Earlier in the week, my present from Cubic Telecom CEO Pat Phelan arrived: Cubic Mobile. It is a Cubic Telecom-branded DP-L10 from Pirelli Broadband Solutions complete with a MAXroam SIM. It comes with everything you see here:




This review is going to focus more on the handset itself and less on the MAXroam service, which I will review in a future article.

The phone, which will be available for 99 euros in a few weeks, is a low-end Tri-Band GSM phone (missing GSM 850 for US usage). The phone is built similar to many WiFi-only phones I've played with. It doesn't have the solid feeling that my Nokia phones have, but for what it is and what it costs, it's more than adequate. It's an unlocked device, so you can use whatever SIM you'd like.

What makes it special is that the phone is also WiFi-enabled. Calls will occur over WiFi if one of the configured WiFi access points is available. Otherwise, the phone will use GSM to make calls. You can configure the phone to prefer GSM or WiFi, as well as be exclusive to GSM or WiFi.

According to the box, WiFi calls are free to other Cubic Mobile customers and as low as one eurocent a minute to everyone else. Tests I've with WiFi calls have superb audio quality. It's nice that Cubic is passing the savings realized from avoiding the GSM network onto the customer.

I did not get much in the way of documentation in the box. I am hoping that is a function of this being a closed beta versus a shipping product. I was given one sheet of paper that briefly explained how to configure my WiFi access point into the phone as well as a little card that came with the SIM that explains how to make and receive calls. Phone documentation is included on the CD that came in the package. Still, a Cubic-branded sheet explaining the basics of the phone would be a nice addition to the retail package.

The phone also has a VGA camera. It takes pictures and will send them over MMS, but unless you use the really lame Windows software that's included with the phone, you can't get the pictures off. It doesn't take great pictures, as you can see, but it takes them:




Given the MAXroam value proposition, this is a respectable handset. Of course, there's nothing preventing you from using the MAXroam service with your existing handset. Or using this phone with any other GSM provider.

The only major change I would make to the handset is to make it a quadband GSM device. Particularly in the US, GSM 1900 simply doesn't cut it for nationwide coverage. However, this device should be more than adequate in the European markets it is more geared for.