Review: ZTE C88
Mar 14, 2008, 3:48 PM by Eric M. Zeman
The C88 is the first from Chinese manufacturer ZTE to enter the U.S. market. ZTE has grand plans, and hopes to eventually be one of the top-five phone makers in the world. See how the C88 marks its entry here and sets the tone for what lies ahead.
Form
Is It Your Type?
The C88 is one of the first handsets from Chinese manufacturer ZTE to become available in the U.S. That being the case, we decided to really give it a run for its money. How does it compare to similar models from Samsung, LG and other manufacturers? If simple and elegant flip phones are your thing, the C88 should be on your short list. It may be a little plain in styling, but there's something to be said for understated looks these days. None of the C88's features will shock you into awe, but they serve their purpose well.
Body
There's no way to mince words about the C88's plain-Jane appearance. Its sense of fashion will not win it any awards. I doubt even the designers from 'Project Runway' could do much to dress it up, despite their genius at using lettuce leaves to make evening gowns. But that doesn't mean it doesn't look good. It's far from ugly. The inky black plastic surfaces were not sculpted in the shape of a Maserati, but the simple lines give it an elegance that means it is comfortable in any environment.
If you think Chinese-made might mean shoddy quality, you'd be sorely mistaken. The C88 is tightly put together. Every aspect of the C88 feels strong, sturdy, well thought out and well made. The hinge was as solid as a rock. There was no play or give at all. The battery cover fit snugly, and was not difficult to remove. All the seams were matched together well and it has that well-machined feel you expect from a finely made automobile (if not the look).
It's been a long time since my hand reacted this positively to the feel of a mobile phone gripped tightly. The C88 just feels nice to hold. There are no edges protruding, no ledges, no lips, just slightly rounded surfaces that are comfy cozy against your skin. Its weight is also balanced. It doesn't feel too heavy or too light (yes, there is such a thing!). The balance and feel of the phone does not change when opened. It's just as comfortable either way.
Digging your thumb in and popping open the top is a breeze. The seam between the top and bottom halves of the phone isn't so tight that you have to pry it open with your fingernail. Closed or open, your fingers are easily able to find an use the volume rocker and camera key on the left side of the phone. Both buttons had great travel and feedback. My one complaint would be that the camera button is a little on the small side, and oddly placed. A lot of phones put the camera button on the side of the phone, but the C88 is held vertically to take pictures. This would lead you to expect the camera key to be somewhere on the keypad.
Speaking of the keypad. The keys are all generously sized. They are flat and embedded in the surface of the keypad, similar to a RAZR. There is a tic-tac-toe pattern of lines that run up and down, and back and forth to separate the keys a little bit, but it was barely discernible. I hardly noticed the lines as I moved my thumb to and fro across the keypad. Also, the nubs on the "5" key were not large enough to attract attention. Bottom line: it takes a little bit of getting use to, as there are fewer cues to let you know exactly where your thumb is positioned on the keypad. The buttons all have good feedback, though. There's just the right amount of travel and "click" that pushing them is satisfying.
The navigation cluster is pretty much the same. The D-pad is squarish in shape, and is flanked with three buttons to each side. On the left are the soft key, speaker phone key and send key. On the right are the other soft key, back key and end/power key. All of them are large and provide the same level of feedback as the number keys. For some reason, however, I thought the D-pad itself felt a little scrunched on the sides. I had a tendency to accidentally hit the back or speaker phone key, rather than the left or right nav buttons. As I've said before, I might just have fat thumbs.
The Three S's
Screen
The C88 has two displays. The exterior display is fairly small, and even though it is full color, only shows your typical status indicators: time, date, signal, messages, battery life, etc. The interior screen is nice and bright. We wish the resolution were higher, but most icons and graphics appeared fairly smooth, with few jagged edges. Colors looked good and true to life. As for outdoor viewability, the C88 performed flawlessly. Even in bright sunlight, everything on the screen was readable. Unless you had direct glare reflecting off the screen, there was no problem seeing the screen outdoors.
Signal
The signal was all over the place on the C88. Keep in mind, MetroPCS operates in a handful of cities, including Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, San Francisco / Sacramento, Dallas / Fort Worth, and Detroit. So the C88 was roaming where I live in NJ. Since MetroPCS uses CDMA-1xRTT technology, it is likely roaming onto Sprint's and/or Verizon's networks. The signal indicator fluctuated up and down depending on where I was standing. It was in constant motion, and you could watch it swing from 1 to 5 bars as you walked across the room. Where I live, Sprint coverage happens to be fairly poor, but Verizon's coverage is strong. Perhaps the signal variance was a factor of it hopping form one network to the other. Unfortunately, the vault test completely befuddled the C88. We were never able to complete a call from the NJ vault, and it lost signal altogether three-quarters of the time we were in the vault.
