Gigabyte GSmart t600 Review

Messaging:

Different message types are placed in a single menu - SMS, MMS and e-mails. There is nothing unexpected here. Entering text is done by one of the following touch display methods:

• Block Recognizer
• Keyboard
• Letter Recognizer
• Transcriber
• XT9

We think that the on-screen keyboard is the fastest and most convenient way to do it, but if you practice the other methods, they can also be quite handy! Combined with the T9 predictive system, entering text with the phone is pretty quick. However, this has to be one with the stylus, because the buttons are too small to be pressed with fingers.

Just a few steps away, is the option to add your e-mail account (POP3 or IMAP) and to use it on your mobile phone. Very nice extra is that the phone can try to get the email settings automatically from the internet, and so we configured our Gmail Account by entering only the username and password. Windows Mobile 6 already supports HTML formatted e-mails.The client is very similar to the Outlook on a computer, you can filter your inbox to see just some results, reply to a message, or forward it to other person.

The support for attachments allows you to download or send one, in addition to the text body. The phone can be set to synchronize with your company Exchange Server.


Connectivity:

GSmart t600 is quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900), which makes it a global phone. A big drawback here is the lack of any 3G support. It can be compensated by the built-in Wi-Fi, but this means that you’ll have to look for access points.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth come standard. Bluetooth is mainly used for connecting to other nearby devices, as accessories (earpieces, car-kits, multimedia devices) and for data transfer (transfer of files to/from another phone/PC). Cable connection can also be used, via the miniUSB port.
Like all other Windows phones, you need to have ActiveSync (Windows XP) or Windows Mobile Device Center (Windows Vista) installed on the computer to connect to it. The program will let you easily synchronize the phone (contacts, emails, and organizer) with Outlook.
With WiFi you can connect to a wireless LAN network covering you, use it as an Internet source and view the shared documents (input \\name-of-computer in Internet Explorer and you will see what is shared).


Internet:

Like in most WM6 phones, we have the mobile version of Internet Explorer present here. Unfortunately, the name is the only thing that relates it to the PC version.

Its main drawbacks are that the pages, especially the heavier ones, load slowly and visualize incorrectly. Since options such as pan and zoom in/out are not available, you’ll have to be constantly scrolling in all directions. Even when you get to the part of the page that you are interested in, you’ll have to move left/right, because the text won’t shrink.


Overall, the browser is usable, but uncomfortable and far behind the competition; we avoided using it, unless we really needed to do so. The light upgrade to version 6.1 doesn’t change things much and it’s time Microsoft equipped its business phones with something more competitive. A good example is iPhone’s Safari, the Symbian S60 phones and even some “not smartphones”, by manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, Samsung.

We installed the internet telephony app Skype, to check if it can be used with a Wi-Fi connection. As in most WM6 phones, in t600 the program was sluggish as well. The voices during a talk are extremely unreal, but they are not interrupted and everything is clearly understood. Only the loudspeaker sound volume is not sufficient in order to have a conversation in a noisier environment.