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Are you a movie buff who likes to watch movies on the go, but feel that the iPod and the likes aren’t good enough? Are you looking for a better option, something which is much more convenient, with no video conversion hassles? Somewhere around mid 2007, we gave you an option of the Creative Zen Vision W for the same which surpassed the iPod quality in terms of video, and otherwise too; it was quite a PMP.

Today, we look at a similar offering from iAudio COWON — the A3. Will this player quench your thirst of movies on-the-go, or will it be just another fizz drink leaving you thirsty once again? You’ll find out Read on!

Package

iAudio COWON A3, Earphones, USB Cable, AV Cable, HI Quality TV Cable, Hand Strap, Leather Pouch, AC Power Adaptor, Installation CD & Manual

Features

The COWON A3 is loaded with features. Just its feature list could put many of the other PMPs around to shame, and even pinch a few UMPC in terms of its screen quality. Its 4-inch long screen has a brilliant support for 16 million colors which bring the screen to life. The previous iteration from iAudio — the COWON D2 — had a tiny screen compared to the A3. While the D2 has a touch screen, the missing feature was easily negated with the A3’s joggle lever.

The A3 can play 720p HD content. It’s powered by a DaVinci AV DSP processor of Texas Instruments. The processor is a dual core and enables smooth decoding of various codec. You can connect the A3 to an HD TV and enjoy HD-quality video. If that wasn’t enough, this PMP can even record video through a TV Line-In. Supremacy in audio comes to the A3 through iAudio’s JetEffect. Though the standard earphones provided with the player aren’t quite capable, if you connect a good pair of headphones and you will instantly experience it.

The player has a 10 Band Equalizer to create personal settings with Mach3Bass, BBE, 3D Surround and MP Enhance. It’s crazy enough that the A3 records video from an external source, therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised to hear this — the A3 records audio in lossless FLAC format through its Line-In. The other capabilities of the player let it read various image and documents formats. It even covers the RAW format under images, and Microsoft Office files along with the standard PDF and TXT files.

Video Playback

First up, let’s talk about the video playback; it’s the primary reason why anyone would want to own the A3. That said, let me tell you that the COWON A3 has supreme video playback. The Creative Zen Vision W amazed me, while the A3 blew my mind away!

The screen quality of A3 is much better and video playback a lot smoother. As for testing its support for various codec, the A3 did well in our DivX/XviD test, failing in almost none. The only one test that it failed was in the audio playback of a DivX3 Fast. The file’s audio was MP3-encoded, which surprisingly, the player couldn’t decipher. Otherwise, all the other videos with MP3 encoded audio played just fine. Do make sure your video file index is doesn’t have any errors; else fix it with a utility that comes in the fully loaded klite codec pack “AVI Fix”. The A3 know how to play HD content, but it’s restricted to 720p. It finds it difficult to process WMV-HD, whereas, 720p MKV and AVI files played on A3 pretty well. While all standard format videos would start playing in a couple of seconds, the 720p videos would take its toll on the player; although the difference in startup times was just about 4-5 seconds.

As earlier mentioned, this player has the capability to transmit AV to a TV via a cable. There are 2 ways of going about it. If you have a standard TV/LCD or non-HDTV, then there’s the composite cable provided; and if you’re a arrogant owner of an HDTV, then there’s a Hi-Quality cable provided as well. I did try it on a typical TV as well since on a large LCD with 1080p capabilities, but didn’t find much difference between the 2. I feel, it’s not the player which is at fault, but the video quality that was loaded is to live blamed. The large screen we tested this trait was on a 47-inch screen, which was bluntly stretching the video. Going by that, a 32-inch screen would just about be perfect.

The A3 provides lots to fidget around with in order to adjust the video to your liking. All of the adjustments can be done with the video playing in the background — be it aspect ratio, panning & scanning, video playback speed, subtitle adjustments. Hence, the consequence for every change is instant. Even while having the PMP connected to an external screen, you could make the changes on-the-fly plus settle with what looks best on in a matter of few seconds. You can also take a screenshot from a video live and it’ll have the blast saved in the Photos Mode under Screenshots; this is a nice addition something that even Windows Media Player doesn’t offer.

The Sidekick LX that opinion might say more about me than about this showy messaging powerhouse. It excels at text, IM, and e-mail but puts up some roadblocks for those who use a phone primarily to make calls.

The LX costs $300 with a two-year T-Mobile voice plan and a rational extra $20 per month for an unlimited data plan. You can pay $30 per month for a data-only, no-voice plan. You’ll require a good data plan to take gain of the LX’s chief strength: messaging. I easily set up an AOL IM account (the LX supports Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, too), and I also logged on rapidly to Gmail and to PC World’s Web-based mail accounts; the LX supports the IMAP e-mail etiquette and most other popular Web mail services. And, of course, you can text- and picture-message as well.

The LX is designed for two-handed use. To access the keyboard, you lift and swivel the large, beautiful 3-inch screen to reveal a luxurious QWERTY keyboard with brilliant spacing between the keys and a no-slip matte finish. New instant messages scroll across the top of the screen when you’re doing other things like surfing the Web, which, by the way, is slow. (Currently T-Mobile doesn’t offer 3G system speed, but the company plans to roll it out in the first half of 2008.) The senders and subjects of new electronic mail messages appear when you scroll to the main interface e-mail picture using the quick and handy scroll ball.

This design, however, is not great for phone calls. You’ll want to import phone numbers into the LX’s address book and access them that way, because it’s ill at ease to dial using the number keys, which sit in one horizontal row at the top of the keyboard almost directly under the display’s hinge. Advantage, you’ll require to swivel the keyboard out to dial and back in again to talk–awkward design decision number two. While call quality in my area was fine, the speakerphone sounded distorted to me at volume loud sufficient to hear. (Call recipients had no complaints, however.) Series life in PC World lab tests maxed out at 10 hours of talk time.

People who don’t want their phone constantly beeping, buzzing, and flashing won’t particularly like this model either. Under default settings my test unit glowed green, or blue, representing a new message, even when it (and I) was sleeping at night. It made common, unforeseen jarring alert noises too. Sure, you can turn all that off by the phone settings and hardware volume buttons, which I over and over again hit by chance while trying to swivel the screen. But it’s part of the Sidekick LX’s celebrity-attracting bling; turning everything off is like getting an Old English sheepdog and charitable it a buzz cut.

Other features: The LX has a 1.3-megapixel camera with flash that takes graciously sharp pictures but doesn’t take video–a pity given the large screen. You can plug in standard headphones without an adapter, and you can play music that you transfer via USB or store on a microSD card.

Taiwanese phone maker HTC today officially proclaimed that T-Mobile will ship its S620 BlackBerry-like, QWERTY keyboard prepared handset in the US as the Dash. It’s set to ship on 25 October, T-Mobile said.
The rush is a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone, but it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on board too. It measures 11.2 x 6.3 x 1.3cm, making it a very slim smart phone indeed. The weight, counting battery, is 130g.
The device runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and comes with push email installed - offer, of course, you’ve got a Microsoft Exchange Server set-up hosting your messages. It also comes pack with instant messaging tools for AOL, Yahoo! and MSN.
This HTC offering is the first device to feature the company’s JOGGR touch-sensitive navigation bar to ease access to your applications. The screen actions 2.4in on the diagonal, with a 320 x 240 resolution and a 65,536-colour capability. It has a 1.3 megapixel camera, 128MB ROM, 64MB RAM and a Micro SD card slot for memory growth.

T-Mobile Dash / HTC S620 Features:
(1). Wi-Fi for accessing the Internet through the same hotspots you use with your notebook computer.
(2).Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless headsets (with stereo audio) and for local connectivity to other Bluetooth devices.
(3). Memory space: 64MB of RAM for running user applications and 128MB of ROM for built-in software.
(4).Alphabetic (qwerty) keypad for fast typing with both thumbs. The device has been designed for easy single-handed use as well.
(5).2.4 inch, 240×320 pixel (QVGA) screen can display 65000 colors. The screen orientation is landscape.
(6).1.3 megapixel digital camera.
(7). Quad-Band GSM phone with EDGE and GPRS for mobile network data communication.
(8). the device is powered by the Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphone operating system software.
(9).Access to different types of e-mail systems with built-in POP3, IMAP4, and push e-mail.
(10).In addition to a standard smartphone software bundle that includes calendar, contacts, MP3 player, video player, e-mail, web browser, and other applications, the device includes a viewer for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents.
(11). MicroSD memory card slot.