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I currently have a Jasjar, but I'm finding it too big...
I love all the features, but I want to be able to use it one-handed, throw it in my pocket, etc... the K-Jam seems like a good alternative.
The only things that I'm not liking about the K-Jam are:
- Lower rez screen (but it's smaller than the Jasjar, 3.6" vs. 2.8"... so its still pretty sharp... and I can't really see where I couldn't live without it)
- 2.5" headset jack, and on the bottom... (kinda annoying... but could use an adapter... but still a hassle because I currently plug my MP3 player into my car, my headphones AND speakers at the office, and I'll have to have an adapter sticking out of the bottom of my phone now...)
- Mini-SD card... (SD is much better to go above 2GB, even up to 4GB... and it's not exactly a well known or used format... SD is cheaper, and Memory Stick Pro Duo is coming down in price since the PSP came out... but what can I do)
Also, does it work well for one-handed use ?
Any ex-Treo users who care to comment ?
Any ideas ? Suggestions ?
Thanks !
The wizard is a solid device. Go for it!!
You will love the extra battery life and size. I really could not imagine having a universal clipped to my belt weighing my pants down.
I upgraded from an alpine and I could not be happier.
Higher screen REZ is not needed on a screen that small. The screen is much sharper compared to the alpine.
The OMAP cpu is just enough processing power to run everything out there.
Also, I noiticed you were in Canada so I doubt you were making use of the 3G power of the universal(probably another 5-7 years for Canada). The wizard is EDGE enabled so if you use rogers you will see great data download rates. I was lucky enough to already be signed up with fido and their $50/month unlimited data plan when rogers took over fido so i am paying $50 a month for unlimited EDGE use. I am quite sure FIDO does not offer this plan to new subscibers anymore.
My only compliants with the wizard are:
-HTC needs to make better use of the device by increasing screen size without increasing the size of the device.(all HTC devices)
-The stylus hole is a joke. My stylus hole wore out within 1 week and now my stylus slides out of the hole very easily. Soon it will probably be falling out. Didn't they bother testing this at all???
-no GPS.
hey audible,
thanks for the reply !
I am with fido / rogers as well and I signed up for the unlimited plan as well... are you in Montreal ? and where did you order your K-Jam ?
so yeah I'd be good using the EDGE support... I often use my p800 as a bluetooth modem with my laptop.
a few questions:
- that sounds bad about the stylus... is there a solution ?
- have you experienced any issues multi-tasking with the OMAP ?
- have you ever tried a VGA screen on a pda to compare ?
- how's the k-jams one handed use ? have you ever tried a treo for one handed use in comparison ?
- did you remap the explorer and mail buttons to something more useful ? like windows and OK ?
- does the 2.5" jack bother you ? do you use an adapter ?
- does the keyboard slide mechanism feel solid ? I'm worried now after what you said about the stylus...
thanks and look forward to your reply !
Posted from a Universal !
- that sounds bad about the stylus... is there a solution ?
I haven't had any probs with my stylus yet, except it may be a little looser than when I got it.
- have you experienced any issues multi-tasking with the OMAP ?
Nope, I can have several apps open at once (eg. Calender, Notes, Email, MSN, IE x 2 (using PPCPlus), TCPMP playing MP3) and its fine.
- have you ever tried a VGA screen on a pda to compare ?
It resembles the crispness of VGA screen because of its smaller size, but in no way matches the res.
- how's the k-jams one handed use ? have you ever tried a treo for one handed use in comparison ?
Haven't tried a treo, but WM5 is great for one handed use. I can do most things without the stylus. The Win and Ok keys on the keyboard make it even easier.
- did you remap the explorer and mail buttons to something more useful ? like windows and OK ?
You can, but I find their defaults good.
- does the 2.5" jack bother you ? do you use an adapter ?
I rarely use it, but yes when I do I use an adaptor.
- does the keyboard slide mechanism feel solid ? I'm worried now after what you said about the stylus...
