BUILD & DESIGN

The Nexus S looks like most smartphones available today, with a black exterior and a minimum of buttons and controls so that the overall look is streamlined and modern. Then again, you might have trouble picking out your phone if you put it on a table next to a few other smartphones at dinner, because there is nothing that really stands out about the Nexus S in a stylistic sense.

At 4.8-inches by 2.48-inches and 0.43-inches thick. the Nexus S is comparable to other large-screen smartphones available today. It does seem to be somewhat lighter than many of the other phones I’ve recently reviewed–when I first took it out of the box I looked for a battery to install, but it was already in the device. It might create a bulge in your pocket, but it won’t weigh you down. My key ring, with its large assortment of office and home keys, weighs more than the Nexus S.

Display
The screen on the Nexus S is simply beautiful. It’s a 4-inch WVGA (480 x 800) Super AMOLED display, so it is extremely sharp and bright. Even when I’m outside in full sunlight I can see the display clearly, which is a nice change from squinting and trying to shade the screen with my hand. There isn’t any ghosting during video playback, and photos looks especially vibrant.

It’s also the first phone with a Contour display, which means exactly what it sounds like — the screen of the phone is slightly curved. The idea is to make it more comfortable in your hand and against your face, when you’re using the Nexus S as a phone. The curve is quite subtle, I didn’t notice too much of a difference except that the phone does seem to fit in my hand a little better than other devices I’ve reviewed recently.

There is an anti-fingerprint coating on the screen, and while I can’t say that it works perfectly — there are still plenty of fingerprints on the screen — it does seem to extend the time between my compulsive screen wiping and cleaning sessions. I simply can’t stand smudgy screens, so something that cuts down on the frustration is a step in the right direction, and the Nexus S delivers on that point.

Keyboard
The Nexus S doesn’t have a physical keyboard, so you’ll be doing your text entry on the virtual on-screen one. This has been improved in this new version of Google’s operating system, so you’ll see slightly larger keys thanks to an optimized, clutter-free layout. It has punctuation at the top for convenience, and works quite nicely.

Of course you can bypass the keyboard entirely using Google’s speech recognition, which works amazingly well on the Nexus S. No matter which way you choose, text entry is fast and easy.

Other Buttons & Controls
The Nexus S has very few buttons or other hardware features. The power button is on the upper right side of the device, and the volume rocker is on the left.

The only other controls are the standard Back, Menu, Search, and Home controls underneath the display, the camera lens on the back, and the headphone jack and charge/sync port on the bottom edge of the device.

There is no microSD card slot, which is unfortunate. I know that everything is “in the cloud” these days, but I like to keep a lot of music, photos, and ebooks on my device, and the 16 GB of internal memory can fill up all too fast since there’s no option to add more with an expansion card.

PERFORMANCE

Under the hood, the Samsung Nexus S is powered by a 1 GHz Samsung Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor. It is extremely fast, carrying out my every desire almost immediately. The only slowdowns I noticed were network related (more on this point later).

Android OS 2.3 — sometimes better known by its code-name: Gingerbread – includes a number of small improvements throughout that leads to a better overall experience. There are more options on calendar appointments, and the new copy and paste scheme is truly delightful.

A simple tap on a word brings up the text markers, and you can move them to the beginning and the end of what you want to copy by sliding them to the proper spot on the screen. The word or phrase is then automatically copied to the clipboard. I love the new method, because it is so much easier to use and so much more precise than what previous versions of Android could offer. No more worries about random spaces or punctuation marks getting in the way because it is now much easier to copy exactly what you want.

Some Nexus S users have complained about some troubling glitches — random reboots, text messages being sent to the wrong contact, and some graphical issues with icons on the homescreen. I haven’t encountered any of those problems on this test device, but enough users have complained that it seems likely these aren’t isolated issues.

Communication
Unfortunately, call quality on this device is very poor. One of my test subjects likened it to “a tin can connected to a tin can” and another said that I sounded very tinny and distant. In both cases I could hear them on the other end very well, they just had problems hearing me. It wasn’t due to background noise either, because none of my callers were able to identify exactly what was going on the background (construction, children at a playground, a nearby fountain, or a busy street).

I don’t have a great deal of experience with T-Mobile, so this could be a network issue, but I live in a major city and tried the phone inside and outside of my office, at home, and while I was out shopping, with notable voice quality issues each time.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work great, though I’m not too happy about the new Wi-Fi settings screen. When you join a new network you don’t get the quick and simple user name and password box anymore; that area is farther down and requires scrolling past security certificates, etc. to access. I’m not sure why Google decided to rearrange things to make it more difficult to join a new network, but at least it’s the sort of thing you usually do just once when you set up the phone.

The email and web browsing experience is also great, as I have come to expect on Android devices. Reading my Gmail or navigating from page to page on the Web is fast, with smooth scrolling and a rich experience.

There aren’t any social networking apps included, but you can get Facebook and Twitter clients on the Android Market, most of them for free.

Productivity
The Samsung Nexus S has all of the standard PIM apps that you would expect to find on any Android phone, including calendar, contacts, clock, calculator, and a News & Weather app that provides the local weather forecast and all of the top news and sports headlines.

Gingerbread brings some enhancements in this area, most notably with the addition of guests/invitations in the calendar app and time zone support for appointments. The new appointment interface is much cleaner than before, and more attractive.

The new features in Google Maps 5.0 with Navigation are quite impressive. Multi-touch allows you to use two fingers to explore 3D maps, dragging up and down to tilt and twisting to rotate the map. There’s a compass mode that reorients the map to the direction you’re facing, and improvements to map caching with offline rerouting means that you won’t lose your way even if you lose your data connection. I like being able to choose between driving, biking, walking, and public transit directions, and I was perfectly directed on each of my test trips.

There is no Microsoft Office compatible software included with the phone, such as QuickOffice, but if you receive a Microsoft Word or Excel document as an email attachment you will be able to view it with the built-in ThinkFree Write Mobile or ThinkFree Calc Mobile. There are also more productivity apps available on the Android Market.

Entertainment
The Android OS music player will keep you entertained listening to your favorite tunes. The external speaker will is capable of extremely loud volumes if you desire, with a minimum of distortion. Plus, there’s a video player if you want to transfer TV shows or movies you get off the Web. Just keep in mind that 16 GB storage limit I mentioned earlier.

The included YouTube client showcases web videos quite nicely, with full screen viewing and good sound quality.

Since the Nexus S is sold as an unlocked phone, you won’t find all of the games and demos you typically see on phones that have been more heavily customized by mobile carriers. I downloaded a few games from the Android Market and found that my usual favorites like Jewels and Sudoku played well, with no stuttering or lag and with bright vivid colors.

If you have some time to kill and want to play games or watch videos, the Nexus S can definitely handle your mobile entertainment needs.

Camera
The Nexus S has two cameras, one on the back that takes five megapixel still photos and can capture video as well, plus a VGA camera on the front for video calling.

The five megapixel camera takes excellent photos, even under difficult lighting conditions, and I’m impressed with the level of quality and detail I was able to capture.

White balance, flash, scene mode, focus mode (including macro), and exposure are all easily adjusted by tapping on the screen, though I was disappointed by the lack of any sort of zoom capability.

The only other issue is with action shots, as demonstrated by my photo of cars speeding by on a busy street. You might be able to capture some sports shots if you’re lucky, but you may end up with some blurring or may miss the shot if the camera isn’t able to work fast enough to keep up with you. It works best for portrait and landscape shots, so if you’re planning to take lots of kid or pet shots this might not be the best cameraphone for you.

Battery Life
You won’t have to worry about running out of juice with the Nexus S, because it seems to go on and on forever. I can get three days of relatively heavy use out of it, with Wi-Fi on, taking shots with the camera, constantly checking my email, and watching two or three YouTube videos each day.

You should certainly be able to make it through the day without having your phone go dead during your evening commute, and you might even be able to get away without packing the charger on a weekend trip.

CONCLUSION

I like the Samsung Nexus S, mostly because of Android OS 2.3/Gingerbread, the responsive nature of the device — I hate waiting for apps to open — and the nice camera.

It’s not perfect, though. While this smartphone generally performed well and I didn’t see any of the glitches that have plagued other users, I’m extremely disappointed with the voice quality of the device when I’m on phone calls.

Of course it’s important to have a great email and web browsing experience, and there are times when you have a few spare minutes to play games or watch a video on YouTube, and it’s great that our phone can do all of those things. But they should first of all be really good phones, and the Nexus S doesn’t live up to my standards in that regard. It is possible that the issues I experienced are all due to the T-Mobile network in my area, but that is impossible to know for sure.

If you have strong T-Mobile coverage in your area, or are planning to use the Nexus S with another GSM carrier such as AT&T, it deserves a closer look because it performed well in all other respects.

Pros

• Latest version of the Android OS
• Excellent screen
• Responsive device
• Good photo quality, with accessible controls for white balance, exposure, scene mode, etc.
• Light weight
• Good volume and sound quality on external speaker
• Long battery life

Cons

• Extremely low voice quality
• No memory card slot
• No zoom on the camera

Incoming search terms:

• Samsung Nexus S HDMI Video Cable
• samsung nexus s

BUILD & DESIGN

While many current Android devices are thinly veiled attempts to mimic the iPhone, the Droid Pro clearly has another target: the segment of business users that are mostly addicted to the BlackBerry and it’s constant email access.

I’m not a BlackBerry user myself, but I am a member of the demographic that must have a keyboard, preferably in a one-piece design like this. So I came into this review curious about the Droid Pro, both because of it’s slightly unusual design, and because it seemed to have the qualities I look for in a smartphone: a great spec sheet, simple design, and — hopefully — a solid operating system.

Screen
A key difference between the Droid Pro and its rivals is that while QWERTY-bar phones often include a relatively small  screen with a landscape orientation, the Pro has a larger portrait-oriented screen. This makes it a little longer than it’s relatives within the class, but considering everything that is packed into this device, the Droid Pro is actually surprisingly compact.

Compared directly to my usual phone, a Samsung Jack, the Droid Pro is about a third of an inch taller — and that’s it. They’re the same width, and roughly the same thickness, though the Droid Pro is actually a tiny bit thinner over most of the casing, with a small bulge along the top rear. Even granted that my Jack is cheaper and is a year old, I was pleasantly surprised by the size.

Despite it’s compact footprint, it squeezes in a 3.1 inch, half-VGA screen — not the largest or highest resolution on an Android-based device, but roughly comparable to the first three generations of iPhones.

Keyboard
Given the device’s size constraints, I had been half expecting the keyboard to be cramped. So it was another pleasant surprise that it was, in fact, every bit as usable as the better thumb keyboards I’ve tried out.

Good key travel, key separation, and feel. The number keys are spread out along the top row, instead of being placed in a conventional grid formation. The good news, though is that this is made up for by a large and very usable on-screen keypad available from the phone dialer application. Or, you can just speak the number that you want to call — but we’ll get to that later.

Other Buttons & Controls
One of the ways the Droid Pro saves space is by not having a directional pad or directional control of any kind, which is a departure for most QWERTY-bar style phones. At first, I didn’t think that I was going to be happy about that omission. Now, after having gotten to use it a bit, I’m not nearly as put out as I expected to be. Yes, there’s some situations where it would be nice to have a physical directional control — particularly navigating cramped web page elements, or relocating a cursor for text entry. But for the most part I’ve gotten along quite well using touchscreen gestures for scrolling and practicing accurate fingertip clicking.

My biggest complaint about the Droid Pro’s design lies in the four navigation buttons right above the keyboard. Because they’re part of the screen, and therefore touch sensitive, it’s fairly easy to accidentally “push” them if your finger brushes the screen accidentally. Since the center two buttons — those most likely to be hit accidentally — both take you back out of the application you’re using, it can be very annoying to have to go back and re-start what you were doing. Since you can’t vary the sensitivity of these buttons — and they really do have a hair trigger — the only real cure for this is time and practice, to get used to having them there and not letting your fingers stray.

With the memory card tucked under the battery cover, the only open ports are the Micro-USB plug on the lower left hand side, and the 3.5 mm audio jack on top. It’s nice to have a standard audio plug again, though I wouldn’t object to having all the plugs on the bottom, so that I could have a nice car dock for the thing, but that’s rather a nitpick.

Overall, the build quality feels good, the design is sleek and very usable, and it packs all it’s features into a very reasonable size and weight.

PERFORMANCE

Even if you thought the physical design of the Motorola Droid Pro was a bit basic, you’ll love what’s under the hood. On paper, this model has almost everything you could possibly want packed into a business phone.

It starts with a hardware set designed for performance: a 1 GHz TI OMAP 3620 processor and 512 MB of RAM, plus 1.5 GB of internal storage for your data. There’s also a 2 GB microSD card included.

All of this stacks up to mean amazing performance. Full-screen transitions, sliding gestures, window animations, even with plenty of stuff running in the background, it was all as smooth as an oil slick behind a Zamboni. I’m certain that there’s some situation or program which could slow this thing down, but I couldn’t find it, even when running high end games or applications.

Wireless/Call Quality
Add to that high performance base the standard wireless accessories: CDMA/EV-DO Rev. A for-voice and data on Verizon in the U.S., GPS with network-assistance and geotagging, WiFi b/g/n, and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR.

Then you start on the rarer components. A secondary cell phone connection in the form of quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band HSPA adds worldwide coverage: unlike most Verizon phones, you can take this phone overseas and it will still work.

Mind you, if you intend to use Verizon’s overseas roaming service you’re going to be charged by the limb, but that’s kind of to be expected. You can, of course, get the GSM module unlocked, and then use cheaper prepaid services around the world, at the expense of not having your usual phone number.

It also features dual CDMA antennas for better than average signal performance, giving me multiple bars in areas that are normally sketchy.

Productivity
Despite the fact that I’ve been neck deep in mobile technology for many years, the Droid Pro is actually my first extended chance to use a device running Google’s Android OS. I was very curious to see how it would turn out, since I hadn’t really developed a firm impression or opinion of the Android platform from the brief look and play opportunities I’d had.

My first impressions were extremely positive. Granted one has to attribute a lot of the software experience to having good quality hardware behind it — the smooth-as-glass performance, the advanced looks, and the robust storage all help to ease the learning curve. But more important than the performance is the true software experience. Complete interoperability between applications, down to the level of being able to hand off a scanned barcode from one app to another from a different, competing developer. Or the integration of OS-level security into the mix to allow you the protection of guaranteed apps, as well as the freedom to go beyond what Google gives you.

Speaking of apps, they’re the centerpiece of the experience. The minute that I got into the Android Marketplace, I think I fell in love. It is, to put it simply, the sort of one-look-one-touch system for finding and installing applications I’ve been looking for for years. Or put another way, the thing that Microsoft never did for Windows Mobile, and should have. If it had, the company might have been in the position Google is right now, instead of having to jettison their entire former platform and start over.

