Windows Phone Thoughts: Dell Axim X3i - Now With Added Bluetooth

Wi-Fi & Bluetooth Together
In addition to the normal four hardware buttons on the front of the device, Dell provides two additional buttons at the edge of the case. The left-hand button controls the recording option whilst the right-hand button controls the wireless functionality. This is a very simple toggle operation - pressing it once turns all of the wireless functionality on and pressing it again turns it all off.

In addition to the hardware button, there are software methods of controlling the radios. For example, if you have both wireless features turned on, tapping on the connectivity icon at the top of the display produces a balloon like the one shown in Figure 14. Tapping on the "Turn on flight mode" option causes the Wi-Fi radio to be turned off - presumably a reference to the fact that you are not permitted to use Wi-Fi on an airplane. Hmm … I'm sure that at least one airline was thinking of using Wi-Fi to provide Internet access to economy class …


Figure 14: Flight mode option.

Similarly it is possible to turn Bluetooth off from the Today screen whilst leaving Wi-Fi enabled. In fact, of the two technologies, Bluetooth is easier to turn on and off. For example, if you press the Wireless button so that both are disabled, it is still possible to turn Bluetooth back on from within the software. However, it doesn't seem to be possible to do this for Wi-Fi. This is unfortunate as it means that the only way to get Wi-Fi turned on is to press the Wireless button … which may actually turn everything off to begin with, if it is in the wrong state.

Battery Life
I thought it would be interesting to see what the impact is of using the two wireless options on battery life. I carried out four tests to see how the battery percentage decreased over time. All tests were conducted with maximum backlight and no user activity. Timings were collected using Spb Benchmark. The results are as follows:

• No wireless - 4 hours, 15 minutes, 43 seconds;
  
• Wi-Fi enabled - 4 hours, 13 minutes, 12 seconds;
  
• Bluetooth & Wi-Fi enabled - 4 hours, 4 minutes, 57 seconds;
  
• Bluetooth enabled - 3 hours, 55 minutes, 53 seconds.

You are probably wondering why using Bluetooth appears to place such a high drain on the battery and that it appears to last longer if you are using Wi-Fi on its own. The test results are, unfortunately, slightly misleading because they don't make it clear that when the battery life gets down to about 20%, the Axim turns the Wi-Fi radio off, thus saving battery power. This doesn't happen with Bluetooth - it is kept on until the battery runs down. The other thing that needs to be remembered is that although the radio hardware was on, and therefore drawing power, the Axim wasn't being used during these tests. These are, therefore, likely to be top-end figures.

Conclusions
It is a shame that Dell, for whatever reason, was not in a position to include integrated Bluetooth when the X3i was first released. It is clear from using this model that the integration works very well and the Widcomm software provides a well tested and well established set of functionality. The wizard interface makes it very easy to establish connections with other devices. If you are looking for a Pocket PC that has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in one package, you should definitely have this device on your list for consideration.