Review: Eten glofiish X500+

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Alright the eten glofiish X500+ its here!!! I know for those who its a great GPS PDA phone now with VGA screen, auto focus macro camera and business card recognition and the latest Windows Mobile® 6 platform in an easily portable, ultra-thin form factor for entertainment, communications and productivity on the move.

Lets us take a look at whats in the box, X500+, charger, battery, stereo headset, usb able, quick start guide, Active sync, Microsoft Outlook 2007 and leather case

Back view with battery and back cover

The VGA screen is really sharp and clear vs QVGA screen, I like the mett black metal body black in rubber grip material. It give a solid and manly feel, the rubber grip material give a more comfort feel on your hand and easy to clean and not easily scratch

Side view camera button, reset button and power button

Top view

Side view volume button, voice com button and headset port

Rear view microSD, USB ports and stylus port

Back view camera, flash light and speaker

X500 and X500+ side by side, we can see that X500+ screen is much sharper

For the camera, we can see that X500+ come with new macro function

Lets take a look at the BCR feature. It is an interesting tool which allows you to photograph a business card and getting the data from the business card recognized and added to your contacts database:

I tried it on my name card just aim and capture!

It recognized my address, zip code email, contact and my web adress pretty cool, but OCR is always a challenge, also for a PC and even more if the scan is done with a camera.

We can see that X500 keyboard looks flat and X500+ give live to it due to the higher resolution screen

Glofiish X500+ is the first GPS-enabled Windows Mobile 6 smartphone featuring a SiRF Star III chipset with TMC support (thanks to the inbuilt FM radio tuner) while additionally supporting quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, WiFi b/g and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR as well.



There are quite a number of exclusive software and features in eten glofiish products, one of them is the above GPS viewer. The GPS Viewer is a pretty basic GPS monitor which shows you your current location in GPS parameters (Latitude/Longitude and Altitude only) and the number of available satellites.



On the other hand, you can also use free software like Google Maps Mobile, since the X500+ supports both: GPS to receive the information about the current location and GPRS/EDGE to download map details from Google


Another exclusive software from eten glofiish is Satellite Data Update. As the earth rotates the position of the satellite will shift and Satellite Data Update helps to provide the latest satellite positioning thats what make eten glofiish lock on timing within 10 to 30 secs (where Nokia N95 took over 10mins and still waiting...). The above is my basic explanation, if you require a more technical and in depth explanation why this exclusive software is so great read the following:

As mentioned above, the Glofiish X500+ features the latest SiRF Star III chipset from SiRF Technology. The SiRFstarIII chip is distinguished from earlier SiRF chips due to its faster Time to First Fix (TTFF) and the ability to acquire and maintain a signal lock in urban or densely covered forest environments. This means, the X500+ features the latest and greatest GPS technology you can get today. To improve the Time to Fix even more, E-TEN also added "Offline AGPS" (or "AGPS over the Internet") to the X500+. Instead of downloading the ephemeris data from the satellites, something that takes 30 seconds at best but requires a good signal level (>28 dB-Hz) and needs to be done every 4 hours, you can also download a 50 KB ephemeris file valid for 3, 7 or 10 days over the Internet. Acquisition time in the morning goes down to 15 seconds from 40 seconds in good environments and remains at 20/30 seconds on average in challenging environments (coated windshield, dense urban environment, etc.) versus several minutes, if at all possible without AGPS (thanks to Guillaume from GpsPasSion for the explanation). To support Offline AGPS, the X500+ includes an application called Satellite Data Update which downloads exactly the above mentioned ephemeris data



Birthday Reminder is another useful tool. Typically Windows Mobile devices notices of an upcoming birthday with an alarm; same does Birthday Reminder. However, Birthday Reminder allows you to send the contact a SMS, E-Mail or MMS message, straight from the reminder pop-up or lets you call it directly. Also it provides a general overview about upcoming birthdays and anniversaries



Quick Link appear on the standby screen, it capture all the program in your PDA and convert them into icons where we are able to click on them just by using our thumb thus making eten glofiish one hand usage is so easy without the need to depend on your stylus, I really like this exclusive software.



M Desk is another very useful exclusive software it will definitely hand to decrease in stylus usage and make it simple and easy to config your PDA phone into one hand usage - quick and easy. Pretty interesting is M-Desk which is - as mentioned above - even accessible from one of the hardware keys. M-Desk (which is also configurable) groups applications into different tabs and can replace the standard Windows Mobile Start menu



Last but not least the FM Tuner which allows you to listen FM radio stations:

Overall Eten glofiish X500+ is great PDA phone to have whether if you are looking for a GPS PDA phone, for entertainment or business eten glofiish X500+ will definitely meets your needs. And now with improved VGA screen and add features you will hold on to it till the X800 arrive.

Available Now at MassOrder Mobile Singapore

Features Pictures Source:
The Unwired

Just something extra to show, I had review on this X500 metal case before which I had specially imported, I used to place the X500 with this case it does not look so good due to the black body of the metal case. But take a look at it now, its like its man for each other cool man.









Available at MassOrder Mobile Singapore

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