rhedgehog
11-12-2003, 01:14 PM
This is a review I had done for a mates Student Union magazine. Wondered if anyone was interested.
It's the first review I've done for anyone, so it is a bit rough around the edges, and they might not even want it, but it kept me busy on a couple of otherwise quiet nights at work!
Panasonic X70 – Worth The Wait?
This phone has been the talk of the town for a little while, especially when it was revealed it would have a light for taking pictures in the dark! Something all picture phones have been useless at since they first appeared on these shores. However, with many more phones offering add-ons such as removable flashes, and camera attachments with built in flash already (that was by far the best thing about the S55 from siemens) it is not so much of a selling point now. So what has the X70 got to make you want it over other phones on the market?
Specs: -
· Dimensions - 87 x 47 x 24mm
· Weight - 92g
· Battery Life - 250 hrs standby, 5 hrs talk time (max)
· Display Size - 132 x 176 pixels
· Tri-Band, 900/1800/1900 MHz
· Built in Camera with light and digital zoom
· 4MB user memory
· 64k colour screen
· infrared, bluetooth and cable connectivity
First impressions are good, Smaller and lighter than the GD87, similar design but much better overall. The new Darker metal colour scheme is much nicer! The whole phone has a much slicker and higher quality feel to it, improving on the 87 which was already extremely good. The one I have is locked to Orange UK, and as such is no doubt going to have the typical orange software problems you encounter on all phones, from the most basic upwards. Whatever you do, make sure you get this thing updated as soon as you can to avoid the bugs in the early firmware versions that orange always use.
As for actual use, Orange had set the menus of this phone to an horrendous shade of (funnily enough) orange. Guaranteed to give anyone a headache after 5 minutes use. Worse still, there seemed to be no way to change it! Thanks orange! This could be an Orange firmware issue though, and I hope it is, as the Icons are a particularly nasty orange/black monochrome effect which puts them down on a par with the Vodafone T610. Not the kind of let down I was expecting.
Multi-Media
The ringtones are loud and undistorted but not quite on a par with the 32 and even 40 channel midis such as on the T610, which really did raise the bar as far as polyphonics go. The supplied ones are nice enough and no doubt it will take any ringtones for the GD87 as it seems to keep the same file format. The silly key noises have returned again, but they don't seem to be as annoying as before, with only a small selection of noises this time, and thankfully none of them sound like a cheap Mario Bros rip off.
The In Fusio(tm) games are pretty good, with Crash bandicoot being the favourite round the office at the moment, even challenging Minigolf on the SE T-series phones. but never having been a major fan of games on mobiles, I wasn't there long. The other supplied game on this handset was Wall Breaker. An Arkanoid clone, but somehow just not the same. Then again, that could be the retro gamer in me coming out.
Obviously, with the reduction in size from the GD87, the buttons seem a little smaller and closer together, but still extremely usable. No problems for guys with bigger hands like myself, unlike with Siemens' nasty little SL55. Exact same layout and similar menu structure to the GD87, and even room for the Vodafone Live! button in the same place as its older brother.
The browser seems more than adequate, but then Wap browsers are all pretty much the same anyway. Once again, Orange's ridiculous colour scheme fails here, with the blue links on the bright orange background making browsing Wap a rather sickening experience, but this should not be a problem on sim free handsets. Lets just hope Vodafone don’t get their hands on this one!
Connectivity
The infrared port is still in the same position, on the front of the case above the camera and the new sub LCD,which is and always was the stupidest place imaginable, and the bluetooth, at least on this one, is absolutely dreadful. It found my SE T610 but refused to send anything to it at all! Not a good start. It found and paired with my iPAQ 2210, but that was as far as it went. Rather disappointing all in all. I think it was just a glitch though, as some others I know who have tested this have had it working with 3900 series iPAQ’s, so it could be an incompatibility there. I also tried it with my MSI bluetooth key, and while it seemed to pair, it then refused to acknowledge that my computer even existed and would not talk to it at all. Needless to say I was not impressed. Overall, it seems that anyone wanting to use this phone as a modem with their laptop or PDA will be a little disappointed, as the reliability seems to be just as bad if not worse than its predecessor. The options for connectivity have been moved to what did not feel like a sensible place, hidden away in the organiser section of the main menu along with the calculator, converter etc, and also with a remote SyncML client, which seems to becoming 'De Rigueur' in many phones these days.
This seemingly random approach to the menus continues with the themes! I did find a way to change the colour of the screen eventually, although for some reason, you have to go into the data folders and actually select the theme file and select to use it in there. Surely a themes option in the display settings would have been much more sensible. Unfortunately though, the nasty orange menu icons remained. As for everything else, this phone just doesn’t do anything in a logical way! I thought the old Motorola menus were bad, but this is just ridiculous
Everything Else
The screen is actually rather nice, performing better in the sunlight than the screen on the T610, and is as bright as you could want it with vivid colours and clear text. The phone feels solid, with none of the creaks and groans that sometimes are associated with phones as they get smaller and lighter, and it has a sturdy feel to it, as if it would withstand a drop out of your pocket when you’ve had one too many down the pub without taking any real damage.
The voice quality is of the usual high standard you would expect on the orange network in this part of the country, I didn’t experience a single dropped call, even though where I am situated is not in the best reception area around these parts, losing all UK networks completely on the next hill over towards town, and the sound was nice and clear, so no problems there. The SMS T9 took very little getting used to, being fairly similar to the SE T9 setup, although this was somewhat faster. There did not seem to be any way of going back to edit a previously entered word, apart from deleting it and starting again, as it would not select the word once you had gone on. A minor thing admittedly, but extremely annoying.. Even so, and being a Sony Ericsson man myself, I still miss the simplicity and speed of the Nokia T9 inputs, which are still the best around.
MMS is just as bad as on every other phone at the moment, but then that’s not really the faulty of the phone, but more the fact that the size of the pictures once they have been sent or received, is a complete waste of time. Hopefully the networks will address this soon, because I couldn’t make out the picture taken on the X70 by my friend and sent to me. Just too damn small!
All in all it seems Panasonic aren’t really sure which direction they are going with this one. A definite improvement over the GD87 in some areas, but a massive step backwards in others that matter. It has the potential to be a very popular phone, but my experience of it was totally ruined by the awful firmware on the handset. Hopefully Panasonic will address this in a later update, unless it is just the orange firmware (which is terrible as usual). The main problem I can see for the X70, besides my experience of it so far is that as the prices for mobile phones come down further and further, and with the sheer affordability of phones such as the 7250i from Nokia and the T610 from Sony Ericsson (for less than £50 on contract you can’t complain), I wonder where and who this phone will appeal to? Certainly not the top end of the market by any stretch of the imagination, but there may well be plenty of people out there who will like the phone’s features as they are, and decide to put up with the ridiculous layout of the phones menu’s, without being the all singing all dancing spectacular some phones are becoming, but just a capable phone with a few bells and whistles to impress the friends on a Friday night out. In the end, it will all come down to whether you prefer the looks of other phones available on the market or this, because from this test, looks is all that the X70 has going for it.
Panasonic X70 – Worth The Wait? I Don’t Think So!
It's the first review I've done for anyone, so it is a bit rough around the edges, and they might not even want it, but it kept me busy on a couple of otherwise quiet nights at work!
Panasonic X70 – Worth The Wait?
This phone has been the talk of the town for a little while, especially when it was revealed it would have a light for taking pictures in the dark! Something all picture phones have been useless at since they first appeared on these shores. However, with many more phones offering add-ons such as removable flashes, and camera attachments with built in flash already (that was by far the best thing about the S55 from siemens) it is not so much of a selling point now. So what has the X70 got to make you want it over other phones on the market?
Specs: -
· Dimensions - 87 x 47 x 24mm
· Weight - 92g
· Battery Life - 250 hrs standby, 5 hrs talk time (max)
· Display Size - 132 x 176 pixels
· Tri-Band, 900/1800/1900 MHz
· Built in Camera with light and digital zoom
· 4MB user memory
· 64k colour screen
· infrared, bluetooth and cable connectivity
First impressions are good, Smaller and lighter than the GD87, similar design but much better overall. The new Darker metal colour scheme is much nicer! The whole phone has a much slicker and higher quality feel to it, improving on the 87 which was already extremely good. The one I have is locked to Orange UK, and as such is no doubt going to have the typical orange software problems you encounter on all phones, from the most basic upwards. Whatever you do, make sure you get this thing updated as soon as you can to avoid the bugs in the early firmware versions that orange always use.
As for actual use, Orange had set the menus of this phone to an horrendous shade of (funnily enough) orange. Guaranteed to give anyone a headache after 5 minutes use. Worse still, there seemed to be no way to change it! Thanks orange! This could be an Orange firmware issue though, and I hope it is, as the Icons are a particularly nasty orange/black monochrome effect which puts them down on a par with the Vodafone T610. Not the kind of let down I was expecting.
Multi-Media
The ringtones are loud and undistorted but not quite on a par with the 32 and even 40 channel midis such as on the T610, which really did raise the bar as far as polyphonics go. The supplied ones are nice enough and no doubt it will take any ringtones for the GD87 as it seems to keep the same file format. The silly key noises have returned again, but they don't seem to be as annoying as before, with only a small selection of noises this time, and thankfully none of them sound like a cheap Mario Bros rip off.
