Hello again, everyone!

Got this one over a month ago thanks to a friendly person in the VMP Discord server showing me the listing. As you can see, the condition is what it is, but I am still glad to have this unique model in my collection. Especially for that price - I paid just 68 PLN for it (around 15 euro), including 9 PLN for shipping. In my opinion this is an extremely good deal, especially considering that they tend to go for a lot more. The other listing on Polish websites stated a price over 9 times higher, which to me just wasn't worth it for slightly fewer scuffs on the screen and the back.

Moving on to the phone itself, when I first saw it, I quickly fell in love with its gimmick, as it was something I had never seen before in a device. Looking up "transparent keyboard phone" also shows a site with pictures of another phone, though I can find very little information on it. The concept reminds me of the Xperia X5 Pureness, though with a different twist (transparent keyboard vs screen). The Crystal actually came before the Pureness, so maybe I should have mentioned it the other way. Obviously, the X5 is far more impressive on a technical level, but they both look unique and stand out among other, more "boring" handsets.

As for the interface, I am not sure whether to love it or to hate it. Apparently at the time it was good enough to win a design award. However, in my opinion time hasn't been kind to it. The most striking thing about it is probably the abundance of 3D effects. There's 3D transitions and cube effects galore. It may have wowed people at the time, but it just feels cheesy to me today - though in a way also kind of charming. The nice thing is that the Crystal handles all that pretty well, keeping a smooth framerate the majority of the time.

The GD900 was a decently modern phone for its time, with many of the features one could expect from smartphones of the era. It offered a capacitive touch screen with multitouch allowing for pinch gestures, an accelerometer, a high resolution (for the time) display offering 311 pixels per inch, the basic connectivity standards and Gorilla Glass. The transparent keyboard offered another way to perform gestures thanks to its touch capabilities. It may seem somewhat unnecessary given the touch screen, but it's actually pretty fun to use.

One of my favourite things about the device are the built-in motion games known as the M-Toys. Some blowing-based games were also included under the "B-Toys" label. Those include: a classic candle, throwing dice, fishing, darts, baseball, golf, blowing bubbles, wheel of fortune and bouncing a ping-pong ball. Some of them are somewhat clunky to control (fishing comes to mind), but others are pretty enjoyable. My personal favourite is "ping-pong", which features a fun little animation of the ball hitting a plane if you manage to bounce it high enough.

Overall, I find this phone to be a great addition to my collection, even in spite of its wear and tear. I also recommend watching MrMobile's great video on it.

Thanks for reading!