Digital Boomerang Singapore 

Sendo, a new European phone manufacturer, will soon be in the Singapore market. Although new to the mobile phone arena, Sendo is armed to cause a stir in the market. Their first commercially available mobile phone, the D800, has seen huge success in Europe and it promises to do the same in Asia.

The look: The D800 is a simple flip cover phone. The screen is framed in silver metallic with colour combinations of grey, azure blue, forest green and chili red. But because the entire chassis is made of plastic, it lacks that heavy metallic feel of the Siemens SL45 or the Benefon Q. It may even come across as being too much like a toy.

The physical attributes: The amazing thing about this phone is that it weighs only 68g. It is the lightest GSM in the market. Often you get the feeling that it isn’t even there which makes it attractive to those who have been putting up with the heavier Siemens S35i, Nokia 3330 and Nokia 3210.

The small compact dimensions of 102mm x 44mm x 19mm compliment the light-weight phone to offer a totally weightless feel and makes the plastic chassis something you can live with.

The network: The D800 is a dual band GSM-900/GSM-1800/EGSM phone.

The features: The clear big screen offers a full Graphic 96×64 display with up to 6 lines of text. Coupled with the cool extra bright ice blue backlight, it’s a screen you never have to squint at. You can also enjoy all the rich graphic animations and games not available on any other phones in the market.

The Graphic Equalizer is truly a unique feature. You can choose bass, treble or normal to subdue those shrilly voices of your friends or sharpen the mumblers. Working together with the triple codec HR/HR/EFR it offers high voice call quality.

Another striking feature of the phone is the user interface. It takes a little getting used to if you have been using phones from other brands. But once you get the hang of it, it’s really very simple and everything is within the click of a single button.

It has buttons on the side as well as the front so you can adjust the volume easily while talking on the phone and scroll up and down menus easily. The side buttons give you 1-button access to the last calls you have made or missed. You don’t have to access the “Call Register” or “Records” menu first.

I was particularly surprised to find that the phone packed a calendar, built-in data/fax capabilities, infrared port and vibrator since Sendo is positioning it as a phone for average users costing considerably less than the high-end Nokia 8850, Nokia 8210 or Ericsson T29s.

The frills: The D800 comes with all the industry standard features such as 50 ringer tones, SMS with T9 predictive text input, programmable phonebook shortcuts, clock and games. My personal favourite is the scissors, paper, stone game which brings back the nostalgia of school days.

A frilly feature worth a mention is the flip cover. It’s design is smart and intuitive. You never have to flip it open to answer a call or access your phone book. You only need to open the flip when you have to key in numbers or send an SMS!

The drawback: The plastic feel of the phone can be a put off. It’s also not very customisable as you cannot tie ringtones to your phonebook or change the ringtone of the SMS alert.

But as a first for Sendo, it’s got a whole host of features for a 68g phone. Given the pricing strategy Sendo intends to go with, it’s going to be very affordable and the little drawbacks will be outweighed by the features-to-price ratio.

Watch out for it when it hits the shops!

- Published on IT AsiaOne

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