LG brings to it’s customers a unique combo, which one can’t even find in the much hyped iPhone, of touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard. The device is named LG10000, a CDMA handset, is made available to Reliance subscribers.
Features:
2.8-inch display
2 MP camera
extendable memory up to 8GB
Office applications for Corporate Mail Access
Full HTML browser and high speed internet connectivity
Battery supports 240 minutes talk time and up to 480 hours stand-by time
priced between Rs 22,000 to Rs 25,000
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It will be available only on CDMA EVDO network of Verizon Wireless, but since this wireless carrier has good coverage and good unlimited data plans, this phone may be an interesting proposition… and already first official information from Verizon Wireless is available about it!
Some highlights about this phone:
* support CMDA EVDO for wireless broadband speeds
* has no Wi-Fi
* memory card slot: microSD (visible in photos)
* small size
* powered by Windows Mobile 6
* not to be confused with Samsung SGH-i760 that is for GSM / UMTS / HSDPA networks and has slide-out QWERTY keyboard too but it slides-out in portrait mode not in vertical mode
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Building on the success of its BlackBerry Pearl 8100 handset, RIM is now selling a similarly styled full QWERTY device called the 8800. Like the Pearl before it, the 8800 has a consumer friendly look to it and features a trackball for navigation. The Pearl did much to move RIM into the realm of consumer devices, can the 8800 make even more headway for the company? Our review 8800 is decked out for T-Mobile USA and supports the company’s My Faves calling plan featuresPhysical Aspects
When it comes to physical design, you can think of the BlackBerry 8800 as being a Pearl (8100) that has been stretched wider, given a full QWERTY keyboard, and had its camera removed. The design elements used in the 8800 are borrowed directly from the Pearl: from the piano black cover material to the graphite metallic sides, the 8800 looks just like a wide Pearl. One difference that is worth mentioning is that I find the 8800 to be more solidly built than the Pearl. The 8800 feels like a device that will stand up to hard use.
The 8800 measures 114mm x 66mm x 15mm (4.5″ x 2.6″ x .6″) in size, which is 7mm longer and 16mm wider than the Pearl 8100. At 134g (4.7oz), though, it is 43g (1.5oz) heavier than the Pearl. The end result is a device that is a bit less pocketable, but one that can support a QWERTY keyboard and larger, higher resolution display. In fact, I was quite pleased with the display on the 8800. It offers QVGA (320×240) pixel resolution in a landscape orientation and has good color saturation and brightness, even outdoors. The automatic brightness adjustment mode keeps the display readable while conserving battery power. The display measures about 2.4″ across the diagonal, which is reasonable for a device of this size.
With the exception of a somewhat stiff space bar, the 8800 has a pretty nice full QWERTY keyboard. Upon initially seeing that the period (full stop) key required an ALT shift to access, I was surprised. But RIM thought through this more than I had initially given it credit for: entering two spaces in a row will automatically covert the first space to a period, making the period key needed only for email addresses and the occasional number. That’s a real time saver. Capital letters can be entered using the traditional shift keys, but are more conveniently entered by long pressing the key. Can’t be bothered with apostrophes? The 8800’s AutoText function can automatically change words like “dont” and “cant” to “don’t” and “can’t”. Words like “I’ll” and “ill” still confuse it, though, so the occasional manually entered apostrophe is still in order. RIM has obviously put a lot of thought into making the 8800 fast in the hands of an experienced user, and the results speak for themselves.
Navigation on the 8800 is handled by the trackball. The trackball makes navigating large menus or emails a snap, and also obviates the need for a separate scroll-wheel. Pressing the trackball will act the same way as the center button would on a typical d-pad. The trackball feels a bit stiff to me when pressing on it, more so than did the Pearl or the new Curve 8300. Regardless, it still works very well.
The rest of the controls and features are found on the sides and back of the 8800. The volume buttons are on the right edge, the headphone jack and mini-USB power port are on the left, as is the voice dial button (which can be reconfigured). A power button and a triple-function mute/music player/standby mode button are found on top. The microSD memory card slot is found under the rear cover, but unimpeded by the battery, so a restart is not necessary when swapping cards. Lastly, the 8800 ships with a leather case for your belt. A magnet in the case automatically puts the phone in standby mode when inserted, and wakes it when removed.
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You have to admire Apple’s chutzpah as much as its creativity. Any other newcomer to the mobile-phone market would have allowed, indeed encouraged, potential customers—the Verizons, T-Mobiles, AT&Ts of the world—to have at least some say in what went into its fledgling device. Even Nokia, the biggest handset maker in the business, has always listened carefully to its clients.
Not Apple. Since its conception early last year, the company’s heavily hyped iPhone (which has finally gone on sale in America) has remained remarkably untainted by industry group-think. In exchange for exclusive rights to offer the phone in America for at least the next couple of years, AT&T has had to refrain from any form of meddling. And it shows—both for good and for bad.
The iPhone is all you would expect of Apple—thin and sleek, with the biggest screen ever seen on a mobile phone. It combines all the functions of a smart phone, internet appliance and multimedia player seamlessly in one handsome device.
Using a subset of Apple’s rock-solid OS X operating system means the iPhone’s 16 built-in applications—including phone, address book, calendar, alarm clock, organiser, camera, web browser, e-mail client, Wi-Fi terminal, video and audio iPod—work together in a clear, simple, intuitive way that has become Apple’s hallmark.
As with an iPod or iMac, it’s the user interface that impresses most. With the iPhone, Apple has taken its sense of minimalism a crucial step further. The phone has no clunky keyboard or rows of fiddly function keys, and no pop-up menus to plow through. Instead, everything is done by tapping, pinching or swiping a finger on the phone’s touch-sensitive screen. Get lost among its many different displays, and the gadget’s one solitary button takes you straight back to the home-page showing icons for the phone’s various functions.
A virtual QWERTY keyboard pops up on the screen when you need to write a text message or an e-mail. Tricky, yes, but the software is smart enough to guess what you meant to type and will correct most mis-keyed letters.
Another bit of out-of-the-box thinking is the iPhone’s web browser. Unlike the tiny cut-down, text-based Mobile Web offered by Verizon and the rest, Apple has implemented a rich set of browser features that lets the iPhone display pretty well the same web pages you get on a computer. You can scroll down by dragging a finger over the screen, and enlarge anything you can’t read by simply double tapping on it. Spread two fingers across the screen and the whole image gets magnified.
But just because Apple is clever enough to do all these things, and more, does not mean they will necessarily be appreciated beyond the Macaholics, fashionistas and other early adopters. Much has been made about the way Apple has bravely bucked the trend by building a “convergence” device—an appliance that melds many functions into one-instead of pouring its prodigious energies into a “divergence” product that does one thing brilliantly, as it did so successfully with the iPod. All the blockbusters of consumer electronics—video recorders, digital cameras, plasma TVs, Nintendo game consoles, MP3 players, as well as the vast majority of mobile phones—have been divergence devices. By contrast, convergence products, such as smart phones and media-centre PCs, have either flopped or finished up occupying niches.
The danger in developing a gadget that tries to be a phone, internet appliance and iPod all in one is that it can fail to accomplish each as well as it might. Unfortunately, the iPhone comes up short in a number of areas. For instance, it does not include voice dialing—essential now that hands-free is fast becoming the only way that mobile phones can be used legally in cars. Also, simply making a phone call is more cumbersome than it should be, requiring up to half a dozen different steps. And because the phone can’t take advantage of high-speed 3G cellular networks, surfing the web is more like wading through molasses.
As an iPod, the iPhone is also less than adequate-especially when trying to store videos and photographs as well as songs. The $500 model has only four gigabytes of storage, while the $600 version has eight gigabytes. These days, iPods come with 80-gigabyte hard-drives.
If the iPhone’s potential is to be fully realised, Apple will need to do two things in a hurry. As with the iPod Nano, it will need an entry-level model that’s much cheaper and more focused. And as with the iPod itself, it will need to make the mainstream model a good deal more polished. That means adding more storage, a modern broadband radio, a slot for an external memory card, a GPS receiver for real-time navigation and software which, among other things, allows the phone to capture video as well as send photos to others.
Insiders reckon that Apple could halve the current price of the iPhone and still make a profit. That leaves the company plenty of wiggle room to prove the naysayers wrong. Expect to see cheaper and better iPhones perhaps as early as January.
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LG 10000 takes a leap ahead of Apple iPhone with touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard
