The Five-minute fiddle: INQ Chat 3G

Crumbs, it’s been a busy week at IntoMobile Towers in the UK – apart from all the CES stuff, I’ve also been getting devices in the post (no mean feat when you consider we’re getting snow – which all local authorities seem completely ill-prepared for!)

Anyway, enough of my weather-related woes – one of the devices I got was a INQ Chat 3G – a what, you say? Come on, you know, the INQ Chat 3G – it brings a QWERTY keyboard together with some of the best native social network integration you are likely to see on a phone, and was devised by INQ Mobile (which is part of the Hutchison empire).

So what does it look like? Well, imagine a BlackBerry crossed with some of Nokias more colourful handset creations, and you are on the way there. The OS is Brew, and on top of that sits a layer of software developed by INQ to give that native integration feel I was talking about. But let’s not dwell on the OS too much, let’s categorise as we normally do in these reviews:

(Note: for those of you that are not familiar, the aim of the five-minute fiddle is to spend a very short period getting first impressions of a given handset/service, like you would browsing in a shop for example, and then write things up with a summary ‘gut feeling’ about it)

Unpacking

INQ is all about style and design – oh, and colour! Well I maxed out on all of these, and loved the industrial design getting the device out of the box. Also loved the cue cards you get instead of a user manual – very fresh approach. INQ have obviously been to the Nokia/Apple school of compartmentalised box design too

Hardware form-factor

Again, LOVE IT. Feel superb in the hand, just the right weight for the size that it is. The screen is a reasonable size, and the buttons are a similar size to those on a BlackBerry 8900 Curve – although not as well spaced. It’s a really striking design, and a breath of fresh air, I personally feel.

I should say a bit more on the keys, just before we dip in to the software/UI side of things. I pressed a number of the keys and felt a slightly unsteady return rate on some of them – and that’s one thing you can’t have when typing at speed, because it doesn’t give you confidence in having registered the right letters to go to the screen. Well, I think the Chat suffers a little from this, which is an issue that no BlackBerry that I’ve used does have. Granted, they are different classes of device, but given it’s probably the closest hardware design, it’s fair to contrast them.

I should probably comment on the display delivered on-screen too, without going in to the UI too much. Suffice to say the screen is bright, and a reasonable size – perfectly adequate for what’s needed.

In summary then, I’d say very impressed with the hardware ID.

Software / UI

So this is where things need to be very good indeed, since a lot hinges on it – without the right software stack and UI, things will be laggy, hard to find, and difficult to access. I’m happy to report that the OS+UI does a reasonably good job of keeping things together – but probably could be just a little bit smoother (fluid, animated, etc).

But as regards the social network integration – it’s all there – Facebook, Twitter, plus the ability to grab other apps apparently, for some kind of online portal. There’s also a ton of other common apps, like email and text messaging. I banged out a test sentences to see how the keyboard responded, and it was okay – not great – just okay. I think that with more time, the tactile feedback of the keys might be something that I’d get used to – perhaps.

One other comment about the UI – I personally found it a bit ‘busy’ – lots of colour, images, highlights, and suddenly stuff becomes hard to see. For example, I found it hard to be sure what option I was on in the main menu.

Conclusion

So I have literally had 5 minutes with the device – it was supplied to me nearly discharged, and is now connected to the mains charger, and is busy refuelling. But once that is done, I’ll be going online in more depth to test out how the browser, social network clients, and email are working.

But for right now I’d say the device has fantastic hardware, and the software is reasonable – pending an upgrade to great if it proves itself with further use.

Verdict: Reasonable

You can find out more about the INQ Chat 3G here.