ETEN M600+ PocketPC Review

M600+ is the latest Pocket PC Phone by Taiwanese manufacturer ETEN, which become popular due to models like M500, M600 and G500. As a successor of the M600, is has the same dimensions and design, while the materials used are slightly different. Its technical specifications are also better as it now supports Bluetooth v2.0, the camera is a 2 megapixel one and its quality is quite better this time, and the internal memory is the astonishing 256MB!

The package that comes along with the phone is absolutely the same as with its predecessor (even the same accessories are used) and is accordingly as good. It comes together with everything you may need, and it is:

• M600+
• Battery
• Stylus
• Stereo Headset
• Leather Case
• USB Cable
• USB Cradle
• AC Adapter
• Quick Start Guide
• Getting Started CD (Contains Outlook 2002, Active Sync 4.1 and User Manual)
• A Screen Protector
  

Overall, we are very happy with the kit, but we have a minor remark towards the Leather Case: first of all, only small part of it is made of Leather, secondly – in order to attach it to your belt, you first have to disengage two buttons on the back of the case, put it on and then snap them again – this makes sure it will not detach easily, but it's also makes it quite inconvenient when attaching and detaching it. It closes well thanks to two magnets and the fact there are no holes that they have to fit in, and the surface is smooth so the case closes tightly.

The USB Cradle is black and is well made in round form and features a comfortable “bed” for the phone. An additional battery can be charged simultaneously with the phone. Either the USB Cable (which can be connected directly to the phone) from the kit, or a standard USB-USB cable is attached to the Cradle.

The M600+ sports a candybar design with internal antenna, typical for such a device. Its dimensions are normal for a feature-rich device, it fits nicely into the hand with and its weight causes no inconvenience. Carrying it on a belt, in its case, is not a problem, but it is clearly felt when carried in a pocket, something normal for all Pocket PCs at the moment. Its construction is very solid and the only noticeable movement comes from the battery cover – it is very slight and does not produce any annoying sound.



Changing the material, which the phone is made of, is an interesting idea by ETEN – the big difference is in the front part of it. The plastic around the Eten sign and the M600+ one (where it said Pocket PC in its predecessor) is now mat, while it was a bit glossy with the M600. This is probably made in order to make it easier for you to keep the phone clean. But it looks like this surface is easily scratched as we got few minor scratches during the tests, although we were very cautious while using the phone. The upper part (around the SD slot) is glossy, which is in fact colored in indigo, a slightly transparent almost black surface – it is where the infrared eye is hidden. The surface of the battery cover is also slightly changed as the bumps on it are now slightly bigger which makes the phone more comfortable to hold in the hand.

M600+ compared to M600

The display of the M600+ is the same as the one of the M600 – nothing has changed in this aspect. It is touch-sensitive with a resolution of 240x320 pixels and displays up to 65 thousand colors. Its diagonal size is 3 inches, as big as the HTC Wizard's screen (T-Mobile MDA, Cingular 8125). We placed them one next to the other, compared them and noticed that they have the similar brightness and contrast, but the display of the Eten has a yellow shade (while the MDA's one is more like pink). Both displays are hard to see in bright light but are well-lit in dark.

The M600+ buttons are the same as those in the M600 both in terms of size and form, but this time they're mat, not glossy. There are four buttons and a d-pad at the lower part of the front. The four buttons consist of two Shortcut Keys, Answer and Reject keys just below them. The upper ones feel comfortable when pressed, but it would have been even better if these were Soft Keys, which is good for single-hand use. That's the case with the MDA. All four buttons are designed so that they can be easily pressed with the stylus.
The D-pad is quite small and inconvenient to use, as pressing any of its directions or the middle buttons is quite hard.

 

At the left side of the phone (from top to bottom) we have the camera button (also used for taking pictures), slider for adjusting the volume and voice commands button. Since they are placed a bit too close to each other, they are not that convenient to use. The sound slider is easy to reach and very convenient to use.
The functions of four of the buttons (camera, Voice Command and the two on the front) can be changed by the user.


The power button is placed on the top, to the right, which is standard for Windows Mobile PPC phones. The possibility of pressing it accidentally is very limited because it's lower than the surface around it and is a little bit hard to push it, unlike its predecessor, although the size and the design of the button are the same. 
The ETEN M600+ has no lit buttons and this makes it quite inconvenient to use in the dark. But as they are not very useful, you will probably use the touch screen only.    

There are two LEDs placed at the upper part of the front side. The left one indicates whether Bluetooth or WiFi is turned on, and the right one is a Service Light and blinks: in green when the phone is turned on, in orange – when you have a missed call or new message, and in solid red – when the it's charging. The slot for the SD cards is also placed on the upper side. 

