Words Gary Mercado
Say you're the antisocial type. You just want to go to work, do your thing, and get through the day attracting as little attention as possible. Unfortunately for you, you just bought the new Panasonic GD88.
From firsthand experience, this is definitely the phone you do not want to have if you want to avoid attention.
First off, it just plain looks great. Forget specs, forget cost, forget the cynic in you who frowns at fancy tech toys. No one will be able to keep their hands off it. Pull it out from your pocket at meetings and it will distract everyone, guaranteed. The smooth flowing oval theme is consistent throughout. The casing, the hinge, even the keypads are smooth. Not a sharp edge anywhere. It helps that it's a sturdy phone as the silver finish with chrome touches evoke a "look at me" attitude that will make your officemates want to touch, no, grab it from you.
There's even less chance they'll go away once they open the clamshell. The 65,000-color screen will knock their socks off. Not only is the display possibly the sharpest and clearest among phones today, it is also large - at 132 x 176 pixels, almost PDA levels large.
So you lock yourself in your cubicle to avoid everyone. That'll work, to a point. This means you're going to have to use your pretty phone to call and text people. And at this the Panasonic scores mixed results.
The phonebook and calling features are easy to understand enough. However, texting is a different story. To expound: If you've ever used a computer with a slow keyboard "Repeat Delay" rate, you will know how frustratingly slow it is to delete letters using the backspace key. This is exactly how I feel when texting using the Panasonic.
Fast texters will not enjoy this phone. Needless to say, in the Philippines it is essential to be able to text comfortably in the most dif cult of circumstances, while eating, while driving (Admit it. I know you do), while in meetings, while running in the rain, etc. Not only is the GD88 a slow texting device, it is also hampered by miscues such as needing to shift text input modes when typing numbers and letters. A message such as "il b l8, w8 4 me" is actually easier to type in the correct spelling.
My main gripe is the tiny piece of rubber that serves to cover the battery/cable
connector. To use it, you have to remove it, which almost guarantees that it will be lost within the first few recharges. While losing it might not constitute an emergency, it will expose sensitive connectors to possible corrosion. Also, if you're an obsessive-compulsive and you don't like losing things no matter how inconsequential, then that little soon-to-disappear piece of rubber will always bother you.
Overall, the Panasonic is relatively easy to use - a capable and simply gorgeous looker of a phone with all the fancy bells and whistles a modern phone should have, such as the camera, MMS and GPRS technologies. While surely there are other phones that can do the same, there's one thing the Panasonic has that they don't - and that is looks. The Panasonic is high-tech, yes, but more significantly it is a large, colorful, attention-diversion device. Definitely not for the simple and retiring.
At the end of the day, the determining factor that will make you buy this phone is simple: do you want the attention?
