Design and Ergonomics:

On first looks, Apple iPad seems to be an oversized Apple iPod Touch, and it is generally true. Looks are almost identical to those of Apple iPod, there is almost no difference. But the question is how it looks in this larger size. Well, iPad is sleek and stylish, as expected from something with Apple’s logo. It looks good in hands, and on first sight, it looks like a remote touch panel of a smart house, really futuristic. On the front, there is a brilliant 9.7 inch touch-screen with 1024 x 768 resolutions. Screen is brilliant, similar to that on iPod and iPhone, and there is no lack of vibrant colours and brilliant interface. iPad is amazingly thin (only 13.4 cm) and lightweight (1.6 pounds). So it looks great and because of the high quality touch screen, it is great to use as well. And being a novel device, it’ll probably get more attention from the people than high-spec Alienware laptops, and someone using it should expect everyone to take a look at the iPad. It is a beautiful and stylish gadget.

Features:

Apple iPad has features almost identical to the Apple iPod touch (with the exception of optional 3G connectivity in the iPad 3G model). It uses the iPhone OS 3.2, which is the latest. It should be familiar to the iPhone and iPod users, the UI is identical, except that it is on a comparatively larger screen. Almost all iPhone applications run on the iPad without any modification. So it is good news for the people who like the great and easy to use iPhone OS, they’ll know how to use the device from the start. Multi-touch support and iPhone OS and UI makes it great to use. For storage, there is option of 16, 32 and 64GB, which is more than what is needed in a device like this one. 64GB is more than enough for storing huge amount of music files, movies, pictures and games. It is great for travelers, and its excellent battery should keep it running for hours. 10 hours is claimed by Apple, which is probably more than any other tablet PC and device of similar size. For connectivity, there is Wi-Fi, Digital Compass, and 3G connectivity is also available in the 3G model. The 3G model also has GPS, GSM and EDGE, (but it is only for data transfer). iPad has Wi-Fi and Apple’s Safari browser, combined with a huge display, and web-surfing is a great experience on the iPad. There is also 3.5 mm jack, and Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA Adapter, 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable, 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable. For running everything well, there is a fast 1GHz Apple A4 processor, so the iPhone OS runs even better and faster, and high quality movies run smoother. This is slow compared to Netbooks and tablet PCs, but since it is not a pure Tablet PC, nor it runs Windows or similar OS, 1 GHz CPU is more than enough for the iPad. Accessories include iPad dock, iPad keyboard dock, iPad case and iPad Camera Connection Kit.

Conclusion:

Apple iPad is a versatile device, and it can do a lot of things. Its huge memory, large high quality screen and huge battery time makes it ideal for entertainment during long journeys and for students. Keyboard doc makes its use at home comfortable, and for so many things can be done with the iPad, that for many one does not need to use the PC. Read the newspaper online, check email and Facebook etc with the comfort of sitting on the sofa using the iPad. Connect it with the Wi-Fi network anywhere. Comparing it with a home PC + laptop + cell phone with GPS (which most of the iPad buyers are expected to have already), is it a device worth buying? But a great device overall

Design and Construction:

The look is great, with elegant curves on the corners, and the dimensions blend well with the screen. The rear has the camera and LED Flash, and Google and HTC logos. The Teflon finish is smooth and pleasant to touch. 130g weight is a bit on the heavy side, but considering the slightly large dimensions of the phone, this doesn’t look too odd. Overall the looks are great; especially the elegant two tone finish is very appealing. The looks and the style factor are pretty awesome.

Features:

Features are where this phone really shines and shows its power. It has HTC logo, so one would expect great specs, but get ready for this: It has a full 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor, which can be described only as being quick, very quick for a cell phone that is. The performance doesn’t lack anywhere thanks to this great processor, and to back it up, there is huge 512MB RAM and 512MB ROM, so there is no question about its great performance. Android 2.1 runs super smooth and quick and so do all the applications, and with a huge number of Android applications coming, people switching from Symbian, Windows Mobile and Iphone will not miss anything. To fill the cell phone with applications, there is up to 32GB microSD card storage, and 4GB card is included in the box. For music lovers, this is good news, and so is the presence of 3.5mm jack. The list of features is long: GPRS, EDGE, 3G (HSDPA and HUDPA), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and GPS with A-GPS support, Digital Compass, Google maps and full integration with your Gmail mailbox, You Tube, Facebook and Google Talk. This handset doesn’t cease to amaze. Whatever one would need in a cell phone is already there. There is a great quality 5MP Camera with LED flash and it can record in 720 x 480 resolution. Features like smile detection, Geo-tagging and autofocus are also present. There were few camera options in pervious versions of Android, but the latest Android 2.1 adds a lot of features, and a lot of options, so Nexus One can be used as a makeshift camera, and both image and video quality doesn’t disappoint. The colours are accurate, image quality is superb, and what else do you want? The best feature of Nexus One is perhaps the screen. 3.7 inches, 16 million colour AMOLED capacitive touch screen with a high resolution of 480 x 800 is amazing. Videos play great, browser is a charming experience, and the screen is really sensitive to touch and integrate well with the Android 2.1’s crisp and fluent UI. Nexus One has the latest Google Android 2.1 OS, which is a great improvement over the 1.5 and 1.6 used widely in many models. It adds a whole new experience with its latest UI, and for the first time, I have to say that this is a serious challenge to the Iphone, and is a little better in my experience. The new features and improvements in Android 2.1 can be seen everywhere, the UI seems more polished as than 2.0. There is voice control, speech to text, new camera features, car mode for navigation, live wallpapers that react to touch and many more! All this makes the cell phone very pleasant and a lot of fun to use. The phonebook can automatically update contacts from sources like Facebook, Gmail etc. The UI is mainly very easy and takes very little time to understand since everything is obvious.

Conclusion:

If you are an Android fan, and also need a cell phone full of features, Google Nexus One is the best choice. It rivals the best Windows Mobile based phones, and Iphone 3GS. One word… Amazing!

Features and Technical Specifications:

Consisting of Samsung S3C6410 800MHz processor ensure the top quality performance and a dedicated graphics accelerator with support of AMOLED resistive touch screen spread 65K colors on 3.7 inch screen supporting 480×800 resolutions. Samsung OMNIA II is a windows mobile consisting of Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional which can be further upgraded to 6.5. Samsung OMNIA II has a 5 MP (2592 x 1944 pixels) camera with autofocus and dual-LED flash, video recording at 720×480 at 30 FPS. It provides variety of mediums for data transfer and connectivity which includes USB, Bluetooth, WLAN, GPRS, EGDE and 3G. Having 256MB of RAM it has internal secondary storage maximum up to 16GB and a micro SD card of 32GB further can be used. Other interesting and dominating features are Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and Handwriting recognition. The other built in softwares are Photo editor, video editor, DivX / XviD / MP4/ H.263/ H.264/ WMV player, MP3/ e-AAC+/ WMA / WMDRM / OMA DRM 2.1 player, Find Music service, Media Gate 3D, Pocket Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, PDF viewer), TV-out, Mobile Tracker and Business card scanner. The OMNIA II comes with an FM antenna adapter that you can plug your headphones into and listen to the radio world. The screen simply isn’t all that responsive so one has to press down quite hard to perform any operation. It has no physical keyboard so only interaction is through the touch screen. Talk time normally for 2G is up to 12 hours.

Conclusion:

OMNIA II is a good upgrade from Samsung. Overall cell phone is great as far as style, graphics and features are concerned but it lags a little in speed and touch screen is less responsive as compared to others but it is a complete windows mobile with a quite user friendly interface.

Features and Game Play:

Featuring normal play as well as multiplayer over the Internet as well as LAN makes it exceptional. Single player modes allow user to play exhibition matches (10-50 over matches, no test match option though), but there are enough types of games to keep a player busy and happy, from tournaments to net practice. Other than exhibition match, there is a Revolution Cup, which is knock-out tournament and a Revolution League, featuring a full length tournament almost like a World Cup where each team looks to compete for the best. Each tournament screen allows the selection of team, over’s and difficulty. Net practice allows for batting and bowling practice, with scales to judge the shots and challenges to play a certain shot or to hit the ball at a certain location with a guide to technique to play that shot, a very good tool not found in other similar games and a very easy to follow way to learn the game for a new player. There are many shots, and they have been divided into defensive shots, push shots, slog shots, lofted shots and aggressive shots, some types requiring just an arrow key, some requiring a combination of keys to execute. There is a wide variety of shots (34 of them) and each shot as a specific timing against each type of bowler bowling at a particular speed, and each shot can be adjusted to go to a certain direction, and so, the game is not easy. In fact, in my personal experience, this is the most difficult cricket game, even in the easy mode, there are tiny details of the shots to be kept in mind, which may result in a 4 or a 6 or a wicket. This brings us to the bowling details; there are 3 major types of bowlers: Fast, Medium Fast and Spin. The bowling options are extensive and detailed and allow selection of the area where the ball will pitch, seam/swing/spin direction and amount and speed of the ball. All this makes it very detailed since the way the batsman reacts to a ball is superb and hence makes getting a wicket more challenging. Fielding is mostly automatic and only allow for selecting the throwing side for the fielder.

Graphics:

At first the game impresses, graphics are not great, but they are good I must say, and considering the size of the game, maybe great too, but nothing special. There are good enough animations of shots, fielding and bowling etc, but there are little less variety here. Details are acceptable, rather a bit lacking, but the game can occupies very little space on the disc and can run on a pretty basic machine, an old Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM and a basic graphics card should have no problems running the game. Basically, there is a general lack of diversity in player animations: each type of bowler bowls in only one way, shot’s animations also lack diversity, and so do the faces and other things. Stadiums are largely similar and so is the crowd. This lack of diversity is eminent after sometime. Also there are huge number of minor glitches and overlooks. Like more than 75% of the time, the fielder throws the ball in the stumps, catches drop too often to mention a few. Other major glitches like the batsman freezes at some shots but the shot is played, and sometimes, the fielders also get stuck etc. These are annoying considering the high quality cricket games it has to compete with, and given the competition and specs of modern computers, the small size and low hardware requirements do not come as a plus point, so no chance of these being an excuse of lack of diversity and glitches. Longer experience makes it all more irritating. More annoying is the lack of commentary and replays. I mean it is near impossible to imagine a modern Cricket game without commentary and replay. There is Hawkeye though, for the LBW decisions.

Multi player:

As far as multiplayer mode is concerned the game behaves differently other than its rival games by Code Masters and Electronic Arts. Cricket Revolution allows to play online globally through internet and as well as through LAN. It offers a chat box at top left corner for the both players to communicate with each other also there is a network lag bar at bottom indicating about the lagging status of game connection which also affects the timing of shot making the game more interesting.

Conclusion:

Features:

Nokia N96 has been made capable to have storage of 16 GB. Regarding the memory card, memory card up to an 8 GB can be inserted, also this phone has a 128 MB RAM. Phone memory is very much enough for holding unlimited number of messages, contact numbers and call records. A 5MP camera with up to 2592 X 1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, an auto focus facility and LED optics complete the camera composition of the phone. For video, there is a VGA@30fps.   Connecting technologies available in the cell phone are Bluetooth (v2.0 with A2DP), WLAN (Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology), a 3G (HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps), USB (Yes, v2.0 micro USB).Features like Symbian OS 9.3, S60 rel. 3.2 operating system, Dual ARM 9 264 MHz processor (CPU), SMS, MMS, Email, Browser like WAP 2.0/XHTML, HTML, RSS reader are a part of this creation. Not just this, but Stereo FM radio with RDS, built in + downloadable games and A-GPS for supporting Nokia maps are also there to facilitate the user as much as possible. Other features involve the JAVA applications with DVB-H TV broadcast receiver, Dual slide design, WMV/RV/MP4/3GP video player, Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF). Colors available in this wonderful cell are Black, Silver and   Quartz which it a more appropriate choice to carry. This mobile has got the standard battery and Li-Ion 950 mAh (BL-5F).The talk time in the Nokia N96 is 3 hours and 40 minutes on the 2G. Music play timing is amazing and that is up to 14 h.