Hi All! The Panasonic GD68 is up for test and I want to help yu guys to make a good decision. Nowadays mobile phones are a matter of choice and lifestyles rather than its real purpose of making calls. We all like to be a bit out of the ordinary. We all have seen enough of those dull green displays of Nokia. Colour display handsets appeal to the eye. Panasonic, one of the key players in the mobile circus introduced the GD68 in late 2002. Everything went for it...at least in magazines. 256 colour display, internal antenna, compact design, lightweight, polyphonic ringers, GPRS and to top it all, a price tag of 9000 something. Mmmm..looks good. During that time colour display handsets would not cost less than 15-17000. I was hooked at once. At that time I had a samsung R220 with the electric blue display. A friend of mine who is also a Mobile freak was interested in the GD68. We went through a lot of websites hunting for reviews. There werent many since the fone had just launched. But the ones who had it had a lot to scratch their heads about. We gave in to all the oddities and went ahead and bought it for Rs.9000 with a bill and 1 year warranty. At first glance, the fone appeared a bit chunky, not the sleekest I have seen but really light. Then again, when you buy a new phone, in the shop everything looks really good.Even some of the flaws are masked. I was happy. I did not check it out too much in the shop and wanted to go through the features leisurely at home. The most distinct feature about the phone is the design. Nicely rounded edges but a little slippery to grip. The joystick button in the middle takes care of most of the phone features and also had a nice silver metallic look. But here it ends.Polyphonic ringtones!!! MUSIC AT THE COST OF VOLUME. If you travel in a 9AM local train and if yu keep a soft polyphonic ringtone...chances are very likely that you will not hear it. Panasonic has not taken care of the speakers. Even the loudest non musical ringtone is NOT really LOUD!!! The display is not so bad but still leaves a lot of room for improvement. AT 256 colours, you cannot see photo images, just some bitmapped cartoon characters or logos. I found the absence of an infra-red port as a hassle. If you want to get some new wallpaper, you have to access it from the PANASONIC WAP site. That means you have to enable WAP in your mobile tariff just for some wallpaper or new ringtones and the worst part is you can only go to the PANASONIC WAP site if you have a AIRTEL simcard.No others support this access.Thats a real putoff. If you are a frequent SMSer you can bid your fingertips goodbye...because the keys on this phone really is user UNfriendly. After some time I got the hang of it but they are really tiny and a new user with glasses will find it difficult to see the characters clearly. Perhaps one of the biggest let downs of this fone is the battery life. This is really BAD. The main reason for this is the LCD screen which is the main battery hogger. With a animated wallpaer and a loud ringtone with vibration on, you will get nothing more than a day of battery. I put off all eye candy and kept a really low ringtone and no jazzy wallpaper and still could just squeeze out about half a day of extra battery. This phone also has a problem of hanging after the first drop. The build quality leaves a lot to be desired and cannot withstand falls much. I dropped it once from about a foot height and then...PROBLEMS. The phone hung between calls which was quite frustrating and especially if you were speaking to someone important. One good feature of the phone is that you can put a photograph on the back side of the phone and personalise it a bit. The games are really disappointing. Just two but boring. Nothing beats the addictive SNAKE.
So all in all, my advice would be not to run out and buy this phone since nowadays there are many models being launched by Nokia with color displays which will come down in price in time. My Samsung R220 was much better built and was pretty loud. At the end of the day I dont mind getting a plain screen but I don’t wanna miss my calls. You cannot do much with the inbuilt wallpaper and cannot download new ones if you dont have Airtel so that doesnt make sense either. To round up my review I would not really recommend this phone except maybe to those who are particular about color displays but cant afford to spend too much and are not in very noisy places and who dont talk much on the cell. The 3530 by Nokia is a much better bargain since it has a better display, good bettery life and is very stable. Panasonic has experimented with colour in this first color phone of theirs and Im sure they have learnt from the flaws and will make better, louder, more durable phones in future.So....WAIT AND WATCH!!!