Just how important is a good battery life on a smartphone to you? Very according to Motorola. With that in mind its been busy working away at its Motorola RAZR MAXX, a smartphone that doesn’t skimp on features, but most importantly won’t die on you before the day’s out.

The Motorola RAZR MAXX is no shrinking violet. It’s got a huge 4.3-inch display with a thick border surrounding it, meaning you almost have to stretch you hand around the device when making a call and you’ll certainly be aware of it while it’s in your pocket.

Yet Moto has managed to keep the waistline down to an impressive 8.99mm, which helps explain why it feels far lighter than it looks – 145g.

There’s a slight chin at the top of the rear of the phone in order to accommodate the 8-megapixel camera and LED flash. The power button is located on the right hand side of the phone – as you look at the display – just around the point your forefinger would rest when taking a call in your left hand. Perhaps we’re being pernickety but we have concerns that we might inadvertently switch the phone off mid-conversation.

There’s no removable back cover with the SIM, micro at that, being inserted in the bottom left side of the phone. The protective door, which also leads to the microSD card slot, felt a little flimsy especially as you need to pull it right back to access either port.

Found on the top of the phone is an HDMI, microUSB and 3.5mm headset jack neither of which comes with cumbersome pullout door. A headset jack positioned at the top of the phone is always preferable because it makes it easier to take the phone out of your pocket without damaging your plugged in headphones.

Fire up the phone and an impressively vibrant Super AMOLED Advanced display greets you. It’s protected by Corning Gorilla Glass and has a resolution of 540×960 pixels. It really is quite stunning, especially when you turn the brightness to full, which you can afford to do thanks to the mammoth battery life, right?

So far so good. Now for the not so good. Once switched on it’s immediately apparent that this is no Android Ice Cream Sandwich phone. Well not yet anyway. Running on Gingerbread 2.3 from launch, Moto hopes to upgrade the phone to ICS by the end of Q2 2012.

The processor is also only dual-core 1.2GHz. It seems ridiculous to baulk at a processor of this magnitude, but the truth is with more and more smartphones featuring quad-core processors the bar has been raised. To be fair when playing with the phone it was a far from lethargic experience, though it did take a while for images to appear on any shortcuts we set.

Motorola has also included its innovative “Smart Actions” feature, also found on the previous RAZR. You can set the RAZR MAXX to administer specific functions depending on where you are and what you’re doing.

For example, have a meeting scheduled in your Google Calendar and the RAZR MAXX will automatically put itself in silent mode. What’s more should you have… erm…. a wife who’s about to go into labour for example, you can set a VIP number (ie, your wife’s) which will overrule the Smart Action and ring as normal. There are plenty of other actions to have a play with, such as automatically firing up the music player as soon as a pair of headphones are inserted.

The MotoCast app is also on board which enables you to access music, documents and photos from a remote computer either by streaming or downloading it to the Motorola RAZR MAXX. The files will then be stored locally on the phone, meaning you can access them even when offline. The remote computer will have to be switched on in order to access the files originally, but it makes for a useful alternative to cloud storage.

In terms of memory we’re looking at 1GB RAM and 16GB ROM, with a 16GB microSD card also included, though it can support cards of up to 32GB, which we’d recommend investing in especially if you plan to use the MotoCast app.

Yet, as Motorola kept telling us, the Motorola RAZR MAXX is all about a long battery life. So all that’s left to say, according to the manufacturer, is that the 3300 mAh capacity battery should provide up to 1,056 minutes talktime, the “longest of any smartphone” according to Moto, and over 25 days standby.

We’ll be bringing you a full in-depth review of the Motorola RAZR MAXX before you have time to run one out of juice.

The Motorola RAZR MAXX is available now from Clove, Expansys and Amazon.

Tags:
Phones Motorola RAZR Maxx Motorola Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Motorola RAZR MAXX pictures and hands-on originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 17 May 2012 17:33:00 +0100

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The Great Britain Olympic team has been bestowed with a prestigious honour even before the London 2012 games has kicked off. The athletes have been immortalized as Lego minifigures.

There are a total of nine Team GB Lego minifigures to collect. These include a brawny boxer, a stealth swimmer, relay runner, judo fighter, tactical tennis player, flexible gymnast, wondrous weightlifter, horseback rider and agile archer.

The commemorative range will be sold from 1 July for ?1.99 each in John Lewis, Argos, Tesco, WH Smith, Smyths and Toys R Us.

Each figurine has its own accessory such as bow and arrow, boxing gloves and weights.

The Great Britain Olympic team joins the likes of The Lord of the Rings, Transformers and Marvel Superheroes as just some of the characters to have been given the Lego treatment.?

The 2012 Olympic Games kick off in London on 27 July, with the Paralympics finishing on 9 September.

Tags:
Lego Toys London 2012 Olympics

Lego creates exclusive Team GB Olympic minifigs originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 17 May 2012 18:18:00 +0100

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Travel apps are all the rage, especially when it comes to getting around in the Big Smoke. There are bus checkers and train finders coming out of our app store ears, but the most recent trend has been for getting about in the privacy of a car hired just for you. Yes, we all know about the executive car app for Addison Lee, we very recently met the Hackney Carriage end of the equation with GetTaxi, but today it’s all about minicabs.

ubiCabs

Platform

Android, iOS, browser

Price

Free

Where

iTunes/Play/web

If there’s one thing that ex-Googler Jay Patel and his co-founders at ubiCabs hate, it’s inefficiencies. Minicabs are stationed by a local controller and, when you hire one, it’s either going to pick you up from, or take you to, an area where it’s not going to be able to get another fare. Worse still, in cities like London, the transport agency forbids minicabs getting customers off the streets, so the drivers and the companies that dispatch them end up having to pay for the petrol of one leg of the journey on their own, ie, without a passenger in the car.

That’s where ubiCabs comes in, according to Patel. The service acts as a booking agent for as many minicab firms as it can get. The idea is that customers then request taxis through either an Android or iPhone app, or by using a web interface. The ubiCabs system will then instantly search and access all the minicab controller information to assign the nearest, available and – most importantly – the cheapest car for your needs.

The app itself is fairly familiar to the others we’ve seen. As with most of these systems, ubiCabs tracks your position by GPS or you can add your pick-up point manually. The selection of what kind of car, how much luggage you have and how many passengers is nicely handled, as well as the way you can track your cab’s journey to you on a live map. So, no more waiting around and wondering.

While the main idea behind it all is obviously to get taxis at your convenience without having to pay Black Cab prices. One would also hope that both the added petrol efficiency and the behind-the-scenes price bidding system might result in minicab costs going down. Sadly, this doesn’t yet seem to be the case with all the journeys we’ve been quoted so far being pretty much what we’d expect to pay normally.

Still, with the added convenience on top, it’s well worth a try. Sure, it’s not much different from picking up the phone if you’re looking to get from your home to a night out, but it’s just the answer for those tedious queues when you’re on your way back from the middle of town.

At the moment, ubiCabs covers just London within the M25 but, so long as it can stay ahead of the competition, expect to see the service rolling out to a town near you soon.

Tags:
Apps Cars and GPS iPhone apps Android apps App of the day Ubicabs GetTaxi

APP OF THE DAY: ubiCabs review (Android & iPhone) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 17 May 2012 18:21:00 +0100

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The Sony A37 is a new entry-level SLT camera that comes jam packed with a 16.1-megapixel Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor, an ISO range of 100-16000, a 7fps burst shooting at full resolution and a 3-cross 15-point phase detection autofocus system. The Sony A37 with an 18-55mm kit lens will be available in the UK later this month for $600. [TechnoBuffalo]

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