Home » Mobile Phone Reviews » Sharp GX10i May 13, 2008

Sharp GX10i Review

First Impressions

I had always wanted this handset and when I saw it at a bargain price of £99 I had to have it. I had never owned a sharp handset before and I was looking forward at having a good play with this one. I wasn’t disappointed, the handset felt well built despite being a clamshell the phone didn’t feel top heavy at all, and instead it felt well balanced, solid and strong. This to me was one impressive looking phone, and despite being branded with all the vodafone live menus and icons it was one I really enjoyed using. I also thought that it looked classy, due to the charcoal grey colour of the casing and the sleek rounded lines of the phone itself.

Sharp GX10i

Sizes & Dimensions

Features

Whats In The Box

Sharp GX10i Contents

Menu Structure

The menu is set out as a list, which you scroll through, the sections then have subsections, which are laid out as follows.

LG 7100 Box

Camera

The camera has 3 sizes of pictures, high 288*352, medium, which is the default of 120*160 and low which is 60*80, it has five exposure levels and a two stage digital zoom. When the high resolution is selected you cannot use the zoom. The pictures I found were of a very low quality, certainly not good enough to print out; the quality I would say would be just about good enough for MMS use. You can associate pictures to contacts in your phone book so when the contact rings their picture will flash up on the screen. The pictures are really easy to send via MMS and you don’t have the problem of the picture not sending as the file sizes are kept small due to the low resolution of the pictures. There is enough memory in the phone to store up to 50 pictures taken on the highest setting. The lens is housed on the outside flip, there is no lens cover so there is no protection from dirt or scratching it, there is a little mirror next to the lens for taking self portraits, which I didn’t think would work very well but it did work surprisingly well. The camera on this model was quick to respond with a pretty impressive refresh rate, so overall despite the quality of the camera it was nice to use.

Sharp GX10i Photo

The Display

The handset features a 65k TFT 120*160 colour screen which is really nice, the display is really bright and pictures displayed on the screen appear crisp and bright. You have the option of changing the wallpapers by downloading your own via wap or using the pictures you have taken with the onboard camera as wallpapers.

Design

This handset without a doubt is well built, when you open and close the flip there is a satisfying click that at first I thought was a fault but it is designed that way. There is a vibrating alert on this handset but I found this to be really weak so in the end I turned it off ad the ring tones were more than load enough to alert me to a call. A good point about the handset was the small rubber plug covering the charging socket on the bottom of the phone, normally these rubber plugs just can be taken off but the one on the GX10i is attached so there is no danger of losing it. The GX10i also features an external display; this is not in colour but is more than adequate to display caller id, time and date, battery life and signal strength etc. You can access the light on the external display by pressing either of the handsets volume buttons when the phone is closed. There is a hole on the top of the handset to attach a hand strap or even a neck strap, since this is the way a lot of people I have seen seem to wear this phone. The body colour of this phone was something that I really liked; it was a charcoal sort of grey colour, a welcome change from the standard silver handsets out there.

Sharp GX10i Front

Messaging

This handset supports MMS and SMS and comes with T9 for supposedly faster text input. I found that this did not work very well because the handset was so slow at displaying the text already typed that it would quite often miss a couple of letters and you had to start all over again, so normal input of text I found was much more quicker and precise. MMS was one thing about this handset that I really liked, once you assign an email entry to your phone book sending an MMS message is really easy and fast and worked every time with no exception.

Calling

The call quality on this particular model was excellent, there was no hissing or crackling, just clear sound quality, and I was able to hear clearly and also to be heard clearly. There is no facility for using a speakerphone but that didn’t bother me, as it’s not something I use anyway. A call is answered by pressing the green button on the keypad, there isn’t a facility to answer a call just by opening the flip, and however you can end a call by closing the flip, something that I found really strange.

WAP

Browsing WAP pages using the built-in browser is easy. For users of Vodafone live enabled handsets, this service has been preset onto the phone, a lot of people I know don’t like the idea of having vodafone live on their phone but for me it isn’t a problem. The GX10 can also be connected to an external PC device through the IR port and act as a data modem once the relevant drivers and software are installed.

Sharp GX10i Front

Keypad

The keypad on this model is really nice, the buttons are slightly raised up from the body of the phone, with a nice green backlight, they are well spaced and they are not too big or too small. There is a four-way joy pad, which is used for navigating the menus, this is really precise and easy to use, and there is also two more dedicated option buttons to the left and right of the joy pad.

Extras

The GX10i has all the standard office tools such as a calculator, calendar and a 500-space address book; these all worked perfectly and were easy to use. There are 3 onboard games included and the ability to store and download more games or java applications. Speed dialling is standard on this model, with spaces for up to nine speed dials. I found that this feature was easy to use and worked reliably with no problems.

Battery Life & Signal Strength

The battery once fully charged was average, it is quoted at lasting for 250 hours but in reality it lasted around two days on standby, and that was with average use of the phone, couple of minutes of calls, several texts, taking around four pics and sending them via MMS and just general setting up of the handset, phone book, caller display etc. The phone was on vodafone so I had a fairly pretty good reception, with no call dropping or going out of signal area so this aspect I was pleased with.

Summary

As I have said I really wanted this phone but after using it I thought that it was just a standard clamshell with an inbuilt camera. There was nothing to dislike about it but at the same time there was nothing to get excited about either, the camera could have been a lot better quality and you could have had the option to transfer pictures via IR but there was no facility for this at all so the only option for sending pictures was MMS. The price on this model has in some places halved, so for the £99 I paid I think the price is justified. The phone is basic, easy to use and reliable, so I would recommend it for someone wanting a basic camera phone to take and send the odd MMS but I felt the camera wasn’t up to anything more than this. Overall a nice basic little handset at the right price.