August 5th, 2010 | Mobile Phones, Nokia
The Nokia X5 handset is one of Nokia’s newest models. Neatly packaged as a small square, with only the screen constantly visible, this compact new mobile phone has a flip down QWERTY keyboard for easy typing and a 5-megapixel camera, which includes an LED flash and 4x digital zoom.
As with most new mobile phones, there is a strong emphasis on the ability to play music and connect to social networking sites with the Nokia X5. The handset comes with a music player with the ability to play all major encoding formats, giving it much more versatility than many other handsets. Access to social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and Twitter also comes built in to the phone.
However, there are several drawbacks to the Nokia X5. Firstly, there is no 3G capability, meaning that access to social networking sites can be slow and cumbersome when not connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Secondly, the built in memory to the new Nokia X5 is a measly 200 MB, which will quickly get filled up with just a handful of songs and photos. If you want to expand this internal memory then you will have no option but to buy a new memory card, as the phone’s microSD slot can accept memory cards of up to 32 GB.
Buying a 32 GB microSD card, though, will cost over £80, so it may be best to look out for mobile phone deals which include the expanded memory.
August 3rd, 2010 | LG, Mobile Phone Reviews, Touchscreen
This handset is very similar to the original Prada but much better. The phone has a QWERTY keyboard so it isn’t wafer thin. For those of us who prefer to send correctly punctuated texts and emails it is a must. For the discerning phone buff out there, you will note that there isn’t any noticeable difference between the two, except for the extra thickness of the keyboard. But this phone has so much more than the original handset. It has a fantastic video feature and once you’ve made your video there are lots of options you can use for editing the material.
The LG Prada 2 KF900 gives you Quad band coverage with up to 3 hours talk time and up to 400 hours standby time. It has a 5-megapixel camera with a real flash, a video camera and video player, along with an audio player. You can listen to FM radio but unfortunately it hasn’t got a 3.5 mm headphone jack. It comes with GPRS, 3G, HSDPA, GPS and Wi-Fi. The Prada handset has many more features such as Bluetooth, email, browser, touch-screen and video calling.
The handset just about has it all and is ideal for personal and business use. If you want to keep in touch with your friends and family via email or your social networking sites then this phone is great. Equally if you need a phone for business use it is ideal. It has an email facility that can keep you in touch with your office and colleagues and proves to be a good all round phone for the money.
July 30th, 2010 | Broadband, Mobile Broadband
When researching and seeking out information to compare broadband services, it’s vital to not only get a feel for which benefits are most important, but also to compare individual companies and their service offerings against one another. To best compare broadband services it’s necessary to utilise a wide variety of information channels and information services. This combined with personal attention, research and time spent inspecting the claims of broadband service providers will lead to the best fit broadband selection for any user’s needs.
To properly compare broadband service providers and plans, it is typically best to begin with a broad focus on the types of services that are desired. Depending on typical internet usage, as well as number of simultaneous users will determine the specific need for high download rate, high upload rate, and maximum download capacity per month. Typically, most services offer a single speed with a variety of download capacities, with an increase in price for each increase in maximum capacity. From here, additional charges such as set-up fees, account maintenance fees, and cancellation fees should be split among the life of the contract, and then considered.
Once a list of potential firms has been established, a proper broadband comparison will include a call to the firm. The rates listed might not always include all fees and exceptions, and when a prospective buyer calls the company personally they can both confirm the offering, as well as negotiate for better terms. A proper broadband comparison is often simple, it simply requires the drive to learn and decide based on the results uncovered.
July 28th, 2010 | Mobile Phones, Sony Ericsson
The Sony Ericsson Spiro is one of the latest mobile phones to be released under the company’s Walkman range of music orientated handsets. Because of this, much of the functionality of the phone is tailored towards its use as a high quality and versatile music playback device.
Thankfully, the Spiro has done away with the Fast Port technology which has blighted many other Sony Ericsson mobile phones in favour of an industry standard 3.5 mm jack, which means that Spiro owners can use any set of headphones to listen to their music. The phone also boasts Bluetooth stereo for high quality stereo wired and wireless playback.
Although the memory which comes with the Spiro is limited at just 5 MB, barely enough for more than a track or two of music, the on board memory can be bulked up to 16 GB with the purchase of a larger microSD card.
As with all the latest mobile phones, the Sony Ericsson Spiro comes with a camera – albeit with just 2-megapixels – and social networking integration. This means that users can share all of their information using services such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Another big functionality bonus is the fact that the Spiro uses threaded text messages, so entire conversations are stored in order for ease of access.
However, there aren’t many mobile phone deals for the Sony Ericsson Spiro, meaning potential buyers will have to search hard for good mobile phone contracts for the handset.
July 26th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Reviews, Motorola Mobile Phones, Touchscreen
There are some excellent contract mobile phones available at present and Motorola’s Backflip is trying to position itself at the top of an ever growing list of smartphones. This one is a 3G smartphone which is a developed from the DEXT MB220 family of phones by Motorola. This model is also sometimes known as the Motorola Motus.
The phone uses an Android operating system which gives access to a whole range of apps and gadgets. It has Motoblur built in and offers live support for widgets. It has a full QWERTY keyboard and a 3.1 inch 262 colour TFT responsive touch-screen measuring 320 x 480 pixels. Wi-Fi and Push Email are incorporated and it is easy to link in to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
The built-in navigation system uses GPS and A GPS navigation in combination with Google Streetview and Maps. The superb 5 megapixel camera has built-in auto focus and the music player can handle MP3, eAAC+, WAV & WMA9 formats.
The handset is a quite sleek looking, platinum silver colour with a black keyboard and a mechanism that reverse flips the keyboard (that’s where the model name comes from). It weighs 133 grams including the battery and a fully charged battery will give 315 hours of standby time, or 6 hours of continuous talk time. Connectivity with other devices is good because the Motorola Backflip covers a whole range of networks.
Overall it is a good looking phone and ideal if you like gadgets, apps of various kinds and music. The most outstanding feature for me is the excellent camera.
July 23rd, 2010 | Mobile Phone Recycling, Mobile Phones
Do you fancy helping the environment and making some money at the same time? Well, you can do just that by recycling your old mobile telephone. If you are wondering what price you should expect to receive for your old mobile phone you should be aware that there are actually many factors at play that will determine your eventual payout. It will depend on the make and model of the phone and also how old it is. You can still receive cash for your phone even if it is broken. You could receive as little as £5 or as much as £200. It is also worth noting that some phones are not really worth a great deal anymore, but it is obviously better for the environment if you recycle it efficiently.
Another important thing to remember when you decide to sell your mobile is the removal of all of your personal information from the handset before you send it off to your chosen company. You should delete all your messages, photographs, videos and phone numbers stored on the handset.
There is now a wide choice of companies offering a mobile phone recycling service; Envirofone and Mazuma are just two of the best known. However, this does not mean that the companies will all offer the same price for your old mobile phone; it is recommended that you shop around to make sure that you get the best price possible.
July 20th, 2010 | Broadband, Mobile Broadband, Wireless Devices
Anyone thinking of upgrading their internet connection from dial-up to broadband will be faced with a bewildering array of choices. Should you select BT Total broadband or Sky broadband, TalkTalk broadband or Tiscali broadband? Then again, there’s Think broadband, O2 broadband, Tesco Broadband and Plusnet broadband, not to mention Orange home broadband and Be broadband. So, faced with options like these, just which way do you turn?
The chief reason for switching is that broadband is incomparably faster than dial-up, and it doesn’t disrupt telephone use (with dial up, if someone’s using the internet, no one can use the phone). Dial-up plods along sedately at 56 kilobits per second whilst broadband turbo-zaps at rates as high as 768 kilobits (although technically, any rate exceeding 256 kilobits per second is considered to be broadband).
A 56K dial-up connection will load a typical web page in around 14 seconds whilst a 256K broadband connection will do it in three; a five minute song will take 14 minutes to download via dial up compared to broadband’s three minutes. If the broadband connection moves to the top of the quality range (eight Megabytes presently) web pages load instantaneously and the music download will take about 2.5 seconds. The higher the rate, the more expensive the monthly fee, generally.
