Review: UTStarcom XV6700

Pros
Windows Mobile 5 makes improvements that make this a smarter smartphone and the slide out keyboard is the most usable built-in set of keys on any PDA yet. The camera is amazing for such a device as well.

Cons
Same old Verizon story, DUN profile removed from Bluetooth, Wi-Fi deactivates phone voice use (though there’s an easy registry hack to stop that), battery life, and a plain and simple crappy speaker.

The Bottom Line
Now that Verizon has been removing the DUN Bluetooth profile for a year, most are used to it. So that’s not a huge disadvantage, but the poor battery and speaker may be. If you’re looking mainly for a strong Windows Mobile unit with a phone you’ll use less than a stock broker on Wall Street, you’ll enjoy this smartphone, then.

Ratings
Overall:
Ease of Use:
Durability:
Battery Life:
Sound Quality:

Recommended
Yes

Full Review
My first long lasting venture into the smartphone arena was the Samsung i730. I got it weeks before most of the general public did and I must admit, I was pretty full of myself. :) But the good Lord has His ways to deal with that and by the time summer had turned into a cold fall, my smug attitude chilled with the breeze that swept through my town. The honeymoon was over - and fast! So crushed was I with my first smartphone.

A few months later I learned about two new Windows Mobile 5.0 devices that seemed would correct all the problems of my Samsung phone. One was Palm’s first deviation from the operating system barring its name and the other was from the former Audiovox now UTStarcom. The later had the XV6600 in its portfolio and having used that for a whole four hours before sending it back, it was Palm’s offering I looked forward to. When I got to play with it at CES, I wasn’t impressed. It was the XV6700 that impressed me. Impressive enough that I didn’t even think twice about getting it over the Palm Treo 700w.

Windows Mobile 5.0 - What an Improvement
After a shaky start with the XV6700, I quickly warmed up to it when I worked out the bugs (why do I so often play the part of QA?!) What struck me first about the phone was the changes in the interface. Now with soft keys (buttons that will have different actions depending on the program and/or screen you are in), placing one to the left and one on the right, the operating system all of a sudden became more single-handed-use friendly. But this Microsoft we’re talking about, so there’s still some need for improvement, but UTStarcom does a good job getting over those issues with added functionality from its joystick. Ya, joystick! For the first time in my nearly ten years of using PocketPCs, I can actually play Pac Man that I scored with my first iPAQ way back in the late ’90s! Stop laughing! This is an amazing accomplishment. The joystick also helps navigate easily with your thumb while the rest of your hand holds the device. Single-handed navigation, baby!

Another new feature of Windows Mobile 5.0 is the way things are installed. Now you are questioned by the device where the install package should go and not from the desktop. Seems to makes sense since installing over the air (OTA) is becoming more popular and with the old version, all CABs would install into the main memory.

Speaking of the main memory, the XV6700 has a lot less of it then the Samsung i730 does and it’s led to issues when I have installed programs onto the miniSD card. Since external cards respond much slower than the flash memory that’s in the device, PocketInformant takes a long time to open and other Today plug-in programs just plain had to come off the device due to issues. Unfortunately, PocketPCTech’s has determined that it cannot upgrade the RAM on the XV6700. Bummer.

Other grand and very welcomed fixes to WM 5 is the stupid task reminder problem. Every stinkin’ task would ring the reminder bell at exactly 8:00 a.m. every day (or what ever you configured your devices start of day.) I hated this! Why even have reminders? Well this finally - finally - is fixed! They ring when you set them in either Outlook or on the device. Yea! Another annoying issue with reminders has been fixed in that you now get a soft key “View” with each Calendar or Task reminder. Thank you, Microsoft.

New in the phone area is something called Smart Dialing. When you need to make a call to someone that is in your Contact database, simply type out the contacts name on the number pad. Remember, each key (except 1 and 0) have letters in them. It’s those letters you use to bring up the contacts name. For example, to bring up my number, you’d dial 7-8-3-6. SVEN would come up and a bunch of other matches (if applicable) and then you select it from the list and off it dials the number. Very nice!

WM5 missed call and voicemail notifications are now better handled with the soft keys changing to “Notification” and “Dismiss” until you acknowledge them.

What About the Device?
Okay about the PDA. Well the docking base is nice; however, it is difficult to remove the device from it. Really difficult. Why? It’s mini-USB connector, while great for easy compatibility, makes for easy removal not so easy. You have to hold the base with one hand then kind of wiggle the device up and out with the other hand. Since the mini-USB male connector is long, it takes some wiggling.

The connector does have its advantages as it allows for easy travel since any USB-to-USB-mini cable can be used. Additionally, you can find an iTip to charge it in your car with ease since this is a common connector (as opposed to a proprietary connector found on most devices.)

Buttons and Key(board)s
The XV6700 comes with lots of buttons. There’s a Pocket Internet Explorer button on the left side under the volume button that slides up and down. Above that switch is the Voice Record button. On the bottom right of the device is the camera button. It’s the only button that requires a long hold for activation. On the bottom of the XV6700 you’ll find, from left to right, the reset hole, USB-mini port, and the iritating dinky not standard ear phone jack. The top, again left to right, has the power button, miniSD port, and a slot in the antenna where your stylus hides.

Under the screen you’ll find a keyboard. Under? Ya, it slides out to the left of the screen automatically activating the LCD display into landscape mode. Other devices with built-in keyboards, like the Samsung i730 and the Palm Treo 700w, just don’t have enough room for its keys to make typing words practical. Phone number dialing is about all you can do with those keyboards (also known as thumb-boards,) but this is a keyboard you can actually use. Now granted, you won’t be doing any touch typing, but you can at least type at a fairly fast pace with this keyboard. Stuffed with the regular letters of the alphabet, you also get two soft keys, function keys, and the other standard keys like return (enter,) shift, and backspace (delete). Some have complained about the tactical feel and while not as responsive as the other keyboards out there, it’s still good enough that you know when a key has been depressed or not.

The Camera
Verizon’s decision to axe the camera from the Samsung i730 was a poor one and rumor had it that Verizon would soon introduce the camera version after the initial release. That never happened. Speculation had it VZW would pull a similarly misguided yank of the camera on the XV6700 but thankfully that was one Internet rumor that never came to be.

With it’s 1.3 megapixel sensor and the ability to take macro shots, I was quick to take some shots right out the box and was immediately impressed. Like I already mentioned, the camera button requires a long hold before the Camera application springs to life which in itself takes a while, too. But once it comes up, you’re in action. You take your pictures holding the camera in landscape position. With a slew of choices for your picture taking adventures, including immediate questioning if you’d like to send the picture via MMS, UTStarcom made a very nice camera in this phone. In fact, I was stunned with the results of the flash. Thinking it was just another wimpy LED light, I nearly blinded my five year-old daughter at Olive Garden one night when I held the camera close to her face. Needless to say, the picture came out over saturated. :) The cameras automatic setting does a good job handling different lighting conditions as it did a great job nabbing a picture of this Ford Lighting after it took out a post and ate some turf at In-n-Out in the rain. Overall, I’m really impressed with the camera.

EV-DO and PIE
In brief, the EV-DO integration is great and Pocket Internet Explorer’s (PIE) update is a good one. Now you can see what’s being downloaded and how much of it you got to go before getting it all, just like its big brother. There aren’t too many other improvements other then it seems to be faster (even at slower connections) as well as it displays large made for “big” screens Web pages better. Either way, I still use Google’s mobile proxy, though.

With EV-DO, man, you totally notice a speed difference. Even simple text-only sites fly down when compared to the trickle of 1xRTT. I’ve seen EDGE networks and it doesn’t even come close to EV-DO. If data speed is an issue for you, I’d highly suggest you go with this unit as the GSM cousin to this unit just won’t make you happy. With EV-DO, you want to surf!

