After a much hyped launch, many Windows Phone 7 devices saw underwhelming sales figures in their first year on the market. With the inability to apply custom skins and unique features to devices, manufacturers such as HTC have so far failed to turn Microsoft’s new mobile operating system into the storming success as they have done with Android, but that hasn’t stopped Nokia from going all in with Windows Phone.
Following a lacklustre performance from Symbian devices up against competitors such as the iPhone, Nokia certainly needs to side with the right software provider for their latest generation of smartphones, and Microsoft seemed like the only logical choice outside of Google’s Android, which the Finnish company seems reluctant to consider.
The first flagship Windows Phone 7 device to come out of Nokia is the Lumia 800, which is available on Three here in the UK. With Nokia’s hardware and Microsoft’s software this phone should blow the competition away, but does it live up to expectations or fall flat on its face? Let’s take a closer look… [Read more…]
You’d be forgiven for not noticing the arrival of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc S in the smartphone market when it was launched a few months ago. After all, it’s becoming harder to differentiate between the phones that carry the “Xperia” name as the branding is used on more models every quarter.
If the blogosphere was to be believed in the build up to Apple’s new iPhone, I should be sitting down to review an incredibly thin new device right now. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. From afar, the iPhone 4S is indistinguishable from the iPhone 4. In fact, it’s indistinguishable up close as well, except for a slightly altered antenna around the edge of the device.
Whether you’re a keen photographer or not, the chances are you’ll take some snaps or some videos once in a while, whether it be on a fully-fledged DSLR, or just the camera in your smartphone, so you can easily relive your memories. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend slipping into the sea or a swimming pool with your smartphone or camera attached to your hip, it could have disastrous consequences.
I’ve been in the market for a new router myself recently, and I have to say it’s an increasingly tricky decision to get right in this modern world of dual-band, gigabit and all sorts of other mind-boggling jargon. Anyway, once you’ve figured it out, you might realise that this router from TP-Link, despite being labelled ‘ultimate’, falls short of the competition as it is just a single-band. That means it’ll only operate on the 2.4GHz frequency, neglecting the 5GHz frequency that other rival routers use to gain a clearer path to half of your devices amongst other things.
Following the digital switchover here in the UK, almost every man and his dog now has a television that is at least HD ready. That means that demand for HDMI cables and accessories is going sky high. Even HDMI DVD players are available to take advantage of upscaling content and getting the most from your old discs, but what happens when you want to watch the same content on two TVs instead of just one?
There are lots of converters and adaptors available that can take a video signal from your computer and display it on your TV or projector, but there aren’t many that work the other way around. That is, to take a signal from an external device such as a DVD player or cable box and convert it to display on a conventional computer monitor.
Whenever I approach a review for a phone, I try my best to do so without any pre-judgements about the device that I’m about to use. I’ll ignore the vast majority of reviews already written, and get a feel for things before loving or hating it, but for the Xperia Neo this is particularly difficult.
Whenever you send or receive a read-only document, the odds are that it’s sent in PDF format. Adobe’s portable document format has enjoyed a monopoly for many years now, so it’s not surprising that there are so many PDF reader applications out there to choose from.