A Review Of The Verizon Smt5800
About a month ago I received a see in the mail from my wireless carrier informing me that it was time to upgrade my phone. Almost immediately I went online and began to browse through my options; excited by all the possibilities. Phones are no longer a simple means of vocal communication; they are cameras, date books, email centers, Gameboys and more all wrapped into one convenient package.
For many people, myself included, cell phones are counted among our most important possessions. I race through a mental checklist every morning while feeling around in my pockets; “keys, wallet, cigarettes, cell phone… gracious.” I would never think of going anywhere without it and for this reason choosing the right cell phone is important. After some time of aimless browsing, I decided to take note of what I found important. What did I feel my old phone was lacking? Number one on my list was a full size qwerty keypad. This narrowed down the list to twenty-six choices. The second feature I looked at, and perhaps even more importantly, was some form of text editor. I thought to myself, “What if I’m out somewhere, hit with a sudden bout of inspiration and I’ve no pen and paper within my reach.”
This brought me down to three phones to choose from; the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Smartphone, the Palm Centro Smartphone, or the Verizon SMT5800. The final deciding factor had to be note. Although the BlackBerry itself was free with a new two year contract it required activation of the BlackBerry mobile features, a $45/month minimum charge. Mobile web browsing and email unprejudiced didn’t seem worth the cost. The Palm was also free, in fact I could get two of them, but only if I added a second line. The choice was made for me, within a few short days I received my SMT5800 in the mail.
So, had I made the right decision? How did my unique phone measure up to my expectations?
Activating it was a snap using verizonwireless.com. I received my first phone call about five minutes after opening the box. The very next thing I did was sync it up to my desktop and transfer the full contents of the book I’m currently working on into the phone. The ActiveSync software, Windows Mobile 6.1 OS, and standard USB cable made the operation seamless. I was as excited as a kid in a candy store when I first saw my work inaugurate up in Microsoft Office Word Mobile on the tiny screen. Actually editing the document was another anecdote all together. The slide out keypad is just a little to small for my large thumbs and even with the display view set to 50% I regain myself having to scroll right-to-left to read the full document.
Enabling the “wrap text to screen” option only improves things slightly and many pictures and charts embedded into the document do not show up at all. Writing anything more then a few lines would be out of the question. As for my original thought of text document creation, it is just not an option in Word. The phone does offer OneNote Mobile for jotting down ideas but these cannot be transfered via sync. A simple work around I found was to create a blank document on my desktop called “ideas” and transfer it to my phone. Now I can open it and edit it at any time then send it back to my desktop. Eliminating the need to type things more then once.
My first real reveal with the phone came when I went to transfer over some music and videos to use with the built in Windows Media Player. I found that the 128 MB’s of available flash memory fills up very posthaste. To Verizon’s credit this is double the available space on either of my other initial choices. “No Problem,” I opinion as I purchased and installed an additional 4 GB of Micro SD memory into the side slot. The phone wouldn’t recognize it and I found myself at the repair shop the next day. As it turned out the slot was broken and of course no stores in a 50 mile radius had any in stock. A couple days later a new one arrived and the process started all over again. Within two weeks of getting the new one the left and down buttons started working only intermittently, making scrolling through menus a chore. Now perhaps I’m just unlucky with the malfunctions or I overuse my phone, but I would think that a it should last longer than a few weeks. Some of the other annoyances I’ve encountered are the typical locking up or shutting down of most Windows based products, a very short battery life which causes me to charge it twice a day, and lock out feature that is more of a nuisance then it is an asset.
There is no draw to set the key lock manually on the phone. Your choices are; 7 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, or never. More than 7 seconds creates a pocket dialing dilemma and 7 seconds creates a problem with things like in call touch tone options. Listening to voicemail or checking a bank balance becomes a juggling act. When the familiar computer voice says, “Press 1 for…” you hit the button and get that the phone is locked. Unlocking it is a few quick keys, but in the process of locking it backs you out to the menu screen. Which means that you have to scroll down to where it says, “call in progress” and reopen the call to make your selection. The same thing happens while loading Word docs or if you purchase to long to read without scrolling.
Overall, I would not recommend the Verizon SMT5800. Both the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Smartphone and the Palm Centro Smartphone have a superior battery life and most of the same features that drew me to this one. They also offer a speaker phone, a feature the SMT lacks, and the Palm even has a touchscreen. Perhaps next time I’ll go to the store for this considerable purchase instead of making it on-line.
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Filed under Microsoft Small Business Phone by on Nov 27th, 2011. 