September 25, 2006 at 3:19 pm ·
Authored by Ewan · Filed under Uncategorized
Honestly tell me if I’ve got it wrong.
Are you a Windows Mobile user? If so I’d like you to take a few minutes to post a comment here or email me with your experiences.
- what device did you buy? - what service provider? - what does the device do well? - what can’t it really handle? - would you recommend it? - general summary
I saw an advert for the HP Ipaq at the station earlier. It’s a good looking device. I wouldn’t mind one.
I’ve just been so disappointed. So please, take some time and tell me your thoughts.
If you don’t use Windows Mobile but you know your colleague does, please pass this link to them and get’em to contribute.
September 25, 2006 at 2:19 pm ·
Authored by Ewan · Filed under Devices
Link: Jane Lewis’s Weblog : We work in a fast changing World..
What I also found interesting was reading Ewan MacLeods blog,SMS Text News about the rumour of Apple and Rim joining forces to create a “new revolutionary ” mobile phone. Well flame me if you like, but dont we have that already….it is called Windows Mobile 5 with Windows Media player for Mobile and SD cards in all shapes and sizes !
Jane doesn’t have comments enabled on her blog so I thought I’d reply here.
I’m just so disappointed with Windows Mobile. It’s appalling. It’s perfect at done one thing — address book, for example, or calculator. Or MSN Messenger, or even playing music. Try and multitask and you’ve had it.
This isn’t a Microsoft-are-shit moan. This is an opinion based on real experience from a wannabe Windows Mobile fan. I went out and bought the top of the range device — the best HTC that money could buy. (The T-Mobile “MDA Pro”) And it just didn’t live up to my hopes.
And that’s what it’s all about. Hope. The device arrived and I was delighted. Absolutely delighted. But it was pathetic as a unified messaging device. I hoped I would be able to do my email on it. Forget it. I hoped I could multitask. Nonsense. I hoped I could keep Skype on all the time and talk to someone on a Skype call whilst sending a text message. Badly.
So I’m still hunting for the ‘new revolutionary’ device.
Seriously, anyone reading thinks my points are flawed — please, please, please put me right. Show me a Windows Mobile device that can actually be used by a day to day mobile warrior like myself, and I will buy it and love it.
Meantime, I’d love to see an Apple Blackberry.
I bought an Orange SPV M5000 (rebadged HTC Universal, same as your T-Mobile MDA Pro).
Before then, I used an iPaq PDA (not a phone!) so I was already familiar with some of the quirks of Windows Mobile.
I found the default Orange setup to be upsettingly slow, the time between a call coming in and the phone actually ringing was so long that I’d often miss calls. I wasn’t very happy.
But then I started looking into it a bit deeper and tweaking things. My MP3 ringtone was stored on the SD card. So I re-compressed it and stored it on the phone memory, this decreased the wait time between a call coming in and the device ringing, but it still wasn’t perfect.
After reading the forums at http://www.xda-developers.com I decided to upgrade the ROM (firmware/operating system) and chose one by a Taiwanese HTC reseller named Dopod. At the same time I also ran the hack to SIM unlock the device in preparation for jumping ship to T-Mobile’s web ‘n’ walk plan later on.
The Dopod ROM freed up a lot of memory which sped the device up considerably and was much more up to date than the default Orange ROM and lacked all the operator addons that Orange had bloated their ROM with. It also had Microsoft’s “Direct Push e-mail” alleged “BlackBerry Killer”… I tried it for a week, RIM have nothing to worry about!
I’ve enjoyed using the phone since I upgraded the ROM, however, a normal consumer shouldn’t have to go to such lengths to make such an expensive device usable!.
I’m quite tempted by the Nokia E61 (wifi, blackberry, VoIP, Mmmm), I just wish it had a camera!
Posted by Dan Lane on September 25th, 2006 at 4:44 pm.I have a ppc-6700 with sprints network in the states. Works pretty well, I have it connected to four mail servers that check every hour for new mail except one that checks every 15 minutes. For me pocket IE just isn’t that usable so I had to buy multiie. I’ve also been thinking of writing my own PIE wrapper because I have specific criteria.
I thought the slide out keyboard would be great but I rarely use it. I’m looking at the new HTC Libra, http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/attachments/pdaphone-general-news/9764-htc-code-name-libra-will-replace-6700-pic-libra.jpg?d=1158203957
Having a regular number pad on the front would make it so much easier to use as a phone. I also hope the ear piece works a little better then the 6700.
Summary ppc-6700
Posted by Shawn McCollum on September 25th, 2006 at 5:00 pm.As a PDA great. As a phone, well i’d rather use a bottom of the line cell phone. It works well enough for my infrequent calling so i’d guess that someone who talks on their cell all the time wouldn’t care for it.