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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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ZDNet Australia puts 10 of the best phones on the market today under the reviews microscope. Whatever your mobile needs are, we've got a phone for you, as well as a look at the first 3G phone on the Australian market.
The market for mobile phones is accelerating so swiftly it's astounding, and most of the movement appears to be away from the core functionality of mobile phones, that being actual talking. You can't quite buy a phone that omits this function, of course, but simply being able to talk won't cut it when it comes to appealing to consumers any more. All of the ten phones we've reviewed here have their hooks, and many of them are converging around a core set of technologies.
Say Cheese, please
It's getting actively hard to buy a mobile phone that doesn't come with an inbuilt camera, and the quality of images that you can expect from these pocket sized snappers is improving on a day by day basis. One of the phones we've reviewed, the Seimens S55, takes this concept even further -- the camera is a snap-on attachment with its own flash. We're still some time away from seeing mobile phones that truly attack the lucrative digital camera space, but that's surely only a matter of time.
From ring ring to sing sing
It's not just visual quality that's improving on phones; audio is also moving ahead in leaps and bounds, although whether this is an entirely good thing remains to be seen. Polyphonic ringtones are the name of the game, whether you're emulating the classical music or a cheesy pop hit. It's all a push towards the personalisation of phones, so that you can tell the entire world you're obsessed with Britney Spears. As we said, we're not sure that's a good thing.
Higher-quality ringtones may also be something of a legal minefield in the future. Music publishers are already antsy about people using monotone versions of popular songs for ringtones, so once it becomes possible to sample actual songs, we can't imagine they're going to be any happier.
Speed thrills
The other big movement in mobile phones is towards faster connectivity. Voice calls only need relatively low bandwidth side, but the use of mobile phones for applications such as web streaming and real-time video calls for more heavy-duty bandwidth provision. After many years of hand-wringing and deal making, we've finally seen the launch of two 3G services; Telstra's 3G-ish Mobile Loop and Hutchison's fully-blown 3G service. We've previewed the first 3G phone on the Australian market, the NEC e606 as part of this roundup. While the actual number of people willing to invest their consumer and enterprise dollars into deploying 3G mobiles remains to be seen, we're sure this won't be the only 3G phone on the market for very long at all.
The Nokia 2100 doesn't boast flashy 3G features, MMS messaging or glow in the dark vibrating attachments. It just works, and for many users that's enough.
The P800 is perhaps the most anticipated phone in recent years, combining Sony's design style, Ericsson's phone know-how and a dollop of PDA functionality.
The NEC e606 is the first 3G phone on the Australian market, but it's unlikely to be the last. Check out our preview of this fascinating phone.
ZDNet Australia's Alex Kidman, James Pearce and Jeremy Roche contributed to this article
LG 7020
The LG 7020 is an impressive, smart, feature-rich mobile phone. Most remarkable is the bright, colourful graphics that can be displayed in over 65,000 colours across 128 x 160 pixels on the relatively large LCD.
The 7020 (also known as the G7020) brings so many features together into such a cute, small phone which measures only 88 x 45 x 22mm. The silver case and the inside aluminium panel adds a little to the overall weight, but still it's only 99g.
On the front of the folder, hidden below the sub-LCD is a (rather bright) 8 colour LED strip. While not all colours can be shown at once (or in succession), this can be set a specific colour to flash when the phone rings (green, magenta, red, orange, yellow, white, blue). This is a great feature that integrates well with the caller groups, but could be further enhanced by being more flexible (eg. flash blue for SMS, choice of colour for the idle-mode flash), as is the case on the Panasonic GD88.
The interface is one of the most user-friendly we have seen. There are eight top level options in the menu--messages, call register, phone tools, profiles, call divert, organiser, fun & tools and Internet. These are represented by small square icons on the right side of the screen and when highlighted, a large icon and text fills the left side of the screen.
Messaging is simple and includes extended messaging services (EMS), allowing you to add ring tones and basic (black and white) pictures to messages. Text input is quickest through eZi Text, which predicts the word you are typing (usually after three characters) and auto-completes the word. You simply press the OK button to select the word then move on to the next. You can add words that aren't in memory by moving through the message menu.
The navigation key is very sturdy and easy to use. The directional buttons are firm with a smooth, translucent OK button in the middle. Holding this button down in idle mode gives you quick access to internet services based on wireless application protocol (WAP). For faster download speeds the 7020 can use GPRS. Up to five profiles can be stored for internet settings and allows you to have a different homepage, image display, connection type and security settings for each profile.
For those with friends or relatives overseas, a valuable tool is the world time application. This will give you the time for over 55 cities across the globe--all displayed on a colourful world map with a crosshair pinpointing the location.
LG package a whole bundle of accessories in with the phone. Apart from the standard battery and power adapter, the 7020 is also boxed with a hands free portable earpiece and microphone. Additionally, there is a neck strap included for those who choose to follow the Japanese fashion of wearable electronics. Finally, you get a data kit consisting of a data cable (to connect the phone to your computer though a serial port) and a software CD.
Programs included are PC Sync, Contents Bank and Internet Kit. The installation of the bundled LG software was quick and painless. While your phone is connected to PC Sync you can read, update your phonebook entries through the PC, manage your SMS folders, and view your schedule. Another great function is being able to backup a lot of the information from your SIM card into CSV format on the computer.
Contents Bank is management software for polyphonic ring tones and images. There is a wide range of both images and tones to choose from. Tones are grouped into voice, sound, melody or music categories. Images are also categorised into folders such as animals, holidays, and celebrations. The Internet Kit allows you to surf the Internet using your mobile as the connection.
The call register is an extensive listing detailing the last twenty of each dialled number, received number and missed number with the date and time.
