Decide what to buy

We like people’s comments and opinions at Reevoo and we have our own as well!
Why not add us on Twitter to see what we’re chatting about in the office today?

Our Tweeting will offer you insight into how we work and the technologies and trends we’re following most keenly. Of course if we spot a new bargain on Reevoo we’ll be shouting about it on Twitter for you all to hear!

To add us on Twitter just click the links on the right hand side of Decide What To Buy, under the Twitter logo.
I’ll (jonnyapps) be talking mainly about Digital Cameras and computing, Jo (the_chipstick) is full of exciting mobile phone tweets just waiting to burst out and Sam (Sambos) is the man to follow for interesting updates about anything that provides home entertainment in your living room.

If you’ve not used Twitter before you can sign up to it here.
Think of Twitter as being a lot like a text message or a Facebook status update. You can ‘tweet’ your thoughts and interesting links and talk about whatever you wish.

You can visit Twitter directly here: www.twitter.com
Mobile devices such as the iPhone and the Blackberry 8900 Curve can be used to tweet on the go.

After some great feedback on our Reevoo iPhone app from Graham Charlton at ecounsultancy we jumped at the chance to act on some suggested improvements.

After a few hours of work we’re pleased to say that the Reevoo iPhone app now allows you to compare prices between various retailers!

So now, when you’re out on that spending spree, not only will your shopping choice be empowered by thousands of customer reviews at the touch of a button, you will also be able to see which stores stock the product and at what price!

As well as being able to compare retailers we made even further improvements.
After you’ve read reviews and seen the various retailer prices you can now choose to surf to the retailer store directly on your iPhone.

You can also choose to email yourself, or anyone else, a link of the Reevoo product page you are viewing. This way, if you’re browsing on the bus or wandering through a store, and want to take a bit more time before committing to a purchase, you can send yourself a reminder.

Installing the iPhone App
To add the updated Reevoo iPhone app to your home screen just unlock your iPhone and:

1. Open Safari
2. Navigate to http://www.reevoo.com/iphone
3. Tap the + button in Safari and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’

What’s left to do?
You’re probably now wondering if it could get any better, and we’re confident that it can, with your help.
We love customer reviews, so why not tell us what you think of our iPhone app. Give us good points and bad and one suggestion for an improvement you’d most like to see implemented. We’ll collect your opinions and implement the best idea.
Leave your review in the comments section of this post or email any of the category managers with your ideas to feedback@reevoo.com

Well, it’s 2009 and there are a load of exciting phones due to be released this year. We thought we’d concentrate on three that you can get your hands on pretty soon:

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (formerly known as the Tube), will be the first Nokia touchscreen and is due for release on Friday.

It has a 3.2″ screen, 3.2 megapixel camera , full HTML access to the web, 8.8 hour talk time, weighs in at 109g but is still a little chubby at 15.5mm thick. As you’d expect, it’s built for music and you get an 8GB SD card (expandable up to 16GB) for all your tracks, photos and videos. It’s capable of 35 hour music playback  and 5.2 hour video playback and the video playback has been praised by the guys over at TechRadar who say it’s a “a viable alternative to an iPod touch”.

And if you hate grubby fingerprints all over your screens, Nokia has provided a stylus and the more trendy plectrum for all your pointing pleasure.

Texting is even more fun with a normal keyboard, full QWERTY keyboard, mini QWERTY or handwriting recognition.

You can also pick your top four contacts to follow/stalk on your home screen by getting RSS feeds on their social network activity, all your conversations and photos.

Get down to the Nokia Store on Regent Street on Friday for some extra freebees, including Guitar Rock Tour and Benicassim tickets.

Sim-free handsets will be £249 but look for the deals on various networks. For more info, check out the Nokia website.

Palm Pre

You’ve probably heard that the folks over at Palm HQ have been busy bees trying to bring themselves back into the smartphone game. Their offering, the Palm Pre, is also coming soon.

It’s been dubbed as an iPhone-G1-INQ1 fusion which impresses with its 3.1″ touchscreen, 320×480 resolution HVGA display, 3MP camera, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS and 8GB storage. But where it really blows the socks off established stars like the iPhone, is with its multiple application viewing. Each app just sits like a deck of cards on the screen so that you can scroll between them and not have to lose things you’re working on to view something else.

It’s curved glass screen adds style and other nice touches are the hidden, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 360 degree accelerometer and all your contact with your friends and family can be viewed, chat-style.

You can pretty much sync-up your life with this phone with everything from Google, Outlook and Facebook.

We also like the look of its stylish charging dock, the Palm Touchstone. Just place the Pre onto the Touchstone and magnets “quickly align your phone in the correct position for charging”.

The Pre will be out later this year but check out this video for more info on how it’ll work:

Nokia N97

We can also look forward to the Nokia N97. Complete with 3.5″ touchscreen, 5MP camera (with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens) and flash, a huge 32GB of storage with an extra 16GB via the Micro SD slot, GPS with built-in compass and Wi-Fi, will make it a pretty hard-hitting release.

And if you get fed up of having to keep charging up your phone, the N97 has 400 hours of standby time! Along with 37 hours of music and 4.5 hours of video playback.

Add to that a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, fully customisable home screen, Symbian S60 software, N-Gage games and all the syncing you expect from Nokia and you’ve got an impressive piece of kit.

According to Play.com, the N97 will be available at the end of March for £479.99.

Just in time for Christmas, Reevoo has launched its own iPhone web application. This means that all you lucky folks who own iPhones will be able to take Reevoo with you to the shops. If you’re looking to buy an MP3 player, camera, laptop or any other product that is available on Reevoo.com, you can check out what people have said about it before you buy. Not only that, but you will also be able to see how much it is online! Very useful for saving some valuable pounds over Christmas.

If you’d like to have price comparison and helpful reviews in your pocket this Christmas, just follow these three simple steps and Reevoo will guide you through all your Christmas shopping.

To add the Reevoo iPhone app to your home screen just take your iPhone:
1. Open Safari
2. Go to http://www.reevoo.com/iphone
3. Tap the + button in Safari and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’

And to use it:
1. Simply tap on the Reevoo icon on your home screen

2. Tap search and enter the product name - you’ll get a list of search results with scores and the cheapest price available online from over 100 retailers

3. Tap on the product itself and you’ll be taken through to read the 10 most useful reviews (as voted by our community) on the product.

We’d love to hear your feedback on this app. If there’s anything else you’d like to be able to access or if you’d like to see something done differently, just let us know at feedback@reevoo.com.

If you’re bored of the iPhone already, be a little different and get your hands on a BlackBerry Storm. You can pre-order one from Phones4U from tomorrow and they’re officially released on Friday, exclusively on Vodafone. But if you really want one, just beware of the potential crowds you might encounter on Friday because it’s rumored that newly crowned champion, Lewis Hamilton, will be making an appearance.

If you’ve forgotten what the BlackBerry Storm is all about, check out the details:

For more info, check out the BlackBerry website

Read other BlackBerry reviews

It’s time for another installment in our What to buy series. We looked at What to buy Dads last week and this week it’s the turn of another tricky customer…the teenage boy.

If you need inspiration, just take a look at these:

For the music lover - Everyone loves music. Get them an MP3 player and they can take music with them wherever they go. The top rated MP3 player on Reevoo at the moment is the 8GB iPod Touch. It’s currently around £100. If you were looking to spend a little less than that, the second highest rated player is the £70 Sony NWZA816 4GB. And for a complete bargain buy, grab some CDs. Prices start from as little at £2.

For the gamer - Why not go for a games console like the PlayStation 3 (£289)? If they already have a console, they might like a gaming chair (£100). It’s comfortable for extended gaming sessions and you can feel the action through it. It can also be used to listen to music and watch films. There are also lots of console accessories, like this PS3 charging station for £15. For smaller gifts, you could go for a video game (prices start at £2).

For Mr Sociable - A mobile phone so that they can keep in contact with all their mates. For a phone packed full of features, how about the Nokia N95 or N96? Or for a more classy option, how about the Samsung Tocco or the new iPhone? (All phone prices vary according to contract)

For the sporty ones - Some tickets to a football or rugby match will make a great gift. For something more original, why not try this Garmin Forerunner 405 (£169) GPS-enabled sport watch, which tracks your training and sends the data to your computer or for trips to the coast this fishing starter kit (£32)?

For gadgety types - A Wind-Up Torch with Mobile Phone Charger (£7) or some travel speakers for your iPod (£9).

And for the boy that has everything? - Give them this Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock (£24) - guaranteed to wake the laziest of teenagers.

All done. Pretty painless, just as shopping should be.

If you’re purchasing online, follow our top tips for online shopping this Christmas.

For all you original iPhone owners who’ve been fed up with your battery life, this new product may ease the pain a little. The iPow, although it sounds like something out of a Batman comic, is actually an external battery case for the original iPhone (3G version on the way).

It can be charged up at the same time as your iPhone and will apparently double the battery life. It also provides a leather top which closes with a magnetic clasp and mini stereo speakers which are twice as loud as the ones on the iPhone.

It’s not the prettiest of things and in my opinion, makes the iPhone look a little clumpy. It’ll also add 98 grams to your handbag or pocket but if you’re after more juice, then I suppose it’s not so bad. You can pick one up at twistedcarbon for £49.99.

If you want to be cool, drive an Aston Martin, play Nintendo and wear Agent Provocateur…not necessarily all at the same time. These are some of the coolest brands around according to the annual Coolbrands survey.

Voted for by the Coolbrands council and 2,500 members of the public, Aston Martin receives the award for the coolest brand for third year running - certainly aided slightly by a certain Mr Bond who is rather partial to their vehicles.

Relative newcomer, the iPhone is in at second place, preceding the mother ship ? Apple, in third.

There?s no doubt that brands and celebrity go hand in hand. With Bond helping out in the car department and constantly-in-the-press Daisy Lowe being the face of Agent Provocateur, there?s a healthy little partnership of which somebody can be very proud.

But it?s not all down to the celebs.  With brands like Apple, Nintendo and Bang & Olufsen it shows that brands who constantly lead their field in design and innovation are worthy recipients of the accolade.

Congratulations should also go to the Tate Modern who have managed to get onto the list at number 10 - pretty impressive with all those super-brands on there.

You can check out the top 10 coolest brands below:

Top 10 Coolest Brands
1.    Aston Martin
2.    iPhone
3.    Apple
4.    Bang & Olufsen
5.    YouTube
6.    Google
7.    Nintendo
8.    Agent Provocateur
9.    Rolex
10.  Tate Modern

It seems that the iPhone has won even more fans in the shape of HSBC chiefs. The powers that be over at the global bank have decided to look into using iPhones as their executive weapon of choice. That would mean replacing their fleet of around 300,000 BlackBerry devices.

Now that the new iPhone 3G is compatible with Microsoft Exchange servers, it has become more attractive to business as well as consumers. Its larger screen and applications geared towards trading and accounting are adding to the iPhones capability to become a serious business competitor.

News from the BlackBerry camp is that the BlackBerry Thunder, equipped with a large touch screen, will be released later this year to go into direct competition with the iPhone. Watch this space for a smartphone stand-off…

So the iPhone was released on Friday. Some people love it, some people say it’s a disappointment, what’s a person to think? Well I looked to the reviews on Reevoo to see what people were complaining about on the old iPhone and then compared it to the new version so that I could make up my mind and see if Apple listened to the people that matter most - the users.

Here’s what people who bought the original iPhone had to say about it. I’ve also looked into what Apple have done about each issue and put it in underneath. Be prepared, this is a long’un…

Speed
Original iPhone owners complained about internet browsing speed, with many citing the absence of 3G as one of the biggest opportunities to improve iPhone

The new iPhone has 3G technology so that browsing the net is much faster

Battery life
From 107 reviews, the original iPhone only scored an average of 6.8/10 for its battery life. As well as improvements in the battery life itself, iPhone owners also wanted to be able to change the battery

Apple says that it has increased battery life to 300 hours on standby, 10 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk and 7 hours of video playback. However you still cannot change the battery

Text messages
Original iPhone users were very frustrated with its SMS functionality. People were unable to carry out the most basic functions such as forward text messages, send messages to multiple contacts and send pictures and business cards. Users also would have liked to be able to navigate more easily through words and letters in text messages

Apple has now improved the iPhone’s messaging features so that you can now send messages to multiple contacts. However, you still cannot send multimedia messages

Camera
Consumers thought the old iPhone’s camera was another of the worst features. They wanted to see a camera with a flash, more megapixels, the ability to zoom and video functionality

Apple has kept the original specs for the camera on the iPhone 3G, which will disappoint many consumers. There is still no flash or video capability and it is still only 2 megapixels

Synchronisation
People wanted to be able to sync up their email, calendars and other Microsoft applications with their iPhones

Apple has now made sure that the new iPhone is compatible with Microsoft products

Memory
Owners would have liked to have had more memory in the original iPhone

Apple has so far kept to the same 8GB and 16GB capacity phones. There are still no memory card slots

Connectivity
Some users noted that the Bluetooth on the original iPhone didn’t work as they would have liked it to

Bluetooth on the new iPhone is still limited

GPS
Many consumers wrote that their iPhone would have been considerably better if it had GPS

Apple has now incorporated GPS into the new iPhone which will be gratefully received by users

Speaker quality
Users commented on the poor sound quality for both music and calls on speakerphone

Apple has improved the iPhone’s speakers so that music playback and calls can be heard much more clearly

Ringtones
Users wanted to be able to set their own music as ringtones

This is now possible, however it is a bit fiddly for the average user, requiring manual reformattinf of music files

Handset
Original iPhone owners found the handset slippery and difficult to hold without pressing something unintentionally

The new iPhone has a plastic back, instead of the original aluminium, which may make it a bit easier to hold and grip without activating functions

Radio
Users would have liked an FM radio incorporated in their iPhones

There is still no FM radio but you can listen to radio over the internet

Headphone jack
Original iPhone owners were frustrated at having to pay for specific Apple headphones or having to use a chunky adaptor as standard headphones wouldn’t fit in the sunken jack

Apple have now rectified this so that standard 3.5mm headphones can now be used

Third party software
With so many features missing from the iPhone, users wanted to be able to use third party software more easily

Apple has now opened up the new 3G iPhone so that third party software can be easily accessed and used through the App Store

So there we go. I think we can all agree that some great changes have been made to the new iPhone - 3G, GPS and third party apps, to name but a few.  But it does seem that Apple mainly listened to the more tech-savvy user when it came to these improvements. For the average user who just wants to share media with their mates and take some decent pictures, it might be a bit of a let-down. Saying that, I bet you all buy one anyway. For me, I’m happy with my more than capable Nokia 5310.