T-Mobile Pulls MDA From Website - Replacement in August?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2007/04/06/t-mobile-mda-says-goodbye/">http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2007/04/06/t-mobile-mda-says-goodbye/</a><br /><br /><i>"T-Mobile has pulled the MDA off of it's website and after calling around to a few stores, they don't seem to have inventory available. This could be just a temporary shortage, or more likely the MDA is gone for good. The MDA debuted in February of last year as T-Mobile's first Windows Mobile 5 phone."</i><br /><br />The T-Mobile MDA is part of the wildly popular HTC Wizard family, a device I've been using now for 18 months. I'll be sorry to see it go, but a device this old makes it one of the oldest still at retail. Have no fear though. T-Mobile isn't backing away from Windows Mobile. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2007/20070410-tmobileatlas.jpg" /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.mymobile911.com/dnn/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/20/Default.aspx">MyMobile911 is reporting</a> that the HTC Atlas will be coming to T-Mobile in August, running Windows Mobile 6. I'm glad to see they are going to continue to offer a device with this form-factor. If I were in the market today for a new device, I'd look for something as close to the Wizard as possible. It does make you wonder though why the MDA is being pulled now, at least 4 months before it's replacement will be available. :?

[virain]

It is reported by msmobiles.com too. http://msmobiles.com/news.php/6238.html
But as it was expected form T-Mobile, another low powered, less than average, money saving (for T-Mobile of course, not the end user) device :roll:

[PdaAddict]

Boring. They must think we are dumb crowd that will buy anything they offer as long as it's branded "New".

[Paragon]

the HTC Atlas will be coming to T-Mobile in August

It's the Wizard with a new cloak. I honestly didn't think it was possible for HTC to release yet another device with 2.8" screen/64/128...yada yada, but it appears I'm wrong.

[daS]

It does make you wonder though why the MDA is being pulled now, at least 4 months before it's replacement will be available. :?
Most likely because they blew it on determining their production order. These days, ODMs like HTC need volume orders to set up their production line. Once the run is made, they reconfigure the line for a different product. If T-Mobile ran out of devices to sell, it might not be worth it to them to order a few month's supply when they already would have an order pending for the new product. Plus, they might not be able to get into the production queue in time for any useful delivery.

So instead, they will just have to wait it out and sell Blackberries. :|

[virain]

Boring. They must think we are dumb crowd that will buy anything they offer as long as it's branded "New".

No, being a German owned company, they must be thinking that we are dumb Americans. Check t-mobile.de or t-mobile.co.uk They have some very neat stuff there

[Menneisyys]

another low powered, less than average, money saving (for T-Mobile of course, not the end user) device :roll:

Well, being low-powered also means really excellent battery life. With A2DP and WMA's played in WMP (which isn't the least-power-consuming media player app) via A2DP (!), some 6-7% battery level decrease an hour. I've never seen so good results with any other (non-TI OMAP-based) PDA.

[Eriq Cook]

This LOOKS great. Better than the current MDA model, which is the worst version of this HTC model in terms of outward appearance IMO (Cingular and Sprint's models look much better, IMO).

This is my favorite mobile device to date. It's a perfect form factor. And having a slide-out keyboard has made life a lot easier responding to many emails (and text messages, now). My only wish at this moment is to see a similar form factor with a numeric keypad on the FRONT of the device, but I'm confident I won't see something like this under T-Mobile for another couple of years (and I'm tired of switching service providers so I'm staying with T-Mobile).

My only concern is that I can keep my current MDA safe from damage for another 4 months. I've only had my MDA replaced once (from dropping), but I worry if I did loose or damange my MDA is it going to be difficult to replace because T-Mobile pulled it from shelves? I have phone insurance--through whoever T-Mo uses, and I think they have their own independent inventory of spare MDA's for insurance replacements. But I'm not sure.

And I assume that a WM6 software upgrade is out of the question for the current MDA...

P.S. - That reminds me of my ol' Casio EM-500 back in the day lol

[windmilltilting]

This device has the SAME specs as the MDA. It is a wizard in new clothes. I want improvement. Faster processor. Thinner dimensions. More screen real estate. More storage. WM6? XDA Developers.com I will not be purchasing this device.

[virain]

another low powered, less than average, money saving (for T-Mobile of course, not the end user) device :roll:

Well, being low-powered also means really excellent battery life. With A2DP and WMA's played in WMP (which isn't the least-power-consuming media player app) via A2DP (!), some 6-7% battery level decrease an hour. I've never seen so good results with any other (non-TI OMAP-based) PDA.

If all you need from your WM device is to play music and movies, than of course, you are right. :roll: On the other hand, I use it primerely for business: email, internet browsing, Excel, Word, GPS, and some other software I used for business. Often, I need to run several applications at the same time. So there's a choice: to have a powerful device that I might need to recharge twice a day but working fast and reliable, or low powered one, so instead of doing work, I could watch that colorful circle to spin in the middle of the screen. Very productive use of battery power indeed! :devilboy:
My answer to the problem would be instead of making smaller, thinner devices with processor that bearly alive so it could save energy, and minimum required memory (ROM, RAM), make device of an average size (MIO A701 I use now), and use extra space for larger battery. Last time I checked - size does matter!

[Menneisyys]

another low powered, less than average, money saving (for T-Mobile of course, not the end user) device :roll:

Well, being low-powered also means really excellent battery life. With A2DP and WMA's played in WMP (which isn't the least-power-consuming media player app) via A2DP (!), some 6-7% battery level decrease an hour. I've never seen so good results with any other (non-TI OMAP-based) PDA.

If all you need from your WM device is to play music and movies, than of course, you are right. :roll: On the other hand, I use it primerely for business: email, internet browsing, Excel, Word, GPS, and some other software I used for business. Often, I need to run several applications at the same time. So there's a choice: to have a powerful device that I might need to recharge twice a day but working fast and reliable, or low powered one, so instead of doing work, I could watch that colorful circle to spin in the middle of the screen. Very productive use of battery power indeed! :devilboy:
My answer to the problem would be instead of making smaller, thinner devices with processor that bearly alive so it could save energy, and minimum required memory (ROM, RAM), make device of an average size (MIO A701 I use now), and use extra space for larger battery. Last time I checked - size does matter!

If you enable CPU Scaling in the BatteryStatus plug-in with, say, 283 MHz as the maximal clock frequency, the CPU speed will be auto-scaled and you won't really see the clock. And, if you do need really low battery usage (hours of A2DP without major battery consumption, while all XScale- and Samsung-based PDA's have long been run out of power - playing A2DP on my Dell Axim x51v, for example, decreaes battery life by about 30% an hour), then, you just switch off auto-scaling and enjoy the very good battery life.

That is, while TI OMAP's don't have the latest technology (3+G, hardware-based MPEG4 / h.264 decoding etc), they are pretty useful in many situations - much more useful and dependable than alternative technologies.