HARDWARE

The very first thing you’re gonna notice about the Aria is its compact size. In a world of ever expanding screens, HTC decided to go small with the Aria. Measuring 4.1 x 2.3 x 0.46 inches and weighing a mere 3.8 ounces (that’s with the battery in there), most mobile enthusiasts would scoff at the Aria. But as an entry-level phone, it’s awfully pretty, awfully small (sometimes we forget a major point of having a mobile phone is portability), and awfully light.

You’ve seen the pictures comparing the HTC Aria to a deck of cards, and that’s exactly what it feels like when you hold it in your hand. It’s tiny! I’ve got an EVO, though, which makes most phones look dwarven. Here’s the EVO, an iPhone 3GS, and the Aria in a side-by-side comparison:

iPhone 3G S vs. HTC EVO 4G vs. HTC Aria

I absolutely love HTC’s choice to round out the sides and continue the matte finish all the way to the screen. It makes it incredibly easy to hold – you won’t be afraid of dropping the Aria while it’s in your hand because of that choice.

That being said, it’s not nearly as easy to take off the back cover to get to the battery. That might be a good thing for some, but I personally prefer a little more ease in removing the battery cover. As a side note, there’s a lovely shade of sports car yellow under the hood of the Aria. Being a geek, I notice and appreciate this small, eaningless detail, mostly because it’s cool looking and gives me something to show my non-tech-savvy friends. “But look! Underneath it’s yellow!” “Ooh.”

The HTC Aria has some style under the hood.

On the front, we’ve got the HTC standard capacitive buttons for Home, Menu, Back & Search, as well as an optical trackpad (welcome due to the Aria’s smaller screen). It’s a good-looking phone.

Display So, there are a lot of larger, higher-quality screens out there right now, but the Aria’s 3.2 inch HVGA screen shows off HTC’s Sense UI nicely. The screen is crisp and clear, even at lower brightness settings. The capacitive touch screen responds swiftly. Other than that, it’s your standard fare.

Camera Here’s the deal: I’ve come to demand a flash on my cell phone cameras. Not being able to take pictures half of the day seems absolutely insane to me – especially if you’re a night owl. The 5 megapixel camera does its job just fine in daylight, but no flash really puts a damper on the camera for me.

To an entry-level smartphone user, it might be forgiven, but no flash these days is heresy, especially for those of us who don’t like toting around a myriad of media gadgets. The VGA camcorder is decent enough in the Aria’s price range, but nothing to write home about.

Here are two un-retouched comparison shots of the Aria (top) and the EVO (bottom):

Sample photo taken with the HTC Aria.

Sample photo taken with the HTC EVO 4G.

You can see an obvious difference. The EVO’s colors are richer and the image feels more robust and dynamic, though the Aria seems to show more true-to-life color saturation in its image. Interestingly, however, the EVO’s image has a little more noise in it than the Aria’s.

Storage So… I’m not exactly sure where someone made this decision along the way, but there’s a piddling 2GB MicroSD card included with the Aria. I am seriously disappointed in that. Most people have an iPod Nanos with larger storage capacities. Obviously, the solution to this issue is to buy a bigger MicroSD card (up to 32GB), but if you’re dropping $130 already on this phone, I’m not sure you’re gonna want to immediately turn around and spend more to make it mid-level functional in terms of memory.

Speaker/Sound The sound quality was okay, though I admittedly live in an area where AT&T’s 3G coverage isn’t fantastic. Out in Santa Monica, though, the phone made crystal clear calls (though when the wind acted up, I could hear it blowing into the mic, which I’m not a huge fan of). I have to say that I’m a bit jealous HTC included a beautiful little hands-free headset with the Aria that looks and sounds fantastic while driving around Los Angeles, not to mention works great while working out at the gym – where did that hands-free go for the EVO, HTC? The music generally sounds great, especially for such a small phone. Once rooms got crowded, though, it was definitely struggling to cut through the noise. But it’s not a deal breaker.

Battery Life The battery life on this little bad boy is pretty nice – I had the phone for two weeks to review, and got a couple days of basic use out of it. Using it heavily (I’m talking bringing it out of sleep every 5 minutes and playing around with it), I got about 5-6 hours out of it. There’s a 1,200mAh battery in there, so you’ve got some room to play with in terms of time. It’s very, very efficient.

SOFTWARE

Obviously, we’re all Android fans here, which means we’re also crazy about 2.2 (Froyo). But I’d be selling the Aria short if I didn’t mention how nicely 2.1 (Éclair for those of us pastry-minded users) works on it. It’s smooth, and I never had an issue while browsing, playing music, or playing games. Even though we’re all becoming rapidly used to a 1 GHz Snapdragon world, Android screams on the Aria’s 600MHz MSM7227, 512MB of ROM and 384MB of RAM. Really. When I put it through its paces, not once did I experience any notable lag. This little phone rocks.

It’s with great sadness, however, that we mention the dark side of the Aria. By no fault of the handset itself, its carrier AT&T has decided (like they did with the Backflip) to completely cut off third party, non-Market apps from the Aria. That’s right, ladies and gents. No Swype for you, at least not until it shows up officially in the Market. As a die-hard Swype user (I will never use a virtual keyboard phone without it), this is unacceptable.

I get that AT&T says it’s to keep their customers safe… but let’s get real. If you’re sideloading apps from third-party sources, it’s a good bet you know what you’re getting into. This is SO depressing, AT&T! Why would you remove something that’s not even auto-enabled in Settings upon getting the phone? Most people who will pick up the Aria won’t ever poke around in there, and even if they did decide to enable sideloading, the message about the dangers of loading third party apps would likely scare them off well enough to disable it again. Sheesh.

HTC Aria gaming demo

CONCLUSION

If you’re dying for an Android phone on AT&T, and you’re a serious enthusiast, then the Aria is not for you. The Nexus One is. That being said, if you’re an entry-level smartphone user who doesn’t care about sideloading third-party apps or taking pictures with a flash, then the Aria might in fact be for you. I can’t for the life of me understand the price – as a $130 price tag might be too steep for a phone that’s been kneed in the nethers in terms of Android. Sense UI tends to upgrade a lot later than other Android phones (so no 2.2 in the foreseeable future); and the iPhone 3GS got a super competitive new price point ($99) when the iPhone 4 launched. It’s not ‘crippled,’ but it sure ain’t the open source heaven us Android geeks know and love. Maybe ‘hobbled’ is a better word to describe what AT&T did to a perfectly capable
smartphone.

I can see someone like a mom, or a stylish yet non-tech-obsessed friend picking up the HTC Aria because it’s somehow adorable and totally sexy at the same time – but anyone who’s really into Android (or loves to have the latest and greatest) will pass on it. Which is a damn shame, all things considered. I think AT&T had a big chance to make the Aria a competitor in the hotly contested $99-$149 bracket, but blew it with the choice to remove the third party apps option. I guess we’ll be waiting a bit longer for a true, non-Nexus One Android option on AT&T (I’m looking at you, Samsung Captivate). Unfortunately, it’ll likely still be hobbled by AT&T’s decision to remove the option to enable third party app installation.

Review submitted by Ashley Esqueda, host of This Week in Mobile.

Through a few reader and AAM staff suggestions, I came across a gem called Homerun Battle 3D, and haven’t been able to put it down since. Homerun battle 3D turns you into a steroid-laden homerun hitting machine and challenges you to…well…hit as many homeruns as you can. The game is basically one huge homerun derby, offering both singleplayer and online two-player baseball-clobberin’ action.

The local/single player  game offers arcade and classic mode. Arcade mode challenges you to get as many points as you can, with hits and homeruns alike counting toward your point total. Classic mode features conventional home run derby rules for all you traditionalists out there. In classic mode, only homeruns count toward your total, and the goal is to hit as many as possible.

Single player mode is great and all, but multi-player/matchup mode is where this game really shines. Matchup mode pits you in arcade mode against an opponent who is similarly ranked. Each player has a status bar that is filled up each time you make contact with the ball. Homeruns are worth more of course, but everything counts. First one to fill their status bar wins. It’s that simple, and it’s that addictive. I played through about 15 games before I realized I probably needed to get back to work.

The game also features unlockable content that allows you to customize your character with facial hair, sunglasses, cleats, jerseys, and many other things you’d expect in a baseball game. Though it may be trivial and unnecessary, the ability to customize your character when beating the snot out of some opponent is pretty cool.

The controls are very easy to learn. Simply tilt your phone up/down/left/right and a glowing bat moves around the strike zone. Tap anywhere on the screen to swing and watch the ball fly out of the park.

Pros

• Addictive gameplay
• Shows off what Android is capable of for gaming
• Great game for any baseball lover
• Very easy and well put together controls

Cons

• Matchup mode doesn’t offer classic mode.
• Game is huge at 20MB! Basically requires AppsToSD for you 1st gen users.

Final Verdict:

If you love baseball, you need to get this game. Homerun Battle 3D is currently available for $4.99 on the Android Market. Want to try before you buy? A free version is also available.

Dropbox solves a problem I’ve been having for a little while in that it cloud-syncs user files for access wherever there is a Dropbox client installed which includes Windows, Max and Linux variants. My primary use for it is that I enjoy reading (free and fair-use) comics on my Milestone.

However, being the lazy person that I am, I don’t like maintaining a “to read” folder on my phone’s SD card itself. Dropbox fixed this by syncing a folder on my computer to the cloud, uploading anything new that was added since the last time it checked. Accessing the client from my phone allows me to download the files and store them from my SD card.

Things I liked:

• SD storage is a big deal because it differs from other syncing applications I’ve used. With those, the files downloaded must be handled by an internal player. With Dropbox, downloaded files show up in ASTRO (or other file viewer) under a dedicated folder, which lets you open them with whatever app you want.
• Sleek interface (not a port). This is a big plug. Responsive, simple to use and doesn’t bog you down with a lot of options. Dropbox is to the point, and does what it’s advertised to well.
• The ability to upload things from your phone to Dropbox works wonders, and allows for the easy sharing of pictures, videos and more.
• Free 2 GB of sharing, and increases with referrals or other challenges, like completing 5/8 things off a “to do” list (tell your friends, take a tutorial, etc).

Things I didn’t:

• I really don’t have any complaints about Dropbox; the app simply works, and does exactly what I need it to. This seems to be a rarity in the application world, and I can commend the developers for putting work into the app.

Though this application’s in beta, I think the only issues that need to be tested is the stress on Dropbox’s servers. I can see that would come with the addition of any new devices, though, and can see this hitting the marketplace proper as soon as they’ve got everything smoothed out.

Sadly the beta for Dropbox is closed at the moment, as I miraculously managed to get one of the 500 open spots. Like I said above, it should only be a matter of time before users can join me. Happy syncing!

I don’t really use my Android for gaming; I have a Nintendo DS that fits into the front pocket of my bag quite nicely. However, every once in awhile I like to pull out an app on my phone that I can use to occupy a few minutes, or show off what my Droid is capable of.

Every once and awhile you just feel like blowing some stuff up.

I stumbled across the appropriately-named “Blow Up” using Appaware, and decided to give it a try. I’ve got the Lite version on my phone at the moment, and the limitations of that version are limited to levels (10 in the lite version) and ads; it doesn’t curtail any major features (-cough- Robot Defense), which earns a couple points in my book.

Oh, that poor little panda.

Basically the point of the game is to reduce a structure of a certain height down to a smaller, more manageable pile of rubble. You have a certain amount of bombs, with the ability to place them on timer delay. Pressing one big red button sets off your cascade of destruction, hopefully reaching the final height limit.

Extra points are given if you make a physics-affected panda touch a star, which is located somewhere in the level. This adds a bit more challenge and lets you get a bit more artistic with your explosions. Your overall progress is rated by a four star system; this encourages some replayability.

I clearly need practice.

This game is simple to pick up and play, which ultimately is what you want in a game you’re going to be playing in short bursts. I’m extremely picky when it comes to touch screen controls, and thankfully Blow Up does a good job of making the placement of bombs easy; the dynamite snaps to the beams of the structure, zooming in while you make precise placements. Touching a bomb once brings up its timer delay, which is manipulated with arrows.

I don’t give number/star ratings, because I think they’re arbitrary. However, I’ll tell you guys that Blow Up is worth your time if you’re looking for something extremely easy to pick up and play. Definitely the type of game you want on your phone in case you’re stuck waiting for an extended amount of time (or have a child/sibling with a short attention span you need placating).

Blow Up is available on the Market from developer Camel Games. The price of the paid version (which nets you more levels and no ads) is $2.99 USD. Not a bad price for a little slice of violence (and puzzles).

Pyramids of Ra was a puzzle game in which the object was simple: Bounce a ball around a map of blocks, making sure to hit every one and return to the starting point. The hard part was that each block would crumble away as it was landed on (some took more than one time) and the trick was to leave a path that you could use to get back.

So, the obvious question I know you must be asking yourself… “so, what the heck does this have to do with Android?”

Here it goes… Recently released to the Android Market was a similar game called Athol Adventure, by developer 59Pixels. It’s not exactly the same as Pyramids of Ra, of course, but the object of the game is essentially the same. But, what is similar in gameplay is worlds apart in almost every other way. Athol Adventure is, as one would expect, an incredibly modernized version of this classic puzzler.

The Story

You, a princely character, have just been married… but your happiness is short lived, for an evil witch has come to take away your beautiful wife. OK, so it’s a cartoon drawing, so beautiful might not be the best word to use, but you get the gist. In order to save your bride you must travel accross the island through treachorous mazes of block platforms. Avoid exploding blocks and fireballs and don’t choose the wrong path to find your way to the Hall of Heros and win the day.

The Gameplay

With over 75 levels including plenty of bonus levels (and according to the developer, a level generator in the works) this game is sure to keep you occupied. None of the levels are exceptionally difficult, so don’t feel like you will rack you brain to get through. But, that isn’t to say that some of them aren’t challenging. Each level only takes a few minutes, making this game is a great way to pass the time here and there. Of course, your progress though story mode is saved along the way.

The graphics are simple but crisp, clean, and vibrant, and are nicely done throughout. Generally speaking, the game runs smoothly and consistently, except in times of high cpu (such when background services fire up).

Athol Adventure is a free game. It is supported by ads, and they certainly don’t let you forget it. It’s not that they are particularly intrusive, but rather they are very persistent and are always in view. As with almost all ad-supported applications and games in the Android Market, I have gotten quite good at not really noticing them.

All in all, it is certainly worth a play if you are into puzzle games, and even if you are not. Heck, it even prompted me to hunt down my old original Game Boy, which I did end up finding (by the way… it still works). Now, to find my Handy Pak…

Athol Adventures for Android
Version: 2.3
Developed By: 59Pixels
Price: FREE
Filesize: 1.71MB

You can find more from Justin on his new blog.  Check out his tutorial for creating an Android clock widget.

Lock 2.0 is a step in the direction of providing PIN based security for the Android based phones, including the T-Mobile G1 with Google.  Although the current version of Lock 2.0 limits a user to a four digit numeric PIN, when properly shielded from view, it is more difficult for a casual observer to see a recognizable pattern.

Beyond simple security, Lock 2.0 is cool in the way the iPhone unlock mechanism is cool. In fact, it goes beyond the iPhone unlock mechanism and offers a good number of skins for both the slider mechanism and the battery level indicator. Downloading the skins is easy. Download the skins from the Lock 2.0 app and they are saved to your SD card as compressed .zip files. Installing the files from your card automatically unzips them and installs them in your phone’s memory.

The background of the unlock screen can be set to either be a battery indicator or any image on the SD card. The skins all come with very nice default images, but having the flexibility to select any image to match the slider is very nice.

Although still not strong security, it is a step up from the default Android security. In defense of the default security, unlocking the phone while driving is a breeze. Lock 2.0’s security is a little more difficult, and I personally wouldn’t want to unlock a phone with a strong password while driving.

Lock 2.0 is available as a free version and as a $1.99 donate version. I downloaded the free version and was so impressed by the look and feel that I turned right around and downloaded the $1.99 version, which was the source of these captures.

If you are looking for a fun, very cool way to unlock your phone that supports a large number of skins and available customizations, Lock 2.0 is for you.  By combining this app with one of the desktop replacements, like aHome, Open Home or dxTop, almost every aspect of your Android based phone can be customized.

Lock 2.0 for Android
Version: 1.7
Developed By: Android Apps
Price: FREE or $1.99 for latest version
Filesize: 90.00KB

Here is a confession: I am a smart phone addict. My job as a writer requires me to be in constant contact with a large group of people. Being out of contact for more than a half a day is simply not an option. The G1 has performed beautifully. By setting up my Gmail account to poll other email accounts, I get email messages very shortly after they were sent. The G1′s email interface and full keyboard(I was a Pearl user) are superb.

As a writer, research is a big part of my job. Android’s browser simply works. With the exception of Flash based sites, the browser is fast and very functional. Researching on the train or on a park bench is now a reality. T-Mobile’s 3G network is faster than AT&T and side by side tests with iPhones consistently favor the G1. With the improvements to the browser in Cupcake, I believe that the G1 is simply one of the best hand-held web browsing solutions available.

For people who enjoy customizing the look of their phone, the available after market home screen replacements are incredible. The themes available for aHome, dxTop, and Open Home are fantastic. With the addition of downloadable font and icon packs, the possibilities are endless.

The Open Source nature of the G1 also is appealing. I run a rooted G1 with Jesusfreke’s Android 1.5. This won’t appeal to everyone, but the ability to control the OS version is very appealing to me. By rooting my phone and moving various caches to the SD card, I’ve not only improved the overall performance of the phone, I’ve opened up more space for apps.

Now for the bad. The Android Market isn’t as complete as the marketplace for the iPhone. I’ve managed to find most of the tools I need. When I couldn’t, the app somehow managed to appear at a later date. As Android captures more of the market, the financial incentive for developers to write apps for Android increases. We will see far more apps for the G1 in the near future.

Even though there are fewer apps for Android than iPhone, there are still an incredible array of apps. After two months, I’ve found everything I need. I’ve even found things that I didn’t know I needed until after I’d installed them.

Do I recommend the G1 to people who are interested in a smart-phone? Absolutely. As the Android operating system matures and is used on newer hardware platforms, a strong contender will simply become stronger. Although I still like my BlackBerry, the person I gave it to is simply envious of the G1 that replaced it. Even my wife, a dedicated Luddite, is thinking about swapping her BlackBerry for a G2.

Still don’t have an Android phone?  Amazon has the G1 on sale for $97.99…

T-Mobile G1. My dream phone.

[Photo via Flickr]

If you are looking for a clean, simple web browser with a solid gesture based interface and a soft keyboard, Steel is your browser.

Hidden Commands Require Some Practice

The Steel interface is clean and simple. The browser opens blank. To load a web page, users must touch the bubble on the lower right side of the screen. The bubble will bring up the URL bar and a bar at the bottom of the screen. The plus (+) to the left of the URL field adds a bookmark for the current page. Selecting the URL field brings up a very functional soft keyboard. The icon to the right of the URL field either re-loads the page or stops the page from loading, depending on whether the page has finished loading or is in the process of loading.

The navigation bar of Steel.

The lower navigation bar has page forward and back buttons, a view bookmarks button, and a button that allows for the selection of available windows.

The power of the browser lies in the features aren’t visible until you long touch the screen, links, or an image. Although this is similar in some ways to the native browser, Steel pops up a translucent context sensitive pie menu instead of the native context menus. This allows you to continue to view content while executing other commands.

Long touching anywhere on the web page brings up a context sensitive pie menu that allows you to zoom in and out of the page and re-load the current page. Using the context menus takes some practice. Instead of lifting your finger and pressing the selection, you must slide your finger to the desired command. At first this seems strange, but after a few minutes it really improves the web browsing experience.

Long touching an image brings up a pie menu with share, save, copy, open, and zoom functions. These work in much the same way as the native browser.

Long touching a link will bring up a context sensitive pie menu with the option to zoom, open, copy, or share the URL.

The Menu Key

The pie menu with zoom controls.

Pressing the menu key brings up a number of useful setting to customize your browsing experience. The virtual keyboard can be turned on and off, the color of the virtual keys can be set to light or dark, the menu bar and lower navigation bar can be set to always visible, and the browser’s default full screen mode can be turned off. In addition, the location of the control bubble can be set to be more convenient for left handed users and the screen can be set to auto-rotate when the physical keyboard is opened. One of the nice features of the Steel soft keyboard is that the phone will vibrate each time a soft key is pressed. This function can be turned off, if desired.

Other standard web functions can be set up via the menu button. This includes setting the start page, enabling or disabling java script, and setting the user agent and cache mode. The menu button also allows for the clearing of saved form data, passwords, history and cookies.

Conclusion

Although a number of the features of Steel are expected to be in the Cupcake release of Android, their present implementation in Steel is very good. If you are looking for a good, simple browser that doesn’t get in the way of the web content, Steel is a fantastic app.

Update:  According to the dev’s blog, a new release is on the way that supports Cupcake.

Steel for Android
Version: 0.0.19
Developed By: kolbysoft
Price: FREE
Filesize: 189KB

When I saw a shop advertising full invisibleSHIELD wraps for G1, I went in. The price of the kit itself wasn’t bad, a little more than on the invisibleSHIELD web site. By chance, the technician had just started an installation on an iPhone. After watching for a few minutes, I realized that I was going to buy the kit and pay the shop another $15.00 to install the wrap.

What sold me was the sleek, glossy finish with a slick, yet very rubbery grip. It adds no bulk to the phone, preserving the design elements. A lifetime guarantee helps a lot. It really is the ultimate in invisible protection. On the off chance that it scratches, invisibleSHIELD will replace the wrap.

In chatting with the technician as he installed my wrap, I learned that the technology is simple. A hard outer shell is bonded to a rubberized back. A special adhesive, water breaks its bond, is applied to the back. The material was originally developed to protect the leading edge of helicopter rotors. I don’t think I will be putting my G1 through the kinds of stresses experienced by rotor blades, but you never know.

It took him about a half hour to install the three pieces of the G1 wrap. One piece protects the screen. A second piece protects the battery cover. The third piece wraps around the lower control area. Just as he was finishing, he groaned. A cat hair from my jacket had blown on to the touch screen. It took another 15 minutes to remove the hair and re-apply the Invisible Shield.

He sent me off with a warning not to put the phone in my pocket for an hour. The adhesive needed that long to dry and cure, it wouldn’t be fully cured for 24 hours. I followed the directions to press hard for 20 seconds on the occasional air bubble that appeared on the back of the soft battery cover, and my wrap shrunk down nicely. I will never again buy or use another bulky G1 cover. In fact, in the future, I will customize wraps to fit other electronic devices. I’m sold. I’ve gone from being curious to being an evangelist.

Would I attempt to install an the cover myself? Absolutely. By following the included directions, installation is very simple.

I tried photographing the installed shield, but it wouldn’t actually show up in web resolution images. Aside from a change from the phone’s native matte finish to a nice gloss, the invisibleSHIELD is, well, invisible.

Is there a down side? Sure. The wrap interferes with the other cases that I’ve collected, but that is the only one I can find. The feel of the phone and touch screen are actually better than completely unprotected. It doesn’t provide the same level of impact damage that a heavy shell gives, but I suppose that’s why I have phone insurance. The sleek black phone that appears when I reach in my pocket has given a few iPhone users G1 envy.

Visit Amazon.com to purchase the invisibleSHIELD for $17.04 with free Prime shipping.

invisibleSHIELD by ZAGG: Clear, Formfitting Armor for Your T-Mobile G1

If you would like to explore more Android accessories, please visit our Android Store or other product reviews.