Motorola Droid – Part 2 – Partial review of Droid Eris and Hero
By Nick Dunklee | December 3, 2009
Rather than editing the original review I decided to not muddy the waters and create a “Part 2″
The “part 1″ can be found here.
I’ve had Droid for a few weeks now, I’ve dealt with the bugs, the shortcomings, overall I am still optimistic.
The MMS phone number bug, it turns out, requires that you have your numbers in npa-nxx-nnnn or npanxxnnnn format – no other format (including the format I chose of npa nxx-nnnn or +1 npa nxx-nnnn) will work reliably. This will hopefully be fixed in the December 11 firmware drop.
Visual Voicemail not working with WiFi enabled has been an annoyance as well. Every time I receive a voicemail message I must shut off WiFi. While it’s nice that there’s the included wifi/bluetooth/gps/etc. widget to control WiFi from the home screen, it is still annoying having to shut off WiFi every single time I want to check voicemail. Interestingly enough, MMS will send over the 3G network even while connected to WiFi so it’s obviously possible to dual-home, Verizon’s VVM app just doesn’t currently.
The most annoying Droid bug that really “bugs” me, however, (and this is a fault of Android proper, not just the Droid) – is that to associate your device with a new primary Google account you must factory reset. That’s right, to switch to a different Google account you must erase your entire phone. This means several things. First, once associating with your new Google account, all your previously installed applications will no longer be remembered. Second, any data backed up to Google will also be unavailable. Google doesn’t tell users where their Android backups are being stored, nor how to find them, nor how to transfer them to another Google account. It’s just some Black Box somewhere where backups go to die. On the plus side there are some third-party applications such as the Astro File Manager that allow you to back up all your installed applications to SD card and then restore them upon erase, but this method is questionable as the device alerts you that you can’t install apps off SD card without first turning security off, and it is still unclear if installing this way makes the Android market ignore future updates to those apps until they’re installed through the market. My gut feeling says it won’t know any better.
After using the software keyboard more, it is acceptable but some iPhone keyboard features are sorely missed. The biggest being the ability to tap-drag from the number/symbol key up to a number/symbol you choose and then select all in one motion. Droid requires you tap, tap, tap some more!
One place it is really shining though is just raw data speed. iPhone takes a few seconds to wake a dormant HSPA data link and start loading data, and it quickly sleeps the session again after a few moments. Using the Droid to search on Google Maps is an amazing experience. I had the map and satellite layers turned on, and even with all that data and on a higher resolution display than the iPhone, it was able to continually load maps so fast you would swear you were on WiFi. None of the other handsets mentioned in the previous review could come close, except maybe Pre when Sprint service was well enough to do anything with.
Since part 1 of the review I have had the opportunity to use the HTC Hero and HTC Droid Eris as well. Both are CDMA-based, both have lower resolution displays than Droid, and both are of much cheaper build quality.
What stood out the most by comparison though, is that not all Droids are created equal. While HTC did a good job writing apps for their Windows Mobile phones to improve user experience, the Droid Eris and Hero both get crippled by HTC’s software. The Sense UI looks pretty, but it’s also a little more messy than Droid. From the get-go there are a lot of things to get rid of, the clock/weather app on the home screen defaults to Boise, ID for both models, and the only way I’ve found to modify that location is to delete the clock/weather widget and readd using another city. The keyboard on the HTC variants of the Droid use a modified version of HTC’s keyboard for Windows Mobile – their word-correction option is a little better than the default one for Droid, floating possible word suggestions under where you’re typing, but sometimes this can get in the way as well. Their soft-keyboard misses some common symbols such as the pipe (|) symbol, there is no way to type it on the Hero or Droid Eris as HTC misconfigured the key to do a broken cursor symbol (looks like a pipe but a break in the middle.)
They also missed some basic stuff in QA on the Eris such as a notification tone called “Modern” – they named it “Modern.mp” so you can’t play it (as all their others are .mp3) and since the root filesystem is read-only, users can’t fix it.
HTC’s variant on the standard messaging app that comes with vanilla Android devices is also a bother. On Droid you can tap on an MMS image and it is displayed full-screen. On the Droid Eris/Hero, it is displayed in this useless MMS viewer that shows the image in half of the display, and text in the other half. It’s not movable, resizable, etc. You can only open the image up in another image viewing app once it’s stored on SD card to look at it full-screen. The Motorola Droid totally wins here.
Motorola’s Droid definitely has the best implementation, as it doesn’t have the HTC cruft to hold it back. Some of HTC’s widgets are cool, but there are third-party equivalents in the Android Market to compensate, so it’s kinda a wash.
I think that overall my biggest frustration with transitioning to Android, as this is the first I’ve ever seriously used it, is the UI.
It isn’t really worse than other phones, but the UI operation can get vague at times. Want to compose a new gmail? There’s no button onscreen to do that. Turns out you have to hit the “menu” hardware button to bring up this option. In fact, in most applications, if you cant’ find the feature you’re looking for, it is probably hidden in Menu. This is compounded when it isn’t actually in Menu but in a “More” button inside Menu, which then displays a vertical scrolling list of options that didn’t fit in Menu. WTF? Now we’re two layers of obscurity deeper to find the function we want.
In comparison, Windows Mobile has soft-menus onscreen always, and they have an > arrow next to a menu that expands. BlackBerry is about as vague, with most hidden options being tucked under the BlackBerry key, but at least it’s a key used often enough that users are conditioned to find things there. Pre tries to keep UI options onscreen, but they’re guilty of hiding things under the application menu on the upper left, or the status menu on the upper right (both of which can be pulled down at the same time and overlap each other, huh?) and some operations involve holding your finger on the swipe area and hitting a key on the keyboard. iPhone does it best. If you can see something on screen, that’s where the option is, otherwise it just doesn’t exist. Their UI experience has gotten slightly more complicated with the copy/paste/undo affair (who wants to shake their phone to undo?) but at least those operations don’t often get in the way of normal use and make sense when they happen.
Speaking of text manipulation: Droid text selection, it can be a very frustrating experience. On iPhone you have the magnifying glass text selector, on others you generally have arrow keys. (Pre has this goofy gesture system but it works ok once you’ve figured it out.) I suppose you could use the Droid’s D-pad to scroll left and right in a textbox but it’s a bother having to open your phone to scroll back 10 characters. I’ve found if you tap on the edge of a textbox it’ll usually semi-center your selection so you can keep tapping back to where you want to be, but there’s no fine-grained method to stick the cursor between the characters you want without a lot of guess-and-check.
Not having multitouch is a bother as well, especially after getting so used to pinching to zoom. The web browsing experience is made worse by this, as the +/- zoom controls often won’t show up until a page has finished loading, and sometimes not until you tap in an area that doesn’t have active links to bring the control up.
The lack of voice dial via Bluetooth (which as far as I am concerned means a complete lack of voice dial) continues to be annoying. Seriously, who thought that feature up? Go voice dial but only from the handset? I can call someone manually in nearly the same number of taps as it takes to start Voice Dial.
Favorite lazy person feature so far? Using the Google Voice Search as a method to transcribe short phrases to text for copy/paste to a notepad. Ha!
Pics are still coming at some point, and I’m sure I’ll have more comments to add as time goes on.
Topics: Reviews | 2 Comments »
Motorola Droid
By Nick Dunklee | November 15, 2009
So far I’ve been using Droid for a week’s time. It has replaced my iPhone and BlackBerry Tour I used recently. It’s nice going back to one phone, let me just start there. This review will be a bit scattered at first, I’m going to go back and clean it up as time goes on. I’ve not done a review in a while and since I have a lot of other stuff going on, this is kinda a side-project that I don’t want to put too much effort into. I’m also doing this more in the format of not only a single-device review but a comparison of this device against some of the other “top” devices currently.
So why two phones? iPhone’s functionality has become indispensable in my daily life, sure I can live without it but it’s just so darn handy. Alas though, AT&T’s network is worthless, so I have a BlackBerry Tour on Verizon so people can actually get ahold of me, and in a pinch I can use the worthless BlackBerry browser to look something up.
With my biased opinions in mind, off we go!
Shape, Size, Color
If you love steampunk, you’ll like this phone. It looks totally like some 19th century retro piece of hardware. They get the gold star of a mostly metal case – Apple should have never gave this up. Plastic is cheap, feels cheap, scratches and breaks easily, yadda.
The device is very angled, very industrial, yet still feels good in the hand. The back is rubberized which gives a nice grip. Oh yeah, and the display is glass, so no worries about scratching!
The slide mechanism feels very well-built, very solid, nice travel with little wiggle. Compared to another recent slider, the Palm Pre, it is night and day. This really feels finely crafted.
The location of the charging jack is not too bad, and much better than the horrible location on the BlackBerry Tour.
Other buttons and ports are decent. The keyboard buttons have very little travel, but you know when you’ve pressed a button. Given the thinness of this device, it is very impressive what kind of keyboard they’ve squeezed into this.
Signal, Calls, Voice, Data
It goes without saying that Verizon has the largest true voice and data network with 3G capabilities in the US, so Droid already has that as a great assist.
The Droid is on par with the signal on the BlackBerry Tour. It’s quick to recover from weak signal areas, holds onto signal amazingly, and you wouldn’t believe the phone is made of metal honestly.
I’ve yet to drop a voice call, and data sessions are so fast I really have no reason to use WiFi. It’s very nice having a handset on a fast 3G network with enough processing power to make use of the bandwidth!
OS, UI, Apps
When you first set up your Droid, it asks if you want to report anonymous GPS info back to Google. Palm Pre does a similar GPS stalkernet for various reasons, partly to make GPS location information pop up faster, partly for insert conspiracy theory here. Android is nice enough to ask you if you want to be stalked or not, and you can opt-out of this so they don’t regularly grab your phone’s GPS.
Operating System
Droid is using a fairly vanilla Android OS out-of-box. Many apps in the Android Market work flawlessly, although there are some buggy ones. The built-in applications are fairly extensive. You have a phone application with favorites, contacts, missed calls; you have the camera application; messaging; e-mail; web browsing; camera; video; calculator; maps; navigation; voice search; voice dial; calendar; specific corporate calendar app for Exchange; gmail app for gmail’s special features; the list goes on and on.
Market/App Store
The Android Market applications are a refreshing change from Apple’s draconian approval process. You can get all sorts of applications in the Android market, and most are free. Applications aren’t constrained like they are on the iPhone, which means they can do a lot more to the user experience. For example, the WeatherBug application can display the current temperature in your location up in the statusbar, and will use GPS to update the weather so it always follows your current location’s weather, all in the background. You can also install multiple applications at once and the Market will queue them up so you’re not stuck buying apps one-at-a-time if you want to quick-grab a few games or apps before leaving somewhere. When installing an application, the Market will display to you what system services the application will be accessing. So you know in advance if it will be accessing your phonebook, radios, GPS, power manager, etc. To the uninformed user this may be too much information, but for your average PDA phone user with some computing background knowledge, or your supernerd, it’s nice to know what your programs are doing before even installing them. (In comparison, the iPhone apps that use your GPS won’t let you know until after you attempt to use a GPS-related feature in that app, and they won’t tell you if they access anything else in the device. On BlackBerry you get a very arcanely presented “firewall” dialog box that doesn’t really explain what anything does but at least asks, Pre will inform you of GPS at least in advance.) Droid isn’t way too nerdy like Windows Mobile or BlackBerry with arcane messages with hexadecimal addresses, but it’s not as simplistic as iPhone with generic useless glossed-over messages like “there was some kind of error in something somewhere, who knows.”
Application Integration
The device has very tight integration with Google applications, in fact when you install Google Voice the device can be configured to automatically dial international numbers with your Google Voice number instead of your cell number, or dial all numbers through voice. It is completely configurable.
Web Browser
The web browser is based on WebKit, and while not as snappy as iPhone, nor supporting the MultiTouch pinch/zoom, it is definitely the best mobile browsing experience currently available on Verizon.
Messaging
Out-of-box it does SMS and MMS, no waiting a year and a handset generation later. The unified messaging client is really slick. You can combine Google Chat, SMS, MMS, Facebook IM, and any other IM client that uses the Messaging client’s API so you can have one continuous stream of conversation with a person and use any method available you choose. The client will also show a user’s current Facebook status underneath their icon at the top of a conversation, regardless of what IM method you are currently using, a nice touch. It does lack in some areas – for example, I can’t seem to find a way to get detailed message delivery status, sometimes MMS messages appear to fail, and I just plain can’t MMS certain people who are on Verizon. You also don’t get the message delivery confirmation that CDMA supports, so unlike BlackBerry, and most other Verizon phones, you won’t know if the message actually made it to the other handset or not. There is a glitch that is allegedly to be fixed in the December 11 firmware drop, where if your phone numbers being SMS or MMSed contain parenthesis (ie. (555) 444-1234) then some arbitrary messages will sometimes be sent to your area code instead of the receiver’s area code. The suggested fix for now is to edit your entire phonebook and replace ( ) with something else. I changed my formatting to 555 444-1234 for now while I await the fix. Also, if a phone number in contacts isn’t explicitly set to “Mobile” (Generic/Mobile doesn’t work) when you start typing a person’s name in messaging, their number will not show up. Lame. There is also a bug that some may not actually define as a bug. SMS doesn’t show how many characters you have left until you get to 10 remaining in the first message, then it will start counting down. If you are trying to cram everything you can into one 160 char message it makes it a bit harder, but not a showstopper by any means. This is also to be fixed in the December drop. One of my favorite things about the Messaging app is when you receive a message. BlackBerry background beeps at you, Pre has a notification bar at the bottom with an icon, iPhone presents you with a gawdy unavoidable message box that you can’t get past without marking the message as read or bringing SMS.app to the foreground and replying to. Droid will just “spin” the statusbar, replace the entire bar with the sender and as much message contents as will fit across the top of the screen, and then spin back to the statusbar. So you can get an idea of what the message is without stopping what you are doing. Very impressive.
E-Mail
The e-mail client feels a lot like iPhone’s e-mail client back in the 1.0 days. You can’t move messages, or mass-move messages to other IMAP folders. However you can “star them”, mark them as unread, and delete them en-mass, so that’s something. The client supports a unified inbox which is nice. File attachment is very straightforward and fast compared to iPhone or BlackBerry. You can quickly add a handful of files to an e-mail message while you’re still trying to single-task switch on iPhone.
Multitasking
Speaking of task switching, Holding down the home key brings up the task switch display to show current running applications. Although I’ve not yet learned how it is “supposed” to work on Android, it only shows the 6 most recent launched applications. Whether others are still running in the background or not, I have no idea, but even with this perceived limitation it blows iPhone out of the water. BlackBerry has had this since the late 90s if I remember correctly, and Pre has their own task-switching mechanism that works decent.
Software Keyboard
The software keyboard is nowhere near as robust as iPhone. Also, due to the lack of multitouch it sometimes trips up on very fast keypresses and thinks your fingers are elsewhere and messes words up. There are also hilarious spelling corrections, some more predictable than others. Spelling “haha” makes it suggest “hagar”, while sometimes you get odd ones like typing “p4″ it corrects to “David” (but then the next time it corrects to something else completely.) Since there is a physical keyboard, who cares, worst case scenario you have to pull out the real keyboard. It’s nice having both because both have strengths and weaknesses. Overall though, the touch keyboard needs some major work to be anywhere near as usable as iPhone’s. More on the physical keyboard in the in-depth hardware review below.
