It's not MY Sagem, it's his (Sagem MY X-7)

Member Name: sandemp

Product:	Sagem MY X-7
Date:	24/03/05 (786 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Camera phone , Loud and clear when in use

Disadvantages: Looks tacky , Locked to network

A couple of months before Christmas, while browsing several “bargain” forums, I came across what for me was a deal not to be missed. Basically Woolworths had made a pricing error and for a very short period were advertising the Sagem MYX-7 for £29.99 and even throwing a free CD micro system in. Now who am I to refuse an offer like that, so I toddled off to their site, placed my order then sat with my fingers crossed for the next week, while they decided whether or not they were going to honour the order.

Lucky for us, we eventually got an e-mail confirming that they were going to send us the phone for that very special price, so we waited for the deliveryman to knock on the door with my husband's brand new phone.

On opening the box the phone came in we discovered the following :

The actual mobile phone
Two Snap on covers
A battery
A charger
A CD-ROM
Instruction manuals
And of course a SIM card

~~~The looks~~~

Well lets put it this way, the MYX-7 certainly isn't the most beautiful phone to look at. It's not actually all that big and measures in at 10cm x 4.6cm x 2.2cm, which is about the same size as a Nokia 3310. But, it somehow manages to make itself look much bigger. Our phone actually came supplied with two snap-on covers, a black one, and a nice shiny silver one. My husband preferred the silver colour, so that's the one I put on for him. I have noticed however that my local market sells some much nicer looking covers.

~~~Charging the battery~~~

Inserting the SIM card and battery was a simple enough job, as was putting on the cover of our choice. We then needed to charge the phone for the pretty customary 16 hours to condition the battery after which we were ready to go.

Now the battery life is reasonably good, and it will last upto a week without actually being used, and a couple of days with pretty heavy use. Of course, it doesn't take as long to charge after the first time, generally it takes under two hours.

~~~Turning on/off~~~

This isn't the quickest phone, when it comes to switching on, but it's not too bad, taking about 15-30 seconds, before it's ready to go. Switching off, however, is very quick taking under 5 seconds.

~~~The screen~~~

The screen is gorgeous, and takes up just under half the height of the phone. It's full colour, nicely backlit, and displays such useful information as battery life, signal strength, time and whether you have a GPRS connection. According to the Sagem website it features 65,536 colours and 128x160 pixels, which to me means that any pictures are displayed gloriously.

~~~The menu system~~~

The menu system on the phone is a fairly simply GUI, with links to the various functions on the phone. It is, however pretty confusing, even to me (who knows something about technology), my husband can only just manage to navigate to the texts and missed calls.

~~~Adding Contacts~~~

Adding contacts is to say the least a pain in the bum, you have to go through four different key presses before you even get to add a number. But when you are finally there it is worth it, you get to add the contacts first name, last name, e-mail address and a total of three phone numbers, along with the name of the company they work for, a photo and a comment. I'm not sure exactly how many numbers the phone will hold, but we've got quite a few on so far.

~~~Making Calls~~~

Making calls is fairly easy, especially if you've called them before. You can either tap in the number or go into your contacts and then press the green start call button. Once the call has started, there are volume controls on either side of the main navigation button, which maybe isn't the best design.

The phone is loud and clear depending on reception, but being on the receiving end of calls made on this, I have a gripe. It picks up every little bit of background noise, and I sometimes find I have to move my own phone away from my ear due to this.

~~~Texting~~~

Ahh, texting, now my husband doesn't send texts he just finds it too awkward on any phone so I've had a go at writing one, and this is what I've found. Firstly the keys are too close together, it's really easy to press the wrong key by mistake. Secondly, the actual keys don't actually feel like you've pressed them properly, it's hard to explain exactly what I mean, but there's so little actual movement. The final point is a good one (or not depending on how fast you text), it actually moves onto the next character very quickly. I can't actually comment on the dictionary function, as I never use it on any phone.

~~~The camera~~~

Now, I've heard great things about this camera, shame I don't actually agree with them. OK, it has a good number of options, including light settings and zoom. But woe betide you if your subject moves. Even a slight movement will result in a blurry picture. If your subject is absolutely still, then the picture is OK, nothing fancy but OK. You can also take pictures of yourself, by looking in a little mirror on the back of the phone.

But as well as taking still pictures, we can create short video clips, just for the fun of it. I can't really imagine any other reason, for using this rather than a camcorder. Although the clips are with sound they are pretty dire, and very short lasting literally a matter of a few seconds.

~~~The ringtones~~~

Most of the pre-installed ringtones are pretty dire, they just sound really tinny. There are, however, a few quite cool tones, I especially like the cow and baby. As well as downloading extra tones, you can record sounds to use as tones. My personal favourite is one we did of the children telling their Dad to answer the phone.

~~~Games~~~

The MYX-7 comes with two games pre-installed :

Gulo's Tale ~ A cute little platform game

Siberian strike ~ A scrolling aeroplane shoot-em up

Both games are of reasonable quality, and provide enough entertainment for short periods when waiting for a bus. You can of course download more, from various sites on the internet.

~~~Extras~~~

Along with the features above, the phone also has a calendar/organiser, sound recorder, calculator, converter, alarm, to do list and timer, which are all pretty self explanatory.

~~~Connectivity~~~

Now, my husband has never tried any of the following, but the phone has the following methods of connecting :

GPRS, WAP, Bluetooth and via data cables.

As I said, we've never tried any of these so I can't comment on how effective they are.

~~~Durability~~~

Well it's survived for the last four months without any damage or glitches, and that includes being dropped a couple of times, so it seems pretty durable to me.

~~~Unlocking~~~

This is a big bugbear, the phone is locked to the O2 network, and for the time being it looks like it's going to stay that way. We've been trying to get it unlocked since before Christmas at various places, with absolutely no luck.

~~~Accessories~~~

You can buy various accessories to go with this phone including :

New covers : from £5 at my local market.
Data Cable : No idea where you would get this though.

~~~Price and Availability~~~

As I said at the beginning, we got this phone at the never to be repeated (probably) price of £29.99, but a search on-line finds that you can buy it from Argos on the O2 network for £74.95

~~~Final Words~~~

For the price we paid for it how can say that this phone was anything but a good deal. Even so, I personally don't like it, for some reason it looks and feels cheap and tacky, and it's just so hard to text. My husband however, loves it, even though he can't use half the functions, it does what he wants perfectly well, which is to make phone calls.

So the question is, am I recommending this phone? And the answer, I'm not really sure, it does an awful lot for the price, but there are better phones on the market that do similar if not more for not a lot more money. So my final advice is to go for this phone if nothing else is in your budget and you don't mind being locked to the O2 network.

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