Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review our wish list for the iphone 5 hot new phones from HTC and samsung perk up your iphones puny battery life and the kobo vox takes aim at the kindle fire it's all coming up right now I ever when I'm Hollywood and welcome to the Cena 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 things off with the good good news for those of you who have been waiting for all the cool windows phone phones to come out they are starting to arrive samsung announced two new windows phones this week and one of them is even 4G have a look at the focus s and the focus flash hi I'm Bridget Kerry Wood seen it and we're here with two new windows phones from ATT the samsung focus s and the samsung flash now their sister phones but the focus s has a bigger screen its 4.3 inches and it has a better camera in the back eight megapixel the focus flash is your lower end one it's a little on the cheaper side smaller screen 3.7 inches and a 5 megapixel camera in the back now as sister phones they both have a lot in common they're both mango so that's windows seven point five they both have an internal 1.4 gigahertz processor and I'm told they both of the same amount of memory as well and they're both on the ATT hspa+ 4g network the focus s is going to be about two hundred dollars with the contract and the focus flash it's going to be about fifty dollars so definitely for a more affordable phone you're going to get a little bit in a smaller package but internally it's about the same now taking just a look at the focus s this is a very thin phone it has a plastic back but it has a nice texture to it so doesn't feel too slippery you have a dedicated camera button on the top here and you also have that in the lower end focus flash both have a front facing camera this one is 1.3 megapixels design-wise there's just a small differences as you can see in the focus flash there's a little bit of a button design on the windows home button and you don't see that on the focus s so there you have it if you're looking for a Windows Phone this is the latest and greatest from AT&T on the windows side you have two different options to go with depending on your butt pristine at TV I'm Bridget Carey Bridget Carey was on Sirius New York phone duty this week because Samsung wasn't the only company drop in new phones HTC has another new Android option and this one is all about the beats hi I'm Bridget Carey with cnet TV here at the launch event for the HTC Rezound on verizon now this is a pretty powerful phone it's going to be top of the line you're going to have a 1.5 gigahertz ur inside you're also going to get 16 gigs of internal memory and an SD card that has another 16 gigs attached to it but let's talk about the screen this is a 4.3 inch high definition 720p screen the first time you're going to see that out of HTC so the cameras 8 megapixels with a flash and it record at 1080p HD and the camera itself has a few extra little features in it like being able to take action burst shots really fast or playback your video in slow motion and the cameras designed to really in take a lot of light more so than other cameras so supposedly you should be able to take some really good shots and low lighting takes a lot of hints from the HTC incredible in terms of design kind of a curved back kind of this soft textured finish on the back with some red highlights and the be here is for beats audio that's the big standout feature in this because they integrated Beats Audio technology so your music is going to sound a little better and it comes with beats audio headphones you're also going to notice HTC sense 3.5 which has unique new features like having your customizable icons on the lock screen so I could take it and just kind of drag it right into there so it'll immediately open up my messages mail whatever want to put in there also when you go into leap view you'll be able to customize the order of each of these screens or just drag one and delete it right from here overall I can tell this is very smooth experience and only had a few minutes with it but just by looking at some of the videos very sharp and bright imagery so well to take it back to our labs to get a really longer look at it but initially it's pretty sweet it comes ice cream sandwich ready so it's going to have gingerbread to start but expect an update on Ice Cream Sandwich say maybe next year and it's going to be available November 14 from verizon at to 9999 foreseen it I'm Bridget Carey so it's got good sound video and photo editing on the phone and a low light sensor for better pictures in the dark party phone people you heard it here first but for some of you none of these new amazing phones can fill the hole that was left when Apple announced the 4s and not the iphone 5 I know it hurts so in this week's top 5 in addition to counting down the features we're still waiting for when the five does arrive Ryan Cooley also offers a lesson in the classic stages of grief you know it's funny the release of the iphone 4s was kind of like a kubler-ross experience there was denial no I don't mind it's not an iphone 5 anger wait it's kind of knife owned five bargaining come on Apple please just one more thing depression whatever yes I'll get a droid and then accept it hey iphone 4s rocks well now we're through that neurosis we can move on to what the iphone 4s immediately makes us think of what we want in the iphone 5 i'm brian cooley here with the top five things in that category leaving out the silly stuff like removable batteries expandable storage or flash support the