Smartphones & Gear

Android Device Review: the AT&T HTC Aria Mobile Phone

With all of the current buzz over Android phones with ~4″ screens like the Incredible, Xperia X10, Galaxy, Desire, and EVO 4G, it’s easy to forget that sometimes less can be more; sometimes less is actually more desirable. Take the HTC Aria for instance. Measuring a diminutive 4.1″ long x 2.3″ wide x 0.46″ thick and weighing 3.8 ounces with battery installed, the Aria is the perfect size to tuck into a smaller pocket or the smallest of evening bags. Its matte black plastic backside is covered in that wonderfully grippy material which rejects fingerprints and offers a bit a traction…

Reviews

Charge Your Mobile Devices with the Power of the Sun

External batteries are great, but they’re only as good as the mAhs they possess; once you deplete them, until you find yourself near a charging source they become useless. The Monaco Mobile Power Solar Charger from Wireless Ground takes care of that problem by harnessing the power of the sun to recharge itself. You can use the battery to recharge you device and then recharge the battery on to go so it’s ready to be used again. In addition to the battery itself you’ll also get some tips to charge with. The Monaco comes with a USB out cable which…

News & Features

Just In Case You Missed It: Sprint & HTC Bring Froyo to the EVO 4G

If you’ve got a Sprint HTC EVO 4G, then today you have yet another reason to feel vastly superior to all other Android Device users … Today HTC marked yet another “first” in its long history of bringing innovation to the mobile arena. Ahead of the pack, Sprint has started to make available the latest version of the Android platform, version 2.2, otherwise known as Froyo, for HTC EVO 4G. Not only is HTC EVO 4G the first Froyo device with HTC’s Sense user experience, it’s also the first mass-market Froyo handset period. In addition to bringing a number of…

Reviews

SGP Skin Guard Review

Many of us like to keep our iPhones as sleek as possible. I personally prefer to use my iPhone 4 naked. But I also know that it’s just not practical to do so. I want to keep my iPhone looking as new as possible not only because I enjoy looking at “minty-fresh” gadgets but I also realize that in under a year Apple will be most likely be coming out with the next generation iPhone and I’ll most likely be selling this one to finance the new. The better condition a phone is in the more money it fetches in…

Reviews

Graffiti One Comes to Android!

If you were a Palm OS fan, you were probably a whiz with Graffiti, the shorthand text input system. In college, I took all my notes on my Palm M100, and I used Graffiti so much my pen and paper notes were in an unholy mix of print scrawl and Graffiti. So when I saw this morning that Access had released Graffiti (the famous, original, pre-lawsuit with Xerox version) for Android, I practically danced in my cubicle. It is everything I had hoped it would be and more! I was very skeptical at first since Graffiti is so stylus-based, but…

Editorials

Tech Infrastructure and Monopolies

When I was a kid, phone design was still pretty much in its infancy–the “Princess” phone was pretty much the height of technology then. It wasn’t bolted to the wall! The dial lit up! It came in colors other than black or beige! Eventually, it even had buttons instead of a dial! In those prehistoric days, everything ran across copper, and 99% or more of the traffic was voice–ARPANET was just getting going, and all we primitive creatures did was make one-to-one phone calls. (The concept of a many-to-many phone call–a “party call”–was almost insanely exotic to me.) So worry…

News & Features

Palm’s Legacy

By now you’ve probably heard the news that PALM is officially part of Hewlett-Packard. If you, like many of us, started with a Palm OS device before moving on to smartphones, it’s a bittersweet ending. On the one hand, no one wanted to see Palm die, even after their slow circling of the drain for years. On the other hand, it’s an open question how Palm will do as part of HP, and whether WebOS will resurface or be absorbed into an HP Printer. One of the original Palm-people, Donna Dubinsky, wants to remind people there’s always been something special…

News & Features

Atomic9 Bluetooth Speakerphone Wristband- Dick Tracy Would Love This! – Review

Let’s face it, technology has finally gotten to the point where some of the gadgets we lusted after in cartoons and science fiction programs as children are now becoming a reality. I mean, the iPhone does even more than a Star Trek communicator (well everything but communicate intergalactically but I’m sure that is coming). The iPad looks like one of the tablet information devices that were so common in scifi shows 30 years ago. And Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist Radio (first introduced on January 13th, 1946 and then upgraded to a 2-Way Wrist TV in 1964) how cool was that?!?!?…

News & Features

Phonesuit Introduces Their New PrimoCube Micro Battery

PhoneSuit has introduced their latest creation… The Primo Battery Cube for SmartPhones. The Primo Cube is small… really, really small. It is so small that it will fit in the palm of your hand. So small that it is just about 1.5 inches (40mm) in length and width. Yes it is small but it is large enough to offer integrated Micro-USB and Mini-USB connectors that support new and legacy mobile phone charging standards. The result is that the cube compatible with virtually all USB charged SmartPhones and Bluetooth devices. That includes BlackBerry, Android based, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia SmartPhones and…

Editorials

Why Does AT&T’s Android Crippling Matter?

Android Central is reporting that the HTC Aria will be getting a bit of a lobotomy. You see, AT&T apparently hates the idea of sideloading apps. Sideloading means you can add apps that are not part of the regular Android marketplace through over the air download or via the USB cable on your computer. It’s for installing beta software, or software that’s only distributed through a developer’s site, and many of these are not as obscure as you’d think… Just to give you a few examples, I was away on a business trip last week. While I was there, I…

News & Features

If Dad Loves His Tech Case-mate Has Some Nice Gifts For Dad’s Day…

Suddenly all the dads in my life are going Apple. My father-in-law loves his iPad and my dad is using a new 21″ iMac and is taking my iPhone 3GS. (Well that is… if I can ever order the iPhone 4…) If dad has an iPad you might want to get him Case-mate’s iPad cases. The Walkabout has an MSRP of $79.99. It is “Made of high-end tan leather, any dad will be happy to tote his iPad around in this case.” Information and ordering here. The Express has an MSRP of $34.99. It is “created out of a black…

Reviews

Belkin Dualfit Armband As a Droid Case

Since there are no specific Droid armbands, I had to get creative to find a way to carry my bulky phone while I run. A bit of google-fu led to some posts over on Droid Forums about iPhone and iPod Touch cases holding the Droid reasonably well. I’ve been using a Belkin Dualfit for the last few weeks. How does it stack up as a Droid case? Read on to find out! First of all, the Droid is a heavy phone. It’s fine when you’re carrying it in a pocket, but on your arm, you definitely notice the weight right…

News & Features

Wall Street Journal Fans the Flames of Malicious App Paranoia

Know how you can tell smartphones and app stores are truly mainstream? No, it’s not because my mother just bought a Blackberry! It’s because the Wall Street Journal is writing articles on apps, and that <gasp> malicious apps have been creeping into the smartphone space. I am being a bit tongue in cheek; the Wall Street Journal is, as always, fairly even and conservative in their tone: As smartphones and the applications that run on them take off, businesses and consumers are beginning to confront a budding dark side of the wireless Web. Online stores run by Apple Inc., Google…

Reviews

Electric Pocket’s BookLover for iPhone Review

I know I’ve said it here before, but I’ll say it again: I like lists. I’m a sucker for any promising program that allows me to make more lists, and while I like programs that allow me to create lists for a wide range of needs (Things or ListPro, for example), specialized list programs are great, too, because they can incorporate features that true enthusiasts want but are specific to the list topic. BookLover from Electric Pocket – makers of BugMe! – is just such a specialized list. BookLover, as may not surprise you given the title, is a program…

Reviews

The OtterBox Nokia N900 Commuter Series Case Review

When phones with sliding top halves first appeared, they presented unique challenges for accessory manufacturers. I can just imagine that some of them must have been scratching their heads — wondering how they were going to protect both halves of these devices, yet allow the keyboards to remain functional. After years of watching some of the more offbeat solutions come and go — like clear plastic covering the keyboard and odd straps holding the leather bits in place — many case-makers seem to have settled for offering pouches that will hold the phones when they aren’t being used, but many…

News & Features

Dear Gear Diary: Windows Marketplace Issues

I received this email from a Gear Diary reader, and unfortunately, I don’t currently have a Windows Mobile phone. If anyone can help him out, please offer suggestions in the comments! Hi Carly, I always check out your posts on Gear Diary and find your perspective refreshing and honest. Since you are so involved with researching different techie toys and have a lot more background information than I, I was wondering if with your post on Mobile 6.0-6.1 Marketplace, if you found or encountered stories of this not loading and allowing one to buy apps. I have a T-Mobile Wing…

News & Features

American Foundation for the Blind Looks at Smartphone Accessibility

Smartphones have become nearly indispensable productivity tools. Businesses issue them to employees, and people use them constantly to keep up with their personal lives. But what do you if you are blind or visually impaired? Tiny keyboards and 3-4 inch screens aren’t always great if your eyesight is wonderful, let alone if you have vision issues. Luckily, the American Foundation for the Blind puts out an online magazine called AccessWorld, and several articles this month covered smartphones and visual impairment. For the corporate-types, they looked at an app called Oratio for Blackberries. This is what’s called a “screen reader”, or…

Reviews

WirelessGround Touch Screen Stylus Review: Reduces iPad Fingerprints

Fingerprints. It’s perhaps my biggest pet peeve about the iPad’s glorious screen. It’s one gigantic fingerprint magnet. Unless you plan on joining the Men In Black (they remove your fingerprints) it’s something you just have to deal with. Unless of course you find some other way to use your iPad without touching the screen with your finger. Enter the WirelessGround Touch Screen Stylus Pen. The stylus, which is available in Black, Purple, Blue or Pink, features a soft tip which gives your more precise control when tapping on your screen and allows you to do so with using your finger….

Reviews

PDAir Luxury Silicone Case for Nexus One Review

I like lots of different kinds of cases and switch depending on what I need at a given moment. For quite a few years, I was really into aluminum cases (Rhinoskin, anyone?), then slip cases, pouch cases, play-through cases… you name it. More recently, I’ve preferred to put as little on my devices as possible. With my iPhone, I’ve settled into using just a screen protector and an Incipio Feather case much of the time to protect it from scratches. So when I picked up a Nexus One, I started looking for ways to protect it, but with minimal weight…

Reviews

HTC Desire with HTC Sense and Android 2.1 Review

While the Google Nexus One has been on the market for a few months now, its HTC-branded brother has only just started to make it out. I’ve been using the HTC Desire for the last week or so, and it has surprised me just how good it really is. HTC have been a bit presumptuous from the get-go, calling the phone the Desire. While it looks quite different from it’s Google branded sibling, the two phones are very similar underneath. Both share the same 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, 3.7” 800×480 AMOLED capacitive display, and run Android 2.1. There are a few…

Editorials

No Relief in Sight for Palm

Poor Palm just can’t get a break. They are up for sale, but no one’s showed up at their open house, and Jon Rubenstein even baked cookies! In all seriousness, there’s no concrete evidence of a buyer, and the last few days have just been one blow after another. First, their Senior Vice President of Software resigned, and from the looks of the stock grants flying around, apparently, most of the office intended to follow him. Palm threw loads of stock at people to keep them around; if a new, deep pocketed suitor were around no one would be beating…

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