Pantech Slate C530 Review

The Pantech Slate C530 is a highly-functional and sensible messaging cell phone. This mobile phone has an incredibly simplistic design and has been hyped as the thinnest cell phone with a full QWERTY keyboard for fast and easy text and email composition.

This AT&T mobile phone is all about the basics, it’s not “fancy” looking and it doesn’t boast all of the newest technologies, but it is highly practical, and for the price is not a bad deal. According to most sources, and depending on the current deal offered by AT&T, this phone can be obtained for free with a two-year contract agreement.

The standard features that the Slate comes with include a camera, a music player, 2.5G compatibility, a USB port and email and chat capability.

This cell phone cannot even compare to high-end phones like the iPhone the Blackberry Bold  or the T-Mobile G1, but it’s a functional and easily affordable messaging phone for AT&T customers and may be a good choice for kids or teens who do not need advanced features.

Design and Features

This AT&T mobile phone is incredibly thin at less than a centimeter, or less than .4 inches for those that are non-metrically minded. The Pantech Slate is a candy-bar type phone that has a 2.2 inch LCD screen with a five-way button and a full QWERTY keyboard placed underneath it. It weighs less than 92 grams (3.2 ounces), has an internal antenna and a 930 mAh Li-Ion battery.

The buttons on the notable QWERTY keyboard are fairly large and well-spaced for easy text and email typing. This keyboard also includes a few useful symbols, such as those usually located above the number keys like the @ and # symbols. This is much more convenient than having to dig through an on-screen menu to find commonly used symbols.

As mentioned above, this mobile phone is designed to be a practical and easy to use messaging phone. To accommodate this goal, the Pantech Slate not only offers the straightforward keyboard but it is also compatible with popular chat or IM services such as AOL, ICQ, Windows Live and Yahoo. In terms of messaging, the Slate can send SMS, EMS and MMS type messages. The cell phone is also quite compatible with a variety of email protocols including POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, Exchange and Outlook.

In regards to the type of technology the Slate uses to communicate, it is not 3G compatible like many of the latest AT&T mobile phones. But it is quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE at 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz and is 2.5G capable. 2.5 G will not give you the super fast data exchange rates of 3G, but it is fast enough for most everyday uses.

This mobile phone has a basic 1.3 megapixel camera that can capture images and video. The camera can capture images up to 1280 x 960 px, it has a 2x zoom and a self-timer for hands-free self or group portraits. It can record MPEG4 video file types at up to 15 frames per second. For music it works with AT&T music and plays with the Windows Media Player, it can play MP3s as well as MP3 type ringtones. AT&T music provides Napster Mobile that offers customers a choice of over 6 million songs for download or sideload from a PC. This service also offers XM Radio Mobile. Of course, AT&T music isn’t a free service, it requires a subscription, but AT&T does offer a free trial, so you can try out the services offered before committing. The Slate can also play J2ME (Java Platform, Micro Edition) type games.

The productivity tools of the Pantech Slate include an alarm clock, calendar, notepad, voice memo, calculator, stop watch and unit converter. It also is Bluetooth compatible and can send contact and event information, images, video and voice memos via this technology. In terms of the cell phone’s operating system it runs the popular and well-received Windows Mobile 6.

What’s Missing

The most notable feature the Pantech Slate is missing is a decent amount of built-in memory and optional expanded memory. It has only 20MB included and does not have a MicroSD memory card slot. 20 MB is very little memory compared to most cell phones that can support at least a 1 or 2GB memory cards, many phones can even support much more like 8GB or the iPhone 3G comes in a 16GB capacity. 20 MB really seems short sighted for a cell phone that has a camera and music player.

The second less than impressive feature of the Pantech Slate is the camera. It only has a 1.3 megapixel camera, though this type of camera was quite common a few years back, nowadays a 2.0 megapixel camera at the minimum is common and even expected.

The third unremarkable attribute of this mobile phone is the LCD screen. Though the cell phone screen can support up to 260K colors it only has 176X220 pixel resolution, which is less than stunning to say the least.

Lastly, this cell phone is not 3G compatible, has only a 3 hour battery and it only supports Bluetooth 1.2 version. It seems that this phone was designed to be just functional and cover the basics. Though for a “free with service” cell phone it includes quite a few practical features.

Summary

The Pantech Slate C530 offered free of charge by AT&T is a streamlined, basic messaging phone that is quite compatible with a variety of technologies. It is a good basic phone for people that do not need a lot of memory or exceptionally fast data transfer speeds. It is a great phone for kids or teens that do not need sophisticated features, and since it’s free, parents will not have to worry as much as they might if their child lost a $300 iPhone.

However, if you are looking for a phone with advanced features and 3G compatibility check out the iPhone, the Blackberry Bold or the T-Mobile G1.