Cheaper, Tinier
PS3 Slim grows stronger
In all but Linux

Matte finish looks great
Hard drive still removable
Actual buttons

Sony will sell lots
Especially with iView
VOD as well

…And I’m spent. Among other things discussed, Sony reckon that PlayTV is still on track to launch in Australia this year. I kept trying to get more out of them, but they weren’t going to spill. But considering the PS3 Slim is launching on September 3 and the PSP GO! is due for an October 1 launch, I’ve got my fingers crossed for a November release for the Playstation DVR.

The Design:
You can see it from the moment you take the EP-1 out of the box – design is central to this camera’s very essence. Sure, it’s not a new design, but the silver body with leather trims are as classy as you can get, while the camera has a satisfying weight to it that really reminds you that it’s a premium piece of kit. That’s not to say it’s heavy – I spent a good chunk of Sunday with the Pen hanging from my neck, and barely noticed it was there.

The Lenses:
The EP-1 came with two micro four-thirds lenses in the box: a 17mm f2.8 wide angle and a 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 zoom. Both lenses worked pretty well, but it was the zoom lens that really captured my affection. Not because it was a superb piece of glass or anything, but because it locked down to about half the length when not in use. Once attached, you twist the lens to zoom and it would extend, but not retract all the way back in unless you pulled a switch. I love things like that.

The controls:
Easy, easy, easy. I’ve generally been a Canon man in the past, but I was blown away by how simple it was to adjust things like ISO, white balance, aperture and shutter speed. The Art mode was nice for a bit of fun, and Olympus’ standard 10 million 19 scene modes are just a turn of the mode dial away.

Video:
I only tested out the video recording feature at night in some fairly average lighting, and it showed. It wasn’t terrible quality – it actually looked fantastic on the Pen’s LCD – but when viewed on my laptop it was a bit grainy and noisy. Still, it was definitely good enough quality for YouTube, and that’s what we really care about, isn’t it?

Issues:
As I mentioned last week, the first thing I did with this camera was lift it to my eye to look through the viewfinder that doesn’t exist. Not that this is a big problem at all, but it does take some getting used to. The optional viewfinder attachment which slides into the hotshoe is an option, but it was frustrating when using the zoom lens – the viewfinder doesn’t zoom with the lens, so you actually have no idea of what you’re shooting.

Similarly, the lack of a built-in flash means that low light shots are a tad harder to capture. Ultimately this isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a change from what many photographers will be used to.

Bottom Line:
Right now, I really want to spend more time with this camera. I’m not completely in love with it yet, but I really want to continue this relationship to see where things go. There’s the potential for something very special with the EP-1 – I’m hoping Olympus let me play with it again sometime soon to see where this goes…

But then you hit the software. And even though HTC’s TouchFlo interface covers some of Windows Mobile 6.1, it’s still there. The phone still has a stylus. It’s still a resistive touchscreen, so even though TouchFlo’s bigger buttons make using your finger easier, it’s still way too easy for the button to not respond or for you to press the wrong button with your finger.

Apparently people who buy the Diamond2 and Pro2 handsets will get a free upgrade to the more finger-friendly Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, but there’s still a chance that the telcos will block that, which would be an absolute disaster on their part.

Of course, I’ve only been playing with the phone for about an hour, so there is the slight possibility that I’ll grow to love it, but at the moment I’m finding myself frustrated at every turn…

There are four models in the new range. The entry-level MY30 featues a 3.5-inch 320×240 screen, while the MY50T, MY55T and MY500XT all have a 4.7-inch 480×272 widescreen. They all run the latest NAVTEQ maps, and all three of the widescreen models include SUNA traffic out of the box. The top-of-the-line MY500XT also features a capacitive touchscreen.

The menu system has gotten a bit of an overhaul from previous Navman range, and now features a really simple, large button touchscreen interface like its Garmin and TomTom brethren. But where they really hope to differentiate thmeselves is in POIs, thanks to partnerships with Lonely Planet and Wcities travel guides, as well as the ability to search Google and TrueLocal direct from the device through a Bluetooth GPRS connection.

Pricing for the range will be announced later this week, with the devices hitting shelves later this month.

[Navman]

The very first thing to strike you about the snapper is its build quality. The model I played with was stainless steel, with a black leather grip, although there’ll also be a white version available when it launches next month. And yet despite that, oit’s still light enough to carry around in one hand without fatigue.

The second thing you’ll spot is the huge 3-inch screen that takes up most of the back of the camera, and the lack of an optical viewfinder. Instead, you can add an optical viewfinder via the hotshoe on top. There’s no inbuilt flash though – the flash is an optional extra – so you obviously can’t shoot with both the flash and the optical viewfinder attached.

Olympus are launching the Pen camera with two lenses, although they’re planning on expanding the range of lenses early next year. There are a couple of different adapters available though, which let you use standard four-thirds lenses or Olympus’ old OM lenses. And it will obviously work with any of Panny’s micro four-thirds lenses as well.

Although I didn’t get to see the images taken printed out or displayed on a large screen, they did look fantastic on the LCD and a small monitor on the Olympus stand. Video was even better – the inbuilt image stabilisation did a fantastic job while panning, making the 720p video look pretty damned fluid.

One of the other cool features I got to have a look at was the manual focus mode, which automatically zooms in 7x so you can get truly pinpoint focus on the part of the photo you want in focus, which is especially great for Macro shots.

The other great thing about this camera is the price: The single lens kit, which comes with a 14-42mm lens has an RRP of $1,399, while the twin lens kit, which adds a 17mm lens and an optical viewfinder attachment, will cost $1,799.

We’ll be getting a model to play around with within a coupl eof weeks, so stay tuned for a more thorough review. In the meantime, if you’re in Sydney and want to have your own little hands-on, PMA is open this weekend in the Convention Centre at Darling Harbour.

The PSP Go! feels considerably smaller than the wider PSP—mostly because it is. And the feeling of actually playing is akin to a cellphone/PSP hybrid, a device like we expected to see from Ericsson for some time. Borrowing from Kotaku’s game review process for a moment, here’s my take on the PSP Go!:

What I Loved:
• The chrome triggers are the perfect level of clicky, and they extrude from the Go’s body at just the right amount.
• With brushed metal, piano black and matte black, it’s a nice looking machine in person with hardware that, for the most part, feels premium.

What I’m Not Sure About:
• Both the D-Pad and main game buttons don’t press down very much. Sure, they were responsive, but it barely felt like you were pushing them down. The feeling would take some getting used to.
• The position of the single analogue stick makes the device feel smaller than it really is (in a bad way). And it’s just tough to use in its current, tiny-hand-intended system. I was left wondering, is the PSP Go! small, or are my hands just big?

What I Hated:
• The start/select buttons are just a waste of space on the controller. They could have been stuck anywhere. Instead, they spite you, taking up the spot that the second analogue should be. Also, these two buttons simply don’t feel as premium as the rest of the device.

We didn’t get to open and close the Go, and with the system tethered for security, we have no idea how it really feels to carry around and put in your pocket. But our first impression is that, even though it’s not the latest and greatest, the older PSP 3000 will retain a following for the larger-handed gamers in the audience.

The device is tighter and more physically beautiful than the iPod Touch and it’s got a better UI, the main menu’s scrolling so natural through the swipe gestures. There’s a little note on the side, under the volume toggle—”Hello from Seattle.” The power button is up top. The home button is nice and prominent, a bar rather than a round button on the Touch. It’s smaller. And the accelerometer is more swift in responding to repositioning; images rotate very fast.

Of course, this thing won’t have hundreds of apps ready for download when it comes out, as the Touch does.

But I would take this in a heartbeat, provided they get around to making a Mac client.

The screen looks the same, but somehow, proportionally beautiful. The screen is significantly better looking in terms of overall ratio between screen and non screen. The keyboard is about 10 percent of the overall device, where the older versions felt more like 20%. I like it, but doubt I would want to bring this on a trip or use it in bed to read. It clearly is a work device, meant for displaying 8.5×11-inch type docs. The screen refresh rates are the same—almost as fast as Kindle 2, because although it is the same engine and technology, its refreshing more info. But it is more contrasty they say, compared to generation one.

Despite the added size, it feels like the chassis is pretty rigid, thanks to the aluminium back (same design as the Kindle 2.) The name, Kindle DX, stands for Kindle Deluxe.

The device is heavier, almost twice as much (10 to 18 ounces).

Flipping to widescreen takes about 3 seconds to trigger and refresh the e-ink display, but its very much like an iPhone’s accelerometer based screen orientation sensing. It’s slow enough of a trigger than if you do it accidentally, you will be cursing. It’s like 7 seconds round trip from portrait to landscape to portrait.

The Price: $US29.99

The Verdict: One of the best expandable surge protectors we’ve used yet. It’s incredibly useful on road trips (CES) as well as at home, and beats even the Power Squid in our eyes in a general comparison.

The special thing about Socket Sense is that it can be expanded from 30-45cm and has 6 angled outlets, allowing you to fit more adapters on one strip. Because of this, the Socket Sense is significantly bigger than a lot of other power protectors—fully extended, it is the length of a 5′4” female’s arm—and weighs a lot more too.

However, compared to squid outlets, the design and size of the Socket Sense gives it a heavy, flat bottom, which makes it easier to use without having to deal with bundled up cords and cables all over the place. Moreover, surge protector allows you to individually extend each outlet when needed, allowing you to adjust how much space it takes up to some extent. Also, there is enough tension on extender so that the strip doesn’t flimsily slide open or close, but it doesn’t give off so much resistance that a relatively weak girl can’t extend it easily.

Overall, Socket Sense is a reliable piece of hardware for those who need a power strip that offers more space between each adaptor. It has 2160 joules of surge protection, compared to the 540 joules of the $US30 power squid (the $US50 squid offers 1080 joules and the $US70 squid offers 3240 joules). For $US30, it’s hard to find a better overall surge protector with this amount of space per socket, although the EZSpace UFO is pretty good as well. [Ideative]

Large enough to allow you to plug in six of just about anything in the strip

Slightly larger than a normal power strip

Slightly pricier than a normal strip at $US30

The Scope
In a single metaphor, if the iPhone App Store is Whole Foods, RIM’s App World is more like the food section of a Target—it does some of the things the App Store does decently enough, but it doesn’t match the breadth and depth or the polish that makes you feel good about having spent $US8 on a bag of local handmade sustainably farmed artisan organic granola.

The grocery metaphor actually extends a bit further: While Whole Foods can be your exclusive grocery store, Target’s food section isn’t likely to be the only place you shop—similarly, the App Store is the exclusive (legal) place to get iPhone apps, while you’ve always been able to grab your BlackBerry apps from anywhere you want. So App World is more about creating a convenient centralized point to funnel the BlackBerry platform’s already vast developer community and software through—not to create a brand new ecosystem, like the App Store did. Still, increased interest and development will probably happen as a result. They’ve got a few hundred applications in the store to start, which isn’t too shabby.

The Shopping Experience
It takes the iPhone App Store and turns it into a very BlackBerry experience—lots of scrolling text lists, tapping the BlackBerry menu button to access shortcuts and secondary functions (like reviews), or to go to the top level App World menu. It works well with the trackball, even if it isn’t as fun to browse as the iPhone’s App Store. (I haven’t tested App World on a Storm, but if it’s exactly the same, the UI would suck on a touch phone.) Even though you’ll run into tons of progress bars as you move around the store, it does load fairly quickly, even over EDGE.

I wanted to avoid comparisons to the iPhone’s App Store, but RIM so clearly modeled theirs on it, it hurts. You even have basically the same set of icons on the bottom as the App Store: Search, Top Downloads, Categories and My World (which lists your own apps). Instead of a “featured” button, featured apps take up most of the screen, with one app displayed at a time, dominated by an Apple-style app icon (Bloomberg’s especially). It’s nice, but not especially intuitive if you want to quickly glance at the list of featured apps.

Payment for paid apps is clumsier, as Walt Mossberg notes—you have to link it up to a PayPal account. Granted, BlackBerry doesn’t exactly have iTunes already sitting there for a simplified system, like Apple does. It would be very cool if it could be linked up to, say, an Amazon account, where I could seamlessly pay for apps along with music, movies, books and whatever else they’ll sell digitally.

Downloading and installing free apps is hitch-free, just click and boom, you’re downloading. Then you get the usual OK/Run confirmation when it finishes. Downloading and installing the Ticketmaster app over Wi-Fi with an average 5Mbps downstream according to Speedtest—a mere 171KB app—took about 45 seconds. The 1.2MB Google Talk took about a minute to download, and another 20 seconds to install. Over EDGE, I had more than timeout downloading a larger app like Facebook.

The app manager screen feels a lot like Firefox’s download manager, actually. Some apps tie up your phone while they’re installing (at least on our test Curve 8900), but usually, not for very long. Uninstalling apps—or installing a new version to replace an old version—however, is a pain. When I uninstalled the Facebook app, I had to restart the phone! And when I installed a new version of Google Talk, I had to restart again. What bizarro world is this, Windows 98?

Other Gripes
Some of the more prominent BlackBerry apps also appear to be missing from store—notably, TwitterBerry. Presumably, this will change over time as more apps pop up and App World becomes the definitive clearinghouse for BlackBerry apps.

The UI could use some fireworks stuffed in its stuffy pants—for the most part, I like the BlackBerry UI, but I feel like it needs a more dynamic style to make app shopping fun. You guys want me to spend money, right? (Making it literally easier to spend money would help with that as well.) Oh yes, a desktop version would be nice too—a gripe we had with Android as well.

Overall, it works well enough—it’s definitely easier than scouring far-flung corners of the internet to find the apps you’re looking for, provided they’re available in App World. But there’s definitely room for it become a more unique, smoother and sexier experience. [BlackBerry]