This set of earbuds makes the lofty claim that they are ‘guaranteed not to fall out’. A lofty claim for sure, so evidence will be scrutinised.

Unboxing

I have an Audioboo account and I’ve posted a brief podcast detailing the unboxing and first impressions here. Photos below.

The box as it arrived, minus packaging of course

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

The box compared to my Garmin Edge 800 so you can see the ludicrous size of it

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

Box contents

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

The lofty claim

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

First Impressions

I’m afraid that the first thing that struck me is not the product, but the ridiculous packaging. Even if I were not an environmentalist, this would still annoy me. Most of the packaging is superfluous, not biodegradable and it is so big that when I cycled down to get it I could only just squeeze it in to the pocket of my huge grey hoodie. This is something I really despise. The environmental damage is tremendous, it is wasteful and it is cumbersome to carry. When an iPod touch including headphones can fit in a box roughly a fifth this size this sort of box is unforgivably large. I cannot stress how much this annoys me. What complete waste of resources, materials, and what a thoughtless approach to the environment.

Moving on, the earbuds are distinctive, but I suspect the Marmite effect will come in to play. Red and black is very much love-it-or-hate-it. The jack plug is a standard 3.5 mm and is a distorted ‘L’ shape:

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

The angling seems pointless. Why not just make it straight? I can only see that being annoying as I’ll have to twist it around to stop it bending back on itself. I know I’ve nitpicked here, but for $36 plus postage (around £25-30) I would expect a bit more thought to go in to the product.

The cable splits as it hangs around the solar plexus with a ‘Y’ shape piece which also has the control panel on it:

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

I also attached the included clip:

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

The controls are volume upend down on the ends, with play/pause in the middle.

The two things that make earbuds fall out in my experience are the lack of a clip, meaning that the earbuds jerk up and down, eventually pulling them out, and also sweat/rain in the ears. The latter is infuriating as it is impossible to get earbuds to stay in wet ears. Yurbuds claim this won’t happen. We shall see how that claim stands up to rigorous testing.

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

The earbuds arrive with sheaths attached:

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

They also provide a slightly larger set for those among us with freakishly giant ears:

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

A handy carry pouch is also provided:

From Yurbuds Ironman Series Running Earbuds Review

I love this. I’m always losing earbuds, as well as having to constantly hide them from my children who play with them. This way I can safely stash them in a drawer or sports bag and they’ll be safe. Much appreciated, and a welcome addition to the package.

Usage

Sliding the earbuds in feels a little bit weird, but they are reasonably comfortable. They do not seal the ear, however, the material feels as though it will mould to the shape of the wearer’s ears over time, so whilst I cannot see them being too good at noise-cancellation that may well get better over time.

You can hear my initial thoughts after a quick mile and a half run in an Audioboo here. The run was logged on Endomondo:

This was a short run after walking my son to school. The performance of the headphones is split easily in to two parts.

Running

The headphones were really very good indeed. The claim made on the packaging holds true. They did not fall out. The only point when I felt that they might do was when they snagged on a fold in my running top, which has nothing to do with the headphones of course. It simply means that I need to place them more carefully. The earbuds stuck firmly in my ear, and but for my placement-induced tugging, they did not move at all. I have to say that I am very impressed.

Audio

The earbuds gave an extremely satisfying, bass-y sound and are clearly rather good at noise cancellation as I have only now realised that I didn’t hear anything except the music during my run. The sound is even and clear, whilst not being too tweet-y. Of all the music compression algorithms MP3 tends to give the brightest sound, but thankfully these were very restrained, delivering a great tone that allowed the various voices in the music to be heard.

At the end of the run I finished with a fifty yard sprint, and that didn’t affect the headphones. I will use them for interval running too, but for review purposes they have delivers everything I was hoping.Great sound, and they stay in the ear very well. Next up I did some interval runs, which I do as laps of a field, with half a lap running, quarter of a lap sprinting, quarter of a lap warming down by jogging. Did the pace changes and fast sprints affect them?

No, most certainly not. The performance was exactly the same. These headphones provide a great sound and they live up to the hype on the box, they stay in the ear no matter what. Given the price they are good value I think. A good set of headphones comes in around £15-20, so for the extra benefit of sticking in the ear I think this is a good buy.

Rating: 3/5. Good for value for money and good looks, not so much the sound.

The keyboard is almost exactly the same size as a full size laptop but touch typing is a little more difficult at the keys are flatter than normal and the gap in-between the keys doesn’t seem as large.

Alienware M11x - Reflective Screen

It’s got one of those gloss reflective screens – and it’s MASSIVELY reflective. If you are running on the battery then the default brightness is so low you only see yourself staring back at you, and you have to turn the brightness up. It seems much more reflective (read: worse) than the gloss screen on the Samsung Q430 that I recently had. The blacks aren’t very black, there seems to be a lot of “backlight bleed” with the whole screen looking mostly grey. The default black wallpaper doesn’t give a good first impression of the screen – as all you can see is yourself in the reflection. (If I wanted to see myself I would have bought a mirror!)

Also it’s LOUD – after running the Windows Experience index two times, the fan in the laptop stayed on for a long time … and has not yet shut up, despite CPU usage hovering around 10% while I’m typing this. You can overclock the processor in the Dell BIOS – the options are Overclock : Enable, and Disable (which is the default).

Alienware Lights

The speakers built into the laptop seem very good. 50% volume is too loud for close use. The volume of iPlayer for example can easily be set to be louder than the volume of the fan, however it’s not very silent – and doesn’t tend to stay silent when watching.

The default speed is 1.3ghz, you can overclock the laptop in the BIOS, see here, for the scores and much more information about the laptop. Boosts CPU / RAM score from 4.1 / 4.8 to 4.6 / 5.4. GFX for both desktop and 3D is 6.5 and disk score 5.9. I think you can even turn down the performance of the GFX – perhaps this would make the laptop quieter?

Windows Experience Scores: M11x: CPU: 4.1 RAM: 4.8 GFX: 6.4 3D GFX: 6.4  HDD: 5.9 (Nvidia, CPU 1.3ghz)
Windows Experience Scores: Q430: CPU: 6.3 RAM: 5.9 GFX:4.9 3D GFX: 5.9 HDD: 5.9
Windows Experience Scores: 1510:  CPU: 4.8 RAM: 4.8 GFX: 3.5 3D GFX: 3.5  HDD: 5.1
Windows Experience Scores: R500:  CPU: 2.8 RAM: 4.2 GFX: 2.2 3D GFX: 3.0 HDD: 5.1

Yes – you can switch between graphics cards the NVidia GeForce graphics, or the “discrete” built in graphics – using FN + F6 – the built in graphics being “Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset” / “Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD” with 64mb dedicated memory.

GeForce GT 335M – dedicated video memory 1024mb – switching between the modes is quite quick although if the graphics processor is in use, it asks you to close the program before it will switch. There is a slight degradation of image quality when switching to the Intel graphics – and it’s noticeable on the external display more than the internal laptop screen (Seiko / Epson Laptop Display) - for example on an external 22inch screen. The text isn’t as crisp, but the display is quite stable.

Using the Intel graphics seems to keep the laptop quiet(er). Watching iplayer even – (the laptop CPU usage averages around 29%) – the laptop settles down to a nice quiet purr. There is still a fan running, but it’s nice to see that there’s a quiet mode as well.

More on the screen – it’s very fingerprint prone – so not only is it super reflective, you also need to make sure you don’t touch it. It also has a large border and dare I say it, it looks kind of 90s – like Star Trek The Next Generation – trying to be futuristic but in reality looking kind of dated. (More to be added…)

Pros:
+ Good value for money now that Dell are offering it for £498
+ Switchable between Intel gfx (quiet, low power), or Nvidia (loud, good for games)
+ Overclock friendly – need more speed, switch it on in the BIOS
+ Built in SIM card slot! (Firewire, PATA)
+ Metal bottom to laptop, alienware fabric sleeve
+ Excellent battery life

Cons:
- Can be really loud when using Nvidia graphics
- Not entirely convinced by the keyboard (yet)
- Reflective gloss screen (although it’s less reflective with a brighter wallpaper)
- SD / Memory cards stick out when in the reader
- Keyboard marks the screen when the laptop is closed

Klick Image002_0A

Epson Klick size

Epson Klick size sharp

The following is not intended as a review of the mentioned scan methods, but for comparative purposes and is published in hindsight. I include images scanned by Klick when the film was first processed. The Klick images are to be viewed as a reference to basic commercial scanning service capabilities. The Maplin and Aldi images were scanned at 1680 x 2550 dpi in Tiff format and converted to jpeg maintaining their resolution. The Klick image has been upscaled from 1024 x 1536 to 1700 x 2550. To compare the results, I use FastStone Image viewer, as it allows up to 4 images to be simultaneously displayed and scrolled. Comparing the banners in the portrait images reveal sharpening in the Klick image and flaring in the Aldi and Maplin scans. The Epson scan did not bring out much extra detail, and on closer inspection I decided that the negative was not that sharp to start with.

Klick Image020_18A cs5 enlarged

Aldi 2011-05-02_22

Epson Match Unsharp

The landscape images are the outcome of scanning a sharper negative on the same film. The image ‘Epson Klick size’ was scanned at 1200 dpi, (a comparable resolution to the Klick image) and saved without modification as a jpeg. The ‘Epson Klick size sharp’ is the same image and has been auto coloured and sharpened. Sharpening in the Klick image is again obvious, but the tonal range in the Epson scan provides a more pleasing result. The Epson will scan up to 2400 dpi without interpolation, and provides a great deal of control over the final appearance of the image. As yet I have not found a quick scanner that complements the capabilities of my Epson.

Maplin 2010-12-26_10

The Maplin scanner was returned, as the calibration process did not eliminate the vignetting that the back light produced (see bottom left of Maplin scan). The Aldi scanner was returned as it was not equal to my existing Epson scanning capabilities.

Aldi Traveller – Digital Film Scanner: http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/special_buys3_18156.htm?WT.mc_id=2011-03-25-11-11

Maplin 5MP Compact Film and Slide Scanner: http://www.maplin.co.uk/5mp-compact-film-and-slide-scanner-503038

Not as large as a 15.6″ laptop, and not as small as a netbook, but slightly larger than 13.3″ laptops, the Samsung Q430 offers everything you’d get with a laptop, but comes in at a netbook similar price, has a battery life approaching a netbook, and is lighter than your standard laptop. What else does it feature to make it stand out? Well compared to it’s smaller brother, the Q330, the Q430 features a dedicated Nvidia Geforce (Cuda) graphics with it’s own 512mb memory. See below for it’s key features:

Samsung Q430 Features:
- Intel Core i3 350 2.26ghz CPU (dual core with hyperthreading – enabling 4 cpus)
- 4GB RAM (DDR3 – 3.86gb available)
- 320gb HD
- 14 inch 1366×768 16:9 screen with LED backlight (gloss – boo!*)
- DVDrw/CDrw
- NVidia Geforce 310m 512mb GFX
- 2.1kg
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
- Built in webcam, SD card reader, HDMI out, 3 USB sockets, ethernet, wifi etc

First switch on – easy enough, quick to go through the Windows setup process, entering the laptop name, wifi connection etc, then “Samsung Software Installing” takes over… and 20 minutes later you’ll still be waiting for it to finish installing… what I do not know (yet). But it’s probably stuff you don’t want clogging up your laptop… this is a somewhat frustrating start, as it doesn’t tell you what it’s installing or give you any explanation or choice regarding whether you want it or not.

Part of this is to ask you to partition your hard drive (I went for default settings, 160/120gb for C and D or something similar). Then after about 30 minutes in total you end up on a nice shiny blue Windows desktop. IE8 comes pre-installed, and comes with mcafee site advisor / mcafee security centre, google toolbar, already installed and active.

Design: Latch-less shiny black lid. Silver inside. Quite rattley plastic silver, textured to appear as metal, but you can tell it’s not. The keyboard looks neat with square black keys much like an Apple laptop, or Sony Vaio. There’s also an extra row on the very right hand side with Del, Home, PgUp, PgDown, End which should make it easier to access compared my current laptop (a Dell Vostro 1510), and the \ and / slash keys are in the correct place (unlike my current Vostro!). There are not really any dedicated volume controls apart from the FN + Left/Right buttons, on the keyboard. The trackpad’s mouse buttons are good with little travel and a re-assuringly responsive click.

