Gizmo
www.gizmo.co.uk
AMAZON KINDLE Is this the future for books?
MOBILE BUMPER ISSUE From smartphones to rubbish phones. Thirty pages of mobile knowledge. Technology - Life - You
MOTION GAMING Wii, Xbox or PS3, which is best? STREAMING Saviour or death of traditional media?
978s0 9 780230 736238
1 2 >
9e
January 2011 ÂŁ3.95
Century publishing
Gizmo
January 2010
www.gizmo.co.uk
CONTENTS
30-Page Bumper Mobile Guide
Reviews, guides, features and more on the latest phones, apps and operating systems.
p.46
p.92
Music Downloads & Streaming The way forward for an industry in turmoil? We look at the best and worst of the options out there.
fresh
19
Mobile Guide
46
In-Depth
90
OS Wars HTC HD 7 Blackberry Bold HTC Wildfire iPhone 4 Upgrade Why we love smartphones Its all about the Apps Top Apps Accessories Guide Buying Guide
Video on Demand Motion Gaming Online Music E-books The 3D Revolution Internet TV Tablet Computing
p.98
Play
Mass Effect 2 Forza 4 Gran Turismo 5 News Coming Soon
The Future of Books? The book industry has been the slowest to adopt electronic technology. Could the Kindle and similar E-Book readers change that?
15
Flip Ultra HD Blackberry Playbook News Google TV Microsoft Zune Chrome OS
Motion Gaming Showdown Wii, PS3, or XBOX 360: which offers the most interactive experience?
EDITOR’S LETTER
Continued on ... p.104
20 27 30 32 42 43
48 52 55 57 58 62 65 70 72 78 81
91 92 98 104 109 112 114
118 123 124 126 128 130
11
gizmo.co.uk / Jan 11 / 09
In-depth
Video on Demand
If there is one thing that us British love, its our TV. Video on Demand has been one of the most widely adopted of all online media to date as broadband and computer use has exploded. But what is the future for Video on Demand; is it perhaps the TV itself? Video on Demand has proven to be one of the big success stories of the internet. First pioneered by Channel 4 in 2006, and refined for a wider market with the launch of the BBC iPlayer in 2007, the wide appeal of the medium has become firmly cemented. The initial investment made by the BBC was initially unmatched by its commercial competitors, and their products lagged behind for quite some time. More recently though, enough money has been pumped into the services by broadcasters such as ITV and Five that they have become hugely successful and profitable parts of their operations. Many of the services have benefited from the much wider availability and reduction in cost of broadband internet services, as well as vast amounts of money spent marketing the services. Access to the services is also becoming wider with Channel 4 and Five in particular
Youtube is one of the leaders in collating content from a variety of broadcasters.
leading the way in working with partners such as YouTube and SeeSaw to also provide their content. These two companies are seemingly the only two to realise that for on-demand TV to work, that the content must be openly available. Many of the other broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV have been particularly guarded over the use of their content by other providers. To me it is clear that the way forward for on-demand TV is through actual TVs, and I believe that this is probably the next big thing coming to the television market, not 3D as some would have you believe. The problem with ondemand TV on a TV is that the content all has to be readable in one format and distributed through one system for it to be useable, so proprietary systems have no proper future. Watching TV through a computer may appeal to a small number of people, such as students who may not have a TV, but largely we all spend way too much time sat in front of our computers anyway, and it is an uncomfortable experience, both for our eyes and body. Therefore the only logical way forward is through actual TV. The market has been slow so far however, and this is because the broadcasters have guarded their
content so closely, and the competition regulators have stopped anything that nearly reached the market, such as the BBCs attempt. Even if successful these projects would have been flawed as they require one set-top box or delivery method to work. What Video on Demand really needs is to become much more open. A set of pre-established guidelines for the provision of content needs to be agreed upon by all broadcasters, possibly even through regulation by OFCOM. The way I see these forming would allow broadcasters to provide their own adverts, tags, content and categories through their own servers, which can be viewed through a wide number of services. Broadcasters would simply provide access to the database and servers which hold the content to providers (at a cost, if necessary, as set out by the database). This would allow free and open access to content for a variety of TV Manufacturers, set-top box manufacturers, as well as computer based providers. Every system would be similar, built around the same data fields, provide the same data to broadcasters and provide the same content as set-out by the broadcasters, yet would still allow for a variety of user interfaces and delivery methods. In the current digital age where if people cannot find content legally, they will by other means, then making content more openly available legally is the only clear way forward. Whether it will actually be workable while broadcasters remain stuck in the past, I seriously doubt it. / Thomas Ross gizmo.co.uk / Jan 11 / 91
Upgrade
Smart phones are dominating the mobile market, but how do they really compare to their much cheaper counterparts. Thomas Ross looks at his experience of upgrading from his £60 Samsung to a £450 Blackberry. I’ve never been one to spend a lot of money on buying or using a mobile phone. Up until now, I’ve always waited for the expensive phones I’ve liked to come down in price, but with the Blackberry Torch it was just too temptingly beautiful... I had only had the Samsung Genio Touch for 11 months, and for such a cheap phone I actually loved it. It was small, light and quirky (something I have always really liked in a phone). Although it feels generally cheap, it is nice to hold, and as the screen is just that little bit bigger and wider than most cheap touch screens it was much easier to type on too. The Samsung was also full of features too. All the usual things such as calculators, alarms, timers, music player, camera, internet, calendar and voice recorder were there. In addition to this though, there were quite a number of features you may not expect from such a small phone: video camera, FM radio, a music recognition service and widgets for a wide array of social media sites. All of this packed into such a cheap device is really quite impressive. So, why when it did everything I needed, did I feel the need to change you may be asking. Well in truth, I can’t actually really justify it. I saw the Blackberry and instantly wanted it. It
