Panasonic VS3 and VS7 (and SA6, SA7, MX6 and
MX7)
Discontinued 15th February 2005
The
Panasonic VS3 (pictured right) is a slim handset
at just 18mm thick and a large 2.2" QVGA (240x320)
pixel display capable of up to 16 million colours, which
would make it the best screen on the market, even better
than the offerings from Sharp. There's a 1.3 megapixel
digital camera on the outside capable of taking video
clips.
Other than the screen, camera and impressive slimness
of the device, there's not much going on. This is a
tri-band GSM phone with GPRS. It supports MP3 ringtones,
but it doesn't appear to have a standalone MP3 player,
and there's no removable memory. There's no Bluetooth
either. Although the Panasonic VS3 has a WAP 2.0 browser,
it doesn't seem to have an email client. There's one
push auto-open and exchangeable covers though, if those
sort of things are important to you.
Although the 16 million colour screen sounds impressive,
it really only represents a shift from 6 bits per pixel
on 262,000 colour displays to 8 bits per pixel. It is
unlikely that most users will notice any discernable
difference. And by the time the VS3 hits the market
1.3 megapixel cameras will be pretty standard. Panasonic
have slated the launch date as Q3 2005, although we
wouldn't be suprised if the actual launch date slipped
badly.
There's
a variant of the VS3 with a longer battery life called
the MX6, and also a toughened version for outdoors use
called the SA6. From the details we have at the moment,
it might well be that the MX6 has 10 hours talktime
and 20 days standby by including a double-capacity battery.
The Panasonic VS7 (pictured left) takes the
same design concepts as the VS3 and adds a slightly
bigger screen (2.5 inches), additional external display
and a 2 megapixel digital camera, housed in a slightly
thicker case at 19mm.
Again, from what we can tell, the VS7 lacks the same
features that the VS3 lacks, meaning that beyond the
screen, camera and size there's not a lot going for
this phone. As with its sibling, there's a ruggedised
version of the VS7 called the SA7, and one with a high-capacity
battery named the SA8.
We're not keen at all on the two VS-series of phones,
because they don't seem to deliver much beyond their
headline features. The two variants look much more useful
though, as ruggedised phones are still few and far between
and the inclusion of a high-resolution camera with video
recording capabilities could be a novel and useful feature.
Supplying the handsets with double-sized batteries is
also a clever but simple idea that should appeal to
many.
Although this looks like six phones, really they
are all pretty much the same. Whether or not they can
turn around Panasonic's fortunes remains to be seen.
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