Hands-on with Qool: hip, stylish... qool
We saw a few "Qool" (sorry, we were mandated to get that in) products at CeBIT this year: the QDA "Glider," QDA "Icon," and the Qool "Twins." The Twins come in two different flavors; the Twins 168 is a tri-band dual SIM handset that allows both SIMs to be active at all times. Rolling with CDMA? Then the T178 is for you, with tri-band GSM, plus a CDMA 800 / 1900 / 1X radio all in one set. This is top-shelf stuff if you are a business traveller -- no need to swap between SIMs to check your messages at home and throwing in the dual-purpose CDMA / GSM model does the same for CDMA users. The Glider is a quad-band Windows Mobile device with a sliding keypad, a 195MHz OMAP850 core, 2.8 inch touchscreen, Bluetooth 1.2, WiFi, EDGE data, and a 2 megapixel cam. This is a solid device and we absolutely loved the red backlit touch-controls mounted on the face. The QDA Icon is touted as the world's slimmest PDA phone with a 4 megapixel camera, and as such, it was given props with an Innovations honour at CES. The touchscreen QDA Icon is available in either dual-band GSM 900 / 1800 or 900 / 1900 versions, with the grunt delivered by a 200MHz OMAP730. Sadly, the only data options are Class 10 GPRS, Bluetooth 1.2 and USB -- no EDGE or HSDPA here.
