Audiovox SMT 5600 Smartphone Oct-2004 – Currently the world’s smallest Smartphone [AKA Orange SPV C500, HTC Typhoon, Qtek 8010, Dopod 565 and i-mate Smarpthone 3 in other countries]

My impressions within the first 5-minutes of holding the SMT5600 are Wow! It's small, light weight, and has a beautiful large 2.2" color screen. Material quality seems excellent, and speed of navigating through menus and apps is very fast. The sound quality and signal clarity is good but I need to get familiar with the volume and position to my ear as well as the speakerphone levels and proximity.

Since being an early adopter with AT&T GSM service, I've had my sparring bouts with them over the years, but the kinks have been worked out and I haven't had issues since they were bought by Cingular. I was also an early adopter with PDA’s when I had the HP 100LX units and upgraded through to the Palm’s. I prefer the smaller candy bar style phones now and have owned two Nokia’s and an Ericsson T68i. This Audiovox SMT5600 was purchased 10/15/2004, at the local AT&T store and this review was written 11/14/2004. List price was $319 USD although they were available for $200 with contract.

Looking over the SMT5600 you first notice the slim attractive design and large screen. Even the included leather belt clip carrying case is a very clean design with its magnetic button flap. The screen top is made of a soft material that keys might easily gouge, but for viewing clarity is probably negligible due to brightness and resolution. (Specs below) Screen smudges easily from skin contact but again the brightness makes it easy to read. There is a 2.5 mm headset socket on the bottom edge (a stereo set of ear buds with mic and volume dial are provided), along with a standardized 5-pin mini-USB port for synchronizing AND power/charging. (Also provided) One side holds a small, dedicated camera button and the loudspeaker port, while the other side features a volume rocker. I have found since the tiny volume button location is directly opposite the camera button it is too easy to accidentally press both. On top is the IR port and recessed power button. A light sensor just below the keypad decides whether or not to backlight the keys in blue. Just put your finger over the tiny sensor and press a key if you need them back-lit in daylight. In terms of feel, the keys are hard silver plastic, domed, with a clicky tactile feedback that's pleasant to use. Then there is the much discussed Joystick/rocker control; I agree with others that the rocker design is awesome for up/down, left/right, but clicking enter (press down) is an exercise in surgery and can lead to selecting choices you didn’t intend. It takes practice but I personally found it to work well enough once I had used it for a few days. Probably not good for games and might not be easy for big fingers. On the back is the tiny camera lens and mirror to aid in framing self portraits.

In a rapidly evolving camera phone arena the SMT5600 is on par. [UPDATE better pics than my wife's Treo600] There is a user friendly albeit limited VGA camera that encodes JPEG Photos-(640x480 320x240 160x120 up to 4x zoom) also phone size Photo ID-(176x180) as well as 2x Zoom Video and MMS Video-(both 176x144 or 128x96). As they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words" and although I didn't buy it for the camera, it's nice to have it available at all times. It's mainly just for general information sharing and fun photo ID. Email a photo, or store a few for discussing something later with a client or friend. There is a 'mini' SD Card slot for more storage room. It's hard to miss a photo op as you can press the dedicated camera button on the side to instantly access the camera mode you last used. The pictures are all 'soft focus' which translates well on the screen however close-up photos of text were illegible. The camera also has adjustments for ambience, brightness, gamma, tint, and saturation. This makes it very usable in darker situations as you can adjust the light sensitivity to improve the image.

You can assign different photos and ring tones to individual contacts or whole groups. All you do to add more sounds or pictures is drag and drop the files to the appropriate folders using the Explore program in Windows. It was easy to link them to the groups and contacts. Take a picture with the built-in camera and then just link it to your contact. Among the many ringer options it has a 'vibrate once then ring' option and supports WAV files for this link-to-contact feature. Lot’s of fun.

Connecting to a PC couldn’t be easier using the internal Windows Mobile Smartphone software 2nd Edition. No drivers to load no hassle, just plug and play. You can even use it to transfer file to different computers. Connectivity is through mini USB, IR port or Bluetooth(2), which uses less power and the performance with headsets is far more reliable. Wifi is not an option at this time. I found the connectivity to work very well and I use it a lot to synchronize with my laptop.

The Audiovox SMT5600 includes a portable version of Windows Media Player (WMP) 10.0. This supports the playback of not only stereo MP3 music but recorded TV (if you have a Media Center PC), video, photos, and more in the palm of your hand. The sound quality of mp3 songs is superb when using the headphone jack. There's an application called PV Player which allows you to view video and audio over the air (e.g. via GPRS). Supposedly you can sync it with a Media Center PC and watch last night's 'The Apprentice'. I haven’t tried this. What I have tried a bit were a few games which worked well to pass some time instead of web-surfing or as well as web-surfing. Yes multi-tasking! The games were better quality than any other phone or small device I have used and as more games come out I'm sure we'll see improvements.

Where do you store all this stuff? Specifications show 64 MB ROM and 32 MB SDRAM as standard. It actually shows about 28 MB of flash storage, plus 23 MB of memory for storage and program execution. The rest might be used by the OS. Underneath the battery is the SIM-card slot and a place for the included mini-SD card however the location makes it time consuming to swap cards as you need to remove the battery. Mini-SD cards are currently available with up to 1GB of storage (Teravit). I assume that putting all your extra files, games, data on the mini SD will help free up the memory to keep response time fast.

The extensive, easy to use menus are very responsive. It took some practice to learn and remember all the procedures to customize and use the phone to meet my needs and expectations. The layout is well thought-out and with so many powerful features in such a small package, the time it takes to learn them all is well spent.

I really appreciate the /-- Back Button. If you accidentally press the wrong button as you navigate through the phone, just press the /-- Button and it takes you to that page, whether it's an Email, or a web page, appointment, contact etc. It's a great feature. Another nicety, while dialing a contact you automatically have the option to click their contact info for notes etc. or your appointment calendar in case you want to add something. If they are not in your database you still have access to the calendar and you always have the option of adding them to your database or calendar with a few clicks. Small but very useful everyday features.

Getting familiar with surfing the web takes me back to the old dial-up modem days. Ack! I read somewhere that Verizon data transfer is 2X faster unless you have an AT&T Edge system phone. The browser is great though. You can usually view the whole site as you would on your laptop or you can alter the view to make all the graphics and text fit the screen for easy reading. Very nice. After a while you get to know which website work well for speed and you tend to stick with them. I have used it as a yellow pages/411 directory which was tolerable if you know where to look. AT&T mmode also has a ‘Things Nearby’ search feature that asks your permission triangulate your cellular signal to pinpoint your location and then tell you the closest coffee shop, restaurant, hotel etc. Very Kewl. The less you have to type the better even though the excellent T9 recognition helps. Also, data usage fees with carriers are currently very high as will be your bill, especially if you surf sites with pictures etc. I have an unlimited talk and data plan so it doesn’t matter but watch out if you don’t. Lately I have found the web access invaluable. I use it for dictionary, thesaurus, news, important financial bond market updates and POP3 email. I get emails all day and currently I have an Austin Powers WAV file alert me with “You’ve got mail. Yeah baby!” It’s great until I decide to have a new WAV file. I don’t typically respond to the emails with the phone unless they are urgent but then I just call the person if there is a lot to discuss.

REAL WORLD USE
[UPDATE: I accidentally dropped it on the concrete at least three times (without carrying case) and only have minor scratches.] Since I work to a great extent with ACT! 6.0 and Microsoft Outlook for my business, I downloaded some Act! to Outlook Synchronizing software so that my contacts, calendar and to-do’s get updated from ACT! to Outlook as well as to the SMT5600 all at the same time! (USB, IR or Bluetooth) So when I leave the office I always have everything from client meetings to dental appointment as well as viewable/editable notes. The alarms also carry over to help keep me on top of my scheduled plans.

I Sync'd over 100 contacts from my ACT! database. They include clients, friends, and some services contacts. I sorted them into six different groups and now I can filter the view of each group with only four button clicks. If you know the person you want, just type their name or number with a couple of key strokes all matches come up instantly for easy access. Very impressive! Not to mention assigning up to 99 speed dials or voice tags to make a call. I can even bring up other features like Calendar, Internet Explorer, E-Mail, Voice Notes memo recorder etc. And with my Jabra BT200 Bluetooth earpiece I don’t even need to touch the phone to accept calls although I have not been able to setup voice activated dialing using only the Jabra. Microsoft has reportedly acknowledged this and is addressing this bug. I have read in some online forums that some people have been able to use the voice activation with different headsets, possibly the BT250. Make sure to test it before committing to the earpiece or check the forum listed below. By the way, pressing and holding the volume up button will access the voice notes area. A great feature even if the memo sound quality is not best so speak clearly.

