The first one i.e the Turtle resembles the Palm Pre to some extent. It comes loaded with a slide out keyboard and a nice vibrant looking screen. The other one i.e. Pure will remind of possibly every other smartphone available in the market these days. Reportedly both the phones have been targeted towards the youth.

Well, by the looks of it this one doesn’t look even a bit of the iPhone killer it was being touted to be. And anyways it doesn’t  look like Microsoft really cares about being the iPhone’s challenger. So any kind of clash between the Pink phones and the iPhone looks unlikely in the near future atleast. PEACE!

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Good keyboard, attractive feature set, decent call quality.

Thumbs down: No flash and self portrait mirror, bad video streaming.

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: Looks like Sammy learnt quite a few lessons from the launch of the Messager and thankfully came up with the refined Messager 2. This one is not only more attractive but also has an appealing feature set. So lets go ahead and see what Sammy has to offer with this latest one…

Razzle-dazzle: I ain’t going to start with my rant on the Messager but I just can’t move ahead with the review of this without mentioning the fact that its older sibling was almost mistaken for a toy. Thankfully the Massager 2 looks and feels more sturdy and has a got a nice flamboyant aura around it. It isn’t all that attractive but then again it isn’t down right ugly.

It’s got a 2.2 inch display which supports a 262,000 colours which is quite vibrant and bright. The images look innate and pleasant. The menus are user friendly and the shortcut icons on the standby display are pretty useful.

What is impressive about the Messager is the nifty navigation array. It’s got a circular wheel which functions both as a four way toggle and a scrollwheel. Its got two soft keys, a clear button, a speakerphone shortcut and the talk and the end buttons on either side of the navigation toggle. Below the toggle is the keypad which is spacious enough with flush keys. Though the numbers on the phone are small, the keys make up for a nice pleasant typing experience.

On the left spine it houses the volume rocker and the microSd slot and on the right spine it houses the camera shutter and the Micro-USB port. The camera lens and the speaker rest on the back of the phone though this one lacks a flash and self  portrait mirror.

Sliding the phone on the left side reveals the keyboard. The slider mechanism is quite sturdy and the keyboard has a pleasant feel in the hand. The keys are nicely spaced out and though they are flat they make up for a comfortable typing experience. This one does not have an accelerometer though it flips to the landscape mode when the phone is rotated. The keys are backlit which make it easier to use in the dark.

Inside dope: This one has a 1000 entry phonebook which can store around five numbers and an email address per entry. Apart from the basic features like the vibrate mode, calculator, alarm clock, calendar and a tip calculator, this one has Bluetooth with file transfer protocol, voice dialing, USB support and a variety of other applications.

This one comes with an iinternal memory of 40 MB, but can be spruced up with an external memory card.

It comes loaded with a 2- megapixel camera which can be used to take pictures in almost five resolutions. The quality of the photos was pretty much impressive for a 2 megapixel camera. It didn’t display much noise and the photos were pretty much clear and vibrant. The multimedia videos removed with the help of the camcorder are capped at 30 secs. The quality of the videos is pretty much mediocre though.

It’s got the standard Samsung music player which is pretty much easy to use. The toggle can be used to scroll over the song lists. The audio quality over the speakers isn’t that great and that’s like nothing new for this kind of a phone. So I recommend using a headset.

Coming to the most important factor… the call quality. Its pretty satisfactory to say the least. The call volume is good with hardly any interference or static. There was also no echo exhibited. Quite contrary to my expectations, the quality of the sound over the speakerphone was loud and clear even in crowded places. On the other end the callers were pretty much satisfied with the voice quality and hardly had any problems except some background sound. This one paired up easily with Bluetooth headsets and the voice quality over the Bluetooth headsets was also pretty much decent.

The messager 2 has a battery life of  12 hours on standby and 4 hours of talktime which is again pretty much average.

Nitty- gritty: This one is definitely targeted at those who want IM, e-mail and MMS when on the move. Priced at $149 this one is definitely better than its predecessor and is also a solid accretion to both the Metro PCS and Cricket.

Thumbs up: Brilliant touchscreen, ki-ller performance, best on the shelf keyboard.

Thumbs down: Heavy on the pocket as well as on the hand.

Inside The Trunk:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional (32-bit)

Ports (excluding USB): DisplayPort; Ethernet; Headphone; Microphone; USB/eSATA; VGA,2 USB Ports

Card Slots:  Readers 5-1 card reader.

