Looking sharp with a sharp! (Sharp GX25)

Member Name: helpa4eva

Product:	Sharp GX25
Date:	27/12/05 (543 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bluetooth, Ringtones, Features.

Disadvantages: Battery and Memory

Sharp GX25 - helpa4eva
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I - How I got the phone
I did have a Sony Erricson T610, but unfortunatley, i started to get bored with it and its lack of fun kitsch gadgety-bits. Conveniently, a few days later, my sister told me she had just bought a new phone from ebay because she couldnt use her current one, and so i could have it. So from then on, i owned the phone that i had wanted for absoloutley ages - a Sharp GX25.

II - What it looks like
From the outside, the phone is fairly attractive, with a dark blue and silver colour scheme. There is a small LED-style screen on the front of the cover, which tells you the time/date, and how many messages or missed calls you have. There is also a white light which can be turned on by holding the "up" button of the 2 phone volume buttons on the left hand side of the phone.

When fully opened, the phone makes a satisfying click, and the screen lights up. The phone is in colour, and has a red toolbar at the bottom, then above that displays its network (which is supposed to be vodafone but mine says T Mobile :-)) and at the top there are various icons -

Volume - There is a rising bar type icon indicating the volume of the phone
Bluetooth - In the middle-top of the phone there is an icon indicating wether your bluetooth is active or disabled.
Battery - There is a battery which has 4 bars and obviously tells you how much juice your phone has. This would help but unfortunatley the phone is prone to going from 4 bars to 1.
Time & Date - Underneath the battery icon you can see the time and date, including the day, which also helps!!

The keypad on the phone is nice. At the top there is a round silver circle, which acts as the "enter" button. There is a silver ring around that, and depending on where the ring is pressed, you navigate left, up, down or right through the phones interface. Around the ring there are 5 silver buttons, used for calling and ending calls, getting the camera on, and using the shortcuts on the phones desktop.

Underneath these keys are the stanard phone keys, layed out as normal. These keys are average in size and not hard to press or anything.

III - FEATURES

Well, where to begin? I dont have a spec for the phone as i got it through family, but ill take you through what i know how to use on the phone. The GX25 runs java games, and more can be downloaded through vodafone live (at an extortionate cost!). The phone has an applications section, which contains options to change the phones alarms, the calculator, the voice recorder, and the melody editor.

The melody editor is probably one of my favourite features on the phone. Its basically a ringtone composer, but instead of Erricsons idea of giving samples that you organise, or Nokias idea of having a single track midi tone, you can have up to 20 tracks, and you enter in the notes in sheet music form, change the measures and instruments etc. to make a professional sounding ringtone! (if you have a lot of patience and spare time like me, that is).

Obviously the phone recieves and sends text messages. It can also send multimedia messages, media albums, and emails, so people can send each other pictures/music/ringtones. There is also a "messenger" service. I think this is like an in-phone chat client, not sure how it works.

The phones camera can take pictures, record videos, and the pictures taken can be edited with frames, effects, and stamps. The only negative thing about doing this is that the phones memory is absoloutley poor, and there isnt room for removable memory - there is 1.8mb of memory on the GX25.

In settings, profiles can be selected and personalised, which is the same as on most phones. The language can be altered, and there is a choice between english, dutch, french, italian, spanish, portugese, swedish, turkish, and 2 others that i cant read!

IV - Wear and Tear
The phone has lasted through to people in my family so it must be pretty hard. The only damage it has taken really is when i was running home, and it came out of my pocket and one of the silver side panels of the top half of the phone came loose, but it has clipped back on. Thats about it!

V - Conclusion
The phone is easy to use, it looks great, feels great, all my friends are constantly stealing it to have a look, and i highly reccomend it to anyone. The only problems being the battery and onboard memory, this is definitley a worthwhile phone to have.

Thank you for reading this review by helpa4eva on:
Sharp GX25 (Phone)

Summary: Ace phone! Recomended!

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