Panasonic X300
Discontinued.
25th March 2004
Panasonic's mission to re-establish
itself as a leading mobile phone maker has thrown up
some interesting results, from the not-bad Panasonic
X700, to the girlie Panasonic
G70 plus a handful of other handsets.
The X300 is a little unique though,
because it has a fold-out viewfinder which combines
with a built-in camera and video recorder. It certainly
makes the X300 look like no other phone.. but is it
impressive at all in the specifications department...?
Errrr....
no. Although it's not a bad attempt by Panasonic, it
suffers from some of the same weaknesses as it's sibling,
the X700. which is a very pretty phone but with a feature
set that lags behind the competition.
The first problem is the camera. While
other manufacturers are producing megapixel devices,
the X300 comes in at only a run-of-the-mill 640x480
pixel VGA resolution camera, which is simply not good
enough for a phone that prides itself on its imaging
capabilities. The VGA-resolution camera is less of a
problem with video capture, but the X300 appears to
be without Bluetooth or removable memory making it a
pretty poor video camera.
At launch time the screen size has not
been specified, but it appears to be just 132x132 pixels
in 65,000 colours, a small screen by camera phone standards,
but this does make the X300 a fairly compact handset.
The rest of the feature set looks pretty standard, GPRS,
polyphonics, MMS and a couple of games.
At first it's hard to guess what Panasonic
are trying to do here.. the flip feature gives the impression
of a high-end camera phone, but the specifications are
of a low-end mass market phone. Maybe it will become
clear with the pricing, but we think that the X300 is
going to have to be heavily discounted in order to shift
units.
But Panasonic really should be able
to do much better than this, given the fact that they
produce many of the technologies in the X300 themselves
- rather than just buying them in. Panasonic are relying
far too much on gimmicks and cosmetics and need to have
a much harder look at the basic features of the handsets
they are making. Sorry, Panasonic, but we know you could
come up with something amazing if you just tried harder.
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Panasonic
X300 Specifications
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Available:
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Q3
2004
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Network:
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Tri-band
GSM
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Data:
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GPRS
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Screen:
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128x128
pixels, 65,000 colours
|
Camera:
|
640x480
pixels
|
Size:
|
Small
candy-bar 92x50x21mm
/ 87 grams
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Bluetooth:
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No
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Infra-red:
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No
|
Polyphonic:
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Yes
|
Java:
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Not
specified
|
Battery
life:
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5
hours talk / 11 days standby
|
|
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