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- iPhone 4 UK price: First Pay As You Go option confirmed
- iPhone 4 UK price: O2 offers early upgrade deal
- Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro review: What do you want to know?
- iPhone 4 vs Dell Streak poll: which one are you?
- Google Earth World Cup stadium tours: fly to South Africa for free!
- Dell Streak review
- Dell Streak review: The first true tablet phone?
- Dell Streak review: Build and touchscreen
- Dell Streak review: Android OS
- iPad UK stock: have you found one?
| iPhone 4 UK price: First Pay As You Go option confirmed Posted: 09 Jun 2010 10:25 AM PDT 
Although Carphone Warehouse staff have reportedly been informing customers that the iPhone 4 won’t be sold on PAYG tariffs, O2’s new site detailing upgrade eligibility confirms that a Pay & Go (the network’s name for PAYG tariffs) iPhone 4 will be available. The site doesn’t give the PAYG iPhone 4 UK price unfortunately, but you can bet it’ll be big. The iPhone 3GS on O2 Pay & Go currently starts at £449 – we can’t see a thinner, faster, more swizztastic version with HD video recording built in costing much less. iPhone 4 UK price: What are you willing to pay? Of course, the plus side of paying such a hefty iPhone 4 UK price up front is that you can wonder off and pick up any other phone as soon as it comes along, with no monthly pound of flesh to hand over. We’ve contacted O2 about the iPhone 4 UK price for Pay & Go, and availability, and will update if and when we get a comment from the company. Will you be buying an iPhone 4 on PAYG? How much are you willing to pay? Let us know in the comments below! Out TBC | £TBC | O2 Related posts:
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| iPhone 4 UK price: O2 offers early upgrade deal Posted: 09 Jun 2010 09:37 AM PDT 
The iPhone 4 UK price is still an unknown entity right now, but if you’re locked into an existing iPhone contract and chimping at the bit to get out, we’ve got good news. O2 is offering Apple addicts the chance to get out of their commitments on the cheap – but they’re not waiving them completely. Read on to see what you’ll need to fork out to get an iPhone 4 on launch day.
To avoid a backlash when announcing the iPhone 4 UK price tariffs (Something that happened with the iPhone 3G and 3GS changeover last year), O2 is letting people know now that they can get out of their contracts early. Unlike in the US, where AT&T is simply letting iPhone owners waive their contracts six months ahead of schedule, there’s a cost. Instead of paying upwards of £35 per month, or whatever your current phone tariff is, O2 is allowing customers to pay a charge equivalent to £20 per month left – this is for all contract customers, not just iPhone users. iPhone 4 UK price: How much are you willing to pay? In other words, if you bought an iPhone 3GS on launch last year on an 18 month contract, you should only have to add an extra £120 to the iPhone 4 UK price for your realistic switchover cost (As you should have six months left on your contract now, see?). Confused? Don’t worry: O2’s provided a simple calculator to work out the fee for you: just pop your contract renewal date in and brace yourself. It’s a welcome move, and we’ll be interested to see how other networks respond: this is the first iPhone which will be sold on four different networks at launch in Britain, rather than just one, so we’re hopeful a bit of competition will bring the iPhone 4 UK price – and the one early upgraders will really have to pay – down. [Thanks Luke!] Out 24 June | £TBC | O2 Related posts:
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| Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro review: What do you want to know? Posted: 09 Jun 2010 09:13 AM PDT  A Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro has just rocked up at the door to greet us with its slide out QWERTY keyboard and HD video recording skills. We’re off to put it through the grinder, but in the meantime, snack on all the photos of this Symbian phone right here, and tell us what you want to know for our full review, coming soon!
We first clapped eyes on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro back in February at Mobile World Congress, but it’s only slipped out on sale this week in the UK. It’s near identical to the original Vivaz, sharing the same 3.2 inch touchscreen, Symbian S60 operating system, and 5.1 megapixel camera, capable of recording 720p HD video. The only difference is of course the slide out QWERTY keyboard on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, and we’re quite pleased with it from our first play. The buttons feel a tad cheap and rubbery, but they’re quite easy to get a good WPM pace going on. Of course, we’re already running up against what we think’s going to be the sticking point: Symbian. On the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, it’s still as creaky and unpleasant as ever. We’ve seen some screen blackouts already that you could make a cup of tea during. But never mind our concerns – what are yours? If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro for a while, what do you want to know most? Is it the camera quality? App support? Build quality of the slide mechanism? Read our Sony Ericsson Vivaz review now The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is on sale at O2 now, but sit tight a while and we’ll be back with a full review for you, charting its highs and lows, and tell us what you want to know in the comments below. Want to help shape our Sony Ericsson Vivaz review? It’s easy: just jot your burning questions down below here, and we’ll answer them for you. Out Now | £From free on contract | Sony Ericsson Related posts:
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| iPhone 4 vs Dell Streak poll: which one are you? Posted: 09 Jun 2010 08:50 AM PDT 
If you're the type that likes to tinker, then you're probably the Dell Streak. While it's currently running Android 1.6, the Dell Streak has been rooted and the ingenious folks in Android forums are already beavering away on an unofficial Android 2.2 upgrade. If you were been tempted by the HTC HD2, a Nokia N900 or the HTC Evo, which is sadly not UK bound, the Dell Streak has the same hackable flexibility. The Dell Streak is also the one for people who believe size matters (stop sniggering!) with that enormous 5in WVGA screen to play with. Thankfully though our Dell Streak: build and touchscreen review found it'll slip easily into your pocket. It's just 9.98mm thick which is not much fatter than iPhone 4 which is 9.3mm deep. There's also a comparable 5MP camera, VGA front-facing camera and a hot-swappable microSD card slot which makes it simple to get files and apps onto the Streak. iPhone 4 on the other hand will probably suit you if you're after a gadget that comes fully formed with its features all set. For instance, like the Dell Streak, it's packing a 5MP camera with LED flash and a VGA front-facing camera but the iPhone 4 FaceTime function will work straight away while the Streak needs some changes to get its video chat skills going. Though you could jailbreak your iPhone 4, it's more suited to someone who wants to gorge effortlessly on apps and audio and isn't bothered about giving up some control to the Apple overlords. The sheer simplicity of iOS 4 means you should have a lot less headaches but also less scope for truly customising the device. There's also the iPhone 4 Retina screen to consider which should outshine the Dell Streak's size with it's ridiculously good 960 x 640 resolution. Let us know whether you're iPhone 4 or the Dell Streak in our poll below: Related posts:
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| Google Earth World Cup stadium tours: fly to South Africa for free! Posted: 09 Jun 2010 08:00 AM PDT 
Google has whipped up a full 3D tour of featuring every World Cup stadium or you can check them out individually using the Earth view in Google Earth. We'd recommend visiting the Mbobela Stadium which sports rather fetching Zebra-print seats and the Royal Bafokeng Stadium where England play the USA on Saturday. If you're feeling particularly geeky, Google Earth's Historical Imagery feature will also show you how the World Cup stadiums were constructed. Hit Google Earth, switch on the Historical Imagery layer and you can travel back and forth in time using the slider to see the World Cup stadiums rise from next to nothing. You can also create your own with Google Building Maker. Hit the comments to let us know what you think of the Google Earth World Cup stadium tours and point us to any other cool World Cup web finds you've stumbled upon. Out now | £free | Google Earth Related posts:
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| Posted: 09 Jun 2010 07:33 AM PDT  The Dell Streak really shouldn’t work as a phone. It’s the biggest handset we’ve ever seen, 1980s Motorolas aside. It has a poor on screen keyboard and runs an outdated version of Android. And yet, if you’re a power user, prepared to move beyond the paradigms and traditions of how you “should” use a mobile phone, there’s no way you’ll be able to avoid falling in love with the thing. Find out what we mean, and if it’s for you in our full Dell Streak review.
Let’s get things straight: if you’re clutching on to your Nokia 6700 and wary about touchscreen phones or full QWERTY keyboards, the Dell Streak is absolutely not for you. It’s unbelievably huge. At five inches wide, it’s certainly the biggest touchscreen phone ever made, with acres more screen space than the still epic 4.3-inch HTC HD2. It’s the sort of size that might almost make you think twice about what jacket you’ll put on as you head out the door, but for its saving grace: its thin profile. At just under 10mm, the Dell Streak is barely thicker than the new iPhone 4, and will still comfortably slide into your trouser pockets, even if your tastes are closer to Shoreditch skinny than MC Hammer baggy. Even sitting down, it won’t cause discomfort – we’d say Dell’s pitched the size just on the right side of acceptability, if you’re prepared to open your mind a little. There’s no getting around the weight issue, admittedly. At 219g, the Dell Streak is incredibly hefty for a smartphone (By comparison, an iPhone 3GS weighs just 135g). It's something you'll notice at first, but you'll soon get used to it. Certainly, it's no bother while conducting even long phone conversations. But if you want to use the Dell Streak efficiently, there's something you'll need to adapt to: it's a landscape phone (You could say the Nokia N900 was too, but well, the screen was as responsive as Page 3 model is to advances from a goat). We don't blame you for being confused as to whether the Dell Streak is a tablet or a phone, but the best way to put it is this: when you're not making calls, you have to hold it like a tablet, more PSP than iPad (Which is far, far larger, and not a rival product, despite the word "tablet" being tossed around). There's an accelerometer for portrait tilting, sure, but to emphasise this, Dell has locked the homescreen into landscape mode only. It's not something you may be used to, but the screen is wide enough for Dell to pull this off: you'll want to read web pages in this view, you'll want to Google Maps in this view, and you'll probably want to type in this view. Hang up your suspicions and prejudices, and you'll find it's definitely preferable. Some of the specs on the Dell Streak aren’t amazing, true: the five megapixel camera takes merely decent stills, not helped by a laggy shutter. The 1GHz Snapdragon processor meanwhile is par for the course on top end Android phones – speedy, but matched elsewhere. But the responsive and sharp WVGA screen, with pinch to zoom gesture support on pictures and web pages, and astonishing battery life (It puts the smaller, power hungry HTC Desire to shame) more than make up for it. What's the catch then? The Dell Streak will never be a mass market hit like the iPhone 4, but surely it's a geek's ultimate gadget? Almost. Firstly, the Dell Streak only runs the older Android 1.6, albeit a very well skinned version, so no delicious Froyo Flash support or multiple Google accounts for you. And because it's skinned, don't expect immediate updates either as Dell programmers try to keep pace with Google's release schedule. Secondly, and much more pressingly, the onscreen keyboard is atrocious for such a large, responsive screen. There's way too much space between the keys (And an inexplicable numberpad in landscape mode), leaving you with a board that's actually worse than the stock Android QWERTY. Even if you're ready to embrace such a massive mobile, these problems really could be dealbreakers. If it weren't for them, we'd buy the Dell Streak in a heartbeat – it's just we use two Google accounts and enjoy sending properly punctuated emails. But hey, if you're a coder, therein lies the challenge: start solving these problems yourself. If you're the sort of person who relishes the task as much as using the phone, you'll love the Dell Streak. This phone is built for you. And if you're an Android fan rather than merely a touchscreen phone fan, keep an eye on the forums. Should you see an unofficial Android 2.2 update hit (It’s already been rooted, so don’t rule it out), disregard all your hesitations, and go grab one: once those two flaws are fixed, the Dell Streak will be near perfect for serious smartphone aficionados. Read the rest of our Dell Streak review now: Related posts:
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| Dell Streak review: The first true tablet phone? Posted: 09 Jun 2010 07:32 AM PDT  Since we first saw the Dell Streak in hazy spyshots and leaked video way back in 2009, we've been wondering just what the company would pitch it as. It's a huge slate, but it makes calls? Huh? In the end, it left O2 to deal with the branding, and the network is now pitching it as a, well, Dell Streak. So is this a replacement for your mobile, or an iPad rival with a hefty monthly contract? We explain just where it really fits in this part of our Dell Streak review.
It's quite clear that an impending tablet war is coming, as the first Android iPad rivals are starting to emerge at tradeshows. But despite the Dell Streak's large size for a phone, it's emphatically not an iPad rival. As you can see in the snaps above, it's a great deal smaller than the iPad: in fact, you can fit approximately three Dell Streaks on top of the iPad's screen. That limitation puts it in a different category altogether: the iPad is categorically better for sitting on the sofa and browsing the web, or reading ebooks. The iPad is also a gizmo you'll pay a one off price for, like an iPod, rather than an iPhone. The Dell Streak will set you back £35 per month on a 24 month contract , or intriguingly, £25 per month for data only, with no option for voice. While it's great that O2's seen fit to offer this option, after using the Dell Streak extensively, we can't see the point of using it only as a tablet. The size is naturally the issue here: at five inches, the Dell Streak is mansionesque. But believe it or not, Dell's pitched it at just the right scale (and thickness, or lack thereof) to fit comfortably in your pocket. Throw another candybar or phone in there (Which you may also be paying monthly for), and all of a sudden, you've got one bulging, pricey pocket. It's far better to merge the two together for an extra tenner a month, and use the Dell Streak as your phone. There's just one thing to bear in mind if you do this: the Dell Streak requires to you to change your perception of how a phone works. It's a landscape phone, to be held like a tablet. Sure, a few Nokia phones have tried this before. The N800/900 internet tablets, for instance – but they're barely bigger than new smartphones, and unless you're typing, could easily be held in just one hand. The Dell Streak really can't, save to tap a quick bookmark in the browser. Instead, you hold it horizontally for almost everything. The keyboard is easier to use this way (Though still awful – why Dell thought a separate number pad to the right would be a good idea is anyone's guess), the screen is wide enough to make viewing webpages this way, Google Maps looks better this way, and to really emphasise the point, Dell's locked the homescreens into landscape view. But so long as you accept this, you'll love the Dell Streak. It doesn't have the portability and casual coolness of an iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS or HTC Legend, but in lieu of the epic HTC Evo 4G ever turning up here, this may suit hardcore Android fans down to the ground. Here's to many more tablet phones – Dell's definitely on to something with the form factor. Read the rest of our Dell Streak review now: Related posts:
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| Dell Streak review: Build and touchscreen Posted: 09 Jun 2010 07:32 AM PDT  The Dell Streak has a lot to live up to. It's not just Dell's first smartphone in the UK, but the pioneer of a whole new form factor, courtesy of its absolutely enormous five inch screen. Does it pull it off, or has the PC giant simply created a monster? Find out in this part of our Dell Streak review.
Read the rest of our Dell Streak review now: Dell's been turning around its reputation for clunking office PCs of late with a series of stylish, if expensive, laptops like the Dell Adamo and Adamo XPS, and if you're pondering how a tablet phone really works, you'll be relieved to know that it's pulled it off again with the Dell Streak. So long as you're happy toting a screen so big around in your pocket, there's almost nothing wrong with the massive mobile's design. It feels perfect to hold in the hand thanks to a smudge resistant back panel, is comfortable to hold against your hand, has decent call quality, and will take a tumble or three thanks to its Gorilla Glass screen – you won't crack it by mistake. To be clear, the Dell Streak is not a phone for everyone. The five inch WVGA screen really is a Behemoth, and it weighs double many other smartphones. But it's not so big that it won't slot in most any pocket comfortably: it just requires you to learn to treat your phone as a landscape tablet when you're not making calls, even if it looks like an elongated BlackBerry Storm. Part of the reason for this is its profile. The Dell Streak is long, sure, but it's mighty thin too: at 9.98mm, it's barely fatter than the iPhone 4. And yet, Dell's squeezed in a 1GHz CPU that canters along at a nice pace, a five megapixel camera with an LED flash, a hot swappable microSD card slot (O2 bundles in a 16GB micro SDHC card, which is very generous) and a battery with plenty of juice. Yes, you read that right, the battery life is excellent. We've not been impressed with the longevity of many top end new Android phones recently (Naming no names, HTC Desire and Legend), and reports from the US peg the HTC Evo 4G as even more power hungry. So you can imagine our relief then when we found that the Dell Streak's 1530mAh juice supplier kept it ticking over for much more than a full day despite very heavy usage, and well, a blooming enormous TFT screen. It's quite possible to stretch the Dell Streak to almost a whole weekend on a charge, so you'll never be caught short and communication-less. Frankly, HTC could and should learn a few lessons from Dell on this front. The Dell Streak's screen itself meanwhile is top notch. It doesn't have the vivid colour of a HTC Desire or Samsung Galaxy S with an AMOLED display, and with a larger screen size the pixel density is lower, but it's hardly detectable. Web pages still look bright and sharp (YouTube videos in high quality mode are stunning), and pinch to zoom support for easy zooming is always welcome. It's also highly responsive, as are the touch sensitive home, menu and back buttons on the side – it's just a shame we can't say the same of Dell's software keyboard. The Dell Streak's build is not absolutely perfect. Its tapered edges on the short sides rule out any buttons or ports, which is a nuisance as you really don't want to have a 3.5mm audio port on the side of something so big in your pocket (Tough). The camera shutter button meanwhile requires a long push to fire up, and a long, shaky hold to fire. But if you're prepared to make the changes to enjoy such a sweeping screen size (You could start practicing by holding your PSP – or dusty old Game Gear), it's an immense effort nonetheless. Considering it's one of Dell's first phones, we're astounded. We've honestly not seen a debut phone from a brand as good as this since the iPhone. Perhaps more of a concern should be the software Dell's loaded on top – for that, check out the Android 1.6 section of our Dell Streak review. Read the rest of our Dell Streak review now: Related posts:
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| Dell Streak review: Android OS Posted: 09 Jun 2010 07:31 AM PDT  The Dell Streak isn't the first five inch Android tablet we've seen – but it is the first that makes calls and surfs the web over 3G. How does the Android 1.6 Donut bake it's running work in this new blower screen size? Read on and find out in this part of our Dell Streak review.
The good news first: the Dell Streak is the best Android 1.6 device on the market. Forget about the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10: it may share the same Donut core and 1GHz processor, but the Dell Streak is much faster, with no laggy Timescape software slowing things down. The Dell Streak doesn't run the vanilla Android Google released into the wild however, but a skinned version, with some very savvy tweaks to make it work better on a five inch screen designed to be held in landscape mode (In fact, the homescreen can only be viewed in landscape orientation – and it's for the better). While Dell's Facebook widget works fine, what's much more useful is the tabbed control bar along the top. On most Android phones, this is just one bar you can pull down to get notifications. That's still present on the Dell Streak, but alongside it is the menu button usually summoned from the bottom of the homescreen, which can show your favourite apps in a single row, or the whole shebang. Another button along it lets you open recent apps and add or adjust up to six homescreens, while the most useful one shows you connectivity settings in a drop down pane (Not dissimilar to the embedded panes that pop up in iPhone OS on the iPad). This is a godsend for anyone used to placing widgets on the homescreen to toggle Wi-Fi on and off – you don't have to jump back out of the browser if you need to turn it on, or turn data off to save battery. Pinch to zoom meanwhile works fine on webpages and pictures (Not Google Maps), although there's strangely no option to fit a column of text to screen with a doubletap with the Dell Streak – no real biggie. And Google voice search works a treat, even with our British accent, transcribing even whole sentences perfectly (though sometimes bizarrely too). And now the bad news: the Dell Streak is the best Android 1.6 device on the market. That means you miss out on all the extra features, bug fixes and speed boosts that Android 2.1 gizmos like the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S enjoy, never mind the Android 2.2 Google Nexus One, with turbo fast speeds and Flash support. Unless you're prepared to tinker when the Dell Streak inevitably gets rooted, you'll likely be stuck with it for some time too, as the nature of Android skins means you'll be left waiting while Dell updates its software plastered on top to the latest version – and Dell hasn't said it's doing that, officially. Truth be told, unless you badly need multiple Google account support – or want to play Farmville or other Flash games on your phone – Android 1.6 isn't such an issue. The video codec support (H.263/H.264, 3GP, MPEG4, WMV) is feeble compared to the Samsung Galaxy S, but in the right format, clips still look fantastic. The Dell Streak is still blazingly fast, serves up multiple contact icons in the address book, sucks in Facebook profile pics, and has free navigation with voice read out if you update Google Maps. Navigation works an absolute treat on the Dell Streak's lavish display – in fact, we'd go so far as to say that this is the best satnav phone on the market right now, period. But as we touched on in our full Dell Streak review, the keyboard is a major problem. It's certainly the worst we've ever tried on a Android smartphone with a capacitive screen. To be clear, the blame lies entirely at the door of the Dell developers who created the skin, as the screen is epic, responsive and eerily scratch resistant. But the keyboard has tiny keys, a baffling number pad on the right hand side crushing things up, and auto correction turned off by default. It's hard to see how Dell didn't notice these issues during the Streak's extensive gestation. You could download Better Keyboard from the Android Market, but it's a paid for app, and while it removes a lot of headaches, the trade off is you'll have to wait a few seconds for the keyboard to appear – we tested it out on the Dell Streak, and it's far from instant, crashed now and again, and mucked up voice transcription. That it's still the sensible thing to install speaks volumes. Still, if you don't yearn for the simplicity of an iPhone, can cope with Android 1.6's feature set and the odd pause while you summon the keyboard, you'll adore the Dell Streak. What you're left with is a solid Android device, with an epic screen and new form factor that a small band of open source and spec fans will go absolutely gaga for – and make much, much better. Read the rest of our Dell Streak review now: Related posts:
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| iPad UK stock: have you found one? Posted: 09 Jun 2010 07:25 AM PDT 
The iPad hit UK shops on 28 May, with the predictable lengthy queues that greet any major Apple launch snaking out of the company's Regent Street flagship store – but many other people managed to stroll into a local electronics emporium and pick up their iPad without any fuss and a minimal amount of waiting in line. Were you one of them? Let us know in the comments section below. Or perhaps you thought you could wait a little longer and grab your iPad a few days after launch? Did you succeed? Did they have the model you wanted or did you have to settle for a 16GB iPad when you really wanted the 64GB edition? So basically, let us know your iPad buying adventures. Have you got the one you wanted or are you still desperately seeking the 10-inch tablet? Tell us in the comments box. Out now | From £429 | Apple Related posts:
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