PoV: SkypePhone - The Eighteenth Day

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I have learned once more. Mee andI had been criticising the day we got our hands on it but I havetotally changed my point of view since I used it from 29th January 2008.

Atthe beginning, the very next day we signed a contract with 3 and sawthe logo Amoi on its manual, I started looking for comments on forumsand blogs. My first thought was that I should have googled beforedeciding to choose Skypephone. I had very less confidence in this phoneand thought that those reviews praising this phone were rubbish. I hadeven posted a comment on one of the site.

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January 17th, 2008 2:31pm myi4u

First of all, I agreed with John Smith.

I’vejust signed up for 3 yesterday and chosen the Skypephone. At a firstglance, I thought it’s not a bad phone. When I tried putting in the
battery, sim card and mmc, I felt that it is fragile and plastic.

Thebattery cover doesn’t fit properly, I believe it is due to themechanism where there’s a magnet at the bottom of it. When I read the
manual, I saw a Amoi logo and I have a feeling that I had made a mistake.

Iregret for not making research on the internet. I regret for not tryingout the display phone. Well, anyway, no one to blame but myself.

I am just wondering how long it will last and how long it will take for the usb port cover to break.

Personally, even 6630 is a better phone. Yeah, I am talking about an old model which I am using it now as my alarm.

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Haha… now I am regretting for making that comment and would like toapologize to those who made the reviews. Don’t be mistaken. I am notbribed by anyone.

I should point out that the quality of themake is indeed fragile than other mobile phones in the market. And Iwould not pay £49.99 (the current price) for this phone.

First, the battery life is quite amazing. I had only charged it thrice (29th January, 7th February and yesterday) since I first used it. When it’s on the 12thFebruary, the battery level has only consumed 25% - 30% (estimated). Imust admit that I did not make much calls myself and mostly texting.However, I had previously used SE W850i and Nokia 6630 which lastedabout 4 to 5 days the longest. I believe part of the reasons lie on thescreen saver and brightness. The screen saver is plain and simple, withthe options of time and date, or a picture. The unit does notilluminate until I unlock it where Nokia and SE tend to illuminate whenany buttons are pressed.

The screen resolution is terrible.The 2.0mp camera without flash is standard. Pictures do not look goodon the phone itself but they are still good when uploaded to computer.The keypad is quite cramp too. The menu is simple with only 9 plainicons and the only animation is just glowing of icons when selected.The front menu buttons are not customizable as shortcuts or gotofunctions, thus the only way to access applications and such is todrill in to the menus.

The user interface could have beenbetter. Some of the options when chosen, there are no indicationwhether the options are saved. On some rare occasions, notepad andmessaging exited while I was still typing.

The memory cardsits underneath the battery which will be considered a bad point formost phones but not this one, though. It can be easily connected tocomputer as USB mass storage and its connector for pc connection andcharger is the same USB connector. It comes with Bluetooth connectivityas well.

As the name suggests, SkypePhone, connecting to Skypeis effortless and a button is created specifically for launching Skypeis right at the middle. Mee had tried connecting to Skype effortlesslyon Chinese New Year’s eve and chatted with her friend in Edinburgh formore than an hour while experiencing 3 disconnections. However, Ibelieve that it could be owing to low network coverage in our area. 3network is also offering free MSN based on fair use policy and MSNcomes preinstalled. There are only two trial version of games; TetrisPac-Man.

Other than that, it also has notepad, calendar,profile settings, alarm and calculator. The sound quality is acceptableand louder than the mobile phones I had before. One thing which Ishould also give credit to is the easiness of typing SMS messages. TheT9 prediction is standard but the response between each button pressedis fast.

Overall, it is quite a fast phone when typingmessages and manoeuvring the menus. I would say that it’s just astandard but light-weighted phone. I would rather not have the camerabut improve its functionalities and quality of the phone.

UPDATE 210208 1517

Thereis one nifty feature which enable the SkypePhone to navigate to themain menu without closing applications such as Notepad, Calendar andthe likes but not MSN. In order to switch between the openapplications, there is a button on the right with 5 squares engravedicon on it.

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