This is certainly a big screened, big capacity mobile from Telecom featuring Push 2 Talk, 1.3 megapixel photography, streaming T3G media and colour WAP browsing. In terms of its physical characteristics the lower base section is dark grey, with silver in the upper section to match the colour of the flip cover. There’s an oval shaped central section on the cover that matches the base and the overall effect is to make the 5600 look slightly smaller than it is.

The hinge is contoured to provide a strong and snug fit for the flip. Weighing 128g, the 5600 measures 26 x 49 x 93mm with an additional 20mm of extendible antenna on the top RHS. Along the top edge you’ll see the small miniSD Card slot, which comes complete with a 1GB miniSD Card. The 1GB capacity is useful if you want to use the 5600 as a portable hard drive (phone services are disabled during USB mass storage connections, but an adapter is supplied that lets you transfer files to a computer using an SD Card slot).

On the RHS of the base there are two buttons: one for use with the 1.3MP camera and one for calling/voice functions. The battery and the rear cover are combined, so if you unlatch the fastener at the base to remove the cover the battery will also be removed. On the bottom edge you’ll find the charger point and accessories connector (for the bundled USB cable). On the LHS of the base there is a mount point for a carry strap, a 2.5mm mini-headphone jack with a rubber cover, the Push 2 Talk/recorder button and another button that adjusts volume.

On the front of the cover is a light source for the camera, a lens for the camera plus a small switch that selects macro or normal focus points, a speaker and a colour LCD with 260K-colour depth. The sub-LCD measures 18 x 23mm (w x h) and has a 72 x 96 resolution. Vibration alerts can operate if you have the 72-chord polyphonic ringer silenced. Inside the flip, the 33 x 43mm (w x h) 260K-colour LCD provides a rich visual experience with a sharp 240 x 320 resolution.

When you play back movies shot with the device the window size is much smaller than the screen, which is mostly filled with large menu bars and frames. The Java animations and menu effects look good, and the web browser makes better use of the screen real estate. The powering on and off times are 10 and seven seconds.

Navigation
The base of the 5600 is wide and deep enough to grasp comfortably for single-handed navigation and the keys are nicely sized and spaced out enough for most users. The keys are mounted level with the surface around them and have a good amount of travel and positive response when pressed. The keypad has bright blue backlighting that seemed to fade slightly towards the LHS, which made it harder to see the letters on the left-most keys in low light. The four-way navigation button, central selection button and surrounding four function keys are also flush with their surrounds and well designed for comfortable use.

There are three more shortcut keys above the keypad and many key functions are described with English rather than symbols making this a fairly user-friendly phone. The menu screens are attractively designed and sub-menus are small but quite easy to read and make selections from.

Calling
The Sanyo 5600 operates on the Telecom network and besides having dual-band connectivity (1900/800MHz) with CDMA it lets you talk though direct networking via the optional Push 2 Talk service. Note that P2T is disabled during many web-based activities, so you might have to resort to standard calling techniques to get in touch with anyone who is busy online.

The 5600 can also connect to analogue networks. Local device connections are by USB only. In our tests we found there was good volume range in speakerphone mode and also through the earpiece, but overall, the call quality was average. Shortcuts and enhancements in the phone function include voice and speed dialling, caller photo ID on the internal and external LCDs (for inwards calls only), plus a coloured LED response to indicate a caller’s identity or just to flash different colours for no particular reason during a call. You can flip the cover open or closed to answer or end a call. The battery’s talk time is rated at a rather low 2.3 hours, with a standby time of seven days. An optional high-capacity battery provides almost double talk time.

Camera
The 5600 comes with an integrated 1.3MP camera with digital zoom for photo and movies. Although the image quality was better than that of a 0.3MP camera, it wasn’t as crisp as you might think. For instance, in spite of having a switch for close-up or normal range photography, the images didn’t look very sharp at full size and were best viewed on a small screen or resized and sharpened up on a PC.

If you want to print two or four images on a 10x 15cm card you can connect directly to a supporting printer over USB as the 5600 is PictBridge compatible. Once you’ve snapped an image, menu options let you save it to memory for resizing, send it as a message or upload it to an online gallery that is provided by Telecom for Sanyo 5600 users. Imaging settings include various colour tones, mirrored shots, beach/snow, scenery and soft focus settings plus brightness and white balance adjustments.

A flash beam is available to assist in low light. The camcorder can shoot basic or rich quality video to the phone’s internal memory or directly to the miniSD Card for extended capture times. We found the 3G2 movies quality looked blocky on the 5600’s screen and not much better on a computer. It was rather disappointing that the camcorder movies didn’t fill the whole screen when we played them back, but this is the nature of 3GP movies which all default to the same size (176 X 144 pixels), no matter the megapixel rating of the phone they’re shot with.

Messaging
The 5600 is capable of simple SMS texts, MMS messages with pictures, sounds and movies attached and it has a menu option to log on to Telecom’s web-based mail service.

You can also send MMS messages to a email address, but the body of the message isn’t delivered as email, only the attachment is, and recipients must visit a website to read the message.

When you send a message you can watch its progress on a status bar and know that it has been sent. The T9 predictive input works well and there are various preset messages available if you don’t have time for a lengthy TXT session. The high screen resolution allows for smooth and solid-looking fonts. There are four font sizes and you can preview them before you select them and configure different sizes for WAP browsing and messaging. The smallest is tiny but very sharp while the largest should be easy for anyone to read.

Applications
Calendar, clock, calculator and PC Sync functions are available in the tools section. The WAP browser fits lots of text onscreen and sites that we visited looked colourful and tidy. The contacts database supports 300 entries holding seven numbers with fields for an email address and a URL for a web page (such as a homepage).

You can scroll the caller’s photo for the best cropping on the sub-LCD. The Push 2 Talk service has a separate database capacity for 200 entries. The MP3 player also supports AAC format files. There’s a stereo headset bundled, and while the playback through the external speaker was quite loud and crisp it is likely than most users will prefer to use headphones. During playback, a levels display appears onscreen and you can skip forwards or backwards with the navigation keys.

Streaming video from the web is one of the selling points of the 5600, but our experience was varied. Over the course of a few weeks we tested two different phones in different locations. One in the inner city and one out in the suburbs. We found the streaming video experience to be of a very good standard in the city, but tested a different phone in different suburbian locations and were unimpressed. Video was somewhat blocky and the sound wasn’t crisp. If streaming video is important to you we recommend you ask for a demo in the shop to be sure it delivers to your expectations. Java games and applications are downloadable. The 5600 has fairly effective voice recognition for numerous commands with no need for training.

Summary
While the Sanyo 5600 is well configured in many ways, it didn’t really live up to the hype in terms of its camera streaming video functionality. The 1GB miniSD Card is an appealing feature and the externally accessible slot adds to its usefulness by allowing quick removal for file transfers. The 1.3MP imaging capabilities are only average in quality, with rather soft still shots and blocky video recording and playback.

The MP3 player adds entertainment value. If you want instant voice interaction with predetermined contacts, the optional Push 2 Talk service will serve your needs. The large, 260K-colour display is very pleasing to the eyes and great for texting, but much of the content you’ll see on it is just decoration. The keypad is a great feature. Overall, a highly specced easy to use device suitable for both business and pleasure.

For more information on Telecom Mobile visit their online exhibit here.

For more information about Mobility visit the Mobile Business Research Pavilion

February 2006