Mio Spirit 695 LM satnav review
These be tough times for satnav makers when, for under £100, you can pick up a good 4in smartphone like the Huawei Ascend G300 which comes with Google’s ever-evolving and improving free navigation, and even entry-level eight grand motors, like VW’s new Up!, feature low-cost optional navigation packages. To compete satnav makers …
Nokia Asha 311 budget smartphone review
Nokia’s smartphone sales may be in the toilet at the moment but it still flogs a fair number of handsets under the Asha brand of feature phones. Newest to the ranks is the Asha 311 which looks and behaves a bit like a smartphone but has a far lower purchase price – around £100 unlocked and SIM-free.
Nokia Asha 311 budget …
Samsung Galaxy Beam Android projector phone review
Samsung's first Galaxy Beam, the GT-i8520, was a tremendously thick, heavy and expensive handset that very few bought. Having had a rethink, the company is now trying the whole smartphone-with-a-projector idea again with the GT-i8530. Essentially, this handset amounts to a Galaxy Advance S with a Digital Light Processing …
Ten apps to install on your Nexus 7 first
Once you’ve prised your Nexus 7 out of the box, watched your free copy of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (surely "binned it immediately" - Ed) and spent a few hours playing Dead Trigger the time is ripe to start thinking about the first third-party apps that will help you really get the most from your shiny new piece of Google …
Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 64GB Android tablet review
When it comes to tablets, it seems Asus is on a bit of a roll. In my estimation, its Transformer Pad is the best value 10-incher on the market and, lest we forget the company makes the altogether excellent Nexus 7 for Google. There is no sign of Asus resting on its laurels either, if its latest Transformer device is anything to …
Ten Android games
Not everyone will agree with me that the Nexus 7 tablet is nigh on perfect but I can't imagine anyone seriously questioning its ability as a gaming machine. With a quad-core CPU and a 720p IPS screen, we're off to a good start. It's also the perfect size and weight to hold in both hands but still give your thumbs free range to …
Huawei Ascend P1 Android review
Huawei’s entry level Ascend G300 smartphone has already been favourably reviewed in these pages and the eagerly awaited Ascend D quad is only a few months away. Between those two devices sits the new Ascend P1 – a handset aimed not at the impecunious or the power-mad but at Joe Average. Evidently, it’s a phone designed to steal …
Acer Iconia Tab A510 10in Android review
In my view, the 16GB Google Nexus 7 is pretty much the ideal Android tablet, but if that form factor is too small for you, then you might be interested in what Acer has cooked up lately. Say hello then to the Iconia Tab A510. Targeted at those who want a quad-core machine, it offers a 10.1in screen, 32GB of storage and for a …
Sony Xperia Go waterproof Android phone review
The arrival of the Nexus 7 has given me cause to reconsider my next phone purchase. Do I need a 4.6in superphone now I have a 7in Tegra 3 tablet? Surely a small, rugged handset with good battery life, a decent dual-core CPU and plenty of storage for apps would make more sense. An outright purchase price of around £200 would be …
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean review
Only eight months have passed since I took a shufti at Ice Cream Sandwich, back then it was the new version 4.0 of the Android operating system for mobile devices. A few days ago, my Asus Google Nexus 7 tablet landed on the doormat. It's preinstalled with Jelly Bean, the ICS replacement and lends itself to poking with the …
LG Optimus 4X HD quad-core Android phone review
I was never much of a fan of LG’s Android phones, they struck me as rather ordinary and frequently hampered by an unhealthy obsession with 3D. But suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere South Korea’s other phone maker has delivered an absolute blinder. Between you and me, this may prove to be the best Android handset of 2012.
LG …
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1
Judging by the lawsuits flying around, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been the only Android tablet to seriously worry Apple. Quite why is a mystery, because it has sold in nothing like the numbers of the iPad. Will the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 prove more of a threat by being cheaper rather than better?
