There are many activities which are illegal, but unlocking your mobile phone is not one of them. Surprisingly there are a large percentage of mobile users who are unaware of the legality of getting a device unlocked, so MVNO Giff Gaff has launched a video campaign aimed at educating users that unlocking a phone is a totally legal practice.

A survey commissioned by Giff Gaff suggests that 28% of users are unsure if unlocking is legal, whilst over half of all phone users currently use a device that is locked to a particular network.

To emphasise the legality of phone unlocking, Giff Gaff are running a viral video campaign, which can be viewed at the Giff Gaff Illegal Theatre. The site shows two YouTube videos running together, in one is an anonymous commentator, who passes comments in the activities in the other video, aimed at emphasising the whole 'unlock your mobile' message.

Of course, the underlying point of educating users about the legality of unlocking their phones is aimed at then drawing consumers to the Giff Gaff product, but the message is an important one that it seems consumers need to be informed about. When it comes to the time to look for a new contract deal, there are many excellent value SIM only deals around, but if your handset is locked to one network provider, it will limit the range of offers you can opt for. A recent study showed that many users are not getting value for money from contracts, by tying in to large tariffs to get a device for 'free'. Having an unlocked device opens the whole market, allowing you to take a package deal from any network to use with your existing handset.

If you need to get your handset unlocked, your first port of call should be your network Customer Services department, which should be able to give you all the information you need. Once you have your device open to all networks, head on over to our SIM Only Deal Page and check out the range of value for money packages available.

Mobile phones have become more than just a convenient accessory that allows us to keep in touch with friends and family. Nowadays, the mobile phone is our connection to the online world, our photo album, our music player, digital camera, GPS SatNav device, and more. In the UK we have a mature mobile market that gives us the opportunity to enjoy the most expensive products at a low, up front cost. Whilst entry into the mobile world is relatively cheap, the on going costs of mobile ownership can soon mount up, and it is prudent to keep an eye on our monthly invoices to ensure we are always getting the best value for money.

There are many variables that need to be weighed up when getting a mobile phone. Simply shooting for the first tariff where our device of choice comes in free of charge is not always the best approach. Ideally when choosing a tariff consideration needs to be given to the amount of minutes that are needed to cover usage each month, text messages, and any data requirements. Using that information as a guideline should help to ensure the tariff you sign up to gives ongoing value for money over the duration of the contract.

For example: Tariff A offers 300 minutes, Unlimited Text and 500 MB of data, for £30 per month. However, the handset of choice on that tariff costs £99. Tariff B offers 600 minutes, Unlimited Text and 500 MB of data for £35 per month, but the handset comes free of charge. Surely Tariff B is the 'best deal?'

Well, not necessarily. Over the course of a 24 month contract, the complete package on Tariff A will cost £819, whereas on Tariff B the costs come to £840. The only point at which Tariff B offers greater value over the minimum period of the 24 month contract is if you would actually use the additional calling minutes. Otherwise, even though the device is free on Tariff B, it is not a better deal.

There is a lot to consider when buying a mobile phone, choosing a device, network, tariff, and then taking advantage of the many special offers available, too. With budgeting becoming a more serious issue for a wider number of people today, some simple calculations beforehand can make a real difference, and help to ensure that the package you sign up to offers a great deal for the duration of the agreement.

There are a wide variety of methods for controlling your monthly mobile spend, all of which you will find covered on the Rightmobilephone. Offers can be selected based on Best Deals, Network Offers, Sim Only deals, Pay As You Go and so on. By selecting a package based on long term needs, you can be sure that you will always be getting value for money.

One of the major stories of the past few months has been the phone hacking scandal, where one of the leading Sunday Newspapers stands accused of having its staff hack into the voicemail accounts of various public figures. The issue is of major significance, and has even led to the jailing of the former Royal Editor from the News of the World.

The stories of suspicious activity are starting to snowball, with celebrities, politicians and sports stars suggesting they may have fallen victim to having their voicemail accounts hacked. With an ongoing police investigation, this story has plenty more to run yet.

Whilst the messages left on the voicemail accounts of most of us are probably not worth hacking into, it is still prudent to take precautions to avoid unauthorised access to voicemail messages by third parties. After all, some messages can contain sensitive information regarding work and family issues.

Protecting a voicemail account is usually done by setting up a pin code, which can be set by dialling into the voicemail service and accessing the settings menu. It is advisable to do this as soon as a new number is activated, as some networks setup a default pin on all voicemail accounts. Your network customer services team should be able to guide you through the set up if there are any problems.

Setting a pin code on voicemail is not only for protection, it can also give access to your messages from another phone, allowing you to login and listen to your messages should you forget your device and leave it at home. All you need to do is call your phone, and when the voicemail message kicks in, press the '*' key, enter your code and you have remote access to your messages. You can see just how easy this makes it to hack into some accounts, particularly those that have not changed the default pin code.

With the proliferation of smartphones available on the market these days, it is not necessary to be restricted just to the voicemail service provided by your network, either. One of the leading non-network specific services is Hullomail. Hullomail has specific apps for a variety of platforms, including Android, iPhone and BlackBerry, as well as offering generic access from other handsets. All accounts are password protected, and messages can even be forwarded to a pre-determined email address as attachments.

Whichever method you use, protecting the account is paramount, and all that needs to be done is to set a hard to guess (but easy to remember) pin code. A momentary hassle for long term peace of mind.

A few years ago, as the possibilities of the mobile internet were only just becoming clear, one of the ‘killer applications’ that was often talked about was the ability to get email on the move. Most commentators were of agreement, that being able to access email on the go would be the one feature that would really push the sale of mobile internet enabled devices. These days, we seem to take the access to email wherever, whenever, for granted.

It is rare these days for a modern mobile phone not to include at least a simple email client in the messaging menu. Of course we expect this of smartphones, but even the majority of mid range handsets and even some lower range devices can be configured to access your email account, although it is fair to say the further down the line you go in handset price, the less effective and more problematic the device can be to set up for mobile email access. Additionally, there are some third party setups that will also give you simple, synchronised access to your email from your mobile device, and we’re going to take a look at a few of these handsets and services in a bit more detail.

In the earlier days of mobile email access, setting up a device was a rather complicated affair, with users needing to know information like the SMTP and POP settings for their accounts. Thankfully life is a lot easier these days, most devices require only username, password and email address, the rest of the information is added automatically by the device. When mobile email is mentioned, it is not uncommon for the first thought to turn to BlackBerry.

