IQUA Smart Badge bluetooth headset is a unique product. From outside, it may look like a normal badge, but it also packs in a bluetooth headset and that has a really good battery life.

It has a nice sleek design with good finish. It packs a space for a badge which can be easily replace by your ID card (85mmx55mm).

It can even give you vibration alert to tell you about the incoming calls which is a god-send feature for those business meetings.

Pairing and real world use

Pairing is really easy. Keeping the power button pressed, just press the volume down button along with it, you will see that the power button will start to blink. This means that you headset is ready for pairing. Then, fire up the bluetooth on your host device, which in my case is the HTC Diamond Windows Phone and it automatically paired it. It did not even ask for the code! In case,it asks a code on your device, just use 0000 as code and you will be ready to go.

Calls are answered via the button on the present on the earpiece

I tried it with my SONY VAIO P and its bluetooth stack recognized it immediately and it worked wonderfully with Skype. The other party was able to hear me perfectly and voice was crisp on my side too.

According to IQUA, you can squeeze upto 40h of talktime or 600h of talktime from its small frame. Though those numbers may appear unrealistic to some people, but we got 3-4 days of heavy use from it which is very good. This involved 4 hours of talk everyday.

Changing

It comes with an AC adapter as-well-as a USB cable to charge it, both of which are extremely portable although I prefer using the USB cable as it allows me charge it with my VAIO P which I take everywhere with me.

Charging port is present at the bottom of the unit. The LED glows green when charging.

Note: it can save partnerships with upto 8 devices at a time, but allows usage with only one device at a time.

Note2: As with all bluetooth devices, the supported range is upto 10 meters. If used beyond that range, it will auto-disconnect.

You can buy one from mobile-fun at mere 14.95 pounds. They do worldwide shipping

[Link to iQUA Smart Badget Bluetooth headset]

There’s an update to rumors of Verizon and HTC handsets – the specs. While the HTC Whitestone is said to be equipped with 5MP auto-focus camera, HTC Mega may come with a 3MPcamera. A bit disappointment may be with the Diamond 2 that’s supposed to come with WinMo 6.1;looking less tempting as against WinMo 6.5 on the Mega.

Turning now to processor, Mega has Qualcomm 7225 528 MHz while the XV6975 gets a Qualcomm 7600 @ 528MHz. Both the smartphones are gossiped to have gpsOne, GSM and 256MB RAM. Hands on the display, the Whitestone is speculated to be 3.6 inch WVGA screen as against Mega having a QVGA 2.8 inch touchscreen. Let’s see what happens at the final unveil.

Read our Diamond 2 review

Via WMExperts

Dressed in brushed aluminum, the ASUS P835 comes equipped with an 3.5-inch WVGA display that is absolutely breath taking to look at. The display is shockingly sensitive, almost as sensitive as iPhone’s capacitive display. ASUS P835 is certainly the best ASUS device and is a serious contender for the Touch Diamond 2

Introduction

We have used almost all the ASUS Windows Mobile phones so far. ASUS is not a company which should not be under-estimated by any means. They have shown the world that they can produce great (mini) laptops at affordable prices and can maintain great quality standards at the same time. The ASUS P835 promises to deliver great mobile experience, but is it really able to deliver all that it claims?

Looks

From the past couple of years, we have seen that people want functionality with beauty too. HTC has shown the world that Windows Mobile devices can look great too. ASUS has done an excellent job with the ASUS P835.

On the right of the P835, you will find the dedicated camera button, which has become absent in the past HTC models. The position of the camera button is at the right position and it really helps in taking good pictures.

On the left, you will find the volume up and down buttons and lock switch. The lock switch also acts as power button.

At the bottom of the unit, you will find the mini-USB port which also doubles as an earphone jack.

Screen/Front of the device

On the front of the device, you will the huge 3.5-inch display with WVGA (480×800) resolution. The flushed screen is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The screen has great contrast and adequate brightness.

The display is very sensitive.  I also own an iPod Touch 2G and I can say that it can easily be mistaken of being capacitive!

You get dedicated answer and end buttons. Above them, you will find 4 ‘virtual’ buttons: quick launcher, start, ok and Internet button. The Internet button launches Opera (more on it later). Above the display, you will find a VGA camera for video calling and LED light for telling you some notifications. It tells you if you are receiving the signal or not. It also tells you about the notification alarms.

Performance

The ASUS P835 comes with the same processor that comes in all the latest HTC devices, Qualcomm MSM720x series. Although the processor handles the basic tasks pretty well, DO NOT expect it to run your HD videos on it. We do not understand why ASUS went with the Qualcomm processor when they could have used the mighty Intel Xscale 800MHz processor in ASUS P565. That model was blazingly fast and blew every other Windows Mobile phone in terms of performance.

We consider it as a step back in terms of performance. Its home screen interface is slow to use and was unbearable sometimes. Looks like ASUS forgot to tweak the interface in terms of speed. They should better fix this via a firmware update as the current one is painful to use.

We would suggest the users to switch to something like SPB Mobile Shell instead of using the stupid Asus home screen interface.

Storage

The ASUS P835 comes with 256MB ROM out of which 130MB is available for storage. There is also 4GB internal storage just like HTC DIAMOND. That said, it goes one step ahead by providing you with a micro-SD slot. So, you can get a lot of storage on your device, even more than the latest iPhone 3Gs (4GB+32GB micro-SD card).

You can mount both the internal storage as-well-as storage card as external USB drive.

Connectivity

The ASUS P835, being the flagship model comes with all the bells and whistles that you would expect from a modern communication device. You get GPS, WiFi, 3G, EDGE, GPRS, GPS, HSDPA, HSUPA and Bluetooth.

Internet Experience

Sad part is that ASUS describes P835 as a device to surf the Internet, but by mistake they are shipping them with QVGA version of the Opera Mobile browser. THIS IS A DISASTER. The pages look awful. I immediately downloaded the VGA version and have been happy since then.

Phone

The phone performed well even in low-signal locations. The dialer app is clearly inspired from the one found on iPhone.

Stylus

It comes with a telescopic stylus. Although we would have loved if they had bundled a non-telescopic one, but we are not complaining as you are not going to use the stylus that often. The screen is big enough so that you can use it with your fingers.

Battery Life

The ASUS P835 comes with a 1100mAh battery, which was surprisingly able to give us easily 2 days of use. ASUS must  have done some heavy tweaking with the device as I was able to squeeze out just 1 day with my HTC DIAMOND that came with 900mAh battery.

How does it feels in the hand?

ASUS P835 has a boxy design and feels fine if you have large hands like me. Keep in mind that in order to accommodate the huge display, the device cannot be small and petite like HTC DIAMOND.

Camera

The ASUS P835 comes equipped with 5MP auto-focus camera and it takes decent pics. Here are some pictures that I took with its camera:

Software screenshots

Here are some screenshots of ASUS’s today plugin:

Although ASUS has worked pretty hard on their today plugin, but it is not as good as HTC’s TouchFlo 3D due to these reasons:

• It is slowwww
• It is not as deep as HTC’s TouchFlo 3D
• It is not as sleek as TouchFlo 3D

They have also skinned the WMP 10 mobile

..and here are a couple of screenshots of WiFi sharing app, which makes the P835 as a wireless router

Quick Launcher:

So what is missing?

Firstly, it is high time that manufactures should understand that 3.5mm earphone jack is a must-have on a phone. ASUS has again deliberately not included it in the phone even though  there is ample space at the bottom of the unit.

ASUS’s glide interface leaves much to be desired. Although more features  have been added, but it feels slower than its previous version, which was used in ASUS P565 and ASUS P552W.

ASUS P865 is also a little on a heavy side. It weighs 148gm with battery which is much more than its rival, HTC TOUCH DIAMOND 2, which is just 118gm. This is mainly due to the metal parts, especially the heavy metal back used in  the P835.

Pros:

• Metal body (mostly)
• Most sensitive resistive screen
• 3.5-inch WVGA display is great to look at
• Built-in WiFi, BT and GPS
• Decent battery life
• Good Looks

Cons:

• ASUS Glide is no match for HTC TouchFlo 3D: Less features and slow
• Processor not as fast as the one found in ASUS P565

[ASUS P835 official webpage]

Search for LCD TV online and compare HDTV brands.

All in all, this phone should be a viable competitor to phones like the LG Pop; though it just doesn’t pack enough of a punch to reach a wider audience.

Palm may not not release a Windows Mobile phone in future. Why? Well, it looks like they have done a fantastic job with the Palm Pre. Precentral.net has posted a huge review of Palm Pre and according to them, the Pre offers great web browsing experience, even better than iPhone and T-Mobile G1, both of which are famous for their great web browsers. It is said to have extremely fast javascript engine, which makes overall web-browsing silky smooth and flawless.

On the other hand, the Palm Pre was not able to receive ‘thumbs up’ for its battery life.

The Palm Pre is a stellar 1.0 product. Given Palm’s fractured and foible-filled history, the fact that they were able to pull all this off is nothing short of amazing. There are faults here and there and I tried not to be shy about pointing them out, but I attribute nearly all of them to the fact that is is Palm’s first outing with webOS, their 1.0. Compare the Palm Pre to the initial release of the iPhone or the initial release of the T-Mobile G1 and you can safely say that the Pre is in their class and quite possible at the top of that class.

It is pity that Microsoft took such a long time to release IE Mobile 6. Unfortunately, even after such a long delay, IE Mobile 6 is just too slow for any use. Opera Mobile is still the best browser for Windows Mobile. Also, it is high time, manufactures introduce capacitive displays for their Windows Mobile devices. Some say that support for capacitive displays will not be there in Windows Mobile until Windows Mobile 7. Sad.

Palm Pre Review

SBSH is a Windows Mobile software house that has been releasing a slew of quality software for the Windows Mobile phones from quite sometime. Although, they have released their first iPhone application just few days back, they have once again proved that they are still a huge supporter of Windows Mobile by releasing a quality application, SBSH GoNews

Interface

SBSH has focused a lot on making this application as finger-friendly as possible. Infact, it is the first RSS reader for Windows Mobile which is ‘this’ finger friendly. I am a fond of finger-friendly applications and thus love its interface.

Immediately after installation, you are asked to create a channel. You can choose from a list of pre-loaded channels. You also have the option to add a feed by entering its RSS feed URL.

When downloading, it shows a down arrow indicating that it is downloading content for ‘that’ channel.

Once you are in the RSS feed, you can mark all the posts as read, unread, delete all items and so on!

While you are in the post, by clicking on the same menu as shown above, you can increase or decrease the size of the whole post. This feature works great especially in VGA and WVGA devices as you can make good use of all the extra pixels you have over the QVGA users!

By default, the GoNews loads images in the RSS feeds, but that can result in huge bills if you are not on an unlimited data connection. Fortunately, GoNews does provide an option to turn off the images. This will also make downloading content from the RSS feeds faster.

Setting Screen

Turn off "Show images" to save bandwidth

You can also tell GoNews to automatically update the content after a certain interval or whenever you connect it to Activesync.

Backup

This is something no RSS feeder for Windows Mobile. The GoNews lets you backup all of your RSS feeds in an OPML file, which is compatible with most RSS readers used on Desktops.

Final Thoughts

SBSH GoNews is a feature packed RSS reader for Windows Mobile. It provides great user experience with its pleasant interface and finger friendly controls. It can backup your precious RSS feeds so that you can get them back incase you loose them. Along with the fabulous support, you cannot go wrong with this application! We RECOMMEND IT.

What is great about GoNews?

• Finger friendly interface
• Streamlined design
• Ability to backup RSS feed URLs
• Font size can be adjusted
• Can auto-update on Activesync connect

What I expect in the future versions?

• More support for gestures
• Channel library should have more RSS feeds
• There should be a download bar when downloading content
• No today plugin for taking a quick glance at the RSS feeds

[SBSH GoNews Official Product Page]