebook and makes it as portable as possible. If I could, I would apply a shrink ray to my quad core desktop — complete with its two high-res monitors and three hard drives — and place it in a watch on my wrist. So I was jaw-droppingly impressed on Friday when I finally got my hands on the Viliv N5, a 4.8-inch, 1-pound notebook that’s capable of running Windows 7 (and probably many flavors of Linux), but fits perfectly in a pants pocket.

The very concept of a 4.8-inch notebook is more amazing and “magical” than an iPad. If you’re as old as I am, you can remember 1981, when IBM released its first PC, which weighed 21 pounds without a floppy drive (and 28 with two!), and 1982, when Compaq released theВ Compaq Portable suitcase PC . What a miracle of Moore’s law that something with so much more processing power and functionality, but with the same PC legacy can fit in my pocket today.

Unfortunately, not everyone is enamored with the concept behind the N5 and similarly-sized competitors like the UMID BZ. For years, this class of pocketable notebooks, first known as UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PCs) but more recently referred to as MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices), has had its share of detractors and, in the U.S., they’ve beenВ slow to catch on.

So when it came time to place a star rating on our Viliv N5 review, I found myself disagreeing with critics in my own office. One editor said point blank that he thinks nobody would want a Windows PC this small. Another was a little more diplomatic, describing the N5 and its ilk as “niche products,” and he predicted that if I carried the N5 around I’d stop using it within a week.

For certain, the N5 is not a perfect product and it’s not for everyone. With its somewhat pokey 1.3-GHz Atom Z520 CPU, tiny SSD, and mediocre 802.11g wireless, the tiny device is no match performance-wise for any of today’s 10-inch netbooks. В Where the average netbook gets well over 6-hours of battery life (and many over 9 hours), the N5 managed just 3 hours and 58 minutes of endurance. Its webcam produced dark, low-res images; its resistive touchscreen offered too much resistance, and it lacks a video-out port. It also starts at a whopping $649 when you can get a netbook or even an iPad for much less.

Yet, we’re overlooking the obvious here. The N5 В is a fully functional computer that fits in your pocket! It comes with Windows 7 Starter preinstalled and a handful of Viliv utilities, but the possibilities are endless.В Forget about so-called “lightweight” apps that have been dumbed-down for phones or other devices; a UMPC’s app store is the Internet, from Download.com to Sourceforge.net or anywhere that hosts downloads. Does that have enough variety for you?

With a UMPC, I can run the full Microsoft Office suite or the real Photoshop (though not with great speed). I can conduct a real video chat in the actual Skype or even do some programming while I’m standing in line at the ATM. And, unlike the iPad, I can also visit sites that use Flash. We don’t know what flavors of Linux work on the N5, but I’m sure some industrious geek will find a way to throw on Ubuntu or MeeGo. Try that on an Apple’s tablet!

And considering its small size, the N5’s QWERTY keyboard is a pleasure to type on. You can’t touch type but you can easily pound out about 30 to 40 words per minute while standing up and navigating with its tiny thumb mouse. And its 1024 x 600 screen (which can scale up to 1024 x 768) can fit a real Web page, Word doc, or spreadsheet.

My colleagues would argue that devices like the N5 — no matter how great their screens and keyboards — are just too small to use for serious work on a regular basis. No doubt, it won’t replace my regular notebook or my quad-core workstation, but a tiny PC like the N5 could come in very handy for a mobile geek like me.

One of the many hats I wear at LAPTOP is that of Web developer and, in that role, I’m called upon to regularly make changes to our site’s code. The next time I’m sitting on the bus and I get an urgent message from my coworkers telling me the CMS is acting up or the site is down, I won’t be able to use an iPad or a smart phone to solve the problem. But with a device like the N5 sitting in my pocket, I could fire up the tools I need to fix the site in a hurry: a code В editor like Notepad++ (my personal fave), FTP, VPN, and a real desktop browser for testing.

Is the Viliv N5 able to match up to a netbook in terms of usabilty, price, or performance? Of course, not. There are still trade-offs that companies have to make to build a 4.8-inch PC. В But I challenge you to find a pair of pants with pockets big enough for a netbook. And if manufacturers like Viliv don’t listen to the naysayers and continue developing new MIDs, we may soon see a 4.8-inch notebook with 8+ hours of battery life, the ability to play 3D games, and a sub-$500 price tag. They just have to have confidence in the platform.

In the end, we finally settled on a rating of 3 stars out of 5 for the Viliv N5, В a “recommended” rating that also takes into account the product’s flaws. Do you think we got it right? Would you find a 4.8-inch notebook like the N5 useful or is it just novelty? Would you rather have an iPad? Check our review of the Viliv N5 and let us know in the comments below.

Online Editorial Director Avram Piltch oversees the production and infrastructure of LAPTOP’s web site. With a reputation as the staff’s biggest geek, he has also helped develop a number of LAPTOP’s custom tests, including the Notebook batteries provide power to the system whenever it’s unplugged.
Learn MoreLAPTOP Battery Test. Catch the Geek’s Geek column here every other week or follow Avram on twitter.

This month we reviewed 14 notebooks and netbooks, including the lilliputian Viliv N5 and the updated, Ion-powered ASUS 1201PN. But only four systems earned 4 stars or above this month, with two scoring the coveted Editor’s Choice.