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 The
ETEN Glofiish M700 promises a lot in terms of specification and all of
these promises are housed in a relatively small body. Let's have a
quick run down of the main specs and as you can see it is an enticing
bundle-400 Mhz Processor, Quad Band GSM/EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth v2.0 EDR, WiFi, IEEE802.11b/g, SiRF Star III GPS Receiver with TMC support (country dependant), 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera, FM Tuner, Slide out QWERTY keyboard, 320 x 240 QVGA TFT-LCD, Micro SD slot and 128MB ROM/64MB RAM. All of the above is housed in a device that weighs 165g and is only 19.8mm thick. The standard Windows Mobile 5.0 applications are included along with Outlook 2002 plus the following list of extra software- Phone Tools Phone Application, Phone Setting, SIM Toolkit, Speed Dial, Call Filter, Wireless Modem, Dialer Skin, Add Ringtone, CSD Type, Voice Commander, Connection Wizard, SMS Sender, SIM Manager, Skype Reciever Switch, Image Wizard, Image Maker, Multimedia Manager, Quick Link, Battery Meter, Zoom SMS, Bluetooth Manager, M-Desk, Scenario, Backup Utility, Application Recovery, Wireless Manager, Easy Keyboard, Satellite Data Update, Location SMS, GPS Viewer. That is a serious list of extra applications and whilst some of them are small add-ons each serves a purpose. Does it all sound too good to be true so far? Read on to find out... The overall look of the M700 is very corporate, almost industrial, with a bulky but flat appearance dominating the asthetics. The silver plastic covering if very light coloured and thus can come over as shiny in sunlight and the screen looks a little dwarfed housed in a device that has over an inch of buttons above and below it. It feels sturdy in the hand and the back says nothing in terms of fashion but I do like the final result. It is hard to describe but I warmed to it quite quickly.  Let's
look at the exterior
buttons- as you can see in the image above the M700 is not
loaded with lots of application buttons on the front. You get the green
and red phone buttons and the two standard WM5.0 keys below the screen.
The joypad and select buttons are quite fiddly and certainly not the
best I have seen but they are good enough for short periods of use-
can't see them performing in the gaming stakes though. Fortunately
there are two extra buttons above the screen- the first is asigned to
the GPS receiver and the second to the M-Desk utility. Of course you
can customise their uses but an 'OK' button would have been a good idea
or at least the ability to define the 'OK' function to one of these
buttons. On the left hand side are volume up/down keys plus an extra
button which is also definable. It is initially set for Voice Commander
and I found myself constantly hitting it accidentally- changing this
button to scroll down soved that issue and also helped with eBook
reading. I can live without a scroll wheel provided there is a left
hand button for scrolling. On the right hand side you have the on/off
button and a camera button and that's your lot. The button set up does
work well and they are flush enough to the surfaces to stop accidental
presses, apart from that Voice Commander button. The
logical place to look next is the keyboard
which will be one of the main features potential purchasers look at and
the one that has dissapointed me the most. You can see from the photo
that it looks the business and that having a full length QWERTY
keyboard should provide a much speedier and accurate data input
experience.There are two issue with this keyboard that hinder an otherwise excellent set of keys. The first is the closeness to the edge of the top part and a funny lip at the bottom part. I found that when typing my thumbs were touching the base of the screen for the Q-P row and catching the lip at the bottom for the function - % row. It is actually not a huge problem but one that could have been partly avoided by not having the lip at the bottom. When moved to landscape the keyboard does take up all of the available height and I can at least understand why ETEN did this.  The
next keyboard issue is quite bizarre. Take a look at the photo of the
keyboard in the dark. The numbers and function symbols are not visable
at all. Surely a light up keyboard should light up all of the functions
on every key? Add to this the fact that you can barely see the numbers
in broad daylight because they are printed dark gray on a medium grey
background and we have a very quirky keyboard design. I like the blue
lighting though:)Strangely the whole keyboard set up does work well and I am picking on minor annoyances rather than failures of design but I do wonder who sits down and makes these devices at times. I suspect too many scientists and not enough artists. The performance of any device is important and particularly in the Windows Mobile arena. I have seen far too many devices that cannot handle the operating system and thus produce a poor user experience. The M700 is most certainly not one of those- it zips along at a fair old pace all of the time and I managed to get to more than ten applications open before things started to slow down. Video playback was super smooth and even the most demanding of games played without issue. This is a seriously powerful device that filled me with confidence and this has made my time with it an extremely positive experience. Watch the video below for a small demonstration of it's speed (opening messaging from cold, opening contacts and changing the today theme). |
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