Wonder-phone. (Sagem MY X-7)

Member Name: HaZZ

Product:	Sagem MY X-7
Date:	03/11/04 (510 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, customisable, and packed with features, Great, cheap phone

Disadvantages: MMS not stable, A little too small, perhaps

After five years of being exclusive to Nokia I recently decided to splash out on one of those fancy camera/video/useless-application phones. I didn't think I'd use it much, but it'd be trendy to have, no? I randomly picked this one as it was the least ugly one in the shop and I've been praising the name of randomness ever since. This is easily the sleekest, and fun phone I've ever owned.

Aside from the obligatory phone-calling option you'd hope a mobile has, this -- surprisingly cheap at £100 -- is packed with all sorts of useful goodies. There's a camera that takes pictures at a decent resolution. Videos which, unfortunately, aren't of the same quality and the sound quality is pretty awful if there's a lot of noise in the background. Two fun, pretty games; a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up and a short, but sweet platformer. Additional games can be purchased through the WAP service.

The phone is highly customisable; you can take pictures and use them as wallpaper. You can record up to thirty seconds of decent quality audio and use it as a ringtone. Comes with some pretty banal ringtones, including some baffling animal-sounds. There are various skins for the interface and different sound effects for the buttons.

While all this is a nice addition it'd be pretty pointless if the phone itself didn't perform, and luckily it works like a charm. The small buttons take getting used to if you've got large fingers or are used to bigger phones, but you'll soon get accustomed to it. The phone lasts for about 5 hours, but excessive use of the video can wear it down quicker. There's a handy "eco mode" which uses the least amount of energy possible, very handy if you need your phone on and you're nowhere near a charger.

Audio quality is fine, and it has the usual SMS/MMS/Polyphonic features most phones do now. If there's one complaint I have it's the MMS isn't very stable, and the IRDA port on my phone doesn't work properly, although I've dropped it a few times so that probably didn't help.

Overall it's a handy, durable phone with a lot of lovely extras. And it doesn't cost the world.

Summary: