Now seem to be a good time to talk about a mobile phone. No, not the new Apple iPhone, but the the Vodafone V1240. Apple's new gadget is not an actual shipping product yet - by virtue of being announced, it has just progressed from rumourware to vapourware. It's ubercool, but we might actually get it here in time for Christmas 2007. On the other hand, I have been using a Vodafone V1240 "smartphone" as my only mobile phone since around August 2006.
I will list the phone's good and bad points, but first there are a couple of things which could be seen as good points, but my previous phone, a Sony Ericsson K700 from about 3 years ago can also do them, so these are neither pro nor con: they are simply required to stay competitive with the midfield. These features are: a large bright screen, and the ability to upload and use MP3s as ringtones, camera, and ability to upload your own wallpaper. I would cite the wi-fi, but I'm, not interested in trying to read web pages on a screen that small, especially not when I have a laptop in the bag.
I should also say that these points no not necessarily apply to other Windows Mobile devices, even ones that look quite similar. They vary quite a lot in terms of what software is loaded onto them, and Vodafone has customised this phone's software.
The Good Points:
Recharging off a USB socket rather than a proprietary connector is very convenient.
The battery life is long.
The email and appointments on the phone features are very useful
The ActiveSync with the PC is simple and functional.
The Bad Points:
Key response is often sluggish. The processor sometimes struggles with the workload.
The keys are large and go very near to the edge of the phone's front, thus it's very easy for the phone to make a call by accident in your bag.
There is no built-in automatic key lock (I mean one that kicks in without intervention after a set period of time). The omission of this standard feature is puzzling in light of the previous item. I've found a decent third-party add-on that does it at Maniac's smartphone tools, but getting something this basic as a binary file from a man called "Maniac" doesn't inspire confidence. Also, unlocking is sometimes clumsy, requiring three of four key presses to get through both key locks. An integrated autolock wouldn't have this issue.
The built in alarm has exactly two options: Time of day, and on or off. That's it.
I think of the last two consumer phones that I had, which in my opinion hit the usability sweet spot between simplicity and options by having two alarms: one "recurrent alarm" which is usually set to go off at wake-up time, Monday to Friday (and not Saturday nor Sunday), and a second alarm which can be set the day before to remind of the non-recurring things in life. That worked great - sometimes it just did the right thing with no intervention for months on end. Going back to an alarm that needs configuring every Friday and every Sunday so I don't get woken on Saturday or left sleeping on Monday seems to me a big step backwards. This is not a general problem of Windows Mobile, I have seen other windows mobile devices with better alarms.
There is also no stopwatch or egg-timer application, but those are minor issues since I used them maybe once a month or so.
And finally there's the big one: problems connecting calls. This seems to be especially a problem if you drift in and out of reception. Unfortunately this applies to any Londoner who travels by tube. Ana attempt at a call while out of reception results in the display "Dialling…" displayed until you give up - the phone never realises that the call is not going to go through. Calls that should go through quite frequently cannot be completed - in many cases I think this is the aftermath of such a dead spot. Most phones can recover from then and notice that they have coverage again. Spurious error messages such as "Dialing…", "Phone error: The operation failed" are quite common. Upon rebooting, the call can be made. Or received as the case may be. This behaviour has caused me and my loved one a bit of stress, but fortunately I haven't had to depend on this phone. Because you can't depend on it working.
Being able to make and receive calls wherever there is cover, without a tedious manual process or resetting the phone and waiting for the windows logo to go away is not an optional extra. It is basic functionality. All the bells and whistles on a phone don't make up for not having reliable calling; especially not when so many other cheaper and older phones do it so well that we expect it as a matter of course. This phone may not be a "consumer device", but all the people who are going to use it are going to have prior experience with "consumer device" phones, and will expect more, not less from a new, feature-filled phone.
I'm sorry if I get worked up about it, but this phone has gotten to me a bit. Sometimes at parties after a few drinks, when I am rebooting it in order to make a call or get the Bluetooth to work, I'll hold it up to people that I don’t really know and say "you see this. This is a Vodafone somefourdigitnumberorother. It runs windows. Don’t get one." ... and a few rude words about it. I'm probably not being fair to Windows Mobile in general, but I'm not even kidding about that.