From the name, I thought this was a high end smartphone but latter I was disappointed to know that it is a basic low end phone made just for calling and sending text messages. The best part about it is that the phone costs just $19.99 with a rebate and is free with a rebate if purchased online. This handset is recommended for senior citizens or for people who are using a cell phone for the first time. You can also buy it if you don’t have much interest in cell phones and are looking to save some money. Samsung Gusto has an attractive design and is very slim. You won’t even notice the weight of the phone when you put it in your pocket. But this is not unexpected in low end phones. The features are all low end and hence you don’t have to there is nothing contributing to the bulk. The phone has a glossy body which easily attracts a lot of fingerprints. If you are a hygiene freak, I would recommend you to carry a cleaning cloth along with you all the time or else the  [...]

There is a lot of buzz around whenever a Samsung phone is announced and this shows how popular this manufacturer has now become in the gadget market. And it surely will remain popular if it makes phones like the Samsung Galaxy S i9000. The best part about this phone is the gorgeous four inch screen which dominates the front face of the phone. It was a great treat for my eyes watching movies. The phone has AMOLED display which gives you a crisp picture quality. AMOLED screens are also known to consume less power so you get plenty of battery power as well. The only draw back is that these screens are a bit costly and hence are included only in high end phones. But people who value quality above price will certainly not mind it much. I got the GSM version of the Samsung Galaxy S i9000 in my labs for testing. The phone is based on Android 2.1 and it is quite good. This device sports built in accelerometer which gives you a spacious QWERTY keyboard in the landscape mode.  [...]

A big 4.3 inch touch screen dominates the Motorola Droid X's surface and it looks really gorgeous. A bigger screen gives you a bigger resolution and hence you have more real estate. We don't get a lot of phones with such big screens in our labs and we were drooling a lot on it. Also remember that it is a capacitive touch screen so you dont need a stylus. The screen is very user friendly, just like your iPhone. Motorola Droid X is running on revised version of MotoBlur so the experience will be different from Clique or previous Motorola phones that you might have used. There are some changes done here and we really like this new layout. Underneath the screen, there are four physical buttons and we thank the manufacturer for this. These buttons come in really handy at times because you have to go digging inside the touch screen sometimes. There are phones which have touch sensitive buttons here but we prefer hard buttons since they are easy to press. These four buttons are home, back,  [...]

HTC EVO 4G has an impressive specs list: 4.3 inch WVGA display, eight megapixel camera which can record 720p HD videos, WiMAX compatibility and HDMI-out jack. If this doesn’t impressive then the tag of being the first 4G phone ever surely will. To start off, we really liked the packaging of this phone. You might not care much about this but we still want to mention it here. The box looks a lot like microwaveable meal and feels like steam will come out of it, if you peel off the cover. There are no moving parts inside the cell phone and this makes the device quite light. But we had one gripe with the quality of the build. When the capacitive touch screen buttons light up, the bottom edge of the phone suffers from leakage. You might not notice this in bright environments but will be apparent in low light surroundings. The light leakage definitely makes the phone look cheap. This is not a deal breaker but HTC could have done this better. On the edges, the HTC EVO 4G is quite simple.  [...]

The HTC HD2 is now available through T-Mobile and features 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 5-megapixel camera, and 4.3 inches capacitive touch screen. Not only this, but the T-Mobile has also added a lot of applications that makes it awesome. The HD2 uses the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, while the Window Phone 7 series has also been announced. So, does the HD2 will worth its price tag? Currently, the HTC HD2 costs $199.99 with two-year T-Mobile contract and you can also buy it for $449.99 with Even More Plus Plan that does not need any annual contract. According to us, the HTC HD2 will worth its cost by its great performance and high-end features. It is not sure that the HD2 will be upgradeable to the Windows Phone 7 or not. 4.3 inches capacitive touch-screen of the HTC HD2 has 480×800 pixels WVGA resolution. The display is enough sharp and vibrant to display the colorful images and text. It remains visible in most lighting environments. We appreciate  [...]