BlackBerry devices have had a major impact on messaging from a mobile device, and have moved from what was solely seen as a corporate user’s work tool to something that is not uncommon in the hands of many teenagers. There are two ways a BlackBerry device will handle email, one is known as BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Service) and the other is BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service). BES is pretty much exclusively a corporate setup. If you own a BlackBerry device and you use it for work email, it is most likely that the setup is controlled by the internal IT team, and uses BlackBerry Exchange software. For people who work in smaller companies, and for sole traders, prosumers, and general blackberry owners, the service you would use is BIS. BlackBerry devices tend to use technology known as ‘Push’ for delivering email to your mobile phone. Push technology actively sends out the email to your connected device as soon as it hits the email server, delivering the email to you instantaneously. If you mark the email as read, it will also be marked as read on your server. You can still access the email via your PC, and can archive it for future reference.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With a Blackberry device, networks set up a Network Operating Centre (NOC) which is operated by RIM (Research in Motion, the people who manufacture BlackBerry devices) via a private APN (Access Point Name). The networks are charged for this, a charge that is passed on to the customer. If you have owned a BlackBerry device for personal usage, you may well have been aware of extra charges to access the BlackBerry email and blackberry internet services. That charge covered the cost of accessing the BlackBerry servers.

There are benefits to this, and one of these is BlackBerry Messenger, also known as BBM. BBM allows you to communicate with other BlackBerry devices via a service called PIN messaging. It’s a bit like any other instant messaging service, you can send pictures, text, voice notes, etc, directly to another BlackBerry device, all you need to know is the PIN number of the handset you are connecting with. (PIN numbers can be accessed via the settings menu, as well as being written on the IMEI label underneath the battery on the phone, and on the side of the box the phone came in) The BBM service totally bypasses the cellular network, which can also offer significant cost savings if it is used when abroad. BBM is also a main driver in the growing popularity of BlackBerry devices amongst the younger users.

Whilst BlackBerry pretty much built their empire on mobile email, it took other manufacturers a little while longer to get on board. In recent times, one manufacturer which has made big strides in delivering a decent mobile messaging experience is the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, Nokia. The Finnish giant offers a personalised service on a range of Nokia handsets, via their Nokia Messaging service, which is as simple to setup via the Nokia messaging website as it is on the phone itself. All you need to do to get emails coming through directly to your device is to enter the details of the handset you are using and the email account settings on to the Nokia Messaging website. The procedure is a world away from the complicated and difficult process that was needed in the past, and has helped serve Nokia with a decent slice of the mobile email market. Allied to this Nokia have delivered some supreme quality messaging handsets to the market in recent times, especially in the E Series range. As well as delivering access to email, the E Series devices deliver strong feature set, and have gained a reputation for excellent build quality and a supreme battery performance, features that are all important for those that work away from the office for long periods.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With most other mobile devices, the technology used in email access is something called ‘Pull’ retrieval. This generally involves the handset automatically connecting to your email account, on average every 15 minutes, and ‘pulling’ all newly delivered unread messages into the handset inbox. A time lapse of 15 minutes in notification isn’t such a big deal for many people, and there is a saving in terms of costs for people who use handsets that utilise pull technology. This can be of interest to users whose handsets do not deliver the decent battery life of a BlackBerry or Nokia E Series device. Because ‘Pull’ is not constantly connected to the network, the battery performance is less affected.

Aside from Push and Pull technology, you can also configure your email client on your mobile phone for manual synchronisation with your email account. Many people prefer this option, as it gives the idea of being in control of when they get their email, rather than feeling their email is controlling them with always connected services. Once your email client on your device has been configured, simply open the mailbox so the handset can connect, poll your account, and deliver any unread messages. Further messages will not be delivered to your phone until you open the mailbox to connect again.

If your preference is for Push email, but the device you are currently using can only handle Pull, then you could look at some of the online services available, which can mimic the performance of push email. Services such as Emoze or Mail2Web work to give you instant access to your email wherever you are. Once you have signed up for an account with them, you simply set in your email details and the service starts pushing out emails straight to your phone. Some of the benefits of these types of services are being able to keep up to date with your messages even if you change handsets frequently, as they work on a variety of phones from a range of manufacturers, including the iPhone, Android, Palm or Windows Mobile handsets, and Symbian devices. They can also be configured to deliver social networking updates from services like Twitter and Facebook, delivering a fully rounded messaging experience. There are many more services like these available online, and some of the services offered are not always free, so make sure you are aware of the costs involved before you sign up.

Among the most popular email services are those offered by Google, Yahoo and Hotmail; these web based services let you login to your account by any device that has access to the internet, such as a PC, MP3 player and of course a mobile phone. These services are compatible with email clients found on most devices, but the quality varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. As the web browsers have improved on mobile phones these days, it has become easier to ace web based email via the browser on the mobile phone. If you find your browser isn’t up to the job, then you could always look at downloading the excellent Opera Mini.

Services like Google’s Gmail also offer java apps that you can install on almost any handset that supports java, and that’s a lot of phones! The Gmail app mimics the layout of the Gmail web service, and is a very intuitive application to use.

As it turned out, access to email on the move didn’t really explode the sale of mobile internet based devices; that was more due to the development of large, colour, touch-enabled handsets which offer a much improved overall web browsing experience. But email is a major part of the feature set on any decent device these days, and as communities move more and more to using email to keep in touch with family and friends, being able to access email from your mobile phone has never been as important. Or as easy.

Introduction

Competition in the mobile industry is fierce, and there are a number of manufacturers who are chasing hard the number one position that has been held for so long by Nokia. Not one to rest on their laurels, Nokia are slowly re-aligning their handset line up, including a new naming culture for their devices which should make it easier for consumers to know more about the phone before they purchase. Handsets will be designated by a single letter which will indicate the market focus of the device, whilst the number of the phone will show the level of technical specification. The existing N Series and E Series device names will be retained, and these will be joined by C Series and X Series. Two handsets have been released by Nokia in the X Series range so far, the X6 and X3 and we’ve had an X3 in the office over the last couple of weeks to review. The X Series focuses mainly on social entertainment, so with this in mind let’s take a more in depth look at the Nokia X3.

Design

Hardware: The Nokia X3 is a compact, lightweight handset, weighing in at just 103g and measuring 96 x 49.3 x 14mm. The X3 is a slide style phone, and the spring on our review model was firm, with the handset opening and closing with a satisfying sense of solidity. In the closed position, from the front of the device there is a 2.2 inch TFT display, which supports up to 256,000 colours. This is lower than usual on Nokia devices, where 16 million colour TFT displays are much more common. Because of this, the display looks a little washed out, and isn’t so great outside in bright light, either.

Underneath the main display is a large 5 way D-Pad style Navi key, flanked by two soft option keys and send/end call keys, a very familiar key layout on Nokia devices. With a nod to the entertainment aspect of the handset, down the left hand side of the main display are three shortcut keys for controlling media playback on the phone. The three keys offer play/pause, fast forward and rewind options, and from standby pressing on the play key will activate the last used music app, either the music player or FM Radio.

Around the edges of the phones are various buttons and connection ports; on the lower right side is the camera key, which activates the camera from standby and doubles up as the image capture button, whilst at the top right is a volume rocker key which operates in many menus. During music playback and calls the key raises and lowers volume, and when using the camera it operates as a zoom key. On the top of the phone is the charging port, a Micro USB connector and a 3.5mm audio jack for plugging in headphones to the handset, whilst down the left of the phone is the Micro SD memory card slot and a loop for attaching a lanyard. At either end of the phone, top and bottom, are situated the stereo speakers.

The keypad is a standard 12 key alphanumeric layout; completely flat, the keys are etched into the keypad, and separated with vertical and horizontal lines etched between the numbers. Even so, the keypad is comfortable to use, and all but the most addicted texters should be able to use it without any problem. The microphone on the handset is located at the bottom left hand corner of the keypad, which would suggest the sound quality for people you call would be better if the phone was slid open, although whilst testing this with friends when making calls it proved to be a negligible point. A nice touch when the keypad is slid open is the lower speaker grill curves round the bottom of the phone into the lower part of the keypad, a design that actually looks quite good.

Around the back of the phone there is little to see, other than the camera lens situated at the top of the phone. The back cover itself is made from a matt plastic, and feels a bit flimsy when removed from the phone, but once in place it feels solid enough, in overall keeping with the feel of the X3 in general. The back part of the phone that is exposed when the slide is open also has a brushed metal look, which is in keeping with the overall style of the phone, using the same material as used for the keypad. In use the phone does feel a little plasticky, but the construction is generally solid and there are few creaks or wobbles.

Software: The Nokia X3 runs on the latest version of the standard Nokia S40 operating system. S40 as an OS has been with us for a few years now, and has manfully carried the Nokia trademarks of simplicity in use. Over the years as mobile phones have developed and extra features added, S40 has received a few tweaks and upgrades, with the current latest version in use being the 6th edition.

From the main homescreen display on the phone, Nokia have the easily recognisable Active Standby layout, which separates the screen into four sections. These sections can be accessed by pressing up or down on the Navi pad; the sections become highlighted, and you scroll through each one to select the option you want. On the Active standby screen the top line is allocated to five shortcuts, which can be changed by accessing the customisation menu; underneath the three other sections contain shortcuts to defined services or applications, which again are easily changed through the main options menu. There are so many customisation options with this menu that it is very easy to store all your most accessed applications and services right there on the main display, so that you may never have to enter the menu again! However, if it all becomes too much and you prefer a more minimalistic, less cluttered look, the Active Standby screen can be easily disabled in the settings.

Disabling the standby screen however does not diminish the opportunity for shortcuts; directional presses on the main D-Pad can be set as shortcuts, which again are easy to set through the options menu. So for example, a left press on the D-Pad opens a new message, whilst up opens the camera, down can open contacts and right open the calendar, and so on. Shortcuts can also be set to the two soft option keys from the main standby, including accessing the GoTo menu, which offers even more shortcuts to other features and phone settings. It can seem a little overwhelming, with so many shortcuts and options, but that is one of the main benefits of the S40 interface; a fluid, flexible menu system that is easy to customise, and can easily be laid out in a manner that suits your own needs, allowing you to get to the features you want with the fewest key presses possible.

The customisation features do not finish with just the standby menu, either. The main menu also offers a variety of viewing options, including single, list, grid, grid with labels and a tab view. All of these separate layouts have their own benefits, and are aimed at the individual needs of the end user. For example, I would give an elderly relative the simple single view, which shows one large icon on the display at a time, whilst for a more intermediate user the grid layout with labels would suffice, whilst a more advanced user may benefit from the tab view. The main point here is, there isn’t just one menu layout or option, and you can change the look to suit the user or suit your mood. It is just nice to have a choice in the matter.

Making Calls

Calls: In call sound quality on the X3 is very good, and the reception on the display showed to be very stable and solid throughout. The call menu on the phone can be accessed from the main standby screen by simply pressing on the green send key. This opens the All Calls section of the call log, which uses bright, colourful icons to show the status of calls, whether the number was outgoing or incoming. You can scroll through the list of numbers and when highlighted, simply press the green send key to call the number again, or press the option key and a pop up menu appears offering various options for that number, including sending the number a text, audio or flash message, editing the number, saving to a new or updating an existing contact, or checking the call time duration to that number. A more in depth call log is available via the handset’s main menu, which separates numbers into received, missed and called lists, plus you can also see a list of message recipients, plus a data counter detailing your time spent online. Very useful if you do not have an unlimited data plan, as is the message log which counts the numbers of SMS and MMS sent/received, useful if you do not have an unlimited SMS bundle. You just need to remember to set these each month when you hit your next billing cycle.

Phonebook: The Nokia X3 has a powerful phonebook, with ample room for thousands of contacts, with space to add a wide variety of information to each contact stored. Names can have a mobile, work, home and fax number, plus an email address and an image which is displayed when the contact calls. Further information can be included, such as a personal ring or video tone for that particular contact, plus address, birthday, general notes, formal name, nickname, job tile and company. If you have stored the address properly in the contact details, you can also choose the option to view that address location using Nokia Maps. Just select the contact, choose the ‘View on Map’ option, and Nokia Maps launches, after clarifying the correct address the Map will load and show the location of that address. A very useful feature, especially if you spend a lot of time visiting perhaps business clients, etc. Contacts in the phonebook can be viewed in three different formats, either a plain name list, as name and number or as name and image, and you can choose between viewing SIM contacts only, phone contacts only or a mix of the two. A voice dial option is also available which can be used without pre-recording if required, although it is recommended to follow the voice training set up. In practice it works rather well, and you can also use voice settings to change profiles, launch applications, etc.

Messaging

A capable messaging device, the X3 supports the traditional SMS and MMS as well as flash messaging, email, audio and instant messaging. The menu layout is familiarly Nokia, although the inbox is no longer listed as such, instead it is called conversations. Here you can view text conversations with each message wrapped by a speech bubble type design, and it makes following SMS conversations very simple. However, if you don’t like this new way of presenting text, you can easily switch back to the traditional inbox view, although personally I much prefer this new conversations layout. Email on the device is very easy to setup, I found all I needed to do was enter my username and password for my email account and the phone automatically added the other settings required. Considering the struggles I’ve had in the past setting up email on more complicated, smartphone style devices, this was a pleasurable experience and it is this kind of experience that will encourage people to use more advanced messaging features on their phone. When you have to mess around adding all the POP and SMTP settings manually it can put a lot of people off. Instant messaging on the X3 is handled via a separate application, and uses the OVI chat service. This service is also compatible with Google’s GTalk, and proved to be a useful distraction chatting with friends via IM when stuck on a train journey.

