Yes, yes y’all. We’re back with Act 2. Following up on the much-loved BlackBerry 9700 Review: Part 1, we’re here to go over the T-Mobile version of the handset. We’ll give you another look at it, and clarify anything that might have changed between our previous not-final unit and what we have now (which is what you’ll be getting in stores). And of course give you some awesome pictures to drool over. After the jump, fine friends, is where the goodies are at!

Hardware changes

While not much has changed hardware-wise from a larger viewpoint, there are a couple things we’ve noticed. First off, if you look at the keyboard and the trackpad specifically, you’ll see a very small piece of plastic that’s connecting the back and menu keys. This actually broke in half on our pre-release BlackBerry 9700, and while it hasn’t affected its use, it got us a little concerned about the build quality. We haven’t confirmed whether the retail Bold 9700s use different parts or not, and we haven’t heard of this happening to anyone else, but it’s just something to look out for.

As far as the processor is concerned, we reported that the Bold 9700 was sporting an 800MHz capable CPU. RIM’s official specs say it’s a 624MHz processor, but we think it might be a newer model than what the original Bold had. It’s also quite possible it’s under-clocked as well. We’ll try and clarify this and report back. Regardless of the actual CPU specifications on the 9700 though, one thing is certain: it’s the fastest damn BlackBerry we’ve ever used. There unfortunately is no internal memory as there was on the previous Bold, and while we believe it’s carrier dependent, the T-Mobile unit ships with a 2GB microSD card.

One last thing about the hardware… honestly not a big deal, but since we’re comparing the retail unit to the other unit we had, Michael and I both noticed that the lock and mute keys are very easy to press on the retail unit. And that’s not for the best as we both accidentally lock / put our Bold 9700s in a mute coma from time to time. Again, not the end of the world, just a change from our other unit.

OS changes

OS 5.0 is finally ready to rock. The much-needed upgrade tries to bandage RIM’s aging yet nicely skinned operating system, and it seems to do a good job of it on the top layer. While dumb things like gradients, sounds for events, and other little UI improvements may look stupid on paper (read: they are), hey, us BlackBerry folk have to take all that we can get. And even though that’s not a lot, it’s still something to slightly freshen up this beast. Something we’ve noticed in the version on the 9700 is that marking messages as read takes a long, long time. This was an issue on a couple beta OS builds for the 9700, so it’s surprising to see it on a production OS. Not a show stopper, but something annoying if you mark message read fairly frequently like I do.

Keyboard changes

Oh those pesky QWERTY keyboards. Some are too small, some are too big, some are spaced too close, some have incorrect layouts — is there a perfect keyboard in existence? Well, if there’s one to be found, we’re pretty sure it is on the BlackBerry Bold 9700. A beautiful blend of the original Bold keyboard with the Tour’s keyboard, it really provides a great typing experience. Keys click but aren’t clackity, there’s enough spacing to allow a definition between keys yet it isn’t boat-sized like its older brother — and it just feels damn good to type on.

Phone changes

Using the phone as an actual phone is still really pleasurable. Calls are very clear, volume is great, and BlackBerry smartphones in general just rock as phones. There’s no fuss, you dial a number and make your call. We’re used to AT&T, but to be honest we couldn’t tell the difference between the two. This T-Mobile unit is solid and we experienced no dropped calls even in fringe areas, and 3G service was great.

Battery changes

This isn’t going to be fair because of T-Mobile’s global meltdown yesterday–the day when we were really pushing the 9700 to the floor– so, well, you know, it didn’t work. We were on SOS for the better part of a day, but Wi-Fi did stay connected to the outside world thankfully. Unfortunately however, Wi-Fi kind of ransacked our battery. The good news is that even with Wi-Fi on and connected for 12 hours straight with constant email usage, BlackBerry Messenger usage, and very light browsing, we still had around 25% of battery left at the end of the day. It’s great, and we’re really happy that RIM has further improved their battery life while making a device faster and smaller. We weren’t kidding when we said average usage is about double compared to the original Bold, and it looks to stay that way in the retail release.

Conclusion

You know, it’s sort of like clockwork. Once every six months we proclaim the latest BlackBerry to be the best BlackBerry ever. Well, we hate to disappoint you, but it doesn’t look like we’re stopping that tradition anytime soon. The BlackBerry Bold 9700, for whatever network it’s powered by, is the finest BlackBerry to date. From the gorgeous screen to the perfect keyboard, to the pocketable size and swift processor, the Bold 9700 seems like it can do almost anything you throw at it. With 256MB of RAM, you’ve got a little more room for applications and data, and the device doesn’t ever seem to get bogged down. We have never even gotten a spinning clock (yet). It’s that solid.

The BlackBerry platform has its advantages and disadvantages (what, we’re not vocal enough about it?), but if you’re an existing BlackBerry user or just don’t require a media-focused device, the Bold 9700 might be right up your alley.

Rogers, Bell, and TELUS in Canada have pretty much all started to release BlackBerry 9700 units into the wild, T-Mobile’s offering business customers a little head start, and AT&T’s looks to be near as well.

We scooped it, we previewed it, and now we’re officially reviewing it. There’s a good chance that even if you’re not into tech all that much, you’ve heard of the Motorola DROID thanks to Verizon’s big marketing push, and that’s a good and bad thing. As you’ll see in our review, the DROID is a fantastic device, but does it have what it takes to compete outside the world of the die-hard Android fans and techies in the consumer arena? You’ll see soon enough!

Hardware / Design

Design is always going to be subjective, but in a world of curves and tapered edges, it’s downright thrilling to see a handset that’s angular, retro-looking and extremely masculine. Sorry, ladies. You’ll always have Droid Eris… We just love the styling of the DROID. It’s minimalistic in a lot of ways, not cluttered with useless buttons and switches, and overall is solid as a rock. The slide mechanism is not spring-assisted, but the click is reassuring enough to warrant a comforting feeling when opening or closing the handset. One thing physically we’re not thrilled with is the looseness of the volume up and down key. It slides up, down, front and back and generally feels like it’s just going to fall off over time. Both the unit we received from Verizon as well as our older unit exhibit the same behaviors.

Contrary to other reports, the Motorola DROID exterior is actually mostly metal. The bezel around the screen is metal as is the mid-plate of the case. The only part that’s plastic is the rear back-plate and as we understand it, the reason that little chin exists is because that was the only place Motorola could fit the wireless antennas. They face out towards the plastic back as opposed to being Faraday-caged by the metal front.

Touch-sensitive keys are a, uh, sensitive area but they’re honestly fine at the end of the day. We’ve been banging on a DROID for many weeks and haven’t once had a misfire or accidental key press even though the keys are 100% touch-based. We don’t think they’re a problem even though some people have been concerned. Plus, you can’t beat the Haptic feedback. There isn’t a single key on the left side of the unit, just a microUSB port, and on the top there’s a 3.5mm headset jack followed by the power / lock /unlock button. On the right side, we’ve got the shady bi-directional volume key and a two-stage camera shutter key donned in gold. Or as Motorola likes to call it, brown sugar. Mmm, brown sugar.

When you turn the phone over, you get a rather simple but concise “brown sugar” speaker grill, battery cover with Motorola and Verizon logos, and that 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash. Oh, and the “with Google” logo, too. No, the phone doesn’t look like a billboard to us, but hey, you’re entitled to your own opinion. Inside it is packing a 550MHz OMAP3 CPU, dedicated graphics processor, 512MB of ROM, 256 of RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, a digital compass, and accelerometer.

Screen

You want one word to describe the screen? Stunning. A 3.7″ WVGA 854×480 capacitive high-quality display? We’ll take three. Like we said in our preview, it’s the best screen we’ve ever seen on an Android device and possibly in general. Plus it’s responsiveness is second to only Apple’s capacitive displays, so we’re talking about a really, really solid screen here, people. The widescreen proportion might take a little getting used to for some, but all in all, it’s roomy and sports a rather nice resolution.

On the screen there is a proximity sensor and also an ambient light sensor. Both work magically to shut off the screen while you’re on a call, saving battery and preventing your face from triggering an on screen button, and also adjusting the brightness of the display to match the lighting in your current environment. Some people asked us if the screen on the DROID was dim as it appeared that way in a couple of our photos, and our quick answer would be: absolutely not. It’s viciously bright if you ask it to be, and the backlighting is a very assuring white as opposed to a tinted red, orange, pink or blue hue on some other phones we’ve used.

As we said, it’s second only to the iPhone as far as capacitive screens go, and coupled with the rest of the DROID, it’s a real winner.

Keyboard

After using the phone for almost a month, I can confidently say the keyboard is fine for most people. It’s not a BlackBerry and the actual spacing of the keys isn’t great, but it is really livable I think. Each key has a little bubbled-texture which makes it a bit easier to define one key from another, and the tactile feedback, while not perfect, is fine. The spacebar could use a little more tactility though as it’s probably the hardest key to press when you’re trying to type swiftly and accurately. There are two things that bother us about the keyboard and that’s the directional pad stage right, and the fact that two keys haven’t quite made it through metamorphosis. Can someone please point out another phone in the entire universe that shipped with two blank keys? Is this a joke? It’s not the end of the world but uh, how about a home key and a back key? How about a bigger spacebar? There ars a million things that could have been done to improve the keyboard layout even by two keys and it’s pretty hilarious that two keys are blank.

Backlighting on the keyboard is a nice white/teal-ish tint, definitely bright enough, and comes through just the letters and symbols.

The on screen keyboard that Android-lovers are used to for all intents and purposes has not changed. It’s the standard Android affair, there are settings to enable vibration-feedback on key press, an audible sound on key press, and the usual configurational options like auto-capitalization, word suggestions, auto-correct and completion. There’s virtually no improvement from other Google Experience handsets which is a bit depressing as the keyboard in Android has a bit of a ways to go to compete with that other popular touch-based phone. The landscape on screen keyboard is obviously very, very wide and a tad more forgiving with typing since the keys are obviously larger.

OS

Oh, Android 2.0. It feels like such a huge step forward for Android and it is. It really brings the mobile Google OS into 2009 with support for Exchange, a unified inbox (for non-Gmail), more resolution support, 3D graphics, and a whole lot more. Would we classify it as mostly a face lift? Yes. But that’s okay because at the core Android wasn’t too bad and most of the open issues in our mind have been fixed in 2.0. Unfortunately, there’s no multi-touch support in here which is a major downer. There is multi-touch support in the European version of the DROID, the MILESTONE, though. You might have read in our preview that we said that in the Maps application you can two-finger tap to zoom in. Well, you can also one-finger tap to zoom in. The software was sensing one input, not both simultaneously. Our bad.

In the new version of Android it seems that we’ve been given some more fluidity and some nice shortcuts to simplify our lives and not make them more complex. You’ll notice you can tap on a thumbnail of a contact photo anywhere in the OS and have a quick-launch list of immediate correspondence options.

There is still a lot of things Android 2.0 doesn’t fix and it’s pretty annoying. For one, there’s no way to set a real password on the phone. Seriously, drawing lines, shapes and farm animals with your finger to unlock the phone was cute in Android 1.0, but in 2.0? Get it together. It’s also inexcusable that there isn’t a password timeout interval you can adjust so you’re not forced to play tic-tac-toe each time you want to unlock your phone and read your email. Also, there are still no configurable hardware keyboard settings for repeat delay and repeat speed. Openness is great for mostly everyone: consumers, developers, etc. It also, however, brings shoddy code (from some 3rd party developers), fragmentation, and other hurdles. There has been countless times that programs for whatever reason have froze and the standard Google “Wait or Force close” prompt didn’t pop up for sometimes over 15 seconds. We don’t have a program waiting, but if it does, give us a way to force close something without having to wait for you to tell us it’s borked.

Maps is greatly improved, not taking into account Google Navigation. Configurable layers are fantastic as you can overlay what you want (Traffic, Latitude, Wikipedia, Local Search, Satellite, Transit Lines, etc.) when you want to access it instead of having specific modes that only allow you to consume one group of information at a time.

Contacts have now been updated to include sorting and viewing options as you can finally combine multiple contact sources natively (Google, Exchange, Facebook). Visually it looks great and it’s functional, too.

Android’s biggest issue as a whole is the lack of decent applications in our view. Sure, there are 10,000 but do you really need 25 star gazing applications? Nothing is functional and nothing can be compared to the other mobile OS’ apps in terms of quality. It’s not a shot, it’s just fact. You can’t replicate the desktop-class applications on Android yet for one reason or another, and that is a big issue.

I have a major Exchange issue that basically prevents me from relying on the phone as far as my email is concerned. I get a pretty big number of emails a day (around 500) and it’s not that the DROID stutters or can’t handle the volume, it’s that when I configure the phone to fetch the last day, it fetches the last three days. I’ve tried to play with settings, delete and re-add the account — nothing.

I used another Exchange account on the same Exchange server and that works fine. But, even though the account works and messages come through on time, it still went back and synced the last three days of mail instead of one. There are other glitches and bugs with the Exchange implementation on the DROID, but since it is software and something rather important, we have our hopes that it will be resolved in an OTA update. For now though, mail isn’t completely useless, it’s just not something we can count on. Well okay, maybe it’s useless.

Voice:

The built in voice recognition is positively top notch. Since Google’s voice search OS-wide queries your speech with an online synthesis system, this means that first off, your results should be pretty darn good, and second, that it can always improve and “learn” from more and more users. The downside is that if you don’t have a data connection, voice searching and voice control won’t work at all.

The scope of what’s covered by the voice recognition is pretty amazing. We’re talking about getting directions, searching for something like a product online using Google search, locally searching on Google Maps for a store, restaurant or item, and looking up and calling contacts from your address book, all of which are beautifully integrated into the OS.

Music:

Sadly the music side of things in Android 2.0 didn’t get much of an update. Or really any update at all. Look, we get it, you can’t do everything and that’s fine. Google Navigation as you’ll see is fantastic, we’ve got social networks integrated, a better browser — all that good stuff. But it’s not like much had to be done with the music application. Skin it a little bit and we think people would be happy. That’s not to say it doesn’t work, but the layout is a little tired, playlists and navigation is a little cumbersome and we just think music deserves a little bit more attention then it is getting.

Google Navigation

Uh oh, Google just ate everyone’s lunch right? Well, kind of. Google Navigation is amazing at the conceptual level, and even as far as usability goes it’s great. It’s fast, clean, and hey, it’s in beta so don’t flip out. We love satellite view for navigating and we love that it’s truly an internet-connected navigation app that never needs updated. It caches your route so it’s not totally network-dependent, but there isn’t any offline maps or anything like that, so some might take issue with that.

We found Google Navigation to be a joy to use and while it lacks some of the features and functionality traditional mobile navigation applications have, we’re pretty sure that will come in due time. For a first go, it’s very usable and it’s probably something we’d buy the damn car mount just to use. Searching for places and locations along the route is great and so is the robotic-sounding lady that will actually read you the entire street name instead of just giving you basic voice readouts like, “make a left in .8 miles.” You can also add layers to the navigation program and overlay traffic, parking locations, gas stations, banks, restaurants and more for viewing on the map while you travel along your route.

Browser

It’s amazing how a simple double-tap gesture will dramatically change the usability of a touch-screen-based browser. Literally, it’s one thing (besides CPU speed, a great screen obviously, etc.) that makes a big difference. Again, there’s no multi-touch and to be honest, a simple pinch-zoom gesture is really missed. With that said, the browser has improved a lot as far as rendering, being HTML5 compliant, sometimes fast, and very, very stable. Visually, as Android 2.0 in general seems to do, there’s some spice added. Visual bookmarks are fun, the improved URL bar at the top complete with favicon is also a nice touch. In addition to being HTML5 compliant, there’s also support for offline caching for browser-based apps among other improvements. The widescreen resolution and pixel density of the screen really make the browser very friendly to use even without having to zoom.

When you look at speed, the browser is pretty good. Running over the same Wi-Fi network, the DROID performed pretty reasonably compared to our iPhone 3GS. The 3GS we’d say has about 20% on the DROID for straight page loading and rendering, though scrolling speeds are noticeably faster on the DROID. Well, loading is pretty fast. It’s an interesting thing because the browser will sometimes be incredible speedy, and other times just get bogged down on really rudimentary sites. Your mileage may vary, but the speed of the browser can easily go from fast to frustrating and we’re not 100% sure why. One thing that’s annoying about the browser is that there’s no shortcut to jump back to the top of the page when the keyboard is closed. Big deal? Nope, just little things that go a long way that Google continues to miss as far as usability and user experience is concerned. Flash support is not built in to Google Experience phones at this time, but is said to be coming in 2010.

Not having a dedicated search box by the URL bar seems to have its advantages as we love performing searches and seeing related results instantly below. It’s also great that there are little visual icons like a star, clock, and search icon so you can differentiate between your bookmarks, history and live search data.

Phone calling / speaker

It’s a little strange when you ask a group of people about Motorola’s phones and their experiences with them. The strange part is that there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the middle; it’s a love it or hate it affair when it comes to phone performance among other things. Thankfully the Motorola DROID is an amazing performer in the phone calling arena. It’s got “the network” sure, but the phone itself also has incredibly accurate audio reproduction when using either the earspeaker or loudspeaker on the handset. Now, there’s one weird thing about making calls on the DROID and if you hold it up to your ear and talk, you can sort of hear yourself a little bit more than you can on another phone. The DROID has noise-cancellation built in so we’re thinking it might have something to do with that and the audio routing, and it’s definitely not cause for concern, just something we’ve noticed after using it as a phone for a pretty long time.

The speakerphone isn’t the loudest speakerphone, but it’s delightfully crisp and projects sound very well. When bumpin’ some music, we didn’t notice a single distortion, crack — nothing, even at full volume. Speakerphone voice calls also exhibited from the same pleasurable and accurate audio reproduction. We love making calls on the DROID.

The phone interface has received a little upgrade as far as visuals are concerned, but it’s straight forward and damn fast. Dialing has no slow downs or hiccups, calls connect instantly, and there’s no fuss. We’re also really feeling the upgraded call screen with improved end key, dialpad button, speaker and mute button. These slightly changed icons and new arrangement make accessing the essential calling functions a lot easier and more efficient.

Camera

The camera, a 5 megapixel autofocus dual LED flash, is straight up disappointing. It doesn’t seem to be hardware-related as we’re almost positive it’s a software issue, but man… did Kodak just say peace out to Moto or? This thing couldn’t focus on any sort of scene, portrait, landscape, a close-up — nothing — to save its life. On top of pictures not coming out focused properly, the camera application is ridiculously slow, sometimes pausing up to 7 or 8 seconds after you’ve taken a picture before it will let you snap again. What’s worse is that with geo-tagging enabled, delays get even longer.

With Android 2.0 there’s a brand new camera interface which is much-needed and actually isn’t horrible. It’s just not that intuitive and adjusting settings on the fly is damn near impossible. This is a common theme with Android and that’s because most coders aren’t designers and aren’t GUI experts. It’s pretty simple. For instance, the camera will display the automatic flash indicator in the lower left of the viewfinder, yet you can’t click on it. Wait, what? Yeah exactly. The logical among us would expect to tap the indicator and be able to cycle through the options quickly. But you have to slide your finder left to right to bring out the settings drawer, flick down to the flash setting option, tap it to bring the flash setting to the forefront, tap the desired choice and then slide the options drawer back into hiding– all when Megan Fox slipped out from the club while you were fiddling with your camera settings.

There’s also no review settings, so it’s not like you can take a photo and it will show it on screen for a certain amount of time where you can see that you accidentally sneezed during the photograph and want to delete it quickly. You have to tap the recent photo thumbnail in the upper right of the application and only then are presented with the option to delete, share, or set as (wallpaper, contact icon). Like we said, the optics seem to be fine, the dual-LED flash is perfect, but if the camera doesn’t focus properly, takes a long time to launch/shoot, and doesn’t allow on-the-go adjustments quickly, it’s a pretty useless camera. And in the end, we’d take our 3.2 megapixel Bold 9700 camera with flash and even iPhone 3GS camera without flash any day of the week, month, or year over the DROID’s camera.

Battery:

The Drizzy packs a 1400mAh battery, the same one used in the Motorola CLIQ, and there couldn’t be a starker difference between the two. Our Motorola CLIQ would run out of battery if we looked at it funny. The DROID on the other hand surprisingly has some of the best battery life on a mobile device we’ve used in recent memory. It’s definitely up there with an iPhone 3GS and BlackBerry 9700 — really remarkable for such a fast-powered handset with huge display, and it’s a CDMA phone! Very impressive and like we said before, even though the battery is user-replaceable, we really doubt you’ll ever need to with normal daily use.

Conclusion

So, what’s the wrap up, you’re asking right? We absolutely love the Motorola DROID. It’s a perfect storm between awesome hardware, great software, and a great network. That’s not to say it’s for everyone. It isn’t the most consumer-friendly device off the bat and it’s going to take some time and a whole bunch of improvements before we think Android can totally compete in the consumer space like others can, but Android is getting there slowly and this device in general couldn’t be a better way to show it off. There’s obviously some compromises like a pretty flat QWERTY keyboard and a little heft from the inclusion of metal as a design element, but the pros easily outweigh any cons if you’re on Verizon. And even if you’re not, it’s the most compelling alternative to the iPhone we’ve ever used. What’s important is that this phone exists and can easily fill a big void. It bridges a big gap and will be Verizon’s star device for the rest of the fourth quarter. Probably.

The price of $199 is a great price point and we can see VZ moving truckloads of these. International roaming would have been something to put a lot of people over the edge, but besides that, (and the fact they couldn’t fit in another thing) luckily most of the shortcomings the DROID has are software-based and can be easily rectified in the near future. This isn’t the only Android phone coming to Verizon, but from what we’ve seen it’s the best so far and something you’re really going to want to try out in the store and get a feel for. It’s easily one of the fastest and smoothest phones we’ve ever used, easily the fastest Android device on the market (as of November 6th), and definitely the most impressive. Motorola’s CLIQ, as we confidently told you, is a bottom-feeding device. It’s cheap, pretty poorly made physically and software-wise, and the DROID effectively wipes any bad taste out of our mouths. The Motorola DROID is now Motorola’s most important device in recent memory, and they’ve hit it out of the park with this one. We’ve been told there won’t be a USA 3G DROID (GSM) coming anytime soon (or ever), so if you’re looking to scoop one up, your best bet is on November 6th from Big Red.

Recently I visited Mercedes-Benz’s headquarters in Montvale, NJ to see their all-new 2010 E-Class vehicles. You might be thinking we’re pulling an Autoblog, but we’re not. If you knew the amount of technology and engineering in the new E-Class… well, you’re actually about to.

When you begin to look at how much effort, planning, design, testing, and money goes into creating a line of cars, you realize it’s not an easy task. Forget about competition from other manufacturers, just hearing and seeing the process of how it’s done was an incredible experience for me. We’re going to focus on just some of the technological features in the E-Class which is more than we could ever imagine, so once you add that in with every other component in a car, it’s really amazing. I was lucky enough to get a whole sense of how the process works and how it’s executed. I also test drove two 2010 E-Class vehicles, the E550 Coupe and the E63 AMG Sedan. Read on for my experience and an overview of some of the amazing stuff in the E-Class.

Disclosure: Mercedes-Benz North America is a past and present advertiser on BGR.

The E-Class has a feature called ATTENTION ASSIST which is amazingly cool and incredibly brilliant. Mercedes told us that people who drive when they are tired and drowsy get into car accidents roughly 100,000 times a year, almost as much as driving while intoxicated. What Attention Assist does is monitor around 70 different parameters to get a baseline of your habits and then compare it in real-time to your current driving habit. So, you turn on your car and go off for a drive on the highway. For the first 20 minutes, the intuitive system automatically is monitoring different things that you do. Stuff like how aggressive you are with the steering wheel, braking patterns, and much more. Once that baseline is measured, the system then can decide if your patterns changed for the worse and it wants to alert you. There’s an audible alert as well as a visual one in the instrument cluster.

Mercedes told us that in testing, Mercedes drivers typically have a heart-rate that’s reduced by 5% compared to other drivers of other brand vehicles. The reason they said is because of how much attention they pay to the cabin and the entire experience of making the driver feel like a driver, and a driver that’s driving comfortably.

Something else intelligent the new E-Class does is called Adaptive High Beam Assist. It uses a camera that sees oncoming headlights and taillights of cars in front of you. It then automatically softens the headlights as cars pass by you to ease the lighting and not blind them. It will even switch between high-beams and low-beams automatically. But the best part is that it’s all automatic and will auto-adjust your headlights to compensate for 1,000ft of road (including vehicles) in front of you.

The E-Class cars we saw were equipped with a bag load of safety features and it’s really great to see these things start to get implemented faster and faster on different cars from all sorts of manufacturers. PRE-SAFE Brake is another one of these technological achievements that you might wonder why it isn’t available until now. It makes use of something called DISTRONIC PLUS feature (basically think of it as adaptive cruise control that uses radar to see if another vehicle in front of you has stopped while you’re cruising at 75MPH), and what it does is actually stop the car for you in emergency conditions. We’re not talking about just slowing it down and slightly breaking, we’re talking 100% braking power. It works by sensing an impending rear collision (you about to hit another car in front of yours) and will sound about three warning tones.

If you’re listening to Bubba Sparxx too loud on your iPod and don’t hear those tones, and you don’t see the visual alerts because you’re emailing BGR a tip (not smart), the car will be able to detect that you’re a moron and apply around 40% partial braking to the car to slow you down 1.6 seconds prior to impact. But if all the aforementioned things fail, besides the fact you probably shouldn’t be operating a moving vehicle, the car will apply 100% full braking power 0.6 seconds before impact which will create an “electronic crumple zone,” dramatically reducing the impact for you. It doesn’t mean you won’t crash, but it’s an amazing safety enhancement that Mercedes is confident will reduce serious accidents on the road.

What about night vision? Well, Mercedes said they’re one of the only manufacturers to use an actual camera for their night vision implementation, and instead of detecting heat, it works as does a regular night vision product; it shoots out IR light and the IR camera captures it. We were told it enables you to see more or less 500ft in front of you which is unbelievable if you think about it. There’s also a person detection feature that will put people in boxes so you can accurately view them.

If you know me personally (funny guy, aren’t I?) or even follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I absolutely love cars. So mix that love of tech, gadgets, mobile devices, and everything else with cars and you can get an idea of why the E-Class is so interesting and incredible to me. It’s the most advanced vehicle I’ve ever driven and one of the most exciting just from the technology aspect itself. But, who are we kidding. The E63 would have had me excited if there was a rotary phone strapped to it. Just look at it.

The car can also pair up to 5 mobile phones via Bluetooth and will give you much-loved signal strength indicator in the COMAND display as well as load in your entire phone address book if you’d please. The navigation system actually shows a lot of POI data as icons now, so you’ll literally see a Sunoco sign if there’s one close to you, or a McDonalds, or what have you. Completely unnecessary yet surprisingly enjoyable. Something else interesting is that DVD-based navigation is no longer necessary in this vehicle as it uses a built in hard drive to store everything. There is also around 4GB of free space for you to copy MP3 files to and play back at your leisure.

Another great feature for us phone freaks is that pretty much all Mercedes have dedicated phone number pads.

What about suspension? Isn’t there some tech in there, too? Definitely. There are two different suspension options on the E-Class. One is a spring-suspension system and the other is AIRMATIC suspension which lets the driver select either comfort or spots mode at the touch of a button to fine turn their driving experience. We would have preferred even more control on the suspension, maybe four modes, like some other cars offer, but oh well.

There’s literally so much technology in this car — obviously why I jumped at the opportunity to do this article — that we could go on and on for a pretty long time. If the car senses an incoming collision the seats will move automatically to a more favorable crash position to try and protect the occupants, if the car is about to roll over, the sunroof and windows close automatically, there are up to 11 airbags in the car (9 standard) and a whole lot more. What’s great about all this technology though, is that it’s configurable. We often asked if you could disable almost every new feature they briefed us on, and the answer was always yes. We’ll be following up with a video post on the E-Class that will give you a more visual look at the car’s styling and design elements as well as a nice walk-through from our friend Bart Herring who is Product Manager for the E-Class series at Mercedes-Benz.

If you’re a Droid-chaser, you’ve no doubt been hooked to BGR for the past few weeks (more than normal, maybe?). We have our very own Motorola Droid handset, and although the software isn’t final, it’s solid enough where we feel comfortable giving you a nice preview of the unit. Remember, again, this isn’t a final unit and things can and will change for the better. Read on for our Motorola Droid Preview!

P.S. As we have been doing, we’ll follow up on this preview with a review based on a retail unit at release.

P.P.S. I just want to add that this is a Google Experience phone, and my line about Verizon and GPS was a joke. Verizon hasn’t and won’t touch or control any functionality on the Droid. GPS is 100% open, there’s Wi-Fi, Android Market, etc.

Hardware / Build quality:

When the Motorola Droid is released in the coming couple weeks, it will be the most advanced Android device on the market as far as specifications go. Software too, as it’s the only one said to be running Android 2.0 until months from now, but that’s for another section. There’s a 550MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor, separate PowerVR GPU, 256MB of RAM, CDMA Rev A., Wi-Fi, GPS, a digital magnetometer, accelerometer, proximity sensors, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, notification LED, four touch-sensitive navigation buttons, a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port — jesus. In the last year or two, spec sheets really haven’t meant all that much to people. Rational people, that is. What means a lot more is the OS your phone is running since that’s what going to enable you to take bad ass pictures and immediately share them with a close group of friends, or edit work documents on your phone while conducting an online presentation, and so on. But what’s actually pretty funny is, Android devices have been a little underpowered, so the spec sheets do matter, and the Motorola Droid absolutely topples every single Android device ever released as far as the hardware specifications are concerned.

We love the build quality of this phone. It’s mostly metal, and while it’s heavy, it gives you a reassuring quality feel that you just don’t find much nowadays as handsets get thinner, lighter, smaller, and cheaper. It’s practically the opposite of the Motorola CLIQ as far as the physical attributes of the device goes. Really solid and it seems to be manufactured very well. The slider is not spring-assisted, but when you push the metal bezel around the gorgeous display upwards, you get a satisfying click. It does the same when you slide it closed as well.

Screen:

It’s the largest capacitive screen we’ve ever seen and it’s positively amazing. It’s crisp, sharp, vibrant, bright, and really, really responsive. It’s almost iPhone-level in terms of the capacitive touch. We’re not sure if the screen is glass or plastic (we’ve heard glass but it’s incredibly hard to tell), but it doesn’t seem like it would scratch easily regardless of the material. The 3.7 inch display powers a 854×480 resolution image and shows off Android’s true colors. You see what we did there?

What’s interesting is this whole touch-button phase. On the HTC Desire/Predator/Your face, it also features touch-sensitive buttons just like the Droid does. The great part about the Droid’s implementation is that there’s haptic feedback when you press a button and to be perfectly honest, we don’t mind them at all. Would we prefer physical keys? Yeah, sure, but these work just fine and we haven’t come across any problematic occurrences.

Keyboard:

Everyone is bitching over the keyboard. Well, it’s probably better than you’d think, but it’s not perfect. As has been discussed ad nauseum, the unit we have has two blank keys. They don’t press in at all, so it’s not just like there isn’t anything written on them, they are just flat. We had initially been told this was because the keyboard design wasn’t finalized, and if you’ve been Droid-chasing for a while you’ll have noticed many different keyboard revisions. Love it or hate it, this keyboard design is actually final and will be on the device you buy from your favorite Verizon Wireless store. As far as the actual ‘board goes, there isn’t as much feedback as we’d have liked from the keys, but since the phone is so darn thin, there had to be compromises somewhere. People have asked why Motorola didn’t just make the phone into a keyboard-less version, and our answer would have to be: they are. We like the keyboard on the Droid and we’re really anal about keyboards. The directional pad on the right is a little weird at first but it doesn’t hamper your typing too much, but there isn’t enough tactile feedback to make it perfect. Something that’s a little annoying is the proximity of one key to another key, but all in all we’ve been able to bang out emails, texts, and other forms of text entry very efficiently on the hardware keyboard very quickly after using the device. It’s not the best, but it certainly isn’t bad, and it’s definitely better than the T-Mobile G1’s keyboard.

And oh… a ton of people are asking, and we’re not sure why you wouldn’t assume it already, but you can indeed use the on-screen keyboard in portrait as well as landscape mode.

Phone calling / speaker / call quality:

The Droid sounds great as a phone. Calls with the handset over Verizon’s network sounded clear and the phone application itself performed really well. It’s speedy and there weren’t any hiccups unlike some other Android devices we’ve fooled around with. The dialpad is pretty standard and if you’ve used an Android device, you should be right at home as this is a straight Google affair after all. Google Voice obviously works flawlessly (we’re not sure why it wouldn’t, unless you’re talking about the animal sacrifices Verizon makes to disable GPS on the phone…) and the phone application is quick! That’s probably what we love most about it… number dialed. Call connected. Have a nice day.

OS:

Ah, Android 2.0. We’ve detailed it quite a bit, but we can definitely explore it a little more for you… I personally never liked Android 1.0. Well, that’s not true completely. I liked it, but I just didn’t see it being the OS we expected. It wasn’t polished, it wasn’t fluid, it offered very basic functionality — not a good way to start. What has happened between Android 1.0 and 2.0 is that a lot of missing functionality has been added, the UI has been made a little bit more streamlined in some places, and it generally brings the OS up to speed with other mobile platforms. Out of the box Exchange compatibility is our absolutely favorite new feature, but we’re sure people will appreciate the new unified email Inbox, voice commands / search, a new Google Maps, better multimedia support, a new browser, and the list goes on and on. Once you have a chance to use Android 2.0 on any device, whether it’s HTC or Motorola or Samsung, we think you’re going to love it.

Battery:

This might come as a shock to many, but the Motorola Droid has the best battery life out of any Android device we’ve ever tested. It completely smokes the Motorola CLIQ — obviously it’s not constantly pushing as much data, but it’s not even a fair comparison. With push Exchange configured, Facebook, and a linked push Google account (Gmail, contacts, etc.) we had no problem lasting through a whole day of usage. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were disabled, but it’s still a pretty amazing performer as far as the battery is concerned. Yes, it has a user-replaceable battery, but it’s probably good enough to be sealed up to be honest. Motorola recently made a boo boo and let the Droid appear on their website, and official battery times are: 6.5hrs of continuous usage (phone + web + email + anything else, continually) or around 270 hours of standby time.

Accessories:

There’s a really cool accessory that we’re told will be available at launch and it’s a charging dock/multimedia station. It turns your phone into an alarm clock/weather display/music player by using a magnet to control and launch the corresponding application. We discovered that by putting the phone in our BlackBerry 9700 holster in a certain position, Car Home would launch.

We then moved the magnet and the multimedia mode launched, so we’re guessing there’s going to be some sort of car cradle/dock/thing that will be available as well in addition to the above station.

Conclusion:

You know how we roll at BGR, we don’t hold anything back — if it’s hot, it’s hot. If it’s not, it’s not, and we’re not afraid to call it like it is. The Motorola CLIQ was a pretty big disappointment for me personally, but oh man does the Droid make up for it. Sure, there’s a little hype sprinkled in because this is the first Android 2.0 device I’ve had the pleasure of using, but once you move past the initial “wow” factor, the Droid really delivers. Whether it’s Verizon’s ad campaign or Motorola’s that pits the Droid against the iPhone it doesn’t matter. The Droid isn’t an iPhone competitor because nothing at this point in time is an iPhone competitor besides the new iPhone. And things don’t have to be right now. Everyone can eat. So will the Motorola Droid be successful? Absolutely, we think. It will eat in to BlackBerry sales, Windows Mobile sales, and positively murder any lingering Palm Pre sales. It’s that good. Did you notice how Verizon still hasn’t announced the BlackBerry Storm2?

We really enjoyed using the Motorola Droid and think you’re going to love it. It’s not as straight forward as an iPhone and a little more involved than a BlackBerry, but if you’re up for the challenge, so is the Droid.

There are a couple more comparison shots below!

While Sprint’s HTC Hero is housed in a different and arguably less sexy shell than the standard HTC version, the internals are the same. That’s a 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a whole lot more running on Sprint’s CDMA voice and data network. We’ve put together a bunch of things we loved as well as things we disliked about the Sprint version of the HTC Hero after the break along with some photos.

Why, why, why is our beloved Teflon coating gone? Sprint thought the Hero in its pure form was most likely a bit too edgy (that pun was definitely intended) and opted for a more simple and rounded casing. It’s not all bad, though. The physical buttons we really had issue with are now very workable and the trackball has been replaced with a larger one making scrolling a bit more easy. The screen and screen size are exactly the same and we’re told that the Sprint units run the updated HTC ROM that fixes a lot of the Hero’s initial slowdowns.

Unfortunately, the Sprint HTC Hero is still laggy and a bit too slow to use as a main device by our standards. It’s just not fast enough. Not when you have the Palm Pre or iPhone 3GS to compare it to. We can’t tell you how many times our attempts to simply unlock the phone have ended in it being swift-kicked across the room. It freezes, the browser is clunky at best (that Adobe Flash integration doesn’t seem to be helping), and it’s really frustrating to use at times. Exchange support is great, but it doesn’t do much good if it takes 12 seconds to open a single email. Sometimes, it literally takes 12 seconds. There’s countless examples we could give, but our initial review still stands pretty much true: it’s an awesome phone (even in its new shell) that’s hampered by the CPU it is powered by. Is it usable? Absolutely. Is it as fast as it should be? Not a chance. It’s definitely in the upper echelon of greatness and Sprint’s smartphone lineup is pretty fantastic at the current time. Compared to anything other than the Palm Pre on Sprint, though, especially if you’re not a BlackBerry friend, the HTC Hero would be our choice. It’s available on Sprint starting October 11th for $179.99 with a two-year service agreement.

Motorola. Regardless of your brand loyalty, the aforementioned company changed the mobile landscape. Twice. First with the legendary StarTac and once again with the Motorola RAZR. Unfortunately, the RAZR by itself wasn’t enough to keep propelling Motorola’s mobile handset division forward for eternity. Here we are some five whole years later looking at what is Motorola’s most important product (and upcoming products) in recent memory. Enter the Motorola CLIQ. We’ve been fortunate enough to have one or two units of our own, even though there’s already been hands on sessions and a couple of reviews, we’re finally ready to tell you about it. We labeled this as a preview instead of a full review because we’re about two months out from launch. We’ll follow up to this post with findings from a unit T-Mobile sends us if there are any differences and additional thoughts.

Hardware:

Motorola really hasn’t been known as the most reliable company when it comes to manufacturing, but they’ve also previously dictated trends as far a cellular devices go. With that said, the Motorola CLIQ’s hardware isn’t a surprise to us. It seems decently solid, albeit a little cheap. Physically, buttons are spread nicely throughout the casing with a loud / vibrate ringer switch on the left side of the handset, volume bottoms below that, and a microUSB port just underneath that. On the right side there’s a power / lock and unlock button (one key for all three actions) followed by a two-stage camera shutter key. On the front of the device there’s a menu key, home key, and back key. Pretty simple and clean.

When you slide the display up to reveal the full QWERTY keyboard (the slide mechanism is very solid and fun to use), you get access to more Android-specific keys as well as a 5-way directional pad. There’s a dedicated search key and a back key, but what’s a really nice design touch is the alt key.

No, the alt key itself isn’t anything special, but when the backlight on the keyboard is active and you press the alt key, the alternate numbers and symbols on the keyboard independently light up. Very cool. (This doesn’t seem to be the case on the titanium version of the CLIQ).

Plus, who could forget to mention the glowing Motorola symbol on the back of the display? That’s right. It’s a blatant rip on Apple’s notebooks and we love it.

Screen

With a 3.1″ capacitive display, it’s a little tough to completely fall in love with the screen even though it’s one of the best as far as capacitive ones go. The smaller size of the display really affects usability and the on screen keyboard shows this issue the best — Motorola had to use even smaller on-screen keys for the keyboard. It’s plenty responsive but without multi-touch, it just feels primitive to say the least in some applications. The screen itself is definitely bright enough and pretty accurate in the color space, though it’s a little pixelated for our tastes.

OS:

Motorola did something pretty smart with their customizations — unlike HTC’s Sense UI, we don’t believe there’s a complete skin (extra process) running on top of the regular Android OS. Instead, Motorola uses widgets to display live information on the homescreen of the device and their other customizations seem to be OS-deep. This speeds up the entire phone dramatically. They even modified the Android homescreen to display 5 pages instead of 3, again, without having to run a process on top of the existing OS.

What’s not so good about the CLIQ’s software is that everything is disconnected and nothing really flows. For example, you can update your Facebook status, but there’s no way to see your previous statuses in one place, or even refresh the latest status manually. So, if your phone is powered off and you just updated your status from a computer let’s say, then powered the phone on, it shows your last update from the handset but not from the web. Not unless you let it refresh on it’s own schedule which can sometimes be never. The whole refreshing thing automatically is a little wonky, but again, that might just be not final software talking.

The Happenings application is a valiant effort to combine your social networks into a tidy timeline, but from our usage of it, it’s pretty clunky, slow, and lacking some features. What Motorola should have done is build more custom applications a la HTC’s Peep Twitter application because Happenings isn’t really cutting it when there are 500 updates. You can also forget about flicking through 500 updates in single view mode when you launch a friend’s update from the homescreen widget. The base concept here is awesome, it just needs some refining to make it usable in high-volume situations (read: lot of status updates/messages)

We think the execution is a little flawed for anyone with more than 20 friends total out of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. While trying to simplify their creation of widgets infused with status updates and linked contacts, Motorola in our opinion has made it even more difficult to manage your social life from this handset. Things like be able to manually refresh these updates and statuses, or even allow menu-based actions would be a plus. If you go into a single “happening” and press the menu key, nothing happens. No “reply”, “email”, “call” selectable options — nothing, even though that contact is in your address book and linked with all their other networks and contact information.

Another problem is how the CLIQ’s BLUR OS treats different forms of communication. For instance, Twitter isn’t like email. Mentions if anything are more a form of direct communication that I’m interested in, not direct messages. The CLIQ only has an inbox for direct messages and there’s no way to see aggregated Twitter mentions. I swear the people that created this phone barely use Twitter or Facebook for anything meaningful…

Thankfully there’s built-in Exchange support which will lovingly sync your mail, contacts, and calendars. Unfortunately, the fastest refresh internal is a whole 15 minutes and push email is no where to be found inside the Exchange program. Hopefully that’s because our unit might not be running final firmware, if it’s not, then well… yeah.

Maybe Motorola could have used the lock screen on the device to give previews of unread status updates, messages, notifications? There’s a ton of ways to properly integrate social services and while this is a decent attempt, its clunkiness we think will turn off any user looking to do more than lightly communicate with a select group of friends.

Phone:

Using the phone was surprisingly pleasant. There are no send/end keys on the device (physically, at least) and it’s a little different than what we’re used to for a Android phone. The built in voice dial/command function is absolutely brilliant and we fell in love with the virtual number pad. The phone app is one of the areas on here where you’ve got a lot of different options. Sorting by all calls, missed calls, outgoing calls, frequent called, recently called, and more are all some of the ways you can access your phone logs and contacts quickly and efficiently. In terms of incoming calls, you not only get the person’s name, number, and photo (if available), you also get their latest status update from whatever service that contact is linked. Sooo cool. We can’t believe no one has done this before (yes, we’re looking at HTC right now). In terms of actually using the phone to talk on, calls sounded pretty clear, though it wasn’t the best phone we’ve ever talked . Speakerphone was definitely loud and surprisingly clear with callers being able to hear us well, and we could hear them fine and have a normal conversation. Just as you’d expect from a phone…

Keyboard:

This is tough. Early reviews have said that the keyboard of the CLIQ was fantastic. We have to unfortunately disagree. It’s decent. Definitely usable, just not something we’d want to bang on all day and every day. The buttons are hard, cheap plastic, and while there is some tactile feedback when you press a single key, it doesn’t “bounce” back up and it’s a little unsettling.

The space bar on our unit has practically no feedback and since this is a sliding phone, the keyboard is sunk into the case which allows for the handset’s shell to rise slightly above the keyboard. The 5-way directional navigational pad suffers from the same common issues as the keyboard — not enough feedback. Childrens will have no problem with it, but anyone over the age of 12 might take issue to the keyboard. We’ll see.

UI:

While widgets are what spices up the homescreen of the CLIQ, Motorola also decided to blend contact information from all your different social networks together in a clean and useful live address book. Think of it as Synergy on the Pre, just executed a lot, lot more intuitively. For one, you can hide and view different networks if you don’t want to see every single Facebook friend or Twitter account you follow.

In terms of being intuitive, there a little UI work on here — Motorola has customized some default Android graphics and thrown on a custom color scheme, they’ve also overhauled the address book with a nice skin, but a lot of it is more application-centric.

We mean instead of there being an actual user interface on top of Android, there’s applications like Motorola’s unified inbox, inboxes for your social services like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc., widgets on the homescreen with popups, and things of that nature.

Something very cool about the Exchange email program, though, is that you actually have a font editor. You can bold, italicize, and completely format text. It’s really neat if not completely useless, but cool nonetheless.

Battery:

Not even joking when I say this — the Motorola CLIQ has possibly the worst battery life of any phone I’ve tested in recent memory with the current software. Maybe Motorola’s BLUR back-end isn’t optimized yet, maybe the phone software isn’t final, but this is ridiculously bad. Especially since it doesn’t even deliver your status updates when you want them, it just sits there pulling in data constantly updating in batches. I haven’t used the device as a primary device so I couldn’t give hard statistics on battery life when phone calling, but with on and off usage, it’s ridiculously bad. The battery itself looks to be 1390mAh for those that are interested.

Again, let’s hope the software isn’t prime time.

Conclusion:

The Motorola CLIQ isn’t a StarTac. It isn’t a RAZR. It’s a decent phone with a great concept. A concept that unfortunately wasn’t executed as well as it should have been when the entire industry is watching. We feel that the Motorola CLIQ’s appeal will be to the young teen market as opposed to consumers as a whole like other Android handsets. It’s only the first phone from Motorola and their new initiative, and they deserve credit for putting together something this unique and creative. Yet compared to something along the lines of HTC’s offerings, we don’t think many people are going to spring for a clunky Android handset regardless of price.

It’s annoyingly slow at times — really hope this isn’t final software — has very little user-customizable settings where you need them (something ironic for a handset that actually does offer a real attractive “connected lifestyle” concept) and has to be pretty low on the totem pole as far as market positioning is concerned. There’s the Motorola Sholes which is said to be extremely high-end with a fusion of aluminum and other metals launching on the Verizon network (as well as a Euro 3G unit we’re told) which is completely opposite of the CLIQ, and that interests us as far as what Motorola is up to.

Motorola was and still is one of our favorite tech companies. This is only their first handset since they did a little spring cleaning and it’s decent. I’m really hoping the software side of things dramatically improves as we get closer to a release, but with less than two months to go, I’m not sure it will happen. We know not everything you wanted to hear about was covered in this preview write-up, so hit us in the comments with any questions and we’ll update the post with answers. We’ve also reached out to Motorola’s PR team and are waiting to hear back from them to clarify some information like the software version and other fun stuff.

UPDATE: We’ve been informed this unit is definitely not running the final OS.

Oh you thought we fell off. Nope — we’ve just been tearing apart BlackBerry’s latest flagship over the past week or so and our review is finally perfectly crafted. The BlackBerry 9700 replaces the Bold as RIM’s newest flagship device. Even though it’s not released yet — look for it anywhere from mid-October to mid-November depending on what part of the globe you reside in — it’s BlackBerry’s most advanced QWERTY device to date and combines all of their next generation features together in a smaller and lighter package. We’ve already detailed our thoughts on RIM and how they are doing on the software side of things and this review will be mostly hardware focused. We will also follow up with a Part 2 review as we did with the BlackBerry Tour since this model is not a production unit.

Hardware / Design:

Gorgeous. How do you like that description? From the beveled edges to the powder-coated keyboard, this is one good looking BlackBerry. The much loved (and hated) fake leather textured battery cover makes a reappearance here as does a trackpad to handle the navigational duties.

The 9700 makes the Tour look like a bloated 8-month pregnant single mother. Shave about 24% of the surface area off the Tour, bevel the edges, round the corners, and you’ll have something close to the BlackBerry 9700. It’s the most gorgeous BlackBerry on the planet. And no, that’s not up for debate or discussion. Early units had the straight RIM color theme on the keyboards (white letters with red accents/symbols) but the unit we have which is most likely what AT&T will receive is all white. This looks great meshed with the titanium chrome finish on the bezel and the high gloss black finish on the front of the device.

This theme is always brought up in our reviews of BlackBerry devices — RIM really keeps innovating in hardware design and manufacturing. It seems as if each device they make has a brand new manufacturing process and technique, and while you might view this as a negative, we view it as a positive. Unlike a car maker, RIM can’t make a chassis, so to speak, that they use for all their models in a series. Since each device is unique, it’s great to see RIM experiment with different planning and assembly options to deliver the best product possible. Eliminating the number one failure point on a BlackBerry (the trackball) and replacing it with something that’s not just going to save money in the long run, but is actually a better solution is great. Making desktop chargers that use battery contact points to save wear and tear on the mini/microUSB port is smart. Speaking about the trackpad, we’re not sure what’s up because there’s a nice and day difference between this one and and the one on the BlackBerry 8520. It might be the exact same hardware revision, but something about it feels better to use and after a day of not using the traditional trackball, we can’t imagine not using the trackpad. It’s a worthy successor to the trackball.

What about something that’s often overlooked? Vibrate. We’d like to be the first ones to report that the vibrate function on the 9700 is straight up violent. It’s possibly the most downright disrespectfully loud and obnoxious vibrate mechanism we’ve heard in recent memory. And we love it. Switching gears to the physical buttons on the 9700, it will make a BlackBerry user feel right at home. Two-stage camera shutter /convenience key on the lower right side of the phone with volume up / down buttons towards the top of the right side. Left convenience key on the opposite side with lock and mute buttons on the top of the handset. There’s the now-default 3.5mm headset jack and microUSB port sitting above the left convenience key. Below those are a lanyard hole. Thrilling, we know.

The 9700 is very much like the 9520/9550 in terms of industrial design and gives us a glimpse at where RIM’s styling is headed for the next round of handsets. Things like soft-touch rubberized finish on the middle of the handsets with matching rubberized buttons (instead of chrome), darker chrome finishes, high gloss black — all these lead to more pronounced and edgier designs for a historically conservative corporation.

Screen:

RIM really moved in a brand new direction with the Bold’s display and ever since, they’ve been continuing the tradition of awesomeness. We’re really happy to report that the BlackBerry 9700 has the best screen to date of any BlackBerry handset. It’s that good. The resolution, which is the new RIM gold standard, is 480×360 and while you wouldn’t expect it to be any better than the Tour’s or Curve 8900’s screens, it is. Pictures appear as if they’re floating on top of the display, blacks are black and colors are crisp and vibrant. There’s a pretty decently-sized black border that goes around the entire display much like how the BlackBerry Tour’s screen looks, and while people have moaned about this ad nauseum, it doesn’t really phase us.

OS:

The latest versions of OS 5.0 (which have leaked for existing handsets like the 9530, 9630, Bold, 8900, etc.) show a slight UI refresh with more blues, more gradients, updated icons and buttons and even — *gasp* — kinetic scrolling on some devices. Here’s where it gets a little tricky, though. AT&T’s BlackBerry 9700 evaluation units shipped with OS 5.0.0.169. The unit we have originally came with that OS and worked magically. It, however, didn’t have the updated UI that later OS 5.0 builds contain. After upgrading our unit to OS 5.0.0.215 (internal builds for the 9700 are up beyond .249, we’re told) it’s now rocking out with the updates features and sexified UI elements. Why we’re going into this so deeply is because there’s a good chance that if AT&T’s 9700 passes technical acceptance without issue (we don’t anticipate the same issues that plagued the Bold’s release), the version that will ship with the 9700 will be 5.0.0.169 or something close to it. That means that you’ll be running an “old” 5.0 build and it’s interesting to see this play out. You’ll obviously be able to install different OS versions for yourself that have been released by other carriers, but we just wanted to give you guys a heads up that the release unit’s OS might be a little different.

Keyboard:

We don’t have to keep reinforcing it (well, we just did, we guess): we take those keyboards seriously. Throw the BlackBerry 8900 keyboard out of the window on this because it’s completely different. Imagine the BlackBerry 9700 keyboard as a mix of the Bold and the Tour keyboards. Tour-shaped (little better) with the bounce and feel of the Bold keyboard. It’s really fantastic. Definitely not as large as the original Bold’s mammoth boat-sized chiclet pad, but it’s great. We’d probably go as far as saying out of the current generation BlackBerry handsets, the BlackBerry 9700 is the best. You’ll see that theme appear time and time again in this review. Each little key has a nice carved design that allows for precision typing at its finest. Keys have a decent amount of space and even though the shift keys at the bottom look a little small (they are tiny), they’re completely usable and really don’t turn out to be a hindrance when it comes to getting your typing on.

After a couple hours of usage we have no doubts that you’ll absolutely fall in love with the keyboard. The feel of the keys coupled with the shape and proper layout that’s standard on all BlackBerrys offer a truly excellent typing experience on the BlackBerry 9700.

Phone:

The unit as a phone is fantastic. That will obviously depend on what network you sign your life away to, but even on AT&T, when the network worked, the 9700 made for a great phone. The actual ear speaker seems less recessed than previous BlackBerrys and we could hear callers loud and clear using the ear speaker. Speakerphone also worked well (as it should) with minimal distortion at maximum volume. Quite refreshingly, the device didn’t get too hot during long voice sessions and we really had no problems using the phone as a phone.

Browser:

While the browser in OS 5.0 comes with some improved Javascript support, it’s still no where near any of the top dogs like Apple’s mobile Safari, Android’s webKit browser, or Palm’s webKit browser. Using the browser with the trackpad as the cursor is definitely a great input method (remember when the trackball made use of the cursor back in the day for the first time?) and feels natural to navigate websites. The browser seems like one of the things that changes most as OS builds move further and further along so we’ll reserve our hatred for the browser in our final Part 2 review.

Speaker:

While the Bold offered three different audible speaker ports (one on each side and one at the top) for pretty accurate sound reproduction, the BlackBerry 9700 uses a single opening towards the top part of the back of the device. This works fairly well and sound, uh, sounds good. We did notice a volume decrease compared to the Bold, but not by much. Maybe around 15% lower? Nothing is going to beat that Storm 2 speaker, though…

Battery:

We’re not sure how they did it, but the BlackBerry 9700 has the best battery life of any 3G BlackBerry in recent years. It could probably even rival the BlackBerry 8900 — truly unbelievable. The BlackBerry Tour was the king of battery life, and that was odd seeing as how CDMA devices usually are a bit worse than their GSM brothers and sisters, but the 9700 has one-upped the Tour. For some rough statistics, the BlackBerry Bold with normal usage patterns lasted me around 7 hours of usage until the battery was dead. How long do you think the 9700 lasts using the exact same BlackBerry Bold battery? Try around 15 hours. We’re talking more than double with a faster CPU and using the same battery. Really remarkable and will help those on-the-go warriors.

It’s funny to see RIM use such a wide range of batteries in their devices. Then again, for a company that has 15,000 different models, 4,000 different screen resolutions, and 2,000 different form factors it doesn’t surprise us. What you’ll be happy to hear is that your existing BlackBerry Bold battery will work perfectly in the 9700 and will yield you better battery life than you’ve ever imagined.

Note: Battery life was based on OS 5.0.0.169. It’s dramatically worse in OS 5.0.0.215 which the unit is now running.

Conclusion:

It’s pretty hard to make a general recommendation nowadays with any device, let alone a BlackBerry. With four form-factors in the BlackBerry family, it complicates things.

The BlackBerry 9700 is a much-needed refresh to the aging BlackBerry Bold. To date, RIM has released only a single 3G GSM device in the United States and with competition heating up, the BlackBerry 9700 looks to be their answer. We absolutely gushed over the BlackBerry Tour in our review and until the 9700 came along, that was our daily driver. Is the BlackBerry Tour still the best BlackBerry on the market? We think so. But as good as the Tour is, the 9700 is better. There seems to be a drastic difference between CDMA and GSM hardware on BlackBerry devices (we’re guessing it’s the Qualcomm processors opposed to the Marvells) and it’s actually exhilarating to be back on a GSM device. The BlackBerry 9700 combines the most-loved features that have been sprinkled about on BlackBerry phones over the last year (3G, 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, trackpad, QWERTY keyboard, smaller size, faster CPU) and combines them into a single sexy and compact package.

“So you’re saying the BlackBerry 9700 is the best BlackBerry ever?”

Yes. It’s the finest BlackBerry ever crafted and if you’re asking why it’s so much better than the Tour, it goes back to that CDMA vs. GSM argument as well as the fact that the 9700 is simply a year newer. We nailed the Tour all the way back almost two years ago, and sadly the internals seem to be a little outdated. There’s no official CPU specifications on the Tour, but if we had to guess we’d guess it’s running at around 500MHz give or take. Rumblings have pegged the BlackBerry 9700’s Marvell Tavor CPU running at close to 800MHz! It’s a lot faster in normal usage than the Bold (both running OS 5.0) so in addition to the RAM being doubled, we’re pretty sure there is a faster CPU dropped in there as well.

Every single thing about the BlackBerry 9700 screams high-end to us, and for a device that’s a part of the Bold-series (the Bold won’t go anywhere, we’ve been told), it should. It’s the best of the best to come out of Research In Motion to date and we can’t wait until everyone’s able to use one.

Check back for Part 2 when we follow up with a review on an AT&T release unit.

Image courtesy of TweetGenius.

Some of you might be privy to a little bit of confidential BGR info, but for those of you who are not: I went to Chicago recently. In a car. Besides me harboring a hate for the entire of state of Pennsylvania, (because it’s ridiculously long to drive through) the trip was quite successful. One of the main reasons why I didn’t mind being in a car seven times longer than being in a plane was because I was blessed by two MiFi units; a Verizon Wireless unit and a Sprint unit. Plus, what better way to really test out two mostly identical devices on two completely different networks when you’re covering around 1700 miles round trip. I didn’t do a really vigorous string of tests or anything near our much-loved BGR Carrier Wars series. Instead I used one unit exclusively on the way to Chicago from New York City and the other unit on the way back. Here’s what I found…

The first MiFi I used was the Verizon Wireless unit. We all know how good Verizon’s reputation in the data department is and I had high hopes for this little bad boy. Before we get into how it fared, let’s look at the physical unit itself. It’s definitely smaller than you’d imagine if you have never seen or held one before, and Verizon opted to go with a glossy black top plastic piece with a soft touch rubberized finish on the underside. While this obviously goes well with Verizon’s black, red, and white color scheme, the review unit was scratch city already when I received it. Will this affect the device’s performance? Absolutely not, but I’m not terribly sure high gloss black plastic was the best of ideas as far as exteriors go. On the underside of the Verizon unit is a nice little sticker that will give you the pre-set passcode for the wireless network it transmits.

This is helpful so you can get going immediately when you purchase the unit instead of fumbling for the user manual or frantically calling that bastard salesperson that sold you the device. What’s really fantastic about the MiFi in general is that you get access to a router configuration page just as you would on your Linksys, Belkin, or whatever brand router you use at home or at the office. On that page you can customize just about anything including presents for different network modes (temporary hotspot, secure, open, etc.), port forwarding, MAC filtering, power and standby settings and a bunch more. You’ll see that Verizon and Sprint have different network configuration pages and we’ll go over both of them a little further down.

Here’s Verizon’s wireless configuration page and you’ll notice it looks just like their horribly-designed and crafted VZAccess Manager apps. But, Verizon isn’t about sparkle, they’re about substance and their configuration page (and arguably VZAccess Manager software) is extremely simple and quick to navigate and setup. After renaming the wireless network to something a little more clean (Verizon MiFi — original, I know) and setting a new Wi-Fi passkey, I was ready to go.

Immediately 5 bars of glorious mobile Wi-Fi appeared on my MacBook Pro. I entered the passkey and was off and running. After knocking through some work over IM, in the web browser, and in Outlook, I decided I’d start to speed test the Verizon MiFi. The highest speed I saw was around 950kbps and the lowest was around 780kbps (in Rev. A coverage areas). I think I completed one speed test over 1X and that was about 120kbps.

You can see a shot of one speed test I did that yielded 802kbps down and 557kbps up. Not bad at all if you need to have data access while on the move and definitely in line with Verizon’s other data products like USB sticks or ExpressCards.

Both MiFi units support high level security including WPA2-PSK and WEP Wi-Fi networks.

As far as Sprint’s unit goes, the finish is quite different on the top part of the casing. There’s a brushed aluminum texture which is glossed over with a clear coat that really doesn’t show scratches. Major bonus. Besides just looking lighter and being less scratch-prone, the Sprint MiFi externally is basically the same exact hardware as the Verizon device. Sprint doesn’t have a sticker on the underside of the unit with a default passkey for the Wi-Fi network, but since this review unit came with an open Wi-Fi network it wasn’t an issue I had to deal with. Bets are that it would be on the box or in some sort of included paperwork…

After selecting and configuring the Wi-Fi network to my liking (again, Sprint MiFi2200 — totally brilliant, right?) I was a happy camper on I-80 East. For some reason, and this might not actually be the case with every unit, I noticed the range of Wi-Fi signal to be a little worse on the Sprint MiFi than on the Verizon MiFi. I had read about this somewhere and it mentioned that since the Sprint unit was part metal compared to all plastic the Wi-Fi range suffered a bit. That’s obviously not true as the Sprint unit is not any part metal, so I’m not sure what exactly the reason for that was or if maybe the unit I was testing was a little broken in. Just think about how many Wi-Fi clients had been using that MiFi before me. Yikes.

While both units are pretty much identical when you get down to the nitty gritty, Sprint’s MiFi offers the ability to use the built-in GPS. This is really cool if you don’t have a GPS-enabled mobile phone and could possibly be a life-saver in some situations. You have the option of searching directly from the router configuration page using your GPS location, and displaying the coordinates of where you are, among other things. Very nice and very cool. As far as the look and feel of the configuration page goes, Sprint’s was really clean and had a bit more polish, shall we say, over the Verizon page. There was also an option in the power preferences to have the MiFi enter standby mode when plugged into a charger which the Verizon page didn’t have.

Not too surprisingly, speeds were a bit better on Sprint’s unit. We’d say an average of around a 150kbps difference even though there’s about a 300kbps difference from the speed tests we took photos of. The trade off is that Sprint’s coverage was not as good as Verizon’s and many times the Verizon unit would be in a Rev. A coverage area when the Sprint unit would only be chugging on 1X. Battery life was the same on both units at around 4 and a half hours of straight usage which actually ended up lasting throughout maybe half the day when going about the city on and off.

Both MiFi devices can support up to 5 wireless clients each simultaneously which is an incredible feat for a device so small and compact. You can also connect your MiFi via a microUSB cable to your computer and tether it while also charging the unit. The downside here, though, is that once the unit is connected to a computer over USB, routing data over Wi-Fi is not possible. Obviously if the unit is plugged into a microUSB wall charger you’re free to charge and surf without a hitch. Both units got mildly warm with strenuous usage, nothing alarming or even concerning. While I’m not daring enough to keep a MiFi in my pocket, when left in my backpack it turned out to be an awesome traveling companion, gladly picking up the slack from AT&T’s horrendous Chicago coverage.

As you can see from the review, both units are pretty much identical at the end of the day. Little minor exterior differences and even smaller hardware differences (I actually believe they are identical, just Verizon doesn’t enable the GPS function that Sprint does), it’s pretty tough to immediately call one a winner. I wish I could be more clear and really recommend one over the other — Sprint’s was a little bit faster in places, Verizon’s had better coverage and was a tad more reliable — but it’s really personal preference. I’ve been a Bell Atlantic customer and now a Verizon customer for a very long time and like their coverage. After I ship back the Verizon unit, I’ll be purchasing a Verizon MiFi for my personal use, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t be happy with a Sprint one.

Both devices retail for $99 with a 2-year agreement with qualifying monthly data plan.

When I fondled the HTC Hero for the first time a month or two ago, I was instantly floored. I mean, Android looked this bad ass? It was actually functional? The T-Mobile G1 was a non-starter for me, the HTC Magic (HTC variant) was a cool mess around device I had (a custom white one with U.S. HSDPA might I add) but it wasn’t until I saw the Hero where I actually thought, “Wow. This could actually be a device I’d want to use.” Multi-touch capacitive screen, Flash support in the browser, full Microsoft Exchange support? Oh man…

But it’s not all roses, ponies, and rainbows. Since my time with the device pre-announcement was limited, I was quickly shown the best that the Hero had to offer. In terms of the inner workings however, not so much. All that changed since the Teflon Don found its way to BGR HQ and I’ve had plenty of time to size it up from top to bottom. So what’s the verdict? Hit the jump for the full review.

Hardware

HTC went from this little nothing company to literally a manufacturing champion practically overnight. Their hardware is top notch and with each product cycle, it constantly improves and is refined. The HTC Hero’s exterior is nothing short of amazing. The metal bezel around the entire screen with the white Teflon-coated plastic shell both reek of elegance and sophistication. The four main navigational buttons on the front (send, home, menu, end) are all made of aluminum just like the bezel so they blend in perfectly in terms of looks and feel. Additionally, the handset in general is very comfortable to hold and fits nicely in your hand. The trackball is placed nicely in the now rigidly-sculpted signature Android “chin” but there’s two buttons that we can’t (we can, there’s no damn room) understand why they are placed where they are: the search button and the back key. Here’s the issue… since the phone has this chin thing that everyone either hates to love or loves to hate, you have to hold the handset higher up in your palm in order for it to be useful as a touchscreen-based handset. What happens then, is you’re forced to stretch your thumb all the way down below the screen itself — below the row of four navigational buttons, in order to hit the back key which is used incredibly frequently since there is no touchscreen equivalent.

It’s not so bad if you’re not really getting jiggy with the handset, but if you’re entrenched in some serious Google Voice action, or in your inbox, it’s an annoying pain to switch positions with the phone in your hand just to move down and hit the back button. Our choice? Move the Menu button to the left side of the trackball and put the back button where the menu button was on the strip of four. Have a nice day.

Software

Thank the lord for HTC as far as Android is concerned. For anyone that does anything of importance with their lives (doesn’t live on Gmail and actually requires corporate functionality — half kidding, kind of not), the standard Google builds are effectively useless to us. Luckily HTC has saved our cold, robotic hearts from Mountain View’s default experience. There’s literally too much to list, but HTC overhauled everything as we’ll explore a little later, and this includes home screens, widgets, contact lists, messaging, email, information syncing, the camera interface, keyboard, web browser, music player, GPS, calendar, photo albums, and much, much more. It makes the phone feel like an almost brand new OS and for something as new as it is, it’s pretty incredible. To be fair, this in itself is the beauty of Android — it doesn’t hold OEMs back, it encourages them to smack it around and mold it into something entirely their own.

Keyboard

Since there’s no physical keyboard on the HTC Hero, there’s a built-in virtual keyboard to handle all your data entry needs. How well does it work? It’s decent if not mildly frustrating at times. One of the reason the iPhone keyboard works so incredibly well is because their correction system is second to none. HTC’s is decent, but it’s still not in the same class as Apple’s integration. The keys are decently sized and do provide a nice little enlarged key popup when you press one (though they can be a little slow to show and if you’re a normal human, the enlarged key popup will be of little use as you’ve already moved on to the next key).

A couple annoying things with the keyboard: Maybe it’s just habit, but the “12#” symbol entry button should be on the other side as there’s no use for a damn settings key IN THE ACTUAL KEYBOARD. That’s what the settings section is for. Another annoying trait is the fact you have to manually hide the keyboard when you’re done typing. Say what? Wait, how about this… you have to manually tap the text field to bring up the keyboard. Uh… why? This isn’t HTC’s fault, but the fact Android doesn’t auto-launch the keyboard in 98% of everything we’ve come across is ridiculous. So, the keyboard is kind of clunky and slow, the auto-correction isn’t that great, you have to manually bring up the keyboard when you want to use it, you have to manually hide it when you’re done typing, and there’s a settings key in place of where the symbol key should be. Rock on, fellas.

Screen

The 3.2-inch 480×320 capacitive multi-touch display used on the Hero (we believe it’s the exact same panel as used on the Magic as well) is fantastic. The touch input is second to only Apple’s capacitive touch screens and as far as the display itself goes, it’s wonderfully bright, vivid, clear, and crisp. One of the reasons I had an issue with the original G1 was the lack of multi-touch. Android’s default browser (to me personally) is a joke. Navigation is more than clunky, it’s the opposite of intuitive, and I’d rather use my BlackBerry browser. Word, son. Thankfully multi-touch is incorporated into other areas of the OS besides just the browser, and this extends the fluidity of HTC’s improvements but as you’ll soon see here, it’s a two-faced coin because as much as it adds, it subtracts.

Speaker / Music

The speaker is fine. It’s not great, it’s pretty loud as far as the top end is concerned but what’s really nice is that since the shape of the Hero is a tad bit curved, when rested on a flat surface like a desk, the speaker placement doesn’t get muffled and makes it a pretty useful speakerphone.

We really liked the music player on the Hero. It’s not a full-fledged MP3-playing companion like an iPod but it’s simple to use, you can scrub through music, flicking through tracks was enjoyable, playlists and organization followed HTC’s Sense slider theme and works really well here. Very nice.

HTC Sense

Man… HTC has done it again. While TouchFLO on the original Touch Diamond was a huge gamble for them, they’ve kept pushing forward and practically made Windows Mobile almost lovable likable. Well, HTC Sense is basically a Palm Pre killer and it’s just a freakin’ skin! Literally. The Pre is cool but borderline useless. What HTC’s Sense does is add a beautiful layer to Android that lets the user interact with their phone in fun, entertaining, and most of all, productive ways. Their clock widgets are gorgeous, their Twitter widget (and Twitter client) are great, their messaging and weather widgets don’t disappoint. You can customize the crap out of your Hero and make it exactly custom tailored to you and your tastes.

HTC’s beauty isn’t just skin deep, it extends beyond the surface and integrates more heavily with the actual OS. A true testament to Android’s open and customizable nature. You can, in addition to linking Twitter, link up your Facebook and Flickr accounts and let all of them co-exist naturally in a seamless playground of contacts, photos, and notifications. Facebook profile pictures and birthdays can sync up with your contacts, your Google contacts can live with your Exchange contacts in harmony, and Flickr photo uploading is only a couple (probably 25) seconds away.

Typical HTC doesn’t do the bare minimum, though, and you’ll find practically every damn .png or graphic on the Hero customized from the original Android base build. From the custom HTC dialer to call logs, to the notification drawer to the mail application; they’ve brought Android even further in the future than where Google probably thought it could go, and we’re only around a year in.

Battery:

The Hero ships with a thin 1350mAh battery and since the unit we got our hands on doesn’t have any U.S. 3G bands, all we were able to test daily was EDGE and Wi-Fi. Running around NYC using the phone, Exchange email, some light web browsing, and some Google Voice SMS checking and sending, we were able to get around a day of usage. Add in 3G and some real heavy use and we don’t think you’ll be too pleased with the battery staying power. Seeing as how the iPhone 3GS lasts around 2-3 times longer on 3G than the Hero does EDGE, HTC might be better suited researching their own battery technology.

Phone calling: No. We have no idea why the text at the top is in Dutch…

Making phone calls was pleasant enough except for a couple annoyances. When dialing a number, the Hero cross-checks this with your contact list. While nice in theory, it makes for a pretty slow dialing session as the underpowered handset tries to visibly (literally, under the dialpad) match up what you’re entering with your address entries.

What’s really nice is when talking on the phone itself, using the ear speaker, the Hero is really comfortable to hold against your ear. It just feels natural and it’s one of the best phone phones we’ve used a pretty long time, even on AT&T’s network.

Performance

This is going to be tough. For everything I loved about the Hero, there was always something pulling me back that had to do with performance. Let me explain… One more original reason why I didn’t like the G1 was because it required more effort to do less. Why would I want to spend 25 seconds just getting to a compose email screen when I could press “C” on my BlackBerry and receive a reply to my original email I just sent faster than I could get that original email out on an Android phone? There are trade offs, sure, but speed isn’t a trade off. The HTC Magic is my favorite Android device because coupled with a sexy form factor and Cupcake 1.5, it fixes a lot of the less-intuitive and time-consuming issues that the original Google device launched with. So where in the hell am I going? It’s that we took 10 leaps forward with the Hero but took 12 back. With every brilliant addition HTC made, the device suffered a little bit in terms of performance. Imagine what the typical home screen background on the Hero is actually running when you’re not even doing anything:

• One or possibly two clocks (which also grab your location so it will invoke GPS requests from time to time)
• One or possibly two weather widgets (which update in the background as well as grab your location so that it will invoke GPS requests from time to time)
• A Twitter widget which pulls your Twitter timeline at intervals
• A Messaging widget which updates in the background displaying your latest SMS and MMS messages all in a funky and cool yet CPU intensive animated widget
• An email widget which just the Messaging widget displays your emails, also CPU intensive
• A calendar widget which pulls in your entries from the Calendar app
• A people widget which displays favorites and their associated photo thumbnail
• A bookmarks widget showing your top four website bookmarks

Now, even if half of these do nothing but display data, it’s still memory that’s being used up in addition to CPU, and then consider the ones that actually update in the background. What makes Android so much more usable here, hurts it because of the hardware it runs on. This doesn’t speak too highly of Android as an OS to us because Apple’s iPhone 3G was about 50% faster with a 400MHz CPU compared to the Hero’s 528MHz processor. The Palm Pre, a little faster than the iPhone 3G, is pretty speedy and doesn’t bog down like the Hero does. And the iPhone 3GS? For. Get. It. Once you’ve tasted Big Momma’s fried chicken, you’re not going to eat at Popeye’s (don’t think about that line too much because you won’t get anywhere) and that’s really the issue here with the performance aspect of the Hero. All of HTC’s advancements get undermined with a should-be-fast-enough CPU and make the entire user experience suffer. I don’t want to wait, I want to move quickly when I’m doing something and this is one huge area where the HTC Hero disappoints to the point of almost not wanting to use it.

Conclusion:

So what’s the wrap-up with everything that’s been said? It’s a really tough one. This for me personally was harder than just reviewing another Android handset to cross the desk because I really, really wanted this damn thing. Would I take it over the Palm Pre? One hundred percent yes. The HTC Hero effectively crushed any hopes Palm had at keeping any sort of momentum (at least in my view). Though what I’ve found, sadly, is I get more enjoyment out of using my HTC Magic or the T-Mobile myTouch 3G than I do with the Hero. Like I said, HTC’s achievements and innovations aren’t anything to dismiss, they are what to me makes Android usable, but with the current hardware powering the HTC Hero, things become murky and frustrating.

I’d like a multi-touch web browser and full Exchange integration in a sexier thinner package with a Teflon-coated shell, but I’d rather save myself 5 seconds here, and 7 seconds there than deal with bogdowns and sluggishness on something that should be as fast as lightning. HTC isn’t stupid and we’re sure they know that once they couple this setup with a faster CPU and chipset (Tegra?) it’s going to be a sure-shot winner that will be able to rival the best. As it is now, it sort of fits in with Android’s whole theme — you can do what you want, but you might have to take a couple more roads to get there.

So you read part 1 of our BlackBerry Tour review and then our impressions of Verizon’s BlackBerry Tour, but you’re still too scared to go out and buy one because you live in Canada and aren’t sure how the newest BlackBerry handles life above the 49th. Well it’s time to put your neuroses aside, Canadians, because Bell recently sent a Tour our way just so you crazy Canucks wouldn’t feel left out. So site back, relax and hit the jump to see what’s up with the Bell BlackBerry Tour 9630.

Before we begin, we think it appropriate to clarify just exactly what one gets when he/she purchases a Tour from Bell: The device itself (which was made in Mexico, for those of you who fawn over Canadian-made devices), a leather holster, stereo headset, travel charger, microUSB cable, Bell SIM card, Desktop Manager installation CD and instruction manuals. Unfortunately, Bell does not ship the Tour with a microSD card. Okay, that’s out of the way so let’s move on.

Seeing as we’ve covered the Tour’s hardware and software so many times before, we hope that you’ll forgive us if we skip over all that and focus on the things that make the Bell Tour different from all other Tours. There are two physical differences and although they’re both pretty minor, one makes us really smile and makes us scratch our heads. The positive is that Bell has decided against putting its logo on the device, meaning that those of you who have a coronary out of anger when seeing a physically branded device are safe and won’t have to hit up cnn.cn. The negative is the battery door. While Verizon opted for a soft-touch rubber coating on the areas surrounding the faux carbon fiber, Bell has chosen to leave a glossy black finish in its place just as we saw on our pre-release unit. Why do we take issue with this? Two reasons. The first being that it’s summer; perspiring hands and slick-finished smartphones don’t mix well. The second reason is that it just looks half-assed because it doesn’t match.

Moving on to the OS, the Bell Tour ships with the same OS as every other Tour on the market from various carriers — OS 4.7.1.40. We’re a bit shocked that this is the OS that shipped on all devices seeing as there are quite a few annoying bugs in it, the worst of which seems to be radio issues. Our Canadian office is located a few hundred meters from several Bell towers yet we haven’t managed to get over three bars of EV-DO. The strangest thing however, is that our Tour seems to love to sit at zero bars when not in use. Once we pick it up to use data however, we always get an incredibly fast connection. Whether we were downloading attachments, surfing the web, using GPS Nav by Telenav (yes, GPS is unlocked) or using the awesome Bell TV & Radio streaming app, everything worked fine despite only showing about two bars of service. Guess it goes to show you that bars aren’t everything and CDMA does provide a digital connection regardless of bars most of the time.

Despite a few issues here and there, the Tour is a solid performer and overall it handles itself very well in its infancy. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that it’s the best device Bell has in its catalog. If you don’t already have one, it’s definitely one to check out.

My, my, what a long road we’ve traveled. We’re back at it just like we promised. We combed through the BlackBerry Tour we had a while ago, but now that we have a Verizon unit in hand it’s a whole new ball game. We’re writing this review without looking at or referring to the previous Part 1 we did, so if some of it is a little similar in some places, it’s just because those parts of the device have not changed. Read on to get a glimpse of what we thought about the BlackBerry Tour for Verizon!

Screen:

The 480×360 screen is nothing new to BlackBerry lovers. The BlackBerry Curve 8900 features this display and while larger, the BlackBerry Storm does as well. The Bold seems like an outcast as it’s the only BlackBerry to utilize a 480×320 resolution LCD. Personal preference aside (I like the resolution of 480×320 better), the BlackBerry Tour’s screen is nothing short of stunning. It’s not a huge panel but it packs a punch. Colors are rich, there’s a great amount of contrast yet not too much, and text and graphics look as sharp as ever. Additionally it looks like there’s a harder plastic covering the LCD than there is on the Bold and 8900 and this is a good thing, people. It feels solid, not scratch-prone and is a display that we’re proud RIM has transitioned to as their standard screen for the Tour and other BlackBerry handsets to come. There’s that pesky black bezel around the LCD but it’s a minor annoyance and not a big deal.

Voice Calling:

Hello, Verizon. Yes, I can hear you. If those two sentences don’t tell you where this section is heading, you should probably stop reading. We realize the BlackBerry Tour is also launching on Sprint but since they didn’t send us a review unit, they won’t get included and we have nothing to compare the Verizon service or unit to. Back to voice calling… It’s an awesome experience with Verizon on the Tour. Especially compared to the other unit we reviewed, this is really solid. Calls came through loud and clear, callers could hear us perfectly on the other end (as opposed to sounding “tinny” like before) and even in low service areas we didn’t drop a single call. What’s equally impressive is how fast Verizon connects the call — almost instantly.

Since all phones are phones at heart, it’s nice to have a BlackBerry on Verizon’s network. BlackBerry devices in general (especially the latest family) usually offer great voice calling but coupled with Verizon’s network, we’re not sure it gets any better.

Speaker / Speakerphone:

The speaker and speakerphone function on the Tour are great. You can really tell this was designed as a business device. There’s only one speaker on the left side since the 3.5mm headset jack is on the right (the middle “speaker” doesn’t count since it’s not really a speaker — just somewhere for audio to flow out of) but we haven’t noticed this to be an issue. Besides a Nextel device or the HTC Touch Pro2, it’s one of the loudest and most useful speakerphones we’ve used.

One thing that’s a little strange is that while the speakerphone is quite loud, ringtones and audio in general plays back at a lower volume than the Bold does. It’s not that low — it’s louder than the 8900’s speaker — but lower than the Bold’s as far as audio reproduction goes. The high-end is a little lacking but hey, everything is relative and it’s a mobile phone.

Something that many BlackBerry fans will be pleased as punch to know, is that the vibrate feature on the Tour is aggressively strong. Probably the strongest vibrate on any recent BlackBerry, you can’t really miss it.

OS:

The BlackBerry Tour for Verizon ships with OS 4.7.1 and can be thought of as a non-touch Storm OS. It’s practically identical, just made for trackball navigation and QWERTY keyboard entry as opposed to touch (though some could argue that the Storm OS itself isn’t even designed for fingers… never mind) and for better or worse is practically the same operating system that you’re used to. It’s quick, responsive, and besides a couple random bugs here and there (nothing that got in the way of usability) it’s really solid. We’ve been pounding on two different BlackBerry Tours now and haven’t had a single reset, crash, or any other issue that would affect you in a major way.

Hardware:

In the interest of being upfront with everyone, we had some hardware issues with the first BlackBerry Tour we received. Verizon and RIM swiftly swapped it out for us and the one we’re using now is 100% good to go. Even the other Tour we reviewed from months ago didn’t exhibit the hardware problems we noticed and it’s pretty safe to say that you shouldn’t experience any major hardware problems.

Moving on to the actual hardware of the device, it’s great. Looking at it from a larger viewpoint, the device is incredibly well built. It doesn’t creak, it doesn’t waddle if you try to type on it when it’s on a desk or solid surface, there are no loose parts, and it seems again that RIM has improved their manufacturing and assembling processes. Getting granular, things are also perfect. The volume buttons and camera shutter button for instance aren’t mushy, they’re firm but not hard to press. The four main navigational buttons (Send, Menu, Back, End) also are perfectly sized and offer great feedback when navigating. The trackball might be too recessed for some but after a while of use, it’s not that big of a deal and you get used to using it.

We’ve been messing with a Tour on and off for the last three or four months and we have to say again, it really excels as a business device and we think it will stand up to various punches, nicks, drops, kicks, and the like without issue.

Keyboard:

Another QWERTY review? You bet. A true mashup of the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve 8900 keys, the BlackBerry Tour offers a great compromise. The keys aren’t as mushy as the Bold keys, they’re a little harder and a little “clackier”, something found on the 8900. As far as size goes, they’re roughly 20% larger than the 8900’s keys and are nicely sculpted. We’ve found the best and most efficient way to type on the Tour is not to press on an entire key but on the angled area of a key. This let’s you pound through emails with relative ease and doesn’t really let your finger hit more than one key a time. The BlackBerry Tour keyboard is a keyboard you’d come to expect from RIM — simple, easy to use, and perfectly laid out. It’s a winner.

Design:

While highly subjective, we find the BlackBerry Tour to be striking. It’s such a true BlackBerry if you think about it. Unlike the BlackBerry 8900 and BlackBerry Storm, the Tour is boxier but we think better. It’s a little thicker, but it’s comfortable to hold and use, and seems perfectly proportioned. RIM did an awesome job of letting all the components work together. The dark chrome bezel meshes beautifully with the soft-touch rubberized sides and the glossy black navigational buttons blend with the black screen and upper earpiece section, blending perfectly with the black powder-coated QWERTY keyboard. The camera lens cover flows perfectly into the back battery cover, also with a soft-touch rubberized finish.

Battery Life:

Battery life is really impressive. Coming from a heavy, heavy BlackBerry Bold user, the Tour is straight up refreshing. With the exact same usage patterns and same applications installed, I’ve been able to get double to battery life using the Tour compared to the Bold. I’m not sure why — CDMA devices typically use more battery than their GSM counterparts and the battery on the Tour is 1400mAh compared to 1500mAh on the Bold — but battery life is fantastic.

Email, voice calling, music playing, web browsing, Twittering (cheap plug), BlackBerry Messenger — all a go with great battery life.

Annoyances:

How could we review the BlackBerry Tour without complaining about Wi-Fi? We always say it, but whatever the reason — cost, weight, size — it doesn’t really matter. The BlackBerry Tour is Verizon’s flagship device for the Summer and there’s a glaring hole in it. We realize Verizon has the best voice and data network in the country with the most coverage. We applaud them. But, there are some places where service is bad, the buildings are too thick, the location is too remote. And that’s where you need Wi-Fi.

In general, using the device has been really pleasant. Besides a brief stint with an 8900 it’s the first time I’ve switched from my Bold since last June and I’ve been very happy aside from a couple slowdowns here and there. The 624MHz CPU on the Bold is nice and this is slower I believe by about 100MHz, give or take. Will the average user notice the difference? No. They’ll be too ecstatic coming from the Curve 8330 but it’s worth pointing out nonetheless. And hey, if that’s all we have to moan about, Verizon and RIM are doing something right, right?

Conclusion:

While the BlackBerry Tour lacks Wi-Fi and sports a slightly slower processor compared to the BlackBerry Bold, we can confidently say when it’s released later this month it will be the best BlackBerry on the market. We won’t look ahead, we’ll focus on what is in front of us and if we do that, the Tour is the top dog. It’s on a superb network, it’s extremely professional and durable, and it’s incredibly pocketable and versatile. 2009 BlackBerrys include 256MB of RAM and 3.2 megapixel AF cameras which are probably the only two things people would change about the Bold. Add in a smaller and arguably sexier package and you’ve got a sure shot winner. There’s no question this is the finest CDMA BlackBerry to date and if you’re on a CDMA network (Verizon or Sprint) this is a no-brainer. Besides being a fantastic handset, it’s a world device that will work practically anywhere on the planet, thus eliminating a difficult barrier of entry (people who want Verizon) for globe-trotters. RIM really knows hardware and it shows, and if you’re ok with the BlackBerry OS then we suggest you give the BlackBerry Tour a long and hard look come Sunday the 12th.

Since the introduction of its first Bluetooth headset, Aliph has set a new standard where background noise reduction and cancellation are concerned. The California-based start up introduced its Jawbone headset in December of 2006 and almost instantly, long-standing giants in the Bluetooth headset business found themselves playing a game of catch-up. It has been about two-and-a-half years since then and in the world of consumer electronics that’s about seven lifetimes. Aliph has released two more Jawbone headsets with last month’s Jawbone PRIME launch being its latest feat, and the competition continues to rain new models all over the marketplace. Now that noise cancellation has taken center stage as the main differentiating factor in separating the men from the boys, is Aliph still the undisputed champ or has the competition caught up? Hit the jump as we pit Jawbone’s latest against one of the hottest headsets of recent history, the Jabra BT530.

Jawbone PRIME:

Kicking things off with our general impressions of the Jawbone PRIME, it’s awesome. The size and weight are ideal and the look of the handset has finally been toned down to our liking — it’s actually pretty elegant now where headsets are concerned, as opposed to odd and ostentatious as was the first Jawbone. The sleek look of the handset is not without sacrifice however, as Aliph was only able to fit two buttons in the design: an on/off/send/end button hidden beneath the pattern on the side of the headset and a NoiseAssassin/volume button on the back. You read that right; one button for volume control. It’s not the worst thing in the world but it does take a bit of getting used to. Rather than having the ability to raise and lower the speaker volume, repeated presses of the sole volume button cycle the audio incrementally from lowest to highest and then back to lowest.

Beyond the less-than-ideal button configuration, our only remaining complaints are depicted in the two images above. First, the rubber compound Aliph chose for its PRIME earbuds. A) It can be a bit uncomfortable after wearing the headset without the optional ear loop for a long period of time. B) It attracts and holds onto dust like no other earbud we’ve ever used. Second, Aliph still insists on a proprietary power connector. It’s great for maintaining fluid lines on the headset but terrible when you lose your charger.

Jabra BT530:

Jabra’s BT530 is without question one of our favorite Bluetooth headsets of all time. It’s small, light, well-designed and has a great look to it. The BT530 is also remarkably comfortable to wear and seemingly lasts forever on a single charge. All of the buttons are well placed and we love the presence of a small sliding power switch on the bottom of the device that is quick and easy compared to holding a button down for X seconds to turn the headset on and off. Lastly, while it might not be quite as pretty, the BT530 uses the standard microUSB port we all know and love to take a charge.

NoiseAssassin 2.0 vs. Noise Blackout

Noise Blackout is Jabra’s catchy name for a great little dual mic system designed to eliminate background noise. Anne Rasmussen, VP of Mobile at GN Netcom — the company behind Noise Blackout — says of the technology, “Our Noise Blackout technology is a completely new and proprietary technology that not only allows crystal clear sound but eliminates the ‘tinny’ sound that many noise cancellation headsets are plagued with.” The system basically uses a unique directional technology to differentiate and eliminate sounds coming from around the headset while allowing sounds from in front of the headset (the user’s mouth) to pass through.

NoiseAssassin 2.0 on the other hand, attacks background noise from a completely different angle. Using a small white Voice Activity Sensor (VAS) that touches the wearer’s face coupled with two electret mics, the Jawbone PRIME combines audio from various sources to assemble the single stream of speech it delivers. The VAS also allows the headset to accurately distinguish between background noise and speech to provide extremely effective noise cancellation. The system worked quite well in Aliph’s first two Jawbone headsets and this latest iteration seems to work even better.

During our tests, the Jawbone PRIME was the clear winner where noise cancellation performance is concerned. It was able to completely eliminate low to moderate background noise and dampen louder background noises to the point where they did not interrupt conversations at all. Where the PRIME shines even brighter however, is in the wind. Jabra’s BT530 performed very well in low and moderate noise situations, but it seems the wind is the BT530’s weakness as it does little or even nothing to dispel wind noise while on the street or in a car with the AC on.

As much emphasis is put on noise cancellation these days however, we found that the PRIME’s terrific performance in that department didn’t necessarily translate to a better overall user experience. Where the BT530 really set itself apart from the PRIME in fact, was audio quality. On the recipient’s end, we got no complaints about either headset where audio quality is concerned. Both headsets managed to deliver great speech, though the PRIME was better at filtering out everything else as we mentioned. On our end however, we found the audio on the PRIME to be very tinny despite the company’s claim to the contrary. Yes, compared to older Jawbone models and even other noise canceling headsets, the quality is much improved on the PRIME. Compared to the BT530 however, it’s no contest. Jabra’s headset delivers terrific, well rounded sound to the wearer and the PRIME is no match. Audio on the BT530 is deep and crisp as opposed to thin and tinny, and it’s a real pleasure to use.

So which would we recommend? Both, actually. For users who commute or are constantly in situations with high levels of background noise, the Jawbone PRIME is the clear choice — provided the $115-$130 price tag doesn’t scare you away. For users who want good noise cancellation but are more concerned with great sound and affordability, the $45-$70 Jabra BT530 can’t be beat.

Jawbone PRIME product page
Jabra BT530 product page (page is down right now; main headsets page)

It’s no secret that we had our issues with Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic, but has the Nokia N97 changed our minds? It is, after all, their flagship device and is packed to the rim with goodies. We already said the Touch Pro2 was the best Windows Mobile device to come out of HTC, is the N97 the Pro2’s match for the Symbian world? Hit the breakage for the review and what we thought!

Keyboard:

It’s hilarious that when Nokia finally listens and tries to make a somewhat normal QWERTY keyboard layout (we bitched and moaned that the Z key was always incorrectly right under the A key on previous devices) they mess it up even more. Like honestly, you’re expecting people to use something with the spacebar key stage right? If the layout isn’t bad enough, the keys certainly are. While the texture of the keys is actually pretty stirring, there’s absolutely positively the smallest tactile feedback imaginable when pressing in a key. For comparisons sake, the T-Mobile G1, whose keys aren’t the best in that department, is worlds better than the N97’s keyboard. It’s really disappointing because Nokia just can’t seem to nail this keyboard area. You could argue that there’s a virtual on-screen keyboard, but that’s so useless we’re not going to entertain the idea of you bringing it up.

Screen:

Man… this is a tough area. Some people are going to viciously attack us for saying this, but, is this the best you can do Nokia? If it is, you’re out of touch with the entire cell phone world because this is one of the most disappointing screens we’ve seen in a long, long time. Besides being a poor resistive touchscreen with good resolution — it’s poor because they try and allow it to decipher touch actions separately from select actions — it looks like there’s a weave pattern behind the display. It gets really infuriatingly annoying. We’re assuming it’s the digitizer, but seriously, learn how to make a touch display. This isn’t 2003. Every single flagship phone has a display 10x better than yours. If you want us to break them down because you’re too out of touch to realize it, we’re glad to do so:

• HTC’s Dream and Magic — wonderful bright and crisp capacitive displays
• RIM’s BlackBerry Storm — awesomely vibrant capacitive display
• Palm’s Pre — packed tight with resolution, vivid and capacitive
• Apple’s iPhone 3G/3G S — an amazingly accurate clear capacitive display with incredible accuracy

Noticing a trend here?

Hardware / Build quality:

Nokia has been around the block for a long, long time. They’ve had their share of hiccups, but man… they know how to make a phone and make it solid. And a sexy phone at that. The N97 might feel lighter than you’d expect at first, but it really has a quality feel all around. The metal bezel is actually plastic and is probably the cheapest-feeling part of the device. But all in all, the build quality is top notch and we shouldn’t expect anything less from the world market leader Nokia. The 5 megapixel camera also doesn’t disappoint — just what you’re used to if you’re a Nokia Nseries fan.

Feel:

This is kind of the same as build quality in a way, because the feel of the device will change depending on the build quality, but the overall feel of the Nokia N97 in your hand is a pleasant one for the most part. Not a huge fan of the matte finish/texture on the back of the device, but button placements are very standard Nokia and comfortable. Power button on top, dedicated two-stage camera shutter key, volume keys, etc.

Connectivity:

This is the second Nokia handset with tri-band HSDPA and it’s awesome they’ve finally come around. In addition to the UMTS sex appeal, you’ve also got a quad-band EDGE radio, Bluetooth 2.0, an FM transmitter (yep, it will allow you to tune to a radio station and listen to your music), A-GPS, and Wi-Fi all built in. Very, very cool.

