Mobile Phone Blog:

One of the reasons I love Windows Mobile is that there’s a wealth of different web browsers you can use on it. There’s Opera Mobile. There’s Opera Mini. There’s Internet Explorer, if you’re feeling particularly masochistic (well, unless you’ve got an HTC HD2, which has got the newest version of IE, which is actually quite good, by all accounts). And then, there’s Skyfire. I’d tested the previous version of Skyfire, before, but never blogged about it, because I have to admit, I wasn’t particularly impressed.

Sure, it can render things like Flash pages, but with the previous version, the controls were lumpy and unfriendly, scrolling round web pages was slow and unresponsive, and it generally (on my X1, at least) ran like a dog. With three legs.

But now, version 1.5 has been released, and it’s bigged up as being much more stable, being much more user-friendly, and being able to render even more content than the previous version, so I thought I’d give it a try, and see what’s changed. My first big question was whether the user experience has improved (because in my opinion, it really, really needed to)…

The answer? Oh blimey, has it ever!

Now, the high point in mobile browsers, for me, is Opera. When it comes to user experience, nothing comes close to Opera Mobile. Now, Skyfire still hasn’t achieved the same level of brilliance as Opera, but it’s miles ahead of what was seen in the previous version, which was, frankly, bleedin’ awful. The kinetic scrolling actually does work properly now, and instead of convulsively jerking its way round pages, a much smoother page scrolling is on display. There’s still an issue with pages showing that checkerboard background until it refreshes on screen (and the checkerboard appears for longer periods than on Opera), but it’s 100% better than the previous version, and I’m prepared to concede it could be my phone that’s causing the problem (you’ll see why in a minute).

The new controls are very welcome, as well, being much, much more touch-optimised.

Skyfire’s claim to fame has always been the fact that, because it renders web pages on its own servers, before pumping the result down to your phone, it can show you everything on the web. Well, the new version supports Flash 10 and Silverlight, so it really will show you, on your mobile phone, anything that you can view on your home PC. That’s very, very impressive. However, there was one bit Skyfire couldn’t show me, as I found out when I tried watching BBC iPlayer.

Now don’t get me wrong, the video did play. And that was mightily impressive. But what it didn’t do was let me hear any sound. Which is what made me think the above usability problems would be own to my phone, because the sound issue definitely was down to my phone, not Skyfire itself. Or, I suspect, it may have been down to the data settings Orange have on my account. Either way, it’s something to be aware of.

Other than that, though, Skyfire 1.5 has impressed me. Get it on a powerful phone like the aforementioned HTC HD2, and it’d fly. It’s not as user-friendly or as pretty as Opera Mobile (by a long way), but it shows much, much more of the web. So, it’s a choice of which you’d prefer. But one thing is for sure, when it comes down to web browsers, I can now legitimately say that it is a choice between two. Skyfire has gone from being one of the most overrated to genuinely being one of the best.

If you want to try it for yourself, you can download it from Skyfire’s website.

Have you used Skyfire? Did you have any sound problems with your copy, or is it really just my phone (I suspect the latter)? Leave us a comment and have your say!

A bit back, I did a review of Opera Mini 5, and you may remember that I loved it to bits. I loved it so much that I started using it as my main web browser, replacing Opera Mobile 9.5 (which was the standard one the X1 came with), because it was faster, ever so slightly sleeker, and did pretty much everything Opera Mobile would do. I also promised you that I’d be getting the beta version of Opera Mobile 9.7, to compare that to Opera Mini 5, and now, here’s the follow-up to that original review.

I now have Opera Mobile 9.7. Let’s see how the two browsers stack up against each other.

The big, huge, massive advantage that Opera Mini had over Opera Mobile 9.5 was speed. Quite simply, Mini was much, much faster than Mobile, down to the fact that web pages were rendered on Opera’s servers, and then the resulting page was pumped to your phone. That did make it a lot faster, as all the heavy work of rendering the page wasn’t being done on your mobile device.

However, Opera Mobile 9.7 comes with a new feature called Turbo, which does the exact same trick, server-side rendering. And that means, folks, that Opera Mobile 9.7 is now once again as fast as Opera Mini. Surprisingly, I even found that with Turbo turned off, Opera Mobile wasn’t far off the speed of Opera Mini, anyway, so I reckon some serious optimisation’s gone on under the hood.

Opera Mini 5 also brought kinetic, finger scrolling to the java-based browser for the first time ever, bringing it up to date with its larger, Mobile cousin. In fact, the scrolling was smoother on Mini 5 than it was on Mobile 9.5. So the big question here is whether Opera Mobile 9.7 has done anything to improve its kinetic scrolling; the answer is, of course, yes it damn well has. The scroll is now a lot smoother, and a lot faster, and the user experience as a whole has been optimised even more, putting it ahead of its little brother once again.

I did experience some issues with the UI, such as the fact that pages wouldn’t open in new tabs if you have Turbo turned on, but since it’s a beta release, that’s to be expected. And anyway, as I say, it’s nearly as fast with Turbo turned off. Granted, it lacks the built-in keyboard that Opera Mini now has, but since I have both a hardware keyboard and SPB Keyboard installed (and expect a blog post about that app soon, too), that ain’t a problem.

So, conclusion…

If you have a touchscreen phone which isn’t Windows Mobile, or you have an older, not-as-powerful WinMo phone, then Opera Mini 5 is the best browser you can get, bar none. If you have, however, a more recent, more powerful Windows Mobile phone (like an HTC Touch Diamond2 or a Toshiba TG01), then get Opera Mobile 9.7. It’s awesome.

The final word in this blog post, however, is one about Opera Mini 5, and is aimed specifically at people who are thinking of using it on non-smartphones. It’s also something my sister found out, and it’s the reason why she’s gone back to using Opera Mini 4. The built-in Opera keyboard doesn’t, against all common sense, actually have an underscore key, and neither does the keypad on her phone, which makes it impossible for her to log in to Facebook using Opera Mini 5.

So, be aware, if you’re using Opera Mini, on a feature phone, then in your case, you may well be best sticking with the previous version…

Which do you use? Mini or Mobile? Leave us a comment and have your say!

As long time readers of the blog will know, I use SPB Mobile Shell as the interface on my X1; you may also remember I reviewed version 3, and gave it a massive, massive thumbs-up. Because, you know, it rocked. But software is always evolving, and now, SPB have released version 3.5. I should be able to give you an idea of the general vibe of this review, by telling you two key facts:

1/ I adored Mobile Shell 3.

2/ Mobile Shell 3.5 is biggerer and betterer in every conceivable way.

However, since that is possibly the least useful review I’ve ever written, perhaps it may be a good idea for me to go into some more specifics, and tell you what’s changed. Yeah, that’ll work. Assume that all the good bits I liked about version 3 have been retained, because what I’m going to focus on here is what’s new. What new stuff have SPB added, to make Mobile Shell even better?

Professional Home Screen

The biggest change that I’ve noticed is the updating of the Professional Home screen. Now, you may remember that in version 3, the Professional screen was very much inspired by (ie/ it was basically identical to) Mobile Shell 2, with static placements of clock, calendar, message alerts and so on.

The big change here is the Pro screen is now entirely widget based, just like the Lifestyle screen I habitually use. So, you can add and remove widgets, just as you do on the Lifestyle screen, and rearrange the Pro screen however you like.

They’ve even added in multiple screens you can swipe to, again like the Lifestyle screen, so that the only difference between the two, now, is that the Pro screen keeps a jet black background, so you focus on the info being presented. In that sense, it has truly evolved into a work-focused homescreen, and rather than feeling like a relic of the former version of Mobile Shell, it now feels like a specifically designed interface for a specifically designed purpose (ie/ work).

That’s a big, and a very positive, change.

New Widgets & New Skins

So, the widget interface is still as flexible as ever, and it’s now spilled over to also make the professional screen completely interactive. However, in terms of content, SPB have added some new stuff that is worth checking out. New widgets come as standard, including a Facebook widget, a Twitter widget, and a Google widget, which lets you search for info, right from the desktop. So, as well as being mouth-wateringly pretty, the interface now includes some seriously powerful functionality right on the surface.

As well as new widgets, the widgets on the interface also have a variety of new skins, letting you customise them even more. For example, the digital clock has four different variants (small, medium, big, professional), the analogue clock has three, the weather app has four different variants, and so on. So, it’s easy to make your interface look just as you want it to look.

3D Enhancements

Unfortunately, I can’t test this bit (since the Sony Ericsson X1 doesn’t have dedicated 3D acceleration hardware stuff), which is a shame, since this is one of the key important updates. The app carousel is now in enhanced 3D, and there are 3D message viewers. I can view the 3D message viewers, but they don’t look as pretty as in press photos. That isn’t SPB’s fault, though, that’s entirely down to my phone. It’s still annoying, but hey…

Speed

Now, then, here’s the bit that wasn’t listed in the reviewer’s guide, but this is the bit I picked up on the most. Y’see, as someone rightly pointed out in the comments of the version 3 review, when you slide the keypad open on a WinMo phone using Mobile Shell, it would take a couple of seconds for it to react, and flip the interface into landscape mode. That’s a well-known thing that’s happened with every Windows Mobile phone ever. It didn’t bother me, but I can understand how it would annoy people.

I don’t know what SPB’s coding-type people have done, but now, in version 3.5, there is NO delay when you slide the keypad open. And that’s even with transition animations turned on. I’m seriously impressed, I can only imagine how much they’ve optimised the code, because it’s lightning fast, now. It’s unbelievable, and it really has made my phone come alive in a way not even Mobile Shell 3 made it come alive.

Conclusion

I am a big fan of SPB Mobile Shell. I have been since I got my paws on version 3, and this new one has taken all the good bits about that version, erased every single one of the speed issues that some people have commented on, and added in about 4.5 million% extra goodness. It’s an astounding interface, and the new widgets (and new skins for those widgets) make it truly easy to set up your interface precisely as you want it.

I do have one complaint, and it’s that the 3D enhancements won’t work on my phone. And that’s saying something, as it means the only thing that annoys me about SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 is something that’s not even the fault of the interface at all. It’s entirely down to my phone, but it’s something to be aware of, if you’re using an X1. The 3D enhancements won’t work properly (you’ll still get 3D effects and message viewer, but they won’t look as pretty, since the X1 uses software rendering, not hardware rendering).

So, as the 3D enhancements are out, I can pick out two things that stood out as the best new bits for me. First is the swapping over of the Pro screen to a widget-based interface. It’s evolved, in this release, from being a throwback to earlier versions of Mobile Shell, to being a sleek, customisable, business-focused interface, that’s perfect for when the flashy Lifestyle screen isn’t appropriate.

But the big win, for me, is the speed. I’m still in shock over how fast it flips between portrait and landscape mode, when I open the keypad. There’s just no delay. And I can finally turn on all those lovely menu animations, and even that can’t kill the speed.

So, in conclusion, if you use a Windows Mobile phone, SPB Mobile Shell is, hands down, the best interface you can use. It relieves itself all over the standard WinMo front end, and it leaves TouchFLO in the dust. And the best news, if you already use version 3, is that you can upgrade to 3.5 for FREE. As in costing you nothing. So if you use version 3, get upgraded to 3.5, now. It’ll even keep your current settings and widget layout when you upgrade. You have no excuse not to use it.

And if you don’t already use SPB Mobile Shell on your WinMo phone, get it bought. Now. You won’t find an interface as good as this one.

Do you use SPB Mobile Shell and adore it as much as Technical Markus? Or do you (and why you would, I can’t fathom) prefer TouchFLO? Leave us a comment and have your say!

Hands up anyone who’s got an FM radio on their phone. Ok, granted, I can’t actually see who’s got their hands up (and I’m intrigued, in a humorous way, how many people reading this did actually put their hands up), but I bet quite a considerable number of you have got a radio on your phone.

Ok, here’s a different question. How many of you have listened to the radio over the internet? I do, a fair bit, since it’s easier than trying to muck about trying to point your radio aerial in the right direction, and you get access to lots more radio stations besides the ones we get in the UK.

Software company SPB has now made a new way to get internet radio on your phone, and it’s called (unsurprisingly) SPB Radio. And it is, a couple of niggling issues notwithstanding, brilliant.

The first thing I really like about it is the interface. It’s superb, with massive, finger-friendly icons, and smooth kinetic scrolling throughout all of its menus. But then, I’d expect nothing less from the creators of the utterly brilliant SPB Mobile Shell. The app is also very streamlined, and runs really efficiently, so it’s quick and really responsive, and it’ll run nicely on lower power phones. I dread to think how fast it’ll run on the newest WinMo phones, like the Toshiba TG01 and HTC Touch Pro2. It’ll probably go fast enough to spontaneously go backwards in time, or something.

Another huge plus is the sheer number of radio stations you can listen to (1500+, according to the press release), and it’s easy to add others, if you’ve got the URL for them. And yes, that includes radio stations from anywhere round the world, so my play list will include a load of rock stations from America (they do wall to wall rock rather well, in the US of A).Oh, and there’s a range of DAB stations on there, too, like Kerrang.

It’s with the list of channels that I find my only issue with SPB Radio, and that’s because Radio 1 and Radio 2, probably the biggest two stations in the UK, aren’t on there. I suspect, though, that this isn’t the app’s fault, I suspect it’s because they run on iPlayer, and the app uses realplayer streams. Two completely different codecs, y’see. However, if I’m wrong about that, and you can get Radio 1 and Radio 2 on SPB Radio, then chime up in the comments and let me know.

And if that is the issue, I have to wonder if SPB will fix it with a future software update (or, and this is very possible, the BBC won’t let them use iPlayer feeds).

Either way, that’s a bit of an issue with the app, but nothing I can’t live with, considering the vast amount of stations you do get.

Pros: vast number of stations to choose from, superb interface, incredibly fast and responsive, saves you mucking about trying to find a decent FM signal.

Cons: some of the big name UK stations are missing, like BBC Radio 1.

Score: 8/10 (because I suspect the omitted stations aren’t SPB’s fault)

Have you tried SPB Radio? Do you like it? Leave us a comment and have your say!

Well, I’ve been building up to it for the last couple of days, but here it is… my full review of SPB Mobile Shell 3! First up, though, it might be useful if I tell anyone who doesn’t know what SPB Mobile Shell is what it actually is…

Basically, it’s an entire new interface and front end for your Windows Mobile phone. One of the big complaints of WinMo, over the years, has been that the user interface is bobbins. And, to be fair, the standard WinMo front end is a bit drab. And fiddly. Well, SPB Mobile Shell is one of the range of interfaces out there (along with TouchFlo 3D for example), that sits on top of WinMo, and achieves the twin goals of making it both pretty and usable.

SPB have a long history of doing that, though, because their Mobile Shell has been around for a good couple of years, now. My X1 even came bundled with version 2. And it was really very nice, but… it was a bit dull, so I never used it.

Now, though, I’ve got version 3. So, it’s time to put it to the test, and find out what this baby can do!

Interchangeable interface

The first cool thing that’s noticeable about SPB Mobile Shell 3 is that you actually get not one, but two separate user interfaces. The first one should be familiar to anyone who’s used an SPB interface in the past, since it’s modelled directly on their earlier incarnations. Yep, this part is called the Professional Home screen, and it’s geared towards using your phone for work, hence why it’s dominated by the BIG clock, the BIG calendar, and strips away the fun stuff to focus your interface just on the stuff you’ll need for, effectively, business communications. Also in the pic on the right, you can see the Weather and Time screens, laid out in the same functional way.

Now, if this was the main homescreen, and this was the only way you had of interacting with your phone, SPB Mobile Shell wouldn’t be worth the money. However, because this is a secondary homescreen, it works perfectly, changing your phone into a dedicated work phone by just swiping your finger up or down on the screen.

But, you see, that Professional layout isn’t the main homescreen. It’s just a nice bonus to have. The main homescreen is called the Lifestyle Home, and it is far, far funkier…

Lifestyle Home screen

Here’s where things get more exciting, because nothing I’ve just told you about the Professional Home (with its static screen, and lack of flashy animations) applies here. The Lifestyle screen’s an entirely different beastie, and… well, it’s chuffin’ lovely.

There was one word that popped into my head when I first started playing with this screen: Android. The way you sweep left and right between the sideways extensions of the main homescreen is out and out Google Android… and that’s no bad thing, because the Android interface rocks. So, what you get here is possibly as far removed from the Windows Mobile standard front end as possible. It really does bring your WinMo phone up to the level of the more user-friendly (at least in the eyes of a lot of consumers) phones out there, like the HTC Magic or the Palm Pre.

Ah, but… it’s not just slick. The similarities to Android go a step further, because the whole Lifestyle screen, by means of the current buzzword in interfaces: Widgets.

Customisation

With the Lifestyle homescreen, customisation’s taken to a level far beyond what WinMo phones have achieved in the past, bringing it easily up to par with the likes of Android or the iPhone (it’s not just about changing the wallpaper, now, although of course, you can still do that too). And widgets are the key to that.

And if you’re wondering what widgets are, the pic on the right, over there, should help. A widget’s a little icon that sits on the screen. It can be a clock, or an app shortcut, or a favourite contact, or whatever. Crucially, though, you can also move them about, and put them wherever you want them. So, the Lifestyle home screen I now use all the time doesn’t just have a custom wallpaper, the entire layout of the interface, and where each widget is, has been built from the ground up, by me.

SPB Mobile shell, like Android, really does take customisation to a new level, and lets you set up not just what your phone looks like, but how you interact with it. That rocks. Big time.

Finger-Friendly, Fast as F……

Needless to say, the whole point of the SPB Mobile Shell is to make an interface for Windows Mobile that doesn’t need you to whip your stylus out to use it. In short, it’s designed to be finger-friendly, with big icons, and kinetic scrolling in menus (you know, where you flick through them with your finger, instead of using a menu bar on the right hand side). It succeeds beautifully, and in the time I’ve been using SPB, I’ve had to get my stylus out only about twice. And that was for when I drilled down into WinMo’s own menus.

The other crucial factor in how luvverly SPB Mobile Shell is… is speed. Now admittedly the Sony Ericsson X1 is a fast and powerful phone, but that alone can’t account for how blisteringly fast and responsive SPB is on it. That’s down to software, and in this case it must be frighteningly well-coded because, as I say, it is lightning fast. I mean lightning as in ZERO lag when, for example, flicking between the Lifestyle home’s three screens. And that’s just on my X1; I can’t wait to see it running on something like the Toshiba TG01, with a Snapdragon processor, since I think it’d run fast enough to take your hand off.

Conclusion

You’ve probably already gathered that I am head over heels in love with SPB Mobile Shell 3. I mentioned TouchFlo 3D at the start of this post, since that’s considered to be the high water mark for WinMo phones. Well, although TouchFlo is undeniably good (and Matthew’s gonna hate me for saying this), I can honestly say I reckon the SPB front end relieves itself all over it. The comparisons with Android, on the Lifestyle screen, are obvious, but is that a bad thing? SPB Mobile Shell 3 takes a powerful phone, and makes it into a pretty and intuitive, finger-friendly phone. It has one or two flaws, like the completely pointless screen carousel (pictured to the right), which you won’t use ever (and which is more or less replicating the Panels interface on the X1, but with just SPB’s screens), but that pointless inclusion doesn’t in any way detract from the other, vastly more important aspects of the interface.

There is really no competition. If you use a Windows Mobile phone (even one with TouchFlo 3D), SPB Mobile Shell 3 will make your phone even better than you already think it is. It’s not that cheap, coming in at $29.95 (about £18.80 in real money), but the price is worth it, and this is about as essential as software gets.

Verdict: it rocks. Buy it. You won’t regret it.

Now it’s your turn… SPB Mobile Shell or TouchFlo? Which do you prefer? Leave us a comment and have your say!

Well, I’ve been promising it for a while, and here it is! I’ve sat down with the newly-released HTC Magic, to try and find out if I actually like it more then the T-Mobile G1, a phone that showed definite promise, but that I can’t say I liked. Will the HTC Magic fair any better? Will I actually rate it as a decent phone? Or is it possible I might even fall in love with it?

Or will I think it’s like its predecessor, potentially a good phone, but fundamentally not as good as it should be?

Eagle-eyed regular readers should already be able to answer that, but for the rest of you…

Read on…

First Impressions

Now this is more like it. One of the big things I didn’t like about the G1 was its looks. I always thought it looked a bit plasticky, with the big chin it had making it a look a little comical. In essence, as many people said, it looked like a phone that had been designed 3 years in the past. Not so with the HTC Magic, because although it’s still got a hint of ‘plastickiness’ about it, HTC have gone out of their way to make it look vastly sexier. Even the white version (a phone colour I’m not mad keen on) has something about it, and the removal of the QWERTY keyboard definitely makes for a slimmer, more alluring handset. Oh, and with the HTC Magic, the vast chin’s been toned down, so that now, it actually looks like a decent piece of phone sculpture. In short, looks-wise, it’s a vast improvement!

Interface

The big thing with the G1 was always its Android operating system, and the same’s true with the HTC Magic. There’s a difference here, though, because the removal of the keyboard’s meant that they’ve had to build in a software keyboard, something the first build of Android lacked. So, the HTC Magic comes with the ‘Cupcake’ version of Android, and that software keyboard is the biggest addition. It’s pretty nice to use, as well, although I have the same complaints with it that I always do with virtual keyboards, being a hardware button basher. That said, if you want a device without hardware keys, this is one of the better-equipped ones on the market.

The interface itself will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever seen Android before, since it’s remained unchanged. You get the same widgety front end, the same flicky-scrolly motions through menus and screens, and all the other bits that made Android nice. I do have to wonder how it will compare to the Palm Pre, though, since that phone’s WebOS looks like it can’t be beaten in terms of usability and simplicity, but all in all, judged on its own merits, the HTC Magic’s interface is really rather nice.

App Store & Google Integration

Ah yes, the other thing the T-Mobile G1 was famous for… Many pundits have said that third party software is the most important battleground mobile phones will fight on this year, and the evidence so far is compelling. You’ve got the Windows Marketplace coming later in the year, there’ll be the Ovi Store for the Nokia N97, there’s always the Apple App Store of course… and in the HTC Magic’s case, there’s the Android Marketplace.

With Android being open source, theoretically it should be able to get a massive variety of apps, with the only limits being people’s imaginations. Anyone who read my post last week about StarDroid will know just how cool you can expect the software on Android to be, and that really is the tip of the iceberg. Oh, and you still get the tight integration with things like Googlemail, Googletalk, and Docs, so it really is a phone for the online lifestyle.

Internet & Web Applications

Again, there are no surprises here, to anyone who’s ever tried Android, as the HTC Magic inherits the same web browser (which is a good thing, ‘cos it’s nice). With full support for tabbed browsing, and finger friendly controls, it really is good. It’s not quite the canine’s conkers, as there’s the odd bit of lag here and there, but nothing that’s going to be hugely detrimental to your online experience.

Of course, you do get a few other rather nice web apps to go along with it. Quite apart from the intense level of Google Apps integration I already mentioned (with Googlemail being the one you’ll use every day), you get the same Youtube client that was found in the G1. Again, that’s a good thing, because Youtube were sweet as a nut on the G1, and the HTC Magic’s no different. In other words, it’s top stuff.

Hardware Features

Now we come to the bit where the HTC Magic doesn’t fair so well: the camera. With the Magic, you only get a 3.2MP cam, y’see, and nowadays, that’s nothing particularly exciting. Having said that, you do get decent pics for a 3megger, but it could have been a lot bigger, especially since the UK’s going to get a 12MP camera this year, in the shape of the Sony Ericsson Idou.

In other areas, though, the HTC Magic comes up trumps, with built-in GPS and digital compass, and about 93million accelerometers to work out what position the phone’s in, what angle you’re viewing it at, and so on. With apps like the aforementioned StarDroid that can integrate with those features perfectly, it’s rather nice to have ‘em!

Final Thoughts

I love the HTC Magic. I never thought I’d say that about an Android phone (what with my nagging feeling Google would be watching everything you do, to send you adverts), but I really genuinely like it. The interface is spot on, the third party apps are sublime, and it looks very pretty. There are a couple of things I didn’t like, though. One, it would’ve been nice to see it with a 3.5-4 inch screen, to give the web browser a bit more room to breathe, and two, it’s a Vodafone-exclusive. So, if you want one, but you can’t get Voda in your area, you’re not in luck. That’s a potential deal-breaker, but if you’re happy with going on Vodafone, the HTC Magic is a top purchase.

Conclusion? It might not be perfect, but the HTC Magic is very, very, very, very, very good!

A definite 4.5 out of 5…

Have you snagged the HTC Magic? Do you love it? Or do you disagree with this review? Leave us a comment and have your say!

Well, I told you about the new Youtube app that Youtube themselves have released, on Monday, and as promised, it’s time for my hands on with it.

So, let’s get right into it, and go right from the start, with installation. Or, more accurately, from trying to find the download link on Youtube’s site. As long time readers know by now, I’m using a Sony Ericsson X1, and I’ve got the default browser set as Opera Mobile. So, fired up Opera Mobile, scanned through for the link…

…and it’s nowhere to be found. In the end, I had to resort to using Internet Explorer on my phone, which isn’t the nicest browser in the world, but hey, all it entailed was clicking on a link, so I put up with it this one time.

Still, if anyone’s after getting the Youtube app, be aware that the download link might not show up in every browser. Why that is, I couldn’t tell you, but there you go.

So, installer downloaded, ‘yes’ is clicked, and I’ve left my Sony Ericsson X1 to one side while I finished typing up the original blog post. Glanced back at it a few seconds later, and bang, it was installed and ready to go!

Now onto the actual using of the Youtube app. Time to see if it’s really as fast as Youtube say it is. And, well, the easy answer is ohhhhhhhhhhhhh yes, it really, really is! It loads up pretty much instantly on tapping the icon, and then you get into the main interface. I’ve got to admit, it’s really rather nice. With a simple, clean interface, finding your way around the app’s going to be a doddle. And as for speed… well, I did a search on Sony Ericsson X1, so I could screenshot something for you to see, and the list of videos appeared approximately 3 nanoseconds later.

Now, THAT’s fast!

As for video playback, the videos I tried all ran really smoothly, with both visuals and sound playing beautifully.

So, in conclusion, I reckon Youtube weren’t kidding when they said about the speed increases. It’s fast, it’s responsive, and even better, it’s free. So, if you’re a fan of videos on the fly, and you’re running either Windows Mobile or Symbian S60 (but NOT Symbian UIQ, just clear that up), get on your phone, get over to m.youtube.com, and get the app today!

Oh, but be aware, if you’re using it through a 3G connection, it’ll eat your data allowance…

Leave us a comment and share your own experiences with the Youtube App! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest news and reviews from the world of mobile phones!

I was having a gander through our news pages the other day, as one does, and a story caught my eye, about a new mobile game called Mystery Mania, that people are raving about. Now, the people who know me well know that generally, mobile games are of about as much interest to me as the 1903 Croatian Ladies’ football team, but after a quick read through of the story, I was intrigued.

So, bought, downloaded, and played with, to see what the fuss is about (and I eventually found it on Sony Ericsson’s own site, for £4.50).

Ooooooooooh, the little robot dude in it, F8 is reet cute! A little robot detective with a head apparently made from the monitor on an Acorn Electron has stolen my heart. The game’s story begins with F8 suddenly being brought online in a deserted mansion, with no memory of who he is, how he got there, why there’s an alarm going off, or where The Investor is. So, off you go, through the mansion, solving a little mini-mystery in each room, to progress further and further along, find out who you are, why you’re there and so on.

Pretty standard puzzle game type stuff, then. The interface is dead easy to master, and the puzzles (none of which are particularly taxing) are fun to work out.

What sets Mystery Mania apart though, as reviews of it have said, is the fact it’s got personality coming out of its earholes. F8 is eminently adorable, especially when you pick the wrong bit to use as a solution to whatever mystery presents itself, and he gets flung across the room in comical fashion. That leads on to my favourite bit of the game: you can’t die. Even when you do completely the wrong thing, you always recover (no Lara Croft style impaling on spikes, here), dust yourself off and carry on in the same lovably robotic way.

All in all, it’s not a long game, by any stretch of the imagination, and the puzzles aren’t particularly taxing (except for two rooms that had me pulling my hair out), but it’s fun. Pure fun. And if you want a game on your phone that you’ll really enjoy playing, get Mystery Mania, right now…

Favourite bit? F8 kicking a landmine to make it work…

(Reviewed on a Sony Ericsson X1)

Have you played Mystery Mania? Leave us a comment and share your love for F8!

You may recall that I finally got to fiddle about with an HTC Touch HD, yesterday, and promptly fell a little bit in love with it. This gave me an opportunity to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while; it’s well known that when the HTC Touch HD was announced, a lot of people called it the ‘iPhone-Killer’ (including, if I’m honest, myself). But now I’ve got access to one, and since I also have access to an iPhone 3G, I reckon it’s about time we actually put these two big name mobile phones up against each other, don’t you?

So, welcome to the big fight live, the showdown we’ve all been waiting to see, and one that, surprisingly, I’m going to be completely objective about… In the blue corner, we have the iPhone 3G, and in the red corner, coming in swinging, it’s the HTC Touch HD.

And since they’re so evenly matched, this promises to be one epic showdown!

1. Screen

In the first category it’s a straight up, out and out battle between the screens on these two touch-friendly mobile phones. Coming in at 3.5 inches, the iPhone 3G has an admittedly beautiful glass screen, displaying 320×480 pixels, and 16 million colours. However, the HTC Touch HD sports a 3.8 inch screen, and that’s always been its biggest (physically, as well as metaphorically) selling point.

Oh, and the resolution is much higher on the HTC Touch HD, too, coming in at a whopping 480×800 pixels, more than twice the number of pixels the iPhone 3G can display. Granted, it only displays 65,000 colours on screen, but to be frank, in normal usage, that’s not going to be such a massive deal, since at that vastly higher resolution, the HTC Touch HD renders what colours it does display beautifully. Based on the sheer size and resolution of the screen, the HTC Touch HD takes the victory in the screen category. It really does have a screen that needs to be seen to be believed.

2. Interface

Here’s where users of the iPhone 3G really shout how advanced their mobile phone is: the interface. Based on OSX, it is incredibly fast, and hugely simple to use. Of course, it’s not just about simplicity, as any iPhone user will tell you, because the interface on the iPhone 3G is designed to be fun, too, letting you do ostensibly silly things like pinching on the screen (which you can do with two fingers, as the iPhone 3G supports multitouch) to zoom in and out on things, or flick through lists with one finger, that keep moving after you’ve flicked them, an example of the cool software trick known as kinetic scrolling, where it emulates real physics.

Of course, that pretty much describes the HTC Touch HD as well, since it uses finger swipes and fingers slides to navigate round things. In fact, the only thing missing from the HTC Touch HD is multitouch and to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure that having it is a necessity. I even found that the pinchy motion made my hand hurt like mad, so I prefer the look and feel of the HTC Touch HD’s interface. However, the iPhone 3G interface was faster, and despite the Touch HD’s best efforts, the Apple contender was simpler, too, so this round goes to the iPhone 3G.

3. Internet

Ah yes, the other thing that iPhone 3G users trumpet as being the best thing since sliced bread: their Safari web browser. However, since I’m being objective, I will say this: the Safari web browser on the iPhone 3g really is very nice, and is one of the best web browsers seen on any mobile phones. With easy zoom and scrolling controls, and with the same flicking through the page action as you have on lists, it’s actually fun and intuitive to use.

However, and this may cause some controversy, after having tried out Opera Mobile on the HTC Touch HD, I can categorically state that there was very, VERY little difference between the two. The simple fact is that the browsing experience on the HTC Touch HD, thanks to Opera Mobile, is virtually indistinguishable from Safari on the iPhone 3G. However, since both mobile phones were on O2, and therefore have the same signal, it quickly became readily apparent that the HTC Touch HD loads pages a bit faster than the iPhone 3G, and so, it takes the crown in this category.

4. Camera

This category really isn’t going to be any contest at all, given how I’ve gone on at great length, previously, about how poor the iPhone 3G’s camera is. Even at 2 megapixels, it’s not, I felt, a particularly good 2 megapixel camera, and the number of mobile phones that can outclass it in this area is phenomenal. Compare that to the HTC Touch HD, with a 5 megapixel camera, and the difference is striking. However, it’s a bit of a hollow victory for the HTC Touch HD, because quite frankly, as neither mobile phones have a flash, neither are what you’d call exceptional camera phones…

5. Photo Viewer

The photo viewer on the iPhone 3G is one of its key strengths, always has been, thanks to the sheer speed that images load, and that you can navigate your way round them. Even when you’ve gone into the photo itself, scrolling through them is fast and easy. And despite me really not liking that pinchy thing that iPhone 3G users always go on about, it is used to good effect here.

Contrast that with the HTC Touch HD, which aims to do something even more fun, but with the same user-friendliness, allowing you to flick up or down to go through the pics. However, it’s no way near as fast as the iPhone 3G, because you can only flick up one photo at a time, and then, if you show the photo full screen, the movement to scroll through goes from up/down, to sideways, which can get confusing sometimes. For that reason, the iPhone 3G takes this round.

6. Text Entry

One of the big things about the iPhone 3G and the HTC Touch HD is that both of them are keyboard-less, so you’re going to be using a virtual keyboard on both. With the iPhone, I found it a bit hard to use, as it seemed to not recognise the key I was pressing worryingly often. I will say that it would get easier over time, but there is a steep learning curve in using it.