Camera
The internal camera application is a bit buggy right now. Autofocus says autofocus failure quite often even when it was actually successful (or so it seems) and the app launching, taking a pic, saving is a very slow process. Hiding common camera options under an options drawer is rather cumbersome if you want to quickly rotate the camera flash on and off for two pics of the same thing, for example. It’s definitely not bad by any means, and still a bit faster and more useful than the BlackBerry Tour’s camera app, as well as the Palm Pre’s app, however, it definitely needs work for a quicker point-and-shoot interface.
Media Player
The media player is functional but abysmal-looking. It looks like some rudimentary Unix media player from the mid-90s when MP3 was just becoming popular. That said, it works, and the music sounds good, so who cares how it looks. Still a little spit and polish for presentation points couldn’t hurt. Loading media is a complete joy. You plug the phone into your computer and mount the internal (included) 16GB MicroSD card as a disk, copy MP3s or M4A files to a folder, and off you go! No iTunes bloat to fight with. The player allows you to view files by artist, album, song, and playlist. I’ve not figured out if it just supports standard m3u playlists or what, I haven’t even figured out what all audio formats are supported, although judging by the fact that the OS’s default ringtones are .ogg files, it probably will play Ogg Vorbis.
Home Screen
The home screen only has 3 fixed panes, but given how flexible they each are, it doesn’t seem to be as big a deal as it feels like at first. With iPhone, you can have up to 9 fixed uncustomizable panes of installed apps and weblinks. You can’t install plugins nor have wallpapers on iPhone without jailbreaking and installing potentially dangerous hacks. The Droid allows you to put on a wallpaper, and install an assortment of first- and third-party plugins. There’s a media player plugin to control music from the home screen, a plugin to control wifi/bluetooth/gps/sync/brightness, there’s a third-party plugin that allows you to have a clock with date on the home screen that looks like iPhone’s lock screen clock (with customizable fonts and colors), and even Facebook modules if you want to see Facebook statuses on the home screen.
Enterprise Shortcomings
The OS has some glaring omissions for enterprise. The Exchange client doesn’t support PIN policy enforcement and some other basic features necessary to make Exchange on corporate networks work. The VPN client is also a generic one that only does PPTP/L2TP and L2TP/IPsec – no Cisco IPsec, AnyConnect, or other VPN technology. There is a third-party beta IPsec VPN client based on Cisco Unity in the Android Market, except it requires you root your device and it’s based on VPNc and rather buggy currently. The device’s WiFi also doesn’t support WPA/WPA2 Enterprise at all. The EAP extensions are completely missing. There are also some apps in the Android market, but again they are beta and require to root your Droid.
Rooting a Droid is similar to “Jailbreaking” an iPhone, or rooting a Palm Pre. It most often involves a combination of making the core OS filesystem read/writable and disabling any built-in system security that would normally prevent “unauthorized” tampering. These processes can often be very dangerous to your device if you are inexperienced, and make you vulnerable to attacks such as the two recent iPhone worms out of Australia.
Consumer Shortcomings
The biggest consumer omission is the lack of voice dial via Bluetooth. The device has voice-dial but you have to activate it on the handset. This isn’t a fault of Motorola’s as much as it is a fault of Android, however either way it is not there, and annoying a lot of users who live in states with laws against driving while using a cell phone. On the plus side it is one of the top most complained about bugs on Google’s Android bug tracking page (here) and getting a lot more attention with the release of Droid. Hopefully it will be addressed soon, as it is kinda a big deal in a mobile phone. Especially since phones have had the capability since the early 2000s.
In-Depth Hardware
The battery is 1400mAh, the same capacity as the BlackBerry Tour, and larger than the 1219mAh battery in iPhone 3Gs. Depending on how you use the device, you WILL be able to drain it by the end of the day, but it will not drain nearly as fast as iPhone 3Gs. Battery life compared to the BlackBerry Tour is still disappointing, Tour will last 2-3 days without trying. However given how much more multimedia, data and graphics-intensive things the Droid can do that Tour can’t it really isn’t so surprising. Still, the days when a cell phone lasted more than a day without having to try to not use it are sorely missed. If you use the Droid lightly, you can make it last 2-3 days, but weak signal will impact your usage time greatly.
Headphone Jack
The headphone jack is your standard 3.5mm 4-conductor used on most phones these days. It will work with regular headphones as well as headphones with integrated microphone/button such as iPhone headphones. In fact iPhone headphones work with Droid fine, just like how iPhone headphones work fine on Pre.
Audio/Speakers
Speaking of audio, wow, where to start. The earpiece volume is awesome, the speakerphone is loud – better than BlackBerry Tour, about as good as BlackBerry Curve. The music volume on internal speakers is loud enough to use it as a portable radio. When plugging a good pair of headphones into Droid it REALLY shines. The audio quality is much better than iPhone, iPod, or Pre. You don’t have distorted lows and fizzling highs like you do on the other devices. The media player application is mentioned above in the software section. It is rather meh, but at least it supports the full suite of A2DP and AVRCP commands, so devices utilizing track forward/back play/pause, etc. will work correctly. Of all the handsets mentioned here (Tour, Pre, iPhone 3Gs, Droid) it has the fastest AVRCP response time for track switching and general responsiveness. In comparison the BlackBerry Tour lags quite heavily responding to buttons, Pre often will ignore buttons because A2DP requires 50%+ of the device’s processor to even play music, and iPhone 3Gs – per the usual with Apple, doesn’t follow spec at all so they don’t support AVRCP. So Droid gets mucho props for everything in the audio department, except for the above-mentioned lack of voice-dial through Bluetooth.
Summary
So overall, Droid is still lacking some things like WPA Enterprise, VPN, and useful voice dial, but overall for a first run next-gen phone from a mobile company that seemed to be fading out of the industry to nothingness, completely amazing.
If you can get past the current bugs (which should be fixed soon) and can deal with the fact that there aren’t 100,000 fart apps in the Android Market, or having a slightly slower user experience than iPhone 3Gs (but about the same as iPhone 3G on the 3.0 software) this is definitely the handset to get. Especially given it’s on EVDO 3G, which has better coverage in the US than AT&T could dream of for at least a few more years.
I’ll be editing, reorganizing, adding, deleting, and hopefully putting some pics in here as I get time. Stay tuned!
Part 2 is available. Rather than editing this review, I decided to just do a followup.
Topics: Cell Phones, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Mophie JuicePack 3G
By Nick Dunklee | January 3, 2009
If there were to be a top-ten list of complaints about the iPhone 3G, right after the call drop issues (which have been recently fixed for the most part) and the garbled audio issues (where both call parties sound like digital audio scrambling garbage and voices are completely unintelligible), it would be the battery life.
Thankfully after iPhone 2.2, Apple managed to make the iPhone 3G’s battery life better, but it is still not much to write home about.
This is where the Mophie JuicePack 3G comes in.
The JuicePack is a half-case the iPhone 3G slides into. The JuicePack has an 1800mAH battery inside to augment the 1150mAH battery built into the iPhone 3G. It has a 4-LED status indicator on the back with a button to check battery capacity. It has a notch cut out for the camera, and the side buttons are left exposed by the half-case so volume and ring/vib are still accessible.
The case is a rubberized soft-touch plastic that really improves the grip of the iPhone 3G in hand, no more slipping and falling out of the hand!
The bottom of the Mophie JuicePack 3G has a standard MiniUSB port. Many complain that Mophie strayed from Apple’s proprietary connector, but for anybody owning products outside the Apple realm, having a standardized port is a godsend. The pack uses the same connector as every BlackBerry, every HTC phone, most digital cameras, XM portables, many feature phones, the list goes on and on. According to Macenstein, Mophie didn’t use a female iPod docking connector because Apple won’t allow third parties to use them anymore. Either way I’m not complaining.
