T-Mobile First Look
I dropped by my local CompUSA today to get a hands-on with the new T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition. I lucked out, as there happened to be not only a rep from VoiceStream/T-Mobile, but a product manager as well. I seized the opportunity to glean as much info as I could.
First off, the T-Mobile is much smaller than I expected. It feels a good 15% smaller than the iPAQ, with similar rounded styling (big surprise, as Taiwan's HTC designed both devices). Like the iPAQ, there are no side controls. Unlike the iPAQ, the back of the device is textured to give it a sure grip in your hand.
Construction felt solid enough, with no creaking or flexing. The casing is a titanium-colored plastic (a refreshing change from silver) with chromed buttons. The directional pad is a little small, but response was good. It better be, with no jog wheel.
Okay, on to the important stuff. ClearType looks great on the T-Mobile, crisp and black. The Screen settings applet has the checkbox to enable ClearType system-wide. This will be a great device for ebooks.
Expansion is via a single SD slot on the bottom edge of the device, just behind the sync connector. This would be awkward, especially while using an as-yet-unreleased folding keyboard, if you had an SDIO device that protrudes from the slot, like the Bluetooth SD card or the recently-announced SD camera. As it turns out, this isn't a problem. Why? Because the T-Mobile doesn't support SDIO. Memory cards only, but there is a silver lining. VoiceStream tells me the SD slot is a 4-bit slot, so it should be much faster than the 1-bit "not so much SD as oversized MMC" slots on many Pocket PCs.
The lack of SDIO or a CF or PC Card sleeve has a more disturbing consequence. There is no way whatsoever to enable Bluetooth or 802.11b on the T-Mobile. You'd better like GPRS, because it's the only networking you're going to get.
GPRS works really well, as it turns out. There's an indicator on the title bar showing signal strength and the status of the data connection. (I'm already weaning myself off WISbar...) Speed is adequate, roughly 56k modem speed (the product manager was nice enough to let me borrow her SIM card) but T-Mobile provides an "accelerator" proxy service that strips out extraneous code to decrease both download time and GPRS kilobytes. T-Mobile offers a number of rate plans, but 20MB for 40 bucks a month will probably be the most popular. Between T-Mobile's proxy and Pocket PC Phone Edition's tendency to be as data-frugal as possible, 20MB should go a long way even for data-hogs like me.
The T-Mobile is $724 at CompUSA, but VoiceStream offers discounts and rebates to cut that down to a price more competitive with other 32MB, 206MHz Pocket PCs. Check your local shops for the specifics.
While VoiceStream is really excited about the Pocket PC Phone Edition, the product manager hadn't heard of Microsoft's SmartPhone 2002 platform. She agreed that it would probably be more popular with the masses than Phone Edition, but VoiceStream doesn't have any plans yet to partner with Sendo, Texas Instruments or other SmartPhone 2002 makers.
The T-Mobile looks like my next device, folks. It's small, sleek, readable and neatly avoids the foolishness of many of the XScale devices an the market. But more importantly, I've come to realize that my next device has to have anywhere, anytime Internet connectivity. Stand-alone PDAs were okay a year ago, but now they're as much communications devices as information reference. The ability to get up-to-the-second email, easy text messaging and access to the whole World Wide Web (as opposed to just what I sync to AvantGo ahead of time) makes my Pocket PC orders of magnitude more useful to me. It's one thing to be able to write an article while seated in my favorite restaurant, but it's quite another to be able to post it to the site before I pay the check.
First off, the T-Mobile is much smaller than I expected. It feels a good 15% smaller than the iPAQ, with similar rounded styling (big surprise, as Taiwan's HTC designed both devices). Like the iPAQ, there are no side controls. Unlike the iPAQ, the back of the device is textured to give it a sure grip in your hand.
Construction felt solid enough, with no creaking or flexing. The casing is a titanium-colored plastic (a refreshing change from silver) with chromed buttons. The directional pad is a little small, but response was good. It better be, with no jog wheel.
Okay, on to the important stuff. ClearType looks great on the T-Mobile, crisp and black. The Screen settings applet has the checkbox to enable ClearType system-wide. This will be a great device for ebooks.
Expansion is via a single SD slot on the bottom edge of the device, just behind the sync connector. This would be awkward, especially while using an as-yet-unreleased folding keyboard, if you had an SDIO device that protrudes from the slot, like the Bluetooth SD card or the recently-announced SD camera. As it turns out, this isn't a problem. Why? Because the T-Mobile doesn't support SDIO. Memory cards only, but there is a silver lining. VoiceStream tells me the SD slot is a 4-bit slot, so it should be much faster than the 1-bit "not so much SD as oversized MMC" slots on many Pocket PCs.
The lack of SDIO or a CF or PC Card sleeve has a more disturbing consequence. There is no way whatsoever to enable Bluetooth or 802.11b on the T-Mobile. You'd better like GPRS, because it's the only networking you're going to get.
GPRS works really well, as it turns out. There's an indicator on the title bar showing signal strength and the status of the data connection. (I'm already weaning myself off WISbar...) Speed is adequate, roughly 56k modem speed (the product manager was nice enough to let me borrow her SIM card) but T-Mobile provides an "accelerator" proxy service that strips out extraneous code to decrease both download time and GPRS kilobytes. T-Mobile offers a number of rate plans, but 20MB for 40 bucks a month will probably be the most popular. Between T-Mobile's proxy and Pocket PC Phone Edition's tendency to be as data-frugal as possible, 20MB should go a long way even for data-hogs like me.
The T-Mobile is $724 at CompUSA, but VoiceStream offers discounts and rebates to cut that down to a price more competitive with other 32MB, 206MHz Pocket PCs. Check your local shops for the specifics.
While VoiceStream is really excited about the Pocket PC Phone Edition, the product manager hadn't heard of Microsoft's SmartPhone 2002 platform. She agreed that it would probably be more popular with the masses than Phone Edition, but VoiceStream doesn't have any plans yet to partner with Sendo, Texas Instruments or other SmartPhone 2002 makers.
The T-Mobile looks like my next device, folks. It's small, sleek, readable and neatly avoids the foolishness of many of the XScale devices an the market. But more importantly, I've come to realize that my next device has to have anywhere, anytime Internet connectivity. Stand-alone PDAs were okay a year ago, but now they're as much communications devices as information reference. The ability to get up-to-the-second email, easy text messaging and access to the whole World Wide Web (as opposed to just what I sync to AvantGo ahead of time) makes my Pocket PC orders of magnitude more useful to me. It's one thing to be able to write an article while seated in my favorite restaurant, but it's quite another to be able to post it to the site before I pay the check.