The apps that come with the Droid Pro are basic but good — a complete Office suite and PDF viewer, multiple-account email client with support for a variety of platforms, navigation apps (both Google’s own and Verizon’s VZ Navigator), along with the usual packing peanuts.

Unsurprisingly, the device’s email implementation is most friendly toward GMail. Since I normally use Exchange Server synchronization on my Samsung Jack, I attempted to set up the same, only to discover that it’s a little more complicated. Not that I should be surprised, since Exchange is a Microsoft platform, and here I am asking it to play nice with Google. Eventually, I got it working with the help of the instructions off the Motorola website, but the lesson is to plan for a little more complexity when interfacing across platform brands. Nevertheless, it does work out of the box, even before the wandering eye is drawn to Google’s support framework.

Here’s what I did: I touched the button on the phone marked “Marketplace.” About ten seconds later I was scrolling through a list of hundreds of brilliant, absolutely free applications, all of which could be downloaded and installed in the background with two button presses, while I kept searching for more apps. It’s hard to overstate how easy to use it is.

And these aren’t your run of the mill free calculators and miniature pocket dictionaries. These are some amazingly powerful applications. One of the first ones I downloaded was Google Translate — and if you’ve never actually seen this app in action, it is hard to describe just how impressive it is. Speak any phrase into it, and within seconds it can read aloud a proper translation for the phrase in the language of your choice. This ranges from “Where is the airport” to “Do you enjoy anchovies on your pizza?” For that matter, it will tell you how to ask about anchovies in Welsh or Yiddish.

Or let’s talk about Google Sky Map. This free app uses the device’s internal gyrosensor to track where exactly you’re pointing the thing, and act like a perfect window to display constellations through, and can adjust the orientation automatically based on your GPS location.

Or ZXing Barcode Scanner, which can use the camera to automatically read and look up both 2D and 3D barcodes, including the QR codes that provide instant links to application downloads or websites. And it reads them right off the computer screen.

From Google-search-by-voice to recording DVD-resolution video; from being able to solve complicated math questions almost as fast as you can read them out loud to being able to signal in Morse code using the camera’s LED flash, the standard software package is impressive, and the available add-ons are even more so.

I also need to mention the voice command integration. The impressive part about the Droid Pro’s voice command system isn’t that Android has it — we’ve been experimenting with voice-commanded computers for a very long time. The impressive part is how ruthlessly accurate it is. I have yet to have it get a word wrong when I’m enunciating properly, and it’s still far better than 90% when speaking casually. In fact, I just read the previous sentence to it, and it picked the thing up word for word. I even tested it with obscure, easily missed words like “ferrets,” “anchovies,” and “Wookie.” For the record, it had the most trouble with “ferrets,” which it mistook about half the time for “parents.” But it recognized “Wookie” fine.

In a much more practical application, right out of the box you can order it to dial your contacts by name — without recording voice tags or doing any other setup work. Once it had slurped down my contact information, I simply said “Call Adama,” and my regular cell phone was ringing. You can also dictate text messages and emails with a fair degree of accuracy — not something that you’d need to do in most circumstances, but highly useful if, say, you’re driving somewhere and need to write an urgent reply.

Entertainment
The Droid Pro isn’t sold as a multimedia phone — it’s solidly targeted at business users, a fact Motorola isn’t shy of, emphasizing the bundling of Office applications and the strong password administration support. But make no mistake, if you don’t mind the slightly smaller screen, you can have a very happy multimedia experience.

To emphasize that, the Droid Pro comes equipped for working with Digital Living Network Alliance products, a system for allowing various entertainment products to work together. For instance, being able to stream video from a set-top digital video recorder, or use the Droid Pro to control the interaction of other DLNA equipment like a remote. Lacking any other DLNA-certified equipment, I couldn’t really test this, but the concept looks like it could be brilliant if it takes off and is implemented well.

Even the default browser is quite comfortable, more so even than my usual standby of Opera Mini. I suspect that would change outside of 3G range and the high browsing speed it provides, but for now, the dynamic zoom and automatic reflowing win the day.

As mentioned above, the Droid Pro is faster than hell. And it handles all it’s applications like a champion, even the high end ones that it’s not marketed towards.

Battery Life
The only sour note I have to sound about the Droid Pro’s performance is the one which, when you think about it, is fairly obvious. The more you use all that amazing hardware, the faster you’re going to eat the battery.

I had my review unit fully charged at 2:30, and by 7 PM with all the playing I had done, the battery was down to 15%. I’ve seen worse, but it’s certainly nothing to write home about. I’m accustomed to getting a full day of heavy use, but that expectation isn’t based on a larger screen and what is, in fact, a relatively small battery for the hardware it’s powering.

There’s a nifty little OS component that will tell you in detail what is consuming your battery life. To no surprise, 65% of my power drain was in the form of the screen. The Droid Pro does have a setting to automatically adjust the screen’s brightness, however the automatic setting is too low for my taste relative to the ambient lighting, and unlike on other devices with a light sensor, you can’t give it any guidance as to whether you’d like it just a little brighter or darker than its defaults.

It doesn’t help that Android’s default menus and screens are almost all white text on black backgrounds, making them much harder to see in a lit environment. Indeed, I had to turn up the brightness considerably to be able to see clearly, which led me to my second noteworthy complaint. Specifically, Android doesn’t make it easy for you to choose anything but the default color scheme. There is no way built into the device to choose different colors, and even with some of the third party launcher replacements, you can only get part of the way. I installed ADW Launcher, which allowed me to change the color of the app drawer, but menus were still all white text on black backdrop.

This may seem like a little thing, but it’s important because it has to do with user comfort. Users shouldn’t need to crank up their screen brightness to compensate for absurdly dark colors they can’t change. When you’re not dealing with that, the automatic screen brightness is much more to my taste.

As far as the larger power issue goes, there are some settings you can tweak to help reduce battery drain, such as the frequency of data and GPS updates, there’s supposed to be an extended battery option available soon through Verizon, however it’s rated at 1820 mAh, only 28% larger than the standard 1420 mAh cell. I’d really like to see an option to add a little padding to the entire back of the device in trade for, say, 2 to 2.5 times the standard battery power. That would give the power hogs like myself the guarantee that we could get through a rough day without worrying overmuch about conserving juice. If I’m lost and depending on the GPS, or making a lot of calls to manage a situation, I don’t want to worry whether the battery will hold out.

While these two things are my biggest issues with the Droid Pro as a device, in the big picture they’re relatively minimal. Both can be either fixed or reduced by software eventually, and frequent charging is a reality of life for smartphone users, particularly high end ones.

CONCLUSION

I have to say that it’s been quite a long while since I got the raw thrill from playing with a gadget that I have from the Motorola Droid Pro.

While it’s obvious that the state of the art in mobile tech improves, the difference is more than just a hardware upgrade — it’s the fact that the Droid Pro and the Android platform are well thought out and robust in ways that others simply aren’t.

The difference is like driving every day in a basic sedan, and then suddenly being handed the keys to a well built luxury car. It shows you all the little things that you didn’t realize could be done so much better. And while in the end you may not technically need those things, I dare say that most people would choose to have them.

The Droid Pro delivers a solid business-oriented device that also makes plenty of room for recreational use. I’m sold.

Pros:

• Great hardware specs
• Sleek, easy-to-use design
• Excellent operating system

Cons:

• Can eat battery power quickly
• Some buttons too easy to push

BUILD & DESIGN:

This model looks like many similar smartphones on the market today, with a large screen that dominates the device and minimal buttons. The corners are nicely rounded, and the case is made entirely of black plastic aside from the chrome band running around the edges of the phone, on top of the keyboard slider.

The keyboard is accessed by pushing the display to the right, and that mechanism is solid and strong–you won’t have to worry about the slide stopping in the middle.

Overall size is similar to most modern phones. The Transform measures 4.6-inches tall and 2.42-inches wide, just slightly larger than the iPhone. Thickness is a different matter; the Transform is significantly thicker due to the physical keyboard. It’s heavier too, at 5.4 ounces.

It fits nicely into a pocket, but you probably won’t forget that it’s there. It isn’t too large or bulky, just not as slender and light as other phones.

Display
The 3.5-inch HVGA  (320 x 240)  touchscreen is very good, but it isn’t amazing. There are larger, higher-resolution screens out there, but these are generally on more expensive phones, of course. I did find that the display has good color saturation, good clarity and contrast, and minimal pixelation when examined up close.

The display is responsive to my touch; I didn’t have the dreaded “tap here, get no response, tap again and again, harder each time” problem with the Transform. There were also no issues with a jumpy cursor or a too responsive display either.

Keyboard
The slide-out QWERTY keyboard is really nice, one of the best I’ve used in recent memory. The keys are very large, taking up as much space as possible, so I didn’t have any problem hitting the wrong key. They are also very flat and in essence flush with the surrounding area; there is only a slight bump on the two home keys. I still get good tactile feedback; pressing each key gives a small click and you know when you’ve depressed the key enough for it to register.

The key layout is quite nice, with no funky or strange placements. The Backspace, Enter, and OK buttons are on the right side, and the arrow keys are grouped on the bottom right side of the keyboard. Punctuation and numbers are accessed by first pressing the orange function key on the lower left corner of the keyboard. You will also find a smiley-faced emoticon key, symbol key, and the @ sign just to the left of the space bar, while the control key is between the space bar and the arrow keys.

The graphics on the keys are very large and easy to see in daylight and when illuminated in white for use in the dark. Though I would have liked Samsung to use a color other than pale orange to label the numbers and punctuation for better readability, I didn’t have too much trouble finding the right mark, especially with a little practice.

Other Buttons & Controls
The power button is on the top right side of the device, with the voice dial button below. The camera button is on the bottom right side, and the volume up/down buttons are on the top left side of the phone.

The microSD card slot is on the bottom left side, but is hidden under the back cover of the phone. Thankfully the back cover is easy to remove, and the card slot is not under the battery, so it isn’t too difficult to swap out if necessary.

The headphone jack and the charge/sync port are on the top of the phone, and the charge/sync port is covered by a very nice little sliding door as opposed to the standard rubber plug or open port. The placement is very strange if you’re trying to use the phone while it is plugged in; my natural instinct was to pick up the phone with the cord hanging from the bottom, not the top. There’s nothing wrong with that, I just prefer that type of thing to be on the bottom edge of the phone instead of the top.

PERFORMANCE:

The Samsung Transform is based on an 800 MHz processor, and debuted running Google’s Android OS 2.1 — an upgrade to version 2.2 is scheduled to be out later this year.

Given its processor speed, this device isn’t going to win any races, but it does perform well. I didn’t experience any major slowdowns, and apps loaded within just a few seconds.

One of the coolest features is Sprint ID, which offers a fast and easy way to customize your phone. I’ll be covering it in far greater detail in a separate article here on Brighthand.

Wireless/Call Quality
The Transform has excellent sound quality, and my test callers were impressed. Even when I was walking down a busy street they didn’t hear any background noise, and both sides of the conversation came through loud and clear.

Signal strength is also quite good, even inside my office, which is typically a dead zone for cellular service no matter the carrier. I had no problem at all making and receiving calls, which was a pleasant surprise.

As a mid-range model, this smartphone comes with 3G cellular-wireless networking, Wi-Fi b/g, and Stereo Bluetooth.

Productivity
You will get the standard Google apps such as Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts, plus an alarm clock, calculator, Express News (from Handmark) and the web browser.

Express News helps you stay on top of the latest stories and headlines; it isn’t an RSS reader but I found it to be both user friendly and fast. It serves up top stories with one photo each, so you can catch up very quickly–much better than navigating the much busier news site.

The web browsing experience on the Samsung smartphone is good, but not stellar because it’s somewhat slow. I waited quite a while to load the main page in  several  sites while I was browsing at home and at the office. That rules out a coverage issue, so I suspect that the processor in the Transform is not quite as speedy/powerful as I would like.

The Google Maps Navigation beta is quite nice though, and I really enjoyed using it. You can choose your destination from your contact list, or you can speak it or type it. Directions pop up very fast, and you can choose to add additional layers such as traffic information, gas stations, and the like. You can also choose whether you want to avoid highways or avoid tolls as well. I’m very impressed and can say that this is just about the best navigation experience I’ve had on a smartphone so far. Carrier-sponsored navigation services tend to be kludgey and slow, but this one is powerful, quick, easy to use, and isn’t cluttered up with unnecessary features.

If you’re planning to use the Transform for business, you’ll probably want to add an app for working with Microsoft Office files. This is a situation where the Android market comes in handy. You’ll be able to search for the app you want, purchase it, and download it, right on the device.

Entertainment
Just as in the previous section, there aren’t too many entertainment apps preloaded on the Transform. That’s due partly to SprintID, of course, but it’s also nice not to have bunch of preloaded stuff that you may not want. Aside from the apps that were added as part of the SprintID I chose at startup, Pandora and YouTube were the only ones that were included when I unboxed the phone.

The Pandora streaming music service works perfectly, though I was rather underwhelmed by the external speaker. It’s loud enough, but the sound is rather tinny, no bass at all. The Black-Eyed Peas, normally a groovin’ music experience that usually makes me want to get up and dance, sounded rather flat. The experience is better with headphones, but still not great.

YouTube also works fine, though the video quality was somewhat disappointing — rather grainy, with no option to watch in full screen mode.

Like all Android OS devices, the Transform comes with a multimedia player. You can store your music and video files on a microSD card, but you’re going to need to supply your own.

Camera
The 3.2 megapixel camera is capable of producing some very nice shots under the right conditions — outdoors in bright light, for example. Depending on the situation there are some exposure issues and blown out areas; photos of the dawn sky exhibit a great deal of noise and loss of color differentiation.

The zoom feature isn’t great; under ideal conditions you might get a good shot out of it. Generally speaking you’ll want to just move yourself closer to the action.

The camera is also rather slow to capture a photo, which means that until I realized what was happening, I would actually move the phone before the photo was actually captured, ruining the shot. Results aren’t terrible by any means, but the camera is a disappointment considering that the Transform has so many other good features.

The Transform also comes with a front-facing video camera, so it can do video chatting. In theory, anyway — it isn’t bundled with any software to enable this feature.

Battery Life
I’m impressed by the battery life on this device. I expect that the typical Android phone will go dead very quickly the first day I have it, due to syncing all of the information from my Google account, downloading a bunch of software from the Android Market, and starting to give the phone a really good workout for review purposes. Not this time.

The Transform surprised me by lasting almost four days on the initial charge, which has to be a new personal record for me. I can also get as many as five days of use out of before it goes dead, though if I take a ton of photos that drops down to two or three days.

