Technology and gadget news

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S gets its powerful design from its predecessor.  Arc  S is equipped with single core 1.4GHz processor and an 8 megapixel Exmor R camera with few added features. The phones is pretty fast, thanks to the single core 1.4GHz processor and the upgraded camera functionalities lets you shoot cool 3D panorama shots. Despite such a powerful and slim and well built, it lacks the front facing camera. One things Sony needs to realize is that people have accepted 3G and since the handset is capable of it, they expect a front facing camera at least when the pricing is of such range. Arc S boasts 4.2 inch of Sony’s own Super LCD variety with lovely LED backlighting. The Mobile Bravia engine screen type is borrowed from its long line of LED TV’s.  It has a scratch resistant glass surface. The USP of Sony’s handsets are that they are equipped with Sony’s patented Timescape UI.

The UI found only in Sony handsets provides a very visually appealing and artistic messaging feature and application support to the Timescape UI.  It is mainly a card based UI for displaying your messaging and social networking updates. It can be flipped up and down on the homescreen .The photo quality from the 8 megapixel smart fast shooter is sharp with accurate color representation. The latest addition in the camera department is 3D Sweep Panorama. It lets you capture a wide 180 angle picture which then gets stitched together.  It comes with Android version 2.3.4 Gingerbread. Sony has officially announced a planned upgrade to this powerful gadget somewhere in the first quarter of 2012.

Samsung is out with his powerful and upgraded version of its Wave series and his very own Operating System Bada 2.0. Power packed with lots of performance improvements, tweaked UI and improved Samsung App store. Wave 3 comes with 4.0 inch Super AMOLED Capacitive touch screen with Corning Gorilla Display. One of the best Display screens launched till date. It is heavily loaded with features such as 1.4GHz Scorpion processor, Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP, 4GB internal storage and latest BAda 2.0. The rear facing 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash supports features such as Geo- tagging, face and smile detection, image stabilization and touch focus. Front facing VGA camera is provided for 3G Video calling. The USP of this device is its revamped and upgraded Bada 2.0 OS.

Samsung has worked very hard on it, after all it is in competition with top rankers such as Android and iOS.  Samsung has started with its ChatON service. ChatON is a global mobile communication service that enables you to have better relationships with your buddies all over the world. It is pre installed with ChatON. Currently it supports only limited Samsung devices and few android platform devices. Future support to iOS and Blackberry devices is mentioned on their official site. The Samsung app store has undergone a lot of improvements and changes. It gives you the fell that it is something different on Bada 2.0. Though Samsung has made it so appealing and powerful, it still lacks the charm of what other devices have. iOS and Android are way ahead when compared with their device sales, user’s choice and app support. These are major changes but still are not enough to hold itself in the position where iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows are competing.

Microsoft’s  Windows Phone platform has seen moderate success in its first round. It lacked few important features which were perfectly included in its latest 7.5 Mango update. Samsung Omnia W is a mid range Windows smart phone with decent hardware. It has 1.4 GHz processor with 512MB of memory and 8GB of storage. It has 3.7 inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. It has Corning Gorilla Glass Protection. Making the screen features more crispy and shiny. The 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED Flash shoots pretty nice images. VGA Camera in front provided for video call functionality. It provides 720p video recording and playback. Other features are standard like Bluetooth connectivity of version 2.1 with A2DP, Wi-Fi, accelerometer, light proximity and gyroscope sensors. The interface is very clean and simple. The live tiles on the homescreen displays information such as missed call entries, current date and time, unread mails etc. The UI is very strict with not much room for customization. After some time the same old strict UI becomes boring and gives the need of few customization tools.

In spite of being a moderately powerful smart phone, it still has a lot of disadvantages. Non – expandable storage, users have to limit their memory usage.  It does not support Bluetooth file transfers. The browser lacks the support of Flash or Silverlight . There is no option of mass storage. Though the specs look very promising, it still lacks its hold in the competitive market. Plus the app store for WP7 phones is very limited when compared to Android and iOS.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus is Samsung’s latest addition to the Google Nexus family. The family’s latest addition is indeed a powerful one with stylish looks with impressive and stunning features. Plus it is pre equipped with Google’s latest installment of its OS version 4.0 codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), One of the most anticipated phone. The first thing that will catch your eye is its massive 4.65inch Super AMOLED plus HD Display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The hardware specification includes whooping 1.2GHz Dual Core Cortex A9 processor with 1 GB of RAM and choice of 16/32GB of built in storage. The Galaxy Nexus boosts rear 5 megapixel and front 1.3 megapixel cameras. Other specifications include A-GPS, an accelerometer proximity sensor, Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP and Near Field Connectivity (NFC).

It comes fully loaded with one of the most awaited and anticipated version of Google’s Android OS, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The feature wise upgrade from its previous version 2.3 Gingerbread is phenomenal. It includes Face Unlock Feature, which will let you unlock your Nexus by holding the mobile handset in front of your face. Performance improvement, Multitasking upgrade, a recent app button which displays the most recently used application. One of the best feature include Android Beam , which uses Galaxy Nexus’s NFC feature providing you the ease to share any details with other compatible Android devices like photos, contacts, music etc. Overall the 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is easy to use and by far the fastest when compared to its earlier version.

Conslusion : Samsung Galaxy Nexus, by far the best Android Smartphone running with Google’s latest installment ICS 4.0 with 1.2GHz dual core processing power and 1GB of RAM. However Samsung could have upgraded its rear facing camera to 8 megapixels.

HTC Sensation XE is very good looking and impressive when compared to HTC Sensation. The appearance is visually more appealing with the glossy black finish along with a hint of red here and there. The keys get illuminated when they are use.  Sensation XE has a 4.3 inch display with S-LCD capacitive touchscreen. Below this display 4 touch sensitive keys are present namely Home, Options, Return and Search. The beats audio branding is very much visible at the back. The deal between HTC and Monster Cable Inc who makes the Beats by Dr. Dre  series of earphones and headphones. Sensation XE has shown that power has no limitations. It has 1.5GHz dual core processor with 768MB or RAM. HTC has its own sense UI preinstalled in their phones. It has the latest HTC Sense UI 3.0. HTC’s Android handsets have excellent browsers and SensationXE makes no exception. The pages load faster and have a speedy Flash performance, thanks to the 15GHz dual core processing power. The 1730mAh battery lasts for 7 hours and 20 minutes on 3G network while 9 hours 60 minutes on 2G network. It runs Android OS version 2.3.4 Gingerbread; however the latest addition in the Android OS family is 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and there still there are no news from the HTC side as to when are HTC devices getting those upgrades.

Overall Sensation XE is a powerful and a brilliant device with as good as power no bar and performance as smooth as silk. The Sensation XE with Beats audio logo at the back and the buttons on the lower screen mixed with misty red and black gives the Smartphone a classic appearance. It is one of the most powerful android running Smartphone till date.

Rumors were doing the rounds few months back that Samsung is going to introduce an upgraded version of its most promising Galaxy Ace line up. The beginning of this year saw the official launch of Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus with an expected release month of February 2012. The Smartphone boosts a 3.65inch capacitive touchscreen display with 1GHz processor and Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 chipset. It has 512MB RAM along with 3GB of internal storage and microSD support of up to 32GB. The phone supports a 5megapixel rear facing camera with autofocus and LED flash feature and lacks front facing camera.  Connectivity includes Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP support and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n with DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot feature.

The phone comes with Android OS version 2.3 Gingerbread and the regular features include Accelerometer proximity sensor, compass and A-GPS support. The phone overall doesn’t impress much and does not meet the expectations. Android version should have been the latest one 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich seeing its tough hardware specification and 1GHz processing power. The phone supports 3G network but the front facing camera is missing. The display type should have been more impressive apart from the regular TFT display. Hopefully Samsung should announce the planned upgrade to 4.0 for this device. Let’s keep our fingers crossed on this one. Overall the phone slightly matches to our expectations and is currently creating buzz because of the satisfactory performance by its predecessor Samsung Galaxy Ace. Users having an Ace will surely like to add a Plus to it J