Posted by: Jane Douglas

Topping this week’s most popular stories is Microsoft cutting the price of the Xbox 360 Elite to £200.

The Elite price drop was accompanied by a price rise for the Arcade version and comes shortly after Sony unveiled a slimmer PlayStation 3, along with a price cut of its own.

Katie Price came in second place, meanwhile, with word from internet security researchers that she is the UK’s “most dangerous celebrity in cyberspace”.

By which they mean web searches for her name are the most likely to lead to risky websites, not that she’s become a notorious hacker since returning from the States. Disappointingly.

As for Tech & Gadgets’ highlights this week:

 
How AR will change the way we see the world

 
Review: Batman – Arkham Asylum

 
Preview: Halo 3 - ODST

Posted by Nik Taylor

Your most-read story of the week has been the tale of a burglar who fleeced a house of a host of gadgets, including a computer, mobile phone and Nintendo DS.

Not much newsworthy in that, you might think, until you discover the thief twisted the knife a little further by taunting his victim on her own Facebook account via her nicked laptop.

The light-fingered lout even had the nerve to berate the householder for not having a TV worth stealing.

Bolshy burglars aside, this week has been all about the immense Gamescom show which has been taking place in Cologne, Germany.

Jane has been out there reporting for Tech & Gadgets; take a look at her blog posts below for an excellent rundown of all the top stories from the show.

There’s also plenty on the main site about everything that’s come out from the show. Go check it out.

The sights of Gamescom 2009

New screens from Heavy Rain

PS3 price chop

New screens from Mass Effect 2

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Around 120 hours of voice acting have been recorded to accompany the many choices, branching storylines and multiple endings of espionage RPG Alpha Protocol.
There are about seven possible endings, we are told. But each ending is made up of a number of portions, making for further variation.

You can choose to kill “almost every character” in the game said the developer demonstrating the game at Gamescom 2009. They can all return in the ending you achieve; “if they’re alive at the end of the game, they’ll be there”, he says.

Moscow missions
We were shown a couple of missions set in snowy Moscow, taking place about a third of the way into the game, kicking off in a hub-type safehouse. Each city visited will have such a safehouse: a place where you can customise your character, check your e-mails, buy and sell gear and weapons.

There are four classes of weapons in the game: pistols, shotguns, sub-machine guns and rifles. There are multiple types in each class, plus stat-improving modifications and accessories (scopes, barrels, etc), giving that depth of customisation we expect from role-playing games. 

Besides the weaponry, players can equip different customisable armours for combat or stealth scenarios, and hand-pick their gadget load-out, with options including mines, remote mines, transmitters and a radio mimic (to make guards think the alarm you just set off was a false one).

You can buy intelligence on the black market for info about missions or characters – for advice on how best to talk to another character to get your way, for instance. 

Boat infiltration
In the first mission, we followed the player character, rogue agent Mike Thornton, as he infiltrated a boat to eliminate a target and steal some information. The Mike of the demo had been customised for tech and stealth, leading to a sneaky approach to the level, with a silent lethal takedown of the target character.

Tech abilities make hacking easier (carried out via a BioShock-like minigame) and allows for the unlocking of certain abilities on weapons – such as chain shot, a slow motion ability.

Another ability called overclock increases the range of an explosive. In the boss fight at the end of the boat missions, Mike took down Sis, a punky-looking mute teenager, with such an explosive.

Dialogue system
The player then (attempts to) speaks with Sis and is eventually offered the option to spare or execute the girl, demonstrating the dynamic dialogue system at the heart of the game’s many-branched decision tree. Dialogue options (such as ‘threaten’, ‘investigate’, ‘apologetic’ and ‘headslam’*) are offered up as a conversation progresses.

Choosing to spare the girl, as in our demo, sets up how the next mission – an all-dialogue mission, in effect an interactive cutscene starring Sis’ boss – plays out. Other dialogue options will also offer perks and experience points, as well as forming allies and shaping how other characters perceive you.

The take-away? Alpha Protocol thinks dialogue is pretty important – all 120 hours of it.

*For if you don’t feel chatty, presumably.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Avatar is a mix of the groundbreaking and  the conventional.

On the surface, it’s safe, by-the-numbers stuff: an action-adventure-shooter starring a space marine on a hostile alien planet.

On top of that, it’s a movie tie-in (for James Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi by the same name), the kind of game from which we don’t expect originality or particular technical achievement in the first place.

But Avatar is the first serious foray into 3D gaming on a console, if we don’t count the old-school red-blue 3D of the G-Force game (we don’t).

Stereoscopic 3D
The Avatar game uses the kind of polarised light stereoscopic 3D technology already making its way into the cinema – with Pixar’s Up, for instance.

With this tech, the light of the image put out by the TV screen alternates, frame by frame, between two polarisations. You wear special specs – they look a bit like unfashionable sunglasses – in which each lens allows only one kind of polarisation through.

The upshot is your TV shows one picture to your right eye, then one to your left, alternating fast enough for it to seem like a smooth, persistent on-screen image – with the illusion of depth (that third dimension) created by the slight difference between the left and right pictures.

Back to the game. On a planet called Pandora, the militaristic corporation who our space marine-alike works for is stuck in conflict with the blue, ten-foot-tall native race, along with all the hostile alien animals and plants.

The game doesn’t follow the plot of the film, the game’s animation director Brent George told us at Gamescom. Instead, it’s “a different window into the same universe, that is, Pandora. We focused really heavily on the environments, lore, flora and fauna and themes from the film.”

Jungle demo
In our hands-on demo, we fly, blast, run, shoot and drive our way through a Pandoran jungle, killing creatures resembling alien dinosaurs, driven across the map by missions and side missions. At one point we climb into a giant AMP mech suit to stomp around on a pack of wolf-like creatures.

It’s fun, though not revolutionary. There’s a variety of weapons – assault rifle, grenade launcher and flame thrower in the demo. There are skills to gain, too, among them stealth camouflage, a repulsor blast, a tactical strike from above. A scanner lets us check out the local wildlife’s lethal stats.

But as the time of day changes, through sunset into darkness, the environment blooms with bioluminescent light, colourfully glowing flora and fauna turning the scene from mostly green into a jungle rave. “All the geometry on the map will look different by night,” says Brent George, the animation director.

The effect is that much more exotic if you’re watching the stereoscopic 3D version of the game. Watched through the glasses, the jungle and characters pop up off the screen. The effect is convincing and vivid and rarely jarring in the way 3D sometimes is.

Key choice
The tired space marine scenario is further twisted by a critical choice later in the game, where the player is asked to decide between fighting for the corporation or the alien natives, the latter involving use of the eponymous avatar – a sort of psychically remote-controlled alien body that is handier with axes and maces than guns.

Making a good-looking 3D game is no mean feat, says George. Maintaining a high refresh rate to make the action smooth is harder when each picture has to be rendered and displayed twice (for the left and right eye); in effect, the game would have to run at 120 frames a second to give the appearance of a 60 frames a second game.

George invited us to feel the Xbox 360s running the 3D and 2D versions of the game. The console with the 3D version was much hotter, showing how much harder it was having to work.

Both the 3D and 2D versions of the game will come on the disc, but a special television is needed to display the 3D version. These TVs are very rare at the moment, though new and more widely available models are coming on the market in the near future.

When Avatar is released this winter, though, only a handful of gamers will have the kind of TV needed to play the game in 3D. And it will be a shame that most people will be playing the game stripped of that spectacle. 

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of Final Fantasy XIV, has said that this massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is still on track to be a PlayStation 3 console exclusive.

The game will appear only on Sony’s console and the PC “at launch,” says the producer, “but we are talking with other platforms too.” Though if or when the game will launch on another console, he could not say.

Hiromichi Tanaka and Sage Sundi, FFXIV’s global online producer, spoke about their game at the Gamescom show in Cologne.

Pegged for 2010 release, the new Final Fantasy is the second MMO in the long-running RPG series; the first was Final Fantasy XI.

No PvP
FFXIV will include, say the producers, more weapons, more monsters, more complex initial character customisation, partially customisable interface and a seamless (not zone-based, like FFXI) world and a real-time (rather than auto) battle system. In tone and style the game will be most similar to Final Fantasy VI, says Hiromichi.

Player-versus-player combat will be absent from the game, at least initially, “to avoid player harassment”. If it is ever introduced, we are told, it will be more of a sport-like element, such as duelling.

According to Sage Sundi, there are plenty of Final Fantasy fans who haven’t tried MMOs and plenty of MMO fans who haven’t played Final Fantasy; FFXIV is another attempt to bring these two groups together. But how do you convince a Final Fantasy fan to play an MMO when the traditional single-player Final Fantasies are so unlike the MMO experience?

They have worked hard on the story line, says Sage. And the game will including voice acting this time, with voiceover for the storyline.

In Final Fantasy games, says Hiromichi, you follow a predetermined storyline – but in an MMO, you “meet real people and experience your own storyline”, which makes for a “moving” experience.

And another advantage of the MMO is the ability to tweak and update the game over time. Final Fantasy is traditionally a “packaged title”, says Hiromichi. Once it is released, it is out there and unchangeable. An MMO, on the other hand, means you can change things according to player feedback as you go.
Sage admits that the MMO market is a difficult one, but Final Fantasy XI’s particular success as a cross-platform (console and PC) game is unique.

With traditional single-player RPG Final Fantasy XIII coming out next year, close to the intended release date of XIV, is there rivalry in the FF camp between the two titles?

Sage, of course, says there is no such rivalry. “Maybe if we were both MMOs, we would be rivals,” he says. The reason the two games are being launched so close together, he says, is that both have been in development for the same period – three or four years – and both use the same engine. This meant that both games were waiting for that engine to be made ready, resulting in tightly spaced launches for the two Final Fantasy games in 2010.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

“Evolve or become a niche,” said game designer David Cage at his Game Developers Conference keynote speech.

According to Cage, gaming has come to a fork in the road, with the path that game makers pick now set to determine the fate of games as an entertainment medium. 

Games can go one of two ways, either becoming like comics or movies. In the comics model, games would become like comic books, with a very limited but stable market, plus “aggressive visuals and niche themes”.

This is the fate of video games if we stay on our current course, says Cage.

The alternative is the movies model, in which games will evolve to become “emotion simulators offering depth and meaning” and mainstream “by reaching all audiences”.

“”Do we want to be comics, toys, family entertainment or movies?” asks Cage. His preference as a self-styled games auteur is clearly for movies but right now, he says, games are (grown-up) toys and family entertainment first, partly akin to comics – and yet, if ever, to undergo the same process of maturation and self-discovery that cinema did in decades past.

The risk of staying “niche” and limited to a small audience is a concern of Cage’s – and if the traditional hardcore gamers need to be neglected to go mainstream, so be it.

“Be ready to lose your core audience,” he told the game makers of the GDC audience.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima has revealed an extended trailer and details of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the PSP title announced back at the E3 games how in June.

“The new trailer that I am about to show highlights co-op gameplay,” the designer told the press. “It’s about working together to maintain stealth, creating a new kind of tension you did not encounter with other MGS titles.”

The lengthy trailer elaborated on the E3 teaser trailer, which showed four Snakes on screen together. The new game will support up to four-person co-operative play, allowing for linked movement while sneaking and shooting, double simultaneous takedowns, battlefield resuscitation (chest compressions, that is, not mouth-to-mouth) and multiple-Snakes-in-a-box stealth action.

The trailer’s intertitles promise team infiltration, covert operations, coordination, cooperation, combination and comradeship. 

More will be revealed at the Tokyo Games Show in October, says Hideo Kojima.

The Peace Walker trailer (stay tuned for a link) debuted at the Konami conference at Gamescom. Other highlights were:

Exclusive, world premier trailer: Tower of Shadow (the current working title), set for release in Spring 2010. A interesting-looking Wii game, this, in which you play as a shadow, manipulating light and dark to get around levels.

  Axel de Rouge, lead producer, announced Krazy Kart Racing, an iPhone racer that “should be released by the end of the month”. Comes with accelerometer and touch controls, as well as up to six-person multiplayer. “Personally, the iPhone is my favourite [gaming platform] by far. It’s set some unexpected new standards,” says Rouge. 

Dave Cox, producer of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, revealed a new extended trailer for upcoming action-adventure instalment in the much-loved Castlevania series set to feature the voices of Patrick Stewart,, Jason Isaacs, Robert Carlyle andNatasha McEllhone.

“This game is a true love letter to the classic Castlevania games I grew up with. But it is also its own game,” says Cox. “This isn’t a rehash, it’s a rebirth.” 

The father of PES, Shingo ‘Seabass’ Takatsuka took to the stage to talk about PES 2010: “We received so many requests about new moves of the players, we added around 300 new moves and signature moves for the players as well… Now the players can move in all directions, freely.”

“Another new factor is the setting of formations… We added these new features since we heard many requests that PES should become a more true, real football experience… You can now play strategically, almost as if you were the manager of the team you are playing with.”

Finally, the PES creator announced the release dates: November 19 for the Wii, November 5 for PSP and October 22 for PS3, Xbox  360 and PC.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Peter Molyneux has announced Fable III at the Microsoft Game Studios conference at Gamescom in Cologne.

The game is planned for release on the Xbox 360 in 2010, though “don’t expect it too early"," says the game designer.

In this third game in the fantasy role-playing game series, the player will take on the role of their Fable II hero once more, start a revolution and overthrow Albion’s tyrannical ruler.

“You’re going to lead a revolution and ultimately overthrow that tyrant,” says Molyneux. “But to do that you’re going to have to make promises to these people who are going to be following you. Just like our politicians when they stand up to try and get elected.”

The moral choices this time around, then, will be about keeping or breaking those promises.

“For me, as a game designer, it’s all about power,” Molyneux says. “We want the player to experience what it’s like to be a ruler.

“What are you going to do with your castle? Are you going to develop and expand it, or are you going to let it go to rack and ruin and spend the money on the poor?”

Some of the game will be set in familiar places, though they will be changed by time - with industrial districts having grown up in Albion’s cities, for example.

The game will also introduce new places in the Fable universe. “A very good portion of this game is set in places you’ve never seen before. Expect the unexpected. Albion is just one small continent in the world of Fable,” Molyneux says.

Judging and touching

Molyneux outlined two new game mechanics for Fable III: Judgements and Touch.

“Being able to be king, you should be able to say: ‘I judge you.’ It’s the ability for people to come before you and you say: ‘Right, I’m going to judge you now’.”

“Think of it as a new way of getting quests,” he says. With Judgements, your subjects will come to you with grievances or accusations and you can hear their evidence,  or ignore it, investigate and pass judgment, determining the fate of the judged.

Touch, on the other hand, will replace the expressions system from Fable II. Rather than multiple expressions accessible from a wheel, says Molyneux, “We’re installing this one-touch mechanics.”

He explains: “It’s very rare you can see game characters physically touching people… We’ve got this new system. When you first meet someone, you can shake their hand or refuse to. Later, you can earn the right to hug them, embrace them… You don’t need too much imagination to see where this [system of physical touching] leads.

“Being able to touch people as ruler and see how they react, that’s what we want.”

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Sony has unveiled a new, slimmer PlayStation 3 at Gamescom in Cologne.

The new version of Sony’s current console, revealed by company president Kazuo Hirai, will be about a third smaller and lighter than current models and have a 120GB hard drive and lower power consumption.

The new console will go on sale for £250, €299 and $299 in the first week of September.

Sony conference highlights

The new slim PS3 announcement rounded off a conference that included:

A new SingStar space in Home, providing a virtual karaoke experience in the PlayStation 3’s virtual world. This new virtual space will be accompanied in due course by new animations, dance moves, shrinking potions and “the ability to flip a coin and roll a dice.”

Improved navigation and aesthetics from the PSN online store, including shortcuts to TV catch-up websites: meaning BBC iPlayer in the UK, formatted for the Sony console.

