Design-wise, there is no “wow” factor as this candy-bar style camera phone sports a classic shiny look in a silver-and-white plastic casing that would appeal to business people with a conservative taste in phones

At 104g, IMHO the myx6-2 is also slightly on the bulky side for females who usually tote around petite handbags, but it would definitely fit snugly in a man’s pants pocket

Nevertheless, like with its higher-end sibling the MyX-8, many of my friends were bowled over by its large and beautiful 176 x 220pixel LCD (liquid-crystal display) screen that can display up to 262,000 colours,

The screen, which occupies almost 40% of the front cover, will do justice to the phone’s multimedia capabilities, as this phone is also a mobile music and video player

Body check
Overall, the Sagem myX6-2’s body has a solid and sturdy feel to it

The matte plastic finish of its body casing seems to be dirt and scratch proof, which is really good for those who don’t care for protective covers

To install my SIM card and the battery, I had no problems unlocking the back cover using the very wide slide-lock button (no need to poke and pry)

One has to remove both the front and back covers to insert the Micro SD card

Though the back and front covers felt a little tight in the beginning, after a few tries it consistently slides into place very firmly, unlike phones that have very flimsy covers which tend to go slightly out of shape

No complaints about the keyboard, which has shallow bevelled buttons with smooth dipped contours at the centre of the keys

The keys have a reasonably good tactile response and were a joy to use

A prominent feature that immediately grabs your attention is the very shiny round navigator button (which looks like a jog dial and doubles up as a mirror) located below the screen

Beside it are the left and right programmable keys for shortcuts to menu items.

Multimedia Boleh
Apart from the screen, the camera is possibly the phone’s most noteworthy feature

Capable of snapping photos up to 1.3- megapixels (1280 x 960 pixels) with 8x digital zoom, this camera produces impressive shots, even in low light conditions

For protection, the lens is recessed within the body, but I still managed to smudge it while using the camera

My only complaint was that the raw pictures looked a little washed out due to a lack of contrast, but this is compensated by the good picture quality – a little Photoshop magic would fix things

One can quickly activate the camera function by pressing a small “photo taking” button at the side of the phone, which also acts as the shutter button once the camera mode is active

The zoom buttons are next to the photo taking button. These can also be used to adjust the sound volume

For those who don’t like plain photos – you can choose to shoot in greyscale, sepia or negative

Additionally, you can adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and other aspects of saved photos with the built-in editor. You can toggle between shooting photos or video using by pressing left and right on the round navigator button. The video clips can be shot without or without sound in the .3gp format

Other than the camera, another highlight of this phone is the sterling sound quality of its speakers

At the maximum volume, the sound does not distort or crack up

Audio formats accepted are iMelody, Midi, wave, MP3, AAC, AAC+ and AMR

Minor grouses
In my opinion, the myX6-2 phone’s user interface not too confusing, though it does need some getting used to

Pressing on the round navigator button will take you to the menu consisting of animated icons, which are accessed using the navigator keys

Unfortunately, one annoying problem I encountered with the review unit is the enormous lag when searching for contacts and scrolling through my contacts list

I had to wait for two seconds before the second and third alphabet would register when searching for a contact.

Also, I ended up calling the wrong person many times as the response when scrolling through my contacts was terribly slow

This does not seem to be an overloaded SIM card problem (my SIM memory was 98% used) as I tried swapping with other less full SIM cards, and the problem still did not go away, albeit it was slightly alleviated

Another annoyance I faced was that the sound volume would be accidentally changed on many occasions when I had the phone pressed against my ear during calls

Somehow, my face would accidentally press against the navigator keys that are used to adjust the volume.

Either the keys are too sensitive, or I am too forceful when answering calls

Connectivity-wise, the Sagem myX6-2 comes with an infrared port and Bluetooth while it also supports WAP 2.0, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Java

Battery life is decent, considering the backlighting for the large screen is usually an enormous battery guzzler – at normal usage one full charge can last up to four days