UTStarcom PPC-6700 / XV-6700 / HTC Apache
Average Ratings
Avoid purchasing this phone
I have owned this phone for 18 months and have already had it replaced because the tap-screen quit working.
The ear piece volume on maximum is still not loud enough to hear due to poor design. The same holds true for the phone ringer volume.
Aftermarket cases are nearly impossible to find for this phone, and with its weight and slippery case, even a new phone becomes marred quickly.
Screen protectors render the screen unusable on the phone, so prepare for a dented screen as well.
That being said, there are some good things about this phone that should not go without mention. The windows PC software is great and works seamlessly with your home computer to make synchronization fast and easy. File transfers are a snap.
The full keyboard and decent screen display make Internet access easy, and the faster method of dial-up is nice.
If the makers could repair the volume problems with this phone, make the case better and the hardware more durable, this would be a good phone. Until then, choose something else!
Not very pleased with it
On a scale of eleven through 22 i give it an 1 1. other than the fact that sprint is horrible, verizon is awesome and really helps out this phone with a higher rating than it deserves. you should get the env. it is great and will do alot of great things for you if you allow it to.
Save some money, buy a brick!
The brick might just be more useful. As a phone, mine works abut 40% of the time. The rest of the time, it locks up. It won't let me answer calls more than 50% of the time, requiring a reboot that takes around 5 minutes.
Battery life?? Laughable! I have to charge the thing at least every day, twice if I've used it. At all.
Texting is good, but it sucks that I paid $518 for what is essentially a pager.
The internet browsing is the worst I've ever seen. Sprint should be embarassed to call that "internet browsing". Doesn't shrink websites to match the screen size requiring ridiculous amounts of scrolling. Most websites don't work. Came with an outdated version of IE, but it won't download updates.
The only good thing I can say is that I only have another year on the contract then I can hurl this thing into a trash bin where it belongs.
BEST $150 Spent
For the price I paid for this I am very happy. Sure there are some cons like the battery life or lack of memory but that was fixed with getting an extended battery and a 2Gig memory card .
So far it does everything I need it to do. I got the new Opera mini internet on it so I use that rather than Internet Explorer. Every thing runs real fast and it allows you to move around the web with your fingers like the iPhone using the Grab and Scroll technology so i could zoom in and scroll around JUST like the iPhone. Oh! and I also changed the whole theme of the phone to mirror the iPhone so my contacts scroll as fast as i can move it with my finger tip etc. I love the keyboard for texting and I get my emails sent directly to me. I even use this to change the channels on my tv and even turn the alarm on and off on my 2006 Camry!!!! All for $150 bucks cant beat that!
So for the price and the functionality given to me that I need I give this a Four and a half (being that its FAR from perfect)the HTC MOGUL would probably have gotten a higher rating!!! SINCE I CHANGE CELL PHONES AS FAST AS I CHANGE MY DRAWS THE NEXT UP IS THE HTC MOGUL for now its good bye M1 flip hello ppc-6700
Serious Flaws! Beware touch screens...
I've given this phone a chance for a couple of years, but have identified some fatal flaws (for business use) and am finally am trading it in (moving to Blackberry).
Pro's: Big screen. Pretty decent standby time. Good speakerphone. No prob with voice quality or drops with Sprint in Orange County CA. Fairly good Bluetooth cell-modem w/Sprint.
Fatal Con's:
1) It does not sufficiently alert me to a waiting voicemail message. Just 1 vibrate and an easily overlooked text field on the screen. I hate to not call my chairman back for hours! I can hardly believe it's so weak on notifying options. Fatal problem.
2) Not good for my email purposes. I now know I need "push" not "pull." Pull was painful. I would download 2 weeks of emails from my company mail server, and it would take a very long time. Incremental pulls also were painfully slow. I used it a few times, then never again.
3) Dialing phone numbers from the touchscreen is hard: requires your attention to watch exactly where your fingers were going, and frequently would not register a push. Phones must be able to be dialed almost without looking at all (i.e. tactile feedback from real buttons). Imagine driving, for example (yes Sprint does have voice command which works fairly well). Even with the keypad pulled out, there is no normal key layout (phone style) and moreover to get the keys to output numbers a weird shift key must be pressed!
4) Turning on backlight too hard!
Other Cons:
1) Too easy for inadvertent things to happen with touchscreen (unintended calls). I eventually learned to always use the key lock - an extra step which I sometimes forget.
2) Buttons on outside of phone also can easily cause unintended actions.
3) Every time I use bluetooth cell modem capability, I have to reset the phone (90 seconds of delay).
4) Have lost many styli at about $10-15 a pop. You use it, it gets loose in the slot, it falls out eventually.
5) Short (but barely adequate) use time of a couple of hours max.
Had it for two days...it's going back
First off, I would like to start by saying that one of the reasons I am not pleased with this phone is because Sprint told me its capabilities were far beyond its true capabilities (such as telling me it was sprint TV capable, navagation capable, etc).
I have been a loyal sidekick user for sometime now, so operating this phone is a lot different, but I'm sure I could get used to it after a while. Windows Mobile is pretty cool, but it has its ups and downs. The reason I switched from T-mobile was because the college I'm going to doesn't recieve good T-mobile coverage. The PPC6700 looked like a good choice, especially for the price that sprint was offering it for. After two days of use, I have decided to send it back in exchange for the palm treo 755p, which will hopefully be more towards what I am looking to get out of my mobile experience.
PROS:
-Windows Mobile and adding programs to it.
-Wi-fi
-data speeds are pretty quick (when you can get good reception)
-camera and video recorder
CONS:
-BATTERY! won't even last me till 8pm.
-Windows lags a bit
-reception
-ease of figuring out how to make the most of the phone and switching from application to application
-viewing the screen in the sun is not easy
Hope this helped. If you are looking for a cheap phone to access the internet and message a little, this is your phone.
great phone and support
I've used this phone now for 8 months. Had some issues in the beginning with hot sync, and 2 programs (epocrates and a medical dictionary), but got resolved quickly with support from above companies.
Pro's
1. Extremely easy to use. Love the keyboard, easier to type with than treo. (I have nails).
2. Charges up quickly in the car or at home.
3. I LIKE the speaker phone, have used it in meetings-no problem. Voice dial-up is GREAT, I don't use speed dial anymore, just voice dialing.
4. Plenty of memory, I have a card but have not had to use it and I use a drug program and a medical dictionary daily!
5. Always have service with this phone!
Con's
1. Yep, using it in the daylight sucks!
2. I've had my internet purposely locked, I was accidentally accessing internet, however my service discounted all charges and then locked me out per my choice.
3. Battery life if you use it a lot, BUT it does charge up rapidly.
4. Tried the Treo, hate the keyboard. The Blackberry-useless for the programs I need and terrible service!
Conclusion, I really like this phone and my service (Sprint)-can I say that?
excellent phone
im giving this phone a 4.5 cause nothings perfect but this thing is close. i have service with alltel and i love this phone. after flashing it with a 3rd party windows mobile release its more usable than ever and has much more free space on the built in memory. for the people that have it freezing up, etc im curious to see if you installed programs that use the today screen on the built in memory or a mini sd. installing on the built in memory for those apps is recommended since mini sd access is just slower.
pros:
does everything i want it to when i want it to (calendar, tasks, ssh with pocketputty, web browsing, text msging, email, contact manager, notes, internet access with laptop, camera)
activesync w/exchange is excellent
decent battery life, i get about a day per charge and im a heavy user of all the functions
keyboard is so much better than number pad text entry and having it hidden is just great
wifi is great to have when its available
3rd party windows mobile release (do some searching) makes this thing 100% better
easy to develop software for using visual studio .net and the .net compact framework (which is included in the 3rd party wm5 setup) but thats the same for any windows mobile device
camera is good quality and video lets you record to the mini sd for tons of recording time
cons:
texting one handed is a little difficult but possible
sometimes (once a week maybe) it gets a little sluggish but that can be solved by killing all running apps
turns on when a call comes in so it stays on for a few min after the missed call. this is where random dialing kicks in. my only solution is to just not miss a call when its in my pocket or at least take it out to ignore the call and turn it back off
plastic case seems kind of generic
all in all this phone is great if you dont get a lemon. freeware apps i recommend for this phone or any other windows mobile based phone are ADBWeatherPlus, cLaunch, pRSSreader, and Smache (if youre into geocaching)
Going back to Blackberry
I have had this phone for a couple months now, and this device has been so-so. The phone has great features to which run down the battery very fast. If you have the active-sync set for every 15 minutes your phone will not last through the night. In my opinion if I pay $500 for a phone I should not have to change the settings to keep a charge.
I have had blackberrys in the past, and will be going back after experiencing the smartphone side. If your a person that wants a PDA for organization, storing info, keep the phone off the charger for more then a couple hours, and recieving emails without a delay you would do the same.
Excitement to frustration
I got this phone about 6 months ago and was infatuated with its features, etc the first day. It's gone downhill from there. Now if it works when I need it to work it's a small bonus to my day. When it's working, though, I really like it (on the data side - not the phone side).
Pros:
*Easy to type with slide-out keypad. I love this.
*Internet surfing easy
*Managing Emails hasn't given me a lot of trouble, though I've had I.T. in my office to fix sync issues a few times.
*Probably simple, but when it syncs, it's very handy.
Cons:
*Started freezing a couple months ago sporadically, now it's almost every day. It always seems like the most important times, too. You have to re-boot it to work. I miss a lot of calls.
*Even when adjusting the backlight, it's extremely difficult to see outside in the daylight. I saw this before buying it and didn't think it'd be a big deal. It is.
*Dialing the phone with one hand is out of the question and two hands is an adventure. The device is not meant to be a solid phone. Sometimes numbers when dialing don't register - or will register twice. Speed dialing is hit or miss.
*Doesn't have real-time Email send/receive. Not a huge deal, but a little annoying to reply to an Email and have to go into menu>send/receive and hope there's a strong signal.
*I would like a shortcut to texting instead of taking the long road there every time I want to start a new text.
*Reception is sketchy at best.
*Screen options within camera program unresponsive at times.
In conclusion, it's a fun little data device when it works, but I tried to use it as my main phone and that was a disaster. I'm buying out my contract and going with one of the smartphones such as the BlackJack or Dash or Q. I need a phone that handles email, contacts, calendar, tasks, has a decent camera, and can surf the web fairly easily.... not a data device that on a good day works as a phone.