CONCLUSION:

I like the Samsung Transform. I think it’s a good solid phone with a great keyboard, great sound quality, and very good battery life.

This device has a good screen and is responsive enough, but it falls short in the entertainment area, specifically with grainy video quality, an underwhelming external speaker, and a weak camera with poor quality zoom.

Its current price of $150 after rebate is slightly high, but not too bad.

The Transform is a good choice for someone who is more phone-centric, who talks (and texts) a lot, and needs excellent voice quality and a great keyboard. If you want a media powerhouse, though, the Transform probably isn’t the device for you.

Pros

• Excellent call quality
• Very good battery life
• Excellent keyboard
• Google Maps Navigation is solid and a pleasure to use

Cons

• Somewhat thicker and heavier than comparable phones
• Barely adequate camera with poor quality zoom
• Underwhelming external speaker
• No bundled microSD memory card

Incoming search terms:

• samsung transform
• physical call answer button on samsung transform

On paper at least, the Samsung Galaxy Tab seems to have all the right ingredients to take on the iPad. Featuring a 7-inch display, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is much smaller than the iPad. Samsung believe that this could be the area where the iPad could be taken on. The smaller size makes the Galaxy Tab much easier to carry around or just holding in your hand. The smaller size does not compromise on the quality however. The display produces rich and vivid pictures with great quality.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab comes with two cameras on either side. The back camera is a 3-megapixel one and the front camera is 1.3-megapixel. These cameras allow the user to take pictures of a memorable moment or use them for video conferencing, features that are unavailable on the iPad currently. Running on the Android 2.2 operating system, Samsung have fitted this device with a powerful 1 GHZ processor and the end result is breath-taking. The tablet is powerful enough to play Full HD videos or play high-end games. A 4000 mAh battery offers nearly 7 hours of movie play.

There are two versions of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the 16GB or 32GB version. Memory can also be expanded through microSD cards to a maximum of 32GB. The prices for these tablets have been dropping and Amazon has given a huge discount and the price for the 16GB version is £600. You can find the latest Galaxy Tab deals at best-mobile-contracts.co.uk.

It is available now for $200 with a two-year contract and a $100 mail-in rebate.

BUILD & DESIGN

When I took the Omnia II out of the box, the first word that came to mind was “sexy” — this really is a nice looking device. It’s a little on the large side compared to other phones, but that’s due to the 3.7-inch, AM-OLED screen, which is absolutely gorgeous. The overall design is sleek and modern, mainly black with chrome accents on the buttons and hematite around the edges of the device.

The battery cover on the back is basically black, but it has really cool red accents that show up more depending on how they catch the light. It’s a subtle effect, nothing too over-the-top or cheesy, but just different enough to set the Omnia II apart from the crowd of similar-looking devices. The top of the back panel is where you’ll find the lens for the 5.0 megapixel camera with flash and video capture capabilities.

This device has a nice heft to it — it’s not so heavy you don’t want to carry it with you, but it’s not so light it feels like an insubstantial toy. At 4.75 inches tall, 2.4 inches wide, and 0.5 inches thick it’s not something you’ll forget that you have in your pocket, but it does fit.

Buttons and controls are relatively minimal, though there are quite a few of them. The call and disconnect buttons on the front of the phone are lightly textured, while the navigator button in the middle is smooth. The left side houses the standard headphone jack, the very small volume up/down buttons, the uncovered microSD slot, and the OK button. The right side has the covered charge/sync port, the lock button, and the camera button. The lock button is easy to manipulate and is cleverly recessed in comparison to the camera button, so you shouldn’t have any problem with the phone being accidentally unlocked when in your pocket or purse.

Display
I’ve already mentioned the display, and for good reason — it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s a bit larger than usual, and everything is so big and bright it made me realize just how much squinting I seem to do with other devices. Everything is sharp and neon bright, with saturated colors. Video looks great, with no ghosting issues.

Whether you’re viewing pictures or video or just composing a text message, you’ll like what you see on the Omnia II’s stellar display.

Keyboard
This device has a virtual keyboard, not a physical one, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the same-old, same-old. This is the first device I’ve used with Swype technology, and it’s nifty.

Instead of picking up your finger or your stylus each time you want to move to the next letter, you just slide your finger or stylus to the next one. It was a little strange at first, but I’m really starting to like it. It’s easier on my fingertips than pounding the virtual keys (I always tend to push harder than I need to) and it’s fun too.

If Swype perfectly understands what you just entered, it’s exactly like typing. If it doesn’t, you’ll get a selection of as many as eight different possibilities. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how the Swype system works. Typically turning off the auto-complete or word suggestion utility is one of the first things I do when I get a new device, but so far I really like how Swype is working for me on the Omnia II.

If it turns out that you’re not a big fan, you still have your choice of block recognizer, letter recognizer, the standard Windows Mobile keyboard, the Samsung Keypad, or Transcriber.

PERFORMANCE

The Omnia II runs Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, but it looks a lot different than you may expect. Samsung has really jazzed things up the user interface with TouchWiz 2.0, homescreen widgets, and the multimedia Cube.

