General Mobile DSTL1 Review
The ‘General Mobile DSTL1’ is available at a price of $450. It has some interesting features like support of dual-SIM cards. The design is not that good and the touch screen is not very responsive. The greatest feature of the DSTL1 is that it supports two distinct mobile phone numbers. You just need to insert the SIM cards into the two slots available beneath the battery. A slot is present which accomodates a microSD storage card of capacity 16GB. The phone has an internal memory of 4GB.
The cell phone uses the ‘Android 1.5’ operating system and has a processor of 624MHz in it. The mobile has a display of 3 inches and a touch screen of 240*400 pixels. It also features a camera of 5 Mega pixels, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity and an FM radio. The cell phone has plastic chrome as its outer shell which is highly reflective. This does not show the features of the phone clearly; instead you can see your own reflection neatly.
The handset possesses a navigation wheel which has an ‘Enter’ button at the centre along with buttons to make a call from any of the SIM cards. The phone also features an On/Off button and a Back button. The cell phone measures 4.4*2.1*0.6 inches and has an Android touch keyboard for typing, which is very tiny and absurd to use in ‘Portrait’ mode and very uncomfortable in ‘Landscape’ mode.
The touch screen does not respond instantaneously and correctly to the commands given by the user, starting from choosing the applications to desktop customization to utilizing the calculator. But, the voice commands like ‘open calendar’ works pretty well. The mobile fails to support 3G which is its major drawback. It can support only 2.5G or 2G EDGE networks. With the Android operating system which is impulsive and simple, the phone operates in a classic manner.
The handset offers three home screens to install your own list of widgets, wallpapers, shortcuts and folders. Just above the center panel, you have a ‘Google Search’ bar. To switch between the home screens, you have to move your fingers from one side to another. By lifting the tab from the lower most part of the screen, you can view the application launch menu. The phone is preloaded with games, 20 applications, widgets, shortcuts and important tools, which includes the tools of FM radio, phone settings and contacts.
To add a shortcut to these applications for your home screen, you need to press and clasp the icon. Navigating via messages is impulsive and easy, but typing in the ‘Compose’ box becomes slow due to the touch screen. The text messaging functions are organized very well and is impulsive. The moment you finish typing the message, you can select the SIM card through which you want to send the message. You can import your contacts from Gmail easily; but to create new contacts takes a lot of time.
The address book of Android has a tabular design and enables easy access to all the contact details. If you click on a contact, then all the modes available (IM, text, phone etc) to contact the person is provided by the application. If you are planning to use one SIM for your work schedules and the other for your personal use, then its very easy and comfortable. Click on the desired tab at the screen’s top portion and you can conveniently view the call log, favorites, or the dialer.
The dialer interface is a touchpad having very huge, closely spaced keys as its keypad. The music player is great, but loading tracks into the phone is troublesome. The headphones are good, but since a 3.5mm jack is absent, you cannot directly connect them into the cell phone. In that situation, you can connect the headphones to a voice microphone which is clip-on, which will get connected to the USB port of the phone.
The phone has a camera of 5 Mega pixels and an exclusive variety of features like choice of picture sizes, auto focus, multiple focus settings, timer to take your own picture and facial recognition. The phone also has a physical button at the camera’s top portion for capturing snaps. The snaps come out extremely well with bright, clear images. The flash is capable of lighting the photos correctly without blurring them.
The phone has some classy features. But, the price is very high and there are many disadvantages. To sum up, the phone has a fantastic operating system of Android with plenty of applications. At present, if you wish to buy a phone which has both Android and dual SIM facility, then the General Mobile DSTL1 is the only option you have.
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I don’t see this mobile phones
Here is a review about DSTL1 but in Turkish.
I have this one but I don’t use android market.