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Doro PhoneEasy 520X Review - P2 Calling, camera and battery life Review

Sections

Doro PhoneEasy 520X – Contacts and Calling

The basic contacts book can store up to 300 different contact cards. Each entry can contain the name along with home, office and mobile numbers.

There’s also an option in the phone’s menu for entering ICE (InCase of Emergency) information. This includes medical details covering items such as blood type, allergies and medication that might be useful to first responders.

The phone has a handy emergency assist button on the rear, too. If you press and hold it the phone starts to dial a list of up to five numbers until someone picks up. It will also send an emergency text to these numbers in case no one is immediately available to take a call.

Doro PhoneEasy 520X 7Hand holding a Doro mobile phone displaying the home screen.

We’ve go no complaints when it comes to call quality. The Doro Phone Easy 520X’s earpiece is louder than the vast majority of other phones, and despite this it doesn’t distort when it’s set to full volume. As a result it would be a good choice for those who are a bit hard of hearing

The microphone delivers good quality, clean speech too, and reception was on the whole very strong. So, overall, this phone is an excellent handset for general calling duties.

Doro PhoneEasy 520X – Camera

This handset’s camera has a lowly 3.0MP sensor. The lens is fixed focus only, but the camera does have an LED flash. The shots it takes are just about passable in quality terms, but focus isn’t very sharp and colours are usually a tad over saturated.

Doro PhoneEasy 520X 9Close-up of a Doro phone camera and calling button.

Doro PhoneEasy 520X – Apps and Multimedia

The 520X is a very basic phone, so there’s no facility for installing extra apps. However, it does have some handy built-in functions, including a calculator, alarm clock, simple organiser that lets you set reminders for upcoming events, and an FM tuner that has pretty decent reception.

Doro PhoneEasy 520X – Battery Life and Connectivity

As you’d expect the 520X has bare bones connectivity. It supports 2G and 3G networks as well as Bluetooth. However, there’s no Wi-Fi, 4G or NFC support, although they’re not really relevant on a simple phone like this.

Doro PhoneEasy 520X 5Black mobile phone with green-screened display showing time and date.

Doro quotes a talk time of 10 hours and a standby time of over 14days, which seemed about right from our time with the phone. Naturally, that’s much longer than you’ll get from today’s smartphones.

Doro PhoneEasy 520X – Verdict

The Doro PhoneEasy 520X isn’t exactly overflowing with features, but it’s nicely designed for its target market of older users thanks to its easy to use menu system and large keypad. We also like some of the extra functions, such as the ICE contacts screen and assistance button on the rear. If you’re looking for a basic, easy to use phone for an older relative, it’s a good buy.

We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.

Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.

Used as our main phone for the review period

Reviewed using respected industry benchmarks and real world testing

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

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