GeekTest: The HTC Desire HD Review
HTC Desire HD Review
I was recently sent one of the new HTC Desire HD mobile phones for review, but i’ve been putting off writing it. Not because I’m not sure what to say about it, or because I dislike it. But mainly because, once I write this, i’ll have to send it back to the PR company. As someone who’s an avid iPhone user, and who’s current phone is the iPhone 3GS, the Android driven Desire HD rather took me by surprise. Every time i review a smart phone for the site, i’m obviously going to compare it to the iPhone, and nothing has really come close enough for me to want to switch from Apple’s cool designery grasp. Until now…
The Spec
HTC Desire HD Spec
The 164g HTC Desire HD comes with a 4.3 inches (480 x 800 WVGA) touchscreen, in a 123 x 68 x 11.8 mm case. Some might say that’s a little on the large size, but it actually feels fine in your hand. The screen takes up most of the front of the phone which is great for watching movies or tv shows on. Across the bottom are 4 touch-sensitive buttons that go to home, back, bring up the menu, or search.
It has a nice high spec 8 megapixel camera with auto focus and dual LED flash, and can record video in 720p HD quality. Inside there’s a 1 GHz Scorpion processor, with 1.5 GB (expandable to 32 GB via SD cards) and 768 MB of RAM.
Connectivity
For connectivity, the HTC Desire HD has a micro USB socket, and runs Bluetooth, EDGE, WiFi, and 3G. But this is no ordinary 3G… This is the enhanced HSDPA 3G, and frankly, it’s incredible. It’s effectively like having WiFi access from anywhere with a normal phone signal. It’s completely capable of streaming 480p video from YouTube without so much as a small stutter.
The Interface
HTC Desire HD Interface
The HTC Desire HD is running Android 2.2, which has been enhanced even more by HTC’s Sense UI. This allows more widgets and screens to play with, and more customisation to your home screen. One of the things that has always bugged me on non-Apple smartphones is the unresponsiveness of the interface. Thankfully there’s none of that on the Desire HD. The touch sensitive and animation is as fluid as anything Apple produces, and is a joy to use. The interface is also highly customisable, with you no only being able to change ringtones, but whole soundsets, giving you complete control over every little bleep and chirp the phone makes. One more feature which really impressed was the boot time from the phone having been totally switched off, which comes in at 7 or 8 seconds. It’s a small thing, but just adds to the slickness of the experience.
Contacting People
HTC Desire HD Contacts
Of course, it’s all very well it being slick and a great mini computer, but what about it’s primary function – actually contacting people. One handy little feature is the ability to sync your phone contacts with your mail and social network accounts. This allows you to use any contact info from their facebook or your gmail account directly in your phones contact list. This also allows you to pull pics from those accounts to use as the contact’s icon if you want to.
The sound quality of the phone itself is perfectly fine when talking. There’s also a rather nice feature if you choose to use the phone in your car, where it’ll give you a screen of nice chunky buttons for key functions, making answering hands free calls much easier.
Email (via POP3, IMAP or Exchange server) and social networking accounts are easy to set up, and typing out messages on email or SMS is straightforward on the iPhone-like virtual keyboard.
Internet Access
As i mentioned earlier, the 3G on steroids (HSDPA) makes browsing ridiculously quick for a mobile device. The in-built browser is also fast and responsive, and supports HTML 5, and Flash. This means video can actually run on the page without jumping out to a separate media player like it does in certain fruit based mobile devices. Having said that, videos do still run better if you use the separate media player which bypass the appalling Flash code (which is a problem with Flash/Adobe, and not the Desire).
Media & Camera
HTC Desire HD Camera
The 8 megapixel camera gives decent enough still photos. Good enough for any quick snaps you wish to take, and the LED flash is perfectly acceptable, and can double as a flashlight if needed.
The sound quality for the music has been enhanced from previous models with Dolby Mobile and SRS virtual surround sound. It’s a little tinny, but good for a phone. Music can be browsed through using the Apple-esque cover art mode, and also has a link to the Amazon MP3 store allowing you to download music direct to the phone.
Video playback on the 4.3 inch screen is great to watch. I could be a little picky about the contrast or the colour, but really it’s fine. It also has this nifty little trick which allows you to wirelessly stream video from the phone to a DLNA enabled TV. It also means you can stream media from DLNA enabled devices such as a PS3.
The Battery…
So this is my only real negative of the phone. The battery life sucks. From my experience of the testing model I had, it would be very easy to drain the life out of it with a reasonable day’s use. It’s the one part of the phone that really lets the whole thing down. Of course, using less video or music playback on it would expand that life, but it’s slightly annoying to have a great device somewhat crippled by sucky power usage. It will usually last the day, but you’ll find yourself leaving it charging every night.
Apps
Since it’s running Android, the HTC Desire HD gives you access to all the apps on the Android store. It also comes with a few of it’s own, such as news & weather, or the Shazam style SoundHound which will try to recognise any songs you play to it (that includes you singing/humming to it!). It comes with a google maps app, but also HTC’s own Locations app, which is built in association with TomTom. The basic set up is free, but there are a bunch of premium addons (like speed camera locations, traffic etc…) which you can buy if you so wish.
Conclusion
The HTC Desire HD is a fantastic mobile device, which really made me look at the iPhone and think very hard about which one i’d want. The only thing that really lets it down is the battery life. In all other areas it really gives the iPhone some serious competition.
For more on the HTC Desire HD on the Three network, click here.
9/10 – A superb phone that just need a better battery.
Review: Sony Ericsson Elm
Sony Ericsson Elm Review
Hello, my name is Dave, and i’m an iPhone user… Or at least i was until my 1st gen iPhone finally died. I’m currently a Sony Ericsson ‘Elm’ phone user. After the mild panic attack caused by the death of my iPhone, i’m actually rather please with the Elm as a replacement. No, it doesn’t have all the functionally of a full blown touchscreen smartphone, but it still has a good range of options, and quite a lot of other redeeming features.
The Design
Sony Ericsson Elm
The primary selling point of the Elm is it’s ECO-friendlyness. It’s made from recycled plastics using a CO2-light production process, has reduced packaging (basically a smaller box), a low power consumption charger, and a tiny manual, backed up by a larger e-manual.
Despite all it’s green cred, that didn’t stop Sony Ericsson skimping on the look and feel, or features. It has a good non-plastic feel to it, and is small and lightweight (10 x 45 x 14mm and 90g) with a lovely curved design.
The Elm also has built in WiFi and bluetooth, and comes with a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash. The button layout is nicely done, so it actually feels like a your using a camera rather than a phone when taking photos or video.
The main keypad layout is comfortable and easy to use – i’m surprised how quickly i got used to texting on a traditional phone pad again after being used to a full qwerty keyboard. That i think is partly due to the Elm’s predictive text actually being quite intelligent in it’s predictions!
My one critisisum would be Sony Ericsson’s insistence on using a proprietary headphone socket, rather than a standard 3.5mm jack, forcing you to use their headphones.
The Interface
The Elm home screen
The ‘home screen’ on the Elm lets you set it to display one of number of built in widgets. These range from your Facebook feed, to you calendar app, to their own ‘Walk Mate Eco pedometer’ app (i’ve apparently walked 3534 steps today saving 503g of C02.)
The main interface is a standard 3×4 grid layout, and is nice and easy to navigate through using the Elm’s D-Pad.
As i mentioned earlier, i found texted pretty easy, with the predictive text actually helping rather than hindering. It stores text conversations like the iPhone, in an ‘instant messaging’ type layout, allowing you to keep track of previous texts by just scrolling upwards.
Internet & Email
Email access is about what you’d probably expect from a normal mobile. It’s serviceable, but not great. Its easy enough to set up, and the functionality is there, but it’s not exactly pretty.
There are a number of built in web enabled apps included on the Elm, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, and YouTube which work pretty well. However, the straightforward the internet access is a little on the ugly side. It’s easy enough to set up, and will run through WiFi if your in range or a hotspot or 3G if your not, but the internet content itself can get quite stripped back. It’s functional, but not pretty. Normal Internet browsing is the one area I do find i’m really missing a full smartphone.
