Philips 699 is a device that has received little attention over the past period, although it could prove to be suitable for a large market. The appealing looks along with some average performances that many people would love to benefit from are at an affordable cost.

The handset comes at some acceptable sizes, although some people might consider it to be quite large. The reason for this mostly rests in the fact that it also includes a large TFT touchscreen that takes up most of this phone's surface. It's 15 mm thick, which makes it quite comfortable to use, without having the feeling that it is too fragile to hold in your hands.

Philips 699 has an internal memory of 11 MB, an extremely small one that will most probably prove to be insufficient even for the most basic needs of its user. Still, a microSD card slot comes to make up for this drawback, increasing the needed personal data storage space to a comfortable level.

Connectivity is available through miniUSB and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, as most evolved mobile phones manage to bring. One impressive aspect about this phone is that it also includes handwriting recognition, a feature that will prove to be useful especially for the native Chinese phone users. They will have the ability of introducing text by using their classic characters, especially as Philips 699 also includes support for traditional and simplified Chinese writing.

The phone packs only a WAP browser and GPRS class 10 services. Still, it has some other interesting features that will surely come in hand at a certain time. A music and video player are meant to entertain the user, while some other applications ease the user's life a bit. This includes a female calendar, a weight management and international converter.

Just as to top all these features, the device also packs a dictionary meant to convert English to Chinese and the other way around. Still, what many people will really love about this device is that it is capable of handling two SIM cards at the same time.

Philips 699 will be available sometime during the third quarter of this year, on the Chinese market, with little or no chances of reaching markets outside this area.