Pharos Traveler GPS 127- High Price And Low Performance

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Free maps on the bundled microSD card, nothing else.

Thumbs Down:

Bad call quality, performance is sluggish, menu is cramped, display is too small and you have to use stylus all the time. You put another memory card and use maps at the same time as you will have to remove the bundled memory card which has free maps.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: GPS, camera, EDGE, GPRS, HSDPA.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Pharos Traveler GPS 127 has 2.5 inch TFT LCD display which has resolution of 320 x 240 pixels,16-bit (65000 colors). Below the display is a full size QWERTY keyboard. The phone comes with a 2.5 mm head phone jack.

2 mega pixels camera on the back of the phone gives maximum of 1600 x 1200 pixels resolution. There are applications soft wares on the phone like  MSN Messenger, games, picture, calculator, notes, Microsoft ActiveSync, Microsoft Excel Mobile, Microsoft Word Mobile, Microsoft Office Mobile, Microsoft Voice Recorder, Windows Media Player 10, Microsoft PowerPoint Mobile, Microsoft Voice Recorder, Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile

The OS of the phone is Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. 1410 mAh Up to 450 min The phone 1410 mAh  battery which gives 7.5 hours of rated talk time and standby time is about 8 days.

Razzle Dazzle:

Pharos Traveler GPS 127 looks a lot like RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 and the layout of the QWERTY keyboard, the color of the number buttons breathe plagiarism but this phone is a bit bigger than its RIM counterpart. In fact it is so big you will wish you had a bigger claw to house it in your hands. We think this is miles away from being sexy; we were turned off by the bigger shape even though it has sturdy exteriors. The phone is 2.4 inches wide, 4.5 inches tall 5.1, 0.6 inch thick and weighs about 5.1 ounces.

Inside Dope:

Smart phones have now become a tight market with manufacturers increasing the number of features and decreasing the price. It is really tough for new comers now to enter and survive in this already crowded market. So manufacturers are coming out with new dough to enhance their sales and the latest is GPS software inclusion in these devices.

The phone comes unlocked which means that it will come at a bigger price tag. We thought the handset was pretty good for navigation purposes but fails to compete with smart phone giants like HTC. With a price like this slapped on to it, we would recommend you to go for Touch Cruise from HTC which gives you even better features for smart phones with GPS and comes at a less price.

The display of the screen is 2.5 inch TFT LCD touch screen which we found was a bit low while navigating through maps. It has a 320×240-pixel resolution and 65,000 colors which makes images, text look clear on the screen. The LCD screen means that the phone icons and maps will not be visible when you take it out in bright sunlight. We were helpless when finding directions outside when it was sunny. If you need GPS frequently and if you are a Pharos fan, we would recommend you to go for the Pharos Traveler 137 which sports a 3.5 inch display. But on the bright side, the phone’s touch screen is very responsive and registered our touches quite fast.

We used the stylus quite a lot of times since the small display had cramped menu items. Apart from this there is a call and call end button, start menu button, OK button and the trackball navigator. On the sides there is a voice recorder and volume rocker, there is a dedicated button for launching GPS, another OK key and the camera button. We missed a dedicated back button because it makes going back from sub-menus easier. The buttons on the side are user programmable and you make them come up with application of your choice.

Below the display is the full size QWERTY keyboard which we again thought was like taking a leaf out of RIM Blackberry’s book. The keys are curved which means fewer mishits and better typing experience. But we thought the buttons were a bit wobbly, they could have been sturdier. Number keys are colored in white but then you have to keep the ‘Fn’ button pressed to use these keys which needs 2 hands.

There is a 2.5 mm headphone jack and power button on the top of the phone and on the bottom there is battery cover button and port for mini USB. The phone comes bundled with USB cable, power adapter, software disc, wired headset and reference manual.

Pharos Traveler 127 is a GPS centered device, which will be clear from the name itself and GPS features on the device are quite good. The phone also has GPS radio and these days even though smart phones have GPS software they you have to pay for a free for subscription. But this phone has a microSD card which has Ostia Smart Navigator software so you get free maps access. We think this will be the biggest selling point for the phone.

The built in GPS software gives you multiple routing options, text and voice based directions, trip recorder and points of interest (POI) database. You can also get gas prices, real-time traffic updates, weather information and movie listings of your location. The phone doesn’t have text-to-speech feature where in locations are told by the phone rather than reading it from the device.

We hated the menu interface because the icons were really small and we had to use the stylus all the time to access it. The small size of the screen makes matter worse; there is no physical back button above the keyboard. Menu layout is also a bit perplexing, the windows tile on each other as you go into the sub menus. You will have similar problems when using GPS feature on the phone. GPS, though one of the selling points of the phone, is strictly OK.

The phone has Windows Mobile OS onboard which makes the phone a lot like other devices which have the same OS. Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition OS, which the phone has, comes with Internet Explorer Mobile, Microsoft Office Mobile Suite, Windows Media Player and Windows Live integration.

There is no limit to the number of contacts you can store on the phone as long as you are not running out of memory. A single entry can take work and home addresses, multiple numbers, birthdays, e-mail, etc. You can make groups, put your callers in them and also do use the built in photo caller ID and give a unique ring tone to a contact.

The phone has 2 MP camera behind the body, it has geotagging capabilities and can record video. We thought a 2 MP camera was pretty bad for these days since smart phones mostly come equipped with a 3.2 or 5 MP cameras. Camera options include antiflicker function, various effects, three settings for quality and three choices for resolutions(the maximum being 1600X1200). There is also a 0.3 MP camera in the front for taking self portrait images and video calling.

For video you can have a choice of two formats and two options for resolution. Photo quality of the camera was quite good considering it is just 2.0 MP.  The handset has 128MB SDRAM and 256MB Flash ROM and you can expand it further through the microSD card slot. But phone comes bundled along with card which has all the maps so if you want to use a bigger card you will have to remove the maps card so you can’t use the maps. The card slot is located on the sides but you will have to remove the battery cover to access it which is quite frustrating.

Call quality on this phone was really bad, we heard a lot of hiss and background noises but this didn’t come in the way of audibility. We could hear what others were saying perfectly well. Our friends said call quality was OK but they could hear the noise distorting.

Speaker phone calls were better and the voice was clearer but we would have liked a bigger volume. Call quality is crystal clear with when the phone was paired up with a wireless Bluetooth headset.

400MHz Qualcomm MSM7201-90 processor of the phone was pretty bad and slow too.
It froze when we pushed it too hard and we thought the phone had crashed but suddenly it came alive. The phone is not for people who lack patience; it takes a while to start applications after you press the button. The phone also had issues connecting to the internet for updating data from the satellite.

The phone 1410 mAh  battery which gives 7.5 hours of rated talk time and standby time is about 8 days. We found the battery fell short of rated talk time, it had juice for about 4 hours.

Nitty Gritty:

Pharos Traveler GPS 127 comes with free maps for GPS but this sole feature is too less to make a good smart phone. There are other phones which deliver more on features for a less price. The best option for you is HTC Touch Cruise which has similar features and is generous on your budget.