Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted May 23, 2003 Report Posted May 23, 2003 My dev kit came through this morning and i thought some of you lot may like to see some pics and hear my thoughts on the Compal Red-E handset. I've no idea if anyone is actually interested, but it's interesting to compare two completely differnt handsets in depth for the first time. Pics can be found here: http://malvern.hamlesh.com:9091/images/spdevkit/ The Hardware The kit includes the handset, 2-pin American charger (which is now happliy charging the handset through a universal adapter), hands free kit (more on that in a second), bog stndard USB sync and charge cable, a T-shirt, a slightly pointless watch built into a carraberra (can't remember the spelling hehe, a climbing hook basically), battery, dummy SIM card, manuals and MS M2M information pack. The headset is amazing. I wish we'd been given that kind of earpiece with the SPV, it can support the weight of the entire cable and jack from one ear. It can only do it form one ear because it is a mono headset, which is its one drawback. A shame really. The handset is big. ~1.5cm longer, slightly wider at the top and another 2cm of aerial after that. However it is slightly thinner. The power button is really nice, firm and responsive. You get a noticable "click" with each press...however i have noticed this makes it a lot easier to accidentally knock. The power button is situated on the top of the handset and incorparates the IRDA. The boot up. The first thing you notice is no Orange sunset :) Just a "Red-E" logo and a bird sillouette (bear in mind this isn't a HTC device...). The second thing you notice is the washed out effect of the screen has, like turning the brightness right up on your monitor. There's nothing worng with it as such, but it makes the SPV's screen look good... As you may know it has a joystick control which is so much nicer than the SPV's D-Pad. The buttons are flat and larger and makes you realise that no matter how much you get used to the SPV's keypad, it really is quite terrible design. The Software It runs SmartPhone as you all know. However presumably this is an MS virgin ROM image. There is no Orange stuff, or any other carrier app's. This increases the free storage on the handset to slightly over 10 meg. The ROM versions are as follows: The Activesync Pass through connection works out of the box, and after a few seconds i was able to copy my Orange GPRS settings over and get online wirelessly. Windows Media Player still buffers streaming video. There is no MMS software. I think the speaker on the Compal is slightly better than the SPV's...not particulary important though. After playing for a while the menu's definately feel more responsive and quick to update. My Orange SIM card was accepted with no problems, and SmartExplorer and the Planus app were installed with no application signing problems. Other than that its fine, Activesync picked up on it and created a partnership with no problems, all info successfully synced. I'm going to use it for a week or so as my primary phone to get a feel for how it copes with normal day to day use then beat it up later on :( If people are interested i'll add to this when i find out new stuff and how it copes with being a dev phone! Cheers again to Paul and MS for providing the comptetion and prizes.
Guest Brody Posted May 23, 2003 Report Posted May 23, 2003 Cheers for the post Mono, just what i was thinking when i enquired on IRC!! So there's really no mms support??! Weird! Ps. I can see wot u mean about the screen being a bit dull.
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