When we began our review of the BlackBerry Torch (aka the Bold 9800), our hearts were all aflutter. The leaked shots we’d been seeing of some kind of Palm Pre-esque RIM  slider were different and frankly weird enough to cause a kind of low hum gadget lust. Furthermore, although no one on the Engadget team was blown away by what the company had shown us in recent BlackBerry OS 6 demo videos, the promise of a substantially revamped UI and new, Webkit-powered browser certainly got us interested. Even if Research in Motion had been slipping on its once-unassailable smartphone game, there was a sentiment amongst the team that the opportunity for a return to innovative, industry-driving design was wide open for the Canadian company. So when we got our very own Torch to play with, we were understandably excited. A new OS, a new form-factor (completely  new for RIM), and from what we could tell, a new outlook from the company about where it wanted to target this product: namely, the average consumer. A great story in the making, no? But it’s a fiercely competitive market out there, with devices like the EVO 4G, iPhone 4, and Galaxy S  line all vying for the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of the buyer. Can the BlackBerry Torch pick up where hugely successful models like the Curve and Bold have left off? Or is the new phone too little and too late in an industry where technology advances not by tiny step but leaps and bounds? Get the answer to that question — and many, many more — in the full Engadget review below!

Hardware

The first thing you’ll notice about the Torch, obviously, is that it looks very much like the current crop of BlackBerry devices. Besides that fact that yes, it slides open, you’re basically dealing with the same industrial design that we’ve come to know from RIM over the past two years or so. Sure, there are variations on a theme, but side-by-side with the Bold 9700, it’s obvious to see where Torch got its looks from.

The size and shape of the device is nearly identical to the 9700, and in fact, its dimensions (4.4-inches up and down by 2.4-inches across when closed) are within spitting distance of the simpler, portrait QWERTY model. The thickness differs by a tiny margin (the Torch is 0.57-inches thick, while the Bold is 0.56-inches), though for some reason it feels much more significant when holding the two in your hand. Compared to more streamlined devices like the Captivate or iPhone 4… well, it has a full keyboard, okay? The Torch keeps the familiar, metal-like (it’s plastic) bezel around the edges of the phone, looping around back just as with the Bold, though this time it’s split in two pieces due to the separate screen and keyboard portions of the phone. The front of the device is mostly taken up by the Torch’s 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen (480 x 360, just like the Storm and Storm2), though you’ll find the familiar BlackBerry call, menu, back, and end buttons and optical trackpad just below the display. Along the right side of the phone is a 3.5mm headphone jack, volume rockers, and user-assignable convenience key (it defaults to the camera), while the left side houses only the Micro USB jack. Up top there are mute and lock buttons, while the phone’s 5 megapixel camera and LED flash sit in a familiar spot along the back of the phone.

As you should know by now, the screen slides up on a nearly invisible metal track to reveal a rather traditional BlackBerry QWERTY down below. The sliding action feels quite solid, though it’s got some resistance, and we did have trouble quickly popping it open with our thumb once in awhile. The width of the keyboard is about the same as the Bold 9700, but slightly narrower, and the keys are more depressed than previous devices in RIM’s arsenal. Still, using the QWERTY was completely natural and our confidence while typing was nearly as high as it is when using the 9700. Nothing really compares to the spacious keyboard of the original Bold, but for a device packing a larger touchscreen, there’s little compromise. It blows the Pre’s keyboard out of the water, for sure.

In all, we were impressed with the technical aspects of RIM’s design here — the company certainly built a solid, capable device from a hardware perspective. Still, one can’t help but feel that the look of the Torch is woefully dated in comparison to some of the newer phones previously mentioned in this review. Next to the current crop of touchscreen-only devices (and even in comparison to the company’s 9700), it looks old and bloated, strongly reminiscent of something like the iPAQ 110 — and that’s not a good thing. There’s nothing daring or lust-worthy about this design. When we first spied images of the Torch, the rumor was that the model we were seeing was an older prototype that had been discarded, and we kind of wish that had been true. From a design standpoint, it’s not enough to just iterate in the smartphone market — you’ve got to ignite a buyer’s desire to own something on a visceral level, and the Torch misses the mark by a long shot.

Internals

The GSM device is launching on AT&T’s 3G network (UMTS 2100 / 1900 / 850 / 800 MHz), though we would expect to see the handset eventually roll out to other carriers in one form or another.

As we said, the Torch sports a 480 x 360 capacitive display, which is adequate for the device but already a generation behind the competition in terms of resolution and pixel density. In fact, almost every smartphone we’ve reviewed this year — save for a few low-end models — sport a higher res display than the Torch. We’re unclear as to why RIM didn’t bring the screen up to at least 480 x 800, but we suspect it has something to do with backwards compatibility with apps. Compared to other displays, text looked blocky, and images didn’t have the clarity we would have expected from a smartphone in 2010. Touch sensitivity wasn’t outstanding on our review unit, making for a real lack of confidence when it came to finger tracking. We feel like there’s polishing to be done on the software side that would greatly improve the experience, particularly when attempting more precise pinch-to-zoom and swipe gestures (more on that in a moment). Oh, and SurePress? Nowhere to be found on the Torch.

Inside, the phone packs 512MB of RAM (doubling that of the Bold 9700 but the same as the 9650) and 4GB of hardwired storage, with a microSD slot for additional storage up to 32GB (you get a 4GB card in the box). As you would expect, there’s 802.11b/g/n WiFi on board along with Bluetooth 2.1 support, as well as an AGPS chip for when you get lost. Disappointingly, RIM is still using the same Marvell CPU found in the 9700, clocked at 624MHz (though the company claims this is a newer generation chip). In our testing, performance was sluggish in some areas, and we can’t help but wonder if it was a fault of the software or the slower processor speed. Not to harp on this, but with competition like the Nexus One and Droid X, it seems logical that RIM would put a little more horsepower into these phones.

Camera

The Torch has a 5 megapixel camera along with an LED flash, which is certainly a contemporary arrangement. There’s nothing particularly notable about the lens itself from what we could discern, though it’s clear that RIM has put a lot of time and energy into making the photo-taking experience on the Torch a more seamless experience than on its previous phones. It’s certainly easier to pick from a variety of preset modes, like portrait or sports, though we found the default setting to be fairly bad at capturing steady looking shots. For some reason, the camera was set to shoot in “continuous” mode, when single-shot provided much better results. As far as the photo quality goes, the device does an excellent job of capturing images — particularly close-ups, though colors and black details looked a bit washed out to our eyes (you can see a selection of shots in the gallery below).

On the video front, the camera can shoot up to 640 x 480 resolution clips, still not competitive with most top-tier smartphones hitting the market right now (720p at 30 FPS is quickly becoming the standard). Again, here’s a spot where we can’t help but think that a faster CPU might have allowed RIM to take it up a notch — instead the company is just treading water with its offerings.

The updated pictures app on the phone makes it easier to organize your collections, though we were a little bothered by the time it takes to render zoomed-in views of shots taken. One nice addition is pinch-to-zoom in the gallery viewer, since RIM is keeping up with the Joneses.

Call quality and speakerphone

Calls on the Torch were crisp and clear, and as with previous BlackBerry devices, getting into and out of calls was a breeze. We also found the speakerphone quality to be reasonably high, though the midrange of the audio felt a bit shrill at high volumes. Overall, making and receiving calls on the phone was a pain-free and most importantly fast experience.

As far as antenna concerns go, we didn’t notice any outstanding issues with signal loss or an unusual amount of dropped calls. We suspect that we’re in particularly good range of a cell tower, but our guess is that most users’ experiences with the phone will be similar. We don’t see an Antennagate cropping up for RIM.

Software

Of course, the real story with the Torch is not the hardware. Rather, it’s RIM’s next play in the OS department — BlackBerry 6. While it’s not the radical departure some were hoping for, the revamped operating system takes some extreme steps to deal with issues that have plagued BlackBerry phones for quite awhile. In particular, the company has canned its awful web browsing experience in exchange for a new Webkit-based browser, and Webkit also serves as the new underlying framework for email on the phone, as well as a new class of applications coded using web standards (sound familiar?). Additionally, RIM has gone to great lengths in 6 to reduce the “menus within menus” experience of the previous operating system and has included a powerful universal search alongside a social networking tool which allows you to aggregate RSS feeds and services like Twitter or Facebook into a single view. There are a lot of changes, so we’re going to go step-by-step through what we consider the biggest changes for the BlackBerry platform.

Look and feel

Overall, if you’re a BlackBerry user coming off of a OS 5 device, you won’t feel totally freaked out when you see the homescreen on 6, though there are some notable differences. RIM has cleaned up and smoothed out a lot of the iconography and text in the UI, making the whole OS feel much more cohesive and consistent. Graphically, BlackBerry 6 occupies the same space as OS 5, though it feels softer, more polished, and a bit more upscale. Nearly every part of the interface has been altered in some way, though the most notable changes are present in the homescreen.

In the previous version of the BlackBerry OS, you had two basic views, the first being a screen with your favorite (or top) apps, time, date, and message alerts, and quick access to sound profile settings. The second screen was basically your entire collection of apps and folders with little information otherwise (think: the iPhone homescreen). RIM has now joined these two views together by stealing a move from Android’s playbook: a window that slides up from the bottom of the display showing your apps. You can notch this window into place to show everything (four rows), or any variation between all and nothing. We kept ours at the standard view of four apps at a time (one row), though it’s easy to toggle between sizes. Not only can you bring this window up onto your homescreen and scroll vertically through it, but you can also swipe side to side for different groupings of apps, like “favorites” or “media.” You can also swipe on the top bar of this window when its reduced to move through groups of apps. RIM has also added a persistent notification alert to this screen via a small row of icons at the top of the page. This allows you to see social networking, email, SMS, call, and calendar alerts all in one place. Like Android, this drops down a separate window showing your most recent activity, and each notification can be clicked on to transport you to the app.

Everything on the homescreen seems designed to help you get to your most used functions quickly, which is wonderful. Tapping on the time brings up your network connection manager and alarm settings, tapping on the profiles icon lets you choose your sound setup, and hitting the search icon naturally brings up your search window (more on that in a second). It all works really well, and we feel like RIM has made the right amount of compromises here to make getting around the OS cleaner and easier. Of course, there are still lots of ways to do things in BlackBerry 6, so sometimes moving from place to place can get a little confusing. You have the choice of using the touchscreen, trackpad, or search for finding items, and in addition to the standard menu key to bring up contextual menus, long-pressing on items all over the OS reveals a separate context menu with many (though not all) of the menu key items. Just as with Windows Phone 7, the long press is a kind of mystery meat in this user experience — it does what you’d expect it to do, but there’s a weird overlap with the menu key, and it’s inconsistent throughout. We’re guessing this has a lot to do with the fact that RIM is planning to update its older, non-touchscreen devices with the new OS — while not necessarily a bad thing, it does create sometimes-chaotic interaction.

Menus and messaging apps have all been given the once over as well, and there’s now Storm-like inertial scrolling in lists. RIM has also altered the manner in which you adjust settings on the phone, giving you a more graphic-heavy menu to navigate preferences, which is a huge improvement over the lists seen in the last version of the operating system. While most applications will look familiar to BlackBerry users, there seems to be less clutter (we’ll look closer at specific apps below). One of the nice touches we liked in the OS is a method of selecting text by tapping at the beginning and end of the section you want with two fingers — a really smart and useful idea.

