I’ve used quite a few tablets in the last year, and indeed I now own three of them (don’t ask!) including the Touchpad and now the Playbook.  So which is better and how does RIM’s model stack up against the competition?

The Blackberry Playbook has a 7 inch screen, a 1GHz processor, 1Gb of RAM and comes with either 16Gb, 32Gb or 64Gb of storage.  It weighs a dinky 425 grams.  By comparison the HP Touchpad has a 9.7 inch screen a 1.2GHz processor, 1Gb RAM and either 32Gb or 64Gb storage, weighing a heftier 740 grams and the iPad 2, also with a 9.7 inch screen contains a 1GHz dual-core processor, 512Mb RAM, 16Gb, 32Gb or 64Gb of storage but weighs in at a much more reasonable 610 grams.

The Playbook does have certain advantages over the competition however which start with a micro-HDMI socket and include extras such as a touch-sensitive bezel, clearly labelled controls on the outer edge and two cameras, a 3MP affair on the front and a healthy 5MP camera on the rear.  This is compared to the woeful 1.3MP webcam on the Touchpad.  The battery life on the Playbook is also excellent, being a match for the Touchpad, but perhaps not the huge battery life of the iPad 2.

The screen is excellent but the resolution is only 1024 x 600 and this results in a fair amount of scrolling being necessary in order to read a full web page or document.  The included software bundle is generally speaking bog standard with apps for the camera, mapping (using the on board GPS which doesn’t work anywhere near as well as the TouchPad), music and music store, video (and YouTube), pictures, video chat (but only with other Playbooks which seems pointless), Calculator, Adobe Reader, Weather, Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail and Gmail (the last three are simply links to the relevant websites), app store and voice notes.  There is also DataViz’ excellent Documents to go for creating and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

I encountered a significant problem with my Playbook however in that these apps aren’t delivered in flash memory with the OS itself but are rather downloaded from the cloud and Rim’s own servers.  The update server was down when I got my machine and so for almost an entire day my tablet had nothing more on it than the web browser.  This is the achilles heel of RIM’s services as their servers do seem to go down with some regularity.  To have a hardware device that you’ve bought and paid for so tightly integrated with the company’s own servers is something of a worry.

The software is missing a few key apps.  There are currently no native email and calendaring apps (though these are coming later this month with the next OS release so this shouldn’t put you off buying one) and the machine and screen lock feature doesn’t work properly, it asked me for a password every time I turned the machine on even though I had told it to only lock after 30 minutes.  Hopefully this is something else that will be sorted out.

The app store is well stocked but not quite as well stocked as I might have hoped and it can be difficult and fiddly to navigate and find what you want.  I thought the app store on the Touchpad was fairly barren but the Playbook’s store is not much better.

With the OS itself I found some simple tasks, such as closing a browser window, took two actions where on other devices they would only take one, and the left-right swipe action needed to select a running app on the home screen to open was often over-zealous and swiped straight past the one you wanted.  Despite these niggles though the OS is certainly polished, very fast indeed and very responsive.  I really like it.

One of the problems I faced with my Touchpad was being unable to hold it in one hand when using it, it’s just too heavy and bulky for that, as is the iPad.  I was hoping then that a smaller 7 inch tablet would solve these problems.  Alas it’s still just a little heavy and left my hand aching between my thumb and forefinger after holding it for moderate periods.  Resting it on the knee doesn’t work too much either as it’s just too small for that and suddenly you find it’s too far away.  It can also get a little hot in extended use.

You might think then that I don’t like the Playbook and wouldn’t recommend it.  In fact quite the opposite is true.  For the problems and niggles there is also much to like.  RIM’s QNX operating system is very similar to WebOS in many ways, almost always in ways that make it intuitive and simple to operate.  It’s nice to see that RIM have put a great deal of focus on ease of use and they’ve certainly succeeded.

It is very small and light too, so if you’re looking for something to use on the daily commute this won’t get in the way and will be very comfortable to use in an airline seat too, where larger tablets can be too big.  I’d have liked to have seen a 3G/4G slot on something so portable, and this is a complaint I commonly make about tablets and laptops, but for these new super-cheap prices I couldn’t really complain.

It’s this new low price though that really sells the tablet to me.  In build quality, form factor and weight it’s every bit the competitor to Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet, but now it also competes keenly on price.  With that excellent screen it’s a very capable eBook reader but doesn’t have the Amazon Kindle-store-focused front-end.  If you’re after your first tablet you won’t get any better for the price.  If you want a tablet to use seriously though and don’t mind spending more, then you might be better looking at the available Android machines.

The handset that Nokia sent me was the black model that’s the first time come to market.  The Lumia 800 will soon be available in several colours including a very fetching pale blue.  It’s almost identical in the hardware to their recent MeeGo handset, the N9 and is very fetching too.  The glass expanse on the front that covers almost the entire front of the handset is extremely attractive and the build quality overall is of an extremely high quality.

Internally it’s a little better than other Windows Phones with a 1,400MHz processor, the usual 512Mb of RAM but a healthy 16Gb of storage.  There are also all the features you’d expect in a modern smartphone.  Externally the handsets sports a 3.7 inch AMOLED screen and an 8 MP camera with a Carl Zeiss Lens, usually the preserve of companies such as Sony, a a dual LED flash.

There is little doubt in my mind that the Lumia 800 is a thing of beauty and every bit as desirable as the Apple alternative, if not even more so.  When you actually live with the handsets though is the experience always as pleasurable?  I set about finding out.

The Lumia 800 has had a difficult birth.  When Microsoft and Nokia first announced their strategic partnership early this year there was a great deal of pressure already on the Finnish phone maker.  Their ageing Symbian operating system was failing in the market, their MeeGo platform with Intel was going nowhere and the company was admitting it was in trouble.  Nokia needed Microsoft as much as Microsoft needed Nokia.  This wasn’t a love-in, it was more like a desperate marriage to keep both parties afloat.

Despite a huge marketing campaign surrounding the Lumia 800 rumours have abounded of sluggish sales.  The company has also had to rush out a patch to fix an issue with poor battery life.

I was definitely looking forward to trying the Lumia 800 and have been looking forward to it for ages now, right from when I saw the first leaked images.

It’s a little heavier than some other Windows Phones, at 142g, and there’s not really any indication as to why as there’s not much more here than you’d find anywhere else.  Some people do like a slightly weighty phone though so they can feel it on their person.  It’s far from heavy though and will fit in a shirt pocket without sagging.

The screen is slightly disappointing.  It actually looks small under such a huge expanse of glass.  It’s lacking contrast too with whites looking a bit creamy on medium brightness.  Finally it suffers from the curse of all AMOLED screens with the live tiles in Windows Phone looking a little fuzzy around the edges if you get close.  The camera is a little disappointing too with images looking a bit washed out.  The camera with the Xenon flash on my Own HTC Mozart is far better and even the camera with an LED flash on the new HTC Titan is a big improvement over the Lumia.

I also have concerns about the USB socket.  This sits behind a plastic pop up flap on the top of the handset, next to the headphone jack.  The effect makes for a very clean outer but I can’t escape the nagging feeling that this flap will probably break over time, especially as you need to charge modern smartphones every day.The battery, like the iPhone, is non-removable but this shouldn’t be a problem for most.

It’s in the software though where this handset shines.  The Nokia Drive satnav app is by far the best addition with downloadable maps for most countries in the world available for free.  This enables you to use your phone as an in car or walking satnav without having to worry about maintaining a data connection.  This single app makes the Lumia 800 worth having on its own.  Elsewhere the custom Nokia software is less inspiring and mostly duplicates, though happily doesn’t replace, the in built Windows Phone apps for music and mapping.

So what do I think of the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone overall and am I disappointed?  In short I’m certainly not disappointed and I’m looking forward to using the phone in anger over Christmas and New Year.  It’s s perfect fit in the hand and very comfortable to hold when making calls, something not every Windows Phone is.  The software and hardware package overall is quite simply superb and the inclusion of a protectivive silicon rubber case and a low-profile charger means that for a first Windows Phone from Nokia I believe we can expect some very exciting things from the company going forward.

The HP though is a quandary.  While HP announced suddenly last week that they were dropping the TouchPad completely, but still supporting WebOS, the tech world went into shock.  After all, the TouchPad had barely been released when it was canned, and many outlets hadn’t even taken delivery of their stock yet.  As a tablet with the WebOS operating system on it though it’s had a huge amount of positive press in the last year and when the fire sales began with the tablets selling from only $99 (£89) around the world the only way to get one now will be on eBay.  The entire worldwide stock of TouchPads is sold out completely.

I was one of the people who bought a TouchPad in the fire sale, for all of you obviously so that I could review it.  But what is it like to use and more importantly, have all the people who’ve bought one wasted their money?

Let’s start with the actual hardware.  It’s an iPad’esque tablet with a standard ratio 1024 x 768 resolution IPS screen (though it’s a couple of hundred grams heavier than the iPad 2).  It contains a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1Gb of memory and comes with either 16Gb or 32Gb of storage; the 64Gb version is unlikely to ever see the light of day.  On the front there’s a 1.3MP webcam, but no camera on the back.  It’s got a volume rocker and a micro-USB port for charging and connecting to a PC or Mac where it shows up as USB storage to allow you to transfer files to it.  Battery life is good at around 7.5 hours.  This might lag a long way behind the iPad but unless you were an exceptionally unlucky early-adopter, your touchpad just cost you less than a quarter of the iPad’s price.

The back is piano-black plastic and the front is glass.  Some people have criticised the build saying it’s not up to the iPad 2′s standards.  It’s not, but in fairness it’s still excellent and one of the best built tablets I’ve yet seen.  There are stereo speaker ports on the bottom, or side edge (depending on how you hold it) which are truly excellent.  I had some trouble with the sound, ie. I didn’t have any at all and was getting worried.  A quick search online however revealed a software bug that was fixed by simply restarting the tablet.  I eventually found the shutdown and restart options rather worringly hidden behind a reset button in the OS and the speakers sprang into life.

I’m going to give a special mention to these speakers as they are simply the finest speakers I’ve ever encountered in a mobile device, and simply phenomenal for such a small device.  The range and distortion-free volume will project across a busy room giving pleasure to everyone there.  They might not be up to the quality of a good set of desktop speakers, but for a portable device they’re hard to match.

So what about the operating system?  Well I should start by saying that at times it can feel a bit laggy.  It’s slow to rotate the screen and occasionally feels a bit sluggish.  Apparently the tablet version of WebOS was developed by shoe-horning it onto an iPad 2 on which hardware it apparently performed much faster.

In general usage though WebOS on the TouchPad is very fast and extremely intuitive.  Programs and browser tabs are treated as cards which you can stack into piles and move around to form groupings.  To close an app or a browser tab you simply flick it off the top of the screen.  This interface is completely effortless, utterly intuitive and an absolute joy to use.  This simplicity extends to all aspects of the OS and while it might not allow you much control, which as a Windows user is one of the first things I miss, it’s extremely well organised and workflow becomes simple and joyous.

The on-screen keyboard is also a joy to use and even has a proper number row across the top unlike iOS and Android that includes all the standard symbols available on the shift key.  WebOS won’t let you slow it down with too many apps either.  If it detects performance will slow it will prompt you to close an app before opening a new one to keep performance speedy.

Where WebOS will be let down will be with app support.  So far there aren’t many TouchPad apps (identified by the “for TouchPad”) wording in the app store and with news that HP won’t be producing the hardware any more this will probably scare most developers away.  It’s best to assume that what we currently have so far as apps, and operating system updates too is going to be it.  The TouchPad you’ve just bought isn’t going to change much if at all during its lifetime.

To sum up the value of the HP TouchPad and whether it was worth the money for all those people who bought one it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.  It will forever be a limited device in apps and updates.  If you are the type of person who will want to do more with it in the future this will quickly drive you nuts.  If like me you’re happy to just have something that cost peanuts for a little light email and web browsing when you’re crashed out on the sofa, then it’s the bargain of the decade.

WebOS is every bit as polished a tablet operating system as iOS and indeed is far better in a great many ways, most notably the way it handles applications and multi-tasking.  The hardware is excellent all round and the IPS screen is absolutely glorious.  If you’re waiting on delivery of your shiny new TouchPad, you’re very right to be so excited.

To be fair to Google and Chrome OS I’m being a little unfair with the title of this article as some people will clearly be extremely happy living with a Chromebook as their primary computer.  I decided to give the “no” as my overall conclusion however because these demographic groups simply aren’t the majority.  Let me explain.

