Camera Phones Plaza

Every manufacturer has at least one milestone mobile phone. Even if they should have at least three, I am maintaining this easy condition: one milestone device. If you are planning to buy a new phone, just check every manufacturer first and see which one provides more confidence judging from their technology "boom" factor on the market. This "boom" factor is in fact a mobile phone. Since 2007 every manufacturer tried to rebrand their image and to change their entire portfolio. Day zero was the iPhone (first generation) announce day. Every day after that announcement was just another continuous chance for Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, HTC, and others.
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It is pointless to say the Nokia offered so many milestone phones on the market that there is no point in saying what image has Nokia adopted. Nokia is equivalent to continuous evolution. However, the other manufacturers are more conservators than innovators. Their rebranding took a while, and for some is it still an ongoing process. Samsung is still rebranding itself until 2010, while Sony Ericsson is not exactly sure what to do. Sony Ericsson is still delivering dull products with high price tags. They really need to step up to the game, if they don't want to disappear until 2011. A nice surprise is, however, LG. LG brought to the market a few important phones like LG PRADA and LG Viewty, but its milestone phone is KM 900 Arena. This is the LG flagship, for now, and includes great features. Before presenting the excellent features of this device, let's see what its main disadvantages are. So, LG KM 900 Arena provides DivX XviD video in limited support, it has a bad recording format, a semi functional GPS module, bad flash, and a not so great display visibility under direct sunlight.

It doesn't provide too many disadvantages, especially if you choose to look at the advantages brought to the game. In design department, KM 900 Arena provides a nice design. Its design is something that you either love it, or hate it. Therefore, if you like this phone you will like its design too, not only the spec list. On the front you get a metallic frame. This frame surrounds another black plastic frame, which surrounds on its own the actual screen. By doing so, LG tried to make the Arena's display a little bigger than it actually is. Unfortunately, the result is ambiguous and subjective. On the back you get an aluminum cover.

Although it doesn't look like aluminum (rather more like simple plastic) the battery cover offers a good quality material. If you are concerned about the built, rest assured, LG KM 900 Arena sports an excellent built quality, with no flex or squeaks when pressed. Also, by providing a metallic finish on front, and an aluminum cover on the back, LG protects KM 900 Arena not only from fingerprints, but also from minor scratches.


On the front side, above the display, you get the centered earpiece, the second digital camera for video calling, and a proximity sensor to switch off the screen when you make or receive a call. Under the display, you get three buttons, call key, end call key and in the center the "cube" key to launch the cube menu (user interface). On the left side LG included in the Arena the USB port (covered to prevent any dust to get inside the port). On the right side you get the (almost common by for the right side of nowadays phones) the camera dedicated key and the volume controls. The top of the KM 900 Arena sports the 3.5 mm audio jack and the power on / off button, while the bottom side of the KM 900 lacks any ports or keys. On the back side of LG arena you can find on the upper left corner the 5 megapixel digital camera lens and the LED flash just above the camera. You get no protection for the camera's lenses. The battery cover doesn't retain the camera lenses.

The 5 megapixel camera will not be opened for any dust. Therefore, LG provides good solutions, better than the one provided by Nokia, or even Samsung for that matter of fact. Don't bother looking for the card slot, because it is located under the battery cover. However, the memory card slot is not placed under the battery. Therefore, you don't have to power off your Arena in order to change your memory card. The overall build quality is excellent. LG Arena not only looks solid, but also feels solid. Also, the great materials used provide a durable life cycle for this phone.

LG KM 900 has a height of 105.9 mm, wide of 55.3 mm, deep of 12 mm, and Arena weight about 105 g. In other words; LG Arena is a compact, yet solid built, touch screen phone with great quality materials. LG equipped the KM 900 Arena with a 3 inches TFT capacitive touch screen with 16 million colors, capable of a resolution up to 480 x 800 pixels. This display will render in excellent quality (indoors) the new S Class Touch user interface. Also, because it features the capacitive touch screen technology features multi touch input method. LG also included an accelerometer sensor for user interface auto rotate. You get vibrant colors and excellent brightness (until you go out in day broad light).

