Windows Phone Thoughts: Dell Axim X50: Dual Slot Goodness at a Reasonable Price

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Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Dell Axim X50: Dual Slot Goodness at a Reasonable Price

Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 12:00 PM


Buttons, Slots, Etc.
Button-wise, it's a fairly straightforward affair. Four buttons plus a direction pad below the screen. The buttons are small but slightly raised, so they're easy to press. The d-pad works well for gaming – I tried a demo of SkyForce and it performed nicely. I was able to move diagonally and fire at the same time (I turned off auto-fire), so the X50 doesn't seem to have the "button press issues" that plagued earlier Pocket PCs.


Figure 3: The left side Dell Axim X50 showing the buttons. Black on black photography is tricky. ;-) Click the image above for a larger version of the photo.

On the left side of the device there's a toggle that completely locks down the device. Dell must have heard all the complaints from people who have their Pocket PCs turn on in their pockets due to random button presses. The device shipped with this toggle turned on, so I was baffled for about 30 seconds as to why I nothing would work after a soft reset. Below the lock toggle we have the wireless button - according to the manual, pressing this button once is supposed to turn on both WiFi and Bluetooth, which I've always found a bit silly. Why not one press for WiFi, and a double-press for Bluetooth? On my device, the button only turned the WiFi on, not the Bluetooth…until I manually turned on Bluetooth once, then the button started to behave normally with one press turning both on, and another press turning both off.


Figure 4: An assortment of Pocket PCs lined up for size comparisons. From left to right, an iPAQ 4350, iPAQ 4150, Axim X5, Axim X50, Axim X30. Click the image above for a larger version of the photo.

Below the wireless button there's the voice recording button. I used to use voice recording a great deal, but I stopped using it when I realized that I always forgot to check my voice recordings. Tangent: I've asked more than one third party developer to create software that would integrate with Outlook Notes and provide some sort of system to remind the user to act on the voice notes, but no one has ever taken me up on it. If you're a developer and want more information about this, feel free to contact me. ;-)

The stylus is thin – perhaps a little too thin – and it's somewhat difficult to get out of the holder on the top right of the device. The notch on the style is too small to be grasped with my fingers, so I have to resort to using my fingernail to remove the stylus. That's just bad design, plain and simple.


Figure 5: The dual slots in action – in the photo I have a 4 GB Kingston CF card and a 512 MB Simpletech SD card. Because I use a digital camera that takes CompactFlash cards, I've been waiting for a small Pocket PC with WiFi and a CF slot – the X50 fits the bill perfectly. Click the image above for a larger version of the photo.

The dual slots of the X50 are one of the more interesting features – you can pack a lot of storage in the device with two slots, and they managed to keep the thickness of the device down.


Figure 6: It might not look like much in this picture, but the X50 feels much thinner than the X5 when you're holding it in your hand. Click the image above for a larger version of the photo.

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