PCD CDM8635 – Entry level phone
The name of this phone is quite awkward even considering the haphazard model names that manufacturer’s are giving to their products these days. This handset is made for entry level users and the feature set is quite basic. I am not so enthusiastic about such low end handsets since I am a tech freak and yearn for high end gadgets. But I have been getting a lot of e-mails asking for the such basic phone reviews too so I am blogging here about them. There are people who don’t need a smartphone and are just looking for an entry level handset for making phone calls. PCD CDM8635 is made for such people. It is targeted more towards the senior citizens; the phone has feature inside for them.
Thinking from an entry level phone users point of view, the hardware and software features of this phone are quite impressive, you get every thing that you want. The phone has a clamshell design and there is a display on the lid too. It is bigger than what you normally get on such entry level phones. This screen shows you time, date, battery status, signal strength, etc. On the side, there is a headphones jack, a button for the camera and dedicated voice command button. The latter two are located quite close to each other and look a lot like a volume rocker key. On the other side, there is microUSB charger jack and volume rocker button.
On the back of PCD CDM8635, there is a 1.3 megapixel camera and picture quality is not that good. I am not complaining much here since the camera has a low resolution and this is an entry level phone. But these days, I am observing that even two megapixel resolution cameras are getting rare. Manufacturers are putting 3.2 MP cameras in their phones since they give better photo quality. This camera has been given just to take photos for the photo caller ID and it does that job very well. But I won’t recommend using this phone for anything else.
There are two themes on the PCD CDM8635, easy to read and easy to use. The display is quite colorful with large font. The font is kept big so that people having eyesight problems will be able to read it easily. There are shortcuts on the display too. Below the display, there are four shortcut buttons for speaker phone on/off, alarm, photo gallery, and zoom button for zooming in to a text field. This is again for the people who have a bad eyesight. These four buttons are located directly beneath the display on the upper half of the phone itself.
On the lower half of the PCD CDM8635, there is the navigation array which consists of the four way navigation button with OK button in the middle, two soft keys and two more special buttons. One of them calls 911 and the other one gives you three emergency contacts list that you have entered. You got to be careful with these special buttons because they are located at a place where phones usually have Talk and End buttons. I accidentally pressed the 911 button assuming it was the End button. The Talk and End buttons are actually located beneath the navigation array. There is the clear button between these two buttons.