Other Features
The Elms Camera
The 5-megapixel camera takes decent photos and video giving accurate and vivid colours. It also comes with a range of technological software wizardry such as smile & face detection, and you can geotag photos, then upload them directly to sites such as Twitter, Facebook or Flickr.
The music player is nice and easy to use, and has a decent enough sound quality. Plus the 280Mb of on-board memory can be expanded up to 16Gb using a microSD card, so there should be more than enough room for your day to day tunes. The Elm also contains at radio which works well, although as i mentioned earlier, you are hampered by having to use the Sony Ericsson headphones to listen to your tunes.
The calendar/organiser is simple and easy to use, and – along with my contact list – synced easily on my Mac via iSync.
The Elm’s battery life claims 446 hours of standby time, and 4hrs of talk time (on a 3G network), although excessive WiFi use will sap that considerably.
Conclusion
Overall, I rather like the Sony Ericsson Elm. It may not be a fully blown smartphone, but it’s got most of the bases covered. The internet browsing does let it down a bit, but then if all your really using it for is checking up on the occasional news story, or that elusive pub quiz answer, it’ll work fine for you. Plus all the main social networking sites are covered using separate apps anyway which work really well. The camera is impressive for this level of phone too. If your looking for a phone that’s smart rather than a smartphone, the Elm is well worth a look.
8/10 – A phone that’s smart.
i-Mego Retro Heavybeats Headphones Review
i-Mego Retro Heavybeats headphones
Opening the pack, the first thing i noticed about the i-Mego Retro Heavybeats headphones was the really robust build quality. There’s no cheap plastic or flimsy construction here. It felt like a really solid quality product. I also love the design. Styled on the iconic classic microphone, the look is totally unique.
Thankfully they aren’t just style over substance either. The sound quality is superb, with the ‘heavybeats’ easily living up to it’s name. They also don’t neglect the higher frequencies, giving a solid performance with whatever my somewhat eclectic iTunes library threw at them!
I tested them out at the office to see how well they cut out background noise, and they actually did a pretty decent job of that too. They were also reasonable comfortable to wear for the majority of the day. The i-Mego Retro Heavybeats are some of the best we’ve had on a GeekTest and well worth a look if your in the market for some new headphones.
Tech Specs:
Driver Unit: 2 X Ø40mm
Frequency Resp: 20-20KHz
Buy I-Mego Retro Headphones (£49) from Amazon
9/10 – A classy & quality product with a great sound.
REVIEW: Earbud headphones that actually stay in the ear!
I got a big parcel through the post last week. Not having ordered anything, i was kinda curious as to what it was, only to open it up to find… A severed ear!.. Well okay… a plastic severed ear with some earbud headphones wrapped around them. Now, i loath earbud headphones, for the over-riding reason that they never stay in your flippin ears!
However, these headphones (from Coosh), are your standard earbud with the added extra of a soft bit made out of a rubbery type material that wraps around the ear. Extra bits that hook over your ears aren’t a new invention, but all the previous versions i’ve tried do tend to really hurt after a while, but the material the Coosh headphone straps are made from didn’t seem to have that issue.
I have to say, i’m rather impressed. Not only are they extremely comfortable, but they stay in place pretty much whatever you do. I passed them round the office to a few people, and despite some rampant headbanging antics, they weren’t budging. The sound quality is pretty good, and the price is affordable too (starting at $19.99).
Don’t take my word for it about them staying in place, they’ve got a bunch of vids on youtube showing off people breakdancing whilst wearing them!
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92% |
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“Coosh Earphones. Inexpensive, comfy, and actually stay put when you wear them!†|
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The 3 Skypephone Review.
A couple of weeks ago, the nice folk at 3mobilebuzz.com contacted us to see if we’d like to user test the new 3 Skypephone for them. Now, if you’re reading this, you know how much into gadgets and gimmicks we both are, so you can imagine how long it took us to decide to agree! Plus here at Geektown, we have a some what love/hate relationship with Skype on the PC. We love the convenience and sound quality, but hate the fact that it can be a bit flakey, and suddenly decide to stop you hearing the person your calling, or drop the call all together. So, it was going to be interesting to see how the technology faired on a mobile.
What is the 3 Skypephone?
Well… it’s a mobile phone, on the 3 network, and it lets you use Skype from anywhere (the 3 Skypephone does what it says on the tin!) ;)
What’s it look like?
Like this:
It’s 100 x 44 x 13.6 mm and weights 86g, so very nice little lightweight phone.
What’s the Spec?
3G phone, with 2 megapixel camera, MP3 Player, 16Mb internal memory expandable to 1GB by micro SD.
Getting Started
The phones arrived promptly and we got them charged straight away. Once the lil green bar reached maximum charge we were off.
Setting up a Skype account is really easy via the phone. Or you can log in via an exisiting account if you have one. Personally, I’d advise setting up a 2nd account on the phone. Initially I tried using my exisiting account, but if you don’t log out of the PC when you log onto the Skypephone, it really confuses the hell out of Skype. This would result in replies to text messages I’d sent via Skype on the PC only showing on the skypephone, not to the PC. It’s either a seperate account, or log out of the phone everytime you want to use skype on the PC, which is a bit of a pain.
Once that was sorted we made the first call. Sound quality isn’t up to Skype PC quality, but the call quality was better than expectations, and was easily as good as a regular mobile phone call.
What’s it Like to Send a Skype Text (Skype Chat)?
We then discovered the chat facility, now this is good fun! Maintaining an on-going chat is sooo much easier to follow then text after text, if you forget what you are talking about you just scroll up the chat!
However, there’s an odd delay between the phone beeping to say you have a new Skype Chat and it appearing on the screen. It’s like it goes
Skypephone: “Hey, i’ve got a message for you!”
You look at the phone
Skypephone: “Ermm… hang on a min… I wrote it down somewhere…”
Still looking at your phone…
Skypephone: “Oh, one sec… There it is!”
It’s not too much of a problem once your used to it, it’s just a little weird at first.
What’s the Tariff Like?
Pretty decent actually. £49.99 for the phone on pay-as-you-go, and £10 a month topup, or free on contract.
So, What’s Your Final Verdict?
The phone is a nice little gadget, incorporating some clever software. Skype (obviously), plus all usual 3 network 3G functions (ability to watch streaming TV channels, internet access etc…), and the launcher app, with links set up to popular site such as Google and eBay.
The overall design of the phone is lightweight and looks very similar to Nokia type phones, but actually when put side by side next to Daryl’s Nokia N73, it makes the N73Â look like a house brick!
There are little niggles, like the Chat system delay but nothing that would stop us buying the phone, and nothing that won’t get ironed out in time.
A really good little gadget.
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80% |
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“Inexpensive 3G phone with free Skype calls in a nice little package.†|
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Richard Garriott’s “Tabula Rasa”
 
Its been 3 weeks since the official launch of NCSofts newest MMO, Tabula Rasa. Working on a completely unique story line around the scattering of the last of humanity across the stars to fight a war. Richard Garriott along with NCSoft has created a very unusual but appealing game.
The main feature most people will know of is the blend between MMO and FPS style combat. You literally aim your weapons at your targets, and squeeze off the rounds you want, rather than go into combat by button mashing certain combos of hotkeys.
The system is far from perfect, but gives you a nice sense of interaction. Sadly, the process can be slightly hampered when a lag spike hits you, and your poor alter-ego can be seen stood in battle-field firing their entire clip with no control like a shell-shocked soldier. Here lies another problem, as of the date of this post, only one European server is online, compared to three American servers. This has caused some disrupt amongst the gamers, mostly language differences, everybody shouting out in their respective languages can make reading General chat very difficult. A hotfix has been applied giving a few language channels, but still, further servers are required.
Ok, lets get the problems outta the way then we can move on to the good. The European server is under a heavy load, and is prone to lag spikes, but, bear in mind, this game only went Live 3 weeks ago, and is still in teething process.
SUMMARY
The story line is compelling, the lands are vast and interesting, with large array of weird and wonderful creatures. Its a very visual game, and with the almost click-combat in use it makes it far more fun to jump at your target firing multiple shotgun rounds! Its a good game, and my experience with NCSoft tells me they will support it well. I wouldn’t be surprised if this game grows in popularity over the coming months.
Watch this game, its gonna be huge!
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90% |
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“Great sci-fi fun, with room for future improvement†|
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