9/25 Mobile Magazine

REVIEW – BodyGuardz Clear Skin for Nokia E71 September 24, 2009 at 9:11 pm A mobile phone is meant to be exactly that: mobile. Whether you’re rocking the latest BlackBerry or you’re hanging out with Steve and the iPhone 3GS, you want to make sure that your smartphone is properly protected. You never know when you might accidentally brush your phone up with some keys or drop it onto the table. Arguably, one of the problems with most conventional cell phone cases is that they can add a great deal of extra bulk. I used to carry around my old HTC Wizard in a leather holster. The phone was already big enough already, so the extra heft from the leather case just made it even bigger. Silicone skins and clear plastic cases are a little better, but they still make your phone bigger overall. While they may not be able to offer quite as much protection as their heftier counterparts, the clear skins from BodyGuardz seem to be a very attractive option. It’s like getting the clear screen protector, but for every other portion of your phone too. For the purposes of this review, I received the BodyGuardz for the Nokia E71, though the skins for other cell phones and mobile devices should be quite similar. Two for the Price of One You might be familiar with a similar product from Zagg called Invisible Shield. The BodyGuardz product is pretty much the same thing, but with one very notable difference: you get double the value. If you were to order the skin from Zagg, you can expect to pay about $20 to $25 for enough clear plastic to wrap a single cell phone. For $24.99, the Nokia E71 package from BodyGuardz offers two complete kits. This way, you can replace it with your backup skin when the first one gets a little too mucked up. Remember that each set is a complete set, so you get skins for both the front and the back. I’m only showing one set in the picture, but there are four sheets in total in the box. I’d say that’s pretty worth it. Along with the skins, you get the diagram, a squeegee card, and some application solution, the last of which is really just some watered-down baby shampoo. In terms of initial impressions, the BodyGuardz protective film appears to be of equal quality to that of Invisible Shield. You can’t expect to get fantastic protection if you drop it out of your apartment window, but you can expect it to hold up against scratches and other minor dings. BodyGuardz says that its product is made from the “same material that is used to shield the front of automobiles from stones and other abrasive elements.” Getting Wet with Application The application solution is there so that the BodyGuardz protective skin does not stick to your finger (or to the surface) when you are applying it to your phone. The instructions remind you not to spray the solution on the phone itself, since we all know what happens when electronics get wet. You don’t want that. This will vary from model to model, but the skin set for the Nokia E71 comes with a lot of little pieces of plastic. That’s just the nature of how this phone was designed, but it’s nice that BodyGuardz even provided skins for the absolute top and base of the phone. The same cannot be said about some other kits. You’ll want to take some time with the wet application process, since things get pretty permanent once they dry. The adhesive is still quite sticky, even when wet with the solution, so you’ll want to be careful. Watch the tutorial video for some application pointers. And the Final Product? BodyGuardz says that its product is optically clear and I have to agree. If you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t think that there is anything on your phone at all. The last thing you want is a screen protector that is all hazy and distorted. The thickness of the film is just perfect too, giving you a little bit of extra grip and protection without adding any real bulk. The film is cut reasonably well too, though I did find that a couple of the pieces were just a little off. It’s not a huge deal, though, since the errors were relatively minor. If you want a little more personality, BodyGuardz also offers designs for the skins, not unlike Gelaskins, though the selection of devices is a lot smaller than for the clear skins. BodyGuardz offers a cost-effective protective solution for a variety of cell phones, mobile gaming devices, MacBooks, media players, and more. The application process may take a little bit of time, but it’s well worth the clean and simple appearance that your phone maintain. Overall Score: 8.0/10 Microsoft Pink Leaked as New Turtle and Pure Smartphones? September 24, 2009 at 4:13 pm Ever since Microsoft decided to acquire Danger, we’ve wondered what they were planning on doing in the cell phone market. Rumors swirled around about some sort of crazy amalgamation that would comebine the Sidekick thing from Danger, Windows Mobile as the OS, and something to do with Zune for media. It was dubbed Microsoft Pink and now we could be seeing the first fruits of that labor. Nothing official has come out of Redmond just yet, but it seems that the Pink project is starting to get a little more concrete. What you see here are the Motorola Pure and the motorola Turtle. From what we understand, both phones will actually be manufactured by Sharp, the same company that produced (most of) the Sidekick line. With Project Pink finally bearing some fruit, we see the Motorola Turtle. That’s the phone that looks almost like the Motorola Hint QA10 or Palm Pre, featuring a vertically-sliding QWERTY keyboard and what looks like a square display. The cute rounded lines are clearly targeting a younger audience. For something marginally more serious, we get the Motorola Pure. This has the QWERTY keyboard that slides out the side to work with a landscape oriented display, similar to what we got with the Sidekick Slide or any number of HTC smartphones. The rumors are saying that Windows Mobile (maybe WM7) will be at the core of both these units, but Danger will provided some sort of special UI overlay (like HTC’s TouchFLO 3D or Samsung’s TouchWiz) and there could be some inclusion of Zune services, including a dedicated app store. Nothing’s confirmed for now, but it looks like they’re trucking along with this project. Source: BGR Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet Works with Multi-Touch Gestures Too September 24, 2009 at 3:57 pm Graphic artists and website designers swear by their Wacom Bamboo tablets, since it’s so much easier to draw out logos and other pieces of digital art using a tablet than trying to do it with a conventional mouse. It makes a world of difference, but the problem is that most graphic tablets don’t do the multitouch thing. This means that you can’t take advantage of the gestures built into Mac OS X. Well, Wacom is waking up and smelling the roses, because the new Bamboo Touch is fully compatible with the range of multitouch gestures you know and love. This multitouch trackpad measures 5.0 x 3.5 inches, giving you enough room to do two finger zooming and scrolling. It’s built for finger-based input, just like a regular trackpad and it retails for just $69. If you prefer to use a pen for your artwork, the appropriately named Wacom Bamboo Pen (also $69) is more for you. The trackpad is the same size as the Bamboo Touch and it’s just as happy with multi-touch (as far as I can tell), though you’ll need two pens to do it. To get touch and pen, you’ll want the $99 Bamboo Pen and Touch (that makes sense). For people who need a tablet with a larger trackpad surface, Wacom is also offering the $129 Bamboo Craft and $199 Bamboo Fun. They also come with more software and other goodies. All versions will work with Windows (including Win7) and Mac environments. Source: Gizmodo C-3PO Gets Resurrected as USB Flash Drive September 24, 2009 at 3:40 pm We’ve seen quite a few unique USB flash drives. Some are shaped like pieces of sushi. Some have been made to look like severed fingers. And who can forget about the USB humping dog that later gained some flash storage of its own. While I don’t expect this bot to do anything more than store a document or three, the USB Man has to be one of the more interesting drives we’ve seen in a while. There is no official connection to Star Wars and George Lucas, but the resemblance between the gold version of the USB Man and C-3PO is utterly undeniable. Even his head is shaped roughly the same way. It’d be nice if he came bundled with an R2 unit, but I guess you’ll have to find his robotic companion elsewhere. To make things even more interesting, the legs on the USB Men are fully bendable and posable, just like what you’d get with a Lego Minifig. That’s pretty cool. I think the arms can move too, though there’s no explicit mention of movement for the upper extremities. Available in your choice of gold or silver, the 1GB USB Man does not come cheap. Find it thorugh the Gift Library UK retailer for a whopping 55 GBP. That works out to about $88. For that price, you can get a much larger albeit more generic-looking USB drive elsewhere. Source: BookOfJoe