In this picture the iPhone 3G is charging
off a standard MiniUSB BlackBerry charger.
The best feature about the JuicePack is that not only will it simultaneously charge the iPhone and its battery using that MiniUSB port, it will also allow you to sync your iPhone 3G with iTunes using a standard MiniUSB cable! Unlike the InCase Power Slider, you don’t have to go push some stupid button to get it to sync. The JuicePack Just Works™.
Problems
Not all is perfect with the JuicePack, however. I have noticed some odd intermittent issues that have gone unanswered by Mophie. (In fact they’ve never returned any of my e-mail at all.)
Sometimes the JuicePack gets into this state where it will be at 75% full and then suddenly an hour later it is completely dead. It could be bad power management firmware, it could be just a faulty gauge, but I can’t seem to go for more than a day before the JuicePack depletes. (Bear in mind, this is with the iPhone’s battery still at 100%.) This might end up just being normal battery discharge behavior, and the power gauge is just not accurately representing depletion. It is shocking though as several occasions when I’ve been out in places without a charger, I look at the battery, it says 75% full, and an hour later the iPhone 3G is running off its internal battery.
Another issue I have seen is, sometimes MiniUSB cables that are overly thin or 4 feet or longer don’t work so well with iTunes syncing. Mid-sync the JuicePack will disconnect from iTunes and the iPhone 3G will get stuck in syncing on the screen until it is unplugged from the computer.
Biggest Irk
My biggest irk by far though, is that even though the JuicePack 3G is allegedly “Works with iPhone 3G” Apple approved, it makes the iPhone 3G’s built in speaker work poorly.
When the iPhone 3G is in the JuicePack and on 3G during a voice call (using the handset’s built-in handset speaker, not speakerphone), you can hear a high pitched oscillating noise coming from the earpiece. Some other handsets make this noise too, such as the BlackBerry 8330 or the Nokia E61i – and every time I hear this it pisses me off to no end. Unfortunately I am blessed with obscenely good hearing and frequency response in my ears, so I can hear these annoying noises. (The Nokia E71 and several other high end handsets do not exhibit this behavior, however.) The noise is best described as that high pitched ringing some people can hear coming from an old glass-tube television when it is turned on.
When the iPhone 3G in the JuicePack and on a GSM voice call, users are blessed with getting to hear GSM TDMA noise in the earpiece. This is just plain unacceptable. For being allegedly Apple certified, I should not have to listen to TDMA noise in my handset speaker. As soon as you pull the handset from the JuicePack (even mid-call) the TDMA noise goes away. Place the handset back in, and the TDMA noise returns.
Plugging the iPhone 3G into an iPhone sync cable that is powered doesn’t create this noise, so it is something to do with the JuicePack. If I were to hedge a guess, it probably has something to do with the JuicePack covering the antennas on the backside of the iPhone 3G and causing some kind of noise bounce, or TDMA/3G power control noise just somehow leaks back through the data cable connector and into the JuicePack, which puts the noise close enough to an earpiece audio amplifier stage that the earpiece picks up the sound.
It appears that using a Bluetooth or wired headset alleviates the problem, thankfully, but this behavior is still highly unacceptable from an allegedly certified product.
Wrap-Up
While not perfect by a long shot, the Mophie JuicePack 3G is a capable power supply, decent protecting device, and also makes the iPhone 3G fit into large man-hands with a nice comfortable fit. It insulates your hand from getting too warm from the iPhone 3G during long phone calls, and has a wonderful soft-touch finish.
It has some audio quality issues that can be truly annoying at times, especially when in an area with GSM coverage only, but overall it is a good enough improvement to the iPhone 3G’s paltry battery life that it is definitely worth the money.
Oh yeah and syncing through MiniUSB is just awesome.
Topics: Reviews | No Comments »
BlackBerry 9000 “Bold”
By Nick Dunklee | December 14, 2008
The BlackBerry 9000 “Bold” is perhaps the best built BlackBerry since the 8700 series.
Apple’s iPhone has raised the bar for handset build quality and RIM definitely wants to make sure they don’t get left in the iDust.
The Bold is named as such for a very good reason. It is hefty. It is thick. It is downright huge. For big-handed people like myself that’s great, it fits the hand well – for those always wanting smaller phones, it’s a lose compared to the BlackBerry Curve.
In fact, the Bold is taller than the old 8700 series, just as wide, and only a few millimeters less thick.
The size thing is especially confusing when the Nokia E71 is 40% the size of the Bold – and the E71 has a battery of the same capacity (1500mAh), all the same features AND the addition of an FM radio, front-mount camera for video phone calls, and the Nokia’s main camera has autofocus.
Nokia E71 on the Bold.
On the plus side though, the Bold uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and standard MiniUSB, while the Nokia uses a 2.5mm headphone jack and the new MicroUSB ’standard.’
Both handsets have A-GPS. A nice feature to see becoming more standard on GSM phones.
Anyway, once getting past the size issues, on to the details!
Signal
RIM never scrimps on signal performance and the Bold is no exception. The Bold pulls great 3G signal, as well as GSM signal. The 802.11A/B/G WiFi radio gets great reception as well, and the Bluetooth radio works as well as can be expected for Bluetooth.
Display
The display is only 16-bit color like most handsets, but the BlackBerry uses a decent dithering routine so the lack of color space isn’t readily noticed. It runs at a resolution of 480X320 while still being the same physical size as the older 320X240 displays – the display is simply fantastic looking. The resolution is the same as the iPhone but with a smaller display this means higher DPI. Did I mention it looks amazing yet?
Looking at an older BlackBerry makes you think you need glasses – everything looks so jagged and pixelated in comparison!
Audio
The earpiece has an ultrasonic high pitched ringing in it like many handsets these days do. It might end up being some harmonic from the 1500Hz power control on WCDMA – thankfully for most people their hearing can’t hear this noise (but I sure can.)
Otherwise, the audio is as good if not better than most RIM products. Speakerphone is loud and crisp, earpiece is great, Bluetooth audio is as clear as Bluetooth can be, and wired headset audio is great as well.
There’s a new feature that lets you apply audio equalizers to the audio, 2 tone adjustment settings, the treble boost really helps with the muddy audio of calls to CDMA subscribers on Verizon/Sprint.
Music audio is simply fantastic, and here’s the best part. The speakerphone is in stereo – it is AMAZING. You can crank the volume all the way up and the speakers won’t distort. There’s a good frequency response too, bass doesn’t just fade away. It sounds like the device is using some kind of SRS simulated surround sound, but it doesn’t sound bad like most!
Oh yeah, and the audio jack is a standard 1/8? headphone jack (with the 4th connector pin for microphone) which is fully compatible with iPhone headphones, studio headphones, car stereo adapters, you name it!
Input
The keyboard is decent to type on, the buttons have nice travel. They have a beveled texturing to them similar to the 8800 series but less harsh on the finger. Overall very comfortable to type on. The input is buffered just like previous BlackBerries, so in most cases when the OS is laggy, your keystorkes will not be forgotten.
By default a spell-check “while you type” is enabled, which is cool except when you use the TrackBall’s button to select “send” on a message, it gives you spelling corrections if you are on a word it doesn’t know how to spell, instead of just letting you send. I disabled this auto spellchecker because of that annoyance.
Overall Performance and Speed
This is the fastest BlackBerry in the fleet, running at 624MHz – you will definitely notice the speed improvements. Unfortunately some of that speed is wasted in some cases, such as when yo have to encrypt or wipe the memory. They added a faster processor but upped internal storage to 1GB – which isn’t quite big enough for anything useful these days, but big enough to slow down memory-intensive things.
Wiping the device includes a memory scrub that will altogether take 30 minutes to an hour depending on how grumpy it is feeling at the time.
The one odd thing I have noticed is the device’s perpetual obsession with popping up the sandtimer icon (in this OS’s default theme it is a clock with spinning hands, but I digress.) It does this while you’ll be in the middle of typing an e-mail message, and sometimes manage to steal focus away from the user input.
I have tracked this down and I think it is because either the device is scanning my 8GB MicroSD card to update MP3 contents, or because the BES policy on the device requires basic encryption and it is dynamically encrypting things and bogging down userspace. Either way, this should not happen to the user. I will know better on the BES front once I remove the BES policy and will try to post an update if the spinning goes away finally.
Update: I found out what was causing this. The BES IT Policy put on my BlackBerry required mandatory memory scrubbing while idle, the sandtimer popping up was the mandatory memory scrubbing kicking in. Once I removed the BES IT Policy and disabled memory scrubbing this constant sandtimer went away. Something RIM should definitely fix for enterprise users, but at least there is a way around it for users that don’t need BES or have control over their BES. The timer will still pop up occasionally when first scanning for MP3s, but once the scan is complete it goes away.
Bluetooth
The Bluetooth on this device has great range, and a host of profiles including A2DP, AVRCP, DUN, and more! (I have the unlocked version, carrier-speific versions may have missing profiles, YMMV.)
Stereo Bluetooth works, and sounds ok for the SBC (Sub-Band Codec) used for transcoding to the headsets.
Bluetooth handsfree works great, voice-dial over Bluetooth works fine. If there is a downside, occasionally headsets don’t initially connect until the dial button is pressed.
Biggest Irk
Definitely the biggest irk some friends and I have experienced with the Bold thus far, is some goofy glitch where the Bold stops playing alert sounds. All you get is this 3-beep for every alert, ringtone, etc. This has been with both an unbranded unlocked Bold and an AT&T-branded Bold, both on a BES server with BES policies. Once I removed the BES policy, erased my Bold and reflashed it to factory defaults with the latest firmware I could find (from a Turkish provider) it finally started working again. Horrible way to have to fix the handset though.
Hopefully RIM will address this issue in subsequent updates.
Wrap-Up
One of my favorite features that seems to be a trend since Apple’s iPhone 3G, is the addition of the network switch. If you don’t want to waste your battery power on 3G and have no need to do phone calls and data at the same time, you can switch your Bold into 2G-only mode. Many previous handsets that did GSM and WCDMA (mostly on AT&T) had their network switch disabled. It is a nice addition.
Battery life was surprisingly meh so far. The iPhone 3G with a smaller battery lasts as long, or longer in some cases. When I use the Bold on T-Mobile EDGE, I can use it for 4-5 days without a recharge, same usage pattern.
The BlackBerry web browsing concept is getting out of control. Once I attached to my BES and use WiFi, I have no less than FOUR different browsers I can use. There’s the WAP browser for WAP sites, the HotSpot browser for WiFi-only browsing, the Internet browser for regular web sites, and then your corporate-specific browser that gets installed via BES. Be sure to pick the right browser in the right situation or web pages won’t load and you will NOT have a clue why. Bravo RIM. It is bad enough your browsers render pages like slow trash, now users have to fight with which one to launch to load a page. This bit gets a D and is the single largest weakness in the BlackBerry platform, in my opinion. (It is also why I am forced to continue carrying an iPhone alongside my ‘Berry at all times.) One browser people. One browser that works. The iPhone is 200MHz slower than your device and can render pages faster, that’s just wrong. (Update: The addition of the HotSpot browser appears to be an AT&T addition. On T-Mobile that icon doesn’t show up. However the multiple browsers still exist on T-Mobile, you just don’t have an easy way to choose between them other than switching the default browser setting and relaunching.)
Browsing irks aside, for those wanting a voice/text/e-mail communications hub with some decent multimedia features and a great feel in the hand (and can forego a decent web browser), the Bold is where it is at.
Pictures to follow:
The Bold next to a Nokia E71
The Bold and E71 in profile.
This is probably the best view to compare the size of the Nokia E71 to the BlackBerry Bold. The Bold could practically eat it for dinner!
BlackBerry Bold 9000 alongside a BlackBerry Curve 8320, Nokia E71, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3G with Mophie JuicePack.
The same from a top-down angle.
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BlackBerry 8800
By Nick Dunklee | March 29, 2007
The BlackBerry 8800 is the second in a new generation of RIM PDA phones. RIM is attempting to compete in a market they pretty much pioneered, and this is leading to some pretty funny results.
Signal
The BlackBerry 8800, like its former brethren, fairs well at signal acquisition. However, I can’t really say it’s any better, and in fact, seems to be a bit worse overall when compared to such signal beasts as the 8700c/g/etc. it’s meant to replace at HOLDING signal. RIM decided to mount the antenna in the bottom of the device, like so many manufacturers are doing these days, which continues to aid to consumer confusion. Most knowing anything about antennas always assume the antenna is at the top of the device. When there is no visible antenna, it’s up to the user to guess…
Overall the signal on this device isn’t horrible, it’s just not as good as previous BlackBerries. Sad really, because one generally assumes future generations of devices to be better than the previous ones.
Like the BlackBerry 8700 series, the status display will tell you if you’re using GSM, GPRS, or EDGE, as well as signal, and what network you are using if the handset knows. It will keep the text lowercase before attaching to a certain kind of network, and once it is attached, the letters go to uppercase to indicate this.
Display
The display is only 16-bit color, and of an inferior quality to previous series’. The color is off, just like the Pearl’s color is off. They must be using the same display manufacturer for both devices, and I have to say it’s an odd situation. The new display is brighter compared to the 8700 series, but dithering is worse and color balance is also worse, resulting in inaccurate color, and it being clearly apparent to the end-user that it’s only 16-bit when looking at web images and photos and the like.
There is an ambient light sensor that smoothly brightens and dims the display backlight based on the light around the device. This is a very cool feature and works pretty much flawless.
There also seems to be a quality-control manufacturing flaw on these devices displays. I have purchased two of them now, the first returned due to a display defect, the second had nine times the number of defects in the display! Tiny pits in the lens (the cover that goes over the LCD display below) act as image magnifiers at their given points. Around these blemishes, the color of the pixels underneath gets magnified and enhanced, making a shimmering sparkle around these points that ends up looking like pixels are stuck on or burnt out. Frankly, this is unacceptable given that cheap penny phones don’t even have this issue.
Finally, they removed the “List” themes, which were one-dimensional hierarchical lists of menu options, text-only, with a text-only task-switcher menu. This frankly sucks, because the graphical interface does tend to run a bit slower than the text interface. There was absolutely no reason to remove these themes, and it seems like a step backwards more than anything.
Audio
Like the 8700 series, the 8800 keeps the great earpiece volume, Bluetooth volume still works great, and stays loud. Speakerphone volume has been made slightly quieter. Interestingly enough, the speakerphone assembly on the 8800 now uses 2 speakers instead of just 1. I am not sure why this route was chosen, but overall it works fine. Makes me wonder about power consumption though.
There is no ticking, no backlight buzzing or other audio defects in this device, just like its predecessor, so at least RIM kept consistency here. The audio on this device is definitely no slouch!
Input
The QWERTY keyboard on this device, like all devices with QWERTY is small, but RIM managed to space the letters far enough apart to make it very easy to use and even with large hands accidental keypresses rarely happen. The buttons are a bit more squishy than previous BlackBerries and some tactility is lost. The ridged curves on the buttons however, do make it easier for one to tell which particular keys are being pushed without having to look at the keyboard.
The BlackBerry trackwheel has been replaced with a trackball. I still am not sure if this is an improvement. I’m a left-handed person and I grew quite adept at the right-hand-oriented trackwheel of the 8700. The whole interface on the 8800 seems to be made more complicated, because clicking in the trackball is now a stripped-down menu of common-used items. This makes it more efficient, unless your definition of common used items is different from RIM’s. At this point, you are most certainly boned, and forced to click the BlackBerry button next to the trackball, that replaces what the trackwheel previously did. This is definitely one case where it seems adding more features reduced functionality in a bad way.
Overall Performance and Speed
The BlackBerry 8800 runs on the Intel PXA901 312MHz “Hermon” processor. The processor is powerful and gives the handset great performance, although the base UI does lag a little bit at times. Given that the OS is all Java, it is amazing it runs as fast as it does. Stability is good, I’ve not had to reboot the phone once so far, which is expected from a RIM device.
This stability can cause some coincidental problems though, as certain poorly written applications suck the phone’s battery life faster than others, and with something so stable, users won’t often be rebooting. The easiest way to alleviate this issue is just to remember to always quit unused applications. So far, every app I’ve tried on the 8700 works on the 8800 except for BBWeather. I am not sure why that app doesn’t want to run yet.
Bluetooth
Due to security concerns, the BlackBerry 8800 only has the headset, hands free, tethering, and PDA sync profiles available. Bluetooth data tethering is a welcome addition and way past due. Oddly enough, Bluetooth stereo audio (A2DP/AVRCP) are not installed by default, even though the 8800 will recognize these profiles on a pair of Bluetooth stereo headphones. I can’t see much of a security risk in adding audio-streaming profiles, and given that RIM is trying to break into the consumer segment more, it seems logical that they would. However, you can NOT listen to music on the 8800 using stereo Bluetooth. Boo to that!
There is the VoiceSignal voice-dial program from the 8100 Pearl onboard, and it works correctly with Bluetooth headsets for voice-dial just like the Pearl. It’s about time!
The audio range is great, and audio quality is best-in-class for Bluetooth. Pairing is painless and the handset gives you visual cues as to if BT is running, connected, and the like. It will automatically transfer a call over to a Bluetooth headset if the headset is turned on while the call is going on and the devices are properly paired. Very handy.
Wrap-Up
There are many applications availble for this handset, including a streaming radio application. The E-Mail client can display plain text and the BlackBerry servers handle converting HTML to plain text. Attachment images, PDF, DOC, and a few other formats will open fine, even ZIP files, which are handled by the remote BlackBerry server.
Web browsing is fast too, as web requests are also funneled through the BlackBerry servers, although as a result, trying to go to sites like Google that base your locale on IP address will always display Google Canada, because RIM’s servers are based in Canada. Kinda funny/goofy.
My feelings on this device aren’t as positive as the 8700 though. If you already own an 8700, don’t bother upgrading to the 8800. There isn’t enough of a compelling addition of features to justify the expense. RIM made a good attempt, but I’m left feeling they changed things in the same way Microsoft changed features in Windows to make Vista seem new: needless revision rather than actual creative addition.
Pictures to follow.
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Welcome!
By Nick Dunklee | March 29, 2007
This is going to be the new format for my reviews page here at Skuzz.com.
Writing raw HTML code all the time can get downright frustrating and take a lot away from the actual content.
So hopefully this will mean more reviews! 
I’m going to be back-dating the old reviews so they will show up when they were originally written, which means some will probably happen before this does. Ah tim travel! 
–Skuzz
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T-Mobile Dash
By Nick Dunklee | January 16, 2007
I recently decided to try the T-Mobile Dash / HTC Excalibur. It’s a small, battery-conscious (for Windows Mobile anyway) QWERTY SmartPhone running Windows Mobile 5 SmartPhone edition.
So far, it has actually been a nice experience. The device is very tiny! It has decent battery life given its size, it’s LiPolymer battery will last about a day of moderate phone calls, text, e-mail, some browsing, a little bit of WiFi, and some Bluetooth audio off the MicroSD card slot. I wish it would last a bit longer, but given all it does the battery life is understandable for the size.
Signal
It picks up WiFi networks very easy and holds signal well, I am actually impressed at how good it handles WiFi, much better than previous Windows Mobile devices of any type. It also holds good cellular signal and has great Bluetooth range. Finally, it also REACQUIRES signal VERY fast, this I very much enjoy, because too many devices take 5 to 10 minutes to finally reacquire signal after being in a “No Service” area.
Display
The display is nice and sharp! It is about the exact same size as the BlackBerry 8700g display, same color depth too, 16-bit. As mentioned there, things tend to show that they are being rendered in 16-bit color on this device, Microsoft must use a very low-quality dithering routine.
It is also annoying that Microsoft doesn’t really seem to grasp how to utilize a small 320×240 resolution display efficiently. They add a thick statusbar at the top, a thick softkey bar at the bottom, a thick scrollbar on the right, (which I was able to registry hack from 6 px down to 2px) and then fonts in the middle that are either way too small, or way too big.
An example of this, the e-mail program’s fonts are way too big, and display is in two-line format, so you can only see 3 messages per screen, and this is not changable by the user. On the BlackBerry OS you can fit 10 messages per screen.
The Motorola Q managed to screw these up even worse though, so I guess it’s not the worst of the worst! The Dash at least fits 4 icons per row without modification to the registry.
The Dash also suffers from the usual Windows Mobile goofiness like slow display refresh, and a slow UI at times, probably suffering from similar issues as the Motorola Q since much of the UI is all XML files.
Audio
Reviews I have read have rated this phone’s audio rather mediocre. I don’t understand why. The earpiece volume is clear, not super-loud, but loud enough to hear in almost every environment. The speakerphone does tend to distort a little at high volumes, but is overall very acceptable. The ringtone volume is also fairly loud given the size of the device. The vibrating ringer also is one of the strongest I’ve ever felt in a handset.
Input
However, Windows Mobile has generally had a problem with keyboards. They must have a really crappy keyboard driver as it tends to drop keystrokes really easy. On top of that, this keyboard’s keys are rather close together even for a thumb-board.
The other input method irks I have are:
- They have some new “XT9″ input method based roughly off T9, basically as you’re typing it tries to guess your word. You can disable it, but it’s only disable-able on a per-inputfield basis, and often inputfields ignore the registry entries pertaining to disabling XT9. I found a program that will go disable it in almost every app, but rebooting the phone (power off, remove battery to get SIM card out) will reset all those settings. VERY annoying as it slows down typing horribly when you already know how to spell – pulling the list up is very cumbersome.
- SHORTCUTS! There are hardly NONE. When you start a new sentence it auto-capitalizes the first letter, that’s about it. On the BlackBerry I can type “its” and it changes it to “it’s” All I need to finish a sentence and start a new one is hit space twice, none of that hunting for the period key jazz, proper names are often auto-capitalized, you can add to the list if you want custom words like say, typing BB makes it autocorrect to BlackBerry if you wanted, etc. etc. I didn’t think these things were such a big deal to me, but now that I am stuck typing every punctuation symbol, space, period and capitalized letter, it slows me down almost as much as the typing glitch and tiny keyboard.
Overall Performance and Speed
I miss the BlackBerry holster magnet sensor that puts the phone in vibrate mode automatically when holstered. You’d think this would be standard PDA phone fare now, I am guessing this is probably patented by RIM so probably not much luck there.
The phone also comes with the HTC standard compliment of accessories, belt leather case with magnetic latch and all fuzzed to keep the phone from getting scratched, USB home charger, USB sync cable, earbuds for music, and Windows Mobile sync software with Outlook 2002.
Bluetooth
Integration with Bluetooth, especially with A2DP and AVRC and my Motorola HT-820 Bluetooth stereo headphones works good! A phone call will pause music so you can answer it automatically, then unpause when done. When you get a text or e-mail or reminder, it will turn the volume down to low on the music, play the alert, then bring the volume back up. It also supports voice dial via Bluetooth or on the device, however it only has the voice-tag matching method, not actual recognition without training.