The headset port is placed on the left side; it is 2.5mm stereo and there is a small rubber cover placed over it, which is quite hard to remove and looks quite unstable. The Eten connector is placed on the bottom side of the phone. It is where the USB cable is plugged (and the charger plugs into it).



The stylus is placed to the left of this socket, but if the phone is placed on the cradle, it's quite hard to draw it out. The stylus is extendable and most of the times it stretches open just as it's drawn out; its quite comfortable but you may have a problem placing it back in, because if you do not insert it the right way, it may not get back in entirely, and then it's also harder to draw it back out.  

Interface:

Eten M600+ is a standard smartphone running on Windows Mobile 5 for Pocket PC Phones Operating System – so it features a standard and typical interface for such a system. It comes very close to desktop computer with a Windows XP and is suitable for people which use the computer more or less. More often than now, navigating through the menus and using the device is relatively quick and enjoyable thanks to the powerful processor (400MHz clock rate). The lack of hardware soft keys is a major drawback because using the device with only one hand is almost impossible. The added software by “M-Desk” is quite useful. By default it is launched by the right shortcut key on the front. This software provides shortcuts to various menus of the phone, divided in four tabs:

• PHONE
• PDA
• FUN
• SYSYEM

The telephone comes with slightly customized home screen. There are shortcut icons at the lower section; they are big-sized, and the scroll buttons to the right reveal the rest of them, as the total count of these icons are 48!



As a WM PPC Phone, M600+ can be customized in many different ways and the easiest one is changing the visual themes. If you have to use more advanced software, the phone can be adjusted to perfectly suit your needs.

Phonebook:

The phonebook has no restriction on the amount of contact that can be added – it only depends on the memory available. When you open the phonebook all contacts are displayed as a list; each field consists of the name and the number of the contact, while a letter placed beside them indicates what the type of the number is (w – work; m – mobile, etc.). Pictures are not displayed even if there are ones attached;

The first line is a search field, which starts searching through the names and numbers on entering a symbol – the more symbols you type, the more accurate the match is – it's quite useful! There are tabs with different letters (divided in groups of three) just below it. This way you can arrange the contacts so that only the ones beginning with a given letter are displayed. These two search features are quite handy and they make finding a particular contact in the phonebook very quick.



Too bad that's not the case when adding a new contact; the phone offers way too many capabilities, including multiple work and home numbers, but there's only one for mobile –something quite inconvenient as that's exactly where we wanted to add multiple numbers to, not the Home category. The numerous address, e-mail and other address fields confuse you even further – it would have been a lot easier if the most frequently used fields are highlighted. We would have done this with the Name, Picture, Mobile number and e-mail fields and thus finding them would have been easy, eliminating the need to go through the long list;



Personal photos and ringtones can be assigned to each contact; there's no restriction on the size of the pictures but they are visualized in a very small size even on an incoming call – we think they are useless. The Birthday field is an interesting feature as it adds an “all day event” to a particular date, but the odd thing is that it's not indicated in the calendar – it's displayed only when you view the specific day. You can also add a note to each contact.



Another inconvenience is that when go through the list with the contacts you cannot edit any of them, and you first have to “open” the contact and then choose the Edit option.



Another major drawback is that a Missed Call number cannot be added to an already existing contact. To do this, you first have to add it as a new one and then Cut and Paste it into the other contact. These complex manipulations not only lose your time, but there's also a chance that you lose the number. That's what we experienced. We cut the number, then copied another text in error and the number was gone. That's a problem with all WM PPC phones, not only with Eten ones.     

Dialer:

Dialing is done after pressing the ANSWER button, no matter which menu you're currently in. A large numeric keypad is visualized, featuring buttons that are easily pressed even without a stylus. Speed Dial and Call History are the other two shortcut buttons. The first one is a standard one as particular number is assigned to numbers 0-9. The Call History is a list displaying all call activity of the phone (incoming/outgoing/missed). You can easily dial a given, when viewing this menu.

By default, the left hardware shortcut button on the front opens an application called Frequency Dial – it displays the most frequently dialed numbers in relatively big cells (with a  relatively ugly design). We found the Call History quite better and useful.



Organizer:

Alarms can be directly accessed through the home screen. They are three, and they all can be configured to be active for certain days of the, and you can also assign names and different sounds to each of them. More than one alarm can be active simultaneously, and overall they are easy to use and do what they are supposed to. Maybe they should have been even more, as we wouldn't mind having five or more alarms and that would have been no problem.

