Tryphone – preview cell phones virtually before buying

With so many brands and models, people find it difficult to decide upon which mobile phone handset to buy. All the user reviews and the expert opinions available on various web sites can’t substitute for your own hands-on evaluation. But that would mean going from store to store to play with the different models.

Tryphone.com is a web site that might help you narrow down the field.

Tryphone has these virtual replicas of selected handsets you can interact with. You can actually click on the buttons and activate the screen. You can run through the menus and get a feel of the interface. But do not expect all the options in the menus to work. Right now you can click navigation buttons to reach top-level menus, but if you attempt to virtually type an SMS message or enter a new contact, a video demo using canned input is displayed.

As for the number of phone model available, it is limited to a few of the top models as of now. But you can expect more models to be added.

Tryphone is not intended to and cannot replace an in-person encounter with handset. But playing with the site’s virtual handset costs nothing, and once more models become available, it could be a useful and fun way to check them out.

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