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O2 Xda Atom Exec Review
An anonymous reader writes "CNET has posted a full review of the new O2 Xda Atom Exec smartphone device. They were very impressed with the handheld, giving it their 'Editor's Choice' award. From the article: 'On its own, the Exec is a highly impressive, push e-mail enabled smart phone, but if you already own the first Atom, its upgrade worthiness is questionable.'"
Text only version
for posting these fscking Slashvertisements?
How about this for a proposal:
- There are at most 3 slashvertisements for every legimate story
- slashvertisements are clearly marked as such
- subscribers can hide the slashvertisements on the front page
Does anyone actually find this usable? It's impressive it works at all, but I've always been frustrated by it, even when writing phone numbers and addresses.
See the rest of the XDA range.
Easy to read version (without bells and whistles): http://www.cnet.com.au/pdas/pdas/print.htm?TYPE=st ory&AT=40063806-39035588t-30000042c
Linux PDAs have traditionally been cursed with buggy software, awful handwriting recognition, crashes and high prices. But hey, it runs Linux right? Certainly Linux is not the cause of these issues, but it seems symptomatic of certain manufacturers that they think they can release some junk and get people to buy it simply because it runs Linux.
Fortunately we're getting to the stage where Linux is reliable and mostly behind the scenes. What OS is running underneath is an irrelevance to most people. They'd rather that their PDA / phone did what it was meant to do, namely make calls, take notes, make appointments, store addresses etc. If it runs Linux then all well and good, but a piece of crap running Linux is still a piece of crap.
You are not exactly correct. Up untill recently, HTC (not HP, HP's devices are also made by HTC), did not sell anything directly to the public, they design and make the devices which are then marketed to the larger brands like Dell, HP, Palm, and the PPC phone makers. HTC however purchased QTEK and another company I cannot remember, or partnered, either way, to begine selling directly to the public. They design and make the phones, and then customize them for the carriers, just like nokia does. You will find that the O2 version of this phone (HTC Prophet I think), is identical internally to the Qtek and Imate versions, but differ on the outside casing, and the Customizations (extended rom and radio rom).
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Useless!
I'll have one of these instead.
http://europe.nokia.com/A4142030
Deleted
Huh punk? Is it? Well?
I don't get that comment at all.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
This is one of the rare smartphones that isn't manufactured by HTC. It's actually made by another large OEM device company, Quanta (I believe they are actually the world's largest laptop manufacturer as well). The HTC Prophet, although similar in appearance is a quite different phone (TI OMAP Processor rather than Intel, for instance).
"HTC however purchased QTEK and another company I cannot remember, or partnered, either way, to begine selling directly to the public"
The name of the company you couldn't remember is Dopod, HTC just bought a $150m stake.
http://www.physorg.com/news68740895.html
Ok guys, I've been using PDA's for the last 5-6 years or so, mainly for work and such and I just can't honestly imagine them getting further than they are now and laptops are just getting so much more viable as PDA replacements. Sure there are those certain times when a PDA is the only choice but as a wise man once told me "You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air." I whistled for a cab, and when it came near, The license plate said "fresh" and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, But I thought "Nah forget it, Yo home to Bel Air." I pulled up to the house about seven or eight, and I yelled to the cabby "Yo holmes, smell ya later." Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there, To sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air.
... at the E61 or the E70 while you are browsing the Nokia site I think they have a newer Symbian version than the one you linked to. Design wise I especially like the E70. It folds open into a QWERTY keyboard and has a 352 x 416 pixels display which is better than my old iPaq had but it's quite small for the kind of features it offers. Personally I like Ericsson and Nokia phones better than the Windows Mobile powered ones like the Xda Atom Exec. Windows mobile phones are nice and well integrated but only if you are runnig Microsoft products wall-to-wall. If you want to connect to non Microsoft solutions, unless the phone manufacturer bundles solutions for things like Cisco VPN, Lotus Notes and Blackberry connectivity, you usually end up paying a tidy sum to acquire these capabilities.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
just trying to get my atom working with ubuntu when this article came up. seems to be a problem getting the ipaq driver to recognise it.
hardware is pretty good, althpugh software has been pretty flaky. lots of crashes early on. it seems to have settlef lately though.
size is very small, but it fits into the pocket much better than the o2 xda2.
this st was made on it over the wifi link. very handy but long texts are tricky.
I've got to get one of these. It can store data in ROM! Windows Mobile must be pure magic...
I know. My mistake. I actually read the article. I'm sorry....
to be willing to pay us$915 for something like that. Let me shed tears for
the poor exec who has to carry a cell and seperate PDA at a fraction of the
cost. And if your company isn't buying then you really do need help with
your spending priorities. No moaning about the cost of this or that when
you put one your credit card.
I have the O2 Exec... otherwise known as the HTC Universal and I love it.
5 972
:-)
/Mad
It does all of the usual PDA stuff as well as being my mobile phone, GPS (with additional matchbox sized receiver) and I can walk round town using MiniStumbler to detect open WIFI.
It syncs with Exchange so I can access my work public folders and Global Contacts. It also does email, texts, web, etc etc.
And yes... the Universal can run Linux: http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=3
Oh, nearly forgot, it also doubles up as an mp3 player with an additional SD card (up to 4GB). So quite a step up from my previous Palm V
I don't either. Maybe it's the leeches sucking at my forehead...
.. .
but then agiaian, thiis new styllus pen ha aas
ooh! look! i can see myself in shiny screen! hehe hehe hehe hehe
I had one of these - absolute rubbish. One of the slowest pocket PCs I've ever used - and I've been carrying pocket PCs for 21 years.
It got to a point where I couldn't answer a call because the OS was taking so long to respond to a close operation - that was the point at which I took it back and picked up the vastly superior Imate K-Jam with the slide-out keyboard.
Closing an entry in the "notes" function took an astonishing 31 seconds on some occasions (I actually timed it), it was lagging all the time and often unstable. I had to not only soft-reset often but hard-reset (total wipe) too often - and that was with the absolute latest firmware of which there were a frighteningly large number of releases (this shows the unit was shipped too early). The camera is useless and so slow to come up you could quite literally pull another camera out of your pocket, turn it on, aim, focus, zoom and shoot far more quickly than this thing can respond to its camera software - clicking that photo button could take as long as 90 seconds to even bring the jittery camera up, when you took the shot you never knew exactly WHEN it took the shot so you'd often get the wrong photo or your subject would look away or move.
I tried a range of things including and overclocking utility which ramped the CPU up to 624mhz - that improved it slightly (almost to usable levels of performance in some cases) but it still wasn't enough. Trying more exotic things such as Pocket DIVX playback - which I could do on my older 400mhz Viewsonic PDA - simply didn't work due to compatibility problems.
It lacked hands-free (the KJam has this) and sound quality was ordinary at best - it's designed to be pretty but not to be used. The FM radio only works with their own particular headphones and I can't think of it being that useful for most (that's a personal thing I guess) - hands free was far more useful to me.
Imate and HP also sell this thing under their own branding (there's a lot of HTC units badge-engineered) and I wouldn't touch those either....
Linux PDA's have not always been expensive. In fact, although not a PDA, the Nokia 770 is only $350. The big issue is WHY IN HECK ISN'T SHARP SELLING THE ZAURUS HERE!
Right now, if you want Linux on a handheld, you have to have one of four things: a Nokia 770, import one of the Zaurii from Japan(EXPENSIVE because you have to import it), flash linux on a perfectly good iPaq or other handheld or possibly installing desktop linux on a Sony UX180. That's it. Anyone remember the Agenda VR3? No I did not think so....
Gorkman
"... as long as it works." Considering that Windows PDAs only sync reliably and smoothly with Windows computers, yeah there are some of us for whom Linux on a PDA is a selling point. Some of us don't consider Windows to be the computer.
For me, the main reason I want Linux on my PDA (Even if it's an after-market mod like some of the Linux on HTC PDA projects out there) is because I get a development environment that doesn't require expensive Microsoft software, and can be extended in any way I want, not just any way they allow me. Right now, my Zaurus syncs via wifi to my computer at home, and via USB charging cable to my computer at work. Yeah, it was a bit of work initially, but it's on auto-pilot now and works reliably and smoothly.
... And so it comes to this.
