winjim
Smash the cistern
As I'm sick of lugging around my huge expensive smartphone, and I now have a Garmin for navigation, I was after a cheap, simple and small phone to take on rides. Somebody on a previous thread mentioned these key fob phones so I thought I'd get one and give it a go, and let you know my thoughts in case anyone else is thinking of getting one. They cost about thirty quid from Amazon and apparently are very popular with prisoners as they can be smuggled inside certain body cavities, but I'm going to stick mine in my saddlebag I think. 
I expect it mainly to be used for texting my wife to let her know I'll be out longer than planned and not to worry, but will also be useful in a genuine emergency and for locating errant ride buddies.
Here's the box. It's made by Shenzhen CCH Communication Equipment Co:
Inside you get: The phone with key-ring, USB charger and adaptor, headphones and two battery packs. The batteries are labelled as 500mAh each, but crucially the charger is not standard mini- or micro-USB. If anyone can shed any light on what it is, please let me know.
The phone itself is shaped as a BMW key-fob, although it is not disguised as such, it is obviously a phone. It measures 7cm x 3.5 cm x 1.5 cm. Here it is with the contents of my saddlebag for scale.
The two big silver buttons on the back do depress, but they don't actually do anything. The back slides off to reveal the usual slots for SIM and micro-SD cards underneath the battery. It took my EE pay as you go SIM with no problems. The front has the usual alpha-numeric keys, although the zero, hash and star keys have beenn moved to the side rather than their usual place at the bottom. There is a little joystick, which actually only clicks left and right, and call / hang up buttons which also function as soft keys when navigating menus. The colour screen measures 2cm x 2cm.
Being BMW based, on startup, the phone makes the sound of an engine revving, but thankfully this can be turned off. All the menu screens also have rubbish pictures of BMWs on them. I think you can change the wallpaper somewhere but I don't really care. There is no instruction manual supplied with the phone, but it's pretty easy to work out. From the welcome screen, a left click on the joystick brings up Shortcuts, a right click the Phonebook, the Green button Call Logs, and the Red button the Menu. The Menu scrolls through various functions with the joystick, although as this is only an emergency phone I don't intend to use most of them. There is, for example, an FM radio, and God only knows why they included an ebook reader. Perhaps some people like reading novels on a tiny screen three words at a time. There's a choice of three pretty rubbish ringtones, but it can read MIDI files if you can be bothered to change them. I wouldn't hear it ringing in my saddlebag anyway. It's also got bluetooth and WAP(remember that?) which I won't be using. The text messaging on the tiny screen and with the tiny keys is not the most user friendly but will more than suffice for simple "I'll be home late, don't worry" messages which is mostly what I'll be using it for.
I have not put any of the security on as this phone could potentially need to be used by a third party in case of emergency, but I have activated the keypad lock which is a simple press of the green and star keys to unlock, just to prevent accidentally activating the phone in my saddlebag.
I've charged the phone for a couple of hours and given it a quick try. It was clear enough just phoning my wife from the kitchen, and sends & receives texts just fine. When I've had a bit more of a play and taken it out for a ride I'll update with more useful information such as charging, standby and talk times, and signal strength and whatnot, but that's it for a first look.
I expect it mainly to be used for texting my wife to let her know I'll be out longer than planned and not to worry, but will also be useful in a genuine emergency and for locating errant ride buddies.Here's the box. It's made by Shenzhen CCH Communication Equipment Co:
Inside you get: The phone with key-ring, USB charger and adaptor, headphones and two battery packs. The batteries are labelled as 500mAh each, but crucially the charger is not standard mini- or micro-USB. If anyone can shed any light on what it is, please let me know.
The phone itself is shaped as a BMW key-fob, although it is not disguised as such, it is obviously a phone. It measures 7cm x 3.5 cm x 1.5 cm. Here it is with the contents of my saddlebag for scale.
The two big silver buttons on the back do depress, but they don't actually do anything. The back slides off to reveal the usual slots for SIM and micro-SD cards underneath the battery. It took my EE pay as you go SIM with no problems. The front has the usual alpha-numeric keys, although the zero, hash and star keys have beenn moved to the side rather than their usual place at the bottom. There is a little joystick, which actually only clicks left and right, and call / hang up buttons which also function as soft keys when navigating menus. The colour screen measures 2cm x 2cm.
Being BMW based, on startup, the phone makes the sound of an engine revving, but thankfully this can be turned off. All the menu screens also have rubbish pictures of BMWs on them. I think you can change the wallpaper somewhere but I don't really care. There is no instruction manual supplied with the phone, but it's pretty easy to work out. From the welcome screen, a left click on the joystick brings up Shortcuts, a right click the Phonebook, the Green button Call Logs, and the Red button the Menu. The Menu scrolls through various functions with the joystick, although as this is only an emergency phone I don't intend to use most of them. There is, for example, an FM radio, and God only knows why they included an ebook reader. Perhaps some people like reading novels on a tiny screen three words at a time. There's a choice of three pretty rubbish ringtones, but it can read MIDI files if you can be bothered to change them. I wouldn't hear it ringing in my saddlebag anyway. It's also got bluetooth and WAP(remember that?) which I won't be using. The text messaging on the tiny screen and with the tiny keys is not the most user friendly but will more than suffice for simple "I'll be home late, don't worry" messages which is mostly what I'll be using it for.
I have not put any of the security on as this phone could potentially need to be used by a third party in case of emergency, but I have activated the keypad lock which is a simple press of the green and star keys to unlock, just to prevent accidentally activating the phone in my saddlebag.
I've charged the phone for a couple of hours and given it a quick try. It was clear enough just phoning my wife from the kitchen, and sends & receives texts just fine. When I've had a bit more of a play and taken it out for a ride I'll update with more useful information such as charging, standby and talk times, and signal strength and whatnot, but that's it for a first look.
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