AllThingsD » Personal Technology

Power Testing: Can Two New Laptops Really Last All Day?

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:03:20 +0000

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Most consumers pay little or no attention to the processors and other chips that power their computers, and rightly so. In recent years, changes to the design of these chips haven’t made major, noticeable differences in everyday computing tasks.

But this month, chip giant Intel introduced a new generation of processors and chips that it claims can dramatically improve something important to almost all users of light laptops: Battery life. In fact, it claims these chips, called the 4th Generation Core processors, can boost battery life by 50 percent while actually improving graphics performance. Intel says the new chips are the first it has designed specifically for the slim, light laptops Windows PC makers call Ultrabooks and Apple calls its MacBook Air line.

The Sony Vaio’s optional second battery clips to the bottom of the laptop, roughly doubles its battery life and boosts its weight to about 3 pounds.

These new processors, code-named “Haswell” before the release, have been eagerly awaited for months in an industry that has seen laptop sales suffer at the hands of tablets, partly because tablets typically boast much longer battery life. They have now begun to appear in some computers and this week I tested just the battery life of two new models equipped with these new chips. I focused on battery life since that is a huge factor for many users and Intel says the new chips provide its biggest battery-life gain ever.

For my tests, I chose the latest MacBook Air, introduced last week. The Air is the leading slim and light laptop in the U.S. According to research firm NPD, it outsold all Windows Ultrabooks combined in U.S. retail sales for the first four months of this year. I also took a look at an entirely new Windows Ultrabook, the Sony Vaio Pro 13, a handsome, even lighter laptop with a touchscreen to accommodate Microsoft’s touch-centric Windows 8 operating system.

In my tests, I was able to largely confirm Intel’s battery-life claims. This was especially true of the 13-inch MacBook Air I evaluated, whose battery life in my test jumped 65 percent from my last test of the machine, even though it hasn’t been significantly redesigned, except for the inclusion of the new Intel chips, faster Wi-Fi and solid-state storage and a slightly more potent battery. It has become a computer capable of all-day use when performing typical tasks, even though its dimensions and 3-pound weight are unchanged.

Because the 13-inch Sony is new, I couldn’t compare it with a prior test, but my results were generally in line with Sony’s claims. Out of the box, the 2.34-pound Sony delivers significantly less battery life than the Air, but with an optional second battery that clips to the underside of the machine, its battery life roughly doubles, while its weight grows to be about the same as that of the Air.

In addition to their impressive battery life, both computers equipped with the midrange i5 model of Intel’s line offered the speedy performance Intel promises and resumed from sleep almost instantaneously.

Their major downside is price. Although Apple cut the price of the upgraded 13-inch Air by $100, it still starts at $1,099 for a configuration with 4 gigabytes of memory and 128 gigabytes of solid-state storage. The 13-inch Sony, with the same memory and storage, is $1,250, and its optional second battery brings the price to $1,400.

These prices are much higher than the $600 to $800 Windows buyers have traditionally spent on a well-equipped laptop, but as the new Intel processors spread throughout the industry, there are likely to be less expensive models.

Without getting into the technical details of chip design, Intel explains it achieved the gains by making numerous tweaks to the power demands of its chips in both their “active states,” when the user is performing a task, and the frequent “idle state” when, however briefly, the demands on the chips drop dramatically. In addition, Intel has squeezed all the components onto a single piece of silicon, reducing the power needed for them to interact.

Apple, which unlike Sony controls its own operating system, said it also made many tiny software tweaks that reduced power usage without sacrificing performance. For instance, it was able to cut the power needed to play a video in iTunes, yet I noticed no degradation in the quality or playback smoothness of the same video played on the previous and new models.

For these tests, I used the same tough laptop battery test I’ve used for years. I disable all power-saving features, crank the screen brightness to 100 percent, leave on the Wi-Fi to collect email in the background and play an endless loop of music until the computer loses power and shuts off.

For the new 13-inch MacBook Air, Apple claims battery life of up to 12 hours. In my tests, the Air lasted an amazing 10 hours and 14 minutes, the longest any single-battery laptop I’ve reviewed has ever gone and about what an iPad gets. In more normal use, with power-saving turned on and the screen at 75 percent brightness, I estimate you could get well over 11 hours, nearing the company’s 12-hour boast. That compares with the last MacBook Air test I performed, which yielded a result of 6 hours and 13 minutes, and which I estimated could meet Apple’s claim at the time of 7 hours of battery life.

Sony claims 6½ hours of battery life out of the box for the 13-inch Vaio Pro and in my test it lasted 5 hours and 56 minutes. I estimate you could meet or even exceed Sony’s claim in normal use.

In a second test with the second $150 battery attached, the Sony lasted 11 hours and 52 minutes, compared with Sony’s claim of up to 13 hours. In normal use, I estimate you could approach that 13-hour mark.

Bottom line: Intel has pulled off a major gain in battery life with its new 4th-Generation processor, and I recommend you look for one with these new chips if you’re shopping for a light, thin, mobile laptop.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

A Windows Laptop With an Apple Price, but Less Juice

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:03:48 +0000

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Laptop sales have been tanking as tablets surge. The new Windows 8 is off to a slow start with users. And the hybrid machines that claim to work as both tablets and laptops are still niche products. So what’s a laptop maker to do?

Well, most Windows laptop companies are promising to spend this year driving prices down, while continuing to experiment with better hybrid designs. But not Toshiba. The venerable Japanese firm has decided to go upscale, introducing an all-new brand of conventional 13-inch laptops that are positioned as premium products, with prices starting at $1,600.

That over-$1,000 market has long been the territory of Apple. But Toshiba figures it can offer buyers with deep pockets the Windows equivalent of Apple’s popular and much-praised MacBook Air, with premium materials, strong specs and a good warranty. It’s called the Kirabook, part of a new Toshiba brand called Kira.

I’ve been testing a Kirabook for the past five days and I found it to be a good computer whose strongest feature is a brilliant, high-resolution screen. It’s a speedy and reliable machine that’s thin and light without feeling cheap.

The Kirabook’s strongest feature is its high-resolution screen. It’s speedy, thin and light without feeling cheap.

But I consider it overpriced for what it offers. It actually costs more than a MacBook Air, but with much worse battery life, an older processor and a design that looks like a lot of other grayish, metallic laptops.

There are three models. The top one, which costs $2,000, is distinguished mainly by its use of a very fast processor that average consumers won’t need. The other two models are identical, except the entry-level offering, at $1,600, has a standard, non-touchscreen. The middle model, at $1,800, which I tested, has a touchscreen.

The MacBook Air also has a non-touchscreen, but that’s because its operating system, Mac OS X Mountain Lion, isn’t designed for touchscreens. By contrast, Windows 8 is a touch-centric operating system, and I don’t recommend consumers buying Windows 8 computers to opt for non-touchscreens. So the least expensive Kirabook that works optimally with its operating system costs $1,800.

How do those prices compare with Apple’s, which have traditionally been higher than those of most Windows PCs?

Well, the base $1,600 Kirabook with the non-touchscreen includes a generous 8 gigabytes of memory and a 256 GB solid-state drive. The base 13-inch MacBook Air, whose price was cut $100 just Monday, costs $1,099. But when configured with the same amount of memory and solid-state storage, it costs $1,399, still about $200 less than the non-touch Kirabook and $400 less than the touchscreen model.

The two machines each weigh a hair under 3 pounds and are roughly 0.7-inch thick, though the Toshiba is a bit thicker. It also has a smaller footprint. The Kirabook has a magnesium alloy body that Toshiba claims is 100 percent stronger than the aluminum used for the body of the Air.

The Kirabook’s biggest advantage is its high-res screen. It is almost as sharp as the one on Apple’s higher-end 13-inch laptop, the MacBook Pro with Retina display. That MacBook starts at $1,499 and is $1,699 when configured with the same memory and storage as the Kirabook. The Kirabook’s screen resolution is so high that text can get uncomfortably small. I was forced to use a built-in Toshiba utility to actually lower the resolution a bit for this reason.

The Kirabook has three USB ports to the Air’s two, and Toshiba throws in a two-year warranty, while Apple’s standard warranty is just one year. The Kirabook also has an HDMI port, for easy connection to a TV, which the Apple lacks.

In addition to its high price, the biggest downsides of the Kirabook are Windows 8, whose two very different user interfaces can be confusing; mediocre battery life; and the fact it uses older processors.

By contrast, as of Monday, the MacBook Air uses the latest Intel processors, just out, which promise huge increases in battery life and better graphics. The Kirabooks aren’t due to be upgraded to these new chips till the fourth quarter.

These new processors and battery life are closely linked. Apple claimed this week that, with the new chips, the 13-inch MacBook Air can get up to 12 hours of battery life between charges. That isn’t a typo. (Stay tuned for a review of this revamped Air.)

However, even with the same, older Intel chips, the MacBook Air handily beat the Kirabook in battery life. In my tough battery test, where I turn off power-saving features, keep the Wi-Fi on to collect email and play music until the battery dies, the Kirabook lasted four hours and 27 minutes. The MacBook Air rates over six hours on the same test.

Overall, the Toshiba Kirabook is a very nicely built PC, but for its premium price, it ought to have the latest components, more distinctive design and better battery life.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Apps Raise the iPad's Aptitude for Real Work

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 15 May 2013 01:08:44 +0000

There’s a popular myth that Apple’s iPad and other tablets are simply media-consumption devices, unsuitable for productivity applications. That’s just not so, and this week I tested a variety of office suites for the iPad for mini-reviews of their capabilities. In fact, I wrote and edited this entire column on an iPad using the most popular paid iPad app, the $10 Pages word processor by Apple.

[ See post to watch video ]

Not every productivity task is optimally done on tablet software, of course. Writing a plain text document like this one isn’t the same as creating a large, nuanced spreadsheet. For complex documents, I still recommend using a PC or Mac.

And then there’s the problem with typing on a tablet’s virtual keyboard. If you’re going to use your iPad for longer documents, I suggest using a Bluetooth keyboard. I used a physical keyboard to write this, though I usually am fine with the on-screen one.

Despite these caveats, iPads and other tablets are being used every day for productivity tasks once reserved for laptops. Every time you reach for your iPad to read, or tap out, a work-related email, that’s productivity. Every time you make or change a business appointment on an iPad calendar, that’s productivity. And there are way too many tailored productivity and business apps to list here, including apps for salespeople, contractors and doctors.

There’s a major gap, though: Microsoft Office. The software giant doesn’t yet offer a tablet-optimized version. So there are iPad apps that attempt to emulate the features of Office and can import and export files in Microsoft’s Office formats. They generally don’t offer all of the features of Office and don’t always offer perfect fidelity with PC and Mac versions of Office. But I have found they are fine for the basic documents most people create or edit. And all can open and edit Office-type files attached to email, using the iPad’s “Open In…” command. You just touch the attachment icon for a bit longer than usual and a grid of compatible apps to use for editing appears.

Here are my impressions of some of these apps, including AstralPad, from a three-person startup that launched a few months ago. I tested these by doing two things with each. First, I created an identical word-processing document, with text in various styles and a photo, and then exported it to Microsoft Word on a PC and Mac. Then I imported a 23-page PowerPoint file to see if it looked as it did on a PC and Mac.

iWork’s Keynote is built for touch.

iWork

Introduced by Apple at the iPad’s launch in 2010, the touch-version of the company’s office suite is now in its seventh revision. It’s the most touch-friendly of the products I tested and the most transparent about cases where it’s incompatible with Office. Apple even maintains a Web page disclosing incompatibilities. The suite consists of Pages, the Numbers spreadsheet and the Keynote presentation app, which are sold for $10 each.

iWork synchronizes documents as you type them with its cloud-based iCloud service, which can be accessed from any Web browser and can export the files in Office formats. You can email documents in Office format. But unlike many other iPad apps, it lacks built-in access to popular online storage sites like Dropbox and Google Drive.

The suite works well offline, as it stores documents locally as well.

Pages was fastest and easiest at creating my test document, but the document had a misaligned line when I viewed it in Word on a Mac and PC. On the other hand, Keynote on the iPad imported the presentation perfectly.

QuickOffice is fine for simple documents on the iPad.

QuickOffice Pro HD

This Office substitute has been around a long time on various platforms and is fine for simple documents on the iPad. It costs $20 for all three modules in one app. It stores files locally and integrates with many popular cloud-storage services.

However, I couldn’t insert the photo into my test document, and the presentation I imported was formatted wrong.

AstralPad

The newest competitor is merely a window into an office app running on a server. Since the server app is meant for PCs, it has many more features and in some cases, better fidelity, than apps that live on the iPad. It’s free for now, but will soon cost a few dollars a month for more than a limited number of documents.

AstralPad is merely a window into an office app running on a server.

However, the cloud-based program Astral uses isn’t even an actual version of Office, but an open-source clone. And because it’s meant for a mouse, I found it difficult to manipulate, even though Astral has added some touch controls and a virtual mouse.

In addition, it converts files in the current Office document formats into older formats before you can work with the files.

AstralPad has some nice features. It allows you to work with multiple documents simultaneously and to cut and paste between them. And it has video and audio calling for collaboration. It works with cloud-based services and local storage. But it can’t work offline.

It created my test file fine after the company fixed a bug that at first wouldn’t allow me to import a photo. But it didn’t display the presentation file correctly, with overlapping text and pictures.

I found AstralPad to be a work in progress.

CloudOn uses a real, remote copy of Microsoft Office.

CloudOn

Like AstralPad, this is just a window into a server and won’t work offline. But it uses a real, remote copy of Microsoft Office and is free. It was able to create my test document fine and to display my test presentation properly. It also integrates with cloud-based storage. But while it was easier to use than AstralPad, I still found it clumsy to use its PC software on a touch tablet.

Bottom line: None of these iPad office suites is perfect, but you can get basic work done on them that will translate to a computer with little or no effort.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Two Products for People Who Miss the Old Windows

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 08 May 2013 01:03:02 +0000

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The face of Windows 8 — the tablet-like, tile-based Start Screen that comes up every time you start a new PC — is nicely designed and works well on touchscreens. But a lot of people hate it. They do almost all of their computing in the traditional Windows desktop environment, which has been demoted to secondary status in Windows 8. And they are annoyed that Microsoft has replaced the familiar Windows Start Menu with the Start Screen in Windows 8.

That means when you want to launch a new app that isn’t pinned to your taskbar, you have to jump back and forth between the desktop and the Start Screen, two radically different user experiences. It drives some folks crazy. They dearly miss the Start Button, which launched the Start Menu, at the left end of the taskbar.

Microsoft is planning a revision of Windows 8, code-named “Windows Blue,” later this year that may smooth out the interaction between the two interfaces. But there’s been no promise that the company is dumping the Start Screen, refocusing on the desktop or restoring the Start Menu.

If you’re a desktop and Start Menu lover using Windows 8, you don’t have to worry about Microsoft’s plans. That’s because ever since Windows 8 emerged in October, numerous third-party utilities have sprung up that restore the Start Menu, allow you to boot the PC directly into the desktop mode and otherwise reassert the desktop’s primacy over the Start Screen. They essentially allow you to use Windows as you always have.

This week, I tested two of these Start Menu add-ons and found each different, but both effective. If you don’t like these, there are many others to choose from.

Start8

This is a $5 utility I found to be the best I tried at simply restoring the old Start Menu. If the price deters you, there’s a 30-day free trial. Start8 comes from a company called Stardock, which makes utilities and games.

Start8 lets users pin apps to the top of it, show a user picture on it and change the physical Windows key so it launches the Start8 menu instead of the Start Screen.

As soon as I downloaded and installed Start8, the old Start Menu was back. You can choose its taskbar icon — either a Windows 8 logo, the Start8 logo or a custom image, including ones that resemble the Start icons from older versions of Windows. A nicely designed, easy-to-use settings screen allows you to customize many other features of the Start Menu, desktop and computer.

One huge feature is the ability to boot directly into the traditional desktop once you’ve signed into your PC. So you don’t have to see the new Start Screen at all. This essentially makes your Windows 8 PC behave a lot like a Windows 7 machine. Start8 can be configured to look something like Windows 8’s “all apps” view, if you prefer, but I suspect most users will stick to its default Windows 7 style.

The program allows you a host of other choices. You can pin apps to the top of it, show your user picture on it and change the behavior of the physical Windows key so it launches the Start8 menu instead of taking you to the dreaded Start Screen. You also can disable the various new Windows 8 controls that appear when you perform certain swipes or mouse movements.

What if you want to be able to get to the Start Screen quickly and you’ve disabled all the usual ways to do it? Well, Start8’s menu comes by default with a link at the top to the Start Screen and it lets you directly launch the new-style Windows 8 apps.

Start8 worked very well and was worth $5. The company says it has been downloaded five million times since Windows 8 launched. You can download it here.

Pokki

If Start8 recreates the traditional Windows Start Menu, Pokki aims to modernize it. The free product, from a company called SweetLabs, does restore the Start Menu, but with an updated look and feel, as well as a built-in app store.

The free Pokki is a window that lists a user’s program categories and recently used apps on the left, and their favorite apps and an app store in a series of panels on the right.

Pokki is a window that lists your program categories and recently used apps on the left, and favorite apps in a series of panels on the right. These right-hand panels, which you can flip through, resemble the screen of a smartphone or tablet, with apps represented by icons.

The left-hand side is a list, with major categories for Favorites (the smartphone-type view), All Apps and the Control Panel items.

There’s also an app store, which was Pokki’s main business before Windows 8 came along and opened the Start Menu opportunity. The apps Pokki offers are all free and many are like Web apps with the browser interface removed. I downloaded YouTube and Gmail, which behaved exactly as they did in a browser. Pokki hopes to make money from app developers.

When first installed, Pokki advertises its apps at the bottom of the Start Menu, but you can turn this off. You can’t, however, turn off the icon for the Pokki app store itself, though you can move it. Apps you buy from Pokki are automatically pinned to the taskbar, though you can unpin them.

Pokki also has a smartphone-like notification system, that, in my tests, listed new messages in the Gmail app.

Like Start8, Pokki also allows you to boot directly into the desktop, skipping the Start Screen. You can set the Windows key to open Pokki, not the Start Screen.

To get quickly to the Start Screen, Pokki has an icon at the lower left. You can download Pokki here. The company says the product has been downloaded three million times since Windows 8 launched.

Bottom line: Whatever Microsoft does or doesn’t do later this year, you can get back your Start Menu and desktop supremacy in Windows 8, right now, with these utilities.

Email Walt at at mossberg@wsj.com.

Laptop Guide: Timing the Market and the Machines

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 01 May 2013 01:02:42 +0000

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Welcome to my spring laptop buyer’s guide. It should be an easy time for laptop buyers, now that we’re six months past the introduction of Microsoft’s redesigned Windows 8 operating system and laptop makers have had time to get into a new groove. Alas, I’m sorry to report, it’s still pretty confusing and frustrating to buy a new laptop, and it might be best, if you can, to wait until the fall.

After the big buildup in October around Windows 8, laptop makers stumbled. They continued to offer mostly nontouchscreen models, though the new Windows was designed for touch. And the touchscreen models they built were clustered around $1,000, far more than consumers are used to paying for Windows laptops. Plus, Windows 8 itself proved confusing, because it combines two interfaces — the tabletlike “Start Screen” and the traditional Windows desktop.

Two touchscreen models: The Acer Aspire S7, top, and an Asus S200 series model, middle. Bottom, the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air.

Based on conversations with laptop makers and Microsoft, I believe there will be an effort to regroup this fall, with more touchscreen models that are less costly and a forthcoming class of PCs even smaller and thinner than the current slender Ultrabooks. There also will be new chips from Intel that aim to greatly increase battery life and a refined, beefed-up version of Windows 8, code-named Windows Blue, which will be available to current buyers as a free upgrade.

Recent statistics showing massive drops in laptop sales indicate consumers aren’t replacing their computers as often as in the past, partly because they now rely a lot on smartphones and tablets. But some of you will be buying new laptops this spring and summer, so here are some tips on what to look for in a machine. As usual, this guide is meant for average users doing typical tasks, not businesses, or people doing heavy-duty work like video production.

Windows vs. Mac

Apple has led in the touchscreen market, but with phones and tablets, not computers. So its Mac models remain traditional laptops, which don’t use touchscreens. As always, they aren’t cheap: The least expensive Mac laptop is still $999. And they lack the variety of Windows PCs. But the machines are high quality, reliable, versatile computers that are far less susceptible to viruses than Windows PCs and can even run Windows quite well. The light, speedy MacBook Air is a paragon of what a capable laptop should be and I expect Macs to adopt the same new Intel processor coming soon for PCs.

Tablets vs. Laptops

I reject the idea that tablets are only for content consumption, not productivity. Plenty of business is conducted on tablets daily, from work email to reviewing and editing office documents, to using sales and medical apps. Still, heavy-duty work, like the creation of large spreadsheets and presentations, is better done on laptops. If you don’t do such tasks, a tablet may suffice, but most people will want to keep a laptop around, even if they use a tablet.

Touchscreens

On a Windows 8 laptop, I strongly advise consumers to buy machines with touchscreens. The operating system will work with just a mouse or track pad, but it was designed for touch, and Microsoft intends to continue to make the touch-centric Start Screen, with its tabletlike apps, more powerful and versatile. If you only plan to use traditional Windows desktop programs, you can skip touch, but more and more PC software will be for the Start Screen.

Convertibles

In an effort to fend off the attack on laptops from tablets, hardware makers offered a variety of convertible models designed to be both laptops and tablets. Unfortunately, these machines typically made for heavy, thick, expensive tablets. So, until convertibles appear that are thin and light enough to work well as tablets, I suggest you shun these combo devices.

Detachables

These are laptops from which the screen can be detached for use as a true tablet. Unlike convertibles, they work pretty well as a tablet, in addition to functioning as a laptop. One example is the Hewlett-Packard Envy x2, which sells for $600 to $700.

Storage

Windows 8 takes up a lot of storage, so get a laptop with at least 500 gigabytes of hard-disk space, or if it uses a solid-state drive, at least 256GB.

Price

In combing my local Best Buy and Micro Center stores (a smaller, but high-quality chain store), I found most well-equipped, name-brand touchscreen models still hovering between $700 and $1,200. One excellent touchscreen Windows 8 Ultrabook, Acer’s S7, was $1,200 at Micro Center for a 13.3 inch model.

And on May 12, Toshiba will introduce a premium touchscreen Ultrabook, called the Kirabook, starting at $1,800.

There were a few — very few — bargain touchscreen models. At my Best Buy, the least costly Windows 8 touchscreen was the 11.6 inch Asus Q200e for $480. At Micro Center, a similar Asus model, the X202e, was $400 after a $100 rebate.

Bottom Line

For a high-quality, traditional laptop without a touchscreen, you can’t do much better than a MacBook Air, if you have at least $999 to spend. On the Windows side, stick with touchscreens and be prepared to spend nearly as much, or even a bit more. But if you can wait, come back in the fall.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Galaxy S 4 Is a Good, but Not a Great, Step Up

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:03:48 +0000

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Samsung has been on a roll. The success of its many models of smartphones, aided by massive marketing campaigns, has made it by far the leading maker of devices running on Google’s Android operating system and the chief rival to Apple in smartphones. In fact, Samsung is almost as synonymous with Android as Google.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4

Now, the Korean electronics giant is about to launch its latest flagship phone in the U.S., a market where it hasn’t been able to dislodge Apple’s iPhone as the leader. The new model, called the Galaxy S 4, will roll out over the next week at AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, and likely sometime in May at Verizon Wireless.

I’ve been testing the Galaxy S 4 intensively for four days and while I admire some of its features, overall, it isn’t a game-changer. It’s an evolution of the prior model and despite some improvements, it still is especially weak in the software Samsung adds to basic Android. I found Samsung’s software often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional.

I urge readers looking for a new Android smartphone to carefully consider the more polished-looking, and quite capable, HTC One, rather than defaulting to the latest Samsung.

The new Galaxy boasts a giant 5-inch screen, a bit bigger than the 4.8-inch display on its predecessor, but its mostly plastic body is thinner and lighter. It may stretch some small pockets and purses, and look funny when held to your ear, but it doesn’t feel like a brick.

Apple iPhone 5

Still, compared with the iPhone 5, with its 4-inch screen, the S 4 is 30 percent larger and 17 percent heavier. The new Galaxy has a 13-megapixel camera, compared with 8 megapixels for the iPhone 5.

Nearly all Android phones already come with two email apps — one reserved for Google’s Gmail. But on the Galaxy S 4, there are also two online video and music stores, two music and video players, two calendars and two browsers.

Yet out of the box, there’s no camera icon on the lock screen so you can immediately take a picture. (You can add this feature, via the settings menu, in — you guessed it — two different ways.)

Some of Samsung’s new software features worked well. A feature called Air View lets you see expanded information about things like email previews and calendar items by hovering over them with your finger. A multi-window feature splits the screen so you can view two apps at once. But both features only work with certain apps.

I also liked an improved version of Easy Mode, which substitutes the sometimes confusing normal screens and settings panels for simpler ones with larger, cleaner icons and simplified settings.

Another good move: Samsung rewrote the standard Android email app so it’s better, with a unified inbox and other nice improvements.

HTC One

Speaking of settings, Samsung is proud of an expanded panel of one-touch settings icons you can get to by pulling down the Android notification window from the top edge of the screen. I liked the idea, but this panel is likely to confuse users with items labeled “Air Gesture,” “Smart stay,” “S Beam” and other special Samsung features.

There’s an array of new camera effects, such as one where you can superimpose for fun a small square image of your own face onto a picture you’re taking, and another where you can create a “Drama” shot in which a single moving person appears multiple times in sequence. These are easy to select, but I doubt they’ll be used frequently.

I had almost zero success with a suite of features that claim to take certain actions by detecting whether you’re watching the screen. For instance, Smart scroll will scroll the screen based on the angle of your head and Smart pause will stop playing a video when you look away. I only got these to work about 10 percent of the time. Samsung blamed lighting conditions, even though I used it in many settings.

On many key hardware specs, the Galaxy S 4 shines. Its screen and camera resolution beat the iPhone 5’s and I found its pictures to be slightly better than those from the Apple phone, which is nearly a year old. Its removable battery gave me a full day of use.

But the plastic body felt a bit insubstantial to me and the mono speaker on the rear was only fair. Oddly, I found the sound via headphones to be too soft in some cases, though voice calls were clear.

Prices will vary because T-Mobile has stopped subsidizing smartphones and Sprint has a temporary new-customer discount. But AT&T will sell the base 16-gigabyte model for $200 with a two-year contract. T-Mobile’s price, paid over two years, will be $630, $50 more than the iPhone 5. Verizon hasn’t provided details, according to Samsung.

My test model was running on the T-Mobile network and even indicated that it was using super-fast LTE, which T-Mobile is still building out, in some areas. But data download speeds in the D.C. suburbs averaged just 6.96 megabits per second, versus 20.81 mbps for an iPhone 5 running Verizon LTE. The Galaxy S 4 would likely be faster on Verizon in the same location.

While many will compare the Galaxy S 4 with the iPhone 5, I also compared it with the $200 HTC One, which came out April 19. The HTC has a handsome, sturdier, aluminum body, dual stereo speakers, an excellent camera, better screen resolution than the new Samsung and twice the base memory for the same price.

If you’re a nut for lists of new features, love Samsung or crave an even bigger display, the Galaxy S 4 may be for you. It’s a good phone, just not a great one.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Facebook Gets a Hold on Phones

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:03:44 +0000

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Facebook wants to take over your phone. It aims to immediately immerse you in its social network with just a glance at the phone’s opening screen, without making you run its app or even unlock the device. Right from the lock screen of your phone, you’ll be able to see your Facebook news feed — including text posts and eye-catching, full-screen photos posted by friends — and to comment on, or Like items.

Facebook Home uses the lock screen to show new posts and other things.

Also, with one swipe, you can go right to Facebook Messenger, the social network’s chat feature, to communicate directly with people and even send and receive text messages.

All of this is possible before you even see the usual start or home screen of your phone filled with app icons, by using a new suite of software Facebook is introducing for Android phones on Friday called Facebook Home.

The idea is that during spare moments — say, while waiting in a line — you’ll get immediately hooked by Facebook.

Facebook Home, which replaces several key aspects of a phone in addition to the lock screen, will be an optional, free download for U.S. users at launch on four leading Android phones, including the very popular Samsung Galaxy S III. It also will be available that day, preloaded, on a midrange, $99 model, the HTC First, from AT&T. At least two other major Android phones also will be compatible when they hit the market.

I’ve been testing Facebook Home for five days on the HTC First, but this isn’t a review of the phone hardware, which is unremarkable. I focused my testing on Facebook Home, the boldest attempt by any non-hardware company to alter a phone’s native user interface.

Swipe your round photo to one of three icons: Facebook Messenger, app-launcher screen and Last App used.

In effect, Facebook has created its own phone without having to build or sell hardware. The HTC First, so far the sole phone on which it’s preloaded, even boots up with the Facebook logo.

I found Facebook Home to be easy to use, elegantly designed and addictive. Although I’m a regular Facebook user, I found that, with Home, I paid more attention than ever to my news feed, Liked items more often and used Facebook’s Messenger service more often. So, if you are a big Facebook fan, Facebook Home can be a big win.

But I found some downsides. Facebook Home blocks the one-step camera icon some Android phone makers place on their lock screen to allow you to take pictures without first unlocking the phone. It also overlays other lock-screen features some Android phone makers include, such as weather information or favorite app icons. And if you do go to the icon-filled home screen, you’ll find that Facebook Home has taken that over as well, topping the screen with a bar that makes posting to Facebook easier and eliminating the bottom bar of heavily used apps.

By default, the first of these Facebook Home app screens contains Facebook’s apps, including the popular Facebook-owned service, Instagram, plus apps from other companies, like Google Maps and Google Search, and the camera app. You can remove these and add others.

With Home, Facebook is essentially staging a land grab of Android, the hugely successful mobile operating system made by one of its key rivals, Google. Facebook Home leaves all the standard Google apps in place and doesn’t alter the underlying Android operating system. But because it’s so dominant, it makes it less likely that a user with limited time will launch Google products that compete with Facebook, such as Google’s own social network, Google+, or rival services from other companies, such as Twitter.

A Home app screen with Facebook’s apps, such as Instagram, and standard Android apps from Google.

This is all made possible because Android allows third-party companies to alter the lock screen and other core features, such as the app launcher, which displays app icons and widgets.

By contrast, Facebook Home can’t run on Apple’s iPhones, because Apple doesn’t allow others to take control of these core functions. Apple has integrated Facebook (and Twitter) to some degree into the iPhone, mainly by making it possible to sign into the services as part of its basic settings and to share almost any content to them easily. But that’s as far as it goes.

When you first turn on the screen on a Home-equipped phone, you see the time and a small circle at the bottom displaying your Facebook profile picture. If you don’t touch the screen, your news feed, called the Cover Feed, starts to display, automatically scrolling from one post to the next. You also can manually swipe through the feed. Each post takes up the whole screen. If it’s a photo, it’s displayed in all its glory. If it’s a text post, the author’s larger wall photo appears faintly in the background. The effect is mesmerizing.

If you want to Like a post, you can double-tap it or tap on a Like button. To comment, or read comments, you can tap on a comment icon.

To get beyond the feed, you touch your little round picture and swipe it over to one of three icons that appear. Swipe up to see a home screen, or app launcher of your favorite app icons. Swipe left to go to Facebook Messenger. Swipe right to go to the last app used, whether it’s a Facebook app or not.

Facebook Home has another major feature: Chat Heads. These are the profile pictures of people who send you Facebook messages or text messages via Messenger. Unlike message notifications that appear only briefly on most phones, these remain visible, atop any app you’re using, tempting you to keep chatting via Facebook. You can move them around if they’re blocking something, but you can only get rid of them by dragging them off the screen to the bottom. Whether they annoy or delight you will depend on how much you use Facebook Messenger.

Chat Heads shows profile pictures of people who send you Facebook or text messages via Messenger.

Facebook stresses that Home is purely optional. Nobody needs to install it, or buy the sole phone on which it’s preloaded. You can still use Facebook the way you always have — through the app. In fact, Home doesn’t fully replace the app, which has many more features.

And you can turn all of it, or parts of it, off. I was able to turn it off even on the HTC First and also to require the phone to be unlocked before I could see my feed.

Facebook says it hopes eventually to include feeds from other services, such as Twitter, in the automatic stream of updates on the lock screen. Even now, alerts — but not full posts or photos — from other products, such as Gmail or Twitter, appear on top of the news feed. However, this only works on the HTC First. Other phones only display Facebook alerts in Home. There aren’t any ads in Cover Feed currently but Facebook says there may be in the future.

You cannot view customized news feeds, like ones containing only certain people, in Cover Feed. You also can’t compose new posts from the lock screen, though Facebook says it hopes to add that feature.

I didn’t notice that my test phone suffered any significant battery loss while running Home constantly, but Facebook does provide settings for data use and image quality that can lower the battery load of Home. The default setting is “medium.”

Facebook Home is a very clever and very well-done product that will delight Facebook fans. If you aren’t in that category, or prefer the standard Android user interface, it won’t be right for you.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Dell Laptop Does Flips to Try to Be a Thick Tablet

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:03:06 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Welcome to another in our series of reviews on efforts by Windows PC makers to make laptops that are also tablets, with very little success. This time, the attempt comes from Dell and is especially creative, and even kind of cool. But as with many other convertible laptops, it still results in a computer that’s a perfectly fine laptop, but a thick, heavy tablet.

Dell has been in the news lately mainly due to a proposed corporate restructuring, but that topic won’t be addressed here. The company still makes PCs for consumers. So I have been testing its flagship convertible, the XPS 12, a Windows 8 Ultrabook that starts at a pricey $1,200, and has a vivid, bright 12.5-inch touchscreen.

To turn the XPS from a laptop to a tablet, push the bottom of the screen from the back and spin it around to the opposite direction.

What makes the XPS 12 notable is the method Dell has chosen to enable it to morph from a clamshell laptop to a tablet. While other companies have resorted to slider mechanisms, or hinges that require bending or twisting the whole lid, Dell has created a flip screen. The screen pivots within the frame of the lid to either face toward the keyboard, or away from it.

When the XPS 12 is in the classic laptop position, you just push in at the bottom of the screen from the rear and it spins around so the screen faces in the opposite direction. You then close the lid and the touchscreen is facing up, ready to be used as if it were a tablet. To return to laptop mode, you open the lid and reverse the screen-flipping process. When you flip the screen from one position to the other, it snaps back into the aluminum frame of the lid firmly and reassuringly.

I found this method easy and reliable, and commendably innovative from a company that hasn’t historically been hailed for industrial design. I found it a bit quicker and less of a hassle than some of the other mode-shifting techniques I’ve tested.

Then, close the lid so the screen is facing up.

However, as with all of its competitors I’ve tested that don’t completely separate the screen and the keyboard, the XPS 12 doesn’t make for a very usable tablet, both for hardware and software reasons. The hardware weighs 3.35 pounds, more than double the weight of the heaviest iPad. At its thickest point, it’s twice as thick as an iPad. It’s also much larger.

The XPS 12 was uncomfortable to use as a tablet, in my hands or lap, for long periods. Like its convertible rivals, it is, at best, a standard laptop that can be occasionally used in tablet mode, preferably on a desk or table.

And then there’s the software. Although it’s now six months old, Microsoft’s Windows 8, in my view, hasn’t made much progress in improving its tabletlike aspect, the Start Screen. Its core Start Screen apps, like email and calendar, while improved, are still crude. The latest insult: You can no longer directly sync Google calendar data to the new Windows 8 calendar app. And its store still lacks key apps common on Apple and Android tablets, such as an official version of Facebook, or the popular news app, Flipboard.

As a traditional laptop, the XPS 12 does better, but still has drawbacks, especially when it comes to battery life.

Its strongest point is the screen, which is especially bright, crisp and very responsive to the touch. It has a sturdy body, partly made of carbon fiber. It was able to run everything I threw at it, handily and speedily. This included not only Microsoft programs, like the latest version of Microsoft Office, but traditional desktop programs from competitors, such as Adobe Reader, Google’s Chrome and Apple’s iTunes.

On the Start Screen, it ran tablet-type, full-screen apps like Twitter, Kindle, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Dell has cut way back on the amount of craplets — unwanted software or trials and come-ons — it preloads on this machine.

However, partly because of the flip mechanism and the hidden components needed to make it work, the XPS 12 is heavier and thicker than the largest MacBook Air, which starts at the same price and has a bigger screen, at 13.3 inches.

Battery life is a big downside on this Dell. In my tough laptop test, where I turn off power-saving software, crank up the screen to 100 percent, leave the Wi-Fi on to collect email, and play a continuous loop of music, the XPS 12 lasted just 3 hours and 31 minutes. That’s awful compared with the 6 hours and 13 minutes I got on the 13-inch MacBook Air in the same test.

In more normal use, with power-saving on, I suspect you could get 4 to 5 hours on the XPS 12, but that’s still nothing to write home about.

And there’s one more issue with this Dell: Available storage. Of the 128 gigabytes on the solid state drive, only 102 were available to me out of the box. Dell explains this is because of things like the space claimed by Windows 8, and an Intel system that guarantees fast starting and resuming.

One consideration for consumers buying any Dell product is the company’s proclaimed strategy to cater mainly to business customers. But Dell executives insisted they remain committed to the consumer market.

Dell deserves credit for a clever flip screen design in the XPS 12. But it’s very hard to make a computer that’s both a great laptop and a great tablet, even if the operating system contains elements of both.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

New Flipboard: News and Posts Handpicked and Shared

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 01:02:58 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

One of the best ways of following topics that are interesting to you is Flipboard, a popular app for Apple and Android mobile devices that automatically turns social-network posts and news from online publications into beautiful, magazine-like pages you “flip” through by swiping.

Now, a new second generation of Flipboard, out Tuesday, is extending the app so it allows users to create and share their own handsome digital magazines with a few clicks and without any design talent required. If you make your magazine public, anyone with Flipboard, which is a free app, can read it and comment on it.

I’ve been testing this new version of Flipboard, which has some other improved features, over the past week or so, on several iPads and an iPhone. My verdict is the new features make a great mobile app even better. There are some limitations to the new capabilities, but they make your mobile device more personal and more of a creative tool, rather than just a means of consumption. For now, the new version is only available for Apple’s devices, but an Android edition is in the works.

Walt Mossberg’s Flipboard magazine on the American Revolution

The original Flipboard, which is produced by a small, private Silicon Valley company of the same name, was aimed at helping people wade through the welter of information on social networks and the Web, by allowing them to corral posts on popular topics like, say, baking or basketball, into attractive collections. The company says that capability has earned it 50 million registered users and a smaller, but active, core group of millions who use it daily.

I have long used Flipboard to follow tech and political news, or to leaf through everything posted on Twitter or Facebook by particular people or sites. These collections would update as new posts meeting the criteria appeared. If I had a collection about, say, the economy or smartphones, based on tweets on those subjects, it would stay current, showing me automatically any Web pages referenced within those tweets.

With the new personal magazine feature, however, I can make my own Flipboard-hosted publications on particular topics of interest, handpicking the posts or articles I want to include, rather than relying on feeds or algorithms. And it’s easy to do. When you find a post, video or article you want to include in your magazine, you just click a plus button next to it, choose which of your magazines to “flip it” into and it appears in that magazine. The magazine only updates when you decide to update it with a new article, photo or video. The original creators are credited.

Above, one person’s Flipboard page with personal magazines and subscriptions

During my testing, I made five magazines, some public and some private. Since these were just for testing, they weren’t carefully created. But I was impressed by how quickly I could produce them and how nicely Flipboard laid them out, with handsome cover photos, bold headlines and a logical arrangement of photos and articles.

I made public magazines on the American Revolution, Ancient Wonders, the Boston Red Sox and my favorite current TV dramas. I also made a private magazine to store content I wanted to read later.

This process is greatly helped by a much-enhanced search feature in Flipboard, which finds items both in Flipboard itself and in a long list of social networks and sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr and streams of content, called RSS feeds, produced by various sites.

You can add content to your magazines using a special bookmark for most browsers on PCs or Macs. When you see something on the Web you’d like in one of your magazines, click this bookmark and a small Flipboard window opens with thumbnails of your magazines, allowing you to add the item. Alas, this bookmark is very difficult to install on the browsers on the iPad and iPhone.

There’s a new Notifications feature that tells you when people have liked or commented on your magazines. A “By Our Readers” feature suggests public magazines the Flipboard staff considers outstanding.

Publishers are making use of the new magazine feature in Flipboard. Esquire has created a magazine that’s a collection of its interviews and Rolling Stone has published a Flipboard magazine collecting some of its articles on the Beatles.

If you find a magazine you like, you can subscribe to it, for easy and continued access, or share a link to it via Twitter, Facebook or email. If somebody who has Flipboard wants to view the magazine, it’ll automatically open. Otherwise, the link will take a person to a Web page with instructions on how to get Flipboard.

Unfortunately, what you can’t do is to edit your magazine much, or add original or local content to it. You can’t rearrange articles, or create your own text articles, or add photos or videos that live only on your iPad or iPhone. You also can’t rearrange articles. Because Flipboard is so oriented to pulling in content from online sources, to use one of your own photos or videos in your own magazine, you’d have to first post it to a site like Flickr. To use an article you write for your own magazine, you’d have to first post it online.

The only tweaking you can do directly is to change the cover picture, which is typically drawn from the most recent article you include that has a photo; remove an item; create and change the title and a short description of the magazine; and change its status between publicly visible or private.

You also can’t charge for your magazines or sell ads in them, though any ads embedded in the content you include would travel with that content into your magazine.

Flipboard says it expects to add some of these features, like the ability to use photos and videos stored on your device, in updates.

Overall, Flipboard’s new personal magazines are a very good addition to a very good app.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

How Much of a Tablet Can You Get for Under $300?

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 01:03:02 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

This month marks the third anniversary of Apple’s iPad. Since it hit the market, it has sold over 120 million units, and tablets in general have taken off. But large-screen tablets like the 9.7-inch iPad have remained dear for many budgets. The latest iPad and Microsoft’s new Surface RT start at $499. Even lower-priced, full-size tablets from name-brand companies typically cost $300 to $400. To pay significantly less, you’ve had to opt for a much smaller unit, in the 7-inch range.

Now, major manufacturers are lowering prices for some larger-screen tablets to at least slightly below $300. This week I’ve been testing two of these sub-$300 models. One is the largest Kindle Fire HD, with an 8.9-inch screen and a price that was just cut to $269 from $299. The other is a new 10.1-inch tablet from Asus, the MeMo Pad Smart 10.1, which sells for $299. The Kindle’s display is smaller than the roughly 10-inch tablets, but I consider it close enough to include in the category.

Left, the Asus MeMo Pad Smart; right, the Kindle Fire HD

What kind of large tablet do you get for under $300? Pretty good ones. While neither of the two I tested is as good as the iPad, each delivers decent value for the price.

These two tablets are quite different from each other. The new, awkwardly named, Asus is a standard Android tablet, replete with built-in apps from Google, which makes Android, and a few from Asus. It has front and rear cameras, and the standard 16 gigabytes of internal memory. And it has access to the Google Play store, which features over 700,000 apps, only a fraction of which are designed to take advantage of a large tablet screen.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9, like its popular $199, 7-inch sibling, is technically an Android tablet. But it buries Android under Amazon’s own user interface, doesn’t feature Google’s apps and uses its own tablet-oriented, highly curated app store, which currently has 50,000 choices. It is capable of managing email, browsing and social networking, and running popular third-party apps and games. However, the Kindle Fire HD is mainly a hardware front end to Amazon’s vast collection of digital books, music and video. It also comes with 16 gigabytes of internal memory.

The Asus, available at various online stores, runs the current major release of Android, called Jelly Bean, albeit a slightly older version of that software. However, the Kindle, consistent with its general demotion of Android to mere plumbing, is running a version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, that’s a whole generation behind. It’s available at Amazon.com.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two was in battery life. I ran my usual rigorous tablet battery test on each, turning the screen brightness to 75%, keeping Wi-Fi on to collect email in the background, and then playing videos until the units shut down for lack of power.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 scored 8 hours and 16 minutes in my test, nearly two hours less than the iPad, yet better than many tablets I’ve tested. But the Asus MeMo did quite poorly, lasting only 5 hours and 27 minutes, almost 3 hours less than Amazon’s tablet.

To get the Kindle for $269, you have to put up with ads, some on the lock screen and some in the form of recommendations for buying other content on the home screen. You can turn off the latter in settings—a new feature. But to get a model without the full-screen ads, which Amazon calls “Special Offers,” you have to pay $15 more, either when purchasing the device or by going to an obscure page on Amazon.com.

Other downsides of the Kindle HD 8.9 are that it lacks a rear camera and its browser, called Silk, remains in my tests a bit slower at loading Web pages than either the iPad or standard Android browsers.

