E-Ten Glofiish M800 smartphone
Product: Glofiish M800
Vendor: E-TEN
website: www.glofiish.com
+ Proper keyboard
+ Nicer design
– A bit more bulk
LAST YEAR WE TOOK a look at E-Ten Glofiish smartphone models. For those unfamiliar with the brand, it's the are soon-to-be Acer smartphone division. Before you hit the flame button, Yes, it is Glofiish with a double 'i' and no, we don't have a clue why.
E-Ten has just released its newest model, the M800 with a full QWERTY keyboard. While the functionality and feature set are identical to the X800 we reviewed earlier ( with the addition of the extra sliding keyboard) the design has been completely revamped.
The shiny black and silver look of the X800 has been replaced by serious business-like dark metallic grey of the M800. There's no more red ring around the front camera either. But, there is a more cool-looking copper rim around the sliding portion.
Operating the sliding mechanism reveals the jet-black keyboard and, while it may not match the typing comfort of the far larger Nokia Communicator, the 39-button keyboard does allow easy typing of short messages and emails.
In a funny way, its colour and keys remind me of the glorious old Sinclair ZX81. For those not born in the burgeoning days of home computing, it was the very first truly cheap home computer, released way back in 1981.
Sliding the keyboard automatically turns the display into landscape 640x480 VGA mode. With small fonts and matching sharp eyesight, you could even edit documents on this. As usual, too much staring into 70-character text lines on any 2.8-inch display may ultimately lead into that eyesight not being so sharp anymore, so use this capability only in an emergency.
While the touchscreen's Easy Keyboard does help a bit in typing quick replies, it still can't compare to the real keyboard under the slider. In fact, you can combine the two on this phone.
The usual features stay: 3.5G HSDPA / UMTS plus quad-band GSM with GPRS, the SIRF Star III GPS, WiFi 802.11b, twin cameras (QVGA in front and 2Mpix flash at the back), all run by a Samsung 500 MHz ARM mobile CPU with 256 MB Flash ROM, 64 MB RAM and anything extra on the MicroSDHC. The Windows Mobile 6 Pro will, of course, eat any resource thrown at it... it is Windoze, after all.
Packing all that plus the keyboard took extra space and weight, though: 114 x 58 x 18 mm and 178 grams with battery. We wouldn't suggest you carry this (or any cellphone, for that matter, due to the radiation right next to your pacemaker) in your shirt pocket. The provided leather pouch fits the purpose far better, especially if you've piled on a few extra pounds to protect your kidneys and stuff from the EM.
Overall, the M800 is a good dose of improvement over the X800 for the business user, from both a design and comfort point of view. Feature-wise, it matches the best HTC offerings as well. What else could our little hearts desire?
Well... a better camera, for one. Since the phone is a bit fatter now, it may not be impossible to squeeze a 5Mp 3x optical zoom doodad on the back. Of course, with their small CMOS sensors and such, cellphones will never come close to real cameras, but at least this would be a good step forward.
Then, if the front space is stretched a bit, they could fit a wide-screen 3.5 inch 800x480 display. Not only it would let us watch DVD-quality video from the Micro SDHC card (for those with a bit of time to waste between high-powered meetings) but also, in landscape mode, viewing Web pages and, yes, editing documents, will become far more comfortable, if not almost PC-like.
If you look at the front facing, there is actually space to add 20% more length there if the camera were on the top, and those touch keys at the bottom could be moved a bit further apart without changing the phone's overall size.
And, oh yes, a faster processor with a bit more multimedia acceleration. After all, those videos have to be decoded. Then we'll have a perfect little smartphone, at least till Moorestown-based X86 phones come along in 2009...
Good: attractive design, usable keyboard, VGA screen, full feature set.
Bad: well it did put on some weight, just like the rest of us.
Ugly: I'm missing that red ring around the camera, huh!
Beers: 8
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Sounds like you want the Sony Ericsson Experia X1, with its 800x480 3inch screen and hardware video acceleration.
See also the Toshiba Portege G900, which has an 800x480 3 inch screen and a hardware video accelerator (whether it does anything is a slightly sore point) and, unlike the Experia, has actually been available for several months. I hope for E-Ten's (and S-E's) sake that their software is a bit more polished than Toshiba's, though - assuming that it's Microsoft's fault, WM6 is desparately slow and flaky, even when tweaked (it also has a 2MP camera; I hope the E-Ten's doesn't crash when pointed at anything bright). The screen is glorious; the keyboard is a bit unreliable (don't get me started on the text prediction); the responsiveness... well, it's no iPhone, and even 3G only makes up for it a bit. Given how unstable it is, I may as well have gone with a Linux phone - although I've nearly got Emacs running on it, so that's a start.

Back to the Glofiish... describing any keyboard in relation to the ZX81's is a pretty underhanded compliment. I remember the pain; it made a Spectrum's keyboard look good. Hopefully you won't have to stick blu-tak on the side of the Glofiish to stop the SD card falling out. :-)

Why on earth would you want an x86 phone? There are millions (billions?) of ARM-based phones in the world, and every manufacturer has experience with an ARM software stack. Intel's x86 "compatibility benefit" makes as much sense as the same argument applied to Larrabee: x86 helps if you're running on something that looks like a PC and want to run Windows apps. Ship your mobile with a mouse, a 24" screen and a copy of the Orange Box*, and run it off the mains+, and x86 makes sense. Otherwise - unless Intel manage to push their process to the state where they can compete with the entire compatible range of ARM processors (from ARM7 to A9) produced by the ARM partners with only a few chips - it'll be a long time before it's a good idea. Possibly around the time that 64-bit becomes useful in mobiles.

Still, nice to see what's coming up. Maybe, if they've fixed WM6, I might be able to get a software upgrade.


* Okay, you can use the fingerprint scanner on my G900 as a (bad) mouse or plug in a USB device, they're adding microprojectors to mobiles that in theory ought to be able to do decent resolution, and mobile graphics acceleration is improving, but why buy a phone that's the equivalent of a ten year old PC - it still won't run modern software, and it'll be a worse phone than something designed as one.

Not that I object to an Atom (seriously, Intel, be subtle with the Acorn digs) running Linux/XP dual-boot in a Psion 5-style case with one of Epson's 1920x1080 7" screens (if you don't like it, move your head closer or use a bigger font), and I might even try to make one some day, when I'm tired of annoying Eee PC owners with my Libretto. I don't want it to be a mobile phone, though. I carry an 8850 beside my G900 for a reason.

+ We seem to be heading towards this anyway. My G900 gets alarmingly warm. Remember when phone batteries would last for weeks?
please read here about my bad experience
http://www.mobiphil.com/?p=20