Here are five of the best Android Smartphones for 2011:

1. Samsung Galaxy S II

This smartphone is really your dream of innovative technology come true. It not only claims to be the next generation smartphone, but it really is. It has a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen for better readability and a slimmer design. Not only that, but its dual core processor is unprecedented.

Samsung Galaxy S II

2. HTC Sensation

It comes with qHD display which is crystal clear. It has a Hi-Fi audio technology which is in competence with Nokia N8. It has HTC’s unsurpassable Android friendly HTC Sense User Interface that goes well with Android platform. Thus, it is user-friendly and is a multimedia super phone.

HTC Sensation

3. Droid 2 Global

It is a total business smartphone that you have been always looking for. It has a Quad band GSM that has sufficient e-mail sending technology. It allows you to tie up with Verizon Wireless in the United States for calls from around the world. It has superfast 1.2 GHz processor and enhanced security.

Droid 2 Global

4. Motorola ATRIX 4G

It has some of the best features like web top and finger print technology for accessing confidential folders and files that beat any hackers. You can get entertained by watching full length movies and load web pages faster than possible ever before.

Motorola ATRIX 4G

5. LG Optimus 2X

It has a dual core processor backed by Android 2.2 (FROYO) and gives faster performance. It is extremely user friendly and has fast web browsing. It comes with 1080p HD video recording technology with content mirroring through HDMI interface. It is one of the best gaming smartphones with gaming console with NVIDIA graphical processor.

LG Optimus 2X

According to a tweet by the official Swype twitter account, they say that Swype will not be available on Ice Cream Sandwich for now. The lack of support is caused by problems related to the way ICS reports screen resolution.

And since resolution is an important factor for a keyboard, it explains why the people at Swype are facing issues. They said that they’re working to make Swype work on ICS as well but no estimated date of completion has been given and till then ICS users will have to do without Swype.

Google may be working on a voice-recognition assistant for Android under the codename of Majel, according to an unconfirmed report.

AndroidandMe.com claims the company plans to expand its existing Google Voice Actions, already available on most Android phones, by adding a natural language processing feature.

Voice Actions allows users to give commands by saying keywords such as “send text to. But the updated software could allow it to respond to commands by using more natural verbiage, similar to Siri.

Majel is a reference to the female voice of the computer on board the ship in Star Trek. Mashable reached out to Google for comment, but the company declined to address the matter.

We expect Google will use Majel for search queries at first, and will incorporate other commands such as controlling phone and app actions down the line. Majel could be released before the end of the year, but more likely in the next few months, according to AndroidandMe.

Google recently announced that it acquired a company called Clever Sense, the maker of the app Alfred, which serves as a digital personal assistant. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Alfred Similar to Siri, he does search the Internet and provide users with recommendations from restaurant suggestions to bar and nightlife options. Alfred also learns user preferences and tastes over time to make more targeted recommendations.

Google could be planning to pair Majel with Alfred’s “learning” technology — though that’s still speculation at this point.

The current Google flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus by Samsung, is the first device to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The super large, super high-resolution display on the Galaxy Nexus is a dream to look at, and the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system gives users something very new and interesting to work with. Here is the in-depth review of this super smartphone.

Hardware

The Nexus itself is fairly big. With dimensions of 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9mm, it’s marginally bigger than Samsung’s other flagship handset, the Galaxy S2. It’s also a little bit heavier at 135g compared to the latter’s 116g. Not that it feels larger although you can tell you are not using an iPhone 4S. The rear takes its design cues from the S2 with a snap on cover that feels slightly coarse to give a good grip. It has both Google and Samsung branding on. Ridiculously, in this flagship Google handset which is so set up as a media device, has been crippled by having no expandable memory. Words fail us. And they may fail you when you realise that 16GB internal storage is your lot. It has a CPU of Dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A9, PowerVR SGX540 GPU along with 1 GB of RAM. It’s available in Black colour only. It is available in 16 and 32GB of storage with no external micro SD option in it.

Display

The phone has a 4.65-inches with a resolution of 720 x 1280, giving a ppi of 316. It really is super sharp. We would have expected nothing less with Samsung’s mobile displays among the best out there but it’s cracking for internet and video. But it’s bright, it’s beautiful, the viewing angles are as close to 180 degrees as you can get. It’s simply a great display, and the delicate curve given to the glass adds an extra touch of class.

