Sunday, January 31, 2010

Form factor a plus!


Recently got hold of the latest product offering from Torque, the D110 Metal. You will really love the look of this one, elegantly styled with its classic metal casing and wait till you get to actually hold the actual unit,  it’s a heavy unit for its size and thickness. It’s truly living up to its name - D110 METAL. Though the keypad buttons are a bit bothersome after a period of using it. At first you would think that those cute stainless buttons would make texting easier, but its tiring for the fingers after a brief period of using it. But I get to give it to the designers of this brand, this is really one beautiful handset.         
Looking under the hood, the D110 Metal is a Dual Sim Dual Standby phone, quadband, sports a 1.3 megapixel camera, its Bluetooth enabled even for a Bluetooth headset, it can play videos on its 2.2” QVGA monitor and play mp3/mp4/3gp files. It doesn’t have WIFI but you can connect to the internet using its GPRS/WAP connectivity function. I can say that this model just provides the basic comforts of a basic phone for calls and texting. After testing this unit for a few days, i noticed that the SMS is quite slow after typing in more than ten words or so.  After typing in a few words, you will notice that you are not already typing in the words in real time, there is a lag of two or more words.  People behind Torque should do something about this, its really frustrating sending SMS like this. 
One cute feature of the D110 Metal is its motion sensor. With just one shake of the phone, you can program the phone to either change the wallpaper, play the next music track, or silent your phone when you are in a meeting. 
If you are a style conscious person but don’t have the budget to afford those big name brands in the market, the Torque D110 Metal is just right for you. It retails only at P 3,299.00.  Heavy on the hands, but not on your pocket.

Another Mobile TV handset


We have seen a lot of mobile handset brands trying to penetrate the Cellphone TV market, but nothing can still beat those china brands that has proliferated in the local market for the past few years.  The only problem with those products is the quality of the TV reception you get out of these generic brands.  Torque has again came out with a new and updated version of its Torque DTV100 model, the DTV90. Though this model was priced a thousand bucks more than its predecessor, but it has updated some of its features to bring more viewing pleasure. The reception quality was quite exceptional compared to its older model. You can also adjust the quality of the reception (though I can’t still seem to get numbering of its quality adjustment). Also the orientation of the screen adjusts automatically from portrait to landscape everytime you change adjust the unit.  Channel reception though will vary on your location, just be sure on your first attempt to program the channels, you are in a very good location to get most of the local channels available. Based from experience, channels 7, 11 and 23 has the best reception quality within the Metro.    One thing I don’t like with the DTV90 is the mini USB type headset provided when you buy the unit.  I don’t know if you can get a superior mini USB headset in the local market, but for now I’m stuck with this kind of headset, one thing for sure sound quality is not good. The DTV90’s screen is a bit smaller than its predecessor, but the improvement in the clarity of its reception made up of  on its smaller sized monitor.  It has a 2 megapixel camera mounted on the front and back of the phone both capable of recording videos.
Aside from the TV feature, the Torque DTV90 sports all the basic features that you can get from any model from this brand, its Dual Sim Dual Standby feature, Quadband,  GPRS/WAP enabled, MP3/MP4/3GP video and audio player and its motion sensor feature, with just a shake of the phone, you can either program the unit to change the wallpaper, skip to the next music track, etc.
The DTV90 sells at P 4,999.00. At this price you can get 2 phones from any China branded handsets, just minus the warranty and servicing...