T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide review

Not too long ago, things were pretty simple in T-Mobile's Android land. For us (the nerds, geeks, power users, early adopters, and other misbegotten social deviants) there was the G series of phones with plain Android, culminating recently with LG's delightful G2x. If you wanted to buy your mom an Android smartphone, you'd point her at the myTouch series of handsets with custom HTC Sense-based skins, like last winter's myTouch 4G. Life got a bit more complicated with the introduction of LG's Optimus T, Samsung's Galaxy S 4G, and other devices that don't neatly fit into the carrier's grand branding scheme. Well, fear not! T-Mobile and HTC went ahead and refreshed last summer's lovely myTouch 3G Slide with a dash of dual-core tech lifted right from the HTC's Sensation flagship and a bespoke 8 megapixel shooter said to be "the most advanced camera of any smartphone". Those are fighting words... so does the myTouch 4G Slide (as it's called) beat the likes of Samsung's Galaxy S II, Sony Ericsson's Xperia Arc, and Nokia's N8 in terms of imaging performance? Is the sliding keyboard as pleasant to use as its predecessor? And most importantly, is this your mom's next phone? Read on for our full review.

T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide review

Hardware

It's easy to mistake the myTouch 4G Slide for the myTouch 4G when seeing it for the the first time. Both phones look almost identical from the front -- at 3.7 inches, the Slide's glass-covered WVGA capacitive touchscreen is only 0.1 inches smaller than its slate cousin. It features the same baroque earpiece and chrome rim around the screen. Like other myTouch devices, it comes with a row of four bona fide physical buttons (home, menu, back, and "Genius") plus an oh-so-retro optical trackpad above the signature chin. The silver ring around the front-facing camera lives on, along with the myTouch logo and notification LED. Flip the Slide over and it's a much more cohesive design. Gone is the myTouch 4G's mishmash of surfaces and textures, replaced instead by a silver accent along the edges of handset and a matte, off-white "khaki" battery door / back cover with a large, slick, machined aluminum pod incorporating the camera (the phone is also available in a more austere gunmetal and black color scheme). The words "8.0 MEGAPIXEL CAMERA" are prominently etched on the pod, which is flanked by a dual LED flash and a secondary microphone. A molded HTC logo and the speaker grille populate the other half of the back. On the sides of the Slide you'll find a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and power / lock key on top, a volume rocker and micro-USB connector on the left, the primary microphone, a slot to pry the cover, plus a lanyard attachment at the bottom, and finally, a dedicated two-stage camera button on the right.

The myTouch 4G Slide is as pleasant to handle as it is to look at. It's a solid, well-made device with a heft that inspires confidence despite the extensive use of plastics. Both the weight (184g / 6.5oz) and thickness (13.2mm / 0.52in) are on par with other sliders (HTC's G2 comes to mind). Still, it can feel somewhat bulky if you're accustomed to slates like the myTouch 4G. Pop the back cover and you're greeted by a 1520mAh battery that's also compatible with the Sensation, SIM slot, and microSD card reader (a 8GB card is supplied). There's an interesting design touch here: the camera is mounted in a machined aluminum cylinder which is partially anodized in a beautiful shade of apple green. Sadly this is most obvious when the battery door is removed, and will likely go unnoticed by the casual observer. Sliding the handset open reveals a staggered four-row QWERTY keyboard with black keys on a silver faux-aluminum background. While the mechanism (which is not spring loaded) is adequately smooth and sturdy, the keys themselves feel mushy compared to the myTouch 3G Slide. We'd have preferred keys with better defined tactile feedback. The other problem is the backlight, which only turns on when it's pitch dark, making it difficult to read the keys in low light. In practice, we ended up using the onscreen virtual keyboard (we installed SwiftKey X) more often than the physical QWERTY keyboard. So if you're considering the Slide for its keyboard, try before you buy -- you've been warned.

Under the hood, the myTouch 4G Slide is almost a dead ringer for the Sensation. You'll find the same Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon SoC with its 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and Adreno 220 GPU, 768MB RAM, and a combination quadband GSM / EDGE plus tri-band UMTS / HSPA+ "4G" radio -- the latter supporting Band IV (AWS) and Bands I / VII (world). Other specs include the usual suspects: at least half the sensors known to human kind (compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity, and ambient light) along with a full complement of radios (WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0+EDR, GPS / AGPS, and FM). The Slide lacks a qHD display, making due instead with a more pedestrian 3.7-inch WVGA (800x480 pixels) Super LCD panel. We'd gloss over this if the screen was of the same caliber as HTC's Incredible 2, but the Slide's display quality is just average at best. The screen looks fine indoors, but falls apart in direct sunlight, and generally exhibits mediocre contrast and viewing angles.

