HTC Universal review update after 1 week.

[Guest rilot]

Well, I've had my Universal for 1 weeks now and so can report on it's general usage.

Battery life:

Not too bad. Banging away with the WiFi utterly murders it though. Factor on a couple of hours at most. With normal usage (phone calls, SMS, bit of web and e-mail) I have to charge it every 2 days.

Keyboard:

A god send. e-mail and SMS on the move is wonderful without having to muck about with a stylus, but WHY OH WHY did they omit a ctrl key? I would love to use the device to administer my UNIX machines in the datacentre but without a ctrl key I can't, as doing things like ctrl+c and ctrl+d are essential. I've tried re-maping the keys using an app but as yet have had no success with producung the correct code for ctrl. Watch this space though. I willl get there.

Screen:

Again, a joy to behold. As with other VGA devices I can't understand why MS sacrifice desktop real-estate in order to make the text the same size as on QVGA devices. I know there's the issue of having to cater for blind executives but would a mode switch have been so hard? I'm working on a real VGA hack along the lines of OZVGA or SE_VGA and have made good progress. I just need to wait for a couple of QVGA WM5 devices to appear so I can "borrow" some of the 96dpi icon dlls.

Phone:

Seems to work well. No dropped calls and the voice quality is good at both ends.

Bluetooth:

A big dissappointment. The MS BT stack is rubbish. I mean absolute crap when compared to the Widcomm stack. Getting TomTom5 to work was a right pain and as with all MS BT stack devices it only presents the contact number to my BT800 headset, not the contact name. This is a real shame as it would have been extremely useful to have contact name appear on my headset as it did with my P910.

General useability:

Very good all in all. It works as a mobile device very well and I always had the feeling that I'm well connected when I'm carrying it. The thing is a heavy old beastie but not prohibitively so.

All in all I think it's an excellent device but sorely lacking in a few areas.

My suggestions to HTC for the Universal 2:

Widcomm BT stack

Small external display for caller ID

Ctrl key on the keyboard

With those things it would be wonderful as opposed to just very good.

[Guest Tech]

its not MS Bluetooth stack that is "rubbish" - its the handset's bluetooth component! trust me :o

[Guest dearsina]

How is it compared to the M2000? Also, does anybody know the release date? I'm up for an upgrade (the one good thing about having bills in triple digits are frequent upgrades), and I was going to get the C550, but I haven't been too impressed with the improved features compared to the C500, so I'm thinking of getting this instead. Would be useful to see how it matches up with the M2000.

[Guest AndyBond]

Rilot:

looks good with that review - hoping to get the orange version when it comes out - you have certainly eased my fears somewhat over battery life - was worried that I wouldnt be able to be away from a charging point at all. Still kinda miffed about the power when wlan on - but then pretty much the same on my ipaq so I am used to it - dont suppose you can turn the power down on the wlan component? thus sacrificing distance from access point for a bit more power (like on laptops)

As for the screen - let me know when you get that working :o would be interested in that.

its not MS Bluetooth stack that is "rubbish" - its the handset's bluetooth component! trust me :(

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tech : read this and thought Nah! - then I checked the documentation for microsofts stack.... Now I am really confused - a lot of people seem to slate MS because this device does not have PAN support on the stack - But.. all the documentation for CE 5 show that the stack does have PAN support - more than that, all the mobile bluetooth stacks from MS show that they can be extended to support other protocols. From first glance it shows that the stack is good! so why does it not work on the universal - is there something fundamental about the chip?

reason I ask - I wondered if the stack was a cut down implementation, would it be possible to get a full implementation from somewhere else, or even possible to write the extra required protocols as a plug in? or will the chip just not support it anyway?

Andy.

P.S. will still be buying one - my main concern is actually to have tomtom + phone working together, fed up of going round with phone + ipaq + gps + laptop (for typing emails etc)

[Guest Tech]

andy mate :o - its to do with the cell manufacturer (HTC) and the network provider - both of their "deals" - the full functionality of the OS is there - its just the network provider and the handset manufacturer making us look bad.

it could be the chip itself - or it could be the software (ROM's) making it cut down....PAN is also supported on 2003SE I believe

sucks! maybe we should get a US carrier here lol :(

Edited September 20, 2005 by Tech

[Guest rilot]

Andy

You can adjust the power of the WLAN component in the control panel. I have it on Medium normally. Not tried it on Low yet.

[Guest se23]

hi please help. how do you get tomtom 5 to work with the mda pro? and the msn messenger cost are out of order. I like the pro but i wish i kept my mda compact it was so easy.