When my boyfriend got the new T-Mobile MDA, I was instantly jealous. Then I started thinking how great it would be to carry only one device instead of a PDA and a phone. Well, by this point I'd reached the conclusion that I need a phone with syncing possibilities. My old Nokia 6600 had this, but when it would sync my contacts, it never did it quite right. I decided that having a phone with Windows Mobile would be to my advantage. After some deliberation, I was pretty sure that the Smartphone version would be adequate for what I wanted it to do. Mostly, I wanted a device that would remind me of my appointments because I always look at my phone more than my PDA. Of course, I needed a phone that had all the bells and whistles I was used to. This included bluetooth, speakerphone, text message, browsing, games, and a camera. The SDA was the perfect solution for my need.
So how does it stand up? As a phone, it works great. The voice dialing is slightly better than my Nokia 6600, which is helpful if I'm dialing from my bluetooth headset. The speaker is better in general. I've found I can use regular mp3's as ringtones and they sound fine. I can still use all the bluetooth features that I was used to. This included voice dialing, redial, answer, and hang up. There might be more, but these were the most important. I've never had a complaint about sound quality. The only complaint I have as far as phone features is that it doesn't come with many ringtones and the ones it does are kind of weird. This is easily remedied, so no big deal.
As a replacement for a PDA is a little different. I did realize when I chose to go to a smartphone that I would lose some functionality, but I didn't appreciate how much. I still get pop up reminders for appointments that are set up that way and I can view and edit all my tasks, contacts and calendar options, but I lost my notes. A lot of people don't use the notes at all, but I did, so it was a bit troublesome. However, after some research on the internet, I found a program that syncs my existing Outlook notes and even preserves the colors. The other thing I lost was the Microsoft Office programs. Upon further reflection, I realized that I never used those to edit in my PDA. Once again, some research and I found software to view Office documents. That's all I really needed it to be able to do.
It came with a few bonuses. It has Windows Media player and you can easily sync music or video files if you have mini SD card. Once you have a mini SD card, there are shortcut buttons to quickly play your music. The only downside is that if you don't want to listen through the phone's external speakers, you have to use the headset that came with it - regular headphones won't work. I think there might be a way to listen over your bluetooth headset, but I didn't really get the phone to use as an mp3 player. You can sync your media files using ActiveSync over bluetooth once the device has been set up. Since this is so simple to do, I've found myself keeping music on the phone to listen to at work.
It's pretty simple to sync over bluetooth. The only problem I have with that is because I sync with two computers, it wants me to rename my device every time I switch. I think that is an ActiveSync quirk though. UPDATE: This problem seems to have resolved itself somewhat. I can now sync with both computers and even did so via Bluetooth on both, but now have to use a cable with my laptop for some reason. Still believe this is related to ActiveSync as both computers have no problem seeing the device as a SerialPort. It has all the instant messaging and text messaging programs you'll ever need. It also can view any website, but even better, it has wifi built in. So if you don't have a data plan and you're somewhere with wifi, you can surf the web.
One of the perks of having a Windows Mobile device is the amount of software available to download for it. I even talked my boyfriend into writing a Sudoku game for it for me. It's also incredibly customizable. You can change nearly everything about it to fit your needs or wants. The thing I like best is the size. It is the perfect size for me. It's long enough where you can hold on to it, but not too thick where it feels like you're holding a brick. It's also relatively light. One annoying feature which I think can be fixed with a hack is the G that shows on the top when a GPRS network is available. The other thing I was disappointed in was the camera. I don't use the camera a lot, but the few pictures I've taken have come out fuzzy. It seems to only work well in full light. I expected more out of a 1.3MP camera. Other than that, it took me awhile to figure out the predictive text entry and how to turn it off, but once I did figure it out, it was smooth sailing. It's still not a lot of fun to type long messages on a numeric keypad. A bluetooth keyboard may be in my future.
All in all, a terrific phone which has freed me from my PDA. It functions well as a phone and a PDA, although some upgrades were necessary to have all the functionality I required. Highly recommend for anyone who's looking to cut down to one device.
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