O2 Xphone IIm

[Guest sol2k]

Hi all,

I have just bought a O2 Xphone IIm in Singapore on 28 May.

As a complete newbie to Windows Mobile smartphones and to O2, I want to share my thoughts on the phone, but not quite sure how to go about it. Here is an attempt, hoping that this is the right forum to post... :-)

The new Xphone IIm from O2 is a real looker. The white and grey color combination plus the rounded edges ironically remind me of the design of a Macintosh iBook.

The phone has nice, bright and crisp display, complemented at the bottom by 4 small function keys (left softkey, home, back, right softkey) and the big novelty of course are the new 4 bigger sized buttons for special functions (Pocket Explorer, WMP back, WMP play, WMP forward). The joystick is nice and small, though it took me a while to get the hang of it's sensitivity... it was quite stiff (compared to a K700i example). The call and number keys are just about the right size and the touch feels quite good. On the left side of the phone is the volume and the camera shot button is on the right side.

The software is Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition for Smartphones. I was not fully aware of the fact that not all Pocket PC OS's are made the same. The choice of sofware feels much more restrictive than what seems to be available for full fledged WM 2003 for Pocket PC or the Phone Edition.

My last experience with a Windows portable device was a long time ago, with a Casio PDA (runnning Win CE 2.1). Therefore I was a bit disappointed with the apparent sluggishness of the software upon booting and first few usages. Coming from a Nokia or SE perspective it felt a bit slow and heavy, but after a while (couple of hours) one gets used to it and I no longer have that feeling.

It seems to be a standard O2 Windows Mobile offering in terms of software. Pocket Explorer, Pocket Messenger, Pocket MSN are all there along with the standard Contacts, Calendar, Tasks and Inbox. WMP 10 seems to be the only big novelty. So far, have not tried it. Then there is O2's Menu, replacing the normal Start menu, into something more familiar to users of other phone models. Was a bit disappointed with not having Pocket Word and Excel, or at least some sort of text note application.

The sound is good, nice and loud, but it requires some fiddling with the Profiles to set some of the volume settings. The SMS and Alarm volume was quite low in the defaults.

The text input is as one would expect, with multi-tap and T9 interfaces, though it seems like it's not possible to default to T9 for all input modes. The manual states that the phone will "automagically" switch to the most appropriate input mode for the current function, but I think that is a highly subjective thing.

Using the O2 Xphone IIm on the Internet is a real pleasure for someone who comes from a S40 or even a newer SE model. The GPRS Class 10 make this phone quite zippy on the data transfers and Pocket Explorer does an unexpectedly excellent job of rendering normal XHTML pages and WAP sites were very fast and comfortable to surf in.

Still struggling to get some nice apps, missing a eBook reader badly.

Also, I am really hoping that O2 releases a ROM update to WM 2005 ! IMHO, just that would conquer an imense following amongst the smartphone community.

Here are some things I am not able to comment on yet:

Battery life

WMP sound quality and functionality

E-Mail functionality

MSN Messenger

Please feel free to ask me any questions, since I am still getting to know the phone and the platform. Would also like to hear from others who have gotten the same model.

Cheers,

Sol2k

[Guest sol2k]

Just a quick update to say that this same topic is ongoing at PPCsg.com.

http://www.ppcsg.com/index.php?showtopic=52443

Just added some comments on the camera specs... Short version is : VGA resolution. Nice quality tho.

Questions ? Feature enquiries ? Welcome.

Cheers,

sol2k

[Guest leofungwai]

can u copy the orginal theme of xphone iim to me pls ?

(the one only shown timw and date ..)

my mail : [email protected]

or pos it here pls ...thx a lot