Doro Phone Easy 520x GSM Sim Free Mobile Telephone – Black

There can’t be any excuse for Doro not to have tested their phone enough to have not notice that their is a major problem when you want to enter a “new line” when texting. Often you can only create a new paragraph by cycling through all the text fonts, before trying to access the newline character.

I bought this phone as an upgrade to the Doro 345. The 345 suited my needs but texting with it was too slow. The 520 offers predictive text and 3 different type speeds. It also supports more languages. I would have liked a much clearer example of how predictive text works, than that given in the manual, as it is baffling for novice users. Another positive feature is the keyboard lights up in the dark. The black lettering glowing blue. The Torch as also been upgraded.

Doro have successfully styled the body into something which looks classy. It also looks more robust, although I have to say my 345 is yet to show any signs of wear, without having taking any special care of it.

The 520 is a shorter phone at the cost of the size of the keypad. I find using such small keys a big nuisance and the klicking noise the keys now make is very unwelcome.

Another thing I don’t like is that as far as I can tell, there is no way of preventing every text that you send from being saved. If you want to delete all of your sent text (rather than individually), you now need to do so via the settings menu which isn’t obvious or logical. Both of these problems did not exist with the 345.

The 3 MP Camera is an upgrade on previous models, but the images it produces are still poor when viewed on a computer screen. Still, it is significantly better than Doro’s earlier 2MP cameras and the 345 had no camera at all. Camera operation is very simple and intuitive.

The 520 claims to have a similar standby battery life than the 345, but when in use it must be using a great deal more power as I am needing to charge it daily as opposed to weekly.

The 510 is a very similar phone for half the price. What you would lose is some of the physical robustness and camera quality, but I think that given this phone isn’t quite what it should be, I don’t think paying the extra is worth it. The Doro flip phones offer the advantage of automatic power ON/OFF and call answering, which I know my Mum would love, but they are not as robust, which is why I chose this one for myself.

Overall a mixed bag that I don’t think it is worth paying top money for, compared with the cheaper earlier Doro models.

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Having used the predictive text for some weeks now, I am still frustrated by its awkwardness. There are many common words missing from its dictionary, and one or two Americanisms such as the misspelling of neighbour. (The American spelling suggests someone living in a nearby hole rather than in a nearby enclosed space). What I can’t understand are situations such as “prepared” being offered as a solution when typing, but having to type all of “prepare” before it recognises “prepare”‘s existence. It seem impossible to teach the dictionary proper nouns and names, so you have to constantly switch in and out of predictive text mode, if you want to be polite and use capitals where needed. The dictionary neither offers nor learns emoticons.