Over the past few years, LG has significantly stepped up its game when it comes to mobile phones. We’ve had the Secret, Arena, Renoir and Viewty: all impressive, feature-packed handsets aimed at style-conscious consumers.
That trend continues with the Viewty Smart, a more powerful sequel to the original Viewty. Its predecessor was - as the name suggested - designed with snap-happy mobile photographers in mind and boasted a high-quality 5 megapixel camera.
The Viewty Smart naturally trumps this by rocking an 8 megapixel variant. And while imaging experts continue to inform us that megapixel size isn’t everything when it comes to photo quality, we were blown away by the snaps produced.
Not only are the images pin-sharp and packed with detail, but the colour balance is excellent. We feel that this phone will comfortably oust your dedicated point-and-shoot digital camera from its coveted position in your jacket pocket.
It’s not just the standard of the snaps that impresses either: the range of options available is also noteworthy. Several different shot modes are available, including one that promises to make all of your photos beautiful (although the success of this procedure naturally depends on the initial attractiveness of the subject matter - don’t go shooting a pig and expecting a work of art).
Putting aside the photographic prowess of the Viewty Smart, the phone exhibits the typically high standards showcased by pretty much every handset that comes out of LG’s factories these days.
The design is slim, light and robust - a world apart from the chunky Viewty Mk1 - although we have to admit we were slightly disappointed to discover that the back is plastic, though it appears to be brushed metal.
The front of the device is dominated by the 480×800 capacitive touchscreen. The only other feature is a single button which works very much like the Home key on Apple’s iPhone. External controls are kept to a bare minimum and this imbues the Viewty Smart with a sophisticated and uncluttered look.
LG’s S-Class interface - which made its debut with the Arena - makes a return, albeit in a slightly nippier guise. It’s still not quite as swift as we’d like, but the delay when switching between menus is less pronounced: clearly this phone is packing beefier hardware and RAM under the bonnet.
If we were going to pick fault with the Viewty Smart (and, to be honest, that’s what we’re here for) then we’d question the wisdom of producing a phone that can take 8 megapixel photos, display DivX movies and play music, but then giving it just 1.5GB of memory. Needless to say, that storage isn’t going to go very far, although there is the option to augment it with a microSD card, at least.
Another issue is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack - one of our constant bugbears with pretty much every mobile phone we seem to review these days. To be fair to LG, this isn’t being marketed exclusively as a music phone, but the tiresome use of proprietary headphones still annoys us.
However, such problems fail to dampen the resoundingly positive feeling we got from the Viewty Smart. This is a sexy, powerful and versatile mobile phone produced by a company that is truly hitting its stride at present. With product like this, it’s little wonder that LG happens to find itself being held in such high regard by consumers.
LG’s incredible run of quality continues with this ultra-desirable successor to the Viewty; if you’re looking to upgrade your phone but also want to avoid lugging a digital camera around, then this is highly recommended
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Manufacturer: LG
Price: from around £350 unlocked
Pocket Picks Score: 
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It’s not due until the autumn but it seems Microsoft is starting to build up the excitement about its Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
However talking to Mobifrance, Windows Mobile product manager Audrey Zolghadr said that of the 20,000 apps currently available for Windows Mobile, only 600 will be certified for launch.
Interestingly these will include some from game publisher EA Mobile: “Microsoft wants to make the smartphone more fun,” Zolghadr said. Free content, including games, will also be included.
Windows Marketplace for Mobile will allow you to buy apps via credit card or through operator billing, and like Google’s Android Market, will permit you to return apps within 24 hours if you’re not completely satisfied.
[source: Mobifrance via Google translation]
It’s hard to know how they will make a sustainable business of the back of such a hardcore device, but madcap Spanish outfit geeksphone has press-launched its device - named ONE - that will offer users root access out of the box.
The specs include a Marvell PXA310 processor clocked at 624 MHz, Android 1.5, a 3.2-inch TFT touchscreen, 3.2 MP camera with autofocus, quad-band GSM, UMTS (3.5G), Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, and a DVB-T digital TV tuner.
Pricing is yet to be announced - and technically we’ve yet to see a working prototype, let alone getting any details about the production run - but the device is expected to be available from geekphone’s website during the autumn.
[source: androidguys]
Developer Iliya Yordanov has confirmed that Ananga Ranga has been patently rejected for approval by Apple.
The iPhone app, which chronicles dozens of sexual positions outlined in the Kama Sutra, will not appear on the App Store due to explicit sexual content.
Yordanov wrote to us about the reasons behind the rejection, telling us that Apple made it clear that it was a fundamental objection to the app’s content.
“Even though they now have parental controls, Ananga Ranga is too graphic,” he explained. “I asked what’s that and he told me it’s because the app shows sex scenes.”
As we reported in our first look, Ananga Ranga details 50 different sexual poses using anatomically accurate 3D models. It’s those models–a bare-chested woman and nude man drawn mid coitus–that are drawing controversy.
Continue reading ‘Apple rejects Kama Sutra app, takes position against sexual content’
It has been exactly a month since Nokia launched Ovi Store, the Finnish company’s - let’s be honest - answer to the Apple App Store. How does it measure up
One thing is inarguable - Nokia, or Symbian phones in general, needed an organised App Store. The mish-mash of download sites and services that most Symbian users were used to meant no easy way of paying for applications and often no guarantee that what you were downloading was safe.
Apple’ App Store changed all that - setting the bar rather high with a service that is easy to use and tightly integrated with the phone. Love Apple or hate it, the App Store just works.
Ovi Store.. does too. Kind of. Almost all the key elements are in place - it even has a few nice features that Apple lacks but it doesn’t quite gel.This isn’t entriely Nokia’s fault - Apple only has one (two if you count the iPod Touch) platform to worry about. Nokia has many different models with subtle differences in both hardware and software.
Heres what does work: Applications are easy to find. Nokia does an admirable job of only showing you apps that will run on your phone. Apps are presented as large icons (12 to a page) with star ratings. On mouseover, a ’speech bubble’ popup will appear detailing price, a brief descrition and a ‘Send to mobile’ button.
The service will recommend apps it thinks you may like, and you can do the same with a ’send to friend’ button. Clicking on an app will give more details, reviews (and the chance to add your own views) and ‘related apps’ that perform similar functions.
Here is what doesn’t work so well: everything else. Actually buying an app is, for me at least, tortuous. Clicking the ’send to phone’ button will send an SMS to your phone (the number being part of your account details) containing a link… to the Ovi store. Yes, clicking that link on your phone takes you to the same page that you were on on your PC - this time, however, you get a ‘Download’ button. Unfortunately, to actually use the Download button you need to sign in to Ovi Store again using your phone’s built-in browser.
The built-in Nokia browser may be many things - but ‘usable’, ‘intuitive’ and ‘any good at all’ are not among them. The browser’s seeming inability to remember login details between sessions means you have to laboriously sign in again each time you decide to buy an app. Once you are in and can click ‘Download’ you will either simply get your free/trial app via wifi or 3G or you will have to negotiate the card payment system to purchse you non-free app.
The card payments work, but - again - entering the details via the keypad is an almighty faff. You can of cousre simply do this once and have Ovi Store remember them for you. One niggle I had was with th echouce of payment options. VBISA, AmEx.. but no Mastercard or debit cards. Even Paypal would have been nice. Sort it out, please, Nokia.
What is a simple two-taps and a password option on the App Store is for some reason vastly more complicated via Ovi Store. Focusing the purchasing of apps on the phone seems like a misstep when your phones are as fiddly to operate as Nokia’s (N97, 5800 etc. excepted - but not all customers will have those yet) Also, why no option to just download the SIS file and side-load the app? Frustrating.
Does the Ovi Store measure up to the App Store? No.
It is, however, a step in the right direction and much better than the jumble of alternate sources that faced Symbian owners in the past. Nokia has a somewhat harder task before it than Apple, and supporting multiple platforms on multiple mobile carriers can not be easy. All the same, there is much work to be done and several rather dim choices that need to be unmade before the Ovi Store can be declared an unqualified success.
Following reports that Apple had approved pornographic app Hottest Girls for release onto the App Store, developer Allen Leung is claiming it has sold out.
Searching for the app yields no results and the direct link to the App Store listing from Leung’s website prompts a message outlining it’s unavailability. Instead of being pulled down by Apple for objectionable content, though, it’s be voluntarily taken off the App Store due to what Leung claims is overwhelming popularity.
“The Hottest Girls app is temporarily sold out,” explains Leung. “The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app. Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing.”
Hottest Girls has been at the forefront of a wave of new apps taking advantage of firmware update 3.0 parental controls enabling restricted access to mature content. Interestingly, Leung also sells a similar app with male models entitled Hottest Guys that has not been viewed as controversial.
Don’t worry if you weren’t able to snatch a copy of Hottest Girls when it was on the App Store because it’s coming back, comforts Leung. “To answer the question on everyone’s mind: Yes, the topless images will still be there when it is sold again.”
For those who llike to plan carefully, and don’t mind spending ages doing so
Looking at Projekt’s icon (and name, come to that) you might be forgiven for expecting a full-on project management tool like MS Project. What you get instead is basically a list making tool, albeit quite a comprehensive one.
Lists can have up to 1000 entries, with an unlimited number of ‘children’ or sub-entries. Each item or sub item has a ‘completed?’ tick box and, in a nice touch, ticking a sub-item will partially fill-in its parent entry. When all sub-items are ticked the parent is automatically ticked too.
Items can have associated links to contacts, to-do items, meetings and memos as well as contain text notes. You can date items, assign priority values and even set alarms for their completion. Great, right?
Well, sort of. If you like making lists there is a good set of list-making features. The problem is that actually using them from your phone is rather fiddly and time consuming. It takes around five separate key presses to create a list item - not including the textual and time/date details. Ticking off items uses the 9 key rather than the more obvious central D-Pad button, etc.
It all works, but not without reference to the manual and more key presses than you would expect. In such a simple app this seems like a lot more work than should be necessary.
Ultimately, the app falls between two stools - not sophisticated enough for proper project management, but too complicated for the simple listmaking it actually offers.
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App: Projekt (Symbian)
Seller: Ovi Store
Price: £free
Version reviewed: 1.23
Size: 666 KB
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Pocket Picks Score:
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The iPhone 3G S has been pitted against the upstart Palm Pre to see which is the faster platform. The Palm Pre did well, but the iPhone 3G S is substantially faster - and utterly demolishes the original iPhone 3G.
Tech site Anandtech performed the tests, one of which compared web page rendering times on the iPhone 3 G, iPhone 3S S and Palm Pre, while the other measured the time it takes to launch applications on those 3 platforms plus the Android G1.
The web page rendering tests compared times for fully opening several popular sites. The iPhone 3G S came out top, rendering web pages a whopping 122% faster than the old-school iPhone 3G thanks to its new ARM Cortex A8 processor. The Palm Pre, which also rocks a Cortex A8 did better than the iPhone 3G, but was still 22% slower on average than the 3G S.
When it came to App launching, however, the Palm Pre was pretty dismal in comparison to the 3G S, performing roughly equivalent to an old 3G iPhone, barring some anomalous results like taking 8.6 seconds to open Google Maps - more than twice as long as the G1, which was otherwise the slowest phone. The 3G S performs between 15% & 72% faster than the Pre and 3G.
The iPhone 3G S is in the wild at last and thankfully some other eejits have decided to take the plunge and rip their new iPhones to pieces to save the rest of us the trouble. Inside they have found some surprisingly high-spec kit that can potentially do a lot more than Apple is letting on.
The iPhone 3G S can record video and VGA resolution. This is good - after all, phones have been doing video at that resolution for some time. When the phone repair gurus at Rapid Repair cracked an iPhone 3G S open, however, the discovered a far more capable camera than they expected.
The video hardware insiode the 3G S can apparently record in HD at up to 720p resolution. The camera - and the graphics chip, which RR have confirmed is a PowerVR SGX with 256 MB of RAM - is also more than capable of real-time video conferencing.
Doubtless there would be some kind of performance hit for enabling these facilities which Apple must feel would detract from the iPhone experience - otherwise surely they would have been active from the start. Having these capabilitie sinnce the hardware does hold out a tantalising possibility, though. Could a jailbroken or otherwise unlocked iPhone 3G S be persuaded to take advantage of such hidden hardware?