The iDEN based cell phones are limited in the United States. However, the famous manufactures are still launching handsets to capture the iDEN mobile market. There is a new member in this line – Motorola Brute i680 for Sprint Nextel. It is rugged and tough handset that offers Bluetooth, 2-megapixel camera, and satisfactory call quality. The Brute i680 is available for $119 with service contract from Sprint Nextel. It is military certified to withstand the elements such as salt fog, low and high temperature, vibration, shock, and dust. We dropped it on bricks and threw it on the marble floor, but there was no effect or scratch on it. We also dropped the i680 phone in water for 20 minutes and it still worked without any problem. The external display sits on the front lid and has 160×120 pixels resolution that supports 65,000 colors. It shows recently called phone numbers and photo caller ID. You can also use it as camera viewfinder. The camera lens  [...]

Samsung Jack is the successor of its BlackJack series. In addition to changed name, this smartphone has better camera, faster processor, more memory, new features and fresh updated look. The Jack also has better email support and productive applications as compared to its predecessor. It gave excellent call quality. Samsung Jack costs $99.99 with two-year contract from AT&T. However, we recommend you Nokia E71x from AT&T as this phone has the same price with very good look, better user experience and more features. The Jack has some issues that you might want to know before purchasing it. Let us have a look on new Samsung Jack from AT&T. Samsung Jack has 2.4-inch LCD display which gives a 320×240 pixels resolution and supports 65,000 colors. The display is bright and clear, but gives same look as that of RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900. You can change the background images and themes of the Home Screen. Samsung’s Jack does not have  [...]

This one comes loaded with a 500-entry phonebook which can have several phone number entries along with an e-mail address, an IM handle, a street address, a birthday, a job title and company, and notes. The callers can easily be categorized into groups and the each entry can be paired with a polyphonic caller tune entry. The other features that tis one offers are a calculator, alarmclock, vibrate mode, currency calculator, notepad, voice memo recorder and voice dialing. The major drawback for this one is that it doesn’t come along with Bluetooth facility. Being a phone basically for communication I expected this one to have Bluetooth compatibility atleast for talking when driving. For sheer entertainment this one comes loaded with demo versions of three Java games primarily the Downtown Texas Hold 'Em, Brain Exercise, Super Street Fighter. The call quality offered by this one is pretty much decent though not really astounding. The call quality was mediocre and the sound was  [...]

Let me start of with the main attraction on the N86,i.e the camera. Though not an industry first, this one is the first in Nokia’s range. This high end camera offers features like the Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, dual-LED flash, 20x digital zoom, and video recording at up to 30 frames per second. However this one doesn’t offer features like face and smile detection. It would have been nice to have them on this one especially since it claims too replace the regular digital camera. The images were bright and sharp with no display of noise whatsoever. During the nighttime however the images appeared to be a bit grainy, but then again this one has decent image quality considering that this one is a camera phone. Also the video quality was decent enough with no interferences in between. The pictures can also be edited using the photo editor and then stored on the phone. This one comes loaded with an inbuilt memory of 8GB and can be expanded upto 16GB. Moving ahead, this one supports  [...]

This one isn’t a high end  dainty phone but can be very well be called the successor of the 6300. In short this  one could be just like the girl next door, simple yet adorable. Anyways all my superfluous metaphors aside, this one has a lot to offer if your looking forward to a no-nonsense, highly functional phone. The Nokia 6303 weighs a decent 95g making it quite lightweight and at 08.8(h) x 46.2(w) x 11.7(d)mm its quite lightweight which makes it easy to slip it into the pocket. This one is available in two colours black and silver, though I personally liked the look of the black one. The curves give it a nice quality touch. This one resembles a slider phone as the navigation keys and the display are raised above the keyboard. The navigation array has a OK button in the centre surrounded by the talk and end buttons. The numberpad beneath the navigation array has well placed keys. They provide sufficient room for a comfortable typing experience. Its got a 2.2-inch, QVGA (320x240  [...]