Features (cont.) and Software

The i350 sadly hasn’t been boosted to 3G, it’s still very much a GSM handset and we’re really hoping for some 3G action from GSmart in the future. The i350 is a quad band handset which means it should work in most parts of the world and it supports GPRS class 12, but not EDGE which is a shame.



The i350 has been given an external memory card slot, but unlike the t600 which uses a micro SD card, the i350 is using a slightly larger mini SD card. The only problem we had was with the location of the memory card slot which is at the bottom of the handset, this would probably make one worry about the card dropping out, but hopefully this won’t be the case.



The main feature of the i350, as with the t600 which had a built in digital TV tuner and digital radio, is that the built-in SiRF Star III GPS receiver. However, GIGABYTE doesn’t seem to ship it with any navigation software, instead you get a small GPS tracking utility which works in all extents very much like the early GPS units. This means that you get a set of coordinates and you can place markers to navigate between. It will also display the speed you’re travelling at. We did have some problems using this in a car, as it seemed like the GPS receiver had problems locating the satellites, but this was most likely down to the windshield in the car as these can sometimes block the GPS signals.



You can also take snapshots with the camera and link those pictures to the GPS location, this allowing you to retrace your step back to that location with the help of the picture. The GPS information should also allow you to keep track of where you’ve taken the pictures.

Apart from the GPS tracking utility, the i350 comes with some additional software which doesn’t normally come with Windows Mobile devices. The one that stands out the most in our opinion is the Pocket Remote and we’d like to see this on more Windows Mobile devices. It’s actually not a remote control application in the way you’d think at first, as it allows you to remote control the i350 from within Windows.



The application is stored on the handset and you simply copy it over onto your PC, connect the i350 via ActiveSync, run the application, press the power button that shows up on the screen and you get a video overlay of what’s displayed on the i350 in Windows. Then you can use your mouse and keyboard and enter information, edit contacts or even play games on the i350. This makes it a lot easier to do some tasks and as the i350 doesn’t have a keyboard this is an easy way to enter large amounts of data onto it.