vB Easy Archive - New Audiovox SMT5600 -- First impressions and comparison

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New Audiovox SMT5600 -- First impressions and comparison
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Posted by: Razor1973

I just got an Audiovox SMT5600 from Cingular, as my Nokia 7610 seems to have problems with the internal antenna and I just couldn't be without a smartphone (I used my backup Nokia 6230 for a couple of days, but it just doesn't cut it). I also wanted to give Windows Mobile a try and didn't want to keep waiting for the new Cingular 2125, so I decided to get the SMT5600 and return it within a month, at which time I would know whether I want to get the 2125 or I simply didn't like Windows Mobile enough and decide to go back to another Symbian phone (maybe the Nokia 6682).

I have been using the phone for a couple of hours and here are my first impressions, mostly in comparison with my Nokia.

THE GOOD

G01) The phone is physically beautiful, very well built and very small for a smartphone. Definitely smaller than my 7610.

G02) The screen is clear, sharp and overall nicer than in my 7610.

G03) USB is awesome, hands down. No need to get a proprietary cable like with Nokias. In fact, I am using my digital camera cable right now.

G04) The home screen concept is neat. Very much a-la Pocket PC. There's a couple of applications for Symbian that imitate this, but it's not native.

G05) It's nice that when you start dialing a number, it shows you the numbers that you've previously dialed that match what you've typed so far. Again, there's something that can do this in Symbian (it's actually more complex than that), but it's not native.

G06) Well connected phone. Most Nokias with Bluetooth don't have IR. The Audiovox has both.

THE BAD

B01) The number one thing that I could complain about is the lack of the 3 dedicated keys in Symbian phones. With my 7610 you can see all running applications by pressing one key, as opposed to having to go Home | Start | 9 | 9 | 9 | 2 | 2. That's 7 keys!!! Once again, this is my biggest complaint about this phone.

B02) The "joystick" takes some getting used to, especially when pressing the Action key. It is very easy to make the wrong choice when trying to press it.

B03) I also haven't found a way to actually close most applications that don't have an Exit option. If you press Home or the Stop button, you go back to the home screen, but the applications are still running in the background. Is there a way to do this?

B04) With my Nokia, I can organize the menu shortcuts very easily, create folders, re-arrange positions, move shortcuts to folders, etc. With the SMT5600, I haven't found a way to do this. I went to the File Manager and then to \Storage\Windows\Start Menu and I was able to create a folder in there and move a couple of icons from applications I had just installed, but what if I want to move the shortcuts that the phone comes (say, MSN Messenger) with to my folder? Is there a way to do this? Or to re-arrange the position of the shortcuts/folders?

B05) Everytime you get to a text field where you type, T9 is not activated by default (is there a way to set this?). Not only that... Because of the lack of dedicated keys, switching between input methods is much more of a hassle in the Audiovox. Examples: 1) In my Nokia, you press the * key to get to the symbols and pick the one you want. In the SMT5600, you have to hold the * key, select the symbol input method and the pick; 2) In my Nokia, you hold the * key to go to numeric input. In the Audiovox, you have to keep pressing it until you get to that method (and there's 7 of them!).

B06) No SyncML???!!?!?! This is a high-end phone, so I didn't even bother to check if it had SyncML, assuming it did. It doesn't! What do I do with all my contacts that I have on mobical.net now? Transferring them via SIM is a PITA, as I would need to do a lot of editing in order to get them back to how they were (several number for one contact, etc.).

B07) No EDGE.

OK, off to see King Kong now. There's a lot I obviously haven't seen (both good and bad), but I've only been using the phone for a bit. Maybe I'll come back to the thread and post some more. For the time being, I'd appreciate your input. The way things are right now, I don't think I will be keeping this phone or getting the new 2125. Back to Symbian!

Posted by: Razor1973

OK, I didn't see King Kong, cause the theater was too full once I got it, so I got my money back and left. Everybody's out on the streets on the first day of the year, it seems.

I did, however, get a chance to play more with the phone. Here's more good and bad.

THE GOOD

G07) SMTP authentication in the native e-mail client. This is, in my opinion, what the Series 60 client lacks.