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Take …
Panasonic Eluga DL1 waterproof Android
Over the course of the last decade Panasonic all but vanished from the European consumer mobile phone market but it’s back with a bang with the Eluga - an acronym of ‘elegant user-oriented gateway’. Or at least back with a loud thump - the bang is really the Eluga Power, a 5in 720p Qualcomm Krait-powered beast due later this …
Orange San Diego Intel-based Android phone
If you own a smartphone then you are almost certainly using an ARM CPU. That’s good for ARM and its licensees but bad for Intel, as it wants a piece of the vast mobile chip market. Cue the San Diego, a retail version of Intel’s own Gigabyte-built smartphone reference platform built around a hyper-threading 1.6GHz Z2460 Atom …
Sony SmartWatch Android remote
Sony has tried this remote phone manager and viewer malarkey before with its LiveView that first appeared almost two years ago. The idea was sound but the execution was somewhat undermined by the fact it just didn’t work. Evidently, Sony thinks it’s time for another crack at this concept with the SmartWatch
Sony SmartWatch …
FolderSync
When Microsoft recently offered users 25GB of free SkyDrive storage it highlighted the lack of a good Android app to take advantage of it. Enter FolderSync, which lets you synchronise your Android folders with SkyDrive and just about every other cloud storage supplier.
FolderSync supports most of the popular commercial cloud …
Huawei Ascend G300 budget Android
As an example of how much the budget smartphone has come on over the last 12 months you need look no further than Huawei's G300, which at £100 pre-paid is Vodafone’s latest entry-level Android smartphone.
Huawei Ascend G300 Android smartphone Cost conscious: Huawei's Ascend G300
What do you get for your 100 spondulicks? A 480 …
Sony Xperia P mid-range Android
Little brother to the Xperia S, the Xperia P is the second Sony Ericsson handset to arrive in the UK. The company's flagship S model prompted a slightly lukewarm response when launched but the Xperia S sets its sights lower as a mid-range handset on a par with the Samsung Galaxy S Advance and HTC One V.
Sony Xperia P Android …
Songkick Concerts
I’ve been waiting for Songkick to land on the deck of the USS Android ever since it was released for iOS a year ago. Now it has and it’s every bit as good as I was hoping for.
Simplicity itself to use, once installed Songkick scans your music library as well as your Last.fm, Pandora and Spotify feeds and then creates a …
Samsung Galaxy S Advance mid-range Android
Things sometimes change fast. Take the HMS Lord Nelson, a fine battleship when laid down in 1905 but almost instantly rendered obsolete by HMS Dreadnought, laid down just a few months later.
Or take HTC’s One V. A 3.7in single-core LCD Android phone now up against a dual-core 4in OLED-screen device for the same contract price of …
Asus Transformer Pad TF300
It’s no secret that I like the Asus Transformer Prime a lot. Still, £500 is a lot for a tablet even if it does go like the clappers, is made of aluminium and has a cracking keyboard dock with a built-in extra battery.
Asus Transformer Pad Can you tell Pad from Prime at a glance? No
Asus has now addressed that issue by …
Volkswagen Up!
They say good things come in small packages, and at only 3.5m long Volkswagen’s new city car is certainly small. To put that into context it is 28.5cm shorter than the unloved Fox it replaces and only 53.5cm longer than the original Mini.
Volkswagen Up VW's done a good job with the styling
There’s no denying VW has done a …
UEFA Euro 2012
Assuming you haven’t been on another planet for the last few months you'll be aware that soccer's 2012 European Championships kicked off in Warsaw on Friday. Sixteen teams, 31 matches and, I predict, the usual post-mortem in regards to England’s woeful performance.
Not that I can gloat if England does crash out at the first …
Read It Later was one of the better Android apps for archiving web content to read at a later date and it has just been given a full makeover, a new name and a welcome price reduction. It'll now cost you absolutely nothing.
The principle behind Pocket couldn’t be simpler: if you find something you like on the web just open the …
Vauxhall Ampera hybrid e-car
Only the most ardent electric-vehicle advocate would argue that the current state of battery technology and absence of recharging infrastructure isn’t an impediment to the widespread adoption of the e-car.
On paper, the new Vauxhall Ampera – the European version of the Chevrolet Volt – has the perfect answer to this problem: it …
HTC One V Android smartphone
In the beginning was the Hero and then came the Legend, and now the Legend has sired the One V. Yes, the V is the runt of the One litter but its forebears had a solid following and, as a one-time Hero owner, I’m hoping the bloodline is in good health.
HTC One V Android smartphone Another one: HTC's One V
With the One V, HTC’s …
Ten... Mi-Fi HSPA 3G wireless mini-routers
Reg Hardware Mobile Broadband Week
If you want cellular data connectivity when you're out and about you can cough up for a laptop or tablet with a Sim card slot, but they are hardly cheap. Or you can tether your phone if your telco lets you.
Another alternative is a portable router. These can be bought with data contracts …
Evernote
As a long-time user of Catch Notes it was going to take something quite impressive to get me to jump ship to arch-rival Evernote but a recent update and integration with the latest versions of HTC's Sense have persuaded me to do so.
The upgrade has brought a new Ice Cream Sandwich-esque design to the app. There’s still an awful …
UK mobile broadband carriers compared
Reg Hardware Mobile Broadband Week
Two years ago, I plugged a selection of 3G dongles into my laptop at various locations to see what the coverage and speed offered by the major mobile networks was like. You can see the results here, but with HSPA being introduced at ever higher upload and download speeds, it's time to …
IMDb
If you're a fan of the movies then this app should be right up your aisle. Not only can IMDb tell you just about everything you could ever wish to know about just about every film ever made, but it has all the information you need to plan your movie-going night out too.
Film opening dates, show times, the location and contact …
Hyundai Veloster coupé
Tradition dictates that cars look the same from the left as the right. Not Hyundai’s new hatchback coupé, though. It has a rear door on the passenger's side but not on the driver’s. Clever idea or gimmick? More to the point, will it lure buyers away from the the obvious alternatives, the VW Scirocco and Vauxhall Astra GTC?
From …
National Rail Enquiries
I should use local trains more often, but there are several reasons why I don’t. One is I’ve no idea where most of my local stations are, let alone the ones dotted further afield around Manchester. Secondly, I can’t be bothered picking up timetables.
The new National Rail Enquiries app solves both these problems and could herald …
Textgram
Textgram is another app designed to differentiate your digital self from the masses, in this case by letting you send graphically enhanced missives as MMS messages, or as pictures to your social network.
Maybe it’s the use of 'gram' in the name, but Textgram has already racked up between 100,000 and 500,000 downloads since its …
Google Currents
When Google’s Currents news and magazine reader was released late last year, I thought it one of the most visually attractive apps ever to come out of Mountain View.
Looks aside, though, there was a lot wrong with it, not least the time it took to sync. A recent update claims to have fixed that and added a host of new features …
Ten... Satnavs to suit all budgets
The squeeze is on for satnav makers stuck between the rock of smartphone navigation apps and the hard place of the built-in systems that are finding their way into ever cheaper showroom models. Of course, there are still a heck of a lot of cars on the road that don’t have built-in navigation and while using your phone is fine …
HTC One S Android smartphone
Playing Tonto to the One X’s Lone Ranger in HTC’s new model line-up is the One S. I’ll get to Silver, the One V, when it arrives in a few weeks. For now though, we can see if HTC’s much vaunted One series makes sense from a technical, as well as a marketing perspective.
HTC One S Android smartphone Tonto's talker: HTC's One S …
At last, the much vaunted iPhone picture blogging app has arrived on Android and, judging by the one million downloads it saw on the day of release, it’s been eagerly awaited.
For the uninitiated, Instagram is a Twitter-like affair but with a picture taking the place of the 140 characters. You take a snap, jazz it up with some …
TED
TED - or Technology, Entertainment and Design - is a series of conferences run by a private not-for-profit organisation called the Sapling Foundation. In its own words, it was formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading".
