Panasonic VS3 disadvantages

Panasonic VS3

The brilliant huge display is not the only characteristic the new Panasonic VS3 is going to attract customers' attention with. It also offers a remarkable design, a clamshell auto-open construction, a megapixel camera and a solid functional construction.

It was not that long ago, when the color display on a mobile phone was considered unneeded and due to its poor imaging abilities people preferred to stick to the still more practical at that time monochrome display. Today the color display is a standard and its quality is being constantly improved. Modern displays are getting finer and more colorful every day. Today's mobiles are expected to be able to display the obligatory 65K colors. Provided they would like to stand out, they should manage then 262K. Now compare: the new VS3 clamshell from Panasonic is able to display the stunning 16 millions of colors. What's more, it does so on a huge surface with an extremely fine resolution.

Key features

• Brilliant display
• Attractive, original design
• Megapixel camera with macro option
• Flick mechanism
• Large built-in memory

Main disadvantages

• No outer display
• Searching the phone book by entering the first character
• No Bluetooth

Six out of two

This year's new releases from Panasonic in the area of the mobile phones could seem quite dull at first sight. All clamshells that were presented at the 3GSM congress in Cannes in February this year feature similar design and the same constructional principal. Yet, the offer is pretty rich.

The central model is the perfectly equipped Panasonic VS7. It is a clamshell with an excellent big inner display, which is accompanied by a small outer display. The body of the phone is extremely thin. Its equipment, however, is rich including a megapixel camera. A little bit lower in the hierarchy is the VS3 model, which we are going to present in detail in this review. Unlike Panasonic's top model, VS3 has no outer display; it is equipped with an info diode, instead. The body of the phone remains unchanged as well as the inner display and the camera. Certain lighter differences could be expected in the functional menu. Unfortunately, we are not able to specify them here for we have not been given the exact characteristics of the VS7 model yet.

Two other phones - the tough SA6 and SA7 models - derive from the models mentioned above. Understandably, they feature different and more rugged covers with gum edges. In terms of functionality, however, they are identical to VS3 and respectively VS7. An interesting conception has been launched with the MX6 and MX7 models. They also stem from the two basic phone types, but are thicker by a millimeter. Moreover, they feature special accumulators of doubled capacity, which are expected to considerably prolong the stand-by time of the device after a single recharge.