Product Reviews

Smartphone manufacturers are cramming more and more features into their phones, but Fujitsu Siemens' Pocket Loox T830 has the biggest list we've ever seen. There's a full QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, 802.11g wireless networking and 3G, as well as an integrated GPS receiver.

Unfortunately, Fujitsu Siemens couldn't manage to cram all this technology into a slim and lightweight package. The T830 is very large and feels heavy, while the grey plasticky finish is just plain ugly. Despite the handset's size, the screen is fairly small and has a resolution of 240x240 pixels, rather than the usual Windows Mobile 320x240 pixels.

Like Palm's Treo 750v reviewed in What's New: Handhelds, Shopper January 2007, the T830 has a QWERTY keyboard beneath the display. The keys look too small to be usable, but are actually remarkably easy to type on thanks to the generous amount of space between them. Typing messages is still not as fast as on the T-Mobile MDA Vario II's slide-out keypad, though. Thanks to the keyboard, the directional keypad and a jog wheel on the left of the handset, you can operate most of the smartphone's functions without using the stylus.

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all Windows Mobile smartphones, you can set up the T830 to download email from a POP3 or IMAP4 server. You can also synchronise the handset with a Microsoft Exchange server over GPRS and, if the Exchange server has Push email enabled, it will deliver mail directly to the handset as soon as it arrives. The T830 also has a Direct Push mode, where the handset is in standby but can still receive Push email. Unless you plan to use this phone for business, it's unlikely that you'll be able to use push email.

The T830 has a camera on the front as well as the rear, for 3G video calling. The main camera is impressive. It has a 2-megapixel resolution and there is hardly any shutter delay, so your subject is unlikely to have moved out of the frame by the time the photo is taken. There's no flash, so it's hard to take pictures in poorly lit places, but daylight shots have good contrast if slightly washed-out colours.

There's also a 3.5mm headphone socket, and the supplied pair has balanced treble and mid-range, if little bass. There is room for some pictures and audio files in the 62MB of free internal storage, and the T830 uses standard-sized SD cards rather than mini- or micro-SD if you want to expand this. The handset has a simple GPS program installed. You can set your current position but, with no maps, navigation can be difficult. You'll need to buy a separate Windows Mobile navigation software package for any serious navigation.

Fujitsu Siemens' T830 is a fast messaging smartphone with an unmatched specification. It's a shame it's so big and heavy, and it's very expensive on contract. For the same price, you could buy a Palm Treo 750v (What's New, Shopper January 2007) and a standalone in-car GPS system.