Pantech Duo Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Mark Brezinski Published on November 15, 2007 Comment on this |
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Supported Email Services (8.0)
Push Email (3.0)
The Duo supports Direct Push, which means your Duo will have access to push email as long as you have access to an Exchange server. It doesn't support other services out of the box like BlackBerry but you may be able to install software to enable this.
Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Duo supports at least five email accounts, which should suffice for most users.
HTML and Attachments (7.0)
The built-in email client supports viewing HTML emails, but does not do so by default. You'll have to select a few "yes, I do in fact want to see the HTML and pictures" options first. This is good for security but a bit annoying if you frequently receive HTML-laden newsletters or similarly embedded emails. Clicking on PDF, Word, or Excel file attachments will automatically start up a file viewing program. Downloading attachments is a bit complicated, since you need to select them for download, then select send/receive again in order to get them.
Email Customizations (5.0)
The email client gives you a few options or customizing your inbox. You can set a priority for email, opt to show the date and time, alter how messages are sorted, and sundry tweaks to the interface. You can also create signatures and rules for when a signature should be included. You can't change fonts or increase the number of emails that fit on-screen (only 5 will display at a time). Those serious about email won't like the 5 emails per screen limit, as there aren't any quick ways to scroll through emails.
Time to a New Message (8.70)
For this timing test, we again start with the phone closed and unlocked. We stop the timer when we have a new email message dialogue on screen. The Duo took 2.33 seconds to complete this test, which is pretty speedy, but not as fast as a BlackBerry, as you can see below.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Pantech Duo | 2.33 | 8.70 |
| Helio Ocean | 2.1 | 9.52 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 1.7 | 11.76 |
| Palm Centro | 1.86 | 10.75 |
| HTC Tilt | 6.45 | 3.10 |
| Nokia N95 | 4.4 | 4.55 |
Email Usability (4.0)
Supported IM Services (0.0)
The Duo has versions of the big three clients: AOL, Yahoo!, and Windows Live. We didn't award points for these services, however, as they're charged against your messaging account as well as your data account. We would have awarded points if they were only charged as a data transfer.
MMS Support (6.0)
SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
The Duo is all business all the time, and therefore doesn't support smiley faces.
SMS/MMS Ease of Use (4.0)
Time to a New SMS Message (4.18)
On our timing tests, the Duo was able to get a new text message dialogue up in about 2.39 seconds. This isn't the fastest time, due mainly to a bit of cumbersome menu navigation. Even if the messaging icon is amongst the shortcuts at the top of the screen, accessing your text messaging inbox still requires more user input than most phones. Even though we're only talking about a little over a second separating the Duo from the front runners, even slightly more navigation than you're used to can easily turn tedious.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Pantech Duo | 2.39 | 4.18 |
| Helio Ocean | 3.1 | 3.23 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 4.22 | 2.37 |
| Palm Centro | 0.86 | 11.63 |
| HTC Tilt | 0.79 | 12.66 |
| Nokia N95 | 0.9 | 11.11 |
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