Though the need for it may be moot, the world’s first solar-powered case for Kindle gets a nod. SolarKindle’s reserve battery case works with the standard Kindle or Kindle Touch and guarantees three months of unplugged Kindle reading time, provided that the user is in “normal sunlight conditions.” Taipei-based SolarFocus first showed off the product at CES earlier this year; it’s now shipping for $80. As we noted back then, the SolarKindle case does not work with the Kindle Fire.

Eighty dollars might seem like a lot — even for a renewable solar-energy panel — but the case also comes with a built-in LED reading lamp that’s supposed to last up to 50 hours, using the case’s battery and not the Kindle’s. And if direct sunlight isn’t an option for getting this thing juiced up, it also comes with a USB port for traditional charging.

Three months of battery life seems like a hefty claim. And here at AllThingsD, we put products through rigorous battery tests. So, while it’s a grueling job to test the SolarKindle case on a sunny beach for three months, I am graciously volunteering to do so, and pending approval from the bosses, will report back with the results.

The source of the confusion stems from how Apple manages the charging process from the point when a battery is very nearly charged until a user unplugs the device.

So here’s how things work: Apple does, in fact, display the iPad (and iPhone and iPod Touch) as 100 percent charged just before a device reaches a completely charged state. At that point, it will continue charging to 100 percent, then discharge a bit and charge back up to 100 percent, repeating that process until the device is unplugged.

Doing so allows devices to maintain an optimum charge, Apple VP Michael Tchao told AllThingsD today.

“That circuitry is designed so you can keep your device plugged in as long as you would like,” Tchao said. “It’s a great feature that’s always been in iOS.”

It appears to have gone largely unnoticed until this latest generation iPad, when DisplayMate analyst Ray Soneira noted that his testing showed the iPad not fully charged when it displayed 100 percent.

No matter where in that cycle a battery is, Tchao said, owners of the new iPad can expect the 10 hours of battery life that Apple has promised.

The decision not to keep changing the battery status was designed so as not to distract or confuse users.

Battery life has, of course, become a critical issue for device makers and consumers alike.

Chips, screens and other components continue to increase in sophistication at a rapid rate, while battery life has improved only incrementally.

The new iPad, for example, has a screen that displays far more information and requires additional graphics horsepower, yet offers similar battery life to its predecessor. In order to make this happen, Apple has put a significantly larger battery in the new tablet, likely accounting for the device’s slightly thicker body.

It would make sense then that users would find it takes longer to fully charge the device than its predecessor.

Further confusion often comes in for longtime gadget owners who can remember the days of nickel cadmium (NiCad) batteries, which had a so-called “memory effect,” requiring users to fully discharge the battery each time in order to keep getting maximum battery life.

Newer batteries, which use lithium-ion and other compounds, don’t have this issue. However, they do have a limited lifespan and lose capacity over time.

Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe said battery charging has become a complex art and science.

“What’s really subtle is that consumers think they understand that 100% means ‘full’,” Howe said. “That might have been the case with older batteries, but today’s batteries have microprocessors managing their charging. So 100% is whatever that microprocessor says it is — it’s not any absolute measurement of ion concentration or anything.”

Howe says consumers are probably best off just leaving it to the device to handle things.

“We don’t have to understand their engineering to use them,” Howe said. “However, we shouldn’t apply our prejudices formed (both good and bad) from older generations of battery technology to today’s systems either. If it says it’s charged, consumers should assume it is, and not worry about whether the charger is drawing current.”

So there you have it — more than you ever wanted to know about battery life. Now if only someone would just hurry up with batteries that last longer.

A new project being funded through Kickstarter is aimed at providing a short-term wireless solution to the power-drainage problem, with an iPhone case that’s got the plugs plugged in.

The nifty rubberized JuiceTank case, created by New York-based entrepreneurs Jesse Pliner and Lloyd Gladstone, comes with a wall charger built into the back of the case. The prongs fold flat to the side, making it easy to slide into a pocket. And with prototypes of the device weighing 3 ounces or less, it’s lightweight, too.

Since putting the JuiceTank up last week on Kickstarter, the popular online platform where people can pledge money to support projects in the works, nearly 529 people together have pledged nearly $26,000. The company has set a goal of $125,000, which it has to reach within the next 54 days in order for the backers to bring their product to market.

If it makes it to market, the expected retail price of the JuiceTank will be $55. Other battery-boosting iPhone cases, like the ones made by Mophie, can range in price from $20 to around $100.

Right now, the case is just for iPhones, and has only been designed in black, but the company plans to produce other colors (white, they say, has been a top request).

The “Juicers” acknowledge that it’s tough to fit an iPhone into some spaces around electrical outlets, so they’ve also built in a USB microport, in the event that users have a cord with them and can plug in that way. Pliner and Gladstone are also working on designing the next iteration of JuiceTank: A case that, like a Mophie pack, combines the plug with a rechargeable energy supply.

If the project is funded, the company anticipates that the first JuiceTank case will ship in July. They say they hope to have the combo case available by fall 2012.

For the seventh consecutive time.

The iPhone scored 839 out of 1,000 possible points. That’s a point more than it claimed in J.D. Power’s September 2011 survey, and 41 points more than its nearest rival, HTC, which scored 798 (down from 801).

It’s also 64 points more than the industry average of 774, beneath which rivals Samsung, Motorola, LG, Research In Motion and Nokia continue to toil. All five of those companies’ smartphones fell in customer esteem, some precipitously. Motorola’s score slipped to 758, down from 775; Samsung’s to 769 from 777; LG’s to 733 from 760; RIM’s to 733 from 762; and Nokia’s to 702 from 721.

What a sad commentary on the industry that smartphones from five of its seven largest vendors posted below-average scores in customer satisfaction.

Declining scores.

Ease of operation, operating system, physical design and the all-important battery performance — which, according to J.D. Power’s study, consumers identified as the least satisfying aspect of smartphones, by far — are features you’d think the smartphone industry would have pretty much dialed in by now. But evidently there’s still lots of room for improvement.

I’m not pleased with Microsoft’s Ribbon interface for Office. Any way to revert to the old menu format instead?

A:

When Microsoft replaced the classic menus and toolbars with the tab-based “Ribbon” at the top in the 2007 version of Office for Windows, it didn’t offer an option to keep the old approach. It still doesn’t.

(Microsoft’s Mac version of Office is an exception: It lets you opt for the old interface.)

However, some independent companies make add-on products that restore the classic interface. I haven’t tested any, but you can find them by searching for “Office classic menu.”

Q:

I need to purchase a new MacBook to replace an aging machine. On the new machine I will need to run Windows. I was reviewing your article on Parallels Desktop for Mac. Will this application run adequately on a MacBook Air? Apple sales consultants suggest that it will not and that I should instead purchase a MacBook Pro.

A:

In my experience, Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, which allows you to simultaneously run Windows and Mac programs, runs perfectly fine on a MacBook Air. I have used it on an Air many times to run Windows programs like Internet Explorer, Quicken and Microsoft Office for Windows.

Q:

It used to be that leaving a phone plugged in too long supposedly damaged the battery. But with the newer devices, I have gotten into the habit of plugging it in before bed and leaving it plugged in all night. In general is this OK for today’s batteries or do I need to get up in the middle of the night and unplug?

A:

I do the same thing with my phones and I don’t believe this damages the battery.

I have tested many, many phones in recent years and have never seen a warning against this practice. Some modern chargers and phones are designed to cut off the power once the battery is charged, both to protect the battery and to save energy.

You can check with the manufacturer to be sure.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Big names like Lenovo and Toshiba already have entered this new category, and on Tuesday, Dell will introduce its first ultrabook, the XPS 13, starting at $999.

Dell has had difficulty lately attracting consumers. At one time, it was the go-to brand for many people looking to buy a computer. But, in recent years, its consumer business has faltered as individuals, especially in the U.S., have flocked to Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and even once obscure brands such as Acer and Asus.

Now, the Texas tech titan is making a renewed push for the affections of consumers and the XPS 13 is an important weapon in that push. Like other ultrabooks, it’s an attempt to emulate Apple’s popular MacBook Air by offering a thin, light laptop with good power that has a full-size screen and keyboard, starts up and resumes quickly, uses a solid-state drive and claims decent battery life.

The XPS 13 uses a thinner screen border and a full-size keyboard.

However, Dell’s entry offers an interesting twist: It packs a 13-inch screen into a footprint that is closer to that of models with just an 11- or 12-inch display. This makes it easier to fit in a briefcase or on an airplane tray table in coach. When placed atop a MacBook Air with the same-size screen, the Dell is noticeably smaller.

Dell uses edge-to-edge glass for its screen and leaves much less of a bezel, or border, around the screen, than the Apple does. The XPS 13 isn’t smaller than its competitors in every dimension. It’s thicker and a tad heavier than the comparable MacBook Air. And, like the Apple, it’s significantly heavier than Toshiba’s ultrabook. But the shorter width and height are a nice touch.

I’ve been testing the Dell XPS 13, and there is a lot to like about it, even beyond its compact dimensions. I found it to be solid and well built, speedy and with a good, backlit keyboard, a bright screen, and good looks. It emerged from standby mode quickly and reliably. But this machine has a major downside: subpar battery life. In my standard test, it fell about an hour short of the longest-lived competing ultrabook I’ve tested and two hours short of the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Like other ultrabooks, the XPS 13 isn’t a bargain computer. It’s costlier than the typical, bulkier Windows laptop, which can be had for $400 to $700. But, at $999 with 4 gigabytes of memory and a 128 gigabyte solid-state drive, the Dell is $300 less than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the same specs. Both machines use Intel’s midrange i5 processor. Dell offers an otherwise identical model with double the solid-state storage for $1,299, and a model with double the base storage and a more powerful processor for $1,499.

The model Dell sent me for testing was high end. But based on my tests of other ultrabooks—all designed to tight standards promulgated by Intel—I have no reason to doubt the base model with the midrange processor also is speedy, and no reason to recommend the costlier chip.

The XPS 13, which runs Windows 7 and is part of Dell’s premium consumer line, has a silvery aluminum top and a base made of carbon fiber. It rests on two long rubber runners. The battery is sealed and ports are minimal. There are two USB ports—one is the faster USB 3.0 type—and a video-out port called a Mini Display Port.

The spacious keyboard has nicely separated keys. The touch pad is large, with no physical buttons. But I found it required tweaking in its buried settings screen before it felt right for me.

I was annoyed that, out of the box, the top row of function keys that is commonly used to adjust things like brightness and volume also requires you to hold down a special key to get to these controls. But this can be changed in a settings panel and Dell says it’s considering changing the way this works.

The 13-inch screen fits nicely in a smaller footprint than the Mac’s, but has a lower resolution than the Apple screen of the same size. So, an identical Web page in the identical browser displays more on the MacBook Air than on the Dell XPS 13.

Dell says this is because it had to use the lower-resolution panel for a special manufacturing process it employed on the new ultrabook. It says it will increase the resolution later this year.

Dell’s ultrabook comes with a standard suite of Microsoft and Dell software, including the Windows Live Essentials consumer package, which includes email, and a photo and video program. A starter edition of Microsoft Office contains somewhat stripped-down versions of Word and Excel.

The computer easily handled other programs I installed, including the Google Chrome browser, and Apple’s iTunes.

But Dell still clings to the bad old habit of loading in software you may not want, for which it presumably gets paid. In particular, it has added a Dell-branded Bing toolbar to the Internet Explorer browser.

As noted above, battery life was disappointing. In my test, where I use full brightness, disable power-saving software, leave on the Wi-Fi, and play a loop of music, the battery on the XPS 13 lasted just under four hours, the worst I’ve seen on an ultrabook.

By contrast, in the same test, the longest-lived ultrabook I’ve tested, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, got nearly five hours, and the MacBook Air almost six hours. I estimate you could likely get five hours on the Dell in a more normal usage pattern.

Ultrabook shoppers looking for a well-built, unusually compact 13-inch model should consider the Dell, but the relatively poor battery life might be a deal breaker for some.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120222/dell-goes-on-ultrabook-diet-with-slimmed-down-laptop/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120221/two-joysticks-to-beat-smartphones-at-games/ http://allthingsd.com/20120221/two-joysticks-to-beat-smartphones-at-games/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:42:28 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=176665 Portable gaming devices have plenty of reason to sulk in the corner. The job they once dominated—rescuing people from boredom while on the go—is now done by smartphones and devices like the iPod Touch. Smartphones offer casual games like “Angry Birds” and “Words with Friends” that cost little or nothing to download, and also make phone calls, and send email and text messages.

Sony’s PS Vita is the first portable game to come with two joysticks; on the screen, apps are represented by playful bubblelike icons.

This week I tested the newest gaming device that tries to do many of the things a smartphone does, short of making phone calls: Sony’s PlayStation Vita. It has front- and back-facing cameras; a Web browser; a store for downloading movies, TV shows and games; a music player; and an optional AT&T 3G network connection. This spring, Sony plans to add its own music-streaming service, Facebook, Skype and Foursquare. Netflix, Flickr and Twitter apps are slated to work on the device on Wednesday, when it’s available in stores. All these features are still secondary to the main reason a person might plunk down $299 (3G and Wi-Fi capable) or $249 (Wi-Fi) for this device: gaming.

Sony’s PS Vita is the latest move by a portable-game maker to gain some ground back from smartphones. Nintendo’s 3DS, which I reviewed last March, now has a Netflix app and other smartphone characteristics. The company also plans to add Hulu Plus to the 3DS later this year.

Not surprisingly, I found the PS Vita did best with games and pretty well with the programs over which it seemed to have the most control. Other features seemed like they were added just for the sake of adding them and didn’t work nearly as well.

The PS Vita’s pre-loaded Near app has a whimsical interface that showed 28 people near me who were signed into the PlayStation Network. The PS Store was easy to navigate and clearly displayed details about each downloadable item. But the Web browser can’t play Flash and only partially supports HTML 5, which will make it impossible to see content on many websites.

It lacks an email program, so users are limited to sending things via the PlayStation Network to people using PlayStation. Photos I took with the device could only be sent this way and a workaround of hooking my PS Vita into a PS3 or a PC to offload photos seemed antiquated.

The device’s rear touch pad, lets users control games with fingers on the back.

The PS Vita embraces multi-touch gestures on its responsive, bright screen. A peeling-back gesture reveals the home screen and can be used to close any program. A bubble in the top right can be tapped to see download progress or device notifications, and swipes up, down, left and right help users navigate around screens. Playful bubblelike icons represent all apps.

The design of the PS Vita is obviously related to its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable. It has game controllers that flank the right and left sides of its 5-inch touch-screen, and its top right and left corners double as buttons. At 7.2 inches by 3.3 inches, the PS Vita looks like it could eat an iPod Touch for lunch. Its 3G model weighs twice as much as the iPhone 4S.

This is the first portable gaming device to have two joysticks instead of one. Sony says the “dual analog sticks” offer better gaming. When I played “Uncharted: Golden Abyss,” the right joystick adjusted my vantage point and the left moved my character.

People can control games using their fingers on the screen or—in a novel twist—on the back of the device. A rear touch pad lets fingers operate from where they naturally rest when holding the PS Vita. I played Sony Computer Entertainment America’s $30 “Little Deviants” game by rolling a ball-shaped creature through mazes, controlling where the ball moved with my fingers touching the back of the PS Vita. While playing the $40 EA Sports “FIFA Soccer” game, I used the touch pad to aim and shoot the ball. I found the touch pad so sensitive that it was hard to use, but this might get easier over time.

In the $50 “Uncharted: Golden Abyss” game, I guided the main character up a wall by moving my finger on the touch screen rather than using multidirectional buttons. Likewise, I balanced my character as he walked across a plank of wood using the PS Vita’s built-in motion sensor; aiming a gun works with the motion sensors rather than a joystick.

Plenty of PS Vita games are geared toward the serious gamer, with 21 of the 26 games launching with the PS Vita costing $30 or more. (These can be downloaded through the PlayStation Store or bought as PS Vita Cards at retailers.) “Uncharted: Golden Abyss” comes with a 43-page digital instruction manual, which I had to read to get anywhere in the game. There are 275 PlayStation Portable games playable on the PS Vita and available for download, and pricing for those starts at 99 cents.

(Games for Nintendo’s $170 3DS portable gaming device range from $2 to $40 apiece. The most expensive game you can buy for Apple’s $499 iPad is the $17 “Final Fantasy III” game by Square Enix.)

Wirelessly downloading content from the PS Store only works in Wi-Fi, but the 3G model can download files smaller than 20 megabytes over 3G. I downloaded a demo mode for one game from the PS Store and 26 minutes later, it was on my PS Vita. Downloading a movie was harder: I used a $25 gift card and bought the $14.99 standard-definition (HD wasn’t available) version of the movie “Tower Heist,” but an estimate told me that it would take over 3,000 minutes to download, and I gave up shortly after the download started.

Battery life is estimated at three to five hours for gaming without network features in use. I played in shorter intervals and didn’t have any trouble with battery life.

At times, the PS Vita seemed a bit slow to respond. As I initially set up my PlayStation Network account for use in “Friends,” a built-in social-networking app for interacting with other PS Vita and PlayStation 3 users, I waited several seconds. A polite “Please wait” message appeared far too often.

Gamers will like the PS Vita’s double joysticks, while non-gamers will feel more comfortable with its motion and touch controls. But instead of competing with smartphones, this device should stick to what it knows: games.

Write to Katie at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120221/two-joysticks-to-beat-smartphones-at-games/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120215/mobile-device-thats-better-for-a-jotter-than-a-talker/ http://allthingsd.com/20120215/mobile-device-thats-better-for-a-jotter-than-a-talker/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:02:55 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=175132 Lots of folks carry a smartphone, and, at least some of the time, tote a second mobile device—an iPad or other tablet. But some people might prefer a product that combines the two. Similarly, many have come to love the finger-controlled interface popularized by Apple, but might prefer at times to use a stylus, a common tool in the pre-iPhone days.

Samsung is hoping to offer all of the above. On Sunday, it’s introducing to the U.S. a phone-tablet hybrid with a large 5.3-inch screen that uses a stylus as well as your fingers. It’s called the Galaxy Note and costs $300 with a two-year AT&T contract.

While the Note could be mistaken for a small tablet, Samsung insists it’s a phone that merely offers some of the roominess of a tablet. And in fact, it runs the last purely phone-oriented version of Google’s Android operating system, called Gingerbread. This product positioning may be due to bad memories of another company’s effort to sell such a ’tweener: Dell’s 5-inch Streak, which was marketed as a tablet that could make calls and failed miserably in 2010.

After testing the Galaxy Note, I have decidedly mixed feelings about it. It isn’t a very practical phone and, as a tablet, it can’t match the experience of the iPad, which is more spacious and has over 150,000 apps designed for it. However, I can see where some folks might consider the 5-inch screen a good trade-off for much better portability than other tablets, and Samsung has done some very interesting work in making the stylus, which is stored in a slot on the device, useful.

The S Memo app lets the Note’s stylus draw in different colors and to emulate a brush or marker.

As a mobile phone, the Galaxy Note is positively gargantuan. It’s almost 6 inches long and over 3 inches wide. When you hold it up to your ear, it pretty much covers the entire side of your face. You look like you’re talking into a piece of toast.

The Note is so big, an iPhone can almost fit within its display. And it dwarfs even the more-bloated crop of recent Android phones, like Samsung’s own Galaxy S II series, whose screen can be as large as 4.5 inches. And while it can fit into a large pocket or handbag, the Note isn’t going to slip unobtrusively into your jeans or a small purse. It weighs 6.28 ounces, nearly 30 percent more than the iPhone and nearly 50 percent more than some Galaxy S II models.

For people who use Bluetooth earpieces all the time, or who primarily use the speakerphone function, the Note’s size may not be a problem. But for the rest, the Note is just too large to go without a more reasonably sized phone, which defeats the one-device argument.

Voice quality in normal use was good. But, in my limited tests of its Bluetooth voice capabilities, the caller on the other end felt the Note sounded significantly worse than the iPhone or other Android models I’ve tested.

However, as a data device, I liked the Note a lot. Its screen sports a high resolution that made photos, videos and text look very good. It uses AT&T’s high-speed LTE data network, where available, and in my tests it was very fast. The larger screen enabled more of a Web page to be visible without scrolling than on typical phones.

Like all Android devices, it has fewer, and, in my opinion, generally lower-quality third-party apps than the iPhone. But those I tried worked well. The Note was consistently speedy and responsive.

The 8-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front camera both did a good job. Photos and videos I shot from the rear camera were excellent. But I found the sheer size of the Note undercuts its convenience as a camera and there’s no dedicated camera button or quick way to launch the camera when the screen is locked, as there is on some other phones.

In moderate mixed use, where I played music and videos, surfed the Web, texted, used email constantly and took pictures, the Note’s battery lasted more than a full day between charges.

Unlike Apple, Samsung allowed AT&T to load a bunch of its own apps you might not want on the Note, like a $10 to $15 a month program for locating family members via cellphone GPS. A particularly egregious example is a Yellow Pages app that’s jammed into the very top of your contact list.

Another drawback: While other Android phones I’ve tested can be plugged into either a PC or a Mac so you can manually transfer files onto them, I couldn’t get the Note to do this with either of two Macs I tested with it. It did work with Windows machines.

The stylus is a big plus, at least for users who like to jot down notes, create sketches or annotate documents in a way that’s much more precise than using a fingertip. Even on the iPad, which wasn’t designed for a stylus, third-party styli have become quietly popular, but Samsung has taken the idea much further.

The Note’s stylus, called the S Pen, can be used instead of a finger to launch and operate apps. But that isn’t its main purpose. It’s meant to work closely with a special app called S Memo that allows you to take notes or make sketches. These can be saved or shared via email or text messaging, or uploaded to sites like Facebook. They can include photos or typed text.

The software allows the stylus to draw in different colors and widths and to emulate a brush or marker.

A button on the side of the stylus can be pressed while tapping the stylus on the screen to bring up a light version of S Memo for quick notes, or to capture whatever is on the screen as a photo that you can annotate with the pen and send off to others.

Samsung plans more pen-oriented apps, and there are some games and drawing apps for the stylus. Some similar apps are available for the iPad and iPhone, but Samsung is investing more in the stylus and what it can do. For people who like jotting notes or sketching, the stylus alone could be a reason to buy the Note.

The Samsung Galaxy Note isn’t for everyone, and I can’t recommend it as the main mobile phone for most people. But as a stylus-driven small tablet, it might be just what some users are looking for.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120215/mobile-device-thats-better-for-a-jotter-than-a-talker/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120208/for-ipad-and-mobile-devices-a-port-out-of-the-norm/ http://allthingsd.com/20120208/for-ipad-and-mobile-devices-a-port-out-of-the-norm/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:04:27 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=172874 The pocket-size USB flash drive has become nearly ubiquitous in the PC world, for moving files among machines and for adding extra storage. But it can’t be used with most tablets because they lack standard USB ports.

Now, there’s a special, modified, pocket flash drive that works as usual with PCs and Macs, but can transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports, such as Apple’s iPad and iPhone, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and many other Android devices. Its secret: It has built-in Wi-Fi to beam the files to and from tablets and smartphones wirelessly. It can even stream files like videos to many devices simultaneously.

The AirStash drive with removable SD memory card

It’s called the AirStash and is made by a tiny company called Wearable Inc., and distributed by Maxell Corp. It’s available at Amazon.com and a few other retailers for $150 for an 8 gigabyte model, which can increase the storage capacity of a base iPad by 50 percent. An AirStash model with 16 gigabytes is $180.

The AirStash is a clever device that solves a genuine problem, though not without some issues. In my tests, it worked as advertised, without crashing or exhibiting bugs. But it’s pricey and has one big drawback: When a device is connected to the AirStash via Wi-Fi, it can’t be connected to the Internet. The company plans a fix for that as early as next month.

The AirStash looks like other USB flash drives, except a bit wider. Its storage is provided by a removable SD memory card that pops into the bottom edge. You can substitute your own larger card. In fact, you can swap in the memory card from your camera and beam your photos.

This product is aimed at the iPad and iPhone, and the company has a free app for those products that makes it easy to manage and view the files on the drive. But its wireless file transfers also work, via the Web browser, on non-Apple devices, even computers. And the company plans an Android version of the app.

A typical way to use the AirStash would be to first plug it into your computer like any flash drive and copy onto it photos, documents, videos, podcasts or songs. Then remove it from the computer and press a small button on the front of the AirStash that turns on its Wi-Fi network. Next, you connect your iPad to this network, launch the AirStash app and all the files on the drive show up.

The AirStash app allows an iPad to wirelessly import photos from the drive.

The AirStash app allows an iPad to create a new directory on the drive, below.

From the app, you can view documents, play songs, watch videos, view photos or listen to podcasts. On a non-Apple device, there’s no special app, but you can still access the content on the drive. You just link up to the AirStash Wi-Fi network, launch your Web browser and go to airstash.net. A page appears with a list of the drive’s contents.

AirStash performed some feats I found impressive. In one test, I was able, from about 75 feet away, to flawlessly watch three movies stored on the AirStash at the same time on three devices. I had “Inception” playing on an iPad, “The King’s Speech” playing on a Kindle Fire and “Star Trek” playing on a Dell laptop. I stress, none of these movies was stored on the devices—all were stored on the AirStash.

In another test, I was able to watch a movie on an iPad, play a song on an Android-based Motorola Droid and read a PDF file on a Mac, simultaneously. Once again, all these files were stored on an AirStash drive 75 feet away.

The AirStash can beam material to as many as eight devices at once, except for video, where the limit is three devices. It can beam the same video to three devices at the same time. A parent could use one AirStash to provide different videos to each of three kids during a drive in the car.

Wearable, the maker of the AirStash, boasts it works in both directions: You can also write files to the AirStash from a device like an iPad. Technically, this is true. For instance, from the AirStash app, you can export photos stored on an iPad or iPhone to the drive.

But several iPad apps for viewing or editing documents, which the company says work with AirStash, require a geeky setup process, and I couldn’t get them to send edited documents back to the drive.

There are some other limitations. For instance, on non-Apple devices, the Web interface is rudimentary, and on the Kindle Fire, music can’t be streamed from the AirStash.

Finally, unlike most other flash drives, the AirStash has a battery to power its Wi-Fi. The company claims up to seven hours of continuous battery life between charges, and while I didn’t do a formal test, the battery life seemed good to me. You can recharge the device either through a standard USB wall charger, like those that come with cellphones, or by plugging it into the USB port of a computer. In the latter case, the Wi-Fi capability can’t be used while charging.

If you’re pining for easier file transfer or expanded storage on your iPad, iPhone or other mobile device without a standard USB port, the AirStash might be the ticket, albeit an expensive one.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120208/for-ipad-and-mobile-devices-a-port-out-of-the-norm/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120110/battery-maker-leyden-energy-announces-pact-with-powermat/ http://allthingsd.com/20120110/battery-maker-leyden-energy-announces-pact-with-powermat/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:01:46 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=161034 Leyden Energy, a start-up focused on bringing the world much needed improvements in battery technology, is using CES to announce a tie-up with wireless charging company Powermat.

Because it packs more battery capacity in a smaller space, Leyden said it can create batteries that pack the same amount of charging, plus the circuitry to support Powermat, that standard batteries need just for their juice.

Leyden, as we wrote last year, has raised a bunch of money to produce batteries with a different kind of chemistry that the company says can lead to longer charges, and batteries that last twice as long.

Like everyone else, we’re sold on anything that might make our phones and tablets last longer. The real question, though, is when we will start seeing products using the technology.

In an interview, Leyden marketing VP Noam Kedem promised that we would see actual products this year, and said that a lack of announcements since last year’s funding should not be taken as a sign the company has gotten complacent.

“It’s not because we haven’t been busy,” Kedem said. “Au contraire.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120110/battery-maker-leyden-energy-announces-pact-with-powermat/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120109/nvidias-tegra-3-tries-to-save-battery-in-all-sorts-of-different-ways/ http://allthingsd.com/20120109/nvidias-tegra-3-tries-to-save-battery-in-all-sorts-of-different-ways/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:30:52 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=161404 Well, the Tegra 3 is just full of surprises.

Nvidia has already disclosed that its quad-core chip also packs a low-power fifth core that can be used in place of the other four to save power. On Monday, Nvidia shared a few more secrets about its latest smartphone and tablet processor.

Among its other power-conserving superpowers is the ability to reduce the amount of backlighting needed. It does this by looking frame by frame at what is being displayed and, when possible, opening up pixels and turning down the backlight where possible.

“That adds a significant amount of battery life to these mobile devices,” Nvidia mobile unit head Mike Rayfield said in an interview, noting that backlights are one of the bigger drains on battery life. In addition to the backlight trick and the low-power core, Rayfield said the Tegra 3 also eliminates the need for a separate controller to process input on a touchscreen.

The Tegra 3 is already shipping in Asus’s Transformer Prime (a device first shown at AsiaD). At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nvidia is showing the Tegra 3 in action on a bunch of other devices.

Nvidia isn’t the only chipmaker trying to make a case for its processors this week. Both Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs are slated to deliver keynote speeches on Tuesday.

All three companies are trying to make the case for why their processors should be the brains of device makers’ next mobile gadgets. And they aren’t the only ones: Texas Instruments, MediaTek and Broadcom are also angling for different segments of the market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120109/nvidias-tegra-3-tries-to-save-battery-in-all-sorts-of-different-ways/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111219/ibm-predicts-home-electricity-from-your-bike-mind-reading-computers/ http://allthingsd.com/20111219/ibm-predicts-home-electricity-from-your-bike-mind-reading-computers/#comments Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:29:37 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=155065 There’s something about the reflective, year-end state of mind that causes tech companies and institutions (and pundits) to make predictions about what they think is plausibly in our near future.

One example is the annual tech prediction by analyst Mark Anderson, which I wrote about last week. Another is IBM’s recurring “Five in Five” series, wherein Big Blue looks at the unfolding technology landscape and predicts what innovations are still just this side of “gee whiz” today, but will be commonplace within five years.

Think back to what we were doing in 2006, and how far things have come in that short period of time in terms of consumer and enterprise technology. The iPhone existed only as an Apple prototype. Facebook had just opened itself up to the population at large, beyond just college and university students. Twitter was just getting started. And a tablet was a not-terribly-popular PC design.

As you’ll see, some of these five predictions aren’t exactly mind-blowing, especially if you pay attention to general technology trends. Over the past decade, you’ve probably already heard predictions saying that computer passwords will go away and be replaced by biometrics of some kind, whether in the form of fingerprints or voice authorization or some part of your eyeball. Also: Junk mail I actually want? That one I’ll believe when I see it. However, I really like the “think to call” idea, which sounds like a super speed-dial.

Anyhow, here are IBM’s predictions for stuff we’ll see by 2016, and a video explaining them in a little more detail:

You will make your own energy: Anything that moves has the potential to create energy. Your running shoes, your bicycle and even the water flowing through your pipes can create energy. Advances in renewable energy technology will allow individuals and scientists to collect this energy and use it to help power our homes, offices and cities.

You will not need a password: Your biological makeup is the key to your individual identity, and soon, it will become the key to safeguarding it. Each person’s unique biometric data such as facial definitions, retinol scans and voice files will be composited through software to build your DNA-unique online password. You will be able to log into your mobile phone or have access to an ATM machine by simply speaking your name or looking into a camera.

Mind reading is no longer science fiction: Scientists are researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone, so you just need to think about calling someone and it happens. Scientists have designed headsets with advanced sensors to read electrical brain activity that can recognize facial expressions, excitement and concentration levels, and thoughts of a person without them physically doing anything.

The digital divide will cease to exist: In five years, the gap between information haves and have-nots will narrow considerably due to advances in mobile technology. Growing communities will be able to use mobile technology to provide access to essential information and better serve people with new solutions such as mobile commerce and remote healthcare.

Junk mail will become priority mail: Think about how often we’re flooded with advertisements we consider to be irrelevant or unwanted — it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. In five years, unsolicited advertisements may feel so personalized and relevant it may seem spam is dead. Systems will be able to filter and find only the data that’s important and relevant to you and will bring you the information without you having to ask for it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111219/ibm-predicts-home-electricity-from-your-bike-mind-reading-computers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111214/ultrabooks-bring-speed-and-light-to-windows/ http://allthingsd.com/20111214/ultrabooks-bring-speed-and-light-to-windows/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:03:14 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=153971 Rejoice, Windows users!

If you envy Apple’s sleek, speedy MacBook Air laptop, and yearn for something like it that comes with the Microsoft Windows operating system, your wish has been granted. It’s a new type of Windows laptop called Ultrabook. A handful already are available, and more are likely to arrive in the new year.

The Ultrabook concept, which is being driven by giant chipmaker Intel, is governed by a set of specs covering everything from thinness to battery life to start-up times. But it is basically an effort to emulate the MacBook Air, which has been a hot product in a challenging market despite selling for double what some bulkier, but capable, Windows laptops fetch. (Apple doesn’t disclose sales of specific Mac models.)

Ironically, the MacBook Air, which came out in 2008 and now starts at $999, uses the same Intel processors Ultrabooks do, and can, if its owner wishes, run Windows capably along with the Mac operating system. But it now will have much more competition.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, with a sturdy aluminum body, has a superb keyboard and roomy touch pad.

I’ve been testing a couple of the new Ultrabooks, from Lenovo and Toshiba, to get a feel for the category, and I’m a fan. I love the idea of a machine that combines low weight with good speed and battery life, yet doesn’t compromise on keyboard and screen size.

I found some drawbacks to both machines, and to Ultrabooks in general. For instance, like the Apple, they lack internal DVD drives and removable batteries, things that will bother some folks. And, at least for now, the Ultrabooks mostly tend to cluster at around $1,000, which rules them out for shoppers on a tight budget. But, overall, I think the advent of the Ultrabook is a good thing for consumers.

In general, I preferred the Lenovo, but the Toshiba has some advantages as well, and you won’t go wrong with either. In my tests, neither did as well as the Apple in such measures as battery life or start times. But both cost less than the comparable Apple model.

Toshiba’s Portege Z835 is lighter and has more ports, including an Ethernet port, than the comparable Lenovo IdeaPad or MacBook Air.

The idea behind the Ultrabook is to make a light, thin laptop that has a full-size screen and keyboard—unlike a cramped netbook—yet also gets strong battery life, starts up and resumes quickly, and is powerful enough to handle a wide variety of common consumer tasks. It is meant to be good enough to be your main computer, but it isn’t aimed at those who need extra horsepower for things like hard-core gaming.

To be clear, there have been thin and light Windows laptops for many years, but these machines have typically been so expensive that few people could buy them, and they often had poor battery life and other serious compromises.

I tested the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and the Toshiba Portege Z830, and also compared them with the latest, comparable MacBook Air. Both have 13-inch screens, are made of metal, weigh under three pounds, and use a solid-state drive—storage chips—instead of a hard disk. This improves speed, reliability and battery life, but limits storage capacity.

The Lenovo starts at $1,095 with a 128 gigabyte drive, 4 GB of memory, and Intel’s mid-range i5 processor. The Toshiba starts at around $900 for a model with the same specs except for the processor, which is a less powerful chip called an i3. However, both Toshiba and Best Buy have recently put this machine on sale, and I found it on Best Buy’s website for $700.

By contrast, the 13-inch MacBook Air with the same amount of solid-state storage and memory, and the i5 processor, costs $1,299.

Beyond their price and processor differences, I found each machine had its strengths and weaknesses.

The Toshiba weighs just 2.47 pounds, versus 2.91 for the Lenovo and 2.96 for the Apple. It also boasts the most ports, including three USB ports versus two for the others and an Ethernet port the others lack. But I found its magnesium body felt more fragile than the other two, which are aluminum and sturdier.

I also disliked the fact that on Toshiba’s keyboard, using the keys for common things like brightness and muting required you to hold down a second function key. And the Toshiba came in last among the three in my tests of battery life, cold start-up time and reboot time. Plus, Toshiba has pre-loaded an annoying Best Buy promotional app that pops up at launch.

The Lenovo feels sturdy and has a keyboard I found superb, and a roomy touch pad. Unlike the other two, it isn’t tapered at the edges, and my test unit sported an orange color, though it also comes in gray. Also, like the Apple, but unlike the Toshiba, Lenovo offers a roomier, 256 GB solid-state drive for extra money.

