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Saturday 12 May 2007, 5:48 PM
A good PDA and a decent phone but...
I recently bought this device to move my emailing and phoning (regular phone and Skype) from my laptop and mobile phone. This device looks like it's just a little bit short of a laptop really. It contains word, excell, outlook, powerpoint. It's web browser is almost as good as a desktop browser only with a smaller resolution. It even contains the remote desktop feature to access your desktop PC. It has 3G features and so on, so it is a good mobile phone (except the size) as well. It has a decent 2 megapixel cam to replace your old digital cam. It has a good sound quality to replace your chunky MP3 player. It has a decent picture quality to use as a video player as well.
- Portability: It fits nice in hand but feels thick and heavy compared to some of the smartphones like S710. You cannot carry it in your pocket if you are in business attire, without your having a bump in your pockets or having your pockets sag. The camera and the screen seems to be unprotected for scratches as well. It is best to carry it in it's leather case all the time but then you have to carry it on your belt which I find impractical. You can always use it with a BT headset, which means more pieces to carry when traveling and more battery usage...
- WiFi: The settings and network selection are not user friendly. You cannot easily see the list of networks and select the proper one, save your settings and preferred networks list. Each time you disconnect/connect you might see the annoying popup if you want easy access to network selection. Wifi connection is not quite stable when used in power conservation mode, otherwise it is stable and fast. But it drains the battery within a few hours if you don't use it in power conservation mode. Unless you are close to a power source keep your websurfing and Skype conversations minimum. The good thing is it can be charged from USB port, so you can charge it from your laptop in emergencies.
- Sliding: This is one of the distinctive features of this device. I noticed that when you press the buttons on the side, you can accidentally slide and dislocate the upper side, which is annoying. I'm only using it for a while I hope when the mechanics wears out it doesn't slide by itself.
- Q Keypad: Seems useful for typing emails and online chatting, But why would you type if you can have conversations with Skype. It's not useful for other tasks like websurfing or entering info to forms as you have to use your both hands for using the keyboard thus you cannot hold the stylus to operate the touch screen. I think for general operations the touch screen keypad is just fast and convenient enough. Q keypad takes a lot of space on the device, so if you don't think you'll type long emails and notes, consider a similar device without the Q keypad.
- Skype: If the WiFi is reliable the sound quality is very good. Sometimes it is as good as a regular phone but other times you get disruptions, delays and noise. It depends on the bandwidth of the skype network I guess as I have similar problems with my laptop as well, though not as much as Tytn.
- Camera: It produces very good results under good lighing and distance, better then all other cameraphones I have seen so far. It has a wide angle lens but CMOS sensor might not be as good as your regular digital camera. Nevertheless it is good for capturing events etc although the basic camera software is not quite user friendly. It is hard to control features like focus, zoom and exposure. I hope that they will provide a better software for the camera in the feature.
- Web browsing: Almost as good as my laptop except the resolution. It is fast if WiFi is stable.
Overall, it's a good PDA and a decent mobile phone with lots of features if you are not sensitive about the size and weight. If it was a bit thinner and lighter this would be the perfect PDA phone.
| Design |  |
6.0 |
| Features |  |
9.0 |
| Performance | |
9.0 |
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