Due to my volatile relationship with water recently, I lost my Motorola V180 to an unfortunate diswashing mishap. Coincidentally I was in the market for something that would make it as easy to sync my Outlook Calendar and Contacts and easier to keep up with than a PDA.
Lo and Behold came the Audiovox SMT 5600. What I like: Microsoft 2003 Smartphone O/S so it syncs with Activesync like any other Windows based PDA. Windows Media player (as if you needed to watch a postage stamp sized movie), Mini SD card memory expandable, it CHARGES when connected via USB to your PC/Laptop, you can drag and drop files, allows you to use Midi(remember those?) and MP3s files to create your own ringtones, Video and Cameraphone (nothing to write home about qualitywise though), I can add my pop3 mail accounts to the Messaging menu. bluetooth.What I didn’t like: the horizontally wide joystick. navigation with this thing is problematic. pushing down to hit enter gets you a three way shot at scrolling up, scrolling down or hitting enter. a side set jogdial would have been spiffy. typing – as much as i prefer text messaging a keyboard would have been nice, luckily theres a T9 predictive text option. also I kinda got used to the clamshell flip phone design, but the screen is bigger. so hey…
I added my PDA era Mapopolis maps to the phone viewed with Mapopolis’ Beta Smartphone frontend. I can view maps and scroll around but would need a Bluetooth GPS receiver to get full use of the product.
no more gadgets for ’05. Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas and Happy Kwaanza