Motorola Droid 3 review
Few companies get a second bite at the mobile cherry. Motorola took its initially awesome RAZR phone and flogged it until it wasn’t just a dead horse but little more than neatly canned dog food. With the company’s handset business on the brink of failure, Motorola then bet everything on the Droid – a testosterone-packed Android handset that was everything the iPhone wasn’t. It paid off. Motorola now has a stable of Droid handsets in a variety of sizes, shapes and configurations that share a common clunkiness, geekiness, feature overload and the best ringtone in the Android universe.
The Droid 3 is the ultimate expression of Droid DNA. Motorola has crammed every feature it possibly can into this dual-core Gingerbread device, from an 8 megapixels camera to a five-row slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Like previous Droid devices, the Droid 3 is debuting on Verizon in America network – although without being able to take advantage of the network’s stunning 4G LTE speeds. Does the powerful Droid 3 take Motorola to another level? Or is the company making the same mistakes again, putting all of its mobile eggs into one Droid-shaped basket?
HP TouchPad review
As things get older they tend to get bigger. It’s the same for people, corporations, models of cars, budget deficits… and so it is for webOS. As Palm was in the process of being subsumed its great mobile operating system was being eyed for much broader things, far bigger than the little phones it had previously been flashed on. Things like printers and desktops and laptops, but for its first proper foray outside of a phone it has a tall task: compete in the brutally vicious tablet space.
Its weapon is the TouchPad, a 9.7-inch tablet from HP that got official back in February and will be available July 1st (if you don’t manage to find it earlier) — $499.99 for the 16GB model, $599.99 for 32GB. That’s exactly on parity with the WiFi iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1, current kings of the tablet court. Does this plus-sized Palm progeny really have what it takes to hang at that price point, or is this just a chubby pretender that’s outgrown its britches? Read on to find out.
HTC EVO 3D review
The first time we saw the rumored Supersonic we were blown away. HTC and Google had just wowed us with the Nexus One, and here we were looking at something even better — a 4.3-inch phone with WiMAX wrapped in a white body. This prototype was buggy and had abysmal battery life, but it was real. Four months later it landed in our hands at Google I/O. We’re of course talking about the EVO 4G which went on to become a runaway hit for HTC and Sprint as the first ever 4G smartphone in the US. And here we are a year later with the HTC EVO 3D, the legitimate heir to Sprint’s mobile kingdom — at least until the Motorola Photon 4G comes along. When we first played with the 3D-capable handset at CTIA we were suitably impressed, but we left with a lot of unanswered questions. How do the 1.2GHz dual core processor and qHD display affect battery life? Is 3D a compelling feature or just a gimmick? What is 2D camera performance like with the lower specced camera? Is the EVO 3D a worthy replacement for the EVO 4G? Find out in our review after the break.
Nintendo Wii U review
Well it’s about time. Ever since the current generation of consoles has been sat in our living rooms, annual gaming expo E3 has been bereft of any serious hardware announcements. Or at least one that hasn’t been either a handheld or peripheral. E3 2010 was dominated by Microsoft and Sony as they locked into a bizarre battle over who could best imitate the hugely successful Nintendo Wii, which this year has left Nintendo with only one choice: innovate yet again and jump ahead of the pack. The result is Nintendo’s Wii U.
Something for everyone
Nintendo says that this new machine is a revolutionary console and controller duo designed to be “something for everyone,” which in our opinion simply means packing the motion-control aspects of the Wii while also bringing what’s expected (a full compliment of controls and joysticks, for example) for core game styles like shooters and sports titles. With that mission statement in mind, you’d expect things to be graphically up to muster. They are. HD is a welcome (if late) addition, for one
via Nintendo Wii U review: Hands-on first impressions review | T3.com.
Sony NEX-C3 hands-on and exclusive photos
Sony has now officially announced its small form factor interchangeable lens camera, the Sony NEX-C3, and Pocket-Lint got a chance to have a quick play earlier today at a press event in Taipei, Taiwan of all places.
The new design looks great compared to the NEX-3 and NEX-3, mostly due to its more rounded shape, but Sony has somehow managed to shed both weight and a few millimetres here and there on the camera.
