INQ 3G Mini review

INQ has been around for a while, offering social networking phones to 3. with the Skypephone S2 and NQ1.

The INQ1, the UK company's first device sold pretty well, although it did lack in some obvious features, such as 3G technology and an easy to use OS.

Now INQ has followed the advancing trend in social networking, ensuring the INQ Mini 3G includes Twitter functionality, as well as specially designed Java-based Skype, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger apps.

The screen on INQ devices have never been bad, and the display on the Mini 3G is no different. It's not the largest screen on the market at 2.2-inches, but it's crisp and bright for such a budget phone. One rather large issue we found was that the text is too small for even 20/20 vision.

The homescreen is intuitive, with a scrolling taskbar at the bottom for quick access to the main features and apps such as Twitter, Facebook, Skype and your contacts.

At the top of the homescreen there's Yahoo Weather - simply input your location and you'll be presented with the current weather conditions. Below that there's the usual date and time widget.

The INQ Mini 3G's grid-based menu can only be described as kitsch. Each square is blindingly brightly coloured with a random icon on it. These icons are pretty tricky to decipher and the tiny text just adds to the confusion.

The best way to find out what's behind each menu item is to open it and browse its contents. Unfortunately, this is one feature that can't be customised or changed in any way.

Hardware-wise, the INQ Mini 3G feels cheap and plasticky, though solid.

A speaker is badly positioned on the rear, muffling any sound coming from it if you have the phone on a surface, while the single mini USB port for hooking up to a computeer, charging and using earphones is a little irritating.

There's a handy jog button on the right side of the handset, above the camera key that moves you through the scrolling taskbar in a much more effective way than the circular nav key, which is sharp and uncomfortable to use.

The keypad itself is spongy, with what seem to be air filled keys. They're easy to press, but not particularly comfortable for typing large chunks of text. The keyboard is perfect for writing short statuses or tweets. What the Mini 3G would really benefit from is a sliding Qwerty keyboard like on the similarly priced LG KS360.

The INQ Mini 3G's camera is poor, producing grainy, dark photos but multimedia comes second to social networking on this particular device.

The newest app addition to the INQ Mini 3G is its Twitter application. It's well implemented, making use of the handset's multitasking abilities. However, don't expect anything as fast as the Toshiba TG01 with its Snapdragon processor or the iPhone 3GS.

The Twitter app itself is pretty basic in comparison to other Twitter applications available on Android, BlackBerry, iPhone or Windows Mobile. It's easy to reply to @ messages, retweet or DM a follower, but this is where the talents end.

The text is too small and therefore hard to read and you won't find anything as technical such as a picture posting. As other smartphone apps manage to do this, it's a wonder why you can't post pictures using yfrog or Twitpic.

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