Gadgetory

this week on the Sina tech review Steve Ballmer shows off new Windows Phone 7 models find things on Facebook that you would probably rather forget Sony's internet TV is one screen worth watching and an a sous monitor that probably isn't 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 and offer some unique tech wisdom in the form of our bottom line but let's start with the good way back in February Microsoft announced the Windows Phone 7 Series at Mobile World Congress 2010 fast forward to October and the new Zune like handsets are finally ready for their debut Microsoft Steve Ballmer was on hand to personally unveil nine different models and our own ena freed sat down with him afterwards to talk about them I mean if read with CNET here in New York for the launch of Windows Phone 7 where Steve Ballmer is about to show off Microsoft's answer to the iPhone and Android and all the other smart phones that it hopes to compete against we think there's a lot of things that you'll see today that'll help you understand how the Windows Phone is different but I'd focus on two key themes always delightful and wonderfully mine will have nine phones available when the Windows Phone chips here in the United States in November there's a range of phones here from LG from Samsung from HTC and from Dell all windows phones in fact have at least a full gigahertz processor and have several other great standard features under the hood and we're thrilled to be launching the Samsung Focus on November the 8th and the HTC surround and the LG quantum just a few weeks later u-verse Mobile is an application we launched earlier this year to let our u-verse TV customers download and watch hit TV shows on their smart phones starting next month we'll bring this capability to Windows Phone 7 customers and if you don't have AT&T u-verse TV we're gonna let you do that nationwide for any Windows Phone for a low monthly fee one of the key features for making the phone really wonderfully yours really deeply personal is being able to put the people that you care about right up there on your start experience in a live tile and these tiles are live because as Steve updated his Facebook post you can see if he posts pictures I'll see them right there I don't have to go in and out of a whole lot of applications to see all these sorts of things its aggregated for me right on the home screen um st said we want the phone experience to be always delightful whether you're using our software third-party software or no matter which phone you buy we're trying to make it easy for end-users but also for developers the pictures hub has automatically customized with pictures of my twins you see my Xbox Live avatar these games were developed using XNA which is a development framework that works both on the Xbox and on the phone these phones are gonna be amazing game machines and with games developed that are happening on the Xbox platform as well we think people have a terrific experience well then you have it it's mostly what we expected but a few things that one should pay attention to one copy-and-paste coming in early 2011 also while the first models are gonna hit AT&T November 8 some of the models for both AT&T and t-mobile will be somewhat later than that and then also all the AT&T phones are gonna be priced at $1.99 for those were the new contracts I mean if read with C net here was Steve Ballmer the CEO of Microsoft you just introduced Windows Phone Steve you've talked about how Windows Phone is different kind of phone what do you mean by that different kind of phone in the sense that we think we can help people get in and out and back to life quickly it all begins with the Start screen you see the Start screen really brings a set of activities and people and websites that are important to you right to the forefront of the user interface it starts with being very personal we have devices of various shapes and for its forms keyboards no keyboards AMOLED screen very durable devices machines that are phones that are optimized with surround sound and Dolby sound so you get a raw a wide variety of choices and yet a consistent the lightful user interface that's about you do you guys feel there's an opportunity to have it sounds like more variety than Apple but perhaps not as much variety and not as much fragmentation as in the Android world I think you clearly have a lot more variety than Apple has there's really one choice in the Apple in the Apple world big screen little screen we got a lot of choices I think the problem if you don't have a minimum kind of standard is the brand means nothing to the user our brand means something to the user it means something to the developer it implies a certain level of consistency and high quality which i think is important for the Windows Phone what do you do on the phone what are the things that matter the most to you that you're like I want to do this when I'm using the phone and I don't really want to do X Y or Z I do their very little I won't do when I'm on my phone I certainly do the typical email messaging I make phone calls not surprising a lot of them and I don't want those calls dropped I actually kind of fairly active on Facebook I'm kind of watching what's going on in that world I do in fact travel a lot so the fact that I can kind of take my office with me is important and I can take some videos to watch and music to listen to it's all great for me actually as a as a mobile mobile person are there things that you think will be doing on our phones a couple years from now that we don't do today that you guys want to be positioned to do well in the future I think we're gonna see a continual evolution the way these things interact I mean this will be a projector someday hold it up put it down on the kickstand and project we'll be able to more and more with sensors to capture images and you see what we've done with Xbox Kinect you can let your mind run wild on kind of what that might be in