If you overlook the fact that the battery lasts barely 6 hours unless you turn the HSDPA off and win 20 days of standby time, the keyboard is easier to use in portrait mode and lets you type faster.

Samsung i900 Omnia features

It supports the DivX and Xvid format for videos, which avoids you the nightmare of having to use a video converter. And the music player supports the rare Ogg Vorbis format, aside from MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA and AMR that you can turn into your default ringtone.

The internal card slot allows for SD cards up to 16GB for storage of videos, photos and music. However, the 5 megapixel camera falls short in quality in relation to its 2592×1944 resolution. Despite the autofocus and the LED flash, don’t expect anything otherworldly in regards to sharpness. But you still get the face and smile detection features and image stabilization which make up for it a bit.

Samsung i900 Omnia downsides

The same goes for the video camera, it’s practical and perfect for sending small shoots, but don’t expect anything professional. But this model has a TV-input, so it’s a mixed bag.

Yet the most remarkable feature of this cellphone is the Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 operating system with the full package of Pocket Office that includes Word, Excel, Power Point, OneNote and the PDF viewer.

The phone supports the GSM/EDGE technology and Wi-fi connection, which works well in a wide range. The FM radio has also great synching and sound quality. All in all, it’s worth your money if you look for a touch screen cell phone at a good price and that fulfills its role well.

The design is made to impress you with the almost tactile round buttons and the semi-touch screen user interface. The only perk I found is the battery case cover which is difficult to take off and then put it on, so this may be an issue to improve for next models.

LG Neon GT365 features

Being the left-slider type, you get a three-row full QWERTY keyboard and a touch screen for specific functions. The interface is intuitive and offers you quick access to your calendar, alarm clock and the media player, as well as your contact list.

The screen is a 2.4 inch LCD that with a 240×400 pixel resolution and 262,000 colors, wonderfully sharp and comparable to the Xpressmusic by Nokia and even the iPhone.
It probably has one of the most durable batteries, with almost three days between full charges, even if you use the most energy hungry features. Not bad at all for 4 hours of talk time and 10 days of standby time, as indicated in the manual. You can charge it with the PC through and USB cable.

You can take pictures and shoot small videos with the relatively modest 2 megapixel camera that has options such as balance and brightness controls, 4x zoom, allowance of multishots, and night mode for low light settings. There are four resolutions available in which you can take pictures: 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480, and 320 x 240 pixels.

LG Neon GT365 downsides

For videos, you can shoot in 320×240 and 176×144 resolutions with a 2x digital zoom. The small footage can last up to 32 seconds, so you can send it to your friends via MMS. Nothing sophisticated and falls short compared to other models.

Still, you have the audio player that supports MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA. You can create playlists, adapt the equalizer and switch to other applications while you are listening music.
As for memory, you have up to 14MB for internal storage, and a microSD memory card slot that allows for 4GB in expansion. You can store up to 1000 contacts. The Bluetooth is A2DP and it includes all profiles available such as stereo headphones that are quite good. Internet browsing capabilities include sending email by Yahoo!, AOL, and hotmail and similar, as well as instant messaging and Java 2.0 support.

Overall, it’s a very good option if you look for something not too fancy but that at least has a great quality for what you want to do.

For barely the prices of around $260, and even less today, depending on your service provider, if you like to hear great quality music and use a fast internet connection, as well as sending pictures to your friends and relatives through SMS, MMS or email, this Nokia model will mean heaven for you.

According to the manual, the battery lasts 4.4 hours of talk time and 14 days of standby. As with most similar models, this estimation is untrue if you use all the media features regularly as they drain the battery quickly, so you’ll need frequent recharge.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic characteristics

The high definition touch screen or 3.2” (640×360 resolution with 16M colors) can definitely compete with that of the iPhone, along with the size that can easily fit the palm of your hand without being too lightweight and slippery.
The controls are very intuitive but the plastic fabric of the device can easily get dirty, dusty and even greasy with recurrent use, so it’s necessary to buy a screen protector separately, whether you use stylus pen or not.

The interface continues to be steady with the latest Symbian software. There’s a media bar that allows instant access to music, web browsing, photo and video features with barely one touch.
Then, the contacts bar highlights the most frequent and important people on your home screen, facilitating the access to call, text messaging and emails.

The music player can also be reached via Bluetooth. It has an 8 graphic equalizer, bass booster, stereo widening, and compatibility with MP3, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, and WMA formats. Additionally, you can tune into your favorite radio programs with the stereo FM radio

The internal phone memory is up to 81Mb and that’s a good amount to storage photos and files. But if you want more space, there’s a microSD card slot available for 8GB and 16GB memory cards.
The 3.2 megapixel camera and camcorder makes a significant difference, being the highest resolution at its time of launch and the feature of uploading them to Youtube.

The camera’s lens is a Carl Zeiss, with a 640×480 and 640×352 widescreen resolution for videos; either at 15 or 30FPS, which is impressive as you can plug the device to a TV. Not to mention that you can shoot small videos at 176×144 15FPS for sharing by email, or MMS. Could you actually ask for more?
So is the media player with high-resolution widescreen video and surround sound and stereo speakers. The supported formats are: MPEG4 and WM9 at high definition.

The Internet connection and browsing is still one of the best in the market with the 3.5G technology for GSM/EDGE. You can use it as a dial-up modem.
The GPS system is supported by Nokia Ovi maps that provide assistance of address and directions in any country you are located in, whether you are a driver or a pedestrian. You can download information about key places, such as restaurants, hotels, mall center, specific companies, buildings, airports, and more.

Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic downsides

All being said, you can still choose to be overwhelmed by all the little gadgets and good things this phone has, or not. I’ve found that the interface is not exactly the most user-friendly if you’re not used to touch screens.
The photo/video camera can shoot outstandingly well for a cellphone in outdoors and indoors, as long as there’s not an excess of light or absence of it.

This is one of the few models in which I can actually go on and on about features. All I have left to say is that Nokia just played to put all the eggs in one basket at an incredibly inexpensive price of around $260-$300 and it blew the competition out of the water for quite some time (until the next generation of iPhone emerges, maybe?).

On the back there’s a 2 megapixel camera that lets you shoot pics, file them and send them as messages or emails to your friends or relatives, or use them for caller ID’s and for the main theme. Not bad for a start. You can take pics in 1600×1200, 1024×768 and 640×480. There’s the always necessary balance and color setting.

Blackberry curve 8330 features

The LED light turns on automatically in low light indoor settings, but the photos have some noise as expected of a 2 megapixel resolution. One additional feature is that you can now shoots small videos with audio, of 240×176 and 176×144 resolution, but you must storage them in your microSD card.

The video and audio quality suffers and stutters constantly. You can barely watch a 5 minute video without any interruption. The media player application is standard, with the basic playback controls, playlist and shuffle options. It plays MP4 files well, but forget about trying to play the WMV format.

Blackberry curve 8330 issues

You can listen to your MP3 and AAC files through an incorporated headset. The microSD card slot is great for additional memory, up to 4GB or 8GB. The only problem is that it’s located under the battery slot and of course you must turn off the device to put it, not to mention that it’s really slow to access it.The call quality is great and clear, whether you use GSM or CDMA technology. The hands free and headset profiles via Bluetooth are even louder.

As for Internet browsing, page rendering has improved considerably with advanced support for full HTML sites, Javascript, cookies and cache storing. Some pages can be rendered in 3 columns instead of 2 or the full view, so this can still be improved.

The Blackberry Curve demonstrates that it has the leadership when sending emails and the sort. The easiest and fastest interface you will see on the market. The rendering of elaborated HTML email is still an issue, though, with lots of broken pages, unless you have additional apps like BBSmart or Empower solutions.

One of the main new features were the GPS system with Blackberry maps that help you go through any city of your choosing without getting lost. The performance is fast an accurate for being a small, yet very practical GPS interface with routes, directions and voice guidance that you can even send to your friends, be it by email, SMS or PIN.The classic features are still there with the SMS, MMS and IM messaging, contacts, calendar, notes, tasks and such, as well as the BrickBreaker game.
The battery lasts an average of 4.3 hours of talk time and 11 days of standby mode. But if you use all the features together you will really need to charge every day. All being said, this phone is not afraid to make a statement about quality.