The KM 900 Arena also sports a 3D graphic accelerator. How I've mentioned before, the display visibility gets washed out under sunlight. The new Cube interface brings a multimedia universe in your hands. It is not as glamorous as the iPhone interface, but it does its job pretty well. The extra touch to this interface is provided by the 3D graphics. Because of the cube layout you have instant access to different applications sorted on different home screens. LG offers you the possibility to install as many widgets as you may want or need. Overall, the S Class Touch user interface is very efficient because is almost fully customizable. LG included onboard the KM 900 Arena a 8 GB memory, with the possibility to expand this value with a micro SD memory card (or a Trans Flash memory card) up to 32 GB. LG KM 900 Arena runs in 2G network - GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and in 3G networks - HSDPA 2100 and HSDPA 850 / 1900.

This touch screen phone features some business quality as well, providing a great organizer, good calendar, excellent phone book, and other similar applications. Also the connectivity in ensured by GPRS Cass 12 with 4+1 / 3+2 / 2+3 / 1+4 slots and a speed going from 32 Kb per second to 48 Kb per second, Class 10 EDGE with 236.8 Kb per second, Wi-Fi with 802.11 b/g profile, Bluetooth version 2.0 with A2DP, HSDPA with a speed up to 7.2 MB per second, and the USB port. As a multimedia phone, KM 900 Arena provides a great music player (Dolby Mobile which offers everything you might want from a music player) and a 5 megapixel digital camera with Schneider Kreuznach optics. The maximum resolution of this camera is 2592 x 1944 pixels, featuring auto focus and a LED flash. The KM 900 can also record video, with 720 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per second, and VGA mode with 30 frames per second. LG KM 900 Arena comes with a 1000 mAh Lithium Ion battery. The standby time value goes up to 300 hours, with a talk time of 3 hours and 50 minute.

If you are interested in listening to music continuously you should know that the KM 900 battery life will last you about 30 hours. For an average user, all the above values mean about 2 hours of battery life after one full battery charge. LG included in the containing box, beside the KM 900 Arena and the 1000 mAh Lithium Ion battery, a charger, USB cable, CD Software, and one piece hands free. LG hasn't included in the retail box of the KM 900 Arena any memory cards. Overall, the LG Arena is a solid multimedia phone. Also LG tries to offer some business features in the KM 900. Because of its excellent quality built, and a full feature package, LG KM 900 Arena is the obvious choice for anyone who wants a good flagship touch screen phone with an average price tag.

Smartphones, by definition, are smart cell phones, and they offer their users a lot of features: they can make calls, they can send/receive e-mail, surf the Web, be connected with their friends, family and work colleagues, they have multimedia centers on the mobile device, what could they want more? A smartphone is like a Swiss Army Knife for professionals.
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New tools are added to smartphones, and people seem to like them more and more daily. For example, more and more people use the built-in GPS and find it very useful, because it helps them to find specific locations and the best thing is that the number of the GPS-equipped models is continuously growing. Cell phone carriers understand its utility and they started to create special services for GPS devices, like Verizon's VZ Navigator, Sprint's Sprint Navigation and AT&T's TeleNav GPS Navigator.

GPS capabilities started to show their utility, and now they are not seen anymore like a luxury show-off. It really helps smartphone users to get real-time position tracking, they get text and voice guidance for reaching destinations, and a lot of points of interest. There are also trade-offs, not only advantages: the small screens are not suitable for car usage, and the GPS radio will affect battery life, in a negative direction, of course, but the voice prompts and helps you to avoid these problems, by announcing you when the battery is almost over.

GPS manufacturers are trying to enter mobile devices market, and they created a navigator-phone which offers part of a smartphone's features, but its design is focused on the GPS feature, and it somehow is a novelty, but it cannot be compared with the smartphones available on the market.