Media

Gallery: The Nokia X3 isn’t a great imaging phone, but nonetheless the gallery offers some useful options, as well as some fun extras. When you open the gallery menu you can choose to browse through your photos, music and videos or all content. Opening photos lets you then choose from all photos, albums or by timeline, which presents pictures in sequence according to when they were captured. Opening the photo gallery presents thumbnail images of photos in a three by four format, and you can browse the gallery via the thumbnails or by enlarging on an image then scrolling through one by one. I put over 300 photos on the Micro SD card, and pictures scrolled smoothly from one to the next. After selecting an individual image you can send it via MMS or email, as well as adding it to a photo album on the phone or editing it. Editing options include a simple crop feature, or you can add effects like a photo frame or clip art.

I also installed about 30 video files on the phone, and although they were all in MP4 format, some of them did not play. I got the audio, but no video. The ones that did play looked ok, images were not too choppy and the sound quality through the loud speakers was pretty good. Videos didn’t jump, and playback was quite smooth. The main let down was the quality and size of the screen, the display on the X3 just isn’t up to the job of delivering quality playback, it is not clear enough and not big enough.

Music: On the X3 it is possible to listen to your own music played back via the media player, as well as listening on the built in FM Stereo Radio. The radio itself supports RDS, but more noticeable on the X3 is the inclusion of a built in antenna. This means it is possible to listen to the radio without the need of having the headset plugged in, although in areas where signal isn’t so good I found plugging in the headphones gave better reception. For example, at home indoors the local radio frequency is usually quite strong, but I couldn’t pick anything up with the built in antenna. I had no difficulty, however, with the headphones plugged in.

Music playback generally on the X3 is very good, and I found listening to music on the loudest setting to be too loud, and was more than happy with a lower setting. You can choose to browse through all songs stored on the device, or filter via playlists, artist, album or genre. The music player theme can be set to match that of the phone in general, or you can settle for the standard default layout. There is support for album art included, and during playback the light around the D-Pad Navi key pulsates in time with the music. Whilst in general multi tasking on the X3 is not possible, it is possible to leave the music player running in the background while you check email, or browse the web. From the music player just hit the end call key once and you go straight to the main standby screen, and from there you can open a subsequent application. Whilst ‘hidden’, the music player can be controlled by the external keys located down the side of the display for skipping tracks, play and pause, and for volume settings you can use the volume key on the side of the phone. There are various music playback options in the settings menu, including a shuffle option, repeat, equaliser and stereo widening. It is in the settings menu here that you can also set the theme options.

Camera and Video recording

The camera on the X3 is a standard, no frills 3.2 Megapixel affair. Captured images rank as ok, but not much better than that. If imaging is important, then the X3 is not the phone you would choose. The camera supports enhanced fixed focus, and there are a few settings in the options menu, such as setting a timer for photos and how long you can preview the image for, plus changing the effects and white balance. There is also an option to change the viewscreen from landscape to portrait view and back again, and camera sounds can be disabled through the menu system too. You can easily flick between camera and camcorder mode on the phone by flipping left to right with the Navi key, but in all honestly I wouldn’t bother, video recording on the phone is hardly worth while, with recorded images being good for nothing more than sending as an MMS. You certainly wouldn’t want to be uploading captured video to the web, the quality is way to poor for that.

Web Browser and Connectivity

Data connectivity on the X3 is restricted to just GPRS or EDGE, there is no 3G or HSDPA. As such, web browsing some sites can be painfully slow. The default Nokia browser gets the job done to an adequate level, but hidden away on the applications menu is Opera Mini. On a device like the X3 Opera Mini is the perfect web browser, and highly recommended for all web browsing activity on the phone. Opera Mini routes web traffic through the Opera servers, stripping out unnecessary junk in the HTML files and compressing the data so it is delivered quicker, and the layout of the browser seems to make better use of the limited 2.2 inch display. If you are going to web browse on the X3, the Opera Mini is the app for you.

Local connectivity on the phone is handled via a Micro USB port, which allows you to connect the device to a PC for transferring media to and from the device. It is possible to charge the device via USB, but it is a trickle charge, so not recommended for anything more than an emergency booster to top up the battery. The X3 also includes support for Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support for stereo audio streaming. Nokia have consistently delivered one of the best Bluetooth experiences on all of their devices, and the X3 also fits that category. Connecting to another device, or PC, and transferring media is a simple operation, and should be held as a ‘how to’ guide for other handset manufacturers.

Summary

There is a lot to like in the Nokia X3; by its construction and design, it is clearly a budget handset aimed more towards the youth market, but that shouldn’t mislead you. In fact the X3 is a capable handset that would satisfy most people who shop for phones in the mid tier, the type of user who wants a functional device that is easy to use and looks good, whilst not necessarily offering all the bells and whistles of the top end feature devices. In general day to day use the X3 proved to be reliable and quick, with a commendable battery life and a good all round performance level. If it is let down in any area, it has to be imaging, the camera quality was not up to standard of even a mid range device. That aside, the X3 proved to be a delight to use, and would be a sound purchase.

Introduction

Having found a new lease of life courtesy of the Android Operating System, Motorola have been busy releasing a number of devices running on this OS. Among the first batch of Android devices is the Motorola DEXT, boasting a slide out QWERTY keyboard and utilising the proprietary MotoBLUR User Interface. Motorola were good enough to send us out a review model of the DEXT, so we’ve had a really good chance to put it through its paces. Read on to find out how we got on with the phone, and our overall impression of the device.

Design

Without wishing to be too unkind, the design of the Motorola DEXT isn’t all that inspiring. If I were to try and find words to describe the overall look of the handset, words like ordinary, standard, even a bit frumpy, would come to mind. But that’s not necessarily such a bad thing; sometimes weird and new don’t always look good either. I think the best thing to say is the device is designed to be functional, and overall it achieves that objective. The Motorola DEXT is a nice size, measuring in at 114 x 58 x 15.6mm, and it fits well in the hand. The construction feels solid enough, although not quite as good as the Motorola Milestone. The DEXT has a fully touch enabled display, with a pixel resolution of 320 x 480, supporting up to 256,000 colours. Across the top of the display is the traditional Android task bar, within which various icons will appear, depending on the action being performed on the device at the time. For example, if you are downloading an application from the Android Market, then a notification icon appears in the task bar, showing the download is in action and also when the downloaded app has been installed. Other icons that appear in the task bar can be notifications of received email, incoming text, and missed calls. Some applications will also show notifications when updates are available, as in a new weather update, and also when updates for installed apps are ready to download from the Market. To get more information, just hold your finger on the task bar to activate it then drag it down the screen, to access the relevant detail.

The main display of the DEXT is very busy. It seems the implementation of MotoBLUR on this device aims the product squarely at the youth market, the look and feel of the onscreen widgets have a decidedly ‘teenage’ feel about them. In the main, the function of these widgets is to aggregate access to all your favourite social networks, with live updates from Twitter, Facebook and others delivered straight to the homescreen, making it easy to follow the updates and tweets of your friends. The MotoBLUR UI offers five standard homescreen displays, upon which you can choose to activate various shortcuts to installed applications or widgets that you have downloaded to the device. Some widgets were already pre activated on our device, including services from T3, Reuters, Discovery, Ministry of Sound and Hed Kandi. In use the MotoBLUR UI was easy to navigate around, and setting up email and access to Facebook and Twitter was very simple. The touchscreen was responsive, and faired well outside, although in the small amount of recent sunshine we’ve had it was a bit washed out.

At the bottom of the screen, are three tabs. One launches the dialler, the middle one opens the main menu, whilst the last one opens the contact information. Underneath the display, actually on the device itself, is a menu button, home button and back button. The menu button brings the screen to life from standby, and also unlocks the display, and the location of this button makes it much easier to use than the menu button on the Milestone. Around the outside of the device, on the right hand side is a dedicated camera key, which launches the camera application whilst near the top right is the power key. As well as turning the phone on/off, the power button can also be used for various other options. A quick press on the button will put the display on standby, whilst a long press of the button brings up a shortcut menu that allows you to quickly enable or disable various features, such as Bluetooth, WiFi, Airplane Mode and GPS. At the top of the handset is a 3.5mm audio output jack, and down the left hand side there is a MicroUSB connector, volume keys and a manual switch for putting the phone into silent or activating the ringer, in the same way used on the iPhone.

The DEXT incorporates a full three row slide out QWERTY board, which I found took a while to get used to. A lot of the keys have multiple options, and that meant I had to think as I typed rather than naturally knowing where the options I wanted were. The keypad is also rather compact, and the keys are slightly rounded on top, which I didn’t find particularly comfortable. To the left of the QWERTY keyboard is a navigation key, which was ok to use except for some reason I couldn’t get the hang of navigating around using it with my left thumb, being right handed. Thankfully it is not often needed; I find the navigation pad on Android devices only really comes into its own when I need to move the cursor to a certain point when composing text messages. So overall, whilst the look of the device may be a little uninspiring, the functionality and general layout is quite comfortable.

Making Calls

Calls: There are no hard call keys on the DEXT; to launch the phone application you just press the phone tab located at the bottom of the display. Doing so launches you straight into the phone application, and you are instantly presented with a traditional 12 key digital telephone keypad. You can tap out the number you wish to dial manually, or press the little person icon in the bottom left hand corner, to be presented with a full list of stored contacts on the device. Next to the person icon is the call button, which changes to end call once a call has been initiated. Finally in the bottom right hand corner is a one touch button for calling your voicemail. As you type the numbers in on the phone, they appear in a little bar above the keypad; should you accidentally enter a wrong number, you can delete back from here and try again. Located above this bar are four tabs, Dialler, which is the active tab, then Recent, Frequent and Speed dial. All fairly self explanatory, offering quick access to regularly used numbers on the device. Call quality on the device is clear enough, but perhaps a little quiet even at full volume. When on call the display auto disables, taking the phone away from you will re-enable the screen, and this worked well, quickly, which isn’t always the case with touchscreen devices. When in call if you have a contact photo stored for the person you are calling, this is displayed on the screen, and under the photo there are three on screen buttons, offering one touch options to either mute the call, or place it on loudspeaker, plus a button to launch the keypad for use with automated telephone services.

Phonebook: The phonebook application on the device will gather in all contacts from the various services you use, which can be a bit of an issue if you have an untidy contact list, and can also lead to some duplication. However, it is easy to filter out any unwanted details, leaving you with just the contacts you actually want. All Facebook, Twitter and Google contacts are listed in the device, and if you leave all showing, it soon becomes second nature to open the phonebook and start typing the name of the person you want. You can also scroll through your contacts by sliding the tab at the side of the screen, which quickly takes you through the alphabet until you find the letter with which your contacts name starts. If having all your friends and followers details listed is too much of a burden, there is a drop down filter list at the top of the display, via which you can choose to list which contacts are shown, from Google, Twitter, MotoBLUR address book or just favourites. All contacts show the avatar that person uses in the address book, and lists all numbers too. Various information can be stored to the address book, including personal details, email addresses, work details, birthdays, etc. Opening an individual contact through the address book also shows you their update history, and latest status, by scrolling through the options at the bottom of the display.

Messaging

As I’ve already mentioned, messaging features well on the DEXT, with simple access to various social networks, as well as including support for instant messaging and email. Texts are displayed in a conversation format that is popular with a lot of modern mobile phones these days, making it easy to follow multiple conversations. Entering text is either via the slide out QWERTY keyboard or an onscreen touch QWERTY device. The onscreen QWERTY works ok, but is very cramped, and does not make for easy one handed message composure. Rotating the device to landscape mode did not enable a larger keyboard, so it was either cramped touchscreen QWERTY in portrait mode or use the slide out keyboard, which presented problems at those moments when all you want to do is send out a quick text, which suddenly became a bit of a chore rather than something done in seconds.

Media

Gallery: The image gallery on the DEXT presents really well, all images stored on the device are gathered together into a single display and listed in rows of three. The gallery can be viewed in both portrait or landscape mode, and all pictures are represented by small thumbnail images which are easily swiped through. Down the side of the screen is a taskbar which lists dates, and you can slide your finger up and down this bar to find certain dates, which then jumps the main gallery view to pictures with that date stored in the digital information of the image. This is a pleasing way of browsing through the image gallery, it looks good, and is simple to use. You can also look through images by choosing a certain album to scroll through, and you can swipe through images one by one. As you rotate the display and choose a different view, the different views are changed to via a nice animation, which just adds to the presentation of media stored on the device. There is a separate gallery for viewing video clips on the handset, which presents in the same fashion as the image viewer.

Music: The music player, in comparison, has had no facelift at all, so we are presented with the uninspiring, if functional, standard Android layout. When you open the music player, you are presented with four, large, onscreen buttons, titled Artist, Albums, Songs and Playlists. Pressing on a button will take you to your music, filtered by the selection chosen. Navigation around the music player is simple enough, and playback through your own headphones works ok. Music quality was good enough, and fairly loud through the built in speaker. As with most phones, generally speaking, the music sounds much better when the device is laid flat on a table, if using the loudspeaker. Album art for stored music is displayed where available, and you can do web searches for music playing on the device by holding down on the relevant information. For example, when playing a song, a long press of the screen on the screen name will offer a web search on that term either via the web or through YouTube. The same option also appears for the album name, and Artist. There’s little more that can be said about the music player, at best it is functional, but could do with some colour to liven things up a bit.

Camera and Video Recording

The camera on the DEXT is a 5.0 Megapixel offering, with support for autofocus and geotagging. There is no flash on the camera, so anything captured indoors and in low level lighting conditions is going to suffer. Outside, pictures generally present well, and are certainly good enough for the main aim of the device. With a focus on social networking, most images captured on the DEXT camera are going to look good enough when uploaded to Twitter, Facebook or Flickr. The standard is acceptable enough, but not great. Images can be captured manually using the main camera key on the device, or automatically by touching the camera icon on the screen. If you rotate the device from landscape to portrait mode or vice versa, the onscreen icons also rotate round, which is a nice visual touch. When in camera mode, you can simply flip to camcorder and back via the main menu button – just a quick press of the menu key, select the imaging mode required, and the choice is activated, all pretty slick. The camera recording facility matches that of the stills camera, i.e. it is ok, and good enough for messing around with, loading up to the web and emailing off to friends, but you wouldn’t want to use it for more than that.

