Palm Pre Specifications:

• Provider: Verizon Wireless
• Operating System: Palm webOS
• Display: 3.1-inch 320×480 multi-touch
• Camera: 3.0 Megapixel Camera + Flash
• Music: MP3, WAV, AAC/AAC+
• Video: MPEG4, H.263, H.264
• Memory: 16GB internal, 512MB RAM
• Dimensions: 3.9L x 2.3W x .67D inches
• Battery: 5 hours talk time | 350 hours stand-by
• Wireless: WiFi 802.11 b/g & Bluetooth 2.1+

The Body: 4.5/5 stars
The Palm Pre Plus weighs under five ounces and looks like a smooth glossy black stone. The body has a soft feel and offers a great grip. It’s probably one of the best looking phones I’ve come across recently. It definitely offers a friendly and welcoming feeling compared to devices such as the robotic Droid. There’s a volume rocker, a switch to silence your phone, and a microUSB port on the right side. Accessing the charging/data USB port was easier than on the Palm Pixi, however it needs to be relocated to the bottom. If you are holding your phone to your ear while it’s charging, it’s a nuisance since the cable extends out sideways. I also was cautious each time I tried to open the flap that covers the port since it’s quite flimsy. It is also quite tricky to get the flap open; I found myself using nails to pry it open. I feel that Palm has a secret agenda to get us to buy their Wireless Touchstone Charger by annoying us with the charging port. The back of the phone is a rear “face-plate” that comes pre-enabled for wireless charging unlike on the original Pre. Palm also offers a variety of custom artistic styles for those tired of the all-black look. Although there’s 16GB of on-board storage, which is twice that of the original Pre, there’s still no microSD expansion. The only thing under the rear cover is the interchangeable battery pack. The 3 megapixel camera, a LED flash, and speakers are on the upper rear part of the Palm Pre. The power button and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack are on the top. The front of the phone houses the slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a gesture area, and a 3.1 inch display from bottom to top. I found the curvature of the slide out keyboard aesthetically appealing and comfortable for typing. There’s also a reflective mirror hidden behind the upper portion of the phone that becomes visible when the keyboard is extended. It definitely comes in handy for taking self portraits. I’m still fascinated with how well Palm has reinvented themselves with a new generation of hardware, but it has already been over a year and it’s time for another major release.

Gesture Area: 5/5 stars
Palm made one major cosmetic change to the Pre, they removed the physical touch button and replaced it with a touchpad that’s hidden under the casing. It now looks cleaner and simpler. It, however, almost feels as though they forgot to put something on it. This gesture area is a thin touch-sensitive slit between the display and keyboard. It’s unique and makes using the phone much more intuitive. For example, to move back a page in the browser, just do a quick swipe to the left. The pad illuminates the direction you swiped with a neat little animation. To get back to the home screen, just swipe up. The Pre Plus also lights up the gesture area to indicate that the phone is busy performing a task. It’s definitely a more intuitive take on the simple physical home key that’s prominently featured on the Apple iPhone. It’s a lot more convenient than having to double or triple tap to perform commands.

The Display: 4/5 stars
The Palm Pre Plus’s display looks stunning. The screen seems to reach out at you due to the curvature of the body. It doesn’t appear recessed into the body like the iPhone but rather runs edge-to-edge. The 3.1 inch display is about a half-inch larger than the screen on the Palm Pixi, but still smaller than the Droid and iPhone. The interface offer plenty of space for viewing web pages. It’s still unfortunately nothing compared to the Motorola Droid’s whopping 480×854 pixel display. While the Pixi we reviewed last year only had 18-bits of color, the Pre Plus features 24-bits. Despite the boost, I doubt anyone could point out the difference unless told about it. The multi-touch functionality performed accurately and responsively. It was easy to pinch a webpage with two fingers to zoom out or in. The accelerometer was also very responsive and would kick in quickly to change orientations when rotated. The gesture pad also conveniently changed from the page navigating mode to scrolling. The Sprint Palm Pixi, on the other hand, rarely rotated properly. I should point out that since this phone doesn’t feature an on-screen keyboard, you’ll have to switch back to portrait mode to type. I was also worried that the glossy finish would make reading the screen difficult in direct sunlight or under bright lights, however the ambient light sensor brightens everything up enough so that it’s not much of a problem.

The Keyboard: 3.5/5 stars
When I first saw the Pre Plus, I expected a comfortable keyboard especially since it’s a fairly premium device. However, after a few days of use, I have to say otherwise. Although the four rows of keys are decently sized and spaced out, the keyboard lacks the same tactile feel the Pixi’s keyboard offers. The buttons almost seem sticky and I had a surprisingly difficult time getting accustomed to it. The keys are too flat and don’t offer enough of a click when pressed. Typing messages on the Pre Plus took longer than it did on the Pixi. I had to exert more pressure on each key and take time to ensure an accepted input. It isn’t necessarily hard to type messages, but takes more getting used to than with other phones. It also would have helped if the phone featured a decent virtual auto-correction tool as found on the iPhone and Droid. I feel that Palm should consider revamping or entirely redesigning the keyboard on a future iteration. It’s an essential part of the phone and it’s currently lacking.

Operating System: 4/5 stars
A smartphone’s ability to properly bring a desktop-like experience to a handheld is essential.  One of those important features includes the ability to multi-task. For instance, the Apple iPhone has taken much heat for lacking that ability. Fortunately the Palm Pre Plus breezes through this with webOS 1.3.5.1. In addition, since the Pre Plus sports double the RAM, it can handle running twice as many applications at once. I managed to run nearly 10 apps at once without any issues, however having too many open can take a steep toll on battery life. Even if there’s enough RAM, the CPU will become a bottleneck as it can no longer handle all the processes. Running multiple programs definitely handled better than the Sprint Pixi that easily froze up and wouldn’t even let me make a phone call at times. The home screen, interface, and major components are still pretty much the same as with last year’s webOS. The default calendar, phonebook, contacts, and mail apps are essentially identical. The Synergy feature does an excellent job which I’ll get to in the next section. The web browser does an excellent job of rendering web pages and that’s expected since it’s called the webOS after all. The pinch to zoom works seamlessly which even the North American Motorola Droid doesn’t have yet. It’s still not as great as the iPhone’s Safari Browser, but it’s drastically superior to both Windows Mobile’s IE and BlackBerry’s browser. Moving on, the Google Maps application is wonderful as always, but still isn’t the Google Maps Navigation software found on Android devices that offers turn-by-turn directions. Verizon customers will have to opt to use the VZW Navigator which costs $10/month. A new v5.0 of the GPS software with major changes should become available in a few weeks. As for getting real work done, a built in Document Viewer lets you access Excel, Word, and PowerPoint documents. If you are ready to grab some new programs, the App Catalog has come a long way. There’s a lot more it has to offer, but it’s still far from offering numbers close to the 100,000 in the Apple App Store. Despite that, there’s a great selection of quality applications for everyone to appreciate. The UI is quite intuitive and I still love the idea of being able to “toss” a program up to close it. The home screen could better use the empty space with some sort of widgets as seen on Android devices, but you can at least customize backgrounds unlike the iPhone. Even with improved support for higher quality games, the Palm webOS probably needs some more ground-breaking features such as Synergy to truly take on competition.

Synergy: 5/5 stars
There’s one way to explain Synergy: WOW. It’s just that awesome. The Palm Pre’s webOS offers a single central interface to pull information in from a variety of accounts. These include Google Sync, Facebook, Microsoft Exchange, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. After a single login, my Calendars, Contacts, and Emails started pouring in. I definitely recommend syncing over a fast WiFi connection the first time. Instead of creating havoc with a mess of duplicate contacts and data, the Synergy technology handles it quite well. It merges duplicate contacts without destroying your data. For instance, if you have “Jon Doe” on both Facebook and LinkedIn, it will create a merged contact card. If you happen to make any changes to your contacts, updates are automatically relayed to the server. I was truly glad to see that just about all my Facebook contacts appeared along with profile photos, email addresses, and phone numbers. This was by far the easiest and most convenient way to fetch data. If most of your data is already in the ‘Cloud,’ there no reason to have to deal with manually re-entering data, Bluetooth sync, CSV sheets, or VCards. The next step would be to make this feature more powerful. Adding support for more popular web services and offering a clean way to manually select which contacts to sync would go a long way. Palm has an edge over competitors in this segment and needs to keep running with features like these.

Messaging: 4/5 stars
As for messaging, both the webOS is great. All my emails were setup for delivery with Synergy’s magic. It has great support for Gmail folders and features. When an email arrives, the phone alerts the user with a popup and a notification icon at the bottom of the screen. The same row displays alerts for texts, missed calls, voicemails, calendar appointments, alarms, and more. To dismiss an alert, you can either slide it off to the side to acknowledge that you’ve seen it or click on it to open the respective application. Composing and reply to emails and texts was an easy task. The conversation logs are neatly organized as well. The option to forward items often comes in handy. Copy and paste saves the hassle and time of having to remember and retype things. The only thing that would have improved the experience would have been a better predictive text tool and spell checker that will both speed up typing and correct typos.

Call Quality + Network: 5/5 stars
The Palm Pre performs on par with most smarphone devices. It wasn’t as amazing at eliminating external noises such as the Droid, but still got the job done. I was clearly able to hear the party on the other end and vice versa. I almost always had a decent number of bars throughout the Sacramento and Davis area. Verizon’s network didn’t drop just one call since I had this phone, which was rare in my opinion. I’ve humorously seen the iPhone running on AT&T try and repeatedly fail to make calls from the same areas even though the device reported full signal. I was always able to communicate without issues. I found the ability to call someone by simply starting to type their name while on the home screen a convenient method instead of scrolling through the contact list. There’s a clean list that displays all incoming, outgoing, and missed calls. I also was glad to see that you could delete specific items from the call history, which I can’t do on the iPhone. 3G data reliability was also pretty great, which I’ll get into more details in the Hotspot section. However, if you for some reason can’t fetch a strong signal, you can always opt to use WiFi.

Multimedia: 3.5/5 stars
The Palm Pre Plus streamed videos impressively well from YouTube. I was a bit dissappoitned to find that VCast wasn’t included on this phone. I truly enjoyed having the Sprint TV streaming service available to enjoy ESPN on the Palm Pixi. Considering the price of a data plan, that should definitely be thrown in. I copied some video podcasts and MP4 movies over the device. Some appeared in the video application, but others with certain codecs didn’t. I was further disappointed to find that some files that played just fine on my iPhone didn’t play past a few frames. The video formats are a bit limited at the time and could sure use some improvements. As for music, things were a lot better. Although iTunes sync support is not reliable since Apple keeps disabling support, programs such as Windows Media Player get the job done. If that doesn’t work for you, simply connecting it as a mass storage device with any machine and dragging files onto the device will work just fine. The phone also supports Bluetooth AD2p stereo profiles for devices such as the Jabra Halo, Altec-Lansing BackBeat, or Nokia BT-905. Speaking of music, Pandora worked quite well with this phone. Especially great since I can let it run in the background unlike with the iPhone. I had it connected to my car’s stereo through an AUX jack. It streamed music impressively well without any major pauses for buffering. While it’s still no iPod when it comes to multimedia, it should be able to replace the need for an additional MP3 player for most consumers.

Camera & Camcorder: 3.5/5 stars
The Pre Plus sports a 3.0 megapixel camera, which is a step up from the 2 megapixel camera on the Pixi, but no match versus other smartphones. The phone once again entirely lacks the ability to record videos. A v1.4 webOS update should become available this month that will enable video recording and editing amongst other new features. Getting back to the camera, it fails to impress. I was disappointed to see how long it took for the camera to start up. Once it was up and running, it was actually fairly responsive and the interface was simple, clean, and easy to use. However, it falls flat in terms of custom settings. I was only able to enable, disable, or set the flash to auto. There are no other special effects, filters, resolution settings, or anything else. Browsing through your library of photos was slow to load. Sliding images to the left or right to get to another one would take a moment to render. However, zoom in and out with the pinch gesture was smooth and quick. I was glad to see that I could email, MMS, or upload photos to Facebook right from the gallery. It’s a neat addition, but it’s unfortunate that the camera isn’t better. The colors were decent at best. Bright objects became easily over exposed. Images that aren’t taken in anything less than a brightly  lit area appear grainy. The flash helps with close up head shots in dark settings, but is still not bright enough. Fortunately the turnaround time for snapping each image was fairly quick. But the fact remains, it lacks features even inexpensive or free flip phones have. There’s a lot of work Palm needs to put into this element of the phone.

WiFi & Mobile Hot Spot: 5/5 stars
This was by far one of my most favorite features. There’s a pre-installed App for Mobile Hotspot that lets you use Verizon 3G network and share it with up to 5 nearby WiFi enabled devices. The App lets you pick a network name (SSID), set a WPA/WPA2 security passphrase, or even leave it as an open network. I put it to the test with a couple of machines including an Asus netbook, Dell Mini, Apple iPhone, and Dell XPS Laptop. Mostly using a single device at a time, speeds were actually quite impressive. After several tests in Northern California (San Jose, Davis, and Sacramento), we found download speeds averaging around 1.1 MB/s and upload at 0.30 MB/s. I also noticed that even if multiple connected computers weren’t necessarily using data at a given instance, speeds did slow down a bit. Also, if you are using the Pre Plus as a WiFi Hotspot, you definitely should find a source of power as the built in battery will drain quickly. And of course with any neat feature comes a price. Enabling the Palm Plus for use as a 3G hotspot costs $40/month. That’s the same cost as it is with other smartphones. But the advantage of the Pre Plus, like a MiFi, internet access isn’t just limited to one device. You can take your iPod Touch, Sony PSP, Nintendo DSi, or any WiFi enabled device online easily.

Conclusion:
The Pre Plus definitely packs a punch and seems appealing until you look at competition. The webOS, Synergy, and the hardware are all great, but it’s definitely a notch down from what both the Motorola Droid and Apple iPhone have to offer. It’s especially in the shadows compared to the Google HTC Nexus One. If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer or planning on switching to their network, the Droid is only $50 more, offers more features, and has the same monthly fees. Although the Droid may not have the ability to host a personal WiFi Hotspot, I doubt many customers will opt to pay the extra $40 each month in addition to a calling + data + texting plans. I should note that the Palm Pre is definitely easier to use and has a friendlier feel, but I truly have a hard time recommending it over the Droid. For example, the Pre Plus requires a $10/month fee for using VZ Navigator, while the Droid has the free Google Navigator. The Palm Pre hasn’t really seen any major changes other than the new gesture pad and doubling the RAM and Flash Storage. It was a unique product and fairly decent device about a year ago when it first launched, but it has definitely begun to look old compared to newer phones. The Pre Plus is really due for a major hardware upgrade along with new cutting edge software features to stay afloat. Plus with a few disadvantages such as a mediocre camera, no voice commands, a slow CPU, and a lacking App Catalog, there’s not much it offers versus other smartphones at nearly the same price range. However I should note that there isn’t anything particularly wrong about the device. It’s a wonderful creation, has a great polish, and does what it’s designed to do but simply can’t stand up against competition. If you simply like the aesthetics, the webOS, or need the hotspot feature, then this phone won’t disappoint.

Buy: $150 for Palm Pre Plus
Links: VerizonWireless.com Palm Pre Plus

BlackBerry Curve 8530 Specifications:

• Provider: Verizon Wireless
• Operating System: BlackBErry v5.0
• Display: 2.5-inch 320×240 pixel TFT LCD
• Camera: 2.0 megapixel camera
• Music: MP3, WMA, AAC/AAC+
• Video: MPEG4, WMV, H.263, H.264
• Memory: 256MB internal + microSD expansion
• Dimensions: 4.29H x 2.36W x .55D inches
• Battery: 270 mins talk time | 252 hours stand-by
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1+ | WiFi b/g

Hardware
At just under four ounces, the Curve is a featherweight both smaller and lighter than an iPhone. With a rubber backing and sturdy frame, the Curve seems rugged at first touch. However, the plastic buttons on the front feel flimsy and take away from the build quality and durability. Instead of pronounced buttons like the ones found on the keyboard, the navigation and media controls are flush with the body of the phone and aren’t the most accessible.

Media keys on the top of the body provide quick access to media player controls. You can pause, play, and skip songs without taking the Curve out of your pocket. These controls can’t be locked, but the strategic location of the buttons on top of the phone might help to prevent accidental song changes. This coupled with the standard 3.5mm headphone jack provides the essentials for a decent media player.

It is clear that RIM did not make the Curve’s screen a top priority. The phone sports a mediocre 2.5 inch, 320×250 pixel display. This is not necessarily terrible, especially when you consider the fact that the iPod Classic has a similar screen size. It will seem a bit pixilated to the keen eye and those accustomed to high definition screens, and the low depth of 65,000 colors does not do much for video quality either. Battery life will suffer from the lack of proximity and light sensors, but this probably isn’t a deal breaker. The Curve’s screen does well in cafés and buses, but you can forget about reading email outside on a particularly sunny day. If you intend to use the phone outdoors more often than indoors, I would find a brighter screen.

• Build Quality – 3/5
• Navigation – 3/5
• Screen – 2/5

Touchpad and Keyboard
The famous trackball is one gripe I have always had with the BlackBerry. The old trackball often failed because dirt, oil, and grime had a tendency to collect on the sensor. RIM recently introduced an optical track pad that takes care of those issues and it’s featured on this phone. The track pad is a vast improvement over the trackball and is easily my favorite feature. It works like a combination between the old trackball and your laptop’s touchpad – just glide your finger over the pad in the direction you want to move the cursor. The web browser is infinitely easier to use because the touch pad allows you to navigate sites with a cursor rather than cycling through clickable items. More importantly, I was able to improve my BrickBreaker score by a couple thousand.

Seasoned veterans of the Curve are some of the fastest mobile typists I’ve encountered, and they swear by this layout. The keyboard has a standard QWERTY layout with 35 backlit keys, similar to the keyboards found on older Curve models. The shape of the keys and a slight bow in the layout make typing on the Curve’s keyboard almost as natural as typing on a full sized keyboard. One downside is the keys are a bit small and will take some getting used to.

• Touchpad – 5/5
• Keyboard – 5/5

Software
The BlackBerry OS has not changed much over the years, with only a few variations from model to model. This makes transitioning from BlackBerry to BlackBerry simple, but those who are new to the interface may have a tough time getting used to it. That’s not to say that a BlackBerry is harder to learn than other phones, but the BlackBerry OS is not nearly as intuitive as some of its competitors such as the Android and iPhone OS. For example, both Android and BlackBerry phones have a configurable central notification area. However, the location of the notification area on the BlackBerry OS isn’t as obvious as on the Android OS.

Although capable of displaying full web pages, the BlackBerry’s browser is seriously lacking in speed. Even on Wi-Fi, pages render much too slow to compete with other smartphones. The Curve’s touch pad, as mentioned before, does make the browser easy to navigate. Adobe mentioned in 2009 that they are working with RIM to incorporate Flash Player into the BlackBerry browser, so we may see an upgraded browser early this year.

As for application availability, BlackBerry has the basics covered with Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, document viewers, and a few useful utilities preloaded. BBM users will have to head to the BlackBerry App World to get the latest BlackBerry Messenger; oddly enough the Curve does not have it loaded out-of-the-box.

• Operating System – 4/5
• Web Browser – 2/5
• Applications – 3/5

Call Quality and Signal
Verizon Wireless customers are probably already familiar with the inability to access the Internet and make phone calls simultaneously on a single device. This impediment has lead to issues with lost email in the past. The BlackBerry Curve 8530 has Wi-Fi in addition to CDMA, so it is possible to make calls and use data simultaneously in areas with WIFI signal. The 8530 also has notable advantages over its GMRS sibling, the Curve 8520, in that it is 3G enabled and has GPS.

The phone’s signal quality is not nearly as good as other Verizon phones. The Motorola Droid, for example, had full 3G bars at my desk, while the Curve could barely muster up a single bar in the same spot. But even with full bars on both ends, the audio quality is just average. It doesn’t filter out background noise well enough to use in busy or loud areas, but in general calls are as clear as on any other cell phone.

A note for Google Voice users: the Google Voice application is currently buggy on this phone. It seems to integrate well with the address book, but your contacts do not sync regularly and outgoing calls are seldom connected successfully.

• Signal Strength – 2/5
• Call Quality – 3/5

Camera and Camcorder
Most of the new BlackBerry models have 3.2 megapixel camera, which seems to be the standard for many manufacturers. The Curve’s, however, is a measly 2.0 megapixel, fixed focus, flash-less camera. Zooming is all digital (up to 5x), so in the end there isn’t much of a zoom function at all. With only 256 megabytes of flash memory to share, the Curve’s camera system was outdated before it even hit store shelves. You will need to insert a MicroSD card to use the video camera function. The phone’s memory is expandable up to 16 gigabytes with a MicroSD card, though some users have reported problems with cards larger than 4 gigabytes.

One thing I will say the camera does well is sharing. In addition to standard MMS and email sharing, the camera software takes advantage of the preloaded social networking apps by allowing you to upload pictures and videos directly to Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr. The sharing features are convenient and fast, and I hope to see more from BlackBerry in this area.

• Camera and Camcorder – 2/5
• Sharing and MMS – 5/5

Navigation
The preloaded BlackBerry Maps application has come through for me in a pinch a few times, although it could use a bit of improvement in terms of speed. It takes far too long to acquire satellites; it can take over a minute to get going, even when outdoors in areas where other Verizon phones have great GPS signal. BlackBerry Maps gives reliable directions, but it lacks voice guidance and features found in turn-by-turn navigators. If you are looking for a navigator with turn-by-turn directions, Google Maps or VZW Maps will have to do. Google Maps is normally a fantastic feature-packed alternative that easily fulfils this role, though it does not seem to use the GPS properly on this phone and gives poor approximations. Either way, the Curve won’t be replacing your Garmin any time soon. If you are looking for a phone that will fulfill that role, Android phones like the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One will impress you with a fantastic navigation interface and a huge screen.

• Navigation – 3/5

Media Player
The media player is surprisingly easy to use. In fact, the interface and workflow is in many ways similar to the iPod’s interface. It does take more effort on the user’s part to manage the library since the phone does not come with software like iTunes. The media player supports a variety of formats, including MP3, WMA9, AMR, AAC, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, and WMV9 audio and video. The 3.5mm headphone jack puts out more than adequate audio quality, considering this is a BlackBerry and not something commonly used as a primary portable music player. The external speaker can be very loud, though music sounds how you might expect it to sound on a phone: a ringtone. While I wouldn’t use the Curve to replace my iPod, RIM is taking huge steps in that direction with other models like the Storm.

• Media Player – 4/5
• Audio Quality – 4/5
• Speakers – 3/5

Battery Life
The Curve’s battery life is disappointingly short. RIM reports a 3G talk time of about 4.5 hours and a standby time of 10.5 days, but I find the latter to be a little unbelievable. I used this unit sparingly on most days and was lucky to go a full 24 hours on one charge. There were days when I could barely squeeze a full 16 hours out of it after a full night of recharging. I expected a short battery life and a daily recharge; most smartphones, even the iPhone and Droid, have notoriously short battery lives. However, I never thought it would run out of juice before I did on such a regular basis.

• Battery Life – 2/5

Conclusion
As a lower-end version of the Bold, some of the Curve’s shortcomings in terms of build quality are expected. Current BlackBerry users, especially those who have owned the Curve, will love the familiarity of the BlackBerry OS and the physical keyboard. Don’t count on the Curve replacing your MP3 player and GPS device, though it will do a great job complementing your current devices. If you frequently take photos and videos with your phone, I recommend checking out the Motorola Droid, which has all the great sharing features found on the Curve but also has a 5.0 megapixel camera with flash for higher quality images. Business users, travelers, and BlackBerry enthusiasts should take a look at the more robust models like the Bold and the Tour. If you are looking for the BlackBerry experience on a budget, you can’t go wrong with the Curve. All nitpicking aside, the 8530 is a decent smartphone and a great addition to the Curve family. If you’re ready to pick to pick one up, it’s available for $50 after signing a new two-year contract with Verizon Wireless.

Buy: FREE BlackBerry Curve with contract
Links: VerizonWireless.com BlackBerry Curve 8530

The Pre Plus also comes with some extra goodies over its predecessor. It now comes with a touch-stone enabled rear cover. You won’t need to spend extra cash if you decided to buy a Touchstone Dock. The phone now has 16GB of internal storage versus the 8GB available on its older sibling still running on the Sprint network. The phone also has double the RAM, meaning more multitasking. The hardware gesture key is now embedded into the casing and is no longer visible, but functions just the same. The Pixi Plus also has some improvements in addition to the new hotspot feature. Yes, if you didn’t guess already, that means the Pixi now has WiFi. It’s also compatible with a variety of designer rear plates that are all compatible with the Touchstone Dock.

Palm Pre Plus:

Palm Pixi Plus:

Both the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will hit store shelves and will be available for purchase online starting January 25th, 2010. That’s just 3 days away! The Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will cost you $150 and $99, respectively. That’s, however, after signing a new two-year contract and sending in a $100 mail-in-rebate. Verizon’s also has a new promotion that runs through February that will get you a Palm Pixi Plus for free after a mail-in-rebate if you buy either of the phones first. As you can tell from the gallery of images above, our units just arrived. We’re working quickly on our reviews and hope to have them published before launch. To read our full review, stay tuned. You can subscribe to our RSS Feed or sign up for Email Subscriptions. If you haven’t heard, we’re also on Facebook and Twitter!

