On April 15th Sound ID announced that its new 300 Bluetooth headset would be available exclusively at at&t stores.

The 300 is a beautiful Bluetooth headset with a glossy black color or as some call it a piano black finish, that not only looks good but feels good in your ear, because it’s so light weight and it doesn’t even feel like it’s in your ear.

I actually forgot the headset was in my ear because of how comfortable and light weight it is, it literally doesn’t feel as if it is in your ear after a while.

What also amazed me about the Sound ID 300 is the sound quality, it’s as crystal clear as it can get, and people who I talked to could hear me clearly as well, I did not have to speak louder than normal for them to hear me. I credit the dual microphones in the headset for that.

The Sound ID 300 also has 3 listening modes, which are easy to switch between and depending on the environment you are in will give you a better call experience, it will even adjust the volume automatically depending on your environment as well.

What’s also cool about the 300 is you don’t need to tap talk on your phone, you just hit the button on the back of the headset and it will answer or put on hold the person you are talking too. That’s the kind of ease of use I enjoy.

The battery life is also long, I have gone several days with day to day use with out having to charge the battery yet, it advertises 220 hours of battery life so that may be about right.

The Sound ID 300 is great and it’s available now at at&t retail stores for just $99.99, it should also be available at http://wireless.att.com but at last check it was not. 

Cecilia over at our sister site CuteGeek.com posted her review on the Pantech Matrix Pro today, and while she liked the way the phone look, her overall impression wasn’t that great for the phone.

She pointed out that the UI for the phone wasn’t that appealing and that pretty much has to do with the fact it’s a Windows Mobile OS, but with Microsoft coming out with a better more stylish version of their mobile OS later this year, her impression might have been different.

Check out the review here.

Jawbones new headset is a lot thinner than the previous version, and a lot more comfortable too. I have been using it for nearly 2 and a half weeks and I have been happy with it.

As I said in the unboxing post, I became a fan of Jawbone when the original first came out, because it literally was the best Bluetooth headset on the market. It was also probably the biggest.  But time has changed and the Jawbone has shed some weight.

It’s new thinner self still has that sleek elegant design the original had just a bit more compact, I actually prefer the thinner versions look over the bigger original, however my friend John prefers the bigger one.

Since the new Jawbone is so much smaller than the original and so much lighter in weight it is very comfortable on your ear, and at times it doesn’t even feel like it is there. With the original Jawbone my inner ear would sometimes begin to hurt, but I don’t have that problem with the new Jawbone.

But smaller doesn’t necessarily mean not as good as the original, because if may even be better.

To put the noise cancelation technology which is the same as the original to the test, I hoped onto an elevated Subway train here in NYC and while the train rolled down the tracking making its infamous clickity clack sound, I spoke with my mom and a few of my friends and none of them complained about not being able to hear me.

Nor was I complaining that I could not hear them, they came in loud and clear, I also didn’t feel as if I needed to raise my voice for them to hear me.

So why is it called a Jawbone? It is a rather easy explanation. It’s called Jawbone because the headset has a piece of white plastic that rest on your jawbone. This piece of plastic essentially measures the vibrations and is able to block out sounds that you do not make. This gives the jawbone one of the best noise cancelation systems around.

Overall the New Jawbone is great, and it comes in three colors, Blah Blah Black, Sliver Tongue, and Goldy Lips.

The Black and Silver retail for $129.99, I was told the Gold would sell for $149.99 but it is available on the Jawbone website for $129.99 also, not sure if that is a temporary or permanent price.

The Jawbone is so great we have decided to award it our 5 Star Kick Ass award!

For more information on th Jawbone headset visit: http://www.jawbone.com

We have just posted some Unboxing pictures over at our Parent site HardwareGeeks.com. Just thought we let you know so you can check them out.

The phone is actually amazingly responsive to the touch of the finger and kind of pulses when you tap on something which is pretty cool. A lot of people who haven’t gotten an iPhone because it lacks that tactual sensation when you press a key will enjoy the Samsung Instinct.

The Samsung Juke is a Chick Magnet if I have ever seen one! I had to start this review with that sentence, because this phone brings in the ladies. They love it, and they love asking to hold, use, and play with it. Girls absolutely love it. I think because of the phone I was able to get a few more numbers than I normally would get.

The Samsung Juke for Verizon wireless is a sexy looking phone. It has one of the smallest form factors around. The Samsung Juke features 2GB of internal memory, Bluetooth stereo support, Integrated Camera, and GPS Capabilities that actually work.

The first thing I tried with the Juke was the sound quality of music and how easy it is to get music onto the device. It was easy. All you have to do is connect your Juke to your computer and drag over your favorite music. I was able to get my music onto the phone and begin listening to it in less than 5 minutes.
I connected the Juke to some portable speakers I have, and my friend and I threw a little party. The sound quality is really good.

Navigating through the music and selecting what songs to play is also easy on the Juke. It has a small navigation wheel right under the screen that is really easy to use. 

The sound quality during phone calls is also good. I have no complaints, and there was no straining to listen to the caller I was talking to.

The screen on the Juke is rather small, but that isn’t a bad thing, as it helps maintain the phones size and displays all the information you need clearly.

Navigating around town is also easy with the Samsung Juke and Verizon Wireless VZ Navigator. For $9.99 a month you can get turn by turn directions from your phone and never get lost, a common problem I have, just ask LaIndia.

Overall the Samsung Juke for Verizon Wireless is great. It’s a stylish phone that allows you to take your music with you. It gives you features such as GPS functionality that most phones do not have, and all for $80 dollars with 2 year contract. You can’t beat that in my opinion.

Visit Verizon Wireless to find out more on the phone or to get yours!

When I first saw the Motorola Q, I liked it a lot, and when a friend’s birthday came around, I pitched in with her sisters to get her one, and she loved it. Why wouldn’t she? Motorola makes great phones. The Moto Q isn’t just a great phone a great smartphone geared towards business professionals, and with her being a “classy” business lady, she needed a phone that could keep up with her busy schedule.

On the 1st of November, at&t announced they would carry the Moto Q 9h Global exclusively. The 9h Global is a phone that literally works all over the world. 135 countries to be exact, and with an upcoming planned trip to Europe, I decided to test out its global capabilities. I was heading to Spain for Microsoft’s TechEd Europe, but sadly that planned trip fell through. However, we did test the phone overseas thanks to help from a HardwareGeeks.com partner Patrick O’Malley who is a developer for a large company here in NYC, who did attended the Microsoft TechED Europe event.

But before the phone headed to Europe, I decided to test it out state side. But before we get on with the review, let me tell you what the phone features.

The MOTO Q global offers users an ergonomic, integrated QWERTY keyboard, great voice quality, and fast broadband speeds up to 3.6 Mbps via AT&T’s UMTS/HSDPA-based BroadbandConnect network. On various speed tests I performed, I was able to get 3.3 Mbps down constantly with a slight improvement during the nighttime hours. It also has Windows Mobile 6, built-in GPS capabilities, Documents to Go® for document editing, Opera browser, and Internet Explorer. However, Opera is set to the default browser. It has seven dedicated shortcut keys, a 2.0-megapixel camera with flash, and let’s not forget Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity.

So, now that you know what the phone features let’s get on with the review.

I live in NYC, and I am a T-Mobile subscriber and have been a loyal subscriber with T-Mobile for the past 6 months and a not so happy customer for the past 2 months. After using at&t for the past month or so on my review of the Pantech Duo and now the Moto Q 9h Global, I kind of regret my decision to switch providers after a dispute with an at&t CS agent 9 months ago.

The service at&t provides here in the states is exceptional, way better than what T-Mobile has to offer here in NYC anyway, and it’s on par with Verizon and Sprint, if not a smidgen better than those two.

Their BroadbandConnect network is probably one of the best available in the US. Sure Verizon and Sprint may offer faster speeds, but I have used all 3, and if I were to grade them I would grade at&t with an A + as I have never had trouble connecting to a webpage or checking email and Sprint with an a B since I have had some connection issues with Sprint and some slow downs during peak hours, Verizon receives a C; I have had major speed issues with them, especially in major cities. 

The at&t network is rock solid, and being a t-mobile customer for the past 8 months has made the saying “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” ring true to me.

We now know that at&t offers great service in the US, how about overseas? Well, we almost didn’t find out how their service is overseas, because I committed a major faux par. We were given a sim card to test out the Pantech Duo and the Moto Q 9h Global. When I handed the 9h to Patrick, I had neglected to swap the sim card from the Duo to the 9h. Luckily, Patrick is an at&t customer and had no problem using his sim card on the phone while in Spain and Italy.

According to Patrick, while he was in Barcelona and in Rome he never had an issue with getting a signal. The internet speed on the phone was pretty good; however, when he ran some speed tests on the phone he only was able to achieve 2.3 Mbps a second, but that’s still pretty damned good.

He said he used the built in GPS feature to get around Barcelona with the help of Microsoft Live Search. Although, it took him a bit of trial and error to get it to work correctly. I my self was unable to get it to work.

Now we know the at&t service works great globally, but how does the phone perform?

The sound quality the phone delivers during a phone call is amazing. It made me feel as if the person I was talking too was right next to me. Everything was crystal clear, and when I went back to using my T-Mobile dash, I missed the sound quality the Moto Q had.

But the sound quality doesn’t just end there. I played music on the phone, and the sound quality was just as good as the sound quality I get from my Toshiba T400. This surprised me a lot, because most phones have semi decent sound when it comes to music, but this was not the case with the Moto Q 9h. The sound was superb. Who needs an MP3 player when you have a phone that has sound like this?

The Moto Q 9h is a big Smartphone, a bit bigger than what I am used to. At first, I really didn’t care for the size, and when I met with Motorola, I kind of implied I wasn’t too happy with the size, but I got used to it. After using it a while, I like that it is big, because it’s easier to type on it and feels comfortable in your hands. With most phones that have a QWERTY keyboard, you find yourself using the tips of your thumbs to type. However, since the keys on the Moto Q 9H were larger than the keys you’d find on the T-Mobile Dash, Sidekick, and Palm Treos, you don’t find yourself using just the tips of your thumb. Also, you find yourself making less typing mistakes.

Big Smartphone also equals big screen, and the Moto Q has a nice sized screen which offers a 320x240 color display that automatically adjusts itself to the light conditions in the room you are in which is a kick ass feature to me. The screen is one of the best colored screens I have seen on a phone. I literally watched some recorded TV shows on it that were stored on a SD card, and it was as if I were watching them at home on my TV. Well, not exactly, but the Picture Quality was pretty good. I also watched some streaming TV on mobile Slingbox, and again, the at&t service performed as advertised. The PQ on the TV show was what you’d expect.

The 9h also has a built in GPS, and while I ran into trouble with the telenav software and couldn’t test it fully, my friend Patrick did get it to work while he was in Spain and said it worked great. I, for some reason, constantly got a signal is weak error even when I was on the roof of my apartment building. Telenav actually told me they didn’t support the phone when I called them for help, even though they have software specifically designed for the phone. I guess their tech support scripts hadn’t been updated when I called. So, I basically gave up on trying the GPS out for myself, but again Patrick said it worked for him.

Before we end the review, we have to mention the camera. The Moto Q 9h has a 2 megapixel camera with built in flash. The camera software and the picture quality are really good, and probably gave me better shots than my old 3 megapixel Kodak camera I have laying around somewhere.

The Moto Q 9H is a great Smartphone for the business professional on the go. It runs Windows Mobile and comes included with Documents to Go, a great program that I use to use on all of my palm pilots. Documents to Go allows you to edit your Microsoft office documents on the phone itself.

Overall the Moto Q 9H is amazing. It has great sound quality for calls and music, great video quality to watch video clips on, and a great camera that takes decent pictures. For all of its greatness, we award the Moto Q 9 h our highest award the 5 Star Editors Choice.

The Moto Q 9h is available exclusively from at&t wireless for $199 with a 2 year contract and after a $199.99 mail in rebate.

Over the past several months I have become a Pantech fan. From their C300 to the updated C3B and even the C150, I have fallen in love with the look and feel of their phones. They honestly seem to put a lot of thought into their phones and focus on what we as users really need and want.

Pantech continued their stylish and consumer oriented ways with the new Pantech Duo released on the 29th of October. (Some pictures at this link)

The Pantech Duo is a Windows Mobile based phone. It is loaded with cool features such as a 2.2 inch QVGA screen, voice commands, messenger programs (AIM, Live Messenger, Yahoo), a 1.3 Megapixel camera, support for microSD cards, Quad-band GPRS/EDGE with dual-band UMTS/HSDPA so you can use it around the world, Bluetooth, and a battery that promises 250 hours of standby time.

So, why is it called the Pantech Duo? It’s called the Duo because it’s a dual slider. What’s a slider phone? It is a phone whose keypad slides in and out. What’s a dual slider? It is the same thing as a slider except you get an additional keypad, or in the case of the Pantech Duo, a full QWERTY keyboard.

Now that you know a little about the phone, let’s get on with the review.

I have had the Pantech Duo for a little over ten days, and I have to say have been enjoying every minute with it. Each day I discover a new feature. The phone is fun to use, easy to learn, and does everything you want it to for a lot less than similar phones with the same or less features. It is probably one of the most fun phones I have used in a while.

The first thing I noticed when I first held the Pantech Duo, is that it isn’t as heavy as it looks. It only weighs 3.88 ounces with the battery. That’s far less than any Sidekick.
Speaking of the Sidekick, the Pantech Duo is a good alternative to the Sidekick. Being a previous sidekick owner, I often suffered with the not so great t-mobile network. While I didn’t have trouble with phone calls, the t-mobile data network constantly had outages. Over the past 9 days, I used the Duo in the same way I used my sidekick when I had one. I constantly had it connected to AIM, Yahoo, and Live Messenger, and I set it up so that I could receive my personal email on the device. There were occasions where I would receive a text message as many as 5 seconds after it was sent, I never experienced an outage of data service. While my friend who has a Sidekick had issues with receiving Instant Messages, especially at night.

Emailing, Messaging, and Texting on the Duo is comfortable and easy. Because of the full QWERTY keyboard, you’re able to use both your hands. Even if you just need to use one hand, you can use the numeric keypad. It may take you a bit longer to type something up, but you won’t end up dropping your Duo in the toilet like my friend Chrissy did; she dropped her Sidekick in the toilet while applying makeup.

But the Pantech Duo isn’t just for messaging. It has a dual purpose. Not only is it good for your everyday life, it’s also good for your work life. It’s a phone that’s cool enough to take to the club yet sophisticated enough to whip out during a business meeting to check your schedule, look up a contact, or check the web for some information.

I tried out the call quality on the phone. I have to say it’s pretty impressive. It’s better than the call quality on my T-Mobile Dash and the HTC Touch from Sprint. On my dash, I sometimes have to stick a finger in my left ear so that I can hear the call clearly from my right ear, even if the volume is all the way up. I really didn’t have that problem on the Duo.

I also have to give props to at&t. The signal I have had with them this past week and a half has been great. I have not had one dropped call all week. I can’t say the same for my T-Mobile phone service, and I now regret switching to T-Mobile. (Can read why I switched here) I think I will be switching back soon enough.

The Duo also has a 1.3 mega Pixel camera which does both still and video images. The picture quality and video quality were decent for a 1.3 mega pixel camera, and the sound quality in the videos was really good.

Speaking of Video and Sound quality, the Duo comes included with at&t Music and Cellular video. 

The at&t music feature works with eMusic, Napster, Yahoo Music, and XM Satellite radio. You have your pick of music service. You can also put music onto a microSD card and listen to it via the Windows Media Player in Windows Mobile. The sound quality is great with or without headphones.  Part of at&t music is that there is a MusicID feature which will help you ID music you are listening to. How does it work? Well you ask it to ID a song, you place the phone near the music source, and you will get a message that tells you what song it is. I tried it, and it worked pretty well.

The Cellular Video feature is also pretty cool. You can watch music videos and news. If you can name it, you can watch it. The video quality is a lot better than what I experienced with the HTC Touch from Sprint, and it was a lot crisper than the video quality on my T-Mobile Dash.

After I checked out the call quality and quality of the at&t services, I tested out the battery life. Again Pantech has amazed me with the battery life on the phone. With the default settings, I got nearly 12 hours of battery life with normal use for me which is about 5 to 10 phone calls ranging from 10 seconds to 30 minutes, browsing the web to check my weather, and sending a couple hundred text messages. I got 11 hours and 43 minutes exactly of battery life. Pantech advertises the Duo as having 3 hours of talk time.

The Pantech DUO is also probably the only Sub 200 dollar Windows Mobile based Smartphone that takes full advantage of the power of Windows Mobile.

For example, Windows Mobile 6 has Voice Commands, and I have used several smart phones. While the voice command feature works on them all to an extent, the Pantech Duo is the only Smartphone I have used this year that takes advantage of it fully; meaning you can hold a button and say “Call Home” and provided you have a contact named Home it will dial it for you, or you can say “text messages” “email” and your messaging center will be displayed.

Another cool thing about the voice commands on the Pantech Duo is that they can be set to read your text messages to you when you receive them. However, if you do enable it to do this, make sure you don’t receive any embarrassing text messages. As Deborah from Pantech pointed out, it can be very embarrassing. If you are curious as to how the voice on the phone sounds, it is the same female voice Windows Operating systems have. So, if you are running Windows, go to your control panel, select Text To Speech (in Windows Vista) or Speech (Windows XP), make sure Microsoft Anne is selected, and click preview voice. It’s not that bad sounding, but a bit robotic.

Just like other Windows Mobile smartphones, the Pantech Duo can handle your contacts, your appointments, and allow you to take your work with you; with the proper software, you can read and edit or create a new word document.

Overall, the Pantech Duo is fantastic, and the at&t service is better than what I remember. For that, we award both Pantech and at&t our 5 Star Editors choice award, because both companies have delivered a product and service that is dependable and reliable. At $199 with a 2 year contract, It is one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, Smartphone on the market.

The Pantech Duo is available at all at&t wireless stores and online at http://www.attwireless.com. For more information about the Pantech Duo visit: http://www.pantechduo.com/ .

When the iPhone came out, a lot of people wondered if anything could compete. Honestly, for some time, nothing could.

But back on June 5th, 2007, HTC announced the Touch. Immediately, everyone said it could possibly be an iPhone killer. I thought so, Indi (LaIndia aka Triple B) thought so, and many other people thought so as well.

Well, I am here to tell you if it is an iPhone killer or not; I have been testing it out for the past 2 weeks, and I love it. Before I tell you if it is an iPhone killer or not, read my review and go to a Sprint store and an Apple store to test them both out for yourself. I will say this: if you just recently entered into a contract with a Phone company, I totally believe the Touch is worth breaking your current contract in order to switch to Sprint and get the HTC Touch.

Now let me stop the rambling and get on with the review.

