BenQ E72 review

BenQ has chosen not to provide Office Mobile, so third-party applications will need to be installed if you want to edit Excel or Word documents. However, the E72's small screen really rules out these tasks anyway.

There are several extra applications, among them Mundu, a unified IM client that brings together MSN Messenger, Gtalk, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL and Jabber contacts. There's also a version of Fizz Traveller, which includes a world clock, travel to-do list, currency conversion and over-the-air weather forecasts.

Performance
BenQ says the E72's 900mAh battery will provide up to 4 hours of talktime and 180 hours on standby. In our tests, it gave us just under 5 hours of non-stop music from a full charge, which bodes well.

We have already noted the slow 260MHz processor, but this is only likely to trouble those who like to have many applications running. If you keep tabs on resource usage, you should be fine.

Conclusion
It's nice to see a company with a different take on Windows Mobile, and with the E72, BenQ shows originality in both hardware design and software. Although a faster processor, a larger screen, more on-board memory and Office Mobile wouldn't go amiss, these features would make the E72 much more of a 'me too' device. Still, as it stands, this phone may satisfy only a small proportion of business users.

Edited by Marian Smith