Menu/phone book: If you’re familiar with Windows Mobile, or Windows for that matter, you should be able to dig right into the Pantech Duo. The device sports the familiar Windows Mobile home screen. By default, the home screen features the Start menu on the bottom left, Contacts on the bottom right, and icons for recently used applications in a ribbon at the top. In between you get one-touch access to e-mail and voicemail messages, appointments, tasks, and IM accounts. You can also customize the background image, theme, and displayed menu items. The 416MHz processor runs Windows Mobile 6 applications at a decent clip, although the device gets a little balky when switching between portrait and landscape modes.
The phone book is limited only by available memory, while the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts. You can store up to 12 numbers per entry, plus e-mail and street addresses, IM screen name, and other info. Through Microsoft ActiveSync, the Duo synced with our Outlook address book flawlessly.
Messaging: Though it doesn’t look so at first glance, the Duo is a smartphone, so you get full messaging capabilities. We downloaded the free Xpress Mail Client to manage our e-mail accounts. After entering the user name and passwords for each account, Xpress Mail automatically downloaded the rest of our settings. Xpress Mail supports POP3 and IMAP accounts, and corporate users can synchronize contacts, calendar events, and tasks through the Microsoft Exchange server.
Messages from our Comcast and Gmail accounts appeared instantly in our inbox (and disappeared after we read or deleted them from the computer).  The Duo’s e-mail support includes Microsoft Direct Push technology for real-time e-mail delivery. The Duo also comes loaded with AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger instant messaging clients. You can keep all three accounts active simultaneously, but there’s no one-button toggling among the three accounts.
Camera: The Pantech Duo sports a 1.3-megapixel camera. Images were fuzzy, although colors were surprisingly vivid. You can use the navigation button to adjust the brightness or zoom in and out without having to go through the menu. Other settings include three quality options, four white balance modes, four color effects, a self-timer, a 4x zoom, and a self-portrait mirror next to the lens on the back of the device. The Duo also features a camcorder, though the quality of the video could be better.
Music: Music playback is becoming a standard smartphone feature, and the Duo lets you sync tracks from Windows Media Player onto a microSD storage card. It supports MP3, protected WMA, and AAC files. The mobile version of Windows Media offers album art, playlist creation, and shuffle/repeat modes. The AT&T Music store supports Napster downloads, and you can subscribe to XM Satellite Radio. The Duo doesn’t come with headphones, but it does include a 3.5mm stereo headphone adapter in the package, so you can use your own stereo headset with it to listen to your tunes.
Bluetooth: The Duo supports Bluetooth 2.0, so it supports wireless stereo headphones and dial-up networking as well as basic hands-free headsets. We paired the Duo with a Plantronics Discovery 610 headset without any problems. |
Look and feel: On the positive side, the 2.2-inch QVGA display features bright colors and crisp text and images. The display automatically switches from portrait to landscape mode when you slide out the QWERTY keyboard. Below the display you’ll find a five-way navigation key, two soft keys, buttons for talk and call end/power, a Home key, and a Back key for returning to the previous page. A Quick List key provides one-touch access to power and sound profiles (it also doubles as the keyguard lock). The left spine holds the volume rocker, while the right spine includes the camera and voice recorder buttons. The microSD card slot sits at the top of the unit. Because of the dual-slider design, the Duo is too bulky to slip into your front pants pocket, though it’s not as heavy as you’d imagine. The slick red plastic is prone to fingerprints, so you find yourself wiping it off a lot. We never felt really comfortable holding the phone during conversations either with the slide open or closed.
Keypad: Though it’s a great inclusion in what looks like a standard cell phone, the QWERTY keypad could be better. The keys are not only tiny, they’re flat, making it difficult to thumb type unless you have long fingernails. We often found ourselves pressing the wrong button, a real annoyance when typing long e-mails or chatting in IM sessions. The dial pad buttons are somewhat better. They’re nicely sized and slightly curved, though a bit slippery. |
Pantech C810 Expert Rating
