The G450 is now an old phone, and a bad one by today’s standards. The handset is quite light but a bit chunky, and would look quite out of place now if you wanted to look cool and trendy like I do!

This phone actually replaced the famous G500, which was known for its terrible reception and bad quality. You would think the replacement would improve on areas like this but you would be wrong! Infact, considering their association with Sony, Panasonic handsets are terribly put together and not very good quality. Thankgod the G450 has now been replaced I think – twice. Lets hope they have improved some things.

As I said, the phone is chunky, but not big, it’s quite tall with a medium sized antenna and it also features a nice silver fascia, probably the best thing about the phone.
The keys are hard plastic, and are quite small but easy to press. The keypad is spaced out ok but maybe a bit too far the bottom, which is sometimes annoying.
The screen is quite large, with a pixel style typeface that makes it look more upmarket. At night, the screen light looks good and clearly lights the whole screen but the keys look a bit cheap when the backlight is on. The menu system is quite easy and basic, and you can use a Navi key on the keypad to find your way around. There is also a strobe light on the top corner of the phone. Its low profile flashes are green when you are in standby with network coverage but red when the battery is low or its being charged. It’s quite helpful.
The battery is quite small, very thin but is only nickel metal hydride which means you cant keep topping up the charge all the time, which you’ll want to because the battery life is terrible. The phones standby is about 2 days, but make a few calls and you will be lucky with 24 hours! Charging is quick though, with a complete charge done in about an hour.

The phonebook stores about 90 numbers on the SIM, which is ok, but hardly impressive
and you can access it with a dedicated button under the screen.

Text messaging from the phone is something to be desired. Basically you have to scroll through the menu each time (its not the first option like on a Nokia) and select message editor. It will ALWAYS save the last message you sent in the message box, so you have to delete the last message each time – how crazy is that!? Once you have written the message, you must enter the number, oh and you cant access the phonebook, yep you must remember the number you want to send to every time!!! Crazy business!!

Calling someone on this phone can be a nightmare. Sadly this is where Panasonic have made a reputation for themselves for bad quality calls and awful reception. The G450’s no exception. The call quality is poor, and is so quiet you always end up asking your mate to speak up or even shout!! The call is often interrupted with various crackles and tones coming from the phone or network.
The phone is really lazy when trying to get a signal, move from a ‘no signal’ area to a ‘good signal’ area and the phone will take about 15 minutes trying to acclimatise!!! So you have to wait ages before attempting to make a call!
A nice feature that is helpful though, is that it displays the call time during a call and also the total call time after the call has ended. This unfortunately doesn’t really make up for the bad call quality which makes this phone rather bad to use.

Ringing tones on the phone are limited to about 10, but the embarrassing musical ones will sadly limit you to ‘Ring Ring’. Also, when the phone rings, it’s so quiet you wouldn’t hear it in a library. When in a busy club or bar you can forget knowing you phone is ringing and theres no vibrate function either.

Generally, the Panasonic G450 was good in its day, but times have moved on and hopefully – so have Panasonic!!