W

How much do you need to shell out on an unlocked smartphone?

On March 16, 2011, in Smartphones, by admin

Sure it’s great with the latest and best smartphone like the Motorola Atrix, but is it worth the money? What you should aim for depends a bit on your needs you have. Many cheap mobile phones can do pretty much the same as the expensive top models, but you often have to sacrifice access to the latest technology. And then of course there are gray areas; there are many good phones in between the price ladder. Some of the main reasons to buy a top model is that you get access to new technology and improved specifications.

The display on an expensive top model is almost always better than a cheap phone. As a rule, you also get a larger screen with higher resolution. This means that the phone will be suited well for surfing and watching video on.

Most expensive phones also have a dual core processor and plenty of memory. This allows you to run multiple applications simultaneously and it is quick to start apps and load web pages.

The expensive smartphones also have the best cameras. Here you get better optics and the highest resolution. In addition to the video camera is something that pushes the price up. Some even give you HDMI connectivity. This allows you to connect your phone to a TV or a projector and play HD video over the HDMI connection.

On the other hand, if you just call and send a text message every once in a while, you do not even have to buy a smartphone. A cheap Nokia for a hundred bucks is usually more than good enough. If you want smartphone that ‘s just a little bit smarter, you do not pay extreme amounts of money either.

All Android phones can do pretty much the same things. Regardless of whether you have an Android phone for $199 or $900, you can run Angry Birds and do other cool things with your phone. Android phones can be used for more or less the same things as an iPhone. On a cheaper phone you might have to wait 10 seconds for Angry Birds to start, and you may not be able to view websites at full width, but so what? To have 32 GB on your mobile phone is all well and good, but how many of us do not really need so much?

A mobile with, for example, 256MB of storage has room for more than enough apps, emails and pictures. Should you use your mobile for music and video, an add-on memory card is cheap enough so you can cheaply expand the memory if you decide you need more over time. It is not easy to know what to look for when buying a new mobile. If you have a top model you may already know what you are looking for. Should you buy a cheap one, it is easy to find one of those to. Just make sure that your phone meets your needs.

Tagged with:  
W

Motorola’s New Atrix Becomes a Notebook with “Lapdock”

On March 8, 2011, in Smartphones, by admin

Motorola’s latest smartphone is pretty but powerful. Enough to turn into a laptop even. Motorola has created an add-on specifically for this purpose–the Lapdock that basically turns the Atrix into a laptop computer when you dock it to the back of the accessory.

When you hook up the Atrix, it launches the “Webtop” application, which brings up a user intnerface that looks a lot like a well-known operating system from a fruit-inspired manufacturer. The Webtop app’s desktop interface happens to have animated tray icons at the bottom of the screen. Of course, just like OS X the operating is Unix based, but Linux in this case.

As a result you get a reasonably capable laptop that can do about the very same stuff as the smallest PCs. You can also watch video clips and do other things you would count on being able to do on the average MacBook Air. Just like the devices it is trying to imitate, it is very sleek and lightwight – just over 2 pounds andno thicker than for example the Dell Adamo.

The screen is eleven inches with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixel, and with the integrated battery it will stay alive for up to ten hours. Speakers are also included, as are two USB 2.0 ports. One of the best parts as far as design goes is the backlit keyboard. It also has a track pad with multi-touch which supports gestures, which is a starting to become a standard feature in today’s laptops.

Another neat feature is that even when the smartphone is docked on the backside of the display, you can use it through an application named mobile view. This brings up windows from apps in your phone with full access to the built-in features such as text messaging and calendar.

The Atrix/Lapdock is not that powerful of cours – it can’t compete with a regular laptop in performance, but it’s an extremely cool gadget nonetheless. Unfortunately the Lapdock is very high-priced. It costs much more than the Atrix does.

Tagged with:  
W

LG Optimus 2X – Dual Core Smartphone

On December 18, 2010, in Smartphones, by admin

LG Optimus 2X is the first dual-core smartphone. The processor is a Tegra 2 and it has a clock speed of 1 GHz. With its processing power the Optimus 2X is capable of sending  out full HD, 1080p, via HDMI, and filming with an 8 megapixel camera. It also features a 1.3 megapixel camera for video calls. The screen is a 4-inch touch screen with WVGA resolution and it also has 8 GB of storage space which can be upgraded with a microSD card up to 32GB.

The battery is unfortunately fairly ordinary at 1500 mAh, so it remains to be seen how the battery life is with its power-hungry processor. LG release the Optimus 2X in Korea in a month and to Europe later.

 
W

Protection for your iPhone 4

On August 24, 2010, in Smartphones, by admin

I get so fascinated that so much accessories for Apple’s new iPhone 4 are available in such a short time . This is despite the secrecy that has been surrounding the new phone. The companies that make accessories, such as cases for the iPhone, seems to always have stuff that matches the new model already a few hours after it launched. How does it work?

So now, just a few days after Apple released its new iPhone, but there are 4 such as those infinitely many cases, the protection on the market. Google it on the “four iPhone cases” so you may actually already thousands of hits. These ten are a selection of what is on the market today. Some nice and some not.  Do you have more beauty tips on accessories for iPhone 4, tell me.

 
W

Qualcomm to Launch Updated Snapdragon

On August 21, 2010, in Smartphones, by admin

It feels like it was yesterday that the super fast Snapdragon processor was launched in smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy, but already an update is approaching. Qualcomm has gone on record and said that an updated version of the snapdragon, called QSD8672, will be launched late in the fourth quarter of this year smartphones with the new chip will appear eary next year.

Good news with the chip are that they have been to a 45nm manufacturing technology, which means relatively low power compared to previous versions. Architectural changes to power management features are designed sp that individual chips should be able to go down to sleep better than before when not in use, saving more power.

Another thing about the “snapdragon 2.0″ is an updated GPU, which said to be 300 % faster than its predecessor in some areas. Processor cores are now two instead of one, although it is uncertain how battery-efficient these new dual-core phones are going to be.

There is however also a possibility that manufacturers can sell a chip with a defective CPU core as a single core processor, just like AMD is doing with their Phenom x3 for desktop PCs. The CPU core can now in any case spin at up to 1.5 GHz, which is a 50% increase in performance on the existing Snapdragon. New features will be added in the chips that allow playback of 1080p high definition content and provide a maximum screen resolution of 1440×900,.