ddowning
11-06-2005, 11:31 PM
Seven days ago I traded in my 3-year-old Sanyo 4900 for the first PPC 6700 sold to consumers in the Boston area. I am not normally a "first adopter" -- but I've been looking to upgrade for several months now, looking for a phone with these specific priorities:
1. Radio with superior signal strength: I live in Lincoln MA (Boston burb) and the signal in my home office is so weak the 4900 -- though better than most other phones --misses many calls.
2. Bluetooth: I want to be able to keep both my hands on the wheel while driving, and be able to talk with the phone in its holster and no wires to tangle with. I tried a Jabra bluetooth headset with the 4900 -- sound quality was good, but the bluetooth adaptor that had to be plugged into the 4900 was a nuisance—and I stopped using it.
3. Speakerphone: As a consultant, I sometimes find myself using my phone as a conference phone. The 4900's is good. My new phone's speaker should be at least as good.
4. Reliability: My 4900 with a skin-tight glove has taken a lot of abuse – it gets dropped a lot. It's never stopped working in 2 1/2 years of steady use. I expect my new phone to equal this. Unlike many members of this blog, I plan on upgrading phones every couple of years, not every couple of months.
5. Ease of use: It's got to be intuitive, learnable with scant reference to the user guide.
I started considering PDA-phones based on a friend recent upgrading to a Treo 650 and raving about it. I realized in doing so that I would be upgrading from an "appliance" to a "computer", and thus likely trading-off some ease-of-use for more functionality.
The new functionality that I would be willing to trade ease-of-use for:
6. Contacts and Email access: The key benefits I sought in moving to a Smartphone are (a) to have access to all by contacts in Outlook 2003 -- personal and business (I use Business Contact Manager), and (b) to be able to read email while traveling without having to get out my laptop.
7. VPN access: Getting into the business servers I access – over vpn and terminal services – would be cool. Unclear what the full value is of this, but would add flexibility to doing my job.
Here is my review after living with it for 7 days, including one trip.
In summary: The jury is still out, but I am leaning toward returning the 6700 before my 14-day trial period is up.
The pluses:
- Signal strength: Despite only showing 1 bar in my home office, and even when it shows *no* bars, the phone works while I sit at my computer -- something the 4900 would not do. Passes the first major bar! Add an external antenna plugged into its external antenna connector, and I should solve this signal issue.
- Sound quality: Very good, both on my end and on my callee’s end. A definite requirement.
- Wireless connectivity: It *found* my home wireless network effortlessly, and I was able to connect to one of our servers via terminal services while sitting in my living room. Cool, but not really something I’d do if I was a t home – I’d do this at my desk on my laptop and large LCD screen.
The so-sos:
- Battery life: Low, as many have cited. Extra extended-life batteries and car/hotel chargers would eventually take care of this – so a nuisance, but not a show –stopper.
- Internet browsing: EV-DO works, and is fast – but doing anything useful on a website is slow and frustrating, requiring a lot of horizontal and vertical scrolling to “see” on the small screen. Perhaps eventually key websites will have displays sized for smart phones. This is not a key need for me, so not really a big issue.
- Ease of use: Definitely takes some learning and getting used to, e.g., figuring out that mouse-keyboard “click-and-drag” to select is replaced by a “touch-for-2-seconds-then-drag” took me awhile to figure out. Found that I generated a good bit of frustration and several hours spent this first week gaining some mastery of it. Mastering it will take some time.
The minuses:
- Speakerphone: As others have noted, the speakerphone volume is quite low, and this phone’s use as a conference phone is unlikely to meet the need.
- Contacts synchronization: Activesync did not sync my Business Contact Manager contacts. On my trip, I did not have the contact info for a business partner I was meeting with. After some googling, looks like I’d have to wait for PocketMirror to release a Windows Mobile 5 version to get full Contacts-Sync functionality.
- Reading new mail: I finally managed to download the new email received during my trip (via our webmail interface – we do not run Exchange) – but only after an hour of fiddling on my own, and another 30 minutes on-line with a Sprint 6700 support person – who stepped me through a hidden reset process that un-boloxed something I must’ve boloxed while fiddling with my Connections settings. However, I had 4023 emails – 98% of the junk – and unlike on my Outlook, there is not spam filter to weed most of this out. Manually weeding out the 10 good ones from the rest – on the small screen and with no “select all” feature, this was frustratingly slow. I'd need to wait for a better email client in order to fully utilize this feature.
The question marks:
- Bluetooth: Have not tried it with a headset yet – but (after some doing) I *did* get it to pair up with my laptop – a good start; but this key feature remains untested via a headset.
- Reliability: I’ve read a couple of blog entries by other owners that attest to the delicateness of the screen, if dropped. There are no “skins” available for it yet – a must I believe. (The very first 4900 I bought returned from a trip with a cracked screen, before I found a leather skin protector for it).
There’s my assessment after one week. The jury will deliver final verdict next weekend. Meanwhile, I’d like to hear from others: do my assessments match your experience,or am I missing something?
1. Radio with superior signal strength: I live in Lincoln MA (Boston burb) and the signal in my home office is so weak the 4900 -- though better than most other phones --misses many calls.
2. Bluetooth: I want to be able to keep both my hands on the wheel while driving, and be able to talk with the phone in its holster and no wires to tangle with. I tried a Jabra bluetooth headset with the 4900 -- sound quality was good, but the bluetooth adaptor that had to be plugged into the 4900 was a nuisance—and I stopped using it.
3. Speakerphone: As a consultant, I sometimes find myself using my phone as a conference phone. The 4900's is good. My new phone's speaker should be at least as good.
4. Reliability: My 4900 with a skin-tight glove has taken a lot of abuse – it gets dropped a lot. It's never stopped working in 2 1/2 years of steady use. I expect my new phone to equal this. Unlike many members of this blog, I plan on upgrading phones every couple of years, not every couple of months.
5. Ease of use: It's got to be intuitive, learnable with scant reference to the user guide.
I started considering PDA-phones based on a friend recent upgrading to a Treo 650 and raving about it. I realized in doing so that I would be upgrading from an "appliance" to a "computer", and thus likely trading-off some ease-of-use for more functionality.
The new functionality that I would be willing to trade ease-of-use for:
6. Contacts and Email access: The key benefits I sought in moving to a Smartphone are (a) to have access to all by contacts in Outlook 2003 -- personal and business (I use Business Contact Manager), and (b) to be able to read email while traveling without having to get out my laptop.
7. VPN access: Getting into the business servers I access – over vpn and terminal services – would be cool. Unclear what the full value is of this, but would add flexibility to doing my job.
Here is my review after living with it for 7 days, including one trip.
In summary: The jury is still out, but I am leaning toward returning the 6700 before my 14-day trial period is up.
The pluses:
- Signal strength: Despite only showing 1 bar in my home office, and even when it shows *no* bars, the phone works while I sit at my computer -- something the 4900 would not do. Passes the first major bar! Add an external antenna plugged into its external antenna connector, and I should solve this signal issue.
- Sound quality: Very good, both on my end and on my callee’s end. A definite requirement.
- Wireless connectivity: It *found* my home wireless network effortlessly, and I was able to connect to one of our servers via terminal services while sitting in my living room. Cool, but not really something I’d do if I was a t home – I’d do this at my desk on my laptop and large LCD screen.
The so-sos:
- Battery life: Low, as many have cited. Extra extended-life batteries and car/hotel chargers would eventually take care of this – so a nuisance, but not a show –stopper.
- Internet browsing: EV-DO works, and is fast – but doing anything useful on a website is slow and frustrating, requiring a lot of horizontal and vertical scrolling to “see” on the small screen. Perhaps eventually key websites will have displays sized for smart phones. This is not a key need for me, so not really a big issue.
- Ease of use: Definitely takes some learning and getting used to, e.g., figuring out that mouse-keyboard “click-and-drag” to select is replaced by a “touch-for-2-seconds-then-drag” took me awhile to figure out. Found that I generated a good bit of frustration and several hours spent this first week gaining some mastery of it. Mastering it will take some time.
The minuses:
- Speakerphone: As others have noted, the speakerphone volume is quite low, and this phone’s use as a conference phone is unlikely to meet the need.
- Contacts synchronization: Activesync did not sync my Business Contact Manager contacts. On my trip, I did not have the contact info for a business partner I was meeting with. After some googling, looks like I’d have to wait for PocketMirror to release a Windows Mobile 5 version to get full Contacts-Sync functionality.
- Reading new mail: I finally managed to download the new email received during my trip (via our webmail interface – we do not run Exchange) – but only after an hour of fiddling on my own, and another 30 minutes on-line with a Sprint 6700 support person – who stepped me through a hidden reset process that un-boloxed something I must’ve boloxed while fiddling with my Connections settings. However, I had 4023 emails – 98% of the junk – and unlike on my Outlook, there is not spam filter to weed most of this out. Manually weeding out the 10 good ones from the rest – on the small screen and with no “select all” feature, this was frustratingly slow. I'd need to wait for a better email client in order to fully utilize this feature.
The question marks:
- Bluetooth: Have not tried it with a headset yet – but (after some doing) I *did* get it to pair up with my laptop – a good start; but this key feature remains untested via a headset.
- Reliability: I’ve read a couple of blog entries by other owners that attest to the delicateness of the screen, if dropped. There are no “skins” available for it yet – a must I believe. (The very first 4900 I bought returned from a trip with a cracked screen, before I found a leather skin protector for it).
There’s my assessment after one week. The jury will deliver final verdict next weekend. Meanwhile, I’d like to hear from others: do my assessments match your experience,or am I missing something?