My O2 12 month contract ended in January and back then I didn't see any new stuff from O2 so I did not consider purchasing anything. However when I saw the XDA Zinc, I was pretty much sold as getting that as my next phone. However, now the Zinc is no more (I'm in UK right now) and the XDA Trion (HTC Hermes) has showed up. On top of this, my uncle is also nearing the end of his contract and is keen on getting the XDA Mini S (after he saw mine) but may consider upgrades.
Now the things bugging me are these:
There's the O2 XDA Terra (HTC Herald 100) which really is a XDA Mini S in black and has WM6 and possibly a better keyboard and camera and some other tweaks BUT with a microSD slot. The big issue is when it will be released.
Then There's the O2 XDA Trion - All things considered, the CPU is clocked higher but it is an ARM4 core based one and truthfully the CPU is from 2003 (as far as I can tell, the HTC Kaiser will use the same chip and only really has a better camera and a new keyboard mechanism). But it does have a better keyboard and camera...not to mention 3G capabilties (which the Wizard and Herald and any other OMAP850 based device - correct me if I'm wrong - lacks). However it again touts the microSD slot and is using WM5 and not WM6.
Considering that I find my HTC Wizard adequate for most things and the only things that truly bother me are the lack of an OK and Windows key on the front (but I am so used to sliding out the keyboard a little and using it), the lack of WM6 (can be resolved) the camera's resolution (could I stick a HTC Herald camera module in the Wizard?) and SDHC compatibility (now this is something I need to double check).I also get the feeling the OMAP850 can trump the Samsung offerings at clock speeds greater than 200MHz (I run it 116 at times and it's still usable for me)
The main reason I got the Wizard back then was because of the keyboard and the Exec is simply too impractical for me.
The question:
With all the above considered and in addition to the major question whether the O2 Contract is even worth it; I might be better off getting a device from expansys and the like (in which case a wait is a non issue), which of the following should I do? You can introduce your own as long as it's reasonable.
For me:
1- Get a new wizard fascia to replace the currently scratched one and do the WM6 upgrade and just hold on for a new device (I might do this anyway).
2- Get an XDA Trion as soon as it's available; it seems better than my XDA Mini S?
3- Screw the contract; it's cheaper to get the latest and greatest off expansys or someone when it arrives.
For my uncle who doesn't have a WM5 device:
1 - Get an XDA Mini S?
2 - Wait a week and grab an XDA Trion?
We are all in the same boat.
I say get a Trion and put Mobile 6 on it. O2 will not have another out until december if their track record is anything to go by. They ave been pissing around with the Zinc for 5 months now, i know my friend works for them and had it in his hands befor xmas.
In that case I am going to tell my uncle to head to a shop and try them out first(I will definitely have a play around as well).
Given o2's uk track record, it's WW release + 3 months (why does o2 UK skip devices anyway?). I might get a Trion depending on the total cost but until it comes out, I think I should get a replacement body and screen protector for my wizard.
Related
I have the original XDA-II and have an upgrade opportunity in a few days. I was thinking about going for the XDA-IIi. I was wondering about a few points and thought maybe people here might be able to help:
1) The camera has been upgraded quite a bit, can anybody supply me with a picture taken from the XDA-IIi so I can see the quality?
2) Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 2nd edition - Is this much different from the 1st edition on my XDA-II?
3) I am moving to the USA in jut under a year, I know that 1900MHz works in the USA. Can anybody tell me if there is an advantage to having 1800MHz (one that is available on the XDA-IIs)
4) Are there any plans for another XDA release soon? i.e. should I hang on for a few months to upgrade?
Thanks,
Allan
hi,
I can comment as follows.
Wait for the xda EXEC (Universal/MDA4 other names) which is due out any time soon in the UK on carrier o2/Europe. Its a 3G phone, so may not offer the benefits/compatability in the USA over 'edge' etc. I suspect that the USA will realease a tweaked version to suit the carriers of edge.
The camera on the 2i is crap when compared to the 2. seriously. dont listen to anyone whom says different.
2003SE is nice, landscape mode etc, slightly slicker menus, but over all so little difference, again, wait for the EXEC (or MDA4 as its known in europe) Wifi on board is the only reason i got the 2i, and in some ways i wish i had stuck the the 2 and the wifi card, and saved some cash and waited for the exec.
Hope that helps, in a nutshell the 2i is so much the same as the 2 , i would wait for the exec/mda4.......
heres a link for a review, only differnce been that in the UK it will be known as the EXEC as mentioned above and will be in Black as is the 2s currently by o2.
