It's take two as Sendo unveils the X2 smartphone with dedicated music keys at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes: Jørgen Sundgot takes it for a quick spin.
Pitching its newest smartphone as a music phone rather than a business phone, Sendo this week showed its second-ever smartphone, the X2, at the 3GSM World Congress. Smaller and lighter than its predecessor, the X, the X2 integrates a number of dedicated music playback keys on the right side of the device to offer instant access; an interesting promise, but perhaps not the best of ideas.
Of course, everyone else is doing it too, and Sendo's implementation is - from a usability perspective, expertly handy: users have immediate access to playing, pausing, forwarding and rewinding music at the click of a button. The catch, however is that since the device is small, so is the battery. Couple this with a high-end feature set, and you end up with having to restrain music playback to a couple of hours if you want to use the phone for anything else. It's not Sendo's fault, though; they just follow suit.
 | | Sendo X2 |
Fortunately, there's lots more to the X2 than its music playback capabilities. Every bit as powerful as its predecessor, the X2 now integrates a 1.3 MP camera that appears just as apt as the 0.3 MP one found in the X. Shooting stills and recording video yielded good results, although I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want 8x digital zoom.
32 MB of user available memory means there's plenty of space for applications, and having implemented a miniSD Card expansion slot, users can trick out their X2 with up to 1 GB of additional memory. Given the X2's support for MP3, AAC and AAC+ music formats, users could likely squeeze up to 500 tunes at most onto such a card.
Connectivity has been adequately ensured with support for tri-band GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz, although the X2 sadly lacks EDGE; a bit of a requirement these days. Thankfully, there's Bluetooth and USB for PAN connectivity, and Sendo wisely choice to leave Infrared out of the picture this time around. The screen seems to be slightly brighter than that of the X, being a 2.2" TFT LCD with 65K colours.
 | | Sendo X2 |
Another feature worthy of mentioning includes speaker independent voice recognition; needless to say, I opted not to test this feature on the showfloor as results would undoubtedly be... interesting. Also, the keypad has received a minor upgrade from the X, and I'm especially thankful for the reworked navigational pad - it appears I no longer will be foreced to resort to lengthy cursing after accidentally hanging up a call when trying to navigate right. Yay!
Slated for release some time this summer, the X2 appears a worthy upgrade to the X, but I'm puzzled as to whether Sendo chose the best approach when placing such an emphasis on its music capabilities. It's one of the smallest Series 60 smartphones around, and although it lacks EDGE, it could very well make for a good alternative for those not in need of video calling and 3G.
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