Acer Iconia Tab A500 Gets Android Honeycomb 3.1 Update 5-7-2011

About two weeks ago we heard that the Acer Iconia Tab A500 was  going to get the latest Honeycomb update sometime in July. In doing so, at least after the update, the tablet’s high-end specifications will be utilized in the right manner, so we hope. Well July is here and it looks like Acer has kept their promise of delivering the update. The goodness inches closer... According to AndroidOS.in, the update should bring a leap in system performance. Better support for USB and Bluetooth devices is also expected.  Acer has balanced the focus with support for HTML5 video content and there’s also support for additional video file formats, as well. The goodness doesn’t stop there though, there’s improved Wi-Fi networking and last but not the least, there’s support for Microsoft Exchange server, as well. That’s definitely a whole lot of improvements that’s being promised. The update is globally available OTA, but we hope it’s also available for the Indian community. If you’ve got the notification for a software update, do let us know whether you’ve found any improvement in the performance. Since we have the product in our labs, we checked for the OTA update however there was none. We'll keep checking of course spo stay tuned.

Spice Mi-410 Android Smartphone

Although Spice has been in the mobile game a long time now, and has only recently entered the Smartphone market, they haven't really outshined the competition. Their Mi-310 was not too bad though, but it's their upgrade i.e. the Mi-410 that's got the industry going ga-ga. So, I give you the Spice Mi-410 that sports a high power processor and large screen, but just so you know, technically, Spice had nothing to do with manufacturing the phone other than fixing their name on it. Beneath the Spice branding, its actually Huawei’s i9000 IDEOS X6, that’s sold in the West and Far East. But, is this enough to lure prospective buyers away from other seasoned brands? Let's find out. Form Factor The Mi-410 feels like a slab of metal in your hand. The design is very monolithic and is devoid of any curves or other design elements which does not make it very ergonomic. The 4.1-inch capacitive touch screen somewhat makes up for it though with a very decent resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The screen is not fitted with Gorilla Glass, but isn’t very prone to scratches either. Android-centric touch sensitive buttons for Return, Options, Home and Search are located under the display. The Mi-410 is equipped with a pair of speakers located at the bottom on either sides of the device. By doing this, the sound is not muted when you place the phone on the table, but unfortunately it could be hampered if you hold it in your hand, as the tendency is to obviously hold a phone from the bottom when you're on speakerphone. There’s also a front-facing VGA camera, proximity sensor and ambient light sensor beside the earpiece. Slim design and sturdy build The power button is placed on the left and the volume rocker is on the right. While it's easy to control the volume with your thumb, it's a real pain when you have to lock/unlock the phone. The problem is that the power button does not have a groove nor is it raised and sits flush with the bezel so it’s hard to tell exactly where it is without looking. It should have been placed on the top beside the 3.5mm headphone jack. At the bottom we have a mini-HDMI and micro-USB port. The HDMI-out is a great addition, especially when you consider the price. Screen is decently bright but only indoors The 5.0MP camera is slightly raised above the body of the phone and without a lens protector it's prone to scratches. The Mi-410 is also capable of capturing 720p videos at 30fps, another first for a sub-15K phone. While most of the body is made of plastic, the battery cover is metal. Along with the battery, the phone feels a bit heavy in your pocket at 143g, and a bit slippery as well due to the metal back. Overall, the Mi-410 has a pretty good build quality and by no means feels like a cheap phone that you would be ashamed to flaunt in public.  Features and Performance Interface The Spice Mi-410 runs stock Android Froyo (2.2.2) with a few customizations here and there. At first, it feels a bit laggy, but a quick install of Launcher Pro fixes everything. Whether you're swiping through the home screen or scrolling through the menu, the motion feels fluid and snappy. Even the animations are butter smooth, and why not! After all, there’s a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU with an Adreno 205 GPU beating inside. Spice (or Huawei to be precise) has taken some cues from HTC and included an LED indicator in the earpiece. It blinks green when you get an alert and red when the battery is low. Navigation is quick and fluid The Mi-410 also has three scene modes which are preset themes with different widgets like Travel, Work, etc just like in Sense UI. The lock screen also gives you the option for accessing the Phonebook, Contacts or Messages directly without having to unlock the phone first, another feature seen in the latest version of Sense UI. The screen has decent brightness and colors for indoor use, but outdoors everything goes for a toss. Even at maximum brightness, you can barely make out what's on the screen. Also, when the screen gets too greasy (which happens very quickly), it's not very responsive. Many times I found myself struggling to unlock the screen. The touch sensitive buttons work fine without much problem. Boot up time may appear to be quick, but it still takes some time for all the widgets to load.   