The next tab in this menu is the clock; there is a field called Visiting next to it which can be used as a World Clock – select another location and the phone starts using its local time. The clock has an option to be displayed on the title bar of all the menus.



The Calendar can be viewed for a particular year/month/week/day. Appointments are easily added to a certain date and alarms can also be assigned to them. We also noticed that when viewing a particular day, hours are displayed in red and blue background respectively for the “dark” and “light” hours of the day, instead of indexing them with PM and AM. 



Tasks are added via the Task menu and each of them can be assigned a date for activation; you can easily indicate that a certain task has been completed by placing a tick next to it in the list with all the tasks – thus it will not be displayed on your home screen as uncompleted.



The Calculator is simple but its buttons are relatively big and can easily be pressed you your fingers. Features like scientific calculator and converter are missing. 

The phone features a complete set of voice commands which are also speaker independent. The voice commands menu is entered by pressing the small button to the left; after you can easily select or find a particular contact there. Digit dialing is also supported; it's quite possible that the phone has a problem recognizing your contacts' names, but that also depends on the person who's using it (although it's speaker independent). 
For better voice recognition, different commands can be trained, as well as the names in the phonebook. “Training” is actually done by recording a voice tag for each command or number.

Different message types are placed in a single menu. These are 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

We think that the on-screen keyboard is the fastest and most convenient way to do it, but if you train the other methods, they can also be quite handy! Combined with the T9 system, entering text with the phone is really quick.

Everything is standard in the e-mail menu; there's an option for downloading headers only and you can also set a limit in KB per message. Speed is not that high, because GPRS is used for data, just like the M600…we'd love to see EDGE or UMTS on this phone, and it looks like it can be done, because rivals have already launched HSDPA PPC (HTC TyTN).

Connectivity:

Compared to its processor, one of the improvements of the M600+ is the newer Bluetooth version – it's v2.0 + EDR and supported profiles include: Headset; OPP; GAP; A2DP (Bluetooth Stereo Audio). Compared to previous Bluetooth versions, much higher transfer speeds can now be achieved thanks to EDR (Enhanced Data Rate). Theoretically, power consumption is also reduced. The A2DP profile is useful for stereo audio streaming with a compatible device

The phone features an integrated Wi-Fi module for wireless Internet connection. You can easily connect to a home/office network, or any public place where “hotspot” service is supported. Wi-Fi transfer speeds are much higher than GPRS ones, and using it for Internet and streaming, as well as VoIP services such as Skype, is not a problem.

The mobile version of Internet Explorer is used for internet browsing; loading standard pages in full size is not a problem, because of the relatively high resolution (320x240 pixels) of such devices; to achieve even greater comfort during browsing, we prefer using the display in landscape mode (in M600+ this can easily be done using the M-Desk application). Full-screen usage is almost mandatory when the page has loaded.

There is also One Column View option which eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling but increases the need for vertical scrolling. The page is narrowed and thus it changes its initial look. 

Camera:

The camera is one of the major upgrades of the M600+; it's 1.3 megapixel in the M600, and here it's 2-megapixel one – that's also indicated on the metallic ring around its lens which is placed on the back of the phone. It uses a LED as a flash, and it only lights up during exposure, and not during picture framing, which makes it inappropriate to use in low lighting because you will not be able to see what you're shooting. A small mirror for self-shots is positioned just below the camera.


Staring the camera takes about 6 seconds; the time between taking two consecutive pictures at the highest resolution (the time needed for saving it to the phone also is included) is about ten or eleven seconds; This is pretty slow, which makes the camera quite inconvenient to use.   

The camera is started by the button on the left side. The interface is pretty straight-forward and there are only a few icons when it's in shooting mode: a button for selecting between camera and camcoder mode, a Settings button, a Close button, as well as information icons indicating the status of the flash, the picture/video size, and how many you can take with the memory available. Taking pictures is done by pressing the button which launches the application. The Settings menu is designed using big-sized icons; there is a capability for setting the size, white balance, the flash mode, the shooting mode (whether it is Portrait or Landscape oriented) – these are all standard settings. There is an option for automatically stamping the Date on the picture. As expected, various effects are available: Normal, Negative, Gray, Retrospective, Mirror. We think that the Mirror effect is the most interesting one.
Overall, the interface is quite awkward to use and there is almost no functionality when the camera is in shooting mode, which makes taking pictures even more sluggish. The flash status and resolution icons could have easily been made to act as buttons used for changing the corresponding settings!

			Camera Interface
			Camcorder Interface

The pictures are what we expect to get from a 2 megapixel camera without auto-focus. They are definitely better than the ones taken with the M600, not only because of the higher resolution. Overall the pictures are better exposed, the purple fringing is reduced (although it's still present) and the colors look more real. But after a comparison to a Canon G3 digital camera, adjusted for taking pictures at 2 megapixels, it is obvious that there's much more to be wanted of the M600+ camera (or any other 2 megapixel phone).

M600+	M600	Canon G3

When we tried taking a picture using the flash in total darkness…”something” was seen in the pictures but the quality (if it could be called this way) was way below the necessary minimum to be worth discussing it. The pictures are awful and framing them is also almost impossible because the flash does not light up until the shoot button is pressed.        

3feet

9feet

Media Player:

M600+ is equipped with the standard mobile version of Windows Media Player. It is a multimedia player for music and video files. MP3 format is supported, as well as WMA  and WAV. After updating the library with files, all supported types are found, and they can be added to playlists. This function is not well implemented and organizing them is quite hard. Songs can be viewed by artist, album and genre, as these are taken from the ID3 tag of the files.

The supported video formats are WMV and 3GP, while the quality of the latter is pretty low. They can be viewed in fullscreen and the picture quality is quite good and looks very nice on the three-inch display.
The options buttons (next/previous, Play/Pause, etc.) are small and inconvenient both during Music and Video playback. When audio files are played, the video visualization window is still displayed, which is a lapse as it only takes up place on your screen. You can have these problems solved by adding new skins for the Media Player or by using another player, which can be additionally installed.



During the test we noticed that the multimedia player does not come as a heavy load for the phone, and we used Skype to chat while it was playing in background. We even used it for playing 1411 kbps WAV file. Music can be played with the integrated speaker, but that's only suitable if you use it as a ringtone. If you want to listen to the music you can use the headset included in the package, as well as Bluetooth Stereo via the A2DP profile. The headset jack is a standard 2.5mm stereo and for better sound quality you can attach regular wired headphones.

Software:

The M600+ doubles the available memory from 128 to 256 MB. However, it's a pity that the RAM is still 64MB. Memory can be expanded through the SD card slot placed at the upper part of the phone. It supports the SD I/O standard, so additional hardware like GPS can be installed – the location of the port makes it suitable for such procedures.

WM for PPC provides unlimited capabilities for installing software. The only restrictions are the memory available and the hardware of the phone. The first problem is easily solved by getting a memory card as there are SD cards with capacity of up to several GB. Every PPC comes with programs that are modified, “pocket” versions known PC applications. Such programs are the mobile versions of (Microsoft) Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Explorer, Media Player, etc. Many more could be downloaded from third party sources.

There are numerous programs created for this platform, almost as much as the ones intended for PCs with Windows operating system. The most popular are the various utilities for personalizing the PPC, multimedia players, file explorers, Instant Messengers, etc. Skype is an interesting software which is a VoIP program known with its PC version. It works flawlessly and you can use the Cradle or WiFi for providing Internet connectivity

Performance:

Thanks to the relatively powerful processor (400 MHz), M600+ works fine for regular usage and until you do not load too complex applications you should not experience problems. The navigation through the menus is quick, as well as opening folders and notes… but it's totally different when you start doing something more serious. Despite the pretty high clock rate, the processor is not among the most powerful ones and it has difficulties loading large pictures for example.

The sound quality is awful! We're not sure if the problem is with the model or our phone particularly, but the sound is just terrible. In a noisy environment almost nothing is heard, and even the loudspeaker's volume is not high enough. The microphone quality is also pretty low and the other party will hardly hear what you're saying.

The battery is not the most powerful; it has a capacity of 1440 mAh and can supply the phone for a few days. Complete recharging takes a couple of hours, but thanks to the convenient Cradle, the phone was there almost all the time so we hardly ever experienced lower than 70% charge during the tests. That's why we rarely had a look at the status and one day we woke up later than we should have, because the phone had switched off and the alarm (even two) did not set off at the scheduled time. The strange thing is that the phone had enough battery power to boot up but the alarm did not ring (with the phone powered down). The manufacturer claims the battery lasts for up to four hours of talk time and up to 200 hours in standby mode.

Conclusion:

The Eten M600+ is a Pocket PC Phone and as expected it offers a lot – but nothing more than the standard functionality. A plus is the large amount of integrated memory (256MB), but despite the powerful processor (400 MHz) you should not expect miracles. The display is a standard one and does not stand out neither in terms of quality, nor in size. The major problem is the basic phone functions – the ringtone volume is not high enough and the sound quality during conversation in both directions is low, distorted and annoying. Design-wise it's pretty ordinary and does not catch the eye, while a bad impression comes also because of the fact that the buttons are not lit and are inconvenient to use.