However, the Lenovo froze once during my tests; the others didn’t. And, unlike the others, it lacks a slot for memory cards.

Both Ultrabooks did fine at all the common tasks I threw at them. But their screen resolution is less than the Mac’s, meaning less material can be seen without scrolling. The Mac also felt sturdier to me than even the Lenovo.

Both Ultrabooks claim battery life of up to eight hours or so. In my battery tests, where I turn off all power-saving features, crank the screen brightness up all the way, leave the Wi-Fi on, and play a continuous loop of music, they fell well short of that. The Toshiba lasted 4 hours and 36 minutes and the Lenovo 4 hours and 50 minutes.

Still, these are respectable numbers in my harsh tests, and suggest to me that in more normal use with power-saving on, you could get six hours or so easily on these machines. However, the MacBook Air did much better, lasting 5 hours and 51 minutes on the same test—suggesting users would likely achieve Apple’s claimed seven hours of battery life in more normal use.

The two Ultrabooks booted up and rebooted much faster than most Windows laptops I’ve tested in the past, reaching a ready-to-use state, with Wi-Fi fully connected, in about 30 seconds when booting from scratch and under a minute on a reboot. They recovered from sleep in under 10 seconds. But the Mac beat them handily on all three measures.

For Windows shoppers who can afford to spend a little more this season, I believe Ultrabooks are a great choice.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111214/ultrabooks-bring-speed-and-light-to-windows/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111208/up-means-having-to-say-youre-sorry/ http://allthingsd.com/20111208/up-means-having-to-say-youre-sorry/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:24:29 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=151967 Jawbone, maker of the UP fitness wristband that has been the subject of varying customer complaints since its launch a few weeks ago, has posted a letter on its Web site apologizing for the problems, describing the results of the diagnostics on the band and issuing a free refund on UP bands, no questions asked.

In other words: UP does mean having to say you’re sorry.

Jawbone’s CEO, Hosain Rahman, said the company has found an issue with two specific capacitors in the wristband’s power system that affects the ability to hold a charge; Jawbone is also working on an issue with syncing related to the band’s hardware.

The company reassured users that the problems are performance-related and don’t pose safety risks.

If customers are unhappy with the UP, they can also receive a full refund for it — and keep the (possibly nonfunctional) one they’ve got. Jawbone said the refund program will go into effect starting tomorrow.

The Jawbone UP, a $99 wristband that monitors users’ activity and plugs directly into an iPhone to send data to an app, first hit the market a month ago and initially received positive reviews for its wearable form factor and ease of use. Within a short time, though, some customers alleged that the device wouldn’t hold a battery charge; there were also complaints about syncing issues and the fact that the cap at the end of the band falls off easily. The product is the first foray into the health-and-fitness market for Jawbone, which is known for its nifty audio products.

Full text of the Jawbone letter below:

Update from the CEO
The UP No Questions Asked Guarantee

To the UP Community:

Earlier this year, we unveiled Jawbone’s vision to help people live a healthier life with UP. We’ve been thrilled by the passionate response to this product. We heard from tens of thousands of you through emails, tweets, blog posts and on our forums about how you’re changing your lifestyle and becoming consumers of your own health. In just four weeks, UP users have collectively taken over three billion steps, gotten more than 300 years of sleep and captured hundreds of thousands of meals.

While many of you continue to enjoy the UP experience, we know that some of you have experienced issues with your UP band. Given our commitment to delivering the highest quality products, this is unacceptable and you have our deepest apologies. We’ve been working around the clock to identify the root causes and we’d like to thank everyone who has provided us with information and returned their bands to us for troubleshooting. With your help, we’ve found an issue with two specific capacitors in the power system that affects the ability to hold a charge in some of our bands. We’re also fixing an issue with syncing related to the band hardware. Typically, these issues surface within the first seven to ten days of use. The glitches are purely performance related and do not pose any safety risk.

We’ve also received helpful feedback on the application experience, including bug reports, ways to make signup and finding friends easier, user interface suggestions and new feature requests. Your comments are invaluable as we continue to improve, so please keep them coming and check back frequently for updates to ensure you’re always enjoying the latest features and enhancements.

We recognize that this product has not yet lived up to everyone’s expectations – including our own – so we’re taking action:

The UP No Questions Asked Guarantee

This means that for whatever reason, or no reason at all, you can receive a full refund for UP. This is true even if you decide to keep your UP band. We are so committed to this product that we’re offering you the option of using it for free.

The program starts December 9th and full details can be found at http://www.jawbone.com/uprefund.

For most of you, this program is simply meant to offer peace of mind. Please continue to enjoy your UP band and keep sharing your experience with us. If you encounter any problems with your UP band, contact Jawbone directly for your choice of a replacement and/or refund under this program. It’s that simple.

Jawbone remains deeply committed to addressing all issues with UP, investing in the category and giving our customers the tools to live a healthier life. We’ve temporarily paused production of UP bands and will begin taking new orders once these issues have been sorted out. In the meantime, we’ll continue to release app updates for existing users.

We regret any disappointment we’ve created for our community of users and appreciate the trust you’ve put in us. The fact that you’ve taken the time to talk with us and help us make a better product is simply phenomenal. Our customers have always been part of our team and we’re incredibly grateful for that.

Please know that we’re doing – and will continue to do – everything we can to make things right. This is just the beginning for UP and we are excited to keep improving until we realize the powerful vision of what this category can be.

If there is absolutely anything else we can do for you, please let us know.

Hosain Rahman
CEO
Jawbone

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111208/up-means-having-to-say-youre-sorry/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20111207/solid-keyboard-elevates-this-tablet-though-software-lags/ http://allthingsd.com/20111207/solid-keyboard-elevates-this-tablet-though-software-lags/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:03:52 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=151713 One of the biggest things that deters people from relying on tablets is the lack of a convenient physical keyboard. Now, Taiwan-based Asus is attacking this issue with a new Android-based tablet and accompanying keyboard dock, due on store shelves in the U.S. on Dec. 15.

This 10-inch tablet, called the Eee Pad Transformer Prime, starts at $499, the same price as the market leader, Apple’s iPad 2. But it has twice the memory—32 gigabytes—at that price. The keyboard dock, with an additional battery and added ports, is an optional extra for $149.

The new Asus has another notable feature: It is the first tablet to use a new processor from chip maker Nvidia that has four cores, double what other recent tablets use.

Asus and Nvidia, which developed the product jointly, claim this processor, called the Tegra 3, offers more power when it’s needed, and the flexibility to sip less power when it’s not, for overall better performance and battery life. I expect this same chip to show up in other tablets in coming months.

I’ve been testing the Transformer Prime, and I found it to be the best standard Android tablet I’ve used. In my tests, the Prime had snappy performance, and decent battery life, though less than the iPad’s (more on that later). It is a tad lighter and thinner than the iPad 2 and has a sharp, pleasant screen.

The Transformer Prime tablet starts at $499. Keyboard dock is an extra $149.

Plus, when the tablet is coupled with the keyboard dock, by nestling it into a hinge, it becomes the screen of what is essentially an Android netbook. When docked, the tablet even folds down over the keyboard like a lid. I found typing on the keyboard to be easy and accurate.

However, as with all other tablets based on Google’s Android platform, its weak point is software. The tablet-oriented Honeycomb version of Android on the Prime isn’t as slick or smooth as the iPad’s operating system, though the Prime’s potent processor makes it more fluid than is typical on such Android devices. And Google’s Android Market offers only a small number of tablet-optimized apps, compared with 140,000 for the iPad.

The Transformer Prime

In addition, the Prime lacks access to a large, unified ecosystem of music, videos and books, unlike the Apple or Amazon’s Kindle Fire. It does offer Google’s new music store, and a movie-rental service. But, when I tried to rent two movies, neither would play.

The Prime will gain a fresh version of the Android operating system, called Ice Cream Sandwich, early next year, according to Asus. The company says early buyers of the Prime will be able to upgrade for free.

Fans of the iPad will point out that it, too, can work with optional physical keyboards. But Apple doesn’t make one that couples with the iPad 2 the way the Asus docking station mates with its tablet, and the extra battery in the Prime’s keyboard dock can supposedly add up to six hours of unplugged power, a claim I didn’t test. The Prime’s dock also has a USB port and a memory card slot.

The Prime is actually the third try by Asus to mate a tablet with a physical keyboard. An earlier, bulkier version of the Transformer wasn’t embraced by many consumers, and a thick tablet with a cramped slide-out keyboard, called the Slider, also hasn’t been a big hit. But Asus is hoping that the slimmer, lighter Prime and its dock will do the trick.

The Transformer Prime, when coupled with the keyboard dock, can fold down like a lid.

The stand-alone tablet is 0.33-inch thick and weighs 1.29 pounds. The dock adds 1.18 pounds and 0.4-inch of thickness. Together, they cost $648, just $49 more than the cheapest 32 GB iPad, but hundreds more than many standard 10-inch Windows netbooks.

The companies are stressing how the processor improves the graphics and speed of games on the tablet, and boast that the Prime can be used with gaming-console controllers. This is good news for tablet gamers, and, in my tests, some sample games the companies provided looked impressive. But I wasn’t blown away with their superiority over iPad games.

