A Quality, Feature - Stuffed Bargain. (Philips Az@lis 238)

Member Name: TUVOK

Product:	Philips Az@lis 238
Date:	30/04/01 (232 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Price, features, superb battery power, vibrate, Looks good, solid, compact

Disadvantages: No lithium battery, T9 could be easier

Reasons for buying

I bought the Azalis 238 for £19.99 on a BT prepay staff deal (I work for BT) as a back up in case my 3210 breaks. I had the choice of this, the Nec db4000 for £24.99 or an Ericsson 2618 for £19.99 all on prepay. The Nec was attractive and has a lithium battery which is important to me as Lithium batteries can be charged at any time with no memory effect, but I ended up choosing this for price, looks and features. I paid £19.99 but in The Link it has now gone up from £39.99 to £69.99, even the staff deal is £55.99, this is due to price increases at the end of April by all networks on prepay phones to try and entice people away from prepay onto contract phones instead which is where they get their revenue. The phone is on the BT Cellnet network which has a terrific weekend rate of just 2p/minute to landlines and other BT Mobiles. To landlines Peak rate is 25p/min, off peak 10p/min. To BT Mobiles peak/off peak rate is just 10p/min. WAP is 10p/min at all times. Without wanting to sound biased, I really believe these represent the cheapest prepay rates of all the networks.

Features/looks/feel.

Its really a souped up C12/savvy, as its lighter (127 grams), smaller, but still has the smooth lines of its siblings and the familiar 4 way menu compass button which works well. The phone is nicely coloured in silver and blue and looks good. Its quite grippy in the hand and very unlikely to slip out. The phone is compact and nice to hold although it does have a large depth of 28mm so smaller hands may struggle to grip around it fully. Its narrower than a lot of phones and only slightly longer than my 3210 and that’s including the extra length of the aerial. The battery is a 3.6 volt 670 Mah Nickel Metal Hydride type and is strange as instead of having metal connectors which touch the connectors on the inside of the phone, it has a short wire with a “plug” on the end which fits into a socket instead, the first
time I have seen this in a phone. It means you can easily remove the sim card without having to unplug the battery, which is very useful to me as I can swap the pay upfront sim card from my 3210 into this phone or vice versa when the battery is flat. The battery time is massive - Philips quote a standby of 500 hours and talktime of 6 hours, in practice the first charge lasted almost 7 days (160 hours) during which time I made 25 minutes worth of calls, this is excellent and far better than any other phone I have used, including my Nokia 3210. Even before I had to charge the phone it worked for 3 days straight out of the box without needing initial charging, which is something I also noticed in jemini’s review for this phone.

The phone is Philips first to have a WAP browser, which enables access to text based web pages for news, weather etc. It also has T9 predictive text, voice activated dialling, a very powerful vibrate alert, choice of analogue or digital clock, an alarm, and a funky carousel menu with icons. It has a breakout game too which makes a refreshing change to the Nokia games. Its also got a soft orange backlight instead of the usual green in most phones. The contrast can be altered from level one which is very faint , to 5 which is strong. I would recommend at least level 4. The phone has a "zoom" feature which enlarges text and numbers on the phone, although its fine on the normal setting. A unique feature I have not come across before is the ability of this phone to set a menu feature as a speedial button. This feature is found in the “extras” menu and then select “hotkeys”. Instead of assigning a phone number to one of the number keys (2-9, 1 is voicemail), you can choose any of the menu features instead, such as “write sms” “read sms” “activate silence” and so on.

The phone has the usual missed/outgoing/received call menu list with time/date/name s
o you know who you have called and who has called you.
There are 20 ring tones and a composer for the musical among you, which is comprehensive. Ring volume is ok, not as loud as some but loud enough. The vibrate alert is so strong that the phone manouvres itself across my table when someone calls !!!

In use

The menu is accessed by the four way compass button which is situated above the keypad, the compass is clearly labelled for each direction. (“arrows” for left and right, “c” for cancel/up, and “ok” for down). To the left is the green send button and to the right is the red power/end call button. This menu system is very quick and easy to use, and can be operated easily with just a thumb. It’s Almost as quick as Nokias “Navi key” menu. Press right on the compass to access names. Press left to view missed/made/received calls. To access main menu just press down on the compass button and it goes straight to the carousel menu (“names”) which then rotates to a new menu option each time left or right is pressed on the compass. Simply click down to enter the desired menu function. To cancel or undo a move , simply press up on the compass button. Call quality is good and reception is reliable and solid.

SMS

Millions of sms messages are sent each day so for lots of people the sms system is vitally important. Many manufacturers such as Ericsson and Motorola don’t have the T9 predictive text system, which allows words to be created with just one key press for each letter. Thankfully this phone does have T9. On this phone Its not quite as intuitive to use as Nokias’ version, when writing sms messages on this phone you need to first select the name or number of the person you are sending to before composing the message. You type the word you want but it appears in small letters at the bottom of the screen in a narrow box, then you need to press th
e right compass key or number 1 to insert the word into the main screen message, and so on for each word. There doesen’t appear to be a dictionary, so to spell a word not in the T9 system it takes longer. Also, to insert a full stop in Nokia’s system you just hold down the 1 key. On this phone you press “1” 3 times in quick succession, each key press of the “1” brings up a different symbol or you can goto the symbol menu - the * key is also the T9 key and when in sms mode subsequent pressing of this button will change from standard T9 menu to normal sms input, then numbers, then symbols, and back to T9 again. It’s a good system and works well when you are used to it and is far quicker than the normal method of typing. One drawback is that if you write a message and save it to send later, you cannot edit the message, it has to be sent as it is or you need to rewrite it.


WAP

I have heard many critics of Wap, saying its far too slow and meaningless. I disagree, its limited to the technology of the phones but should improve when GPRS emerges on May 18th (BT Cellnet). The genie site is one of the better ones and can be accessed by any phone on any network.

WAP on this phone is very easy to use, there is a @ button on the phone , simply press it and within half a minute I was logged onto genie.co.uk and reading news headlines and weather forecasts! I was impressed with the ease of use of the WAP menu on the phone and the comprehensive features it offered.

Conclusion

All in an excellent phone for anyone wanting a feature stuffed prepay phone which stands out from the crowd. At this price it’s a bargain.

Summary: