HTC EVO 4G

Introduction

The Apple iPhone jolted the collective cellphone world three years ago, bursting consumer expectations of what a cellphone could and should be able to do. While the HTC EVO 4G, available on Sprint isn’t quite the breakthrough the iPhone was, it does represent the future of cellphones. Just as the iPhone made multi-touch touchscreens, accelerometers, proximity sensors and visual voicemail de rigueur for advanced cellphones, EVO’s 4G connectivity, front-facing camera for video chatting, HD camcorder, and especially its multiuser mobile hotspot capabilities, are all features future high-end cellphones will emulate. But don’t expect imitations any time soon; Sprint is currently the only network with 4G coverage.

Features and Design

EVO’s drool-ilicious pool of future tech is sure to make even Steve Jobs jealous – and maybe a bit mad that AT&T’s network can’t even enable iPhone tethering, much less include a mobile hotspot. It’s tough to imagine what tasty morsels HTC and Sprint have failed to toss into this cell salad.

EVO’s hot spot capability essentially works the same as a MiFi – it takes the 3G or 4G cell signal and creates a WiFi connection which can fuel up to eight different devices.

EVO’s other impressive soon-to-be-copied primary attributes include:

• 4G connectivity, which Sprint says will cover 44 markets by the end of this year;
• 4.3-inch LCD
• 1.3 MP front-facing camera for video chatting, sharing and virtual game play using Qik software (the service isn’t available yet, and you’ll likely need another EVO user to play)
• 8 MP camera with dual LED flash
• 720p HD video recorder
• Mini HDMI output jack (cable not included)

There’s dozens of other fascinating and state-of-the-art functions and features, all powered by a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor under the Android 2.1 operating system.

On the rear is a handy kickstand for hands-free video watching in landscape mode; EVO topples over if you try and use the kickstand for portrait.

Physically, the phone is a doppelganger to HTC’s Incredible phone from Verizon, a flat black slab that’s heavy – 6 ounces, yet not as heavy as it looks. There are only four touch-sensitive buttons on the front – Home, Menu, Back and Search. On the right perimeter is a volume toggle, up top is an on/off switch and a 3.5mm headphone jack, and on the bottom is a microUSB jack next to the mini HDMI jack.

The EVO comes pre-loaded with an 8 GB microSD card buried under the large battery. But considering how much memory HD video footage, 8 MP photos and music sops up, you’ll likely need/want a bigger card.

Can a phone serve as a workable PMP?

With its big, beautiful screen, the EVO makes a great little movie viewer, but you’ll have to sideload your video for the time being. The EVO includes Sprint TV, but shows do not always display in full screen and don’t take full advantage of the copious display real estate. Sprint is likely to add some sort of movie download service to compliment its 4G networks, but there’s nothing yet.

In 4G territory, YouTube videos automatically load HQ/HD versions.

Since the EVO is an Android phone, it handles music as well as any other Android phone.

Sound Quality

For calls, conversation quality is above average; not exactly landline-like, with only a hint of cell tininess.

For movie watching, the earpiece and rear speaker are only loud enough for quiet environments.

Phone Functionality

There’s no direct button on the phone to make a call; you have to go to the Android home screen to hit the “phone” control to get a dial pad. EVO’s screen is large enough to allow your “favorite” contacts to be listed above the dialpad.

The EVO’s touch scrolling isn’t as baby bottom smooth as the iPhone (but then again, no phone is). Haptic feedback helps on typing, and you get pinch-and-zoom for both Web pages and photos.

Web

The EVO is a great 3G phone. Mobile-oriented pages such as CNN, ESPN and The New York Times jump to completed view in 3-4 seconds, while full HTML sites such as Digital Trends’ home page take around 8-9 seconds.

I took a day trip to Philadelphia, the closest city to New York with 4G service. There, all these pages loaded twice as fast – a near-instantaneous 1-2 seconds for mobile-oriented sites, 4-5 seconds for more full HTML pages.

That kind of incremental Web access speed barely warrants a whole new network. But EVO’s mobile hot spot adds a whole new level of the need for speed. Used with an Apple iPad, EVO loaded pages three to four seconds faster in 4G than in 3G, not as fast as I expected, and still glacial compared to “real” WiFi. For instance, The New York Timesloaded in 13 seconds with EVO’s 3G connection, 10 seconds in 4G and seven seconds in my home WiFi network. Used to provide WiFi to an iPad and a couple of iPhones, EVO’s speed dropped a second or two.

Camera

Yes, the EVO has an 8 MP still camera and a 720p video recorder, but both are compromised by the silly pinhole plastic lens, the cellcam equivalent of putting a Porsche engine in a riding motor. Photos are big and colorful, but often lack definition and edge detail, are sharp in one part of the image and out-of-focus in another, and are filled with digital artifacts, a lot of which could be solved with a better lens.

