iPhone 4 Review! A truly amazing phone!

Apple's launch of the iPhone 4 has seen the greatest excitement for a new phone ever - and with HD video recording, a super high-res screen and ridiculously slim dimensions, it's not hard to see why.

But things are a little different now - not only was the iPhone 3GS something of a non-update to the iPhone range, but there are finally decent alternatives in the smartphone market, with the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S leading the Android fight right to Apple's door.

Add to that the first major leak of an Apple product a couple of months before launch, and suddenly the iPhone 4 has a lot to do to impress.

At least Apple has unleashed the big guns for this effort - before we get into the headline specs, the design itself is a massive talking point on its own.

Jobs' chats on stage to unveil a new iPhone might have got a little repetitive (best this, magical that etc) but this is the first time since the first iPhone way back in January 2007 that we've seen a variation on the standard iPhone design.Gone is the traditional curved back and plastic exterior with slightly chunky dimensions; in is a chassis that's only 9.3mm thin at its thickest point and a new stainless steel and glass industrial design.

If you're an iPhone fan, there's a good chance you won't like the look of the iPhone the first time you pick it up - it's the same weight as the iPhone 3GS at 137g, but it's a lot smaller, with dimensions of 115.2mm x58.6 mm x 9.3mm, so it feels like a much weightier and compact model.

The edges are stainless steel, apparently forged by winged unicorns in an iceberg (or something) to be 10 times stronger than 'normal' steel.

The front and back of the phone are made of glass, which has also been treated to be a lot stronger than the normal variety we're used to seeing through and drinking out of.

This claim holds up - not only did we feel the need to drop the phone onto the floor a few times to test, someone nameless of the TechRadar team also knocked it out (an admittedly low level) window onto concrete - and not a scratch.

If you're the protective type, then you can buy an official 'Bumper' for the iPhone 4, which encases it in a small ring of rubber, if you haven't bought the handset only for its slim lines.

The chassis shape isn't the only different thing with the iPhone 4 - the whole ethos has been tweaked. For instance, no longer is there a slightly plasticky rocker switch to control volume on the left-hand side, as it's now two discrete metal buttons with '+' and '-' written on.

The volume silencer rocker switch is above too, but that has also undergone the uber-metallic treatment.

The top of the phone still holds the headphone jack, and the power/lock key. However, the 3.5mm port is now flush to the chassis, and the power button feels much nicer to hit than before.

There's also a separate microphone for noise cancelling next to this as well - we imagine a few people will be pushing paperclips in there before they realise that it's not for the SIM card slot.

At least Apple has remained consistent when it comes to the packaging - apart from a new graphic on the front to make 

So that means: a simple Apple USB cable, a three-pin plug adaptor and some headphones. The latter is the same old set from the year before: hands free and a function button on the cord, but slightly poor quality compared to a range of other buds on the market.

The front still has that one iconic button, which is much nicer to press in the new chassis, it has to be said.The right-hand side of the chassis is still blank - no camera button sadly, which would have been nice given the extra effort Apple has clearly put into overhauling the photography system.Still, sleek is clearly still 'in' at the Cupertino HQ, and we can't say we blame the designers when you look at the lines.Actually, that's not true - the micro-SIM slot is hidden away here, rather than on the top. It's the same pokey key thing/slot system as before, but this time the SIM card is much smaller - Apple says to make more room for stuff inside, we say it's just to shake things up a little bit. Either way, we bet micro-SIMs become the norm before very long in all phones.

The bottom of the phone has the familiar Apple connector for charging and connecting and docking etc, and is flanked by another more microphone-y looking microphone slot and the speaker.

Overall, the design might not impress some people the first time they pick up the phone - a number of people we showed the phone to grimaced a little bit the first time they handled it.

It's a sharp and weighty-feeling phone, make no mistake - and it doesn't sit as comfortably in the hand as well as other iPhones of the past have.

But it feels premium, and at up to £600, it had better - that's a lot to pay when you consider you could get a 42-inch 1080p LCD for £200 less these days.

In the box

the new iPhone 4 look more mysterious, there's not a lot different to the older iPhones.

Nexus S (Google phone) available for pre-order.. But is it worth it?

First Impressions!

It’s easy to like the Nexus S, but we’re sure it will have its critics. It hasn’t leaped forward with screen resolution or processor speed, but that might not matter. The screen is an absolute star. It doesn’t have the resolution that the Apple iPhone 4 does, but we’re also quite glad that Google didn’t just step into a stats battle with its Cupertino rivals. Remember too that newer generation processors are more powerful than previous hardware clocked at the same speed, and the Android operating system is getting more refined all the time.