The In Fusio(tm) games are pretty good, with Crash bandicoot being the favourite round the office at the moment, even challenging Minigolf on the SE T-series phones. but never having been a major fan of games on mobiles, I wasn't there long. The other supplied game on this handset was Wall Breaker. An Arkanoid clone, but somehow just not the same. Then again, that could be the retro gamer in me coming out.
Obviously, with the reduction in size from the GD87, the buttons seem a little smaller and closer together, but still extremely usable. No problems for guys with bigger hands like myself, unlike with Siemens' nasty little SL55. Exact same layout and similar menu structure to the GD87, and even room for the Vodafone Live! button in the same place as its older brother.
The browser seems more than adequate, but then Wap browsers are all pretty much the same anyway. Once again, Orange's ridiculous colour scheme fails here, with the blue links on the bright orange background making browsing Wap a rather sickening experience, but this should not be a problem on sim free handsets. Lets just hope Vodafone don’t get their hands on this one!
Connectivity
The infrared port is still in the same position, on the front of the case above the camera and the new sub LCD,which is and always was the stupidest place imaginable, and the bluetooth, at least on this one, is absolutely dreadful. It found my SE T610 but refused to send anything to it at all! Not a good start. It found and paired with my iPAQ 2210, but that was as far as it went. Rather disappointing all in all. I think it was just a glitch though, as some others I know who have tested this have had it working with 3900 series iPAQ’s, so it could be an incompatibility there. I also tried it with my MSI bluetooth key, and while it seemed to pair, it then refused to acknowledge that my computer even existed and would not talk to it at all. Needless to say I was not impressed. Overall, it seems that anyone wanting to use this phone as a modem with their laptop or PDA will be a little disappointed, as the reliability seems to be just as bad if not worse than its predecessor. The options for connectivity have been moved to what did not feel like a sensible place, hidden away in the organiser section of the main menu along with the calculator, converter etc, and also with a remote SyncML client, which seems to becoming 'De Rigueur' in many phones these days.
This seemingly random approach to the menus continues with the themes! I did find a way to change the colour of the screen eventually, although for some reason, you have to go into the data folders and actually select the theme file and select to use it in there. Surely a themes option in the display settings would have been much more sensible. Unfortunately though, the nasty orange menu icons remained. As for everything else, this phone just doesn’t do anything in a logical way! I thought the old Motorola menus were bad, but this is just ridiculous
Everything Else
The screen is actually rather nice, performing better in the sunlight than the screen on the T610, and is as bright as you could want it with vivid colours and clear text. The phone feels solid, with none of the creaks and groans that sometimes are associated with phones as they get smaller and lighter, and it has a sturdy feel to it, as if it would withstand a drop out of your pocket when you’ve had one too many down the pub without taking any real damage.
The voice quality is of the usual high standard you would expect on the orange network in this part of the country, I didn’t experience a single dropped call, even though where I am situated is not in the best reception area around these parts, losing all UK networks completely on the next hill over towards town, and the sound was nice and clear, so no problems there. The SMS T9 took very little getting used to, being fairly similar to the SE T9 setup, although this was somewhat faster. There did not seem to be any way of going back to edit a previously entered word, apart from deleting it and starting again, as it would not select the word once you had gone on. A minor thing admittedly, but extremely annoying.. Even so, and being a Sony Ericsson man myself, I still miss the simplicity and speed of the Nokia T9 inputs, which are still the best around.
MMS is just as bad as on every other phone at the moment, but then that’s not really the faulty of the phone, but more the fact that the size of the pictures once they have been sent or received, is a complete waste of time. Hopefully the networks will address this soon, because I couldn’t make out the picture taken on the X70 by my friend and sent to me. Just too damn small!
All in all it seems Panasonic aren’t really sure which direction they are going with this one. A definite improvement over the GD87 in some areas, but a massive step backwards in others that matter. It has the potential to be a very popular phone, but my experience of it was totally ruined by the awful firmware on the handset. Hopefully Panasonic will address this in a later update, unless it is just the orange firmware (which is terrible as usual). The main problem I can see for the X70, besides my experience of it so far is that as the prices for mobile phones come down further and further, and with the sheer affordability of phones such as the 7250i from Nokia and the T610 from Sony Ericsson (for less than £50 on contract you can’t complain), I wonder where and who this phone will appeal to? Certainly not the top end of the market by any stretch of the imagination, but there may well be plenty of people out there who will like the phone’s features as they are, and decide to put up with the ridiculous layout of the phones menu’s, without being the all singing all dancing spectacular some phones are becoming, but just a capable phone with a few bells and whistles to impress the friends on a Friday night out. In the end, it will all come down to whether you prefer the looks of other phones available on the market or this, because from this test, looks is all that the X70 has going for it.
Panasonic X70 – Worth The Wait? I Don’t Think So!