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Innostream A11 Review
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Posted by: braindead5400
I haven't written one of these in a while, but here goes:
The Box
The phone comes in a small square box with the picture of a laughing woman on the top. When you open it up, you find the phone, two manuals (Spanish and English), two batteries, a desktop charger, a travel charger, a USB cable, a lanyard, headphones and an adapter so you can use regular headphones with the phone. The manual says that some of the accessories are optional and may not come with all the phones. WElectronics sells a USB-less version but Inno tells me that they are not supposed to and are removing the cables from the boxes. According to the manual, the extended battery, desktop charger, holster, car charger and PC Sync software are all optional.
The desktop charger seems out of place and doesn’t match the blue and silver phone. It looks more suited for an iPod than the blue battery of the phone.
The Build
The phone itself is very nice looking. Its two tone silver and blue (mostly blue face and a blue battery). The phone looks compact and feels very light in my hands. There is wording all over the phone for some reason though. The face has “1.3 megepixel camera”, “Intenna”, “Innostream” and “MP3 Real Sound” on the front. “Innostream” on the back, and the word “Megapixel on the flip hinge when you open the phone. May just be me, but it seems like it’s too much. The phone itself feels solid, there is no side to side movement of the flip. The battery on the other hand is creaky. When you squeeze the phone, the battery creaks and it pops when you push down on it.
The hinge springs open once you flip it past 90° and is stopped by a rubber strip on the top of the phone. The keypad is silver with blue backlighting and each row is spaced pretty well. I had no problem dialing by feel with the phone once I got positioned with the little bumps near the 5 key. The directional pad is just like the inno 90, wap button in the center surrounded by directional keys that quick launch preset items. All the keys are adequately lit and produce a clicking sound when you push them.
The Screen
The screen is a bit of a disappointment to me. The phone is capable of showing 262k colors, which is great, but that doesn’t do much on a screen that is 128x160 pixels. It’s the same as the inno 90 and it disappoints me. The pixels are easily viewable on both the inner and outer screens. The display takes up a good portion of the upper half of the phone and is bright and easily read in sunlight. The outer screen is on the small side (like most outer screens) and provides you with signal strength, batter indicator, message icons, viewfinder and the mp3 player. It’s basically the same screen as the inno 90. It’s not as easy to see in sunlight but the phone will display a black background with the time in blue when you first push a button. It makes the time easier to read than If the wallpaper was showing.
The Camera
The phone features a 1.3 megapixel cmos camera with a flash. The camera is one of the biggest disappointments about the phone. The photos have lots of noise in them and are not sharp. I’m not exaggerating in any way; everything is fuzzy and has lots of noise. Its even apparent when the photos are resized to around vga size. It reminds me of the Motorola V710. The pics from the cam will never be printable and don’t even look good on the phones screen. I’d have to say that this is the biggest disappointment with the phone, I was really expecting something better from Inno.
The camera can be accessed from the menu or the d pad when the phone is open and from the down key when the phone is closed. When you hold the down key, the phone gives you the option of starting the camera or only turning on the flash so it can be used as a light, very nice touch.
When taking photos, most of the info can be hidden so you can use the entire screen as the viewfinder. The phone can take pictures in the following resolutions: 96x64, 128x160, 320x240, 640x480 and 1280x960. It also features digital zoom which can only be used in 320x240 or lower. They should have included it for VGA, but they didn’t. You can select the white balance and quality of the shots neither seems to really do much.
The camcorder is just as much of a disappointment as the photos. The videos are choppy, have no sound and are recorded in mjpg format. The phone cannot take or playback .3gp files. You can also only record in 128x96 resolution.
I contacted Innousa about the camera and I was told to use the setting to get the best pic. That doesn’t really help, the pics are bad either way.
MP3
The phone has a mp3 player built in. Unfortunately, there is no expandable memory so you are stuck with the built in 128mb. The MP3 player has its good and bad points.. The phone comes with an adapter to use regular headphones and the sound quality is really good. The phone can play up to 192kbps and even VBR files. I’ve never owned a phone that could play a VBR mp3 file without a problem. The volume is very loud through the headphones and is decently loud through the speaker. Quality is pretty good through the speaker, the sound isn’t tinny like the Mitsu M900 and sounds richer. While playing mp3’s, you can close the flip and the outside screen with give you all the info about the song you are playing. You can also use the side keys to change the volume and advance to the next song. With the phone open, the directional pad takes over navigation and there is a key on the screen to tell you which keys do what. There is a moving equalizer that is just for show but improves the look of the application. Sadly, there is no equalizer function but the music sounds good as it is so I can easily get along without it.
There are two main problems with the mp3 player that may be a huge turnoff for some people. For one, the application cannot be minimized. There is no multitasking allowed, which can be understood because the phone doesn’t seem to be very powerful. The second one, and this is the kicker, the mp3 player cannot be used while the phone is on silent. Even if the headset is in the phone, the application will not start. It just tells you that the phone is on silent. Basically, you cannot use the player when you need your phone to be quite, this is especially bad for me since I need to have my phone on silent in school.
Reception and Call Quality
Rf is ok, nothing stellar. It can’t compete with my Nokia 6230. At my job, there is a very weak signal in the back area. My 6230 can place and receive calls and bounces between 2 and three bars (I know bars aren’t the greatest indicator of signal). The A11 will display a bar, but it cannot make or receive calls like my Nokia.
In coming sound quality is pretty good. The earpiece seems quite nice and reproduces voice clearly. Every now and then, the earpiece will be crackly, but it goes away on the next call, not sure what’s going on with that.
The speaker phone is quiet and is only usable in a quiet room, otherwise, you won’t hear anything.
SMS
SMS is a trade off. I find it very friendly and easy to use, but there is some lag. The phone will skip characters if try and type too fast, gets rather annoying after awhile. One thing I really liked is that after you write a message, you can enter several phone numbers at once so you don’t have to resend the message to multiple people. Thee phone comes with preset SMS tones and you cannot use your own.
Ringtones
The ringtones are another disappointment to me. Many of the tones are the same as the 90, but they aren’t as nice. The A11 does not use a Yamaha chip and cannot play mmf files. Songs like Cat Dance, Elephant Walk and Santa Clause Is Coming To Town are now missing their voice intros. When I first got the phone, I thought the tones were sufficiently loud, as well as mp3 songs. Once I ventured outside, I learned something different. While the tones may sound nice and loud when you are in your house, the volume decreases enormously when outside, especially in the city. Many people will be using the vibrator along with the tones so they don’t miss calls.
Just like the 90, ringtones cannot be set to individual people in the phonebook, only groups. What is different is that you can use custom tones for the groups and not just the preinstalled ones like the 90.
Entertainment and Applications
The phone comes with the same three games as the inno 90. There is nothing new about them and they don’t seem as nice as they did before (Now that I’ve used a SE S700i). The phone also supports java and I’ve had no problem using games that are converted from Nokia java files.
The phone also has a biorhythm utility that I find useless, but it’s nice if you are bored. There is a stopwatch watch and countdown timer as well as a calculator, composer and converter. The calculator has options for sin, cosin, tan, exponents and logarithms.
The calendar is plain, as simple. You can add events and check your biorhythm for each day as well as set alarms. The phone also comes with a “lady” schedule. I don’t really know what it does. When I tried to open it, it asked for the date of my last menstruation, I immediately closed the phone.
The wap browser is yet another disappointment for me. While it is relatively fast when it comes to navigation, it is still wap 1.2.1, despite inno claiming that its 2.0. I’ve had problems accessing certain sites with the phone, I always get gateway errors, the same I got on the inno 90. I was expecting a wap 2.0 browser and I’m really disappointed that Innostream could not deliver.
I contacted inno about the browser and apparently its supposed to be 1.2.1 and not 2.0 like the site says.
Connectivity
Connectivity with the phone is terrible. There is no expandable memory, no Bluetooth and no IrDA (Despite Innostream saying so). The phone is supposed to come with a USB cable and you can use it to transfer files between the phone and the computer. When you first plug the phone in to the cable, it asks you if you want it to act as a USB mass storage device. Saying yes allows you to drag and drop files onto the phone. It comes in really handy but its painfully slow. Inno claims that the phone cannot handle more than 5-6mb at a time, so copying more than one mp3 at a time is not recommended. When acting as a mass storage device, the phone cannot be used, but it pulls power to charge the battery from the cable. As far as I know, there is no PC Sync software available at this time.
Again, I contacted inno and they claim that the phone is not supposed to have IrDA and that the site is wrong, oh well.
Phonebook
The phonebook is basic and straight forward. You can store up to three numbers per name and an email address. You can also assign a picture to a caller and that’s about it. From the phonebook screen, you can hit right or left to sort the phonebook by the different groups (family, friends etc….). There really is nothing else special about the phonebook.
Overall battery life is exceptable, nothing stellar though
So I think that about does it for my review. Despite all the negative points, I like the phone. I think I’m somewhat biased because I’ve owned several high end phones since my Inno 90 and my expectation may be a little high. It’s a great phone for someone upgrading from any other inno, but those of you who have used phones like the SE S700i, Sharp GX32, or the M900, may be disappointed.
Below are picture samples of and from the phone.
Posted by: mibu
yea i have to agree that the camera is not too good. i've compared my pics with a moto's and even though we were both 1mp, her's was way better than mine.
also i find the inside screen kind of small. thats because the whole phone is pretty small itself
sms is the worst...but its like that for all inno phones...cant type as quick with multitap as with others like SE or nokia
and i dont recall (i sold the phone) that it had the option where i can assign a picture to a person's number..
Posted by: braindead5400
you can assign a picture to a contact
Posted by: mibu
really? how?
can inno 90 do that too?
Posted by: braindead5400
yea the 90 did it aswell. On the A11, its down at the bottom when you are editing a contact
Posted by: braindead5400
Wirelessly posted (don't hate, procreate: Nokia6230/2.0 (04.28) Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)
I think i'm gonna trade it in for a d500.
Posted by: h412121501V
braindead so, overrall you think inno a11 is a piece of crap?? lol
Posted by: h412121501V
the phone design is kind of beautiful.. and the camera pictures are not much different from m900.. without the proper settings on m900 it looks exactly whats a11 taken.. a11 is smaller too.. just out of curiosity, how much do you think you can get back for that inno a11 you just paid, and how much did you pay originally?
Posted by: braindead5400
The phone is a piece of crap to me because I've been spoiled with much higher end handsets for the past year or so. It would be great for someone who has ANY other inno model though. The phone is very nice looking, pretty compact too. I disagree with you about the camera though. The m900 has much sharper pics with less noice, especially after you reside them. The A11 cannot compare to the M900, if your m900 pics look like the pics above, then you are taking them wrong.
I paid $450, if I put it up for sale on ebay, I could probably get most of it back. I think I may wait for the xcute or the e720 before I sell it though, I dunno yet.
I just saw that you said without the proper settings, even without the proper settings, the cam on the mitsu is better.
Posted by: james2k4
Very dissappointed to hear about A11. Thanks for the review dude.
Just wondering though, is this phone http://www.gsmarena.com/innostream_inno_75-789.php gonna be available? coz it looks and sounds much better than A10/11. It's inno 75
Posted by: h412121501V
no thats not inno a11.. that says inno 78.. inno a11 is inno a11 also inno a10 is the same thing expect inno a11 is for usa (triband) while inno a10 is a dual band for euro/asia..
Posted by: braindead5400
The Inno A11 is NOT triband, its dual band 850/1900.
The phone he linked to is the Inno 75 and he wasn't saying that was the inno A11. The 75 was supposed to be released for NA but Innousa cancelled the phone (last I emailed them) so you won't be seeing it anytime soon, if ever.
Posted by: mibu
geez
i can only attach a picture thats smaller than 2kb to a contact in my inno 90
that really sucks
Posted by: ant-dizzle
So basically I'd be better off keeping my 90 and getting the firmware updated? Then that I shall do. I was surprised to see that the key lag is there even in the A11. That's downright lazy.
Posted by: mibu
where can you get your firmware updated
Posted by: braindead5400
Quote:
Originally posted by mibu
geez
i can only attach a picture thats smaller than 2kb to a contact in my inno 90
that really sucks
|
thats so the pic can properly show up on the outer screen. If you want your firmware updated, you have to send it to innousa
Posted by: Kricket
oh man - what a disappointment that is - the pictures really do look crummy - i was expecting a lot more...
oh well - live and learn i suppose...
Posted by: braindead5400
Here's another pic I took, the place is birghtly lit, its just that nothing is sharp at all, everything look out of focus almost
Posted by: braindead5400
If anyone is interested, the phone is up for sale. I didn't use it after I wrote the review and its just been sitting around in its box waiting for someone to buy it.
Posted by: h412121501V
you better think about your pricing.. because on ebay they are selling new ones for 299.. i mean seriously.. i hear people saying inno a11 = piece of shyt.
Posted by: braindead5400
yea, I know, the phone is up on ebay now
Posted by: h412121501V
i just checked on ebay.. and you sold it for a decent price.. not bad.. i'm just glad i didn't wait for that phone..
Posted by: Jaja007
does anyone have the firmware to download, or know how or where we can get it? thanks
Posted by: braindead5400
i don't know of a way to get it, I doubt inno would give it to you
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