May 29, 2010
Solar Cell phone Chargers: A Green Way to Charge your Mobile Phone
Very few people know about alternative ways of charging their mobile phones and other electronic gadgets. However, it is possible to charge these gadgets without having to rely on electricity. For instance, unknown to many, solar cell phone chargers are available in the market. But how do solar cell phone chargers work, exactly, and how [...]We love mobile phonesSolar Cell phone Chargers: A “Green” Way to Charge your Mobile Phone
Review: Nokia X3
The Nokia X3 is a slim, budget offering from the Finns. With no touchscreen and modest memory, it still has pretensions of being an attractive music device with a low cost to boot.While the recent Nokia X6 touchscreen topped the rebranded X-series music phone bill with smartphone functionality and a heavyweight 32GB of onboard memory, the Nokia X3 is a much more modest affair.It works the signature Nokia XpressMusic design look again, sporting bright red or blue music player controls down the side of the display, and comes with a 2GB MicroSD memory card in-box, a standard 3.5mm headphone socket, in-ear earphones and an FM radio. However, there’s no high-speed 3G connectivity, let alone Wi-Fi or GPS functionality, and its onboard camera is an average 3.2MP shooter.Initially available for around 90 with various pay as you go deals (or 129 SIM-free), the Nokia X3 is clearly aiming for the cash-conscious music phone buyer after a smart-looking device, pitching it squarely against the likes of the Sony Ericsson W395.Design and handlingThe Nokia X3’s bodywork is tidily proportioned, measuring 96(h) x 49.3(w) x 14.1(d) mm closed and weighing 103g. It has an average-sized 2.2-inch 262K-colour QVGA display dominating the front that’s reasonable for this sort of handset. There are no touchscreen controls under the display is a regular navigation D-pad flanked by a standard issue quartet of soft key and call end buttons on a flat glossy black front control panel. These buttons are adequately spaced for hassle- and error-free navigation, although the glossy front is a touch plasticky.But the metallic red or blue music controls and trim bordering the display and the matt black bodywork used around the rest of the phone add a sharp look to the design not HTC Legend levels of design, but not bad for 90 of your English pounds.These three thin music control buttons (forward, rewind, play/pause) enable users to operate the music player when it’s playing in the background, although they’re aren’t essential for controlling the phone - the navigation D-pad can take care of that too. The slide-out keyboard is a bit of a throwback to Motorola RAZR styling, with a flat brushed metal pad separated by illuminated ridges. It’s sufficient for texting at decent speeds, though it doesn’t have the super-light touch of the best texting phones, and larger-fingered users should be wary of straying thumbs.Around the sides are routine camera key and volume buttons plus a MicroSD card slot, covered by a fairly tight plastic bung. The standard 3.5mm headphone socket sits correctly on top of the phone, next to a microUSB data connector and thin-pin charger socket. All-in-all, it feels slim in the hand and pocket, and is comfortable to handle what more do you really expect from a 90 handset? LG is doing the same thing with the LG Pop so we’re glad to see Nokia is playing in the right area as well.The Nokia X3 user interface is Nokia Series 40 rather than the S60 smartphone platform, so is standard issue, uncomplicated and straightforward to operate. It’s based around the usual type of grid main menu, which drills down into basic sub-menu option lists all of which should be very familiar to anyone who’s packed a Nokia mobile before.The home screen setup is standard stuff too; in fact, there are two home screen set up options you can choose between. The out-of-the-box default home screen has a row of five scrollable icon shortcuts towards the top of the display and additional lines on the screen for media player and radio status and info, calendar and message updates plus other information.These home screen shortcuts and info/content options can be user-defined as can further D-pad shortcuts with dozens available to select as shortcuts including functions, applications and even any bookmarked web pages intuitive for a cheaper handset like this.Alternatively, you can de-clutter the home screen by switching that mode off in the settings menu and sticking with a simpler setup that utilises the D-pad and softkeys only for shortcuts. It’s up to you, although the default home screen does provide more immediate information.Within the menus, the Nokia Series 40 6th Edition user interface is easy to navigate and operate. The functionality isn’t such that the menus are overloaded with confusingly laid out options, so it should be undemanding for any Nokia newcomers too.We found call quality on the Nokia X3 not quite up to the usual high standards we expect from Nokia handsets. Outgoing calls were often muffled and audio sometimes ropey even in areas where signal strength was good. It was surprising on our review sample, as we usually have no problems with Nokia’s high standard calling performance. For instance, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is not that much more expensive, but has a much higher level of call quality.We tried the phone in a number of places with varying signal levels, and its performance was average at best.Volume level was good enough, however it can be cranked up enough to cope with noisy urban conditions.The keyboard is perfectly manageable for tapping out numbers, and the typical Nokia Series 40 phonebook allows for numerous bits of contact information to be stored for each entry. The Nokia X3 puts in a decent messaging performance, supporting the usual text and multimedia messaging plus email and instant messaging. The flush, one-piece keyboard provides a reasonably responsive way of tapping in texts with some proficiency. Texts can easily be upgraded to MMS messages, with a toolbar of icons ranged along the bottom of the screen for adding photos, sound clips, video clips, and so on. It’s easy to operate and intuitive to use.Messages are presented in ‘conversations’, with a threaded string of incoming and outgoing messages for each contact you’ve recently been in touch with.The X3 uses the Nokia Messaging Mail email client, which enables you to set up email for a new Ovi Mail account or set up details from an existing POP3/IMAP4 email account. Settings are pre-loaded for several services, including Windows Live Hotmail, Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail you just need to tap in your email address and password - and you’re away. Other email provider accounts can be set up quickly and easily in a similar way settings details are taken care of automatically.The email user interface is reasonably attractive for a budget handset, and emails are sensibly ordered and headers viewable in lists on the screen. Some attachments, including JPG images, can be viewed, but not all file types are supported (we couldn’t view PDFs, Excel and Word documents, for instance). You can send documents from the phone though. With no 3G, large attachment files can take some time downloading or uploading, but then again that’s not really what the Nokia X3 is designed to do.The email client has a fair selection of options to manage accounts, including the facility to send instant messages directly from your email account, and you can use the number pad keys as shortcuts for certain options. You can also send quick replies to emails, with 9 preset messages available that can be selected and sent in a couple of key presses useful for fast acknowledgements of incoming mail. Multiple email accounts can be stored and accessed in the Nokia Messaging Mail application, and you can set the phone to regularly check email accounts automatically for new messages.Instant messaging is supported on the Nokia X3, with Nokia’s own IM application enabling you to use Ovi IM, and support for Windows Live Messenger in a separate IM app in the messaging folder. You can send and receive short messages to other IM users online easily and speedily, and leave it running in the background.Nokia once again doubles up on the browser front in the Nokia X3, including Opera Mini software as well as Nokia’s own-brand browser.Lacking 3G or Wi-Fi to fire up online speeds, the X3 relies on 2.5G EDGE/GPRS data connectivity.On mobile-optimised sites the onboard Nokia browser goes along at an acceptable pace, rendering sites efficiently enough, with a useful progress bar running along the bottom of the screen.As with other Series 40 phones, the Nokia browser operation is based on selecting from menu options rather than an on-screen toolbar or shortcuts, so it’s not the slickest browser around compared with some of the budget touchscreen phone browsers now in play. There’s only one windows and no tabs. It does support Flash Lite though, and can render pages reasonably well, if a little languidly.The Nokia X3 has pre-loaded bookmarks for a selection of online services, including Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, which take users to mobile-optimised versions of these sites. However, streaming video clips from YouTube is hit and miss and if you’re out of EDGE coverage, forget it. Opera Mini provides a more fluid and slicker non-touch browser experience that has a more desktop-style appeal. It includes address and search bars and history on the home screen, plus a full web page overview when you land on a site and controls for zooming as a softkey option. It’s a more intuitive and quicker browsing experience, and pages render very well on the Opera app.Other online applications on the Nokia X3 include Nokia’s Ovi Store application download shop (the first Series 40 phone to support it), and a Web Search function that enables you to tap in and search via Google or Microsoft’s Bing search engine.A Flickr application is also included, which takes you to the Flickr mobile site, allowing users to view, upload and manage Flickr image accounts online although this is woefully slow over EDGE connection.You can upload images directly to Flickr accounts once you’ve taken shots too, or alternatively to Nokia’s Share on Ovi service; settings for both services come pre-loaded. The camera used on the Nokia X3 is a run-of-the-mill 3.2MP snapper, lacking a flash and autofocus system. It has the typical sort of functionality you’d expect from a mid-to-lower end Nokia Series 40 handset, with nothing remarkable about the fixtures and fittings - or performance.Pressing the side camera button, the screen flips sideways into viewfinder mode within a couple of seconds. Nokia has set it up so that a long press of the camera key takes you straight into video mode, while a short press fires up the camera - a neat touch we’re surprised more manufacturers haven’t cottoned onto.However, this does mean you have to be aware of how long you’re tapping the button something that’s tricky with its almost flush position on the side or you can find yourself starting to video record when you meant to snap a picture.Although this can initially be disconcerting, if you are in the wrong mode the D-pad can be used to toggle sideways between camera and video recorder functions (an icon in the corner display’s what mode it’s in). The on-screen user interface is somewhat basic, if adequate. Settings and effects can be chosen by opening up the Options menu and toggling through it. You can adjust white balance to cater for lighting environments, add a few colour effects, use a timer and tweak image quality, but it’s quite rudimentary by Nokia’s high cameraphone standards.The fixed focus camera produces reasonable snaps that can be colourful and bright, but they do lack the crisp sharpness you can get from some autofocus cameraphones in the same class. Also, in subdued overcast conditions, the camera can produce murky images with flat tones and so-so colour. Overall, its shooting performance is OK for quick snaps, but modest and limited in detail and quality.Under low light conditions indoors, the auto metering adjustments mean images can be soft, although they’re better if the camera is held steady. Reasonable snapper: The Nokia X3’s 3.2-megapixel camera is an average lower range shooter, offering limited detail and a fixed focus lens. It can take reasonable snaps in good lighting environments, however, although don’t expect stunning clarity when printing out Click and hope: The fixed focus camera means you can’t choose which particular part of the subject you want in focus you just press and see what comes out Brighter is better: The camera performs best in bright lighting conditions, rendering colours in vibrant tones. There is though a lack of subtle detail in the background sky in the way the blue colours and clouds are reproduced Patchy effort: The camera does reasonably well at close-in shots, producing some detail in the foreground, although the blue sky and clouds in the background are patchily renderedSoft and noisy: This shot at dusk is soft and detail is limited with plenty of picture noise apparent Its video recording performance isn’t great. The low-grade camcorder option can record footage at maximum QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) resolution at 8 frames per second, so playback is stilted, or at lower QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution at up to 15 frames per second. That’s a low quality budget effort. Should you wish to, these clips can be uploaded too to online video hubs.Of course, the most upfront feature of the X3 is its music mobile credentials. The music player controls on the outside mark out this territory, while a 2GB memory card supplied with the phone provides a decent amount of in-box storage for a budget music phone.Nokia’s also boxed it with an above-average set of in-ear earphones and it has a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on top for music fans who want to upgrade their ear-ware.The media player software inside, though, is low-key and functional rather than novel. The X3 uses a standard Series 40 media player, so it has a familiar mid-tier phone look and feel: a list of regular media player categories (all songs, playlists, artists, albums, genres and videos) and a player interface that doesn’t break new ground. The D-pad can operate the controls in normal phone fashion, and there’s a draggable elapsed time section to help navigation, plus album cover art (if available).The music player controls on the side of the display aren’t needed unless the music player’s working in the background; if so, they’re handy, but don’t exactly redefine the mobile music experience.Some settings can be tweaked, with equaliser presets you can assign as you’re playing. In addition to shuffle mode and the like, you can also choose to have lighting effects on the D-pad to go with the music - snazzy if you’re putting on a disco for mice.The supplied in-ear earphones put on a fine show. They fit snugly, with extra plastic buds in-box to get a close fit, reducing outside noise interference. They can deliver a surprisingly heavy-duty music performance, with plenty of bass presence coming through loud and clear, and good definition on high and mid frequencies. It’s not subtle, but it’s impressive for a budget music mobile.The media player automatically slots any new tunes loaded up or slipped in via a memory card. MicroSD cards up to 16GB will work in the phone’s side-mounted memory card slot. Tunes can be downloaded over the air, or copied over from a PC using the supplied Nokia Music software and USB data cable. Nokia’s PC Suite’s Music Manager software can also be used to transfer tracks, and the phone can be synchronised with Windows Media Player on a PC. Tracks can also be dragged and dropped in mass storage mode, or sent via Bluetooth to the phone - so to sum up, there’s a variety of ways to bung your favourite tunes on to the Nokia X3.Some mobile network operators will also be offering the Nokia X3 as one of Nokia’s Comes with Music range, which enables unlimited downloads, although UK availability of this service on the X3 is still to be confirmed at the time of writing. In addition to the music player, more free music and entertainment is available via the phone’s FM radio. Unusually for a mobile phone, you don’t need to plug in headphones as an antenna to listen to tracks you can simply switch it on and listen to it through the phone’s loudspeaker. The loudspeaker, which can of course also be used with the music player, is loud and clear and not too tinny. It does lack on the bass front, as usual with mobile speakers, but is better than most with its punchy delivery.The radio interface is a doddle to set up and use, with automatic tuning taking care of station finding, and sound quality is pretty good if you plug in the earphones.With a relatively small 2.2-inch display, the Nokia X3 isn’t set up to be your ideal video-playing device. However, it’s OK to watch clips in full screen mode. The media player supports video playback and streaming in a number of file formats including H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 and WMV9. Without stacks of potentially battery-sapping high-end 3G functionality, we found that the Nokia X3 delivered a handsome battery performance under regular conditions. The X3 arrives with a standard 860mAh Li-ion battery pack that Nokia reckons can deliver (under optimum network conditions) up to 7.5 hours of talktime or up to 380 hours of standby time. We managed to go a steady 3-4 days between charges with normal phone usage, though naturally if we used the music player heavily, this figure dropped accordingly.Of course, the music player functionality is the key selling point of this phone, so users are likely to hit play often; Nokia estimates that using the music player alone (with the phone switched to flight mode), users can get up to 26 hours of music player power which seemed to hold up pretty well in our tests.A routine set of Nokia Series 40 organiser tools and applications are ready for action on the X3. These functional tools, which are standard fare, include alarm clocks, calendar, to-do lists, notes, calculator, stopwatch and timer apps. A couple of convertor apps and a world clock function are also slotted into the phone’s application folder. Nokia X3: ConnectivityThe Nokia X3 is a quad band handset, capable of running on GSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks. Without 3G or Wi-Fi the X3’s data connectivity relies on lower speed EDGE or GPRS, which limits its online prowess.USB 2.0 connectivity is supported, via a microUSB port on top of the phone and a supplied data cable.The X3 has Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity too, with stereo audio profiles (A2DP and AVRCP) enabling streaming to wireless headphones, speakers and other suitably enabled Bluetooth gadgets.Also included in-box is a Nokia Music software CD. This PC software (there’s no Mac support) enables users to manage and synchronise music between the phone PC and other devices. Nokia X3: OtherAlthough the X3 isn’t kitted out with internal GPS gadgetry, Nokia does include its Maps software onboard the phone. It can be used with a separate optional Bluetooth GPS receiver module, although we’d guess anyone that keen for satellite location finding is likely to choose a phone with GPS inside in the first place.Although it doesn’t use GPS or the cellsite-based location approximation system of Google Maps users can do searches for addresses, locations, businesses and services, get routing information and maps over the air.Without GPS, the setup can feel a bit clunky as some menu options aren’t available, as the Nokia X3 firmware appears to have been ported from a more generic version of the OS.Mapping downloads can take a while too if you’re in marginal coverage, and generally in its GPS-less truncated state, and without fast map updates, it’s a far from compelling proposition.Among its other features, the X3 also has support for over the air software updates, with 10 games included too. The Nokia X3 is decently equipped as a budget music mobile without having that ‘must-have’ X-factor. The music player software is standard issue Nokia, so functional rather than flashy, but it puts an impressive audio show for a low-cost phone, with enough in-box to make it an attractive slim-line slider package.Elsewhere, the X3 has a low-key set of features there’s no 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS or smartphone gadgetry, and it has a limited camera but if music is the focus, the X3 does the job fine. The mediocre call performance on our review sample was a concern, however.What we likedThe music player puts in a punchy audio performance, with decent sound quality through the better-than-average in-ear bud earphones supplied. The 3.5mm headphone socket offers easy upgrading too, while the 2GB MicroSD gives decent tune room out of the box at this price. Being able to use the FM radio without having headphones attached is also welcome.The X3’s design is slim and quite attractive, and the Series 40 interface is typically straightforward-to-use Nokia stuff. We liked the additional Opera browser to enhance its online performance. The email client is easy to set up too. We were also pleased with the phone’s sturdy battery performance.What we dislikedThe call performance was surprisingly lacklustre. The lack of 3G connectivity limits data speeds when using online applications, although the Opera Mini app pre-loaded does offer a speedier alternative to the Nokia software.The camera put in a mediocre performance image quality is limited and video recording is distinctly low-grade. Without GPS technology inside, the Maps software is limited too. Verdict The Nokia X3 is a tidy budget music mobile that concentrates on the audio performance and music player features. Slim on other higher-end features and lacking 3G, it doesn’t demand centre stage, though some will nab it based on its tune playing highlights alone.Related LinksTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeMore mobile phone reviewsRelated StoriesReview: LG Chocolate BL20Review: Acer Liquid S100Review: Nokia E72Review: HTC HD MiniReview: Nokia 5230
April 4, 2010
Review: Acer Liquid S100