Links: VerizonWireless.com | Palm.com
Related: Palm Pixi Sprint Review

Verizon Wireless: Motorola Droid

The Motorola Droid is probably the most powerful phone offered through a domestic cell phone carrier. While there may be a few critics, the majority of reviews are favorable about the Droid and tout it as superior to the famous iPhone. While I could go on about the features it sports, here’s a few for starters: Touch Screen, QWERTY Keyboard, WiFi, GPS Navigation, Camera, and plenty more. While that’s my number one choice, if you’re looking for another good alternative on the Verizon Wireless network, check out the HTC Droid Eris. It’s lighter, looks friendlier, and costs a fraction. The Eris will be receiving the Android 2.0 update that the Motorola Droid uses early next year.

Buy: Motorola Droid $150 | HTC Droid Eris $10
Links: Motorola Droid Review | HTC Droid Eris Review

Sprint: Palm Pre

Palm’s device is a fairly new entry into the Smartphone market. After being announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, it made  official debut on Sprint’s network this summer. It runs on Palm’s fresh WebOS that offers multi-tasking, streamlined interface, and organizes your data. There’s even an App Store with a few steps behind the Apple App Store and the Android Marketplace, but still has a good selection. With QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, GPS, and a 3G network, there’s plenty this phone has to offer. If that’s not in your taste, check out the HTC Hero. It was a hard choice deciding between the two, but the HTC Hero was also one of our favorite picks. It also sports all the essential features to make a good Smartphone and will even be getting the Android 2.0 update in the near future.

Buy: Palm Pre $80 | HTC Hero
Links: HTC Hero Review

T-Mobile: myTouch 3G

While T-Mobile is a fairly open network and can accommodate devices such as the iPhone unofficially, they don’t exactly have a best Smartphone. Sure, they offer the HTC Touch Pro2, but that’s not exactly the most ideal device as we pointed out with our review for the Sprint version. While this was a hard call, I would recommend the myTouch 3G. It’s compact, looks good, and has plenty to offer. With a good battery life, 3G network, WiFi, a 3.2 mega pixel camera, and running on the Android OS, it’s definitely a great device. If there’s another device I would recommend, I’d pick the BlackBerry Bold 9700 for business users and the Motorola Cliq if you’re looking for a cheaper Smartphone.

Buy: myTouch 3G $99 | Motorola CLIQ $99

AT&T: Apple iPhone

If I had to choose my favorite smartphone asides from the Motorola Droid, there’s no question it’s the Apple iPhone 3GS. It’s that simple. What’s there the iPhone can’t do? With over 100,000 Apps in the store, you’ll probably never get bored. Despite AT&T scoring last for 3G network quality, there’s always WiFi. With every iPhone supporting software upgrades, it’s fairly future proof. Just keep in mind, rumor has it that a 4th generation iPhone is almost out the door. If security and enterprise features are essential or necessary, the iPhone is probably not the best choice. I’d highly recommend the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as it’s a more traditional business phone. And of course, although not as fancy, it still has a 3.2 mega pixel camera, multimedia player, a web browser, and even an App Store.

Buy: Apple iPhone $200 (16GB) | BlackBerry Bold $0

Unlocked Device: Nokia N900

If there’s a device I’d have to select that isn’t available through any U.S. cell phone carrier, there’s no question that the Nokia N900 is my current pick. In all honesty, I wouldn’t know where to begin with this phone. It seriously has that much to offer. If there’s a feature available on the iPhone or Droid, this phone probably has it or can do it even better. With 3G, WiFi, a slide out keyboard, a 5 megapixel camera (plus another front-facing camera), unrestricted Bluetooth, 32GB of storage, microSD expansion, a Mozilla-based web browser, multitasking, Linux-based Maemo OS, and extensive media file format support, it’s simply a robust device. Unfortunately you won’t get a subsided price when picking one of these up. It’s now goes for about $500 through Amazon.com.

Links: Nokia.com N900 | Skatter Tech N900 Unboxing

This is a part of our ongoing Skatter Tech Holiday Gift Guides.

Faster and More Responsive
Android 2.0 was by no means slow. The update did make some noticeable improvements on speed and stability. Programs open, close, and switch quicker than before.

New “Unlock” Screen
The most obvious change when you first open the Droid is in the “unlock” screen. Though the principle is the same, the interface uses drag-able “tabs” rather than the “wheel” used in 2.0.

Battery Life Increased
This is Verizon’s claim and not my own, however, the phone did last the grueling holiday drive from Sacramento to San Diego with some juice to spare. That includes a solid two hours of music streaming with Pandora and a half hour of using Google Maps Navigation to find my way out of a shady corner of Los Angeles.

Auto Focus Fixed
Some people have reported problems with the Droid’s auto focus ability. The update fixes this and shortens the delay time between shots.

Improved Call Audio
Somehow, Google managed to improve the already impeccable audio during calls. The difference isn’t drastic in my opinion, but I’ll take their word for it.

Speakerphone Fixed
I never ran into this problem before, but when receiving a call on call waiting, the speakerphone turns off. The speakerphone now remains on.

Bluetooth Improvements
The update eliminates the background echo created when using a Bluetooth headset. If you have a car like the Lexus R400h which allows you to transfer contacts via Bluetooth, you are in luck. Android 2.0.1 improved the ability to beam up your phone book with Bluetooth.

Support for Seven-Digit Numbers
You can now send text messages and multimedia messages to seven-digit numbers. Also, you can merge contacts with seven-digit numbers.

Visual Voice Mail Delay Fixed
Verizon Visual Voice Mail provides an interface for your voice mail. It allows you to view caller information and voice mail information for each message without having to deal with the standard “to replay this message, press 7, etc.” New voice mail messages now appear right after they arrive. It used to take a few minutes for the message to show up. WiFi access has also been enabled.

Other Thoughts:
On another note, I’m hoping Google finds a better way to control the audio volume. Right now, there are separate volume levels for calls, ringer, media playback, and navigation.  To adjust the volume, you have to open a corresponding application and then use the buttons on the side of the phone to adjust the volume. For instance, I have to open the media player to change the media playback volume. So, if I’m listening to music at a reasonable level and the navigation decides to scream at me, I have to switch to the navigation application to relieve my ears. I’d like the side buttons to control the master volume have individual volume controls in the notification area. That way when I need to make a “LEFT ON ANDERSEN PARKWAY IN ONE QUARTER MILE!”, I can quickly turn it down.

Support: Droid Update Info
Related: Motorola Droid Review

Interestingly enough, the majority of iPhone owners on AT&T stated that they would buy it again if they had the choice. The real question is whether they would be willing to buy it with AT&T if it were also available through another carrier. The answer for me is: YES. Here’s why:

Just this past weekend, after spending time with family in the Bay Area (San Jose, CA), I drove back up to the Sacramento Area (Davis, CA). I had both my Apple iPhone running on AT&T and the Motorola Droid on Verizon Wireless. The Droid was able to provide voice-guided turn-by-turn directions and even display satellite and street views. My friend, also in the car, was able to multi-task and use the web browser with no issues. We randomly joked about the I Am T-Pain App for the iPhone. So we decided to buy it. It took nearly 10 tries and over an hour before it finished downloading. While I made a quick stop in the Berkeley Area, the iPhone couldn’t place calls, load Google.com in the Web Browser, or even finish downloading that App. AT&T’s network just didn’t work. It interestingly even displayed full signal, plus or minus one bar. My iPhone 3GS was fully charged and has all the latest updates. The Motorola Droid on the other hand breezed through any issues, other than for one or two brief “GPS signal loss” messages. While the unit did get somewhat warm and loose battery quickly due to heavy processing from the Google Maps Navigation App, it simply worked seamlessly with the Verizon Wireless network.

While I haven’t used Sprint’s or T-Mobile’s networks nearly as much, they are both outperforming AT&T as well. I have never heard too many complains about those two either. If you buy a Cell Phone, you should be able to make calls with it. Unfortunately that’s where the problem lies with my iPhone tied to AT&T. If I had the choice of purchasing a smartphone today, I’d definitely get the Motorola Droid no questions asked. If the iPhone were also available on Verizon, I might have a debate with myself to decide which to buy. For now, it’s probably best to stick with Verizon Wireless if you can.

Related Links: Consumer Reports

The Hardware – 4/5 stars
The Droid Eris is one of the best-looking smart phones I’ve come across. It’s definitely looks friendlier than the robotic Motorola Droid and cuter than it’s Sprint sibling the HTC Hero. It has an attractive soft black-coated finish and silver trims on the side. It’s fairly light weight and can slip into just about any pocket. There are four touch sensitive keys below the display: Home, Menu, Back, and Search. The inclusion of physical send and end keys are appreciated. HTC also implemented a special trackball for navigating the interface. It even lights up when notifications are available. There’s a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, a 5 megapixel camera on the back, and a volume rocker on the side. I was slightly disappointed to find that the Eris uses a HTC proprietary USB cable and that microSD expansion slot (8GB card included, supports 16GB card max) was hidden behind the rear plate.

The Display – 4/5 stars
The HTC Eris sports a 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen display with a 320 x 480 pixel resolution. The display is bright, has great viewing angles, and colors. The ambient light sensor automatically brightens up the display, making it easier to read, when outdoors and dims down the display to save battery life in darker areas. The built in proximity disables accidental inputs during phone calls by locking the display when held to your ear. The UI can also switch to a landscape mode from portrait using the built in accelerometer, but unfortunately only works in one direction. While most people would be quite satisfied with this display, they’ll still be stunned to see detail, quality, and difference in resolution when compared to the Motorola Droid. Despite that, it’s still looks great for the UI, images, web pages, and videos.

Camera & Camcorder – 4/5 stars
The HTC Droid Eris sports a 5 megapixel camera. It supports digital zoom and auto-focus, but unfortunately lacks a built in flash. Max image resolution is 2560 x 1712 pixels. The interface allows customizing the white balance and brightness. The advance settings reveals a self-timer, time stamp, geo-tagging, ISO, and other enhancement features. Launching the camera is a split second faster than the iPhone 3GS. The view finder was quite snappy and more responsive than I had expected. When it comes to capturing images, quality is about on par with the Motorola Droid. Just like most camera phones, the Droid Eris works great outdoors, but faces difficulty in low-light situations. The HTC Eris supports recording videos of any length, only limited by storage space, in a max resolution of 352 x 288 pixels. While the quality was decent, it’s still not a match to the Motorola Droid’s DVD quality recordings.

Music, Media, & Syncing – 5/5 stars
While the Apple iPhone has been known for it’s phenomenal media playback capabilities and an amazing user interface, it’s hard to have high expectations for other devices. The entire Android platform still isn’t entirely on par with Apple iPhone OS, but it gets quite close with the HTC Sense UI. With an included 8GB microSDHC card and support for up to 16GB of expansion, this is definitely a worthy alternative/replacement for a dedicated multimedia player. First off, there’s a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so no adapters are needed. Syncing music is easy. The power cable is actually modular, it separates from the AC adapter plug, becoming a USB cable. Just plug it into a computer and tell the Eris to mount the microSD card from the notification menu. It immediately becomes a standard mass storage device, much like a USB flash drive. Unfortunately, there’s no official tool to sync music or other media, you’ll have to do it manually. Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 7 was able to work with the Droid Eris quite smoothly. Motorola actually offers a sync tool for their Droid. Once you get the music onto the device, there’s a neat little HTC widget that goes on any of the home screens. It lets you control playback and view album art without launching the player. Since it’s Android, the phone supports playing music through the built in player or through an application such as Pandora in the background while using other applications. The music player interface allows browsing your library by Artists, Albums, Playlists, Songs, Genres, and Composers. The Droid Eris also supports setting songs in your library as a ringtone and purchasing new tracks from the Amazon MP3 music store.

User Interface – 4/5 stars
The Droid Eris by HTC runs on version 1.5 of the Android Operating System. It’s a step behind the Motorola Droid which is running Android 2.0 and even the HTC My Touch 3G running on Android 1.6. The Droid Eris supposedly might get a jump to version 2.0 sometime next month. Despite that, the OS seems to be quite well polished for the most part. Especially with HTC using their Sense UI, the user experience and flow is vastly improved. In fact, I found that I liked the variety of widgets available on the Droid Eris over the flagship Motorola Droid. The only issue I found was occasional lag. Even with a 528MHz processor, 288MB of RAM, and 512MB of ROM, the HTC Eris is still not as snappy as the iPhone 3GS or the Motorola Droid. The messaging tools via both the Gmail App and the Mail client are both impressively powerful and compatible with just about any email service. (IMAP, POP, & Exchange supported) SMS/MMS integration is quite well implemented. It displays contact images and displays an entire conversation history. The Android OS also supports linking contacts to their Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter accounts. Simply clicking on a contact card will display their contact info, their location on a map, conversations with them, their Facebook status updates, their photos from social networks, and call history. It even syncs with Google Contacts and becomes available to modify and add too through a web browser. The on screen keyboard has both landscape and portrait modes with haptic (vibrating) feedback, making it fairly easy to use. While I wouldn’t be able to begin to mention all the amazing Applications available through the Android Marketplace, there are 10,000 of them available. The only thing this phone doesn’t have is the free Google Maps Navigator app with turn-by-turn voice guided directions that was originally available on the Motorola Droid and then became available to other Android v1.6 devices. The learning curve is quick and most customers will love it.

