Sendo X smartphone

Sendo X is a tri-band smartphone, and this candy bar styled model is suitable for global roaming, such as in the USA. The handset has a clean but simple appearance, being clad in an aluminium case, and it would be equally appropriate for business users or those who need lots of features in their phone. Indeed, there are plenty of features included in this model, such as its Bluetooth™ wireless connectivity, Symbian series 60 Operating System, GPRS and WAP technology, MMS multimedia messaging, video capture download and playback, video and audio streaming, MMC/SD memory card slot, voice memo recorder, speakerphone for hands-free conversations, voice control, Java™ enabled, and an e-mail client. For the voice commands the Sendo X uses voice recognition, which means the mobile phone reacts to normal speech without the need to train it to understand your voice, and so there is no need to record voice tags.

Sendo XThe display in this phone is a large-sized TFT type of active matrix LCD screen, which has a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels, and it can also reproduce up to 65,536 different colours. One useful feature of the phone’s menu system is the customisable “Now!” screen, that acts like your phone’s home page, and this allows the user to gain fast one-click access to favourite applications, Web, WAP, personal information, etc.

The Sendo X has an integrated digital camera, with the lens being located in its usual position on the back panel of the phone. There is a choice of picture sizes available to the user, which you might select depending on whether the pictures are to be used for MMS, or for some other purpose, or how much memory you wish to allocate to them. The available sizes are named Large, Medium and Small (640 x 480, 400 x 300 and 80 x 96 pixels). A digital zoom of up to 4x is provided, and a picture editor allows you to perform several manipulations on your pictures, including morphing, cropping, drawing, speech balloons, fun backgrounds and foregrounds, with the addition of Clip Art.

To help with the taking of indoor photographs, or when you find yourself in poor lighting conditions, a built-in LED flashlight is fitted near the lens to illuminate the subject. This flashlight has an integrated red-eye reduction system, which produces one or two flashes before a photo is taken, to help reduce red eye. Another feature to help when the light conditions are poor is the Night Mode, and this sets a longer exposure time to ensure that you get the best photograph. A small mirror is fitted into the back of the cameraphone, and a timer is provided to help with the taking of self-portraits.

It seems that most of the high-end mobile phones these days are fitted with some sort of video recording facility, and the Sendo X is no exception, being able to record up to 30 minutes of video with an audio soundtrack. You can playback the video clips you record yourself, but you may also download clips over-the-air from your service provider, or from pages on the WAP or Web sites that you visit. The best video resolution available is QCIF, or 176 x 144 pixels, which again is fairly typical for these types of camcorders. Additionally, the phone can stream audio and video directly over the network, and so you can use it to watch any media that interests you, such as news and sports highlights. There is a standard RealOne Player™ built-in, and the MPEG4 format is also supported.

To give you a little music on the move, the Sendo X comes fitted with a stereo MP3 player. This player enables you to set up your own playlists, and it has all the usual MP3 player controls, including repeat and random play settings. To get the best sound you can listen to music in stereo on the supplied headset, or alternatively the sound can be switched to the loudspeakers.

With all this multimedia passing through the phone, it is no wonder that Sendo has allocated it a large memory capacity. There is up to 32 MB of user available memory in the phone, which will allow you to store up to 1,000 images, an album’s worth of audio or up to 30 minutes of video. This might be enough for some users, but if it is not then there is a slot provided that lets you use MMC or SD memory cards, when you need to expand the available memory. With a few memory cards you are then able to save almost limitless amounts of video, pictures and sounds. The memory cards are easily changeable and may be “hot swapped” while the phone is switched on.

A useful business feature of the Sendo X is its Document Viewer, and this makes it possible for you to read a variety of document formats on the screen, such as Word™, Excel™, Powerpoint™, PDF™ and ZIP™ files. On the supplied CD-ROM you will also find over 40 additional Document Viewer plug-ins, and these enable you to view many other common document formats on the phone.

As the Sendo X is an MMS enabled phone, it supports the sending and receiving of multimedia messages, although this means your contacts must also have an MMS phone to take advantage of this feature. An MMS message may contain a combination of text, graphics, animations, photos, audio files and video clips, and messages of up to 100 kB are possible. If you wish, you can also send multimedia messages as attachments to e-mails.

It is inevitable that some users will want to personalise their phones with new themes, wallpapers, screensavers and ringtones, and the Sendo X smartphone allows you to do this. When you want to find new content, you can download it over-the air from any suitable source. It is also possible to customise your phonebook by adding a personal ringtone and thumbnail image to each contact. For users who like to compartmentalise their contacts into different pigeonholes, you can create as many contact groups as you like. Sounds recorded with the phone’s audio recorder may also be used as ringtones.

There are 5 preset profiles (General, Silent, Meeting, Outdoor, Games) for setting the way that the phone appears to the user, and you can customise these profiles to suit the way that you use the phone. So, for example, you may change the ringtone and its volume, or the brightness of the display backlight, and you can even change the name of four of the preset profiles.

Being Java™ enabled means that the Sendo X is able to run lots of different applications and games, and Java and Symbian 60 series programs may be downloaded. There are two enjoyable games to play for a bit of amusement - Pinball and Funny Farmer - and there is plenty of space for more.

The Sendo X has built-in GPRS technology, and this speeds up the phone’s functions when you are transferring data. The extra benefit is that GPRS provides the user with an “always on” connection, and you only pay for the amount of data you actually use, rather than the length of time that you are connected to the network. The WAP 2.0 and Opera browsers ensure that you can get the most from visiting WAP and Web sites, and this gives you access to a great many of the services currently available, such as news, sport, weather, traffic, entertainment, shopping, business, and lots of other on-line sources of information and services.

An e-mail client comes with the Sendo X, which enables you to keep up with all your e-mail correspondence while on the move, and this client supports the standard POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP protocols, as well as accepting MIME attachments. A foldable QWERTY keyboard is available as an optional accessory, and this should make it easier to enter text into the phone if you do a lot of text messaging, emailing, or note taking. This phone also supports the exchange of vCard and vCalendar formats.

The Sendo X has a good choice of connectivity options available. There is the wireless Bluetooth™ technology, which offers the chance to make a connection with any compatible device within about a 10-metre range. Alternatively you have the option to connect via the phone’s infrared port to other IrDA compatible equipment. A third choice is the USB connection, using the cable that is supplied. Once connected you are able to synchronise the phone’s calendar, contacts and e-mail with your PC, and to copy files to and from the phone. The mobile phone supports a range of popular software products that you might wish to synchronise with. Also, as this phone has SyncML technology, it is possible to synchronise information in the phone remotely to compatible computers or on the Internet.

Among the Sendo X’s organiser features are a Calendar, Tasks, Notepad, Clock, Alarms, Calculator, and a Unit Converter (including currency). This model also includes a vibration alert and T9™ predictive text input.

Sendo X Smartphone description and specification

Sendo product page - the Sendo website has closed

User manual - Contact us

Sendo X FAQs
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Last updated 30th January 2008, 14:39 GMT