Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou)

Sony Ericsson Satio (a.k.a. Idou) is perched at the top of the touchscreen food chain with an ominous grin. Currently rivaled only by the Samsung Omnia HD and in a way by the non-smart Samsung Pixon12, the 12 megapixel predator readily bares its teeth of incredible multimedia, powerful processing and of course perfect connectivity. There isn't much more to look for in a smartphone except how its potential translates to real-life performance. The Satio sure is an exciting package but at this point it still needs to live up to its very own spec sheet. This quick preview tries to give you an idea about how the Satio behaves under pressure and warn of glitches (if any) that remain hidden on paper. Now we are pretty certain you all know them by heart but before we continue let's have a look at the main features of the Sony Ericsson Satio.

Sony Ericsson Satio at a glance:

* General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, GPRS/EDGE class 10, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 3.6 Mbps
* Form factor: Touchscreen bar
* Dimensions: 112 x 55 x 13.3 mm
* Display: 3.5" 16M-color TFT resistive touchscreen, 640 x 360 pixels
* Memory: 100MB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB), 256 MB RAM
* OS: Symbian OS
* Camera: 12 megapixel autofocus camera with xenon flash and video LED flash, geotagging, face and smile detection, Smile Shot, Smart contrast and VGA video recording at 30 fps
* Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB v2.0, GPS receiver with A-GPS
* Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, FM radio with RDS
* Battery: 1000 mAh battery

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T-Mobile Vairy Touch

According to the latest news on the Web, T-Mobile UK will soon add to its offering a new mobile phone that is manufactured by the Chinese company ZTE. Dubbed T-Mobile Vairy Touch, the new handset comes with touch-screen capabilities and is expected to soon make it to the carrier's PrePay lineup of mobile phones. T-Mobile Vairy Touch includes a PDA-style touchscreen, is able to provide connectivity with GSM GPRS 900/1800 bands, while also including a 1.3-megapixel photo snapper, as well as Bluetooth connectivity and FM Radio functions. The new device features a rather stylish design, as well as voice, SMS, MMS and Multimedia Entertainment capabilities. The device is said to include a battery able to offer up to 180 minutes of talk time, as well as up to 180 hours of standby time.

The T-Mobile Vairy Touch, with its elegant mini PDA design, touch screen, and FM radio, is bringing a style and affordable pre-paid phones to our customers” said Daniel Meredith, head of Device and Handset Marketing at T-Mobile UK.

Gartner has recently predicted that ZTE could break into the global top 5 of handset manufacturers by the end of the year, demonstrating ZTE's strength in this market. Our partnerships with tier one operators, such as T-Mobile, is a testimony to our commitment to delivering attractive, exciting and affordable devices to consumers worldwide,” said Mr. Kevin Y Qi, managing director of ZTE (UK) Limited.

As many of you might already know, ZTE is a global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions. The company intends to become one of the largest mobile phone makers in the world in a five years’ time. Its touchscreen Vairy Touch mobile phone is now available for T-Mobile users in the UK on a pay-as-you-go basis, featuring a price tag of £59.99 ($87.80).

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LG GC900 Viewty Smart

The LG Viewty Smart (CG900) carries on the heritage of the first LG Viewty (KU990), which sold over 6.5 million units. Not too shabby. Especially when you consider that Viewty Mark 1 found itself fighting an almost impossible popularity battle against the first iPhone. Credit then to LG, who didn't pitch the original Viewty as a rival to Apple's revolutionary mobile. Instead, LG focused on what the Viewty did best – taking great photos using its 5 Megapixel digital camera. Two years on and the LG Viewty Smart updates the specification. This time around, there's a stunning 8 Megapixel camera, WVGA (800x480 pixel) touch screen and the S-class interface that we first glimpsed on the LG Arena. The Viewty Smart also sidesteps a brawl with the iPhone 3GS.

