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OUTSIDE
The outside keypad: I read a lot of other reviews about this phone concerning the T9 function. They said that the T9 wouldn't "remember" their custom words. Unfortunately, this is true. At first, the T9 remembered every one of my custom words. But it seems that after I turned the phone off and back on, that custom memory was cleared. This was HIGHLY disappointing for me. But they did add a text-to-speech option for the text messages.
The outside screen: When tilting the phone towards you, the screen becomes too dark, when tilting away from you, it becomes too bright, so you have to be looking straight at it to view the screen properly. For some reason, you cannot view the pictures that came with the phone FULLY from the outside screen (but you can with your own pictures). You may view portions of the factory-shipped pictures, but not the whole thing so if you set one of them as your background, you won't see the entire picture. This isn't an issue with pictures that YOU put on the phone, personally. It'll show your personal pictures in their entirety but they will most likely have black empty space on both sides (depending on the shape of your pictures). When viewing the picture menu, it shows three at a time. And I like the way they designed them to move. In menu mode, when you click left or right, it shows the effect of swiping, and when you HOLD left or right, it speeds through your pictures. In single photo mode, when you click left or right, it does the swiping effect to the next picture (if you click in quick succession, the swiping effect stops and it just shows you the next picture), and if you HOLD left or right, a film strip comes up showing three at a time, and whatever picture you stop on in that scrolling, that's the one that will become full screen without you having to press OK.
The outside menu options: You have to press OK once to unlock the menu (this can be changed to click twice if you prefer). The keyguard timer can be set to Always Off, 7 Seconds, 15 Seconds, or 30 Seconds. When unlocked, your menu options are Key Guard, Contacts, Messaging, Recent Calls, My Pictures, My Music, and Bluetooth. Messaging can only be text and you can only put one recipient so if you want to send something other than text, or to multiple recipients at once (or both), the phone needs to be opened. As for the shortcut keys on the front, left is for pictures, up is for music, right is for bluetooth, and down is for messaging (this cannot be changed). The clear button serves as a voice command button, and when held, it shortcuts to the voice recorder.
The outside buttons: On the left you have the dedicated camera key right above the master volume controls (up and down). On the right side, there are no buttons, there are only ports for the 2.5mm headphone jack (above), and the micro SD card slot (below). There's nothing on the top of the phone. The bottom is where the charger goes. I was a bit disappointed when I found that it wasn't using mini USB, but something similar to it. Well at least the charger doubles as a USB connector so I guess that really doesn't matter.
The charger/USB connector: Instead of two separate wires, the USB-end of the wire plugs into the adapter, and the other end into your phone. When I plugged this into my computer, it said it couldn't intall so I can't tell you anything about that (because it didn't work). And the phone didn't come with a disk so I don't know what they want me to do. My computer is running on Windows XP, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
The overall feel of the phone is nice, but it kind of feels like there's something missing on the left side, only because the camera and volume keys are recessed into the side of the phone so it feels incomplete. I think I know why they did it though. It might be because these buttons might get in the way of the screen being opened, but when I look closely at it, it doesn't seem like it would. So I guess I wish they would've just made them normally, instead of recessed into the side, but maybe I'm just being picky.
INSIDE
The inside screen: It can be tilted open to 135 degrees, or 180 degrees. Unlike the front screen, there's none of that too-bright/ too-dark positioning that you have to go through. I also love the auto-brightness feature which changes according to your surrounding light conditions. So if you wake up to a new message at night, the light is dim for you. Conversely, if your outside on a bright sunny day, this phone will adjust to it and you'll still be able to see everything on your screen. And, if you prefer, this feature can be turned off and you can set whatever level you like best to be there all the time.
This is where I run out of room for the review, sorry.
Updated on Jun 14, 2009
I couldn't fit this in with my submitted review, so I'm posting it as an update.
The inside keyboard: I like to use proper English when texting people (instead of the abbreviated texting language), so punctuation symbols mean a lot to me. I noticed myself hitting the shift key a lot when trying to get to a symbol because I'm so used to a normal keyboard that I keep forgetting to use the symbol key. This isn't really a problem but I thought it was worth mentioning. Something they could fix is to capitalize the first letter of a new message (so I wouldn't have to press shift each time). They added copy and paste, which is a great time saver -- especially for contact entries. The spacebar behaves like the clear key on the front of the phone (press for voice command, hold for voice memo). The favorites key is pretty cool. You can store up to ten favorite contacts. There are two rubber stoppers at the bottom of the keyboard to prevent the buttons from ever touching the screen.
