SmarTone will start selling Sharp's new 2.5G mobile phone - the GX22 - which has one of the most impressive screens yet seen on a mobile. The 2.5-inch liquid crystal display is larger than most displays on mobiles and the clarity and resolution of the LCD exceed that of many digital cameras.
There are several improvements over the older GX12. With the camera you can take pictures in three sizes, 120x160 pixels, 240x320 and 480x640 and two modes - macro or portrait. The continuous shooting option allows up to four rapid shots. Pictures can be taken in two quality settings - fine and normal - and saved to the onboard 3.8 megabytes of memory. The macro function was impressive as I could photograph text clearly and send it as an MMS (multimedia message service). The video camera function is new but basic and can shoot 15 seconds of sound and video in normal or fine mode.
The GX22 is lighter and less bulky than the GX12, while the keypad is easy to figure out, even for long-time Nokia phone users. Hotkeys are clearly labelled with icons.
Sharp designed the GX22 with limited memory to suit its Hong Kong carrier partner. SmarTone has an online album service.
Unfortunately, the GX22 is not a smartphone so it does without wireless LAN and Bluetooth. An email client was not available on the test model, but SmarTone will undoubtedly provide its email-on-the-go service to GX22 owners.
Sharp GX22