Software

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the world’s first phone to run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and comes with full of top end tech, including a huge but still massively high resolution screen.  The Galaxy Nexus is like nothing you’ll have seen before from Android. It is a complete redesign and although some bits are the same as they were, on the whole, even long-term Android users like us had to spend a few moments figuring out where things now are. Three soft keys are now provided within the OS at the bottom of the screen: back, home and multitasking. The beauty here is that when they’re not needed, the OS disposes of them and gives you more screen space to enjoy your pleasures. Icons have been refreshed and look sharper and clearer too… overall, it’s a much more polished experience to take on the gloss of Windows Phone and iOS. Like the rest of the UI, Contacts has been rewritten and we are massive fans of the new look. The older one was looking really dated and the black colour scheme was hardly imaginative. The new People app is light (white and blue) and feels so much more elegant. Texting has been redesigned to fit in with the whole look of Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s fairly basic. White background, black headers, but it does the job well. It’s very much separate from the other messaging forms – there is no BlackBerry-style unified inbox here.

Camera And Multimedia

The only thing in Galaxy Nexus which is not up to the currently available standards, is it’s camera, which clocks in at 5MP. It’s not the most adventurous of phone camera specs considering the iPhone 4, which launched almost 18 months ago, came with that. Indeed, the Samsung Galaxy S2 has been out since early summer, and that rocks 8MP.

The good thing in that camera is that it takes photos unbelievably quickly. You tap the capture button on screen and before you can remove your finger, the photo is taken and saved. It really is that fast. There is also an inbuilt panoramic mode that you will really enjoy using but don’t do it in a hurry. Even when you’ve finished, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has to stitch the photos together. And it will take almost 20 seconds to do this.

Video on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is captured in glorious 1080p Full HD and looks fantastic on that screen. It’s not amazing when transferred back to a computer, but it’s no so bad that you’ll want to throw the handset under a bus.

The size of the Galaxy Nexus, the quality of its screen and its weight make this an ideal PMP and you will really enjoy using it as such. It’s a real shame, however, that you are stuck with a finite amount of storage as it makes you really selective about what music and videos you load on in case you run out of space.

Watching movies is a more than pleasant affair on the Galaxy Nexus. It is a basic player in that when you start playing one of your flicks, there aren’t dozens of options that you can wade through, tweaking this and tweaking that.

Internet and Connectivity

The phone runs on the latest Google OS, and compared to the internet experiences of both Gingerbread and Honeycomb, we were expecting perfection. But there was one huge omission on our review handset. Flash. Yes, you read that correctly. Flash is NOT on there.

The browser is fantastic and aside from the (presumably temporary) lack of Flash, we had no complaints. However, we appreciate that Android’s browser is not necessarily to everybody’s taste and if this is the case, you can easily download a third party one from the Market.

For connections, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is pretty future-proof. Not only are the staples such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HSPDA and GPS all built in, we also have the benefits of DLNA and NFC technology, which also incorporates Android Beam.

You can expect blazing fast speeds over Wi-Fi and HSDPA, so internet surfing really is a breeze. Ice Cream Sandwich also provides you with a new data monitor to track how much you get through, which is particularly handy on a data-hungry operating system like Android.

Wi-Fi is quick to set up, and Wi-Fi direct is also supported, so you can bypass the hotspot. We weren’t impressed with the wireless internet signal strength, though. Samsung really needs to sort out the components it uses, since we’ve noticed that on both the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S2, even when you’re practically sitting on the router, it’s still not 100%.

Detailed Specification

• 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• 3G Network HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100
• SIZE 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9 mm
• Weight 135 g
• DISPLAY Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
•                     720 x 1280 pixels, 4.65 inches (~316 ppi pixel density)

• - Oleophobic coating
• - Multi-touch input method
• - Touch-sensitive controls
• Internal  Memory 16/32GB storage, 1 GB RAM
• Card slot No
• GPRS Yes
• EDGE Yes
• 3G HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps; LTE
• WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
• NFC Yes
• USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB

• CAMERA 5 MP, 2592×1936 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, Geo-tagging, touch-focus, face detection
• Video 1080p@30fps
• Secondary Yes, 1.3 MP

• OS Android OS, v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
• CPU 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, Cortex-A9
• GPU PowerVR SGX540
• Messaging SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, RSS
• Browser HTML, Adobe Flash
• Radio No

• Colors Black
• GPS Yes, with A-GPS support

• Java Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
• Other Features
• - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
  - MP4/H.264/H.263 player
  - MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3 player
  - Organizer
  - Image/video editor
  - Document viewer
  - Google Search, Maps, Gmail,
  YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa integration
  - Voice memo/dial/commands
  - Predictive text input
• BATTERY Standard battery, Li-Ion 1750 mAh
• Stand-by Up to 290 h (2G) / Up to 270 h (3G)
• Talk time Up to 17 h 40 min (2G) / Up to 8 h 20 min (3G)

By Roman Butt

HTC has gone from being an unknown manufacturer for bigger brands to become a leading Android smartphones. The Desire was a landmark phone in the fight against the iPhone, but now things have moved up a level. Today, with dominant market-share and increasingly polished handsets, the battle is between Droids. Into the fray drops the HTC Sensation XE, the new dual-core flagship smartphone from HTC. It’s certainly the best-spec’d HTC to date. We’ll review this super smartphone hereunder.

Hardware

A typical HTC phone, having dimensions of 4.96 x 2.57 x 0.44 inches and 5.42oz, and combining a unibody metal chassis with soft-touch plastic inserts, the Sensation is slightly longer, slightly deeper, slightly narrower and a fair bit heavier as compared to its rival Galaxy S2.

A unique feature of Sensation is the aluminum frame that HTC has wrapped around the sides, back, and even a small portion of the Sensation’s front. It’s rigid, shaped from a single slab of metal, and makes this a sturdy and creak-free handset. A pair of soft-touch plastic inserts take up a third of the rear cover each, with the upper one protruding a little bit in front of the camera lens and LEDs, lending them an extra bit of protection.

It’s CPU boasts on a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, Adreno 220 GPU, Qualcomm MSM 8260 Snapdragon along with 768 MB of RAM. It’s available in Black colour only. It has an internal memory of 4 GB and can have a micro SD up to 32GB.

Display

The HTC Sensation has a qHD (540×960) Super LCD with a Gorilla Glass display, measuring in at 4.3″. It offers greater pixel density than WVGA screens of the same size such as the Samsung Galaxy S II and a longer 16:9 aspect ratio. The glass display is also inclined, with a smooth raise towards the edges. We definitely appreciate the HTC Sensation’s aspect ratio when viewing movie content or using the phone one handed in portrait orientation thanks to it being narrower. The pixel density is also noticeably better when web browsing which is another plus. So while Super AMOLED Plus screens are generally more desirable, the HTC Sensation still looks immense, especially head on offering great brightness with good colour and contrast levels. Unfortunately, viewing angles can be likened to the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, with colours tending to look a bit washed out when tilting the phone to the side, despite a great head on experience.

Software and Sense v3.0 UI

HTC has smacked Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread onto the Sensation, complete it with the latest HTC Sense v3.0 UI. As we saw on the Flyer, the newest Sense brings with it a useful Active Lockscreen with app shortcuts, more 3D effects in the seven-pane homescreen, and various tweaks throughout the UI that smooth over some of Android’s ruffles.

The redrawn UI sits on top of Gingerbread and carries the premium feel from the construction across to the interface. From a design perspective, HTC Sense 3.0 is so considered, elegant and cohesive, that it’s on another level to any custom UI we’ve seen. Each widget now has a silky smooth 3D transition when swiping the homescreen, so the layers of the widget subtly separate. Widgets are pin sharp and there are some really attractive new ones, such as the gallery widget, a huge improvement over the static photo-frame. If you’re liking the idea of renting movies on the fly, the Watch widget, gives you quick access to HTC’s movie rental service. The 7 homescreens are also now on a revolving carousel system, so the last leads straight back to the first, and all with some rather slick SPB like carousel visuals in the process.

The lock screen is also a definite improvement, with a ring in the bottom of the screen and four application icons just above. Drag a shortcut down into the ring and you will unlock your phone straight in that application, or just drag the ring up to unlock where you left off. There are also personalizations you can apply to your lock screen, the most obvious being selecting your shortcut applications, or going further and selecting your lock screen background.

Camera

The camera on the HTC Sensation is an 8MP effort with dual-LED flash and autofocus – pretty much ticking all the boxes on offer aside from a Xenon flash, but then again some comprimises have to be made to keep the width down. The autofocus is a good feature though, and one we’ve seen from the likes of the Desire HD and Desire S in the past, where tapping the screen will alter the focus of the photo. This extends to exposure values as well, meaning that if you’re trying snap something in a darker area, the Sensation will work out the optimum light levels needed.

The HTC Sensation is a device with a stronger focus on video recording than ever before, with 1080p footage possible from the 8MP sensor, thanks to the dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm processor. A video light is on offer to help make shots look that little bit classier and at 30fps the footage we captured is nice and smooth, with no hint of the choppiness affecting the likes of the HTC Desire HD from before.

Multimedia and Beats Audio

There can be no mistake that HTC is pushing the Sensation XE as a media smartphone. The inclusion of the Beats Audio earphones and the fact that Beats Audio is branded on everything to do with the smartphone gives that away.

If you’re not familiar with Beats Audio, it’s a breed of headphones and speakers developed by Dr Dre and a former Geffen records executive.

