The HTC Revolution

HTC have always been a brand to bring out new phones, each one better than the other. This month, HTC have brought out two new phones, the new Desire line. There is the Desire HD and the Desire Z.

Both of these phones have some incredible specifications. Yet the specifications are not the only things to focus on with these phones.

The new HTC Sense is a new UI that will enable us to share multimedia through the use of more dynamic camera software. Also, the new Sense will offer HTC Locations, which should give less download times, therefore less roaming charges, which is always good. To keep up with the competition, HTC have introduces a new e-reading experience with the new Sense. It will give us the opportunity to use a Kobo powered book store.

The phones themselves have incredible specifications. The HTC Desire HD has a 4.3” display that supports multi-touch. It is all powered by the new Snapdragon Processor which is clocked at 1GHz. Like the N8, it can record at 720p from its 8Mp camera. You can store up to 32 GB on a microSD and it has 1.5 GB of on-board memory. Luckily, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack and has a Dolby Mobile speaker system. This phone is running Android, so it supports flash 10.1, which means that your web experience will be far better. The processor will also make sure that your whole experience with this phone is incredible.

The HTC Desire Z has a smaller screen at 3.7” but also a smaller processor that clocks in at 800MHz, which is not unreasonable, and will give you an excellent user experience, without any lag waiting for the phone to catch up with your actions. The Desire Z has a full QWERTY keyboard that as a unique hinge for faster access. This phone can also record 720p, but it has a 5Mp camera. The Desire Z also has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Both of these phones will give you the unique HTC Sense experience. This will also enable you to connect to htcsense.com this will give the user the opportunity manage their phone experience from their computer or phone. You will be able to flag the location of the device on a map or even trigger the phone to ring loudly even if it is on silent. You can send messages and manage your contacts but also manage the personalisation of your phone.

These phones can compare to the Nokia N8 and may even be able to trump in certain ways. The phone that everyone tries to beat has to be the iPhone, these phones do this, the Nokia N8 does this, and so do these HTC’s. Yet without an extensive app store, no phone company will be able to take down the iPhone. Yet Android have a growing library of apps, both free and paid, and it will only be a matter of time before Android takes over.

The Up And Coming

Nokia, once again have done it. The specifications for the N8 were breath-taking enough, but the tech specs for the E7. The E7 also uses the same Symbian^3 OS that the N8 uses, along with a 4” touchscreen that supports multi-touch. The E7 has an 8Mp camera with an LED flash, not as incredible as the Xenon flash on the N8, but then again this is an E series phone, for the business sector. The camera should provide them with a camera that is of incredible quality. The E7 also has the same HDMI and Dolby Surround Support. The QWERTY keyboard and the camera are the two things that differentiate the E7 and the N8 in the hardware aspect. The weight difference is noticeable as well; the E7 weighs over 50g more than the N8. (The N8 weighs less than the iPhone 4 by the way).

Another of Nokia’s new rage is the Nokia C7, with a 3.5” touch-screen. This Nokia is just a smidge (1.2mm of a smidge) thicker than the iPhone 4. With the new Symbian^3 OS, it supports an 8Mp camera that can record at 720p. It has a 3.5 mm headphone jack with 8 GB of internal storage. Some may say that this phone sounds a lot like the N8, yet it does not support the multi-touch that the N8 does. It has half the storage space and less RAM. This phone would be aimed at the mid-range phone for consumers who enjoy music and a touchscreen. It does not have the HDMI and the Dolby Surround Sound support that the N8 and the E7 have. This is probably because it was aimed at the mid-range consumer.

Last of the Nokia’s is the C6-01; this phone also has a touchscreen, that comes in at 3.2”. this phone is also quite a bit thicker than the C7. This phone is the cheapest of the three, with only 340Mb of internal storage. The C6-01 also has a 3.5mm headphone jack, 8Mp camera and the capability to record video at 720p. This phone has 3G connections and Wi-Fi as would be expected.

These phones are all incredible and Nokia deserves a lot of recognition for making the game that much harder for everyone. 

The Dark Fruit

The BlackBerry has taken over the world. What used to be exclusively for businessmen is now being used by teenagers and adults all across the world. What has influenced these people to buy the BlackBerry? The answer lies in a program that BlackBerry offers to all of their users. BBM is the service that provides instantaneous communication between two people. Not only is the service free, but it can also be used to any BlackBerry in the world.

Though the service is free, it still uses the internet on your phone to connect to the world, and if you do not have the right contract, you could find yourself with a hefty bill to pay at the end of the month.  Fortunately, many mobile phone companies will make special plans for the internet usage so that your bill doesn’t add up too much.

BlackBerry ‘s have some new and incredible tech specs, such as the new BlackBerry Torch 9800, with a slide out keyboard and a touch screen, this BlackBerry is bringing new ideas to the companies monotonous line of BlackBerry’s. The new Torch is really trying hard to be able to compete with the new phones, such as the Nokia N8. Unfortunately, the BlackBerry doesn’t have some of the hardware that the Nokia does, and falls behind in that respect. Even so, the Torch does a reasonable job with a 5Mp camera; the capability to read and write documents and emails on the move with the full QWERTY keyboard is fantastic.

Bringing a phone that is aimed at businessmen, but also teenagers is very difficult to do as they both have such different requirements. BlackBerry has done an excellent job in using a 3.5mm headphone jack so that you are able to listen to music on the go. For teenagers and businessmen alike, the full QWERTY keyboard is brilliant.

The dual-core revolution

On my previous post "The new generation of smartphones" I introduced the concept of the a new breed of processors that will be used in future mobile phones. These processors are the dual-core processors that are going to be introduced into our mobile phones.

Samsung and NVIDIA are both releasing dual core processors that are clocked at 1GHz. There is also a company called ST-Ericsson that is releasing a 1.2GHz Dual-core processor. These processors are likely to be released and used on most future phones. The integration of these new processors will effectively allow companies to produce phones or tablets that are far more powerful than the tablets and the phones we have today.

Nvidia

Samsung

These new chips will be able to support better graphics and perhaps be able to introduce 3D to mobile phones. Along with better graphics, these chips will allow us to play 1080p video from our phones and record HD content at 30fps. As these new chips are far more powerful and are most likely to have HDMI support, they will of course be able to support multiple displays. Soon the capabilty of taking a 20Mp still photo will be  possible on your mobile (though I am not sure who would want to do that).

We already have phones that have incredible cameras, screens and can do some things such as surfing the web as well as our computers and cameras, but being able to do so with a more powerful processor will unlock a huge amount of features to the phones that might mean phones or tablets start to replace our computers at home. (Unless you are a hardcore gamer and then you would laugh at having a dual core processor that is clocked at 1 GHz.)

Some people argue that the processors will be far to energy consuming and that having a dual-core processor on your phone or tablet could reduce the battery life drastically and make mobile phone less portable as they will not have the battery life that we all now demand in our every day life.

There have been no confirmed OS' to be running off of these processors, but Android and the new Windows Phone 7 seem to be likely candidates as they will be able to utilise the full potential of these processors. LG and Samsung seem to be the only two companies that have announced their involvement with this new line of processor.