RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700 Review

RIM along with AT&T has unveiled BlackBerry Bold 9700. This phone is not only the T-Mobile’s first 3G BlackBerry, its smoother design and performance improvements has made it a valuable addition to the carrier’s lineup. BlackBerry Bold 9700 offers UMA support for Wi-Fi calls, updated OS, and for the faster processor. BlackBerry Bold 9700 offers more features and speed than the T-Mobile’s other BlackBerry offerings.

Design:

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700 has the larger screen and a well spaced keyboard which makes its fans very happy. BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes with 109x60x14 mm of dimension. It weighs around 122 g. BlackBerry Bold 9700 is smaller and lighter than the BlackBerry Tour. Its chrome edges and lines between the keyboard rows add more attractive to the headset.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 has a 2.44 inches display with 480x360 pixels of resolutions which keeps the things sharp and clear. The user interface is unaffected, though the BlackBerry OS v5.0 brings some slight refinements. You can customize the Home screen with different background images and themes along with six different shortcuts.

Below the display, you can see the Talk and End keys, a Back button, and Menu shortcut. BlackBerry Bold 9700 has replaced the traditional trackball navigator, like BlackBerry Curve 8520, with an optical trackpad which is a responsive. Using Trackpad, navigating the menus and scrolling through lists feels very smoother. Below the buttons, you can see the Full QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is larger and makes comfortable to type text messages and longer emails.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 has 3.5 mm headphone jack, shortcut key, and microUSB port on its left side. On the right side, you will get the volume controller and camera button. On the top of the device, you get lock and mute buttons. The flash and camera are situated on the back side. RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes with AC adapter, microSD card with 2 GB included which can be extended up to 16 GB, USB cable, and stereo headset.

Features:

RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700 has marked the first 3G BlackBerry for T-Mobile. BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes with BlackBerry OS version 5.0 which brings some of the improvements to the calendar capabilities and messaging and as well as to the browser. However, BlackBerry OS v5.0 doesn’t bring the tabbed browsing, but still it provides faster JavaScript and CSS processing for loading the pages quickly. The browser supports Google Gears and BlackBerry widgets and the real-time streaming protocol so that you can view the streaming videos from the sites like Youtube.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 has UMA and Wi-Fi support which helps you to receive and make the unlimited calls over wireless network. Apart from these, Bold 9700 includes quad-band roaming, voice activated dialing, smart dialing, conference calling, a speakerphone, visual voice mail, text and MMS messaging, and speed dial. BlackBerry Bold 9700 also includes Bluetooth which supports for stereo and mono Bluetooth headsets. Bold 9700, by default, comes with GPS/A-GPS.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 has the great messaging capabilities. You can sync your smartphone with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, with the support for IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange, in order to deliver the corporate email in a real-time. BlackBerry Bold 9700 allows you to access the POP3, IMAP4 email accounts. You can also view and edit the attachments like MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, GIF, JPEG and many more with the help of attachment viewer. You can also chat with your buddy list from AIM, ICQ, Windows Live, G-Talk, Yahoo, and BlackBerry Messenger.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 includes calendar, memo pad, calculator, task lists, and a voice recorder. Bold 9700 comes with 256 MB of internal memory. It supports WMA, MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMV, H.264, and MPEG4 video clips. You can sync your library with BlackBerry Media Sync.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes with 3.15 megapixel camera with 2048x1536 pixels of resolution. It offers autofocus, flash, zoom, and video recording capabilities. Its picture quality is impressive.

BlackBerry Bold 9700 offers excellent call quality. Audio is clear with very less background noise so that you can hear the callers without any disturbance. Its quad-band quality is also quite good. Bold 9700 deliver with 624 MHz processor. BlackBerry Bold 9700 comes with 1,500 mAh Lithium Ion battery which offers standby time up to 408 hours and a Talk time of 6 hours. BlackBerry Bold 9700 is available for $199.99 with two year contracts.

HP Mini 311 Netbook Review

 

HP has unveiled its brand new laptop called Mini 311 with a faster low-voltage CPUs and bigger HD displays. The Nividia powered Mini 311 laptop offers competitive performance. HP Mini 311 comes in 11.6 inch with a 1366x768 pixel of screen resolution.

HP Mini 311 comes with processor of Intel N270 with 1 GB of RAM and Windows XP as operating system. Nvidia provides sufficient power so that you can play the HD video files with comfort. Also offers to play some games at the same time. The performance will not affect for the tasks which doesn’t use the graphics.

HP Mini 311 has an inbuilt graphics and high resolution. It is a generic, dull, gray plastic, with either a white or black lid with a slight swirl pattern. The keys of the keyboard are beautiful with an ornamental shape and are wide faced. But when you start typing, you will feel that the keys are very loose and weak. The Touchpad is not so impressive because it provides more struggle to your fingers. You have to go to the Control Panel and you need to change the speed of the pointer, because the factory settings for Touchpad are created by keeping in mind the older resolution of Netbook. The two silver-like buttons (mouse buttons) below the Touchpad looks like inexpensive.

The key feature of the HP Mini 311 laptop is its 11.6 inch wide screen LED display with 1366x768 native resolutions. But, the screen is very soft and the plastic screen bezel in black is very glossy. This laptop contains a set of connections as per the standard. You can customize your laptop including 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with an extra cost. While running non-graphics, Intel Atom N280 CPU has acted as expected. Simple tasks, like web surfing, office tasks, basic Photoshop work, and email, are performed very well. You can play the games respectably.

HP Mini 311 offers excellent video playback and updated version of Flash allows the streaming web video to get the GPU to its advantage. Mini 311 comes with 160GB of HDD at the 5400 rpm. It has an Nvidia MCP79 chipset and weighs around 3.3 pounds and 4.1 pounds with AC adapter. HP Mini 311 offers the battery life of 5 hours and 20 minutes to watch the videos and to play the games.

HP Mini 311 has already hit the market with the cost of $399 with one year warranty for labor and parts. If you want to upgrade your plan to three years, then you have to pay $179 extra which includes the accidental damage protection. You can also avail the 24x7 customer support for free via phone line along with the driver downloads and online KBs (Knowledge Base).

Motorola Droid Review

 

Motorola has unveiled its brand new mobile DROID. Motorola Droid feels solid and nice phone with a 3.7 inch of touch screen display. Its display is attractive and the device is lightning fast, especially for Android phone. Droid comes with Android 2.0 version of operating system. It is powerful communications and web surfing tool meeting the high standards. Its keyboard is shallow and flat and it makes very difficult to type.

Design:

Motorola Droid comes in an 115.8x60x13.7 mm of dimensions and it weighs around 165g. Droid has TFT capacitive touchscreen with the support of 16M colors. It comes with 480x854 pixels of resolutions with full QWERTY keyboard with 5-way navigation keys. The display resolution provides 409,820 pixels which sounds very great. The keyboard of the device doesn’t take the entire length of the device.

The basic interface is similar to the Android users. You can see three Home screens which you can customize each pane with the help of widgets. In the central pane, you can see the Google Search bar using which you can search whatever you need. The Main menu can be accessed via pull tab which is at the bottom of the display. You can also move the icons and add the shortcuts and folders.

On the display, you have four buttons – Back, Menu, Home and Search. The functionality of these buttons is same as on other Android phones. Droid doesn’t have the physical Talk control. Alternatively, you have to access the calling functions via widget on the display. When you open the Droid to show the physical keyboard, the screen orientation will automatically change. The keys of the keyboard are flush and squashed with each other which makes hard to type the text quickly.

The central OK and toggle buttons, which are in the next to display, are easy to use. It assists you in browsing through the menus and selecting items. Motorola Droid contains Volume controller and camera activation/capture buttons on the left side of the panel. You can also use the 3.5 mm headset jack, which is on the top of the panel, to use your own headset. Camera lens, stereo speakers, and flash are on the rare side of the device. You can also use the microSD card slot by removing the battery on the rare side.