Media The default video player will only playback AVI, MP4 and 3GP files. It won’t even detect any other file formats. There are two applications, Videos and Video Portal. While, Videos simply lists the available videos without any options to group them, Video Portal does a better job in presenting your videos and also gives you access to YouTube. The default player is quite strict when it comes to playing back AVI, as I noticed some SD videos would not get detected. Videos look good, but the colors aren't very vibrant Moboplayer (which is free to download) helps you read more file formats like MOV, FLV and MKV, but for some reason we couldn’t get 720p MKV files to play smoothly or AVI (encoded with Xvid) for that matter. You’d think a phone with a 1GHz CPU would just breeze through this test, but sadly it doesn't. I also encountered a very strange bug with the media player. If you try to play a full HD AVI file in any player, the audio starts playing, but there's no way to stop it. I tried shutting the player by killing the process via the settings as well but the audio continued to play. If you own this phone, do not attempt to do this, you have been warned. Audio playback is decent and the speakers are loud enough to be heard even when travelling. Although the Huawei X6 packs a Dolby sound enhancement feature, the Mi-410 does not have this. The audio quality with the stock earphones is average but it gets better if you use good IEMs like the EP-630s. The stock music player doesn't have any equalizer presets either for enhancing the sound.  Other multimedia apps include FM Radio which worked well even when travelling and MuVee video editor for editing MP4 and 3gp files. Here, you have options to trim, fade in/out, join a video or add text to it, all of which are very basic but simple to use. Connectivity The Mi-410 is 3G ready and supports HSDPA up to 14.4 Mbps. Wi-Fi ‘n’ with tethering and Hot Spot support is also included. There's also Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP support and Flash 10.3. The stock browser does a good job of rendering web pages and just like every Android device, you have options for Gmail, Microsoft Exchange and any other mail service you wish to configure. Internet related apps include GTalk, YouTube, RSS Reader, News and Weather, Places, Maps, Navigation, Google Search and Latitude. There is no Twitter app or Facebook app, simply a link to the Facebook page, which is odd since the app is free and could have been... sorry, should have been preloaded. Keyboard is responsive and works well I didn’t face any problem with the call quality. The earpiece volume is sufficiently loud and the person on the other end could easily hear my voice even in noisy, crowded trains. I didn’t experience any dropped calls, either, so we can say the Mi-410 does well in this category. Misc Features Spice has pre-installed the Documents-to-Go app, which allows you to read spreadsheets, word files, power point and PDF files. Other standard apps include Voice Dialer, Voice search, File browser, Clock, Calendar and Calculator.   Camera The 5MP camera snaps decent outdoor pictures. There is a slight bloom effect in the whites, but other than that, the quality is not bad. If you zoom in a bit though, you’ll notice it doesn't capture a lot of detail. The camera interface is really nice with plenty of options to play around with. On the left you have brightness settings, white balance and flash settings. Good camera interface, but very average sensor On the right you have capture modes that include Tap capture (which is more like touch focus), smile capture (which is a little slow in detecting a smile), face capture, timer and panorama. In panorama mode, the program manages to stitch the picture well, but you have to be very steady as it doesn't compensate for shaky hands. The LED flash is weak and can only illuminate nearby objects properly. Outdoor shots are decent, but lack detail The Spice Mi-410 can also capture HD (1280 x 720) video in MP4 format. The result is not great, though. The captured video is very jerky and is by no means 30fps. Even if you’re shooting indoors in a well lit room, the colors are all washed out and faded and it certainly does not look like it’s been shot with a 5MP camera. The problem lies with the sensor. It may have high mega-pixel count, but the sensor used doesn't seem to be of very poor quality. Battery Life The Mi-410 comes with a 1400mAh battery which gives you about a day's worth of use. This is with a little bit of everything, phone calls, Wi-Fi, EDGE, some music playback and Auto-Sync for GMail on all the time. By disabling Auto-Sync, I managed to get a little more like a day and half, but nothing more. Hopefully, if Spice officially releases the Gingerbread update for this soon, we may see a slight improvement.  Verdict Of all the companies, Spice happened to be the first to break the sub-15K price barrier with a 1GHz processor on an Android phone, and I can see why this phone has such huge hype around it. While the MRP may say Rs.17,999, you can buy this phone from the market for as little as Rs. 13,999, and if you check online with the right coupons, even lower. There’s no denying that the Mi-410 offers tremendous value and has made other companies stand up and take notice. The Samsung Galaxy Ace was not too long ago the crowd favourite at this price point, but the Mi-410 renders it moot now. For a lesser price, you’re getting a larger screen, faster processor and HDMI-out (for those who care). But, would I recommend everyone to run out and buy one? Not really. Could have been a lot better If you’re simply looking for large touchscreen phone that can run Android “the way it was meant to run” then by all means get the Spice Mi-410. But for those who care about camera quality, sunlight legibility of the screen, battery life and video and music playback, I’d recommend getting the Motorola Defy . It may have a smaller screen and slower processor, but with its recent price drop, it’s hard to ignore. The Mi-410 has all the right ingredients for a very successful phone -  great pricing and good specs and in theory it should have blown away the competition. But sadly, there are many little problems that take away from what should have been an outstanding product.

