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Nokia N8 live Q&A countdown: 12MP camera showcase incoming
Leica M9 Titanium: The most beautiful Leica yet… designed by Volkswagen?
BlackBerry Torch review: BlackBerry 6
BlackBerry Torch review: Build
Mystery device ad broadcast on prime time US TV, but what is it?
HTC Mozart video: Windows Phone 7 full specs leaked!
Red Dead Redemption Liars and Cheats DLC out today!
Google Chrome OS: the biggest threat to Android tablets?
Etch A Sketch iPad case: best retro accessory ever?
Orange San Francisco £99 Android phone outed

Nokia N8 live Q&A countdown: 12MP camera showcase incoming

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 11:00 PM PDT

Our Nokia N8 live question and answer session goes down tomorrow afternoon at 2pm UK time. In this first session, we’ll be breaking down the 12 megapixel camera phone’s shooting skills for you, and answering everything you want to know about its snapper. To join in and quiz us, all you have to do is drop us a question on our Facebook page, through our Twitter handle (@electricpig), or just leave us your query here in the comments. Be sure to drop in tomorrow for the full guide on the Nokia N8, live on camera!

Leica M9 Titanium: The most beautiful Leica yet… designed by Volkswagen?

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 09:19 AM PDT

Leica just unveiled the new Leica M9 'Titanium'. It’s a special edition version of the M9, created in collaboration with Walter de'Silva, chief designer of the Volkswagen Group. But don’t let the VW heritage distract you, as de’Silva is responsible for the eye-popping designs from Audi, owned by VW. Now it all begins to fit together…

As part of the collabroation with Leica, de'Silva and his Audi Design Team re-interpreted the design of the Leica M9, slathering the outside in Titanium and buddying it up with a Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH. lens. Of course, that lens also has a titanium finish.

The price for such a luxurious re-design is unsurprisingly high. £19,800 will get you a camera and a lens, but for the price you’ll be in exclusive company: Leica is making just 500 of the new M9 Titanium cameras.

As well as the Titanium coating, there are new features inside too. LED illumination of the viewfinder, and a single mounting point for a carry strap (rather than dual carrying clips) come as standard. There’s a new metal finger loop, covered with fine Nappa leather, too. In fact, the leather used in the trim of the Leica M9 Titanium is the same stuff “typically reserved for the interiors of Audi's premium automobiles.” de’Silva’s clearly using his old contacts book to source suppliers.

There’s good news for clumsy millionaires too: The Leica M9 Titanium is scratch-resistant, with sapphire-crystal glass used to cover the screen, and lastly Leica has even let de’Silva tweak its iconic logo. It sounds like sacrelige to us, but the Leica badge “has been restyled and is elaborately hand-engraved in pure resin, inlaid with white enamel, sealed with a clear varnish and then polished.”

Who’s getting one for Christmas then? Also, can we come to your house and watch you open it?

Out now | £19,800 | Leica

BlackBerry Torch review: BlackBerry 6

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 08:45 AM PDT

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 might not be the leap forward we were hoping for when it comes to industrial design, but with BlackBerry 6, it boasts the most front end changes to the BlackBerry software we’ve seen so far. For better or worse? Find out in this part of our BlackBerry Torch review.

Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch review
BlackBerry Torch review: UK edition
BlackBerry Torch review: Build

You’ve read plenty about BlackBerry 6 already in the main section of our BlackBerry Torch review: in short, it is more of the same. But for die hard QWERTY keyboard addicts, it’ll be enough to keep their attention, even if that ends up being the case on other BlackBerrys getting the update. Let’s get stuck in to the pros and cons.

Loved

Universal Search
We have to hand it to RIM, this really is masterfully executed on BlackBerry 6. It’s not especially pretty, but it’s very speedy, and very useful. Where before you could start typing a name to pull up a contact and call, now other options appear as you type, Google Instant style. Contacts, emails, text messages, applications, and even the option to search YouTube, App World, Google Local Search or plain old Google. The only thing it doesn’t do is search email text rather than recipients/subject titles. Regardless, it’s still faster to pull up any contact you like and call them on the BlackBerry Torch 9800 than it is on the iPhone 4, or even on Android with voice actions.

New app layout
RIM’s spruced up the age old icon grid layout of its main menu screen on Blackberry 6. They’re still they’re of course, but you can now swipe left and right through different sorting methods too: you can cycle through frequent apps, downloads, media and favourites also. The frequent menu is great as it intelligently sorts your apps by the ones you most use, and you can leave your BlackBerry Torch 9800 on this screen by default.

Social Feeds
One of BlackBerry OS’ most useful features already is a tightly integrated inbox into which anything from IMs to bids on eBay and app updates can drop into. They still can, but to complement them, the Social Feeds app in BlackBerry 6 saves you opening lots of different apps for your social stream updates.

You can have Facebook, Twitter and the most popular IM clients (Except Facebook chat) streams and conversations flow through here, and filter by network at the top, or even send an update to more than one simultaneously. There’s even an RSS pane if you swipe to the right that does just the same so you can have everything from your favourite sites ready to look at, no third party apps required.

What surprised us most is that syncing our Twitter feed in the background doesn’t grind the BlackBerry Torch 9800 to a halt, as it does so many other phones with this functionality built in (Android Sony Ericsson phones, Motorola Motoblur phones and the Samsung Wave, for instance) – we follow a lot of people, OK?

Browser
We can’t say we’re head over heels in love with the browser in BlackBerry 6. It’s more we’re relieved than smitten. But the point is, it’s sporting a near modern browser at last that loads pages promptly, and the drop down history bar shows page titles as well as URLs. And cycling through different tabs is very slick. All that’s missing is a Chrome To Phone-esque push feature to shove what’s on your desktop browser to your phone when you leave the house.

Hated
Browser stickiness
Pinch to zoom does work of a fashion in the browser on Blackberry 6, but we’ve found that just navigating with your finger alone can be quite tricky – through either slowdown, a glitch, or the responsiveness of the screen, we’re not quite sure. At any rate, text links on websites would frequently not open on a tap, even when zoomed in very close. You often have to trigger the cursor by brushing the the optical trackpad and selecting it the old school way. It sounds like a minor problem, but we noticed it enough times for to to be annoying.

Wasted screen space
BlackBerry 6 doesn’t quite make full use of the BlackBerry Torch 9800’s 3.2-inch screen, which is a pity. Most of the time, your apps menu sits in a tray at the bottom of the screen, while at the top, you can trigger drop down menus for profiles, network connections and messages/upcoming events in your calendar – unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to pin this to the homescreen as you can on current BlackBerrys. That leaves a good inch and a half of, well, nothing really. Why not give us the option for some more widgets in there? Even a window into the social feeds app We’re still waiting for Apple to do the same with iOS, mind – Android leads the trail here.

BlackBerry Maps
Do people actually use this? We’re not sure anyone at RIM does, otherwise they would have noticed how slow and ugly it is. If for some reason you do, we suggest you install Google Maps immediately for a functional, bearable means of GPS and guidance when you’re lost.

We actually can’t wait to see BlackBerry 6 on other ‘Berries. We’re pretty certain it’s going to make the Bold 9700 and Curve 3G seriously efficient communicators – more so even than before. It’s just a shame the build of the BlackBerry Torch makes it so much less appealing.

Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch review
BlackBerry Torch review: UK edition
BlackBerry Torch review: Build

Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch 9800 coverage
BlackBerry Torch 9800 official
BlackBerry Torch 9800: all the official photos
BlackBerry Torch 9800: hands on first impressions
BlackBerry Torch 9800 exclusive UK preview
BlackBerry 6 video: Six secrets revealed
BlackBerry Torch 9800 unboxed: photos

BlackBerry Torch review: Build

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 08:45 AM PDT

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is a Berry like no other. Never mind the BlackBerry 6 software, its single biggest talking point is that it has a slide out keyboard, and a touchscreen. The best of both worlds, surely? Not quite. Read on for our full BlackBerry Torch review: Build section to see what we mean.

Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch review
BlackBerry Torch review: UK edition
BlackBerry Torch review: BlackBerry 6

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is very much a phone of two halves: the back section is great, but the front and most visible section is a big letdown.

Face down, the BlackBerry Torch looks like any other BlackBerry of recent years, for better or worse. A metal rim runs along the top so profiles can play nice with your holster, a camera with a flash resides just underneath, and there’s a distinctive removable back panel which can be prised off to get at the battery and microSD slot. This time round it’s rocking a bizarre ridged mould, which can best be described as “ribbed”. You soon stop noticing it though and it’s comfortable enough.

On the sides, you’ll find the micro USB port, volume rocker and one quick launch key (rather than the usual two). The 3.5mm audio port is also on the side: it’s usually something we grumble about but RIM didn’t really have much choice given the unusual form factor.

The best bit though is the keyboard on the BlackBerry Torch 9800. It’s been lifted straight off the Bold 9700’s design, and given that’s the best board for speed typing in the mobile business right now, that’s no bad thing. Since it’s set down slightly it’s a little bit harder to use but it’s still immensely practical for firing through emails, and the lip underneath doesn’t block your thumbs or out and out cut you like the one found on the Palm Pre.

The way the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is weighted, it’s actually comfortable to hold while typing, and it never feels like it’s going to topple over your hands in the way the overly oblong Sony Ericsson Aino slider felt like it would. The sliding mechanism is excellent too, and you won’t see any Oreo style twisting problems over time, we suspect.

It’s just a shame then that the upper half of the BlackBerry Torch, you know, the half you’ll be using most, is such a letdown. The chrome top above the screen is far too big: so large in fact that RIM’s managed to squeeze two BlackBerry logos on top of one another into it, and it really adds a sense of bulk to the phone. The LED indicator is still present, so email obsessives can tinker with their alerts as before.

Also present from before is the row of physical buttons and control scheme found on non-touchscreen BlackBerry models. Sitting below the screen are the call, menu, back and reject buttons, plus the optical trackpad which makes text selection much less fiddly. The problem is that they’re joined together, and are very difficult to push down individually, particularly the tiny call and reject zones. They should have been separate or touch sensitive.

But the real disappointment is the screen on the BlackBerry Torch 9800. The 480×360 resolution is way behind the curve (at least on a screen 3.2 inches or bigger), and if you’ve ever used an Android phone with a WVGA (800×480) screen or an iPhone 4 with its stunning Retina Display, it’s almost embarrassing. You can see the rough edges on words when reading emails – which you’re going to be doing a lot on a BlackBerry, let’s face it – and it just leaves you with the impression that it’s cheap, and BlackBerry 6 is underpowered.

And yet, even if it looks cheap, the whole affair feels a bit delicate too. While we reckon it’d come off better from a trip to the concrete than an iPhone 4, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 still feels delicate. Our Bold 9700 has survived trips into puddles and even a car crash and is still going: we’re not confident the BlackBerry Torch 9800 could, though we naturally aren’t going to simulate those examples to confirm.

What might just swing the build of the BlackBerry Torch 9800 for you is the battery life. Where a few hours of anything but standby on a HTC Desire can leave the little droid all but tapped out, the BlackBerry Torch just keeps on going and going. This phone will easily see you clear a weekend, or two full days of working week use, especially if you switch to 2G overnight.

But battery life and keyboard alone aren’t reasons enough to buy any phone these days. Software is key, and we’ve got the lowdown on that for you in our BlackBerry Torch review: BlackBerry 6 section.

Read the rest of our BlackBerry Torch review
BlackBerry Torch review: UK edition
BlackBerry Torch review: BlackBerry 6

Mystery device ad broadcast on prime time US TV, but what is it?

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 08:43 AM PDT

This advert for a mystery device, with no manufacturer details save a lower case ‘m’ branded on the outside has been broadcast to the US on prime time TV. The ad is so short that look away, and you’d have missed it. What it is, we can’t tell. What does it look like to you?

It reminded us of the O2 Cocoon. (Remember that? It’s better if you don’t.) Since the ad was broadcast in the US, that theory went straight out of the window, as the O2 Cocoon was an O2 branded phone for the UK, and the only branding on this phone is the ‘m’ on the front of the device, which we can’t identify.

It may not be a smartphone or phone at all, and in fact, it probably isn’t. The advert states that the sleek-looking device has an 8MP camera, wireless charging, a standard 3.5mm audio jack, a mini USB slot, dual pico projectors (why two, when they appear to be on opposite side of the device?), an embedded Bluetooth dongle, a Bluetooth/IR dongle, which can pan and zoom in 3D space, 45 Lumens (a measure of light strength). These all sound like stats relating to something like a portable projection device, rather than a smartphone.

The tagline would suggest otherwise: “Work Mobile, Play Mobile, Live Mobile. See Mobile. On Thursday.” That’s the tagline of a phone more than a mobile projector. It was added yesterday: when Thursday comes, what’s going to happen?

What do you think? Watch the video, and click and tell what you think this mystery device is…

HTC Mozart video: Windows Phone 7 full specs leaked!

