A Stylish Multimedia Clamshell

Sporting a stylish brushed aluminium exterior, the BenQ-Siemens Q-fi EF71 looks elegant and has a pleasant feel. The hinge of this ruggedly-built phone allows little play and feels very strong. When opened, it’s all jet black; only the 4-way rocker and the border of the keypad sport a metallic finish.

The blue backlit keys are well-spaced and extremely comfortable when SMSing. The icon-based UI is easy to use and the colour LCD is good, as is the external white OLED display used for various status messages.

The Q-fi range is music-focused, and this is one of the first phones in this series. Media playback keys are present on the lid, and there is also a music button at the side to start the media player. The 10-band equaliser makes listening to music a pleasurable experience. The 2.0 MP camera does not feature auto-focus, but still does a good job. You can’t zoom while taking still photos at the highest supported resolution.

The phone has a paltry internal memory of just 24 MB, so adding a microSD card becomes compulsory. The memory is not hot-swappable—you need to open the phone and remove the battery to access the slot. PC connection has three modes: mass storage device, Modem / PC Sync, or Webcam.

Voice quality is satisfactory, and the speaker is loud enough. There is a special Q-fi mode that disables the mobile network connection and lets you access only multimedia features along with FM and Bluetooth. The FM Transmitter lets you wirelessly transmit your calls or music to an FM receiver up to two meters away. There’s also an Answering Machine feature. The price, though, is a little on the higher side at Rs 12,955.

Specifications
GSM900/1800/1900; Display: Internal: 2.2-inch TFT 176x220 pixels 262K colours, External: OLED 128x64 pixels; Camera: 2.0 MP, 9x digital zoom; Weight: 100 gm; Dimensions: 47(W) x 18.5(D) x 90(H) mm.

Contact : BenQ India Pvt Ltd
Phone : 1800-22-0808
E-mail : benq.mobile@benq.com
Web site : www.benq.co.in
Price : Rs 12,955