These two venerable devices have made themselves both an icon and a status symbol of the latest trend in smart mobile and game console technology.

But what if you combine these two? Then squeeze it up with several accessories with the likeness of Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson (SE), multiply that with a Windows-Mobile-that-looks-like-3G kinda thing? What comes out?

Well, it’s the Amycoll A816 Gaming Phone.

I have done reviews of many branded gadgets here in the Technews Lab. And the A816 definitely

So they said to me, "Is that a PSP?", "What are you doing with an iPhone?", "Can you play games with that?", "You got me fooled on this thing, man?!", "S—t man! It’s a fake!!", and, "The guy who invented this phone must be a nitwit." Even the guys and gals of Manila Bulletin couldn’t stop laughing at the phone, or gaming device.

Truly, the A816 Gaming Phone has done quite the impossible task of combining existing mobile and gaming features present in so many branded gadgets in the market today. Gotta tell, it seems the manufacturer

The (built-in) Dual-SIM-equipped A816 has a dimension of 130 x 62 x 18 millimeters and weighs about 116 grams. Out of the box, it includes the unit, 2 batteries, charger, USB cable, hands-free headset, TV-out plug-in cable, stylus, and a 256MB microSD. It has no software CD and the manual is in Chinese.

Pressing the power on button on the A816 takes about five to 10 seconds to boot up. What really surprised me was that the boot image is "Windows Mobile – Direct Push Technology," and, the logo of Microsoft and the Chinese letters of Windows XP.

The black-and-silver colored A816 has a hard steel-like battery cover and a glass screen that almost similar with the Apple iPhone. The USB slot can be found on the left side while the microSD slot is on the right side of the phone.

At the back, it has the 1.3 MegaPixel camera and dual stereo speakers. The phone buttons can be found on the front, and the phone receiver speaker, gaming buttons, and secondary camera is on the top of the phone. When you turn the A816 90 degrees clockwise, viola! It becomes a game console, ala-PSP.

The A816 sports a 3.5-inch, 260K QVGA touch screen that is similar to that of the iPhone. It has five (5) shortcuts below the screen, which includes Home Menu (iPhone-inspired), SMS, Directory, Phone, and MP3 player. Whether using the SE-inspired stylus or your fingertips, the screen is quite sensitive.

Texting is just a bit easy using the stylus, and very hard using the keypad. You can also compose texts using the A816’s handwriting support feature, but it isn’t close to the P-series smartphones.

Calling your friends and colleagues using the A816 can be either a boon or bane. I see no problem when using the handsfree because it has good clarity and signal while receiving and making calls. But, it gave me a hard time and made me silly as several people mistook me of talking to a PSP. Weird?!

Multimedia features of the A816 includes the 1.3 MP camera (with secondary camera), Image Viewer, Text Reader, Video Recorder / Player, Photo Artist, MP3 Audio Player, Sound Recorder, and Melody Composer.

The A816’s primary and secondary digital cameras have a minimum resolution of 160 x 120 pixels and a maximum resolution of 1280 x 960 pixels. Image quality can be set at Normal, High, and Fine, and also on Normal and Night modes when taking images.

As for video recording and playback functions, the A816 can record videos at 352 x 288 pixels (CIF) and 176 x 144 pixels (QCIF). Video quality can be set on Low, Normal, High, and Fine, and can be saved as 3GP and MPEG-4 with no file size / record time limit, depending on the available phone and external card memory.

The Photo Artist feature is just a cropping function for images taken and saved on the A816, which can also be set as wallpaper and screensaver.

The phone’s images and videos that were taken during the review were okay, but it’s relatively far from the sharp quality of Nokia’s Carl Zeiss and SE’s Cybershot series phones.

The A816’s integrated MP3 Audio Player is just like any MP3 player of other mobile phone brands. But this one has a dancing cartoons background skin while playing MP3 song files. It has an equalizer feature for enhanced music pleasure.

On the gaming console feature of the A816, it has built-in GBC/NES/SNES game emulators. From the well-loved Street Fighter game series to Super Mario Brothers 3, it’s all in the A816.

Similar to those TV-out plug-in games, the A816 can be plugged directly on the TV. It also vibrates like those PS2 game controls.

As for connectivity features, the A816 has WAP and GPRS. Sorry, no HSDPA, 3G, Bluetooth, Infrared, and other high-end connectivity functions. What I like about the A816, though, is its USB Mass Storage plug-and-play feature. With an internal memory of 100MB to boot, you can leave your other USB flash drives at home for the meantime.

Extra functions on the A816 include Calculator, Unit/Currency Converter, integrated dictionary, Body Mass Index (BMI), Menstrual, Organizer, and an MP3 based alarm clock.

The A816’s Lithium-Ion 1350mAh battery has a charging time of 6 hours, a talktime of 5 hours, and a standby time of 4 days. It can be fully charged by using the provided charger (via a regular power outlet) and also on your desktop PC or laptop by using the USB cable.

The Amycoll A816 Gaming Phone is a portable game gadget that surprising sports some pretty mean features. Although some would consider this a "rip-off" brand of several brands in the mobile and gaming console market, it is still a device loaded with fun, and laughter.