HTC claims that Beats Audio delivers the music “the way the artist intended” and we agree that the sound quality is infinitely superior. It’s more apparent on some songs than others, though. For example, ‘Hallelujah’ by Alexandra Burke sounded pleasant enough but not incredible, while both ‘Just The Way You Are’ by Bruno Mars and ‘Bright Lights Bigger City’ by Cee Lo Green sounded, frankly, phenomenal.

What Beats Audio appears to do is up the bass level and enhance sounds. During that Cee Lo Green song in particular, sounds were heard prominently that we wouldn’t normally have noticed. So much so that we thought someone was talking to us, and kept taking the buds out to ask “What did you say?”, much to the amusement of our friends.

To see the difference, you can easily turn the Beats Audio software off by pulling down the notification bar and tapping ‘Disable’ when playing.

The technology has been implemented incredibly well. There is a danger that this could have been a fad that was included half-heartedly, but that hasn’t happened, and HTC’s collaboration with Dr Dre really pays dividends here.

As for video playback, with the 16:9 aspect ratio, video fits very well on the screen and HD video plays back without a hitch. It needs to be encoded in MP4 format to play on the native player, though 3rd party apps such as Rockplayer play back other formats smoothly. The device is also comfortable to hold in landscape for extended periods, so is easy to recommend as a PMP.
The gallery is HTC’s standard gridded system, with some cool perks such as wireless network printing as well. Interaction with images is very predictable with pinch to zoom being silky smooth and images rendering instantly while looking great on the screen.

Internet and Connectivity

Web browsing on the HTC Sensation Xe is superb. Thanks to the screen resolution, text is legible and crisp from the page overview, and pinching to zoom is quick and smooth. Pages load up very fast and Flash video plays back smoothly. Text reflows to fit the display, which does stagger the process of zooming slightly. That said, it makes the reading experience more enjoyable.
As far as connectivity goes, you’ve got quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G along with Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA functionality as well as an FM radio.
The GPS was extremely quick, finding our location almost instantaneously on first boot.
HDMI connectivity comes in the form of the MHL port, enabling HD content to be outputted via the microUSB port to a compatible HD TV. With compatible devices, this will simultaneously export visuals and charge your handset, while non-compatible devices will only export visuals.

HSPDA is at an acceptable 14.4Mbps speed, with the upload speed bouncing in at 5.76 Mbps, both of which seem plausible in our tests – plus the lovely option of setting up your own Wi-Fi hotspot if you fancy chewing the battery in heartbeat.

Other features and Apps

HTC Sensation Xe offers various other features and built-in apps:
DLNA, Flashlight, Friend Stream, HTC Hub, Mirror, Music, News, Peep, Polaris, Office, Soundhound, Stocks, Teeter, Watch and Weather etc.

Detailed Specification

• 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• 3G Network HSDPA  900 / 2100
• SIZE 126.1 x 65.4 x 11.3 mm
• Weight 151 g
• DISPLAY S-LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors, 540 x 960 pixels, 4.3 inches

• - Gorilla glass display
• - Multi-touch input method
• - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
• - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
• - Gyro sensor
• - HTC Sense UI
• Internal  Memory 4 GB (1 GB user available), 768 MB RAM
• Card slot microSD, up to 32GB, 8 GB included
• GPRS Up to 80 kbps
• EDGE Up to 236.8 kbps
• 3G HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
• WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
• Infrared port No
• USB microUSB (MHL) v2.0

• CAMERA 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash, Geo-tagging, touch-focus, image stabilization, face detection, instant capture
• Video 1080p@30fps, stereo sound recordin
• Secondary Yes

• OS Android OS, v2.3.4 (Gingerbread)
• CPU 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, Adreno 220 GPU, Qualcomm MSM 8260 Snapdragon
• Messaging SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
• Browser HTML
• Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS

• Colors Black
• GPS Yes, with A-GPS support

• Java Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
• Other Features
• - TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
• - Beats Audio
• - Beats Headset
• - SNS integration
• - Digital compass
• - Google Search, Maps, Gmail
• - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration
• - MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA player
• - XviD/MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
• - Organizer
• - Document viewer
• - Voice memo/dial/commands
• - Predictive text input (T9 Trace)
• BATTERY Standard battery, Li-Ion 1730 mAh
• Stand-by Up to 310 h (2G) / Up to 540 h (3G)
• Talk time Up to 9 h 16 min (2G) / Up to 7h 20 min (3G)

By Roman Butt

There is new entrance in the Sensation line of HTC phones, guys and it has come with Beats Audio as well. The HTC Sensation XL differs from its other peers in the lineup with the huge 4.7 inch LCD display, and the lower hardware specs. HTC made it with a single-core chipset, no memory card slot, and lower screen resolution than the other models.

