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Pocket PC Phone Reviews O2 XDA IIPosted March 25, 2004 by Howard
Paw, updated June 2004 by Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief Note: The XDA II was designed by HTC, the same folks who designed the 3000 and 5000 series iPAQs as well as the original XDA. It's sold under several brand names, including the XDA II, iMate, Qtek 2020 and MDA II. Smartphones, whatever form factor they may be, has been steadily garnering market share worldwide, and many analysts have predicted that the days of the standalone PDA are numbered as convergence devices take over. HTC might make that day become a reality sooner than we think with the release of the XDA II.
The XDA II is the much awaited follow up device to the immensely popular original XDA, known as the T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition in the US and as the XDA overseas. It was adored by many due to its sleek design and native Windows PC file interchangeability, but scorned by critics mainly for its apparent poor phone-pda software integration, non-transflective display and lack of connectivity options (no Bluetooth and no SDIO slot to be exact). The XDA II addresses those shortcomings, and is a full featured, Bluetooth enabled, Triband phone with an integrated VGA camera. But is the XDA II as perfect as O2 and HTC want us to believe? Lisa Gade, our Editor in Chief thinks the answer is "yes" since she fell in love with this phone and purchased one from Dynamism.com! Design and Ergonomics If you're one of the many people who liked the design and form factor of the XDA, chances are you will go gaga over the XDA II since both units share a similar design, with the XDA II offering a few slight improvements. Gone is the protruding antenna and instead of being all silver, the XDA II now is silver on the front, with black accentuating the overall look. The SD slot is now located at the top with the power button, IR port and stylus silo flanking its sides. The upper left side of the unit has the voice recorder button, slider volume control and camera snapshot button. The hardware button locations are unchanged from the XDA, with the 5-way d-pad and call send and end buttons located below the display and the Calendar and Contact buttons above the display. HTC has made a conservative decision and retained the design that made the original XDA a hit, and If it ain't broke don't fix it, right?
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One caveat is that the XDA II feels a slight bit cheaper compared to its older brother. I don't know if it's the plastic that they used, but the XDA II just feels a little less sturdy than the XDA. I also wish that they had moved the headphone jack to the top of the unit instead of putting it at the bottom of the unit.
Expandability, Horsepower and Battery life
By utilizing an XScale 400 MHz processor the XDA II has the capacity to perform fast computing tasks, and is on par with top of the line Palm and Pocket PC devices. Unlike other Pocket PC phones, it makes no hardware concessions. Large contact and photo databases can be opened in an instant, movie files can be played with scarcely a hit on the CPU's overall speed, and games can be thoroughly enjoyed with no fear of slow downs. In the age where 64MB of built-in RAM is of the norm, the XDA II carries the distinction of being one of the few Pocket PCs that comes with a hefty 128MB of RAM and an extra 14MB of flash ROM storage. An SDIO slot is included so you can add extra storage memory with MMC/SD cards or add functionality by using SDIO networking cards such as the WiFi SD cards from Sandisk and Socket.
It should be noted that you can buy an optional accessory “backpack” which attaches to the back of the unit. This “backpack” adds a CF type II slot, VGA output port and an extended battery to the device, although this would make the XDA II substantially thicker and heavier.
From a technical standpoint, the XDA II seems to have almost everything: power, memory and expandability, but with all of this, something has got to give right? Sadly, HTC did skimp on something when making the XDA II, and that something is the oh so important battery life. The XDA II comes with a 1,200 mAh Lithium Polymer battery, a battery that size may seem to be enough for a regular PDA, but not one that does dual-duty as a phone. In my normal use that includes using SMS, making calls, accessing the calendar and contacts list, playing games and some light reading, the XDA II would only last a day, and I hadn't even turned on the Bluetooth radio yet. Be prepared to charge your XDA II every night. The only saving grace here is that the XDA II's battery is user replaceable, so you can simply stock up on extra batteries if you feel the XDA II hasn't got enough juice to last you through the day.
Wireless
Being a former XDA user, I was well aware of its weakness holding a signal. My XDA would sometimes lose signal and the only way to get a signal was to toggle the wireless antenna off and on-- I was very glad to see that this quirk is no longer a problem with the XDA II. The XDA II manages to hold a network signal as good as my old Motorola phone, and the XDA II is capable of automatic searching for a network signal after losing a connection.
In the US, we tested the phone on T-Mobile's network, and were pleased with the results. The XDA II has excellent RF, pulling in a signal even in marginal coverage areas.
Configuring the XDA II for GPRS and MMS connections was a breeze with its autoconfig program: I simply selected my Cellular Phone Network Provider from the drop down list and all of the configurations were set automatically. If by chance your network provider isn't on the drop down list, you can easily configure GPRS and MMS yourself— you just have to know the GPRS and MMS Access Point Name (APN) of your particular network provider. Note that while many carriers are listed in the autoconfig program, these carriers are all those who officially sell the XDA II. There are no autoconfig settings for US carriers, so you'll have to enter the correct GPRS and MMS settings using the Pocket PC Connection Manager. If you're using T-Mobile in the US, note that many folks have trouble getting MMS to work, but GPRS is easy.
The phone has GPRS Class B / Multi-slot Class10 for data connections and also supports class 8. Windows Mobile 2003 Phone Edition allows you to switch between class 8 ( faster downloads) and class 10 (faster uploads).
Camera With camera-phones being the rage nowadays, it was only natural to equip the XDA II with a VGA camera, and with the XDA II's high price tag, one might easily argue that the inclusion of a camera is only fitting. The XDA II's camera may seem to be useless at first due to its low resolution and the absence of a flash (as with every GSM camera phone). But the camera did prove itself useful on a number of occasions, because although I have a standalone digital camera I don't carry it around with me everyday as I do the XDA II. The camera is capable of taking both stills (480x640, 240x320, 120x160) and videos at 15fps with sound (240 x 320, 144 x 176, 96 x 128). It saves pictures in JPEG and BMP format while videos are saved in MPEG and AVI format. Using the camera in environments with good lighting produces good quality pictures and videos by VGA camera standards. In dark environments, the XDA II's camera is technically blind as a bat so don't even bother to use the camera at night to avoid disappointments. It was a let down that camera doesn't offer a “night mode”. One very nice thing I really liked about the camera though is that it is capable of using graphic templates similar to those found in Neo Print photo booths which are quite popular in Asian countries. These templates are basically graphical borders or frames that are pasted on top of the pictures, adding more eye candy and giving your pictures that extra “oomph” when you send it to another person via MMS. |
Above: a photo taken at VGA resolution with the XDA II. Click on the photo to see the full size, un-edited original photo. |
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Bluetooth Other than GSM and GPRS, the XDA II also has Bluetooth wireless networking that allows you to use the various BT headsets available on the market. Note that the XDA II supports the Bluetooth headset profile, but not handsfree. I tried the Plantronics M3500, Logitech, and Sony Ericsson's BT headsets and they worked flawlessly. The Jabra 250 paired just fine, but didn't have good range with the XDA II (about 2.5 before the connection had static). ActiveSyncing, connecting to a Bluetooth access point and using the XDA II as a modem via a wireless BT connection is also possible. I was very disappointed to find that the Microsoft Bluetooth software stack used for this phone lacks the OBEX file transfer profile. This means that the XDA II is incapable of sending or receiving files via Bluetooth. Why they didn't include the OBEX file transfer profile is beyond me and it seems quite stupid since one of the primary uses of Bluetooth is file transfer.
Specs:
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