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Motorola's in big need of a smashing success and Verizon needs to prop up its line of smartphones: is the Droid by Motorola the answer? Verizon's huge marketing campaign claims so, with the usual anti-iPhone rhetoric (which we could do without) and mysterious bites of the Droid's high end features. Indeed the Droid is a phone to be reckoned with and adds that special sauce to Verizon's recently much improved smartphone lineup. The Droid runs Android OS 2.0 hot off the press, and this adds more syncing options such as MS Exchange, Google Maps 2.0 beta with spoken turn-by-turn directions and a few other tweaks. This is a vanilla Android phone with none of the customizations that HTC has done with the HTC Hero or Samsung has done with their upcoming TouchWiz-ified Behold 2. So the phone must stand on its hardware strengths, and those are good: a large 3.7" capacitive touch screen sporting the highest resolution yet on Android: 854 x 480, a hardware QWERTY keyboard, slim design, ARM Cortex A8 CPU (the same CPU found in the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre), GPS, EV-DO Rev. A, WiFi, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera and Bluetooth. Not bad, particularly the large display and ARM Cortex A8.
Design and Ergonomics

The Droid is a modern minimalist phone, lacking the trademark styling of HTC's Hero or the slim stone look of the Palm Pre. It's a basic rectangle, but it's very slim for a QWERTY slider and it looks like a high class piece. It's solid and well made, and the slider moves with a smooth motion that clicks when opened or closed fully. The battery cover is made of metal with a grippy soft touch finish. The Droid is a phone for sophisticated types and business people, while the Motorola Cliq on T-Mobile is more of a plastic youth messaging device that happens to run Android OS (ver. 1.5). At 6 ounces the phone feels weighty in a good way, and it's in the same size class as the iPhone, HTC Imagio and Samsung Moment Android phone on Sprint (though the Droid is thinner than the Moment). It's infinitely more pocketable than the HTC Touch Pro2 on Verizon since it's gobs thinner, though it's wide and tall enough that you'll want to be careful when sitting down.

The 3.7" capacitive touch screen dominates the front face with just a small bezel and touch sensitive haptic buttons below. These buttons are: back, menu, home and search. Sorry, there are no hardware call send and end buttons-- you'll need to use the on-screen phone shortcut for that. . . a dangerous proposition if you're on the move and need to keep your eyes ahead of you rather than on your phone. The display is responsive and a pleasure to use, which is true of most Android phones, and it won't leave you longing for an iPhone. Though the resolution is very high at 854 x 480, the OS scales well so text isn't painfully small and images are reasonably sized. The display is very sharp and clear but not as bright and color-rich as the Palm Pre or Samsung's AMOLED display phones like the Moment. It has an auto brightness setting that keeps things on the dim side-- turn it off and manually adjust brightness for a better experience unless battery life is an issue for you. The Droid has an accelerometer that's responsive without being too twitchy and a proximity sensor for calling without cheek-dialing.

The keyboard is surprisingly small since Moto left plenty of room for a not terribly needed d-pad on the right. The size didn't bother us as much as the incredibly short key travel-- the price we pay for a thin phone. Thus typing isn't an absolute joy and the keyboard isn't as useful as the Samsung Moment's, but it's better than on-screen pecking using the default Android keyboard. The black keys are backlit with white masking and are easy to see in the dark, and there are shortcut keys for search and menu and the @ symbol requires no Alt key press.

Video Review

Here's our 10 minute video review of the Droid that includes comparisons with the Samsung Moment and Motorola Cliq Android phones as well as the HTC Imagio Windows Mobile 6.5 touch screen smartphone on Verizon.

Phone and Data

The Motorola Droid is a dual band digital CDMA phone that works with Verizon Wireless in the US. It has EV-DO Rev. A for fast data and fallback to 1xRTT. Wifi 802.11b/g is on board when you're not in a good EV-DO coverage area, but keep in mind you must get a data plan with this phone. Google's webkit-based browser (Safari on the iPhone and the Palm Pre browser are also webkit-based) does an excellent job of rendering full HTML sites in desktop fashion. It's also fast at rendering, and thanks to the Droid's very fast CPU, it's as fast as the iPhone 3GS. Flash support should come sometime early next year, but for now the integrated YouTube player that serves mobile versions of YouTube videos does the trick. Videos embedded in web pages such as the one you're reading right now show up in the Android browser, and when you click on the video it opens in the Droid's YouTube player (similar to the iPhone's handling of Flash video). The dedicated YouTube application is standard on all Android phones and offers standard (meh) and high quality (very good) playback options. We had no trouble streaming YouTube video at the high quality setting over Verizon's EVDO Rev. A network with half signal strength (-101 db).

Speaking of signal strength, like many Moto phones, the Droid has excellent reception. Our office is in a Verizon black hole and most phones barely hold onto a bar of 1x and EV. The Droid never dropped EV, always had good data throughput and 1x stayed steady at about 50 to 60% signal strength. If you're in a marginal coverage area, this is the smartphone to get.

Call quality, even with a good signal was OK but not great. Callers said our voice sounded nasal but not underwater. On our end calls were loud and clear but sounded mechanical and digitized. We wouldn't call it bad, just artificial sounding. The speakerphone is uncannily loud. Unless you're at Yankee Stadium during the World Series just after Hideki Matsui hit a homer, you'll have no trouble hearing calls, music and video on this phone. The large speaker grille lives on the back, but we didn't have to turn the phone over to improve volume or quality. The Droid works with Google Voice, Google's calling service that works over data networks rather than Verizon's voice network. You must have a Google Voice account to use this feature, and the service is still running in invite-only mode.

Software and Android OS 2.0

The Droid is a full "with Google" phone which means it hasn't been heavily customized like the "powered by Android" HTC Hero and Moto Cliq. In theory this means the smartphone should be eligible for Google OS updates that are managed by Google and the carrier rather than requiring a customized new OS version created by the manufacturer (Motorola in the Droid's case). It also means vanilla Android, and that's not a bad thing given the operating system's freshness and pleasant UI, but we do long for a bit of that special sauce as with HTC's Sense UI. There's no MOTOBLUR here, and that's likely a good thing for the older and more business-oriented market the phone targets. That doesn't mean you can't social network your heart out. Facebook is pre-installed and in fact integrates with contacts beautifully without creating duplicates. It has a home screen widget so you can keep track of your friends. You can download Twitter clients with and without widgets and a variety of IM clients. Google's own Google Talk is the only pre-installed IM client.

Android OS 2.0 syncs with MS Exchange as well as Google. There's support for syncing to other sources, for example Facebook. MS Exchange syncs calendar and contacts and picks up Exchange email. Android 2.0 still has that strange separation between Gmail and other email; there's a Gmail icon and an Email icon. Likewise SMS/MMS Messaging lives in the Messaging application. If you sync your MS Exchange calendar, that data goes into a separate Corporate Calendar application. HTC's integration on the Hero is tighter and they added syncing over the cable to Outlook in Windows in their customized Android build-- sorry Droid, you're second best.

Media syncing is still nonexistent. Want music or video? Load them onto a microSD card yourself-- there's no mollycoddling iTunes treatment here. The Droid has a decent music player that supports MP3 and non-DRM iTunes AAC format tunes. The Gallery handles video playback with limited format support: basically MPEG4 encoded in H.264 format. Fortunately that's a popular format and the same commonly used to rip content for the iPod and iPhone. Again, thanks to that Cortex A8 CPU, the Droid handled video playback from the microSD card very well. We tested it with a 720 x 360 pixel video encoded at 1,050 kbps and it played perfectly. That's better than the HTC Hero and MyTouch 3G, both of which use and old and dreary 528MHz Qualcomm CPU.

As a business phone, the Droid does a decent job thanks to MS Exchange support but it falls behind Windows Mobile since it lacks an integrated Office suite that can edit and create MS Office documents. You can buy Documents To Go for Android for $15 via the Market if you need to edit and create MS Office documents. Quickoffice 2.0 is included and it can view MS Word, Excel and PDF documents (but not Office 2007 format files ending with .docx or .xlsx). it renders documents beautifully, including those saved as email attachments. PDF documents look great with full support for images. If you want to carry documents on a card for reference, you'll need to install a free file manager from the Market since Quickoffice doesn't have an icon and thus there's no way to access documents.

The Motorola Droid and the Motorola Cliq (T-Mobile) Android phones.

Camera and GPS

The Moto has a very good 5 megapixel autofocus camera with an LED flash. It takes sharp shots, particularly in well lit settings since the flash is overwhelming in dim settings. The camera UI is intuitive and fresh: there's a slider to switch between photo and video mode and a grab handle (a common Android convention) to pull out the drawer of settings. Images and video are saved to the microSD card and there are a wide variety of exposure, effect and quality settings. Our only complaint: autofocus is a tad sluggish.

Video recording is the star and the Droid can record 720 x 480 pixel video at 25fps (there's a lower quality MMS setting too). Video quality very good as long as the lighting is adequate. Dark settings equal blocky video but well lit scenes are natural.

Rare for a Verizon phone, there's no VZ Navigator; in fact the only pre-installed solution is free! Google Maps 2.0 beta is on board and it adds turn-by-turn spoken directions. Google Maps on Android has always been one of the best mapping and POI solutions on the mobile platform, but it lacked spoken directions and for that you had to use a paid service like VZ Navigator or Telenav. Since this is beta, we expect improvements over time, but as per usual with Google, it's a great start. The guidance voice is a speech synthesized female who sounds robotic (somehow appropriate) but intelligible. Though Google's splash screen warns you the service is in beta and it might tell you to turn left into a creek or hop on a ferry, we found its directions logical and sane (and the same as what VZ Navigator would offer). It handled re-routing well but suffered a mini-meltdown when we chose the back entrance to a big box store (the kind that's so big it has entrances on 3 streets). Google Maps wanted us to circle around an adjacent block to get to the front entrance even though it knew we were on a street that formed the perimeter of the store and that we could have simply turned right to enter the parking lot or taken a right turn 100 feet down to reach the main entrance. Bad robot.

Battery

The Droid ships with a 1400 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's user replaceable. For a very large screen EVDO phone with a fast CPU, the Droid had very good battery life, easily lasting a day of moderate to heavy use. In addition to Google cloud services sync we had it check other email accounts at a 15 minute interval during business hours, took a 5 mile trip with the GPS, watched several YouTube videos, surfed the web for an hour total, talked on the phone for 30 minutes total and played music for an hour.

Conclusion

It's hard not to like Moto's new robot. The Droid is a smashing smartphone that gives Verizon's lineup a serious lift. The hardware's look might be polarizing-- folks seem to either love it or hate it, but it's got a clean, modern and slim design. It's well made with one of the nicer slider mechanisms on a phone and that huge display makes you feel like you've got a mini computer disguised as a phone. Reception is excellent and data speeds and web page load times are likewise tops. Android could use some help in the friendly multimedia department with desktop media syncing and more supported video playback formats, but with a little effort the Droid is a very good music player and portable video player (drag them to a card yourself and convert videos to MPEG4 H.264 format first). Unless you have serious business needs that require BlackBerry push email or strong MS Exchange and Office support, the Droid is a top pick among Verizon's smartphones.

Websites: www.verizonwireless.com, www.motorola.com

Price: $199 after rebates with a 2 year contract. $559 with no contract.

Specs:

Display: 3.7" capacitive 16 million color touch screen. Resolution: 480 x 854, supports both portrait and landscape mode, has accelerometer, haptic feedback and a proximity sensor.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1400 mA. Claimed talk time: 6.4 hours.

Performance: 600MHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU (TI OMAP 3430). 256 megs RAM, 512 megs flash ROM with 250 megs available as internal storage.

Size: 4.56 x 2.36 x 0.54 inches. Weight: 5.96 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital with EV-DO Rev. A for fast data with fallback to 1xRTT.

Camera: 5 megapixel with autofocus lens and dual LED flash. Shoots video with audio up to 720 x 480 pixels at 24 fps in .3GP format (MMS size video option also available). Max photo resolution: 2592 x 1936 pixels. Has 4x digital zoom.

GPS: Built in aGPS that works with Google Maps.

Audio: Built in stereo speakers, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR supporting headset, handsfree and A2DP stereo. Tethering not yet supported.

Software: Android OS 2.0 (Eclair). Google apps: Gmail, Google Maps, Google Voice Search, Webkit-based web browser, YouTube player and voice dialing. Verizon applications: Visual Voicemail.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, 16 gig card included.

I love it! I don't get to say that very often, but the Sprint version of the HTC Hero really stands out as one of the best smartphones of 2009 and so it's won our Editor's Choice award. Google's Android itself is very compelling and both HTC and Sprint's customizations send it over the top. Thanks to the Hero, HTC Touch Pro2, BlackBerry Tour and Palm Pre, Sprint has the best smartphone lineup on the market among US carriers so far this fall. The HTC Hero features a 3.2" capacitive multi-touch display, Android OS 1.5 (Cupcake) with HTC Sense software, a 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3.5mm stereo headset jack and a microSD card slot (2 gig card included). It has EVDO Rev. A (Sprint's version of 3.5G) for fast data, a GPS with Sprint Navigation and Google Maps as well as Sprint TV.

The HTC Hero was first released in Europe in a more angular form reminiscent of the Windows Mobile HTC Touch Diamond2. Sprint's version takes its design cues from the T-Mobile myTouch 3G (also running Android and also made by HTC). It's curvy and relatively small, but it loses HTC's signature Android "chin". We like the brushed metal front face that gives it a classier look than the plasticky HTC Magic (that's the code name for the myTouch 3G and the marketing name for that phone overseas). Front buttons are the same as the Magic, but they're in different locations. These are the home button, menu button, back, search, call send and call end/power button. There's also a very useable trackball in the center of the button cluster. The volume controls are on the left side, the mini-USB port is on the bottom and the 3.5mm stereo jack is up top. The microSD card slot is under the back cover but you need not remove the battery to access it. The phone's curves and non-slippery back make it feel good in hand and the size is manageable-- it's much smaller than the HTC Touch Pro2 and smaller and lighter than the iPhone 3GS.

This is the first Android phone to ship with multi-touch enabled, and needless to say we love pinch zooming web pages, just like the iPhone. And the Android web browser is as lovely as ever and we'd put it on even footing with Apple's Safari on the iPhone.

What makes the Hero stand out are HTC's software customizations that don't merely dress up Android but add useful functionality such as the 7 page vs. 3 page home screen, HTC's own widgets for the desktop, a launcher bar, weather, stock reports and more. Even better, HTC has answered our prayers with expanded syncing: now you can sync to all Google cloud services (standard on Android) and MS Exchange and Outlook on the desktop via cable. That gives the Hero a much wider audience. The only drawback is that firmware and OS updates must come from HTC rather than being a part of Google's OS update cycle (so far, HTC has already released one firmware upgrade for the overseas Hero, so that may not be an issue).

The HTC Touch Pro2 for Sprint, HTC Hero and T-Mobile myTouch 3G.

Sync City

Standard Android phones sync only with their maker. That means all things Google: Google contacts, Google calendar and Gmail. In fact when you turn on an Android phone for the first time you must log into your Gmail account or create one before you can use all the of the phone's features. The iPhone does something similar, but there you must create or enter an existing iTunes account. While we love Android's cloud syncing, it's just not nice to have to create or enter account information if you want to do anything more than call 911. HTC's customizations in HTC Sense take care of this pet peeve: you turn on the phone, you use the phone-- all apps work except the Android Market and Gmail, and you can call anyone, not just the folks at the 911 call center. That does mean that you won't have any PIM data or email on the phone until you select your sync source(s) and initiate a sync. Under settings you can select sync sources and these are Google (Google's Gmail, contacts and calendar), MS Exchange using Exchange ActiveSync (email, contacts and calendar) and USB cable sync to Windows (contacts and calendar). Sorry Microsoft Outlook and Exchange users, there's no tasks and notes sync and no email sync with the desktop.

Exchange ActiveSync works much the same as it does with the many other phones and smartphones that support this feature. HTC's cable sync requires PC installation and a few steps. Here's how that works...

HTC Sync handles syncing via USB with Outlook in Windows. If you connect the phone using the included cable it should show up as a mass storage device and the included 2 gig microSD card has the HTC Sync installer. That said, our Hero's drivers loaded and Windows Vista thought the microSD card mounted as a volume but we couldn't access it. So we used a card reader to do the job instead. Once we did install the software, Windows loaded new drivers, but still the Hero didn't mount correctly. The installer warns you to disable your anti-virus software before running the installer (not always the easiest thing to do since many anti-virus programs do their best to avoid being turned off), but we had no problems installing when we left AVG running. Once we got HTC Sync installed and running (plug in the phone and then use the taskbar sync notification on your Hero to get things started rather than the sync section under settings) it worked fine. Note that HTC Sync supports Outlook versions 2000 through 2007 along with Windows Calendar and Windows Contacts, and it syncs only contacts and calendar items. The desktop sync application has options to repair synchronized data and it has an application installer-- an unexpected feature since apps are usually gotten from the Android Market application on the phone itself.

Sense UI

Sense UI has quite a few features, chief among them the 7 page home screen (swipe sideways to move back and forth between them), HTC Scenes, which are 5 different home screen layouts each with different widgets and HTC's Social Networking (integration with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr and HTC Footprints for keeping a log of favorite places you've visited using geo-location and the camera), A video tells a thousand words, so here's our video review of the HTC Hero for Sprint, with a focus on Sense UI and Sprint's TV and Navigation services. You'll also get a walk around the phone and see how responsive the phone is. If you're completely new to Android and don't know what the standard Android user interface looks like, check out our review of the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and its video review.

Sure it does a lot, but does it work as a phone?

There are lots of smartphones on the market, and not all excel at voice service and voice quality. It seems that we sometimes forget that the phone is still a phone. Happily, the Hero has excellent voice quality, good volume and strong reception on Sprint's voice and 3G EVDO Rev. A network. While it's not horribly difficult to make a call on an Android phone, the feature doesn't exactly jump out at you (the same can be said of the iPhone which beckons with everything except dialing). Instead of pressing the call send button and then switching to the dialer tab or hunting for the Dialer icon on the home screen, just tap the big "Phone" in the center of the launcher bar at the bottom of the screen. You'll be greeted with a large on-screen dial pad that has a list of the 3 most recent calls above and shortcuts to call history and favorites below. This is a smartphone even my mother could use for calls. The phone works well with Bluetooth headsets, has voice command and dialing (reasonably accurate) and Visual Voicemail.

The HTC Hero for Sprint is a dual band digital CDMA phone that's locked to Sprint. It has EV-DO Rev. A for data with fallback to 1xRTT. Data transfer speeds and web page download times were excellent. Likewise applications downloaded quickly over Sprint 3G via the Android Market.

The myTouch 3G and the HTC Hero.

Performance

Like most Windows Mobile and Android smartphones, the HTC Hero runs on a 528MHz Qualcomm CPU. It has 288 megs of RAM and 512 megs of flash memory with approximately 125 megs free for your use. That internal storage is important since Android currently only supports installing applications to internal storage (you can put photos, documents and everything else on a microSD card). When the Hero first came out in Europe several months ago, everyone loved HTC's enhancements but they did slow down the phone. HTC recently released a firmware update for the overseas versions and that fixed speed issues. Good things come to those who wait, and the Sprint version has those fixes in place, so the Sprint Hero is a peppy phone. The touch screen is responsive with no lag when scrolling or dragging, applications open quickly and widgets update fine. Our only complaint is that after 3 days of use the Hero does slow down, and a reboot fixes that. The demands of Sense UI and Android's memory management (or seeming lack of it at times) are likely to blame. Android doesn't exit applications by default; it just puts them in the background. That means they'll open very quickly the next time you need them but it also means memory can get full.

Sprint TV, GPS Navigation and Android Market Apps

Sprint TV plays like a dream on the HTC Hero, using the full screen and showing less digital breakup and sync loss than we've seen on many other Sprint phones. The UI has been customized to work easily with the touch screen and we found ourselves spending way too much time enjoying this feature. It's interesting to see video playback beyond YouTube on an Android phone, since Android itself lacks a video player (there is a free basic one available for download on the Market). Now that we've seen Sprint TV, clearly the platform is capable of some good multimedia fun. The Hero has a custom HTC music player that has album art, playlists and all the usual sorts (artist, song title, genre, album). The phone is compatible with cards up to 32 gigs so you can carry a very large library of tunes.

