Best Mobile Phone – Summer Contenders
CameraPhone Review
With so many great mobile phones on the market and the launch of the iPhone 4 arguably raising the bar what is the top mobile phone available now, or expected to be available in the coming months?
Although choosing a mobile is a very personal affair, In a bid to answer this question Camera Phone Review has compared the top phones from the top manufacturers to see if there is a clear winner.We have compared size, screen, camera, multi-media, general performance and other features and looked at the Apple iPhone 4, Nokia N8, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the HTC Desire.
First the iPhone 4 Apple’s latest offering and most sought after handset
iPhone 4 size
115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm 137 grams
iPhone 4 screen
Apple’s Retina display 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display with 960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi
iPhone 4 camera
5-megapixel still camera, Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio, LED flash, Tap to focus video or still images, Photo and video geotagging
iPhone 4 multi-media iPod music player, iMovie, iBooks and iTunes
iPhone 4 other features
UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technology
Assisted GPS
Digital compass
Talk time:Up to 7 hours on 3G / Up to 14 hours on 2G
Standby time: Up to 300 hours
The Nokia N8 is expected in stores around 24th August. Our Nokia N8 review holds out this to be a solid device with the highest resolution camera of all of the phones compared.
Nokia N8 size
113.5 x 59 x 12.9 mm 135 grams
Nokia N8 screen
3.5-inch OLED capacitive touch screen with 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) AMOLED and 16.7 million colours
Nokia N8 camera
12 megapixel sensor and full Xenon flash and the ability to record video in 720p HD. HDMI connector for easy downloading and viewing of your video.
Nokia N8 multi-media
Music player, internet, messaging, photos, Ovi Store, Videos, WebTV, Office document editors, Video & photo editor, Mail, Chat, Radio
Nokia N8 other features
Bluetooth
HDMI connector
micro-USB connector
3.5 mm AV connector
FM radio
FM transmitter
Internal memory: 16 GB
MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, up to 32 GB
A-GPS receiver with Ovi Maps with free car & pedestrian navigation
Talk-time (maximum): GSM 720 mins / WCDMA 350 mins
Standby time (maximum): GSM 390 h / WCDMA 400 h
The HTC Desire is the first Android phone in our summer heavyweight round up.
HTC Desire size
HTC Desire screen Touch-sensitive 3.7 inches screen with pinch-to-zoom capability and 480 X 800 WVGA pixels
HTC Desire camera
5 megapixel coloUr camera
Face detection capability with auto focus
LED flash
Widescreen photo capture and geotagging
HTC Desire multi-media
Photos application for viewing photos and videos
Music
FM Radio
HTC Desire other features
1 GHz processor
576 MB Ram with microSD™ memory card up to 32 GB
3.5 mm stereo audio jack
Bluetooth
GPS with Google Maps navigation
Facebook™ integration
Talk time:WCDMA: Up to 390 mins / GSM: Up to 400 mins
Standby time:WCDMA: Up to 360 hours /GSM: Up to 340 hours
The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 has been out in the market longer than the other mobiles in this round up and yet it has a camera and picture performance to rival certainly the iPhone and the HTC models. Like the HTC it is based on Android with a custom interface.
MATERIALS AND FINISH
Sony started off Thursday by unveiling three Cyber-shot cameras, two of which are its first point-and-shoots to support 3D. The WX5 and TX9 together can use their sweep panorama modes to create a 3D image viewable on a supporting computer or TV, including through HDMI out. A new trick, sweep multi angle, composites 15 different angles to create a 3D image that can simulate 3D even on the camera's 2D display.Both have back-illuminated, 12.2-megapixel CMOS sensors that should improve their sensitivity in low light and which also are key to some multi-shot photo effects. A new automatic mode is smart enough to recognize when multiple shots are needed to improve the final image quality. It can take two shots for a "natural" flash that uses a reference shot to reduce the washed-out effect, and a pseudo-bokeh effect that compares two shots to defocus the background much like a wide aperture lens. Both can shoot at up to 10FPS in bursts, though possibly at a lower resolution.
Both cameras can shoot widescreen 1080i (or 4:3 1080p) AVCHD/H.264 video and are split mostly by their bodies and lenses. The TX9 is Sony's ultra-compact model with a 4X (25-100mm equivalent) lens and almost exclusively touchscreen control. Opting for the WX5 reverts to manual controls but provides a 5X (24-120mm lens) with a relatively wide f2.8 maximum aperture.
The two will be available in September and will start at $300 for the WX5, moving up to $400 for the TX9.
One conventional camera, the T99, will ship at the same time. It shares a touchscreen-driven body similar to the TX9 but uses a 14-megapixel CCD and supports 2D sweep panoramas. Sony prices it considerably lower, at $250.
ASUS earlier today denied claims the Garminfone was selling poorly at T-Mobile. The Taiwan firm said shipments were as planned and that it had "positive demand," but didn't provide numbers. Morgan Keegan analyst Yair Reiner had estimated from visits to 50 T-Mobile stores that ASUS and Garmin shipped just 20,000 Garminfones since they went on sale in early June.