By bringing the fastest Android phone on the planet to market, Acer has good reason to be proud of the Liquid S100. Packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and super hi-res screen, there’s a lot to get excited about on this phone.Acer might be a relative unknown in the mobile world, but that hasn’t stopped it making an impression with first the Windows Mobile NeoTouch S200, and by bringing top-end specs and the Android OS, the Liquid S100 will be seen by some as even better.But one constant problem with Acer phones from the past is that despite bringing some nice parts, they often fail to be anything more than average in general use. So can the Liquid change that?The phone looks pretty basic out of the box, with a white plastic shell encasing a 3.5-inch screen, but with the large amount of plastic border around the display, it doesn’t look anywhere near as big as the iPhone or Samsung H1.The four touch-sensitive buttons at the bottom offer basic Android navigation, and the hieroglyph look is pretty neat.The left of the phone houses the power/lock button, and the right has the volume and shutter buttons. Pressing the former is pretty easy one handed, but the chassis creaks a little from time to time.Weirdly, Acer has decided to go for a miniUSB slot on the Liquid, which seems a little old fashioned. The slot is located on the bottom of the phone, and when charging, a little white battery indicator appears on the top of the chassis, next to the 3.5mm headphone jack, which was a neat touch.The phone has a single speaker on the back, next to the camera, which is adequate but pumps out basic ‘chav on a train’ sound quality.Pulling the battery cover off is a worrying experience it seems digging your fingernails in at the top and pulling rather hard is the way to do it, and it feels very much like you’re going to snap something off.Overall, the feel of the phone is a little cheap the plastic of the white chassis and silver buttons makes it feel a little toy-like.In the boxAcer offers a simple range of accessories in the box a miniUSB connection lead and separate charger are a nice touch, and the bundled ear phones are decent enough, doubling as a hands-free kit too (although without media control). We’re still yet to learn how to use screen protectors on a mobile yet without adding a million bubbles to the screen, but you get a few of these in the box too.There’s also a 2GB microSD card, as well as an adaptor to turn it into a full SD card too. This is pivotal, as the phone won’t save any media or photos to the 512MB inbuilt memory for some reason.Acer hasn’t played around too much with the interface on the Liquid S100, and that’s something we like. HTC’s Sense UI overlay is good because it adds so much to Android, but with the Liquid, simplicity works.This means you get the basic three home screens, one either side of the main display, and the simple bottom drag tab for menu options.Pulling down from the top will give you access to email, SMS and other notifications, and thanks to running Android 1.6, you can also hit the search key from anywhere and use local or wider search to find content on your phone or the net.The main difference from Acer is the scrollable wheels at the sides of the home screen, with the left offering music, photos and video, and the right a collection of your internet bookmarks as scrolling thumbnails this is a great feature in terms of both aesthetics and function, and exactly the sort of thing open-source Android is great for.The capacitive screen is slick and responsive you won’t feel a lot of difference between this and the HTC Hero. And the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor doesn’t disappoint on the home screen you can swipe away to your heart’s content without a hint of judder.But, we’ve got a conundrum here why does the Liquid have a Snapdragon processor, but then limit it to 768MHz? Presumably it’s capable of 1GHz as it is on the Toshiba TG01. It surely can’t be a battery issue and seems like a waste.Unlocking the phone is a simple power-menu key combo, although it would be nice to be able to light up the display by pressing any button to check for messages or the time.The rest of the Liquid pretty much follows the vanilla Android road map, with the simple system of the application running as you’d ask it to and the physical menu key offering additional functionality, such as settings or navigation options.However, more often than we could cope with the Liquid gave up on trying to process an application, with the ‘problem with X, Force Close or Wait?’ option a regular visitor to our screens not what we’d expect from a phone with such a powerful processor pushing things along.Android 1.6 brings some neat upgrades, such as a more comprehensive battery power meter, but we hope that the Liquid will get the forthcoming Android 2.1 upgrade, otherwise it’s going to feel dated pretty quickly.Google has brought an irritating problem with Android when you start the phone up and synchronise your Gmail account, all your contacts are automatically thrown at the phone. This would be great, but unless you’ve spent a good three hours sorting through them, it’s a veritable mish-mash of nonsense.Of course you can choose not to see these, but there are always some you need to keep, and that makes life a little harder when trying to organise your contacts book.Android’s contact list is pretty basic slide up and down to find the person you’re looking for, grab the tab on the side to move through quickly and alphabetically, or just type a name in through the search box to open things up and find it easily.Contacts are listed with photo and personalised ringtone and so on and we were pretty excited to see the ability to link social networks with contacts as well. However, sadly the problems within the Acer Liquid system were too great to ever see how this worked as trying to synchronise Facebook or Flickr within the phone led to the application throwing up an error message and asking us to close it down. So it means we’re back to only seeing the Android contacts menu, which isn’t all that bad in fairness. We’re not fans of the tabbed system which is used for everything calling-based, but it is nice to be able to choose your favourites and have them in a separate list to offer quick access to those you call and text the most.The dialler is nicely laid out, although it would have been nice to have some smart dialling on offer, as it’s not always easy to navigate through to your favourite friends using the contacts tab, which can be a little hard to grab and slide. And when you’ve added in Google contacts, it’s nigh on impossible for the Acer Liquid to manage to sort them all alphabetically for some reason, with it spiriting away a portion of your friends to a hidden, impossible to find location.Calling on the Acer Liquid is OK - the call quality isn’t brilliant but it’s stable enough, although we had trouble finding the speaker hole with our ear in that expanse of plastic at times. Coverage was good enough to function in most places, although it dropped out fairly regularly when in a moving vehicle - in fact, it wasn’t even worth bothering with at times. We’ve tested other devices in the same situation, such as the HTC HD2, so we know it can be done well.Messaging on the Acer Liquid S100 is a, well, difficult experience if we’re trying to put it in a balanced way. The thing about using the messaging functions on the phone is that while the Android system is good and can handle elements like threaded conversations and improved contact integration, there are some companies that can’t seem to get the basics right when it comes to text entry, and Acer is one of them.The Acer NeoTouch S200 was one such device, with it’s impossible-to-use Windows Mobile keyboard, and while the Liquid’s is miles ahead of that, it’s still sorely lacking. For one, when you’re trying to reply in a threaded conversation, trying to press the ‘Tap to compose’ screen just doesn’t work - if we hadn’t known the trick of holding down the menu icon on the touch sensitive row to force the keyboard open, messaging would have been impossible.And while the Acer Liquid does support predictive text (like on the HTC range, where it works out which word your fumbling thumbs were trying to type) it’s nowhere near as good, with it basically capitalising the letter ‘I’ and putting the odd apostrophe in here and there. But most infuriatingly, if you try and write ‘and’ or ‘an’ the Liquid will decide you actually want to write ‘Android’ instead and insert it in.On the plus side, the Liquid does have RoadSync as standard, which means that you’ve got access to Exchange email instantly. We’re big fans of this being offered, as it makes any Android phone instantly more useful as a device. The interface and synchronisation are good, as is the calendar support, so a big well done to the company for including that.The web browser on any Android phone is always good, and the Liquid is no exception. The excellent capacitive screen, while not multi-touch to offer pinch and zoom, is tip top for navigation around the mobile and full web, which is once again delivered speedily on the Acer Liquid.We’re still massively confused as to why the Liquid hasn’t beefed up its processor to the full 1GHz capability, but at least when browsing the internet it doesn’t show.Instead, pages are generally loaded very quickly with minimal lag and few incomplete sections, and the mobile web pages, such as those from the BBC, are an absolute breeze.As with all Android phones, we like the way Google has put this browsing experience together - being able to share the page you’re looking at directly to Twitter (through the excellent Twidroid) is a great example of how to interweave APIs, and the ability to see your history and bookmarks visually is a nice touch. We also like the fact the web browser on the Acer Liquid remembers your most visited pages, meaning you don’t have to go trawling back through the history to find that page you forgot to bookmark. And while there’s no Flash player on this phone (boo) it means you’re less likely to visit those sites that you might not want your partner to find you’ve been trawling through when she has a play with your shiny new phone - every cloud…As you can imagine on a phone that comes from a company with no photography heritage and at this price range, the photography options on the Acer Liquid aren’t that great. Sure, the headline specs are good enough - 5MP, autofocus and so on - but the absence of flash, LED or otherwise is a bit of a downer.The photo processing also falls a little short in our eyes as well - not only does it take an age to shoot a photo, but it also doesn’t manage to capture it quickly enough. This often leads to a bad case of blurry pictures when you move the camera away from the subject when you think the photo has finished being taken.The options for snapping away are good enough, with the ability to mess around with the ISO settings, the white balance and the effects (we’re big fans of ‘Posterise’ which adds a certain Andy Warhol effect to your photos). However, it’s not going to trouble the likes of Sony Ericsson and Samsung who are at the head of the mobile photography game.To be fair to the Acer Liquid, there still aren’t any decent cameraphones on Android, so it’s a bit harsh to say that it’s a negative point as yet. But we do miss the little review pane in the top corner of the photo-taking screen where we could check out our latest snap.Video is similarly only OK - taking something in QVGA resolution isn’t going to cut it here, which is why the option to take video in VGA mode is a welcome sight. We can’t find any published specs on the frame rate it records in, but the video we shot in good light was a little choppy, so again this isn’t going to be a great substitute for a dedicated device.The coolest thing about using media on the Acer Liquid is the ability to scroll through your files and whatnot from the home screen, as we mentioned above. Less good news - the Acer Liquid eschews the standard Android player as the default media application. If you’ve read any of our other reviews of Android phones, you’ll note that there’s a distinct lack of love for them, but what’s been bundled on the Liquid is an even worse option, which surprised us. The substitute is Nemo player, an application that bizarrely wants to crash the phone every time we used it to open a video. Want to watch more than one in succession? You can’t. Want to watch a three minute music video smoothly? You can’t… you just get a choppy, out of sync effort that frankly we found awful.Of course, you can always look at the videos through the Android video player, and this is a nice option to have, with the playback smooth enough and, while not as clear as other programs on other phones, perfectly passable.However the problem is the Acer Liquid’s little scrollwheel on the side of the home screen is set to use Nemo Player, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to change that. This means that if you want to use the one feature of the phone that uses the cool Android home screen overlay you’ll have to put up with poor playback.Music is a little better, as despite the Liquid using the Nemo player again, it has at least managed to eke some better performance out of the device with a large and easy-to-use interface - although we’re not sure it adds much on top of the default player.Music playback on the Android OS is satisfactory - upgrades over time from Google and the rest of the Open Handset Alliance (the group behind Android’s development) have made it into a useable program thankfully.A set of four large buttons take you into a finger-friendly media player, with album art a prominent part of the display. Sadly there’s no way to update this cover art from the program itself, but it’s not a deal breaker.There’s the usual other range of Google goodies on board for media too, with the top being Google-owned YouTube, which is well-implemented. You can watch videos in high quality with ease, and the interface loads quickly with minimal search lag.If you’re going to download something to make the media better on the Acer Liquid, the first place you should go is beeb Player. Essentially an unofficial port of iPlayer, it allows streaming of current programs over the internet, although there’s no download option, but we expect to see it in the official application whenever it appears.The Acer Liquid is surprisingly devoid of native applications when you turn the phone on for the first time (compared to its peers), with only RoadSync catching the eye thanks to the way it extends the Liquid’s functionality so much through corporate connectivity.Google Talk is also included as part of the Android firmware, and offers a simple way to communicate with your buddies over the chat service. You can switch between windows of friends relatively easily, but there’s no ability to add the video chat functionality from this service over the internet.Acer has added Spinlets to the Liquid as well, which initially seemed pretty cool - music from albums that you could stream for free from your device. However, the range is limited to around 10 albums, and we only recognised music from The Killers - hardly the Spotify slayer we were hoping for.File viewer Documents To Go also gives the Liquid another business edge, with the ability to view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint presentations. Datawiz has been sneaky in putting this onto the Liquid S100, as you can’t edit docs on the go until you buy the full version. And, of course, there’s Google Maps, which is complete with StreetView as well. This works very well on the Acer Liquid, with pictures loading up fast when you move into the map to scope out an area before you get there, and navigating across vast terrain in the 2D mode also rendering quickly.When thinking about applications on the Acer Liquid, we do think it’s important you download a third-party application manager from the Market, as this will help conserve the battery life (which is crucial, as you will see later on in this review). There are a few good free ones, so just try them out and see which takes your fancy.Given the expanding nature of the Android Market app store, we’re not sure this and future Android phones will need a vast amount of inbuilt applications to be rendered a decent device - the core things from Google are there and for us that’s all we really want out the box.If we were ranking the problems of the Acer Liquid S100 in order, the battery life would likely be right at the top. Simply awful, the battery on the Liquid gives up easily within the day and will begin dropping sometimes within minutes of being disconnected from the charger. We’re not sure what’s taking up so much power, as when we consult a third-party application manager there’s always very limited memory available for new programs.We suppose in a good way, turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth doesn’t actually help the cause at all, but it does add to the mystery of the poor battery life. At least this means that it’s possibly just a rogue piece of code within the system that’s pulling the battery meter down too fast, and this could be updated in the future.We never thought a phone would be able to have a worse battery life than the Samsung Galaxy, but barely three months later, the Liquid has arrived to take that crown.RoadSync is also the best bet with this phone when it comes to organisation - the calendar function synchronises with your Exchange server to communicate all your important meetings and suchlike, and Google calendar does the same for your (probably) less important ones.What is odd is that you can’t synchronise the two - a dual calendar surely is easy to implement, but Acer hasn’t managed to do that here, adding to the irritation.Android phones are well specified when it comes to connectivity, and the Liquid is no different. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS are included by default, and while there’s no inbuilt tuner, an FM radio can be downloaded from the Market.GPS is a little disappointing on the Liquid, as it takes a while to connect to the satellites, and pretty much gives up when in a crowded city at times.We’ve had a few handsets that can lock on to your GPS signal from indoors - so we’d have hoped this would have been included in the Liquid as well.Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are good enough at finding other devices when you need them to - there’s no way to send your pictures over the latter, which we still find a strange thing to leave out (although Apple does it with the iPhone too).PC software with the Acer Liquid is non-existent - it’s pretty much just a case of you plugging the phone into your PC, waiting for it to have a think about being connected and then being allowed to transfer files across in mass storage mode.There doesn’t seem to be any dedicated software to allow you to use the Acer Liquid as a mobile modem, and the CD in the box is nothing more than a dedicated user manual.Acer Sync seemed to be the place to go to connect to your PC - but the interface only offered us the chance to synchronise with Google in the way Android already does, so this seemed a redundant icon.However, being able to interact with the file system on both the phone and the memory card is vital, and pretty much all we need the connection for (although the internal storage level is rubbish) so we can’t criticise this feature too much - although it was irritating not to be able to use the phone as a mobile modem at times.We all raised our eyebrows at the Acer Liquid when it arrived, and we were especially excited by the premise of the first Android phone to rock a 1GHz processor.Early tests we ran on it seemed to confirm our suspicions - it was nigh on impossible to make the phone crash or judder, such was the awesome processing power.We likedThe Acer Liquid is a decent device to hold in the hand - while the plastic chassis is a little flimsy feeling, and the buttons a little low quality for our tastes, the overall shape and build is good.When the phone is in comfortable territory, it pretty much flies along in terms of application management - we were able to run multiple programs at once with little hint of a problem.We liked the spinny things at the sides too - being able to see your bookmarks and media files visually was a lot of fun and the kind of thing we were expecting from the Android platform.And seeing RoadSync included was pretty cool as well - the ability to receive your work emails and calendar information expands the Acer Liquid’s range from a simple mobile device into something that can actually be useful in your day-to-day working life.We dislikedThe problem with the Acer Liquid is that while the above elements are great, only RoadSync didn’t cause us any grief when using the phone.The messaging function was beyond irritating - the lack of auto-corrected text is irritating (despite a promise of such a feature in the settings), the bug that means you have to force the keyboard to open in threaded conversations is a real rookie mistake and we found ourselves not wanting to text on the Liquid.And while most of the time the phone would function really easily and cope with most tasks, there were far too many instances of Android crashing and asking us to wait while it sorted out the issue - not cool on a phone with such a powerful processor.Verdict While most of the early promise of the Acer Liquid is realised, a lot of it isn’t and that’s a real kick in the teeth for a phone we had real hopes would be the dark horse of the Android world.Perhaps a number of the issues can be sorted out with firmware updates - the HTC Hero managed to polish it’s reputation with this, but the Nokia N97 didn’t - and given the limited profile Acer has in the mobile world it can’t afford such a slip if it’s to get a good word of mouth review.While the overall package is actually fairly slick and functional, this certainly isn’t the phone to upset the natural order in the mobile arena, and we can only hope future Android handsets from Acer (many are promised in 2010) will manage to take things to the next level.Related LinksMore mobile phone reviewsTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeSearch for the best Acer Liquid S100 deals at OmioRelated StoriesReview: Samsung Galaxy Portal i5700Review: Sony Ericsson VivazReview: HTC LegendReview: LG Chocolate BL20Review: Nokia E72
Review: Nokia 7230
Not everyone needs a phone with a million apps and a 20MP camera. Sometimes you just want to make calls, text and browse the internet for basic information, with a little style thrown in. Something like the Nokia 7230 slider phone for example.At only 10 x 5.5cm when folded, you’re easily able to slip the Nokia 7230 into your suit or trouser pocket with ease. But it still packs plenty of everyday essentials, including a featured 3.2MP camera, 3G connectivity, a media player with radio and a 2.2-inch screen for viewing everything from messaging and checking your email through to web browsing and fast access to Facebook and MySpace. And there are apps too via Ovi if you want them, with a few demo games and utilities to get you going. All of that in a phone that’s mostly free on contract or at 129 should you opt for pay-as-you-go, which isn’t bad as a stylish-looking 3G phone.Nokia 7230: DesignSmall, functional and with smooth curves the 7230 is classic Nokia design. Sized at 98(h) x 48(w) x 14.75(d) mm and weighing in at 100g, the phone is small and light enough to fit into anyone’s bag or pocket, with curved, chromed edges that contribute to an ergonomic shape for your hand.Within the fairly minimalist design is a mini-USB slot (although the cable for hooking up the phone to a USB slot doesn’t come as standard), a headphone point and those front facing controls for accessing/ending calls, along with an additional three menu-based controls for getting round the 2.2-inch TFT screen. Memory card slot? That’s located inside the handset, with a 2GB microSD down to come as standard.. The rear of the phone is devoted to photography, with a dedicated camera key on the side (or on top if you’re taking pictures in landscape) turning your phone into a reasonable outdoor snapper in seconds.The sliding mechanism is a dream, a ‘glide’ rather than a ‘clunk’, exposing a keyboard that’s spacious enough for error-free typing and sufficiently responsive when you hit the keys. When you close the slide, the phone automatically locks, kicking off that lock when you flick it back open. Running on the Symbian Series 40 platform, the Nokia 7230 has a