This mobile phone had started a lot of discussions and it gained a lot of attention. Although everybody needs a certain period of time to confront the design of the device and the keypad layout, there are many different opinions on how the device should look like. Some find it really weird and just different, while others think it is sleek and elegant, which it really is.

The phone is colored in a cool silver paint officialy called „ice blue“, and the plastic feels solid and comfortable.

Unlike other series 60 mobile phones, this device is really small. The main factor in making the phone so small is the keypad layout. It is placed near the edges of the screen, and the keys itself are not small but they require time to adapt. While typing messages you should hold the phone by both hands, so you could press the keys on the both sides of the keypad. We tried typing messages using only one hand but it is rather unhandy to do so because of the distance between different letters. The device weights 116 grams, which makes it pretty light for a smartphone.

So when they had decided to make an attractive, special device with such keypad, they had known customers will have a hard time learning to type on the phone. That is why the phone comes with a game called „Typegun“ which helps you to learn to type the easiest way. Besides the keypad from 0-9 the keypad with the menu button and the joystick are located below the screen. That is really convenient, because you can use the smartphone features such as mp3, or video playback with only one hand. The joystick is a bit harder to use because it is small and hard to move, it has no grip so you might have to repeat a certain movement because your finger slipped. The keys are very nice and you have a nice feeling while pressing them. The keypad backlight is blue, and it is well seen in the dark, but the symbols become blurry, and the light is not spread equally.        

Ok now lets get back to the most highlighted part of the phone, the screen. The resolution of the screen is 176x220 pixels and it is capable of showing up to 65000 colors. It is very bright, and the pictures on it look well defined and sharp. The screen has an extra line of 12 pixels on the top which indicates service information such as battery status, signal strenght or bluetooth operation. This line is present through all the menus, and it is a good thing while playing some game or typing a message. The pictures slightly fades in the sun but it still keeps its clear visibility. The screen itself is very good, but what we did not like is the mask cover on the screen which makes it unusable at certain angles because it distorts the picture.

The sides of the phone contain rubber ingredients which makes the phone more comfortable to hold. On the right side of the phone are located two shiny silver buttons. One for camera and one for voice memo. On the left side is located the MMC-card slot. The good thing on it is the hot swap function, which really makes changing several MMC-cards easy. We have tested the phone with an 1 GB MMC-card from Moby Memory, and it worked completely flawless. The internal memory is 4 Mb but only 3.8 is availabe to the user since the system applications take a bit of memory. In other hand it has 16 Mb of RAM memory, which is used for the running applications. Lets say that we had no problem multitasking on this phone, we had over 10 applications opened at the same time and the phone worked normally. Of course, if you are planning on installing a lot of applications on the phones internal memory you should better think twice and buy an MMC for it, cause you will have a lot more use of the phone then.

The back side of the phone has a large cover for the battery, while there are a camera and an external antenna connector on the top edges of the phone. As we said earlier the phone doesn`t creak, but the battery cover is pretty loose. Under the cover there is a 1000 mAh battery which is powerful enough, as the manufacturer claims, to hold the phone on for 200 hours on standby or 4 hours of talk time. While testing it we got 64 hours on standby and about 2 and a half hours talking. In regular use the device is capable to work about 2 days before recharhing. As you all know the Bluetooth function really makes the battery go down much faster, so you have to recharge. Charging takes about 2.5 hours.

The camera is located on the back of the phone and it can be accessed by a key located on the right side of the phone. You can take pictures by pressing the joystick or by pressing the button on the right side. We noticed that the camera is a bit slow when moving the phone around, but when you hold the phone focused to one direction you get a really good, sharp image. The camera function is very similar to the one found in Nokia 6600. You can choose between three picture resolutions (VGA 640x480, 120x160, 80x96). It has 4x digital zoom and using it makes the pictures lose their quality. If you choose the best resolution, pictures will be large so you can select where the pictures will be stored (phone memory or memory card). A good implementation in the camera menu, is the Image Fun function. You can select between different frames and camera effects. The video recorder function serves it`s function, but only for 10 seconds, because the file is limited to 95kb. The resolution for videos is a standard QCIF (176x144) resolution. The installed video recorder is there only to introduce video recording to the customer but we higly reccomend, third party recorders which offer longer video recording and better quality and framerate. Real Player is used for viewing recorded videos on the phone.

The Symbian OS 6.1 is very user friendly and offers a lot of functions, not as much as found in OS 7.0 (Nokia 6600). For instance, there is no support for themes, and it has some minor bugs.

Since this phone is classified as a business smartphone, it should have many connection possibilities, which it certainly has. You can choose between USB cable, IrYes, Bluetooth, E-mail, and using third party software you can connect to FTP servers and various chat clients. The cable is used for synchronization with the PC, and it can also be used to access the phones internal modem. Since this mobile phone accepts all file types to be transfered/received, you can send files to it using IrYes, or much better standard Bluetooth. The bluetooth function works without any problems and it supports audio over bluetooth, meaning you can connect to a wireless handsfree.
        
The phone comes loaded with important applications such as calculator, currency converter, Real Player, detailed calendar, notes, voice recorder, and so on.

The signal strenght was very decent and the sound during calls was good. All that goes for the vibration and the polyphonic ring tones, which could be a bit louder.
Overall, we find this device really good, packed with features and definately functional despite it`s keypad layout. Since it`s main competitor is Nokia 6600, we think that the SX1 looks a more attractive and elegant, which is a deciding factor in buying phones in most cases. If you want to combine looks with features, you will not go wrong with this phone.