StenoWeb

I’ve had my new phone a fairly long time. I got it on like January 7th or 8th or so and ported my main mobile number to it on January 13th. So it has been just about two months, and I’ve gotten a feel for what it’s all about as well as what’s wrong with it, what I know now that I either didn’t or couldn’t have known in January when I purchased it, and a few other juicy tidbits.

I’m going to start off by giving a rundown of the hardware. It’s got a fairly decent processor, a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, it’s either the chip or similar to the chip in just about every HTC product (and a whole lot of other smart phones) from maybe 2007 to 2009 and a few sold in 2010. It improves upon other Windows Mobile phones that come before it by having 256mb of memory, an 800×480 resistive touch screen, and just about the largest keyboard there is on a phone. I believe the only phone with a bigger keyboard, ever, is the HTC S740, which is available on GSM networks.

The keyboard, which I will talk a lot about, is about as big as a small XBOX, which means that typing on it tends to be a fantastic experience. Texting is extremely fast, I have been able to replace my traditional paper-based steno pad with the OneNote Mobile application on the phone, and replying to emails is a fun type of breeze. A warm one in spring (the real type) that encourages the use of a phone. I have even written parts of certain blog posts on it, due to the OneNote synchronization with my computer. Tweeting and updating facebook status messages with it are also joyous occasions.

While the keyboard has been a blessing, Windows Mobile and its available software library has been a bit of a mixed bag. The OS itself is better than most people give it credit for, I think, and the HTC extensions to it are, to quote Engadget, are simply a small miracle, providing quick access to my favorite programs with the simplified Applications menu provided by the TouchFlo 3d interface. I personally do go back and forth between the TouchFlo interface provided by HTC, and the default Windows Mobile interface, realizing that each of them do have their merits and downfalls. The TouchFlo 3d interface is, for example, a fairly significant resource hog, using about ten percent of the resources that the system has, on its own, so a fresh reboot of the device with TouchFlo 3d will have the device using between 50 and 60 percent of its resources, whereas the default interface might use 40%. Why is this significant, or worth two sentences? To put it lightly, TouchFlo 3D really does enhance the device’s usability as a phone when I’m out and about, giving me very quick access to my e-mail, my favorite contacts, text messages, along with my recent photos, and the still and video camera functionality. Although I do like the look of the classic (and WM6.5) Windows Mobile home screens, getting to a lot of important things with those home screens takes too long.

One of the things I’ll admit I failed to account for when I was looking at phones was third party software for the device. Having used an iPhone for two years, and having its life extend into the third as a reader slash clock slash music player, this area is dificult for me, because tweetdeck for the iPhone, the iPhone version of Facebook, along with a few other really fantastic pieces of mobile software, some of which I used all of the time and some of which I almost never used when I had the iPhone.

Although social networking isn’t the very best on Windows Mobile, there are a lot of other cool functionality that the device and its software have. For example, the device can mount its MicroSDhc card on a computer as though it were a flash drive. This functionality alone, paired with mobile Word, Excel and PowerPoint, is amazing. These particular mobile apps aren’t just a fake Office-compatible suite. This is straight-up legit Microsoft Office 2010 Beta for cell phones. It works fantastically. I can put a docx/xlsx/pptx or other Office-compatible file format on the SDHC chip and then read/write/edit that file while I’m on the go, or I can begin writing something in a Word Mobile file and then without moving the file, edit it on my desktop computer.

All of that I could have gotten on any carrier, as the TouchPro2 is one of the few phones that has been made available by its manufacturer to all of the vendors. Each carrier has a different trim package, and slightly different interface coloring, but it remains largely the same device through and through. (It gets modified far less than its little siblings on the Touch Diamond 2 platform, at the very least.)

I chose mine on VerizonWireless for a few reasons. I intend to live out the rest of my two-year contract here in Flagstaff where, right now, VerizonWireless has absolutely the best coverage. AT&T Mobility has really good speed here, if you can get coverage in your room. The room coverage thing wouldn’t even be that big of a problem except that  AT&T is moving very slowly on releasing the 3G MicroCell in my area. Another reason is that with the NAU discount, VerizonWireless came out to be fairly inexpensive. Sprint would have been the absolute least expensive, but they lack a fast network in this area, so I’d either have no data or slow data on Sprint’s network, or voice-only on the VerizonWireless network. I also could have chosen T-Mobile, which may have been fairly inexpensive, but their coverage, similar to Sprint’s, is pretty terrible here for heavy data users.

Compared to the iPhone, I really like it. The headphone jack isn’t recessed in a ridiculous way, the synchronizing over Bluetooth is fantastic, and other things like M2M texts on the VerizonWireless network are also fantastic. The hardware itself has a lot of advantages over the iPhone, the huge hardware keyboard, the standard headphone jack, and the regular USB jack I can use any normal MiniUSB cable for. I’m still keeping the iPhone around of course, but mainly as a way glorified alarm clock, and sometimes as a music player.