Rix Bits

Well, I’ve upgraded my phone. For the past two weeks I’ve been using and adjusting to the HTC Touch Pro from Sprint, trying to see if I like it, or if I need to take advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee. I’ve got a lot friends who have the Mogul, so I thought I’d write something up to say how I feel about the Touch Pro (6850) in comparison to the Mogul (6800). With that said, this review is specifically for Mogul users, and I’m not gonna spend time talking about the specs (you can read about that here), nor will i be talking about how HTC’s 6000 series phones are so much better than other phones like the iPhone, for instance. (insert devious giggle here)

In general, I like the new phone, and would recommend the upgrade. There are improvements in lots of areas, and the improvements far outweigh the shortcomings. So, based on my previous post, this post could also be called “The HTC Touch Pro is… Awesomer!” :)

I’m gonna talk about my experience in the following areas:

Software

Pros: The Touch Pro has a September 2008 version of the ROM with WinMo 6.1. This is definitely a better version than the last Mogul ROM. Although it introduced at least 1 stupid glitch (no standard word completion), it fixed a lot of other issues. In general it feels more stable, and I’m sure the extra hardware is helping that as well. They built-in a lot of software functionality that I was previously installing separately (picture mail, voice commander, scrolling/panning).

And they’ve added a lot of goodies also (see below). One of the nicest goodies is a choice during sync – you can use ActiveSync, or just treat your phone (with storage card) like a flash drive. Perfect for grabbing a few MP3’s before you get in the car (which by the way has me now using my phone more as an MP3 player than i did with the Mogul).

Cons: They could have left the TouchFlo 3D software off of this phone. I mean, I know what they were trying to do: put some fancy eye-candy software on the phone to make your friends envy your new phone, and to make you feel like you’ve got an iPhone-ish interface. But I don’t need that. In fact, the TouchFlo interface is so useless I went ahead and re-installed my SPB Mobile Shell software; I still prefer it over the fancy stuff. I've found that there are others that agree.  [updated]

Hardware

This, my friend, is the key area that made me want to buy the phone in the first place (ie Pro’s), and is also the area that made me initially not want to buy the phone ever (Con’s):

Pros: The major value this phone brings is in a whopping increase in memory – any current Mogul user will probably salivate over the screenshot shown here. This is the #1 reason why I even considered this phone. As Forrest would say, “that’s all I’ve got to say about that”.

Also, although I don’t have official data just yet, it ‘feels’ like the power management on this phone is better. I think I’m getting maybe 50% better battery life out of this thing than I was with the Mogul. It also feels like it charges faster as well.

Finally, one kool hardware feature that I haven’t yet explored is the TV-out capabilities (I need to first buy the cable to do it). Imagine playing YouTube videos from your phone onto your friend’s TV, or just demonstrating the phone in general on a TV. But mostly, this is probably useful for showing PowerPoint presentations from your phone – this is a way to get your non-techie colleagues to awe at your greatness, and fellow-geeks to covet you. :)

Other subtle hardware benefits:

• the D-pad has a better feel, especially for the push-select
• ergonomics of the phone are nice
• video screen looks beautiful
• screen auto brightens/dims (which probably helps the battery life), and looks better in sunlight than the Mogul does

Cons: My major problem with this phone was/is (haven’t decided yet) the lack of hardware buttons. Certainly taking away all the buttons adds to the sleek sexy feel of the phone. But me – I had tricked out all my buttons to do some amazing 1-touch kind of things on my Mogul (as I describe in the latter part of my other post). I really felt that those extra buttons were so useful that it wasn’t worth an upgrade. I’m starting, tho, to learn how to live without them, and the SPB Mobile Shell software is certainly helping me break my addiction. So, maybe this isn’t so bad after all.