Nice Surprise
It seems many smartphones just don’t want to come with voice activation which IMHO is just really lame. Isn’t this called a smartphone? Oh well, there’s Microsoft’s Voice Command, though it hasn’t been updated in nearly a year. Further deterrent is the multiple forum postings telling of horror stories of what happens to your device when it’s installed. I guess I got lucky because it works perfectly for me!

You do have to assign a button on the XV6700 to activate Voice Command (I chose the Pocket Internet Explorer button,) as well as speak into the device itself to make this all work. No dialing from your Bluetooth headset for you. There’s a great thread as to the reason for that, but I’ll let you search for that on your own. Once the call is dialed, your headset happily takes the call and you can still hang up with the button from your headset.

Voice Command is nice as it goes further then just dialing numbers. It will allow you to look up appointments, addresses, start programs, and even ask how many missed calls you have. Comically, when I asked it the first time how many I had missed, Voice Command responded, “3,675,945.” Ya, my phones busier then the presidents. ;) When I asked it again right after, I got, “You have no missed calls.” Mmmmm, feature?

Problems to Note
There are few issues I found with the XV6700. The two problems that are hardware specific are the battery and speaker.

Both the ear piece speaker and the speaker on the back of the unit are of low quality. One reader told me the lack of quality is what drove him to the Treo instead of keeping this phone. For me, it’s not a huge deficiency that makes this a deal breaker. Since I do mainly use my Bluetooth headset (BTh), I can pretty much ignore this problem. Though do note, the BTh isn’t as loud as it is with the Samsung i730. Hopefully UTStarcom fixes that in later updates.

The battery is smaller than that of the Samsung i730 by a bit and thus you get less power in a “day” on the XV6700 then you would on the i730. I find that I get about 15 to 20% less life in a day than I did with the i730. Not good, but man, way better then the XV6600. A larger capacity battery is available for the XV6700 which can be had direct from Verizon. You can also get another “slim” battery if you’d like to keep the device thin on your belt or in your pocket. The dock comes with a slot to charge either the extended life battery or the standard while your smartphone is docked.

Microsoft’s .NET CF 2.0 will not install on Storage Card even when you select it during install on the device. At 5+ MBs, kiss off any use of other programs that require CF 2.x since there is no way to grab memory from the “Program Memory” side like you once could. Unless a ROM update becomes available with .NET CF 2.x on it or MS fixes this issue, you’ll be out of luck.

Be warned, if you have LOTS of files in your DEVICE NAME My Documents (the synched folder,) you will be sitting for a looong time waiting for “Looking for changes” to finally change to “Synchronizing”. This “bug” took a call to UTStarcom (they had no idea what my problem was) and two hard resets to figure out. Each time I did my first sync restored the My Documents folder, it would take ActiveSync three minutes and ten seconds to just get out of the “Looking for changes” mode! Compare that to three seconds from a fresh hard reset. It wasn’t until I questioned what changes could have been possibly holding up the process up did I discover that I had 9,232 files in my WebIS folder. Once I yanked most of those files out (down to 367 files), my performance dramatically increased and came back to what I expected. The irony of this is my i730, running PPC2003SE, had the same file structure and never had this issue. So what changed in WM5 with ActiveSync 4.x to cause this? Who knows, UTStarcom didn’t. ;)

Overall
At the end of the day, I’d have to say I’m really happy with this smartphone. With the Windows Mobile 5.0 improvements, great looking display, trick keyboard, incredible Pac Man friendly joystick, and very good phone reception, I can live with the cons of the XV6700. I just hope the BTh loudness is fixed and battery life improved. It’d be nice if the software developers could figure out somehow to get better response from applications stored on the miniSD, but I know that’s more a hardware thing and I’ll probably just have to get the next generation with more RAM on it to solve that problem.

In all, this is a very good phone (I’m careful not to say great after having the Samsung i730 and thinking that of it at first) and I would highly recommend it to a person looking primarily for a PDA first and wants a good phone bundled with it.

[tags]bluetooth,ev-do,review,verizon wireless,treo 700w,xv6700,utstarcom,slide out keyboard,1.3 mp camera[/tags]