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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: HTC Mogul PPC-6800 Smartphone (Sprint) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted HTC Mogul PPC-6800 Smartphone (Sprint) Reviews (cont...)Date: 2008-03-16 What a FANTASTIC device! This device replaced my iPAQ-4450 from 2003 and Motorola RAZR from AT&T/Cingular (you think you have call quality problems? I could not even - during the 2-year contract - call from my own house!). I had none - absolutely none! - of the bad experiences that the other reviewers complain and whine about. The onscreen keyboard too small? Shell out $10.00 for a third-party utility. It's a little thick? It's got a pull-out keyboard -- what do you expect? It's impossible to dial the phone one-handed (when driving, etc.) -- thank God you're not anywhere near my car. With the new ROM upgrade (which HTC/Sprint delivered on 03/12/2008) the speed has improved remarkably and -- more important -- the battery life is much better now too. Windows Mobile 6.0 -- or the recently introduced Windows Mobile 6.1 -- makes syncing absolutely flawless and without effort with my desktop where I, yes, use Office 2007. And the amount of third-party software (both free and for fee) make it unbelievably customizable. I'm still blown away by it, and extremely happy with my purchase. Date: 2008-02-26 Excellent PDA. Not-so-excellent phone. When I recently decided that I was tired of printing my schedule out each night and toting a hardcopy with me, the obvious answer was to get a convergent device that integrated PDA functionality with cell phone functionality. After a fair bit of research, I bought an HTC Mogul for a couple reasons: WiFi connectivity to the web, Microsoft Windows Mobile for reliable synchronization with Outlook, a large touchscreen, and a slide-out keyboard to name just a few. On paper, this device was hard to beat. The design just seemed to incorporate everything I wanted - or thought I wanted. Unfortunately, while the concept of this device is terrific, the execution had some gaping holes. I used it for about a week, and then gave up and sold it on eBay. Here's why: * Phone Dialing: As I said in the title, the Mogul is a really nifty PDA that makes a really, really good electronic daytimer. But it isn't a very good phone. Sliding out the keyboard to dial a number was very cumbersome, and using the touchscreen was maddening. No matter how big the screen is, it is still too easy to press the wrong digits as you dial. So, you either reach for the stylus, which is a pain just to dial a number, or you get used to hitting the backspace key a lot as you type a wrong digit, erase it, and stumble your way through the supposed-to-be-simple process of dialing a phone number. A big drawback of a touchscreen is that there is no tactile feedback to tell you if you have pressed the key. At the end of the day, the process of dialing the phone - one of the most basic things that a cell phone should be good at - was unnecessarily cumbersome. * Bluetooth: Many of the reviews on the Mogul comment on the poor quality of the Bluetooth. In my experience, they are right. I could hear other people just fine, but the converse was not true: they always complained about the quality of my voice. I read elsewhere that the device shares the same antenna for WiFi and Bluetooth, and this creates problems when both are in use. I don't know if it is true or not, and I don't recall whether there was any marked improvement in the Bluetooth audio quality when the WiFi was off versus when it was on. I just know that the Bluetooth quality was almost always marginal and the ability to talk handsfree is very important to me. I talk frequently on the phone from my home office for business and I like to have my hands free for other tasks. I can't tell you how many times I had to rip the earpiece out of my ear in disgust to just hold the phone up to my mouth so others could hear me. Like that particle the vacuum won't pick up, you keep running it over and over the carpet to give it "one last chance" before finally giving up and picking up the crumb by hand. That's how it was with the Bluetooth on this phone. You keep giving it "one last chance." I don't know about you, but when I call people, they want to hear more than "can you hear me now" 15 times in a conversation. * Voice Command: This phone is advertised as having voice command. Perhaps if you get it directly from HTC this is true. But if you buy the Sprint version, this functionality has been turned off and you are limited to the older voice tag functionality where you have to use your own voice to record tags for each number or command that you want to launch with voice activation. Sounds OK - until you realize that those 200 numbers in your phone book mean recording 200 voice tags, which takes a lot of time, not to mention memory space. But then comes the real rub: when you try to actually use the voice tags to dial numbers in hands-free fashion when wearing your Bluetooth earpiece, it never - and I mean never - works. Now, imagine the anticipation of being able to use this phone when you are driving, and realizing that it just ain't gonna happen. You pull over, yank out the stylus, dial the number, merge back into traffic and...busy signal...no answer...wrong number...etc. Do that twice and it is two times too many. Ultimately, this lack of handsfree capabilities was the show stopper that caused me to sell the phone rather than keep it. As an aside, there are two kinds of voice activation capabilities in cell phones these days: voice tags and voice command. Voice command is true voice recognition software, similar to the unattended answering systems that many help desks and customer service lines use these days. You know... "press or say 1 for sales, 2 for technical support, 3 for questions about your billing, ..." It recognizes any voice. On the newer phones with voice command, you can say things like "call John Smith...mobile" or "call John Smith...home" or "call 555-1992" and it will WORK, whether directly into the handset or into the Bluetooth earpiece or when using the speakerphone. For whatever reason, the Mogul's implementation of the voice tag recognition features were just not robust. If I have to speak directly into the handset rather than an earpiece, the whole voice recognition thing is sort of a moot point. * Integrated connector: HTC uses a connector that they call ExUSB, which basically combines audio, charging, and sync functions into a single connector. The unique connector design means that you can plug a standard mini-USB cable into the device for charging and synchronizing to a PC, or can connect headphones that use the proprietary ExUSB style format. The connector on the device is designed to accept both. They also provide a splitter that let you use conventional 2.5mm headsets while simultaneously plugged into a charger or while sync'ing. I thought it was a rather elegant solution, but I really would have preferred two independent connections on the device: a 3.5 mm headset jack and a conventional mini-USB. This was not a big dissatisfier, but rather a minor annoyance to have to carry an extra "gizmo" with me when I wanted to use standard earphones with the device (my ears don't do well with earbud-style headsets...I prefer over-the-ear). So, as I said, the main dissatisfiers with the Mogul were aspects related to its functionality as a phone. I don't know about you, but I was hoping for something that was a rock solid phone and a pretty good PDA. What I got was a rock solid PDA and a very iffy phone. But enough of the bashing. Let's talk about what I DID like in this device. * Intuitive GUI: Because it was a Windows device, the user interface was very familiar. Didn't know quite what to do next? Right click. Expecting the organizer to work like Outlook? It does...because it IS Outlook. Want to open and read WORD docs or EXCEL spreadsheets or even open PDFs from websites you are accessing? No problem. It all works flawlessly. It is basically like having a pocket sized version of your most frequently used desktop tools with you. I did not have to constantly refer to the manual because it was all pretty familiar territory for those who have used Windows for any length of time on their desktop. * Media Player: The media player was pretty much just a scaled down version of its big brother desktop version, Windows Media Player 10 or 11. And, contrary to what I was told by the HTC help desk, it does support microSD cards larger than 2GB (and Sprint? Don't even go there...their ability to answer simple technical questions like "how large of a memory card can I use?" or "will the microSD slot support the newer SDHC format?" was abysmal). Turns out the device will work with SDHC cards just fine and I corresponded with several people that were using 4GB and 8GB memory cards with no problem. Translation: you can put an awful lot of mp3s, photos, messages, and files on 8 gigs. There is little need to carry a second device like an iPod for multimedia anymore. Also, I really liked the fact that accessing the microSD card was so easy on this device. I now own a Blackberry Pearl and it is considerably more cumbersome to insert and remove the microSD card. As a result, I never remove it unless absolutely necessary. That was not the case with the Mogul and when I wanted to add files, I just took the microSD card out, inserted it into the std. SD-sized adapater, plugged it into my PC, and used it as a removable drive. Super easy. * Touchscreen: While I did not like the touchscreen for dialing phone numbers, it really was pretty slick for most of the other PDA functionality. Frankly, I found it easier to type most of the time just using a "soft" keyboard that displayed on the screen by pressing an optional menu command than to slide out the keyboard tray and start pounding away with my thumbs. * Widescreen: There is a nice feature that automatically changes the screen orientation from vertical to horizontal when you slide out the keyboard. But you can also select this manually even when the keyboard tray is hidden. The generous screen size was nice for "day at a glance" functionality when I wanted to see previews of all my appointments for the day, all my tasks, missed calls, e-mails, etc. on a single screen. It was also nice for surfing the web. * WiFi: I bought this device primarily to use in my home and in my office, both of which have WiFi. Since I don't have an internet data plan with my phone service, it was nice to be able to surf the web for free wherever WiFi was available, whether my house, the plant, or the local Starbucks. This functionality also allowed me to connect to our corporate intranet easily, something that would have been tough using over-the-air internet service from Sprint. At minimum, it would have meant having to tunnel into the corporate intranet using VPN all the time. * Flexibility: Because this thing is - at heart - a computer running Windows Mobile, there are plenty of geeks out there that have been able to make this device do amazing things that other phones just can't do. There's a whole hacker subculture out there for the HTC Mogul, and I mean hacker in a good sense. People that can make the device do nifty things so you are no longer entirely at the mercy of the manufacturer or 3rd party commercial software developer, waiting on certain functionality. You can get online and typically find what you want for free through the user community. Or, you can load what you need from the increasingly large selection of apps for Windows Mobile. But frankly, I found that the core factory load of applications installed with the operating system were everything I needed. The only things I put on the device were media files and new wallpapers. There is quite a bit more that I could say about likes and dislikes, but I think you get the picture. To repeat the headline of this review, it really was a slick device for PDA and portable web access to not just the internet, but our corporate intranet. However, its shortcoming as a phone proved to be just too significant for me to overcome. HTC and Sprint have announced that they are releasing a new firmware upgrade sometime in late 1Q08 that will give the device native GPS capabilities and perhaps help the Bluetooth performance (although the BT issues were supposed to have been fixed in the Nov 2007 version of the BIOS they released). While that may be the case, it is no longer my concern. Someone else now owns my Mogul and I wish them all the best if they get around to loading the new firmware. Ultimately, however, I suspect that they will reach the same conclusion I reached: great PDA, not-so-great phone. Date: 2008-02-23 Poor upgrade to the PPC-6700 I was a user of the PPC-6700 for many years and loved the phone, but loved it with its deficiencies. The worst part about it was that it was difficult to hear in loud situation because the earpiece volume was low. I was in the market for a new phone and was turned towards the Mogul PPC-6800. It was thinner than the older model, weighed less, and appeared to have all the same features as the PPC-6700. So I jumped off the deep end and bought it. Well, I got home and started playing around with it. The one thing I noticed that was different was that the keyboard was backwards. I was so use to flipping the phone one direction to open the keyboard just to find out that I had to flip it around the other way. I was impressed with the Mobile 6 OS on the phone. I liked the wifi switch that allowed you to turn off wifi, but the worst part of the phone is the phone itself. I made numerous calls and had horrible feedback on the phone. It was almost like I was talking in a tin shed. Not only did it affect me, but it affected the caller on the other end of the phone. Had this problem been non-existent, I would have kept the phone, but unfortunately, I had to return the phone the very next day because my phone calls are more important than the Pocket PC. I have since bought a Pocket PC that is separate of the phone. So, if you want a Pocket PC that gets you on the web and receives your emails, then go for it, but if voice quality is your priority, stick with Sanyo phones. Date: 2008-02-01 Phone works great after I installed the upgrade I've had my eye on the sprint mogul for quite some time. I've read the reviews posted here and at other sites. Here are my thoughts: 1. Should you buy the phone, thoroughly check it out w/i the first 30 days. That way should you not like it you can return it. 2. If you are experiencing any problems with the phone go to: http://www.america.htc.com/support/mogul/software-downloads.html and see if you need to install the latest upgrade. Though I purchased my phone in January 08, I had to install the upgrade, which has been available for at least 6 months. This fixed my bluetooth isssue as well as several other issues. 3. Try this website for helpful info about the phone that's not in the user guide, I found it very useful: http://www.america.htc.com/support/mogul/tips-tricks.html 4. To save battery life, I have turned off the wi-fi and beaming. I also put the screen in "sleep" mode when I'm not using it. This has extended my battery life greatly. 5. "softboot" the phone when it's convenient for you. I have never had a problem with the phone locking up but I read a review that suggests soft rebooting several times a week to clear cache...So about twice a week I do a soft boot when it's convenient for me. I normally do it 1st thing in the morning...I know it's a temporary fix but by rebooting when it's convenient for you, you won't have to reboot when it's inconvenient. 6. Try the Sprint software store http://softwarestore.sprint.com/ for add-ons. Some of them are really good. 7. In case you don't know, when you close an application/option, it's not really closed. it's running in the background. To really close it, go to Start/Settings/System tab/Memory/Running Programs tab...from there you can truly close the application/option. The sprint store also sells applications that will truly close the application w/o you having to do the extra step. I hope my review is helpful. The ones I read were informative to me. In the end, you have to make the best judgdment call for you. Date: 2008-01-29 the great mogul thie is a great phone and that is it. You really need a goo micro card through. Wish the battery life was longer.
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