Features:

Motorola Droid offers many of the same core features which are in the Android phones. Droid is the first smartphone to run the Android 2.0 OS which gives new features and interface enhancements. Droid uses 600 MHz of ARM Cortex A8 CPU with PowerVR SGX530 graphics. Android 2.0 has expanded the capabilities of the personal information management tool including calendar, contacts, and email.

Motorola Droid offers native Microsoft Exchange synchronization out of the box for calendar, contacts, and email, in addition to the support for Gmail, IMAP and POP3 accounts. Only Microsoft Exchange and Gmail offer the push delivery, whereas the IMAP and POP3 message are retrieved at user-specified time intervals. Droid helps you to merge the contact information from the various accounts like Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, and Facebook, and it combines them on a single contact card for an individual.

Android 2.0 has brought some of the improvements to the web browser. Droid now supports HTML5. You can add the visual bookmarks and you can also toggle between the multiple windows though the simple list view. This browser doesn’t have the Flash Lite support. It has the plug-in which will support the Adobe Flash Player 10. Motorola Droid comes with GPS/A-GPS with the different Google Maps Navigation app. On Google Maps, you can use the voice-guided, text-to-speech directions. Google Maps offers layered maps with traffic data, Google Latitude, and satellite view.

Motorola Droid supports MP3, eAAC+, WMA9, MP4, WMV9, WAV, and other audio formats. Music quality is very good. You can listen to the songs using 3.5mm headset jack. Even, video playback is also smoother. It doesn’t require much rebuffering. Droid comes with 5 megapixel camera with resolution of 2592x1944 pixels. It has autofocus and dual-LED flash. You can record a video for 30 seconds, if you are adding the video to multimedia message, but you can record up to 30 minutes in Normal Mode. The photo quality is decent, but not impressive. You can record the video at 720x480 pixels of resolutions at 24 frames per second.

Motorola Droid comes with 133 MB of internal memory and 256 MB of RAM. It comes with 8 GB of microSD card which can be extended up to 32 GB. Apart from these, it has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, 3G, GPRS, and microUSB v2.0.

Performance:

Motorola Droid makes a big rise in the internal performance. Droid is lighting fast, as compared with other Android processors, when opening any applications and menus, scrolling through lists and switching the displays. The call quality of Droid is excellent. There is no problem with hearing the voice. It gets strong and consistent signal. Unfortunately, Droid doesn’t support Bluetooth Voice commands or dialling. You have to select the icon from the Main menu in order to use the Voice Dialer feature.

Motorola Droid offers the Lithium Ion 1400 mAh battery. It gives Standby up to 350 hours and the Talk time is up to 6 hours 30 minutes.

Motorola Droid doesn’t support the dual-mode capability for domestic GSM networks and CDMA networks abroad. So, this disappoints the user who frequently travels abroad.

Apple iPhone 3GS Review

Apple iPhone 3GS, the predecessor’s of normal iPhone 3G, has hit the market with faster processing and network speeds, more memory, extended battery life and with other additional features. Its performance boost, sharper camera with video and the improved battery life make the iPhone 3GS a much more balanced smartphone. iPhone 3GS is the first iPhone which comes with preinstalled iPhone OS 3.0.

Design:

Apple iPhone 3GS looks similar like the previous model. It has the same shape and the same external controls, but 3GS is the unique in many ways. iPhone 3GS comes in two colors – black and white. It comes with 115.5x62.1x12.3 mm dimensions and weighs around 135g. This phone’s dimension is same as its predecessor, but weigh slight heavier.

