Height: 4.5 inches
Width: 2.31 inches
Depth: 0.37 inch
Weight: 4.9 ounces
The Nokia Astound is a new smart phone available from T-Mobile. It is a basic candy-bar style phone with a decent size touch screen, internet connectivity, and all the features available for most smart phones. So does it live up to its name?
The first thing that may astound you is its price. With a contract from T-Mobile you can be the proud owner of this slick phone for a mere $50, which is far from the sticker shock of an iPhone or Droid. The design of the Astound is also meant to capture your attention. It comes in Frosty Metal, not basic black like many other smart phones, and its rounded edges are easy to hold and definitely stand out from the crowd.
The new Nokia N9 was announced just last month amid media frenzy around the phrase “All it takes is a swipe!” Nokia’s PR team clearly knows what it is doing, because this simple phrase became all that Nokia needed to grab the attention of tech-savvy individuals everywhere.
So what did Nokia mean with this cryptic advertising copy? The N9 is going to be the first phone ever released with sole touch screen capabilities. This means there are no buttons. Read that again – no buttons. Where the iPhone revolutionized the smart phone market with its single navigational button, the Nokia N9 promises to go even further. All your internet browsing, phone calls and apps can be accessed and used with a single swipe of the finger.
Paying for things with your mobile phone may be the marketplace of the future. And not the future of our children and grandchildren. Market analysis firm Juniper Research believes that paying with mobile devices will garner $670 billion by 2015.
Mobile payments include online shopping via smart phone, money transfers and near-field communication (NFC) transactions. Online shopping and money transfers are nothing new to today’s tech savvy users. The largest money transfer company, PayPal, is a billion dollar company.
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Few phones are going to grab your attention the way the Kyocera Echo will. This smart phone is available through Sprint, and at first glance appears to be a simple touch screen phone. Once you hold it in your hands, though, you will have a sense of the surprise to come. This phone hinges open, effectively doubling the touch screen size.
What is the point in having an almost tablet-sized smart phone? For some users, this will make the Echo become their phone and gaming system. Others will find the extra large screen extremely useful for multitasking, video chatting or easily working while on the go.
For cell phone manufacturers, keeping up with the competition is something like running at a full sprint just to stay where you are. Technology advances as fast as a blink of an eye, and if you want to have the hottest new phone out there, you have to keep abreast of the latest and greatest releases. For the HTC EVO 3D, available through Sprint, the latest and greatest just might be 3D images.
Once a gimmick of cheesy 1950’s movies, 3D has had a resurgence at the box office. But does it translate to cell phones as well? The EVO 3D aims to try. This smart phone features a large touch screen (of course) with a technology called “parallax barriers” to render images, movie clips, and other visual media in 3D. Unlike a movie screen, where it will appear you are part of the action, the much smaller technology only gives the 3D screen a “deeper” look – it has often been compared to a diorama effect.