We still want to check out the little details like camera performance and how Android 2.3 performs when we actually get it integrated in to real life, but on first impressions, the Nexus S looks like a serious contender.

New features, ease of use, etc!

The Google Nexus S is the second Google phone to hit the market, the first Android 2.3 device. It has been designed and built by Samsung, whereas its forebear, the Google Nexus One, came from HTC. The Nexus One quickly appeared in another form as the HTC Desire with some minor tweaking, we’ve yet to see whether Samsung will launch a successor to its Galaxy S handset. We suspect it will.

Comparisons so far have been drawn between the Samsung Galaxy S and the Google Nexus S because it seems the most obvious choice. They bear some resemblance physically, as well as technically, but it’s not that simple. Get both phones in your hands and it becomes instantly obvious that they’re different. They feel different, they look different.

However, everything that sets the Google Nexus S apart from the Samsung Galaxy S seems like a logical evolution. The Google Nexus S is more rounded on its body, the screen is slightly curved and the bulbous bottom we saw on the Galaxy S is now slightly larger. The Nexus S measures 63 x 123.9 x 10.88mm and weighs 129g.

A more substantial change is the keyboard. Android keyboards come in many forms and the default that we’ve been using across past generations has been good. HTC’s Sense keyboard always offered more, as do the likes of SwiftKey and various others. Google has tackled this for themselves now and created a keyboard that feels more complete. It feels as though it acknowledges the sorts of thing that people are writing on a smartphone. Access to numbers is much better and the fresh look is welcomed too. We can’t really identify all the quirks in the keyboard with only a brief hands-on, but we came away feeling positive about it. 

One of the new features is the way text is selected and highlighted. Individual word selection happens in a flash, with draggable markers so you can easily place them where needed. The cursor placement gets a marker too. In truth, adding these sorts of features brings the stock keyboard up to date, with other platforms already offering this sort of convenience.

The Google Nexus S is also fast. Menus move with a fluid grace, apps open and close with barely a pause. Browser pages render, drag and zoom with the sort of elegance that you’d expect from a top-of-the-range smartphone. Of course, this was an unsullied device, it wasn’t loaded with contacts and apps like a device in the real world will be, so we’ll have to wait and see what the result is when it really gets put to work.

Around the back of the Nexus S you’ll find a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash. There is a front facing camera too supporting 640 x 480 pixel resolution capture and strangely Google list the video resolution of the rear camera as 720 x 480. When we checked the device it didn’t state the resolution in the settings, so we’ll have to wait and see exactly what the deal is when we get a review sample in.

One of the other features that Google has been making noise about is the 3-axis gyroscope, aimed at giving developers something else to get to grips with, and should provide some interesting game support.

But this isn’t just design for the sake of design. When holding the Nexus S it was balanced and nestled down into the palm of your hand ready to be put into action. The squared cut of the Galaxy S just doesn’t feel as comfortable now, and the bulbous bottom on the Nexus S fits into your hand giving the phone support. Perhaps we’re a little over-excited about this, but it felt like the phone had been custom made to our very own hand. They say that cars are sold on basic things - the sound of the door closing, the feel of the steering wheel, the action of the seat belt pull. If Google wants to shift phones, then we think it's already taken a step in the right direction. That is if Samsung doesn’t then sell an identical version of its own.

From discussions that have emerged around the Internet, some are disappointed that the Nexus S doesn’t push the hardware boundaries forward. Some are calling for a 1.2GHz or dual core processor, some are dismayed by the lack of upgradable storage - you get your 16GB and you better be happy with it.

But the real point here is about performance. If the Nexus S can do everything you want with the hardware it has, do you need to wind up the numbers? Digital cameras ramped up their megapixels in incremental steps, but it didn’t always translate into performance. We’ve always argued that sheer processing power isn’t the be all and end all. Yes, it will step over a shoddy OS (like the HTC HD2 did with Windows Mobile 6.5), but it is software refinement that is more often the key to a device that works. The question that some will have is whether a device that toes the line at the top of the smartphone pile at the moment, will be able to hold its own as we ask more of our phones in the future.

The Google Nexus S runs the new Android 2.3. Visually it doesn’t look drastically different, but there are some slick little touches here and there that make Android a little more refined. There are also a few new changes to accommodate hardware and the inclusion of NFC support is the biggest change overall. Of course you need to be able to put this to some sort of use (which we didn’t get the chance to do in our hands-on) and at this point in time, we wouldn’t say it is a reason to buy a phone - not until there is a commonplace real world benefit.

But the little touches you will notice are things like pressing the standby button - and the screen blinks off like an old cathode ray tube. Get to the top or bottom of a list and you get a yellow burst to accompany the slight bounce you get. It’s a small detail, but effective at telling you that you’ve reached the bottom of that particular menu. The status icons across the top of the screen have been redesigned too.

The phone is released late December 2010. 

Pay as you go price:£549.95

BLACKBERRY TORCH REVIEW!!

Introduction

Whether or not you believe the new BlackBerry Torch 9800 from AT&T is as revolutionary as RIM’s TV ads imply, depends on what side of the smartphone divide you’re on. If you’re a current BlackBerry user, you’ll find the Torch a quantum improvement over RIM’s last touch-screen attempt, the Storm, and an amusing alternative to BlackBerry’s suddenly quaint non-touch interface. If you’re an iPhone or Android user, however, a few minutes touching Torch will make you chuckle patronizingly before returning it to its chastened owner. In other words, BlackBerry users will find it a huge step up, but it still won’t staunch the bleeding RIM continues to suffer from defections to the iPhone and Android phones.

Features and Design

Even though RIM touts the Torch as revolutionary, it’s a doppelganger of the Storm, only with the addition of a vertical slide-out keyboard – same size screen, same basic design and layout.

The Torch would have been revolutionary – or at least competitive – even a year ago, but now suffers badly in comparison with the latest wave of iPhone and Android superphones. It has just a 3.2-inch screen, the same size on the Storm, but now suddenly considered small, considering the iPhone has had a 3.5-inch display since for more than three years and the 4-plus inch screens available on the Samsung Galaxy S, Motorola Droid X and HTC EVO. A 600 MHz processor compared to the 1GHz engines on all recent superphones. VGA rather than HD videorecording. The Torch does offer a modern 5-megapixel still camera and 3G tethering – nice, but hardly comparable to the mobile hotspot capabilities of the Droid X from Verizon, or 4G hotspotting on the EVO and the upcoming Galaxy S Epic from Sprint.

BlackBerry is building its own App World app store, but the Torch also includes AT&T’s own AppCenter app store, which is slightly confusing.

BlackBerry’s biggest attraction has and always will be its highly responsive, sculpted physical QWERTY, but the Torch compromises this prime feature. To slide comfortably under the Torch’s top screen half, RIM flattened the keyboard, and as a result, the keys are nearly flush and don’t have Blackberry’s deep, firm response. Even though the keyboard is around the same approximate size as on previous BlackBerry slab phones, you’ll find now trying to hit ALT and the adjacent 7 key nearly impossible.

Multimedia

As compared to the iPhone and the current crop of Android phones, the BlackBerry’s Torch’s knack for dealing with music, photos and video is limited.

While smaller than current superphones, the Torch’s screen is nonetheless big and bright enough for casual video viewing. But MobiTV offerings are pixelated, and instead of a dedicated YouTube app, the YouTube icon instead simply takes you to the YouTube Web site, and I could find no way to watch videos in high quality, as you can on Android or iPhone. AT&T’s own video service doesn’t seem to be pre-loaded on the Torch, but you do get PrimeTime2G

iPad vs Blackberry Playbook

PlayBook vs iPad: Fight!

It's still very early days to start judging the PlayBook against its biggest competitor, the iPad. RIM has only given us a glimpse of the PlayBook, and we think that ease of use is more important than feature overload, no matter how sexy the specs.

We're looking forward to seeing Flash 10.1 and multitasking implemented well on a tablet, but battery life could be crushed by features like these, as well as the PlayBook's dual-core processor. RIM hasn't announced what the PlayBook's estimated battery life will be, but we've been endlessly impressed with the iPad's juice conservation -- it can last for days without charging.

The PlayBook will also have to outshine an upcoming update to the iPad's software, which Apple announced earlier this month. iOS 4.2 will bring iPhone-style multitasking to the iPad, as well as other features.

The iPad also benefits from easy access to apps, music, movies and books through the iTunes store., and we hope a version for the PlayBook will arrive quickly. But there's no equivalent to iTunes for buying other media effortlessly on a BlackBerry. On the other hand, BlackBerrys are much easier to sync with your computer, You can do it via Bluetooth with several different computers, for example, rather than being chained to a single computer with a USB cable, as is the case with the iPad. So we expect it'll be easier to get your PlayBook packed with media from your desktop.