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E-Ten glofiish X800

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Features

One of this handheld's main features is its VGA-resolution display. Though it wasn't retina-burning bright, we found its backlight sufficient for normal use. Like the E-Ten X500+ before it, having more pixels has its advantages. You see more of a Web page when surfing a site on the browser, and Excel sheets certainly get a boost.

There is no lack of connectivity features on the X800. First up, it's the first mass-market device from E-Ten to come with HSDPA connectivity. This works in three bands (850/1900/2100MHz), so you won't be caught out when roaming in other countries. The same goes for its GSM radio--quadband so roaming in the US isn't an issue. Aside from the cellular features, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 are available, which is pretty standard for Windows Mobile PDA-phones.

One thing you won't find lacking in an E-Ten device is GPS and the X800 is no exception. This one, like many of its other devices, comes with the SiRFstar III GPS chip. We tested this out with software from MapKing and, as usual, found it to be effective when performing in-car navigation.

Like many other device manufacturers, E-Ten threw in a bunch of addon software to make the X800 different from other WM6 PDA-phones. The most obvious of which is Spb Mobile Shell, an application that modifies the Home screen of the handhelds, so commonly used items are more easily found. It also comes with its own wireless manager, battery meter and task manager software. Ironically, though all these are supposed to help you monitor and manage the device, they are the ones that cause slowdowns in the X800. We felt that E-Ten could have done better in this respect to scale down or, better still, optimize the applications bundled with the product, so they don't cause it to be less responsive. It doesn't help that the X800 comes with only 64MB RAM, not 128MB like what's becoming common on HTC devices starting with the TyTN II.

The 2-megapixel camera found at the back of the handheld also has an LED photo light and a preview mirror for self-portraits. It has an autofocus feature as we found images to be decent for a PDA-phone. But as usual, don't expect anything even remotely close to a dedicated digital camera. One thing we could have done without was the graphical interface in the camera application. It was full of cryptic icons that confused us--another software implementation that E-Ten needs to correct in future models.

 
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