Motorola Devour Arrives on Verizon

Verizon Wireless just snagged Motorola’s latest smartphone called the Motorola DEVOUR. This is the first Verizon Wireless phone that features Motoblur, Motorola’s own Android-powered content delivery service. With Motoblur, users will have access to various personalization and customization features of the said mobile phone.

The Motorola Devour features a robust contacts syncing feature for both work and personal e-mail servies including G-mail. It will allow users to posts, send instant messages, upload photos and other contents to social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. What’s so good about this Motoblur feature is that media contents are sent directly to the Devour’s home screen and fed as an easy-to-manage streams.

The Motorola Devour is also packed with great smartphone features including a 3.1-inch capacitive touch screen, touch sensitive navigation pad, pre-loaded apps including Gmail, GTalk, YouTube, Google Search and Google Maps, direct access to the Android market, automatic pushing of status updates through widgets, an 8GB microSD card, Bluetooth, and a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard.

The phone also allows home screen customizations with e-mail and social network messages. These contents are automatically backed up as well on a secure Motoblur portal. The phone also has aGPS which can be used to track down the phone in case it got lost or misplaced.

The Motorola Devour is available through Verizon’s Nationwide Talk or Nationwide Talk and Text plans with pricing that starts from $39.99 monthly access to $59.99.

Nokia Unveils the C-Series with the Nokia C5 Phone

True to the rumor that has been going around the past few days, Nokia indeed has a new series of mobile phones, the C-Series. And to kick off, the new Nokia C5 was just launched. The Nokia C5 is another smartphone which optimized for social networking and sharing. It provides direct access to favorite contacts as well as Facebook status updates on its homescreen.

The Nokia C5 also supports MySpace, various instant messaging tools and email accounts through its Ovi Mail service. But of course other email clients are also supported by the Nokia C5. The phone also features a 3.2 megapixel camera, a 2GB memory card, assisted navigation, location sharing, web browsing and applications that can be purchase from the Nokia Ovi Store.

This phone runs on S60 3rd edition mobile OS and also boasts of a bright 2.2-inch display. It also has a built-in stereo FM radio, 3.5mm AV connector, and stereo IHF speaker.

Design-wise, the Nokia C5 sports asmall form factor with just over 12mm and 46mm across. It provides up to 12 hours talktime and standby time of up to 26 days.

The Nokia C5 is slated for a 2nd quarter 2010 release and will be available in white and warm gray. It will have an estimated price of around 135 Euro.

Samsung Launches the Galaxy S Smartphone with 4-inch AMOLED

Samsung has just launched its latest mobile phone offering, the new Samsung Galaxy S. Featuring a 4-inch AMOLED screen and a 1GHz mobile processor running the latest Android OS, the Samsung Galaxy S promises vibrant HD video handling, rich augmented reality content through Layar Reality Browser and advanced location based services. The Samsung Galaxy S is slated for a simultaneous release in Europe, North America, Latin America, Australia and Asia.

Nokia E72 Review: Quirky QWERTY Smartphone

The E72 is a little rough around the edges.

I picked up a Nokia E72 for an upcoming trip to Japan. Here are my thoughts on this Blackberry-ish smartphone.

As you might have noticed, the E72 is a QWERTY-packing smartphone in the same vein as the Blackberry. It’s not as wide as a Blackberry, but it’s super sleek and definitely thinner. It doesn’t feel cheap, either: like the E71, its predecessor, the back plate is entirely metal. But unlike the E71, the E72 has some nice brushed-steel accents that give it a trendy look.

Software

OS and UI

The Nokia E72 runs Symbian v3, an operating system that has been fairly rock solid over the ages but is a little dated now. The E72 is not, however, as rock solid as I would have liked. I’m currently using the latest firmware for my region (22.007), yet I’ve had a decent number of random reboots ever since I got the phone. And they always crop up at the worst times, too.

Performance

Under the E72’s hood, there’s a 600 mhz ARM11 processor. It’s quick, and the phone handles multiple applications and transitions well. Lag is rare.

Hardware

Keyboard

The E72’s keyboard is, like most Nokia keyboards, hit and miss. It has some of the best feeling (tactile) buttons that I’ve used, and typing on it can be extremely quick. But the buttons are small – really small, and I find myself accidentally hitting multiple keys or the wrong keys, and generally making far more mistakes because of it. I have about average size hands. If your hands are larger, I wouldn’t even consider the E72. Sorry, it’s just not going to work out.

The key layout isn’t as much of an issue, it’s just a little different. Nokia dropped the backspace key directly underneath the P key, and the Enter key under that. It takes a little getting used to.

I find that I hit the one-touch keys (the Home, Calendar, Contacts, and Messaging buttons) by mistake when hitting either of the two soft keys. Might just be me.

Battery Life

Pretty amazing. The battery (1500 mAh lithium-ion) is one tough cookie. During the past two weeks, I’ve pushed my E72 to its limits, with the GPS/phone/browser/ZXreader on constantly. I’ve also had to reboot the phone a couple of times a day (more on this later). The E72 eats all of this for breakfast, and the battery is the phone’s ace-in-the-hole.

Conclusion

Overall, I have to say I really like the Nokia E72. It’s thin, very pocketable, does everything I need it to do, and lasts longer than any other phone out there. I always used to say that I would never carry around a Blackberry (or Blackberry-ish device in this case), but the E72’s made me change my mind.

Best of all, the price is very reasonable – one recent deal at Dell pegged the price at $245 shipped for a new E72. For a smartphone of this caliber, I’d say that’s pretty damn good.