Google’s Chrome OS, which is a Linux based OS that is simply nothing more than a web browser, is an accomplished piece of work.  It’s very fast and responsive and for the 90% of things we do on computers that just happen to be online, perfectly good and usable.  After all, what’s the difference between using a web browser in an operating system and using a browser that is an operating system?

Unfortunately you don’t have to be using Chrome OS for very long before the limitations begin to creep in.  The lack of offline applications, proper ones anyway, for editing the documents we all use in our day to day lives, such as Word and Excel files and digital photographs is just galling.  Having to edit these documents in a web application is simply not good enough for most people.  These applications are limited anyway but even more so when you can only edit documents you have stored on that service.  Both Hotmail and Gmail will allow you to edit documents sitting in your inbox but email is a crummy way to transfer files around when we’ve got USB flash drives.  There is limited storage on Chromebooks and you can technically use this to store files that are later uploaded to Office Live or Google Docs, but that’s not the solution most people want.

It’s even worse when it comes to editing photos.  Most services these days, including the already excellent pixlr.com will take an age to upload a digital photograph from your camera, let alone a whole bunch of them.  Then having nowhere on your device to store these photos is very unhelpful.

I was interviewed by the IEEE back in January 2010 about Chrome OS, shortly after it was announced.  I was dubious about the concept then, saying that while Google might be confident that cloud-based services were the way forward, and that they might even be correct in that assumption, that the current infrastructure of the Internet simply isn’t good enough to permit it in any meaningful way.  This is the whole problem with Chrome OS, in that it’s just too ahead of its time.  There’s little wrong with the actual product, but your average Internet connection simply isn’t up to the job of working with it.

There are other ways in which Chrome OS falls down though beyond a lack of storage and a lack of a meaningful way to edit documents offline (though in fairness Google do say they’ll be adding offline support for Google Docs soon, and are rushing out Chrome OS updates very frequently).  The lack of any type of media player means you either have to use up your bandwidth listening to Spotify or YouTube, or you work in silence.  This isn’t much fun I can assure you, and I quickly found myself crying out for a media player.

There’s also the security issue.  While Google will argue that Chrome OS isn’t prone to viruses it is prone to malware that tries to trick ther user into parting with sensitive data.  The browser security goes some way to rectifying this but it’s still not enough and third-party malware detection apps are now beginning to appear in the Chrome OS web store.  This is a problem Google need to recognise and act upon if they’re going to behave responsibly.  With the ongoing debacle over Android security still raging though, I’m not getting my hopes up.

Finally there’s the backup and restore problem.  Chromebooks don’t come with a restore function.  In order to create one yourself you need to activate your Chromebook with your user account.  This primary account can never be deleted though so should you want to pass the device on to a friend it will be there forever.  This is a huge oversight and one that Google badly need to fix because I’ve certainly not found a way to do it.

Overall though there are too many failings in Chrome to recommend it for day to day usage for all but the most casual computer user.  This does bring me on to the categories of people who would like it though, these being children and pensioners.  For these two groups, who will have limited use for a computer except for games, browsing and messaging, Chrome OS is a great idea.  It’s simple to use, difficult to break (though my Chromebook crashed on me once on the first day) and does everything these people will need.

So can I recommend Google’s Chrome OS?  Well it’s not looking good so far but the hardware could still save it, and I’ll publish my full review of the Samsung Chromebook here in a couple of days.

Let’s start with why you might want to buy an illuminated keyboard.  It’s clear that a great deal of design effort has gone into these products, indeed Logitech has been putting much more effort into design generally.  I’ve recently bought a few of their products including the DiNovo Keyboard for netbooks for which the palm-wrest is a single piece of brushed aluminium and their HD Pro Webcam which shoots 1080p video with their ClearChat Wireless Headphones (and I’ll be reviewing these last two items soon).

Illuminated keyboards can be a real boon however, especially for the living room when people are winding down for the evening with the TV on and the lights are dimmed.  It makes everything much easier to use and I can tell you straight away that in this type of environment you will notice the benefits of an illuminated keyboard straight away.  But let’s have a look at these two particular high-end products.

Logitech Illuminated Keyboard

The Logitech Illuminated Ultrathin Keyboard with Backlighting is most definitely the more striking of the two.  I wasn’t too keen on the over-styled font used on the keys but there can be no doubt that this keyboard is extraordinarily pretty and exactly the sort of keyboard that will help make an all-in-one PC look stunning.

