The Good: This is a tri-band flip phone identical to the Samsung SGH-309 with the addition of Bluetooth and a different color scheme. It has a VGA camera on board with a variety of photographic options and picture resolutions. The phone can also be customized via a number of operational and thematic settings. Call quality is excellent both through the earpiece and when using the speakerphone.

The Bad: The phone is very pricy for the feature set. Both displays are hard to see especially in bright light. The keys are small and rather flat, making dialling by feel difficult and causing frequent mis-dials. Standby time is also disappointingly short, lasting just 3 days despite the rated 9.

The Bottom Line: This phone isn’t likely to win any beauty or technology awards anytime soon, and those wanting anything more than super call quality should probably look elsewhere.

The Good: The Samsung T409 is a mid-range phone with a simple feature set, featuring internal and external displays, a 1.3 megapixel camera, support for e-mail and the most popular instant messaging clients and a WiFi receiver for connecting to pre-configured wireless networks. For ease of use the phone has a number of programmable shortcut keys and a hotlist where five ‘favourite numbers’ can be listed for easy dialling.

The Bad: Despite a wide range of photographic options, the T409’s camera is disappointing with pictures appearing washed out and hazy. The speakerphone also suffers from poor sound quality.

The Bottom Line: This phone’s greatest asset has to be, without doubt, the wireless connectivity which allows users to browse the web, make and receive VoIP calls thus saving money, particularly on long distance calls. The phone is simple yet effective and is more than suitable for business and leisure consumers alike.

The Good: The Voyager also known as the VX10000, is one of LG’s first touch screen phones to target the US and includes a more iPhone-like interface based on that of the Prada phone; users can place calls, play AAC/MP3/WMA music, and take 2-megapixel photos almost exclusively from the screen. It offers a generous features set that includes EV-DO support, V Cast Mobile TV Bluetooth, a top-notch Web browser, and an integrated GPS application. And if that’s not enough, its call quality was excellent.

The Bad: The LG Voyager VX10000’s camera lacks such extra options as a flash and Wi-Fi, and its photo quality was below par. The touch screen can be clunky at times, and the streaming video quality and EV-DO connection speed were sporadic.

The Bottom Line: Though we had some minor complaints here and there, the Voyager’s sleek design, generous feature set and excellent performance make it the best LG messaging and multimedia phone by far. What we like most about this phone is the improvements LG has made to the Verizon Wireless interface. Verizon Wireless believes, that users like to learn an interface and then find it useful on the next phone they buy. We don’t buy it. Phones are improving too fast, with too many new features every season, and users want a phone that makes sense. Maybe it made sense to bury the touted HTML browser under the “Get It Now: News and Info” submenu in the past, but now, that’s the last place we’d look.

The Good: The T-Mobile Wing is a quad-band world handset with a full QWERTY keyboard, a 2 megapixel camera and is one of the first on the market to boast the new Windows Mobile 6 Professional Smartphone operating system. It also features the full Office Mobile suite which allows both creation and viewing of documents. There are a number of shortcut keys to frequent used applications, and the display effortlessly changes from portrait to landscape when deploying the QWERTY keyboard.

The Bad: With all this gadgetry on board, the handset is a little on the heavy side. Also, it sometimes behaves somewhat sluggishly, especially when multiple applications are open at the same time, which also takes a toll on battery life. Whereas the display is quite clear under normal operation, it can be difficult to read in direct sunlight.

The Bottom Line: T-Mobile has taken mobile productivity to the next level with the Wing, with a raft of useful features, enhancements and capabilities. However, its weight coupled with several bugs and performance issues give some pause for consideration.

The Good: T-Mobile has a history of producing and influencing the design of great phones, and the Dash, aka HTC Excalibur is no exception. It looks stylish with its silver bezel and curved edges, offers a host of connectivity options including Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi, has the Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone operating system and offers quad-band worldwide coverage.

The Bad: The inabilities to only read, and not create Word; Excel and PDF documents may be problematic for business users, however e-mail can be synced with another computer via Outlook Mobile. The 1.3 megapixel camera has a confusing interface and produces hazy, washed-out images. Also, the touch-sensitive volume control strip on the right side of the handset is a little fiddly and unresponsive at times.

The Bottom Line: All in all this is a great offering for the modern mobile user with an ideal balance of features for both productivity and entertainment. The long talk and standby times add extra appeal as does the integrated WiFi receiver.

The Good: The Samsung SGH-T219 is a lower model in the Samsung range geared towards business users. It features support for multimedia messaging and has a 500 contact storage capacity with its ample internal memory.

The Bad: Due to this phone being aimed at business users, it does not feature a camera to comply with the more and more businesses prohibiting camera phones in the workplace. The display is generally clear, although does become difficult to read in direct sunlight. Call quality is adequate; however there is some echo and distortion when using both the earpiece and speakerphone.

The Bottom Line: Whereas the red colour may be eye catching and make the phone stand out aesthetically, the basic feature set and poor call quality don’t really impress that much.

Microsoft has halted distribution of its Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool after questions were raised as to whether the software utility makes improper use of open source code. The tool is designed to help owners of Windows XP-based Netbooks get Windows 7 onto their machines.

Microsoft has halted distribution of a tool aimed at making it easier to put Windows 7 on Netbooks amid allegations that the utility makes improper use of open source code.

The General Public License, like other open source licenses, allows code to be freely used by others, but has its own set of terms and conditions, such as sharing any modifications made to the code.
Microsoft confirmed it has launched a review of the matter and taken the utility off its online Microsoft Store until that inquiry has been completed.

“Microsoft is looking into this issue and is taking down the (Windows 7 updating) tool from the Microsoft Store site until its review is complete,” the company said in a statement. “We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience.”

Though somewhat arcane, the utility is important because it solves a technical challenge in upgrading the operating system on Netbooks and other PCs without an optical drive.

The Intel Reader can assist the estimated 55 million people in the US who have dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities, or have vision problems such as low-vision or blindness, which makes reading printed words difficult or impossible,” Intel expalined.

When the Intel Reader is used together with the Intel Portable Capture Station, large amounts of text, such as a chapter or an entire book, can be captured for reading later. Users will have convenient and flexible access to a variety of printed materials, according to the company.

“The Intel Digital Health Group’s expertise is in finding innovative technology solutions to improve quality of life,” said Louis Burns, vice president and general manager, digital health group, Intel. “We are proud to offer the Intel Reader as a tool for people who have trouble reading standard print so they can more easily access the information many of us take for granted every day, such as reading a job offer letter or even the menu at a restaurant.”

The original concept for the Intel Reader came from Ben Foss, a researcher at Intel who was identified in elementary school as one of the estimated 20 per cent of people nationwide who have symptoms of dyslexia.

Microsoft made two enterprise moves on Monday, one expected and the other a bit of a surprise. As promised, the company used its TechEd event in Berlin to release Exchange 2010, the latest version of its e-mail and calendar server software. Microsoft finalized the code for the product last month and had said it would launch at Tech Ed.

Meanwhile, the company also announced it is buying the Teamprise technology from SourceGear. Teamprise allows developers using Eclipse and those working on non-Windows operating systems to build applications using Microsoft’s Visual Studio product.

“We know our customers face daily challenges with management, collaboration and development in heterogeneous environments. The industry must take steps to make interoperability a stronger business asset for our customers,” senior vice president and developer unit head S. Somasegar said in a statement. “With the acquisition of the Teamprise assets, we’re taking a step forward on this journey, providing customers with a viable cross-platform development solution that will help produce business results more quickly.”

Microsoft didn’t announce financial terms of the deal, but did say the Teamprise technology will be integrated into Visual Studio 2010.
At TechEd Europe, Microsoft also talked about enterprise adoption of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, highlighting some early customers of the two products.

But suddenly the tech industry is facing supply constraints for DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips used in computers to hold data while processors run programs and NAND flash chips used in mobile gizmos to store music, photos and data.

That’s good news for the tech sector looking for signs of recovery after a yearlong slump. And no other company will benefit more from a semiconductor supply shortage than Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory chips.

The Korean company’s chip business chief, Kwon Oh Hyun, said Oct. 28 he expected the supply of both DRAM and NAND chips to fall slightly short of demand next year, making chip prices stay firm. Samsung aims to increase its chip revenues to $25.5 billion in 2012 from an estimated $16.6 billion this year, he said.

The optimistic outlook stems from confidence that Samsung has widened its gap with rivals during the downturn. Samsung kept investing in upgrading production technologies and equipment while Japanese, American and Taiwanese rivals cut back in spending.

Industry analysts say Only Samsung and Hynix Semiconductor, another Korean company, can now produce DRAM chips by printing circuit lines on wafer disks with 50 nanometer technology – a tool increasing productivity by 30 percent from the previous-generation technology. Samsung is poised to report a sharp rise in profits this year, thanks partly to a turnaround in its chip business.