When my old phone fell down and broke, I had to get a new phone, and I decided to get a Windows based one after a gap of nearly 2 years. Of the range at display in Reliance Digital, I thought that this phone was a right mix of features, price and the goodies thrown in.
The phone is based on a Windows Mobile 6.x and is far superior in terms of stability and robustness. I have now been using this for close to 2 months and there have been no (touchwood) crashes so far. This was a big quantum jump for a Windows-based mobile (not hanging, crashing etc).
In addition to the normal stuff, the package consisted of a belt-case for the mobile, a suction-based stand to mount the device in the car for navigation etc, a 1GB MicroSD, a set of CDs (MapKing, Outlook Mobile etc) The GPS is pretty fast in getting fixed to the satellites (unlike the GPS bundled in E90). A QuickGPS utility is provided through which you can download satellite data and which is then used to get a satellite fix.
That does speed up things pretty fast. The normal features expected out of a Windows mobile based device are all there - Push mail, Outlook Synchronization, Windows Live Services
(Hotmail sync, MSN messenger, Live search etc). They all work like a breeze, and
no problems in either the setup or the subsequent usage. The camera is 2MPs and
is quite OK for the occasional party/social/workplace snaps. And there’s no
flash.
The phone has a lot of buttons for a touchscreen based phone. I have one
for answering calls, rejecting/ending calls, windows start button, OK button,
Internet Explorer button, communication manager button, two buttons (which can
be configured) - apart from those volume control, camera click, power off, and
voice commander buttons. I personally found these buttons useful, instead of
navigating through the screens for routine stuff. It also has a jog dial, and a
nice tracker ball (a la mouse) which glows blue. I find these useful as well
while scrolling the screen, clicking URLs etc. So, what they have tried to do
with these buttons, tracker ball, jog dial etc is to sort of reduce the usage of
the stylus, and that’s a big improvement. Now all these great things are let
down by two main factors - the processor and the internal memory.
Now dig this,
when I open a program, sometimes I get a message that "There’s not enough memory
to start the program. Please close some of the programs, wait for 30 seconds and
try again". This is a fairly regular occurence and I have to open the task
manager and close all other programs and then try opening the application that I
had in mind. Secondly, the time taken to open some of the heavy applications can
be an agonizing wait of around 10-15 seconds - Completely attributable to the
200MHz processor. Compare this with the HTC TyTn which comes bundled with a 550
MHz processor and you would know what I mean. Apart from that the MapKing
software is OKish (The european version of the phone comes with TomTom, while
the asian version comes with MapKing - primarily because of the availability of
regional maps).
This software is not that great. The bottomline? The device is
pretty good and packed with a lot of quality software, but is severly let down
by the slow processor and minimal internal memory. I would not suggest this
device to anyone as the user experience is extremely irritating due to the speed
and lack of enough memory.