Between the TYTN, the Touch and the 9100

[Guest Bagpuss]

I've been out of the Windows Mobile loop for years now (I was an early adopter wiith an original SPV and an MPX200 many moons ago) and now am thinking of coming back with a Pocket PC phone.

My budget is limited, but I don't need anything too powerful. I just need it to be my phone, but also be able to cope with playing two hour long MP3s (I listen to a recorded radio show on my commute to work) and occasionally play the odd movie in full screen without stuttering. It also needs to have Wifi for the occasional email or whatever when near a hotspot.

I've narrowed it down to three aging models - the HTC Tytn, the Touch, and the Qtek 9100. The Tytn appears to be the most powerful of the three, but it is hard finding comparisons because the Tytn and the 9100 both came with WM5 when it came out, and I am guessing that performance and battery life would be increased when upgraded to WM6. It seems that the Touch and the 9100 are pretty much the same when it comes to processor and memory, but the Touch is obviously without the slide-out keyboard and is much smaller (and better looking). The keyboard would be a nice thing to have but I don't spend all my life texting so it's not a big problem to use a virtual keyboard.

My head tells me to find a second-hand or reconditioned Tytn, but my pocket tells me to get a new Touch (can get a nice white one for 150 quid from Orange) and my wallet urges the cheaper 9100. So I'm not really sure which way to go :D

Cheers,

Dave

[Guest chucky.egg]

The Tytn is quite dated and lardy now, but functionality-wise they're fine. I seem to recall horror stories about reliability and/or battery life on the Tytn, but I could have that all wrong.

The QTek 9100 (aka HTC Wizard) was a fine phone, if a little bulky. Battery life was fine, performance was OK.

Newer ROMs are likely to help with both devices, but are you up to re-flashing the phone?

The Touch is what I have at the moment, but I've got a new device (Samsung i780) on order.

Functionality is good, battery life is great.

I've adjusted the Page Pool (to free more memory) and over-clocked mine (faster, but at the cost of battery life).

I too thought I could live without the keyboard, but I've finally grown tired of it. If you do go for the Touch get a screen protector, my screen is starting to show signs of wear - light scratching on the screen where you use the keyboard, the same as I had on my Prophet before that area of the screen became unresponsive.

Of the three (and bear in mind I've never owned a Tytn), assuming you're looking for function over form, I'd say:

1. QTek 9100
   
2. Touch
   
3. Tytn
   

But don't under-estimate the bulk of the QTek and the Tytn (especially compared to the Touch)

If you can stretch to it the Tytn 2 is still a strong favourite with it's owners.

Personally, I went for the i780 because I rate the size and weight slightly higher than the battery life. Oh, and I was crying out for a keyboard!

[Guest Bagpuss]

Thanks for the reply :D

I understand that the Tytn II has all sorts of problems with video playback, but anyway it's a bit out of my price range (especially as I'll probably end up buying two, as the missus is also on the lookout for a similar phone and it's her birthday in July :o ). That said, some reviews say that the video performance on the Touch is dreadful, and others say it is very smooth - I guess it depends on what type of video you're throwing at it.

I've also now come across (via Modaco) the MWg Atom Life, which seems to be a lot more powerful than the others for not a lot more money. I was watching some Youtube vids of the Atom and it seems so responsive compared to similar videos I've seen of other phones. So maybe I should bite the bullet and get that, even though it's not as pretty as the Touch :lol:

Both me and the missus think that we can live without a 'real' keyboard, but as you say, you can never be sure. But we won't be hammering out hundreds of emails and text messages with it - just adding a few calendar entries here and there, that sort of thing :(

Cheers,

Dave

[Guest Mysterious Stranger]

The 9100 and the Touch are both Omap processor based @ 200 Mhz

The Tytn has a 400 Mhz samsung.

Doing more than the basics while expecting reasonable performance out of the box without tweaking / custom roms, go for the Tytn.

Once you get used to the faster processor speed (reaction to opening apps etc) the 200Mhz units do seem slow.

So it depends what you'll be doing with the phone.

From ebay:

9100 approx £50

Tytn approx £100

Touch approx £110

YMMV.

M.S

[Guest Bagpuss]

Bah, so much choice. After a lot of searching around, I have narrowed it down to two - the mWG Atom Life, and the Tytn (actually it would be the MDA Vario II). If I buy two of the same model brand new, it comes to more-or-less the same price (the Atom would come from Expansys UK and be sent here in the Netherlands, and the Vario II would be sent from a Dutch webshop).

The Atom Life is clearly much faster, but has no keyboard (which might not be a huge problem), and I worry a bit about it's reliability and the ease of getting it fixed - especially after reading one person's story of sending their Atom Life back to Expansys NL, and waiting weeks for it to come back after being sent to China for repairs :D

The Tytn appears to be tried-and-tested, perhaps has better after-sales support, and from what I've seen the processor is quite a bit speedier than the 200mhz TI you still get in things like the Touch. Flashing the device to 6.0 or 6.1 does not particularly scare me :(

So given the choice, what would you choose? :o

Cheers,

Dave

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Hmmmm. If I needed the keyboard, the TyTN, else the Atom life I think!

P

[Guest Bagpuss]

I eventually went with the TyTN - I'm writing this on it now :D

Cheers,

Dave