These days, touchscreens are practically mandatory when it comes to Android phones, which helps the Motorola Charm for T-Mobile stand out from the crowd. The 2.8-inch Android 2.1-based phone features a display and full QWERTY keyboard that’s similar to a BlackBerry. We were fans of the Charm’s low price tag and svelte form factor–it costs $74.99 and measures 3.9 x 2.7 x0.5 inches. The phone’s construction also earned equally high marks, as the keyboard and body both felt solidly constructed. When it came to actually using the phone, though, we were considerably more disappointed. The Charm’s display is a low-end 320 x 240-pixels, which results in less than stellar visuals. Plus, thanks to the phone’s meager 600-MHz processor, it performed sluggishly during moderate usage, which can pose some problems–in our review, we ran into lag when using the phone as a GPS navigator. Check out our full review of the Motorola Charm for more info.
The closer we get to the day when Windows Phone 7 devices hit the street the more excited I get. Of course, the whole launch could end up being a crushing disappointment. But the video below of the LG E900 gives me hope.
The folks at Android.pl.com got their hands on the device and declare it a worthy competitor to their beloved Android platform. Pretty high praise, but we can see why they say so. The interface is as slick and attractive, as promised. And the 1.3GHz Qualcomm QSD8650A system-on-chip appears pretty snappy. Let’s hope the promised 2D and 3D graphics acceleration makes the phone worthy of the XBox Live icon we see there. A mini-gaming phone that records and plays HD video? Yes, please.
Now that the HTC Evo 4G comes with Android 2.2/Froyo pre-installed (when you can find the phone at all) we thought this device was worth a second look. A phone’s hardware and design is important, but a software update can either make it better or make it unusable. If we were evaluating this model today, would it get the same star rating, or does the updated OS make it a better – or worse – buy?
Performance
Google and HTC packed in a long list of new features, functions, apps and widgets. But their usefulness is not only measured in UI tweaks. After all, what good is an app if the phone is too sluggish to handle it? Users were promised better performance with Froyo, so we put that to the test.
Some of the benchmark differences between the Evo with 2.1 and with 2.2 are startling (in a good way). The biggest jump we saw was in CPU performance measured by the Benchmark app. With Android 2.1, the Evo scored 649.67, but with 2.2 it jumped to 1880.69, more than double the points. The Linpack test shows this best as Froyo crunched out a five times better result of 33.8 compared to the previous version’s 6.7 score. The Evo also beats out the Motorola Droid 2 (1706.4 CPU / 13.9 Linpack).
Though CPU and overall performance scores are up in general, graphics is a mixed bag. The Benchmark app shows a slight loss in performance, going from a score of 27.8 to 26.8, both of which are lower than the Motorola Droid X running Android 2.1 (31.5). However, the An3DBench score went up 200 points to 3386. Though again, this score lags way behind a Motorola offering: the Droid 2 (6189). Plus, HTC’s cap of 30 fps remains even though Froyo is capable of faster video performance. Since HTC touts the Evo 4G as a multimedia powerhouse, we’re surprised that graphics performance and faster frame rates aren’t more of a priority.
Thankfully battery life showed a big improvement, with the newer OS giving the Evo an hour and a half of more juice.
“There’s an app for that” was a clever marketing campaign, but it can also be thought of in another way: as an epitaph. Think about it. It’s not just the fact that smart phones do it all these days—camera, camcorder, games, GPS, music, video, etc.—that has put single-purpose gadgets on notice. It’s the staggering level of quality they offer compared to just a couple of years ago. Many of today’s smart phones can snap 8-megapixel photos and record HD video (some with HDMI output), play console-quality games, and deliver free spoken turn-by-turn GPS directions. Portable video players? They’re so early aughts. Just look at such phones as the Droid X with its built-in Blockbuster app or Hulu Plus for iPhone. So it seems the real question isn’t whether smart phones will kill off so-called unitaskers, but when.
Not so fast, say the makers of dedicated devices. Executives from such companies as Flip, Kodak, and Novatel Wireless are quick to defend their respective product categories, highlighting simplicity, a lack of recurring monthly costs, more robust features, and unconsolidated battery meters as reasons to continue buying specialized gear. Are they right, or is it just a matter of time before the smart phone cuts down every category until nothing else is left?
“There’s an app for that” was a clever marketing campaign, but it can also be thought of in another way: as an epitaph. Think about it. It’s not just the fact that smart phones do it all these days—camera, camcorder, games, GPS, music, video, etc.—that has put single-purpose gadgets on notice. It’s the staggering level of quality they offer compared to just a couple of years ago. Many of today’s smart phones can snap 8-megapixel photos and record HD video (some with HDMI output), play console-quality games, and deliver free spoken turn-by-turn GPS directions. Portable video players? They’re so early aughts. Just look at such phones as the Droid X with its built-in Blockbuster app or Hulu Plus for iPhone. So it seems the real question isn’t whether smart phones will kill off so-called unitaskers, but when.
Not so fast, say the makers of dedicated devices. Executives from such companies as Flip, Kodak, and Novatel Wireless are quick to defend their respective product categories, highlighting simplicity, a lack of recurring monthly costs, more robust features, and unconsolidated battery meters as reasons to continue buying specialized gear. Are they right, or is it just a matter of time before the smart phone cuts down every category until nothing else is left?
It looks like the Samsung Vibrant may not be king of the T-Mobile smart phone hill for much longer. Not if the T-Mobile G2 has anything to say about it. This Android phone will be the first device for the carrier that rides on its HSPA+ network, delivering 4G-like speed in nearly 50 metro markets in the U.S. (covering 85 million peeps). T-Mobile has also posted a sign-up page where intrigued shoppers can register for updates.
How fast is HSPA+? Well, in tests we conducted in Philadelphia, T-Mobile’s network beat Sprint/Clear 4G head to head in a couple of locations, where we saw downloads as high as 4.5 Mbps using a connection stick. Then again, we get EDGE speeds right outside our Manhattan office. According to T-Mobile, the G2 has a “theoretical peak capability of 14.4 Mbps” but there’s a reason why it’s called theoretical. We can’t wait to see just how swift this phone is, and what services T-Mobile and Google roll out to help users get the most out of that throughput.
I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship when Jobs shared his thoughts on Flash and wrote that “Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices.” After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.
At LAPTOP, we’re still testing mobile Flash on a variety of handsets, but the early returns are a mixed bag, with some sites performing really well and other “unoptimized” videos and games causing restless thumb syndrome. When Flash 10.1 for Android is good, it’s great, but when it’s bad, it can make even the harshest Apple critic want to e-mail Steve Jobs an apology video playing in HTML 5.
To see mobile Flash at its best, I downloaded the Abobe Flash showcase for mobile in the Android Market, a directory of sites the company recommends. There I found a link to the Sony Pictures trailer site, and all of the clips played smoothly at full screen. I also found links to a number of TV shows that play in Flash, but not always smoothly. An episode of CSI on CBS.com didn’t cause any serious problems, but it was a bit jerky, particularly at full screen.
Despite the jerkiness, I was excited to be able to watch shows on my phone that previously played only on my PC. That excitement turned to disappointment when I ventured onto several sites that weren’t featured in the showcase.
When I went to ABC.com and tried to play a clip, I waited five minutes while the player said “loading.” During that time, it was nearly impossible to scroll around the page or tap objects on it. Eventually, I scrolled up to see a message that was previously obstructed and said  ”Sorry. An error occurred while attempting to load the video. Please try again later.” It gets worse…
When I visited Fox.com and tried to start an episode of House, the program actually played but, even over Wi-Fi, the playback was slideshow-like. Worse still, the player became unresponsive as it ignored my attempts to tap the pause, volume, and slider buttons. At some point during playback, an overlay message warned me that this video was “not optimized for mobile.” I encountered the same message when I tried to play a trailer of the Expendables that was embedded on the movie’s mySpace page. Wasn’t Flash 10.1 supposed to erase the boundaries between mobile and the desktop?
