AllThingsD » Product Reviews

Alcatel One Touch Idol Smartphone: Nothing to Be Idolized

Bonnie Cha — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:31:21 +0000

How do you introduce the world to a new smartphone from a company that most people have never heard of? With a cameo in “Iron Man 3,” of course.

Alcatel One Touch is a cellphone brand from Chinese consumer electronics company TCL Communications. Its first U.S. smartphone, the mid-range Idol, will make its debut at the end of the month. To get the name in front of more eyes, the Android-based handset is featured in the latest installment of Marvel Comics’s “Iron Man” film series. But in real life it faces the heroic task of going up against smartphone stalwarts like Samsung, HTC and LG.

[ See post to watch video ]

Unfortunately, this smartphone isn’t going to reach superhero status. I’ve been testing the Idol over the past week, and I found it to be unremarkable. The phone lacks 4G LTE support and is somewhat sluggish, which makes it frustrating to use. Plus, it’s currently priced at $299 without carrier backing. For that money, you’ll get a lot more from the Nexus 4 by LG.

There’s really nothing that sets the Idol apart from the competition. The design resembles a lot of other all-touchscreen smartphones, and without any type of branding on the front of the device, you’d be hard-pressed to pick it out of a lineup of Android devices — not that I want a huge company logo splattered across the front. Alcatel One Touch does offer the Idol in a number of colors, including red, green and blue, but, alas, I received the boring silver one.

The smartphone measures 5.24 inches tall by 2.66 inches wide by 0.31 inch thick, and weighs 3.84 ounces. It’s smaller than the Samsung Galaxy S4, but bigger than the iPhone 5. The construction of the phone is largely plastic, but I didn’t think it felt particularly cheap or fragile. It was comfortable to hold, and I had no problems navigating through the menus with one hand.

The Idol has a 4.7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 960 by 540 pixels. That’s on par with other midrange smartphones, and the display was bright and clear for reading text and viewing videos. But for the same price, you can get the Nexus 4 with a 4.7-inch, 1,280 by 768-pixel touchscreen, which offers sharper image quality.

Another advantage to the Nexus 4 is that it’s running the latest version of Google’s Android Jelly Bean operating system (4.2.2). The Idol runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.1.1, so it’s not too far behind, but the rate at which it will receive software updates may not be as quick as the Nexus, since the latter is offered directly by Google.

The good news is that the Idol’s user interface is clean and easy to use. The company hasn’t added too many of its own customizations, and it’s not bogged down with useless software. A couple of apps that I found particularly useful were MobiSystem’s OfficeSuite for viewing and editing Office documents, and Movie Studio for editing videos right on the phone.

The quality of the Idol’s main eight-megapixel camera is mediocre. As with many camera phones, I got the best results when taking pictures outdoors in natural light. But even then, I didn’t find the colors to be that vibrant. Photos taken indoors or in low-light conditions were a bit grainy, and using the built-in flash only washed out colors. There were other issues, as well.

To focus, you can tap on the screen, but I found it slow at times (the phone also makes a weird clicking noise). There were also delays when I tried to launch the camera from the lock screen, and a couple of times the camera app unexpectedly closed as soon as I launched it from the main menu. It didn’t give me much confidence for using the Idol’s camera to capture spontaneous moments.

A photo taken with the Alcatel One Touch Idol’s 8-megapixel camera.

Unfortunately, performance issues weren’t uncommon during my time with the Idol. It’s powered by a slower processor than other phones in its price range, and I ran into delays when launching apps or loading social networks like Facebook. There was once instance where it struggled to even get to the main menu of apps, which I have never seen before. The problems weren’t constant, but it was enough to make it frustrating. The speed of the Nexus 4 offers a more fluid experience.

Also, the Idol doesn’t support 4G LTE for faster data speeds. Instead, it works on another 4G standard called HSPA+, which can be just as fast or faster than LTE in some places, but in my testing I didn’t find this to be the case. Using the iPhone 5 on AT&T’s LTE network in San Francisco, I averaged download speeds of 22.04 megabits per second and upload speeds of 18.17 Mbps. Meanwhile, the Idol averaged 3.77 Mbps down and 1.03 Mbps up. To be fair, the Nexus 4 also lacks 4G LTE.

Calls sounded clear, and I didn’t experience any dropped calls. Voices sounded natural, without any disruptive background noise. But the volume can get piercingly loud, even at mid-levels. My friends had no major complaints on their end.

For my battery drain tests, I simulated a voice call with Wi-Fi on, allowing the screen to time out after 30 seconds, and the Idol offered six hours and 18 minutes of continuous talk time. In real-world usage, where I used the phone to check email and social networks, read articles on the Web and watch a couple of YouTube clips, I needed to recharge the phone by early evening.

Sadly, Iron Man can’t save the Alcatel One Touch Idol. At its current price, the smartphone doesn’t hold a candle to the more powerful and robust Nexus 4. Even if the smartphone was eventually offered by a carrier at a cheap price or even for free, the performance issues aren’t worth it.

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.

Breathe, Relax, Repeat: Devices for Inner Peace

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:22:06 +0000

Breathe in energy and positivity. Breathe out distractions and bad feelings. Envision a calm place and let yourself go there.

Who are you kidding? You’re probably racing to or from work along with hundreds of other people and the anxiety level you feel is indescribably high. You may want to try to meditate or center yourself in stressful situations like these, but never actually remember to do it.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested two sensors that might help: the $99 HeartMath Inner Balance Sensor for iOS and $119 Tinké by Zensorium. Each device plugs into Apple’s iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, and digitally monitors heart rate and breathing patterns, offering on-screen coaching to get you into a calmer zone.

While a traditional heart monitor often just spits out a number, both the HeartMath Inner Balance and Tinké provide feedback as you use them. People who meditate regularly but don’t know whether or not their heart and breathing are reacting to their meditations will get some specific answers with these devices and apps. Both of these free apps offer ways to save results and share them via email or social networks. Using them taught me how to lower my heart rate and steady my breathing.

The HeartMath sensor is the company’s first mobile device after years of working only on computers. One end clips to an earlobe, resembling a Bluetooth headset from afar, and uses an infrared sensor to see blood flowing through the skin and measure heart-rate variability. The other end attaches to an iOS device.

The company suggests spending 10 to 15 minutes with this app in the morning to prepare for the day and 10 to 15 minutes at night to get settled before sleeping. It measures what HeartMath calls coherence—an algorithm applied to heart-rate variability, which the company says can reflect emotional states and stress levels.

In stressful situations, I watched the screen register my low coherence level with a red icon, but I gradually learned how to get into the zone of high coherence, which is represented by a green icon.

I tried this for several days in the morning and at night, and found myself looking forward to my time with the app. I also tried it at different times of the day, including after a quick walk at lunch and while riding the subway home.

The first time you use HeartMath, helpful slides walk you through how the product works. You can switch between several views to focus on during a session: a flower pulsing in and out with your breaths; a shade that lifts and lowers as you breathe; a photo of a waterfall, which you can change to an image you’d like to stare at; or a statistical screen showing heart-rate variance, coherence over time, pulse and a spectrum analysis of heart rhythms. Relevant coaching phrases pop up to encourage you. Some included, “Breathe through the heart area” and “Excellent! You’re in high coherence!”

During setup, I was never asked for my gender or age, but a company spokeswoman said it plans to add these personalized levels later this year. Early next year, the company plans an Android version and a wireless version of the sensor.

The Tinké (pronounced “tink”) by Singapore-based Zensorium is a tiny sensor that comes in white, gray, pink or blue. After downloading its app, I was invited to use it as a guest, or by creating a new account. I tried guest mode and later created my own account, where session scores were saved. Even as a guest, I was prompted to enter my age and gender for a more accurate reading.

I plugged the sensor into my iPad, which made its infrared light glow. On-screen instructions told me to place my thumb over the light, and I waited while Tinké measured either my Zen Index or Vita Index. The Zen Index uses heart-rate variability to quantify stress levels in a simplified manner, according to the company. The Vita Index is a cardio-respiratory score that looks at heart rate, blood-oxygen level and respiratory rate (the number of breaths per minute).

I started with testing my Zen Index, which I did by breathing in time with one of five circle patterns that appeared on the screen, each pulsing at different paces. In just a few minutes, my score out of 99 points was displayed: “Calm, 57/99 points. Doing well. Keep calm and carry on practicing your breathing to improve.” When I tested my Vita Index, my score said: “Fresh, 84/99 points. Looking good! Your heart rate, respiratory rate and blood oxygen level are within normal ranges. Stay motivated!”

Fun factoids appeared on the screen while I used the Tinké sensor. One said, “Did you know? Your right lung takes in more air than your left.” Another said, “Eating fish helps lower your risk of depression.”

I chose a “Shout” icon in the app to share results with Tinké users but I could also share my results via Facebook. Tinké awards badges for activities and gives users extra points when they measure their Vita Index three times daily. There’s a leaderboard of all users, which might motivate people even more.

If you’re curious about your heart-rate variability and the other data that can be gleaned from it, I’d recommend the HeartMath Inner Balance for a comprehensive approach.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com

Three Battery-Boosting Cases for iPhone 5

Lauren Goode — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:00:33 +0000

As advanced as new smartphones are, battery life can still be an issue for people who use a lot of juice-sucking apps.

Sound like a familiar first-world problem? Luckily, the next generation of battery cases is here. They’re slimmer than earlier models, and they promise more.

They’re not perfect, but they’re pretty darn good.

Over the past week and a half, I’ve been comparing three cases for iPhone 5: Mophie’s $100 Juice Pack Air, the slightly less powerful $80 Mophie Juice Pack Helium, and MyCharge’s brand-new Freedom 2000 case.

The Freedom 2000 also costs $80, and yet it claims to give even more extra juice than the Mophie Juice Pack Air.

