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Neophyte
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 2
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Audiovox SMT 5600 Impressions and Feature Requests / Bug Rep
Posted this on microsoft.public.smartphone, and figured I might as well cross post here.
I just picked this phone up on Sunday, so my experience has been a bit limited, but here are my impressions and feature requests / bug reports.
The phone's size is excellent. How this much electronics can be packed into such a small space is just amazing.
The phone feels well built. The surface has an ever so slight texture that
is nice to the touch which makes it feel as if has gone through a good bit
of user acceptance testing. I only have noticed two things about the fit
and finish:
1) When holding the phone to my ear, I can feel my facial stubble get
stuck on some portion of the screen. Strange! This is resolved by using a Bluetooth headset.
2) While operating the phone, the seam between the battery cover and the phone (near the camera) can be felt moving ever so slightly. The battery cover does fit very snugly though. This is not much of a problem but the first time you notice it, it seems like something is loose.
From a software standpoint, the phone is pretty good. Things are pretty
snappy, and I am happy. Configuration has occasionally been spotty, though.
What would be useful in the fairly non-existent documentation is a
configuration tree, showing where all available settings are located. Also,
a thorough description for each setting would be nice. Two specific things
about the configuration that irked me and are slightly related:
1) Activesync over Bluetooth. The configuration from the phone's
perspective does make sense, however it is so incredibly non-intuitive that I kept thinking there was something wrong with the Bluetooth stack in my software. The process that worked for me:
a) Initiate pairing from laptop, get the inbound serial port created
(inbound to PC = outbound from phone)
b) Tell activesync to look to that inbound serial port for serial
sync
c) Go through "setup bt activesync" option from activesync phone
menu. Once it puts you in the Bluetooth settings, select menu, then
devices, then find the PC, bond again, and "connect via Bluetooth" from
activesync menu. Voila!
2) Pairing with a Bluetooth Headset. It just seemed non-intuitive to
find the option to pair with a device where it is. Never-the-less, I
managed to find it in only a minute or two.
The few applications I've already loaded include Agile Messenger (like
Trillian, with AOL IM, MSN, Yahoo, etc, -- even supports a Nextel style
push-to-talk feature over AOL IM), City Time (quite useful, but needs to get Weather for the configured cities at a configurable interval), CodeWallet Pro (great for having passwords at your fingertips and can sync with a Desktop Version that could use a couple improvements), and MxConverter (great for mass, length, and currency conversion).
The applications that I still need include an SSH Client (I hear Putty is
being ported), Zagat for Smartphone (even though I could just use the web version), and a pocket GPS software for eventual use with a Bluetooth GPS.
Hopefully this is something that Pocket Streets can do.
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Now, for the Bugs and Feature Request
1) Sometimes, GRPS via Bluetooth Modem (to PC) will remain logged in even once the PC has gone out of range for more than a moment or two.
2) Voice Dial / End Call action from Bluetooth headset has no effect when
keypad is locked (with the exception of if a call was received).
3) Attempting to keypad lock the phone (by holding the end call button),
while in a call, ends the call.
4) Sometimes Bluetooth turns itself off after interaction with the bluetooth
headset.
5) Contact selection for MMS composition does not allow search with t9 style name matching, as does the normal contact list, and each contact is listed multiple times (once for each number / email).
6) MMS and Caller ID applications have different look and feel than other
standard applications
7) Sometimes the phone will spontaneously return to the home screen. *RESOLVED* was simply the home screen timeout being set to 60 seconds or something similar.
8) Have had to reboot the device for a few reasons -- on being that it
doesn't recognize that it is attached via USB (battery life indicator does
not reflect charging, and windows reports that an unknown device is attached to the bus.)
9) memory management needs some work -- after a fresh boot, the phone has something like 11MB free, whereas it only has 4 or 5 after a days worth of use, even if I kill applications with the task manager
10) "beaming" should allow selection of method before looking for IR or
Bluetooth Devices
11) applications that can initiate Bluetooth connections, like activesync,
should turn on Bluetooth when an option like "connect via Bluetooth" is
selected, and then back off after the sync.
12) there should be an ability for auto keylock (not device lock) at some
configurable interval
13) Occasionally, the phone will get confused about it's profile settings.
I.e., last night, I tried to adjust the ringer volume and set "vibrate and
ring" for the normal profile. Once I did this, there was no change. So, I
change profiles and change back, thinking that some data structure was not properly updated. Still no go. Finally, rebooting the phone resolved.
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Now some questions for others:
1) should applications exit upon task switch? Some applications don't
provide a method to exit, and thus they run until they are ended with task
manager. E.g., if I'm using file manager and I hit the home button to get
back to the start menu, should the file manager just exit? It's simple
enough to reopen. I understand keeping some applications open, like
Bluetooth gps navigation software, or agile messenger.
*ANSWERED* Apparently I must generally rely on the phone to know when to close applications based upon resource availability. Aside from that, the task manager or Oxios Hibernate is the way to go.
2) how to switch between open applications? it seems that the "back" key is somehow analogous to alt-tab.
*ANSWERED* The back key in combination with either the task manager, or simply reselecting the application via homescreen icon or start menu entry is the way to move between applications.
3) Microsoft Windows XP SP2 Bluetooth Stack and Activesync -- the stack needs to have a way to make the inbound COM port persistent, even when the bluetooth radio is off. It is really annoying to hibernate, suspend, or alter which radios are operating, then see that Activesync has changed the serial port to something that is still available.
Anyways, hope this mini review has been useful for some and that the
Microsoft lurkers can look into some of my bug reports / feature requests.
:-)
--
--phil
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