Design
Very unassuming looking, the squarish S95 is matte black (think laptop finish), and at 2.3 by 3.9 by 1.2 inches (HWD), it’s toward the top of the compact camera size spectrum. The camera’s body is loaded with scroll wheels, which makes the shooting experience feel almost D-SLR-like. One ring sits around the base of the lens where it meets the body, and another is to the right of the LCD—it makes for a nice, two-handed manual shooting experience. The rings can be assigned to control aperture and shutter speed, or they can be reprogrammed to control a number of other functions (ISO sensitivity, exposure, focus, etc.). You also have the option to shoot in fully automatic mode with face detection.

The 3-inch LCD on the back of the camera is stellar. The average 3-inch camera display is made up of 230,000 dots; the S95 doubles that to 460,000, so images on the screen are incredibly crisp and sharp. The LCD shows virtually no motion blur, and offers great contrast with dark blacks. Using it as both a viewfinder and for image playback was a pleasure. There’s a pop up flash up top.

The lens is the biggest draw here, with a focal range of 28-105mm (35mm equivalent), it offers just 3.75x optical zoom. But this lens isn’t about zoom—it’s about light. In its wide-angle position (28mm), the aperture can open all the way to f/2, so it lets in a lot of light, which is key for shooting in low light without a flash.

The bright f/2 lens is paired with an image sensor that’s very large for a compact camera. A few compact Panasonic cameras, like the Lumix DMC-FX700 ($399.95, 4 stars), have nearly-as-bright f/2.2 lenses, but the FX700′s image sensor (roughly 25mm²) is less than half the size of the S95′s.

Performance
The S95 takes an average of 2.33 seconds to boot and shoot, you’ll wait an average of 2.78 seconds between shots, and shutter lag averages just .55 seconds, so the S95 feels very fast. Those are all good speed scores for a compact camera, but they’re nowhere near a Micro Four Thirds camera like thePanasonic Lumix DMC-GF2 ($699.95, 4 stars), or the Sony NEX-3. These cameras’ shutter lag clocks in closer to 0.10 seconds, and they can shoot at 2.40 and 2.30 frames per second (respectively).

In the PC Labs we use Imatest to collect object information about image quality. In terms of sharpness, the Canon S95 delivered a center-weighted average of 1,858 lines per picture height, which is a good result. The Panasonic FX700 offers a competitive 1,817 lines, but with image noise, the S95′s larger sensor really stood out. All the way up to ISO 1600, the S95 keeps image noise under 1.5 percent (the acceptability threshold). Even pics taken at ISO 3200 weren’t horrible, though they fell short of Imatest’s mark. (The FX700 only produced useable images up to ISO 400 in our tests.) The S95 is an excellent low-light shooter, and will work in most situations without a flash. Still, though, it’s important to note that D-SLRs will produce sharper images with less noise at any ISO sensitivity.

Video recordings captured in 720p30 HD look similarly great. The files are written as .MOV, so you can upload them right into YouTube and Facebook. Canon is a bit behind its competitors in recording options, though: the Panasonic FX700 allows recording in multiple resolutions (up to 1080i) and with different codecs (like AVCHD for less compression and higher quality).

Connectivity options on the S95 are top-notch. There’s a universal mini-USB port for connecting to your computer and a standard mini-HDMI port for plugging the camera right into an HDTV for HD image and video playback. The camera writes photos and videos to SDXC and SDHC cards.

Canon’s PowerShot S95 reaches the current upper limit of image quality in pocket-sized digital cameras—that’s why it wins our Editors’ Choice for the category. This little guy packs a sweet LCD, great controls, a big image sensor, a bright lens, and it pumps out stellar-looking photos—but at $400, it’s not cheap. And keep in mind, we’re entering a digital imaging revolution. Breakthroughs in high-speed small processors enable compact interchangeable lens cameras like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2 and the Sony Alpha NEX-3 use much larger image sensors, which can deliver quality and speed that’s leaps and bounds above what you’ll get with the S95.

The latest EliteBook 8460p is the smallest model in the EliteBook lineup, with a 14-inch screen and a weight of about 5.5 pounds. The new model is equipped with one of the latest-generation Intel Core CPUs. Our review unit carried a 2.5GHz Core i5 2520M with a maximum turbo boost speed of 3.2GHz. HP’s configuration also included 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition, and a Radeon HD 6470M mobile GPU.