Hardware

Ignore Android for a moment, and you’re basically looking at the HTC Titan only in white rather than black: the XL and the Windows Phone share the same 4.7-inch WVGA touchscreen, the same 1.5GHz single core MSM8255 processor and 8 mega-pixel camera with 720p HD video recording support. There’s more RAM in the Sensation XL, 768MB versus 512MB but unfortunately the missing memory card slot and miserly 16GB of fixed storage (of which 12.64GB is available to the user). This is highly unimpressive especially when you consider HTC has included Beats Audio functionality and is pushing the handset as a multimedia smartphone.

Display

As for the display, it’s tough to get too excited over WVGA(480 x 800 pixels) resolution, even if the panel itself is large and bright. HTC’s point of view at the Sensation XL’s launch was that its display choice was partly down to supply availability and partly down to cost and then promptly wowed us with the HTC Rezound for the US market, complete with a 720p panel boasting a higher pixel density than the well-esteemed iPhone 4S. In comparison, while the Sensation XL’s Super LCD has vivid colors and solid viewing angles, we couldn’t help but feel short-changed when browsing and reading email and ebooks.

Software

Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread is the order of the day here, though with HTC’s usual UI revamp. HTC Sense 3.5 is carried across from the Rhyme, with its lockscreen shortcuts, colorful widgets that look good on the sizable display, and exclusive apps like HTC Watch along with social networking integration in FriendStream. By now it’s all very familiar, though HTC is careful to buff up the visual gloss every so often.

HTC has been showing off a version of Sense 3.5 with the curved buttons as the bottom traded for two small, unobtrusive round buttons for opening your full apps list or bringing up the phone, but this hasn’t made it into the Sensation XL rather it’s the old style here, which means it matches its Sensation brothers.

One minor but noticeable change on the HTC Sensation XL is that the default weather widget has been scaled back to something smaller than what HTC fans are used to. The old style is still there, though, hidden away in the Personalize menu.

Camera

The Sensation XL comes with an 8-megapixel camera with an f2.2 lens and backside-illuminated sensor for improved low-light performance. There’s a dual-LED flash but only 720p HD video recording, not 1080p like its Sensation and XE, thanks to the limits of the processor. A 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera does video call duty.

As for video, the Sensation XL seems particularly dependent on good lighting, with anything less than daylight leading to dim, murky scenes. The touch focus is useful, but exposure seems to adjust in steps rather than smoothly, as the sensor struggles to catch up. We’ve definitely seen better on other devices, including from HTC’s own stable.

Multimedia and Beats Audio

Media is firmly on HTC’s mind when it comes to the Sensation XL. In fact, with the bigger screen and Beats Audio, we’d say it’s pretty much the XL’s purpose in life.

The most important element is definitely the Beats Audio integration, with the special earphones included in the box.

We should point out that these aren’t the ones you’ll see on HTC’s Sensation XL product page, those are the Beats Solo HDs that come in a limited edition package. Most people will wind up with the deal we had, with the YourBeats in-ear headphones, the same as the Sensation XE, but in silver, red and white.

Internet and Connectivity

Web browsing on the HTC Sensation XL is superb. Thanks to the ultra big screen, text is legible and crisp from the page overview, and pinching to zoom is quick and smooth. Pages load up very fast and Flash video plays back smoothly. Text reflows to fit the display, which does stagger the process of zooming slightly. That said, it makes the reading experience more enjoyable.

As far as connectivity goes, you’ve got quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G along with Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA functionality as well as an FM radio.

HSPDA is at an acceptable 14.4Mbps speed, with the upload speed bouncing in at 5.76 Mbps, both of which seem plausible in our tests plus the lovely option of setting up your own Wi-Fi hotspot if you fancy chewing the battery in heartbeat.

Other features and Apps

Sensation XL offers various other features and built-in apps:
DLNA, Flashlight, Friend Stream, HTC Hub, Mirror, Music, News, Peep, Polaris, Office, Soundhound, Stocks, Teeter, Watch and Weather etc.

Detailed Specification

• 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• 3G Network HSDPA  850/900 / 2100
• SIZE 132.5 x 70.7 x 9.9 mm
• Weight 162.5 g
• DISPLAY S-LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors, 480 x 800 pixels, 4.7 inches

• - Gorilla glass display
• - Multi-touch input method
• - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
• - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
• - Gyro sensor
• - HTC Sense UI 3.5
• Internal  Memory  16 GB Storage, 768 MB RAM
• Card slot  No
• GPRS  Class 12
• EDGE Class 12
• 3G HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
• WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
• USB microUSB v2.0

• CAMERA 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash, Geo-tagging, touch-focus, face detection, HDR, auto-upload
• Video Yes, 720p, slo-mo video recording
• Secondary Yes, 1.3 MP

• OS Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread)
• CPU 1.5 GHz Scorpion, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM 8255 Snapdragon
• Messaging SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
• Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, Adobe Flash
• Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS

• Colors White
• GPS Yes, with A-GPS support

• Java Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
• Other Features
• - TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
• - Beats Audio
• - Beats Headset
• - Google Search, Maps, Gmail
• - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration
• - MP3/eAAC+/WAV/WMA player
• - MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
• - Organizer
• - Document viewer
• - Voice memo/dial/commands
• - Predictive text input
• BATTERY Standard battery, Li-Ion 1600 mAh
• Stand-by Up to 360 h (2G) / Up to 460 h (3G)
• Talk time Up to 11 h 50 min (2G) / Up to 6h 50 min (3G)

By R¤m¥

It’s time to do another post in our series of comparison posts in which, well, we compare stuff. In this comparison post, ‘stuff’ is the three major mobile operating systems – iOS 5,  Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Windows Phone 7.5 Mango – and it is their feature-list which is compared.

Although, yes, it is a bit unfair to compare two already-released OSes – iOS 5 and WP7 Mango – against an OS that is still somewhat in the making (Ice Cream Sandwich); please keep in mind that this is more of a comparison of features (which, we believe, are final) rather than a comparison based on how these OSes perform in daily life.

Let’s begin with a little history: iOS (then known as iPhone OS) was revealed alongside the original iPhone back in 2007. Apple called it the most advanced mobile operating system and claimed that iOS+iPhone was 5 years ahead of anything else available in the market. Since then, we have seen four major updates, each of which added one highly demanded feature or another. Today, iOS 5 is one of the most feature complete mobile OSes available. It was released on October 12th.

Android OS was unveiled in 2007 as well, but was launched in 2008 with the HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1). It is considered to be the most rapidly-developing and feature-complete OS of the bunch, but because of its focus on features, the OS has been lacking in the user-experience department. However, its upcoming release – Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich – is expected to offer a vastly improved experience as Google claims that design and UX was a primary focus during development. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will be available along with Galaxy Nexus sometime in November.

Lastly, there is Windows Phone 7. It was announced last year and is the ‘spiritual’ successor to Windows Mobile. Its initial release had limited features, but Windows Phone 7.5 Mango – which was released only weeks ago – makes up for most of the limitations. WP7 isn’t as popular as iOS or Android, but its popularity is expected to shoot up exponentially once mobile phone giant Nokia starts pumping out their WP7-based smartphones.

So, which OS is the best?

Via:Redmondpie

As we have already reported here about the launch of Android 4 , Google finally made Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich official. The said OS is specifically designed to run on this type of powerful hardware. Also, Samsung is confirming that Ice Cream Sandwich’s native resolution is 1280×720, 16:9 aspect ratio. The Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 will be available in November this year.

Matias Duarte introduced Ice Cream Sandwich for the first time. ICS was developed with 3 principals in mind; Android is enchanting, Android is easy, and Android is powerful. With that said, let’s see some improvements in Ice Cream Sandwich that were touched on in the event.

Basics

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich gets many basic updates as a phone OS. First off is the influence of Honeycomb throughout the new operating system. The new typeface for Android is called ‘Roboto’ and was specifically designed for the new OS. The lockscreen resembles that of the Nexus S with an updated lock ring. Gestures are used widely throughout the new operation system and can be seen when managing notifications in the notification bar and recent apps menu. Within those you can flick notifications out if they aren’t important and also flick to close applications that you no longer need running. You can also see notifications from the lockscreen, although I don’t think I would find that useful for privacy concerns. Cut, copy, and paste has also been improved throughout ICS. One major, basic feature that we finally get to see is native screen capture. Just hold down power and volume down to capture what ever is on your screen!

Google Apps

GMail gets a major update with the ‘action bar’ at the bottom of the app. This removes the need to open a different menu to perform specific tasks, like batch deleting or archiving. This action bar is seen throughout Ice Cream Sandwich in other applications. The camera and gallery got some much needed attention this time around. The Camera app now has a one second lag, meaning that taking pictures is lightening fast. The Gallery app can now sort by people or location and includes various editing tools. You can apply an array of hipster effects and edit picture angle straight on the phone. Google also claims that Maps and Google+ were also updated in Ice Cream Sandwich.

