The most recent Hardware Reviews from Incisive Media

Power Traveller Solargorilla

Tom Royal — 2009-07-02T15:55:00.000Z

Tom Royal, Computeractive, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 15:55:00

Charge your laptop or phone anywhere with this solar panel

Packing for holidays isn’t as easy as it used to be. As well as a passport, sun cream and clothes, many of us want to take a mobile phone – and that means taking a charger, and probably a foreign plug adapter to make it work. If you have an MP3 player, that’ll need a charger too. Oh, and if you’re travelling for work you’ll need a laptop and its charger. Pretty soon the bottom of your suitcase can end up filled with a spaghetti-like mess of power adapters and wires.

One neat solution is the Solargorilla: a foldable solar panel that can be used to charge all kinds of electronic products. Its two panels are fitted into a plastic case that measures around 27x20x2cm when folded shut, and feels impressively rugged – we would have no concerns about chucking it into a rucksack.

The Solargorilla has two sockets. One is designed to charge laptops, and there’s a USB socket for charging smaller devices. A selection of power adapters is supplied in the box, and others can be ordered from the company for a few pounds each.

The only problem we found with the Solargorilla was finding enough sunlight in the UK. Small devices such as a Nokia mobile phone and Nintendo DS games console charged easily, but even on a brilliantly sunny day we couldn’t quite get enough power to properly charge our Medion laptop. If you’re heading somewhere really sunny, of course, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Alternatively the company sells a rechargeable power pack, the Powergorilla, that can be charged from the solar panels and then used itself to deliver a steady charge to a laptop.

All in all, the Solargorilla won’t be ideal for everyone: it’s fairly expensive, and to charge a laptop directly you’ll need very bright sunlight. If you’re travelling somewhere hot and off the beaten track, though, it could prove invaluable.

Powertraveller Solar Gorilla portable power charger

Orestis Bastounis — 2009-07-02T10:41:00.000Z

Orestis Bastounis, Personal Computer World, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:41:00

An eco-friendly way to charge mobile devices

The Solar Gorilla is a portable solar panel that can charge an MP3 player, mobile phone, or even a laptop.

It’s quite a bulky unit that comprises two photovoltaic panels that open like a clamshell to capture energy from direct sunlight.

You plug a device into either the 5V USB or 20V laptop power using one of the supplied adapters. There are plenty of these for all the shapes and sizes of power connector used by different manufacturers, so you can charge most notebooks, including those from Asus, Acer, Compaq, Gateway, Epson, Samsung, Sony, E-machines, Viewsonic, Dell, Panasonic, but an Apple Macbook needs an adapter.

It doesn’t store any energy, so you can’t rely on the Solar Gorilla as an alternative battery. Instead, to charge a device, you have to leave it plugged in while the Solar Gorilla is in direct sunlight, which restricts when it can be used.

Powertraveller sells another product, the Power Gorilla, a portable battery that can be charged by the Solar Gorilla, although this costs another £130.

If you spend time camping or hiking, the Solar Gorilla could be exactly what you need if you have to be certain your laptop or mobile phone will work away from a power source.

The surface of the Solar Gorilla is covered in rubber, so it can survive a few knocks and scratches if you’re on the move. It’s quite thin, so will easily slip into a laptop bag or a rucksack, but be aware it weighs 700g.

It’s a free source of energy, but it might take a while before the savings to your electricity bill match the initial cost of the device.

The Solar Gorilla is an excellent solar-powered charger, but aside from giving you a warm feeling that your laptop is being powered from a source of eco-friendly energy, it’s only useful in limited situations, most of them travel-related.

Genius G-Shot HD520 HD camcorder

Orestis Bastounis — 2009-07-02T10:25:00.000Z

Orestis Bastounis, Personal Computer World, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:25:00

A portable HD camcorder for less than £100

Like the Flip Mino HD, the G-Shot HD520 is a pocket-sized camcorder that can record 720p resolution video. However, the G-Shot can also capture still images, function as a webcam, MP3 player and ebook reader, has a 2.5in rotatable flip-out LCD and its internal storage can be expanded with SD cards. And, incredibly, it’s much cheaper than the Flip Mino HD.