The outside keypad: I read a lot of other reviews about this phone concerning the T9 function. They said that the T9 wouldn't "remember" their custom words. Unfortunately, this is true. At first, the T9 remembered every one of my custom words. But it seems that after I turned the phone off and back on, that custom memory was cleared. This was HIGHLY disappointing for me. But they did add a text-to-speech option for the text messages.
The outside screen: When tilting the phone towards you, the screen becomes too dark, when tilting away from you, it becomes too bright, so you have to be looking straight at it to view the screen properly. For some reason, you cannot view the pictures that came with the phone FULLY from the outside screen (but you can with your own pictures). You may view portions of the factory-shipped pictures, but not the whole thing so if you set one of them as your background, you won't see the entire picture. This isn't an issue with pictures that YOU put on the phone, personally. It'll show your personal pictures in their entirety but they will most likely have black empty space on both sides (depending on the shape of your pictures). When viewing the picture menu, it shows three at a time. And I like the way they designed them to move. In menu mode, when you click left or right, it shows the effect of swiping, and when you HOLD left or right, it speeds through your pictures. In single photo mode, when you click left or right, it does the swiping effect to the next picture (if you click in quick succession, the swiping effect stops and it just shows you the next picture), and if you HOLD left or right, a film strip comes up showing three at a time, and whatever picture you stop on in that scrolling, that's the one that will become full screen without you having to press OK.
The outside menu options: You have to press OK once to unlock the menu (this can be changed to click twice if you prefer). The keyguard timer can be set to Always Off, 7 Seconds, 15 Seconds, or 30 Seconds. When unlocked, your menu options are Key Guard, Contacts, Messaging, Recent Calls, My Pictures, My Music, and Bluetooth. Messaging can only be text and you can only put one recipient so if you want to send something other than text, or to multiple recipients at once (or both), the phone needs to be opened. As for the shortcut keys on the front, left is for pictures, up is for music, right is for bluetooth, and down is for messaging (this cannot be changed). The clear button serves as a voice command button, and when held, it shortcuts to the voice recorder.
The outside buttons: On the left you have the dedicated camera key right above the master volume controls (up and down). On the right side, there are no buttons, there are only ports for the 2.5mm headphone jack (above), and the micro SD card slot (below). There's nothing on the top of the phone. The bottom is where the charger goes. I was a bit disappointed when I found that it wasn't using mini USB, but something similar to it. Well at least the charger doubles as a USB connector so I guess that really doesn't matter.
The charger/USB connector: Instead of two separate wires, the USB-end of the wire plugs into the adapter, and the other end into your phone. When I plugged this into my computer, it said it couldn't intall so I can't tell you anything about that (because it didn't work). And the phone didn't come with a disk so I don't know what they want me to do. My computer is running on Windows XP, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
The overall feel of the phone is nice, but it kind of feels like there's something missing on the left side, only because the camera and volume keys are recessed into the side of the phone so it feels incomplete. I think I know why they did it though. It might be because these buttons might get in the way of the screen being opened, but when I look closely at it, it doesn't seem like it would. So I guess I wish they would've just made them normally, instead of recessed into the side, but maybe I'm just being picky.
INSIDE
The inside screen: It can be tilted open to 135 degrees, or 180 degrees. Unlike the front screen, there's none of that too-bright/ too-dark positioning that you have to go through. I also love the auto-brightness feature which changes according to your surrounding light conditions. So if you wake up to a new message at night, the light is dim for you. Conversely, if your outside on a bright sunny day, this phone will adjust to it and you'll still be able to see everything on your screen. And, if you prefer, this feature can be turned off and you can set whatever level you like best to be there all the time.
This is where I run out of room for the review, sorry.
Updated on Jun 14, 2009
I couldn't fit this in with my submitted review, so I'm posting it as an update.
The inside keyboard: I like to use proper English when texting people (instead of the abbreviated texting language), so punctuation symbols mean a lot to me. I noticed myself hitting the shift key a lot when trying to get to a symbol because I'm so used to a normal keyboard that I keep forgetting to use the symbol key. This isn't really a problem but I thought it was worth mentioning. Something they could fix is to capitalize the first letter of a new message (so I wouldn't have to press shift each time). They added copy and paste, which is a great time saver -- especially for contact entries. The spacebar behaves like the clear key on the front of the phone (press for voice command, hold for voice memo). The favorites key is pretty cool. You can store up to ten favorite contacts. There are two rubber stoppers at the bottom of the keyboard to prevent the buttons from ever touching the screen.
