Handsets

Alcatel OT-S210

Alcatel’s latest launches include a couple of candybar handsets within its ‘Essence’ line. They both look pretty good – a compact and ‘palm friendly’ 12.6mm wide and just 69g in weight – but still delivering 400 hours of battery life, and five hours’ talk time.

There’s a comfortable rubber keypad that allows for easy messaging, and that centre “eye” shaped button acts as a one touch function for the menu. The S210 features an FM Radio too.

Otherwise this is a basic entry-level PAYG phone of the kind that Alcatel does rather well – n o camera, no Bluetooth, no complexity.

Sony Ericsson G502

Sony Ericsson’s G502 is a compact candybar that improves on its predecessors by adding HSDPA for high-speed web connectivity. Impressive goodies under the hood include an easy email setup wizard for webmail; for push email, the G502 also supports Exchange ActiveSync.

Users can browse the web in landscape mode, and apps built in include the latest version of Google Maps for Mobile, a neat preloaded weather forecast application, and RSS feed for one-click access to favourite pages from the phone’s home screen.

The result: a good-looking and well-specified budget phone for working the web. There aren’t many competitors in this space just yet, and the G502 looks a real contender.

Apple iPhone

Sagem my721x So iCE

Sagem is best known for middle-of-the-road PAYG phones, but every so often it pushes the boat out. Its latest handset, the my721x ‘So iCE’, is sleek and quite classy, thanks in part to a stylish brushed steel finish on the front and a ‘soft-touch’ finish on the back.

The my721x comes with a 512MB memory card in the box, enough to turn the phone into a fully functional music player. It also has an FM radio with RDS and an impressive 3D loudspeaker for superior sound quality.

Battery life is pretty impressive – three hours of talk time, six of music playback, 200 hours on standby – and it also has an automatic battery life indicator which informs the user exactly how long the battery will last before the handset needs a charge.

Samsung F400

Samsung Mobile has finally unleashed its latest music mobile, the F400, with audio technology by Bang & Olufsen ICEpower. This was first shown in February in Barcelona but still looks good; indeed, Samsung is positioning the F400 as “the style-conscious choice for users who do not wish to compromise technology for design”.

It’s a dual slider with a pretty high spec – HSDPA for web access, for instance, and a 3MP CIF-video camera.

And the F400 is of course loaded with music features, starting with high fidelity sound tuned by Bang & Olufsen and ICEpower audio technology delivered via a slide up speaker that creates a 3D sound effect. The Samsung F400 also contains the SmartBass system with full digital amplifier.

Sony Ericsson W980i

Sony Ericsson has done it again; the W980i looks to have enough class and enough guts to get a long run in the spotlight. It’s a Walkman-series phone in a neat clamshell format, armed with 8GB of internal memory, 3MP camera, a built-in accelerometer, an exotic FM transmitter feature, and very cool light effects.

It’s finished in nice glossy plastic with a sexy mirror-like front panel that looks as though it has no controls on it – but when a key is pressed, the location of the touch-sensitive controls illuminates. They can be used for the music player and the FM radio without opening the lid.

The FM transmitter is a first on mobile phones, as far as we know – it sends music to a radio. It does a great job in a car and it can be very useful during a party too.