Pantech Impact – A Phone With Lots Of Messaging Features

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Two displays, lots of features for messaging, full QWERTY keyboard.

Thumbs Down:

Keyboard feels cramped, the phone needs to be opened to use the camera.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Folder
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Camera, music player, Bluetooth.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The Pantech Impact has a 2.6 inch internal display, which gives a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels and has color depth of 262000 colors (18-bit). The recognized audio formats are eAAC+, MMF, AMR, AAC, WAV, SMAF, WAV, MP3. The phone can read only MP4 formats for videos.

The Pantech Impact has a 2 megapixel camera in the back that can take resolutions of 320×240, 640×480, 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200. Other features on the phone include four presets for white balance, self timer, four effects for color and there are options for timer sound and shutter sound. The camera has 3x digital zoom. The video resolution is 320×240, 176×144 (MMS) and 176×144.

The Pantech Impact has buit in memory of 80 MB and is further expandable to 32 GB through microSD cards. The 930 mAh lithium ion battery can give talk time of 300 minutes and stand by time of 336 hours.

Razzle Dazzle:

Pantech Impact is a downright sexy looking phone for us but it also depends on your perception. Do you like folder type phones? Or do you think they are made for oldies? The best part of the looks in the phone is the stunning external display and the touch sensitive keys on the lid. We say that the phone get thick if it is slider build. This is a folder type phone with both the halves thicker than a typical slider phone. What you get in the end is a slightly thicker phone and also a heavier one. But you get so many messaging features in one box.

Inside Dope:

Pantech is out with a messaging device and this time they have done it with style. The phone has two displays; the one on the lid is 1.5 inch big and shows you signal strength, date, time, battery life. The display doesn’t have a photo caller ID but it is very sharp and you can see it clearly in the dark.

Beneath the screen is the touch sensitive keypad which is very responsive. It has all the buttons which a numeric keypad normally has like call and call end buttons, two soft keys, and navigational button which has only the up and down direction functions and the number buttons. All this hard ware gives us more features than we expect from an external display – you can make calls and receive them, you can access the address book, music player, messaging menu and you can access the recent calls list. Some might find these functions too basic but we thought it was great considering that this is a secondary display.

The keys give haptic feedback when pressed and you can adjust the vibration sensitivity of the phone. The numeric keypad is good the touch sensitive keys will get on your nerves after a while because there will be a lot of mishits as they aren’t physical buttons.

When you open the Pantech Impact you get a big 2.6 inch internal display which gives a resolution of 240×400 pixels and has 262,000 colors. The inside display too is good and you can read the text clearly on the phone. Adjustable features on the display are menu style, style and size of the font, backlight timer and brightness.

Below the display of the Pantech Impact there is camera button, talk button, two soft buttons, middle select key and the power button is also the End button. The biggest key on the keyboard has to be a circular toggle key with OK key in the middle. The four way directional key has pre-attached shortcuts for applications like mobile e-mail, instant messaging, new text message and address book.

The keys are a bit cramped which you will notice if you type a lot on the keyboard. But we liked the big space bar key, key dedicated for instant messaging and also the .com key. The keys could have been better placed like the four way direction pad could have been somewhere close when dialing.

There are a couple of buttons on the sides of the Pantech Impact like charger/headset jack, volume rocker and a hold key for the keypad. You can only take the photos with the camera open because there is no viewfinder when you close the camera. Taking pictures is not comfortable due to the shape of the phone.

You can store 1000 contacts on your phone book and the SIM card can take up to 250 more contacts. A single entry can take two e-mail addresses, five phone number entries, URL, street address and a memo. You can make groups and put your contacts in a group depending on how you know them, you can also pair up a contact with his photo graph but the external display won’t show it. You can give a unique ring tone to a contact, there are eight polyphonic and tones for alert.

Essential features on the Pantech Impact include alarm clock, notepad, calendar, vibrate mode, voice memo recorder, calculator, world clock, unit converter, timer, tip calculator and stop watch. The phone will automatically switch to speaker phone mode when you open the handset, while on a call.

One of the best features of the Pantech Impact has to the browser which is based on Opera. You can zoom in and out of the pages with the help of the volume rocker, and you get an option for full web version or mobile version for the sites.

The music player of the Pantech Impact is capable of reading AAC, MP3, eAAC+, MIDI and AMR files. The player is intuitive and the songs get arranged by genres, albums and artists. You can create and you can also edit play lists on the fly, there are standard options of shuffle and repeat. For storing music, the phone has 80 MB of built in memory but the phone takes expandable cards up to 32GB.

There is a two mega pixel camera in the back of the Pantech Impact which is pretty standard. This is a mid range phone and we expected at least a 3.2 mega pixel camera if not 5 MP. With this camera photographs are not that great, you will be shooting mostly to hook up the contacts with a photo in your phone book. The camera is capable of shooting in resolutions of 320×240, 640×480, 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200. There settings like four presets for white balance, self timer, four effects for color and there are options for timer sound and shutter sound. Photo quality is below average, just like a typical 2 MP camera.

The camera is also capable of shooting videos of resolutions 320×240, 176×144 (MMS) and 176×144. Video quality too is not that great.

For game enthusiasts, Pantech Impact is not an ideal handset for mobile gaming but it does have a few games like Tetris, Diner Dash 2 and Ms. Pac-Man. You can buy more if you want from the store.

The Pantech Impact was tested for call quality and it was quite good. We had no problems and could clearly hear what our friends were saying. There is no call distortion and the signal is quite clear.

Our friends told us that they heard a bit of background noise but they could heard our voice clearly. There was no distortion from there end too.

Speaker phone calls were loud and clear but there was a bit of echo during the calls. The speaker phone is not good with music so you are better of with the wired headset bundled with the Pantech Impact.

The battery of the phone has talk time for five hours and stand by time of 14 days.

Nitty Gritty:

We liked the Pantech Impact as it didn’t have any thing that made us uncomfortable to use the device. The phone serves well on the features that it promises. The only thing that may hold you back is the compass box geeky design that makes it look like a phone for business men.