the context of a mobile device I see a lot of opportunities thanks a lot Steve I appreciate it thank you Christina I mean afraid you can find the rest of Venus interview with Steve Ballmer over at scene at tv.com but ok enough talking about Windows Phone 7 let's see some phones here's Bonnie cha with a look at some of the new handsets that are headed your way hi I'm Bonnie Todd senior editor at Phoenix comm and we're here in New York for the Windows Phone 7 launch and today 18 key announced three phones that will be coming for the holiday season all will cost one $99.99 with a contract and the first one we have for hands-on looks is the HTC surround now this is the first mobile device to have Dolby's surround sound and so just push down the screen and you've got a little speaker system it also has a kickstand on the back so you can lay it on a flat surface and watch video and listen to music as well other highlights of the surrounding put a 5 megapixel camera as well as video recording and actually all the 18t phones will come with the AT&T u-verse mobile which is a video streaming service so that will be on all the Windows Phone 7 devices from AT&T overall the design looks really nice very solid and HTC has had a good history of making great design so it's like this around follows that pack so let's go check out the other two device here we have the Samsung Focus it's going to be the first one in launched on November 8th like a lot of the Samsung Galaxy phones this one has a four inch Super AMOLED screen which is going to be great for the Xbox experience as well soon and again the AT&T u-verse other highlights of the focus include a 5 megapixel camera 8 gigabytes of internal memory as well as an expansion slot so that's really a nice tip II and finally we have here the LG quantum which is a little more business-focused than the other smartphones it has a slide up full QWERTY keyboard and it feels pretty nice to you so it'll be great for email and messaging Windows Phone 7 also offers a virtual keyboard which I found seems pretty easy to use by its looks other business highlights of Windows Phone 7 include Outlook integration as well as other emails protocols also has the office suite so you can view and edit office documents such as PowerPoint Word and Excel just a quick rundown of some of the other design features you've got the hardware buttons down here which are required on all Windows Phone 7 devices which is the back previous button the start button as well as search you've got a little micro USB port here as well as a camera on back and flush a volume rocker and camera activation and just as a reminder all three phones will be available from 18t the Samsung Focus will launch November 8 and the rest will follow the holiday season and they're all going to be $1.99 99 with a two-year contract I'm Bonnie time that's been your first look at the Windows Phone 7 zones for 80s now for all you iphone folks who've been feeling burned by AT&T service and are looking for another excuse to switch maybe now is the time let's see what Bonnie has to say about these windows phones for t-mobile hi I'm Bonnie Jos senior editor at cnet.com and we're here in New York for the Windows Phone 7 launch and today I've got the HTC hd7 which will be available through t-mobile in November this is Windows Phone 7 device and it was actually got the biggest - screen all the Windows Phone 7 devices it's 4.3 inches diagonally so it'll also have the largest virtual keyboard really beautiful screen here t-mobile is gonna take advantage of the screen and bundling some entertainment apps with it including Netflix as well as t-mobile TVs it'll also have a family app where you can send out group messages and share calendars as well design-wise sort of like to even afford a very very solid design you've got the three shortcut buttons down here on back you've got a five megapixel camera with HD video capture and got a kickstand which we always love so the HD 7 will be available in mid November pricing has not been announced yet in addition to the HD 7 t-mobile II will be launching the Dell Venue Pro so we're gonna go take a hands-on look at that next all right we are here with Dell as they will be bringing the Dell Venue Pro to t-mobile for the holiday season and can you give us a few highlights of the Dell Venue Pro first I'd be happy to so as you said this is the Dell Venue Pro it will be available for holiday what's unique about this phone it is the only one with an integrated 40 keyboard but in portrait mode a lot of the microsoft operating system is optimized more for portrait like the Start screen certain applications are in portrait only as well but just some key features about the phone like I said it does have the integrated keyboard for those that like to actually have a physical keyboard the portrait mode actually lets it be optimized for one-handed text messaging as well it also has an on-screen keyboard if you prefer that it has a four point one inch AMOLED display so you can see it's a very vibrant the resolution is great the pixels per inch are good it also I don't know if you can tell here but it's got a curvature to the lens which actually is more like an aesthetic in his Parrilla class on it which makes it extra durable has a five megapixel camera on it and it does come with a gigabyte and we'll also be selling a 16 gigabyte version as well all right those are the two phones that will be available from t-mobile this holiday season the HTC hd7 will march in mid-november and the Dell Venue Pro will be available sometime for the holidays I'm personally really excited about the Dell Venue Pro because of the form factor but we're looking forward to reviewing them both I'm Bonnie Tom this been your first look at the HTC hd7 and Dell Venue Pro for t-mobile and if that's not enough Windows Phone 7 frenzy for you head on over to Cena tv.com for bonney's look at some handsets for the international market and just a condole quartz demo of some noteworthy apps but don't go there yet because we still have a lot more tech review coming up including our first look at Sony's internet TV with google TV built in that's coming up in just a minute so stick around and welcome back to the CNET tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at Sina TV continuing on in the good we certainly kept our New York team busy this week in addition to the Windows Phone 7 launch we were also on hand for the premiere of the sony internet TV with google TV inside here's David Katz Meyer with a decidedly thorough overview hi I'm David Katz Meyer from C net here with the sony internet TV with google TV the first product of its kind it's a television that builds in Google TV service right into the TV so there's no need for any external set-top box or anything like that to get your Google TV functionality this is a standard edge-lit TV with not too many bells and whistles 120 Hertz or anything like that the main feature on this thing is Google TV Google TV for the uninitiated allows you to basically search internet video sources as well as your own TV sources from cable set-top or antenna right from the same search window so you can just go in type in a search for a show title up will come results from the internet from the various TV services as well as from your own cable or satellite so it's the first we've kind of incorporate all of those sources into one easy to search window the Sony TV comes with this remote here that's kind of a little handheld unit little reminiscent of the pleasse 3 controller it's got a built-in QWERTY keyboard so you can type in whatever you want to the search results screen it's also got what I consider a pretty cool little touch sensitive Mouse it allows you to drive your cursor around on the screen and select items there's also a standard up/down left/right arrows that allow you to select items a little more easily so all things considered it's a pretty slick remote although it is a little bulkier than your standard TV remote it will probably take a little bit of getting used to the remote incorporates RF technology so you don't need line of sight between the remote and the television the TV can also control your other devices including the cable box and a couple of other AV devices via IR blasters allows it to incorporate for example search results from the TV itself including an EPG you don't get full integration however unless you hook up this thing to a dish DVR which allows you to search the DVR and also incorporate a couple of other control features including control over IP as opposed to read the Sony NSX GT 1 series is available in four screen sizes I'm with the 46 inch here there's also a 40 a 32 and a little 24 inch here all of them have that LED edgelet backlighting except for the 24 which is a standard CCFL display price points range from $5.99 for the 24 up to 13 99 for the 46 inch though prices are actually pretty good and in line with a lot of the other well featured HD TVs on the market today Sony's also announcing a blu-ray player at the 399 price point it's the nsz GT 1 it incorporates all those Google TV features and of course it doesn't have a screen but it does have a built in blu-ray so you can get all of your Google TV goodness including the remote from a separate standalone blu-ray player that's for people who already own a TV and want to get the Google TV experience we'll walk through a couple of features on Google TV it does include Netflix Amazon video on-demand Twitter and a few other apps right out of the box we expect more apps to come in the future so let's use Facebook but the real killer app of Google TV is its access to the Internet so you can actually go out using its built-in Chrome browser and search a variety of Internet video websites for example to comedycentral.com be a sorg and a lot of other places that have Internet video that aren't easily available on a lot of the other internet enabled TVs and blu-ray players out there one big missing link right now whoever is hulu.com you cannot search the hulu.com website or play any of its videos right now on this device we're expecting Google to announce sites compatibility with Hulu Plus in the future but they're still in talks at the moment on the other hand you do have Netflix Amazon video in demand and the ability to search Sony's curiosity VOD service that's a proprietary feature this TV Sony also offers a few other content options familiar with its bravia internet link service including Howcast blip TV and a few other niche video websites so that's a content offering a step above the Logitech Revue which is the only other Google TV box on the market right now one other big difference between the Sony and the Logitech box is the Sony at the moment does not allow you to stream video and audio over a DLNA connection so you can't use the Sony TV to go out and play streaming video directly over your home network speaking of apps in 2011 google says it will allow access for Google TV products to go out and use the Android Market which has thousands of apps designed for smartphones it'll be interesting to see how those apps apply to the big screen but it is the unlimited content development for the Google TV products that's a quick look at the sony internet TV with google TV functionality I'm David Katz mark from seen it Wow yeah that remote is definitely something to be reckoned with but considering that the standalone Google TV box from Logitech is 300 bucks by itself $13.99 for sony's 46 inch model not too shabby at all alright but now let's give some of our SF peeps some face time as we move along to the bad when it comes to pronunciation some tech companies have names or products that are open to interpretation nokia comes to mind nokia nokia or OS 10 versus OS X the same goes for a soos but as Eric Franklin found out having a funny sounding name is far from the biggest problem with this new monitor hey guys is Eric