It's small, light, looks good and boasts an impressive array of features: Jørgen Sundgot plays with Panasonic's new Series 60-based X700 smartphone at its unveiling in Cannes.
Chalking up yet another win for its Series 60 platform, one can't help lend thought to the idea that Nokia might be having second thoughts as to whether the company did the right thing when licensing its Symbian OS based platform to other manufacturers: First came the Siemens SX1, which takes multimedia to new levels, then the Sendo X is expected soon - and now there's also the Panasonic X700, which will be out in the second half of 2004.
Offering functionality fully on par with Nokia's own flagship, the Nokia 6600, the Panasonic X700 comes with the vast array of features that seems to be present in all Series 60 devices: an integrated VGA camera, polyphonic ringtones, MMS, e-mail, tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz and GPRS, to name a few of the most prominent. There's also Bluetooth, of course, along with support for J2ME MIDP 2.0, a WAP 2.0 browser, infrared and USB connectivity, and even speaker independent voice dialing and command functionality.
 | | Panasonic X700 |
There's a couple of firsts in the X700 as well, however, as it is the first smartphone on the market to support the new miniSD Card format, and it also appears it will be the first clamshell Series 60 device to hit shelves since the Samsung SGH-D700 has been indefinitely postponed. Thankfully, Panasonic decided not to "innovate" in the area of its keypad, which is - thank God - quite comfortable and offers good tactile feedback, although its keys would benefit from a slight elevation. The navigational pad and its adjacent buttons, however, should be left just as they are.
The most striking aspect of the X700, however, is its small size and light weight; despite lacking exact numbers, it's still a no-brainer pegging it as one of the world's smallest smartphones. Then there's the excellent display, which is both crisp, bright and offers a viewing angle that's out of this world. How this impacts battery life noone knows, but it's fair to guess that because of this, the X700 will be as challenged in the battery department as other Series 60 phones. Additionally, the X700 boasts a relatively large external colour display, offering picture caller ID functionality and more; also this of enjoyably good quality.
When it comes to software, the X700 offers the standard line-up of applications which should be familiar to all other Series 60 users, including a full compliment of PIM applications and a range of small utilities, all reached through the user friendly interface. There is little to talk about here, but it's worth noting that the performance of the camera application was quite poor - however Panasonic has several months left of development, so this is expected to change for the better by the time the X700 reaches shelves.
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