GPS Phone

Review by D. Matheny:
Well, my wife and I have been using our new Aria phones for about a week now. I switched from a Blackberry Bold and she was using a 1st generation iPhone (although hers didn’t have any data plan). We also purchased one of the 3G MicroCells from AT&T at the same time – so our cell signal at home is now better than I thought would be possible.

As far as our profiles go: I’m a tech addict – I work at home as a C/C++ programmer and tend to be an early adopter of anything tech related. My wife is kind of the opposite – she relies on me to keep the tech stuff going and tends to resist new technology since she knows it can often be more of a headache than it is worth:).

Fortunately, this phone is working for both of us. The Android OS has been great – although there are some features in the next version (Froyo) that I wish were on this phone already. I spent several hours yesterday figuring out how to ‘root’ this phone and I did end up getting it done last night. My wife’s went a lot faster since I already understood the process.

Here are some things I like about the Aria:

1) The size of the Aria is perfect. It is smaller than either the Blackberry Bold or the iPhone, yet the screen is very usable. This is a very ‘pocketable’ phone.

2) The touch screen works great. It supports all the common touch controls like zooming, swiping, etc…

3) There is a version of Kindle available for Android! And it works great – I’ll still use my Kindle, but this will work when I’m out without it.

4) I like being able to mix programs and widgets on each screen. It took a few days of playing with it, but we both now have our phones setup to work well for us.

5) The text input works well; but, if you decide to root your phone, do yourself a favor and install the latest version of Swype. This has turned out to be an unbelievably great method of inputting text and both my wife and I are loving it for e-mails and texting!

6) The selection of apps available to this phone through the market is great! I’ve been able to find apps for everything I want, and I’m looking into writing some myself just to see how it works.

7) The voice quality is excellent. When I first started using the phone I would get that ‘Wow!’ impression every time I talked to someone – even when out of range of the MicroCell.

Web browsing is very snappy and easy. This is an area where the Blackberry really sucked, so I’m loving the real browser with Flash.

9) Once I figured out the task switching and status bar at the top, I’ve found them very useful. On the other hand, I’m not sure my wife will ever take the time to look into those features.

10) I really like that I can get both my personal e-mail (GMail) and work e-mail (Exchange) – and they integrate together very intuitively. I’m using multiple GMail accounts on this phone with no problem.

11) This is one of those phones that really doesn’t need a protective case. The back cover is ‘rubbery’ and easy to grip – and actually seems to be as protective as any additional cover would be. I like the protective cover much more than the decorative cover that comes on the iPhone (that most people end up covering anyway).

12) This phone supports pattern unlocking; which is a much easier form of security than typing a PIN or password. Once again, this is an area where Android comes through against the iPhone. (NOTE: If you connect to Exchange, the pattern unlock feature can be disabled by your Exchange policy – but this can be worked around if you’re willing to do some tweaking.)

13) I’ve been playing around with the voice input for a couple of days and it works great (although it isn’t perfect). You can use it anywhere you can enter text – and it just converts your voice to text. I’ve been alternating between voice input and Swype, depending on whether other people are around who would make fun of me talking to my phone.

Things I’m looking forward to:

1) This phone does not support voice dialing through BlueTooth – but the next version (Froyo) does. I am excited to get that feature on this phone.

2) This phone has some nice accessories that seem to be in the pipeline, but they aren’t available yet. iPhones, on the other hand, have gobs of accessories available from day one. (My wife wants a red cover for hers so we can tell them apart more easily.)

Things that could be improved:

1) As with any phone, I think we can always wish for better battery life. If I use the phone non-stop through the day (which I did at first), the battery will last an entire day. I can get through about 2 days of normal use without charging. There is an app called ‘Advanced Task Killer’ in the market that helps with battery life.

2) I wish there was a way to change sound profiles when charging. I found a program called ‘Setting Profiles Lite’ that does this, but it seems like it should be built into the Android OS like it is in the Blackberry.

3) The contact manager could be improved. When sending a text, for example, it gives the option of every phone number for a contact instead of just mobile numbers…

Anyway, I’ve probably yammered on enough already; but I really am enjoying this phone. If you’re using AT&T, and looking for an alternative to the over-hyped iPhone, then I think this is probably THE phone to get at this point.

Review by C. Chambers:
Just received my new Aria last night. This is my first ever Android phone – Full Disclosure: I am coming from an old Blackberry & Moto Slvr so I am not exactly on the bleeding edge of smartphone development. My initial impression after about 4 hours of use is – fantastic phone!

Things did not get off to a good start however when I couldn’t get the phone apart to put the battery and SIM card in. I found the trick was to put my fingernail into the slot where you are supposed to split the phone apart and slide it to the left and right to get the top catches to release – others have said pushing the front out by pressing on the speakerphone in back while also using the slot works but I was hesitant to do that.

The size and weight are perfect for my needs as I didn’t want something the size of the Spring Evo 4G, etc. Although the big displays on that phone and similar phones are great I just felt they were too big for my daily use (and I had to stay on AT&T). The upside is with the resolution on this screen on a physically smaller screen than say my son’s iPhone 3G the “crispness” of the display (especially text) is super.

Physically the phone feels fantastic in hand and the build quality is excellent.

Regarding the two primary AT&T induced drawbacks…no sideloading and AT&T bloatware: for the average user those are probably minor to non-issues. There are workarounds for both issues – the phone has already been rooted (check any of the Android developer forms) and custom ROMs are even available with the AT&T “features” removed. I was going to wait a few more weeks to let the hardware gurus fully explore the phone before making any modifications – but I really want that Swype keyboard.

After a look at some of the AT&T software I think I might have to agree with some of the conspiracy crowd that AT&T would rather not be forced to deal with Android. Initial opening of the AT&T Hotspot app and the page is not centered?? Come on AT&T – at least make it look like you are trying! Sorry – I have been ticked off with AT&T from day one with regard to Android as I never understood how it was in their interest to NOT sell a phone that their customers want given the REAL revenue is in the two year data agreement – not the hardware.

Lots more to explore but I don’t think you will be disappointed with the Aria (especially at Amazon’s price) if you decide to purchase one.

Review by Thomas Jhou:
This phone seems to combine a lot of promise with above average frustration. One the one hand, this “smartphone” is much more useful than my previous “dumb” phone. The ability to synchronize my Google contacts, e-mail, and calendar automatically is a lifesaver, and is very helpful when traveling. This phone also boasts impressive specifications, including GPS, WiFi, bluetooth, internal compass, ambient light sensor, and autofocus-capable camera/video. When I first got it, it ran Android 1.5, an old version which had some annoying problems, such as a horribly frustrating YouTube app. Also, the default settings ensured lousy battery life. I have since updated the phone to the latest Android 2.1, which made some things better (e.g. the YouTube app works well now) but other things worse. Most glaringly, the phone is now noticeably slower to do everything. It was never very zippy to begin with, but us now downright irritating, and I am constantly killing background tasks just to keep the slowness at a manageable level.

Using this phone reminds me of my experience many years ago when Windows 95 first came out. Then, as now, that was the product to compete with Apple, but it had a lot of rough edges, crashed constantly, and had a less intuitive user interface.

Here are my detailed observations, starting first with the good things:

1. If you use gmail and Google calendar, Android will synchronize your life. If you add contacts on your phone, they show up on your gmail account within a few seconds, and vice versa. If you add calender items online, they show up on the phone, and vice versa. It just works. All phones should be this easy.

2. The GPS is great, much better than my older HTC phone. It finds satellites quickly, even indoors when I’m not particularly close to a window. If it doesn’t find satellites, the phone will locate itself using cell phone towers.

3. HTC’s “Sense” interface is pretty nice.

4. There is an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts screen brightness to match the environment, like the iphone. It works well most of the time.

5. Google’s apps store, while still lagging behind the iPhone, is catching up fast. There are a lot of good ones, ranging from useful things like WeatherBug, to nerd toys like the barcode reader and sky constellation viewer for astronomy nerds. You can read user comments before you install any app, which helps weed out the flakier ones.

OK, now for the frustrating parts.

1. The processor is a tad slow. Under Android 1.5, simple things like typing sometimes had noticeable delays. After updating to the latest version 2.1, the phone has gotten slower still. The lag is particularly annoying if I am traveling, or running through airports, etc, which is ironic since the whole point of getting a smartphone was to help keep me organized when traveling away from home. To make the situation tolerable, I installed a Task Killer, without which I would probably have thrown the phone at a wall by now. I find it particularly helpful to kill the camera application, which slows the phone a lot if running in the background. Sometimes rebooting the phone helps too, but it takes almost two full minutes to power down and back up, again not a fun thing to do while trying to make one’s connecting flights.