So what we have here then is a collection of 1200-odd - with more being added each week - video lectures …
Renault Twizy budget e-car
Some vehicles are more suited to certain geographical locales than others. Case in point: Renault's new two-seater electric runabout may not make much sense in central Manchester on a cold, dark, drizzly December evening.
On the other hand, on a sunny afternoon on a Mediterranean island it could be right at home. Lucky, then, …
HTC One X Android smartphone
HTC messed up in 2011 by releasing too many similar handsets. There was nothing actually wrong with phones likes the Sensation, Sensation XL, Sensation XE or Incredible S but equally none of them had me itching to upgrade my Desire HD ahead of schedule.
HTC One X quad-core Android smartphone The X factor: HTC's One X
Now HTC …
Runtastic Push Up
Those of you with six-packs, biceps of iron and a physique from a eugenicist’s wet dream can stop reading now. For the rest of us, who have been planning to “get fit” next week, next month or next year, Runtastic’s Push Up app may be just what’s needed to whet our blunted purpose.
The idea behind this app - like all the best …
Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 Android media player
I reviewed Samsung’s first Android media player just over a year ago and frankly thought it was awful. I'm sure I wasn't alone. Undaunted, Samsung tried again with a new device packing a larger screen, faster CPU and bigger battery but only costing £40 more.
Samsung YP-G70CW Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 Second listen: Samsung's Galaxy S …
Toshiba AT200 Excite
At only 7.7mm thick, Toshiba boasts that its new tablet is the slimmest yet and it’s a claim I can’t argue with either. Dubbed the Excite in the US and the rather less exciting AT200 elsewhere, Tosh's slim slab is 0.9mm thinner than the previous title holder, the Samsung Galaxy 10.1. While the Apple iPad 2 seems positively …
Dijit
It’s two-for-one this week as I take a look at the Dijit remote control app and Griffin Technologies' Beacon accessory, which connects to your phone over Bluetooth and then operates your home entertainment kit.
Dijit Android app screenshot Dijit Android app screenshot Devices get basic layouts, such as this one for a Sky+ box …
N7Player
It’s not often that I come across an application that displaces a default choice on my phone within minutes of me downloading it, but the N7Player music player is just one such. I think it’s brilliant.
Before I go on, let me make one thing clear: I’m an obsessive about album cover art. I go to great, some would say unhealthy …
Viewsonic Viewpad 10e tablet
‘Budget tablet’ is a phrase that tends to crop up in reviews that only ever reach one conclusion: the product is pretty awful. But the new Viewsonic Viewpad 10e may be the exception that proves the rule, because this £200 Argos-exclusive ain’t half bad.
Viewsonic Viewpad 10e Android tablet Viewsonic's Viewpad 10e adopts the …
Panasonic CF-53 Toughbook 14in rugged laptop
Skinny Ultrabooks may be getting all the press at the moment but what it you want a laptop that will withstand the knocks, drops and tribulations of use on the road and in the great outdoors rather than the board-room? Panasonic’s semi-rugged CF-53 Toughbook may be just the ticket.
Panasonic CF-53 Toughbook rugged laptop Ready …
TuneIn Radio Pro
I stumbled across TuneIn while reviewing the Archos 35 Home Connect - it’s preinstalled as that device’s main radio portal - and since that chance encounter it has ended up on all my Android devices.
TuneIn allegedly offers over 50,000 internet radio stations and 1.2m on-demand programmes. I’m not about to count them to see if …
Ten... in-car gadgets and accessories
Reg Hardware Car Week
With so much tech being built into the even the most mundane of motors, writing round-ups of car gadgets isn’t as easy as it used to be. For this list, the brief was even more exacting: only include kit that if you were given one for Christmas it wouldn’t be on eBay come Boxing Day.
There’s a lot here to …
Ten... stars of the Geneva Motor Show
Reg Hardware Car Week
The annual automotive get-together on the shores of Lake Geneva is arguably now the premier annual European car show. With auto makers having a better time of the current economic situation than many other manufacturing concerns, there was a definite feeling of optimism about the halls of the 82nd Geneva …
