Originally posted by: brikis98
11/21 Update
I've now had the phone for a few days and have more comments to share. I'll probably write a full review after a couple more weeks, but here's what I've found so far:
The potential of panels is starting to come through. The ones installed on the phone by default are ok, but nothing special. However, there are already two excellent panels available for download online:
The Spb Panel is made by Spb Software, a company known for all sorts of well designed Windows Mobile applications. This panel is no exception and really showcases the strengths of this phone. It looks fantastic on the bright, colorful screen, it's extremely quick & responsive, has cool effects, and, most surprising of all, it's a genuinely good UI. You are within a tap or two of almost everything you need: the calendar, your email, any program, contacts, the time, the weather and more. IMO, this is the default panel the phone should have shipped with.
The TouchFlo3D UI (there are several versions of it listed in that thread) has been successfully ported over from the HTC Touch phones and can even be
installed as another panel. It's built from the ground up for use with a finger, looks really cool, and even features a number of really cool extras, such as a neat email preview feature, a youtube app, a stock ticker app, a beautiful weather app, and cool touch based apps for viewing your photos, videos and music. Overall it's very impressive and runs smoothly. The only real issue they need to resolve is that it doesn't switch into landscape mode properly, but that'll probably be fixed in the near future.
With these two panels, the UI experience has been vastly improved over standard windows mobile and makes the phone much more pleasant to use. Having said that, there is no denying that the UI is still not as good as the iPhone. Even with the goofy
Slide 2 Unlock app, which gives me the iPhone-style unlock mechanism, it just isn't as intuitive and simple to use. However, this phone offers a ton of other advantages - including a proper GPS, hardware keyboard, copy & paste, higher res screen, tons of room for customization, etc - that, so far, make it all worthwhile.
Although google maps works flawlessly on this phone, I really wanted turn-by-turn navigation, so I got Nav N Go iGo8, which has been great. Connecting to satellites has taken between 10 and 45 seconds and I have not had the signal drop once connected. The iGo8 software runs very smoothly (including all the 3d effects), calculates routes quickly and accurately and overall has been a pleasure to use. I've wanted a GPS for a long time and am ecstatic to finally have it as part of this all-in-one device
The phone itself has gotten a solid signal everywhere I've taken it and phone calls have come through nice and clear. However, I'll be able to better test this as I'll be traveling around the state a bit these next couple weeks and possibly even going to Europe for a few days in the middle of December.
After getting used to it, I'm even more impressed with the keyboard. I've tried typing with my thumbs and by laying it on a table and typing with my index fingers, and either approach works great. I make virtually no mistakes while typing, almost all the buttons I need are available and overall, it's MUCH better than the iPhones on screen keyboard. There are no arrow keys on it, but I've discovered that the optical button is easily accessible while typing and works perfectly as an alternative. The only thing that's really missing is a separate row for the number keys. To type numbers, you need to use the special function key, which does slow you down a bit.
For the most part, the phone has been extremely stable. An individual program or two has crashed, but never the OS itself. Even better, unlike other windows mobile phones (and windows computers) that I've used, the phone doesn't seem to get slower over the course of a day, as the 256mb of RAM keeps everything moving smoothly.
All of my music has worked great on the phone and the sound quality coming through the 3.5mm headphone jack (which is also a plus) is excellent. I also tried playing some movies on the phone and for those that play, I've had good success. Certain formats (xvid?) don't seem to be supported, so I'm still trying to figure that out, but the mp4 files that worked played very smoothly and looked awesome on the crisp screen. The youtube player that came with the TouchFlo 3D panel also worked very well (over wifi). The speakerphone is relatively loud for a phone and the quality is decent for phone calls. However, the quality isn't great for movies/music, although I'm sure it wasn't really intended for that anyway.