14 DAY TRIAL // BenQ, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, has recently released one if its new 3G mobile phones, namely the BenQ E55. The handset was first seen back in May, but then there was nothing official about it. Now the new BenQ has hit the market, coming in a simple but nice clamshell form factor and bringing a set of not too advanced but useful features.
The full list of specs packed in the E55 include: tri-band GSM connectivity (900 / 1800 / 1900) as well as 2100 MHz UMTS connectivity (for high data transfer speeds), a 2 inch TFT internal display with 262K colors and 176 x 220 pixels, a 96 x 64 pixel external display, Media player (with support for MP3, AAC, MP4 and 3GP), Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, FM radio, a 2 Megapixel camera, secondary video-call camera, SMS and MMS capabilities, WAP 2.0 browser, 45MB of internal memory and microSD card support (up to 2GB).
The E55 weighs 95 grams and, when not flipped, it measures 94 x 48 x 19 millimeters. The 900 mAh Li-Ion battery packed in the new handset is kind of weak. I'm saying this because, when working on a 3G network, it can provide a talk-time of up to only 1.5 hours or a stand-by time of up to 200 hours. The GSM performance of the battery is not great either: up to 2.4 hours in talk-time mode and up to 180 hours in stand-by mode.
The suggested retail price of BenQ E55 is of only 6,990 Taiwanese dollars, which means around 230 USD or 145 Euros. Not much at all, but the handset itself is only a mid to low-end one, so the price suits it.
For the moment, the E55 is available only across Taiwan, but BenQ will probably release it in other Asian countries too (China, for example).