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Porsche P’9522 - its news won't precede it

I would have never thought that there will be a second Porsche phone. But it's here.

Introduction

I have started the review of the predecessor model (P’9521) the same way, telling you that this Porsche is not that Porsche. This is not the phone manifestation of 911 Carrera (and otherwise, it would be more like a Cayenne if we want to look for something similar). The Porsche mobile phone has been made by Porsche Design, which of course has the same roots as the company that makes the sports cars, but it’s not Porsche Design that draws the taillights of GT2. But they design all other kinds of stuff like water boiler, vacuum cleaner, navigation systems, electronic devices.

Porsche Design P9522
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And now they have created the design of their second phone. Just like in the case of the first one they have teamed up again with the once French manufacturer, Sagem. Many of you might scream in pain right now, as Sagem entering the market of luxury devices is like Crocodile Dundee appearing as the main guest of the opera ball, but opposed to this terrifying idea, P’9522 is not a bad phone at all. I might even dare to say that it is the most feature-filled device that has ever left the Chinese factory.

Porsche Design P9522
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The gadget that came from XXL GSM costs about 550 euros. This also means that we probably won’t be see one in the hands of every guy on the street, and also tells that the name Porsche Design has a price. It’s cheaper than a Motorola Aura, it costs about as much as Nokia 8 series handsets, but it’s much more unique than those. It’s a prestige product, but differently, because Sagem packed quite a lot of features under the case of P’9522.

Exterior

The packaging is elegant, the black and white box is nicely padded with lots of soft sponge and some great things. There are cool little booklets under the phone, the warranty card is made of plastic (this is a really elegant solution), and the headset with a remote control can be taken apart, so we can use any kind of other headset. The other stuff that are included in the pack are a 2 GB microSD card, a data cable and the charger.

Porsche Design P9522
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The phone looks like if it has been cut with an axe, the silver parts are made of brushed metal. The black panel on the front is made of plastic, but we won’t be touching this a lot, we will usually have a cold feeling when holding the phone in our hand. Porsche Design is known for its clean lines and shapes, which is true in the case of P’9522 as well, so it’s kind of annoying to have the small things necessary on a phone placed randomly, with not much coherence. The buttons on the side look dumb (camera and volume), while the data connector banished to the right side doesn’t fit the image at all. The back side is not very good either, the camera, the flash, the speaker and the slide that lets us take the back off are also incoherently placed.

Porsche Design P9522

On the front the phone looks really unique and clean. Beauty is really subjective, I’d rather say hmm than wow. The black, stripe-like buttons remind me of Nokia N78. There is a strange sensor sitting between the red and green buttons: this is the fingerprint-reader.

Porsche Design P9522

The assembly quality is just like I would have expected of this category, P’9522 is a massive, solid brick, made of premium-quality materials. As for me, I’d really be worrying about the case scratching on metal surfaces, but as I really wanted to give the phone back in mint condition, I didn’t attack it with a screwdriver.

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Display, menu

The display kicks ass. It kicks some serious ass. The 240 x 400 pixels large screen is made with the AMOLED technology, it has a view angle of nearly 180 degrees, it’s crystal clear and it’s even a touchscreen. It will sound strange, but it’s the best display in its category, which is really surprising if we know that it’s made by Sagem. Holy cow, as Duke Nukem would say it.

Porsche Design P9522
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This also means that tapping the screen is important to control the device, and I think this is one of the worst solutions I’ve ever seen. The main screen is very promising, there is a quicklaunch taskbar that can be moved horizontally on the bottom, we can select the features to have displayed here. The main menu with 12 icons also seems nice, the icons are unique, but still self-explanatory and tapping one we get to a submenu, which has a list view.

Porsche Design P9522

Here we’ll notice that no matter how hard we keep tapping the display, the software ignores it. Gently stroking the screen up and down will let us scroll to the function we want, after which we tap on the Select label in the bottom left corner, and thus we are finally granted entry to the submenu we want. This is the better case, as sometimes we don’t see a simple Select in the corner, but we have Options and tapping this an even smaller menu pops up, which usually has Validate as its first item, but sometimes it’s not and we can keep on scrolling with the quite method I’ve described before, and only after this can we make our will come true. Messaging is the most problematic part, as it’s just not logical that after selecting an SMS from the list why do we have to ask for options and then confirm our selection just to let us read a message.

Porsche Design P9522

On the previous Porsche handset the fingerprint-reader between the call handling keys could be used for navigation, so I’ve been really shocked to notice that this is not available this time. The volume control keys on the side are also completely inactive when moving around the menus. It’s a sad thing that the otherwise fast, nice and logical menu system dies with the usability, which, no matter its advantages, cannot be supported by the handset’s judgment and no other positive aspect can make us forget this flaw.

Basic functions

In the contact list we can notice the usual Sagem features. The capacity is unlimited, which means that we can use all of the internal memory for storing contacts. This has a capacity of 25 megs, which is more than enough, even more if we store multimedia contents on the memory card. The number of extra fields is just what I’ve expected, searching is fast, but selecting the entry we want is again done by smoothly stroking the screen, which is okay when sitting calmly, but it’s a real challenge when walking on the street or sitting in a moving vehicle.