During these Flash lockups, it was nearly impossible to scroll around the screen and most taps were ignored or followed many seconds later. The only way I found to get your phone back to normal when it’s having a Flash meltdown like this is to hit the back button or the home button to get out of the program and even then the phone takes a second to become responsive again.
The difference between the smooth Flash trailers on Sony.com, the jerky episode of CSI, and the system-stalling Flash video on Fox.com is that the smoother ones were optimized specifically for phone playback. But if content providers have to go back and optimize their videos for mobile platforms, one of the key benefits of mobile Flash–backward compatibility with millions of existing videos–is lost. If you’re modifying your videos anyway, why not go the full monty and use an HTML 5 player instead of Flash?
Back in April, Jobs pointed out that mobile Flash had been promised and delayed since the beginning of 2009. “We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath,” he wrote. Unfortunately, many Web content providers haven’t been holding their breath either. As we surfed around, we found more and more sites that work with HTML 5 or other non-Flash technologies. The difference between one video format and another is so slight you can’t tell. I visited South Park Studios on my PC and saw that it used Flash to play episodes of the popular show, so I tried it on my phone. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Flash episodes of South Park streamed over 3G, until I realized that the site had detected that I was on my phone and was serving me a specially optimized non-Flash video player (like the YouTube app) instead.
After my mixed experience with video, I was curious to try Flash-based games on our Android phones. When I tried going to famous Flash game sites like Newgrounds or Addicting Games, I found that, as Steve Jobs said, “Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers.” Many of the games I loaded were slow to start and slowed the system, making it difficult to scroll around the page or tap on links. But much worse was that, even when these titles loaded, there was no way to control most of the action. Most games required keyboard or mouse actions I simply could not perform on my phone, even with its QWERTY slider. One shooter wanted me to hit the CTRL key to fire; another asked for the left mouse button.
Finally, I went to Mochi Games, a site that Adobe points to from its Flash showcase, a site that is designed specifically for mobile flash. There, I found  an attractive looking zombie game called Blood Red that was made for touch and required me to tap the screen to fire my gun at the oncoming undead. Unfortunately, when I tapped my shots went all over the place and I was dead within seconds. Was it Flash that caused the bullets I shot to go to places I didn’t tap or was it my poor hand-eye coordination? I don’t know, but I was frustrated.
Aside from playing videos and gaming, another purported benefit of Flash is that gives you the real web, without showing empty boxes on your favorite sites. While I love this idea, I actually found that some Flash sites had more difficulty loading on the mobile browser when I had the plug-in enabled. At one point, for a period of about 45 minutes, I was inexplicably unable to load either New York Times home page or LAPTOP’s home page as the Droid 2′s browser got stuck at the point where it was trying to download some Flash ads and a Flash video player.
When we ran our phone battery test, which surfs the Web until the handset’s battery dies, the whole process crashed when the browser reached Veoh.com, a site with an autoplaying Flash video on its home page. Once we disabled Flash, we were able to run the test to completion.
Despite all the problems I experienced with Flash Player 10.1, Adobe deserves credit for bringing the grownup PC experience of Flash to phones. Now, I can browse around the Web and attempt to use Flash sites that were never designed for my phone and see how it goes. Sometimes, I’ll even be pleasantly surprised by how well something translates. The South Park Avatar Creator, which is featured in Adobe’s showcase, is a really neat Flash tool for creating a South Park version of yourself.
Unfortunately, most phone users don’t have the patience for bugs and incompatibilities that hardcore geeks like myself do. Sometime this week, either Verizon or I will get an angry call from my mom when she tries watching a Flash video that locks up the screen or plays a Flash game that won’t respond because it expects mouse clicks rather than finger taps. Both of us will probably advise her to disable the plug-in so we won’t get called again and she won’t see Flash again, which may be her loss.