Meanwhile, on the HTC Touch HD, the virtual keyboard fairs better, as it has, very simply, bigger keys. I found it much, much easier to use, and made less errors when I was typing out the test message (which was rude, so I won’t repeat it, and yes, I did leave it on their respective screens for Matt and Dan to find). As well as that, the HTC Touch HD comes with a stylus, and since it doesn’t have one of those new-fangled capacitive, it will let you use handwriting recognition, which even recognised my scrawl, so it’s really rather advanced. Oh, and since it also has copy/paste, the HTC Touch HD wins this round…

7. Music

I’m going to reverse the order for this bit, and do the HTC Touch HD first. You’ll see why in a minute (the more astute of you have probably guessed why). The HTC Touch HD does have a rather nice music player, with the up/down flicky motion used this time to scroll through your albums. It’s a rather nice player, and the sound quality ain’t half bad, either.

As for the iPhone 3G, the sound quality is inferior, as it has been on every iPod I’ve ever used or tried, ever. However… and this is a big’n… it makes up for that with one word: iTunes. The iPhone 3G comes with iTunes built in, and lets you buy and download songs straight to the phone itself. For that reason, despite the inferior sound quality, the iPhone 3G has to win this round.

8. 3rd Party Apps and Software

Thanks to the App Store, the iPhone 3G has access to a huge range of software to pick and choose from, some of it tat, some of it genius. The downside that many commentators have mentioned is that you have to wade through a huge amount of cack to find the really decent apps. Plus, there’s a lot of stupid software been developed for the iPhone 3G; the imitation Zippo lighter springs immediately to mind.

Meanwhile, on the HTC Touch HD, you can again install third party software, and with it being Windows Mobile, there’s a huge array of really, really top-end software available for it, from Pocket Office, to instant messaging clients that actually work, to a whole new web browser, Skyfire, which promises to be the best mobile browser the world’s ever experienced. However, despite that, the iPhone 3G’s gonna win, for two reasons: 1/ Google Earth and 2/ as in an earlier blog post, Metal Gear Solid Touch…

9. General Feel & Usefulness

So, now we come down to brass tacks, how does each mobile phone make you feel? Well, with the HTC Touch HD, there’s is no escaping just what a powerful high-end smartphone it really is, with power dripping out of every pore. You always get the distinct feeling, when using it, that the HTC Touch HD will do whatever you want it to do really well. With the iPhone 3G, however, as nice and as funky a phone as it is, it doesn’t have that same feeling, it doesn’t feel like you’re using something that, if left to its own devices, could become self-aware and take over humanity (yep, another Terminator reference, there). The HTC Touch HD feels more composed, more capable, whereas the iPhone 3G, despite it being an undoubted laugh, doesn’t feel as good when it’s being a mobile phone. With that in mind, the HTC Touch HD takes the final round…

And the winner is…

So, who’s won? We’ve come all this way, and you’ll notice I’ve cunningly used 9 different categories, so that there would be a definite winner. We don’t do tiebreakers round here, no sah! So, here’s the big moment… speaking objectively, and totting up the scores from these 9 categories, the winner, with a score of 5-4 is…

The HTC Touch HD!

However, it was very close. And let’s not forget my central belief that people should have the phone that’s right for them, and if you want something that’s undoubtedly more fun, and is best described as a “smart-ish phone for non-smartphone users”, then yep, the iPhone 3G is the beastie for you.

If, however, you want a truly powerful mobile phone that will benefit you like no other, you need to grab the HTC Touch HD today!

Time for a post answering a question I had come through in my email today. In their own words, “Is the S2 Skype Phone by 3 actually any good?”

Well, it’s an intriguing question, because this isn’t a mobile phone you can compare to, say, the Nokia N96. It’s not designed to be the ultimate multimedia powerhouse, or be a portable cinema.

What the Three Skypephone S2 is designed to do, though, is give you masses upon masses of communication options, and if you judge on its own terms, then it comes out as a superb mobile phone. First up is the killer feature, and the bit that should be obvious from the name: the Three Skypephone S2 has got Skype in it, straight out the box. Not only does this give you free calls to all of your Skype contacts, but it also gives you free SkypeOut minutes to call overseas numbers.

What, you may ask, does that amount to?

Basically, with the Three Skypephone S2, unlike just about all other mobile phones on the market, you’d get, effectively, free international calls straight out the box!

That’s rather good, that!

As with the first Skypephone, the Three Skypephone S2 also gives you instant access to Facebook, MSN Messenger and email. But it does more than that… you see, this beastie is almost unique amongst mobile phones, in that you can plug it in to your PC or your laptop, and use the Three Skypephone S2 as a USB modem.

In other words, it’s like getting mobile broadband AND a mobile phone in one device. And it’s got a 3 megapixel camera, a superb music player, HSDPA and a brilliantly intuitive interface.

So, if you hadn’t guessed the verdict: the Three Skypephone S2 is utterly, utterly brilliant! Grab yourself one today!