Samsung Captivate (SGH-I897) Phone (AT&T)
Released for AT&T, the Samsung Captivate is an Android-powered smartphone with an large 4.0-inch AMOLED screen and a 1GHz processor ideal for viewing HD videos, experiencing augmented reality content through its Layar Reality Browser and connecting with friends on Facebook and Twitter using the ‘Social Hub.’ The Captivate features mDNIe (mobile Digital Natural Image engine) technology, used in Samsung’s best-selling televisions, to boost even sharper and crisper imaging — perfect to record, edit and play HD video. Users can access to Google services — such as Google Search, Gmail and Google Maps — or download a variety of apps from the Android Market.

MobileProtect Insurance for Your iPhone 4
Willing to spend $11.99 monthly to insure your new iPhone 4?Asurion’s MobileProtect insurance now covers the iPhone 4. With Asurion MobileProtect, iPhone users who lose their phone, have it stolen or damaged including water or other liquid damage or who experience a failure after the warranty has expired can receive a replacement iPhone [...]

Four new Samsung Galaxy phones finally offer hope
The Samsung Galaxy range is the company’s range of Android-based phones, and we’ve already seen some of them either already on sale, or announced previously. At CommunicAsia, though, Samsung were showing off the whole Galaxy family, from the bottom end right to the very top. Some were poor, some were much better, and one or two [...] Related posts:Samsung Wave 2 and Wave 2 Pro take a backwards step Two new Korean Android phones from Samsung and LG Samsung Galaxy S brings stunning display tech to Android Video of the Samsung Beam (aka Halo) 3GSM: Samsung shows off hundreds more new mobile phones

T-Mobile to Sell New LG Phones
T-Mobile plans to sell a trio of phones from LG Electronics, the Sentio and dLite with social-networking capabilities and the GS170, marking a new partnership between the two companies.

US judge to halt iPhone HD release?
Steve Jobs might be quaking on his aluminium unibody iThrone tonight as it appears the next iPhone release could be halted – by the law.Sadly nothing to do with a counter claim by Gizmodo’s Jason Chen, the problem revolves around the screen used in the upcoming iPhone HD.This is very much a ‘maybe’ story, as it relies on ‘facts’ that are far from being confirmed, but could be very bad news for Apple.LG is believed to be the supplier of the new OLED screens in the upcoming iPhone HD, giving it that super-slick look Apple and Jobs are so fond of.But LG has jumped into litigation with a rival Asian screen manufacturer, AU Optronics, claiming that AUO had nabbed some tech for its screens.Flip-reverseBut the claim appears to have backfired, with a US judge ruling that AUO is in the right and LG was the infringer.AUO could now push for an injunction on all products containing LG’s OLED screens, which would mean a US shutdown for the iPhone HD.Would Jobs really want to announce it and then have to wait for his home country to get it while the likes of the UK and China are happily loving the next-gen iPhone?Of course, this is based on a lot of heresay and ‘if this happened, then that would happen’… but surely nothing could stop the Jobs iPhone-juggernaut now. Surely?

Review: HTC HD Mini
Hot on the heels of the excellent HTC Legend and the even more impressive HTC Desire, is the HTC HD Mini. But whereas the Legend and Desire both come equipped with Android 2.1, the HD Mini has to make do with Windows Mobile 6.5.3.Don’t be put off by the less-than-trendy operating system though, because if anyone knows how to make a Windows Mobile phone usable, it’s HTC, and the HD Mini is a fine example of just that. With HTC Sense UI thrown on top of Windows Mobile, the HD Mini is not just easy to use, but actually quite enjoyable. So, has HTC managed to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? (Sorry Microsoft.) In a word, yes. But there’s far more to the success of the HD Mini than the slick masking of Windows Mobile. HTC has created a phone that is simply packed with features, while also being far more compact and pocketable than its direct competitors. At just under 104mm tall, the HD Mini is noticeably shorter than the HTC Legend and even the disappointing Nokia X6. At 57.7mm wide and 11.7mm thick, the HD Mini is also extremely comfortable to hold in fact it feels far more like a traditional phone than, say, the Desire or iPhone. It’s not too heavy either, coming in at 110g, which is 23g lighter than both the Desire and the iPhone 3GS. HTC has gone down the industrial chic route for the design of the HD Mini and the results are pretty successful. The bevelled back has a tactile, rubberised finish that ensures you always have a good grip on the device. A design highlight comes in the shape of the four visible screws in each corner, which remain in place when the back is removed.And when that back is removed, you realise that HTC’s designers aren’t just about those clean industrial lines, because the whole inside of the phone is finished in bright yellow, with the bottom half translucent, no less! It’s a great design juxtaposition, like the glove box in the new Jaguar XJ Supersport being trimmed in bright purple velvet you won’t see it very often, but whenever you do, it will bring a smile to your face.Another nice touch is that the microSDHC card slot is mounted sideways, so you don’t have to remove the battery in order to access it. There was no card included with our review sample, but if you’re serious about music and video on your phone, it’s worth investing in a 16GB card, which will set you back around 35 online. The phone will support cards up to 32GB and although these are now available, you’ll be looking at over 150 for the privilege.The front of the phone is as sleek as you can get, with a single glass sheet covering its entirety. HTC has achieved this look by making the HD Mini devoid of any physical buttons. Instead there are touch-sensitive controls for Call, End, Home, Windows Menu and Back. Although touch sensitive buttons can be a pain, the ones on the HD Mini are both responsive and accurate.The 3.2-inch capacitive screen is bright, vivid and viewable under pretty much any lighting condition. It can be a struggle to see under very bright, direct sunlight, but then that could be said about almost any phone. The screen feels larger than it actually is, simply because the handset itself is comparatively small. Although HTC doesn’t state that the screen uses AMOLED technology, it does appear to be identical to the 3.2-inch example seen in the Legend. PC connection comes via the microUSB port mounted in the base of the unit. It’s worth noting that the port juts through a hole in the rear cover, which means that you can’t take the back off while the phone is connected, unless you want to unceremoniously rip your USB cable out as well.On the very top edge is a metal strip that houses the power button, while the 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the bevelled edge of the rear casing. The only other control is a volume rocker on the left edge, which is again a solid metal strip, adding to the industrial design statement as well as the phone’s overall quality feel.The traditional HTC oblong box is used once again for the HD Mini, and it houses the usual array of kit which is to say, not much. As well as the handset itself, you get a mains charger with a USB port, a USB to microUSB cable for charging and connecting to your PC, and finally a stereo headset. The latter isn’t as bad as some bundled headsets we’ve seen, but if you have any real interest in listening to music on the HD Mini it’s worth investing in a decent set of noise-isolating earphones.Let’s not beat around the bush here, Windows Mobile, even in its latest 6.5.3 build, isn’t the most user friendly mobile phone interface. In fact, compared to Android, Palm’s WebOS and, of course, the iPhone, it’s positively archaic. To make matters worse, we’ve seen what the future holds in the form of Windows Phone 7, and it looks very good indeed. Unfortunately all that proves is that even Microsoft realises how far behind the curve its mobile OS currently is.However, as we’ve already mentioned, HTC has moved mountains to ensure that the HD Mini offers a good user experience, regardless of the underlying OS. We’ve seen before that HTC Sense can improve an already good user interface, on the Desire, but what it does for the HD Mini is nothing short of a revelation. The key to HTC Sense is that it tries to keep a buffer between the user and the Windows Mobile OS, and for the most part it achieves this goal with aplomb. But good as the HTC Sense wrapper is, it