Pharos GPS Phone 600e review

As far as voice features, the 600e is a quadband GSM world phone with an address book that's only limited by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts). As with most Windows Mobile smart phones, there's room in each entry for multiple numbers, e-mail, IM, and physical addresses, notes, birthdays, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a photo, a group ID, or one of eight ringtones. The 600e also has a speakerphone, a vibrate mode, voice commands, a SIM toolkit, and a utility called EZDial for easier contact search and dialing.

Wireless options on the 600e include Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), and the onboard wireless managers help you get connected to Bluetooth devices or the Web. The phone supports a number of Bluetooth profiles, including wireless headsets, Bluetooth stereo headsets, hands-free kits, dial-up networking, file transfer, and vCard exchange. As far as Wi-Fi, the device was able to find and connect to our test access point, and we were able to easily get on the Web within minutes. Sadly, the Pharos GPS Phone isn't 3G-capable, though it does support EDGE speeds.

Now, while the 600e is equipped with a GPS radio, its functions are limited without the inclusion of navigation software. Pharos does include a copy of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2005, so you can transfer maps from your PC to the smart phone. However, it will not give you real-time driving directions.

We were disappointed by the quality of the 600e's 2-megapixel camera. Colors looked washed out, and you have to have a really steady hand to get a clear picture.

As we noted in the Design section, the Pharos GPS Phone 600e has a 2-megapixel camera with a flash and video recording capabilities. You have a choice of five resolutions and a number of setting options for white balance, special effects, and frequencies. You also can enhance your photos with a frame or add a time stamp. In video mode, you get three quality settings and three resolutions, as well as many of the white balance and special effects option, but you lose the photo frames. Overall, we weren't very impressed with the quality of the photos. They lacked definition and colors were washed out. Plus, we found you really have to keep the device steady, more than usual, to get a somewhat clear shot.

Performance
We tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) Pharos GPS Phone 600e in San Francisco using Cingular service. Call quality was OK; there was a lot of background noise and a distracting echo on our end, and while our friends said they could hear us fine, they could tell we were using a cell phone. When we activated the speakerphone, the results were reversed. Conversations were much clearer, but our callers said we were barely audible as a crackling noise disrupted things. The one bright note is that we had no problems pairing the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset.

The 600e is equipped with a 400MHz processor and has 128MB ROM/64MB SDRAM with about 40MB of user-accessible storage and 28MB for running programs. General performance was mixed. The smart phone was quick to perform certain tasks like opening office documents, but it slowed considerably when launching the camera or activating certain wireless features. Obviously, we didn't get the benefit of 3G speeds when browsing the Web on the 600e, but it wasn't horrible, as pages loaded fairly quickly. Music playback through the phone's speakers was, as expected, pretty poor, lacking bass and richness. Watching video, however, was surprisingly good. Though you get some pixilation, video quality was better than some other smart phones we've tested and the picture and audio always matched up.

The Pharos GPS Phone 600e is rated for 5 hours of talk time and up to six days of standby time. In our battery tests, the 600e just met the rated talk time.