iNo Mobile F12

Remember the iNo Mobile CP09 and CP10? These phones made for the elderly have yet another successor, the F12. This time, the budget phone packs an extra SIM card slot and a 2-megapixel camera.

Design

The F12 is nothing like the CP10, thanks to its industrial design and soft-touch plastic shell. The keypad and switches are generously sized like its predecessors and clearly cut out on the chassis to lend a rugged feel to the handset. New to the F12 is a four-way directional pad, which can be mapped to four shortcuts such as phonebook, music player, camera and text messages. The F12 also has a 21cm-long radio antenna built-in, which can be extended out to improve reception. At the back is where you find the onboard speakers, a 2-megapixel camera and the SOS button which is now indented minimize accidental presses.


The toggles for the keylock, volume, FM radio and flashlight are on both sides of the phone. The latter can be activated even when the handset is switched off. Like previous iNo Mobile devices we've reviewed, the keypad on the F12 has excellent tactility. Holding down the # button lets you switch to silent mode. The phone charges via mini-USB (cable bundled; headset provided uses this connector as well) found at the bottom where it sits beside an additional 2mm charging port. So, if you happen to have an old Nokia charger lying around which has the latter connector, you may be able to use it on the F12 as well although it didn't work on the Nokia charger we tried.

Features

The F12 looks every bit like a well-built, decent phone. It's not a Nokia or a Samsung, but it'd give these companies a run for their money--at least that was our impression before we fired up the handset and saw the animation, fonts and color schemes that seem to suggest the software is from the 1980s. Never mind the interface, which is behind the times because the F12 has a few features to keep users interested.

The dual-SIM card utility is one of them. Phones with two SIM card slots are far and few between and the F12 is actually a respectable choice. Bear in mind that the handset supports only the GSM 900 and 1800 frequencies. You can set either one, or both lines to be active concurrently, or Flight mode where the cellular radios are switched off. Once you've punched in the number or message, you can choose which SIM to call out or send a message from.

During an emergency, pressing the orange button at the back where the camera is activates the SOS mode. This sends out a pre-configured SMS to the emergency contact list, while emitting a shrieking tone that sounds like an ambulance siren. It will also automatically call the numbers on the list, starting with the first all the way to the fifth if any of the earlier parties didn't pick up the call. However, the concept fails if anyone on that list has voicemail enabled, as the SOS feature would recognize it as a successful call for help.

The rest of the features are pretty standard. You get basic functions including phonebook (500 entries), user profiles for managing different ringing/SMS tones and vibration settings for each SIM card, calendar, alarm clock, calculator, To-do list, file manager as well as an e-book reader. We couldn't figure out why the F12 would have the latter and we reckon it'll be one of those white elephant features on the F12 considering the 1.77-inch (160 x 120 pixels) OLED display isn't conducive for reading, particularly for the elderly. We also noticed that the screen washed out under sunlight resulting in some squinting.

When plugged into a PC, the phone can be used either in mass storage mode or as a Webcam. The image resolution is the same as the phone's display, which, in other words, is really tiny when you see it on a PC monitor. But it's definitely a neat feature to have. In a brightly lit office setting where we tested the Webcam, we could make out who we were looking at and there wasn't any lag when we panned the camera around. The handset also charges via USB.

Text messages can be stored on either SIMs or the phone's memory. There are various text input methods including dictionary option, basic multitap (alphanumeric), Simplified Chinese stroke and pin yin. You can also switch the language setting on the device between English and Simplified Chinese.

The F12 also supports Bluetooth A2DP, which lets you connect to your wireless earbuds and listen to MP3 music. There's a microSD card slot behind the battery and 128MB of built-in memory to store your media files. The beam from the built-in torch is diffused by the translucent plastic grille, which limits its effectiveness.

There's no onboard flash for the 2-megapixel camera even though the shooter packs a number of features. You can choose one of three shutter sounds or turn it off completely, as well as adjust exposure compensation and white balance. There's also a delay timer, continuous shooting mode for three or five takes (about 1 second for each snap) and color effects. These settings can be changed using the keypad, while the button 0/Ok doubles as the shutter. You can browse images in a list or matrix format. For all that it is able to do, the F12 doesn't record videos. Not that this matters anyway.

Performance

The F12 comes with a 1,200mAh lithium-ion battery that's rated for 4 hours of talktime and about seven days on standby. In our tests, the party on the other line reported a hollowness in the audio, which sounded like someone speaker across a cavernous warehouse. What's useful was the connect tone/vibration, which when a call connected, would alert the user with a jingle or a vibrating pulse (or both). Like its predecessors, the onboard speaker was very loud to the point of being jarring. The lighting on the keypad was uneven, but that's just a minor gripe.

Conclusion

We like the look and feel of the F12 and it even surprised us with a few tricks such as the USB Webcam feature. At a budget of S$168 (there's a current promotion for it at S$138), the phone actually packs a number of features including a dual-SIM feature, built-in radio and a large keypad. You can tell that the Singapore-based company has improved on the F12's predecessors by a fair bit, though it still misses the mark in terms of the software user interface.