| Sagem MW 3020 |
| General |
| Network | Gsm 900 / Gsm 1800 |
| Announced | 2001 |
| Status | Available |
| Size |
| Dimensions | 105 X 45 X 18 Mm, 79 Cc |
| Weight | 112 G |
| Display |
| Type | Monochrome Graphic |
| Size | Up To 7 Lines |
| | - Softkeys |
| Ringtones |
| Type | Monophonic |
| Amount | 43 + 5 Custom |
| Customization | Download |
| Vibration | Yes |
| Memory |
| Phonebook | 50 |
| Call Records | |
| Card Slot | No |
| | - 10 Short Messages |
| Data |
| Gprs | No |
| Hscsd | No |
| Edge | No |
| 3g | No |
| Wlan | No |
| Bluetooth | No |
| Infrared Port | No |
| Usb | |
| Features |
| Messaging | Sms |
| Browser | Wap |
| Clock | Yes |
| Alarm | Yes |
| Games | Yes |
| Colors | |
| Camera | No |
| | - T9
- Built-in Handsfree
- Calculator
- Curency Converter |
| Battery |
| | Standard Battery |
| Stand-by | 170 H |
| Talk Time | 130 Min |
|
Sagem - MW 3020Sagem MW 3020
Advantages Relatively small, Not a bad set of features for the price, Some good ringtones
Disadvantages Build quality certainly not up to scratch and menu system too quirky, Difficult system for text input and unresponsive keypad, Design rather too unsual and slightly old-fashioned
Before I bought an MW 3020 for a friend about two months ago, there were only two categories of Sagem phones: terrible and excellent. The former category contained my old Sagem MC 920, which was the first phone I ever owned, and just slid lower and lower in my estimation with every day that I owned it. The latter category included my current Sagem MYX-6 camera phone, which is probably the best phone I have ever owned, and is so far removed from the old MC 920 that is is sometimes hard to believe that they could be made by the same company. Now, I have to had to change that opinion. After using the MW 3020 for a couple of days, I can certainly report that there is something in the middle, and thus this very phone could be considered as mid-way between the two extremes. A lot of the old problems with the MC 920 had been solved, but there was still a long way to go before surprising the European mobile phone market with the excellent MYX-5 and MYX-6 in 2003. The MW 3020 is thus an intriguing phone which certainly merits further investigation.
First impressions are bad. The styling resembles a normal mobile phone which has been squashed and bent into a funny shape, which does not exactly make for admiring glances in the street when text messaging! The MW 3020 was released in quite a few colours, but mine was dark grey/black, and none of the colours are as good as those which were released with the MW 3020's superior relation, the MY 3020, which came with a blue screen, and was provided with two different covers as standard in the box. The MW 3020 has a traditional green screen, which gives the impression of being cheated every single time it is in use, since one is always aware of not having spent a little more money to get the much nicer MY 3020. Although the plastic sticker was still on the screen of my phone, the screen underneath was already cracked, and the back cover did not fit as snugly I was expecting. Worse was to come. The phone did turn on at a single press of the green on button, which also doubles as the answer key, and activates the loudspeaker function during a call, but immediately I could feel that the French flimsiness so prevalent in cars such as the Citroen AX and Peugeot 106. Upon using the keypad to enter text in the phonebook, the impression of less than solid build quality is reinforced, since the rubbery keys have a distinct lack of positive feel about them, which is so present in Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson phones. Sometimes the keys require multiple presses to peform simple functions such as deleting a letter, and every time the keypad is used the phone creaks alarmingly. Although the phone has a good weight about it, and thus it would not necessarily fall apart if dropped in a car park (it has this in common with my old MC 920), it is still irritating that even simple operations cannot be completed in silence. The internals of the phone are another thing to get used to.
The menu system is a cross between the ancient interface of the MC 920 and the slick modern software of the MYX-5. The central round key moves in four directions, up and down as normal, but moving the keypad left or right clears text or moves back a step and confirms the current action respectively, labelled 'C' and 'OK'. On the MC 920, this was perfectly easy to understand, and the only problem was that things which could be done in the current step were quite limited, as with the four-button Nokias like the 3210 and 3310. The three 'hot keys', if they can be so named, above the 'answer' and 'hang up' buttons and the central D-pad were actually used merely for short cuts on the standby menu, so were pretty much useless in most situations. However, Sagem obviously took note of this in the design process of the MW 3020 and MY 3020, as the hot keys now work all the time. When entering text, for example, the three keys will show various options, some of which are repeated by usi ng the 'C' and 'OK' keys, but not always. In an attempt to bring shortcuts to the menu system to make certain operations quicker, Sagem has produced one of the most inconsistent interfaces I have ever used. The central 'hot key' is now labelled with an @ symbol, since in standby mode, this takes the user directly onto the Internet, but it is also used during the menus to perform operations such as toggling vibrate on and off, which really did confuse me at times. I suppose that extensive use of the menus, which are helpfully numerically labelled with each step in the Nokia fashion to enable fewer key presses to get the most useful functions, would eliminate this problem somewhat, but it does not seem to make much sense. Fortunately, all the colour screen Sagem models have a refined interfaces which is much easier to use and far more conventional, so this brave experiment has been confined to its monochrome screen models. In the same way as there is a scroll bar in many menu systems these days, the MW 3020 uses a circular diagram to indicate one's position within each menu, which is just as well, as there are quite a few of them! Another gripe concerns text input.
Instead of using the standard method for putting in text, which is known as Multitap by most people (pressing the 7 key three times produces an R, for example), Sagem have stuck to the same old system that they had on the MC 920. Instead of pressing the key repeatedly until the desired character appears, one must hold the key down until it presents itself. This means that putting names into the phonebook, for example, is both counter-intuitive and slow, especially if the name contains a great deal of Ss. Fortunately, those who use T9 predictive text will be overjoyed to hear that the MW 3020 is so equipped. This completely eliminates the need to use old MC 920-style method of text input, and saves the phone from being a completely useless text machine. I, for one, had to abandon my principles of only using Multitap on mobile phones because of the various languages and complicated words that I need, and it certainly worked very well for what it is. There is good news for those who are still considering this phone after reading this far, however.
The ringtone selection, something of a Sagem strong point, is even improved from the already impressive selection on the MC 920. Some of the 41 ringtones of the aforementioned model make a reappearance on this one, and they now have been given names as opposed to numbers, as is preferred by today's phone users. Others are so good that they have been retained for even the top-of-the-range MYX-6, and certainly do not sound old-fashioned on my own phone. It is difficult to describe the quality of the ringtones without using the word quasi-polyphonic, as the MW 3020 does not support polyphonic ringtones, but nevertheless the melodies are played so rapidly that it is easy to fool someone into thinking that they are polyphonic. There are 43 in total, some of which are extremely well-programmed and certainly a long way from anything monophonic produced by Nokia or Siemens. There is also a ringtone composer and the ability to download extra ringtones, but I do not think that anyone in my experience has managed to do this.
There are also other useful features on the MW 3020, such as a currency converter, a calculator and three games. The office tools, such as the currency converter, work just as well on this phone as on the MYX-6, and can provide useful shopping advice when abroad. The games, principally the original version of Megabox Conquest, now a Sagem perennial, and Minigolf, are really not that bad. Megabox Conquest is a certainly a challenge, and the game moves at a much faster pace than on my MYX-6, and Minigolf, although quite difficult and confusing at times (it is yet another occasion where the keypad layout lets the phone down), does provide ample distraction on lon g journeys by public transport. The MW 3020 also has a speakerphone, which being a Sagem is one of the best in the business. It is possible to put the phone down next to a computer or on a coffee table and manage a perfectly audible and clear conversation without the need for one of those absurd handsfree-kits. Unfortunately, the speakerphone can suffer from distortion at the top end of the volume, like a bad speaker when played too loud, and this can also affect the ringtones, which is a shame, as they are quite good. I suppose that this is yet another example of the inherent cheapness that one can feel sometimes oozing through the phone.
In terms of components, there is no doubting that whilst the external aerial on the MW 3020 does the phone no favours in the looks department, it does ensure that it gets a decent signal just about everywhere. This is one of the strengths of Sagem phones, obviously looking back to the time when mobile phones were not very widely used in France and it was hard to get a signal, and has continued with the MYX-6. I did not get much of a chance to test the battery life since I only had the phone for about three days, but I would not imagine that it would be any better than average, since it is only a Nickel Metal Hydride one as opposed to the more modern lithium examples, but it is still acceptable at least. In order to conserve battery life, it is possible to enable screensavers, and this may just be one of the saving graces of the MW 3020. These are not just screensavers in the Nokia sense, but full animations, one of which concerns an aeroplane flying over land, and another which has a coyote getting caught in a trap. The French have always been into comics (or Bandes Dessinees as they are known over there), and this is a good example of that. The phone is also WAP enabled, although I did not get much of a chance to test it, since I only had a Pay As You Go SIM card inside, and was not feeling like spending money unnecessar ily.
Overall, the MW 3020 is not actually a bad phone. It certainly provides good value for money, as these days they can be picked up for under 30 pounds, and there are some useful features inside, such as the speakerphone, along with WAP, some decent games and predictive text. Unfortunately, fundamentals such as design, build quality, ease of use and text input have been somewhat neglected, which is a real shame, otherwise this phone would have sold much better than it did. It is excellent to see, however, that the newer Sagem models have answered some of these criticisms and built on the phone's own strengths. |
| Common misspellings on this brand: sabgem , savem |
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