The simple answer is to consider three points: mobile broadband availability in your area, how often you use the internet (and what for), and the maximum speed of the broadband services on offer. One thing’s for certain, once you’ve adjusted to the Jenson Button Formula One speeds of broadband, you’ll never want to return to the Miss Marple’s bicycle of dial up.
July 16th, 2010 | LG, Mobile Phone Reviews
LG GW300 is a unique smart phone that is targeted to a specific niche of social networking fanatics. It features a QWERTY keyboard and a 2.4 inch, wide screen landscape style display. The GW300 sets itself apart from the rest of the smart phones on the market with its inclusion LiveSquare home screen, an application which displays your social networking contacts as animated avatars, and provides quick access to messages, with the ability to quickly reply to them. Combined with the preinstalled Facebook application, this mobile is a powerhouse of seamlessly integrated social communication.
While the key strengths of the GW300 are clearly centred on social networking, instant messaging and e-mailing, this phone is still capable of surfing the internet. Without a touch screen, it does become more difficult to surf the web, however it’s far from impossible. Unfortunately, the battery life in the GW300 leaves much to be desired as well, with only 3.5 hours of talk time on a single charge. The camera, at a mere 2 megapixels also leaves much to be desired.
All in all, the LG GW300 has its niche, and is a great LG phone for those targeted. This phone simply isn’t meant for everyone, and of the people that the phone is meant for, the battery life may simply be too little to keep up with their busy social lives. Regardless, the LG GW300 is a solid phone that at a reasonable price, that does what it’s advertised to do, and should be considered by those not intent on owning the cutting edge in mobile technology; compare mobile phones in the LG range or the latest mobile phones from other manufacturers.
July 15th, 2010 | Mobile Phone Reviews, Mobile Phones, Motorola Mobile Phones
If you are on the lookout for cheap mobile phones that still look good then the Motojewel is certainly worth a look. There are some excellent deals around on this particular Motorola model. This one is especially suitable if you like to take your music with you. It is a real multi sensory experience and the music player is accessed by a one touch sensor button. It comes complete with a 2 megapixel camera and Motorola’s CrystalTalk system which ensures crystal clear voice calls by filtering out background noise.
The internal measurements of the display screen on this model are 230 by 320 pixels and it has GSM Quad Band. The battery offers around four hundred minutes of continuous talk time and it has 250 hours of standby time before it needs to be recharged.
The 2 megapixel camera comes with 8x zoom camera and 4x zoom video but the focus is fixed. The speakerphone gives crystal clear sound on music and video clips.
Physically, the Motojewel looks sophisticated with its purple interior and midnight quartz coloured outer casing. It’s a flip phone which weighs 95g so it feels substantial in the hand and measures 90 by 48.6 mm with a depth of 16.4 mm. The antenna is internal and it also has a clock and calculator built in.
This is an excellent choice for users who utilise their phones for text, calls and music but it offers few gadgets. Overall it is a good looking, stylish mobile phone that is worth searching out on sites offering mobile phone deals.
July 12th, 2010 | HTC, Mobile Phone Reviews, Mobile Phones, Touchscreen
The HTC Desire is a very clever little phone. The curvy design fits snugly into the palm while the detailing gives it an understated elegance. It has a very fast processor with a highly responsive touch-screen. It has a huge 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, which is very sharp with the most vivid colours available on the market. The HTC Desire is very fast for working online and off and with the decent sized screen design it makes browsing the internet a great experience. This is a very light, slim and comfortable phone, which feels nice when holding it.
The Desire has many of the features mobile phone users have grown to love, plus a lot more. It has a built in camera with flash and also a video camera for that must see moment. There is an FM radio facility and most important it has a 3.5 mm headphone jack. It comes equipped with GPS, GPRS, Bluetooth and 512MB of internal memory. You can also email from this phone and it has a fantastic browser capability. The Desire gives a reasonable 6 hours talk time and up to 340 hours of standby time.
The HTC Desire is a pleasure to use. Whether you are using this handset for business or pleasure there is not a lot wrong with it; it is a very user friendly mobile that quickly and effortlessly performs tasks. The browser system is very fast and the screen gives some of the best pictures around. You really can’t ask for more.
