Treo Central Reviews MPx200

[David McNamee]

http://treocentral.com/content/Stories/301-4.htm

Treo Central's Michael Ducker has written a very balanced review of the Motorola MPx200. Unfortunately, he walks away less-than-impressed with the phone:

"While I do not feel that Microsoft did a particularly bad job with their first generation of smartphone software, I was not impressed by the total package of hardware and software. The Smartphone OS felt immature and slow, and as I said before I did not fall in love with the user interface."

Michael did mention that the like or dislike of the user interface is a personal choice. It seems that the phones he used at the user group meeting were sluggish. That's a shame, because I haven't had any performance problems with my phone in four months of use. Michael does bring up very legitimate complaints with the phone including the fact that Pocket IE is not the best-of-breed in mobile web browsers.

His article does highlight that we do have a difference in opinion of what should reasonably called a smartphone (small 's'):

"... their “smartphone” isn’t a smartphone in the way the Treo is. It is not made to be an out of office replacement for email. It is not data-centric in any way, and its features are limited."

He's right that the Smartphone is not an "out of office replacement for email." Banging out e-mail messages of any real value using T9 is painful. The Smartphone allows you to respond to email using voice attachments, but that isn't always appropriate. I believe, though, that it is a stretch to say that the phone is "not data-centric in any way." The Smartphone's sole purpose in life is data. The focus, though, is on data that is communications-centric - voice, SMS, IM, and, within limits, e-mail. The Smartphone should be thought of as a phone that has included the most common features of a PDA. The Treo, in my opinion, is better compared against a Pocket PC Phone Edition - a device that is intentionally geared toward being a PDA first and a phone second.

All in all, this is a good article that is worth the read.

[David McNamee]

http://treocentral.com/content/Stories/301-4.htm

Treo Central's Michael Ducker has written a very balanced review of the Motorola MPx200. Unfortunately, he walks away less-than-impressed with the phone:

"While I do not feel that Microsoft did a particularly bad job with their first generation of smartphone software, I was not impressed by the total package of hardware and software. The Smartphone OS felt immature and slow, and as I said before I did not fall in love with the user interface."

Michael did mention that the like or dislike of the user interface is a personal choice. It seems that the phones he used at the user group meeting were sluggish. That's a shame, because I haven't had any performance problems with my phone in four months of use. Michael does bring up very legitimate complaints with the phone including the fact that Pocket IE is not the best-of-breed in mobile web browsers.

His article does highlight that we do have a difference in opinion of what should reasonably called a smartphone (small 's'):

"... their “smartphone” isn’t a smartphone in the way the Treo is. It is not made to be an out of office replacement for email. It is not data-centric in any way, and its features are limited."

He's right that the Smartphone is not an "out of office replacement for email." Banging out e-mail messages of any real value using T9 is painful. The Smartphone allows you to respond to email using voice attachments, but that isn't always appropriate. I believe, though, that it is a stretch to say that the phone is "not data-centric in any way." The Smartphone's sole purpose in life is data. The focus, though, is on data that is communications-centric - voice, SMS, IM, and, within limits, e-mail. The Smartphone should be thought of as a phone that has included the most common features of a PDA. The Treo, in my opinion, is better compared against a Pocket PC Phone Edition - a device that is intentionally geared toward being a PDA first and a phone second.

All in all, this is a good article that is worth the read.

[pdaisdead]

For what it's worth, one of my only complaints with my MPx200 is that it does feel sluggish. Check that, the sluggishness along with Active Sync. What a horrible program. Start rant here:

Memo to Microsoft: I know you really don't see Pocket PC as a vital product segment going forward. So if Active Sync was used solely for that product, I could almost see you not caring enough to fix something that's been broken for so long.

It just so happens though that this is Smartphone, a place where you've staked so many of your vast resources in a market segment that is highly competitive. Remember how hard it was to get those handset agreements signed? Nokia and Sony Ericsson will never put your product in their phones and I've heard that the i600 is Samsung's last Smartphone (which a capital "S"). Sorry, while Motorola's fine (although it sounds like they might alienate some customers soon), the Mitacs and Oranges of the world aren't going to cut it. You need to do everything you can to make this operating system perform flawlessly. You don't hear a lot of complaints out of Palm and/or Symbian users over the reliability of their software, particularly in regards to syncronization.

Rant over.

[SQLDba]

I currently own a Treo 600 (GSM) and have just purchased an iPaq 5550 for my PDA....and intend to grab the MPx220 when it's released. Here's why...

The Treo form factor makes a great phone - but it is too small (for me) and too crappy a screen to be my sole daily driver. I found that I couldn't easily view programs like Agendus on the Treo - and defaulted to the built in apps because of viewability, and they are nav-pad aware. So I missed a lot of PIM features as a result.

I thought I would just drop my Tungsten C on the cradle, do a double sync - and then hit meetings w/ the C. I would relegate my Treo to more of a smart phone type status (i.e. read-mostly) but I could live with that. Unfortunately, a sync under the same user name, locked my C up completely because it was also syncing applications that were unique to the Treo hardware. Not going to work.

Enter the iPAQ - now I can sync both - they work independently, but the iPAQ is my daily driver. I'm going to the next Motorola, because if I am going to a read-mostly type phone, the input features and functions of the Treo are overkill - and as a reference handheld - the smartphone is just better (IMHO)

My 2 cents anywho.