Pantech C810 Duo

Like the well-known Ocean that Pantech designed with Helio, the Duo (also known as the C810) is a dual-slider handset that sports both a traditional numeric keypad and a full QWERTY keyboard. In order to accomplish this, a few compromises had to be made. For one, at 102mm x 50mm x 22mm (4.0" x 2.0" x .9"), the Duo is not a particularly thin handset. Its 128g (4.5oz) weight isn't going to set any records either. But all in all, Pantech did a fairly good job of keeping the size and weight of the device under control, which keeps the Duo looking, for the most part, like any other slider smartphone.

The most interesting part of the Duo's physical design, as well as the part that involved the most compromises, is the slide out QWERTY keyboard. In order to keep the Duo's overall thickness in check, Pantech had to make sure that the QWERTY keyboard was very thin.

The overall design of the Pantech Duo is decent. If you look at it primarily as a regular slider form factor smartphone, one that just happens to have a QWERTY keyboard to help ease the occasional messaging need, then the design works. If your phone needs require more frequent and heavy text entry, then the keyboard's feel is probably going to leave you wanting for more.

The quad-band GSM/EDGE, dual-band UMTS/HSDPA (850/1900MHz) support in the Duo means that it fully supports AT&T's 3G network as well as basically any GSM network in the world.

The Pantech Duo supports traditional SMS and MMS messaging as well as email and IM. The included IM app integrates MSN, AIM, and Yahoo! Messengers into one central location that is quite easy to use. The email support on the Duo is also very good, thanks to the inclusion of Microsoft's Exchange Activesync system that can deliver push email as well as synchronize appointments, contacts, and tasks over the air. When the phone is paired with an Exchange 2007 server, users can even search for messages that are stored on the server, but not the phone, which can be tremendously handy. The solid messaging app on the Duo also supports regular IMAP and POP based email accounts, with all accounts of all types, except for IM, being handled by the main messaging application. Users can easily switch from one account to the next by pressing left or right on the d-pad. The Duo can also be synchronized with desktop apps like Outlook by using Bluetooth or a USB cable.

One of the areas where the Pantech Duo comes up short is its camera. For such an otherwise well equipped handset as the Duo, it just seems strange to place a lowly 1.3 megapixel camera on-board.

The Pantech Duo has about 56MB of on-board storage, of which roughly 48MB is available to the user. There is roughly 55MB of application RAM in the Duo, 34MB or so of that being available after a restart. Storage can be augmented by inserting a microSD card into the Duo's card slot, but no card is included in the retail package.