The Virgin Lobster 700TV is the first Windows Mobile device from Virgin UK and is probably one of the first Windows Smartphones aimed at the "youth" and "fun" market rather than the "Business" and "Executive" market. The emphasis here is not on workflow or time-management but rather on watching digital TV, listening to Digital radio and playing about with your handset. Best of all you'll not be paying huge chunks of money to watch the TV or radio either - it's all provided free for 90 days on the "Pay As You Go" option (then just £5 per month) or completely free if you choose the contract option.

So will  the Lobster 700TV broadcast a smile across our face and transmit joy to the CoolSmartPhone community? Let's see eh ?

THE OUTSIDE

The box arrived at CoolSmartPhone HQ looking very posh. A TV test-card showed through the "700TV" lettering and the Lobster logo on the back. Inside you get a charger, battery, USB sync cable, stereo headset, manual, quick start guide, CD (with ActiveSync on) and a ClearVue CD which - obviously - has the excellent ClearVue on. This program lets you view Word, Excel and other documents on your Lobster 700TV. Neat.

The handset itself is, well. Curvy. I've sat here for a while trying to think of a way to describe it. In the end I've decided to say this. It's curvy in a Lisa Tarbuck way, rather than a Gemma Atkinson way. OK? Got it? Good. I've taken a comparison shots so that you can see roughly how tall and wide it is.

Let's start by looking at that curvy bit on the right. It's got the large "TV" button and a button that takes you into the camera application. We'll have a look at the TV application in more detail shortly.

This curvy right side presumably houses the DAB kit which, although the designers have worked overtime to style, looks a tad weird to me. I can only imagine that some techy at HTC (who make these phones) has been given a job sheet that says, "Add DAB reception to regular Smartphone". He's gone off and decided that, instead of redesigning the insides of a regular Smartphone to make space for the DAB stuff, he'd rather just shove it along the side of the existing circuit board.

It's a love it or hate it style I think, however we'll continue to look around the handset. On the top of the phone is a nice clicky power button. I like this power button, it's like the one on the front of a Dell monitor and it works..... really well. You've also got the external speaker where your ringtone will blast out.

On the left side is the volume up / down keys. Holding these down will also do other things, like launching the audio notes or voice dial functions. More on that later though.

On the bottom is your standard miniUSB port (we mean "standard" in a good way though) and the socket for your headphones. The miniUSB port will give you a connection to your PC and charge point.

The screen itself is set back in the unit somewhat, however you can adjust the brightness of the LCD screen to combat any unwanted glare from the sun.

Wait.. Did I miss something there? Umm.. Side bits, check. Top, check. Bottom, check. Screen.... err.. check. Oh yeah. Wait, I haven't covered the keyboard yet have I ? Well, there's a reason for that. I have a problem with the keyboard. It's a fairly big problem too. Let me show you....

Here's the keyboard. Everything at the top works well, however the numeric part at the bottom is insane. Most of the keys on the silver part float and wobble around like a drunk fat man trying to stand at the urinal. The number 2, 5 and 8 seem especially bad. Look what happens if I press "2" down. A huge gap suddenly appears at the top of the key - seriously, you could lose a few supermodels down it. To make things worse sometimes it can bump into the numnber 5 and push that down too.

Check the keyboard out from a side profile. You'll see that there's actually two different types of keys on the numeric portion of this phone. The silver keys on the left have a slightly "tilt" on them whilst the darker keys on the right have a groove at the bottom of each key. These "grooved" keys seem to have been styled this way due to the specific functions they play in the TV / Radio application. The experienced "texter" who uses the "ABC" mode will find "double presses" can become difficult to perform because of the switching from one key type to another. That said though, I've just had to amend this entire review because Emily (my darling wife) picked it up a typed out a perfectly good text message using "T9" within seconds. Doah! :)

These silver keys, as you can see, are angled "up". You may be forgiven for thinking that this would actually match the height of the "grooves" in the darker keys.

Unfortunately the minute you touch these silver keys they become completely flat like this..