2. Typing. This phone has one of the increasingly common “capacitive” touchscreens (like the iphone). If you’re already used to this, you know what you’re in for. But if you have never used this kind of screen before, get ready for several days of fat fingers. This phone’s screen responds only to the fleshy pad of the finger, not a stylus or fingernail. Your fingers will feel like giant marshmallows as you try to type on the tiny on-screen keyboard. On my old phone, I could use my fingernail or a stylus to touch a precise spot on the screen, but that is no longer an option.

3. With Android 1.5, the YouTube app was horribly buggy, and barely worked. Fortunately, under Android 2.1 it is vastly improved.

4. Settings are often hard to find, and buried deep within menus. For example, to turn off dialpad tones, you have to exit out of the phone application, then go to “Settings”, then “sound and display”, then scroll to “dialer keypad tone”. It took me days to figure this out, and the setting really ought to be placed in the phone app itself.

5. Battery life is middling when using default factory settings. It seems to get better if you turn off “always-on” in the wireless settings, but then email gets much slower because the phone no longer downloads new mail in the background. These things aren’t obvious – you have to figure them out by reading forums and seeing what other people have tried.

6. Slightly arrogant user community. Getting help with this phone reminds me of the IT departments at my job. While setting up my phone, one comment I got from another Android user went along the lines of … “if you don’t want to flash your own custom roms, then get an iphone”. OK, I don’t want to have to “flash a custom rom” just to make my phone do what it was supposed to do from the beginning. Why should I have to become a tech support expert when Google/HTC have highly paid engineers whose job it is to solve these problems?

7. Google Chrome automatically syncs bookmarks across your PCs, but this does not extend to the Android browser. Of course, no other phone does this either, but it seems like a strange omission. I have no doubt Google’s engineers are working on this, but it’s not here yet.

In summary, Android feels like the early days when PCs became popular. There is a lot of potential, but I’m still waiting for bugs and quirks to get smoothed out, even in Android 2.1. If you are still getting this phone, be aware that you will have spend some time fiddling and tweaking, and reading in forums to find out how other users worked around various quirks. Once you do all that, phone becomes very useful, albeit frustratingly slow to operate, especially after updating the Android 2.1.

Review by D. Schreiber:
Android is excellent. However the touch screen on the HTC Hero broke in 6 months of purchase. Also had a HTC Touch. The touch screen on that broke after 2 years.

Review by DeShaun:
As a person who is accustomed to the Blackberry interface, but has minimal experience with some other smart/mediaphones (iPhone, Nokia e71, Nokia N97) I can say with confidence that this is the best phone I have ever handled, and definitely the tip-top when it comes to Blackberry devices.

I upgraded to the 9700 from a Curve 8310, and the form factor is nearly the same. This is a joy, considering the original Bold was a little too large for my tastes. In fact, it’s only a tiny bit taller, and a little thinner. It combines the best of the devices before it: It has 3G like the Bold, a great keyboard like the Tour, and a trackpad like the Curve 8530. They really brought it all together in a way that is perfect.

The keyboard is responsive and provides good feedback, but it quieter than say, the Cuvre’s keyboard. The trackpad might take a little getting used to, but once that awkward phase is over it works like a dream. No more dirty trackballs! It doesn’t light up, but that’s not really a big deal, as the call, send, menu, and escape buttons always stay lit when you are using it, so brushing your thumb over the dark space in the middle is all you need.

Excellent camera with autofocus and very good color balance. The speakers are loud and clear. The screen on this thing is absolutely gorgeous. I didn’t think the additional resolution would make much difference on such a small screen, but it really is head and shoulders above previous models like the Curve. The media player handles a large number of formats and video codecs, which is fantastic, as I found previous models lacking in that department.

It comes with a standard headphone jack and a set of in-ear headphones that are really stylish and easy to use. Also I was pleasantly surprised to find a case that could clip to my belt (as opposed to the slip-in case they used to give) and a 2GB micro SD card already in place.

Battery life is superb: I have done heavy texting/email with my alerts on vibration, and streamed music via Pandora, and it still takes a few days to fully discharge. Excellent.

The browser is faster than previous Blackberry models, but it still needs work. It doesn’t come close to the likes of mobile Safari. However, there are alternate browsers you can use for free, such as Opera Mini.

Texting is a breeze, and it keeps a log of the conversation as if it were a chat in an instant messaging client. It also has visual voicemail, so if you are moving from an iPhone, you’ll still have the feature. Get this phone, you definitely won’t regret it.

Review by Venu:
Hoping to replace my older curve 8310, I was leaning towards the 8900, instead of the Blackberry Bold. The Bold had 3G. 8900 didn’t. But the 8900 had better battery life. And that was an important factor for my usage patterns.

Boldly enters the new Bold 9700. Has 3G, has the higher resolution of the 8900. Has WiFi. It also boasts a better battery life than the 8900 on the spec sheet. I ordered it and got it overnight and at two days of usage, I am VERY happy with this model.

Fantastic screen.

Beautiful fonts and rendering(It’s night and day compared to 8310)

The touchpad is really nice and I am completely converted away from trackball use.

WiFi is good and connects quickly to my home network.

3G network is fast.

Each of the above connectivity options can be turned off/on individually.

You also have the option to turn off 3G and just use Edge (advantage: longer battery run time?)

The unit came with a 2Gig Micro SD card already installed. (What’s the world coming to? Are TV manufacturers going to include free HDMI cables along with the TV now?)

The box came with a wall charger, a micro-USB cable to connect to the PC and a nice holster.

Browser is fantastic. With the touchpad, it is easy to move around the screen. “i” and “o” work as shortcuts to zoom in and out of a web page.

Google Apps work great (you may encounter a “Cross Application Communication” Error) (My workaround/fix at the end of this)

I had some issues with the browser not connecting (Resolved now. Workaround below).

I was stumped when initially configuring WiFi to my home WPA2 network (Workaround below).

Blackberry “Appworld” is great. Download it as soon as you get this device. Does not have millions of apps like the iPhone, but has a decent set – free and paid – that you will find useful.

Lots of nice improvements in the Mail, Clock and Calendar applications.

A few problems I encountered and my workarounds:

I have WPA2 security on my WiFi network at home. In the 9700, when you configure your WiFi connection, you will not see “WPA2″ as an option. Just select “Pre Shared Key” option and enter your WPA password; The 9700 will do the rest and will connect. (BB design team, take note. You might as well highlight this in your documentation clearly… or, just add WPA2 and WPA to the options list)

I had intermittent problems with the browser. It would connect to some sites and simply refuse to connect to others. Workaround: Open the browser, go to options (by pressing the key immediately to the left of the touchpad) and in the “Browser Configuration” page, for the default browser, change it to “Internet Browser”, from the default “Blackberry browser”. Do the same change in the “General Properties” in the browser options. This should fix browser connectivity issues.

When I started Google Maps, I got a “Cross Application Communication” error and it refused to connect. My workaround (and I am not sure why this works): Go to Blackberry settings. Select Applications. And in the “Applications” page, select “Google Maps”. Then “Edit permissions”. Here, I basically expanded all the configs, and made sure they are set to “Allow”. The “Interactions” setting by default will be “Custom”. This cannot be changed, but I simply expanded this selection. In this what seemed to be a pointless exercise, I didn’t really change any permissions other than what they were defaulted to. But, after this, the “Cross Appl…” error went away. Maybe, if I rebooted the BB after installing Google Maps, I wouldn’t have had to resort to this.

That’s it. It’s working great now. Hope the above workarounds will be helpful to some. Activating my BES account was straightforward. If you don’t have a corporate account, the setup should be even more simpler.

I’d give it 5 stars, but if anyone at BB is reading these reviews (and I know they are…), I want them to keep doing the great work and come out with more winners such as this. So, this 4 star rating is to tell you that no one can achieve perfection, but can always choose to strive to become even more perfect than before. Great product folks. Keep it up!

UPDATE (Jan 30, 2010):

After close to two and a half months of use, I’m still very happy with the Bold 9700. The battery life is exceptional and I can go without charging for 3 days if necessary. For a couple weeks, I noticed the battery was losing a couple of bars within 12 hours. I think this was because I had the “Blackberry Messenger” app running in the background. After closing that app, the battery life is back to normal, and I lose a notch in 24hrs. I have the WiFi option always ON and this doesn’t seem to affect the battery usage adversely.

Apps that I use most, and these are very easy to use on the Bold (there are plenty others available): WSJ Mobile Reader, Poynt (Business, people, restaurant, movie lookup), Dictionary.Com, Amazon for Blackberry, Google Maps, Gmail and Google News.

Review by G. Wu:
OK..to start, I gotta say that the FREE shipping from Amazon SUCKS. So, if you want good shipping, dont use the FREE shipping that Amazon offers. Why? Tracking is horrible, tracking history is completely inaccurate.

(I used the nokia N82 before)

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO BUY THE CELLPHONE, READ THIS REVIEW. I THINK IT WILL HELP A LOT. IT IS LONG, I KNOW.

Moving on, the cellphone is good for the price. Come on, where will you get a 300$ cellphone that has all the functions that this one has? It is insane: 3.2 camera, touchscreen, more customizable than iphone, external memory, etc etc.

Regarding the touchscreen…I think it is personal taste.. I never used the iphone, and I think that this touchscreen it is VERY responsive. AFTER buying this phone and getting used to it, I used a friend’s Itouch and I gotta say that my nokia 5800 is the winner. But as I said, it is personal taste. Still, it is a very responsible touchscreen (no matter you say that it is a resistive touchscreen)..like, you got no excuse..it is responsive, and it is responsive. PERIOD.

Good things about it:

-Starting to have more apps…you just gotta know where to find, for FREE.

-MACRO of the camera is awesome.

-I got the GPS with turn by turn voice direction (trial), and it is a dream. I wont know when they take away my trial…however, with voice direction, this thing it is a real GPS.

-The media button is pretty useful.

-It is legit that it unlocks when you take it close to your face when you are talking.

-Speakers are also awesome. Super loud. Sound quality when you plug in earpieces are also really nice.

-I love the cable to plug it in to the tv. I convert videos, put it on my cellphone and lay on my bed, plug the cellphone into the tv and voila. It is REALLY nice.

-About apps. Right now I have 42 but I only use maybe 8 of them lol.

-The screen it is mega-clear. It is one of the best screens ive seen.

The “so-so” of this phone:

-Build quality. It is pretty well built, however the screen it is TOO plasticky. When I put it under the sun, the reflection shows a big difference in the surface, I mean..it is not completely flat. Using the reflection of light you will realize it is not completely flat. In other words, the screen presents big flex (like in laptops, for instance). However, the rest of the cellphone is well built. If you take out the screen part of the cellphone, it is a pretty solid cellphone.

-The camera. I dont know. Sometime it takes great pictures, sometimes it stinks. When there is too much suns, it doesnt work well. When there isnt light, it also sucks. It has to have the right amount of light.

-For some people it may be ok, but this is a freaken fingerprint magnet. only the back cover it is mate. The rest of the cellphone devours fingerprint as a dinasour.

-Battery life it is not the best, but not the worst.

The bad:

-The interface it is not the friendliest. It could be better. I hope that with the update, it will be user friendlier.

-The screen. As I said, it is too flexible. It kills me to see differences with the reflection of the light (you know what im saying if you have the cellphone). It makes me hella nervous.

-Sometimes the phone in landscape mode, when you want to scroll down or up for example in some setting, it is freaking hard. I always keep tapping the wrong thing. in vertical mode this doesnt happen, because the scroll bar it is sticked to the right of the screen, so you dont have margin of error. however, in landscape mode the scroll bar is in the middle of the screen, so it gets tricky.

-Honestly, the phone it isnt the best looking phone in the market. It is just a chunk of plastic. (This is for people that care about appearances. I personally dont care, but im trying to be objective)

Ok, I think this is pretty much it. If you read this, you may decide whether to buy ir or not. I think it is a pretty good phone for the price. If you are RICH and money it is not your main problem, I would say go buy yourself a N97. Oppositely, I would say definitely go for this cellphone; I like it pretty much. You wont regret it (however, remember all the things I wrote in this review). If you are ok with the cons of this cellphone, you wont regret. And in my opinion, the Pro’s overcome the Con’s so… I dont know, it is your call!

I hope this helped.

