Panasonic GD68

The Panasonic GD68 is a good lower-midlevel phone with some nifty features, but it does have its problems.

Crash Test
First, we'll bring up the problems we found in the GD68. The main issue is that the phone switches itself off once in a while. We're not sure why it does this. Originally we thought it may have something to do with the buttons. At one point, however, we saw it turn off and glimpsed an error message containing the word "emergency".

To be honest, the GD68 is not the first thing we've encountered that tunes out in the face of an emergency, but considering it was sitting calmly on our desk at the time we feel it may have overreacted to the situation.

Lights And Sound
However, when the phone is switched on the screen makes it worth your while. It boasts an appealing 101x80-pixel, 256-color display. In fact, the phone as a whole is quite attractive. It measures 10.9cm by 4.5cm, with a joystick in addition to the two softkeys, answer/reject keys and number pad. A rubber cover protects the earpiece connection, and a quick-release cover on the bottom hides the battery connection.

Also, the back cover is clear, with the idea being you can insert your own picture for instant customization. This is a pretty simple idea, but simple ideas are often the best. This feature puts it one up on the customization of most phones, and it doesn’t back-down from that vantage point, offering different screen savers, color schemes, and a choice of a number of 16-polyphonic ringtones.

You can compose your own ringtone, which is of course almost impossible for the average tone-deaf plebe, including us. The GD68 also has a facility where you can record a ringtone. You've got up to 10 seconds, which can get in quite a fair bit if you use your imagination.

The call clarity on this phone is pretty good, although not the best we've heard. However, we've had complaints of the microphone picking up too much ambient noise. The phone is easy to navigate, with the softkeys leading to the phone book and message section. Pressing the joystick takes you to the main menu. The main menu consists of nine pictures and is navigated using the joystick; the sub-menus are simple lists.

The only problem we had with navigation was using the joystick. It would intermittently register a click as a joystick movement, or a joystick movement as a click, although that's something you could probably minimize with practice.

Other Features
The phone has the now-commonplace WAP and GPRS, and includes the ability to set DTMF tones, which can be used when accessing phone services using numbers as access codes. It has dual band GSM, at 900 and 1800 MHz, and supports EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service).

In the SMS space, the GD68 performs well. You can toggle between "Greek" and "extended" text modes for more character sets, in addition to the usual Normal, T9 and numeric. It can also convert messages to e-mail and fax, if that's what you think is useful.

You can set Hot Keys for the GD68, and it has voice dial capability. There is also a section to record voice memos. The phone also has a 'desktop hands free' setting, which is instigated using the joystick during a call. You should be careful with this feature…

The screen allows for some good-looking games, Atum and Kimang. Both games are engaging, hard to learn, and quite different from any we've seen on other phones.

The battery on the GD68 wasn't as good as we're used to, running out in only 78 hours, or three days and five hours of normal usage. It's advertised as having 1.5-6.5 hours talk time and 60-190 hours standby.

SAR Rating
According to Panasonic, the GD68 measures 0.505W/kg on Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) tests. According to the recommendations of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, this is well below the limit of 2.0W/kg.

Conclusion
At S$388 (with a two-year plan), the GD68 comes across as a pretty nifty mid-level phone, which would especially appeal to people who like to customize their mobile and put more emphasis on aesthetics than reliability.

CNETAsia's Aloysius Choong contributed to this review.