Like 4G, HD videos also fall short of expectations. Big, yes, and better than any VGA cell camcorder, but footage is unexpectedly choppy and fuzzy when compared to even the cheapest HD pocketcams such as the Flip. Videos also are large – a 10 second clip runs nearly 8 MB, and a 2:30-minute clip was 15 MP was 145 MB and took nearly 20 minutes to transfer from phone-to-PC via Bluetooth – all HD clips are too bulky to email.

And with only a touchscreen shutter release, it’s hard to keep EVO still enough to snap a clear image.

But considering how poor cell photos and videos usually are, this is really quibbling.

Battery Life

Quoting talk times for EVO is a waste of time since so little of your usage will be spent chatting, and there’ll be differences between 3G and 4G usage. Besides, neither Sprint nor HTC has releases talk times at press time.

I spent six hours in on-and-off-usage in 4G in Philadelphia before I got a 15 percent power remaining notice. Apparently, even with its enormous battery, using the hot spot really soaks up the juice. With average mixed usage, expect to have to refill its lithium ion tank in the late afternoon.

Conclusion

The EVO is a true breakthrough, not only for its impressive concoction of next-generation features and functions, but it’s overall look-and-feel. Even in “just” a 3G coverage area, the HTC EVO is an impressive cellphone, and will become more impressive as its 4G-enabled capabilities such as video chatting become available. In a 4G zone, it’ll likely be unmatched by another carrier until the iPhone LTE hits stores in 2011 at the earliest.

Highs:

• 3G/4G connectivity
• Built-in mobile hot spot
• Bright, colorful, 4.3-inch screen
• 8 MP camera with dual LED flash
• Front-facing camera

Lows:

• Hot spot, 4G shorten battery life
• No external dedicated camera activation/shutter button

Apple iPhone 4

Introduction

The Apple iPhone is no longer the Superman of the cellphone world, despite all the hoopla, lines and glitz. Every carrier now has (or will have) at least one comparable Android superphone, such as Sprint’s EVO 4G, T-Mobile’s Google Nexus, the upcoming Droid X from Verizon on July 15, and Samsung’s Galaxy S from either AT&T or T-Mobile later this summer. Plus, the iPhone 4 also has to compete with the lower-priced 3G S, which also can run the new-and-improved multi-tasking iOS 4 operating system.

The question really isn’t whether the iPhone is a cool, new phone – it is. Its video chatting FaceTime is fascinating and fun, the Retina high-resolution screen is a salve to squinters, its 5-megapixel camera is exceptional. But the iPhone 4 also suffers from a couple of niggling issues which, now that you have plenty of superphone choices, make it less than it could have been.

Design and Layout

Apple touts the iPhone 4 as being the thinnest smartphone ever. This is misleading. The iPhone 4 is actually thicker around the edges than the tapered 3G S, so it feels thicker. And its glass rear is slipperier than the plastic 3G S.

The iPhone 4 is a smidgen smaller all around than the 3G S and the same weight, but thanks to the metal band around the perimeter and the glass front and back, it feels more solid. It’s also squarer than the tapered 3G S, which means form-fitting skins won’t fit (they’ll be too small), and the upper frame by the earpiece has a sharper edge, which means a naked iPhone 4 held tight to your ear will feel sharp and uncomfortable.

The iPhone 4’s controls and jacks remain in the same place, but the volume controls and home key require a firmer touch, which eliminates accidental presses.

Storage

Inside the iPhone “General/About/Capacity” settings menu, we’re told the 32 GB S has 29.3 GB of user memory, and the iPhone 4 29.1 GB. When you plug the two phones into iTunes, you’re told the S has actually has 29.33 GB and the iPhone 4 just 29.06 GB. But that approximately 270 MB difference (if my math is right) is not big enough to account for the disparity between the content that fit on my S and what didn’t fit on my 4. I had 4,750 music tracks and 2,250 photos on my 3G S with 1.4 GB left to spare; I had to trim these down to 4,550 tracks and just 400 photos, with just 830 MB left over on the 4 (all other content – video, apps, books, et al – remaining consistent between the two). Considering I was hoping the iPhone 4 would be available in a 64 GB version, this memory short-sheeting is doubly disappointing.

Retina Display

Everyone will be talking about FaceTime, but the iPhone 4’s Retina screen that will be the longest-pleasing improvement.

The iPhone 4’s Retina 960 x 640 pixel screen leans to the greener end of the color spectrum compared to the 3G S’s cooler blue hue, most noticeable on white background Web pages, on faces, and on clear blue skies. But those extra pixels make a world of difference in illuminating tiny details and creating sharper edges in images and video. More importantly, the iPhone 4’s screen has deeper blacks (noticeable when comparing the iPhone 4 and the S when in sleep); colors pop in both tone and in contrast like never before.