The Radeon HD 6470M is fully DirectX 11-compliant, but it’s unlikely to give you much of a performance boost in current-generation DX11 games: Its 3DMark 2011 performance score is a modest 598. T play hardcore games, you’ll have to dial down the resolution and detail settings substantially.

But the EliteBook 8460p is all about business, not play, and HP includes a robust package of software that caters to business users. HP ProtectTools, for example, gives end users and IT managers fine-grain control over security features, such as drive encryption and user login control. ProtectTools includes facial-recognition software that can work in concert with your Bluetooth-enabled phone to verify that the person logging in is really you.

HP Power Assistant is a reskinning of the Windows Power Management controls, but it isn’t deeply buried and it’s substantially more user-friendly than its predecessor. Like ProtectTools, Power Assistant supports remote management by IT system administrators, if the right HP management suite is running on the server.

The laptop’s overall performance was about average for a system of its class, with a PC WorldBench 6score of 124. Battery life is quite good, at well over 5 hours in the PCWorld Labs’ battery life test.

The keyboard’s feel is excellent, with good tactile feedback during touch-typing sessions. HP supplies both a pointing stick and a trackpad, plus two sets of buttons located to provide optimal support for each pointing device. Even though I’m a trackpad user, I liked having both sets of buttons at hand, since I could easily reach one button or another with different fingers while touch-typing. The trackpad is well-designed, too–not too sensitive and offering good support for multitouch-gesture recognition.

Another plus is the matte-finish LCD panel in place of a glossy glass display. Matte finishes sometimes yield somewhat muted color saturation, but the resulting display is much more usable because it minimizes reflections and glare. Video playback quality was excellent: DVD upscaling showed only a little edge enhancement, and we noted good detail levels on the native 1366-by-768-pixel screen. (HP also offers 1600 by 900 resolution as an option.) High-definition playback scaled down to native resolution looked very nice.

On the other hand, the overall audio quality through the built-in speakers was abysmal. Without the SRS audio enhancement software activated, maximum perceived sound levels were very low, and music had a tinny, grating quality. With SRS switched on, the speakers’ perceived loudness went up, but the sound stage seemed muddy and treble was completely lost in the midrange. I played around with different settings, but ultimately I couldn’t improve the music-listening experience. Surprisingly, movie audio quality was somewhat better, though still muddy sounding. I strongly recommend that you use headphones or external speakers if you plan on listening to a lot of music.

The EliteBook 8460p we tested shipped with a 320GB Hitachi hard drive and a DVD-recordable optical drive. The hard drive seemed a bit sluggish, and the system took several minutes to boot. HP does offer larger-capacity hard-disk drives as well as several solid-state drive options. On the optical front, you can add Blu-ray as an option.

The system comes with plenty of connections, including a USB 2.0 port on the right side that’s designed to make charging USB-connected mobile devices easier. The other USB 2.0 port on the right is a combo eSATA port. Two SuperSpeed (USB 3.0) ports are on the left side.

The left side also houses an ExpressCard slot, a four-pin FireWire connector, and the optical drive. A VGA connector, ethernet, and an actual V.92 modem connector is built into the back. A full-size DisplayPort connector is available on the right side, as are a pair of audio mini-jacks–one input and one output. Our unit shipped with 802.11n, Bluetooth, and gigabit ethernet. Cell-phone-style mobile broadband cards are available as an extra-cost add-on.

The preconfigured model of the 8460p delivered to PCWorld is priced at $1199–a touch high for a midrange business class laptop with its configuration and performance. However, it’s price is considerably lower than that of any custom-configured unit.

Overall, the HP EliteBook 8460p offers decent performance, a good display, and a great keyboard in an unassuming exterior design. The price for preconfigured models is reasonable, given some of the system management features built into the EliteBook. So if you’re looking for a fairly light business-class all-purpose laptop that gets the job done without being flashy, the 8460p deserves closer inspection. Just remember to bring your own headphones.

High-Quality Design

The first thing I noticed about the phone is its stylish, yet sturdy design. The phone, HTC-designed, feels more high-quality than the previous, plasticky myTouch models. The plastic is still there (on the face of the phone and on the hardware buttons), but the device is primarily metal and has the feel of a higher-end phone. The phone will come in four colors: white, black, plum, or red.

