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Since 1997, Taiwan-based HTC has been making handsets for mobile carriers under their own labels - until now.

It seems that HTC may be going out on its own with two new handsets - the TyTN and MTeor (yes, the names could use some re-working).

The MTeor is a slim candybar-style smartphone while the TyTN is more tailored to the enterprise crowd (BlackBerry, here we come?) with tri-band UTMS for roaming on the various carriers' networks from GSM to even Wi-Fi.

This looks interesting...

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Some of you may have read about our "workaround" to the slow registration issue with the MDA. The "workaround" was to buy another phone - a real phone this time - not a pda/phone combo.

At first glance, the t809 has the appeal of a new-model Lamborghini with a hard top that slides to expose the driver to the summer elements. OK, while the Lambo doesn't quite do that (yet), the t809 infers that nonetheless.



Its thin body and large screen is a joy to hold. A simple thumb action pushes the screen up to expose the keyboard. While it takes getting used to, after a few practice runs, the operation become quite easy...

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Well this is a strange one...

I had heard a while back that when someone called me, they heard the ringtone played back to them. What?

So today while checking my voicemail by dialing the cell number, sure enough I heard the first few notes of the T-Mobile ringer jingle!

This must be a Windows Mobile 5 glitch somewhere? Anyone else experience this one?

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Will Apple Computers and RIM (Research In Motion - the makers of the BlackBerry AKA "CrackBerry" email phones) team up and develop an "AppleBerry"?

Despite its funny sounding name, if this alliance comes into fruition (pun intended), we should see some interesting design tweaks to the pucky-looking BlackBerries. We should expect to also see more entertainment-based apps and a better UI.

Will it be that glossy-white color that's ubiquitous as the iPods that dominate the MP3 player market? Let's hope not if they're to be targeted to the hipster corporate types.

We've seen Apples' entry into the phone market with the iTunes phone sold through Cingular (the Rokr) with substantial ad blitzes in the major telecom markets, but with somewhat of a ho-hum acceptance.

This should be interesting to see to whom they intend to market the AppleBerry...

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Well, it looks like the FCC has given its approval for the new Danger SideKick 3. It'll most likely be sold through T-Mobile and will be built by Sharp.

Danger has also recently joined the MSN Mobile Developer Program which probably means you'll most likely see apps like MSN Messenger coming to a HipTop display in the near future.

What will it look like? Pretty much the same as always.

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(6/9/06)

This just goes to show that making customer service calls is like playing roulette. It's a game of chance to be able to speak with the "right" CS rep who can handle your issue. Perhaps it's mainly because they don't listen well and probably don't want to do the work involved in addressing customers' concerns, especially the ones not in the playbook. Of course I'm generalizing here, but having spent the better part of the past month with customer service departments in various outfits, I think my experiences and conclusion aren't far from the truth.

Sometime a few weeks ago, I called LetsTalk to see if I could add another line to my plan which is already a "family plan". It only seemed logical that since I was still within my trial period I should be still considered a new customer activation and hence "entitled" to adding additional lines while receiving the benefits of those rebates.

My "workaround" to the MDA network registration problem and evidence that true phones even on the T-Mobile network worked fined was to buy a phone-phone, not a computer-phone...

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I-mate recently announced the Smartflip Windows Mobile phone with a thin clamshell form factor. Looks like they're targeting the Motorola RAZR.

As with the RAZR, the Smartflip will be a quad-band GSM/GRPS/EDGE phone with the exception that it'll run WM5. It will also have a camera and bluetooth.

It's reportedly 0.6 inches thick and weighs only 3.4 ounces and will be manufactured by HTC but sold under the I-mate brand. Stay tuned for details.

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Well, here's your problem T-Mobile!

After unlocking one of the MDAs using LokiWiz (see our entire pictorial tutorial here), we inserted a prepaid 64K Cingular SIM card and guess what happened?

The MDA no longer had network registration problems or reception weaknesses. In this article, we have two MDAs - one with a new T-Mobile SIM card and one with a new Cingular SIM card - that we put side-by-side to show you the differences between them when operating under T-Mobile and Cingular simultaneously...

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If you have a MDA or 8125 or any other flavor of phone running on the HTC Wizard platform, you can now unlock and relock the simlock on your phone so that you can switch GSM carriers at will by simply swapping sim chips/cards. It has been tested on various devices in overseas as well as here in the USA on Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile's networks.

This article is our re-worded version of instructions based on the brilliant work of some developers in the XDA developers community. We are offering this information AS-IS with no warranty. This is FREEWARE in its current state as published by its authors. We have done this since the original thread is over 30 pages long and mostly contains praise of the work. We wanted to make this a more readable How-To.

IMPORTANT NOTES!
-Anything you do with and to your phone may very well VOID your warranty or worse - it may make your phone inoperable. You do this at your own risk!!! As the authors have stated, it's experimental software.
-Your level of success at doing this depends on a few factors one of which is the version of the ROM on your phone. It has been reported that newer versions of the ROM may have a write-protect on the disk preventing this to work.
-According to the forum, over 90% of testers have claimed success using many variations of the HTC Wizard platform devices.

And on we go...

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If you want to trek over to the HTC America website to find out more about your HTC platform device, here you go.

You won't find the special ROMs and such there. We'll be posting a master list of ROMs in the near future. Have fun!

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(6/6/06) ]:-> :)

A box arrived today with two new MDAs! Despite what the LetsTalk email stated, it had apparently shipped on Monday as the lady said it would most likely do.

You've already read the review of the MDA so I'll spare you the pictorial op-ed.

The $64,000 question is this... Did this new MDA have any reception and slow network registration problems?

Want to take a guess at the answer?...

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By now many of you have already heard (or seen) that the Treo was going WM5 as well as PalmOS.

I recently had a chance to play around with the 700w on the Verizon Wireless network and had this initial reaction. Nice!

For those of you who already own a Treo of older generation(s) (remember those flip-lid doodads?), there's no doubt that if you love your Treo now, you'll really love the 700 more regardless of which OS you pick...

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Well, sorry! I didn't have a camera handy as I played around with the new Motorola Moto Q running on Verizon Wireless' network.

My general impression of it was - cool! However, that quickly subsided as I actually picked up the phone and played around with it some more.



Why? Well, first off, the build quality of this phone isn't quite what I'd expected from Motorola...

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Come on people. Sheesh.

Got an email from LetsTalk saying that they're shipping out the phones on Tuesday (Day 28) which means with overnight delivery we get them on Wednesday (Day 29).

Time to pour over the fine-print of their agreement. I sure hope they're not trying to be sneaky by taking their sweet time getting our replacement phones back to us...

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(6/2)

"Love is in the air..." (from the LoveBoat)

Remember the optomistic timeline I posted? Well, hell hasn't frozen over, reality kicked in and here I am four days (and counting) without a phone and paying for service that I can't use and couldn't use even when I had the phone...

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(5/30)

The first chance I get, I put the phones back into the boxes and ship 'em back.

Now I wait.

As I understood it (and still hoping for best case scenario), I would get the phones shipped back the day they received them in-house. So this is the timetable I'm looking at:

TUE - send back
WED - in transit
THUR - delivered and new phone shipped back
FRI - delivery to me


Elapsed time: .5 hours

If you make minimum wage ($8.50/hour) = $4.25
If you're a hot-shot partner at a law-firm ($400/hour) = $200 (crazy, right?)

Overall satisfaction meter: >:\

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(5/25)

After speaking with T-Mobile, I call LetsTalk. I explain the entire ordeal and the customer service lady says to ship the phones back (at their expense) and once received, we'll get replacement (new) phones.

Great (sarcastically). So, I get a 2-day return ship and an overnight ship back to me. Mind you, this is already Thursday and best case scenario I get the mailing slip same-day and with the weekend coming up, I could theoretically get the phones back by the following Tuesday:

THUR - ship out
FRI - transit
SAT- no transit
SUN - no transit
MON - delivered
TUE - new phones

But there's a problem. Monday is a holiday and everyone's closed! :(

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(5/25)

After having spent more time on researching this issue, I figured a more pointed call to T-Mobile would help resolve the issue.

This time, I call and talk with Tier2 support after explaining that I've rebooted, swapped chips, and all other things that I, the customer (not guinea pig, lab rat), am stilling having problems with slow registration AND poor reception. I really just want a fix to the registration issue first.

The guy tells me first that he's never heard of such problems (more on that later) and that it's a sim chip problem. Um, I've swapped out four chips already. If all four exhibit the same failure, T-Mobile has serious issues. They're not even from the same batch! I re-explained the situation and perhaps it sunk in a bit further into his wall of defiance that something is wrong. He thinks it's the phone itself and said that he recommends that. I ask if I can get escalated to which he replies "no". I have to try this first.

Now, think for a minute that I have two MDAs and four sim chips and none of them are sequential in serials.

Fine. I'll get the phones replaced. At this point, I'm quite the unhappy camper. I'm paying for all of this service and I can't use it. Tech support is clueless (or maybe just this guy).


Elapsed time: 1 hour

If you make minimum wage ($8.50/hour) = $8.50
If you're a hot-shot partner at a law-firm ($400/hour) = $400 (crazy, right?)

Overall satisfaction meter: >:\

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(5/22)

Got back on the phone with LetsTalk and this time stuck around for 30 minutes with a lady who after doing some checking, updated the record to reflect the new rebate amount to be received.


Elapsed time: .5 hours

If you make minimum wage ($8.50/hour) = $4.25
If you're a hot-shot partner at a law-firm ($400/hour) = $200 (crazy, right?)

Overall satisfaction meter: :\

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(5/19)

I checked online to make sure that the $150 rebate was posted on my account. Nope. Time to get on these guys...

After being on hold for 30 minutes, I decide to send LetsTalk an email asking about the status of the rebate change.

Later that day/Early next morning, a form email shows up telling me how to check on rebate status. Hellooooo?

By this time, I've figured out that there's a huge problem with many MDAs running on the T-Mobile network. My question at this point is what to do next? In California, you have 30 days to return and cancel without penalty and I'm halfway through this...


Elapsed time: .5 hours

If you make minimum wage ($8.50/hour) = $4.25
If you're a hot-shot partner at a law-firm ($400/hour) = $200 (crazy, right?)

Overall satisfaction meter: :\

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(5/16)

The sim chips come in the morning and within minutes, I was on the phone with T-Mobile.

Activation of the new chips took just under 15 minutes. Painless really.

After I get off the phone with them, I test the phones. The result? Same as before. Now what?


Elapsed time: .25 hours

If you make minimum wage ($8.50/hour) = $2.125
If you're a hot-shot partner at a law-firm ($400/hour) = $100 (crazy, right?)

Overall satisfaction meter: :| (still hoping...)

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(5/15)

I call Letstalk, explain the situation (again) and within a matter of minutes, the customer service lady said she'd overnight new chips and that we'd have to activate them ourselves. OK! Now that's service...

Elapsed time: .25 hours

If you make minimum wage ($8.50/hour) = $2.125
If you're a hot-shot partner at a law-firm ($400/hour) = $100 (crazy, right?)

Overall satisfaction meter: :| (there's hope)

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(5/13)

It's a beautiful Saturday, Barry Bonds is still trying to hit #715, birds are chirping and all that crap...

And here I am back on the phone this time with T-Mobile directly. I speak with customer service, tech. support, provisioning, the data department and a whole circus of T-Mobile drones (to be fair, they're nice on the phone, it's just that they can't _help_).

One of the guys "rebuilds" my account and again, I'm calling from within the home and the MDA shows the dots. There are sporadic moments where I'd receive a text message, you'd see the "G" and get a bar or two. Then when you make a call, it dies into a cell-phone ether. Obviously something's wrong...

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(5/12)

Knock on the door - it's UPS with the phones! (No signature required.)

I'm happy as can be like a kid on Christmas. I open the box and find brand-spankin' new T-Mobile branded boxed phones (I had thought maybe they would be shipped in some brown-box refurbished cartons).

To be a good phone user, I plugged in both MDAs and waited an hour to charge up the batteries. Then with great excitement, I turn on both phones and started the WM5 (Windows Mobile 5.0) OS orientation. This is definitely NOT a phone-phone, not even a PDA-phone. This is really a micro computer with a phone taped to it...

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(5/11)

Now this sucks, doesn't it?

The day after I placed the order, Letstalk offered a better deal on the rebates down to $50/phone from $100/phone.

Well, I called in and basically asked them to modify this and guess what? They obliged. The customer service lady said sh'ed be able to take care of it and that the account would be reflected of this in 3-5 days. Cool.

So, at this point, I'm thinking that I've made the right decision with the etailer.

Still waiting for a phone, but if this kind of service continues, I'd be more than happy to refer friends to them (they also give you a referral fee if you do so - now that's even a greater incentive, so it's in their best interest to make customers happy).

And we wait for another day...

Elapsed time: 0.5 hour

If you make minimum wage ($8.50/hour) = $4.25
If you're a hot-shot partner at a law-firm ($400/hour) = $200 (crazy, right?)

Overall satisfaction meter: :)

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Before I start, let me explain what this entire category is about.

While it's fun to play with your phone and there are many sites dedicated to such activities, there aren't any that specifically chronicle the experience of shopping around for a phone from start to finish (and beyond).

You will read plenty of updated information as I take you down this journey of a fairly unpleasant experience...

(Oh, by the way, this journey is a continuing saga-of-sorts and what you're reading now is probably anywhere between two weeks to one day behind until I get to the present.)