[ See post to watch video ]

While Mophie has been making smartphone-charging cases since the days of the original iPhone, MyCharge is a relatively new company, mostly making portable charging packs. Its iPhone 4/4S charging case never even made it to market.

The best part about this new MyCharge Freedom 2000 case is that it doesn’t add the additional junk to my iPhone’s trunk the way the Mophie packs do, with their slide-on bottom attachments. But it does have one notable design flaw: It renders the phone’s power button pretty much useless by covering it with a plastic “dummy” button that barely sticks out. I found it nearly impossible to power off the phone or take screen grabs with this case on the phone.

Still, after using the MyCharge, the Mophie packs felt big and long in comparison, especially when I was holding my phone in my hand during a long run outside. And the Mophie Juice Pack Air is expensive, at a third of the cost of the iPhone. The Mophie Juice Pack Helium is a little more reasonably priced, and still provides a good amount of extra battery life.

From left to right, the MyCharge Freedom 2000 (in gray and black), the Mophie Juice Pack Air and the Mophie Juice Pack Helium.

But let’s say you’re still considering one of the Mophies — it’s important to know the differences between the two cases I looked at.

The Air is Mophie’s top model, claiming 100 percent extra battery life that’s drawn from a 1,700 milliamp (mAh) pack inside the tough plastic case. The Helium, by comparison, promises 80 percent extra juice from a 1,500 mAh case. The Air, at 5.5 by 2.6 by 0.6 inches and 2.68 ounces, is just a little bit larger and heavier than the Helium, but the size difference is barely noticeable.

Both the Air and Helium packs split apart and then reattach to form a case around your phone. The bottom portion of each pack has a built-in adapter that connects to your iPhone 5 to charge it.

Another small but noteworthy difference between the two — the Air covers the entire band of the iPhone, whereas the Helium case has a gap on the side to let the phone’s buttons hang out. While Mophie likes to say the Air offers more “protection” than the Helium, I just don’t like plastic obstructing the phone buttons.

On the back of the packs, there are LED light indicators to let you know when each pack is charged. One light means low battery, and all four lights signal that the Mophie is ready to go. The Mophies also have a “standby” switch: Flick it to begin charging, and snap it back to put the Mophie in standby mode.

In my unscientific tests of these cases, I used my iPhone 5 as I would on a normal day, taking a handful of phone calls that lasted 30 minutes or more and running multiple apps, like Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps and Gmail. I connected to both an LTE cellular network and a Wi-Fi network when available. The display was on about 75 percent of maximum brightness. This would normally last me from approximately 8 am to 5:30 pm, or nine-and-a-half hours.

I began using the Mophie Air in the early evening, when my phone’s battery dwindled to under 5 percent. Within an hour and a half, my phone’s battery had been boosted to 84 percent. Shortly afterward, the Mophie itself was out of juice.

I answered work emails, made phone calls and played mobile games. I went for a long run, using both streaming music and fitness apps, and used Foursquare to find dining options. In total, the Mophie Air got me just about eight hours of extra battery life — enough so that when I woke up the next morning, the phone still had some life.

In a separate test, the Helium boosted my 5 percent-charged iPhone to 78 percent before the pack itself died, and ultimately got me nearly as much extra juice as the Air.

So, given the choice between these two, I’d go with the less-expensive Mophie Helium.

But if you’re going to consider spending $80 on a battery case, and you prefer a case that lets your phone buttons hang out freely, that’s where the MyCharge Freedom 2000 comes in (hence the “Freedom”). This one has a 2000 mAh rechargeable battery, claiming 110 percent extra battery life. It’s a few ounces heavier than the Mophie Air pack, but is only 5.1 inches long compared with the 5.5-inch Mophies.

The MyCharge has a tiny tethered arm that extends from the bottom of the case and connects to the iPhone 5. I like this extendable arm: It’s small enough to go unnoticed, and yet I knew from a quick glance at my iPhone whether I was charging or not, depending on whether the connector was plugged in.

It also has a multicolored LED indicator light to let you know when the pack is charged (green), or alternately, when it’s dead (red). And, finally, it has a gap on the side to give the phone’s volume buttons some breathing room.

The first time I put the MyCharge through my test, the pack’s indicator light was green, leading me to believe it was ready to go, and yet it stopped charging my iPhone at 47 percent of its maximum battery capacity. In follow-up tests, however, it basically matched the Mophie Air in terms of performance.

If you don’t mind the extra length the Mophie packs give your iPhone 5, I can recommend the Helium as a reliable case. Otherwise, the MyCharge Freedom 2000 is a more wieldy option for the same price, despite the way it makes the power button tough to press.

Apps That Curb the Temptation to Text and Drive

Bonnie Cha — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:00:45 +0000

Would you ever drive the length of a football field at 55 miles per hour blindfolded? Some daredevils might consider it, but what if the field was filled with obstacles like people and cars?

I’m guessing most people’s answer would be a resounding “no,” but that’s pretty much what you’re doing every time you text and drive.

[ See post to watch video ]

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, texting drivers are 23 times more likely to get into an accident than those who don’t. It’s no wonder that it’s now illegal to do so in 39 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Yet we still do it. Studies have shown that younger drivers are the biggest offenders, but adults are guilty of it, too. This past week, I checked out several apps designed to curb this dangerous activity: Text-Star by Cinqpoint, DriveScribe by Drive Power and DriveSafe.ly by iSpeech.

Each app handles the task a little differently. Text-Star sends automatic responses to incoming texts, so you don’t feel compelled to answer right away. Meanwhile, DriveScribe blocks incoming messages and calls when it detects you’re in a moving car. Finally, DriveSafe.ly allows you to receive texts, but reads them out loud, so you don’t have to look at your phone. They all worked well, but still require discipline on your part.

Text-Star is free, but it’s currently only available for Android smartphones. Cinqpoint said it hopes to offer an iOS version in the future.

I used it on my Nexus 4 and found it easy to use. The app offers three operating modes: Automatic, Manual and Passenger. I left it in Automatic mode most of the time, which sends auto-replies as soon as it detects that your car is moving faster than 10 mph (it does this by using your phone’s various sensors and radios).

Before you head out, you can select from a list of preset messages, such as “On the road, ttyl (talk to you later),” “At the movies, ttyl,” or you can write a custom message. Though primarily designed for in-car use, you can also use Text-Star for other situations, like when you’re in a meeting.

To test the app, I drove around an empty portion of a shopping mall parking lot and had my brother text me. The Nexus 4 chimed just as usual to let me know I had a new text, but I resisted the urge to check it, knowing that an automatic response was sent. My brother confirmed that he received my custom message.

There’s really nothing in TextStar that prevents you from checking or sending messages while in the car. Some apps, like Textecution ($30), require an unlock code from a parent or administrator. Cinqpoint says it believes that brings potential liabilities, but to help encourage good behavior, it is working with national insurance carriers to provide discounts. As you use the app, Text-Star takes note of whether or not you’re using your phone while on the road, and gives you a star rating. A good star rating can then potentially be used to lower insurance rates.

DriveScribe also uses rewards to encourage safer driving, and includes a number of useful tools for parents with teens who drive. Available for Android and iOS, the app blocks texts and incoming calls when a car is moving faster than 12 mph. There’s an auto-response feature, and messages appear once you’ve stopped. The app also offers an option to allow texts from certain numbers, such as a parent’s, even while in motion. All the features worked well on the Nexus 4.

DriveScribe also monitors other driving habits, including speed, and all the data is available to parents via a Web-based dashboard. Based on their behavior on the road, drivers are awarded points for each ride. These points can later be redeemed for rewards like discounts at national retailers, which are provided by a DriveScribe partner.

For example, 1,000 points gets you a $10 Amazon gift card. But to take advantage of rewards like this, you have to subscribe to one of DriveScribe’s paid plans, which start at $3 per month. Still, it might be worth it for parents who want to give their kids an incentive to be safer drivers.

For those moments when you can’t bear to be disconnected from text messages — say, if your wife is pregnant — DriveSafe.ly is a good option.

The free app reads incoming messages out loud, and automatically replies to the sender with a custom message. It’s available for Android, and a BlackBerry 10 version is coming next month. But there’s no iOS app. There’s also a Pro version ($10 for Android, $14 for BlackBerry) that adds the ability to reply by voice, though I’d argue that can be just as distracting as typing.

Upon launching DriveSafe.ly on my Nexus 4, I thought something was wrong with the app. This is because it only displayed a small image in the upper left-hand corner of the screen rather than the entire screen, but it still worked fine. ISpeech said this is something it’s planning to fix.

Under the Settings menu, you can indicate what you’d like the app to read out loud, such as text, emails and sender’s name. This is also where you can write a message for your auto-response.

Using the same test method as the other two, DriveSafe.ly announced my brother’s name and read the message in a pleasant female voice. I was pretty impressed with the text-to-speech translation. The voice didn’t sound too robotic, and it didn’t horribly mangle the pronunciation of any names.

I’ll admit, by actually hearing the message, I was a little more tempted to grab my phone and respond, compared to the other two apps. But knowing that they received an automatic reply from the app saying that I was driving curbed the temptation.

These apps aren’t perfect solutions for completely stopping texting and driving, but they can certainly help, and are worth a test drive.

Two Products for People Who Miss the Old Windows

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

[ See post to watch video ]

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.

At 10, You Still Have Some Tricks, iTunes

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 07 May 2013 22:28:56 +0000

Apple just celebrated the 10th birthday of its famed iTunes, which is easily the most popular source for buying digital content. Still, I regularly field questions from my family and friends about how iTunes works. These range from basic questions about syncing to storing music in the cloud and sharing music with family. And iTunes also has a lot of features most people don’t know exist. This week, I rounded up some ways to improve the way you use iTunes.

Digital Allowance

If you aren’t thrilled at the prospect of setting your credit-card number as the default payment on your kid’s iTunes account, a monthly allowance might be a better solution. From the iTunes Store home page on your computer, select “Send iTunes Gifts” on the right, then “Learn More About Gifting” and scroll to the bottom to find allowance settings. You can set the allowance in amounts ranging from $10 to $50.

[ See post to watch video ]

Recipients must have an Apple ID, but you can set up an Apple ID for them at the same time. You can decide to send the allowance right away or wait until the next month, on either the first or the day of the month you set up the allowance. You also can add a personal message.

Redeeming Gift Cards

Some people are thrilled to receive iTunes gift cards, but they just don’t know how to redeem them. A simple shortcut on a computer or mobile devices is to open iTunes, navigate to the iTunes Store, scroll to the very bottom of the store’s home screen and click Redeem. (On a computer, this is under Manage. In the iOS app, it’s in the bottom, center of the screen.) You’ll be asked to enter your Apple ID and then to enter your gift card or download code. If you accidentally scratched letters or numbers from your code like I did once, call or email Apple Support and they’ll help you figure it out.

Gifts Without the Gift Card

Anything in the iTunes Store or Apple’s App Store can be given to another person via an email. On your computer, select the arrow beside the price and click on “Gift this.” If you’re using an Apple mobile device, select the share icon (a small square with an arrow pointing right) at the top of the screen from the store and choose “Gift.” Then enter a personal message and choose Now or Other Date to decide when the recipient gets it.

This is especially helpful for favorite games or TV shows that you want friends to start playing or watching.

Sharing Libraries

Many family members or friends may find themselves frustrated by how their digital content is stored in individual libraries associated with individual Apple IDs, making it harder to share this content. While you can’t merge Apple IDs to combine libraries, you can turn on Home Sharing within your home Wi-Fi network to let various devices share content while they’re within range of the network. Turn on Home Sharing from the Advanced menu in iTunes and enter the same Apple ID on up to five computers. Likewise, you can stream content from other shared computers, or drag it onto your computer’s local library.

You also can see this shared content from iOS devices and Apple TV. Within the Music app on iOS, click the More tab in the bottom right. In the Videos app, tap the Shared button at the top. On your Apple TV, go into Settings, Computer and turn on Home Sharing, then open the Computer icon in your Apple TV’s main menu to access libraries and stream content.

iCloud vs. iTunes Match

Owners of Apple products surely have heard of iCloud, but they may not use it. Some people aren’t sure how it works with music and how it differs from iTunes Match.

ICloud is a handy insurance policy against losing your iPod and all of your iTunes content along with it. Once you set up iCloud using your Apple ID, any content that you buy from the iTunes Store will show up on other devices without any syncing. Any past purchases from the iTunes Store will show up on all of your devices, too. Tapping a tiny cloud icon beside each file will pull it onto your device.

To replicate all of your content across devices, including stuff you haven’t bought from iTunes (like CDs you imported or bought elsewhere), iTunes Match will do the trick. This costs $25 a year and matches up to 25,000 songs. From iTunes on your computer, open the Store menu, select “Turn on iTunes Match,” enter your Apple ID and password and click Subscribe. On iOS devices, open Settings, Music and turn on iTunes Match.

ITunes Match will work on up to 10 devices, and it auto-scans for newly purchased content so you have it on all devices.

Getting Rid of Content

It may seem like everything in your iTunes library is stuck there for good. But if you’re tired of keeping unwanted files, like episodes of Season 2′s “Mad Men” or irritating tunes from a Christmas party playlist, the process to delete them is painless.

From your iTunes library on the computer, click the item to select it, press the delete key and click Delete Item. From here, you can opt to remove the item only from your iTunes library, which keeps the file on your computer though not in iTunes (click “Keep File”), or delete the item from your computer permanently (click “Move to Trash” and empty the Trash).

When you know how all of its features work, iTunes can be a real pleasure to use. But if you’re confused, syncing content can be a dreaded experience. If you know people who tiptoe around how to use iTunes, share this guide with them.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com

Can These iPad Apps Teach Your Kid to Code?

Lauren Goode — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:00:20 +0000

The pillars of elementary education in the U.S. — reading, writing, math — have remained the same for a long time. Now another skill set is increasingly coming into focus: Computer programming.

This week, I tested two new mobile apps, Kodable and Hopscotch, that are aimed at teaching young children the basic skills necessary for computer programming. Both are for iOS — specifically, for iPad — although Kodable plans to introduce an Android version of the app. And both are free to download, but Kodable does include advanced levels that cost $1.99 to access.

What is programming, exactly? Also called coding, it’s the execution of different languages that make computer software, websites and mobile apps run. A series of symbols, like text, are grouped together to imply or prompt something else. A very common example of this is the use of a semicolon to signify a break in a line of code. There are also visual programming languages, which use graphical blocks of code.

Coding tools for kids and beginners are hardly a new thing, but many earlier applications are browser-based, while these apps capitalize on the gravitational pull that tablets seem to have on kids.

[ See post to watch video ]

Kodable, which launched late last year, is aimed at kids in kindergarten through second grade. It takes a levels-based game approach, reminding me in some ways of a popular app called Cargo-Bot, which lets you move cartoon robotic arms using commands. Or, think Angry Birds, except instead of slinging birds through the air using your finger, you’re moving a fuzzball using arrow commands. Kodable also sprinkles game coins throughout the app as an incentive.

I found it easy to get the hang of Kodable, which is based on Basic, an early and simple programming language. But to say it teaches “coding” is a stretch. It more or less teaches kids how to think logically to get an object moving.

Hopscotch, on the other hand, is more advanced, aimed at kids age 8 and up. It’s based on Scratch, a visual programming language created at MIT. Hopscotch offers colorful blocks of code with which to execute a program on what is basically a blank slate. This means Hopscotch can be as easy or as difficult as you make it, but it also works under the assumption that you already know some programming basics.

Since I’m a few years beyond fourth grade at this point, it’s tough for me to approach these apps exactly as a child would. But I’ve never learned to code, so I can claim beginner status there. Hopscotch was definitely more challenging for me than Kodable was. But I learned more about actual coding from Hopscotch.

Let’s start with Kodable, and then “graduate” to Hopscotch. Once you get past the intro animation with ambient music (maybe meant to lull kids into a total state of relaxation and quietude? Parents and teachers can only wish …), you’re asked to enter your name. From there, you’re taken to a “Smeeborg” of unlocked levels.

Kodable’s main character is a blue fuzzball with eyes and a mouth. There’s a short course laid out for you, littered with coins; as the levels progress, the course gets more maze-like. On the upper right there is a toolbox with arrow keys. On the left, there’s a “script” area where, using the iPad’s touchscreen, you drag the arrow keys to create a command. With each new level of difficulty, a small cartoon hand will simulate the commands for you to give some guidance, but that’s all there is in terms of tutorials.

I dragged a sequence of arrows over to the script and hit the play button. My fuzzball made it through the course, and I went on on to the next level.

I made it through about a dozen levels on Kodable, even unlocking a new fuzzball named Simon Fuzz — he’s green and wears hipster glasses — before I found out that by swiping to the left I could skip to new areas in the game. These are called Function Junction and Bugs Below. Each costs $1.99 and contains 30 new levels of varying difficulty. For example, Function Junction teaches you to create a second sequence of arrow commands under the one you’re already using.

Kodable says it plans to add more curriculum-like education features to the app in the next couple months, including vocabulary exercises, so kids can learn programming words. I think Kodable on the whole could be a bit richer, but I like the app, and there’s no cost to download it and try it.

On to Hopscotch: This app takes you through a quick tutorial at the start, showing how to put together blocks of code to program a little monkey to draw a line. At the top of the app is a plus sign that allows you to choose from one of 10 different cartoon characters, including the monkey. Then, there are “method blocks” of programming on the left, including commands like “move,” “rotate,” “leave a trail,” “repeat” and “scale by.”

You drag these blocks to an empty script on the right, building them on top of one another and squeezing commands in between other commands the way you might play Tetris. Then, you can choose different prompts from a dropdown menu. So, for example, I could tell the app to execute the program I built when I tap the character, or when I shake the iPad, or when I simply press play.

For my first project, I attempted to make a space pod draw a line. I got the space pod to move across the screen, but it didn’t leave a line trail as I thought it would. I tried the same thing with a cupcake character, but still, no line drawn. In another project, I made a gorilla run around the border of the app, scaling up in size every time he turned a corner, but again, I was missing something.

This is where a “debugging” mode — something that lets you see the code being executed in real time to help you pinpoint your errors — would help; Hopscotch says it’s considering adding this feature.

I finally asked the app’s co-creator what I was doing wrong. It turns out that I was putting certain movement-specific blocks outside of the C-shaped “leave a trail” block, instead of inside of it. This kind of troubleshooting might be obvious to some people, but it just didn’t click for me without some basic knowledge of how visual programming languages work. In addition to the debugger, Hopscotch plans to build out more tutorials for this exact reason.

After I completed projects, I could save and share my work with others via email. I still need to hone my Hopscotch skills before I deem anything shareable, but I’ve seen projects by others that are pretty creative, including a chess game in which the Hopscotch characters represent different chess pieces.

These are just two apps in the growing area of coding apps for kids, but both offer value for beginners at varying stages of their learning processes.

Twitter Takes On Music Discovery, but Comes Up Short

Bonnie Cha — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:00:15 +0000

Back in my day, discovering new music and bands meant listening to the radio or going to Tower Records to sample albums at the listening stations. Now there are all sorts of apps and services to help you do that, right from the convenience of your smartphone, including a new app from Twitter.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Twitter, it’s a social networking service that lets you broadcast messages, called tweets, about what you’re doing or thinking, in 140 characters or less. People can follow you to receive your updates, and conversely, you can follow people you find interesting.