The phone has a vibrant 3.8-inch WVGA display, which nicely showcases the phone’s user interface. Below the display, you’ll find four hardware buttons: Home, Menu, Back, and Genius (more on that one later). Measuring 4.8-by-2.4-by-0.43 inches, the myTouch 4G is a manageable size.

Like the other myTouch phones, the myTouch 4G comes in a handy case for storing all of your phone’s accessories.

Custom Skin Over Android

Running Android 2.2, the myTouch 4G has a custom skin, which is sort of a mash-up between that of the HTC Sense and the myTouch skin we saw on the myTouch Slide.

As on the HTC Sense, you get a dynamic weather app and a socially-aware address book (which aggregates your friends’ contact information from your social networks). You also get HTC’s Friend Stream, which takes all of your friends’ status updates, links, and photos from your various social networks and displays them in a single feed.

Another unique, user-friendly feature is MyModes, which lets you customize your phone for your work life and for your personal life via widgets, homescreen apps, and wallpapers. If you want to avoid work e-mail and appointments as much as possible over the weekend, you can simply set those applications to be hidden from your homescreen when you leave your office. You can program MyModes to switch by location (using GPS), or you can switch it manually.

The Genius button, mentioned earlier, is a useful tool for smartphone newbies. Press it, and you jump to a simple voice-command menu. From there, you can use commands to make calls, compose and send texts and e-mails, search the Web, and more. It worked fairly well in my hands-on tests, taking a few seconds to figure out what you said, but producing generally accurate results. The more you use the feature, the better it gets, too: It employs Nuance’s Dragon Dictation Software, which gradually learns your voice and thereby improves response time.

Remember T-Mobile MyFaves? T-Mobile’s cheap calling plan of yore (which permitted users to make unlimited calls to five people of their choice) is back–this time, in the form of a speed-dialer application on the Slide. The app has a kind of 3D effect that you spin through to get quick access to your favorite friends’ contact information, pictures, and social networking account links. You can add up to 20 friends as your “faves.” You can easily get to the MyFaves screen by hitting the dedicated hardware button on the phone’s face.

The myTouch has a new feature called Media Room, which organizes all of your music, video, and Internet radio in one place. For media syncing, the myTouch comes with the excellent doubleTwist software onboard. Of course, you also get the dedicated YouTube app, which also supports HQ videos. HQ versions of YouTube videos are leaps and bounds better in quality than the normal, fuzzy YouTube videos.

While I like that the myTouch skin provides customizability, I don’t really like what HTC and T-Mobile have done with the 4G’s camera interface. Rather than the stock Android 2.2 interface, which gives you access to white balance and exposure controls, the myTouch’s camera does all this automatically for you. It isn’t a big deal, but it is an example of how these skins can sometimes interfere with features found in stock Android. I honestly think that the myTouch would be slightly better–and perhaps even faster–if it ran the stock Android OS.

Superb Camera/Camcorder

Despite these gripes, I was really happy with how my photos taken with the myTouch’s 5-megapixel camera turned out. On a gloomy World Series day in San Francisco, my outdoor photos looked pretty good, considering the low light. Photos taken indoors looked sharp and vibrant, but perhaps a bit overexposed (a common problem with smartphone cameras). The camera also has an LED flash, autofocus, and face detection.

The phone’s high-definition camcorder captured pretty sharp video of a busy San Francisco street (all of those people in orange and black are headed toward the Giants’ stadium for the World Series Game 2). The sound isn’t the best, however–especially if you are in a windy area, as we were.

The myTouch also has a front-facing camera, which lets you make video calls with or without a Wi-Fi connection. I only briefly tested this feature over HSPA+ as I could find only a few spots where signal strengths were strong enough to make a good video call. In a café on Van Ness St, where we achieved our fastest data speeds, video chat looked really good. And of course, video chat worked fine over Wi-Fi.

You have two options for video chat: Qik or Yahoo Messenger. Both integrate nicely into your address book, too, alerting you which of your contacts have video chatting capabilities. Since I’ve used Qik a lot with other devices, I opted to use Yahoo Messenger’s video chatting app. It was really easy to set up with my existing Yahoo account, and it was simple to make calls directly from my list of contacts.

We are going to be testing this feature in more depth over HSPA+, so stay tuned for a follow-up article; meanwhile, see below.

HSPA+: How Fast Is It?

The myTouch 4G runs on T-Mobile’s 3G HSPA+ network, but the company defends the MyTouch 4G name by pointing out that the connection speeds seen on the phone are on a par with LTE and WiMAX.

And from what we’ve seen, T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network really is kicking out speeds comparable with existing 4G networks–in certain places. Sitting at in a café in San Francisco, where HSPA+ service is available (and strong), a T-Mobile rep achieved download speeds of 3.5 megabits per second and upload speeds of 0.66 mbps per second in one test, then 4.5 mbps down and 1.31 mbps up in a second test. The rep said he’d seen download speeds of 6 mbps earlier in the day.

Unfortunately, over at our offices on the other side of town, we didn’t achieve such high speeds. An average of three tests yielded download speeds of 28 kilobits per second (or 0.03 mbps) and an average upload speed of 86 kbps (or 0.08 mbps) over the regular 3G network. At least in San Francisco, it really depends on where you are in the city to get the high HSPA+ speeds.

Unlike Sprint, which charges $10/month for 4G, whether you have coverage or not, T-Mobile does not charge an extra fee for HSPA+.

Performance

Call quality was pretty good, but I did hear some strange static in the background of a few of my calls. Callers on the other end of the line were quite pleased with how my voice sounded. I made my test calls on a blustery, noisy World Series day (with multiple helicopters flying overhead), but my contacts said that they could barely hear the background noise.

Like a few of the older BlackBerry models on T-Mobile, you can make calls over Wi-Fi with the myTouch 4G. In fact, the myTouch 4G is the first phone on T-Mobile to have this option. My calls over Wi-Fi worked just fine, but be aware that if you leave that Wi-Fi hotspot, your call will be disconnected.

The myTouch 4G is powered by the second-generation Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 768MB of RAM. The phone is incredibly snappy, both in the browser (over Wi-Fi especially) and throughout the software. Native video playback was also quite impressive.

Conclusion

T-Mobile and HTC definitely have a real winner here with the myTouch 4G. The powerful processing speeds paired with HSPA+ data speeds are hard to beat when it comes to watching videos and browsing the Web. The camera is also quite good (though the camcorder’s microphones aren’t the best). If you don’t have HSPA+ available in your city, however, you might want to hold off on buying a myTouch 4G until coverage is expanded. You won’t be able to make video calls over the network unless you have HSPA+ connectivity (you can still make them over Wi-Fi, though). Even in a city where it is supported (like San Francisco), HSPA+ still has a ways to go for area coverage.

The Sharp landed in the upper half of all HDTV sets tested over the last few months. Judges generally rated it good to very good for most content, but they accompanied the ratings with written comments expressing reservations such as “slightly dim” or “seems a little dark.” One problem was that the set’s glossy glass surface was annoyingly reflective in the lit room where we conducted our tests.

Sharp’s TV ads feature George Takei (Sulu from the original Star Trek series) talking about how Sharp sets show yellows that others can’t. There might be something to his claim: A yellow dress in a party scene from the Blu-Ray Disc of The Dark Knight seemed to pop, though not in a pleasing way. Perhaps Sharp’s technology simply doesn’t play well with the way content makers balance colors to accommodate more-traditional pixel arrays. Whatever the reason, our judges weren’t impressed.

The set’s performance in our motion panning tests betrayed its use of edge-lit LED backlighting. Judges noticed slight shadowing in a pan of a blueprint. And though the set handled a diagonal pan of a city perfectly, we spotted some jaggies in our benchmark test (the set has a relatively modest 120Hz refresh rate); some judges also noticed slight loss of video resolution in a separate benchmark test. Overall, the Sharp offers good but not great image quality. In our power consumption tests, it averaged a very low 69 watts of per hour, and registered 0 watts per hour when powered down, making it among the most energy-efficient sets we’ve seen.

