Where’s the peanut butter?!

nick asked me if i’m happy with my mda (t-mobile branded version of the HTC Wizard, also available on Cingular as the 8215 or something). here’s a summary of some of my likes, disikes, and tweaks towards the ultimate judgment (i really like it a lot):

in no particular order
• like: platform. windows mobile 5 is great. my old ipaq 6315 was passable as an integrated phone/pda but the new OS is way better. it’s much closer to the smartphone (no stylus) interface of windows ce, meaning one handed operation is a definite possibility. you might say ‘of course that should work’ and you’d be right, but if you want a nice pda, it frequently doesn’t. The new os is still a pda first and a phone second and it shows sometimes (dialing can be awkward with the touchscreen and the predictive behavior feels less smart than other phones I have had in the past, touchscreen is sensitive to my cheek during calls) but it definitely works well enough for me for now.
• dislike: slow processor. the cpu really should be faster, but its not. oh well. Workaround: with smartskey and omapclock you can overclock it to 240 with (for me) no noticeable change in stability or battery life and very noticeable perf improvements.
• like: applications. if you want games on your phone mamece is definitely the way to go (but only overclocked - before overclocking I found it sluggish). tpcmc is an awesome video player and with it I can a 624×352 139kbps xvid encoded video - the same compression files I watch on my tv. I see some artifacts sometimes but at that encoding i’m amazaed I can watch it at all. again, this needs the overclocking or else the quality is unwatchable (but at that bitrate it’s really no surprise)
• dislike: mini rca jack. couldn’t they just put a standard headphone jack in? annoying, but I just keep a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter from radio shack with me all the time.
• like: connectivity. the mda supports edge so I get 2.5G mobile speed, which is generally fast enough for me. it also supports bluetooth and 802.11g. the bluetooth is pretty standard and not all that exciting (however there is a firmware upgrade that has A2DP, meaning stereo audio over bluetooth, which i’m super excited to try out), but the wifi is becoming more rare and makes the wizard stand out. basically the lack of wifi and inclusion of data formats in other phones means if you want to be mobile on the go, you have to pay for your phone carrier’s data plan. often these will be super expensive, which is a huge drag. you just bought a cool new bleeding edge mobile productivity machine but to actually use it to be productive on-the-go, you’re suppose to shell out $40 a month? please. with wifi in the wizard, this isn’t an issue. this was super nice the last time I was in munich where I could find free wifi cafes. note: by default you get 802.11b, it’s a simple reg tweak to enable g. another note: i’m a super happy t-mobile customer of about 5 years and happily pay for what I think is a reasonably priced data package.
• like: more programs. mail (pop or imap) are great. bunnydoku (sudoku), python, perl, gsplayer (music), mapopolis (gps with a bluetooth receiver) - these are all super awesome. mapopolis is priced to move and I definitely notice bugs with it but it meets my needs at a fine price so I haven’t checked out tomtom, which I hear rules (but I hear is very slow which probably means god-awful on the mda).
• dislike: software. for some reason the command shell I have used on a ton of old pocketpcs does not work well on the wizard - this is very very frustrating for me. for some other reason, the WM5 team STILL has not made filesystem performance near where is should be - it take me about 20-30 seconds to read the contents of /windows every time (luckily I don’t need to go in that folder too much…). profile switching (brightness, volume/vibe, sounds, which antennae are on/off) should be better/supported. you get easy access to toggle sounds on/vibe, to the antenna setting program (to toggle phone/wifi/bluetooth), and can map a key to the brightness control but can’t quickly manage all 3 (e.g. “work” “home” “gps”).

that’s about it. this is all based on the original firmware these shipped with, too. as I mentioned above, there is a firmware upgrade which enable A2DP on bluetooth and has AKU2 for corporate email connectivity (if you workplace supports it and you want it) along with a ton of other stuff I hear is cooler that the other side of the pillow but haven’t tried.