The action is smooth and quiet and there’s plenty on offer including media playback controls on a function key combination and dedicated controls for volume and a key to launch the ever-important calculator.

The keyboard is surrounded by a piece of clear plastic that sadly doesn’t also light up but that looks gorgeous.  The lighting itself has three brightness settings and can also be switched off when you don’t want it.  It’s not intrusive, even when sitting in the dark, but there’s bleed around the keys too instead of just through the middle.

In fairness this is a problem that’s common with illuminated keyboards and the wireless one suffers from the same problem, though not as badly.

One difference between the two keyboards is that the wired keyboard has a double height Del key and shuffles the Insertkey, which almost nobody uses any more, off to the top row of small function keys.  I found this makes a big difference as you might be surprised how often this key gets used.

Logitech Wireless Illuminated Keyboard

The Logitech wireless illuminated keyboard is a very different proposition.  It’s all curvy with big, bold letters on the keys in an almost comic sans font.  It’s clear here that Logitech have gone for comfort rather than looks and each key is slightly curved as as to make typing for long periods more comfortable.  This extends to the write-wrest too which is also curved.
The keyboard has a similar clear plastic strip around the outside, again not illuminated that adds to the chic appeal of the device, a helpful on-off switch and a very useful battery indicator.

You plug this keyboard in via the supplied Micro-USB cable and I found leaving it plugged in all the time except for when I wanted to use that cable to top up the charge on my phone.  It’s useful to be able to use it wired or wireless.

But how does power consumption work?  Logitech have tried to minimise the draining effect of the backlight by including a motion sensor into the keyboard that only turns it on when you’re near the device (it also comes on when you’re typing).  This motion sensor is in the top right of the device though near the battery life indicator and, I don’t know about you, but I don’t put my hand up[ there very often.  Putting the sensor in the wrist-rest would have been far more sensible I think.

Speaking of sensors, the wireless receiver is tiny and there’s no pairing involved, it just works all the time.  This is essential as I remember how hard it was to pair keyboard from even a few short years ago.  The backlight again has three brightness settings.

Conclusions

So which one do I think is best and are they worth the price premium you’ll pay for them?  If you tend to have lots of drinks around then you should probably look elsewhere as these keyboards are definitely not spill-proof, but they’re definitely worth it if you want to make a design statement with your PC, or if it sits in a prominent position in your home.

For style then the wired keyboard wins hands down, if you’ll excuse the pun, but if you need to type for extended periods then the wireless keyboard is the on you should go with for the extra comfort.  This keyboard is also excellent for people with vision problems as the letters and symbols on the keys are very clear and much larger than on your average keyboard.

If I had to pick a winner then the wirelss keyboard pips it, though both are excellent, very quiet and have great build quality.  Recommended.

If you missed any of the previous parts of this review, you can catch up with them here…

Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 1 – Unboxing
Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 2 – Setup & The OS in General
Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 3 – The Main Apps
Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 4 – Living with Windows Phone

But the time has finally come for a verdict on the OS and my recommendation on whether you should actually buy one.

Now I’d like to think that I’ve praised Windows Phone 7 where it deserved it, and criticised it where it didn’t deserve any.  One thing is very clear and this is that Windows Phone is 7 a version 1 product.  The mistakes and problems that exist are all minor, Microsoft have released a much more polished OS than Apple managed with the first iPhone, and I would expect some of these problems to be fixed early in the new year and the rest by the end of 2011.  e can be certain that, for the next year at least, updates to this phone will be regular and frequent.

For the last part of this review I want to focus on switching to Windows Phone for owners of various different mobile phone operating systems and handset types.

You can read the rest of this review at Windows7News.

I’ve had the phone now for about five days and I’m very comfortable with it.  It’s simplicity itself to use even though I am rather annoyed that I had to get used to its onscreen keyboard, rather than it having a keyboard that would work the way I wanted to.  In some apps you can rotate the screen which makes the keys slightly larger, but not in all and certainly not in third-party apps such as Facebook or Twitter.

On battery life, which I would imagine if the very first question most of you would ask, you should be prepared to charge it overnight and every day.  On a day of general usage I’m left with a little under 50% battery life at the end of the evening.  This is with a little light web browsing, a few calls and some MP3 music playing.  In part this is the fault of the handset-size.  As the handsets get smaller and thinner, and battery technology doesn’t keep pace, its inevitable this would happen.  I’m used to charging my phone every night anyway but this could be a problem for people who travel a lot.

I do have some criticisms of the OS, none of which are major as they’re all Version 1 issues.  Some are significant though.  There’s still no way to import Internet favourites to the phone and Office on the phone won’t allow you to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents stored on Microsoft’s Office Live service (for some reason only OneNote is supported here).

You can read the full version of this review at Windows7News.

The main way these apps work is through panels.  The most obvious of these is the people panel which holds your main contacts list but also acts as an aggregator for your Windows Live and Facebook streams, plus any other streams you add to your Windows Live account.  Generally this works extremely well, though it’s obviously no substitute for the full, seperate Facebook app itself.

It’s a really good way to keep in touch with what’s going on in the lives of your friends but is obviously limited by the phone’s small screen size.  It’s disappointing to not see Twitter integration here but we can be certain that this will come soon in a software update.

Version 1 Niggle: This is obviously the fault of the lack of proper multitasking on the OS, again something that I know will be solved eventually.  In principle the idea of this connected hub with all your friends’ updates in one place is fantastic.  In practice it doesn’t actually update until you open the panel, which can slow down updates for several seconds at minimum or a good twenty seconds at worst.

The messaging and mail apps I simply can’t fault.  They’re utterly fantastic and exactly what you need.  The way the conversation threading works with SMS messages is also really great and the email app is quite powerful.

Version 1 Niggle: Calendar on the other hand I can’t be quite so kind about.  It’s fantastic to have a calendar app (finally) that seamlessly syncs with my calendar in the cloud but it’s lacking a few important things.  Firstly, the day and agenda view will tell you the date of appointments but not what day of the week they are on, a significant oversight that.  Also there’s no year or planner views and these would make a nice addition.

To read the full review with pictures visit Windows7News.

While the unboxing was a bit of a disappointment, setting up the phone certainly was not.  From switching the phone on I had a working handset in about 1 minute flat!  It was a simple case of choosing about three or four options, signing in with my Windows Live ID (it’s just as easy to set up Google services) and you’re done.  This is the least painful set up experience I’ve ever had with a phone and it’s a very far cry from Apple’s insistence on using their iTunes software to activate your phone.

logging into Facebook on the phone is just as simple and it’s a pleasure to see an option in the final OS to only show contacts in your main contacts list that appear in another list.  My list of Facebook friends and acquaintances goes on and on and just the sight of that in my phone contacts made me feel queasy.

So setup is a breeze but what’s the OS like generally?  I’ll talk about specific apps in later parts of this review but I’m delighted to say that Windows Phone is a joy to use.  It’s intuitive (almost, I’ll come to this in a bit) and very fast and responsive.  In fact it could easily be said it’s almost too responsive and I have frequently found myself grateful for the back button as my thumb or finger slipped over an icon I didn’t mean to hit.

You can read the full version of this review with photos at Windows7news.

Now I have to say here that I’ve been evangelising about this new operating system since February and looking forward to the phone’s delivery eagerly.  Sadly I only have it for a week or so as review handsets are much sought after (it was a struggle even getting this one so quick and I had to call in some favours at Microsoft to do so).  I know that whatever the result of my experience with Windows Phone it will be difficult for me to go back to my regular phone, but as that’s only an HTC Touch HD you should hardly be surprised.

In the first part of the review I’m looking at the unboxing experience and the HTC Mozart handset that I’ve been sent.  The handset quality is up to HTCs usual high standards, though I’ll report on battery life later on.  I’m underwhelmed by the unboxing however as I was hoping for Windows Phone to come with a bit more pizazz along the lines of Apple’s products.  Sadly, while it’s nice to open it and just be faced with the handset screen, it’s just feels like getting a new phone out of a box.

I’m determined to deliver an unbiased review however and there are already a couple of areas I’m concerned out.  You can click on any of the photos to view them full-size.

You can read the full version of Part 1 of this review at Windows7News and I’ll be writing about setting up the phone tomorrow.

Yes people, say hello to Sony Ericsson’s first ever Android phone – the XPERIA X10. Not named X3 after all and thankfully not Rachael, the X10 is exactly what we have all been hoping for. And since this is Sony, you can expect stellar aesthetics and build quality.

Update: Found a hands on video. Embedded below.

Update 2: UK Unlocked price – £460 on pre order. [read]

When I refreshed the page today, I knew the X10 was here because it started redirecting me to a complicated URL that looked like a product page. Sure enough, I saw the X10’s name pop up on the title bar moments before the page became visible. The photos that we have been showing you so far have been absolutely accurate, down to the last details. It looks like Sony has been sitting on the finalized version for quite some time now.

So what is it like in person? I wouldn’t know because I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet but on the surface of it, the thing’s a stunner. The screen is 480×854 pixels (WVGA) but for some reason, it displays only only16,536 colors.

As for the form factor, the thing is pretty thin – only half an inch. The dimensions are 4.7”x2.5”x0.5”. So you can imagine how large the phone is. It is almost like an MID in your pocket. A rather slim one at that. The actual screen size has not been provided individually but according to my calculations it should be around 4.0″-4.1”. The online stores are listing this as a 4″ screen. Now that is a large screen!

Features include a capacitive touchscreen, the impressive Mediascape media browser that reminds us of the Zune HD’s UI and face recognition in photos integrated with your contacts. It has an 8.1-megapixel camera with auto focus, face recognition, flash, smile-detection and video recording with video light. Most of the Sony Ericsson phones that I have seen and reviewed have had above average image quality when came to the camera. So I would bet on this one being a pretty good camera as well.

As we had been informed by the rumor mill, the infinity symbol is part of the X10’s UI. It signifies the Timescape feature. Timescape is a feature that consolidates your conversations and communications with a person. Be it on Facebook, text, phone or email, you can view them all in one place per person using Timescape. I personally like this feature because it sounds like something we all need. I hope it has threaded SMS conversations. Given the myriad communication platforms we use today, features like this one are fast becoming necessities. Although, I am not sure of how well Timescape works. If you have tried it out, let me know in the comments section below.

For those of you who were hoping for a physical QWERTY keypad – sorry to disappoint you. As I had mentioned in my X10 round up some time back, there is no way this thing is hiding a QWERTY keypad in that slim a profile. And the images would’ve shown it off anyway, given the amount of excitement that surrounded this phone.

As for the overall performance of the phone, I will be betting on the side of great rather than just good. That is my confidence in Android, which this phone is running beneath all that custom UI.

The Internal memory is 1GB minus whatever the software is taking up (not announced yet). You can put in a MicroSD card, which come in a maximum of 16GB right now. They include a 8GB card when you purchase it.

Networks supported are – GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900,            UMTS/HSPA 900/1700/2100. It has aGPS, Bluetooth A2DP, Google Maps and WiFi. No word on the processor, although we are pretty sure that it is the Qualcomm Snapdragon. The clock speed is unknown at this point though.

As for price, I could find only one website through Google. It has the X10 listed at $799. Check out the search right here. the official product page is here.

And while the links have been removed because they are no longer valid, the news have been kept as it is part of the site’s history.

Partnersites:

AMCP Blog give their impression on the Flock browser, a new browser which uses the same rendering engine as Mozilla Firefox. The Flock web browser is still available. Its developers have however moved the browser from using Mozilla’s Gecko engine to Google Chrome’s WebKit rendering engine instead. Then in April 2011 the browser was discontinued completely and developers suggested to switch to either Chrome or Firefox in the process.

Joe from Mybestgadgets reviews some interesting gadgets this week, among them is the Solar Flare Messenger Bag that trickle charges your electronic devices with solar energy. The Solar Flare Messenger Bag is still available on the Internet. It is available for around $160 Dollars on select sites. It can be used to charge electronic devices such as cell phones during commutes.

Other sites:

• Economist has a story about the battle of the portals, Why Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! are fighting over AOL. It turns out that AOL is still up and running, and that none of the mentioned companies has purchased the Internet company after all.
• Pc Mag published their list of the top 101 websites.
• Engadget unpacks the Ipod with Video, short review with lots of pictures. The iPod Video was a big thing back in 2005. Apple has released other devices in the meantime that have replaced the video iPod more or less. This includes the Apple iPhone, the iPad and newer versions of the iPod that is capable of playing music and video.