Porsche Design P9522

I’ve already mentioned the navigation anomalies at messaging. There are no problems with functionality, although both the editor and the reader have a very plain screen. When entering text we’ll notice another problem: typing hurts. The small, rice-like buttons are quite sharp, hurt our fingertips, but besides that they are easy to use, even in spite their design.

Porsche Design P9522

It’s strange, but there’s no email client, and I found no explanation why can the phone store exactly 700 SMS messages, not as if this wouldn’t be enough.

Porsche Design P9522

The calendar has a very plain month view, and we can only add new events in the week view, but the notes can be sound notes as well. Sagem again. The alarm clock can store a single alarm time, which I feel a bit too few on such a classy phone. There is no stopwatch, just a countdown timer, while the calculator, which appears in the main menu, can be used for conversions as well.

Multimedia, fingerprints

The five megapixel camera has a small flash too, and it theoretically has autofocus as well. We also got to know that the phone has a gyroscope, as when rotating the phone, the picture display is also rotated. The settings, accessible from the bottom row, are the usual ones, we can tamper with brightness, light metering, focusing, lots of effects, flash settings and a self timer. The pictures can be geo-tagged as well, as the handset features a GPS receiver. I’ve been really startled by the theoretically existing autofocus, as the shoot key on the side doesn’t have two positions. You just press it and it takes the picture. That’s all it can do. I’ve switched to macro mode, but I didn’t see any difference at all, and you can see that on the test pictures below.

Here’s another example that the number of pixels is just one of the lots of parameters that characterize an image. The phone performs quite well in the case of long-distance images, but it just couldn’t take sharp images when focusing to a short distance.

Porsche Design P9522

There are no serious issues on the musical part. Sound quality is pretty good on the handsfree, we have an equalizer, all kinds of effects and the player can run in the background. There is no sorting by ID3 tags, we can put our songs in folders instead. The headset is upper-medium quality, but it can be taken apart so we can use any kind of headphone. There is an FM radio as well, and we of course have to connect a headset in order to use it. When playing back music, videos or viewing picture, the phone rotates the picture if we tilt the phone, which is mostly handy when watching a film. There are tons of Porsche videos on the 2 GB card, which is no surprise.

Porsche Design P9522

I would never consider using the fingerprint reader, although all the information on the phone can be locked and we can access them only after properly placing the proper finger. In order to make this work we have to register our finger, which require at least three strokes and we should do this with the center part of our finger, or the software won’t recognize it. If we managed to do it we can assign a feature or a speed dial number to all ten fingers.

Data transfer, GPS, summary

By using the supplied USB cable or the 2.0 Bluetooth, we will have no problem moving the data stored on the phone (or better said: on the memory card). There is, however, no 3G, EDGE is the fastest data transfer protocol supported. But here’s the surprise: the gadget has WLAN support and it works. Of course we will need a proper browser for that, and let’s wonder again: there is an Opera Mini pre-installed in the internet menu. And it even has landscape mode.

Porsche Design P9522

I have mentioned before that the phone has a GPS as well, and this usually comes with software. As a Java application has been required, the developers chosen Wayfinder, which works only if it can download required information from the web, so this will mean some data traffic costs.

Porsche Design P9522

The 880 mAh battery keeps the phone online for two-three days, which is average. Using the proprietary Sagem data connector in such a premium phone is quite disappointing, but at least the phone can be charged from the PC as well, through the USB cable.

Porsche Design P9522
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Summary. If I don’t take the price of the handset into consideration, then it has only one serious issue (besides the lots of small ones), which is usability. One could get used to it, but the point of touchscreens would be to make them simple, logical and functional at least in the menu system. We don’t know who has though of this kind of usage logic, but unfortunately it makes the phone really hard to use, even though Porsche P’9522 is a really feature-filled device in its category.

Bog

Porsche P9521 has been provided by XXL GSM. The handset can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.

Specifications

Porsche P'9522
General
TechnologyGSM
Size112 x 49 x 12 mm
Weight115 grams
Available colorsBlack-silver
Display
Display diagonal2.8”
Display resolution240 x 400 pixels
Display typeOLED
Number of colors262 thousand
Memory
Phonebook capacitydynamic
SMS memory / max. MMS size700 / 300 KB
Internal memory25 MB
Memory expandabilitymicroSD
Data transfer
Frequency bands850/900/1800/1900 MHz
GPRS / EDGEClass 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps)
UMTS / HSDPAno / no
IrDA / Bluetoothno / 2.0 (A2DP too)
WiFiyes
USByes
Push-to-talk / RSSno / no
GPS receiveryes
Basic functions
Profilesyes
Vibra functionyes
Built-in handsfreeyes
Voice dialing / voice commandsno / no
Sound recorderonly in the calendar
Alarm clockyes, also when turned off
Predictive text entryT9
Software
PlatformSagem
WAP / HTML browser2.0 / Opera Mini
E-mail clientno
Javayes, MIDP 2.0
Gamesnone of them
Currency converteryes
Extra softwareWayfinder
Multimedia
Main camera5 megapixels, autofocus, flash
Secondary camerano
Video recordingQCIF
Music playeryes, can run in background
Equalizeryes
FM radioyes
Battery
Main battery880 mAh Li-Ion
Standby time300 hours
Talk time4 hours
Others
fingerprint-reader, gyroscope

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