My new T-Mobile MDA compact has just arrived :-))

[MarcTGFG]

Cool, cool, cool. You have to see this unit to believe it. Pictures dont do it justice. It is SOOOO tiny (well, that comment comes from a Nokia 7650 owner). So much smaller than any other PPC I ever saw before.

I ordered it last Thursday on the first day T-Mobile offered it in their online store. And today is the day. Just got home from a hard work day and the package lay in front of my appartment door. Unbelievable that T-Mobile would have a 520 Euro package just dropped there without any receipt or signature from me. If I were a bad boy I could just say that I never got it. Ask for another shipment and donate the first unit to the PPCT community. Got your hopes up? ;-) Sorry, but of course I am not a bad boy.

I will charge the battery now and have to go to bed now. Its 1.30 am here in Germany.

I will keep you updated with my first impressions tomorrow.

This unit looks so cool!

[Mr. PPC]

If you reported it missing/stolen they would just disable the phone so nobody could use it. That's why they don't care.

[ventivent]

We in the US have been waiting and waiting for this to come out. Certain online vendors promised it weeks ago, but we still haven't seen anything. Please post pictures...we PPCT people love pictures.

Hope to see mine before Xmas.

[MarcTGFG]

1. MDA compact
2. battery
3. charging cable (no base/charging station!)
4. USB-cable (for buspowered charging too!)
5. Stereo headset
6. black leather pouch with belt clip
7. 256 page printed manual
8. spare styli
9. 1 screen protector
10. CD with Active Sync 3.7.1 and Outlook 2002
11. Companion CD with additional software

[MarcTGFG]

Looks are everything :-)

What you see first when you get the package

http://www.exitmagazin.de/ftp/packshot.jpg

Whats in the box (sans charging cable)

http://www.exitmagazin.de/ftp/whatsinthebox.jpg

The unit before configuration

http://www.exitmagazin.de/ftp/unitbeforeconfigure.jpg

And then the proud owner holds the baby in his hands for the first time *weep* ;-)

http://www.exitmagazin.de/ftp/tmobieltodayscreen.jpg

[MarcTGFG]

There are so many interesting things about this unit (hardware, but especially software wise). I will post more info after work at around 6 pm EST. Stay tuned.

[neomotion]

Hi.

It's a great little machine, end of november i will be getting mine. But just out of curiosity, could you post some pictures taken with the mda? I would like to see what the 1.3 MP camera can do.

Congrats on your purchase.

[MarcTGFG]

The battery seemed to be charged already when I turned the unit on, but I urge you to follow the instruction in the manual to charge the battery for at least 8 hours before first using it. A greeen LED will signal the completion of the charging process.

When you first turn on the device some T-Mobile specific patches and extra software gets extracted from CAB files and presumably installed.
This takes a couple of minutes.

There comes one screen protector with the device, which has no brand name on it. It also doesnt exactly fit the screen, lacking approximately 4 mm in width and 1-2 m in height, which I find very irritating. So the very first thing I will do tomorrow is looking for alternative screen protectors for 2.8" screens. Furthermore, when I applied it to the screen, big pockets of air were created between the protector and the screen. It didnt improve much when I tried one more time. This has an effect which resembles rain drops on a glass surface. It also makes the screen look a bit unclean. While the original screen has a nice feel for stylus input, the screen protector is VERY soft and sticky. I guess thats a matter of taste, but I dont like it at all.

The unit overall feels very solidly built. The case seems to be made of some metal/aluminium mix. Everything comes in a matte silver, while the upper part of the back has a slightly different color, which isnt very obvious at all. It feels very good in your hand, not as slippery as the first generation iPaqs. I have also finally figured out where the IR port is located (the bottom right), a not so ideal position I would say, but with the newly implemented screen rotation functionality you can at least use the device in landscape position with the IR facing whatever you are communicating with.