Apple iPhone 3GS has the TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors. Its display has 320x480 pixels of resolution with 3.5 inches of widescreen multi-touch display with fingerprint resistant oleo phobic coating. The SIM card slot, power button, and 3.5mm audio headset jack is situated at the top of the device. In the right side of the device, you can see the camera activation/capture key using which you can access camera faster. At the bottom, mic and loudspeaker is situated, but there is only one loudspeaker, which is not enough. But, Apple have tuned the loudspeaker performance because of which the sound is now louder than the before.

The back side of the iPhone 3GS has the fingerprint magnet which is much harder to clean it. You can also see the camera lens on the back side. The camera functionality is somewhat improved with higher resolution, autofocus, and video recording.

Features:

Apple iPhone 3GS has the same features as in the iPhone 3G, but with some additional features. As I said above, iPhone 3GS is the first iPhone which shipped with preinstalled iPhone OS 3.0. It has faster 600MHz CPU with 256 MB of RAM. The iPhone 3GS is faster in all the aspects like starting the menus, programs, and the responsiveness of the screen auto rotation. The iPhone 3GS boots the iPhone 3.0 OS in just 15 seconds. If you try to boot iPhone 3G, then it will take double the time.

The iPhone 3GS has the Search option called Spotlight which, by default, searches in the 9 places, i.e. contacts, applications, mail, notes, music, audio books, video and podcasts, and finally in calendar. You can change the priority of the result listing. iPhone 3GS comes with HTML Safari web browser using which you can browse the internet, read/write Emails and so on.

iPhone 3GS has two new features which you cannot find it in the iPhone 3G. They are Magnetic Compass and Voice Control. The Voice Control app supports many of the commands like call a phone number, playing the musing by song or artist or album name, shuffling the music and so on. The recognition of Voice Control is speaker-independent so you no need to pre-record your voice commands. It supports over 30 local variations. To open the Voice Control app, just hold and press the Home key. This interface is simple. If you pronounce a command correctly, then the app will respond. If the command is wrong, then the app quits automatically. But the problem is whenever you pronounce wrong command you have to restart the application to retry the command.

Magnetic Compass works in Google Maps and any other third party maps and it also has its own application. This app will allows you to view the exact GPS co-ordinates. This app seems very inaccurate at times. However, in Google Maps, the maps auto rotation is very accurate.

iPhone 3GS has also optimized some of the features for disabled people like Voice Over, Interface Zoom and Whit-on-black color combo. It helps the disabled people to use the phone without any issues.

The call quality of the phone is just fine, but whereas the messaging has been greatly improved. You can send SMS, Multimedia messages, and Email. iPhone 3GS includes audio and video players and TV-out features. It has 32GB internal memory so you can store 100 dialled, received, and missed calls entries each. Apart from these, it has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, and microUSB v2.0.

iPhone 3GS has 3.15 megapixel camera with touch-focus and geo-tagging features. You can record a video with a VGA resolution at 30 frames per second. It has Lithium Ion Standard battery. It offers the Standby up to 300 hours with the Talk time up to 12 hours for 2G and up to 5 hours for 3G. The audio playback will offer you up to 30 hours of battery life.

This phone has already hit the market with the available price of $299 for 32 GB and $199 for 16 GB. The newly introduced changes in both hardware level and software level, will make the new iPhone 3GS a more balanced smartphone.

HTC Nexus One Review

Google, no 1 Internet Search Provider in the World, has unveiled its new and latest mobile called “Nexus One”. Nexus One is the first phone to function on Android platform. It’s a fast and user convenient phone. The best feature of this phone is its display. It has AMOLED touchscreen and the phone includes AMOLED on Android platform. Nexus One does not support DivX and Xvid formats, doesn’t has flash support for browser, voice dialling, smart dialling, FM radio, and there is no specific camera key.

Design:

Google Nexus One is sleek and attractive. By seeing its trackball and display, it looks like HTC Hero and HTC Droid Eris. It comes with 119x59.8x11.5mm in size and it weighs up to 130g. This phone has 3.7 inch AMOLED display which is a start attractive of the phone. It has an 800x400 pixel resolution and Android 2.1 operating system along with Trackball navigation, touch-sensitive controls, and proximity sensor.

