With dominating front speakers, can the little Latte Boom compete with the big-league music phones?
Review summary of the Latte Boom:
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 Truthfully, the Latte Boom received one of the lowest scores we've ever doled out, but we have to give the company points for originality. The design is eye catching, the phone is smaller than you'd expect, and we'd like to see a second (and third) attempt at getting this idea right. Also, we like a reasonably priced, unlocked phone, though we could never recommend the Latte, with its horrible button layout, call quality, and messaging. Oh, and it doesn't play music very well, either. Ultimately, we'll remember the Boom as the skinny white phone that couldn't sing and called us fat. Release: June 2007. Price: $240.
Pros: Loud speakers. Small, unusual design. Included 3.5mm headphone adapter. Loud alarm clock.
Cons: Lousy call quality. Poor music experience, with no transfer software. Few messaging options, hurt by narrow keypad. Called us fat.
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37%
MEDIOCRE |
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Full Latte Boom Review:
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Design - Good
The Latte Boom phone will quickly draw stares and even inquisitive looks as you take it out and start dialing. It looks different than any other phone on the market, thanks to its narrow shell and twin, dominating speakers on its face. The speaker panel slides open to reveal the phone, but, closed, the phone looks simple and clean, like a very tiny boom box (hence the name?). Open, the keys are tightly packed, as you would expect on a phone that is just more than half as wide as our Palm Treo 700p, but the numeric keys aren't our biggest complaint. The dedicated music button and the camera button also act as soft keys, but their placement makes using the phone's menus less than intuitive. The "send" and "end" keys flank the lower speaker, which is where we would have liked the soft keys, and so we kept pressing those keys instead. Also, the only navigation key is a sort of click-rocker, which lets you move up and down menus step-by-step, and depresses for selections. Too bad Latte couldn't have incorporated a five-way button into the lower speaker; that would have seemed like a more intuitive solution.
The interface is simple, but pretty enough, navigable by the click-rocker. The screen is tiny, just over 1.5-inches diagonally, and poor, with an obviously low resolution and blocky text. The phone's USB port triples as a headphone port and charger port, like Samsung's proprietary port, though we always prefer a real 3.5mm jack on music phones. Thankfully, Latte has included an adapter for 3.5mm headphones.
Calling - Mediocre
Calls on the Latte Boom had plenty of static, and sounded generally mediocre. Reception was fine, usually a bar or two shy of full strength using our Cingular SIM in Lower Manhattan. Though the phone has two speakers dominating its face, it can hardly manage any volume on the speakerphone, which seemed mysterious to us. Also, Latte has omitted Bluetooth, so your only hands-free options will be wired. Though the phone lacks voice dialing, conference calling is included, and requires the standard menu digging to connect two callers. Alert handling was very good on the phone, and it even supports alert profiles, a feature we usually only see on higher-end phones. The contact list has a nice number of fields, though we could have used more, and without any included software to synchronize your address book with your PC, entering all those names on the narrow little keypad could give you a real headache.
Messaging - Mediocre
The Latte Boom has SMS and MMS messaging built in, and both of these were no more difficult on the Latte than any other bargain phone. Typing on the tiny keys was a problem, and reading text on the small, low-resolution screen wasn't terribly pleasant, but phone does have some basic text formatting options. No e-mail or instant messaging is available, though Latte does include an enigmatic "Chat Room" feature, though this didn't involve any sort of text messaging that we could see.
Music - Poor
The speakers on the Latte Boom were nice and loud, though sound quality left something to be desired. Though the design my garner comparisons to the Samsung YP-K5 digital audio player, which also has slide-out speakers, the sound quality on the Samsung device was much better. Like Samsung, though, Latte has included a nice alarm clock that takes advantage of the loud speakers. No music transfer software comes with the phone, and we had to try to save files to a memory card a few different ways before they would automatically show up in our playlist.
Once loaded, the music player was not very easy to use. Soft keys are counterintuitive, as the phone lacks any real, dedicate music buttons, a serious omission. As we mentioned, a 3.5mm headphone adapter is included, but the phone also lacks stereo Bluetooth, so you'll have to rely on your own headphones, or the included earbuds, which are clearly a rip-off of Sony's excellent MDR-EX50 in-ear buds. Comfortable to wear, but the sound on the phone was a bit muddy, and fairly bass heavy, even when we didn't have the bass boost EQ setting enabled. The phone only supports MP3 files, so AAC files from iTunes and all your WMA files will have to be converted or left behind. Overall, besides the speakers, there is little to recommend this phone as a dedicated music device.
Odds and ends
In reviewing the Latte Slim 11b, we found a strange, potentially offensive welcome screen attached to the phone's menstrual calendar function. Thankfully, this didn't make its way to the Boom, but the phone managed to get personal with us, nonetheless. Under the "Health" menu, there is a BMI calculator, which we stupidly decided to try out. Instead of letting us know that our BMI was a bit high, or perhaps deeming us overweight, the phone instead decided to declare us "Fat." Yes, "Fat." We laughed, but on the inside, we cried a little, remembering years of middle school torment. Thanks, Latte.
Price and availability
The Latte Boom is available unlocked from Latte Communications for $240.
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