Beside the regular text input methods (graffity clone, block recognizer, soft keyboard, transcriber), there is one more T-Mobile specific input called Intellipad, basically a phone keyboard in software, with some more options for number and symbol input and built in T9 functionality. If you are really accustomed to T9, have forgotten how to do handwriting, have problems to hit the small keys of the soft keyboard, then this might be for you.

The MDA compact ships with an application called Foto-Kontakte preinstalled. It uses the same data as Pocket Outlook and lets you assign ringtones and pictures to any contact and will show/play them when the person calls you with caller id enabled. It also lets you define groups and has some more options I still have to try out myself. It will also be interesting how it stores the pictures, whether these get synched with desktop Outlook and showup in 3rd party applications like Pocket Informant.

The MDA compact also comes with a preinstalled GPRS monitor to show you the generated traffic.

There are viewers for Powerpoint presentations and PDF files from Clearview and KS Truefax preinstalled.

I dont know if that is standard meanwhile (I remember the original XDA not beeing able to work as a modem for a PC), but the MDA compact works as a wireless modem for your PC and vice versa. It also has VPN (PPTP and IPSec) functionality built in and T-Mobile provides a wizard for configuring certain connection types.

The MDA compact comes with MS Media Player 10.

I will do further posts in the coming days about

1. the camera
2. phone features and experiences
3. software compatibility

[neomotion]

Thanks for all the info sofar. You trying to land a job at pocketpcthoughts :wink:? I am looking forward to the rest (especially the pictures).

And damn, can't wait to get my own MDA compact. If things go wel, just 10 more days...

Oh, how does the compact hold itself against a regular phone? I mean in daily use? Is it as easy to use as a normal cellphone?

[MarcTGFG]

Memory

The MDA compact has 64 MB ROM and 64 MB RAM.
After first configuring the device (and after the automatic install of T-Mobile specific patches and applications) you are left with 38,4 MB of RAM. Curiously it shows only 57,41 MB overall, not 64 MB.

This might be explained by the special storage area of 7,6 MB, reserved for securely storing contacts, appointments, tasks and connection settings. But hey, since this is supposed to survive a complete battery drain, it should reside in Flash ROM, not in volotile RAM, right? So there should still be 64 MB RAM overall. Mysterious!

Also the 57,41 MB of RAM are split between application memory and storage memory which can be adjusted by a slider. Wasnt this supposed to be gone in an earlier OS upgrade?

Though T-Mobile obviously installs programs with first initialization, there are nor programs to remove in the respective list.


Case/Build quality

As mentioned earlier, the upper part of the back has a slightly different color. I have found out by now that it also another material, probably plastic. I know that, because the paint has already gone off at a very tiny part on the upper right side, where the stylus sits.

The stylus is much better than the one in the prototype unit I saw at Photokina. It isnt square as the latter, made of black plastic and aluminium and felld solid if not a little bit short. It fits VERY tight, almost too tight, and was hard to retract the first time I tried to do so. You better have strong fingernails to get it out (and that might be a reason for the paint peeling off at that part of the cases backplate). I have got accustomed to it by now, but I'd rather have it less tight. On the other hand, it will be very hard to loose your stylus accidentally.

[Ryan Joseph]

Marc, you should consolidate all your posts into one review and post it seperately. If it generates enough interest, someone might link to it on the front page. :mrgreen:

[MarcTGFG]

I might do that eventually, but right now I will post whenever I have the time to do so. The alternative would be for you to wait another week. I know myself. If I want to do something comprehensively, I get tied up in details, want to doublecheck everything etc.

[neomotion]

Any updates yet?

Here we can finally get it. When we stay another two years with t-mobile, we get it for free. But it takes 10 days to ship.... :evil:

Just a few more days. And please, post some pics taken with the mda. I wanna see if the cam is any good, or if it is like the motorola v710 crappy wannabe 1 MPcam.

[q-live]

ok.... can someone explain to me how the hell that THE SMALL MDA is coming out over here soon but they didnt relase the one they had suppose to MDA 3...... WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE :evil: :evil: :evil: