Pantech Crossover Review

Introduction:

Heavily known for their line of feature phones, Pantech is one of those companies that simply continues to pump out an exorbitant amount of handsets throughout the year, but they’ve seemingly held off from making the jump into the smartphone world. Well, times are undoubtedly changing, and with buzz about smartphones overtaking sales, it’s only inevitable for them to finally give in. With that in mind, we’re greeted to the affordable Pantech Crossover – a device that’s aiming to be the perfect crossover device. Although it’s their first Android powered handset, it’ll be interesting to see how they execute in making the jump.

The package contains:

• Pantech Crossover
• microUSB Cable
• Wall Charger
• 2GB microSD card
• Quick Start Guide
• Interactive Tutorial CD

Design:

At first glance, the Pantech Crossover comes across as some sort of rugged style smartphone – due to its bulky (0.56” thick) looks and tough plastic exterior, but it offers some tangible differences with its angular cutout corners. Despite its plastic construction, there is still a noticeable amount of weight (5.15 oz) with it. Ultimately, it’s not the prettiest thing out there, but it still bears some resemblance to some of Pantech’s previous efforts with their feature phones.



You can compare the Pantech Crossover with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Clearly, the Crossover’s 3.1” HVGA (320 x 480) LCD display isn’t the highest quality out there, especially when there’s a yellowish tinge to it, but its tiny size does make it difficult to make out text on screen. Additionally, its poor viewing angles tend to wash out colors on the display even when it’s tilted ever so slightly.



Finding a combination of touch capacitive and physical buttons below the display, we don’t find any issues pressing any of them. On its left and right sides, we’re greeted with its tactile and well-sized volume rocker, shutter key, and microUSB port for charging and data purposes. On the top edge of the phone, the 3.5mm headset jack is positioned squarely in the middle – with the dedicated power and function buttons prominently placed toward the corners. With the latter, you can actually map it to run a variety of apps on the handset – and it comes in handy in quickly gaining access to those specific apps.


Requiring just a tiny bit of force, the Crossover has a springy feel when you open it as it snaps into position to reveal its 4-row QWERTY keyboard. Even though buttons looks rather flat, they’re decently sized, offer a good amount of responsiveness when pressed, and spaced evenly from one another to make speed typing a breeze. Actually, we didn’t have any issues using it as we managed to quickly get a feel for it right from the start.



Finally, the 3-megapixel auto-focus camera and speakerphone are positioned in the rear, while sliding off the plastic rear covers provides access to its 1,500 mAh battery, SIM card and microSD

Interface and Functionality:

Taking to account its inexpensive nature, the Pantech Crossover is powered by a paltry 600MHz processor, but don’t let that fool you, because it actually offers a decent platform experience – albeit, some levels of lag are evident sometimes. Obviously, Pantech sprinkles their flavor with a customized Android experience running on top of Android 2.2 Froyo, though, it’s not all that eye-catching compared to the competition. Frankly, it’s more than functional with Pantech’s specific set of widgets that basically outline the foundations of Android as a whole. With its app panel though, it’s actually laid out in that all too familiar grid-style layout.

Considering that its physical keyboard offers an astounding messaging experience, it’s rather difficult to fathom why anyone would want to use its on-screen keyboards. nevertheless, boasting the stock and Swype keyboards, we’re content with the level of responsiveness they exhibit, but of course, the tiny size of buttons with both landscape and portrait options make it hard to consistently type with few mistakes. In the end, it’s best reserved to stick with its physical keyboard.



Unsurprisingly, the Gmail experience doesn’t deviate in any way since it’s the same experience you find with just about any Android powered smartphone out there. Of course, you’re still presented with its rich set of features – like threaded conversations and the ability to label items. As for setup, it’s fairly simple since it generally requires your email address and password for automatic setup. However, you might be asked for additional pieces of information if you’re setting up some accounts that are less popular.



Being the AT&T smartphone it is, it’s not uncommon to find the carrier’s set of applications preloaded with the handset – such as AT&T Code Scanner, AT&T FamilyMap, AT&T Mark the Spot, AT&T Navigator, Live TV, and myAT&T. Moreover, there are a couple of third party apps preinstalled as well – like AllSport GPS and YPmobile. Happily, AT&T customers will be thrilled to find out that you can install non-Market apps with the handset.



Camera and Multimedia:

Don’t expect anything exhilarating with its 3-megapixel auto-focus camera. Outdoors, details are on the average side, with color production on the cooler side. In addition, it falters with indoor shots in low lighting with noisy looking production and flat looking details.






Scarily, the handset’s video capture is even worse with its slow as molasses 18 frames per second capture, grainy & muddy looking visuals, and muffled sounding audio recording. Sure it’s able to shoot WVGA videos, but after checking out the results, it can be easily mistaken for QVGA videos instead.



Pantech Crossover Sample Video:



Not deviating from the norm with its conventional looking music player interface, it’s still nonetheless more than functional in playing some tunes, Displaying the usual set of items as a song is playing, such as the album cover, on-screen controls, and track information, you can instantly switch songs by executing swipe gestures on the album covers. Audio quality with its speaker is on the moderate side, though, we’re glad to find that it doesn’t strain at the loudest setting.



Interestingly enough, we’re surprised to see the handset accepting a video encoded in MPEG-4 1280 x 720 resolution, however, it does crumble under the pressure when it’s playing it. Besides the slow playback, its low quality display and tiny size does make it rather challenging to enjoy watching videos during an extended period of time.



Granted that it’s better than nothing, the preloaded 2GB microSD card will be appreciated by some people, but for those who require more, you can always replace it with cards up to 32GB in capacity.

Internet and Connectivity:

First and foremost, you’ll need some patience when it comes to web browsing seeing that it does take some time loading up complex web pages. Lacking Flash support, it’s missing out on that desktop like experience, but its operation with various functions, like pinch scrolling, are more than acceptable with our taste. However, we still experience some instances of lag and slowdown every now and then that come out of nowhere.



Being the GSM smartphone it is, you’ll be able to take the Pantech Crossover on your world excursions without the worry about being disconnected. In addition, it stays firm with other handsets by offering aGPS for location-based services, Bluetooth 2.1 to get other wireless peripherals to connect with it, 802.11 b/g/n as an alternative data connection source, and mobile hotspot functionality to share its data connection with up to 5 Wi-Fi devices.

Performance:

More than acceptable to our taste, we’re content with its calling quality because its earpiece puts out a moderate amount of volume that basically produces some deep, yet audible voices. On the other end of the line, our callers are happy with the natural voices they’re greeted with. However, the speakerphone exhibits some crackly tones when it’s placed on the loudest volume setting.

Signal strength remains strong throughout our testing since it displays a solid set of bars in high coverage areas. Moreover, we didn’t experience any drop calls while testing it in the greater Philadelphia region.

If you’re one of those individuals that love to constantly talk, then you’ll be thrilled to find that we’re able to get 10 hours of continuous talk time with a full battery, which blows away the 5 hours rated by the manufacturer. On the other hand, we’re able to get at least a solid day of normal usage – though, it still might be a good idea to charge this one every night.

Conclusion:

No longer a bystander as other manufacturers set the bar with their line of smartphones, we’re actually happy to see Pantech finally making that leap of faith by jumping into this competitive market. By no means does the Pantech Crossover come off as a high caliber Android smartphone, but taking its affordable pricing and performance into consideration, it’s a reasonable start for a company known to make excellent feature phones. At $69.99 on-contract, it’s not going to break the bank, but even better is the fact that it provides an acceptable Android experience that’s the perfect go-to device for those who are curious about moving into the smartphone game.

Software version of the reviewed unit:
Android Version: 2.2.1
Build number: FRG83
Kernel Version: 2.6.32.9-perf

Pantech Crossover Video Review: