In my earlier post, I compared some aspects of the new-to-me T-Mobile MDA with my familiar Verizon Treo 650.
First, about the customizations. I installed the AKU2 ROM (which includes the MSFP DirectPush bits), and I stil love it. Having wireless sync for all my calendar and contact data was extremely valuable when I was in France (although I’m not looking forward to getting the bill for data charges, which are something like $0.015/KB). I also installed a ton of software, including SPB PocketPlus, SPB Weather, and PocketInformant. I’m really impressed with SPB’s products, and I like PocketInformant too although it’s taken some getting used to. I’ve also installed a free app called Smartkeys that makes the right softkey double as an “OK” button– highly recommended.
Second, the hardware. Battery life, even with WiFi and Bluetooth off, has generally been poor. I started yesterday with a fully charged battery; after a total of about 15 min of phone calls and a day worth of DirectPush, I was down to 20% (the first warning threshold) by about 6pm. I’ve gotten in the habit of turning on flight mode overnight, and that helps some, but not enough. The camera is decent, and I like having the three additional side buttons (I have one mapped to PocketInformant so I get one-button calendar access), plus the two softkeys, plus the red/green buttons, plus the dedicated mail and IE buttons.
The screen is excellent, and I like the ability to switch between portrait and landscape mode. Overall, though, the phone feels a bit slow. It’s not entirely clear how much performance is affected by the homebrew AKU2 ROM I’m using; consensus seems to be that it’s actually faster than the factory ROM, but I don’t have any basis for comparison.
Windows Mobile 5.0 has been quite stable. Occasionally when I press the “mail” button, Pocket Outlook launches and updates the softkeys but doesn’t display the message list. This is a little bothersome, but closing Outlook and IE generally fixes it. (Speaking of Outlook: I complained that there was no way to move between messages, but that was just me not knowing to use the 5-way navigator by moving left/right).
There are still some things I miss from Palm OS. For one thing, Palm OS has the concept of numeric fields, so when you go to enter something like a phone number, the keypad automatically goes into numeric mode. Applications can leverage this, so entering things like flight numbers or birthdays is easy. As far as I can tell, there’s no equivalent concept in WM. The Palm text entry engine does a better job of correcting some kinds of shorthand entries (e.g. “dont” turns automatically into “don’t”); although WM will suggest words, I haven’t figured out how to edit the list of suggestions or turn the feature off.
How is the MDA as a phone? Decent. T-Mobile’s network coverage isn’t as good as Verizon’s in the areas I’ve tested (around Toledo and at CVG and JFK). The phone worked fairly well on the Orange and Bouygtel networks in France, although incoming calls didn’t always make the phone ring on my end. Sound quality isn’t as good on the Treo 650, and the speaker volume for ringtones and alerts isn’t loud enough. (Part of the problem is that Voice Command adds an audio announcement, which it mixes over the ringtone audio, reducing its volume further). When the phone’s in its holster on my belt, it’s very difficult to hear it ring if there’s any kind of environmental noise.
EDGE data speeds are acceptable; by comparison, all I have here in Toledo is Verizon’s 1xRTT, which feels about the same.
Overall, I like the form factor of the device quite a bit, but I’m not satisfied enough with T-Mobile’s network to switch.
Next up: evaluating the Verizon Treo 700w that I got in yesterday. So far, after a little fiddling with it, I like it a lot.
Update: PhoneScoop just posted their review of the MDA. Their conclusion: it’s great if you’re using Exchange, but only mediocre otherwise.
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