Sprint Navigation works well on the Hero and it got a fix indoors near a window and outdoors in our suburban location. This TeleNav-based service provides spoken turn-by-turn directions, on-screen directions, maps and POIs. Since this is a Google OS, Google Maps is on board with driving and walking directions, maps in standard view, satellite view and traffic view and support for their Latitude service. We downloaded Google's free Google Sky Map which makes use of the Hero's digital compass, GPS and tower triangulation to show you the night sky on screen complete with constellations and stars mapped out. Point the phone at Ursa Major or the Big Dipper and it will show you those constellations on-screen along with a view of the surrounding night sky and it's stars. Very cool!

There are currently over 8,000 applications in the Market and many of them are free. Though that number pales compared to the iPhone ecosystem, there are plenty of useful applications and some decent games, though nothing that competes with the advanced 3G games for the iPhone. HTC includes one of the 2 major Office suites for Android: QuickOffice (Documents To Go is the other). QuickOffice displays MS Office files up to Office 2007 but it can't edit them.

Battery Life

The HTC Hero for Sprint ships with a 1500 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's swappable. For a very full-featured smartphone with 4 wireless radios and push email, the Hero did surprisingly well, lasting us about 2 days with moderate use, just over a day with very heavy use and 3 to 4 days with light use. Sprint claims 4 hours of talk time which was on target in our tests. The GPS and Sprint TV will drain the battery more quickly, so expect shorter runtimes if you use those services heavily.

Conclusion

It's hard not to love a Hero, the HTC Hero on Sprint in this case. It's replete with features and those features work well. HTC's customized Android is a joy to use: it's fun, efficient, full-featured and highly customizable. The phone is responsive (though it needs a reboot every 3 days or so to keep things moving quickly) and it has one of the best web browsers on a smartphone. The capacitive 3.2" display is sharp and we love the multi-touch feature when zooming in on web pages. Though it lacks the serious business clout of the HTC Touch Pro2 with its full MS Exchange support, very complete Outlook syncing and an Office suite that both reads and writes MS Office files, the Hero should do for those who don't need Windows in their pocket. Well done, Google, HTC and Sprint.

Web sites: www.sprint.com, www.htc.com/us

Price: $179 with 2 year contract

Available: October 11, 2009

Specs:

Display: Capacitive multi-touch color LCD. Screen size diagonally: 3.2". Resolution: HVGA 480x 320, supports both portrait and landscape modes. Has accelerometer, light sensor for auto-brightness (can also use manual brightness) and a digital compass.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh. Claimed talk time: up to 4 hours.

Performance: Qualcomm 528MHz CPU, 288 megs RAM, 512 megs flash ROM with ~ 125 megs free.

Size: 4.46 x 2.22 x 0.54 inches. Weight: 4.5 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital with EVDO Rev. A for fast data.

Camera: 5 megapixel camera with autofocus lens, no flash. Can shoot video.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder included.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR.

Software: Android OS 1.5 with HTC Sense UI and HTC Footprints. Standard Google Android apps including email, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, calendar, contacts, web browser, camera, clock, Market, Amazon MP3 store and YouTube player. HTC's Sense adds user interface customizations and multiple email/PIM sync sources, HTC Weather, HTC Stocks, music player and QuickOffice (MS Office file viewer). Sprint software: Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, Visual Voicemail, NASCAR and NFL Mobile Live.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot, compatible with cards up to 32 gigs. 2 gig card included.

Though the HTC Eris might not conjure up the visceral envy that the Greek goddess Eris was known for, it is a more than worthy partner for the Motorola Droid on Verizon. The Eris, or Droid Eris by HTC as Verizon calls it, offers better portability and more phone-like ergonomics than the pocket computer Moto Droid. If you crossed the HTC Touch with the HTC Hero, you'd have the Eris whose black soft touch finish and curved lines matches the Touch while the software (Android with HTC Sense UI) match the Hero. Not a bad match at that: the Eris has all the great usability and syncing features of the Hero with a more attractive and grippable casing.

At launch, the $99 Eris costs half what the Moto Droid does with a 2 year contract, making it appealing if you want to get into the Android smartphone experience but don't want to shell out the big bucks. If you buy it retail with no contract the prices are closer. If form factor and looks are your main concern, the Eris is smaller, arguably more attractive (looks are subjective) and lighter. You do forego the Droid's hardware keyboard but the Eris' on-screen keyboard and capacitive display with haptic feedback are a passable stand-in. That said, email addicts will likely be better served by a hardware keyboard or the iPhone's impossibly good on-screen keyboard. But the keyboard is more than adequate for entering URLs, composing text messages and the like.

Phone and Data

It's hard to fault Verizon's excellent 3G network and the Eris downloads applications, web pages and email quickly over EV-DO Rev. A. It doesn't render web pages as quickly as the Droid since its CPU isn't as fast, but it's certainly on par with the Hero on Sprint (also EV-DO Rev. A and a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM CPU). YouTube standard quality streams well and HQ video plays decently with occasional loss of audio sync. We could see a difference in video quality when using a WiFi connection instead: HQ video was absolutely crisp and clear with no blockiness or loss of sync. Android's Webkit based web browser is excellent and comparable to the iPhone's-- thanks to HTC's customization that adds pinch to zoom (only the Hero and Eris currently offer this feature).

Voice calls sound natural and full and the volume is good, but I could hear my own voice coming back at me through the earpiece. Since there was no delay it wasn't the usual echo experience and thus is less annoying. Reception is middle of the road: it's not a reception demon like the Droid and BlackBerry Storm2, but it's not among the worst Verizon phones. If you frequent areas with modest to poor coverage, you'll feel it with the Eris.

The Eris works with mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets and it has a 3.5mm stereo jack (no wired headset included-- Hades will freeze over before AT&T and Verizon include one in the box). Android comes with a Voice Dialer that does a good job-- just remember to say your contact's name as entered in the address book (if the sort is last name, first name you'll have to say it that way).

Multimedia and GPS

Here we go again. Since we've reviewed a slew of Android phones in the past few months, we're getting tired of telling you that it's plain old lacking in the multimedia department. The music player isn't bad and does support album art and playlists along with MP3 and AAC (plus AAC variants) formats, but there's no syncing. Get out that USB cable or card reader and drag non-copy protected songs to the card yourself. There's no V Cast Music but there is the usual Android Amazon MP3 store.

Video applications are still oddly lacking on Android, but there's built-in support for MPEG4 encoded in H.264. You can play videos from the microSD card. Verizon kindly includes an 8 gig card that's pre-installed in the phone (remove the back cover to access it). So you can carry a decent library with you-- just stick with MPEG4 and VGA resolution or lower for best results. The phone doesn't have V Cast video support: Sprint's Hero wins on that point since it comes with all the Sprint services from music to video to NFL Mobile.

The 3.5mm stereo jack is up top.