Tag Heuer Announces their First Android Smartphone, Link

There seems to be no end to the number of mobile phone manufacturers that are coming into the market, nowadays. The latest to join the smartphone segment is Tag Heuer’s Link. The device runs on Android’s earlier version, FroYo. Of course, for a smartphone launching now, the operating system seems to be a little outdated. The other features also are quite mundane, so to speak.

Links to the rich and famous!

Tag Heuer have manufactured the Link to be more of a style icon with a little sprinkling of smartphone features at the user’s disposal. Here is a small list of specifications that the Link boasts of:

• 3.5-inch TFT display touchscreen
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 2.0
  5 megapixel camera
• 246MB internal memory
• Expandable to 8GB via MicroSD card

Tag Heuer being a company preferred by the well-heeled has not loaded the Link with a lot of features. Sources rather say that the smartphone boasts of good looks and users can choose between steel, titanium or 18K rose gold and Tag Heuer is throwing in some diamonds to enhance its looks. If that doesn’t sound good enough for the elite, users can also opt for leather with the case being made of Calfskin leather.

Expecting the Link to be a high-priced? Well you’re right in doing so. The Link can be yours at a very paltry (for the rich and elite, that is) $6820 (approx Rs. 3,41,000).

Huawei U8800 IDEOS X5 - It's Simple, but Cool

Huawei is one of those companies that have specialised in the manufacture of mobile handsets, for quite sometime now. They only recently made a debut in the Indian market, but failed to impress the community seeing as their U8-150 budget Android device was far from perfect. The U8800 aka X5 was just launched in the mid-range segment and has the definite potential to redeem the company’s standing. Here’s a closer look.

Form Factor
The X5 is a pleasant looking mobile phone with a very down-to-earth feel. The ovalesque design form makes it comfortable to handle and at just 130 grams it’s not a heavy device in your pocket. The slightly rubberized rear and black chrome finish for the front also gives it a very funky look and feel and the absence of physical keys makes it quite modern, for lack of a better term. The only buttons available on the X5 are the Power/screen lock key on the top near the 3.5mm handsfree socket and the volume/zoom rocker on the top left side. The micro USB/charging port is located at the bottom. The IDEOS X5 is also equipped with a hot-swap micro USB slot under the rear panel and incidentally also features 2GB of internal storage.

Quite slim and curvey

The one flaw with the design, which can be excused is the slight protrusion of the camera lens at the rear. It’s a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with an LED flash that’s strapped on. The 3.8-inch capacitive TFT LCD is supposed to be finger print resistant and truth be told, it is to quite an extent. But like similar displays boasting of this surface technology, including the iPad, it’s not 100%. The resolution on the display is 480 x 800 with 16 million colors making it crisp and clear, but not altogether perfectly visible in bright sunlight conditions.

3.8-inch display with a 480 x 800 pixel res

With a simple, yet tasteful form factor, the IDEOS X5 comes off as a handset that that could be one to beat in its price segment. But design is one thing, lets move on to its performance.

Features and Performance
Interface
Running Android 2.2, aka FroYo out of the box on a 800 MHz Scorpion processor coupled with an Adreno 205 GPU, the IDEOS X5 is a very capable smartphone. The stock UI is quite basic and initially seemed to have a bit of lag while traversing through the menus. One quick reset later and everything was ‘A-ok’. Just to compare though, I tried a couple of free third party UI’s as well and the experience was just as good – functionality was smooth with no lag and activating apps was also a seamless process. Multitasking and handling of heavy files also proved to be a non-issue with the IDEOS X5. Huawei has also thrown in Swype for text input, which could drastically speed up your typing once you get the hang of it.

FroYo out of the box

Media
The IDEOS X5’s media prowess leaves a little to be desired. Even with the added bonus of an SRS WOWHD preset and a few others, I found the decibel level to be just a little low for my taste. Audio quality was, however, quite clear with a set of balanced tones making their way out. The bass line is expanded quite well with SRS WOW and you’ll wind up with bass heavy tone quality, but nevertheless still quite well rounded . By contrast though, video playback volume via RockPlayer was no problem and I was able to hear dialogue clearly enough even in a crowded train. The bundled handsfree kit is not really up to par though and you should consider buying a better set of earphones, at least. The X5 doesn’t come with bundled support for XviD and DivX codecs, so you’ll have to go with Moboplayer or RockPlayer for additional file support. 720p files played without a hitch and watching videos on the 3.8-inch display with the resolution that it supports was nothing to complain about.
Connectivity
The IDEOS X5 is well equipped for connectivity with 3G, EDGE, Wi-Fi. I couldn’t find a Wi-Fi hot spot option, which was quite strange, but given that it’s FroYo, all I had to do was download a third party software. Other connectivity settings included USB tethering, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and USB 2.0.  Although, Huawei hasn’t included any GPS software with the device the X5 does have a GPS module, which can be used with Google Maps. All of Google’s corresponding location based services – Latitude, navigation and Places are on board. Google Earth is also thrown in for good measure.

Full web experience

Huawei has also included ‘Shopper’, which is a Google app that functions just like Goggles. It captures bar code data or images of products, CD cover art etc. and provides all kinds of details on the same including location details for purchase. It also incorporates Google’s Voice Search feature. Google talk is also provisioned for. Along with the native browser, Layar, the augmented reality browser is also thrown in. With Flash 10.3 support the mobile web is a much better experience. HiSpace is Huawei’s own version of the App market with a few choice apps selected that would possibly be good for the X5.

Misc. Features
Some of the extras, aside from Android basics like the clock with an alarm function, a file manager, calendar that syncs with Google etc. include – Aldkio for eBooks, Documents to Go, RichPad and notepad (either could be considered redundant) and Voice dialer are included. There’s not much else worth mentioning.

Google shopper for shopoholics

Camera
The 5 megapixel camera is nothing to write home about and is, simply put, quite average. For some reason images and even just viewing subjects appear with a sort of purplish hue. Settings include – macro, white balance, a few scene modes and geotagging. The X5 can also record video in 720p, which is really not the most focused of all mobile phone video capture.
Image quality is also a bit unfocused and grainy for a 5 MP camera suffice to say, the X5’s camera is not its biggest asset.

Battery
With its 1500mAh battery, the IDEOS X5 can provide you with just a little over a day and a half of usage that would include a little bit of social networking, email access, music, calls and messages. Stand-alone talk time averaged in at about 4 hours and around 35 minutes, which is not too bad.

Simple and functional UI

The Bottom Line
The price tag on the Huawei IDEOS X5 is Rs. 15,000. It works out to be just a little steep, but manages to offer quite a bit of functionality for the price. Although, in this range, I would have expected a better camera and DivX and XviD codec support as well as a better set of earphones. However, as is the IDEOS X5 did manage to fulfill most other requirements satisfactorily, and if your budget is somewhere in this range, then this handset is a worthy consideration.

Sony's S1 and S2 Tablets Featured in a New Teaser Video

Looks like Sony is leaving nothing to chance with their upcoming tablets and have released a first in a series of videos for the S1 and S2 tablets. The first video tagged “The First Impression” is a little misleading, since we can’t really get a good look at the tablets themselves. The video is beautifully done though with the whole domino effect going on. I really like the way they’ve used the lighting and placement of power lines and trees to create a cool shadow effect. Towards the end you’ll notice both the tablets running Honeycomb but that’s about it. We’ve covered the announcement of the S1 and S2, back in April itself in depth, so you can take a look here for more information. Most likely, the features and specifications shouldn’t change much, but we’ll know soon enough. For now, enjoy the video.

REVIEWS / TABLETS / CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY Creative ZiiO 7-Inch: Not Really a 'Tablet'

When it comes to multimedia products Creative is one of the oldest companies that have been churning out competitive products starting off with PC peripherals like speakers and then branching out into components, media players and now tablets. In order to keep up with the public demand to stay current, it’s only natural for any company to try their hand at what’s currently trending in the market. Creative have launched two tablets under the ZiiO branding, a 7-incher and a 10-incher. Today, we’ll be reviewing the former that’s available in two memory capacities - 8GB and 16GB.

Looking good

Design
The ZiiO comes well packaged with all the basic accessories including a handy travel case. The 7-incher is only available in white so you might want to keep it in the case if that’s not your color. It's fairly lightweight at 415g and built well so it feels sturdy. Most of the ports are placed on the top which include the power button, 3.5mm headphone jack, mini HDMI (cable not included) and a mini-USB port. The volume rocker button is on the right while the micro-SD memory card slot is on the left. There were some issues with the card slot on our unit though, everytime a mciro SD card (2GB, 4GB, 8GB) was inserted, the tablet would stop responding and behave erratically. Creative also includes a thin-pin power adapter for charging although you can charge it via USB as well. The usual sets of touch sensitive shortcut buttons on the front similar to many Android based tablets and phones are located just under the display. The 7" screen sports a resolution of 480x800 pixels and is 13.7mm thick.

Huawei Launches the Ideos X5, X2 and Chat in India

More Android smartphones underway! Just a few hours back, we told you that Spice had brought the Mi-410 to compete in the mid-range smartphone segment and now, Huawei has brought the Ideos X5, X2 and the Ideos Chat to India. While the X2 and Chat will rather come in the entry-level Android smartphone category, the X5 will be competing in the mid-range market.

Any more Ideos for budget smartphones?

The Ideos X5 and X2 run on Android 2.2 aka FroYo whereas the Chat runs on Éclair which is Android 2.1. Let’s quickly take a look at the specifications of all three smartphones, starting with the Ideos Chat which has a QWERTY keyboard:

• 2.6-inch touchscreen
• 3G, Wi-Fi
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• 3.15 megapixel camera with LED Flash
• FM Radio
• 3.5 mm audio jack

The Ideos X2 has features like SNS integration and all the standard Google apps like Gmail, Maps, YouTube preloaded on the smartphone. It has the following specifications:

• 3.2-inch touchscreen
• 3G, Wi-Fi
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• 3.15 megapixel camera
• FM Radio
• 3.5 mm audio jack

Finally the Ideos X5 is the smartest of the lot in terms of specifications and price, as well. The smartphone is powered by an 800 MHz processor and with the following specs:

• 3.8 inch capacitive multi-touch display at 800 x 480
• 3G, Wi-Fi with Hotspot support
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, auto-focus and 720p video recording
• FM Radio
• 3.5 mm audio jack

The Ideos X5 is priced at Rs. 14,999 whereas the X2 and Chat will come for Rs. 8,999 and Rs. 8,199 respectively.

via AndroidOS.in

Umeox Unveils Android-Based Apollo - Runs on Solar Power

You’re going to like this if you’re an environment-loving, don’t-cut-down-trees person. Even if you’re not, it’s still a neat way of conserving some electricity (and costs). Umeox had unveiled a solar-powered smartphone at the MWC in Barcelona and the good news is it runs on Android.

Heat up with the sun...

The Apollo runs on Android 2.2 Froyo, has a Mediatek chipset and a 512 MB RAM. The other specifications, which aren’t the best but should still be noted nevertheless, are as follows:

3.2-inch Capacitive Touchscreen with 320 x 480 pixel resolution EDGE Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP 3 Megapixel camera 1 GB internal memory expandable up to 32 GB FM Radio 3.5 mm audio jack

The solar-powered battery needs about 2 and a half hours of loving from the sun for your daily usage but if you’re completely drained out, it’ll take about 17 hours of sunlight. So it’s advisable that you don’t run out of juice completely. 

So if you’re working with an NGO where you’re working in a village without any decent electricity supply, this seems to be a pretty good smartphone.

Rugged and yet pleasantly colorful

The Apollo smartphone should be launching sometime in May in India and other Asian countries. The price is supposed to hover around $100 (approx Rs. 4,500) which looks to be quite right, but we’ll let you know for sure once we get our hands on the Apollo