Pixel Concept

It’s been about a month since the almighty Hero came to rescue me from the N97, yet the gadget lust has not worn off. That alone should give an idea of my first impressions of this device. I must say, I am impressed. Though the design may seem like a slimmed down version of the Dream, the build quality of the Hero really stands out. The device is solid and feels good in the hand. The teflon coating gives a bit of that soft-touch feel to the back, and does a great job at fending off dirt and fingerprints. I must admit, the reorganized button layout does not make much sense. The ‘Back’ button should be easily accessible at all time; unfortunately, this is not the case. Hitting the ‘Back’ button requires a very agile thumb, and just feels unnatural when reaching for it. It’s not impossible to reach, but it could be easier. Of course the true appeal of the Hero is HTC’s new Sense UI. In short, HTC has scored a homerun with Sense. The multitude of widgets and additional home screens make the Hero extremely customizable right out of the box. Many reviewers seemed frustrated with speed issues and overall system lag, but I have not experienced that. Every once in a rare while an app will hang up, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary and so far seems to be more of an app issue than a Sense UI issue. Overall I am very happy with the HTC Hero and only plan on switching phones when I receive the Nokia N900. I will be writing a full, in depth, review in the coming weeks of the HTC Hero, so stay tuned.

Although the HTC Magic has been overshadowed by its sibling, the HTC Hero, I still wanted to post up some first impressions on the device. There are plenty of full reviews out there so I will probably not be doing a full write up, but I figured some brief thoughts on the device couldn’t hurt. The first thing that I noticed about the Magic was that it finally looked like an HTC designed device. The Dream was a great first run at Android, but the hardware was sorely lacking. It didn’t have that HTC flare that the manufacturing giant has come to be known for. The Magic on the other hand, is sleek and solid. The back slides on like a traditional battery cover and is a lot more stable than the snap on back of the Dream. The chin still exists on the Magic, but it is a lot less pronounced than on the Dream. It has a nice rounded shape to it that adds to the design. The sleekness of the device can of course be attributed to the lack of a QWERTY keyboard; unfortunately, the virtual keyboard makes it noticeable. Of course that has more to do with Cupcake than with the device itself, but it is an aspect of Cupcake that needs improvement. Outside of the keyboard however, the OS runs well on the Magic. There is still the issue of slowness building over time. A stronger processor and more RAM could have alleviated this issue, but for some unknown reason, HTC decided to stick with the Qualcomm 528MHz processor. Even with those small caveats, the Magic is a solid device and first full touch-screen Android device. A great choice if the Hero is not available on your carrier.

Nokia’s first touch-screen N-series device raised excitement among S60 diehards everywhere. The specs sounded promising: full QWERTY keyboard, 3.5 inch touch-screen display, 3.5mm jack, 128MB RAM, a whopping 32GB of storage space with a microSD slot to boot. Not to mention the design made the N97 worthy of lust…and a $700 unsubsidized price tag. Needless to say both my anticipation, and my hopes, were high. Sadly, my first impressions of the device were so bad that it has taken me a couple of months to write up this post. With such an impressive device on paper, what could possibly be so bad about it? Before I rip into the short-comings of the N97, allow me to applaud it for its successes. (continue reading…)

Spending a full month with the E75 can hardly be called “First Impressions” but I am impressed so far. Nokia’s foray into the QWERTY candy-bar slider is a good one. Following up the acclaimed E71 is no easy feat, and although I still prefer the E71 overall, the E75 stands out all on its own. The build quality is what you would expect from an E series device. It feels great in the hand in both portrait and landscape mode. The E75 retains the stainless steel back of the E71 but uses hard plastic for the rest of the chassis. Although I would have liked a full stainless steel phone to retain the new E series design language, I can understand the need to use softer materials to accommodate the sliding mechanism for the QWERTY keyboard. (continue reading…)

It’s been about three weeks since I received the VAIO TT 290 and although I have not had time to prepare a full review, I can give some first impressions. For starters, the TT’s design is excellent. The brushed aluminum chassis looks great and feels sturdy when carrying around. Despite being thin, the carbon fiber lid feels solid and does not wobble at the hinges like some of the budget notebooks. The only disappointment in build quality comes with the chrome moldings on the side of the TT (I’ll provide more detail in the full review). Of course the overall size is the biggest differentiator here as there are not many contenders in the 11.1” arena; outside of netbooks of course. I have already been approached a few times by people wondering if the TT is a netbook since it is so small and light. Size and weight is pretty much the only netbookish attribute the TT possesses though as its performance and battery life are way above the netbook mark. On average, I have been getting about five hours of battery life on a single charge; and that’s with the standard battery. I was contemplating ordering the extended battery but there really is no need. Performance has been great so far as I can perform simple Photoshop tasks without a problem. I have not yet tasked the processor too much outside of running Office and Photoshop, but I have not had any issues running multiple apps simultaneously (I’ll have benchmarks soon). Lastly, I am very impressed with the overall usability of the TT. The keyboard is a dream to type on and I now understand why Apple adopted the chicklet style keyboard design that Sony started. I will begin a full review in a few weeks. As was posted recently, Sony made a 1.6 GHz option available which also extended to CTO systems. After making a few calls to Sony, I was able to have the 1.4 GHz TT swapped for the slightly faster 1.6 GHz processor. I have the benchmarks for the 1.4 GHz configuration so this will allow for a direct comparison between the two options. Stay tuned for those benchmarks and a full review.