Firstly I would like to welcome Alex to the team... He will be starting to blog with us soon. I hope you like his first rant objective review of his new phone...
Samsung Tocco Ultra Black Addition on Orange Network
OK so I got this phone on contract about 2 months ago, at first it everything seem quite neat, it’s a very suave looking phone, and it comes with some interesting little apps, which become an annoyance later on.
So let’s start with the positives:
It has a very good camera, 8.0 mega pixels. The only true redeemable feature on this phone, although the camera on the front of the phone can ONLY be used for video calls.
Its looks, this phone is no doubt stylish, the design and paint finish is very nice, but this has now become so standard with most phones recently that it becomes just that, standard.
And the screen is quite durable (There’s a reason for this).
So hello.... :o) Haven't blogged in just over a week, and feel I have to before I lose some of the ideas I wanted to blog about lol...
Firstly the geek stuff....
The new tablet PCs/macs OK, so we have ipad from apple... looks good :-) Although if I hear, theres an app for that I think I would throw it across the room... and the courier from Microsoft... to be fair I haven't been hands on with either of them, and I am not overly sure of the release dates either, except they will be some time this year... in fact I haven't even done my normal geek research into the specs... in fact I just looked at the pictures, read through a few articles and then looked at them again... The design on the apple is almost futuristic and it is amazingly light and thin... it reminded me of a film I had seen recently, think it was 2012 where the crew members are walking around with these tablets reading instructions off of them... Nice touch... However the iPad is terrible. No multitasking, no camera, no expandable memory, no USB port, no Flash, no stylus. If I wanted an iPod Touch, I would have bought one by now. Apple had the opportunity to really corner a market in its infancy but they failed.
I have had my HTC Hero since July 28th, at first I was happy and giddy about it, spent a while playing with it and learning how the phone works. I have always been a Nokia brat for the last 10 years, so it was very different. The OS is simple enough and navigation is ok, I love most of the features.
I do have a few problems with the phone tho, these are:
Camera is terrible, being 5mp I expectead a lot better, no flash, no backlight, unless its very light, your not getting a picture!! (Nokia beats this hands down)
Battery Life is terrible, especially if you use wifi, I have killed my battery in less than 90 minutes uploading pics to Fbook using the orange internet connection. Even on standbye I have yet had it last over 24 hours with minor useage. HTC Claim 750 hours???? I think not.
Signal strength seems to be another issue with a much lower signal than any Nokia I have had, even no service yet put my sim card into the N95 or 96 I have and it shows nearly 4 bars...
Ringer volume is terrible as well, and it keeps turning itself off and getting louder and quieter because of the position of the volume control button o the phone. Music player is rubbish if you want to use the phones speaker, although not too bad if you use headphones, again every Nokia I have ever had is better, and my mates iPhone kicks the Hero here.
I have spent some time searching apps etc on the internet for this phone, and there is a few, however, most of the stuff I would like for social media and multimedia is not available, I would have expectead a lot more of the social and multimedia items to be part of the OS and tied into the phone much tighter, at the moment the only IM tied into the phone is google talk.
In Short, if you want a different looking stylish very clean touch screen smart phone for business then the HTC hero is fine (as long as you carry your charger with you) If you want a decent camera multi media phone, then leave this phone well alone, you will be very dissapointed.
Just for the record I am sending this one back to Orange as I am within the 14 days!!!