stuff that Apple's never going to do and taking you right to the realm of reality we're going to rank these by how likely it is we'll get each feature here we go number five NFC that's near field communications this is that swipe to pay with your phone technology that all the banks and merchants and payment networks are cranking up in 2012 and which most consumers think is some kind of Voodoo that will siphon their bank account expose their ID or both that notwithstanding it's pretty likely apples gonna build NFC into the five because they have a big stake in the payment space due to itunes chances here about forty percent number four is better battery life the 4s pretty much just did a lateral on this front so now apples really on the hook to make the five go longer on a charge especially since the macbook air goes all day on one it's a laptop and the ipad goes all month on a charge that makes the iphone the one apple product that doesn't really have a standout battery story to tell new cpus and gpus we expect in the five are going to help out here and the odds on this one about fifty-fifty number three is actually the number one thing cnet users like you tell us you want that is a screen bigger than a postage stamp the long-standing three and a half inch iphone display is just plain dinky these days you really feel it when watching a video or if you use the phone as a navigation device yet we still rank bigger screen at maybe fifty percent likelihood because of the battery hit that a bigger display might mean see number four and the fact that the same users who want a bigger screen also say they don't want a bigger phone that can be tough number 2 4g if the iphone 5 doesn't have 4g i will officially whistle apple's golden era dead you see 4g phones and networks are little green right now but by the time the iphone five comes out 4g phones are going to be it and the 3gs are going to be moving fast into the bargain category also 4g bandwidth is going to do wonders for iCloud which might dovetail nicely with an expansion of that service to finally work with video for the first time odds here a solid eighty percent okay before we hit number one remember another reason for a lot of the anticipation that'll be built up around the five are the reports that it was the last product Steve Jobs really focused on reportedly allocating the limited time he knew he had left to this product it makes sense it's far and away apples biggest thing in their entire lineup and therefore it may be the last physical evidence we ever get of jobs vision okay the number one thing we think we'll see and want to see in the new iPhone 5 is gonna be a whole new design now we don't know what the new look might be thinner more sculpted wider longer curvier who knows those are all in play as well as a bunch of crazy ones that I won't even bore you with but we know this in the handheld phone space you have to change up your design once in a while to keep the coals burning under the hype machine also consider patents we've seen that suggests backside multi-touch is coming this isn't that thing you try and get away with in a strip club it's a technology where you control the screen from behind the device or perhaps we'll get a completely button free phone both of those ideas would create a more spacious screen experience which answers your number one request whatever it is a new design is ninety-nine percent likely with just one percent reserved in case Tim Cook drinks a whole lot more than we know if you're intrigued by this short list and want to see the full one including the stuff that everybody wants and that Apple will never give you check out David car noise full 15 item slideshow on things we want to see in the next iPhone you can find a link to that and a lot more top 5s like this at top 5 cnet com I'm Brian Cooley thanks for watching since Apple has now admitted that iOS 5 is causing battery problems on the iphone 4s I wouldn't be surprised to see that issue rise in the top 5 rankings Apple set of fixes on the way but if you don't want to wait that long Sharon Vaknin has some tips to prolong your battery life right now hey everyone I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet com here to help improve the terrible battery life that came with iOS 5 especially on the iphone 4s the issue is so bad that Apple's investigating the problem and might release a fix but until then I have a few solutions you can try right now grab your phone and head to settings to get started one tip many people swear by is resetting your network settings first go to general reset and select reset network settings enter a passcode if you have one and your phone will restart this won't erase any data but you'll have to reenter your Wi-Fi passwords now go to location services and turn off any location services you don't need these services drain a ton of battery since they force your phone to constantly find your location the biggest offender in this list is probably reminders because if you set up a location-based reminder your iPhone will always monitor your location as it waits to activate your reminder so you can either disable it here or hold off on using location-based reminders until this battery issue is fixed once you turn off these services head down to system services and disable location-based I ads and setting time zone which you can turn on again when you travel across time zones alright we're done with location services and the next step is to turn off diagnostic reports your phone may be sending to Apple periodically so now head to general about diagnostics and usage and select don't send this next setting is Siri related and only applies to the iphone 4s go to general Siri and turn off raise to speak this is a handy feature but it consistently drains your battery by monitoring your iPhone's light sensor to activate Siri it's not fair that we have to disable useful features for better battery life but until Apple releases a fix this could be the best solution if you did all of the above and you're still seeing crappie battery life some users in the apple community forums say you should condition your battery so let your battery die which shouldn't take long then completely recharged it by using an AC adapter in general you should do this at least once a month with these settings in place you should see your battery life improved but this doesn't mean Apple is off the hook for this issue if you have any battery saving tips let me know on Twitter or my facebook page and I'll repost them on how to cnet com for cnet I'm Sharon Vaknin even if you find that your new 4s can make it through the day with plenty of charge to spare these tips can also help if you know you're going to be away from a charger over the weekend or in a remote area or you could just turn off your phone and enjoy the scenery that concludes the cell phone portion of our show for today and now is as good a time as any for a break we'll be back with more tech review 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 the 2011 dodge charger is more likely to turn heads for its exterior styling but as Wayne Cunningham shows us the charger is equally impressive on the inside hi I'm Wayne Cunningham lacina taking a close look at dodges new infotainment center here in the 2011 charger now the first thing you'll notice about this system it's got a massive screen this is eight point four inches and there's no plastic buttons around the outside dodge put all the function buttons in a menu across the bottom here now if i push the navigation button i get a really familiar screen here this is actually garmin navigation software that dodge integrated into the new infotainment center now this is pretty good stuff it's got really good route guidance if i switch to this plus button here that gives me serious travel link and the serious travel link i get movie listings sports scores gas prices and weather and that stuff is integrated with a navigation system so if i find a gas price that i like I can actually just hit that button and it was in the address of that gas station to the navigation system now if I go to the stereo I hit this player icon here and I get a lot of digital audio sources I get bluetooth streaming audio I get USB Drive I got ipod integration and even SD card now I've got a USB Drive actually plugged into the car right now and this system used the integrated Gracenote database to parse all the mp3 tracks that I've got on there and now I can browse the tracks on that that drive-by album genre artists all the normal things you'd find in an mp3 player with the phone system here I can get an on screen keypad and I can actually just manually enter a number or the system also copied the phone book from my perdon to the system and I can search through and find any name on there I can also use voice command to call a number just by hitting this steering wheel button and saying call wayne cutting ham which phone for Wayne Cunningham would you like to call so the system actually found three numbers associated with my name in the contact list and asked me which one of those I want to call so this system brings dodge up-to-date and includes all the modern features we'd expect in a car infotainment center in a nice big screen so this has been a close look at dodges new infotainment center here in the 2011 charger I'm Wayne Cunningham frisina so that's a look at the infotainment system in the charger to see how the rest of the car fares you can find Brian coolies video in the car tech section at cnet TV com and now might be a good time to do that if you're an LG employee because the time has come for the bat there are a lot of amazing TVs out there and prices just keep getting better which makes it even more disappointing that LG kind of blew it with this one hi I'm cnet senior editor David Katz Meyer and this is the LG 42 lk 450 this is a 42-inch LCD TV there's also a 32 and a 37 inch member of the series this review will apply to all three this is one of LG's least expensive TVs for 2011 it uses a ccfl backlight which means that it's not the LEDs found on a lot of the higher-end LCD TVs this year seen from the side you can tell it's not an LED TV it's a little bit thicker but still plenty thin the sets design is really not all that inspiring around the bottom you'll see this sort of sandy stripped sort of set it off against the glossy black all told we find the look a little bit uninspired but then again it's an entry-level TV unlike some TVs at this level the LG does have a swivel stand however feature set on the lk 450 is pretty bare-bones it's a 60 Hertz refresh rate which means that it doesn't have 120 Hertz found on some higher-end TVs not a big loss in our book the TV doesn't have the DLNA streaming found on some Samsung models but it does allow you to plug into USB port to the side and look at videos photos and music so that's one little extra one area where LG didn't skimp was the picture settings there's a slew of picture presets in addition to a 10 point grey scale and full color management system so if you're tweaking this TV you'll find all the controls found on many higher-end televisions it's a real plus at this level around back to find two HDMI two component video a pc input and a third HDMI as well as a headphone jack around the side so all told is one of the better equipped entry-level TVs in terms of connectivity when we took the LG into the lab we were a little bit disappointed by its picture quality compared to some of its peers the real weaknesses it's very light black levels when you look at his TV in the dark you can see the blacks are relatively gray and they don't have that punch that a lot of the tvs at its price level from sony and samsung for example can deliver on the flip side we did appreciate the accurate color again helped by those extensive picture adjustments the TV does miraculously handle 1080p 24 Kayden's correctly despite being a 60 Hertz TV so that's kind of a bonus leave your blu-ray players at 1080p 24 we also appreciated the matte screen but all told thanks to those pretty weak black levels as TVs one of the worst performers at this price point that's a quick look at the LG lk 450 and i'm david katz meijer it sounded pretty promising right up until the very end you can tell your friends from LG to come back into the room now as we move along to this week's bottom line the kindle is the undisputed king of eerie ders right now and the Nook is trying to be the prince so is there any room for an upstart Kobo is hoping that the answer is yes i'm david carter from cnet i am here with a Matthew Welsh from Kobo and we are here with the new kobo vox ereader tablet this is a $109 tablet that is powered by Android is it is Android 2.3 and Matthews going to tell us a little bit about the device and its highlights yeah and you can see from the beginning here that the device starts with the home screen which is very book centric beyond that you have all of the other things you would expect in an open android platform that's completely customizable it weighs about 14 point 2 ounces and it comes with 8 gigabytes of memory gigs and expandable to 32 so I think it'll hold you know our normal Kobo touch will hold a thousand books this will hold eight thousand books and it you want to expand it with the 32 can hold you know we're 30,000 bucks so it's quite a large library 800 megahertz processor very similar to the barnes & noble nook color some of the other features it has you talked about the screen earlier what makes the screen special compared to other screens obviously people love our eating screens because you can read them in bright sunlight when you go to a color reading device we looked around and we found the ffs plus screen I don't know ffs plus stands for but I think it stands for you can read it outside because effectively we looked around and we found that the type of screen technology used in the cockpits of fighter planes is this technology there's no android market on the device it is your own store your own android store and it just has free apps exactly so we have 15,000 apps and you can also get you know our whole philosophy is read freely so you can you can basically get apps from anywhere else side load them on here the whole device is built around freedoms it's an open android platform you can customize the look and feel of it as you like in fact the product itself comes in four different colors you're free to use whatever browser you want your free when you buy books from Kobo to use them on in the other device or if you bought books from another device to bring them onto a coma and so we're looking at pretty similar battery life to the nookcolor at around seven hours yeah has the quilted back the signature Kobo quilted bag we have a great social new social feature called pulse and with pulse you can for the first time kind of books come to life again so you get all of the things you would get in a in a virtual book club now integrated into an underlay within the book itself so if you want to say that you like a page that you've started reading a book you want to make a comment in the book you want to see the comments that other people make on the book all of that can then show up directly in the Facebook ticker so obviously some of the potential revenue stream is in doing paid apps for Android you guys are just doing free apps is that conscious decision that you can't actually buy paid apps from any store yeah it's just it's the way it is right now it's certainly not a it's certainly not a great t-check position there but its extent to which people want free things we give them free things right we don't have a lot of people clamoring please take my money for apps it also talked about adding even more fonts is that a feature in this or is that part of your apps strategy as well in our initial version we had you know a certain range of font sizes when we went to touch we went up to 17 font sizes now with this were up to 42 font sizes and it turns out that people appreciate if they have bifocals and trifocals being able to put their glasses down and just read a book the old-fashioned way all right thanks Matthew for all that that is the new kobo vox tablet ereader and i'm david cardo and thanks for watching the bottom line this week enjoy third place Kobo since the kindle fire and the newest nook are due to go on sale in the next week or two the future of the kobo vox looks a little bleak although there is something kind of tempting about all that openness and the jet fighter glass that is cool that's going to do it for this time but come back next week for an all-new cnet tech review and tell them there are tons of great videos available every day at cnet TV com see you next time and thanks for watching