I spent a good amount of time today working with the T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone. The T-Mobile phone, along with its European sister the o2 XDA, is a good first step towards an integrated wireless voice, data and Pocket PC. There are just a few things that keep this latest device from being perfect.
First, the T-Mobile only has 32 MB of RAM, which forces one to be frugal with installing applications. You have to devise strategy to determine whether to install an application to a storage card. That may seem petty, but with 64 MB in the other Pocket PCs you really don't have to think so much about whether you will have enough RAM. There is really no excuse for any new Pocket PC coming with less than 64 MB of RAM, it should be the new baseline for memory, with top-level devices coming with 128 MB of RAM. Pocket PC Techs provides 64 MB and 128 MB upgrades for the T-Mobile device, and if I decided to use this as my main, full time Pocket PC, I may seriously consider getting one of these upgrades.
I've really grown used to the side jog wheel on the Toshiba E740, which makes reading eBooks and web pages so much easier. The T-Moble device only has a front navigation pad so there is no real way to scroll down pages while holding the device in one hand. Now, I know that the iPAQ also only has a navigation pad, but IMHO that was not one of it's strengths. I've also found the navigation pad to stick and or not recognize when I press it. So, I can press down a couple of times and nothing happens, then all of a sudden it starts scrolling down several pages.
The first specification that Microsoft made for Palm-size PCs required a jog wheel on the side for one-handed operation. The iPAQ took us away from that with their navigation button on the front and nothing on the side, which was a step away from the Casio E-100 that had both a jog wheel and navigation button. The iPAQ's popularity has companies copying that design, which I think is a step backwards. It's bad enough that "regular" Pocket PCs don't have this one-handed operation, but one would expect a mobile phone to be designed around one-handed operation. There is really no reason why HTC couldn't have put a jog wheel on the left-side of this device, and if they had it would make such a big difference. You could actually dial a call from Contacts while holding the device in one hand, not to mention be able to scroll through eBooks and web pages easily.
I've also come across a couple of short comings with the phone side of the device. First, there isn't a simple, one tap-way, of switching the phone to mute or vibrate. Hopefully this is something that a developer can fix with a simple application. T-Mobile made a today screen plug-in with buttons for the call log and voice mail. Neither of those are important to me, and I wish T-Mobile had made it programmable. I think it would have been smarter for T-Mobile to have provided buttons for mute and voice mail. Until someone develops a simple app, I'll have to go into the phone settings to switch between audible ring tones and vibrate.
You can only program speed dials using entries in the Contacts application. So, if you want to add a number as a speed dial, you have to first create a contact for it. Unlike my Ericsson phones, I can not program a speed dial with pauses in them or add dial strings beyond the initial set of numbers. I have a speed dial configured for my Ericsson phones that dials my voice mail at work, and automatically navigates through entering my mailbox and password. So far as I can tell, there is no way to do this on the T-Mobile device. (I should point out here that this speed dial nit is the only problem that I have with the Microsoft Pocket PC Phone Edition software. You will note that all of the things that I have written about up this are either hardware design decisions by HTC, or the software included by T-Mobile.)
There are some good things about this device. It seems to connect to the Internet much faster than when I use my E740 to Bluetooth to my T39m phone. In all it seems that the data side of the device works very well, though I really wish Microsoft would make it easier to operate Internet Explorer with one hand. T-Mobile has also provided some nice buttons on the today screen command bar for sending SMS messages, opening Internet Explorer, working with the phone book ok the SIM card, seeing battery life, or getting at the dialer app and phone settings. WAV file ring tones are also very cool, and as I said at the beginning of this, I am impressed with the speaker phone. The hands-free headphones that are provided appear to be good enough, though I think I would prefer a single ear Jabra headset rather than this one.
Maybe my view on some of these issues will change over time. These are my first impressions after using the device or a day, and they may change over time.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:29 PM |
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I'm digging RemoteAmp. This app lets me control Winamp3 running on a desktop computer from my Pocket PC. Since I run Winamp3 on Fred, and I share monitors between Fred and Barney, I can use my Pocket PC as a remote control for music why I am working on Barney. RemoteAmp also is skinable and a skin creation guide is available on the web site.
posted by Frank McPherson 8:28 PM |
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I finally got my T-mobile Pocket PC Phone, and it was very easy to set up. I just had to pop out the SIM card on my T39 phone and put it in device. Voice communication just worked. I did have to fiddle the data connection since my T-mobile account is configured for using a different apn. I have the 10 MB plan that uses internet3.voicestream.com for the apn. The T-mobile phone appears to be configured by default to use internet2.voicestream.com. It wouldn't connection for me until I changed the phone to internet3.voicestream.com. To do that I tapped Start, Settings, Connections, Connections. Then I tapped Modify on the Internet settings drop-down, and then tapped T-Mobile Internet, and then next to display the Access Point Name (apn) field. I changed it to internet3.voicestream.com, taped Finish and I was good to go.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:45 PM |
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withMP3 is a nice looking MP3 player for Pocket PCs. It does not play WMA files, but it does provide a 10 band graphic equalizer and preamp, and you can configure the audio buffer. Playlists appear on the main screen, and the program provides all the basic functions for MP3 players. It costs $15.75.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:45 AM |
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Pocket PC Thoughts :: View topic - Pocket PC Phone - $299 with activation! Amazon is providing a $200 rebate on top of Voicestream's $50 rebate, so that is how the price gets down to $299. This is the type of discounting I expected when I first heard about Pocket PC Phones. It is too bad that the deal requires new activations. I find that requirement strange from the carriers. One of their biggest worries is churn, which is the number of people who leave one carrier to go to another. Don't they see that by not providing their current customers with at least the same discounts as new customers, they in effect cause churn? If they were smart they would provide their existing customers with an even lower discount than new, provide they are willing to re-sign to another extended service plan.
BTW... I finally got my hands one one of these T-mobile devices. It will take me some time to get up to speed on using it, but so far so good.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:27 PM |
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Version 3 of Nyditot Virtual Display is out.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:17 PM |
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pt saw my post from last week noting the lack of information about wireless data service providers, so he put together a chart with the pricing info one one page.
posted by Frank McPherson 6:56 PM |
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Unlike Doc, me thinks the simplest solution to this problem is Pocket PC Phone Edition.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:21 PM |
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I think that HP is making a huge mistake by not bringing the Jornada 928 WDA to the US market. It appears the WDA has some very innovative features in the terms of wireless data devices.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:58 AM |
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The Nokia D311 is a dual GPRS and 802.11b card that works in Pocket PCs. The Americas version of the card only supports GPRS data rates of 14.4k and does not support voice. I wonder who is selling this card in the United States? I just did a search on MobilePlanet and Shopper.com and didn't have any luck at either.
posted by Frank McPherson 3:38 PM |
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News: Java falling short of mobile promise Java on handhelds and phones tastes bitter.
posted by Frank McPherson 2:14 PM |
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