still can’t make the HD Mini as slick as its Android-based brethren.Compared to the HTC Legend or Apple iPhone, the HD Mini just feels slightly sticky and clunky.That’s not to say that the user experience is bad, because it’s not, but you can just feel Windows Mobile grinding away underneath. The home screen is typical HTC, with a large clock dominating proceedings. Integrated into the clock is the weather widget, which gives you an animated indication of the weather, along with temperature and your current location. Below this you’ll find shortcuts to your call history and calendar. Although you don’t get pages of app shortcuts to the left and right of the home screen, as you do with Android mobiles and the iPhone, you can swipe the home screen upwards to reveal a page of user-definable shortcuts. You can add programs, contacts or even browser bookmarks here whatever you feel you may need quick access to regularly.The main navigation is done horizontally though, via the home screen tabs that run along the bottom. Here you’ll find essentials like SMS, email, contacts and calendar, along with less important fodder like stocks, music and weather. The good news is that you can choose which home screen tabs you want, so you can streamline the interface to suit your personal needs.Flicking through each home screen tab isn’t quite as smooth as we’d like it to be, although if you set up your tabs so that what you need is generally on the horizontal list at the bottom of the screen, you won’t need to do much swiping left or right. Although the HD Mini is fully multi-touch enabled, the user interface doesn’t always show this functionality off to best effect.There was a time when Windows Mobile smartphones were the de facto choice for anyone that wanted to sync their email, calendar and contacts quickly and easily. The integration with Microsoft Outlook worked brilliantly, so every time you hooked your device up to your PC, it would synchronise everything and you’d be good to go. These days however, things are very different.Let’s face it, who wants to sync their data by hooking up to a PC? If you can’t do it over the air, it’s simply not worth doing. Modern smartphone users need to know that any changes they make on their home PC, work computer or mobile phone, will be instantly rolled out to every device they use. For most non-corporate users, that usually means synchronising a Google Mail account. Syncing the HTC HD Mini with your Google data isn’t quite as easy as on an Android phone, but that’s hardly surprising since Android is a Google product. That said, it’s not difficult either in fact, it’s a slightly simpler procedure on the HD Mini than it is on an iPhone. Once configured, Active Sync will automatically synchronise the HD Mini with all the data on your Google Mail account, filling your inbox, your calendar and your contact list in a matter of minutes. One slight annoyance is that the HTC HD Mini defaults your contacts to Last Name, First Name, regardless of how you have it configured in Google, whereas Android handsets will carry over your data in the format it was found.You’re not limited to using Google mail, and you can configure the HD Mini to access any email account. Obviously if you’re using POP for your email, you’re not going to get the benefit of syncing your contacts and calendar, but if you’re using any other type of Exchange service, you’ll reap all the benefits therein. If you’re a social networking junkie, you’ll probably lament the absence of HTC’s Friend Stream, which amalgamates all your contact and friend lists, creating a method of seeing everything that someone has been up to, via any medium. You still get Peep, HTC’s Twitter app thrown in though, so if you simply have to tell the world what you had for breakfast, you’ll be well catered for.Hitting the People tab on the home screen is slightly annoying, since it defaults to a list of Favorites (that’s Favourites for anyone who has a proper command of English). The problem with the default Favorite list is that it needs to be populated manually, so if you’re relying on Google, or any other Exchange service to populate your contacts, it’s a slightly laborious process to then drag out the ones you think you’ll need the most. If you want to see your full contact list, you simply hit the All People button, which will then display a traditional scrolling list of names. To make navigation quicker and easier, the alphabet is pasted vertically down the right-hand edge, so you can jump straight to the letter you need, iPhone style.The HD Mini had no signal strength issues during testing, not once dropping below three bars. Of course signal strength is as much to do with the network operator and location as the device itself, but using a Vodafone SIM, the HD Mini was always ready for voice and data duties.Call quality was also first rate, and there was no hint of echo or interference of any kind. The sound quality at both ends of the call was clear and loud even when talking outside in relatively noisy environments, the other person had no problem hearing every word.Making a call is also quick and simple on the HD Mini. If you want to call someone you’ve spoken to recently, the Call History button on the home screen will do the trick. Or if you want to phone someone that you call regularly, you can just make a shortcut to them, so it’s just a matter of flicking down from the main home screen. Here the HD Mini puts in a strong performance with multiple options to keep in touch with friends and colleagues. However, this is also where HTC Sense and the underlying Windows Mobile OS occasionally clash. As already mentioned, HTC has done a great job of making the HD Mini more usable and more polished, but ultimately what’s underneath isn’t quite so pretty and slick.Take email for example. When you tap the email tab you’re greeted with a snazzy, Cover Flow-like email reader, where each message looks like a sheet of paper that can be flicked off the screen to reveal the next message. However, when you select a specific email for closer inspection, you’re presented with a traditional page layout with a scroll bar down the side. And if you want to go back to your inbox, you’ll see a bog standard list of emails, which is functional, but nowhere near as pretty as HTC’s reader.As already mentioned, setting up your email on the HD Mini is a simple procedure, and shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes. If you’ve opted for Active Sync, your email will be sent to the phone as soon as it arrives in your inbox. If you choose to use a POP account, you can define how often you want the HD Mini to check for new mail. The email client does appear to have issues with special characters, as can be seen from the screen shot, where the apostrophes have not made it through unscathed.You get text messages in a threaded view, but again HTC has tried to make things a little more interesting. When you select the messages tab it will display the latest SMS that you have received, then you can flick upwards to reveal each one of your received messages, regardless of sender. If you then select a particular message, the display will then change to the full conversation trail between you and that contact.When we had an early play with the HD Mini back in February, we commented that the keyboard wasn’t quite as accurate as we would have liked, especially compared to the Legend. Whether that sample was dodgy, or HTC has simply improved the screen accuracy since then is unclear, but typing on this particular HD Mini is a joy. Not only are the keystrokes accurately registered, but the autocorrect function is very intuitive. Yes, the keyboard on the Desire is better, but more by virtue of the screen, and therefore the keys being slightly bigger.Sending an MMS instead of a plain text couldn’t be easier. You simply tap the paperclip icon, then choose the type of media you’d like to send. If the picture is too big, the phone will offer to resize it for you before sending, something Windows Mobile has always been great at.Being a Windows Mobile phone, you also get Windows Live integration. This is particularly useful if you’re a Windows Live Messenger user, since you’ll be able to chat with all of your friends and colleagues in real time without having to resort to some kind of third-party app. Having used various third-party MSN/Windows Live Messenger apps on other phones, we can say that the integrated Windows Live support in the HD Mini is considerably better, and far more stable.If all that isn’t enough, the aforementioned Peep app will satisfy your Twitter needs and ensure that everyone who knows you is fully aware of what you’re up to 24 hours a day.As with the HTC HD2, the HD Mini has two internet browsers built into it Opera and Internet Explorer. HTC would clearly prefer you to use Opera, since that is set as the default browser out of the box, but if you delve into the Windows Mobile menu, you’ll find IE pretty much near the top of the list. When we reviewed the HD2 we noted two major differentiations between Opera and IE Opera allowed multi-touch control, while IE didn’t, and IE gave you Flash video playback while Opera didn’t. Things are slightly different with the HD Mini, since both Opera and IE sport multi-touch control, while neither browser seemed happy to playback any form of embedded Flash video. That said, we’d still agree with HTC and recommend Opera as the browser of choice, simply because it seems to render pages faster, and more accurately. Multi-touch navigation works anyone who’s used to a bit of pinching action will feel right at home but it’s nowhere near as smoothly executed as on the Desire or the iPhone. When pinching to zoom we often found that it took several attempts to get the job done, although double tap zooming proved far more reliable. A good old double-tap on text will produce a column view, providing larger text that’s far easier to read, and will keep zooming the more you pinch and zoom inwards, much like the Desire. The biggest annoyance, though, is clicking hyperlinks. Sometimes hitting a link simply doesn’t work, regardless of how accurate you try to be or how zoomed in you are. You just end up stabbing at the screen until the browser gives in and takes you where you want to go.This hyperlink problem afflicts both Opera and IE, so it’s clearly a firmware issue of some kind. But the fact that it doesn’t seem to rear its head in any situation other than web browsing is somewhat confusing to say the least. As long as the HTC HD Mini has a 3G connection (which was all of the time in our experience), browsing is very fast indeed. Obviously it depends on how efficient the page you’re browsing is, but on the whole you won’t be waiting too long for pages to load. Like the HTC Desire, the HD Mini lets you store your bookmarks with thumbnails, so you can tell what they are via the briefest of glances. You can then add your favourite bookmarks to your home screen shortcut list, making it even easier to get to your most visited websites.The HTC HD Mini comes equipped with a 5MP camera that can shoot both stills and video. Unfortunately there’s no integrated flash, which is a shame when you consider that the Desire benefits greatly from just such a feature. Operating the camera isn’t quite as easy as it could be, due mainly to the complete lack of physical buttons on the HD Mini – it’s simply not as easy to hit the “touch button” on the screen, as it would be to press a real button mounted on the chassis. The camera has auto-focus, which reacts quickly, making it easier to get those impromptu shots that make a good camera phone a worthwhile investment. You can also manually select the AF point, so your subject doesn’t have to be at the centre of the frame ideal for a rule of thirds composition.THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT: Here the colours of the cat and the rug he’s sitting on are completely washed outThe results from the still camera are fair, but not wonderful. As is invariably the case, images taken with the integrated camera look far better on the phone’s screen than they do when you transfer them to your computer and study them more closely. Colours have a tendency to look slightly pale and washed out, which results in pictures losing a degree of impact. PREPARE FOR TAKE-OFF: Again the grass looks pale and washed out, while the reds and blues on the helicopter also lack vibrancyGREEN, GREEN GRASS: That’s exactly the same lawn that the helicopter is sitting on, but this time it looks vivid and lushIn strong sunlight, detail can be lost in high intensity areas of the scene that become overexposed. Subsequently, darker areas also lose most of their detail as the camera struggles to deal with an overly wide dynamic range. This can be seen in the picture of the two white cars, where creases in the bodywork on the left-hand car are lost in the oversaturated whiteness, while detail in the shadowed area of the car on the right is also conspicuous by its absence.WHITEOUT: The camera struggles with scenes of high dynamic range. Detail is lost on the brightly lit panels on the car on the left, while the shadowed area of the car on the right also suffersThe issues above can be improved upon in some instances by experimenting with the various white balance settings, but in reality there isn’t enough manual control to make a significant difference. But this is a phone after all, not a dedicated camera. You can throw a few preset effects at your photos for fun, like making them greyscale, sepia or even negative. Far more useful is a setting specifically for labelling your contacts, and the ability to GPS tag your pictures, so you know exactly where you were when you took them. Video resolution is limited to 640 x 480 at 30fps. The results aren’t bad at all, and the integrated microphone manages to pick up a surprising amount of sound with good directionality. A nice touch is the ability to shoot video specifically for an MMS, which will save you having to do any conversion in order to send it over the ether. The one area where the iPhone really does rise above its competitors is media playback. That’s hardly surprising when you consider that Apple has simply squeezed an iPod touch inside the iPhone. But the downside of both the iPhone and the iPod touch is that you have to use iTunes to get anything on or off your device. Consequently, although other phones may offer less stylish media playback functionality, the fact that media can simply be dragged and dropped, goes a long way to redressing the balance.The HTC HD Mini is just such a phone all the media playback features are there, but they’re not the most sleek and stylish examples. That’s not to say that HTC hasn’t done its best to improve upon the Windows Mobile basics of course. And let’s not forget that if you want to put a new song on the HD Mini, you simply drag it over from your computer, transfer it via Bluetooth or even copy it straight to your microSDHC card life without iTunes is just much less complicated.The music playback application is decent enough. You can browse by cover art in both portrait and landscape modes, and the phone will even grab cover art for you if you don’t already have it assigned to your music. Strangely though, despite contacting the Gracenote database directly, and allegedly downloading the images over the air, the artwork didn’t actually appear until after the device had been connected to a PC. Music can be filtered by Artist, Album, Genre, Song Title or Composer the latter is particularly useful if you happen to listen to classical music, where the composer is far more pertinent than the artist. You can create playlists, or shuffle your tracks to keep you guessing as to what’s coming next. Sound quality is very good, especially if you marry the HD Mini with a decent set of headphones. We plugged in a set of Shure SE530 triple driver earphones and the results were very pleasing. The HD Mini managed to playback Ronny Jordan’s Blues Grinder as well as any phone we’ve used, including the iPhone. Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones was equally impressive, and the HD Mini offers no shortage of volume, although with good, noise-isolating earphones, you don’t have to crank things up too high.You can also assign any MP3 file as your ringtone, and there’s an MP3 trimming application preloaded, so that you can hear your favourite bit of your favourite song when someone calls you.Video playback is smooth and suffers from little in the way of dropped frames or audio syncing issues. Video shot using the phone itself looks particularly good, but then you’d kind of hope it would. The selection of MP4 content that we downloaded to the phone also played flawlessly, and the screen is definitely good enough to watch an entire programme or film while on a plane or a train. Unfortunately there’s no DivX support out of the box, but there’s no shortage of free Windows Mobile apps that will add that functionality.Despite being unable to make embedded Flash video play in either browser, the integrated YouTube app worked perfectly. Playback is, assuming you have a decent data connection, excellent. Although there’s the ever present “garbage in, garbage out” caveat with YouTube content, so how good it looks and sounds will depend entirely on how good the source material is.The photo