Phone calling / speakerphone:

There’s no if, ands or buts about it — Nokia seriously knows how to make for some damn good voice calling. Their radios are usually on point (besides the disastrous Nokia E71-2 scenario and we guess some 5800 problems), but for the most part it doesn’t get much better than Nokia. Some could argue RIM is almost on Nokia’s level in terms of RF performance and voice quality, but Nokia, in our view still has a slight edge. Phone calls made with the N97 were loud and sounded bright instead of dull like some phones we’ve been testing. Callers reported to hear us just fine and sometimes thought we were calling from a land line phone.

One thing that’s funny about Nokia is that their speakerphones range from horrible to pretty good. We’d say the N97’s is right in the middle. It’s no where as loud or clear as the Touch Pro2’s but it’s decent enough to be used. Anyone ever had a Nokia phone where the ear speaker was louder than the actual speakerphone? We have!

Usability:

Here’s one fairly large issue for us — the slide/flip up screen. The mechanism is actually very well-built, but it’s the angle of the screen and the non-adjustableness (forgive us) that get us going. For instance, to see the screen at the perfect angle when flipped up means that the keyboard is going to be pointing straight up at the ceiling. Wait, what? Yeah — you can barely use the keyboard comfortably when navigating through on screen applications and the like. It might not be a big deal for some, but for a keyboard that it feels like your typing on a pad of Post Its, it’s a big deal for anyone remotely interested in typing something.

The directional pad also suffers from the same issue as we mentioned earlier in the keyboard section — zero feedback. It’s unfortunate but it really doesn’t enable you to accurately navigate as well as it should. As far things like home screen widgets go, they’re cool. But just because you have live widgets on your home screen doesn’t mean people will overlook how out of date and poorly designed S60 is becoming. It’s almost like Nokia keeps bandaging the OS up and it’s starting to get more and more difficult to use and less and less relevant.

Conclusion:

Nokia tried really hard here, but to be honest, speaking from my personal opinion, the second I saw the N97 announcement I skipped right over it in my head. I’m the biggest N95-4 fan you’ll find — but S60 5th Edition with a resistive screen, horrible keyboard and horrible navigational buttons? No thank you. The problem with the Nokia N97 is — and please don’t take this the wrong way — that this exact phone could have been launched 2 years ago and no one would have blinked. What other phone can you take out of it’s current place, drop back two years, and have no one question where it came from? Take the Palm Pre for better or worse, and bring it back to 2007. People would have heart attacks. What about the iPhone? Well, you know how that turned out. BlackBerry Storm? People would have broken through glass to get it. But, no one really would care about the N97 and that, besides not being a device we enjoyed using, is the larger issue. Nokia has lost its place in the sun when looking at the consumer smartphone market and until they get back on track, RIM, Apple, Windows Mobile, Palm and Android are going to continue eating more and more of their lunch.

HTC has been seriously the little (now big) engine that could. Does anyone even remember what the T-Mobile Pocket PC (Wallaby) looked like? Now the number one Windows Mobile manufacturer in the world, they show no signs of stopping — they even added Android to their portfolio. But let’s be honest, you’re here to check out the much-awaited update to the viciously popular HTC Touch Pro, the HTC Touch Pro2. So let’s get to steppin’, hit the jump and find out what we really think of the TP2.

Design:

Design is always going to be subjective, right? But you can most of the time appreciate a phone’s industrial design even if it’s not something you’d drop a wad of cash on. The Touch Pro2 is probably one of the sexiest Windows Mobile devices we’ve ever seen. Rounded edges, chrome bezel, huge screen, minimalistic buttons — all great things. What’s even more exciting, however, is that the design is completely functional. There’s not one single thing the designers did that gets in the way of real usability and let’s face it, this device is really the high-end corporate user’s dream device, so there shouldn’t be any complaints in this department.

Hardware / Keyboard:

It’s really exciting to watch newer products being released but it’s a little bit more exciting to see evolutions of previous handsets morph into something else. HTC told us that people really missed not having the tilting screen of the HTC TyTN II so they incorporated that back in. Additionally, people thought the HTC Touch Pro was a little too small and cramped, so they practically made the Touch Pro2 a HTC Touch HD with slide-out QWERTY. And oh man, what a slide-out QWERTY it is. Shaquille O’Neal himself (also a very happy TweetGenius user, might we add) would have zero problems typing on this thing. The keys are very, very spacious and have a great feel to them. It’s a plastic feel which is totally fine (even if they are really made out of aluminum), because it’s a quality feel. Something Palm should learn a thing or two from.

On a different note, have we mentioned how absolutely incredible HTC’s new soft keyboard is? Anyone using an HTC Magic or who has installed a non-Google build on their Android device (not a Google version) will know what we’re talking about. It’s almost as good as the iPhone’s keyboard and this is coming from using it on a resistive screen. Really top notch stuff here.

Screen:

If there was a such thing as the world’s greatest, the Touch Pro2’s screen would surely be in the running. It probably wouldn’t win, though. It’s really something HTC has no control over, but the fact that this is a resistive screen as opposed to a capacitive screen is a major strike against it. Really, they can’t do anything about it since Windows Mobile practically makes you use a fingernail to hit menu options. Once you accept the screen is resistive, though, it’s a damn good one. Unlike the Touch Pro where the screen wasn’t as responsive as everyone wished, the Touch Pro2’s screen is incredibly sensitive and responsive — paging through screens, sliding through TouchFLO menus and the like are all smooth as butter.

The actual resolution of the display is 800×480 and it’s a whopping 3.6″ measured diagonally. In addition to being highly responsive, it’s vivid, bright, clear and crisp.

TouchFLO 3D:

We have touched on TouchFLO 3D in many different sections of this review as you have read and will read below. But, to focus on just TouchFLO 3D, a lot has been added since the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. For starters, it’s finally landscape! If that wasn’t enough, HTC has gone ahead and built upon the Touch HD’s TF3D by adding in a Stocks page, revamped Weather page and a new Calendar page. All extremely welcome additions.

Phone:

What good is a phone if the phone doesn’t work? While voice calling in very old versions of Windows Mobile was a pain in the ass, Windows Mobile 6/6.1 has made it bearable. Luckily HTC’s TouchFLO interface makes it rather enjoyable. Anyone who has used a recent HTC device knows this pretty well, but on the software side, everything is cleanly laid out. Your recent call log is integrated with the dialpad, and you have the option to flip between a standard voice call and a video call. Don’t get excited; that’s for international users only because it’s a carrier-supported feature.

As far as the hardware goes, calls we made and received came through loud and clear. Literally. The ear speaker on the TP2 is a little bit higher than you’d anticipate but you get used to it very quickly and it proved to work without any issues. Volume on the in ear speaker was sufficient enough to provide audible call quality on the streets of New York City and our callers could hear us quite well, too.

Messaging:

HTC has excelled at making Windows Mobile a more-usable platform. What in the hell would the world look like without it? What’s more interesting with the latest version of TouchFLO is the messaging integration. In addition to having phone calling, you’ve now got access to your entire communication history with all of your contacts. Once you click on a specific contact, you’re able to see all the recent calls, all recent emails, all recent text messages, and even Facebook updates all in a neat and clean interface. It’s rather remarkable.

Integration of these features isn’t just skin deep either — you can even click on a contact’s thumbnail image in an email and start a conference call that way as an example. Really cool stuff that’s incredibly useful.

Speakerphone / Conference calling:

This is one of the big selling points of the new Touch Pro2 — the speakerphone and Straight Talk. The brilliant part of HTC’s heavily-customized TouchFLO interface is what they’ve been able to do with conference calling. You can literally just hit 4, or even 5 numbers or contacts, and instantly, the Touch Pro2 will transform from a phone, to a mobile conference room and conference all parties together. You’ll also get options to individually drop certain parties from the call while it’s in progress. But, look, what good is some bad ass conference calling software without some business-grade speakerphone action? As soon as you flip the handset over so the screen is face down on your desk (or whatever surface really), the call will instantly change over to speakerphone. Ok, cool, we guess. Most speakerphones suck and you can barely hear them. Not here, though. Besides being super loud and clear for you to listen to, the Touch Pro2 has got dual microphones. One for noise-cancelling and one to actually pickup your voice for uh, talking. This makes for an absolutely wonderful conference calling experience — it’s the best we’ve ever used on a mobile phone. Plus, if that wasn’t enough, there’s a dedicated mute button right in the middle of the speaker so you can hurl insults and nasty words at your boss while he’s talking. While muted, of course.

Battery life:

The TouchPro2 ships with a large 1500mAh battery and it’s pretty good. HTC quotes talk time over a UMTS connection at a whopping six and half hours. Unfortunately, since our review unit is a Euro-spec unit, we weren’t able to participate in sexy 3G-calling voice tests. Their quoted EDGE talk times are listed at about eight and half hours, and we can pretty much say those numbers are incredibly close to being accurate.

On EDGE and Wi-Fi, our unit constantly got us through a full day of work. This included heavy email using a Microsoft Exchange Server with ActiveSync configured, a ton of web browsing using Opera and Skyfire, staying logged into IM with BeeJive for Windows Mobile, and some light to medium voice calling. On 3G, however, we’re pretty sure our battery life would have been reduced by at least 35%, let’s say. That’s an estimate, but a pretty conservative one. To make two paragraphs short: the Touch Pro2 has very good battery life but your usage patterns will obviously vary, thus your battery will as well.

Connectivity:

It’s pretty much a standard nowadays for any high-end device; quad-band GSM/EDGE, tri-band UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 or higher and GPS. Unfortunately, the Touch Pro2 we reviewed didn’t have three UMTS bands, just two. These are the 900/2100MHz UMTS/HSPA bands that are incompatible with North America’s 3G bands. Since 3G is such a standard feature in today’s world, we couldn’t enjoy the TP2 as much as we’d have liked to. Don’t fret, though — when you get your own Touch Pro2 you’ll be pleased as punch with all the connectivity options loaded in here.

Minor annoyances:

There’s a few things that aren’t quite perfect here. The camera, while being a decent 3.2 megapixel sensor, didn’t get upgraded like the Touch Diamond2 did. We would have loved for a 5 megapixel shooter in here. Additionally HTC has removed the flash module. Handset makers don’t get it twisted — leave the motherloving flash in your phones.

This isn’t much of an annoyance since the hardware works quite well, but in fairness we figured we should point out that the Touch Pro2 actually runs more of the less the same internal hardware as the original Touch Pro did. It’s not a bad thing like we said, but anyone hoping for a major spec bump, you won’t really find it here.

Lastly, there isn’t a directional pad anymore on the front of the device. This isn’t the worst thing to happen, but it was really nice having that on the front part of the Touch Pro to make navigating a little bit easier. The trade off is that the screen is obviously larger which does help when using touch selections as opposed to hardware keys.

Conclusion:

It’s pretty apparent that there will be an HTC Touch Pro2 in your own carrier’s flavor pretty soon. In the U.S. alone, just from leaked photos and information floating around, T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon will all get their own version of the device. What’s even better is that they will all be roughly the same. The keyboards won’t range from usable to world’s dumbest configuration (cough, Touch Pro, cough) and we have a feeling the physical exterior will be pretty close to the stock HTC units as well.

This is an incredibly interesting summer, though. You’ve got this device, the Nokia N97, the Palm Pre, the iPhone 3G S, the Google G2, and a bunch more handsets to choose from. How will you make up your mind? Form factors are pretty similar with the aforementioned devices. Most have a physical QWERTY slide-out or flip up, and all have on screen keyboards except for the Palm Pre. We can’t say that one OS is better than the other for your taste and usage, but we can confidently recommend the Touch Pro2 as the best Windows Mobile device in the world. That might not make your decision any easier, but as long as you’re considering a Windows Mobile phone, the Touch Pro2 is going to be the reigning champ for a long, long time. Or at least until HTC releases the Touch Pro3.

Regardless of what phone you end up choosing, one thing is 100% certain, folks. It’s going to be a hot summer.

We know, we know. You wanted the review sooner. Well, you know what? It’s here now and we’ve busted through this handset like a Japanese tourist with an SLR in Times Square. So how does the Pre stack up against the competition? Can it contend with the top-of-line smartphones that are currently on the market? Will it end world hunger and bring Isaac Hayes back? Read on for the world’s first hands on review of the Palm Pre!

UPDATE: While we believe the OS the Palm Pre is running is the final retail OS, there’s still some stuff missing from it. Additionally, the hardware unit itself is 100% a retail unit, yet we weren’t able to test things like phone calling for obvious reasons (uh, you call this a review and you can’t test the damn phone?). We planned all along to actually do a more thorough review with a retail unit at release, just like we’re doing with the BlackBerry Tour 9630. But in the interest of being transparent, we figured we’d update this post and let you guys know that another entire review will be coming. Thanks!

Palm’s Mission:

Before we jump into the really, really good parts, we thought it was important to recap the “magic” that Palm has done its best to create. Announced at CES 2009, the Pre was instantly a media smash. At least in the tech world. Journalists, bloggers, consumers, prosumers, even corporate users all wet their pants with excitement in anticipation of the Palm Pre. In the midst of a recession that had slowed most of the tech world down to a crawl, the Pre was a shining beacon of light that represented the most exciting new mobile phone since the iPhone. The problem is, that was six months ago and the average person can’t pay attention to something for longer than 52 seconds. Dedicated Pre blogs and a small breed of new fanboys are still on fire of course, but that is hardly a sure sign of commercial success. The question is, has Palm been successful in creating hype with the average consumer? Here we are roughly 8 days away from the launch date and its looking like even if the answer to that question is yes, Palm and Sprint won’t have enough inventory to make the launch a success.

Screen:

The screen is where the Palm Pre shines. Selections take little to no effort and there’s that oh-so-magical water ripple effect when actually touching the display. It’s vibrant, rich and all around really clear. Like we said in our Pre-view (har, har), we’d rate it just behind the iPhone’s glass capacitive touch screen — it’s that close to being perfection. The size difference between the two is really noticeable however, with the Pre having a 3.1 inch display, but as you’ll read on later, this makes the device much more pocketable. Just know that as high as your hopes are for the Pre right now, the vibrant display is one area where you will most definitely not be let down.

Keyboard:

It’s really not good. My hands aren’t that big (I can type faster than you could ever dream on a BlackBerry, iPhone or E71) and my thumb literally takes up 3 or 4 keys on the keyboard. There’s less space in between each key than say, a BlackBerry Curve 8300 keyboard, and the texture takes some time to get used to. It’s a rubberized coating kind of like the Centro and Treo Pro, and while the keys are a bit harder (better), the coating could possibly get irritating as usage increases. It’s really such an important area that couldn’t afford to be messed with and we’ll admit it… we’re a little let down. You’re going after the big guns here, and this is kind of disappointing.

You can’t compete with RIM in the keyboard area and you can’t compete with Apple in the soft-keyboard area, so how are people going to enjoy using your product when the data entry isn’t perfection? It’s like buying a brand new Ferrari, but getting an Accord steering wheel. It’s not the end of the world, but it isn’t greatness.

Size:

The size of the handset itself is wonderful. Really no complaints. It’s fits perfectly in your hand and Palm did a great job blending an awesome touchscreen with a separate multi-touch gesture area, sliding design, and everything else together in this package. It’s a happy medium between something larger like a Sidekick and smaller like a BlackBerry Pearl. As far as portability, it fits perfectly in your pocket and some people will love that the phone is so compact when closed — it’s really crazy small.

Feel:

This is an important area when designing a phone. Besides working like you had hoped, you want people to feel like they are holding a quality product, especially when talking about such a high-end product. Well, forget a high-end product, how about the product that everyone is counting on turning your company around? To be honest, the device feels a little cheap. The edges of the bottom piece are sharp on the back of the screen and even worse, when sliding it up and down, the top part that houses the screen will sometimes catch on itself.

It feels good in your hand, but the actual build quality really leaves a lot to be desired. One of our friends that checked it out over here said it felt like a Fisher Price toy. We wouldn’t go that far, but it really seems to be constructed with lower-grade materials compared to other flagship phones. One of the things that might be throwing us off is that it just feels so light. It’s an odd thing to happen when you’re expecting to be heavier than you’d imagine. Normally heavier = higher quality, but we’ll have to put the Pre through our usual battery of tests to really determine what’s going on here. The takeaway should be that it’s really light, feels a tad less expensive than we would have liked, and not as polished as it could have been.

OS:

WebOS itself is off to a great start we think. Taking the hardware aspects of the Palm Pre completely out of the equation, it has a bunch of potential. Especially with being public version numero uno. It will be interesting to see how developers try to take advantage of the operating system, yet we can’t help but feel it’s going to be iPhone web apps all over again until Palm releases an SDK that lets everyone (not just special partners) access areas of the OS that are needed to create applications that aren’t just “fluff”. Granted Pre apps will be a whole lot better than iPhone web apps ever were; it’s disheartening to see something like this happen out of the gate though. They will never be able to compete with the Symbian, Android, BlackBerry and iPhone app stores and services like this. But don’t worry too much — we’re sure Palm will come around in due time and release an SDK that gives devs access to everything! It’s just not optimal out of the gate, that’s all.

Switching gears, Synergy is so cool in itself. Well, the concept part of it. We haven’t linked everything together yet, but we’re not sure if Palm’s got the right approach. I mean, I’d like my Facebook contacts in a Facebook application, not in my main contacts app mixed with my Exchange and personal contacts. Obviously you can just not link Facebook, but the point is that centralizing data isn’t the end-all answer to our problems. It’s just that we have to create and manage them in a clean and organized manner.

Hey, what about Universal Search? Well, it works ok. We guess. It’s great they added a Twitter option to it instead of just Google, Wikipedia, and Google Maps, but what good is it when it just launches the respective web page for anything not stored locally? We also wish this could be 3rd party customizable. Imagine being able to integrate your favorite services into the Universal Search card.

One thing we didn’t tell you in our Hands On was that during our first photo session, the device completely reset. Like, wiped clean reset. We had to go through the entire setup process and get the phone up and running. Since we didn’t use an account, we’re not sure how the backup/restore function works (we haven’t tested it yet is what we mean), but everything looks to be tied to a Palm account including IM services, etc. No word on whether or not this is the final shipping OS, though. We hope not.

Multimedia:

On the unit we received, Multimedia was unable to be explored. It simply linked to non-existent help files (just like the webOS SDK Emulator does). We’re pretty sure after 10 years Palm has learned how to make an MP3 player, though, so we’ll just give them this one at no charge.

Battery life:

To be really fair, we haven’t been able to really put this thing through the ringer in regards to battery life. When we first got it, it had a pretty low charge of around 30% and that lasted for about two and a half hours of us taking photos, going through different options, etc. Take that for what you will but we don’t see a problem with Palm’s quoted battery life and from other reports, the battery is a pretty decent at keeping you going throughout the day. It is obviously removable which will make a bunch of you either jealous or angries, but for the rest of us, a quick swaparoo means you won’t need to lug around a solar charger in your pants. *Gasp*

Browser:

The browser for the most part renders pages properly and pretty quickly. It took around 15-20 seconds to pull up BGR over Sprint’s EV-DO connection but navigating is a little bit of a problem. We found that zooming in and out didn’t produce a smooth effect, rather it simply increased the size of the page sort of how Internet Explorer zooms in. Panning around was crisp though and the browser was incredibly responsive. It hasn’t locked up on us a single time which is pretty impressive considering we beat it up quite a bit, and with plenty of other stuff running as well. Additionally, the accelerometer was absolutely positively instant. The Pre switches between portrait and landscape more than lightning fast, no question, and we can definitely see motion-controlled gaming playing a big role for this little guy. Granted, you know, that little SDK thing happens we talked about earlier…

Applications:

To be honest, there weren’t too many applications to explore here. The App Catalog was empty so we were left scrounging around anything that’s preloaded. Google Maps was something that will come with every unit so we checked that out first. It works really well. Loading was quick and the location feature and GPS integration was effortless (not just Google Maps but the GPS works really well on this handset).

We ventured deeper and deeper into webOS and you know what we found? The PDF Viewer! It actually is pretty solid but all the Document-related apps on here are viewing capable only, not editors. But that’s coming later with DataViz.

The Media application layout looks really clean as well, you know, before you click something and are taken to the ominous Help files that don’t exist yet. The YouTube application that you have all seen by now has an awesome layout and we could see it being used very frequently with no issues.

Conclusion:

Everyone’s expectation are set enormously high for this device and it really feels like the original iPhone launch again. Well, maybe not quite as insane but still. Palm has done a masterful job of crafting and molding the hype factor, but there seems to be an underlying issue. In being so secretive, they’ve let people’s imaginations run wild and expectations couldn’t possibly be higher.

The OS is great. There’s no ifs ands or buts; it’s really refreshing to see something that’s brand new with a UI unlike anything else out there. The only problem with this is, Palm’s never been a hardware company that anyone’s really cared about. They have been the furthest thing from innovative since circa-2003 — their hardware has always been second rate at best and it doesn’t seem to be changing now. Couple that with the nation’s underdog carrier at a $299 price-point (before rebate), and we’re not sure how many people are going to be lined up overnight, yet we’re pretty confident once people are able to play a real unit themselves, there will be more than a lot of happy Palm Pre customers.

Once the initial Pre launch is over and done with and all the hype, smoke and mirrors are clear though, we can see Palm being pretty successful moving forward. Hell, Palm has converted tons of people into raging Pre fanboys before they could even see the phone in person! Very Apple-esque. More carriers will get the Pre, more handsets will be released and WebOS could very well keep things interesting even if the hardware is lacking.

So by now you’ve probably seen that our Rogers HTC Dream demo unit recently arrived in a locked safe and are wondering why such a fuss has been made over a device that has been for sale in the US from T-Mobile since October of 2008. While the device is physically the same of course, there are quite a few differences compared to the stock Android OS and it really took us by surprise. Want to know more? Grab a coffee, slip on your spectacles and a hit the jump for the review.

First things first. Yes, the Rogers Dream does come loaded with Android OS 1.5 aka Cupcake. But, and this is a huge but (think J Lo circa 1999 here), it does not come with all of the awesome features that T-Mobile G1 users are enjoying / will be enjoying with Cupcake. You see, the Dream has been loaded with custom firmware that more or less kills off a bunch of the cool new features of the update, the most notable being the lack of the soft keyboard. Why is this? Well, take a look at the back of the device:

There isn’t any physical branding of the Google trademark on the device. This means that Rogers likely said no thanks to Google and asked HTC to make custom modified firmware build that includes the typical, ugly and permanent links to a few of Rogers’ mobile content shops and its website. On top of that, one of the most basic things we have come to expect in a smartphone — a note taking application — is nowhere to be found.

So what do you get in exchange? Well, you get Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support. It might not be the most desirable trade-off if you don’t make use of an Exchange server, but it’s not as if the soft keypad on Cupcake G1s is something to write home about when compared to other capacitive touchscreen devices anyway. Besides, it’s not overly difficult to run and get some custom firmware up and running for those who absolutely hate the physical keypad and forgot the Magic is also about to drop.

Android OS 1.5 is rather nice and features some much needed cosmetic changes here and there in addition to some new features. At the same time, it’s still more or less the same as Android OS 1.0 which you can read about in more detail in our G1 review. Since this is our first review of an OS 1.5 device, we think it’s time we mention the things that haven’t yet made it to Android that we think should have been included from day one. For example, it couldn’t be more annoying to have to touch and hold on a message screen for two seconds to be prompted to reply, forward or delete it. Surely Google of all companies could whip up a simper way to get stuff done without always having to rely on the keypad or menu keys to get stuff done quickly. After all, isn’t simplicity and ease of use one of the main reasons touchscreen devices are now coming out left, right and center?

The guts of the Rogers Dream include a 528MHz processor, 192MB RAM/256MB ROM, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, GPS, quad-band EDGE and dual-band UMTS/HSPA (850/1900MHz) at 7.2Mbps down and 2Mbps up. This gives the Dream more than enough power to keep it running without much lag even when running apps that are extremely resource heavy. And heaven help us if the Dream is not one of the fastest devices that we’ve ever used. Even in a busy area we were easily able to get 2Mbps down while breaking 3.5Mbps and beyond here and there. GPS signals are insanely easy to lock on to and seems to work in buildings where other devices struggle to keep a lock on a signal. As for the Wi-Fi part, well, it’s Wi-Fi so it’s quite a bit faster than HSPA. But like we said, the Dream is a champ when it comes to cellular data speeds. The best part? We were able to get a full day out of the Dream before the battery died at around 2am. Just be careful with that Wi-Fi connection because it seems to have an insatiable thirst for juice.

We have to hand it to HTC because they really know how to make a touchscreen display and the Dreams is no exception. It’s respectable at 3.2″ with a resolution of 320×480; the display is crisp, bright and has a really nice feel to it despite the fact that it’s made out of some sort of hard plastic as opposed to the glass of most capacitive panels. Still, it’s extremely accurate and responds very well to the slightest touch. In terms of the overall picture quality, we would definitely rank it among the better displays currently on the market.

One of the things that makes HTC’s Android devices stand out as touchscreen devices is their inclusion of a trackball — the very same as seen on a certain line of smartphones that hails from the Northern Lands. Bluntly put, we never really use it because 1) it’s been programmed with a very low level of sensitivity, and 2) the sensitivity level cannot be changed. Why this is we’re not sure, but we highly doubt we’d use it even it we were able to crank it up to a comfortable 80 or 90 like we do on our BlackBerrys.

We’ve already covered two methods of input so now we move on to the full-QWERTY keypad of course. Accessible by moving the screen away via a sliding mechanism (which is solid and should survive a couple of years with power users) that almost instantantly converts the screen from portrait to landscape mode, the keypad takes a bit of getting used to and might feel a bit foreign to type on as the keys that are raised 1mm above the body of the device. It only takes about five minutes to adjust to however, but after five minutes of typing on the Dream you’re likely to want to take a chisel to the hump that contains all of the navigation keys because, damn, does that thing ever make for some seriously sore and cramped hands. Basically what we’re trying to say is that if you have small hands or short fingers, stay away from this phone because it’s just not gonna work out for you unless you have access to Prof. Farnsworth’s Fing-Longer. If you have the hands for it though, it’s not all that bad and we’d go so far as to say that despite its shortcomings we’d gladly take the Dream’s keypad over 95% of whatever else you can think of. Oh, one thing that we’d kill for Android to get is some sort of spell check. Seriously, what smartphone doesn’t have this?

The Dream features a flashless 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and a dedicated camera button. It takes decent pictures, but even if we were to take a photo with the light cast by an atomic bomb going off behind us, the end result would still end up being pretty grainy. C’mon, no flash? It’s 2009 and the phone is a massive 17.1mm thick — you’d think they’d cram a flash in there. Here’s a sample pic.

It’s pretty funny that one of the least talked about features of any phone these days is how it handles calls. Okay, it’s a sign of the times we live in, but we like to make a phone call now and again which is why we are so pleased that making a call couldn’t be more simple than it is on the Dream. You can either punch in a number or contact name on the QWERTY keypad, or dial the number straight up on the touchscreen. As for call quality, the Dream really delivers from both the earpiece and the speakerphone. That said, things did start to sound thin and tinny when the volume was cranked above 75%, but this can be attributed to the fact that the volume can be set so loud that you’ll be crying for earplugs. As for calling features, swapping, merging and adding additional people to a call could not be more simple. The only negative we can find with the voice aspect of this device hasn’t a thing to do with call quality or connectivity but rather a lack of a proximity sensor. Would it really be too much to ask that all high-end touchscreen phones come with proximity sensors? It seriously sucks to have to tap a key to wake up the display.

So overall, we like the phone — hardware and the software — yet there are a few things that we just can’t understand like the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack and the proprietary charging / data cable port (which is quite ironic considering the Dream runs on an open source software platform). Still, these flaws aren’t exactly uncommon for HTC devices but we sincerely hope that this changes soon.

In closing, there are a lot of things we like about the Dream and there are some things that we dislike. Maybe we’re way too picky, but we still really like the HTC Dream; it’s just not the greatest. Bottom line: take it for a spin before you buy it. 50% of you will love it and 50% of you won’t, but there is no doubt you will at least enjoy the experience.

We’ve been playing with it non-stop all weekend. We’ve tastelessly shown it off with a dash of hood on video. But the review is now finally ready. We decided to split this into two parts, one now and one right before launch. That way no one will see things that aren’t final and vice-versa. It will also be a nice way to keep track of what’s changed/been modified. We’ll also do something new here… if you have any questions, drop them in the comments and we’ll edit the post and answer them in the Q&A section of the review!

UPDATE: We’re re-posting this review with all photos. Enjoy!

Hardware:

You can literally think of the BlackBerry 9630 as a BlackBerry Storm with a QWERTY keyboard. It’s that exact. From the cell radios (quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, single band UMTS/HSDPA, 1X/EVDO) to even the layout of the keys on the side, it’s almost identical. It definitely follows RIM’s styling cues from the Curve 8900 and obviously the Storm as well. This will be tough for people contemplating switching to Verizon because it offers 90% of what every BlackBerry user has dreamed and it’s on the nation’s best network.

You know where we’re going here, don’t you? Wi-Fi. Verizon told us they really looked forward to releasing BlackBerry devices with Wi-Fi, blah, blah, blah. Cutting it short, as you all know, the 9630 doesn’t have Wi-Fi. There were rumors of pre-release devices floating around with Wi-Fi, and that obviously clears up any “technical” limitations (seriously, do you honestly think “we can’t fit it on the circuit board” is an excuse anymore?. This blunder is on Verizon’s shoulders, RIM, we excuse you this time.

Listen, we’re not going to really dive into it as our thoughts on this are pretty well documented, but, is it so difficult to stop being little bitches and just let people jam out with their Wi-Fi? We really don’t understand the difficulty, not one bit, and we’d love it if someone could fill us in and make things clearer. It’s just crap all around and it’s really frustrating that the perfect phone on the perfect network has a glaring hole in it.

Sorry, friends. No Wi-Fi on this one.

Phone:

Voice calling is an important part of any phone (duh), and it’s a combination of hardware and software. As far as the hardware portion goes, this is probably the best phone we’ve ever used. Yeah, seriously. The speakerphone is absolutely off the ringer. It is just insane how loud and clear it is. We’re not talking about phone performance like holding onto calls, and all that, just connecting the call and having a conversation. And in that area, both the ear speaker and speakerphone excel beyond almost any other phone, ever. Add in Verizon’s network and you’ve got one bad ass piece of machinery.

This is a tried and true BlackBerry — you know by now — everything is logically arranged and organized as far as the phone goes.

Battery:

The BlackBerry 9630 uses the same battery as the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and BlackBerry Storm; a 1400mAh cell. Since we’re not running this on Verizon at the moment and the software isn’t final (read: not close), take these results pretty lightly, ok?

• 4 hours of talk time
• 3 hours of video playback
• 8 hours of music playback
• 18 hours of light email, messenger, SMS, browsing.

Screen:

The screen on the 9630 looks great. It really looks like a plasma display with a glass lens over it. Colors are rich, sharp, and images are crisp. One thing we don’t like is the bezel around the screen. The Bold and 8900 LCD basically goes right up against the outer case of the handsets, yet with the 9630, there’s a black bezel around the LCD. We would have loved for the screen to be a tiny bit bigger because as it is, the Bold is still reigning champion of BlackBerry screens, if only for size alone.

In terms of resolution, you’re looking at the same res at the 8900 and Storm, 480×360.

Keyboard:

As you’ll read below, the keyboard is also a mash-up of the Bold and the Curve 8900 as is the size of the phone. It’s just right. We have to give credit where credit is due, and RIM still knows how to bang out some of the most perfected and usable keyboards on the planet. The keys are a smaller version of the Bold’s with a bit more click like the 8900. Since the Bold is as wide as a boat, the keyboard could afford to be laid out extra roomy. On the 9630, however, things are smaller obviously. This isn’t a problem for the keyboard for the most part, but one annoying thing is keys on the edge. What we mean is that the curved shape of the key is flush with the actual outer case of the device, and if you don’t hit the key precisely on the right spot, you’ll end up typing on the chrome bezel.

One other huge negative is the placement of the back button. We’re not sure why it’s so close together (well, we are) but we wish there was another way of working that out. On countless occasions we’ve hit the back button while pressing in the trackball.

Size:

The size of the 9630 is a perfect blend between the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Curve 8900. It fits squarely in the middle. It feels great in your hand and is incredibly comfortable to use. One odd fun fact: we couldn’t put our finger on it at first, but after a while it finally hit. The 9630 feels like the BlackBerry 7130 (Cingular model). Not sure why, but its like the wider 2009 version of that.

The device is a tad skinnier than the bold, less wide, and less tall too. So you’re basically getting the entire Bold package without much sacrifice. Well, one big sacrifice actually — Wi-Fi. Though people could use the argument you gain Verizon so it evens out. We’ll leave that up to you.

Toting the 9630 around, it really is the perfect mix of form, function and size for a BlackBerry. We would have loved for the phone to be thinner (really just a bad ass RAZR-type BlackBerry) but since RIM plans so far out (what, you missed this from a year ago?), we understand why the hardware is behind.

Reception:

This is mostly going to be left for Part 2: Launch Time, but on GSM, the phone even in its way buggy state performed just as good as it’s cousin, the 8900, in the signal department. Literally side by side you’ll see them get the same reception as far as the bars are concerned. The actual signal reading doesn’t differ either.

OS:

Think of 4.7.1 as the same OS the Storm uses minus the touchscreen. All the visual elements look the same — everything from highlights and gradients to slight UI changes –and even “gestures” work. We say that clearly not insinuating there’s a touch screen, but if you for instance scroll left or right in the media application for example, the photos will flick left or right. It’s a nice touch.

Screen animations are not in this build, so we’re not sure if things like the sliding screens from right to left will make it in the final version, but we’d guess they will. Or maybe RIM realized this is more of a professional device and those cheesy animations were getting in the way of real productivity rather than helping. Just a thought.

Browser:

The browser in its default mode now zooms into web pages much more than earlier versions. We’re not sure if this is going to be the final way of doing things here or if it’s just temporary, but it’s kind of irritating. Things are so far zoomed in that it makes text look enormous and images look tiny. Another issue with this current OS build is that you can’t click on any links with the mouse pointer. You have to go to menu, then hit “get link”. It’s not like we care, though.

The browser performs super fast over EDGE but it really isn’t in a condition to be thoroughly tested. If you load a page that is decently large, then proceed to scroll down, the web page text will stick, etc. We’ll leave this open-ended and update you if anything changes but look forward to a real torture test in Part 2.

For now, early, early impressions are that 4.7.1’s browser would be better than all the rest (just going on it supporting newer JavaScript and obviously RIM having time to iron other things out).

Build Quality:

The 9630 just has this Verizon “halo” all around it. Seriously. If we had never heard of the 9630 or seen pictures and you showed it to us, we’d say, “that’s the one going to Verizon, right?” The build quality is great and you can tell that Verizon’s getting more durable hardware than say AT&T is. Now, that’s not an official statement, but when you start getting phones with speakerphones as loud as this one, something is going on and this ain’t Nextel, folks.

You can tell that this phone will stand up to multiple daily beatings, and that’s a really good thing.

The Bold’s build quality left a lot to be desired. The 8900 feels pretty plasticky and cheap (the cheesy plastic battery door doesn’t help) so the 9630’s build quality is very refreshing. We, again, think it’s going to stand up to various drops, punts, and drop kicks.

There’s a quality feel to the device and while we wish the battery door was metal (long live the Storm), we don’t see a big problem here.

Picture courtesy of Tweet Genius. Coming soon!

Q&A:

Is it confirmed that the BlackBerry 9630 will be launching first on Verizon and then Sprint?

Nothing is confirmed at all, but we’re pretty confident this will hit Verizon first and they’ll get a pretty decent head-start.

Will the 9630 be able to function using AT&T’s 3G network?

Sadly, no. It’s the same story as the Storm — GSM/GPRS/EDGE for North America, UMTS for the rest of the world (where 2100MHz WCDMA is supported, obviously).

Will there be a U.S. version of the 9630 with U.S. 3G and Wi-Fi?

We doubt it. There just doesn’t seem to be room in RIM’s lineup with the Bold and Curve 8900 released. Remember there is a Curve with 3G coming, so that might be pretty similar. We wouldn’t expect that for a while. Like, end of year, early next year-type while.

Questions from readers will be listed and answered here. Additionally, hit us up with anything you want to see in our real video walkthrough — we’ll try and make sure it gets added in!

Conclusion:

We went through this with the Storm review and we told most of you to wait for the 9630. Most of you didn’t listen and you’re bitching everyday about your Storm. It’s ok, we’re here to help. Basically, to you know, not beat around the bush. Verizon + 9630 = the best BlackBerry experience on the planet. This is the phone you’ve been waiting for. Smash those Storms, donate them to charity, sell them on eBay or give them to your significant others you want to slowly and cruelly torture. This is it as far as Verizon goes. We said the Storm was the best phone on Verizon (hey, everything is relative, ok?) and this obviously takes it a step further. In its complete buggy state probably more than 3-4 months away from release, this is going to be the big seller on Verizon when it launches. There’s not a single person who wouldn’t want this phone. Young, old, black, white, rich, poor, disabled, not disab… never mind.

RIM and Verizon, congrats. This will seriously screw with AT&T’s BlackBerry customers and poach more than a few. Just remember Wi-Fi is a friend and there are people that need Wi-Fi rather than want it.

We can’t wait until the 9630 launches, it’s going to be a great all around phone.

Thanks to the folks at TetherBerry, we have been putting its latest software solution for BlackBerry tethering through the paces over the past week or so in preparation for today’s official launch. For those unfamiliar with the product, TetherBerry allows you to use your BlackBerry to access the Internet from your computer anywhere you have a cellular signal. It uses the data connection on your handset and does so without incurring additional tethering fees imposed by your wireless carrier. Now that you know what it does, let’s get on with the review and see if TetherBerry is indeed a viable on-the-go mobile tethering solution.

Hardware and Carrier Information

Before we begin with the software, let’s take a look at the hardware we used for the purposes of this review. Here is a rundown:

• ThinkPad Z61t with Windows XP
• Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with Windows XP
• Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Curve 8330 with OS 4.5, EV-DO Rev.0
• Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Storm 9530 with leaked OS .109, EV-DO Rev.A
• Verizon Wireless EV-DO connection

TetherBerry was tested using a BIS-based BlackBerry connection and was not tested with BES. This review will not discuss various IT policies and any challenges BES users may face while using TetherBerry.

Setup and Installation

The installation of TetherBerry is a straight forward process. The software consists of two components: a desktop application and a mobile application — both applications are needed to establish and maintain the internet connection. The desktop component is for Windows PCs only, though a Mac version is currently in the works so all you Mac users out there who have gone crazy without tethering since updating your Bold with OS 2XX can breathe a sigh of relief.

TetherBerry installs both a TetherBerry Ethernet adapter into your network connections folder and a desktop application that you launch when you want to tether. The desktop component also requires you to have BlackBerry Desktop Manager installed on your computer. If Desktop Manager is not installed, TetherBerry will install a non-Roxio version for you as part of the setup process. A nice touch so you don’t have scour RIM’s website looking for the proper software. The PC install went smoothly and without error on both the Thinkpad notebook and the Dell netbook.

The BlackBerry Component is installed over the air from a .jad file from TetherBerry’s website. Once again, the application was installed without error on both BlackBerry handsets. With the Curve, the application appeared as an icon within the applications folder while on the Storm, the application appeared as an icon within the downloads folder.

Usage and Performance

Before you initiate a tethering session, you must disable your other Internet connection options (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc) on the PC. No other configuration to your computer is needed, which of course is a nice bonus. To initiate a tethering session, you need to connect your BlackBerry to your PC via USB and launch both the desktop application and the handheld application. When you launch the handheld application, it prompts you to connect to TetherBerry.com and you must respond “yes” if you want the application to launch. If you click “no” the TetherBerry application will run but the components necessary to establish the Internet connection will not load. We queried the company about this requirement to connect to TetherBerry’s servers and were told that it is necessary both to validate the software license and to determine which server you should use. The representative elaborated further by saying the “connections are routed through Tetherberry’s servers to get around some limitations of BlackBerry devices” and assured us that TetherBerry does not monitor or inspect the packets as they pass through its servers. One problem with this configuration however, is that your IP is served up from San Diego, CA so any location based Internet services that use your IP address to approximate your location will place you in San Diego rather than your actual location.  A minor drawback with the method used by the software to establish and maintain the data connection.

Once the connection between the PC and the handheld is established, you can browse to your heart’s content. The desktop component keeps track of the packets sent and received, volume of data sent/received and the status of the connection. The handheld component monitors the connection and will list any errors encountered during the tethering session. It initiated without a hitch and Verizon Wireless did not pick up on the tethered connection. When in a tethering session, you could browse the web with the mobile browser and use almost all (see the next paragraph for the exception) of the functions of the phone without a disruption in the tethering connection. The connection was rock solid and did not drop, even while in a moving vehicle.

There were only two times that we encountered a disruption in service. First was when we received an incoming phone call. The internet connection remained active while the phone rang, but came to a screeching halt when we answered the call. The pause in the connection is most likely due to the inability of CDMA devices to support a simultaneous data and voice connection. Despite the pause in the internet connection, the application remained running in the background and the connection was resumed as soon as the call was ended. The only time the handheld application threw an error was when we let the connection lay dormant for about 10 minutes. When we tried to resume browsing, we received 3-4 “couldn’t write in receive: java.io.IOException” errors before the connection was re-established and we were off browsing again — something we hope is resolved with a future build.

Connection Speeds

Establishing a connection is one thing but the connection speeds will make or break the browsing experience. Overall, TetherBerry maintained decent connection speeds but we did see a marked difference between the EV-DO Rev.0 Curve and the EV-DO Rev.A Storm of course. In an area with a strong signal, connection speeds with the Storm averaged 800kb/s down and 250kb/s up while the Curve managed 400kb/s down and 100kb/s up. Connection speeds also varied based upon signal strength, with areas of low signal signal showing a degradation in speed. The lowest speed recorded was 200kb/s down and 42kb/s up. TetherBerry did not appear to cap speeds and seemed to establish a connection at a speed optimized for the device and the signal strength. Basically, it looks like TetherBerry can cope with whatever speeds your carrier can throw its way.

We even pushed the limits and attempted to watch some streaming video — YouTube streaming worked well but Hulu and Netflix were way too choppy to watch.

Conclusion

Overall, we were pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of setup and the steady performance of TetherBerry. For those who don’t mind carrying around a USB cable, TetherBerry provides an excellent and inexpensive tethering solution. TetherBerry is available now at Tetherberry.com for $39.99 – not bad at all when you consider how much a tethering plan will run you. For those who prefer to get things for free, TetherBerry has given us 30 complimentary copies for BGR readers — so the first 30 readers to respond in the comments and request a copy will be the lucky winners. You must indicate that you want a copy, comments like “I’m first!” are not eligible. Please be sure to use a valid email address in the email field when you submit your comment as we will use that address to contact the winners.

Pros:

• Easy to Install without the need for any advanced network configuration
• Provides tethering anywhere you have a wireless signal without any additional carrier-imposed tethering charges
• Connection speed was excellent (though the actual speed you experience will depend upon the hardware used, network used and signal strength)

Cons:

• Only works on a Windows PC (Mac version is in the works)
• Requires a USB Cable (though Bluetooth support is expected in the future)
• Packets are routed through TetherBerry’s servers, which will impact LBS
• As with any third-party tethering solution of course, use it at your own risk and definitely use some common sense to avoid potentially massive data bills.

TetherBerry product page

It’s been nearly five months since we scooped Amazon’s Kindle 2 and earlier this week, after what seemed like an eternity for anxious e-book fans, Amazon finally began shipping its new reader. We unboxed it for you this past Tuesday but you know we couldn’t leave it at that — it’s full-on review time! Leading up to the Kindle 2 we’ve been through a Sony PRS-505, an Amazon Kindle 1 and an Irex Iliad so we had high hopes for Amazon’s new Jesus-reader. Is it up to snuff? Did it fall flat on its slim, sexy, 3G-connected face? Grab a cup of coffee and a snack pack, then hit the jump to find out.

Hardware and Aesthetics

To kick things off, let’s start with the guts. The Kindle 2 packs a 532 MHz ARM-11 processor, a 3.7 V 1530 mAh non-removable lithium polymer battery, a Sprint compatible EV-DO antenna and 2 GB of internal storage. The choice to abandon the external SD card slot and the removable battery of the Kindle 1 are a source of contention amongst current Kindle owners and rightfully so. Yes, the internal memory of the Kindle 2 can hold close to 1,500 books and the battery does promise longer life but people paying $360 for a reader don’t want to be limited — especially when the first generation Kindle didn’t have such limitations. You can’t carry around your whole library if your collection exceeds 2GB and the device is only useful for the life of the battery (unless you want to fork over $60 to Amazon to replace it).

For the average user who upgrades devices regularly, these limitations are nothing to be concerned about of course, but to the power user or pack rat, the lack of an SD card slot and replaceable battery may be a deal breaker. Just a warning to all of you “I am not going to buy the Kindle 2 because it does not have an SD card slot or replaceable battery” folks, the allure of this sexy new device may soften your stance on this issue so don’t handle a Kindle 2 as you may not be able to resist. And so we come to the design…

Fresh out the box, the Kindle 2 is a gorgeous looking device — rounded edges with a brushed aluminum back, and ohhhh so thin. Sorry original Kindle fans, we don’t mean to be offensive but the Kindle 2 brings some style to what had previously been a very clumsy-looking device. Despite its thin profile, the Kindle 2 feels very solid and not at all flimsy. At the top of the device, you’ll find a sliding power switch and a 3.5mm audio jack. The left side of the device has two small slots for a cover (optional purchase and not included in the box) while the right side has a volume rocker toward the top of the device. The bottom has a mini-USB port and small reset button. The back is brushed aluminum with a non-removable cover — no cracking this Kindle open unless you’ve got some tools on deck. The only items of interest on the backside are the two speakers at the bottom and the device information like the serial number, FCC ID, etc.

The front of the device is where all the action takes place of course. In the center you have a 6-inch, 800×600 e-ink display touting 16 shades of gray. On the left hand side you’ll find the previous page button and a next page button. What an improvement these buttons are, by the way! Gone are the paddle-like Kindle 1 buttons that would navigate pages with the slightest accidental touch. With the new style buttons, you have to push firmly on the edge of the button closest to the screen; there will be no accidental page turns from simply picking up or putting down the device. It is a bit awkward at first to push the inner portion of the button but you quickly get used to it and appreciate the feeling of control with regards to page navigation. Finally, at the bottom you’ll find the bubbly QWERTY keyboard which is an improvement over the Kindle 1 “chicklet” keyboard for sure. It’s most definitely not the greatest keyboard we’ve come across but it’s fine for searching and typing brief notes.

The right hand side of the device has the menu button and back button, both of which flank the 5-way directional control which may be the Achilles heel of the Kindle 2. It is an improvement over the scroll button and the funky vertical navigation display on the Kindle 1 but the 5-way controller itself leaves much to be desired. It is sturdy and has a nice satisfactory click but it’s small. Too small. It is fairly easy to move up and down but moving left and right can be tricky at times. We’re not talking “throw this thing out the window because it’s impossible to use,” but people with any dexterity problems will likely be less than happy with the performance of the controller. A slightly larger d-pad with a center button/click may have been a better choice.

Above the 5-way controller, you have another next page button and finally the home button. The button layout is quite comfortable over all, and you can perform just about any common function without having to shift your grip. The exception is probably the previous page button on the left which is placed a bit too high on the device for our taste. Despite the two main flaws we mentioned however, the Kindle 2 is definitely a winner in terms of look, feel and overall design. It is not perfect but it is pretty close.

Display

Amazon made a huge deal out of the Kindle 2’s snazzy new 16-shade display so our expectations were sky-high. Unfortunately without having another reader to do a side-by-side comparison (we’ve long-since ditched the Kindle 1 and other readers), it is difficult to rate the overall quality of screen as it relates to its predecessor or competition. As a stand alone device however, the text on the screen is crisp and the images have a nice appearance. The display response is definitely spry it supports the dynamic rendering needed for the on-screen cursor. Page to page refreshes are also quite snappy, though you do get the typical e-ink inverting and flashing when you switch pages (albeit very briefly). You really only notice it during the first 10-15 minutes of usage when you first get the device. After that initial adjustment period, the flickering anymore as the pages turn smoothly and quickly.

As for the flip side of the coin, light source is a necessity for the Kindle 2 as it lacks backlighting. This is a limitation of e-ink technology and affects all e-ink based readers. The latest Sony Reader, the PRS-700, includes external side mounted LEDs to alleviate the problem but the Kindle provides no such solution. If reading in a dimly lit area, you will definitely need a stronger light source. In a fully lit room or in the sunlight however, the Kindle display is perfectly crisp and the glare is minimal making the Kindle 2 a real pleasure to read.

Reading with the Kindle 2

The home screen is where all the fun begins of course. When on the home screen, the menu key provides access to core features including settings, search, a link to the Kindle Store, the experimental applications and the ability to sync your Kindle data and the command to check for new items. Outside the menu, the home screen itself contains a list of all the books on the Kindle. Sorry folks, as most of you Kindle 1 owners already know, the Kindle 2 does not support folders leaving all of your books to sit in one giant list. This might not be a problem for the new Kindle user who may have 5-6 books but watch out experienced veterans; you still have to scroll through your 100+ titles. This is a feature that has been requested a million times and may be added in a future update but don’t count on it. Purchase the Kindle 2 with the knowledge that you cannot use folders to organize your book collection.

When you select a book, you are brought to the beginning of the book if it is your first time opening it and the most recently finished page will appear if you have already begun reading. At the bottom of the page is a progress bar that indicates your location (locations are the digital equivalent of pages) within the book and highlights your progress. A percentage indicator is also present on the left side. Beyond the next and previous page buttons which allow page-by-page navigation, the 5-way controller allows you to jump from chapter to chapter which is a nice feature. Navigation through the book is further simplified by the menu button which provides access to the clickable/linkable Table of Contents, the beginning of the book, a page jump that allows you to go to any page or straight to the furthest page read. The “in-book” menu also lets you create a new note, highlight or bookmark, access your saved notes and bookmarks within a book and search an individual book. Last but not least, you can toggle the wireless off and on, hop to the Kindle store, or start Text to Speech from this menu. All that from one click of the menu button!

The 5-way controller is used to navigate the contents of the page you are on. When scrolling though the text with the 5-way controller, a definition of the selected word appears dynamically at the bottom of your screen – a great convenience when you hit unfamiliar words. The controller can also be used to navigate to and select any links that may be present within the text. The onscreen cursor will switch to a finger when a link is selected and a click of the 5-way controller will bring you to the linked location. Lastly, the controller can also be used to zoom in on images within a page. A zoom icon will appear over the image and a quick click zoom while a second click will zoom back out to the full page.

The Kindle 2 provides several different methods for annotating the text within a book, allowing you to add a note to a portion of the text, highlight a portion of the text or bookmark a page. If you are reading a periodical or a blog, you can also take a clipping of the any section you choose. When a note, bookmark or highlight is added to the text, the Kindle 2 indicates the specialized status of the text by displaying a folded page corner for a bookmark, a superscript number for a note or an underline beneath the text for a highlight. Pretty nifty. Reading a periodical, blog subscription or non-Kindle e-book is similar to reading a Kindle e-book. The overall navigation is the same but you have different menu options that reflect whichever type of content you are reading.

The Kindle Store: Searching, Previewing and Purchasing Books

The biggest advantage the Kindle has over its competition is Whispernet, the wireless connectivity that makes browsing and buying books ridiculously simple. The wireless coverage is provided by Sprint and, depending on your location, can be a high speed 3G EV-DO connection. Why bother with wireless connectivity? To browse and purchase books directly from the Kindle, of course! You can browse books by genre with almost every category broken down into subcategory upon subcategory. You can also view the National Bestsellers list, a new and noteworthy book list and the top Kindle books as ranked by Amazon.

If you prefer a more direct approach, you can search the book catalog using the search field and the QWERTY keyboard. When browsing categories or search results, the books appear in a scrollable list with the book cover, title, author and the review ranking (up to 5 stars) of each book. You use the 5-way controller to move up and down the list and the previous page and next page buttons to advance forward and backward through the list.

Clicking on an individual book will bring you to the the book detail page which has a link to the author’s other available Kindle books, a short list of details and a brief description of the book, the ever important “buy” button, a link to user reviews and finally, a helpful “what others have bought” section. If this book is not what you expect, you can use the search field at the bottom to start over. You can also select to “Try a sample” or “Save for later” if you want to mark the book for further review. The “Try a sample” option is another ingenious idea from Amazon and is present in the Kindle 1 as well. You can liken the experience to sitting in your local bookstore, grabbing a book off the shelf and thumbing through it before purchasing. You lose the ambiance of a bookstore with the Kindle of course, but you retain the ability to try before you buy which is most definitely appreciated. It is also handy if you have 20 minutes to fill and want a quick read.

Once you pick a book that warrants a purchase, buying it is a breeze — it’s almost too easy as a matter of fact. Hit the “Buy” button and Amazon will process the purchase using your Amazon One-Click settings. You do have to log in to your Amazon account using your PC and setup One-Click prior to purchasing of course, but once One-Click is configured, purchasing is a one step, no hassle process. The delivery of the book is equally elegant. In matter of a minute over the 3G connection, your book is downloaded to your Kindle 2 and is ready to read. If you were the proud owner of a Kindle 1, you can also use Whispernet to sync all your previously purchased books to your new Kindle 2 which certainly makes things much easier. Amazon really has captured here with Whispernet, what Apple has captured with the iPhone and its App store. Elegant and easy over the air purchasing.

For those who prefer purchasing books from sources other than Amazon, the Kindle 2 provides several methods for getting non-Amazon content onto your reader. The Kindle 2 supports the Kindle format (AZW), TXT, Audible (format 4 and Audible Enhanced AAX), MP3, unprotected MOBI and PRC natively. No conversion is needed for these formats and the content can be dragged over to your Kindle 2 via USB or sent wirelessly for a fee of $0.10 per item. It also supports PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP but these formats require conversion. Amazon provides an easy to use email-based service for converting these documents to a Kindle 2 friendly format. Basically, each Kindle 2 is assigned a unique email address (”your_kindle”@kindle.com) and you send the item for conversion to this address. Amazon will accept the content, convert it to a Kindle-friendly format and forward it on to your Kindle. It is easy but as you might imagine, it’ll cost you $0.10 per item.

If you need the conversion and don’t want to pay Amazon $0.10 to forward the book to your device, you can instead use your Kindle’s “free” email address (”your_kindle”@free.kindle.com) and Amazon will send the book back to you via email. You will need to connect your Kindle via USB and drag the newly converted content to your Kindle, but for frequent flyers this could save you a bundle in the long run. For security and privacy and purposes you can’t send content from any email, you must pre-designate a list of acceptable email addresses from which content will be sent.

Web Browsing/MP3Player/Text to Speech

The Kindle 2 also comes with a few “experimental” features including a web browser, an MP3 player and the much talked about Text to Speech function. The web browser works but don’t expect a Safari or even Opera Mobile-like experience here. You’re looking at a browser for mobile web sites only, and it’s a bit sluggish and clunky to navigate. Despite its unpolished nature, the browser does work and is convenient if you really need to check out the latest news headlines, read/post to a forum or search Wikipedia. The same applies to the MP3 player. It works and provides decent-quality background music through the small speakers, but don’t fire it up expecting to be wowed.

Last but not least is the Text to Speech function. This experimental feature actually works better than expected. It reads the text back in a computerized voice but does so with surprising clarity and proper enunciation. It is not as “sterile” and “robotic” as expected. It won’t replace audible and all those folks upset about this feature should not be concerned about book lovers opting for the Kindle audio version of a book over the audible version. The Text to Speech lacks the intonations, inflections and drama that a real person reading would bring to a book. Nonetheless, the Text to Speech is quite listenable and is a great accessibility feature to boot.

Overall Conclusion

Kindle 2 PROS:

• Whispernet service makes book searching and purchasing a breeze
• Kindle 2 is thin, well-balanced with a nice layout of buttons
• QWERTY keyboard makes entering text easy and allows for features like note taking and web browsing
• Text is crisp and easy to read with minimal glare and the screen refresh is quick
• Navigation is easy and intuitive

Kindle 2 CONS:

• Device is a bit long due to the presence of the QWERTY keyboard
• Side buttons are a bit awkward to press as you have to push the inner edge and not the outer edge of the button
• 5-way controller can be difficult to use
• Cost is a bit prohibitive and you need to purchase a case asthe retail pack does not include one

Overall, the Kindle 2 is a gorgeous looking device that makes digital book reading a joy. For those looking to make the jump into the digital book reading experience, the Kindle 2 is an excellent choice and the experience it provides will be tough to match with a competitive reader. The price tag of $359 is a bit high, especially when you consider the extra $30 you’ll need to shell out for a cover. Never the less, the ability to have all your books on one device and new content accessible via a wireless connection is indispensible and lessens the sting of the high price tag. If you are an avid book reader and have the cash on hand, the Kindle 2 is definitely the way to go. Amazon did a fantastic job and while it might not live up to the hype surrounding its launch, it most definitely came a whole lot closer than we expected.

The Samsung Memoir has been rumored to make its way to the nation’s newest 3G network for a very, very long time. Starting today, however, it’s available in all of T-Mobile’s retail stores, online, and over the phone. Samsung’s high-end optics on handsets are nothing new, but an 8 megapixel sensor certainly trumps anything available in the U.S. market (sold by a carrier). In terms of raw specs, you’re looking at T-Mobile 3G support, touch screen with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface (we’ll get into that in a bit), Xenon flash, HTML web browser, A-GPS and nifty photo functions such as smile and face detection along with geo-tagging capabilities.

The feel of the handset is actually great. It’s a combination of metal, soft-touch-finished paint and plastic which all blend together marvelously. The physical design works extremely well as far as not cramping your style no matter how you’re using the phone — web browsing, taking photos, texting — plus, there’s not too much you can do to hide an 8 megapixel sensor.

TouchWiz is a decent attempt at jazzing up a rather poor, old, and horrible operating system that Samsung has made us deal with. You’re given a list of widgets that can be dropped on the home screen for your enjoyment, but we really found this to be a pain in the ass. The home screen offers basically no functionality besides showing the clock and the weather. Everything else is a just a shortcut to another application. If Samsung had copied a little bit of HTC’s TouchFLO 3D, they would have made this at least a little bit more interesting.

Diving into the handset’s OS, you sort of get a dull feeling. Nothing pops out at you and nothing is really interesting. In a world of smartphone operating system battles, even featurephones nowadays need to start stepping it up. Text-based menus really aren’t going to cut it, you know? Like, at least try a little bit for us, ok? The photo section of the phone is probably the most manicured part of the handset, but even that really isn’t saying much. Sure you can swipe to peruse your photos from last night’s drunken stupor, and yes, you can automagically (credit: Gizmodo) upload your pictures to Flickr and T-Mobile MyAlbum service, but we just don’t see the connection here. You know, between a phone and a camera. Especially with an OS so bad and so 1999, it just doesn’t work in our minds. If you really want a decent cameraphone on T-Mobile, we’d completely recommend picking up the Motorola ZN5 over this bad boy, it at least has a decent phone OS that you can work with. The resistive touch screen tech mixed with a pretty bad excuse for an operating system boiled with an 8 megapixel sensor baked with text menus aren’t exactly our cup of tea.

Then there’s also the price-point. For $249.99 on a 2-year agreement, we’d have trouble not slapping you if you didn’t pick up the BlackBerry Curve 8900 over this. Didn’t you hear? T-Mobile can’t keep them on the shelves. We highly doubt stockrooms won’t be cozying up the Samsung Memoir, though. It’s not horrible, it just isn’t worth the hassle or the price. At least in our photo scrapbook.

Click on over to our T-Mobile Samsung Memoir gallery!

Here at BGR, we’ve learned several truths over the years: What happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas, you really shouldn’t eat yellow snow and most importantly, there is no such thing as a phone with a big enough battery. Discounting those first two for the time being, we’re long-time Proporta portable battery users as having that extra 3400 mAh of juice in reserve can be a life saver. Last month however, we were made aware of an alternative option from London-based Devotec Industries and our interest was immediately piqued. While Devotec’s offering holds 47% less juice than our Proporta battery, we couldn’t help but get reeled in by a key feature that no other portable charger we’ve come across in the sub-$40 price range can tout — solar. Needless to say we scooped up a handful of them and went to town. Hit the jump to read our impressions of the Devotec Solar Charger after a few weeks of abuse from the BGR staff.

First things first – what exactly is this thing? Devotec’s Solar Charger is a small pocketable battery that will charge your mobile phone or other portable devices on the go. It holds 1800 mAh of power, more than enough to give just about any handset one full charge with a bit left over just in case. The entire face of the charger is a solar panel, thus allowing the battery to be charged by the sun as opposed to sucking power from the grid. This also means if you’re out and about for an extended period of time, using the unit for multiple charges is possible without having to stop and find a power source. Just leave it sitting on the dash in your car or anywhere else it can see the sun and a few hours later you have a full 1800 mAh waiting for another go. Leaving it in the sun as it’s charging a device will also drastically reduce the battery drain of course, stretching that 1800 mAh cell out much further than any non-solar portable charger could dream of.

The unit is built quite solidly; the area surrounding the solar panel is standard black plastic while the rear half of the case is metal. Admittedly, we’ve dropped the unit a short distance several times already and there isn’t a scratch or scuff to be found. One end of the charger is home to a single DC-out port and the other end holds two LED indicators and a USB port. Why a USB port, you might ask? In the event you have a trip to Seattle or just want a quick burst of juice, the charger can be plugged into a wall outlet or any computer with a USB port (Extended pack is available with a multi-country travel charger).

Devotec’s Solar Charger ships with a short cable and a variety of tips that should be able to charge just about any handset along with any portable device that can be powered with a standard USB cable — as you can see above, the center tip on the top row is a standard USB port. It also comes with a small leather-like case which, oddly, is the cause of our only real complaint. The case is nice and it keeps the unit from getting scratched or scuffed while in transit but it’s only big enough to house the charger itself, and barely. We would have preferred a case that could also hold the tiny charger cable and maybe even a few tips so that everything is kept together and organized.

In terms of performance, a portable charger is the type of thing that either works or it doesn’t. There’s really no room for middle ground so in short, the Devotec Solar Charger works. Surprisingly however, we found that it works a bit better than the Devotec Website states. The company’s site claims charging the unit from empty will take approximately 12 hours of sunlight, while the documentation included with the unit claims 4-6 hours. During our testing we found the reality to be somewhere around 4 hours in direct sunlight. The other thing you might notice is that in each of our pictures of the unit there is a blue LED shining, indicating that the unit is currently charging. That’s no mistake — we were very surprised to find that artificial light charges the Devotec charger as opposed to just sunlight. Of course we doubt a standard house bulb will charge the unit anywhere near as quickly as sunlight, but it’s still nice to know.

