Pantech PN-820 Review

Windows based smartphones are gaining more and more momentum each day. AT&T and Verizon each carry two different Windows Mobile for Smartphones devices – one with full QWERTY keyboard and one flip. Verizon’s line of WM devices also includes four WM for Pocket PCs. The main between them and WM for Smartphones is the lack of touch screen support in the latter.

The Pantech PN-820 is slightly bulky flip phone with stub expandable antenna and dual-color displays. Its rival in the Verizon’s line is the Motorola Q. Even though both devices are WM for Smartphones based, their target audience is very different. The Q is mainly a messaging device, wider and longer compared to the PN-820, with full QWERTY keyboard. The PN-820 looks and feel more like a regular clamshell device, rather then like a Smartphone and here lies the main different with the Q. The Pantech is suitable for people who do occasional messaging and do not require a full keyboard, but want to take advantage of the feature Windows Mobile OS offers:
-    Easy synchronization with Microsoft Outlook – contacts, notes, tasks, calendar
-    Large software base
-    Easy work with Microsoft office documents

From the outside, the PN-820 looks like an regular clamshell device. The front shell features the 1.3-mega pixel camera with LED flash to it and the 1.1 inch external display. It is TFT type, with small 96x96 pixels resolution which is very adequate for displaying service information such as battery status, signal strength, appointments due or called ID information. The phone does not offer any kind of visual notification (usually a blinking LED) for missed calls, messages or appointments. In order to check the phone’s status without opening the shell, any of the side keys can be presses which will trigger the external display to light up for at full power for about 2 second, then about 3 seconds ½ brightness and then goes completely black. The main’s screen backlight duration can be adjusted from the settings, but not the front LCD one and given it is only fully lit for 3 seconds, this might create some issues where the screen goes off before you can view it.
In direct sunshine, the screen is not always visible and it should be tilted in different directions until it is at visible angle.

The flip opening/closing action is smooth and easy in both directions. Opening with one hand-only is also achievable but requires more effort then using both hands. To prevent slamming during opening, there is a rubber cushioning installed on the top the hinge, which greatly reduces the annoying “bang”. Two smaller ones are also trying to absorb the energy during flip closes but still very noticeable “bang” is heard if not closed gently.

Opening the shell reveals the internal 2.2” TFT display with the standard for WM Smartphones resolution of 240x320 pixels. As pointed earlier, the Motorola Q’s display is in landscape view, while the one here is with regular, horizontal orientation. Even though WM 5 allows landscape viewing, it is still primarily designed for landscape view and in some cases not all information can be displayed and some other issues arise. In this sense, the regular screen orientation the PN-820 utilized is a plus.

Its main screen reproduced images are clear, with saturated colors but lacks brightness. There is not even an option to adjust it up or down. In direct sunlight it is of course a lot worse and like the external display, the whole phone must be tilted until a contain angle is reached where the screen is visible well.



The keypad is located below the display. It starts with two soft-keys with Home-button which takes you to the stand-by screen. Below them is the 5-way navigation pad. It is pressed easy and offers very good tactile response. Even though not a major issue, sometimes we were not sure which direction we are about to press as the pad is completely flush and there is no way to distinguish each direction. The OK buttons is not raised but is made of flush plastic, while the surrounding directional-keys are metal with circular lines which contributes for easily distinguishing the OK from the nav-pad.

Next are the two SEND and END keys. Those two keys are the most often used ones and we are always happy to see them as large as possible like it is the case here. Between them is a smaller, Clear button which also double as Back.

Below those keys starts the numeric keypad. We have not complain here as well – the keys require about average force to be pressed, after which distinctive “click” is observed which gives the consumer feedback of successful key-press.

The left side houses the miniSD memory slot. The first time you insert the memory card please note that it needs to go in upside down – or the card’s bottom side should face up. If you try to insert it the regular way, it would go in only half-way. Below it is the volume rocker. It is well raises, easily felt and pressed during conversation.

The right side has two keys, the top of which starts the camera, and bottom launches Quick List or when held longer invokes the Recording. Those are not soft-keys and their functionality can not be changed. The Quick List allows for fast profile change, key or device lock, power off or staring of the Wireless Manager.



On the top of the phone is positioned a 2.5mm headset jack and a lanyard hole next to it. Even though more and more manufacturers these days move to the standard miniUSB port on their phones, the PN-820 still uses proprietary jack located on its bottom for charger/computer connection.

As the Pantech PN-820 in most part is standard WM5 device, some parts the next pages will be taken from previous reviews.

Interface:

Pantech PN-820 is a standard Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone and the software review as a whole will not be a review of the phone, but rather of the operating system used in many different models.
The operating system is generally similar to that for pocket PC phones and to the computer desktop version but at the same time it is considerably different. For all that, it will be easier for people who are more experienced with such appliances to navigate in it.
The home-screen can be personalized in several ways, but we will consider the one called ‘Windows default’: in standby it is active and contains links to various applications; after the system information there is a bar with large icons representing links (unfortunately even after holding the cursor upon them no information appears as to what they link to) and under them - hour/alarm, upcoming appointments from the calendar, profile and availability of new messages are visualized.
The ‘main’ menu is visualized as a grid of nine icons (with shortcuts from the keyboard), which change their appearance when pointed at. Unfortunately they look rather ‘square’, somehow plain and not eye- catching. Since the menu contains more than 9 icons instead of scrolling you will have to go to the next page by using the ‘more’ option. You can get back by pushing the keyboard ‘C’ button. Submenus are visualized as lists and have digital shortcuts as well.
Applying various color schemes can somewhat personalize the appearance of your menus.
As a whole the navigation is logical and one can easily orientate oneself. The phone processor does a good job and navigation in the menu is fast, without tedious delays.

Phonebook:

As a whole the phonebook is well structured but we can make some critical remarks about it as well: its capacity depends solely on the available memory, which means that in practice you can save an unlimited number of contacts. For each there are numerous fields to be filled, including several phone numbers and e-mails, as well as personal photos and melodies to be shown and played at the time of a call. All the contacts are visualized as a list with an indication on the right as to the type of the number (m – mobile, w – work, etc.).
Looking a contact up can be initiated from two locations (the contact list and the home screen) and in two ways – typing digits for NUMBER or typing letters by pressing each button once (a predictive text input system is activated). Looking up contacts from the contact list is rather unenjoyable: your exact input is not displayed until you arrive at a case of no concurrence, which does not quite make any sense – if you thought you made a mistake when typing, there is no way to make sure you did, so you must delete everything and start anew.
From the home screen the entered digits are displayed. The concurrences (regardless as to number or name) are visualized below and the exact concurrencies are highlighted. As opposed to Blackberry Pearl if the concurrence is of a word, the text you are typing in will remain in the form of digits and will not change. As a whole looking up from here is convenient, fast, trouble-free and leads to good results.

Organizer:


The organizer under Windows is relatively well set. Its design is intended to be readily compatible with the Outlook on your computer, therefore there is a full functionality. A few clicks are enough to add notes to the calendar for a certain day (one can add reminders, too) and those that are near in time will be visualized on your home screen.
There is not much difference when working with tasks either – you can easily add a new one or assign a ‘completed’ status to an old one. Though it may seem a bit strange to us, there is no option in the organizer to simply add ‘notes’, which is a part of the computer ‘outlook’ and of the ‘elder brother’ – WM for Pocket PCs.

The calculator is in the ‘Accessories’ folder and inexplicably has no graphic interface whatsoever. It is usable, but inconvenient and unenjoyable to work with. There are neither more complicated ‘scientific’ options nor a converter of measurements.
You can add only one alarm and at that you will need to go through quite a number of menus – settings – clock & alarms – alarms – and unfortunately there is no setting there for the sound, but for the time only. We consider this to be quite inconvenient and while we were using the phone we were not able to make a single successful attempt to set the right sound for the alarm, so that it would make a distinct sound (this can be done only through ‘profiles’).

PN-820 has the option for voice commands, but they are quite simple, especially bearing in mind that this is a smartphone: after holding the button on the left side you must say your voice tag that has been attached to a certain contact beforehand; the phone does not support speaker independent recognition so you will have to ‘fiddle’ with recording separately for each contact you might wish to use. This is quite elementary and we personally would never bother to use it.

Unlike the GSM version (AT&T 3125 or Smartflip), the Pantech PN-820 comes with full speaker independent voice commands and dialing. For its activation, different keys can be assigned.
Making phone calls:
To call a particular contact, press the Voice Command key, and after the beep say:
- Call which will call a contact whose phone number is stored on the device. If you wish, you can call the contact at as specific locaton Call at/on .
- Dial will dial the numbers you pronounce
- Callback will return the last call received
- Redial will repeat the last call made

Other Voice Command functions:
Contacts and Schedule:
- Show or Lookup will bring up the contact in question
- What is my next appointment?
- What is my schedule today/tomorrow?
(while listening to your schedule, you can push the Voice Command button and say “next” to go to the next or “previous”, “repeat” to heard the current appointment again or “cancel” to stop previewing your schedule.
Music:
- “Play anything” will play all media
- “Play music” and Voice Command will guide you through selection music
- “Next Track”, “Previous track”, “play”, “pause” or “stop” to control Windows Media

Programs:
- “Start/Show/Open

Phone Status:
- “What time is it”
- “what date is it”
- What is my battery level”
- “Set Profile”
- “What is my signal strength”
- “What calls have I missed”

Messaging:

The message interface does not seem to be very convenient, at least as far as we are concerned. The standard text, multimedia and e-mails are all in one and the same menu. To write a new one is in fact easy, but you get to know that there are ready templates (only for MMS) only when you start writing a new one and open ‘Menu”. You must use the same menu in case you do not want to send a message you have already started writing – otherwise the standard navigation with the ‘back’ arrow and the red receiver will not do – the message will not be closed, but just minimized (by the receiver button) at best. For instance, there will be no indexation if there are no messages in the inbox – you will simply see a blank screen.

Connectivity:

PN-820 is dual-band digital only phone with high speed EV-DO support. For local connectivity it supports IrDA and Bluetooth.

You can also connect it to a computer by a USB cable plugged in the bottom port of the phone. You will need an installed Microsoft Active Sync on your PC in order to achieve an easy synchronization of the phone with Microsoft Outlook at your will.

The phone has the standard Windows Mobile Internet Explorer adapted to smartphones. It is a good browser and capable of opening Internet pages the way you are accustomed to watching them on a computer. We used the ‘full screen’ regime to make use of the whole screen area – simple pages as Google are easily loaded but if you choose to open something heavier as PhoneArena.com for example, take a little longer by still the EV-DO speeds are fast. For some reason our page did not load properly. When we tried CNN is loaded OK, but some images were missing.

Camera:

Not targeted as multimedia device, the PN-820 has a 1.3 mega pixel camera does not have autofocus but only an LED flash. It is situated at the top of the front lid. It starts comparatively fast (4 – 5 sec) after holding the shortcut key on the right side. The main settings are very easily adjusted as they are accessed via keys 1 to 6, while the navigation-pad is used to control the software zoom and brightness.

In the respective menu you can choose the white balance and colour effects as well as execute various settings, including resolution and compression. It takes the picture about 2 – 3 sec after pushing the button even though there is no automatic focus and you need one more second to get ready for the next picture – thus the interval between two pictures is approximately 4 seconds.

The camera photos are hardly of any worth – they have a very weak detail, are very blurry with unreal colours. Usually such cameras are even worse indoors, but the PN-820 showed satisfactory results for 1.3-mega pixel camera.

Multimedia:

For playing music and going through video files the phone has a built-in Windows Media Player: it is very similar to the one for PPC devices) and in it you can look at the songs’ performer / album/ genre provided that this information is available in the ID3 song tags. During playback small buttons (back, pause, forward) are visualized on the whole screen and the file name and its quality can be viewed at the top. Fortunately, here you can use fast forward and rewind functions in contrast to the buttons of the external screen. This is achieved by holding one of the directions of the d-pad.

The loudspeaker is pretty much useless as its volume and quality is very low. You will need to purchase separate headphones for realistic music experience; the ones from the set of our smartphone offered the same low quality and volume as the loudspeaker. However the Bluetooth is readily available for connecting to wireless ones if you have any.

The transfer rate was about .34 Mb/sec when we used USB 2.0 card reader, the same card achieved a 3.5 MB/s transfer rate or 10 times faster.

Even though the processor PN-820 utilizes is one of the fastest, still video playback skips some frames and is slightly choppy. Like other Windows Mobile 5 for Smartphones, the PN-820 video playback does not support the H.264 standard for even better video playback.

Software:

The phone features a 64 MB built-in memory and the same amount of RAM. The available memory can be increased by using mini-SD cards which are hot-swappable.

The PN-820 does have pre-installed office viewers. Separate software such as ClearVue Office package could be purchased separately for $19.95. It allows viewing (not editing) of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

The phone is supplied with two games, standard for Windows Mobile –Solitaire and Bubble Breaker. Additional games and software can easily be added.

Performance:

PN-820 does not rely on the slow OMAP 850, running at 195 like a lot of the Smartphones, but on Intel Xscale PXA270 running at 312 MHz. The speed increase is very significant and during our testing we did not notice any delays in the phone response which is lightning fast!

During conversation it is also up-to-standard – the other side can hear you very well, with sufficient sound volume and clearly, without any noise at that. The sound of the voice is realistic and with a rich key. You hear a bit more low frequency than in reality, but it is clear and distinct – sound volume is slightly average which makes the phone perfectly usable even in very noisy environments.

Conclusion:

PN-820 is a great addition to Verizon’s line. Currently it is the only device in the carrier’s line to offers its users the convenient clamshell form-factor along with the extended functionality of Windows Mobile for Smartphones. It is just the perfect choice for consumers who do not need full QWERTY keyboard like the one on Motorola Q, nor the touch-sensitive display and Pocket PC functionality (and increased size and weight) of the i830 or the XV6700.