First Looks: Philips Xenium 9@9s
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Xenium Lives On
Xenium Lives On
Philips Xenium series of mobile phones has always promised long battery life and so far every Xenium model has lived up to the promise by delivering unbelievably long talk time and standby time. Today, we take a look at the latest clamshell handset to join the Philips Xenium family, the 9@9s.
The Business Look
As part of Philips’ ongoing effort to improve upon its industrial design and product attractiveness, the new 9@9s is clearly a much better looking handset than its predecessors. Its stylish clamshell design along with its silver color tone, rounded edges and brushed aluminum exterior exudes a dash of class and elegance that should appeal to image conscious white collared folks striving to elevate their professional appearances. As for the technical bits, the 9@9s is notably equipped with a decent 1.3-megapixel camera on the outside and a precision-cut aluminum keypad on the inside that is almost a complete replica of the implementation found on the Motorola V3. Display wise, the 9@9s is furnished with a nice OLED screen and a secondary LED screen with a mirror surface.
A Closer Look
As far as visual quality goes, the glossy OLED screen is always going to be pleasing to the eyes, gently alerting with a cool blue glow for every incoming message or call. At a low resolution of 128 by 160 pixels, the primary OLED screen is disappointingly coarse to look at, but at least it is delightfully bright even in broad daylight. Fortunately, the precision cut aluminum keypad was found to be tactile, which should bode well for those who message frequently. And with a pleasing blue backlight that glows to outline the entire keypad when in use, the 9@9s is very inviting and quite a stylish phone to be seen with to say the least.
Though geared towards business users, multimedia functions were not neglected. The camera takes decent pictures and is capable of recording short video clips as well, a standard function of modern mobile phones really.
It also has a very useful voice memo function via a single button that allows recording of up to 30 minutes, useful for recording short discussions or meetings for future references. Users might want to take note however that there is no Bluetooth and memory capacity is limited to just the 20MB onboard. Hence, it’s advisable to perform routine cleanup to avoid getting caught out by insufficient memory. Navigation on the 9@9s is easy with applications arranged in an intuitive manner. There is also a decent number of basic tools and functions for anyone to get through a day’s work comfortably.
Long Winded People Rejoice
The main focus of the 9@9s has to be its highly efficient power saving feature designed to return a long battery life. This includes a light sensor that automatically determines whether or not backlight is necessary. The phone can even be scheduled to power down to conserve even more power.
Our own meandering battery test clocked a little over six hours of talk time, which was considerably longer than most. There is no doubt in our mind the 9@9s will quickly find its way into the pockets of folks in the insurance and sales line of work. We really have to take our hats off to Philips and its Xenium series of mobile phones because no other phones we tested so far even come close to challenging the battery life of the 9@9s.
Our Thoughts
Once again, the legendary battery life of Philips Xenium mobile phones has proven to be unrivalled, living on in the latest 9@9s. With clean aesthetics, an ergonomic keypad and bright screens, the Philips Xenium 9@9s is an obvious choice for the professionals. It may not be the most feature rich clamshell mobile phone around, but with more than six hours of talk time you can put in your hand, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better alternative.