G08) Obviously, the GPRS Class 10 in this phone is faster than the GPRS Class 6 in my 7610, although the difference is barely noticeable.

G09) I loaded a few MP3's and they sound very good with the earpiece and pretty decent through the phone speaker. Better than in my 7610, I'd say. Definitely louder.

G10) The way you look for a person in the Contacts. I prefer it to the Nokia interface. Basically, you start typing the person's first or last name, as if you were typing in T9 (no multi-tap like with a Nokia).

G11) The light detector. Good for saving battery power.

THE BAD

B08) Due to the lack of the dedicated keys (once again), I don't think there's a way to mark/select several items (i.e. messages in the mail client, files in the File Manager, etc.). How do you delete 10 files in the File Manager? Delete one by one?

B09) Contact functionality. This might as well be up there with the Task Manager functionality in things that bother me the most. And I thought Motorolas were bad! With a Nokia, you can copy contacts from the phone to the SIM or viceversa, keeping the original or deleting it. You can also show only the phone contacts, or the SIM contacts, or both. This combination of features gives you great flexibility. With a Motorola there's no way to do the latter. However, you can copy from the SIM to the phone and vicerversa, or you can edit a contact that's on the SIM and make it a phone contact, or viceversa. From what I have seen, with the SMT5600 you also cannot limit what you see and you see everything on the phone and SIM, but there's also no way to copy/move from the SIM to the phone or viceversa. That's really bad!

B10) If I go to a person in my contacts and hit Menu | Send Text Message, the person's number appears in the To: line as opposed to his/her name. However, if you go up to that line and hit the Action button in order to add other people, once you do, their names show, not their numbers, even if you add the same person you were originally sending an SMS to. What's up with this?

B11) When the phone goes on standby, the screen goes completely black. You need to press a key in order to see the date and time. This is one of those things I'm sure can be taken care of with a third party application. Maybe there's even a setting for it that I haven't seen yet.

I wonder how many of these things were addressed with WM5.

OK, that's it for now. More to come, I'm sure.

Posted by: Razor1973

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor1973

B09) ... From what I have seen, with the SMT5600 you also cannot limit what you see and you see everything on the phone and SIM, but there's also no way to copy/move from the SIM to the phone or viceversa. That's really bad!

OK, I found a way to copy from the SIM to the phone or viceversa (Start | Accessories | SIM Manager). However, you cannot limit what you see in your Contacts. Good thing is all SIM contacts appear after the phone contacts. What I did was copy everything from the SIM to the phone and then delete all the contacts from the SIM. Workaround, not solution.

Posted by: Razor1973

Another big one. Big bad one, that is.

B12) No copy and paste. I use it a lot in my Nokia. Again, caused by the lack of dedicated keys.

Posted by: Razor1973

One more...

B13) The contacts are shown <Last> <First> ("Doe Joe"). I still haven't found a way to show them as <First> <Last> ("John Doe"). Besides, if you're going to show them with the last name first, you should separate the names with a comma ("Doe, John").

Posted by: Razor1973

B14) You can only add one number of each type per contact. What if the person has 2 home numbers and 3 mobile numbers? Also, you are required to classify the number as home, mobile, work, etc. Nokia allows you to categorize a number a General, in case you don't know what type of number it is. Very convenient.

Posted by: qutius

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor1973

One more...

B13) The contacts are shown <Last> <First> ("Doe Joe"). I still haven't found a way to show them as <First> <Last> ("John Doe"). Besides, if you're going to show them with the last name first, you should separate the names with a comma ("Doe, John").

Select the contact, hit the button to edit and scroll down. You'll be able to adjust how the name is displayed there, and it will also have fields for more phone number. Sure, the tage might say home fax #2, but you just ignore that and use it to hold cell #3 or whatever.

When typing a message, you can use the * key to scroll thru different input types (abc, ABC, t9, T9, 123). When typing a message, hold the key down to bring up the number instead of the text associated with that key. Example, holding the '4' key will display '4' instead of 'g'.

Not the quickest way to kill applications, but press Start and hit next ('9') until you hit Resource Mgmt. From there, select Task Manager. You can close apps here.

Hold down the Home button to load IE.

Posted by: Razor1973

B15) T9 only works in English, as opposed to the Nokia's ability to predict in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese (Maybe Italian too, but I'm not going to turn the Nokia back on at this time to make sure.) So if you're going to write a message in a language other than English, you're stuck with multi-tap. I found [URL=http://www.pdagold.com/software/detail.asp?s=938]this neat application[/U], but, after installing it, I realized the SMT5600 doesn't come with the DLL's for any language other than English and German.

Posted by: Razor1973

Quote:

Originally Posted by qutius

Sadly, neither of these 2 are solutions to the O/S shortfalls. For the name order, you'd have to edit contact by contact in order to achieve this. I have 187 people there. For the phone tags, how do you know that what you're dialing is a second mobile number or a second home number or even a pager number when you have the number listed under fax?

Posted by: Razor1973

B16) When there's an incoming call, there's no way (that I have found) to silence the ringer and let the call go to voicemail after the normal number of rings. You can only accept it or reject it, in which case the caller will realize you didn't want to pick it up, cause it went to voicemail after, say, 2 rings.

Posted by: qutius

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor1973

B16) When there's an incoming call, there's no way (that I have found) to silence the ringer and let the call go to voicemail after the normal number of rings. You can only accept it or reject it, in which case the caller will realize you didn't want to pick it up, cause it went to voicemail after, say, 2 rings.

Press either volume key on the side of the phone to do just that.

Posted by: Razor1973

Quote:

Originally Posted by qutius

Press either volume key on the side of the phone to do just that.

I had tried that once, assuming that would do the trick, and didn't work. Apparently, I didn't press the key well, as it kept ringing. I just tried it again after reading your post and it worked. Thanks!

Here's more, though.

G11) The camera takes pretty decent pictures for a VGA camera. Better than the VGA cameras my Nokia 6230 has.

... but...

B17) The T9 prediction lacks a couple of features I have in my Nokia. (a) Say you type a whole word and press space to start writing the next. You then look at the screen and realize the word wasn't right and you want to go back and see what other guesses T9 can give you. With the Nokia, you could press the left cursor to go back to the end that word and press it again to highlight the word (without moving the cursor). Once highlithed, you can press the * to keep guessing words. With the Audiovox, I have not found a way to do this yet. Once you go back, the cursor simply goes into the word and doesn't highlight it. (b) If you type a word and force the first letter to uppercase (say a person's name) and then realize you don't want it and go back to delete it letter by letter, in the Nokia once you delete the first letter, it "remembers" you forced uppercase and is ready to write an uppercase letter there. In the Audiovox, you need to force the uppercase again. I hope these makes sense. The latter is no biggie to me, but the former one is.

Posted by: psycho03

while i think this is a great thread, i think that you should read the manual for a bunch of your "bad" points. most of the answers can be found there

Posted by: Razor1973

Quote:

Originally Posted by psycho03

while i think this is a great thread, i think that you should read the manual for a bunch of your "bad" points. most of the answers can be found there

I actually have eyeballed the manual for some of these things and honestly I haven't posted a couple I have found on it. If there's any other, would you please point it out to me?

By the way, the manual didn't come with the phone. I had to download it from the Audiovox website.

Posted by: psycho03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor1973

don't know where to point you exactly, i am getting the phone soon, i have wanted it since it was released. Although one thing you do have to remember is this phone was ment to be sync'd with outlook, so your stuff about your contacts and what not could be solved using outlook (assuming you aren't a.....*VOMIT* mac user *VOMIT* :-P).

Posted by: Razor1973

So you don't even have the phone and you were only assuming some of the "shortfalls" I've found with the phone could be avoided by reading the manual? I see. Winner.

No wonder I searched the manual for stuff that would help me "solve" most of them and I didn't find an answer. Don't assume nobody reads their manuals.

Posted by: psycho03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor1973

So you don't even have the phone and you were only assuming some of the "shortfalls" I've found with the phone could be avoided by reading the manual? I see. Winner.

No wonder I searched the manual for stuff that would help me "solve" most of them and I didn't find an answer. Don't assume nobody reads their manuals.

no, actually i worked for ATT when the phone was released and wanted it from day 1, i read everything i could find in the ATT system about the phone, features, how to do things, etc. a lot of the shortfalls are not shortfalls but as you stated, you are not sure how to do them. like i said, the phone is really ment to be synced with outlook.

Posted by: Razor1973

G12) Unlike with most Nokias and Motorolas, with the Audiovox, I don't have to wait until the call I am making starts ringing before I can activate the speakerphone. Instead, I can activate it as soon as I press the Call/Send button. Cool feature.

Posted by: VetteXP

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor1973

<SNIP>
I have been using the phone for a couple of hours and here are my first impressions, mostly in comparison with my Nokia.

I'll take a shot at addressing some of your bad points...

B01) The number one thing that I could complain about is the lack of the 3 dedicated keys in Symbian phones. With my 7610 you can see all running applications by pressing one key, as opposed to having to go Home | Start | 9 | 9 | 9 | 2 | 2. That's 7 keys!!! Once again, this is my biggest complaint about this phone.

A must-have application for any Windows Mobile device is a third-party task manager such as xBar. xBar, among other things, allows you to see what is running and quickly and easily switch to or close them.

B02) The "joystick" takes some getting used to, especially when pressing the Action key. It is very easy to make the wrong choice when trying to press it.

There is a bit of a learning curve, but it is usable.

B03) I also haven't found a way to actually close most applications that don't have an Exit option. If you press Home or the Stop button, you go back to the home screen, but the applications are still running in the background. Is there a way to do this?

This is by design, but xBar (see B01) will address this.

B06) No SyncML???!!?!?! This is a high-end phone, so I didn't even bother to check if it had SyncML, assuming it did. It doesn't! What do I do with all my contacts that I have on mobical.net now? Transferring them via SIM is a PITA, as I would need to do a lot of editing in order to get them back to how they were (several number for one contact, etc.).

I haven't used SyncML, but this is a Microsoft OS, and it synchronizes beautifully with Microsoft Outlook as far as Contacts and Calendar items are concerned.

B11) When the phone goes on standby, the screen goes completely black. You need to press a key in order to see the date and time. This is one of those things I'm sure can be taken care of with a third party application. Maybe there's even a setting for it that I haven't seen yet.

I believe this is for power savings. One tip is to just tap the power button to activate the screen. This is especially useful when a reminder pops up, but the screen backlight does come on.

B12) No copy and paste. I use it a lot in my Nokia. Again, caused by the lack of dedicated keys.

xBar, again, can help.

B13) The contacts are shown <Last> <First> ("Doe Joe"). I still haven't found a way to show them as <First> <Last> ("John Doe"). Besides, if you're going to show them with the last name first, you should separate the names with a comma ("Doe, John").

My contacts show up <First> <Last> so I suspect this is an Outlook setting, since I sync with Outlook.

B14) You can only add one number of each type per contact. What if the person has 2 home numbers and 3 mobile numbers? Also, you are required to classify the number as home, mobile, work, etc. Nokia allows you to categorize a number a General, in case you don't know what type of number it is. Very convenient.

I don't believe this is correct, because it seems to sync virtually all contact information in Outlook, and Outlook provides fields for multiple numbers of each type. In fact, on my phone, I can edit a contact and I see fields for Work2, Home2, E-mail2, E-mail3. As for a General category, that's more of a personal preference; just use an unused field.

Hope that helps!

Posted by: Razor1973

Hey, someone brought my post alive again!

OK, since I wrote this, I have given up on Windows Mobile, no matter how much I tried liking it (I'm a .NET developer and really wanted to learn to develop for the mobile platform).

I got myself a Nokia 6682 and went back to Symbian Series 60. I am happy as a clam. Funny how it's the same O/S I have in my year-old Nokia 7610 (although a newer version) and I have that new toy feeling and can't let go of it all day long, which I honestly could not say about the SMT5600.

However, I thank you for your comments and will comment as well. (I still have not returned the Audiovox.)

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