Iconoclast!!!. Review on Panasonic GD75

The last time I wrote a review on cell phones was ages back. I remember, changing my Sony in favour of a robust Siemens C25. They say history repeats itself, and so I changed my dated C25 for a brand new Panasonic GD75. It’s been nearly a month now, and I think I can safely jot down my humble opinions and my user experience.

One of the primary reasons that influenced my buying decision was the look and feel of the phone. The japs have done a good job on the drawing board with the result that the GD75 looks more like a coveted work of sculpture rather than a phone. I however, refer to the silver version of course; the GD75 also has a black variant, which I will not recommend. The antennae-less design, the smooth contours, the graceful design lines, the silver finish, the transluscent keypad and the joystick make this phone stand out in a crowd of mundane Nokias and Samsungs. Panasonics are always lighter than the competition, and the GD75 is no exception; lighter than a smaller Nokia 8250, it tips the scale at an amazing 82gms. A large high-definition screen adorns the tasteful exteriors. The only flaw in the design is that while the screen has a blue backlight, the buttons are green when illuminated. There’s also a LED above the earpiece, which one might mistake for a signal indicator (a la Samsung). The indicator unfortunately glows only during an incoming call or while the phone’s being charged.

The feature list in this phone is rather extensive. It features voice dial, voice memo, polyphonic tunes, speakerphone, WAP 1.2, group SMS, T9 typing, and so on. One feature, which comes across as a novelty in the first instance, but is immensely useful, is the timer function. You can set the phone to switch itself off and on at specified times. It also has the usual apps such as a currency converter, a calculator, a scheduler, games, profiles, screensavers etc.

Lets move on to the ease of use. The GD75 takes some time to get used to, (if you’ve been a Nokia user), what with the joystick and the graphical navigational menu. One gets the hang of things easily after a few hours of fiddling with the phone. The joystick works as a multifunctional device, for menu-navigation, volume control, hands-free toggle switch, voice memo and voice dial during various states of operation.

Talk time is rather impressive at 360 mins and so is the standby time at 150 hours, owing to an efficient LI-ion battery, which takes up a little more than an hour to be completely charged. This phone was also probably designed by a western classical music buff, as all the polyphonic tunes are based on classical numbers such as Bach or Beethoven. Also I haven’t had much luck, despite my unrelenting endeavor to download a few snazzy tunes. None of the local service providers, nor Yahoo mobile supports the GD75. Sadly, for some weird reason it does not support picture messaging as well. I guess there’s always a tradeoff when you want to be exclusive, which in common parlance would mean, “to exclude”. The Nokia fraternity is definitely better off in this regard.

All said and done, if you want to be different and want a great looking phone with a plethora of features with an affordable price-tag, the GD75’s the way to go.