As of next month, PS3 voucher cards will be in retailers throughout Europe (in €20 and €50 denominations). Meaning you won’t need to use a credit card to buy downloads.

Digital Reader for the PSP, launching in December. Andrew House, European Sony chief executive says: “Digital Comics will launch with hundreds of comics available [to download direct to PSP], with more being added every month.” The initial offering will include Marvel titles such as Spiderman and The Fantastic Four.

Ira Rubenstein of Marvel Comics, in a fetching Wolverine leather jacket, came on stage to add: “We are very excited to be offering our catalogue of comics to the PlayStation community… This service could eventually become our most significant.”

Will Sony’s Digital Reader technology be extended beyond the realm of comics on the PSP? Expect “broader reading material in the near future,” says House.

Minis: Responding to a “shift in the entertainment needs of PSP owners”, the PSP will soon be offering Minis, miniature games up to 100MB in size, only available as downloads.

These will be bite-size games to be played in short bursts, playable on all PSPs but launching with the PSP Go in October. Seems like Sony has been taking pointers from the unexpected success of low-cost, casual games on Apple’s iPhone.

The PSP Go will come with Gran Turismo for the PSP - as a full game, not a demo.

EyePet will retail for an RRP of €49.99 Euros, bundled with PlayStation EyeCamera as well as the game itself.

As for the PlayStation motion controller we first glimpsed back at E3, Sony teased the conference crowd with a taster video – but told us we’ll have to wait for the Tokyo Games Show in October for the full story.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

David Cage, the game designer behind Fahrenheit and upcoming Heavy Rain, called for the video game industry to “stop making stupid games” at the Games Developers Conference Europe in Cologne.

In a keynote speech, Cage referred to the immature missteps of the industry in days gone by, including the GTA: San Andreas' Hot Coffee (a sex minigame which wasn't officially accessible in the finished game).

Game makers as a whole are still being judged and restricted by such mistakes, says Cage, ridiculing the rules in place around explicit, though non-gratuitous, content in games.

If the texture map (the graphical skin applied, in this case, to a game character) for a nude girl has breasts, even if there is no way for the player to directly view it in-game, then under the right (or wrong) circumstances, “you can go to jail,” says Cage.

Referring to his own (occasionally explicit) game, Fahrenheit, Cage explained that in certain countries a swimsuit had to be placed on a female character because of a partial mirror-reflected view of a breast – even though she was taking a shower, and even though it was an adult-rated game.

“I would like the same rules to apply to games as do for TV and for movies,” says Cage. “If we do things with taste and there is nothing gratuitous… you shouldn’t be able to tell me what not to write.”

Forget about the technology

On the topic of storytelling in video games, Cage says: “I hate game designs written by 20 people… It’s not the great ideas that stay in the end. It’s the ideas of those highest up [the chain of command].”

Creative work needs to be reserved for creative people, says Cage – script writers, not marketing departments. Moreover, the industry needs to let go of its fixation on technology: better physics engines, better graphics and the like. He compares the current situation with movie-makers building their own camera for each film they want to produce.

“Forget about the technology. It’s a tool, not a goal. No-one writes a great book because he has a great pen.”

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Eidos has put its football management sim up for “any price you want to pay”.

For 1p, or whatever you feel like parting with, plus a £2.50 handling fee, Championship Manager is available to pre-order from www.champmanstore.com between now and September 10. The game launches on September 11.

It’s a bold, if curious, way to price a game -  something like Radiohead’s pick-your-price album In Rainbows. Is Eidos counting on gamer goodwill to push up prices? Or hoping that the bargain prices will generate good early word of mouth?

Posted by: Nik Taylor

Another 19 of the 45 on-disc tracks for The Beatles: Rock Band have been announced today. At the risk of exposing myself as a Beatles know-nothing, I must admit there are several there I’ve never even heard of. Boys? Hey Bulldog? Something?

Still, there are plenty of crackers there too. Ticket to Ride, Come Together and A Hard Day’s Night stand out for me. There’s one more to come, too: a mystery reveal…

You can see the rest of the track listing in our The Beatles: Rock Band preview.

