Gadgetory

this week the cnet tech review is brought to you by the letter s as Sony's new s tablet wedges itself into a cluttered market and Samsung's Galaxy s2 is coming to a pocket near you plus catch all of your favorite podcasts with your Android phone and use snagged a $99 touch pad now what it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Hollywood and welcome to the scene a tech review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech plus offer our own unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good samsung truly had a hit on its hands when the Galaxy S line of Android phones arrived in the US last year and the names hit the hyperbole ceiling to epic captivate fascinate even mesmerized all different galaxy s models with different features for different carriers well this week Bonnie cha was on hand for the unveiling of the first three members of the galaxy s2 series including the epic 4g touch for sprint hey everyone I'm Bonnie putt senior editor at cnet com and I am here to bring you a first look at the samsung galaxy s2 which was just announced here in New York I'm holding here the sprint version which will be called the samsung epic 4g touch and they are actually coming first to market will be able september's to keep for 1 99 99 with a two-year contract so very fair price what you're getting is a souped-up version of the galaxy s you've got a 4.5 inch super amoled plus touchscreens they've also updated the TouchWiz interface we get a little more of control over customization like resizable widgets and more animations which is very nice front you've got a 2 megapixel camera for video calling on back you've got an 8 megapixel camera with flash and there is a dual core processor under here so you can shoot video at 1080p software-wise it's running Android 2.3 2.4 and again like I said it's running the latest version of touch with we've also got more security options here they offer on device encryption as well as full microsoft access the exchange support sprint is added some of their services on here such as Sprint ID sprint zone sprint mobile wallet and things like that but overall looks like a very nice upgrade to the samsung epic 4g fortunately no keyboard for those who love their physical button but again very nice very thin here sprint have added a textured back unlike some of the other so offers a nice or more of a premium feel I'm Bonnie Thomas keep in your first look at the and some fx4 d types for sprint I like to see Samsung getting rid of all those over the top names and just sticking with one really really long over-the-top name anyway those new galaxy s 2 s are hot but if you can't wait a few weeks and you need a new android phone now ryan tongue has a couple of solid choices in this week's prize fight of course it helps if you're a sprint customer or don't mind becoming one what's up price five fans i'm brian Tong we're bringing you a fight to the finish between 2 4g phones on sprint it's a prize five punch-out with HTC's ego 3d and motorola photon 4g our judges for this fight our senior editor Bonnie boom shakalaka cha senior editor Nicole ice-cold Lee and myself ring a ling a ding dong we'll take all three judges blind scores and abs them out to the nearest tenth each round the final price five score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system is five rounds to the finish round one is designed HTC's evo 3d and the photon 4g are solid devices but the evo 3d stands out with its cleaner design textured backing and curved corners now the photon 4g has a brighter display and we're always fans of a kickstand but this is one of the only phones that decided to cut off corners as a good design element and it doesn't work ACC takes round one with the 4.3 and the photon 4g gets a 3 next round is controls and user interface the evo 3ds lock screen app launcher and visual transitions plus its overall ease of use make our editors smile and its physical camera button and an easy switcher between taking 2d and 3d photos when it points with us now the photon 4 g's motorola blur interface has cleaned itself up from the past we like the ability to resize any of your widgets it has a more simplified rigid look but it can also feel and get a little cluttered at the same time the evo 3d gets a perfect five and the photon 4g gets a four so after averaging two rounds ACC leads by over one full point but there's plenty of fight left next round is features HTC's biggest feature is in its name and it's glassless 3d now you might think this would be a huge advantage but when you can only use the 3d feature with specific game content certain movie files and pictures and movies you take with the camera really wasn't that big of a feature advantage and what hurts it even more is the lack of hdmi and fewer features compared to the photon 4g Motorola isn't messing around here at all and the photon 4g is packed with an HDMI for our beloved kickstand that the evil removed from its design it's a dual-mode world roaming phone and it has a web top docking station option that gives it PC like functionality I know it's a 129 add-on but it's a feature that ACC can't match Motorola gets a perfect five and HTC gets up for next round is web browsing and multimedia both of these dual core processing gingerbread phones feature 4.3 inch screens and swipe and handle web browsing about the same with support for playback and flash content so we're going to call it a push here now the evo 3d gets the advantage with its 5 megapixel camera that takes better quality pictures overall compared to the photon 4 g's 8 megapixel camera and when you add in the 3d option taking pictures and movies can be even more fun even if you have to be in the perfect sweet spot to see it correctly now the evo 3d gets a perfect five and the photon 4g gets up 4.3 so after averaging four rounds the evo 3d only leads by half a point the final round that decides it all is called quality and performance the evo 3d has solved call quality but we did notice there was more background noise and occasionally noise artifacts like crackling now the photon 4g delivered with slightly crisper audio quality and are richer and fuller sound overall both phones rock dual processors but the photon 4g also felt just a hair faster moving through the menus without all of HTC's visual eye candy so in the final round motorola gets a perfect 5 and HTC gets a poor let's average out all five rounds and enterprise right we're both phones scored two perfect rounds the photon 4g came on strong towards the end but it just wasn't enough and HTC EVO 3d takes this battle 4.5 to 4.3 and is your prize fight winner i'm brian Tong thanks for watching Oh catch you guys next time on another prize fight Congrats HTC but I still don't know why they got rid of the kickstand on the EVO sometimes the best part of having a smartphone is being able to put it down when HP announced it was killing off the touch pad tablet it was obviously because no one was buying it then HP and retailers dropped the price to just ninety nine dollars and suddenly people couldn't snatch him up fast enough but what good is a touchpad given that webOS will no longer be supported here's Brian Cooley with a few ideas you might be one of the lucky hundreds of thousands who scored an HP TouchPad for a 99 bucks or maybe you're one of the techs knobs sneering at those who did either way there's no denying the touchpad fire sale made it one of the hottest tech products on earth for a while but are those who bought one savvy or stupid I'm Brian Cooley with the top five things to do with an HP touchpad also known as why any tablet is fine for most of what you'll do with it file this one under reality check number five use it as an ereader the touchpad comes with the kindle app pre-installed and the kindle store is not going away even if you use the touchpad for no other purpose you just got a reader for fifteen dollars less than the cheapest Kindle now there is some risk the Kindle platforms going to evolve and the webOS based touchpad might get left behind but let me restate $99 number four use it as a photo viewer the touchpad does a particularly good job of harvesting all your online photos in one place from Facebook to photobucket snapfish and others it beats the hell out of making people squint at your smartphone screen or the back of your digital camera number three use it as an in-car media player now you can spend the two grand or so to get rear seat entertainment built into the head rest of your car or let our little sub $100 friend or really any tablet take over instead the touchpad will always support standard mpeg-4 and h.264 video formats along with all the major audio formats now only an iPad will get you access to the iTunes Store but there are enough other ways to get download and streaming video on any non iOS tablet and anything's better than those few scratched up dvds in the back seat pouch that your kids are sick of watching anyway number two email emails agnostic it works on any device that has an email client and the touchpad has one baked in just like every tablet and it's not going to stop working because you're missing an OS updater needs some app no one's developing for your platform in fact seventy-four percent of respondents in a recent Google survey cited email as a use of their tablet before I take you to the number one reason to buy and use one of those fire sale touch pads let's give the ipad it's due if you want to buy a tablet and not have to explain yourself then it's going to be an iPad a recent survey showed ninety-five percent of people looking into a tablet are considering an iPad the next nearest competitor was like ten percent considering the touch pad the one that's not made anymore and the blackberry playbook forget it like fewer than four percent of people care if the iPad retains these kinds of numbers the touch pad will not be the last of its competitors liquidating at fire-sale prices see what I mean okay the number one thing you can do with your fire sale $99 touch pad and not care what anybody else thinks is go on the web in fact if the touchpad had nothing but a good web browser it could still do everything else on this list and it does have a good one one that actually shows you flash based websites without broken stuff on the screen like you know who so whether you found one of each piece $99 unicorns or are considering some no-name tablet that's good and cheap take heart that you will get a lot out of it even without a bunch of apps and OS updates orphans are beautiful too to stay up on top of the latest tablet reviews the best street prices and even news of who might be having a blowout fire sale next go to cnet com click on tablets right there on the left I'm Brian Cooley for more top 5s like these go to top 5 cnet com thanks for watching if you missed your chance to snag a bargain price touch pad the first time around HP is announced they will be offering a limited supply of the tablet in the next few weeks and they'll be available starting at $99 from hp's website but we don't know whether other retailers will match the price this time around so start stocking HP com today although if you'd prefer a tablet running an OS that actually has a future Sony's new S tablet is just the latest of several tablet models built on the Android platform but it offers a few features that help it stand out from the crowd hey I'm Donald Bell and this is the Sony S tablet it's an android 3.1 honeycomb tablet with a nine point four inch screen and unique wedge-shaped design is due out mid-september priced at four hundred ninety nine dollars for 16 gigabytes or 599 432 now we've already seen a ton of honeycomb tablets this year and Sony must know that they had their work cut out for them they want to stand out from the crowd in my eyes they've succeeded in terms of design tab will has a completely unique wedge shape that gives it a better balance in your hand and minimizes glare when you have it on the table it doesn't achieve the same fitness as an iPad 2 but it's just as light at one point three pounds and feels more solid than a samsung galaxy tab 10.1 around the sides here you have buttons for power and volume speakers headphone jack and the door here that offers a micro USB sync connection and a full-size SD card reader a built-in app handles moving files back and forth from your card another thing worth noting here is that Sony went with a nine point four inch screen instead of the 10.1 inch panel found on nearly every other honeycomb tablet out there they're also using Sony's true black technology to make the screen contrast really pop sony also rolled in an ir remote control that comes with one of the best interfaces we've seen for managing multiple devices and finally just to prove that Sony is all in they've made this a PlayStation Certified device which means that Sony will be offering games from their vault of ps1 and PSP titles out of the box you can play Crash Bandicoot and pinball heroes overall this is one of the best executed Android tablets we've seen the hardware is beautiful and lightweight the screen pops and the software optimizations are all thoughtful and restrained it's not cheap but if you're wondering what a high-end Android tablet has to offer this is one of the best examples we've seen so far for cnet.com on Donald Bell and that was a first look at the Sony S tablet 499 sounds high after 99 bucks but at least it's comparable to other tablets actually wish that philosophy would carry over to Sony's TV business also I can't wait until someone figures out how to use that thing to control my ps3 get on it people in fact let's take a break so you can get started working on that right now but don't go too far there's a lot more tech review coming up right after this welcome back to the cnet tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at cnet TV continuing on in the good if our resident security expert Seth Rosenblatt has taught us anything over the years it's that the internet is a dark and scary place and you should never click any links ever but if you see a URL that just begs to be clicked and you feel like you have to see what's on the other side seth has a few tips to help you decide whether it's worth the risk have you ever been fished whether you use a Mac Windows or Linux iOS or Android there's a real strong chance that somebody has sent you an email or text message in an attempt to get you to turn over your personal information I am Seth Rosenblatt for cnet today I'm going to show you some excellent ways to make sure that you don't get victimized online data equals money and you're a big old dollar sign to the bad guys so first off browse smart always double check the URL of your banking site before you log in and look to the left of the location bar to verify it's legit this is Tripoli true when going to your bank from an emailed link in fact let's just agree now to never ever ever do that again if your bank emails you a link ignore it and type in your bank URL by hand but what about that link to some ostensibly hilarious video your best friend just posted on your facebook wall there are several services you can use to verify a link there's google safebrowsing type google.com / Safe Browsing / diagnostic ? site equals and then the site name or the IP address to find out if it has hosted malware in the past 90 days another similar service is HP hosts at hosts filenet enter a site into the search box and its database will tell you if the site has been used to distribute malware or phishing attacks HP hosts gives you more detailed information than google safebrowsing if you're into that kind of thing two other excellent services are Norton safe web from symantec at safe web Norton calm and unmasked parasites calm pop in the URL and you're good to go or if the site comes back as unsafe don't go many security suites come with browser add-ons to check links you can click on the fly and those work fairly well at scanning your search results and adding icons to indicate if a link is safe or not if you don't have a suite AVG's linkscanner is a free add-on that works with both windows and mac and avg free mobile ation android app will block malicious links there iphone and ipad users you're at a lock there are no link checking apps I could find for iOS probably because iOS is safe apple says if you know of one let me know so those are a few tips on how you can stay off the hook of the creepazoids after your box Cena you hear that creepazoids I've got my eye on you former iPhone users who have switched to android often lament the loss of itunes for me Bo management especially when dealing with podcasts there's no built-in pod catcher and it's time consuming and frustrating to have to track them down manually well antuan goodwin feels your pain and he's found a couple of apps that will help ensure that you never miss another episode of your favorite shows welcome to tap that app I'm antuan goodwin this is the show where we talk about the hottest apps in the mobile space these days I spend more time listening to podcast than I do listening to music there's so many good shows about technology and cars and Android now iphone users have got it easy podcast management's built right into itunes but google's left its podcast loving android users out in the cold without a native podcast subscription service fortunately there are a few good pod catching apps available in the android market dog catcher puts your favorite audio and video podcast at your fingertips with a set of options that allow users to be as basic or as complex and granular as they'd like to be if you want dog catcher to just download the newest episode of every subscribed show it can handle that if you want to set the auto downloader options on a per show basis dogcatcher can do that too if you only want to download podcasts when your phone's plugged in and on Wi-Fi you're good to go this app also allows resume playback so you can pick up your shows where you left off now the on pod offers just about all of the functionality of dog catcher but adds the ability to separate your podcast into categories so you can keep your comedy podcasts separate from your tech news podcast now categories come into play with a cool feature called Smart Play that lets the user micromanage what feeds get add it to the playlist and in what order so if you like to start your day with the latest news show then listen to three comedy shows and then finish up with the oldest episode of your favorite internet radio drama beyondpod will accommodate beyondpod also offers a tablet optimized version for honeycomb users both dog catcher and beyond pod are going to cost you about seven dollars each however beyondpod is free for the first seven days for those of you who like to try before you buy I think that either of these apps is worth every penny if you subscribe to a bunch of audio and video podcasts the app that will be best for you will depend on which interface you like the vest whichever podcast manager you choose be sure to fill it up with C net podcast which you can find over at cnet com / podcasts and if you've got an app that you would like to see us tap send it to tap that app at cnet com I manasquan good one and if you'll excuse me I've got to tune in to the latest episode of tap that app weird Antoine is sure a busy guy in fact I'm not sure how he has time to listen to all those podcasts considering how much time he spends making them every week all right I've put it off as long as I could but the time has come to check out the bad we talk a lot here about all the great things smartphones can do and sometimes we leave out an important thing they should do and that's make phone calls apparently Samsung left that out as well when they unleashed the admire upon the unsuspecting public I'm in German section editor for cnet com today we'll take a first look at the samsung admire the admirer is a new phone for metropcs as a pretty simple design so it's basically user-friendly functional but just isn't going to have a lot of really high-end features one thing to note that however is the phone didn't have the best audio quality audio tended to cut out a little bit of time so really a trouble hearing me so doesn't have the best audio quality but let's get down to the design as I said it is pretty simple does have this ribbed texture here on the side so gives it a bit of a comfortable feeling in the hand also there's a bit of a texture on the back I wouldn't want to drop this phone a lot of times on a hard surface phone is a little heavier than it looks a little over four ounces mentions are pretty average so slips easily in a pocket or bag or anything like that it does have five home screens though of course you can customize usual Android fashion phone is running Gingerbread so that's a nice bonus especially on a basic phone like this just came out but it is good to have all the features of a gingerbread down below we have four physical controls these are easy to use their tactile I could feel you can find them by feel on the back there's just a 3.2 megapixel camera lens and a small speaker speaker doesn't have the best output made the speakerphone kind of unusable actually especially when the phone is resting like this and the music quality on that external speaker is pretty poor so you definitely want to use headsets when you're talking about listening to music now the phone is all the basic features you'd expect from an Android phone as I said although it does have a couple of extras this is the first device that we've seen from metropcs that comes with access to the carrier's new Rhapsody unlimited music service so you get unlimited access to almost all of rhapsodies catalog it is free but it does require metropcs is sixty dollar per month unlimited data and calling plan so keep that in mind another unique feature this phone has is metropcs is virtual card service once you sign up there's no minimums and it should be pretty easy to manage so on all I think the phone has a lot two offers for us future Scout of the design is user friendly but I just wish that call quality was just a little bit better i'm kent german and this is the samsung admire from metropcs so there you have it the admirer is a nice phone that doesn't really work as a phone let's hope they don't have the same problem with those galaxy s 2 s we talked about earlier and now it's time for this week's bottom line until now if you wanted to take advantage of onstar suite of driver assistance services you had to be driving a General Motors vehicle which let's just say isn't for everyone but with the release of onstar FMV or for my vehicle these security and convenience of onstar is now available to almost anyone typically the OnStar service is only available in GM vehicles but I'm in a Ford Explorer and there's an OnStar mirror now before you go getting confused we're taking a look at the OnStar FMV it stands for for my vehicle it's a universal standalone OnStar mirror that you can install in pretty much any vehicle it's also got an internal speaker that's built into the back of the unit and an external microphone that you can mount pretty much anywhere in your own vehicle ours is up here in the roof now on the front of the unit there are three major buttons the first button of the phone button or if I like to call it the self-service button because you don't actually have to interact with anyone here you'll be able to access hands-free calling either through the OnStar system to built-in cellular connection or through a Bluetooth connection with your parent phone the second button is the blue on button now here pushing this button will get you in contact with on thar's concierge service who will be able to help you find destinations who can send you roadside assistance the real person the third button is for emergency services now you don't really want to push that button unless you need help from police fire or medical personnel now in the event of an accident the system can also initiate a call from an OnStar person and if nobody answers they can automatically send you out help that's the automated crash response system now the way that OnStar knows where you are is because the FMV has a built-in GPS receiver and can even give you turn-by-turn directions to a destination that's been pushed to your car either by an OnStar concierge or through the online Google apps interface the onstar is going to retail for about two hundred ninety nine dollars but you're going to have to have a professionally installed the go ahead and factor about a hundred more bucks in for labor after that you're also going to need a subscription to the OnStar service which is about nineteen dollars a month or two hundred bucks a year I've been in chalong good one we've taken a look at the OnStar FMV universal on star receiver the bottom line this week for my vehicle is right granted some might balk a little at the cost of installation the monthly fees the lack of remote door unlocking but I gotta tell you every time I see on star on a commercial when the operator calls for help after someone's been in a crash I want that I think I might do it alright that's it for this week everyone but come back next week for an all-new Cena tech review until then there are tons of great videos available everyday at Cena TV com I'll see you next time and thank you for watching