Neo 808i > Reviews > NEO 808i - super compact GPRS/GSM mobile phone

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Excellent
Durability & Robustness	Strong
Reception quality	Satisfactory
Battery standby time	Satisfactory
Value for money	Poor
Range of features	Good selection

Advantages:	Compact size, full phone features .
Disadvantages:	Very poor PC/sync link, 1 hour talk time, drops calls, BlueTooth limited

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Surprising little phone but with a couple of major issues and quite a number of minor issues too...

(See text - review revised after using the phone for 3 months.)

Packed full of all the features you would expect in a full-sized phone! Pretty easy to use even though it is tiny - keyboard is good, screen is good, build quality is great.

No 3G, but GPRS works ok.

ISSUE 1:
BlueTooth functions ok, but ONLY with headsets - you cannot send contact cards and so far the NEO 808i refuses to work with any hards-free car kit (I've tried 2 different Alpine iPod/BlueTooth units, a built-in VW/Audi unit, a built-in BMW unit, and 2 different Parrot units).

Note, the BlueTooth support is limited to audio devices only. For those whom know how BlueTooth works, this translates to the hands-free profile. The phone does not appear to support the A2DP stereo music profile. It will not connect to any of the 3 BlueTooth A2DP devices I own (Alpine car stereo, mobile speakers & Plantronics stereo headset).

ISSUE 2:
For those of us have better things to do in life than to manually type in all of their contacts to a new phone, and maybe we would like to backup all of our contacts to a PC too - the NEO is probably not for you.

No Windows Vista support. And Mac OS support. And it is unlikely NEO will provide it. Support has been agressively stated as being "Windows XP only".

NEO seem to have missed that the vast majority of new PCs/laptops bought over the last year all shipped with Vista pre-installed! And Macs generally ship with Mac OS ;-)

Ever wanted to spend a full day on Sunday manually entering your 500+ phone book entries!!? That's what NEO expect you to do if you don't want to use Windows XP!!

ISSUE 3:
Contacting NEO to ask about Vista/Mac support resulted in a very unprofessional and offensive email stating they are opposed to both Vista and Mac! They even advised that I downgrade to Windows XP. And even when trying their software on Windows XP, it was a terrible experience ... like using software from the 80's... Unbelievable that a mobile phone vendor could release a new product now with ONLY Windows XP support!

ISSUE 4:
Then you have the truly bad battery life. Standby time is fantastic, but you will be lucky to get more than about an hour of talk time in reality. Which means you are constantly having to think about charging the NEO if you use it like any other phone.

(No surprise they provide a second battery and USB charge cable with the product - but you can only charge the batteries when they are in the phone - there is no desktop charger!)

ISSUE 5:
Call quality is quite good, but it does tend to drop calls a lot more frequently than my HTC Touch or Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, especially in low signal areas.

SUMMARY:
Overall, as NEO have stated, this is a fashion phone. Not bad for a backup phone (which is why I bought it originally), but in hind-sight the sync issues and terrible battery life make it truly more of a key-ring fashion accessory than a really viable mobile phone.

Its great for a night out, just pop your SIM in it and hide it somewhere in your pocket. But honestly, only buy this if you have a proper mobile phone too, as you will need a proper mobile phone for normal use. The talk time alone is insanely short.