Nexus One has five home screens for full personalization. Compared to other and previous Android phones, Nexus One gives some unique touches to the home screen. It has a shortcut bar which allows you to activate and deactivate the features like GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and syncing. It’s all easy to access using shortcut bar without digging into the Menu. Main menu is very much similar to the previous Android phones. The interior menus, mute icons and display lock are comparable with Motorola Droid. Nexus One allows you to adjust the backlighting time, brightness and also allows to limit the display animations.

Google Nexus One offers four touch controls just below the display - Back, Control for Notifications Menu, Home, and Search buttons. If you long press the Home button, it will bring up your recent and latest features and if you long press the Search button, it will activate the Voice search. It also has a virtual keyboard which is again unchanged from other Android phones. You can use the virtual keyboard in landscape mode and also in portrait mode.

The power control is situated at the top of the phone. It has a 3.5mm jack at the top of the phone to use your headphones. Volume control is situated in the left side of the phone. In the back side of the phone, you can access the 5 megapixel Camera with 2560x1920 pixels, autofocus, and LED flash. This phone supports microSD and which you can access it by removing the battery. It has microUSB port in the bottom of the phone.

Features:

As an Android phone, Nexus One has everything you would like to have it. Contacts are limited by the memory available. Contacts are synced automatically from your Gmail account. You can also sync the contacts from Facebook and Microsoft Exchange. Nexus One comes with 512 MB of internal memory and 4 GB of microSD card which can be extended up to 32 GB. It has 5 megapixel Camera with 2560x1920 pixels with an autofocus and LED flash. Camera has smile detection and geo-tagging features. It has 2x digital zoom along with White Balance, Color effect Controls. You can record a video up to 30 minutes of 720x480 pixels resolution at the 20 frames per second. Coming to the photo quality, it is satisfying and video quality is about average.

Along with Gmail, Nexus also supports IMAP4 and POP3 accounts but there is a problem with Yahoo mail account. Sometimes you may get connected and sometimes not. Nexus One has a great feature called voice features. Using this feature, you can do many functions like composing text messages, updating Facebook page, searching over Android Market. But still, you have to press the microphone icon on the display to activate the feature and other icons to move between the text fields.

Along with these features, it includes calculator, compass, duplex speakerphone, A2DP stereo Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Text Messaging, Multimedia Messaging (MMS), and text-to-speech feature. Also includes Google applications like Picasa, Google Voice, G-Talk, Goggles, and Youtube.

Performance:

Nexus One has a quand band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) which can be used with any GSM provider. It also has 3G band (2100/AWS/900) which is only compatible with T-Mobile network in U.S. The call quality is also good. You will hear clear voice and volume is loud. Bluetooth calls are also very good and worth.

This phone has the HTML web browser which lacks Flash Lite, but it includes multitouch software update. The GPS applications do better when compared to other Android phones. You can stream the videos satisfyingly over the Youtube, but it depends upon your 3G connection. It supports MP3, WAV, MP4, H.264, H.263, eAAC+ and other audio formats.

Its battery performance is also excellent. It gives up to 290 hours of Standby for 2G and up to 250 hours for 3G. In case of Talk time, it gives up to 10 hours for 2G and up to 7 hours for 3G. Nexus One gives 20 hours of Talk time for audio playback and average 5 hours for video playback.

Google Nexus One has already hit the market. It is available at the price of $529 in all over the World. It is also available at the cost of $129 with 2 year contract with T-Mobile.

Motorola BACKFLIP Review

Motorola has introduced latest mobile called “BACKFLIP”. It is the first phone being an Android phone to attract AT&T’s network. This phone runs with Android v1.5 operating system and it can be upgradeable. Its best feature is that it has a unique design which includes QWERTY keyboard in the rear facing in nature along with the trackpad which is situated in the back side of the display.

