So the story of how this review came out was a surprising one, a week ago i was checking my Youtube Subscriptions, one was of the IAAPA Expo from Namco's point of view, which you can see below:
Now when watching this it suddenly occured to me, in an expression of "WAIT, NAMCO MAKE ANDROID PHONES" and so after looking around and even looking at the
namco site. I decided to look into buying the NAM-GEAR G40C, now i did find on on
ebay for £20 + £4.95 P&P . So i did bid on it and then it came to Wednesday which then i won the auction, paid £29.95 for it over paypal 5 hours later and was PM'med that it would arrive either Tuesday or Wednesday, which would of been a shame since i've got major plans for those days.
The Arrival
But i was working on Saturday and i got a delivery through the post, it turns out the seller used 2nd class signed for and then it was with me. Although i wasn't going to review it during work, since i would end up distracted and it would of been annoying for everyone, i did it later on in the evening, after watching Die Another Day. For Now, you can enjoy the pictures of the Phone's outer packaging below:
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| The front of the box for the phone. |
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| The right side of the box, to show off the slimness of the phone |
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| The top of the box, with the Namco Nam Gear Logo |
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| The Left side of the box, with the Name and model. |
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| The Rear of the box, which include the description, the Specs and the barcode |
So the packaging is quite clean and simple which makes it easier to see and it does have that Namco feel to it. But then it was later on and i decided to get the video review done, which i show you how it looks as well as test it and try the internet as well as a few applications and games
The Unboxing:
Now the box was easy to open up and the phone and manuals were the first thing you would see when opening it, Enjoy some pictures of the Manual, there isn't much i can say here, it actually is quite a fair bit more documented than laptops and even some of the other high end android phones have, which for the novice is quite a bonus.
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| The front of the Manual |
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| The first few pages - which include some notes as well as the features and picture of the phone. |
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| This part of the manual is more on the how to part, like setting up the Wifi, using bluetooth and how to even text someone |
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| The final pages of the manual, the Technical Specs, which actually might not be all as it seems, but i'll mention that int a minute, This is a good thing with some namco products, manuals help everything. |
Before i get to the main point of the phone itself, there was actually some things extra that it did come with, which is the standard with most other phones and the like. But one thing was slightly different, the fact it came with 2 different USB Chargers instead of the one, but that makes sense since this was also sold to european arcades as well as British ones.
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The contents of the box, which includes:
1 x UK USB Charger
1 x EU USB Charger
1 x Micro USB Cable
1 x Pair of Headphones
1 x Battery (Not shown since by this point, i had fitted it into the phone
1 x Warranty Document |
Now this was quite a neat amount to get going with, sure the headphones are rubbish and the cable is starting to wear itsway out without even being used ones, well i did fall asleep with them in my ears overnight, to test them on my main phone. The USB Chargers are just your bog standard 5V 2A USB which isn't ideal for Tablets. But now on to the Phone itself.
The phone is quite a slim shape with the stock Android Navigation Bar buttons as the soft keys, along with a power button at the top, volume keys on the right side ofthe phone, the Micro USB and 3.5mm jack was along the top and the speaker at the back, along with the NAM GEAR Logo.
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| The front of the phone, with the home screen, notice is looks very much like 2.3 (Gingerbread) |
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| The Back of the phone, with the trademarks as well as a camera and a speaker |
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| The back of the phone with the cover off and the battery inside, oh and a 2GB SD card i had somewhere, its a simple look, nothing too advanced, but actually quite similar to my phone |
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| The Right side of the phone, to show how slim it is and how the volume buttons looks |
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| The left side of the phone |
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| The top of the phone, with the Power button, the Micro USB port and the 3.5mm Headphone jack |
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| The bottom of the phone, which has a microphone and thats about it |
Using the phone.
The phone had some charge in the battery so it was a simple case of turning it on, the setup was simple, although me typing on the keyboards was quite bad, but it was quite responsive for a single core phone. The Browser worked fine, it loaded up the BBC and Google quite fast. Installing Youtube was neat as well, although the keyboard problem was the worst at this point, it played
my recent video fine.
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| Trying Youtube out on the phone, it worked fine but the keyboard i don't get on with |
Playing Games however, was not too bad, i mean i only tried
Frisco Frenzy and that played reasonably well, although installing that and
Adobe Air made the phone only have 14mb left to install apps and only 2 apps i installed could be moved to the 2GB SD Card, of course if the phone was easy to root, which after a few hours, its not as easy, it can ease that to a degree
Using the Camera was quite ok, it was slightly similar to the camera app on my phone but the quality, well it was DISGUSTING. i'm not kidding, look below:
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| Just a test pic of the box and my main phone |
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| This was after a sunday roast as a snack or desert, |
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| This was of my garden |
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| This was a selfie video clip |
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| The info on the Camera for the garden image |
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| The information on the selfie video i recorded, which is worse than the front camera on my main phone |
I'm going to be honest here, i didn't test much else, the vibration was quite strong, the sound was reasonable as well as the torch being useful, which might help you in life or death situations.
The Geeky bit:
Now with the phone saying it was a MT6515, i found out it WAS NOT. Well to root the phone, you need to install CWM and although i've failed when attempting it, i've got something it didn't mention to me. The phone is actually using a MT6575 processor instead, either that or MTK Droid Tools is lying but i'm not sure, but Droid Tools was quite unstable when the phone was connected.
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| MTK Droid Tools showing the phone when connected, with the information as well as the fact i could possibly root it, but that didn't work, oh and also it kept crashing when the phone was connected, so using this was quite difficult |
It took a few hours trying various thing but alas there was no avail.
The Verdict:
So the phone has been under my day for over a day and it is quite a good phone, for under £30, it was a cheap buy, but it is a basic internet phone, maybe too basic for a 5 year old. But it was a check to see Namco's entry into the market, even though it was a chinese basic type.
Pros:
- Nice sized screen
- Quite responsive for the basic internet use over wifi
- Has playstore
- A Torch
Cons:
- Not 4.1
- No GPS and No 3G (which is bad since most phones are now starting out for 4G)
- VERY LOW ROM SPACE (i only installed 5 apps and it was pretty much full)
- Feels like Android 2.3.7 from the icons and settings menu
- No front Camera
- Poor Rear Camera
So i give this phone a 5/10, mainly because of the cost of the phone makes it reasonable to have these missing features, oh and since it has the Namco Brand linked to it, as well as having a MediaTek processor, which means with more expertise than i have, it could run 4.1 and be a better phone.
See you in the Next Review
omracer