gallery is good, and may well have been ripped off by the PlayStation 3. Flicking through what appears to be a bundle of real photographs enhances the whole experience, and when you want to look more closely at a particular picture, the multi-touch interface works beautifully.The built-in FM tuner struggled to get any kind of signal lock while we were testing the HD Mini, but that’s probably down to the general poor radio reception in our area than any failing of the device itself. As always, the headphones act as an antenna for the radio, so if you’re using Bluetooth headphones, you’re out of luck.The HD Mini comes equipped with a 1200mAh battery, which is very slightly smaller (capacity wise) than the battery in the HTC Legend. It’s always hard to accurately gauge battery life, because it really depends on what kind of user you are and how much you leave running and activated. That said, we got a good few days out of the HD Mini, with everything switched on and push email active. That’s significantly better than the HTC Desire, which struggles to manage a day and a half, despite having a larger 1400mAh battery.If you require better battery life, it’s fairly simple to improve things by limiting what you have switched on. If you don’t need Wi-Fi on all the time, only activate it when you do. The same goes for Bluetooth. You can limit how often the weather updates, or have your email fetched periodically rather than having it pushed. Ultimately though, it will be media playback and web browsing that will do the most damage to battery life on any phone.Google Maps is well integrated and the integrated GPS locks onto your location quickly and accurately. Again, the multi-touch support works well here, and we experienced none of the issues that we saw with the web browser interface. Zooming in and out of maps is smooth and responsive, while Street View works, but only in a portrait orientation. ALK CoPilot Live 8 also comes pre-installed, but before you get too excited, you only get a 15-day free trial. That said, CoPilot is a very good turn-by-turn navigation system for Windows Mobile, so you may well find that you like it when you do give it a go. If that’s the case you can simply purchase an activation code and carry on using it.Being a Windows Mobile phone, productivity is high on the agenda, which means that you get the full Microsoft Office Mobile suite thrown in. So not only can you view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but you can create and edit them too. This can be particularly useful when someone sends you an attached document in an email and you want to edit it before you get back home or to the office. It also gives you the option of giving a PowerPoint presentation without the need for a computer at all. OK, so these benefits are aimed more at the corporate user, but that’s where Windows Mobile’s roots lie. HTC has stuffed the HD Mini with just about every connection option you can think of, and it does a pretty good job with all of them. As already mentioned, the signal strength with this phone is particularly good, and data speeds over the 3G/HSDPA connection are as fast as we’ve seen anywhere. Just remember that even though a phone can support HSDPA speeds up to 7.2mbps, it doesn’t necessarily follow that your network operator does.The phone prompts you to create a Wi-Fi connection during initial setup, making the process as simple as possible. Even if you don’t set up your Wi-Fi at the beginning, the Wireless Controls are second on the Settings menu, so it’s easy to find and a breeze to configure. Once the HD Mini grabs hold of a Wi-Fi connection, it will hold onto it with all its might, offering a surprisingly expansive range.You also get Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, so there are plenty of communication and streaming options. One nice feature is that the HD Mini supports the SIM Access Profile (SAP), which means that if you have an in-car system that also supports SAP, you’ll get the best possible hands free performance. The difference between SAP and the standard Hands-Free Profile is that your in-car system accesses the SIM directly, then uses its own electronics, and antenna, resulting in much improved reception and call quality on the move.The icing on the connection front though, is the inclusion of the wireless router technology that we first saw in the HTC HD2. Basically you can configure the HD Mini to be a Wi-Fi hotspot, so that you can connect to it via any Wi-Fi enabled device and share its data connection. Of course it can also do standard internet tethering over Bluetooth or USB, but the Wi-Fi router option allows more than one device to connect simultaneously.Like it or not, Apple started a revolution with its App Store, and any mobile OS needs to offer a plethora of downloadable content for its users, even if most of it is totally useless. Unfortunately the Marketplace on Windows Mobile is woefully inadequate. Not only is there very little on offer, but what is there is simply too expensive. By comparison, Apple’s App Store and Android’s Market are stuffed full of free apps, so you can get your downloading fix without paying a penny.On the flip side, given the long history that Windows Mobile has behind it, the internet is awash with free applications for pretty much every need. OK, so you can’t download and install them through the Marketplace, but it’s easy enough to download them to your PC and install them to the HD Mini over USB. In fact, that’s exactly what we had to do in order to get the screen grabs you see on these pages.After the launch of the Legend and Desire, it was easy to think that HTC had given up on the Windows Mobile platform, but the HD Mini proves that assumption to be unfounded. The 600MHz Qualcomm processor keeps things zipping along nicely, and the traditional Windows Mobile slowdown failed to rear its head. Battery life is particularly strong for such a feature-packed handset, which is one area that the HD Mini puts some distance between itself and the more, er, desirable, HTC Desire.We likedThe form factor of the HD Mini is the perfect compromise between size and usability. The screen is still large enough to do everything you want, but the physical dimensions of the phone itself make it easy to hold and pocket.HTC shows once more that its Sense user interface really can make all the difference, literally papering over Windows Mobile and creating a truly user friendly environment.The screen is excellent and the multi-touch interaction works very well in the vast majority of situations. Connectivity is also first rate, with the Wi-Fi router option being genuinely useful.The class leading battery life will endear the HD Mini to road warriors and those who don’t want to carry a charger for weekends away.We dislikedEven with HTC Sense on top, it’s still Windows Mobile 6.5 chugging along underneath, and it simply can’t compete in a landscape dominated by Android and Apple.The Marketplace is woefully under populated and the lack of free apps is disturbing. This needs to be seriously addressed before the launch of Windows Phone 7.Browser navigation is tricky, with clicks not always registered and multi-touch gestures not always as smooth as they should be.VerdictWe liked the HTC HD Mini far more than we expected to, and it has proved that Windows Mobile can’t be written off just yet. After using the HD Mini for a while, devices like the Apple iPhone 3GS and HTC Desire just feel huge in the hand, and for many, size does matter.The overall design of the phone is sleek, stylish and minimalist, with the yellow internals bringing some colour to the equation. Basically, it feels like a well designed, well built, high quality phone, in the same way that the Nokia X6 doesn’t. But is the HD Mini good enough to sway buyers from an Android or Apple handset? We’re not so sure. However, if you were a fan of the HTC HD2 but felt that it was just too big, the HD Mini is the answer to your prayers. This phone has all the features of its big brother (large screen aside), packed into a far smaller chassis. Put simply, this is the best Windows Mobile handset currently available, and it makes us think that HTC will have something very special for us when Windows Phone 7 finally hits the street.Related LinksMore mobile phone reviewsTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeRelated StoriesReview: HTC LegendReview: LG Chocolate BL20Review: Acer Liquid S100Review: Nokia E72Review: Nokia 5230

Verizon to Launch First 4G Phone in Mid-2011
Verizon said it will sell a smartphone that runs on its super-fast fourth-generation network as soon as mid-2011, six months earlier than the company had said before.

Review: Sony Ericsson Aino
The Sony Ericsson Aino is the phone that finally brings PS3 connectivity to a mobile – bringing the best of Sony’s brands to beat the multimedia prowess of the iPhone and Samsung i8910HD.It’s a mid-range effort, following just behind the Sony Ericsson Satio in the recent slew of releases from the brand, but it still tries to pack a wealth of functionality into its chassis.The main talking point is the PS3 connectivity – but don’t get too excited as it’s not the PSP phone we’ve all been waiting for, more a device to make use of the considerable multimedia prowess of the PS3.Beyond that, the phone is similar to the Sony Ericsson W995 in terms of specs – 8GB memory card, BBC iPlayer support, standard SE interface and so on.But the shape is entirely different – it’s a long device with a 3-inch screen and a slide out physical keyboard. Sadly it’s only widescreen QVGA, meaning it won’t give the best resolution for watching movies or viewing web pages.The slide action is solid with a pleasant feeling both up and down – given that the likes of the Palm Pre and the Motorola Dext haven’t managed to achieve such a thing with recent high-end devices, this is good to see.The solid black chassis is a lot less button-full than the Satio, with a camera shutter and a volume/zoom rocker switch on the right-hand side. The left merely houses the standard Sony Ericsson port for power, USB and headphones (sadly no 3.5mm headphone jack here, despite SE debuting it on the W995).The top of the phone hides the lock switch for when the phone slider is shut – because this phone has an odd double life. By day/when slid up, it’s a meek Sony Ericsson phone with a slightly long screen – physical keyboard and the normal interface.But by night/when closed, it morphs into a multimedia marvel, with a touchscreen activated by a slide up arrow. It’s an odd scenario, and one we’ll go into later in the review.The physical keyboard is well laid out, with the important buttons all necessary. We’re enjoying the rubberised and compact yet easy-to-hit layout, with the two softkeys flanking a circular D-pad and enter button, as well as a clear and running applications/notifications key below.The rear of the phone houses the camera, an 8.1MP effort, with a single LED flash for both video and photography.The battery is hidden below the snap on cover, which is a little tricky to replace and requires a user to push it harder than they’d probably like – we felt like we were going to break it.The SIM and battery compartments are well laid-out, with the microSD slot at the top easy to use and the battery simple to remove to access the SIM card.The design of the phone is interesting – with the lock key in a little bit of a hard to reach place and the phone not quite sitting as snugly in the hand as the Sony Ericsson W995. However, it feels solid and is impressive enough for the market SE is likely to be aiming for with it.In the boxThere’s the usual fodder in the Sony Ericsson box for the Aino, with a couple of notable exceptions. There’s, of course, the USB lead and charger (both proprietary) and some quick start literature.It’s devoid of a start up CD, and that’s because Sony Ericsson has included the relevant software on the memory card. And for a phone that’s supposed to be a media handset, SE has decided to give it a whopping 8GB card right out of the box, which we’re very impressed with.But the thing we love the most is the MH100 Bluetooth headset, which houses a 3.5mm headphone jack to allow you to use your favourite cans wirelessly (well, sort of).This is a teeny tube with multiple LEDs on the front to show activity, with a touch sensitive slider on the side to control the volume. There are also track skipping and play/pause keys included, as well as a call/terminate button on the bottom, as the MH100 can also be used as a hands free kit.You may have noticed we nabbed this for use when reviewing the Satio – it’s a great addition to the package and makes the Aino a much more attractive proposition in our eyes.The box also includes a charging stand – it allows you to watch movies without having to hold the phone, as well as including two charging ports so you can power up your phone and Bluetooth kit at the same time, which is another neat touch.The talk about the interface will be divided into two sections, as the Sony Ericsson Aino technically is running two user interfaces, if not two OSes. Non touch (keypad slid open)Those of you familiar with the standard Sony Ericsson UI will either groan or squeak with delight when you power on the Aino for the first time, as it’s the same interface that the company has been using for nearly eight or nine years.This means a home screen with customisable softkeys and D-pad to use different shortcuts, and a grid/list menu system for delving deeper into the phone.One interesting addition to the Aino is Facebook however – it has a customised portal in the applications menu, and a mini-mode that sits on the home screen.This smaller option basically cycles through your Facebook friends’ profile pictures, with new status updates shown in little speech bubbles. You can also go up and down to see notifications, such as pokes and requests, or look at and change your status.Other than that, the Aino’s home screen is leagues away from the heavily customised Symbian offering on the Satio, with things like the quick launcher (giving options on running applications, bookmarks and messages) giving a familiar, if functional, feel to the proceedings.The media listings are slightly different though, using Sony’s Xross Media Bar system (yes, we hate that spelling too – it’s like renaming a packet of Walker’s into Xrisps), which gives easy and well laid-out access to your tunes/video/radio.It’s a little hidden down the menu, as are a lot of cool applications, like remote play. We’ve already touched on how being able to connect to the PS3 is a fundamental part of why people will buy this phone, but you have to hit Menu > Entertainment > Remote Play to even start it, which seems a little odd to us.We’re also questioning the wisdom of switching off the touchscreen functionality when the slide-out keypad is used – what’s the point in that? We know people would rather use a physical keyboard and the touchscreen is a little redundant at this point, but unless not using it saves huge amounts of power, we see no problem with it staying on.Let’s be honest – using elements like the internet browser are much easier when you can just poke the screen, so we hope this is something that might be changed in the future with a firmware update – especially as Sony Ericsson tells us that it is possible, it just chose not to do it.Touch interface (keyboard closed)The touch interface when the phone is closed is a whole new ball game. You shut the phone, and you’re presented with a handset exclusively to be used in landscape mode. Dragging up an eject-style icon will give you access to a similar array of options to the Xross Media Bar, except this time you can touch the elements you want instead.Each press will open a new range of icons in front of the former, so you can interact with the content chosen. The touchscreen on the Aino is bizarrely a capacitive effort, which is a little more expensive that a resistive choice – we can’t see why you’d need to be accurate with this screen when the icons are so large, as accuracy is usually the reason for not going with a resistive screen.When using media, there are limited options compared to the standard mode – you can set the Aino to shuffle and repeat, but you can’t, for instance, edit or add items to a playlist. We don’t see why there’s not a small icon at the bottom to call up some basic options and settings – but this landscape media mode seems to be set up to be simple to use.We’ve also got a couple of real problems with it – the lock key will shut off the screen, but it can be easily reactivated in the pocket and somehow the screen can be slid open, with all the icons easily pressed.Twice in our tests the phone spontaneously fired up when sitting in the pocket – we have no idea how as we weren’t even moving that much, but it’s a poor showing that this is possible.The memory card accessing is also terrible – the first time you put it in the phone will update itself, but after that it keeps re-updating for no reason when you fire up the media browser. This means you can’t access your tunes for up to a minute – which can get very irritating.The touchscreen also spontaneously kept shutting off when we were trying to use the media mode – this meant restarting the phone, which takes an age when all you want to do is listen to your tracks.And both modes suffer horribly from lag when running multiple applications. Try using the music player and receiving a message – not only will the music stop for the message, only to restart a few moments later, but the phone will more often than not grind to a halt in order to have a think about all the tasks it needs to do.We don’t know if it’s a substandard processor or just poor optimisation – either way it needs to be sorted if the Aino is to be seen as a true multimedia option.Calling on Sony Ericsson handsets has always been fairly easy, and that hasn’t changed on the Aino.The caller lists are laid out in a simple to use and set up way – it’s easy to scroll through and with the physical keyboard you can simply input the person’s name and off you go.A problem we’ve always had with Sony Ericsson handsets is entering text this way isn’t displayed easily, so you can’t always be sure which name you’ve entered. It is also very slow to react, so you can easily input the wrong letter than have to wait a second or two to change it.That said, we’re fans of simplicity when it comes to elements like this – touchscreens suffer with long lists, and being able to simply switch to the name you’re after, or see a list of calls made, received and missed is a nice touch.Adding a contact is as simple as can be too – simply type the number, select ‘New Contact’ and then put in all the information you need – you can go from just a picture to company details to voice command for automated calling. It might not sound like much, but in today’s complex smartphone days it can be very easy to make even entering a new contact a very difficult experience.Grouping is on offer too – pre-made groups such as family or business are available or you can make your own. It’s a bit redundant as you have to negotiate a number of menu screens to access the group, but if you regularly send group messages, you’ll be pleased to see this on offer.There are two options for calling – video and voice calls, with the former only activated from within a sub menu of the contact. There’s a reason for this – no front facing camera means video calling is more about showing your friend something from the main camera, or sharing a video or picture clip over the call.Voice call quality is average, as in we sometimes struggled to hear people over the handset – it’s not a deal breaker by any means, but we could have done with a little more clarity to make the Aino perfect in this respect.The reception wasn’t as good though – mainly with regards to 3G coverage, with the phone defaulting to GPRS or even GSM connections far too often. Not a major problem, but trying to call when on a moving train was a veritable nightmare. We’re used to better from Sony Ericsson, which makes it odd that the Aino doesn’t fare as well.Similar to calling on the Sony Ericsson Aino, the messaging experience is simple and easy to use.The main texting option is as simple to use as you’d expect, and Sony Ericsson is also using an updated text input system to make things easier. It basically apes the simplicity of Nokia’s Symbian OS, meaning the space key now lives on the ‘0′ button, and the cycling through words is possible with the ‘*’ key rather than just the down button.Text messages are arranged into two options – the normal inbox/sent message format and conversations, which are thankfully under the messaging icon and not stuffed away in the applications section (we’re looking at you, Satio).Changing a message from a simple SMS to an MMS is an easy process as well, something Sony Ericsson has traditionally done well. You can simply add a picture, GIF animation, sound or video, with the Aino updating the message accordingly. It can cost more to send a message this way, so make sure you check your contract or PAYG deal to see if it will incur extra charges.There’s also a direct link to Facebook from within the messaging menu, but it’s sadly not as good as on the INQ1, where FB messages are as easy to send as a text. You have to access the Facebook portal on the Aino, meaning an internet connection and even if you have that, you’ll be waiting a while before you can update your messages.Email support is also included on the Aino, but like many other devices, it doesn’t play well with webmail. We used Gmail, as many others will we imagine, and went for a POP3 connection, as this gives a more instant update for emails in the absence of push.The Aino asked for all our details, but unlike the Nokia 6300 Classic, the phone couldn’t download the necessary Googlemail settings. This means that most users will probably give up at the thought of having to input the correct POP server, and those that don’t will have to track down the relevant Google page (which is here, if you’re looking for it).Email also doesn’t synchronise to the most recent mail either, and only a vast amount of playing and deleting will bring things up to date. While we like the option to have webmail on the phone, we recommend downloading the Google Mail Java application instead of relying on the inbuilt system.We mentioned a serious amount of lag caused by an incoming message earlier – another problem is sending one too. After sending, the phone pauses for an interminable amount of time until the message is sent – it’s been years since this issue has afflicted mobiles and it’s very annoying.The internet experience on the Sony Ericsson Aino is a little disappointing too – the browser is pretty basic and seemingly can’t render sites with any kind of aplomb.Well, that’s not strictly true – it can, but Sony Ericsson has made a big play about the fact you can search on Google either right from the home screen or via the bookmarked home page. But on this handset, Google strips all the picture functionality away, leaving users with a basic text only version of the sites.As far as we can tell full HTML is only a very last resort on the Sony Ericsson Aino – we were constantly redirected to mobile versions of sites, which is annoying when you need some functionality from a full site version.One problem that had us truly stumped for a while is the lack of internet options or settings on the Aino. A touch on the softkey to open the toolbar gave only a few basic bookmarking options – it was only after hunting through nearly every menu on the Aino did we realise a secondary menu became available once the toolbar was enabled.Perhaps that was just us being slightly slow on the uptake, but it’s hardly the most user friendly option and placement.GOOGLE’S CHOICE: How the search engine renders web pages on the AinoWeb feeds, such a great part of the Satio, have weirdly been integrated into the Xross Media Bar, rather than in the browser itself. We actually prefer them there, as more often than not we use RSS feeds to ignore the browser, not as a reason to use it.Finding the feeds and adding them in is a little harder, but it’s the same on most feature phones – and once you get them up and running it’s a great little feature.BACK AGAIN: And in ‘normal’ HTML modeOne problem, and one we touched on earlier, is connectivity to data is pretty slow on the Aino – both over 3G and Wi-Fi in fact. From two separate routers and the local 3G coverage we were left hanging waiting for websites to load on countless occasions – we’re not sure why as once they render, the pages actually load pretty quickly.The internet browser is pretty basic on the Aino. Most people will be used to the mobile internet on their phone, and will simply have a bog standard list of mobile friendly sites they like to bookmark.But that’s no excuse, and with the nice long widescreen, plus the media-centric nature of the Aino, we just expected slightly more from it in terms of web browsing – and not being able to use the touchscreen makes it all the more annoying.Sony Ericsson has actually been placing some pretty decent cameras on its phones these days, and the Aino is no exception. 8.1MP, an LED flash and video light as well as some decent photography options – that’s the top end of what nearly everyone will need. And those that yearn for 12MP and above – well, you’re just being greedy, aren’t you?The camera has a range of functions, from being able to divide the screen into thirds for better pictures to a touchscreen focus mode, which will take a picture based around the point you’ve touched on.This is a great way to work around the problems of not being able to focus on the elements you want simply by using the built-in hardware, and something we think should be integrated into all cameras.The time taken from one picture to another is absolutely ridiculous though – we’re talking up to 14 seconds to take another picture, and that’s only with the camera on 6MP setting. We’ve no idea why it takes that long to save a photo, but it does.The touchscreen borders on appalling in this mode as well – we lost count of the amount of times we tried to hit a pop up icon on the camera screen only for it to register no input – we assume this is down to the icons being too close to the edge of the display.However, there are some nice tweaks like touch focus, geo-tagging, face detection, image stabiliser, smart contrast and red-eye reduction, all of which work well and do the job they’re supposed to, which is what you’d expect from a camera using Sony tech.Here’s how the Aino stood up to the Olympus SP-565UZ prosumer camera. The Sony Ericsson Aino takes pictures in 16:9 format at 6MP, which we’ve used here to show how much more photograph you can get:Sony Ericsson Aino – colours look a little washed out on the Aino, but overall reproduction is good:Olympus SP-565UZ: Sony Ericsson Aino:Olympus SP-565UZ: Sony Ericsson Aino – the macro mode is excellent at sharpening edges, but the Olympus is much more able to pick out detail:Olympus SP-565UZ: Sony Ericsson Aino – both cameras are decent in direct sunlight – the Aino certainly holds its own and picks out a good amount of detail:Olympus SP-565UZ: Sony Ericsson Aino – Face detection works well on the Aino, instantly bringing it into focus:Olympus SP-565UZ: Sony Ericsson Aino – the LED flash on the Aino is better used as a torch – it’s very poor in darkness, losing a lot of detail and colour compared to a Xenon:Olympus SP-565UZ: Video recordingVideo is recorded in VGA and at 30fps on the Aino – which is very good indeed. It takes a lot less time to start up than the camera, and will save video files faster too.And we were delighted to see NearHD video recording included as well – this allows users to record video that will actually look pretty decent on a large screen.Video detail is satisfactory, and although boot up time is a little slow, leaving us all too often asking someone to wait while we started up the camera, it’s passable for run-of-the-mill movie making.Media on the Sony Ericsson Aino is pretty darn good, as you can imagine. Well, it’s not as good as the Satio, but the ability to listen to music in two different ways (when the phone is open and closed) is a pretty nifty feature. We found ourselves mostly using the media player when the phone is shut, simply because we prefer touchscreens for this application. The capacitive screen was far from being as responsive as we’d hoped, but it was still slick enough when needed.MusicThe music player was a good effort on the Sony Ericsson Aino, with easy to use controls and the MH100 Bluetooth headset making the experience very nice to work with.The music interface was slow to react in portrait mode, although tunes sounded excellent over the wireless connection, and the whole thing sped along nicely on the touchscreen.One major flaw was the inability to search for music to use on a playlist – we had to copy all the songs to a certain folder on the memory card in order to set them up to play continuously.VideoDue to the low resolution of the screen, the Sony Ericsson Aino isn’t capable of playing a huge number of our videos we’ve encoded specifically for mobile phone use.The only way through was to resize and convert them all using the PC software, meaning a couple of overnight jobs just to watch a movie on the 3-inch screen. The experience was again enhanced by the MH100, but not supported by an average resolution. We could understand these characteristics in a cheaper phone, but for something that’s fairly pricey we’re a little perturbed.Video access was OK, especially in touch mode, and scrolling through and all the usual options worked well. We wouldn’t use the Aino as a PMP regularly, but if you’re willing to convert the files then you might enjoy the experience.FM radioWitchcraft-alert – somehow the Sony Ericsson Aino asks you to connect wired headphones to act as an antenna for the FM radio, but pull out the Bluetooth headset and it will work fine. We can only assume that the MH100 unit sends the signal back for the FM radio to pick up – either way, it’s clever and very much unexpected.The radio is simple enough to use, and once again makes good use of the touchscreen for manual tuning (even if it did keep switching itself off).YouTube and BBC iPlayerYou know how these work by now – we like the way Sony Ericsson packages them in the Xross Media Bar for easy viewing, and we imagine finding BBC iPlayer on board is a great surprise for some people.SMILEY MILEY: Yes, that’s a grainy Miley Cyrus. She’s rapping about not being on Twitter any more. Kids these days, eh… back in our time, we’d have to phone people to tell themWe won’t go into great depth, as both do what they’re supposed to – YouTube mobile needs a wider range of videos, but BBC iPlayer brings a very solid mobile experience.PS3 connectivityAs we mentioned before, one of the big draws of the Aino is PS3 connectivity – offered both over 3G and Wi-Fi networks.The set-up process is pretty convoluted, with codes having to be issued by the base unit to be synchronised with the Aino. It then asks for your PlaySation network user name and password, and the whole thing begins searching.The first time we tried it over Wi-Fi it worked pretty well – OK it was very slow, but the movie did play OK. However, get a text or a call or anything else other than the connection and the whole thing starts to go awry, and the phone slows down so much you’re forced to pull out the PS3 connection.And it gets worse – it would not work for us over 3G no matter how many times we tried (and that was nothing to do with the poor reception this time). And when we tried to use it over Wi-Fi again, it didn’t work.We’d advise if you’re really after remote play from your PS3, pick up a PSP Go – at least they work more often than not.Media HomeBut weirdly, Media Home does work. Install the software to your PC, make sure it’s switched on and let the phone find the content you’ve dubbed as share-worthy from your computer.It’s neat, and as long as you have Wi-Fi turned on (and the settings turned to auto-update) users can get easy and automatic access to their favourite content without having to mess about