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Excalibur 3G Android Phone – Hands on review of an Android smartphone for the rest of us

Battery Life

The phone comes with two 1100mAh batteries, which are only rechargeable in the phone. With the phone set to check email every 15 minutes via 3G, about 30 minutes of calls and answering the odd email, I managed to get about 38 hours out of one battery. If I spent 5 hours listening to music (or on wifi), especially over Bluetooth, the phone would last about 14 hours and need recharging everynight.

The phone charges quite slowly, a dead phone will take about 3.5 hours to fully recharge via USB. Charging via the mains doesn’t speed it up either, the adapter just steps the voltage down to USB.

In Use

The Excalibur is powered by a Qualcomm 600MHz processor and I found the phone quite zippy with little to no lag. I played games while the music player was streaming over Bluetooth with no problems at all. In the 10 days or so I’ve been using it, the phone OS has not crashed, hung or lagged. Boot up time is a respectable 40 seconds, and it shuts down in about 5. Using the ringing volume buttons you can set the phone to just vibrate, or to not ring at all. It also has the obligatory flight mode. I yoinked out the 2GB card and tried an 8GB and 16GB card without any problems.

The trackball was a very welcome addition, and it made one handed web surfing very easy. The only issue I had was the length of the trackball travel when you pressed it. If you pressed too quickly the cursor often missed the link as the ball moved. Patience it seems is still a virtue. Rotating the phone rotates the screen with a short delay (~1 second), and it can only be rotated in one direction (so the trackball is on the right).

The phone has both GPS and A-GPS and it seemed to lock on very quickly especially geotagging. A cute app I found in the AndAppStore, turned the phone into a GPS and electronic compass as well as showing you which satellites were locked on and their signal strength. Using this you could clearly see how quickly the phone locks onto them from a cold start.

Receiving calls, the sound quality was ok, but unremarkable. A few people complained that the microphone was quite noisy even in gentle breezes. With the handset against my ear the speaker needed to be turned almost all the way down as it was quite loud, raising the volume just seemed to add distortion, and not much volume. The handsfree speaker, located on the back of the phone, was very tinny but audible enough, and I was able to use it as a hands-free without issue.

The music player worked really well, and quickly found new music I had added to the card over USB. The video player didn’t like anything except 3gp, h.263 and mp4 videos but happily played these, even if it had been recorded on a different camera phone. I recoded some long videos into 3gp using the iPhone settings in Super and they played beautifully at 720kbps. I couldn’t find a codec pack on the AndAppStore for Xvid or Divx. It wouldn’t play them out of the box.

Connecting the phone to a PC mounted the phone as a CD-ROM drive (as well as charging it). On the CD drive were a bunch of files but no documentation, so I ran the setup.exe file to see what would happen. After a bunch of dialog boxes in Chinese, I found that the phone’s micro SD card could be accessed via USB. The app also seems to allow syncing and tethering but I didn’t experiment. The application should auto-run if your antivirus allows it. I moved files on and off and could access the micro SD card completely.

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Pros

  • Fully featured unlocked touchscreen smartphone
  • Great looking screen and UI with familiar Android underneath
  • 3.5mm stereo/hands-free jack
  • Physical trackball
  • Fast GPS and geotagging of photos
  • The microSD card can be accessed via USB
  • USB charging with some good undocumented USB features including syncing and tethering
  • VGA video camera, camera low light performance quite good

Cons

  • Resistive touchscreen, however it’s still quite usable
  • Running Android 1.6
  • Microphone can be noisy
  • 5Mp interpolated photos aren’t great, stick with 2Mp setting. Flash is terrible. Videos can be grainy
  • Battery life not spectacular but on par for a 3G phone with large-ish touchscreen, spare battery is a nice touch
  • USB charging is quite slow

Conclusion

The Excalibur is a great phone and for US$350, you get a contract-free, unlocked Android smartphone with just about everything you could need. Sure it’s running version 1.6 of Android and there’s no Android Market but after a couple of weeks using it I’m smitten. I know we’re all drooling over Desires, X10s and Incredibles, but if your budget just won’t stretch that far then the Excalibur will more than do. The only thing I’d recommend is to wait until they start shipping with the Android Market onboard the phone and then you’ll have the best of all worlds. The Excalibur is highly recommended.

Tags: gadget, chinavasion, android+phone, review, excalibur+phone, phone+review

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34 Comments

  • I stumbled upon this blog from Yahoo and just wanted to say thanks for the reviews you posted on this blog. I am contemplating about purchasing one myself.

  • Thanks for the great review! I looked at getting a Excalibur and after your review I have ordered one. Looks like you can upgrade the OS from 1.6 to 2.2 or 2.3 but I don't know enough yet to safely do this. Maybe if a few of us get together on a forum we can discus it.

    • Nice one Andy, I'd love to hear what you think of it.

      As I said in the article I've asked Chinavasion to let me know as soon as the Android update is available and I'll be sure to pass it on.

    • just got my phone and dying to hear about any updates for the phone!

  • Hi Dan. Just got the phone and so far so good. Just getting my head round it. Have tried installing Google Maps as the Chinavasion website says you can via the marketplace but I cant find it. Have you tried yourself?

