nüvifone™. The navigation phone.
- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 249 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
61 out of 62 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Absolutely Beautiful"
Pros: A very good feature set
Cons: no UMTS, still trying to configure WPA, speed, bluetooth menu immature
Summary: All and All, this is a great peice of equipment. Will do almost anything you want to, but only at its own pace. I googled about the performance about this baby and came accross a few registry edits that should do the job. But I have seen that connecting a GPS via Bluetooth has been a pain (for me). I use the pharos GPS with microsoft streets and trips. I tried I-guidance but do not have enough memory. Expect a second review when I get my memory card (1 GB mini SD/ SD) on the 23rd.
The response times got really painful when i finally connected the device and started i-guidance. MS Streets was pretty light on the procesor/memory. I guess the downside of Cingular's/HTC's decision to put a 200 Mhz processor is showing here.
Coming to the Wireless LAN, i was able to connect to a WEP 80.11b network at work, but not the WPA 80.11g network at my home (yes, i tried mixed mode as well, and the registry hack). I did not see a performance degradation with this.
Coming to the true function, the phone !!! The Signal reception is beautiful. It almost matches my previous nokia 6230. I'd say its about 95% as good as a Nokia. Need I say more ?
I did not like the bluetooth menu a lot compared to my nokia. there was a way in nokia that would allow me to see a history of all devices and then give me the "Connect" option when i selected one of the devices. I do not see this feature and do not know how to keep track of the devices i am currently connected to. Hope microsoft updates this.
Synchronizing is absolutely smooth, no troubles at all, and I mean it. However, Linux users may not find it as attractive due to the microsoft affiliation of this product. I am yet to try it out on linux.
People complaining abt the keyboard, SHUT UP !!!!!!! If you got fingers the size of a coke can, you wouldn't be comfortable with any phone. I have used the keyboard and the stylus based soft key board, they are a beauty.
The sliding function needs no introduction, its breathtaking. however, i have seen performance issues on more than one occassion when it takes too long for the screen to switch to landscape mode. I found out later that this was because of the i_guidance GPS taking too many resorces. I will have to revisit the GPS thing later though.
Camera is good. I have taken pictures with the flash and it makes a difference in picture quality for upto 4 feet in dark conditions. I personally enjoyed the burst mode and ability to delete the whole set at once or file by file.
Volume Control is cool. the slider button on the left makes me wonder why it took so long for someone to come up with this idea. Nice job HTC.
Screen brightness is way too good. think it was about 5 different brightness levels. Clear font was cool too.
Voice Dial: I used this feature only twice and it was wrong on both occasions. However, to judge its quality based on two occassions would be a serious offense against the law of probability by sampling. I will give a full recap in my next review. The direct button for voice dial is placed appropriately.
Still need to figure out what the Push to Talk feature is all about. And its too soon to comment about the batterylife, expect this in the next review too.
I am yet to use it as a walkman, GPS, video camera and a sound recorder.
See ya soon,
Ciao.
- 10 replies to this review
-
Hope somebody reply me
Thank you -
Dose Cingular Charge for my wi-fi
If not how do i know i am using wi-fi or not
Thanks for your time -
i have one question, please help me with this does cingular chares you when using the WI-FI i really think they should not but i want to be sure please help with that one thanks
-
srikanth_janga! I am anxiously awaiting my 8125 and found your review very helpful, but for a non-super-techie, can you please explain where you found this overclocking software that fixed some of your speed performance issues? Many thanks, also from the Great Lakes....
-
Is there any website where you can download music to the 8125?
-
I had this phone for a month now and used pretty much everything except for the GPS, I actually don't believe that it would be fast enough to be a pleasant experience on a 200Mhz processor, so there was no desire (yet) to go the GPS route on 8125.
Camera - sucks, the usual. Well, let me explain. If you are taking casual pictures of your surroundings outside during daytime then you are most likely going to be satisfied with the outcome. However if you are planning to take some shots inside then it will disappoint you. There is no flash. There is a lamp that turns on, but is not of much help. My need is documents!!! I want to take a picture of an 8x11 piece of paper that would be printed at the office or put directly into OneNote 2007 - and this my friends SUCKS!!! Quality of the picture taken is not good, I can't focus close enough on the document.
WiFi - works great, I have connected at a dozen of different spots over 802.11b without any hiccups
Bluetooth - activesync, h700, plantronics voyager all three connected quickly and never got dropped ...well until I went over 30 feet away.
Keyboard - very useful if and when you need it. The keyboard is also backlit, it is perfect for the evening typing I love this feature.
Screen - sharp enough to see everything that was on the bigger screen of my dell axim. Transflective part is not that great, dell axim is better
Speed - slow!!! if you are running few progs at the same time, search for an address takes sweet time to show the results on my 1600 entries address book. There is an overclock somewhere on the xda site and reported substantial increase without compromising stability. I have not done it yet.
Built Quality - well built, feels solid all buttons have great feel and response. I have not dropped the unit to test the durability and actually am not planning to do that either. ...ok where is my metal case that I just got from eBay...
Voice Quality - great, both the speakerphone and the regular speaker are very good. The mike is very good also I have not heard anyone complaining about my calls ...not unlike when I'm using my H700 Bluetooth headset
Dialing - no hardware keys. I actually don't care as most of my numbers are in the address book and since I don't memorize them I usually dial them from the book rather then keypad. However on the occasions when I need to dial the keys the experience is unrewarding as the keys are a bit too small for my thumb. There are some hacks that allow you to have the keys rearranged/sized ...etc and are no doubt would be useful if you have to manually dial a lot of numbers, I will probably install it one day also.
Voice Dialing - if you are planning to use voice dial over Bluetooth (I was) you are sh*t out of luck. I have tried like six different headsets and none of them managed to work it to my satisfaction. Yes I recorded both straight over the phone's mike and also tried over the headset's. The technology is not here yet. Unfortunately.
Case - useless if you need to quickly look on the screen who is calling. I'm getting a metal case from eBay, don't have it yet so nothing to comment on the comparison.
Battery - lasts for a while and with the mini USB plug there is a cable galore (at least in my house) to charge it anywhere you are without spending a bundle on the proprietary cables.
MS Outlook â?? synchronization if perfect there are no problems here. Iâ??m using two different computers (desktop at the office and a tablet HP TC1100 on the road) both outlooks are synced by OsaSync and then I also sync the desktop computer to the 8125. It works and works great Period.
This is an overall great phone if you know how to use a windows based pda. If you don't then you will probably hate it as it has so many features that a beginner will no doubt will be lost and an advanced user will never get enough of. My wife asked me where her phone was (old Motorola V60) I suggested to use mine; her reply was that she had no idea how to use it. -
Can you play music over the bluetooth? because I have a set over bluetooth headphones and I want to make sure the music will play over them being as that is one the key features I want.
-
I really appreciated a review from someone that knows what they're talking about. I also agree with you about the UMTS not being available. I too really wanted that feature... oh well!
One last thing, the PTT(Push To Talk) feature you spoke of, is not supported by this phone by default. If you happen to find a hack that makes it work, PLEASE post about it!! -
I didn't see a GPS feature shown it the Specs. In fact, the specs say there is no GPS. It would be great to have a GPS feature.
-
I can't see you giving the phone a 9 raiting if you have so many usability issues with the phone. With all the problems you listed - it would keep me from buying the phone. Wish I had read into more detail on the reviews - would have saved me the trouble.
