Click for more images of the Panasonic X70.

Mobile minnow Panasonic shot to prominence early last year with the sublime GD88, one of the best camera-phones on the market then. The Japanese electronics maker was rewarded with a remarkable spell of reader popularity on CNETAsia that lasted all through 2003. Unsurprisingly, the X70 has been the most requested review on CNETAsia in recent weeks. But as they say, sequels are rarely as good as the original. Will the X70 live up to the hype?

Design
Realistically, the X70 was never going to be as astonishing as the GD88. For one, owing to the GD88's success, many mobile fans had their sights locked on the X70 since last March. In addition, the new Panasonic really doesn't try anything too spectacular, coming across more as an evolutionary upgrade of its predecessor.

Given how good the GD88 was, that's not necessarily a bad idea. The 92g X70 is lighter and more compact, but offers the same beautiful finish and solid build. A vertical LCD, which displays the time during standby, adorns the bivalve's exterior, while the camera lens lies near the hinge. When you open or close the flip, the handset locks into place with a convincing click.

The inside of the clamshell is also aesthetically impressive. Below the large and bright display, the Panasonic's numeric buttons lie on translucent black plastic, illuminated from beneath by a cool white light.

Interface
The interface part of the equation is what left us with mixed feelings. The main menu, filled with pretty icons, is intuitive and responsive enough, but there are some software quirks. Panasonic strangely has Bluetooth settings in the "Organizer" folder together with the calculator and alarm clock functions.

Worse are the odd stability issues we experienced. The camera sometimes refuses to activate, and on a few occasions the handset even restarted on us.

The keypad also isn't very easy to use. The small buttons lie flat against the frame, so finding the right letters for texting may initially require some thumb probing.

Features
The X70 sports a brilliant 132 x 176-pixel, 65,000-color TFT display. It's large enough to show seven lines of text, and is especially comfortable for reading and typing Chinese messages. The four games on the handset showcases this nicely with lively graphics and some bright colors.

Unexpectedly, we found the Panasonic X70's camera function disappointing. The handset comes with a new capture light that works like a flash, illuminating subjects under low-light conditions. In practice, this made only a slight difference. Photographs appear all right on the cell phone screen, but when transferred to the desktop, the limited 132 x 176-pixel resolution results in a small, underwhelming image.

The other major feature is the integrated Bluetooth, which works fairly well for file transfer. We easily connected the phone to our Bluetooth-enabled desktop and began moving photographs from phone to PC in no time. Given the limited number of preinstalled wallpapers on the X70, you may also want to upload more onto the cell phone.

Other features of the X70 include triband, a non-polyphonic melody composer, as well as voice recording. Java is lacking.

Reception And Battery Life
Reception is adequate, as is voice quality. However, battery life is on the short side. The Lithium-ion cell has a capacity of just 680mAh, which had a bearing on actual battery performance. On normal usage, we managed just two days.

Conclusion
The Panasonic X70 goes for S$788 with a two-year contract, a reasonable price considering it comes with a free Bluetooth headset. The mobile is also available at S$988 on retail. The new Panasonic stays close to the formula of its predecessor--too close, perhaps. Its design works wonders, as does the nifty Bluetooth feature, but the limited photo resolution, lack of Java and stability issues prevent the X70 from reaching the heights of the GD88.