Penguin (Panasonic GD 35)

Member Name: Bad_Kitty

Product:	Panasonic GD 35
Date:	13/02/02 (378 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does everything it's supposed to, like sending texts and phoning people!, It was the cheapest one available to buy (when I bought it)

Disadvantages: I probably paid an extra £20 for it having WAP, but it was still the cheapest!

Apparently this phone has something called WAP which is really cool and new and exciting and we can't live without it. I must have pressed the wrong button becasue all I got was something akin to text messaging, which was a bit pants, to be honest. WAP is marketed as the easy way to keep in touch/ access the internest and information whilst on the move. But if you're that desperate to use the internet that you have to use a pretend version of it on your phone, then maybe you should just stay by your 'puter 24/7.

Okay, I'm sure WAP has it's advantages and can be handy. But do we really need it, or is it-whisper it gently now-just another cunning advertising ploy to get us all to buy another phone, as compose your own ringtones and download your own icons didn't make enough money?! I don't deny that one day I might use it, but I have always been happy with phoning and texting people with my phone, and surfing the 'net with my computer. And the bloke in the shop when I bought it agreed with me, and said he's rather pay 10p a minute for Teletext! Yay for Teletext, an Oracle (no pun intended, as that's what it used to be called for people who don't remember!) of information, in (limited) colour, on a big screen, and all for free!!

So why did I but this phone?! Well, it was the cheapest one in the shop! I decided spending £130 on a Nokia 3310 or something more popular would have been silly as A) I don't see my phone as a fashion accessory (I only use it at home as we don't have a proper phone in our Looniversity-owned flat), B) the money saved can go to my New Shoes Fund, and C) I didn't particularly want to be mugged for it, so a cheapo phone seemed the best option! But I'm glad I got this one now. Why? Because it has a cute little penguin that hatches from an egg when you switch it on, and when you send a text it carries a little envelope on its skis for you, and when you switch it off it ge
ts run over by a giant snowball and gets splatted (no, I didn't understand that either) and it sits on your screen and looks pretty while its switched on. You can also have a dog in a hot air balloon, or be boring and have a clock. Hurrah for completely useless, gimmicky, novelty- type gubbins!

But, considering it is one of the cheapest pay-as-you-go phones you can currently buy, it is a well-equipped (oooh-errr) phone, with some good features. It's small and lightweight, and I think the battery life is supposed to be quite good, although as I've been using it in poor signal areas it has to work harder to operate, and thus the battery doesn't last as long (at least that's what the handbook claims......hmmmm, a conspiracy, perhaps?) I can't really comment I'm afraid. But according the the handbook you should get about 5 days standby on a fully charged battery, in a "strong" signal area.

It's also got something called T9 predictive typing, which is either a bit pants, if you like to make up words like I do, or good if you want to be extra-fast when texting people. Although I got used to all that tappity-tapping with my last phone so I can compose a message without T9 on pretty fast anyway. T9 would be a good idea if it took into consideration grammar (I'm sure it is available, or will be soon, an extra £50 perhaps?), and made your sentence make sense, rather than just came up with the most popular words, and in scrolling through the possible words, you might as well just enter it yourself.

All in all this is a pretty good phone as it does everything you want it to, and in my case, several that you don't. But it's certainly more individual than the 3310, as no one else seems to have them!!

Scrolling through the menus is easy, you just use the cursor keys to go up and down and press "select" when you get to whatever you want. The screen is fairly big and the items in t
he menus are fairly big too so it's easy to see what you want! It also has useful functions such as auto-redial (comes in handy when you're trying to get through to someone who's gabbing away!), a basic calculator, vibrate alert (good for when you've got it on silent in your pocket!). It has 20 different ringtones, nothing really exciting (no Kylie & Jason songs or anything!), just variations of ringing noises. You can select which you want for when someone's calling you, you can even select a different ringtone for certain numbers, so you can tell if someone important is calling without looking at your phone. You can also choose to have one of the 20 ringtones as your text message received noise, or just have a "beep". It takes about 2 hours to charge the battery fully, during which time you can use the phone as normal (well, you can't move around much obviously).

I would reccommend this phone if you're not too hung up about image. Not that it is pants, mind, but if you want to be super-cool, then you'll want a 3310 or 3330! If you want something that has a good selection of features, but don't want to part with too much of your hard-earned cash, then I'd reccommend this phone also! Also, as it's really easy to use, it's a good phone if you're a beginner to the scary world of mobile phone madness.

I must add that I'm on the BT Cellnet network. I won't go into massive details here, as there's a separate section for that. I'll just say that if you use your phone at weekends then BT Cellnet is the cheapest, as it's just 2p a minute all day to other BT C. mobiles and landlines! I think the next cheapest is Vodafone at 5p. Also, weekday daytime "standard" calls are 35p/ min, weekday calls to other BT C. mobiles are 10p/ min., and evening standard calls are 10p/ min.

Summary: