This is intended to be an in-depth review from a user's perspective. Specifications won't listed unless it's necessary. After you read this review you'll be able to understand how this device works under normal day to day operating conditions.
The model shown here is a production model, not pre-production. This phone can be purchased in a store right now.
This is what would happen if you picked one up...
This phone (actually two of them) were purchased from Let'sTalk.com (letstalk.com). They have one of the best deals out there because you can sign up for a one-year contract. UShopWireless.com may end up giving you money back, but you'd have to sign up for a two year contract. Not cool.
OK, the box arrived with two new phones!
Upon opening the box, you get the following contents:
-phone
-miniUSB charger
-belt-clip-style holder
-extra stylus
-manual
-cd with software
-stereo headphones
Let's boot up the phone for the first time (after leaving it in the charger for an hour or so):
IPL 1.08
SPL 1.08
GSM 01.09.10
OS 1.8.10.2
After being prompted to configure the screen stylus tap orientation, you start installing software. This takes 5 minutes or so. Notice that they use CAB files - hey, it's Windows!:
And just like Windows, there are HotFixes. This means that the Windows site should have these files available for download (when you open a virus-laden email in pocket outlook and mangle your device for example...):
When you open up the sliding keyboard, you see that the orientation changes from portrait to landscape. It takes no more than 1 second to do so. There are three "looks" to choose from - Windows, T-Mobile, and Guava Bubbles:
The backlight on the keyboard is adjustable for timing. It's off as shown above. The keyboard feels quite nice for small tic-tac shaped keys. There is a tendency for the space key to do "double-clicks" like the underlayment is off somehow. This resolves itself as you type it again. Not a big deal.
Alright, let's get to business. Start clicking around using the screen and the various input methods from the Palm-style grafitti to the keyboard and other forms of recognition. This takes getting used to.
Let's get this on a Wi-Fi network. Once you turn the Wi-Fi on using the hard button at the top left hand side of the phone (in portrait mode), you touch the screen to turn it on. It automatically detects networks! If your network is secured, it'll prompt you to enter your WEP key for example.
You type it in (and it's masked so if you mess up - start over!) and get in.
You're in and you start to browse REAL HTML websites (not WAP/WML, HDML or other variants) and let's go to the SF Chronicle website:
It's bunched together and you can choose between various methods of rendering the page from desktop (it takes up the entire desktop) to single column (this is better - no horizontal scrolling).
Tired of this, you want to check email. There's SquirrelMail that's PHP-based.
It's small and cramped but useable. The problem is with the default framed windows.
As you go to click somewhere else, it gets slow... then... nothing...
You crashed it! Like we said, it's Windows :)
You go to reboot and upon reboot the Windows Mobile screen is in landscape mode (it's still confused):
Now that you're back in, you immediately go back into keyboard slide-out mode for more browsing on your 802.11b network (it's actually plenty fast for web browsing but for data transfer, make sure to use the registry edit to turn on 802.11g).
You can't see very well, so you click a key to get the backlit keyboard to turn on:
Hey, wait, this is a phone too?
Let's make a call. You're inside an office building and whereas your old SprintPCS or Nextel phones (or even other T-Mobile phones for that matter) get reception, your MDA is searching... and searching... and searching... So you go into settings to manually select the network:
And it searches forever...
Until you get a reply!
It failed to register onto the network! What? So you think to yourself, "self, I have 30 days to return this (in CA) and not get hit with the cancellation fee". So what's next?
Let's make sure it's not a fluke. Let's scan for networks using both MDA's. And again, more confusion:
You take the phone, er, Pocket PC outside to see if you get better results. Guess what? You wait some more. While your friends, old phones, etc.. can get a signal acquired in seconds, you're looking pretty silly waiting and waiting and waiting...
You go online only to find out that it seems everyone has this problem and it seems that it's a problem with the T-Mobile SIM card being confused about which towers to register on. The phone actually works quite well outdoors once you've acquired the signal. Replacing the chips won't help (tried that). The only other option is to hack the phone. Hence this site.
The MDA is an awesome device. The major complaint is that it is too slow to register on the network and that the signal could be stronger - two separate issues to address by HTC (the Taiwanese manufacturer) and T-Mobile.
If you're also looking for a BlueTooth earbud and don't like those bulky Star Trek looking headsets, check out the NextLink.To's Bluespoon AX2 and G5 earpieces. We have a review of the AX2 here.
(05/18/06)
Some quick niceties about the interface. To copy and paste, you simply highlight the text with the stylus/finger or double tap the text. Then, simply press down on the screen until a circular pattern of dots show up and a menu appears to have you undo/cut/copy/paste/clear/select all - the available options are black text while the unavailable are grayed out.
But here's a quirk that needs to be addressed somehow. With secured Wi-Fi networks, you'll be prompted to enter in the key which you can't copy/paste. So for example, with a key stored in a word doc (yeah, not secure), I want to be able to copy the 128-bit hex key and paste it into the network key window. Can't do it!
More to come...
Posted 05/16/2006 by Administrator | Filed under: MDA / 8125 / 6700
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