(pt.1 here)
(pt.2 here)
(pt.3 here)
Well, this is the one I chose…the xda mini s or HTC Wizard as it is also known. To summerise, this is a very nice phone with all the built in functionality one could hope for, stunningly let down by abysmal software.
Let me give you an example: To make a phone call. Bearing in mind, this is a device sold in mobile phone shops, not computer shops. It is supposed to be a phone first, and a pda second. Phone is an application, it must be executed and closed like an application. It (like most windows mobile applications) suffers from numerous bugs and design flaws. I have only had it a week, already phone has crashed during a call (when the phone crashes, the on/off switch ceases to work, battery must be removed), irritating!
So, to make a phone call, one must first open the ‘phone’ application, sometimes this works by pressing the green ‘call’ hardware button (great!) but not always. Sometimes pressing this button gives you your contacts, sometimes it does nothing except light up in pretty green. I wonder if one day I will be able to predict what response pressing this button will give.
The second problem with this phone, believe me there are too many to go through here, is the support. There is NO mac support for the o2 xda mini s, none…nothing from microsoft, nothing from apple, nothing (as yet) from any 3rd party. Apparently the reasoning for this is that microsoft ‘improved’ the security in WM5 which broke iSync and the 3rd party offerings (pocketmac and missingsync) to the extent that they have to go back to the drawing board to sync. The os has been out since last april and still nothing…thats pretty bad if you ask me.
Ok, I can put up with only using my pc and bluetooth. Ha! I connect a bluetooth serial port, go through the rigmarole of pairing and…no connection. I must also point out that the activesync program has sound effects while trying to find a device (arrrg!). Now I am somewhat irritated, but hardly surprised, so I connect the supplied usb cable to the back of the pc… ‘installing drivers’, ‘device is ready to use’, zonealarm tells me i have a new network…fzzt! The Pc resets itself. The pc also refuses to boot while the phone is connected…
So, I cant sync with a mac, I cant sync with the pc…what do i do? I try virtual pc, nope…I try safe-mode, nope…I try different versions of activesync, nope…all have the same effect of driver wont start or just straight crash. Beginning to run out of ideas, I installed the dreaded XP sp2 on a spare partition. Thank-god, finally a sync through usb…it really shouldn’t be this hard!
With regards to the phone itself, it isnt that bad…well, I am getting used to it anyway. The buttons on screen are usually too small to press with a finger, so the stylus has to be brought out, nerdlyness ensues. There is something about using a mobile device and a stylus, just needs black-rim glasses fixed with sticky-tape to complete the image really.
The camera seems to actually be worse (although higher resolution) than the 7650 (the very first phone with a camera). The lens is almost useless in low light conditions. The flash/light on the camera is actually pretty useful as a torch, useless for images as it really seems to make no difference in any other condition except pitch-black.
The wifi is kinda cool, only 802.11b though. IE for mobile is ok, it sort of does what you need in a mini browser. I tried opera mobile 8.5, it seems largely the same as IE, except with an irritating ‘this will expire in 40 days’ screen. The wifi connection is relatively stable, it sometimes has trouble getting an ip address (I have had this on three separate networks, so i am sure it is the phone not the individual dhcps), range is pretty good too…even found a couple of networks my powerbook couldn’t see. Such a shame the gprs is prohibitively expensive.
Bluetooth seems to be even more temperamental that the 7650, sometimes it works and can sent to the powerbook/pc, sometimes it just doesn’t want to play. I would guess this is some kind of ms-patched-to-death security fix…
By far the most entertaining part about Windows Mobile 5 is the message you get when you shut-down the phone
Warning: Device will be off,and may lose some data.
Do you want to continue?
Damn, those are some confident programmers…simply powering down the phone may delete all of your contacts, images, themes. It probably doesn’t mean this, but how can you be sure? To a new user this could be pretty freaky…well, if they actually read it.
Windows also seems to have lost the ability to actually close programs. You think I am joking? In windows mobile 5, pressing the x in the top right corner, no longer closes, it minimizes/hides the active window. This is terrible, especially when there isnt a task-switcher easily accessible. I dont know whether this is some kind of ill-fated implementation of the osx style of application management or what, but after a couple of hours of twiddling with the phone you have to go into task manager to shutdown all of the programs you have used. I can see the novice user having great problems with this…as the memory gets used up, the phone gets slower and slower…
Luckily, I am not the only person who has had these problems…after following advice on various forums, I removed the o2 ‘active’ software, this improved the phones performance by about 50%.
I also discovered a couple of programs which deserve to be packaged with every copy of WM5, the first is called spb PocketPlus. It fixes the ghastly task manager problems, it creates a nice customisable shortcut collection and monitors collection on the desktop (or today screen as it is known) and does all sorts of other useful things in the background too. The second is a cool voice-recognition software called fonix voicedial, it basically allows you to do almost any phone operation by voice only and it actually works, first time, with no training…great!
I think I have vented enough annoyances about the phone…so what does it do well? Well, it looks pretty 
The qwerty keyboard is surprisingly easy to use for txting and emailing, it is quite strange to know where the keys are when typing with thumbs though. A nice feature is that txt messages are displayed on screen for a few seconds when you receive them…just enough to quickly read them without having to go through the process of opening etc…The contacts list is nicely organised, and the search is quick and comprehensive. The battery life is good, my first trial lasted for 48hrs with no charge to take it down to about 10% battery, certainly better than my old phone. Just a shame that the only docks available for this phone are plug ugly.
Looking back on my list of things I wanted to be able to do…after a week of usage I am at 6/15. I can connect through wifi, connect through gprs (for £2.32 per megabyte, urk!), send photos to flickr via flickr email (not ftp yet although it is possible), blog via email, vibrate (duh), tetris (yet to find a copy which isnt crap though). I reckon there is software that will do voip, but I have heard it isn’t great. If only I could sync with the mac…
All-in-all, I am relatively happy with the phone, after a week of usage I am learning windows little foibles. One thing I must add though, is that the phone/pda market really is ripe to be iPodded.
All it will take is for some company (hopefully apple, this tuesday) to release a stylish, easy to use mini pda running some well designed, pretty software and they will completely take over the market. Windows mobile would not be any competition, they are on their 5th version of the operating system and it is still dire…they wont get it right anytime soon and Linux is still in the theoretical stage of development.
