Windows Phone Thoughts: Say Hi to the T-Mobile MDA!

Finally, the part you've all been waiting for: the keyboard.


Figure 2: The MDA's keyboard, open.

The sliding mechanism feels a bit loose on mine after having played with it for almost a week. That is a bit alarming, because I tend to make extensive use of the messaging client on any Pocket PC. I'm taking a wait and see attitude on it. The keys themselves are well-spaced, and the F and J keys are slugged so you can find them without looking. One minor annoyance is the placement of some of the symbols. In an effort to make more space available for the keys themselves, HTC put symbols like the @ - and ! on top of other keys, requiring an alt keypress to activate them. I don't mind the idea of sacrificing those to make the letter keys bigger, however, it does get frustrating to have to press the alt key for almost every symbol.

They good part, though, is that the keyboard is very responsive, and has nice tactile feedback. It may take a bit to get used to it, but once you do, you'll be whizzing through words in no time. It really is that good. It's a slightly different design from the keyboards used on HTC's other devices (The JasJar, the Vx6700) but I think it's every bit as good, just different.

Overall, although it's a bit quirky as far as the layout of symbols, the keyboard is reliable and easy to use and makes up for a few shortcomings in other areas.

There's Always a "But"...
While most of the features implemented in the MDA can be described as pretty good or good, there are some areas that need improvement.

First, the signal reception is relatively unimpressive, and the MDA takes what seems like an eternity to re-acquire a signal if it's out of range for any length of time. The fix for this, as I've discovered the hard way, is to set the "Network Search" option to manual, and manually select T-Mobile as your network. This speeds up re-acquiring of a signal dramatically.

Secondly, T-Mobile disables the 802.11g and instead leaves the phone locked onto 802.11b. This is easily patched with a little bit of registry tweaking, but in reality it shouldn't be necessary if the phone can support it.

Finally, voice quality is somewhat hollow. My last phone was a Motorola V635, and it had the warm and full sound characteristic of most CDMA phones. The MDA's voice quality is good, but not as good as I was used to.

Conclusions
After using the MDA for about a week, I've decided that it's a keeper. It will be staying in my pocket for the near future because, despite it not being perfect, it does a few things really well. It's a stable phone and organizer with enough features and modes of connectivity to keep you in touch from pretty much anywhere. The inclusion of Bluetooth guarantees that you won't have the typical face "stuff" on the screen of the phone, and despite the battery life not being the greatest, you should be able to get through a day with it as long as you make sure to throw it on the charger each night.

I would definitely recommend the MDA to anyone looking for a compact all-in-one communicator and PDA. It's not a performance monster, but it does what it does very well and you'd be hard-pressed to find more bang for your buck out there.

Vincent Ferrari is a Systems Analyst for a Cellular Master Agent in New York City. He enjoys photography, music, and cycling, and is an avid early adopter.