Trium Eclipse

Siemens' S25 may have been the first European mobile phone with a colour screen, but Trium's Eclipse is the first that makes it more than a novelty. We tested a preview model.

GPRS is the technology that keeps your mobile permanently connected to the web and only charges for data sent or received, as opposed to time online. Sadly, it's still early days for GPRS, with just Cellnet and Vodafone offering it at the time of writing. Worse, each company only allows consumers to access Wap services over GPRS, and not the whole internet via a PDA or notebook. Full consumer internet access using GPRS is expected soon.

By the time the Eclipse hits the shops, it should be GPRS enabled, or at least be available as a future upgrade. It will feature GPRS Class-8, which supports one slot for sending data and four slots for receiving: in theory this means the Eclipse can enjoy GPRS data rates of up to 85.6Kbits/sec coming in and 21.4Kbits/sec going out, although in reality they're more likely to be 53.6Kbits/sec in and 13.4Kbits/sec out at best.

To be fair, there aren't any phones currently supporting anything faster than GPRS Class-8, although Trium believes the Eclipse may be later upgradeable to GPRS Class-10, offering a second slot for sending data.

In terms of conventional circuit-switched data, the Eclipse supports both the standard 9.6Kbits/sec and Orange's improved 14.4Kbits/sec, but not Orange's High Speed rates of 19.2Kbits/sec and 28.8Kbits/sec. Connection to notebooks or PDAs is with a standard infrared port only, as there's no Bluetooth.

But back to that colour screen which, at 29mm x 34mm, dominates the front of the Eclipse. It features 120 x 143 pixels in 256 colours and has a decent backlight. Although it's nowhere near the quality of, say, a Compaq iPaq, it is nevertheless bright and clear. The big question is whether colour and such a large display can be put to any real use.

The first impression of the display is that it is a novelty, with five different graphic wallpaper themes to choose from, each indicating signal strength and battery life in their own unique ways. The trademark Trium butterfly simply perches above conventional block indicators, but the Woody theme employs depleting forest trees to indicate signal and battery.

Full novelty marks go to the daisy theme, with falling petals and a climbing ladybird, respectively, indicating signal and battery.

The colour display is also exploited when you head over to the games section. Trium commissioned UbiSoft to write two titles featuring its Rayman character. Rayman Garden is an uninspiring 2D clean-up game, but Rayman Bowling displays a half-decent 3D bowling alley where you launch balls at varying speeds, directions and spins. It's not brilliant, but it does show where mobiles are heading in terms of entertainment.

The screen really comes into its own for messaging and Wap. With so many pixels it can easily display eight lines of text and, in some cases, an entire 160-character text message.

The Eclipse has a Wap 1.2.1 browser and while this doesn't directly support colour, Trium has used it to surprisingly good effect. Text is coloured black, links are blue and highlights are in orange, which all help when navigating pages. The large screen also makes the whole Wap experience much more pleasurable.

Rounding off the chunky dual-band 900/1,800MHz handset are a vibrating alert, alarm clock, comprehensive phone book, voice dial and speakerphone facility, and a wide selection of surprisingly pleasant three-voice polyphonic ring tunes. The battery should be good for three hours of talktime or up to 180 hours in standby.

The Trium Eclipse is a decent phone and an impressive technology demonstration, but faces tough competition in the form of Ericsson's imminent T68. This boasts a colour screen, GPRS, tri-band, Bluetooth and sexier looks.

Until then, the Eclipse has the market to itself and proves colour can be both fun and a genuine benefit to a mobile.

Price
£99 to £149 with contract

Contact
Trium: 0800 912 0020 www.trium.net

See also:

Bush LCD 15TV

A monitor and TV set, but it isn't cheap.  07 May 2002

Trium Eclipse

Why do you want a mobile with a colour screen? We were hoping you'd know.  18 Apr 2002

Sony Ericsson T68

Small, perfectly formed and packed with features.  11 Feb 2002

Trium Mondo

Science fiction comes true as the first combined Pocket PC and mobile phone hits the street.  18 Dec 2001

Siemens Phone PDA

The SX45, based on a Cassiopeia, is the best combo device around.  17 Oct 2001

Ericsson Bluetooth Headset HBH - 10

Ericsson has finally come up with the Bluetooth goods, but the HBH-10 is overpriced and far from perfect.  11 Oct 2001

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!