LG kf700

These days it's not enough to give a phone a name and a model number. Manufacturers are forever creating fluffy new brand extensions to sell the sizzle of their products and LG has more than most. As well as coining the Black Label Series moniker to define its designer handsets, the manufacturer also assigns precious metals to its products according to specification and price point, with platinum representing the very best (most expensive) handsets in its range, followed by gold for the mid-tier and silver for the budget models.



While fancy handsets like the Viewty and the new KF750 Secret laud it up in the platinum club, phones like the LG KF600 and KF700 fall into the gold category.

Don't let that fool you. The LG KF700 is feature packed and more than capable for all but a few fussy sorts and it's a damn fine all-rounder with a wealth of neat tricks up its slider sleeve.

To access the keypad, the KF700 features a smooth, spring-loaded sliding mechanism which feels perfectly weighted and balanced in the hand. Slide the phone open and you'll find a smart, simple, checker-board-style keypad with no raised keys. The phone's many applications can be selected and controlled either by the KF700's jog-dial or touch-screen interface. This means the keypad has been designed simply for basics like making calls and sending texts and includes only the numeric keys, a call accept, call reject and cancel key. Simple.

On the right-hand side of the phone you'll find the camera key, the screen lock key and the charging/headphones port. On the left-hand side you'll find the carousel menu access key and a jog-wheel - about which we'll explain more later.

Due to the fact that the display dominates the entire fascia, touch-screen phones tend to look fairly similar; however, it's much easier to distinguish the phone from the growing army of touch-screen handsets when its distinctive carousel menu is activated. With its glossy black finish, the KF700 possesses a minimalist charm.

The carousel menu is activated with a dedicated key on the left-hand side of the phone and can be customised to include your most popular menu options. It's then navigated using the jog-wheel and the carousel menu key.

All in all, the KF700 is well put together and even the side-mounted jog-wheel (a feature which can occasionally look a little awkward) has its aesthetic merits. It's bold, silver and sits on full display on the rear of the phone, rather than protruding from the side.

HTC Touch Cruise

The Touch Cruise’s 240x320-pixel screen is sharp, bright and clear, and is flush to its surroundings, isn't what you could call a small phone, measuring 110mm x 58mm x 15.5mm, nor is it particularly light at 130g, but considering all that's packed into its business-like exterior, it's quite remarkable. This is unusual for Windows Mobile devices, which more usually have recessed screens.

Messaging on the Touch Cruise was a bit of a mixed-bag. The messaging applications on the device were undoubtedly very powerful, but the touchscreen interface makes it difficult to type quickly and accurately. As expected, the usual SMS/MMS messaging services are supported, as well as POP/IMAP and push email services. Also included is a Windows Live Messenger application, which was very easy to use with my existing Windows Live account. There are a good selection of text input methods available, but they all share the same flaws. Unfortunately, touch screen text input is still too cumbersome and inaccurate to use extensively, and unlike it's older brother the Touch Dual, the Touch Cruise does not feature a hidden physical keypad. On-screen text input options include a QWERTY keyboard, a traditional 12 key phone keypad, a 20 key SureType style keypad, and various handwriting input methods. The messaging system itself was a typical affair for a Windows Mobile device, but with some nifty touchscreen gestures thrown in to allow quick scrolling through your messages and easy switching between messaging accounts.

Data connectivity is one of the Touch Cruise's main advantages over its predecessors, featuring both 3G HSDPA (2100MHz), quad-band GSM/EDGE, and WiFi. Data connections worked well during our tests, proving to be both quick and reliable. Managing the phone's many connections was a doddle with its 'Comm Manager' application, which allows easy control of all connections, including Bluetooth, WiFi, network data, and even push email. Annoyingly, when trying to 'beam' files across to my laptop via Bluetooth, I was forced to search each time for a new connection. This made the simple task of transferring a few photos into a time-consuming chore. Included in the Comm Manager was an 'airplane mode' which disables all wireless connections when activated, then re-enables them when deactivated. As with previous Touch devices, the Touch Cruise features native support for Microsoft Exchange servers, allowing over the air synchronization of email, contacts, calendar entries and tasks. Wireless connectivity isn't all the Touch Cruise has to offer though, and the usual 'HTC ExtUSB' port (miniUSB) is present and capable of USB 2.0 speeds. This port is also used to charge the device and connect its wired headset.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a S60 5th Edition device with a resistive touch screen and tactile feedback. The device has a large 3,2“, bright nHD (640 x 360 pixels and 16:9 aspect ratio) color display. The device has variety of input methods: stylus, plectrum and finger touch support for text input and UI control (alphanumeric keypad, full and mini qwerty keyboard, handwriting recognition). Use the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic to connect to mobile broadband using WLAN or HSDPA (3.5G). Find directions and locations with the integrated A-GPS and included maps. Additional features include a 3.2 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, and USB 2.0 High-Speed. Supported WCDMA frequencies depend on the region where the device is available.

While it may not be Nokia's first touchscreen phone (anyone out there remember the 7710?), the 5800 XpressMusic is certainly the first to come out of Finland with a mainstream appeal. What we've alternately known as the "Tube" throughout much of its development cycle is the first production device to run S60 5th Edition -- the fourth major overhaul of Nokia's ubiquitous smartphone platform since 2002 and the first to support fingers, styli, and high-res displays. Speaking of high-res displays, the 5800 comes equipped with an impressive 3.2-inch 640 x 360 resistive touchscreen to go along with its 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, GPS, WiFi, 3.5mm jack, and a microSD slot with support for 16GB cards.

BlackBerry Bold

If you’ve been eagerly anticipating a phone this year, he was one of two phones: the other. This is because RIM BlackBerry Bold is the most powerful, polished handset ever. With 3G, a brilliant new user interface, a real web browser, a serious hardware and almost beautiful body fat does not redefine the BlackBerry experience, but it does raise at its highest point ever.

Let us be clear: if you hate BlackBerry phones, you still intensely dislike the Bold. As many layers of polish that RIM was thick on the Bold, it is still a BlackBerry, with all his suit and tie intact DNA. Basically, he works and plays like every other BlackBerry, but with a load of small to medium improvements, updates and changes in addition to a richer, more refined phone that looks much better than the rest while doing his work.

A BlackBerry lives and dies by its keyboard. When RIM irreducible countered reckless banter about the death of the BlackBerry for the iPhone Exchange support by pointing to the keyboard. After you get used to the slight change in angle the Bold keys, they are fantastic, like a well-balanced wine, with a perfect blend of elastic, punchy and spongy. The buttons on glossy paper are too large for reasons I can not quite divine. The backlight is very beautiful.

It has everything you want: 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi Despite the reports he has suffered from poor 3G problems, I found it more consistent and reliable with its 3G connection . It is not unusual to recover four bars of signal when, for example, the iPhone has seen one. (I realize bars are not standardized or totally accurate, but the disparity between the two is often significant, two or more.) By car test, the transfer went smoothly. GPS has been slower than I liked, often take up to a minute to get a lock, and the maps app could be snappier (and beautiful) than it is, but it will do. At least on AT & T, he will immediately have a browser app.

HTC Touch Diamond

The first thing you notice about the Touch Diamond is that despite being a touch screen device, the phone is both candy bar in shape and size. In this respect the hardware design leans more towards something from Sony Ericsson rather than Apple’s iPhone. Having said that, the Touch Diamond remains minimalistic in design. The 2.8-inch touch screen takes up most of the surface aside from four dedicated buttons (home, back, answer call, end call), along with an iPod-like virtual scroll wheel that also acts as a directional pad.

On top of the device is an on/off button and down the left hand side are volume controls. Tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner is a stylus, held in by a magnet. This might seem like a design flaw on paper but in practice it actually works really well. As you begin to slide the stylus back in it reaches a magnetic tipping point and automatically snaps into place.

The Touch diamond offers two cameras: one front mounted for video calls over 3G, and an auto-focus 3.2 megapixel camera for taking pictures and shooting VGA quality video.

Sony Ericson - Xperia Review

Techno Station has been picking up some of the best smartphones in the market in past. Readers here are familiar with handsets like iPhone 3G, Google's Android based T-Mobile G1 and more. Techno Station intends to continue this endeavor that can be a help to pick the best one. Here is our first: Sony Ericsson Xperia 1.

It comes with a very comfortable slider keyboard, great connectivity options (WiFi, 3G, Quad-band GSM etc.) and is a multimedia powerhouse. The phone comes with a 3-inch WVGA display with resolution of up to 800 X 480 pixels screen, which means it can play back videos in almost DVD quality and makes it easy to play 3D mobile games. I love the photos taken by the 3.2 megapixel camera and the music playback is solid and clear. X1 has a pretty decent battery life — and yes, it beats the pants off the iPhone 3G battery. It got about 8 hours on AT&T’s 3G network — ahead of my iPhone — but lagged the Android G1. However, it had better GSM standby and talk times. But again, battery usage differs from person to person. One thing I hate about the device is that it lacks built-in memory, but the good news is that it can take up to 32 GB in a memory card.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia mobile phone is an extremely enhanced handset with a neat design. Thanks to Windows Mobile as operating system, the use of Office files and synchronizing with the personal computer is not a problem at all. The new panel interface of Sony Ericsson certainly adds to the user’s ease. The full QWERTY keyboard is nicely designed and works well, although the keys don’t have a clear tactile feedback. Sind the large touch screen is slightly higher than usual, the screen also appears to be somewhat narrower. The Sony-Ericsson Touchscreen responds fast and the high resolution offers an astonishing image quality.

Smartphones: Nokia E71

Claiming to be the world’s slimmest cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard, the E71 is highly pocketable, especially compared to Nokia’s earlier attempts. It also looks the business in other ways, using a stylish blend of stainless steel and ‘grey’ high density plastic, resulting in a very solid feeling build.

There’s obviously, as ever, a degree of compromise between the size of the device, screen and keyboard — however, in the case of the E71, Nokia may have found the sweet spot. The QVGA screen is bright and maintains a productive 320 x 240 pixels in dimension, and the QWERTY keyboard, although tightly packed, is one of the best I’ve used. Key presses on the E71 are far less spongy than on the E61 (or Nokia’s latest Internet tablet), providing enough tactile feedback without requiring too much pressure to register. Nokia have also found room for four keyboard short cuts, dedicated ‘home’, ‘calendar’, ‘address book’ and ‘email’ keys, all of which can be re-mapped to launch your own choice of application. Additionally, holding down each of the shortcut keys for a few seconds will trigger a different action, such as entering a new appointment in ‘calendar’ or a new contact in ‘address book’, and again all of these can be customized, as is the case with almost any element of Nokia’s updated S60 User Interface. Another nice touch is that if you start typing a person’s name while on the home screen, the E71 will instantly drill down into your address book.

The E71’s choice of directional-pad over a pointy joystick or Blackberry-style trackball is also a welcome change, and proved great for navigating around the device, scrolling through documents or browsing the web, and even a dose of casual gaming. The d-pad also functions as an indicator light informing you when there’s a new SMS message, email or missed call.