There are a lot of smartphones which have GPS capabilities, but if you already have one which cannot help you with this feature, you can add it this functionality with a Bluetooth receiver. Taking into account that a standalone GPS device is not anymore the only way to get navigation guidance, you can think of smartphones or cell phones which have GPS support, and if they do not have it, you can add software or accessories to transform your mobile phone into a navigation device.



If you have a Bluetooth enabled smartphone, you can pair it with a receiver, and this is how you will get real-time tracking on your mobile device. A lot of receivers come with mapping software, but you should check on the manufacturer's website on in the device's manual to see if it is compatible with the phone. If you don't need to deal with external gadgets, you can just get a car kit, which is a standalone GPS, with maps preloaded on an SD card.

With the solutions offered by network carriers you can get turn by turn driving directions and colored maps; moreover you can search for local businesses or interest points, and in some cases you can get the traffic updates so you can take the shortest and less crowded road to your destination. These solutions from the big carriers require a subscription fee, and as an alternative, you can use Google Maps for Mobile to get the same features (it is free, but you need a data plan for maps and traffic information).

Here are some good smartphones, GPS enabled, and for each of them a short description about how GPS works on them.



BlackBerry has released the latest device with a large touchscreen which can switch immediately between vertical and horizontal views. This large screen is perfect for GPS applications and it works better with business applications that its predecessors.



T-Mobile G1 is the first mobile device which runs the Android OS, and it includes a GPS receiver (built-in) and it has also location-based applications, like Loopt.



Palm Pre provides the standard locating information and the directions, and it is also linked to Pre's universal searching feature, which includes Wikipedia, Google, and Google Maps. Sprint Navigation is installed on the phone when you purchase it, and this application includes: driving directions (turn by turn), business finder with more than 10 million points of interest, traffic alerts and fuel prices, but full nationwide color maps too.

In the Apple AppStore, there are more than 400 navigation dedicated applications available for iPhone 3G, and it remains the champion in services and applications too. Just to mention some applications, I would name Snocatore, GPS Lite and Groundspeak for geocaching.



The only winner in all this competition is the customer, which has only benefits from this war between the smartphones manufacturers, because the features which are added in this competition between the companies only help the users and they make their smartphone user life easier.

Nowadays, more and more people are expecting WiFi connections from their smartphones, and even from the common cell phones. This was the result of a survey released by ABI Research this year, in February. This survey was conducted with more than 1,000 mobile phone users with ages between 18 and 59, all of them from the U.S.
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The results of this survey showed that more than 77% of the smartphone users who had WiFi connection enabled on the device were very satisfied with the services. Among all the people who have the WiFi connection possibility on their smartphones, 74% use the feature constantly, and 77% of these people said that they will look for WiFi connectivity on their next mobile device. This survey's results show that about 44% of the smartphones on the market have this feature. By 2014 this percent is expected to grow up to 90%, and as an interesting fact, you should know that almost 60% of the WiFi smartphones had the devices for less than an year. WiFi Alliance stated before the results of this ABI Research survey to be released that despite the economic recession, the WiFi industry could still continue to grow, and we can obviously see this ascending trend.

WiFi Alliance wants to ensure that various WiFi products work well with others from different vendors, and they apply a wide range of tests on the products and they also issue WiFi certificates for the tested products. Since 2000, WiFi Alliance has issued more than 5,000 certifications for consumer and enterprise devices. There are, 311 handsets on the market which have been WiFi certified. As long as the manufacturers are trying to solve the problem of this feature about draining the battery (and hopefully they will come with the solution for this as soon as possible), I think that this feature is great for smartphones.

The presence of good PC browsers, which relying on WiFi connections offer quality browsing on the Web are boosting wireless services market, and WiFi capable devices market too. Moreover, the growing popularity of the social networking services, like Twitter or Facebook are also contributing at this market boost process.