Design:

As I said above, the best feature about this Motorola BACKFLIP device is its design. By seeing it, you may or may not be impressed with it but most of the times; it looks like Motorola Cliq phone because of its rectangular shape and the rounded edges. BACKFLIP comes with 3.1 inches capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320x480 pixels. It has a dimension of 108x53x15.3 mm and weighs 133g. Size and resolution are just fine, but user may not get impressed because of its poor sunlight legibility. Its display supports 256K color, but due to Android OS, the color will decrease to 65K. Once the Android version is upgraded with the support for 256K, then it may possibly resolve this issue. But, poor sunlight legibility cannot be fixed.

Capacitive touchscreen is quite responsive. When you open up the keyboard, the UI will rotate to landscape mode automatically. The touch-sensitive buttons have nice haptic feedback and solid backlighting. Apart from the Search key, the typical Android buttons are on hand and the Search key is situated on the QWERTY keyboard.

Motorola BACKFLIP has microUSB port, Volume Controller, and the Camera activation button on it right side of the panel. In the left panel, you won’t see any controls. The microUSB port doesn’t have any protective cap for it. Alternatively, it has a green LED connector which displays light whenever you plug the data cable or charger.

One of the key features of BACKFLIP device is its “Touchpad”. You can see the touchpad in the back side of the screen. It’s a centrally placed touch panel does the trackball job which you can use to scroll and as well as for selecting. You can find the shortcut buttons for messaging and web browser. The keyboard has a 5 megapixel lens and the LED flash.

Features:

Its MOTOBLUR UI comes pre-installed with some nice add-on. You can access social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Along with these social networking sites, you can also access the emails. It has an interface called “Account Manager” which allows you to manage your all social networking sites accounts in one place so that no need to go into each and every application setup account or to delete it. The cool security feature of the MOTOBLUR UI is it allows you to lock your phone remotely and also allows you to wipe your all the information stored in the phone remotely, in case of missing or stolen.

It has a 3.5mm audio jack at the top of the device along with the Power/Lock button. It has a 2GB of microSD card and which can be extended up to 32 GB. It has an internal 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM memory. It has a 5 megapixel Camera with the resolution of 2560x1920 pixels. This phone doesn’t have the zoom facility, but in place it has autofocus by which you can get the better quality of the image. This phone supports the MP3, WMA9 player, WAV, eAAC+, and many other audio formats. This device has a Document Viewer which helps you to view the documents without downloading and installing any other app.

In case of networking, it supports GPRS up to 32 to 48 kbps speed and also supports 3G network. It has a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, and microUSB v2.0. It offers Google Maps along with the street view.

Motorola BACKFLIP comes with 1400 mAh Lithium Ion with the Standby time of up to 315 hours and the talk time is up to 6 hours.

The build quality of the Motorola BACKFLIP is excellent. Motorola BACKFLIP has already hit the market in March 2010. It costs $99 with 2-year contract. Its full cost is $349.

Micromax Q5FB

Micromax Q5fb joins to the wide range of handy mobiles being released by MICROMAX to meet the generation next customer needs. Micromax Q5fb is the next version thereafter Micromax Q5. The Q5fb device comes with more advancement in its features and user operatability.You can even share your thoughts, catch up with your friends online through a one touch access to Facebook.

This dual sim( GSM and GSM) device Weighs only 95 grams and is of 115 X 62 X 12.5mm as per the company specification. It  has a cute 2.2inches 320×240 pixels QVGA Display and supports a wide range of depth  upto 262k colors.

MP3 Audio files, video files like avi,mpeg and other important document can be saved in the internal memory of 15MB and can be used for easy retrieval. The Memory capacity can be expanded upto 8GigaBytes through MicroSD slot.

  

  Many important documents can be exchanged with other devices through Bluetooth with Advanced Audio Distribution Profile(A2DP).The device also lets you to acces the web through GPRS/WAP.


The device is also embedded with a 2MP camera which can be used to capture  pictures of your favourite moments.Video recording is also supported.