Wrap-Up
Overall though, despite these input method deficiencies and a bit of sluggishness, it definitely is an impressive little device. Especially given that all of this comes in such a tiny package! The music integration is WONDERFUL! I’ve reached a new level of portable synergy!
Pictures to follow shortly.
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BlackBerry 8700g
By Nick Dunklee | January 7, 2007
The BlackBerry 8700g is one of the best handsets I have ever had the pleasure of doing business with. There are actually several BlackBerry 8700 series devices, including Verizon’s bastardized BlackBerry 8703e (which will probably get its own review), but the core 8700 is amazing.
Signal
The BlackBerry 8700g (and the whole 8700 series) gets BRILLIANT reecption. Everywhere I tested it was able to hold service, even the weakest T-Mobile signal in areas where other phones will not pick up service. It actually pulls better signal than the Nokia E61, which was, until this phone the best RF phone I had ever used.
One of the most unique features of the 8700g is that, like all BlackBerries it tends to show a decent amount of network information on the status display.
The status display will tell you if you’re using GSM, GPRS, or EDGE, as well as signal, and what network you are using if the handset knows. It will keep the text lowercase before attaching to a certain kind of network, and once it is attached, the letters go to uppercase to indicate this. The only irk with the way it displays network names is that if it doesn’t know what network it is on, it displays nothing. You have to go to the status display to find the MCC-MNC.
Display
The display is only 16-bit color, oddly enough, the way they use color on this handset, it is not nearly as noticeable as on some devices such as the Motorola Q. There is an ambient light sensor that smoothly brightens and dims the display backlight based on the light around the device. This is a very cool feature and works pretty much flawless.
The display is designed so well you don’t even think about it, which is always a good sign things are done right. The 320×240 resolution format is great for viewing web pages, and size is physically big enough to make reading even the smallest text easy on the eyes.
Audio
There is no other way to say this: The 8700g is one of the best sounding phones ever created. The earpiece volume is loud and clear, the speakerphone volume is even louder and clear, ringtones are easy to hear, even mp3 tones, microphone picks up audio good, and Bluetooth audio is also nice and loud.
The biggest point, is that the 8700g has good QUALITY audio as well as loudness. Even at lower volume levels, it still sounds absolutely wonderful, I could only wish other handset manufacturers held themselves to this level of quality. No backlight inverter hum, (although I believe the display backlight is white LED so no inverter) no GSM ticking, no hissing or other noise, even with very weak signal when audio starts to drop out, the earpiece doesn’t do anything funky!
Simply amazing!
Input
The QWERTY keyboard on this device, like all devices with QWERTY is small, but RIM managed to space the letters far enough apart to make it very easy to use and even with large hands accidental keypresses rarely happen. The buttons all have good feedback and a solid click so you know what you pressed.
It is also wonderful that unlike previous BlackBerry devices, this has a dedicated SEND key and dedicated END key, so call handling is made much more simple and less like some odd PDA phone.
The BlackBerry trackwheel as always is wonderful for scrolling and selecting. It is amazing how much can be done with one thumb. However, horizontal scrolling is inconvenient, as one has to hold down the alt key and scroll to do horizontal scrolling. It’s also right-handed by nature, which stinks for us lefties, but I have personally accepted the dexteritism in this world so that I can cope with the right-hand operation fine. This is being solved in newer models that are going to a miniature trackball solution. Overall though it’s a minor irk, and doesn’t detract from the functionality of the phone too much, unless you use mapping programs heavily.
Overall Performance and Speed
The BlackBerry 8700g runs on the Intel PXA901 312MHz “Hermon” processor. The processor is powerful and gives the handset great performance, although the base UI does lag a little bit at times. Given that the OS is all Java, it is amazing it runs as fast as it does. Stability is wonderful. I’ve had the 8700g running for over a month and it never required a reboot. (Which is good because rebooting takes as long as Windows Mobile, if not longer.)
This stability can cause some coincidental problems though, as certain poorly written applications suck the phone’s battery life faster than others, and with something so stable, users won’t often be rebooting. The easiest way to alleviate this issue is just to remember to always quit unused applications.
Bluetooth
Due to security concerns, the BlackBerry 8700g only has the headset, hands free, and PDA sync profiles available. Technically speaking, Bluetooth data tethering is available, but only when using the companion Windows sync software. There are alternative applications that allow Bluetooth DUN, one requires you have a BES server and account, the other requires you run a proxy server on a home computer to route the Internet through to the phone. Consequentially I don’t consider the 8700g to have true Bluetooth DUN, or USB DUN even, as RIM was nice enough to leave out drivers for Mac or Linux to be able to use this phone for DUN. This is lame of them, but their newer ‘Berries are more friendly to all computing platforms, if this is an issue for you, get a Pearl or wait for the 8800g.
There is no voice dial application on this handset, although I’ve attempted to get the VoiceSignal app from the 8100 Pearl running on the 8700g, I don’t have access to some system settings to make it run, so I’ve not been able to add it just yet. This makes Bluetooth dialing annoying as you have to always grab the handset unless you are redialing the last number dialed.
The audio range is great, and audio quality is best-in-class for Bluetooth. Pairing is painless and the handset gives you visual cues as to if BT is running, connected, and the like. It will automatically transfer a call over to a Bluetooth headset if the headset is turned on while the call is going on and the devices are properly paired. Very handy.
Wrap-Up
There are many applications availble for this handset, including a streaming radio application. The E-Mail client can display plain text and the BlackBerry servers handle converting HTML to plain text. Attachment images, PDF, DOC, and a few other formats will open fine, even ZIP files, which are handled by the remote BlackBerry server.
Web browsing is fast too, as web requests are also funneled through the BlackBerry servers, although as a result, trying to go to sites like Google that base your locale on IP address will always display Google Canada, because RIM’s servers are based in Canada. Kinda funny/goofy.
What else is there to say? This handset is wonderful, is fast, runs Java, is a blast to use. The only shortcomings are lack of voice dial, and lack of USB or Bluetooth modem ability without custom software. If either of these are deal-breakers, as mentioned go for the BlackBerry 8100 Pearl or wait for the 8800 series which should be coming out by February or March of 2007.
Pictures to follow shortly.
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Motorola Q
By Nick Dunklee | July 22, 2006
The Motorola Q is one of the most advanced handsets to ever hit Verizon Wireless. With that in mind, also realize, this isn’t saying much at all. Verizon generally chooses poorly developed handsets with incomplete feature sets, only to require further tweaking to cripple the phones even more.
Amazingly, the Motorola Q is an exception to their standard barrage of crippling…for the most part.
(As usual on the site, click on the thumbnail to see a larger image.)
Signal
The first thing that should be covered is coverage, or rather, reception and signal strength. The reviews I have read all tout the Q’s antenna as the same great antenna from the RAZR. I have to say, I’ve never been impressed with the RAZR’s antenna, and I remain unimpressed with the Q’s antenna. CDMA hasn’t advanced enough yet as a wireless technology to support phones that do not have real antennas, period.
That said, the Q will get decent signal as long as it isn’t sitting on anything organic such as a human leg, or oriented horizontal when trying to make a call, such as sitting on your desk while attempting a Bluetooth headset voice dial call. In my reception tests, areas with decent Verizon signal (full strength on every tested handset when held upright) the phone would lose signal if sat horizontally while making a call. The meter would read the phone had 3 bars, or 4 bars (of 4) of signal strength, yet making a call would result in the call failing while dialing. Once a voice call was established, it held the signal fairly well.
Display
The display isn’t that impressive. Overall the color is good, the backlight is strong. However, in direct sunlight it is harder to see. The color depth is a pathetic 65,000 colors in a time where many handsets are going to 18-bit or 24-bit color for “true color.” Dithering is often noticed on many images one views. Motorola also did no optimization of the interface, and Verizon chose to waste space on their Today screen layout. This results in the user having to constantly scroll up and down to read the entire today screen. The default home screen actually has the ring styles option listed only on the home screen as a “Profiles” option, not seen as it is at the bottom of the home screen. Most other Windows Mobile SmartPhones let you press the dedicated “Power” button to bring up a Nokia-esque menu to select ring profiles and radio on/off. More on this later however.
The display shows little information
The Start Menu only shows a 2×3 grid of icons.
In comparison, the Nokia E61 with the same
display resolution can show a 3×4 grid while
still showing signal/battery/Bluetooth/WiFi
and other info readably.
Audio
This is a doosey. Audio on the Q is garbage. Every other review I’ve found keeps blathering on how wonderful it is. Total rubbish! Contrary to the PhoneScoop review, the speakerphone volume never distorts. However, the earpiece ALWAYS distorts at any volume higher than 50%.
Per the usual, Motorola is continuing to use the same crap backlight inverter that they used in the RAZR, et. al., so anybody with halfway decent hearing will be delighted to have a symphony of “BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ” in their ear while talking on the handset directly. Setting a short backlight timeout will cause it to dim fast, and eliminate the buzzing, but any keystroke or button press brings it back again. Also doing a short backlight time out makes using the phone’s other functions annoying as one has to be constantly pushing a button to bring the backlight back on. *INHALE*
You thought I was done? NO WAY! Not only does the audio suck via handset, the audio gets even WORSE via Bluetooth! I use my standard Plantronics PLT 510v.D that has worked perfect on the last 10-15 phones I’ve owned. Pairing is as simple as it can get via Bluetooth, that went smooth and the Motorola-included Bluetooth management apps are simple and easy to use. Actually using the headset in a phonecall is no less than dizzifying. Every time a person is quiet for 500ms or longer (half a second), their voice ramps up when they start talking again rather than just TALKING. Example: so they stART TALKING LIKE THIS AND THEN THEY PAUSE….their voICE IS QUIET AND THEN GETS LOUD AGAIN BECAUSE THEY STOPPED FOR HALF A SECOND….it keepS GOING AND GOING. It’s an annoying aural rollercoaster I’ve not been able to disable. Upon calling Verizon about this issue, the rep had, “never heard of that problem before,” big surprise there…
The trip back to the store to return the handset resulted in both the sales reps on duty agreeing that the Q’s “aural rollercoaster” effect is very annoying and were surprised they didn’t have more refunds given how obviously stupid that is. (We even compared their store demo handset, as well as several bluetooth headsets to make sure it wasn’t an isolated incident.)
Seriously, how does quality control miss this?? At least Motorola put in some cool Motorola ringtones – maybe they should give up on the handset industry and just stick to ringtones.
Input
Where to start? How about the main keyboard. The buttons are too small. They are usable, but Motorola chose such a nonstandard layout, like putting / and \ right next to each other, that you’ll be guaranteed to always hit the wrong button just from the layout, let alone fat finger syndrome. Shift is on the wrong side of the keyboard for most people, return looks suspiciously like a backspace key (in reality one has to reach up to the function pad section and use the generic “back” button for backspace.)
My least favorite feature of the keyboard isn’t the keyboard as much as a consistent bug in Windows Mobile 5 for SmartPhone. Many assume the keyboard’s hard to press and that is where random keystrokes they type disappear to. In reality, WM5 for SmartPhone drops keystrokes constantly due to a horribly written keyboard buffer/driver. The only way around this bug is to type…very…slowly…so…the…p…h…o…n…e……doesn’t drop any keystrokes. I personally find this horribly unacceptable as the phone’s operating system hampers one’s typing speed, but for many who can’t type very fast on a phone, it won’t seem like much of a problem. Overall not the best keyboard, but also not the worst.
The function section of this phone is atrocious. My first recieved phone call on this phone was a battle to the death to get the send key to work. I had to mash it hard and finally learned in that moment how absolutely cumbersome 6 buttons could become. The D-pad and select key are all fine. Pressing one of the function keys is hard to do without mashing send/home/back/end, and hitting one of those four buttons intentionally is just a nightmare. Since this phone does not contain a dedicated power button like most WM5 SmartPhones, one has to hold End to power down the handset. (This is also the reason the aforementioned “profiles” function was put on the Today Screen instead of just hidden under a convenient button or switch.) The force needed to hold end results in many accidental presses of the letter P as the handset’s case bends under the buttonpress of end and connects the P key with it’s traces on the keyboard.
The jog dial wheel works good itself. It’s disappointing that out-of-box it can’t select apps off the Today Screen and only goes up/down, but it is nice to have an alternate input device. The big downside, however, is where the back button on the jog dial is located. It is moved so far away from the jog dial, the user will often find themselves trying to press the metal frame behind the button, instead of the button, which severely hampers its usefulness.
Overall Performance and Speed
This is the category where I am most flabbergasted. I have used Windows Mobile SmartPhones from the now-ancient Samsung i600 to the Cingular 2125, and now the Q. The Cingular 2125 suffers the same keystroke-dropping bug, and is JUST AS SLOW as the Q. The Q runs on a 312MHz processor, but that extra 112MHz of compute cycles seems to do nothing for performance. Everything on the Q is just as slow as the 200MHz Cingular 2125. It is a wonder why they didn’t just leave it at 200MHz for some better battery life.
After peeking in the \WINDOWS directory some of the slowdown is more apparent. Most of the handset’s operating shell is XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and XML files. That’s right, your cellular experience on the Motorola Q is non-stop web browsing! (Example: the text message composition screen is just an HTML file in \WINDOWS…)
Speaking of random files left around where they shouldn’t be, Motorola left a “Built_info.txt” in \WINDOWS as well that shows some interesting information about the workstation at Motorola used to build the firmware image! (Some bits listed below.)
Build Machine Name: g16839-09
IP Address: 10.22.87.77
User ID: G16839
ISV Vob location: W:\: => F:\ss_views\g16839_01_07_05-08P\motopro_isv\isv
BSP View: F:\ss_views\g16839_01_07_05-08P\motopro_bsp\platform\DaVinci
******
Apparently the platform’s codename is DaVinci? Who knows! Talk about lazy setup!
Bluetooth
Amazingly, Verizon decided to be honest about Bluetooth for once and not lock many profiles. Of course they probably did this because the Q isn’t a BREW device, but it is nonetheless something refreshing to see. Even the OBEX profile, one of Verizon’s longest-tabooed profiles is on and running. It also supports the stereo Bluetooth headset profile, but as I don’t have a pair of stereo headphones to test with, I wasn’t able to try out the performance.
Wrap-Up
After extensive registry tweaking and thoroughly messing up the Q I was testing several times, (like rotating the screen 90 degrees sideways just for fun!) I’ve not been able to improve any of its shortcomings. With some tweaks on the key strobing delay I was able to make its ability to register keystrokes better, but not by much. The Bluetooth audio gain and backlight were both uncontrollable after many different attempts.
Given that the launch was delayed as long as it was, Motorola AND Verizon could have both done some more research into this device’s operation and function before releasing something so crummy. At least the power jack is a mini-USB port just like the RAZR, so charging is a breeze. You’ll be doing this a lot, so consider this feature a blessing.
Final Pictures
The left side, MiniSD and infrared ports -
at the bottom is the USB charging/data port.
(Q on right.)
(Motorola Q is on left.) This shows the dog dial
and poorly-placed back button.
(Motorola Q is on left.) This shows the bottom -
nothing to see here!
(Motorola Q is on right.) Here is the not-mentioned
and ho-hum camera and flash. (The flash does make
a good flashlight though!) Also visible
are the stereo speakers along the bottom.
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