CECT P168+ Review: Software

The user interface is simple and easy to use. The screen in its "home state" shows a clock in the center, your network name and number at the top, and more status indicators above that. Tapping on the screen will bring up a dial pad. Along the bottom of the screen is a series of icons that will launch different applications on the phone. From left to right these are home menu, SMS, Phone Book, Dial Pad, and Music.

The phone also contains a number of buttons. There are two buttons with dots. The left button on the home screen will bring up the home menu, the right will bring up the Phone Book. Bellow these buttons are the call and hang-up buttons. The call button will bring up call logs and the hang-up will turn the phone off if held down. In the center is a four-way directional pad with a button in the center. The center button will bring up the home-menu and the other four buttons can be assigned as shortcuts. On the left side are two buttons that will adjust the volume and on the right side is a button that will bring up the camera.

Home Menu and Applications:

The home menu displays the featured applications on the phone. These can not be changed. There are five categories, each housing four applications.

AV Zone:

Audio Player:

A simple Audio player that supports mp3 files. You open an MP3 file to play it and it'll play any other songs in the same directory. Playlists are not supported. If you do not have headphones plugged in then the music will play through the built-in speakers.

Video Player:

Plays video files, including AVI.The player has simple controls. In my experience the movie player is a bit sluggish, probably due to the weak processor.

Video Recorder:

Records Video and saves as an AVI file. The quality isn't very good and the framerate is slow resulting in blurry videos.

Camera:

The built-in camera. The quality isn't very great, but it's at least a bit better than the video recorder. It's better than nothing. The camera also has the ability for some filters such as Sepia and frames.

PIM:

Phone Book:

The phone book allows you to store names, phone numbers, addresses, picture, and email address. Custom fields can also be created. Overall it's fairly decent. Large phone books can cause browsing entries or searching very slow however.

Messages:

This is where you send SMS and MMS messages. This feature is straight forward and works fairly well in my experience. I've been told that incoming MMS messages may be limited in size however.

Call History:

Self-Explanatory. A log of all your missed, dialed, and received calls as well as a call counter.

Organizer:

This contains a calender, To Do List, and World Clock. The calender is simple allows you to add or view tasks to days. The To Do List is a simple check-list creation tool. The Alarm clock allows you to set up multiple alarms. The world clock displays a map and shows times of other cities and time zones when selected. Over all the features of the organizer on the phone is very simple. I never use them since they can't be synced with my computer, but if you want something to keep simple notes, it works. Functionally it is very similar to most entry-level phones.

Entertainment:

Fun and Games:

This is where the games are held. The only game that came with my phone is Puzzle. The addition of new games (including JAVA) is not supported.

Services:

I'm not sure why this is under Entertainment, but this is where you set up your data service and use your WAP browser. I haven't tried the WAP browser myself, but I suspect it is similar to most simple WAP browsers.

Multimedia:

This is a collection of an Image Viewer that views picture files, a photo editor that resizes pictures, a sound recorder for recording sound, and a melody composer to create new ring tones. Nothing too special about most of these. It is notable however that the sound recorder records in the .AMR format.

Extra:

I'm not sure why this is under Entertainment either. Extra contains even more applications. These applications include: Calculator, Currency Converter, Health (BMI and Menstrual programs), an E-Book Reader (read text files) and Bluetooth. The switch-sim card option is also under this menu allowing you to reboot your phone with the other SIM card (if any.)

System:

I will cover this section in a future article where I discuss configuring the phone in-depth.

Settings:

The main control panel that allow you to change the settings and appearance of your phone.

User Profile:

Set up different calling profiles such as "General", "Meeting", and "Bluetooth"

Shortcuts:

I'm not sure exactly what the use is for this. If the phone didn't have the custom "iphone-like" home-menu I suspect this would allow you to edit the list of displayed applications.

File Manager:

View the files and folders on your Transflash card.

Overall Impressions:

The interface has some nice features, but overall feels cheaply done especially with the recycled iPhone/Mac icons. The downfall of the interface for the most part is its slow responsiveness, especially in the phone book. A little more work and a more powerful processor would have improved the user experience in many ways.

That's the end of the software tour. I will be covering configuring the phone and my overall impressions in a future article. A first impressions review and hardware review can be found in my article list on my Associated Content profile.