Now in HD: Galaxy Nexus vs. Optimus LTE screen shootout

Done pushing megapixels and well into pixel popping, still the good old numbers game. HD screens are the next big thing and they'd better enjoy it while it lasts, with quad-core around the corner and all.

Anyway, is it just another number to brag about or is there really something to the "HD" label. To find out, we're looking at two of the first smartphones with 720p screens - the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the LG Optimus LTE (very similar to the LG Nitro HD).

The two have similarly sized screens - 4.65" for the Nexus and 4.5" for the Optimus - and both push pixel density over 300ppi, the threshold above which eye-watering magic starts to happen.

They are from two different worlds though. The LG Optimus LTE uses a traditional three-subpixel matrix for its AH-IPS LCD display (a.k.a. True HD IPS), while the Galaxy Nexus has only two subpixels per pixel (called PenTile) in its Super AMOLED matrix.

Both have plenty to brag about, but they won't get away with just judging them by their sharpness. LG are shaping up as the standard-setter in display brightness, so that's something to look out for. Viewing angles (a typical weak spot for LCDs) is another thing they seem to have addressed.

There's a lot to test, so let's not waste any more time. We'll be doing both scientific measurements (trying to break down display performance into hard numbers) as well as providing subjective opinions (as hunting for the better spec doesn't always result in the best experience).

Side note: For those of you getting acronym sickness, AH-IPS LCD stands for "Advanced High-Performance In-Plane Switching Liquid Crystal Display". AMOLED is short for "Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode".

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus review: A game of sequels

Apple gave the world the tablet. Samsung gave the world a choice. It’s not as simple of course as narrowing it down to an iPad vs. a Galaxy Tab. Nearly every phone maker out there has a tablet to offer. But the fact is that whatever size you want and whatever screen you like - Samsung most likely have it.

     
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus official pictures

Samsung have tablets stretching from 7 to 10.1 inches of screen diagonal. And these are either Super AMOLEDS or LCDs with the resolution ranging from WSVGA (600 x 1024) to well above HD. There are 3G and Wi-Fi enabled combos or Wi-Fi only versions. Users can choose between 16/32/64 GB of inbuilt storage. With all that variety on offer, it was obviously time to go back to where it all started.

If anyone needed a refresh, it would be the original Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab. A single-core powered Froyo-running tablet has little left to offer and the 7.0 Plus does well to send it into retirement. The slimmer and lighter upgrade more than doubles the processing power and runs the latest tablet-tailored version of Android, Honeycomb 3.2. .

The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is one of the two tablets of the house (along with the Galaxy Tab 7.7) to use Samsung's very own Exynos chipset - a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and Mali-400MP graphics. As you are about to see, this SoC does quite well in the benchmarks, beating the NVIDIA Tegra2 competitors on almost every count.

Key features

• 7.0" 16M-color PLS TFT capacitive touchscreen of WSVGA resolution (1024 x 600 pixels)
• Weighs 345 g
• Exynos chipset: Dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor; 1GB of RAM; Mali-400MP GPU
• Android 3.2 Honeycomb with TouchWiz UX UI
• Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and tri-band 3G with HSPA connectivity (HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps)
• Support for voice calls, texts and MMS
• 16/32 GB of built-in memory
• 3.2 MP autofocus camera, 2048x1536 pixels, LED flash, geotagging
• 2.0 MP front-facing camera; native video calls
• 720p HD video recording @ 30 fps
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Direct, dual-band, Wi-Fi hotspot
• Stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• HDMI TV-out (adapter required), USB host (adapter required)
• microSD card slot
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Adobe Flash 11 support
• GPS with A-GPS support; digital compass
• 1080p DivX/XviD/MKV video support with subtitles
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor; three-axis Gyroscope sensor
• Polaris office document editor preinstalled
• Infrared port, Peel Smart Remote app preloaded
• 4000 mAh Li-Po rechargeable battery

Main disadvantages

• Smallest screen with the lowest resolution in the Samsung tablet lineup
• Has a non-replaceable battery
• Uses a proprietary 30-pin connector port for charging and connectivity
• One of the lowest capacity batteries in the range

7" is the compact class in tablets and you can reasonably expect it to be targeting the budget-conscious. With that in mind, we guess we cannot hold it against the Samsung P6200 Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus that it sticks with the screen resolution of its predecessor. It's worth noting though that the 7.0 Plus has the improved PLS variety of TFT displays. What's more, the main 7" competitors - HTC Flyer, BlackBerry Playbook - have the same WSVGA resolution.

   
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus live pictures

Huawei U8860 Honor review: Way of the Dragon

The Huawei Honor is made in China and proudly so. Designed, engineered and created in the Land of the Dragon, it's nothing like your run-of-the-mill cheap knock-off. It's a genuine Chinese product, not just something put together for someone else – including premium brands drawn by the low manufacturing costs.

The Huawei Honor is a Chinese smartphone – and one with solid specs too. Not as loaded as the Meizu MX, but a lot more subtle too in doing an impression of some of its illustrious contemporaries.

Huawei U8860 Honor official shot

Anyway, most phones in the Huawei lineup looks like a phone you've seen. This is not a trivia quiz though. And we don’t care what phone (or phones) the Huawei Honor brings to mind. There must be more important things to Huawei than coming up with fresh original designs. How much bigger, you ask? Well, how about - pretty huge.

A multibillion multinational, Huawei is - to put it simply - the Chinese version of Motorola or Ericsson. One of the world’s leading network and telecom equipment manufacturers, they've been making mobile phones too for a while now.

Ideos should ring a bell: a small lineup of low-to-mid-tier Android smartphones and tablets. The Honor is the next step for them. It’s pretty much the company’s current flagship. A 1.4GHz-powered Gingerbread-running smartphone with a rather interesting custom skin. The 4” FWVGA screen and the 8 megapixel camera are the other prominent features on the list.

Key Features

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• 14.4 Mbps HSDPA; 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 1.4GHz Snapdragon CPU; Adreno 205 GPU; Qualcomm MSM 8255Т chipset; 512MB RAM; 4GB ROM
• 1GB storage, microSD card support (up to 32GB)
• 4.0” LCD display of FWVGA (854 x 480) resolution; 245ppi pixel density
• 8 megapixel auto-focus camera with geotagging and HDR; HD (720p@30fps) video recording, LED flash
• Front-facing VGA camera
• Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread with custom Huawei launcher
• Custom lockscreen with shortcuts to messaging, camera and missed calls
• Huawei Cloud + Store offer exclusive content and 16GB of cloud storage
• Wi-Fi b/g/n; hot-spot and DLNA connectivity
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• GPS with A-GPS; Digital compass
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Accelerometer, Gyroscope and proximity sensor
• Stereo FM radio
• Active noise cancellation with secondary mic
• Office document viewer
• Powerful 1900 mAh Li-Po battery
• Web browser with Adobe Flash 11 support
• Smart dialing

Main disadvantages

• Cheapish gloss
• Real smudge magnet
• Poor screen quality
• Non hot-swappable microSD card
• No hardware shutter key
• No native video calling despite built-in VGA camera

Droids come in all shapes and sizes, feature sets and price tags. You’ve heard it all about Samsung’s droids, or Sony Ericsson’s, or HTC’s. And think that’s all there’s to know about Android. Well, apparently Huawei can show a few tricks too.

We're not quite sure about the first impression the Huawei U8860 Honor leaves. You'd do well though not to let it fool you. Plain design and more cheap gloss than we're comfortable with - most people will find it hard to believe they're dealing with a rather impressively spec'd handset.

 
The U8860 Honor held in hand

It’s an easy one to miss but anyone looking for a reasonably priced Android cameraphone should pay attention. It’s time to see if the Honor can do the job and make at least some difference in a crowd filled with class “A” contenders. The Huawei Honor isn’t trying to impress or scare the Galaxy Nexus or the iPhone 4S. It’s a fight they will win even with one hand tied behind their back. It’s users Huawei need to convince and if the Honor turns out credible, they’d be one step closer to their goal.

Nokia Asha 300 review: King of ordinary

The Nokia Asha 300 may not exactly fit in with today’s standards of newsworthy. With smartphones flexing their muscles at venues like CES, sporting ever-expanding app markets, HD screens and multi-core processors, it’s hard to see how an entry-level offering could produce much of a splash.

If, however, price is a factor, or you simply want a phone that is…well, simple, then the Asha 300 could definitely make some waves in your pool. Part of a new line of phones by Nokia, which feature a revamped S40 interface and 1GHz processor, the Asha 300, and its QWERTY sibling, the Asha 303, aim to cement Nokia's place in a market they have traditionally dominated.

  
Nokia Asha 300 official pictures

The Touch and Type S40 interface is at once the same yet different from the traditional non-smart UI from Nokia. Combined with an app store and a customizable homescreen, there are definitely elements borrowed from smartphones in an attempt by Nokia to extend the functionality while retaining the simplistic feel of the S40. The faster processor and 128MB of RAM are more than sufficient to run the S40 quickly and without hitches.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Quad-band 3G with 10Mbps HSDPA and 2Mbps HSUPA
• Asha S40 Touch and Type platform
• 2.4" QVGA 256K-color resistive TFT touchscreen
• 1GHz processor
• 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM
• 5 megapixel fixed-focus camera
• VGA video recording at 30fps
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Bluetooth v2.1 (with A2DP)
• Standard microUSB port (charging enabled)
• USB On-The-Go support
• microSD card slot (32 GB supported)
• 3.5mm audio jack
• Asha exclusive Angry Birds game

Main disadvantages

• No Wi-Fi (as opposed to Asha 303)
• No multitasking
• Fixed-focus camera
• No smart dialing
• No video-call camera
• Non-hot-swappable memory card

The Asha 300 walks that fine precipice between designing a phone that is contemporary, yet aims to appeal mainly to an audience where being contemporary is not as important as being simple and not too expensive.

We’ve all heard the expression “I just want a phone that works, don't care about the extra stuff.” With quad-band 2G and 3G support, the 300 does exactly that – it’s a no-nonsense worker bee of a phone. In fact, with Bluetooth, a 5MP camera, messaging and radio it will do even more should the need arise. The only ding in regards to important cost-cutting features is that it does not have the Wi-Fi support of the Asha 303.

 
The Asha 300 in-hand

All of this in mind, one of the main disadvantages of not having a smartphone is that you don't get multitasking. Save for being able to play music in the background, the Asha 300 will not be able to run multiple applications simultaneously.

Asha is the new name of Nokia's entry level phone lineup. The Asha 303, which we recently reviewed, succeeds the Nokia C3. The Asha 300 in turn is an obvious descendant of the C3-01. Interestingly, while the QWERTY-enabled Asha 303 upgrades its predecessor in almost every way, the Asha 300 looks and feels like a downgrade. That should make it even more affordable, but let's see what you get relative to what you pay for.

We're about to take a closer look at the exterior, and how it feels to trade stainless steel for plastic.

Samsung I9103 Galaxy R review: Riding shotgun

The Samsung I9103 Galaxy R rode in on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform and became the first affordable dual-core smartphone from the South Korean company. With a bright SC-LCD screen and brushed metal back, the Galaxy R is just different enough from the Galaxy S lineup to stand on its own.

   
Samsung I9103 Galaxy R official photos

Samsung has so many variations of their models that sometimes it's hard to say when one model stops and another begins. Take the Samsung I9103 Galaxy R, positioned somewhere between the Galaxy S II flagship droid and the mid-range Galaxy W.

Not that we're complaining - having more options available is always a good thing and all dual-core droids from Samsung were only top of the line so far (S II and its variations, the Galaxy Nexus and the Galaxy Note phoneblet).

This is where the I9103 Galaxy R steps in in - it offers tangibly better specs than the Galaxy W, while staying a step below the top dogs in specs and price. Here's a summary of what you get with the Galaxy R and some downsides.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 4.2" 16M-color SC-LCD capacitive touchscreen of WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) resolution; Scratch-resistant glass
• Android OS v2.3.3 with TouchWiz 4 launcher
• 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU, ULP GeForce GPU, NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset, 1GB of RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash, face and smile detection
• 720p HD video recording at 30fps
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support; DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct support
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass
• 8GB internal storage, microSD slot
• Accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port
• Stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• FM radio with RDS
• Great audio quality
• 1.3MP secondary video-call camera
• Document editor
• File manager comes preinstalled

Main disadvantages

• SC-LCD has poor black levels
• Tegra 2 falls slightly behind Exynos in CPU and GPU performance
• No dedicated camera key
• Non-hot-swappable microSD card

Depending on how you look at it, going from the Galaxy W to the Galaxy R means getting a better CPU and GPU, a bigger screen and extra built-in storage, or trading in several of the highlights of the Galaxy S II in exchange for a smaller total at the cash register.

Anyway, if you pull the Galaxy R away from the S II's shadow, you'll notice it stands pretty well on its own. Tegra 2 is at the heart of several popular dual-core droids and quite a few tablets too. And a 4.2" WVGA screen doesn’t sound too bad, even if it is an SC-LCD (we'll how it does in our tests though).

The camera could have been better - 5MP and 720p is nothing to brag about. We have seen some excellent 720p shooters lately though, so we'll postpone our final judgment on the camera for the camera section of this review.