When recording video the G-Shot is meant to be held with your arm outstretched, pointed like a gun. It isn’t as light or portable as the Flip, measuring 4cm deep at its widest point.

On the right-hand side is a control for 5x digital zoom, along with a button to manually turn the flash on or off when taking still images.

Four buttons sit under your thumb for going through menus, selecting options and deleting files. A switch on the top lets you switch focus settings between normal and macro recording.

Regardless of which macro setting you use, the G-Shot won’t produce brilliant-quality video, thanks to its low-quality lens.

We spent time recording indoors and outside, and both times the results were mediocre. Video was either grainy or blurry, with artefacts obscuring small details, which negates the benefit of recording in high definition. It isn’t terrible though and is perfectly suitable for recording video for the web.

The G-Shot’s other features range from good to useless. The MP3 player works well as expected, but the small 2.5in screen isn’t suited for reading ebooks. Its still images are reasonable, although most dedicated compact cameras produce far better quality.

Still, you’d be hard pressed to find another HD camcorder less than £100. The G-Shot isn’t nearly in the same league as the Everio, and falls short of the Flip Mino HD. However, it’s perfectly suited for recording while on holiday, or for anyone who likes to share online video.

Nokia E75

David Phelan — 2009-07-02T10:00:00.000Z

David Phelan, Computeractive, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:00:00

This ‘business phone’ is neat enough to appeal to everyone

Nokia’s range of E-series phones are aimed at business users, which means they’re great for things such as email.

This new model is the first E-series one with a proper keyboard - it harks back to the company’s Communicator phones, which were always great for typing on but were very hefty.

However, on the E75 a spacious keyboard slides out sideways from behind the screen. The design of this phone was clearly important, and it’s elegant enough to stop it looking like a business phone at all.

It’s reasonably slim like a regular phone, and the gleaming metallic back looks very stylish. Overall, it feels like a classic Nokia that happens to hide a keyboard.

A motion detector means that when you slide out the keypad the screen spins around automatically and quickly so that its orientation matches the keys below.

The benefit of the keypad is obvious – why send text messages using annoying predictive text input when you have a full keyboard available to type on?

It worked very well, although there’s no room for separate number keys which instead occupy the top row of the keyboard - it is odd to have to press a Function key to select them.

Even though it’s sleek and cute, this is a phone that will attract more business-minded users who don’t want to go down the Blackberry route.

The E75 includes a subscription to Nokia Mail – a mail delivery service, free apart from data costs. Setting up a Googlemail account on the phone took just a couple of minutes and was simple and effective.

Like the earlier E71, this phone is designed to work in different ways according to your needs – it can be up for business and personal use with separate, customisable home screens.You can set it so business emails pop up only in the work scenario, for instance.

Internet access is good, with wireless network access built in so you can find a signal in a hotspot, but although the PC software is good for backing up and more, the absence of Apple Mac compatibility is a shame.

There’s a decent 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus, mirror and light, and a standard headphone jack. Battery life was decent rather than exceptional but this is a great phone with nice styling and strong features, including the very useful slide-out keyboard.

Konica Minolta Magicolor 1600W

Simon Williams — 2009-07-01T17:17:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeractive, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 17:17:00

A relatively cheap colour-laser printer

Inexpensive colour printing used to be the preserve of inkjet printers, but as prices have continued to drop, it’s now possible to pick up a colour laser for under £150.

Konica Minolta’s Magicolor 1600W is compact for a colour laser, but is still big – microwave oven-sized – compared to an inkjet.

It’s bigger still when in use, as the front cover pulls down to make the paper feed tray and part of the top cover hinges out to make the output tray.

There’s no cover for the paper when loaded, so you’ll probably want to close the machine up when you're not printing so it doesn’t attract dust.

The control panel consists of two buttons and six indicator lights, four of which tell you when the toner in each of the colour cartridges is low.

This printer uses a carousel-style print mechanism, which means each colour in a print is built up separately, before the complete image is transferred to the paper.

This is a slower technique than inline print, which is now more common and produces a colour page in a single pass, but is more expensive.

The Magicolor 1600W only comes with a single USB connection – the USB socket sticks out of the right-hand side of the printer, rather than being less obtrusive at the back.

Konica Minolta only supplies drivers for varieties of Windows – there's no support for Mac or Linux.

Print speeds suffered a bit from the carousel print system, but we still saw a top black print speed of 17 pages per minute (ppm) and a top-colour speed of over 4ppm, both of which were close to the claimed figures.

Print quality was good for both black and colour prints, though black text isn't quite as sharp as from other entry-level laser printers we’ve seen. Colour graphics were bright and attractive, but the range of available colours made photo prints a little over-vivid.

In its intended market of homes and home offices the drum or fuser units, which have lifespans of 45,000 and 50,000 pages respectively, will probably never need replacing.

The only other consumable is the toner itself and this gives a cost per page of 2.6p for black print and 11.7p for colour. The black print cost is good, though the colour is a little on the high side.

E-Pens Mobile Notes

Paul Lester — 2009-07-01T16:22:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 16:22:00

A quick and easy way to transcribe handwritten notes

Anyone who has attempted to convert a series of handwritten notes to text on a computer knows that transcription can often be a painstaking and time-consuming process, so automating this with a device such as E-pens Mobile Notes could save a lot of hassle.

The package consists of a digital stylus that acts as a regular pen, a receiver unit and conversion software. It can either be used on the move or as a mouse for tablet PCs, or for handwritten text entry into various applications.

Setup is straightforward and, once charged, the receiver can be clipped to the top of a pad of paper, picking up pen strokes to store as one of up to 50 virtual pages.

Once connected to a computer, these can be imported using the supplied software and converted to digital text using optical character recognition, with a range of settings available to denote language, writing style and end-format.

In addition to this, switching to mouse mode means that pen movements control the pointer on screen, with a tap on the page or click of the control button on the pen, activating left and right click.

We were very impressed by the responsiveness of the stylus and receiver and, though you have to write quite neatly to achieve 100 per cent accuracy, it does an admirable job of converting scrawl into text.

If you are unable or unwilling to write neatly, there is a recognition trainer provided to help the software interpret your style of writing, although you will need to proofread and alter text after writing to correct inevitable mistakes.

A bigger issue is that the pen doesn’t feel solid or well-built and is prone to slipping in the hand slightly after extended use. For normal writing, a premium fountain or ballpoint pen is much more satisfying.

However, the Mobile Notes package is still an effective product for saving time when transferring handwritten notes onto a PC.

Lexmark X4975ve

Simon Williams — 2009-06-29T16:11:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeractive, Monday 29 June 2009 at 16:11:00

A wireless printer with a few nifty additions

The X4975ve is part of Lexmark’s Professional range of multifunction printer/scanners, which means it comes with larger ink cartridges and a five-year warranty.

It looks clean and functional, with a silver case edge wrapping round the largely black body. There is a near-horizontal Automatic Document Feeder set on top, which makes scanning documents for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) much easier than using the standard glass flatbed scanner.

Paper feeds from a near vertical tray at the rear through to an extending output tray at the front. The control panel looked a little empty and one-sided, as there are no fax facilities in the X4975ve and hence no numeric keypad.

There is a 61mm colour screen, which can show thumbnails of photos as well as the menus. Controls for menu navigation sit to the right of the screen.

The front has memory card slots and a Pictbridge socket for printing direct from a plugged-in digital camera. The back has connections for USB and a home network. However, we suspect more people will use the wireless connection, also provided as standard.

To set this up it’s necessary to temporarily connect the machine through the USB socket first. Some of the printer's competitors have managed the wireless setup process without this step and it could be awkward if it’s hard to get your computer close to the printer.

Print speeds were below average, even for an inkjet, and much slower than Lexmark's claims: we measured just over 7 pages per minute (ppm) for black text and just under 2ppm for colour pictures. The X4975ve can print double-sided pages and at this it was better, at just under five sides per minute.

Print quality was generally OK, though black text is a bit more fuzzy than from rivals such as Canon and HP. Colour graphics are a little pale, though colour photocopies are surprisingly close to their originals. Colour scans from the flatbed are also good in this respect.

Using the larger ink cartridges supplied, one black and the other containing three colours, gives costs per page of 4.7p for black and 8.5p for colour. While the colour cost is reasonable for this class of machine, the black print cost is too high, as is the asking price for the device.

Review: Apple 13in MacBook Pro

Julian Prokaza — 2009-06-29T12:16:00.000Z

Julian Prokaza, V3.co.uk, Monday 29 June 2009 at 12:16:00

Apple's MacBook Pro range gains a much more portable member

The new 13in MacBook Pro is aimed at people who like the look of Apple's other aluminium 'unibody' models, but don't want to lug around a leviathan laptop just to have Mac OS on the move, or pay a premium for the MacBook Air.

Externally, the 13in MacBook Pro has the same sumptuous good looks as its 15in and 17in siblings, but it weighs a good half a kilo less than the 15in model. It fits more comfortably on the lap too, which is an important consideration if you're prone to working on the train or in cramped economy-class airline seats.

The all-aluminium construction means that the 13in MacBook Pro feels very robust and, like other the other unibody models, there are no external vents to worry about keeping clear. Apple has sensibly relegated all expansion ports to the left side of the laptop and, while this means that there's a plug scrum when they're all in use, the cables are at least kept neatly to one side.

All MacBook Pro models gained an SD Card with Apple's June refresh, and FireWire is now standard on all models. The port was absent from the previous 15in MacBook Pro, much to the annoyance of many. Apple has settled for FireWire 800 ports on all MacBook Pro models though, so you'll need an inexpensive 400-to-800 adapter to connect digital video camcorders and many external FireWire hard drives.

As with other MacBook Pros, the 13in has Apple's new glass multi-touch trackpad and 'Scrabble tile' keyboard, and both are extremely comfortable to use.

The 13.3in glass screen has the same frameless design as the other MacBook Pros but, unlike the 17in model, there's no anti-glare option. We can't help feeling that this is a mis-step for this model since, while the LED backlight gives a wonderfully bright and vibrant image, the screen's highly reflective glossy coating makes it all but useless outdoors, which is where a compact notebook like this will often be used.

One other small caveat with the 13in MacBook Pro is that the battery is non-removable. This is something of a trend with Apple products, although its supporting arguments about increased battery life do seem to hold water (or electrons). The 13in MacBook Pro gives an impressive six hours of typical internet use but, while this is impressive for any laptop, it's no consolation when you can't swap in a spare cell on a 10-hour flight.

With a starting price of £899, the 13in MacBook Pro is good value and highly recommended if you need a powerful Mac OS laptop that's both affordable and portable. The only hiccup is that the white MacBook is still on sale and, thanks to recent specification bumps, has largely the same set of features as the 13in MacBook Pro. In fact, its matte screen, removable battery and FireWire 400 port might make it even more appealing, as long as you can live with its dated design, that is.

Lacie Datashare

Tom Royal — 2009-06-26T17:23:00.000Z

Tom Royal, Computeractive, Friday 26 June 2009 at 17:23:00

Two memory card readers in one

Lacie’s Datashare is certainly unusual looking. Its red and white plastic shell looks a bit like a giant pill.

Separate the two-coloured parts, though, and you'll find that each has a USB plug and a memory card slot. The red section takes SD and SDHC cards, or MicroSD cards using an adapter, while the white one accepts only MicroSD.

Apparently, the idea is that you stick a memory card in both and then use one side for files that you want to share and the other for those you want to keep private. There is nothing to stop you keeping both to yourself, though.

The two memory card readers work well, but we’re not sure how useful a MicroSD card reader is – we’d rather have two standard SD ones. Even so, the two-part design does at least keep dust out of the card slots when they’re not in use, and £10 seems a reasonable price to pay for a sturdily made card reader.

Sapphire DPF-T10 digital picture frame

Andrea-Marie Petrou — 2009-06-26T17:07:00.000Z

Andrea-Marie Petrou, Computeractive, Friday 26 June 2009 at 17:07:00

A frame with interesting features

A photo frame used to mean a static display of a single picture, but with digital photo frames it's possible to show much more than that.

The Sapphire DPF-T10 is a frame that looks sleek and stylish, meaning we weren’t embarrassed to display it in the living room. It has a 10in screen and can display JPEG and BMP format images as well as AVI video.

The screen can also be set up to display the pictures in portrait or landscape mode (that is, propped on its bottom or on its side). Most of the time the frame was able to detect that it had been rotated and it automatically rotated the pictures to match.

That clever touch aside, actual picture quality was not so good – photos were grainy and in some cases badly stretched.

The frame also supports MP3 music files, which means that you can listen to music while viewing pictures. Unfortunately the sound from the internal speakers was very tinny and when we played videos they suffered from the same problem.

However, the frame did come with some interesting features, notably the way it can be switched on by the user clapping twice. A great idea, but you have to stand right next to it, making us wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier to push the power button.

The frame itself is controlled using the touch-sensitive display, which has nine on-screen buttons (they disappear when not being used) to access menus and create slideshows of your pictures.

We were also impressed with the size and sensitivity of the buttons, which were big enough to cater for the biggest of big fingers and sensitive enough for just a light touch.

The frame has 256MB of internal memory for storing video and pictures and we liked the way that we could easily transfer it straight from a camera using the USB socket on the frame, or through a computer. There are also memory card slots that accept the common SD and XD formats but not the Compactflash used by some larger cameras.

First Look: iPhone 3GS

Ian Williams — 2009-06-26T16:31:00.000Z

Ian Williams, V3.co.uk, Friday 26 June 2009 at 16:31:00

Is the latest incarnation from Apple worth the hefty price tag?

Apple recently unveiled the third generation of its popular mobile phone, the iPhone 3GS, and we've managed to get our hands on one for a quick once over.

At first glance it's almost impossible to tell the 3G and the 3GS apart, but under the hood Apple has made a number of improvements, including more storage, a higher resolution camera, faster processor, better data speeds, stereo Bluetooth and a magnetometer to enable the compass feature. Despite the extra grunt behind the 3GS, Apple reckons it has managed to improve the battery life as well.

Apparently the 3GS also boasts a smudge resistant screen, but to be honest we couldn't notice much difference and after a few minutes of use you'll find yourself wiping down the screen with your sleeve or a cloth, just like every other touch-screen around.

The latest version of the operating system also brings in a raft of new features, many of which will be available to original and iPhone 3G owners as well, including such novel concepts as search, voice recording, video recording, MMS and the ability to cut and paste text.

Of course some people will argue that Apple is not doing anything new, but instead just catching up with what most of today's smartphones can already accomplish, but regardless these new features do make it an even greater threat in the enterprise market as the iPhone now has enough functionality to make it a workable business device.

Possibly two of the biggest changes in this regard are ability to use the landscape keyboard in any application - something that was sorely lacking in previous iterations – and the introduction of cut and paste. When you have two hands available to type, the landscape layout is almost always much easier, however we found the lengthy procedure required to select, cut or copy, and then paste text to be somewhat laborious. That said, we can't really think of a better way that Apple could have done it under the circumstances.

Apple has done an excellent job of integrating MMS support, making the multimedia aspect fit in nicely with the threaded message system it uses for SMS. Adding images is also as simple as tapping the little camera icon that appears when typing a message and then either taking a shot or browsing for an existing one to be embedded into the message.

Another noticeable improvement is the increased data speeds which now support HSPA up to 7.2Mbit/s and if you're in the right areas you can really notice the difference. Similarly the faster processor helps make the iPhone's already slick interface just that bit smoother, particularly in resource heavy applications like Google Earth.

In terms of the camera, the bump in resolution to 3 megapixels and the addition of video recording goes a long way to turning it into something usable, however the lack of any kind of flash or zoom function means it still lags behind most competitors.

The new search function is a great addition, particularly for those heavy users who store a large number of contacts, email and bookmarks, allowing you to search for a term across the entire device in one place.

Apple has also jumped into the voice arena with the launch of the 3GS, introducing a pretty handy voice recorder and voice control as well. The voice recorder works well and also allows you to send recordings off in an MMS or an email.

Voice control is done pretty neatly as well, activated by simply holding down the home button for a few seconds. As long as there isn't too much background noise, the speech recognition is pretty accurate, although it does take a while to learn the commands, and the lack of any ability to train the software is something of a shortfall.

Apple has also introduced tethering, which allows owners to use their iPhone as a 3G modem for their PCs. However, at least here in the UK this feature has been crippled by the mobile operator with the introduction of an extra tethering charge. According to O2, despite the iPhone's unlimited data service on the phone itself, if you wish to tether your iPhone you have to purchase a bolt-on for an additional £15 a month, which gives users up to 3GB of data. In this case, most people would be better off simply buying a separate 3G dongle.

At first glance the addition of the Compass may not seem like anything you might actually use, and as a discrete application that may be true. However its potential to be integrated into other applications is quite wide, the most obvious being maps and navigation – for instance if you double tap the 'locate me' icon in Google Maps the location icon also indicates your direction, helping make finding your way around just that bit easier. It also helps enable full GPS navigation systems to be ported to the iPhone.

So, the iPhone 3GS is faster and packed with a raft of useful new features, but is it worth upgrading? In the UK, O2 has an exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone and the operator has attached a hefty price tag to the 3GS and isn't offering a free upgrade like it did last time.

Given that many of these new features are available on the previous iPhone through the OS 3.0 upgrade, if you're only a few months into your contract it's probably not worth the upgrade. But if you're a fan of the iPhone and your contract is up for renewal it may be worth counting up your pennies.

However for those that think the new iPhone is too expensive, the recently launched Nokia N97 and the upcoming HTC Hero could be great alternatives and may well suit your pocket a lot better.

D-Link NetDefend DFL-260

Alan Stevens — 2009-06-26T10:00:00.000Z

Alan Stevens, Personal Computer World, Friday 26 June 2009 at 10:00:00

All in one threat protection for the small business

D-Link’s NetDefend DFL-260 is a UTM (Unified Threat Management) appliance which, at first glance, offers the same firewall/VPN facilities as the cheaper DFL-210 we reviewed back in the September 2007 issue. However, whereas the DFL-210 is very much an entry level product, the new DFL-260 adds anti-virus and more sophisticated intrusion protection options, together with hardware accelerators to cope with much larger networks.

From the outside there’s very little difference, with four 10/100Mbits/sec Ethernet ports for Lan connectivity plus two for the internet. Traffic shaping and failover options are available across the two Wan ports, added to which the second can be used to create a so-called De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), to protect public facing servers.

In terms of the firewall there’s not much difference either, implemented in the NetDefendOS software. To this is then added a VPN server able to support up to 100 tunnels with a maximum throughput overall of 25Mbits/sec. Support for site-to-site and client-based VPN setups is available using a mix of tunnelling IPSec, PPTP and L2TP technologies, but software clients aren’t included.

The “real” UTM options then start with what D-Link calls “stream-based” anti-virus scanning. By this it means the ability to inspect files for viruses as they pass through the gateway, without having to be cached. Kaspersky technology is behind the D-Link anti-virus scanner, added to which there’s an advanced Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) which employs a technology called component-based signature recognition to identify a wide range of potential threats. This, in turn, uses information collected from a number of sites including the US National Vulnerability Database.

The IPS and anti-virus options also benefit from hardware accelerators. D-Link claims the accelerators enable these options to be run simultaneously without degrading firewall/VPN performance and so deliver sufficient throughput to handle networks of 50 users or more.

Web content filtering is yet another option, with 90-days of free updates for this and the other services included. Thereafter, however, annual subscriptions are required which, together, can cost almost as much again as the hardware.

In terms of what it has to offer, then, the DFL-260 looks like it ought to be an effective UTM appliance, well suited to the small business. As with the DFL-210, however, management is something of an Achilles heel

The basics are fine, with a console port for local management via a command line interface plus SNMP support if needed. It’s also possible to connect to the DFL-260 via a browser both for initial deployment and day to day management.

We found the Web interface easy navigate, and there’s a startup wizard to, where for example, you can assign addresses to the various interfaces, set the clock and so on. That done, however, and all you’re left with is a fairly basic firewall. Everything else has to be configured manually, and it’s not easy

Policy-based management is the order of the day, which is good, and once you get to grips with how it all works it’s not hugely difficult. However, you’re presented with a seemingly endless list of options and a high degree of technical knowledge is assumed throughout. Such knowledge is likely to be in short supply in the kind of small businesses at which the product is aimed. The documentation helps, but only a little, leaving the DFL-260 very much the kind of product you’d want a specialist reseller to both install and maintain.

Apple iPhone 3GS

Paul Allen — 2009-06-24T14:00:00.000Z

Paul Allen, Computeractive, Wednesday 24 June 2009 at 14:00:00

The world’s most talked-about phone – but is it worth it?

VIDEO: See our video review of the new Apple iPhone 3GS

The third addition to the iPhone range, the 3GS, is a small step forward for Apple compared with the first two handsets, in that it introduces several features that similar phones have had for years.

There are actually two new products here: the iPhone OS 3.0 operating system update that users of older iPhones can get through iTunes, and the new hardware. The software introduces the ability to cut and paste text and images from documents or web pages and to send photos by MMS. The long-called-for landscape keyboard for typing emails and text messages has also been included.

More people now use phones to take photos and the 3GS has an improved 3-megapixel camera. It has auto-focus built in so that you can tap a specific part of the screen to bring that area into focus. This feature is demonstrated in our video review of the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone also adjusts colour and light settings to suit. The quality is fair for sharing photos digitally, but prints larger than 6x4in were average at best.

Users can also take short video clips and trim them. Once complete, photos and videos can be sent using MMS or email, while videos can also be uploaded to a Youtube account.

The 3GS has a built-in compass that works with Google Maps: open a map, tap the compass symbol and a cone symbol shows which way you're facing.

One of the iPhone's most talked-about new features is voice recognition, which enables users to tell it to call someone or play a specific artist, album or playlist, although it can't be used to select specific songs.

It was impressive but the number of commands available is limited and they need to be structured in a specific way: for example, 'play, artist, The Beatles' – not 'play The Beatles'.

There are some downsides to the iPhone – for PC users, synchronising its calendar with anything other than Outlook requires additional software.

And then there's the price. If you already have an iPhone on contract with O2 you can't upgrade until six months before it ends, and even then you have to pay up the rest of the contract's value.

New pre-pay customers will pay upwards of £340 while new monthly contracts start at £30 per month plus £184 for the phone. O2 has a page that gives full details of iPhone prices and tariffs .

For ease of use and all-round usefulness, the iPhone continues to set the benchmark for smartphones. This is neatly demonstrated by the cut-and-paste tool – double-tap a word and drag the bars to select the text you need before choosing to copy or cut. Double-tap a blank spot in a document and you'll get the option to paste. It's neat and intuitive.

It's fair to hail the iPhone's style but there's real substance to it too. Whether most of us can afford to buy or upgrade it is another matter, although cheaper deals for the iPhone 3GS are beginning to emerge online, such as by getting a 16GB iPhone 3GS with 12-month Simplicity tariff.

All the features mentioned in this review are demonstrated in our video guide to of the iPhone 3GS.

Violet Mir:ror

Kelvyn Taylor — 2009-06-24T11:15:00.000Z

Kelvyn Taylor, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 24 June 2009 at 11:15:00

An RFID kit for home that’s charmingly loopy

The French are experts at creating quirky technology and they don’t come quirkier than Violet’s Mir:ror RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader.

The Mir:ror starter kit ships with a Mir:ror USB RFID reader, two nano:ztag miniature RFID rabbits and three RFID ztamp:s adhesive tags to stick on everyday objects. The Mir:ror itself is a small white circular reader with an LED-illuminated rim that glows in several different colours depending on its status. There’s also a small audio beeper in it.

To get started, you create a user account at Violet’s website and download the Mirware application. Once your Mir:ror is connected, you need to assign actions to your RFID-enabled objects by placing one on the reader then registering and naming it either using the Mirware application or directly using your account area on the website.

Each tagged object gets its own unique email address, allowing you to do surreal things such as send emails to your umbrella. It will recognise any ISO-compliant RFID chip, so we could register both an Oyster card and an RFID-enabled Barclaycard as triggers to launch applications.

You can associate any number of applications with each object. There are several general-purpose apps such as ‘launch a program’ or ‘open a URL’ so you don’t need to do any programming to get started.

Available applications include launching a Youtube video, podcasts or RSS news services using text-to-speech conversions. The quality of text-to-speech isn’t brilliant, though. Applications can be chained together. There’s no easy way to create your own applications, but you can use a tag to send metadata to any web-based application.

Mir:ror has some good novelty value and is simple to use, although it’s not yet a must-have product. But as a technology demo, it’s impressive.

LG Arena KM900

David Phelan — 2009-06-23T16:49:00.000Z

David Phelan, Computeractive, Tuesday 23 June 2009 at 16:49:00

An iPhone alternative, or just a lookalike?

There’s something very familiar about the screen of the LG Arena KM900 touchscreen phone: the 16 colourful icons on a black background that decorate its screen bear more than a passing resemblance to the ones that appear on the screen of Apple’s iPhone.

But there’s more to the Arena than that. There are a range of views available. Click off the menu view and you have the choice of four different home screens, a finger swipe moving from one to the next.

These swipes work well, if you don’t mind a bit of a wait for the next screen to load. Then you can customise them as you wish, which is a neat touch, although with so many screens it can get a bit confusing.

The 3in screen on the Arena will suit those looking for a device smaller than the iPhone. It’s certainly easier to put in your pocket, with smaller dimensions in every direction (though it’s only a touch less deep). And the higher resolution of the screen, even though it’s smaller, makes it pin-sharp and colourful.

The phone has a great range of features. Not just the cut-and-paste basics of the iPhone, but an FM radio, a decent camera (this one is five megapixels), a front-facing camera for video calling, and more.

The camera has a flash, though its shutter lag is greater than you’ll find on a ‘proper’ digital camera.

The LG Arena will not satisfy people who want a phone as stylish as the iPhone. Although it’s made of high-quality materials including titanium, it just doesn’t quite cut it design-wise.

There’s certainly plenty going for the Arena but touchscreens can be offputting to newcomers.

Apple’s skill is to have designed one that is fast and responsive enough to make the user almost forget there are no real buttons. The LG Arena’s screen is a good implementation but it’s not quite as smooth as the iPhone’s or the one on the HTC Magic.

The inclusion of Dolby Mobile technology means that music played through the Arena sounds good and, unlike many modern phones, it can accept a dedicated 3.5mm headphone plug as standard.

Music lovers can add to the storage, too, as there’s a removable memory card slot under the phone’s back cover.

Other features include wireless network access and the easy ability to upload photos and video to Youtube and other websites. There is also a selection of games that make use of the M-Toy motion sensor within the phone.

While the Apple iPhone on the O2 network and the HTC Magic on Vodafone are better phones, this is a decent handset for those wanting a touchscreen device but who aren’t using either of those networks.