Review: A weekend with Pharos' Traveler 127 Unlocked GPS Smartphone

Pharos' Traveler 127 implements best of class GPS in a high-end smartphone, and it does it well. Turn-by-turn navigation is great and the feature list is packed. Planted on the dash, its principal limitation is the relatively small screen.

As a general purpose smartphone, though, it falls short despite such powerful extras. The problem is software: the 127 labors beneath a particularly mind-numbing configuration of Windows Mobile.

A 3.5G tri-band handset with 7.2 MBps HSDPA, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and up to 4 hours talk time, the Traveler 127 has a 2 megapixel camera, a 0.3 megapixel webcam, and comes with a full suite of apps, including Mobile Office, remote desktop, Outlook, and so on.

Available unlocked for about $450, it runs on any GSM network: just slip in a SIM card and drive.

Whether it succeeds for you depends on your tolerance for Windows Mobile and the bad interface decisions it engenders. The home screen is an mess of widgets. The camera button launches Windows Live instead of the camera, unless you hold it down for several seconds. The "MobileMenu," a meta-interface designed to gloss over Windows Mobile's shortcomings, is a clutter of randomly-sized and incomprehensible icons. Even making phone calls seems more difficult than it should be: by default, the QWERTY keyboard can't produce numbers unless you hit the function key before each digit. You'll find yourself loading the touchscreen keypad application just to talk.

Pharos' GPS program is the best thing in it. It's simple, and quick to get you placed and on your way.

The 127 is a heavy duty "stylus-era" touchscreen phone with great GPS, rendered difficult to use because it's hard to navigate. Irony.

Also available is the 117, which dispenses with the qwerty keyboard in favor of a larger touchscreen.

Product Page [Pharos]
Traveler 127 unlocked smartphone for $450 [Dell Store]