Review Of Fly SX100
Slim and sleek mobiles rule the roost these days when it comes to making fashion statements. Though manufacturers may design some really cool-looking and stylish handsets, it remains to be seen how well they work. The SX100 is one such handset, and I put it through its paces to see if it lives up to expectations.
The SX100 is a looker all right. It has a sleek, elegant appearance and feel. At just 11mm thick it’s slim enough to carry in a credit card compartment in your wallet. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m sure some of you would get that impression too. It has a decently sized 1.7 inch display with a 220 x 176 pixel resolution. The keys may seem a bit thin, but it’s not a problem even for those with plump digits. The five-way nav-pad is great for navigating menus. On one side is a proprietary USB/handsfree slot. Thankfully, the Fly has provided a converter to 3.5mm so you can use your own earphones… and it does make quite a difference using your own earphones. A dedicated camera key that activates the 2 megapixel camera with an LED flash is located on the same side at the bottom. On the other side are the volume/zoom keys.
The SX100 supports external memory and although the compartment for the microSD card may not be easy to obtain to from the outside, you won’t require to remove the battery to get to it as it’s just under the cover. Happily, even the SIM can be removed without touching the battery.
Features and Performance
The SX100 is a decently loaded phone. It has easy-to-navigate menus and a clear interface. The menu styling can be customized and selecting items form various sub-menus is quick. All the regular features of a basic phone are intact, including a calendar for keeping dates and memos as reminders, and a separate to-do List option.
Other features include an alarm, world clock, calculator, unit converter, stopwatch and even a health feature to calculate BMI and bio-rhythm (not that anyone would use these functions, but hey, they’re there just in case). It also has a flight mode and a file manager option for locating data. Video and picture caller ID are supported.
From the media angle there’s a music player with nine EQ presets and a repeat and shuffle mode. As for the quality, well, using your own earphones makes a difference. The sound is adequately loud but not spectacular. It sounds a bit like you’re in a large hall, on any setting. The bundled video player is okay. What I was quite unhappy about was the FM radio’s pick-up – I was unable to get a clear signal during much of my commute, and the AMR recordings from radio were quite inaudible. There’s a voice recorder and tune composer for making ringtones, apart from a few games. The loud speakerphone is a plus.
Coming to connectivity, I was surprised to learn that the SX100 supports Bluetooth with an A2DP profile. Brilliant! It also has USB (proprietary) connectivity. Here’s the really odd thing though. You don’t get a cable. So I was stumped what to do when it came to move files from the phone to the PC quickly. Here’s what you need to do: if you have anything stored on the phone, transfer the data to the card. Then remove the card, and with a microSD card adapter and/or a card reader that supports microSD cards, you can transfer data to the PC and vice versa. Incidentally, WAP is also supported.
The 2 megapixel camera looks quite bad as far as the display goes, but the exhibit resolution isn’t very high so it’s understandable. The camera offers you plenty of options, including White Balance options, Scene Modes (only Auto and Night), various effect settings, and some interesting frames. but on the whole, the image imitation is pretty bad. Don’t expect crystal-clear images; pictures tended to be very noisy and dull, and often just plain blurred. No amount of adjustments seemed to work.
I actually liked the onboard Image Editor that allows plenty of adjustments to the pictures taken in terms of brightness and contrast, add various effects and icons, text etc. It’s quite a bit of fun. The SX100 also records video in MPEG4 format and the videos are not too bad. The problem is the battery life. It lasted just about 2 hours and a few minutes. That’s not very good, unfortunately. But for the average user it should last about a day, if used judiciously.
At Rs 7400 the Fly SX100 seems quite sensibly priced. It’s a very good-looking handset with plenty of features, but the chief drawback is its insufficient battery life and lack of in-box vitals such as a USB cable and a memory card. I feel it would make a really great fashion phone, but only if it were priced a bit enhanced than it is now. As it is, I feel it’d be safer to say – pass.
Tags: camera phone, slim phone
June 20th, 2008 at 5:32 am
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