For those of you who haven’t seen my Unboxing of the HTC Touch for Sprint post, check it out, so you can see how the HTC is packaged and what comes with the device. For those of you who don’t want to see, I will just say that HTC took a page out of Apple’s book when it comes to packaging a product. It was done elegantly and reminded me of how my 4th Gen iPod was packaged.  It was very classy on HTC and Sprints part to package the phone like they did.

When I first held the phone in my hand back in August and again in September, I remembered it being light weight and thin. When I heard Sprint was going to have the Phone, I began to worry a bit. I thought it may get a bit thicker and heavier. For example, the Cingular and T-Mobile version of the HTC TyTn is thinner and lighter in weight than the Sprint version. So, I was a bit worried that the HTC Touch for Sprint would be heavier and thicker than what I saw back in August and September. It wasn’t; in fact, it felt a little lighter, but that may be because the ones I saw in the past were in cases or attached by a security cable to a display.

I was pretty happy to see that it kept its form factor and light weight. I also like the feel of the phone. Those of you who have held any HTC phone in the past know they have a silky smooth feel to them, and HTC continued that with the Touch.

The HTC Touch runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional, and HTC seems to have tweaked the hell out of the OS. They have added so many cool features: weather on the home screen, TouchFlo (allows you to flip the screen with the flick of your finger), and picture dialing. Sprint takes advantage of these features to the fullest. Many times you see a Service Provider disable certain features, and Sprint has done that in the past on some phones. It seems that Sprint left the HTC touch alone. The only thing they did was add their OnDemand, SprintTV, and Sprint Music Store software to the phone. All of which have worked flawlessly for me.

I am sure you are all wondering how the navigation is on the phone. Well, there are three ways to navigate the phone: one is with the stylus, the second is the navigation pad on the bottom of the Touch, and the third is the ole mighty finger.

Navigating with the stylus and the navigation pad is self explanatory. You tap where you want to go, or you scroll until you get where you want to go. Using your finger is not that much different than using the stylus. The only real difference is your finger is thicker, longer, and attached to your hand.

Taping here and there and navigating with your finger is easy. The device is responsive, and it kind of felt like navigating on a Tablet PC. For example, if you held your finger down on an application or a contact name a menu would come up. This happens in the same way the properties menu pops up on a Tablet PC when you hold down the stylus.

The TouchFlo feature is really cool too. You swipe your finger up-or-down or side to side to flip between screens. The screen itself is also not overly sensitive. If your finger swipes across it slightly, it won’t register. You kind of have to apply a little pressure for any swipe to register. You can also use the stylus for TouchFlo.

The only problem I really had with using my finger on the Touch was typing a text message or email. Why? Because the keyboard keys when using the full keyboard are very small. However, after a day or so, I got used to it and was able to type like a pro on it. You can also set the Touch to have a 20 Key keyboard. Each button has 2 letters and 1 number or symbol. It uses T9 to basically guess what word you want to write, and it’s pretty accurate. There is also a regular 9 key keyboard with 3 letters, 1 number, and/or symbols similar to what you would find on a standard phone. Overall, typing on the touch isn’t that difficult. Once you become accustomed to it, it just gets easier. If you are into messaging, Sprint gives you a free messaging program on the touch that allows you to communicate with your friends on AIM, Live Messenger, and Yahoo. The communication is instant. However, I recommend you have an unlimited data plan.

Something cool about receiving text messages and instant messenger messages on the Touch is, when you receive the message a little prompt comes up with who sent the message, the subject of the message, and some to all of the message depending on how long it is. I thought this was pretty cool because normally you have to go into your messages to view the message and find out who it’s from.

You don’t have to type on the screen to write a message; there is also a block recognizer and a letter recognizer, so if you know the Block Alphabet or if you want to entrust the letter recognizer, you can use the stylus or your nail to write the message.

But hey, the ability to use your finger to navigate isn’t the only cool thing about the Touch. You can use it to make phone calls. Dialing a number is easy. You just tap the phone icon on your screen and dial the number, or click contacts and select the contact you want to call by tapping on their name. The sound quality is great, I was a little disappointed with the speakerphone volume. It sounds clear, but I wish it were a bit louder. Here in NYC, there is a lot of surrounding noise, and sometimes you need the speaker phone. In this city, the Touch Speaker phone is drowned out by the surrounding noise. Hopefully someone will come out with some tweak that can boost the volume a bit.

The Touch also has a 2.0 Megapixel camera which delivers pretty decent pictures. The camera settings are easier to configure than on previous HTC devices. I also like the picture gallery the Touch has. There is also an album feature that allows you to drag a picture off the screen to the right or left so that the previous or following picture can be seen. You can also do a 180 degree swipe on the picture and change the view from portrait to landscape mode and vice versa. 

You can use it as a MP3 player and Video Player. You can add up to 4GB of storage with a microSD card. I know there are 8GB microSD cards available, but I do not have one to see if the Touch supports 8GB. The manual didn’t say if it did or not, but it handled the 4GB.

The sound quality for music was great. It was not as good as the T400, but good nonetheless. I really had no complaints about that.

The Video quality was good as well. However, the Sprint TV video seemed a bit pixilated, but I blame that more on my signal strength I had when watching SprintTV.

Speaking of signal strength, I constantly had 4 bars or more where ever I was, and the data speed Sprint offers is 10 times faster anything T-Mobile or Cingular offer. Browsing the web, downloading programs, music, and movies on the touch was fast. So, many props go to Sprint for the speedy network. In fact the Sprint Network rocks especially in the NYC area, I have T-Mobile and Cingular phones and for the week of October 20th, service was with both Cingular (at&t) and T-Mobile, Sprint was rock solid.

The phone’s beautiful, sleek, and elegant design is perfect for anyone, even if you are in a corporate setting. The phone also hides the microSD card under the siding of the phone. It took me a while to figure out how to open it and to get it in.

Is the HTC Touch an iPhone killer? The simple answer is no, but it comes pretty damned close. Close enough that most people may find the HTC touch more appealing than the iPhone. Both phones certainly have their own advantages and disadvantages. I personally like the Touch more than the iPhone and so does Indi who has hidden the review sample Sprint sent me and won’t give it back.

Just because the HTC Touch isn’t an iPhone killer doesn’t mean I do not like the HTC Touch more than the Apple iPhone. I do I like the HTC touch more than the iPhone and like the iPhone more than my HTC S620 pro.

My only complaint about the Touch is the OS it runs, Microsoft needs to tweak Windows Mobile so that you can use it with your fingers more efficiently, right now the version of Windows Mobile the Touch is using in my opinion is configured for a Stylus. For example X buttons in the far corners are sometimes impossible to tap on with your finger. So Microsoft work on that please!!!

Overall, the HTC Touch is a fantastic phone, and I use the word fantastic rarely. It’s powerful; it’s fast; it’s affordable, and it offers a lot of features that every user wants. For that, we award it our 5 Start Must Have award. Seriously, I must have this phone. I am seriously considering switching from T-Mobile to Sprint right now just so that I can get it.

The HTC Touch is available at Sprint Stores, Online, or over the Phone and will run you $249 dollars with a 2 year contract and $100 dollar Mail in Rebate. So head on over to Sprint.com.

More and more people these days use their phones for texting and email, but not everyone needs something as sophisticated as a Smartphone. So, phones like the Samsung Blast are appealing to many people who just want a phone that they can easily use to send emails and text messages.

The Samsung Blast has a very nice form factor. It’s a thin slider with a 20 button keyboard. It’s very light weight and has a nice sized screen. The Samsung Blast is an all-in-one phone. Not only does it have a camera, but it’s also great for texting. It’s an MP3 player with a 1.8 inch LCD screen.

The first thing I did with the Samsung Blast was test sound quality for both phone calls and music, and I have to say it was pretty good. It was better than my T-Mobile Dash’s sound quality; the speaker phone was even good. Something I have noticed about Samsung phones is that their speaker phone feature is crystal clear, unlike many others that crackle and are hard to understand. When playing music, the sound quality was pretty good. My only problem was the headphones. I wish there was a 3.5 mm I could use instead of the propriety headphones included, but I was able to use Bluetooth headphones to listen to music.

The phone can hold as many songs as you can fit onto your microSD card. It supports up to 2 GB cards. I tested it with a 4 GB card, and it was a no go.

Texting on the Samsung Blast was a blast. Although it does not have a full keyboard, I found myself sending texts pretty fast. The keyboard at first is a bit confusing, but once you get used to it, you will be texting and emailing people like a pro. I am used to full QWERTY keyboards, but I could survive with the keyboard the Blast has if I had to.
If you love to take pictures with your phone, you will love the camera on the Blast. The picture quality isn’t the best, but its damn good for a camera phone. You can even add effects to the camera which was fun. The camera also records pretty good videos. The camera is 1.3 megapixels.

The UI for the phone is great also; it has probably one of the top 5 easiest user interfaces to use and probably one of the easiest phones to use in general. From the volume and camera button on the sides to the stop button on the front under the screen, all of the buttons on the phone are where you would expect them to be.

Battery life for the phone was great. I was able to get over 6 hours of talk time and over 24 hours of music playback.

Overall the Samsung Blast is great. It has all the features you’d expect from a Smartphone, but without having to buy one. For that, we award it our 5 Star Must Have award.

The Samsung Blast is available from T-Mobile for $99.99 with a 2 year contract or $229.99 without.

You see more and more people walking down the street talking to themselves now a days, and while they may look crazy they probably aren’t. I am sure if you look close at their ears you may see a Bluetooth headset on it with a little blue light blinking.

Almost every cell phone for sale now has Bluetooth connectivity and because of that, the demand for Bluetooth headsets is on the rise. We have reviewed quite a few headsets over the past few months and I have to say the Z9 from BlueAnt is one of the coolest and featured filled headsets we have had a chance to review.

The Z9 was announced at CES in January and just released on the 30th of July.

BlueAnt aimed to keep the Z9 stylish and they accomplished just that, while walking down the streets of New York City I was approached on at least 5 occasions asking me where I got it and that it was really cool looking. That gave me a little confidence as I was able to get a few numbers. Too bad I kind of got blown off when I called her, said she was busy.

So we know the Z9 looks good and can help you to pick up chicks but does it deliver the same features as other new Bluetooth headsets? The answer is yes.

The Z9 features dual microphones that capture your voice better and a voice isolation technology that isolates your voice and delivers it clearly to the person you are talking too by eliminating background noise such as wind.

I used the Z9 while walking around in NYC and the Financial District a very noisy area here due to a lot of construction and general traffic. I called a few people and not one of them complained about not hearing me clearly, they did mention they could hear the occasional jack hammer but nothing overwhelming.

You are also able to pair the headset with more than one device and with the push of a button you can easily switch between them. The Z9 is also very light weight. You barely notice that it is on your ear when you’re using it. One night I almost got into the shower with it on, good thing I caught myself in the mirror. But for those of you who don’t like to keep it on your ear it does have a little clip that you can use to clip on your shirt pocket.

I was able to get nearly 6 hours of talk time before the battery drained and it only took about 35 minutes for it to fully charge.

Overall I loved the Z9 because of the cool look it has and the features that makes it one of the best headsets on the market. It is also a lot cheaper at $99.95 than other headsets that offer similar features. For that we award BlueAnt and the Z9 our 5 Star Kick Ass Award.

For more information about the Z9 visit: http://www.blueantz9.com