The smartphone has a GPS that works with Google Maps (all Android phones come with Google Maps). We were surprised that Verizon's VZ Navigator wasn't included-- it's rare to see a Verizon phone without it. That means no turn by turn spoken directions until Google adds it (there's a beta version of Google Maps with spoken directions on the Droid). HTC's Footprints is on board for a camera plus GPS combo that you can use to record where you've been, favorite places, restaurants and etc. with photo and location saved.

Speaking of the camera, it's not as good as the specs might lead you to believe. The Eris has a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that can take still photos and video up to a lackluster QVGA resolution at 15fps. Since there's no flash, dim indoor shots yield noisy, overly warm photos. Outdoor shots have very nice color saturation (a pleasing over-saturation) and decent color accuracy. But even at the highest settings, there's obvious software interpolation making up the details-- not just in tree leaves (that kind of fine detail is often a little fudged) but cars, signs and buildings show a level of detail we'd expect from a very good 3 megapixel camera rather than 5. Outdoor images look much better when resized down: this improves the apparent sharpness and the colors look great.

There's no dedicated camera button (boo!) so you'll have to resort to the desktop camera shortcut to launch the application and press the trackball (who thought pressing a rolling part was a good idea, HTC?) to snap the shot. Though a help bubble pops up telling you to press the trackball to take a photo, you can thankfully press and hold the screen to take a shot (though this is slower). When using the trackball to take a shot, the Eris' camera is faster to focus and capture than the Moto Droid. The trackball also functions as the digital zoom control. There are plenty of camera settings to fiddle with and images are saved directly to the card.

The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, HTC Eris, Moto Droid and HTC Imagio.

Conclusion

The Droid revolution has come to Verizon, starting with the Moto Droid and the HTC Eris. While the Moto Droid captivates us with its seductive display, strangely modern industrial design (where ugly almost merges with sleek) and very fast CPU; the Eris says "I'm a phone and I'm friendly to use and hold". HTC's industrial design has been spot-on lately and the Eris is attractive and ergonomic. And HTC's Sense UI polishes Android's rough edges with user-friendly software customizations, useful widgets, apps for popular things like weather, twitter and stocks and it greatly expands Android's syncing capabilities. This is a smartphone that can almost hold its own against HTC's Imagio-- we say almost because Windows Mobile, despite its slow march forward, is more polished in terms of software features (Android is still a very young platform and it shows) like multimedia playback and syncing. And the Imagio has VZ Navigator while shockingly, the Eris lacks it. In fact, Sprint's HTC Hero is stronger on the multimedia front since it crams in Sprint TV, Sprint Music and every other Sprint service currently available on their phones. But the Eris is a fun phone with a spanking new UI that's fresh and fun. It works well as a phone and clearly is tops for working with Google's myriad services like search, Maps and Google Talk.

Pro: Looks great and feels great in the hand. Fairly easy one-handed operation. Display is quite bright and sharp. Capacitive display is responsive and HTC has added pinch zoom in the web browser. Great web browsing, excellent support for Google services, can sync to MS Exchange and Outlook on the desktop. Very customizable. We still love Android's elegant and unobtrusive notification system.

Con: Media players lacking and there's no media syncing (you'll have to drag files to the microSD card yourself). No corporate grade security features like remote wipe. Android Market is weak in the games department. No VZ Navigator or V Cast services.

Websites: www.verizonwireless.com, www.htc.com/us/

Price: $99 with a 2 year contract, $469 with no contract.

Specs:

Display: 262K color capacitive touch screen. Screen size diagonally: 3.2". Resolution: 320 x 480 pixels. Supports both portrait and landscape modes via accelerometer. Has haptic feedback for touch sensitive buttons on bezel and for on-screen keyboard. Has proximity sensor.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1300 mAh. Claimed talk time: up to 300 minutes. Claimed standby: up to 373 hours.

Performance: Qualcomm MSM7600 528MHz processor. 288 MB built-in RAM. 512 MB Flash ROM with 145 megs available for storage.

Size: 4.45 x 2.19 x 0.51 inches. Weight: 4.23 ounces.

Phone: CDMA dual band digital 800/1900MHz with EV-DO Rev. A and fallback to 1xRTT. Has speakerphone and vibrate mode.

Camera: 5.0 MP camera with autofocus lens. No flash. Can shoot video with audio up to QVGA resolution at 15fps.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC and WMA. Has mono speakerphone and vibrate mode.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR with headset, handsfree, A2DP stereo and phonebook profiles. Tethering not yet supported.

Software: Google Android OS 1.5 (Cupcake) with HTC Sense. Google Webkit based browser with support for Flash Lite, Gmail, email, MS Exchange email, YouTube, Google Maps, PIM applications (contacts and calendar), Peep Twitter client, Facebook client, music player, Amazon MP3 Store, HTC Footprints, Google Talk, PDF viewer, Quickoffice MS Office document viewer, HTC weather and stocks, calculator, photo album, camera application, clock and SMS/MMS messaging application.

Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot (under back cover), 8 gig card included.

In the Box: Phone, battery, USB cable, charger and quick start guide.

Another year, another iPhone launch from Apple. The 3rd generation iPhone is still exclusive to AT&T in the US and it's still the hottest phone on the planet in terms of user interest (err, obsession?) and hype. Even the recently released Palm Pre (an excellent touch screen smartphone) can't seem to keep up with Apple's latest hotness. The iPhone 3GS looks and feels like the iPhone 3G, which Apple and AT&T are still selling but at a lower price. Like the 3G iPhone, it's available in black and white and in two storage capacities, upgraded from the 3G to 16 and 32 gigs. The white is available in both sizes this time around. The iPhone 3GS 16 gig sells for $199 and the 32 gig is $299 with a 2 year contract. AT&T charges $200 if your contract isn't yet up for renewal, and you can buy it at retail price ($599 and $699) if you don't want to extend your contract. The outgoing iPhone 3G 8 gig isn't going out just yet: AT&T and Apple are selling it for an incredibly cheap $99 with contract.

Everything that was in the old iPhone 3G is in the iPhone 3GS: accelerometer, 480 x 320 pixel capacitive touch screen, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor (turns off the display when the phone is against your face), a non-user replaceable battery (still have to send it back to Apple if you need a new battery), WiFi, Bluetooth and iTunes music and video players. Since the 3GS shares the same ports and dimensions, your iPhone 3G accessories will work: cases, chargers and more.

Video camera built-in

So what's new? The iPhone 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and it can (finally!) shoot video. And not little crappy MMS style video; it can shoot VGA video at 30fps. There are still no software settings or controls for the camera, just point and shoot with the added focus feature: tap the viewfinder where you want the camera to focus and then hit the virtual shutter button. Still photo quality is markedly better than the iPhone 3G's with more detail and sharpness, though colors are a little over-saturated (some folks will like this) and brightly lit outdoor shots can blow out. Want to take club photos? Sorry, there's still no flash, so darkly lit scenes look dark and noisy.

