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The beginning
Just before my trip to the MS
Mobility Developers Conference last month I read Steve's
article entitled One
Piece or Two? I recall thinking that there was no doubt
in my mind that I was a one piece guy - not that I would
be able to test that theory any time soon - or so I thought!
Wrong - just before the conference I received an email from
Steve and Beth Goza (Microsoft) asking whether I would be
interested in using the O2 XDA
Pocket PC Phone Edition at the conference. Needless to say
my response was enthuisiastic, blackmail and extortion were
not required.
Two Pieces?
The area I live in has recently joined
the 21st century and the rest of the world enjoying the
benefits of GSM and GPRS coverage. Finally I can SMS my
friends and family! I leapt at the opportunity to couple
my Compaq IPAQ with a GSM/GPRS phone. I bought the Ericsson
T39 since it is a tri-band GSM phone, meaning it can
work in Europe, Africa and the US. Best of all it is Bluetooth
enabled. I could now use the T39 with my bluetooth enabled
iPAQ 3875 and all would be happiness and joy in the land
of Pocket PC communications nirvana? Well not exactly. One
of the challenges of being an early aopter of these type
of technologies is that you often have to tread upon the
razor sharp edge of the leading edge. It took almost 3 days
of calling my local carrier's support and no end of troubleshooting
persisitence on my part to get the T39 functioning properly
using GPRS and this is before you begin to experience some
of the other inevitable "challenges" of integrating
device services using Bluetooth. [As a side note I must
add that I have recently started using my HP 568 and Socket
Bluetooth card with my T39 - and many of the headaches that
plagued me with my iPAQ 3875 are gone. Most of the configuration
problems were related to my cellular carrier not providing
me the correct config details.]
There must be an easier way
As a developer I find the marriage of
highspeed cellular communications and the power and functionality
of the Pocket PC interface a very compelling solution for
mobile enterprise applications. As compelling as this is
I cannot however in good conscience recommend a two device
setup as a usable solution for the "average" corporate
end-user. The support overhead is too high and this is only
compounded by the vagaries and quirks of the Connection
Manager interface - it just isn't a practical solution yet
for all but the most dedicated user embarking upon the road
less travelled. Then there is the one-piece solution. The
XDA from mmO2.
Picture a fairly regular sized Pocket PC - but it has a
built in GSM/GPRS phone. What follows is my perspective
on using the device for a day - if you're looking for detailed
specifications check the following XDA
page.
As you can see from the picture above
the form factor will be familiar to Pocket PC users.
The
XDA has an extended life battery rated at 15 hrs Pocket
PC time and about 3.5 hrs talk time. I'm guessing that I
used the phone for about 4 hours over the course of the
day including the evening and I was fairly impressed with
the battery life. The battery life was at about 60% at the
end of the day. The caveat would be that I didn't make that
many calls. I did do a fair amount of email and surfing.
The stylus silo is located on the right
hand side of the device sliding into the top of the foreshortened
antenna. The XDA comes with an SD slot located at the bottom
of the device and the SIM card is inserted on the right
side of the device.
The screen resolutions is OK - 4096
colors. It isn't the brightest I have seen but I guess this
is a brightness verses battery life compromise.
The first thing that I did when I got
the device was to flip through the screens to see just how
they differed and whether the communication integration
was there. I wasn't disappointed.
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