We earlier shared pictures of Infibeam’s Phi and here is first part of the review [after playing with the device for 3 days].

I will stick to a very basic barebone review of the product (check out Phi specification) and will share a much more detailed review later.

What’s Great About Infibeam Phi?

The fact that Infibeam Phi is seven inches in width makes it a great device to read/browse and in general, consume media for on-the-go people. The device comes with Android 1.5 (sadly, but will upgrade sooner) and has resistive touch screen.

As far as media supported formats are concerned, the device pretty much supports the known formats like PDF, Text, CHM (for reading), MP3/WAV and WMA for audio and supports MP4, 3GP, AVI, MPEG, MOV, FLV, RMVB, MKV format for videos.

Reading books (ebooks/pdf etc) on the device is a great experience and here are a couple of interesting features that makes Phi really awesome:

– Light weight : The toy weighs only 180 gms and that makes it a great companion during travel and replaces my Pi e-book reader.

–Support for Android Marketplace – You can install application/games from Android marketplace and to me, that’s the most important factor in purchasing a tablet PC. Android marketplace hosts a lot of free apps (including Angry Birds beta version) and some of the apps I have already installed are SpeedView, Antigen (puzzle game), Book (Google Book Search) and NewsRob.

–Awesome quality :  The ‘media’ device has a very good audio/video quality and the in-built Memory of 8 GB provides the necessary cushion to play with the product.

What’s Not so Great?

– Resistive Touch – Okay. After playing with Nokia phones (N97, N900) for the last 1.5 years, I am used to resistive touch screens (and eagerly looking forward to capacitive touch devices). As far as Infibeam’s touch screen is concerned, it takes not more than 5 minutes to get accustomed to Phi’s touch experience (but that’s where the iPad comparison ends).

Final Verdict

At a price tag of Rs. 14,999, Infibeam Phi is a super awesome product that offers the much needed features for anybody who needs a tablet. The device is highly recommended for those who consume a lot of media and need a much bigger screen than a smartphone.

Eat this – the device is a lot cheaper compared to most of the smartphones and offers much more features than smartphones (it’s a tablet!).

Good to go, if you are the typical dude(tte) who hogs on media and applications.

Share your questions regarding the device here [detailed review in a week].

Check out more pictures of the device (click on the images for higher resolution).

Couple of things Phi Doesn’t Supports

• LAN, i.e. you need a Wireless Internet access.
• External Keyboard – you have to use the internal keyboard.
• No webcam.

Phi Specifications

• Length 190.5 mm
• Width 118.5 mm
• Height 14.8 mm
• Weight 332 gm
• Capacity (GB) 8, Expandable Memory 32 GB (TF / Micro SD Card )
• RAM 256 MB
• Processor ARM9 600MHz
• Display Type TFT LCD Flash
• Size 7.0 Inch
• Resolution 800 x 480
• Battery Type : Inbuilt
• Standard Battery Type : Li-Ion
• Battery Life for Music Playback(Hours) : 5
• Battery Life for Video Playback : 4
• Recharging Time (Hours) : 3
• Type of Charging : USB, AC