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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: 2007-10-26 Great phone, but... This is a great phone overall, with lots of power and flexibility, but with a couple of major shortcomings. First, the main one is the battery. Battery life is limited, and just sitting on your nightstand overnight the battery can run down 60% or more. I understand there is a bigger battery for it and I suppose I'll just have to get one of those, or another one like the one it came with that I can keep in reserve. For now what I did was buy the car phone charger and I just charge it while I drive around town. The other thing is they just tried to make it almost too convenient. There are buttons for everything, and the problem is that if you put the phone back in the case and carry it on your belt, I find that when I bend over, or fasten my seat belt, it presses the dial button on the bottom left side of the phone, which causes the phone to dial the last person you called automatically. This happened to one three times, until I figured out how to stop it, which was sort of embarrassing. The cure is to lock the screen by tapping that option on the main screen, but still, it's easy to forget, then I get into the car, or bend over to pick up the paper or something, and it calls the last person I dialed. It's still a great phone and I like it a lot except for these few shortcomings. The Bluetooth headset is also a nice option and I picked up one of those. Also, the audio and sound quality is the best of any cell phone I've had in recent years. It seemed as if the audio was getting worse the last five years with very poor, tinny quality, worse than the cell phones I had even ten years ago, but they seemed to fix that in this phone. One last thing, I like a good calender mini-app and most cell phones have ones that are dismal and primitive. For example, the last Samsung phone I had wouldn't allow you to schedule regularly recurring or repeating appointments; you had to enter the next one manually. This phone has a very powerful and versatile calendering/scheduling app which I need and like a lot. Overall a great phone except for a couple of problems, that's why the four stars instead of five, but I can still recommend it and it's better than anything else I've had in the last ten years. Date: 2007-10-24 great phone I am very picky when it comes to phones so I spent A LOT of time researching my next one. I finally decided on this one over a Blackberry and a Palm. Yes, it is big and bulky but in order to have the slide-out keyboard that your fingertips can actually fit on, this is a necessary evil. For those who wish for easier dialing when driving, just enable the voice dialing that works with a push of a button on the side of the phone. Simple! The battery life STINKS so I have to keep it plugged in most of the time in order not to run out of juice at an inconvenient time. Also, I agree with a previous reviewer that the touchscreen phone number input is slow and inaccurate if you're not careful. But overall, this is a super phone that beats the others hands down PLUS I've dropped it 3 times with no damage! Great for a working mom who has her hands full most of the time lol. Date: 2007-10-21 Bluetooth stack just did not show for the dance I bought a Mogul thinking it would be a great replacement for my aging (very) Motorola V710 and a great way to move from Verizon to Sprint. Now, *ALL* phones have their very own quirks which are specific to that model so we are all always getting used to the phone. In other words, there is no perfect phone. Overall, I was impressed by the capabilities of the device. I was disappointed that WM6 still has the number of holes in it -- memory usage, yuck, speed, and the bluetooth. I really liked the slide-out keypad and (with my big hands) I can slide it out and back single-handedly. The back-lighting on the keypad took a little to get used to regarding when it would be back-lit. The keypad itself took little to get used to, but anyone who has used reduced-size keypads / keyboards knows what they are getting into. After some practice, dialing on the phone was relatively a non-issue, but I do make a lot of calls. In truth, it really should not take that much practice to get used to a number-pad (touch-screen or not) and this one took a bit of practice. I found myself using the phone in either hand and generally not using the thumb wheel and its associated "OK" button. While I could get used to it, I just found it felt and acted too squishy and I would sometimes select the wrong entry as the wheel had turned while I was pressing it in to select an entry or I had applied too much pressure to the wheel while using it to scroll and accidentally selected something. So, a little difficult to use for my big hands. The display was great when it was not used out in the bright sunshine. Not much else to say there. I became really good at using my fingers to select entries on the touch screen instead of the included pointer -- Nice pointer, by the way. Why? Sometimes it would take just as long to select something and do what I wanted as it would to remove and use the pointer. I frequently used the pointer, so no issues with it. The slide-out does not seem to stay tight after lots of use -- A little wobble develops between the two sections after repeated slide use. The slide-out will stay open or closed (No problem there); only that whatever keeps the section held together (Flat) seems to loosen a bit. I read this was also observed elsewhere, so it is probably one of those "Things we live with". The camera did seem to shoot under-whelming pictures and does not have a cover (dirt, grease, grime oh my!). The color scale would flicker (whitish, yellowish) while setting up a shot and the pictures really were not that good -- Looked like they were taken from a camera phone. I have a friend who has one of these and uses the camera far more than I do and he likes it. Either way, "We" are probably spoiled by having 5MP (Mega Pixel) and 8MP cameras in our pockets. Bluetooth is where the phone just floundered. Simply put, my business suffered and my girlfriend refused to talk to me while I was using a bluetooth headset. *Ugh!!!!