Sound
Given the signal issues, I was not too surprised that the C88 had less-than-stellar sound quality. During calls, voices sounded like they were talking to you through a cardboard tube. I had no problems understanding the people I was speaking with, but it sounded like they were calling from 1991. There's no other way I can describe it. The speaker phone was decent. It had the same cardboard-tube-from-1991 action going on. If you dial the sound up all the way, the sound quality degraded just a little bit, but there was no distortion.
The C88's ringer was able to get loud enough so that you won't miss calls even if you are on a different floor from where the phone is located, but I wouldn't be surprised if you miss calls when inside a noisy bar.
Battery
The battery lasted about 3 days per charge. The battery level indicator always appeared to have a full charge. Then, mysteriously, on the third day it would drop to almost empty. So be forewarned. 3 days is what you're going to get. But this was with minimal use. Connecting the C88 to a Bluetooth headset stole a day of battery life, even if left on standby.
Basics
Menus
Given the C88's status as a mid-range flip phone, it shouldn't surprise you to learn that the menu system is simple and straightforward. Hitting the center of the D-pad brings you into the main menu, which is just a grid of the 9 main selections (it can be changed to a list). The menu system is almost moot. From the home screen, you can jump into contacts, and the MetroPCS @Metro deck. If you customize the D-pad, you can access four other applications. That's six of the nine found in the main menu that can be accessed from the home screen without the need to even open the main menu.
You do have to open the main menu to get at the C88's settings folder, tools, games and media folders, though. Once in those folders, the menu turns into simple lists.
In all, using the C88's entire menu system is a snap to figure out. You shouldn't have to crack open the manual at all.
Calls/Contacts
The C88 makes calls just like any other phone. One thing we noted was that it took forever for the C88 to connect calls. This was consistent no matter what sort of signal strength we had. Once you got the number dialed, it typically took 23 seconds for the phone to figure out "Hey, I'm making a phone call, let's connect to the network." Once it connected, there was a wait of another 7 seconds or so. Bottom line? From the time you press the send key until the time you hear the phone ringing is easily half a minute. I don't know if that's because the C88 is roaming here, but if I was trying to dial 911 in an emergency, that 30 seconds could make a big difference.
When in a call, you can access the options menu with the left soft key, the change the volume with the D-pad, or mute it with the right soft key. There are only three in-call options: dial in a third party (conference call), or open the contacts database or calendar.
Contacts are found by tapping the left soft key from the home screen or through the main menu. Opening them up brings you into a list with a search bar at the bottom. Start typing in names, and the C88 starts auto-sorting your contacts. One thing I liked about the contact app is that if you scroll up or down and happen to select one of the numbers, the two soft key actions automatically change. The left one lets you dial the number, and the right one lets you start composing a message.
Messaging
Two things to note here. Because we were roaming, we had no access to MetroPCS's data applications. So far everything we've spoken about was unaffected by this, Moving forward, however, a lot of our experiences were governed by the fact that the network wouldn't allow us to access a number of features.
MetroPCS has loaded with C88 with the ability to send SMS, MMS, IM and email messages. So whichever way you like to stay in touch with people, the options are there. The default way to send a message is via SMS. During the process of composing a message, you have the option of inserting a picture or a tune.
Emails and IMs can only be sent from the @Metro application. Setting up an AIM account was no big deal, and neither was setting up mail accounts. MetroPCS included the settings for Gmail, Earthlink and AOL accounts, but strangely leaves out Yahoo and Hotmail/MSN. Why it would ignore these two large email providers is beyond me. You can choose to set up "other" POP3 email systems. This process is a little bit more labor intensive, but you can add a Yahoo account here if you wish.
Aside from connectivity issues, one major issue both Rich and I have with the C88 is its T9-like auto-word-complete program. ZTE does not license T9, so it uses a home-brewed version.
As you begin to type, rather than appear in the main message box, the words form at the bottom of the screen. If what you type can lead to a number of different words, you get a lot of options. The dictionary of the C88 is definitely strong, but the basic functionality of typing with this predictive text program is so frustrating that I gave up and switched to regular triple tapping.
Once you have the word picked along the bottom of the screen, you'd expect that hitting the space key would automatically send it up to the message. Not so. You have to hit the center of the D-pad to select it. Since your hand naturally jumps to the bottom of the keypad, I found it infuriating to have to continually move my thumb all the way up to the D-pad to "enter" a word into the message. Granted, we understand that this will become a learned behavior over time, but for us, it was sheer pain.
In addition, once you send a word to the text box, it automatically inserts a space after the word. This also takes getting used to, and I found myself inserting two spaces into numerous messages through force of habit. And if you want punctuation to follow a word without a space in between the two you have to insert it before you send the word up to the main text box. Again, another unnatural way to compose messages that is different from any other predictive text program we've used.
We would recommend that ZTE spend a little bit more time on this software.
Extras
Camera
Camera
As noted earlier, the camera can be launched with the dedicated camera key on the side of the phone, or through the main menu. Either way fires up the camera in about one second, which is nice and quick.
Along the bottom of the screen are four little icons. Using the D-pad to scroll right or left lets you access each icon, which include brightness, contrast, zoom, and picture effects. You push the D-pad up or down to change the settings. There are no windows that open; simply scroll left or right, and make your adjustments directly from the main camera screen. I liked this set up. Making some basic adjustments was quick because it voided the mess of opening options menus.
The left soft key lets you open another options menu, where you can set the timer, and adjust the image size, quality, white balance and shutter sound.
Hitting the center of the D-pad or the camera key on the left side of the phone takes a picture in just under a second. The phone takes less than a second to process the image and give you a preview. From the preview screen, you can send, save or trash it. Saving it takes about another second. From start to finish, opening the camera, taking a shot, and saving it can take as little as 5 seconds. This is great if you're really interestedin capturing your friends doing incriminating stuff.
Gallery
The gallery is pretty simple. You can get to it directly from the camera application or through the main menu. It shows you a list of your images, with thumbnails running down the left side of the screen and picture file info next to it. The left soft key lets you choose from the expected set of options, such as send, set as wallpaper, rename, etc. The center of the D-pad will open up the image on the screen, and the right soft key will mark photos with check marks. This lets you delete or move a bunch of files at once.
With a photo open, you can really only choose to send it, set it as a wallpaper or view the file information. There are no editing features in the C88's camera or gallery software.
One thing I really had to laugh at. When you are looking at a picture in the gallery, there is a landscape view of it, with black bars above and below it. One of the options you have when viewing the picture is to view it on the full screen. So I hit that, and what happens? Pretty much nothing. The status bars along the very top and very bottom of the screen go away, but the image itself doesn't get any bigger nor fill the screen. So why this option is even there, I just don't understand.
Pictures
Well, the C88's camera gets colors and the exposure pretty much right. But the amount of noise and graininess in each image was unacceptable to me. That goes for indoor and outdoor shots alike. Also, the C88's camera is VGA in terms of resolution. So blowing up images to vast sizes is not going to be realistic. If you're interested in sending picture messages to your friends that basically just show off what you're doing, it'll work out fine. But if you're a little bit more creative and like to do fun things with the pictures you take on your camera phone, you're going to be disappointed.
Browse/Customize
The C88 offers you two ways to view or access content. You can go through the MetroPCS WAP browser, or go to the @Metro deck. Because we did not have access to data services, we were unable to test the browser or deck to see how they work. Given that the C88 is limited to 1xRTT data, though, you wireless browsing won't be done at blazing speeds. It will let you download ringtones, wallpapers, get basic information content, such as weather and news, and so on.
As far as making the C88 your own, it comes with a handful of ringtones and wallpapers that let you adjust the basic appearance. You can fully adjust the sounds and some aspects of the display. You can also set images you take with the camera to be the wallpaper. But there aren't any other themes or grand schemes that let you drastically alter the appearance or functionality of the phone.
Other
Bluetooth
The C88 lets you pair the phone with a Bluetooth headset. We tested three different Bluetooth headsets and didn't have any problems with it. Sound quality was okay, but not great. We were also able to send business cards from the C88 to other Bluetooth phones without problem.
Clock
The exterior display is perfect for using as a watch replacement. The backlight is generally off, but a touch to any of the sidekeys illuminates the display immediately. You can also set the size of the digital readout to make it bigger and more visible.
Tools
The C88 comes with all the standard tools, including a calendar, calculator, tip calculator and world clock. They were all easy to find and use. Nothing really sets them apart, though.
Wrap-Up
The C88 is a solid little phone, but it is not without its faults. It won't stir deep-seated passion or lust with its no-frills design, but it doesn't offend the eye, either. It was well put together and we don't think quality will be an issue with the hardware.
In terms of functionality, it is certainly as capable and usable as any other similarly-priced handset on the market from LG, Samsung and others. It completes the basic tasks of making calls with no complaints. It has a WAP browser that lets you jump around the Web and even access POP3 email accounts. And the camera takes pictures that are well-suited to MMS messages.
After our experience with the predictive text software, though, we would not recommend the C88 to heavy SMS senders. Dealing with the quirky T9 substitute just didn't get the job done well enough.
In all, the C88 is a good little phone for what it is. It will fit right in to MetroPCS's lineup and provide a nice alternative for those who prefer clamshell-style phones.
About the author, Eric M. Zeman:Eric has been covering the mobile telecommunications industry for 17 years at various print and online publications. He studied at Rutgers Newark and University of Kentucky, and has a degree in writing. He likes playing guitar, attending concerts, listening to music, and driving sports cars.
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Comments
Where's the lead paint on this thing?
I would like to know about Java support on this phone, though...
and it seems like the review is compromised due to the fact that the reviewer did not test the phone i...
(continues)
