Windows Phone Thoughts: Pocketing Samsung's SPH-i700: The Ultimate Connected Pocket PC?

Software
Pocket PC Phone Edition 2002
The i700 runs Pocket PC Phone Edition 2002, EUU3 (which I'll hereafter refer to as PPCPE). As of the writing of this review, Samsung is apparently testing Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition; it'll be up to Verizon whether they want to offer it, and current rumors seem to suggest a early 2004 release date.

For those of you who aren't familiar with a Phone Edition device, it's a superset of the regular Pocket PC OS -- in particular, APIs and applets have been added to support phone operation. An "antenna" icon is in the title bar tray indicating whether there's a signal. Whenever a signal is acquired, or if you tap the icon in the tray, a service information popup appears.


Figure 19: A shot of the Verizon Wireless service information popup.

A pet peeve of mine with regards to this service popup is that Microsoft saw fit to design PPCPE such that it appears every time a signal is acquired. This wouldn't be such an issue for me, except that it makes using a Phone Edition device rather frustrating in environs like the subway, where you're constantly picking up and losing pockets of Verizon signal (presumably, in parts where the tunnel is shallow enough where overground base stations penetrate). If you happen to be using your Pocket PC, you have to take out your stylus and tap the dialog, or wait about three to four seconds for the popup to go away. No fun. Incoming calls trigger a similar dialog, but you can use the hardware Phone buttons to either accept or reject the call.

When you're on a call, it's worth noting that the phone circuitry is essentially decoupled from the PDA circuitry. While the Phone Edition software controls the phone's initial behavior (i.e., connecting, hanging up, dialing, etc.), the established call can be kept even if you turn the PDA on and off as many times as you like. In fact, both the i700 and the XDA turn the PDA off after approximately one minute if you don't interact with the PDA's functions while you're on a call -- and you can simply continue speaking on. This is a major reason as to why the Phone Edition devices have surprisingly decent battery life. You can also easily turn off the phone -- just tap on the phone icon and click "Turn phone off", at which point the bar meter next to the antenna changes to an X. Of course, it may not be easy to convince a flight attendant that's the case; it might have been nice to have the service dialog say in big print "Phone is off", like my ancient pdQ did.

Dialing is accomplished using the Phone applet. If you don't mind touching your screen (or if you have a screen protector), one-handed operation is possible. In my case, I cradle the device in my left hand, turn it on using my index finger, and then use my thumb to hit the Dial button and navigate the Phone applet. The d-pad also serves several functions in the Phone applet; for example, if you hit the Down key, you'll get a list of your speed dial entries. I frequently will hit the Phone button, hit down, scroll through, and click the center d-pad button to dial a contact -- and as such it works reasonably well. I wish the numbers on the main applet screen were bigger, however; and, of course, there is no tactile feedback. You can enable speakerphone once you're connected, but you can't do it before or set any default.


Figure 20: The phone dialing applet in PPCPE.

For those of you who own GSM Pocket PC Phones, the interface is extremely similar, with some small changes. In the Phone applet, the Talk and End buttons are rearranged slightly -- instead of being one button that toggles between the two states, they're separate. This is a mixed bag -- while it avoids ambiguity, your thumb has to be more dexterous if you're one-handing the unit. In addition, since Verizon supports the voicemail indicator, SMS and voicemail are separate notifications (unlike T-Mobile US, which uses SMS messages to notify you of new voicemail). There's also a "charging" icon/notification which pops up when you plug the unit into an AC jack; I don't quite understand why this is necessary, since both the cradle and the AC adapter have charging lights. (If multiple notifications occur at the same time, PPCPE groups them into a "bubble" which you can tap to see individual notifications).

The Phone option dialogs have changed slightly as well to accommodate CDMA options. For you XDA owners, you can compare your tabs with the ones below.




Figure 21: Phone customization screens.

Yes, there's a GPS option in there, although turning it on doesn't seem to do much at this point. I doubt this'll ever be useful as a general GPS, but may eventually help in e911 applications and provider-based location-specific services.

Other Phone Edition enhancements include the Contacts applet, in which telephone numbers are underlined, much like hyperlinks -- tapping them triggers an automatic dial. You can also quickly switch to the Contacts applet via the button at the bottom of the Phone applet. There is an additional provider in the Inbox applet that deals with SMS messaging. (For those of you who ask, there is a way to do email-via-SMS through Verizon and the i700, but it's undocumented.) Vibration support is present throughout the Phone Edition OS -- you can either use the Volume Control applet and explicitly set every sound to trigger a vibrate, or you can use the Sounds and Notifications applet to explicitly vibrate for certain events.


Figure 22: There's a vibration option in the volume panel.

I prefer the latter method, as I can control precisely what causes a vibrate, and I generally keep everything else silent. One interesting trick for you Pocket PC Phone Edition users who like vibrate: try setting your speaker volume to the lowest setting (NOT muted), and then specify vibrate for only the events you want, and it works perfectly without making any audible sounds. If you mute the device via the volume control, then SMSes or reminders won't trigger a vibration, while if you set the device to vibrate via the volume control, other events (like ActiveSync) trigger a vibrate. I guess a bit of complexity comes with the flexibility...

Many third-party applications also support the Phone Edition. For example, Pocket Informant supports seamless dialing. In fact, PI has a neat call-tracking feature -- as soon as you trigger a dial, it will bring you to a screen where you can enter notes for the contact, and it will even automatically track the phone call's length for you for contact-management purposes.

Apart from these enhancements, the Phone Edition is almost identical to the Pocket PC 2002 OS. I say identical because I find the Phone Edition variant to be slightly less stable. My previous non-Phone Edition full-time device was an iPAQ 3870, and I had the unit so precisely set up that when I went home every night I could see that the RAM utilization remained the same after I shut all the applications down. In fact, I would only reset my 3870 once a month or so -- when the SD slot flaked out. With both my T-Mobile unit and this i700, I find myself having to soft-reset about once a week or two to free up RAM that appears to have leaked. In addition, the device starts acting slightly quirky leading up to the point where I need a soft reset -- either the SD slot disappears, or the amount of time it takes to notify me of an incoming call increases slightly, or even a situation where the speakerphone clicks on for about 2 seconds when I accept a call (and then it clicks off). A soft reset cures these, but it would be nice if some of these quirks were ultimately stamped out; I'm hoping that a WM2003 upgrade takes care of that. It's worth mentioning, however that I find the i700 to be a bit more stable than the T-Mobile XDA. Overall, the Phone Edition features work well, and I really haven't had situations where I found the phone to be incapacitated by OS troubles.