* For more than ten years, I have refused to wander around with a phone attached to the side of my head as that meant one hand was not able to do anything and my mobility was reduced. After having several wired headsets destroyed by snagging wires, I purchased my V710 (the previous phone) as it was the first bluetooth offered by Verizon and that would allow me to continue my headset usage without worrying where the wires are and I never went back to wired-headsets. That was the set up. If it not obvious, all of the other features on a phone can be mediocre and I would probably keep the phone if the bluetooth operated very well. Unfortunately, it did not. I went through 8 different headsets from three different manufacturers across 6 different models (Yes, I had two headsets of a couple of models). All-in-all, the newer headsets had more problems working with the phone. They were either too quiet on my end, the remote end, or both. Also, the bluetooth connection "seemed" to have more issues with EMI then the V710 or a Sanyo SCP-7050. Even at full volume, most people reported that it was not functional. In the end, the HS850 worked the best, but this "best" was more like talking with someone who is in some remote location with spotty service and some emergency in progress -- Not across the yard, with great service, and no urgencies. Fail. For this reason alone and no others, the phone went back. I cannot have my personal and professional activities suffering due to a phone. For hands-free voice dialing, you have to set up voice tags for each person you want to call. This is doable, but I so miss the integrated voice and number dialing of the V710. A one-hundred percent terrific feature, but so few phones incorporate it. I figure this is a spoken language issue -- Trying to gear a phone to function with all of the various spoken languages is currently very difficult and to keep said phone in a usable size is impossible. Still, I miss the feature. Anyway, voice tags do work, but they are one more step you must do when setting up someone's number in the contact list. Speaking of setting up a number, do not forget that this is WM and it will want to set the display name for any entry to "Lastname, firstname" format. This does funny things to multi-word business names and is one of those "Things we get used" features. The WiFi and EVDO wireless access is nice. Running Google-Maps "Just to look something up" during a conversation; priceless. Web-browser capabilities are not even close to what a desktop or laptop user is used to, but that will change over time. There is supposed to be a software update for the phone in the near-future, sometime, which will upgrade the wireless to EVDO-Rev. A and maybe update some other items, but the speculation runs wild as to what will be updated and when the update will be released. I, myself, am sending the phone back only because of the bluetooth. I will keep an eye on the upcoming products from HTC and, maybe, in a year or two, I will go here again; if the bluetooth is willing. Date: 2007-10-08 HTC Mogul 6800 Review Overall, I am happy witht the performance of this product. This is my third PPC, I have a Thera Audiovox, and a iPaq 1910, and it is definetly better than other ones out there. Solid casing, small size, though a little on the thick side. The screen is smaller than others, making it difficult if you've never used other PPCs before. The navigation is a bit more complex than other PPCs and the internet browsing is great, having the screen fit into one colum, or to display size if needed. Internet browsing can be trough the data plan available, or through Wi-Fi, with the connection and download speeds as fast as the connection you're on. Keyboard could be slightly bigger, you really can't type as well if your nails are even a bit big. Nice feature though is the keyboard backlight, really useful. Camera is not of the highest quality, though is is 2MP, quality is poor even on the highest setting. Camera flash though is very bright, great for a flashlight! Nice addition on the MicroSD card slot. Crappy loud speaker, and the "sluggish" on-screen keypad dialing can be fixed by simply disabling "smart dialing" improving the speed of number dialing. There are apps out there by sprint, which make the on-screen keypad bigger. If you are planning to buy this phone, one word of caution: It is meant to be used by work people, people who use the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook features, and e-mail capabilities. It's not really meant for the casual user or curious buyer. Unless you know how to use PPCs, get a Samsung Upstage or something if you plan on using it as a mp3 player and phone (not saying that the Mogul 6800 is useless as an mp3 player, because the music playback is great and the video reproduction is superior to other older versions). Otherwise, it is a good phone, despite it's few flaws. I recommend it. Read on below if you're interested on knowing a little more about it. For the bussiness person: It has the Windows Office Mobile with Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint with sound playback capability. The Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes easily synchronize well with the host computer, it can also synchronize wirelessly with a Client Network, leaving your work up to date wherever you are. Currently it is 1X-EVDO, but Sprint should be releasing a patch (Rev A) bringing its browsing and downloading speeds up to 5.5 mbps (faster than ATT's home internet) E-mail isn't exactly a snap to set up, but it supports POP3 and IMAP4. It comes with several programs built in, such as Adobe Reader LE, AudibleAir (for your audiobooks), Windows Live, Voice Speed Dialing, and Zip (folder compression) capabilities. And perhaps the most important aspect, the memory card can be set up to encrypt data as it is created or put in (i believe it is 128 bit encryption) For the tech loving "junkie": It has a full, slide to hide Qwerty keyboard with a photo sensor that automatically turns on the back light, useful when you're in the dark and need to type. And to take good advantage of the keyboard, it also comes with Pocket MSN Messenger which supports voice clips and files (pictures, videos, etc) to be sent and recieved. It comes with a calculator, GetGood, Music Store, OnDemand, and Sprint's Software Store. Easily (and free) installable programs available include Google Maps and Microsoft Reader. Besides supporting text messaging and email, it supports MP3, Polyphonic or WAV ringtones in addition to its vibrating alert. It comes with a 2.0 megapixel camera and can record video in two sizes (128x96,176x144) and records in H.263, 3GPP2, MPEG4 or Motion JPEG format. Its Mobile Windows Media Player supports MP3, MP4, WAV and WMV, I have only been able to test the video playback capabilities at 700kbps with no problem. To my delight, you can play a music file in the background while using the video camera function, and it will record the music as part of the video, so that you can create music videos straight out of it. If you decide to get the data plan, you can use your phone as a modem, to acess the internet trough it. Other features include Bluetooth wireless technology, Bluetooth PAN, integrated Wi-Fi with a on/off hardware switch, IrDA, and a Micro USB slot. There's probably a few things I have missed, so forgive me if I have left out something, there's quiet a lot of things on this small device. Date: 2007-10-01 All around poor replacement for my Blackberry 7130e I'll keep it short - I bought this phone because it runs Windows Mobile 6.0 and I'm a .NET (Microsoft) software developer by trade. The battery life stinks (and I've tried every tweak imaginable.) I've just ordered an extended battery to see if that helps. It's impossible to dial the phone one-handed (when driving, etc.) The dial keypad (touch-screen) is too small and slow to respond (so I wind up dialing too many digits.) Overall, I'm pretty unimpressed with this phone. I'm considering moving back to my Blackberry & getting rid of this phone on eBay.
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