Ok, I saw the light, and am now a texting fool. But to go with this new found need to text, I needed a mobile phone that actually was easy enough for an old geezer to text with.  A mobile phone with a full keyboard.

Sweet… I bought an LG Rumor.  The kinds specifically customized for my Sprint mobile account. After nearly 2 months of using it, I can say for sure that I like it. Actually love it — my best cell phone purchase in my 15-ish years of cell phone usage.

DESIGN
The design is elite and very executive style. The screen is a 2,8″ and the quality is exceptional. A numeric keypad below the screen is lined with the function keys on each side which have a dedicated task assigned to them. The joystick sits between the 2 and 5 key , making it a little problematic to use, but an effort from Asus, by increasing the height of both the keys, has worked to some extent. Right side has the standby button and hold switch , which is used to lock all keys. Left side has the camera key , volume control and voice command button. A mini-USB port and headphone jack are available at the bottom. The overall design is strong, and the matte finish is a big plus.

INPUT
Handwriting recognition, Onscreen keyboard , and the numeric keypad are the 3 ways of input, which are well designed for comfort and ease in every mode. Each option is easy to use and provides the user the functionalities available.

CAMERA
The camera included is quite good and is a 2MP autofocus with flash assistance. The maximum resolution supported by the camera is 1600×1200 and the video recording can be done at 320×240 resolution.

MULTIMEDIA
Equipped with the OS media player , the phone can play audio and video files. The sound quality is good , and the videos can be switched to fullscreen via a simple shortcut. The quality of media seen is above average for any PDA.

NETWORK
A quad band PDA, it has GPRS , but no EDGE , Wifi 802.11b is provided , and so are bluetooth v2.0 and Infrared port for communication. USB option is also available and it can be used as 2.0 or 1.1 depending on the condition.

CONCLUSION
Even after a 416 MHz processor and 64MB of ram, the phone was quick enough due to the impeccable Windows OS 5.0. Quite easy to use, the phone has a good battery life also. A worthy investment , this phone wont let you down , when it matters the most. The pricing is the icing on the cake!

DESIGN
The design is executive class oriented, and its a slider by base design, first by Nokia in this class. The screen is crystal clear and top quality, and it is a 1.8inch TFT. The D-pad is a bit cramped, with 10 keys around it making it a bit tacky. A handy conference key is provided for quickly switching to the mode. The left is devoid of any controls but the right is lined up with volume keys , speakers, voice recorder , Text edit keys. The phone has a matte finish, giving it an elite look. People with large fingers might have a problem handling the keypad, which is the only drawback in its design.

BUSINESS FEATURES
It excels in this field, and provides a hell lot of applications and features to maximize your productivity. Some of these are Quick Office, Notes application, Zip files , and PDF support by Adobe. Other utilities include Message reader, Screen export and HP printer support. Message reader is mainly for the messages , and screen export is used to transfer the display. An useful addition might be that of a GPS system , which is quite handy for many professionals.

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURES
The phone is decent in this category too, with good sound quality for a phone of this class. Video playback is possible via included applications like Real player, which give a good playback. The camera is a 2MP one, which operates at a maximum resolution of 1600×1200. Videos are captured in the CIF format and the quality is acceptable. It seems like the camera is more of an after-thought rather than a full fledged feature.

INTERFACE
Powered by the Symbian OS 9.1 , it has 50MB of internal memory , along with a 256 MB card bundled. The phone is slow in comparison to other Symbian 9 series, probably more slow than some phones belonging to the N-series. A major drawback is the buggy nature of the OS, which forces the phone to restart very often. It is incapable of handling the power that resides underneath it. An improvement or bug-fixes can correct this problem.

CONCLUSION
The main strength of the phone, which are the business features, could not be used to the fully extent, because of the frequent restarts and buggy nature. The Style factor cannot rescue it on its own and you won’t actually end up buying this. Other options are widely open, some better, some well priced. So, it would be a good thought to avoid this one.

DESIGN
The feel is the familiar round and chubby, and the overall design is good. The QWERTY keypad has lighting feature and typing in dark is a breeze. The phone is available in gray and champagne-gold colors. Its quite thin for a PDA, and is light, small , sturdy with absolutely no creaking. The Mini-USB port and headset jack are present on the left side. The Camera lens, and LED are at the back, but unfortunately, MicroSD slot is under the battery, so you need to power down the phone to swap memory cards. The screen quality is great , sharp , and a pleasure to look at. The phone is very ergonomically designed for a PDA.

INTERNET AND EMAIL CAPABILITIES
The WiFi , when configured properly , lets you send emails, IMs over the Internet. No email account , may it be POP, IMAP, are a trouble for this one. The browser supports Javascript, CSS and is quite capable and a quick performer, capable of displaying the web content as in a PC. The Trackball acts like a virtual cursor which makes browsing an easy task. Yahoo, AIM , Windows Live, ICQ , Gtalk every messenger is included in the phone by default.

NETWORK AND CONNECTIVITY
The phone has great voice quality and clarity both. The reception was strong too, and calls were not dropped. A great addition is UMA , which enables the phone to make calls over the WiFi network, and these calls have excellent quality. Moreover, the phone can easily switch between GSM and UMA.

SOUND
The sound quality over bluetooth was simply great. The provided Media player handles music , videos , photos easily, and has various options to group and select the media. The player can play MP3, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ and WMA files. Sound quality via speakers is average, and via headphone its good, but no match for the quality through Bluetooth device.

CAMERA
The camera inclusion was a good idea in the phone , but still , the quality of the photos isn’t good. The camera is a 2MP one, capable of taking photos at 1600×1200 resolution, but no video recording is supported. The overall image quality was bad.

CONCLUSION
The product is a great device when it comes to performing the functions it has been designed for. Business applications are just great, but video capabilities are not. Sound quality is great and so is the ergonomic design of the phone. Calling in UMA and GPRS both is awesome, but the battery life of the phone is quite short. So, a great buy for those who desperately require a PDA.

DESIGN
Incorporated with a plethora of features and a solid design, it can easily last 2-3 severe falls. The face of the phone is brushed steel whereas the back is silver plastic. The back has been rubberized for a good grip, and the phone has a glossy cover all over. The screen is a 2.6″ huge one, which is good in quality. The stylus and the jog key are resting on the left of the phone. The Internet hot key, camera key and the M2 slot have been placed on the right. A 3.2 MP camera is present on the back and the infrared port is on top along side the power key. The multi-port connector has been loaded on the underside.

INTERFACE
Equipped with a 208 Mhz processor, 128MB memory the phone still turned out to be a bit slow. The interface is awesome, and easy to learn, and you would be zipping through it in very little time. The jog key makes it easier to navigate by selecting and clicking via a single key. The QWERTY pad is fast enough, and the touchscreen is decent. Another additional feature is the handwriting recognition., which is quite good.

CAMERA
The 3.2MP camera, supplied with Autofocus and LED captures good images in low lighting conditions too. The max resolution achievable is 2048×1536, and the quality is awesome overall. Video recording is in CIF and the resolution is 320×240 maximum, and the playback quality is also good enough for a phone of this class.

MULTIMEDIA
The interface implemented is Walkman style, and there is no doubt that the quality is superb. All the media can be controlled from a stand-alone player, which lets you configure playlists and also listen to FM via a single application.

CONNECTIVITY
Good options like Infrared, WiFi, 3G and GPRS and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP capabilities complete its set of features. The Email applications are accessible without any problems, and the network reception is great.

CONCLUSION
A good successor to the P-lineup, this one has good quality and decent features for its class. The battery life is decent, with nearly 3 hours of usage on full load. Good for SE fans looking for a business style phone.

DESIGN

The biggest achievement of this phone is the fact that its slimmer than the original Razer. The design is awesome and a glossy face with an external 2″ screen completes the package. The camera sits on this external screen only. Volume controls and select key , which also is the shortcut for camera, are present on the left of the phone. Every button has been given a metallic brushed finish which makes it even more gorgeous. The back is rubberized for a good grip, and internal screen , 2.2″ in size , is covered by rubber to protect it while closing the flap.

SOUND

The phone is has a good sound quality and it is considerably improved when clubbed with good headphones. Bass , treble are configurable from outside, and the external screen provides a touchscreen control over the music application, which is full fledged, a first timer from Motorola. To maximize the quality of the music, just use a good pair of headphones, and you won’t forget this experience.

CAMERA

The phone has a 2MP camera, which is good in daylight but suffers bad in dark conditions. There is no flash feature, which is extremely bad. Resolution supported is 1600×1200 maximum and videos are recorded in QCIF which is another drawback, because of the outdated format Still , the quality is good but its marred by another flaw, the videos are not viewable on the beautiful and convenient external screen.

NETWORK AND CONNECTIVITY

The sound over calls, and the network strength are all great, and this has become a trademark for Motorola now. The networking options are very wide and it supports class 10 GPRS, and class 12 EDGE. The included Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP makes transfers a breeze. MicroUSB 2.0 is included , which makes it complete in connectivity, and gives good speeds in every transfer that you make.

OS
The OS deserves a special mention here, because it performed really well. Not even a little slowdown could be observed, even while switching between applications.

CONCLUSION

The battery life is poor because of the 2 large screens . It is a definite improvement over the predecessor, with improved interface, sound, connectivity and a slick OS. Go get it!

DESIGN

It comes in 4 colors, white, pink, gray and black. A cool all matte finish, it runs high on build quality. Phone has a 2inch screen, crisp and sharp, supporting a resolution of 240×320. Weighing at just 94 grams , it is not at all heavy , and a slim-sexy slider to boot. The old 5way Dpad is imprinted with play/pause buttons, and activity , walkman keys side with it. The brushed cool metal keypad is visible when you slide open the phone. Left has the volume keys, right has the multi-connector, and top has the M2 memory card slot. Blinking lights cover the rest of the phone. Overall , the phone is something which you wouldn’t stop flaunting.

SOUND

The phone has the Walkman v2.0 application , is quite slick in its presentation of song details. The all new feature of Shake Control is provided in this phone , which lets u change the track by pressing the walkman button and shaking the phone. The sound quality is above average , but nowhere comparable to w8800i, but nevertheless, the experience is quite good.

PEDOMETER

A pedometer is an additional feature of the phone, which calculates how many calories are burned when a person is working out. It utilizes motion sensors on the phone , which also assist in shake feature.

CAMERA

A 2MP camera , with maximum supported resolution of 1600×1200 is provided. The camera has nothing home to write about. It misses out on the Auto-Focus, Flash assist also. Videos are recorded in QCIF at 176×144 resolution. The quality is average, with images taken in daylight producing good results , and the ones in low light are utterly useless.

INTERFACE

Quick , smooth and neat, thats what the interface of the phone can be classified into. Having an inbuilt memory of 12MB , the phone is surprisingly quick in response. Good utilities like Pocket trainer, your pocket fitness guide, Music Mate, your ringtone manager/creator, some games like Sims2 and Block Challenge are bundled.

CONCLUSION

Great connectivity, network reception , mind-blowing looks, good sound quality make this phone a must-buy for most. However, if you are looking for a phone with a great camera , skip this one , and try the Cybershot series.

While the younger crowd can only think of the cell phone as the only means of communication, others have witnessed first hand the advancement of science. From its modest beginning when the pagers were the hottest trend. No one could afford a cell phone let alone a sat phone. But the times have surely changed.

Technology and mobile communications keep on advancing. Now, it is not uncommon to have a cell phone with a word processor, the capabilities of 1,000 phone numbers stored, full fledged gaming as well as 4 or more hours of songs. Who needs a Polaroid to capture the moment for ever in the annuls of our memories when you can simply pull out your mobile phone and transfer that photo to your computer later, or even email it to yourself.

Today’s mobile phones almost come standard with both video and image capturing as well as audio recording and play back. When you are bored and have nothing to do for the next 5 minutes, you can count on being able to pull out your phone and play a flash based game or even search the Internet.

So the true question regarding the advancement mobile phone technology is, “What is next? What can you possibly fit into the next generation of micro-mobile communication devices?”

LOOKS AND BUILD

The phone is a sexy-slider, and it has a black body with blue or red
stripes on the sides. These stripes have music buttons engraved in it
which can be referred to for quick control. The phone is slim and sleek,
and the overall body build is average, spoiled by the all-plastic body.
A 2.2” screen is good enough and gives a clear display. A 3.2MP camera
resides at the back of the phone, supported by LED for taking pictures
in the dark.

PERFORMANCE

The phone delivers decent sound quality, but still, they are no
competition for the Walkman series. Considering the fact that the phone
is focused on the music faculty, this performance is nothing to rave
about. The camera records decent quality videos at 15fps, which is
better than some Walkman phones like W580i. The phone faces some issues
with the Network reception, rest performance is average.

Conclusion

Overall a decent option, the looks are above average and the phone
provides good battery backup It can be considered as a good music
option if you are a loyal fan of Nokia, else Sony takes the lead. The
phone scores better than some SE phones in the camera, and the battery
life is obviously better than Sony phones. The score is level, the next
round of cellphone domination is about to begin!