The Sagem myMobileTV isn’t introduced yet into
the market, it’s a DVB-h phone from a company that hardly releases phones to
the market. The only way I managed to get it was through DSTV,
The phone was designed by Ora-ito, a fashion
designer. I don’t know much about fashion so the name doesn’t tell me much. It
does have a glossy design with a lot of glass, which leaves a lot of
fingerprints. The phone itself is quite long, 11,5cm and very thick as well,
about 2,08cm. The keypad has two soft keys, the left soft key is the TV key as
well, there is a 5-way joystick, green and red buttons, and 12 numeric keys.
The keys and joystick have a white backlight to it and due to the rubber,
there’s a very good grip, they are thin and long. The right side of the phone
has an infrared port only. The backside reveals a very good 1.3 megapixel
camera of which I will talk about later, and a mirror for self-capture. The
left side comes with volume/camera button, a strange side for the capture
button I would say. The top side has absolutely nothing and the bottom has a
charger/data connector, a microphone, and the DVB-h antenna outlet.
As you would guess, the software functions of
this Sagem are very poor, there are lot features but none is elaborate because
Sagem doesn’t have experience. Our desktop shows us battery level with colour
codes on the left, on the right there are network bars, on the middle of the
screen there are date and hour, and in the bottom there is a menu option which
can be accessed with the joystick centre press. If you press the left button,
it will take you to the TV, if you press right it will take you to an array of
other shortcuts.
The menu us a 4x3 grid and has options of:
games, wap, applications, messages, phonebook, multimedia, organizer, TV,
connectivity, music player, camera, settings.
Under games we see a picture puzzle. I could
not install anything else as it seemed to have a problem with the phone’s java
installer. The wap function allows the pages to be displayed fullscreen but
unfortunately there is no proper web navigation, only wap. Applications has:
alarm, timer, to do, sim services, calculator and converter. Messages has
normal sms and mms options but no email features. Phonebook allows mailing
lists to be organized. Multimedia has videos, pictures, sounds, microsd
browser, and help. Organizer has calendar and allows to add scheduled events.
The TV feature I will talk about later. Connectivity has serial speed, IrDA,
Car Kit, headset, SyncML. The settings have many diverse options such as to
save energy from the 240x320 256k colours brilliant screen to keypad lock.
There is a secret menu, go to menu and hold star.
The phone lacks in connectivity. There is no
Bluetooth, HSDPA or 3G, or even EDGE. There is only GPRS and IrDA. Data connection
made to computer is usually with the cable which uses Sagem’s own buggy program
which crashes whenever it feels like. You can just buy a microSD memory card
and insert it in the computer for faster transfers. The card slot is beneath
the back cover, but fortunately you don’t have to remove the battery to remove
the card.
Now I will talk about the camera, I was quite
impressed that Sagem developed such a good camera sensor. Being only 1.3
megapixel, it details a lot of colour and contrast. There is timer, photo
effects, exposure type, photo quality, and photo format. The highest photo
format is 1280x1024. The digital zoom allows until 8x but of course by then it
is useless. Unfortunately there is no video recording or optical zoom.
The sound quality on this phone is excellent,
the speaker allocated at the front on the top provides a 3D effect that comes
only from recent phones. The earphones also provide high quality sound with
deep bass, better than N95. Unfortunately one of the earphones wires is shorter
than the other one. A disadvantage is also that the music player program is
very simple, you can’t even check the playlist while playing a song. You also
can’t forward or backward a track. To add songs you will have to manually go to
its directory, you can’t refresh the library.
And the TV…
This phone was made for the TV. One word:
Great. But that’s if you get it to work. The Sagem uses DVB-h, stands for
Digital Video Broadcasting for handhelds. This technology broadcasts audio and
video at 8mbps and it’s different from streaming, it’s more like catching the
frequency. The problem is that it takes very long to load channels, and it
makes it practically useless. The video and audio quality is superb, but you
must point the antenna out for the TV to work and you can leave it on its right
side and press fullscreen while on your way to work and sit back and relax
while you watch your morning news. The quality is really TV quality as it makes
use of each and every pixel. Another thing I’m afraid is the price. How will
people afford the phone and TV costs?
Approaching the end, I have a simple thing to
say. Connecting phones to TV allows mobility, but this comes at a price. If you
can get everything right, then DVB-h is here to stay. I remind you that rating
depends on when I got the phone, not now.
Advantage: DVB-h, superb sound quality, great
LCD, keypad has a good grip, camera is wonderful.
Disadvantage: Software not elaborated, memory
card slot in stupid position, camera button in wrong side, no Bluetooth or 3G
Rating: 8.2/10
