Dopod 810

The Dopod D810 is one of the most well equipped smartphones on the market, sporting the latest 3.5G High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) protocol for blistering data transfer. The entry price into this high-speed world may seem a little steep, but you'll usually be able to get it cheaper when tied with a contract.

Design
The D810 smartphone is touted as the world's first 3.5G HSDPA-capable Windows Mobile PDA-phone and comes finished in either polished black or white. Its glossy and sleek design makes it one of the more stylish handsets on the market, complemented by its minimalist good looks and large vibrant display. Forgoing an integrated QWERTY keyboard, the D810 instead uses a 2.8-inch LCD touchscreen display that quickly becomes a haven for fingerprints.

Getting around isn't a problem thanks to a three-way scroll wheel for traversing menus, as well as multiple control buttons, including a voice command activation button, five-way navigation key and a stylus. To the right are a miniSD card slot for extra storage and buttons for selecting the camera and turning on the power.

The device measures in at 108 by 58.2 by 18.4 millimetres and weighs only 150 grams with the battery. For a smartphone, the D810 isn't too bulky or obtrusive and will fit comfortably in most pockets. Accessories include a travelling pouch, stereo headset, AC adaptor and USB cable.

Features
Running the show is a 400MHz Samsung processor combined with 128MB of system memory and 64MB of SDRAM. The chosen operating system is Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition, which also comes bundled with several important software tools including Microsoft's Office suite, Media Player 10, Pocket MSN, ActiveSync and a PDF viewer. Windows Mobile is also capable of supporting push email from a Microsoft Exchange server, as well as standard POP3 and IMAP, however, the platform is getting a bit long in the tooth and is expected to be superseded by a new version soon.

Connectivity shouldn't be an issue with the D810 thanks to full support for 3.5G HSDPA, quad-band GSM with GPRS & EDGE, tri-band WCDMA, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, infrared and USB for charging and connection to a PC. Bluetooth comes with A2DP support, which means you can wirelessly stream audio files to Bluetooth-enabled headphones.

The D810 sports both a 2-megapixel camera for snapshots as well as VGA unit for video talk. There's no flash for night-time shooting but there are settings for day and night modes, adjustments for white balance and black & white or sepia special effects. Images range from 160 x 120 up to 1600 x 1200 pixels, with video taken in 352 x 288-pixel resolutions, and there's also a 4x digital zoom.

Media files are taken care of with Windows Media Player 10, which supports a wide range of audio files, such as MP3 and WMA. It's a shame Dopod didn't include an FM radio or a 3.5mm audio jack.

Performance
As a basic phone, the D810 excels in most areas, with good sound quality, great coverage and no complaints from respondents. Sound at maximum volume levels is too low, especially when calling from a busy area, and quality from the speakerphone isn't great but it is loud. Connectivity is never an issue with the D810 thanks to its full support for so many formats. The device quickly found most Wi-Fi hotspots around the office and never managed to lose the connection. It's easily one of the most well connected phones we've ever tested.

The 3.5G HSDPA browsing speeds are noticeably faster than home broadband connections, although video streaming still has some hiccups, and it's still not possible to have a seamless conversation with video talk. Applications also suffer from noticeable delays, usually when switching between multiple programs. Most other smartphones on the market, such as O2's Xda Zinc, have moved to the faster Intel XScale chipset and the D810 can be painfully slow at times, which becomes very annoying when waiting for frequently used functions such as a contacts list to load.

Images taken with the inbuilt camera are nothing to write home about. Still-images aren't very sharp and rarely come out acceptable when taken in poor lighting conditions. Battery life was one of the D810's strong points. The 1500 mAh battery lasted close to two days on a single charge with our heavy usage.

The good:

• Excellent interface
• Numerous connectivity options
• Good battery life
• Sharp and vibrant display

The bad:

• Slow processor
• Lacks FM radio
• Expensive
• Lacks 3.5mm audio jack

The bottomline:

The Dopod D810 is packed with a bevy of useful features including 3.5G HSDPA support, quadband GSM, and Wi-Fi, but suffers from some glaring shortcomings such as slow processing speeds and barely passable camera.