Web Browser and Connectivity

The native Android Web browser is a pretty decent browser, and manages to present most sites in an acceptable manner, and that is the case also with the Motorola DEXT. There is no multi touch support on this device, so zooming in to a web page is done via a plus/minus scroll bar which appears at the bottom of web pages when you start to swipe through the web page. Also at the bottom is a full screen option, which works like a mini map viewer; tapping this icon displays the page in full on the device, with a magnifying box that you can run down the small print. When you find the part of the page you want to read, just tap on the box to instantly zoom in. In practice it works well, but is not as intuitive as using a pinch zoom action. The DEXT supports WiFi 802.11 b/g, plus 3G+ Mobile Broadband, with HSDPA at up to 7.2Mbps for downloads. This is all backed up with Class 12 GPRS and EDGE, if you happen to be located outside a 3G coverage area. In testing data speeds on the device, we were restricted to using GPRS as the SIM card sent with the review model was not a 3G SIM. And you really notice the difference when browsing the web on GPRS! It is so easy to get used to the speeds offered by 3G and HSDPA, that using GPRS is torturous! But even under these trying conditions, the DEXT showed it is a more than competent web device.

Operating System

The Motorola DEXT still runs on Android OS 1.5, which in relative terms is now a rather old version of Android. This means no support for applications like Google’s gesture search, or Google Earth, or even apps like the Daily Strip, which offers cartoon strips like Peanuts and Garfield. This can be frustrating, but of the DEXT is your first step into the World of Android, you’re not really going to miss what you’ve never had. In practice, the device works well, there are still many thousands of apps available from the Android Market, and the implementation of MotoBLUR on the DEXT is done really well.

Summary

At the beginning, I said the DEXT is ordinary, standard, and even a bit frumpy. And I stand by that, in terms of look and design. But in use the DEXT is a fine handset, with a strong emphasis on social network integration, which it manages to deliver well enough. All round the DEXT performs, and whilst it may not take star billing in any one area, it is a more than capable jack of all trades, delivering well in all it does without being a star device. Even so, it is not a phone you would be embarrassed to use in front of your friends; in fact, thanks to the Android OS the DEXT is an adequate handset and would be an ideal choice for a first Android phone. If the choice is to either buy or avoid, I would definitely say the DEXT is a buy.

The ash cloud covering much of Europe at the moment is bringing a lot of misery to a lot of travellers, with people finding themselves stranded a long way from home, and in some cases in a strange part of the world, stuck in an unfamiliar city, trying to get back.

In some cases companies are taking advantage of the stranded traveller, with ferry companies, car hire companies and hotels all hiking up their prices, but that is not the case for all. Step up Lonely Planet, who are offering free travel guides to some of the major cities hit by the flight bans, to aid the traveller in finding their way around an unknown part of the world.

This is a short term offer, running until the 22nd April. The Lonely Planet guides usually sell for £9.49 each, so this is a good time to pick up a good deal. Lonely Planet Travel Editor, Tom Hall, says “Travellers stuck in unfamiliar places need access to practical information as well as suggestions on what to do whilst stranded. That’s why we’re giving away iPhone city guides to major affected destinations.”

The cities guides that are free include Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna. These apps offer a wealth of information, including offline maps, a huge amount of things to see and do, to keep you occupied during an unforeseen extended break, location based navigation and an array if images and points of interest listed.

Whether anyone stranded is going to be able to get access to a PC with iTunes and login to download the guides is debatable, but in the meantime why not bag yourself a freebie, to use on your next holiday?

Introduction

Recent times have not been kind to Motorola. The once undisputed kings of mobile, the once number one manufacturer of mobile phones in the world, have had a hard fall from grace. With the emergence of Nokia, coinciding almost with the emergence of GSM digital, Motorola started a slide that has led them to become almost a laughing stock within the industry. There have been some notable handsets along the way, it has to be said. The slide from grace happened over a period of time, and it is worth remembering that it was Motorola who brought us such innovations as the Motorola Star Tac, V3688 and RAZR. But it hasn’t all been great, with Motorola responsible for products like the RIZR, SLVR and ROKR, too. But recently things have started to look up, and Motorola seem to be working closely with the Android Operating System, allowing them to focus on delivering handsets at a lower cost to themselves, seeing that the platform is already worked on and readily available. Motorola just need to come up with a shell to stick it in, basically. And so we come to the focus of our review, the Motorola Milestone.

The Milestone, known as the Droid in the States (which is a much cooler name, why did it get changed?) is leading the charge in Motorola’s resurgence, and as such a lot rides on the success of the phone. I’ve been using the handset for the last few weeks as my main phone, and it’s time to see if the Milestone has what it takes to help restore the flagging fortunes of this once manufacturing great.

Design

To look at, the Milestone does not scream ‘cool’. I dislike using the terms ‘sexy’ when describing material products, but some phones are very desirable gadgets, with a form factor that instantly shouts ‘Buy me!’ I can’t apply that to the Milestone. That said the device isn’t so ugly I wouldn’t want to use it in public, either. The Milestone has a solid feel, and when you first pick it up you instantly know that it is a serious bit of kit, and the ‘squareness’ of the edges just seem to add to the feel of a device that may not have the looks, but certainly has the ability to perform.

The Milestone is dominated by a large, 3.7 inch touchscreen, a TFT capacitive screen that supports up to 16 million colours. It is great to look at, and when I’ve been showing the phone off to friends, all have commented on the display. The touch of the screen is very assuring, and certainly works better than some devices with resistive touchscreens that I have used in the past, and means that interacting with the phone is very pleasing. Holding the phone in portrait mode, at the bottom of the display are four touch sensitive buttons, reading from left to right these are the back, menu, home and search buttons. You get a little vibrating feedback when selecting these keys, and in general use they were sensitive enough for what I needed, although I found it very easy to accidentally touch them and activate a feature I didn’t want, when generally handling the phone.

Around the outside of the phone there are various ports and control buttons; at the top there is a 3.5mm audio jack, located next to the power button, which also doubles up as the lock button. You need to press this button to ‘wake’ the phone after it shuts down into standby, which can be automatically after a period of non use or can be done manually using the same lock key. I’m quite used to using Android phones, and as far as I recall the Milestone is the first device I’ve used that could only be brought out of standby with the power key, on other phones I could at least activate the screen by pressing the menu, or home key. It took a while to get used to only being able to use the one key for this, and its location at the top of the device made it feel a bit cumbersome to do.

Down the left hand side of the phone, near the top end, is the micro USB port, which you use for both connecting the phone to a PC and to charge the device. The device can charge from a mains lead and also via the PC. There is nothing along the bottom of the phone, whilst down the right hand side there is a camera key near the bottom, which can be used for launching the camera application as well as capturing images, and at the top of the right hand side is a rocker style volume control key. Over on the back of the phone, there is the battery cover, which lies next to the loud speaker grill and at the top the lens for the 5.0 Megapixel camera, which has an LED flash located to the left of it.

The phone is not overly large, considering the size of the display, and is in proportion to something like the iPhone, for example. Generally the design is functional, but there were a couple of elements I did not like. Firstly, the gold colour camera key on the right hand side looks extremely naff, and would have been better matching the look of the power key. It just looks odd there. The other part of the design that put me off a bit is the lower ‘chin’ of the Milestone. It looks out of place, and other than being where the microphone is stored it seems to serve no purpose. The microphone could easily be incorporated more into the body of the phone, and without this ‘chin’ the overall look would be much improved.

The Milestone has a slide out QWERTY keyboard incorporated, and sliding the keypad out instantly ‘wakes’ the device from standby and flips the display into landscape mode. The keys on the keypad are a bit flat, so it takes a while to get used to typing on them, but they are well spaced enough to make this achievable. To the right of the keypad is the Navi key, and after the Navi key comes the chin. This makes typing a bit difficult. I would hold the phone in both hands and generally type with my thumbs, rather than hold the phone in one hand and type with the other, and the positioning of the Navi key and the chin to the right meant I was forever stretching over with my right thumb to reach keys which ordinarily on a better laid out keypad wouldn’t be a problem. If the chin needs to stay, it would have been preferable to have had the Navi key to the left of the keys, making the keypad itself more central and easier to use. Regarding the Navi key itself, it hardly gets any use, but I would hate to see it left out all together. It comes into its own when needing to go back to a part of a message and correct a typo, or re-arrange a part of the text. For this reason alone, the Navi key is worth keeping in. It can also help when browsing the web on move the cursor from hyperlink to hyperlink, on pages that are not very well optimised for mobile browsing.

Making Calls

There are no send/end hard keys on the Milestone, so to launch the phone application you need to simply press on the phone icon on the main screen. Doing so brings up a large, well spaced traditional digital phone keypad, which you can us to manually enter phone numbers. Underneath the 12 keys is a green dial icon, flanked on either side by a delete key, and a shortcut to dialling the answerphone. As you type the number on the display the number is presented in a box above the keypad. Above this are four on screen buttons, the phone tab, plus a tab for call log, contacts and favourites. Marking contacts as favourites is a simple process, simply open the contacts tab, open an individual contact and press the favourites star at the top of the screen. Once selected, all starred contacts will appear in your favourites list. When making a call on the Milestone, audio is clear enough, but also a little quiet, even on a high volume setting. The screen will auto disable when on call so your cheek does not activate any features, but it does take a few seconds when removing the phone from your face for the screen to re-activate, making it difficult to hang up a call. A hard end call key here would be very beneficial.

The phone book itself is easy to navigate. The Milestone pulled all my contacts over from Google very quickly, and you can navigate through the list by swiping through the contacts with a grand swiping gesture, allowing the kinetic scrolling to whiz you through the list of contacts. If you have a few hundred contacts, then you can use the on screen button at the side to run through your contacts jumping through the alphabet to more easily locate the contact you are looking for. Each contact can have a variety of information stored under their name, including a photo, multiple phone numbers for mobile and landline, email addresses, postal address, web address, organisation details, even a nickname, plus a space to add notes.

Something I find very useful, as it has not been unknown for me to scroll through my contact list every once in a while and wonder just who some details belong too, a name and number taken a while ago and details about that person long since forgotten! Touching on the various contact elements will allow you to interact directly with the person listed, so to call just tap on the relevant number, to email just tap on their email address and the email client instantly kicks in. I find the whole phonebook layout very logical, easy to use, and I’m particularly keen on the favourites feature, it saves a lot of time.

Messaging

Text messaging on the Milestone is another well thought out, well laid out application. Conversations are listed in a threaded format, making it so easy to follow the conversation, especially if you have more than one text conversation on the go. Messages can be locked, forwarded, and text copied by pressing and holding down on the little envelope icon at the side of each sent text. Through this you can also find the delivery status of your message, if you have activated the message delivery report feature. As a Gmail user, I have found the email integration on all Android devices I have used to be top notch, and the Milestone is no exception. Notification of incoming messages seems to me to be almost instant; when I am at home in front of my PC I sometimes get alerts on the device before my inbox is even showing a received email.

As well as the standard email and messaging application, it is very easy to keep in touch on the Milestone with contacts on social networks. Through the Android market there are a variety of apps available for Facebook, Twitter, etc, and all the ones I tried worked really well. Typing messages on the hardware QWERTY keyboard gets easier over time, as you learn to cope with the design issues, but most often I found myself quite happily using the on screen QWERTY, and also over the last few days I have been using Swype on the phone, an application I am quickly becoming a big fan of.

Media

Gallery: Media has never been a strong point of Android, with early devices offering a pretty poor representation of captured media. The Milestone media gallery is not going to set it amongst the great media phones, but personally I’m a fan of simple presentation and therefore like the simple layout the Milestone uses. When opening the Media Gallery, all pictures on the device are laid out with little thumbnail options for each image. You can easily scroll through the images by flicking your way across the screen, or you can flip the Milestone on to its side and then scroll through larger thumbnail images in a very pleasant snaking carousel like presentation. There is a drop down filter box in the top left hand corner of the screen, through which you can choose which media you want to look through. Options include all pictures, captured images, tags, folders and all videos. You can also slideshow the images, and there are a few settings that allow you to choose how the slideshow is presented. In the settings you will also find an option to set up quick send sharing, which allows you to share your content to specified addresses, without having to type them in manually each time.

Music: The music player on the Milestone is another area where you could say it should be better presented. Opening the music menu offers you four large buttons on screen, to search through stored content via artist, album, songs or playlists. Choosing one leads you into the relevant list of music, simply scroll through the list and press on the name of the song you want. And it plays. Very simple, very light on ‘eye candy’, but it is at least functional and straight forward to use. Music played through the loud speaker sounds good, but not spectacular; thanks to the 3.5mm audio output jack you can use your own headset to listen to the music, too. Album art is displayed if available and other information on screen shows the album name, artist and track name of the tune currently being played. There is a shuffle option, repeat, and playlist chooser. At the bottom of the screen we find the fast forward/rewind and play/pause buttons, and there is a meter which measures how far into a track you have played. It’s a very basic layout, for sure, but sometimes less is more and the best thing you can say is the simple layout will mean most people should be able to choose and play their music with little fuss.

Camera and Video Recording

The Milestone is equipped with a 5.0 Megapixel camera, with dual LED flash, which supports autofocus and geotagging. You can open the camera through the menu or via the quick launch key on the side of the device, and once launched the main part of the display becomes the image view finder, with a small section to the right closed off. Here you will find a thumbnail at the top of the last image captured, a quick shortcut to flick between the camcorder and camera app, and a button for capturing images. The button on the screen when pressed will automatically focus and capture the image in one go. If you use the manual button on the side of the device you can focus in on your image by gently squeezing the button before capturing the image by completely pressing the button in. The Milestone is capable of capturing video at up to 24 fps per second, and a maximum resolution of 720 x 480 pixels. Below are some sample, unedited images and video clip below, taken on the Milestone:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Web Browser and Connectivity

It is rare to find an Android powered phone that does not offer a full suite of connection options, and the Milestone is not the exception. The device is packed with 3G, HSDPA Mobile Broadband, EDGE, GPRS and WiFi, all designed to keep you in touch and connected wherever you happen to be. I’m fortunate to live in an area where HSDPA is prevalent pretty much all over, and web browsing on the Milestone is a real pleasure, particularly with the large capacitive screen. The Milestone supports multi touch, and this allows you to zoom in and out by using a pinching and opening gesture with two fingers on the display. This is particularly useful on some not so well optimised websites, by simply zooming in it can make some links easier to select than they otherwise would be. Most websites work well on the Milestone, and the touch version of Facebook is my preferred way to use the service, rather than a third party app. The overall feel of browsing on the Milestone leaves one with a positive impression, with a simple to navigate interface and quick page loading.

Operating System

The Milestone came delivered with Android OS 2.0 installed, and a quick scan via the menu system led me to the latest Motorola update, Android 2.0.1 The Milestone does not have MotoBLUR included, so the standard standby is the native three screen option found on vanilla Android devices. Customisation is king with Android, and it is a simple action to populate the three screens with shortcuts to favourite apps. And of course, there is the full Android Market available, with thousands of apps to download and enjoy, some free, some not. It is not difficult to use Android, and that simple point lies behind the quick rise of this fairly new mobile platform. Multi tasking is simple, and the Milestone coped well, I had no issues browsing the web and using the camera with the music player playing along in the background. In all things I did the Milestone coped admirably.

Summary

In summary, the Motorola Milestone is a fine product, and one that should deliver a bit of pride back to the Motorola name. During my time using the device I came to like it, a lot, and although I had issues getting comfortable with the QWERTY keypad, and the design, both because of that silly ‘chin’, there was a lot more to like than dislike. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but the screen on the device is a real beaut, large and clear, and the whole device feels solid and robust.

The slide out QWERTY keyboard snaps into place with a satisfying little click, which just adds to the feel of the build quality. In usage the Milestone would generally last me a clear day on one charge, which is about the norm for a modern touchscreen smartphone, and I found it to be a stable product. I shall miss not having it anymore, and given the opportunity I would have no hesitation in purchasing the phone, and I’d be more than happy to recommend it as a top buy. All in all a decent phone, and a welcome return to form from Motorola.

The weather is one of the staple topics of conversation for the British, and in general we rely on the MET Office to supply the data for our forecasts.

A short while ago, the MET office launched an iPhone app, allowing you to keep up to date with the latest weather news on your iPhone or iPod Touch, and now they have a website optimised for use on a mobile phone, so anyone with a half decent handset can get access to the latest weather news directly on their mobile device. The MET Office have had a bit of stick recently with the reliability of their long term forecasting, but short range forecasts are generally spot on, and the website allows you to view localised casts as well as a full five day prediction for the UK. If I was to offer one criticism, it is the links on the mobile site are not so easy to select if using a touchscreen device.

Either way, if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch you can download the MET Office app directly from iTunes, or alternatively point your mobile browser here

Whilst times have been tough in the last 12 – 18 months for Sony Ericsson in terms of handsets, they remain one of the manufacturers who are committed to providing a wide range of accessories designed to enable you to take advantage of all the features your phone offers. One of the sub brands within the Sony Ericsson range are the Walkman branded handsets, and Sony Ericsson have a strong line up of headphones and speakers that offer exemplary music playback quality. The first of these we’ve chosen as among our favourites is the MS410 Snap-On Speaker Stand.

This ultra compact stand delivers excellent sound quality, and is designed in such a manner that when the phone is connected, you can listen to music or watch videos, as the handset lies across the top of the speakers. The speakers offer a deep bass sound, clear audio, and there is also a built in FM antenna which allows you to listen your favourite FM radio station if your handset has this feature.

Whilst the MS410 works well indoors, for outdoor activities an alternative option is the MS500. This rather unusually designed speaker is A2DP compatible, allowing you to stream music to the speaker wirelessly from your phone. The speaker runs on its own AA batteries so power supply isn’t a problem, and is also splash proof, making it ideal for use on the beach (note, splash proof, not water proof). The A2DP support means the handset can be safely placed out of reach of any possible water contact. Again, audio quality is optimum, and clear even at high volume.

Talking of high volume, there will be occasions when music playback should be kept personal, for example when on a bus, or train. For such occasions the Sony Ericsson HPM-88 are an ideal choice. These headphones have a built in noise cancelling feature, which can be activated by a simple flick of a switch, delivering high quality sound in even noisy environments. The noise cancellation will cancel out up to 75% of background noise, and can even be used to help you enjoy silence without music.

Another good choice of headset would be the Sony Ericsson MH907. These headphones, as well as delivering the audio experience you would expect, also have SenseME control, which allows you to operate the audio features automatically. For example, if you want to initiate music playback, simply plug both ear buds into your ears, and away you go. If you receive an incoming call, remove an ear bud to answer the call, and when you have finished, simply replace the ear bud to recommence music playback. Pretty cool.

But with accessories, it is more than just music playback. One of the more interesting enhancements offered by Sony Ericsson is the Bluetooth Watch. There are three varieties of watch available under the MBW-200 banner, the Sparkling Allure, Evening Classic and Contemporary Elegance. Once your handset has been connected to the watch, you can handle incoming calls discreetly, by viewing the incoming caller indo on the watch display. Calls can be rejected via the watch, and answered. By using a Bluetooth headset you don’t even need to take the phone from your pocket, simply check your watch display, answer, and start talking. The watch has a vibrate alert, and also utilises a proximity sensor, which will alert you if you are separated by more than 10 metres from your phone. You can also control music playback via the watch, simply connect your handset via a stereo Bluetooth headset or Bluetooth speakers, and you can pause/play, fast forward and rewind; all very convenient, simple and fun. The watches are splash proof, and also support auto connecting, so once your handset and watch have been paired the devices will automatically connect to each other if Bluetooth is enabled.

Enhancements are available to help you get the most out of your phone, and the world of accessories is an ever expanding and evolving. We’ve chosen a few of our favourites here to whet the appetite, why not let us know about your favourite accessories in the comments section?