Beetel Xpert Connect GD530 - With a Lot of Glitches

The mobile phone market in India has definitely seen a boom and the low-priced segment has been one of the major contributors. Looking at this, we've seen a number of companies coming with budget priced phones that have some decent functionalities. Not surprisingly, Beetel has joined the bandwagon and has brought the Xpert Connect GD530, which we're going to look at today.

Design and Build Quality
The GD530 has a standard candy-bar form factor, but with the curved corners and the tapering edges at the top and bottom, the phone looks quite attractive. The sides of the phone have a chrome finish which give the handset a classy look. The bezel on the top of the screen is a little too thick, and Beetel could have given the handset a sleeker profile by eliminating that.

Desktop has six customizable shortcuts

Just below the display screen, there’s a section that holds all the navigation buttons and some shortcut keys, as well. At the right side of the GD530, there’s a 2.5 mm audio jack with the volume rocker that also doubles up as the navigation buttons when you’re in the menu. Between the volume keys, there’s a flashlight button which when held down, switches on the camera. Finally, there’s a mini-USB port for charging and transferring data to the mobile phone. Initially, the middle button looks like it’s a shortcut for the camera, but it doesn’t work that way. Rather it only functions for opening an application.

QWERTY keypad feels flimsy

While the design is quite nice, the build quality was something that didn’t impress us much. The navigation buttons over the QWERTY keypad feel very plasticky and cheap and the feel of the buttons are poor. You’ll clearly see some space between the screen over the navigation pad and this gap means that dust and dirt can enter easily. The QWERTY keypad itself is not too great. While the keys are big enough to press without any discomfort, they feel a tad flimsy. The labeling on the keys are a little unconventional, but are quite visible and the keypad also has backlighting so typing in the dark is convenient.  Usually when you use the handset with both hands, the back panel feels flimsy and loose.

Features
Interface
The GD530 runs on a Java interface which has the look and feel that most low-end Java-based mobile phones have. It’s definitely not very attractive or intuitive to use, but the interface functions smoothly. There wasn’t one instance where the phone hung or took a long time to open an application.

Snaptu works quite well

The main desktop has six shortcut icons and all of them are customizable by selecting other options that are available on the phone. The main menu can be viewed in the grid or list format and browsing between the menus and folders is quite easy.

It was a little weird that the User Profiles did not include a Silent Profile option. Also, all the profiles had the same ringtone ringing at the same volume. A little odd and funny this, but Sheila Ki Jawaani playing loudly in the office can definitely be quite embarrassing. I noticed another glitch while typing an SMS message where the Space button will for some odd reason set the message to send rather than put a space. So in short, you can’t really send messages of more than two words!