The Smart Unlock feature allows you to unlock the phone by drawing a key letter on the locked screen. Handwriting recognition is pretty decent on the handset too, although we found it worked best with a fingernail rather than fingertip. You can use the phone's accelerometer to allow you to flip between applications by flicking the handset to the right or left. It's okay, but not really a substitute for pressing a button.
Apart from the Wi-Fi set-up, operation is intuitive
There's also a set of three icon-based menu pages. The menu button that sits next to the camera shutter on the side, opens a cube-based interface that you can rotate sideways and up and down to access the media and entertainment functions. It looks sparkly, but it's not really necessary.
The animated cube does something to show off that 800MHz processor on board and, sure enough, we couldn't really fault it for speed. Graphics never seemed to drag, videos played smoothly and web pages rendered quickly enough. But while we didn't have any problems relating to the processor, we couldn't, hand on heart, say that it was noticeably quicker than other handsets either.
Setting up the Wi-Fi connection isn't quite as straightforward as hoped, and there was a bit of fiddling around with menus to be done before we could get access to full broadband on this quad-band, HSDPA 3G handset. Once configured, however, the browser proved to have a good level of intuitive, time-saving features.
You can switch the address bar to accept Google search and on-page text search as well as URLs and have several pages open at once. The buttons on the onscreen Qwerty keyboard are a little tight, but it flags up the letters as you press them and includes handy shortcuts like www. and .com.
The speedy processor doesn't compensate for the touchscreen response shortcomings
The browser will play Flash video and you can also zoom using the volume rocker or by pressing and holding the screen, though accessing links could be a bit hit and miss, due to the less than sensitive screen.
COMMENTS
Screen life
I know this doesn't affect people who upgrade their phone/car/partner/life every year, but my experience of two small OLED displays is that they deteriorate quite quickly. I think it is significant that Kodak had a camera with one a year or two back, and now they don't...
I own one.
...and it's not so bad. But, because we all like to slate products - here's it's bad points:
My phone freaks out and tells me the inbox is full when it reaches 200 text messages (instead of the 500 the specifications promise). In fact, I had nearer to 300 texts combined between my Sent Items and Inbox when it told me it was full - but the 'Memory Status' read as 200/500. Bug-tastic!
One bad thing is that it makes you pick a wifi network / data connection in the settings of each app instead of being intuitive and either letting you pick the connection you wish to use as you connect, or it should automatically 'guess' which one you want to use (ie, trying for wifi first, and then using data).
The default web browser is shite. Thank god for Opera Mini (though even Opera Mini will cause problems with people with fat fingers on this screen. Fatties, maybe carry a makeshift stylus?).
The camera is pretty good - shame it takes at the aspect ratio it does, and not the nicer 6x4 size a 'proper' camera would - but other than this, there's a wealth of useful settings. The flash is a bit harsh on just about everything, but there are enough settings to take a good photo - you just need to know what to do with them.
Widgets are nice, some pointless, but quite a lot of the ones you hope will be good are just bookmarks. Lame. What's more they have a widget to download more widgets that just takes you to a website once you've found the widget you want to download. Also lame (and hard to navigate when it's so small). I've looked into developing my own widgets and there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to submit them so others can download them ala an 'App Store'.
I can't scrobble my music from the default player to Last.fm. :(
There are, however, many things that this phone can do that are nice ideas that, say, the iPhone can't. Being able to shake the phone to get rid of the app you're using, tapping the phone (anywhere - not just the screen!) to stop and start music, the camera hardware, the tactile feedback, to name but a few.
£330
For a phone?! Is this some sort of joke? I don't think I'd pay more than about £15 for that sort of thing. What the hell can it possibly do that makes it worth over three HUNDRED quid?
bad knockoffs
It is my fondest hope, that some day, phoneset makers will realize that a good phone is defined by the craftsmanship of the design and the responsiveness of the UI, not on 'how close we can make it look like an iPhone until someone tries to use it'. Sidekick (RIP) and Android got this. Why must we have so many also-rans that don't?
If someone wants an iPhone, they'd be buying it (or waiting until the exclusivity expires). If they don't want an iPhone, they won't be buying something that looks like what they don't want.
How quick
How quick, for example, does it take to turn on?
How quick, for example, does it take to get into camera mode and ready to take a picture?
How quickly can I start going in to my address book from hitting the power key.
All of these things I care about. And yet, I still have no idea how quick this "jet" is.
Apart from their lousy advert, did you see their attempted vile viral campaign they tried to promote through B3ta. Utterly poor.
