The NEC 232E's VGA camera was impressive and offered a few surprises. You get only 300,000-pixel resolution, but you can choose from Superfine, Fine, and Normal quality settings, as well as three photo effects (normal, monochrome, and sepia). You also can adjust the brightness and use the 3X zoom, the flash, and the self-timer. Photos looked slightly washed out but were much better than other camera phone images we've seen. Of the mobile's 4.6MB of total memory, 1MB is set aside for pictures, while 1.1MB goes to e-mail, 1.6MB is for application downloads, and 900K is dedicated to sounds. You can send images to others, and NEC makes it very easy to do so. After taking a picture, you're automatically given the option of saving or sending the shot. There's no need to take a more circuitous route through the menus. As this is the first cell phone loaded with the Openwave 7.0 browser, you're presented with a much-improved and intuitive experience for saving, editing, and sending pictures. The EDGE data speeds help, as well.
You can personalize the 232E with a variety of wallpaper, colors, themes, and sounds. If you're bored with the integrated options, you can download more choices. The 232E doesn't ship with any games, but you can download titles, if you'd like. A word of caution: This mobile, like most other NEC models, supports only DoJa instead of Java (J2ME).
We tested the triband (GSM 850/1800/1900; GPRS; EDGE) NEC 232E HDM in San Francisco using AT&T Wireless. Call quality was satisfactory but occasionally patchy, with low volume. Callers said they could not hear us from time to time, and they sometimes sounded like they were speaking from behind glass.Battery life was admirable. We managed a solid 4.5 hours of talk time on a single charge or just a half hour short of the promised time of 5 hours. For standby time, the mobile lasted 4.5 days. Though that's almost two days short of the rated time of 6.3 days, it's still respectable. Travel bugs should know, however, that the handset has a rather bulky charger. According to the FCC, the 232E has a digital SAR rating of 0.33 watts per kilogram.
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