I was pretty impressed with the HTC Inspire, the first phone to tap into AT&T's faster HSPA+ 4G network. It's AT&T’s slickest Android phone yet – and the $99.99 price tag sweetens the deal.
The HTC Inspire comes loaded with Android 2.2, HTC Sense 2.0 and built-in Adobe Flash player. LCD screen is 4.3-inches. Camera is 8 megapixels with autofocus and flash, and records HD video in 720p. Has a 1 GHZ processor with 4GB of internal memory and 8 GB on a microSD memory card, but supports up to a 32 GB card. Can be a mobile hotspot for up to five devices with DataPro with Tethering plan.
But keep in mind that when AT&T releases its reportedly faster and more-improved LTE-4G network later this year, this phone won’t be able to take advantage of that.
Also, although the HTC Sense phone-finding features are handy, the map of the phone’s location is just a general area – not specific to know exactly where it is in a building. So it’s decent for helping you know if you left it at a restaurant or work, but not whether you left it in the bathroom or on your desk.
You can read the full review at MiamiHerald.com. But before you buy, be sure to check out AT&T's Motorola Atrix 4G that hits stores tomorrow (Feb. 22). Although I haven't had a model to test yet, the first "NirvanaPhone" is sure stand out from the rest of the Android herd.
In case you missed it last week, here's the review of the first 4G phone from MetroPCS, the Samsung Craft. But it's not a smartphone, so buying it just because it is a 4G phone is pretty pointless -- especially considering the phone crashed often when loading a full website.
Need some extra money? Take your smartphone to the store and rack up points for cash and gift cards.
One of the latest marketing trends pays you to walk into stores and use your phone’s camera to scan barcodes or take photos of products — provided you’ve already downloaded the free app. And some of these apps also reward you for trying other free apps.
Advertisers are hoping these gimmicks will make users more likely to stick the featured product in the shopping cart.
In the video below I highlight how to use a few of these the next time you're at the store. But you can read my full print review for a rundown of others also popping up in the space: Apps let you scan, snap and click your way to rewards.
Finding the incentive to stay active and fit doesn’t always come easily, and motivating kids to get off the couch can sometimes be a bigger challenge. Two fitness gadgets have the same answer: Move around to earn free stuff, such as toys and gift certificates. Exercise really can be rewarding -- oh and there’s that being healthy thing, too.
One is GeoPalz, a pedometer that's a cute, cheap way to keep elementary-age kids motivated to put down the video game and run around. The other is the S2H Replay, a digital watch and activity tracker for kids and adults that smiles as you shake off those flabby math-teacher arms. You can get a full breakdown of the good and bad in today's print review. (For example, the S2H Replay only lets you enter an hour's worth of points a day, so a workout fiend isn't going to earn rewards any faster.)
In our continuing series on tech to help meet your New Year’s resolutions, we hope you vowed in 2011 to quit the dangerous habit of texting while driving. If willpower alone is not enough, there are a few smartphone programs that can help.
Although if you have an Android or BlackBerry, you'll have more support than iPhone users. That's because the iPhone versions of many of these apps aren't allowed to mess with stopping text messages while the phone is traveling in a car.
If you haven't made your New Year's resolutions yet, then allow me to suggest a few for you. In the next few reviews, I'll be covering gadgets that can help you meet the goals you've been procrastinating on. This one goes out to my lazy viewers who don't mind dropping $400 to keep the home cleaner.
Here's the more detailed breakdown:
Price: Same. The Neato XV-11 is $399, and the Roomba 570 can be found online for the same price.
Size: Very similar. The Neato is just a tad bit taller because it has a laser on top that can "see" walls and obstacles to map out the whole room. Both were able to get under my furniture.
Automated: Both have an auto-scheduling system, won’t fall down stairs and will return to their charging base when finished.
Brushes: The Roomba has two brushes, one bristle and another rubber. The Neato only just has the rubber beater brush.
Maintenance: The Neato is easier to clean since the dirt bin is contained. Roomba’s slide-out bin can cause dirt and dust to fly when opened. The Roomba’s brushes have more pieces to take apart to untangle hair.
Communication: The Roomba will speak in a female voice or beep if there is an error, such as needing to clean the brushes (which happened often for me). The Neato tells you on an LCD screen, and offers cute messages such as “please put me down” or “Thank you for cleaning my trash bin.”
Blocking a room: With the Roomba, you have to set up battery-powered towers to have it avoid an area or pull it toward a room. With the Neato, you have to lay down pieces of a thin, black magnetic strip in areas you don’t want it to go into.
Cleaning pattern: Here is where the most significant difference lies. The Roomba randomly zig-zags all over rooms like a manic sugar-overloaded 5-year-old, ramming into furniture and walls. The front bumper was covered in scuff marks within in a few minutes. When leaving it to do my entire downstairs floor, the Roomba went over some spots multiple times, but barely touched others. (And one time it didn’t even bother going into my kitchen.) After a little over an hour, it returned to its base.
The Neato’s laser sensor maps out the room, furniture and door frames. It barely ever touches the furniture since it can “see” it. It’ll go over the perimeter once, then neatly cover the rest of the room in straight lines, like a carpet Zen garden. It’ll only go over each spot once, but finished the entire floor in a half hour.
But the Roomba’s brazen attitude towards furniture was a benefit in cleaning between my blinds for the sliding glass door. The Neato saw the blinds as a wall and didn’t push to clean the few inches behind them.
Cleaning quality: Both filled up their bins with loads of dust, pet hair and debris. But the Roomba’s duo of a bristle brush and rubber squeegee has potential to grab up more hair than the Neato — although the brush required more frequent maintenance to clean.
Cleaning speed: The Neato and the Roomba travel at about the same speed, but the Neato finishes cleaning every area of the floor much faster than the Roomba. To go over my entire living room, kitchen, guest bathroom and den, the Neato took a half hour. The Roomba stopped after an hour and repeated some areas.
The verdict: Neither will clean as well as a human with a stand-up vacuum cleaner and a hose, since corners and edges don’t get a good clean. These are designed for maintenance. That said, they both will help keep your home cleaner, but I prefer the Neato. The Neato just gives me more piece of mind. I know it’s covered the whole floor, it requires less maintenance to clean brushes if I set it when I’m away, the dirt bin won’t fling dust around when I remove it, and it’s not hurling itself at my furniture.
After a very exciting year in gadgetry, I'm proud to present the best (and worst) of the tech I've tinkered with in 2010 in our first annual Tech Review Awards -- THE CAREYS! Filmed LIVE from The Miami Herald Theater:
In this week's review of the Libre eBook Reader Pro, the bottom line is that its a good, cheaper e-reader alternative -- that is, if you don't mind it lacks some of the top-of-the-line features, like downloading books over Wi-Fi and being able to subscribe to newspapers and magazines.
You can read my full list of ups and downs in today's print review. The price ranges online, usually around $120, but my contact for the Libre said the price is going down to $99.99 this week at Borders stores. I saw it for $99 last week at Dell.com, but now Dell has jacked it back up to $150.
A few weeks after I reviewed the FLO TV hand-held personal television, the company has discontinued selling the device to consumers. I'm told service will continune until Spring 2011 for anyone subscribed to watching the personal units, but there's the chance it may end sooner.
Qualcomm, the parent company of FLO TV, "will make approprite refunds" if they discontinue service, the company said. Details about such a thing would be revealed before the plug is pulled. And it seems some FLO TV employees will lose their jobs as a result.
Qualcomm declined to disclose subscriber numbers.
There's no news about the FLO TV for mobile phones, or the FLO TV made for vehicles. As of now, nothing has changed for those devices. And the company worded it in such a way to leave open the option that it could go back on sale sometime.
The official statement from Qualcomm:
As we previously indicated in our July 2010 earnings call, we have been examining strategic opportunities for FLO TV. We have been engaging in conversations with a wide range of partners for both the network and the spectrum. We are seeing strong interest in using the FLO TV network or spectrum to capitalize on the growing imbalance between mobile data supply and demand, the growth of tablets, and consumer demand for high quality video and print content, and a richer user experience. While this process continues, we are suspending our direct to consumer sales of new devices. We anticipate we will maintain the network so that current direct to consumer subscribers will continue to receive FLO programming into Spring 2011. Service provided to handsets purchased through wireless operators is unaffected at this time. In the event of a discontinuance of service, FLO TV will make appropriate refunds, the details of which will be communicated prior to discontinuation. While we are working to redeploy impacted employees, we anticipate that there will be some layoffs.
I enjoyed testing device -- it worked well, but didn't have the rights to show NFL games. That was a major gripe among those who bought it as a way to tune into a game from anywhere. The company recently announced it's working on FLO TV for iPhone and Android devices.
Below is my review that ran a few weeks ago, and a comparison of it to Kula TV, a competitor that is taking a different approach by using streaming Internet channels. For me, I thought it just made more sense to have FLO TV on a phone rather than carry around another device. Perhaps that's one of the reasons Qualcomm discontinued it.
The country is in the midst of an Android invasion, and there's no sign of it slowing down.
Since late April, more than a dozen new smartphones -- most of them
running Google's Android operating system -- have hit stores. Apple's
iPhone 4 with service on AT&T has grabbed the most media buzz of all
the new smartphones, with customers still occasionally finding some
stores out of stock. But competitor phones with Android systems have
also flown out of stores.
Throw in the launch of a new touch screen BlackBerry, and 2010 has
shaped up as an unprecedented bonanza for consumers and smartphone
makers. (And that's not counting the launch of Windows Phone 7 handsets that launch in October.)
In today's Herald, I write about how consumers are buying Android phones at a faster pace than iPhones, and what this year's phone trends signal about the changing marketplace. You can read the full story here: Battle of the Smartphones.
If you're in the market for a new top-of-the-line smartphone, but feeling dizzy from the array of choices, have no fear. For those of you too lazy to read my full reviews, I've got a quick breakdown of which are the winners, and why: Smartphone Review Roundup
Don't care about carriers? Or prices? Then maybe you will like this fun little flowchart to help you narrow down which phone's hardware might be a good fit for your mobile needs. I made it for you with love, with help from Herald graphic designer Bill Gerdts.
