8390:Fantastic Phone...but 2 ?'s: Battery & External Dis

[Guest tbendis]

I recently purchased a Mio 8390 (By the way, if you're looking for one, I strongly suggested seller x1387 on eBay - customer service was just terrific!). It's really a great phone, and I'm very pleased with the purchase ...

... but I have two questions/issues:

1) Battery Life: The battery does not appear to last anywhere near the 100 hours of standby time listed in the specifications. If you also have a 8390, what has been your experience with battery life?

2) External Display: When a incoming call occurs, I only see the phone number on the external display. Is it possible to view the caller's name (if it exists in contacts)?

Thanks,

Todd

[Guest dmoney5]

I was thinking of buying from that seller too, Is it worth $520 Though

[Guest Zim]

1) well the name does come up, if u have it saved in the contacts!

2) the battery life does suck, i must admit

"Z"

[Guest tbendis]

You actually see a name on the external display? Even when I have the callers saved in Contacts, I still only see a number. Hmmm ...

Also, I've read that several of the other Smartphones experienced dramatic increases in battery life when the card was removed. I'm testing this now. Has anyone else with a Mio 8390 tried this? (I think that the Orange released a fix for the E200 that fixed this problem. So if the SD really is the cause of poor Mio 8390 battery life, perhaps an update will correct this issue)

[Guest tbendis]

dmoney5, it is great phone. After using a Pocket PC Phone for the last two years, I enjoy the ability to accomplish things one-handed and without a stylus.

[Guest pvc]

Yes, The battery is really not good, while youre using camera, playing media, playing games,.. you may need to charge it twice aday.

Display can show up the name of the contact.

PVC

[Guest tbendis]

Another question for Mio 8390 owners:

Look at the back of your battery. Does is say "Li-ION Battery, Rating: 3.7V/3,7V 750mAh" or something else?

[Guest dmoney5]

Just found out i can get the phone for $350 - $400 with Tmobile contract extention. VERY good deal i say. So i'm going for it.

[Guest mattscholey]

Just found out i can get the phone for $350 - $400 with Tmobile contract extention. VERY good deal i say. So i'm going for it.

Where's this from? Is this T-mobile UK?

Matt

[Guest tbendis]

I just figured out that the Called ID function of my external ID works ... but only if the phone number exists in my Contacts without any punctuation.

That is, if I have "John Smith" and "3435555555" in Contacts and John calls, the external display will show his name.

However, if I have "343-555-5555" in Contacts for John and he call, the external display will only show the number.

Is this consistent with your experiences?

[Guest markgamber]

I'll second the statement on EBay's x1387....the 8390 showed up TWO days after buying it from them. It works flawlessly and has all the accessories. I ordered the English version and that's what I got, including the T9, but the Mitac manual is in Chinese. Included with everything else, however, was a non-Mitac CD that I'm assuming x1387 burned and put in there which has the English manual as a PDF file. I'd say they went above and beyond and, including shipping, I paid $488. I'd recommend x1387 to anyone looking for a Mitac.

[Guest schriss]

Agree, a year ago I ordered Qtek 7070 from x1387 and I got it wothout problems. That's why I'm now ordering Mitac 8390 from them :D

[Guest schriss]

I'm still waiting for my Mitac Mio 8390, ordered from x1387 on eBay. Payed few days ago... I know they are verrry busy (around 20-30 positive feedbacks a day!!! Impresive!!), but I can't wait to get my hand on my new smartphone :D

[Guest markgamber]

You can always email them and ask when it will ship. Or has shipped. Make sure you include the transaction (item) number if you do. I did note that they were a little light in communication as compared to other people I've dealt with on ebay, but they did seem to be busy and if I asked, I got responses back in a timely manner.

[Guest schriss]

I asked on friday, still no replay :cry: not even read receipt (I usually get it when they read). They must be really busy... :D

[Guest neko]

Hi I brought my 8390 in HK and used for around 2 weeks, here is my personal experience on the battery life you could reference to.

I unplug the phone from the power adapter at 9:00 a.m., played mp3 audio for around 5 hours (Windows Media, Lexar 256Mb SD card, mono headset that comes with the package), played FIGHT HARD 3D for around half an hour, took a few pictures by the build-in camera on the road and had roughly 20 minutes of phone calls. I went back home at 9:00 p.m. and there is still about 10% of battery left on my phone.

That's enough for me since I don't have much calls per day.

Recently I have encoded a lot of movies and watch them while I am on a bus or train, the phone have managed to finish playing a full length movie without draining too much battery. I must say that the PDA part of the phone does a good job on the power management (I currently have 3 pocket pc, they drain the battery pretty fast while watching movie or play games) If you are complaining about the battery life then maybe you really have a lot phone calls per day... you may need an extra battery which cost around HK$240 in HK, not too expensive.

p.s. This phone works great on WMV playback, thanks to the fast processor it can also handle v9 video codec, VBR with 24FPS flawlessly.

Just make sure you use the correct parameter while encoding your videos (i.e. Do not directly use the Pocket PC profile as Mio recommended, edit and give 168X128 as the resolution, try Quality base VBR=85-95 and it should always give good results)

hope this may helps. :D

and sorry about my terrible english, I am HK people.

[Guest tbendis]

Neko,

Is it possible to purchase an extra battery for the Mio 8390 on the Internet?

Todd

[Guest neko]

Hi tbendis,

Sorry, but I really not sure that if we can order it on the Internet, as I got my phone from a local phone store..

well at least I don't see the Taiwan Mio website currently offers any online ordering yet. maybe you should try looking for some reseller at ebay etc if your local store does not carry any Mio products...

by the way today I found out that you could use the "mini headphone to standard headphone covertor plug" that comes with the HP 1940.

but the bad new is, when I plug in a headphone, the phone enters into handfree headset mode automatically, and since I am connecting a stereo headphone I have no way to answer any call without disconnecting the headphone completely.

so we need special headset mic with stereo headphone in one cable. does this exist?

[Guest schriss]

8390 has MONO headset?? :shock:

[Guest markgamber]

If anyone finds a battery for sale, please post it here. I haven't found one yet. Nor have I ever seen a phone that included anything but a cheesy mono earphone so I wasn't exactly surprised. The stereo set I use cost a whole $10, if I recall correctly.

[Guest schriss]

Did you buy it (stereo set ) online? If yes, please post a link :D

[Guest dcko]

for the headset problem, you can use SE p900 stereo headsets, you can listen to MP3/movies while also being able to use the answer functionality on the headset, just like if it was made for the mitac mio 8390, and the sound quality is awsome!

i have the battery (only silver though, red a bit later), if anyone is interested in purchasing one.

[Guest Zim]

For the battery just use ebay should find one! i got two batteries with my phone! its a def must! makes life easier. Esp when u can charge the battery on its own with the cradle!

"Z"

[Guest tbendis]

I left a message about the external display issue that I've mentioned here with Mio. Mio confirmed that the external caller ID won't function when there are spaces, periods, or parentheses in the phone number in Contacts.

This is disappointing. My desktop Outlook automatically formats my phone numbers with these punctuation marks; plus, I prefer to look at phone number like this, as opposed to a long string of only numbers. (By the way, the build-in Microsoft Caller ID - the one used by the Smartphone operating system - has no problem recognizing Contacts that have phone numbers formatted with spaces, periods, or parentheses)

For me, it's a significant flaw in an great phone. Hopefully, this can be addressed in a future upgrade.

Does anyone else share my disappointment?

[Guest schriss]

As for the headset, I'm not sure, but I think we can use any universal 2.5 mm Hands free sets:

http://www.cellularaccessory.com/hanfreheadse.html

Can someone confirm an universal 2.5 mm Hands free set working with Mio 8390?