Nice Little Phone for Average Users
Written: May 25 '01 (Updated Jun 05 '01)
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Pros: Light weight, small, build-in vibrating alert, decent battery power and T9
Cons: Small keys with similar shape makes it hard to dial, not as well designed
The Bottom Line: For casual cell phone users who does not do a lot of text messaging, the light weight, decent battery life and build-in vibrating alert are big pluses.
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| mxy15's Full Review: Panasonic ProMax EB-TX210 |
I have the Panasonic phone for about 2 months now and I like to very much. It is lightweight and small, has decent battery life and I love the build-in vibrating alert. However, there are also several shortcomings that prevent me from giving it a 5 star rating but it is still on my recommendation list.
The Panasonic is well build and has a nice feel to it when I hold it in my hands. The battery pack is on tightly and it doesn't move like in my old Nokia. However, the keypad area of the Panasonic is not as well designed as my old 6100 series Nokia. For example, the Nokia has different shape keys, which makes it easier to dial without having to look at the phone. The Panasonic's keypad is made up of similar shape keys and the keys are also very small due to the small size of the phone. Overall, the phone is well constructed but the keypad is its weakest area.
The Panasonic's phonebook feature is also different than the Nokia. For the Panasonic, you store your contact's name and then there are multiple lines to store Work, Home, Cell, and Other phone numbers. So each person can have up to 4 phone numbers stored under the same name. Which I think makes finding a number easier.
Now the bread and butter section of my review, the actual call quality of the Panasonic. Just like bread and butter the Panasonic delivers. It has good clarity, as well as can be expected of a cell/PCS phone. I live in Central/South Jersey and I use AT&T Wireless. From what I can gather, this is not the best and most well covered area for AT&T. AT&T has some sort of a sharing agreement with Singular (Cellular One)'s wireless network. But once again comparing w/ my old Nokia, the Panasonic seems to get better reception. For example, the Nokia wouldn't work in my townhouse but the Panasonic does.
For those who use text messaging the Panasonic does a pretty good job here with the large screen and it has T9 text entry technology. For those of you who are not familiar with T9, what it does is it guesses the word your trying to type so you wouldn't have to type the whole thing thus saving keystrokes. For example, if you use the traditional way of text entry and you want to type "office", the key stroke combination would be 6,6,6,(o),3,3,3,(f),3,3,3,(f),4,4,4,(i),2,2,2,(c)3,3,(e). That's a total of 17 keystrokes. With T9, all you have to do is type in 6,3,3,4 and office in underline should appear and you just move on to the next word you want to type. I've use T9 a few times and it works pretty well. However, if you're going to do a lot of text messaging, the small keys mentioned above makes typing a chord regardless of T9.
The battery life of this phone is average but consider its size I think it is pretty impressive. If you take the battery out of its bay, you will see that it is about as thick as 2 to 3 credit cards stack together and weights next to nothing. With a full charge, I could go up to 5 days of normal use without recharging. Normal use for me is about 95% standby and 5% talk. But even if my wife uses it and she's on the phone w/ her friends we can still get at least 2 hours of talk time out of it easily.
I am very happy with my purchase of the Panasonic. Despite the drawbacks its advantages of being well build, small, light weight and the build-in vibrating alert fits my needs perfectly. And since I am just a casual user the average battery life is not a big concern with me either. I think this phone will last for at least a couple of years if not longer. Hopefully by then they would have developed a Dick Tracy style wristwatch phone with voice recognition technology so we won't need keypads. That's something to look forward to.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 25
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Epinions.com ID:
mxy15
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Location: NJ
Reviews written: 12
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Home Theater and HiFi Hobbyist. Electronics junky.
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