E-TEN Glofiish X800

Smartphones have been around for a number of years now, but it’s only recently that consumers have begun to warm to the concept of having a mobile office in their pocket. It’s a phenomenon that E-TEN aims to capitalise on with its latest smartphone — the Glofiish X800. And with its bright, brassy colour scheme and slim profile, this phone is bound to attract its fair share of jealous glances.

There’s more to the X800 than just good looks, though. Its screen is one of the brightest and most vibrant we’ve seen on any phone, with a resolution of 640 x 480 — most Windows Mobile 6 smartphones only have a 320 x 240 screen. This high resolution means that small text is more readable, scrolling is kept to a minimum and handwriting recognition is more precise.

The X800 is simply bursting with features too, such as HSDPA for fast mobile broadband connections (up to 3.6Mb/s), two digital cameras and a built-in FM radio. The phone also has a GPS receiver, though no navigation software is supplied.

There’s nothing wrong with the hardware though — we downloaded Google Maps and found the GPS receiver was quick to pick up satellites and did a great job of holding a clear, strong signal. We were also impressed with the pre-installed software. As well as Windows Mobile, which includes Office Mobile, you also get a finger-friendly launchpad. With a five-day weather forecast and quick access to commonly used applications and favourite contacts, this is a welcome replacement for the standard Windows Mobile home screen. There’s also call filter software, an easy to use speed dial that’s much more effective than scrolling up and down Windows Mobile’s Contacts view, and a function that allow you to use the camera assist light as a torch. And to top it all off, there’s Voice Commander, which allows for voice-activated speed dialling and navigation.

But despite its fine qualities, the Glofiish falls well short of ergonomic perfection. The lack of a keyboard means that you’re forced to rely on Windows Mobile’s handwriting and character recognition for text input, which at best, is slow and at worst, aggravatingly tedious. There’s also no scrollwheel or trackball like you get on a BlackBerry to make list and web browsing easier. Instead, you have to rely on a slightly-more-fiddly clickable four-way joystick, which sits in the centre of the main button panel below the screen.

Some of the proprietary software also seems to slow the device down somewhat, despite the seemingly fast 500MHz processor. If you can live with the tactile frustrations of a virtual keyboard and prefer the PDA way of doing things, the X800 is a solid choice. But the X800’s principal problem is the price. While HTC’s TyTN II costs £80 more in an unlocked state, it’s free with a contract, which makes it a far more attractive option.