In the end, we would definitely recommend the Devotec Solar Charger to anyone in the market for a portable charger. The $39.99 price point puts it exactly in line with our Proporta unit and while its capacity is 1800 mAh compared to the 3400 mAh of the Proporta, the green-factor and convenience of solar technology more than make up for it. Whereas the Proporta or a similar non-solar unit might be able to refill your handset twice before having to be refueled by a wall outlet or computer, the Devotec charger can keep refilling your gear without touching an outlet as long as the sun keeps rising every morning. If the sun stops rising, well, you’ve got bigger problems to deal with than recharging your phone. With that, we’ll leave you with a few comparison shots to give you an idea of the size of the unit, along with a link to Devotec’s product page.

Devotec Solar Charger product page

Last week we showed you an unboxing of COWON’s latest Portable Media Playing creation and you had to know we’d be following it up with a full-on review. We wanted to take a little while to play with the S9 and cover every square inch of its functionality before bringing you a hands on review and now that we’ve had a few days alone with this puppy, we’re ready to dish. Hit the jump to dive in.

In this review we’ll take you through most of the important parts of the UI and pepper in some commentary along the way. The UI, by the way, is COWON’s own flash-based GUI and while it certainly isn’t the fanciest game in town but it is simple, attractive, intuitive and lightning fast. The capacitive touchscreen is very responsive as is the UI, making the S9 a real pleasure to use. Pretty much every function can be discovered quickly by even those with very basic gadgeteering abilities, but it’s still enough to be respectable amongst seasoned vets. With that, what better place to start than the home screen?

The home screen is a direct portal into each of the S9’s functions and the icons thereon are are well-sized. Settings, Utilities, a file browser can all be accessed with one click along with all of the multimedia functions. Also, the S9 boots from off to the home screen in about three seconds which is fantastic compared to competitive offerings. Along the bottom of the home screen are two groups of dots which serve only to toggle between silver icons and multicolored icons. Like us, you’ll probably stick with silver.

The settings menu gives quite obviously presents all of the configuration-related items on the device. The one thing that took us a brief while to get used to was the necessity for double-tapping to make a selection. Once you get past that however, the settings menus are quite sensible and easy to tweak.

One thing we particularly like about the UI is the zooming feature present in most sections. As amazingly crisp as the AMOLED display is on the S9, size is always an issue with portables. Many areas of the UI such as documents (as seen above) include a slider across the bottom. The far left end brings the zoom all the way out and the far right end zooms all the way in. As you can see below, the slider makes it very easy to adjust the font to the exact size that suits you.

Moving along to the bread and butter, we have the S9’s multimedia functionality. First up, images. As you can imagine, photos look great on this display. The 3.3″ AMOLED screen displays its 480 x 272 pixels in vivid detail and photos jump off the screen. The included software suite makes it easy to load photos along with the rest of your media and the accelerometer allows the device to automatically adjust the image orientation as you rotate the device. The S9 supports viewing in all directions so you can rotate it left, right or even upside down and the image will adjust accordingly. You can also find the zoom slider present beneath each photo for fast and easy zooming.

From photos we move right over to the video player. Again… AMOLED! Videos are a joy to watch and and 30 fps playback makes for a smooth viewing experience. The S9 supports AVI and WMV, as well as SMI subtitles in case Kung Fu is your thing. Also of note – thanks to the beauty of OLED displays, COWON rates the S9 with 11 straight hours of video playback on a single charge. We didn’t try to watch 11 consecutive hours but judging by the battery performance we’ve seen, we don’t doubt it. Below are a couple of shots of video playback and as you can see, tilting the device will automatically rotate the picture in any direction.

Next on the list, and the function we’ve been waiting for the entire review to cover, is the music player. The S9 supports a variety of formats including MP3, WMA, OGG and WAV, as well as LDB 1.0 and 2.0 lyrics and ID3 V1 / ID3 V2.2/2.3/2.4 tags. Visually, the player is so-so. In landscape mode all you get is a row of album art along with the zoom slider beneath it. In portrait mode, the player displays the album art of the current track along with controls and a slider that can be used to shuttle. In the bottom right corner is a flip button that will swap play controls for options to bookmark the current track or add it as a favorite, toggle repeat mode or adjust EQ settings. There is also a “quick list” above the flip button that pops open a small visual representation of the current, prior and next tracks. Beyond the touchscreen controls, playback can also be controlled with a centrally located play/pause hardware button on the top of the device, flanked by rewind/fast-forward and volume up/down buttons. These buttons can be used in various other modes as well.

It should be noted at this point that the audio quality on the S9 is incredible. No, seriously. It tops Apple’s iPod line hands down – we were pretty taken aback by it in fact. We tested the S9 with Apple’s iPhone headphones, a pair of noise isolating Shure buds and a pair of AKG studio cans. Each was better than the next. Though we haven’t had a chance yet to pair it up with a set of stereo Bluetooth headphones, we would certainly expect similar performance. We played with the EQ settings a bit and while there are plenty of user-configurable options, we found the rock preset to be just right for most types of music. With the AKGs plugged in and the volume cranked up to 33 out of 40, we were in music heaven – though a while longer at that level and we might have gone deaf. Oh, and it’s rated at 55 continuous hours of music playback… Mmmm, OLED.

In terms of pricing, COWON set a good price point for the currently-available 16GB model, $239.99, but we would have liked to see the 8GB come in a bit lower than $199.99 as it will be priced when shipments begin hitting the States. $239.99 puts the 16GB a healthy $60 below the similarly-sized iPod Touch while the 8GB model only affords a $30 savings over the 8GB iPod Touch. These prices also put the S9 well above the Zune, with 8GB and 16GB models coming in at $139 and $179 respectively, though we would hardly put the user experience of the Zune on par with the S9. All in all, the major question in debating between the S9 and an iPod Touch – beyond price – would come down to to a trade off: Do you want a connected PMP with a web browser, mail and apps, or would you rather have pure media player with superior audio quality, smaller size and a ridiculously long-lasting battery? Either answer is perfectly acceptable but in the age of the smartphone, many people already have their browsing and app-related needs covered pretty well. If that’s the case for you, then you may want to give the S9 a thorough consideration the next time you’re in the market for a PMP.

COWON S9 distributor product page

This right here people is the day you’ve been waiting for. The two best Windows Mobile devices out there; the Sony XPERIA X1 and the AT&T HTC Fuze. We put them head-to-head in a bunch of tests and categories just so we could help make your decision a little bit easier. They are both fabulous phones, both are manufactured by HTC, and both are practically identical in terms of hard specs. But which one comes out on top? Which one are you going to drop a weeks pay on? Well, hit the jump and see what’s really hood with the X1 and the Fuze!

Screen:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The XPERIA uses a WVGA resolution for it’s 800×480 display, and while it’s absolutely gorgeous, we couldn’t help but feel as if it might be a little too big. The menu items are pretty small, and while it’s ok to use if you’re banging away on the soft key buttons on the front of the device, it’s kind of tricky to use your finger to select these most of the time. What we love about the XPERIA’s display is that there are no grainy artifacts, and the screen barely requires any pressure to register input. Not a bad thing, a good thing. But that might come down to personal preference.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

Ah, good ol’ VGA. The Fuze rocks out with a 640×480 display, and while it’s not as roomy as the Sony X1, it’s more than big enough to cram whatever you want into the screen. Most applications look great in this resolution, and hey, even Skyfire works! The only downside about the Fuze’s screen is that while it’s very, very nice, it’s a little grainy if you want to get nitpicky, and the pressure required to register a touch can get a little annoying.

Keyboard:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1 makes use of a 3-row QWERTY keyboard (the fourth row being the spacebar, extra buttons like “OK”, etc). We said some pretty harsh words about it in our mini-review back in the day, but we’re actually loving the keyboard now. Our gripes were that the keys were a little too flush with the case, but it seems as if that has been cleared up now. The keyboard by no means protrudes, it’s still very flush, but it’s a lot better than the unit we toyed with previously and we have no problem banging out emails or IMs on here. The only complaint would probably have to be that there isn’t quite enough room to type 100% perfectly on the top row of keys. We would have loved a tiny bit more space in between the key and the front sliding mechanism, but once you get used to it, you’re pretty much good to go.

Final critique would have to be the backlighting. We understand the keys are metal and everything, but there is really no excuse. Once you have the layout sort of memorized you’ll make out alright, but the lighting is very dim unless you are in total darkness and it doesn’t even fully light up key like it should.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

The Fuze uses a 4-row QWERTY keyboard and is pretty much what you’d expect from HTC. The keys are not rubberized like they were on the Herald or Tilt, but they feel really good. There’s enough tactile feedback to minimize mistakes and the layout is near perfect. But there are a couple things that bug us, though… For starters, while we love AT&T for kicking the crap out of whoever designed the initial Touch Pro keyboard and making them add Start and OK buttons, there is also a negative. Instead of the numbers being at the top row of the device they are placed in a standard number pad format over the keys. That’s all well and fine, but what this did is push the letters to the side of the keys so they could fit the numbers in. If you’re not typing in perfect daylight this can kind of get annoying because when you go to hit a letter to type, you actually hit the very edge of the key and not the middle of it since the letters are pushed over. It’s not the end of the world, just a minor annoyance that we would have liked to be fixed. All in all, it’s a very good keyboard; one of the best keyboards on a Windows Mobile device

OS:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

While Sony doesn’t come close to offering anything like HTC’s TouchFLO 3D, they have made great use of something called “Panels.” There are about eight pre-loaded that range from the standard Windows Mobile homescreen, to a Google homescreen, to even a Facebook homescreen. The Facebook panel is straight up addicting. Like crack addicting. Really. Why do you think it took us so long to write this review? In addition to the aforementioned panels, there is also a music player panel, and customized homescreen ones where you can add in some RSS feeds and have them display right there. Very sneaky, very cool. Navigation on the XPERIA is just the regular Windows Mobile stuff, though, and Sony didn’t do much in terms of customizing the OS. For an expert WinMo user this is obviously not a problem, in fact, you might even prefer this, yet we can’t help but think how many additional sales Sony would have gotten if they had done a little more. Well, they probably would have got a lot more sales if the damn thing was shipping and wasn’t $800, so let’s not kid ourselves there.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

The Fuze uses HTC’s TouchFLO 3D which runs on top of the standard Windows Mobile junky OS. HTC has done wonders in this regard, and they don’t plan on stopping. If you’re not familiar with TouchFLO, you could sort of think it as a very complex skin, but the whole purpose of it is to minimize the actual user interaction with Windows Mobile as a whole. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. You can always just rip into the regular Windows Mobile until your heart is content, but TouchFLO is the best Windows Mobile experience out there. In the OS department, where the Fuze differs from the X1, is that HTC has pretty much combed through everything to try and bring it up to snuff. You can’t polish a turn (well, you actually can) yet HTC has been able to deliver an amazing product that makes Windows Mobile far more usable. For instance, the soft keyboards. Instead of having to slide the phone open like the XPERIA to enter text (unless you want to use the atrocious standard Windows Mobile keyboard, or one of the other rudimentary text entry options), you can just quickly touch type and be on your way. For a longer typing engagement, just slide out the keyboard. This approach works wonders, and it’s actually one of the big complaints we had with the T-Mobile G1.

Battery:

The X1 makes use of a 1500mAh battery while the Fuze uses a 1350mAh battery. No question which one lasts longer, right? Well, not so fast. We’d say they are practically equal in terms of battery life, and if they aren’t exactly equal, the Fuze beats the X1 by a tiny bit. This as usual depends on your usage patterns, but we found both handsets lasting well into the late evening from an early morning full charge. If you’re a power user, you’ll want to pickup a second battery or car charger for either device.

Connectivity:

Both handsets are practically identical in this regard — quad-band GSM/EDGE, tri-band HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IrDA, etc. We noticed that the Fuze holds onto a 3G signal a tad bit better than the X1 but this wasn’t really a concern as both units 99% of the time mirrored each other in the signal department, and both would hold onto low signals in fringe areas very well. The only part where we can see these two differing in the connectivity department would be Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi just plain sucks on the X1. We’re not sure why. It might be the placement of the Wi-Fi antenna, it might be the semi-metal casing — we’re just not sure. But even standing 5ft away from one of our wireless routers wouldn’t yield better than a 1-2 bar signal. Wi-Fi dropped every so often, and it just wasn’t a pleasant experience in general. The Fuze fared much better and we really don’t have anything to complain about there. At least in terms of connectivity.

Speed:

Hard specs on the X1a:

• 528MHz Qualcomm CPU
• 512/384MB ROM/RAM

Hard specs on the Fuze:

• 528MHz Qualcomm CPU
• 512/288MB ROM/RAM

As you can see, they are pretty much identical. But how do they fare in real world usage scenarios? It’s tough to compare them, but we’d say overall the Fuze is a tad bit more responsive and polished. Neither device has crashed on us so far, and that’s very impressive seeing as how we’ve put both through the ringer.

Sexiness:

Beauty is the eye of the beholder, right? This one’s going to be tough to judge as y’all probably have more than your own opinions (anyone ever looked at our comment sections before?), but if we had to give you our take, we’d say the X1 is simply the sexiest Windows Mobile device out there. That’s not an insult to HTC either, they built the thing. The Fuze is a little more understated from the front, but we love the diamond back, though some people would have preferred the flat one that didn’t pickup an ant’s fingerprints, we dig it.

The X1’s backside is a little too “Sonyish” for out tastes, it reeks of the P-series, and while that might not be a bad thing, it sort of takes away from the beautiful aspects of the phone. The triangle front navigation keys, the sexy-crafted angled aluminum keyboard, and the very sleek polished aluminum bezel around the handset.

The Fuze isn’t an ugly duckling, and the all polished device really looks professional yet sexy. The all black theme works wonders for it as well. And while the casing is metal on the Fuze, we’d have to go with chrome/polished aluminum over gun-metal glossy black. But hey, we’re just speaking for us. Go on with your bad self and lust over whichever device you want to!

Navigation:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1 uses the beloved (at least by us) optical joystick. You won’t see an onscreen cursor here, but you will be able to do pretty much all your navigating with the optical joystick. Some nice tweaks by Sony (or HTC, we might add) include using the optical joystick to scroll in the browser in a page up / page down mode instead of selecting individual items. This works great because you can scroll to wherever you want to go, and then when you need to actually select something, hit the up/down/left/right key and select with the optical joystick (yes, it’s a real button also, that pushes in). There are no arrow keys on the keyboard however, and at first this is pretty annoying. Once you get used to navigating with the optical joystick though, it’s really no problem. You just keep one hand on the joystick instead of on the non-existent arrow keys on the keyboard.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

Out of the box, the Fuze offers a 5-way directional pad with a circular touch wheel. The problem is that the touch wheel doesn’t really do anything besides zoom in and out in Opera, or increase text size in emails, and so on. To get it to work like a scroll wheel, you have to hit up XDA and get your freak on. That’s fine with us, but for the average user that just buys a phone and keeps it stock, that won’t work so well.

Touch:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1’s screen, like we said before, requires a much lighter touch to register touch input and this is really preferred in this neck of the woods. You get very fluid touch movements that are easy to control. This makes it more prone to user error if you aren’t careful, but once you get used to the thresholds, it’s very nice to use. The X1 does use a form of TouchFLO for scrolling, so you can simply swipe in any directions and phone will continue that touch interaction for you. One of the negatives about the touch screen really doesn’t have to do with the touch screen at all, rather how it’s placed. The screen isn’t flush with the casing, and while it doesn’t make or break the phone, it does make it a little annoying when you can’t seem to hit the start menu or “X” button just right because it’s sunk in the corner of case.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

HTC’s Fuze requires a stronger touch to register input, and while it’s cool that you can get away with lightly touching the screen to wipe it clean, or not accidentally hitting buttons while you are talking on the phone, we think it requires a little too much force. We’ve begged HTC to integrate capacitive touch screens into their Windows Mobile phones, and while that might be a pipe dream (there’s too many damn tiny check boxes in the OS to make a capacitive screen effective at this point), the touch should require so much… touch. The good news is that HTC’s screen is flush with the front panel and this makes our problems with the X1 seem like much bigger problems — the layout is great here on the Fuze.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, what phone is better? That’s the ultimate question isn’t it? I personally crowned the AT&T Fuze as the best Windows Mobile device out there. Am I sticking to it? More or less, yes. Here’s why… The XPERIA X1 is a fantastic Windows Mobile phone. But the more we use it and evaluate it, the more we think its target market shrinks. Not so much because the device is sub-par, it’s quite the opposite. It’s just that we feel the only consumers interested in the X1 will be prior Windows Mobile users that know what they are doing and know how to handle the shortcomings in WinMo. Then there’s the $800 price tag which will certainly push a huge segment of the target market away. Like real, real fast. Looking at both of them from a consumer’s perspective, there really isn’t any reason to not go with the Fuze. Even if you’re not on AT&T, paying $500 for an unlocked unit is still better than paying $800.

The Fuze offers a much more complete experience than the X1, and that combined with the price really makes this a winner. If we eliminated price altogether, which one would we choose? That’s really tough, folks. The fact is we’d be happy with either one of them, but at this point we’d probably just go ahead and choose the Fuze. It’s much more streamlined, the entire OS is cohesive in terms of what HTC has done (everything from the volume up/down screen, to the Connection Manager, to TouchFLO, to well, you get the point) and it’s just an all-around more usable phone out of the box. If you want to man up and get your hands dirty with customizing the X1 and making it suit your needs better, more power to you. We’ve pretty much raped this handset and got it up to snuff, we just don’t think that many people want to be bothered with doing that. Not with Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and the iPhone around.

The long-awaited first iPhone game from Cartoon Network’s [adult swim] has finally made it on to the iTunes AppStore for the iPhone and iPod Touch running the 2.0 firmware. As with all things [adult swim], this game mixes the comedy world, the gross and bloody world and the imagination world all at your fingertips.

From the AppStore description:
“Amateur Surgeon from [adult swim] puts all of your wildest surgery fantasies in the palm of your unwashed, unqualified hand. Use precision instruments such as a pizza cutter, salad tongs, stapler, and a car battery to hack your way through thirty different procedures and be the surgeon that your parents always knew you would never become.”

Also, please take note of the warning that is posted with the game. I personally think this makes it a more enticing download, but perhaps that’s just my sick and twisted personality.

Rated 17+ for the following:
Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes
Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
Frequent/Intense Profanity or Crude Humor
Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity
Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence
Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References

At this time, Amateur Surgeon is only available to the United States market, but expect a wide release in the next few days.

Download and Preview: Click Here (opens in iTunes)

The Sonim XP3 is dead and we have killed it. Thus begins our hands on review and the results of our torture test of the Sonim XP3 Enduro. Before we begin we wanted to give a big thanks to all of the BGR readers who posted suggestions. They were excellent! As for the tests we ended up choosing, we tried to stick to those that reflected what potential Sonim owners would encounter on a daily basis. Knowing that an elephant can step on it is one thing but it doesn’t help the folks who work (or play) outside in the rain and snow all day or those who are crazy adventurous enough to ride their motorcycle in the rain. Before we get to the results of the torture tests and how the Sonim stands up to its claim of being the worlds’ toughest phone, we wanted to give our overall impressions of the phone from a phone point of view. Hit the jump to see how the Sonim stacks up both as a phone and the world’s most durable device.

We know that most Sonim owners buy an XP3 because of its ruggedness and that quality is obvious from the moment you pick it up. It is a durable, solidly made phone – no question. The rubberized exterior resists scratching and provides the phone with a very “grip-able” feel. This is not a slippery phone by any means. The keypad and the D-pad on the front are responsive and have a nice feel to them. They are well constructed, not too stiff and not too loose. You would think the mechanism needed to create a waterproof seal would impact the functions of the keys but it surprisingly does not. The buttons on the sides are a tad bit harder to press, especially the push to talk button, but we don’t think they would be a hindrance for the more burly types. The display is color with a fairly low resolution (128×160) and the XP3 has a simple user interface with a home screen that changes depending on the theme that you select. The main menu screen has 9 icons arranged in three rows that give you access to the basic functions of the phone such as the call history, files, settings, and contacts.

The phone comes with all the standard features that you would expect to find on a feature phone, and even a few extra goodies thrown in. One such goodie is a built-in voice recorder that allows you to record both notes and phone calls. When you are on the phone, a few quick key presses and you can choose to record your side of the conversation, the other person’s side of the conversation or both sides of the conversation – a very handy feature if you need it. Unfortunately, the internal memory is limited and without MMS (more on that later) it is difficult to get the recordings off the phone. Sonim does provide PC sync software for this purpose but having to connect your phone to a computer is a bit of an inconvenience. If you wanted to store the recordings on your phone instead, the voice recordings were loud and clear when played through the Sonim’s speakerphone. One other extra is a built-in LED flashlight with a dedicated on/off button. With the press of a button, you have access to a fairly bright and infinitely useful flashlight.

The call quality on the phone was surprisingly good. The model we demoed was a European model that lacked the 850MHz band. We did not expect to get a good signal but as it turns out, we were presently surprised. We were able to hold on to the signal in areas where coverage was sparse and didn’t experience any difficulty at all when placing calls. Considering the handset was demoed in an area where GSM coverage is spotty at best, this is an impressive feat. The Sonim has a nice loud speakerphone and supports Bluetooth 1.1 so you can use it with a bluetooth headset. We successfully paired the Sonim with a Plantronics Voyager 510 (oldie but goody) and a BlueAnt Supertooth Lite Bluetooth speakerphone. As mentioned briefly above, the Sonim supports SMS but not MMS. We assume it was not included as the model we tested did not have an integrated camera but camera or no camera, it would have been nice to have MMS support to send along any voice recordings that we made or to receive multimedia files.

The XP3 also ships with Opera Mini installed which, in our opinion, may be fine for a quick search for a phone number or a person’s name but is not good for any type of extensive web browsing. You have a low resolution screen and a GPRS data connection, both of which preclude you from having even a moderately good browsing experience. Keep in mind that the Sonim XP3 Enduro that we demoed was a foreshadow of the US model that is slated to arrive in March 2009. The US model will rock a 3 megapixel camera and integrated GPS, both of which were lacking in the Enduro European Model that we tested. The upcoming Sonim will also have the US 850/1900 GSM bands with EDGE support. These additional features are like icing on the cake and will make the Sonim XP3 an awesome phone for anyone who demands a lot from a phone.

So ends our impressions of the phone side of the Sonim and brings us to the company’s claims of durability… Does it live up to its hype? We would have to answer with an unequivocal yes! The Sonim withstood tests that would have killed any other standard phone and even most ruggedized handsets. We shudder to think what would have become of a standard handset if it were to be so carelessly tossed into the washing machine like the Sonim.

The Sonim was on when it went into the wash and was still on when we pulled it out 40 minutes later. It also battled the elements and survived a freezing night of 18 degree weather and 16 hours being battered by the snow, sleet, and rain.

It then took a 30 minute swim in Mountain Dew, an idea that came to us after some Dew was spilled on an old BlackBerry Curve, which did not fare as well as the Sonim. The Sonim came out a bit sticky but fully functioning while the Curve still has a sticky “0″ key to this day.

Last but not the least the Sonim somehow managed to survive its battle with our 5,000-pound Chevy Suburban – almost. The first attempt to crush the Sonim with the SUV was not successful. The Sonim survived the weight of that behemoth not once but twice! A second attempt to get better footage of the SUV tires hitting the phone however, proved to be too much for it to bear. A much slower rollover of the phone caused the internal LCD to crack. The phone still worked flawlessly but the LCD, not so good.

Ultimately, the Sonim died an untimely death and the Achilles heel was not the Sonim’s construction per se, but user error. We washed the phone off by letting it soak for a few minutes in a bucket of water (how liberating it is to be able to do that) but failed to completely close the bottom flap that covers the charging port and headphone jack. With the flap only loosely closed, water seeped inside the phone and it has failed to work ever since. We would love to be able to tell you that we revived the phone after careful drying in front of a fire but it is too far gone and now sits lifeless in our office. Our final impression of the Sonim is that it is far and away one of the most rugged phones currently on the market and does indeed live up to its claim of being waterproof and able to withstand high impact drops. Though extremely durable, it is not infallible. It does have its limits and does require some diligence from its owner. If you want it to be waterproof for example, be sure to close that rubber flap tightly; check it and check it again. The one time you don’t will be the one time it falls overboard.

Sonim XP3 product page

The BlackBerry Storm. It feels like ages ago since  we first broke news of this bad boy, but the release is finally right around the corner. Literally, it’s tomorrow! Need we say more? Heck yeah! We’ve got a pretty substantial review on the device and we’ve even taken the time to compare the Vodafone units to the Verizon units since we’ve got both in our office. First impressions? No way, you’re going to have to hit the jump for that. Just make sure you’ve got a couple Ritalins in your system — we go in!

Screen (not including SurePress)

The capacitive screen on the BlackBerry Storm makes use of a gorgeous 480×360 display. That’s a full 40 pixels more than the iPhone/iPhone 3G, for those that are keeping score. While the screen isn’t as perfectly crisp and vibrant as the Bold, it’s definitely at the top of the list in terms of comparing it to other high-end smartphones. We’d much rather look at the Storm’s screen than even, let’s say, the Sony XPERIA’s. Even though for instance the Storm’s screen is basically half VGA compared to VGA, it just is more exciting to look at.

There’s one tiny, and we do mean tiny problem. You can see a checkered pattern of dots on top of the touch panel. Not below the digitizer or anything, right on top. There are around 18 x 12 dots (216) on the screen, presumably how the touch panel registers touch inputs. You can even see micro-fiber lines connecting the dots (har, har) and it looks like little “X”s on top of the screen. Now, these aren’t highly noticeable and we never even saw them until around the second day of use, but once you know they are there, they drive you crazy. Especially if you are a neat freak and keep thinking it’s dirt on your ‘Berry.

Build quality

We’re generally all around really impressed with the Storm’s build quality. The Bold was a little shady in some places and we’ve experienced plenty of problems regarding hardware failures there, but we’re pretty sure those things won’t occur on the Storm. You do have the most fragile part of the device front and center, and we’re not sure how resistive the capacitive screen (you like that?) will be to scratches and nicks. It’s not a cheap plastic material and it should fare decently well, though. Plus you can always get a screen protector if you’re really scurred.

If you shake the handset, there’s literally nothing that rumbles around. No buttons shake, the battery cover doesn’t move — it’s very solid. There are also no creaks whatsoever. It really feels like a tank, both in weight and in build quality. The silver bezel seems to be either the same material as the Bold or possibly a little better, though we wouldn’t count on that staying pristine if you ever drop it, scratch it, or anything else. You’ll most likely end up seeing the black plastic underneath the silver coating sooner or later.

For giggles we took apart one of our Vodafone Storms and were really surprised. It’s amazing that for the most part, RIM really refines their manufacturing and assembly process. We’d go out and venture to say that the Storm is probably RIM’s most solidly constructed BlackBerry in a very long time. Save for the adhesive that holds the bottom and top front panels on, this thing is iron-tight.

Feel

This is a little tricky… BlackBerrys have always been so comfortable to hold and use. The Storm is a little different. What really bothers us is the back of the device. The two metal battery latches on the two bottom rear sides makes the phone very uncomfortable to hold sometimes. Not when you hold it while “cupping your hand,” but when you hold it deep in your hand (like how I like to carry my Bold when it’s not in the holster), it sort of bothers you. The two rubber feet don’t bother us (though they do make the unit wobble if you try and type while it’s on a flat surface), but the metal latches really get in the way sometimes. The phone in general is incredibly solid-feeling, as we have come to expect from RIM. The screen assembly does feel a little cheap coincidentally though.

First, there’s the gap around the edges, likely necessary since the whole thing actually moves inward when pressed, but if you hold the screen with a finger and move your finger around, the screen will wobble back and forth. It’s not exactly a comforting feeling when everything else is so solidly constructed. The metal battery door is completely awesome and so necessary for all of you that abuse the crap out of your devices. Just think about your Curves and how scrizzy-scratched up those battery doors were! The right convenience key is placed a tiny bit too low for our comfort, and since this is made to be a one-handed device (at least in portrait mode), we kept thinking the unit would fall out of our hands whenever we tried to launch the camera using that key.

The Storm totally threw us for a loop at first. I had personally used a very, very early unit for literally probably 1-2 minutes a long time ago, but don’t remember it being this heavy. And don’t take that the wrong way, the phone isn’t necessarily snackin’ on McDonalds everyday, but it sort of messed with our minds as we expected it to be much lighter.

UI

There have definitely been some problems with the UI of the Storm, for us at least. We can’t help but feel like it was designed for three year-olds with tiny fingers. There’s been so many occasions where you think you are hitting the right selection but your touch registers the option below it. This makes it difficult to get things done sometimes because SurePress is effectively rendered useless in those situations. For instance, you want to hit Screen/Keyboard in options, yet it hits Security Options instead. Sure, you can slowly get the right selection down and then press in the screen. But if you’re in a hurry and just want to quickly browse, you should be prepared for some erroneous touch events.

Let’s talk about scrolling… There’s no “rubberband man” sexy scrolling here. Where your finger stops is where the scrolling stops. This is probably the single stupidest thing the Storm does. How in the hell are you supposed to scroll through an insanely long webpage? For instance, RIM’s sacrilegious terms and condition webpages when you want to download a RIM application. You want us to click the hardware menu key, scroll down the menu, click Show keyboard, and then finally use the space bar to help us down the page? RIM gives you up and down scroll buttons in some applications, but the one area where it is needed most (browser) is no where to be found.

RIM did the best they could here, but is it enough? We’re not sure. It’s sort of a wait-and-see thing, because it will depend on what your usage is like and how well you can adapt to a new user interface. It’s another one of those love-it-or-hate-it moments.

Hardware

RIM, Verizon, and Vodafone deserve massive lashings for the omission of Wi-Fi and a tri-band HSDPA radio. (Or the software-locked 2100MHz band at least, but we’ll cover that later). Like we said before, if you think you don’t need Wi-Fi, you are obviously not a smart person. It has nothing to do with the carrier’s data network. Yes, Verizon’s data network is better than AT&Ts. Congrats, VZW subscribers. The fact is that no carrier’s data network will ever compare to my 50Mbps cable modem or yours. Granted, the unit won’t come nearly close to those speeds if it had Wi-Fi, but still, a steady 3Mbps is a whole lot better than 500KBPS.

What about when your carrier is having data outages? No worries, just flip on that Wi-Fi switch, right? Wrong. What about when you travel for business or pleasure and the local coverage in that bad ass remote island location isn’t that great. Just flip on Wi-Fi since your hotel (or if you’re insane like us, you carry an Airport Express so you can Wi-Fi that shizz) offers Wi-Fi, right? Wrong. What happens when you work in a corporate office that gets horrible reception? Wi-Fi? Nope. What about when you’d like to connect your device to your home network, use VoIP applications, or just get a speedier web experience in general? You’re completely out of luck.

The removal of Wi-Fi (actually, a non-inclusion as RIM told us) in 2008 is absolutely atrocious and all three of those named above should be ashamed. Literally. It angers us that in this day and age carriers and manufacturers are still calling the shots for us, treating carriers as customers instead of customers as customers. This hasn’t been Verizon’s first crippling, and we anticipate it will not be their last. You can bet your ass on one thing though, if AT&T gets a version of the Storm, Storm 2, Storm 7, or what have you, it will certainly have Wi-Fi. It’s been confirmed to us by sources at RIM that what we said about Wi-Fi was absolutely correct: it’s not that there wasn’t room on the circuit board for the Wi-Fi chip, it’s that the carriers completely requested it to be not included.

The tri-band radio is another one of those situations. Listen, VZW, If someone wants to go and buy a Storm at full price from you and unlock the crap out of it, make your $100-$200 on the unit and keep it moving. That person wasn’t going to port their number over to you anyway if they are buying it outright to use on another network, so stop worrying about “lost revenue on data plans.” Make your easy money, and keep it movin’. If nothing else, that person’s Storm is Verizon-branded — free advertising. But, no, there is not a user-accessible tri-band HSDPA radio in the Storm, so anyone wishing to use an unlocked Vodafone unit will have to settle for EDGE and no Wi-Fi. Sorry, friends.

SurePress / Typing

This is going to be a hate or love it experience again, and we really aren’t feeling it since we’re power users. We would have loved a straight capacitive screen here. The button presses get tiring after you type a lot and we find that we just want to type less in general than we do on our Bolds and Curves. (I’m not going to out the one lone writer here at BGR who still has a Curve.) Here’s the issue… if you’re in SureType mode it’s not that bad, but when you switch to landscape mode, your finger covers up the letters and blue halo does little to reassure you what letter you’ve selected. The other issue is the actual hardware. I took apart the unit and found that there is one button in the middle of the screen which explains why it is so damn hard to press the screen on the edges. If you need to type an “a” key or “z” key or even select a menu option that’s on the edge of the screen, you will have to press very, very hard. This makes it really a chore to use sometimes.

The auto-correction on here is a total joke and barely works for anything we’re trying to type, and you just can’t type fast. Your typing speed is hardware-limited.

Not all is bad though… for anyone who loves their BlackBerry shortcuts (T for top, R for reply, etc.) those can all be done via the on screen keyboard when it’s shown. The shortcuts even work in SureType mode but you’ll have to remember what they are since they are different.

Gestures

While there’s pretty much no multi-touch support, besides maybe copy and paste (a royal pain in the ass to use effectively, but better than nothing), the Storm incorporates a ton of useful gestures to help make navigating easier. For instance, you can swipe left or right to flip through emails, texts, BlackBerry Messenger conversations, IMs, etc. There’s also gestures to show and hide the virtual keyboards. To pull up the keyboards you can either go into the menu and “show keyboard” or you can simply put your finger at the bottom of the screen and flick up. To hide it, you just flick down.Very, very useful when you don’t want to have to go hit the menu key, scroll down, and finally click, “Show keyboard.”

Gestures are also implemented in the photo browser so you’re able to swipe through your pictures with no problem at all. It sometimes doesn’t register correctly and you have to be a lot more precise than when using the same gestures on an iPhone let’s say, but it does work fine. To our surprise, the left/right swipe gestures actually don’t work in the browser for some reason. Not really sure why not, but it’s sort of hit or miss with what applications will accept gestures and which ones won’t.

Voice calling

It’s funny because the first time I went into the phone application, I couldn’t get the thing to dial a number. Quickly I realized that you had to physically push down on the screen, and all was well from there. Dialing phone numbers is actually our favorite part of the device. It just gives you a really reassuring feeling that you can quickly bang out a phone call without screwing up the number and having to retrace your steps. Verizon’s cellular network hand in hand with the Storm provide an absolutely pleasurable calling experience. Phone calls were crisp, clear, and the interface is really well designed. You’ve got speaker, mute, flash, and add participant keys right on the screen. At the bottom where the shortcut keys are always at, you have options for the dial pad, notes application, home screen, calendar and contacts. We had no problem multi-tasking while on a phone call, but not being able to use voice and data at the same time is really a problem once you’ve gotten used to it. Heck, our Messenger status won’t even say “On the Phone” anymore! Single tear.

Reception

Here’s a shocker… the Vodafone unit constantly got 2-3 bars of EDGE reception on AT&T while every other AT&T device got 5 bars in the same location. Makes absolutely no sense, right? We’re going to wait until the unit is unlocked and not using a Vodafone SIM, but definitely not a great first start. As far as the Verizon unit goes… we’re seeing better results but not absolutely perfect signal pickup. Hopefully it’s because Verizon gave us not final software (more on that later) but this isn’t the best start. Again, in locations we’d get 4 bars of Verizon service (and 4 bars on a Verizon data card), we’re constantly seeing 2-3 bars with possibly a fluctuation of 4 bars at times. This is a BlackBerry. RF is what they do! We’re really not sure what’s the deal here, but we’ve got some emails out to Verizon and RIM to find out what’s up. Something might be up with how the unit shows 1X signal and EV-DO signal. On regular Verizon phones, you usually get dual indicators, and on BlackBerrys you just get the highest data network indicator, so maybe that has something to do with it?

Browser

We’re sorry, WebKit, what? There’s no way in hell this thing is based on WebKit (contrary to rumors from a little while ago) because honestly, it’s the same exact browser that’s on the Bold. Problems loading large pages, death by JavaScript, and so on. Now, the browser isn’t terrible and if you are keeping score, it’s the best browser RIM has ever offered. We just don’t think that’s enough in this day and age, especially when you are trying to go head-to-head with you-know-what. It’s true. Can the browser get you by? Sure. Is it something you want to use? Not so much.

One of the main gripes with the browser is navigation. In most applications there are scroll up and scroll down keys at the bottom of the screen. This is completely necessary in the browser and it’s not available here. What makes matters worse is that like we mentioned, scrolling stops when your finger stops. If you have to scroll down an entire decently-sized webpage, you might need to check yourself an appointment with a BlackBerry thumb / finger therapist because it’s tiring! An easy trick is to flick up the on screen keyboard and use the space key to page down, but what’s the fun in that? We want real scrolling on here.

As you can see in the screenshots, it was hit or miss with some sites with images sometimes not loading at all, and we’ve got plently of “An error has occured” messages when trying to browse the internet on here. We’re also not happy with the fact that the double tap doesn’t really work that well. You might have to play around with the touch settings in Options to try and fix this, but on more than one occasion when we double tapped, and then tried to select a link, the unit zoomed in again. Content doesn’t reformat for the screen all that well, and is again, hit or miss.

Media Player

RIM’s media player on the device really isn’t all too bad. It’s no iPod but we get a weird sense of joy when we use it. Maybe it’s the way it’s structured or the great blue and black theme, but it works, has minimal issues, and did we mention it works? MP3 playing on here is great. You get full screen album art (well, almost fullscreen) when in portrait mode, and when you turn the device into landscape mode, the content resizes to 100% of the media player window without changing the image proportions (read: stretching, distortion).

Videos look absolutely stunning on here. Probably one of the best video experiences on a mobile device we’ve seen, and probably better than the Bold. First off, the screen is larger, but there’s more than that. Content looks sharp, detailed, has a great contrast ratio, and all around looks almost HD quality. Obviously the quality will depend on the original source and conversion settings you use, but if you’re impressed by the sample video on there, you’ll be blown away when you load in your own video that you’ve encoded in high quality. Great job, RIM.

Applications

We’ll start this up with the first thing you see when you turn the device on… Setup Wizard! God knows how we loathe this damn thing and how annoying it is, but we have to admit, this tweaked version is just what the doctor ordered for any new BlackBerry user. Something about the touch input makes this version of Setup Wizard feel 10x better than other ones. It’s definitely great for someone that has no idea what they are doing and just starting out.

Let’s get negative for a second. The Application Center is probably the stupidest thing we’ve ever seen attempted by RIM. It honestly is. First off, it’s carrier-driven, meaning you can kiss all those applications that matter good bye. That’s not the worst part, though. The kicker is that while it shows a list of applications to install, and show you when upgrades are available, you still have to go in the browser to download them! And we’re not talking like, launch the browser, click one button. We’re talking about accepting RIM’s nutjob three pages of terms and conditions! Absolutely a complete failure and not even worth the effort. Just hit up mobile.blackberry.com and save yourself the trouble. Really, really disappointing.

Brickbreaker and WordMole have been upgraded to take advantage of the new touch-input interface. For Brickbreaker, instead of using a trackball, you now use your finger to guide the paddle. There’s about 1/8th of the screen dedicated to the area where you use your finger, and honestly, we find that we’re better at Brickbreaker this way. It offers more control to the user and is much more precise than using a trackball. Nothing will beat Brickbreaker on the 8700 with the trackwheel, though. Everz.

WordMole, instead of using the trackball to select letters to spell, lets you use your finger to select them. It totally speeds up how fast you can bang out complete words and we’ve gone from 44 second rounds to around 35 second rounds in some cases. Totally hot.

Verizon’s VZ Navigator (we love you, Verizon!) is probably the worst GPS application I personally have ever seen on a BlackBerry. Not joking. It’s visually disgusting and you’re probably better off asking the random guy on the corner of 42th and 5th for directions. We’ll have to wait and see which companies can step up to the plate since the touch screen input is a whole new ballgame. We have faith in our buddies at TeleNav, though!

OS

We’ve said this along, and it’s true. The Storm is a Bold with a touch screen. That’s not necessarily bad, but it doesn’t bode well for RIM who really needs to step their OS up with so many new competitors. The iPhone is popular for a reason. Yes, it’s an Apple product. But getting beyond that, there’s a complete almost desktop-class OS on there that has limitless possibilities. From the networking stack, to the SDK, to the UI, to Safari, they’ve got a pretty serious thing going on. 4.7 is 4.6 is 4.5 is 4.2 more or less. The fundamentals are the same, and the way the OS works is the same. It’s great if you love the default applications and have no complaints, but until RIM really steps the OS up and gives developers the right APIs they need to access you’re not going to see any good 3rd party applications. Yeah, we said it! It’s a pretty bad thing when all the developers that want to develop great applications (SlingMedia, Qik, Skyfire) all need RIM’s assistance because they can’t develop anything on their own.

Specifically talking about the Verizon OS version (4.7.0.65), we’ve experienced a ton of issues with the operating system. (Our Vodafone Storm is also running 4.7.0.65 coincidentally.) The phone sometimes gets hung up if you try and switch the orientation in the middle of typing in a text field and will show a garbled image. Sometimes half of the portrait screen and half of the landscape screen. Then there’s the camera application which has either launched instantly, or taken almost 25 seconds at times with again, a garbled screen image and redraw issues. There’s also a really big bug where if you have a password on your device and go to type it to unlock the phone in portrait mode, after typing the “WXYZ” key, or 9, the phone will ask if you want to make an emergency call. To get around this you have to switch the device to landscape mode and use the full QWERTY keyboard to enter the password.

What’s strange is that Verizon and RIM, (RIM hesitated, though) confirmed that 4.7.0.65 was the release the unit would be shipping with and that’s the OS on all our models, but we know for a fact there were newer builds floating around and getting flashed on the retail units for Friday. What’s more, the product sticker on the retail box our Storm came in has an OS version of 4.7.0.82. Pretty stupid of them to give us not final software units to review, right? We’d go and hunt down the .82 release but then we’d be basing our review on something all our friends didn’t have and that wouldn’t be fair. If anything in here is incorrect, blame it on the fact that we got a crappy beta OS version on our review units. Not smart.

Social Networks and communication

There’s just this thing about RIM’s BlackBerrys that you can’t shake; they are the best devices in the world to keep connected. The ease of snapping a picture and sending it to a BlackBerry Messenger buddy, or to Facebook, or to Yahoo IM is just remarkable. It really lets you communicate more than text so effortlessly and the Storm is no exception. Take the usability factor out of the equation for now. The BlackBerry Storm on Verizon supports AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and BlackBerry Messenger. Plus those are all more or less the best versions of those mobile applications when comparing them to other devices.

If you can’t stay connected to the people you need to on a Verizon Storm, you’ve got serious issues. Looking at the instant messaging clients, you’ll see a very clean and much welcome redesign. The shortcut keys on the bottom are very necessary and helpful, as is the scroll buttons. Plus we love the added space underneath the conversation windows so you can actually see a preview of a message someone else sent you. On a Bold, or Curve, you only saw the person’s name or screen name.

Daily use

We’ve used two storms over the past four days constantly. First a Vodafone unit for two, and then a Verizon until now. We’d say there’s pretty much nothing we don’t know how to do on here. 90% of it was figured out because it’s pretty self-explanatory, and then when we met with Verizon and RIM they gave us the ill-na-na tips and tricks. In terms of everyday use, this is again going to depend on how much you need to get done, and how much time you have for errors. Make no mistake about it, you will mess up when typing a whole lot more than on your Bold or Curve, and you will have bugs and errors with the device in its current state. Plus, without similtaneous voice and data, it’s rather difficult to keep a hectic workflow going if you’re on the move and always on the phone. The good thing is that this is, afterall, a BlackBerry, and once you get past accepting that there will be some hiccups, it’s really not all that bad. It’s a great phone, a very good device for email, a really good media player, and a decent web browsing machine. You’ll just have to decide what your priorities are in a mobile device and see if the Storms meets that.

There were no catastrophic problems in our daily usage of either device (anyone remember the iPhone 2.0 software actually crashing and you’d have to restore when you were away from a computer?), and if we hit some errors or bugs, a simple battery pull usually resolved them.

Battery

The Storm ships with a 1400mAh battery. It’s also a totally new model battery that is compatible only with the Curve 8900. Well, the obvious question is, is it enough? Possibly. The first day we used the phone with a full charge, we quickly found our battery depleting faster than we had hoped. There wasn’t even any voice-calling done. Absolutely zero. Just email, BlackBerry Messenger, little MP3 playing, and some light web browsing. If we started the day at 9AM, the unit had around 20% battery life by 4PM. That’s worse than the Bold. Granted, CDMA devices get less battery life than GSM devices in general, so we’re guessing this has something to do with it. Still, we had hoped for more, and if you’re a power user, we strongly recommend you picking up a second battery and an external battery charger. Throw in a car charger and an extra travel charger while you’re at it. We’re just kidding. Kind of.

Remember that we aren’t big on talking on our BlackBerrys so we didn’t really do any hardcore voice-battery testing, just more or less data!

Gripes

This might just be me personally, but I absolutely hate the fact you can not disable auto-rotation of the screen. There are so many times I just want the screen to be in portrait mode and not flip on me that it’s ridiculous. Even when the phone is locked it will still switch orientation on you. It just doesn’t make sense to give the accelorometer permission to move about the cabin all the time. The web browser is one key area here but it’s OS-wide. Sometimes you just want to use SureType because you want to use one hand to type. I had never thought about this, but RIM and Verizon informed us that in the phone application, auto-rotation is disabled and there might be a couple more apps that do disable auto-rotation. Thank the lord! One of them joked that on really early builds the auto-rotation in general would go 360 degrees around (FAIL) and they didn’t want people to start making phone calls with the phone upside down. We laughed.

Besides the auto-rotation, we really have to nitpick about Wi-Fi and tri-band HSDPA. That would have made this an unstopable device even if its difficult to use sometimes. Additionally, we’re not too impressed with the camera on here. Pictures come out very washed out, and while the auto-focus helps, many of our beloved camera shortcuts are gone. The space key used to turn the flash on, off, or to automatic, and sadly, there is no shortcut for that. You’ll have to manually set it in options which is a royal pain in the ass. One neat feature is that the volume up and down buttons also serve as zoom in / zoom out buttons, so they dropped one shortcut but added another.

Something else that is incredibly annoying is the fact that your data coverage indicator, not the actual bars of reception, drop in some applications. For instance, in BlackBerry Messenger, you won’t see 1XEV or EDGE, you’ll just see bars of service. This might not seem like a big deal to some, but as someone who is always paranoid about the data connectivity status, this really bugs the hell out of me.

Vodafone-specific:

Contrary to public belief, the unit in the teaser video we posted was not a Verizon unit, it was a Vodafone unit our good friend Marc J. brought us from London. (Dude literally flew here, landed, gave us the Storms and hopped back on a plane to the U.K. two hours later. The definition of a BGR ninja. If you know who we’re talking about make sure you buy him a round of beers at the pub!) The Vodafone units that were shipped to retail are running 4.7.0.65 and are incredible buggy, much like the Verizon unit we have. Forget the screen taking forever to correctly orient itself, the screen would show garbled images when you tried and flip from portrait to landscape sometimes. This wasn’t a regular occurrence all the time, but you could definitely get the feel that the OS was rushed and not a release candidate of what we’d expect from RIM. Same thing that happened with the Bold.

Verizon-specific:

On the Verizon unit you’ve got Visual Voicemail, a first for any BlackBerry, and you’ve got VZ Navigator both pre-loaded. Verizon informed us that since Visual Voicemail is an added monthly feature you have to pay for, it has to be added on your line. The cool part (and great business tactic) is that you can do it right from the device so you don’t have to call in and go through that hassle. Another great feature of Verizon’s Visual Voicemail is the ability to forward a voicemail via email (as a .wav attachment). Another thing we love about the Verizon unit is the theme. Thank the lord above they didn’t mess with success and insist their horrid default themes were on here, because that would have been a major turn off. One difference is with the application center, and the applications. While the YouTube application (which works rather well, even on EDGE) is included with the Vodafone app center, it’s not on Verizons. Google Maps also gets 86′d from the app center on Verizon, but you can always download that directly, and it will work perfectly fine.

The last difference would probably be how Verizon’s unit lets you selectively set CDMA, GSM, or both (Global) while the Vodafone 9500 unit only allows GSM. All in all, they are 99% the same!

FAQ:

Here’s of some of the smarter, and er, more stupid questions that have people have been asking from day one:

Q: Is the Verizon 9530 identical to the Vodafone 9500?

A: More or less, yes, except for the CDMA chip. According to FCC documents, the CDMA circuitry is actually not in the 9500. That means if you roam in the U.S., you coincidentally will be on either T-Mobile or AT&T and not Verizon. Funny, right? RIM told us that was Vodafone’s request. We also found out that if you travel to another CDMA network in a different country with a 9530, (Canada for instance) you can roam on Telus or Bell’s network since Verizon has those roaming agreements. You’d also be able to manually select Rogers if you wanted to get excited.

Q: Can the 9500/9530 be unlocked?

A: We know for a fact that Vodafone will not be giving out unlock codes, at least in the U.K. as the phone is exclusive to them. We heard people had a ton of trouble getting unlock codes for the BlackBerry 8830 and we’d guess the Storm is in the same boat. That said, the units physically can be unlocked, but you’re better off not going through the respective carriers to get it done since they probably won’t help you all that much. Good luck.

Q: Is there really a “gap” in between the SurePress screen and the housing?

A: Yes, didn’t you read above? It’s definitely there, and while we wish RIM would have minimilized this, we really don’t think this is going to be a major issue. Sure some dust and grizime will get in, but that’s normal and we’d assume thought of during hardware testing. We don’t think it’s a big problem, but it would be nice if the screen didn’t wobble all over the place.

Q: Is the GPS locked down like typical Verizon BlackBerrys?

A: Kind of… The Verizon Storm’s A-GPS is locked to Verizon (the tech that speeds up getting a GPS fix by using the cellular network to triangulate your approximate position) but the actual GPS chip is not. That means you’re free to use any BlackBerry GPS application your hearts desire without any worry of Big Red crippling your dreams.

Q: Is the Storm coming to any other carriers?

A: At this time, no. The full list of carriers is Verizon, Vodafone, Bell, and Telus. That’s it for now. There’s a GSM/HSDPA one in the works which we’d expect to hit AT&T and Rogers with Wi-Fi but that’s a good ways away. Most likely Q2 or Q3 of 2009.

Q: Are you positive that Verizon/Vodafone made RIM remove Wi-Fi at its request?

A. Yes, 100% positive. Verizon’s official statement was something along the lines of, “We’re always looking at additional features and would love to have future devices [BlackBerrys] with Wi-Fi.” If it is any consilation, RIM told us that from the start there was never a Storm with Wi-Fi planned. It was axed from the getgo.

Q. Ok fine, what about the tri-band HSDPA radio? Is there a tri-band UMTS chip in there but the 850MHz/1900MHz bands are software-blocked?

A. Well, software and maybe a little hardware we suppose. The pre-production units all ran 850/1900/2100MHz, and we’ve never seen RIM swap in different chips at the last minute, yet RIM told us there was definitely nothing else in there than the 2100MHz band. Verizon also told us that the Qualcomm chip only supports 2100MHz, but that didn’t make sense to us. We believe them, it just doesn’t make sense…

Q: Honestly guys, why are you so biased? You love the iPhone and secretly call Steve Jobs at his home to talk about plans to conspire against RIM.

A: We’re not and we don’t. We love RIM. They’re our favorite company and we give them a hard time because we expect only the best from them. When they screw up, we give them crap about it. Customers shouldn’t settle for mediocre OS releases riddled with bugs, constant delays and constant push backs from a company that has historically been one of the most solid and reliable. Simple as that.

Conclusion

Here’s our honest to god non-biased conclusion… this is the best phone to ever touch Verizon Wireless so far. If you’re a Verizon Wireless subscriber and a dumb phone won’t cut it, you’d be pretty air-headed to not pick this bad boy up above any other smartphone in Verizon’s lineup. It’s the “realest” touch screen Verizon has ever got. Not a piece of crap Voyager or Dare, but a real usable smartphone, depending on your needs. That includes Windows Mobile phones on Verizon for the most part, unless you’re a tech geek that knows what you are doing, then we give you a pass. Please also remember we’re saying this based on Verizon’s current lineup and we’re assuming you have one of Verizon’s less-than-stellar feature-phones. If you have the patience to wait for a Niagara, then god bless you.

The tricky part gets into whether you should switch carriers for the phone like a lot of you are considering. That’s obviously a personal judgment you have to make, but we wouldn’t trade our Bolds in for Storms if you paid us. Like a lot of money. Like, six figures. It’s not that the Storm is a piece of junk for the most part, it’s that it goes against everything a BlackBerry stands for… Quick. Easy. Effortless. The touch screen on the Storm complicates the simplest of tasks sometimes, you lose that lightning fast BlackBerry crack-addict mentality, at least to us.

The whole point of a BlackBerry and what BlackBerry users bragged about to their co-workers, friends and family to was that a BlackBerry was straight-forward and completely uncomplicated. The Storm complicates things. There’s not one thing you can do faster on a Storm than you can on a Bold. Typing is mediocre at best, and to tell you the truth, it really does get tiring at times. It’s not something we can bang out 250-word emails on like we can on every other QWERTY BlackBerry in the past. It hinders your mobile device experience, in our opinion, if you are a raging lunatic on your BlackBerry. It just doesn’t compare to the BlackBerry Bold. At least not in the current incarnation.

At the end of the day, if you’ve been eyeing the Storm, we suggest you either go play with a demo unit at a store, or go ahead and buy one. That way you’ll be able to decide for yourself if you really love the thing, or maybe just don’t care for it. This isn’t a cookie-cutter device, and it’s not for everyone. That said, we’re sure these things are going to fly off the shelves at Verizon stores on Friday, we just have a feeling there will also be a lot of returns.

Sure, we hit up the press event and got some early hands on action, but there’s nothing like a really solid review, right? We’ve been using the T-Mobile G1 for around a week and we’ve literally combed through the entire device. So much so that we split up the sections piece by piece and separated it into hardware and software. If you’ve got a G1 on the way or are passionately considering scoopin’ one up, you are out of luck they are all sold out might want to take a gander at what we’ve put together.

Hardware:

The hardware part is a little tricky. The phone has supposedly been in development for years, yet we can’t get beyond the feeling that this device is a little bit too prematurely at the prime-time stage. The black model especially just looks like a prototype in a couple areas. One being the four physical buttons on the banana end of the handset. Those are send, home, back and end/power. While the tactile feedback of those buttons is fine, you often times try and select one, and it doesn’t register anything. That’s because of the small size and physical surroundings if you will. They are basically flush with the case, thus making it difficult sometimes to accurately push one of them.

The screen is very crisp and actually offers the second best touch-screen experience ever, yes, compared to the iPhone at number one. For all you Storm lovers, we haven’t officially reviewed the Storm yet so that is why it’s not in this list if it did in fact make it on. It’s a capacitive screen which means that force isn’t necessary. Essentially the touch panel registers the minute electrical pulses in your fingers instead of looking for an actual physical touch input. That works great and we’re happy to say the screen has a high-quality feel all around. It’s not glass, rather a very hard plastic which we love using.

Now onto the probably one of the G1’s biggest features — keyboard time! There are two parts to this; the keyboard is better than most, but not quite perfect. The reason is that the keys are about 1-2mm too flush with the case. There is a bunch of room under the flip, and we really would have loved to see HTC jump up the ‘board a little bit. If they could, they probably would, so it’s most likely not their fault, but that would have made for one of the nicest QWERTY typing experiences to come along in a pretty long time. The layout is completely fine and you won’t have any trouble navigating at all. That includes a very clean white backlighting on the keys and the actual hard/soft plastic feel the physical keys have.

When you take the battery cover off the G1, the first thing you might see is the vibrate mechanism. It’s actually the first time we’ve ever seen one exposed on a mobile device and it gives off a weird vibrate feeling. It’s sort of a rough ass vibrate that makes you feel like the phone is going to explode. Ok, well maybe not that bad, but we guess a stronger vibrate is better than a weak one? That’s what she said.

The speakers are another big important feature of the G1 as this is pretty much a consumer-targeted phone. The placement is again, (noticing a trend here?) flush with the casing. There’s a tiny raised dot which theoretically would help divert sound off a flat surface when resting your phone on, but it honestly does little to remedy the muffled sound you’ll get. The actual speakers are pretty decent when not on a flat surface, but we had trouble hearing alert sounds when the phone wasn’t right next to us or when it was in a pocket.

The camera isn’t all too bad, but for some reason we were expecting more out of a 3 megapixel + camera. Performance even in daylight didn’t work out too well for us, and pictures never got that sharp and crisp look we were looking forward to. Forgot about low-light performance. Without a flash, that’s a non-starter.

Now, onto the actual flip mechanism… it works very well. HTC has made this thing really durable and it slides out with ease, and the same goes for closing it. It’s pretty violent (read: not smooth) but we don’t have any qualms about it. Put it like this… if people are experiencing hardware problems with the G1, we highly doubt it will be with the flip assembly.

Summing up the hardware bit, we’ve just got to get this out of the way; WHY IN THE HELL IS THE DAMN THING ANGLED AT THE BOTTOM LIKE A BANANA? Can someone please enlighten us? This does absolutely nothing for the handset, it just makes its more difficult to hold and carry in a pocket or something else. It really annoys the crap out of us that it isn’t just flat. Heck, everything on the device is flat — buttons, camera, speakers — why not keep in the tradition of flatness?

Software:

There’s no real task manager. Sure, you hold the home button and get a recent list of open apps, and you can install a 3rd party program that makes it easier to switch applications with shortcut keys, but still, sometimes you just want to completely close something. In all fairness, the G1 and specifically Android does a pretty decent job at managing memory, but we have run into a couple “wait for application to respond or close” errors while putting the phone through it’s paces.

We realize this is just the beginning and we’ve got more hope in the platform itself than we ever had before, but for something that was being cooked up for so long, and something practically started by the Sidekick king himself, we can’t understand why there are so many general inconsistencies and non-existent functions.

For instance, the device has an LED in the earpiece to designate charging status (orange for charging, green for full), yet that can’t be used as a notification light for missed events. There’s no keyboard options like key repeat rate, delay, no trackball sensitivity options, and worst of all, when you set a lock for the device, there’s no timeout option! Let’s repeat this. When you set a lock password for the phone, which isn’t a password at all, it’s a specific drawing on the screen which is pretty cool yet highly insecure, the phone will lock and require a password each and every time the screen goes off. For people who the screen set to a 15 second or 30 second timeout, that means you’ll have to unlock the phone by pressing the power button, the menu button, and then drawing your pass-phrase on the screen every single time. Absolutely ridiculous we say.

We’ll explain the inconsistencies for you so you know what to expect and get an idea for how we say the phone is definitely v1. In maps, you can press menu + z to bring up the zoom keys, but you can’t do that in any other application like the web browser, for instance. Just plain stupid. Android could be at least 40% better if all these inconsistencies were addressed and actually let you do more with less, instead of making you work harder to get to the same place.

What about an on-screen keyboard? You’re out of luck. It’s way stupid in our opinion that you can’t pull up a T9 layout and fire off some quick 4 or 5 letter word to a friend in an SMS. You are forced to slide the phone open, and bang out your sentences using the physical keyboard. This can get extremely tiring seeing as there’s practically no way to send off a quick message when it’s closed. Heck, we would have ever appreciated some canned pre-loaded responses. That would have probably held us over for a bit, but nope, there’s no way to basically enter any information other than dialing a number when the phone is closed.

Let’s look at Wi-Fi on the G1… it works pretty well most of the time, but we have run into a couple occasions of the phone staying connected to a much weaker saved network rather than switching to a stronger saved one. The biggest issue you’ll run into using Wi-Fi on here is that it absolutely murders the battery. Even when the phone is locked your battery is dying rather quickly. You’d be lucky to get around three hours of semi-rough usage with Wi-Fi. On the other hand, if Wi-Fi is off, the battery life should really impress you. It’s got a 1150mAh battery which is definitely decent and should power you though the day. We were just a little depressed about the Wi-Fi situation as our Bold and iPhone are both on Wi-Fi and have no issues whatsoever, especially when they are just in standby mode.

Phone calling is pretty straightforward here, and the speakerphone sounds great when it’s not obstructed. The interface is clean and is one of the areas where the G1 looks really, really polished. It’s semi-iPhone like with a swap call button, merge call button, speakerphone button, and keypad button. Call quality was also very good with the G1 in our limited calling tests.

One of favorite applications on the G1 is the SMS app. It’s just very natural to use and makes texting seem fun again. You could think of it as a unified MMS/SMS inbox since everything that is sent to you will show up in message threads in that application. It’s very natural and logical to have such a clean interface where text messages along with photo messages, audio, voice notes, and slides all are seen in one conversation. Big ups to Google for that one, we likes. But what about email? We’re sad to report that emailing is probably one of the worst things the G1 does. It’s clunky, slow, and unresponsive if you are on EDGE. Plus shortcuts are pretty much non-existent.

But, if we go back to the whole unity thing for a second, we’re just not sure why Sidekick king failed to address the issues of inconsistencies and a general lack of usability in some areas, while adding great features in others. Unless we’re seriously missing something, and we doubt we are, there’s no way to instantly flip in between messages, or anything like that. On a Sidekick you have the left and right shoulder buttons to flip through conversations in an application and that applied to every application; IM, SMS, email, even the web browser. But there’s nothing like it here. What’s the point of having 4 dedicated hardware buttons and a full keyboard when there’s basically no shortcuts? It really hinders the overall user experience and will cause people a lot of unnecessary headaches.

Speaking of instant messaging, how is it? As far as smartphones go, it’s one of the worst experiences we’ve had. Google Talk is the best out of AIM, Yahoo, Live Messenger and Gtalk (no surprises there, right?) but it’s still not that good. Reconnects rarely worked for us, we would get signed in and out for no reason, you can’t hide offline buddies, and while you can press menu + space to flip between conversations, the whole thing is clunky at best. So, how are the rest? They work over SMS, people. Utter. Fail. One of the stupidest things we’ve seen in a long, long time. Now, there’s been some debate over AIM and the other clients using data or SMS, but even if they don’t use SMS they are still horrible. Messages take forever to come in, you have very limited options in terms of communicating (read: text only, no media), and again, reconnects aren’t smooth. This should be the “killer app” on the G1 out of the box. Yes, there will be 3rd party solutions, but that doesn’t negate the fact that so many things are just unpolished and rushed here.

There’s the whole theory that basically anything can be added by a 3rd party developer, and for the most part that’s true. We’ve seen applications wonderfully throw themselves in the mix on the phone, and that was incredibly refreshing to see. But, when you have a base package and are leaving a lot of what makes an OS great (intuitiveness, cohesion, user-interface, consistency, and polish) to 3rd party developers, that’s probably not the smartest idea. Why? Well, you might like green and your friend likes blue. Someone might like a putrid mix of green blue and yellow, too. Just because what one developer thinks is the right way to craft a UI for something doesn’t mean another one will feel the same way. That’s going to be the biggest uphill battle for Android in our opinion. Forget about the corporate market for a second, think about how fluid the iPhone is. Heck, think about how consistent a BlackBerry is? Since your first BlackBerry up until now, did you ever have to look at it twice, or did you instantly know what you were doing? Now take the fact that nothing is seamless across even Google’s own OS applications, and let’s now throw in about 5 different form-factors, and 15 different hardware configurations, and 3 different navigational configurations. See what we’re getting at?

How in the world could someone perfect the Android experience across that broad range of hardware when even the first unit doesn’t do that? In the meantime, we think the up-and-coming mobile consumer/prosumer will love the G1 as long as they know what it is. It’s not a BlackBerry, it’s not a Sidekick. You could think of it as the adult Sidekick though, and that, my friends, is what people have been waiting for, for a very long time.

If there’s ever been two devices so closely pitted against each other, it would be none other than the BlackBerry Bold and the iPhone 3G. Heck, people we’re even putting the original iPhone against the Bold. We’re going to break down each device piece by piece and give you an unbiased comparison of both. We’ll give you our personal opinion at the end, but besides that, we’re going to be completely accurate and fair. Hopefully this will help you make up your mind on what phone you’re going to get. You know, if the Bold is ever released, and the iPhone 3G is ever in stock. Hit the jump for the craziness!

Design:

BlackBerry Bold:

Some could agree the Bold is the sharpest and cleanest-looking BlackBerry ever to come out of Waterloo. With a complete black face, chrome border and sides, and faux black leather back, the device looks great. From all the matching chrome accents all over the phone to the simple and not confusing layout, RIM has designed a great BlackBerry which should set the bar for future devices down the road.

iPhone 3G:

If there’s one iconic handset design in the last couple years, it would certainly be an iPhone. There’s not too many people on earth who couldn’t easily recognize the device. The iPhone 3G is a logical extension of the previous model, still holding true to its original design roots. While there are two color choices, each both work marvelously well with handset’s design. It would be hard to find a more solid and sexy design on a phone. From the gorgeous screen to the matching black (or white) back, you’ve definitely got a true Apple product — totally minimalistic, yet offering enough access to the most commonly used functions.

Even though the Bold is definitely a looker, we’d be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t give the design award to the iPhone 3G.

Build quality:

BlackBerry Bold:

The BlackBerry Bold is built extremely well. Not including minor screen scratches and things of that nature, the Bold should be able to last you as long as you want to keep the thing. The unit is a little lighter than it looks and there no creaks or anything to get you worried about. The only negative thing we’d have to say, it that the build quality on the BlackBerry Curve slightly trumps the Bold. We’d ever go as far to say that the 8800 does too. But not the Pearl. Hell no.

iPhone 3G:

Unless you’re talking about military-grade handsets, we don’t think you’d have an easy time finding a handset as well built as the iPhone. From precision-laser-cut glass, to the absolute stunning engineering on the inside of the device, we see the iPhone 3G lasting you a very long time. Even with key scratching and concrete-dropping, the iPhone 3G definitely holds its own.

The BlackBerry Bold’s build quality is great even if its not as good as the BlackBerry Curve, but we can’t help but feel the iPhone 3G will last the average user longer. You know, there’s no moving parts. That alone gives the iPhone a head start, and since the screen is proven to stand up to a lot of abuse, the most fragile part on the device is actually the strongest.

Size:

The Bold is the biggest BlackBerry to be released in a pretty long time. Well, since the 8700. It is larger in every way than the BlackBerry 8800 and can sometimes feel a little hard to hold in one hand. It’s definitely no Curve. Comparing it to the iPhone 3G, the iPhone is a tad bit taller than the Bold, but less wide, and thinner. The iPhone 3G feels much better when holding it and using it, but since the Bold’s keyboard makes use of the larger size, we’re going to call this one a tie because of the pretty comfy Bold QWERTY.

Screen:

As much as we we’d love to say the iPhone’s screen is better, it isn’t. Not in terms of displaying graphics, text-based content, or even videos. Everything looks better on the Bold due to the incredibly dense ppi ratio. You have to see it to believe it. Honestly. On the other hand, the iPhone’s screen is a close second, with a vibrant and large 3.5″ display. When you’re not using the on-screen virtual keyboard, the entire screen is your oyster, and you can make full use of it. We’d rather look at awesome MP3 album images, watch videos, web browse, and even look at our email on our iPhone rather than our BlackBerry Bold. This is going to be another tie, fellas. We’d rather use the iPhone specifically looking at the screen side of things, but we’d rather look at the Bold’s screen.

Applications:

You probably already know the answer to this one, but we’re still going to break it down for you. RIM has some very loyal developers working on applications for them, but the tools the developers use are outdated, and don’t give them enough access to core APIs on BlackBerry handsets. Ever notice how the nicest applications are always ones made by RIM? An outside developer could never create the BlackBerry Facebook application in a million years, again, because of the API access. We heard RIM is actively trying to listen to developer’s cries for help, open up some APIs, give them newer and better tools, and possibly include things such as OpenGL graphics support. But it’s still extremely difficult to develop for BlackBerry devices and distribute those applications. Desktop loading, OTA loading — it isn’t the most straight forward way to handle things. On the flipside, we have Apple who as you all should know, finally released their own SDK and have launched the App Store. Not looking at distribution for the meantime, we can honestly say that the iPhone is the easiest device to develop applications for. We’ve only worked on our BGR Mobile application for around a day, and even with some of the cool features like geo-tagging photos, commenting on posts, and more, it’s been a breeze. More on the BGR Mobile application another day. But don’t listen to us, listen to the thousands upon thousands of developers that have created beautiful games with full 3D graphics, or awesome instant messaging clients, and so forth. While the BlackBerry Bold is prettier than other BlackBerrys, the applications and tools to create them are the same. Without a doubt, this round goes to the iPhone. Scratch that, the iPhone wins over any other handset in the world in regards to applications.

OS:

BlackBerry Bold:

This is a tricky and sensitive subject for a lot of people. Many of us live and die by the BlackBerry OS. Some could say we even know it better than we know some of our significant others… But therein lies the problem. While RIM has been on a mission to revamp the BlackBerry from the old school “pager” into an all-in-one communications device for consumers and business alike, we can’t help but wonder when the OS will get a real makeover. Not a Mariah Carey cover page airbrushed makeover, more like a Carnie Wilson 300lbs to 150lbs makeover. But, we do have to say that RIM has a great thing going. The BlackBerry minions have figured out every single tip and trick there is to squeeze every ounce of usability out the operating system, and for a lot of people, the OS is fine. It does what it is supposed to, and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that the market has changed so drastically in the last year and half. People want to be connected more, they want to do more while doing less.

iPhone 3G:

Whether you believe Apple’s words of the iPhone OS actually running a scaled down OS X or not, it’s very difficult to rip apart the iPhone’s operating system. Sure, we’d absolutely love copy and paste, and it’s pretty sad we even had to write that, but for the most part, this is the finest and most technologically advanced mobile operating system on the planet. That’s not even open to debate, ok? There is always room for improvement, however, and we have no doubt that Apple will begin addressing some of the shortcomings of the operating system pretty soon.

iPhone 3G wins by a landslide.

Call quality:

Let’s assume we’re talking about voice-calling over a 3G network, ok? If that’s the case, then we think both devices held up pretty well against each other. The iPhone 3G sounded a tiny bit better and more natural than the BlackBerry, and wasn’t distorted as much. But that’s relative. Both devices fared extremely well with voice-calling, and you’d be pleased to use either one of them as your phone. Aww, how sweet!

Battery life

While the Bold has taken its fair share of battery life criticism, we’re happy to report than we don’t have a battery issue with the Bold at this point. The latest hardware and software are pretty top-notch when it comes to battery life, and you’d most likely get the same amount of usage out of the Bold as you would from your current BlackBerry. Now, going up against the iPhone, we’d say the Bold wins. Not by too much, but definitely by a little bit. Again, there isn’t too much of a difference that we’re finding, but the Bold does last a little longer in everyday usage. We’re not talking about talk time vs. talk time, or web browsing over 3G vs. web browsing over 3G. Just general everyday usage, and the Bold wins on this one.

Keyboard:

Let’s face it, virtual keyboards aren’t for everybody. Check out our personal thoughts and impressions at the end of the article for more information. The BlackBerry Bold holds true to RIM’s roots with their excellent QWERTY keyboard execution. The layout, key travel and feel make RIM’s keyboard a winner. But not so fast. Plenty of people don’t want a QWERTY keyboard. A lot of iPhone buyers came from a simple phone like a RAZR, and they rave about the keyboard. Well, it can’t take the place of a hardware keyboard, no matter how we try and convince ourselves. And if you’re going after a real keyboard on a mobile device, RIM is going to win. 9 times out of 10.

Email:

BlackBerry Bold:

Listen, you can’t throw around the word “BlackBerry” without thinking about email. That’s RIM bread and butter, and we don’t see that changing for a very long time. There are probably 500 competitors vying for the title of “Best. Email. Ever.”, but they’re not coming close anytime soon. While Windows Mobile offers some of the same feature-set, there is nothing like using a BlackBerry for email. From changing your out of office message, to configuring email filters on the go (what, you think we actually get all 6,000 comments from our iPhone 3G giveaway post on our BlackBerry?), to remote searching (awesome!), RIM has perfected email on the BlackBerry for the most part. When new features like full attachment viewing and HTML get introduced, though, it gets a little murky. Instead of viewing attachments natively off the bat on your BlackBerry, RIM’s data network will compress and send you what you need bit by bit. There is also a clear separation between RIM’s BES services and BIS services, and they are totally unnecessary. There is no reason we should have the ability to view HTML on BIS, but not on BES yet (unless you hacked that in), and there is no reason file type support is so convoluted. For instance, we can listen to our voicemail MP3s on our BIS email, but not on BES because even the latest BES service pack still doesn’t support the encoding used in our MP3s. Things like this really confuse users and there’s no reason for it. BIS features should mirror BES features as much as possible and be upgraded at the same time. If we have to email an attachment from our BES to one of our BIS email accounts one more time… One last thing, RIM. Please for the love of everything holy, allow us to edit forwarded messages. Please. Pretty please.

iPhone 3G:

Up for much debate is how well the iPhone 3G competes in the email arena. They have made strides in regard to improving the email application, even going as far to supporting full Exchange 2003 and 2007 email, but Apple has left a lot to be desired when working with anything other than simple POP and IMAP accounts. Forget the sexy stuff like filters and out of office messages, there is still no access to remote email search, or heck, email search period. There’s no way to mark multiple items read or unread, and if you have multiple email accounts, have fun switching back and forth to check them. Things aren’t localized like they are on a BlackBerry, and you don’t have the fun keyboard shortcuts to make things easier and get to them faster. When it comes to how email is rendered and behaves, though, the iPhone probably beats any other device out there. The HTML rendering is second to none, it murders the BlackBerry HTML, attachments can not be saved locally which is a real pain, but in terms of viewing them, it offers the most organic way of looking at them or playing them. From flipping the device to goto landscape mode, to double-tapping and zooming, the iPhone makes email a pleasure to read.

No question who the winner is here. RIM’s email can’t be touched, but for not-so-hardcore email users, Apple’s iPhone definitely offers a great experience, even with an Exchange server or their MobileMe service.

Corporate usage:

BlackBerry Bold:

RIM has made the BlackBerry the hands-down winner for a perfect desktop extension. Pretty much whatever you can do from Outlook on your Exchange server, you can do from your BlackBerry. In addition to looking at the device specifically, RIM’s BES server offers the now standard way of managing, controlling, and deploying devices across a corporate infrastructure. Their BES servers allow IT admins to tweak and configure every possible setting, making this is the ideal solution for mid-to-large businesses and government agencies. RIM’s focus on security also make the BlackBerry the most secure device on the planet to use in a corporate environment.

iPhone 3G:

The iPhone still has a lot to prove to corporate entities. Apple has made device deployment tools, but they aren’t as easy to use as RIM’s setup. While the iPhone is pretty secure, it’s security has not been fully tested, and there are many corporations still wary of allowing iPhones on their infrastructure. Sure, it has things like remote wipe and password enforcement, but it doesn’t come to offering the customization abilities of RIM’s BES servers and security.

Again, corporate usage goes to the BlackBerry. Heck, without corporate users, we don’t think RIM would still be in business. We don’t see the iPhone 3G making BlackBerry users in mid-to-large corporations switch that quickly, but we do see the iPhone being a possible device choice for small businesses that don’t rely so heavily on RIM already.

Pricing:

BlackBerry Bold:

Bold pricing has not been fully announced, but we’d wager on it being $199-$299 with a 2-year service agreement. Probably $299, but let’s see what happens. We know RIM went back to the negotiating tables after the iPhone 3G pricing was announced, as they were going to price the device much higher.

iPhone 3G:

You have a choice of $199 (8GB) and $299 (16GB) for the iPhone 3G. People have said that the pricing scheme is confusing because of the eligibility factor and upgrade factor, but that’s how mobile operators have worked since we can remember. So, that’s not new to 99% of people. Some will have to pay more, some will get to pay the aforementioned prices, just like with the Bold.

Pricing looks to be pretty even between both devices, so we’ll call it a tie.

Device longevity:

This is hard to speculate on, because we’re not talking about which device will physically last longer in terms of not breaking. We’re talking about how long the device can last you, the consumer, as a phone. And how long you’ll want to use it for. Taking a peek at RIM’s road map, we know that they’re coming out with four new devices (including the Bold), all likely to appear before the year’s end. We’d also bet on them churning out update replacement handsets a lot quicker if they can manage to. There will also likely be a new iPhone in a year’s time, or even less. Assuming you don’t upgrade to a new handset, we’d say the iPhone will last longer as you have an ingenious method for doing software updates and upgrades, and you have the App Store which will constantly be fresh with newer and better applications.

Personal Opinion:

Here’s where we’re going to voice our opinions of both devices as we kept the head-to-head review completely unbiased. True BlackBerry fans will want the Bold. It honestly is the best BlackBerry ever. There is no other choice — it’s the Bold. Plus the Bold spoils you. We cringe at the sight of our friends using Curves now. From the screen, to the keyboard, to the OS, which hate it or love it is pretty darn solid, the Bold is fantastic. But when you throw the iPhone 3G in the mix, it’s gets pretty difficult. A lot of early criticisms surrounding the original iPhone have been addressed. Corporate email, 3G, GPS, price, 3rd party applications, and so on. The honest truth is that if we had to use only one of the two devices, we’d be happy enough with whichever one you gave us. We could deal with the email shortcomings on the iPhone, and we could deal with the improved but not incredible browser on the Bold. It really comes down to what you need more in a phone. While the Bold certainly has improved media and other consumer features, it really is a business device at the end of the day. The iPhone 3G is a consumer device that happens to play nice with a lot of corporations, and we honestly think you won’t find many people dropping their BlackBerrys for an iPhone. They’ll carry both as long as they can afford it.

This might be a shocker out there to many, but we do actually, you know, not leak things from time to time. What’s important here, is that we’ve been rockin’ a BlackBerry Bold for around a month now, and we’ve got a great handle on the unit. From hardware to software, this is going to be the most complete BlackBerry Bold review, period. If you’re really ready, hit the jump. You might need a couple cigarettes and a cup of coffee — it’s long!

RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9000, huh? We knew it was coming since October of last year ever since we broke the news, and since then, this has been the BlackBerry communities iPhone. Sorry for an iPhone reference so early on in the review, but it’s true. This is the device every single BlackBerry user has been waiting for. Finally a BlackBerry that “has it all.” 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, QWERTY keyboard, camera, great screen, clean styling, and more. Since this has been our day to day BlackBerry exclusively, we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs with the Bold. Here’s a recap on our first day with the Bold, followed by our full review…

Remember all that talk about overheating and battery drain? It definitely wasn’t crap — we’ll tell you that! Even still, the device gets a little warm, but nothing to get too concerned about. RIM has made strides in regards to updated software builds for the Bold. Let’s bring you back to when we first got the device, ok? We thanked our very friendly FedEx Sameday delivery man (or delivery person since there’s this cute female that sometimes brings us goodies… anyway) and proceeded immediately to remove the SIM card and microSD card from our BGR edition BlackBerry Curve 8310. After that, we took a bat to it, Office Space style. Once the battery was installed in the Bold, we patiently waited for the unit to turn on.

One minute went by. Then two. Then three. What in the heck? Isn’t this supposed to be at least double the speed of the older models? When the unit finally powered up, we were greeted by the usual Setup Wizard. After canceling out of that (I can remove languages manually, athankyou) it was time to explore the device. At first glance, the first thing you’ll see is obviously the gorgeous screen on the 9000. We can safely say that this is the best screen we’ve ever seen on a mobile device. Hands down. So, yeah, after messing around with a couple applications and exploring, it was time to turn on wireless and connect to AT&T’s mothership. 5 bars of service showed up with the GSM indicator. Then EDGE. Oh boy, we’re so close! Finally 3G appeared. We were in business! But not so fast. No sooner than the 3G indicator showed up, the device for some reason restarted. All ‘Berry lovers will know this all too well. Red LED, black screen. After waiting for another three or four minutes for the device to power up again, the same thing happened! Everything was ok until we tried to turn wireless on. Oh bother. What now? The Bold did this in an endless loop for a good two hours. The battery was only at 40% so we figured we’d let it keep passing out until it was fully charged. Bad plan because that didn’t help. After managing to sneak in right at start-up and turn off wireless mode, the device was stable again. Great. What good is a BlackBerry as a PDA? Don’t answer that. By now we practically had a gun pointed to our heads. We messed with a Bold before, but we can’t even use our first unit? After a quick call to one of our BlackBerry ninjas, we were promptly sent an updated software build. Now it was time to update the OS.

We opened up Desktop Manager 4.5 and proceeded to update the device. This part totally blew us away! Gone are the days of a 30-45 minute backup and update. It probably took no more than 6 minutes to backup the device, erase the applications, load the system software and what not. The only part that took a little bit was waiting for the device to initialize after everything was done. As soon as we booted up with the new OS, we were good! The Bold connected to the network just fine and we did our enterprise activation. First thing we did? Check out BlackBerry Messenger! God knows if there’s one thing making us keep out BlackBerrys… The new client isn’t drastically different but has some semi-cool additions. For instance, the layout is the same but graphics for online, away, and unavailable have changed. You can set an alert so you are notified when a buddy comes back online, and you can broadcast a message to everyone you have an open conversation with. Digging a little deeper into Messenger, we found that you can enable an option to change your status when you are on the phone, and even change your status automatically to reflect whatever MP3 you are playing on the device. Totally iChatish, but not that bad.

After Messenger, it was on to the browser. At first, nothing looked different at all. That was until we brought up BGR on it. The BlackBerry web browser has indeed been redone to act more like a web browser and not a piece of garbage 1990’s WAP browser. Pages render awfully quick over 3G, and even on EDGE. They are formatted 90% of the time correctly and images look sharp and crisp. You’ve now got new controls with the trackball. Instead of just a mouse cursor like before, the default setting is a zoom key. Just scroll over what you’d like to zoom into, press the trackball and zoom. This can also be achieved by pressing “i” and “o” for zoom in and zoom out respectively on the keyboard.

We fired off some emails on the keyboard, made some phone calls, and started to sit back, relax, and have fun with our new BlackBerry Bold. Battery life improved 10 fold when the new OS was installed, and the overheating we noticed quickly dissipated. It still gets a little warm when you’re freakin’ it, but oh well. Here’s the full review on the device and the most recent software build. We’re not basing the review on the extremely crappy builds before this.

Design:

Some might say it looks awfully like an iPhone. But not Mr. Lazaridis. According to him, every BlackBerry device is “three years in the making.” They couldn’t possibly have made the device around the iPhone since they started it three years ago, right? In all seriousness, it has a couple similar design features like a chrome border around the unit and black front, but it really stops there. We don’t think they said to themselves, “let’s copy the iPhone.” The chrome you see on the Bold is nothing more than cheap plastic that scratches very easily, though.

Screen:

We said this before, but this really is the screen to beat. It might be a little too “contrasty” at times, if you know what we mean, but overall, it steals the show. It is the most vibrant, color-rich, sharp screen we’ve ever seen on a mobile device. It can be extremely bright if that’s how you like it, or subtlety lower. The auto-dim features on BlackBerry devices let the screen adjust to your surrounding so it doesn’t disrupt you. One major problem with the screen, though? It, like the chrome border around the device, is made of cheap plastic and scratches incredibly easily. We kept the Bold in either pants pockets with nothing else in there or a BlackBerry leather holster. After only a day or so, scratches started to appear out of no where on the gorgeous display. They better ship this thing with free scratch protectors!

Keyboard:

If you know us, you know we don’t let keyboards off easy! And if there is anyone who understands keyboards, it’s usually RIM. Think of the 9000’s keyboard as a cross between the 8800 and the Pearl. The keys are pretty large in size, a little squishy, but still firm. They are not plasticky-feeling like the Curves. After only around 10-15 minutes we found ourselves typing almost as fast as were on our 8310. The layout of the keyboard is exactly the same as you’d find on other BlackBerrys. Even all symbols and other markings are in the same spot. This makes it easy to jump right into the device. The send, BlackBerry, back, and end keys are abnormally large, though. It’s not bad. It’s just awkward for some reason. They all work fine, but we can’t figure why RIM decided to make them so big. Possibly a design situation where they had an overall device size ready, couldn’t make it any smaller, and ended up filling the dead space with larger keys. Keyboard back-lighting is great, too. Just the accents, letters, and symbols light up white. Not the entire key like the Curve.

Connectivity:

Every BlackBerry users’ dream lies in the Bold. 3G data, GPS, and Wi-Fi make this a hit. Unless you’re really trying not to be found, there’s a good chance the Bold is going to help you stay connected no matter where you are. A-GPS in the Bold works wonderfully, always getting a fast and accurate lock on location whenever requested. The included BlackBerry Maps works well, but since TeleNav hooked us up, we’re using that for the moment without a hitch. Er, AT&T Navigator. If you’ve ever used a BlackBerry with Wi-Fi, it’s pretty much the same concept. Select a Wi-Fi network and off you go. This is especially useful when you’re in a low or no coverage area yet have access to a Wi-Fi hotspot. We found no issues while using the 3G cell network and Wi-Fi at the same time, though it was actually using Wi-Fi for data. You can’t use Wi-Fi if you turn the cell radio off, but you can use Wi-Fi when you have no cell signal. Food for thought? We’ve noticed that sometimes while using Wi-Fi, the device will lose connection to the BlackBerrt network on the cell network. Possibly a battery-saving enhancement?

OS:

We said this from the start… the 4.6 OS is 99% the same as your current BlackBerry. Assuming you’re not using an 8700 or something like that. Little things have been tweaked to make using the device a little easier and quicker, but for the most part, you’re basically looking at a skin on the top level. That’s not to say there haven’t been some changes beneath the surface, but for the average BlackBerry user, you’re not going to really notice anything besides the semi-pretty UI enhancements. It’s now July 15th, and even running the latest 4.6.0.93 build, we’re still pulling the battery out a good 10 times a day. Why? Between the constant java errors, and the BlackBerry completely losing service and informing us it’s “Searching for Network…”. That’s why. What’s sad is that even with this bad-ass 624MHz CPU, we still get slow downs and we still get freezes. Don’t get it mixed up, it is 100% faster than any other BlackBerry. We just can’t understand why this thing isn’t really optimized like it should be. Ah! Because the OS is from 1999. That’s it.

Applications:

Again, mostly top level stuff, but there have been a couple added applications. These include WordToGo, PowerPointToGo, WordMole, and a couple other games that have been around for a while. There’s something beneath the surface called BlackBerry Game Service, and what this does is allows true multi-player games over either the cell network or Wi-Fi. We beat the crap out of our friend in WordMole who was half way across the country. Sorry, buddy. One of our favorite applications, if not the favorite, is BlackBerry Messenger like we said before. In the updated BlackBerry Messenger, you’ll find added functionality such as being able to broadcast a message to all open conversations, letting your status change automatically when you’re on the phone, and also changing your status to reflect whatever song is playing on the media player. HTML email is obviously a go assuming you’re on a BIS 2.5 carrier or your company has hacked HTML email back into BES 4.1.5. Totally awesome feature, though? If you’re downloading an attachment and highlight that email, it will show you a status bar indicated how far along the download is. Welcome to 2008, RIM. Now could you please stop being pansies and show us a progress bar for outgoing messages please? You know, some of us actually like to send videos and pictures and what not. Oh yeah! Video over BlackBerry Messenger too, while we’re at it. Kthnkz.

Browser:

The web browser was actually one of the last things ready on the Bold as we were told. The earlier versions had a browser nowhere near what we’ve been using, and we have to say… it’s pretty darn good! It’s no iPhone, but it definitely does the job. Any BlackBerrry user whether corporate or consumer will definitely appreciate the new browser’s improved rendering, speed, and controls. It actually shows web pages how they are supposed to be shown, but the navigation can get a little tiring. Instead of the regular mouse pointer that we’ve been used to lately, the pointer is now by default a zoom in pointer. A couple clicks of the trackball, and you’ve zoomed into the web page. Sometimes the page will reformat to the screen, sometimes it won’t. Forget about Flash or anything sexy, but the browser has definitely been upgraded pretty nicely.

Battery life:

Another concern possible Bold buyers have is battery life. There’s been so much information floating around, what’s the real story? Up until around 3-4 weeks ago, every build of the OS we tried had major battery problems. Random restarts, device totally dead within a couple hours, etc. With the latest software version, we can safely say we’re getting as good or better battery life than we did with our Curve. Yes. Isn’t that awesome? Thanks to 1500mAh battery and a crap load of engineering on RIM’s part, they’ve finally got it nailed down. To give y’all a little usage detail: 300-500 emails a day, one hour of web surfing over 3G, Wi-Fi usually turned on, Bluetooth turned off, JiveTalk connected, and around one hour of phone calling (we don’t really use the BlackBerry as a phone) lasted us from 9AM until 4:30AM.

Sound quality:

RIM is trying to step it up in the sound department, and it shows. Instead of a covered speaker like the Curve, there are speaker grills on both sides of the device, and also on the top as well. Sound quality from playing back music sounds decent. Not great, not terrible. It could be a little louder, but even as it stands, music is still distorting on the loudest volume setting. Also, the speakerphone volume could definitely be louder as we found it lower than our Curve.

Call quality:

We’ve found call quality to be fantastic. It’s definitely the most phone-like BlackBerry to date. People we spoke to sounded crystal clear and they said we sounded great. The earpiece volume was also sufficiently loud, so there should be no problems there. That 3G network is also probably helping a lot with call quality as well, no?

Build quality:

This one is a tricky one. We have a production hardware unit, and the trackball can get a little shady. Then again, don’t all BlackBerrys? There are no creaks with the device, and it seems sturdy as heck. The screen could possible be an issue as it looks like it’s a cheap plastic, and the “chrome” border around the body is also a lower-grade plastic. At least it seems that way to us. Expect for the screen to be scratched to all hell, and for nicks, scrapes, and dents to show up on the device body. On our unit, the back battery cover is a little loose towards where the release button is and kind of moves in and out when you press it. We’re not sure if that will be resolved when the device is released, but it can definitely get kind of annoying. We wouldn’t call the Bold fragile but we don’t think its built as well as the Curve.

So what do you guys think? Happy with our review? Want a Bold even more now… even less? Sound off. And look for some more posts on the Bold coming shortly.

Remember the Microsoft Surface? After a slow start, the greatest multi-touch device on earth (yes, greater than that one) is finally rolling out to business customers in a variety if industries. Microsoft sat down with BGR last night in an attempt to school us on a few of the intricacies of the oh-so-appealing behemoth of a device, some of the philosophy behind Surface, and a bit of insight into the future potential and possible future applications of this brave new market space. Were we impressed? In a word, yes, though not without a few caveats. Hit the jump below to continue reading our hands-on review, or hit the gallery link to check out the gallery!

Click on over to our Microsoft Surface hands-on gallery!

First things first: Microsoft has designed an amazing device, one that essentially creates an entirely new market space. Sure there are multi-touch devices out there, but nothing that compares to the Surface in terms of size, versatility, and scalability. To be perfectly honest, the closest thing we can think of to the Surface, at least in regards to its physical presence, is a circa-1986 Pac-Man machine in your favorite neighborhood bowling alley.

The amazing thing about the Surface is how seamless everything is. There’s almost no lag between input and reaction, and the multi-touch screen responds without an undue amount of pressure, giving the impression that it’s truly an extension of whatever input you’re attempting to execute. The company remained quiet on the internal components of the machine (though we did learn that the device is running on a highly customized version of Windows Vista), but whatever they’ve got in there must be pretty powerful.

Every Surface sold includes full access to the Surface-specific SDK, which includes a number of tools to help partner clients realize the device’s full potential. As the team explained to us, working with the Surface requires developers to re-align their entire approach to building applications. Even something as simple as the device’s table-top orientation can cause problems in a traditional development environment, as planning for a top-down 360 degree user experience isn’t something that’s currently being taught in most computer science courses. As such, Microsoft seems to be working closely with every contracted partner, offering them a comprehensive back-end support program that should help programmers new to the Surface environment.

Microsoft had several devices on hand, and demoed a variety of different applications. We got a chance to see the AT&T software up close, and also had a bit of time to play around with the Rio iBar software. These two implementations represent vastly different applications of the Surface and speak to the device’s seemingly limitless potential. The AT&T version essentially take the form of a virtual touchable sales clerk, displaying phone-specific feature sheets, plans, add-ons, and more, all based on the device that the user chooses to place on the screen. Placing two devices on the screen instantly brings up a side-by-side comparison of features and options. Imagine a wireless shopping experience that provided you with up-to-date, correct, information about the device(s) of your choice, allowing you to make your selections without the added pressure of a commission driven salesperson breathing down your neck. Sound appealing? We certainly think so, and there’s no reason this model couldn’t work in a variety of retail settings.

The Rio iBar implementation on the other hand, is focused on provided a fun, interactive experience to patrons at a bar or club. You can play various games, order drinks, and flirt with other Surface users across the room. Nothing ground breaking, but it certainly demonstrates much of the gaming and social-networking potential of the Surface. Interestingly, the social implications of the AT&T and Rio iBar devices couldn’t be more polarized. The AT&T device is essentially designed to replace a human being (despite what anyone says to the contrary), and all the face-to-face interaction that goes along with a traditional retail sales environment. The iBar customized Surface, though, is something akin to a virtual campfire, albeit located in a casino in Vegas, creating a very social space for human interaction.

Ironically, the biggest problem facing the Surface right now is, in fact, its potential. There are so many potential applications for something like this, from education, to the medical field, to in-home use, that it’s almost heart-breaking to see such a contained and focused launch of the AT&T and Harrah’s applications. We certainly understand their business model, and appreciate the necessity of proving that the Surface is a viable product for deep-pocketed corporate clients such as AT&T and Harrah’s. Though we wish we could look forward to a day in the not-so-distant future when we can head out to Best Buy and pick up a Surface of our very own. The company mentioned that they’re hoping to get into the consumer space within the next three years, but they’re currently working on accelerating that process as much as possible. Our advice? Take our briefcase full of money and send a demo unit out to BGR World Headquarters. We’ll do our best to prove that enough consumer demand exists right now. Due entirely to the efforts of the dedicated Surface team, Microsoft has succeeded in something very un-Microsoft here: a new product that defines its own market. This isn’t a Zune made as a reaction to the iPod, and this certainly isn’t an Xbox designed as a reaction to the Playstation. As such, they have a bit of an uphill battle ahead to prove that the Surface as a device genre is viable enough to warrant a continued effort. Honestly, in our opinion, it’s going to be well worth their trouble.