There’s a lot going on here, and even after spending a couple of weeks with this device I can still lose my way now and then. Thankfully performance is nice and fast — I really haven’t seen any delays or hiccups, and applications like Word Mobile start quickly.

You can put widgets on the three-panel homescreen, and everything is fully customizable. You can even shop for new widgets in the Widget Store. You’ll find a wide variety, with everything from E! Online, G4TV.com, and the Urban Dictionary to entertainment apps like a lighter, glow stick, and Magic 8 Ball. All of the widgets currently available are free, though of course that can change at any time.

Tap the Menu button at the bottom of the screen to bring up a list of all the software installed on the device. It runs several pages and includes absolutely everything, from My Contacts and My Pictures to games and Office Mobile. You can move things around if you like, and you’ll probably want to do so — the Office applications are buried on the fourth page of the menu, with all of the carrier-specific stuff like V Cast Music and V Cast videos on the font page.

Wireless/Call Quality
My call quality tests have been OK, but not stellar — my callers can definitely tell that I’m using a mobile phone. Background noise wasn’t too much of a problem; the issue was more one of volume, making me feel that I needed to talk somewhat louder than normal in order to be heard.

3G mobile broadband, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work exactly as expected, without any issues.

Productivity
Since this is a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, there are plenty of productivity applications included, from the usual suspects like Office Mobile and Outlook Mobile to extras like MSN Money and Adobe Reader.

Voice Recognition from Nuance is also included, and my results are quite positive. If you find the five(!) pages of menus and the 3D Cube media interface overwhelming, you can say any command from “Call Brad” to “Go To Calendar” and things happen exactly as you say. It works very well, and was a joy to use, unlike most voice recognition apps.

The Opera Mobile Web browser works great, and I like how text is re-flowed as necessary when I double-tap the screen to zoom in.

The e-mail experience is, however, extremely frustrating. Everything seems to have been optimized to minimize bandwidth usage to an unreasonable extreme. Do you want to browse folders, not just your Inbox? You can do it, but you have to change the settings to choose which folders to access, and that menu option is pretty well hidden.

Even worse, only message headers and the first 2 Kb of each message are downloaded by default, without any graphics, unless you tap to “download Internet pictures” on a per-message basis. You also have to tap to download the rest of the message, which will only happen the next time you “connect and receive e-mail” unless you choose send/receive in the menu to make it happen immediately. Want to scroll to the right in order to see the other half of your message? You have to tap in a specific place to enable horizontal scrolling, which is a real pain. I’m hopeful that some of these settings can be tweaked on a global basis; otherwise the Windows Mobile e-mail experience will be extremely unpleasant, and not one to which I would wish to subject myself on a long-term basis.

Entertainment
There’s a lot of fun to be had with the Omnia II, and it starts on the home screen. When you select the Cube menu option at the bottom of the screen, you’re presented with a really cool spinning cube that highlights your available options, from games to V Cast music and videos, to photos and the Web.

If you don’t want to use the cube, you can make your selections at the bottom of the screen. Choose video and you’ll see a flip list of every available video on the device, whether it was preloaded or something you shot with the phone’s camcorder feature. It’s a nice interface that works well and quickly gets you where you want to go.

Entertainment options include Media Player for music and videos and a collection of games and demos such as Solitaire, Bubble Breaker, Dice, and Ferrari GT Evolution (which utilizes motion controls).

The external speaker is loud enough and clear enough to offer a good gameplay experience without requiring the use of headphones.

V Cast Song ID is included with the phone, and it works very well, even with the relatively obscure songs I tested.

Camera
The 5.0 megapixel camera takes really good quality photos and videos, with a nice array of options for scene settings and special effects. The zoom is quite nice — it gets you much closer to the action, though the picture quality does suffer a bit.

I’m quite pleased with the quality of both still photos and video I’ve been able to take with the Omnia II — it won’t replace a standalone digital camera, but it’s much better than what you’d typically expect to find on a mobile phone.

You can also edit photos on the phone: flip, resize, rotate, crop, brightness, contrast, and color effects.

Battery Life
Battery life has proven to be a real standout with the Omnia II, though I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised considering how the e-mail experience has been throttled back so severely. I was able to get a full week on standby, and probably could have eked out a couple more days before plugging it in.

CONCLUSION

There are parts of the Samsung Omnia II that I really like — the beautiful display, the fun gaming experience, the Swype keyboard, the excellent camera, even the cool red accents on the battery cover, etc. There are also a few things I don’t like, most notably the almost wretched e-mail experience.

If you want a phone that offers a lot of entertainment options and don’t plan to use the e-mail functionality too heavily, the Omnia would be a solid choice. If however you tend to get the shakes if you don’t check your e-mail every five minutes, this isn’t the device for you.

Pros

• Gorgeous display
• Innovative Swype keyboard technology really works
• Good quality camera with video
• Offers a strong mobile entertainment experience
• Good battery life

Cons

• Painful e-mail experience
• Average voice quality
• Somewhat confusing UI/menu system