Panasonic X70 Review

Panasonic X70The Panasonic GD87/GD88 was their first GSM handset to make a large splash on the world market. Sure, Panasonic had been making handsets for a long time, but the GD87 was their first that really had a mass appeal. I first saw the follow-up to the GD87 last year at CeBIT, the X70. The X70 is smaller, lighter, and more technically advanced than its older sibling. The GD87 was capable, but uninspiring.

So the question is, is the X70 advanced enough, and interesting enough to be a big seller?

Solid, baby

While only being 8g lighter than the GD87 that it replaces, the 95g X70 seems much more compact and pocketable, without being cramped. The finish of the handset is fairly tough, resisting key scratches well. The external sub-display is also reasonably scratch resistant, which is always important to me, and it can display a digital clock, an analog clock, or phone and call status. The rest of the exterior is fairly simple. There is a 2.5mm headset jack, a voice dial/sub-display control button, and the data/power port. And, of course, the camera lens with its self-portrait mirror. There are no external volume controls, something I would have liked to have had.

The only thing worth complaining about is the placement of the IR port. It is located below the sub-display, a position that makes it very difficult to use the phone's keypad and display while it is connected to another device. I often ended up turning the device sideways so that it could connect to my laptop while I could still access the keypad and see the display.

Speaking of the keypad, I was pretty pleased with it. The buttons have a good tactile feel to them, and are comfortable to use. The softkeys are also fine. The only complaint I have is regarding the 5-way directional controller, the d-pad. The center button is just too large, making it harder to operate the ring that surrounds it than it really should be. It is certainly usable, but the proportions are just wrong. A thumb large enough to require a center button of that size would never be able to make use of the directional aspects of the control due to the slim size of the ring that surrounds the button - it just isn't thick enough. But as a whole, the keypad is good, and the backlighting is adequate, if a bit strange.

Multimedia

The X70's display is rather nice. It has a pixel resolution of 132x176, and displays 65,000 colors. The image quality isn't up to par with the likes of the high-resolution Sharp GX-20, with its quarter VGA display, but it is still quite good. The previously mentioned external sub-display is a 96x28 monochrome unit that has an assortment of different backlight colors, which I find to be both more practical and energy-efficient than color external displays. The monochrome display can be viewed in any light, and the varying colors of the backlight can confer information and look cool at the same time.

The 16 voice polyphonic subsystem is adequate, but not all that different than most other phones on the market. I found the ringtone selection to be reasonable, and was able to find a few ringtones that were loud and annoying enough to get noticed. The vibration alert helped with those that weren't so noticeable.

The X70's camera is not quite up to par. It is capable of only CIF resolution (352x288), which is just too small to be of much use for many people. The photos fit nicely on the X70's display, but are of little use outside of the phone. On top of being small, the images have poor contrast. When taking photos of relatively close objects, such as people, the focus is also too soft. The camera deals with object that are further away better. Colors are pretty accurate, in general, but undersaturated. The fact that there is an assist light, located near the lens, does score a few points, as does the intuitive control of the brightness and digital zoom using the d-pad. The various shutter sounds are also kinda cool.

User Interface

The X70's user interface (UI) is decently fast and responsive. The system makes sense, and offers consistent use of the softkeys. The only strange thing is the fact that in most cases you have to pull up a context menu to select OK when entering in data, such as the name of a contact. Using one of the softkeys for that would have been faster, but since OK is usually the top menu item, it just means you press the d-pad button twice to get the desired effect.

 

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