.. this means that they're a different height when pressed to the darker buttons when pressed.

Around the back we've got a matching curvy battery cover..

Under here, if you manage to get the cover off (believe me it's tricky) you'll find a battery with a SIM card and a MicroSD card slot underneath it. Above it is the 1.3 megapixel camera which has actually been styled quite nicely.

THE TV

Let's cut to the most important part of this phone right now. It's the "killer app" of this phone and it's obviously why people are so interested in it. It's got a TV. It's not regular TV or the type of digital TV that you can get across the UK now. The service on this handset isn't over 3G either - you may have heard of similar services via "Three" here in the UK but that service relies on an open 3G data connection.

So how does it work ? Put simply, the new DAB - Digital Audio Broadcasting system allows for data to be pushed across transmitters. This lets people receive loads of radio channels on their spanky new DAB radio receivers in excellent quality. The channels are fed down on frequencies which your regular desktop digital radio will scan automatically - no tuning or faffing about. On these frequencies are streams of data - up until now it's been a 128 or 192k audio stream similar to that found on most radio websites.

The Virgin system - working on "Movio" from BT - puts streaming TV down some of these frequencies instead. These are picked up by the phone - along with a description of the programme you're watching plus what's coming next etc. This is all in addition to the regular radio channels you can get for your local area. Have a look at this page to check your coverage. It's well worth plonking your postcode in here and looking for the green "ticks" on the UKDigitalRadio website to find how many DAB radio stations you'll receive on the Lobster 700TV plus how likely you are to get the TV pictures (the more green "ticks" you get, the better!)

There's been many questions from our forum about this handset so here's the answers to the most popular questions....

- Yes, you'll need a TV licence before you start - the BBC is funded entirely by the licence so you need to ensure it's paid for.
- Yes, watching the TV on the Lobster 700TV is free for the duration of your Virgin Mobile "Pay Monthly" contract.
- If you choose the "Pay As You Go" option then the TV is free for 90 days, then you'll need to start paying - currently £5 per month - for it. - According to Virgin the Mobile TV service (not necessarily DAB radio) is only available in UK and excludes Northern Ireland.
- Virgin do not control the content of the TV broadcasts, so if you see boobies on your phone it's not their fault.
- There is the ability within the handset to scan other DAB frequencies (not JUST UK ones) - it'll even scan all frequencies if you wish.
- The TV viewing in the version of the software tested only allows "portrait" screen orientation. The software powering the TV is upgradeable however so it may change.
- At the time of doing this review there are 5 TV channels available and I can get 43 DAB radio channels in my area, however there are more. The TV channels at the minute are BBC1, ITV1, Channel 4 (showing "Short cuts" - a mobile version of the channel which isn't in line with the regular channel but doesn't have interruptions), E4 and ITN.

So let's get started with it. Out of the box we insert the Virgin Mobile SIM. You'll notice that the MicroSD card is actually below the SIM card here. The battery is a standard HTC Smartphone battery that we've seen on a lot of the Orange SPV range and I'll confess it does stand up rather well when watching TV.

The first power-on does all manner of configuration bits. The Virgin tweaks are added and the phone reboots into this screen ...

There's several different ways of accessing the TV functionality - you can either press the home screen plug-in (this shows you what you're watching or listening too plus whether it's on or off), via the menu or you could just press the sizeable "TV" button on the front of the unit.

The very first time you run the TV application a few things will happen. Firstly it'll scan for available channels. As mentioned previously I got 43 radio stations, however if you're fairly mobile and travel between different transmitters you may get some "greyed out" as you move to the new area. The new local channels for your new destination will then be shown alongside. For example, at home I get stations including "BRMB" - this is a Birmingham-based station. When I travel up towards Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent I'll get new stations appear, such as "Signal One" - this is a North Staffordshire based station. BRMB is still listed, but it's greyed out to let you know that it's currently out of range.

You'll also get a listing of which TV channels it's found. At the time of this review there's five channels available. The very first time you click on one it'll ask you to grab the licence needed for the TV channels. This is done via a GPRS connection to Virgin Mobile. A web page is called up on your handset and the necessary licences are grabbed down the pipe. Trying to do this on any other connection - like a pass-thru connection - fails because the request must come through the Virgin network. A few people have already asked me about this - "Can you swap the SIM and still watch TV?" Well, yes and no. The phone is of course network locked, so putting another SIM in fails and the phone won't start. We all know of course that the network lock can be got around, but even if you do pay to get your handset network unlocked then you'll only be able to watch TV until the licence needs renewing or the TV application is updated.

I should mention here that everything to do with the TV and the radio facilities requires you to have the headphones plugged in. This acts as your aerial for the TV and radio services, so you need it plugged in whilts using it. There is, thank goodness, an option to have "Loudspeaker" turned on. This is excellent for showing off or letting all of your mates watch the latest episode of something on E4 whilst sat on the bus.

The digital radio (DAB) service is similar to the service you see on regular DAB radios. Once you click a station you'll get some text telling you what is currently playing, who the DJ is and perhaps some other information too. This is in addition to the excellent Radio / TV Guide and programme details (shown above) that are fed down to you (along with all the TV / Radio station logos) over the air. There's even "Red Button" functionality too - this can be access by pressing the TV button again.

OK, OK. So enough of the chatter. Let's see it in action shall we ? I did a quick demo by recording a video on my M600. I've uploaded these to YouTube which has dropped the quality a bit so you can get the original MP4 videos at the links below (warning - they're fairly large downloads).

- Start Menu - Page 1

Internet Explorer

The usual Windows Smartphone apps are here and that of course includes Internet Explorer. It comes with some Virgin favourites (actually spelt correctly too - previous Windows Smartphones have always said, "Favorites" in this list even when you're set to UK English). These include tones, pictures, gams, downloads and Virgin Bites which can be seen below.

You can adjust the way the screen is displayed (full screen, column view, desktop etc) plus you can change the font size or add stuff to you favourites listing.

Camera / Video Camera

The very latest camera application has been added to the Lobster 700TV. Like with most "out of the box" Smartphones it's set as default with a fairly low resolution on the camera (why networks / handset manufacturers do this I'll never know - surely you don't want people taking 640x480 "medium quality" shots when the camera is capable of much better?!). There's a zoom function, which is operated by moving up and down, and you can alter the brightness of the shot by pressing left / right. I've pointed the camera at our TV in a fairly dark lounge to show you the zoom function. It's a digital zoom, so you can expect a certain amount of pixilation as you zoom in.

On the camera preview screen you'll notice several bits of information. On the top left is the type of shot you're taking. In this instance it's a camera photo - it could be a movie,  MMS video, contacts picture, picture theme or a sports shot. At the top it says, "M" - that's the quality of the photo and next to it you'll see where the photos will be stored. In this case it's the internal memory. On the top right you can see how many photos you have left.

Down at the bottom of the preview screen you'll see your zoom level, light meter and white balance (Auto/ Daylight / Night etc) plus whether your timer is set. There's bags more settings to play with too. These are shown in the following screenshots..

I can change pretty much every aspect of the camera from the "Menu" options. The self-timer is always useful for fun shots that you'd like to be in, so you can set the delay above. You can also change the light balance although most will probably leave it as "Auto" which is default. The one thing you will want to change, as I already mentioned, is the quality of the pictures. This can be done from the "Capture Settings" option which allows you to tweak the resolution up to 1280x1024 (1 Megapixel). You can also change where the photos are stored. If you have a storage card it's probably a good idea to use that as it'll give you more internal memory space.

Above you can also see the "Quality" option. This will let you increase the image clarity still further. You've also got the ability to add a time stamp onto your shots too. Useful particularly if you can't remember when and where you snapped a shot. You can also add some photo effects onto the image too. The Sepia and Grayscale options will give your photo that old-fashioned appearance.

