Updated: We've now taken the full HD video camera out for a spin, so check out our latest home video efforts using the 1080p camera with auto-stabilisation.
The iPhone 4S caught many by surprise, with Apple expected to release the iPhone 5 - but instead we got an iPhone 4 with overhauled innards.
While the masses were initially disappointed, the iPhone 4S features a glut of top-end tech that is designed to put it on a par with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S2 - but does it manage to do that?
The changes to the iPhone 4S are easy to document - the camera has been upgraded to 8MP (with an improved aperture ratio), the CPU is now the same dual-core A5 processor as seen in the iPad 2, and a seven time increase in graphical processing power.
Also we've got Siri, Apple's voice recognition service - will this be a game changer for mobile phones or will it be nothing more than a gimmick?
As we've mentioned, the iPhone 4S is almost identical in outward design to the iPhone 4, which might irk those that like to show that they've got the most up to date device from Apple when out and about with friends.
However, the flip side of this is that things like the plethora of iPhone 4 covers on the market at the moment will still fit.
Apple has slightly changed the design of the iPhone 4S somewhat though, by changing to a dual-band aerial design, making sure it doesn't encounter an embarrassing repeat of antenna-gate we had to endure with the iPhone 4.
For all those that haven't seen the older version of the phone, we'll take you on a tour of the new handset: the top of the iPhone 4S houses the power/lock button, as well as the headphone jack, plus a microphone for noise cancellation.
The right-hand side of the phone is devoid of any buttons, but holds the slot for the micro SIM card, which pops out using the included tool (or a paperclip).
The bottom of the phone is pretty standard, with the Apple connector and dual speakers which pump out the (actually quite decent) sound.
The left-hand side of the phone sees the rounded volume keys, with the top one of these also acting as the camera shutter button to make it easy to snap with the new iPhone. We've also got the silencer switch too, which has been slightly moved upwards from the previous iteration.
As you can see, Apple has altered its antenna band technology to move the gaps that plagued the iPhone 4's reception to a less-touchable location.
The original HTC Sensation surfaced earlier this year, and has proven so popular that HTC has decided to keep and nurture it as the music-skewed HTC Sensation XE.
HTC sold 13.2 million mobile phones in the third quarter of this year. Considering that's a 93% increase on last year, it means the company must be doing something right.
Some technologies in smartphones change the way we live our lives and become a uniform part of the experience (we're thinking about GPS – first seen on the Nokia N95) while others are touted as the future and then disappear without a trace (anyone remember iMode? Nope. Thought not).
HTC is putting its cash on Beats Audio – the musical experience given to the world by Dr Dre – and is heavily marketing both the HTC Sensation XE and HTC Sensation XL as Beats Audio handsets.
As far as the HTC Sensation XE's looks go, you'd quite happily think you were looking at a bog standard HTC Sensation at first glance. The dimensions haven't changed. Not a single bit. It's still 126.1mm x 65.4mm x 11.3mm in the hand, but ever so slightly heavier at 151g compared to the original Sensation's 148g weight.
The camera (8MP), dual flash, front-facing snapper, buttons and sockets are all in the same place, and the only visible difference is the presence of splashes of red around the earpiece, buttons and camera lens. Plus, you get a Beats Audio logo round the back.
Like the original HTC Sensation, it's a unibody design so you actually pull the HTC Sensation XE into two pieces to open it, which is also how you access the slot to pop the memory card in.
The big differences are inside now. Apart from the superior audio quality (providing you're using a Beats Audio headset, that is), there's a 1.5GHz dual-core processor to replace the 1.2GHz job on the Sensation, the battery has been boosted from 1520mAh to 1730mAh and there's a couple of other small tweaks in the software.
The screen remains the same, as a 4.3-inch, HD (540 x 960) although it does seem a lot more vivid and brighter than the Sensation we previously used. Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread is installed out of the box along with Sense 3.0 – HTC's own skin on the Android design.
It's a solid design, and feels like it means business. And with a great foundation to build on in the original Sensation, one we can see being a big seller for HTC as the lucrative Christmas shopping period arrives.
In terms of competitors, we'd pitch it against the original HTC Sensation, with the only real benefit of the original being that it must now be cheaper. HTC will also be hoping to steal business away from Samsung and its flagship Galaxy S2, which is of a comparable size and provides similar specs - something it failed to do with the original Sensation.
And of course, there's Apple and its iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, which come with more internal storage (the HTC Sensation XE only really gives you 1GB out of the box, which you have to expand yourself), but are comparable to (and even beaten by) the XE in so many other ways.
At the time of writing, the HTC Sensation XE is priced at around £450 for a SIM-free model, which is cheaper than the £499 of the Sensation XL but more expensive than the £399 of the original Sensation. You can get it free on a contract, but it's a premium handset and thus, you'll have to sign away two years of your life on a £35+ per month deal to walk away with one of these in your pocket for free.
The HTC Radar is the latest smartphone to run Windows Phone 7.5, following on from the HTC Titan. With a smooth unibody design, HD video recording and 5MP camera, will it be enough to make Windows Phone a success?
If HTC was at school right now, you can't help feeling it'd be getting an A for effort. The Taiwanese manufacturer is certainly churning out handsets like nobody's business.
For the last few years, it's been concentrating mainly on Android - but now Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is here, it's going for gold. Probably much to the annoyance of Nokia, which adopted WP as its main operating system months ago, but is still being pipped to the post by HTC when it comes to getting handsets on the shelves.
Little brother of the HTC Titan and the second handset from HTC to run Windows Phone 7.5 (or Mango to its friends), the HTC Radar is a solid little handset. It's crafted from a single piece of metal and has enough weight at 137g to make it feel like it means business without giving your biceps a workout.
To look at it, the dull aluminium fascia, the size (120.5mm x 61.5mm x 10.9mm) and even the slight dip at the bottom immediately puts us in mind of a Google Nexus One (which HTC manufactured almost two years ago). But, obviously, there's no trackball here, with the HTC Radar relying on the compulsory three Windows Phone 7.5 soft keys on the front.
The back holds that 5MP camera, LED light and speaker, while there's very little around the edges to write home about. There's a power and headphone jack up top, micro USB slot on the left and volume rocker and camera button on the right.
To open the HTC Radar, you slide the bottom down to reveal a little section that invites you to insert a SIM card. Strangely, the HTC Radar seems to restart if you do this - even though you're not interrupting the power supply.
There's no space for a microSD card because HTC has, just like it did for the Titan, decided to stifle this handset, enabling you to only use the onboard memory. With 8GB storage (just 6.54GB of which is available to the user, once the operating system has taken its share), it really does beggar belief.
For those who like their photos, music and videos in one place, it makes the HTC Radar instantly less attractive compared to the various crop of Android devices out there such as the stunning Samsung Galaxy S2 and, of course, the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S.
Another handicap is the lack of removable battery. You can't access it at all, and although there always seems to be someone about in the office who you can nick an iPhone charger off, there are likely to be fewer carrying around micro USB cables. So, as an HTC Radar owner, that task may fall at your feet.
If we were to pit the HTC Radar against other handsets on the market right now, we'd have to say we think it's up there with the BlackBerry Curve 9360 in terms of its professional abilities. The memory is on a par with Apple's most basic offering, the iPhone 3GS, while we can't help thinking that (apart from the colour), the HTC Radar looks identical to the Android-toting HTC Rhyme, which it certainly matches up against for the majority of its internal workings.
You can buy one SIM-free for around £340, which isn't too bad a price - it's certainly much cheaper than its big brother, the Titan, which is nearer the £500 mark. You can pick one up for free on contract, providing you're willing to part with around £25 a month and sign the next two years of your life away.
It also appears to be available in two colours - all publicity shots show the handset in white. However, our review unit was grey and black, and although sites such as Carphone Warehouse show the white version on their page, they also state that it's only on their systems in grey. It may very well depend on where in the world you purchase it.
The Motorola Atrix 2 isn't really a full sequel to the Motorola Atrix, another fast smartphone. Instead, it's an iterative release with a few new features, a better camera and a lower price. As such, the phone starts to reveal some performance issues, especially since it uses the same 1GHz dual-core processor as the first model.
The screen size is just a notch bigger - 4.3 inches compared to the original Atrix's 4-inch screen. The 960 x 540 resolution looks crisp for movies, photo galleries, web browsing and typing up text messages.
The TFT screen was responsive for finger swipes and clicks, although the screen isn't nearly as bright and clear as the Samsung Galaxy S2's AMOLED screen.
For those who tend to fire off messages every few minutes, or type longer business documents on your phone, the lack of a full hardware slide-out keyboard is only a slight detriment. For the most part, we typed fast and accurately on the Atrix's soft keyboard, even compared to a phone with a hardware keyboard.
The Motorola Atrix 2 is a 4G phone, and uses the AT&T HSPA+ network in the US. It's not an LTE phone on a second-gen network running at 10-12 Mbps. Instead, our US speed tests clocked in at only about 4Mbps on a regular basis, or sometimes as high as 6Mbps.
Running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the Motorola Atrix 2 benefits from a few minor improvements in the latest operating system, including the ability to easily select entire passages of an email without too much effort (previous Android phones would sometimes flicker and jump around during text selection).
Another minor benefit is that you can now select whether you want to snap photos or shoot video with the VGA front-facing or rear 8MP camera and camcorder.
In an age when a $200 phone under a contract doesn't make anyone blink, the Motorola Atrix 2 is priced to sell - it costs $99 with a two-year contract in the US.
The low price makes the Motorola Atrix 2 more affordable than the iPhone 4S, the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Nexus. In fact, it's one of the most fairly priced high-end Android phones with a high-res camera available.
The Motorola Atrix 2 has 8GB of internal memory and supports microSD cards up to 32GB. There's 1GB of RAM, which is in line with most of the other Android models.
We won't say the phone is feature-rich in terms of hardware - it lacks an NFC chip, for example. And the latest Android models tend to use a faster 1.2GHz dual-core processor.
The phone is light, at 147g grams, and thin, at 10mm, but falters in this regard in comparison to the Samsung Galaxy S2. The S2 is much lighter, at 116g, and thinner, at 8.49mm. That makes the Motorola Atrix 2 require just a bit more heft when you want to grab it and make a call.
We're here at the Hard Rock Cafe in NYC, where Boost Mobile is showing off its latest prepaid Android smartphone running on Sprint's 3G CDMA network, the ZTE warp. If you'll recall, this 1GHz Gingerbread 2.3.5-equipped device dropped on November 2nd for $250, only to receive a price drop to $200 days later. Boost is citing the Warp's 4.3-inch WVGA (480 x 800) display as the largest of its current offerings, along with its 5-megapixel, LED flash-equipped camera (raising the count up from the two on its $229 Samsung Transform Ultra). The phone is Android Market-compatible and comes with 4GB of internal storage and a 2GB microSD card, which can be maxed out to 32GB. So, did the Warp feel worthy of its moniker in the few minutes we spent with it? Join us past the break for our impressions.
For its moderate price, the Warp certainly feels solid, if a bit plasticky on the front. It's not exactly a premium fit and finish, but it seems well suited for average day to day use. Furthermore, despite its large display (which appeared fairly bright and decently crisp in the dark room we viewed it in), it's is a pleasure to hold in hand, thanks mainly to the textured soft-touch coating on its back plate. Put simply, we didn't sense that phone could easily easily slip out of our hands. On the the top of the device, you'll find a 3.5mm headphone jack along the center with a power button on the side. Along the top left is a volume rocker, while on the right side there's a dedicated camera button and a microUSB port. Opening up the snap-on battery cover revealed its 1600mAh battery, as well as a single microSD slot. Lastly, on screen's lower portion are four familiar capacitive buttons for Home, Menu, Back and Search.
Aiding the Warp's 1GHz CPU is 512MB of RAM -- overall, the phone seemed snappy on first impression whether we scrolled through and load loaded apps or played video content from YouTube. One area the device clearly had problems with, though, was its camera. While we can't say much yet in terms of image quality, the cam was slow slow startup and shots didn't snap until a few seconds after we pushed the shutter (be it the dedicated or onscreen button) -- its disappointing considering the camera is a key selling point. The cam can also shoot video, although, we didn't have a chance to test it out, nor get details on its resolution. In terms of customization, Boost's loaded the phone Mobile IDs, which essentially let you make make themed homescreens with specific apps. For instance, the demo device we looked at had an ID for MTV music that was filled with an MTV news ticker along with apps like Pandora. Notably, being that the Warp technically runs over over Sprint's network, Google Voice integration is on offer. Sure, the device may not have Ice Cream Sandwich, a front facing camera or Chirp capabilities, but for $200 dollars off-contract with "unlimited" everything at about $50 bucks a month, we'd say this is a delicious piece of Gingerbread for anyone scared of commitment.
