The slew of Windows Mobile smartphones that have entered the market over the past 2 year and incredibly it create a huge trend among teenagers (and I wonder how they managed to buy as they are all expensive!)With names like HTC, Samsung, HP and a variety of others fighting to shine like a diamond in a sea of pebbles, Acer has popped up with the DX900 and brought a feature to the market that has been wished for by a specific group of people for a long time- dual SIM.
Few phones have included dual SIM to date and the ones that boast this eye catching feature have failed to deliver an experience worthy of the promise. Users have only had the choice to run one SIM at a time or to use full dual SIM functionality in a phone that has been made from spare bits of plastic in China and sold on eBay for £30 or so. Acer has now released a phone which promises real time dual SIM functionality with all of the extra smartphone trimmings we come to expect from a Windows Mobile device in 2009. Alongside the battery sapping dual SIM set up we have a VGA screen for good measure with HSDPA, GPS and Wi-Fi included for good measure. Can a smartphone function for more than a day with all of these features without requiring multiple charging sessions? Let’s find out…
The layout of buttons are pretty much like any other Windows Mobile phones, navigational button in the middle bottom of the device with receive and hang-up button on its either side. It comes with a hot-swap MicroSD card slot on the side that is located with camera shutter and power button. On the other side is the volume button next to a screen lock switch.
At 3MP, the camera does not set it apart from other mobile phone cameras of the same standard. While the pictures appear sharp and clear (if you hold very still when taking pictures) on the 2.8” TFT screen, when uploaded to a PC it appears normal. No complaints though, the flash light was bright enough to capture nearby objects even when the room is pitch black.
With its speakers located at the back of the phone, right next to the camera, your hand won’t get in the way of the sound. If you wish to listen to music through the speakers, you’ll have to place it with its screen down otherwise the sound may get disoriented – a rather common problem with most phones.
I said at the start that Dual SIM is the feature that stands the DX900 out from the rest and if it works we are looking at something very special. It works.
The ability to use two SIM cards at the same time is a huge bonus to people like me who have a SIM card provided by their employer and also a card for personal use. I tend to use my personal card for data and personal calls and my work card purely for calls and texts, and it is a pain having to carry 2 phones everywhere. It has become such a habit for me that it now feels normal to carry 2 phones and this goes a long way to negating the main benefit of a smartphone which is portability.
I loaded both SIMs into the Acer and up popped signal meters for each on the top right of the main screen. One did struggle, but to be fair it always does in the location I was testing it. My main card achieved a full 3G lock which it cannot do in the iPhone and I was impressed with the overall signal quality coming from the Acer on both SIM cards after prolonged testing.
Call quality is decidedly average through the internal speaker, but the loudspeaker is excellent and produced little distortion at the highest volume setting. Few Windows Mobile phones have included good quality speakerphones so this is an added benefit for anyone who need the speaker facility more often than not.
There are many software touches included that enhance the Dual SIM functionality such as different ring tones for each incoming call and a delve beneath the surface will show up all of the features you could possibly need to customise the voice experience to your exact needs.
If this phone had 1 SIM card slot I would be relatively impressed with the battery life. Because it has 2 I am more than impressed and have witnessed the first smartphone that successfully integrates 2 SIMs into 1 unit and which makes for a communication experience unlike any that I have seen before. It should not be underestimated how much of a bonus it is to be carrying just 1 phone rather than 2 and this alone will be enough to sell it to a lot of people.
| Vendor List of Acer DX900 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment