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The best pocketable laptop replacement

I am looking to upgrade my phone with something just a bit better, but I want to make sure I am upgrading, not losing out on features. So first I need a phone that has all of the same features but more.
I use my phone in lieu of a laptop on trips, as I am often in a situation where carrying a laptop is impractical, and I need something that can be shoved into a pocket at a moments notice.
Here are the features I have currently and I want in my new phone:
1. A Great Phone
This is by far the most important thing. A phone that has loud and clear voice quality, great reception, and picks up voice well. My phone currently I can use in the middle of a loud nightclub underground and still be able to have a conversation and great reception. This rules out the iPhone already.
2. Outlook 2007 Integration (or Outlook 2007 killer software integration)
This includes push email, desktop synced email, contacts with all fields, tasks, calendar and notes. I need them all.
3. Internet friendly
I use the internet constantly on my phone, browsing all day. I use Opera Mobile software, and it works great, even with tabs! Wether it is GPRS, EDGE or 3G, I can connectification.
4. Multimedia friendly
Windows media player converts and copies all the videos and music I want automatically and provides many great options for shuffling the music on the player automagically. I also use TCPMP for divx and youtube videos and the like with no problems.
5. Bluetooth A2DP
I swear by my stereo headset. I have no used a wired one in so long. Listening to music, wathcing videos and having phone conversations is so much easier with A2DP. This rules out the iPhone again.
6. Large capacity/storage cards
Currently 8GB microsd cards are avaliable for my phone, with a theoretical limit of 32GB.
7. Instant messengers
I use MSN, QQ, Skype and others on my phone. It is nice to be connected.
8. Wifi
for those times when 3g just aint enough.
9. Hardware keyboard
I message a LOT, so I need a device that caters to this. No onscreen keyboard can match the usability of a hardware keyboard (in my and most people's opinion)
10. Pocketable
This has to fit in my pocket easily. PReferably a suit inside pocket. My current phone is about 14mm thick and about 3.5 inches diagonal... smaller than many less functional phones.
11. Chinese/Asian language input
Perhaps this is just for me, but it an essential for me to be able to communicate in Chinese.
12. All the little things
All the little things that make the user experience better
- threaded sms
- autocomplete names, emails, numbers
- predictive phrases (not only words, the phone predicts sentence patterns as well)
- calling card support (adding prefixes, dialing predetermined numbers automatically)
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Things I want in my NEW phone that my current phone lacks:
1. Speed
My phone slows to a crawl when I am doing too many things at the same time.
2. Bigger screen (3 inch+)
Watching videos on a 2.8 inch screen is fine, albeit too small. My eyes get tired after a while. Extra screen real estate would be better for surfiung the web as well.
3. GPS
Google maps is functional, but can only now give me a location based on my nearest cell. true GPS location finding would be a huge advantage, as I am often searching for locations.
So after all that, does anyone have any sugesstions on the perfect phone?

why not try a x7510 ?

boinger66 said:
why not try a x7510 ?
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Click to collapse
Hmm, looks interesting, if a bit big and heavy... I am looking further into it to see how pocket friendly it can be...

phony said:
Hmm, looks interesting, if a bit big and heavy... I am looking further into it to see how pocket friendly it can be...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly what you are looking for (I think)
http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/HTC-Universal-phone-gallery-pg_1336.html
It´s not a new model, but till to this date not ANY phone has beaten Universal!!
Have a look mate
Cheers

orb3000 said:
This is exactly what you are looking for (I think)
http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/HTC-Universal-phone-gallery-pg_1336.html
It´s not a new model, but till to this date not ANY phone has beaten Universal!!
Have a look mate
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anotehr vote for the Universal. IMHO it's better than the Advantage - and MUCH cheaper!

The Universal definitely does look like a great choice, the only thing would be it's lack of GPS and perhaps it is a tad bulky to have in a jeans pocket. Otherwise, I agree, the Universal seems like a top contender. What is the successor to the Universal?
Is is possible to upgrade the Universal with WinMo 6.1 and TouchFLO?
Also, I was leaning towards the HTC Raphael (Diamond Touch Pro), but the small screen still is a bit annoying... just a half inch more and I'd be happy.

The Universal definitely does look like a great choice, the only thing would be it's lack of GPS and perhaps it is a tad bulky to have in a jeans pocket. Otherwise, I agree, the Universal seems like a top contender. What is the successor to the Universal?
Is is possible to upgrade the Universal with WinMo 6.1 and TouchFLO?
Also, I was leaning towards the HTC Raphael (Diamond Touch Pro), but the small screen still is a bit annoying... just extend the screen to the edges more by a half inch...

Anyone coming from the TyTN II or Kaiser?

How is the new experience with the TP? Is it worth the money for the average Joe? Which features are notoriusly superior? Thanks for any details...I´m on the fence about the upgrade....

asolano895 said:
How is the new experience with the TP? Is it worth the money for the average Joe? Which features are notoriusly superior? Thanks for any details...I´m on the fence about the upgrade....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a similar thread asking the same/similar question - do a search.

1. Missing key mapping, kaiser can map a hardware key u want, TP cannot. (no app support remap hard key on TP)
2. Slow, rearly slower than kaiser, may be 640 x 480 device more hungry?
3. Keyboard miss "win" key & "ok" key.

Yana said:
1. Missing key mapping, kaiser can map a hardware key u want, TP cannot. (no app support remap hard key on TP)
2. Slow, rearly slower than kaiser, may be 640 x 480 device more hungry?
3. Keyboard miss "win" key & "ok" key.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1 can be done through registry editing or using a program like (AEBPlus) I think it was?
3, the American version has that. :O
Oops, just realized the OP is from CR, so the American version won't help him much.

asolano895 said:
How is the new experience with the TP? Is it worth the money for the average Joe? Which features are notoriusly superior? Thanks for any details...I´m on the fence about the upgrade....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not for the average joe I guess lots of eye-candy goodness for VGA, but still slow imo when using touchflo3d. Still need to get used to TomTom in VGA.. it's renders the streets really small compared to my tytn II before!

asolano895 said:
How is the new experience with the TP? Is it worth the money for the average Joe? Which features are notoriusly superior? Thanks for any details...I´m on the fence about the upgrade....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am pleased with TP, as it open up more options for VGA and G-Force appliaction. I used to flash a lot of ROMs since I was using Kaiser, but I am quite satisfied with TP original rom, only doing some tweaking here and there...
I agree that the speed is slower than Kaiser, but I believe with more people using TP, there will be better solution in XDA. Would everyone agree on this?

Black93300ZX said:
1 can be done through registry editing or using a program like (AEBPlus) I think it was?
3, the American version has that. :O
Oops, just realized the OP is from CR, so the American version won't help him much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AEButton Plus can't map more than a few hard keys on the face and sides of a device, as far as I know (and I have it installed on my Mogul)

I don't regret going from my Kaiser to the TP at all.
After following some of the "Tweaks" suggested in the below threads and installing most of the programs to my memory card I honestly don't feel a speed difference.
I just see the TP as the Kaiser done properly - OK anything running on WM will have small bugs, but as ecoline said the more poeple using the TP the more we'll clear the bugs and improve the TP's performance.
Raphael Tweaks
Advanced Configuration Tool v3.2
Tweak collection for the HTC Touch Pro

Another thing I want to add-- TP is like Kaiser buffed for VGA processes. Bigger images to render = more power and memory to do it. All of my contacts in my Kaiser has a full screen contact picture for S2U2, and checking them in TP they've been reduced about 1/3 their size. It was fast browsing them, but as soon as I changed the pictures to match the size of my TP screen browsing them was slow. S2U2 for VGA needs more memory than the QVGA.
So it's like using Kaiser but VGA. Still slow in my standard, but lots of VGA goodness

I found the Kaiser with Touchflow 2D installed (along with the other cabs for all the other apps that are on the Touch Pro) was actually a lot nicer to use. The screen updated instantly (e.g scrolling left and right on the tf bar, you could see the cursor under your finger and the screen always kept up); whereas on the Pro you see the cursor follow your finger and the screen update is about 12 frames a second.
All in all, with the Kaisers screen update and finger following speed makes Touchflow a nicer experience.
But.... the Touch Pro screen is fantastic and in VGA which makes everything so crisp. The keyboard is even better than Kaisers and has full querty 5 lines. The look of the phone is sexy for once. The size of the phone is much better even though it is only 1cm shorter (a couple of mm thinner and it would be perfect). The camera actually takes good pictures that I actually keep, the first for a camera on a phone for me, though the LED flash is just like any other - bit of a gimmik. Everything else hardware wise is at least as good as on the Kaiser or better.
In my first week I found the Touch Pro to be very buggy and slow. It's crashed a couple of times, freezed for no apparent reason (from 1 to 20 seconds), the screen update in the interface is slow and annoying, the finger detection sometimes seemed to miss now and then making it annoying to use at times. Typing messages would freeze randomly at about 100 typed chars intervals and then come back 10 seconds later!!!
Sounds bad doesn't it?
But, I have since fixed most of the problems. Have since upgraded to the DXS v15 ROM, done a few of the tweaks from this forum, fixed the typing freeze bug by turning WiFi power to "best performance" (strange but it fixes it). I'm hoping the WiFi power setting fixes other freezes I've experienced.... time will tell. I've even managed to stop it auto connecting to GPRS data with Pocket Toolman 2 (I have have to pay for data on my contract), prefer to use WiFi, this should be an option in Windows Mobile but isn't.
Now, after a lot of fiddling the phone seems to be very usable, dare I say very nice to use. My main gripe is that the interface doesn't run quicker with fast screen update and have better finger input accuracy from being faster. I can't see why this can't be fixed, if the Youtube app can show videos at 20fps (or whatever it is) whilst downloading & decoding mpeg and read the touch screen, why doesn't Touchflow manage to display 10 2d image at a decent framerate (as you finger scroll the bar to select the view, all it is doing is displaying static screens to show which you have selected).
Oh, and there are a couple of things missing or wrong with the Touchflow apps too. For instance, the 3d email view is very nice but there is nothing to show which emails in the view are unread; And there is no way to tell if you are at the first or last email.... or any other. The image view needs an option to rotate the image (it rotates if you turn the phone, but if the image is wrong and needs rotating, it will just rotate to the screen orientation and still be wrong). The email view does really need updating as it is like a dumb blonde - pretty but useless, you end up having to go into the normal email list view to actually manage your emails.
I'll conclude with this though: At the end of the day I wouldnt go back the the Kaiser, the Touch Pro is much sexier, nice to hold and show. The usability is pretty good after you update and tweak it. I can only see things improving with updates. And as for worth the money, Vodafone do the phone free with 600 mins & unlimited texts on a £35 contract..... great value to me.

Having never dared to change my device's rom for warranty reasons, and not having been able to do any official upgrade as my kaiser was an operator version ( SFR aka Vodafone ) I must say I am very satisfied with my touch Pro. I find it superior to the Kaiser in EVERY aspect comparing two official roms : so much better battery life, much better performance even if the resolution is much better, instant landscape to portrait switching...
The GPS is said to be worst (but I didn't ever manage to make it work correctly on the Kaiser anyways).
There are some small issues compared to the Kaiser :
- the softkeys are missing (right and left keys above internet and mail keys on the kaiser - an issue for some games but in fact it was a windows mobile 5 phone edition standard and has been deprecated, so recent software work perfectly without these)
- no scrollweel on the left side and that's a real loss. The central button can be used as a "virtual scrollweel" as it is touch sensitive but it only works with opera and is not very comfortable to use. However some third party utilies can map the volume slider, not very useful in my opinion, to up and down keys.
- The four front pannel keys and directionnal keys are physical but behind the same big plastic cover, which means the whole bottom half cover of the phone presses on a button. This means the directional keys, wich are in the center of this plastic cover are nearly useless...
Reminds me of some Apple mice...
BUT
- Touchflo 3D is an extremely good addition, eye candy and actually really useful (the preview of the mails for example is really excellent). A lot of great software additions compared to Kaiser.
- Having an FM radio too is a nice feature...
- Everything looks so much better in VGA... Even QVGA apps (games) are filtered so that you don't see big ugly pixels. And it's not just a question of look. Excel can actually be used with this resolution, and web browsing - with opera - is actually possible. On the kaiser it isn't, not just for a question of software or speed...
- The new keyboard is WAY better, specially if you need to type special caracters like in french.
- I had a Fujitsu Siemens Pocket Look 720 before buying the Kaiser, the idea being not to have a phone and an organizer in my pockets all of the time, but I was disgusted with this phone which wasn't up to my expectations, inferior in many aspects to my FS pocket PC, I found it ugly, slow, too much power consuming, with a horrible screen, and of bad material quality: one of the small plastic clips of the battery panel got quickly broken... Not to mention those missing hardware drivers.
I thought I would never buy an HTC ever again.
But I did, and now I can get rid of my Fujitsu Siemens pocket pc which was so good but is now in every way inferior to my new phone (well apart from the big screen - but that's not good for a phone - and the 3.5 jack)

pfcsabre said:
Not for the average joe I guess lots of eye-candy goodness for VGA, but still slow imo when using touchflo3d. Still need to get used to TomTom in VGA.. it's renders the streets really small compared to my tytn II before!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tomtom already has software specifically made for the VGA/touchpro screens in beta, will be released sometime in November according to them.

Tomtom Navigator 7 posted here actually leaked (extracted) from HTC Diamond since Jun 20, 08. The newer version 7.451.9033 (VGA and QVGA) is available also.

Yup its like a Kaiser with everything fixed, looks better and is more usable in daily use. Very happy with mine.

HTC Touch Pro or HTC Touch HD?

Hi guys,
I'm trying to pick between the two. The main problem I'm having is whether I'll miss having a physical keyboard. As I wont be able to have a play with either of these phones before I make a purchase I want to be completely sure that I'm picking the phone I'm going to prefer.
So whats your opinion? Is the HD's keyboard suitable for you?
Do you miss playing silly small games on your HD? How are games on the Pro?
Also another important thing for me is the performance, I heard the Diamond can be quite laggy (With the Touchflow, which I plan on turning off anyway) but I would still like to know if the Pro is just as bad as the Diamond, and whether the HD is a significant improvement!
Cheers,
Luke

diamond rocks
There is a small lag , BUt it again depends on wether the ROM is a light one or a packed one . There are many out here , lighter ones ..for eg V7 , and there is one other fact about these phones , that if you do have a lot of calender enteries and contacts ...it lags a little ...

Calender entries aren't a big deal, don't tend to take full advantage of the calender. Though I do have 60+ contacts.

Have Diamond and I like it but wish I'd waited for the HD. I don't miss the keyboard from the hermes much as I expected.

Keyboard
I'm using a Herald. During some days I used the Diamond keyboard SIP, but after a hard-reset I did not install it again.
I'm using the physical keyboard when sitting or stopping in a comfortable place (office, train, restaurant) and I must work a lot (i.e. writing some project memories or preparing some lectures); on other cases, I usually try to use the stylus. When at building, I fear about missing the stylus (or maybe missing myself) in some concrete reservoir or some hole, so I liked to use the Diamond keyboard SIP, to write some small notes. So, my experience is I use keyboard about 30% of my time.
Looking the HD and the Pro specifications, I suppose they don't defer more than in design and small details.
If you need to work as "at home", I suggest you to get the device with built-in keyboard.

Thanks for the replys guys.
As I do a fair amount of blogging and web browsing I have been thinking that the Pro might be best suited for me, but on the other hand I do use remote desktop a lot (From work to my home PC) so being able to use remote desktop "On-the-go" would be rather handy especially on the large screen of the HD.
Another question I have is how often do you Pro and Diamond users make use of the D-pad? It doesn't seem like it would have very much use on a touch screen WM device.

D-Pad? Hardly ever.

Picked up a sprint Snap/HTC Cedar last night at Best Buy first thoughts.

