Cell Phone Reviews: Pantech Impact

Posted by Geronimo Boosh on March 2, 2010 · Leave a Comment

AT&T get together with a company named Pantech and makes a few phones of their own at times. They did a good job with this particular one called the “Pantech Impact”. You can get it in the boys or the girl´s version. Seriously, it comes in blue or in pink. Is this a new marketing ploy by AT&T ? Read on to find out the details.

The Pantech is a different phone. It has two screens, one inside and one outside, reminiscent of the LG VX9900. The outside screen is smaller and has a haptic keypad. “Haptic” simply means it responds to touch. The outer screen has a full glossy treatment that looks good, but does not do a whole lot. When you open this clamshell style phone there is a bigger screen that has much better coverage. The inside screen is rated at 400 by 240 pixels and is 2.6 inches in size and using TFT technology. This phone is not described as a PDA, but it is close to one. It also does not really qualify to be called a smartphone. It is designed around messaging, and has the proper equipment for this job.

The Pantech Impact is going to connect its users to 2G and 3G networks. The 2G networks are accessed in quad band and the 3G in tri band. It also has HSPDA, GSM and WCDMA modes. Wi-Fi, sadly, is not included.

The camera is a two megapixel unit and has video but no flash. You have eighty megabytes of internal memory available and a MicroSD card slot to take advantage of. You can use a 32 gigabyte card for a truckload of usable memory. The keyboard is the best part of this phone. It is a QWERTY unit with a nice feel to the keys and has lots of keyboard shortcuts. Some people call the keyboard “amazing”.

The negative things about the Pantech Impact are few. It drops calls. The front screen is too small. It is overall a strange layout, but easy to get accustomed to, so that may not be so negative as it sounds. The battery is only able to give five hours of talk time. The size of the Lithium Ion battery is just 950 mAh.

The Pantech Impact weighs only 4.41 ounces. That is 125 grams if you are not in the United States. That is about average for the major smartphones in the world. The two screens on this phone probably have something to do with the extra weight. It is 0.7 inches ( 17.8 millimeters ) thick, which is also just a bit above average.

The good definitely outweighs the bad with this AT&T Pantech phone. It is created in plastic and is being sold cheaply. You can get it for around $90 dollars with a rebate from AT&T. It is a good contender in the lower range of phones that can be used for a lot more than just talking.