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/3668.html
Bryson
Was just gonna say the same, Bryson!
A
he whom rises early catches the early worm mr.valleyman!
:wink:
spot on bryson
i wish i had waited a 11months before upgrading to the da2i
as far as i'm concerned the 2i was a waste of space
Roll on the Exec!!! I'm upgrading early from the 2i to it, as well...
Does anyone have any idea of the approximate fine for upgrading early? Is there one? I'm on a staff account contract if that makes any difference.
Cheers
Ant
The XDA Exec is massive its simply too big to be used as a phone anymore.
The Blue Angel is still the device to go for, 2s. Simply becasue it's smaller than the Exec, also has a qwerty keyboard, and will be getting a WM5.0 upgrade in the future. Camera quality is also better than the 2i.
s1nn0n said:
The XDA Exec is massive its simply too big to be used as a phone anymore.
The Blue Angel is still the device to go for, 2s. Simply becasue it's smaller than the Exec, also has a qwerty keyboard, and will be getting a WM5.0 upgrade in the future. Camera quality is also better than the 2i.
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dude no offense but which rock did you crawl out under from.. firstly no current htc phones are getting wm5 upgrades and the camera quality of xda 2s is far far worse than the xda2i camera quality....i know i have both of them....
why isnt there a forum dedicated to the xda atom yet when its already been released?
FrontPage said:
The only two things not wrong about the name of this site are the dash and the dot. This site is about certain PDA-phones, made by a secretive firm called HTC in Taiwan.
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Perhapse because it is not actually a HTC device?
I thought it was xda developers not htc developers... :wink:
I don't think that many people have the device to justify having a forum perhaps.
It's only officially released in a limited number of countries around the world.
I had the pleasure of playing around with my mates Atom- two things that put me right off were 1) the screen contrast- absolutely terrible and 2) considering it has 128MB memory, it is relatively slow and sluggish. Would definitely like to these things fix in the next ROM upgrade.
I just got my Atom and I can honestly say it isn't bad.
The Screen contrast is completely adjustable and it seems better than my XDA II.
Also it is slow however, it gets a lot faster when you remove all the crap out of startup.
Only been using it for a short period but I'm currently happy with it.
cyeoh said:
I just got my Atom and I can honestly say it isn't bad.
The Screen contrast is completely adjustable and it seems better than my XDA II.
Also it is slow however, it gets a lot faster when you remove all the crap out of startup.
Only been using it for a short period but I'm currently happy with it.
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How do you adjust the contrast? I only played around with it for about 20 mins. Like I said it belongs to a mate.
i actually considered that its a quanta device and not htc but as the other poster said, i think the XDA part of the Atom has more weight than its company of origin.
i dont think its because its only been released in a few countries either.a forum dedicated to the universal was up even before it was released if i remember correctly.
so, again i ask the question: why isnt there a dedicated forum to the XDA atom?[/quote]
i dont think its because its only been released in a few countries either.a forum dedicated to the universal was up even before it was released if i remember correctly.
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But there are going to far less of these devices than HTC products since O2 Asia is the only carrier of it. The Universal was/is available in many variants by many carriers hence more devices being sold.
All the better if they do have a forum.
sh500 said:
i dont think its because its only been released in a few countries either.a forum dedicated to the universal was up even before it was released if i remember correctly.
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But there are going to far less of these devices than HTC products since O2 Asia is the only carrier of it. The Universal was/is available in many variants by many carriers hence more devices being sold.
All the better if they do have a forum.
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but remember, china is the most populous country in the world!!!
My 2 cents,
Simple fact is this forum is for people with these devices to communciate.
People with XDA Atoms will continue using the forum to communicate regardless of whether there is separate forum for it
A separate forum will make it easier to post in the correct location and stop clogging up the General Discussion, so regardless of who makes it and where it is available, it really doens't make sense not to have a separate forum for it.
Cam
I had the Atom for about a week now. The thing looks stunning but performs quite poor. The memory is is a big corncern for me as it's just too low, I've only got 6 Megs left in the storage memory and I haven't loaded half the programs from my Jam yet.
I'm a bit lost and don't know what to do with my Atom because I've also got the K-Jam on upgrade for £30 and it perform much better but just very bulky and not as good looking. I brought the Atom from Expansys and have about 21 days return policy on it.
I really want to keep it but it's such a buggy thing for £552!!
I would suggest not to go in for the k-jam instead of the atom as its WM5 which is the problem (slow) I had the k-jam for 10 days, it was so damn slow I had to get rid of it...I mean if I use the device without installing any other software (WM5 compatible) its fine but as soon as I put 1 or 2 softs its lagged terribly, so stick with the atom & wait for a ROM update...
Also try removing the start up program like the user mentioned above...
There are also registry Hacks to make WM5 faster.
Atom & Dopod 818 Pro (Prophet) are hot machines in Hong Kong market and users are actively arguing about their pros and cons.
However, seems like a new ROM for Atom has been release but only available through service center, even not seen in seeo2.com (official O2 Asian support page). The ROM version is 20051223B2WWE. The general response is the ROM make the machine much much faster and the radio (not FM radio) signal is improved as well. I don't have the machine so cannot verify.
For 818 Pro, we Hong Kong people hearing more and more negative feedback... seems like the bad things raise slowly to the surface, like bubbles in thick oil. On the other hand, a side track news: Dopod is not going to release ROM upgrade as fast as before because so many people do ROM hack. It's really bad news and make me think twice before going for 818 Pro. :x
Not considering the bad reputation and performance during Atom's initial launch, seems like Atom with new ROM patch defeat 818 Pro a little bit... :?:
For me, I have stopped and just wait, to see which device will have a dedicated forum here... if there is no resource and feedback from you guys and play with the device together, no matter how well the device, it's just a consumer gimmick and not compariable to even magician
I have the Atom for the past 3 weeks and I guess I am not overly satisfied with the product,
even though this is my first PPC , I am a regular reader of all forums and have been following all product launches ,
one fo the main reasons for me to go in for the Atom was WM 2005
but it seems the product as such has some HW issues especially in the sound front ,and Data Transfer rate ,
The speakes are just too bad for what is supposed to be a media center PPC and the USB Active Sync Data Transfer rate is at best OK,
I do not know how a ROM upgrade will improve poor speaker quality and the Data Transfer speed, I guess I will have to just grin and bear it
I will be doing the ROM upgrade next week , will give my updates once I observe the perfomance of the Atom after the upgrade
A few more Atom gripes
Apart from the poor response time, I also find the standard alarm function does not work properly. A quick test with the alarm set for 10 minutes ahead works well, but 6am the next morning does not sound at all, until you later go into the alarm section to find out why, and then it goes off. Any ideas anyone?
Also, my Atom turns itself on accasionally for no reason. No incoming call or SMS, no alarm set, no USB or bluetooth connection, etc. It just turns on and sits there. Any ideas anyone?
Also - another poster advised removing items from start-up. How do you do this? Does it require a registry edit?
thanks,
depressed_atom_user
No registry edit to take items out of startup, done it on both 2003Se and WM5.
Programs - File Explorer - Device - Windows - Startup
I currently have a HTC universal, however it isn't very practical for every day use for me so i am selling it - i currently have 4 phones in mind however i was just wondering which you thought i should get and why
Choices
xda orbit - htc p3300
spv m700 - HTC p3600 (trinity)
For their inbuilt GPS solutions (will save money)
xda trion - htc hermes - spv m3100 - vario 2
as i had the wizard and absolutely loved it
htc touch
as a last resort (imo) as i really like the phone but i've heard bad things about the screen?
anyway as i said which do you reckon and why?
do you want 3g
do you want wifi
do you want microSd or miniSD
do you want keyboard
what screensize do you want
frontcam and back or just back
soooo many more factors to deside which phone is right for you
see thats the thing
they all have wifi & bluetooth.
two have built in gps (which is a plus)
one has a keyboard (which is a plus)
just trying to figure out which people think would be best - as im really confused lol
i was going to go in today and get the first one i saw but im thinking that may not be wise
Sadly (due to being robbed on a recent trip to Russia) I find myself without my trusty Dopod838Pro (Hermes). I am tempted to get a Tytn 2 or a Nokia E90 but to be perfectly honest, with some actually attractive looking PDA phones (Touch Pro and Xperia X1) coming out I'm a bit loathe to do that.
I am curious to know what the best bets for arrival dates for these phones are. I'm aware that the Xperia X1 (my preference) has been speculated for H2 this year or 1st quarter next, and am unsure about the Touch Pro. What are the best bets people have seen for these?
Just wondering as I'm considering buying the cheapest, ****test 3G phone I can (sadly my old 2.5G one won't take a USIM and i'm contracted to a 3G only network) in order to wait for them...of course this means I'm without PDA functionality for a while though...
The other thing I'm curious about is if anyone knows if the stock (i.e. not sold through networks) models of these phones are likely to include the VoIP stack in the base rom? With my old phone I went to a huge amount of trouble and eventually got VoIP working but it would be nice if it actually came stock in the ROM as it does in the Nokia E series phones (which is why I briefly considered the E90, until I saw how huge and ugly it was...). VoIP is kinda important to me and I'm not completely wedded to Win Mobile if I can get superior form and function on another platform...just I do prefer it if possible as it syncs better with outlook...
caeci11ius said:
Sadly (due to being robbed on a recent trip to Russia) I find myself without my trusty Dopod838Pro (Hermes). I am tempted to get a Tytn 2 or a Nokia E90 but to be perfectly honest, with some actually attractive looking PDA phones (Touch Pro and Xperia X1) coming out I'm a bit loathe to do that.
I am curious to know what the best bets for arrival dates for these phones are. I'm aware that the Xperia X1 (my preference) has been speculated for H2 this year or 1st quarter next, and am unsure about the Touch Pro. What are the best bets people have seen for these?
Just wondering as I'm considering buying the cheapest, ****test 3G phone I can (sadly my old 2.5G one won't take a USIM and i'm contracted to a 3G only network) in order to wait for them...of course this means I'm without PDA functionality for a while though...
The other thing I'm curious about is if anyone knows if the stock (i.e. not sold through networks) models of these phones are likely to include the VoIP stack in the base rom? With my old phone I went to a huge amount of trouble and eventually got VoIP working but it would be nice if it actually came stock in the ROM as it does in the Nokia E series phones (which is why I briefly considered the E90, until I saw how huge and ugly it was...). VoIP is kinda important to me and I'm not completely wedded to Win Mobile if I can get superior form and function on another platform...just I do prefer it if possible as it syncs better with outlook...
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Not sure if the VoIP stuff is included in WM6.1 at all?? Perhaps some chefs might be able to answer that....I personally am waiting for a Raphael (Touch Pro) which POSSIBLY might be available around Ausgust time but thats just an estimate. The Xperia is also one that interested me but im sticking with the Raphael.
Perhaps search for a cheap Hermes until then?
The Sony Xperia X1 should hopefully be out by Sept or Oct time this year...well thats the latest info i have received from a friend of mine who works in the mobile communications industry. If they decide to release it next yr then im afraid it will be too late for SE, it would crazy for them to release next yr...the phone would be a massive failure for them. But knowing SE they always take the piss when it comes to phone launches.
The best we can hope for though is Sept/oct this yr fingers crossed. If i hear of anymore info ill be sure to update here.
Right now I have a T-Mobile dash, known as HTC Excalibur. I do llike the phone, however I have had it for three years and I just found out that the USB port on the phone looses contact and makes the phone difficult to charge.
I want to get another HTC smartphone running Windows Mobile, with Querty Keyboard. The phone must be able to sync to ms Outlook, and read/edit ms Word & Excel files. Also the phone MUST run off a SIM card.
Just by looking around this site, phones which come to my mind are; Blue Angel, Wizard, Hermes, Herald, Kaiser, Titan, Raphael, Wings...
I was looking around and I can get HTC Wizard for $140 on ebay. Is the wizard a good phone or should I look elsewhere? I dont want to spend more than $150...
I appreciate any inoput...
Don't get a Wizard at all, get at least a Tytn or Tytn II.
slick69 said:
Don't get a Wizard at all, get at least a Tytn or Tytn II.
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I just got T-mobile G1, wasnt bad for $160 new from the store...
So far I am very happy with it...
Let us know how u like the G1 3G? I'm waiting on the tmob Touch Pro2 due in July...
Love my G1, even more so with the custom ROMs available as it has made the mobile much more complete. When it was originally released it felt rushed but everyone knew it had potential to improve and grow, due to the nature of Android - And boy has it done that!
Everything has improved from responsiveness, battery life, quality applications, louder external and internal volume for calls, A2DP support for Bluetooth stereo headsets, video recording, vastly improved camera software and more. The only thing that's missing (which is currently being developed) is Bluetooth OBEX support so users can finally send and receive files via Bluetooth.
As soon as that's implemented it will be the most complete smartphone I've ever used.
galaxys said:
Let us know how u like the G1 3G? I'm waiting on the tmob Touch Pro2 due in July...
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The G1 is awesome, just that awesome... It was well worth the $160 I spend on it...