Windows score: (Windows Experience Index)
Overall: 4.9, CPU: 6.3, RAM: 5.9, Graphics (Desktop): 4.9, Graphics (Gaming): 5.9, HDD: 5.9

Idle volume: the idle volume of the laptop is quite noticeable – there is a constant fan noise even when the CPU is doing very little. The Vostro 1510 on the other hand is silent unless under quite heavy load.

Samsung Q430 Volume Controls

The keyboard is really quite good and takes very little time to get used to so that you can quickly start touch typing on the laptop. Although the wrist rest area is a little small, as the keyboard is not as far back as some other laptops, the keyboard is still quite comfortable to type on.

Samsung Q430 Side Ports

Screen: gloss is bad for reflections, when looking at a black background you’ll either see a reflection of yourself or lights or other (terrible outdoors in the sun for example), however, the black is often very black and the gloss finish makes photos look very colourful, rich, saturated, etc, almost like a high quality photo print. The optimal viewing angles for the screen aren’t great, although when you do angle it correctly the blacks are very black, angle it wrong and you get what looks like backlight bleed. The screen is also quite low, so long periods of looking at the screen with your head bent down may not be the best for you.

Samsung Q430 DVD Drive

Flickering VGA output? using the VGA cable connected to an external monitor, the screen / image seems to wobble / flicker… fault or just a design / quality flaw – is this something they all do?? It’s worse when you are using the mouse, so could be power related, however, if the cheaper Vostro 1510 doesn’t do this, then a more expensive machine shouldn’t do this!

Battery life – Fully charged, Windows says the battery should last 3 hours.

As someone who uses an external monitor when using the laptop on a desk, I find the flickering of the external display really quite disappointing. (Something a budget Vostro 1510 doesn’t suffer from) Likewise, after using the virtually silent Vostro 1510 (the only noise you hear most of the time is the hard drive accessing), I find the default / idle noise of the Samsung Q430 disappointing. The first issue seems like it may be a fault, the second, seems like a design or configuration flaw. I don’t know whether I can learn to live with these issues… (I’m wondering whether I would have been better off with the Intel graphics based Q330… even though it has a smaller screen…)

Pros:
+ 14inch screen / compact size
+ Good keyboard – good layout, and easy to touchtype
+ Good spec for the price

Cons:
- Flickering VGA output
- Loud fan (even when CPU idle)
- Would be nice to have a slot loading drive
- unimpressed by the memory card reader – easily loses contact

These four aspects seem to be important when buying and using in-ear earphones: Sound quality, Build quality, fitment, and price, so I’ll rate each based on this, and then give a total score.

Creative Labs EP-630 (Best Overall Value) – from £8 – £12 from Amazon UK
Excellent for the price (value 9/10). Good buds – fitment wise they are very good (9/10). Good cable, build quality and design are very good for the price – assuming you get them for £8 (9/10), or £12 (8/10). Sound (7/10), very good sound but very bass driven, and not as crisp as others.
Overall: 8.25/10

JVC Marshmallow FX-34 – around £10 on Amazon UK
Cheapest foam earphones available (upgraded by the FX-35), slightly too large plastic can make them too large. Sound quality is very good, although can take some “run in”, and mine started failing after around 3 months! Cable is good and doesn’t seem to tangle. Good value for money – especially compared to other foam earphones – often costing much more. However, you can tell these are cheaply made, as the foam slides on, rather than clips on. Sound 8/10 (strong bass), Build 5/10, Fitment 6/10 (Can be too big for some people), Value 9/10.
Overall: 7/10

Philips SHE-8500 – around £12 on Amazon UK
Very good sound. Not very good rubber buds – too soft making the fitment* lose and difficult to get complete isolation from the surrounding noises. Poor quality cable, not very flexible, feels cheap, and brittle, and tangles easily. Poor design of plastic (square) making any contact with ear while fitting them uncomfortable. Sound quality: 9/10, build quality: 5/10, fitment: 5/10, value: 8/10.
Overall: 6.75/10

Nokia BH-214 (Best value bluetooth) Bluetooth wireless earbuds – from £15 – £20 from Amazon UK
Great value for money, but sound quality not so great compared to others. You can use the bluetooth wireless numbers with other earphones, so can always use these as an entry into wireless earphones. Sound quality: 6-7/10 (Sound slightly worse when using the bluetooth adapter – less bass and clarity etc), build quality: 7/10 (jack is not gold plated), fitment: 8/10, value: 10/10 (includes Nokia charger as well).
Overall: 7.75/10

Sennheiser CX-300 IIs (Winner!) – around £18 from Amazon UK^ – but sometimes more.
Good cable. Good buds. Best price / performance / quality in my opinion. In fact , if you can stretch (financially) to these, buy these and never look back. Sound 9/10 (perhaps not as bass driven as some of the others), Build 8/10, Fitment 9/10, Value 8/10 (inludes carry case / pouch).
Overall: 8.5/10

Overall: The Sennheiser CX-300 II are clear winners, offering the best sound quality, fitment and build quality, at a reasonable price. The Creative Labs EP-630 offer a lot for the price, and are runners up. And the Nokia BH-214 are worth considering because they offer bluetooth connectivity at a very reasonable price.

* Fitment – correct fitment is key / essential to getting the best sound out of the earphones, not getting the correct fitment can mean the sound is completely lacking bass etc. This is the same with all of these in-ear style earphones.

^ Recommend purchasing directly from Amazon, to avoid potentially getting fake earphones.

* Can replace this with Spotify if you have an account as Spotify is available for both.

Find new / more apps for Symbian / Nokia on http://blog.ovi.com/dailyapp/global/, Nokia Betalabs (apps), recommended apps on MobileRnR

The Orange San Francisco / ZTE Blade offers an extremely cheap entry into the world of Android. Priced around £99 (with a mandatory top up of £10/£20), it offers excellent value for money, and is one of the higher spec phones available around that price. Offering a large 3.5″ screen with a high resolution of 800×480, a 600mhz cpu, and 2gb of Micro SD ram.

Another big feature of the phone is the community support for the phone, allowing it to be unlocked for free (found via Modaco), and upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo), and potentially newer versions when they are released, it has it’s own dedicated forum here at Modaco.

Nokia N8 OLED - Orange San Francisco TFT

The “SanFran”, as some people affectionally call it, has 3 physical buttons at the bottom of the screen: Home, Menu, Back, one power button at the top, and volume buttons at the side, there is no dedicated camera button or unlock button. To unlock you press the power button and slide something on the screen based on what version of android (or screensaver) you have. Considering the whole touch screen ethos of the android operating system, it seems strange to have to use physical / moving buttons to navigate – it would make more sense for these to be soft touch buttons (as I’m sure other android phones do).

Box Contents: Phone, Battery, Orange SIM, Earphones with microphone (earbuds, NOT in-ear earphones), Wall charger (Plugs into wall and has USB socket), USB Cable (used to charge phone with wall-charge or plug into computer), User guides (quick start guide, printed 133 page manual, plus 2nd manual for orange software), 2GB MicroSD Card.

Phone quality – Making and receiving calls, the audio quality is very good, the speaker is loud and clear, and quality seemed very good with no feedback or echo noticeable. (Although you network coverage may alter your experience)

Music playback – full volume is still on the quiet side of things. The music player app is fine, nothing seems to be missing, but nothing stands out as particularly interesting either. It does the job, but only seems to work in portrait mode (and not landscape). Music playback is interupted by other app notifications!? (Could just be my OS build, 2.2, and even when the other notifications are set to silent!?)

Web browser – this is quick, responsive, and works well.

Some screenshots, click to enlarge, homescreen, app updates, task manager.

Android market (app store) – this has very nice integration with websites, you visit the site, click the link to download from the store, it takes you there and you click install, it then takes you back to the website and downloads and installs the app in the background. Very swish, very un-intrusive, very simple, very easy, the way it should be done. (I’m looking at you Nokia) It’s also ironic that you can get Snake free for the android – but no official version from Nokia for Nokia phones…

Orange San Francisco ZTE Blade Back / Battery / MicroSD / SIM slots

Expansion – Under the one piece back cover (made of plastic), you’ll find slots for the MicroSD card, SIM card, and battery. Small hole next to the camera lens – could be a reset button?

Battery – a 1250mah 3.7v battery.

Build and size: Slim, compact, the back cover covers the power button, and needs to be taken off / put back on carefully as, like the Nokia N95, it could cause problems if not treated with care or over-used. The plastic is coated with a rubbery texture, making the phone feel like a higher quality / higher price handset than it actually is, and internally the circuit boards seem very thin. The use of philips head screws make it very tempting to take apart…

Orange San Francisco ZTE Blade Taken Apart (Teardown)

There’s a hidden screw under a white dot, so no doubt taking it apart will void your warranty, there’s also a moisture detector dot under the battery, as shown above, and there are 8 screws in total holding the phone together, after taking these out, the phone then unclips with some encouragement – although you can help it along by pushing the clips surrounding the battery area – I didn’t want to go further than this as the rest looked like it needed the ribbon cables disconnecting, and this is often fiddly.

Orange San Francisco ZTE Blade TFT Screen Removed (back) - Click to Enlarge

To remove the front glass / case, you need to remove / disconnect the top ribbon cable that connects the *something* (don’t know what). The ribbon cable connections are held in place with plastic that “pops” up, and the wi-fi aerial also pops-off. The screen is quite firmly glued on to the main plastic “chassis” in the middle of the phone, and there is also a ribbon cable behind the main board connecting the top led and light sensor, and the volume control ribbon cable is soldiered on, and the buttons are glued onto the chassis, making it very difficult to disconnect / remove – it quickly becomes very fiddly.

Identifiable chips / components: (Click images above to enlarge, or to view additional images!) Top: Samsung SWB-A23 (Wifi, bluetooth), Qualcomm (hidden from view), Qualcomm PM754, AH56714, C1034003 (Power management), Underneath: Samsung 040, KA1000015M-AJTT, YK10338E (RAM), Qualcomm MSM7 (CPU, hidden from view), TriQuint 7M5012H, 1037, KORE, AT9366. Camera module: Made by MCNEX MC_32A2_48, 2010.06.04, the chip on the front of the phone, above the screen: 1KAAV0QW, Z1A0AD09.

Nokia N8 Camera with Flash - Orange San Francisco Camera with no Flash

Camera – 3.2 megapixel AF (Auto-focus) lens. Photos are awful. Terrible. Horrible. Utterly crap. Seriously substandard.

Other features? Impressions? The top bar shows you your notifications, things like texts, twitter or app notifications, and battery / connectivity status etc (3G, Bluetooth etc), but doesn’t actually let you interact with the notifications on the right of the bar… you can’t click the battery, for example, to see how much remains (like you can on Symbian ^3), instead you seem to have to go through the phones setting menu to get the information.

Updated conclusion: 6 months later: (10/07/2011) Some have said, in the comments that this review is overly negative, and somewhat lacking in it’s conclusion, and I agree. In retrospect, the ZTE Blade (Orange San Francisco) is still, to this day, 6 months later, one of the most fully featured, and lowest priced android phones available, and the good screen, and low price make it very apealling, especially with such a huge homebrew community of support. I bought it as I wanted to see what all the fuss about Android was, and I wasn’t as impressed as I felt I should have been, especially considering all the hype. There are areas of weakness such as the poor camera software (camera is poor on this phone, but may suffice in great weather, outdoors), and generally android isn’t as polished as I think it should be (this may have changed with newer versions, I tested 2.2). The ZTE Blade with a lower spec processor than most, won’t do flash, which is a huge drawback for me as I need iPlayer on my phone. Another big weakness is the high SAR levels (1.35 W/kg) – enough to give some users enough of an issue that they’ve seen a GP (Doctor) about it… Another big issue is the fact that everyone feels the need to mess with the google version of android, and try and add their own skin, apps, and money making programs to the phone. Very annoying. Anyway, to try and conclude this as quickly as possible, the ZTE Blade (OSF), is a great phone considering the price, and if well worth looking at if you’re on a limited budget and don’t mind the various issues the phone has.

Pros: (Positives)
+ High resolution 3.5″ capacitive screen (responsive)
+ Extremely good value for money
+ Easily unlocked, for free
+ Upgradable to Android 2.2
+ Tons of apps, good app store experience
+ Notification of app updates, and “Update all” button (not just OS)
+ Full screen PDF viewer (in QuickOffice)

Cons: (Negatives)
- Home screens don’t work in landscape mode (see Symbian ^3, or Launcher Pro for Android)
- Music playback is interrupted by other app noises! (even when the phone and notifications are silent)
- Limited memory as standard (only 2gb MicroSD provided)
- AWFUL camera (see Nokia N8!), lacks even basic LED flash
- Fragmented OS / Features ie BBC iPlayer is supposed to work on 2.2 (using Flash*) but wouldn’t for me, 2.1 it just isn’t available (see Nokia / Apple)
- Poor battery life (8 hours)
- No strap loop / wriststrap mounting hole
- Camera shutter sound on, even when all sound muted.
- Default install location is the phones memory, not MicroSD, easy to fill the 512mb built in.
- Difficult to use one-handed (back button awkward – and pressing the background of the screen doesn’t take you back so you have to press the back button – easier on Symbian ^3 to just press the screen behind the pop up menu)

* Flash 10.1 is needed, which isn’t available for the ZTE Blade due to the ARM6 processor.

Useful links: ChrisLowthian.co.uk How to Unlock.
Orange San Francisco also available from Amazon UK (Unlocked).

The HTC Desire HD. Let’s get the specs out of the way eh?

None of which tells you anything useful. Well, there are loads of things to talk bout with this phone so lets go.

Screen

It’s a 4.3 inch screen and it’s a bobby dazzler. Despite sounding massive it feels really natural in the hand. It’s noticably bigger than the iPhone but the weight and smooth contours make it easy to hold. The camera lens protrudes from the back a good few millimetres. I really thought that it would catch my palm and do my head in, but not at all. Ergonomically it’s a decent phone. Typing is tough with one hand unless you use the excellent, yet love it or hate it Swype. Swype lets you type with swipes, moving from one letter to the next without taking your finger off the screen. If it sounds weird it is at first, but now it’s a ‘how did I do without i?’ app for me. It’s predictive and lets you add to the dictionary. Provided you’re not typing nonsense words it is seldom wrong. There are no hard keys as such. They have been made in to touch sensitive buttons for Home, Menu, Back and Search. Gone completely is any trackball or trackpad. I don’t miss it.

Apps look great on screen and the touch screen is unintrusive and useful. Call quality is good but the bundled hands free kit is predictably crap. Terrible sound and earphones that fall out of your ears.At the bottom are the SIM and Micro SD slots, with a hatch that slides off  so no need to turn the phone off or take the whole back off to remove either. Left side has a volume rocker, which can be hard to operate, rather irritatingly, and top left is power, again, irritating to access. Minor points but they do annoy me.

Performance

Lightning fast apps, switching, animations and functions make this phone a joy to use. However, the big issue. Battery life. When I started using this phone I was horrified at it’s 6-7b hour standby time. I thought it was faulty at first until I did some research, and here is how you get 30-40 hours out of it.

• Accounts sync. I had a total of 11 accounts  syncing, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, News, Weather, Stocks etc. They set themselves to sync every 15 minutes by default. Massive drain. I killed all bar the Google and Facebook accounts. Google updates every 2 hours and Facebook daily. This alone extended the life to a days’ use.
• Install a task killer, kill all tasks that do not need to be running. This makes a huge difference.
• Get rid of pointless apps. They are usually badly written and drain power. Apps like this are the price of the more open Android market, as opposed to Apple’s ‘Dolphin’s Butt’ approach.

There are other optional steps that I took.

• I rooted the phone using VISIONary, a free app that needs no restart and doesn’t flash the phone.
• Installed Titanium Backup free and  deleted all the crapware that came with it. I dumped a load of pointless widgets, HTC bloatware apps that offered wallpapers etc and, astoundingly, there are two bundled Twitter apps with the phone, the official Twitter app and the HTC one called Peep. I use the far superior Tweetdeck so I have no use for those, off they went. A factory reset puts all of this back on the phone so you need not worry about that.
• After this run the phone as normal for ten days, then drain it completely and calibrate the battery.

My battery clocks in at 30-40 hours business use now so it can be done, Don’t believe the propaganda. I am the sort to plug my phone in whenever possible anyway, always have been. It’s hardly Apple’s ‘It just works’ appeal but I like Android for playing with it so I’m not bothered, you might be.

Running widgets, particularly live feeds will drain it but it’s nothing to worry about.

Media

Music is well played, no skips etc but you’ll need decent headphones as cheap ones sound tinny. The screen is perfect for iPlayer/YouTube and the playback is very good indeed. Sharp, vibrant and well-balanced with intuitive controls. YouTube lets you sign in to a different account from the phone which is a useful idea. Photos look crisp and sharp too. Flipping between landscape and portrait is snappy and works perfectly. The music app displays album art and controls music whilst the phone is locked without having accidental presses. Clever. You can install different ones if you like, notably Tune Wiki, but I see no need. There is some sort of Dolby sound thing going on here, but I have to be honest, in my experience the rule is spend a few quid and it sounds good. This phone doesn’t convince me otherwise. It sounds good, but if I am supposed to notice some sort of sound revelation, sorry. It sounds good provided you don’t use a terrible bit rate on MP3 files.

Navigation

Google Maps and Navigation is there. It works snappily and the voice search is brilliant. No complaints. With it being a cloud based app there’s nothing new here that isn’t on other phones. What is new is HTC’s proprietary Locations application. It has several features. Free maps and mapping but navigation is a premium feature. Unless you’re a heavy user then navigation is free with Google. If you use it daily then buy the premium as Vodafone only give you a measly 750 MB data plan. I think this is taking the proverbial a little now. One gigabyte is not a huge amount so it’s clear they’re looking to squeeze a few pounds out of us on data.

Fortunately, the free element of Locations is offline mapping. No data usage, but sadly the database of locations is absolutely hopeless. It’s empty compared to Google Maps and as far as I can see it does not accept postcode searches. They had better update that pronto. If you search then every space sees a lag as it tries to match what you just typed. That is extremely irritating and a flaw that needs to be addressed. However, most of the time, if you give it the data it will find what you need. If so, then the maps have 2D and 3D views – very nice indeed – and they work with the compass so that the map turns wherever you are pointing it. No more walking for a bit to see which way you should be going. Very nice feature and one iPhone has had for ages. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Google haven’t  done it  with maps. Locations also does general keyword shops. You can select whatever category of place you want, e.g. pubs, and find the ones in the area along with ratings and reviews. This is very good and means no worries about using your data up on Google Maps. As an aside, as these apps move to the cloud then networks need to be fairer on data allowances. I would happily compromise on say, mapping and browsing only, no downloads or streaming, in exchange for unlimited 3G data. I think that is a better way to keep everyone happy. No nasty surprises in our bills and the networks don’t have to worry about media streaming brining 3G networks to their knees. I am sympathetic as the traffic on 3G has exploded since iPhone changed things, but then they’ve had three years to beef up their infrastructure. If they keep this up it will stink of profiteering. Having expensive data tariffs on always-online devices is a gun to the head scenario in my opinion.

GPS signal acquisition is lightning fast and as accurate as I have ever seen. Any thing like maps or navigation looks brilliant on that 4.3 inch screen.

Location services on this work really well. I know there are real concerns regarding privacy but I am all over location services like a fat kid on cake. I love them and can’t wait until they gain wider acceptance. Why, for example, can’t 20 Foursquare check-ins at a restaurant equal a free meal? There is an opportunity to make money here, and hopefully the right sort of thinkers will drive this. Foursquare is a great idea, but the app on here needs refining. It works fine, but searches can often be slow and it’s a little  buggy. Not the phone’s fault, but a thought. Facebook works well and includes Places. Tweetdeck (or Peep/Twitter if you prefer) all permit location updates in tweets and geotagging photos os available too. This phone will stretch the possibilities for locatoin applications. It has the capability and the screen to be extraordinarily useful. We just need some original thinking from developers for apps and services. Bring it on.

Camera

The camera is 8 megapixels, twin LED flash and shoots HD video at 720p.

Here is a sample video from bonfire night:

Pretty good, I am sure you’ll agree. A couple of stills from the same night:

The OS is the bang up to date Android 2.2, smooth and fast. There is a vast array of sharing options, Twitter, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Mail, YouTube. Uploads are a couple of taps and go just fine.

Internet and Mail

Gmail on this is great, push updates and notifications. The mail client works well with loads of options, including a unified inbox for all accounts. Nice touch. The browser works very well with smooth panning, zooming and pinching there, and in the rest of the apps too. Google search and voice search integrates brilliantly, giving local results for the device and net results too. I did install Firefox beta but for a beta release it has some terrible bugs, notably being the capitalising of the first letters of passwords, meaning you type it, then your full password, then go back and delete the capital. It’s easily fixed but that is a real balls up for something of Firefox’s standards. Quick look up works when you highlight text, you get the usual cut and paste options. The menu also gives ‘Quick Look Up’ as an option so you can get web and Wikipedia results for the highlighted text. Very good idea.Bookmarks are tiles and multiple pages are supported. plus map links and so forth open the relevant app rather than viewing in browser. Perfect touch there.

Software

The market now allows auto-update and update all for installed apps. It restricts that by forcing manual update if application permissions have changed. That stops developers sneaking in data mining and sharing that you did not originally agree to. Thank you Google. The market is simple to browse and the app selection is huge. Not quite up with Apple and there is a fair amount of crapware in there, but there are some great pieces of software. Be wary that quality control is non-existent, which gives app developers freedom but also allows more seedy tactics like apps that are just there to serve ads, thus generating cash, and apps that don’t work properly. Read comments before installing.

Main Features / Specifications:

• 12 megapixel camera, with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash
• HD Video recording – 720p – image stabilisation available (digital)
• 3.5″ 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels) AMOLED Capacitive touch screen
• Symbian^3 with over 250 new features, Java MIDP 2.1
• Web Runtime 7.2, Flash Lite 4.0, HTML 4.1, Qt 4.6.2
• 50 hours MP3 playback (when in offline mode)
• Free sat-nav navigation with Ovi Maps
• 3 live home screens with widgets
• On-demand Web TV
• HDMI / HDTV out
• Dolby Digital Plus technology*
• USB on the go – plug in USB things like pendrives, keyboards, digital cameras etc
• Anodized aluminium casing, available in: Silver white, Dark grey, Orange, Blue, Green
• Dedicated graphics processor with OpenGL 2.0 enables 3D graphics, Accelerometer
• BL-4D 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery (internal, but can be removed using torx screws)
• Internal memory: 16 GB, MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, up to 32 GB
• Capability to serve as data modem (ie “Tethering”) assuming you’re not crippled by your phone network.
• FM Radio, FM Transmitter
• Optional accesories: Nokia SU-36 Capacitive Stylus £10 (If yours doesn’t include it)

Previously, I’d questioned or rather suggested improvements I’d like to see implemented in the new Nokia N8 / Symbian^3 phone operating system update. Just as a very quick answer to see whether they have resolved my concerns I’ll look at each point (although you can probably see the answers from the screens shown below):

Nokia N8 Home Screens - Widgets, Shortcuts, RSS - Click to enlarge - here I've setup the first screen to show the interactive widgets, and favourite contacts (photos taken from twitter, phone, and facebook), the second screen I've filled with the search widget and shortcuts (making it look like an iphone or an android phone), and the third screen I've filled with RSS feeds - including an RSS feed from twitter.

RSS feeds on the home screen: Yes. By default you can get specific widgets such as the BBC News RSS Feed widget, and CNN News RSS Feed widget, these are built in to the phone as standard. If you subscribe to an RSS feed in the built in web browser, it will then appear as an option to put it on the home screens as an RSS widget.

Improved UI Design / Icons: Compared to Symbian S60 v3 or v5 (Touch), and the N97 / N97 Mini the interface is much nicer to use, graphically more pleasing, and much more responsive. The general look of the icons when in the main menu is still rather plain and not drastically different, but is more pleasing overall due to the blue buttons (they have tidied up the icons making them a little prettier, but they still have the same general look). There do seem to be some UI (User Interface) design quirks in that the exit button will move position when in landscape mode (such as the camera mode – this was not the case with the N97 Mini!).

Improved Web Browser: This is questionable. The browser is a slightly newer version (N8 is v7.2.7.2, N97 is v7.1.4), and deals with BBC iPlayer slightly differently, but is still very similar to the old browser. Overload it and instead of being able to view videos from iplayer or youtube, you’ll still get the “broken flash” icon. Apparently the first firmware update will include an improved browser. The new browser now supports Multi-touch and pinch zooming.

Improved sharing features: Photo send options are via message, mail or bluetooth. Where are the send to flickr, facebook, twitter, etc options? Update: – once you sign into Social (by Nokia) you then get the option to upload photos and videos to facebook and twitter straight after taking them! It’s a bit basic, but works well – yay!

Built in Twitter / Facebook client and home screen widget: Yes, twitter and facebook client / widget built in, called Nokia Social. This also integrates with the Contacts on the phone, and you can pull twitter / facebook friends profile picture into your contacts, and view their shared contact details on facebook.

Improved battery life or sleep mode: Too soon to say, but the screen saver looks low power (other screen saver options are: music player, which will display the track you’re playing even when the phones locks, slideshow, Big Clock, Animation or None). Wifi, and other internet connections *seem* to go to sleep when not in use, and the phone also copes well with having many apps running in the background, even overnight, without much battery life problems. With the N97 Mini, running programs overnight normally meant waking up to a flat battery, not so with the N8. The battery is the same 1200mah battery as used in the Nokia N97 Mini (BL-4D). So far the battery lasts longer than the N97 Mini, and in everyday use, the N8 battery lasts 15 hours (I will add more results later), although the battery life will be highly dependant on what features you use and how often you use them. Another new feature added to the phone, is that it now shows you how much the phone is charged in percentage, even when the phone is off.

PC software needs fixing – why are there separate apps for Nokia Maps loader, Nokia Ovi Suite, Nokia Software Updater, etc, why can’t these all be combined into one? This appears to be being resolved, with the majority of tools being put inside Nokia Ovi Suite, however there still appears to be development of Nokia Software Updater as a separate program. Nokia Ovi Suite is available on the phone to install, when you connect the phone in Mass Storage mode.

Have a screen that works outside even when battery is low: Too soon to say, however, the screen clarity and brightness looks like a significant improvement over the Nokia N97 Mini and the N8 features an AMOLED screen, although this wasn’t a good thing when the Nokia N86 8mp featured an AMOLED screen, as it was very difficult to see it in bright sunlight.

Lots of memory (RAM) for multi-tasking: Despite the N8 only having 256mb internally for the C: drive, compared to the Nokia N97 Mini’s 512mb, the N8 seems to be able to run WAY more apps simultaneously when compared to the N97 Mini – I have not yet seen any memory error messages despite running applications that cause problems on the N97 Mini. Running 11+ applications is not a problem, as Symbian^3 now has virtual memory support.

Photoshop for Symbian anyone? Already, since the release of the Nokia N8, Nokia have released a new photography app, Nokia Panoramic. There are other photo apps currently under development… see Nokia Make My App, in particular: Mobile Photoshop and Auto HDR Photography.

High Quality Audio / MP3 Playback: The Nokia N8 is already at a disadvantage compared to the Nokia N97 and N97 Mini, as the N8 only has one speaker for playback. However, it improves over the N97 Mini by including an FM transmitter. For stereo sound you will need to plug in some earphones / headphones. The music player on the N8 is greatly improved over the player on previous Nokia phones, and provides smooth scrolling through album art.

Volume is very high – much higher than the N97 Mini, and clarity (particularly treble) is exceptional, without distortion at 100% volume. The N8 is very capable of driving large headphones, at potentially dangerous volume levels, and the volume can be changed with the side volume control even when the phone is locked (this was not possible with the N97 Mini, which is nice). Gapless playback of MP3s? Nope, it almost seems like it’s trying though, with a one or two second gap.

Music features:

• Flick scroll to browse the albums in your music collection
• Ovi Music Unlimited service on selected markets
• Nokia Ovi Player
• Ovi Music store
• Music codecs: .MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB
• Bit rate up tp 320 kbps
• DRM support WM DRM, OMA DRM 2.0
• FM transmitter
• Stereo FM radio (87.5-108 MHz/76-90 MHz)

Nokia N8 Camera – Carl Zeiss Tessar Lens, f2.8, 28mm equivalent (wide-angle), Auto focus. Xenon flash at the top. Speaker hole at the bottom.

The Nokia N8 Camera: One of the greatly anticipated (and hyped) features of the Nokia N8 is the 12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash. Nokia have put in a 12 megapixel sensor (1/1.83-inch) that is the same size as you find in your typical compact digital camera from Canon, Panasonic etc, and whilst nowhere near as good as the large sensor you would find in a Digital SLR, it is an improvement over the tiny sensors found in every other camera phone. As proof to how serious Nokia are taking the camera abilities of the N8, they posted 34 questions and answers about JUST the camera on the phone.

Golden autumn leaves, 12mp, 2.56mb, ISO105, f2.8, 1/155, Click to enlarge.

Camera features:

• 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• Xenon flash
• Face recognition software
• Autofocus
• Focal length: 5.9 mm, Wide-angle 28mm equivalent
• F number/Aperture: F2.8
• Still images file format: JPEG/EXIF
• Zoom up to 2x (digital) for still images
• Zoom up to 3x (digital) for video

Some photos above: click to enlarge, click again to view full size.

More on the Camera: The camera defaults to taking 9 megapixel 16:9 wide aspect ratio photos (4000 x 2248) – switching to 12 megapixel images gives the more usual 4:3 aspect ratio (4000 x 3000), and 12mp photos average between 3.2mb and 1mb, which means they are quite highly compressed. After taking over 50 photos, the ISO (when set to AUTO) has ranged from ISO100 to ISO229. Manual settings for ISO are available and can be set to Low (ISO100), Medium (ISO400), or High (ISO800).

Video features:

• 12 megapixel with Carl Zeiss optics
• HD quality 720p resolution
• Shoot 16:9 videos in HD
• Video capture in 720p 25 fps with codecs H.264, MPEG-4
• Settings for scene, white balance, colour tone
• 3x digital zoom available

The phone has a new video player, that supports DIVX, and XVID playback, including mkv files.

Plugging the phone into Windows 7 and you get some useful information, as Symbian^3 now supports Windows 7 properly:

Charge, Photos, Memory (Here it’s showing 20+gb as I’ve put an 8gb Micro SD card in), Text messages, Missed calls etc,

Other improvements: There’s a new keyboard mode (not yet supported by most apps), that lets you view your program, and your keyboard at the same time, it also implements predictive text / words, which makes using the keyboard much quicker. Simply start typing the word, and suggestions will appear making it quicker to use than the old qwerty keyboard.

USB on the go: Plug in any USB device, such as a USB keyboard or mouse, and you can use them on the phone, why not use a full size PC / Mac USB keyboard for typing instead of the touch screen? Or use a bluetooth mouse as well and use the HDMI output to connect the phone up to a large screen and then it can be used as a desktop PC replacement. Alternatively you could connect up a digital camera and start uploading photos to the internet, the possibilities are pretty amazing. Supports USB pen drives, and I suspect USB memory card readers (although I haven’t tested this personally). Or you could connect up your previous Nokia, such as the N97 Mini in Mass Storage mode, and copy everything across without having to go through a PC.

Over 250 new features in Symbian^3: From the nokia blog, we can see that some of the main features added to Symbian are: Better graphics, Multi-touch, improved multimedia (new video player, HDMI support, Dolby*, new music player), better multitasking which includes better memory management to allow more apps to run, and an “Alt-Tab” (Windows) style task switcher, nicer networking, and Qt for developers.

Some other cool new features are: (if you’re technically minded) 64-bit file server – the phone supports files larger than 2gb, and Symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) support for dual core processors such as the ARM A9. Probably the most important for Nokia users that are bored of seeing the “Out of Memory” message on the N97 or N97 Mini (etc), Symbian^3 now features Writable Data Paging (WDP) – much like the Windows Page File, once the built in physical RAM has run out, it will simply page it to the other “drives” in the phone. (see Nokia Library “What’s new in Symbian^3” for more info)

New Ovi Store: One of the listed selling points of the phone is “access to 1000s of apps in the new Ovi store” (paraphrased by me), although strangely the Ovi store isn’t actually installed on the phone, all the shortcuts are there, but when go to open it, you then need to install it. I suppose it means you are going to get the latest version of the Ovi store even if the phones been sitting on the shelf for a few months, but it seems a little strange. When the Ovi store is installed, it is a noticeable improvement over the old store, not that there was anything particularly bad about the old store, it’s just that the Ovi store on the N8 looks nicer and feels nicer to use.

Build quality: The front glass is made out of “Gorrilla Glass” – a product that is deemed by the internet as unbreakable (Video). The phone body is made out of Aluminium, and feels extremely solid and well built, and the top and bottom of the phone are plastic. The fit and finish of the phone feels and looks like a high quality product, with no flex in the plastic or screen or any other parts of the phone, and the few buttons that the phone has feel good, with an especially nice shutter release button and volume controls. The sliding lock button feels solid even though I think it’s made out of plastic. (You can also unlock the phone by pressing the menu key and pressing the screen, in case you’re not a fan of using the side unlock key)

More intuitive: The Nokia N8 / and Symbian^3 is improved over Symbian S60 v5 (used in the N97/Mini etc) in lots of little ways, making it a much more intuitive phone to use, for example: To change the clock on the home screen from analogue to digital, you press the clock, this takes you into the time / date / alarm screen, and then you simply press the clock again to switch between analogue and digital. On the N97 Mini, this wasn’t possible, instead you had to delve right into the phone settings to choose between analogue and digital clocks.

Better connectivity and networking: Apart from the phone finding wireless networks quicker than the N97 Mini, it also seems to find more networks, and seems to have better range from the router. There’s also a new “Settings” menu in the connectivity menu, it allows you to set options for switching to WLAN, Data use in home network (Auto, Always ask, WLAN only), Data use when roaming (Auto, Always ask, WLAN only) – these settings could be very useful if you have a horrible internet data tariff but excellent wireless access, and it’s also where the “Destinations” menu has moved. There also appears to be a new power saving setting in the WLAN settings. In the USB connection menu there’s a new option to “Connect PC to net” enabling you to use the phone as modem (this was possible through OVI Suite with previous phones but not built into the phones menus). Under the Data Transfer menu, there’s a new “Ovi Sync” in addition to “Sync”. Remote drives is now an option.

Better internet: Changes made in the built in browser are subtle but quite clever, increasing the ease of use of the browser, for example, the refresh button is now directly next to the options button, making it easier to refresh a page.

Even more features: (too many to go into detail, so I thought I’d start listing additional features)
- Data transfer / Phone switch tool (built into the N8 in Settings, Data Transfer, Phone Switch) – lets you transfer data from or to another Nokia onto the N8 via bluetooth, and installs the sync tool to the other phone from the N8, then lets you choose what you want to transfer over. It’s very clever, and easy to use.
- Nokia Ovi Suite comes on the phone as an installable program when connected in Mass Storage mode (copying the useful feature from the Sony Satio?)
- Pop-Up Connection Notifications – tell you when you’ve connected to the network
- Long press / hold items to bring up a pop-up menu
- The battery icon is now click-able (from the home screen), so you can view the battery status
- New Power Saving option in the Phone Management screen (Settings, Phone, Phone Management)#
- Better contact management – you can merge contacts so that you don’t have duplicates in your phone

Wish list? If I could improve or add anything to the phone, what would I like to see? Previously with the Nokia N Series, Nokia included a lens / screen cloth to keep the lens and screen clean – this should be included with such a camera centric model. The lens is very easy to get finger prints on, and it’s important to keep the lens clean in order to get the best photo quality possible. An improved web browser would be very nice – the included is a little slow, and a little buggy.

* Apparently I’m meant to remind people that Dolby is a registered trademark of Dolby Laboratories. Like you’d forget or something.