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It’s been around for a good while now but since we already reviewed the N81 and wished it were more like the N95, we might as well look at what could be argued is the best Nokia phone on the market. If you want it all and want it with power, the N95 is for you.

For all of those that fell in love with the 7650 (I still have mine) this is the modern equivalent. A 5 megapixel camera means you’ve got a full-blown digital camera with you and a video camera to boot.

Connectivity-wise it can connect using 3g, WiFi and bluetooth. Mobile broadband using 3g
is a gamechanging piece of technology and having 3g in a phone like this helps in changing your digital lifestyle and then add WiFi on top of that. You might not even need to buy a 3g connection were you in any other country in the EU except broadband poor Ireland though to get the most you really do need to sign up to a 3G package.

Then there’s the GPS. Flaky indoors but over the months the maps when you’re on the road are fairly good, apart from the odd snafu. Just as good as the standalone, one purpose only GPS units. But it’s on your phone that already has everything else.

A definite bonus with this phone is that you can install applications on it without having to “hack” or “unlock” it and there are tonnes of these applications that make use of all the inbuilt power features. Take that iPhone version 1 (but maybe not version 2)

There are of course negative bits to this phone. The cluttered interface could really be made a little simpler and there are far far too many buttons on this phone. It’s the forty coats of phones as
a result. Also, this computer in your pocket is too big for my pockets though not massively too big. The biggest issue though is the battery life. It sucks the juice far too quickly especially if using WiFi and 3G. The design too isn’t as sexy as other phones but it destroys the competition when it comes to features.

Despite these bits, this phone is still getting a very rare five out of five rating. It’s that good.

Another quick review, this time of the second and much better iteration of the HP Touchsmart. This new one comes with a 22inch screen and looks very like the iMac with pretty much everything built into and behind the screen. Full optical drive. Being all about thin/thick, this PC is 2.6 inches thick, has half a terrabyte of storage, 2.16Ghz processor, Wifi and all that jazz.

Oh and did we mention it does touch? We were waiting for “I touch myself” to play during them showing off the interface but they played some good pop-punk-like song about touching. If you’ve used the touch interface on the iPhone then you know how it works. Flick through photos, play songs, drag stuff around. However it’s still very very basic. No copying and pasting functionality. Only inside the HP TouchSmart software can this functionality work. Big shame.

It’s still rough too in that you have to use the keyboard for copying and pasting and inside the music player you can’t adjust the volume. That’s hardware only. That seems a massive oversight.

Overall giving this a three because of the limited/restricted use for the touch interface which I hope changes over time but on pushing HP about opening up their Touch “platform”, it seems management won’t allow an SDK or API for it. Hello? Imagine every Facebook developer making apps for this? I’d love to see a child’s game made for this for people to play over the net. Get kids playing each other etc. Or fathers and daughters playing online when they are oceans apart.

So we managed to get a few minutes alone with the very very new Voodoo Envy, the new “thin is in” laptop from the very talented people in Voodoo who are now owned by HP.

Unlike most others, this laptop is encased in carbon fiber with a custom micro-weave design. So yes, you can put your own “mark” on the exterior, though not just yet. It’s a lightweight but powerful laptop, weighing in at 3.37lbs and a processor clocking in at 1.8Ghz with the usual 2GB of RAM. It has a 64GB solid state hard drive and a 13.3″ WXGA High-Definition Widescreen LED Backlit Display with resolution of 1280×800, it has the usual ambient light censor.

No optical drive, though a nice external one and no built-in ethernet BUT the power brick does have ethernet built in there. Clever. Where there’s ethernet there’s a power source. The battery can also come out, unlike the MacBook Air. Battery life is 3hrs 45. Slightly less than what you get out of an Air but actual field testing might prove different here.

A worthy competitor to the MacBook Air and Lenovo Thinkpad x300 but the crowd that will go for this might not even consider the x300 and vice versa. Only drawbacks so far are the trackpad doesn’t feel great and the shape is far too rectangular(for my tastes). Pricing stateside is: $2,099. It’s going to be a great success.

A proper more in-depth review will happen once we get a loaner from HP/Voodoo and have it for a few days.

The Swiss Army Knife entertainment phone.

Before we start off it needs to be pointed out that I’m not a gamer, don’t really like games and my Nintendo Wii is gathering dust. I may not be the best person to review a gaming phone. The Nokia N81 8GB does it all. Almost. It’s a powerful phone. Here are the specs.

The idea of it being a Swiss Army knife for entertainment is important because it’s probably trying too much to be everything. Incorporating the N-Gage gaming platform, this does photos, videos, Wifi surfing the web and good enough games. The games are fun enough but this reviewer isn’t really a gamer so doesn’t appreciate them but then perhaps a serious gamer might appreciate them even less. Snake? That’s enough for me.

There’s always a trade-off between design and thinness and power and most times Nokia decides as an engineer not as a designer so we get some of the most powerful phones in the world but also some of the clunkiest. However with this phone it has the size of the N95 (a fantastic power-phone) but with a lot less power. A two megapixel camera is severely disappointing for this phone and it being part of the N series.

Others have talked up the battery power of this phone but I didn’t find the battery life to be that impressive and with WiFi left on, the battery drained quite quickly.

Music

8GB of music storage is good, the music player itself is pretty good but with a music store with DRM crippled music and a website that hates Firefox users, I can’t see a reason to buy any content from Nokia. Battery life when it comes to music is pretty good actually and as far as I can see it kicks the ass of the iPhone.

Games

There are a lot of titles with more promised. That’s as much as I can say really. Again I point out my lack of interest in games and gaming.

Summary

Personally I was disappointed with the phone when compared to having used an N95 and their lovely range of thin music phones. Nokia may once again need to rethink the idea of games on phones with this offering. It still gets 3 out of 5 because it does have the power options, though let down by a lo-spec camera. I’ll happily send the phone out to a gamer and see what they think if Nokia are willing to submit it for another review.

Two words: No compromise. Funnily enough this is the tagline Lenovo want you to use but they really didn’t need to say it as the specs say it without prompting. This does it all and in a thin and light way.

The Lenovo Thinkpad x300 has it all. Optical drive, full size keyboard, power, good and large enough screen, more than one USB port, an ethernet port!, a battery that comes out so you can add extra life and more. Laptops Direct have it for around €2196.29.

I have the power

Performance-wise the x300 is meant to last 4.3 hours. No it doesn’t. Using it to surf the net and do a little processor crunching and that starts to drop. Still, it does almost 4 hours with wireless on and surfing the net.

The MacBook Air livened up the laptop market when it came out with a beautiful design, super model thinness and made people who never wanted a laptop before to want one. But quite quickly after it was released Lenovo announced the x300 and the bits the Air ejected to be so thin were all in the x300 while it still remained thin.

x300 will win Lenovo new customers

The x300 ensures existing Thinkpad owners will stay within the fold and will probably migrate to a thinner, lighter and more powerful version of the Thinkpad they have while the likes of Dell and HP should be worried that their market might be cannibalised. I don’t think many Thinkpad owners will get an Air and I don’t think people that like the Air for the design qualities will get an x300.

Could do ever so slightly better

And thus we get to the weakpoints of the x300. If people have used the Air, the Thinkpad x300 actually seems fat and the too traditional look of the x300 is holding it back. It would have been nice to have seen a greater transition away from the very samey Thinkpad look. It blends right in with all the previous models when maybe it should stick out so existing Thinkpad owners will want to move. Apple does this well. Another issue is the keyboard area is far too cluttered and messy and the trackapd needs to be bigger to give powerusers the ability to up their game. And please, get rid of that bloody red nipple. It’s 2008.

In summary

Fond of Thinkpads already? You’ll love this. Apple fanboy? You’ll hate this. Dell, HP, other person? Do consider trying this out because you’ll probably like it. The x300 is an excellent laptop and one of the best I’ve ever tested out. No fuss, powerful and makes going mobile so much easier. I’d buy one.

Here items such as laptops, desktops, mobile phones and other gadgets are reviewed.