Ayo Jakarta

When a work mate saw the I-mobile 518, he commented:” It’s so Nokia.”

In a positive tone, this comment reflected the success of Thailand-based mobile phone producer Samart to design its mobile phone as good as Nokia.

The I-mobile 518 design actually looks a bit “fat”, but it is still pretty.

Not only a good design, it also offers a camera, a video and a music players, a voice recorder, a micro-sd card slot, a usb connector, a bluetooth, and a FM radio.

Perhaps if it accommodates 3G connectivity, this mobile phone would become the most comprehensive mobile phone at Rp 1.5 million (US$180).

“We are still developing 3G in our mobile phone. In our country 3G is not popular so we have yet to produce one,” said Samart i-mobile Indonesia managing director Thawee Udomkitchote told a press gathering recently.

But lacking 3G doesn’t mean the end of the world for the I-mobile 518.

Its 2.0-mega pixel camera, for instance, has immediately grabbed my attention. We just need to click a camera keypad in the right side of this mobile phone to activate the camera.

The good thing is the camera enables photo effects, so that we could choose normal or other colors as a background when we take pictures.

However, when we intend to see the previous pictures, we should quit the camera application and open the multimedia folder. It is a bit uneasy, but remains tolerable.

The FM radio in the I-mobile 518 is advanced as it could identify the name of radio station. The quality of the sound is also good but it is suggested that you use a headset rather than the speaker phone.

What annoying me is that I could not just play MP3 songs from the micro-sd card. The I- mobile 518 says it cannot read the files as the file is saved in different format. But Samart might not be too worried as this problem also occurs in the inexpensive Motorola W230.

However, my experience has guided me to copy the MP3 files from the micro-sd card to the phone memory in my music folder. The outcome is expected, the MP3 songs can be played, but I believe that Samart should resolve this small problem.

At least for Jakartans, Samart said its shops were available in Roxy mas and ITC mall ambassador, so it should not be that difficult to get the I-mobile 518 accessories.