Display & Audio
Mogul’s display is a 2.8” touchscreen capable of 320 x 240 resolution 65,000 colors. While the color resolution is on the low-end of current handsets, it didn’t affect the display much in practice. I found the screen to be sharp with good color saturation and plenty of brightness in almost all lighting conditions. Text, graphics, and images all displayed clearly and accurately, and the only real trouble I had was the aforementioned jerky video playback inside of Windows Media Player.
Mogul’s touchscreen sensor also worked well. Though using a stylus is obviously the preferred method, I was able to navigate most situations with a fingertip (though scrolling through web pages via arrows located in the corners of the screen was tough with my big digits). The only problems I consistently had came with clicking links in Internet Explorer, which I’m pretty sure was a function of the browser itself and not Mogul’s hardware.
The handset shipped with a leather holster case and a stick-on screen protector. I didn’t apply the protective film and generally carried Mogul in a pocket instead of the holster during my three weeks or so of testing. At the end of my tests the display was still scratch free.
I tested the CDMA Mogul in Nothern California, Las Vegas, Nevada, New York City, and in homes, cars, and on beaches between New Haven, CT and Wellfleet, MA. Voice calls were generally loud and clear with a little bit of fuzz here and there but no notable reception problems or dropped calls. The internal speaker was plenty loud for voice calling, but the speakerphone was just okay at best: the one time I tried using it in a group conference call situation we wound up switching to a land line in order to better hear the other parties.
A set of wired stereo earphones with an inline microphone is included. The phones connect to Mogul via a mini-USB plug, and a USB-to-2.5mm adapter is also included. I used the earphones quite a bit for handsfree calling and found them to be a bit better than your run of the mill stock earbuds in terms of both comfort and audio quality. The earphones also make for decent music listening.
Mogul supports mono and stereo Bluetooth audio, and I had no trouble pairing headsets with the device. Audio quality over Bluetooth was very good, both for voice calling (mono) and music playback (stereo).
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4.5