Call Quality – 5/5 stars
Over the week or two I’ve had this phone, I’ve definitely had a better signal and call quality compared to the Apple iPhone. The Verizon Wireless network was by far more superior in terms of signal strength, call quality, and 3G speeds in Northern California compared to AT&T’s network. I had no dropped calls with the Droid Eris, while I often couldn’t even place calls or had to redial multiple times with the iPhone 3GS. Call quality wasn’t anything special, but was clear and reliable. The SpeedTest.net App showed that the the ping time to the same servers with the Droid Eris had a tenth as much of lag over several tests as the iPhone 3GS. The download speeds with both AT&T and Verizon in the same spot at the same time were fairly identical for Download speeds coming in at 1400kbps for the iPhone 3GS and 1500kbps for the Droid Eris. However Upload speeds were quite astonishing, Verizon had a clear win with about 800kbps on average while AT&T struggled with a mere 100kbps. For the most part, the Droid Eris has great hardware and utilizes the excellent Verizon Wireless network seamlessly. If you enable WiFi to connect to a broadband network, things only get even better.

Battery Life – 4/5 stars
Most smart phones have fairly poor battery life since they are often running applications and constantly using cellular networks to check for email and retrieve other bits of data. The HTC Droid Eris has a replaceable 1300mAh lithium ion battery which can handle up to 5 hours of talk time or at least a week on standby. In reality those numbers were significantly less due to constant fiddling with the phone to use the browser, listen to music, reply to emails, or utilize any of the phone’s variety of features. Most customers will actually see about 3 hours of talk time and about 3 days worth of standby, which isn’t a bad thing. It just means you’re using your phone.

Bottom Line
I was quite impressed and satisfied with the Droid Eris for Verizon Wireless just as we were with the HTC Hero on Sprint. It’s got all the goods needed to be a good smartphone from the Android operating system, a touch screen, a good camera, WiFi, and a App store. There’s plenty of features to keep you entertained, informed, and busy at all times. The HTC Sense UI takes the personalization and customizations features to a whole new level which customers will appreciate. It’s also cheapest Android device on the market costing just $99 after a $100 mail-in-rebate and signing a new 2-year contract. A data plan is required. If you are looking for a new entry level smartphone and don’t want to spend too much, this is definitely the best one out there.

Buy: Droid Eris on Amazon for $99
Links: HTC Droid Eris – VerizonWireless.com

Just a few years ago, every Verizon Wireless customer was eligible towards a $100 discount when they upgraded their phone after their two-year contract expired. In 2007, I wrote an article about Verizon downgrading their Upgrade Plan. Their new “Every Two Plan” would only entitle customers paying over $80 a month on services a $100 discount towards a new phone, while the rest only received a $50 discount. They recently once again made some changes which has upset many customers.

Verizon Wireless’s latest changes apply to their Early Termination Fee (ETF). Normally if you choose to cancel your two-year contract, there would be a $175 fee for any device. As of November 15th, there’s a new fee for Smartphone owners, categorized as “advance devices” by Verizon. If you were to purchase a smartphone such as the Motorola Droid and decide to switch providers or cancel your contract, you’ll now have to pay a $350 ETF. If you moved to a new location that doesn’t have signal and decided to cancel your service the second month into the contract, that would mean you would end up paying nearly $550 for just the device. While Verizon does knock $10 off the ETF each month, that’s still a $130 left over to shell out 22 months into a contract. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) has even introduced a bill to revert this change since it’s “anti-competitive” and “anti-consumer.” As for now, fortunately, non-smartphone devices still only have a $175 ETF.

It’s true that the devices such as the Motorola Droid are heavily subsidized; otherwise we would have to pay a couple hundred bucks extra up front. However the required Smartphone data plans with the cheapest calling plans will still cost an average customer nearly $2000 over a two-year period. Even with the subsidy for the device calculated in, that’s still large amount to spend. While this won’t affect customers that don’t plan on canceling their contracts, it would still be nice to at least see Verizon increase the amount knocked off the ETF each month by at least a couple dollars so that the ETF would be close to zero a month before a contract ends.

While it’s great to see new high tech phones with more features become available for lower prices each year, it’s a bit depressing when you realize the service cost through just about every provider hasn’t.

What do you all think about the increased ETF? Is it fair to charge Smartphone owners more?

Links: VerizonWireless.com

While you are waiting for the review of the Droid Eris to go live, please feel free to subscribe to our RSS Feed or sign up for Email Subscriptions. If you haven’t heard, we’re also on Facebook and Twitter!

UPDATE: Droid Eris Review is here!

An average brand-name Netbook (e.g. Dell, HP) with a standard 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and 1GB of RAM costs about $300. Cell Phone carriers including AT&T and Verizon now offer subsidized Netbooks with a 3G Wireless Broadband card built in. So the big question: “Is it worth purchasing a Netbook with a contract?” The simple answer is NO.

For example, let’s take a look at the HP Mini 110. It retails for about $300 excluding tax straight from HP.com. Verizon Wireless offers the same configuration of the Mini 110 for a subsidized price of $150. Half-off seems like a great deal, but it’s not. First there’s a $35 activation fee. Next you’ll have to sign-up for a data plan that costs $60 per month for just 5GB of data. I should note that there’s also a $40/month data plan that offers just 250MB of data. Considering that I feel 5GB itself is too little, 250MB is just ridiculous. Plus there’s also a 2-year contract associated with the device. To get out, you’ll have to pay the $175 early termination fee. So if you add that up here’s what you get:

$150 (HP Mini 110) + $35 (Activation Fee) + $1440 (5GB Plan, $60 x 24 Months) = $1625.

Keep in mind that I didn’t include tax either. That’s nearly the cost of a fairly high-end Dell XPS laptop or MacBook Pro. Although Netbooks are a great tool, it’s not a good idea to spend that much for one and be stuck with it for two years. The technology is evolving and new models that run faster and longer keep coming out. Dual Core Atom processors are probably going to hit Netbooks within the next few months. Your Netbook will be outdated in no time. Unless you need a computer with 3G Broadband at all times, it might be better just to use hotspots when you need access. If you decide to upgrade your netbook every year, you can do so and still end up paying less than half of what a contracted Netbook costs. If you really need broadband on the go, either try to add a tethering plan to your current phone, grab a MiFi that works with multiple devices, or a separate 3G USB Modem.

Links: AT&T Netbooks | Verizon Netbooks

On another note, Verizon Wireless also announced the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530. Unlike the clickable touch-screen the Storm2 features (see our review), it has traditional form factor with a physical QWERTY keyboard. Unlike older BlackBerry phones, this one does away with the trackball, replacing it with a touch-sensitive trackpad. And for some quick specs for this phone, it’s packed with WiFi, 3G, GPS, 2 megapixel camera, and mainly a lot of business/enterprise features. The Curve 9530 will be available on November 20th for $99 after a $100 rebate and signing a 2-year contract.

We will be getting a hold of both of these phones in the coming days and will be publishing full reviews shortly after. In the meantime, to be the first to read our reviews, subscribe to our RSS Feed, sign up for Email Subscriptions, or find us on Facebook or Twitter!

If there is anything you should take from that last paragraph, it should be that I am hypercritical when it comes to reviewing smart phones because I have yet to experience the recipe for a so-called “iPhone-Killer”. So when I say that the Motorola Droid is my new favorite phone, you can take me seriously. Yes, yes, all of the smart phones in this generation do just about everything short of cooking for you. But the Droid just does it better with Motorola’s feature-packed hardware, Android’s new open source operating system, and Verizon’s high quality network. I’ll explain.

The Hardware
This phone is built like a tank. It weighs about an ounce more than the iPhone, but the extra weight just makes the Droid feel like it’s expensive and has a lot to offer rather than just a heavy burden. I was initially concerned about the sliding mechanism for the keyboard, which is often the first to break on phones with a similar form factor. However, this isn’t the case. The Droid is far from flimsy. Although the phone doesn’t sit flush on a flat surface; the shape of the back elevates the phone just enough so that it doesn’t vibrate off of a table or let the camera get scratched. The lip below the screen didn’t seem to serve any purpose, but I soon realized that it houses the microphone and helps the user to tell the speaker from the microphone.

I only have a few small complaints. My first complaint is with the external buttons. Don’t get me wrong, all three power, volume, and camera keys work fine, but they sit loosely in the frame, which feels as though it takes away from the quality of the build. My second complaint is with the battery compartment cover. It slides off rather easily. It even came off once when I pulled it out of a tight pocket in my backpack. I suppose that’s better than not being able to take it off at all, but it’s something to keep in mind if you like your jeans extra tight.

• Overall Quality – 5/5
• Mechanical Parts – 5/5
• External Buttons – 4/5

The Display
Measuring 3.7 inches and 480 x 854 pixel resolution, the Droid’s touch-screen display is beautiful, bright, enormous, and knocks competitor’s displays out of the park. The screen is both larger than the one found on the iPhone and also has over two times screen resolution. That means it can easily fit and render websites normally designed for computers. Plus, it’s large enough of a resolution to playback DVD quality movies. It’s also accurate and sensitive enough to register touches properly. Like all glossy touch screen phones, the screen tends to get covered with fingerprints and smudges, but it’s nothing your t-shirt can’t fix.

• Size – 5/5
• Resolution – 5/5
• Brightness – 5/5
• Quality – 5/5

The Keyboard
The Droid offers both a physical keyboard and an on-screen keyboard to suit your taste. The on-screen keyboard works perfectly in both horizontal and landscape modes. A key press results in both a sound and/or haptic (vibration) feedback. In fact, the on-screen keyboard is almost the same as the iPhone’s, so it should be an easy transition for those used to Apple’s keyboard.

The physical keyboard is pretty standard. The buttons are square and the keys become illuminated when it’s dark. There’s nothing incredibly special or annoying about it. The only issue is the layout. Rather than having slightly offset keys as found on standard keyboards, everything is aligned in a perfect grid. However, just like any other phone, you get used to what you have after a day of use. I shouldn’t understate the keyboard. Many smart phone owners are first time buyers who are accustomed to the traditional click and feel of physical keyboards. The Droid wouldn’t have been as interesting of a phone if it didn’t have one.

One major drawback to the keyboards is the lack of language interchangeability. Android does not offer native on-the-fly language switching. There are a few applications on the Android Marketplace that will do this for you, and something may be in the works for future upgrades, but I’m disappointed that the Droid can’t handle more languages than I can out of the box.

• On-Screen Keyboard – 5/5
• Physical Keyboard – 4/5
• Language Options – 2/5

The Interface
The touch screen interface is flawless, responsive, and frequently used, which makes the Droid extremely intuitive. Surprisingly the Droid lacks multi-touch gestures, while the European version, called the Milestone, offers it. I can’t imagine why they left this out, but hopefully it can get fixed with a future software update. But even without that, the Droid is just as easy to get along with. I felt that the double-tab to zoom command was easier than the pinch-to-zoom since it can be done with just one finger.

There are four touch-sensitive spots below the screen: back, menu, home, and search. The interface controls for nearly every application stay in an orderly manner, so the touch sensitive keys work perfectly everywhere. My favorite by far is search, which looks through both your phone and Google. Thanks to the Droid’s ability to multitask, this feature can be used at just about any time without losing your work. For example, say you are in a call with a friend and need to find the address of a restaurant. Just hit search and type in the name of the restaurant. If the information is not already saved in your address book, it will search Google and display results while remaining on the line.

• Multitasking – 5/5
• Touch Interface – 5/5

Voice Recognition
Android’s voice recognition engine is unparalleled and works with almost everything. That includes slang and even thick accents; “Call Kreestan” works just as well as “Call Kristen”. Android was even able to recognize my French and (bad) Spanish without changing any settings. “Direcciones al gymnasio” (Spanish for “directions to the gym”) gave me a list of nearby gyms while my locale was still set to English. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow using this feature to dictate text messages, but if it did I would image it would work better than the Samsung Rogue. With laws prohibiting texting while driving, it would be a great idea to let you speak your texts through a hands free device.

• Voice Recognition – 5/5

Phone Calls
With all the other stunning aspects of the Droid, it’s quite easy to lose sight of its primary function: a phone. The Droid does not fall short in this category. Calls are as clear as ever and the microphone intelligently cancels out background noises. During one particular call, a caravan of buses passed by not three feet away from me, and the person on the other end didn’t even notice. Until I mentioned the busses to see if anything was heard, the caller thought I was in a quiet room. Signal strength was strong just about anywhere I went in Northern California and I didn’t face any dropped calls. And as I’ve mentioned before, it’s easy to multitask while on the phone. You can add callers, look up contacts, search for information – the only thing you can’t do while on the phone is use the microphone.

• Call Quality – 5/5
• Signal Strength – 5/5

The Android Roadtrip
The Motorola Droid’s features integrate incredibly well with its operating system, Android 2.0, so it’s hard to talk about one without the other. I decided the best way to really discover the capabilities of both by taking the phone on the road and use the Droid for everything and really push it to the limit.

We had no idea where we were going, but we knew what route we wanted to take, so we packed a lunch, hopped in the car, plugged the Droid into the stereo, and created a station for The Kills on Pandora.

Navigation
The Motorola Droid on Verizon is the first device to feature Google Maps Navigation. It’s a completely free service that offers 3D maps with voice guided turn-by-turn directions. The VZ Navigator available on most Verizon Wireless phones costs an additional $10 a month for use. A decent turn-by-turn direction App on the iPhone sells for a one time fee of nearly $80-$100. On the other hand Google Maps Navigation is entire free and is offers a lot more.

Our journey through Sacramento was a familiar one. Kristen (my lovely driver) and I were feeling the familiar drone of the autopilot set in, and decided that a caffeine fix was necessary. The Droid features a “Car Home” mode, which offers quick access to on-the-road navigation features. I hit Quick Search and asked for “directions to Starbucks”. The voice recognition registered all the terms successfully and gave me directions to a Starbucks right off of the highway in Folsom. The navigator showed us a Google Street View of our destination, so it was easy to point out where it was upon arrival. If I had the official dashboard mount, the Droid could have easily replaced my current GPS.

The drive through El Dorado National Forest is beautiful. There were lots of trees and mountains that probably should have thrown off the GPS or at least our streaming soundtrack, but both remained strong. We lost GPS signal once while weaving through mountain roads, but that lasted less than five seconds, and the only reason we noticed was because the navigation voice started to give us alternative directions. After seeing a couple small rivers running along side the highway, we had the urge to go find a waterfall. With the GPS and Pandora still running, I searched for “nearby waterfalls”. The browser remained fast even while driving through a forest with the other programs running in the background. I was given results relative to our location – our new destination was Vikingsholm in South Lake Tahoe.

• Navigation Interface – 5/5
• Accuracy of Directions – 5/5
• GPS Accuracy – 5/5

Camera & Camcorder
The Droid sports a 5-megapixel camera. It produces images with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1936 pixels. The scenic road through El Dorado was a perfect place to give the camera a shot. With 16GB of memory on the included Micro-SD card, I wasn’t afraid to keep snapping. The camera took some great shots, though I did find that the automatic stabilization function needed the camera to remain still for a few extra seconds to work properly. The digital zoom produced some pretty grainy pictures, as expected. The flash kicked in at appropriate times and improved pictures taken in darker environments. Plus the geo-tagging feature marked coordinates of where those photos were snapped. With a program such as Google Picasa or Apple iPhoto, you can easily import and view your photo library on a visual map.

The Droid’s large screen is great for reviewing photos and videos, though I was most impressed when I played back the captured videos on my laptop. Videos are shot at an impressive 720×480 pixel resolution at 24 FPS. The quality was excellent and it didn’t jitter at all. Android also supports sending images and videos via MMS, email, or uploading to services such as Facebook and YouTube. The Droid’s camera won’t be replacing a traditional camera anytime soon, but it’s a big step up from other camera phones.

• Photo Quality – 5/5
• Video Quality – 5/5
• Camera Interface – 5/5
• Media Sharing – 5/5

Notification System
Android has a centralized notification system to keep track of the things happening on the phone. By simply dragging down the top toolbar, you can view alerts for new emails, texts, missed calls, finished downloads, calendar reminders, and voicemail. On the other hand, the iPhone simply places a number above Apps that have an alert, but that requires swiping through multiple pages to check on them. The BlackBerry Storm2 probably has the most similar ability with its built in news feed. Simply organizing those updates into one place makes thing easy and responding to those alerts is just a single click away. The system also provides a simple interface to access applications that are running in the background. For example, it will show what song it playing on Pandora. It’s definitely going to be hard to go back to other systems after giving this a shot.

• Notification System – 5/5

Speakers & Headphones
The Droid uses a standard 3.5mm audio jack and has no problem putting out high quality sound. It sounded just as good as my iPod Touch. But using headphones on this trip would have been selfish, so I cranked up the volume of the external speakers so that Kristen could listen in. The speaker’s sound quality was absolutely fantastic; they sounded better than my three-year-old Macbook’s speakers! The speakers would not put out much bass, but surprisingly they did not garble the rest of the audio. From ten yards away with a river running in the background, Kristen was able to clearly comprehend Jack White’s lyrics.

• Speaker Quality – 5/5
• Headphones – 5/5

Media Player
While listening to Pandora, I came across a song I really liked by the White Stripes. I clicked on the “Buy” button in the menu and it took me straight to the song’s page on the Amazon MP3 store. I bought the song and opened up Music for an encore. The purchased song was added into my music library with the existing songs from the White Stripes album. Although the phone’s media player offers all the basic functionalities such as browsing by Artist, Album, Genre, or Songs it does have a few issues. For example, you can’t view all the songs by a single Artist, but rather have to jump back and forth through the Albums by that Artist one at a time. Edit: The media player does allow you to view all songs by a single artist, but it was a little tricky to figure out how (touch and hold the desired artist, select “Play”, and hit the “Playlist” button to view all songs). It’s a well developed player and includes Album Art, a shuffle and a repeat feature. Although it could use a few tweaks, it’s a completely viable alternative to purchasing a dedicated MP3 player.

• Music Player – 4/5

Syncing
Before my road trip, I manually copied a few hundred songs from my computer to the phone with the included Micro-USB cable. The phone appeared as a mass storage device and didn’t require any software. Android automatically recognized the music and other content. Although people despise the bloated iTunes software, it offers an easy syncing relationship between a computer and an iPhone/iPod. Unfortunately, neither Motorola nor Verizon suggest nor include a tool to manage your media. Edit: Scratch that, Motorola just released a tool called Media Link which easily lets you manage music, photos, and videos. Computer geeks will find a solution that suites their needs, but others will be left in confusion.

• Library Management – 4/5

Battery Life
The battery was at about 75% when we left Davis. After four hours of multitasking, the Droid was just about finished with a little bit of juice left to take a few pictures, exceeding my expectations completely. The official specs claim 6.4 hours of 3G talk time and about 11 days of standby.

As we headed to the car to start our trip home, after four hours of heavy multitasking, the Droid gave me a low battery notification. It wasn’t just a standard, single-line message; it brought up a panel that displayed the power consumption of each running application. Right at the top of the list were my power hungry applications. I knew where we were going, so with 5% battery left, I closed all applications and put the Droid on standby. It stayed on for another hour, which was both unexpected and impressive, though I would recommend purchasing a car charge if trips like these are a regular occurrence. It only took about three hours to completely charge the phone once we got home.

• Battery Life – 4/5
• Power Management – 5/5

The Bottom Line
So that brings us to the big question, “Would you recommend the Motorola Droid over the Apple iPhone?” Yes and No. In terms of technical specs, yes the Droid is better. Yes, the Droid does have more features. And yes, I would absolutely recommend that you check it out, but in the end it is a matter of preference. I don’t believe the Droid will be the mythical “iPhone-Killer”, but there’s a good chance the Android platform will. For example the HTC Hero which we reviewed last week and the upcoming Samsung Moment on Sprint both run on the Android platform. This means all the same set of applications downloaded through the Android Market, similar to the iTunes App Store, will run on any of those devices. Unless Apple drops a bomb in the near future with some major changes to the hardware and opens up the software, Android has a clear shot to take out the iPhone.

If you’re convinced and ready to buy a Motorola Droid, it’s going to hit Verizon Wireless stores this Friday, November 6th, 2009. Due to high demand, Verizon is opening all it’s stores earlier than normal at 7 AM. It’s not that expensive either considering the powerful camera, GPS Navigator, and 16GB MP3 player it packs inside. It will only set you back about $199 after signing a new 2-year contract and sending in a $100 mail-in-rebate. If you’re an existing customer who’s eligible for an upgrade, you should be entitled to an additional $50 or $100 discount based of the price of your current calling plan.

Links: VerizonWireless.com Motorola Droid

Note: This review was edited by Sahas Katta.

Novatel MiFi 2200 Specifications:

• Network: Verizon Wireless CDMA
• Wi-Fi Mode: 802.11b/g
• Security: VPN & WEP/WPA/WPA2
• Size / Weight: 3.5″ x 2.3″ x 0.4″ / 2.05 oz
• Connector: microUSB
• Battery Life: 4 hours use / 40 hours standby

Hardware: 5/5 stars
The MiFi 2220, developed by Novatel, is about the width and height of a business card. It’s 3.5 inches wide, 2.3 inches tall, and just 0.4 inches thick to be exact. While weighing just about 2 ounces, it packs both a CDMA and WiFi antennas inside. There’s a power button on the top that lights up green when it’s on. A microUSB connector, for charging the device, resides besides another green LED indicator that displays WiFi activity. On the bottom, there’s a sliding back door that reveals a battery pack. Other than that there’s not much else to say. It’s light weight and compact enough to take with you.

Setup Process: 3/5 stars
For someone who doesn’t know much about technology, the idea of this device might be confusing. It’s essentially a 3G modem that has a WiFi router built in. So instead of having to connect it to your computer with a cable, it broadcasts a WiFi signal. Just find the access point on your computer, connect, and behold: the internet! Sounds easy right? Unfortunately not. Although our unit was pre-configured since it’s a sample review model, a normal user will have to go through some mess. Unlike phones where you just dial a number to quickly activate, MiFi owners will either need to do it over the internet or at a Verizon Wireless Store. To get it done over the web, you’ll have to download and install some drivers for your computer to recognize the device. Unfortunately that ends up defeating the major selling point of the device: not having to install crappy software.

Features: 5/5 stars
Anyways once you get it activated, there’s a lot this device offers. Just connect to the hotspot and key in the IP address to access the web interface of the device. Just like a standard home Linksys or D-Link router, it offers a panel to change settings. I was able to pick a new SSID, change the security to WPA2, and pick a new pass-phrase. I was quite impressed that such a small device was even capable of offering such options. The local web interface even displays 3G signal strength, data usage, and your IP address and plenty more. Plus since up to 5 of your devices can join in on your network, it even displays the number of connected users. Considering this first model has so many options and capabilities, I’m quite excited to see what’s in stock for a future version.

Network Speed: 5/5 stars
The most important aspect is the data transfer speeds the device offers. To give this a shot I decided to use the SpeedTest.net application on my iPhone to test the speeds when connected to the MiFi over WiFi. Yes, I have Verizon on my iPhone, through WiFi. Speed test recorded throughout the San Francisco Bay Area consistently averaged at about 1200kbps down and 700kbps up. Every time I ran a test on the MiFi, I also tested AT&T’s 3G speed on the iPhone. The results disappointingly averaged at about half of what the MiFi offered: 650kbps down and 250kbps up. I also used the Verizon MiFi to access the internet through my Dell Mini 9 netbook. The speeds were speedy enough to browse most webpages, check emails, or instant message. Streaming rich media such as Hulu or YouTube just isn’t too practical. It works and sometimes well when signal is really strong, but requires waiting for a lot of buffering most of the time. Plus with data caps, I wouldn’t recommend using up precious bites.

Battery Life: 5/5 stars
According to the specifications, Verizon claims four hours of use and 4o hours of standby with the 11mAh battery. After testing for short periods over a period of few weeks, I can agree that the claims are about right. Although the power saving feature, which turns itself off when there’s no activity, is sometimes annoying; it offers plenty of hours for the average user. Plus charging it is as simple as plugging it into either a computer with the included microUSB or a power outlet with the AC Adapter. The device takes about 2.5 hours to replenish and can even be in use while recharging.

Conclusion:
Overall the Verizon MiFi is a new and interesting technology that is simply great. Other than the weird setup process, it makes life on the go truly convenient. Transfer speeds are great. Battery life is probably enough for most users. The only issue comes in with data caps. The plans are just ridiculously overpriced. A 250MB usage plan costs $40/month and a 5GB plan is $60/month. That’s more than what most people pay for unlimited high speed internet at home. And while the hardware lets you easily share internet access with a friend traveling with you, the data caps makes you think again. Other than that issue, the rest is great and I highly recommend it. If you are interested, the device is available for purchase for $99 after a $50 mail-in-rebate with a new 2-year contract.

Deal Alert: Verizon MiFi For Free [with contract]
Links: VerizonWireless.com MiFi

I had some time to handle the device and mess with the interface. My first impressions were quite positive. Everything from Verizon’s marketing to the quality of the hardware to the Android 2.0 software are stunning. Ian Thackston will be publishing an in-depth review of the phone in the next couple of days, prior to launch. This should give you guys some time to read the review and decide whether it’s the right phone for you before you pick one up. In the meantime subscribe to our RSS Feed, Email Subscriptions, or on Facebook/Twitter to get notified when the review is up!

UPDATE: Read Our Full Review!

Link: Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid

BlackBerry Storm2 Specifications:

• Provider: Verizon Wireless UMTS/HSPA & EDGE/GPRS/GSM
• Displays: SurePress 3.25-inch 360×480 pixels touch screen
• Camera: 3.2 Megapixel Camera w/ Auto-focus & Flash
• Music: MP3, M4A, WMA, & AAC/eAAC/eAAC+
• Video: MPEG4, WMV, H.264
• Memory: 2GB (internal) | 16GB microSD included
• Dimensions: 4.43″ L x 2.45″ W x .55″ D
• Battery: GSM: 5-6 hours talk time | 270-305 hours standby
• Other: Bluetooth 2.1 | 3.5 mm Audio Jack | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g

The Body: 5/5
The Storm2 is a bit of a heavy phone just like the original Storm, but there are plenty of changes that make it fantastic. For one it simply just looks sharp and feels like an expensive device. The front is completely glossy, the sides are covered with a chrome trim, and the back has a brushed metal look. Instead of having separated physical buttons for the send, menu, back, and end keys, they are all integrated onto the bottom of the SurePress touch screen. The speaker is now located on the bottom portion facing the user for undistorted quality instead of on the back. The voice command key and the micro USB port are on the left side of the phone. From the top to the bottom on the right side, there’s the 3.5mm headphone jack, volume rocker, and the camera shutter. The top of the back side has the 3.2 mega pixel camera and a LED flash right above the plate covering the battery pack, SIM card, and microSD card. The play/pause control and power button that also locks the phone is on the top. Everything is within fingers reach and the grip feels great.

The Display: 5/5 stars
The original BlackBerry Storm had plenty of issues with the touch screen. For one it was too hard to press and was too slow to type on. The Storm2 features a new SurePress display that supports multi-touch and multi-clicks. The display is much more responsive and feels better. When browsing through applications or typing on a keyboard, you can lay your finger on the screen without worrying about it accepting that as a click. It will simply highlight the item your finger is on until you physically press the display. If you’ve used any other touch screen display such as the iPhone before, this is a very different feel. Although it takes some getting used to, it brings back a bit more of the feel a traditional QWERTY keyboard offered. The accelerometer has also been vastly improved and the display can quickly switch between landscape and portrait for anything including the keyboard. For everything from the home screen, text, images, or videos, the display has excellent colors, is bright, and crisp. Although slightly more difficult to use in direct sunlight, it looks stunning indoors.

The Keyboard: 4/5 stars
Moving on, since the Storm2 doesn’t have a physical keyboard, it offers multiple types of virtual ones. The simplest one is the QWERTY mode that works in both landscape and portrait. It’s a bit too crammed when in portrait, but is the landscape version is the best way to type. The MultiTap method most resembles typing on numeric keypads on old flip phones. It’s slow and tedious, but still works. The most interesting mode is an improved version of SureType which was also present on the original Storm. It pairs two letters on a single key in the portrait view. Without having to double-click to access the second letter, it second guesses the word you are trying to type. And it impressively actually worked most of the time. There’s almost no lag in between key presses and it appearing on the display. I only wish they made the keys for the QWERTY landscape a bit larger since there is some extra screen estate available. Typing isn’t slow either since it can accept two inputs at almost the same time. The original Storm had a delay, since you would have to wait for the screen to pop back up after a click. Plus with an improved auto-correct feature, it’s faster to type as it fixes typos for you. The default dictionary learns new words and names quite quickly. Plus there are plenty of custom settings to adjust tap interval, hover period, and swipe sensitivity to meet your needs. Even though it lacks a real physical keyboard, the Storm2 manages to make typing easy, fast, and even fun.

Operating System & Interface: 4/5 stars
The Storm2 runs on the BlackBerry 5.0 OS. It’s a big improvement over 4.7. For one it’s much snappier and has faster animations and transitions. It’s interface is user-friendly and even looks good. The home screen is completely customizable from choosing backgrounds, to rearranging icons, or even creating folders for group applications. And as with any BlackBerry, you can customize font size, color, and type. The OS also supports multitasking unlike the Apple iPhone and lets you easily switch between running applications by simply holding down the menu button until an Windows-esque ALT-TAB menu appears. The OS is also more open to 3rd party applications than the iPhone. Storm2 owners will be able to fetch new applications from Verizon’s Application Center, through BlackBerry App World, or download one from a web page in the Browser. App World has a great interface and large selection of both free and paid applications. The phone comes pre-loaded with chat clients, social networking programs, and a few others tools. Plus with 256MB of RAM, double of that on the original Storm, everything is faster and more things can be running at once. The only issue I found was with the Web Browser. Despite a fast network and WiFi, it is still slow when it comes to rendering pages. It lacks a tabbed interface and still has issues displaying pages properly. It also lags quite a bit when zooming in or out. And when it comes to applications, there are plenty of good ones available, but many standard BlackBerry apps don’t run so well on the Storm2 since they aren’t designed for a touch screen display. Rather than those issues, the rest of interface and OS has been vastly improved.

Call Quality & Features: 5/5 stars
I don’t think this phone could do any better when it comes to making or receiving calls. The reception was beyond excellent. Call quality was crisp and clear on both ends. And that’s great since the phone aspect is the most important part of this smartphone. I had no dropped calls either. After pressing the send button to launch the phone application, the dialpad appears. It looks elegant and has large keys, making it easy to dial numbers quickly. Getting to either the call history or contacts page is only one click away. The phone even helps “guess” the number while you are typing by cross referencing your address book. During a call, there’s a menu with keys for the speaker, mute, flash, and “add participant” button. The phone also has a proximity sensor which turns off the display when it’s held up to your ear during a call to save battery life and prevent accidental key presses. The voice-dial function has its own dedicated hard key and recognizes names quite accurately even amongst a couple hundred contacts. The Storm2’s new OS also allows accessing other components of the phone during a call including your calendar, email, and browser making life a lot easier.

Multimedia: 5/5 stars
The Storm2 still isn’t as great of a media player compared to other devices such as the iPhone, but it’s a step closer. It has 2GB of on-board memory and a 16GB microSD is included for extra storage. I was able to sync my phone using the included microUSB cable with both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 easily. I was able to quickly drop media onto the card and the Storm2 automatically detected and indexed everything immediately. It even played back HD shows that was recored in Media Center 7 after being automatically converted to a compatible format by Windows Media Player. The last phone I reviewed, the Samsung Rouge, had horrible speakers, but the ones on the Storm2 exceeded my expectations. There was barely any distortion even with the volume turned all the way up. The phone allows browsing music by artists, albums, or genres. It even displayed the album artwork that was embedded into my MP3s perfectly. I was also thankful to find that my music could be used as ringtones, which even the iPhone doesn’t allow without going through some roundabouts. Video quality was also excellent, it didn’t jitter or lag as some other phones do. If OpenGL gets thrown into a new OS update in the future, it will make media playback, animations, and transitions much smoother.

3G & WiFi: 5/5 stars
The BlackBerry Storm2 makes excellent use of Verizon’s 3G network. I found it to have faster network speeds and it better signal strength just about everywhere I went compared to the AT&T iPhone another Skatter Tech writer had. Emails, Chat Messages, and other notifications were almost instant. And plus with WiFi thrown in, things get even faster. The WiFi setup is simple and even allows those push button pin setups some new routers support. It’s compatible with the latest WPA2 encryption and corporate security protocols too. I don’t know why RIM hadn’t spent the time to integrate this in the original Storm because there’s no question that WiFi is an essential part of this phone.

Camera & Camcorder: 5/5 stars
The 3.2 megapixel camera takes great pictures up to a max resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. The phone has a built in LED Flash, auto focus, and image stabilization. With those three features, images looks wonderful. It still shows signs of “graininess” in low light situations, but that’s expected for a device with a small lens. The camera application now loads up in under 2 seconds and can switch from landscape to portrait almost instantly. It’s a vast improvement over the original Storm. The phone also uses the GPS module to Geotag where images are shot. Importing them into programs such as Google Picasa or Apple iPhoto can arrange them on a world map appropriately. There are no image editing capabilities built in by default, but I’m sure some Apps are available for that purpose. Plus with a large 16GB microSD card, I can take plenty of images and record videos only limited by free space at a 480 x 352 pixel resolution. It even allows turning the flash into a flashlight to record video in the dark. There are effects such as black and white, sepia, and a few others included for both images and video recording. To top that off, the phone even supports uploading high resolution images to webs services such as Flickr or Facebook.

Email & Messaging: 4.5/5 stars
After the phone component, email and messaging are probably the second most important aspect of a BlackBerry. And the Storm2 handles that quite well. There are pre-configured settings for services such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Live Mail included. If you have your own corporate email, there’s even a wizard to walk you through the setup process. If you’ve used a service like Facebook, you know about the news feed. The BlackBerry 5.0 OS has it’s own news feed for everything that’s happening on the phone. This includes everything from missed calls, emails, instant messages, and even Facebook alerts to appear in one centralized location. The only data it didn’t include in the stream for some odd reason is SMS and MMS. There’s even a centralized way to compose a message. And as I mentioned before typing takes some getting used to, but becomes fast. The Storm2 is truly a powerful messaging device and will definitely meet or surpass your needs.

Conclusion:
This is hands down the best phone I’ve ever had. Sure there are plenty of other device such as the Apple iPhone that claim to be the god of smartphones. Even so, the iPhone lacks many business features that the Storm2 offers including a powerful search, a robust email client, security features of all sorts, and finally the freedom to use any application you wish. Plus the Storm2 comes with the Verizon Wireless network that has the best overall coverage in the nation. The phone can make calls in another 220 countries and even has data access in 185 of those. There’s no question that this is one of RIM’s best BlackBerries to date. It’s a night and day difference compared to the software and hardware problems customers faced with the original Storm. I will definitely be disappointed to let go of this phone once this review gets published. If you are a business customer and also want to get in on the touch screen action while not loosing any of the enterprise and corporate features the BlackBerry offers, the Storm2 is for you. Plus with the unique SurePress screen technology, it’s something to show off. And even if you are a college student, it’s got plenty of entertainment features including a great media player, social networking, powerful texting platform, instant messaging, and even a web browser. If you need a new phone the BlackBerry Storm2 is available as of today for $179.99 with a new 2-year contract. If you are an existing customer eligible for upgrade, you should be entitled to another $50 or $100 discount based of your current calling plan.

Links: VerizonWireless.com Storm 2 | BlackBerry.com Storm 2

We’ve been testing the device for the past few hours; so far so good. Other than the phone, the packaging includes a headset, microUSB cable, and an AC Adapter. Akshay Aanabathula will be publishing a full review of the phone within the next day or two, so subscribe to our RSS Feed, Email Subscriptions, or on Facebook/Twitter to be the first to read it!

Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 Specifications:

• Provider: Verizon Wireless (1.9 GHz /850 MHz CDMA)
• Displays: 3.1-inch 800 x 480 pixels & 18 bit colors
• Camera: 3.0 Megapixel Camera w/ Autofocus, Flash & Image Editor
• Music: MP3, M4A, WMA, AAC/eAAC/eAAC+
• Memory: 512Mb (internal) / 16GB microSD (external)
• Dimensions: 4.29″ L x 2.17″ W x .65″ D
• Battery: 280 Minutes Talk Time & 300 Hours Standby
• Other: Bluetooth 2.1 | 3.5 mm Audio Jack

The Body: 4/5 stars
The Samsung Rogue shares the same form factor as the Samsung Glyde, a sliding keyboard under a touch screen, but it has a new look. Although this phone is taller than the Glyde, it is thinner and has a more streamlined finish. The face of the phone is very simple. Underneath the 3.1″ touch screen, there are three “brushed metal” buttons: send, clear, and end. The back of the phone has a rough bronze-colored texture, which offers a decent grip. The speaker, a 3.0 megapixel camera, the flash, and a tiny mirror for self portraits are on the back. The position of the camera causes one small issue. Each time I picked up the phone, I had a tendency to place my index finger directly on the camera lens. I found this to be annoying since it was a pain to continually have to clean the lens, but then again, this might be an issue only for me. The volume controls and the USB connector, used for both charging and data transfer, are on the left side of the phone. On the right side there’s a screen lock, voice command, a zoom in/out button for the camera, and a camera capture button.  The lower portion of the right side features the 3.5mm headphones jack and the microSD expansion slot.

The Keyboard: 2/5 stars
Verizon Wireless advertises the Samsung Rogue as great phone for texting. Therefore, I expected it to have a great keyboard, unfortunately, it was a big disappointment. There are four lines of keys instead of having a additional symbol function. This makes things easier to find and faster to type. The keys are not small or cluttered, but are neatly spaced out. Unfortunately the problems begin with the layout of the keys. Some buttons are too far off to the left and others are properly centered. Even though the keys feel great to type on, their locations don’t feel natural. They feel as though they are a bit jumbled and not placed in traditional keyboard format.

The Display: 5/5 stars
I was impressed with the 800 x 480 pixel (AMOLED) touch screen display. With a higher resolution than Apple iPhone’s 480 x 320 pixels, the Samsung Rogue’s display looked beautiful and had rich colors. Even with a mid-range brightness setting, the display was fairly visible even in direct sunlight. The Rogue also has haptic feedback. Every click results with a small vibrating pulse in addition to audible feedback. A built in accelerometer changes the orientation of the display automatically from portrait to landscape and vice versa. A proximity sensor automatically turns of the display when the phone is held up to your ear to save battery life.

User Interface: 4.5/5 stars
To lock the phone, there’s a physical side button. To unlock it, just press any button so the display turns on, then click the on-screen unlock button. The home screen is quite customizable, you can change the brightness, the banner, change the text font, the wallpaper, and even the clock format. There is a collapsible side bar that holds all the supported widgets. You can easily drag the ones you use the most on to the home screen by simply dragging them over. There’s an analog and  digital clock available as a widget as well.  On the bottom of screen, there are two rows for actions. The first row is for notifications for missed calls, voicemails, text messages, calendar, alarm clocks, and more. The second row contains four buttons for the phone dialer, contacts, messaging (text, picture, email, etc.), and  the full menu. These two rows are static and can’t be customized. It would be a great idea if they offered the ability to dock other programs such as the web browser or media player to that menu. In general, the user interface is clean, simple, well designed, and works!

Call Quality & Features: 4/5
The call quality was excellent, plus there were a few extra unique features added in. For example if you are in a library or a lecture hall and have to whisper, there’s a mode for that! Just click the “Whisper Button”  and it amplifies your voice so it sounds almost normal for the person on the other end. For the most part, the regular voice quality was excellent on both ends, no complains. The only reason the phone didn’t live up to a five star rating was because of the speaker phone. The speaker wasn’t loud enough or clear enough. It works fine if you are in a truly silent room, but it’s quite difficult to hear when in a car. If you normally use a Bluetooth headset, you won’t need to worry about this.

Messaging: 4/5
Just like most phones today, the Rogue supports text, picture, video, and voice messages. Text conversation history is saved to keep track of everything that’s been said. You can compose a message with either the pull out QWERTY keyboard or the on-screen digital keyboard. The digital keyboard isn’t in a QWERTY layout, but a normal alpha-numeric keypad.

Voice To Text: 1/5 stars
This was a feature I was truly excited for. It theoretically allows you to say a phrase to your phone, which should automatically be converted into text. Unfortunately this feature barely worked. Even after training my voice, I only had successful results about 25% of the time. The rest of the time, the program types in something completely incorrect. For it to work, you’ll have to speak very slowly and clearly, emphasizing each word. For example, I said “This is a cell phone review” and the program typed in “This is itself under view”. It doesn’t accept slang too well either. Another example, I said “Let’s go see Zombieland at 10 o’clock” and it typed in “Left to see some reliant@koch”. To wrap it up, this feature is a great idea, but needs a lot of work. For now it’s not worth using; it’s faster to type the message yourself.

Camera & Camcorder: 4/5 stars
The camera on the Rogue has all the standard features you would expect: zoom, flash, and focus. There are alternate image options such as mosaic, frame, panoramic, and multishot. Image resolution and brightness are also modifiable. After you take a picture, you can edit it with some fairly cool effects. In addition to the standard effects such as sepia and black & white, some other effects such as sketch, emboss, soft-elegant, and fright are thrown in. For the most part, the camera takes excellent photos. The only issue I faced was a small lag from when you click the capture button to when it actually takes the image. If you make any sudden movements, it looses focus. That results in blurry image quality.

The camcorder mode can record video only limited by the available space on the memory card. However you can only MMS clips that are a max of 30 seconds. It records at a 640 x 480 pixel resolution. There are five recording effects, similar to the ones for the camera. Quality looks fairly good for a phone, but gets choppy at times. It obviously isn’t comparable to a decent camcorder or even a Mino Flip.

Music Player: 3.5/5
The Samsung Rogue was designed to be a full MP3 player with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The media player has a search function and lets you browse your library by Artists, Genres, and Albums. During playback, the album art isn’t shown on the full screen, but rather as a thumbnail. Other than that, the interface is quite nice. Controlling playback, such as play/pause, next track, and so on, are easy to use and work without any problems. The media player has a shuffle and repeat mode. The audio quality with headphones was great and it didn’t cackle when turned up too high. The speaker on the other hand was an issue. They just weren’t loud enough and wasn’t clear. Another major issue is the lack of multitasking. You can’t do anything else while playing back music. Phones such as the LG enV Touch allow browsing the web, texting, and doing other things while the music player runs in the background. This is a major drawback and needs to be addressed.

Other Features: 4.5/5
There are a lot of other features that this phone offers. Some built-in tools include a calculator, a tip calculator, and a unit converter. The Rogue also syncs to your computer with the included USB cable to transfer music and data. The media player also supports playing video files, however quality isn’t too great and supported file formats are limited. The web browser was impressive. It still isn’t on par with a browser such as the one found on smart phones such as the iPhone. But for the most part it has all the essential features such as navigation, favorites, and zoom. It rendered most pages fairly quickly as well. The VZ Navigator works really well. The GPS module tracked my location very precisely. I do feel that the navigation interface could use a bit of a face lift. The program also offers voice turn-by-turn directions, but once again the poor speaker quality was an issue. Another truly unique feature is the business card reader. All you have to do is take a close up image of a business card in a fairly well lit location. It automatically scans the card and creates an entry in your address book with all the information from the card. It worked really well with just about every card I tested it on. The final feature I’d like to note is the document viewer. It supports viewing Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, and Power Point) and PDFs. The interface allows scrolling and zooming for all files. To get files onto the device you can simply copy them onto a pre-created folder on the microSD card or sync them over using the data cable.

Conclusion:
After spending a little over a week with this phone, I was fairly satisfied. I was impressed with some of the rather unique features such as the voice-to-text and the business card scanner. The largest drawbacks were probably the odd layout of the slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the quality of the speakerphone. Other than that, the phone performed quite well. The home screen is one of the best parts of the user interface experience. The phone excelled in the most import aspect, call quality. I suggest going into a Verizon Wireless store to handle the phone before buying it over the phone or online. If you are ready to buy it, the Samsung Rogue is available online for price of $99.99, with a 2 year contract.

Buy: Samsung Rogue for $99
Links: VerizonWireless.com Samsung Rogue

LG enV Touch VX-11000 Specifications:

• Provider: Verizon Wireless (1.9 GHz /800 MHz CDMA)
• Displays: 3-inch 800 x 480 pixels & 1,600K colors
• Camera: 3.2 Megapixel Camera w/ Autofocus, Flash & Image Editor
• Music: MP3, WMA, Unprotected AAC/AAC+
• Memory: 250Mb (internal) / 16GB microSD (external)
• Battery: 260 Minutes Talk Time & 408 Hours Standby
• Other: Bluetooth 2.1+EDR | Stereo Speakers

The Body: 3.5/5 stars
There is no doubt that the enV Touch is a large phone; 4.5 inches tall, 2 inches wide, and over a half inch thick. Despite being a tad bit too large, it actually looks a whole lot more attractive than the Voyager and the Dare. The back of the phone features a soft rubberized texture with a unique engraved pattern which offers a decent grip. The left side has the camera trigger, volume toggle, and the display lock button. A 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD slot can be found on the right side. On the bottom you’ll find the microUSB connector which serves two purposes: charging and data transfer. The face of the phone has a large 3-inch touch screen and three “brushed metal”-looking physical buttons at the bottom: send, clear, and end. The clear key seconds as the voice command button when on the home page and initiates voice memo recordings when held down. When you flip open the phone you are introduced to another 3-inch display, stereo speakers, a full QWERTY keyboard, and a navigation D-pad. Compared to the Voyager, the keyboard now has larger keys and remains well spaced at the same time. LG has finally placed repositioned the “space bar” to the center of the keyboard instead of two “space bars” on the bottom left and right as they were on the LG Voyager, LG enV2, and LG enV. Overall, though the enV Touch isn’t the most compact phones I’ve had for what it offers, but remains functional and isn’t too large to fit into an average sized pocket or purse.

The Displays: 4/5 stars
We were quite impressed with the resolution and the colors of the displays. The enV Touch’s 800 x 480 pixel display has a higher resolution than the iPhone’s 480 x 320 pixel screen. Both photos and videos look great on both screens. The external display also uses a sensor that dims out the screen as you hold it up to your ear, but I found this to be sometimes problematic since it often didn’t turn back on if I were to try to use the interface during a call. The only way I managed to get the screen working again was to either flip open the phone or by placing my finger over the sensor for a second and then moving it away. Other than that small annoyance, the displays are bright, sharp, and even looks decent outdoors.

User Interface: 4/5
The enV Touch has a similar interface to the Voyager and like its predecessor, duplicates features on the external and internal display. However, not all features on the external work from the internal, and vice versa. For example, photo editing only functions on the external touch screen. To unlock the phone you must slide up an overlay on the screen or press the lock/unlock button on the side of the phone. The home screen has 5 permanent icons on the bottom: messaging, dialpad, menu, phonebook, and favorites. The favorites menu allows you to set 10 favorite contacts for quick access. In addition 3 “widgets” can be placed anywhere the main page; memo, calendar, and clock. The memo is very similar to a sticky note on a Macs. On the right side of the home screen there is an arrow which links to the shortcut menu, which manages all application/utility shortcuts. Mostly any tool on the phone can be placed in the shortcut menu or can also be placed as an icon on the homepage. The interface on the internal display has a more traditional interface, familiar to that most Verizon Wireless phones. The D-pad can be customized to launch various applications when on the home screen. One major problems I ran into occurred when an application on the internal display then closing the phone would exit out of the application and return to the home screen instead of moving to the outer display. Overall, the interface is very intuitive and for the most part it works seamlessly between the two displays.

Messaging: 5/5 stars
After many iterations of the enV lineup, LG has mastered the messaging feature of this phone. The physical keyboard does not need much of an explanation, it works as it should and feels great. The external display also supports messaging, with support for both a portrait and landscape virtual keyboard. The virtual portrait keyboard does the job just fine for quick responses, but is a bit impractical for typing long messages. The horizontal virtual keyboard works a whole lot better than the portrait and is a viable option. The interface enlarges the letters you hit as they are typed and provide haptic feedback as well. The size of each virtual key and spacing helps the usability experience as well, however the internal physical QWERTY keyboard is by far the best solution for messaging.

Camera & Camcorder: 5/5 stars
The enV Touch has an extremely feature packed camera and camcorder interface not found on other phones. The 3.2 megapixel camera can take photos up in various resolutions up to 2048×1536. It features an unusually bright LED flash, which can automatically turn on in low-light situations. The camera uses the auto-focus setting by default, but can be switched to macro for close-up images as well as a manual focus option. The camera has white balance, brightness, color effects, and self timer settings. In addition to these settings the camera has a couple of “goodies” that you will not see in the typical phone camera. One would be the panorama mode, where the phone will actually guide you through the process of snapping a panoramic photo with on screen instructions and then stitching them together. Another would be the smile detection, where the camera will only snap the photo only once the subject smiles to get the best picture. My favorite by far was the NameCard reader, which lets you snap an image of a physical business card and it uses OCR to extract the name, email, and phone number into your contacts. A built in image editor allows cropping, draw on the image, and adjusting the brightness of the photo.

The camcorder can record clips with a max resolution of 640×480 and offers custom white balance, brightness, and color effects. Most phone’s camcorder functions are rendered useless in the dark, but not the enV Touch. The camcorder can switch on the LED flash during a recording which turned out to help a lot. Finally, the enV Touch does a great job with video editing. One of the much hyped feature on iPhone 3GS was video trimming and this plus much more can be done on the enV Touch. The trim feature allows a simple crop, after choosing a start and end point. But say you wanted to cut together multiple parts of a video, that’s where the multi-trim feature comes in. You can cut together up to 3 different parts of a video (3 different start and end points) and the phone will merge these different parts together into one video. The camera in the enV Touch really stands out because of the depth of options presented and puts it clearly ahead of many other phones in the U.S. Market.

Music: 3.5/5 stars
The enV Touch was designed to work as a full time mp3 player with a set of  internal stereo speakers and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The music player is organized by Artists, Genres, and Albums. It can also display album artwork which looks good in its sincere imitation of “cover flow”. The player can create on-the-go playlists and manage music storage between the microSD card and internal memory. Music playback supports shuffle and repeat modes. For listening options, the Dolby settings allows you to toggle between preset equalizers, such as bass booster and classical. Audio playback on the speakers was clear with no crackle, even when turned up all the way. One of the features I liked the most was that music application can run in the background. Performing other tasks such as look up a contact or texting is possible without having to exit the music player. I decided to use my enV Touch when I went for a jog. I found it extremely difficult to use the external display to navigate through songs. In addition to the poor visibility due  to sunlight, it was difficult to even manage to click the next button or pause my music. Some external controls for music would have gone a long way. Overall the music player felt solid, keeps getting better, and usable but not polished, it needs to be put back in the oven for a bit longer.

