Design
O2’s Xda II Mini has been one of the most popular phones here at CNET.com.au, so we were especially keen to get our hands on its successor, the O2 Xda Atom. At first, visually speaking, it’s hard to obviously tell the two apart, save for the obvious switch from a silver style scheme to an all-black one. The Atom is marginally smaller than the Xda II Mini at 102 x 58 x 18.5mm versus the Mini’s 108 x 58 x 18.1mm, but that’s more of a paper measurement — we’d challenge anyone picking up both phones to intuitively feel the size difference without putting them side to side. Read the rest of this entry »

Nokia today introduced the new Nokia 6110 Navigator, a navigation-enabled mobile phone designed for the mass market. The Nokia 6110 Navigator brings together GPS (Global Positioning System) and AGPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) functionality with always-on mobile connectivity.

The Nokia 6110 Navigator features full personal navigation experience with integrated maps, routing and navigation available with the click of the phone’s one-touch Navigator key. With the Nokia 6110 Navigator, consumers can view their current location on the map, search for destinations, find specific routes, or locate services such as restaurants, hotels or shops that are nearby. Featuring full turn-by-turn 3D navigation, the Nokia 6110 Navigator suggests the best route to follow to reach a location by car or on foot.

The Nokia 6110 Navigator comes with a local map pre-installed on the memory card ready for immediate navigation. Additional maps and content – such as traffic information, weather services and travel guides – can be purchased online. Additional maps can be transferred to the phone by using the Nokia Map Manager application included.

The maps also show thousands of points of interest, such as restaurants, hotels, shops or other services nearby the location, including phone numbers and web addresses for calling and browsing directly with the phone. And, because the map’s information is located in the mobile phone, it can be shared with family or friends with the touch of a button.

Moreover, the Nokia 6110 Navigator enables fast access to online information with HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) up to 3.6 Mbps. Emails can be handled in real-time by push email, which also supports attachments as well as features a Message reader function to read aloud emails.

The Nokia 6110 Navigator is an ideal tool for 3G multimedia, enabling real time video sharing and video calls, as well as a 2.0-megapixel camera with a dedicated capture key, panorama mode, and integrated flash. Video clips can be enjoyed with full screen view, and maps and images are clear and crisp to see on the large and bright 2.2-inch QVGA screen, offering up to 16 million colors. For extra protection, the camera lens is covered by a protection slide, keeping the images crystal clear.

The Nokia 6110 Navigator is Nokia’s first dedicated smartphone aimed specifically towards the navigation market. Based on S60 smartphone software on Symbian OS, the Nokia 6110 Navigator enables access to a wide range of S60 applications such as Mobile Search or S60 games for additional entertainment and productivity. Key features of the Nokia 6110 Navigator include:

- Fully integrated GPS Navigation with one touch Navigator key
- Local map pre-installed on the memory card for immediate navigation
- HSDPA for fast web browsing and downloading
- WCDMA 2100 HSDPA, GSM / EDGE 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
- 2.0-megapixel camera with integrated flash, 4x digital zoom and panorama mode
- Real-time video sharing and video calling
- 40 MB free internal memory
- Support of microSD memory card up to 2 GB

The Nokia 6110 Navigator phone offers a talk-time of up to 3.5 hours (GSM) and 2.5 hours (WCDMA), and a standby time of up to 11 days (GSM and WCDMA). The Nokia 6110 Navigator is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2007 with an estimated retail price of 450 euros before subsidies or taxes.

Review Video:

Motorola has been selling Linux-based devices for quite some time since the company’s first announcement to adopt the platform in February 2003. Unlike handhelds which run on Symbian or Windows Mobile, the open-source approach for Linux takes advantage of community-based development for the system.

Unveiled at the ITU Telecom World in December 2006, the ROKR E6 is not like the musically talented ROKR E1 and E2 that came before it. It is more a smart phone with multimedia capabilities, targeted at young professionals.

Design
The all-black chassis of the Motorola ROKR E6 reminds us of the classic RAZR lineup with laser-etched controls, except that it’s in an oversized candy-bar form factor. The E6 uses touchscreen input, so users who prefer a hardware keypad to thumb away are better off with the slider ROKR Z6.

Unlike most touchscreen phones with their LCDs slightly below the surface of the unit, creating a sort of rim around it, the ROKR E6 is completely flat. Instead, the panel is under a transparent plastic layer that makes you feel like you’re tapping on a layer of air. You never really “touch” the screen’s surface in actual use.

At 123g, the E6 is not the lightest phone around, nor is it the thinnest (14.5mm), but the build quality is excellent.

Features
Like we mentioned earlier, the ROKR E6 is not like the iTunes-savvy siblings that came before it. In fact, placing the E6 in the ROKR category is a misnomer since the smart phone is nothing like the E1 and E2, both in terms of design and features.

There are some things which we really like on this ROKR, such as a 3.5mm audio jack, a Secure Digital card slot for up to 2GB of flash media, a Hold button to prevent accidental presses and a mini-USB port.

As a multimedia player, the installed RealPlayer is capable of playing most popular formats including AAC, AAC+, DRM, MIDI, MP3, RA, WAV and WMA. The E6 also supports Bluetooth stereo so you can use your wireless stereo headset. One thing we didn’t take too well to was the poorly located music playback controls on the left edge of the phone. Because of the flushed surface, it is hard to feel for the buttons, much less know what each represents.

Features (cont.)
Over at the back of the E6 is a 2-megapixel camera. Again, this is a mixed bag. We’re right-handed users, so by having the shutter button on the left edge when the phone is held horizontally means we have to consciously remind ourselves that the shutter is on the left and not on the right like most digital cameras. Just beside the camera lens is a handy slider to switch between landscape and macro shooting modes. The phone’s internal memory is only a measly 8MB. Fortunately, like we mentioned earlier, the E6 has an SD card slot that supports up to 2GB of flash media.

That’s not the only trick up this ROKR’s camera sleeve. It’s also a Webcam when connected to a PC via USB (you’ll need to install the drivers) and a business card reader. During tests, the camera had to be switched to macro mode and we found the card reader function worked best on white-based namecards with good lighting. Oddly enough, it took preference to Chinese characters over English letters on the cards we tested and didn’t recognize Japanese lettering.

Unfortunately, the ROKR E6 doesn’t match up with other smart phones in the market. Unlike Office Mobile or Quick Office on Windows Mobile and the Symbian Series 60 operating systems, the E6 doesn’t come with any built-in document editing applications. What it has instead is the Piscel Viewer which allows the user to read only Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files.

Performance
We tested the triband (900/1800/1900MHz) Motorola ROKR E6 in Singapore with a MobileOne SIM card. Overall, call quality was decent and the onboard speakers worked as expected and were sufficiently loud. The only issue we had was with the lack of a hardware keypad, which was quite inconvenient at times.

Image quality from the 2-megapixel camera was decent, though it’s nothing fantastic. The macro and landscape switch came in handy but the lack of autofocus and built-in flash light limited our shooting in certain environments.

Motorola rates the ROKR E6 with a talktime of up to 7 hours and a maximum standby time of 9.7 days. In actual use, we managed to use the phone for approximately three days before the 1,000mAh battery ran out of juice.

Review Video:

Even aside from the ever popular BlackBerry, which for many people is the defining device in this category, the Windows Mobile Smartphone is a pretty crowded market so Motorola’s Q9 has a lot to contend with.

As I write this review the phone has gone on sale in Italy and is fully expected that it will appear in the UK pretty soon. At the moment though, we don’t have confirmation of pricing or any information about which operators might take it on.

It is more than likely it will find a home here though, as it has some enticing specifications. It runs Windows Mobile 6 and is Quad-band with HSDPA at up to 3.6Mbps. You won’t find a UK operator offering more than 1.8Mbps at the moment, but there’s nothing like a bit of future-proofing, is there? It has 96MB of RAM and 256MB of internal storage memory and a microSD card slot is on the upper left edge of the casing. A 2-megapixel camera with flash caters for shooting photos and video, the latter at 30 frames a second. Very annoyingly given that little list, there is Bluetooth but no Wi-Fi.

