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Sunday, September 07, 2003 |
Review: GSL Xplore G18 Smartphone (MobileBurn)Snapshot by Siddharth Raja on Wednesday August 20, 2003. 
China's Group Sense Limited (GSL) and PalmSource recently announced GSL's first Palm powered wireless handlend, the Xplore G18. While it does have a silly name, the Xplore G18 is quite advanced, sporting dual-band GSM, digital camera, TFT screen, and a 33Mhz processor. The fact that it runs the Palm OS means that all of the Palm OS 4 applications already available will work on the Xplore G18. GSL has included 16mb of RAM, and while that may seem very little, it's quite reasonable for a Palm device.
The digital camera has a resulution of 320x240 pixels, which is a little disappointing. Still, the photos should look fine on the TFT screen, which has a relatively high resolution of 160x240 pixels. One of the most impressive aspects of this device is its form-factor. In dimensions and wieght the Xplore G18 can be considered to be in the "standard" phone category - compare its 100 x 48 x 21.1 mm and 105g with the T610's 102 x 44 x 19mm and 95g. Here are some quick spec's: Dual band GSM/GPRS 900/1800 Dimensions: 100 x 48 x 21.1 mm Weight: 105g Display: color TFT (160x240 pixels) 320x240 res camera with digital zoom Memory: 16MB Palm OS 4.1.2 SMS/MMS This phone is available locally ... saw the advertisement in yesterday's paper, Utusan Malaysia, Seni pullout, page14. Fifth Media Sdn. Bhd. is the sole agent and is currently doing an exhibition of the PalmOS smartphone at Low Yat Plaza, concourse level from 5-7th September. There was no mention of pricing in the advertisement though. I'd like to compare this to a Tungsten|W. The specs kind of matches the T|W. Reading the mobileburn review, there were no mention of on expansion slot. After a "Googling" session, I found a posting in Palminfocenter forum confirming the absence of an expansion slot on the Xplore G18... bummer! Personal opinion. Good form factor, nice looking screen at 160x240 pixel with virtual grafitti (compare that with the upcoming Treo600's 160x160 display plus keypad), but I wonder why it is powered by PalmOS 4.1.2. posted by Mohd Nazley Fadhley at 8:22 AM | permalink | 
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