    • The phone Chinavasion sent me doesn't have access to the Android Marketplace, and as far as I know that means you can't access it. Unfortunately that means you can't get Google Maps on the phone unless you reflash it somehow. I mentioned that in the review.

      The phone is a Smart F910, and screenshots from other vendors do show the Google Marketplace app on the home screen, but the one I was sent doesn't have it. I've installed apps from the AndAppStore, and SlideME. I've done some searching but I can't find mention of reflashing the F910 as yet.

    • Acually Dan-o, I have a feeling that if you do a Google search for Google Maps.apk you will find the files you need. Just install them to the SD card, navigate there via a File Manager and click on the .apk file to start the install. I'm not sure whether that will work with this particular handset, but it's a good option for finding Android apps when there's no Marketplace listing available.

      The issue with the Marketplace has something to do with handset signatures (I think). If the phone doesn't have the right sig, then the marketplace apps for that sig won't appear on the phone. Someone who knows this stuff much better than me will probably come along and correct me. :)

    • Andy/Adrian – After searching for "google maps apk" I found and installed the first one on the search results and it works very well. The only thing I can't do is login to access MyMaps. See Nigel's comment above.

    • Stay tuned Andy, new info is coming our way from Chinavasion.

  • Looks like the phone is manufactured by Foxconn and has as sold under the name of "Vibo A688" for the Vibo Telecom company in Taiwan.

  • Just ordered my phone and wondering if anyone has tried to flash it up to 2.0 or 2.1 yet, I am pretty keen to get it up to the latest version I can but have not played around with Android before (ex windows mobile user).

    • I was thinking about trying this method to upgrade the Android version, hopefully if things go wrong I can use Nandroid backup to restore my ROM.

      Does anyone have comments or suggestions about this?

      Cheers,
      Adrian

  • I got the maps working using an "alternate version". Do a search for 'brut13.apk' and you should find it. Works fine on the Excalibur. I would guess an upgrade to 2.0,2.2 etc would need a version specific to the hardware platform. Correct me if I am wrong. Overall though it is a great phone. androidfreeware.org is a good source of apk's. A few features missing like some indication of missed calls and sms waiting but installed "missed calls" which has lots of configuration features like LED and audio reminders. Battery life is not that great but then I am using the WLAN heaps. I found an outer case to protect it. Belkin leather sleeve for iphone. It needs a bit of modification and is a fairly tight fit but it came with a screen cover and gives the phone some much needed protection.

  • Don't waste your hard earned cash on knockoff phones. Get an iphone4, you won't be sorry.

  • Hi. Guess you must be the caller in this video asking for an iphone 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg) Worth having a look guys. Hey, I can even make calls with my Android without having to cover it in a rubber case :) Cheers Andy

  • I see chinavasion has upgraded the OS to 2.1, but they wont give me any information about upgrading it :-(

    • Stay tuned Adrian, I've just been speaking with the guys there and we should have some information very soon.

    • Any luck Dan? I have been traveling and have not been able to follow up with Chinavasion at this time, the last time I spoke to them they didn't want to pass on the build information. I so hope you had more luck than I did!

    • Hi Adrian,

      Chinavasion have posted a how-to on their blog if you haven't found it yet: http://blog.chinavasion.com/index.php/6716/upgrad

      I haven't tried it but will soon.

  • is this phone compatible with hspa system with Bell Canada or Telus in Canada?

    • No. If you buy this phone for use in Canada, you'll have to install a Rogers or Fido sim card in it. That being said, the signal strength is great because of the 3g towers being set up in the big cities.

  • Love this 3g phone for use in Canada. Great service from Chinavasion but they should do a better job of warning people about the lack of access to the android market app. For most users, it's simple enough to find the apk files through other methods than the market but it is a hassle (for the free apps). I ordered the Excalibur 2 weeks ago and got the 2.1 android system running on it.

  • ALL FYI, the excalibur from chinavision can be EASILY upgraded to latest OFFICIAL firmware that includes ALL GOGGLE APPS (market, gmail, etc). anyone interested leave a valid email i will reply with instructions.

    • So I tried to upgrade to the newest rom but during the installation (with the phone still plugged via USB) there is an error message (step 2 out of 3). Im thinking that I should maybe try the non GSM version that is on the apanda website? The phone I have is for sure running 2.1 but I was hoping to upgrade to get the market…

    • Hi David, Please can you provide me the instructions to Upgrade it , my email ID is [email protected]

    • Ok so everything is good. The upgrade worked perfectly and makes this phone even better. Good stuff David, thanks.

    • Hi David, that is fantastic news!!! Can you please send the instructions through to [email protected] Many thanks!!!

    • David, Can you please email the Upgrade instructions for Android 2.2 on the Excalibur to [email protected]
      Kind Regards

    • Hi David,

      If you want to email the directions to me I'll post them with my review of the Excalibur Android 2.1. Email address is up top next to my name.

      Dan.

    • Please send instructions to [email protected]

  • david, can you please email those instructions to [email protected]

  • would also love instructions to upgrade firmware. many thanks [email protected]

  • Could you send the upgrade instructions to me too: [email protected]
    I also want to know if the official formware from google will work with other china phone hardware platforms

  • Upgrade instructions here
    http://boston-mania.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-u

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