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| Photo sourced from Netphone.com.ph |
I bought my Smart Netphone 701 (otherwise known as the ZTE Blade in other territories) almost a year ago as a result of several things:
a) a desire to have a smartphone with an Android OS (back then I was still using the mother of smartphones, a Nokia 6680)
b) a need to have a postpaid, dedicated personal line (prepaids do have their uses but if there's no available loading station like you're in a 3rd class municipality in Mindanao ...)
c) an answer to the curiousity of having a wi-fi phone with all the possible bells and whistles (i.e. camera, music-player, organizer, calendar, etc.)
So when Smart started advertising their Netphone postpaid offer sometime August-September last year, I knew I had to grab it. And so I did and had my baptism of fire with the much-talked-about Android OS. The Netphone came with Froyo 2.2.
So after almost a year of using the Smart Netphone, what is my verdict? To be honest, I think I'm ready to graduate to another Android-powered phone and probably bequeth this phone to someone else.
Don't get me wrong. The Netphone or the ZTE Blade is a great introductory Android smartphone. It has just right amount of bells and whistles to keep a novice interested. It's a decent phone -- one year of usage and I've not had any major problems when calling or texting. Of course, it's not perfect but calling and texting is one-half the phone and one-half the network and I think I've made the Smart move in choosing my postpaid.
The camera, which doubles as a video-cam, is quite decent although a lack of flash would be troublesome during night photography attempts or indoor shots where lighting isn't magnificent (like in malls). With a micro-SD card loaded with music, the default player is ok but there are better players out there. However, due to circumstances, I had to stick to what's been onboard.
The distinguishing feature of the Netphone and why I got it was its free SmartNet Center -- 24/7 connectivity (albeit limited) to Social Stream which includes Facebook, Twitter, and Smart's very own chat and instant messaging services. While I was able to max out FB and Twitter while it lasted (the service remained free until June 2012 only, already extended from an earlier December 31, 2011 termination date), sadly, with no other friend using the SmartNet service, I wasn't able to check out the chatting and instant messaging features.
One very useful widget on the Netphone is its one-touch check to see if you're using your mobile data. With the widget, you can easily turn-off and turn-on mobile data and that helps ensure that you won't get charged millions for data connectivity. The one-button-for-all-mobile-data also is a kill-all button -- all apps you've installed that constantly try and seek out mobile data connections and override your settings are instead overridden themselves by this widget.
And because it runs on Android, there are gazillions of apps to download from Google Play (need to be connected to cyberspace, of course). The phone itself already comes loaded with Android-based apps including Google Search, Gmail, Maps, Docs-to-Go, etc. and all one had to do was load it all up with apps that suited your lifestyle. Personally, aside from games, other apps I've downloaded from the then Android Market that have been quite useful in my year of using the Netphone include AVG Antivirus, Juice Defender, Flashlight, and ConvertPad. Of course, I had to download the Android apps for mobile social networking including FB, Foursquare, and Twitter. My Netphone also has FBReader installed for all those eARCs I've been planning to read (but never really gotten to yet) and for entertainment and fun, I've recently re-installed MX Player for playing video files, GStrings for tuning, and GChord, a useful chord finder. Note that all the apps I've installed are free ones.
With all the positives, you may ask, why shop for a new Android phone then?
Like I mentioned earlier, the Smart Netphone 701 is a great introductory smartphone but once your curiousity has been satiated and you're now ready to embrace the Android experience further then the Netphone will leave you lacking. And here are the three reasons why ...
Battery: Even with Juice Defender on Aggressive Mode, I still have to recharge my battery at least twice a day. I've done all possible battery-saving tricks on the phone -- lowering display to the lowest, turning off unnecessary apps, turning off wi-fi and network scanning -- but these only added minutes of battery life to the phone. Calling, surfing, playing games and apps are the real juice-killers for the phone. And what's worse is I can't seem to find a retail outlet anywhere that carries the battery-type that the ZTE Blade uses.
Internal Storage: 512MB of internal memory may seem like forever -- if you were talking about it in 1995. In this age of terrabytes, a 512MB is just a pinch of salt and this is probably the biggest letdown of the Netphone as an Android phone. Looking at my storage settings, I'm basically left with just 23.61MB of space. Where did the freaking rest of the 512MB go? To the numerous apps that's loaded on the Netphone. I've tried stripping down the phone to the barest possible my lifestyle can afford it but there just seems to be not just enough memory. Even with the expandable micro-SD slot, you would still need to have enough internal storage space to run all the apps you want. So, to save on internal mem, what I usually do is uninstall and install apps which is turning out to be tedious. I have only one game left in my Netphone -- Jewels Maze! -- and the biggest memory resider app is the FB for Android at 23MB+.
Processor: Last year, the ARM11 600MHz processor was powerful. However, with most of the Android apps updating, the Netphone's internal clucker just cannot keep up it seems. That's based on my personal experience so techno-paths no bashing please. After updating many of the apps installed in the Netphone, it now has become more prone to crashing and restarting. I guess the now-depowered processor coupled with the low internal storage space work in combo in wreck the smooth running of the phone. The crashes are more evident when I'm playing Jewels Maze! or using the MX Player.
Aside from the three abovementioned reasons, the Netphone's OS is not upgradeable to a higher Android OS version. Makes sense though because if it were to run something higher than Froyo 2.2, it might just decide to die on you rather than take on the herculean task of running a much more sophisticated OS.
So, in summary -- the Netphone 701 is a good introductory Android-powered smartphone. However, the short battery life, small internal storage, and fastly-obsoleting processing speed are the likely culprits of this phone not taking off. In my one year of using the Netphone, there has only been one instance when I saw another user had the same phone. Despite the marketing hype, the advertising, and a Netphone-touting Sam Pinto billboard advertising all around, the Netphone 701 didn't become a popular handset. In fact, barely a month after I bought it, Smart released its newer Smart Netphone -- the Samsung Galaxy Y. No, I didn't feel that I was had. I just wished I had a little more patience and waited for the Y to come out a few weeks more.