Review by Aussie:
I had owned various phones in the past and Nokia is the best on any comparison, for the Features available on this phone, had Apple had all these features it will cost 10 times more, most people don’t even know it has extra camera on the front for video Calls along with the 3.2 MP on the back, Video is far better and there were no sluggish performance as far as I had used for more than a month, unlike iPhone this phone can run multiple applications at same time which is like multitasking in PC, so I can play music and browse websites at same time and switch to GPS , attend a call and type an SMS.. And it goes on…all at same time, iPhone cannot do more than one at a time, we get millions of free software, games, themes etc., unlike Apple App store, no need to pay more and more. Best feature, no MP3 conversion required, if you have lot of MP3 files on hard disk just drag and drop in few seconds, we can play, phone comes with 8GB of SD Card, can upgrade to 16 GB, that’s more than enough, I had used the N95 earlier which costs double this price, this is not a NSeries phone from nokia, but it had all the features + touch screen of N series phone at half the price.

If you like Garmin for GPS, Garmin GPS software available for this phone and installing that will make it the best GPS (it comes with Nokia’s map software too) and no data plan or internet required for GPS as maps are copied to memory. It comes with lot of add on and Its not too big like iPhone and not too small, exactly made for using with single hand and I had replaced the blackberry phone used for Office with this and configured my Office outlook exchange server along with Gmail, hotmail and yahoo, how cool is that.

It handles website just as a PC and there is no difference with any websites, I can login to bank accounts and do anything like PC, it has stereo speakers but the Nokia Headsets are far Superior in sound quality and build and it comes with built in Mic and buttons for music track change so we can play music and attend calls without touching phone.

And FM is there to use while driving and at the Gym, Google has lot of software available for this phone like latitude, docs etc. If you want free chat software Fring (www.fring.com) is available for free, it connects yahoo, hotmail, AOL, Gtalk and Skype users all in one place and we can even make voice calls to online users. It has the great sync software that syncs all your photos, videos, contacts, notes etc between phone and PC using Bluetooth, just switch on the PC and it does the sync automatically. We can import and export all contacts from outlook, Lotus notes etc.

And there is software to use the screen as a touch screen mouse for the PC like a wireless Bluetooth mouse and that’s free too.

For brand conscious users like me, I want to buy a phone from a telecom company like Nokia than a computer (apple) or TV (Samsung) company, who were just trying phones as one of their business.

iPhone doesn’t have many of these features and only selling because of marketing, if nokia did their part, this should beat any phone for sure, I don’t want to lock with AT&T for lifetime with iPhone and pay $ monthly and pay for any applications and did I say its unlocked? What else you can expect from a phone?

Review by Jennifer:
This arrived the very same day that my iPhone 4 did and it couldn’t have been better timing as I hadn’t been able to find a case that I liked for the phone yet and was concerned about it being protected. This case is very durable with just the right amount of padding to ensure that your device is completely protected. It’s not too bulky that it can’t fit in my purse but not so flimsy that it doesn’t really offer any protection at all. It finds a nice middle ground that I have really enjoyed having around. I’ve since used it to carry my small point and shoot camera, USB sticks, iPods, anything electronic that I can fit it in. It comfortably holds both my iPod 3G 64GB right alongside my iPhone 4, both with their own protective cases on as well. The clip has also been extremely useful as I do yoga, run and just hang around in the house in light, pocketless pants and I really want to have my music with me most of the time. This has always been kind of a sore spot for me as I love to be comfortable but I never have anywhere to put my music. I’ve even used fanny packs (inside the house only!) for this purpose. Not anymore! I put the clip right over the waistband on my pants and it’s completely secure. It’s never slipped or fallen off and even if by some chance it did, I know my phone is well protected. Overall I continue to get tons of use out of it for the fantastic low price and I can’t recommend it enough.

Review by A. Tegtmeier:
This little case is big enough for my Zune HD MP3 player *actually, it is much roomier than required for that), and my guess is that an iPod Touch/iPhone would also fit.

The padding is quite thick and the whole case looks very stylish in my eyes.

The drawstring cord has a plastic closure mechanism on it. The overall quality is very good, the stitches are sturdy and I could not detect any apparent flaw in the fabric or the seams.

Overall, this is a very simple, yet sturdy and usable case for a lot of the current electronic gadgets. Just don’t try to fit an iPad in it …