Our very own Sabesh just finished his review of the Motorola DEFY PRO:

The Motorola Defy Pro brings an interesting set of features to the party: Moderately water, dust & shock-proof and good QWERTY keyboard. It runs Android 2.3 with Motorola's MotoBlur overlay.

It's keyboard rivals that of the Blackberry Bold 9900 and is a pleasure to use. They keys are even shaped in a similar fashion. The keys don't "click" as much as the 9900, but do have a good feedback. The physical keyboard even supports Auto complete! One caveat though: The centre pad is a directional button, not a scroll pad like that of the Bold 9900. ...

Just got an LG Optimus G. Here are my quick thoughts on it.

Both the front and back are covered with Gorilla Glass. Apparently the back is polarized so it has an interesting pattern on it. Some how in my hand the finish makes it feel like plastic - maybe the sides have too much laquer on them or something. Still, it's a very solid phone.

The screen looks amazing. It's 4.7" 1280x720 display with amazing viewing angles. I just got it tonight so I haven't had a chance to use it outdoors in the sun yet.

The speaker on the back isn't very loud.

There are going to be 2 versions for the Canadian market. They differ in terms of LTE support. The Rogers one has 2600Mhz LTE only while the TELUS and Bell ones have AWS LTE (and probably other bands though I'm just speculating here). ...

One of last year’s unexpected hits was the Samsung Galaxy Note. It was basically a Galaxy S II with a stylus, a bigger, higher resolution display and a bigger battery. I had a nice laugh when I first saw it. I wondered, who would want to use such a large phone?

It screamed ‘my phone is better than your phone because it’s bigger’. I figured it would appeal to guys who wear huge watches, drive showy cars, that sort of thing. Nothing like a good stereotype right? Anyways, if you go out, you’ll notice a lot of girls with Notes. Turns out a Note fits just fine in a purse. Maybe size really doesn’t matter.

Anyways, it’s been about a year now and a lot has changed. Samsung is now the de-facto power in the Android smartphone space, so there’s a lot of anticipation for the Galaxy Note’s successor. ...

One of last year’s unexpected hits was the Samsung Galaxy Note. Boiled down it was basically a Galaxy S II with a stylus, a bigger higher resolution display and a bigger battery. It screamed ‘my phone is better than your phone because it’s bigger’. I figured it would appeal to guys who wear huge watches, drive showy cars, that sort of thing. However, if you go out you’ll notice actually notice a lot of girls with Notes. Turns out a Note fits just fine in a purse. I guess size really doesn’t matter.

Anyways, it’s been about a year now and a lot has changed. Samsung is now the de facto power in the Android smartphone space so there’s a lot of anticipation on the Galaxy Note’s successor.
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Starting with the HTC One X back in April, Android flagships have a few common features: A 1.5Ghz dual core Snapdragon S4 processor, LTE, 4.7”+ screens, 8MP cameras, NFC and 16GB+ built-in storage. Now Motorola throws their hat in the ring with the RAZR HD LTE.

While I appreciate how detailed the RAZR HD LTE’s name is it a bit of a mouthful. Then again I guess I should be happy it’s not called the Motorola 2012 RAZR HD LTE NFC 8MP KEVLAR 4.7 2500MAH.

With it’s sharp edges and the exposed weave on its Kevlar back the RAZR has a very striking and memorable design.

Now if you look at the RAZR’s specifications you’ll notice that they’re very similar to the ATRIX HD LTE I reviewed recently. Indeed, looking at the spec sheets the 3 main differences are the bigger screen (4.5” LCD vs 4.7” Super AMOLED), NFC and bigger battery (2530mAh vs 1780mAh). Bigger and more or better right? ...

While iPhones have changed dramatically since the first one was launched 4 years ago, one thing that hasn't changed is the size. They've all sported 3.5” displays. While, I think 3.5” works well on an iPhone, it’s hard to ignore the giant screens found on it’s competitors.

As such, the new iPhone 5 sports a 4” display. The biggest ever found on an iPhone though still much smaller than pretty much all it’s competitors. But as they say ‘size doesn't matter’.

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Howard gave me the Rogers LTE Rocket hub to put through it's paces and post up a review. How could I say no?
1> it's LTE
2> it's LTE data that isn't counting towards my 6 gig package
3> refer to #2

So with the Rocket Hub in hand I happily trotted down Free LTE MAD SEEG lane to test some speeds, download some stuff* and generally pillage and plunder the Rogers LTE network.
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Here's my report on Nokia's Lumia 820 and 920 launch.

I'm here in New York where Nokia is launching 2 new Windows Phones. The Lumia 920 and Lumia 820.


The Lumia 920 is the higher end phone with a 4.5" 1280x768 600 nit IPS LCD, 8.7MP Pureview camera with optical image stabilization, a polycarbonate unibody and a 2000mAh battery. I noticed during the demo that Joe Belfiore's 920 was connected to LTE whereas someone else who looked like they were from Europe had 4G. According to the Forum Nokia page the 920 supports LTE Band 1 (2100), LTE Band 20 (800), LTE Band 3 (1800), LTE Band 7 (2600), LTE Band 8 (900). Not sure if this one version of the 920 supports all these LTE bands or if they're mentioning all the bands the different 920 variants support. Note that LTE on AWS isn't listed - so I'm guessing those specs are for the 'Euro' variant.

Powering all this is a 1.5Ghz dual core Snapdragon S4 processor (like some Samsung GS3 and HTC One X variants along with the Motorola ATRIX). You get 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The storage is not expandable.

The screen has a brightness level of 600nits. Just for reference the Xperia ION (another extremely bright phone) measures 500nits so the 920's screen will probably work amazing even in direct sunlight. ...

Recently, Android hardware reached a point where I felt you didn’t have to buy the fanciest phone in order to be happy. While the HTC One X is a great phone most users will be happy with the One S, that sort of thing. I recently reviewed the Motorola ATRIX which is another fantastic device. Turns out the ATRIX has a smaller sibling the RAZR V XT885. Is the RAZR V good enough?
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