LG rates the 7020 with a standby battery time of 200 hours and 2.5 hours of talk time, which matches up well with our testing, where the phone lasted 3 days under a normal workload; that's about average for most current mobile phones.
LG 7020 Company:LG Electronics Price: AU$999
Distributor: LG Electronics
Phone: 1800 725 375
Nokia 2100
The Nokia 2100 is the latest incarnation of Nokia's low-end phone, and it raises the bar on what is expected from a simple voice/text mobile.
The AU$279 Nokia 2100 looks a lot better than other low-end phones, such as the 3310. It has a stylish light-blue cover and a simple button layout, including two softkeys and up and down arrow keys. The only gripe we have is with the back cover, which has a different removal mechanism to the normal click-and-slide you get with Nokia phones, and is a lot harder to remove.
However, once the cover is off we were pleasantly surprised to find the battery does not need to be removed to put the SIM card in. We're not sure why this fantastic development wasn't implemented earlier, as it means that changing your SIM card doesn't wipe the time and date settings from your phone.
As we've indicated, the Nokia 2100 is a simple phone without the latest technology, but what it does do is done well. To give an example, the messages menu is the first menu in the system, which makes sense because it's the most likely to be used. It also contains thirteen different folders, covering pretty much anything you might want to do with SMS.
The phone allows the creation of 'distribution' lists of people you commonly send SMS messages to, which makes messaging a group of people much easier. The phone also has the 'send to many' function, which we've found very useful.
The 2100 also allows you to send picture messages, of the black-and-white SMS variety. In addition the phone has the 'Picture Editor' facility, which is normally hard to use for the average person. This editor has some features that make it easier to use than others.
The editor includes tools such as 'Fill', 'Invert Colours' and 'Mirror' - which flips the image to a mirror version of itself. This makes the creation of images a lot easier; we were well pleased with ourselves when we managed to create a passable image of a cactus in front of a sunset.
This ease of use is mirrored in the tune composer feature, which we found a lot easier to use than other composers we've come across. Although the phone is not polyphonic, this feature allows you to create your own tunes relatively easily. It was simple for us to create 'chopsticks' and the 'Blackadder' theme, and while they weren't perfect they were recognisable.
The mobile includes other personalisation features such as animated screensavers and downloadable ringtones. There is also a "photo window" on the back of the phone, but the plastic covering isn't clear so we're not sure how useful that will be.
The other menus are fairly standard, 'Call Register', 'Profiles', 'Settings', 'Alarm Clock', 'Reminders', 'Games' and 'Extras'. Apart from the Composer and Picture Editor the 'Extras' menu includes a calculator, stopwatch and countdown timer.
The games included with the Nokia 2100 are Snake II, Space Impact and Link5, which is enjoyably difficult to play. It's the first strategy game we've come across in a mobile where the phone regularly beats us.
The Nokia 2100 weighs 85g, and is advertised as having a talktime of three hours and 20 minutes and a standby time of 150 hours. We found it lasted just over three days of normal usage.
All up, we find the Nokia 2100 to be the best low-end phone we've seen, and recommend it for users who don't want the frills surrounding MMS and 3G.
Nokia 2100 Company:Nokia Price: AU$279
Distributor:Nokia Phone: 1300 366 733
Nokia 3650
Despite the "ring of fire" keypad, the Nokia 3650 has some fantastic--and relatively unique--features. This is definitely worth a perusal for those looking at the high-end mobile market.
The Nokia 3650 is one of those mobiles that appears to be different just for the sake of being different--in this case by having its number keys aligned in a circle. Despite this, there are some nifty things the 3650 has that may make it worth the purchase--things such as a video camera.
Apart from having the keypad in a circle--which achieves its aim of being eye-catching but couples it with being annoying--the layout of the keys on the 3650 is pretty useful. There are the normal answer call and reject call keys, two softkeys and a clear key. These are joined by a dedicated menu key and a 'text' key, which is used to bring up options when entering text. There is also a five-way dial, used to navigate around the menu.
The screen of the 3650 is quite impressive, with 4,096 colours and 176 x 208 pixels. We're not sure why, but the 3650 screen seemed to be clearer and brighter than the P800, even though they have the same colour range.
The big drawcard of the 3650 has got to be the video camera embedded in the phone. While there are a lot of mobile phones on the market with an inbuilt digital camera these days, an inbuilt digital video camera is still enough of a rarity to attract attention. The video quality is not good enough to send into Tropfest, being basically a bunch of mobile phone-camera images strung together, but it's still pretty cool. It can record up to 15 seconds of footage, but unfortunately you don't get sound.
The phone comes with a number of cheesy video clips and animated images included, covering almost every occasion you can think of. There is also the capability to capture a still image from a video, which is a neat feature.
The video camera doubles as a normal digital camera with three modes--standard, night and portrait. The standard mode takes pictures of 160x120 pixels, the night mode the same but using a longer exposure for dimmer conditions. This is useful because the 3650 shares a common trait with most mobile phone-cameras in that it doesn't have a flash. The portrait mode takes pictures at 80x90 pixels, which can be included in the contact book.
The phone has about 3 Mb of storage for images, which equates to 55 standard images at low quality, or 15 standard images using the highest quality. The high quality images are captured at 640x480 pixels.
From a messaging viewpoint the 3650 has all the right features--SMS, MMS and e-mail--but the wheel arrangement of the keypad made entering text quite a struggle.
Images can be transferred to your computer via MMS and e-mail, if you wish, and the phone also comes with Infrared and Bluetooth capabilities. Each picture has to be transferred across individually: We think it would be a lot better if you could select all the pictures you wanted to transfer and do it in one hit.
We found the calendar on the 3650 to be very useful and easy to use, as well as looking good. The phone includes a Real One Player, for music and videos, and an applications folder to download Java applications to.
The 'extras' folder includes the usual suspects: calculator, currency/metric converter, alarm clock and so on. The phone has a 'recorder' function allowing the recording of soundclips, telephone calls and voice memos. The sound quality is good enough to understand what is being said, but not great.
One feature that should be highlighted is the composer, which allows you to create your own ringtones. When this feature first came out our complaint was that the program was so difficult to use that in order to create anything close to a musical ringtone you needed to be a mutant hybrid of Mozart and Linus Torvalds. The 'composer' programs have improved over the past year, and that of the 3650 is probably the easiest one to use we've come across. You can highlight notes to change them--without having to delete them and re-enter something different--and the program has features allowing you to delete notes from the middle of the piece while leaving notes afterwards intact, and even to copy sections of the music if you plan to reuse them.
Additionally, rather than the harsh tones resonating of silicon that normally come out of these programs, the 3650 plays the tunes with a gentle sound resembling a woodwind instrument.
There are two games included with the Nokia 3650 and the phone has the ability to download further Java-based games. The first game is 'Snake Ex', a enhanced form of Nokia's standard Snake game with added powerups and constantly changing mazes.
The other game is 'Mix Pix', which gives you pictures divided into squares that have been jumbled up, and you have to rearrange them to get the proper picture either by sliding squares into a gap or swapping tiles. By far the big drawcard of this game was the ability to create new games using your own pictures. It isn't any more challenging, but there's something ego gratifying about slowly piecing a picture of yourself back together. It gives you the impression you may be able to put the shattered pieces of your life together into a meaningful whole. Did we say that out loud?
All up, we found the Nokia 3650 to be a good phone with a number of useful and reasonably unique features. If you're not put off by the keypad and want a high quality screen with a video camera on a GSM phone, this mobile is definitely for you.
Nokia 3650 Company:Nokia Price: AU$999
Distributor:Nokia Phone: 1300 366 733
Panasonic GD88
The Panasonic GD88 is a triple band mobile phone that combines an integrated digital camera and a flip-top design. Opening the folder reveals a very bright colour screen capable of displaying 65,535 colours at a resolution of 132 x 176 pixels.
When the folder is open and the phone is in camera mode, the large LCD acts as the viewfinder. The centre navigation key acts as the shutter button and when pressed the phone mimics a classic camera "click"-- annoyingly even if the phone is in silent mode.
A 2X digital zoom is achieved by pressing up. Pressing left or right on the navigational keys while in camera mode will adjust the exposure setting (+/- 2). You can add effects while taking a picture including twilight mode (for night shots), adding frames, negative shots. A range of editing options is available for stored images--brightness, size and format. Images can be stored in JPEG or PNG format in a variety of compression settings.
A handy feature in the pictures folder is the date/time file naming convention. For example, an image labelled 04152132 denotes the picture was taken on the 15 April at 9:32pm. This is much better than seeing a simple icremental file name in the "IMG00001" style.
The camera can operate with the folder open or closed. If you want to take self-portraits the button below the sub-LCD acts as the shutter button when in camera mode . If you're wondering how you take a photo of yourself with no viewfinder, Panasonic included a small circular mirror below the lens--although it reminds us of those distorting mirrors you see in fun parks.
You can transfer pictures via MMS, email, infrared or a data cable (optional extra). Adding text to an MMS containing an image will shrink the image down to half its size to make room. Then you can add sound, change the colour of the background or the colour of the text.
For text input, the GD88 includes T9 dictionary, but it does not have the ability to add custom words. However, there is a nifty cut and paste feature which can speed up message editing.
The GD88 is light on the games side, with its sole entry being the rather unexciting Herding Sheep game. The title alone should give you a clue as to its thrill level; you play as a little dog running around barking at sheep, guiding them into a pen.
The keypad buttons are large and flush with the phone. This flat design means the keys are easy on the fingers but can be a little hard to navigate during SMS entry. There is 5-way navigational key similar to previous Panasonic phones like the GD75, but on the GD88 the joystick has been replaced with a flat button so it doesn't interfere with the folder closing.
The Panasonic GD88 measures 97.5 x 49 x 23 mm and weighs 103 grams. On the outside of the folder the sub-LCD can show the date, time, signal strength and remaining battery power. When you receive a call, it will show the caller's name or phone number.
The translucent button below the sub-LCD is backlit and will fade in-and-out a blue light during a call. This is a good reminder to the user that a call is active even when the folder is closed. When in idle mode, pressing the button will bring up the icons representing current phone settings.
One of the features that we love about the GD88 are the personalisation options. Starting from the outside, the sub-LCD can be assigned colours for different events. For example you can set the sub-LCD to light up blue for incoming calls, green when receiving an SMS and orange for an MMS. You can use photos taken as wallpaper and a clock or calendar can be superimposed over the top. Further customisation is though the right soft key, which can be programmed as a short cut for a variety of functions and ring tones can be assigned to individual callers or caller groups.
There are twenty different ring tones on the GD88 and they come through crisp and loud if set to maximum volume. Panasonic have managed to include a range of classical music, club tunes, 80s disco beats and even the sound of a pinball machine. While there were many quality ring tones, we were quite amused to hear the one containing cheesy American slang, "Yo...Yo! C'mon!"
There is an enhanced phonebook available if you choose to use the phone's memory rather than your sim card. You are able to store more information like an email address and notes on the person. You will also be able to assign them a caller group, store a photo of them that you can see while browsing the phonebook, specify a ring tone for them and even allocate a colour that the sub-LCD will flash if they call.
One flaw in the GD88's design is a distinct lack of volume from the earpiece. A couple of extra decibels on the maximum setting would have made conversations in noisy environments much easier. The loudspeaker used in hands free mode is audible in the office environments or in the car, but again, the highest volume was still a bit quiet for raucous places. Another let down with the mostly well-implemented flip design is that you can't answer phone calls simply by opening the folder. On a similar note, closing the phone does not end a call.
Panasonic boast a maximum battery life of 220 hours in standby. In our tests it lasted just under 3 days under high use of the camera and normal use of the phone. To fully charge it again took only 80 minutes.
Aside from a few little quirks, Panasonic have made a great phone that combines a camera, flip design and lots of flexibility in personalisation.
It features programmable shortcuts, e-mail, adjustable backlights and the ever so comfortable "softskin". All this for a bargain price?
The Philips Fisio 620 is a lightweight, pocket-sized phone that is very comfortable to hold. It measures 104 x 46 x 20mm and weighs in at 85g. Enhancing the comfy feeling is a soft rubbery back case which Philips dubs "softskin". It feels peculiar at first, even slippery, but does prevent the phone from sliding from your hands. If you're not keen on the "softskin", you can choose the silver-blue version instead.
A groovy feature included on this mobile is a variable two-colour backlight. There are red and green backlights and you can choose a setting on a scale from one (green screen) to seven (red screen) with an amber colour in the middle. We found the green screen slightly brighter at night, but as red screen phones are not as common, we opted for the latter.
Up to 15 voice tags can be stored in the phone's memory and this amount is shared between voice dialling and voice commands. Voice commands can be recorded to activate specific functions such as 'send an SMS' or 'activate silence'. The same functions are also programmable as hotkeys, so that an extended press on certain numbers can save you the time of traversing the menu.
Two e-mail accounts can be set up on the phone with messages sent and received over your choice of GPRS or GSM. Attachments can also be viewed, providing they're either plain text, 24bit encoded JPEG, or an attached e-mail. There is a note in the manual that if the e-mail is over 10Kb, it is rejected and the download is cancelled. There is a wireless application protocol (WAP) hotkey to open the WAP browser if those services appeal to you.
Most of the nineteen tones that come pre-installed on the phone are classical compositions. The others are an interesting range of sound effects such as birdsong, raindrops and sonar. There is also a spot for another ring tone sent via SMS (from other Philips handsets or from the internet).
A big plus is the durable battery life, which Philips boasts at a maximum of 330 hours of stand-by or 4.5 hours of talk time. We switched on the phone at 4pm Wednesday and with normal usage the phone lasted 102 hours, finally conking out at 10pm Sunday. It took only 40 minutes to fully recharge the battery.
The five-way mini joystick has popped up on a number of phones since we first saw it on the Ericsson T68, and Philips has included one on the 620. Depressing the joystick brings up the menu, implemented through a carousel interface. You steer through a group of rotating icons with the joystick and depress to select a menu option. Traversing the animated menu seems a little sluggish--switching it off really speeds things up. The ring volume is adjusted simply by moving the joystick left or right. Moving the joystick up or down gives quick access to the recent call list, or the phonebook, respectively.
A minor problem we had when depressing the joystick was the phone interpreting this as a left or right movement.
When the phone is idle the screen displays a clock (digital or analogue), the date and a bunch of symbols representing current settings. To customise the phone, a screensaver is included which displays a slideshow of stored pictures. The default pictures are pretty uninspiring thus we soon tired of looking at pixelated images of swirls and restored the clock.
Conversations or voice memos can be recorded for up to 30 seconds. Another useful feature is the hands-free mode--in which the caller's voice comes through the loudspeaker clearly. During calls, you can choose between five equaliser settings to improve sound quality.
The organiser has been well implemented with three types of events able to be added (holiday, meeting or "to do"). Reminders for events can be set as well as recurrences (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly).
We noticed a bizarre bug in the recent call list with some names appearing in a mixture of English and Chinese characters. Another gripe we have is the inability to add custom words to the phone to use during T9 predictive text input--a must for all SMS junkies out there.
Just a step down from the colour screened Fisio 820, the 620 is an affordable and well-designed phone. Its programmable shortcuts will appeal to people who don't want to waste time scrolling through menus.
The Samsung SCH-A561 "Rainbow" mobile phone is the official mobile phone of Telstra's Mobile Loop service, and currently only available through that channel. Considering you are likely to get this phone if you choose to join Mobile Loop, and no service is fun through a bad device, we thought we'd give it a test run for you.
The Samsung SCH-A561 is the CDMA2000 1x version of the SGH-T100, and there are a lot of similarities and a lot of differences. The handsets of the two phones are almost exactly the same: A small 88 x 50 x 21.9mm unit that clam-shells open when you want to use it. On the front is a small two-tone display that contains most of the information you need -- time, signal strength, and battery charge, as well as notification of incoming calls and messages.
The 128x160 pixel colour screen of the aptly-named Rainbow is just as impressive as that of the T100, and viewable from all angles. There are the standard answer call, reject call/on-off button, as well as a dedicated "clear", which is quite useful. The two softkeys have been replaced with a 'menu' key and an 'OK' key, which also takes you straight to the messaging menu from the opening screen.
Also similar are the 12-button keypad, the volume buttons on the side and the series of buttons that together resemble a flying saucer. These four arrow buttons double as hotkeys to the address book, ringer tones, voice memo and address book. The button in the middle sends you straight to Telstra's Mobile Loop service.
Obviously, the phone has GPRS capabilities, otherwise it wouldn't run on Mobile Loop. Mobile Loop has a theoretical limit of 144kbps, although the actual speed will be somewhat lower than this. To investigate what is available on the data side of the phone, visit our review of the Mobile Loop service.
The display is better utilised in the Rainbow than in the T100. There are two menu styles you can choose from, and there are several 'wallpapers' -- including one of Telstra Mobile Loop. You can adjust the backlight time and the LCD contrast, and enter two different time zones. This last feature is enhanced by one of the wallpapers, a 'dual clock' mode that shows the two different times.
One thing the Rainbow lacks that the T100 has is a cable to link to the computer, and appropriate software for that. This means the images that come with the phone are pretty much the ones you are stuck with. You can e-mail images to the phone, but it's not clear how to manage them once they get there.
The service does allow you to download ringtones and easily utilise them, and the 40-tone polyphonic ringtone ability on the Rainbow means you can get some pretty successful tunes out of it.
On the traditional services, the Rainbow stacks up quite well. We found the call clarity on the CDMA service to be comparable to that of the GSM service, and standard menu options such as 'Calls' and 'Messages' to be easy to use. One thing that is surprising in a phone of this calibre is the lack of MMS capability.
The phone book has room for 250 entries (and there's a 'memory' function included to tell you how many spaces you have left) and allows you to store a lot of different information on each contact - including e-mail, Web address and birthday. You can assign different ringtones to each contact, and even assign one of a choice of several cartoons. The choices range from various people stereotypes to animals, so there's plenty of scope. One good feature of the phone book is the ability to make an entry "secret", effectively a security device that prevents people seeing the details unless they know a four-digit code. They can still dial the number, but won't see it displayed anywhere.
A 'Planner' menu contains calendar functions as well as alarm, calculator, world time and countdown applications. There are two games included with the phone, if you don't want to use the ones on Mobile Loop. Push Push is a PC standard requiring you to push crates onto certain positions, and Puzzle World mixes up pictures into nine or 16 tiles so you have to rearrange them into the original picture. The Nokia 3650 has an advantage over this version of the game by allowing the user to mix up their own pictures.
The mobile includes voice dial and voice answer, and the ability to set different ringtones to different alarms and callers.
The Rainbow is a good phone with some amazing features, such as the fantastic screen quality. However, any decision to purchase one of these mobiles is by necessity linked to a decision to use the Mobile Loop service, and should be considered accordingly. It is available free as part of a plan when you sign up on the service, with a AU$100 per month two year contract, which includes AU$100 worth of voice and data usage.
SGH-T100 Company:Samsung Price: Dependant on plan chosen
Distributor:Samsung
Samsung T500
The T500 is a phone targeted directly at women, with a lot of unique features. Should you flaunt the Flaunt, or just discard it?
The Flaunt, as the Samsung SGH-T500 has been named, is a red clamshell phone measuring 7.6 cm long (sans antenna) by 4.4 cm wide and 2.3 cm thick, and is pretty light at 80g. The ostentatious part of the T500 are the 32 cubic zirconia that surround the external LCD. The zirconia even flash pink or green on occasion, and the screen can show animated black images when the phone rings.
Opening up the phone reveals a spectacular 65,000-colour screen. There are images, both still and animated, included with the phone, and you can download others over WAP to use as the background.
The Flaunt has a screen feature we've never seen before: Clicking the "clear" button when the phone is in idle mode turns the screen into a mirror.
The keyboard of the T500 is very comprehensive, with two softkeys, a clear key, an answer key, a reject key, and a four way arrow key (that includes hotlinks to the "messages" and "tones" folder) that includes a blue Internet key in the middle (that also doubles as a "select" key in some instances). Sound confusing? It can be. It quite often takes several guesses to determine which key you're supposed to press to select something.
The volume keys are on the side of the phone, and are used for key volume and game volume, but ringtone volume needs to be accessed through the menu.
The menu is fairly easy to navigate, with the only unusual folder being the "Life" folder. This contains "Games" and "Health". It is the Health folder that marks the Flaunt out as being marketed towards the female gender. The Health folder contains four sub-folders, the most unusual of which is "Pink Schedule".
This contains room for two "schedules", yours and a friend's. After entering the starting date of last menses and the average menses period, the phone can tell you the date of your next ovulation, probability of becoming pregnant on the current date, the timeframe during which it is possible to become pregnant, and the date of your next period.
The owner's manual wisely includes the disclaimer that the schedule may not fit the users physical condition, and should only be used as a guide.
The other folders in Health are: "BioRhythm", which tells you where you are on your physical, emotional and intellectual cycle; "Fatness", which tells you how fat you are (we're not making this up); and "Calorie", which tells you how many calories are burned during a variety of activities.
Although the owner's manual doesn't have a disclaimer in these sections, we feel compelled to point out these tools should be used as a guide only, and should certainly not provide the basis for a certain level of self esteem.
The games provided are "Bowling", "HamsterBox" and "HoneyBall", and are entertaining. One downside is none of them have the option to play at different levels of skill.
The T500 has a 40-chord polyphonic ringtone capability, and sounds quite good. In fact, the first time the phone rang it took us a couple of minutes to work out it was the phone the sound was coming from. There is also a composer, but like most composing utilities, those without musical ability will struggle.
One thing that surprised us about the Flaunt, considering the high quality of sound and screen, is the lack of MMS capability. We can't recall any phone with this level of presentation that couldn't also send MMS. There are picture messages included with the phone, but they are black and white ones you send over SMS.
The T500 has all the features we expect in a mobile, including voice dialling for 20 numbers, voice commands and the ability to record three voice menus of 35 seconds each.
In the "Organiser" folder are tools such for such things as conversion of measurements, a map showing the time in different parts of the world, alarm and stopwatch. There is also a Scheduler and a Calendar, but we found the Calendar didn't offer anything that wasn't in the Scheduler, and was thus redundant.