[ See post to watch video ]

The new app, called Twitter Music, helps you discover new music and artists based on what people are talking about on the service — both within your network and the broader Twitter audience. The free app is currently only available for iOS devices, though Twitter plans to bring the service to Android. Twitter Music also works on any Web browser.

I’ve been testing Twitter Music on my iPhone 5 for the past week, and it’s a beautifully designed app. It helped me keep abreast of what’s popular, and turned me on to a couple of new artists. The Web version also worked well, and it was nice to be able to navigate through the various sections on a bigger screen. That said, Twitter Music as a whole has limited capabilities.

For example, you can’t create a playlist or listen to multiple songs by one artist in sequence, so it’s not a replacement for other music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify — nor is it meant to be. Rather, it’s more of a complementary service than an adversary.

The app’s value is largely dependent on how active you are on Twitter. While you’re not required to have a Twitter account to use the app, you’ll get more from it if you do, since it offers personalized recommendations based on the people you follow. Still, it puts the onus on the user to follow musicians and share what they’re listening to, which might not be appealing to everybody.

Twitter Music is divided into four sections: Popular, Emerging, Suggested and #NowPlaying. Popular shows you the 140 most popular new songs on Twitter, while Emerging surfaces 140 up-and-coming artists found in tweets. Both of these lists are constantly changing, depending on what’s trending at the moment on Twitter.

The other two sections are designed to be personal to you. The Suggested section offers recommendations based on the musicians you follow on Twitter, and NowPlaying shows what your followers are listening to. There’s also a search function, but you can only look up artists, not particular songs.

Navigating among the sections is easy. You can either use the drop-down list at the top of the page, or you can swipe left or right.

Each page is presented with an attractive grid view that displays the album covers for all the artists on that list. Tapping on an individual square will bring up a slightly larger image, where you can start following the artist on Twitter with a tap of a button, visit the artist’s Twitter profile page to see which musicians they follow, and listen to a 30-second preview of their song.

The preview is powered by iTunes, and you don’t have to leave the app to hear the clip, which is nice. If you’re sold after 30 seconds, there’s a button to purchase the full track from iTunes.

You can listen to an entire song if you are a Spotify Premium or Rdio Unlimited subscriber, though both of these services cost $10 a month. I’m a Spotify Premium member, and after entering my login details in the Settings menu, I was able to listen to full tracks with no problem.

While a song is playing, you can tap the spinning record icon on the bottom left of the app, which brings up a music player interface. Here you can fast-forward and rewind a song by moving the record in clockwise or counterclockwise, adjust the volume and tweet what you’re listening to. With the latter, a preset message is written for you, such as “#NowPlaying @Alabama_Shakes – Hold On,” with a link to the track, but you can add a custom message, as well.

Overall, I found the app to be well designed and easy to use, but I had mixed feelings about its usefulness.

The Popular section wasn’t filled with many surprises. It’s populated with a lot of today’s pop hits from artists like Justin Timberlake, Rihanna and Bruno Mars. It would be nice if there was a way to filter songs by genre.

The Emerging page was a lot more interesting to me. It introduced me to a ton of new artists that I’ve never heard of, and there were a handful of bands who piqued my interest, such as Guards and Houses. The problem is once I heard a song, I wanted to hear more from that particular artist, but there’s no way to do that from Twitter Music. Instead, you just have to take note of that artist and check them out on another service like Spotify.

The Suggested section is supposed to offer you personalized recommendations, but in order for this to work, you have to already follow artists on Twitter. Prior to testing the app, I didn’t follow a ton of musicians, so my Suggested page was nearly empty. I only follow people if they have interesting things to say, so if there’s an artist who rarely tweets or only sends messages to promote concerts or new albums, I’m not going to follow them, even if I enjoy their music.

Bottom line: I don’t want to be forced to follow people just to get music recommendations. I prefer something like Pandora, where I can create an artist-themed radio station and listen to a stream of their songs and musicians who are like them.

NowPlaying wasn’t particularly useful to me. If one of your followers has tweeted what they’re listening to, then it shows up in this section. I follow more than 300 people on Twitter, but only four people actually broadcasted what they were jamming to, so this section of the app was also barren. This could change as Twitter Music grows and more people use it.

For those who are heavily engaged in Twitter, the app offers a bare-bones way to discover new music. But for everyone else, there’s no compelling reason to use it over existing music services.

Laptop Guide: Timing the Market and the Machines

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

[ See post to watch video ]

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.

Won't You Be in My Nextdoor Network?

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:13:00 +0000

If you’re like a lot of people, you use Facebook to keep in touch with friends who live hundreds of miles away. The neighbors you can wave to from your front yard? Not so much.

[ See post to watch video ]

Though it sounds counterintuitive, you might get to know your next-door neighbors better by joining a free social network called Nextdoor from a company of the same name.

This hyper-local site verifies users by address, uses each person’s real name and doesn’t allow people access to a network if they don’t actually live in the neighborhood. It isn’t focused on making new friends; rather, it’s designed to connect neighbors. On Nextdoor, people can talk about the new construction on the block, ask if anyone wants to participate in a nanny share or sell an old dining-room table.

Nextdoor launched in 2011 and is now running in every state, in over 11,500 neighborhoods. It adds about 40 or so neighborhoods each day, according to its co-founder and CEO, Nirav Tolia. The company plans to release an app for Apple’s iOS devices within the next month and an Android app sometime this summer. Nextdoor currently works as a website only, which can be accessed on mobile browsers.

I’ve been testing this website for the past week in my Washington, D.C., neighborhood, which already had a Nextdoor network, while a colleague got someone to start a new network in his suburban Maryland neighborhood. Though I’m skeptical of joining yet another social network, Nextdoor’s neighborhood-based approach made it a standout network with real value. Its layout is similar to Facebook with posts and comments by users. Best of all, it’s a vast improvement on antiquated listservs that start to feel like spam.

Map of a Nextdoor network color-codes members, invited neighbors and nonmembers

If you sign up for the site and find a neighborhood network doesn’t yet exist for your address, you can start one, but this means you’ll be the lead, or head organizer of the network. The job includes setting neighborhood boundaries, removing inappropriate messages and describing your neighborhood in the About section. You can appoint someone else to be the lead. Neighbors can be invited by the lead or other neighbors via email or by a postcard from Nextdoor.

Nextdoor has downfalls, though. Over 50 townhouses and apartment units in my condo complex appeared on Nextdoor as if they were a single household, which made it tricky to invite my neighbors to join. Sites like Zillow.com that use their own location data have no problem identifying the individual units in my complex, which has been around since the 1980s. But Nextdoor is relying on third-party data that isn’t as precise.

I also took issue with my neighborhood boundaries, which were drawn up by my network’s lead. I’ve lived in my neighborhood since 2002 and told the lead that his boundaries weren’t accurately drawn. Neighborhood boundaries can be discussed with any lead or with the company and redrawn.

The neighborhood news feed shows posts, alerts and comments from neighbors.

I was delighted to find 89 “neighbors” already using my Nextdoor neighborhood, along with 242 “nearby neighbors,” who live in four nearby neighborhoods. Each post can be limited to only your own neighborhood or expanded to the nearby ones. I was intrigued to browse other users’ profiles, where they posted brief biographies and other personal details.

But the private nature of Nextdoor assures random users won’t be browsing the network. Users can only see detailed information about the people in their own neighborhood, and can opt whether or not to display an exact address or just the name of the street where they live.

I added a little information to my profile, including a photo, a list of my hobbies and how long I’ve been a resident in the neighborhood. Nextdoor verifies each person’s address by using one of four methods: credit- or debit-card number, landline phone number, mobile-phone number or by mailing a postcard that includes an invite code.

A neighborhood lead can send, free of charge, up to 200 postcards each month inviting neighbors to join the site. After 10 neighbors are verified, leads can send out up to 100 free postcards a month, and members can send up to 20 free postcards a month. People can print out fliers in a variety of designs to post in their neighborhood.

Unlike listservs, Nextdoor lets users tweak how many email updates they get and how often they receive them. Someone could opt out of email, choosing only to read the website posts. A useful feature is an urgent alert system that sends SMS text messages to people in the case of emergencies.

Posts in my neighborhood included restaurant recommendations, local gardening tips, nanny-share offers and a post asking for landscaping recommendations. In one post, I asked neighbors if they had tried a new Persian restaurant and I got seven helpful responses in just two hours.

My colleague in suburban Maryland found his new Nextdoor network had 46 people in just 10 days or so. Neighbors posted about recommended garage-door companies and how the development got its name.

Though Nextdoor is currently free of advertisements, the site plans a directory of local businesses that could link to user recommendations, like a Yellow Pages-Yelp mashup. These ads would be in a special section. Neighborhoods are natural social networks, and Nextdoor brings their local appeal to the online world.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Which Messaging App Is Right for You?

Lauren Goode — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:00:11 +0000

Smartphone messaging apps are all the rage these days.

But for some people they’re a mystery. Why would you use a messaging app when your phone’s SMS text messaging function is fine enough for photos and text, or if you use iMessage on the iPhone?

The point of these new smartphone messaging apps is to go beyond that, by letting you send different kinds of media, connect easily and cheaply with international friends, and even send pictures of yourself that will self-combust a few seconds after they’ve been opened. They also create new, mini social networks that companies hope make users stick around.

These apps, for the most part, use data to send the messages, so they won’t add to your tally if you have a monthly limit on SMS through your wireless carrier.

This week, I channeled my inner teenager and dove into a handful of different messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Snapchat and a new one called Burn Note. I see some of the benefit to using these apps. Some features are useful, like being able to loop in friends who own various phones on the same messaging thread. Others are just fun, like the app that let me doodle on a Google search pic before sending it off to a friend.

[ See post to watch video ]

But their usefulness depends a lot on whether your friends and family are using the same apps. Otherwise, the conversations in the apps stall, which happened to me. And it can be a little distracting, to say the least, to have messages flying through a second or third app on the phone.

Here’s a guide to help you evaluate how they work before you commit to using one.

Adding Multimedia to Messages

One of the most popular message apps available is WhatsApp, which has been around since 2009, and runs on iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows phones. It costs 99 cents to download, and WhatsApp has said that it plans to introduce a small annual fee to users in some countries.

WhatsApp is super simple in design, and yet it goes beyond regular old text messages with options to send — in addition to photos and videos — audio notes, contact cards and an active map image that pinpoints your location. It pulls in local business data, so I was able to get specific and message a friend my location at a Subway sandwich shop.

WhatsApp has a big international user base; two of my most active WhatsApp friends included a regular international traveler, who was in Vietnam at the time, and a friend from Canada.

WhatsApp worked fine for me, and I’ve continued to use it with at least one friend who regularly pings me through the app. My only gripe about the app was that the photos I took and sent through the app weren’t saved to my iPhone’s camera roll.

Another new app for multimedia is called MessageMe. MessageMe launched last month, and is available on iPhone and Android phones. Unlike WhatsApp, MessageMe is free to download. And MessageMe lets you doodle on the images you send. I sent an ailing co-worker a picture of chicken soup I found through Google search, and scribbled on it: “Feel better!”

MessageMe also allows you to send song excerpts directly through the app. From there, the recipient can buy the song from iTunes or Google Play.

Of the two, I used WhatsApp more, mostly because I had more friends using the service. But I prefer MessageMe’s design and features.

Making Your Messages Disappear

A growing trend in messaging is sending images and text that will vanish after the recipient has had the chance to view them — something that addresses some privacy concerns and raises other issues, like illicit-photo sharing among teen users.

A well-known app with this core feature is Snapchat. Free to download, it’s available on iOS and Android devices.

With Snapchat, you snap a picture or video from the app, and then determine the length of time the viewer can see it, from one to 10 seconds. You send it off, and shortly after the recipient opens the message, it disappears. If you want to get creative, you can also doodle or scribble text on the photo message. One friend sent me a Snapchat of his poker hand with the text “Not Winning.”

I just don’t understand why I’d use this on a regular basis, although I see the appeal for people leaving digital footprints they are worried about others seeing. Usually if I share a smartphone photo with friends, it’s because something made me think of them, or it’s a particularly cool image. And I’m okay with those people having that picture.

And, let’s say I did want to share a self-combusting pic: Snapchat users still have the ability to capture a “screen shot” of the image sent to them, if they’re quick enough.

A newer app that offers disappearing messages is Burn Note, which was spawned from an email service of the same name. These are text-only messages with a view time of up to 120 seconds. The messages first appear as black boxes. Pressing on your phone’s touchscreen will unveil the text within the boxes.

Burn Note lets you create a password for conversations as an additional layer to ensure privacy. There’s also a checkbox at the bottom of the app that’s meant to prevent messages from being copied, but I was still able to capture a screen shot of these messages.

The bottom line is, even if a messaging app promises to erase your messages for you, there are still ways in which they can be saved.

Payments and Group Messages

Remember GroupMe, the app that made group messaging easy and then was acquired by Skype (which was acquired by Microsoft) in 2011? This app is still around, and despite the fact that others have crowded into the same space, it has some new features that are worth checking out.

The main feature of GroupMe, which is free to use, is that friends with different devices can all be on the same thread. So, even if you have an iPhone, one friend has an Android device and another is using a feature phone, you’ll all get the messages. Whether GroupMe uses data service or SMS, however, depends partly on the kind of device you’re using.

Prior to doing research for this column, I hadn’t actively used GroupMe for about a year, and I was surprised to find that I liked it better than before. This time, I started a group with three friends to organize upcoming weekend plans. It worked well for us, except for one friend who said that the deluge of messages used up all of the memory allowed for texts on her flip phone.

GroupMe now lets you create a tab among friends — let’s say you’re out to dinner, and someone comes up short — and charge everyone’s credit cards from the app, provided that they’ve attached their payment information to the app.

This isn’t a new concept. An app called Venmo, to name just one, allows shared bill payments via text message. But it’s new to GroupMe. I created a bill on the app and sent it to my friends, but I’d have to wait for two or more people to “split in” before I could collect from them.

GroupMe also has a new feature for photos, provided you’re using the GroupMe app and you’re not on a feature phone. If you and your friends share a series of photos during your group conversation, you can conveniently swipe to the left to see all of the pictures arranged in a gallery on the side, instead of swiping up through the conversation to find that one shared photo you liked.

A lot of these messaging apps are stepping on one another with feature sets: WhatsApp offers group messaging as well, and the creator of MessageMe says the company plans to introduce bill-splitting to the app.

So, is it worth it to use another messaging app aside from your phone’s built-in capabilities? It ultimately depends on how valuable the extra features are to you — and whether the people in your work or social life are using them, too.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that both MessageMe and WhatsApp have indicated they will introduce bill-splitting to their apps. While MessageMe plans to do so, WhatsApp’s co-founder has said the company believes mobile payments to be a possible area for monetization in the future.

Green Throttle Takes (A Few) Mobile Games to the Living Room

Bonnie Cha — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:00:50 +0000

The last time I owned a videogame console, Hypercolor shirts were in, everyone pegged their jeans, and I had a perm. In other words, it was a long time ago. (It was the Nintendo Entertainment System, by the way.)

I’m ready to get a new system now, and choosing one is proving to be a difficult decision. Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii U are the most well-known and popular ones. But I don’t want to spend a lot of money, and I already have a Roku set-top box and DVD player, so I don’t necessarily need the entertainment aspects of those systems. What to get?

[ See post to watch video ]

Enter Green Throttle. Started by one of the co-creators of the Guitar Hero videogame with two former Palm employees, Green Throttle is an app and game-controller solution that aims to turn your existing Android tablet or smartphone into a game console.

The only thing you have to buy is the Atlas game controller, which costs $40 and connects via Bluetooth. If your mobile device can be plugged into a TV for playing video, the company also sells bundles that include special cables for connecting to your HDTV. Meanwhile, the company’s free Arena application acts as the game center, where you can download titles and play games.

Green Throttle is more about enhancing the game-playing experience of mobile devices, rather than being a direct competitor to Xbox or PlayStation. And it succeeds in that goal. The controller allows for more precision and capabilities than a touchscreen. It’s also nice to be able to play games on a bigger screen. But there’s a big drawback, and that’s its lack of compatible games. There are currently fewer than a dozen games that work with Green Throttle, so it’s simply not worth buying right now — though it has potential.

Green Throttle works with any device running on Google’s Android operating system, version 4.0 or higher. I tested it on the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD, and setup was relatively painless.

After turning on the Atlas controller and downloading the Arena from the Google Play Store, I went to the app’s settings menu to connect the controller. The pairing process took some time, though. Normally, when I connect a Bluetooth headset or keyboard to a smartphone or tablet for the first time, the whole process only takes a couple of minutes.

With Green Throttle, it took at least a few minutes for both tablets to find the Atlas controller. Enough time had elapsed that I thought something might be wrong, but eventually I got a prompt to connect to the controller, and I was up and running shortly after that. Fortunately, once paired, reconnections were almost instantaneous.

The controller is similar to the ones used with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It’s powered by two AA batteries (included in the package), and there are two joysticks, a directional pad, X, Y, A, B buttons, and two trigger and two shoulder buttons on the top edge of the controller. The power, start and back buttons are located in the middle. All the controls were within easy reach, and provided good feedback — not too stiff or mushy-feeling.

The user interface of the Green Throttle Arena game hub is pretty straightforward. There are four tabbed sections you can peruse: Home, My Games, Recommended and Settings. The latter is self-explanatory. Home features the latest Green Throttle news, recent games and featured games. My Games is where you’ll find all your downloaded titles, while Recommended surfaces editors’ picks.

A couple of things were missing: One is a search feature for looking up specific titles; the other is the ability to look for games by type, such as action, puzzle, sports and so on. Green Throttle says it will add both functions in the future.

For now, this isn’t a huge issue, since there aren’t that many games. Games must be built to work with the Atlas controllers, so you can’t use them to play titles you’ve already downloaded from the Google Play store.

Currently, there are only eight available titles from the Arena game store, with six c. Green Throttle said it is adding one or two new games to the store every week, and more than 500 companies are using its software to build titles for the system, including a few well-known console game developers.

I tried all eight titles. Most are casual or retro-style arcade games. Given the limitations of a mobile device’s hardware (computing and graphics power, memory, etc.), you won’t find any really complex or graphics-intensive titles, compared to dedicated game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation, or even the Razer Edge gaming tablet. So, if you’re looking for big-name titles like Assassin’s Creed III or BioShock Infinite, this isn’t the system for you.

Instead, you get games like Coral Combat, a Space Invaders-type game that takes place underwater, or FishTails, a racing game where you have to collect as many coins as possible while dodging obstacles. There are also multiplayer games like Crystal Swarm, where you can team up to kill alien bugs. I played the game with a friend, using the Kindle Fire HD hooked up to my Samsung TV.

They’re all worth a try (most games are free, but APO Snow costs $1.99, and Gunslugs costs $1.49), but given their simple nature, I wasn’t drawn to play them on a regular basis, with the exception of the snowboarding game APO Snow, and Blocks Party.

Performance was smooth. Also, having a controller with physical buttons made it easy to navigate through the games and accomplish moves.

Final score: Green Throttle takes the mobile gaming experience to the next level in an affordable way, but it’s not worth it until it beefs up its game selection.

Update: Shortly after this review was originally published, Green Throttle announced six new games for the Arena app, including The Bard’s Tale and Duke Nukem 3D.

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

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

[ See post to watch video ]

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.

The BlackBerry of BlackBerry Users' Dreams

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:02:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Spotting a BlackBerry among the sea of iPhones and Android phones out there is now a rare occurrence. Those who remain faithful to these once-iconic gadgets do so for good reason: A love of physical keyboards. But the BlackBerry’s lagging browser, antiquated operating system and lack of apps made users envy other devices.

