Freeze Fone (O2 X1)

Member Name: Roxie_228

Product:	O2 X1
Date:	11/08/07 (111 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Double Camera, Cheap Price

Disadvantages: Poor Quality, Too Quiet

*I would firstly like to point out this review is for an O2 ice mobile phone that hardly anybody has heard of, it can only be bought in an O2 shop and try as i may i cannot find the exact category to write the review in, this is the closest i can get*
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When my Motorola V547 suddenly broke down this year I went to town with only £60 in my pocket hoping for a phone with a colour screen and a decent camera, but somehow I found a lot more for a lot less. I always try to stick with o2 phones, I prefer to use a mobile and sim card from the same network rather than unblock it, otherwise you cannot pay anybody to fix your phone if you have problems in future. So I started off in Tesco. needless to say there was nothing in there but the kind of mobile phones that you pay around £80 for because they are pink, or because the screen can be rotated and these types only have a VGA camera so I left there in moments. The camera is an important factor in my mobile phones because I am constantly taking photos and having this option in my pocket at all times is far simpler than buying a digital camera.
I took a quick glance around Face-It our local trade in shop, sometimes you can find a new release in here for a ridiculously low price, the only problem with this is that you never know whether its legit, a lot of stolen phones are sold in here! Plus with my accident prone lifestyle I figured I’m better off with a brand new phone complete with at least a years guarantee, (I will come to find later that this was a very good choice).
So being a lifelong o2 customer I did the obvious and marched on into the o2 shop, it didn’t take me long to find exactly what I wanted. An O2 Ice!


*~* Features *~*

Colour Screen
1.3 mp Camera
Video Camera
Video Calling
Voicemail
Micro SD Memory Card
Bluetooth
Realtones
Mp3 player
Alarm
Voice Recorder
GPRS (class 10)
Triband

*~* Vital Statistics *~*

Size: 117mm x 49mm x 14mm
Weight: 92g
Talk time: 3.08 – 6.35 hours
Standby time: 262 – 458 hours
Display: 176 x 220 VGA
3G Class: 2.1 Ghz

Now would you expect to pay £50 for all this, including a hands free Bluetooth bug, stereo headphones and £10 call time credit a long with 2mb free browsing, 1 free downloadable realtone and 1 free downloadable game? I certainly didn’t!
It also comes with a CD rom to install the 02 PC suite onto your PC. This gives you options to upload or edit your photos and videos, back up all your messages and phone contacts and charge your phone via USB cable instead of plugging it in.

*~* The drawbacks *~*

To begin with I was in love with this mobile, but one by one I discovered the small things that really began to piss me off!
Firstly you have to remember to set your alarm everyday, there is no recurrent alarm option and you can only set one alarm at a time, the snooze button lasts for 5 minutes and you are only given the snooze option three times, that should be helpful I know but I just find it irritating.

The phone volume is ridiculously low, I have to use bleepy ring tones so that I can distinguish it from the television, otherwise the sound blends in and even so I’m constantly missing calls.

If you change the settings when taking a photo e.g to black and white or to daylight you have to do it everytime you take a photo. If you’re on a sunny trip out its hard to take spontaneous photos when you have to change the settings before each snap.

When charging your mobile using the USB cable you have to leave your PC as is, for example, if my PC is off when I plug in the phone I cannot switch it on before unplugging the phone, this makes it freeze up.

Many a time I have left my phone on my desk, keys locked, only to return and find it browsing the net on its own whilst draining my credit!

And for the biggest drawback of all, the handset is white. As far as fashionable goes this phone is not in the slightest! It closely resembles a TV remote, many of my friends have tried to change the channel using my phone! And I’m sure you can imagine how easy it is to leave a leaky pen in your bag along side your phone!


*~* The breakdown *~*

6 weeks after buying the phone it began to frequently freeze up, at first it was when listening to music, or opening a multimedia message, but it progressed to the point where at the end of every phone call when I hung up the phone froze, with every text when I pressed open the phone froze. So I took it back to O2, the staff were extremely friendly but unhelpful. I had bought the mobile 6 weeks ago which was 2 weeks over the refund limit, so I had to take the free repair under guarantee option, it would take 2 weeks to fix the phone (apparently it was a problem ‘many girls’ had found, don’t ask me why it had to be girls!? Anyway there was a simple software update that would fix it), the problem with this was that they had just given out their last loan phone. If you ever need a loan phone from O2 and they do have some in the cost is £25 which they refund on the safe return of the mobile. Anyway 2 weeks later my mobile was returned and they were right it works perfectly well now, or atleast as well as it did when I bought it.

So since then I’ve been waiting for my parents to update their contracts so I can use their old phone. There are a few things I do like about the O2 ice, for example the double camera gives you the option to switch so you can take photos of yourself and see what you are doing! But the disadvantages out weigh the advantages by a long shot. So in conclusion the phone sounds too good to be true, it probably is!! My advice is to pick a mobile designed by a well known company e.g Samsung or Nokia, the O2 ice is manufactured by O2 and in my opinion they are better off as a network provider only!

Summary: You get what you pay for!

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