Ronnie Tucker

It was inevitable that when Apple released the iPhone there would come clones. The most well known is the CECT 168, it was cheap and looked something like the iPhone, then came the CECT 599 which looks far more sexy. Ironically 599 is just what the iPhone costs in dollars. Coincidence? I think not…

The CECT 599

Like most hooky phones from Hong Kong it comes well packaged and has some nice touches that some of the larger mobile phone companies should take note of:

What you see above is the USB cable (bottom left) the spare battery (yes, you get two batteries, bottom right) the battery charger housing (bottom middle) a Jap plug > UK plug converter (top left) and finally the USB > plug converter. This may seem a lot but you are effectively using the one (USB) cable for moving data and charging the phone.

And with the battery housing you can charge the spare battery while using the first one (above). Nifty! Also in the box is a 256mb micro SD card, the Japanese manual, spare screen protectors, earphones and a CD containing an English manual.

The phone itself isn’t too big. Larger than the current spate of miniature mobiles but I prefer something that has a nice big readable screen.

The edges of the phone are very clean and not cluttered with buttons/sockets, something else some other mobile manufacturers should take note of! The 599 has one socket that does charging, USB transfers and is also used by the headphones. Nice!

(above: left side and bottom)

The left side of the phone has one covered socket which is multifunction (see above) and one button which locks/unlocks the phone. In the bottom left is the stylus.

(above: right side and top)

The right side of the phone has the up/down button (can be used in menus) and the camera start/capture button.

The back of the phone has the camera lens and, rather cheekily, a mirrored Apple logo.

The main menu (above) is quite self explanatory. Using the up/down buttons on the right side of the phone you move through the menu items and the text box at the top of the screen tells you what the menu item is/does. You then prod the screen, easy as that. 99% of the phone is in English. One menu item is in Japanese/Chinese so I have no idea what that item (bottom left on the screen above) does.

The menu items are (left to right, top to bottom):

• Call History
• Fun & Games
• Services
• Phone Book
• Messages
• User Profiles
• Settings
• Music Box
• Multimedia
• [ unknown ]
• Extra
• File Manager

The main menu is animated and a tap of the screen causes a small vibration within the phone. There are a dozen or more midi ringtones and sounds supplied for incoming call and message notifications. Since it’s a touch screen you can also use handwriting recognition on there too unfortunately sometimes when prodding at a letter (mid-message) the phone thinks you want to write something and goes in to handwriting mode which is a bit of a pain but nothing drastic.

Bluetooth is, of course, in there too but so is the unusual feature of dual SIM’s. You can have two SIM cards in the phone and switch between them at will, nice if you want to have this one phone with a business SIM and a home SIM.

The Extras menu has a Calendar, To-Do List and various other items such as a Body Mass Index calculator and a, uh, Menstrual Calculator… very handy (!). One item in here is in Japanese/Chinese and that is the one marked ‘Paradise of M-dog’. I have NO idea what that is. Answers on a postcard folks…

Plugging the USB cable in allows you to use the phone as either a webcam or a mass storage device (the 256mb micro SD card). I use Kubuntu Linux on my desktop PC and it recognized the phone immediately in mass storage mode. Transferred a few files across and that went flawlessly. Copied across some JPG images of various dimensions and they all displayed fine. The 3GP file played well and tilting the phone on its side caused the screen to auto rotate to landscape and play widescreen. That’s right folks, it has a tilt sensor in there too! A flick of the phone can cause it to skip to the next track while playing MP3’s or to change the backdrop on the main screen. Another nice touch! It didn’t like DIVX/XVID files though, shame. Next the MP3. The audio file opened in the audio player and for a little phone the sound quality was pretty damn good! Also under the Multimedia section is ‘Karaoke’. No idea what this does but it can’t be good, Karaoke is never good!

The camera is only 1.3 megapixel but, in my opinion, more than enough for the casual snap, if you want more megapixels, buy a camera! Phones are phones, cameras are cameras and never the twain shall meet says I!

The only real con I can find to this phone is the lack of an English manual but it’s all very visual and not a big draw back.

For £80 (not including postage and packing) it’s certainly worth the money considering the iPhone is several hundred pounds!

To buy one, you’ll have to scour good ol’ eBay.

A short video of me showing the various features of the CECT 599 is on Google Video.

NOTE: As far as I’m aware there is no English manual for the CECT 599, the closest you can get are the CECT P168 - English manual and CECT PDA - English manual.