*BEST FOR FEATURES* *Google Nexus One* *£500 without contract*
Android is an accessible, attractive and capable operating system. Its big advantage is that it allows several programs to be active at the same time (unlike Apple’s iPhone). Swipe your finger across the touchscreen to flip between “home screens”, allowing you to access pages of icons for email, web browsing and so on. The disadvantage it suffers from is that is has fewer apps — about 20,000 compared with an estimated 150,000 for the rival Apple handset. The Nexus One, uniquely for now, has voice recognition, allowing competent, though not perfect, voice web searches and dictation of text messages or emails. It also has an eye-popping, high-resolution 3.7in display and a classy design. Super-fast, the Nexus One is the most responsive phone here — apart from a few touch-sensitive buttons that need to be prodded in just the right way to get a result. Like the Legend and LG phones, it has a 5Mp camera. *Verdict *A snazzy, fast, expensive phone with lots of features. google.com/phone *BEST FOR STYLE* *HTC Legend * *£370 without contract* The Legend is both gorgeous and sturdy, thanks to an aluminium sleeve — but keep it away from scratchy car and house keys. Its 3.2in screen makes the phone compact and manageable. HTC’s Friend Stream neatly collects Twitter and Facebook updates, though not as attractively as the Sony Ericsson X10’s Timescape. Built-in weather, clock and email apps are exceptionally good and the phone is a joy to use. Excellent text prediction on its virtual keyboard makes texting simpler than on rival handsets. The big drawback is battery life: all the phones on test need charging daily, but the Legend’s battery is particularly weak, so you may want to carry a spare one. *Verdict *A cool and capable phone that’s great for texting and social networking. htc.com/uk *BEST FOR MULTIMEDIA* *Sony Ericsson Xperia* *X10 £490 without contract* The X10 has a huge 4in screen and gives great video playback. Unlike the iPhone, Android phones have little built-in storage but this can be expanded with cheap memory cards. The X10 has the most memory on test — 1GB — and comes with an 8GB card. The standout 8Mp camera (with flash) takes good shots. Timescape puts Twitter and Facebook updates, missed calls and texts into an eye-catching column with a photograph of the sender. Mediascape organises music, photos and video, even automatically searching the web for extra content. Like the HTC Legend, the Xperia can connect to company email systems via Microsoft Exchange. *Verdict *Hefty but powerful multimedia phone. sonyericsson.com *BEST FOR AUGMENTED REALITY* *Samsung Galaxy Portal* *£330 without contract* Augmented reality (AR) technology allows information from the web to be superimposed on the real world using a smartphone’s camera and screen. It needs GPS satellite navigation and a digital compass, found on all the phones here. Samsung has put AR on the home screen: hold the phone aloft and the screen points to, say, the nearest restaurant, bank or houses for sale. The Portal’s main weakness is that it has too many buttons; using it can be confusing. And because it runs an earlier version of Android (1.5), the Portal is not especially fast, either. It also has the lowest-resolution camera (3Mp) on test, with no flash. *Verdict *Good for AR but average for everything else. www.samsung.co.uk *BEST FOR VALUE* *LG InTouch Max GW620* *£270 without contract* This chunky, budget phone has a cheaper touchscreen that is less sharp and responsive than the others on test. Still, you can use a stylus with it and there’s a comfortable slide-out keyboard to simplify text entry. Features such as social networking are grouped together on the InTouch, although it only updates at half-hourly intervals, so it is not as smart as the Sony Ericsson X10. One interesting feature is the ability to dial contacts by tapping their face in a photo. This relies on face-recognition software to tell who’s who in the photo. An ingenious idea, though in practice it wasn’t easy to use. The slower processor means the GW620 is sometimes sluggish. *Verdict *Decent budget smartphone with a usable keyboard. lge.com *JARGON BUSTER* *AMOLED (Advanced-matrix organic LED) * Brightly coloured low-power screens found here on the Legend and Nexus One phones. The others have traditional LCD displays. *Apps * Small pieces of software (games, utilities, work applications) that you can download from the Android Market to your phone. Quality and price vary, but many are cheap (less than £1) or free. *Snapdragon* The fastest computer chip used in mobile phones, enabling programs to be quick and responsive, and making multitasking a breeze. Used in the Nexus One and Xperia X10. *1.5 Cupcake, 1.6 Donut, 2.1 Eclair * The different versions of Android have sweet names that, helpfully, run in alphabetical order. Newer versions have cuter icons, snazzy animated backgrounds and extra home screens. The Nexus One and Legend run the latest 2.1, Xperia X10 has 1.6, while the LG and Samsung phones use the outdated 1.5. *Multitouch * With this feature you can pinch your finger and thumb to zoom in and out speedily. Out of those tested here, the Nexus One and HTC Legend have multitouch. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article7092688.ece -- Salam, Agus Hamonangan http://groups.google.com/group/id-android Gtalk : agus.hamonangan Tweet :@agushamonangan Japri : [email protected] -- "Indonesian Android Community [id-android]" Join: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android/subscribe?hl=en-GB Moderator: [email protected] ID Android Developer: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android-dev ID Android Surabaya: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android-sby ID Android on FB: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112207700729 To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
