AKAI Mobiles, a unit of Japanese consumer electronics giant, has unveiled a 3D touchscreen phone?the Akai WOW?for the Indian market. But this is not just another big phone with a wide display, sturdy build and elegant looks. Despite its size, it is light and easily pocketable. It has a wide resistive touch display dominating the front panel with three metal keys for call, home and screen lock, below it. Rest of the actions take place on the touchscreen. The back panel has a 3 MP camera with flash and a metal lid, which shelters a battery, two SIM slots and a micro SD card slot. Top frame features a 3.5 mm audio jack and a micro USB port. Left frame has a switch button, and on the right frame you have an instant camera button with external sound keys.

This mobile phone has a 3.5-inch resistive touchscreen, which registers gestures like a tap, slide and drag and for small icons it comes with a stylus for ease of use. The interface is 3D enabled and the icons are prominent. A slight tap on any of them would get you across. However, it is slow in response, looks dull and at times demands a little more force. The screen has a hidden vertical panel which holds features like time, date, volume, MP3, FM, etc. The display can produce a Qwerty keypad and a normal phone keypad on-screen. One can also write with stylus or finger on the message screen to see it automatically transform into alphabets and numerals.

Its 3 MP camera can click images at a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536. The camera is supported by settings like burst mode, exposure control etc. Video recording at 704 x 576 resolution is blurry and stutters if you are recording on-the-move. However, in well lighted surroundings it is passable. Video recorder offers has night mode, white balance and 10 colour effects. The video player impressed a lot, regardless of the display not being very lively. Sound is definitely not great, but is adequate.

Other highlights of Akai WOW include camcorder, photo viewer, audio player and FM radio. Akai WOW gave a battery backup of roughly 4 hours on continuous music playback. It has an inbuilt memory of 256 MB which can be expanded with 8 GB micro SD card. A 4 GB micro SD card is available with the handset. It has WiFi, Bluetooth, EDGE, USB cable. Call sound is crisp and clear and has dual SIM keys on the screen as well. It is priced at R7,995 which is too much, as Micromax Andro, at a lower price, is offering an Android OS along with 3G and other features.

? CyberMedia www.LD2.in

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