Smartphones and other mobile devices which support WiFi connectivity, such as BlackBerries, iPhone, Windows Mobile based devices, Google Android or Nokia 60 Series belong to the fastest growing mobile phone segment. WiFi is appearing frequently as the primary type of connection across a wide and growing range of mobile devices and handsets. It is supposed that by 2010 20% of all WiFi chipsets to be used in mobile phones as manufacturers continue to ship growing numbers of WiFi enabled mobile devices. WiFi is a great feature because it allows ubiquitous Internet connection and taking into account the ascendant trend of this connectivity method, it is easy to see that its tendency is to unanimously become the primary connection method used on smartphones and other mobile devices. If smartphone users are not browsing the Internet through their operator network, and they use WiFi connection, they are unable to access the billing and other common network services.

"Smartphone" is one of the trendy words of our days' society. Have you ever wondered exactly what a smartphone is, and what exactly makes the difference between a common mobile phone and a smartphone, or between a computing device and a smartphone? What makes a phone to be smart, and why is this word so tossed around a lot? These are the answers I am trying to find in this article, and I hope it will make the things clear.
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Briefly, a smartphone is a device which allows you to make phone calls, and has additional features which basically belong to personal digital assistants or to computers, like, for example, the ability to send and receive e-mails and edit various types of files (like Office files, which are very necessary for business users of smartphones).

For understanding what a smartphone is, and make a difference between smartphone and other devices, it would be good to begin with a short history of these devices. Common mobile phones have been improved and in time they transformed into personal digital assistants (PDAs). Cell phones had as main purpose making calls, and nothing else more. PDAs, on the other hand, like the Palm Pilot, were used as personal and portable organizers. A PDA could store your contact info, a to-do list, and it also could sync with your computer. In time, PDAs gained wireless connectivity and they started to have the emailing ability. Sending and receiving e-mails on the mobile phone was an important step in portable devices' development, and in time, these devices got added cellular phone features, and cell phones got more computer-like features. The result, the combination between these two types is the smartphone.

Actually, across the industry, there is no strict definition for the term "smartphone". The key features, the aspect which, I would say, define a smartphone are the following features, described in the next paragraphs. These aspects should be taken into consideration when you want to buy a smartphone, and they represent the most important specifications are attributes of the device.

The operating system is the base of the smartphone. Usually smartphones are based on operating systems which allow you to run productivity applications, and BlackBerry is the most obvious example: it runs the BlackBerry OS, and is supports plenty of business applications, essential for a business person. Other devices run Palm OS or Windows Mobile, and the well known iPhone works on the operating system with the same name, now at the 3.0 version.Other products are working on Linux.

Almost all cell phones include some software applications, and even the most basic models have now an address book or contact manager applications, but smartphones have for sure the ability to do more. It will allow you to create and edit Microsoft Office applications,or at least to open them, it will allow you to edit photos, download applications ( personal and business managers), get GPS directions or listen to music or make playlists of digital tunes.

Not only that a smartphone can access the Web, but the speed is very important. Latest models can do this as high speeds, and this happens thanks to the growth of the 3G data networks, which combined with the addition of Wi-Fi support to many portable devices brings users a higher navigation speed. Not all smartphones have high-speed Web access, but there are various methods for browsing the Internet, and I mean more networks and more means of connecting.

Smartphones usually have a QWERTY keyboard, but lately there have been developed models which have touch screen display and the keyboard is not required anymore. QWERTY keyboard has the same layout like the one on your computer, but in smaller forms, to fit the smartphone's design. The keyboard can be, as I said, hardware, and this means real buttons, physical keys, or software, which means that the keyboard appears on the touchscreen, like iPhone has.

A lot of cell phones can receive and send SMS and MMS, but the aspect which makes smartphones special is handling e-mail, sending and receiving e-mails are more common activities now. Many smartphones can support more than one e-mail account, and the e-mail management system is purely a smartphone ability. Some smartphones include instant messaging services support, like Yahoo Messenger or AOL, and there is a growing tendency of using Skype on the smartphone. This is a very interesting thing, because Skype, as we know, offers also voice services, and it might be a successful replacement for classical carriers.

