Having spent Xmas and New Years with the INQ1 all I can say is it's been a month long love hate relationship.
Before I start going through the relationship in detail I should point out this handset is not one I personally would purchase because it does not cater for my personal needs nor does it fit into my criteria for what a handset needs to include for me to consider purchasing one. The INQ1 is a "Facebook" phone for that generation and is aimed at the mass market of teens and mobile novices, and I do not fall into either of these.
Moving onto the actual review, you should take note I won't be going through the kit that comes within the box in much detail, as it mostly did not come with much, apart from the information cards, the phone, battery, charger, USB cable and earphones. The box itself is a pretty good effort, which adds to the appeal factor for the target audience.
Physical Appeal
Physically the handset is cute and has curves in the right places, which should be appreciated in most relationships, the buttons are paced well and spacious enough for even the timid user to find themselves pressing the right ones. The brushed aluminium look with the grey is a good mix, the slider is sturdy and spring loaded which gives great satisfaction when sliding it back and forth. The handset is pretty small, and would fit into any teenagers hands, whilst the smaller 2.2" screen isn't that uncommon, it's pretty much the same size found on most Sony Ericsson handsets and mid and lower end Nokia handsets.
On the left side of the handsets is the Micro-USB port for charging and where the PC Suite and earphones supplied with would go into, there is no AV jack of any kind. On the right we have a dedicated camera button alongside a Blackberry-esque button (not a scroll) which scrolls through the main standby menu icons, with the volume buttons nearer the top.
Overall the design is minimalistic, and pretty stylish for a budget handset which is surprising as it retails for £79.99 on 3's Prepay option, but the design wouldn't look out of place on high end handsets.
With all the hype around this being the Facebook phone, and also being at the launch I could see the people behind it were pretty excited to finally making an attempt at bringing something solidly based on Facebook and integrated social connectivity solutions. With 150 million Facebook users to date it's a good shot at a huge market, whilst I do appreciate the concept, experience tells me it's harder putting it into practice. So how does the INQ1 fair?
The Phonebook
The address integration with Facebook contacts and the ability to merge them is a great idea and one of the better features of the handset. Although this feature is not new, many mobile bloggers and evangelists have been talking about this for ages, the problem is no one has listened, until now. Once the the friend list from Facebook has been imported with profile pics included, accessing any profile will bring up the contact details on Facebook, and their mini-feed, to quickly enable access to what your friends are doing, which is handy.
Original entries for friends can be merged with the Facebook entry to create just one entry per person, just to keep the house in order. Using this one entry, you have access to their wall, ability to Poke, send message or write on their wall - very handy.
Messages
As you should expect now, the Messages has also been revamped, now does it not only show your usual SMS, MMS, E-mail but also Skype Messenger, Facebook Inbox, Pokes and Friend requests, making it a central point for all message notifications. It's a good place to start if you haven't used your INQ1 in a while, as one screen would let you catchup on what's happened at a glance.
Skype & MSN Messenger
Both of these services are integrated into the OS or available to download from the applications portal , so users of both services would just need to enter their details and get going. I'm not an MSN user so cannot say I've tried this, a Gtalk client would be nice, and perhaps a Yahoo Chat! client too. Although I do have a Skype client, I did not personally try and use it, mainly due to one reason what makes this handset painful to use at times, something I will delve into later.
E-Mail on 3
Now when I started using this first I thought this is a good example of e-mail integration on a handset, but further usage only disappointed me, there are two issues regarding this service; the navigation is painful, if using multiple e-mail accounts, there is no clear quick option to get back to the main page which shows all your accounts, until you find that it's the navigation button which scrolls through the tabs to get to the main screen. I'm not sure how user friendly this is, but it's a no go for me. The main screen with the list of all my e-mail accounts should not be mixed in with the tabs of my e-mail accounts, it's a level up and thus with any other browser on the planet should be accessed a level up, and not in the same hierarchy of e-mail accounts.
Whilst the navigation within the E-mail is annoying and not user friendly what is worse is the fact that the E-mail application is a trial, yes a trial! I can't recall when was the last time I came across a handset which had a trial version of e-mail pre-installed, this reminds me of the junk one can find pre-installed in laptops and PC's upon purchase where most of the crap is trial and after a certain time has to be purchased, which is a major stink and one I did not expect to find on a handset! Shocking! What's strange is that the handset comes with a quick link to Google's Gmail client, so my question is why would I get the bolt on if I can access my Gmail accounts using the Gmail application? The Gmail application actually also works pretty smoothly, apart from the fact only one account can be accessed at a time, it's an alternative solution.
Facebook
This is the main appeal of this handset, it is dubbed the Facebook phone so one should expect this to be the shining pinnacle of features and seamless integration, the short answer is not quite. Whilst the handset does a good job of integrating Facebook contacts the Facebook application has many flaws; it's not real time, even when doing a manual refresh it's behind the m.facebook site, but what's worse is that it doesn't have some of the features included on the m.facebook site itself; mainly events, groups, notes and access to your friend's photo albums or photo's of your friends. So the Facebook application is short on features and the also it allows the use of Facebook when in no coverage, most of what you can do is restricted or not available altogether. What I did not expect for a handset with "Facebook phone" tag was to be short on the actual Facebook experience. One would think this would be one of the major features and a lot of effort would have been put into it to make it as close and realistic to the mobile Facebook site as a minimum. Can honestly say, not impressed.
The OS & Performance
With many handsets, features which are not included can usually be installed (this refers to most smartphones) or can be accessed via the web. Whilst this is also true with the INQ1, I could not help but notice the sluggish performance even when browsing through the menus, I take into consideration this is a budget handset, so with it I should expect budget features and performance, well this is what you get on the actual performance of the handset. The problem here is budget handsets aimed at the low end handset market will be a big disappointment with those using high end handsets, there are many factors why the INQ1 will not appeal to those with a Nokia N95 for example, the performance is that much of a difference it almost feels like travelling back in time.
Conclusion
The INQ1 one is not aimed at the mobile enthusiast, it's not aimed at the mid-range market either, it's a budget handset for mobile novices, I don't think it will be a viable option for those using any sort of handset which can do anything remotely well, by this I mean if the handset has a good camera, a good music player, good browser or is a smartphone - all of these devices will be too superior for the INQ1. The INQ1 will have to target mobile novices as it has many flaws for mildly experienced users, the camera is bad, no focus or flash, the music player is basic even with the last.fm scrobbling, the OS is slow and sluggish, developing for the the handset is a closed option as the API's are not available for 3rd party developers without restrictions.
The key thing is all these factors won't matter to the target audience, their only focus will be the fact it's a Facebook phone, oblivious to the fact that there are better options and handsets available elsewhere. The INQ1 will be successful if it can grab this audience.
New functionalities in MCU SW version 200.21.118:
- Internet Radio application
- My Nokia application
- 3G power reduction for applications using keep-alive style messaging
- User experience improvements:
- Easy Dialing support for Simplified Chinese language
- Device Lock improvement: Open device lock with LSK + Fn-keys
- One key input method switch for China language
- ‘Mute’ option in Right Soft Key when wired headset / hands free is connected
- ‘Loudspeaker’ option in Right Soft Key immediately when phone call is started
- Enlarge characters in Chr-table
- NTLM v1 and v2 support for Intranet Browsing
- New black and red themes
Changes/improvements made to MCU SW version 200.21.118:
General
- Time zones updated
- Improvements to localization
- Localization fixes
- Missing localizations added
- Operator name database updated
- Startup Settings updated
- Certificates updated
- Security updates
- Stability and functionality improvements
- Barcode reader icon changed from 1D icon to 2D icon
- Windows DRM keys are not lost during NSU update from 110.07.127
Qwerty keyboard
- Stability and functionality improvements
- Keyboard mapping corrections
Browser
- Stability and functionality improvements
- Flash Lite improvements
Connectivity
- WLAN stability improvements
- EAP-FAST/TLS stability improved
- WLAN roaming functionality improved
- BT IOP and Dial-up stability improvements
Maps
- Several stability and functionality improvement
Messaging
- Stability and functionality improvements
- Performance improvement
Quickoffice
- Several stability and functionality improvements
VOIP / SIP
- Many stability and functionality improvements
Email
- Mail for Exchange upgraded from version 2.5.5 to 2.7.22
- Improved functionality when sending email via SSL/TLS SMTP server
Mobile dictionary
- Stability improvements
- Improvement for installed languages. Installed language can be removed.
Camera
- Camera image improvements & slow capture correction with certain HW’s
- Stability improvements
Music player
- General functionality and stability improvements
Java
- Update for CLDC-HI (Sun 1.1.1s Java VM)
Device encryption
- Device encryption functionality and stability improvements
Switch application
- Application updates and stability improvements