Calls sounded acceptable, and we didn't have any issues with reception, but our tests showed more variability in HSPA+ performance than other devices on T-Mobile's network. It's nothing to be concerned about, but it's worth a mention. As for battery life, we recorded a rather paltry four hours and 43 minutes on our newly minted battery rundown test (which basically involves starting with a full charge and looping the same video until the phone shuts down). Our battery usage test -- which attempts to replicate a light day's use (making a few minutes' worth of calls, reading email, checking social networks, and occasionally responding, texting, surfing the web, or uploading some pictures) with plenty of idle time -- scored 15 hours and 35 minutes, which puts the myTouch 4G Slide somewhere in the middle of the Android pack. One time, we even managed to squeeze a full 24 hours from the battery, but that included six hours of sleep. Just don't leave your charger at home, OK?

Camera

Judging from all the buzz, T-Mobile and HTC are very proud of the my Touch 4G Slide's camera. Is it justified? Yes, absolutely. We'd rank the Slide's camera at number three in the current crop of cameraphones, beating devices like the iPhone 4 and Xperia Arc, trailing closely behind the second place Galaxy S II, with the N8 taking the number one spot by a wide margin. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's see what the Slide's camera is capable of, how it shines, and where it falls short. We'd also like to dispel the claim that it's "the most advanced camera of any smartphone" since it mostly combines features already available on other handsets.

T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide sample shots

What makes the myTouch 4G Slide's camera unique is a combination of custom hardware and software. HTC designed a completely new camera module using a backside-illuminated 8 megapixel sensor combined with a quality 3.69mm 1:2.2 wide-angle autofocus lens. At the time of writing the Slide is the only device in HTC's lineup equipped with this module -- sorry, Sensation owners. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this camera is a serious piece of kit. The lens opening is massive for a phone and the sensor is extremely sensitive, something that we noticed immediately the first time we shot in low light. The only missing ingredient in this tiger blood recipe is the apparent lack of mechanical shutter, something you'll find on every single one of Nokia's imaging handsets from the N8 all the way back to the legendary N95 (and on Motorola's Droid X, incidentally). While the Slide features a dual-LED flash, it's not being used as an autofocus-assist light (like on the Xperia Arc), and doesn't hold a candle to the N8's xenon unit. That being said, we're pretty excited about the dedicated two-stage machined aluminum shutter key, which feels wonderful and provides just the right amount of resistance -- it's better than the N8's. Of course, if you prefer leaving fingerprints all over the viewfinder the camera also includes touch-to-focus along with an onscreen shutter key.

It's by using special software that the myTouch 4G Slide's camera really stands out. The premise is simple: pull out the phone, press the camera button to activate the app (à la Windows Phone), and press it again to take a shot -- bypass the lock screen, collect quality photos, don't go to jail. It's not the first cameraphone that's easy to use (the iPhone 4 is a fast, intuitive, and confident shooter as well), but T-Mobile and HTC wanted to bring the dedicated point-and-shoot digital camera experience to the smartphone, and that's what the Slide delivers most of the time. To achieve this, it uses tricks like continuous autofocus and zero shutter lag (wherein the camera is continuously sampling images and storing them in a circular buffer in order to minimize the delay between pressing / tapping the shutter key and capturing the moment). Unfortunately, while the concept is sound, the implementation is far from perfect. The Slide also provides easy access to scene modes, unlike other cameraphones which tend to bury the setting somewhere deep within the UI -- we're looking at you, N8 and Galaxy S II. As such, the camera features a simple interface with four onscreen buttons to switch between stills and video, select between the front and the back camera, control the flash, and change scene modes as follows:

Auto, which detects and adjusts settings to achieve the best results in most situations. This actually works quite well.

SweepShot, a panorama mode similar to what's available on most Samsung and Motorola handsets. The Slide stitches fewer images together but the resulting panoramas, while shorter, are of higher resolution.

T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide panorama samples

ClearShot HDR, a high dynamic range mode similar to what's available on the iPhone 4. There's a noticeable loss of detail in this mode, even when holding the camera still.

T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide HDR samples

BurstShot, which takes five pictures in rapid succession. It's similar to the BestPic feature that was available a few years ago on Sony Ericsson's K850i.

T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide burst mode samples

Night, which optimizes settings for night shots.

T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide night mode samples

Action, a shutter priority mode which adjusts settings for capturing moving subjects.

Macro, which optimizes settings for close-up shots.

Portrait, a shallow depth of field mode for portraits. This allows you to specify the diameter and position of a circular area on the viewfinder outside which the picture will be artificially blurred. It's similar to Instagram's tilt-shift feature on the iPhone, but not nearly as polished. There's no gradient between the area that's in focus and the outside that's blurred, just a sharp transition.

Manual, which provides the following settings (among others) via the menu key: timer, color effects (black & white, sepia, etc...), exposure, white balance, ISO, resolution, review duration, and geo-tagging, face / smile / blink detection.

There's no doubt that the myTouch 4G Slide takes beautiful pictures. Still, as we mentioned above, the Galaxy S II usually performs better and the N8 still plays in a league of its own. The Slide manages to gather a lot of information, but that's no match for the massive amounts of detail captured through the N8's impeccable Zeiss optics. It also exhibits more noise in normal light than the Galaxy S II, despite both phones using similarly sensitive sensors. We didn't experience any problems with exposure but white balance was sometimes a little off. We also noticed what looks like chroma aberrations or JPEG compression artifacts in shots. Low light performance is impressive -- like the N8, the Slide preserves detail at the expense of some noise, thus leaving the door open for post-processing. In addition to the above gallery, here is a ZIP file containing the original photos along with matching samples taken with the N8, Galaxy S II, Xperia Arc, and Canon's s95.

The myTouch 4G Slide captures 1080p (HD) video at 30fps with initial autofocus and touch-to-focus functionality. Audio is recorded in mono using what sounds like a less than stellar microphone. The resulting videos are reasonably sharp and smooth, but we noticed some dropped frame here and there, something that's rather unexpected for a dual-core handset. It looks like the Slide's camera was optimized for stills, and while video recording is definitely serviceable, it's not this device's forte. Hopefully these issues will be addressed in a future software update, along with the introduction of continuous autofocus and stereo sound.

Software

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the myTouch 4G Slide not only ships with Gingerbread out of the gate, but comes with one of the most recent versions (Android 2.3.4). Like many of HTC's recent Android devices, it runs Sense 3.0, something that we'd normally be moaning and groaning about, yet somehow really fits here. The Slide follows in the footsteps of the other myTouch handsets by using a customized version of HTC's UI that suits it perfectly -- especially when you consider T-Mobile's target audience (the first-time smartphone buyer). Some things are missing compared to "stock" Sense 3.0, such as the ability to place four shortcuts right on the lock screen, but T-Mobile chose to add some potentially useful features like group texting (powered by Bobsled) and the aforementioned Genius button (courtesy of Nuance), which adds full voice control to the phone. Sadly, there's nothing smart about the Genius button -- it looks impressive on paper but works poorly in practice.

In terms of perceived performance, the myTouch 4G Slide just doesn't live up to its dual-core pedigree. It's certainly no slouch, but it's no match for the Sensation, despite having to render 35 percent fewer pixels -- in fact, even our single-core Nexus S feels snappier. Our benchmarks partially confirm these impressions, with slightly lower scores than its sibling for Quadrant (1800 vs. 2000) and for Linpack (43 vs. 47 MFLOPS for single-thread). Linpack (multi-thread) returned 57 MFLOPS, Nenamark 41fps, Nenamark2 24.7fps, Neocore 59fps, and Sunspider completed in 4817ms (when it worked). Other than the lackluster Quadrant results (and occasional problems running Sunspider), these numbers are in line with what we've observed on several other dual-core smartphones. Still, there's no denying that there's a price to pay for T-Mobile and HTC's UI customizations. The Galaxy S II, which features a lighter skin (TouchWiz) but similar specs, just runs circles around the Slide.

Like most carrier-sanctioned smartphones, the myTouch 4G Slide includes some bundled software, and while none of the pre-installed apps can be removed, several of them are actually somewhat useful. Beyond HTC's Sense apps (such as Friend Stream), you'll find Adobe Reader, Bejeweled 2 (PopCap's popular game), Netflix, Polaris Office, Slacker Radio, T-Mobile TV (for carrier-billed live and on-demand TV), TeleNav, Qik Video Chat, and Zinio Reader. Other familiar apps include the Swype keyboard, WiFi calling, and Screen Share (for DLNA support). T-Mobile rounds things off with its in-house My Account, My Device, AppPack, KidZone, Highlight, and T-Mobile Mail apps. It's worth noting that for some reason the music, video, FM radio, and Screen Share apps must be launched via something called Media Room in the app tray -- but otherwise there are no surprises here.

Wrap up

The myTouch 4G Slide is certainly a worthy contender in the race for best cameraphone, but it takes more than hardware and software wizardry to make "the most advanced camera of any smartphone." When it comes to mobile photography, Nokia still reigns supreme with the N8 (which is a far better shooter than it is a phone), and Samsung continues to flex its imaging muscle with the Galaxy S II. It's surprising that despite packing the same processor and battery as HTC's Sensation flagship, the Slide performed worse in our speed and endurance tests. There's also room for improvement in the display and keyboard departments, which don't quite live up to our standards. Ultimately though, none of this really matters -- the Slide is pleasant and easy to use, looks and feels great, and takes gorgeous pictures. As such, your mom won't be disappointed. If you want a qHD display, and can live with less camera, the Sensation is a viable alternative to the Slide for the same $200 (on contract). Still, we think the recently updated G2x remains the best device in T-Mobile's lineup thanks to its top-notch camera and a slightly better display than the Slide for $50 less. Well, what are you waiting for? Go out there and buy your mom a phone already!

iPhone app makes learning to read music even less appealing (video)

From Paul McCartney to Irving Berling, the list of songwriters who famously never learned to read music before hitting it big is a long one indeed. Why? Because it's hard, mostly. Of course, they've managed to have successful careers as songwriters, even without the aid of an iPhone app that could read music for them. Surely they could have found some use for the new app from Kawai, which scans music notes from sheet paper and plays them back in real-time or with a delay, should you so choose. The app is available in the Japanese App Store ¥350 ($4.50). Japanese language video of the app in action after the break.

Nokia and Microsoft hosting special event August 17th, both companies likely to give their vows

Between the "accidental" unveiling of the Sea Ray, the announcement of Fujitsu's Mango device, and the less-than-stellar Q2 Nokia had, it doesn't take a lot of crazy speculation to surmise that Stephen Elop's quite the eager beaver in ensuring it'll get the most out of its newfound marriage with Microsoft as soon as possible. Thus, hearing word of a special event being thrown at the beginning of Gamescom, an annual gaming conference in Germany, is definitely a good sign; according to press invites sent out today, the party -- to be held on August 17th -- promises "exciting actions and surprises," and we're pretty sure they don't mean a free t-shirt. So join with us in determining what these surprises are, but please... don't try that hard.

Motorola Triumph review

When we first laid eyes and hands on Motorola's first Android offering for Virgin Mobile, we were pleasantly surprised. The Triumph proved to be one of the better looking and performing pre-paid handsets we'd had the pleasure of holding in our sweaty mitts, but we had one major hangup: the name. Call us old fashioned, but we're of the mind that it's unsportsmanlike to claim victory before the race has even begun. After all, we aren't looking at an iPhone killer here. To the contrary, the Triumph is a decently outfitted, Motoblur-free Froyo phone, with a suitable 4.1-inch WVGA screen, a workable 2GB of storage, and a fairly attractive (and contract-free) $300 price tag. So, after a week in our palms and pockets, did the Triumph really affirm its arrogant appellative or did it fail to live up to its name? The answers to this and other, less alliterative, questions await you after the break.

Motorola Triumph review

Hardware

At first glance, the Triumph is a rather grand looking phone. Its glossy, 4.1-inch WVGA touchscreen reaches to the very edge of its seemingly robust body, giving the feel of a much larger device. In reality, it measures 4.8 inches by 2.6 inches, slightly smaller than its cousin, the Photon 4G. A portion of the screen's real estate is taken up by Moto's logo, which sits just below the earpiece and front-facing VGA camera. Bright white haptic buttons line the bottom of the display, in typical Android fashion.

As we pointed out before, its body is otherwise sheathed in a nice, grip-able, black rubber finish, reminiscent of the Motorola Droid, Incredible, and other similarly appointed handsets. In the rear, a five megapixel camera and accompanying flash sit, horizontally centered, near the top margin, wile a shiny silver 'M' resides, dead center, above the carrier's own logo. The upper right-hand side plays host to an understated, shiny and receptive volume rocker, and the upper left is home to a small power / lock button of the same make. A 3.5mm headphone jack appears along the upper edge of the phone, and a micro-USB and mini-HDMI line the bottom.

For what seems to be such a substantial gadget, the Triumph is surprisingly light, but in no way flimsy. At five ounces, it weighs almost two ounces less than Dell's 4.1-inch Venue Pro, but about half an ounce more than our favorite pre-paid handset, the LG Optimus One. Despite being deceptively light, however, it proved incredibly difficult to carry; the Triumph spent most of its time taking the place of our shockingly under used pocket protector, as it was far too large to fit in our tightest jeans.

But when it comes to winning -- at least in the smartphone market -- a decent set of internals will almost always best a flashy exterior, and the Triumph isn't too shabby underneath all that glass and rubber. A section of the back panel slides off to expose a 1400mAh battery and a microSD card. Like the LG Revolution and HTC Thunderbolt, the Triumph sports a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8655, but falls behind the big boys with only 512MB of RAM and 2GB of onboard storage.

Back in June, when we got our first few minutes with the Triumph, we were impressed with its responsiveness, and while we don't have any big bones to pick about the 800 x 480 display's pickup, we did find it a little slow to catch up on occasion. We caught ourselves pressing some buttons more than once before we saw any results, but our major gripe here comes from a consistent lag in navigation. We scrolled easily across the home screens, but were met with slow app startups, especially when it came to the camera and camcorder. YouTube, similarly, took what felt like ages to load, and here is where the boasting catches up to this generally well-equipped phone.

The Triumph claims to be "The Ultimate Media Machine," but the things that make it a media machine, ultimate or otherwise, failed to keep up. We will, however, concede that this it performed well in terms of playback, both audio and visual. Colors were rich and vibrant, viewing angles were more than serviceable, and once loaded, Kanye West's Runaway played on without incident. As if its name and superlative media playing claims weren't enough to send us into a hyperbolic spasm, Motorola's also promised an "astounding audio experience" with "crystal clear speakers," sans headphones. Sure, Ike and Tina's River Deep, Mountain High came across loud and less muffled than we'd expected, but Phil Spector's wall of sound is much better suited -- as we'd expect most music is -- to a real-deal stereo system.

So it's not the Hulk of all media players, but when it comes to making calls, we'd say the Triumph delivered fairly well, if a bit inconsistently. Aside from a mildly annoying intermittent hissing that popped up during one call, and a complaint from a friend that we sounded distant in another, we gabbed without incident. Considering we could only get one to two bars in the entire city of Oakland, we were surprised to find that Virgin's network carried us through without a single dropped call.

When it came to testing network connectivity, however, pinning down an appropriate location -- one that provided more than two bars -- proved especially nerve racking. After roaming the whole of Oakland, and coming up with lackluster (and inconsistent) results, we made our way across the bay to a coffee shop in San Francisco's Mission District. Even under ideal conditions, the Triumph pulled in speed test scores far below what we'd expected. So we enlisted the LG Optimus V and Photon 4G, both running on the same 3G frequency, and found that while the Triumph sometimes scored half of what its counterparts pulled in, that network wasn't exactly doing any of the handsets justice. Ultimately, Moto's boastful offspring proved consistently inconsistent, jumping back and forth between 3G and 1X, while the other two phones maintained consistent signals. Keeping that in mind, under the very best circumstances, this particular device provided average speeds of 312 kbps down and 215 kbps up -- more like lukewarm than blazing hot.

Performance and battery life

As we mentioned before, the Triumph runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon MSM8655 processor -- the same chipset found in the Revolution, Thunderbolt, and Incredible 2. So how does a pre-paid smartphone stack up against its contract carrying counterparts? Well, in terms of performance metrics, the results are mixed, but it certainly didn't lose the race altogether. As you can see from the chart below, the Triumph wasn't the front runner, but it never fell too far behind its more generously specced competition.

Benchmark

Motorola Triumph

LG Revolution

HTC Thunderbolt

Quadrant

1679

1913

1886

Linpack

38.4

39.6

40.1

Nenamark

34

39.2

32.7

Nenamark2

10

13.3

12.7

Neocore

60.9

65.1

59.5

Sunspider

4111

4591

6213

So, it fared reasonably well in a handful of benchmark sprints, but can this ambitious Android go the distance? We gave the Triumph the standard battery life run down, consisting of two very different tests. When left to run a movie on a continuous loop, it kept its charge for a full five hours and forty-eight minutes. Of course, that's not the sort of thing most folks are likely to do, so we tried out something a little more practical. During a day of light use -- checking email and Twitter about once an hour, snapping a handful of pictures, and making three short phone calls, the aspiring champion came up a tad short, losing its charge in 13 hours flat. That might be enough to float you through the workday, but it certainly won't carry you through to the morning after.

Camera

It may not rock an 8 megapixel shooter like the the Incredible 2, and it won't deliver 1080p, but with 5 megapixel stills and 720p video, the Triumph's front-facing camera is prime competition for a handset like the LG Revolution. Unfortunately, we weren't terribly impressed with what it had to offer. It managed to do an alright job when the lighting was just right, and actually served up some nice, crisp photos when given a little bit of shade. This camera was clearly not built for low-light picture taking, but it proved equally ill suited for shooting in harsh lighting. Under the midday sun, we found a consistent halo effect accompanying our images, and when we took it inside and shot near a window, our kitchen seemed to undergo a soft focus makeover. When the lighting is just right, though, this camera is capable of producing photos fit for even the finest of Facebook profiles. If you're looking to get serious with your picture taking, there are a slew of settings to help the little guy along.

Motorola Triumph sample shots

So, how does "The Ultimate Media Machine" function as a camcorder? You can see for yourself in the video below. Dizzy? We certainly are. The Triumph's camcorder program functions well enough, there's a little bit of lag while loading, but other than that, we don't have much to gripe about in terms of a user experience. But the proof is in the pudding, and this pudding clearly had some issues keeping up. As you can see, when shot in 720p, the camera had some trouble tracking fast moving objects.

Software

You may have noticed our delight when we found that the Triumph was running without the ill-fated Motoblur, but in case you missed it, let us reiterate: we are thrilled! It's no secret that we prefer a bloat-free phone, and this particular handset is about as untainted as we expected. Sure, it's got a couple of pieces of Virgin-branded software, but their presence is by no means egregious. You'll find Virgin Mobile Live, the carrier's own musically minded social networking app -- which strangely asked us if we were at Jesus Christ Superstar the first time we logged in -- SCVNGR, Twidroyd, and two location-based apps called Poynt and WHERE. Additionally, the desktop contains a short cut to your account and a Virgin-branded download manager.

Bloatware aside, we found the Android 2.2 experience smooth and steady throughout our trial, despite a few of the apps taking their sweet time to load. The stock apps are all here, and from what we can tell, just how the little green robot intended them. Sure we'd prefer a completely clean Android experience, but we've come to expect a little something extra from carriers. If anyone at Moto is taking notes, this is what an Android should look like.

Wrap-up

So did the Triumph live up to the hyperbolic hype? In a word: yes. As far as mid-range, pre-paid Android phones go, it's definitely a winner. Motorola shot high with this one, and not just in terms of marketing. It not only shares a processor with a trio of higher-end phones (the aforementioned Thunderbolt, Revolution, and Incredible 2), but it also has the look and feel of a more expensive handset. At $300 and no contractual commitment, we're willing to overlook the sometimes-sluggish startup of apps, and inconsistent connectivity. It hasn't quite ousted the Optimus One from the top of our pre-paid list, but second place still wins a prize, right?

Adobe Releases Early Preview of New HTML5 Web Motion and Interaction Design Tool

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced the first public preview release of Adobe Edge, a new HTML5 web motion and interaction design tool that allows web designers to bring animation, similar to that created in Flash Professional, to websites using standards likes HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Because of rapid changes around HTML5, the company is adopting an open development methodology for Adobe Edge and is releasing the software on the Adobe Labs site much earlier than normal in the development process – before it even reaches beta – in order to allow user feedback to help shape the final product.

While in public preview, Adobe Edge will be a no-charge download that web designers are encouraged to explore and provide feedback on, to help shape future preview releases. To download the software, visit www.labs.adobe.com.

Kyocera Echo Gingerbread update now rolling out, may brick handsets

Kyocera may have jumped the gun yesterday with word of the Echo's Gingerbread destiny, but today those Android 2.3.4 goods have been made official. Rolling out to users in the next few weeks, the OTA update adds Google's latest OS refinements to the dual-screened phone, as well as a new Downloads app, Swype 3.0 and power-saving Eco Mode. Impatient owners can always forego the wait for a carrier-pushed upgrade and pull it themselves, but a word of caution: commenters over on AndroidCentral's forums are claiming this update bricks phones. We've reached out to Sprint for comment on the matter and while the company is aware of the issue, no official statement has been made. So, go ahead and start downloading, or not?