This is a pretty big smartphone. It weighs 134g, which considering you can get Smartphones weighing around the hundred gram mark is a bit heavy. In the accompanying paperwork, the Q9 Motorola only divulged the thickness of this device, all 11.8mm of it. My trusty ruler came up with a height measurement of 117mm and width of 67mm.

Compare all these dimensions to those of the recently reviewed Samsung SGH-i600 and the Samsung wins on almost every count.

Of course it isn’t just about size. A keyboarded Windows Mobile Smartphone has to be usable and in this instance a lot of that usability is about the keyboard itself. I found the SGH-i600’s keyboard pretty good to use at a fair speed. The Q9’s is about the same in terms of usability, though the keyboard design is very different.

In this case the key are large and arranged so that they touch each other rather than being separated. They have a rubbery texture, are very clearly marked and give a little click when they are pressed.

On the bottom row are several shortcut keys. These variously open the Calendar, Contacts and music library, activate the camera, and run the voice control software. The voice control button also activates the speakerphone when you are on a call. Add to these the shortcut buttons for the Windows Mobile messaging software and for the web browser, both of which sit immediately beneath the screen, and you can see that even though this Smartphone does not have a touchscreen it isn’t too difficult to use it one-handed.

Motorola has gone all RAZR with the buttons beneath the screen. They sit on a flat area and are separated by ridges and as each one occupies a relatively large space they are not difficult to use. This is a good thing, because as well as web browsing and message creation you use these buttons to start and end calls, get to the Windows Mobile Today screen, go back, and use the softmenus. Right in the centre of these is a relatively small navigation button.

On the right edge Motorola has put two scroll buttons. Between them is a select button, beneath them a back button. They do for moving through e-mails, web pages, documents and the like and if you hold the select button down you can use the scrollers to control the device volume.

The screen too is vital to usability and here we have a wide format 2.5 inch 320 x 240 pixel display. It would benefit from being a little larger, but in fairness it is in keeping with other devices and is sharp and bright enough.

On the software front, Windows Live Messenger is here as a bona fide part of Windows Mobile 6. There is always the possibility it won’t make it into versions of the device that operators include in their ranges, though. For example, Riyad found that Orange had taken it out of the Windows Mobile 6 SPV E650 he reviewed a while back.

Elsewhere, Motorola has made some interesting software choices. Pocket Internet Explorer is gone, and in its place is the very good Opera web browser. Among its features is the ability to open more than one web page at a time in different windows, something that Microsoft really should have implemented in Pocket Internet Explorer with Windows Mobile 6, but failed to do.

Motorola has also chosen to eschew Mobile Office, the Word Mobile, Excel Mobile and PowerPoint Mobile suite that is newly available to Windows Mobile Smartphone users with Windows Mobile 6. Instead you get DocumentsToGo, a suite that lets you create Word documents, edit Excel, read PowerPoint and PDF files and managed Zipped archives.

There is a voice control utility that works fairly well in quiet conditions, and Motorola has included McAfee Virus Scan too. Not that there are any Windows Mobile viruses out there at the moment, but I guess Motorola thinks it is worth playing safe.

My review sample wasn’t a fully boxed retail version, but everything was ticketyboo with it except for the fact that the battery wouldn’t fully charge. I got it about 80 percent full, and from that managed four and a half hours of music with the screen forced on. I reckon a battery that can charge fully should manage at least five hours.

One more point of pure irritation is that the mini USB power connector isn’t your standard mini USB power connector. Oh no, it is smaller. This means you can’t carry one universal charger several devices.

Verdict

The Q9 is a bit on the large side for my taste, and while its keyboard is very good the screen is a bit small. Aside from the fact that it is hampered by the lack of Wi-Fi it does its job well.

Review Video:

Fresh news from Engadget’s tipster about the latest Sidekick Motorola and T-Mobile handset. The phone that was previously labeled Zante is now almost officially going to be named the Motorola Q700. The phone is scheduled to be released in the second week of september.

The phone looks pretty bulky in the sketches and reportedly measures 118mm x 62mm x 17.5mm. The phone comes with a pretty decent 2.4 inch QVGA display. Other features include, Usb charging, 1.3 megapixel camera (disappointing to say the least), MicroSD card slot and a Danger 4.0 Operating system.

Features & Specifications

Brand: Motorola Q700 HIPTOP SLIDE MSN – SMS Gaming Phone!
Model: Q700/Hiptop Slide
Colour: Purple & Black
RRP: $679
Internal Memory: 128MB
External Memory: Micro SD Card Slot
Network: GSM
Camera: 1.3mp
Dimensions: 118 x 62 x 17.5mm
Display: 320 x 240
Band: Quad
Status: Any network. Unblocked.
Other Features: Dual navigation, QWERTY Keyboard, Access to Facebook, Myspace, Google MSN Messenger, Email and Browser

Review Video:

Full Review
The Motorola Ming is one of those cell phones we couldn’t wait to get our hands on, and once we got to use it, we knew why. It’s just that fun and cool to use. Although this is an unlocked cell phone and some of its menus are in a foreign language, we didn’t have much of a translation problem – it’s that intuitive. In short, the Motorola Ming is a real head-turner with a ton of features that are easy to execute and fun to use.

Call Quality

Calls and speakerphone: We found calls to be loud and clear on the Motorola Ming. We rarely needed to use the side volume keys to adjust the sound. Using the speakerphone didn’t degrade call quality, and we particularly like that two people can talk simultaneously when the speakerphone is activated. Since the cell phone’s flip is actually made of plastic, the earpiece doesn’t heat up when you talk on the phone for long periods of time.

Audio quality: Playback of songs and music on the FM radio application is decent and loud through the cell phone’s speakers. Additionally, since the speaker is located on the back of the cell phone, you should turn the Ming over to listen to songs. On the plus side, we really enjoyed listening to music with the included headset; songs sounded great through them.

Ease of Use

Menu/phone book: As is the case with many Motorola cell phones, the menu’s interface is intuitive, requiring only a couple of steps to access most of the Ming’s features. This cell phone sports a touch screen, so everything you want to do is a just a tap away. The bottom of the screen serves as sort of a task bar with shortcut keys to the most recently used features; the top of the screen doesn’t change. The button in the upper left of the screen with four circles on it (the image looks a little like the bubblet game found on some Windows Mobile smart phones) provides access to the main menu. There’s also one-touch access to the phone book, creating messages, and using the phone. Once you master these buttons, understanding the rest of the icons on the cell phone becomes second nature. In the main menu, just about everything is in English except a few applications that are strictly in Chinese. That said, it’s pretty easy to figure out those apps. While you can run multiple applications at once, if you don’t close them and have too many open, there’s little you can do with the cell phone until you close a few.

Entering and saving numbers (there’s room for 4 phone numbers for each contact) is easy. Additionally, you can save birthday info, anniversary dates, a Web address, and a physical address for every contact on your cell phone and dedicate a song stored in memory as a ringtone.

Camera/video: The Motorola Ming sports a 2-megapixel camera, and it can record videos. Although the Ming lacks a flash, we doubt that having one would enhance picture quality much. About that: Picture quality isn’t the best. Most images came out pretty blurry. Video quality isn’t much better, but at least you can see what’s happening on the screen. Additionally, if you want to save a lot of photos and music, you’ll need an optional MicroSD card storage card since the cell phone has only 8MB of internal storage, which can fill up quickly depending on what else you have saved on the Ming. You can snap pictures by selecting Capture on the screen in the camera mode or pressing the button located on the side of the cell phone with a camera icon on it. There’s also a tiny mirror underneath the lens on the back of the cell phone for snapping self-portraits.

The good news is that this cell phone offers many tools for enhancing picture quality. There’s brightness, zoom, night mode, and the ability to snap in black and white mode, among others. In addition to the many settings for taking pictures already available on the camera, you can edit images with the included Photo Editor. In this application, you can crop pictures and even add writing or draw circles and lines on photos to point out specific objects in the image. If you’re not a fan of the pics you snap with the integrated camera, you can connect the Motorola Ming to a computer via the included mini-USB-to-USB cable and upload a few of your own favorite images to the cell phone.

Music: There are a couple of ways to listen to music on the Motorola Ming. First, there’s a radio application that you can use to hear local FM stations. While you will need to plug in the headset to use this feature, you can still select the radio to be played over the cell phone’s speakers. The other option for playing back music is in the RealPlayer application, entitled Media on the main menu. Once in this application, you can create playlists and play music, but there isn’t much you can do to adjust audio quality. The good news is that you probably won’t have to since playback of songs is pretty impressive. You can play AAC (Apple’s music file format), WMA (Window’s music file format), and MP3 files. If you plan on storing more than two or three songs on the cell phone, you’ll want to purchase an optional MicroSD card, since the Ming has only 8MB of internal memory, which is simply not enough for more than a few songs.

You can get music onto the phone using the USB-to-mini-USB cable, then drag and drop songs from your computer onto the cell phone. You can also store tunes from your PC on a MicroSD card, then slip it into the MicroSD slot located beneath the battery cover on the back of the Motorola cell phone.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to pair the Motorola cell phone with a Motorola H680 Bluetooth headset and an Apple iBook G4.

Design

Look and feel: In a word, the Motorola Ming just looks cool. It’s definitely one of those cell phones that everyone will want to see or ask about whenever it’s revealed in public. It’s got a charcoal-gray plastic covering that flips open to reveal the cell phone’s touch screen. The back of the cell phone is slightly rubberized (like the Pebl’s). While the Motorola Ming isn’t exactly what we would call small (on a par with the Motorola Krzr), it’s definitely compact and fits easily into a pant pocket or small purse without creating too much of a bulge. Our least favorite design aspect is the location of the voice record button; we often pressed it while on a call or when we flipped open the cell phone with one hand. As a result, we ended up recording way too many of our conversations.

The display is bright but not nearly as crisp as, say, the Samsung A990’s. Since the screen is slightly recessed, it doesn’t attract as much grease and fingerprints as many cell phones available today. As noted, the cell phone sports a touch screen, which is responsive to the touch of a fingernail or the included stylus. The Motorola Ming will accept an optional MicroSD card; however, figuring out where to insert the card isn’t immediately obvious since it’s hidden behind the cell phone battery.

Keypad: The touch-sensitive grey keypad sits on a bright white screen, so dialing in the dark isn’t an issue. Neither is accidentally dialing the wrong number. Additionally, when you want to compose a text message, a pop-up keyboard will appear on the screen. The good news is that the predictive text software included in the Ming is pretty accurate, so you won’t have to peck out all the letters of a particular message yourself. The bad news is that the keyboard is on the tiny side, so accuracy takes a hit if you’re trying to tap out messages with just your fingernail.

Battery Life
In the battery life department, the Motorola Ming had decent performance. We found that we could last a little over two days before needing to recharge when using the Motorola Ming regularly to make calls and send/receive text messages. Users who barely use the cell phone to make/receive calls and send/receive messages can wait about four days before needing to recharge, while heavier cell phone users will likely need to charge the Motorola Ming every other day. You can use the included mini-USB-to-USB cable to charge the cell phone when it’s connected to a computer. Nice!

Review Video:

Design
Measuring 59mm wide, 117mm high and 21.8mm deep, the Mio DigiWalker A702 is a neat, if slightly chunky-looking device. On the front there’s a shroud of grey faux-metal surrounding the A702’s 2.7-inch touchscreen. Below this there’s a keypad with all the usual suspects for a Windows Mobile smartphone — call/pick up, end call, Windows key, back and number pad. Along the top of the keypad there are buttons that mirrors the functionality of the Windows Mobile’s button ribbon, which runs along the bottom of the screen. Not only are these hard buttons redundant, they’re also rather too small to be of any use.

There’s also an OK button nestled between these hard buttons which, in our time with the phone, did less work than Paris Hilton. Of marginally more use is the clickable flicker switch along the left-hand edge of the phone. It lets you scroll through lists, messages and options on the Windows Mobile Today screen, although we mainly used it for changing speaker volume.

While we’re not particularly keen on these design features, we’re saving our stash of barbs and arrows for the designers who laid out the A702’s number pad. The numbers one through nine are in their usual three-by-three grid yet the #, 0 and * are located to the side, not along the bottom. This meant that we often keyed 8 instead of 0, and if we had forced ourselves to donate a dollar every time that happened, we’d have fed the starving millions in Africa. We thought that with practice, time and effort this situation would improve, but old habits proved nearly impossible to break.

Locking and unlocking the A702 is done by quickly pressing the power button, located on the right edge. This works fine most of the time, although occasionally when our keys and the A702 co-habited a pocket, the keys unlocked the A702 and the motion of walking or sitting down brushed the screen in such a way as to switch the phone into flight mode.

Features
The A702 comes loaded with Windows Mobile 6 Professional, which includes Office Mobile. Mio also bundles in two apps to make life in Windows Mobile world slightly more pleasant: Mio Menu and Mio Settings. The former is like Palm OS’s launcher screen, while the latter groups together phone settings like voice speed dial and GPS configuration. Pity then that Mio didn’t throw in an app for displaying the phone’s MAC address.

Naturally, being a GPS phone from Mio, there’s also a copy of MioMap pre-installed. It’s basically the same software that’s used in the Mio’s C-Series dedicated in-car GPS units. Although MioMap functions in both landscape and portrait formats, the design of the A702’s windscreen mount effectively precludes this. As with other Mios we’ve tested recently the A702 guided us safely — well, except the instances where no right turns were missing from Mio’s Aussie maps — if not efficiently to our destination. Text-to-speech, which allows the GPS to read out street names in turn instructions, isn’t included with the A702.

The A702’s screen, which is bright and clear in indoor environs, is too glossy and reflective. The screen proved impossible to read when walking around town on bright sunny days and, although the reflections were both annoying and distracting, we were still able to make out the map and turn instructions when driving.

There’s no 3G capability with this phone — it’s 2.5G — so mobile Internet addicts should probably look elsewhere. Other features include a 2.5mm headphone jack, a telescoping stylus, Wi-Fi and a decent 3.2-megapixel camera with built-in flash and self-portrait mirror.

Performance
The A702’s performance as a GPS navigator is on par with dedicated portable GPS devices, but its performance as a phone is sub-standard. Largely our issues with the phone stem from its Windows Mobile operating system — a necessary evil for running the MioMap software. For instance, alarms only function when the phone is switched on, although this makes for a wonderfully techie excuse for turning up to work late.

The A702 comes equipped with 64MB of working memory and 1GB of storage space for applications, photos, music and other files. Its 200MHz processor, however, struggles to cope with the operating system’s resource demands. Opening the mail application, required for sending or reading SMSes, takes a small eternity at times (five seconds or so in some situations). Couple that with the number of clicks, and the pauses between them, that it takes to start entering a message and you may well have forgotten what you wanted to say.

Worse, though, is Mio’s T9 predictive text implementation called MioKeyboard. MioKeyboard works like this: as you tap in a word on the number pad, a list of possible words is displayed along the bottom of the screen. When you’re done tapping in the word, you press and hold the desired word’s corresponding number in the option list. So for “hello”, you’d key in 43556 and press and hold 1. At first glance this seems like a reasonable way of doing things but the press and hold required to select a word takes a good second or so to register. And because pressing space won’t automatically select the first option, typing a simple message like “sorry, gonna be 10 mins late” is like writing War and Peace. Add in the fact that fast typers can often outpace the unit’s key recognition and you have a thoroughly frustrating texting experience.

We got around the A702’s text limitations by opting for Windows Mobile’s on-screen virtual keyboard or hand writing recognition. While these options are fine in the comfort of our lounge room or when seated at our office cubicle, they’re impractical when riding in a car or on public transport. Not to mention impossible to use whilst walking.

Overall
If you want a good GPS system with a phone and you’re definitely going to be using the GPS on a regular basis — be honest now — then the A702 is a good bet. However, its odd keypad layout, slow responses and woeful texting ability make it a poor choice as a phone.