Yup. Figured I'd try my luck at getting another sticky. Feels too good. Naw but all jokes aside..Let's discuss the features of the Dopod c730 that separate it from the former HTC S620. I am hard pressed to pull the trigger on this device since I loved my HTC S620/Dash so much.

Note: Mods feel free to change the thread title to "The Dopod C730/HTC
S630 Thread" if need be. Essentially similar devices..


Following topics hopefully will be discussed:

- Camera - Quality, Interface, Video Recording Capability? Flash capability, How it holds up in not so lit situations?

- Email Solutions: Push, Push via a 2007 Exchange server?, Blackberry Connect, Standard Polling...

-Joggr Strip: How much of an improvement it is, sensitivity, how much more are you less prone to accidentally hitting it with your face, responsiveness, etc

-Handset: Speakerphone Quality/Loudness, Quality of speaker when it comes to rings/playing media/music, ear piece quality/loudness

-OS Speed: Can this device finally keep up with your speed typing? Responsiveness upon opening menu items/programs

-Bugs from previous HTC S620 still apparent?: ie: The unstoppable/unsilenceable sms ringtone notification? The overly obnoxious unstoppable notification in your ear while you are on the phone (alerting you of new voicemail/new sms). xt9 bug still apparent?

-Any other new features of the Dopod c730 not found on the older HTC S620

Let's keep this thread updated and active because this is definitely an exciting time for those have been waiting...


Keytouch Feature

I'll start this thread off with an interesting feature..

Here's a nice youtube clip about a new feature called "Keytouch". Seems pretty interesting if you ask me: "Dopod C730 comes with a nifty add-on called Keytouch that assists in typing English T9 and Simplified Chinese (pinyin) also comes with copy/cut/paste. "

Dopod c730 Keytouch Feature

Regards

I got my C730 a couple of days ago. I am still deciding to use it with Tmobile or Cingular LOL

I'm thinking of purchasing this phone, it seems to have everything I want (spec wise), however...the one thing I'm concerned about is the battery life...I've not seen an indepth review about this phone yet and was wondering how the battery life held up?

I posted some stuff already in the release date thread but I'll cut/past it over here. I asked Mike C. if he would consider makeing this a sticky and maybe making it one as you suggested. Makes more sense than to post this stuff in a relaease date thread.

First, I'd say to those who might be contemplating this purchase, that if they don't know this already, Dopod has been a company (now part of HTC) whose main customer base is the Far East/Australia, including China. With that in mind, the customizations on the phone are geared towards that targeted customer base. It takes a little more tweaking than usual to get a Dopod phone optimized for use in the Western Hemisphere. There is always the warranty issue also, and in this case, its one year on the device. Bear in mind again that it’s probably going to have to go to Hong Kong, if there is an issue.

Here are just some random observations (Day 1).
-Phone is sim unlocked. I had no problem getting it up and running with Cingular using the standard Cingular settings.
-As Jorg (carsmovie) said earlier, it’s a very quick o/s. For those who want a fast processor, this will not disappoint, imo.
-I am getting 3G in my area and see the 3G symbol on top and have also seen the H for HSDPA a couple times. -Under phone setting, you have the option to select bands. You can choose network type (GSM, WCDMA, or Auto); you can also choose band type (Euro band, US band, or Japan band). I left them on auto and auto for the time being and seem to work fine. This will however allow one to quickly go back and forth from a gsm only setting (if you want to optimize battery use) to a 3G for time you want the connection speeds. There is also a separate setting to toggle HSDPA on/off.

-The c730 seems to go back and forth from 3G to edge without issue. I have only seen "searching" for a couple seconds once.
-Phone seems to charge quickly.
-My initial take on the battery is just what others have said already and it is not going to be as good as the Excalibur but that is to be expected with 3G and a 400 MHz processor. Switching between programs is almost a quick as you press the button. Bear in mind that I haven't "junked" this up to much yet.
-Phone comes with a Cyberon English to Chinese dictionary that can be removed;
-Phone comes with Cyberon voice command which I removed and then installed MS VC 1.6. It works fine just as it did with the dash wm6 upgrade. I paired a Moto H700 without a problem. I have not been able to get it to call initiate with VC yet from the device. The registry change to get this to work in the dash with wm6 is not applicable as the line in the audio gateway file is already set to the value described in the tweak. I just need to play around with this a little more to see if I missed a setting somewhere.
-For some reason, my appointments will not show up in Agenda One. They show-up fine in the built-in calendar but not in AG1. Someone else posted over at xda that they had this issue and also mentioned they had the same problem with Papyrus.
-You can just press the fn (function) button to toggle off xt9 and into the other keybd entry modes without having to hit the space bar also.

My biggest dislike is the keybd for a couple reasons. If you look at the pictures posted earlier in this thread by carsmovie, you will see his HTC model has green colored symbols as the color on the upper keys. On the c730, they chose to use brown. It makes them much harder to see. All of the keys are the same color and they chose not to do what they did in the Excalibur where they made the dial keys a different color to help see them better when dialing. The keybd dialing numbers are also much smaller in size than they were on the Excalibur models. Lastly, they chose to flatten out the keys somewhat and its make feeling your way from key to key much harder. The keys on the Excalibur were a little high and tapered and give a better tactile feeling when you slide your thumbs/fingers along. I'm not the fastest text entry person in the world, but there appears to be no issue with entry lag time.

I do like the overall design and shape. The build is good, but I am finding the hard plastic they chose to use for the frame to be slippery. I've already put on a couple pieces of egrips I had left over from a previous set to help make it less apt to slip out of my hands. I liked the rubberized plastic in the Excalibur but for whatever reason, they went with a more traditional hard plastic with the Cavalier. As noted in some of the reviews, the battery cover has a positive release button on the bottom that you push in to release. The door seems to be on securely but there is a slight play but I don't think it will ever come off without releasing the catch. I also don't like the standard font that is on the Dopod o/s and need to figure out how to change it to the font the dash uses.

I'll try and point out anything else noteworthy as I get a little more time with the phone.

You can get it from the Dopod web site but you have to join as a member first. You do not have to purchase first. It took me a few minutes to figure out the best way but once I did, it was easy. On their site, chose the global option on the top right. when asked for country, chose Hong Kong, chose English, go the the support area, you will see links to join. Chose thinking about buying if you haven't purchased a product already. Once you do, you will get an activation email, activate the account, sign in and you can download the manual and quick start in English. Its a 24mb pdf file.

If you don’t want to join the Dopod support group, here is a link for the manual.

http://rapidshare.com/files/3582280..._WWE_Manual.zip

The C730 comes with a Key Touch's Multi Play 1.0 installed. From what I can see, it basically took and improved on the xt9 and incorported the cut,paste, and copy functions into the d-pad. There isn't much documentation and the vendor site says it is very intuitive for the user.

When you are in a field/function using keybd input, you can press the function button and toggle between abc, 12#, and 12#. As you type a tray opens on the bottom of the screen (just like wm6 in the dash) that contains various possible words that you are trying to type. The big difference that I can see is that unlike xt9, the Multi Play does not auto fill the word where you are typing and lets you decide if you want to highlight it and insert or you just want to keep typing. It also appears that the words it suggests are also based on some thing you aleady might have entered eslewhere. As an example, I originally entered in my email address, etc. into my exchange set-up screens and when I started typing something similar in a txt msg, parts of those earleir entries showed up as possible word choices for me to select.

The controls for Multi Play are accessed by pressing the function key and the space bar. It brings up a little on screen display that resembles the dpad and lets you select various functions and options. There aren't a whole lot of options. You can toggle on/off AutoHide function for the On Screen Display (OSD), and can toggle on/off the Display Candidates List (the predictive/suggested words on the botto of the screen during txt input), and can choose English or Chinese.

I think I will like the text part but the cut, copy, and paste functions are a little more involved but certainly a welcomed addition. I've always used Vito Cut,Copy, Paste and it seems to me that Vito's operation is just a little easier to use, at least to me.

From KeyTouch's Web Site: About MultiPlay

MultiPlay Smart Input is breakthrough technology providing a dramatically-improved data entry method for use in the fast-growing mobile phone market. This "software keyboard" solution offers full PC-style functionality for easy and fast entry of text, symbols and numbers on a regular mobile phone keypad. Uniquely, it adds functions such as Select, Cut, Copy and Paste to smart handheld devices. The system is intuitive and very easy to learn. By using the phone's pointing device to navigate an on-screen display of directionally-mapped keys, it provides a complete multi-dimensional keyboard.FAQs: http://www.keytouch.net/support01.htm#01

Is anybody using the screen protector provided? And if so what do you think so far?

Just so readers know what you are referring to, it came with a privacy screen protector. I did not use it and am using a non-glare boxware product for the dash.

Did you install yours?

no, I have not yet.

I am not going to write much of a review.. I got mines since 6/9/07 (Saturday) and been using it on AT&T (Cingular) till today Monday 6/11/07 and still have 3 bars left. Probably my battery will die quicker if I am using 3G as the phone is currently set to EDGE/GPRS only

nice thoughts guys. thread stickied

Did you just leave it on standby or use any of the features? Seems to be a general consensus that this thing runs out of power after 1 day of average use.

To respond to your other post, they could be releasing it but as far as I know and have heard they are not. If it was 3 weeks I would have had the new ROM by now. I had the Vox a few months before release and I would receive new ROM's weekly. The week before I got 3 in a few days. It could be and I hope it is so I can finally update this phone.

As for the other poster in the closed topic, I forgot his name, I have yet to successfully extract the ROM. Not as easy as I thought.

I have a cingular blue card and cannot get my VM to work right. Whenever I use #1 speed dial I get a prompt asking me to put in my VM number. Has anybody else run into this and able to fix it?

Also, does anybody know if you can get the Voice Commander from the Dash WM6 ROM off and install it on the C730?

Without anything running except and the phone set to 3G, it will drop about 20% of its battery life in a 6 hour period. The battery is a 1050 mAh (vs the 960 mAh) in the Excalibur but now is powering a 3G phone operating on a 400mHz cpu. The increased capabilites are certainly going to effect battery consumption. It will all depend on how you use the device, but I expect that most will get a good day from the device but will have to recharge at night. With lighter use, you might stretch that out to 1.5 days. Just as with the Blackjack and others, if you set it on GSM/edge only except when you need the 3g, that will have a postive effect on the battery life.