HTC Panda - the mistake

Introduction, packaging

HTC is not one of those companies who are giving away their products at a really low price, but looking at their price/quality ratio one might find them quite reasonable. About half a year ago they launched, however, a palm, whose price wasn’t really in concordance with its features. As all of you have possibly guessed, this was the phone which is now the subject of our review, the Panda.

The device codenamed P6300 is sold by the manufacturer as a business product. What does this mean in case of a handset running a Pocket PC operating system? Neither the high quality exterior, nor the high-speed data transfer technologies, as most of us would think, or at least HTC doesn’t think so. Panda cannot be proud of such features, it is better than its brothers in only one category: it has a larger display. Well it’s not as large as similar phones’ a couple of years ago: it has a 3.5” diagonal, but it still surpasses the combo handsets of other manufacturers, which usually have a 2.8” screen. A few years ago the situation was different, as back then there was a demand for simple PDAs, lacking phone functions, which had a display with a size around 4 inches. Of course times do change and from all large manufacturers practically only HP has still to offer such a device and that is that.

The gadget, getting his name from a mammal from the family of bears, came in the usual HTC box, whose size nicely demonstrated to the happy owner the size of his phone too. The list of accessories is the usual: in addition to the sync cable and the charger we find a stereo headset, a leather case, a display protector foil and of course inevitable CD and handbook. I think a cradle would also have been due to the business phone.

Hirdetés

Exterior

Judging the exterior is something really subjective, that’s why I don’t like to make statements of great importance regarding this aspect of the tested device. Anyway I can say one thing for sure about the Panda: one can say lots of things about it, except that it’s elegant. Instead it is large, almost in an awkwardly manner, at least if we compare it to the devices following current trends. Because of this it seems as if it would be a many years old phone, it belongs more to those phones in style too, which is of course not a problem. It weighs exactly 200 grams, its size is 129.7 x 69.8 x 18.8 mm.

So the display is 3.5” wide, its resolution is 240 x 320 pixels. In my opinion a VGA resolution would be due to such a size, the number of pixels seems a bit low. As a result picture quality is not very good, although it’s sure that it is readable. Thanks to the large body of the device, we can’t really say that the display dominates the front, which feeling is even more emphasized by the small shortcut buttons, two of which are above the display, surrounding the small size, medium-quality speaker. Of course there are buttons under the display too, which are as tiny as their companions from above. The d-pad is circle-shaped, it can be handled without any problems, just like all the others – or at least by those who have a small hand.

The most prominent part of the back cover is the silver circle surrounding the 2 megapixel, fixed-focus camera. The detachable part has the same design, its surface is reticular. The cover is of plastic at all parts of the phone; the designers used the harder, bit slippery type – so much about elegancy.

On top, between the sizeable power button and the infra port, we can find the memory card slot. It uses standard SD cards, which is something very positive, since with the help of an adapter we can use a micro, as well as a miniSD card. The holder of the stylus is in the top right corner; the size of the stylus, compared to the size of the handset, is ridiculously small – if the phone is as large as it is, they could have included a large, comfortable pen with it.

There is not much of a squash on the right side of the device, only the built-in loudspeaker and the exposure button of the camera are placed here.

There aren’t many more things on the bottom either: HTC ExtUSB connector, microphone and reset-gap. On the left only the shortcut button of the sound recorder and the volume slider have been placed.

Interior, operating system, software

Panda has Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC Phone Edition as an OS, which is incomprehensible because when the device was launched, Windows Mobile 6 Professional was already available. The CPU is a Samsung SC32442, which is renowned for its weak video playback capabilities amongst other things. Most of HTC’s devices use an Intel or a Texas Instruments CPU, last time Trinity and TyTN had a Samsunsg chip. The size of the RAM/ROM pair is 125/256 MB, almost 100 and 170 MB are accessible, so there can be no complaints about that.

We measured system speed with Anton Tomow Pocket PC Mark, the results are shown in the table below. The machine produced the expected results in all means, moreover the mark for the memory test is surprisingly high.

Taking a look at the size of the accessible dynamic memory we can see that there are not many programs installed by default on the machine. Fortunately we can find the HTC task manager at the settings, with its help the X button will close running applications for sure. The list of software includes Adobe Reader and ZIP, there is nothing else extra. Only the multimedia player named Audio Manager has been brought over from the TouchFLO system; I will write in more detail about this in the multimedia part.

Phone calls, data communication

Basically I had no problems with phone calls, I found sound quality adequate. However I had problems running Skype, it only used the loudspeaker, not the phone’s standard speaker, which is not really practical I might say. All phones connected to phoning are all from the manufacturer, excepting the dialing screen, which is of bamboo… I mean of green color, just like everything else on the phone. Messages are handled by Outlook, whose email client supports authenticated IMAP servers and attachments too. The capacity of the phonebook is limited only by the size of the internal memory, even if not by the sky, so we can store almost an infinite number of entries, furthermore there a lots of extra fields at our disposal. There are no factory preset profiles (this can be easily solved afterwards), but the device is capable of ringing and vibrating at the same time.

As compared to being a business model, the Panda has serious issues with mobile data transfer technologies, as it only supports GPRS of these, it doesn’t even have EDGE, 3G and HSDPA remaining a dream. The GSM module is tri-band (900/1800/1900 MHz), the Bluetooth is of version 2.0 and there is WiFi 802.11b/g and an infrared port.

Multimedia, battery, conclusion

The camera on the back of the phone is a 2 megapixel one, with fixed focus. The highest available resolution at photos is of 1600 x 1200, while in case of videos this value is 352 x 288 pixels. The software is rather good, it has a decent number of settings: we can alter white balance, light metering (center or average), the amount of jpeg compression (in 4 steps), there is a self-exposure function, effects and moreover, there is a macro mode, which can be turned on from the software. Picture quality – as it is visible on the test pictures – is completely average.

We can play back our music files with the HTC Audio Manager software, which can filter the files by artist, album and genre and handles playlists too. There is no equalizer, as the separate software from newer HTC mobiles is missing from the Panda. The list of settings includes only shuffle and repeat modes. It is a nice feature, however, that with the help of the aforementioned software we can instantly set our music files as ringtone. Sound quality is really weak when on loudspeaker; the headset is of medium quality.

Under the bit loose back cover we can find the battery with a capacity of 1500 mAh. Probably a lot of bamboo fits in it, as it fed the Giant Panda for 2-3 days without problems, which, as we know, eats 10-20 kilograms of the mentioned plant, because it is not very rich in nutrients. From this point of view, the P6300 is better then a usual device.

Small difference in price, large in features

Conclusion: as it turns out from the review the Panda isn’t an overall bad handset, it is just huge and outdated from many points of view – operating system, data communication, poor display. It however excels in one thing, although in not a positive way: its price is currently about 500-560 € for which… well, to say the least, one could buy a better one.

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

The handset was provided by MobilX.
The device can be bought online at www.mobilx.hu .
Info line: +36-52-501-868

Specifications

HTC Touch Panda (P6300)
	Technology	GSM/GPRS /900/1800/1900 MHz
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC Phone Edition
	Size	69.8 x 129.7 x 18.8 mm
	Weight	200 grams
	Processor	400 MHz Samsung SC34224
	ROM/RAM	256/128 MB (175/100 MB free to use)
	Display	3.5” diagonal, 240 x 320 pixels resolution, 16 bit color depth touchscreen
	Expandability	SD/MMC (not SDHC compatible)
	WiFi	802.11b/g
	Infra / Bluetooth	1.2 / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	none
	Audio	HTC ExtUSB port, microphone, mono speaker
	Camera	2 megapixels, fixed focus, macro mode
	Battery	1500 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Other	-