with connecting up the phone.Why this is hidden in ‘Entertainment’ and not on the media menu we’re not sure, but it’s a decent application nonetheless.The range of applications on the Sony Ericsson Aino is bewildering, simply because it seems the company has lumped every single one it could think of in there.We’ll take you through some of our personal favourites, although the likes of the torch (which turns on the LED flash) and the photo tutor (some basic hints on how to take decent cameraphone snaps) are worthy of honourable mention.TrackIDAnyone that knows Shazam how this works – hold the phone up to a speaker when an unknown song is playing and TrackID will perform music recognition magic for you. It will then send you to a portal where you can download the track -either from the Sony Ericsson PlayNow arena or your network provider’s music store to buy the song in question.TrackID also has searchable elements, an option to see the most listened to and downloaded tracks in recent days and an easy to use interface but it can’t work out what song your mate is trying to hum to you, sadly.TrackerSeen the Nike+ iPod? This is pretty similar, as it works out where you are to help you train while running. The best thing is once your size and weight are calibrated, there’s no need for a pesky shoe sensor – it can map your runs and give you detailed feedback at the end, complete with motivational voiceovers.Crazy PenguinA cool game that’s so addictive we nearly published this review later than we were supposed to. Basically you fire penguins at polar bears, and try and navigate the scenery to do so before you run out of winged ammo.It sounds rubbish – but it’s really not, and while it’s not a reason to buy the phone alone, check it out if you do end up with the Aino.PlayNow ArenaWhile the likes of Apple, RIM, Nokia and friends are off making their own whizzbang application stores, Sony Ericsson, well, isn’t.PlayNow Arena is basically a store front to buy ever-so-slightly pricey games, ringtones, tunes and wallpapers, with an added applications section too. But most of the applications cost to buy – there are only two free, Snaptu and Fring, in the store. We don’t know if the phone is incompatible or the library needs completing, but this needs to change soon if SE is to be a big player in the future.We feel like we’re constantly picking at the Aino, which does feel like it should be a decent handset, but we’ve got another gripe – the battery life isn’t good.Sony Ericsson is touting standby times of up to 367 hours for the Aino – it’s more like 20 hours in real use.While the battery life can be extended to just about last a day when everything is turned off, the Aino is designed to be always on. You don’t want to be turning Bluetooth on and off whenever you want to listen to music – and not least because it’s hidden down in the settings menu (or the slow to launch QuickLaunch box).And Wi-Fi is necessary for the Media Go application – so we can’t see why the battery is a paltry 1,000mAh effort.And while we did listen to a fair chunk of music on the phone, this was offset by not watching video and barely browsing the web, so in real terms it lags way behind its competitors.OrganiserAs we mentioned above with the applications, the amount of organisational ability on the phone is impressive. It’s not going to rival a Windows Mobile, what with its push email, calendar, contacts and whatnot, but it’s got a stopwatch and a timer, and we can’t tell you the amount of people who have told us this is crucial (OK, we can, it’s eight. But they were adamant).The calendar is easy to use, and now comes with a charming piece of artwork, and there are five customisable alarms with some lovely melodic ringtones to choose from.There’s not a lot more to say about organising yourself with the Aino – it might not be the Filofax replacement you’ve been after, but it will let you know when you’re about to miss the footie (as long as you wrote it in there, of course).Connectivity is pretty much limited to the PC via the USB cable, although if you’ve enabled your computer with Bluetooth you can go nuts with that too.The range of options on offer in the Aino is a full complement, with all working well. Wi-Fi sometimes struggles to get going, but on the whole, everything powers up quickly and works when it’s supposed to.We’re particularly impressed with the GPS on board – assisted GPS (which uses cellular towers to triangulate your position) boots up blindingly fast, and GPS has a lock on you generally within 10 seconds. Good show, Sony Ericsson.Bluetooth and the MH100 work together nicely as well, with the latter coming online as soon as it’s switched on. The same can be said for a entering a zone with a paired Bluetooth PC – it connects nicely with the Aino and makes content sharing easy.We also liked the Wi-Fi as it brought Media Go – the only downside to having constantly updated media is you’re often left feeling like you don’t own enough, so a few too many trips to online MP3 stores were necessary out of sheer fear of being uncool.PC softwareSimilar to the Sony Ericsson Satio (well, it’s identical in actual fact, we used the same PC software as it was included on both phones) the phone will connect effortlessly to the PC with a minimum of fuss (once everything is installed).Once again, one of the attributes we particularly like is being able to save and view your text messages in an inbox/outbox format – meaning you can back them up for another phone in the future.Media Go and the Sony Ericsson PC Suite offer you all the media options you need, such as converting video files and streaming media to the phone, and it’s hard to find any fault with this setup really – the new Samsung PC Studio looks a bit nicer and the iPhone has iTunes’ might behind it, but that’s about it. What is the Aino for? Is it a featurephone with smartphone leanings? Is it the PSP phone with some other functionality thrown in the mix? Either way, it’s expensive – around 470 SIM free, or 170 for the phone on a one-and-a-half year, 25 a month contract.We likedWe liked the simplicity of the layout and what the phone is trying to do – it’s got a fairly solid build, although it feels a little long in the hand. BBC iPlayer is always a plus, and the easy-to-use touch media interface is nice. We like the included stand and are big fans of the bundled MH100 headset, and the GPS system with a number of location based services is a nice touch.We dislikedSadly we disliked a great deal more about the phone, from a laggy OS when multi-tasking to an odd touch/non-touch combination.Elements like the touchscreen seizing up, the camera taking 15 seconds to move from one picture to another and the fact the PS3 connectivity doesn’t work regularly make it hard to love this phone, especially when the battery dies for the umpteenth time.VerdictWe liked the Aino a lot when we got it out the box, and our opinion dwindled downwards from there. When the main selling point isn’t fully functional (ie, the PS3 compatibility isn’t up to speed) and both the camera and media player are slow to react, we’re struggling to find a reason to recommend this phone.The Sony Ericsson W995 has the same UI, but is a lot faster, and comes in a nicer chassis, has a faster camera, a 3.5mm headphone jack and crucially is around 120 cheaper to buy. We would have given the Aino half a star less than we have, but we’re still fans of the simplistic Sony Ericsson interface, and the overall package doesn’t deserve to be among the worst phones of the year – we’re just disappointed with the effort.Related LinksMore mobile phone reviewsTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeSearch for the best Sony Ericsson Aino deals at OmioRelated StoriesReview: Samsung Galaxy i7500Review: Samsung Blade GT-S5600VReview: Motorola Dext MB200Review: HTC Touch2Review: Sony Ericsson Satio