If you’re a Bold fan, then you’re probably used to a pretty snappy UI… but you’re also probably used to seeing some freezes and ticking clocks. That doesn’t change with the Torch. As we said previously, the phone is running atop a fairly slow CPU (given the current climate) and RIM seems to be throwing a lot more at it — in terms of functionality and graphics — than in previous phones. The result is a mixed bag: sometimes you feel like you’re blazing through the device, while other times you’re presented with an aggravating freeze. What makes it worse is that you’ll get the clock in some scenarios and not in others, so you may be frantically tapping on the screen while the phone’s display is totally static. In most modern smartphones, this is not a common experience. In fact, on almost every new Android device we’ve reviewed and certainly the iPhone 4, we never ran into issues where the device simply stalls out. It feels like the Torch is already butting up against the limits of its abilities, and nothing genuinely CPU intensive seems to be going on. It’s not like the phone is running 3D games in the background, that’s for sure.

Universal search

One of the biggest — and probably the best — new feature in BlackBerry 6 is the universal search function. Basically, you’re able to find just about any piece of content on the phone simply by beginning to type the name into the device. That goes for apps, music, contacts, notes, emails… hell, it’s just about everything. You can set preferences for what you do and don’t want to search, but it’s fast and simple enough that we didn’t feel the need to kill any categories. Since the Torch offers lots and lots of ways to get somewhere, this seriously simplifies things — think Spotlight on a Mac, but on your phone and way faster. It’s actually the best search we’ve seen on any mobile device; it really delivers on the “everything at your fingertips” promise. In terms of new features that work the way they’re advertised on the box, RIM’s universal search is one of the few.

Mail, messaging, and social networking

Research In Motion trades primarily on the strength of its BlackBerry email and messaging services, so you would expect a reasonably good experience here — and if you’re plugged into the RIM way of doing things, your experience will be better than ever before, most likely. The problem comes if you’re not plugged into the RIM way of doing things. Then, you’ve got a problem.

Let’s look at mail first. Now, we’re primarily Gmail users, which means we’re not syncing this phone with a corporate mail account humming along on RIM’s servers. It also means that we’re in luck because the BlackBerry platform is pretty much the only place outside of Android that you can get a reasonably good Gmail experience. Archiving, threaded conversations, labels, starring, spam management — it’s all present in a built-in plugin made specifically for Gmail. Getting started is easy, as it only requires your standard Gmail login. You’re then given an option to sync your contacts (it will sync your mail calendar whether you like it or not). So far so good. Once your email is setup, it’s pushed to the phone instantly, and changes you make on the phone (creating labels, archiving, labeling, etc.) are pushed back to Google’s servers almost immediately. Unfortunately, there’s one piece of this puzzle missing, and it’s a doozy: when you make changes directly in your Gmail account (in a browser), the changes take ages to get pushed back to the phone. In fact, sometimes the changes never seem to make it back to the phone. So if you just triaged your inbox on your computer, your phone will still make it look like you’ve got an inbox full of unread messages — and they are unread on the phone. There seems to be a fundamental breakdown in this stage of Gmail for RIM devices, and it makes dealing with Gmail accounts on the phone a royal pain. Now, that may not bother a lot of users, but if RIM wants to attract the everyman to this phone — the person who actually uses Gmail — it’s going to have to do a little better than this.

On that note, what’s also confusing about RIM’s handling of mail is that you’ve got two inboxes — your dedicated Gmail (or whatever service you use) inbox, and then your “messages” folder, which actually seems to catch more mail. That’s all well and good, but none of the Gmail features are present in this inbox (not even threaded messaging). That would be fine if you could ignore this messaging folder and just manage your mail in your proper inbox, but RIM forces you into this inbox because it’s the place those handy homescreen notifications take you if you click on them. Does this actually make sense to anyone in the world? Why does RIM give users two different inboxes with two sets of functionality to handle the same messages? The issue is further compounded by using searches within the Gmail inbox — this also presents another, slightly skewed set of options. For instance, when you search for a string, you can archive a set of those messages. You have to back out to the main inbox and go one by one. It is a deeply confusing and unnecessary system for handling email (Gmail, at least), and we really would like to see the company clear up these obvious problems.

Hey, we get it, BlackBerry users love this unified messaging inbox where they see all their SMS, MMS, BBM, and email mashed up into one place. But not everyone wants to handle their communication like that, and RIM doesn’t really give you a choice. It’s like the company threw off the Gmail integration as a lark, and just kind of tolerates the idea that a customer would want to have a separate inbox. You can set options to exclude your messages from showing up here, but then you lose out on that new quick jump to your email from the notification bar. In a perfect world, you would get the option to choose where that jump takes you for what messages — or perhaps have an option that says “always default to X mailbox.” Just a thought.

Yes, we’re griping, but the mail experience still has lots and lots of great features that make for a solid experience, despite our woes. For starters, the viewer now utilizes Webkit for messages, so your emails should turn up looking much better than they have in previous version of the BlackBerry OS. Furthermore, the search in mail is excellent, displaying results almost as fast as we could type them. And let’s not forget that you’re dealing with the folks that practically invented push email, so if you’re impatient (at least about incoming mail), this will be music to your ears.

And that brings us to the new social networking features of OS 6 — namely, a new application called Social Feeds that combines all of your Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging (AIM, Yahoo!, and Gtalk), and RSS feeds in one handy place. The problem here is that, just like in other places on the phone, you feel like you’re being handed too many options to deal with the same content. For instance, a dedicated Twitter app is still loaded onto the device which ties into your messaging inbox, so you end up looking at Twitter messages in two separate places (oh wait… three separate places). The same is true for Facebook. And what’s really galling is that you can’t even use proper application functions in Social Feeds — if you want to respond to someone on Twitter, you have to view the message in the Twitter app. It’s like RIM had an idea to combine every single service into one big silo, got cold feet, and gave us a half-step instead. We’re not necessarily saying that we would have liked to see everything in one bucket, but between dedicated inboxes, the combined messaging view, plus standalone Twitter, Facebook, AIM, and Social Feeds apps, the landscape for communication on the Torch (and OS 6) is fraught with mixed… um, messages. What should have been distilled into a deeply threaded function of the new UI is now just a messy jumble of seemingly random ideas about how people communicate.

The browser

Let’s be blunt — the BlackBerry browser up until this point has been the biggest pain point in RIM’s universe. No matter what good you could say about previous devices, there would always come a point when you had to talk about how abysmally bad the browser was. We’re not going to spend much time here rehashing the past, but let’s just say that RIM’s browser was so bad that they had to buy a new company to fix the issue. It should come as no surprise that this new phone bares the name of that company — that’s how big of a deal it is.

So, BlackBerry 6 got itself a bonafide Webkit-based browser, but does it fix the problems? In a word: yes. For the most part, the browser on the Torch is leaps and bounds beyond anything that RIM has put in a phone before. If you’re used to the experience of using a Pre, iPhone, or Android device, you’ll feel right at home. Web pages display correctly and reasonably quickly, and all the standard accouterments are here, including pinch-to-zoom, tabbed browsing, and text reflowing. Basically, it’s a pretty good mobile browser with some extra features that we really like (such as an actual cursor, which allows you to navigate sites the way god intended). But there are problems too, the main one being that it doesn’t seem like the Torch’s guts have the goods to pull off a seamless browsing experience, so when you’re zooming in and out and panning around you get a lot of freezes while loading, artifacted content that takes ages to render, and generally choppy behavior (as you can see in the video below). There’s also no support here for Flash or HTML5 video, so you’re limited to YouTube if you want to watch video on the go.

It’s an uneven experience, overall — we’re certainly happy to see RIM embracing Webkit, but we just wish the phone had the horsepower to deliver a really killer experience. We don’t know if its memory constraints (less likely), RIM’s method of bottlenecking data through its servers (somewhat likely), or the speed and power of the CPU (much more likely), but the browser doesn’t feel as competitive as it should with other phones in this class and price range.

Media player / WiFi syncing

The media sections of the OS have been significantly revamped along with the rest of the apps here, so it should come as no surprise that they seem more polished and capable than previous versions. In particular, we like the new Cover Flow-esque browsing options, though for day-to-day listening we found the standard list view of artists and tracks a little more useful. We had little trouble getting music on and off the device, though we ran into a couple of problems with file format issues when syncing, and for video playback, the device scoffed at some MP4 files we’d loaded up.

As you may have heard, the newest version of BlackBerry Desktop allows WiFi syncing with your phone, meaning you’re able to wirelessly transmit music from your PC to your phone (Windows-only right now). In our testing we had mixed results. Some songs we couldn’t get to show up at all in our sync list, while others didn’t pass the litmus test for file format compatibility (word to the wise, if you’re a Zune user, be prepared to leave your WMV files behind). The concept is obviously great, but the execution needs a little work here — it’s far more confusing and inconsistent than we would have liked.

App compatibility / App performance

This may come as a shock to some users, but you can expect your favorite apps to not work with the Torch out of the box. RIM’s new OS doesn’t seem to permit much in the way of backwards compatibility, so we found ourselves high and dry for a few must-have applications (in particular, the entire suite of Google apps… and their web counterparts don’t recognize the browser properly, either). We had quite a few issues with apps not working (or not working properly) on the new platform, and even though RIM has improved the App World experience, there’s no differentiation in the store to tell you if what you’re about to buy will function with the device. This may just be a review-period-only situation, but it was frustrating to be unable to run a lot of software we actually wanted to use on the phone.

Beyond that, the apps we did run seemed fine, but we do have to once again take issue with the performance of this phone as it relates to the rest of the smartphone market. For instance, the Torch comes preloaded with a number of pieces of bloatware and a handful of games, one of which is Sonic the Hedgehog. Now, the game this port is based on is about 20 years old, and even our Treo 650 could run an emulator that played a pixel perfect version of the title (an arcade side-scroller). On the Torch, however, the experience is abysmal. Slowdowns, garbled audio, horrible controls. It’s actually kind of sad. Now compare that to the kind of fully developed 3D gaming we see on the iPhone, Palm Pre, and even Android, and it’s more than a little disheartening. It’s 2010 — if these are “super apps” (Mike Lazaridis’ words), we’re expecting a lot more than this. We know gaming might not be a focus of most users’ needs, but they’re a great indicator of how flexible and powerful a platform is, and what we’ve seen doesn’t look promising. Coupled with the fact that RIM told us in a meeting that there would be no 3D APIs and no OpenGL 2.0 support for BlackBerry 6, we’re not feeling psyched.

One ray of light here is that RIM is now pushing web standards-based apps (think: webOS) as a viable option for developers, and the new SDK will allow for deeper hooks into the OS (like use of notifications). That could breathe some new life into the platform, and performance should be consistent, though as we’ve seen with Apple’s web apps and webOS, this isn’t necessarily a strategy for market domination.