Smartphones are definetely successful products on handheld devices market. They are very useful to busy individuals, and they are one of the elementary devices one should own in our modern society. A challenge for a smartphone users would be to discover and use all the features of the phone, and I think it's very important to take advantage of what your smartphone offers you. There are plenty of $500 smartphone users who use the devices for voice communications, and who are amazed when one geeky friend shows them what the wonderful device can do. I think this happens because of the lack of interest of the users, and because they spend too little time on exploring their smartphones. This exploration I would say that has the same importance as knowing the tools you use at work.

When deciding if you will purchase a smartphone or a simple cell phone, take into consideration the aspects presented here, and do some online research. There is a lot of useful information, and you can find a lot of interesting things about the products on your purchasing list. Be aware that what defines a smartphone may be old technology in a week, a month, and you should actually think of what you need and what would fit your preferences and needs. Stay tuned!

If you want to buy a smartphone, you have made some research, and the decision refers to a choice between Blackberry Bold and Palm Pre, you are in the right place, because this article is a comparison between these two products, and it want to be an information source which could help you make up your mind. These two smartphone promise to deliver, and until now they are among the most well known products on the market, and there are a lot of people who own not only these two models, but iPhone and other BlackBerry versions too.The most important thing when you are looking for a smartphone is to find a device which fits your needs, goes along with your preferences and also fits your budget.
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BlackBerry is a device which allows you to stay in touch with the whole world. You can enjoy SMS and MMS, e-mail (up to ten accounts), instant messaging and many other features, for business purpose and entertainment too. You won't get only a 2 Mp camera for still picture, but you will have the video recording option available too. The memories can be shares as stills or as movies, and this is a great feature.  This device reads plenty of business file types, and now you don't have to run to the closest Wi-Fi hotspot to open the computer, because this BlackBerry is a computing device in a phone wrapping. You can also create, edit and open Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files as you walk on the street, or in traffic.

BlackBerry Bold offers you the possibility to organize the music and the media and you can also create playlists, and this means that you have all the time your favorite media with you. The media player plays videos and music, and the headphones and speakers help you enjoy the sound much more. There are a lot of multimedia applications available for download, and this means more entertainment. The built-in GPS allows you to fin all the places you are interested in, and you can look at the map and read directions, which is pretty easy. The dimensions are: 4.4''x2.6''x0.6'' and it weighs only 4.8 ounces. The battery offers 4.5 hours of talk time, and on standby mode battery lasts up to 13 days.

Palm Pre helps you to be organized, and this is made with layered calendars, combined contacts from your address books and from the social networks you belong to, and other applications which help you manage your time and your files. All the conversations with a person are kept together, no matter the means of communication, and this allows you to reply as fast as possible. It you like typing more than talking, than the slide-out QWERTY keyboard is perfect for you. It is available on this smartphone, and it is very easy to use. You can take pictures, watch videos, and play games. There is plenty of entertainment tools on this smartphone, and you can download MP3s from Amazon store, and then play them with the music player installed on Palm Pre. The files can be transferred from iTunes to the phone, and this only another cool way to add multimedia files to the smartphone. Concerning security, there is an over-the-air Palm service which offers you the possibility to restore, backup and erase data on the smartphone, from somewhere else. It doesn't differ too much from the BlackBerry Bold in the matter of dimensions (3.9''x2.3''x0.67'') and it weighs 4.76 ounces.



These two phones are similar in a lot of ways, but the right smartphone always depends on the customer. You have to know which features are most important for you, and then make a decision based on these preferences. It all depends on you, and all the information you need in order to make this decision can be easily found online. If the camera is more important for you, than you might want to have those 3 Mp which Palm offers, rather than BlackBerry's 2 Mp. But if you want a real business tool, then you should definetly choose BlackBerry. This smartphone is by excellence a very good business tool, and Palm is more for personal use, though it offers connectivity and communication features. For more detailed information on each phone, you can visit the official BlackBerry Bold and Palm Pre websites, and no matter the decision, be sure that these devices are among the best on the market, so your decision will be a good one.