Hands On: Motorola Droid 4 and Droid RAZR MAXX
Motorola unveiled the Droid 4 and Droid RAZR MAXX at CES. We got to take a hands-on look at them.
LAS VEGAS—CES has been full of exciting announcements, and Motorola didn't disappoint, introducing two new additions to the Droid family. There's the Droid 4, which is the thinnest 4G LTE smartphone currently available, and the Droid RAZR MAXX, the longest lasting LTE device in Verizon's lineup. PCMag got to take a hands-on look at both of them.
Let's start with the Droid 4, the latest in Motorola's keyboarded Droid family. The Droid 3 was a disappointment, because while it was powered by a dual-core processor, it lacked access to Verizon's 4G LTE network. That's been changed with the Droid 4, which joins the Samsung Stratosphere as the second keyboarded LTE smartphone on Verizon.
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Though nowhere near as svelte as the Droid RAZR, the Droid 4 is surprisingly thin, given the keyboard and LTE support, two qualities that usually make for a thicker phone. It measures 5.0 by 2.7 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 6.3 ounces, but it felt lighter than that. Check out the slideshow to see how thick is looks next to the Droid RAZR MAXX.
The real draw here, though, is the keyboard. And what a keyboard it is. The keys are chiclet-style, which Motorola claims was done to mimic a laptop keyboard. They've been laser cut, so they're super sharp and precise. Coated in soft touch plastic, the keys are backlit by an LED light and felt absolutely fantastic to type on. I was able to type quickly, easily, and accurately on the Droid 4. Other Verizon phones should be put on notice: This is the keyboard to be beat.
Motorola is also stressing the business-ready capabilities of the Droid 4. It comes with government-grade encryption (FIPS 140-2) for email, calendars, and contacts. It's also been preloaded with Citrix Receiver for Android (available in webtop) for desktop virtualization and access.
Another exciting new addition to Verizon's lineup is the Droid RAZR MAXX. This one's simple to explain: It's basically a Droid RAZR that's put on a little weight. Luckily, that weight comes in the form of a larger 3300 mAh battery (that's compared to the RAZR's 1780 mAh battery). It adds a bit of depth to the original RAZR's ultra-slim profile, but get this: That larger battery should be good for an astounding 21 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge.
The RAZR MAXX is 0.35 inches thick, or only 0.07 inches thicker than the regular Droid RAZR. Other than that, the MAXX is essentially the same exact phone as Droid RAZR—it has the same software and hardware. The display looked great and the phone felt plenty responsive as I swiped between home screens and loaded up apps.
Both the Droid 4 and Droid RAZR MAXX will ship with Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread). Motorola has promised an upgrade to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) for within the second quarter of the year. Additionally, both phones work with Motorola's host of companion accessories that, among other things, allow you to use the phones as Linux-based laptops.
Pricing and release dates have not been announced, but Motorola says that both phones should be available in the coming weeks. Check back with PCMag for a full review of each phone as soon as they are available.
BlackBerry Torch 9860 Hands On Photos
Here are some photos of the BlackBerry Torch 9860 which is a full-touch BlackBerry smartphone.We got our hands on the Torch 9860 at the India launch recently. The device was launched last week for Rs.28490It runs on BlackBerry OS 7 and is powered by a 1.2 GHz processor. The device will surely appeal to users who are constantly on the road reading email and don’t really need the traditional BB keyboard. We should be reviewing the device on FoneArena shortly, so stay tuned.
Nokia 701 Photos : Hands On
Nokia announced the 701 along with the 600 and 700 at the event in Hong Kong. We got our hands on the Nokia 701 and it is certainly a well designed phone taking cues from the C7. Nokia claims the phone is the brightest phone in the market( We are checking if its brighter than the LG Optimus Black). Take a look at the photos below. Video coming really soon.
We decided to put the phone under a powerful light which was very powerful and we could still manage to read the text on the screen.
Nokia 600 Photos – Hands On
Just when everyone was thinking , Symbian has reached it’s end Nokia surprised us by launching 3 new Symbian phones running the newest version of Symbian – Belle and packing other interesting goodies such as a 1GHz Processor and NFC ( Near Field Communication ). We got our hands on the most affordable phone of the trio – the Nokia 600 which is also supposed to be the loudest smartphone from Nokia so far. Take a look at the pics below. A video should be up soon as well.
The 600 was pretty fast and a bit thicker than the rest. It has an inbuilt FM Radio receiver and a 5 MP Camera on the back which is also capable of HD video recording.
Looks like they have done something different with the microUSB cover.
Nimbuzz Ping Officially Launched in India , We Go Hands On !
Over here at FoneArena , we are very appreciative of the work that is being done by Nimbuzz. An active support team which constantly listens to consumer feedback coupled with constant addition of innovative services has led to their roaring success. The service adds over 100k users everyday and has over 10 million active users from India alone. So when the company launched their Ping service in Indonesia earlier this year as we found out from our interview with Nimbuzz earlier this year, we were genuinely interested. As soon as we got word that the service has been officially launched in India , we just had to give it a spin.
What is Nimbuzz Ping ? Its a very innovative solution to the problem of being constantly online. A constantly online service is definitely a battery drain but if you go offline , you might miss that important conversation with a friend. Phones which do not have a proper push notification system miss out on that front but not now. The service ties into the SMS messaging system of the phone and uses it in the form of notifications. Anytime someone ‘Pings’ you on Nimbuzz (no pun intended) , the server sends you an SMS message which then provides you a link to launch the application and continue the conversation. The following video should help you understand the service a bit more.
The service is completely opt-in and is NOT activated when you install the application. I think it is a smart move as it puts all privacy related concerns at bay. In order to test out the service, i decided to do an installation from scratch to see how intuitive it actually is for a normal user. Launching Nimbuzz leads you to a log in box , on entering your credentials, you will be greeted by a loading screen as Nimbuzz pulls in your contacts.
A quick tap on the settings button bring you to the next pane. The Nimbuzz Ping tab is very clearly marked out here instead of being buried under menus.
Enabling the service is a simple deal of switching the tab from ‘Off’ to ‘On’. The application then registers your number with the server to enable the ‘Push’ notifications.
Whenever Nimbuzz is switched off and one of your contacts wants to chat with you an SMS message is pushed to your phone. A sample message can be seen below.
Following which you can switch on Nimbuzz as usual and continue your chat. Any message sent previously remains in the chat window. Small touch but which helps in maintaining continuity, while messaging.
Nimbuzz Ping is not a revolutionary service but it is a fantastic addition to an already great application. We are genuinely excited by the potential here. This will be invaluable to the millions of people using Nimbuzz for chat on feature phones. The free service has been launch on Aircel in India and there are plans to spread to other operators as well soon.
Have any of you tested out the service yet ? Is it working on operators other than Aircel as well ? Let us know in the comments below !
Exclusive : The Epic Nokia N950 Hands On !
The first Nokia Harmattan / MeeGo device , the Nokia N9 , has been garnering rave reviews everywhere. However there is one more MeeGo phone ie the developer only Nokia N950. Rumor has it that the N950 was supposed to be launched in 2010 as the first MeeGo device but got canned. Nokia has been handing these out to select developers to spurt the development of Qt apps for the N9 as well as the next billion Qt enabled devices.
I got the opportunity to play around with the device for a while and check out the much touted MeeGo OS. Can I say that i’m in love ? Yes , MeeGo is as great as it was ever hyped up to be. The hardware feels solid, the software is silky smooth and moreover, stable. The multitasking implementation is excellent. In short, the phone works great!
The N950 comes with a 4 row QWERTY keyboard. The keys here feel better than the E7's admittedly awesome keyboard. Check out the video overview of the hardware below :
The matte black finish of the N950 makes it look like a stealth fighter and that is definitely a great thing in my opinion!
4 Row QWERTY
When closed , the N950 is just about as thick as the N8 / E7.
Not much has been said about office documents on the N950. While no office suite was installed on our prototype , the inbuilt document viewer easily runs PDFs , Presentations and other Office files. Check out the video to take a look at the document viewer.
The browser on the N9 / N950 is based on Webkit2. The browser feels like a proper successor to microB on the N900 albeit without Flash support. 
Video demo of browser :
For those of you who really care about browser benchmarks, the N950 browser scored very well in the HTML5 test scoring 283 points our of a possible 450. 
The entire HTML5 test results can be seen via this video :
A nice change can be seen in the calendar application which integrates and syncs well with Google Calendar. The UI is very intuitive and the split screen view ensures that you get your information straight up without requiring to dig into the menu.
The following video should give you a quick overview of the new calendar app.
Nokia’s Ovi Maps application is well known for its amazing turn - by - turn navigation and offline map data capabilities. Well the next generation of Ovi Maps is Nokia Drive. The application is extremely responsive even in its beta state and would pose a serious threat to Google Maps if brought over to the Windows and Symbian platforms.
Startup Splashscreen :
Main UI :
Settings :
Video Demo :
The camera is another aspect of the N9 which is better than most others out there. In our experience, the shot- to shot time was surprisingly low. Another delight was the thoughtfully designed camera UI in contrast to the complex mess we have on Symbian.
Gallery button, camera key, mode switch :
Camera Settings :
Video Demo of the Camera UI :
Nokia has implemented a 3 pane approach to the UI. The central screen houses all the application icons. Swiping to the right shows the multitasking window while swiping to the left reveals a single combined notifications panel.
Multitasking window :
Notifications Panel :
The Facebook integration on the phone is rather great. Your wall posts show up in the notification pane and you can directly jump to the Facebook app from there. The following video demo shows the notification pane and Facebook integration.
The Nokia N900 was well known for its implementation of multitasking where all the apps were shown in there live state. This multitasking paradigm lives on in the N9 with some enhancements. You can now change the size of the multitasking tiles. Having 1 GB of RAM definitely helps as we were able to easily switch between 30+ applications without any lag at all.
This video should give you a better idea of the multitasking capabilities of the phone:
One of the most appreciated features of the N900 was its inbuilt full fledged terminal which made accessing the internals of the operating system a cinch. While not installed by default on the N9 and N950, it can still be installed. The terminal has been given a bit of an overhaul as can be seen below.
Terminal in portrait mode :
Terminal in landscape mode :
Video overview of the terminal :
Keep scrolling down for more N950 hotness !
N950 meets the Nokia E6
Which keyboard do you prefer ?
Mail Client
Viewing mail attachments
Swipe UI in Action
Landscape Swiping
Calculator
Contacts Page
Contact Details (Pulls Facebook image , status)
Terminal Mode
About Page
Software Update Notification on the Homescreen