Franco I'm cnet.com and today we're taking a first look at the asus ve 276 q it also looks fairly slight for a 27 inch err with a thin profile compared to other monitors of its size the house loses bezel is low to the desktop making accessing its connection options kind of a hassle those connection options include one HDMI port a DVI port VGA and DisplayPort the display also includes an ambient light sensor visa wall support and built-in speakers sounds from the speaker's was adequate although much too low even at max volume the on screen display includes several preset options as well as brightness contrast and sharpness options also when a night view mode you're given the option of just in the saturation and changing the skin tone from natural yellowish and reddish why this option is only available in night view mode is a mystery to us as it would have been useful in other presets in movies we notice a green tent push but only when a monitor was sitting next to the bank um 2700 HD which didn't have the same tint problem the AHS who says theater preset was not as apt as the BenQ and displaying dark detail in dark scenes either in games we found the display to deliver a bright image with a good level of vibrancy however when directly compared with the bank you we once again did notice a slight green tint to the image again we need to stress that this isn't something we likely notice the two monitors weren't sitting right next to each other the others isn't a particularly bad monitor it just doesn't offer enough in terms of performance and features to warrant a stronger recommendation the biggest thing that has going forward is its price at $330 it's the lowest price of the recent 27 inches we've reviewed and includes a useful assortment of connections and built-in speakers unfortunately the speaker sound is muffled there's a slight green tint to the image compared to the BenQ and has less connection options in the bank you as well which costs only $20 more unless that $20 is a big deal for you we recommend the Ben QM 2700 HD over the asus ve 276 q thanks to its better performance and more numerous features once again this is Eric Franklin and this has been the first look at the Ossus ve 276 q for the record if you ask us Seuss they'll tell you it's pronounced a Seuss either way it sounds like it's a pass on the assist but be sure to check out Eric's review of the BenQ m270 0 HD which although more expensive sounds like a much better value all right now let's turn our attention to the bottom line there's no denying that Facebook has changed the way we interact with people we share our thoughts our activities we schedule events and then post photos and videos of the events afterwards but if you've ever been curious to see everything you've ever posted to Facebook or you just want to back up items that only exist on the site then check out this super handy tip from Josh Lewin s'en hey I'm Josh Levinson with cnet.com and I'm going to show you how to use Facebook's new download your information feature it lets you grab an offline copy of everything you've ever sent to the social network including photos videos as well as your entire private message inbox and a list of events to get started log into Facebook and then head to the account button in the top right then click on account settings near the bottom of the page you'll see a download your information setting and click on learn more here you'll be asked to re-enter your Facebook password if you're using a computer that you don't normally browse Facebook from it will have you solve a CAPTCHA - the first time you ask for this information Facebook needs a little bit of time to collect it for you for us this took about 10 minutes from hitting the download button to when it was actually ready to download Facebook then sends you an email link when the download link is ready what you end up with is a file that unzips with a folder for us this was 270 megabytes but it can be much larger or much smaller depending on how much media you've uploaded included in the folder are subfolders for your photos and one for videos as well as something called index.html which you can click on to view an offline version of your profile this includes everything that's ever been posted to your wall photo and video pages a full list of friends every event you ever RSVP to and the entirety of your private message inbox for both the message inbox and the wall you get everything that's ever been posted on one long page this can be a little hard to parse so if you feel like saving some time use your browsers on page search feature if it has one worth noting is that you'll get the original quality of the videos you uploaded even if they're in high definition but that's not the case for photos which are the same size as what you see on Facebook this isn't a problem with photos you may have uploaded since Facebook added support for high resolution shots but something to keep in mind if you think you're going to get the originals back another thing to keep in mind is that there's a ton of personal information in this folder and while Facebook has gone to great lengths to keep the wrong people from downloading it once you have it it's a big unprotected jackpot of information we recommend using the file level password protection that's built into your machine for more information on that check out our other how to's I'm Josh Lowen sin' and this has been a quick how-to on using Facebook's information downloader for more check out cnet.com the bottom line this week nice job Facebook for once finally a feature that's actually useful but doesn't expose your private info to prying eyes until you forget to log out of your account and someone comes along and downloads your whole life that couldn't happen right could that happen okay folks it is time for me to go join us next week when we'll have our apples back to the Mack event coverage 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