The T500 Flaunt is a strong part of Samsung's push to target specific markets with its phone. From a presentation point of view the phone has a lot going for it, but some people will be disturbed by the inclusion of tools to measure "fatness" and calories. At AU$999, we'd also want to have MMS capabilities in a new mobile.
If you are looking for a female-centric mobile that stands out from everyone else's phone and has some unique features, the T500 could be for you. Samsung also sells a male-centric model, the T400, which we'll be reviewing soon.
The S55 takes a slightly different approach to integrating a camera into a mobile phone. Rather than a small integrated camera, your photo shooting options come via a clip-on camera module.
The S55 looks sleek, small and silver. Picking it up, the S55 feels very smooth and light--a comfortable mobile to hold. It weighs a mere 85g and measures a petite 101 x 42 x 18 mm.
Snap the camera on the bottom of the phone and you'll add about another 6 cm to its length. The camera can take shots at up to 640 x 480 resolution. Unfortunately the S55's screen is only 101 x 80 pixels and the display on the only supports 256 colours, so photos appear fairly low in quality when viewed on the mobile. The difference in quality is notable when you transfer images on to a PC.
On the lower of the two photo-resolution settings (160 x 120 pixels) shots take up about 5KB each. On the higher setting photos come out at around 35KB. One oddity cropped here; you can opt for saving images in 'low' mode easily, but if you want high quality pictures you have to choose 'high and low', an arrangement that saves your images at both quality settings.
The flash works well and provides sufficient light in night shots. When the flash isn't used images sometimes appear with an almost sepia tone. The screen on the S55 doesn't act as a viewfinder so you have to wait for the photo to be taken before it will display on screen. The camera has a small optical viewfinder which can be used by tilting the camera 90 degrees to the right and holding the camera (with phone attached) up to your eye. There is a 10 second delay from the time you press the shutter button (the volume control when not in camera mode) to the time the image appears on screen. The flash takes a while to load and the image takes a couple of seconds to transfer to the phone.
Siemens supply a data cable that plugs into a serial port on your computer and the base connector on the mobile. The S55 also supports Bluetooth and IrDA for data connectivity.
SyncTool supports the synchronisation of appointments, notes, tasks and e-mails and is compatible with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. There is a bitmap editor where you can create operator logos, screensavers and pictures to transfer to your handset. This program is well implemented and automatically resizes images to fit the required size. You can back up your phonebook through Contact Management and use your PC to create and edit entries. Outlook contacts are supported as well as text file import/exports. For SMS/EMS users, you can also back all and manage text messages from the phone or use the PC as a message archive.
The Modem Assistant software allows you to easily set up a PC Internet connection using GPRS through the mobile. The last piece of software, Data Exchange, is where you can interact with the phone's folders, files and pictures in a Windows Explorer type interface.
On the phone side of things the S55 supports polyphonic ring tones and comes with 20 pre-installed tones in the sounds folder. These can be assigned to incoming calls, text messages, alarms and caller groups.
The keypad on the S55 has buttons side-by-side in an almost seamless array. The buttons are slightly raised on the bottom, which creates a ridge down to buttons on the level below. While this helps you easily identify which key you are on, during text input it sometimes feels like you have slid your finger off the outer keys and on to the edge of the phone.
An icon-based menu provides the main interface and navigation is through a 4-directional rocker and two soft keys. The triangular plastic soft keys jut out from the phone and seem a little jagged when pressed.
Games and the Internet are found through the Surf and Fun menu option and a single MagicPicture game is included. This is a scattered tile game reminiscent of those tacky plastic toys that may have provided hours of enjoyment for you as a child.
The cover and keypad on the Siemens S55 are not exchangeable; the mobile is only available in sterling silver or arctic blue. At first we struggled somewhat with the battery and cover, which removes with a rather unorthodox sideways movement.
When you first switch on the phone, the S55 prompts you to copy your sim phonebook to the phone's memory. Once copied you can the use the mobile's enhanced address book to add an additional range of fields for each contact.
Up to 20 voice commands can be stored on the mobile. In our testing we found they worked most of the time as long as we were in a relatively quiet environment. The S55 also incorporates a voice recorder. The microphone picks up voices very well in our tests and the loudspeaker--which can be used during calls--is adequate.
The biggest let down with the Siemens S55 is the lack of colour depth. The flash camera included in the box is a major selling point and we would like to see the S55 screen doing it justice. However, it is still a very stylish, well-designed phone with a load of features and an impressive software suite to boot.
The long-awaited Sony Ericsson flagship phone, the P800 mobile/PDA hybrid, has gone on sale in Australia. Designed to be everything you need, the P800 contains features of a mobile phone, a Personal Digital Assistant and a camera all in the one device.
The large 4096-colour screen on the P800 gives it a square look, different to most phones. It measures 117mm by 59mm by 27mm, and weighs 158g. That's quite large for a phone, and it took us some time to get used to using it as a phone, as it must be held differently than most other phones during calls.
The clarity of phone calls is pretty good. The phone has a very simple button layout on a 'flip'. When the flip is closed the P800 operates like a mobile--with a mobile sized screen--and when the flip is open the P800 operates as a PDA, with a larger screen.
A jog dial is used to navigate around the phone, allowing you to scroll through menus and selecting an option by depressing the jog dial. The menu is customisable, and easy to navigate. The multitude of navigation options--jog dial, keypad and stylus--means that the P800 fits just about any user style.
The P800 offers four choices of messaging: E-mail, SMS, MMS and EMS. EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service) is defined as simply attaching pictures or sound to a message, while MMS is regarded as a slideshow, where the pictures and sound move from a beginning to an end.
