GX Phone Home (Sharp GX-10)

Member Name: utero

Product:	Sharp GX-10
Date:	01/08/03 (927 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lightweight, Stylish, Good Polyphonic Sound

Disadvantages: Crap Camera, Cumbersome menus

I'm not a big user of the mobile phone; I only got my first one at the end of 2000. The phone in question was a cumbersome Phillips phone with nothing flash about it however I'd probably still be perfectly happy with it. However at work there was an incentive running for overtime, this meant that you worked a certain amount of hours, got paid for it but you would also receive a Sharp GX10 mobile phone on Vodafone. Now at the time these were £300 on a 'pay as you go' deal. However I understand they've dropped in price slightly over the last couple of months.

The first thing that struck me about this phone was the weight, it's incredibly light and you're probably no even going to notice if you keep it in your pocket. It's a silver metallic design with a small LCD window on the outside to display time etc. Flip this baby open and you're greeted with a full colour LCD screen and keypad. It's from here that you can do what you need to do. I'm sure you've seen these phones on those Vodafone TV adverts so no doubt you're aware that you can play games and send picture messages using the phone. Let's get one thing clear, the camera on this phone is pretty crappy. I've seen results from other mobile cameras and this one frankly pales in comparison. You'll have to have a very steady hand to make sure your picture has any detail in it. It's no a case of point and click as the chances are that you'll just get back a blur. If you take this into a club or social situation then it isn't going to be much use. Weeks ago I took it into a bar, the pictures that resulted looked like the subjects had watched that videotape in that movie 'The Ring'.

But I'm no too fussed about the camera, it's a nice addition but one that doesn't bother me a great deal. It's good for taking pictures of things you want to use as the background for your screen.

The operation of the
phone is easy although some of the menus can be cumbersome and not very friendly to the user who wants to use it out of the box. I've found myself resorting to the instruction manual for the simplest of tasks such as previewing the phones ring tones. The majority of the phones functions are buried in sub-menus and you can be left hunting for what you want. This can be annoying to say the least.

A lot of people use these phones for texting. The keypad on this phone is pretty responsive so writing can be pretty quick if you're adept at it. You make sure you disable the autotext function otherwise you'll be pulling your hair out. This function is completely worthless as it tries to complete words as you're tapping them in. It's a shame that 99% of the time it gets it wrong. It'd also no that straightforward to send the thing, as you have no clear on screen instruction.

As for the phone part well calls are easy to make and receive. You can also store a lot of numbers and records in the phone book with home/mobile numbers as well as other addresses being stored under one record for one person. The ringtones included are fairly dull. This has polyphonic capability so no doubt you'll be downloading TV theme tunes as your ring tones. This phone makes use of the Vodafone Live service for access to that kind of content. Most of it is overpriced but there are a few sites where you can download tons for free. The sound re-production is excellent and clear. When the phone rings your attention is grabbed as a light flashes, you can also set it to vibrate if need be.

As for battery life well I tend to keep mine on from around 8am-8pm every day, this normally means I'll have to charge it once a week but you have to also bear in mind that I don't use the phone a great deal compared to people who have contracts etc. On average I spend £15-30 a year on mobile phone costs. The phone comes with a charger and you just have to
plug it in and it charges automatically. The phone also comes with software to hook it up to a PC but there is no data cable. Buying one will set you back £40 which frankly is a rip-off if like me you know how much these things cost to produce.

Aside from the camera and the ringtones you have some games. Often when I'm bored I'll play the Air Hockey game as it's incredibly addictive. There's also a Penalty Shoot out game that is pretty lame as well as some 80's arcade style games in the style of tetris. You can download games to the phone and it comes with one shoot-em-up game. This is decent but the keypad makes it pretty hard to play for an extended period of time.

So the Sharp GX-10 is a decent phone that does its job for me. It's stylish, has some fun extras but for those who look for all the latest features on a phone it's probably not worth looking at.

Summary: