Excellent PDA, good phone, some minor flaws.
Written: Jan 24 '03 (Updated Oct 23 '03)
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Pros: Clear colour screen, handsfree audio, plentiful software, well integrated with phone, good battery.
Cons: Annoying bugs in software, GPRS useless, not tri-band, no camera or bluetooth, small memory.
The Bottom Line: It's an excellent PDA, well integrated with a good phone, but you may want to wait for the tri-band xda II with more memory, camera, Bluetooth and SDIO.
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| philmck's Full Review: T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition |
The phone I have is actually sold by O2 in the UK as an "xda" (meaning a PDA converged with a phone), but it appears to be identical in most respects to the T-Mobile Pocket PC. It's actually made by HTC (www.htccorporation.com) in Taiwan.
Portability
The xda was bought as a replacement for an Ericsson SH888 phone (suddenly deceased) and a Psion 3c organiser, both fairly ancient by today's standards. The first big benefit of the XDA is that at 200g it is roughly the same weight as the SH888 and half the weight of the Psion, therefore a third of their combined weight. Its shape makes it truly pocketable and I do normally carry it in a trouser pocket, instead of a briefcase or coat pocket as previously. So I always have my diary, contacts and web access with me now, which is a huge benefit in itself. I use a PDA more than a phone so the format suits me - a "smart phone" might be better if you're the other way round.
A leather carrying case and belt clip are included for those who prefer to carry things that way. I find a pocket is normally sufficient protection so don't bother with the case (although I use a different pocket for keys!). Stereo earplugs with a sliding volume control and a button for answering calls or muting the microphone are also included. The plug is smaller than standard and the socket in the phone has a tiny rubber blanking plug that is useless because it's so easy to dislodge; I don't use it.
The display is generally easy to read even outdoors and the limitation of 4096 colours doesn't seem a problem. E-books in particular are surprisingly easy to read and there are loads of them available for free (or cheap). Ringing is loud enough (I used to miss calls sometimes with my previous phones) and there are some nifty wav files that can be downloaded. The speakerphone works well, too - which is handy, because you need it if you want to take notes during a call.
Battery life seems very good - I haven't used more than a quarter of the capacity in a day yet. It's Li-ion so shouldn't suffer from "memory effect", which is just as well because the main battery is not user-accessible, although an additional one (not included) can be attached. There are built-in utilities to back up user data to internal flash memory or the web, so you don't lose all your data if the battery goes flat or the unit is stolen.
So far I haven't found the lack of a keyboard to be as much of a limitation as I had expected. Handwriting recognition is surprisingly good - it recognises most of my ordinary cursive handwriting, which is saying something. By the time I've corrected the errors it's still not much faster than pecking away at the on-screen keyboard though. A spare stylus is supplied. I haven't learnt the alternative "graffiti" style letters or spent much time with the individual letter mode so can't comment on their speed. You could use the voice recorder to take quick notes on the move though and transcribe them later.
The xda is only dual-band so this model won't work in America. There's no Bluetooth for a cordless headset nor even the ability to add it later, according to other reviews (no SDIO mode). It does have infrared that works well for transferring files to and from a (Windows 2000) PC, and a USB cradle that also works well most of the time, although the current version of ActiveSync (v3.6) seems a bit buggy, losing connection if standby or hibernation mode is used on the PC, for example. There's no camera available either.
Others have commented that the xda doesn't cope well with weak radio reception, but I've found it better than my old SH888 phone in this respect, so have no complaints there.
Internet connectivity
On the whole, internet access has been rather disappointing. It's good to have in an emergency but I wouldn't use it every day. It all worked out of the box, but it's just not as useful as it could be. WAP takes ages to connect, it's designed for such small screens that there is very little information on each page, and there are hardly any worthwhile sites to visit anyway. At 10p/min I think it's also too expensive to use for entertainment.
I expected GPRS to be better, being faster and "always on". But it's only twice as fast (19.2kbps in this phone) and the data charge (£3/megabyte) is far too expensive for casual browsing or even occasionally downloading applications (which is easily done via a PC). The GPRS connection drops if the phone is used and has to be manually restarted. And if GPRS is left connected when the phone goes into standby and an incoming call arrives, the phone actually crashes and the call can't be answered! So you would have to leave the unit permanently powered up (probably with buttons disabled) which wastes battery power. Therefore, continuously running MSN messenger or polling a POP3 mailbox is not really practical. There is no compatible Yahoo! Messenger version yet, by the way.
There was no GPRS data monitor included for checking when your "free" megabytes are used in the UK software suite, but there was a free one on the supplied disc in the Netherlands suite (in English). There are also cheap shareware ones available.
Having said all that, the ability to check your e-mail and reply on the move is undoubtedly very useful. And the larger screen of a PDA (compared with a smart phone) means it really is possible to access multimap.com for example, either on their PocketPC site or their normal web page, and find an address in the middle of nowhere, which could be a lifesaver.
It's also very nice to be able to phone or send an SMS or e-mail to any contact in Outlook just by tapping the stylus on it, and to have the name supplied for any recognised incoming call (although strangely this doesn't work for incoming SMS messages).
Applications
The range of software available was a pleasant surprise. It really is possible to synchronise all your Outlook contacts and appointments and Excel and Word documents and modify them on the move. For example, I'm the treasurer of a club and I downloaded the large spreadsheet with all the accounts and member details and can now check on the spot whether people have paid their subscriptions instead of printing out a list before each meeting.
There are also free downloads from Microsoft available, including lots of E-books, foreign language dictionaries (quite expensive previously for the Psion), sample city guides, "skins" and some ringtones and games.
There's some great third-party software available as well. For example, I found a universal remote control application with nice graphics that even has a learning mode and voice recognition. And a complete HP-15C scientific calculator emulation for $13!
I miss the nice calendar week view with birthdays in years I had on my Psion, and the world time application that had dialling codes and sunset and sunrise times for hundreds of cities, but I'm sure I will eventually find shareware replacements.
I've nearly exhausted the 32M of built-in memory and have bought a 64M MMC card costing around $30 for more storage.
One thing I really miss though is a way to store my passwords and credit card details. There is a basic utility on the supplied applications disc, but the fields are very small and there's no import facility. There are lots of shareware ones (e.g. "eWallet") but none of these seem to have the ability to import anything except their own format either and they're quite expensive ($30 with a PC application). I have managed to use pocket Excel to import my data in csv format for now (password protected and synchronised with my PC) but it doesn't support templates or forms for viewing the records in individual rows. Pocket Access doesn't seem to exist anymore either (except for very expensive commercial versions). So for the moment I'm stuck with scrolling the spreadsheet endlessly to the right to view my data, or rekeying it all into a proprietary application.
Outlook 2002 is included, but I'm not sure it offers any real advantage over the Outlook 2000 I was using previously and it does take a long time and several reboots to install all the service packs, patches and activation so may be not worth bothering with.
Update
The limitation of 32M of memory isn't as bad as I thought - it's just that bugs in the software ("memory leaks") cause it to be gradually used up unless you reset the phone every couple of days. About half of it (i.e. 16M) is free for user applications. It's probably sufficient for "normal" use as a basic phone, address book and diary but you'll need a storage card if you want to store eBooks, audio files or pictures etc.
I found an application called ListPro from the same people who make eWallet (www.iliumsoft.com) that can import CSV files and password-protect them, although they are not actually encrypted.
The synchronisation of Excel spreadsheets is buggy - it's OK in the direction from PC to XDA, but if you make any changes on the XDA, strange things happen to the formatting in the synchronised version on the PC. Fonts change, columns move and so on. So I don't use the synchronisation feature for spreadsheets, I manually copy them from PC to XDA. On the other hand, Outlook contacts and appointments do seem to synchronise reliably in either direction.
The free utility from Paragon Software to lookup names for incoming SMS messages at http://www.penreader.com/PocketPC/SMS_Name.html seems to work fine. (Note: No longer needed with latest O2 firmware.)
Battery life is better than I expected - I can go up to five days between charges, whereas previous phones I've had needed charging every day. Contacts and appointments can be automatically saved to "ROM" so you won't lose them even if the battery does go flat. They can also be backed up to the web or a storage card and synched with a PC so the chances of losing all your data even if the device is stolen are very small.
The vibrate feature is not really strong enough - I have missed calls because I didn't notice it.
I'm still very happy with it overall though. People are really amazed if they stop you to ask directions and you produce a streetmap of their exact location!
Update 2
The latest firmware is a more stable and fixes the missing SMS names problem, but still crashes after several days unless the unit is periodically reset.
A new xda II with camera, tri-band access, bluetooth option, more memory and PocketPC 2003 is reportedly on the way, so wait for the end of the year if these features are important to you.
Update 3
ActiveSync 3.7.1 is now available from Microsoft at
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/resources/downloads/pocketpc/activesync37.mspx and seems to connect much more reliably via USB, which was a major headache with previous versions.
A couple of people have asked me where I got the latest, more reliable ROM firmware - it was from O2 at http://www.o2.co.uk/productsservices/xda/romupgrade/0,,170,00.html but I don't know if it works with the T-Mobile.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 500
Recommended for: Professionals On-the-Go - Internet and Email is a Must!
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Epinions.com ID:
philmck
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Member: Phil McKerracher
Location: London, UK
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
See www.mckerracher.net
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