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 This mobile phone had started a lot of discussions and it gained a lot of attention. Although
everybody needs a certain period of time to confront the design of the
device and the keypad layout, there are many different opinions on how
the device should look like. Some find it really weird and just
different, while others think it is sleek and elegant, which it really
is. The phone is colored in a cool silver paint officialy called ??€??ice
blue??€?, and the plastic feels solid and comfortable.
 Unlike other series 60 mobile phones, this device is really small.
The main factor in making the phone so small is the keypad layout. It
is placed near the edges of the screen, and the keys itself are not
small but they require time to adapt. While typing messages you should
hold the phone by both hands, so you could press the keys on the both
sides of the keypad. We tried typing messages using only one hand but
it is rather unhandy to do so because of the distance between different
letters. The device weights 116 grams, which makes it pretty light for
a smartphone.
So when they had decided to make an attractive, special device with
such keypad, they had known customers will have a hard time learning to
type on the phone. That is why the phone comes with a game called
??€??Typegun??€? which helps you to learn to type the easiest way. Besides the
keypad from 0-9 the keypad with the menu button and the joystick are
located below the screen. That is really convenient, because you can
use the smartphone features such as mp3, or video playback with only
one hand. The joystick is a bit harder to use because it is small and
hard to move, it has no grip so you might have to repeat a certain
movement because your finger slipped. The keys are very nice and you
have a nice feeling while pressing them. The keypad backlight is blue,
and it is well seen in the dark, but the symbols become blurry, and the
light is not spread equally.
Ok now lets get back to the most highlighted part of the phone, the
screen. The resolution of the screen is 176x220 pixels and it is
capable of showing up to 65000 colors. It is very bright, and the
pictures on it look well defined and sharp. The screen has an extra
line of 12 pixels on the top which indicates service information such
as battery status,  signal strenght or bluetooth operation. This line is
present through all the menus, and it is a good thing while playing
some game or typing a message. The pictures slightly fades in the sun
but it still keeps its clear visibility. The screen itself is very
good, but what we did not like is the mask cover on the screen which
makes it unusable at certain angles because it distorts the picture.
The sides of the phone contain rubber ingredients which makes the phone
more comfortable to hold. On the right side of the phone are located
two shiny silver buttons. One for camera and one for voice memo. On the
left side is located the MMC-card slot. The good thing on it is the hot
swap function, which really makes changing several MMC-cards easy. We
have tested the phone with an 1 GB MMC-card from Moby Memory, and it
worked completely flawless. The internal memory is 4 Mb but only 3.8 is
availabe to the user since the system applications take a bit of
memory. In other hand it has 16 Mb of RAM memory, which is used for the
running applications. Lets say that we had no problem multitasking on
this phone, we had over 10 applications opened at the same time and the
phone worked normally. Of course, if you are planning on installing a
lot of applications on the phones internal memory you should better
think twice and buy an MMC for it, cause you will have a lot more use
of the phone then.
The back side of the phone has a large cover for the battery, while
there are a camera and an external antenna connector on the top edges
of the phone. As we said earlier the phone doesn`t creak, but the
battery cover is pretty loose. Under the cover there is a 1000 mAh
battery which is powerful enough, as the manufacturer claims, to hold
the phone on for 200 hours on standby or 4 hours of talk time. While
testing it we got 64 hours on standby and about 2 and a half hours
talking. In regular use the device is capable to work about 2 days
before recharhing. As you all know the Bluetooth function really makes
the battery go down much faster, so you have to recharge. Charging
takes about 2.5 hours.
The camera is located on the back of the phone and it can be accessed
by a key located on the right side of the phone. You can take pictures
by pressing the joystick or by pressing the button on the right side.
 We noticed that the camera is a bit slow when moving the phone around,
but when you hold the phone focused to one direction you get a really
good, sharp image. The camera function is very similar to the one found
in Nokia 6600. You can choose between three picture resolutions (VGA
640x480, 120x160, 80x96). It has 4x digital zoom and using it makes the
pictures lose their quality. If you choose the best resolution,
pictures will be large so you can select where the pictures will be
stored (phone memory or memory card). A good implementation in the
camera menu, is the Image Fun function. You can select between
different frames and camera effects. The video recorder function serves
it`s function, but only for 10 seconds, because the file is limited to
95kb. The resolution for videos is a standard QCIF (176x144)
resolution. The installed video recorder is there only to introduce
video recording to the customer but we higly reccomend, third party
recorders which offer longer video recording and better quality and
framerate. Real Player is used for viewing recorded videos on the
phone.
The Symbian OS 6.1 is very user friendly and offers a lot of functions,
not as much as found in OS 7.0 (Nokia 6600). For instance, there is no
support for themes, and it has some minor bugs.
Since this phone is classified as a business smartphone, it should have
many connection possibilities, which it certainly has. You can choose
between USB cable, IrDa, Bluetooth, E-mail, and using third party
software you can connect to FTP servers and various chat clients. The
cable is used for synchronization with the PC, and it can also be used
to access the phones internal modem. Since this mobile phone accepts
all file types to be transfered/received, you can send files to it
using IrDa, or much better standard Bluetooth. The bluetooth function
works without any problems and it supports audio over bluetooth,
meaning you can connect to a wireless handsfree.
The phone comes loaded with important applications such as calculator,
currency converter, Real Player, detailed calendar, notes, voice
recorder, and so on.
The signal strenght was very decent and the sound during calls was
good. All that goes for the vibration and the polyphonic ring tones,
which could be a bit louder.
Overall, we find this device really good, packed with features and
definately functional despite it`s keypad layout. Since it`s main
competitor is Nokia 6600, we think that the SX1 looks a more attractive
and elegant, which is a deciding factor in buying phones in most cases.
If you want to combine looks with features, you will not go wrong with
this phone.
Software can be found on Handango Store
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