62 / Jan 11 / gizmo.co.uk
was one of those impulse purchases that you agonise over for weeks because its just so expensive and you really can’t justify it to yourself. But at the end of the day, you know you are going to get it, so its all a load of fuss about nothing. There were some small reasons that I managed to justify the upgrade with however. The Samsung for example was only a 2G device with no support for wi-fi, and at times the lag and poor performance of the browser could be excruciatingly slow. When you went to check your e-mails and Facebook on this phone, you sometimes had to just give up. The Blackberry however has 3G, wi-fi support and as it’s a Blackberry, e-mails and updates come instantly to the device through its push-support, so you don’t always have to get onto the internet to be able to do what you want to do. Also, the one thing that drove me nuts about the Samsung was its touch screen. Everyone seems to love touchscreens, and I agree that they are handy when trying to select options or for webbrowsing, but generally while typing they are useless, especially when they are cheap ones like this. The problem was also exacerbated by the fact that the screen used
a standard number-based layout as found on traditional phones, coupled with a poor dictionary which didn’t even attempt to guess what you might be writing. The Blackberry however offers the best of both worlds.. The screen is brilliant to use, but you also have the option of not using it at all. You have the optical keypad and the slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which the majority of time you find yourself using as it is just easier. And although the predictive texting and touch screen keyboard on the Blackberry are brilliant, once you are used to the hardware keyboard you rarely use it. So it is really these two points, alongside the beauty and quality feel of the Blackberry that finally influenced
me to go for it. And if I am totally honest I don’t think it would be possible for me to admit to regretting it. The Blackberry is a brilliant device, and although in many reviews people often complain that it is slower than its competitor devices, and that the screen is not as high quality, these points are only going to be really noticed by the ultra picky, or very heavy users. But despite my love for the Blackberry, I still believe that there are a number of things the Samsung was better at sometimes, and a few niggling little problems that shouldn’t necessarily appear in such a high-end device. As far as I am aware for example, there is no countdown timer included, no facility for opening PDFs, no FM Radio, no-built in music recognition service and no way of setting more than one alarm. The Samsung could do all of these things, and in its defence it did them all well. There are probably Apps available for the Blackberry that do a lot of these things, but it is extra hassle for something that should be included, and generally the Blackberry Appworld lacks in comparison to some of its competitors, particularly for free Apps. Other niggles with the Blackberry are its lack of screen-based slide-tounlock. Fortunately I managed to find a free app that added this very sleekly to the phone, as the lock key on top of it is inadequate as it is easy to press when taking the phone in and out of your pocket. I have also experienced problems with it syncing properly with my Google Calendar, something which the Blackberry should be able to do with ease. Having said that though, I have also been surprised by how good some of the extra features you get with the Blackberry really are. The e-mail set-
up, the Facebook and Twitter Apps, universal search, even (unusually for a Blackberry) the media player are all brilliant. In addition to this there are also YouTube and BBC iPlayer apps which work brilliantly and actually prove really useful if you can’t be bothered turning on your laptop. The browser is also generally brilliant and can open the majority of web-pages. I also really love having text messages organised in a conversation rather than individually, and although I know this is commonplace in the smartphone market, it is a nice feature that is new to me. So generally I would say that I have no real regrets about my upgrade from the Samsung to the Blackberry. If there were to be one it would be the sheer expense of the Blackberry, as I probably don’t use my phone as a phone enough to justify it. Yes, there are small things I miss from the Samsung, but at the end of the day these are little elements of the device that actually make very little impact to the overall difference in usability between the two. The Blackberry is very much my type of phone, and I reckon that I have now become one of those people who will probably have a Blackberry for life... This however should not detract from how good a phone the Samsung actually is. It is a brilliant phone for the money, and if anyone was looking for a cheap phone, providing they didn’t need the internet an awful lot I would definitely recommend it, as I realise the majority of people won’t be able to waste as much money on what in the end of the day is just a mobile phone. Provided it does the basic phone calls and texting, its doing its job. / Thomas Ross
The spec...
Samsung Omnia 7
Samsung Genio Touch
Blackberry Torch
OS: Samsung HP Battery: 30 days (Standby) Camera: 2MP Dimension: 103 x 63.5 x 12 Screen: 2.8” (240 x 320) Price: £59.99
OS: Blackberry OS 6.0 Battery: 18 days (Standby) Camera: 5MP Dimension: 111 x 61 x 14.5 Processor: 624 MHz Screen: 3.2” (480 x 360) Price: £450
Why we like it... Vibration feedback. Good little Camera Battery Life Cheap
Also consider...
Why we like it... Looks great QWERTY Keyboard Responsive Screen
OS: Windows Phone 7 Battery: 330 hrs (3G Standby) Camera: 5MP Dimension: 122.4 x 64.2 x 10.99 Processor: 1GHz Screen: 4” (800 x 480) Price: £499 Why we like it... The massive clear screen The 1 GHz Processor HD Video Great camera Sleek Windows Phone 7
gizmo.co.uk / Jan 11 / 63