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.

Gallery: Hands-on with Qool: hip, stylish... qool

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

[LS @ Mar 19th 2007 5:21AM]

now that's one nice looking phone (Glider) - gotta say though, what's the need to uglify the edges with all that labelling? Micro SD. Power. We could probably do without all that thanks, I mean it cant be hard to figure those bits out now can it?

Any idea when the Glider will be made available, where and for how much?

[strider_mt2k @ Mar 19th 2007 6:48AM]

Not a bad looker.

They keyboard's simplicity grabbed me, but I hope that doesn't work against it operationally.

[Ciber @ Mar 19th 2007 8:31AM]

No 3G, No buy!

[Timmay @ Mar 19th 2007 8:33AM]

I remember when Qool made Palm devices... those were the good days..

[saq @ Mar 19th 2007 1:23PM]

HTC needs to get serious props for inventing a formfactor that has been duplicated many many times.
That being said, these devices do look pretty slick, but cmon, no 3G? After having a Hermes for a while having a PDA without 3G is like living in the stone age.
I'll wait for the HTC Kaiser to come out, and then come down in price, before replacing my Hermes. A screen-tilting, 1700mAh battery, 4mm thinner with 256mb of memory Hermes sounds pretty hard to beat.

[fred @ Mar 19th 2007 2:40PM]

Twin SIM cards is the dogs danglies. I'm often travelling around the same 3 countries roaming on GSM and generally have two phones on me at all times: one with my home/personal mobile and one with a local SIM card to not pay extortionate rates for data. With this I could just take one phone with me. Why has nobody done this before?

(I know there are all types of twin-SIM adapters for phone but AFAIK none that allow BOTH SIMs to be active at once)

[parry @ Mar 25th 2007 10:30PM]

dual sim ?

check this
http://www.ppcsg.com/index.php?showtopic=78711&hl=dual+sim

[fred @ Mar 26th 2007 4:51AM]

parry: there's loads of dual-SIM adapters but nor this one nor any of the others allow both lines to be active at once. That requires at least software support from the phone and perhaps hardware support too (two radios/baseband processors?)

[jim jonze @ Mar 19th 2007 3:15PM]

Those probably aren't two GSM SIM card slots. I'll bet one is a slot for the URIM cards that are used on some Asian CDMA networks (China Unicom is one that comes to mind). The slots are probably hardwired to each of the respective radios, so you'll probably be able to use a SIM and a URIM at the same time, but not two SIMs or two URIMs concurrently. URIMs theoretically can support GSM roaming in dual mode phones like this, if they are loaded with all the network info, though. So you MIGHT be able to have a GSM SIM active while doing GSM roaming using the URIM, but I'm not sure if installing the GSM SIM disables the URIM's access to the GSM hardware (I'm pretty sure the radio can't be shared between two accounts simultaneously).

Also, good luck trying to get Verizon or Sprint to activate this phone on to your account. It's kinda sad, really, because there is no technical reason for them to not use the URIMs on their CDMA networks. I guess they don't want to open themselves up to the high support costs if they allowed all kinds of cool Korean phones to be used domestically.

[hibiscusroto @ Mar 19th 2007 4:38PM]

if it doesn't have 3g then it's qrap

[defeatedtea @ Mar 26th 2007 10:46PM]

when will this come out, and anyone know where i can buy this?

[Pali Madra @ Jul 16th 2007 5:39AM]

Where can one buy this phone?