It isn’t immensely smaller – it’s just as thick as the NEX-3 – but the body is over 8mm narrower and 2mm shorter. In the grand scheme of things, this is unlikely to matter in actual usage. However, for Sony, it’s all about being able to say that this is the smallest model yet. That said, the rounded shape has improved the grip and with a larger textured surface it’s also less prone to slipping out of your hand.
via Sony NEX-C3 hands-on and exclusive photos – Pocket-lint.
Apple iOS 5 hands-on preview
iOS 5 won’t be ready for the masses until this Fall, but lucky developers — and eager tech bloggers — are able to get in on the action right now. We just got done downloading the 730MB BETA, and have decided to turn our iPhone 4 and iPad 2 into guinea pigs for all the newness. Apple says that there are over 200 new features baked into the updated OS, and we’ve run through the biggies from Notification Center to Twitter to that oh-so-convenient split keyboard for you — all you need to do is click after the br
Droid X2 review
Would a Droid X by any other name smell as sweet? When we reviewed that phone last year we found it to be a solid performer in a solid chassis. In short: a very good phone. Now it’s back with a new name, or a revised one at least, the Motorola Droid X2 offering the same basic design as its predecessor but packing a lot more heat on the inside — a dual-core dose of Tegra 2, to be specific. Will it tickle your olfactory sensors just like the first X?
HTC Sensation review
A hotly anticipated smartphone with a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, a “Super” 4.3-inch screen, and a manufacturer-skinned version of Android 2.3 — we must be talking about the Samsung Galaxy S II, right? Not on this occasion, squire. Today were taking a gander at HTCs Sensation, a handset thats just begun shipping in Europe under a short-term Vodafone exclusive and which should be making its way to T-Mobile in the USA early next month. By beating its stablemate the EVO 3D and Motos Droid X2 to the market, the Sensation becomes the worlds first 4.3-inch smartphone with qHD resolution, while also serving as the debut phone for HTCs Watch movie streaming service and Sense 3.0 UI customizations. That leaves us with an abundance of newness to review, so what are we waiting for?
via HTC Sensation review — Engadget.
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ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Review
I’ve been on a bit of a tablet kick lately, so even if you have dinner with me—tablets are bound to come up (I only break out the SSD conversation for the truly patient). Last week I had the pleasure of having dinner with Tony Tamasi and Jim Black of NVIDIA, and of course—tablets came up.
I’ve been thinking about device synergy, something I brought up in our PlayBook review. The problem is as follows: if I’m on my desktop with half a dozen tabs open and perhaps a PDF as well, but I decide to switch over to a tablet—there’s no quick way that I can transition my reading environment between the devices. What I have to do is sit down on the couch, whip out my tablet, and manually navigate to each website and redownload/open the PDF. What I’d like to do is something along the lines of HP’s Touch to Share, but just on a larger scale.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition review
It may be a bit difficult to pay attention to the spate of Honeycomb tablets that seem to be popping up left, right and center — you know, now that Ice Cream Sandwich has been officially promised — but what’s not easy to overlook is an 8.6mm slate. Checking in at a sliver of a pinch thinner than the illustrious iPad 2, Samsung’s rethought-out, redesigned and definitely-not-renamed Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the first Android tablet to date that seriously goes toe-to-toe with Apple in both specifications and design. Granted, the consumer models aren’t slated to ship out until June 8th, but given that Google handed us one last week during its annual I/O conference, we figured we’d spend the following weekend wisely. You know, photographing, benchmarking and testing this thing to the hilt. (Of note, the unit tested here was the Limited Edition model, devoid of TouchWiz, 3G and a microSD card slot, but is otherwise identical to shipping units aside from the design on the rear.)
The Tab 10.1 — not to be confused with the older, since-relabeled Tab 10.1v — weighs just 1.31 pounds (marginally besting the iPad 2′s 1.33 pound chassis), and if looks could kill, few people would’ve made it out of Moscone West with all organs functional. But as you well know, style only gets you in the door — it’s the guts, the software, and the marriage of it all that makes or breaks the tablet experience. Hop on past the jump to find out why we think Samsung truly delivered on the promise of a Google-powered tablet, and why you should all seriously consider socking away funds as early June approaches.
Read More Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition review — Engadget.
