CECT P168 Cell Phone

I was looking for a touch-screen 'phone with the style of the Apple iPhone but without the price-tag! The CECT is, indeed, attractive in appearance and sells on eBay for between a third and a quarter of the price of the 8Gb iPhone.

I know people who own iPhones and, in comparison, the extra cost does bring with it a more user-friendly, smoother and more refined operation.

To hold, the CECT is surprisingly light; I found it quite comfortable whether in my hand or in my top pocket (although most female friends said they thought it was too large for them). From then on I found the 'phone to be quite 'user-UNfriendly' compared to other types of mobile I've owned in the past. For example, it was not immediately obvious how to turn the thing on...! Making a call was also more of a chore than it needed to be, especially if dialing directly from my contact list - I was hoping to maybe just highlight the contact and press a dial button to call that person but, not so! Several taps, screens and some scrolling took place before I eventually get to make the call.

Texting was equally cumbersome....even with the integral stylus, the various keyboard layouts were far from intuitive, making it difficult and unclear how to swap from lower case to upper case and from symbols to numbers, etc. The freehand writing recognition sounds great but is, in fact, slower than 'tap texting' and was often very inaccurate (also, allowing only one digit to be written at a time).

The ring tones were far from melodic....some being closer to demonic! Above volume 5, sound was distorted and I found myself turning down very low or just resorting to vibrate. I didn't even try using it as a media player because of this. I didn't try downloading any tones because I was never able to connect to the 'net (this may have been my network provider's fault though, more than the 'phone..).

After a couple of weeks I'd had enough; for me, the cons had far outweighed the pros and I sold the CECT to the husband of a work colleague and went back to my Motorola RAZR....!