Google Android

Google, joined by companies such as T-Mobile and HTC, today unveiled its new open platform for mobile devices, called Android.

A broad alliance of technology and wireless companies today joined forces to announce the development of Android, an open platform for mobile devices. Google, T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola, Sprint and others have collaborated on the development of Android through the Open Handset Alliance, a multinational alliance of technology and mobile industry leaders.

This alliance shares a common goal of fostering innovation on mobile devices and giving consumers a user experience that rivals current solutions. By providing developers a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively, Android aims to accelerate the pace at which new and compelling mobile services are made available to consumers.

"With nearly 3 billion users worldwide, the mobile phone has become the most personal and ubiquitous communications device. However, the lack of a collaborative effort has made it a challenge for developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers to respond as quickly as possible to the ever-changing needs of savvy mobile consumers," says Google.

Through Android, the OHA initiative hopes that developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers will be better positioned to bring to market innovative new products faster and at a much lower cost. The end result is claimed to be an unprecedented mobile platform that will enable wireless operators and manufacturers to give their customers better, more personal and more flexible mobile experiences.

Thirty-four companies have formed the Open Handset Alliance, which aims to develop technologies that will significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services. The Android platform is the first step in this direction -- a fully integrated mobile "software stack" that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications.

Consumers should expect the first phones based on Android to be available in the second half of 2008.

The Android platform will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.

Sony Ericsson W960


When: November 2007 Worth: $600

Touch screen, musically inclined, loaded with gigabytes of flash memory and designed by one of the heavy-hitters in the consumer electronics industry. Think we're talking about the iPhone? You're only half right, as Sony Ericsson's recently-announced W960i Walkman phone has all those features and more. Whether its an iPhone competitor may be a moot point, as the W960i is going to be a Europe-only phone, while rumors have been circulating that European carriers have balked at Apple's stipulations for selling the iPhone. So the question may not be which phone to choose, but rather which continent. We size up both models, feature for feature, and decide which phone is the one to keep an eye on.

Interface

If there is one true innovation in the iPhone, it's the interface. Besides the multi-touch screen, the interface is filled with nice little effects that add up to a more visceral experience, made for the tactile navigation. The Sony Ericsson phone, on the other hand, will use UIQ, which is a Symbian-based interface. We last saw UIQ on the Sony Ericsson P990i smartphone, and, frankly, we weren't impressed. Many icons were abstract collections of spheres and cubes, with little relation to their actual purpose.

The one to use: Apple iPhone

Design

We are seriously concerned about the lack of a keyboard on the iPhone, for every aspect of the phone. In our experience with Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices, the touch screen keyboards, even simple numeric pads, just don't cut it. They can be inaccurate, insensitive and distracting to use, especially while driving. Still, just look at the iPhone and you want it. It has all the design appeal of the iPod, simple and clean with a symmetrical look and one-button design. The Sony Ericsson W960i is a very nice looking phone, very slim and glossy, and we're generally fans of Sony Ericsson's designs. Still, the iPhone is something completely different.

The one to hold: Apple iPhone

Platform

We were relieved when The New York Times reported, inaccurately, that Steve Jobs would release a software developer's kit (SDK) for the iPhone. Instead, Apple announced compatibility with Web-based apps, and simultaneously launched their preferred Web browser, Safari, on the PC. It's an intriguing step, but with Symbian OS support, the W960i is definitely going to have more third-party software available at launch, especially our favorite third-party app, SlingPlayer. Sure, Google's Web apps might work on the iPhone, so you might be able to open Microsoft Office documents, but proven apps for Symbian already exist, so W960i won't have to worry about possibilities.

The one to develop: Sony Ericsson W960i

Video playback

We're not exactly sure what sort of videos the W960i will be able to play, and though Sony Ericsson is touting "TV quality," we aren't expecting true DVB-H for mobile television. Assuming it will use a similar standard to the iPhone, which will play h.264 video files like the iPod video, we still think that videos on the iPhone will look better, for a couple of reasons. First, the iPhone's 480 by 320 pixel screen has twice the resolution of the Sony Ericsson phone. Second, the iPhone's screen is nearly an inch larger, diagonally, than the W960. Even with the increased size, Apple has improved pixel density to 160ppi, which is better than most computer monitors.

