A great little number !!!! (Philips Az@lis 238)

Member Name: jemini

Product:	Philips Az@lis 238
Date:	16/04/01 (151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Packed with features, easy to use

Disadvantages: Doesn't have lots of games on it

I have been holding out against buying a mobile phone for about 2 years. I never seemed able to make a decision about which handset to buy, let alone the right tariff to go for. All that changed in two minutes flat when I went into a local branch of The Link and looked around for a mobile to buy for a friend and was introduced to the Philips Az@lis 238.

This was on special offer for one day only. Down from £69.99 to £39.99 ! but I've seen it advertised for the £39.99 price since.

Well, to cut a long story short (ish), I ended up buying two. One for my friend and one for myself.
I can't resist a bargain and it's got everything I need.

It sounded impressive when the features were described by the assistant at The Link, but it was only when I got them home and started exploring around my mobile that I realised why it must have been nearly £70 originally.

The very good handbooks which come with the Az@lis were a bit confusing at first, mainly because they explained how to set up your mobile but I didn't have to do this at all. I had to insert the battery but, as soon as the terminals connected, it registered with BT Cellnet without me having to do a thing. I also found that it was fully charged and ready to go. The woman in the shop said I would need to charge it up for at least 16 hours before using it, but this wasn't the case. I could use it straightaway and it had £5 of calls already on it. Brilliant.


~ What features has it got ? ~


It is very small and lightweight and is blue and silver in colour.

It is a WAP phone, so it is possible to access the Internet on it (Genie).

It is dual band.

It has a very long standby time. I reckon you could leave it constantly on for at least three or four days before having to charge it up. Making and receiving calls uses up quite a lot of battery, but it's still excellent. I doubt if I'll have to charge it more
than twice a week. I tend to leave it on charge overnight, but according to the handbook, it only needs about 3 hours to recharge completely from nearly flat.

The sound quality on it is good and I've had no problems hearing people speak with it.

It has 'Hot Keys' numbered 1-9 which you can simply press down and hold for a second or so. These give you immediate access to functions without having to go into the menu. For example, if you press and hold down '2' you get your balance onscreen. If you do the same on the '3' key, it puts you straight through to the 'top-up' facility.

It has the facility to vibrate with or without the ring tone, so if, for example, you were in a meeting and didn’t want to make a disturbance but were expecting a call, you can put it on vibrate only and keep it in a pocket or have it close to you and it will vibrate when your call's coming through. This gives you time to make your excuses and leave the room.

It has a 'voice dial' facility. I liked the sound (no pun intended) of this but couldn't find any other phone which offered it below £49.99 - often far more expensive. It's easy to set up 'voice tags' which are attached to your list of stored numbers. I have tagged 'Home' and a couple of others: so when I want to phone home I just hold down the OK key on the handset and say "Home" into it. It finds the number and rings it for me. No need to touch any of the number keys. I even thought of setting up one which responded to 'Help' and dialled 999…Excellent feature, this.

It sends and receives SMS (text messages) and has a number of pre-stored sentences and phrases, such as…'Where R U ?' and ' Please call me back on [and automatically inserts your own mobile telephone number].' Alternatively, you can type in a message using different numbers of presses on the number keys whic
h also have letters of the alphabet printed on them. It also has a facility called T9 Text Input, which is a form of clever typing where it anticipates what you are going to write and the word you want. I actually prefer not to use this and it's easily turned off.

You can store goodness knows how many numbers in memory and access them easily. Then you just need to highlight the one you want and press 'OK'. Easy-peasy.

Within the menu of features which you have available, there are also the following:

Call List - which gives a chronological list of all the calls you have received, missed and dialled.
Call Counters - which gives you time information on all incoming and outgoing calls.
Brick game - which is fun to play when you've nothing better to do. If you want loads of games to play, this handset's not for you, but I didn't get it for this.
Alarm clock - which you can set to go off once only, or at a set time daily, weekly or whatever.

It has a Voicemail facility which means that people can leave a message for you to listen to later if they call when your mobile is off. If you don't want Voicemail, you can disable it.

You can also play about with the settings and the display. As well as having quite a long list of pre-entered dialling tones ranging from jazz to Oriental and Mozart, you can put in your own. I have had great fun with this and didn't find it too difficult to do because the handbook explains it very well. As a result, when my phone rings, I have Stevie Wonder's 'I Just Called to Say I Love You'. Haven't come across anyone else with this, so I can pick out my phone very easily. Cool, eh?

You can have the phone ring softly, medium or loudly and change the contrast of the display so you can see what's written more clearly. There is also a Zoom facility which makes the fonts larger, which is great when you've forgotten your reading gla
sses!

There are a few more functions which I haven't really explored yet - including the Internet. Mostly I use my home computer for this at present, but it's nice to know that I can access it if and when I want to.

~ How much does all this cost? What's the tariff? ~

I reckon this BT Cellnet package is very good. It's Pay and Go (no monthly subscription), with no set top-up time. You can either buy a phonecard or pay by credit/debit card.

Standard calls to ordinary landlines cost 25p per minute peak, 10p evenings and just 2p per minute at weekends.

Calls to other BT Cellnet mobiles cost just 10p a minute Monday-Friday at all times and 2p a minute at weekends.

Calls to other mobiles are more expensive and are 50p a minute at peak times and 25p evenings and weekends.

Access to the Internet is 10p a minute at all times and it's the same cost for retrieving your Voicemail.

Text messages (SMS) are 10p each to send.

There are other costs for international calls and premium rated calls etc. but I don't reckon I'll be using these anyway. The handbook explains them all.

So, overall, a great little handset and a good tariff. I thought I would only use my mobile on the odd occasion and for emergencies - but already I've found it invaluable and I'm obviously going to use it a lot more than I originally thought.

I would highly recommend this handset to anyone who is looking for a good deal. It's good value at its full retail price of £69.99 but if you're lucky like me, it's even better value when it's being sold for £30 less.

A great little number (pun intended) !

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