Other points of note include a Flight Mode setting that allows you to disconnect from wireless service network while keeping the device powered on for the many other smart phone functions. The phone has an easy to use call forward feature that I use when I’m in the office. Then I just switch it back when I leave. I found the phone’s volume is low as well as the speakerphone but mostly outdoors or in noisy areas. This would need to be improved to get a five star rating from me. My Jabra Bluetooth is loud enough though. Sound ‘quality’ is good, whether in standard calls, loudspeaker mode or using a Bluetooth headset. I usually charge it every other day, but I’m a very heavy user of all the features, all day (speaker, email, camera, some Bluetooth, surfing and phone functions.) I almost forgot another item. Using to phone as a modem! (See update at bottom) Yes, it is built right in and easy to use for when you are on the road and need to send or receive some detailed email or surf some detailed websites and there are no free Wifi coffee shops nearby. -Use this link to find FREE wi-fi with your phone. http://www.wififreespot.com/

Although the software OS is responsive and memory allocates well among apps, some things could improve. When taking a call with key-lock mode ON, the screen will be on a dim/dark setting and only one key will reactivate the screen but you can barely see the instructions.[EDIT/UPDATE] You can tap the power-on button which will light up the screen! :) I recommend to set the automatic 'phone-lock' to 60-minutes, so that the phone doesn't lock the keys while you're on a shorter call. Regarding appointments and reminders, you cannot take it out of key-lock until you dismiss or snooze. Therefore, currently if I need to change anything, I do a 5-minute snooze and take off the key-lock so when it comes up again I can edit or reschedule. So that needs to get fixed with a unlock or reschedule option. Also they might need to update the Bluetooth Voice Activation. Besides the minor glitch or two the software works great and you don’t need to buy many of the extra apps to use the features you’d expect, like call forward, photo ID, ring tone ID, etc. as they are built into the OS. Much more software is being developed as this platform grows.

There is also Smartphone software available that integrates to help you get things done or just have fun. ClearVue has a bunch of viewing applications for the Smartphone. Each program provides accessibility to native Microsoft Office, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and PDF files. They even have printer drivers for Smartphones. Imagin walking into a meeting and hooking up your cell phone to a projector for your PowerPoint presentation. There is much more available like maps, games, language translators etc. but you can just use the web for most things anyway!

A few tips: I recommend using the 'Favorites Manager' to set up the Homepage with quick-launch icons FOR the 'Favorites Manager.' Having the 'Favorites Manager' as a quick-launch item allowed me to learn how to use many of the features intuitively and made things a lot easier to find until I got familiar with the phone. Once I found the features I used a lot I just created a Homepage icon, speed dial number or voice command for quick and easy access. While learning for the first while I used other quick-launch icons like the 'Task Manager' to keep the memory usage cleared quickly, 'Photo Contacts' to attach the pictures I took to corresponding phone numbers, and 'Sim Manager' to save the contacts in case I messed something up.
Definitely visit
http://howardforums.com/
http://smartphone.modaco.com/index.php
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/communities/smartphone/newsgroups.mspx
Read and share information so the community benefits as a whole.

As you can probably guess I really like this phone and highly recommend it to business people who use Outlook and want to access their contacts, calendar and Email in the field. It’s a lot smaller package and less expensive than a Treo or a PDA but you can’t input data as easily, unless you Voice Memo things for transcribing later or get a Bluetooth portable keyboard. It is really a phone / information source first and PDA / laptop second. We are finally at the beginning of the Smartphone platform here in the USA and I recommend joining in with the SMT 5600. It will only get better from here.

--A FEW SPECIFICATIONS--
*Tri-band GSM candy bar phone dimensions 4.24" x 1.82" x .69" weighing 3.6oz.
*2.2" color screen (176x220 TFT LCD 64,000 color)
*1050 mAh Lithium Ion Battery - 140hr Standby, 4hr Talk, 8hr Data
*Pocket Internet Explorer supports HTML, cHTML, xHTML, WML 2.0, WAP, JScript, ActiveX, and CSS
*Video clip length limited only by memory / selectable formats (MPEG4, H.263, or MJPEG AVI)
*The TI OMAP 200 MHz processor runs Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003 AKU2 update, Second Edition. Further software can be added in the form of native applications, or those of the J2ME (Java) variety.

UPDATE - MODEM info. Go here http://support.attwireless.com/awswls/support/index.jsp
in Search field, type "Creating a Dial-Up Networking Connection for Windows XP via USB Cable" Configure the modem to not wait for dialtone, and to default to no flow control or compression. Finally, in the setup for your connection, make sure you tell it to not use flow control (in the modem configuration). Make sure that your user name and password are blank and dial *99# Worked for me here on ATT. Currently connected at 230Kbps. Also, if you need the driver, here is the link: http://www.ppcw.net/downloads.php

UPDATE - If AT&T customers need to unlock their phone in the future due to the Cingular merger. Here is the link to help... http://smartphone.modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=114531

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 219.00
Recommended for: Gadget Lovers - Trendy and Hip