Review Philips Fisio 620

Philips Fisio 620, live pictures

Philips Fisio 620 is one of the models of the middle class. The company left some old features and added some new ones here. The phone is available in three colours - torm black, silver blue and softskin blue. A silver rim of the screen is always the same, only the colour of keys and covers is various. Phone sides are made of dark, almost black, plastic. If you are not satisfied with this colour you can obtain additional interchangeable covers (front and back). It's really easy to change them, any user can do it without problems. To say the truth you need to make an effort to remove the front colour but it's not difficult. A rear cover has a slight vertical backlash but you almost don't feel it while using the phone. The phone is handy, it has true pocket-size dimensions (104х46х20mm) and weighs 85g.

A display of the phone can show up to 6 text lines or 4 text lines and two service lines (in SMS mode). Screen fonts are readable, characters size is optimal for this screen. Two green luminodiodes which are placed under the screen provide a backlighting of the display. It's not very bright, but it is sufficient to read the information in the dark. It's possible to change the colour of the backlighting, it changes from green to yellow or yellow-red. But as for me green one is the most pleasing.

A plastic keypad is positioned under the screen, keys are small and well-spaced. You can't dial a number with ease but at the same time you don't feel any discomfort. It's interesting that navigation joystick - a Pilot Key (4 directions + pressure) - is made of rubber. It gives easy navigation, you don't make mistakes while using it.

There is an external antenna connector on the rear part of the phone. You'll also find a system connector on the bottom. It unites portable handsfree and charger connectors. The phone incorporates a lithium-ion battery of 550 mAh capacity. According to the manufacturers it can work up to 330 hours in standby mode and up to 4 hours 45 minutes in talk mode. In reality the phone worked about 4 days in case of 40 minutes of talking (Beeline Network). It's not bad result even if to take into account that additional features were almost not used (only 20 minutes). Autonomy will slightly decrease even while active phone usage. Energy consumption is minimal here if to compare with other models of this class. A time of full re-charging is about 2 hours.

Menu

The phone supports several menu languages. Apart from Russian we had English and some others in our sample. Menu organization is typical to all phones from Philips. Press a Pilot Key and you are in the main menu. As usual it is a carousel-based user interface with animated icons. You can move through the menu with a help of the Pilot Key. If you want to return to the main level you should press C key, not reject key as in most models from other manufacturers. A shortcut number navigation is absent here, but you can associate shortcuts to 8 keys from the menu. For example you can press "5" in the standby mode, which brings you to calculator. Remember, the more menu items are associated to shortcuts the lesser phone numbers you can quickly dial. These two features are combined here.

Almost all submenus are also carousel-based. If you often use functions which are deeply "inside" you have to use a Pilot Key or add voice tags to these items. In total up to 40 voice tags can be stored in the phone memory, which can be used for either Voice Command or Voice Dial. If you can accommodate to use mostly Voice Dial you can forget about menu inconvenience. Let's us see the main features.

Phonebook. Up to 300 names can be stored in the phone memory. You can add a name, a surname, up to 5 phone numbers and e-mail address to one contact. If you press joystick down you get access to this feature. Either phone numbers from SIM-card memory or phonebook are displayed simultaneously on the screen. You can see only names and surnames in the list. If there is not enough space to show the whole note, it is scrolled. An icon like a phone is displayed near the selected record, with a help of side moves you can choose other numbers which are added to this contact. Arrows will be active even if additional numbers are absent. The first one you added to the record will be the first one in the list. So, you don't need to set default numbers, it's done automatically. To call a selected number you should only press send key. Pressing a Pilot Key brings you to handsfree mode. To view a phone number that was added to one or another name you should list half of the menu. This action is necessary also when you want to add a voice tag (up to 40).Voice recognition works well. The only negative moment is that you can associate identical words to different phone numbers. In this case only the last one will be recognized by the phone, the other one will be stored in the memory but it will never work.

There is a search by the first letter in the total list. The second pressure doesn't work. It's necessary to scroll a list a little bit to make the search workable again.

Operator Services. When you enter the main menu, you find yourself in the operator service submenu. Apparently engineers decided that functions of this submenu would be the most popular. Wap-browser (one more submenu) and access to service phone numbers are hidden here. Wap-browse in version 1.2.1 works correctly. There is nothing more interesting here.

Picture Album. A list of pictures is kept here, 5 of them are pre-installed. All pictures are stored in jpg format. You can preview a current picture and set one of the images as a background. You can also create screensavers from one or several of these pictures using setting menu.

Messages. One can read received messages and create new ones in this submenu. The phone doesn't have its own memory for the short messages, only SIM-card memory is available. When you view a list of messages, every selected message is displayed (as a creeping line). When you open a certain message, it is automatically scrolled in the full screen mode. It's rather interesting isn't it? There are 10 English templates in this handset. You can also attach many icons to the message, but only another phone from Phillips could display it correctly. There is also a problem when the memory is full. You can know about it only if you enter “Messages” menu, there are no other warning signs. If you don't notice that the memory is full, you won't receive messages. So, be attentive.

E-mail. Built-in E-mail client supports 2 mailboxes. It works with both protocols POP3 and SMTP. One can receive mail via GPRS. The idea is good but attachments are not supported except jpg files. Messages, which occupy more than 10 Kb, are not received.

Call list. There is a total list of received, dialed and missed phone numbers. You can view date and time of the call if you like. The list contains up to 30 records. Press joystick up to access it. You can use the phone numbers in the same way as the phone numbers from the phonebook (messages, detail view and so on).

Organiser. Organizer has a monthly, weekly and daily view. All the days of the month with events are marked by red. When you are in weekly view you can see an icon of event near every day with events. There are three types of events: meeting, rest and business. Date of the beginning and date of the end is set for every event. All the events can be recurrent (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly). You can also set reminders for every event. Sometimes it's irritating that after each reminding you need to confirm it. There is a possibility to delete several old events simultaneously. The memory of the organizer and the phonebook is dynamical. So, 300 records in the phonebook are available only when there are no records in the organizer. It's a little surprise from Philips

Extras. Different useful applications are collected here? For example an alarm-clock. The phone can be set to alarm once, weekly or “only in workdays”.

Calculator is simple.

Call counters. Various call counters for both GSM and GPRS are collected here. Total duration of all calls can't be viewed. Only the counters of incoming and outgoing calls are available.

Memory Status. It shows memory status of the phone. All data you can see on a diagram. As for me it will be more comfortable if you better know how many free fields left in your phonebook (in pieces not in percent).

Memo. It's a dictaphone, which can work in talk mode. Only one record (up to 30 seconds) can be recorded. You delete the first one if you try to record one more.

The phone has only one pre-loaded game - Brick game. It's rather simple.

Settings. Traditionally you can set security levels, one of 5 themes for the display (they change the colour of the windows and the background), adjust a backlighting duration (up to 1 minute) and screensavers and so on.

All audio settings are also collected here. You can choose one of the 19 pre-loaded (+1 received) melodies, vibrating alert, mixed mode. It's interesting that you can adjust an equalizer in this model (5 settings). These settings appeared here thanks to ARM support, it's practically the first phone which does it. Unfortunately this function is operator dependent. My attempts to play with the settings were failed. I don't notice any difference, the sound in the loudspeaker wasn't changing.

Quick Settings. Several profiles are kept here, for example “Meeting”, “Silent”, “Personal” and others. It's disappointing that all settings are pre-default, they can't be changed. There is a list of changes typical for each profile in the manual. Either a user should learn them by heart or trust his or her intuition, I don't know what engineers thought while working out the software.

Impressions

The quality connection is not bad here, the sound is clear. The volume of the loudspeaker is quite enough. The quality of handsfree mode is comparable to the phones of other manufacturers, it's pleasing to use it inside. A ring volume is average. Most melodies have not usual key and tempo and well-known tunes sound a little bit different. Novelty is not bad either. Here you can listen to the melodies (mp3, 430Kb).

Features of Philips Fisio 620 are almost the same as of Philips Fisio 820 except the colour screen and bluetooth. Philips Fisio 620 also supports GPRS. The latter is used only for viewing wap-resources. It's necessary to purchase a cable to synchronize Philips Fisio 620 with PC, IR-port is absent here.

If you've ever used any phone from Philips before you'll understand the menu structure quickly. Joystick is not very comfortable in applying to carousel menu, jog dial is more convenient. But you can minimize a menu using adding voice tags to some items (or speed keys). It's not a usual method of using the phone. Many don't use voice dial at all but those who use them enjoy this feature greatly. It's rather difficult to accommodate to the carousel menu structure for those who get used to the standard list menus. The advantage of the phone is a good autonomy (4 -5 days).

This model would launch on the Russian market before the beginning of 2003, an expected price is 170-180 USD.

Eldar Murtazin ([email protected])
Translated by Maria Sennikova ([email protected])

Published — 13 November 2002

Have something to add?! Write us... [email protected]

News:

[ 31-07 16:21 ]Sir Jony Ive: Apple Isn't In It For The Money

[ 31-07 13:34 ]Video: Nokia Designer Interviews

[ 31-07 13:10 ]RIM To Layoff 3,000 More Employees

[ 30-07 20:59 ]Video: iPhone 5 Housing Shown Off

[ 30-07 19:12 ]Android Fortunes Decline In U.S.

[ 25-07 16:18 ]Why Apple Is Suing Samsung?

[ 25-07 15:53 ]A Few Choice Quotes About Apple ... By Samsung

[ 23-07 20:25 ]Russian iOS Hacker Calls It A Day

[ 23-07 17:40 ]Video: It's Still Not Out, But Galaxy Note 10.1 Gets An Ad

[ 19-07 19:10 ]Another Loss For Nokia: $1 Billion Down In Q2

[ 19-07 17:22 ]British Judge Orders Apple To Run Ads Saying Samsung Did Not Copy Them

[ 19-07 16:57 ]iPhone 5 To Feature Nano-SIM Cards

[ 18-07 14:20 ]What The iPad Could Have Looked Like ...

[ 18-07 13:25 ]App Store Hack Is Still Going Strong Despite Apple's Best Efforts

[ 13-07 12:34 ]Infographic: The (Hypothetical) Sale Of RIM

[ 13-07 11:10 ]Video: iPhone Hacker Makes In-App Purchases Free

[ 12-07 19:50 ]iPhone 5 Images Leak Again

[ 12-07 17:51 ]Android Takes 50%+ Of U.S. And Europe

[ 11-07 16:02 ]Apple Involved In 60% Of Patent Suits

[ 11-07 13:14 ]Video: Kindle Fire Gets A Jelly Bean

Subscribe