Sunday, January 28, 2007

BenQ Siemens EF81: Like Motorola RAZR



In terms of design, the clamshell by Siemens not at all reminds of Motorola's products, saving for strap fastening – though its design has already been adopted from RAZR and is a standard de facto. The model's appearance is quite fresh and is not trite, as it doesn't look very slim when compared to Motorola RAZR, but still, Motorola V3x doesn't seem to have vanishing depth. This impression is intensified by the handset's width and a bit splayed, smooth corners. The best thing about this model is that the front panel is made of polished metal, so one can easily spot the texture – despite all other phones, the material, used here, is solid, you can touch it, feel even.

The handset has 94x51x16 mm and 110 grams weight. This phone has camera with 2 MP resolution. The camera can record video clips in following resolutions 176x144, 128x96 and 96x80 pixels. Frame rate can be adjusted (7 or 15 fps). Maximal recording time is 5 minutes.

The front panel holds the internal TFT screen capable of displaying 262 K colors in 128x160 pixels resolutions. The screen itself is not bad, though I could doubt whether it really reflects 262K colors, but this would be a cavil. The display's diagonal measures 1.25 inches, in other words 20x22 mm. The sun doesn't cause fading effects, but the cover glass starts flashing and sometimes it causes certain impediments to reading information.

Having opened the device, you'll see a very qualitative internal screen, which claims the position of the leader in its class at present and competes with Motorola V3x on equal terms. The display provides QVGA resolution (240x320 pixels, 34x45 mm, 2.2 inches) and is capable to display up to 262 K colors. The capacity of battery is 950 mAh. According to the manufacturer's statement, the device can work up to 300 hours in stand-by mode and provide nearly 4.5 hours of talk time.

The device features 64 Mb of internal memory. The phonebook is capable of storing up to 500 entries. For each contact you can submit four telephone numbers, two fax numbers, for e-mail addresses, two page URLs, company's name, etc. The device offers the capability of recording up to 100 voice labels, at that you can have several commands assigned to one contact. Up to 100 entries are stored in the memory of each call type – incoming, outgoing and missed.

Three types of messages can be created – SMS, MMS and E-mail. When you are creating SMS messages, you can type long compositions since joined message system is supported, maximal length is 755 symbols of latin font and up to 330 for cyrilics. A photo, text, video, sound and contact can be inserted into MMS message. The email client supports SMTP, POP3, IMAP4 protocols. Maximal attachment size should not exceed 10mb.

Organizer consists of calendar, voice memos, world time settings and synchronization point. Calendar's organization is very good. Every new occasion is not related to any type. Each record consists of date, start/end time, alarm time (if required). Next you are free to select reoccurrence of the event (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never).

Media player is brought up as separate menu item, it even has its own icon. Just like in S75, this phone has multimedia processor Imageon 2182 from ATI built-in. Alongside with traditional media files (ring tones, aac, mp3, 3gps, graphics, etc) the phone can playback video in Real Media 8/9 format. Media files can be viewed in full screen mode. Playlists that can include up to 25 files are supported, media player can work in minimized mode too. You can view graphic files in slide show mode.

The phone's performance is equal to SXG75, the difference is insignificant and depends only on firmware version. Unlike Siemens S75 and other x75 series models, this phone works faster.

Read full review about Benq-Siemens EF81 on mobile-review.com

0 comments: