Netbooks trounce this phone accessory 
THE REDFLY SMARTPHONE TERMINAL C8N from Celio is a laptop-like companion for Windows Mobile-based smart- phones. It features a bright, 8-inch LCD and a keyboard to make your smartphone more useful for data-intensive tasks. Priced at $299, the C8N aims to undercut every netbook on the market, but we're not convinced it's worth the price of admission.
Weighing 2 pounds, the C8N resembles many of today's ultraportables. Though compact, the C8N packs a full QWERTY keyboard that's responsive and comfortable to use. But the C8N lacks any internal guts or software. Instead, it relies on your smartphone's processor strength and storage space to create, store, and edit documents. To connect the C8N to your handheld via USB or Bluetooth, you must install a driver onto your Windows Mobile smartphone. When the C8N and the phone are paired, your smartphone's screen goes dim and its image shows up on the C8N's LCD.
In our tests, we experienced some lag when editing lengthy Word documents or when typing rapidly. Also, we found that the touch pad wouldn't always respond to our movements, and the mouse buttons were overly rigid and at times difficult to press. As you'd expect, though, browsing the Web on the C8N is more enjoyable than on a smartphone's screen. And we managed to get an impressive 7 hours and 40 minutes of battery life out of it. 
But despite the C8N's positive attributes, ultimately its nemeses are netbooks that cost little more. Until Redfly slashes its price or adds new features, most road warriors will benefit more from one of them. —L.R.
Redfly Smartphone Terminal C8N
HTC Fuze
Stylish smartphone hindered by keypad 
WITH ITS GLOSSY lacquered finish, the HTC Fuze is one of AT&T's more stylish smartphones. It packs a 3G radio, a touch screen, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and a full QWERTY keyboard.
Despite its design and formidable feature list, however, this $299 smartphone suffers from some notable hardware and software flaws. Measuring 2.8 inches, the Fuze's sharp VGA screen dominates the device and makes everything from Web browsing to watching videos an enjoyable experience. The phone's slide-out QWERTY keyboard, however, is cramped and makes everyday typing a little more involved.
To further complicate matters, the Fuze's keyboard lacks dedicated buttons for numbers. This unique layout takes some getting used to if you're accustomed to working with dedicated number keys. Although the Fuze is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, most of the time you're interacting with HTC's visually stunning TouchFLO 3D interface, a shell that runs on top of Microsoft's OS in an effort to make Windows Mobile more intuitive. 
Functionally, it's miles ahead of Windows Mobile, but we noticed some lag when opening apps from within the TouchFLO shell. In addition, booting up I ITC's interface adds a few extra seconds to the phone's overall startup time, which is already long. Call quality was excellent, although the built-in speaker is weak. Browsing the Web was smooth and fast. The 3.2-megapixel camera features built-in autofocus and an LED flash, but test images appeared grainy and lacked detail. Battery life was dismal. With moderate 3G and Wi-Fi use, we barely made it through a 6-hour workday before we needed to recharge. For heavier use, a spare battery or additional charger is highly recommended. -Louis Ramirez
Computer Shopper May 2009
LG WINE
Product summary
The good: The LG Wine is an attractive phone with a nice display, four dedicated shortcut keys, and a very roomy keypad.
The bad: The LG Wine's photo quality is mediocre and the call quality could be improved. We also would prefer more direct access to the Web browser and e-mail.
The bottom line: Despite a few problems, The LG Wine's spacious keypad and easy-to-use interface makes this a great low-end phone for U.S. Cellular customers.
For a regional carrier, U.S. Cellular has quite a number of phones that we sometimes wish were available on nationwide carriers, like the LG Rhythm and the Samsung Delve. Well, now we have another one to add to the list; the LG Wine. Though it has fairly ho-hum features, it has a great big keypad plus four physical shortcut keys underneath the display, both of which really help make this phone easy to use. We see this as an excellent everyday low-end phone that anyone can pick up and use without having to fiddle too much with the manual. The Wine is also quite affordable at only $29.95 with a two-year service agreement.
Design
The LG Wine has a pretty standard flip phone design, with a simple rectangular shape and rather sharp corners. Still, we quite like the design, especially with the shiny spun metal look on the front surface. Measuring 3.89 inches long by 1.93 inches wide by 0.66 inch thick, the Wine comes in both red and white, which is indicative of its beverage-inspired name. The Wine feels good in the hand, and is quite lightweight at only 3.32 ounces.
On the front of the Wine is a 1.3-inch external screen, which shows the date, time, battery and signal strength, as well as incoming caller ID. It will also work as a self-portrait viewfinder for the camera. The camera lens is above the screen. On the left spine is the volume rocker and charger jack, while the headset jack and dedicated camera key are on the right.
Flip open the phone and you'll find a very nice 2.2-inch 262,000 color display with 240 x 320 pixels. The screen looks great and shows off bold graphic icons quite well. You can adjust the screen's backlight time, the menu style, the font settings for style, color, and size, and the color scheme.
Directly underneath the display are four dedicated shortcut keys. They are shortcuts to the messaging menu, the alarm clock, the images folder, and U.S. Cellular's EasyEdge online store. It's certainly nice to have dedicated shortcut keys like these, but since you can easily get to these functions from the existing navigation array, they seem a bit unnecessary. Still, if you don't want to remember what keys correspond to what function, these four keys are very helpful for quick access.
The navigation array consists of two soft keys, a four-way circular toggle with a middle Menu/OK key, a dedicated speakerphone key, a Back key, a Talk key, and the End/Power key. The four-way toggle doubles as shortcuts to the Bluetooth menu, the EasyEdge online store, a shortcuts menu with room for up to 12 shortcuts, and the calendar.
Both the navigation array and the number keypad are a joy to use. They're both very roomy, and all the keys are large and quite tactile. The number keys on the keypad are in very large text, which is great for those who don't have the best eyesight. It's very easy to dial and text by feel as well.
Features
The LG Wine has a roomy 1,000-entry phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, and a memo. You can then add your contacts to a caller group, pair them with a photo for caller ID, or pair them with one of 34 polyphonic tones to be either the ringtone or message alert tone. Other features include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, a calendar, a memo pad, easy tip calculator, a calculator, an alarm clock, a world clock, a stopwatch, a unit converter, voice command support, Bluetooth, and support for location-based navigation.
There's also a mobile Web browser and mobile e-mail access. However, in order to access them, you have to go to the MyStuff tab in the EasyEdge interface. We would prefer a more direct way to access the browser and mobile e-mail.
The LG Wine takes mediocre photos.
The 1.3-megapixel camera can take pictures in five resolutions (1,280x960, 640x480, 320x240, 176x144, and 160x120), three quality settings, four color effects, and five white balance presets. Other settings include a self-timer, a night mode, multishot modes, brightness, zoom, and four shutter sounds plus a silent option. Photo quality was decent, but not great. Pictures had an orange tinge, and it was not as sharp as we would like. The Wine doesn't have a music player or a camcorder, which is good since it only has 48MB of internal memory.
You can personalize the Wine with wallpaper, themes, tones, and a banner. The Wine also comes with games like Pac-Man, but you can always get more from the EasyEdge Shop.
Performance
We tested the LG Wine in San Francisco, roaming outside U.S. Cellular's home network on Verizon Wireless. Call quality was good, but it was still clear that we were talking on a cell phone. Callers said our voice sounded tinny and rather robotic. On our side, we thought the same of their voices too. Still, we enjoyed very little static. Speakerphone calls went well, though there was a bit more static and audio sounded a little weak and muffled at times.
The LG Wine has a rated battery life of 4 hours talk time and 7 days standby time. According to the FCC, the Wine has a SAR rating of 1.3 watts per kilogram.
CNET
