Monday, January 15, 2007
Let's Glofiishing with the X500
Posted by Darius Wey in "HARDWARE" @ 06:00 AM
Design: Thin Is In
Fresh out of the box, the X500 cries elegance and structural solidity. It moves away from the traditional "flat top" and "curved bottom" design to be symmetrical and rectangular all over. Brushed metal houses the Glofiish logo (note, not the E-TEN logo), while surrounding the 2.8" QVGA (240 x 320) display. Silver coated plastic fills the remaining portion of the front, with GPS and Today/M-Desk buttons, call buttons, soft keys, and a D-pad embedded in it.
Figure 2: The X500 from the front - (1) GPS and Today/M-Desk buttons, (2) call buttons and soft keys, (3) microSD slot and Mini-USB port, (4) headphone socket, and (5) volume controls and voice command button.
Unfortunately, the position of the D-pad impacts usability to a minor degree. It is situated too close to the lower edge of the device, and there are tendencies for the thumb to slip off while using it. Also impacting usability is the lack of dedicated OK and Start buttons. E-TEN obviously realized the importance of soft keys with Windows Mobile 5.0, and so included them in the X500 after the poor design decision of excluding them in the M600. Unfortunately, without dedicated OK and Start buttons, true one-handed operation is still absent, meaning you'll be forced to put thumb (or stylus) to screen every now and again. The earpiece and wireless and battery indicator lights sit adjacent to the GPS and Today/M-Desk buttons. Wi-Fi uses orange, while annoyingly, both Bluetooth and GPS use blue, which makes it difficult to determine which of the two radios (or both) is on. Fortunately, the state of the battery is easier to identify visually. While charging, the battery indicator light is a solid orange, and when completely charged, it's a solid green.
Figure 3: The X500 from the front - (1) earpiece, (2) soft reset hole, (3) camera button, (4) stylus, and (5) microSD slot.
Unlike the M600, all of the X500's buttons are backlit as shown in Figure 4. Their brightness, colours, and neon glow effect are true to the "Glofiish" mental image. Day or night, they activate for approximately five seconds whenever a hard button is pressed. Of course, it's of little use in direct sunlight. To help conserve battery power, E-TEN probably should have included a light sensor and had the buttons' backlight only activate in dark environments.
Figure 4: It glows!
The X500's QVGA (240 x 320) display is much like the M600's, famously bright and capable of accurate colour reproduction. White appears white. Black appears black. The only downside is that while the specifications state a size of 2.8", it's just shy of it. Personally, I found the bundled screen protector to be a little too fragile and attracted a lot of dust, so I looked to third-party offerings. For the many years I've been using Pocket PCs, Pocket PC Techs' WriteSHIELDs have always stood out, and so I decided to give the X500 some WriteSHIELD anti-GLARE love. Unfortunately, the X500's less-than-2.8" display rejected a 2.8" WriteSHIELD, which forced me to trim the edges of the screen protector in order to enable a perfect fit. This is something you'll have to keep in mind if you ever plan on picking up a third-party 2.8" screen protector for the X500.
Figure 5: The rear of the X500 - (1) 2.0-megapixel camera with flash, and (2) mono speaker.
Black rubber dominates the rear of the device. The top third houses the 2.0-megapixel camera, self-portrait mirror, flash, and mono speaker, which is adequately loud for most purposes. The battery compartment occupies the bottom two-thirds of the device and holds the slim 1,530mAh battery in place. The SIM slot is situated beneath it, so the act of swapping SIM cards requires the complete removal of the battery.
