Manage updates with the Download App
The Pursuit also offers support for AT&T's new cloud services like AT&T Address Book, which lets you store messages and contacts in the cloud, and AT&T Online Locker, where you can store photos and videos in the cloud as well. You can also transfer them to popular online photo sharing sites like Photobucket via AT&T's MobileShare. Note that you only get 250MB of online storage, and the file transfer isn't free--it's around 35 cents per transfer, or $10 for 50 transfers. There's a 10MB file size cap as well.
AT&T is clearly thinking of the Pursuit as a youth-friendly device, as they also introduced several social networking features in the phone. There's AT&T SocialNet, which acts as a hub for all the popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. If you're a Facebook or MySpace fan, however, you might want to opt for the dedicated apps for those two services also available on the Pursuit.
The Pursuit is billed as a messaging phone, so you'll get the whole range of messaging features like text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging, and mobile e-mail. To get mobile e-mail, you need to launch a Web-connected app, and after that you can configure it to get email from several web mail providers like Yahoo and Windows Live, in addition to your own POP or IMAP servers.
Since the Pursuit has 3G, this gives it access to AT&T's array of broadband services. They include Mobile Video and Mobile Music. The latter acts as a music one-stop-shop with features like XM Radio Mobile, a song ID app called Shazam, a ringtone creator, music videos, and access to music fan sites. You can also purchase and download music over the air from Napster or eMusic for around $1 per song. The music player on the Pursuit is decent--you get the typical playlist creation tool as well as repeat and shuffle mode. You can store music via a microSD card--the Pursuit supports up to 16GB cards.
The 2.0-megapixel camera on the Pursuit can take pictures in three resolutions, and three quality settings. Other camera settings include a self-timer, color effects, white balance, geotagging, plus timer and shutter sounds. The camera also has six special-effect modes--normal, smile detection, self-portrait mode (it'll beep once it detects your face), blink detection, face detection, and panorama stitching. Photo quality is actually surprisingly good for a 2.0-megapixel camera. The images look crisp overall and though the colors are a little blue for our liking, it's still quite good. The Pursuit has a built-in camcorder as well, which can shoot in either 176x144- or 320x240-pixel resolution, and you can also stream live one-way video via AT&T's Video Share.
Thanks to the AT&T AppCenter, you can easily customize the Pursuit with a variety of graphics, ringtones, games, and apps. The phone comes with a few by default--YPMobile (Yellow Pages), Where, AT&T FamilyMap locator, MobiTV, AllSport GPS, My-Cast Weather, Mobile Banking, FunScreenz, PicDial, Hip Hop Official, Movies Powered by IMDB, Tetris, Diner Dash Flo, Bubble Bash 2, TextTwist 2, and Rolling with Katamari Damacy.
Performance
We tested the Pantech Pursuit in San Francisco using the AT&T Wireless. Call quality was above average, but nothing spectacular. On our end, we heard our callers very clearly, but the experience was slightly marred by the occasional static blip and hiss.
On their end, callers said they could hear us loud and clear--unfortunately they could hear a lot of background noise as well. They reported quite a lot of echo, even in a relatively quiet office environment. Voice quality sounded harsh as well. Fortunately, speakerphone quality wasn't too bad--they said it was similar to when we were not on the speakerphone.
Music playback quality over the phone's tinny speakers isn't the best, but it's loud enough for occasional use. We tested it with the MotoRokr S9 HD stereo Bluetooth headphones, which sounded a lot better.
We experienced pretty good 3G speeds with the Pursuit. We downloaded a 1.6 MB song in 40 seconds and loaded CNET's mobile page in around 24 seconds. Streaming video didn't take too much buffering either.
The Pursuit has a tested talk time of 5 hours and 35 minutes. We don't yet know the SAR for the Pursuit, but we'll update this review with that information shortly.
