The Register Reviews HTC's Blue Angel

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/18/review_htc_blue_angel/' target='_blank'>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/1...htc_blue_angel/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"No company has done as much to advance Microsoft Windows Mobile telephony hardware than Taiwan's HTC. The company's smart phones have been offered by numerous vendors and networks, as have its phone-equipped PocketPCs, most notably as the O2 XDA family. And not content to find one good design and stick with it, over the last few years HTC has continued to evolve each line. HTC's latest PocketPC design is codenamed 'Blue Angel'. It may sound like an escort agency, but that hasn't prevented it being picked up by Europe's key networks and plenty of others around the world. I looked at i-mate's PDA 2k, courtesy of Expansys, but the same hardware also appears as the O2 XDA IIs, Vodafone VPA III, T-Mobile MDA III, Orange SPV M2000 and other labels besides."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20041119-RegisterBlueAngel.jpg" /><br /><br />A nice, detailed review from The Register - if you've been sizing this unit up, you should certainly check this review out. About the only thing this unit lacks (in my opinion) is VGA.

[R K]

Yeah, VGA would be nice but throw VGA in there along with a bigger battery to support it, and you get a PDA-Phone that's significantly pricier than the already-steep price of $900.

I wonder if the rumors of Cingular picking this up at $700 are true.

[Birdman]

I am debating between this model (PDA2K) and the O2 branded XDAIIs. So far, I have not found any significant differences between the 2 (other than the black colour of the casing for the O2 model) and there does not seem to be any proprietary (read: useless) software installed in the ROM of the O2 model.
I have seen unlocked O2 versions for about CDN$1250 (which is a little over US$1,000) but I also note that someone is selling the PDA2K on HowardForums for US$815.

[hotweiss]

I have seen the one you are talking about:

http://www.easycell.ca/02s.html

It looks a lot better than the i-mate.

[Birdman]

Do you mean "looks" better from an "appearance" stand point, or do you mean it looks like a better device?
If the former, I agree with you, if the latter, why?

[hotweiss]

Appearance

[Birdman]

There seems to be quite a price difference though. You can get the PDA2K for US$815 from Madmonkeyboy over at HowardForums, or CDN$1250 (with a free case) from some on-line Canadian vendors.
The black XDAIIs, I have seen only from one Canadian vendor for $1,250.
That is quite a big price difference from US$815, given the current exchange rate. Have you committed yet?

[R K]

I wonder whether Leonard and the gang over at PocketPCTechs would be willing to do a body replacement for the silver PDA2K.
It shouldn't be too hard to get the casings for them should it?

[Birdman]

If the ONLY difference is case colour, given that I will probably use it in a case, then I would go for the one that is least expensive, which right now, is the MadMonkeyboy US$815 special.

[OneAngryDwarf]

is there a link for this $815 deal?

[Birdman]

If you head over to the PocketPC forum on HowardForum, he has a banner ad with his email. I will see if I can get it.

[whydidnt]

I've been playing with the PDA2K for the last week or so and I have to say it's a very nice PDA. The screen suffers from the same yellow tint as some previous iPAQs have. It's "only" a 400 MHz processor, but response time in every thing has been very acceptable. It's a pretty good PDA, but as a phone it's a little lacking. This compares favorably to the 6315 IMO, which was not a good PDA or Phone for me.

It suffers from using the same lousy Broadcomm Bluetooth stack as the 6315 which stinks because you have to use all sorts of work arounds to keep it paired with a Bluetooth Headset. Interestingly, I haven't heard of early users of the 6601 from Sprint complaining about this, so maybe a fix is due.

The keyboard looks like it would be difficult to use, but has been surprisingly easy. Their are small bumps on each key, which leaves plenty of space between keys for us fat-fingered folks. My only complaint is the Space bar only has this little bump too, so you have to hit the middle of the space bar for it to register.

I'm still struggling with the overall size and weight of the unit and am thinking of trying the iMate Jam when it's available. I don't mind the size for weekday, work related stuff, but I'm not comfortable lugging this big device around all weekend or to just run to the corner store.

[yawanag]

Sure hope you have better luck with this one than I've had with the I-mate. I was salivating too and thought it was worth forking over $800. Since July, I've had one exchange and am considering another.

The device goes black for no apparent reason which mean you perform a hard reset much more than you'd like (more than I have with any other device). From reading some of the forums, I'm not the only one experiencing it.

Another reason I purchased the I-mate was that it was Sim Free. I'm having second thoughts about that, too. When I had T-Mobile, I could have the device replaced within 5 days, but was always able to go into a location and get a Temporary phone.

Now, I'm asked to return the device but if I do I am without a phone. I'm not exactly willing to to do that since I use my phone primarily for emergencies.

I feel like I'm caught between a rock and a hard place.

[neomotion]

Isn't there supposed to be a deluxe version which has VGA? I heared a rumour some while ago about different versions of the same model. One with and one without VGA. Oh well, i am getting my I-mate Jame in about 10 days (Mda Compact to be exact).

[R K]

I think the deluxe version is next year's model. There's always something better around the corner.

[jemichael]

I own this device.. And I could personally live without the VGA if the Bluetooth worked! IMate is also horrible at its customer support and is taking way to long to release a fix for this issue. You should read all the complaints and messages on their private boards.

Otherwise if you dont want to use a Bluetooth Headset then it is awesome. But to bad I was unaware of this handicap when i bought it. I just hope IMate released the update soon..

[drj]

Keep in mind that it is just not the Imate model PDA2K but seems like all of them including the 02 XDA2S.

The solution I think is back at HTC the manufacture, not Imate and I think WIDCOMM who makes the bluetooth stack. The HP has the same bluetooth problem although seems not as bad just loosing the connection sometimes.

One difference between the PDA2K and the O2 model would be warranty. You have a worldwide warranty with the PDA2K.

Not sure what would be with the 02. Do you have to be an 02 customer? They are a european/asian telco. I would not put any trust in a retailer warranty.

[yawanag]

[ IMate is also horrible at its customer support and is taking way to long to release a fix for this issue. You should read all the complaints and messages on their private boards.]

Yeah, I know. I thought I was smart in reading reviews before purchase. Then they were all glowing with praise.

[The PocketTV Team]

The good news is that this device has the ATI Imageon 3200 series video accelerator chip, the same as used in the Toshiba e800 and iPaq hx4700.

The bad news is that they have not included any ATI external memory, so the ATI chip cannot be used for video decoding, only for display / overlays.

It's not critical because it's only a QVGA device. And we understand the reason for the lack of external memory: It's a phone, so battery life is critical, and ATI external memory reduces battery life, from what we heard, because it uses more power when the device is turned on (i.e. not suspended).

[jemichael]

Everybody seems to have different Bluetooth problems with the PDA2k. Some have the waking problem where it wakes up whenever it wants to and causes battery lose.

Me personally, I can't even USE bluetooth because when I activate it it works, but when the phone/pda2k goes into sleep mode to save battery and when a call comes in and it wakes up I get a bluetooth could not reinitialize due to insufficient driver memory and it asks me to do a soft reset to use it again.

I soft rest it and bluetooth works fine. SO as long as I set the PDA2k not to sleep or shut down after X amount of time then I can use bluetooth all day. But you could image what that would do to the battery. :)

Bottom line is that IMate promises stuff and do not deliver. I actually had someone in chat told me that there is a fix and they were going to email it to me. But I never received anything. I thought this was weird because why would they email it to me? Why not post it for everyone can download and fix their device? They have also told me in there support chat that they are unaware of all the complaints and problems as they do not read their own bulletin board. :roll:

[whydidnt]

Me personally, I can't even USE bluetooth because when I activate it it works, but when the phone/pda2k goes into sleep mode to save battery and when a call comes in and it wakes up I get a bluetooth could not reinitialize due to insufficient driver memory and it asks me to do a soft reset to use it again.

I soft rest it and bluetooth works fine. SO as long as I set the PDA2k not to sleep or shut down after X amount of time then I can use bluetooth all day. But you could image what that would do to the battery. :)

My problem is similar, except I don't get the insufficient driver memory error. The bluetooth headset is disconnected and doesn't reconnect when the phone "wakes up". I can reconnect by turning off bluetooth and turning it back on.

My work around: I installed "Screen Lock" and turned off the option to have the phone automatically turn off. When I'm not using the phone I turn the screen off with "Screen Lock". This helps save some battery life, since the screen is significant batery drain. Bluetooth stays connected, BUT the battery still drains by over 50% after around 10 hours of "standby" use, where the PDA is on, but the screen is off. Not an ideal situation, especially when you realize you can't carry a 2nd battery, since there aren't any avaialble yet (that I can find, anyway).

Bottom line is the bluetooth stack on EVERY recent WM2003SE PE device is broken. It's this kind of thing that will prevent MS from gaining any traction in this market and I hope they realize it and fix it by delivering a PHONE oriented stack with their software. It's absolutely incredible that every one of these phones is broken this way.

[R K]

My work around: I installed "Screen Lock" and turned off the option to have the phone automatically turn off. When I'm not using the phone I turn the screen off with "Screen Lock". This helps save some battery life, since the screen is significant batery drain. Bluetooth stays connected, BUT the battery still drains by over 50% after around 10 hours of "standby" use, where the PDA is on, but the screen is off. Not an ideal situation, especially when you realize you can't carry a 2nd battery, since there aren't any avaialble yet (that I can find, anyway).

<a href=http://www.expansys-usa.com/product.asp?code=115749>Expansys</a> sells the I-mate battery but I don't know whether it's in stock. Additionally, you might be able to use a CPU underclocking program to keep the CPU at 300MHz or even 200MHz while it's on standby.

Bottom line is the bluetooth stack on EVERY recent WM2003SE PE device is broken. It's this kind of thing that will prevent MS from gaining any traction in this market and I hope they realize it and fix it by delivering a PHONE oriented stack with their software. It's absolutely incredible that every one of these phones is broken this way.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, they have almost nothing to do with the Bluetooth stacks that are on most of these devices. Widcomm is the prevailing developer for these devices.

The thing I'm curious about is whether this problem occurs on the XDA II/MDA II/I-mate Pocket PC. I think those devices used the Microsoft BT stack.

I think the real problem here comes back to the relationship between early adapters and companies with poor QA. We're the ones that always get stuck beta testing the hardware/software. After all, the iPAQ H6315 and the HTC Blue Angel are the first devices that use Widcomm Bluetooth stacks for Bluetooth headsets.

[drj]

The Imate/XDA II used the generic Microsoft bluetooth stack. Although not feature rich at all...bluetooth headset worked. Used my BT headset all the time on my Imate.

Now I really only use it in the car where the device does not go to sleep.

Its a Widcomm problem with the hardware manufacture (HTC) or HP since I have an Ipaq 6365 and same type of problem. The solution is does not sit with Imate or O2 or Tmobile but rather the manufacutre of the hardware, HTC and the manufacture of the bluetooth stack, Widcomm.

Might be a while, and would say a fair bug not to have been detected. Obviously not many beta testers used bluetooth headsets. !!!