The OC Technophile

Blackberry is constantly updating their lineup of phones and most recently updated their Bold line of phones with the Blackberry Bold 9700. If you’ve ever used the Bold line, the 9000 was the most recent of the line. It was a little larger than the current phone but proved it could handle anything thrown at it and had a strong battery life as well. The 9700 contains updated software, a smaller device factor, and proves that smaller things do come in better packages. No longer do you have the trackball but now have a trackpad which makes navigating the interface so much better. The 9700 also contains a longer battery life than most Blackberry units and has lasted us well through the day with multiple options open at the same time. The email interface remains the same as does the browser, but an upcoming browser update is in the words according to those in the know.

Overall, we’d highly recommend the newest addition in the Blackberry lineup as they’ve kicked it up a notch, to quote the celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse. Sturdy, productive, and a professionals dream equal a great product. Grab it from AT&T today for $199 with a 2 year contract.

It’s now official after all the leaks on Engadget and Crackberry, the new Storm 2 is officially coming. Verizon Wireless had announced the Blackberry Storm 2. It’ll be released on October 28th for $279 with a $100 Mail in Rebate. It’ll feature a new 5.0 operating system and a bunch of other enhancements to make it a huge update to current Storm users. Enjoy

Courtesy of the folks over at Womworld, we got the chance to try out the Nokia 6220 classic. This worked to be a great small and compact cell phone with a terrific camera and S60 abilities. This comes unlocked as most Nokia advanced phones come and offers a ton of software and utilities onboard. We were able to pop in a T-Mobile SIM chip and use the phone within seconds. It comes with a quad band GSM ability and 3G abilities as well bundled with VOIP capabilities. 128MB of memory comes with the phone and you can add more via a microSD slot that comes on the side of the phone. We found the phones call qualities very acceptable and the camera with crisp pictures. If you’ve had the opportunity to use the higher end Nokia’s, such as the N95 or E71 you’ll be very familiar with the camera controls.

The size of this phone is remarkable though, being only 3oz + battery and having a sharp screen and vibrant colors to match. Wi-Fi and GPS come with the phone as well and we were able to browse the internet with moderate speed via the bundled browser. The S60 platform features a number of built in programs and the ability to add a secondary browser such as Skyfox or Opera Mini is there if wanted.

Overall, we liked the phone and it’s picture taking, but found the slowness of the operating system a little slow for flipping between features. If on the phone and quickly wanting to take a picture, the phone loaded the camera software slowly and then allowed the picture to be taken. The GPS feature also proved slow as with most assisted GPS phones. The GPS signal took a while to acquire and by the time the GPS loaded, you forgot what you needed it for.

We do like the phone despite the minimal flaws and is available online via most retailers. We give it an 8/10 and thank Womworld and Nokia for the use and trial.

It’s been tinkling around the net for a while but the Q11 from Motorola has been made official on the Motorola site. A fully featured Motorola Windows Mobile experience, Quad band, 3 MP camera, full video support, GPS, 128MB Flash, 64 MB RAM of memory, and more. Looks like a sweet phone and fully featured as well. No mention of release date or carrier.

T-Mobile will be launching the new Blackberry Flip Phone as early as the next month and video is coming out from RIM on it. Enjoy… (No sound on the video, so no need to adjust your volume).

Yesterday was an exciting time for fans of the Android platform, as Google and T-Mobile jointly announced the T-Mobile G1. The T-Mobile G1 is the first in a series of smart phones that will feature the Google Android operating system. Features such as a 3 Megapixel Camera, full integration with Gmail, GTalk, and Google search, Bluetooth, a slide out keyboard, and more make this an exciting release that will be out by the end of October. Additional multimedia features such as GPS and Amazon MP3 store features make this a fully mobile office phone. At $179 with a 2 year contract, it is quite affordable for a phone of this magnitude as well.

Where this phone will beat the iPhone is in the MP3 store and Android market features. You will be able to listen and purchase songs from the Amazon MP3 store wirelessly, without being tethered to your desktop or laptop. With the iPhone, you could purchase songs from iTunes but only if connected via Wi-Fi. With the G1 you can do it over the 3G network. Also the Android market will be a place to purchase applications, games, and utilities for the phone and it is rumored that the store will be free for the first 3 months.

Is this the iPhone killer? It certainly gives it a run for the money. We’ll see as they ship and are released soon..

Photo courtesy of Engadget:

Photo courtesy of Gizmodo:

As the Google/T-Mobile G1 got a lot of press coverage yesterday, some other cell phone news broke in regards to the Blackberry Storm. If you remember, the Storm is the touchscreen Blackberry that will be released on Verizon Wireless by the end of the year. Engadget Mobile and CNet are reporting the device will have a 3.25-inch, 480×360 touch screen, 1GB of memory, the phone will support CDMA/EV-DO Rev. A, quad-band GSM/EDGE, and 2100MHz HSPA bands, and more. The device will also have a landscape QWERTY-esque keyboard and a suretype portrait mode keyboard. It’ll be interesting to see this when it’s released. More news to follow we’re sure…

Image of the phone, credited to Engadget Mobile and CNet..

I’ve recently purchased the Nokia E-71-2 and am ready to proclaim this as the king of Smartphones. I’ve had the opportunity to use the N95 and iPhone in cell phone testing, and it’s amazing to see the differences in a closed platform vs open platform cell programs.

The E71 by Nokia is a all in one smartphone with a full Qwerty keyboard, a brillant screen, built in WiFi, GPS, 3.2 Megapixel Camera, and many more features. From the minute I took it out of the box, the build quality on this phone blew me away. Solid and robust feel to the unit makes for a durable phone in our world. Built in exchange support, full email support including POP and Imap, and ability for multiple email accounts also adds to its excellence.

What really makes the E71 and even the N95 stand apart from most applications is the S60 platform which stands miles apart from the Apple process of NDA’s and closed developers. There are a ton of applications that you are able to download and try  (some free, some not), and don’t require you to unlock your phone or break the phone to use them. Applications such as fring, truphone, and others allow for built in VOIP as well.

Video support is built in as well and with a worldwide support staff of developers and users, it’s easy to find support when needed.

The N95 in retrospect is a feature packed phone with a 5 megapixel camera, but is a slider phone and typing emails and texts proved a chore. The future N96 is due out this fall and should be interesting to see its improvements over the N95.

Kudos to Nokia for putting together a great phone and the best Smartphone on the market. 10/10 from us.