The E7, you could say is the “E” successor to the N97. What this means is that they took the first iteration N97, which many people loved and converted it into a business phone.
Wow. No wonder it costs PHP32,000. The box is something you wouldn’t want to throw away. Pop it open and it’s almost like a box for your jewelry. it’s covered in felt.
To hold, the E7 feels very much like the N8 combined with the slider mechanism of the N97. The slider itself is a bit slippery to push out but well, this may be due to the fact that I haven’t spent a lot of time with it yet. The keypad is amazing though, almost like the felt finish of the box.
The Nokia E7 retails for P32,000.00. I asked their PR for information about current promos and what they told me is that this phone comes free with Plan 3000 on SMART.
About two weeks ago I was able to nab the HTC Desire S running on Android 2.3 more popularly called Gingerbread. As far as I know, this and the Sony Ericsson Arc are the first two Gingerbread devices that are available in the Philippines running on the latest version of the Android OS. What’s the main difference between this version of Android and the previous? Well, not much really: they cleaned up the UI performance, they added a feature called Near Field Communication (like how in some countries you simply need to tap a commuter card onto a sensor to let you pass) and correct me if I’m wrong, real support for a front facing camera out of the box. Hence, the HTC Desire S comes with a front and back camera.
I’m not sure what was more annoying — getting spammed with cheap knife kills in Modern Warfare 2 or getting one-shotted with semi-auto sniper rifles in Medal of Honor.
But nonetheless, EA’s latest shooter has gotten me hooked. OK a bit of perspective — I’ve been playing the MoH series since Allied Assault in 2002. This really upped the bar of first person gaming with its cinematic rendition of the Omaha beach landing. At that time, a game that could live up to the experience of Saving Private Ryan was an A-OK in my book. Then came the rest of the series — Spearhead, Pacific Assault, Airborne … and parallel this was Activision releasing the Call of Duty franchise. And thus was planted the seeds of competition. With two successful releases of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, EA was left with a reboot of their Medal of Honor franchise. Playing the patriot card, they decided to develop a Medal of Honor reboot according to a real world coordinated assault on the terrains of Afghanistan against the Taliban forces.
Medal of Honor’s single player is your typical run off the mill military shooter, with the Tier 1 boys fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. You take on the role as several operatives from the army and special operations divisions, notably as ‘Rabbit’ who belongs to Tier 1 as a frontline sniper and infiltrations specialist. I was particularly surprised that the story arc, presented from different points of view of the assaulting forces, was well stitched, giving the overall impression that yeah, this is military stuff and we’re working with clockwork precision. I was afraid that it would be a Modern Warfare 2 ripoff, DICE’sDanger Close’s accurate portrayal of the real war on Afghanistan from the accounts of soldiers had its own merit.
Of course, military shooters are bought for its replay value. Apart from a Tier 1 mode that allows you to complete the game scenarios in record time and win medals, the multiplayer skirmishes is still at the heart and soul of Medal of Honor. Medal of Honor takes the fast paced arcade action of MW2 with a more simplified class system and vehicle-enabled combat from the Battlefield franchise. The result is a series of 10 minute skirmishes to attack and defend objectives, control point domination, and team death match games for quick fix in-and-out play. The leveling system is pretty much run off the mill allowing new loadout for weapons such as gun barrel customization and targeting mechanisms. A rally point system from kills also allows offensive and defensive assists for your team. If you accumulate 50 points without dying, you can choose to either call in a mortar strike or engage a UAV in the playing field to track enemies. At higher levels, you can equip your teammates with flak vests and ammo upgrades.
Medal of Honor is currently my source of 10-minute escapes from reality. The game runs smoothly on my MacBook Pro amazingly (with Windows 7 Ultimate on BootCamp) and still looks great on a GeForce 320M graphic card. It’s a no-regret buy for less that PHP 1,500.00.
I guess the real question is, how does it compare to Call of Duty: Black Ops?
And then Magel of Strategic Edge (Intel’s PR) put me first on the list for a really big ass ACER gaming laptop. INTEL Core i7. Lots of RAM. Radeon card. All that. Oh and it was so big, that, if you knew Magel personally, the box covered half her body. Imagine her carrying that. Oh, here’s her Facebook for reference.
Being first on the list has its perks.
She’s referring to me and Rico (who just picked up the laptop today).
You know what, reviewing really nice products makes you forget your JOB. The laptop arrived about the same time Civilization V for the PC came out (SEE ABOVE PHOTO). I had just bought the game as stock had just arrived in Datablitz (thanks for the heads up, Ms. Orpha) and met up with her to pick up the unit. Henceforth, I have been unavailable for everything else. Not even for an ACER event.
Hence we are confronted with a moral conundrum: Does missing an event because your were testing their product count as positive product engagement?! We will never know because everyone would rather discuss the RH Bill.
DUDE IT’S HUGE. I’m not kidding. That’s my 13 inch MacBook Pro on top of it.
And there are the specs. It’s OK! Comes with Blu-ray! Lots of gaming! Lots of power!
OK on a more serious note, I must say that I came to an epiphany after getting to play with this laptop. Since it’s huge, it comes with built in arm rests and that matters a LOT for someone who uses the computer everyday. You see, lately I’ve been experiencing numbness in my left pinky due to Guyon’s Canal and lo and behold, working with a big laptop makes working gaming less painful. Serious!
The price of your health: PHP 115,000.00
OK at least we learned something today! I love you, ACER! I love you, INTEL!
The Nokia N900, seen wild in this blurry camera phone pic, is in Manila. Yesterday was Nokia’s Christmas Party and apart from winning a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone (!!!) at the raffle I got the chance to take a peek at the new N900. I only got the better of 4 minutes with the device so here are my first impressions in bullet form. These are general impressions on the N900 as well as the new Maemo user interface.
The N900 is beautiful. It is a sturdy messaging phone, light to the touch with fast UI response.
The multiple desktop functions of the Maemo UI is similar to the iPod / iPhone’s. You are allowed to have four desktops which you can scroll through using your thumb. Imagine combining the widget home screen interface of Samsung and Apple’s iPhone and this is what you get. It works.
The “apps menu” icon has been changed to resemble a series of squares on the upper left. Pressing that opens the application menu. One noticeable difference is that “Messaging” has been changed to “Conversations” which is really the move to threaded messaging. When you have multiple messages open, Maemo shows this ala Expose for Mac OS X with each window (let’s say, two message threads and the main Inbox) all neatly aligned. You can delete a window using the big “X” on the upper right hand side. The N900 is highlighted by its really good integration of messaging applications.
The new UI is fast. Essentially, the changes are really aesthetic. I can compare it to how HTC made their own interface (before the SenseUI of the HTC Hero) over and above Windows Mobile to compensate for the slow and rather outdated UI. Maemo is Linux based so it does feel lighter.
I noticed that Maemo doesn’t have a back button. I could be wrong but going back to previous functions entails using a hidden button on the N900 which I discovered by accident. Again, I’m not sure if this is a feature of the N900 per se or as a part of Maemo.
No pricing yet. This phone isn’t even OFFICIALLY out yet locally.
