BT Verve 450 Twin
| Designer | The Art and Design Partnership Ltd |
| Dates | 05/07 |
Description
The Verve 450 Twin is a digital cordless land line telephone. Form: The base unit is compact. The face of the base unit and handset is black in colour, where the speaker,operations keys and telephone cradle are located is rectangular almost square with bevelled edges along the side. The speaker is a square with black circular hard plastic gauze, then there is a rectangular strip with LED display and lights operations keys, are all contained within a silver trim, at right angles to the rectangular form of the base unit. The operations keys are made up of a little circle key for paging the handset which sits diagonally to a large circle key for volume control, rewind and fast- forward which in turn is encased by four rectangular keys diagonally opposed to each other,for delete, play, stop and on/ off.
There is a slight indentation the same shape as the base unit within the cradle for ease of picking up the handset. The handset is located next door to the operations panel on the answer machine. The cradle also has a ledge for dual positioning the phone. The face of the base unit then sits upon another rectangle which has been extruded and houses the two leads, one for the power and one for the telephone wire and comprises two little round extruded feet and a stand so that the base unit reclines at a comfortable angle.
The handset is a slim long rectangle with beveled edges like the base unit, with an ellipse at the top with a flat and a protruding edge, the bottom is the same but has 2 small squares dug out of the surface for the recharge pins. The handset's face also has a rectangle area with silver trim, set diagonally opposite to the one on the unit when the handset is in its base.
The silver trim on the base contains a small beveled out square for the speaker, rectangular LED screen which incidentally is the same shape as the base unit. Then you have a medium sized circular key to surrounded by 7 function keys making, you guessed it, practically the same shape as the base unit except the top middle key is more rounded. The keypad is square, lies just beneath the silver rectangle area and comprises of the standard twelve rectangle keys. However the eight outer keys lieing along the side of the handset are also beveled meet the rest of the beveled edge of the handset. The back of the handset has a small extruded circular badge, a medium sized gauged square and a rectangular battery cover.
Functionality
This particular model comprises of two handsets, which have a range of 300 meters outside and 50 meters indoors, and a base unit. The base unit doubles as an answer machine, with 15 minutes digital recording time and a handset recharger. The telephone comes with a hands free option. The telephone can store up to 200 of your most frequently used calls, has caller display and text messaging with up to 20message storage facility .The 1st handset can be positioned either standing up or reclining in the base unit.
Usability The telephone wire and power cable are situated at an easy reach. The base unit and the phone when sitting in its cradle are so ergonomically designed at the correct angle that it feels very comfortable and easy to use. The symbols on the answer machine and handsets are very self explanatory and the functions are so easy and quirk to use, and that is coming from a technophobe. The handsets sits comfortably in your hand and you can operate the keys with just your thumbs without straining. The unit comes with two handsets which is very usefull if you are in the kitchen cooking or in the bedroom.
A Personal View
I like it because it is compact and doesn't take up much room on your desk. You can speak to the person on the other end whilst sitting at the drawing board slavishly working away on your designs. It looks very stylish, sleek and professional. I particularly like the black colour and silver trim. The whole unit is very unobtrusive until it rings, but even the polyphonic ring tones sound nice. It seems to me like BT have pulled all the stops out on this telephone and have gone along to a design house and said Look we want something as close to perfection as you can get in every aspect: functionality, ergonomically and aesthetically pleasing. The art and design partnership have certainly ticked all the right boxes, with this one. The whole unit is just simply balanced in every way right down to the form. The way all the shapes have been designed to balance each other. The way they have gone out of there way to to make the whole experience of using the phone as comfortable and stress free as they can in physically touching the buttons, using the answer machine and scrolling through the list of functions, which in today's hectic world and my life is a very big deal. I would even go so far as to say that it deserves to be a style icon and win a few awards.
Context
Consider the Betacom G11, there just is no comparison, ok it is about £30 cheaper at around £45, but I might as well of brought it from a toy shop, boy did they see me coming. The whole phone, and I use the term very loosely, looks ugly like a megalith staring at you saying I'm here and I am going to make your life a misery. The whole feel of the phone screams cheap and NASTY !!!!. In my student world £45 is not cheap. If I was the Sultan of Brunei £45 is not cheap. It feels all plastic like the whole thing is just about to crumble into you hands. You struggle to make the phone sit in the cradle properly and just when you think you have lined the charging points set up right, nope, arghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! your blood pressure sky rockets and your head explodes. You definitely don't get that with the BT verve, this phone of the gods sits in two positions, reclining as if it was sitting in a deck chair on the beach, nice and relaxed, or standing to attention, up right and ready to go at a moments notice, like a Marine, big strong and dependable. The G111, as ugly as it's name, says ok I might give you a couple of months if you are lucky. The Verve says ok I'm here to do a job of work, I'm not going to get in your way and I will be around for a good while yet, can I wipe that sweat of your brow sir!!!. The G111 does try to redeem it self by having a multi coloured screen but even that looks tacky and as clumsy as scrolling through their functions. I am sorry to say this but I think the budget must of run out in the design department or they exceeded their brief in simplicity terms. The display is as plain and dreary as a wet weekend, not much effort has been put into it, its just not as pretty as it could be. It is not bad if that is the one and only criticism I can make about the BT Verve 450 as it takes pride of place on my desk. As for the Betacom G111 it will get lost in the abyss of my kitchen cupboard and forgotten about until it gets disposed of appropriately.
Links
{www.shop.bt.com} - BT Verve 450 twin product description
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| Author: | Thomas McClure | Date: | 13th March 2008 |