Newly announced songs
• “Boys” / Cavern Club
• “A Hard Day’s Night” / Ed Sullivan Theater
• “I’m Looking Through You” / Shea Stadium
• “If I Needed Someone” / Shea Stadium
• “Ticket to Ride” / Shea Stadium
• “Drive My Car” / Budokan
• “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Getting Better” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Good Morning” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Hello, Goodbye” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Hey Bulldog” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Dear Prudence” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Helter Skelter” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Something” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Come Together” / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• “Don’t Let Me Down” / Rooftop Concert
• “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” / Rooftop Concert
• “I Me Mine” / Rooftop Concert

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Danny Wallace, the Yes Man himself, will be voicing Shaun Hastings in upcoming Assassin’s Creed II, Ubisoft announced today.

Moreover, Wallace’s very likeness (see left) will be used for that of Hastings, “a historian, guide and source of information for the player as he proceeds through the game”. And, presumably, a Brit.

Script writer Corey May says, “[Danny’s] manner and particular style of humour has worked out perfect for the role of Shaun.”

Just a droplet of news ahead of the torrent that is sure to be Gamescom 2009. Stick with us for more.

Posted by: Jane Douglas

With the Leipzig Games Convention as we knew it dead and gone, the hopes of gamers all over Europe turn instead to Gamescom, the newly established games festival in Cologne expecting tens of thousands of visitors next week, August 19-23.

There’s a host of hot upcoming games already confirmed for the show but hotter still are the questions on every attendee’s mind: What could Sony be announcing at its conference on Tuesday? What will Lionhead unveil at the Microsoft media briefing on Wednesday? What game character should I dress as for the world record cosplay attempt*?

These questions and more, all answered by MSN Tech & Gadgets at Gamescom next week.

As for the week just gone on Tech & Gadgets:

 
Our favourite celeb cameos in games

Pick your perfect mobile

The world’s most extreme headphones

*The correct answer, incidentally, is Big Daddy.

Posted by: Nik Taylor

The wheels of the world’s social networks ground to a halt this Thursday as both Twitter and Facebook experienced serious outages. Twitter’s left it out-of-play for practically the whole day, and our most read news story of the week reported the theory that a spotty teenager had perpetrated the whole thing from their bedroom.

The next most popular story to break this week is one to avoid if you’re an arachnophobe. Scientists have recreated some 300-million-year-old spiders, after using CT scans on their fossils. The bugs were the size of 50p coins, with claws around their mouths and spikes on their backs. And… is that one on your shoulder?!

Also on Tech & Gadgets this week…

Top games for August

Future gaming: going 3D

Top universal remote controls

Posted by: Jane Douglas

We were up bright and early today to fondle the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic at its UK launch event.

Looking like a slightly shrunken 5800 XpressMusic, the 5530 is a touchscreen smartphone that Nokia is aiming squarely at bargain-loving young hipsters.

The phone concentrates on music (duh) and social networking, both of which we hear are popular with the kids, and will go on sale at The Carphone Warehouse next week for £129 on Pay As You Go - or free on a £15 contract.

Though its screen is smaller than that of the high-end 5800, its resolution is the same (640 by 360), which makes for a crisp little (2.9-inch) picture.

Unsurprisingly at this price, the 5800’s GPS and 3G have been stripped out, so you’ll be tripping from one Wi-Fi hotspot to the next to check your e-mails and update your Facebook status.

The resistive touchscreen is one of the better we’ve sampled, respectably responsive to both the included stylus or a nimble fingertip.

The neat-and-tidy handset comes with a 4GB microSD memory card and supports cards up to 16GB, making it a capacious MP3 player. And, as befits any self-respecting music phone, there’s a 3.5mm jack for your headphones.

The Contacts Bar on the home screen is a cool touch for a committed social networker; up to 20 friends can be be fixed on this scrolling bar, for instant access to contact details, recent activity and social network updates and photos.

Look out for our in-depth 5300 review next week on Tech & Gadgets.

Posted by: Nik Taylor

I've spent the past week living with the Samsung i8910 HD, and I'm still in awe of its remarkable screen.

I hate its name (it was known as the far-smarter Omnia HD before Samsung saw fit to burden it with a clunky string of numbers and letters), but I absolutely love its 3.7" AMOLED, 640 x 320 resolution, 16 million colour beast of a screen. Stack it up against other video-friendly handsets and the i8910HD offers a step up in picture quality that's comparable to the difference between Blu-ray and DVD.

The only people I can imagine not loving it as much as I do are those with small pockets. This is not a dinky phone - all that screen real estate means the handset is necessarily on the large size. Got a ruler to hand? If so, measure out 123mm tall by 58mm wide. If not, think of the iPhone, add a bit to the height, shave a bit from the width. Anyway, despite the size of the phone, it's remarkably thin. At just 12.9mm, it's thickness is about the same as a slice of Hovis. And though the i8910 HD is not quite as tasty with melted cheese, it's way more versatile.  

Of course, it takes more than an eye-catching screen to make a great phone, but the i8910 HD has a list of high-spec features that, for me, put it up there among the most desirable handsets currently on the market.

All kinds of format support, including DivX and XviD, make the phone ideal for watching movies, but it's the video capture mode that is a real headline act. Video can be shot in full HD (up to 1,280 x 720 pixels) and at 24 frames per second.

Still pics are also well catered for. The camera is an eight-megapixel effort, which could realistically replace your point-and-shoot if you're only an occasional photographer. Standard compact options such as white balance, ISO and scene mode are present and correct, as are more gimmicky features including smile detection.

I got some great pictures out of it and found it performs particularly well in good light. Even low-light pics are decent - something that's rarely true of mobile phone cameras. They'd be even better if Samsung had seen fit to splash out on a xenon flash, rather than the more pedestrian LED effort. Getting the pics onto your PC is as easy as plugging the phone in via USB.

The generously sized touchscreen also makes the phone easy to use. When using smaller touchscreens, I sometimes find myself pining for a physical touchpad. I can honestly say I never missed having a full keypad while using the i8910 HD. It's capacitive, so you don't have to use pressure on the screen for it to recognise your touch, and it's very responsive. What bugged me, however, was that you have to double tap on options to open them. It might not sound like much of an issue, but it makes getting around more effort than it should be.

The installed browser enables you to view proper web pages and and finger tapping on links is nice and precise. Texting is pretty easy, too. Flip the phone on its side and you can use a full QWERTY keyboard (and the accelerometer's switch between the two is nippy). I'd like it if the QWERTY option included predictive text, where you can tap on a suggested word as you type it out. This makes texting way quicker, but it's not available here. As for voice calls, I’ve seen comments elsewhere questioning this phone’s sound quality, but experienced no such issues myself.

Samsung's widget-based interface means you can bring any of the phone's main functions to the home screen for one-touch access. It's a neat idea that gives the opportunity for some customisation. You can also download more widgets, but if you don't like the approach you can ditch it entirely and switch to a more traditional view.

A rather superficial issue (but one that’s irritating nonetheless) is that the i8910 HD is a fingerprint magnet. Normal use quickly covers the screen with greasy marks, while the glossy black plastic rear of the phone suffers a similar fate. But when that's one of the main complaints about a phone, you can tell it's a strong offering.

On top of all this, the i8910 HD is a smartphone. The handset runs the latest touch version of Symbian, tweaked specifically to make use of Samsung's TouchWiz 3D interface. It's slick and easy to use. Care needs to be taken with the number of open applications; try running too many at once and slowdown is noticeable. Memory-wise, there’s a choice of 8GB or 16GB models, both of which can be boosted via MicroSD by up to 32GB.

I really enjoyed using this phone. It's not small, but its size has been used to provide a really excellent screen. It sometimes feels as though certain features could be a little slicker, but if you want a smartphone with a top-drawer camera and a spectacular display, this has to be near the top of your shortlist.

Yeah!
Gargantuan, beautiful touchscreen.
3.5mm jack.
Great video mode.
Capacitive touchscreen.

Meh.
Fingerprint magnet.
Sometimes sluggish.
LED flash.
Double-clicking to open options.