 | Good Audio quality Slim design Plenty of features Macro images look good |  | UI is sluggish Not too 'finger friendly' Accelerometer is very erratic Heats up a lot Camera is very average on the whole Too high priced Too pricey |
Unveiling what seems to be their most powerful phone launched in the country – The Gsmart MS820 - Gigabyte the famous gaming motherboard makers, who have been in the phone making business for some time now, hope to thrill audiences with its many features. We used the handset for a period of 8 days and here's what we can tell you.
Form Factor
It’s not a bad looking handset. In fact it’s slim and quite sleek with a 2.8-inch TFT resistive touchscreen display that sports a 480 x 640 pixel resolution and 65k colors with an accelerometer (G-Sensor). It has a round five way nav-pad and two buttons on either side for call take and end. On one side of this 14.1mm handset is a dedicated camera key for the 5MP AF camera (at the rear), zoom/volume keys and an open (not a good idea) micro USB hot swap slot. On the other side is nothing but a 2.5mm handsfree socket. A mini USB all-in-one port is located at the bottom and a Power/screen lock button is on the top. The Stylus is wedged in quite tightly and it was quite a pain most of the time to get out. It’ll take some getting used to. A secondary VGA camera is placed right near the earpiece above the display.
The MS820 may be slim and sleek but it’s quite weighted and we found it a little wide. It makes it a little uncomfortable in your pocket. Other than that it’s in no way an eyesore. Gigabyte has also included all the necessary accessories with the handset – a carry pouch, socket adapters for the charger, a spate car charging kit, USB cable and even an extra stylus. What would have been better than a car charger though is a Memory card as the handset doesn’t come with too much built in memory.
Features and Performance
Interface
Running on a Windows Mobile 6.1 platform with a Marvell PXA270 520MHz processor, we presumed the handset would have been quite the speed demon. We were wrong. The UI was a little too sluggish for comfort and hence made it difficult to do too much too quickly. Although rich with features, it took too long to activate most of them. It even took about 2 seconds after hitting the ‘Answer; button for the connection to be made for incoming calls and even longer before it actually disconnected. The default Windows UI required the use of the stylus almost all of the time; this is why we preferred the secondary touch sensitive interface, which not only looked good but was well designed and quite funky. The problem is, we figured you’d be able to use just your fingers to access and use most of the features and this UI was designed directly on top of Windows to facilitate just that, but that was not the case.
The interface is ‘finger friendly’ with a smooth gliding feel to it, a little similar to TouchFLO. By sliding your finger from the bottom upwards a rolodex type of 'Contacts' screen opens up. By sliding side ways multiple options become available. But all short cuts led back to the normal Windows UI so out came the stylus. If only it did as quickly as it was to say that. There were no on screen keypad that were designed to be used without the stylus so you’re stuck with the default Windows mobile, tiny buttoned options, even in landscape and the regular handwriting function as well.
Speaking of Landscape, the handset’s accelerometer comes to mind. Aside from the fact that it takes about 3-4 seconds to actually turn the screen around (all screens except the secondary UI's) because of the inane and unnecessary animation (which we couldn’t seem to shut off), it was way too erratic. To be more precise - out of control is the term that comes to mind. The slightest turn in any direction your wrist takes and you’ve got to wait till the screen turns one way and then flip it again to go back to normal. It was quite frustrating. Recommendation – switch it off and stick to manual, you won’t miss anything.
Media
One of the better aspects of the Gsmart MS820 features is its audio capabilities. Besides the usual Windows Media Player for mobile application for all your video and audio needs, is a stand alone player called Smart Player. It uses an extremely simple interface and also comes with a long list of EQ presets. Thankfully there’s no difference in audio output between the two players. Smart Player is easier to use as files can be played directly from the folders they’re in, so there’s no need to create playlists. An audio mixer allows for a more limited control of the tone of music with bass, Treble and 3D adjustable settings.
The MS820 also has a voice recorder and a brilliant FM radio. Reception was quite good even on the commute with a very limited amount of static. A recording option is also available here. The Smart Album application is quite typical for viewing images and employs flick control to scroll through pictures if you don’t want to view them in thumbnail mode. Nothing new or exciting here. The Smart Editor is an editing application for images. It helps a bit with post processing images taken from the handsets camera and has quite a few settings. A Streaming player is also at hand.
Although the handset managed to play quite a few video formats, none of them played well enough to watch. Irrespective of the format they would frame and stutter all the time. In full screen mode widescreen videos wouldn’t just have a black bar on the top and bottom of the frame; these bars were a light pale brown for some reason. Needless to say video playback was painful.
A few extra motion sensitive games are thrown in like Smart Ball which is very similar to the HTC motion sensitive game only this one is a little too responsive. The ball is rather excited and can’t seem to sit still even if you are. Bringing to mind again the rather off accelerometer sensor. Another game called Revolver shows you an open gun with two bullets and if you move the handset it spins and gets loaded into the gun. We’re not sure what happens after that. Stick to Bubble Breaker and Solitaire.
Connectivity
The MS820 is unlike our usual smartphone which is not just 3G but 3.5G (HSDPA 2100) capable and if connected to your PC and used as a modem will be able to give connection speeds up to almost 7.6mbps (you’ll still need 3G though). Now that’s not bad at all. But that’s not all; the handset also comes with in-built GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth A2DP and mini USB version 2.0.
Browsing was a good experience on the MS820 with IE doing a fairly good job. Still no flash support and page rendering could have been better. Pocket IE comes with a Zoom In/Out button. Now users can see the overall layout of a web page, and then zoom in to a desired portion of it. Microsoft claims that there are additional significant IE improvements which are available to mobile phones via Update Manager. Some of the promised improvements were the ability to view web pages full-screen and without menu bars. Secondly, there's support for Adobe Flash and support for Microsoft's Silver light. There didn’t seem to be any updates for the handset though via the Update Option. A secondary browsing application like Opera would have been better. But it of course depends on choice as well.
Apart from browsing on the data networks, we also tried browsing and downloading on Wi-Fi. And we’re not sure whether it was this handset or something else as the speed was more or less the same as using EDGE. Wi-Fi should have been much much faster. We also installed Messenger and Fring and those worked out perfectly. So we’re guessing that third party applications work well. But again you will have to go the traditional way of 'Trial & Error' to decide on the apps that suit you and function well enough on the handset.
Microsoft claims that Windows Mobile 6.1, which boasts of a redesigned synchronization architecture for its Direct Push email technology, is said to work more efficiently with the Microsoft Exchange Server. And it does. Setting up email accounts is extremely easy - all you need to do is enter your email id and password and in about a minute or so mails start flowing in. You can of course set up multiple email accounts and corporate email with Microsoft Exchange and also do a complete sync with your Outlook - mainly your contacts, calendar entries, appointments etc.
GPS
The GPS system in the handset is capable of giving you information that a lay person who has no clue about latitude and longitude would find very confusing. Suffice to say you’d get lost if you were already lost. It’s preloaded with an SiRF Star III chipset. I used Google Maps which worked so much better with GPS when it came to directions. If Gigabyte would have included or loaded software with maps, it would have been so much better.
The existing application does however allow you to take images form the camera (geotagging) to be used as landmarks. Getting the camera to start quickly is another story altogether. If you’re traveling, the landmark will be long gone before you get the chance. A-GPS support and GPS combined really did make Google Maps a much better option, with Latitude thrown in, it was a little better.
Productivity
The GSmart MS820 comes loaded with lots of useful applications, like the Zip application, Backup, Mobile Office, Remote Desktop
Overall, Gigabyte has put together a good piece of hardware which comprehends the features and the scalability of Windows Mobile 6.1. Unfortunately delivery in terms of speed is a big issue. With an online store now you can also purchase applications and themes etc. online.
Camera
This Gsmart handset is loaded with a 5 megapixel AF snapper that also has a single LED flash. While it’s feature rich with Scene modes that include Landscape, Portrait (Face Detection), Micro (macro in reality), Snow, Beach, and Night with an Anti Shaking setting as well, images were not anything to be too pleased about. The settings also had an ISO level selection, Self timer, Flicker Frequency (60Hz and 50Hz) as well as Blur detection setting that informs you of a blur in an image. There were many times it didn’t though.
I’d have to say that macro shots were the better than any of the other images I took in any condition.
Normal landscape shots in cloudy or well lit daylight settings were really bad. There seemed to be a substantial mount of focus only in a specific area and everything else was blotchy with a very pastel effect. Images could not be geotagged from the camera directly like in other handsets.
Battery
Battery life was just plain bad. We didn’t even manage to get a full day's usage with the handset on very nominal usage. About an hour and half into calls after charge and the battery died. Another issue was the handset heating up all the time when it was in use or while charging. It would get insanely hot if you happened to be using the handset for music, radio or even Wi-Fi. Getting a call during this time made it extremely difficult to carry on a conversation without the handset being at least an inch from your ear. I wish we were exaggerating. It was even worse when you had to stick it into your pocket after using it for a bit, that’s something no guy should ever feel.
The Bottom Line
Our experience with the MS820 was quite frustrating, from its overanxious accelerometer that seemed a mite confused to the annoyingly slow UI. The Touch Oriented UI should have been the one Gigabyte should have gone with as a default like HTC’s TouchFLO. The camera was not an asset and the only thing that was, was its music player and FM radio. We’re afraid the Rs. 36, 999 is in no way justified at all. Even if the UI were a little faster, it would not be able to compensate for the rest of the functionality being just average. Gigabyte has attempted to make a light, slim and really approachable smartphone, but has failed to keep the stability and performance in check. This is why the handset might just be another Windows Mobile handset and not something which we would recommend. Definitely not at that price.
Irrespective of the outcome and our experience of this review, we’re quite looking forward to what the other handsets have to offer and how they fare. We’re sincerely hoping it’s a very different experience.
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