It's not just standard photos that are available though. You've also got up to 176x144 video, sports, MMS videos, contact pictures (for giving your contacts a preview image) and picture themes...

There's only 5 picture themes on the Lobster 700TV, however they're enough to give you a laugh with your mates and there's always the possibility to buy more themes elsewhere.

Once you've taken a shot or recorded a video you also have the chance to go through the Pictures & Videos gallery. This "Pictures & Videos" application is present in a lot of Smartphones however I really think it's a bit slower than it should be, especially when you've got quite a few images loaded up. It's nothing against the Lobster 700 - it's the fault of the people coding the app. Either way, if you choose "Pictures and Videos" from your menu option you'll get to see everything you've snapped thus far. You can move around from internal to storage card memory too..

Overall the camera isn't that bad at all. HTC seem to have a habit of putting less-than-great cameras into their phones. For those that don't know, this is the HTC Monet handset and it has the same 1.3 megapixel camera which you'll find in a lot of Windows Mobile phones. Whilst not brilliant the camera is good enough and I've included some examples below to show you. These have all been taken on the highest possible settings - click on them to get the original images.

Windows Media Player

Next up is Windows Media Player. We've got Windows Media Player 10 on board and it comes with a lot of the usual stuff you'd expect to see in the desktop version. There's playlists, music libraries and libraries divided into type. This means you can listen to your own MP3's and video files plus the onboard TV & Radio system - that's loads more than your iPod! :)

Messaging

The messaging on the Lobster 700TV is tied heavily into the contacts. Let's not forget that you can "sync" with the contacts in your Outlook / Outlook Express so entering your contacts is a breeze (click here to learn how to do it quickly). You can then text your mates, or email them, or send them a picture message. If you're feeling incredibly flash you can even synchronize with your Exchange server. Most people purchasing this handset however will use the Lobster 700TV as a text / MMS device. You can use T9 or old-style "abc" mode plus you can insert smiley-faces and other symbols. If you're composing an email or MMS then you can insert pictures, audio notes, video and much more besides.

For those who haven't seen or used a Smartphone like the Virgin Lobster 700TV before you can set up a POP email box to collect your email when you're out and about - this will grab a COPY of messages from your POP3 mail account so you can keep in touch via email too. Also, in the example above I've just typed in a number to text, however by pressing the "action" button it'll call up a list of my contacts so I can choose the person to text or email. I can also use the predictive dial feature (where you type in the persons name as if you were typing a message in T9) and it'll quickly locate the correct person.

Calendar

The built-in calendar app has always been a favourite of mine. I can plan a meeting in Outlook and then sync it to my phone use the supplied Activesync cable. At least, that's what Microsoft tend to think people do. Personally I use it as an alarm, a reminder facility, and all manner of other things - even to remind me to.. err.. get some beer!

Using the calendar function it'll remind me via an alarm just before 12 - then I'll know that I have to go and grab some beer. :) This syncs' with your PC, so you'll get an alert in Outlook too. Excellent.

Contacts

Your contacts are all synchronized with your Outlook / Outlook Express address book. This, as we mentioned earlier, makes it really easy to add people in (see how here).

You can also add numbers in via the phone too of course. Here we can add a name, number, home number, work, mobile, email address, postal address, fax number, custom ring tone, IM (instant message) details, website, job title, department, company or even "friendly" things like their birthday, anniversary, nickname, the name of their spuse, children plus they can have their very own picture (which you can add via the camera we mentioned earlier or a pre-stored photo). I've added a couple of test numbers in..

On the right you can see the contact card for this person. Just moving up or down and then pressing select will initiate the action. It's simple, quick and clear. You can also choose to beam your contacts, copy or delete them. You can also send a vCard or filter the list of contacts down if it gets quite large. To send an MMS when you're in "Contacts" you'll have to choose it from the listings as there's no option to do it within the actual contact card.

Call History

The call history will give you details on who you've called, who called you, which numbers you missed and more. You can also search, send SMS / email or delete the whole list from here. I used this screen for checking my call timers and saving new numbers to my contacts list.

