The HTC Wildfire is a cut-price version of the hugely popular HTC Desire, and it’s been a huge success itself, bringing Android smartphone technology to millions. There are lots of reasons to like the Wildfire, such as its solid build, its superbly responsive capacitive touchscreen, and the power of Android. But cuts have been made in terms of screen resolution, battery life, processor speed and memory. Now, more than a year after its launch, its looking rather dated and we’d recommend the HTC Desire S instead.

The Wildfire runs the same operating system as the Desire, namely Android? 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense, making it both very powerful and very easy to use. The Android Market has matured greatly, with thousands of free games and apps now available, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it overtook Apple’s App Store in the near future.

At first glance, the Wildfire’s a pretty handsome and familiar-looking device, but if you’re not a fan of this subtle brown finish, there are three more color options. You can see several elements borrowed from the company’s two other Android handsets — touch buttons and the reassuring back texture from the Nexus One, although the buttons don’t work as well on the big daddy; optical trackpad, earpiece, chin, and body frame from the Desire (read: not unibody à la Nexus One). The back is styled like the HD2 with a wide metallic band, but it’s not the metal that you take off for the battery bay — the actual cover needs to be peeled off with some effort from the top (like the Desire). When held in hand, the phone feels like a shorter Desire but equally as sturdy.

The chin below forms part of the back cover, but this is where we spotted the Wildfire’s first physical flaw: we saw an uneven cut between the body frame and the chin. This does no justice to HTC’s impressive build quality on most of its other devices, but as an entry-level device, we’ll need to go easy with this level of detail. Swinging around to the left side you’ll see the shiny volume rocker — which feels well-built — and micro-USB port, and on the back you have the five-megapixel camera sandwiched by the loudspeaker and LED flash.

The Samsung Galaxy 5 doesn’t look like a smartphone at all. In fact, people often mistake it for just another Samsung Corby phone. But it’s not just another Corby phone, it’s a Corby on steroids! The plastic feel makes this one cheap-looking but very light phone. It has a glossy finish that attracts fingerprints like nobody’s business. There’s a chrome bar around the phone to add some sense of style.  On top is just the 3.5mm audio jack. On the left side is the volume control that also doubles as the control for camera zoom. Beside it is the micro USB port. At the back you can see the lens for its 2mp fixed-focus camera.

With its 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen, it is the smallest screen I’ve seen on an Android phone. With its small screen comes a small display resolution at only 240 x 320 pixel compared to the 320 x 480 resolution of phones with 3-inch screens. Despite the small screen resolution, the display doesn’t look bad at all. In fact, it looks a little better than the HTC Wildfire who has the same display resolution on a 3.2” screen. Do note that it doesn’t do multi-touch but it supports Samsung’s Live wallpapers. Just like other small Android phones out there, it will have problem with apps not made for a small screen. I always use Chomp SMS as my messaging app and due to the small screen, the buttons on it are cut off.

Samsung Galaxy 5 i5503 mobile phone detailed specifications :

• Network:Quad band GSM,3G HSDPA
• Dimensions:108 x 56 x 12.3 mm
• Weight:102 g
• Display:2.8 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors,240 x 320 pixels
• Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
• Touch Wiz v3.0
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Memory Internal:170 MB
• Expandable memroy:microSD up to 16GB, 1GB included
• GPRS/EDGE
• 3G HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• Wireless LAN access Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, DLNA
• Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP
• USB v2.0 microUSB
• Camera:2 megapixel, 1600×1200 pixels,Geo-tagging
• OS:Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair)
• CPU:600 MHz processor

The LG Optimus Chic is a candy bar styled smart phone that comes in a shiny black piano finish with a very sleek design and with the basic touch functionality buttons located underneath the screen.  This Smartphone it’s a bit on the smaller size for those of you that like the more compact designs, its dimensions are 112.5×57.9×12.9mm and it’s fairly light at 132 Grams.  Overall, this is a sharp-looking android smartphone that has a simple but sleek design to it.

The black rectangular slab feels a bit on the heavy side in the hand, and is of average size, despite that the screen is not large. A 3.2” LCD screen is modest for today’s standard, and comes at 320×480 pixels of resolution on the LG Optimus Chic. Underneath it are the four traditional Android buttons – menu, home, back and search, which seem capacitive, but are rather finicky, and require significant pressure to register a touch. It’s probably the main gripe we have with the hardware.

The LG Optimus Chic is designed with 3.2 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen that combines with strong resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. The Dimensions of phone are107 x 60.5 mm but no news about its weight currently. The phone has equipped with 3.5 mm audio jack, accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate and microSD slot card and all these specifications are also attainable via LG C105 handset.  This LG phone endows with 5MP snapper that helps you to capture some important events of your life into it and this snapper comes with both still and video images recording functionalities. In order to provide fast speed internet facilities it has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and 3G HSDPA and we know that similar options are available with LG GW370 mobile phone.

One great thing the LG Optimus Chic does not come with is the bloat-wear android applications; it only comes with all the necessary /standard applications that you’ll find on an android smart phone.  It comes with a good set of android widgets that are user-friendly. One of their widgets and ‘weather widget’ by LG is very nicely designed and comes with great features and is very popular among the android community.

ag Heuer, the company which has been bringing us sports watches and chronographs since 1860, is now eyeing a piece of the luxury phone market with its Meridiist. So what does it take to own this luxury handset that has been “conceived to ride the meridians”? For starters, the damage to the wallet is about the cost of the down-payment for a family sedan in Singapore, which puts it in the same league as the premium Vertu phones. The immediate question that comes to mind is, how does the Meridiist compare with the latter?

Let’s just say that at that price, you aren’t just looking at a phone. In fact, in our hands, it feels more like a solid block of aluminum that’s masquerading as a mobile device. According to Tag Heuer, the Meridiist is made from corrosion-resistant, hypoallergenic 316L steel and the 1.9-inch 60.5 carat sapphire glass display is “unscratchable”. We weren’t allowed to test that out on the prototype we had, so we’ll leave the claim as it is. Further down, the angled keypad reminds us of the ones on the Nokia Siroccos which weren’t the best around. We tried tapping a few digits and are happy to report that the travel and tactility of the buttons are excellent.

The oddly named Tag Heuer Meridiist is a high end mobile phone handset which combines the Swiss-made Tag Heuer heritage from its timepieces, with the technical savvy of the French mobile phone company called Modelabs which have been responsible for the successful Levi’s phone.
The Tag Heuer Meridiist (which is likely to be mis-spelled as Meridist, Merdist, or even Merrydist I’m sure) mobile phone is made from the finest elements available today: We are looking at watch-making grade stainless steel, two un-scratchable 60.5 Carat sapphire crystal displays and rare alligator or leather panels. One thing which really strikes us with the Tag Heuer Meridiist is the solid build, and the long battery life – besides 7 hours of talk time it is said to offer almost unmatched standby time of 672 hours (or 28 days). This phone will not only look great in your hands, but last the distance in between meetings and travels.
The Tag Heuer Meridiist’s 2 megapixel camera is a bit disappointing, we would have expected a much higher resolution camera but we area assured by the sales rep that this still manages to shoot sharp photos which can be printed. The main 1.9-inch display has a bright QVGA resolution which looks stunning through the glassy sapphire crystal. Think how your watch face looks and you get the style of this phone. The Meridiist also has a secondary OLED display which features  a resolution of 96 x 76 pixels – This display is unusually placed on top of the device but can be used for displaying the time (with Swiss precision) and your incoming call ID. The idea behind the concept is that you can leave your phone on your table or dashboard and see the time.

The N8 is also one of the best camera-phones we’ve seen to date, and delivers good call quality and battery life. That said, it still falls short on a number of fronts, including ease of use, navigation, and integrated services. This, coupled with an expensive price tag of US$549 unlocked, isn’t going to attract the masses. Symbian fans will find much to like in the Nokia N8, but consumers will be better off going with an Android device or the iPhone.

The Nokia N8 feels great in your hand. It’s mostly made from anodized aluminum which comes in vibrant colors. The chrome accents around the camera lens, camera button, and volume controls get the thumbs up too. There are no wiggly parts and the buttons all feel solid. As expected, the hardware design is top-notch. The build quality is excellent, too. The screen is made of gorilla glass which is damage and scratch resistant. I tried scratching the display with my keys using a lot of force and did not notice any effect.

The Nokia N8 can be likened to the second coming, not because it’s necessarily salvation in a phone, but more so because it’s taken a really, really long time to get here. Since it was officially announced back in April 2010, with leaks out in September 2009, we’ve all been waiting for Symbian Foundation’s follow up to S60 V5, and Nokia’s follow up to the Nokia N97. Finally, here it is, in all its anodised aluminium glory, with a 12MP camera with Xenon flash and an OLED screen, the new Nokia flagship phone for 2010/2011 – the Nokia N8.

In the box, as well as the phone itself there is a charger, a miniHDMI to HDMI connector, two microUSB to USB cables (one female USB, one male USB), a set of headphones, a power charger and some literature on the phone.

Design:
The Nokia N8 feels special. With an anodised aluminium body, it delivers a really luxurious cold metal sensation when you pick it up, and a fantastic weighting behind it. It is truly a tactile pleasure to hold and fondle and would still be even if it didn’t switch on.

The Nokia N8 has an anodised aluminium body and delivers a really luxurious cold metal sensation when you pick it up You can compare the Nokia N8 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The only areas of the Nokia N8 not encased in anodised aluminium are its ends. Both top and toe are instead covered by slick, super-glossy plastic strips sporting the headphone jack, miniHDMI port, and power button at the top with the bottom end containing the proprietary Nokia charging port. These offer a visual and tactile contrast to the rest of the phone’s body, however, like most things glossy, love fingerprints.

The only areas of the Nokia N8 not encased in anodised aluminium are its ends. The Nokia N8′s front side marries glass and aluminium, with the screen, front facing camera, light sensor and menu button found on the fascia. A thin, semi-gloss 3mm strip of metal frames the glass front, inside which is the 3.5-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 360×640 pixels.

The screen of the Nokia N8 shines. There is little jaw-dropping about it in terms of specs, with similarly spec’d screens having been available on phones for nigh on two years (i.e. the Samsung OMNIA HD). The N8′s screen nevertheless performs exceptionally well with above average pixel density, very vibrant colours and fantastic viewing angles. 3.5 inches is a decent size for the screen of the phone touted as Nokia’s multimedia powerhouse. Well, of course, a bigger screen with a higher resolution would better show off the on-board 12MP camera and make web-browsing that bit more enjoyable, however, Nokia have decided to go with ‘pocket-friendly’ rather than ‘computer in the pocket’. In turn, what you’re left with what is distinctly a phone, not a PMP or a tablet wannabe, but a smart phone with a good, sharp, bright screen.