Smartphone review: Motorola Milestone XT with HDMI Output

Decent camera, but laggy performance

Smartphone review: Motorola Milestone XT

by May Chua
05:55 AM Jul 16, 2010

MOTOROLA has launched yet another Android phone, and what sets this apart from the rest of the pack is the inclusion of an HDMI output.

Using an HDMI cable, you can easily connect the Motorola Milestone XT to a high-definition (HD) television to play your multimedia files. It worked like a charm when I tried it, delivering smooth playback.

The phone looks sleek, with a trim 10.9mm profile and shiny metal frame around its front. Weighing 139g, it feels nice and solid. The 3.7-inch display is sharp, making Web surfing enjoyable.

The Android 2.1 device runs on a 550MHz Cortex A8 processor, and is more laggy than the 1GHz-powered handsets I'm used to. The task manager and messages take longer than usual to load when several applications are running in the background.

The pre-installed task manager, however, is a useful feature for a multitasking platform like Android, especially since there's no quit function for many apps.

Moto Phone Portal - a Web browser that lets you access data like contacts, SMSes and media files in the phone from your computer through a USB or WiFi connection - also deserves a thumbs-up.

The 8-megapixel camera in the XT takes decent pictures. I like the fact that it allows you to select an area to focus on using the touchscreen, and that you get seven scenes to choose from. But I tend to get grainy pictures in low-light environments where using the (blindingly bright) xenon flash results in overexposure. The night mode helps, but not always.

The four touch-sensitive buttons below the display sometimes get in the way of photo-taking. I kept activating the Home or Back buttons just as I'd finished framing the picture. Video clips recorded are sharp enough, though the camera has problems focusing when it comes to close-up shots.

Battery life is reasonable, lasting about 17 hours with push mail, WiFi and Bluetooth on. The Motorola Milestone XT ($988, without contract) comes with an 8GB microSD card, and is sold exclusively from StarHub. May Chua

http://www.todayonline.com/Tech/Techreviews/EDC100716-0000048/Decent-camera,-but-laggy-performance

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Smartphone Review: Samsung Galaxy S

Shooting to a promising start

THE Samsung Galaxy S looks like the Apple iPhone. It has a curved back, a silver lining around the screen, and rounded squares framing each icon on the app pages.

But this Android 2.1 device can hold its own against the competition.

For starters, it's fast. The capacitive display is very responsive, and apps launch with minimal delay. Though there's a slight lag when loading photos, it still feels zippier than some other Android phones running on a 1GHz processor. At 9.9mm and 119g, the Galaxy S feels really light, too.

Though its huge four-inch screen means you need big hands to be able to hold it comfortably and deep pockets to tug it away snugly, it does improve the typing and web-surfing experience. The Super AMOLED display is gorgeous - sharper and brighter than other screens I have encountered.

Besides the roomy 16GB internal memory, most of the other specs for the Galaxy are standard smartphone fare - a 5-megapixel autofocus camera that can capture high-definition 720p videos and a microSD card slot (supports up to 32GB).

Samsung has made an effort in customising the Android OS for the Galaxy S. Besides the usual tweaks to the onscreen keyboard and adding icons for various connectivity options to turn them on and off easily, it has included things like the Daily Briefing feature. This compiles weather information from AccuWeather.com, AP Mobile news, stocks from Yahoo! Finance and the phone calendar. You can add a widget to one of the seven home screens to see all these updates at a glance. But the lack of customisation is disappointing - you cannot change or add any other service provider for these information.

Your communication with each person via various channels such as Facebook, email and SMS, as well as their social media updates, are integrated in the phonebook. A useful feature is the built-in Swype text input service, which allows you to glide your fingers across the keyboard instead of typing. It made messaging on the onscreen keyboard more fun and less frustrating.

One gripe about this handset is that the proximity sensor doesn't seem to work very well - there are buttons like "mute" onscreen when a call is in progress, and I have accidentally ended or muted a conversation more than once.

The phone comes preloaded with quite a few apps. Besides the usual Google ones like YouTube and Gmail, there is ThinkFree for editing and viewing Microsoft Office documents, a pretty ebook app called Aldiko and a file manager, among others.

The Galaxy's battery life fared well in tests - it lasted right about 15 hours when I had WiFi and Bluetooth on, music playing on loop, push mail and a Twitter client updating feeds in the background. The phone had enough juice to keep going for an impressive 24 hours with normal use - I left the WiFi on, surfed the web and posted status updates on social networks, on top of the usual calling and messaging.

The Samsung Galaxy S is available exclusively from SingTel at $0 to $768 with contract, depending on the type of plan. MAY CHUA


Smartphone Review: Samsung Galaxy S
by May Chua
05:55 AM Jul 02, 2010

http://www.todayonline.com/Tech/Techreviews/EDC100702-0000046/Shooting-to-a-promising-start

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