Introduction
I’ve got this Sagem phone, but I’ve been suspicious of testing something else not so long before. And really, Bocha scrawled something for My411V and I thought that „c” in the name only means clamshell version and the two phones are all the same, but not. The other important thing coming out: by the time this review was written, this phone was the one of the cheapest Hungarian prepaid offer because of the „red” provider was selling two for the price of one.
These promotions combined with Sagem brand, hmm, well, are usually not the best omen of the phone in it. For this amount of money, only Motorola F3 can be bought, so I was surprised because the my411Cv looks pretty good. I looks like that Sagem signed up a new designer because they were coming out with cool stuffs in Barcelona.
The manufacturer forming part of Safran group is quasi French but the Chinese company called Bird helps them a lot, this can be kept in production. This is why Sagem phones can be doubtfully cheap and the quality is getting better and better. Slowly, but it does, they Chinese must be taken into account - just to mention one name: Huawei.
Exterior
Calling the my411Cv pretty would be breaking out into excesses, but it’s surprisingly fripperyless, fits into the current fashion, the design is fair. The combination of black and grey has no danger, the slightly rounded edges, the hidden secondary display and the camera in the drawn frame are making attractive general aspect. On the left side of the phone, a microSD slot can be found, it’s still rare in this ultra low-end segment.
On the right side, there are the volume-control buttons and the connector of the data cable. Behind of the darkness of the front, there is a monochrome display using blue letters. It’s not as hidden as it’s in at the Ericsson Z750i, but it’s still elegant.
Before opening the device, I was a bit afraid , I thought the interior is something ultra low-end fabrication, but it’s as elegant as the exterior. The keypad is cast in one, glistens like a mirror, backlight is blue, size is normal, adjustment is logical.
The back is vacant, only a Sagem logo can be find on it. We can feel on the quality of fabrication that it’s not a high-tech model in our hands, it’s creaking hard when we push the case.
Display, basic functions
Everything is cool till this point, but after turning the device on, the 128x160 pixels CSTN display comes to life, this makes us clean that it’s really a phone from the cheapest ones. The display is colorless and blurred, editing the contrast makes no help – we can only make it worse.
The Live menu constrained by the „red provider” just adds to it, it’s not celebrated for it’s beauty but logical. The doubtless advantage of Sagem phones is the dynamic memory partitioning, mainly at the contact list. You can add as many contacts here as you can.
There’s nothing special in message handling, T9 is available, the number of stored SMS messages can be up to 100. Writing on the keypad is much better than it looks like but the press-point has to be used to because it’s exactly nowhere. MMS is supported (100KB), dreaming about e-mail client would be nonsense in this category.
The calendar stand out from the organizer functions. It works in monthly, weekly and daily view, too. Events can be added up to the limit of the memory, numerous type of events can be differed. Different alarm tones can be attached to different types of events. Voice memoirs can be recorded by the dictaphone, this makes adding new notes very easy, it’s a character of Sagem, too. There’s no need hymning the praise of the stopper and the calculator, the alarm can store only one time and automatically repeats every given day until we turn it off.
Multimedia
The VGA resolution camera is the lamest optic used in mobile phones. In exchange, it works fine, but it can only make standing photos. Our little Sagem can record videos in 128x96 pixels resolution, it can’t make a perfect home-theater feeling even for the roadside flea-beetles living on Albanian dogs. The pictures done can be seen under, well... it’s all for this price.
The existence of music player is evident if the memory is expandable. The software itself is a very simple one, we choose the songs we would like to listen to from the memory card and it plays them one after the other. Equalizer is missing, all the options is about the way of repeat. It can’t run in the background, but it works at least.
There are five demos games, these can be downloaded from the referring site of Live – for charge. We are used to it. The size of the built-in memory is 10MB, it could easily handle the 1GB microSD card.
Data transfer, battery
The stuff only supports GPRS networks, but existence of Bluetooth can compensate this, because it’s a nice surprise for this price. If we invest into an USB cable (not included in the package), the operating system can work with that as a modem or mass storage.
The battery under the back looks extenuate also at the first sight. The only thing we know about it is: it’s Lithium-Ion, I’ve found no data about it’s capacity, anyway it works for 3 days with a charge if we handle it with care.
Summary? Sagem my411Cv is a surprisingly fair stuff for surprisingly low price. I would never thought that Bluetooth and expandable memory can be available in a phone costing 40 euros, chiefly not in a comparatively fair case. The lame display makes the overall view a bit worse, but it deserves a medal because we found it:
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| Sagem my411Cv |
Bog - Translated by EQMontoya
Specifications
| Sagem my411Cv | ||
 | Technology | GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz |
| Size | 86 x 43,3 x 18,5 mm | |
| Weight | 82 grams | |
| Display | 128 x 160 pixels, 16 bits color resolution, CSTN | |
| Contact list | dynamic | |
| SMS/MMS memory | 100 messages / 10 MB | |
| Other memory | microSD | |
| Java | yes | |
| Vibration | yes | |
| Calendar | yes | |
| Alarm | yes, in turned-off, too | |
| Calculator | yes | |
| GPRS/EDGE/3G | yes/no/no | |
| Push To Talk | no | |
| Infra/Bluetooth | no/yes v1.2 | |
| Predictive | T9 (hungarian) | |
| Voice dialing | no | |
| Voice recorder | yes, in the calendar | |
| Voice control | yes | |
| Currency converter | Yes | |
| FM radio | no | |
| Loudspeaker | yes | |
| Stock battery | Li-Ion | |
| Stand-by time | 250 hours | |
| Talk time | 3,5 hours | |
| Camera | VGA (128 x 96 pixels videos) | |
| POP3 e-mail | no | |
| WAP browser | yes | |
| HTML browser | no | |
| Games | demo | |
| Ringtones | MIDI, MP3 | |
| Operating system | no | |
| MP3 playing | yes | |
| Others | - | |