To me, the keyboard dock is the big story here. I found it to be a solid companion. Its keys were well spaced despite the unit’s small overall size, and the hinge that holds the tablet as a removable screen was sturdy. Special keys control Android functions such as Home, Back and Search. And there’s a roomy, responsive touch pad.

The screen was responsive and the speakers were good. In my tests, email, Web browsing, and streaming of music and videos worked well over good Wi-Fi connections. But the Prime lacks any cellular connectivity, meaning it is crippled when you’re out of Wi-Fi range. When I tested it at a hotel with slow Wi-Fi, the Prime was notably pokier at streaming the same YouTube video as an iPad 2 using Verizon’s 3G cellular network.

Gauging the battery life on this tablet is a bit complicated. I performed the same battery test I have used for every tablet since the original iPad appeared. In that test, I set the screen brightness to 75%, leave the wireless on and play locally stored videos back to back till the unit dies.

The Transformer Prime lasted just shy of seven hours, compared with slightly more than 10 hours for the iPad 2, a big difference. Still, that seven hours was better than many other full-size Android tablets have achieved in this test.

Asus and Nvidia build in three battery modes, and I tested only the one called Normal. Unfortunately, Nvidia now says that nomenclature is misleading, and that Normal is really meant for only high-performance tasks. So, early next year, when it switches to the next version of Android, it plans to rename Normal as “Performance,” to steer users to a less power-hungry mode called “Balanced.” I can’t say how the Prime’s battery will perform in that scenario with the new OS.

I still believe the iPad 2 is the best overall tablet available. However, if you’re looking for a model using Google’s Android interface and are yearning for a well-designed, easily integrated keyboard solution, or want to play more power-hungry games, the Transformer Prime is a good choice, as long as you can tolerate its software limitations.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111207/solid-keyboard-elevates-this-tablet-though-software-lags/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111115/kindle-fire-a-grown-up-e-reader-withtablet-spark/ http://allthingsd.com/20111115/kindle-fire-a-grown-up-e-reader-withtablet-spark/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:28:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=144524 It’s often said that there isn’t really a tablet market, just an Apple iPad market with a bunch of other contenders fighting over the remnants. But, starting this week, that is likely to change, because Amazon is adding a multifunction color tablet to its popular Kindle line that costs less than half as much as an iPad 2.

This new $199 device is called the Kindle Fire, and after testing it for a week, I think it’s a good—though not a great—product and a very good value. It doesn’t just add color to the Kindle, it adds a robust ability to store and stream music, TV shows and movies—and a weaker ability to store and display color photos. And it offers about 8,500 apps at launch, including Netflix, Angry Birds and QuickOffice.

To be clear, the Kindle Fire is much less capable and versatile than the entry-level $499 iPad 2. It has a fraction of the apps, a smaller screen, much weaker battery life, a slower Web browser, half the internal storage and no cameras or microphone. It also has a rigid and somewhat frustrating user interface far less fluid than Apple’s.

Kindle Fire

But the Fire has some big things going for it. First, the $199 price, though the Fire’s seven-inch screen is less than half the surface area of the iPad’s display. Second, the Amazon and Kindle brands, already known and loved for e-readers and more. Third, Amazon is the only major tablet maker other than Apple with a large, famous, easy-to-use content ecosystem that sells music, video, books and periodicals. The Fire can be thought of as a hardware front end to all that cloud content.

Finally, while the Fire, like many other tablets, is based on Google’s Android operating system, Amazon has taken the bold step of hiding Android. It shuns its user interface and nearly all of Google’s apps and services, including Google’s app store. The Fire’s software is all about the content and apps Amazon has sold you and the easy purchase of more.

When compared to the iPad 2, I suspect the Fire will appeal to people on a budget and to those who envision using the iPad mainly to consume content, as opposed to those who see the larger tablet as a partial laptop replacement. For instance, while the Fire has a decent Web browser and a rudimentary email program, it lacks basic built-in apps, such as a calendar, notepad or maps. However, for people primarily interested in reading books and periodicals, the Fire may seem too heavy and costly when compared with a low-end Kindle or Nook.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet

The Fire isn’t only competing with the iPad and other general-purpose tablets. It has to contend with a new, low-price, similar-size color tablet out this week from e-reader rival, Barnes & Noble. This device, the Nook Tablet, is B&N’s second-generation color slate and costs $249, still less than an iPad. I’ve also been trying it out for a few days and found it has some pluses and minuses compared with the Fire.

The Nook Tablet boasts double the internal storage and a slot to expand it. It has better battery life and a more interactive approach to children’s books. But beyond books and magazines, it lacks either Amazon’s or Apple’s large, simple, built-in ecosystem for other kinds of content, such as music, movies and TV shows.

Instead, Barnes & Noble boasts it offers choice, by including video apps like Netflix and music apps like Pandora. However, these same apps also appear on the Fire and the iPad, along with the Amazon and Apple stores.

And it appears to offer even fewer apps than Amazon does (Barnes & Noble doesn’t provide a number). Also, while its screen is the same size as the Fire’s, the Nook is larger overall, though a bit lighter.

Hardware

The Fire’s hardware is plain and clunky. It’s a thick black box with zero style. There isn’t even a volume control or a physical home button, and the on/off button is a small thing hidden inconveniently on the bottom edge.

In the quest to meet the $199 price point, Amazon omitted many features common on other tablets. There are no cameras or microphone, no GPS for determining your location, no Bluetooth for headsets or wireless speakers and no included earbuds. The Fire is Wi-Fi only—it has no built-in cellular connectivity. There isn’t even an included cable for connecting to a computer, something you may want to do to get photos into the Fire, since Amazon lacks an online photo service.

There is just 8 gigabytes of memory, half the total of the base iPad or the Nook Tablet, and only about 6 gigabytes of that is available to store content. If you want to download movies, you won’t be able to fit many into the Fire.

User Interface

When I first saw it, I really liked the Fire’s user interface. Instead of screens full of icons or folders, it presents virtual shelves filled with the books, magazines, music, TV shows, movies, apps and websites you’ve used. A large one has the most recent items, with smaller shelves below it. These are for your favorite items. Across the top is a search bar and a list of categories, like Books, Music, Videos, Apps.

But I became frustrated with the interface. There’s something off with the touch calibration on the top shelf, or Carousel, which scrolls through a seemingly endless stream of items. It can be difficult to get it to stop on the item you want and it takes more pressure than it should to open the selection.

Also, you can’t configure the main screen much. You can’t reorder the top shelf, and while you can place items on the favorites shelves, they are in the order you added them, not how you like them.

On the Nook Tablet, the user interface is a jumble of different approaches, which I consider confusing. There’s a main screen where you can place favorite icons but also see a scrolling row of items, a drop-down list of other items and a bottom row of tiny icons representing categories. But there’s also a separate interface called the library, with categories and shelves.

Browser

A big selling point for the Fire is a supposedly speedy Web browser called Silk, which splits the task of fetching Web pages between the tablet and Amazon’s super-fast cloud computers. The latter can cache common, static page elements and learn which sites and pages people most often use, so they are pre-fetched and ready to go when needed.

However, in my tests, the Fire’s Silk browser was noticeably slower than the iPad 2′s browser.

This pattern was consistent over scores of Web pages, and on four Wi-Fi networks and two different Fire devices. Amazon’s explanation is that its split-browser system requires lots of user data to achieve its speed advantages, and only a small number of people are using it, so it will get faster over time.

Content

I found it easy to buy, stream, download and use content on the Fire. Reading books was a pleasure, as on any Kindle. Movies and TV shows looked good, and music played quickly and well, despite weak speakers. In general, I found magazines and newspapers looked better on the iPad, mostly due to the larger screen.

Recognizing this, Amazon offers a “text view” of magazines, which makes them easier to read but loses the original formatting.

Screen

After years of suggesting the gray-scale, E-Ink screen on the Kindle was better for reading than a color LCD screen, Amazon now has a Kindle with the latter display. If anything, it struck me as glossier than the iPad screen. It’s vivid and sharp, but not high definition. When I asked an Amazon executive about the reading issue and the company’s past position, he suggested people who prefer E-Ink buy one of each Kindle and use the older style for reading, pointing out the pair would cost less than an iPad. I said, while that was true, such people would be carrying two devices, not one.

Battery Life

In my standard tablet battery test, playing back to back videos with the wireless turned on and the screen at 75% brightness, the Fire lasted 5 hours, 47 minutes, or less than 60% of the iPad 2′s performance on the same test, and about an hour less than the Nook Tablet’s performance. In more general use, I didn’t find myself worrying about the battery. But the Fire requires charging much more often than the traditional Kindle.

Bottom Line

At $199, and with Amazon’s content ecosystem behind it, the Fire is an attractive alternative for many people who might otherwise have bought an iPad or another Android device, especially if their principal interest is content consumption.

The Nook Tablet also is worth considering, though it lacks a music and video ecosystem.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111115/kindle-fire-a-grown-up-e-reader-withtablet-spark/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111112/apple-warns-of-battery-overheating-risk-with-first-generation-ipod-nanos/ http://allthingsd.com/20111112/apple-warns-of-battery-overheating-risk-with-first-generation-ipod-nanos/#comments Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:57:00 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=143464 Apple on Friday said that the battery in some first-generation iPod nanos could overheat and told users to stop using the devices and send them to the company for replacement.

It’s what you or I might call a recall, though Apple likes to call them “replacement programs” unless they are certain types of issues coordinated with the U.S. consumer product safety authorities.

The affected models are the kind with the white or black plastic front and silver back and were sold between September 2005 and December 2006. Apple said the issue is limited to that first generation iPod nano and doesn’t affect other models.

“This issue has been traced to a single battery supplier that produced batteries with a manufacturing defect,” Apple said in a post on its support Web site. “While the possibility of an incident is rare, the likelihood increases as the battery ages.”

The site provides instructions for checking the serial number and, if necessary, returning the units to Apple for a replacement, which is then waranteed for 90 days.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111112/apple-warns-of-battery-overheating-risk-with-first-generation-ipod-nanos/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111111/apple-we-continue-to-investigate-iphone-battery-issues/ http://allthingsd.com/20111111/apple-we-continue-to-investigate-iphone-battery-issues/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:10:18 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=143276 Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 update evidently addressed some, but not all of the battery issues troubling iPhone users. In a statement issued moments ago, the company acknowledged there may still be a few problems that need troubleshooting. “The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices,” the company said in a statement given to AllThingsD. “We continue to investigate a few remaining issues.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111111/apple-we-continue-to-investigate-iphone-battery-issues/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111111/iphone-4s-battery-suckage-persists-for-some/ http://allthingsd.com/20111111/iphone-4s-battery-suckage-persists-for-some/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:41:41 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=143228 Thursday afternoon, Apple released iOS 5.0.1 — an update to its mobile OS intended to resolve an issue that was shortening the battery life of iPhones and other devices that use the software. For some, it did just that. But for an increasingly vocal group of others, it did not. A quick check of Apple’s support forums show an increasing number of complaints claiming the issue is persisting or even worsening for some.

“Upgraded to 5.0.1 this morning,” reads one complaint. “Still draining at the exact same rate. Unplugged with a full charge 2 1/2 hours ago, and already down to 80 percent with light usage. Just lost 2 percent during a 15 minute shower. I see no difference at all.”

“I was a full charge at 5pm,” reads another. “After a few phone calls I went to bed around 2 a.m. with a 48 percent charge. Woke up at 8 a.m. with a full drain. It was in standby mode. That’s crazy!”

Another: “After installing 5.01 i charged it up fully before going to bed and after 7 hrs just sitting there lost 79 percent, and have lost further 5 percent while logging in and typing this. Going to try a full back up and restore this eve…”

And another: “Early yesterday afternoon, I downloaded the iOS 5.0.1 update on my iPhone 4s. After installing, I watched my battery drain 10 percent in 40 minutes while doing nothing on the phone. This update does absolutely nothing for battery life.”

Certainly for that user and others whose complaints I cited above. But for others, iOS 5.0.1 seems to have done the trick. “It really seems to have fixed the problem,” one ATD reader told me. “Battery life looking much better now,” said another.

So there appears to be a broad range of experience here, and lots of inconsistencies. Anecdotally, here at ATD we’re running the gamut. For some of our iPhone 4S users, batteries post-5.0.1 are draining as quickly as they were prior to it. For others, battery life has improved. And for a few of us who never experienced the issue and have had good battery life all along, there’s been no change whatsoever.

We’ve reached out to Apple for an explanation and will update here if one is offered.

UPDATE: Apple just issued the following statement to AllThingsD.

“The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices. We continue to investigate a few remaining issues.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111111/iphone-4s-battery-suckage-persists-for-some/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111110/apple-releases-software-updated-designed-to-fix-ios5-battery-issues/ http://allthingsd.com/20111110/apple-releases-software-updated-designed-to-fix-ios5-battery-issues/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:16:41 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=142869 Apple on Thursday issued a minor software update to the operating system that powers the iPhone, designed to fix several bugs that Apple says are to blame for the lower-than-expected battery life some users have been seeing.

In addition to trying to improve battery life, the 5.0.1 update adds a couple of features, including the ability for original iPad owners to use the multitasking gestures that Apple added with iOS 5. There’s no immediate word on whether the update adds the panoramic photo capacity or the improved autocorrect features that enthusiasts have uncovered hidden within the operating system. (Update: Neither feature is there.)

Apple had said it would release an update to fix the bugs, though on Nov. 2, the company noted that it might take a couple of weeks for the update to be ready.

The update appears as an option within iTunes but doesn’t appear to be an option yet for getting over the air. With iOS5, Apple has said that devices will now be able to be updated without needing to connect to a computer.

Users have reported decidedly mixed results with iOS 5 with some saying they are getting battery life as advertised but lots of folks taking to Twitter, Apple’s forums and elsewhere to tell tales of woe and seek suggestions on how to at least get through the day on a single charge.

Update: Apple is in the process of pushing out the update to its servers for over-the-air updating. Some are already seeing the update, and others should shortly. The download requires Wi-Fi.

The software also includes several security updates, including addressing a flaw, found by Accuvant’s Charlie Miller, that could allow apps to execute malicious code.

Here’s what the over-the-air download option looks like on an iPhone:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111110/apple-releases-software-updated-designed-to-fix-ios5-battery-issues/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:02:27 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=142638 If you’re shopping for a laptop this autumn, you’ll find most of the capabilities and prices in the sluggish market unchanged. You’ll still likely be considering whether it’s time to get a tablet instead of a new laptop.

But if you’re focused on a Windows machine, and you look carefully, you’ll see that a new class of portable PC is beginning to appear. It’s called the “ultrabook,” and is essentially the Windows version of Apple’s popular, nearly four-year old MacBook Air—an ultraskinny, light, speedy, versatile laptop with long battery life.

The arrival of the ultrabook is a welcome development, not only because it spices up the market, but because I consider the MacBook Air the best all-around consumer laptop available, and anything that emulates it is a good idea, if done well.

There are only a few ultrabooks available this season and they aren’t for everybody. Most have limited storage and, like the MacBook Air, are priced near the $1,000 range—rich territory in a tight economy where Apple buyers seem comfortable, though not many others. Still, this new class of Windows laptop is the only fundamentally fresh choice in the laptop market.

If the price is too high, you should be able to get a capable major-brand laptop for between $500 and $800, with plenty of storage and memory.

My annual fall laptop buyers’ guide today offers tips for wading through the technobabble in computer ads, and in online and physical stores. As always, these tips are for average consumers doing common tasks, such as email, Web browsing, social networking, general office productivity, photos, music, videos and simple games. This guide isn’t meant for corporate buyers, or for hard-core gamers or serious media producers.

The recently unveiled Asus Zenbook

The tablet question: Tablets like Apple’s iPad 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 can perform many, though not all, of the functions of a laptop. Most tablet lovers find themselves reaching for their laptops less often to do things like email. If your budget is limited and you’re thinking of shelling out $500 for a full-size tablet, consider whether you can put off getting a new laptop this year instead of buying both.

Future Windows: If you’re shopping for a Windows laptop, be aware that in 2012, Microsoft will offer a new version of Windows, called Windows 8, with a radical new multitouch interface that makes use of a touch screen. The software giant stresses that Windows 8 won’t require such a screen, and will still work with a mouse or touch pad. But unless you have a laptop with a multi-touch screen, you won’t be able to take advantage of the Windows 8 touch-screen features.

Ultrabooks: Four companies make this class of laptop: Acer, Lenovo, Asus and, shortly, Toshiba. These machines are under 0.8 inch thick, weigh less than three pounds, and generally claim long battery life and almost-instant startup times. All run Windows 7; none has a touch screen. Like the MacBook Air, they use solid-state drives (though some combine these with standard hard disks) and have screens of either 11 inches or 13 inches. Prices generally run from around $900 to $1,100.

Windows vs. Mac: Mac laptops cost more and offer less variety than Windows laptops. The least expensive Mac laptop is $999, while a few stripped-down Windows portables can be had for under $300. Well-equipped Windows laptops start at $500 to $600. But Apple laptops combine beauty, ruggedness and long battery life with good customer service. Macs also come with better built-in software, including the new Lion operating system, which includes some tablet-like features. And they can run Windows, at extra cost.

Finally, Mac users don’t fear viruses and other malicious software, because virtually none work on the Mac.

Memory: Get at least 4 gigabytes of memory, or RAM, on a new Windows computer. On a Mac, most consumers can get away with 2 gigabytes.

Processors: Intel’s latest chips are the i3, i5, and i7 Core models. But a laptop with chips from rival AMD, or older Intel dual-core chips, also is OK.

Graphics: Usually less expensive machines have wimpier graphics hardware, and costlier ones have more powerful graphics. Better graphics can make your whole machine faster, because more and more software is designed to offload general processing tasks onto the graphics chips.

Hard disks: A 320-gigabyte hard disk should be the minimum on most PCs. Solid-state disks, like those in the new ultrabooks or the MacBook Air, generally come in sizes of 128 GB or 256 GB. They omit moving parts and use flash memory to store your files, as on a smartphone or tablet. They are costlier, but faster, and use less power.

Ports: Many PCs now come with a port called HDMI, which makes linking to a high-definition TV easy. There is a new, much faster USB port, called USB 3.0, but few peripheral devices can use it. And Apple has introduced yet another high-speed connector that has little practical use so far, called Thunderbolt.

As always, be wary of sales pitches and don’t buy more laptop than you need.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/iphone-battery-drain/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/iphone-battery-drain/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:00:01 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=142644 Q:

My iPhone 4S gets much worse battery life than my iPhone 4 did. I need to charge it by midafternoon, whereas the prior model easily lasted all day. Do you know why and what can be done about it?

A:

Apple says it has found some bugs in its new iPhone and iPad operating system, called iOS 5, which adversely affect battery life for some users. It is promising to release a new version that addresses the problem in a few weeks.

I have heard from several users of the new iPhone 4S and from others who upgraded their older models to the new operating system that their battery lives have degraded.

However, in my own tests and experience, I have seen no reduction in battery life on my upgraded iPhone 4, which still comfortably lasts a full day. And the iPhone 4S Apple lent me for testing also made it through a whole day, every day.

If you can’t wait for Apple’s fix, some websites have reported major improvements by changing a simple setting. You go to Location Services, then System Services, and turn off “Setting Time Zone.” I haven’t tested this and don’t know if it works.

Q:

What is the cheapest device you would recommend to be able to do Skype or any other way of doing video chat?

A:

I’d consider the $199 iPod Touch, which has a front camera, can run several different video chat apps, and requires no monthly cellular service payments.

Another option would be the least expensive Windows laptop or netbook with a built-in webcam. You could also do this with a smartphone, but then you’d likely be paying a monthly bill. Another option is a tablet capable of video chatting, but most cost more than $199.

Q:

How do I sync my new Android phone with my Mac?

A:

Android is generally designed to sync things like contacts and calendar items with online services, especially Google’s, but not with local data on either PCs or Macs.

I have generally found in testing Android phones that you can drag over large files like songs and photos from a Mac by just plugging in the phone via a USB cable and dragging over the files manually.

However, there’s a $40 program called The Missing Sync for Android that claims to facilitate syncing Android phones with both PCs and Macs. I haven’t tested it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/iphone-battery-drain/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111108/consumer-reports-says-iphone-4s-fixes-antenna-woes-can-finally-recommend/ http://allthingsd.com/20111108/consumer-reports-says-iphone-4s-fixes-antenna-woes-can-finally-recommend/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:40:19 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=141695 Consumer Reports, which has long had issues with the iPhone, says Apple has finally come out with a smartphone it can recommend.

The magazine initially withheld its recommendation because of call-quality issues. Even when Apple added a Verizon model, Consumer Reports said it could not recommend the phone because of the “Antennagate” issue, in which holding the phone a certain way could affect the phone’s signal.

“In special reception tests of the iPhone 4S that duplicated those we did on the iPhone 4, the newer phone did not display the same reception flaw, which involves a loss of signal strength when you touch a spot on the phone’s lower left side while you’re in an area with a weak signal,” the magazine’s Mike Gikas said in a blog post.

The company noted the battery issues that some users have been experiencing with iOS 5, and said it would retest the device when Apple releases its software update.

Although it added the new iPhone to its recommended list, Consumer Reports said that Apple’s model still trails several of the newest Android devices in its rankings, including Samsung’s Galaxy S II family of phones and Motorola’s Droid Bionic.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111108/consumer-reports-says-iphone-4s-fixes-antenna-woes-can-finally-recommend/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111102/apple-some-ios5-bugs-prompting-iphone-battery-issues/ http://allthingsd.com/20111102/apple-some-ios5-bugs-prompting-iphone-battery-issues/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:30:42 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=139585 Apple on Wednesday said it had found a few problems that are leading some iPhone customers to experience less-than-expected battery life with iPhones running its latest software.

“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

Apple declined to comment beyond the statement.

Complaints about battery life issues have been growing on the Web in recent days, but began shortly after both iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S were made publicly available last month.

The problems appear to vary based on what network a user is on, usage patterns and other factors.

While Apple has been mum until now about the issues, its support forums have been filled with postings on the issue. And, although Apple is not offering any advice on what customers should do until the software update is released, those same forums contain various potential fixes that may help. Some customers have found some success by limiting notifications and by turning off a feature that automatically adjusts to new time zones.

Despite the battery issues, the iPhone 4S has been a huge seller, with Sprint and AT&T setting records for initial sales.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111102/apple-some-ios5-bugs-prompting-iphone-battery-issues/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110921/a-galaxy-s-sequel-with-big-screen-ambitions/ http://allthingsd.com/20110921/a-galaxy-s-sequel-with-big-screen-ambitions/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2011 01:03:06 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=123374 In the crowded and sometimes confusing market for smartphones based on Google’s Android operating system, Samsung’s Galaxy models have been among the best and most popular. Launched last year on multiple carriers, the Galaxy S models made the Korean electronics giant a serious rival to Apple’s iPhone as well as to Android competitors like Motorola and HTC.

Now, Samsung has introduced the second generation of the Galaxy S in the U.S., after the company reported selling five million of the new devices in Europe and Korea in 85 days. (For context, Apple sold about 20 million iPhones world-wide in its last reported quarter.) The new models are dubbed Galaxy S II, and will be carried by Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile in slightly different variations.

I’ve been testing the first of these new phones, which made its debut on the Sprint network last week. It goes by the lengthy, ungainly name of “Samsung Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch” and costs $200 with a two-year contract. But its name isn’t the only thing about this phone that’s super-sized. It also has a gargantuan 4.52-inch screen, which swells its overall dimensions to a size that dwarfs many other smartphones. For instance, its footprint is about a third larger than the iPhone 4′s.

Samsung Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch

The huge screen is something of a gamble for Samsung and its carrier partners. It makes the phone more attractive for some functions, like watching videos, playing games and viewing photos. But it also makes the Epic 4G harder to fit in a pocket or small purse, or to hold comfortably in smaller hands. And it looks really big when held up to the ear.

To its credit, Samsung has managed to offset the greater length and width by keeping the phone thin and light. It’s only slightly thicker than the iPhone 4 and actually weighs less. But the company pulled off this feat by using a plastic housing that feels insubstantial and fragile. For instance, the removable rear cover is a bendable, paper-thin plastic sheet that I found hard to snap on firmly.

Overall, I consider the Epic 4G Touch to be a capable, versatile smartphone with good battery life and a sharp, rich display. It worked well in my tests for voice and data, and it benefits from Sprint’s unlimited data plans, which compare favorably with the metered data plans of AT&T and Verizon. Like other Android phones, it also offers a rich catalog of 250,000 third-party apps—smaller than the iPhone’s total of 425,000, but still quite large.

However, whether the new Epic is the right phone for you depends on how you feel about its large size and general feel. You’ll also have to be comfortable with Android itself, which is still more complicated than the iPhone’s operating system. And you’ll want to make sure you have good reception for Sprint’s 4G network, which I found varied widely in speed.

The Epic’s hardware performed generally well in my tests. That huge display looked sharp and vivid, even though it actually has a lower resolution than the iPhone 4′s much smaller 3.5-inch screen. One reason may be that the Galaxy S II uses a different display technology than that on most other phones, something called Super AMOLED Plus, which Samsung claims has better blacks and sharper images.

The 8-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front camera took very good still photos and high-definition videos. The speakers were clear for both phone calls and music in my tests. The phone comes with 16 gigabytes of internal memory and has a slot for an optional added memory card.

I didn’t do a formal battery test, but, in my experience, the Epic easily lasted all day between charges, even when I had played several TV shows.

Sprint’s 4G network was less consistent. It’s supposed to deliver download speeds of between 3 megabits per second and 6 mbps, with peaks of up to 10 mbps. But, in my home outside Washington, D.C., the Epic never came close, struggling to reach even 2 mbps in most of my tests. By contrast, in tests I ran in Palo Alto, Calif., the Epic on 4G was blazing, racking up speeds of between 6.5 and 11 mbps in test after test.

Also less impressive was the software. Android itself is getting smoother and simpler, but still has a geekier feel than Apple’s iOS operating system. For instance, to do such common things as composing a new message or searching through your mail in Google’s own Gmail app, you have to first open a menu rather than just directly tapping icons from the main screen. And Samsung actually boasts that the Galaxy S II has an improved “Task Manager,” a utility for managing running apps that average users will never want to consult.

Samsung, like most Android phone makers, adds its own software overlay to Android. The company calls this TouchWiz, and in the new Galaxy S II it includes several motion-based features, like tilting the device to reduce or enlarge the screen contents, or moving the device left or right while holding an icon to reposition the icon. I found the former clumsy but liked the latter, once I got the hang of it.

I also tried Samsung’s built-in video store, called Media Hub, with mixed results. Before boarding a plane, I purchased two TV shows and rented a movie. The TV shows played fine, but to my surprise and irritation, the movie refused to play without an Internet connection, even though it had been paid for and downloaded to the phone, because the program needed to go online to “acquire a license.”

Samsung also includes optional “live panels,” rectangular widgets on the screen that update constantly to show things like the weather, or news headlines with photos. These looked good when they worked. But in my tests, the weather one often failed to update and once crashed the phone. The news panel was usually slow to display photos.

Bottom line: The Sprint version of the Galaxy S II isn’t for everyone. But if you crave a big screen and don’t mind the bigger size, you might like it.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

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