In his research note, Reiner noted that initial enthusiasm for the Garminfone hadn't been matched by the reality, as many of the sampled stores hadn't bothered to put the phone on show even several days after the June 9 debut. Those that had saw very few sales, many of which sold less than five and others none at all. A typical store had sold about five units total, the analyst said.
The Garminfone was to have been ASUS' first significant inroad into the US smartphone world after the lukewarm reception to the also Garmin-backed nuvifone G60, but it has faced several major hurdles even before it launched. On T-Mobile, it has had to compete with multiple other Android phones that offer similar or better features, such as the myTouch 3G Slide and the Nexus One. ASUS' launch was also timed for just two days after what became the unveiling of the iPhone 4
The fourth-largest US carrier has fought to stem subscriber losses in recent months due partly to its lack of a true, sustained halo phone on its network. AT&T's iPhone was one of the earliest lures away from T-Mobile, but Verizon has undermined T-Mobile's one-time reputation as the home of Android by offering more, and more advanced, devices in less than a year's time.
Both GPSTracklog and GPSFix link to a page on the cgpsmapper website that indicates development will be ceasing on that Garmin map compiler. This is a real shame; over the past decade, this compiler has driven the creation of thousands of freely-available maps for Garmin GPS units, as well as being a boon for creating your own personal custom maps. I use it all the time – just posted about it again recently. Even some international Garmin units have sold maps created with cgpsmapper.
In a more detailed post at the Yahoo Map Authors group, Stan Kozicki, the author of cgpsmapper, talks about this issue in greater detail. His biggest problem appears to be his inability to keep up with changes in the Garmin binary map format, since Garmin doesn’t formally document it; I know they recently made a change that broke map “locking” in his commercial version of the program. He’s apparently still talking to Garmin about some kind of continuation of the program for use in non-commercial independent map creation, with them possibly supplying more detailed information about the Garmin format. But Garmin appears to want the commercial versions of cgpsmapper to go away in favor of their commercial (and expensive) Map Product Creator.
I really hope that Stan and Garmin can come to some kind of agreement; I think the availability of cgpsmapper and the Garmin maps it creates helps drive commercial demand for Garmin units. Ten years ago, Garmin and Magellan had comparable market shares in the handheld GPS field; today, Garmin overwhelmingly dominates that arena, and is also far more popular than Magellan in the automotive arena as well. I don’t know how much the ability to create custom Garmin maps with free software had to do with that (creating custom Magellan maps is far more difficult, and requires proprietary software), but it certainly didn’t hurt.
In any case, there’s no indication from Stan that he will withdraw the last free version of cgpsmapper from availability anytime soon, and maps created with that version should work fine on most current Garmin models. Other free options for compiling Garmin map files include mkgmap, MapTk and MapDekode. I’ve been playing quite a bit with mkgmap recently, and am pretty impressed; it’s command-line only (like cgpsmapper), but I’m working on a GUI that will support most of its features/options.
Ever had the itch to make your own maps? Wished that you had access to the same cartography tools used by Garmin? Well, your dreams may be coming true. A new MapSource Product Creator page on Garmin’s developer site offers you the opportunity to…
Create custom maps that can be easily loaded into Garmin devices with the MapSource Product Creator (MPC). The MPC can create everything from full country topographic maps to maps for specific industry, military or research applications.
MPC supports digital elevation model data (a DEM-derived image of Zion National Park is used above), routing and restrictions, FM traffic support, speed limit display and more. Of course the devil is in the details…
Contact us to see if you qualify* for a free 90-day trial of MapSource Product Creator. You’ll receive a fully functional version of the MPC software and a three-month license. After your trial period, simply pay the first $5,000 of license fees to continue using the program.
*Evaluation and licensing of Garmin’s MapSource Creator Product is subject to approval.
Could this be a way for Garmin to reclaim the commercial development territory siphoned off by cGPSmapper? Will high licensing fees eliminate the possibility of trail maps? Okay digital cartographers, spill the beans; what do you think about all this?
iPhone 4 versus Android 2.2 Java Performance
It’s rather surprising this comparison took such a long time to take place, but nonetheless, ArsTechnica published the image below comparing the performance of Android 2.2’s web browser against iOS4’s mobile Safari in two respected JavaScript benchmarks.
The SunSpider JavaScript benchmark measures the amount of time a certain number of various JavaScript operations take to complete. A lower score means the operations completed morequickly, and the Nexus One running Froyo beats the iPhone 4
The V8 benchmark (an open source benchmark maintained by Google) tests the robustness of a phone’s ability to move through rigorous JavaScript actions found on many modern, complex web pages. Here, the Nexus One on Android 2.2 defeats the iPhone 4 by, well, a factor of 4 (about 300% better performance).
My own Nexus One running CyanogenMod 6 Alpha 1, which uses the Froyo browser, scored a 6185.4ms on the SunSpider benchmark, and a V8 score that consistently landed between 240 and 250.
Apple, your move.
Credit: ArsTechnica
Microsoft's alternative to Adobe's Flash, Silverlight, has now exited the beta stage and is available for Nokia's Symbian^1 (S60 5th edition) devices. The software can now be downloaded from NokiaÃs Ovi Store or directly from Microsoft. Users can see Silverlight sites in Symbian^1's integrated browser and install Symbian^1 app