But all of a sudden, the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen seems small in the expanding world of 4-inch and larger superphone screens.

iTunes Integration

As it does for photos, the latest version of iTunes gives you the choice of down converting all higher bit-rated AAC and MP3 files to 128 Kbps AAC for use on your iPhone. We were able to save nearly 4GB of space by doing this, with no real loss of headphone sound quality.

Sound Quality

We could discern no qualitative improvement from the 3G S, but the speaker did pump out a bit more volume during FaceTime conversations. In a quiet room, we didn’t even have to go much beyond three quarters of maximum volume.

We had none of the reception problems reported by other folks, primarily because we don’t hold a bare iPhone up to our ear, left-handed, in a bear grip. Using the phone hands-free (Bluetooth or wired headphone – it does come with one, you know) is simply more comfortable and, if recent studies have shown, safer. We held the iPhone 4 with our hands covering the metal perimeter band, a manner many folks have described as inhibiting reception, for two extended phone conversations and while using FaceTime without a single problem.

FaceTime

Speaking of these two FaceTime calls, they varied greatly in quality, although both seemed to be running at around 15 frames per second from both the front and rear camera; we assume the video is down-converted to around half VGA resolution for transmission. A call to a colleague in midtown Manhattan was crystal clear, with little pixilization. A second call to a colleague outside of Milwaukee was highly pixilated. Both us and our callers were using N routers. Calls were not quite full duplex – it was better if one person spoke at a time, and there was a second or two of lag.

So it isn’t exactly the instant tête-à-tête video call Dr. Heywood Floyd makes to his daughter from the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the experience is both weird and fun nonetheless. You see yourself in a small window that can be dragged around to any of the four corners. But you and your caller are looking either at the tiny picture of yourself to make sure you stay centered in the frame or, more often, at each other rather than at the camera lens above the screen. As a result, you’re not really looking eye-to-eye at your caller, but a bit off center, which makes everyone look shifty. Switching to the rear camera to give your caller a view of your surroundings is a neat and, in some cases, useful feature sure to be emulated by other phone makers.

Two problems. One, who do you call? As noted, you have to know someone else with an iPhone 4, and you both have to be connected via Wi-Fi. Why didn’t Apple make FaceTime an extension of iChat, so anyone with at least a webcam-enabled Mac could make and receive video calls from the iPhone 4? One has to believe such a link will be established at some point. Or that Skype will create a video call app, if Apple allows it. Or better still, that AT&T’s network will become capable enough to enable cell video calls. But we’ll probably have to wait until 4G LTE before this happens.

In the meantime, if you have an iPhone 4 and no one to FaceTime with (yes, we’re already turning it into a verb), call Apple at 1-888-FACETIME (332-3846) between 8 am and 8 pm Central Time to chat with an Apple employee for testing purposes.

The second problem: Why do we need it? Insurance adjusters, real estate agents, spouses who need an assist while solo shopping – okay. But both calls we made were primarily comprised of “Isn’t this cool,” reminiscent of the early “I’m calling you from a cellphone!” thrills from a generation ago. The techno thrill is bound to wane unless a desktop or HDTV video calling component can be created, or even just establishing compatibility with other emerging cell video telephony solutions, like Qik for the EVO 4G.

Web

Even more than it is for movies, the Retina screen is a boon for reading smaller Web site print, and drastically improves ease of reading for text of any size, especially e-mails.

Web sites and pages all load a second or two faster on the iPhone 4 compared to the 3G S, even on AT&T’s much-maligned 3G network in Manhattan. Since both phones support high-speed 7.2 Mbps HSPA technology, the speed improvements must be attributed to the faster processor and improved antenna array.

Camera

Just because the iPhone 4’s camera is “only” 5 megapixels rather than the 8- and even 12-megapixel imagers showing up on other phones doesn’t mean squat. A 5-megapixel camera is all you need on any digital camera, unless you plan on creating billboards. It’s all about the lens and the processing. And the iPhone 4’s camera, sans flash, is the fastest we’ve used. We were frankly stunned at how quick – a second, maybe – the iPhone 4 captured and processed images and was ready to snap another. Shooting with the flash added a second or so delay between pushing the touch-screen shutter release and image capture. Larger icons would have been preferable for switching between still and video recording.

In terms of quality, indoor images and video all had an orange hue, even when we used the flash. Zooming was easy – tap the center focusing square and a touch 5x slider pops up, although indoor and night results look extra grainy. Photos also maintain focus across the entire frame, unlike the larger images on some of the other superphone cameras.

Sadly, there’s still no self-timer.

Battery Life

Apple says the iPhone 4 will give you seven hours of talk time and six hours of 3G Web surfing, with 30 hours of audio listening, compared to five, five and 40 on the 3G S. Both are rated at 10 hours of video viewing. With only a few days of use under our belts, it’s impossible to judge exactly how accurate these figures are, but FaceTime does seem to drain the battery faster than a normal call. After 45 minutes of FaceTime, the iPhone 4’s battery went from 100 to 68 percent.

Conclusion

The iPhone 4’s cool factor alone will grab your attention, but unless you’re a current AT&T customer sans iPhone, we would say hold on to your 3G S for a bit. Apple iOS 4 is a major upgrade, but it brought improvements to the 3G S as well, mitigating functional differences and perhaps lowering the reasons to upgrade. If you’re a Verizon, Sprint or even T-Mobile customer, you have plenty of worthwhile iPhone 4-like choices.

Highs:

• FaceTime video chatting
• High resolution Retina 960 x 640 pixel 3.5-inch display
• 5-megapixel camera with LED flash; HD video recorder
• 16GB or 32 GB built-in memory
• Long battery life

Lows:

• Sharp edges
• Less memory than 3G S; no 64GB version
• Greenish screen tone
• No HDMI out
• Orange hue on indoor photos
• No external camera shutter button

Nokia X6

Update - the Nokia X6 has now been updated to include a 16GB version, which strips the Comes with Music offering and is available at a lower price too.

The persistence of manufacturers when it comes to touchscreen mobile phones has to be applauded.

It might be that only a few - notably HTC, Apple and Palm - have really cracked the marriage of hardware and software - but that hasn't stopped everyone else attempting to achieve the same success. Nokia's own efforts have been hit and miss.

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic isn't without its good points, but all of Nokia's touchscreen phones so far have had resistive screens.

• Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world today

Among other things, that means they all came with old-fashioned styluses, and didn't work properly when you touched the screen with more than one finger. That meant reduced typing speeds, and user gestures that are so intuitive on other phones – pinching to zoom on the iPhone, for instance - were unavailable.

Nokia has heard its customers' complaints.

The X6 looks like a traditional slider phone - at 13.8mm thick it certainly looks like it could accommodate a physical keyboard. However, there are hardly any buttons to be found as the 3.2-inch touchscreen is capacitive, theoretically making a physical keyboard redundant.

There is a wealth of features besides. A whopping 32GB/16GB of internal storage and an FM radio make it tempting for entertainment even before you consider Nokia's intriguing Comes With Music service.

Even the camera has received the kind of attention you don't see on cheaper models - a 5MP sensor behind Carl Zeiss optics gives the X6 plenty of sheen.

But is the touchscreen a gimmick? The S60 operating system has a number of detractors, and just because a phone ticks all the right boxes on a specification sheet doesn't necessarily mean it'll make its users happy.

Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta 2 Available For Download - Get Your Hands On The Portable Version To Test Things Safely

Firefox 4 is getting ready to take on the browser war to next level and public beta 2 of the application is now available for download, the new version now supports "App Tab" feature allowing users to have an permanent faviconed tab for websites, powered by the new Gecko 2.0 page-rendering engine the browser now supports even more CSS3 standards specifically "CSS Transitions".

Apart for addressing 652 issues, performance has also been tweaked to offer faster javascript, improved scrolling and better startup times - to test things out without affecting your existing Firefox install you can use the Firefox 4 Beta 2 Portable version download provided below.

Vuze Remote and Faster Downloads

Have you ever been out, and realized that you forgot to queue a Vuze download to watch when you get home?  With the new Vuze Remote, you can now securely control your Vuze client from any computer or smartphone with a web browser.  Pretty cool, eh?  Not to mention, very useful for those meetings or classes where your mind has already fast forwarded to Friday night entertainment…

Once you have the latest Vuze release,  simply go to remote.vuze.com from any browser, or download the Vuze Remote toolbar here.  After a one-time pairing of the Vuze client and your browser, you’ll be ready to find and control all your Vuze downloads remotely over the web.

Your remote instructions pass directly and securely between your Vuze client and a web page in your remote browser.  Props to the Transmission team, as we leveraged their original web UI in developing Vuze Remote (open source ftw!).

Faster Downloads

This release also includes a number of significant performance improvements resulting from our ongoing Olympic training to make Vuze downloads even faster.

You should notice significantly faster torrent start-up times and subsequent download speeds, as a result of :

• Faster initiation of new torrents through “Allowed Fast” support (enabling new peers to quickly start downloading despite their lack of pieces to trade)
• Connecting to more seeds and peers on launch of a new torrent (for Vista SP2+ and Windows 7), and through optimized support of LibTorrent peer exchange
• Quickly switching to better performing peers through faster connection timeouts
• Faster ramp-up of better performing peers.

Bottomline – you should experience significantly faster torrent start-up and download speeds.