Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review there's something for everybody at Google's Developers Conference new laptops new tablets a new music service we've got the highlights from google i/o plus an MMO you can take on the road and a teeny tiny smartphone you should leave it home it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Molly wood and welcome to the cnet 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 some unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good google i/o was this week and Google pretty much buried us in news everything from laptops to like nine different operating systems to well actually I could sit here and recap the whole thing but i actually just did that in the buzz report this week so here you go I barely know where to start with google i/o their key notes are only an hour but man do they pack in the news let's do this as bullet points okay first an updated version of honeycomb the tablet operating system which thank goodness gets resizable widgets I mean so that's almost as awesome as that time iOS got folders we also got a look at the new version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich because you can never have too many operating systems that one will remain open source and it'll become the OS that runs everything from smartphones to smart homes as an embedded system the Chrome browser as usual gets faster you can now rent in stream movies via YouTube you can even stream them on your Android phone which is pretty awesome and here are some of the bigger headlines first google music beta it's a cloud-based music locker where you can store and play back your music kind of like Amazon's Cloud Player service it's an invite-only beta for now unless you have an android phone and then you can just download the mobile app and like Amazon Google went ahead and launched it without the music labels on board because they remain that irrelevant and in the way of everything consumers what and finally and this is really the biggest news of all there's now a free angry birds chrome app available now in the Chrome App Store with exclusive content for Chrome users I already have RSI from using my mouse hand to launch those little birds all day my boss is not pleased I am ashamed to confess that I played five levels of angry birds chrome edition in the middle of recording buzz out loud on Wednesday they were the easy levels though and what better way to show off how all this new stuff is going to work then to give away a free galaxy tab to try things out on everyone in attendance at i/o got the new 10.1 inch version and eric franklin rushed back to the office so he could give us this first look you can never have too many honeycomb tablets in the wild it seems and today we have our fourth such tablet i'm eric franklin and today we'll take a first look at the samsung galaxy tab 10.1 obviously named for its 10.1 inch screen the 10.1 is a google experience tablet which means its UI is exactly the same as a zoom running android 3.0 point one it has a tigre to dual-core cpu and a 1280 x 800 resolution design-wise however the 10.1 has much more in common with the ipad 2 then the zoom we don't have a micrometer to confirm this but just from feel and eyeballing them side-by-side 10.1 is just as thin as the ipad 2 in addition is actually slightly lighter than the ipad 2 but is about half an inch longer and a quarter inch wider however the most intriguing detail the 10.1 isn't what it has but what it doesn't have the 10.1 sports a clean design with no mini USB or mini or micro HDMI ports what you do get is a universal support that does allow you to connect to a computer via USB speakers on either side of the tablet a headphone jack volume rocker power and front and rear facing cameras so far the only disappointing design decision is the plastic back which makes the tablet feel less solid than ipad 2 and kind of looks like cheap kitchen wallpaper donna bell did mention that he thought it was cute though to each his own i guess this is the Wi-Fi only version of the temp one with no word and when we will see cellular versions there's also no word on price just yet but the 10.1 will be available on june eighth once again this is eric franklin and this has been a first look at the samsung galaxy tab 10.1 the lesson here it pays to go to Google i/o if every year they give you a cool laptop or a tablet or both it's kind of like going to see Oprah remember a few weeks ago when the amazon cloud player was all the rage well if you haven't taken the time to upload all your songs to amazon servers yet you might want to wait especially if you're on android google's new music service might be a better answer hey I'm Sharon Vaknin from cnet com here to walk you through google music for android with google music you can access all your music across multiple devices and computers without burdening your phone or computer storage basically the music is stored on google servers and played back over Wi-Fi or your cell network to your phone to get a google music account go to music google com / music and request an invite Google is slowly rolling this beta software out so be patient once you've been invited you'll be able to access the Google music web interface in the browser and download the music manager for your desktop music manager will copy all the music on your computer to Google servers and make it all available on your Android phone or tablet when you're not at home but even without an invite you can still download the Android app and get to know the interface go to the android market and search for music it's the app with the headphones icon once it's downloaded and installed select which google account you want to use with the app it's based on what accounts are already connected to your phone once you're all set up the app will automatically load songs from your online library and your phone's internal storage if you have a huge library because maybe you decided to take advantage of the free storage of 20,000 songs it might take a while but once the list is populated playing music is pretty straightforward just tap a song to begin playing it or hit the arrow to the right of any song and press play here you'll also see other options make an instant mix is Google's answer to Apple's genius feature if you select it Google will create a playlist of songs similar to the one you selected it's nice for when you're on the go want to dig up old music or if you just want to let Google work its magic you can also add a song to a playlist in this menu you can either add the song to an existing playlist or create a new one all your playlists are stored in the tab at the top to create a new one hit the menu button and select new playlist you can rename it and begin adding songs albums or artists through the other tabs each tabs menu selection is different it makes experience a little frustrating but the main thing you should know is that the playlist albums and artists tabs have an option called make available offline so now that all your music is stored on google servers how do you access it when you're not connected to the internet this is where make available offline comes in tap that option and you'll see pushpins show up next to the items on the list tap the pushpins next to the items you want available offline and hit done the music is cached on to your phone so the amount of music you can make available offline depends on how much storage you have and you can deselect them later to remove them from your phone and free up space you can check on the download progress by going to menu settings then download queue there are other useful settings here to take a look around and contact me on facebook if you have any questions and look if you rotate the phone to landscape you get a whole different interface feel free to choose accordingly send your questions comments and how to ideas to how to at cnet com and for more handy how-to videos head on over to seen at tv.com foreseen it I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interweb you may have noticed the fine print that indicates that the music beta will be free for a limited time and there's no telling how long it's going to take before those invites will start showing up in your inboxes but you might as well sign up now if you want to get in early some of you may be wondering what phone Sharon was using to demo google music well it was none other than the second member of the Samsung Galaxy family on the show this week the galaxy s2 here's Jessica dole court with a closer look hi I'm Jessica dull court with Cena this is a first look at the samsung galaxy s2 this is the next generation samsung galaxy phone and it happens to be my editor's choice now there's a lot going on with this device first of all it is a quad-band GSM world phone it's got dual core 1 gigahertz processors 4G speeds with hspa+ and it's running android 2.3 gingerbread that is the latest version of the android OS the screen is really beautiful it is a four point two seven inch so almost 4.3 inch super amoled plus screen that means it is brighter bolder smoother and the colors pop more than the regular samsung Super AMOLED screen which was also very good so this is just pretty amazing pretty brilliant linking now this phone does feature Samsung's custom TouchWiz four-point-oh interface I'm not always a fan of this custom ui's but I do like the easy access to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings and there are some visual flourishes on here as well hopefully that won't impede any of the OS updates in the future there is an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera on this phone also flash and it's got a 2 megapixel front facing camera for all of those video chats photo quality on this phone was really impressive it was sharp and clear and the camcorder on the back captures and plays back 1080p HD video as for the design itself it's very thin this is less than half an inch it's point 3 inches and it's also pretty light sometimes light isn't very good because it makes the phone feel cheap but in this case I'm glad that it's not too heavy won't weigh you down now Samsung is galaxy phones are usually really plasticky but with this design they're getting much better there's this textured backing that makes it feel a little bit more premium however it's still not as premium looking as one competitor that's the LG t-mobile g2x now I did have a few complaints there is no camera hardware button on the side and the back cover is really stiff I felt like I was going to break my nails off trying to get it off there is a micro SD card behind the back cover but it's positioned in such a way that you have to remove the battery to exchange the card it holds up to 32 gigabytes of external storage there are a couple interesting things inside the phone first of all there's a photo editor and a video maker with which I find really handy also an FM radio that I like Samsung has added three new hubs it's got music games and a reader hub that's something that's unique to the TouchWiz interface there are also some motion controls that are pretty interesting for example you can zoom pan silence and tap for certain apps there are also some business tools to try to make the phone a little bit more Enterprise friendly for example there's VPN encryption and support for some of cisco services NFC support is also enabled for some markets so how can you get this wonderful it is available in europe in korea right now it costs about 500 euros 500 pounds in europe unlocked and i was able to find an online from between 700 and 800 u.s. dollars however when Samsung does announce us and canadian availability the price should come down so what do I think of this phone despite a few design flaws the galaxy s2 has really top of the line specs and it delivers so with the screen and the speeds and the excellent processors it adds up to one of the best all-around smartphones on the market this is jessica's all court and you've been looking at the unlocked samsung galaxy s2 eight hundred dollars unlocked yeah that's why unlocked phones haven't been that successful here in the US I'm imagining most of us will wait and see what a deal with the carrier looks like before we dive in awesome phone though oh and by the way nice bracelet ladies I kind of want to borrow that too and while I figure out where those girls do their shopping let's take a break we'll be right back for 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 and the good there's no denying that world of warcraft is or at least was a phenomenon but the major downside to the game is how much time some people spend locked up in their houses playing it fortunately this week's tappa bilal offers fans of the genre and opportunity to go outside for a change welcome to tap that app i'm jason parker and this is the show we cover the hottest apps in the mobile space most gamers know about blizzards world of warcraft the most popular online role-playing game of all time featuring the perfect mix of beautiful graphics engaging gameplay and the ability to explore a huge online world it's no surprise that world of warcraft is a big hit among desktop gamers this week's app is called order and chaos online for mobile game company gameloft order and chaos closely resembles world warcraft in many ways from the graphical style all the way down to the game mechanics but with order and chaos you can play on your iPhone like most popular massive multiplayer online games order and chaos starts you off easy you start by selecting a race you can be human elf orc or undead then you select a class warrior mage monk or Ranger we're going to select where to keep things easy next we can make customizations to skin color hair style hair color and facial features finally choose a name for your character and you're ready to play order and chaos starts you off in a beginner area and the game shows you the ropes of how to move your character using the on-screen joystick look around with a swipe of your finger other basic movement options and with notifications that show up as exclamation points once you learn the controls you'll be ready to take on your first quest touch the MPC or non-player character with the scroll over his head to receive a quest the first quest is to talk to the warrior class trainer who is Right nearby the warrior trainers shows you the ropes of basic attacks on a combat dummy and how to use special attacks once you've completed the quest return to the wire trainer to receive your reward these early quests help you get acclimated to the controls and options for your chosen class but later you'll need to run great distances and fight monsters and strange lands all while improving your character with new items found and also focusing your character to one of two talent trees each class has two paths to choose from in the case of the wire you can be a battle warrior or a guardian as you level up from completing quests and gaining experience points you'll be able to unlock new skills and abilities based on level as you can see there are a lot of choices to be made as you play order and chaos but the class variations and talent trees are part of what gives the game so much replay value massive multiplayer role-playing games like this one are mostly made for desktop computers because they often have a lot of complex controls fortunately order and cast does a great job of organizing your menus requiring only a touch of your finger to get to things like your inventory character loadout your quest log spells and skills and social and team menus as you get further into the game you'll need to team up with other players online to conquer the more difficult dungeons an order and chaos offers a full range of social options to team up and even join online guilds of players order and chaos online is a smooth overall experience with good frame rates and beautiful 3d graphics but you'll need to have a Wi-Fi connection to play also you start out with three months free after buying the game for 699 but you'll need to pay a subscription fee of 99 cents per month to keep playing after that though it may seem a little steep now we think that once players realize how deep this game is a buck a month won't seem too bad at all so if you like fantasy based role-playing games or a fan of online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft we definitely recommend you tap this app that's it for today's show but you have any suggestions send them to tap that app at cnet com i'm jason parker thanks for watching of course if you actually take order and chaos out into the real world I would suggest taking along a charger as well you'll be burning through your battery in no time all right let's move along and see what's going on in the bad while the trend with most smartphones seems to be bigger brighter screens HP decided to go in a different direction with a new vir 4g phone let's see how that's working out shall we hey everyone I'm Bonnie top senior editor at cnet com and today I've got your first look at the HPV r4 g418 T this teeny tiny device is the latest web OS smartphone since the pre two it's probably one of the cutest phones I've ever seen it's got a very attractive pebble like design and the white model that I have here is particularly eye-catching but will probably grab your attention the most is the size as you can see the vir is really small and there are certainly good things about the compact design but I actually think that HP made the beer too small because there are a number of problems that come with it the first is the screen I only measures two point six inches diagonally so if you're trying to do anything like view a web page or max it's really difficult and you'll be using the pinch to zoom feature a lot even simple tasks like making call gets frustrating because the on-screen dialer is cramped and if you want to read an email there's a lot of scrolling involved luckily you don't have to enter text using the touch screen since there is a slide-out QWERTY keyboard to be honest I didn't have high hopes for the keyboard because the layout is pretty cramped and the buttons are small but with some practice you can actually get around it without too many problems it's not ideal but I wouldn't say it's unusable either the last issue with the design is the proprietary port because the veer is so small HP couldn't fit in a headphone jack or a micro USB port so instead they put in this magnetic connector on the side with it you can connect this headset adapter and then plug in your headphones so you can listen to music I just think it's a bad idea number one it's an eyesore and because it sticks out of the side like this I can see it easily getting ripped off just putting it in your pocket or if your headphone wire gets caught on something also it's small so it's easy to lose when you're not using it and I've already misplaced it several times while reviewing the phone the other issue is with the magnetic connector you have to use the charging cable that comes with the phone so if you're running out of battery and you don't have it nearby you're toast so overall I just think it's a flawed idea it's really too bad because the VR 4G offers a decent set of features it's running webos 2.1 point2 so you're getting some of the latest functions like stacks which groups together similar tasks for better multitasking and just type which expands on universal search by letting you type search terms and even status updates from anywhere on your phone unfortunately I think it's just hard to take advantage of any of these features with the phone's design set at a reasonable price at hundred dollars on contract but 18t has a number of other devices for a hundred dollars or less like the htc inspire 4G that will provide a better experience i'm bonnie chen this has been your first look at the HP beer for d 4 80 sure it may only be a hundred bucks but i'll bet it cost a pretty penny to replace those magnetic headphone adapter things see that's where the real money is or would be if anyone actually buys a beer in the first place you know I'm right let's move along and check out this week's bottom line shall we Google on Wednesday announced the new Chromebook platform that brings the Chrome OS experience onto a regular laptop and Donald Bell was on hand to check out one of the new Chromebooks the series 5 from Samsung hey I'm gamma bell for cnet.com and today I'm taking a first look at the samsung series 5 this is a new laptop from Samsung that runs Google's Chrome OS do I'm June pricing starts at four hundred twenty nine dollars for a Wi-Fi only model you also have a four hundred ninety nine dollar option for a model a built-in 3g coverage through verizon wireless you also get two different colors here there's a white version and a dark silver version both are going to be available in the same prices and configurations there's not a lot to the laptop and that's really the point you get 16 gigabytes of on-board storage and when you boot it up you're booting up right into the chrome browser the support for Google's Chrome browser application so that you can extend this through different app store that's built into the chrome system you can also have support for all of googles great apps like gmail calendar documents all that functionalities here too so the upshot of having such a lean system is that you get really fast startup time from a cold boot eight seconds will get you up into the operating system if you're coming out of standby mode that's going to happen instantly you also get eight and a half hours of battery life about five hours of video playback battery life and the other good thing about this is that because nothing is really stored locally everything gets backed up to the cloud so that if you you know be shut it down and this ain't gotta run over by a train you could rest assured that all that information that you've been working on it's going to be backed up to the cloud you get a new one open it up log in and all your information is going to be there taking a look at the hardware design you've got a 12.1 inch screen it's a really bright screen provided by Samsung you get a full-size keyboard a multi-touch trackpad you've got two USB ports an HD webcam up at the top and you also have a headphone jack and an SD card or a 401 card slot here for memory cards right here on the front under the hood you get a 1.66 dual-core intel atom processor so it's got some muscle but it's only got about two gigs a built-in ram so it's not going to be a serious horsepower machine it's also not the lightest machine we've seen it's about a little over three pounds so it's not groundbreaking in terms of design but I like the concept a lot it really after seeing a lot of tablets this year this kind of strikes that same appeal of being a machine that is affordable is a really utilitarian system for getting onto the web getting there fast and having a really simple operating system without confusing people I think there's going to be a segment of people who are really going to gravitate towards this because of its simplicity so yeah I'm excited see this in June for cnet.com on da mobile that was a first look at the samsung series 5 chromebook the bottom line this week now that's gonna be a hard sell I mean it's nice of Donald to say there will be a segment of people who are excited about chromebooks I just don't know if it'll be a big statement I mean you can buy a full-fledged laptop for four or five hundred bucks and then have like programs then the Chrome browser and the other browser you want we'll see though I mean I was wrong about people buying iPads to all right folks that's our show will be back next week with a brand new cnet tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at cnet TV com I'll see you next time and thank you for watching you