The gloves are off! Well, on. (Mitsubishi Mars)

Member Name: beckstrous

Product:	Mitsubishi Mars
Date:	31/07/02 (512 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap

Disadvantages: Unresponsive keys, Unreliable, Bulky

Remember Chocolate Mittens?

Oh, you must. No? Well, it was the mainstay of children's parties in the late seventies and early eighties (the ones I went to anyway). What you do is put on the biggest, thickest pair of mittens you can find (ski gloves are good) and try to cut a cold bar of chocolate into cubes with a plastic knife and fork. You get to eat what you cut, but you only have a minute or so to do it. Oh, it's fun. Trust me.

Anyway. Trying to use the Trium Mars is a bit like playing Chocolate Mittens. Especially the text messaging part, something on which I have all but given up. The keys are so unresponsive - and the T9 predictive text nowhere near as user-friendly as it is on Nokia phones - that texting can be a frustrating affair.

Fortunately, the Trium Mars currently in my possession is not actually mine. It belongs to the Carphone Warehouse, who have lent it to me while my 8210 is repaired. I've accepted this (grudgingly, as I pay a hefty insurance premium and did think that the replacement phone would at least be the same make as mine), but I can't wait until I get my own phone back.

I guess you want to know why I don't like it, then. Well, the rubbery keys are a bad start - they have to be pressed quite far, and hard, to get any sort of response. The size (115x44x28mm) and the weight (115g) are a bit bulky for me when I'm used to the Nokia 8210 (102x45x17mm and only 79g). Unlike the 8210, the Mars is chunky, and has an aerial which sticks out - it's not the sort of thing I'd want to slip into my pocket.

It's also unreliable. In one week, four phonecalls were cut short simply because the phone decided to freeze mid-conversation. The calls were cut off, and I had to remove the battery and re-insert it to get things going again - oh, and occasionally, my phonebook would temporarily disappear after doing this.

The Mars has a vibrate alert, but it's not very st
rong. My 8210 often falls off tables with the vibration (which is good, as it works!) but I often found that I didn't notice the Mars vibrating even when it was in my back pocket. Quite a few missed calls, then.

The text message alerts are also a bit timid. The Nokia sound is quite distinctive (whichever option you choose) but messages are harder to notice with the Mars, and I missed quite a few.

The battery life isn't bad (3hrs talktime and 180 hrs standby, better than the 8210, which has 3hrs/150hrs), but when charging the phone you might encounter some errors - it will sometimes switch itself off, and when you switch it back on you might find that it's got no signal, even if you're in a strong area (this happened to me twice, and was deceptive because the phone did look like it was working at first glance).

The Mars comes with WAP 1.1. I'm not a huge fan of Wap (hence my decision to get an 8210, which is not a WAP phone, in the first place), but after having developed a website for mobile phones I do know a bit about it, and WAP 1.1 is quite primitive (think Teletext on your phone rather than "mobile internet"). This model was touted as a decent budget WAP phone and I suppose it is, but "budget WAP phone" does not equate to "decent mobile". The Mars is from £40-70 prepay these days, but if you want a cheap WAP phone you are better off with the Nokia 7110, which looks quite archaic now but is free with a contract - you can pick up the popular 6210 quite cheaply too.

I don't work for Nokia - honestly! - but I think they make very good, user-friendly phones. I've hardly needed to refer to my 8210 manual at all, but I found the Trium Mars very difficult and fiddly to use. Added to this, its unreliability and weak alerts/vibrate/ringtones (you can't compose or download new ones, either) mean that I would definitely not recommend this phone. The only advantage it has ove
r my Nokia is that when you try to use it and the keypad is locked, the phone lights up telling you to unlock it. This is useful in the dark because you don't have to feel your way to the "unlock" combination of keys (it's a shame the Nokia doesn't do this).

My 8210 is flawed of course (that's why it had to be repaired!) but it's streets ahead of the godawful Trium Mars.

Chocolate Mittens, anyone?

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