Syncing: 4.5/5 stars
The enV Touch uses a standard microUSB port to connect to a computer. It can be used in data mode, which shows up as an USB Mass Storage Device on a computer and allows you to manually transfer photos, documents, and music to the microSD card. The other option is to use the phone in music mode, in which it can be synced with the Verizon V Cast Music with Rhapsody program or with Windows Media Player as an MP3 player. The charger is also modular, the AC adapter is actually a USB charger. The same cable needs to be disconnected and is used to sync with your computer. One small quirk I noticed was the fact that the phone significantly heated up while charging. It wasn’t too hot that I’d be concerned about the phone getting damaged, however constant heat isn’t good for batteries, meaning a reduced lifespan.

Document Viewer and Other Features: 4.5/5 stars
The phone offers many other features including the now standard world clock, tip calculator, and alarm clock. The one feature that stood out the most was the document viewer, an application not usually found on a non-smartphone. The viewer can read, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xslx, .ppt, .pptx, .pdf, and .txt files. The documents loaded fairly quickly and were fairly readable once zoomed in. I found using the Document Viewer more pleasurable than the iPhone. Mainly since I could simply copy them straight over to the phone’s storage or microSD, rather than having to email them to myself as you have to do on the iPhone.

Conclusion:
After using the enV touch for a few weeks, it has left us with a very good impression. I would say as of now, it is the best non-smartphone on the Verizon Wireless network. It has an amazing display, two displays to be correct,  and excellent media features. It supports a full HTML web-browser, VZ Navigator, V-Cast videos, voice commands, and text to speech. If you are looking for a new phone and just can’t justify paying those required high rates for data plans associated with smartphones, the enV Touch is a no brainier. It has a solid set of features that just about everyone from a casual consumer to a tech-junkie can appreciate. It is available online and in Verizon Wireless stores now for $150 for new customers. Existing customers eligible for upgrade should be able to knock off about $50 to $100 based of the type of calling plan they currently have.

Buy: $99 for LG enV Touch
Links: Verizon Wireless

Ever since Apple released the “revolutionary” iPhone, competitors have been trying to imitate and create a better phone. LG has been fairly successful so far. They released the LG Voyager through Verizon Wireless last year, which we reviewed but weren’t too happy with. Fortunately their latest phone, the LG Dare, has surpassed our expectations and can truly be considered an iPhone competitor especially at its price point. It also has plenty of unique features that impressed us.

LG VX9700 Specifications:

• Provider: Verizon Wireless (CDMA 850MHz / 1.9 GHz)
• Form Factor: Full Touch Screen Candy-Bar
• Display: 3 inch, 240×400 pixels, & 262k colors
• Media: MP3, WMA, & AAC(+)
• Imaging: 3.2 mega pixel camera with flash & auto focus
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, GPS, & microUSB
• Others: microSD, ambient light, & accelerometer
• Size / Weight: 4.1″ H x 2.2″ W x 0.5″ D (inches) / 3.8 oz
• Battery Life: 4.7 hours talk time & 360 hours standby
• Price: $200 with a new 2 year agreement

The Body – 5/5 stars
The LG Dare is quite compact and can fit into even a tight pocket. It is actually about 16% smaller in volume than the iPhone 3G. The phone looks quite sleek with a silver trim on the front and a black colored back. Unfortunately since it is a touch screen, it is also prone to attracting finger prints. The front of the phone contains the send, clear, and end buttons in addition to the display. Although not too visible, when looking carefully at certain angles the ambient light sensor can be seen at the top blank portion above the screen. The left side of the phone contains the screen lock button, the microSD card slot, speaker phone key, and the microUSB charger/data port. The volume increase and decrease toggle and the camera/camcorder capture button can be found on the right side. The backside of the phone merely contains the digital camera with flash, the speaker, and a battery cover lid. Finally the 3.5mm standard headphone jack can be found at the top of the phone. Overall the entire design is a success.

Display – 5/5 Stars
In reference to the brightness, contrast, and color representation, the display was top notch. Probably one of the better displays I’ve seen in a while. The Dare’s three inch screen can display images at a max of 240×400 resolution which seemed to fit the needs of the phone just fine. The ambient light sensor is a great addition as it automatically dims the screen when in darker situations and brightens it up in broad daylight. The phone also has a neat sensor which automatically turns of the display during a call when the phone is held up to your face. It immediately turns back on when it gets further away. These two features assist heavily in conserving more battery life whenever possible.

http://skattertech.com/media/2008/07/lg-dare-interface.mp4

User Interface – 5/5 Stars
The LG Dare’s user interface is quite intuitive. The interface seems to have LG Voyager ancestry, however much has improved since then. The sensitivity is just right, however it can be adjusted. The phone’s screen is quite responsive without delay and all transitions are smooth and everything flows smoothly. The home screen features a clock, the date, and two notifications bar. Five items will always available on the bottom of the home screen: messaging, dial pad, menu, address book, and favorites. Although, this quick access bar cannot be modified, shortcuts can be added to the home screen from the shortcut menu. This shortcut menu can be accessed by clicking on the arrow on the main screen. The eleven default items can be customized to show any of the over fifty items in the phone including downloaded applications. The Main Menu displays the standard nine items found on any Verizon Wireless phone: Contacts, Messaging, Recent Calls, My Music, Media Center, Browser, VZ Navigator, V Cast Video, and Settings & Tools. Navigating through just about any part of the phone was simple and self-explanatory. The LG Dare also addresses the issue plaguing many touch screen devices which is the lack of tactile feedback. This phone solves that issue by releasing small vibrations below the screen each time something is clicked. Sound effects can also be enabled to indicate that a command has been accepted. The Dare also automatically locks itself after a certain period of inactivity. The screen can be activated by pressing the unlock key on the side or pressing the unlock button on the screen.

Messaging (Email, IM, & Text) – 5/5 Stars
Text messaging addicts will not be disappointed by this phone as it supports text, picture, and video messaging. Since the phone has tactile feedback it is much easier to type on this phone than I had expected. The keyboard also turns into a QWERTY layout when the phone is turned sideways thanks to the accelerometer. The keyboard was also quite accurate and the predictive text also helps speed things up. Although nothing beats a real keyboard, this wasn’t as bad as other phones I’ve used. The LG Dare also features Verizon’s Mobile Email client which has built in support for Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL/AIM Mail, and Verizon.net. If you use other services the phone also allows configuring your own POP3/IMAP servers for incoming mail and SMTP for outgoing. (SSL Security Supported!) The phone can automatically check and notify you when immediately when a message reaches your inbox. The client isn’t too great for reading messages with graphics; however is plenty for reading text in emails. Finally the LG Dare also has a built-in instant messaging client that supports the AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger clients. You can log into all three at once and view your full contact lists. Overall the phone has not forgotten about the messaging side of things even while the emphasis of the phone might be the touch screen.

Web Browser – 5/5 stars
The built in HTML web browser excels just as most other components of this phone has. It begins on the Verizon Wireless Portal offering quick links to news, weather, movies, and more. The homepage can be customized to a site of your choosing. To visit a webpage, just press the WWW button and enter a URL to navigate to any webpage. Just as the keyboard did previously, the entire browser switches over into landscape mode when the phone is rotated. The volume toggle can then be used to zoom into or out of a page. A Full Screen option is available in the menu to allow the webpage to take up the entirety of the screen leaving no wasted space. The back/forward, refresh, home, and other keys will only appear as overlay when in the full screen mode. The major drawback would be the lack of flash, however most simple JavaScript works. And since most people will probably have this question, YouTube does work perfectly. The bookmarks are also a thankful to have feature saving having to retype URL. The only other issue I faced was that links were sometimes hard to click and I would have to zoom in to get to them. Large web pages sometimes are slow to move around, however I would still have to say this is the best browser found on a Verizon Wireless phone.

MicroSD + Syncing – 4/5 stars
The LG Dare supports up to 8GB microSD cards, which is great for those planning to use it as their music playback device. 8GB cards have also come down in price and can be purchased for as low as $30 through some major online retailers. When you connect your phone to your machine using the included microUSB to USB cable, you can enter the data or sync music mode. The data mode will turn the microSD card into a mass storage device so you can add or remove content directly onto it. The sync music mode will allow syncing media with Windows Media Player 11. Unfortunately Vista users will have no choice but to install the horrid VCast Music Manager to get the phone working with WMP11. If files are placed directly into the music folder, the phone will manually re-index them the next time the music player is started. So to put all of that together, the phone can be synced as a media player device, a mass storage device, or by using a microSD card reader.

Speakers + Headphones – 4/5 stars
The LG Dare’s speaker is fairly decent. It isn’t as loud as I hoped when being used as a speakerphone. It does sound decent for music, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It might have been better if they had been able to stuff a set of stereo speakers into the phone. Fortunately one of the big pros of this phone is the fact that it has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Those who plan to use this as their music device will have the opportunity to use their standard headphones without having to deal with using messy adapters. The headphones quality is plentiful for most consumers, audiophiles not so much.

Media Playback – 4.5/5 Stars
The LG Dare supports playback of MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+. Verizon recently made a deal with Rhapsody, so music purchased there is completely compatible as well. Controls are fairly intuitive to use. The touch screen makes navigating through songs quite simple. The library can be browsed by a full song list, custom playlists, artists, genres, or albums. The phone also contains preset equalizers. Album art is displayed while playing back music. LG has hilariously included a cover flow type of view when the phone is turned sideways. It doesn’t look too good or function too well, so I would just stick with the standard view. The best part of the Music Playback component is probably the fact that player can be turned into a background process. This way you can begin to browse the web, email, chat, or even send messages while listening to music. Overall this is probably the best music player I have seen on a Verizon Wireless phone to date. As for video playback, although I didn’t have a chance to test it, according to the specifications it supports playback of WMV, MP4, 3GP, and 3G2.

Digital Camera & Camcorder – 4/5 stars
The LG Dare has a Kreuznach 3.2 mega pixel camera which also doubles as a camcorder. Photos can be captured at a maximum resolution of 2048×1536 pixels, while videos can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 640×480. The camera allows for many different options such as a self timer, white balance, face detection, multi-shot, panorama, slit, and frame shot types, and a variety of scene modes. LG has also implemented face detection to focus on people in a shot. The camera allows manually setting the ISO, for those who are interested. The camera also launches within a second unlike most other phones that take a while to startup the application. The Dare’s camera is quite a strong point of the phone as it even includes built-in flash and auto focus. The camcorder offers plenty of neat features including a high frame rate option which will record video in slow motion.

Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR – 5/5 stars
Bluetooth pairing is unbelievably easy; the phone gives instructions as to how you need to go about pairing the phone. The instructions are simple and easy enough for any person to understand how to do it. It automatically pairs itself with the Bluetooth headset once you have completed the steps, no need to enter a password or anything, very convenient. The Dare fully supports use of stereo Bluetooth headsets, which is welcome addition that the iPhone lacks. The phone also supports sharing calendar events, contacts, or printing photos to a printer, although most probably won’t ever use them.

GPS VZ Navigator – 5/5 Stars
The VZ Navigator has become the strongest point of Verizon Wireless phones in recent times and is also a strong point of this phone. The software allows getting voice turn-by-turn directions and even is aware of traffic congestion. It now also has an improved local search that can find movie timings, gas stations, local events and much more. Just like the browser, the app runs in landscape mode when the phone is turned sideways. The GPS was accurately able to find my location just about anytime I tested it.

Extras – 5/5 stars
One small feature which I loved was the power supply that was included with the phone. Instead of providing an addition data cable, the power supply is actually a USB cable in disguise. The cable can be unplugged from the head and can be plugged into a USB port to charge or sync data. No other hardware is included with the phone. As for the software the Dare has voice commands, a basic calculator, tip calculator, a powerful calendar, alarm clock, stopwatch, world clock, notepad, voice recorder, and a drawing pad. I also wanted to mention that the Notifications bar is an actual menu on this phone instead of just being meaningless indicators. When clicked on, information about missed calls, messages, and events will be displayed. The extra components were also though through carefully.

Conclusions
The LG Dare is the best Verizon Wireless phone I have yet to review. I would have to highly recommend this phone for those interested in a new device. It has been well throughout and is a very worthy competitor to the iPhone. Although it may lack the huge application store that Apple offers, there’s still plenty to keep you busy. Everything from the large touch screen display, the camera, the browser, and music player are all solid. The reception was one of the better ones I have seen as well. The phone is available for purchase already through Verizon Wireless stores and online. The LG Dare will cost $200 with a new two year contract. Those of you who are eligible for upgrade should be able to get an addition $50-100 knocked off the price based off your current calling plan.

Links: Verizon Wireless – LG Dare
Buy Now: LG Dare for $137 with New 2-YR Contract (via Amazon)