T-Mobile has entered the competition in a partnership with Google with their new touch screen phone. The first thing to note about it is unlike any of its competitors it has both a slide out keyboard and a touch screen. Both seem to function well. The keys are adequately spaced apart and have a great feel. Although the touch screen doesn’t measure up as well as Apple’s iPhone, it still gets the job done. The G1 uses an open source OS, which Google hopes will get developers to create software for the phone. It will feature applications similar to iPhone with Android’s market.
The phone features WiFi, a full html browser, and GPS functionality. It has one-click contextual search, which lets you search for anything simply by typing in something with the keyboard.
The phone comes with a 3.2 mega pixel camera that takes still images, but not videos. It also doesn’t have a headphone jack, if you want to listen to music you will have to get an additional adapter that plugs into the USB port. It comes with a 1 gig memory card that can be upgraded to an 8 gig, or even higher down the road.
This phone will be available in US retail stores October 22, 2008 for $179 with a contract.
Rating 5/5
Sony's new E-Reader is a lightweight, very slim device will hold and display books for you to read. The case is made of an aluminum-like material, and feels very nice to hold for what could be hours. At only 0.3 inches thick it is much smaller than any book you would carry around and most likely weighs less than a paperback. It comes with a leather cover adding a nice touch of style.
It features E-ink display which makes it very easy to read (similarly to a real book) and is touted to be better for your eyes than a computer screen. However there is no backlight so you're stuck reading with some sort of light on.
Book titles are purchased on your computer and transferred to your E-Reader via USB cable. Titles are easy to search for and the device syncs the books you buy similar to an iPod does with iTunes. Sony has 20,000 titles to choose from, but you can find an additional 170,000 on Amazon.
The downsides are that there is a noticeable lag when navigating menus. Also the price… $270 may seem a little steep when you factor in also that books can cost up to $20 themselves.
It's a very nice gadget though, if you have the money.
Rating: 4/5
I was talking on my cell phone the other night, when my battery died. I plugged my phone in for about 10 minutes, certainly not long enough for all of the "bars" to reappear... I unplugged it, however, and began using it again as if my battery were completely recharged, only to watch it die again within minutes of my next call.
You may have noticed that your mobile phone seems to spend an awful lot of time with its battery gauge saying it's full, or at least almost full. Once you get to the half-full mark, the battery seems to die very quickly.
This phenomenon isn't as obvious with today's low-power-consumption phones, but it is still pretty hard to find a phone that doesn't do it.
Everyone knows that a battery that stays full for a long time makes a phone look good. When your phone appears to have a good bit of battery life left, you're more likely to use it. People who think their phone is about to die will make fewer or shorter calls and that is no good for the phone company.
This is one more illustration of the curse of a good marketing agent. Both phone makers and cellular service providers want you to think that your phone is still pretty much full of charge even if it's almost half empty. (DansData.com)
