yiso cf 2031 sprint 3g data/voice card hands on review

[doctorc]

got this card thursday pm shipped direct from sprint. it sucked so much that it went back friday am. full review will be posted here when i have more time. suffice to say that if you have one of these on order i would cancel asap. for starters it's not just a cf card -- if you are using it in a pda you have to snap on an external battery pack to the card that is about the size of
an actual smallish cellphone making this a much more bulky solution thaneven the larger pcmcia card jackets. i am now carrying an lg5350 and my ipaq 3975 + supplynet cable from dreampages. works like a charm. the yiso card is such a huge piece of crap - i will go into more detail later when i am on a real computer and not my ipaq. there are numerous, numerous flaws with the yiso
i just wanted to give everone a heads up before you get yours and are as disappointed as i was. easily the worst product i have ever seen for a pda. what a joke

[DaleReeck]

Hey,

How'd you get one? They aren't available yet, at least not from Sprint's web site or DreamPages, who moved their availability date to Nov 8th...

[disconnected]

Appalling but, somehow, not surprising. Another winner from Sprint. I think I'm going to switch to the first US carrier with a Smartphone.

I'm looking forward to reading the full review, in a horrified sort of way.

[DaleReeck]

Another thing, not that I'm doubting you, but you made another post here Thur morning thanking DreamPages for service you received and saying that when the Yiso card came out, you were buying it from them. Now, you say that the afternoon of the same day, you received one from Sprint. I'm confused, was it a beta unit perhaps?

[doctorc]

Another thing, not that I'm doubting you, but you made another post here Thur morning thanking DreamPages for service you received and saying that when the Yiso card came out, you were buying it from them. Now, you say that the afternoon of the same day, you received one from Sprint. I'm confused, was it a beta unit perhaps?

Ok here is some more quick and dirty info. Please forgive typos, and my brevity as I am a doctor and at work and very busy but here's the lowdown.

That evening (thurs) when I got home a package was on my doorstep from sprint. Now originally, some of you may recall me posting that I had ordered one of these about 3 weeks ago driect from SPCS when they had (accidentally?) posted them for sale on their web site. Since that period, I had decided to cancel the order because

1) Availability kept getting pushed back
2) I had decided that integration of phone + pocket PC would probably leave something to be desired on both ends (and I was right as it turned out)
3) I figured I would order from Dream Pages rather than Sprint because at least Larry was providing information on the product, availability, etc, while SPCS apparently had (and still does have) it's head up it's a** when it came to this card.

So, imagine how surprised I was when it arrived on my doorstep. No, I do not think it was the beta version. It was the final packaged sealed product completely with final software on a shiney sprint CD ROM.

Now, as for the bad stuff:

1) The battery adapter thingy that you have to attach. This is literally about 0.25 inches thick by 3 inches long by about 1 inch wide. It plugs into the back of the CF card (near the top) and is "hinged" so you can fold it down in back of your pocket PC. Sprint does not show you the picture of this in their photos because they don't want you to know how bulky this will make their apparently "small" CF card solution. The battery pack comes with a travel charger (not really travel sized I might add) that lets you plut it in to recharge it. The manual states "warning, when using the CF card with a pocket PC you must use the supplied battery pack or critical damage can occur to your pocket PC" -- I didn't want to chance it.

2) Software for this card is very bad. I have no experience with other data / voice cards for comparison sake but let me just post a few things here
a) If you have the PPC turned off, and an incoming call comes in, it of course goes to voice mail. But when you turn the PPC back on, the software does not inform you that you have voicemail waiting.
b) If you do not have the 'voice' part of the Sprint PCS connection manager software running, then when a voice call comes through you will not receive any notification (no ringer, no dialog box, etc) that someone is trying to call you.
c) if you are in data mode, calls cannot get through (this makes sense I suppose)
d) if you are in data mode, no SMS messages get through (by the way there is zero support for sending SMS messages, only minimal support for receiving and viewin them)
e) if you are in data mode, and a call goes through to voicemail, you will NOT get a notification that voicemail has arrived if once you end the data session unless you FIRST enable voice mode again and switch to make the SPCS connection manager the 'frontmost' application. In other words, if you are backgrounding this app, it's not going to tell you that you have voice mail. In all cases, you have to actually physically switch to the application and make sure it is in voice mode, before any sms or voice notifications come through.
f) NO support for dialing from your contacts, as far as I could tell. You have to manually program in contacts. I belive there are only 10 speed dial numbers but I may be wrong here. There are no options to make custom buttons with people names on them (similar to what you can do on a treo for example make a button called "mom" that when you press it dials Mom). I can live with this, but kind of disappointing

3) Software very buggy. Seems to slow my 3975 to a CRAWL when using it some of the time. Even though it plus Pocket IE were the only apps running. Had to soft reset 3x in the 4 hours I used it.

4) Data throughput rate was very slow. I was getting on average about 40kbps. Using my LG5350 with Supplynet cable on my Ipaq in the same location in my house I was clocking about 80kbps. I have heard that some of the data cards can get up to 144 and even bursts of 200.

5) Cute little integrated antenna is so small almost useless.

6) Physical engineering of the card makes it VERY difficult to insert into my CF Expansion pack plus. I have no idea why, but the card was very difficult to align with the cf slot and push in. I have never had this problem with any other CF card.

7) Has to be used with a headset (of course). Any 3.5mm headset will do. Ironically, they don't include a headset with the card. Go figure.

8) Buttons on the dialer application are pretty small and hard to press with fingers (and I have fairly small hands). They make very inefficient use of the screen space and the whole interface in general is crappy.

Now the good things about the card:

1) Voice quality was good.
2) Sprint activated it right away without any problems and they did so on the "unlimited" 3g data plan
3) Data function worked, although very slow.

Aside from the requirement for the huge bulky battery pack, I believe the software could eventually be worked out, or you could work around some of this with 3rd party apps. However, very disappointing for a $300 card and also I think you could do better with an LG5350 + cable for your Ipaq or a PCMCIA solution which is probably better in terms of size and maybe their software is better for those as well.

Big thumbs down on this card. Too bad, I had such high hopes. FYI I did try to use the card without the huge ridiculous battery pack. It works just fine, but it makes me nervous that "critical damage" could occur to my PPC so I stopped doing it after a while. I did notice that when I did this it massively sucked up battery power (had a fully charged extended battery for my CF exp pack plus, it was drained fully in about 1.5 hours of surfing with this card in).

[dreampages]

WOW! Thanks for the posting. I'll have to seriously reconsider carrying thiss product. It's being manufacturered for Sprint by a little known Japanese company. This is sad.

Guess that leaves the Novatel Merlin C201 (data only) that's currently shipping and the Sierra Wireless Aircard 550 (voice & data) which hasn't shipped yet and no one really knows when it will ship.

The Novatel modem works grate on with the iPAQ getting 80-100kbps (110-140kbps on a laptop) but it's a PCMCIA device. It uses the iPAQ's battery but the battery life isn't great. I can get about 2 hours of use before needing to recharge the iPAQ and expansion sleeve. I would recommend the newer PC Card Expansion Pack Plus so you can carry spare batteries.

The power drain with the Aircard 550 is suppose to be about the same ad the Novatel card. The Aircard is going to be $100 more3 which makes you think about whether you really need voice or not.

Anyway, if you're on the fence about the Novatel card, the $50 rebate is valid for purchases through 11/3 through Sprint Business Solution Partners.

There's also a special on the unlimited plan. I don't think the unlimited plan is needed for Pocket PC use but comes in great with a laptop. I do about 80MB a month between my iPAQ and laptop.

The special is posted at http://www.dreampages.com/sprintpcs/special.shtml

Larry

[DaleReeck]

Thanks for the report. Unfortunately, as a Toshiba e740 user (with no option for a PCMCIA expansion pack), this meant the Yiso card was the only real option without having to resort to cables attached to cell phones. I do have that CF to PCMCIA adapter thingy, which I tried with my Sierra 510 card, but the drivers do not work. Apparently, their drivers are "for iPaq only". I don't have high hopes that the Sierra 550 drivers will support my e740 any better.

[doctorc]

Thanks for the report. Unfortunately, as a Toshiba e740 user (with no option for a PCMCIA expansion pack), this meant the Yiso card was the only real option without having to resort to cables attached to cell phones. I do have that CF to PCMCIA adapter thingy, which I tried with my Sierra 510 card, but the drivers do not work. Apparently, their drivers are "for iPaq only". I don't have high hopes that the Sierra 550 drivers will support my e740 any better.

Who knows whether this information is at all accurate or not (SPCS reps being the 'informed' individuals they are) -- but I was told by a tier 2 tech at SPCS about a month ago (back when I still owned an e740) that the Yiso card currently did not work with the Toshiba e740, nor was it scheduled to be compatibility tested with it. Luckily, I was within my 14 day return policy for the e740, so I took it back and got a compaq 3975. I don't regret it (well my wallet regrets it a little). But just as a FYI, don't count on being able to use your e740 at all with the Yiso card (who knows it may work, that spcs rep could have been misinformed). Personally I don't see why it would not work. A CFII card is a CFII card and the PPC 2002 is PPC2002 -- so why shouldn't it work....

[DaleReeck]

Actually, the Yiso not working in the e740 had crossed my mind :)

Fortunately, my e740 has been flawless, so I am happy that I got it. But the forthcoming ROM upgrade may only be factory-upgradable (not user-upgradable according to some reports, not yet confirmed) due to them goofing up the hardware in some way. So I'm not confident that the Yiso will work. Us XScale early adopters have to live with this stuff I guess.

I have a Treo 300 Palmphone on Sprint's Vision network as my cellphone. But I'm looking at getting the Kyocera 7135 Palmphone when it comes out. So I don't want to invest in a cable solution yet and IR to cellphone as modem solutions have been a bit flaky. So my options for my PPC are fluid at the moment...

[doctorc]

Actually, the Yiso not working in the e740 had crossed my mind :)

Fortunately, my e740 has been flawless, so I am happy that I got it. But the forthcoming ROM upgrade may only be factory-upgradable (not user-upgradable according to some reports, not yet confirmed) due to them goofing up the hardware in some way. So I'm not confident that the Yiso will work. Us XScale early adopters have to live with this stuff I guess.

I have a Treo 300 Palmphone on Sprint's Vision network as my cellphone. But I'm looking at getting the Kyocera 7135 Palmphone when it comes out. So I don't want to invest in a cable solution yet and IR to cellphone as modem solutions have been a bit flaky. So my options for my PPC are fluid at the moment...

FWIW I have also tried the Ericsson T68 bluetooth on the 3975 via Tmobile. It worked very well and I actually think the Tmobile data services are faster than Sprint's despite the fact that Sprint's CDMA 1x RTT is theoretically faster. THe only problem was that Tmobile coverage in my area is kind of bad, so I returned it. Otherwise I was quite happy (in fact I loved the phone, and also Tmobiles customer service was outstanding -- miles ahead of Sprint).