Latte Slim11b Review

Almost by chance, while rummaging through the models of the well-know brands, we came across this small and quite unknown brand, Latte. The brand is owned by a US-based company, selling GSM phones, made by Korean and Chinese ODM (original device manufacturer).

Their first model appeared under the confusing name Slim11b, which however stresses on the phone’s main quality: being slim. Not availing of almost any advanced functionality, this is a simple phone, easy to work with, small and handy. The manufacturer has dared to compare it to Motorola SLVR L7, which was definitely a successful model in its class.

From a first sight, Latte Slim11b is seen as a phone, intended primarily for conversation. The company’s logo is: „Make a fashion statement” and their models aspire to compete with those of Motorola, which, however, has made a skillful use of metal parts in a much more solid design. Slim11b’s look catches the eye with its shiny frame on the front panel and the elements around the camera. It is also very light, it is comfortably handled and perfectly fits in your pocket, where you’re unlikely to feel it at all. Its size of 107 x 43 x 11.2 mm makes it even smaller than Motorola!

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (MM)	Weight (OZ)	Weight (Gramms)
Latte Slim11b	4.2" x 1.7" x 0.4"	107 x 43 x 11	2,2	62
Motorola SLVR L7	4.46" x 1.9" x 0.5"	113.5 x 49 x 11.5	3,5	99
Samsung SGH-U100	4.15" x 2.0" x 0.2"	105.5 x 50 x 5.9	2,3	66
i-mate SPL	4.5" x 1.9" x 0.5"	114.5 x 49 x 12	3,6	102

Unfortunately, the plastic that has been used feels like a toy, compared to Motorola L7 (and the other phones from the series), but, unless you’re very pretentious, it’ll certainly do the job. Surprisingly, our first sample unit wore off (the paint, covering the panel, fell off) after just one day, but Latte claims that this particular phone was faulty, then they sent us a second one, which was OK.

As the standard is, the display and the main keyboard are located on the front panel. The display is 1.9 inches and it visualizes slightly over 265 thousand colors, but still it is nothing special. The good thing is that it stays visible at comparatively strong light, thanks to its brightness and it does a good job showing menus on the phone. Its resolution is 176х220 pixels.

Below is the keyboard, which, just like the display, is a little smaller than normal, so that it fits into the small phone. Resembling the RAZR/SLVR series, it is flat with a small relief between the keys, which are so small that they are difficult to find. The keys are comparatively hard, above all those at the lowest row, which are simply difficult to press and provide almost no tactile feedback. All keys are backlit in white, which is well visible, save for the small d-pad, which has no backlighting. The phone is set so that the backlight is on/off/on only from 6PM to 6AM. The third setting aims to save the battery power, but we prefer the clever solutions like, for example, light sensor.

On the left are the multimedia shortcut and the volume rocker, but both buttons are very narrow and are not felt: you have to look at them (or else you should know where they are), so that you can press them.

What we found surprising is that Latte Slim11b is equipped with a microSD slot for memory expansion. The slot is on the right and the cards can be replaced while the phone is on (although they say in the manual that the phone has to be off), but since it is located a little to the center, you have to press it either with your nail, or with something pointed, so that they can go in or come out.



The 1.3 megapixel camera and its ‘flash’ is on the back: a bright LED, which is very handy as a flashlight! If you hold down the shortcut button on the left it lights up and shows you the way in the dark.

Another LED is the service lamp, located to the left of the display. It can be lit in six different colors of your choice, and when it is not lit, it is not visible on the shiny panel.

Interface:

Slim11b’s interface has left us with more negative feeling, compared to its design. Although there are some good ideas, which have been implemented well, there are also things that have not been carefully thought over, making the phone’s use not so enjoyable. Combined with the slow operations, some tasks take a really long time to accomplish.

The standby screen contains fairly standard information about the phone’s status. The options for animated wallpaper or for using a clock or a calendar as such, come as a pleasant surprise. The main menu is visualized as a grid of 3x3 icons or as a horizontal list with beautiful big icons. The sub-menus represent vertical lists, which, just like the main menu, have shortcuts from the keyboard. The phone has three color schemes, called themes, which, however, cannot change the type of the icons.

If you have switched on the sound when pressing a key, the phone will ‘say’ the names and not the objects in the main menu and will read the numbers in the phone book. This is a rare option, but we do not see the point: you would hardly be willing to browse through the menus blindly, without looking at them.

Phone book:

The phone book can contain up to 300 names, each with a few numbers to it. When you’re adding contacts, you have a lot of fields, including such for a picture/personal melody or video. The latter option is rather enjoyable and the loudspeaker does a good job reproducing the music. Looking through the list of names is inconvenient. It is done through a separate “Search” menu.

There is an extra, called „Intelligent Call Alert”, which ‘says’ the number of the caller. Even if you have the caller’s name, the phone will nevertheless say the number, which is not handy, since you are unlikely to know the caller’s number by heart. If a personal melody or video is allocated to a contact, it will be heard instead of the number.

Organizer:

The organizer is equipped with 3 alarms that can be adjusted for different days of the week, a calendar, featuring the recurrence option (setting for a particular day each week), a task list, to which appointments can be added, a calculator, world clock and unit converters. From the File Manager you can view the files on the phone’s memory (60MB) and on the card’s memory and you can see all files and folders, even such that the phone does not maintain. You can also move or copy files to other destinations.

The phone is equipped with a voice recorder, which is limited just to the available memory.

Messaging:

In the messaging menu you’ll find options for composing text and multimedia messages, but you will not be able to use email or Instant messenger. When you’re writing a message, you can use Smart abc, i.e. the predictive text input system. For quicker writing you can use the preloaded templates.

Connectivity:

Latter Slim11b is a three-band GSM phone, offered in two versions: one, designed for America (850/1800/1900MHz), and the other for Europe (900/1800/1900MHz). Only slow GPRS data is used for Internet connection.

The Bluetooth connectivity is optional for the phone and, since our phone did not have one, it could not be connected to a wireless handsfree or another BT device. To provide for the Internet connection it comes with a USB cable, included in the set, and since it works with a proprietory jack, you cannot use a standard miniUSB cable for example. When you’re connecting to a computer, the phone will ask you whether it should switch to „Mass storage” or to “Com port”. The former option gives you the convenience to transfer files, as if the phone and the card were computer devices. In this mode we transferred a 13.5MB file from the phone to a computer in 25 seconds, i.e. 550KB per second, which means it will take you about 10 seconds to transfer a song from the computer to the phone. The inconvenience arises form the fact that, irrespective of what mode you’ve selected, the phone stops before getting into it. When it stops working with the cable plugged, you have to re-start it. The possibility of synchronizing contacts or information is from the calendar is simply non-existent.

Camera:

Slim11’s camera is ready to be used almost immediately after it is selected from the menu. It is in portrait mode and visualizes the settings with small icons in the upper part. Each icon corresponds to a key from the keyboard and so settings can be changed easily and quickly, using the shortcuts. You have at your disposal a lot of color filters, settings for the white balance, etc. The panorama mode is an enjoyable extra, but it is not very good at joining pictures and very often the joining is fairly visible, especially if you have not taken great care when taking the pictures. It takes 2 seconds to take a picture and 3 more to save it with the maximum resolution, which makes 5 seconds altogether between two pictures.

The images have a maximum resolution of 1280x1024, which is 1.3 megapixels. Their quality is acceptable. If we compare this with the upmarket cameraphones, they are terrible, but, keeping in mind the phone’s low price (sim-unlocked) and its target group, then the pictures would be just what one could expect. The problem is not only in the low resolution and scarce detail, but also in the frequent over-exposing (burning) of the pictures and the unrealistic colors.

You can record video clips without limitation in time, but with low resolution, which is only suitable for viewing the phone’s screen.
When viewing the pictures you can see them as a list with a small thumbnail, name and size. After you open a particular picture, you can change and view the rest of the pictures.


Multimedia:

The music player can play your audio files from the phone or from the card, but not from both. It has a nice interface, controlled by the d-pad’s directions, you have 3 skins to choose from. There are the Repeat (one/all) and the Shuffleoptions, as well as a few equalizers. The sound is reproduced through the loudspeaker, which is also the speaker during conversation. It is very powerful and it can be heard even when it is placed on a table, because it is located on the front panel, rather than on the back one. If the sound of the track you’re listening to is too loud, maybe you’ll have to turn it down, so that it does not crackle. The music sounds pretty nice.


The video player is easy to work with and it can rewind and fast forward. The videos can be previewed in Fullscreen with the (*) key. An unique option is the change of speed on playback compared to the real one (x ½,1,2,4,8).

Software:

In the Fun & Games menu you’ll find three games, a stopwatch (which, we believe, should have been in the organizer), Image Editor and „Health”, including BMI (Body Mass Index) and Menstrual calendar for the ladies. Unlike almost all other contemporary phones, Latte Slim11b does not maintain 3rd party applications through JAVA.