Next month, people will finally get the BlackBerry they wish they had: A device that combines the features of a modern smartphone with a physical keyboard. I’ve been testing the BlackBerry Q10 for the past seven days, comparing it to its predecessor, the BlackBerry Bold 9900.

This device is expected to cost $249 with a two-year contract, which is more than many smartphones. It will be available from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint by the end of May. It had a couple of app quirks, though updates before release are expected to fix these. BlackBerry still lags behind competitors with just over 100,000 apps available last month. I especially missed some of my favorites like Flipboard, Pinterest and the NPR app. And the Q10’s 3.1-inch screen is limiting compared with the 4.7-inch and 5-inch screens on the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, respectively. But this new BlackBerry’s browser races along and its camera features will impress.

Physically, the Q10 bests the Bold with a slightly bigger touchscreen that measures 3.1 inches, diagonally. To make room for this screen, the Q10 sacrifices two features. First, its keyboard runs straight across rather than in the more comfortable, broad U-shaped curve like on the Bold. Second, the Q10 lacks a track pad, the below-the-screen square that functioned as a precise cursor. In about three days, though, I got used to working without these features.

The Q10 comes in white and black.

The Q10’s keyboard is smartly used for more than just typing emails. From the home screen, typing the first few letters for commands like “text message Katie” or “Facebook” pulls up related functions. This feature is called Instant Action. And some 200 keyboard shortcuts let users navigate around the Q10 more quickly. Onscreen menus subtly display what keys to press for shortcuts.

As you type, common misspellings will be auto-corrected. You can even turn on keyboard predictions, saving you a few keystrokes by showing words on the screen that you might be typing next. A tap on a word adds the word to your sentence. I found I could type faster without using onscreen keyboard predictions, though in some cases I could select predictions for nearly an entire sentence.

The Q10 runs on the latest iteration of the BlackBerry 10 operating system, which made its debut last month on the full touchscreen Z10. This latest version of the BlackBerry 10 OS is souped up with features even the Z10 doesn’t yet have, like new notification options for contacts and fine cursor control and navigation.

The BlackBerry 10 operating system is responsive and fun to use. A list called the Hub organizes all notifications related to emails, social networks and apps in one place. The Hub can be quickly checked with a left-to-right swipe from the home screen, or by swiping up and right from within an app. Contacts are integrated with social networks, adding images of your friends to the system.

Just type the first few letters of a command and Instant Action, above, pulls up the function, such as BlackBerry Messenger.

Apps can be minimized into smaller squares by swiping up from the bottom of the Q10 screen. I grew so comfortable with this gesture that I accidentally tried to use it on my Android smartphone.

In several instances, Facebook’s in-app notifications were delayed and only appeared when I opened the Facebook app. BlackBerry said an update to the Facebook app due out this week would enhance this app. I also had trouble with the Skype app: In two tests, I could see video from the caller but he couldn’t see me though my video was on.

Battery life on the Q10 was impressive. I used it repeatedly for entire days without running out of juice. This included a weekend in a remote area of North Carolina when my cell signal was roaming and several car rides when I used BlackBerry Maps for navigation.

I wasn’t able to formally test the speeds of the device I used, which ran on AT&T’s network, because AT&T is still testing the Q10 on its network. But voice calls that I made around Washington, D.C., and Kirkland, Wash., sounded clear, and Web browsing worked without a problem.

The Q10’s 8-megapixel rear-facing camera is loaded with high-end features, including Time Shift, which captures multiple shots of people and lets you piece together a photo where everyone looks good. Other features include burst mode, enhancements that edit photos and filters that can be added after capture.

BlackBerry World, the marketplace from which apps can be downloaded, looks slicker and runs faster than previous iterations. I downloaded and used a bunch of apps for the Q10, including Skype, The Wall Street Journal, YouTube, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Weather Channel, Kayak and Angry Birds Star Wars.

Along with the Facebook and Skype issues, I found that a health-tracking app and a Sudoku app didn’t work well. BlackBerry attributed this to pre-release app issues.

The browser on the Q10 was super fast, and I found myself selecting links in emails, tweets and Facebook updates that I would have avoided selecting on a Bold — and even on newer smartphones’ browsers — because of slow load times. The Q10 browser has features like an adjustable default font size and a Reader view. Websites that run Adobe Flash can be viewed by clicking a button that enables Flash.

For plenty of users who gave up on BlackBerry years ago, the Q10 probably won’t change their minds. But for those of us who love physical keyboards and want a keyboard paired with the full functionality of a serious smartphone, the Q10 delivers.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Can Travel Reviews Be Sexy? Triptease Thinks So.

Lauren Goode — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:00:53 +0000

If you’ve ever written a review on a travel website like TripAdvisor or Orbitz, you know it’s not exactly a thrilling experience.

Maybe you’ve just come back from the best vacation of your life, or maybe it was a horrible experience and you want to warn others never to book that hotel. In either case, you fill out a standard review form, press “submit” and send it out to the Internet without a second thought.

A new app called Triptease wants to change this whole process by making it easy to write concise reviews with large, eye-catching images that look like they’re straight out of Travel + Leisure, or National Geographic Traveler. In doing so, this London-based startup company hopes to become a destination where people not only write reviews but also spend significant time researching and booking travel plans.

[ See post to watch video ]

Triptease, which is free to use, is available on the Web and also as an iPad-only mobile app. The company says an Android app is also in the works.

I’ve been using Triptease for the past week, writing and sharing about half a dozen travel reviews. I’ve accessed it from both the iPad app and the website. There weren’t any notable differences between the website and mobile app, except that I prefer to type on a laptop over an iPad.

Triptease does what it promises to do: It makes travel writing fun, and the results are slick. I really liked composing reviews, whether it was for Central Park or a hotel in Tokyo, and channeling my inner travel photographer to find the right photo or photos to illustrate my reviews. Triptease requires that you get at least three “likes” on each review before you can write another one, so the app really encourages social sharing in order to get eyeballs on your write-ups.

The problem is that Triptease doesn’t offer much more than that — at least not right now. It’s okay for browsing, and there are around 3,000 reviews currently on Triptease. But the reviews don’t go very deep: Each one is just one person’s opinion of that spot or location, and is limited to 1,200 characters, which results in a short write-up that doesn’t include much detail.

And one of Triptease’s biggest drawbacks is that it doesn’t include very many negative reviews. About 95 percent of the reviews on the site have a rating over five (out of 10). Call me a cynical traveler, but when I look up travel reviews, I tend to go to the one-star write-ups first. I want to know about the deal-breakers — reports of bed bugs, cold-water-only, terrible service, icky stains on the carpet and hotels featuring photos that are far off from reality, like a bad online dating profile.

Occasionally, I saw a critical comment attached to an overwhelmingly-positive Triptease review. For example, in a review of Balthazar in London, one commenter said, “I think Brasserie Chavot is the better place to eat. Not sure this warrants such a high mark.”

But that brings me to my other gripe about Triptease: Currently, the only way you can add upon an existing review is by leaving remarks in the comments. You can’t contribute to the overall rating of the place. In this way, it’s more like an online magazine than it is a reviews site that values each contribution equally. The most visible opinion of any reviewed location is that of whoever wrote about it first.

Let’s say you’re not dissuaded by this, though, and you still want to dive into Triptease.

When you download Triptease on the iPad, you’ll be prompted to sign up or log in by either connecting through Facebook or creating a new Triptease account. The main page has three options: Editor’s Pick, Following and Popular, a good way to filter out some of the thousands of reviews. Following shows you the reviews of the other “teasers” you are following (fortunately, they’re not called “trippers”).

In the upper right-hand corner of the screen, you’ll see three, smaller bits of text: Explore, Add Review and You. Explore is Triptease’s search function. Here you can search for a hotel, the zoo, that Italian restaurant you heard was good, or a landmark. The reviews are generally attractive, often featuring one large photo and an elegant block of text right next to it.

I liked that they included personal touches and first-hand experiences. “It was a bumpy ride, and we were very glad we had the GPS in the car” is much more helpful to me than, “This hotel is located approximately two hours from the airport.”

Creating my own travel review was easy and addictive. First I identified where I traveled, and when. Then I was prompted to upload a photo, either from the iPad’s camera roll or from my computer (most photos are supplied by the reviewer, although Triptease does offer a database of photos to choose from for popular locations). Using the iPad’s touchscreen, I could edit and move my photo. I then added my sub-1,200-character text component.

You can choose from six “themes,” which give the write-up some visual pizzazz. Five of these themes allow for just one photo, but a theme called Tripfive lets you upload four small additional photos, which I used for my review of a hotel in Costa Rica.

Finally, I assigned a rating to my reviews, ranging from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible rating. I gave mostly high ratings. The one exception was a sushi restaurant here in New York that I feel is, well, overrated.

From there, I shared my reviews via Facebook and email. I received enough “likes” to continue writing reviews, and fielded some comments from other members in the Triptease community.

Triptease isn’t the first app that aims to make travel reviews “pretty” on the iPad. Earlier this year, I wrote about a new iPad app called Desti that not only encourages crowdsourced reviews, but promises better search results when you use natural language, such as, “Where can I find a restaurant near here that’s dog-friendly?”

Last year, I reviewed another travel app for iPad, called Stuck on Earth, which contains beautiful, user-captured photos to offer a travel guide around the world. It bases these recommendations on your personality type. But it’s more inspirational than actionable.

True jet-setters should be aware that none of these apps, including Triptease, allow you to search for or book flights. Triptease says, however, that it wants to position itself more toward the booking end of travel. It currently has a limited number of pages for hotels that allow you to book rooms directly from the app.

