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T-Mobile Dumps MS SmartPhone

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the thanks-but-no-thanks dept.

burgburgburg writes "It seems that T-Mobile International, Europe's second largest mobile phone operator, has decided against introducing a Microsoft SmartPhone after all. T-Mobile had announced their plans in February to introduce the MS SmartPhone this summer. Industry insiders say that the software for the phone continued to have 'fundamental problems,' leading to a high failure rate. French mobile carrier Orange introduced a MS SmartPhone, SPV, late last year. It initially had software security problems which Microsoft has claimed are patched."

1 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. Re:yep, that's a 1.0 product for ya by glesga_kiss · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Oh great. Another MS bashing article.

    I have the first SmartPhone, the Orange SPV. Without a doubt, it is the best phone I've ever seen. Here's some of the key features that not many phones can even do half of.

    • MSN Messenger
    • 65,000 colour display
    • Plays mp3, wma, divx, mpeg with full screen video (I used to have SW EP2 on it)
    • Ringtones and notifications are wav files. Make your own, or download millions of free ones
    • IMAP/POP e-mail
    • Syncs Contacts, Appointments, Tasks and E-mail with Active Sync. If you have a corporate Exchange system, this is fantastic
    • Proper internet browser, not WAP, can browse real sites
    • Games that are light years ahead of the Nokia java ones
    • Game Boy Color emulator
    • NES emulator
    • Pocket SCUMM

    The UI is a dream. There is no dispute, MS know how to make an easy to use and intuative interface. It's a logical, object oriented interface, where you can easilly jump around to related tools. It's a pocket PC, not a phone.

    With respect to the "security hole" found, some clarification is required. The "hole" allows someone to perform a hard reset on the phone, during which you can tweak a file to disable the application signing lock that Orange had implemented. This benefited users as the software community exploded. Less than a week later, DOOM, DivX and many games had been ported. Orange now offer over-the-air unlocking, due to the explosion of interest since the community started.

    This phone platform has the largest number of free (as in speach and beer) applications available. VNC, Telnet etc have all been done (no SSH yet :-(

    Sure, it was a little buggy at times. Until the update several months ago. Now, the only time you'll have problems are when you are messing around with Beta software that is still under development. Out of the box, the phone is extremely reliable.

    No other phone comes close. So, it's the first product in a whole new platform. Were the first builds of DOS any good? No. The first builds of Windows. Of course not. And the first builds of Linux? Don't make me laugh.

    But it's MS, so I'll probably get modded down by the zealots.

    PS I admin three Linux servers myself, the OS of my personal choice. I'm not pro-MS. It's just a really good phone. Wait until the new ones come out though, it's not the best hardware design, a little top heavy.