This is Adam Lein with Pocketnow.com. We're going to try some tests I made up to see how easy it is to perform certain tasks with your smartphone. These tests assume you've already learned how to use your phone and are proficient with its functions, so get your phone out and follow along with the video to see how you do.

First we'll try accessing programs like email, contacts, & calendar. I'm not going to test making phone calls since you probably know different people than I do, but email, contacts, & calendar programs are pretty standard on smartphones. If you think it will make your results faster, feel free to pre-load your applications into memory.

- Launching programs: email, contacts, calendar That was pretty easy. You're probably saying that's not fair because the Treo has 10 customizable application launching shortcuts. Okay, I'll give you that. Let's try launching a 3rd party program that's buried within the interface. Something that doesn't have a shortcut key and is not right there on the Start menu or home screen. How about Google Maps? If you don't already have it installed just visit Google.com/gmm and there's sure to be a version available for your phone. If you're timing yourself, measure from the time you turn on the phone to the activation of Google maps. We don't care about how long it takes Google maps to load since we're just looking at the usability of the interface.
I'll show you my programs folder to prove to you that I'm not cheating by preselecting the application.




- Launching Google Maps from programs menu -- Start, p, G-O, enter Okay, now what about the web browser? How quickly can you access a favorite. Let's see how easy it is to open your Pocketnow.com bookmark. If you're using a Blackberry, I know it remembers that last bookmark you visited and opens directly to the bookmark listing. Some people might consider that cheating. We're trying to see how quick and easy it is to access any bookmark at any time, not just the last one you used or the first one on the list.

Open Pocketnow.com in browser -- Start, I, right softkey, A, PO, enter


Now how about an MP3 player? Most smartphones have music players these days. Let's see how easy it is to find a specific song we want to play. You probably already have some Weird Al Yankovik music on your phone, and if you don't, you can download "You're Pitiful" from WeirdAl.com for free. Don't cheat by making it the only song in your library. I've got about 400 or so other songs in there right now.

Play Weird Al song -- Start, E, down to Artist, enter, W-e-i, left sofkey play.


Treo 800w Results
Test 1: open email, contacts, & calendar = 2 seconds (63 frames)
Test 2: open Google Maps = 2 seconds (71 frames)
Test 3: open a saved website favorite = 5 seconds (155 frames)
Test 4: find and play music from a specific artist = 8 seconds (239 frames)

NCAA Football 09: Wide Open Gameplay -
- When it comes to navigating your way through a defense in football games, players have typically had a few options available to them. Sure, you could pull off a juke, spin or a hurdle, but chaining them together in a natural manner without getting locked into a specific animation wasn't really possible. This year, Tiburon and EA Sports have revamped these ball carrier moves with a new system called Wide Open Gameplay, providing many more electric moves for your players. Get used to these steps, and you'll frequently find yourself posting six on the scoreboard.

Let's start with the ball carriers. As previously mentioned, it was practically impossible to chain a stutter step into a spin or hurdle someone before making a cut. That's been changed this time around thanks to new combo moves that allow you to break out of one step to start another. As a result, players can spin to the left and then immediately spin back to the right, or perform two quick jukes before jumping over a diving defender. This gives a lot of flexibility to a ball carrier, particularly when you realize that there are many more running lanes, cutback lanes and holes that will develop within coverage this year thanks to blocks from your teammates. The same can be said about the quarterback's ability to perform pump fakes to freeze defenders, which can be particularly deadly if you happen to have a mobile quarterback. If he hesitates once or twice before he takes off with the ball, you can easily make a defender eat his dust.

Vlingo Corporation today debuted a new application for BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM), offering the industry's first complete voice-powered interface based entirely on vlingo's breakthrough speech recognition technology. Available free-of-charge*, vlingo's BlackBerry application lets users send emails and text messages, search the Web, open applications (BlackBerry® Calendar, BlackBerry® Maps, etc.), dial their phones, look up contacts and even send notes to themselves - all with the power of voice.

"Just a few months ago, vlingo was selected to voice-enable Yahoo! oneSearch™, which showed the world just how quick and easy mobile Web search can be with the power of voice," said Dave Grannan, CEO of vlingo. "Vlingo takes this technology beyond Web search into everyday applications that are now instantly more usable and easier to find because you only need to think about one button and a few spoken words. Vlingo believes that we can immediately improve the way every person interacts with their wireless device and the BlackBerry platform is the perfect place to start our aggressive expansion strategy here in the U.S. and abroad."
To view Multimedia News Release go to, http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/vlingo/33798/