Ny regrets?

[ID64]

I am about to order MDA JAM myself and wondering if I am doing the right thing. I currently own XDA 2 imate, which I am trying to sell right now with no apparent luck. New JAM cost about 518 Euro's. 64 megs of RAM...

It's small, nice looking and what I've heard, very stable and very well build. But I still can't justify this upgade...

Please, point a lost soul to the right direction ;)

[Anonymous]

Is size a major issue for you right now? Do you get alot of strange looks from holding the very PDA-like XDA2 to your ear? ;)

If size is enough of a justification to you, then go for it. Otherwise, you're getting a unit with pretty much the same capabilities. Yes, there is also a 1.3 megapixel camera, but the quality of the pics don't look any better than that of the pics taken with the XDA2.

[sandyind]

Hi

I had similar concerns when I considered the upgrade, but I have absolutely no regrets now. I have a Pocket PC that is so unobtrusive, I feel so much better. If you travel a lot or move about a lot, keeping track of various things does turn out to be a bother, particularly if you have the rather large xda with you. I feel like I've been freed, somehow.

Just a feeling, but worth the upgrade. BTW, I got a good price for my XDA2 hence the upgrade.

Sands

[Kai920]

No regrets here. It's a feather-weight and feels tons smaller compared to my old XDA...

I doubt you will have any regrets either! Just fetch the most possible for your XDA2...

[ID64]

No regrets here. It's a feather-weight and feels tons smaller compared to my old XDA...

I doubt you will have any regrets either! Just fetch the most possible for your XDA2...

Thanks :)

Already sold my XDA 2 ;)

[LeSkip]

It's a nice little unit. Seems pretty solidly built, and I've only had one crash so far when I was trying to run a game.

However, there are definitely downsides. I just switched from a SE Z600 to the Magician, and for one thing the bluetooth is not as stable as the SE. I transfered about 200 contacts yesterday, and the Magician completely stopped receiving about three or four times. I had to turn it off and then back on again to get it working.

The second shortcoming is the phone sound quality. Seriously, this is a major issue that has been discussed on almost all forums dealing with the Magician. It sounds horrible compared to the Z600. We can only hope this will be adressed in a future software upgrade.

Thirdly, the battery could last a little longer. I get about a day and a night's usage out of it before the thing runs dry. Then again, I am a heavy user. My trusty old Z600 lasted about 72 hours before I switched.

Finally, the camera is a massive waste of space on the device. The pictures are dark, grainy, very blurry and almost completly lack color. The only sensible thing to do is to reprogram the camera button to do something useful, and forget that there even is a camera.

Those are my major criticisms towards the Magician. Overall, it is a pretty sweet device that I would definitely recommend to anyone wanting to buy a smartphone.

Skip

[katsj]

This sounds insane!!!!! :roll:
Are you trying to compare a powerful smartphone to a Z600 in terms of battery life??? Jam is one of the most impressive pocketpc phones in terms of battery life!!!
Anyway as for the stability problems I guess we have to wait till they iron all the ROM problems and that is the case with most SE or Nokia phones too! And if you think how much more complex is a pocketpc phone then you can understand that its still too early.
What I have to say is that the English T-Mobile ROM is by far the most stable ROM compared to iMate's and Qtek's ROMS. I also never had any problems with the sound quality and it seems the sound problems are not there in T-Mobile's phones. I guess its a fawlty hardware component in imate's and Qtek's banch of phones! Then again only time will tell if its a software or a hardware problem after all.
As for the camera its really bad at the moment but I guess its a software problem and not just low quality lens! Other people with good knowledge of photoshop filters are saying that the pics are ok but the auto settings of the camera's software are crappy.

[apap]

Katsj, I noticed your preference for the t-mob rom. Is it available and can I put it on an i-mate device? Thanks, A.

[LeSkip]

I agree that comparing a smartphone with a 400 MHz processor to the Z600 is slightly unfair, but that doesn't mean I am perfectly happy with the battery life of the Magician.

It is decent, since I can go for more than a day without recharging, and I might be able to squeeze some more out by shutting of Bluetooth and lowering the screen brightness.

As for the sound there appears to be two unrelated problems, one of them having to do with poorly constructed legs for the speaker, the other being poor speaker software. I seem to be suffering from the latter.

I have seen the photos that some people claim to be decent after improving them in Photoshop. I am far from impressed. Then again, I have yet to see a camera that produces good quality photos.

Releasing a device with inferior firmware seems like poor business practice to me. I know it has become quite commonplace, but it's still a nuisance. Additionally, as this is not the first Pocket PC Phone from HTC, one would think that they would have ironed out the major faults

My bottom line is: The Magician is far from perfect, but it's a neat and sweet little device. Prior to it I would have never considered buying a Pocket PC phone.

Skip

[katsj]

Katsj, I noticed your preference for the t-mob rom. Is it available and can I put it on an i-mate device? Thanks, A.

Of course you can! You have to follow my instructions! You will need an SD card 128MB or bigger and a card reader! But remember flashing your phone with T-Mobile's ROM and then getting it to a service for any reason with a different provider's ROM will void your warranty! I would recommend you should wait for a newer iMate ROM where they will iron the bugs so you ll be fine without loosing your warranty.
I was the one that fixed a friend's iMate JAM speaker and as far as I understood the problem in iMate JAM is most probably both hardware and software! If I were to buy an iMate JAM I would wait till they fix all those problems in their production line first and I would make sure I would get a JAM not from the first ones! I am so happy I bought a T-Mobile MDA Compact and not an iMate JAM.
As for the camera YES they should use a better camera. Sometimes I think they only got a 0.3MPixel in JAM and they use an interpolation routine that makes it look like a 1.3MPixel one only in resolution! In my opinion HTC has to think of a CCD camera and not a CMOS in the next models! SonyEricsson S700 is a very good example of a nice cameraphone.
I love my MDA Compact and at the moment there is no other gadget that would keep more happy than it! :wink:

[kta]

To get better results from the camera, make sure that the sharpness is around 10. The default 5 is horrible and was fixed in some imate extended ROM version.

Regarding colours, make sure you adjust the brightness and contrast. Avoid the default settings, they're horrible. When playing with the brightness or contrast, focus on something red in a light background. The red will help you balance the contrast while the light background will help you balance the brightness.

Changing the above settings will give you some VERY DECENT results for a camera phone. Certainly better than most Nokia and SE phones. Maybe not as good as Sharp's though! :wink: