Anthony Newman tests the little-known AnexTEK SP230, and finds that the past is alive and well in this Pocket PC Phone Edition design.
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The AnexTEK SP230 can best be described as "squat" - and pug-ugly. Notably shorter than most handhelds or communicators at 109 x 68 x 22 mm, the SP230 is also chubby thanks to the protruding battery. At 159 grams (or 170 with its keypad, discussed below), it is also somewhat hefty, yet still at the light-side as communicators go.
 | AnexTEK's SP230 is behind the curve on features, but earns points for its small size
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Not exactly a looker
The SP230 is very simplistic in its design. The screen consists of a typical QVGA 240 x 320 16-bit color TFT, standard for most Windows Mobile devices. Colors, however, look faded and washed out, and the near complete lack of buttons is surprising. The SP230 has a power button above the screen and Call and Hangup buttons below, and aside from a jog wheel, volume rocker, and physical hold switch on the left side, that's it.
AnexTEK have provisioned for more buttons with a fiddly clip-on numeric keypad, akin to Sony Ericsson's P800 and P900 series, although it doesn't rely on pressing the touchscreen like the P800. This add-on is not only goddamn ugly, but feels cheap, offers little tactile feedback, is poorly integrated with the operating system and doesn't support text input or application loading - only number dialling. Might as well leave it off, really.
The top of the device includes an SDIO-capable Secure Digital slot, covered headphone jack and IR port, as well as the 2 cm long external antenna. The antenna is rather wide, although not ungainly, with the cheap plastic stylus of the unit sliding into the side of the antenna. In all, the SP230 feels about on-par for a heavy handheld, but is not narrow enough for comfortable phone use. And did we mention it's really ugly?
The tri-band GSM 850/1800/1900 MHz SP230 supports world-roaming GSM and data over GPRS class 10, but lacks Bluetooth support for headsets or other connectivity. That leaves users with either against-the-face usage, which works but quickly becomes uncomfortable; speakerphone, which has privacy issues; or using either of the included mono or stereo wired headsets. There is also no Wi-Fi support, which we're coming to expect from Communicators, especially Windows Mobile ones. And there's no MMS, but no camera either.
Chugging along
On the inside, the SP230 looks better. It offers a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor with auto-throttling, causing no issues with responsiveness during our testing, although the SP230 is not as fast as other, older, 400 MHz devices. 64 MB of ROM are present for the OS, alongside 64 MB of user-accessible RAM, placing it about mid-range for Windows Mobile-based communicators.
The battery is a rather large 1480 mAh Lithium Ion pack, with backup, and it's responsible for most of the weight of the SP230. In testing, it was able to play music for just about 7 hours before shutting down in self-defense with the GSM radio on but not in use; a perfectly respectable score, although a bit low for such a large battery. Audio quality and volume were both good.
The SP230 runs Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition, but alas not the Second Edition of this platform, and as such the SP230 lacks a number of minor improvements, most notable of which - with regard to the SP230's feature set - is improved formatting in Pocket Internet Explorer.
The one real gesture towards phone usage is that by flipping closed the hardware keypad, the phone application will automatically load. This in fact becomes somewhat irritating, since the keypad has to be closed whenever the user wants to put the device away, not just dial a number by hand. Curiously, MMS support is absent, and limited jog wheel integration (for which Windows Mobile is as much as anything else to blame) makes two-handed operation a must given the lacking directional pad.
Lastly, third party software is also nearly entirely absent from the SP230, which makes for a very basic software package
Availability
The AnexTEK SP230 is at the time of writing available in the U.S. for $599 USD without subscription
Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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