Ok, so ive had the phone going on two weeks and here is my review. (excuse some of the blurry pics)
first and foremost... i was a little (though pleasantly) surprised with the size. It being a smart phone and all I knew that it was supposed to be one of the smaller SP's out there but didnt know it was pretty much the size of many standard candy bar phones, if not just a tad larger. The phone in itself, is no RAZR or SLVR or anything, but it is still very pocketable and portable.
here are some comparisons with my old Motorola A630 (which is pretty small except a bit thick)
as you can see, the SDA is a bit longer, but about the same width and a bit slimmer than the A630.
now here are a few pics comparing the SDA to:
a Logitech bluetooth headset
my hand
and a CD
that should give you a fair idea of the size.
Now, in general the phone isnt the sexiest looking or flashiest device. It's a very practical, clean design. The SDA tends to make the most of its real estate by incorporating a large (for phone standards) beautiful 320x240 screen. I believe its 64,000 colors but don't quote me on that. Even though some of the newest phones on the market have 256k colors and what not, the screen on the SDA is still very capable and gorgeous in every means.
here is a shot of my homescreen, and ignore the digitized tiny square pixels that appear to be visible as they don't appear to the human eye. There are more professional pics on other websites that show off the screen much better than my @home amateur photography.
Under the screen are four softkeys, with the outside being the more typical softkeys found on many other phones that act mainly as 'OK' and 'cancel'. The inner two keys are designated for getting back to the home screen, and for going back to whatever screen you were at previously.
Next are 4 more buttons that are now circular... and they serve as a quick key to get to myTmobile account and for rewind, play/pause, and Fast Fwd for use with media.
Finally we come to the actual numeric keypad. Now this is where the phone has gotten the most criticism in that these keys really are as small as they seem. Anyone with large fingers are going to have a hard time with this phone. I mean it, those keys are tiny. Luckily despite the chubby nature of my digits I tend to still have hands on the smaller side so I have become pretty well accustomed to the size, although I still do mispress a key now and then. The entire layout of keys in general is cramped.
Rounding out the last of the buttons are a power button on the top, a connections key (for use with bluetooth, wifi, and normal phone service) and volume rocker on the left spine, and a solitary dedicated camera key on the right spine.
Now, onto the actual phone and it's features. First things first, the phone, as a phone, is amazing. Volume is great, comfort is good, voice and call clarity is good, and most of all reception is fantastic. It is leagues better than my old motorola A630, catching 2-3 bars when my a630 had none. Of course this is all under T-mobile service. In general, searching through and and adding contacts is fairly intuitive, and actually quite comprehensive and thorough. The phonebook can sync with Microsoft Outlook so it can be a breeze to sync contacts, and can hold information for not only a few numbers but birthdays, important dates, general notes, email, and other information as well. Dialing a number will also bring up any contact names that match the keypresses you have inputed, a nice touch.
Besides your basic phone functions of calling and accessing the phone book, the rest of the phone interface has a bit of a learning curve. The SDA, being a smartphone, runs the newest version of Windows Mobile, version 5, and as a result is familiar (to the ordinary PC user) and foreign at the same time. It's kind of like using a streamlined Windows XP, so it takes some usage time to get used to the new menu order and structure and overall design. It's not always apparant where to find certain functions and programs, but in the end it all makes sense. As a whole, I'd have to say its all more intuitive than say, the commonly despised Motorola User Interface (which even that I don't mind too much), although it is, as expected, much more complex. Once again, it just takes some time to get familiar and accustomed to.
In terms of features, this phone is jampacked. As noted earlier, the phone can sync with your PC, including Outlook for contacts and calander, and can view (but not edit) Microsoft Office documents, and Adoboe Acrobat documents. The SDA includes easy access to all MSN features such as hotmail and MSN messenger, as well as Yahoo, ICQ and of course good ol' AIM. It can also be set up to access pop3 email accounts. All of this can be found in non SP's but what this phone includes that most do not, is integrated Wi-fi. I've tested it with three wireless networks with no problem. And to accompany the Wi-fi capabilites is the ability to surf the internet using either the included Pocket Internet Explorer, or by loading another browser like Opera Mini onto the phone. The internet can also be accessed the traditional GPRS network as well as the faster EDGE network which isnt available everywhere with T-mobile yet.
here are some pics of me browing soompi.com and the soompi forum.
Dealing with multimedia, the phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera (although like most cameras on phones, it underpeforms a bit), and is capable of capturing video, but at a pretty low resolution. The great news is, the amount of photos taken and the length of video capture is only limited to the space available (which is upgradable via a miniSD slot in the back behind the battery). There's a whole rack of capture modes and adjustments you can use and an included mirror on the back for self portraits.
Here's a still photo and video camera example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sxpwMW-p7sAlso, Windows Media Player is included so that means easy playback of WMV, ASF, MP3, and WMA files. So customized ringtones are easy to have. The SDA includes stereo earbuds to use it as a music player, or can be played through the mono external speaker, and it gets pretty loud as well. And if you install another media player, you can play divx, aac, and pretty much any other media format. In fact divx tends to play better than WMV files!
here's a video of the SDA running an actual episode of X-Man korean game show, and a M-Flo music video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynW1hWLxB20anyways: i'm sure i'm missing things but i'm tired of typing and well here's a general wrap-up. if i think of more things i'll edit later.
Pros:
Tons of features, almost all executed well.
Wi-fi, media features.
great call quality, reception, etc.
very customizable
Cons:
1.3 megapixel camera doesn't perform as well as a 1.3 MP should (but it's not bad).
video captures at a low resolution
tiny keypad
Overall: 4.5/5
All I can say is, I love the phone.
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some additional (more professional) pics at
http://www.infosyncworld.com/us/mobility/s...mobile_sda.html
