Sagem myX6-2

Discontinued
23rd March 2005

Amongst the mass of new phones announced recently, the Sagem myX6-2 rather slipped our attention amongst all the big name launches. Sagem, of course, are best known for their inexpensive mobiles pitched primarily at the prepay/pay-as-you-go market, along with some midrange phones aimed at lower end contract customers. There are a couple of exceptions to this, notably the impressive myX-8 and also the myS-7 Smartphone.

At first glance, the myX6-2 looks like many other similar handsets, but it's a massive improvement over previous similar models in every respect.

The Sagem myX6-2's screen is now a 176x220 pixel TFT panel in 262,000 colours. On the back is a 1.3 megapixel camera with 8X digital zoom. On top of this, the myX6-2 has Bluetooth and supports microSD/TransFlash memory expansion up to 256Mb.

There are a wide range of media formats supported by the myX6-2 as well, including AAC, AAC+ and optionally MP3 audio, H263 and optional MPEG4 video plus other formats. We're not sure why MP3 and MPEG4 are "optional" - except that it might give the networks selling the myX6-2 more of a change to tie consumers into a less popular format to drive revenue. Audio playback has some stereo capabilities too, but we're not sure of the exact configuration here.

This is a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 device with GPRS, a WAP 2.0 web browser, MMS, IMPS instant messaging and Java. There doesn't seem to be an email client though. The myX6-2 can be connected to a PC via a USB cable or infra-red connection, although we don't know to what extent you can synchronise the myX6-2 with contacts and appointments.

Size, weight and battery life are pretty typical of this type of handset, at 110x47x19mm, 104 grams and 4 hours talktime with up to 14 days standby. In terms of looks, the myX6-2 is quite smart and businesslike, but we do wonder how easy that navigation key will be to use in real life.

So.. what we have here is a decent mid-range handset that breaks free from the tiny-screened VGA camera brigade, and it's sort of competitive with the benchmark Nokia 6230i too, although the Nokia has the edge in terms of features. We predicted last year that Sagem would be the manufacturer to watch in 2005, and the myX6-2 seems to indicate that Sagem really could be a significant mover in the mobile market by the end of the year.

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