Pocket PC Phone Edition4 November 2002 The big goodie I got to take home from Möbius this year was a Pocket PC Phone Edition. While some attendees got unbranded XDAs straight from HTC in Taiwan, mine was a T-Mobile-branded device. Not that it matters; the T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition, the AT&T Siemens SX56 and the O2 XDA are all essentially the same. Only minor differences in software set them apart. As my device was flashed by Microsoft with the latest build of the Phone Edition operating system - rather than T-Mobile's version - this review will cover these devices in general. Let's get started. The Hardware The first thing I looked at was the screen. Regular readers know it doesn't matter much to me how cool a device is if I can't read it comfortably. I'm happy to report that the screen on the XDA is gorgeous. It's bright and crisp with great contrast, and ClearType looks fantastic. ClearType text on the XDA is among the "blackest" I've seen on any PDA. The screen is a 12-bit reflective TFT, frontlit from the bottom. Oddly, the backlight settings allow only for on or off; there are no settings to adjust the brightness intensity. If you're one of those people that prefers the iPAQ at Super Bright, you'll feel right at home with the XDA. iPAQ users might see a potential downside in this setup, in that running an iPAQ at Super Bright generally results in horrible battery life. Add in the phone radio, and how long could the XDA battery possibly last? Quite a while, as it turns out. The battery in the XDA is a massive 1,550 mAH, and I generally get about seven hours of on time with both the frontlight and radio on. If you need more than that, a bolt-on extended battery is available to take it up to over 3,000 mAH (and George Mosquera, of Silver Slider fame, will be happy to thin the extended battery for you if you just can't deal with the moderate added bulk). There are also a plethora of aftermarket chargers available if you feel the need to "top off the tank" at the office or in your car. The XDA comes stock with 32MB of memory, which probably seems light now that there are so many 64MB devices on the market. It is, but there's a good reason for it. HTC decided to ship the XDA with 32MB standard for two reasons: it's cheaper - an important consideration when selling the device as a phone - and it's more power-frugal. Coming from a Jornada 565, the 32MB doesn't really bother me; I'm used to keeping my internal RAM as clear as possible by storing most apps and data on a storage card. For those of you that simply have to have more memory, Pocket PC Techs offers upgrades to take the XDA up to 64 or 128MB. Keeping things on the SD card isn't as bad as it sounds. Unlike the "MMC in SD clothing" 1-bit slots in some other PDAs, the slot in the XDA is a full 4-bit SD slot. It felt as fast or faster than the venerable Compact Flash card in my Jornada while transferring 15+MB Audible files to my card, so it should be fast enough for daily use. And, alas, it's not like you're going to use the slot for anything but memory. While it is a true SD card, it is not SDIO compliant, so you can't use it for a Bluetooth SD card or anything other than memory. I've heard conflicting reports about whether or not the lack of SDIO is software-fixable, so we'll have to wait and see if this feature can be added without a pricey hardware upgrade. Not surprisingly, since the device is also a speakerphone, the volume levels are much better than most Pocket PCs. The XDA works great as an alarm clock - with SuperAlert installed, natch - and the sound level through the headphones is more than adequate for my WMA and Audible usage. The XDA comes with probably the nicest default case I've seen for any PDA. It's a vinyl form-fitting case with a flip-lid, similar to designs popularized by E&B and Vaja. It even comes with a nifty swivel belt clip. So why did I get a Vaja case anyway? Because the stock case is a tad bulky? Yeah, sort of. But more than that, the stock case closes with magnetic closures in the lid, which adhere to metal clips on case itself. These clips have an unfortunate tendency to scratch the paint on the case after repeatedly inserting and removing the device from the case - a requirement if you want to use the cradle. The Software The software load is mostly the standard Pocket PC 2002 build, but with extra phone/network stuff. The integration between the PDA and the phone is really slick. Not only can you dial straight out your contact list, but you can even dial numbers in email messages. I do have a bit of advice for folks that get the T-Mobile version of the XDA. Stay away from T-Mobile apps! The T-Mobile Today screen plug-in and the "Battery Monitor" app in the Startup folder are directly responsible for 95% of the crashes/hangs T-Mobile users experience. PocketPCMagic has a great article on how to remove these apps that I highly recommend. The Phone Okay, the thing that really sets the XDA apart from other Pocket PCs is the phone. So how well does it work? Is it a good phone, good enough to ditch the cell phone you have now? The phone application runs like any other Pocket PC application. The virtual on-screen buttons are big enough to press accurately with your finger, although I do recommend a good screen protector, especially if you have longish fingernails. It is more full-featured than just about any phone I've ever used short of a digital office system. Let me give you an example. I can be talking to one friend on the phone when a soft beep alerts me than I have another call coming in. I also see on the screen who this second call is from, and I have the option to answer or ignore the incoming call. If I ignore it, it goes straight to voicemail. Let's say I tell the person I'm talking to to hang on and I answer the second call. The first person - let's call him Bob - is put on hold, with regular beeps to let him know he hasn't dropped the call. The second caller - let's call him Jim - starts talking. On my screen, I see: Jim The names, of course, are taken straight from my Contacts database, or Caller ID if I don't have the number on file. If Bob decides to hang up, I know instantly as his name drops off my display. If I want Jim and Bob to talk to each other, there's a convenient Conference button on the dial pad. Of course, the dial pad isn't the only the way to place calls. The Phone app also includes a 99-entry speed dial list completely accessible via the D-pad - just push left from the Phone app to bring up the speed dial list - and an extensive call log. The call log even shows you whether calls were incoming or outgoing, durations and notes. Notes? Of course! While I didn't find holding the XDA up to the side of my head to talk to be as awkward as I'd expected - more on that later - one of the great advantages of the XDA is the ability to use either the speakerphone feature on a headset to let you use the device to take notes while you're on a call. There's a small note icon at the bottom of the screen in the Phone app. Tap it while on a call and a note pops up pre-filled with the caller's name, the date and time and other pertinent information. These are normal notes, stored in a My Documents folder called "Calls," and they're very easy to refer to later. In fact, now I finally have a good use for the Pocket PC's Find function! The one feature the dialer is really missing, and an odd omission given the horsepower of the Pocket PC, is voice dialing. Fortunately, a couple of third-party developers have already stepped up to the plate to address this deficiency. I'll try to do a comparison review of these soon. Now that we've covered dialing, how do you actually talk on this thing? Surprisingly, the most natural way to do it may just be to put it up to your ear and talk. I mentioned before that XDAs seem to have replaced the iPAQ as the geek ID badge among the natives I encountered in Redmond. For the few days I was there, I always found it slightly disconcerting to see someone walking around with their PDA stuck to the side of their head. After I got mine, though, I was amazed at how natural it felt to treat the Pocket PC Phone as, well, a phone. It's not as contoured as I'd like, but the sound quality is good and the larger size of the XDA actually makes it easier to hang on to when used as a handset than some of the absurdly small cell phones I've seen. Facial oils can smudge the screen, but with a screen protector and shirt sleeve you're right back in business. (This may be gross, but I've also found that "lubing up" the screen with facial oil makes the stylus glide more smoothly.) I didn't think I'd use the XDA this way, but as it turns out I probably make 90% of my calls with my XDA glued to the side of my head. It's just so... normal to make calls this way, and I think the the lack of this function is going to be a real barrier for other convergent devices like the Palm Tungsten W. Of course if you need to see the screen while you're talking or you wear Tammy Fay Baker caliber makeup, the "PDA head" approach may not be for you. Fortunately, you have options. If you hold the greed Call button down for two seconds, you enable speakerphone mode. Both the speaker volume and microphone gain shoot up, and you can talk comfortably with the device held away from your head. I should note that the XDA speakerphone feature isn't meant to be used in the middle of a boardroom table; it's really designed to allow you to hold the device in front of you while you use the PDA functions normally. It's really more like the Nextel walkie-talkie feature Dennis Franz "doesn't" hawk in those TV commercials, or, if you prefer, the way Captain Kirk talked into those old-style Star Trek communicators. If you don't want other people listening in on your conversations, you can also use the included headset. The headset that comes with the XDA is pretty nice if you don't have a problem with earbuds. It adds a second earbud to the standard one plus dangling microphone, so can still listen to your MP3s in stereo. The connector is a 2.5mm jack similar to those used in other cell phones, but it's wired a bit differently, so third-party headsets - for example, if you prefer boom mikes - may not work properly. The 2.5mm socket also means you can't use your favorite 3.5mm jack stereo headphones to listen to tunes. There's hope, though. Pocket PC Techs - yes, the same folks that do the RAM upgrade - offer a variety of custom-made adapters to allow you to plug just about anything into the XDA. Text messaging has finally caught on in the US, and the XDA might be the best phone yet for sending Short Message Service (SMS) messages. SMS appears on the XDA as just another mailbox in the Inbox application, along with email synced by ActiveSync and any POP accounts you might have set up. To send a message, you create a new email and enter the recipient's phone number in the To field. To make this easier, you can tap on the Contacts icon, which now brings up a list of phone numbers as well as email addresses. The nice thing about SMS messages is that you don't have to establish a GPRS connection to send or receive them. This gives SMS an edge in terms of notification that email can't match (see below). Before I get into the data side of the device, I just want to mention on last thing about the phone. Ringtones! On most cell phones, downloadable, custom ringtones are a big deal. On the XDA, you can use any .WAV file as your ringtone. The possibilities are endless. Forget the obvious Star Trek or South Park clips. How about a recording of you discretely clearing your throat for use during meetings? (Remember, the Pocket PC can record .WAV files, so you can "roll your own" ringtones.) The mind boggles. I've stuck with the "OldPhone" stock sound as my default, a great reproduction of the ring of an old mechanically-rung analog desk phone. Oddly, since phones don't sound like that anymore, this is more distinctive than any cell phone MIDI tone! Networking Down to brass tacks (what does that phrase mean, anyway?). Having my phone and my PDA be the same device gives me one less gadget to carry, but that doesn't make me that much more effective as a writer. (Well, it could. For example, it makes it much easier to record interviews.) Lucky for me the XDA is as strong with data communications as it is with voice. You have two options for data with the XDA. First, you can literally dial in to your ISP and use the phone as a wireless modem. This uses your cell minutes, and is maddeningly slow at 9.6 kbps. On the up side, if you have unlimited minutes (e.g.. on the weekend) and you don't care how long it takes to pull down data, you can surf as much as you want at no additional charge. For most users, though, this method of using the XDA to access the Internet will be nothing more than an emergency fallback. The second method is far faster than a GSM dial-up connection. This uses General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to establish a packet-based data connection to the Internet, bypassing the voice channel and functioning much more like a network card on a PC. With GPRS, the time you spend online is irrelevant. You're charged by how much data you upload and download, not how long it takes to do it. While much faster than GSM dial-up, GPRS might be a disappointment to desktop broadband junkies. Typical GPRS download speeds range between 15-35 kbps, depending on signal strength and network load, about what you'd expect on a slightly noisy home dial-up modem connection. The magic in GPRS though, isn't the speed, but the mobility. Most of the sites I hit regularly from my XDA are optimized for mobile devices, and are generally as simple as possible. This provides two advantages. One, small pages download faster. Two, small pages cost me less money, since I'm paying for every megabyte that streams in and out of my antenna. Still, it's unbelievably freeing to be able to look up movie times from MovieFone while I'm out, or even look up a cast member in the Internet Movie Database (Where have I seen her before?) while I'm seated in the theater. Of course, while web surfing is certainly useful to a writer for research purposes - yeah, that's it - email is far more useful to a writer on the go. It's pretty easy to set up on the XDA, no different than any other Pocket PC. The difference is that GPRS allows to check your email anytime, anywhere. Now is probably a good time point out that unlike the email on the RIM devices, GPRS on the XDA is not "always-on" but "always-available." When the device is off, although the phone radio is still available for incoming voice calls, data connections are severed. This makes sense from a battery life perspective, but it is different than the email notifications you'd get with a RIM device or email forwarded via SMS to your cell phone. While the device is on and you're using it to do other things, you can have an active GPRS connection and set up Inbox to poll for new mail at regular intervals. Just don't expect the device to "wake up" from off like it would with an alarm to tell you that you've got mail. If you get a lot of email, you may not want to burn up all your GPRS bandwidth downloading low-priority messages. Inbox is designed to be as data-frugal as possible, so it's not hard to avoid this no matter how much email you get. In the advanced options for your POP account, you configure Inbox to only download headers rather than the full message bodies, and optionally include some of the message body - I use 1k. If you need to read more than Inbox downloads by default, you can mark a message for download and read the whole thing on the next connection. But how do you know if you're chewing up all your GPRS data in the first place? The are a few shareware programs that do this, but my favorite is GPRS Monitor by Spb Software. This program keeps track of all your incoming and outgoing bits, knows how much they cost based on what rate plan you have, and can provide detailed reporting on how much you've used and how much it cost you. It even puts up a little icon on your title bar that gives you a constant look at your battery level, data block use and transfer speed, as well as one-tap access to more detailed stats in a bubble window. A shareware app or two aren't the only things you're likely to buy in order to outfit your XDA in true mobile writer style. The XDA accessory situation is thin, but promising. At the time of this writing, the XDA lacks both a thumbboard and a foldable full-size keyboard, although both are due out soon (in the meantime, I'm sharpening my Fitaly skills). If the stock vinyl case doesn't work for you, there are great leather cases available from E&B and Vaja - I have the Vaja case myself - and of course most screen protectors made for other PDAs with 3.5 inch screens will work with this as well. CompUSA carries a car charger and a travel charger designed for the XDA, and there's that aforementioned extended battery, though the battery life of the XDA makes these less necessary than with some other PDAs I could mention. A connected device is a completely different experience from unconnected PDAs. While I've still got my Toshiba e570 around for emergency backup purposes, I really don't see myself ever using an unconnected device again. Not only is it much more convenient to carry one device instead of a cell phone and a PDA, but the things I can do with my XDA that simply weren't possible before make this a connected device the only device worth carrying. Jeff Kirvin
Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today! |