The one to view: Apple iPhone

Music playback

The iPhone has iTunes, with the accompanying music store, so it must be the one to watch for music, right? Not so fast. Sony Ericsson has a slew of interesting music features coming soon, notably the recently announced support for the MusicStation software. MusicStation is basically a subscription-based music store with over-the-air (OTA) downloads. An early criticism of the iPhone has been its lack of OTA access to the iTunes store, which always seemed to us a strange omission, as the iTunes software uses many of the same core elements as Safari for access to the massive catalogue. Eventually, we expect to see the iTunes store on the iPhone, but probably not until the device gets a 3G upgrade. Beyond MusicStation, we're interested in seeing some of the new music organization features on Sony's Gracenote-powered Media Manager software, like smart playlists that group songs by mood and tempo.

The one to listen: Sony Ericsson W960i

Camera

We're not going to make assumptions about the lens quality of the Apple camera, though we hope Apple doesn't go the route of other manufacturers by including a cheap, plastic lens that takes pitiful snapshots, albeit at a respectable, though uselessly high, resolution. We do know that the Sony Ericsson phone's camera will feature a flash, but more importantly will have auto-focus capabilities. In the past, we've been pleased with the image quality from Sony Ericsson's Cyber Shot phones, which use Carl Zeiss lenses, so the W960i is the one we're keeping an eye on, in terms of camera.

LG Voyager
Score: 70% When: November 2007 Worth: $300

Let's get the comparisons out of the way early. The LG Voyager wants to be an Apple iPhone killer, and it could be the very first bona fide contender. It does plenty of things that the iPhone can't, and while it isn't perfect, for many users its shortcomings won't detract from the significant advantages over Apple's device. Forgive us for glossing over the hardware keyboard in this review; we'll discuss whether we enjoyed using it for messaging, but whenever we could, we kept the lid closed on this device, and tried to rely on touch for whatever functions we could.

Design - Very good

The LG Voyager is easy to describe. It's an LG enV with a large, 2.8-inch touchscreen on the exterior instead of the numeric keypad. But if LG had simply stopped there, slapping a touchscreen onto the enV, this phone wouldn't be half the device it is. The touch screen is reinforced by haptic feedback, so whenever you tap the screen you get a slight buzz. It's a great effect, and it made the screen much more pleasant to use than the screens on more static devices.

The Touch interface has improved upon the Verizon Wireless in some nice ways. For one, Verizon has kept the LG Voyager in their walled garden, so you'll be familiar with the features if you've used a VZW phone before. But the garden looks much nicer on this phone, and they've put the best plants up near the front entrance. So VZ Navigator and the Web browser--formerly buried under the "Get it now" menu--are now top-level menu options, just as they should be. Perhaps we understand hiding V Cast Mobile TV, as it won't be available to all potential customers, but we can't understand why the mobile e-mail app is hidden, while SMS and IM are near the top.

The internal QWERTY on the Voyager is nice, but a little flat for our tastes. We prefer HTC's excellent keys, like we found on the AT&T Tilt. The Voyager's onscreen keyboard, however, is the best software keyboard we've seen on a phone. It beats the Apple iPhone with its haptic feedback, though its design is otherwise very similar. Unfortunately, like the iPhone, the Voyager doesn't let you use the wide, touch QWERTY keyboard everywhere you want, and gives you a 12-key pad on screen for SMS messaging, or sometimes makes you open the flip to use the hard keys.

Calling - Good

Call quality on the Voyager was disappointing, and in many ways the calling features are simply average. Though the soft buttons on the touch screen looked nice and polished, there were no new or outstanding calling features to take advantage of the technology, and some of our favorite features were missing. Speaker-independent voice dialing worked perfectly, but we miss conference calling, which the Voyager lacks. Bluetooth worked well for calling, and the speaker phone was nice and loud, better with the phone open than closed. The address book was unfortunately average, and though it had plenty of fields, a touch screen phone cries out for innovative speed dialing, like the "Hollywood Squares"-style menu on the HTC Touch on Sprint.

For calling times, we managed a phone call over four and a half hours, longer than Verizon Wireless' four-hour pledge. Still, that's not much for a multimedia phone, and V Cast Mobile TV is even more of a resource hog. On a long train commute home, we managed to drain the battery in less than three hours, watching television and browsing the Web, then navigating from the train station to home.

Messaging - Very good

Messaging was fine on the LG Voyager's touch screen, but the best experience required opening the phone. This is too bad, as the Voyager's on-screen keyboard is nothing to hide. We enjoyed using it when it did pop up, but this wasn't in the text messaging or instant messaging apps. The phone supports AOL, MSN and Yahoo for IM, and had no trouble setting up our Gmail account without additional help from us, even though Gmail wasn't one of the listed presets. The phone can also handle picture messages and video messages, though we wish there was a way to e-mail pictures. Instead, the e-mail app is somewhat buried, and separate from the standard "Messaging" window.

Verizon XV6800
Verizon Wireless today confirmed that the Windows Mobile 6 powered XV6800 business smartphone will arrive in stores today.

Sporting a conventional, yet popular, Windows Mobile slide-out QWERTY thumbboard form factor, the new XV6800 will replace the nearly two year old XV6700 on Verizon Wireless' network. Most notably, the manufacturer, UTStarcom, has dropped the external antenna and added Windows Mobile 6 to the new smartphone. Its Wi-Fi radio has also been upgraded from b to b/g, and the old 1.3-megapixel camera has been replaced with a 2-megapixel camera with flash. The smartphone's non-volatile memory has also been bumped up from 128MB to 256MB, while maintaining the 64MB of RAM.

Measuring 4.3 by 2.3 by 0.7 inches and weighing 5.8 ounces, the XV6800 is slightly more petite than its predecessor, but continues to focus on messaging, scheduling and productivity tasks. However, with an integrated microSD slot supporting up to 8GB cards and Windows Media Player 10 on-board, it could also be transformed into a decent multimedia smartphone. With a 2.8" touch display, Internet Explorer Mobile, and EV-DO connectivity, web browsing and large attachment downloads should also go like a breeze.

The XV6800 doesn't offer the largest-capacity battery around, yet Verizon Wireless claims a talk time of up to 5 hours. Also worth noting, the device comes with hearing aid compatibility, voice-activated dialing with voice command and Bluetooth 2.0 support.

The XV6800 is available online today for $450 after a $50 mail-in rebate and a new two-year contract.

Samsung's new 3-megapixel

The Samsung SCH-U900 FlipShot phone updates the aging SCH-A990, a previous 3-megapixel camera phone in the same design family as the new device. The major design feature is the rotating screen, which can twist 180 degrees so that it's facing the user when flipped closed, thus acting as a view screen for the phone's camera. This update to the model adds a few features that bring it in line with today's multimedia phones, but doesn't do much for the more-important imaging features. The camera sensor hasn't seen an upgrade, and we would have liked to find an auto-focus lens or even a Xenon flash

i-mate Ultimate 9502

When: December 2007 Worth: $750

The user's eye will rest on what is likely to be a magnificent 2.8" VGA (640 by 480 pixels) touch screen, showing up to 262K colors.

The i-mate Ultimate 9502 also sports a GPS radio, and i-mate claims a talk time of up to 4.5 hours (UMTS) from a powerful 1620mAH Lithium ion-Polymer battery. The smartphone also incorporates a Qualcomm 400MHz processor, 256MB ROM and 128MB RAM.

Samsung SC-DX10

When: November 2007 Worth: $600

On our way up to see the new hi-def Samsung camcorder, our rep told us it looked like a "coke can." He summed things up nicely, as the cylindrically shaped SC-HMX10 fit in our hands exactly as a soda can would, though without the battery it felt considerably lighter than soda pop. The design is slick and well rounded, including a stiff swivel attached to the leather hand strap that lets you hold the camera more easily at a few awkward angles. At the lower end of the spectrum, the SC-MX10 looks exactly like its powerful sibling, but without the hi-def capabilities. Instead, Samsung has wisely chosen to pitch this camera as a YouTube solution. With recent phones, like Helio's Ocean, coming optimized for YouTube and even some digital cameras, like Casio's recent releases, supporting YouTube-ready video formats, clearly there is interest in the market for this feature, and we think this could be driving a whole new audience to the digital camcorder realm. For this reason, we think that Samsung's choice of SD and flash memory for these cameras makes sense. Even for Hi-Def content on the SC-HMX10, SD cards have matured enough that even capacities as high as 32GB will soon be available, and that's plenty for anyone who's not making a feature-length film. And smaller cards can be had cheap; even name-brand 2GB cards can be found for less than $30. Other benefits of flash are the cameras' light weight and instant-on capabilities, two nice features on consumer models.

camcorders

Sanyo Xacti DMX-HD1000

When: January 2008 Worth: $1000

Sanyo's new solid state HD camcorder, the Xacti DMX-HD1000, is their first full-HD 1080p model, recording at 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. Sporting a pistol-grip style and a fold-out 2.7-inch LCD, the camera can record about an hour and 25 minutes onto an 8GB SDHC card, using the MPEG-4 AVC codec. The camcorder also has the ability to shoot 8-megapixel stills, a 10x optical zoom, a 2.7-inch LCD, HDMI-out and SDHC compatibility (presently up to 8GB). Battery life is about 2 hours per charge for video. Sanyo will be shipping 15,0000 DMX-HD100's in Japan in September 2007, price to be determined.