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By Alex Kidman, CNET.com.au
Feb 01, 2007

Dopod's P800W isn't an unattractive smart phone by any stretch of the imagination, but we still couldn't think of any description to put on it that was better than describing it as the Frankenstein's Monster of smart phones. Not because it has a ghastly green hue, or is covered in stitches and bolts, but simply because there are so many small parts of its design that instantly remind you of other phones with different capabilities. It's essentially a touchpad-driven phone unit with a large 2.8-inch QVGA display screen--par for the course--that sits above a very Blackberry-Pearl-esque trackball. The rear of the P800W houses a 2-megapixel camera and it's possible to use this in conjunction with the P800W's embedded GPS receiver to embed co-ordinates into your photographs.

Editors' note: This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com.au. As P800W units in Asia come with the GPS software pre-installed on the device, some parts of this review, including the ratings, have been modified to reflect the difference. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, you can also inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. Note that references made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia.

Design
The entire phone body is encased in smooth feeling silver-grey plastic--Dopod refers to it as "Iron Grey"--and with a size of only 108 x 58 x 16.8mm, this is a small and sleek smart phone, reminiscent of the more high fashion designs of phone houses such as Nokia or Motorola. Keeping with the Frankenstein motif, the P800W's stylus feels like it's come straight from the mad doctor's surgery; it's the sharpest PDA stylus we've ever used, and a danger to eyeballs everywhere.

Features
The P800W runs on a Texas Instruments OMAP 850 processor with 64MB of RAM and 128MB of ROM. User data can be stored internally or via a microSD card, although irritatingly, the card slot lives underneath the battery, so it's fiddly and difficult to change cards on the fly. The P800W's embedded digital camera has a 2-megapixel sensor and a number of photographic modes in common with most other camera-enabled Windows Mobile devices--or in other words, it can play some pretty camera tricks, but you're still not going to become Lord Lichfield with it.

The GPS chipset within the P800W is the de rigueur SiRFstar III. On the phone side, the P800W is a quadband GSM handset (850/900/1800/1900MHz) with nary a 3G capability in sight. On the wireless data front, it supports Bluetooth v2.0 and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.

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