Tools Of The Trade: The Primus 898 mobile phone

The cost of calling an international number has fallen dramatically over the past few years, with low-cost carriers offering alternatives to BT. But calling an overseas number from a mobile remains an expensive proposition.

The cost of calling an international number has fallen dramatically over the past few years, with low-cost carriers offering alternatives to BT. But calling an overseas number from a mobile remains an expensive proposition.

Phone company Primus has combined its experience of offering low-price international calls from landlines with its own range of mobile handsets. The idea is simple: buy a (SIM-free) phone from Primus, and then use the company's cheap Global Communications Service (GCS) for dialling internationally, and your own operator's SIM for domestic calls.

To make matters easier still, Primus has added a special "P" key to its phones: pressing this provides immediate access to the GCS network. Calls to popular destinations, such as the US and Australia, are surprisingly cheap at 2.5 pence a minute. Ringing France and Germany costs 3p a minute, as long as the call is to a landline.

Calls to overseas mobiles can be considerably more expensive - 23p a minute to Germany's E-Plus network, for example - but this is something that is largely outside Primus's control.

The Primus 898 phone works well with a range of networks' SIM cards, but using a model that is not optimised for a particular network means having to accept a number of compromises, including more complicated access to voicemail and the networks' WAP or GPRS portals. But the navigation system on the 898 is efficient enough, even though it is rather too easy to hit the "P" key when you mean to hit "enter".

The battery life of the 898 is respectable and should deliver three or four days' use without a recharge. The phone is also small, light and neat. But the screen and camera are not up to the standards of the latest Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Motorola units. The 898 has only a 300K-pixel-resolution camera, while top-of-the-range models from the leading manufacturers now offer one megapixel or better.

And there are other, more serious limitations with the handset, especially for business users. For one thing, there is no email program bundled with the phone, making webmail the only option. Over GPRS this is both slow and expensive.

And although the 898 is a GPRS-compatible handset, it has no wireless connections. This makes the job of connecting it to a computer, for use as a modem, that much harder. Without Bluetooth or even infra-red, the only option for the 898 is to buy a USB cable; it is not supplied as standard.

The lack of Bluetooth also rules out using the phone with a Bluetooth headset, and again Primus does not even supply a basic, wired headset in the package. Most mobiles come with at least this very basic accessory.

The idea of the "P" key is excellent, although anyone considering a Primus mobile should check whether their operator allows calls to the Primus access number, as this can be blocked. Operators might also charge for calling this number. Even if they do, however, the combined cost is still likely to be far below the operator's own international charges.

Anyone who makes a lot of overseas calls from a mobile will benefit from using the 898. But this handset has too many shortcomings to use as a day-to-day business phone.

THE VERDICT

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Pros: GCS calling rates are very competitive.

Cons: no Bluetooth, infra-red or email program.

Price: £149.99.

Contact: www.primusmobiles.com