Sony Ericsson Equinox phone features
Aside from the upgraded classic ultraslim design, this model gives the impression of being something reliable on your hands, and it really is. It has a 240×320 LCD screen with 262K of color depth, extremely crisp for that size and resolution. The 3.2 megapixel camera just helps reinforce that, as you can adjust and edit your images so it compensates for bad quality pics.

As for the media features, the music player supports MP3 and AAC, which is a bit too basic but it’s ok as long as you have a converter. It has also a FM radio and you can transfer your files from your phone to your computer with the software that comes with the device, which is very user friendly.

The Bluetooth connectivity comes with stereo music streaming (A2DP). The sound quality is great compared to other models, because most fabricants apparently don’t pay much attention to this feature, given that they don’t think of it as a MP3 player; it’s another feature to sell and that’s it. Well, this doesn’t happen here.

Sony Ericsson Equinox phone downsides
The battery doesn’t really last as they indicate in the manual. After 4 hours of talk time it begins to stutter, and that’s not surprising for a very visually-oriented phone. The reception is very clear which is always a plus. This model supports GSM/EDGE technology as well as 3G. Also, you will really need an additional expansion card up to 16GB if you really want to enjoy the phone’s applications at it fullest.

The personable features are what put this basic, flip and functional phone above the others if you look to that. You can customize the way the phone lights and vibrates when someone calls you. These unique pulsating light effects come in colors such as amber, sapphire, beryl, diamond, and amethyst. It’s really nice to see. Overall, it’s a great option if you don’t look for anything fancy and you’re not caught up in the whole Blackberry/iPhone/Nexus One ordeal.

But it has so many issues that it failed completely, a disastrous public relations nightmare. For instance, you can’t really hold it close to your ear because the extremely sensitive touch screen will trigger all sorts of unwanted functions, causing havoc and chaos during calls, which is hilarious, if you didn’t buy one ever.

Motorola Rival A455 features

The features that make up for it, however, are the sound quality, the capacity for downloading and storing music and the long battery life (21 hours!). The phone can be used as an mp3 player with ease, keeping it in your pocket and going for long runs.

The screen is LCD with a 176×220 resolution and a 65,000 flashy color display. There’s a round directional control surrounded by the talk and end keys. Don’t know how this exactly improves user interface, it’s actually difficult to get used to.

The QWERTY slider-type keyboard will help you to understand the interface further as you can easily type text, IM messages or emails in the dark as well as send pictures and videos, with one key access to emoticons and symbols. There’s plenty of space to store around 500 messages.

As mentioned, the sound quality is great and the phone supports MP3, WMA and the always necessary AAC/AAC+ format, which you can store in an additional 8GB SD card. It comes with a 3.5 mm jack that works fine.

Motorola Rival A455 issues

The 2 megapixel camera is not anything otherworldly. It can take pictures in 1600×1200, 1280×960, 640×480 and 320×240 resolution, but what is the point if they’re often blurry? A significant feature is the 7X zoom, the self-timer and special effects filters. Videos can be taken in a 176×144 resolution.

If there is a downfall to this phone it would be the speed dial; you have to open up to the QWERTY key-board to use it, it will not work from the touch keypad for dialing numbers (at least I haven’t figured it out if you can).
The Bluetooth has a profile system in which you can select how to use it, either as headset, handsfree, enabled dial-up networking, phonebook access, basic printing and imaging, vCard and vCalendar & File Transfer.

As you see, this cellphone is a mixed bag. I haven’t even mentioned that the fabric makes it easy to slip and fall anywhere. I don’t know what Motorola was thinking here but at least it serves them well for future revisions and designs.

The design is smaller than a Blackberry, but the slider makes it very stylish and functional. One of the basic main features is texting, allowing you to use templates for words and phrases, pictures and videos but not in an annoying way.
Motorola Karma QA1 features

The LCD, 320×240 resolution screen is small and almost glass-like, but it gets smudgy, scratchy and dirty easily, so buy a screen protector the very same day you buy it. You can watch television and videos from YouTube as the quality is great for such a small phone. You won’t see any problems with lag and pixilation.

As for the 2 megapixel camera, there’s nothing otherworldly about it, aside from a flash, but you can store almost 100mb in pictures and videos, and an additional 16Gb on a card For 2 mp, it’s an ok camera. There is a LED flash and it helps to take the clearest pictures possible in obscure settings.

Most of the themes and backgrounds can be changed into whatever you like, either the presets on the phone main memory or whatever you decide to download. This goes along with the personalized scheme mentality, as you can also change most of the main menu keys to accommodate your needs. If you don’t want a certain application because you don’t use it, you can easily change it. There are shortcut buttons in the left and right side of the camera which correspond to the camera and the ringtone volume.

Motorola Karma QA1 issues

Other features include plane mode, which is always a standard in Motorola phones, and a keylock button. Alarms can be set with multiple ringtones and they can be especially loud. The games are a waste of time and space as they are mostly demos that you have to pay for to play them in full mode.
There was an issue in which if your phone hums for any reason, outside the user configuration for vibracalls, IM’s and texts, return it for warranty coverage, but nothing out of this world as this has already been addressed.
As for sound quality, the quality of the speaker is very clear, the same if you decide to use Bluetooth, but the latter only drains the battery more. The music player supports almost all formats known: AAC, MP3, H.264, MPEG, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA, PNG, AAC+, MIDI, and even RA files. Forget about your standard mp3 player.

The battery life is excellent, lasting around 12-14 days on standby mode. A GPS system is available, and that requires internet service, so it’s a matter of sorting it out with your provider. It is overall a very basic device that combines enhanced social networking features aimed at those who practically live from it. It has potential to be upgraded and serve for much more, though.

It was really the first with a stylish, trendsetting design that was aimed at people who loved individuality and self-expression above all. Really ahead of its time, you can still get a Rzor V3 for $60 and it still doesn’t look outdated. The extreme light-weight, paper thin, cutting edge design is easy to put in a pocket without feeling that it’s going to get lost.

Motorola Rzor V3 features

The display screen of the outer part supports 4,000 colors and shows the time, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID. The VGA camera can take pics and video in three resolutions: 640×480, 320×240 and 160×120. Although it doesn’t reach a good level of megapixels and the pictures are often grainy at best, you still have the 4X zoom and can adjust the brightness or choose from six lighting conditions which weren’t bad at all for being one of the first models of its kind.

The above is especially right when you actually can send the pictures to your friends or 1,000 contacts available (it is the maximum it can store) in your phone directory, or save them as wallpaper, a very personable feature that all brands emulated later, along with color settings, screensavers, and all sort of sounds. The only problem was the photo storage of a laughable 6MB, unless you have an SD card.

The original idea of a cellphone with tons on handy features goes along also with the voice-recorder button on the right side of the front flap, and a volume control on the left. Initially, people complained that the buttons were too thin but grew accustomed with this new way of seeing things.

Motorola Rzor V3 Display Screen

The main cellphone display screen is a 2.5 inch with 160,000 colors which was great for the time, given its crisp and vivid quality. The call, end and number buttons are slim as we already mentioned. The center buttons offer shortcuts to the main application and you can even customize that.

The basic 14 monophonic and 5 polyphonic ring tones can also offer the option of downloading more through the WAP 2.0 wireless web browser, depending of your local provider. You can even have MP3 file support, a calculator, voice and speaker dialing, a calendar, an alarm clock, and a voice recorder. You can receive emails as you have support for POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4. This was also the first models with full Bluetooth connectivity.

The phone can charge through a USB port cable, as well as synchronize with the PC through Motorola Phone Tools. The battery life can last a good 7 hours and 10 days of stand-by time. It is highly recommendable to get a backup BR50 battery since they’re not that long lasting in terms of quality.

As call quality, it is clear, but maybe the volume level is too low for those who like to speak loudly, or maybe it would have been helpful for anyone with a hearing impairment. The same goes for the ring-tone volume. Finally, it is definitely a classic model that doesn’t go out of date easily.

The screen has a 16 million color, 800×480 resolution, transflective display that makes it easier to see, even in direct light. The touch screen is very responsive and I still have to find any issues there. The keyboard is a sliding type with rubberized key surfaces, really well-thought in ergonomics. You could easily write 35 words per minute and not get tired or annoyed at all.
Nokia N900 phone features

The N900 model has a tv output that allows for a 480i resolution, so you can actually watch videos and movies without a sweat. The VGA camera is a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss, so not much change from the Nokia N97. It has a surprisingly good quality and you will rarely see grainy, obscure, blurred images.

You can take pics in Automatic, Macro, Portrait, Landscape, Action, and Video mode. As for the latter, you can take 848×480 resolution videos at 25 frames-per-second. There’s a problem with the audio quality, though. If you force it too much, i.e: take long shots, the audio will become distorted and metallic. The stereo speakers are acceptable but they lack in bass.

Other features include a handy GPS navigation system, with a data fix rate of 10-40 seconds, a FM transmitter. The web browser, MicroB, is amazing and fast. It supports Adobe Flash and applets that enhance the overall web experience, especially on the use of Twitter and Facebook.

Nokia N900 phone issues

The main problem comes from the lack of portrait mode software, but if you are comfortable with it and don’t care too much, then it’s just a minor issue. The scrolling is the only awkward thing about the interface. The battery can last about 5 to 9 hours of talk time and 5 hours of music, which is not bad at all. The codec support of the media player is tacky at best, but you can still use community media players like VLC, so you can avoid the problem.

Nokia N900 advantages

This model is versatile and user-friendly regarding the memory ships and available slots. There are two main memory chips: a 32GB eMMC in which you can store anything you want, from mp3s to .doc files, but not software (aside from an assigned 2GB). The second chip is 256 MB of RAM memory for bootloader, kernel and rootfs, the heart of the OS.

And speaking of the OS, the Maemo 5’s interface fluids smoothly as you can easily manage four desktops with your choice of widgets, zooming in and out of open applications, or taskswitching if you prefer. That’s why the multitasking feature is great, as this is one of the few models in which you can run every application comfortably with no sign of slowing.

All in all, it’s a great option for the price of $542 if you look for something more, despite the issues mentioned.

It has a great interface of 3.3”, 360×640 pixel screen that actually facilitates the reading of small fonts. But as all good things, this comes with a cost: a bit of sluggishness when changing from one screen to another, or from landscape to portrait mode.

Samsung Mythic a897 touch screen

The touch screen is certainly sensitive, as you have to learn your way around it. Sometimes it would seem as if it was unresponsive, but it’s really not. The screen responds not only to touch, but the duration of the touch as well.
You need to learn well how to handle the touch since there are features where a prolonged touch will give you more options in the internet browser, for example. The problem this generates, of course, is that if you swipe through the screen, you could activate the gadgets unintentionally. Samsung’s idea, as described in the manual, is to use the dashes at the top of the screen to avoid this.

As for the virtual keyboard, it’s great as the previous Eternity model. The keys are offset as a computer keyboard, and there are spaces between the keys, which makes texting faster than ever.

The downsides of the Samsung Mythic a897

The camera and video quality (3.2 megapixels with the overrated auto-focus feature) is relatively poor compared to other models from other brands. Fuzzy and blurry pics are still at the order of the day.

Samsung’s Mythic cellphone has two Internet browsers: the mobile web and the default one. They do a decent job in loading pages with ease and opening multiple web pages at once in tab mode.

Aside from efficient voice feature commands, this model comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack for music, but that doesn’t work for phone calls, which makes it a bother. The battery is ok if you don’t use it all day, but you’ll have to recharge it every day as it’s a power-hungry device.

Overall, it’s a good phone if you want something simple and you aren’t too picky on video and camera features.