Hands on: Sony NEX-3 review
It was only a matter of time before Sony dipped its toes into the burgeoning world of 'DSLR-like' cameras.
Beginning with Olympus and Panasonic's Micro Four Thirds system, compact cameras have taken a turn into prosumer territory, with most major manufacturers offering interchangeable lens systems and more features than most simple snappers can handle.
Sony has come to the table with two offerings: the NEX-5 – which we featured last week – and the NEX-3.
Both are compact cameras with interchangeable lenses and both are true to their compact roots.
The NEX-3 is as compact as you can get for a camera that houses pro features. It's surprising then that at the heart of the NEX-3 is the APS-C sensor.
This is the same as what is found in Sony Alpha range of DSLRs and is a bigger sensor than that found in other cameras of its type.
Immediately this means that low-lighting shooting is going to be a breeze (it can shoot to ISO 12,800) and picture quality precise – the camera packs 14.2MP.
The NEX-3 feels different to any other camera we have picked up. This is to do with the material the body is made from. Sony have gone for polycarbonate plastic and not the metal found on the NEX-5.
While we prefer the feel of the NEX-5, the new look chassis of the NEX-3 does stand out. And it comes in a number of different colours, including red.
Other than the chassis change, the NEX-3 the only difference is that the NEX-5 only shoots 720p video and not 1080p. This is no big thing, considering this is the cheaper camera.
There are minimal controls on the NEX-3. The main thing of note which is missing is the Mode dial.
What Sony has done is integrate this technology into the camera's menu. Dig into the menu screen and a massive virtual Mode dial which you flick round using the control on the back of the camera.
Not only does this mean that there's less clutter on the body, Sony can also explain what each feature on the Mode dial does.
This is a good move by Sony as it will aide those who get turned off with the myriad features on offer in a DSLR. And for those who know what they are doing, you can just ignore the blurb.
To help the newbie even more, Sony has also packed 80 pages of tutorials on to the camera, so you can take it out for a spin and essentially learn on the job.
Another great mode is the use of Sweep Panoramic. This fantastic feature was last seen on Sony's compact range and it makes a superb appearance on the NEX-3.
Essentially you slowly move the camera around and the camera will take a boatload of images, stitch them together and create a 149-degree photo. Slap on the fisheye add-on (available for the pancake lens) and this is upped to a massive 226 degrees.
Not only that, from July this mode will be 3D ready thanks to a firmware update – so you can play the pictures back on your 3D-capable Bravia TV.
The lenses available for the NEX-3 are the same as for the NEX-5. These include: 16mm and 18-55mm lenses, which do come in a bundle with the body.
The jury is still out whether interchangeable lens systems work on compact bodies. The lens certainly does protrude in an almost comedic way from the NEX-3's chassis.
But having DSLR-like quality on a camera that doesn't look daunting to use is certainly warranted, something the NEX-3 shows off nicely.
The Sony NEX-3 has a UK release date of 1 June, with prices starting from £500.
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Hands on: Sky Player on Fetch TV review
Fetch TV announced it has added Sky Player to its service this week, marking the first time Sky has allowed itself to be on a set-top box other than its own.
TechRadar managed to get hands-on with the service and were impressed with what we saw.
Sky is pushing itself has being "platform agnostic" at the moment, which essentially means: if you haven't got a satellite dish, don't worry as there is another way to get Sky - to have it piped through your broadband connection in the form of Sky Player.
Fetch TV has added the service to its Freeview+ Smartbox 8000 and you can either use an Ethernet connection to run the Sky content or hook the box up to your network via WiFi.
When we played with the Fetch TV box it was using Ethernet.
While Fetch TV has tried to make the experience of flipping between Freeview content and web content as seamless as possible (it doesn't want you to worry about where your shows are coming from) there is a touch of lag when your drill into the IPTV content.
It's only a few seconds so doesn't detract from the experience but it is a bit of a statement that TV through the internet isn't as immediate as through an aerial.
Anyone familiar with the Sky setup will be right at home with the service on Fetch TV.
The familiar blue and yellows are there and the categories are broken down into the following: TV On Demand, Channels, Help and About Sky Player.
Essentially, it is only the first two categories that you need to worry about. The on-demand content is archived shows that you can watch anytime and, if you have a regular Sky subscription, for free.
If you want to watch the live channels, then you will have to fork out for a multi-room subscription.
This will entitle you to watch Sky Player on Fetch TV and four computers. A word of warning: if you are already watching Sky Player through the Xbox 360, then you will have to choose between that device and Fetch TV.
Sky has locked Sky Player to just one non-computing device.
Even though Fetch TV is a PVR, you will not be able to record any of the Sky channels.
Sky is hoping to sweeten that bitter pill by saying that the on-demand service is so chock-full of content that you want care that you can't record your favourite programmes on to the hard drive.
As an additional service to your Sky subscription, Fetch TV feels like a great way to push Sky into more rooms in the house, without the need of extra Sky boxes.
The service is packed with content and there is enough on-demand material to keep everyone happy.
Currently there are no movies available, though, but Sky is hoping to remedy this in the coming weeks.
If you are new to Sky, then Sky Player does seem like a decent introduction to the service.
And now it is on Fetch TV, you can get a Sky package for around £15. If you want it all, though, you are going to be spending out over £40 a month.
Fetch TV is definitely offering a much more enhanced service now Sky is on-board. For something that was going to the same road as BT Vision (it has BBC iPlayer and a range of other Catch Up TV options), the addition of Sky does make it a real contender and a point in the direction of things to come.
This is by no means an exclusive deal, however. Sky has already announced it is coming to 3View and there are bound to be more partners announced in the coming months.
And there is also the fact that currently the Fetch TV Smartbox is displaying standard def - with Freeview HD versions of the box out in June.
It's no bad thing, though, to get in there first.
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Exclusive: Google on VP8: 'We hope to start an arms race'
Google's new open source VP8 video codec can't do DRM, so YouTube will still use Flash to play protected content (and to insert ads).
In fact, says Google engineering VP Linus Upson, "DRM is fundamentally in conflict with open source and open standards because to do DRM you need secrets".
DRM doesn't actually stop piracy, Google co-founder Sergei Brin told TechRadar. "As a practical matter if you've seen DRM secretly encrypting files… all the videos come out before they're ever released in any digital form. I don't think as a practical matter those things are going to keep them safe."
What's the alternative? "Techniques of watermarking and attribution have perhaps been successful in terms of discouraging people – and watermarking and so forth are all still possible with any codec."
Just how good is VP8 and why did Google buy it and open source it?
Brin calls it a codec designed "with web scenarios in mind; we think it serves as a really good foundation for what the optimal web codec should be. That said, what you're seeing now is still just a developer preview. We have the capability to take it further with the power of the open web."
Partners who've already looked at VP8 in the short time since Google took it over have come up with great ideas and great improvements.
That's part of the power of open source. "We had this experience several times before", says Brin.
"When we open sourced the JavaScript engine behind Chrome… There has been such a rapid pace of innovation in all browsers; every browser has got a much faster JavaScript engine now. We hope that what we are doing here gets us a much faster video codec. We hope - in a good sense - to start an arms race."
Although Google checked out VP8 to see if it infringed any codecs and believes that it doesn't, the company isn't offering a patent indemnity to the many partners signing up to use it.
Android and patent infringement
The same goes for Android, says Brin; "I do not believe we have plans to indemnify- that said we have worked closely with a number of partners to help them with their legal cases."
Brin also points out: "I would disagree with the premise that Android infringes [any patents]. We have tried in Android to create something that stands upon its own rights."
And the handset manufacturers may not need an indemnification to protect them; "Many partners - not just one or two - have now implemented it. I think the members of the Open Handset Alliance have a very strong patent portfolio of their own, combined and individually."
Brin also disagrees with the whole idea of 'submarine' patents on principle. "This notion of submarine patents… the general trade that is made, in my mind, with patents is that in exchange for bringing an idea to the world that it would not otherwise have had, the inventor gets some degree, some period of exclusivity. I think that's reasonable.
"But I think if you consider some of these cases where the patent is not known about… Another company does this work independently - so it's not work the world would not have known about otherwise - and then it tries to stop other people using it. That invalidates the basic idea. I do think there are issues with the patent system as it appears today."
Google still uses native code for speed and to get the best user experience in apps like Google Maps on Android today; do we ever get a point when all we need is the web?
Brin seems to think so. "You saw some of the amazing capabilities arising in the HTML5 world. Frankly the HTML model - which is now starting to include offline, is starting to provide richer graphics- does start to look similar to some of these app frameworks.
"There are other benefits [to web apps]. The lack of installation, the security model; just because you go to the web site doesn't mean you have to worry about the action… It's headed in a very positive direction, but these are fairly recent developments. That said, I think these models are likely to converge in the future - the not so distant future."
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Gary Marshall: 6 things Apple should steal from Android 2.2
In news that's surprised absolutely nobody, Google has taken the wraps off Froyo, or Android 2.2 as it's officially known.
It's a minor update rather than an awesome new version, but there's still lots to like - and there are even a few ideas we'd love to see Google's arch-enemy nick.
We wouldn't recommend nicking the interface, though: while the forthcoming iPhone 4.0 OS looks a bit Fisher-Price to us - we're not sold on the redesigned home screen at all - it's still a work of art compared to Google's effort. Google doesn't really do interfaces - Chrome works because there's hardly any interface to mess up - and there's a reason why you only ever see HTC's Sense UI in Android ads.
Sure, you can customise the way Android looks, but to us that's rather like painting stripes on a donkey and telling everybody it's a zebra.
So what should Mr Jobs steal? Free turn-by-turn navigation is a pretty big selling point, and while an Apple equivalent would really annoy TomTom (and the other sat-nav firms in the App store) we're talking about a firm that will happily and publicly pick fights with Adobe, so TomTom's feelings probably don't matter much.
While we're on the subject of Adobe, Android of course does Flash. You're wasting your breath asking Steve for that one.
What else? We'll have some Wi-Fi syncing, thank you very much - demanding a cable to update your address book is so 2001; MobileMe costs money so it doesn't count - and if you're American, you might want to ask Apple about tethering your iPhone to use it as a modem. Yes, we've seen screenshots suggesting that AT&T tethering is coming, but we won't believe it until there's evidence of real iPhone owners using it in the wild while beaming AT&T execs clap happily.
What's better than tethering? That's right! Portable Wi-Fi hotspots! Android's ability to turn selected handsets into portable Wi-Fi access points is inspired and useful, and if Apple stuck it into the iPhone it would kill sales of its pricey 3G-enabled iPad. So that one's not going to happen.
Neither is an open App Store, where you can download anything you want without running it past Steve Jobs first.
Last but not least - you've guessed it - there's multitasking. Apple's approach in iPhone OS 4.0 is to offer pseudo-multitasking, not proper multitasking, and as gadget geeks we like Android's "it's your phone so it's up to you what you run" approach. Sure, it kills the battery in no time, but hey! It's our battery!
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Exclusive: Virgin Media responds to launch of Google TV
Virgin Media has told TechRadar that it is eager to launch its TiVo-powered new set-top boxes, following the announcement of a potential rival platform in Google TV.
Although Google TV had been mooted for weeks, the internet giant showed off how the platform would work and announced that the likes of Sony, Intel and Logitech are all already on board.
Some of the functionality apes that of the US TiVo platform that will form the basis of the new Virgin Media set-top boxes, due later this year, including a focus on search and collating multiple sources that include video on demand and internet clips.
TV times are changin'
"The way we're watching TV is clearly changing," a Virgin Media spokesman told TechRadar.
"Virgin Media was the first to bring the likes of BBC iPlayer to the living room TV and to help customers watch what they want, when they want.
"We're particularly excited about the launch of our TiVo-powered next-generation service later this year, which will offer Virgin Media customers a unique intuitive TV experience to help recommend and organise the vast digital world of entertainment."
So, aside from obviously not mentioning anything about Google TV, it is clear that Virgin Media will be keen to get its boxes to market and prove that it doesn't take an internet giant to provide our television entertainment.
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Exclusive: Google: Microsoft is smart, clever and well-funded
Google has confessed to being wary of Microsoft in the search market, with CEO Eric Schmidt calling the software giant 'well-funded, smart and clever'.
Bing is still battling for market share in search, with Google the most dominant provider in the western world.
Speaking at a round-table at Google Zeitgeist, Eric Schmidt insisted that Google was not resting on its laurels and that it was well aware of the 'extraordinarily well-funded' rivalry from Microsoft.
Strong competitor
"We have a strong competitor in Microsoft in our search base and Microsoft is competing globally in every market on search," said Schmidt.
"I think it's very important to remember we have a competitor and they are extraordinarily well funded…they have a lot more cash on their balance sheet than we do.
"The clear answer to your question is our primary competitor has been, is and I suspect will be, Microsoft – They're well funded, they're smart, they're clever."
Dominance
Current stats from StatCounter suggest that Google has a 90 per cent share of the search market, with Yahoo (4.3%) still second and Bing holding steady at around 3.6 per cent.
Although these statistics are not replicated perfectly across other measurement companies, the dominance of Google is beyond doubt.
However, a well-publicised tie up with Yahoo in the US will mean that Bing powers 30 per cent of national searches, compared to Google's 65 per cent.
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HTC: Desire Android 2.2 upgrade is coming
HTC has announced that if you bought a handset from its 2010 range, then it is very likely that you will get automatically upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo) when the OS is officially released.
In a statement, the company explained that phones definitely getting the upgrade would be the HTC Desire and Droid, but did note that more handsets would likely get the upgrade.
"If your phone was launched this year, we will most likely offer an upgrade for it to the Froyo version," says the statement.
"This includes popular models like the Desire and Droid Incredible as well as hotly anticipated phones like the Evo 4G, MyTouch slide and upcoming models."
HTC Android 2.2 release date
HTC continues: "We will announce a full list of phones and dates once we are closer to launching the upgrades.
"We are working closely with Google and our other partners to ensure we have the earliest access to everything we need to provide a complete and solid Sense experience on Froyo.
"We expect to release all updates in the second half of this year but can't be more specific yet."
While there is no word whether the HTC Legend will get the 2.2 update, by the sound of the release it looks likely that HTC wants to equip as many of its handsets as possible with the new OS.
New features of Android 2.2 include a speed boost, Flash support (in your face iPhone) and bigger and better games, thanks to the ability to install apps to a memory card.
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In Depth: 10 best laptops that push the boundaries of tech
Having a new processor that runs a hair faster than the last model isn't exactly the height of innovation.
But what if that processor also lets you stream anything on your screen to an HDTV using a new type of wireless signal - all at the touch of a button?
Here are the ten best laptops that go way beyond the basics and offer something truly new.
1. Lenovo U1 Hybrid
We tested this notebook at CES, and it's a jaw-dropper. The Lenovo U1 Hybrid runs standard Windows when in notebook mode, but you can slide off the screen and run a proprietary version of Linux in tablet mode. Amazingly, if you visit a Web site in your Windows browser, the tablet OS will pick up where you left off.
2. Toshiba Satellite E205
With the push of a button, this Toshiba notebook transmits whatever is on your laptop screen – a movie, photos, a Web browser - across the room to your HDTV. The E205 uses the new Intel Wireless Display (Wi-Di) standard, also available on the Dell Studio 15z and the Sony VAIO S-Series. You also need a Netgear PVT1000 set-top box to receive the signal for your TV.
3. Acer Aspire 5738DG
3D televisions are expensive and movies are scarce - the Acer Aspire 5738DG uses the DDD TriDef drive for 3D rendering on the laptop screen, which means you can set just about any game into 3D mode. We tested Aliens vs Predator and, after some customisation, played a level where the foreground objects in a space lab looked like they were jutting out of the screen. Of course, you can also play 3D movies such as Avatar when it comes out on Blu-ray later this year.
4. Gateway NV59C09u
This notebook, which has a 15.6-inch screen and Intel Core i3 processor, has a unique button that activates a custom interface, developed by Gateway, that shows off your Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr feeds. The trend is that so-called "smartbooks" are becoming more like smartphones, running alternative operating systems like JoliCloud and Moblin that provide quick access to social networking feeds.
5. MSI Wind U160
This 10-inch netbook runs the Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz processor but, more interestingly, has a new keyboard that makes it easier to type long documents. But the really unique feature is MSI's new ECO mode, which stretches battery life to about 15 hours with a standard 6-cell battery and no extra weight.
6. Getac 9213
This notebook looks like a normal business laptop, but is actually a rugged machine that can withstand a 45cm drop, water and coffee spills plus a 120kg stress test that involves shaking the laptop and throwing it in the air. The notebook also has a shock-mounted hard drive that locks if the laptop senses a jolt. Unlike other business rigged notebooks, this model looks sleek and inconspicuous.
7. Sony VAIO X
This super-thin notebook measures just half an inch, has a scratch-resistant screen, supports gestures on the touchpad, and runs on a solid-sate drive. The most innovative feature, though, is that it weighs just 780g (1.5 pounds), making it the lightest notebook in the world and about half the weight of the Apple MacBook Air.
8. Asus U53
A notebook made out of bamboo? That's right – the Asus U53 also sports an Intel Core i5 processor and USB 3.0 alongside a discrete graphics card (separate form the laptop's motherboard) for high-end gaming, 3D software, and HD movies.
9. Dell Adamo XPS
One of the more unique laptops we've seen, the Adamo XPS folds into a more ergonomic slant with the display resting on a hinge. Testing this model at CES, we found it was more confortable to type for long periods. The laptop has a 128GB SSD drive and a built-in 2-megapixel webcam with 4GB of DDR3 RAM.
10. Gammatech Durabook D14E2
This recently release semi-rugged notebook has some unusual specs designed to give Panasonic and its Toughbook line some serious competition. It has a much larger hard drive at 1TB, a massive allocation of up to 8GB of RAM, and options for RAID configs (mirroring or striping) on two separate disks. You can also use the disks for any purpose, such as one for your main OS and one for an alternate OS.
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Review: Adobe Creative Suite CS5
Let's face it: if you need Creative Suite 5, you've already bought it. At almost £3,000 for the whole suite, it's an entire office in one. On an individual basis, you're talking £643 for the new Photoshop, over £1,000 for After Effects, almost £800 for Premiere Pro, and the list goes on.
They're essential pro tools, and you don't need us to tell you how good they are. Individually, most of the suite leads its respective market. Their hands appear in almost any media you might watch. There's so much power in each menu that it almost feels wrong to be playing around with the demo if you're not a top-flight creative type.
In many ways, that's why the applications are so interesting. More than any other individual package, it's Creative Suite that rewrites our world on a regular basis – especially the great Photoshop.
Even if you're not in, say, the celebrity touch-up business, you'll see its effect. As such, we're not going to review Creative Suite. There's no point. If you can afford it, you can't do better. Instead, read on for some hands-on impressions of its most notable new features, and how they live up to the hype.
Content-Aware Fill
This is Photoshop's big new trick. Select an unwanted person or object in your picture, hit 'Content Aware Fill' and that person or object is erased... seamlessly. The demo made a huge YouTube splash, but is it any good?
In short: yes, with a but. The image's background must have at least some regularity to it, and ideally not on an angle. A wall, a beach, trees, the sea – all of these will work well. Railings at a 45- degree angle – good luck. Small items, like rocks, are removed with no problem, and it does a great job of dealing with shadows and other complicated effects. People and large items will often leave a noticeable corona around the edited area, although this can be fixed using the Content-Aware Paintbrush.
When it works, it's much faster than using the Clone Brush. When it doesn't, it's fast enough that you haven't wasted any time. It's not a magic wand, though, and often pulls in the wrong data, duplicating unique parts of the background (including people's faces). Still, it's impressive stuff, and a great timesaver for clearing up your snaps.
Puppet Warping
Puppet Warping is a slightly more gimmicky feature, and one that we're undoubtedly going to see abused many times over the next few years. Cut out a figure and Photoshop will work out a mesh that fits its shape. By adding pins to the mesh, you can move the limbs around one by one, with the rest of the form following suit. It's a very creepy effect, and one better suited to subtle edits than completely altering someone's stance.
The most impressive demos don't involve people at all, but instead show solid objects being manipulated – Adobe's showpiece being a picture of a piece of rope that gets threaded in and out of itself on multiple levels.
In-camera effects
Photoshop CS4 offered a decent range of photography features, but a couple let the side down: weak noise controls and underwhelming support for HDR. Both are better now (and if you really want to add noise to an image, that's doable in Camera Raw), but not to the point that we'll be giving up our copies of Noise Ninja and Photomatix respectively.
Automatic lens correction is a useful addition, but if basic photo processing is your primary focus, Lightroom will still likely work much better for you.
Painting in Photoshop
Photoshop now offers a full set of natural media painting brushes with a 3D twist. The Mixer Brush offers live mixing on the canvas, with textured painting via a set of swappable brush tips. It's great to have these features in the same editor as Photoshop's other abilities, but we suspect it'll be tricky to get long-term Painter fans to adopt the new interface and kitchen-sink approach to their art.
Your CMS in Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is an excellent website editor, but in recent years many bloggers and small site owners have moved away from it and WYSIWYG in favour of a simple copy of Notepad.
You could always build a template and then add in the necessary tags to make it work, but now you can do development in Dreamweaver itself – hooking it up to platforms like Wordpress and Drupal and having it discover the necessary extra files. Even if you only use the Code view, Dreamweaver's interface makes it much faster to write the necessary files, and now it can work with your CMS instead of design being a separate layer.
On the CSS side, new visualisation tools make it much easier to see how the page is carved up and where potential problems are, along with the ability to switch off specific classes rather than having to delete or comment them out. Browser compatibility remains, of course, one bad dream short of a nightmare.
Flash on iPhone
...isn't happening. At least, not any time soon. One of CS5's most important features was going to be its ability to export Flash files to iPhone-ready applications, but Apple stepped in shortly before release and put the kibosh on that with a change to the Terms and Conditions that said if you're not writing code specifically for the iPhone, you can't write for the iPhone at all.
It's a pity, but there are good reasons for it, not least that Flash apps are designed for keyboard-and-mouse interfaces rather than touchscreens (rollovers would have to be specially recoded, for example). Flash still has some big upgrades in CS5, including XML-based project files and inverse kinematics for animation, but there's no question that its big showpiece got very cruelly yanked out at the last minute.
The CS5 verdict
Rarely has the phrase 'scraping the surface' meant so much. Every single part of the suite has been comprehensively updated, and everyone who uses it will have their own favourite features and a million others they never even discover.
One that instantly earned its keep here was the Refine Edge tool, which makes it a snap to select part of an image and then run the cursor around the edge to snip out hair with terrifying levels of precision. For someone who works more in video, being able to snip moving actors out of a scene by quickly painting them over will be a lifesaver.
Other features, like Flash's new set of art deco brushes, will likely be forgotten quite quickly as everyone learns to recognise the effect as easily as they do a lens flare or page curl effect, but you never know – with the right editing...
The best thing about all this power is that it doesn't necessarily matter that it's out of the average customer's league. Yes, it would be great for everyone to have these features, but the big ones are increasingly trickling down to consumer level.
Content-Aware Fill may be saved for dedicated artists, but similar home-techniques – like the ability to remove someone from an image by marking the bits you want to keep and squishing them into the background on their own – show that we'll have access to things like that all too soon. (And of course, you can already do the basic trick in Gimp. The plug-in isn't as nice as Photoshop's, but it's free – Google Resynthesizer and you'll find not only the tool itself, but a demo of it working on the same images Adobe used to introduce Content-Aware Fill to the world.)
Even at £3,000 for the entire suite, it's difficult to call CS5 bad value. Individually, yes, the tools are a hefty purchase, but they're professional-grade kit and cheaper alternatives are usually available. It's worth taking the trial for a spin just to see how much the camera really can lie these days, how much you can do with a simple PC and where the limits of your creativity actually are. After that, you just have to win the lottery.
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Exclusive: Google 'unlikely' to bid for TV rights
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has insisted that it is 'unlikely' the company's enthusiasm for video will see it competing for television rights with the traditional broadcasters.
Speaking just hours before the announcement of Google TV, Google's attempts to create a television platform using internet connected devices, Schmidt said that it was unlikely that television rights - and in particular sports TV, would be competed for by the company.
"My own opinion is it's unlikely that we would go and then start competing with the traditional broadcast networks for sports rights," said Schmidt at a Google Zeitgeist round-table this week.
"That's not our business. It's more a question of can we build a platform which they can use to get even broader functions and even broader rights."
Provider
"I would much rather be the platform provider to those people than to compete with them," he continued
"If you think of YouTube as a new way of getting content out that people who own distribution rights can use that we can help them monetise, that's a much better model.
"And all the conversations we've had with them they really like this because they are looking for growth in their markets, and they pay all this money for the rights and their audiences are relatively stable, they want large communities."
Traditional relief
The news will come as a relief to some of the traditional giants in this area – including Sky, whose blockbuster bids for Premiership football, for example, have ensured that it stays at the pinnacle of UK sports broadcasting.
Even Sky, however, would struggle to compete with the might of Google, who now have a platform on which exclusive sports broadcasts could prove a major selling point.
However, the use of the word 'unlikely' rather than an unequivocal ruling out of bidding for television will not sit so well.
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Sky Player on Fetch TV launches
Sky and Fetch TV revealed today their collaboration, which brings Sky Player to a set-top box (that's other than Sky's own) for the very first time.
TechRadar were at the launch in London today, where Griff Parry, Sky director of on-demand and Eddie Abrams, CEO of Fetch TV, were on hand to show off the service.
Working in the same way as Sky Player on the Xbox 360, Fetch TV users will be able to watch live Sky shows and on-demand content but only if a monthly subscription is paid.
If you want the full Sky package, then this will cost you £41.50, but there is a subscription of £15 for the most basic of pacakages.
Those who have a Sky subscription will be able to watch the on-demand content for free via Fetch TV, but will have to have a multi-room package to get the live stream.
Speaking about the launch, Abrams noted: "Sky is a company that lives by innovation and is a key partner for Fetch TV, as it shows the flexibility of the platform."
Sky's Parry explained: "The advancements of broadband means that we can deliver Sky to TV screens without the use of satellite.
"Although we are closely related to satellite, we are platform agnostic and this launch shows this."
Those familiar with Sky and even Sky Player through a laptop or the Xbox will be right at home with FetchTV's service.
The functionality of Sky is there, with on-demand channels nestling next to live TV and the programme choice is the same.
Well it will be in a few weeks as Parry stated that "some movies aren't on Fetch TV but we are remedying this and they should be up and running in a few weeks."
To link up to the web, the boxes have both an Ethernet and WiFi connection. And when it comes to on-demand content, Sky Player is sitting alongside BBC iPlayer and Catch-up TV, as well as a number of other partners.
Currently FetchTV is only running Sky Player on its current Freeview+ box (like the Smartbox 8000) and will be downloaded to existing customers.
The service will also be available on the company's upcoming range of Freeview HD PVRs which will be out sometime in June. There will be a 160GB and 320GB versions available, with prices starting from £200.
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Weird Tech: Keep forgetting to drink water? There's an app for that
Do you ever worry that people are becoming ever-so-slightly too dependent on their mobile phones? "Absorb Water allows you to drink almost anything" says the description of Absorb Water on iTunes, with the all-new iPhone app also featuring the capability to calculate "if you are hydrated" at the end of each given day.
A few suspiciously positive reviews from "users" have already popped up beneath the listing, praising the app for successfully reminding them to drink and avoiding the onset of headaches caused by dehydration.
God on the Jesus phone
If you regularly pray to the mighty Jobs in front of Apple's portable altar, you'll be pleased to learn there's now another deity represented on iPhone - via the Christian Methodist Church.
Revealing its new custom iPhone app, the Methodists said it lets users "view daily bible studies, prayers and news from the Church" on their iPhones and iPod Touches, also including a useful Prayer of the Day, in case the only prayer you remember is that one from school about having bread every day and not trespassing.
"We hope this app will offer Christians from all backgrounds a little spiritual oasis in the midst of their busy lives" said the Methodist Church's Director of Communications and Campaigns, adding that he hopes people find the app useful and inspiring.
Methodist iPhone app: Whoever's manning their Twitter account isn't very on message
With Steve Jobs currently on a crazed, puritanical anti-porn rampage, we're sure he's gazing down approvingly.
Domesticated war machine, $4,000 O.N.O.
We're going to have to risk alienating any readers without the ability to watch embedded videos once again this week, by including footage of this incredible piece of Iron Man cosplay.
We're well aware that the words "incredible" and "cosplay" don't often sit together very well in the same sentence, but please, give Anthony Le's astonishing handmade War Machine costume the respect it deserves.
FOIL MAN: Removable breast plate ideal for keeping chicken moist while roasting
According to a report on PopSci, the costume cost around $4,000 for Anthony to create, and comes with a "dent-proof exterior" and "motorized faceplate" for the ultimate in near-realism.
Being an idiot triggers regret
This week's News of the Obvious comes via a survey released by gadget shopping site Retrovo, which has somehow cobbled together enough data to invent a new tech thing - which it's calling "Poster's Remorse".
The very real problem of regretting something you've just stuck up on a social networking site afflicts 32 per cent of people, apparently, statistics which rocket to 59 per cent among iPhone owners. The best way to avoid waking up riddled with regret and facing an internal disciplinary meeting?
To "assume your account is like the back of a postcard" and remember that everyone can read what you might stick up while momentarily furious about the proposed new seating arrangements.
THEIR SURVEY SAID: Actually, yes, we're already regretting writing about this
Next week in News of the Obvious - other people can hear the things you say out loud, so always slag them off from the safety of a different room.
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Review: Sony KDL-32V5810
The Sony KDL-32V5810 has a handy trick up its sleeve that ensures it still looks very good value despite its size. This TV boasts a built-in HD tuner. This isn't compatible with the new Freeview HD terrestrial service, mind you, but it can handle broadcasts from the Freesat satellite platform once you've got the necessary satellite dish installed.
The 32V5810's connections are a cut above most rival models. Just for starters, it has an Ethernet port through which you can access Sony's AppliCast online features, content on a DLNA-enabled PC and potential Freesat interactive services in the future, like the BBC iPlayer. What's more, there's a D-Sub PC jack, four HDMIs and a USB input that can play photo, music and even video files.
Basically, the 32V5810 is streets ahead of its rivals when it comes to multimedia capability. The only bum note in this is the fact that Sony's AppliCast online system is so short of content that it's arguably barely worth considering as a feature.
A straightforward operating system, meanwhile, gives you access to a pretty respectable set of features and tweaks, and there's plenty going on behind the scenes – not least Sony's redoubtable Bravia Engine 3 processing system and Sony's Live Colour engine for boosting the tones and saturations of colours.
Feeling let down
It only takes a few dark scenes, though, for us to start feeling let down by the 32V5810's performance level. For in keeping with all too many recent Sony TVs, the corners of the picture distinctly exhibit some marked brightness inconsistency relative to the rest of the image. This is only visible during very dark scenes, admittedly, but such scenes routinely crop up in any film or drama.
And whenever the light inconsistencies appear, they can really distract you from what you're watching. After a while, you even find yourself looking for them. The 32V5810's black level response generally isn't quite as deep as we'd have liked it to be, either.
Making these problems even tougher to take on board is the fact that in most other ways, the pictures are very good. Its colours, for instance, look dynamic and punchy, with plenty of subtlety and impressive resolution of skin tones.
Also striking is how sharp the 32V5810's HD pictures look, despite the relative smallness of the screen. Playing a big part in this is the fact that the TV handles motion very well for a screen that doesn't have 100Hz processing. It does have Sony's 24p True Cinema processing, though, and this helps it keep a good lid on the sort of judder that can affect 24p Blu-ray playback.
The Bravia Engine 3 system does a fine job, too, of upscaling standard definition to the screen's full HD resolution and its sound is above average for such a small TV.
Try as we might, though, we never found ourselves able to feel as if the 32V5810's good points truly outweighed the damage wrought by that annoying backlight consistency issue.
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Weird Tech: Keep forgetting to drink water? There's an app for that
Do you ever worry that people are becoming ever-so-slightly too dependent on their mobile phones? "Absorb Water allows you to drink almost anything" says the description of Absorb Water on iTunes, with the all-new iPhone app also featuring the capability to calculate "if you are hydrated" at the end of each given day.
A few suspiciously positive reviews from "users" have already popped up beneath the listing, praising the app for successfully reminding them to drink and avoiding the onset of headaches caused by dehydration.
God on the Jesus phone
If you regularly pray to the mighty Jobs in front of Apple's portable altar, you'll be pleased to learn there's now another deity represented on iPhone - via the Christian Methodist Church.
Revealing its new custom iPhone app, the Methodists said it lets users "view daily bible studies, prayers and news from the Church" on their iPhones and iPod Touches, also including a useful Prayer of the Day, in case the only prayer you remember is that one from school about having bread every day and not trespassing.
"We hope this app will offer Christians from all backgrounds a little spiritual oasis in the midst of their busy lives" said the Methodist Church's Director of Communications and Campaigns, adding that he hopes people find the app useful and inspiring.
Methodist iPhone app: Whoever's manning their Twitter account isn't very on message
With Steve Jobs currently on a crazed, puritanical anti-porn rampage, we're sure he's gazing down approvingly.
Domesticated war machine, $4,000 O.N.O.
We're going to have to risk alienating any readers without the ability to watch embedded videos once again this week, by including footage of this incredible piece of Iron Man cosplay.
We're well aware that the words "incredible" and "cosplay" don't often sit together very well in the same sentence, but please, give Anthony Le's astonishing handmade War Machine costume the respect it deserves.
FOIL MAN: Removable breast plate ideal for keeping chicken moist while roasting
According to a report on PopSci, the costume cost around $4,000 for Anthony to create, and comes with a "dent-proof exterior" and "motorized faceplate" for the ultimate in near-realism.
Being an idiot triggers regret
This week's News of the Obvious comes via a survey released by gadget shopping site Retrovo, which has somehow cobbled together enough data to invent a new tech thing - which it's calling "Poster's Remorse".
The very real problem of regretting something you've just stuck up on a social networking site afflicts 32 per cent of people, apparently, statistics which rocket to 59 per cent among iPhone owners. The best way to avoid waking up riddled with regret and facing an internal disciplinary meeting?
To "assume your account is like the back of a postcard" and remember that everyone can read what you might stick up while momentarily furious about the proposed new seating arrangements.
THEIR SURVEY SAID: Actually, yes, we're already regretting writing about this
Next week in News of the Obvious - other people can hear the things you say out loud, so always slag them off from the safety of a different room.
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Opinion: Google TV: serious rivals and serious questions
Google TV's launch was beset by bluetooth problems - but with some serious rivals in the UK and many questions about how the hurdles between internet and television are cleared, those connection errors may not be the only troubles it faces.
Curation has been the buzzword in broadcast platform circles for some time – the sheer amount of television channels is causing users enough problems, and when you factor in video on demand that becomes exponentially more difficult.
Add in all of the video on demand and streaming content from the web and you realise that perhaps the only suitable way to deal with the information is with search – the tool that has made the internet accessible.
Obviously Google has a key advantage in this area, so I was intrigued to see exactly what Google TV could provide.
Cool concepts
Let's be frank – there was some wildly cool concepts on show; Google's app market is becoming as convergent as the company's plans and using Android as the base of Google TV may be a masterstroke, bringing apps that the public already understands.
Voice search, YouTube Leanback, being able to send a video from your mobile to your TV and vice versa, Google TV certainly has its highlights.
But, in light of many of the other TV innovators' early efforts this year, the same problems that have beset IPTV and bringing the web to the biggest screen in your living room, are still present and accounted for.
UK blessed
The UK is blessed with one of the most cutting-edge television markets. In the blue corner you have Sky, pushing 3D, a global leader in HD and a company that took PVRs and made them simple for the British consumer.
Over in the red corner is Virgin, a company with the flagship broadband product for the nation, an exciting future in partnership with TiVo and an already impressive on-demand service through cable.
And in the (possibly) neutral corner is the BBC, a globally unique setup that is publicly funded and involved in not only the likes of Freeview and Freesat, but also the big hope for UK IPTV – Project Canvas.
All three of these big hitters are developing IPTV-like solutions that bear comparison with Google TV – and all three have hit the same kind of problems.
Namely, how much of an internet experience actually works on a television set, and can you get a decent user experience with the wealth of video content already available on the web?
Less than standard
Let's start with the latter – a YouTube app is by no means a rare sight on the newest televisions, and although the latest material has a better chance of being in HD, the majority is certainly not of a particularly high standard.
On a computer screen that's not a massively big deal, but when your screen is a 1080p 42-inch Panasonic and you've got used to HD content, it certainly jars.
Google obviously acknowledged that YouTube in its online form is not suitable for televisions – hence the creation of YouTube Leanback, and it does have the power to make some web video significantly better in quality.
But as quality goes up, so does bandwidth, and unless the video site is set up for televisions then you need to either explain to consumers why their video is running in a box on the Amazon site, or find some way of adapting the player.
It's a tricky situation – and even in the Google TV demonstration, the simple way of switching between traditional TV and video on demand through a website that wasn't YouTube looked less than ideal.
Browsers
Browsers on televisions also cause a large number of arguments; many people, myself included, don't really object to a full browser experience – and the excellent Opera-based Wii browser or the competent PS3 have illustrated that, to some degree at least, this works.
But many people find them difficult and an old argument, often referred to as lean back versus lean forward, rears its head.
Essentially, we lean forward to use our computers and actively peer at what we are doing, built with a TV we lean back and let it wash over us. The argument is clearly reference in the latest YouTube announcement, but it remains at the heart of IPTV discussions.
Curation
And finally 'curation' - the horrible marketing term for just how we actually find the programmes that we want to watch among 500 television channels, thousands of hours of on-demand and the internet's practically endless archives.
Virgin Media's TiVo-powered interface will, almost certainly, use search as the central way of finding content – and, like Google TV, will offer paid for VOD, its own on-demand, linear channels and some internet video (TiVo taps into YouTube for example).
Sky has had success with its Sky Player, is aware that it needs to add VOD to its lineup and will no doubt be considering search for combing through its own linear, Anytime, Sky Player and more setup.
Last, but certainly not least, the BBC-led Project Canvas – which also included BT, Arqiva, Talk Talk, Channel 4, Five and ITV – may land not long after Google TV hits the states in Autumn, and will give VOD, linear and internet options.
So, Google TV may have some tasty innovations, but it also has some serious rivals who have spent a long time populating our television screens and won't be sitting quietly by as the internet giant steps on their toes.
The real question is whether anyone can truly bring the freedom of the internet to the television, and if the viewer agrees with their vision. Google has the money and the power, but the UK already has some powerfully innovative companies with market dominance.
Of course, if there was a collaboration...
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In Depth: Flash 10.1 on Android 2.2: release date and how to get it
Google used the announcement of the availability of Flash Player 10.1 for Android 2.2 to get in plenty of side swipes at Apple, but it didn't go into any detail about what you get in Flash 10.1 – or how you get it.
What Google showed at Google IO was a "pre-beta build, not the final product release," Adobe director of technology strategy for partner development Anup Muraka told TechRadar. "However it's a really solid technology base and it's going to play a lot of content."
"The goal for this release is that most existing Flash content should just work," says Muraka. "We acknowledge that not all content is going to behave the same; some content will work better than others. You can't expect high bit-rate HD video to work perfectly on a small screen smartphone over a 3Gnetwork- but we're still seeing good performance for video playback."
To help with that, Flash Player 10.1 tried to use less memory. "We've done a lot of work to reduce memory consumption for content, especially unoptimised content. In many cases," claims Muraka, "we see as much as 50% reduction."
Flash 10.1 and Android battery life
Flash 10.1 has settings to save battery life like not playing content that's not visible on screen; but it also has ways for developers to over-ride that.
"If you want to do something like background audio, you don't want it to stop," points out Muraka although he does admit "I think what developers end up wanting to do may end up conflicting with what the OS wants to do."
And it's not just Flash that runs down battery life; "You'll see this in web pages as well. There are web sites doing auto refresh and those are extremely taxing on battery life. Take your favourite Twitter page; if it's getting lot of updates you'll see a pretty big battery drain just from updates."
What kind of battery life are you going to get once you start using Flash? We'll be testing this ourselves but on a Nexus One running a pre-release build of Froyo and Flash Player 10.1 streaming H.264 video encoded for mobile, Muraka says you'll get "well over three hours of battery life" or "four-plus hours of casual gameplay".
That's with no hardware acceleration (which will improve battery life). "Even just with the baseline software-only player we can deliver a great experience and not the perception that it's going to just immediately kill whatever device it's running on."
Flash 10.1 adds support for rotating the screen using an accelerometer, and for multi-touch, gestures and on-screen keyboards (which Muraka points out will be useful for touch screens and tablets as well as phones), but developers will have to write their Flash content to use.
It also has 'smart zooming' which scales content to fill the screen so Flash in a web page can feel more like an application.
Flash 10.1 on Android release date
What's going to be available first is a public beta of Flash 10.1 on Android; you'll be able to download it from the Android Marketplace when Android 2.2 (which it needs) is available.
Adobe couldn't confirm when that would be, but Flash Player 10.1 will be finished in June (for Android, Windows, Linux and Mac as well).
It will be pre-installed on new devices in June but if you upgrade your phone to Froyo and visit a page that needs Flash, you'll be able to download the player directly the way you can on a PC.
"If you have a device capable of downloading it, you'll see the Flash badge and we'll do all the right things to get you Flash."
Users of other devices shouldn't feel left out; again Adobe isn't talking dates but Muraka confirmed "the work hasn't stopped on all the other platforms we're working on and still making progress with partners on; Windows Phone 7, Palm WebOS, BlackBerry- and Symbian" (although, he noted "we still have work to do on that").
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Review: HTC Smart
"Quietly Brilliant" – that's HTC's latest marketing slogan. And although we're not generally won over by such rhetoric, in this particular case, it rings pretty true.
While Apple has been busy trying to convince the world that the launch of the iPad is akin to the second coming of Christ, HTC has spent its time in a less ostentatious manner, launching some of the best mobile phones we've ever seen.
The new HTC Smart has a lot to live up to when you consider the company's recent track record. In the past few months we've seen the beautifully crafted HTC Legend, which was quickly followed up with the HTC Desire – arguably the best mobile phone money can buy right now.
Even a Windows Phone operating system couldn't stop the HTC HD Mini from being a great handset for anyone who's resistant to buy into Google's Android platform.
But the Smart is a very different proposition to those feature-packed handsets. Although it clearly falls into the smartphone category, it's not aimed at the kind of power user who would want an HTC Desire or Apple iPhone.
The Smart is aimed clearly at the average consumer who would like a few smartphone features, but doesn't care about lightning fast processors or app stores. Oh, and they want it to be affordable too, even without a contract.
You can usually spot a budget phone at 20 paces, but that's simply not the case with the HTC Smart. Put simply, it looks and feels every bit as good as the Desire, which is pretty impressive for a brand new handset that can be had for free on a £15 per month contract, or £100 on prepay.
With dimensions of 104 x 55 x 12.8mm the Smart is very comfortable to hold, while at 108g, it won't weigh you down either. That makes it roughly the same size and weight as the HTC HD Mini, which is no bad thing.
O2 offers the Smart in either black or white, but HTC sent us a pink version. Even in pink this is a good-looking phone, with the chrome accents around the edges breaking things up a little.
The front of the Smart is dominated by the 2.8-inch screen, which is surprisingly bright and vibrant for a budget phone.
The 320 x 240 QVGA resolution gives the game away slightly, but it doesn't spoil the party for the most part. The one area where the resolution really is a limitation is when you're using the web browser, but more about that later.
Below the screen are four buttons, the largest being (by some margin) the Back button. This is something of multi-function button, though, since it doubles as the phone's Home button, too.
Pressing the Back button once will generally take you to the previous page/menu, while pressing and holding it will take you to the main Home screen. Pressing the Back button while on the main Home screen will then open up the Programs menu.
Either side of the Back button are Call and Hang-up buttons, while the final front fascia control is a Menu button located just below the screen.
Along the bottom you'll find an older style mini-USB port, rather than the newer micro USB connector. The only other connector is a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is always good to see on any phone, especially a budget model.
The Smart sports 256MB ROM and 256MB RAM, but there's a microSD card slot for increasing storage space up to a maximum of 32GB. A nice touch is that the card slot is accessible without having to remove the battery.
There's a relatively modest 300MHz Qualcomm CPU beating at the heart of the Smart, although there didn't seem to be any issues when it came to general speed of operation.
HSDPA speeds are limited to 3.6mbps, rather than the 7.2mbps theoretical maximum seen on higher end phones. Obviously real world data speeds are limited by your network, but in use the Smart did feel a little sluggish in the data department.
That slightly disappointing cellular data performance is compounded by the fact that the Smart doesn't have Wi-Fi, so even when you're at home or in the office, you can't make use of a fast connection.
You do get Bluetooth with A2DP though, so the Smart will happily work with a hands-free kit, while also pumping music to your car stereo.
Another major departure from the recent trend of HTC phones is the use of Qualcomm's Brew mobile platform. In a world stuffed full of cutting edge mobile platforms like Android, WebOS and iPhone OS, can Brew offer enough to make even a budget handset attractive? That's the question we're about to answer.
Using the Smart as a yardstick, it's hard to say just how good or bad Qualcomm's Brew platform is, because HTC has skinned the OS with its excellent Sense user interface. As such, the Smart will look and feel very familiar to anyone who's used another HTC device.
However, great as HTC Sense is, it can only do so much, and when using the Smart, its budget origins become all too clear.
To be fair, most of the issues with the user interface come as a result of the screen. Unfortunately, the 2.8-inch screen employs resistive, rather than capacitive, touch technology.
This means that it's simply not as finger-friendly as, say, the HTC Legend, Apple iPhone or the similarly-sized HTC HD Mini. Swiping feels a bit sticky, which is mainly down to the plastic screen and is pretty common with resistive technology.
Likewise, tapping isn't as responsive as we would have liked, but then compromises had to be made somewhere.
Screen technology aside, the Smart is pretty intuitive thanks, for the most part, to HTC Sense. The central Home screen looks like most HTC Sense enabled phones, with a large digital clock at the top, and your local weather integrated.
Below this you'll find three slots for shortcuts, and as with the HTC HD Mini, you can swipe the screen upwards to reveal a further six shortcut boxes.
You can also swipe left and right to reveal three Home screens on either side of the central one. As with all HTC Sense empowered phones, you can customise all the Home screens, but the Smart takes this approach a step further with the use of Scenes.
Swipe down from the top of any Home screen and you'll be presented with a selection of Scenes to choose from.
The concept behind Scenes is that they allow you to quickly change the layout of the phone in one fell swoop.
So, during work hours, you can highlight your emails, text messages and calendar, but at the weekend, you might want quick access to your Facebook and Twitter contacts, and have a shortcut to the camera handy.
When you first switch on the Smart, there are four Scenes to choose from – O2 (it's an O2 handset), Work, Lifestyle and Clean Slate.
Strangely, the O2 Scene is identical to the Lifestyle scene, which is something of a waste. If none of the preset scenes grabs you, you can create your own personalised scene using the Clean Slate option, then save it as a custom Scene.
On the whole the Scene functionality is a good addition for anyone who wishes they had different applications to hand at different times, or different days. That said, anyone who really needs to have a smartphone configured for work, would probably find the Smart a bit under-powered and under-featured.
As already mentioned, the HTC Smart can't sync your contacts over the air, which is a real shame. Having to manually synchronise your phone using your computer is so two years ago.
Joking aside, this could be a deal breaker for many potential buyers, especially those who use Google for their mail, contacts and calendar.
The contact list has all the usual fields, including the ability to attach photos to each entry, just in case you forget what your friends and colleagues look like. Your nine most called/emailed/texted contacts can be placed on your Favourites Home screen, along with their corresponding photos.
You can also group your contacts, thus separating work colleagues, friends and family. When you select the People app, you can then choose to look at All Contacts, Favourites or Groups.
Entering contacts manually on the phone is as laborious as ever, so your best bet is to download the HTC Sync software and synchronise with your established contacts list via your computer.
In theory, you should be able to import contacts from a microSD card, but we couldn't get the phone to recognise exported lists in either CSV or vCard formats.
Call quality is generally excellent, with no hint of echo or feedback during conversations. The Smart also seemed to have no problem maintaining a strong signal no matter where we used it.
Pressing the Call button brings up the keypad for dialling – from here pressing the Menu button offers useful shortcuts like People, Favourites and a user configurable Speed Dial list.
Messaging
Although the HTC Smart supports email, that support isn't as advanced as many other smartphones. Basically you can get your mail sent to your phone via POP or IMAP, but there's no Exchange support on the menu. This means that although you can get your email sent to your Smart, you can't sync your calendar and contacts over the air.
The HTC Sense Email client will show you your latest unread message if you have it set up on one of your Home screens. Tapping the email client will open up a traditional list view for your inbox, from where you can choose to read, compose, reply, and so on.
Setting up your email account is pretty simple if you use either Google Mail or AOL, since there are shortcuts for those providers. If you use a different email provider it's a little more complicated, but as long as you know the required details it doesn't take long.
As with the Sense email client, the SMS app also shows you the last received message when you swipe to it. Tapping the message will then show you the complete message thread between you and that particular contact.
Annoyingly, the Home screen client will only show you the last received message, and not the last sent one – so, if you've replied to the message on display, you need to tap it and look at the message thread to see what you said.
Once again the small, resistive screen hampers proceedings. Simple acts like scrolling through a list of emails or SMS conversations is often harder than it should be. It's all too easy to select something, when all you wanted to do was scroll.
Surprisingly, the keyboard is actually quite good. You can choose to use either a virtual keypad in portrait mode, or a full QWERT keyboard in landscape. The Smart has no accelerometer, so you have to manually press a button to switch between portrait and landscape, but once you do, the full keyboard makes text entry easy.
Despite the keys appearing impossibly small, once we got used to the size, we found that we could type pretty accurately on the Smart, thus making it a pleasingly compact messaging phone.
The HTC Smart has a fair bit counting against it when it comes to internet performance. The most obvious shortcoming is the lack of Wi-Fi support, which is a something of a crime these days.
Regardless of how fast mobile broadband is getting, or how much data you have thrown into your contract, when you're at home, or at work, you really want your phone to automatically switch to your Wi-Fi network.
A lack of Wi-Fi also causes problems if you ever travel outside of the UK.
As anyone with a smartphone will tell you, the first thing you do before you get on a plane is make sure that data roaming is switched off, thus saving you a scary bill when you get home. However, as long as you have Wi-Fi, you can still connect with your phone whenever you come across a Wi-Fi hotspot, which is pretty often.
Unfortunately, the Smart doesn't give you this option, so you can forget about checking email or browsing on your phone while you're abroad.
Another stumbling block when it comes to Internet usage is the speed of the Smart's data connection. With pretty much every phone in recent memory supporting 7.2mbps HSDPA, it comes as something of a surprise that the Smart tops out at the older 3.6mbps standard.
But the biggest problem with internet usage on the Smart is that screen again. The low resolution really makes its presence felt, as you find yourself having to constantly move around a web page in order to read it.
Obviously there's no multi-touch, so you need to use a slider to zoom in and out, but to say that controlling the zoom level is inaccurate is something of an understatement. You can double tap to zoom in and out at set levels, but even doing this can produce seemingly random results.
Considering that many consumers want to switch to a smartphone in order to browse the web on the move, the Smart doesn't really offer an experience that justifies the purchase.
The camera is a 3-megapixel affair, which seems low by today's standards. That said, cameras in phones have fallen foul of the numbers game, and it's worth remembering that more megapixels doesn't necessarily mean better photos, especially when the sensor is so small. So, in theory, the camera in the Smart could be a hidden gem – but unfortunately, it's not.
The camera is disappointing on a number of levels, but none more apparent than the dreadful shutter lag. Put simply, unless you're shooting something that's completely stationary, you may as well not bother.
You're looking at a lag of approximately two seconds from the moment you press the button, to the moment when the virtual shutter is released. The usual result is that the picture you spent time framing turns out to be a blurry mess.
MISSED HIM: The appalling shutter lag and slow lens make it nigh on impossible to shoot anything that can move
If you like to take pictures of pets or children with your mobile phone, the Smart is not for you. Even the terrible shutter lag could be lived with if the lens was fast enough to allow a correspondingly fast shutter speed, but it's not. And to be honest, that's not a surprise considering the budget nature of the phone.
NOT MOVING: Even if you can convince your cat to sit still, you're still likely to get blur in anything other than bright light. Flash coverage is so uneven that it's not worth using
Assuming you can find a subject that will stay still long enough for you to photograph it, the camera will still struggle to resolve detail in high intensity areas of a scene. In fact bright areas of a scene tend to be completely blown out, with little or no detail on offer.
Colours also lack vibrancy, and are often completely misrepresented – dark blues look black, while the maroon Ferrari F430 below was actually a deep metallic red.
BACK IN BLACK: The Porsche 968 in the foreground is actually blue and not black as it appears in this photo
RUBY RED FERRARI: This car sat in the pits all day and didn't even see the track! But the point is that it's not dark maroon, it's actually a deep metallic red
OPPOSITES ATTRACT: The highlights on the white car are completely blown out, losing all detail in those areas
Video recording is arguably worse, mainly because the resolution is limited to 320 x 240. It's clearly no coincidence that video is shot in the same resolution as the screen, thus allowing 1:1 pixel mapping when playing back on the phone, but if you want to take the video off the phone and watch it on a larger screen, you'll be very disappointed.
Sound quality when shooting video is poor too. And if you're shooting outdoors, you'll soon realise that even a slight breeze is more than the built-in microphone can handle. In the video above you'll notice that you can barely hear the car engine over the wind noise – until it heads off down the pit lane.
Media functionality on the Smart is something of a mixed bag. Considering the compromises that have been made elsewhere, the music player is actually very good.
Okay, so you can't swipe through tracks in a pseudo-Cover Flow manner, like you can on other HTC handsets, but you still get a good-looking app, with cover art and clear, simple controls.
There's no option to add cover art to your library through the phone, so you need to make sure you do that manually before copying your music over.
The inclusion of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack means that you can use a decent set of earphones, rather than the bundled HTC headset. Sound quality isn't bad with good earphones – we hooked up a pair of Shure SE530s, and the Smart acquitted itself well in the audio department.
As always, to get the best sound quality you need good source material as well as good earphones, so make sure that your music files are encoded at a high enough bitrate in the first place.
Video isn't quite so impressive though, with the Smart unable to play video files encoded in a higher resolution than the native screen res.
We guess that real-time scaling might be pushing the limits of the processor, but it does mean that unless you encode all your video to the right resolution yourself, you'll have a tough time finding anything that will play. That said, the small, low resolution screen doesn't really lend itself to watching video anyway.
Codec support is nothing special, with AAC, MP3, WMA and WAV being the highlights for audio, although it's worth remembering that DRM encoded files won't play. For video MP4 and 3GP are the most useful supported codecs, but as already mentioned, you'll struggle to find files that will play on the Smart without encoding them yourself.
The Photos app is something of a strange beast. When you swipe across to it you're greeted with what looks like a pile of photos, with the top picture viewable.
However, when you try to swipe up or down to reveal the next picture, you realise that it's not possible – basically all you can see is that top photo and if you want to see any more, you have to drop into a traditional list of albums.
Finally, there's the built-in FM tuner, and as usual, how useful this is will depend on how good the reception is in your area. We found that we were lucky if we could pickup one or two stations, but that's not limited to the Smart – we've yet to see any other handset do better in this area.
One advantage that the Smart does have over its more fully-featured siblings is battery life. Whereas as super-smartphones like the HTC Desire struggle to last a day and a half on a full charge, the Smart was still alive and kicking after three days without charging.
For anyone who likes to travel light when they go away for the weekend, not needing to carry a phone charger will be a major bonus. Of course having no Wi-Fi, and no calendar, contact and email data being pushed to the Smart no doubt helps the battery life cause.
There's not too much to talk about when it comes to apps and programs, and there's no way to add to what is included either.
The most important bundled app for the social media junkie will be HTC's Friend Stream, which collates your Facebook and Twitter contacts in one place, making it easier to keep track of what your 'friends' are up to.
Other than that, there's an alarm clock, which is handy, but the absence of both stopwatch and timer functionality is a big disappointment. There's a Flashlight app that switches on the LED camera flash to illuminate your situation – this is a good use of the rear mounted LED because it's pretty useless as a camera flash!
There's no map app, which again is a shame. Okay, so there's no GPS receiver inside the Smart, but then the first generation iPhone didn't have GPS either and Google Maps was one of the most useful apps on it.
Hopefully Qualcomm will implement mapping software into Brew sometime soon, because once you're used to having interactive maps in your pocket all the time, you really don't want to be without them.
The HTC Smart may not be as feature packed or as exciting as the Desire, Legend, or even the HD Mini, but then it was never meant to be. This is a phone that's supposed to appeal to the average consumer who hasn't jumped on the smartphone bandwagon yet, and on many levels it fulfils that brief.
The Brew platform isn't as fluid, slick or usable as Android, but HTC Sense makes the user interface pretty tolerable. The strong battery life will also endear the Smart to many, especially considering that high-end smartphones struggle in this department.
We liked
The HTC Smart is a lovely size, much like the HD Mini before it. Not only is it small and light enough to sit in your pocket unnoticed, but it also fits in the hand far more comfortably than larger smartphones.
Being free on even the cheapest contracts makes the Smart very attractive for anyone looking to dip their toe in the smartphone waters. It's even affordable as a prepay handset.
Battery life is excellent, and you'll be able to leave your charger in the office without fear of running out of juice over the weekend.
It's always good to see the memory card slot accessible without having to remove the battery – if only HTC had adopted a similar design on the Desire!
We disliked
The low resolution, resistive screen is the biggest indicator of the Smart's budget roots. If you really want to know what's so great about capacitive, multi-touch screens, try using the Smart, then use the Desire or Legend, or the iPhone.
Not being able to sync your contacts and calendar over the air is a major minus point for the Smart.
The lack of Wi-Fi is also a big disappointment, and means that you need to rely on network data coverage for everything.
That reliance on network data coverage isn't helped by the fact that the Smart only supports HSDPA up to speeds of 3.6mbps.
The 3MP camera suffers from appalling shutter lag and has a habit of blowing out the highlights on any shots that you do manage to get. Video recording is limited to 320 x 240 resolution, so is only really good for watching on the device itself.
Verdict
We can see why HTC has decided to bring the Smart to market, but in its quest to keep costs down, the company has simply made too many compromises.
There's no denying that the Smart looks good, but underneath that compact and attractive case, there simply isn't enough substance. HTC Sense does its best to paper over the limitations of the hardware, but it only goes so far.
The screen is probably the biggest disappointment, but not in the way it looks so much as the way it works. The plastic, resistive touchscreen feels dated, clumsy and generally unresponsive.
HTC should be applauded for making the QWERTY keyboard so usable, despite the screen, but that's not enough to make a great user experience.
The lack of Wi-Fi, inability to sync data over the air and the generally awful web browsing experience all add up to a smartphone that's lacking in many key areas.
Even if you're more concerned with media than data, the camera struggles to take a decent picture and video playback is mediocre at best, assuming you encode a file in the right resolution in the first place. Music playback is good, but no better than most other phones these days.
Yes, the Smart is cheap for a brand new smartphone, but considering you can pickup an HTC Hero for free on entry level contracts too, it's hard to recommend the Smart. Although the Legend and the Desire clearly live up to that slogan, the Smart just isn't quietly brilliant.
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Review: Acoustic Energy Radiance 2
Acoustic Energy's new Radiance 2 model certainly looks the business, from its high-tech DXT tweeter waveguide at the top, down to the substantial and properly engineered outriggers around the base that keep the whole thing from tipping over too easily.
It's also wrapped up in an admittedly rather utilitarian real-wood veneer, all of which seems to represent pretty good value for money at £1,000 for the pair.
Pick of the bunch
The '2' is the middle of three Radiance models and the last to come under Hi-Fi Choice scrutiny. That's because it came rather later to the market, which in turn implies that the engineers spent a little more time refining the design.
In fact, it took at least three years to bring the original Radiance models to market and the extra year spent developing and refining this Radiance 2 model would seem to have been time well spent, even though its similarity to the larger Radiance 3 and smaller Radiance 1 is close and unmistakeable.
However, whereas the Radiance 3 (and for that matter its much less costly Aelite 3 cousin) is a three-way design with twin 160-millimetre bass-only drivers and the Radiance 1 is a simple two-way standmount, this Radiance 2 splits the difference by operating in a two-and-a-halfway configuration.
It has two 130mm drivers, each using 95mm diameter metal alloy cones with AE's characteristic 'pointy' integral dust cover. The upper drive unit operates as a bass/mid unit here, while the lower one just provides some extra bass weight. Both units are separately loaded by their own ported sub-enclosures, the bass-only driver by a front port and the bass/mid unit by a port located high up on the rear.
Although no mention is made in the manual, if the room match at the bass end proves less than ideal, it would clearly be feasible to re-tune the bottom end by blocking one or other (or both) ports.
The cone drive units have undergone considerable development from those used in earlier Acoustic Energy ranges. FEA modelling has enabled the breakup points to be moved to substantially higher frequencies while at the same time reducing the moving mass.
The magnetic motor design has been improved to increase sensitivity and reduce harmonic distortion and thermal compression. The tweeter – common to all three Radiance models – is one of those 'ring radiator' devices, a design that provides termination for both the inside and the outside of a 38mm soft fabric annular diaphragm.
GOOD VIBRATIONS: The uniquely designed cast-alloy outrigger spiked feet are constructed to enhance the performance of the Radiance 2 by providing a vibration-free footing
This is loaded at the front by the DXT lens to smooth the power response through the crossover region and treble proper.Fed from twin-terminal pairs, the crossover network is deliberately kept as simple as possible.
Curvaceous body
The enclosure has attractive and functional curved sides and front edges and is finished in either pale or dark real (albeit rather anonymous) wood veneer. Crucially, it sits on substantial cast alloy outrigger spiked feet that ensure fine mechanical stability. Proper 8mm spikes with real lock-nuts provide good floor coupling.
The construction involves forming the curved sides by filleting the inside of the 15mm MDF panels with closely spaced, deep grooves. This allows the curved shape to be formed, increasing damping but reducing rigidity. Structural integrity is then restored by a horizontal partition that creates the separate chambers for each cone drive unit.
The curved sides are both fashionable and functional, helping disperse internal reflections and avoid generating focused horizontal standing waves. The grille is held by magnets hidden beneath the veneer, so it may be left off without revealing unsightly mounting lugs.
Beautiful balance
While there are some grounds for criticism here and there, our overall reaction to this speaker is very positive, verging on outright enthusiasm. Perhaps reflecting its extended development time, this middle model has the best overall tonal balance of the three Radiance products – not perfect, but close enough for the majority of listeners.
Add to that an enclosure that's clearly well founded, notably free from boxiness and capable of resolving a wide dynamic range, and you're left with a speaker that does very little wrong and most things rather well.
The sound as a whole has a beautifully balanced and voiced midband, with just a touch of nasal coloration audible on speech, but a good sense of overall coherence. There is a touch of timesmear and chestiness, which seems to be an endemic feature of two-and-a-halfway designs, probably because of the way rolling off the bass only driver adds a touch of timesmear through the lower registers.
Unlike many small speakers, however, the Radiance 2 has a realistic warmth through the bass region. And although those two small drive units are never going to deliver a huge amount of serious bass welly and weight, what there is remains convincing enough, with well-judged average output level, if not the smoothest delivery.
Space and air
Although the speaker is physically quite short, placing the drive units a little below seated ear height, the stereo imaging is still attractively spacious, enhanced by the impressive freedom from boxiness. Superior dynamic range, fine focus and delicacy, a sweet top end and a mostly smooth midband, all help deliver a good sense of air and space and the soundstage shows no tendency to hang around the boxes.
Depth perspectives are well portrayed, especially on choral recordings that are accompanied by a large and believable acoustic. The enclosures are particularly effective at eliminating boxy effects and enhancing the dynamic range.
Low level cabinet noise, which can often obscure fine detail at the low end of the dynamic range, seems exceptionally well-controlled here and the result is a speaker that sounds impressively 'clean'. However, although the dynamic range is unusually wide, the actual dynamic behaviour does fall a little short. Music is driven along with decent pace, but the bass lacks a little grip and tension compared to the best.
The sweet and smooth top end, supplying plenty of subtle detail without ever seeming to draw attention to itself, provides fine vindication for both the choice of tweeter and the effectiveness of the DXT waveguide.
It does indeed seem a shame that the Radiance 2 didn't get the chance to go head-to-head with our group test contenders, as it's clearly a very competitive prospect. The tonal balance is very well-judged, the dynamic range is wide and stereo images are well formed.
The veneer work might not be the prettiest, but the provision of proper and substantial floor-coupling outriggers is a major and very worthwhile bonus.
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Review: Rives Audio Parametric Adaptive Room Compensation (PARC)
Novelty is a bit of a moveable feast. A CD player can still have novelty interest if it uses a new DAC chip or a different kind of output circuit. The PARC, though, is something quite unlike any product we've reviewed in Hi-Fi Choice before.
It's a room correction unit, and it's true we've seen the odd one or two of these, but it works in a very different way from any other we're aware of. Indeed it's a little ironic that several years after the first digital room correction devices, this is the first analogue one.
What it does
The idea of using an analogue filter, or rather a set of them, to compensate for room acoustics is ancient – that was always one of the justifications of tone controls. Crude filters like those, however, seldom accomplished anything really useful and it was always guesswork setting up.
Two significant factors ensure that this is a lot more useful. First, it is a sophisticated parametric filter bank, with centre frequency, width and depth adjustable for three separate bands, on each channel independently.
Second, it relies on using computer aided measurement of the room and sound system to determine the settings required. In other words, it does pretty much what digital systems do, but without the automatic programming of filter characteristics and, significantly, without any necessity to turn the audio signal into analogue form at any point.
Inside the box are two identical boards, one for each channel, containing enough op-amps and digitally programmable potentiometers to construct the filters, which can be quite simply programmed from the front panel with centre frequency, width and depth of attenuation.
Nuts and bolts
The easiest way to set this up is with the matching BARE software, which runs on a PC, using an attached measurement microphone. It's not the only way, however, and Rives supplies a suitable test disc for use with the widely available Radio Shack sound-pressure level meter. You could also use the XTZ Audio Analyser which we reviewed a couple of issues ago.
In practical terms, the PARC (that's Parametric Adaptive Room Compensation, by the way) sits between pre and power amplifiers, or in the tape loop of an integrated. It has balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs and operates at the usual line level.
It's beautifully constructed, in dual mono apart from the mains transformer, robustly housed and easy to operate, with three memories so you can try different settings without losing your original parameters.
Room mate
Having taken a bit of trouble to set up our PARC, we were struck by two things. First, in 'bypass' mode (no filtering active) it is admirably transparent. Its effect on the sound is barely noticeable, as one would hope – maybe imaging is minutely reduced but that's about it.
Second, it's quite hard to evaluate quickly because it has an effect on the subjective loudness, with most (not all) music. That's hardly surprising, of course, but it means one has to listen for a while to establish that this is indeed a very beneficial unit. As a result, sound is clearer all round and better timed.
Magic space
Overall this is a very impressive piece of kit. It won't work magic on bad rooms and Rives sensibly suggests that acoustic measures are taken before set up.
With care, though, it can give a real lift to an already decent system and, as such, is very good value.
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Smartphones fuelling AMOLED explosion
The massive increase in the use of smartphones is expected to make the need for AMOLED screens increase to 600 million by 2015, according to Samsung.
Samsung recently stated that it would be investing in a new OLED production line, and the Korean giant has now talked about some of the reasoning behind that decision.
According to the Lee Woo-jong, Samsung's vice president of marketing, the need for OLED screens is still far in excess of production, and that is likely to continue.
Very strong
"Demand for high-end displays is very strong and we may continue to fail to meet all customer requirements, even after expanding capacity by seven-fold, until next year," Lee told the Reuters Global Technology summit
"Strong growth of smartphones will drive robust expansion in the AMOLED market, which we expect to grow by 30 times to 600 million units by 2015 when shipments of mobile devices are expected to grow to 2.6 billion units," Lee added.
"We welcome competition and the industry needs more major players to grow this market, which is likely to expand application segments to other areas such as tablet PCs and TVs eventually."
Samsung's AMOLED production is now apparently trading at break even – proving that the expensive technology could well become a hugely profitable market.
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Google takes on Apple's iTunes-in-the-cloud
A new music streaming service set to arrive soon, following Google's recent purchase of music streaming specialists Simplify Media, was one of the more interesting announcements made at this week's Google I/O developer event in San Francisco.
In addition to the higher-profile announcements surrounding Google TV and Android 2.2, Google also outlined its plans to take on Apple's dominance of the online and digital music industry, using Simplify's tech to offer Android users the opportunity to buy music online and have it automatically synced and streamed to their mobile phone.
In addition to this, users will be able to access all the digital music that they own and store on their hard drives on their PCs at home – very much like you can already do if you own and use Simplify's wonderful iPhone app (which disappeared from the App Store with little fanfare following the company's acquisition by Google).
Apple in LaLa land
In turn, Apple's recent purchase of LaLa – which will soon let users do very much the same thing, streaming music from their home PC to their iPods or iPhones – is a clear indicator of the future direction of how digital music will be licensed, purchased and distributed.
The only real question now about the cloud-based plans that Apple has for iTunes is simply this - "when are they going to announce them?"
Another Android-based music streaming service called mSpot, was also demonstrated to industry and press at this week's I/O event, showing that Google is certainly more than open to healthy competition in this space.
mSpot is currently in a private, invitation-only beta and is set to be launched to the general public next month. Again, the service synchronizes the user's personal music library to the cloud where the user can then access it using any Android mobile or any PC or Mac.
The free version of mSpot will only allow users to store up to 2 gigabytes of music online and the company is planning a 10 gigabyte and 20 gigabyte premium service for $2.99 and $4.99 respectively, for US users initially. Plans for an unlimited storage option are still to be finalised.
Providing compelling experiences
mSpot CEO Daren Tsui said: "We recognize that portability is key to a compelling music experience for consumers, and the biggest challenge for music cloud services to tackle today. mSpot has spent the past five years perfecting its proprietary over-the-air delivery technology so music plays from the cloud so fast it feels local - even when cell coverage is spotty or non-existent."
Google's own music-streaming-on-the-go plans are based around one objective – to make syncing music to multiple devices as easy as possible for non-techie music fans. As such, the demo that Google showed off highlighted how you will be able to purchase a tune using your PC and have it automatically added to your Android device – with no need to even install extra apps to your mobile or to sync it with messy wires to your PC.
It's a compelling proposition, although details on Google's deals with any of the major labels are still to be revealed. And, of course, Apple has the 'elephant in the corner of the room' in the shape of its immense iTunes music store. Will Google create its own store? Or will it partner with others such as Amazon or 7digital? All of these questions are still to be answered.
It is also unclear where these latest developments will leave current music streaming services such as Spotify and We7. TechRadar has contacted contacted Spotify, We7, 7digital and Apple for further comment on these latest developments in the digital music distribution industry – so stay tuned for updates on progress as an when we get them.
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In Depth: Android 2.2 features: more HTML5, fastest mobile browser
Android 2.2, codenamed Froyo, will be up to five times faster at running apps and three times faster at browsing.
That's according to Vice President for Google engineering Vic Gundotra told at the Google IO conference.
Froyo will also let you use the camera and voice recognition in the browser and it has new services that developers can use to make more powerful apps.
And you'll be able to find and install apps more easily from the Android marketplace.
The performance improvements in Android 2.2 for apps and in the browser both come from just-in-time compilers; apps speed up because the Dalvik virtual machine they run on speeds up Java with a just-in-time Java compiler.
SPEEDY: How much faster Android 2.2 is on various common benchmarks
Web pages run faster because the Android browser has the same V8 JavaScript engine as Chrome. "We think we can claim Froyo has the fastest mobile browser," said Gundotra; he also demonstrated games running faster on Froyo than on the current Éclair version of Android, with frame rates between 11 and 25 per cent better.
More support for HTML 5 and Flash
The Froyo browser has more HTML 5 features; Gundotra emphasised the ones that let the browser access hardware features like the accelerometer for rotating the screen, the camera for taking photos in web apps like Buzz, and the microphone.
With Google's voice recognition and translation services, web apps will let you search the web, tell your phone what to do or get a (rather basic) translation of what you need to say into another language.
He called looking up the details of a restaurant and phoning them by saying 'call fifth floor restaurant' an intention and said Android would give you "more intentions" in the future – like changing the channel on Google TV by talking to your phone. The new version also finally supports Bluetooth voice dialling.
You'll also be able to use Flash in the browser. "We also have the world's most comprehensive browser," said Gundotra. "It turns out on the web, people use Flash and part of being open means you're inclusive not exclusive. It's great to work together to serve users; it's much nicer than just saying no."
This comment wasn't only aimed at Apple, he later told TechRadar; "We continue to partner with Apple in many, many areas. What we said was not necessarily directed at Apple only but a very strong theme of the web is openness, inclusion and choice and that's where we stand."
Data in the cloud
Some of the features in Froyo will have to be built into new apps, like the ability to back up not just the device but also the data inside applications and the cloud messaging service.
"This is much more than a push notification service designed to make up for a lack of basic features like multitasking," said Gundotra and used it to demonstrate sending directions from Google Maps on the desktop directly to the phone.
This is also the way the next version of the Android Marketplace will let you send apps (and possibly music) directly to your phone over the air; Andy Rubin, the engineering VP who started Android, told TechRadar this was a "sneak peek" and didn't mean Android Marketplace would necessarily compete with the ITunes Store.
Gundotra also demonstrated streaming (non DRM) music from a desktop PC to the phone (as long as the PC is switched on); again he later told us this is a "future capability".
Ads will also be able to link directly to apps in the Android Marketplace and download them to the phone. You'll finally be able to install apps onto the SD card (developers can set apps to automatically install to SD or you can leave the OS to device which apps should go there) and you can choose to update all or selected apps automatically, or on demand.
Google has also added features to appeal to businesses; Android 2.2 will be easier to plug into Exchange, it will sync calendars as well as email and companies will be able to set security policies and wipe a phone remotely.
You'll be able to tether some Android 2.2 phones and use it as a modem or as a portable hotspot; Gundotra demonstrated using this to get a Wi-Fi iPad online but he told TechRadar later that this will need operators to enable it in data plans. "The carrier has to be supportive - this is not something you can do without their support."
HOTSPOT: You can use Android 2.2 to get an iPad on 3G – if your operator and data plan allow
Developers get the tools to build apps for Froyo for today; Android 2.2 is coming "soon" and some devices will get updates "within the coming weeks".
But Andy Rubin told us that although Google can offer over-the-air updates, "Porting the OS back to legacy hardware is really, really difficult - historically it's never been done. You have 200, 300, 400MHz processors trying to run apps that are meant for gigahertz processors, so you do what you can."
Despite the success of iPad, Google isn't pushing Android specifically for tablets but Rubin told us "What we showed on stage today was a small three-point-something-inch screen and a 55-inch TV; obviously there's a lot of screen sizes in between and I can imagine a lot of companies coming out with devices in between.
"I've seen Android in ebook readers; I've seen it in microwave ovens… I'm delighted every time I see Android in a device I didn't expect it in."
NEW WIZARD: Froyo has a new wizard that helps you work with widgets, shortcuts and multiple home screens
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Sony and Logitech Google TV products announced
Sony will be launching a range of televisions and a Blu-ray player with Google TV built in, with Logitech also producing a device for the internet television project.
With Google TV set to launch in Autumn 2010, in the US at least, it will be Sony and Logitech that release the first devices.
Intel is providing the Atom-based chipsets for Google TV, which is aiming to being web functionality to the television set.
Sony
Google announced at its I/O conference that Sony would be releasing a range of televisions and a Blu-ray player with its Google TV brought in.
Howard Stringer, Chairman, President and CEO, Sony Corporation said, "I am delighted to announce the unique alignment of Google's rapidly growing, open source Android platform with Sony's unparalleled expertise in the field of TV design and technology.
"The addition of 'Sony Internet TV' will further bolster Sony's comprehensive TV lineup and will fuse new levels of enjoyment and interactivity into the TV experience."
Logitech
Logitech will release a companion box which will plug into existing setups and incorporate Logitech's Harmony remote control technology, and will include a controller that combines keyboard and remote control capabilities.
"The company also has plans to introduce an HDTV camera and video chat for Google TV, along with additional choices for navigation and control, including apps to turn a smart phone into an advanced controller for Google TV and home-entertainment systems."
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