Core OS

Some major core additions that got added were in the form of the lockscreen security and data consumption management. You can now have Android recognize you via the front facing camera to unlock your screen. This feature is pretty neat but did not work well in the event stream. Also, you can now manage data usage within Android from a settings menu. You can see current usage, projected usage, and manage usage down to the applications themselves. Google updated Android’s Voice Command control to start up faster and be more accurate. It still seems very basic and its definitely no Siri. Multitasking has also got a facelift, which now presents recently opened apps in a cards-view.

The iPhone 4S is exactly what it sounds like but not like it was expected – a slight upgrade to the iPhone 4 with a beefed-up processor and a spangly new camera. However, many Apple loyalists were disappointed with the iPhone 4S because the phone did not have any innovative feature, especially as the smart phone competition is hotter than ever. Let’s see how Apple’s new gadget compares to its greatest rival.

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is one of the finest blowers ever crafted by human hands, and blew everyone’s socks clean off our feet when it was the reviewed earlier.

Design

If we compare dimensions of both the handsets, Samsung Galaxy S II is larger, slimmer and bigger than the iPhone 4S. Compared to the Galaxy S II dimensions of 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm, the iPhone 4S has dimensions of 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm. Last year, when Apple announced the iPhone 4, it vowed everyone with how slim the handset was. However, it was disappointing to see its successor having the same dimensions as the previous generation iPhone. The Galaxy S II weighs in at 113gms, on the other hand, the iPhone 4 weighs 138gms. iPhone 4S is primarily made of glass and metal and the Galaxy S II is made of plastic. Both the handsets are pretty stylish as well.

Display

The Samsung Galaxy S II has a 4.3-inch SuperAMOLED Plus display with WVGA(800×480) resolution, while the iPhone 4S has a comparatively tiny 3.5-inch IPS LCD ‘Retina Display’ with an eye-popping resolution of 640×960. Like the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S trumps the Galaxy S 2 in terms of resolution and pixels. However, I would prefer the Samsung Galax S II just because it has a much bigger display with eye-popping colors and contrast ratios.

Hardware

The Samsung Galaxy S II carries an Exynos 4210 SoC, which beasts a 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core processor along with an ARM-Mali 400MP GPU. Like the iPad 2, the iPhone 4S is powered by an A5 SoC. The A5 SoC consists of a Cortex-A9 dual core, running at unknown frequency and a powerful PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. The CPU on the Galaxy S II beats the iPhone 4S in terms of raw processing power but the PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU is way ahead of the ARM Mali-400MP GPU in terms of performance.

OS

While Samsung Galaxy S II runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, with Samsung’s proprietary TouchWIZ 4.0 UI on top of it. The iPhone 4S runs on iOS5, which includes a completely revamped notification center, iMessage, new camera app, and many other changes.

Compared to iOS5, the Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS on the Samsung Galaxy S II looks pretty stale. Hopefully, things will change when Google announces the next major version of Android this month, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Camera and Multimedia

Both the Samsung Galaxy S II and the iPhone 4S have an 8MP camera with an LED flash. While the Samsung Galaxy S II camera has an aperture size of 2.65, the iPhone 4S camera has an aperture size of 2.4. The iPhone 4S has a custom ISP designed by Apple, thanks to which it has features like Face recognition, Hybrid IR filter and auto-white balance. From the camera samples released by Apple, it looks like the iPhone 4S is capable of taking better photos compared to the Samsung Galaxy S II. There is not much difference between the picture quality though. However, in low-light conditions, the iPhone 4S completely outdoes the Samsung Galaxy S II pictures.

Both the handsets are also capable of recording videos in Full HD (1080p) resolution at 30FPS. The most interesting feature of the iPhone 4S is that it sports real-time video image stabilization, along with real-time temporal noise reduction. Thanks to these features, the iPhone 4S records much better videos than the Galaxy S II. This does not mean that the Samsung Galaxy S II camera is bad. It still has one of the best cameras among the Android handsets.

Who’s The Winner?

This is perhaps for the first time, that a product announcement from Apple has led to a disappointment. The iPhone 4S while has evolutionary hardware, still sports a very small screen compared to the competition from its Droid counterparts. Also, it looks exactly like its predecessor, which is not a good thing. Had the iPhone 4S been released at WWDC 2011, it would not have been such a disappointment. But, 14 months after the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S is nothing but a disappointment.

We reckon that for most people, the iPhone 4S is the better mobile. But Apple and Android fans alike should know that we’re expecting Samsung to launch a brand-new mobile called the Nexus Prime in the very near future, which is rumoured to pack a 4.6-inch screen and an iPhone-trouncing display resolution of 720×1,184 pixels.

Moreover, the Nexus Prime will be the next Android flagship mobile, and is expected to come running Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android. So while Apple is on top for now, the fact that the iPhone 4S is a relatively minor upgrade means it could be overthrown before long. But right now, comparing all the features,performances and with an ungraded processor, better camera and some new software, the iPhone 4S just edges all.

Roman Butt

One of the most powerful media players on the market VLC Media Player is now available for download in a pre-alpha state on Android. Link embedded after the break!

The news comes straight from developer CVPCS who, according to his own words, “came across some information on how to build VLC media player for Android” and, using his developer skills, managed to get it running on his Android device after building a pre-alpha package of it.

I’m sure our readers already know about VLC Media Player. It is a open source media player which, well, plays just about every conceivable media format you can throw at it. The fact that it is free and that it is available for a wide variety of operating systems make it the go-to choice for power users. Everyone here at Redmond Pie uses it and we love it to death.

VLC Media Player was launched on iOS some time back, but it was, sadly, later pulled after this one developer complained how open source software can never be released on a closed store like Apple’s App Store. The app later launched on Cydia, though, so this story has a happy ending.

Anyhow, we’ve been waiting for an Android port of VLC Media Player for a long, long time. Our prayers have been answered today as CVPCS built a pre-alpha package for it which you can test out right now.

From CVPCS’s blog:

Today while browsing teh interwebz, I came across some information about how to build VLC media player for android. As someone who uses VLC quite a bit on my desktop, I was quite excited at the prospect of running it on my Android devices, so I went ahead and built a pre-alpha package for it!

So why is this so cool for Android? If it can be optimized, especially with the onset of dual-core phones, you can say goodbye to the old days of having to re-encode your video and audio files to a “supported format” for your device.

While I personally don’t understand the technical reasons behind it, but because of its use of the Native Development Kit, only specific builds of VLC will work on specific devices. As such, there are two builds currently available NEON and NONEON.

To check whether your device supports NEON or the NONEON build, you need to use ADB to locate a file called cpuinfo under /proc. If, in this file, you see the word neon under Features then you download the NEON build. If not, you download the NONEON build.

Be sure to enable Unknown sources under Settings > Applications before you download, otherwise you won’t be able to install the .apk files.

Download VLC NEON [Direct Download]
Download VLC NONEON [Direct Download]

Via

Initially known as HTC Bliss, the HTC Rhyme has been finally announced by the HTC, which unveiled that the smartphone would be first released by Verizon Wireless in the US.

As expected, the Rhyme looks pretty sweet. It is based on the Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon (MSM8655 for Verizon) featuring a 1GHz single-core Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU and 768MB RAM. HTC Rhyme utilizes a 3.7-inch WVGA display and has 5 megapixel snapper with 720p camcorder, 4GB internal storage and the usual connectivity package.

HTC Rhyme runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and comes with the latest Sense UI 3.5 on top of it. There is also the HTC Watch service for on-demand Hollywood movies streaming.

The thing which differs the phone from other smartphones, is that there will be lots of exclusive accessories for the HTC Rhyme, including a docking station, a “Charm cable” (which is “connected to the phone and has a protruding small cube that glows” to warn users about incoming calls or messages), a “sports armband”, and a  Bluetooth headset, most of them dressed in the same color as the handset.

Verizon will offer the Rhyme starting September 29, while other markets, including Europe and Asia, are expected to get it in October.

By Roman Butt

After just three years, a combined one million apps have been developed for iOS and Android, two of the most popular operating systems for mobile devices.

But mobile application firm AppsFire.com, which made the estimate, said only about 80 percent of these apps are active.

“There you go. We just hit the a significant milestone. If you take all the apps ever published developed on iOS and Android we just reached today 1 million mobile apps combined. Now careful: those 1 million apps are not all active. 800k in total are active,” it said.

Still, it said this was an impressive milestone reached “in a few years and an incredible level of activity lead by the developers’ community.”

In its estimate, AppsFire said iOS apps make up 52 percent of the one million apps, although it hinted there may be more Android apps.

“Our tracking on Android also includes apps that have not been published on the Android Market, while on iOS we count apps that are or were published on iTunes. The point is, there are over one million apps developed or being developed combined on both OSes,” it said.

AppsFire predicts there may be one million live apps for iOS and Android combined before the end of 2011.

A separate article on TheNextWeb said this is due to the smartphone market continuing to boom and device owners downloading an increasing number of applications.

“Judging by how quickly app stores are growing, we might not have long to wait,” it said.

The app stores for both iOS and Android opened in 2008 – Apple’s App Store on July 10 and Google’s Android Market on August 28.

VIA