On the other hand, the bigger Kindle offers a crisp, sharp screen, and can also be purchased for just $30 more with twice the memory, and for $399 with a cellular data option in addition to Wi-Fi. It’s lighter and slightly thinner than the full-size iPad, and slightly thinner and lighter than the MeMo 10.1, though the latter is also lighter than the iPad. It has much higher screen resolution than the MeMo’s, but less than the iPad’s.

The Asus lacks a higher-memory or cellular model, though it has a memory-card slot for adding storage. It also has a nice feature that permits continuous burst shooting of up to 100 continuous photos. This photo feature worked, but some of the shots were out of focus.

With the Kindle, I never had a crash or a glitch. On the Asus, I ran into a couple of minor, but annoying, problems. An Asus app called BuddyBuzz, one of many attempts by device makers to meld your social networks in one place, crashed frequently. However, I doubt many users will rely on it. And while playing movies rented from Google, I got several messages saying the movie couldn’t be authenticated. One tap fixed this, but no one wants to be interrupted like that while watching “Inception.” Asus said it couldn’t replicate either glitch but would investigate.

Many people may prefer smaller tablets, which typically sell for around $200 or even less. But for those who want a full-size slate at a lower price, these two sub-$300 models are good choices.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

How Apple Gets All the Good Apps

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 01:03:15 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple tightly controls its software and hardware, and is fiercely competitive in battling its rivals, especially in the mobile market. And yet, while the company never creates apps for anyone else’s mobile system or device, each of its major mobile-platform foes — Google, Amazon and Microsoft — make many of their apps available for Apple devices. That makes those devices the sort of Switzerlands of the mobile world.

If you buy an iPhone or iPad, you get Apple-written mobile apps and services like Siri, iMessage, iWork, iPhoto and FaceTime, which aren’t available on other phones and tablets. But you can get first-class versions of competitors’ official apps.

While there are no versions of Apple apps for other mobile platforms, its iOS platform draws many apps from rivals.

So, iPhone and iPad users who prefer apps from other big mobile-platform makers don’t have to switch to an Android or Windows Phone or an Amazon tablet. They have access right on their Apple devices to major apps from these competing platforms. But people with non-Apple mobile devices can’t get Apple’s mobile apps and services.

This is obviously a lopsided situation in Apple’s favor. But it stems from the different business models of the big rivals. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are primarily software and services companies, though each makes some mobile hardware (Google through its Motorola subsidiary). But Apple, while famous for making good software, sells that software almost entirely through iconic and expensive hardware, from which it makes the vast majority of its money.

Although Android devices are the most popular, Apple has sold over 400 million iOS devices. So the Apple market is too big to ignore, even for its direct competitors.

Apple’s major mobile-platform rivals — Google, Microsoft and Amazon — all have official versions of their apps for Apple devices.

Apple device owners can run official apps for Google Maps, Google Search, Gmail, Google’s Chrome browser, Google Drive and more. They can get Microsoft-written apps for its Bing search service, its SkyDrive cloud-storage service, its OneNote note-taking service and more. And they can get a host of Amazon’s apps, including several apps for Amazon’s online store and apps for Amazon’s cloud-based video and music steaming services.

Some examples: If you read digital books on your Apple device, you can use either Apple’s iBooks app, an official Kindle app, or the official Google Play Books app, among others. If you like asking your phone questions by voice, you can ask either Apple’s own Siri intelligent assistant, or the voice feature in Google’s search app. You don’t get either of those combinations on other phones because Apple doesn’t share its apps.

Even Samsung, Apple’s major hardware rival, makes a handful of iPhone and iPad apps for the electronics maker’s products, including one that turns an iPhone or iPad into a remote control for Samsung Smart TVs. Yes, that’s right, you can use an iPhone to control a Samsung TV, courtesy of Samsung.

In the case of Google Maps, the version for Apple devices is more modern, and sleeker, than the one for its maker’s own platform.

And these apps from Apple’s rivals keep coming. Google just released an iOS version of Field Trip, a location-based app that highlights points of interest; and Microsoft recently released an iOS version of its Xbox SmartGlass app, which links mobile devices to its game console.

Note that I am only talking about apps that are officially published by Apple’s rivals themselves, not those from other developers that may mimic or provide workarounds for an app from one rival for another’s platform. And I am not referring to services that can be accessed via the browser on mobile devices, only self-contained apps.

So, why do Apple’s rivals help make iPhones and iPads more versatile when Apple doesn’t return the favor?

Google said: “We want to make our products available to as many people as possible. Our goal is to offer the best possible Google experience across multiple devices and platforms.”

Amazon noted it has long had a public policy called “Buy Once, Enjoy Everywhere,” that aims to make buying its digital content and physical goods easy on all hardware, not just its own Kindle devices.

And while Microsoft stresses it considers its software to be “first and best” on its Windows phones and Windows 8 tablets, it says: “We provide customers a quality experience across many devices.”

Apple, which years ago did put iTunes and its Safari browser on Windows PCs, had no comment on its policy of restricting its mobile apps and services to its own hardware.

There are some major caveats. If you want to live in a Google or Microsoft world, with a single sign-on to those companies’ services and all of their apps, an Apple device won’t cut it. Certain key apps from Google and Microsoft aren’t available on iOS. For instance, you can only get the official smartphone version of Microsoft Office on a Windows Phone (though there are rumors of an iOS version). Google’s artificial intelligence app Google Now and its payment app Google Wallet are AWOL on Apple devices. And there are many other reasons, including hardware and user interfaces, why smartphone buyers might prefer Android or Windows Phone devices.

Another caveat: Both Microsoft and Amazon make an array of apps for phones and tablets running Google’s Android operating system. But even so there are instances where Apple owners have a slight edge. Amazon’s video-streaming app is available for Apple devices, but not Android. And again, Android owners can’t run Apple’s official apps.

Owners of Windows Phones have much less of a choice in rivals’ apps: Only one from Google, three from Amazon, compared with a dozen or more from each on Apple devices. Owners of Kindle Fire tablets, which use a modified version of Android, have almost no choices from Amazon’s major rivals.

So what does this mean for you? It may not be enough to justify choosing an iPhone or iPad. But if you do, you can still enjoy many of the key apps from other big makers of mobile platforms.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Roku 3: Easier Streaming and Remote Headphones

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:04:38 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

While cable and satellite still dominate American television viewing, the hardware and services for streaming TV shows, movies and other video from the Internet to a TV get better and better. The latest improvement is a new $100 streaming set-top box from Roku, called the Roku 3.

The Roku 3, which replaces the former Roku 2 XS this week as the top-of-the-line offering in the company’s four-model lineup, introduces several new features. One is a revamped, easier-to-use interface for juggling the 750 online services, or “channels” in Roku’s parlance, that the device can stream to a TV.

The Roku 3 is a palm-sized, square black box that practically disappears next to a big television.

The other is a new remote, which has a cool feature: A headphone jack and earbuds that can be used when you want to watch TV without disturbing others in the house. There are improvements under the hood, like a faster processor and more robust Wi-Fi, that will allow the new model to add features down the road.

The new user interface will be made available to existing Roku boxes as a free software update, but the new remote and the improved innards will only work with the Roku 3.

I’ve been testing the Roku 3 on my HDTV. I watched many hours of TV on it while my cable box lay idle. It’s an evolutionary, not revolutionary, advance, but the Roku 3 performed as advertised and I enjoyed using it.

Roku, which comes from a private California company of the same name, is the second-most popular dedicated streaming player behind Apple’s Apple TV, which comes in a single model for $99. About five million Roku players have sold since the device launched in 2008. Apple TV, while a tiny part of the company’s business, has recently seen an acceleration of sales and Apple says about 10 million Apple TVs have been sold just since October 2010. It won’t provide a total sales figure since the product’s launch in 2007.

The remote now has a headphone jack that controls the volume on earbuds so others aren’t disturbed.

Both boxes offer highly popular video-streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, plus photo services like Flickr and streamed games from MLB, the NBA and the NHL. Apple TV also offers its parent’s own hugely popular iTunes service and Google’s popular YouTube. Roku lacks those two giants, but has Amazon Instant Video, Pandora, HBO GO, and over 700 lesser-known and lesser-watched services, compared with just a handful of third-party services on Apple’s box.

Two other popular devices for streaming Internet video are the two big gaming consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. But while nongaming entertainment is now a core function of these boxes, they are much larger and cost $200 or more. Plus, in the case of the Xbox, you have to pay $60 a year for a Microsoft service before you can even use entertainment offerings like Netflix, which then charge their own fees.

Like the less-powerful models in Roku’s line, which start at $50, the Roku 3 is a palm-sized, square black box that practically disappears next to a big TV. Yet it can fetch high-definition programming from the Internet and play it back in very good quality on your TV. It also can play back Internet-based photos, music and some simple games like Angry Birds. And you can plug in a USB flash drive with your own videos, photos or music.

My Channels in the new Roku interface shows the services a user has selected.

The new user interface is simple and versatile. To the left is a list of four options. One is My Channels — the services you’ve selected. Then, there’s the Channel Store, where you can get more services, a universal Search and Settings. To the right are large, colorful tiles showing your collection of channels, and beyond that grid is a big ad you can choose to ignore. One nice touch: When you get to the end of any of the lists of items, the lists circle back to the beginning.

This replaces a one-line carousel of channels and other options that could get overwhelming as you added more and more services.

The remote’s headphone jack was a real plus in my tests. It automatically mutes the TV speakers and allows you to control the volume on the earbuds or any other headphones you choose. I used it to crank up the audio while I was working out on a noisy treadmill, so I didn’t disturb my wife, who was working on her computer in the same room and wanted to ignore the TV.

The big upside of the Roku 3 — and all Rokus — is that it offers a vast variety of services, some free and some paid, which you select from a Channel Store. On Roku, you can go well beyond Netflix to services like Pandora Radio, Spotify, some games and much more obscure channels focused on such things as UFOs, horoscopes, European horror films, language learning, autism and diabetes.

The biggest downside, besides the lack of YouTube and iTunes, is that, unlike Apple TV, it lacks the built-in ability to wirelessly stream video to the TV from mobile devices. Apple’s version of this, called AirPlay, works effortlessly from its iPhones, iPads, iPod touch players and Macs. I suspect AirPlay is one big reason Apple TV sales have risen sharply.

By contrast, Roku’s mobile app can only stream photos and music. There are several apps available on Roku that can stream video from other devices or from cloud services, but in my tests, they required too much setup, worked inconsistently and would likely appeal mainly to techies. Roku says the new chips in its Roku 3 will allow such wireless streaming later this year using an emerging Wi-Fi standard called Miracast. But it won’t work on the lesser models.

If you want to get into the world of streaming video on your TV, with minimal cost and hassle, the Roku 3 is a good choice.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

A Wristwatch Tells When Phone Calls, Emails Arrive

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 02:03:36 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Do you ever find yourself frantically trying to fish your phone out of a pocket or purse to find out whether that beep or buzz from the device is an important call, text or email — or just something you can ignore? What if you could simply glance at your watch to find out?

Well, now you can, thanks to a new $150 digital wristwatch called Pebble that connects to an iPhone or Android phone wirelessly and displays notifications and previews of calls, texts and emails. Not only that, but the Pebble can control music playback on a phone and show at a glance the song that’s playing, along with artist and album information. And of course, it tells time. It comes with multiple software watch faces and you can upload more.

Even better, the Pebble, from a Silicon Valley startup of the same name, is a platform that can work with other apps and aspects of a smartphone. For instance, the company is planning to roll out options that display information from apps for runners and golfers by spring. And there are already techie workarounds that can enable the watch to link to other smartphone apps. The gadget has been much-discussed in tech circles and its founders raised millions of dollars via the crowdfunding service, Kickstarter.

The Pebble wristwatch comes with multiple software watch faces in black and white and shows previews of emails and incoming call info.

One important note: It isn’t a wrist communicator. It cannot conduct phone calls or compose texts and emails. It just notifies you about them, by gently vibrating and displaying sender or caller info, and for messages, an excerpt, on the screen.

I’ve been testing the Pebble watch for about five days with an iPhone 5 and a Google Nexus 4. I found the watch light and comfortable and nobody stared at me like I was wearing a computer on my wrist. I was able to receive notifications and control music on both phones. And I generally found the Pebble helpful. The free companion apps on both phones, which connect the Pebble to the phones, worked fine.

But I also ran into a bunch of annoying bugs and limitations, problems its maker readily acknowledges and says it is working on solving. One example: If multiple emails arrive in rapid succession, the notification for each overwrites its predecessor before you can read it and you can’t scroll back to see those you missed. The company says it hopes to introduce scrolling back through notifications in a software update next month.

If you have little patience for such new-product woes, as I do, you might want to wait awhile before ordering a Pebble. Even if you’re ready to order now, you’ll still have to wait about two months for delivery. The company is ramping up production gradually, though it says it has shipped about 15,000 units and taken orders for 85,000. To buy a Pebble, go to getpebble.com.

The Pebble can control music on a phone and show the song that’s playing.

Pebble is part of what may be a nascent revival for the idea of a wrist computer, something that has failed many times in the past, because older attempts have looked clunky and have been hard to use. A company called Basis has begun shipping a fitness watch with sensors on the back and Apple is reportedly testing a watch that would work with the iPhone.

This wrist computer comes in five colors and is only a bit bigger than a more standard watch. However, it definitely works better on a man’s typically larger wrist. The Pebble may pose a fashion and comfort challenge for women.

The screen technology is similar to that of a basic Kindle e-reader. That means it’s black and white only, and can only show very basic graphics, but it works well outdoors. It has a backlight that turns on whenever an alert appears, or when you shake or tap the watch.

There are four large, easy-to-press buttons on the sides. On the right, the top and bottom buttons scroll up and down and the middle button selects. On the left, the single button displays the menu, and moves you back a step in those menus. The charger also attaches to the left.

The company claims the watch should last seven days on a single charge in typical use, but, in my tests, it lasted between three and four days. In more typical use than mine while testing, it would likely go four to five days.

The Pebble connects to the phones via Bluetooth, like a wireless earpiece or speaker. In fact, on the iPhone, it imitates a Bluetooth audio device, even though it doesn’t do audio. This sometimes confuses Siri, Apple’s automated, voice-controlled assistant, and requires you to press an icon on the phone directing Siri to use the phone, not the Pebble. But it didn’t confuse the Bluetooth speaker phone in my car, or interfere with it.

The company is planning to roll out options that display information from apps for golfers as well as runners by spring.

This is only one of a series of quirks and issues I ran into on both smartphone platforms, neither of which really provides for something like the Pebble.

For instance, on Android, you have to set up the Pebble as an accessibility device, like something that might be meant for disabled users. And on Android, you’re unable to use the watch to direct the phone or earpiece to answer incoming calls. You can only reject them. Another Android limitation: You’re only sure to get a preview of emails from the Gmail app. When emails come in from non-Gmail email apps, you can get a message that lacks any preview.

On the other hand, Pebble email notifications on the iPhone require considerable fiddling with the phone’s notification settings, and in my tests, the email-notification feature on iPhone worked inconsistently. The company says fixing this problem is its top priority. As of now, Facebook notifications don’t work on iPhone, only on Android. Twitter notifications don’t work on either platform.

On both platforms, I found myself yearning for the ability to press a button and send a canned response to a text or email, like “Can’t answer right now.” The company says it’s working on this.

The Pebble is a useful accessory for a smartphone if you have a spare $150 and hate digging out your phone, or can’t easily do so, to see if you need to attend to a call or message. But I suggest you wait for it to work more smoothly.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

For $19, an Unlimited Phone Plan, Some Flaws

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:05:28 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

A typical smartphone costs around $200, but it’s usually shackled to a two-year contract that often costs $70 or more monthly and includes limits on data consumption, voice minutes and texts. Even prepaid smartphones, without a contract, can cost $30 to $50 a month and carry limits.

But I’ve been testing an Android smartphone from an upstart carrier that charges just $19 a month for unlimited data, voice and texts — with no contract. That’s right: $19 a month, unlimited.

Motorola’s Defy XT is the only phone that works with Republic’s network.

This carrier is called Republic Wireless, a private firm in Raleigh, N.C., which launched its service in December. The sole phone that works with the company’s technology is a Motorola model, the Defy XT. The phone costs $249 — partly to help offset the low monthly price.

However, as of Tuesday, the company is offering a second pricing option for people who would rather pay less up front: $99 for the phone and then $29 a month, unlimited. That’s still a bargain service price. The phone and two service plans are only available online, at republicwireless.com. The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. And to sweeten the deal, Republic says Motorola will be offering customers a $50 credit at the Google Play online store, where Android owners can buy apps and content.

So what’s the catch? Well, Republic is using an unusual technology approach that’s smart and may even represent the future. But today, it doesn’t deliver the best voice quality and it requires a specially equipped phone. The sole phone that works with the system now is mediocre.

Republic is mostly able to offer such low monthly prices because it’s a Wi-Fi-centric carrier. That means whenever you make a voice call while the phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, your Republic phone places it over Wi-Fi rather than using a costlier cellular phone network. The same is true of texts.

You aren’t limited to Wi-Fi calling and texting — the phone can make calls, send texts and connect to the Internet over Sprint’s cellular network, at no extra charge. But Republic believes so many people connect their phones to Wi-Fi so often that most calls and other activity will be conducted over Wi-Fi, saving the company money on payments it makes to Sprint. And it says it has developed a system that properly places 911 calls over Wi-Fi, which has often been a problem.

Wi-Fi phone calls aren’t new, or unique to Republic. You can easily install an app on your iPhone or Android phone that will place calls over the Internet via Wi-Fi, just like Republic. But these apps generally require you to use a separate dialer and have a separate phone number.

Republic’s phone is what it calls a “hybrid” device — the main dialer and text-messaging modules have been configured to work on either Wi-Fi or the cellular network, without the need to launch an app. The phone defaults to Wi-Fi but will place the call over Sprint if it decides the Wi-Fi connection isn’t good enough, or if you manually choose cellular.

In my tests, conducted in and around Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, call quality was adequate, text service worked normally, and Web browsing and apps mostly worked okay, at my home, office and public Wi-Fi hot spots in airports and coffee shops. But there were definite downsides.

First is the phone itself. The Defy XT is a chunky device with a lower-resolution screen than any current iPhone or leading Android model. It comes with only about 2.5 gigabytes of usable storage, compared with a more typical 16GB on other phones, though you can expand the storage by buying a larger memory card. It has a relatively small 3.7-inch display. And when it isn’t on Wi-Fi, it can only use an older-type, slow, 3G network. Plus, it runs a clunky, old version of Android called Gingerbread that was released two years ago.

Republic says it plans to roll out several better phones running current versions of Android and much faster networks, including the best — 4G LTE — starting in late summer.

Second, there’s no seamless handoff between Wi-Fi calls and cellular calls. If you leave a Wi-Fi coverage area, the call drops, and, after a brief but annoying delay, the phone will redial the call over Sprint. Republic says it plans to roll out a feature this summer that will cut the handoff to seconds and make it nearly seamless.

Third is call quality. Wi-Fi calls have come a long way and in my tests, most were adequate, meaning the other person on the call and I could understand each other. But many of my calls had some slight echo effect or occasional clipped words, despite a recent software update intended to fix the problem. There was a noticeable improvement when I made the call on the same phone over Sprint.

The phone even displays a button during calls, called informally “the escape hatch,” which allows you to kill the Wi-Fi call and force the phone to redial the other person over Sprint for no added charge. But in general, I found the Wi-Fi calling acceptable, if not pristine, as long as I wasn’t walking too far away from the Wi-Fi hot spot.

Finally, there’s almost no company-provided customer service. Republic relies on online forums of avid customers — its “community” — to provide help to users with problems. You can get help from an employee through these forums, but that’s not typical.

If you can live with these limitations, Republic Wireless can save you a lot of money.

Email Walt Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com.

Surface Pro: Hefty Tablet Is a Laptop Lightweight

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 02:07:48 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft is introducing its second-ever personal computer. As with the first, it’s a multi-touch 10.6-inch tablet that has some of the attributes of a laptop, such as a USB port and snap-on keyboards. But unlike the first, this new tablet is capable of running full-featured Windows 8, though at a price — in dollars, bulk and battery life.

Both machines are called Surface and at first glance, they look similar. But there are big differences. The original Surface, launched in October, uses a limited version of Windows 8 called RT and runs on the type of processor common in rival tablets and smartphones. As a result, while it can fully handle Windows 8’s new Start Screen tabletlike interface and apps, it can only run four standard Windows desktop programs — Microsoft’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. You can’t install other desktop software.

The new Surface, called Surface Windows 8 Pro, is powered by an Intel processor typically found on laptops and uses the high-end Pro version of Windows 8. So it can run a vast array of standard Windows 7 desktop software. That means you could theoretically use the new tablet as a full replacement for a Windows laptop — if you used one of Microsoft’s thin keyboard covers.

The Surface Pro looks like the Surface RT, but it has a much higher screen resolution. The Pro also comes with a pen that makes navigating on the desktop much easier and allows for jotting notes or annotating documents.

Microsoft views the Pro as a new kind of PC, a sort of hybrid of a tablet and a laptop that spares users the hassle of carrying two devices. It goes on sale Saturday.

The Surface Pro starts at $899 — $400 more than the base model of the biggest, newest iPad or the base Surface RT. To be fair, this entry-level Surface Pro has 64 gigabytes of storage, four times what the base iPad offers. But an iPad with the same 64 GB is $699. A higher-end Surface Pro model with twice the storage costs $999, but an iPad with the same amount of storage is $200 less.

Not only that, but the keyboard covers cost extra — $130 for the one with movable keys, which brings the price to over $1,000.

As with the original Surface, the Pro is solidly built, with the same innovative metal kickstand that keeps it upright on a desk or table. It ran all the software I threw at it — both the new type and the old desktop type — speedily and well. I was able to install and run the full Windows 7 desktop versions of such popular programs as Microsoft Outlook, Google Chrome, Apple iTunes, Adobe Reader and Twitter’s TweetDeck.

The Pro has a much higher screen resolution than the RT. It comes with a handy pen, not included or usable on the RT, that makes navigating on the desktop interface much easier and allows for jotting notes or annotating documents. And it has corporate-friendly security features not found on the RT.

But the Pro has some significant downsides, especially as a tablet.

The Pro is thicker and heavier than the RT, which makes it clumsier to use as a tablet and on your lap as a laptop with the snap-on keyboard.

The Surface RT

I like the original Surface and see it as a tablet with the extra benefit of some Microsoft Office programs. However, I am less enamored with the Surface Pro. It’s too hefty and costly and power-hungry to best the leading tablet, Apple’s full-size iPad. It is also too difficult to use in your lap. It’s something of a tweener — a compromised tablet and a compromised laptop.

The Pro weighs 2 pounds, which is light for a laptop but anvil-like for a tablet. That is almost 40 percent heavier than the weightiest iPad and over 40 percent thicker. I found this bulk made the Surface Pro even clumsier than the RT is to use on my lap with the keyboard cover, even with the kickstand, which works far better on a desk than on one’s knees.

In my tough battery tests, where I set the screen to 75 percent brightness, turn off power-saving features, leave the Wi-Fi on and play locally stored videos until the machine dies, the Surface Pro did pathetically. It lasted just under four hours between charges — less than half the stamina of the iPad on the same test and three hours less than the Surface RT. In normal use, you might stretch that to five or 5½ hours, still poor for a tablet.

Also, as on the RT model, the Windows 8 system files take up a huge chunk of available storage. Of the 64GB of solid-state storage on the entry-level $899 model, only 30GB of that is free for the user, according to Microsoft. On the $999 model, 90GB of the 128GB total is available for the user. Microsoft notes you can add more storage via a flash memory slot.

And unlike the RT, the Pro doesn’t come out of the box with Microsoft Office. That costs extra, just as on most laptops. Unlike the iPad and some Android tablets, neither Surface can be ordered with built-in cellular connectivity, though the Pro can accept extra-cost plug-in cellular modems and, like competing tablets, it can be wirelessly tethered to a cellphone or stand-alone cellular modem.

When used on a desk, table, or airplane seat tray, with the kickstand holding the screen upright and the keyboard cover with movable keys, the Pro is a serviceable laptop, especially since, unlike on an iPad or Android tablet, you can use full-fledged PC programs.

But just as the Pro is compromised as a tablet, it’s compromised as a laptop. You get fewer ports and less storage than on many laptops and a keyboard that can’t compare with those on many laptops.

Some users may not mind the price or bulk of the Surface Pro if it frees them from carrying a tablet for some uses and a laptop for others. But like many products that try to be two things at once, the new Surface Windows 8 Pro does neither as well as those designed for one function.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

BlackBerry Reinvents Itself to Compete With All-Touch Smartphones

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:54:12 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

There is a new smartphone coming to market, running on a new operating system. It’s an all-touch device — with no physical navigation controls and no physical keyboard — and serves as a platform for third-party apps. It’s meant to compete in a world defined by Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones. It’s a BlackBerry, reinvented from the ground up.

This model, called the Z10, and its operating system, called BB10, are bet-the-company moves by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. RIM has seen its once-dominant position in the market shrivel away, especially in the U.S., since the iPhone appeared in 2007. It has tried a couple of times to drop its famous physical keyboards for touchscreens, but those projects failed, partly because the old BlackBerry operating system was primarily designed to handle corporate email and was a poor platform for app developers.

The BlackBerry Z10 comes in black and white and looks very different from past BlackBerrys.

Now, RIM is hoping that BB10 can change all that, so much so it’s changing its name to BlackBerry. The new OS, which is the most important part of the product, isn’t an evolution of the old BlackBerry platform. It is a clean break. Its user interface is so different that it will seem foreign to longtime BlackBerry users. And the first phone to use it, the Z10, looks much more like its rivals than like traditional BlackBerrys.

I’ve been testing the Z10 for about a week and decided to approach it as a new entry from a new company, because it is so different from past BlackBerrys. Overall, it worked fine in my tests, but I found it a work in progress. I liked some things a lot, including the way BlackBerry has designed its new virtual keyboard and camera, and the way it gathers all your messages into a single Hub. But it will launch with just a fraction of the apps available from its competitors, and is missing some very popular titles. It also lacks its own cloud-based ecosystem for storing and sharing files, like Apple’s iCloud or Google Drive. And there are other missing or lagging features.

Fervent BlackBerry fans might shun the Z10 for its lack of a physical keyboard, while fervent iPhone and Android fans might shun it for its small selection of apps and lack of native cloud services.

BlackBerry is formally announcing the Z10 and BB10 this week and it will go on sale in some countries almost immediately. In the U.S., all four major carriers are expected to sell the phone, for $199, according to BlackBerry, but the company estimates it won’t be available until March.

A second BB10 phone, the Q10, due in April, may be an easier transition for BlackBerry addicts, since it will have a physical keyboard. But BlackBerry sees typing on glass as its future and will be emphasizing the touch model.

Hardware

The Z10 is basically a chunky plastic slab, midway in size and weight between the tall, slim iPhone 5 and the bigger, wider crop of new Android models. I found it felt good in the hand. Its high-resolution 4.2-inch screen is a bit bigger than the iPhone’s 4-inch display, though much smaller than many newer Android screens, which are creeping toward 5 inches. The rear camera is the same eight megapixels as on the iPhone and Android models like Google’s flagship Nexus 4. It comes in black and white, and has only one memory configuration — 16 gigabytes (the base on the iPhone) — but the memory can be expanded by up to 32 more gigabytes using a removable card. Unlike many phones today, it has a removable battery.

User Interface

The Z10’s virtual keyboard is fast and easy to use, partly because of its predictive typing.

You unlock the phone by swiping up from the bottom border. The phone displays the last screen you were on. A similar swipe from any screen will take you to the home position, which displays minimized versions of up to eight apps currently running, with each displayed as a large rectangle showing some information from the app, such as weather or appointments. These are called Active Frames. From there, swiping to the left takes you through screens of app icons, similar to those on Apple and Android phones. Swiping from the bottom minimizes any open app into an Active Frame. I found these gestures easy to use and remember.

BlackBerry Hub

Although it isn’t technically the home screen, BlackBerry expects most users to spend most of their time in the device’s unified inbox, called BlackBerry Hub. To reach the Hub, you swipe right from the display of running apps, or, if you’re on any other screen, you swipe up and to the right in a curved gesture from the bottom border — that one takes a little practice.

The Hub contains emails from all the accounts you’ve set up on the phone, as well as text messages, messages from the company’s BlackBerry Messenger service, and even updates from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Unlike on older BlackBerrys, there aren’t separate icons for various email accounts; they are visible only via the Hub. But you can swipe right from the Hub to see each account and view only its contents. If you swipe down while in the Hub, you see upcoming calendar events.

Keyboard

The Z10 keyboard is the best and fastest out-of-the-box virtual keyboard I’ve used. Master BlackBerry thumb typists might not find it as fast as the traditional physical keyboard, but, for a one-finger typist like me, it was faster and more accurate than either the native keyboards on the iPhone or Android. This is partly because it features predictive typing. It displays words that are likely to come next right above the rows of letters, and lets you flick these words upward into the text you’re composing. It learns what mistakes you typically make in hitting letters, and adjusts. And it learns words and abbreviations you frequently use, even proper names.

Apps

BlackBerry claims it will have 70,000 apps at launch. Others are promised shortly afterward. That sounds like a lot, but Apple is approaching 800,000 and Android has over 700,000. BlackBerry’s app store, called BlackBerry World, includes—or will soon include — some common and standard apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Major League Baseball. But at launch, it will be missing Instagram, Pandora, Spotify, NPR, Google Maps and Netflix, among many others.

Work and Personal

If you use a corporate network controlled by an IT department, and want to keep your work and personal apps separate, BB10 has a simple way to do it. You just swipe down and press a button called “Personal” or “Work” and the apps, and even the background, change. However, email and calendar entries are still intermingled.

Camera, Voice and Battery Life

The camera has a cool feature called TimeShift that allows you to adjust individual faces in a group shot to get different views of them — say, smiling instead of frowning — by capturing additional images just before or after the snapshot. Voice calls were excellent. I didn’t do a formal battery test, but in my moderate to heavy use of the phone, I found it didn’t last as long on a charge as the iPhone 5, and began to get pretty low by late afternoon. It would last some people an entire day, but not everyone.

Browser

I found the browser adequate, but noticeably slower than the standard Apple and Android browser, even on a fast Wi-Fi network. However, unlike on many phones today, the browser supports Adobe Flash on some pages, if you manually enable it.

Data Speeds

The Z10 is capable of using LTE networks, the most consistently speedy available. But on my test unit, which was running on AT&T, I could never achieve download speeds of more than a paltry two megabits per second, even though the phone said it was on LTE, which typically sports download speeds of 15, 20 or even more Mbps. BlackBerry had no explanation for this anomaly.

Video Chats

In BB10, BlackBerry has added a video-chat feature similar to Apple’s FaceTime. In my tests, this worked well.

Cloud

Unlike Android or Apple devices, BB10 has no built-in cloud system for syncing or storing photos or other data. BlackBerry says that the third-party cloud app Box, which is mainly used by corporate customers, can do some automatic syncing, but it says it plans to work on its own system over time.

Other Downsides

There is no native ability to print from the Z10. And in some cases, I found that common controls required too many steps. For instance, to quickly get to the top or bottom of a long list of messages in the Hub — something the old BlackBerry did with ease — you have to go to the menu. BlackBerry says it is working on making that quicker.

Bottom Line

The Z10 and BB10 represent a radical reinvention of the BlackBerry. The hardware is decent and the user interface is logical and generally easy to use. I believe it has a chance of getting BlackBerry back into the game, if the company can attract a lot more apps.

A comparison table of the BlackBerry Z10 with its competition in the smartphone marketplace.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

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Walt Mossberg: BlackBerry Reinvents Itself to Compete With All-Touch Smartphones

Sometimes They're Tablets, Sometimes They're Not

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 02:06:34 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system is a combination of two very different user interfaces, with each best used in a different way. While the whole system is touch-enabled, only the Start Screen, with its own tablet-type apps, is fully optimized for a touchscreen. The second interface — the traditional Windows desktop — is still best used with a physical keyboard and a mouse or touch pad.

So, hardware makers are turning out convertible PCs that attempt to function as both tablets and traditional laptops. These aren’t merely tablets with thin, optional keyboard covers; or standard laptops with touchscreens. They are attempts to create true hybrid devices that can look and work like either a regular laptop or a touch-operated tablet.

Two for One: The Asus Taichi 21 has two screens: A nontouch display inside the lid and a tablet-like touchscreen on the outside of the laptop lid.

The models take different approaches, each of which has its pros and cons. So, this week I decided to test three from well-known PC makers. These machines have three things in common. At $850 to $1,299, they are far costlier than the midrange Windows laptop, which falls into the $400-to-$700 range. All use full Windows 8, not the more limited Windows RT, so they can run popular Windows desktop software. And switching between their dual modes takes some adjustment.

The Detachable

The HP Envy x2 takes the simplest approach of the three, and is the only one that allows you to use a normal, thin tablet, separate from the keyboard and touch pad. It’s also the least expensive of the three, at $850; and scored the best battery life in my tests. But it has some drawbacks.

A gray, aluminum machine, the Envy at first looks like a plain touchscreen laptop. But when you slide a button on the hinge, the screen pops off to become a slender, 11.6 inch tablet you manipulate by swiping, tapping and using an on-screen keyboard. When you want to use the physical keyboard and touch pad, you pop the screen back onto the base portion and you have a laptop again.

Let It Slide: The screen of the Toshiba Satellite U925t slides over the keyboard to turn it into one thick tablet.

Other PC makers are making detachables, but unlike some, Hewlett-Packard has chosen to hide the attachment mechanism in a sort of hump below the keyboard. This gives the machine a rear rise, good for typing, but it means it can’t sit flat on a desk. In laptop mode, the Envy x2 weighs 3.1 pounds. The tablet alone weighs 1.5 pounds.

I applied my tablet battery test to the Envy, since it actually can be used as a free-standing tablet, and my laptop-battery test to the other two, since their screens are fixed to their keyboards. Both tests are harsher than those the industry uses and involve playing media continuously with Wi-Fi on, power-saving features off and the screen at a bright setting.

Because the Envy has two batteries — one in the tablet and one in the base — it did pretty well. The tablet alone lasted five hours and 15 minutes, and when it died, I snapped it back onto the base, which kept it running for another three hours and 22 minutes. That combined total of eight hours and 37 minutes still wasn’t as good as the Apple iPad’s nine hours and 58 minutes in the same test, but it was better than some other tablets, and in normal use, would likely approach 10 hours. You might do much better running strictly in laptop mode, with both batteries together.

Thin Option: The HP Envy x2 is the only one of the three that gives you a normal tablet, separate from the keyboard and touch pad.

The biggest downside of the Envy x2 is that it uses a relatively wimpy Intel Atom processor, which hasn’t powered many popular tablets. I found it adequate but with some latency, and, on one occasion, it produced choppy video briefly. (The other two machines use full-powered Intel laptop chips.) Also, the Envy has the least storage of the three — 64 gigabytes — though it can be expanded with memory cards.

Two more things: Even after days of use, I found it hard to re-attach the screen. I also kept accidentally triggering the Envy’s power switch, which is flush with the surface at the top right rear of the screen, where you might hold it.

The Dual Screen

The twist with the Asus Taichi 21 is that it has two 11.6 inch screens: A nontouch display in the usual position inside the lid and a tablet-like touchscreen on the outside. Yes, unlike any laptop you’ve probably owned, the cover of the Taichi 21, which starts at $1,299, is glass.

The way it works is that you press a special button that controls how the two screens work. There’s a notebook mode, in which the inner screen is the focus, just like a traditional laptop, but the outer screen comes on when you close the lid. There’s a tablet mode, which reverses the priority. There’s a mirror mode, in which the same thing is shown on both screens when the lid is open, and dual-screen mode, in which different things can be shown on the two displays. (The latter two modes are meant for presentations and collaboration.)

In my tests, the system worked. But it’s all very complicated. And to add complexity, a second button can disable the outer screen altogether, turning the expensive machine into a non-touch, standard notebook.

Also, even though the Taichi is as light and thin as a laptop, it makes for a heavy, thick tablet. The Taichi is 2.76 pounds and has 128 GB of storage. But it costs $1,299 to $1,599, depending on configuration, and battery life was poor. I tested it with both screens on, since the company touts this feature, and got just a bit over three hours. I estimate that with only one screen and more normal usage, you’d get two to three more hours.

The Slider

Toshiba’s Satellite U925t lacks a name that rolls off the tongue, but it has a screen that slides, which transforms it from a laptop to a tablet. You just push the screen back into a flat position and then slide it toward you over the keyboard, and voilà! You now have a big, bulky, 3.35-pound tablet with a 12.5-inch screen.

Not only that, but in laptop mode, the slider mechanism forces the $1,150 PC to cram its top row of keys right up against the screen and to offer only a shrunken touch pad (though it has a touchscreen, which lessens the need for the touch pad).

The Toshiba has 128 GB of storage, and in my laptop battery test, it turned in a mediocre time of four hours and two minutes, which likely would approach five hours in normal use. It’s loaded with craplets — software and offers many folks don’t want and laboriously delete.

There’s nothing wrong with the slider concept, but I doubt many people would use a computer this thick and heavy as a tablet for very long.

Bottom Line

None of these three convertibles is optimal and different people will have different tastes. But as someone who values tablets partly for their sleekness, I’d pick the HP, which includes a real tablet, if I had to choose. I only wish that, as a laptop, it had more storage and a snappier processor.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

A Way to Share Photos, Files And Money in Black & White

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:04:07 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Say you want to quickly transfer a file, like a photo or a contact entry, from your smartphone to a friend’s. Most people would email or text the file. But a number of technologies have come along to make the process quicker and simpler.

On some Android phones, you can “beam” files like photos from phone to phone by tapping one phone to another, or bringing them very close. But that requires that both phones have a special chip, called NFC, which isn’t yet universal on Android phones and doesn’t exist at all in iPhones.

Another approach is to use an app called Bump, which transfers files between iPhones and Android phones when those holding them do a sort of sideways fist bump. It works pretty well, but you have to make contact with the other person.

With the Xsync iPhone app, you select an audio file, photo, video, contact or calendar appointment by tapping on the simple icon that represents each one.

This week, I’ve been testing a different approach — an iPhone app called Xsync. It doesn’t require any special chip and instead uses a free app and a hardware feature almost every smartphone possesses — the camera. While it is primarily meant, like Bump, for transfers between phones in proximity, it works over long distances. I was able to almost instantly send and get photos, videos and songs using Xsync between two iPhones held up to computer webcams during a Skype video call.

The key to Xsync is the QR code, that square symbol found seemingly everywhere these days—online, in print newspapers and magazines, on posters and other places. These codes typically just contain text—often, a Web address. But Xsync, a tiny company based in Seattle, generates QR codes that initiate the transfer of whole files, or in the case of photos, even groups of files. It has a built-in QR code scanner to read these codes using the phone’s camera.

The biggest drawback to Xsync is that it is currently only available for the iPhone. An Android version is planned for sometime this quarter. Meanwhile, you can use an Android phone with any QR code reader to receive, though not send, files sent via Xsync.

The Xsync app is something of a teaser for the underlying technology, which the company calls the Optical Message Service. The company’s goal isn’t to build its own apps, but to license the technology to cellphone makers so it becomes a built-in way to transfer files.

Here’s how it works. Once you install Xsync on your iPhone, you select an audio file, photo, video, contact or calendar appointment, each of which is represented by a simple icon. The app creates a QR code representing the intended transfer of that file and temporarily sends the file to Xsync’s server. Your friend uses Xsync to scan the QR code you’ve created with his or her iPhone’s camera, and the files are sent to your friend’s iPhone.

In my tests, it was easy, quick and reliable. I successfully used Xsync to send and receive all the included types of files with an iPhone 5, an iPhone 4S and an iPad mini. I was also able to receive files on an Android phone, a Google Nexus 4, via a QR code generated by Xsync.

The app generates QR codes that initiate the transfer of whole files, or in the case of photos, even groups of files.

You can even generate a QR code using Xsync that will allow you to transfer money from your PayPal account to another person’s, though that requires an added authentication step for security. But it worked, and would be a good way to, say, split a bill at a restaurant. (This PayPal feature of Xsync doesn’t work with Android, for now.)

The company says the file transfers are secure, for two reasons. First, they are encrypted. More important, each code is generated for a specific transfer and expires after a relatively short time. For instance, codes for photos expire after 24 hours, according to the company.

You can use Xsync to transmit certain kinds of files — including documents — you’ve stored in your Dropbox account, though, oddly, the Xsync app hides this document-transfer feature under an icon for sharing calendar appointments.

And you don’t have to be close to make the transfer. In addition to my Skype example, you can send a QR code generated by Xsync via email or text message, or even post the code to Facebook. Another person can then scan the code to get the file.

Xsync can generate codes that represent either existing files on your phone, or files you create on the spot. If you don’t want to use an existing one, the audio, photo, video and calendar icons in the app invite you to create a new file to be transferred.

On the iPhone, the receiving device displays the transferred files right within the Xsync app. If you’re using an Android phone to receive, you get a Web address that leads you to the file on Xsync’s server.

If you have an iPhone, Xsync is an effective way to transfer files like photos, songs, videos and more between phones.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Windows 8: Not for Old-at-Heart PCs

Walter S. Mossberg — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:01:49 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

If you’re thinking of upgrading your PC to the new Windows 8, be prepared for hassles and disappointment, especially if the computer is more than a year or two old — even if it technically meets the basic requirements to run the new version.

I know this, because I’ve spent big chunks of the past week trying to upgrade to Windows 8 two big-name, well-regarded PCs — a 2008 Lenovo laptop and a 2009 Hewlett-Packard touchscreen desktop. The process was painful, and it resulted in lost capabilities, even though both PCs ran Windows 7 quite well and met the minimum requirements for running Windows 8.

To be sure, people upgrading newer PCs, whose makers anticipated Windows 8 or have software patches ready to accommodate it, will likely have a much better experience. I learned — too late — that neither of the computers I was upgrading was on the list of models for which their manufacturers provided such patches. This may be because, in both cases, aspects of their hardware weren’t up to snuff for Windows 8’s more demanding requirements.

For instance, the touch pad on my Lenovo ThinkPad X301 laptop can’t be used to scroll in the new tabletlike Start Screen environment in Windows 8, or to perform certain Windows 8 gestures. And, on the HP TouchSmart 300, the touchscreen isn’t precise or sensitive enough to reliably perform Windows 8’s touch gestures every time. Plus, the microphone doesn’t work. Oh, and to get the HP to stop freezing, I had to perform a procedure that wiped out most of my installed software, including HP and Microsoft programs.

It isn’t unusual for somewhat older PCs to be unable to take full advantage of a new version of an operating system. And Windows 8 is a big change. But I was surprised by how hard it was to discover that my two PCs weren’t going to be able to fully work with the new system. I assumed Microsoft’s installer would let me know, but it didn’t.

Part of this problem was my fault, I guess. If I had thought to burrow through the Lenovo or HP websites, I might have found that my models weren’t considered by their own makers to be fit for upgrading.

For instance, HP’s information page, at http://bit.ly/SdTCVp, said this about my TouchSmart, after I located and entered its obscure, official product number: “HP has not tested this PC. For this reason, HP is unable to provide upgrade instructions or Windows 8 drivers. You may lose basic functionality & stability if you try to upgrade.” Alas, I learned this only after I had upgraded.

A spokeswoman for HP explained: “With any PC, it’s critical that the hardware and software work well together and some older PCs in our portfolio, including the TouchSmart 300 which was introduced in 2009, are simply not able to take advantage of the extensive new features Windows 8 has to offer.”

And a Lenovo spokesman said: “The X301 is five years old and Lenovo decided not to support it for Windows 8 upgrades. The touch pad hardware really can’t support all the features of Windows 8.”

Microsoft does offer Upgrade Assistant software that might have warned me of the problems, available at http://bit.ly/SdUxFo. But the box for the Windows 8 Pro DVD I was using only suggested running this utility and checking with the manufacturer’s website, in tiny type at the bottom of its back cover.

My problem was that I had too much confidence in Microsoft’s Windows 8 installer software. I had expected the installer, which also checks a PC to see if it can handle the new operating system, to tell me if there were key incompatibilities. It found exactly one: the Bluetooth utility in each machine. It told me to uninstall these before proceeding, and I dutifully did so.

I asked Microsoft why the installer didn’t warn me of the other incompatibilities I ran into, and an official said it simply doesn’t know how every model might perform and that’s why it recommends users look for the manufacturer’s instructions and warnings.

Also, I had problems with the installer itself. On the HP, it wouldn’t work with either the DVDs or a downloaded version of Windows 8. So I had to transfer the downloaded version to a 4 gigabyte USB flash drive to get it to work. (It requires at least a 3 gigabyte drive.)

For a limited time, until the end of this month, you can buy an upgrade to Windows 8 for $40 via download or $70 via DVD. This gets you only the high-end Pro version, with added features that let users tap into certain corporate networks. Microsoft hasn’t announced the eventual regular pricing, but I expect it to be at least $100 for standard Windows 8, and around $200 for Pro.

The basic requirements for running Windows 8 are a processor running at one gigahertz or faster, and at least one or two gigabytes of memory, depending on whether your PC is a less demanding 32-bit or more demanding 64-bit system (the installer tells you). You’ll also need at least 16 or 20 gigabytes of free storage, again depending on whether the PC is 32-bit or 64-bit, and a graphics system that can handle a Microsoft graphics standard called “DirectX 9 with WDDM driver.”

In my tests on both machines, the actual installation took about two hours, but a full workday or more was spent tweaking each machine, and getting updates to Windows 8 and its built-in apps. For instance, after the installation seemed done, I discovered I had lost the Wi-Fi Internet connection on both machines and had to temporarily turn off the firewall to restore it and then upgrade my antivirus software.

The problems were worse on the HP, which I had thought would be easier because it’s newer and has a touchscreen. On the HP, Windows 8 proved so buggy at first that I couldn’t even get back to the Start Screen — home base for the system — after opening apps and the computer froze up frequently. I was forced to perform a “Refresh,” a process that reinstalls Windows 8 without erasing your data files, but wipes out all third-party traditional Windows programs except the new-style apps you’ve bought from Microsoft’s online store. This Refresh got my HP running much better — except for the lost microphone and the inability of the older-style touchscreen to work as well as new ones do.

However, I lost dozens of programs, such as HP’s touch software suite, the Google Chrome browser, iTunes, Windows Live Essentials, Firefox and more. So I had to spend more time reinstalling some of these.

In the end, both machines ran Windows 8 pretty quickly, but clumsily. And both started up faster than before.

But there was a penalty: Each machine wound up with 12 to 13 gigabytes less free storage than before. This is mainly because the installer gathers up incompatible files into a special folder called Windows.old. You can delete this folder to recover space, or Windows will delete much of it automatically after 28 days.

The industry really wants you to get Windows 8 via an all-new PC, and most people who adopt it will go that route. But, if you don’t, or can’t, and have even a three-year-old PC, you may want to just stick with the Windows you’ve got.

Email Walt at at mossberg@wsj.com.

2013: Talk Gets Cheaper, TV Gets Smarter

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:32:01 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Personal technology never stops changing. Some new products and services are game changers, like Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Others are clever twists or refinements, like each successive version of Google’s Android platform, which gets better and better. Others are bold gambles, like Microsoft’s new Windows 8, which hopes to combine both a tablet experience and a traditional PC environment in one operating system. But there’s always something new, from large companies and small ones.

So here are a few things consumers will likely see in technology in 2013. Many of these began to take shape in the past year, but will be stronger trends in the new year.

Tablets vs. PCs

While the iPad line, including the new Mini, continues to dominate the tablet market, Android-based tablets are finally gaining traction. But the bigger story is that tablets will continue to erode the role of laptop PCs.

Consumers are using tablets for more and more tasks formerly performed by laptops. Traditional computers aren’t going away—they still do certain tasks, like heavy content creation, better than tablets. But consumers seem, at the very least, to be replacing their laptops less often and spending discretionary funds on tablets, which are gradually replacing another device: the dedicated e-reader. Many analysts had expected Windows 8 to halt or reverse this trend, and it may yet do so. But early indications aren’t encouraging for that outcome.

Integrating Hardware and Software

Meanwhile, another big trend is emerging: Apple’s model of one company making the entire device—hardware, operating system, core apps and an online ecosystem—is beginning to take hold elsewhere. In October, Microsoft unveiled its first computer, the Surface tablet. The company will follow it up as soon as this month with a second, more powerful version. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft also made its own smartphone this year.

Google is also moving in Apple’s direction. It now sells three devices—a smartphone and two tablets—under its Nexus brand. These products are built by partner companies, but designed by Google. Now that Google owns its own hardware company, Motorola Mobility, I expect it to get deeper into the integrated model. Motorola, freshly stocked with former Google executives, is reported to be building advanced new hardware devices tightly integrated with Android.

What to Watch: In addition to its Apple TV interface, left, Apple is expected to try to further simplify television viewing.

Rethinking Television

Samsung and others already make TVs that can connect to the Internet, and stream Internet video and run tablet-type apps, without any special set-top box. But I find them clumsy, and their “smart TV” functions haven’t taken off with consumers yet. This may be the year they do.

The biggest expectation is that Apple, which has been working hard on the problem, will finally unveil its long-rumored TV this year, with the goal of greatly simplifying the TV and smoothly melding Internet and cable content. Many, including me, thought it might appear in 2012, but the company reportedly ran into difficulties in negotiating with media companies for content rights. Meanwhile, Apple’s tiny, $99 Apple TV box, while still a relatively small seller, is gaining popularity, partly because the company has built into its laptops, tablets and phones a feature called AirPlay which can use an Apple TV box to wirelessly stream audio and video to a TV.

Republic Wireless offers the Defy XT with a $19 unlimited plan.

Cheaper Smartphones and Plans

Smartphones are everywhere in the developed world, but most are still expensive—around $200 after a carrier subsidy that requires a two-year contract. And the monthly service fees can easily approach or exceed $100, especially if you use a lot of data, which is the very essence of a smartphone’s purpose.

There are already some smartphones, usually older, less capable or less popular models, available for $99 or $49 or even free with a contract. But I expect to see better smartphones at lower prices in 2013, especially those running the dominant Android platform, and the handsome, but low-selling Windows Phone platform from Microsoft.

In addition, some companies are beginning to offer really cheap monthly plans. One example: Republic Wireless, which offers unlimited voice, text and data for $19 a month on a small, Android phone, the Motorola Defy XT, using older software that has been modified to make voice calls where possible over Wi-Fi instead of a costlier carrier network.

The $700 Astell & Kern AK100 plays much higher fidelity digital music.

Costlier, Better Music Players

Audiophiles and recording artists have never much liked the compressed music files that now fill every iPod and smartphone. They complain that the richness of the original recording is lost because the song files are optimized for minimum space and download time, and because they are often made from CDs, not from the master studio tapes.

So in 2013, there will be a push to sell a new kind of portable music player that can handle high quality music. The Korean electronics company, iRiver, has introduced the Astell & Kern AK100, a $700 player that can play much higher fidelity digital music. The legendary rocker Neil Young is backing a second venture, Pono, which is doing something similar. In addition to the price, there’s another downside: The files can be 10 to 20 times as large as standard digital songs, so many fewer tracks fit in a given amount of memory.

The Basis, part of the crop of new wristband monitors, measures resting heart rate.

Fitness and Health Monitors

In 2012, sensor-packed wristbands like the Nike+ FuelBand and the Jawbone Up were introduced to measure how many steps people take in a day, how well they sleep, and other indicators of health and fitness. I expect this trend to continue in 2013, in different forms and with more sophisticated sensors. One new product, the Basis, is a watch with sensors on the back that measures resting heart rate. All of these devices tie into mobile apps or Web-based dashboards to track progress and offer advice.

Internet-Controlled Everything

Another trend I expect to see in 2013 is an expansion of apps and devices that let people wirelessly control many everyday objects, from light bulbs to appliances, using low-powered networks and smartphones or tablets. And we’ll likely see more smart devices with such intelligence built in, similar to the Nest intelligent thermostat, which is Wi-Fi powered.

These are just a few of the trends likely to mark the consumer tech landscape in 2013. Others will also be prominent, most notably the continued reliance on the cloud, or remote servers, to store content and work collaboratively. One thing is sure: There are certain to be developments that will surprise us all, and can’t be forecast here.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Google Maps for iPhone Returns Better Than Ever

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 02:05:16 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Google’s rich, reliable Maps app is back on the iPhone, and that means iPhone users can stop relying on the flawed, fledgling Apple maps app that replaced it as a built-in feature in September.

Apple’s version is still bolted into the phone, and the new, free Google app must be downloaded from Apple’s app store. Google says the app was downloaded 10 million times in just its first two days of availability last week.

More Info: After entering a place in Google Maps, tapping a bar on the screen brings up various data such as opening hours and photographic views.

The reappearance of Google Maps on the iPhone closes a big advantage Google’s own Android phones had gained when Apple’s replacement turned out to lack some key features, such as labeling of buildings and businesses, street-view photos and public-transit routing. It also offered too much inaccurate location data.

However, the biggest news here is that the new iPhone version of Google Maps isn’t just better than Apple Maps. For now, at least, Google Maps is better in most respects on the iPhone than it is on Android phones. It has been redesigned with a cleaner, simpler user interface that makes it easier to use. Google officials say they took the sudden need to build a new iPhone version as an opportunity to rethink the popular app from the ground up.

I’ve been testing the new Google Maps on iPhone for a week or so in the San Francisco and Washington metro areas, and I really like it. It isn’t perfect, but I prefer it to any other iPhone Maps app I’ve used, and to Google Maps on Android. The latter will likely also gain the new design in time, but for now, it looks inelegant by comparison.

Why would Google bail out iPhone users and give its rival’s phone a better version of its Maps app than its own Android customers enjoy, even temporarily? Because, while Apple makes its money from hardware, Google is a services and advertising company, and wants its products to be heavily used on a popular platform like Apple’s.

Saved Places: Tapping an onscreen button displays a list of places you’ve recently saved and shared.

The Android version still has a few features the new iPhone version lacks: maps of the interiors of stores, malls and airports; bicycling directions; the ability to view map segments offline; and special offers that show up for some businesses. Google says it left these out for now because they aren’t heavily used and the company wanted a new Apple version pronto. It says these may be added over time.

More important are the Android app’s traits Google abandoned in the new iPhone version: too many menus and steps to get things done, confusing icons, and a concept called Layers that was techie talk for things like switching from map view to satellite view.

Instead, the new iPhone version of Google Maps emphasizes two things: uncluttering the map itself, and swiping vertically and horizontally to move quickly among places, map views and information. In my tests, I found this design refreshingly easy to use. It even enhances the voice-prompted, automatic turn-by-turn navigation whose absence on the original iPhone version of Google Maps was the key thing that prompted Apple to get into the maps business.

Navigation Aid: While traveling to a destination, a large green bar at the top of the screen shows the current step in the directions.

When you first open the new Google Maps, all you see is a map with a search bar across the top and two small icons at the bottom. In the lower left is a button that brings up your current location, and in the lower right is a tiny icon that lets you switch to satellite view, to see public transit and traffic information, or to launch the separate Google Earth app. You can also get to these latter choices by swiping left with two fingers.

The top search bar includes two buttons on the right — one to start a navigation, and one to bring up a list of places you’ve recently saved and shared. These are automatically synced with places you’ve saved and shared via Google Maps on other devices, such as PCs and Macs, or Android phones.

In addition to this clear, clean, main view, Google Maps for iPhone simplifies other functions. If you enter the name or address of a place, a small bar appears at the bottom of the map with summary information, like the estimated travel time or, with restaurants, a summary of reviews.

If you tap on this bar, you get an “info sheet” with a wealth of information and functions, including the photographic street view of the location, interior photos, reviews, hours, menus, and the ability to phone the place or share its location. If your search is for a category, like “cigars,” swiping horizontally will bring up alternate info sheets for other locations.

You can start the navigation process by tapping on a colored icon showing travel time, either in the initial small bar at the bottom of the map, or on the info sheet.

Once you choose to get directions, a list of routes pops up, with estimated time and traffic. You can switch routes by simply swiping on the bar.

Once a navigation is under way, the map is topped by a large green bar showing the current step in the directions. You can peek ahead by just swiping this bar to the left. You also can quickly call up a text list of the route.

In my tests, location and navigation were generally accurate. A couple of flubs: A location pin was a few hundred yards off, and Google put me on a freeway when local streets would have been faster. But overall it worked well. It guided me on two routes between Silicon Valley and a bowling alley in San Francisco’s Presidio area, where I had once been lost. It provided accurate directions for Washington’s subway.

Apple is already improving its competing app, but for now, iPhone users, my recommendation is to go with Google Maps.

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

New Address? Addappt Lets Friends Follow All Your Moves.

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:05:40 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Your friends and contacts change jobs, phone numbers, email addresses and residences all the time. But keeping your digital address book or contact list current with all these changes is tedious at best and often impossible. So, the contacts on most smartphones and computers are usually out of date and incomplete.

Now, a tiny Silicon Valley start-up called Addappt is trying to end all that by making your address book self-updating. The company is offering a free service and contacts app of the same name for the iPhone that matches people in each others’ address books, and then automatically updates their information when changes occur.

For instance, in my tests of Addappt, one of my colleagues who was helping me try it out updated her home address on her own phone, and the new address appeared within minutes on her contact card in my phone’s address book. In turn, I added an additional phone number to my address record on my phone, and it showed up in her information for me almost immediately. No manual changes were needed on either end.

Addappt users control their own information. Only the person who is the subject of a contact card can make changes that will be synchronized through Addappt. It isn’t a social network, and it has no ties to Facebook or Twitter. Addappt says it stores only your own record, not your whole address book, on its servers. The idea is to focus on the address book, and make it better, not clutter it up.

With the Addappt app, changing your address, phone number or other personal data on your iPhone will automatically update this information for other Addappt users in your contact list.

After testing Addappt, I can say it does what it promises. I tried it successfully with several people. I was able to use Addappt itself as my address book, or to stick with my phone’s familiar contacts app, because Addappt instantly shares any changes with the built-in iPhone app, and vice versa. In fact, if you use Apple’s iCloud to synchronize your own address books, changes made automatically by Addappt can be propagated to all iCloud-connected devices, including iPads and Macs.

However, this is a new product from a company with few resources, so it is just starting out. That means it has some limitations and flaws that keep it, at least for now, from being a universal, living address book.

One limitation is that because Addappt is an iPhone-only app, you can’t get self-updating information for those people in your address book who don’t use iPhones. The company says it hopes to add an Android version by the middle of 2013, and has longer-range plans for other platforms.

Another is that, to gain the benefits of Addappt, you have to convince even your iPhone-using contacts to download and use it. But the company makes this somewhat difficult. Every new user must apply for an invitation code to activate the app. The company says this process is needed to authenticate people, and to guard against a surge of new users, which might swamp its servers.

And the app has some flaws. It can’t make a match between two Addappt users, even if they’re in each others’ iPhone contact lists, unless their current contact cards have the email address each used to join Addappt (it must be the top email on the contact card) or your name and the top phone number listed. Also, I found the Alphabetical index down the side of the Addappt app, meant to save you from scrolling through long lists, worked poorly.

In addition, the Addappt app lacks a Favorites or Recents list. Finally, while the company swears it will never share or sell or rent any contact information, it has yet to post a formal privacy policy.

In many other respects, however, the app is nicely designed and easy to use. Once it is up and running, it scans your address book to see if it can match any of your contacts to other Addappt users. If it can, it automatically connects you with them. As people in your address book join and use Addappt, they also get connected.

Addappt users who aren’t in each others’ address books can ask for permission to connect. The app includes a list of connected users, and pending connections, as well as your entire address book. In the main list, connected users are designated by small icons showing two links of a chain.

Addappt’s address book itself is attractive and easy to use. As you scroll through it, the contact at the top of the screen expands to show more information — such as the city and state — and even the local time (so you don’t wake people up in the middle of the night). Icons appear that allow you immediately to make a voice call, or to send an email or text, without opening the contact entry.

What information for a person in your contact book will change once you are connected to him or her on Addappt? It depends. For some things, like name or photo or job title, the other person’s choices will obliterate yours.

For others, like phone numbers, which can have multiple entries, information you’ve entered for the person will be preserved, and the contact’s own new information will be added.

Contacts’ pictures in Addappt are supplied by the person whose contact it is, and are displayed in a large size on the contact card.

The product has no advertising. The company hopes to make money eventually by selling premium versions with additional features.

Addappt is a promising product that could solve a real problem. But it can’t reach its full potential until it runs on all platforms.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

iTunes Gets an Upgrade Without Missing a Beat

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 02:05:03 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple’s iTunes is the world’s most popular computer program for playing, managing and buying music, movies and TV shows. The company estimates the number of copies in active use to be in the high hundreds of millions. Now, Apple has given iTunes its biggest overhaul since 2003, when the software — originally just a jukebox for Macs — was made available for Windows computers and the built-in iTunes store was added.

I’ve been testing this major new version, called iTunes 11, and I consider it a significant improvement in the look, feel, speed and function of the program, which had become somewhat bloated, sluggish and dense over the years as new features were added.

This new version won’t please every iTunes user. Some familiar ways of doing things have changed and some longtime features have been axed in the name of simplification. People who use iTunes solely to organize and play their media, not to buy it from Apple, will find many more prompts to patronize the iTunes store. There also are a few small flaws Apple is pledging to fix soon.

Overall, however, I found the new iTunes a pleasure to use. The venerable program is now brighter and more colorful, with clever and pleasing new capabilities and faster search. There is tighter integration between the library of media that resides on your computer and media stored in Apple’s online iCloud service. Streaming from the cloud has been expanded. The store has also been made cleaner, simpler and easier to use.

A new feature of iTunes 11, called Expanded view, allows you to click on an album cover to get a matching panel showing all the songs on that album.

I tested iTunes 11 on four computers: two PC laptops, one running Windows 7 and one the new Windows 8; and two Macs, an older desktop iMac and a late-model MacBook Air laptop. On all four machines, it ran well and smoothly, never crashing and properly playing all the local and cloud-based music and videos I tried.

In my tests, I bought a variety of new songs and videos, and they quickly became available on all my devices, including the four computers, an iPhone and an iPad. I also was able to smoothly sync an iPhone, an iPad and even a very old iPod, with no problems.

There are many small changes scattered throughout the program, but a few stand out.

No More Sidebar

The most notable change is that the program no longer uses a long, scrolling text sidebar to switch between displays of the major media types, such as music, movies, TV shows and podcasts. Instead, you select these by clicking on a drop-down button. When you pick a media type, it displays choices at the top. The music mode, for example, shows songs, albums, artists, genres and playlists. Choosing any of these instantly changes the main screen to reflect that choice.

Opening the iTunes Store is now done using a button at the top right. Once in the store, you return to the library using a similar button at the right.

Those who prefer the old sidebar can bring it back and banish the new main buttons.

Expanded View

My favorite new feature is called Expanded view. You can now click on any album cover and the cover image expands into a colorful panel showing all the songs on that album. The panel is in the dominant shade of the album cover and shows a lovely image of the cover that blends into the colored background of the panel.

This Expanded view also works for movies and TV shows, showing relevant information about films and, for TV shows, lists of episodes.

A small arrow next to each song, album, movie or TV show lets you perform actions like adding an item to a playlist, or jumping to the artist page in your library, or going to the item in the store.

What’s Next?

Another nice feature is called Up Next. It replaces a function called DJ and is essentially a queue of songs. You place any song at the top of this queue to play it next and see a history of what has been played earlier. If you like, you can play immediately any song in these lists.

Streaming

For years, iTunes was mainly about downloading media, not streaming it from the cloud. That changes with iTunes 11, now better integrated with Apple’s iCloud service, which stores music and videos you have purchased from Apple, or, if you have the paid iTunes Match service, any song, whether you bought it from Apple or not.

As before, small cloud icons indicate whether an album, movie or TV show is stored in iCloud rather than on your computer. And as before, you can click on these to download them. But now, iTunes lets you stream a song, movie or show without downloading.

Previously, streaming from the cloud was only available for paid users of Apple’s iTunes Match service, and only for songs.

MiniPlayer

The program has long had a MiniPlayer option, which hides the main window in favor of a small oblong player that better coexists with other windows you have open on your computer.

Now, this little player has added functions, such as search, and Up Next.

Drawbacks

Fans of iTunes will notice some omissions and flaws. The long-touted Cover Flow carousel of album covers has been dumped. The company says it found too few users considered it useful. A feature that finds duplicate entries is missing. Apple says it will soon be restored in a minor update of the program.

In my tests, some album covers were missing in album view. Apple says this is a rare bug, but one it has solved and will fix in a minor update soon. Another bug the company says will be remedied prevents owners of Apple TVs from wirelessly streaming cloud-based movies to their TVs.

Also, if you want to see biographical information on an artist, you have to go to the store. I wish it was available in the library, but Apple has no plans to change this.

Bottom Line

Apple has made iTunes better and easier to use, and veteran users who upgrade will gain from the new features, if they take a little time to get used to them.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Latest Lumia Smartphone: High Quality, but It’s Heavy

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 02:03:38 +0000

Both Nokia and Microsoft were once titans in the smartphone world, but the pair have struggled to find favor with consumers, carriers and developers in the iPhone-Android era. Now, the two companies, which have become close partners, hope they’ve finally found the formula for success. The product on which their hopes rest is Nokia’s new flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920, running Microsoft’s revamped operating system, Windows Phone 8.

[ See post to watch video ]

I’ve been testing the Lumia 920 and consider it a handsome, high-quality phone with attractive features that worked well for me. Not only that, but it costs half of what most other top-of-the-line smartphones set you back, and yet gives you twice the typical memory. It is greatly improved from the first flagship Lumia, last spring’s Lumia 900.

While this isn’t a review of the new Windows Phone 8 software, I can say that it also has improved in the past year. Its underlying architecture has been rebuilt, it is faster and more reliable, it now has smaller icons so you needn’t scroll as much to find what you want, and it still offers a fresh, engaging interface that sets it apart.

The brightly colored Lumia 920 is 65 percent heavier than Apple’s iPhone 5.

But the Lumia 920 has two big drawbacks: It is heavy and thick, and, like all Windows Phones, it has a much smaller app selection than the iPhone or Android phones.

This new Lumia, which costs $100 with a two-year contract from AT&T, has a sharp, vibrant 4.5-inch screen, a very good 8.7-megapixel rear camera, and is fast and fluid. It supports LTE, the most consistently speedy U.S. cellular-data technology, and has 32 gigabytes of memory for storage. It is made of plastic, but it is a solid-feeling plastic in bright colors — including red, yellow and blue — that are injected into the material.

The phone also has some unusual features. Its screen responds to fingernails and even fingers clad in regular thin gloves (though winter-weight gloves didn’t work for me). And it can be charged without plugging in a cable, by merely placing it on a charging plate that plugs into the wall. (The charging plate, normally a $49 option, is being included with the phone for an unspecified period.)

While I didn’t do a formal battery test, this Nokia lasted me through a day of mixed use. Voice calls were reliable and clear, and the phone’s speakers sounded great. Photos and videos looked very good.

In my tests, the LTE speeds were very good, averaging 17 megabits per second downstream. But AT&T’s LTE network is only in about 100 cities.

However, the Lumia 920 has a few characteristics that may turn off potential buyers. The biggest downside is its sheer size. This may be the heaviest modern smartphone I’ve tested, and it’s one of the thickest.

To give you an idea, it’s 65 percent heavier than Apple’s iPhone 5, and 40 percent thicker. We’re in an era of smartphones with larger and larger screens, but most phone makers take care to keep these bigger-screen phones relatively light and thin, something Nokia didn’t do here. For instance, compared with the latest high-end Android phone, Google’s Nexus 4, which has an even larger 4.7-inch screen, the Lumia 920 is 33 percent heavier and 17 percent thicker.

It can be charged by placing it on a charging plate that plugs into the wall.

The second major downside is app selection on the Windows Phone platform. The number, quality and variety of apps has improved considerably in the past year. But developers still either ignore Windows Phone or write for the platform well after they’ve launched on Android or Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. The Lumia 920 has about 120,000 apps, versus some 700,000 for the iPhone and the latest Android phones.

Sheer numbers of apps may seem irrelevant after a certain point. In fact, important apps like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Kindle, Yelp, the New York Times and Words With Friends are available on the Lumia 920 and worked in my tests. Plus, only Windows Phones have smartphone versions of Microsoft Office programs.

But my searches of the app store on the new Lumia failed to turn up plenty of popular apps available on the Apple and Google platforms, such as Instagram, Dropbox, Google Drive, YouTube, HBO GO, Spotify, Pandora radio, United Airlines, MLB, Scrabble and Starbucks.

Some other annoyances turned up in my tests. An update to one of the built-in settings features has remained stuck in the app store for days (Nokia can’t explain why). The camera, which claims superior image stability and low-light performance, generally did very well for me. But it sometimes had a tendency to take over-bright shots. For instance, an orange wine label came out as yellow.

Voice recognition is a weak point on the Lumia 920. Its ability to answer spoken questions and commands lagged far behind Apple’s and Google’s in my tests. And its dictation capability for things like email and texts was atrocious, never coming close to accurate.

The wireless charging plate worked every time for me. But it has a gigantic wall adapter and takes about an hour longer to charge the phone fully than the included standard charger cable.

All in all, though, the Nokia Lumia 920 is worth considering, if you can live with a heavy device — especially given its combination of low price and strong features.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Corrections & Amplifications
The app store on the new Lumia includes an app for Delta Air Lines. A previous version of this article incorrectly said the app was not available.

Making Sense of All the New Laptop Flavors

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 02:03:42 +0000

Just when you thought it was safe to shop for a new laptop, a fresh problem stands in the way of laptop buyers: Confusion. The shelves are now filled with shiny new PCs and Macs running revamped operating systems, but it’s suddenly more complicated to choose a new laptop, especially for Windows shoppers.

[ See post to watch video ]

So, for this year’s fall laptop buyer’s guide, I’ll focus on sorting out some of the muddle. As always, this guide is for consumers doing the most common tasks. It isn’t meant for corporate buyers or for hard-core gamers or serious media producers.

Windows, Mac Diverge Even More

There always have been some core differences among the many Windows laptops and Apple’s MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops. Computer makers using Windows tended to offer much greater variety and lower prices, while Mac models had better software, were much less prone to viruses and were generally more reliable and elegant.

Now, with the release of the new Windows 8 operating system, there is an even more fundamental difference. MacBooks remain traditional laptops, controlled by touch pads and keyboards. Apple has kept the Mac separate from its touchscreen computer, the market-dominating iPad tablet.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro now comes in regular display and higher-priced Retina display.

But Windows 8 laptops combine the two approaches, with two different user environments in the same computer. One is the traditional Windows desktop mode, best used with a touch pad or mouse and a keyboard. The other is the Start Screen mode, which operates like a tablet, has tablet-like apps and is best used with a touch screen.

So, if you’re looking for a familiar laptop, focus on a Mac. If you like the idea of both approaches in one device, and can handle switching back and forth, pick a Windows 8 laptop.

Which Windows 8?

If you opt for Windows, it gets more confusing. Windows 8 comes in two versions, plain Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. Laptops with the latter have a handful of extra features that make it easier to connect with many corporate networks from home. So, if you need that ability, look for a laptop with the Pro version.

But there is an even trickier division. Some new Windows portables, like Microsoft’s first computer, the Surface, use a variant of Windows 8 called Windows RT. Regular Windows 8 lets you run all the traditional desktop programs in Windows 7, like Microsoft Office 2010, Chrome, Quicken or iTunes. However, RT doesn’t run these common programs. Windows RT machines mostly run the new tablet-type apps that work in the Start Screen. They come with a special version of Microsoft Office, but it omits Outlook. So, if you want to use old Windows programs, don’t buy an RT machine.

Microsoft’s Surface RT uses a variant of Windows 8 called Windows RT, which doesn’t run most traditional desktop programs.

Touchscreen or Not

Windows 8 is a “touch first” operating system. It can be operated with a mouse or touch pad, but its newest, coolest component, the Start Screen, and the tablet-like apps sold for that environment via Microsoft’s online store, are best used with touch. And there are some traditional laptops, like Acer’s slender Aspire S7, with touchscreens to complement their touch pads and keyboards.

However, many if not most Windows 8 laptops available right now lack touchscreens. On a visit to a Best Buy store this week, I found the retailer promoting only three touchscreen Ultrabooks, slim, light, well-equipped Windows laptops. There were a few larger well-equipped touchscreen models and one low-end model. All the others used standard screens.

Because I believe Windows 8′s tablet-style mode works best with a touchscreen, I don’t advise buying a Windows 8 laptop without one.

Tablet or Convertible

Unlike Apple, Microsoft has no separate tablet operating system. Windows 8 was designed to run both tablets and standard computers. In my tests, I have found it runs well, maybe even best, on tablets, which can have add-on keyboards to handle traditional desktop programs. But there are a number of laptops, called convertibles, whose screens can flip, or slide, or twist, so they cover the keyboard and look like tablets.

Don’t rely on these convertibles for extended use as tablets. The ones I’ve seen are too heavy and bulky for more than occasional use in tablet mode. If you use a tablet heavily, stick with an iPad, an Android tablet, or a Windows 8 or Windows RT machine that’s actually a tablet.

Storage

Windows 8 and other system files appear to take up a lot more of your storage space than Windows 7. On the Lenovo Yoga laptop I reviewed last week, only 70 gigabytes of the 128GB of storage are available to the user. Get at least a 500GB hard disk or a 256GB solid-state drive.

Mac Confusion

Despite its new Mountain Lion operating system, the Mac hasn’t changed nearly as much as Windows has. There’s one version of the OS, for home and corporate use, and no stripped-down equivalent of Windows RT. While Mountain Lion borrows some features from the iPad, it doesn’t attempt to mimic a tablet.

However, Apple has redesigned its top MacBook Pro models, and introduced confusion. Both the 13-inch and 15-inch Pros now come in two versions: regular display and higher-resolution — and higher-price — Retina display. Be sure you need the extra pixels before opting for the latter.

Price

The least costly Mac laptop, the 11-inch MacBook Air, is still $999. And you can still buy some poorly equipped non-touchscreen Windows 8 laptops for about $300. In general, expect to spend between $600 and $1,000 for a well-equipped, thin and light touchscreen Windows 8 laptop.

Bottom Line

It’s an exciting time to buy a new laptop, especially for Windows lovers. But be careful to wade through the confusing options so you get what you need, nothing more or less.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.