The MMS capabilities of the P800 have an advantage over other phones with the ability to draw a picture directly on the screen, and send that to a friend. We'll leave you to imagine the extent of what that can be used for, mentioning only the usefulness in the ability to draw a map for someone.
When writing text in a message (any form of message) the phone offers the choice of using handwriting, pressing keys on a 'qwerty' keyboard that can be displayed on the screen or using the keypad--which involves the use of the jog dial to change fields. However, the phone doesn't have any predictive text, and we found all forms of entering text had their problems.
We found using handwriting recognition to be the fastest method for entering general characters. The classic PDA problem of entering multi-stroke and similar characters--such as "i", "k" and "t"--crops up with the handwriting recognition on the P800. Likewise, many of the non-alphabet characters were also difficult to enter. It would take a while to memorise all the techniques for entering punctuation marks, and we ended up using the keyboard to enter these when it was required.
Another main aspect of a mobile is the address book. This allows you to view contacts stored on the phone, or on the SIM card, but not both at once. This can create problems when attempting to write a message, and finding the contact you want is in a different place to that which you can get to.
The address book does allow you to add photos to individual contacts, which then comes up on the screen when that person calls. It also allows you to store contacts in different folders, and sort them by first name, last name, or company name.
The P800 excels in the games department. There's a form of Solitaire that we've never seen before, and a Chess application. For action buffs, the phone offers Men In Black II, a shoot-em-up that involves blasting aliens by tapping on them with the stylus. A car race game called Stunt Run is played using the jog dial.
Of course, the latest feature to invade mobile phones is a camera, and the P800 wouldn't be 'all things' if it didn't include a digital camera. The camera is accessed easily via a button on the side of the phone. Since the camera doesn't have a flash, you need a lot of light--and contrast--to take a picture that doesn't look like a blur on a blur.
The photos do not come out exceptionally well on the P800, although whether that's a property of the images or the screen we're not sure. The images can be taken at sizes greater than that of the screen, and can be viewed on the phone in a small window with scroll bars. Of course, they can also be sent via MMS to friends, one of the main reasons to have a camera phone.
The other aspect of the P800's functionality that makes it an interesting purchase is the integrated PDA functionality. This isn't something that Sony Ericsson have cornered the market on--immediately the O2 XDA phone springs to mind--but it is an area where there is expected to be a great deal of further innovation.
The P800's PDA stylings place it a touch below most currently available PDAs, and at the same time above most mobile phones in terms of most PDA applications. The P800's screen is smaller than most current PDA models, which limits what can be done with it in terms of text presentation. Sony Ericsson ship the P800 with a number of standard PDA applications, from an inbuilt calendar to task lists and voice memo capabilities, which makes sense when you remember that this is a phone at heart.
One thing that did irk us with the P800 is the Stylus, which is thin and folds into one side of the phone. It looks very cool, but compared to a regular PDA stylus, it feels flimsy and is tricky to use accurately. It relies on a very thin nib at the end that we suspect would break sooner rather than later.
The P800 runs on the Symbian OS, which has backing from a number of major hardware players, although at this stage the amount of available PDA software is dwarfed by that of the competing Pocket PC and Palm-based devices. A quick web search finds software for TV remote controls, some games (including PC veteran Doom) and even software designed to help smokers quit. Given the quite new status of the P800 and the Symbian platform as a serious PDA contender, it's quite likely to expand well over time.
Ultimately like most initial-generation products, it's easier to see the future of the mobile-PDA hybrid in glowing terms rather than the current reality, and the reality is this; while it's not as fully featured as a 'real' PDA, there's plenty of functionality in there for a mobile user who needs more portable data than current mobiles provide. If you can get past the flimsy stylus, the P800 is a decent PDA/Phone hybrid.
The P800 has the ability to play videos, and does so with reasonable visual quality and good sound quality. Of course, most people listen to music more than they watch music videos, and MIDI, MP3 and WAV sound files can be played, and even set as the alarm or ringtone, although the volume is slightly too low to be used in noisy environments.
Sony Ericsson hasn't stinted on the connectivity either, with the P800 featuring tri-band GSM, Infrared, Bluetooth, USB cable and Sony Memory Stick. Our only complaint is that the USB cable allows you to synchronise your P800 with your computer, but not transfer individual files from the phone to the computer. This means you need to use a wireless technology or the Memory Stick. While other phones that lack a USB Cable have this problem we feel if Sony Ericsson went to the bother of including a cable it may as well have gone the whole hog and allowed access to the phone from the computer.
The P800 was by far the top of the line phone when it was demonstrated last year, but since then a number of its unique features, such as the PDA and digital camera capabilities, have been superseded. However, the P800 remains a top-notch phone that combines most current mobile capabilities into the one device.
Sony Ericsson P800 Smartphone Company:Sony Ericsson Price: AU$1680
Distributor: Sony Ericsson
Phone: 1300 650 050
Sony Ericsson T100
Small phones are normally expensive phones, except in the case of the T100, which matches miniturisation with a low price tag.
The first thing you notice about the Sony Ericsson T100 is its size. It's small. It measures 99 x 43.5 x 17.7 mm and weighs 75gm, so it's not the smallest phone in the world, but it is the smallest we've seen for quite a while.
The layout of the phone is fairly standard, with a number pad, soft keys, clear, and the yes/answer no/reject keys. We found the keys a little hard to use easily with one hand. This is probably a result of their relatively small size and the fact that they don't protrude much from the phone.The menu system utilises the standard Sony Ericsson menu with folders, but not having up and down keys means you have to select a folder by pressing 'yes', which converts the left/right softkeys into up/down.