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 08:02 AM PDT

The HTC Mozart is one of the most leaked Windows Phone 7 devices and we've got yet another major look at it. An HTC Mozart video of the Windows Phone 7 phone being poked and prodded has hit the web giving us what looks like the full HTC Mozart specs. Head through to see the Windows Phone 7 smartie in action…

The HTC Mozart specs revealed in the video above look pretty damn appealing to us. While that 3.7in display is Super-LCD rather than AMOLED, the clip claims the phone's packing an 8MP camera, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 8GB of internal memory and a hefty 576MB of RAM.

If the leaked HTC Mozart specs are the real deal, it would be an able Windows Phone 7 alternative to its Android packing sibling the HTC Desire HD. That 8MP camera is also likely to be the same one nestled in the Desire HD with 720p video recording on the cards.

There's also Bluetooth in the mix as you can see from the Nokia Bluetooth speaker that's cosying up to the HTC Mozart in the video. We're sure Nokia will be just thrilled to see their kit used to big up Windows Phone 7. Look out Microsoft, there will be people baring Nokia balloons outside your next Windows Phone 7 event.

Take a gander at the HTC Mozart in action. Could it tempt you to go for Windows Phone 7?

Out TBC | £TBC | HTC (via WMPoweruser)

Red Dead Redemption Liars and Cheats DLC out today!

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 07:43 AM PDT

The penultimate Red Dead Redemption DLC, Liars and Cheats, is available on Xbox Live and PSN from today. Red Dead Redemption Liars and Cheats adds a new weapon, the explosive shotgun, plus Stronghold, a new competitive multiplayer mode, and it also expands your free roaming.

Have you got Red Dead Redemption Liars and Cheats yet? Let us know what you think!

Out now | £7.99/800 pts | PSN/Xbox Live

Google Chrome OS: the biggest threat to Android tablets?

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 07:19 AM PDT

Google Chrome OS could pose a threat to Android upon its release, depending on the decisions of tablet manufacturers. Yesterday we asked if you had the choice between a device running Android and the same device running Google Chrome OS, which one you would pick?

Despite the fact that Google Chrome OS has not yet been officially released, it blew Android out of the water in our poll. 59 per cent of you, almost two thirds of you, voted in favour of Google Chrome OS. In comparison, Android received only 31 per cent of the vote.

What’s making the difference here? Is Google Chrome OS too far away from our prying hands for us to assess properly? Too scant on details? One commenter pointed out that the web-application based Google Chrome OS could intensify issues with data charges and caps, and network issues in the UK if it requires a connection to access any of the apps, saying: “Most of my Android use is on the London Underground, deep below any access to Wi-fi or 3G. I regularly go to remote parts of the French countryside with it. Just imagine the data roaming costs of trying to do that with Chrome.”

Those that voted almost unanimously wanted either Google Chrome OS or an Android OS: less than one per cent said you would choose neither Google Chrome OS or Android. Some of you, nine per cent, were on the fence, perhaps waiting to get a closer look at Google Chrome OS and its data connection requirements, before you decide which you’d prefer.

Etch A Sketch iPad case: best retro accessory ever?

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 06:30 AM PDT

Behold the Etch A Sketch iPad case! For $40 you can now make your state-of-the-art tablet look like the plastic drawing tool which promised you'd produce masterpieces but really only delivered frustrating scribbles. While it's made from the same red plastic as the original, the Etch A Sketch iPad case does include some concessions to modernity: there's slots for the switches, ports and buttons and a kickstand to prop your retro-clad iPad up. The knobs do nothing but you can grab one of the many Etch A Sketch apps from the iTune App Store to complete the effect. Want something a little less child like? Try our pick of the best iPad cases.

Out now | $40 | HeadCase

Orange San Francisco £99 Android phone outed

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 06:21 AM PDT

UPDATE: The Orange San Francisco has a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with 800×480 resolution, Orange has confirmed to us. That’s pretty jawdropping for a £99 phone, we’re sure you’ll agree – stay tuned for a full Orange San Francisco review as soon as we can.

Presenting the Orange San Francisco, the network’s take on an own brand Android phone priced under £100 on Pay As You Go, just like the T-Mobile Pulse Mini. This little fella runs Android 2.1 and squeezes in a 3MP camera, plus your usual connectivity bobbins.

Orange is keeping quiet on the screen size at the moment (We’re awaiting a response) but this is certainly more attractive than the squat Pulse Mini and Vodafone 845. Let’s just hope the Orange San Francisco isn’t crippled by the network’s bloatware, like the LG Optimus was.

Intrigued? Check out our Best Android phone budget edition list here!

Out this week | £99 PAYG | Orange