T-Mobile SDA (with co-pilot!)
Author
Discussion

padgett

Original Poster:

434 posts

260 months

Monday 1st August 2005
quotequote all
Has anyone got one of these?

About to change phones at work and considering this.

Opinions please!

sjg

7,680 posts

295 months

Monday 1st August 2005
quotequote all
Have got the Orange C500 (which is effectively the same phone), also running CoPilot.

Generally works very nicely and has taken me in and out of London and to a tiny village in Wales fine. The app crashed on me once when I went off-route and it was churning away to work out an alternative - most likely running out of memory as I had a load of other apps open. Restarted the app and it picked straight up again.

I've got the pocketgps.co.uk speed camera database on there, it does a fair job but doesn't know which way a camera is facing. The voice instructions also aren't as slick as the more recent PocketPC versions - it's limited to some fixed phrases and has to make do with "bear left.. bear right.. bear right.. bear left" on big junctions like the Hanger Lane gyratory. Not a huge problem as the display shows the exit you want. Thinking of that, Brodit do a good little mount for it - I put it on a bracket left behind by an old Nokia car kit but Brodit also do some great ones that don't involve drilling holes in the dash.

Am very happy with it overall, it's about the cheapest satnav solution you can get (if you're after a new phone anyway) and perfoms well. The phone is pretty good as well - was sceptical about the MS smartphone platform but it all work well and the Outlook integration is excellent.

padgett

Original Poster:

434 posts

260 months

Monday 1st August 2005
quotequote all
thanks for the response.

i've already got a Mio 168 with Tomtom 5 for satnav, but i'm a sucker for gadgets.

is the phone itself good? battery life, call quality etc?

Cheers

sjg

7,680 posts

295 months

Monday 1st August 2005
quotequote all
My only gripe with the phone is the stupid rocker switch, but on the SDA it's a more normal joystick.

I'm perfectly happy with the call quality, battery life is great for a fairly powerful device - I leave bluetooth on, can go away for the weekend and make a few calls, send some texts and do a bit of browsing and not have used half the battery. Not had any crashes or lockups in normal use over the 3 months I've had it.

As far as navigation goes, from what I've seen of TT5 on PocketPC, it would be a step backwards but it certainly does the job and looks a lot neater on the dashboard.

If you're the sort of person who'd want the latest thing, the next gen of the C500/SDA is out - Orange have their C550 now, apparently the T-Mobile equivalent will be along soon. You get a slightly later version of the OS and a nicer VGA screen. Or look at the MDA Compact for a proper convergence device - a full PocketPC (so you can go on using your TT5) but shrunk down to a convenient phone size. A couple of colleagues have them and they're very nice indeed.

padgett

Original Poster:

434 posts

260 months

Monday 1st August 2005
quotequote all
the wife had an XDAIIs for a while, but as a phone it was useless.

bad call quality
bluetooth didn't work
problems with using satnav (had to put in airplane mode) - i.e. phone off

is the compact any better?

>> Edited by padgett on Monday 1st August 23:15

sjg

7,680 posts

295 months

Tuesday 2nd August 2005
quotequote all
My colleagues have no complaints, one uses it with Tomtom in car and hasn't had any bluetooth issues.

It seems with the most recent revisions of the pdaphone and smartphone software, Microsoft finally produced something stable and HTC are making good, reliable devices to run it on.