If Adobe can’t make its mobile plug-in work effectively with all Flash content, it needs to at least warn users and give them the option to cancel before it downloads and attempts to play a game or video that isn’t compatible with Flash Player 10.1 for phones. Popping up a cryptic message that says “this video isn’t optimized for mobile” after it starts buffering is not acceptable.
More importantly, Adobe needs to have a better answer to whether or not Flash  is still relevant in a world where other technologies have rapidly started displacing it. Based on my early experience with Flash Player 10.1 for mobile, it could soon join the floppy drive in the tech graveyard, something else Steve Jobs helped kill.
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.
Where do you get the music you listen to on your phone? Is it from your personal collection, Pandora, or an FM radio built-in to your phone? The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the RIAA have decided to pitch Congress on the idea of making it mandatory that all cell phones and portable electronics have an FM radio tuner built-in.
This interesting suggestion comes about because of an ongoing battle between the lobbying groups of the NAB and the RIAA about performance rights and payments. Radio is exempt from copyright law and currently pays royalties to the songwriter when a song is played on the air. Web-based and satellite radio pay the performer and the label. In the RIAA’s never-ending quest to use laws to increase their profit (instead of actually innovating or creating new business plans), their lobbying group is pushing to expand the performer and label payment scheme to include radio broadcasts. Shockingly enough, radio doesn’t want to pay them more money.
So the two sides have come up with the idea of radio paying the RIAA $100 million and mandating that FM radio tuners are included in mobile phones, PDAs (do people still use those?), and “portable electronics” so that radio’s reach is extended and is placed in the hands of more consumers.
All of this still has to go through Congress, so it’s possible that it might not actually happen, but it’s interesting. Two business that are losing out to technology are trying to legislate ways to force consumers to use them. I’ve been spent a lot of time listening to the radio recently and, quite frankly, there’s not much that appeals to me. There are too many commercials and too much of the same old music over and over again.
So here’s my question to you: if you have a phone with an FM tuner already in it, do you use it? If not, where do you get music that you listen to on your phone?
Microsoft has fired a shot across the bow of the iPhone, lifting the curtain on dozens of Xbox Live games scheduled to be available for the fall launch of its Windows Phone 7 platform. Some of the biggest developers are on board, including Konami, Gameloft, Popcap, THQ, Digital Goldfish, Microsoft Game Studios, Glu Mobile, and Carbonated Games. The lineup will include everything from popular casual titles like Bejeweled LIVE and Guitar Hero 5 to companion titles to console faves like Crackdown 2 and Halo Waypoint. We’re especially excited to see Assassins Creed, the two Star Wars titles, and Splinter Cell Conviction.
Of course, Xbox Live is all about community, which is why you’ll find most of the features Xbox 360 owners love migrating to the Windows Phone 7 platform. We’re talking about avatars you can trick out, the ability to challenge or message other gamers, compare achievements, and try games before you buy. The only big drawback is that the multiplayer action for WP7 is turn-based instead of simultaneous (at least for now).
Check out the full lineup below, as well as the gameplay footage Engadget shot during their hands-on session.
Let’s not get into the debate as to whether Samsung’s Epic 4G or the Evo 4G is the better smart phone–at least not yet. The bottom line is that the Epic 4G is the best device in the Samsung’s Galaxy S line and one more reason to consider switching to Sprint. This feature-packed Android slider sports one of the best keyboards we’ve used, a front-facing camera for video chats, and 4G data capability for blazing fast downloads (though we’re still waiting for Sprint to light up NYC). Plus, the Epic 4G’s 4-inch Super AMOLED display makes jaws drop, which will look even better once Samsung launches its Media Hub download service. We have a couple of complaints in our review, but overall the Galaxy S is worth the relatively steep $250 price tag.
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