Windows Phone Thoughts: Engadget Hands-On With Mobinnova Ice

"Up close, questionable engineering decisions start to come out of the woodwork. Take the d-pad, for example: sounds like an awesome idea, but the screen the Ice uses is so dim you can barely make it out under normal lighting. Not that you'd have to make it out, since -- as far as we can tell, anyway -- the only thing it ever shows is the d-pad, which begs the question why they're using a display here in the first place (we'd figured that opening Windows Media would trigger a transition to music controls, but no dice)."

There was a time when specs like that of the Ice would make it the top-of-the-heap. Now, it's at best middle-of-the-road. 528Mhz processor - check, 128MB RAM - check, 3MP camera - check, AGPS - check, accelerometer - that's so 2007! The d-pad looks funky, but as Engadget demonstrate it looks more like a gimmick than anything else. The only real distinguishing feature here is the TV-out, but that probably needs a separate dongle. All in all, not a bad outing - finesse will probably come with more experience.