My quick review of the Mitac Mio 8390 (UPDATED 17-05-04)

[Guest vdk]

[uPDATE 17-05-04]

Ok, the problems with the 8390 has sort of been ironed out. The most glaring is the 8390's inability to play DivX and MPEG files via PocketMVP and PocketTV due to a broken GAPI (see the 8380/8390) forum for more info). As someone has already said, there is a new divx player called Betaplayer that uses GDI instead of GAPI to play files. At last I can play movies in full screen!!!

The SD issue I had was resolved when I reformatted the card. :roll:

Anyway, I feel this phone was worth the money and is often the centre of attention when friends gather. The camera sux but that is expected from a phone.

Rating has been bumped from 6/10 to 7/10! :D

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My father's collegue bought this phone in Hong Kong for 3580 HK dollar.

It comes with the following:

*Phone

*Docking station (cheap and bad plastic quality)

*AC adapter

*Docking station/phone to USB port cable

*Only one battery (should be 2)

*64MB MMC card included

*Handsfree kit

*Active sync cd and some mio bonus cd

Build quality 6/10

The phone as some other people pointed out the build quality is poor but in my opinion its average. The 8390 has sort of a solid feel to it but not so much as phones from other top manufacturers like samsung and motorola.

Looks 6/10

Partly the reason I bought this phone was that it was a flip and sick of the candy bar types. The 8390 looks like many old panasonic and nec flip phones - very boring and lacking in any other color besides silver. Its pretty big but thats expected of a SP phone.

Functionality 8/10

This is why most poeple buy this phone. It uses the new Smartphone 2003 OS and can use active sync software to connect your phone to your computer. If you've already had a smartphone before you would know what are the features, so i wont go into them.

However their are big porblems with the 8390. PocketTV and PocketMVP crashes everytime I play a movie and the included MS media player cant play movies in full screen! 30% of the already small screen space is taken up by the player buttons and toolbar. Very dissapointed here. Im still waiting for an update for my phone.

Camera accepts MMC and SD cards. The included 64mb mmc card worked but my 512mb sandisk SD card was not detected by the File Explorer smartphone software. So i can forget viewing movies on my phone.

Camera 5/10

If you read other posts, you would already know about the camera outputting pictures with horizontal lines no matter how good the conditions are. Very dissapointed since this is my first camera phone and wanted to use it to replace my digital camera. The max resolution is 640x480 and a jpg file takes about 35kb of space

Conclusion 6/10

I really wanted to like this phone since it was my first smart phone however its average looks, bugs in software, poor quality camera and no other way to input text into the phone besides the slow phone keys.

The Mitac Mio 8390 is priced below its competition namely Samsung and Motorola, however, its quality reflects its low price.

I suggest potential buyers of the 8390 wait until an update for this phone is out. Right now the phone is functioning simply as a call receiver and sender, hardly justifying the price Ive paid out for this phone.

[Guest mattscholey]

Thanks for the review. Shame the handset doesn't live up to expectations. You've put me off it. Mpx220 it is for me then!

Matt

[Guest MECX]

put me off it to--i think the MPX100 is the one for me next :D

[Guest schriss]

What If I tell you that you can clock your 8390 at 300MHz? ;) :lol: :P

Mitac rulez with Xscale CPU :D

Check out SmartPhoneTurbo

http://www.novomobile.com/

[Guest schriss]

Think twice, stupid headset isn't important!!

I can encode DivX 5.1.1 movies standard bitrate 128kbps 44KHz stereo sound and play them SMOOTH with fast movement scenes on my Mio 8390 with BetaPlayer! And all that without even installing SmartPhoneTurbo, which sets SDRAM from 100 to 133MHz, and sets CPU from 200 to 300MHz :) :lol: :lol:

Forget other phones...

I can take pics of my Mio 8390, I have 3MPix camera.

[Guest MECX]

did someone complain about the headset? i think you have 'handset' and 'headset' mixed up :-D

after having two HTC phones im staying away from devices that are described as low quality but great perfomance---MPX100 and the new sagem look to be well built quality handsets

[Guest schriss]

Yea, probably, as I never use headsets :)

About quality, I really don't understand. I have Mio 8390 in my hands now and I couldn't imagine a better quality, really.

[Guest DingsDaT]

what for an 512 mb card you used? i buyed an toshiba last week and my mio is going to come monday, and now you say the 512 mb card will not work! :cry:

[Guest stohn]

Strange,

my Sandisk 512 AND 1024 working ok with ALL of my phones:

8380, 8390, MPx200, SPV,Tanager,E200

Maik

[Guest schriss]

VDK: you can bump up the score, as the GAPI problem has been solved (workaround found) :D

http://modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=110450

1st solution is wrapper

2nd solution actually making GAPI work (this means NO WRAPPER NEEDED!) is comming soon!!! (I'm writing a tutorial right now....)

[Guest martin]

VDK: you can bump up the score, as the GAPI problem has been solved (workaround found)

Would be nice if this makes it to the news section then maybe MITAC will read it :D

Great work.

[Guest schriss]

IT IS DONE :D

http://modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=110450