Smartphone Thoughts: Metallic Marvel: The Dopod 595 Reviewed

Over to the right side, there are two buttons and an infrared port. The first button launches the Voice Commander application (if not installed, it launches Windows Mobile's voice tag recognition plug-in), and the other launches the camera application. Despite infrared being a slow and aging technology, I'm happy to see the 595 include it as it's a great solution for a quick beam. Some of the more recent Windows Mobile-based devices (in particular, Pocket PCs) have seen infrared phased out in favour of Bluetooth.


Figure 6: The right side of the 595, with the infrared port (1) and camera and voice buttons (2).

The bottom edge houses the multi-purpose 11-pin Mini-USB port, which is a departure from the HTC Star Trek's proprietary connector. Unfortunately, it retains the all-in-one nature (handling synchronization, charging, and audio), which limits the use of third-party accessories. Your own 2.5mm and 3.5mm headphones aren't compatible out of the box. You cannot sync/charge and listen to music simultaneously without the helping hand of a splitter cable, and while that may sound like a simple solution, it just equates to an additional (unnecessary) expense. Sadly, this appears to be the road that HTC is taking: multi-purpose USB is in; 2.5mm/3.5mm headset jacks are out. To make matters worse, the Mini-USB port is of the v1.1 specification, and in this day and age where the faster v2.0 specification dominates, there's no excuse for including yesterday's technology.


Figure 7: The bottom edge of the 595. Note the multi-purpose (sync/charge/audio) Mini-USB port (2) and lanyard loop (1). The microphone is also located along this edge. The top edge of the 595 (not shown) contains the power button.

Cracking open the rear panel reveals a compartment for the battery and a slot for the SIM card. Inserting a SIM card is simply a manner of pushing it into the slot. Removing one involves the pulling of a plastic tab as shown in Figure 8. Easy!


Figure 8: A black plastic tab, located in the centre of the device, assists in the removal of the SIM card from the SIM slot (1).


Figure 9: The slim 1,190mAh lithium polymer battery contributes to the compact form factor of the 595.

With the battery in the device, the total package weighs 120g, which is a little heavier than some phones, but still acceptable. It's not too heavy that it'll weigh you down, nor is it too light to make you think that you have an empty pocket.


Figure 10: The 595 in three pieces (battery, phone, and battery cover). You'll be seeing plenty of this if you change SIM cards frequently.




Figures 11 and 12: The 595's numeric keypad makes use of a cool blue backlight. Unfortunately, it's not uniformly distributed as the centre strip of keys lacks the same intensity as the rest.