PhoneTalk

The Samsung Stratosphere is one of the few Android phones in Verizon's line-up to features a slide-out tactile QWERTY keyboard. That feature alone makes it a bit of a hot commodity for some consumers. It also has plenty of business features, 4G connectivity, and a solid camera. See how the smartphone rates in the video below or read the expert review of the Samsung Stratosphere by clicking this link.

Radio stations have already switched over to holiday music. Thanksgiving is this week. Store windows are being decked out with elaborate holiday themes. It’s official; the holiday shopping season is just around the corner. So we’ve rounded up mobile apps designed to make this year’s shopping a little bit easier and maybe even help save a little time and money.

1. Get the inside scoop on Black Friday

Who has time to check out circulars and deal information sites to see where the best deal on that new monitor might be? Not to worry, there’s definitely an app that does all the heavy lifting. Black Friday app from dealnews gathers all the latest sale details and offers as they get released from over 2,000 online retailers including places such as Game Stop, Sears, PetSmart, Sephora, and more.

Compatible OS: Android and iPhone
Cost: Free
How to get it: Visit the app market residing on your device or corresponding app store on your computer.

2. The ultimate gift list

During the holidays, it’s easy to get a bit overwhelmed keeping track of who gets which gifts. For some shoppers who have lots of folks on their list keeping track of which gifts have been purchased and for whom can be a challenge. Enter mGifts. The app features a clean interface for keeping track of who is getting what and the ability to see how much has been spent on each person. This list-making app isn’t just for the holiday season, but can be used all year round.

Compatible OS: iPhone and iPad
Cost: $4.99
How to get it: Visit the app market residing on your device.

3. Shopping rewards? Game on!

Some consider shopping a sport. If that’s the case then shopkick isn’t playing around. The idea is a little bit like FourSquare, but instead of badges, mayorships, and bragging rights you get rewards and deals. The idea is simple: Every time you walk into a store, you get kicks (think: points), exclusive deals, or rewards (think: gift cards). Simply walk into stores such as Crate & Barrel, Macy’s, Toys R Us, and others, stop at the entrance, and launch the app. You get checked-in and the rewards just start appearing. Some might even call it a little bit of holiday magic.

Compatible OS: Android, iPhone
Cost: Free
How to get it: Visit the app market residing on your smartphone or corresponding app store on your computer.

4. Is the price right?

The stores will be filled with signs promising discounts of 20%, 35%, or more. So, what is the final cost of an item exactly? If you don’t have a calculator hard-wired into your brain, consider downloading the (Read more)

The latest Android 2.3 smartphone coming to Verizon’s line-up is the Samsung Illusion. The touchscreen phone features SWYPE to help users text quickly, a zippy 1 GHz processor, and a 3-megapixel camera. It also has the ability to share its 3G connection with up to five other WiFi-enable devices. This phone should appeal to those who are passionate about the environment since the back casing and battery cover are made from 70 percent post-consumer material, while 35 percent of the front casing is made up of post-consumer material. The cell phone will be available this week.

Part of the allure of getting a smartphone is the apps. It’s what lets users truly customize their phone. Whether its games, productivity apps, photo apps, or anything else, now users who buy a new Windows Phone can get a $25 prepaid app card. The Microsoft promotion is available for people who purchased or will buy a Windows phone from November 2, 2011 to the end of year. The prepaid card can be used for apps or Xbox Live Games. Find out more by clicking this link.

In this edition, we cover Google Music, the new Casio G'Zone Ravine 2 for Verizon, and Sprint's new data plans. In the test drive, we take a closer look at the DROID Razr by Motorola.

Last month, we launched LetsTalk’s Halloween Scavenger Hunt where the winner of the contest had their choice of winning one of these Verizon Wireless products: DROID Razr by Motorola, XOOM 4G LTE Tablet, or Galaxy Nexus by Samsung. To enter the contest, you had to watch a total of eight Wireless Weekly Wrap-Up and Expert Review videos from September 28th to October 21st and identify the hidden Halloween-themed item in each video. A winner has been selected; so join us in congratulating Guarav Rajaseker. He will be receiving a Galaxy Nexus by Samsung as soon as it becomes available.

Tomorrow at 2:00 PM PST I'll be hosting a chat on LetsTalk's Facebook page. I’ll be taking questions about phones, plans, apps, and can even help Facebook fans pick the best phone for them. If there's something you want to know about mobile, but didn't know who to ask stop by and ask me on Facebook at 2:00 PM PST this Friday. While visiting LetsTalk’s Facebook page be sure to check out the great offers happening right now.

At a press conference today, Google took the wraps off its music offering. The product called Google Music is available for U.S. residents to start using today. Essentially, the service is part cloud storage, part music store, and part music discovery.

Let’s start with the cloud part. You can upload up to 20,000 songs free to your own Google Music Locker using the Google Music Manager. There’s no fee to do this and the idea behind doing this is so that you can access your music on any device. Once you have a song in the cloud, you can select songs by artist, playlist, or album to be played on an Android device without an Internet connection.

Google’s music store can be found in the Android Market. There will a free song featured daily. First free song is David Bowie’s Sound and Vision. To celebrate the launch of the service there are a few more free songs available (most of the songs are from live performances) from Shakira, Rolling Stones, Busta Rhymes, ColdPlay, Pearl Jam, and Dave Matthews Band. The store can be accessed online or from any smartphone running Android 2.2 OS or later.

Once you purchase a song you can share it with your friends, even the ones who don’t use Google+ - those people get an e-mail, so they can play the song once. If they like it they can buy it. That’s part of the discovery. Of course, Google will suggest music recommendations as well – another way to discover new music.

Along with Google, T-Mobile announced that it would be offering its customers with Android 2.2 (or later) smartphones and tablets exclusive free Google Music from artists such as Maroon 5, Drake, and others. The company will introduce new free tracks weekly through the end of the year in the Android Music Store. Customers should look for the T-Mobile’s Free Tracks Section. Plus, T-Mobile customers who purchase songs from Google Music using their Android smartphone or tablet can have the cost of the music added to their bill – no need to setup a PayPal account or enter credit card info.

Android smartphones are highly customizable thanks to the loads of apps available in the Android Market. Although many apps are free we don’t all have the time to try out each one in a specific category. Enter our first mobile app roundup to help take the guessing out of the app selecting equation. We’re starting off this new series by checking out mobile web browsers. For the uninitiated, a mobile web browser is used to surf the web on a cell phone, and every Android phone is equipped with a ‘stock’ browser for this very purpose. For some users the stock browser might be just fine, but others may want to get more out of mobile surfing such as the ability to switch between a company’s mobile website and its full website found with a desktop browser or even a faster browsing experience.

In this showdown, we pit seven mobile web browsers (including the stock browser founded on most smartphones) against one another to see how they rate. Here are the final results:

Read the full review of each browser:

• "Stock" Browser
• Opera Mobile 11.1
• Dolphin HD
• xScope
• (Read more)

  Topics:	Motorola	Smart phones	Android	Google
  	Apps

The Miren browser is a unique entry to the browsing world, sporting a clean aesthetic, simple operation, and a decent browsing speed. There are even a few cool features that other browsers in this round-up should consider as well as several customizable, “tweakable” features.

• Speed: This browser didn’t come out blazingly fast in our speed test, taking around 10 seconds to load the mobile CNN site. That said, there was some redemption in the 34 seconds it took to load the full CNN website. Scrolling was a bit jerky as was zooming, but it was certainly still functional. The “instant” back/forward feature works as advertised and is actually instant. When going back, for example, the previous page just slides in from the left in a nice animation. Miren works smoothly all around and kept loading pages in a perfectly acceptable amount of time.
• Page Display: Miren displayed all pages true to a desktop experience when appropriate and handled embedded videos and pictures well. It also sports several different modes such as a form mode or a reading mode to further simplify page displays depending on the browsing environment. There were no problems rendering content while quickly scrolling or zooming. (Read: There was no “gray checkerboard” to be found). The only problem might be that, by default, the tabs at the top of the screen stay while scrolling up and down, constantly eating up this screen area. However, this feature can be disabled in the settings menu.

(Read more)

- Smart Features - Good aesthetic - Tons of settings for additional customization	- Not much available for syncing - A few key settings are a bit buried

Looking for a rugged phone that won’t take up a ton of pocket real estate and will work around the globe? Consider the Casio G’Zone Ravine 2 for Verizon Wireless. The cell phone sports a 3.2-megapixel camera, 2.5mm headset jack, and is built to meet military standards for immersion, water, vibration, shock, and more. As is the case with many tough phones, it features Push-to-Talk for connecting with other Verizon Push-To-Talk devices. Similar to other Casio models, the G’Zone Ravine 2 will operate in seven G’zGear modes: Earth Compass, Walking Counter, Astro Calendar, Tides, Thermometer, Star Gaze, and Sunrise/Sunset. It also comes loaded with VZ Navigator, V CAST Tones, and the Opera Mini Browser for surfing the web. The phone will be available next week.

Skyfire is an interesting and creative browser that deals with one of mobile web’s biggest hurdles: embedded videos. Some cell phones don’t support Flash, which is needed to watch some videos. Skyfire, however, has a unique approach: It encodes the videos on its servers, compresses them, and then streams the videos in a supported format back to the cell phone.

• Speed: Skyfire performed well enough surfing the web and loaded the mobile CNN website in 6 seconds and the full CNN website in about 34 seconds. That’s faster than the stock browser but not quite as fast as Opera Mobile. The browser loads pages well enough and surfing is effortless. Scrolling, like most browsers in this round-up, was slightly jerky.
• Page Display: Similar to some of the other browsers in the round-up, Skyfire does have the option to switch the user client from the mobile version of a website to the desktop version in order to view full pages. Its biggest innovation is the way it handles Flash-based videos on the web. Skyfire scans the page for Flash videos that it can convert into HTML5 format for viewing on the mobile device. This opens up the Web for those on devices that don’t natively support Flash and can even save on data usage. The feature works fairly well in practice, though we did find a few videos and pages that weren’t supported by Skyfire. When a video does load, it opens in a dedicated window that takes up the entire display. There is no viewing the video within the context of the webpage. However, due to the compression and cache technologies this can save on data usage a benefit for those on a limited data plan. In order to access this service indefinitely, users need to purchase the Skyfire Video License Key for a one-time fee of $2.99.

(Read more)

- Provides alternative to viewing Flash videos - Data savings - Facebook integration	- Not all videos are available - Lacks true tabbed browsing	- Video support isn't free

In this week’s edition we cover the DROID Razr by Motorola for Verizon, Android Gingerbread update for the Samsung Epic 4G, the latest Sprint ID pack, and more.

It has often been noted that a cell phone is the one item that someone will return home to retrieve instead of spending a day without it. Why it’s so important to have a smartphone all day long varies as seen in the results of a joint survey of over 2,000 US users conducted by Yahoo! Mobile and Razorfish. There are loads of stats that came out of the survey, but here are some of the more interesting points:

Mobile phone scapegoat: The study found 52% of consumers use their mobile device to escape awkward situations. Women are more likely to use their phone as an excuse than men.

No need to stop & ask for directions: Overall men (59%) are using their web-enabled mobile devices most frequently for navigational purposes.

Are you ready for some football?: Men were almost twice as likely to say that checking their mobile for sports news causes arguments with their significant other (29%) compared to women (17%).

The gender divide: Men are more likely to use their mobile device as a functional, all- in-one tool; whereas women are more likely to use it as an extension of the traditional phone, to update and connect with friends across their social networks on the go.

Mobile shopping is a man’s world: Online purchases on smartphones are more popular with men (70% under 35 years) than with women (64% under 35 years).

A familiar name in the Internet browsing world, the mobile version of Firefox has some interesting features that tie it to its sibling in the desktop world. Sporting a sleek interface and easy to use features, this mobile browser works better than the stock browser, but there are a few puzzling missteps included, as well.

• Speed: Firefox advertises speed as one of its benefits, and for mobile content it doesn’t disappoint. Firefox brought up the mobile CNN site in less than 6 seconds, keeping up with the other browsers in the roundup. However, in a glaring omission, Firefox does not have the native ability to switch user agents (viewing the mobile or full version of a website) so it was not possible to load the full site without the use of an add-on, which unfortunately was not supported on the Droid 3 by Motorola that we used for testing. Since CNN’s mobile site doesn’t have a convenient “click here to view full site” button, so we couldn’t test how fast the Firefox browser could load the full site. However, we were able to load the New York Times’ full site, which took under 20 seconds, which is on par with some of the fastest browsers in this roundup. It rendered content well and scrolling was smooth with just occasional hiccups while zooming-in and -out.
• Page Display: Firefox rendered pages well, but we did encounter the dreaded “gray checkerboard” filler while rapidly scrolling or zooming on pages. That said, it did render content effectively, and viewing the pages was similar to viewing them on a desktop browser. We were disappointed the browser lacks a full screen view. While scrolling from side to side on websites, the sidebars Firefox employs to hide the tabs and add-ons kept appearing showing up when swiping to the left or right, as in Dolphin HD. There is no way to hide the Android status bar like in the other browsers, and while Firefox controls can be stowed to maximize screen space, you can’t hide the status bar for those precious extra pixels. Firefox opted to not include Flash support for its mobile browser in favor of HTML5.

(Read more)

- Add-ons - Firefox Sync - Good speed	- Lacks true tabbed browsing - Page rendering issues - Overly sensitive sidebars	- No user agents by default - Lacks Flash support - No full screen mode

Owners of the Samsung Epic 4G will be happy to learn that Sprint is rolling out the Gingerbread Android 2.3 OS. Be on the lookout for an update notification on the phone. In addition to the updated OS, there are additional enhances such as the ability to view HTML in Exchange Acvitesync e-mail, Bluetooth headset sound improvements, and a fully visible date on the device lock screen. Once users receive the update notification it’s advisable to attach the charger while loading the update. If you haven’t received the update yet, no worries, the rollout is happening over the next ten days.

The xScope mobile browser seeks to be functional and simple for people who are looking for an upgrade from the stock browser. It claims to be the fastest mobile browser available for Android users, and with the second fastest loading times in my browsing experience it is, if nothing else, faster than most browsers currently available. It does have a limited number of features but the true tabbed browsing is a nice experience.

• Speed: Second only to Opera in terms of speed, the xScope browser loaded the mobile CNN site in about 6 seconds and the full CNN site in 33 seconds. It was faster than the other browsers except Opera, which loaded the two sites in 5 seconds and 25 seconds respectively. We found scrolling on par with most mobile browsers in this roundup, meaning it was slightly jerky when scrolling through pages or using the zoom feature. Pages did seem to load quickly and we didn’t encounter any rendering issues – a definite plus.
• Page Display: The pages in xScope render well, and its easy to switch the mobile or desktop versions of a website. However, xScope did occasionally have difficulties rendering all aspects of a complex page on screen at one time. For example, on some sites a few graphics wouldn’t load properly or text wrapping would be a bit off. It is a minor annoyance, but compared to the seamless performance of browsers like Dolphin HD or Opera, it is one that stands out as a fairly large misstep.
• Navigation: xScope does a good job navigating from page to page, smoothly transitioning between all the navigational tasks. The true tabbed browsing feature stands out the most: it actually had animations when switching between tabs. The tab also tracks the exact percentage of the page loaded, so there’s no need to guess how much of a page loaded.

(Read more)

- Decent amount of settings - True tabbed browsing - Speedy	- Too many menus - Occasional page-display problems - Unintuitive	- Long clicking slows downs the experience - Initial learning curve too steep

Wondering if your HTC Android phone will be getting the latest version of the Android OS dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich? The newest OS 4.0 that was revealed just a few weeks ago (here’s a good overview of what the new OS will offer from PC World) is designed to bridge the gap between Android phones and tablets. HTC unveiled on its Facebook page that along with the HTC Vivid, HTC Sensation, HTC Sensation XL, HTC Sensation XE, HTC Rezound, HTC EVO 3D, HTC EVO Design 4G, and HTC Amaze 4G will all receive the upgrade to the Android 4.0 OS, which is expected out in early 2012.

In this edition we cover the new BlackBerry Torch coming to T-Mobile and the first HTC cell phone featuring Dr. Dre Beats - the HTC Rezound for Verizon. Plus a look at the Samsung Stratosphere and an update on the Halloween Scavenger Hunt winner.

Dolphin HD is the third in a line of Dolphin browsers and consequently the most feature rich. There is also a Dolphin Mini browser and a more basic Dolphin browser, but this roundup focuses on full-featured browsers available. Dolphin claims to be the “most intelligent mobile web browser available,” with its add-ons and speedy performance.

• Speed: Although many users wrote reviews in the Android Market that lauded the browser’s fast performance we didn’t have the same experience in our tests. Unfortunately, this was one of Dolphin’s worst features as it seemed incredibly slow to load pages and navigate site-to-site. The Dolphin HD browser loaded CNN’s mobile site in about 7 seconds, which is still a tad faster than the speed of the stock browser. However, when loading CNN’s full site the browser floundered in the waves for 45 seconds before finally completing loading – that’s at least 10 seconds longer than any other browser tested in the roundup. While 10 seconds may not sound like a long time, on a page-by-page basis that can seem like an eternity in a mobile scenario. Scrolling around the page and zooming in was a bit jerky. That said, using the pinch-to-zoom feature worked fairly well. We should note that jerkiness during scrolling was an issue with almost every browser tested.
• Page Display: Dolphin did a great job displaying pages. Embedded Flash videos played fine without requiring any add-ons other than the standard Flash Player installation. It was refreshing to see a page display on the DROID 3 by Motorola like it does on a desktop computer and mimic desktop browsing experience with embedded videos and properly rendered pages. There weren’t any issues scrolling to a new part of the page and we didn’t have to wait for the rest of the page to load. We appreciated the full screen mode, which removes the top and bottom bars making the most of a cell phone’s display.

(Read more)

- Customizable features - True tabbed browsing - Near desktop experience	- Disappointing gesture recognition - Jerky navigation	- Slow page load speed

Opera has been a player in the desktop browser market since the days of mailed AOL CDs and 56k modems. It would make sense, then, that a developer with this much experience would make quite a splash in the mobile world.

• Speed: The Opera Mobile browser blew away the competition in terms of speed. It loaded the mobile CNN site in about 5 seconds and the full site in a paltry 25 seconds. Surfing site-to-site felt great using this browser and it shot around the Internet faster than any other browser in this round up. Sites loaded even faster after they had been visited and stored in the cache. Clearly, Opera spent time optimizing this browser to work fast and it did an outstanding job. Scrolling around pages was silky smooth with nary a jitter in sight, and the zoom seamlessly moved in and out.
• Page Display: Opera handled every page visited well, loading it quickly and properly. Embedded flash videos played perfectly – a definite plus. One of the product’s claims is smooth panning for surfing the web in a more intuitive way. It certainly lived up to that claim. We were impressed with the way it automatically zooms to text fields when you tap on them making it easier to see what’s being typed, though occasionally it did zoom in after an errant tap on the screen. Opera sports an ability to open pages in a “Single Column View,” which eliminates the need to scroll side to side. This was a bit of a mixed bag, though, since too many pages appeared cluttered. Like Dolphin HD, Opera Mobile 11.1 offers user the ability to change their user agents to simulate either a mobile or desktop browser making it easy to switch between full sites and their mobile counterparts. The browser did lack a simple button to go to full screen mode. On a mobile display every pixel counts, and diving through a menu to hide the status bar at the top isn’t ideal.

(Read more)

- Speed - Smooth scrolling - Opera Link	- Fewer features - Lacks true tabbed browsing - Not a ton of settings	- Single column view

T-Mobile users in the market for a BlackBerry with a touchscreen and a tactile QWERTY keyboard will be happy to learn the BlackBerry Torch 9810 will be available next week. The BlackBerry Torch will have 4G connectivity and runthe latest BlackBerry 7 OS. It will also sport a 1.2GHz processor, feature a slide-out tactile QWERTY keyboard, and have a 5-megapixel camera with flash that can record 720p HD video.

Each Android phone has a stock browser pre-loaded that is used for surfing the web on a smartphone. This review is of the version available on the DROID 3 by Motorola.

Speed: The stock browser loaded the mobile CNN site in about 8 seconds and the full site in 36 seconds. Performance was slightly slower than the other browsers reviewed, but it still functioned at an acceptable pace for mobile browsing.

Page Display: One of the big issues with this mobile browser is that scrolling quickly around a page leaves a "gray checkerboard" pattern on parts of the screen while the browser renders the content in that portion. However, it does do a good job of wrapping text properly when zooming-in so there's no need to scroll from side-to-side to read a complete paragraph.

Navigation: The browser moves from page-to-page well enough, though the lack of tabbed browsing slows down the experience since you have to open the menu and then another menu to see which windows are open. Most navigation features are found in the menu, requiring that one extra button press.

Extra Features: This is where the stock browser falls short. It has the ability to bookmark pages and can perform typical browser actions, but beyond that the browser is limited. It lacks user agent switching, add-ons, and themes. The stock browser is light on features and settings, which is why an alternative can be a refreshing change.

Overall: The stock browser works well enough for those who do occasional web searches on a phone or read a few news articles. However, if you want a more full-featured, desktop-like experience, look at an alternative mobile browser.

Click here to see the Mobile Browser Battle Royale.

- Solid functionality across the board - Easy to use, requires no setup - Syncs well with Google info	- Not a ton of customizability - Lacks advanced features	- Slower than most browsers - No quick window/tab management

The Sound ID SIX Bluetooth headset sports a lightweight design and is loaded with features. SIX has many of the features needed so users won’t have to take their hands off the wheel while wearing it. The VoiceMenu can be used to verbally access voicemail, search Bing, get 411 information, and even dial phone numbers. For those who don’t want to access features verbally the headset sports a Smart Touch Surface for performing similar tasks and more with a quick touch. The SIX also works with Sound ID’s EarPrint App that lets users create personalized listening preferences, check battery life, and even has a "Find Me" feature that triggers the headset to start beeping so it can easily be found. When paired with an Android smartphone the app supports Text-to-Speech functionality for text messages. The app also works with iPhone, and most BlackBerry phones. Finally, the headset can be paired and used with two Bluetooth devices simultaneously. The Sound ID SIX is available now for $129.99.