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- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 34 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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11 out of 11 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Great way to stay connected!"
Pros: fast Internet speeds, great IM & e-mail features
Cons: features not always intuitive, web pages don't always come up
Summary: I've had PDAs before, but this is the first Smart Phone I've had. I didn't want to pay the bucks for the iPhone and probably wouldn't have used it as an mp3 player anyways.
I got this phone for three main reasons: to stay connected to my e-mail, to do some surfing on the Internet, and to organize appointments. It has accomplished all of this and more. Overall, it seems most things that it doesn't do well, can be fixed using a third-party add on or a little bit of research/effort. The only things that aren't true for that seem to be Internet viewing and GPS (read below).
Alarm: this sounds silly, but I really like the alarm function. You have an automatic wake up setting that allows you to choose times with days. For example, I just type in 6am and check Mon-Fri. Then, I type in 9am and check Sat. and Sun. I tossed my actual alarm clock! Pretty cool!
Appointments: I am easily able to set reminders for all appointments. Con- the birthdays in your contacts can't automatically set reminders in your calendar. I would just suggest only setting it in your calendar and not using it at all in the contacts area. Just double work if you ask me.
Contacts: has lots of different fields for multiple numbers, e-mails, etc. You can set individual ringers and pics. Con- you can't change the category names (business, personal, etc.) on the phone. I've heard you instead must do this using Outlook on your computer and then sync it up. I haven't had time to try it out, but heard that's the way to get that done.
Internet: The phone is currently my primary connection to the Internet. It doesn't do everything on the Internet well, but I am moving and don't have my home computer hooked up now. I basically need this to access myspace messages and e-mail messages and that it will do. You cannot view myspace profiles entirely though. Basically, the phone has problems viewing detailed HTML. I haven't yet figured out how to get a working Flash version on the phone either. For video, people have alternatively suggested using www.tinytube.net or just downloading it to the computer and moving it to the blackjack (too planned out for me). I haven't tried tinytube.net yet, but did just try vTap. It is great for searching for videos online. I just watched 3 videos from YouTube and a few from ABC and NBC. The video quality isn't spectacular, but I think this has to do with the quality of it online because it varied depending on the clip I was watching. By the way- even if you have the phone set on vibrate or silent, the videos WILL play sound using vTap. I just figured out this the hard way and surprised several co-workers.
I also enjoy looking up news. Occasionally it won't pull up web pages and the unit must be restarted (403 Forbidden error). Restarting doesn't bother me that much, but web pages not showing up correctly does. I don't think I could use it for heavy browsing (remember the screen is also small), but it works for my purposes. I think eventually I may want a touch screen, but I really like having the actual keyboard buttons right now.
GPS/Directions: I am moving to a new city and really wanted to have directions with me at all times. I downloaded Google Maps for free to the phone and LOVE LOVE LOVE it. The phone is also equipped with GPS but it either is always a little off (about 3-5 blocks) or will not work at all. I'm really disappointed about that, but as long as I can pull up directions using Google maps, it will suite my needs. I also have maps from Yahoo!Go which really works well for looking up nearby gas stations, ATMs, etc. I didn't plan on using the audible GPS because it costs extra to use, but I thought it would be cool to see my location and get directions from Google maps starting from my GPS location.
Ringers: Another feature I like is that I can use my own mp3s as ring tones. You can easily download programs that will edit your mp3s to make them shorter (15-30 sec. for ring-tones). No more paying for stupid tones that you don't get to keep when switching phones!
Camera: the camera quality is not great, but I have an actual camera for that. There is also no flash. It is much better than any camera I've had on my other phones though (2.0 mega pixels). You can also crop and do some other pic adjustments on the phone itself. My only complaint is that the pics you set for an incoming call show up really small- too small for me to tell who it is by the pic. I've heard you can download a program called Photo Contacts that will fix this, but I'm not willing to shell out the $20 for it right now.
More cool stuff:
I know the phone is capable of even more. I have read on the AT&T forums about all kinds of different programs for it, but am slowly adding things as needed.
The AT&T store told me that they have really cool headphones that you can hook up via bluetooth and listen wirelessly to mp3s or XM or whatever. I may eventually invest because the guy said you can pause, skip songs, whatever just on the headphones themselves and just have the phone in your pocket the whole time.
SlingPlayer is pretty cool and allows you to watch your TV at home from your phone. I don't watch a ton of TV, but this may be an option for me in the future. There is a free trial, but it costs $30 for the full version.
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