Param Tech Reviews

For all its good looks and lickable icons, the BL40 hardly feels like a “Chocolate” phone — abandoning the featurephone functionality and slider form factors that are usually associated with the moniker. Well, the newly surfaced BL20 (previously spotted as the BL42) is here to solve all that. The slider handset has capacitive touch controls below the screen, but the screen itself is not a touchscreen. The functionality has also been trimmed back from the BL40’s app extravaganza, but the interface looks and actual hardware seem very similar. We had a little trouble getting around in the German interface, but if you can handle our bumblings you can check out a video of the phone after the break. Gallery: LG BL20 hands-onContinue reading LG BL20 hands-on: putting the ’slider’ back in ‘Chocolate’Keywords:   CellphonesLG BL20 hands-on: putting the ’slider’ back in ‘Chocolate’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

Just look at that little bugger. Ain’t it just so cute? All jesting aside, the adorably retro piece of kit you’re inevitably peering at above rings up at $799 to $899, meaning that it’s priced way too high to be slotted in most consumers’ impulse buy category. Olympus’ E-P1 was launched with high hopes, and it pretty much held the weight of the Micro Four Thirds world on its shoulders. During our time with the unit, we found image quality to be satisfactory overall and the design to be simply stunning, but we certainly didn’t come away feeling it was flawless. For those of you who overlooked the entry-level DSLR in order to try something different, how has that decision treated you? Are you full of remorse? Could you not be happier? Spill all in below.Keywords:   Digital CamerasHow would you change Olympus’ E-P1? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

Keywords:   Cellphones, Handhelds
No one really knows whether HTC’s May 6 gathering will usher in the age of Android (our guess is still “no”), but let’s look a little beyond that, shall we? We’ve just laid eyes on a handful of documents detailing HTC’s efforts to ready the Diamond and Raphael models — already known to be valid HTC codenames — for Sprint later this year, and things are definitely looking up in the post-Touch world. The Diamond turns out to be the successor to that very device, lacking a physical keyboard and relying almost exclusively on a large, glossy touchscreen for user input; the Raphael meanwhile (pictured) features a full QWERTY deal and is destined to replace the Mogul. The paperwork’s pretty blurry, but it appears that both Windows Mobile devices will feature WiFi, 3 megapixel cameras, and — get this — VGA displays. Goodness! The Raphael is currently lined up to be the first out of the gate, hitting the streets in September if everything goes well, with the Diamond following on in November. Surprised that these devices are CDMA-based and Sprint bound? Us too, we admit — but we’d be shocked if there weren’t GSM twins of both of these hotties getting cooked in the lab at the same time.[Thanks, anonymous tipster]Gallery: HTC’s Raphael and Diamond: coming to Sprint and looking goodPermalink | Email this | Comments