Jun 23, 2010 05:54 PM
2215 Views
X1 had caught my eye when it was launched. But the price was way beyond the utility of the phone from my perspective.
This year about 5 months back when I had to replace my old phone, I checked out the price for the X1 and to my surprise I found it had gone marginally below Rs.25000. That by itself should have triggered the warning bells in my mind. I was looking for a business phone with FM radio and I had very few options for this combination. So I bit the bullet and went for X1.
The packaging, documentation accessories were in line for a phone of this price range. The display is super because of high number of pixels packed in a relatively small screen size. When the honeymoon period was over I started many shortcomings with the phone. The phone is windows based and inherits all the limitations of Windows Mobile Platform. The navigation is designed for a desk top and the touch screen based navigation is easy only if your fingers are of the same dimensions as sparrow. Even the much vaunted panels provided kindly by SE do not help you much.
They have thoughtfully provided the stylus, but I was not sure that they were serious. But I soon realized that they were.I could not operate the phone with my Banana fingers.
The fonts can be made larger but unless you have a microscope, the change in the font size is not visible to naked eye. So for a person with reading glasses like me, Iexperience exciting moments when I get the call when I am driving. I have used iPhone, and I honestly believe that SE guys will benefit the lessons from Apple in designing intuitive user interface.
I would have continued in misery, but fortunately I located SPB shell, using which it is possible to convert the dull windows phone to an icon based navigation like iPhone.
The slide out keyboard is a very convinient feature, but the person who designed the keyboard must have believed that all the users would have long pointed nails to operate the well recessed keys. For pressing the keys there is no tactile feedback to the user. The keys are very mushy.
When the keyboard is slided out the screen is changed to landscape and goes back to portrait when the keyboard is slid in. This does not work reliably. On no lesser than 10 occassion in 5 monthsthe keyboard froze. The phone had to be restarted.
I had read that this phone is equipped with a FM radio. But there is no shortcut in the menus for playing the radio. Finally after searching on the net, I was enlightened that I can play the radio using one of the dedicated panels. Probably after the hardware was put in the design guys were ashamed of having a FM radio on a business phone and tried to hide it.
One would expect that the competitors products would be good inspiration for improving products, if you are bereft of any innovative idea. But SE engineers are probably cooped up in their laboratory and have not noticed the sleek headset that iPhone has. The one they supply with X1 is a huge 2 part headset. The sound quality is as good as any SE phone, which is no different from the competition.
There are 6 buttons on the bottom of the phone, an optical mouse pad/key and 4 way keys for navigation. The three most widely used keys on any phone are dialing, call termination and okay button. These vital buttons are tiny and at the worst possible place ergonomically. The dial button is on the extrem left, a small triangular piece. Disconnect button is another triangular piece on the right hand side, and that is not all. The OK button which is used about 100 times a day is a small triangular button at the right hand bottom. The optical pad works well. The up arrow key is so fragile and unreliable.
Signal reception is good. I can take and make calls from the places where I faced challenges with iPhone. The speaker-phone is provided as a tick in the box and is nothing to get excited about.
The resolution is phenomenal and watching the movies on this phone is really very satisfying.
Camera is below par in clarity of the snaps considering what is state of art today. Like all applications this also suffers from the very dysfunctional GUI.
About after 1 months of use I started noticing that the color of the battery compartment lid had started wearing at the edges and I could see the honest metel below it. And to think that this phone was launched in India upwards of Rs.40000.
I could go on and on about my disillusionment, but probably you all must have got the picture by now.
I was not set up for this experience. The earlier SE phone that I used was P1i and it was sturdy as a tank. Worked faultlessly. I once even dropped it in a bucket. Just took it out and dried it in open atmosphere and next day it started working. The build quality was good. Except for the Aluminium part, nothing lost the shine after an year of rough use. This phone was the real reason why I became a SE convert. Now planning to change my religion again.
Actually in the hind sight, I should have been wiser. With the earlierp1i , I had faced a wrinkle. The scroll wheel had started malfunctioning. I took it to the service center, they kept it for 2 weeks. They told me that it was repaired. Experienced the same malfunction in next week. Took it back. Repeat. Finally gave up accepting it as my bad karma.
The crowning event happened today. My X1 has started showing vertical white lines. The display is probably reaching end of its useful life in 5 months post purchase period. Looking forward to some soul enriching experience with the SE dealers.
Will keep you guys posted on my adventures with SE dealer some time later.
Thanks.
Sunil Dandekar
