Hasta La Gadget!

Motorola’s Droid 3 comes with business-friendly features, much like RIM’s BlackBerry phones. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The BlackBerry has been seen as the device of choice for business-savvy types for more than a decade. Motorola wants to change that.

As the latest iteration of Motorola’s Droid-branded devices, the Droid 3 caters to the professional crowd. With its pre-loaded QuickOffice software and slide-out keyboard, it’s meant for those accustomed to doing more on their phone than just playing Angry Birds. After we spent some time with a test device, we’re ready to get to work.

Immediately noticeable is the phone’s physical bulk. Like its two predecessors, the Droid 3 is chunky, almost an electronic brick in your pocket. Granted, at .50 inches thick, it’s slimmer than both previous generations of the model (though only by four-hundredths of a millimeter). Couple the bulk with hard lines and a squared-off design, and you’ve got a phone that’s an enemy of most pants pockets.

But Motorola isn’t aiming for your jeans. It’s a professional’s device fit for a blazer pocket, complete with the full Qwerty keyboard that so many white-collared BlackBerry users know and love. The idea is to move those with older generations of corporate-friendly RIM phones — people reluctant to change devices for fear of change — into the Android environment. I fired off a few e-mails on the keyboard with relative ease; the raised buttons make quite a difference for typing compared to the flat ones of the first Droid phone.

While the keyboard itself is nice, the slider mechanism leaves us wanting. It’s a bit sluggish, as if there’s something stuck between the two halves of the phone. Unfortunately, it’s nothing like the snappy, responsive slider on Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play.

There’s another big draw for the U.S. business crowd that does any overseas traveling. The phone comes with a SIM card, allowing for calls in countries outside of the states. The SIM runs on the Vodafone network, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. That means you’ll have cellular capabilities in over 200 countries. There’s one catch: Data roaming charges outside of the states could cost you over 20 buck per megabyte. But if you’re on the corporate dime, who cares?

The Droid 3’s waist size may have shrunk, but its screen certainly hasn’t. Motorola added an extra .3 inches to the screen size, measuring in at an admirable 4 inches of real estate. It’s more than enough space to view movies and photos, especially on the qHD screen.

Speaking of photos, the 8-megapixel back-facing camera takes rather good ones. I shot a few indoor photos, and the flash worked well in grabbing details under low light conditions. The phone also comes with a front-facing camera, which takes decent enough pictures, and can be used for video chat.

Another big difference from previous Droid models: The Droid 3 comes sporting a dual-core 1-GHz processor, a trend amongst powerful smartphones debuting this year. Unfortunately it’s only backed up by 512 MB of RAM, but we didn’t run into any problems running apps.

Overall, we think it’s a solid phone at first glance. Whether or not it will usurp the BlackBerry, however, remains to be seen.

Not every smartphone needs to be a Samsung Galaxy S II. There’s plenty of room in the market for a reliable workhorse that delivers smooth productivity and media without maxing out your credit limit. The Xperia Neo aspires to precisely this grounded ambition, selling for £320 ($515) off-contract in the UK (or free on contract from £20 per month), versus £400 ($650) for its bigger-screened sibling, the Xperia Arc. For the money, you’ll get a Gingerbread handset with a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 processor, 8 megapixel camera, and a 3.7-inch (854×480) display. The Neo rides a not-so-fine line — it can be a trusty companion at best, or a cause of daily teeth-grinding at worst. Let’s find out why.

Continue reading Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo review

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After being available on the iPad for over a year, SketchBook Pro finally makes its way to Android Honeycomb tablets. Photo courtesy of Autodesk

Autodesk, most well known as creator of the popular 3-D design software AutoCAD, on Tuesday will announce the debut of its SketchBook Pro drawing application for Android tablets, the company has told Wired.com.

SketchBook Pro, essentially a digital canvas and brush set, allows you to use both your fingers and aftermarket styluses to create illustrations and designs. Included are over 60 different brush tools, the ability to create up to six different layers for one file, as well as the ability to export files to Photoshop.

The app was previously available on iPhone, iPad and Android phone devices, as well as in an expanded desktop version. This is the first version of the app that will run on Android’s tablet-optimized software, a.k.a. Honeycomb.

“In this world, size matters,” said Chris Cheung, senior product manager of SketchBook products, in an interview. “There’s this kind of different engagement — while phones are convenient and fit in your pocket, they aren’t the same experience as using the app while holding something the size of an actual sketchbook.”

The app’s tablet release is a timely one. Tablet manufacturers are trying hard to differentiate their hardware from others on the market, occasionally offering a stylus pen to complement a device. HTC’s Flyer tablet, which debuted earlier this year, was the first major Android tablet launch to include a stylus. And if This Is My Next blogger Joanna Stern’s sources are to be believed, we may soon see a tablet from Lenovo that includes a stylus as well. If so, Autodesk could potentially ride a wave of stylus-bundled Android devices to further popularity.

Though the software isn’t exactly a sleeper. Autodesk says SketchBook Pro has already been downloaded over 5 million times across all available platforms.

The company has more than just armchair artists in its sights. Cheung says the software caters to both amateur illustrators as well as established professionals in the design industry. Take Helmut Jahn, a 76-year-old architect and self-avowed technophobe, for instance. Jahn says after discovering the app on the iPad, he uses it for “90 percent of the drawings he makes while on the road,” according to a recent Chicago Business profile.

“It doesn’t remove the need for professionals and high end tools,” Cheung stresses. “But it basically almost level-sets the access to the technology. Effectively, we have these treasures that bring creativity to the masses.”

Of course, the artistic tablet software field isn’t solely populated by Autodesk. Famed Creative Suite makers Adobe recently debuted three apps for the iPad, all of which work in conjunction with Photoshop on the PC. Using the Eazel, Lab and Lava apps, you can finger paint, select Photoshop tools and mix colors, transferring results from iPad to PC instantaneously.

The biggest sea change rests in the app’s utility, rather than the new platform on which it will appear. Since the iPad’s debut, consumer tablet devices have typically been seen as content consumption devices, readymade for movie viewing and game playing. With applications like SketchBook Pro and Adobe’s new tools showing up on tablets, there’s more of an emphasis on content production occurring on novel forms, outside of the traditional desktop environment.

The app will be available through the Android Market for $5 to users running Android version 3.0 and up on their tablets. If you want to try before you buy, there’s also a free (though less feature-rich) version available for Android phones.

Check out the clip below to see SketchBook Pro for Android tablets in action.

There were some mumblings that T-Mobile’s OG Galaxy Tab would come packing a Micro SIM, but that rumor never came to pass. Now a similar tale is being spun about Verizon’s LTE-sporting Galaxy Tab 10.1. Android Central got its green, fingerless arms on a purported image of Big Red training docs that reveals the Honeycomb slate will not use the standard-sized 4G SIMs found in the Thunderbolt, Droid Charge, Revolution — instead, it will come stuffed with a tiny 3FF card. The company has already made it abundantly clear that there will be no LTE roaming with its devices, perhaps now it’s trying to discourage users from swapping a single SIM between a phone and tablet to save cash. Or, maybe Samsung chose the format due to space constraints. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see — which hopefully won’t be much longer.

Verizon’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 may pack Micro SIMs, force Charge owners to break out the scissors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Droid 3 disassembled by iFixit Jawas originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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