A smartphone with a well-designed hardware keyboard is, for many business users, the only way to use Windows Mobile. They're becoming increasingly widespread too, but it appears there's still life in the straightforward, button-free phone yet. And when a phone is as powerful as MWg Atom Life, there's reason for even die-hard fans of hardware keyboards to consider switching back.

While it might not look much from the outside, it's a completely different story inside. The MWg Atom Life is the fastest touchscreen-only phone we've ever seen and with a 624MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor lurking under the hood, it feels as responsive to use as the lofty clock speed suggests.

As with the HP Business Navigator 614c we reviewed a few weeks ago (which had a 520MHz processor), there's very little waiting around for applications to launch and little lag when switching from one to another.

It's disappointing that the MWg Atom Life is only equipped with 64MB of RAM, but the fast processor more than makes up for that inadequacy. Windows Mobile's terrible memory management didn't come into play either –at least in terms of performance. You'll still have the perennial problem of some applications refusing to launch when that 64Mb is completely occupied, but this is easily remedied by clearing the decks from time to time with Windows Mobile’s task manager.

Another compensation for the lack of memory is that there's a generous dollop of user-available storage, which means that this is one smartphone that can genuinely live up to its do-it-all pretentions. Most smartphones of the Atom Life's ilk make do with a measly 256Mb, 128Mb or even 64Mb of storage space and a microSD slot, which means that you’ll need to spend a bit more to add a good selection of media and applications.

That's not the case here. The MWg Atom Life has a full 1Gb of internal storage to play with and while this may not be ground breaking, it’s four times as big as most Windows Mobile-based devices we've seen. It should allow you squeeze a fair few albums, movies, photos and applications on the device without recourse to the phone's Mini SD expansion slot.

The MWg Atom Life is no slouch in the connectivity department, either. It’s a tri-band phone, but more impressive is that it supports 3.6Mbit/sec HSDPA (as well as GPRS and EDGE) and 802.11g Wi-Fi. Less notable is the fact that only Bluetooth 1.2 is supported, so listening to music without wires won't be a possibility, and there's no GPS. But the Atom Life makes up for this with a flash-equipped two-megapixel camera facing the rear; one VGA camera facing the front for video calls; an FM tuner; plus a stack of useful software extras, including remote desktop, a media streaming application and a PDF viewer. All-in-all, it's an impressive specification for a phone costing just £199, unlocked.

Understandably perhaps, given this low price, the one area that seems to suffer is fit and finish. This is not the sexiest, slimmest or most desirable smartphone on the block. Its shiny black plastic front fascia and rear panel look cheap, but there are other areas where the phone could have done with a touch of design flair.

The fact that the rear panel doesn't fit particularly tightly, for instance, means we have our doubts as to how it would cope with a drop or two. And while a relatively compact smartphone from the front, it's pretty thick at 18mm. The one bright spot is the phone's stylus, which is all-metal and has a weighty, quality feel to it.

Ergonomics are better – all the buttons around the Life's silver-trimmed edges are easy to locate and press, while the main button cluster below the 240 x 320 screen has a positive, clicky feel. We liked the fact that the phone's speaker is on the front too, which means you can use it in speakerphone mode with it sat flat on the desk without muffling the sound.

Annoyingly, there's no OK shortcut button set up on the device out of the box – the bottom right key on the main control cluster instead launches Media Player. You can fix this easily enough, but it is a touch frustrating that the key has media-related graphics permanently stencilled upon it.

With such massive power on tap, however, the main worry is not the build quality or ergonomics, though those factors are undeniably important – it's how the battery will cope. After all, smartphones with less than half the clout of the Atom Life, rarely last longer than two full days of occasional use, and we were seriously worried that the massively powerful processor would prove the Atom Life's undoing.

Encouragingly, MWg supplies a high-capacity 1530mAh lithium polymer battery and the power of the processor is ramped up and down automatically (there's also a tool that allows you to change the processor profile from Best Performance to Best Power, just like a laptop). But it makes little difference and the Atom Life’s battery life is distinctly underwhelming. We found that the Atom Life gave up at between a day and a day-and-a-half of light use.

This tips our opinion of the MWg Atom Life from bordering on the positive to distinctly negative. And while the core specifications mark the phone out as above average, the rest of the package is markedly less impressive. It may be reasonably priced at £199 unlocked, but the poor battery life and bland looks means there’s little to distinguish this handset from other manufacturers’ models.

Comments

Add New Search

mike  - How to get facebook and Aim   |31/05/08 4:32 AM I have been searching all over the net for a Aim and Facebook app, but I cant find them. Can someone please send me some links, and if they're are no apps for them, please tell me. Thanks Reply | Quote

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Website:
Title:
UBBCode:	-color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.25

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

---

Bookmark with: