Lenovo Smart Phone K800 with Intel inside: first-look review

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

I’ll get one thing out of the way immediately: this is a blisteringly fast phone. Using it reminded me of moving from Windows Vista to Windows 7: everything just snaps into place, with no judder and no hesitation.

You might ask, “so what?” And that’s a fair argument. I’ve never heard an iPhone 4 owner moan about the speed of the interface, or anyone who’s bought a recent Android phone for that matter.

But there is something psychologically satisfying about using a phone that jumps in response to commands; going back to my usual phone afterwards, things seemed to be in slow motion.

(more…)

Video: Sony Phone Watch demo at CES 2012

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

The phone watch is an idea that just isn’t going away, with a different spin of the concept produced pretty much every year at CES. But this time, Sony assures us, it’s really going to happen and it’s really going to be fabulous.

(more…)

Nvidia and ARM forced to bail out battery makers

Friday, November 11th, 2011

ARM and Nvidia are major mobile players, so it pays to listen when the firms announce new technologies. The latest developments from both serve up an interesting similarity with regards to how these companies are tackling one of the biggest annoyances of the modern smartphone: inefficient batteries.

ARM’s recent announcement, big.LITTLE, pairs one of its high-end Cortex A15 MPCore chips alongside an entry-level Cortex A7, which consumes much less power. It’s designed to seamlessly takes over when a device is tackling low-intensity tasks, so the power-sucking A15 is reserved for intensive games and apps.

Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset, meanwhile, uses a near-identical approach: the four cores on the main chip can be turned on and off to tackle everything from basic web browsing to high-end games but, if the phone’s in standby mode or you’re running low-power apps, those four cores will shut down, with processing power provided by a “Companion Core”. It’s based on the same Cortex A9 used by the main Tegra 3 chip but, crucially, it runs at 500MHz instead of 1.4GHz. (more…)

Samsung Galaxy Note review: first look

Monday, September 5th, 2011

Bravely stepping into the no-man’s land between phones and tablets, Samsung’s 5.3in smartphone, the Galaxy Note, attempts to bridge the divide between the 4.3in Galaxy S II and the newly announced Galaxy Tab 7.7.

(more…)

Binatone Android home phone and £99 tablet review: first looks

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Binatone is a name usually associated with landline phones but, with that market dwindling, the firm has decided Android is the way forward.

Of three new Android products shown off at a launch event, the most intriguing is its iHomePhone 2 – an Android device that, as the name suggests, replaces your landline handset. It’s an unusual idea, but one Binatone is confident can work, with the £99 inc VAT gadget ambitiously aimed at both techies and novices.

(more…)

Cloud security: is Android the weakest link?

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Much has been written about the security of data in the cloud, and even more about the insecurity of the same. Until now, things have been somewhat quieter when it comes to how we access cloud-based data on the move. That, I suspect, is about to change.

Plenty of effort has been poured into securing online data stores, and plenty is made by the providers of those cloud services in making sure potential customers know about it. Which is why the bad guys are understandably looking for the soft targets, and at the moment that would appear to be Android apps.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: the smaller your business, the bigger the benefits of cloud computing. That rings especially true at the ‘free’ end of the cloud scale where the attraction of services such as those provided by Google can offer real bottom-line savings for hard pressed small business concerns. Security within the free or low-cost cloud isn’t somehow automatically weaker than that found at the expensive end of the cloud provision market either.

You can be sure that Google has invested heavily in securing the data at rest within those cloud bases, incorporating all the multi-layered protocols and synchronous replication processes you might expect. But perhaps it needs to invest more at the other end, the smartphone to be precise. What you need to ask yourself is whether Android could be the weak link in the cloud security chain?

(more…)

The dual-core ‘phone’ that runs Android and Ubuntu

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

There’s more than enough glitz and smartphone glamour at Mobile World Congress to keep me writing previews well into next week, but when I dropped in at the ARM stand, it was something a little unusual that drew my attention.

On the edge of a narrow bench sat a rattly-looking development unit – the kind of device phone and chip makers use to test hardware before squeezing it into the shiny, sleek chassis I’ve seen so many times over the past three days. But that’s not the interesting part: ARM was using it to demonstrate the benefits of multicore mobile processors, the sort so many of the new devices this year are set to employ.

(more…)

Acer Iconia Smart review: first look

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Is it a tablet? Is it a phone? No, it’s giganto-phone. Meet the Acer Iconia Smart, a phone so big that, if you had pockets deep enough, it would reach almost to your knee; so tall that two would make a decent pair of shinpads for a very tiny man.

(more…)

HTC Desire S review: first look

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

The HTC Desire won a coveted PC Pro Recommended award in our recent smartphones Labs, mainly for its winning combination of value and power. Its successor was announced this morning – the Desire S – and it has a tough act to follow.

(more…)

HP Pre 3 review: first look

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

It doesn’t seem that long since we first laid eyes on the Palm Pre 2, but its successor, the HP Pre 3, is already here — or at least it will be this summer.

First impressions of the device are promising. Where the Pre 2 was a slight upgrade from the exceedingly underwhelming Pre, the Pre 3 is a “rip up the plans and start again” job.

To start, it’s a bigger device, with a 480 x 800 3.6in touchscreen, finally bringing WebOS into the world of big-screen smartphones.

(more…)