Much like the PC and component market, mobile phones have a product lifecycle that changes so rapidly it's hard to keep up. Panasonic has stayed with their tried and true clamshell design, first made popular by the GD88 and continued with the X700. This handset turns their previous generations upside down, offering Panasonic's first smart phone based on Symbian OS version 7.0.

Similarly sized to their previous GD88 generation phone, it's not a small handset in either the opened or closed position. It is comfortable and attractive though, featuring a backlit keypad, sexy silver housing and generous keypad real-estate for those with chubby fingers.

Panasonic has added some of the lacking features from their previous generation handsets: Java support for content and game downloads; and support for external memory. Our unit came bundled with a 14MB Mini-SD card and converter, which is perfect for users with existing multi-format card readers. For those without a SD reader, Panasonic has included a USB connectivity cable which allows you to synch your PC and handset and transfer images, video and ring tones.

 

While we're talking imaging, the X700 features a CMOS VGA camera, capable of capturing still images up to 640x480 pixels and up to 10 seconds of video footage. There's also a 4x digital zoom, although shooting in the zoom mode reduces the size of the images to stop blurring. There's even a camera light which acts similarly to the light found on the Sony Ericsson S700i for night shooting.

 

Unfortunately the phone does suffer at the hands of a slow interface, with the start up time alone coming in close to 10 seconds. Although Panasonic has now improved the quality of the external LCD, the assignable images on caller ID are still only thumbnails -- the same problem that plagued the GD88 and X70.
In summary though, this is a solid, well-featured handset with all the bells and whistles you'd expect on a phone with a $1000-plus price tag.