SmartPhones
November 19th, 2007 | by WoonZai |A few months back, I was contemplating whether it’s time for me to switch over from a normal mobile phone to a smartphone. It was not a small investment for a student to have a smartphone - Unless I can justify why I needed a smartphone over a normal phone.
The question that I asked myself then was - “Is a $400 premium worth it for me to switch over to a smartphone?
I started listing out the key features that I will not have in a normal mobile phone.
- The ability to read documents (PDF, Word) on the go
- Wi-Fi capability so that I can check out bus arrival schedules and the ability to access my email.
- To take over as my primary entertainment device in downtimes (waiting times etc).
- To check out various mobile applications to satisfy my curiousity - Theasaurus, Dictionary, Financial Calculators, Games
- To mange my schedule better with a better calendar and contact management functionality
- To listen to music on the go (I don’t have a portable music player)
True to my nature as a finance student, I depreciated the premium of $400 over the span over an estimated life-span of 2 years for my phone - Which averages out to be $0.55 per day. Which meant that I should be willing to spend $0.55 for the enjoyment I’m expecting to get from a smartphone.
I decided that I’m ready to take the plunge into purchasing a smartphone. I filtered the list of my choice down to two phones - The HTC Touch vs the O2 Atom Executive.
The HTC Touch
Picture from DataDave
O2 Xda Atom Exec
Picture from Shayan
Next I went to check the CNET reviews on the HTC touch and the O2 Xda Atom Exec .
In summary, the CNET editors were in favor of the O2 Atom Exec, while the users reviews indicate that the HTC touch were more favorable. With the 1 Gig MicroSD card, Touch-flo capabilities, sleek design and a newer operating system (WM 6) - I decided to go ahead with the HTC Touch.
I didn’t regret the hardware of my choice. One major pet peeve was that the USB port of the HTC Touch was used for both the headphones and the charger. This made it impossible for me to listen to music while charging my phone.
What proved more disappointing was the operating system rather than the hardware. True, the Windows Mobile has its merits, but there are some serious fundamental flaws in the OS which hindered my user-experience with the smart-phone terribly.
Pros of WM6
The MS Office Product Suite worked pretty well, especially Powerpoint Mobile. Excel Mobile does not seem suited for the mobile device though
The Camera feature worked seamlessly and smoothly with HTC Touch touch-screen capabilities. The Touch does wonders to display the resolution of the pictures
The T9 Phone-pad provided by HTC Touch was the finishing touch to the pathetic input options provided by WM6.
HTC Touch T9 Phone-pad - What made me chose HTC
For those who love QWERTY - You might like the SPB Full-screen keyboard.
SPB Full Screen Keyboard - All time favorites for QWERTY Lovers
Cons of WM6
Messages, Calendar Entries and Contacts are stored in the internal memory. There’s no option to store them on the external card. There wasn’t any indication of the proportion of memory these items were using - And I was puzzled why my internal storage memory keeps decreasing when I have all my applications and data on my storage card. It takes me a reformat for me to realize that it’s my 500+ contacts (with complete vCard information) that were draining the memory. And.. I haven’t had them backed up when I format my memory.
No Macros. The number of repetitive tasks I have to perform to get a task done is frustrating. It takes longer to get things done.
Viewing PDF files are still troublesome in WM6. There’s no option to auto-expand to fill up the space in landscape mode, and I have to manually adjust zoom into the document. But even so, viewing PDF files remains another handicapped experience of WM6.
It’s too troublesome to create a new SMS message with WM6 - To the extent of discouraging the use of SMS. I need to tap 4 times in the tiny space available (Message -> Menu -> New -> SMS) before I can create a blank SMS message screen, and the 5th tap to get the keypad up. WM6 without the HTC Homepage is worse - There’s 8 taps to send an SMS In additional, I need to tap 5-6 additional times to add in each new recipient for my message.
Verdict
The Smartphone has smart features, but the handicapped WM6 experience had made it a terrible experience using a smartphone. The HTC Touch had provided multiple provisions for these handicapped experiences, but it’s still limited what they could do. I love Microsoft Office products, but I think that’s the only product Microsoft is best at.
Some of you may think that I prefer the iPhone. For me, I’m not too excited about it. It may have a better UI, but the closed platform it practices made it difficult for new functionalities to be extended to the system. There’s more to a mobile device than just multimedia, Wifi, browsers and Youtube - Apple has to understand that.
I do look forward to using Google’s Android . With Google’s user-interface design skills and the Android open platform. I just hope that it’s functional. I will place my bet on Google for this one. 
Google Android
