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BenQ E72 Smartphone
BenQ has targeted its latest smartphone at the mass market. Ursula
Hirschkorn finds out if it manages to pack in the features for a budget
price
With the iPhone 3G finally available, smartphones are becoming as
desirable and ubiquitous as basic mobile phones were a decade ago. It's
not enough to be able to send pictures and messages, listen to music
and take snaps on your phone – now everyone wants high-speed internet
access and the ability to send emails and surf the web as well. BenQ
hopes to meet this new demand from the mass market with the E72, a
device that looks just like a standard mobile phone but promises a
whole lot more.
Features:
Despite its small size – at 90g and measuring just 108 x 46 x 13mm,
it's no bigger than a standard mobile – the E72 manages to pack in all
the high-end features you would expect from a smartphone. It runs
Windows Mobile 6, supports GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz, sports a
super-clear 2in 65,000 colour TFT screen and 2-megapixel camera, offers
802.11b/g Wi-Fi for fast internet access and supports five instant
messengers.
Performance:
Onboard storage is pretty limited for a smartphone designed to
handle video, emails, music and photos. While the entry-level iPhone
comes with 8GB onboard, the E72 has just 64MB DDR RAM and only a
fraction of that is actually available to you for storage. Sure, you
can slot in a 2GB microSD card to boost storage but that's going to
cost you extra and you'll still be way short of what the iPhone offers.
It also lacks 3G support and is a bit slow when launching new
applications.
Ease of use:
The E72 is as easy to use as any other mobile phone, with menu systems
and navigation that are all intuitive and simple to work out, even
without a manual. But, at the end of the day, it can't compete with
higher-end smartphones sporting large displays and touchscreen
controls. If you want to use the internet, send emails or view video
(all of which you can do on the E72), you really want the decent-sized
screen and larger keys offered by the iPhone and its imitators.
Value for money:
Unlike many smartphone rivals, the BenQ E72 is free with a BT Fusion contract.
However, you can currently only use the E72 if you are a BT Fusion
customer, which means you need to have BT Broadband at home or you'll
have to switch over to it. The benefit of this is that it uses your
Wi-Fi connection to make calls while in the house or near a hotspot for
cheaper calls, only switching to GSM when it's out of range. The
downside is that if you don't want BT Broadband, you can't have this
phone, at least for the time being.
Verdict
The BenQ E72 does manage to bring smartphone features to the mass
market but, like many pioneers, there are problems with its approach.
Although the screen is of a good quality, it's simply too small to
really do justice to many of the device's high-end features, and the
same criticism can be levelled at the keypad. Memory on the BenQ E72 is
limited, which severely restricts storage space, and it can be a bit
slow at performing tasks. While distribution through BT Fusion means
further reduction in the cost of running the device, the restriction of
having to be a BT Broadband customer will stop many people from even
giving it a try.
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