I am happy with the slider. It seems pretty solid, and the screen definately feels like it will stay up when it is up.
Hey mitchello,
thanks for your feedback !
Audible:
Any comments ?
Wizard (imate K-JAM) is awesome!
Moving from a Blue Angel to the wizrd has so far been very pleasing. The smaller screen has been a little daunting, especially trying to use the "finger" stylus, but beyond that I highly recommend it.
Stability and features in WM5 are nice, and should not be discounted.
I'm on T-Mobile in the US, and EDGE is great at around 150kbs, compared to 30kbs via GPRS.
i upgraded from my IMATE PPC and i love the K-JAM , it is a little slow , but the battery is great.. i love the deviced , once you get used to it and all features you will love it..
i used adapter to play MP3 in my car and it work great...
good luck
i upgraded from my IMATE PPC and i love the K-JAM , it is a little slow , but the battery is great.. i love the deviced , once you get used to it and all features you will love it..
i used adapter to play MP3 in my car and it work great...
good luck
Hey rah,
thanks for the comments !
Good to hear someone else who uses it to play tunes in the car.
What about one-handed use ? Do you feel you have to do finger aerobics to do certain things, like open the start menu ?
I've heard of people mapping the Send Call button to the Start menu in the Today screen...
I'm wondering if I could map Send and End to Start and OK in every screen except for the Phone screen ?
Any comments ?
O2 have released again, wouldnt you think O2 might sort out the issue they have with so many Atom and Exec's before releasing yet another possibly faulty product? Why are retailers still disributing the Atom when 90% of them are faulty. I have checked numurous retail outlets that have Atom and Exec's on working display that blatantly have the mosquito LCD screen noise. I will do whatever I must do to get a refund on all my Atom's as they all are unbearable to hold against the ear whilst on a phone call, nobody wants bad publicity but as a consumer we expect the standards of the products we buy to match the price we pay.
perfect. and so?
O2 Stealth Review
Dear all
Don't quite understand why no one has given detailed opinion on this fine product from the O2 line of pda cellphones, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents (I've been using it for a week now, as a replacement phone for my O2 xda mini (ie Magician), the motherboard finally having failed after 1 year and 3 months of use due to instability issues:
1. OS
A very stable os running WM 5.0, and extremely efficient. 2 things that could have been improved, namely, the 2 touch screen items on the bottom left and right hand corners cannot be accessed without using the touch screen (ie with the Prophet, you could use the keypad to access these). Presumably, O2 wanted to keep the call and cancel functions exclusive. The 2nd aspect is the soft reset, which causes the volume to go back to full each time you do it. Fortunately, you'll find the device rarely crashes (the onboard memory is about 3 times the size of the Magician). Compatible with the Kingston 2GB mini sd card.
2. Bluetooth
Using the tornado cab to stream a2dp, the maximum volume is slightly disappointing (ie not loud enough even at max setting0, but something I can live with. Music streaming drops off more than the Magician, but again this is a minor quibble (just wear a shirt with a front pocket, or stick it in your jacket pocket rather than in your pant pockets).
3. Voice Quality
Quite good, and certainly improved over the Magician. Haven't tried using the handsfree yet, but HK is such a loud place that it's not gonna make much of a difference anyway.
4. Picture Quality
Stellar - with the flash function built in, you basically have a fully functional digital camera that takes fantastic pictures by day or by night. The picture frames that used to be available for the Magician or Prophet is now not featured in the photo mode, and must be added on by the Photo Editor.
5. Wi-Fi
Still slow, but really, cellphone size screens shouldn't be used to surf the net anyway. It's useful when you just want to quickly check some quick details (ie address of a restaurant) while you're on the move. Pocket MSN is a real boon to use.
6. Downloadable WM5.0 Applications
My main concern is finding a good emulator for my GBA and SNES games. Haven't located one for the SNES, and I still have to figure out how to make Gnuboy 1.0.3 work, but that's not O2's fault.
7. Recording
My favorite new feature - it's so simplistic that it's perfect for my meetings. You press one button to record, and the same button to stop. No more hassle having to choose recording quality (as with the Magician).
To conclude, this is probably the most fault free device O2 has released to date. I understand there were concerns that other Gigabyte (that's the OEM for the Stealth) cellphones weren't up to par, but for the record, Gigabyte is the largest motherboard maker in the ROC, and I would rather bank on my money with them than with Quanta (the OEM for the Atom)!
Looking for the built-in Answering Machine Application in Stealth ExtROM...
RE
Anybody can extract the answering machine program out?
Thanks
Just let you know my comparison of the two units after 5 days with the Xda Cosmo after having the Trion for the last 4 months. My Girlfriend brought me the Excalibur as a pre Christmas gift 8)
After 4 months my Trion main speaker stopped working and I have currently sent it back to get it replaced. All in all I was quite happy with the Trion except for a few quirks.
1. Media Player was buggy with the storage card
2. Never got WM5orage working properly (either had to stopo all my programs running on the storage card which included removing items from the Today screen).
3. Screen alignment problem.
I got the Hermes originally as it looked like a device which I didn't have to use the stylus much to access most of the functionality and in 90% of cases I got by with just using the jog wheel and a couple of presses with my thumb (I had the very first xda device and was turned off by the need to use the stylus to do simple things such as dialing and looking up contacts )
I had noticed due to the operating system PPC vs smartphone the PPC needed much more processing power and hence battery life was preety much limited due to the power from the CPU 400mhz vs 200mhz ( maybe of the extra functionality needed for the touchscreen ).
Differences in the devices
1. Xda Excalibur is more responsive even with the slower CPU. Contacts work instantly on typing on the keyboard. On the hermes there is always a delay in searching for contacts.
2. Excalibur supports multiple languages in its rom and therefore there no need to reflash the rom with the rom with your appropriate language.
3. A2DP works flawlessly on Excalibur being aku 3.2. No need to install cab files to get it working and no sound quality issues and no need to get somone to write a bt stack driver to get around the microsoft one.
4. Programs in general for smartphone seem to be running better than on Pocket PC. Tomtom 6 Navigator doesn't run on the Cosmo but Tomtom 5 work just fine and performance actually seems better on the smartphone even with the lower CPU. Same is notice with other PPC vs Smartphone progams I have eg Skype and Fizz Traveller
5. Cosmo has 128 MB flash ram which is really useful as I was always trying to install everything on the SD card with the Trion to get as much memory possible for standard stuff such as emails, ringtones etc. Yes I know you can tweak the Hermes to get ringtones from the SD card but it just a hassle changing the registry settings.
6. For some reason Windows Live Beta works on the Cosmo. It stopped working on the Hermes about a month ago and never worked since. The smartphone version looks really nice as well and functions much better as I have noticed with all smartphone vs ppc programs.
7. WLAN works much better on the Cosmo compared to the Hermes eg handling of connection settings when WLAN is turned on. On the Hermes I always had to go through the process of changing my connection settings every time I switched by WLAN on an off.
8. Battery life on cosmo is much better. 3.5-4 days use compared to 1.5-2 days use on Trion. Probably because of CPU (I also changed the Hermes to GPRS only to try and save battery life due to UMTS draining the battery)
9. Not to sing all praises for the Excalibur. The only drawback I have found so far for my purposes is the Microsoft Office editing functionality is not possible on the smartphone.
10. 2MP camera vs 1.3 MP camera but I really cannot see much advantage in the quality as the 2MP wasnt that great to start with. Yes the Hermes has a led light but I doesn't really help with indoor photos. The 1.3 MP camera seems to be better quality than other 1.3 MP cameras before and for emails, web photos and MMS quality seems fine for my purposes as I wont ever print out photos from a camera handy.
11. Lack to UMTS/HSDPA on Excalibur. Loose the speed but you'll gain heaps on battery life.
12. Microsoft Media Player works with the SD card. No disappearing songs 8)
13. Price. The excalibur is less than 1/6 the price of the Trion on contract. My Girlfriend brought the Cosmo on contact for 60 Euro. I got the Trion for 320 Euro on the same contact.
14. and I think this is the killer. The excalibur have looks to die for. The Hermes is thick and although many people would say it is solidly built after using the Excalibur it makes the Hermes look like a oversized flimsy machine. The Excalibur is thin and compact with a large screen. Fits in your shirt pocket or even slide it into your jeans!!! HTC have outdone themselves with the build quality I haven't seen any phone build as solid including the razr. I fells like the device is made out of titanium or magnesium with a soft feel rubber all along the back of the device and for the keys as well, ( I cat't stop touching the device it feels sooo.. good ). My Girlfriend who is really fashion concious absolutely loves the look of the device. Photos on the net do not do it justice you have to see it in real to appreciate it's looks for me one look and it was love at first sight. (I first got a look at it from a female collegue who got the phone)
It took me a day to get used to the smaller keyboard and maybe bigger thumbs might have some problems but with rubber keys feel beautiful and make each key feel distinct during typing. The excalibur really is a one hand device even with the d pad and keys only. The touch slider is just a added bonus with flexibility.
After writing this I have noticed that this is more of a sales pitch for the excalibur than a comparison of the two devices but I have found my perfect device which does everything I need without any problems ( performance, bugs and quirks ). If you dont need the UMTS speed I must say Excalibur is the way to go. If you really need UMTS and 2MP camera then wait for the Calivier ( the UMTS /2 MP / 300Mhz version of the excalibur, rumoured to release in Spring next year ).
For me the excalibur seems to have a quite launch compared to the expectations of the Hermes maybe because on paper the Hermes looks better in terms of specifications but for usability it's excalibur all the way.
Now what to do with my Trion when it gets back?
excalibur is a smartphone right ?
Yes it is a smartphone but I think that is why it is much more responsive. Microsoft has done something right with wm5 for smartphone. Theres not much a smartphone cant do now compared to the pocket pc now. except for the microsoft office editing capabilities. I tried skype today and for some reason it was much more clearer than the pocket pc version.
it depends what you use it for..
if youre like me who has to do Office work, watch movies and play tradewinds then the touch screen is VITAL.. personally i dont have any issues with my hermes as the ones youve mentioned above..
and ofcourse there is the touch screen
I just got myself a smartphone (samsung i607) after having the wizard for a year. I was thinkign the same thing you are about smartphone functionality. i was wrong though. There is an extreme lack of third party programs for smartphone. In particular, there aren't any good web browsers whatsoever for wm5smartphone. not a single one. You also cannot customize the homescreen without downloading predefined ones online. I never found one i liked. I like to use data instant messaging programs. and there is a flaw in all of them for smartphone. They don't have homescreen plugins and there is absolutely no onscreen display that you have received a message when the program is in the forgroud. In fact, i hated the lack of flexibility on the smartphone so much that 24 hours after buying the i607, i bought the hermes. I'm still waiting for it to come, and cant wait to start doing everything i used to do with the wizard only faster.
k2snowboards88 said:
I just got myself a smartphone (samsung i607) after having the wizard for a year. I was thinkign the same thing you are about smartphone functionality. i was wrong though. There is an extreme lack of third party programs for smartphone. In particular, there aren't any good web browsers whatsoever for wm5smartphone. not a single one. You also cannot customize the homescreen without downloading predefined ones online. I never found one i liked. I like to use data instant messaging programs. and there is a flaw in all of them for smartphone. They don't have homescreen plugins and there is absolutely no onscreen display that you have received a message when the program is in the forgroud. In fact, i hated the lack of flexibility on the smartphone so much that 24 hours after buying the i607, i bought the hermes. I'm still waiting for it to come, and cant wait to start doing everything i used to do with the wizard only faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I Have both, S620 to work and TyTn for play, and I had Wizard.
Try opera mini... better than IE and I use it also on HERMES
I've found a LOT of home screens (motorola Q has many of it) but also I like to play with XML, using just notepad and I have now my PERFECT , tre pages (scrolling), Home screen!
Office problems? try the new DATAWIZ suite, much better than office embedded in TyTN
Great as navigator and fits in my jeans pocket (the BACK pocket) and in my shirt pocket!
I 've sold the wizard believing the HERMES was the empowered Wizard. It Is the STUPID WIZARD'S BIG BROTHER believe me!
I've tried opera mini, and i dont particularly like it. I consider it to be a step down from the standard PIE with the reg edit to make PIE identify itself as a desktop computer. I guess i just miss the adaptability of my wizard. My hermes will be here soon though. I'll never make the mistake of selling my old phone before getting a new one again. If i dont like the hermes, i'll still have my blackjack. After a week, i'll decide which one to keep.
Hopefully someone who has both the Hermes and Kaiser can tell me which is the better pda to use emulators with. I currently have the Touch which I am more than happy with except for the slower cpu and lack of hardware keys. I mainly use the emulators for the Snes, GBA and Atari ST.
As I spend 75% of the time trying to play emulator games on the Touch the speed of emulation and lack of hardware keys is a real problem sometimes. I had my heart set on getting a Kaiser but have recently come across threads in the Kaiser forum regarding problems with the Video/CPU drivers for the Kaiser. I assume this would affect the speed of emulation.
So I was not sure whether to look at getting a Hermes instead as it is a lot cheaper and possibly more compatible with Emulators. Do you think it would be much faster than the ELF and worth getting?
What would you advise me to do?
Thanks, meddle
yeah even my old himalaya works great with emulators
it have a 400Mhz
I've noticed that my Hermes battery seems to be eaten up very quickly when using morphgear - I mean a full battery will last about 45 minutes to an hour at most when playing. Is this normal?
i believe it is
One thing I didn't realize is that the Hermes has only a 5 way directional D-pad so there is no way to do diagonal moves. Funny thing is my Touch can do diagonal moves play Bubble Bobble for instance but I can only map "left, right, up, down" so I assume it can tell that both Up and Left are being pressed at the same time.
I find the d-pad on the hermes a bit fiddly for emulators. Especially for things like snes where there are more than 2 buttons (I use the message and IE ones as A and B on NES emulators), so I just use the keyboard and assign everything I need.
I gave up with morphgear because of the battery life though
Im about to pick up a XDA Exec and I'm coming from a Tilt.
Am I making a good choice? I've been reading the Wiki and such and not really sure I want to use a cooked ROM. My Exec will be coming with WM6..but I'm not sure if its stock or cooked yet cause I dont have it in my hands.
I also noticed the huge memory difference between the 2 devices, any suggestions to improve or make more memory for the Exec?\
The things that I want to install on my Exec and hoping there is enough internal memory to handle it all:
HTC Home Plugin
HTC Home Plugin Customizer
Google Maps
Yahoo Go
icontact OR PCM
Sclpf's Cube
SRS Sound
Pocket Commander
Advanced ConFig (if there is one for the Uni??)
BT Toggle
KeySwop
ClearTemp
Thoughts?
Thanks gang
The TyTN II is newer than the Universal, but Universal has higher CPU speed (520MHz, overclocked to 624MHz in my case) than the TyTN II's 400MHz. The RAM on the Universal doesn't bother me much as the most programs I run at any one time would be outlook, media player, Internet explorer and windows live, which all run smoothly at once.
The sliding mechanism is quicker to open than the Universal, with the added advantage of being usable in the closed position. I find opening the device to check the time quite annoying, and changing between tablet and laptop styles is a bit inconvenient.
As for the VGA screen, it makes a MASSIVE difference to nothing but text reading and Internet exploerer.
However, if your vision isn't too good you might not be able to take advantage of these features. My father couldn't read any text on normal text size when using VGA (even with reading glasses on), let alone very small (which I use to increase viewable area).
Since the Universal won't run 640 X 480 Video (I tried a wmv at 25 FPS and it played at about 4 FPS), the only noticeable advantage is in internet explorer.
While on WM5 with no add-ons (so it was running in 320 X 240 mode), it was hardly possible to see the whole Google logo when using Google classic, and scrolling from side to side to see forums etc was annoying in desktop view mode, or scrolling through excessively long pages in fit to screen was annoying. However after upgrading to a WM6.1 PRO cooked ROM from here on xda-developers, which had a pre-configured VGA mode, Internet explorer is as easy to use on my Uni as on my desktop.
Storage is far cheaper on the Universal. I recently bought a 16GB SDHC card on ebay for $79AUD after shipping. A 4GB micro SD would cost similar to that.
The internal memory has plently of room for my most used applications (windows live/google maps (which runs perfectly)/all my today pluggins/skype/web viewer/media player (TCPMP).
The HTC home pluggin I have (version 1.0 from www.freewarepocketpc.net) doesn't display icons correctly, with half of the home icon's icons (like messaging, sms, and missed calls) cut off half way, and the media player controller shows only half of each row of text for song info. This is probably due to the method of getting VGA resolution, but I'm no expert. The version 1.2 of the pluggin would install, and I could check the box to appear in today screen, but it wouldn't appear there.
Blufires said:
Since the Universal won't run 640 X 480 Video (I tried a wmv at 25 FPS and it played at about 4 FPS), the only noticeable advantage is in internet explorer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I play standard Divx on my uni.
TyTnII is better for received call without headset.
I love VGA, QVGA is too small for me.
I have two side-by-side here
I'm deliberating selling a Universal I've acquired as it is new condition: the problem I have is that there's something about it I like, which stops me wanting to.
Side by side and for general usage i can give my opinion here.
The cameras on the Uni and Tytn 2/Tilt are both awful. Tytn 2 has autofocus and more megapixels but seems slower for it.
Multimedia playback using Coreplayer seems better on the Uni, perhaps because of its more powerful processor.
Uni has no GPS but TyTn 2 GPS is too unreliable to use for me.
Screen is sharp and beautiful on the Uni, however colours are somewhat less saturated and the overall look is somewhat milkier than the TyTn 2. Despite its Quarter Vga resolution the screen on the TyTn 2 is NOTICEABLY brighter than that of the Uni and colours look much more vibrant.
Uni takes SD cards and will therefore work with ANY SD-derived card you might have lying about - for example a mini or micro sd. On the whole SDHC cards are cheaper than micro SDHC.
Overall feel and responsiveness of the Uni is much better in my opinion than the TyTn 2. scrolling with touchflo seems smoother, though this might have something to do with the higher resolution.
Uni battery life is poor. A good browsing session will likely flatten the battery within three hours; Tytn 2 holds out much longer.
Browsing is good on either device since Opera Mobile 9.5 hit these forums. The Tytn 2 is given a new lease of life as a browsing device with this software, which makes Internet Explorer look positively archaic. Browsing is however more enjoyable still on the Uni owing to the sharper fonts, particularly on overview mode.
The TyTn 2 is faster overall though as it offers HSDPA and HSUPA, whilst the UNI has only 3g (which seems a little sluggish at times).
Keyboard on the Uni is the best ever made for me, though suffers from the need to flip open and spin round when in PDA mode. The keyboard on the Tytn 2 is ABSOLUTELY AWFUL, with softkeys too close to both the screen bezel and the 'r', 't', 'i' and 'o' keys. It also regularly misses out letters and spaces resultingi n veryannoying typosw hen yout hought you'dpr essed all the right buttons!
Overall I will lament getting rid of the Uni, but hell it's 5p listing day and I won't need to deliberate once the touch diamond comes out....