Sharp’s design features rounded silver edges surrounding a standard-issue black bezel. In the back of the set, Sharp tries to deal with cable clutter by placing several ports (four HDMI, one PC-in, one composite video-in, ethernet, analog audio-in and -out ports, digital optical audio out, and a USB port) in a depressed area behind a flip-out plastic panel, with a channel for running the cables to the outside. But in my tests this arrangement made setup difficult: You had to bend the cables to get the connectors into the depression, then hold them steady while completing the connections (I needed a second person to help with this), and then bend them at 90 degrees–twice in most cases–to get them through the channel while keeping them flat enough to permit replacement of the flip-out cover.

Sharp left the set’s coaxial and component inputs and an RS-232C terminal (typically used for specialized diagnostics and service) in a separate depressed area without a cover. But the ports face down, needlessly complicating the task of screwing in a coaxial cable–again, I needed help to keep it steady.

Powering up the set produces a typical setup wizard for specifying home vs. store use (which determines video presets), language, and video source before beginning the channel scan. You can follow up with various image and audio tweaks via the serviceable on-screen menus, but the set offers few extras–no picture-in-picture support or headphone jack, for example.

Sharp puts a ton of features and functions at your fingertips with a long, skinny remote bristling with small buttons. It’s clearly designed with universal remote functionality in mind (you get a lot of detailed explanations and help on setting up external devices in a 68-page printed manual that is bound with French and Spanish versions, and is also available online as a PDF).

The remote is a bit confusing in its control of Internet serves. The Aquos Net button launches the Aquos Net home page, where you can launch Yahoo Widgets; but to access Netflix on Demand, you have to press the Dock button. Doing so produces a bar at the bottom of the screen showing a number of available functions, including Netflix and the USB media player. Assigning different categories of Internet content to different buttons on the remote is unintuitive at best.

On the other hand, Netflix and Yahoo Widgets work well once they’re set up. Sharp also offers an interactive support service, Aquos Advantage Live, for registered users (registration is free and is accessible via the Dock).

Sharp’s media player features are fairly basic: The LC-52LE820UN can play MP3s and display JPEG stills from a USB drive, and you can set up a slideshow with background music, but there’s no video support.

I enjoyed listening to music and movie soundtracks on the set’s audio system (two 10-watt speakers and a 15-watt subwoofer). The system’s simulated surround sound was quite good, and it produced more-robust tones than most sets.

Sharp’s aforementioned printed manual, though somewhat cluttered looking, is fairly detailed, and you also get a sheet of connection diagrams in lieu of a quick-start guide.

Most of that additional heft goes toward performance. On ourWorldBench 6 suite, the P151HM achieved a solid score of 132, but its gaming performance was truly impressive. The P151HM carries an Nvidia GTX 460M with 1.5GB of video memory and full support for DirectX 11. On 3DMark 2011 its score was 1800–one of the better marks I’ve seen from a laptop in this class. On the Far Cry 2 benchmark the system delivered a rate of 56.8 frames per second (without antialiasing), which is pretty darned good. Even better, it ran the highly demanding Metro 2033 at 30 fps, albeit at medium settings. Finally, it ran the F1 2010 Formula One racing game, with the high preset enabled, at 67 fps–not too shabby.

Given the solid discrete GPU, as well as the machine’s Intel Core i7 2630QM quad-core CPU and Blu-ray burner, the P151HM could make for a pretty decent media-authoring workstation on the go. The asking price of $1416 (as of March 9, 2011) is a bit on the high side, but you get what you pay for.

Sometimes, performance can take a back seat if other features are lacking; for instance, one thing that can drag down a laptop’s utility is a poor display. Fortunately, the P151HM’s matte, full-1080p LCD panel delivered seemingly accurate color. Blu-ray movies played on the included Blu-ray drive looked sharp, with good color fidelity. Black levels were adequate, though still mostly very dark gray. The one area where the display fell short was in off-axis viewing angles, but that’s a problem with most laptop LCDs.

Audio quality also proved better than anticipated. The P151HM’s speakers don’t get particularly loud, but they are clean and neutral-sounding. That may be due in part to the additional THX TruStudio Pro tuning from Creative Labs that’s included with the system. I tend to avoid stage-widening effects and fake surround, but the stereo imaging and overall audio fidelity on this laptop sounded surprisingly good to my ears. Music was generally balanced, though lacking in deep bass. Movies sounded crisp, with vocals–often heavy on the center channel–coming through very clearly. You may still prefer to use headphones if you want more punch in your gaming or movie audio, but the built-in speakers, coupled with the THX software, definitely impress.

