BENQ A500: Tightly clammed-shell. Review on BenQ A500

This is a clam-shell phone from ''BENQ'' and comes with a small integrated camera, has a ''VGA'' Camera and two colour displays.

This phone weighs around 98gms and when opened looks a tad bigger then the normal clam-shells available in the market.

this phone is available in three colours ie (Light Electric Blue, Dark Blue, Cool Pink, Funky Gold) the upper part of the body is silver in colour, the volume button is there on the left side of the phone and you will find the camera button just below it and we have the head set connector right at the top hidden with a rubber cover, the place for the strap is on the left side between the headset connector and the volume button. the ''IRDA'' (Infra-red) is situated on the right hand side, the top cover has a small (20x13 mm) external cSTN display having a capability of 4096 colours.

the quality of the display is average or below average and the thing that can get on your nerves is the small font size, the small display can also show monthly calander and also serve as a view finder for self pic.

Now lets open the flap and we have an internal TFT screen of 128x160 pixels (30x38 mm) capable of 262K colours, though the quality of the screen is high and the picture is bright , the keypads are made of plastic with a navigational key,The white backlighting highlights unevenly, and blocks of 1,2,3 and 7,8,9 are practically unlighted although readable, the loudspeaker is at the back.

Battery:

The back side of the phone is the battery which is 700 mAh Li-Ion battery, according to the manual, the battery would last 180 hours of standby time and up to 3 hours in the talk mode, but for anaverage user it would last for around 1 1/2 days, full recharge of the battery takes around 2 hrs .

Memory:

has 20mb of memory and only 16mb is available for images and video

Phonebook:

has a capability of around 500 addresses and one intresting thing in the phone book is the inbuilt''BLACK LIST'' which is quite helpfull if u dont want to get connected by any nos.

SMS:

has the mammoth capability of storing around1000 messeges, this phone further has the capability of ''EMS'', ''MMS'' ''WAP''

Applications:

this phone has a no of applications like alarm clock, calendar, Fast acces menu,world time,calculator, currency converter and a stop watch.

Games:

this phone has three games (Cherry Boy, Puzzle Game, Eda Mouse), java MIDP ver2.0 is supported.

Dictaphone:

you can record for a max of 15 sec and can set them as ringer tone.

Themes:

one can select from the 5 preset colour schemes, can set a background picture, also has the option of the screen saver but you can set only one of the two preset animated images as the screen saver.

Camera:

Has an integrated camera and both the internal and external screen can be used as the viewfinder, you can also see the information about the resolution, contrast and zoom, one can select the following resolution 96x64, 128x128, 128x160, 640x480 pixels has an 8x digi zoom, please dont expect a crisp and sharp picture as this is a basic VGA camera but is good enough in its range.

Video:

has the capability to record video and can do it in 2 res 94x64 and 128x128 pixels and another bad news you can only watch the video on the phone and can not transfer it to the P.C. :(

ADVANTAGES

1) Connection quality is good

2) Camera is good in its line

3) looks are fine in its range (Have seen a lot of ugly Phones)

4) Inbuilt option of blacklisting (I love this option)

5) Value for money

6) The Irda works fine

DISADVANTAGES

1) Low vol of the Loudspeaker

2)feeble vibra

3)cannot transfer video to the P.C

4)while transfering through Irda can't overweight 240 KB

I SHUDDER AT THE THOUGHT OF SOMEONE GIFTING THIS PHONE TO MEPLEASE DONT