|
Page 3 of 3
Taking the E-TEN Glofiish X800 out of the box for the first time, it looked very great. The black linings and silver metal mesh were well designed and put together. The red labels for the shortcut keys fit very well with the black. However, the red rings around the cameras front and back made it a little less appealing for me.
The power, volume, headphone jack, snapshot key, are all around the sides of the device, and the media speaker on the back next to the camera.
A nice touch is the small metal plate on the back useful for self-portraits if you don't want to use the front camera.
Charging takes your standard few hours which is fair, but upon initial boot up, it takes well up to a minute and a half before the main interface and menus start to load, and they will take another 10 seconds or so depending on how you have customised the front.
The X800 comes packed with various utilities such as a SIM card manager, wireless manager, interface customiser, Voice Commander; your standard features like Office, ActiveSync; and some fun such as games, Windows Live and Messenger. These are pre-installed when you obtain your device or hard reset it. If there is something you do not like, you can uninstall it manually afterwards.
By default, your front screen displays battery, alarm clocks, weather, quick contacts, connection status, tasks, appointments, messages, and your information.
You can alter the default four tabs to what you frequently use, along with the 7 static menus in your start menu which you can add there, and your shortcut keys which you can set to whatever program or function you want, this makes accessing everything you need a breeze with up to 15 shortcuts in total for easy access.
Once I got it all booted up and the way I wanted, it was time to start testing features out.
The very first thing I tested was GPS.
Because the X800 does not come bundled with any GPS software at this point in time - still being organised, I installed CoPilot Live 6 onto it.
Initial boot and tracking took the usual minute or two, but from there on, everything was within 10 seconds. Almost instant at most times. The data was also accurate repective to the software and I was able to get from point A to point B without any problems.
I could view the maps vertically or horizontally, the latter preferably, thanks to the 2.8" screen and high resolution; and everything was consistantly up to date and easy to view.
I was able to go around town for around 3 hours before the battery was almost depleted.
Other than the convenience of not having to look through the street directory, I needed to keep up to date with my emails. I was only able to use Wi-Fi for my connection as I am not on a 3G plan, but I can guess it would be about the same. Using the generic email client and not Outlook, I was able to do everything I needed already. Receive emails, read them, and reply.
Although it has a large screen, it was still a challenge to browse wirelessly online with Internet Explorer easily. Using the default full view, I'm scrolling a heap. Squeeze it in together, to get to the content I want, I scroll down pass all the menus vertically. Then there is fit to width which is the in-between. This was more managable; thank goodness.
It will squash together as much as it can but without having the content completely vertical.
Although it does not display your download speed, judging from filesizes and time it took, I'm confident it is around 70 kb/s and up. Probably around 120 kb/s at most.
There's no flash support and such so watching online videos was out of bounds.
I achieved approximately 3 hours worth of internet access, doing nothing. While browsing around, I would have to drop that to 2 hours to 2 and a half hours.
While emailing and browsing, a lot of typing was required, well, key entry. The default keyboard shown has small keys with just about everything you see on your keyboard minus the F keys, the numeric keypad, and the delete, home, end, etc, keys.
If the keyboard is too small for you, there is a larger size which has only the letters and your tabs, shifts, and such, but if you need to use an arrow key or numbers, you'll need to go into the second screen of keys, switching between the two. Then there's a full blown size which covers 60-70% of the screen.
I rather use the middle sized one as the keys are still in order like a normal keyboard and the X800 is accurate enough to allow me to type with around 85% accuracy at 50 words per minute. Howerver, it can slow you down when you need to type in a mix of numbers and whatnot.
If key entry is a bummer for you, there is handwriting recognition. I found this to be the quickest, easiest, but the most tiring of the lot.
Recognition is accurate, quick, and being able to write as much as you can on the screen is bliss. I could write a phrase and it would recognise it all within seconds; you set the speed. If your writing is a little crooked or you join your letters, you can put those settings in action and it'll recognise them too.
There was another system of recognition where you write a letter at a time. I strongly urge everyone to stay away from it as the recognition is fair, but can you write 'T' without lifting up your pen whilst legibly? Okay, try 'Q'. Fine, try 'G'. As soon as you lift up your pen, it takes that recognition.
The X800 doesn't come with any slide out keyboards or such, but it would have been nice.
With the high resolution screen, I couldn't help but watch movies on it. Since the X800 only supports .3GP files, I had to convert some of my movies into that format, which lost some quality mid-way, unfortunately. Otherwise, the over experience was good. Audio was clear and had good volume. One thing I did not like was when you rotate the screen so that you can watch it horizontally to enjoy an ever so slightly larger widescreen display, doing anything or anything happening to it would revert it back to vertical view, be it volume, play, pause, or forgetting to turn off Wi-Fi and the X800 picks up a signal.
Other than that, I left it playing on the highest volume for around 3 hours again before the battery needed to be charged.
On the subject of media, I tried listening to my MP3s on it and I wasn't all too excited. Update the library, save a playlist, hotkey it if you wish, but when it came down to listening, nice loud speaker, clear stereo, but it didn't have the full range, let alone an almost non-existant bass. This is fairly standard for PDAs and phones, so not much to expect. The only kudos I can give is, again, clarity.
I thought headphones would solve this problem or help it, and it only just did. Bass was existant, but weak. Overall it was below average quality, but for someone who just needs a bit of tunes in his jog or walk, this can pull through with around 5 to 6 hours of play life. But again, you will like the crisp stereo sound you get from this.
MP3s aren't the only source of music as there's a radio too. Only Europe, Japan, and America were displayed as the stations and if only I had tried testing them. I had already regurned the X800 when I found that if you're in Australia, you listen with the Europe option, and it will work. My pressumption of battery life would be a little less than the MP3 due to extra work for the reception, but only a little, say 30 minutes.
E-TEN, not putting the big high resolution X800 to waste, adds a 2 megapixel camera to the back of the X800. The camera functions like a digital camera; pressing half way to focus, and all the way to take the shot.
Pushing the button fully to take shots felt heavy rather than a simple click. But half way was light and easy.
Picture quality is so so. Close items look good, but when you want to take a scenic shot or general pictures, image noise is evident and there isn't a lot of sharpness. There is also no zoom if you need to get a little closer to shots out of your reach.
Videos are worse as there is no focus available and the resolution is very small. Quality is the same as a normal picture, minus the focus and add the motion. However, the camera struggles to take videos. Whether I was outside or inside, I could not get smooth frame rates. The microphone also picks up the wind easily. The front camera for video calls isn't any better.
I hadn't tested how long you can record for, but estimate around 30 to 40 minutes of recording on a quick record I did.
As any other PDA, I need to make take and make calls. Call quality is relatively good, but the volume is quite soft. If you need to make it louder, you can put it on loud speaker to hear. You don't have to worry too much as the loug speaker isn't that loud either. The microphone was clear and picks up at a well distance of 20cm away from my mouth.
I hadn't put my moneys worth to test call life, but based on music usaged, I would say the X800 can achieve the rated 5 to 7 hours.
Featurewise, the X800 has a lot. Running on Windows Mobile 6, it supports the latest software out there. However, being limited to only 64MB of RAM is horrendous. And it's not really 64MB, you only have 46MB worth sinc ethe rest is already used for the initial programs the X800 comes with and boot up on. When you turn off the pre-installed features, you free up some RAM usage, more for your own programs, and I highly recommend this if there are a lot of functions you don't think you'll be using. Not to worry, all of the 25 pre-installed software is re-installable as they are stored on the device internally for the hard resets; thus the rated 256MB of space isn't really true as you only have around 170MB to use.
Otherwise, out of the box, you'll have it running at reasonable speeds on the Samsung 500Mhz processor, but once you start multi-tasking, it'll slow down. Just don't forget to go into the task manager to completely close the program when you're not going to use it anymore.
Uninstalling programs you don't need and stopping them from booting does help the overall.
And sure, even if it could start running multiple programs at more reasonable speeds, I can't do it for long. Leaving it on stand-by, you get a good 5 to 6 days out of it with a few calls in between, but if you're checking emails occasionally, transfering a few files via bluetooth, regular calls, and really just use your X800 like a personal organiser, you'll be lucky to get pass two days, let alone one day, which is quite unfortunate. But using it at moderation, you can get some 3 to 4 days.
Other than a few set backs, the X800 does well all round. It's no portable media device, but it can get you through sitting on common battery life times. With the ability to change font size and use ClearType also, the screen is always crisp and easy to read through. With a few tweaks, the system will also run better and you'll have a more enjoyable experience. I also found myself rarely using the 5-way navigation unless I wanted to select something without it opening when I tap on it, which is a individual software dependant problem, not overall. The E-TEN Glofiish X800 had the potential, but it looks like the M800 will be the one to succeed it.
|
Product Reviews 
Comments