The keyboard is another area in which laptops often disappoint. The Clevo P151HM’s keyboard offers excellent tactile feedback. One cute touch is the set of red arrows silkscreened onto the W-A-S-D key cluster, which many first- and third-person action games use for movement. Overall, the keyboard is quite good, but it lacks dedicated Page Down, Page Up, Home, and End keys; you need to double-press the Fn key or deactivate the nearly full numeric keypad to use those keys. Transport controls for media players also require Fn-key use, as they’re layered on top of the function keys.

Battery life is adequate, at a little short of 3 hours–good enough to watch most movies all the way through, but not quite enough to last through a transcontinental flight. The laptop does get fairly loud and warm under a full gaming load, so be wary of using this PC on your lap if you’re wearing shorts while gaming.

The Clevo P151HM provides five USB ports; two are USB 3.0 ports and one is a combo USB/eSATA port. You’ll also find an actual DVI dual-link connector, plus an HDMI output. Networking includes 802.11n and gigabit ethernet, but no Bluetooth support. Storage is robust, consisting of the aforementioned Blu-ray burner and Seagate’s spiffy 7200-rpm Momentus 9500 hybrid drive.

Weight is the main area in which the AVADirect Clevo P151HM disappoints. Sure, it packs a lot of performance into its plastic chassis, but the system weighs shy of 7 pounds without the power brick. Add the 120W power supply, and you’re approaching 9 pounds. That’s a lot to lug around, even though it pays off in system performance.

Solid, Beautiful Design

First and foremost, the EVO 3D is a gorgeous phone. Like the EVO 4G, the EVO 3D is black with blood-red detailing. Keeping it in the family, the EVO View Android tablet, also announced today, has the same color scheme. The EVO 3D smartphone feels solid, but not bulky in the least. It has a nice, textured rubber backing and a slimmer shape that feels good in hand.

With the battery in place, the HTC EVO 3D weighs 6 ounces. It measures about 5 inches tall, nearly 3 inches wide, and 0.47 inches thick. Its display is a 4.3-inch 3D touchscreen with a sheet of Gorilla Glass for added toughness. Unlike the EVO 4G, the EVO 3D doesn’t sport a kickstand–mainly because the twin 3D cameras occupy most of the space on the rear.

3D Display

One of the most important features of the EVO 3D is, of course, its 3D display. The phone uses parallax barriers to display 3D images and video, without the need for clunky 3D glasses (similar to the concept used on the Nintendo 3DS). The EVO 3D’s 4.3-inch qHD 960-by-540-pixel screen looks terrific in 2D–and pretty good in 3D, as well. Let me be clear, however: This isn’t the kind of 3D you’d see at the movie theater. Images aren’t exactly flying in your face. Rather, it looks like you can peer into the phone much like a diorama.

You need to maintain an absolute dead-on viewing angle to properly appreciate the third dimension, though. If you’re viewing at a slight angle, the image will look like a blurry mess. This can be difficult with a small screen. With an image or a short video clip, it isn’t too hard to hold the phone directly in front of your eyes for a few seconds. And don’t even think about trying to watch 3D movies outside; it completely fades in bright sunlight. If you don’t want to view 3D images and prefer to stick to the standard 2D display, a toggle switch on the side of the device allows you to turn the effect off.

New HTC Sense User Interface

Like the HTC Sensation, the EVO 3D comes with the latest version of the Sense user interface. Sense 3.0 has a brand-new customizable lock screen. You can pick a theme for your lock screen (the phone offers quite a few to choose from) and then select four apps that you visit the most. When you turn on your phone, you’ll see those four apps at the bottom of the screen. To unlock your phone, you drag the circle and move it over an app; you then jump straight to that app. That way, you don’t have to go through multiple menus to reach your e-mail or any other items you access frequently.

The new version of Sense also has a spruced-up Walls system. Rather than having to flick back and forth between your walls, as you do in the stock Android operating system, you can flick the EVO 3D’s screen to make the walls spin. The effect is slightly reminiscent of a carousel and makes navigation a little easier.

You’ll find a clutch of new widgets in Sense, but my favorite is the gorgeous new Weather widget. HTC has a nice tradition of creating visual weather apps, and it is cool to see the company continue to improve them. They might not always be pretty, but they sure are dramatic.

Performance

The EVO 3D is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The Snapdragon processor supports advanced 3D technology, including full 1080p 30-frames-per-second HD video and stereoscopic 3D video capture and playback.

So how much of a difference does dual-core make? We matched the EVO 3D up against its predecessor, the HTC EVO 4G (a single-core device), and there’s quite a big difference–one you’ll notice as soon as you turn on the phone. The EVO 4G had a startup time of 74 seconds (!), while the EVO 3D had a much faster startup time of 13.7 seconds. File transfer speed was about the same for both phones, with the EVO 4G clocking in at 7.8 megabits per second versus the EVO 3D with 7.2 megabits per second.

We also conducted two gaming performance tests using GLBenchmark, a software suite that tests the quality and performance of OpenGL graphics. We conducted two tests: one with antialiasing on, and one with it off. (Antialiasing is a graphics setting present in many games and is intended to make gameplay graphics look smoother–for a full explanation of the pros and cons of antialiasing, check outGeek 101: Making Sense of Anti-Aliasing). We measured the graphics in frames per second (fps)–the more frames per second, the smoother the animations and graphics. The difference between the single-core EVO 4G and the dual-core EVO 3D is huge: With antialiasing off, the EVO 4G averaged 5.7 fps while the EVO 3D averaged 36.5 fps.

We’re currently testing other dual-core phones, including the HTC Sensation and the LG T-Mobile G2x, to see how the EVO 3D’s Snapdragon chipset stacks up against its Tegra 2 competitors.

3D Camera and Video Capture

Despite my mixed feelings about 3D, there’s something quite satisfying about capturing 3D images or videos and then being able to watch them on the same device. But you can also view them on any 3D TV with the help of the phone’s HDMI-out jack. The HDMI jack uses a technology called MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link) that allows both charging and HDMI-out via the same port.

Like the Sensation 4G, the EVO 3D comes loaded with Watch, HTC’s new movie and TV-show streaming service. With Watch, you can download videos and start viewing them immediately. Watch is well integrated into Sense, making it easier to find the videos you want to, um, watch. The app’s interface is clean, and movies are easy to find, but the library is pretty sparse at this point. You’ll find some newly released movies like Due Date and some classics like Top Gun. If you’re looking for something in particular, though, you’re not likely to find it (no Spinal Tap!). A few popular TV shows likeChuck and Gossip Girl are available, but you’re limited to one or two seasons of episodes.

Data Speeds and Call Quality

The EVO is also juiced with Sprint’s 4G data speeds, and it comes with a 4G mobile hotspot feature that lets you share your connection with up to eight devices. I tested the EVO 3D’s data speeds using the FCC Speedtest app in the South Park area of San Francisco. The EVO 3D achieved average download speeds of 3.59 megabits per second and average upload speeds of 1.42 mbps. This is in line with other 4G Sprint phones we have tested in the past. And thank goodness for the 4G widget on Sprint phones, which makes it easy to switch 4G on and off (this setting is buried in the Settings menu on Verizon’s 4G phones).

Call quality over Sprint’s network in San Francisco was okay, though it could be uneven at times.

Bottom Line

The EVO 3D is a powerful phone–3D or not. My opinion of 3D remains pretty much the same: It is fun to watch short videos in 3D or take 3D photos, but it is definitely still a novelty feature. That said, the EVO 3D’s design is gorgeous, and the combination of dual-core Snapdragon processors with 4G can’t be beat. It is definitely the best phone on Sprint, and a worthy successor to the original EVO.

All this goodness doesn’t come cheap, however: The $3500 suggested retail price (as of October 1, 2010) makes the UN55C8000 one of the more expensive HDTVs we’ve seen in its screen-size class. You can certainly find good 55-inch sets for a lot less these days. But if your wallet can take the hit, the UN55C8000 will repay you by delivering pretty much the best of everything you can get in a current high-end HDTV.

In our juried image-quality tests, the UN55C8000 achieved some of the highest scores we’ve ever seen–across the board and for all content types. Judges were especially blown away by the set’s contrast, brightness, and color: Written comments included praise such as “great color,” “beautiful detail,” and “awesome.” We did observe some small motion artifacts in the Blu-ray Disc clips for The Dark Knight, and some slight shadows in a panning test betrayed the set’s use of edge-lit LED technology; but whatever secret sauce Samsung used to deal with the common problem of uneven lighting that afflicts edge-lit panels worked so well that the UN55C8000 outperformed sets using pricier full-array LEDs (which also tend to make sets thicker).

Overall, this HDTV handled motion exceptionally smoothly, as we’d expect from an LCD TV with a 240Hz refresh rate. It also aced our tests for jaggies and video resolution, underscoring how brilliantly the UN55C8000 handles image quality. It does this without gobbling up very much energy, too. In our tests, it averaged a modest 84 watts per hour when in use, one of the lowest energy consumption rates we’ve recorded for a set of this size.

But there’s plenty more to like, starting with the UN55C8000′s superskinny profile of less than 1 inch thick. To keep the set so slim, Samsung introduced some unusual design elements, including adapter cables for connecting a coaxial cable (for an antenna or cable TV) and an ethernet cable (to connect the set to your home network). The coaxial adapter cable was especially helpful, eliminating the contortions required to reach the conventional coaxial port in some sets, let alone those required to hold the cable steady while screwing it in. The end of the adapter cable slid onto its input on the set in a matter of seconds.

Aside from the aforementioned ethernet and coax inputs, the UN55C8000 has a fairly standard set of inputs and outputs: four HDMI (all in the back of the unit); one component; one composite; one PC input (D-Sub); PC and DVi audio inputs; and optical digital and headphone outputs. The set also has two USB ports, so you can use one to add a Wi-Fi adapter (an extra-cost networking option) and the other ro accommodate a flash drive containing media you wish to play back.

The Series 8 remote looks as cool as the set, with an unusual touch-sensitive, brushed-metal surface, but it’s not very user-friendly. For instance, there’s a button to turn on lighting for the remote, but the lighting was difficult to see–and the touch-sensitive surface doesn’t provide the tactile cues you get from more-traditional buttons. Still, in a well-lit room you should have no difficulty finding the keys you need: The remote makes switching inputs, accessing content, and running Internet apps a breeze, with dedicated buttons for these functions. Meanwhile, a Tools button affords easy access to frequently used settings.

Samsung’s on-screen menus haven’t changed much in the Series 8: They’re still among the best looking and most intuitive we’ve seen. A standard first-time use wizard gets you up and running fairly quickly, and initiates the usual channel scan if needed.

Samsung packages a wide array of Internet content for its customers, including most major commercial streaming-media services and numerous social media sites, plus assorted news, sports, and games–and even Skype (you’ll need a Webcam with a mic to handle video calls, though). You must download some of these items (the games, for example) as Samsung Apps, and you must pay for some of them (in addition to maintaining whatever accounts the media services require). Be prepared to invest a fair amount of time into setting things up, especially in the case of services such as Netflix and YouTube, which have log-in and activation requirements that are somewhat cumbersome to complete when you use the remote’s numeric keypad for data entry.

One nice feature of the set is its ability to store log-in credentials for multiple services in profiles for different users in a single household. To get to your Facebook, YouTube, or other account, simply log in to your profile on the set.

Samsung also offers a very polished media player, with support for streaming media from DLNA-compliant media servers on your home network as well as for content from a USB flash drive. The player can handle numerous media formats, and it offers advanced features for sorting content and displaying slideshows. The set also supports picture-in-picture for different inputs, so you can keep an eye on a sportscast while watching a Blu-ray movie, for example.

The simulated surround-sound audio from the set’s two 15-watt speakers was surprisingly robust for such a thin device, though the absence of a subwoofer made for somewhat anemic bass tones. Still, the set produced a pleasing audio soundtrack for Phantom of the Opera on Blu-ray Disc.

Samsung provides a serviceable setup sheet and a 67-page printed manual (bound together with French and Spanish versions), both of which are available for download online. The Website also has an downloadable setup guide for Skype. The manual explores the set’s many functions in depth, but would have benefited from more illustrations.

Despite minor flaws, the UN55C8000 bundles superb image quality with great Internet and media-player features. If you’re willing to pay top dollar, Samsung delivers the goods.