I'm having a hard time imagining buying a phone with no hardware keypad. I can be ok with handwriting recognition for the computer part of it, but I'm really gonna need an actual 12-key keypad for the phone part.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
*** RANT WARNING ***
I think this "push e-mail enabled" market speak has been repeated one time too many. People actually believe it is some magical, only available via crackberry and crapchange servers, functionality brought via the heavens. It is called IDLE. IDLE has been available via IMAP for years. Lots of years. Many much more years!
type this to see for yourself.
telnet your.imap.server 143
a001 CAPABILITIES
* CAPABILITY IMAP4REV1 IDLE NAMESPACE MAILBOX-REFERRALS BINARY UNSELECT SCAN SORT THREAD=REFERENCES THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT MULTIAPPEND LOGIN-REFERRALS STARTTLS AUTH=CRAM-MD5 capabilies ad nausium....
a001 OK CAPABILITY completed
and that is from plain old uw-imapd
wooo woooo i have puuuush technology on my internet!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I use PDAs in a day-to-day basis since PalmIIIe.
after 4 generations of palms (last one was a zire 72), i finally took a PocketPC (o2 XDA II) only to consolidate all my gadgets in one.
basically my xda = PDA + cell phone + pendrive + mp3 player.
but zire 72 was way better than XDA ins terms of usability and shows me that PDAs have a lot to evolve, they must be not like computers and more like cell phones. adding a new contact with a photo is a burocratic procedure that convinces 99% of the users NOT to do it again (only to mention one example)...
Smartphones have phone-like keypads. This has a touch screen, and is a Pocket PC, Phone Edition. Smartphones are limited into abilities, usually with only about 10 MB of memory usable, and often locked to what applications can be run (developer signed, or in many cases, operator signed). Pocket PCs have nothing like that limiting their use.
Bahahahah! That has got to be the most atrocious company/product/model/version name that I've ever seen.
Take something that might be the chemical formula for oxygen molecules or might not, add an unpronounceable thing that might or might not be an acronym, add on another word that's currently being used by a completely unrelated technology, and top it off with a word that already means either a person or a system call, but never a piece of hardware, and you get a true miracle of impenetrable gibberish. I honestly think that it might be literally impossible to create a worse name.
Do not EVER buy anything from O2. This company is shady in its business practices.
Here's my story:
I bought an O2 Atom in Hong Kong a while back. Within 2 weeks the unit was broken and wouldn't turn back on. I went all the way to their repair center, and had to wait in line for over 2 hours to get service. And then they told me I'd have to come back another day. This is fine. However, when they notified me to go back, it was in the form of a specific date and specific few hours. I told the tech if I can come later since that time period was too restrictive. He wouldn't promise me anything. I'm like WTF! If the unit is fixed and is back at the repair center, why such a small window of time to pick up the unit?
Then, after I'd moved to Beijing, after about 2 months, the unit broke AGAIN. What an awful piece of machinary. So, I called up the O2 support line at 011-852-800-968-205. For hours on end it was not working, or was busy. Strange isn't it? So finally, after about 20 tries, about a day later, I finally get through. The tech told me it was ok to send the unit in via postal mail.
So, off I went sending the unit to Hong Kong's repair center. Now suddenly they refused to accept the package. Their initial claim was that there might be some sort of "tariff". I called up DHL and they told me there's no such thing. No tariff was due and nobody said that to the O2 Zone repair center.
Ok so now I'm getting worried, so I called up O2 and assured them there's no tariff due, and told DHL to make sure to tell O2 that there's no tariff for accepting the unit.
DHL tries again the next day. Once again it's rejected!!!! WTF!!!
This time, the excuse was that there's no "contact person". The day earlier I explicitly asked the O2 person on the phone who the contact person and phone number was. He told me to give them the support number 011-852-800-968-205. As for a contact person, he said there would be no such person, because any tech can accept it.
Now it's beginning to be clear to me that something fishy is going on with this O2 company. They tell me there's no contact person needed, and that if there are problems, to contact that number. Yet they refused the package again!
So, to recap, O2's product broke down on me TWICE within 4 months. Each time I went to get it repaired, there was some sort of obstacle, one after another. Is this pure coincidence, or purposeful neglect? You tell me.
All I know is, I'm NEVER EVER buying another crap from O2 again. You go ahead if you want to, but you might hear the echo "I told you so" later on...
eTrade SUCKS