I don't think the BB Mobile rep was supposed to let me get it yet as I thought it and the pre were due out on the same day? Of course, she was sweet and cute, but not very knowledgeable anyhow so it all worked out for me.
My HTC S511 came with Qualcomm 7625 528MHz processor. 192 MB of RAM with 80 MB for os as well as 256 MB of Flash memory of which the os takes up 160 MB. Software wise it ships with ROM version 1.14.651.1 dated 4/15/09 and radio version 1.25.05F. PRL version 60652 and PRI version 1.29_003.
Seems like a newer slimmer & lighter version of the Motorola q9c (which I also have on another line) except made by HTC with a 2mp camera. Not even close to the touch or mogul I also have so I will not even bother to compare it to either, but rather to it's closest match that I have experience with. I have pics of all these phones together, but no clue how to get them on here.
Keypad buttons seem a little wobbly but easy to use even for my big paws. Still playing with it trying to see if I like it or not. It feels better in my hand then the q9c and better suited to right handed use. Camera is alright, but no flash. Everything is pretty easy to find, especially if you are q9c friendly. Has MS Office instead of Documents to Go, but I can't seem to open word on it's own without a file already there to open. MicroSD card is protected under battery cover, which is kinda nice if it included a card that is. Includes 3 games Bubble Breaker, Solitaire and Wheel of Fortune. Also here is a quick list of included gadgets/software read from the bottom up on my phone:
YouTube
Voice Recorder
Video Recorder
Streaming Media
Sprint TV (Speaker is very loud though tinny)
Sprint Nav
Speed Dial
Software Store
RSS Hub
Remote Desktop
QuickGPS
NFL Mobile Live
NASCAR
Music
MP3 Trimmer (very nice for custom ringtones)
Messenger (Live) redundant?
Live Search
Instant Messaging (AIM, Live, Yahoo)
Inner Circle
HTC Mobile Guide
Google (not compatible with gmail mobile which makes me think no java support)
File Explorer
Comm Manager (Airplane Mode, Phone, Bluetooth, MS Direct Push, Data Connection) no wifi
Clock & Alarm
Camera (pretty nice and can send via email right from app)
Bluetooth Explorer
Audio Booster
Album
Adobe Reader LE
Internet Sharing
Accessories
Getting Started
Pictures & Videos
Voice Notes
Games
Call History
Windows Live
Voice Command
ActiveSync
Office Mobile
Windows Media
Tasks
Internet Explorer
Settings
Contacts
Calendar
Messaging
Overall, I must say it is much more polished than my q9c and not bad for $149 with new line contract. Too soon to say anything about battery life yet, however it is still running on the initial factory charge and only dropped from 3/4 to 1/2 in 20 hours of being on and mildly used. Data is typical HTC fast and should make it a good pants pocket phone for me instead of jeopardizing my now aging and harder to replace mogul/titan. This is good for me especially since my q9c seems to have forgotten how to shut off it's display of late.

Yes this Phone is very cool

I've got the old T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur) and was wondering if the screen readability in sunlight has been improved?
I've always been upset that I can't seem to read the screen at all when I'm outside and the sun is shining. I've noticed that friends with blackberrys and iPhones don't seem to have the same problem.

Sold my Xperia X1... which new one to go for?

After month of problems, unable to connect my X1 to my Pioneer headunit, I finally decided to sell it.
The question is now, which phone will be my next one?
I'm between the HTC Hero, the Nokia N97 and the Samsung Omnia HD. Important for my decision is a WinMo free device. The time I had my XDA Orbit and after that the X1 I learned to hate Windows Mobile.
Things used to like on my X1:
- QWERTY Keyboard
- the Multimedia/Internet capability
What I didn't like:
- the bluetooth incompatibility to my SatNav
- the working speed
- the limited internet experience (Browsing was not as good as I expected. Opera was slow and "sticky")
The advantage of the N97 is clearly the QWERTY keyboard. But the touchscreen is worse than the ones from Samsung and HTC I think, because it's resistive not capacitive. The Omnia HD has a brilliant AMOLED capacitive display, great for watching movies or doing any other multimedia stuff. The Hero has also a good capacitive touchsceen, an open OS with lots of tools to download and a intuitive user interface.
What I want:
- an easy to use UI which can be personalized
- a smooth and fast operation (I hate continous pressing on the screen until an App opens)
- bluetooth comatibility to my Pioneer Avic X3II (should be no problem, beacause only WinMo devices don't work properly)
- downloadable apps would be nice but not necessary
- a good internet browser and a good alround internet browsing speed as less limited as possible (in comparison to "real" surfing on a PC)
- flash compatibility would be cool
- last but not least: a speedy way to type messages. A full QWERTY keyboard would be the best solution, but typing messages on a very good touchscreen is also fine. On my iPod Touch I am pretty quick
If you have any ideas/recommends/suggestions please post them.
And if you know a device that fits better to my needs feel free to name them (except iPhone because it's way too expensive here in germany)
Greetings
action_heinz