Introduction
This is not the first Philips phone we’re reviewing. In fact new models are coming in continuously from XXL GSM. Usually myself and Bog are satisfied with them, so much that 9@9K is serving our chief editor since we’ve tested it. When we received a call about the new Xenium coming up I have immediately raised my hand virtually. There has been no problem with who should have it, as Bog is having fun with the latest Hello Kitty phone and Bocha doesn’t really like Philips phones.
I’ve made an estimate of the handset’s features. We know that, just like on the majority of Chinese phones, this has the MTK platform as well, the platform that has started moving from the full lamer category towards the average one. We can see that it’s being developed continuously; Bocha has even predicted that it will sooner or later live up to S40. 3G is no big deal from where it comes from, so the platform doesn’t support broadband data transfer.
We also know of Philips that they manufacture everything possible, for example chipsets as well, and some of these are used by other manufacturers (for example Samsung uses Philips chipsets). Engineers have been fine-tuning their chipset so long that they have discovered that the phone can work with nearly zero power. Of course they’ve kept the secret of this technology and so did it happen that nowadays one of the strongest reasons for buying a Philips phone is that it stays online for 1-2-6 months with a single charge. The other manufacturers also like to use similarly large numbers in their marketing material, but the truth is that today an average phone doesn’t have a standby time over 2-5 days. Philips phones, however, can really stay online for weeks. Of course we should not that such power consuming units like a WiFi antenna, or 3G are missing from these models. The box of this Philips also has the label promising up to one month standby, but there’s something else over there too: Dual SIM card mobile. Hmm…
Exterior
Just like Philips 9@9U, the subject of our review, 9@9W, also has a nice design. In order to ensure brand identity they’ve tried to stick to the original design. They’ve probably used a Hummer to run over 9@9U in the test labs and then decided that they won’t be paying for a new design, but keep this one. So the phone is wider and taller than U, but it’s rather flat. The materials and the colors are similar to the ones on the predecessor, although W has the top of its back panel made of metal. Under this we can find the 920 mAh battery, which is a bit weaker than the one in 9@9U.
On the front there is the landscape TFT display with a nearly 2” diagonal and 262 thousand colors at the average resolution of 176 x 220 pixels. The colors are bright and readability is acceptable in sunlight. The speaker is on the top of the front, it has the V-shape we’ve seen on other models as well. Below the display there is a metal part, just like on 9@9U, but this time it has a bronze color, it makes the phone look elegant. The keypad on the bottom is another copy-paste from the predecessor. The bottom of the handset, below the keys, becomes thinner, making the phone quite razor-like. On the top of the back there is the camera with a shiny circle around it, there is no label telling us the resolution. Below, on the shiny plastic metal part, there is the handsfree speaker and a dual-SIM label.
On the left we can see the volume control keys, while midway there is a discrete “Bluetooth” logo. Does one really have to print this on a phone in 2009? On the right there is the miniUSB connector, which has no cover this time, but above the microSD slot there is a small door, just like on Samsung phones.
The assembly quality is again all right, the case won’t be cracking or wobbling. The thickness of 12 mm is impressive, even more since we are told to have a standby time of a month and there is dual-SIM support. The materials have been improved, now the designers have used real metal as well. The whole thing is so okay, that we can feel something is fishy…
Menu, basic functions
I’ve already mentioned 9@9U lots of times before, as it’s a very similar phone. This is true for the software part as well, as that’s almost the same, besides that 9@9W has a landscape display, so the menu looks a bit different as well. At least the main menu, as it still has 12 icons, but they have a different layout, matching the landscape view. The submenus have a list view. In order to reduce power consumption we have white icons on a black background and unfortunately this cannot be changed. There are some animations implemented as well, but this won’t make us happier when we should be reading something on-screen in bright sunlight, as in this case manual shading is a must. We can change the wallpaper and that’s about all we can customize on the menu.
We can assign any menu item to the four directions of the navi buttons, so quick handling is guaranteed. Otherwise the menu has a logical structure, those who have their first Philips phone won’t be having any problems with usability. One can’t really get lost in it as it’s no high-end model, with thousands of features.
After turning on the phone we’ll be shocked for sure: on one hand the Philips engineers, after lots of experimenting, have managed to find the two most annoying notes to be played as a startup sound. The Nokia tune has at least some harmony – on the other hand the phone will immediately ask us to choose which SIM slot would we want to use. Yes, yes. The handset supports two SIM cards, but not at the same time. When switching between the two cards the handset gets restarted and we will be available on our inactive number only if we have redirected it to the active one. We’ve got back to the times of Nokia 3310 and friends, which had dual-SIM back panels. Of course this way it’s easier to provide a standby time of a month and if we look at the average standby times of the two cards than one has a month, the other has infinite. Anyway, I don’t really know why this handset even exists when almost every Chinese phone can handle two SIM cards at the same time. Let’s not mention quality right now and the double power consumption thanks to the two GSM antennas. I’ve been much happier with a model that works for two weeks but handles both cards. Philips made a serious mistake with this one, even more since they don’t mention this anywhere on the web, so many people could be fooled.
The phonebook can store 500 contacts, has the usual Philips system, we can store lots of information in it. In terms of messaging it also has the usual things: SMS, MMS and email client. Typing is assisted by Philips’ predictive text entry system, which has some exotic languages supported as well.
Multimedia, others
In the top corner on the back of the phone we can see the 2 megapixel camera with fixed focus. We can take photos at a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels, while videos can be recorded in CIF (352 x 288) resolution at 15 fps, which is not much at all. Image quality isn’t very good, and the phone’s even slow, it takes 4-5 minutes to hear the shutter sound after taking the picture. The list of settings is not long, we can tamper a bit with ISO quality and white balance.
The viewfinder is portrait, some test pictures can be seen below.
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The musical part is rather okay. There is a hotkey on the right that takes us to the music player at once and this can run in the background. There is still no radio, which is not nice, just like the headset which connects to the miniUSB port, so those would like to use a 3.5 mm headset, instead of the medium quality default one, will have to acquire a converter. The handsfree is loud as hell and it doesn’t have much distortion.
The PIM functions are the usual ones of the MTK platform, so we’ll have a calendar that can store multiple types of entries. There is an alarm clock as well, a notepad, an e-book reader and some games as well. The phone supports Java as well, we might just have problems due to the display.
Data communication, battery
The handset is quad-band (850, 900, 1800, 1900), but I haven’t been satisfied with voice quality during talk. I’ve heard everyone quite well, but the others have heard me only if I’ve been talking really loud. I had no such problem when using the headset, although in this case everything echoed. I hope this has been just a unique problem, as I’ve never seen such a thing on a Philips before. There is not much to use for data transfer: no 3G, GPRS is the fastest (only class 10). We’ll have a WAP 2.0 browser to use with this, but nowadays this is not enough for a good browsing experience.
When connecting the phone to a USB port we’ll notice that it supports only 1.1. Well, this won’t be a problem when tampering with the freaking huge 11 MB of memory (10 of which is free, even when it’s empty), but we shouldn’t use this for the memory card. By the way, 9@9W can work as a webcam as well.
We’ll get a 920 mAh Li-Ion battery under the cover, this keeps the phone on for a really long time. Of course we haven’t been testing it for a month, but based on my experience the little Philips will have no problem staying on for 2-3 weeks. Thanks to the scam-like dual-SIM feature and the bad voice quality it won’t get any award, they will have to work on these, but it would be enough to have a look at a neighbor crap-producing Chinese company for ideas.
Gubro
Philips 9@9W has been provided by XXL GSM.
Specifications
| Philips 9@9W | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 103 x 52 x 12 mm | |
| Weight | 90 grams | |
| Available colors | Black | |
| Display | ||
| Internal display diagonal | 1.93” | |
| Internal display resolution | 176 x 220 pixels | |
| Internal display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 262.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 500 | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | 200 / 300 KB | |
| Internal memory | 11 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps / no | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | no / no | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | no / yes | |
| WiFi | no | |
| USB | 1.1 (miniUSB) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | no / no | |
| GPS receiver | no | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | yes | |
| Vibra function | yes | |
| Built-in handsfree | yes | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | no / no | |
| Sound recorder | yes | |
| Alarm clock | yes, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | smartABC | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Philips | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / no | |
| E-mail client | yes | |
| Java | yes | |
| Games | 3 | |
| Currency converter | yes | |
| Extra software | - | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 2.0 megapixel, fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | no | |
| Video recording | yes (H.264 format, 352 x 288 pixels) | |
| Music player | yes, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | yes, presets only | |
| FM radio | yes, can run in background | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 920 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 720 hours | |
| Talk time | 8 hours | |
| Others | ||
| separate dual SIM support | ||