Video on the other hand is remarkably good, nearly rivaling the standard bearer Nokia N95 and the new Nokia N97. Colors are accurate, exposure is good and video is smooth with plenty of detail. Nice. And the iPhone 3GS has basic video editing features and you can upload video directly to YouTube.

S stands for speed

Honestly, the iPhone 3G didn't strike us as slow. Granted the keyboard would lag once in a while and 1,000 contacts could add a second or two to opening the contacts app, but the iPhone 3GS is noticeably faster. Faster at loading a large contacts database, faster at loading an email inbox with 100 messages, faster at loading heavy HTML web pages and much faster at loading resource intensive games. Here are the results of our speed tests:

Load New York Times homepage (desktop version of their site) over 3G HSDPA:
iPhone 3G: 28 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 15 seconds

Launch Billy Frontier:
iPhone 3G: 28 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 15 seconds

Launch Zen Pinball:
iPhone 3G: 29 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 7 seconds

Launch Assassin's Creed (to cut scene):
iPhone 3G: 15.4 seconds
iPhone 3GS: 10 seconds

The iPhone 3GS has a Samsung S5PC100 600MHz ARM processor (Cortex A8 platform-- cutting edge and fast) and 256 megs of RAM, while the iPhone and iPhone 3G had a 412MHz processor and 128 megs of RAM. There's also a new graphics chip in the S model-- no wonder this thing is faster. Yet battery life is supposed to be better with the faster phone-- impressive since CPU speed and battery life are usually inversely proportional. While the iPhone 3G struggled to make it through a day with heavy use, the iPhone 3GS succeeds.

There's another element to speed and that's network speed. The iPhone 3G supported HSDPA 3.6Mbps while the iPhone 3GS supports 7.2Mbps. AT&T is in the process of rolling out that faster 3G standard and it will take them about 1.5 years to complete, but we'd hope to see it rolled out in some of the larger metro areas later this year. That means even faster web page and email downloads. But in our area (Dallas), download speeds are no better than the iPhone 3G running the new 3.0 OS. That OS sped up download times considerably: DSL Reports mobile speed test reported 360k on the iPhone 3G with the 2.0 OS and 1064k on the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS running OS 3.0.

Reception and Call quality

Sorry, there are no great improvements here. The iPhone 3GS gets average reception and measures the exact same as the iPhone 3G using Apple's built-in field test that measures signal in decibels (smaller numbers are better, use the keypad to enter *3001#12345#* to get a reading on your own iPhone). Call volume and quality are the same with the exception of Bluetooth headsets: range is improved as is voice quality.

Not there quite yet

New for OS 3.0 which is pre-installed on the iPhone 3GS and is available as a free upgrade via iTunes download for the older iPhones, is MMS (picture and video messaging) and tethering (using the iPhone as a high speed wireless modem for a notebook). Unfortunately, AT&T isn't ready to support these new features out of the gate but they should be available later in 2009.

Drive safely: voice dialing

The iPhone wasn't the safest driving companion: no speed dial and no voice dialing -- oh my. New for the iPhone 3GS (and not available as part of the OS 3.0 upgrade for older iPhone models) is voice dialing. Press and hold the iPhone's center button (that's the only button on the phone other than the power button) to launch voice dialing and voice command. Yes, you can say "call Juan Doe mobile", and in fact you better say that because the iPhone won't match partial names and if you've got more than one number for a contact it will prompt you on screen as to which number to call (you must look at the screen to notice this, but you can say "home", "mobile" or "work" without touching the screen). To call folks start the command with "call". To digit dial a number, start your command with "dial". To find out what song is playing, say "what song is playing". Of course if you're going to press and hold the center button, you could just as well look at the screen and see what song is playing. But if iTunes is playing the song in the background (yes it can do that and the iPhone can indeed multitask when Apple wants it to) this feature is more useful.

The good news: it's very accurate, though some Chinese names threw it for a loop. The bad news? There's no voice dialing over Bluetooth-- doh!

Other new goodies

Also new for OS 3.0 (not just the iPhone 3GS) is Bluetooth A2DP stereo. Finally, the world's foremost music phone with all its iPod goodness, can play music through Bluetooth stereo headphones and headsets. And boy is it loud. . . and it sounds good too; better than average for a music phone. New for the iPhone 3GS is Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with multi-point technology, which means it can pair with multiple headsets. It played well with a variety of current Bluetooth headsets and supported most call features except voice dialing.

The new OS adds (don't fall down now) copy and paste. It only took 2 years and three OS revisions to get this basic feature, but now that it's here, we must admit it's the best implementation we've ever seen on a mobile device. It's very easy to control and works like a charm. It copies more than just text too: you can highlight a section of a web page with text, graphics and hyperlinks and paste it into an email message and it's all transferred intact and pretty.

Apple has added iPhone-wide search. Swipe your application screens to the position that would be before the first screen of icons and you'll see a search screen (see below). It searches email (headers only), contacts, calendar and more.

There's a compass (magnetometer) that looks just like your Boy or Girl Scout tool of old. For hikers, map geeks and the like it's a nifty feature but the rest of the world will have to wait until applications like navigation programs put this to general purpose good use.

iPhone 3GS vs. Palm Pre

The Palm Pre is the new kid on the block and he's off to a very promising start. Running Palm's new Linux-based webOS, the Pre, like the iPhone, is very easy to use and full of eye candy. In fact, the Pre has even more special effects and animations in the OS, and while those do nothing to improve functionality, they are fun and attractive. Here are some comparison points:

• Both have capacitive multi-touch displays that are wonderfully easy to use (the Pre's is more colorful). The iPhone has a larger display and that makes a difference when viewing web pages, movies and photos.
• But that smaller screen means Pre is smaller and a little easier to fit in your pocket.
• The Pre has a hardware QWERTY keyboard. . . but it's pretty bad and isn't a real improvement over the iPhone's on-screen keyboard unless you're really allergic to touch screen typing.
• The iPhone can take advantage of the iTunes app store's obscenely large number of programs-- most of them very inexpensive or free while Palm's developer SDK won't be ready until September 2009, so we won't be seeing lots of apps for some time. Those 3rd party Pre apps will be written in HTML (the same code that's used to make web pages) and that means there's less potential for powerful applications (true .exe's in Windows-speak).
• The Pre can sync to multiple PIM data sources-- that means you can sync you calendar and contacts to more than one Exchange server, Google's calendar and more (mostly without dupes), which is a unique feature.
• The iPhone can sync directly to a desktop/notebook computer for PIM (contacts, calendar, tasks and notes) using Outlook or the Mac OS X address book and calendar. The Pre syncs only to the cloud (online services like Exchange and Google).
• Both can sync to iTunes, but if Apple makes changes to iTunes, Pre syncing could break until Palm updates their syncing software on the Pre.
• The iPhone is currently exclusive to AT&T while the Pre is exclusive to Sprint. Sprint's exclusivity will likely run to the end of 2009, while AT&T has had the iPhone exclusive for 2 years and will for at least another year. Only you can decide which carrier works best in your area and meets your budget requirements. Both charge $70 as a starting point, but at the moment, Sprint throws in unlimited text/MMS.
• The iPhone 3GS doesn't have stellar battery life, but the Pre is even worse.
• The Palm Pre multitasks while the iPhone doesn't allow 3rd party apps (generally) to run in the background. On the iPhone you can play music in the background, put a call into the background so you can take down notes or view maps in Google.
• The Pre currently does not ship with voice dialing while the iPhone 3GS has voice dialing.

To buy or not to buy?

If you own an iPhone 3G and aren't eligible for the fully subsidized upgrade prices, then the iPhone 3GS may not be worth the $400 and higher cost of entry. But if you have an iPhone 2G (the first model) run, don't walk to get this. This is a darned fast computer for your pocket that's also the easiest to use and the camera is a big step up. If you like new toys and want to upgrade your 3G there are enough excuses to do so: faster performance (especially in demanding games and big web page download times), VGA video recording with YouTube uploads, faster graphics CPU (some detailed 3D games in the future may only be compatible with the 3GS). Voice dialing is also invaluable for those who make calls on the go (stop looking at your iPhone and drive!). And HSDPA 7.2Mbps doesn't mean much today but you'll notice the improvement when it comes to your area.

Prices:
16 gig: $199 with 2 year contract ($399 if you haven't reached upgrade time yet on your existing iPhone plan and $599 retail with no contract extension)
32 gig: $299 with 2 year contract ($499 if you haven't reached upgrade time yet on your existing iPhone plan and $699 retail with no contract extension)

Websites: www.apple.com, wireless.att.com

Specs:

Display: 3.5" color display, 480 x 320 pixels, 163 ppi. Touch screen, gesture-aware and multi-touch aware. Your finger's flesh must contact the glass, a stylus, gloved finger or fingernail won't work.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is NOT user replaceable. It must be sent to Apple for replacement or taken to an Apple store. Estimated battery life according to Apple: 300 to 400 full charge cycles. Claimed talk time: up to 5 hours in 3G mode, 12 hours in GSM mode. Claimed standby: up to 300 hours. Claimed Internet use time on 3G is 5 hours (9 hours on WiFi), claimed video playback is up to 10 hours and claimed music playback is 30 hours. Supports USB charging.

Performance: 600MHz ARM CPU (Samsung S5PC100, Cortex A8 platform), 256 megs RAM. 16 and 32 gig capacities available. Has flash memory, not a hard disk.

Size: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.48 inches. Weight: 4.8 ounces.

Phone: GSM quad band 850/900/1800/1900MHz world phone with EDGE for data. Triband 3G HSDPA 850/1900/2100MHz. Locked to AT&T, you can't use other carriers SIM cards with the iPhone unless someone finds a way to unlock it.

GPS: Yes, integrated GPS with a customized version of Google Maps.

Camera: 3 megapixel camera with autofocus lens. Shoots photos at 1536 x 2048 resolution and video with audio at VGA 640 x 480 resolution at 30fps. Supports geotagging (GPS location is embedded in photo data).

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Stereo earbud headset with inline mic included (frequency response 20Hz-20KHz, 32 ohms impedance). Full iPod capabilities, including video playback. Audio specs for iPhone: frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz. Audio formats supported: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 1, 2, and 3), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV.

Video: Plays all iTunes videos (TV shows, movies and etc.). Video formats supported: Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR.

Software: iPhone OS 3.0 (customized version of Mac OS X operating system). Safari web browser, e-mail client (POP3, IMAP, MobileMe and Exchange), RSS reader, calendar, contacts, Google Maps, iPod music and video player, voice recorder, calculator, alarm clock, timer and more. Compatible with Mac OS X computers running 10.4.11 and later as well as Windows XP and Vista. Uses iTunes 8.2 or later to sync music, video and PIM information.

Memory Expansion Slot: None.

Connector: 30 pin iPod dock connector.

In the box: iPhone, USB cable, charger, stereo headset, documentation, cleaning cloth, SIM eject tool.

Sony Ericsson P800 Symbian OS GSM Smartphone.

The Sony Ericsson P800 has been one of the most anticipated smartphones released in the past year. Why? It has a relatively large display, runs Symbian OS 7, supports GPRS, has Bluetooth and a VGA camera. If that isn't enough for you, it's one of the few Symbian phones that runs UIQ and has a touch screen that allows you to use the stylus or your finger to navigate and enter data. It's a GSM network phone that suports GPRS for data, and you can get it from Sony Ericsson directly as well as other dealers. It should work with any provider's SIM card (our review unit ran on the AT&T Wireless network), and it's a world phone that works on 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz bands.

Size, Looks and Ergonomics

No doubt, this is an attractive phone. The metallic sky blue and silver finish is beautiful. These tones and the phone's sleek lines give it a tastefully modern and clean look. While the casing and flip are made of plastic, it doesn't look the least bit cheap and feels reasonably sturdy.

The phone was much smaller in person than I'd expected, fitting well in the range of larger candy bar phones. It's actually a bit shorter than the Nokia 3650, and a wee bit thinner than the otherwise smaller Kyocera 7135.

To use the P800 as a phone, you can simply dial using the flip cover in the closed position, as shown in the top left picture. If you prefer, you can use the on screen soft dialpad instead if the flip is open. You can even remove the flip if you prefer to have the large screen always available and set the phone to use the on screen dialer interface as its default.

The Memory Stick Duo expansion slot is on the right side of the phone, below a blue translucent plastic panel that pops out. This panel has a pen like tip at one end because it acts as the stylus! An ingenious design, though it doesn't make the best stylus being too light and flat. It does however stay securely in place, so you're not likely to need the included replacements. Also on the right side of the Sony Ericsson P800 you'll find a camera button which launches the camera app and acts as the shutter button.

The left side of the phone has a jog dial, headset jack, IR port and the power button. The back is where you'll find the VGA camera lens.

What's in the Box?

You get the phone, battery, a slim and well made sync cradle, a CD with PC Suite, another CD with multimedia apps and games for the P800, a 16 meg Memory Stick Duo card, extra stylii, wired headset, an excellent printed manual and a pouch style case. What is a Memory Stick Duo? It's yet another new memory expansion card format that looks like a regular Memory Stick but is only about 1/2 as long. The P800 can accept cards of up to 128 meg capacity.

Phone Functionality

The Sony Ericsson P800 has good reception and call clarity. It's not as good as the Nokia 3650 which has excellent RF reception and doesn't pull in as many bars of signal strength (we have both phones and both are on AT&T Wireless which offers the best GSM reception in our area). However, calls do sound good and I haven't dropped any calls or heard any mentionable digital distortion in lower signal areas.

