Sagem myC-3b

Discontinued
28th March 2004

Sagem have recently announced a number of new phones that demonstrate their growing expertise in the mobile phone market. We covered the myX-7 back in January and found it to be a highly competent phone that challenged the likes of Sony Ericsson and Nokia on their own turf.

The Sagem myC-3b is a completely different phone, and one aimed at women, in much the same way as the Siemens Xelibri 6 and Panasonic G70 handsets, although the myC-3b is technically a much better handset than either of those. However, the styling is a little less "girlie" and indeed it's a little reminiscent of the Motorola V300 with it's gentle curves.

The myC-3b is a small handset, measuring 81x51x23 mm and weighing 85 grams. From the outside it's immediately obvious that there's no external screen or digital camera. Open it up, and there a quite impressive 128x160 pixel display in 65,000 colours. This is a much better screen than either the Xelibri or Panasonic.

Underneath, the myC-3b is a dual-band GSM 900/1800 phone only, so this won't work on US networks- the phone is primarily pitched at European customers - but it does support GPRS for web browsing. Plus it comes with polyphonic ringtones, customisable wallpaper, "bio-features" (we told you this was being marketed at women, didn't we?), and two games. Battery life is about 4 hours talktime and 8 days standby. You can connect to a PC via a serial cable.

Certainly the myC-3b isn't going to set the world on fire with its specifications, but it has a good screen and GPRS, which is better than some of the competition, and it shows that Sagem are capable of producing stylish clamshell phones and we look forward to seeing the rumoured Sagem myC-4 and myC-5 which should have digital cameras, Java and an external display.

Now if only Sagem could do something about the awfully unmemorable names they give to their phones...