Battery specifications: The device has a Lithium-ion battery of 1000mAh which has talk time capacity of 5 hours and a stand by time of approx 180 hours.

Other Additional Features include 1000 SMS storage capacity,Phonebook memory of 1000 contacts,Games, Speed dialing,QWERTY keypad, track ball for scrolling and a opera mini Browser to support web connectivity. :)

Nokia 5230 Nuron (T-Mobile) Review

Nokia has announced its new product Nokia 5230 Nuron in association with T-Mobile. Nuron is a full touch screen smartphone which provides 3G support, and offers access to Ovi Store. It even offers the turn-by navigation though Ovi Maps. With the help of Ovi Maps, you can access the maps of US, Mexico, and Canada along with other premium content like forecasts, Planet guides, and so on for free.

Design:

Nokia 5230 Nuron looks similar to the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition and Xpress Music phone. Its look is good as compared to the other phones. It comes with 4.37 inches in tall, 2.03 inches in wide and 0.61 inches in thickness. Battery cover doesn’t have the soft-touch finish as with the 5800 Navigation Edition.

It has several controls in the sides of the panel. SIM Card and MicroSD expansion slots are placed in the left side and both are protected by covers. In another side, i.e. right side of the panel, you can see the Camera Activation and Capture button, lock switch, and Volume Controller buttons. Talk Key, End Key, and Main Menu buttons are situated just below the display screen, but you will be using most of the functions using resistive touch screen.

This phone comes with 640x360 pixel resolution and it supports 16 million colors. Its display is bright, clear and fulfilling. It has an onscreen keyboard which makes you to feel restricted. It has built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor by which you can view the maps, photos, web pages and also rotate the phone in the landscape mode.

Nokia 5230 Nuron’s touch screen is quite responsive. Using your finger, you can easily navigate the menus. Opening web links is little risky, but you can double-tap in the browser to zoom in the page and tap the link. It offers more sensitive and smoother scrolling experience. The inconsistencies of the interface make the device a bit annoying to use when compared with other touch screen devices.

You can find Micro-USB port, power connector and button, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on top of the device. There is also an XpressMusic button on top of the display using which you can open the various multimedia options which are present in the phone, including video gallery, photo gallery, music player, Web browser, and many other online services like Ovi, Flickr, and so on. Camera is situated in the back side of the panel, but unluckily there is no flash.

Features:

Although the Nokia 5230 Nuron functions are same as Nokia 5800 series, it gives up some of the features to keep the costs down. It contains Ovi Map applications so that you can get the free turn-by-turn, voice-based navigation. Ovi Maps is a much more helpful tool and it also provides many advantages. Even though you don’t have the data connection, still you can view the maps. Maps are downloaded to your device so that you can continue to view it even if you are offline. Additionally, Nokia uses the hybrid vector mapping technology which assists maps to redraw faster and gives you the ability to zoom in and zoom out of the maps with the less delay. Maps can be displayed in 3D, 2D, Satellite, or Terrain view. There are also 3D landmarks which helps you by providing the reference point. You can also customize other settings like route preferences, frequency of traffic updates and so on.

Apart from Ovi Map, Nuron comes with standard personal information management tools, such as File Manager, Calculator, Calendar, Voice Recorder, Notepad, alarm Clock and so on. But, you don’t have the Document Viewer. If you want to view any office documents, then you have to download the app (for ex: QuickOffice 6 Mobile Suite) from the Ovi Store.

Nokia 5230 Nuron supports IMAP, POP3 and SMTP E-Mail accounts. Also supports Exchange via Mail for Exchange 2008. You can also use the messaging clients like Yahoo, G-Talk, Windows Live, MySpace, and AIM. Apart from these, it also offers speed dialling, voice dialling, conference calling, and multimedia and text messaging. The phone’s address book is limited by the available memory and the SIM card can hold additional 250 contacts.

It also provides Bluetooth 2.0 onboard with the support for stereo and mono Bluetooth headsets. This phone is compatible with T-Mobile’s 3G network, but it didn’t included Wi-Fi in order to cut down the price. It supports for MP3, MP4, WMA, MPEG5-SP, MPEG4-AVC, WMV9, eAAC+, AAC, and other audio formats.

The device includes FM Radio which you can use it using headphones. It offers 70 MB of internal memory and can be expanded up to 16 GB via microSD card slot. As I said above, Camera is situated in the back side of the panel. It has 2 mega pixel resolutions without flash. You can zoom the image up to 3x and can use the standard editing options. You can also record the video at 640 x 480 pixel resolution at 30 frames per second.

Performance:

Nokia 5230 Nuron’s call quality is excellent. You can hear the voice without any disturbances. As its voice clarity is good, you don’t experience any call drops during conversations. T-Mobile’s 3G network provides the reliable coverage. As a navigator, Nuron does the better job of tracking your location. It calculates routes very faster, but typing the addresses into the application is bit hard with the restricted keyboard. You can sign up for the Ovi account and use the web portal to synchronize the routes to your phone.

Its general performance is acceptable. It keeps you up-to-date with the most day-to- day tasks. Nuron comes with 1320mAh Lithium Ion battery with a talk time of 420 minutes and standby time is up to 458 hours. So, in general, this phone can be acceptable by the user who uses the maps, internet on the regular basis.

Upgrading to Windows 7

Microsoft has released its new Windows operating system called "Windows 7" on 22nd October 2009. Now-a-days, Windows 7 is very much familiar to the users who use the computer or laptop regularly. From small kid to older age people got attracted to this new Windows operating system.

Windows 7 is in store now. Anyone can buy it by visiting to the nearest store. It comes in Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate Editions. You can choose the edition which suits you better.

But, before upgrading to Windows 7, you need to know some of the points. Below video gives you the tips before you upgrade to the Windows 7:

Tips Before Upgrading to Windows 7

HP Pavilion dv4-2145dx Review

HP, no need of any introduction, has unveiled its one more laptop with huge expectations by the name “HP Pavilion dv4-2145dx”. This laptop offers excellent audio outputs, tiny remote control, and HDMI port. This Intel powered Budget laptop provides competitive performances. This laptop is suitable for entertainment purpose.

HP Pavilion dv4-2145dx comes with AMD Turion II M520 mobile processor, which is clocked at 2.3 GHz. It has Dual-Core technology with a 64-bit computing capability. It has L2 cache memory with a 1 MB of size. It has 4 GB of DDR2 SDRAM (800 MHz), which can be extendable up to the maximum of 8 GB, a 320 GB of hard drive (7200 rpm), ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 graphics card, and 128 MB of video memory.

Pavilion dv4-2145dx has 14.1 inches display screen with a resolution of 1280 X 800 pixel. It supports SD Memory Card, Multi-media Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, and xD-Picture Card. It has a Touchpad located the space bar, centering to the display. The Mouse buttons are below the Touchpad. You can also turn off the Touchpad to avoid accidental cursor movements.

This laptop contains HDMI port which you will not find in the budgeted laptops. You can stream the video content to the HDTV with the help of HDMI port. It also contains eSATA port, USB 2.0 ports, eSATA + USB combo port, multi-format card reader, audio ports, and a VGA port. It supports Ethernet 10/100, ExpressCard/54 slot, wireless and Wi-Fi. But, you won’t get the Bluetooth feature in this laptop.

HP Pavilion dv4-2145dx comes with 6-cell Lithium Ion battery. It offers 2 hours 30 minutes of battery life on continuous video playback. This laptop comes with Windows 7 Home Premium operating system and the cost of this laptop is $599.

It includes one year warranty on parts and labour. It provides 24x7 telephone assistance for free. It also includes real time chat with the technical representatives. You can download lots of drivers from its official web site. You can also extend the warranty period by making extra payments.