Battery life

As with every BlackBerry we’ve used, the battery life on the Torch seemed exceptional to us. In comparison to most other phones we’ve tested recently, RIM’s offering sits at the top of the heap in terms of longevity. There were actually a few days we tested without charging overnight, and when we awoke we were surprised to find that the battery indicator had barely moved — even with lots of emails and messages coming down while we were sleeping. It’s obvious that the company has put a lot of effort into making sure that the Torch sips rather than gulps battery life, and they certainly seem to have succeeded. If you’re on the move a lot or a heavy user, you won’t be disappointed — and let’s not forget that you can always get a second battery or larger third-party battery if you’ve really got to go the distance.

Wrap-up

It’s tough to feel really excited about the BlackBerry Torch and OS 6 after heavy testing. We had high hopes coming into this review that the new operating system would be more than a fresh coat of paint on an aging user experience — that we were going to see substantial changes in the attitude and direction of the company. While there are notable improvements here and much that is laudable, what we’re ultimately left with is, at its core, more of the same. For all the improvements in the browser, the more upscale fit-and-finish of the UI, and the thoughtful changes in basic functionality, we still feel like this device is a generation behind the market. Instead of meeting the rising stars of the smartphone world (Apple and Google) head-on, RIM has taken something more like baby steps toward innovation. The company seems convinced that it’s got a better idea about what its customers want and how a smartphone should act in 2010, but we can’t say we agree. The Torch seems sluggish, underpowered, and dated from a hardware design standpoint, and BlackBerry 6, despite its new features and polish, still feels woefully behind the curve. To call the Torch the “best BlackBerry ever” wouldn’t be an understatement, but unfortunately for RIM and the faithful, their best isn’t nearly good enough.

Love can make you laugh; love can make you cry. This page is dedicated to people who have experienced the sorrowful side of love. These sad love quotes reflect your emotions, share your grief and teach you to build your life once again. Read carefully and you will derive a lot of meaning in these valuable sad love quotes.

1. Kahlil Gibran
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

2. William Butler Yeats
Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned…

3. Anonymous
The saddest thing in the world, is loving someone who used to love you.

4. Tennessee Williams
There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

5. Samuel Butler
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

6. Toni Braxton
How could an Angel break my heart? Why didn’t he catch my falling star? I wish I didn’t wish so hard. Maybe I wished our love apart.

7. Charlie Brown
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.

8. Vanessa Williams
You wondered how you’d make it through. I wondered what was wrong with you. Because how could you give your love to someone else, yet share your dreams with me? Sometimes the only thing you’re looking for, is the one thing you can’t see.

9. Herman Hesse
Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

10. Anais Nin
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.

Content settings aren’t a new feature to Google Chrome, but as the browser matures it looks as though the Big G is making granular controls.

Two recent additions to the Chromium source code combine to function very much like FlashBlock does: per-plug-in content settings and click-to-play. Visit a page with the former enabled, and the latter allows you to click any element you want to display. Better still, you can whitelist an entire website. Simply click the puzzle piece in Chrome’s Omnibar and the menu above is displayed. To try it out right now, you’ll need to download a recent Chromium snapshot build and add two command line switches: –enable-resource-content-settings and –enable-click-to-play.

Why would you want to do this? Two big reasons are security and transfer caps.

While Chrome itself is a very secure browser, plug-ins (especially out-of-date ones) can pose a major security risk. By using click-to-play and manually whitelisting sites you trust, you’re giving yourself a little added protection against nefarious types who use things like Flash to perform drive-by attacks on unwary surfers. And because blocking prevents the elements from downloading without your consent, click-to-play can also help you conserve bandwidth.

The FlashBlock extension currently has more than 160,000 users — I’m curious to see if that number dwindles once this code makes its way into Chrome’s beta and stable channels. It sure seems as though the enhanced content settings will make FlashBlock redundant.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments!

No one really would like to suffer from baldness. This is because this will not only have an effect on their whole physical look but can also have an effect on their emotional condition also.

Professionals classify hair loss into 2 types—the lasting hair loss and the temporary hair loss. Genetic factors are the major reasons for permanent hair loss. People who have a lineage that is susceptible to baldness can’t do much anything about it because it is in their genes.

The pattern baldness or androgenetic alopecia can have an effect on both males and females. In men, pattern baldness can lead to thinning hair and receding of hairlines even while still young. In time, this condition may lead them to complete or part baldness. In women, pattern baldness may occur at a much later age and doesn’t lead them to total baldness. Normally, the thinning hair manifests at their temples and hairlines.

With regards to brief baldness, it can be caused by particular aspects like illnesses, taking in medications for particular conditions, going through medical treatments wherein the medicine that was utilized takes too much toll on the hair, hormonal changes which can either be caused by pregnancy or by taking in birth control pills, hairstyles that put too much stress on the scalp and stops it from growing new strands of hair, and using hair products and treatments that may irritate the scalp and have an effect on healthy hair growth.

Avoidance as the solution

Individuals who have risks for pattern baldness cannot stop the condition but can slower the pace of hair loss through different treatments. But for people who are experiencing brief hair loss, prevention can be the solution to prevent complete baldness in the end. The following are several of the guidelines that can aid prevent hair loss:

1. Correct eating habits.

Having a nutritional regime that is balanced is one of the major keys to avoid too much hair loss. Eating foods that are nutritious especially for the hair can be an effective tool to fight against the indications of hair loss. Those who are experiencing hair loss since they are under nourished should take time to make a diet regimen which can provide sufficient nutrients not just for the hair but for the overall health too.

2. Developing proper hair habits.

Harmful hair habits such as improper handling of the hair can cause excessive hair loss. Individuals—especially individuals who have sensitive scalp—should guarantee that they handle their hair lightly especially when it’s wet. Right handling to damp hair is extremely essential seeing as the hair is weaker when damp. If possible, opt for natural air drying ways rather than utilizing electronic ones such as blower.

