Posted by Mia in 
An amazing case when a market leader in mobile communications devices does not have enough traditional batteries, the company starts to use already forgotten format of energy carriers. Here is Xenium X520, which is able to squeeze all the juice not only from a rechargeable battery and but from all the surrounding ones.
Appearance
Philips Xenium X520 attracts everyone with its mysterious form of a shell, bringing nostalgia of cassette players and pagers (beepers), and also of banal remote control for home appliances. It is really amazing. However, apart from the fussy block below, the size of the phone is quite typical – 111,1 x 48,8 x 16,3 mm.
Yes, it has exactly 16 mm of thickness, and do not believe the advertising image, there you can see that the lower part is much thicker as flat side of the butt-end make the device look much thicker. However, the thickening at the rear part of the shell can be considered a necessity, because it will be inconvenient to hold a 95-g device in your hand.
On the front side of the device you can notice a silver navigation key with a relief texture, as well as a flat button of confirmation “Ok”. In general, the whole block of keys on the phone was made as separate plane areas of opaque plastic, separated by a glossy front panel. The keys have a short tight stroke with a clear click, invariably accompanied by a click. In addition white lights under the small letters are also worth mentioning.
Just above the keyboard a thick plastic cover is placed, which is designed to protect the 2-inch TFT-screen with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels from mechanical damages. The applied matrix does not have excellent quality colors – 260 000 colors. However, there is no need to expect more from the Philips phones and do not expect particularly outstanding results. Of course, you can read phone number and text message without any difficulty, but studying pictures and photographs in sunny weather will be much more difficult.
There is a conversational dynamics opening above the display, which is located directly in the center. Polyphonic speaker is hidden on the back side, next to the small enclosed module of 2-MP camera without autofocus.
There are separate silver volume keys with tight audible click at the ends. There is also a slot for micro SDHC memory card, located on the right end. In the same place, close to the lower compartment, you will notice one more interesting detail, the attachment for the strap, unusually solid and reliable.
Battery
The block is a cylindrical projection, the diameter of which is the 16.5 mm. Polarity battery switch is located on the left end of the block, but from the opposite end, everything is made much funnier.
While rolling the holder, you can see the battery compartment, under the storage component of the standard AAA, spread not less than the traditional finger batteries. In addition, the kit has an Energizer battery.
The main battery is located under the back lid, which you can remove with a hand movement. Under there is a Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 1050 mAh «hidden», providing five days of work in the everyday operation of phone calls and half an hour of listening to music. The batteries charge the device for up to two three-days of work.
Interface & Communications
When you first listen to the greeting sound of X520 you see that it is not worth waiting for anything complex in the phone, and after a couple of seconds, we already see the concise standby mode. Here everything is done without a hint of originality, but this simplicity in fact seems to be convenient. The menu may be represented by a boring list, or matrix of 12 simple icons.
Submenu and all other places of the interface are presented in the form of lists with nice animation cursor, and at the same time you can quickly move to the line through the numerical keys. It is a pity that the ease of navigation is not supported by the personalization, which allows one to change wallpaper in the standby mode or to choose a lighter theme, instead of a dark one. There are also seven profiles in this device. You can adjust each of the five profiles to your taste; you can choose offline and silent alert.
Calling service consists of a simple-to-use phone book that can store up to 1000 entries consisting of a name and a number. This Spartan filling of each cell is an offset with a «black» list of ignored numbers, user-friendly control scheme records, as well as simple editing functions of subscriber numbers in a call row. Accordingly, the call lists serve only for the most basic information, without any counters and tariff.
There are two separate SMS and MMS editors, creating simple multimedia messages, or banal text messages consisting of 1-4 length 60 characters.
Communications
Despite the fact that Xenium X520 belongs to the innovations of 2009 at an average price range, we cannot speak about its abilities to support networks of the third generation. Instead, you have to enjoy only GPRS-connection.
In addition to the wireless connection it has a normal mini USB-connector for charging and connection to a PC. In the latter case, the choice remains between the connection as an ordinary flash and expanded opportunities as a modem, which would require a software installation from the CD.
Utility and games
It has three separate alarms. Each of them can be configured to repeat on selected weekdays, or dwell on a single signal.
In addition, there is a good organizer with a calendar, voice recorder to record sounds, ability to set recording to playback at the selected time, the black list of unwanted numbers, calculator, stopwatch and timer. In general, all is quite ordinary, if you do not take into account the ease and simplicity of using the black list of numbers. If you have few minutes to rest, here are simple games such as funny Snake or Sudoku.
Multimedia
The music player will surprise you by the presence of sorting. The radio has a high quality sound, as well as memory for 20 stations. Naturally X520 has RDS and AF, so everything is quiet normal with radio.
Camera
The phone has a built-in 2-megapixel camera. In addition, there are several settings, including color effects and serial imaging. You can also save funny moments of your by recording movies with a resolution of 176 x 144, at 5-15 frames per second.
