Pantech PG C300 Review
Pantech has been known for quite some time in the industry as a cellular phone provider that offers potential customers phones that both excel in service and exceed in style. One of their smallest cellular phones to date is no exception. The Pantech PG c300, which is currently used on the Cingular Wireless network, is a mere 68 grams in weight, and measures a surprising 69 x 43 x 19 mm in dimension. Its clamshell design and small stubby antenna allows this cellular phone to literally fit in the palm of your hand.
One would think that with its relatively tiny size, this phone wouldn’t be able to do much of anything besides allow for telephone conversations between interested parties. Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth. The Pantech PG c300 offers a wide array of features in addition to the normal standbys of a calculator, a phone book capable of holding 800 entries, speaker phone, the ability to support English and Spanish, text messaging, as well as polyphonic ringtones and vibration alert. Besides that, this phone also offers a VGA digital camera, an impressive display for its overall size, and the ability to match specific ring tones and picture IDs with certain incoming calls. And don’t think for a moment that the talk time or available standby time suffers with all these added features. With the standard Lithium Ion battery, this phone offers nearly 3.50 hours of talk time, and a standby time allotment of over 10 days.
Perhaps the most notable feature about the Pantech PG c300 is the onboard digital camera. This VGA camera with build in LCD flash offers controls located on the outside of the camera, which makes taking in the moment pictures with the camera that much easier. It also has a digital photograph resolution of 640?480 pixels, and the 10MB built in flash shared memory makes keeping a few pictures stored on the phone a relatively easy process.
Of course, if you take the pictures, it’s nice to be able to view them on the cellular phone. Given its size, the prevailing thought would be that the display image would be too small to see clearly. Although the image size and quality can’t compare with an actual print out of the digital photograph, the Pantech PG c300 can definitely hold it’s own with its dual TFT color display. It offers over 262,000 different colors, with an 18 bit resolution. The overall size of the display is 128 x 128 pixels, which is somewhat disappointing at times, but still quite reasonable when the size of the phone is taken into account. Other features that aren’t often seen on phones like this is a built in flashlight, volume controls on the side of the phone, and the ability to support digital TTD/TTY. The phone also comes standard with a few games, a 2.5mm headset jack, and a voice memo that can save up to 6 seconds of information. And for those times that you wish to send a text message instead of a voice call, this phone offers predictive text entry technology, 2 way text messaging, as well as MMS capabilities.
Surprisingly, with the smaller size of the Pantech PG c300, the overall sound and signal quality was found to be quite good, even in areas where the network was a bit patchy. According to consumer comments, this phone routinely out performed such standbys as Nextel, Samsung, and Motorola in overall clarity of sound and number of dropped or missed calls.
There are however, a few notable drawbacks to the Pantech PG c300, and most of them have to do with the overall size of the phone. Because of its smaller size, the keypad controls and numbers are somewhat harder to navigate. Many people found that it was extremely difficult not to unintentionally press extra keys when dialing. Also, the built in speaker phone was found to be almost useless in settings other than close rooms because too much of the surrounding noise was picked up by the microphone. Others found the smaller size of the phone something that took some time to become comfortable with, especially when using it for voice calls. In addition, those with arthritic hands occasionally had problems gripping the phone during conversations.
Overall, the Pantech PG c300 provides the consumer with proof that good things come in small packages. This little phone offers a wealth of features, capabilities, and voice calls clarity and signal strength that simply is well worth the price. So if you’re looking for a phone that can easily fit into the palm of your hand, and that has the capabilities of quite a few of it’s larger cousins, consider taking a look at this phone.
GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) is a digital mobile telephone system that is widely used in Europe and other parts of the world. Read more about GSM on Tech FaQ web site.
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