IPHONE CLONES

At 4.01 inches long by 2.15 inches wide by 0.55 inch deep, the W002 is smaller than the iPhone and it adds extra physical controls, but it does its best to resemble its idol. You'll notice the black casing with silver trim, the dominant display, and the slit-shaped speaker at the top of the phone. It's also a bit lighter than the iPhone (4.23 ounces versus 4.7 ounces), but it has a solid feel in the hand.

The 2.8-inch display is too small for a touch-screen device (we consider 3 inches to be the bare minimum). What's more, the QVGA resolution and color support won't blow you away. Most graphics were rather splotchy and the screen disappears in direct light. The resistive display also is rather difficult to use. You're given a stylus in the box and you can adjust the calibration, but neither tool seems to help with the accuracy. When tapping, swiping, and scrolling through lists, you'll need to make firm, deliberate moves if you want the screen to register your touch. You can adjust the wallpaper, screensaver, backlight time, and brightness, and you can turn off the accelerometer. Needless to say, there's no multitouch.

the menu design is taken straight from the iPhone. A series of icons sit directly on the main standby screen, thus alleviating the need for any subfolders. But what about those icons! We were astounded at just how closely some of them resemble their Apple counterparts. The Contacts, Phone, Photos, Camera, Notes, Mail, and Clock icons are the worst offenders while the Calendar, Map, Text, and Calculator icons show only the tinniest differences. In fact, the only improvement over the iPhone is that the menu will show in landscape mode. The menu spans three pages, but swiping between them wasn't easy. We don't get the point of copying the icon designs. It's not the iPhone, so why bother to imitate it so closely?

With its rectangular touch controls and five shortcut icons (for favorite contacts, recent calls, full contact list, keypad, and voice mail access), the W002's phone dialer interface is another iPhone rip-off. The numbers on the touch controls are relatively large, but the letters are tiny. The QWERTY keyboard is much too small as well. You can't comfortably use your fingers so we had to resort to the stylus. Seriously, is this 2001? Alternatively, if you like a challenge you even can use the handwriting recognition feature.

Below the display are three controls: a home button (again similar to the iPhone), and Call and End controls. The latter two aren't completely necessary since you can place and end calls on the screen. Yet, we were glad to have them since they also double as soft keys for commands that appear in the bottom-left and bottom-right corners of the display.