To make a call you can use the flip or the virtual dialer display which looks indentical to the flip. Instead of send and end buttons, you'll use the OK button to send a new call, answer a call or end a call. The flip isn't backlit, but since it's made of translucent plastic, the light from the display shines though to illuminate the keys. You can also voice dial using the included headset or Sony Ericsson's Bluetooth headset, and initiate a call from the phone book by tapping on your contact's number.

PDA Functions

The P800 come with CIC Jot for handwriting recognition and this does a very good job of allowing you to enter data using natural print characters. There's also an on screen keyboard you can call up to enter data. Like any PDA, the P800 has all the standard PIM (personal information manager) applications: Contacts, Calendar, Tasks and a memo pad supporting ink notes. The Contacts app supports a good number of fields, including home, work and fax numbers, email address, web address, home address, work address, notes and an image for each contact. You can create categories for your contacts and assign specific ring tones to your contact. The calendar has day, week and month views, and indicates appointments in week and month view as a blue box. You can set all day appointments, repeat events and assign categories to calendar entries. The Tasks app allows you to assign priorities, due dates, alarms to your task and you can mark it completed. Jotter is the memo app and you can enter text via handwriting recognition or the on screen keyboard. You can also draw and write ink notes, and specify the color and thickness of your lines. You can send your Jotter notes via MMS, SMS, Bluetooth or IR. You also get a calculator and a messages app for viewing received MMS and SMS messages and sending/receiving email (POP3, SMTP and IMAP are supported).

Additional Applications

There's a file manager for working with files on internal memory and the Memory Stick, a video player, audio player, picture viewer (for looking at the JPEG photos you shoot with the built-in camera) and MS Word viewer application. The P800 has a voice recorder which records in pretty decent quality, and you can record over an hour on a 16 meg stick. Voice memos can be used as ring tones and sent as MMS messages— pretty cool! Opera is included for Internet browsing and it's quite capable, supporting SSL, JavaScript, CSS, cookies and frames. The P800 supports PersonalJava and J2ME for you gamers.

Syncing and Bluetooth

PC Suite, the standard desktop apps for Symbian smartphones, is included, as is a desktop USB sync cradle. You can sync, transfer files and backup the phone using PC Suite. If you don't wish to use the cradle, you can sync using IR and Bluetooth. It runs on Windows ME, 2000 and XP, and works with Outlook 98/2000/2002, Lotus Organizer 5 and 6 as well as Lotus Notes 4.6 and 5. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to sync and install files using Bluetooth, and I didn't go crazy setting it up. I used Anycom's new USB-220 USB adapter on Windows 2000 and was able to pair and sync right away. I just received Anycom's latest adapter and gave it a try with the P800 hoping for the best, and all went well.

To connect the P800 to another device such as a laptop or headset, you'll go into the control panel and select Bluetooth from the connections tab. You can make the phone discoverable and initiate pairing here, and specify whether the phone will ask permission before connecting to paired devices. The phone supports the relatively new hand's free profile and works well with Sony Ericsson's own HBH-60 Bluetooth headset.

Built-in VGA Camera

As if the P800 didn't do enough, it also has a built-in digicam capable of taking shots at VGA (640 x 480) resolution at your choice of three quality settings. It can also take shots at 324 x 240 and 160 x 120 resolution. You can tweak the brightness, contrast and lighting settings (Auto, Fixed, Indoor, Outdoor and Flourescent). How's the image quality? Pretty good for a VGA digicam. It compares favorably to accessory digicams for PDAs, and does a good job of setting proper exposure and color balance. It does display noticable artifacts on indoor shots that aren't very well lit. Below you'll find a few sample photos. The full size images have not been edited, while the smaller thumbnails displayed on this page have only been reduced in pixel dimensions.

Comparing the Sony Ericsson P800 to Other Smartphone Platforms

The Sony Ericsson is both a phone and a PDA. That said it's more in the phone camp than the PDA camp. Functions and ergonomics are phone centric, though it does offer full-featured PIM applications and some nice basic multimedia apps. When comparing the Symbian Series 60 Nokia 3650 to the P800, the P800 is certainly a more formidable PDA thanks to the strong application suite, larger screen and handwriting recognition. The 3650 just squeaks by as a smartphone, while the P800 definitely tackles basic PDA tasks. Plus, the P800 offers a touch screen and handwriting recognition while the 3650 and once very popular Nokia 9290 Communicator do not.

As you might expect, the Palm OS smartphones such as the Samsung I330 and Kyocera 7135 offer a much fuller PDA experience with greater expandability via accessories and the myriad commercial, shareware and freeware Palm OS apps available. The same can be said of recent Pocket PC Phone Edition models such as the T-Mobile and Samsung i700 models. Though you won't find as many software titles for Pocket PC OS as Palm, there are still several thousand applications to choose from.

Above, size comparison of the Nokia 3650, Kyocera 7135 and the Sony Ericsson P800.

Side view of the P800 with flip open. The Memory Stick Duo card goes in the side under the translucent blue cover which pops out to act as a stylus.

If you're a user who's looking for a convergence device that will allow you to carry one device instead of two, and you have basic PDA needs, then the P800 should do the job admirably. If you're a PDA power user, or are interested in exploring the rich world that PDAs offer, then the P800 may not be your device.

Battery Life and Display

The P800 comes with a user replaceable 1,000 mA Lithium Ion battery that was good for 2 days of average use, and a week or more of standby time.

The display is a front lit TFT LCD with a resolution of 208 x 320 pixels when the flip is open. While it's not breathtaking, it is an adequate color display that is visible in daylight.

Suggested list price $699

Pro: Attractive, and surprisingly light weight for a full-featured Symbian smartphone. Symbian OS is reliable and stable: you won't have to worry about losing your data due to crashes. Offers handwriting recognition and on-screen QWERTY keyboard. Good battery life, large color display, Bluetooth plays nicely with other devices. built-in digicam takes nice pix. Con: PC Suite can be a challenge at times for syncing, though generally once you get it working, it will be reliable. Not as many apps and expansion possibilites compared to Palm OS and Pocket PC phones make it a weak choice for PDA pro's.

Specs:

Display: TFT color LCD, 12 bit, 4096 colors, Screen Size Diag: 3", Resolution: 208 x 320 pixels (flip open).

Battery Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1,000 mA. Claimed battery life: Talk Time 5 hours.

Performance: ARM 9 processor running at 156 MHz, 12 MB built-in RAM available to user. One 16 meg Memory Stick Duo also included for memory expansion.

Size: 117mm x 59mm x 27mm. Weight Approximately 158 grams.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and standard 2.5mm mono headset jack.

Software: Symbian OS 7 and UIQ 2.0 user interface. Standard PIM apps included, along with image viewer, camera app, video player, Opera web browser, message app for email, SMS and MMS, games and more. PC Suite for desktop syncing and more.

Expansion: 1 Memory Stick Duo slot. 16 meg card included, can accept up to 128 meg cards.

Network: GSM with GPRS. Tri-band 900 MHz (Europe), 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz (US) freqencies.