Consumer Technology News

Nokia 6220 Classic

Purple reign: Nokia's new blower comes with a penchant for purple

Adorned in a Boy George-esque purple casing this phone is a real looker. Weighing in at 90g and measuring up to a mere 108mm it's not your Nokia N95 pocket drooper.

It's not just about looks with this mobile phone, it packs the standard 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens and a VGA camcorder. Pictures are as detailed as a pixel patchwork quilt and the red eye reduction banishes eye shine.

Viewing the pictures on the 2.2inch screen is a breeze. The screen is bright and the menu's are as easy to follow as a manual for a bicycle helmet. Scroll through your pics, music and browse the tinterweb using the scroll pad and sausage finger-friendly buttons.

Music wise- you get 13 hours playback but switch to use the FM radio and it sucks juice like a volt hungry vamp. Bump up the 256MB memory on board to 8GB with a micro SD card, and strap on your own cans into the headphone jack. Sound quality doesn't compete with the likes of the Sony Ericsson W910, but we can't quibble. We caught the warbling delights of Bono through our cans.

Nokia's been reeling out phones faster than Gazza guzzling his pint. The 6220 Classic is another?erm classic? Practical, purple and dull.

Blu-ray disk of the week: Be Kind Rewind

In a new weekly feature to T3.com, we bring you the best movie set in a video store since Clerks.

Head towards Empire Records, by-passing the annoyingly-cool people, stopping to pick up some clever and imaginative ideas along the way and you'll end up outside the Be Kind Rewind video store.

Be Kind Rewind sees New Jersey no-hoper Jerry (Black) and reluctant best pal Mike (Mos Def) striving to save a condemned VHS store, further ruined when Jerry becomes magnetised in an electrical mishap and wipes all the tapes.

Eager to please a friend of Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover), the owner, the pair hilariously remake Ghostbusters. Soon, demand for their "Sweded" homage pictures transform them from barrel-scraping blag-artists to the guerrilla film-makers extraordinaire.

Director Michel Gondry's penchant for the abstract, which first shone through in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and then The Science of Sleep re-emerges here through the endearingly clever low-budget incarnations of classic Hollywood scenes. The early stages stretch believability, but it's all part of the charm of this great little flick.

JB's improv-heavy, shtick as a lovable, but annoying-to-all, doofus is all very familiar but not unwelcome, married beautifully with a quirky feel-good story that'll warm your heart. The best film based in a video store since Clerks.

A Blu-ray buy?

The heart of this movie lies in the characters most amateur of amateur filmmaking, so glorious 1080p almost feels like you're doing it a disservice. There's nothing here that can hugely be enhanced by Hi-Def. Like an old record player... it just sounds better.

Extras

Always good value with Jack Black on the billing, they feature a making of featurette, a conversation with JB and Gondry and some killer improvisations from Black and Moss Def. There's also the "Fats (Waller) Was Born Here" creation which rounds off the movie.

Caterham R500

Is the Caterham the biggest hit of bowel-slackening adrenaline you can buy on four wheels?

Probably, yes. The new Caterham R500 has a lot to live up to: the original version set acceleration records and scared the wits out of anyone bold enough to strap themselves into its anorexic structure. And yet this new R500 is more powerful, and more sophisticated than ever before, but it also aims to be more friendly - still offering the same thrills, but with a useable softer side.

The results are an emphatic success. With a 2.0 litre Ford Duratec engine tuned to an incredible 263bhp, and a chassis assembled from thinner gauge aluminium and carbon fibre, the R500 actually beats the 500bhp per ton ratio that provides its name.

You can order your R500 with a windscreen and a normal six-speed manual gearbox, but for the full sensory assault grab a crash helmet, order the tiny carbon aero screens that flip the air over your head. Fork out an additional £2,950 for the six speed sequential race gearbox: push the lever to go down the gears; pull back to go up them, all in an instant.

Driven 'normally' the R500 is an event: the heat, the wild sound from engine, exhaust and gears, the rush of air over you, the telepathic feel through the steering and chassis.

But really push the engine as hard as you can and the R500 is so fast you can hardly see; so manically accelerative that you'll be screaming profanities into your visor. Imagine what 0-60mph in just 2.9 seconds feels like.

LG 42PG6000

The new skinny LG TV on the block.

£700 isn't much to shell out on a 42-inch monster plasma, so you could be forgiven for expecting this to be a plastic monstrosity with a crap picture.

But it isn't! Thanks to the "frameless" design, this is actually one of the best-looking plasma TVs around, and even if its thinness is more illusion than fact (it's about 80mm deep), you won't be ashamed to have this trophy hanging on your wall.

Performance? Well, it's certainly not the best in its class: black levels aren't too hot by plasma standards, and the glass screen panel reflects a lot of light back at you - so make sure your curtains are thick.

JVC LT-42DS9

JVC joins the size zero trend and slims down to nothing

With the LT-42DS9 JVC has pulled out the scissors and snipped this televison in two ways: while the 74mm-deep tuner model means it's not as ironing board-flat as other tv's, at parts it's 34mm deep; and thanks to its slim frame it's also brilliantly narrow.

We reckon it's the most compact 42-inch TV on the market. Thankfully it's no lightweight when it comes to performance and specs: the screen is a full 1080p jobbie that excels with HD content and games, delivering natural colours and sharp detail, while the sound is chunky and bass-heavy and there are inputs aplenty, including three HDMIs.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

When real life just doesn't cut it...

With a back-catalogue of role playing and adventure games under its belt, Eidos is perfectly poised to take on the unstoppable force of Warcraft. Its contender comes in the gore-soaked form of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

The tone is darker, and more adult than most in the Massively Multiplayer genre. Sprawling landscapes and cavernous interiors look as good as their frankly incredible concept art, and the cartoonish and colourful look of previous RPGs has been cast aside in favour of visceral, realistic brutality. And we do love a bit of realistic brutality.

So it trounces its peers in the visuals department, but it lets itself down in terms of maturity. It's violent, sure, but by fitting every female character with absurdly large breasts and sod-all to cover them, a more appropriate title might have been 'Norks 'n Orcs'.

And it does nothing to dispel the stereotype of MMORPG fans as Dungeons and Dragons-playing, women-fearing loners.

It feels like a natural progression from WoW. The control system is strikingly similar, though battles require you to be more mobile and quick-witted. Some variation has been injected into the quests to make them less repetitive, and adventuring in groups encourages some nifty teamwork.

The tutorial system, however, remains painfully inadequate and little is explained about developing you character. This is disappointing for a game supposedly welcoming for newcomers. Having said that, if you're already a fan of online RPGs then you're likely to have a riotous time with Age of Conan from the get-go. Let the entrails fly...

Ricoh R8

Sexy? Check. Small? Check. This snapper looks like a regulation compact, but what lurks beneath?

With its retro design the Ricoh offers a very generous 28mm wide-angle 7x optical zoom. Face detection's here and loads of other tweaks, but without shutter or aperture priority, doesn't offer full manual control.

Ricoh's wisely avoided slapping on a touchscreen here, instead you get an exceptional high-res 2.7in screen, with bags of detail. Ricoh's adopted a joystick control, but the nodule shape make the whole experience much smoother.

Macro mode trounces others on the market, getting as close as 1cm. Pictures aren't quite as pleasing, they seem a little softer, although there's bags of detail - even in shadow areas. You can zoom in movie mode, although the staggered zoom makes for a jerky ride.