3. Stick to 1 hairstyle for a longer period of time.

This will truly help you prevent hair loss because you are letting your hair go through its normal growth cycle. If possible, try to avoid hairstyles that are tight like for instance buns, ponytails, or braids in view of the fact that these put too much pressure on the scalp and hinder it from growing.

4. Don’t twist, rub or pull your hair.

Individuals who go through hair loss are individuals who twist, rub, or pull their hair frequently. If it has become a habit, try to break it. You can do this by focusing on different things rather than putting too much pressure on your hair and on your scalp.

These techniques and heal your problems with hair loss. When done correctly, these solutions will give you new hair growth in in a matter of days!

In the words of Google co-founder Larry Page, “if you are not getting a day [of Android battery] there is something wrong.” There must be “something wrong” with a lot of our phones, so hence the How-To Geek’s practical guide.

The website has created a comprehensive tutorial on how to hack, fiddle and twiddle with the settings of an Android phone, to get the best out of the meager battery life. It’s long, but accompanied with large photos explaining every step of the way.

Some of the steps involve downloading apps, but most are to do with disabling life-sucking apps and functions. It might make your usage slightly leaner, but at least you’ll be able to get to work and back each day without having to take a charger with you

Acer may be new to the smartphone game but they’re learning fast. On paper, the Acer Stream has all the right ingredients to tackle the HTC Desire and the Nexus One. With much stronger emphasis on multimedia than the titular Google phone, the Acer Stream has a few aces up its sleeve and isn’t afraid to play them.

Acer dabbled in customizing Android with the Liquid, but their first attempts were far from impressive. Packing the latest version of Acer’s custom Android UI, the Stream is a completely different story.

We won’t spoil the surprise – the changes run pretty deep and we can’t summarize them in one paragraph anyway. But don’t be too quick to skip straight to the User interface chapter of this review. The hardware has a few cool things in store as well.

Subtle small-font labels leave no doubt about the multimedia prowess of the Acer Stream. The 5MP camera can capture 720p videos and you’ll also spot the Dolby Mobile logo, which promises great sonic experience. But if you’re not careful you might miss the HDMI label right next to the microUSB port. That’s right, the Acer Stream has a microHDMI port to deliver HD video to compatible external displays.

Here goes the list of pros and cons, for the most impatient readers.
Key features

* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
* 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps
* Android OS v2.1 with Acer Touch 3D UI v4.0
* 3.7″ capacitive touchscreen of WVGA resolution; multi-touch support
* Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 1GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM
* 5 megapixel autofocus camera; image stabilization, geotagging
* 720p video recording at 24 fps
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA
* GPS receiver; Digital compass
* Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and turn-to-mute
* Standard microUSB port for charging and data
* MicroHDMI video out port, 720p support
* XviD video support up to 720p
* Dolby Mobile; dedicated multimedia keys
* Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
* 2GB built-in memory
* microSD card slot (16GB cards supported, 8GB one included);
* Preinstalled document viewer
* Rich retail box package
* Standard 3.5mm audio jack
* FM Radio
* Smart dialing

Main disadvantages

* Dim display with poor sunlight legibility
* Camera lacks flash and a lens cover
* Generally poor camera output
* No web Flash support
* microSD card not hot swappable
* No voice dialing, no video calling
* No proper file manager out of the box

Dedicated multimedia keys are less than essential perhaps in a touch phone but they serve a different purpose here. They are a promise for some serious media capabilities – a promise the Acer Stream intends to keep. Putting media aside for a moment, there are no obvious omissions from the spec sheet compared to other top droid rivals.

A Snapdragon ticking at 1GHz with 512MB RAM to work with should give the Acer Stream all the speed to keep up. And it’s got the shape too. Compared to the Liquid, Acer have managed to shave off a few millimeters off the Stream – they’ve gotten it down to only 11.2mm if thickness.

Final words

It’s getting nasty at the top of the Android league. A bunch of big bad Snapdroids jostling for the pole position isn’t quite the company you want to be in. Unless, of course, you’re a big bad Snapdroid yourself.

It’s not like Acer didn’t know where it’s going and we think they deserve credit for the courage to try. Their Stream will be running against some of the most compelling devices on today’s market. Acer is a brand with solid credentials but on this one they will be competing against the best in business.

Samsung are the standard-setter for multimedia in mobile phones and HTC made the first Android device. That should be enough to grasp the scale of the challenge for Acer.

So, how are they handling it? Not bad at all actually – and that was a pleasant surprise. The handset looks good – we wouldn’t call it hot but the Stream is mature and convincing. The well-stocked retail package is quite tempting too. 1GHz Snapdragon, 512MB RAM and ROM with 2GB of additional inbuilt storage, a 3.7″ AMOLED WVGA touchscreen – these are all the right ingredients to put the Acer Stream up there with the best Android phones. Not to mention it is likely to handle further upgrades (Froyo, Gingerbread) with ease.

The home-brewed UI is a solid custom job. Acer was in a mood to experiment it seems and the end result is quite positive. The Touch 3D UI was a nice surprise compared to the Acer Liquid, which barely tried to customize the Android interface.

So, Acer wanted to make sure their top Android phone doesn’t feel underdressed and underpowered among celebrities. There’s some impressive competition waiting and success isn’t simply a matter of features and performance – it very much depends on how the phone will be marketed too.

The I9000 Galaxy S is Samsung’s most powerful Android smartphone and perhaps the most popular droid lately. The breathtaking four inches of Super AMOLED display is the most compelling feature, but the solid 5-megapixel still imaging, generous inbuilt storage of 8/16GB, DivX/XviD support and high-res video recording make it a powerful multimedia machine.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 has the older Donut (Android OS v1.6) and its price is steep. The X10 is still quite a catch though. It has a Snapdragon inside and a bigger screen too. The real edge over the Android rivals however is the 8-megapixel autofocus camera and the unique TimeScape UI. If the Android Donut is your only concern, you should know the ?clair update is on the way (along with 720p video recording update).

