Windows Phone Thoughts: T-Mobile Wings It

The Wing Recovers and Soars
As I stated earlier, performance is excellent and the overall form factor is a massive improvement over the MDA which was pretty good to begin with. The Wing gets high marks for having very good battery life, as well. At my office, my desk phone is forwarded to my mobile phone. After a day of calls, the Wing was at 75% of its battery life, and that's counting my experimentation and various clicking around to set it up. As it sits next to me, after being on for a full 12 hours and being used to surf the internet, text, and make phone calls, the battery sits at a comfortable 52%. You're probably not going to get days of life out of it, but charging it every night means you should have enough juice to get you through the day.


Figure 3: The mini-USB connector on the bottom of the Wing serves as the charging outlet and the headphone connector.

T-Mobile also gets high marks for the bundle. Included with the wing are a pair of stereo headphones with a volume dial, an extra stylus, a leather holster, Activesync 4.5 and a trial of Outlook 2007. Also included are a USB cable for syncing, a power adapter with a mini USB connector, and a Y-adapter that allows you to plug the charger and headset in at the same time which is a thoughtful add on considering that both the charger and the sync cable plug in to the same place.

Installation of the included software was standard fare. You pop the disc in, install ActiveSync, sit through the first sync, and you're done. Future syncs are as reliable as ever (which may or may not be good for you depending on past experiences) and I had no trouble whatsoever setting it up on my office PC. Caveat Emptor, though. There is no way to sync a Windows Mobile 6 device with a Mac, Intel or PowerPC. If you had any designs on grabbing either PocketMac or Missing Sync, don't bother. Neither one has Windows Mobile 6 support and no date has been set for either. If you don't mind not syncing for awhile, you should be okay. The word on the streets is that Parallels Desktop for the Mac will work with ActiveSync, so if you must sync, you can. Hopefully someone will fix this down the line, but I'm okay with not syncing for now.

Bull or Bear?
At a current retail price of $299 for new subscribers, the Wing has debuted at a full $200 below both its suggested retail, and the MDA's original launch price. If you're new to T-Mobile and looking for a Windows Mobile 6 phone, the Wing is really a no-brainer. Everything from its performance to its style screams refinement. It's exactly the kind of polish, fit and finish you'd expect from a second generation handheld.

The MDA was good. The Wing is significantly better and it's definitely a keeper.

Vincent M. Ferrari is a blogger, photographer wannabe, digital media junkie, and Apple fanboy from the Bronx, New York. His most famous accomplishment is cancelling his AOL account which got him an inordinate amount of fame, something he still brags about to all his friends. When he's not taking down multi-billion dollar corporations, he's writing on his own blog, taking photos, and working as a Producer for the iLifeZone podcast and the Apple Phone Show podcast. He also is the co-founder of ISPN Media, a podcasting network dedicated to giving regular folks a voice.