The new handset certainly has some iPhone-beating features – the 8MP camera, for starters, the higher resolution screen, plus haptic feedback, an FM radio and expandable storage. Nevertheless, LG is pitching the Viewty Smart as a high-calibre camera phone. "Take smarter pictures" is the slogan that's splashed across its website. Available on Vodafone, O2 and Orange in the UK, the LG Viewty Smart is a bit of a looker. With a black and silver livery, the design is dominated by the 3-inch touchscreen. A long, bronzed 'home' button rounds off the front face.

Measuring 18.9 x 56.1 x 12.4mm, the LG Viewty Smart is slightly more compact than the iPhone, but Apple's handset does have a 3.5-inch display, compared to the new Viewty's 3-inch LCD. It's only a smidgeon fatter too (0.1mm in technical terms compared to the iPhone 3GS) and at 102g, it's a good 33g lighter.

Of course, all this counts for precisely zip if the Viewty Smart doesn't have the technology to match. The mobile phone market is fierce. The volume controls on the edge of the LG Viewty Smart also control the 4x digital zoom.

Flip the LG Viewty Smart sideways and, on its right-hand edge, you'll find a camera shutter button and volume controls. The volume buttons also control the digital zoom when the phone is being used as a camera.

Disappointingly, there's a proprietary slot for power/USB/headphone connections. So you can only use the supplied headphones and you can only use the supplied USB cable. Much like the original iPhone, in fact. Equipped with only 1.5GB of internal storage, you'll need a microSD card to boost the storage capacity.

On the other side, the left-hand edge as you look at it, there's a microSD slot (supporting memory cards up to 32GB) and a 'multi-tasking' button, which enables you to view all of the currently active applications. The power button (and phone lock) can be found on the top edge.

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HTC Touch Cruise 09

So HTC has a new mobile on the market, the HTC Touch Cruise 09. HTC has had a lot of products since their first release of the HTC Touch Cruise, so is the 09 version worth upgrading to? Here's my take. The HTC Touch Cruise 09 still features a 2.8 QVGA screen. At first glance, I thought the Touch Cruise 09 has a slide out keyboard but no, unfortunately, it's only touch screen. What I didn't like about the design of this product is that HTC opted for a 2.8 inch screen when they could have made use of the whole front of the screen and went 3-3.2 inch by removing the useless hardware keys. Other than that, the HTC Touch Cruise 09 seems like a real solid device to hold. I'm glad that HTC isn't taking a step back and decided to incorporate the processor and memory of the Touch Diamond on the Touch Cruise 09. This device has a 256MB of RAM, and a 528MHz Qualcomm processor. It seems that the Touch Flo 3D has really matured ever since it was first introduced on the Touch Diamond. The TouchFlo 3D on the Cruise 09 is overall a smooth experience although there are still lags when you switch to the standard windows mobile interface but I blame that on Microsoft. Now the main feature of the Touch Cruise 09 is the feature called HTC footprints. Basically, it's a pumped up version of the geotagging feature on some cameraphones. HTC Footprints lets you take pictures and then tag your location, add some notes, or add a voice memo. The tagging feature is actually pretty fast. Although I wonder if the HTC Footprints is just all gimmick. I mean, I'm not a social networking nut and I hardly use the geotagging features on my Omnia so I don't really see myself buying the Touch Cruise 09 just for the HTC footprints. However, I guess there are some people who might find the HTC footprints application useful, especially frequent travelers.

My other gripe is that if you're selling the HTC footprints for geotagging then you should have put a better camera on the device. The Touch Cruise 09 doesn't seem to have a LED flash so HTC probably used the camera technology on their previous HTC devices which mean it's good for outdoors and daylight shooting but quality in low light conditions and indoors is not so good. Speaking of light, the screen of the HTC Touch Cruise 09 has 65k colors and a 240x320 resolution so the screen is all washed out when used in direct sunlight. The HTC Touch Cruise 09 has improved in terms of the TouchFlo interface but aside from the HTC footprints, it doesn't seem to offer anything new. If you just want a smart phone that works this might be a better choice over the Touch Diamond but if you're looking for better graphics and don't mind tweaking your phone to get the best out of it then you're better off with the Touch Diamond, Touch Pro or Touch HD as they offer better features than on the Touch Cruise 09.

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