The recently launched Motorola MILESTONE XT720 is the QWERTY-less sibling of the original MILESTONE. Typing is not its forte but imaging is quite impressive. The XT720 has an 8 megapixel camera with xenon flash, 720p video recording at 24 fps and an HDMI port. The screen resolution equals the XPERIA X10, but the processor is slightly underclocked – a 720MHz ARM A8 Cortex.

Finally, the Eclair pioneers – the Google Nexus One and the HTC Desire – are still big enough to upset the cocky newcomer. Both devices boast AMOLED screens, 1GHz Snapdragon processors, 5 megapixel cameras and the latest Froyo upgrades enable 720p video recording. The Desire should be a bit cheaper than the Acer Stream already and has even greater customization with the HTC Sense UI.

So, there is a long enough list of potential enemies and the Stream will have to tick all the boxes to stay afloat. There is enough in this phone to entice users we think but it’s obvious Acer still have some catching up to do. Android is already probing the 8 megapixel boundaries, while the Stream isn’t anywhere near convincing in the imaging department. Its AMOLED screen is below the usual standards and the HDMI output has its limitations. Although we liked the Acer 3D UI, it still isn’t as elaborate and deep-reaching as HTC’s Sense.

But let’s be fair here. Acer was only recently feeling the Android water, now they’re swimming with the sharks. The rate at which they’re evolving compares to the speed at which the Android market share is growing. Acer would’ve been stupid not to want a piece. Phones like the Stream show the company won’t simply play along – it will try and make a splash out of their Stream.

The latest study, led by Dr Stephen West from the Department of Physics at Royal Holloway, looks at the possible effects of dark matter on the properties of the sun, if these elusive particles become trapped at its centre.

“Dark matter makes up more than 80 per cent of the total mass of the universe. We know that dark matter exists but to date it has never been produced in a laboratory or directly observed in any experiment, as a result we have very little information about what it actually is. It is important that we examine all possible ways of probing the nature of dark matter and the sun could provide us with an unexpected laboratory in which to do this,” says Dr West.

Dark matter is expected to form a halo around our galaxy and since the sun is in motion around the galaxy it experiences a dark matter “wind” as it moves through this halo. Some of the dark matter particles may collide with the elements in the sun and become gravitationally captured by the sun. This could lead to a build up of dark matter particles at the centre of the sun.

The research team’s simulations show that the effect of this build up is to reduce the temperature of the solar core. The dark matter particles can absorb heat at the core and transfer it out towards the surface, decreasing the temperature of the core. This change in temperature affects the number of neutrinos produced as by-products in nuclear reactions within the Sun and it is hoped that by examining these neutrinos we can gain information about the Sun’s core temperature and whether dark matter plays an important role in solar physics. This in turn could provide information about the mass of individual dark matter particles and how they interact with the elements in the sun.

Dr West adds, “The next step in the work is to look more closely at the change in the predicted number of neutrinos produced in the sun as a result of dark matter collecting at the core and to examine the sensitivity of existing neutrino experiments to this change. In addition, an investigation of the possibility of probing this type of dark matter at the Large Hadron Collider is planned. The LHC could provide complimentary information about the properties of dark matter which along with the information from the sun may lead to a clearer picture of one of the more puzzling issues in physics.”

NASA’s Opportunity and Spirit rovers touched down on Mars in 2004 for a planned 90-day tour; six years and a few serious snags  later, the latter of the two is facing its death of cold. Since March 22, 2010, Spirit’s been slumbering on the surface — stuck and unable to generate enough power to communicate — and while internal heaters and a favorable position on a sun-facing slope allowed the rover to survive previous Martian winters, this time the chances aren’t so good.

“The rover is experiencing the coldest temperatures it’s ever been in – equivalent to about minus 55 degrees Celsius,” NASA told Space.com. Should Spirit wake up next year, it will resume a stationary mission to help scientists determine whether Mars has a liquid core, but if not there’s always the chance it might spontaneously regain power in another decade or four. Still not on the docket: ever returning home.

Flying is never easy, though it actually is the easiest way to travel. Your plane might crash, or you might have the fear of dying in a crash even when the flight is smooth. Other times you have to deal with annoying passengers who bring their fake Gucci and Prada bags to impress everyone.

At least in such a situation, HENK Travelfriend could help you keep your fellow passengers gawking in admiration. It is the most expensive suitcase in the world and costs a terrible $20,000. The Dutch company sure knows how to impress its well heeled clients and thus from whichever angle you look at it, you could be sure of letting people know how luxurious it really is inside.

So go ahead, and get yourself a suitcase by HENK if you have the lolly with you. You could also customize its looks thanks to its calfskin with ostrich embossing in 15 various colors and opens from both sides. It even comes with a thief proof cable with which you could hold the suitcase securely. So go ahead, and get it for yourself before there is something else to beat it.

If phones could make babies, then this HTC Wildfire would indubitably be the love child of the Desire and Nexus One. But of course, the humdrum reality is that ’tis just an Android 2.1 replacement for the entry-level Tattoo  — same 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor, 3.2-inch 320 x 240 capacitive LCD touchscreen instead of 2.8-inch resistive, 384MB RAM instead of 256MB, and a 5-megapixel camera instead of 3.2 (although quality matters more, obviously). So can this affordable handset provide enough bang for the buck to satisfy Europeans and Asians? Can the aging processor keep Sense UI well oiled?

Hardware

At first glance, the Wildfire’s a pretty handsome and familiar-looking device, but if you’re not a fan of this subtle brown finish, there are three more color options. You can see several elements borrowed from the company’s two other Android handsets — touch buttons and the reassuring back texture from the Nexus One, although the buttons don’t work as well on the big daddy; optical trackpad, earpiece, chin, and body frame from the Desire (read: not unibody à la Nexus One). The back is styled like the HD2 with a wide metallic band, but it’s not the metal that you take off for the battery bay — the actual cover needs to be peeled off with some effort from the top (like the Desire). When held in hand, the phone feels like a shorter Desire but equally as sturdy.

The chin below forms part of the back cover, but this is where we spotted the Wildfire’s first physical flaw: we saw an uneven cut between the body frame and the chin. This does no justice to HTC’s impressive build quality on most of its other devices, but as an entry-level device, we’ll need to go easy with this level of detail. Swinging around to the left side you’ll see the shiny volume rocker — which feels well-built — and micro-USB port, and on the back you have the five-megapixel camera sandwiched by the loudspeaker and LED flash.

To meet the lower price point, HTC’s opted for the good ol’ LCD instead of AMOLED on the Wildfire. Sadly, the infamous mirror effect is still present albeit not as strong the Desire’s and the Hero’s. See for yourself in the video below where we compare this with the screens on the Desire, Hero, Dell Streak and iPhone 4 (HD playback highly recommended for more realistic results). Whilst on this topic, we’re also a bit upset that due to the low 320 x 240 resolution, some apps — including our own — did not appear in the Wildfire’s Market. Ah, the good ol’ fragmentation problem. For future reference, potential Android users should look at devices with a minimum resolution of 480 x 320 to get the most support.

Performance

The Wildfire’s been given the same HTC Sense UI blessing as its other 2.1 siblings — highlights include Leap for switching between homescreens, FriendStream widget for stalking your friends, an intuitive text highlighting tool (which is dangerously similar to the iOS’s), built-in Flash Lite, and a keyboard that many have shown preference to over the stock version. Like the Legend, live wallpapers are — no pun intended — sensibly disabled on the feeble Wildfire. Still, we noticed the occasional hiccups every now and then, and we’ve had a few crashes from the internet browser plus the slow camera app. Looks like the CPU’s the main culprit here, considering the Legend also rocks 384MB of RAM but doesn’t suffer from such issues. On a similar note, Flash web content took minutes to load on the Wildfire, and even if you have the patience, the low frame rate leaves a lot to be desired. You can see this demoed in the video above.

Despite the list of issues, we managed to get almost twelve hours of battery life on just 3G data connection, while enjoying the occasional music, photo-snapping, video recording, Twitter, FriendStream, and web browsing. Pretty impressive considering we only got about eight to ten hours on our Legend (also donning a 1,300mAh battery but with a newer and supposedly more efficient CPU) — perhaps HTC’s AMOLED screens do suck up a fair bit more juice than LCDs. Adding to the list of positives are the vast range of supported audio file formats, stereo Bluetooth audio (which worked flawlessly for us), and built-in FM radio. We wouldn’t recommend using the rear loudspeaker for audio entertainment, but the supplied handsfree kit’s pretty decent — too bad it isn’t the noise isolating-plug type, nor did its mic perform well in our noise test (but the phone’s built-in mic wasn’t any better, as demoed in the earlier video).

We’ve already praised HTC’s multimedia apps in our Desire and Legend reviews. Nothing much has changed for the music player — still as intuitive and stable as before. On the other hand, the gallery app is notably slower at loading pictures, and video playback is much worse — we can understand that 720p playback isn’t feasible with the old CPU (in fact, all our 720p clips froze up the gallery app), but with 640 x 480 MP4 clips coming out at low frame rates, you’d have to wonder who on Earth would buy this when there are featurephones that can do much better. Sorry HTC, but this smartphone ain’t working out for us.

Moving on to the keyboard: if you ask the Android community, many would say HTC has one of the best virtual keyboards, but we have a feeling that the Wildfire won’t make it to the list. No, it isn’t to do with the slightly more crammed keys — we were still able to type well with that; we’re just annoyed by the slow response to our typing. That said, we must commend HTC for yanking the hide keyboard button — the Back button below the screen does the job anyway — to extend the space bar, plus the keyboard settings button now prompts a customizable list of international keyboards for quick switching. Not that this means we’d be less frustrated by the laggy keyboard, though.

Camera
Just like any other HTC device, don’t expect mind-blowing picture quality — especially in low-light condition — from the Wildfire’s five-megapixel camera, but indoor shots like the one above look pretty good. As for outdoor usage, the still camera either struggled with the white balance or consistently under-exposed the shots. Still, they are nowhere as bad as the videos recorded — they’re capped at a 352 x 288 resolution with a sad frame rate, and you’ll get an even lower frame rate if you record in the dark. What a bummer.

Wrap-up

Well, we didn’t have high expectation for the Wildfire to begin with, and having played with it we were even less stoked. In general, this handset’s seriously lacking in multimedia features, and then we have the screen problem plus the occasional lag. That said, we can’t really walk away hating the Wildfire in its entirety — the battery life’s good, plus it is after all a £230 ($346) device if bought off the shelf, or for free on T-Mobile’s £20 ($30) per month two-year contract. In comparison, the Legend’s about £360 ($542) SIM-free, but it’s also available for free on Vodafone’s £20 plan with significantly fewer minutes. Needless to say, your choice will greatly depend on your phone usage and carrier preference, but we’d gladly sacrifice some call time and go for the faster AMOLED-donning Legend. If you’re looking for a basic off-contract Android smartphone but still want the Desire / Nexus One look, then the Wildfire’s the way to go. You’d just quickly realize that you want more.