O2 blueroom

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 Written by Des

I’m on my second Cocoon, the first wasn’t much cop to be honest. the battery kept going flat if I used the ‘phone for more than three minutes - hardly the five hours talk time as promised. O2 were really cool about this and dispatched a new one instantly so I didn’t loose any time.

My new Cocoon however, is brilliant. I love it. I love the look, feel and usablitiy of it, almost the usability, actually. Here’s why it’s an almost…

The LED display is nice, but I’m the sort of bloke who wants to be able to turn it off, and certainly want to have a greater sense of control over the brightness of the lights when using it as my bedside clock. Even turned right down, it’s still way too bright.

The music player. It would be good if you could disable that from time to time, rather than have to go through the rigmarole of choosing the FM Radio through the menu without a headset connected to turn it off.

I’d like louder speakers and different skins for the UI. I’d like to have the option of setting the vibrtae to a much firmer setting and to be able to turn the ring tunes up to be audible when out and about, or sitting in a quite room…

I’d really like to know if there are plans for a firmware updates? Will we be able to upgrade our software during the life of our contracts? I do hope so.

All in all, a truely cracking phone, but it has some issues that need ironing out.

Des

PS - During the installation of the software, I was adviced to install Windows Media Player 11 as it’ll be the only way I can get music on my phone. What rot. Scrap the deal with Microsoft and give us firmware updates and software applications to really make this design icon outshine the iPhone

Written by Gordon McLean on InformationallyOverloaded

DISCLAIMER: I was given an O2 Cocoon by a PR firm. I am under no obligation to blog about it at all, nor was I to only mention it if the ‘review’ was favourable. If this post offends you, then feel free to leave. But if you were thinking of buying one… read on. 

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been playing with the new O2 Cocoon. I’ve been using it as often as I can and ‘living’ with it since then, bar a week away in

 It’s not a stunning ‘must have’ gadget, but it does have some nice touches, alongside a few annoying quirks. 

The OLED embedded on the ‘outside’ of the phone is a nice idea. Subtle and effective and probably my favourite feature. However it suffers through implementation. There are two possible scenarios, both centred around the use of the display when receiving text messages. One is when an unprompted text message is received, the display lights up and scrolls the name or number, and then the message itself, across the outside of the screen.  

Now if I have it in my pocket this is kinda useless. If it is on my desk it is in full view of anyone who looks, again not so good.  

However if I’m in ‘text conversation’ mode, sending messages back and forth, then the scrolling is too slow to be useful, and I don’t need the name/number anyway. So, a smart idea that just feels a little like ‘an idea for ideas sake’. But that’s only on the text message front. The other uses - time, alarm, MP3 track details - make more sense. 

Hardware-wise it feels nice in your hand, until you open it and answer a call. I’m happy to concede that it might just be that I’ve got a funny shaped face but the phone never felt comfortable when I was on a call. However the call quality was good and clear, as was the signal strength, of course it may just be that I was in particularly good coverage zones for the O2 signal. 

As a It has most of the usual features of a mobile phone and, by and large, the software and features are nothing out of the ordinary but, as it’s being sold as a music player/phone/lifestyle gadget I’ve spent more time trying to use it with that in mind and, on that count it’s not too bad.

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