Another con is that the little scroll wheel on the D-pad is pretty useless. It’s mainly for zooming in on pictures, and that’s about it. Why not make it useful in other apps as well? Perhaps they’ll do so in future versions of the software, but for now, that scroll feature is just another piece of eye candy like the TouchFlo software. [updated]

Finger-friendly

Pros: One of the main things that makes this new phone ‘feel’ good is the solid finger functionality. With the Mogul, I had bought some SPB software to enable things like finger panning and scrolling, but now that feature is built into pretty much every app. And it works much smoother than it did on the Mogul, especially in Opera Mobile, probably due to the beefed-up processor and memory. And they also size up the text throughout the phone areas to support this finger-friendly experience.

Another benefit is in the area of 1-hand action, which comes in handy while I’m driving holding a can of Sprite (as I’ve heard Jeff & Josh say). :) The on-screen keyboard on the Mogul was only useful if you wanted to pull out the stylus, where as the Full and Compact on-screen QWERTY keyboard on the Pro finally makes thumb typing a reality. Again, I had bought software on my Mogul for better 1-handed typing, but now it’s built-in. This is mostly useful for quick text messages where I just need to say a couple of words – you’d be amazed how often that scenario comes up. For full-blown emails and stuff, tho, I obviously am still using the slide-out keyboard.

Cons: I think I might need to do a registry edit to increase the sensitivity of the screen. Every now and then I need to press something twice before I get it, or I have to make use of my fingernail rather than just my finger for more precise presses.

Goodies

Here’s a quick list of goodies that they threw in on the Pro. This is not a comprehensive list – it’s basically the list of things that I think are actually useful (so you won’t, for example, see the TouchFlo software on this list):

• Built-in Voice Commander ($40 value)
• YouTube app
• Bluetooth FTP and Explorer
• Sync vs Disk Drive option
• Built-in picture mail
• Opera web browser
• RSS Reader (Newsbreak; $20 value)
• A few new games, including the geo-sensitive Teeter
• Sprint Radio
• Business Card reader (WorldCard Mobile; $25 value)

So, in general, Yes this is a great phone, and an improvement over the Mogul. Besides all the specifics I’ve laboriously explained above, in general the Touch Pro just ‘feels’ like a better phone (from a Mogul user perspective). And that, certainly, should be the first step for a phone maker in getting you to buy the latest and greatest thing – get me to ‘feel’ like I’ve bought something better than what I had. For lovers of WinMo, I think this phone makes Windows Mobile shine the way you always wished it would. There are still quirks, of course. And there’s still a need to stay friends with the software gurus at SPB and PPC Geeks and XDA Developers - but nevertheless, a worthy new addition to your mobile computing toolset.

Happy Moofing! :)

Update: 12/24/08 – Review Part 2: Music Player

Today I laughed [a little more] at the iPhone after watching a satirical video ad on the show The Soup. Being a proud HTC Mogul owner, I always tell my Apple-loving friends to "get a real phone, not an iPhone".



In fact, during a recent business meeting, I noticed that someone else in the room also had a Mogul. Turns out we are old college buddies, so we decided to share each other's information. Why pull out our business cards? We just beamed each other's contact info via Bluetooth. Took just a few seconds, and we didn't even have to worry about pointing our IR ports at each other like we used to have to do 'back in the day'.




After swapping info, she told me that she wanted me to check out her company website to see if I might be interested in re-designing it. Since her web address was right there in her contact info, I was able to pull up her site right then and there! (and with the new Internet Explorer that comes with WinMo 6.1, I was able to zoom out and get the full birds-eye view the same way Opera does!)



After doing all this, I felt the need to make a smart-a** comment to my friend sitting next to me. You see, just moments before all this technological euphoria had taken place, he had commented that his son had just bought an iPhone. "Let's see your son's phone do that!", I sarcastically exclaimed. :)



In actuality, tho, I assumed that the iPhone COULD do that. I thought beaming info (contacts, files, etc) via bluetooth was something all high-end phones could do. Well, I just did a little research, and it sounds like the iPhone doesn't do that. Now I admit, the bluetooth stack is a fickle lady that all phones sometimes have trouble with, but I just was sure that the holy iPhone had that stuff mastered. What a surprise. Of course, this also means that the iPhone also can't be used as a wireless Phone-As-Modem the way my phone can. Interesting....



So tell me again why everyone's in such a frenzy about this whyPhone... i mean, this iPhone?.... ;- )

Would it be weird for me to say that I fall deeper in love with my phone with every update? LOL

Okay, maybe not love, but I sure do like my phone a lot with the latest ROM update. There's lots of stuff I could say about the Mogul and related software, but I don't have much time, so I'm gonna hit the high points.

There's several major software updates. One being an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1. We'll have to see if over time this manifests itself in stability and performance. But also, two other goodies they added in this update are Sprint TV (which should have been there from day 1 but for whatever reason was not), and threaded text messages.

I'm not a big one to watch videos on my phone, but hey, with this Sprint TV maybe I can be converted. The quality is decent - certainly no high-def videos being displayed, but enough to make watching things bearable.

The text messaging I think is pretty kool. I'm sure all it did is bring the Mogul's text messaging interface up to par with other people's phones, but for me it's a kool feature. Essentially now we've got threaded conversations instead of having to view one disjointed text message at a time.

Aside from some other subtle improvements, the other thing I must say is that I started to create a list of must-have apps for this phone. Three of these must-haves are: SPB Mobile Shell, SPB Pocket Plus, and Pocket Controller. (see screenshots)

They say that SPB Mobile Shell does things on the phone that Microsoft should have done already but didn't. I totally agree. I had the 6700, 6800 for months before getting the SPB suite, and when I started using it, it made me say, "Yes! This is how it should have been all along!"

One of the many many kool features it allows is for additional function assignments to the phone's hardware keys. So for instance, the phone can already be programmed to make the Internet Explorer button do something (like, for instance, open Internet Explorer). But with Pocket Plus, you can also program that button to do an additional tasks when you HOLD DOWN the button! I used this feature to turn the Comm button on the side to a Task Manager shorcut - by holding down on it, I go straight to the Task Manager to be able to jump to some other minimized program (see screenshot). This is crucial when I'm on a call, using my bluetooth headset, and the caller needs me to check my calendar, or I need to take notes while on the call, or the caller needs me to find someone's phone number in my Contact book - or all 3 at the same time!

The Pocket Controller software allows me to connect to and operate my phone via my computer (and also allows for the kool skin that you see in the screenshots). This is now a must-have software if for nothing else

because it made an easy task out of getting my phone back up to speed after the full data erase necessary for the ROM upgrade. Re-adding my 4 email accounts is such a pain via the Mogul keyboard and my two thumbs, but using the Controller allowed me type with all the furious keyboard speed contained in my lightning-fast typing hands! :) The Controller does lots of other stuff too, but again, I'm running out of time.

I just had to put my $0.02 out into cyber-space along with all the other Mogul users to let you know my thoughts on this great phone. Don't get me wrong - it is a love/hate relationship, just like everything else. Somedays the screen freezes or missed calls or battery life issues are frustrating. But overall it's a good phone, it still make's the iPhone look like a toy I'd give to my 7-year old nephew, and it keeps getting better with every update!

Rumor has it that we're just days away from the official Sprint update of my phone, the HTC Mogul. This will be update #2 for this year.

I'm trying to be patient and wait for Sprint (even tho they've already missed two advertised delivery dates for this update). Otherwise, I can always download the official unofficial leaked version of the ROM. It's amazing how talented folks are out there - there are some super-techies out there developing software for my phone and hacking the existing ROM - and they do a better job of it than Sprint and HTC do!

The strong connection these days between manufacturers and their educated consumers is pretty impressive, especially when compared to, say, 10 years ago. As I surf the Net, I see unprecedented levels of community involvement in the development and QA of software and electronics. I believe most companies nowadays have a policy of putting out betas or leaked versions for the specific purpose of allowing the community to test and tweak their products (w/o paying them of course).

That makes me both excited and uneasy at the same time. It used to be that you could depend on manufacturers to make high-quality stuff that you can depend on. Now it seems like they throw 'whatever' over the fence, and let us figure out how to fix it. Somewhere around version 3.x the product is usually good enough to use. :-) Hmmm, interesting...