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View Full Version : Review - SMT-5600 as a notebook replacement


sracer
06-05-2005, 11:21 PM
It seems like the older I get, the larger gadgets seem. When notebooks were released, laptops suddenly seemed huge. Pocket PCs made notebooks seem unwieldly. Well, the worm has turned again and with the advent of Windows Mobile-based Smartphones, Pocket PCs now have "brick-like" tendencies.

My latest gadget (an Audiovox SMT-5600 smartphone) was the only electronic device that I took with me on my latest cross-country trip back to NY. As a veteran "mobile warrior", I previously used notebook PCs, and Pocket PCs, plus a cell phone for all of my electronic needs. But this was the first time that I used a single device for EVERYTHING.

My travel pack consisted of my phone, AC adapter, extra battery, both T-Mobile contract and prepaid SIMs, a 512MB miniSD card, Freedom BT folding keyboard, 3/32-to-1/8 stereo adapter cable, and standard "hands-free" headphone/mic.

I loaded up my 512MB miniSD card with: Ocean's 11 movie, Meatballs movie, a few hours of music (Santana, Malo, and UltraLounge), some electronic Bibles, a few games, Pocket Streets Maps, and various notes.

When I boarded the plane for the flight to NY, I put the phone in "Flight Mode" (turns off the cell service portion of the phone) and fired up Meatballs. It was a fun way to kill 90 minutes of the 6+ hour flight. When the movie was finished, I fired up some music and jotted notes on a yellow pad for the upcoming singles character study. Took a break from studying to play a few games of chess on the phone (the computer opponent kicked my butt) while music played in the background. After that, I loaded up the UltraLounge playlist and tried to catch a few winks.

I had a stop-over in Detroit, so I took the phone out of "Flight mode" and did a little web surfing... catching up the news, latest articles on Slashdot, etc. Eventually I made it to NY. Checked the battery level remaining... 80%!

While in NY, I visited with my parents and my brother and his family. I had some music that I wanted them to hear, so I attached the 3/32-to-1/8 stereo adapter to the phone and connected it to the audio inputs on my parent's VCR (yeah I know, but they don't have a stereo system). Music playback from the phone thru the VCR to the TV was surprisingly good. My parents were amazed by the capabilities of this phone.

http://img296.echo.cx/img296/8800/image17ze.jpg http://img27.echo.cx/img27/5029/image15wg.jpg http://img238.echo.cx/img238/4176/image25hm.jpg

At night we'd watch the NBA playoff games, and I'd place my keyboard and phone on a folding tray table. I'd do a little nighttime surfing and email reading, as well as use Agile Messenger to IM my wife. Other days, I'd type up my notes for my study.

On the trip back, I watched Ocean's 11 and did more studying.
------
I have a T-Mobile contract plan ($19.99 a month) plus their $4.99 T-Zones plan. (I need the $4.99 T-Zones plan for internet access). Unfortunately, it only comes with 60 anytime minutes, and since they charge $.45 a minute after that, I have a T-Mobile to Go prepaid SIM. That only costs $0.10 a minute. So when I run out contract minutes, I swap SIMs and use prepaid minutes.

It cannot be overemphasized how useful it is to have an integrated device that does so much. This phone is a lite-PPC, videocamera, digicam, MP3/WMA player, portable movie player, games, ebooks, notetaker, and PIM. Having Pocket IE with built-in connectivity is more useful than I initially thought. Although I had a 2nd battery, I never needed it. Unlike a PocketPC which will drain completely after 3-4 hours of hard use, this phone was very miserly with battery consumption. No matter how much I used it, there was still plenty of battery life.

Using this smartphone as my only device for a weeklong trip has exceeded my expectations. I was pleasantly surprised at just how much I was able to accomplish with this phone.

My only complaints are that Pocket IE is still as limited as its PPC cousin, and there is no general provision for landscape mode on the phone. Except for those two issues (which are not unique to smartphones, I had to deal with the same issues with a PPC) this has been by far my best experience with mobile devices.

Audiovox SMT-5600 Final Grade: 9/10
T-Mobile, T-Zones, TMO-2-Go final Grade: 9/10

Mike Temporale
06-06-2005, 04:00 AM
Good thing you said Ocean's 11, because if it was 12 I would have to slap you! :wink: (Was it just me or did everyone think 12 sucked big time?? )

Sounds like you had an action packed weekend. It's really amazing to have everything come together so nicely. I'm still a little gun shy. If I'm going anywhere, I usually drag my laptop or Pocket PC along. If for no other reason than WiFi. GPRS speeds are killer slow, so if I can snag a WiFi connection, I'll bring a device along that can handle things. :D

sracer
06-06-2005, 03:01 PM
hehe... OCEAN'S 11 as in the one and only... original. I've seen the remake, but I'll stick to the Rat Pack. :D

xultar
06-06-2005, 07:41 PM
OK so how could you hear the movie on the plane? I use noise cancellation headphones when I fly with my HP iPAQ 4355 to hear music and watch movies. I tried the movie thing with my SMT5600 on the plane and I couldn't hear anything with the delivered headset.

I couldn't do without wifi and noise cancellation.

Jerry Raia
06-06-2005, 08:02 PM
Personally I have no desire to not have all my gadgets with me. As much time as I spend in hotels and airports I need a wide variety of toys to keep me busy. I bring my phone, laptop (its a big one too), full sized real mouse (not one of those silly laptop things), digital camera, PPC and now a GPS not to mention all the adapters and chargers needed to keep all this stuff working :)

encece
06-06-2005, 08:53 PM
I was just in NY this past weekend. Being from Philadelphia, a much smaller city, the driving didnt bother me much...but DAMN that the GPS/Smartphone come in handy. It was my first real use of GPS and it got me everywhere I wanted to be. And I was going from the top to bottom of manhattan all three days. What a godsend!

xultar
06-06-2005, 10:22 PM
WAIT.. I have one more thing to say.

I know after this I'm for sure gonna get a BT keyboard.

Second...

When are some new WM 2005 SP hitting the US market????

I'm getting the taste for another handset.

Yes...I love my SMT5600 but man you know how us gadget freaks work.

Rocco Augusto
06-06-2005, 10:51 PM
im gonna be doing the same thing this weekend when i go to the east coast. the only difference is im taking both my mpx220 and my 5600 with me to decide which device will be the one to fit my everyday needs

Mike Temporale
06-07-2005, 12:44 AM
but DAMN that the GPS/Smartphone come in handy. It was my first real use of GPS and it got me everywhere I wanted to be. And I was going from the top to bottom of manhattan all three days. What a godsend!

GPS is something I just haven't gotten into. I bought myself one, and it just sits on the shelf. I guess I just don't travel enough to make good use of it. Oh well, maybe someday. :wink:

Mike Temporale
06-07-2005, 12:46 AM
im gonna be doing the same thing this weekend when i go to the east coast. the only difference is im taking both my mpx220 and my 5600 with me to decide which device will be the one to fit my everyday needs

Ah, you're taking the 5600 as back up for when the 220 gives out on you, eh?! :lol: :wink:

sracer
06-07-2005, 01:04 AM
OK so how could you hear the movie on the plane? I use noise cancellation headphones when I fly with my HP iPAQ 4355 to hear music and watch movies. I tried the movie thing with my SMT5600 on the plane and I couldn't hear anything with the delivered headset.

I couldn't do without wifi and noise cancellation.
I don't know what to tell you. The standard earbuds/mic is VERY loud. Even with the jets of the plane droning on, I had to lower the volume because it was TOO loud.

sracer
06-07-2005, 01:11 AM
Personally I have no desire to not have all my gadgets with me. As much time as I spend in hotels and airports I need a wide variety of toys to keep me busy. I bring my phone, laptop (its a big one too), full sized real mouse (not one of those silly laptop things), digital camera, PPC and now a GPS not to mention all the adapters and chargers needed to keep all this stuff working :)

:lol: I hear ya. I used to be the same way. I would travel with a rollerboard carry-on and a backpack overstuffed with gadgets, AC adapters, and cables for all sorts of connections. I'll never forget the time that I took so much stuff that I had forgotten the AC adapter for my PPC... and went frantically from office supply stores to electronics stores looking for one before my battery died. Good times. :lol:

Oh, I DID take one other device... My Nikon CoolPix digicam. I had sooo much space left in my backpack that the little camera pak containing my smartphone accessories felt lonely.

Rocco Augusto
06-07-2005, 03:40 AM
im gonna be doing the same thing this weekend when i go to the east coast. the only difference is im taking both my mpx220 and my 5600 with me to decide which device will be the one to fit my everyday needs

Ah, you're taking the 5600 as back up for when the 220 gives out on you, eh?! :lol: :wink:

lord knows the battery wont hold up the trip ;)

im getting my 5600 tomorrow or wednesday form cingular so im just gonna take them both on the trip and planned on writting a review similar to this one about my experiences, both good and bad, for both devices. i figured it would help out anyone that was curious as to which device they should get.

chances are i dont need to write that review now because this review was just awesome, especially the comments about the battery life which i hate on my mpx220. i will say im worried about going form a flip phone to a bar phone and thanks to mike im not worried about the dust problem anymore. ;)

-opti-

EDIT: accidently typed 'bad phone' instead or 'bar phone'. need more coffee ;)

MobileRob
06-07-2005, 03:41 AM
I gave up my notebook a years ago when I was running an international business. The travel and lugging everything began to be a real pain. When the PocketPC came out, it was freedom at last. Now I run my business's using my Smartphone when on the road, only going back to my desktop when at home.

I find using a single device is extremely useful. Like tonight, I was waiting on a business associate who was late, and was able to make phone calls, check and send my email, plan out my calendar, and surf the internet. I had a book with me that I could have read as well.

I am sold out on the convenience of one device.

Rob. 8)

Mike Temporale
06-07-2005, 04:11 AM
... and planned on writting a review similar to this one about my experiences, both good and bad, for both devices. i figured it would help out anyone that was curious as to which device they should get.

chances are i dont need to write that review now because this review was just awesome

There are a lot of people that are thinking of switching over from the MPx220. I'm sure you're thoughts and insight will be useful to everyone. 8)

Kris Kumar
06-07-2005, 04:14 AM
There used to be a time when I used to carry laptop, Pocket PC and Smartphone. Now its only Smartphone and one of the other two. Thanks sracer for sharing your thoughts, and proving that just the Smartphone is good enough.

But as Mike suggested, I think it will be the WiFi enabled Smartphones with QVGA resolution (and landscape pIE mode) that will trigger the one gadget only craze. :-)

Personally I am not annoyed by the number of gadgets in my backpack. But more annoyed by the number of power adapters and connecting cables you have to carry.

Rocco Augusto
06-07-2005, 04:23 AM
...But as Mike suggested, I think it will be the WiFi enabled Smartphones with QVGA resolution (and landscape pIE mode) that will trigger the one gadget only craze. :-)

thats why im excitied for Q4 of this year. Hopefully a nice smartphone device with at least QVGA will come out. While I sit back and keep my fingers crossed for wifi I really don't see it happening till at least next year for smartphones.

-opti-

Rebecca
06-07-2005, 02:09 PM
How did you encoded that movie in wmp in fullscreen?

I have used WM encoder and also Synced Windows media but the movies are stored in small screen.

Thanks

sracer
06-07-2005, 04:09 PM
How did you encoded that movie in wmp in fullscreen?

I have used WM encoder and also Synced Windows media but the movies are stored in small screen.

Thanks
I encode my movies at 220 x 176 for playback on my smartphone. You can check out some more details on my encoding guide:

http://percontifamily.com/speedzone/

sojourner753
06-08-2005, 02:52 AM
As much as I love my 5600, I just can't get comfortable with it as a dedicated input device. The screen is too small and iTap/intellitap or whatever its called is painfully slow.

Other than the occasional text message and web page, its pretty much a read access for my data.

Rocco Augusto
06-10-2005, 03:08 AM
... and planned on writting a review similar to this one about my experiences, both good and bad, for both devices. i figured it would help out anyone that was curious as to which device they should get.

chances are i dont need to write that review now because this review was just awesome

There are a lot of people that are thinking of switching over from the MPx220. I'm sure you're thoughts and insight will be useful to everyone. 8)

i got my new 5600 today. i was gonna write a review so here it is:

go get a audiovox smt 5600.... thats it, nothing more needs to be said. after spending 5 minutes with the phone i couldnt even go back to my mpx220 which is sad because i loved that device more than any phone i ever used :D

-opti-

Mike Temporale
06-10-2005, 03:19 AM
Wow! That's to the point. ;) All you old MPx220 owners are starting to make me want a 220. Just to try it out and expereince you're pain. :lol: I've only known the good that is HTC.

Rocco Augusto
06-10-2005, 04:05 AM
Wow! That's to the point. ;) All you old MPx220 owners are starting to make me want a 220. Just to try it out and expereince you're pain. :lol: I've only known the good that is HTC.

haha, i never really had a problem with my mpx220. i think i only had 3 minor problems with the device:

1) dust under the external lcd
2) can't bluetooth voice dial
3) cant use speakerphone with the lid closed

besides that i loved the device. i didnt have the problems like everyone else had with speaker volume and lagging and all that other jaz. it was a fantastic device.

the only reason why i did a xbm on mine was because mine had a factory defect where the hinges were to tight on the phone so when you closed it it caused the buttons to scratch the screen. out of all my friends that had the device mine was the only one that did that. granted they had software issues i didnt get so i should be thankful but i totally dig the audiovox... i do miss voice commands though, that voice command for the 220 was a godsend. time to find one for the 5600 :D

the only thing i dont like about the audiovox is the camera is more fuzzy than the mpx220. the mpx220 camera had horrible colors but taking upclose pictures of text was a lot sharper. i noticed on the 5600 that i cant do that. i dunno if that was due to the screen not being as sharp as the 220 or the camera but ill find out when i get home tonight and view the pics on my laptop ;)

also i was really worried about the size of this device. i wont lie, im clumsy, im afraid im gonna break it or screw up the screen. if anyone knows a good place to get screen protectors for the 5600 please let me know. as far as carrying cases go i was stoked to find one in the box and its pretty nice. also the headeset was a nice touch as well. some screen protectors and ill be all set ;)

-opti-

Jerry Raia
06-10-2005, 08:06 AM
The buttons on my MPx220 scratched the screen too. I'm glad its gone and making someone else as happy as I was with it :evilbat:

Mike recommended the Javo Screen protector and that is what I have been using. I'm very happy with it.

Rocco Augusto
06-10-2005, 08:10 PM
awesome, ill look into it. thanks jerry!

Jerry Raia
06-11-2005, 03:33 AM
YW :) Another place to look for any screen protector is Brando. (http://shop.brando.com.hk) They don't make one for the 5600 as yet but they have an "UltraClear" protector for many devices. I use one on my 4705. I have never seen anything so clear in my life. You just cannot see the thing. They are a great company to deal with too.

Rocco Augusto
06-17-2005, 03:13 AM
Thanks for the link to the screen protector site Jerry!

Well I just got back from my trip. I decided not to bring the mpx220 with me since I had it for about 6 months and used it going cross country once or twice. There really wasn't a reason to compare.

The Audiovox SMT 5600 was awesome. It did everything better than the 220 and I got use to the rocker scroll pad really quickly. I did notice GPRS speeds were faster on the Audiovox than my mpx and videos looked nicer as well, though I almost got kicked off the plane because the crew didn't understand what 'Flight Mode' was-- luckily for me the pilot was up to date on useable electronic devices ;).

I could go on and on about all the good stuff about the 5600 but it was covered in the first post so I'll just go on about the things that dissapointed me about the phone.

1) Voice tags arent as good as the mpx220. I was a big user of the voice recognition features of the mpx220. It's just gonna take a while to get use to the 5600 not having those. While Voice Tags are cool and all I have to manually set them which is just a pain in the rear cause I'll have to set them for EVERYTHING I use... and I use my smartphone for a lot of things ;)

2) Battery life - Don't get me wrong the battery life is good. A bit better than the mpx220 but from what everyone said about the 5600 I was under the impression that this battery was the Superman of all batteries and the truth is I only get maybe an hour to an hour and a half more life out of it than the mpx220. I'm sure for the average user they can go several days without charging this puppy but I'm a very heavy user so I can kill it off before 7pm at night :(

3) Resources - There just aren't enough of them. I was stunned the other day when I got an error message saying I couldn't open a program because there wasn't enough memory. I never had that problem once with the mpx220. I was even more stunned to find out that all the programs I used hours before were still in the system memory and didn't close even after I exited out of them. With the mpx220 it would auto kill a program that didn't close properly after 10 min. This doesn't seem to be the case with this phone but I'm sure I can find a registry setting to do so.

Besides that this phone is awesome. The problems I do have with this phone are minor and can be either overlooked or fixed. Either way, I think I'm in love.

-opti-

ctmagnus
07-11-2005, 05:33 AM
I've got one of these winging its way to me as I type.

I have a few questions:

1) Is the use of a case recommended? I'm coming from an iPaq 5550, which I always have a case on.

2) Screen protectors: I found BoxWave's protectors but I can't find Brando's protectors on their site. Is the SP3i dimensionally similar to the SP3, which Brando does have listed?

BoxWave has screen protectors sized for this phone but I don't know how they compare to Brando's as I've only used BoxWave's and PPCTechs'. And is anti-glare or clear screen better for this use? They also have one of those clear rubber cases but I'm thinking I'd like a leather case better. I've looked at a few of them and I somewhat dislike the looks of Piel Frama's offering this time around.

Mike Temporale
07-11-2005, 10:51 AM
1) Is the use of a case recommended? I'm coming from an iPaq 5550, which I always have a case on.

It's a personal preferance. I would like to have a nice vaja case for this, but they don't make one and all the cases I've seen are kind of ugly. So I'm using the belt clip that came with the phone. It's actually one of the better factory cases I've used.

2) Screen protectors: I found BoxWave's protectors but I can't find Brando's protectors on their site. Is the SP3i dimensionally similar to the SP3, which Brando does have listed?

Yes, the SP3 and SP3i models should have the same screen size. As does the C500, dopod 565, qtek 8010, and of course the smt5600. ;)

BoxWave has screen protectors sized for this phone but I don't know how they compare to Brando's as I've only used BoxWave's and PPCTechs'. And is anti-glare or clear screen better for this use?

Those are 2 brands that I haven't used yet. Of the ones I have used, the JavoEdge are the best.

They also have one of those clear rubber cases but I'm thinking I'd like a leather case better. I've looked at a few of them and I somewhat dislike the looks of Piel Frama's offering this time around.

Check out my review (http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,7381) of the rubbuer case. They are actually very impresive.

Hope that helps!