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: Well the Lenovo ThinkPad 400 could very well be tagged as the best 14 inch notebook that we have on the shelves. With this one Lenovo just raises the bar by adding a capacitative touchscreen to the already awesome T400. This one just like the T400 has a lot of goodies to offer so lets just go ahead and find out what’s in store…

Razzle-Dazzle: This one has got the same black chassis, indicator lights, red trackpoint like most of the ThinkPads that we ve been seeing off late. Its got a nice solid and sturdy feel to it and to add to it the metal hinges provide it with all the more power. This one isn’t as thin and lightweight as the T400s at 1.4 inch and weighing almost 4.4 ounces.

The keyboard of this  one is also similar to the T400s but the makers have taken care to increase the size of the delete and the escape keys and also to reduce the empty spaces between the keys. Not only was it a pleasant experience typing this whole review using the keyboard but what I also noticed was that this hardly exhibits any kind of flex. Also the keyboard is highly responsive and the feedback is also strong.

The touchpad of the Touch 400s is pretty much wide and textured and the touchpad also supports multitouch gestures.

Its got a 14.1 inch screen which offers a resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels. The screen is a capacitive one and it recognizes contact from different fingers enabling the user to swipe to scroll about the screen and pinch the screen in order to zoom. I ll get to the touchpad performance details in the next section. The images on the screen are pretty much vibrant and bright, though the colours tend to fade out at a few angles. Also I advise anyone who wants to use this one for presentations to go ahead and get an external monitor or projector. Like most of the touchscreen ones this one is again a fingerprint magnet.

Inside Dope: Let me start with the highlight of this one… the touchscreen display. I must say that this one is a highly responsive one, and there was hardly any hindrance in registering the touches. At times however it failed to recognize the nail presses. This one comes loaded with Windows 7 touch applications and trust me it’s a whole lot of fun to use them. Scrolling through the browser can be done by just swiping the finger up and down, pictures can be rotated by just turning the finger. Coming to the glitches I sincerely wish that either Microsoft or Lenovo does something about the Operating systems widgets or buttons because frankly its easier to use a mouse on those tiny shortcuts in the start menu but its kind of difficult to be doing that using the fingers.

The speakers of this one are pretty decent as well. The sound was absolutely distortion free while playing ‘hysteria’ by Muse and was also pretty much balanced. Though it isn’t that loud, I would still recommend turning the volume to the maximum if the user is sitting a few inches away from the it.

Unlike the many other netbooks which do a poor job of dissipating heat, this one stays pretty much cool. Even while performing CPU intensive tasks this one hardly got heated up. The back and the palm rest both recorded temperatures of 80.5 and 81.5 respectively.

Thanks to the 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo P9600 CPU this one can easily stood out in the overall system tests. Probably one of the best performances I have seen in the thin and light category till date. It took barely 46 seconds for the Toshiba SD to boot the Windows 7 and it just took like 66 secs to transfer a 4.987 GB file from one folder to another which is truly incredible.

The graphics performance was a bit disappointing with the it’s inbuilt Intel GMA X4500 graphics chip not really offering a great deal of graphics performance. I wouldn’t recommend this one for gaming purposes.

Also adding to our list of disappointments is the battery life of this one which lasted for just 3 hours and 58 minutes while using the web browser continuously over Wi-Fi. However Lenovo claims that the touchscreen shouldn’t take up much of the charge so I guess we could attribute the low endurance to some other cause like the Windows 7 drivers.

Nitty-Gritty: This one can easily match upto its nontouch sibling as far as features and performance is concerned. However I guess with the added bulk comes the added price. I don’t think its sensible enough to dig a $400 hole in your pocket and get this one just for the sake of the Touchscreen. Its just like paying $40 for a topping of chocolate sauce over a scoop of chocolate icecream. Anyways for all those who don’t mind the $400 premium go ahead grab it… it wont disappoint you.

This one was descried first at the IFA last week as the Etna KS360, and now it comes into the spotlight as the GW620. So in all probability this one is going to be launched in different places with different aliases. It’s probably going to be launched in the U.K somewhere during the fourth quarter of the year; however there is no buzz about its launch date in the other regions.

This one is fully equipped with a lot of messaging features, a 3-inch touchscreen, QWERTY slide out keyboard, 5 meagpixel camera, and Wi-Fi and GPS connections.

This one for sure will be a totally new experience for any first time touch screen user. Plus its just one of the many smartphones that are being launched by LG this year. The plans of the company to compete with Nokia and Samsung surely seem to taking good shape with the company also announcing the launch of a Windows mobile Phone in the near future.