Apr 22, 2004 04:31 PM
2074 Views
(Updated Apr 22, 2004 04:31 PM)
This is the first cell I bought, almost an year back, and really happy about its robustness and its price/performance ratio. I paid around 3k for this box packed kit with bill and 1 year warranty. I got a handsfree set complementary.
This is a low-end segment phone with some extraordinary features. First of all the looks are pretty neat even though the cell is quite bulky at 115g. This mainly accounts for the heavy Ni-Mh battery and a 9600bps data modem. The external antenna is quite outdated. The keys are big enough, so it's rather hard to mistype. The soft-keys are rather small. Also there is a side scroll for navigating the award winning Carousel menu. The numbers on the keys are written in an elegant font. When the phone faces direct sunlight it's impossible to see the backlight, but the numbers on the keyboard are clearly seen. In the dark, the backlight becomes very nicely visible in light bluish-green.
The external antenna is detachable, but signal remains the same in city areas, difference is seen in only city outskirts. As far as the signal is concerned it is very good and comparable to nokia handsets. The voice clarity is also very good even when signal is low(2 bars). Coming to battery life, it is extremely good for a low-end set, the phone worked for about four days, in that time, I was making phone calls for no more than 30 minutes a day, plus using other phone features for 45 minutes. It takes about two hours to fully charge the phone.
Speaking about the features, it will take quite a while to explain them all. The menu interface is typical for Philips’ phones- the main menu is a circle of animated icons, you can navigate the menu with the side scroll. To get one level up - press C button. If you try to quit the menu with the red button like you're used to do in other phones - nothing will happen. The hotkeys function allows you to bind 8 shortcuts to different menu items to the buttons. For example - if you press 5 during standby mode you will start the Calculator.
Almost all sub-menus are represented as icons formed in a circle. If you use functions that are hidden down deep in the menu structure, you will have to work that side scroll a lot OR start them with voice activation. Yep, the phone's memory can store up to 10 voice commands which can be used for accessing features that are used the most. Navigating the menu will become a lot easier and faster - you'll just have to get used to the Voice Command feature. Also there is a Voice Memo feature which can store 20 secs of voice and sound.
As far as ringtones are concerned, there are 19 pre-installed ones and one composable ringtone. The ringtone composer has different interface and may take some time to learn it. SMS is easy with T9 text input and 10 message templates. Also there are 50 emotion icons to spice up the text messages.
The screen has a light blue backlit wich is very pleasant,The owner can modify the contrast level, and with maximum contrast the screen will be the brightest. The screen looks pale in broad daylight, but it's still readable. Five text lines can be shown, plus two for service needs.You can connect a handsfree device to the bottom of handset, where a special port is located together with the charger port.
List of calls, it's common, meaning that the last 30 missed, dialed and received calls are listed in this menu. The Organizer feature allows to store upto 40 different events. There is a brick game which is quite addicitive. Clock, alarm and calculator functions are the usual ones.
Finally, no bad words can be said referring to the quality - everything is done at a good level and can be compared with other mobile phones. The vibrating alert is a bit noisy than most of you are used to. The ringtone quality is average. The build quality is extremely rugged and suits rough usage. Considering high competition level between models of low-end sets you should realize that the phone will not be very popular, neither will it be a failure. If anyone wants to feel different from others - this phone is the perfect opportunity at an unbelievably low price tag.