Despite the small size and low price (the recommended retail price is AU$275) the T100 packs in a lot of features which are popular amongst today's users. The phone allows you to set different ringtones and pictures to the numbers of up to 10 different callers. One feature we particularly liked was the ability to use question marks as wildcards in the number. As an example, if you set 9999 ???? as your number, you could get a specific ringtone or picture whenever called by anyoen with a 9999 prefix.
The phone gives you the ability to create your own melody, but we found it quite difficult to use. The main problem with melodies is that they play way too quickly. Even using the longest notes we could, the tune went about three times faster than we wanted it to. You can also edit the pictures in the phone, but once again - and in common with most other picture editors - an unbelievable amount of patience and skill is required to create anything worthwhile.
The messaging system is fairly standard, with the exception that the text input method can't be changed from the messaging menu. We had to go in through the settings folder, choosing language and then T9 to change the input method to predictive text. It's not a large problem, but it is an annoying quirk.
However, you can change the text style to bold, italics, strikethrough and underline, and set the alignment to right and centre as well. The 'Add symbol' menu also houses a collection of similes (real ones, not ASCII), which is cool. The only drawback is that the T100's smilies and formatting can't be seen on other non-T100 phones.
The T100 can hold up to 100 phone numbers, and e-mail addresses can be entered as well. There are also some security features, such as fixed call dialling and the ability to restrict certain types of calls at certain times.
The phone includes WAP and enhanced messaging, but doesn't support GPRS or multi-media messaging. Since this is in the ultra-low end range of the market, that is hardly surprising.
There are five games on the phone, and they cover a wide variety of styles. The games include Ballpop, a combination of Bust-a-Move and Breakout, a solitaire variant called Yukon Struggle, , Q and Wuziqi, a couple of puzzle games, and our personal favourite Naval Fleet, a mobile version of Battleship.
The phone lasted from 9 am Friday morning to 7.20 pm Monday night, effectively 106 hours of normal use. This is pretty average for a mobile these days.
All in all, we think the T100 will be popular amongst parents eager to provide mobile phones to their children in the interest of safety. The low cost and security features make it ideal for this function. Plus, the small fingers of children may be able to navigate the phone more nimbly than our adult sized ones.
Sony Ericsson T100 Company:Sony Ericsson Price: AU$275
Distributor: Sony Ericsson
Phone: 1300 650 050
First Take: NEC e606
Some brief statistics: the NEC e606 is a dual mode 2G/3G phone (GSM/W-CDMA) and has Bluetooth and USB connectivity. Now onto the really interesting stuff.
The NEC e606 is the first 3G mobile handset in Australia. Thus, it's the first to offer video mobile calling, and is exclusive to the first mobile carrier to provide 3G services such as video mobile calling, Hutchison.
The videophone capability is currently unique to the e606. Although other mobiles, such as the Nokia 3650 have video capabilities, the e606 is the only phone that can do live two-way video. Whether you will appreciate this facility depends on your personality type, as the video is not perfect.
The picture on video calls lags a bit behind the speech, often breaks up and can't handle fast movement well. It's very similar to the kind of the satellite phone images that featured heavily on news broadcasts five years ago. That being said, this is the only service on which you can get videophone capabilities at all, and the service is likely to improve as Hutchison upgrades its network.
If the transmission quality bothers you, of course, there's nothing stopping you pre-recording messages and just sending them, although you do lose the two-way interactivity of live video chat. The video call capability has a number of cool features accessible through a submenu, including which of the two cameras to use (one facing towards you, the other away), a 2x zoom, mirror image, mute, and video off (which keeps the call going but takes away the image you are sending). You can also have a little picture of yourself in the bottom left corner, to see the image you are sending to the other person. You do need to have the earphone in during a video call.
During a call the submenu comes up slowly, but you can use number shortcuts to go straight to the menu choice you want. The normal video capabilities are good, with the ability to access a submenu and select three different image qualities, recording direction, mirror image and a self-timer. There is also a 2x digital zoom, which can be switched on and off during the video recording. The phone allows you to record up to 12 seconds of video, which is longer than it sounds, and certainly enough to encompass any message we wanted to send.
This feature also includes video clips downloaded to the phone, which are good quality but best viewed using an earpiece, because the external volume on the phone does not go up very high.
The video cameras can also be used as digital cameras, with the same features (2x digital zoom and three levels of picture quality), and these can then be sent as MMS messages. We found the MMS capabilities easy to use, and quite fun.
The photos also look good on the screen, which is very impressive with 65K colours and a large 132 x 162 pixels (35 x 43 mm). In terms of looks, this is the best part of the phone. While it is very stylish and futuristic, there is no getting around the large form factor, which is about the size of two small mobiles lying on top of each other. It measures 109 x 53 x 32 mm, and weighs in at 145 g. You do get a lot of features with this phone, but they take up space.
The button layout of the e606 is simple, with two menu buttons (one for the phone menu, and one for the 3 menu), two softkeys, a normal keypad and a five-way arrow key. One thing that is unusual is that not all the arrow keys are used all the time, and a little symbol comes on the screen to show you which keys are active at any given point.
One major issue we have with the NEC e606 is the battery life, which is abysmal. NEC says the battery life is dependant on the applications run and the operations of the carrier, and we can understand that video functions and 3G phone calls chew through the power. If you do plan to use these features, don't plan for the battery to last more than about a day, if that. You are given a spare battery with the phone, so you can charge that and take it with you as a backup; we'd advise this strategy at this point.
We'll have more on the NEC e606 once we've finished our comprehensive testing.
NEC e606 Company:NEC Price: AU$768
Distributor:3 Australia