Triptease is a fun app for creating good-looking travel reviews. It has potential. But right now it’s still luring consumers to the app, and is mostly a travel app you go to after the fact, rather than the main squeeze you rely on for all your travel needs.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0: A Pen-Based Tablet With a Premium Price

Bonnie Cha — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:00:13 +0000

Shopping for a tablet with a stylus may stir up memories of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is nice, but too big to hold comfortably in one hand, and the Galaxy Note II is easier to hold, but has a display that’s too small for optimal use with its stylus. At long last, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is just the right size, except for one feature: Its not-so-fairy-tale-like price tag.

[ See post to watch video ]

Like the rest of the Samsung Galaxy Note series, this Android tablet features a built-in stylus and special apps and features that allow you to jot down handwritten notes and sketches, or use it like a mouse when browsing websites. It’s a handy productivity tool that does plenty of other things. Plus, the eight-inch screen is large enough for using the stylus comfortably, though it’s compact enough to hold in one hand.

But, at $400, it’s pricey compared to other tablets in this size range. Apple’s iPad mini, which has a 7.9-inch screen, costs $329, and Google’s Nexus 7, which has a seven-inch screen, is even cheaper at $200 (all prices are for the 16 gigabyte models). Both are solid tablets, though neither includes a stylus.

If the Galaxy Note 8.0 were about $100 less, I’d recommend it without hesitation, but at its current price, only get it if you really want the stylus functionality. Otherwise, the iPad mini and Nexus 7 are better buys.

The Galaxy Note 8.0 measures 8.3 inches tall by 5.3 inches wide and 0.3 inch thick in portrait mode. Constructed largely from plastic, it weighs less than a pound, but it doesn’t feel fragile or cheap. The back is slick, and I wish it had a textured surface like the Nexus 7.

The eight-inch touchscreen has a resolution of 1,280 by 800 pixels. By comparison, the Nexus 7 has the same resolution, but the iPad mini’s display has a resolution of 1,024 by 768 pixels. Looking at the same photos in a side-by-side comparison, I found that the Samsung showed the brightest colors, while the Nexus 7 had the sharpest image quality. The latter is due to the fact that the Nexus has a smaller seven-inch screen, so there is less space between its screen’s pixels. Still, viewing videos and reading text on the Galaxy Note 8.0 was an enjoyable experience.

Above the display is a 1.3-megapixel camera, and there is a five-megapixel camera on the back. A microSD card slot is located on the left side for expanding memory — something the iPad mini and Nexus 7 do not offer.

The stylus — or S Pen, as Samsung calls it — is located in the bottom-right corner of the tablet. Once you remove it from its holder, the tablet automatically launches a window with options for creating various kinds of notes and cards using Samsung’s S Note app, such as meeting notes, diary entries and birthday cards.

One of the functions of the S Note app is the ability to convert handwritten notes into text. I was particularly eager to try this out, since I often take written notes during meetings, but have a hard time reading my scribbles later.

I used it for a work meeting and, unfortunately, the handwriting-to-text transcription wasn’t very accurate. For example, I wrote, “redefining phonebook experience on mobile device,” and S Note translated it to, “Pedufiung phonebook experience on mvhih device.”

If I wrote slowly and more precisely, the accuracy improved, but I don’t usually have the luxury of time when taking notes as someone is talking. And even though S Pen allows you to record audio at the same time as you’re writing, I didn’t feel comfortable using the Galaxy Note 8.0 as my main note-taking device.

There are aspects of the tablet and stylus that I found very useful. For example, by using the button located near the bottom of the S Pen, you can generate an automatically drawn outline around a photo, map or anything onscreen to clip and save to a note.

The preloaded Polaris Office Suite also allows you to annotate Office documents using the stylus, and it was a great way to get some work done on the go. I emailed a copy of this column to myself, and, while waiting for a friend at a cafe, I used the Galaxy Note 8.0 to call out some changes I wanted to make to the story.

In addition, the Galaxy Note 8.0 offers a multi-window feature where you can have two apps opened at once. This functionality is limited to about 20 apps, including the Web browser, music player, email, Facebook and YouTube. It was handy to be able to view my email in one window and check my calendar right beside it to see if I was free for an appointment.

Samsung ships the tablet with several other apps, including Group Play for sharing photos and documents between devices, the Paper Artist drawing app and Samsung’s new video service WatchOn. I tried them out for curiosity’s sake, but I can’t say I’d use them on a regular basis. The Galaxy Note 8.0 runs on the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system with Samsung’s customized user interface.

Overall, I found performance to be smooth. I experienced little to no delay when launching and switching between apps. Unfortunately, battery life isn’t quite up to snuff with the competition.

In my battery tests, where I set the screen’s brightness to 75 percent and played a video in a continuous loop with Wi-Fi and email running in the background, the Galaxy Note 8.0 lasted eight hours before needing a recharge. The iPad mini lasted 10 hours and 27 minutes, while the Nexus 7 offered 10 hours and 44 minutes.

With the Galaxy Note 8.0’s built-in stylus and integrated apps, Samsung had a chance to set itself apart from the competition. But an expensive price limits its appeal. Unless you really want the S Pen capability, the Nexus 7 or iPad Mini is the better choice for now.

Picturelife Tackles Simple Photo Storage

Lauren Goode — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:00:23 +0000

My digital photo life is a mess.

I have thousands of photos scattered throughout my computer, stored on backup drives, blasted to social networks and copied in different cloud services. There are currently 3,025 photos stored on my iPhone. And let’s not forget about the pictures in iPhoto.

It shouldn’t be so hard to get all of these photos organized in one place.

That’s what Picturelife, a recently launched cloud-storage service, aims to do. Picturelife, which was created by three startup entrepreneurs, wants to be Switzerland amid fractured photo-nations. It promises to do all the photo syncing for you when you’re not looking, to and from your desktop, mobile apps and various social network accounts. It also stores video clips.

[ See post to watch video ]

It works on both Mac and Windows computers. A full-featured version of Picturelife is available for iPhone and iPad, but the mobile app for Android is a limited version. There isn’t a Windows mobile app yet.

To start, Picturelife gives you five gigabytes of cloud storage for free; after that, it costs $7 a month or $70 a year for 100GB, and $15 a month or $150 a year for 300GB.

Maybe you’re more organized than I am, and you’re thinking: I’m already pretty committed to another media-storage service, like Flickr, or SmugMug, or the popular cloud service Dropbox. Or maybe you’re content with iPhoto.

Picturelife does have a lot of the same features as similar services. It also costs more than some (though less than Dropbox). And as a “freemium” service that is charging customers, it has some new-service kinks it needs to work out.

But it offers a few features the others don’t. It performs simple imports from your other photo sources, including iPhoto, Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, SmugMug and iPhoto. It has pretty clear-cut privacy controls, which you might appreciate if you’re fed up with the way Facebook handles privacy. And it offers incentives like bonus storage space just for sharing photos with friends.

I signed up for Picturelife, selected my plan and downloaded both the Mac desktop app and the iOS mobile app. Picturelife then appeared in the top menu bar on my computer screen, and as a “droplet” icon on the desktop. Picturelife doesn’t compress photo files, and it supports RAW files, too.

The desktop app’s layout sort of mirrors iPhoto, but has a nice, modern feel to it. On the left-hand side is a list of photo categories: Timeline (photos sorted by date), Albums, Places and All Pictures. On the right are a bunch of photo thumbnails, which can be size-adjusted. While the photo thumbnails are loading, the pictures appear with cool-looking color bars.

When you first log in, Picturelife should ask you which folders you want to sync your photos from, like Pictures, Downloads, Desktop, iPhoto or iCloud Photo Stream. In my experience, Picturelife simply began indexing all of the photos that existed on my computer — including work photos, screen grabs and photos from really old backup drives.

I was a little irritated by this, because Picturelife just grabbed a bunch of photos I didn’t want there. It also led to some duplicates, which Picturelife promises to avoid. Picturelife said it has fixed a bug that caused the service to pull from certain folders — in my case, an old iPhoto folder I had stored on a backup drive — and said that users should and will be given more initial control over the onboarding process.

After uploading the photos from my computer, I set about transferring the 3,000 photos from my iPhone to Picturelife. I could do this via the Picturelife mobile app, provided I was connected to a Wi-Fi network, or by tethering my phone to the computer. Syncing via Wi-Fi would have taken a full day, whereas tethering only took about 10 minutes.

From then on, the Picturelife iPhone app automatically grabbed any new picture I took with my phone and synced it with my account. This isn’t particularly innovative: Apple’s Photo Stream does this, too, though there’s a 1,000-picture limit on the photos you can keep on your device in Photo Stream at a time. (And syncing across four products — Photo Stream, iCloud, iPhoto and iPhone — is admittedly a little confusing. At least Picturelife has one brand name.)

I also linked some of my other accounts to Picturelife to import and share photos. I did this by going first to Picturelife settings, and then to “accounts.” I connected to Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Twitter, but also had the option to connect to Google, Tumblr, Flickr and others. Picturelife quickly sucked up the photos from those accounts. It even imported photos in which other people tagged me on Facebook.

I liked Picturelife’s smart search function — which iPhoto doesn’t have — although it could be a bit smarter. When I searched for photos from “summer,” more than 600 photos came up that were from the past few summers. When I searched for photos from “Japan,” images from my recent trip to Japan came up. But when I searched for photos from a “New Orleans wedding,” a whopping 663 results came up, most of which were not from the wedding. Picturelife says it’s continually improving the search feature.

Sharing select photos from Picturelife to my social networks was pretty standard. Most photo services do this. But Picturelife makes privacy controls refreshingly simple. All photos are private by default. Should you decide to share a photo or an album, you can select, in the “Info” section of each photo, whether you want to send it to specific people, a group of people or a family member.

And even after you share it, if you change your mind, you can later go back and make it entirely private. I shared a photo to Twitter as part of my test, and later was able to adjust the settings so that Twitterers couldn’t see anything from the link I shared.

Picturelife’s app for iOS, like the desktop app, has viewing options for Timeline, Album and All Photos. In my experience, the app was fast and fluid, and offers some handy one-tap options like “Look for New Photos” or “Sync Entire Camera Roll.”

I did, however, encounter some minor bugs. Some of my pictures said “null” on them in my own Picturelife account, and the service misidentified the locations of some of my media in the “Places” map. And currently there isn’t an easy way to find imported video clips.

So Picturelife still has room for improvement. But I can definitely say that it has enough features to make it an appealing option for photo-happy consumers.

A Pocket-Size Solution for Enjoying More Entertainment on the Go

Bonnie Cha — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:00:58 +0000

Tablets and smartphones have made it easy to stay entertained during your travels. You can fill up a device with music and movies to enjoy on the road, but you might find yourself having to pick and choose what to load because you don’t have enough space left on your iPad or Samsung Galaxy S III. Will it be the latest season of “Mad Men,” or “Game of Thrones”?

HP says you can have both.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week I’ve been testing the HP Pocket Playlist ($130), a portable storage drive with built-in Wi-Fi that can stream DRM-free (non-copyright-protected) video, music and photos to up to five devices via an accompanying app.

Designed for those with large media libraries and for families who want to share content, this smartphone-size accessory has 32 gigabytes of total storage, so it can hold roughly 16 full-length movies, 7,600 songs or 10,000 photos. You can even use a service called PlayLater to record streamed content from services like Hulu and Netflix, then store it on your Pocket Playlist to watch later without an Internet connection.

The Pocket Playlist worked fairly well in my tests, and it’s a sleek solution if your smartphone or tablet doesn’t have an option for expandable storage via a microSD slot. But if you have an extra-large media library and are looking for more than 32GB of extra storage, you’ll have to look elsewhere, like the Seagate Satellite with 500GB of storage ($150), or the Kingston Wi-Drive, which you can get on sale for around $120 for the 64GB model and $170 for the 128GB model.

Smooth and polished like a pebble, the Pocket Playlist measures 4.65 inches long by 2.36 inches wide by 0.35 inch thick, and weighs 2.2 ounces. While it’s another device to pack and carry on your travels, it’s smaller and thinner than the iPhone 5, so it’s easy to throw in a backpack or purse.

There are only three controls on the device: A power button, a USB/Wi-Fi toggle switch, and a WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) key, which allows you to connect to a network and enable data encryption for security.

The easiest and fastest way to get media files onto the Pocket Playlist is to connect it to your computer via the included USB cable. (Be sure the toggle switch is set to the USB setting.) Once plugged in, it shows up as a USB drive, and then you can drag and drop files to the device. I added a bunch of music from my iTunes library, and several MP4 video files to the Pocket Playlist with no problem.

In addition, I added several recorded TV shows from PlayLater. PlayLater is a software service from MediaMall Technologies Inc. that allows you to record online video from a network’s website and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video. Once recorded, you can watch them later on your computer or your iOS or Android device without an Internet connection. The company likens the service to a DVR for online video.

It’s a neat service, and MediaMall says everything is legal. But the software only works on Windows for now, and it’s a pay service, with subscriptions starting at $20 for a year.

With it, I was able to record recent episodes of “Saturday Night Live,” “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Mindy Project.” Also, after entering my Netflix login and password, I recorded some episodes of “The Walking Dead.” Much like your DVR at home, recordings happen in real time, so a 30-minute TV show takes 30 minutes to record. Once that’s finished, you can drag and drop your saved files to the Pocket Playlist.

Before you’re ready to play, you will need to download the free HP Pocket Playlist app from the iTunes or the Google Play Store. The Pocket Playlist is compatible with Apple’s iOS devices and smartphones and tablets running Android 2.3 or higher. I tested it out on the iPhone 5, fourth-generation iPad, Nexus 7 tablet and Nexus 4.

Connecting the Pocket Playlist to your smartphone or tablet is easy. First you need to switch the connection source from USB to Wi-Fi using the toggle button on the right side. Then, you will need to go into your smartphone or tablet Wi-Fi settings and choose PocketPlaylist as your network.

Once I did all that, I launched the app and found all my transferred files organized by folder — music, video, photos. Within each folder are sub-folders to help you find content by category. For example, under “music,” songs are also categorized by album, artist and genre.

The Pocket Playlist worked as advertised, and I was able to stream music and video to all four devices at once. I only ran into one issue during my testing: While streaming the same video to the iPhone, iPad and Nexus devices, I noticed that playback was a bit choppy on the Nexus 4.

I also brought along the iPad, Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 on an hour-long road trip up the California coast over the weekend, and passed them out to my friends like party favors. They each selected different videos to watch, and no one reported any issues with performance.

HP estimates battery life at up to five hours, depending on the type of file that is being streamed and the number of streamed devices. In my battery tests, I streamed MP4 video files to two devices (iPad and Nexus 4), and the Pocket Playlist lasted four hours before needing a recharge. A car charger is included in the box.

If your smartphone or tablet is at capacity and you don’t want to cull your media library to make room for more, the HP Pocket Playlist offers a slick way to carry and enjoy those extra files. It’s also a great way to keep the peace on family vacations.

Facebook Gets a Hold on Phones

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

[ See post to watch video ]

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.

HTC Makes the One the Android to Beat

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:16:55 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

In the crowded world of Android, it pays to be bold. HTC has spent years pairing its striking hardware designs with memorable software overlays for Android. But Samsung has surged ahead with a few bold moves of its own.

In an attempt to get some of its mojo back, HTC created a new smartphone with an old name: the HTC One. This $200 device (with two-year contract) will be available on April 19 from AT&T and Sprint. AT&T will also offer a $300 device with twice the memory, and a T-Mobile model is coming later this spring.

I enjoyed using an AT&T model and can recommend it to anyone looking for a new Android phone. It comes loaded with the latest version of Android and HTC’s usual Sense software overlay, which makes the One look and behave differently than other Android smartphones. In the future, the HTC One will be able to run Facebook Home, which puts the social network front and center. And I captured several extraordinary photos with this smartphone’s camera.

Still, it wasn’t flawless. I found the Back and Home icons didn’t always glow when I used the Facebook app, leaving me wondering how to navigate away from the app. And icons on the camera screen didn’t change from horizontal to vertical when I held the phone in portrait view. HTC attributed the former to a light sensor that may need tweaking and the latter to a bug it plans to fix via a software update later this year.

HTC One has a 4.7-inch touchscreen that rivals the iPhone 5 and a high-quality camera.

If looks are important to you, you’ll like this smartphone’s design. It’s elegant and thin with a curved back that’s made to fit your palm. With a 4.7-inch touchscreen at 468 pixels per inch, this display outshines Apple’s iPhone 5 and the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4. Its aluminum build gives it a sturdy feel — but makes it slightly heavier than the S4 and iPhone 5. The One’s aluminum back felt a bit slippery at times and I dropped it on several occasions.

Voice calls sounded crisp and clear and though I didn’t perform a formal battery test, I found myself using the One for a full day without a recharge. AT&T’s 4G LTE network proved speedy for email, Web browsing and various apps, including Google Maps for navigation around Washington, D.C. In downtown D.C., my average download speed was 14.5 megabits per second, peaking at 18.78 MBPS, while uploads averaged 9.84 MBPS. This isn’t quite as fast as Verizon’s LTE, but it wasn’t enough to notice any drag.

The HTC One camera aims to dispel the megapixel myth that has flummoxed people — that a higher megapixel count always equals better photos. This smartphone’s camera is measured at 2 UltraPixels, which are larger than ordinary pixels and are designed to capture better quality images. HTC uses a better sensor that can capture 300 percent more light than many 13-megapixel cameras, an improved processor and optical-image stabilization, among other things.

I was skeptical at first. But I captured shots in a dark room with the lights off that looked crisp and clear — not blurry or washed out by a flash. I took a photo of someone in a dimly lit chapel and it looked as if the person was in a room with plenty of light.

Outside on a sunny day, this camera was just showing off. I captured many shots of spring flowers and a cherry blossom tree, sunlight glistening on flower petals and tree branches. Of the three smartphones in my bag, I repeatedly reached for the HTC One to take photos.

If you aren’t crazy about capturing videos that take up a lot of storage space on your phone, Zoes might be your speed. These are 3-second videos that are captured by shifting the camera capture button to Zoe. I took several Zoes, but found them unsatisfying. I captured a train whizzing by, flowers blowing in the wind and my husband making a funny face. They showed up in my phone’s photo gallery as moving pictures that reminded me of those portraits that hang on the walls in Harry Potter movies. Yet, I didn’t know quite what to do with them.

Enter HTC Zoe Share. This is a smart option that shares many photos and Zoes at once. Shares are emailed via a Web link that lasts for 180 days. I shared these links from my phone with friends who used computers, iPhones and iPads to open them.

The Zoes appeared mixed in with the still shots in an on-screen collage. But if you’re not using HTC Zoe Share, these three-second Zoe clips are pretty much stuck on your phone. If you try to share them via Facebook or Twitter, they appear as still images that can’t be emailed. And why would you really want to share just three seconds of anything?

A new interface called BlinkFeed appears on the HTC One’s home screen with a tap on its tile-like icon. BlinkFeed is meant to give you bits of information as you glance down at your phone in line at the coffee shop or while in the elevator.

You set up BlinkFeed to display content from news sources of your choice like the Associated Press, Huffington Post, ESPN and others. These feeds can be mixed in with your Twitter and Facebook news feeds.

The BlinkFeed design is attractive, showing photos and text in a Flipboard-like mesh that you can quickly scroll up or down. To read more about an article, tap on it to see a short summary, then follow a link to read the entire article.

Those looking for a new take on Android, and especially a better smartphone camera, should consider the HTC One.

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.