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Review : E-TEN G500 - part 1 : what is in the box + first impressions March 18, 2006 [Pocket PC phone] | By Edward J. R. E-TEN G500 is an excellent Pocket PC phone. Yes, it lacks built-in Wi-Fi (that can however be added by miniSD Wi-Fi card) but it is quad-band (good both for Europe and USA), has built-in GPS of latest generation (SiRF Star III = very sensitive), TMC (for omitting traffic jams), FM radio with RDS, very fast processor from Samsung (400 MHz = faster than Intel 520 MHz processor), Bluetooth 2.0 (not 1.2!) and miniSD card slot. Instead of reviewing it in one big review, we will be testing various aspects of this phone over longer periods of time and reporting to you in form of multipart review! Here comes the part 1: the contents of the box and general first impressions! E-TEN G500 comes in the following box: 
... that is originally sealed in a transparent foil. If your box is not sealed in it, then it probably was opened before by somebody. The phone itself - i.e. E-TEN G500 - due to having built-in GPS is a little bit bigger than HTC Magician: 
On the right side there is miniSD card slot: 
... what should not be any major problem because nowadays 2 GB miniSD cards are available very cheaply and one can get even miniSD WiFi card if needed. The reason why memory card slot is on the right side and not at the top is this: 
... or in other words: GPS receiver with integrated GPS antenna is located at the top of the phone, so memory card slot had to be placed elsewhere. Unlike it is in some other Pocket PC devices, the antenna is integrated, so no need to deal with clumsy protruding antenna. There is also GPS antenna slot - in case one would like to connect external GPS antenna over cable. In a box one can find also car holder for the phone: 
... and a leather case for this phone: 
... which is especially designed for this phone - so on the back of this case the opening for camera is exactly matching the design of the phone. There is also belt clip, that allows easy mounting of the phone on your belt. The phone however itself, even inside of the leather case, is small enough that will fit easily into pockets of most people. Apart from the CD-ROM with Microsoft Outlook (included with all Windows Mobile devices usually) and apart from the above mentioned items, one can find in the box also the following: 
... which are:
* * * * * Overall construction of E-TEN G500 is very solid and it has very stylish glowing feature, that makes it very easy to use also in darkness (ulike many other Pocket PC phones that have not all keys with backlit): 
Generally some people think that built-in WiFi is a must, but the reality is that usually to do any serious work anyway one needs to open noteboook with WiFi. Apart from that WiFi adds additional complexity and increases power consumption significantly. For many people who are traveling built-in GPS will be much more important than built-in WiFi (that usually is used only occasionally and to make Skype phone call usually it would be enough to pull WiFi card and plug it into phone). In other words: in most cases lack of WiFi is not a problem but having built-in GPS is a huge advantage. With built-in GPS all problems with external GPS receivers are gone: no need to charge separately GPS unit, no need to fiddle with Bluetooth pairing, very high stability and very big comfort of use. The GPS receiver built-in into E-TEN G500 is very sensitive and we were getting quick GPS fix also indoors with just partial view through the window. The GPS receiver works fine with all GPS software. Interstingly this phone is superior to all other phones with built-in GPS because it supports also FM radio and TMC (notice "$RTRDS" lines in the stream of data from the built-in GPS receiver): 
... and although we must admit that FM radio software is not included in the package yet, and FM radio it is not mentioned on the box: 
... we have got however first hand confirmation from president of E-TEN that FM radio software will be released later! It will be also first FM radio in Windows Mobile phones with RDS support. The release date of the FM radio program for E-TEN G500 is end of March 2006 (at the earliest) or maybe a bit later. Unfortunately E-TEN was thinking that Windows Mobile phones are just for business people and they don't need such rudimentary things like FM radio - and that's why they didn't placed it right away. Stay tuned however: we will be following up this issue! It is too early to draw conclusions in such an early phase of testing, but we already have impression that E-TEN G500 is a very solid phone and thanks to ultra-sensitive built-in GPS it may improve life of users significantly. Let's remember also that in Windows Mobile 5.0 a new feature related to GPS has been built-in into the operating system: ability to run more than one GPS application at the same time... so possibilities to play with GPS are numerous and you don't have to limit yourself just to one application at a time. You could for example run several GPS applications at once, for example: one application for GPS navigation and finding your target, one application for logging of your journey to some format that could be reused elsewhere (like in Google Earth) and one other application that is playing music depending on the location in which you are located. One is for sure: comfort of GPS usage in E-TEN G500 is huge and for people who are traveling from time to time and who don't spent their whole life on the same commute route, this phone may be an excellent solution. * * * * * Stay tuned for next parts of this review and look back at this page for upgrades and extensions! (version of this page: 1)  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 3 Comments ]
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