Airis T482 - overpriced basics

Introduction, packaging

Airis T482… where should I begin? I have received quite a lot of emails regarding the handset in the last couple of days, as we’re talking about a device that we know from pictures, has a nice design and looks quite smart. To tell the truth after having a quick look at the specs I too have been excited, but I was again disappointed after some more in-depth analysis.

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Last year I have thought about T620 that not many people know the name Airis in this region. This statement is not very true now, as the manufacturer’s cheap PDAs have invaded the market, and so the brand has been associated with the adjective “cheap”. That’s why most people have such an attitude towards T482, and they won’t be disappointed when looking at the price tag, which is around €330 EUR. Anyhow, before we go running happily to the store to buy it, we should sit down and think a little bit about what do we want to get for this money. It’s sure that two years ago we couldn’t get anything, at least not a phone-PDA with GPS and WiFi. Today, however, the situation is different: here’s LG KS20 for example, which has a quite unstable price, about €285-€330 EUR, which although doesn’t have GPS, but it supersedes any Airis device from any other aspect. If we don’t want to got that far in terms of features, then we can take a look at E-TEN X500+, which can be used for navigation, has a VGA display and costs exactly as much as T482. What’s the point to this? That Airis has to show something else besides its price-tag.

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The sample device, provided by GPS-Trade Kft. came in a pretty large box, that seemed quite demanding at first. There would be no problems with the yellow-blue colors, but the picture on the cover is not that unique: it shows three youngsters looking amazed at a fourth one with a cell phone in his hand (which looks very much like a Nokia to me). Of course, Airis is cheap, but taste is not a matter of money. The large size of the box is unjustified, as T482 comes only with a headset that looks like a rubber hammer, a miniUSB cable and a charger. Oh yeah, and a Memorex CD, in paper case, with a sticker on it that reads: Airis T482 PDA Phone user. Impressive, isn’t it?

Hirdetés

Exterior

Airis handsets were never renown for their beauty: their exterior could be best described as one-of-a-dozen. You just look at them and nothing comes into your mind. T482 is a small progress from this point of view, it’s evident that the designers have now been struggling to embed some design elements this time, which has been kind of successful, as I can’t say that it’s ugly. It is large, however, it weighs 160 grams, and the 108 x 60 x 17.6 mm size is no beauty spot either. In terms of materials used we can see the typical “low-end”, soft, rubber-like plastic everywhere. Of course after the introduction we know that this is not necessary in this category either.

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On top of the front we see a shiny part, which covers the speaker, and the infra port (theoretically). On the right of it the status LED is blinking, while under this we can see the 3.2” QVGA display. It’s quality is nothing out of the ordinary, although it might seem a bit pixelated compared to smaller screens with the same resolution – the colors, however, are all right. In the bottom we can find the well-known group of navigation controls: a five-way navigation button, call accept/reject keys, OK-, Windows- and two function keys. Strangely, the microphone is under these, but this doesn’t influence sound quality.

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The back is not conceited at all, besides the speaker we can find the 2 megapixel, fixed focus camera here. At the bottom there is a large WM logo, just to let us know about the situation. The telescopic stylus is in the bottom right corner, if we can, as it’s quite hard to pull out. It’s about 11 cm long, so it won’t prove to be too short.

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On the left side we can see a hotkey with a GPS label. This doesn’t have any applications assigned to by default. Below this there is a microSD slot, that is not SDHC-compatible, so it supports cards only up to 2 GB in size. The power button and the 2.5 mm jack output is also here, while on the bottom there is only the miniUSB port.

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On the opposite side there is the hook for the wristband, the volume control buttons and the camera’s exposure button. On top there isn’t a thing.

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Hardware, operating system

The PDA’s operating system is Windows Mobile 6 Professional, which runs on a 416 MHz Marvell PXA270 CPU, 64 MB RAM and 128 MB ROM. Of these we can use 25 MB for running programs and 54 MB for storing data, which is not too much. Here I have to mention that E-TEN X500+ also has 64 MB RAM, of which we can access 24 MB, although there are tons of extra software running on it, which are missing from T482… it’s really a mystery. I had no real problems with the system’s speed during everyday usage, although the synthetic benchmark software didn’t have very good results.

If we compare the results of Airis with the other devices I have mentioned in the introduction, we can see that there are serious differences – the only exception being the graphical subsystem, where T482 had great results: this will come in handy when running iGO8. Pocekt PC Mark’s CPU test have, however, had unjustifiably low results. VsBenchmark results are quite poor, T482 could only outscore Asus’ 200 MHz freak (P527), it didn’t even get close to E-TEN devices with a Samsung CPU.

Can’t say too many good things about the software either. Besides the factory applications there are practically no extras, we might call only ClearVue PDF an extra, but this is not too much. We shouldn’t even be dreaming about a task manager or other similar delicacies. There has been enough creativity for an Airis Today theme however.

Phone calls, data transfer, GPS

I had no technical problems during phone calls, the quad-band GSM module (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) did its job nicely. It’s another thing that this 160 gram gadget, that makes us think of a smaller brick when looking at its size, is quite uncomfortable to use for such things. The software used for calls is well-known, while Outlook is responsible both for storing contacts and messaging, which means that we can store lots of extra entries for every contact and we can have a practically unlimited number of contacts. The e-mail client of course supports authenticated IMAP servers and attachments too.

Wireless Manager has a unique design and it looks quite cool. This is where we can turn on the 802.11b/g-compatible WiFi, the A2DP-enabled 2.0 Bluetooth and flight mode. We can use EDGE or GPRS for data transfer if there would be no WiFi network in range.

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The built-in GPS receiver is a SiRF-Star III, 20 channel model. Signal acquisition is reasonably fast and I didn’t have problems with stability either. I have used iGO 2006SE for testing.

Camera, battery, summary

The camera has a resolution of 2 megapixels and has fixed focus and macro mode. The highest possible resolution for pictures is 1600 x 1200 and 320 x 240 pixels for videos. Before taking pictures we can tamper with white balance, JPEG compression, contrast, brightness, color saturation and exposure correction. The pictures can also be enhanced with a couple of effects, or in case we need it, we can also turn on the self timer of image sequencing. Picture quality is medium, the photos are quite noisy.

We can use Windows Media Player for playing back music, which means that we don’t have much settings. Sound quality is medium through the speakers and on the headset too. The speaker distorts on a high sound volume, while the headset hisses and it’s not loud enough. And it also looks terrible.

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The battery has a capacity of 1500 mAh, this might be the single positive aspect of the phone. It has an uptime of 2-3 days at normal usage, while it should be charged daily when used heavily.

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Summary: after reading the review probably all of you know clearly that Airis T482 is a completely average device, it is characterized by a poor use of materials and small numbers. It’s quite good in terms of data transfer, the lack of 3G might be a negative aspect, but besides this, it doesn’t excel in anything, as it’s slow and doesn’t have too much memory. For all this we have to pay €330 EUR at the moment of writing this article. If it would cost about €200 EUR then I would immediately give it a Recommended award, while if it would have a price around €245 EUR then I would award it as a Cool product. But for its current price I just can’t recommend it for anyone. For this sum one could get an E-TEN X500+ with the exact same features, it’s a much better choice. Neither should those be thinking on buying it who are looking for a Pocket PC with a built-in GPS, as for about €285 EUR you can get a Mio P560, and that’s way much better. In a couple of months its price will surely decrease, and then it will be a good buy!

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

Airis T482 has been provided by GPS-Trade Kft., thanks!

Specifications

Airis T482
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6 Professional
	Size	108 x 17.6 x 60 mm
	Weight	165 grams
	CPU	416 MHz Marvell PXA270
	ROM/RAM	128 / 64 MB (54 / 25 MB free to use)
	Display	3.2” diagonal, 240 x 320 pixels resolution, 16 bit color depth touchscreen
	Expandability	microSD (not SDHC-compatible)
	WiFi	802.11b/g
	Infra / Bluetooth	present / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	20 channel SiRF-Star III
	Audio	2.5 mm jack output, microphone, mono speaker
	Camera	2 megapixels, fixed focus, macro mode
	Battery	1500 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Other	-