Start Menu - Page 2

The second menu has a variety of applications from games to MSN. First in the list though is Games, this contains Bubble Breaker and Solitaire however it will start to fill up with extra games that you download or purchase. Next up is voice notes - a quick way to make reminders, add audio attachments to MMS and emails or to even create your own ringtones. Pictures and Videos we've already covered, applications we'll get into shortly and then we have Comm Manager for accessing all the communication areas of your phone. We also have Tasks, File Manager, Midlet Manager and finally Pocket MSN.

Voice Notes

Here's the voice notes application - as you can see it's a quick and easy way to record things like little reminders when you're driving or otherwise engaged. You can record new audio notes by pressing and holding the "up" key on the side of the handset.

Accessories

Here's what we have in Accessories. There's a simple calendar followed by "Clear Storage" - this will reset your phone back to the defaults or the "out of the box" settings. You'll need to enter a few things to make sure you really want to do this first, so you can't accidentally use it. Download Agent is - I presume - something to bring down new Virgin Mobile content. SIM Manager (which we saw before in the Contacts screens) will show you what your mobile number is and will help you store / retrieve SIM contact details. The Wireless Modem meanwhile will let you quickly set up internet access for your laptop / PC through the phone.

Comm Manager

This is wher you control everything to do with communications on your phone. You can turn the phone, bluetooth, push-email and audio on or off plus loads more. This is the place to be for flight mode etc, even though the cabin crew won't believe that your phone is off! :)

Task Manager

The Task Manager application will let you create tasks that you need to achieve. You can sort them by status, priority and date.

File Explorer

An invaluable application, this will let you move, copy, rename and find files on your device. The great thing about Windows Mobile is that it really is just a cut-down version of Windows, so stuff is where you expect it. Documents are in "My Documents", pictures are in "My Pictures" and so on.

File Explorer will let you navigate your Smartphone with ease and also lets you beam files and pictures to and from other devices.
 

Pocket MSN

Yes, MSN is included on this handset. A lot of operators are now pulling MSN out of the Windows Mobile phones but - thankfully -Virgin have left it in. Thank gawd!

You can sign into MSN Messenger and keep in touch with friends and relatives, compose Hotmail or visit the MSN Mobile site. It's invaluable for keeping in touch with people who are online.

- Start Menu - Page 3

The third menu page includes the settings, which we'll go into shortly, plus speed dial and task manager (which is totally different to the "tasks" application we mentioned earlier). We also have the video recorder, which is really just a quick jump into the appropriate camera mode, and the Virgin SMS services where you can get the latest information on your Top-up etc.

Speed Dial / Voice Tags

Getting speedy access into numbers is important, so this application lets you test them out. You can create Speed Dials from the contacts list just by going into a contact card and choosing "Add Speed Dial". It should also be noted that you can add Voice Tags from the contacts card too, so merely saying a name will dial that person. To initiate this "Voice Tag" recognition system you have to press and hold the "down" key on the side of the handset.

On the left below we have the Speed Dial functionality and how it integrates into your contacts, plus bottom left we show how you can test them out and view the ones you've set up. On the right side we've got the voice tagging system in action. The phone will listen to your speech and match it with a previous recording for that number.

But wait,. that's not all it does - you can also do the same thing for PROGRAMS too, so you can just say something or press one key to get quick access into something you need. Here, below, I'm setting up a voice tag for the video camera. Then all I need to do is press and hold the "down" key on the phone and say, "Camcorder" or something like that.

I could always set it up as a speed dial too, so pressing and holding "2" would bring up my camera.

Task Manager

This little helper is great for freeing up phone memory. Whilst using your phone you may find that a lot of programs start running in the background. This can sometimes affect performance so - if you need to - you can use the task manager to shut down applications fully.

Settings

Here's all your available settings options. There's everything you could need here for tweaking the phone. You can change the ringtone, message tone, homescreen, time, alarm and much more besides. You can also change the profile but, although this can also be done by tapping the power button once, you get more options in this screen to play with and you can edit the profile to suit your needs.

Let's have a quick scoot around the settings screens. First up, in the "Phone" option shown below (option 1). This gives you access into various aspects of the phone such as network choice, call barring and call forwarding etc. The two screens on the lower right show the next option - Sounds. We like sounds. Sounds are great. You can copy MP3's, WAV files and more via ActiveSync (which hooks your PC into your phone) and have completely personalised (and often completely free) ringtones, text, email and warning sounds. You can get loads of them right here at CoolSmartPhone.com in our downloads section :)

Here's the Profiles section we mentioned. You can select which profile you'd like to use. They're all pretty much self-explanatory - plus you have an "Automatic" profile which will shut the phone up when you're in a meeting (see the Calendar application we mentioned earlier)..

Next up is the Home Screen. You can add your own backdrop here, which could be a picture of a loved one or something you've copied to the phone. You can also change the colour scheme or add a full new home screen layout.

The Clock & Alarm lets you set the time of your handset plus the timezone. You can also set an alarm to wake you up in the morning. In the Connections menu you've also got the ability to tweak pretty much everything - even VPN. The SMS service will let you send texts' over GPRS too.

The "Security" option will let you add things like a key lock password whilst the Power Management, shown below, lets you modify how long the backlight should stay on when it's on battery or AC power plus loads more. Something I found useful though - and this is not found on all Windows Mobile Smartphones - is the ability to control the brightness of the backlight. This is especially useful if you're having trouble watching the TV application in sunlight for example..

Here's the System Information screen, just for the geeks like me that like to enjoy that sorta' thing :)

Conclusion

The Virgin Lobster 700TV is the first of it's kind - a phone that not only receives digital radio but digital TV too. Deep inside it's a Windows Mobile Smartphone with all the latest bits thrown in. Everything, including MSN, is included and we're glad to see it all working flawlessly - including the additional TV / Radio software which is integrated well. This, though, starts us off with things we would've wished for. Firstly, a landscape TV format is needed with so many widescreen channels and it's a shame that at launch the option isn't available. Secondly, the handset itself is rather rotund and may pose a problem for phone holders and jeans pockets. Both of these aren't major issues, however the keyboard is one problem we feel may annoy some users. It's difficult to type text messages quickly and the movement of the keys combined with the differing key types (slightly raised with a groove on the darker keys contrasting with tilted silver keys) make speedy data tricky indeed. You should probably contrast these comments with my wife though, as she's just picked up the phone and sent three perfectly typed text messages using "T9", which appears to work much better, and she also stated that, "This is one of the best phones you've ever reviewed. I can just go out shopping or walking the dog now without having to worry about loading up lots of MP3's or taking an iPod." ... doah!

I unpackaged this phone thinking that the TV wouldn't come up to scratch. I figured that it'd suck battery life and the reception would be rubbish, however I'm pleasantly surprised by it and it's pretty damned fantastic. I'd think about buying it just for the range of radio channels you get. There's plans to expand the TV channels too and I must confess it was really quite pleasing to be able to watch a bit of TV whilst waiting for Emily to come out of the shops. Sure, I could "just buy a regular portable TV" but then I'd have to charge it and carry that around with me too. So yes, I am impressed with the Virgin Lobster 700 TV when it comes to it's functionality (Windows Mobile Smartphone) and it's extra "killer app" (the live TV / DAB Radio / TV Guide etc), however I'm not at all enamored with the keyboard.

This is a damned good phone which has been implemented well. It's also a really cheap way of getting Digital Radio into your car - just plug the output into this Audio X FM transmitter and you're away. If it wasn't for the minor keyboard issues then we'd love it to bits, although Emily says, "It's you big fingers, I can use it fine. Can I keep it?"

If you're considering purchasing one then do please look at this page to check how good your local DAB coverage is first. Also, we'd love to see your comments if you have the Lobster 700TV, just hit "add a comment" below.

Links - Virgin Mobile