The SMT5800 ships with Microsoft's Direct Push Technology out of the box for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server. You can also sign up for Verizon Wireless Sync e-mail solution. For personal e-mail, the smartphone also supports POP3 and IMAP accounts, but now you can also view e-mails in their original HTML format, regardless of account type. There's a wizard to help you configure your device to retrieve messages. We used it to access our Gmail account and had no problems. The device does text and multimedia messaging, but doesn't come preloaded with an instant messaging client.
For voice communication, the Verizon Wireless SMT5800 offers a speakerphone, smart dialing, and voice commands. The address book is only limited by the available memory. Each address book entry can store multiple numbers, home and work addresses, e-mail, IM screen name, birthday, spouse's name, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can pair a contact with a photo, a caller group, or one of 23 polyphonic ringtones.
The smartphone has integrated Bluetooth 2.0 with support for mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, a hands-free kits, serial port, and dial-up networking. It does not, however, support object transfer. Also, the DUN capabilities will require a subscription to one of Verizon's BroadbandAccess plans, which start at $15 per month.
Now, although the HTC Vox included Wi-Fi, the SMT5800 does not. But don't worry: It is EV-DO capable. This will bring you data speeds of around 300Kbps to 600Kbps with the potential to hit 2.4Mbps for faster Web browsing, downloads, and smooth media streams. Sadly, Verizon Wireless chose not to include support for its V Cast music and video services.
For entertainment, you get Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, which supports AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, WMV, and other music and video files. If you have TV shows recorded on your Windows Media Center PC, you can transfer them to your device for on-the-go viewing. The SMT5800 also comes with two preloaded games: Bubblebreaker and Solitaire.
Finally, the smartphone is equipped with a 2-megapixel camera with a zoom, auto-focus, and video-recording capabilities. The options are pretty standard for a camera phone. You have your choice of five resolutions and four quality settings. There's no flash, but you do get white balance settings, including one for night shots, and various effects you can add the picture. There's also a self timer, time stamp option, picture counter, and flicker adjustment, among other things. For video, the SMT5800 can capture clips with or without sound in MPEG4, Motion JPEG, or H.263 format. There are only two resolution choices, but you get the same white balance and color effect settings.
Picture quality wasn't the greatest. Objects were clearly defined, but often came out with an orangeish hue. We tried various white balance settings, but it didn't improve the situation greatly. Video quality was also pretty poor. Our recorded clips turned out dark to be dark and grainy.
Performance
We tested the Verizon Wireless SMT5800 in San Francisco using Verizon Wireless service, and call quality was good. We could hear our callers loud and clear and interact with our bank's automated voice response system with no problem. Conversely, our friends had no major complaints about sound on their end. Audio deteriorated slightly when we activated the speakerphone. There was plenty of volume but there was a bit of hollowness to the sound. We had no problems connecting the SMT5800 to the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.
General performance was satisfactory. As with a number of Windows Mobile smartphones, we experienced some delays as we used more applications. Overall, however, we didn't experience any significant problems or system crashes. Multimedia performance was a mixed bag. Music playback was a bit hollow through the phone's speakers and lacked bass, and increasing the volume only blew out the sound. Watching videos, on the other hand, was much more pleasant, with smooth playback and picture, and images and audio were always synchronized.
The Verizon Wireless SMT5800 is rated for 3.5 hours of talk time and up to six days of standby time. In our battery drain tests , we were able to get 4 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge. According to FCC radiation tests, the SMT5800 has a digital SAR rating of 1.49 watts per kilogram.