functional, if unspectacular interface, offering up three ways of accessing the phone’s main functions. With a click of that central menu button, you’ll see icons for all of the basic functions or alternatively, the left-hand selection key brings up the highlights on a scrolling list. The right-hand key offers quick access to your contacts.Finally, opting for the Home Screen mode brings up mini icons for media and networking to scroll through. Which one is best? To be honest, we found ourselves using all three randomly, with none of the menus offering quite what we wanted on first use. But don’t despair, you can change the shortcuts to your own preferences with a bit of time and effort through the menu settings, so if web access on the go is a big thing for you, just stick a quick icon to it on the home screen instead of Facebook.But even allowing for that, the interface does seem a little messy purely by trying to cover too many bases. Granted there isn’t a touchscreen interface to play with, but one well thought-out way of accessing all functions (like on the lower budget Samsung Genio Slide) would certainly be better than the three different solutions currently on offer.When you first log in, you’ll also be offered the option to sign up to Ovi for phone-based email. It’s something Nokia is rightly proud of, but we found the experience slow and not without error messages. We got there in the end, but with the thought that the Nokia 7230 might be used by first-time phone and email users, it is something that needs tightening up.Nokia 7230: Calls and contactsNokia has been making mobile devices for as long as most of us have been alive, so as you would expect, the calling side of the 7230 runs as smoothly as a high-end sports car. Voice calls are clear, with no obvious drops in the network as we were using it.Accessing calls is also a doddle (just a slide and touch of a button), the ringtones, which are both available as presets and MP3, are loud enough to wake the heaviest of sleepers and the keypad is large enough to accommodate the biggest of fingers when fumbling to answer.Setting up contacts is just a matter of entering details in a few fields, although you can augment your entries with personalised images and sounds, as well as web and email details. Accessing is just as easy, simply press the right hand soft key and you’re flung into the contacts list. There’s a big, bold font for typing out and reading those texts and an equally large message when a call is incoming. No video calling, but we suspect you’ve already guessed that one on a handset for this price. Once upon a time, mobile phones were all about calling and texting. These days, some sort of email access is pretty much an added necessity for communication and you’ll certainly find enough options for email here. Whether it’s sufficient for your needs is another matter.As we mentioned earlier, the SMS functionality is simple, straightforward and pretty much faultless. With the added option of multimedia (MMS) messaging, bold message notifications and an easy-to-use keyboard, firing out and receiving random thoughts and images was a breeze. If texting or sharing your latest photos is your thing, you’ll find much to love here. Email, on the other hand, is something that just might frustrate. As we alluded to earlier, signing up for Ovi wasn’t without its problems, despite a fairly solid network reception at the time. But once there, we were able to send an email from that account without any further problems. If Ovi isn’t for you, there’s also the option of logging into Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo or just about any other email service. But slowly. Very slowly.The logging in process to all the services was time-consuming and once in, the wait to get anything but the mail headers was so slow, you wondered if it would be quicker to have sent or received a letter via Royal Mail. Over a 3G connection, there’s really no reason why email messages shouldn’t load from a webmail service in a matter of seconds, no matter how much the phone costs.If that’s a disappointment, the added bonus here should be instant messaging via Ovi. Don’t worry if you haven’t got any Ovi mates, the service also allows access to friends on the likes of Windows and Yahoo Messenger, along with Google Talk. If you’ve already signed up for the Ovi account earlier, just login with those details and you should get taken to the chat interface. Sadly for us, all our attempts to ’set up chat’ after successfully logging in were greeted with a blank screen. Does this mean there’s some sort of incompatibility somewhere? We don’t know. We’ve just marked it down as a big, fat fail.Not one, but two email browsers are offered with the Nokia 7230, the Opera Mini browser and a separate on-board browser from Nokia.Opera is always a solid web solution and that’s certainly the case here. A good zoom function works well with the relatively small screen, pages of our favourites sites render in a decent web-like manner and sites that give thought to mobile access (TechRadar and the BBC for example) come out particularly well. Indeed, connectivity was brisk for most of the sites we loaded, even when the connection dropped from full 3G. Obviously you can bookmark your favourite feeds and sites, making the browser here a definite plus.But if Opera isn’t your bag, there’s always the Nokia browser. It renders just as well, but nowhere near as fast and with far less options than Opera. It also renders in ‘full size’, so you’ll need to do a bit of scrolling around the page too to find what you want. But essentially it’s horses for courses. Try them both out, you’ll certainly prefer one just stick to that one in future.Alternatively, if your web use is pretty much confined to using Facebook and MySpace, just load up the on-board apps for both services. Yes, you can access the full selection of apps at the Ovi Store, which is just a click of an icon away, but Nokia knows its audience and offers the two social networks apps as standard. No Twitter? Sadly not, but two out of three isn’t bad - although we’re not sure if anyone really uses MySpace any more.The Facebook app in particular is fairly strong, offering pretty much everything you get on the web-based service messages, photos, networking, friend-finding it’s all here on the go, possibly even beating the inbuilt options on phones like the HTC Legend. Likewise, MySpace offers up all the information and editing options, even if the layout of a little more functional.To use a footballing analogy, the 3.2MP camera on the Nokia 7230 is very much a ‘game of two halves’.In general terms, the camera is incredibly simple to use, just hit the camera icon and you’ll be able to capture stills in landscape or portrait format, with extras like a self-timer, white balance and effects (greyscale, sepia, solarise etc) giving your average low-end compact a run for its money. Indeed, we were quite impressed with the detail of the snaps we took out and about compared to what we expected.OUT AND ABOUT: A country walk captured with a good amount of detailREDUCED LIGHT: Even in the woods, the amount of detail captured by the Nokia 7230 is impressiveBut there’s no flash on the Nokia 7230, making the camera here a reliable outdoor friend on a bright day, but less than able in a pub, club or simply around the house. INDOOR PHOTO: A typical bright spring day outside, but the 7230 struggles to offer any kind of clarity on a room shotINDOOR DETAIL: Quality improves indoors for detail rather than a wide shot, but still struggles for clarityEFFECTS: A similar photo is much improved with the addition of the sepia effect for a follow-up shotVideo is a bonus, but don’t expect to be the next Spielberg with it. Quality is shaky and colours a little off, nice for a quirky little clip of the dog in the garden, not great for recording a special birthday.(Video: video0001.3gp)IN THE PARK: Bright outside, but that’s not easy to see with this grainy video footage(Video: video0000.3gp)IN THE WOODS: A lack of light makes the detailing of the video clip even harder to viewOn the plus side, Nokia makes it nice and easy to share your moments. The previously-mentioned picture messaging is your obvious way of doing this, but you can also directly upload to Flickr (via the built-in app) or go for Nokia’s own Share on Ovi, again pre-loaded onto the handset and all easy to use once you’ve signed up. There’s also a fourth option with Bluetooth built-in, you can fire over to another device wirelessly. All a bonus, but you do wish there was some kind of flash too, because the camera could and should be a real selling point.If we use the humble iPod as a benchmark for portable audio, it’s safe to say that the media player on-board the Nokia 7230 isn’t anywhere near that level.Getting your music on the handset is a case of drag and drop (or transfer via Bluetooth). Note that a cable for connecting to your PC doesn’t come as standard, which is slightly frustrating. Once music is on the phone comes another disappointment, the sound quality. Playback via either the external speakers or the included headphones has a distinct echo and even at moderate volume, the audio starts to break up slightly. On the plus side, if your MP3 or AAC files are tagged, Nokia’s player does a neat job of subdividing your tunes, as well as allowing you to create your own playlists and making it easy to send (as a message), upload or transfer your tracks wirelessly. In summary, the functionality is good, but the audio quality is distinctly average.Video playback tends to suffer from the small screen. If you like the idea of squinting at a 2.2-inch screen for entertainment, it might be for you. It’s also good for checking those mini movies you’ve just shot, but for us we would prefer our video on a larger screen, like the HTC Tattoo, as a minimum.If transferring tunes sounds or squinting at video sounds like a chore, the Nokia 7230 also comes with an FM radio. We’re not usually impressed with such things on a mobile, but this one is a bit of a gem. Autotune comes at a touch of a button, reception is good, as is the sound quality in relation to your average home FM radio. The only slight annoyance is the radio being a few clicks away from the media interface, really it should be operating in the same zone. Note also that the radio only works with the headset, so no blasting Chris Moyles all over the morning bus commute - although you can switch to speaker mode if you’re that way inclined.The one plus of having less multimedia options on a phone is less wear and tear on your battery. We’ve been hammering the camera, the video recorder, the music player and the web access and the battery has stood up to it very well.Talk time is over four hours, with standby at a healthy 14+ days and even with using all those added features, we found the battery didn’t need to be charged for three to four days of heavy use. If you like your phone in your hand rather than in a socket, you’ll like the Nokia 7230.Nokia 7230: Organiser If you find life drifting away from you, the on-board organiser might offer just the helping hand you need. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a calendar with the option to add notes and view appointments by day, week or month and little audio reminders of what’s coming up. Simple and effective, but no syncing with any online calendars if you are looking for that - that’s par for the course at this price, with others like the INQ Mini 3G missing out on the synchronisation game too.Other added tools include a calculator, alarm clock, a ‘to-do’ list, timer and stopwatch, as you would expect, along with a conversion tool for weights and currency, as well as a size convertor, should you be shopping in a foreign land. You know, the kinds of things you don’t know you need until you actually need them.ConnectivityConnectivity on the Nokia 7230 has been steady, if unspectacular. Basic connection never died completely, but for a 3G phone, we haven’t seen that 3G symbol nearly enough. Ok, that might be down to the local network, but having used other handsets in the same area, this particular phone is certainly no better and occasionally, seems worse. No Wi-Fi on board the Nokia 7230 as you have probably guessed, so when it comes to web browsing and accessing email, the variable 3G might be a problem. We have certainly found it frustrating.The phone does come with Bluetooth and it’s very easy to use. Testing it with a Mac, it’s just a matter of turning it on, pairing and you’re away. Transfer speeds were very brisk, with an MP3 transferring in less than a minute.Just as well really. The lack of a cable to hook up to a PC in the box means Bluetooth is pretty much your only way of transferring data to and from a PC/Mac when you get the phone. If you do plan on picking up a 7230, make sure you grab the additional cable off the shelf too.Nokia 7230: OtherThere’s a welcome bonus in Nokia’s Maps being pre-installed on the phone, which offers up both mapping basics and directions to your chosen UK location. No GPS here, but if you just want directions, the app is very nippy and as a helping hand round an unfamiliar town, Maps offers a very useful (and free) bonus.Games are always included and the 7230 is no exception. Take your pick between trial titles and free favourites, specifically Asphalt 4 Elite, Bounce Tales, Brian Challenge, Midnight Pool 2 and Rally Stars, plus Snake 3 and Sudoku. The trial games are slightly frustrating in that you can only get so far, but to be honest, none of them made us want to go out and buy.Finally, a voice recorder can record all those moments of inspiration you have on the move. Decent sound, easy to use, a nice thing to have.Nokia 7230: ComparisonComparisons are tough because the 7230 falls between the budget market and higher-end sliders, but you might also want to check out the Sony Ericsson Aino , which adds more bulk and a bigger price tag, but does come with GPS, a far better media player and BBC iPlayer out of the box.Alternatively, messaging and networking on a budget is available via the INQ Chat 3G coming in at under 100.Finally, if you want your slider to multi-task, do media to a high standard and offer up a touchscreen interface too, check out the Palm Pre.To compare the Nokia 7230 with the cutting-edge touchscreens of the day is unfair. After all, it’s a moderately-priced handset that comes without any claims of being a world beater. We likedIt’s small, it’s fairly stylish and it offers up just about all the basics you could ask of a mobile phone, even if some of those functions are more successful than others. There’s also 3G connectivity, a big plus for the price point.It also comes with a range of apps and extras you might not expect for a phone in its price bracket, a good quality outdoor camera and decent web interaction for example, not to mention solid apps for social networking.We dislikedBut in the end, the Nokia 7230 is simply punching above its weight. Scratch the surface and many of those features just don’t cut it against the big boys. There’s no denying that the Nokia 7230 is an attractive handset offering a budget-friendly 3G experience, good calling and messaging functionality, a strong battery life and some decent tools for both web use and social networking. But intermittent problems with Ovi, a flash-free camera, poor quality media player and disappointing email highlight just why the handset sells in this price bracket.Related LinksMore mobile phone reviewsTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeRelated StoriesReview: Sony Ericsson VivazReview: HTC LegendReview: LG Chocolate BL20Review: Acer Liquid S100Review: Nokia E72