Unfortunately, the speakerphone was pretty abysmal. We could barely hear our callers, even with the volume at its highest level, and it was so bad that we didn't even realise the speakerphone was on when we first activated it. This was in a quiet room, too, so we imagine you wouldn't be able to hear anything in a louder environment.
The Velocity 103 is powered by a 400MHz Qualcomm MSM7201 processor, and general performance was okay. It didn't feel quite as snappy as the Touch Diamond, as there was some lag when using the touchscreen and various applications. Multimedia performance was also affected by the weak speaker, as song playback was soft and sounded tinny. We watched a couple of short WMV clips, and video and audio were always synchronised and looked better than on other devices, thanks to the VGA display.
The Velocity 103 comes with a 1,410mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 4 hours and up to 8 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, the Velocity 103 was only able to squeeze out 3 hours of talk time, but this was using 3G. According to FCC radiation tests, the 103 has a digital SAR rating of 0.98W per kilogram.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, the Velocity 103 turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The Velocity Odyssey interface isn't as intuitive as the company would have you think. If it weren't for the user's manual you wouldn't even know the shortcuts toolbar was available to you. Plus, there are some performance issues and the speakerphone is plain horrible. That's not to say the 103 is a complete dud. It's got a gorgeous VGA display and is packed with features, including over-the-air software updates. But with other touchscreen smart phones like the HTC Touch Diamond and the Apple iPhone offering a better user experience and better performance, we think the Velocity 103 is going to have a hard time keeping up.
Edited by Marian Smith
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