HTC Dash / S620 / S621 (Excalibur)
Average Ratings
Excellent Phone + Fun Gadget
First off, I dig T-Mobile for many reasons: cost effective family plans, reasonable data plans and KILLER customer service. And while of course I'd like faster data, I find for what I do with a phone, EDGE is quite serviceable.
That said, onto the dash.
First off, this thing is sized just right. There's something that did not come across in the photos (I dismissed the thing on looks before seeing it in person) that you "get" when you see it in person. It feels and looks, well, "right". I find myself looking forward to using the thing.
Sound quality is excellent, and it makes a very good phone. All the "phone" features are right and calling is very intuitive. The WiFi is a killer features, the battery life is most excellent - and if you get in a pinch, you can charge from a mini-usb cable, so you are never without a charger, which is a huge bonus.
I installed Voice Command 1.6 for Smartphones and this is now an excellent bluetooth hands free phone in the car. Outstanding stuff!
Java based Google maps and gmail run flawlessly and fast, windows live search is great for finding nearby businesses and maps.
Using the device as a USB/Bluetooth modem is a complete snap!
Pros:
Wifi
Great screen
Great fit and finish
Great feel
Voice quality
Phone features
Cons:
Have had some intermittent WiFi drops
EDGE isn't full 3G :)
Camera settings interace isn't as intuitive as it should be
Dash = All show very little guts
It looks like a high powered PDA phone, but this deception combined with the low price will trick those of you who wish replace your PDA and cel. In my case a Nokia 3390, Palm III and a printout of my appointments. I use the cel extensively, while driving to appointments and need immediate access to my calendar of appointment for the week and other incoming calls that might be coming in while I am on the phone. Watch out, the Dash is not the phone for you. The small form factor is nice, but the tiny buttons for dialing telephones while you are driving leave much to be desired. It helpful that it synchronizes with outlook, but only with the calendar, contacts and tasks, not NOTES. If you need to see your tasks grouped by categories in an easy to view and accessible manner you will once again be disappointment. Well what about the operating system MS mobile 5.0 surely professional like me that want to replace current reference books and old palm OS software programs should easily be accommodated. Guess again, there is a lot of software for Pocket PC, but this is not the same as MS mobile 5.0 and companies that claim they sell for the Dash are wrong a good 1/3 of the time. Don't buy anything without using the demo first. Ok, how about the Dash strictly as a cel. If you donât mind the problematic volume strip that keeps activating on incoming when you touch the left side of the cel or the less than average speaker phone then maybe this is the cel for you. One last thing if you need to look at your calendar while you are on the cel just make sure youâre not in a hurry and if another call should come in while you are doing this. Forget it, one of the times this has happened I lost the original call and somehow my incoming caller was put on hold while I was in the calendar. Then the cel froze completely with other caller on hold and the only way that I could get the phone to respond was to take out the battery and call everyone back after I turned it on.
BEST PHONE I EVER HAD!!!!!!!
I have literally spent over 2 grand on phones, I know thats a stupid thing to do but I love phones. I have gone through all the high end phones and what not, I even had the Motorola v3i 5 months before it came out in the states! I used to have the MDA but that phone was too fat! It was a really nice phone but whenever I put in my pocket, especially when I wore jeans, everybody would know it! The bulge in my pants was soooo big! So I sold it. And I bought the dash! it has everything the MDA does except without mobile office, however it does have office documents viewer which can view any office document without editing them. The Dash or excalibur is also hella thinner, thinner than the MotoQ! Nicknamed the Q-Killer by some.
Pros:
Really good WiFi
Qwerty Character Board
Windows Mobile 5.0
No touch screen(can also be a con)
Good reception
windows media player 10
speaker phone
expandable memory(microSD)
Bluetooth
Beam
Notes
Appointments Scheduler
"Half" PDA
Thinness!!!!
so much more but I can't think of them now!
Cons:
the touch sensitive scroll wheel(it sux)
retail price almost 600 bucks(unlocked)!
not coming up with it before!!!!!:(
I love this phone!!!
I have tried many many cell phones but this phone is unbelievable. I put a 1 gig memory card in it. Right now, I have a 140,000 word dictionary on it, the NIV bible, Star Wars, many videos of my son, about 100 wma songs, and a ton of pictures. It syncs up to MS Outlook like a charm so all of my contacts, appts, tasks, and emails are always up to date. It comes with bluetooth and works great with my logitech headset. It also has wifi which has been flawless with my wireless network and is very speedy. The screen is absolutely gorgeous. The camera takes decent pictures and video. One of the best features is the battery life. For all it does it lasts an incredibly long time. I have not found a smartphone that even comes close to these features especially for the price. I like it waaaay better than the treo, blackberries, Q, or any other qwerty device. It's glued to my hip and I use it all the time. I love it!!!
I would never recomend this phone...
I was so excited when I got this phone. The guy at the t-mobile store had it and showed me all the bells and whistles and basically talked me out of getting a blackberry pearl. oh how i loathe that man now.
first of all...
the first thing that started happening was the alarm never turns off. they are called phantom alarms and require another program to delete these phantom alarms. then when i would reboot my phone it would reboot over and over and over. so i took it up to t-mobile and they called tech support and they had me do the master reboot as usual. the same problem came back about a week later but i decided i would wait until it pushed me over the edge. well a couple of weeks after that i realized that i couldn't get in to alot of my settings like my sounds, system info, etc. this started pushing me over the edge. i also noticed that internet explorer would stop responding ALL the time. i would then turn off the phone function through the comm manager. when i would turn it back on it would act like it was trying to turn back on then it would say it was off. after several tries it would come back on. so i call customer support and they replaced the phone....
second phone now...the new phone is STILL rebooting. the other day while it was on one of it's endless cycles i let it reboot until i couldn't take it anymore. it rebooted for 30 minutes. then i took out the battery and tried it again. it rebooted about 5 more times and i tried taking out the battery again. this time it rebooted twice and then went in to the operating system. i just called tech support today and they had me do the system restore again. ARGH!!!! i guess i'll give it another week and i'll be back on the phone with them again. hopefully this time to get my pearl.
HTC s620 Vs. Palm treo 680
After using a treo 650 and 680 for years I never thought i would find a phone that could make my life easier. The HTC is truly the best phone I have found for the features I use the most which are;
Pros
-scheduling appts is simple
-screen quality is superb
-speakerphone is great, although the 680 has a much improved I was always asked to turn it off. The 650 speaker stinks!!
-windows mobile 5 was easy to use and navigate
-making phone calls, very easy, although the treo may be better.
-Awesome today screeen showing appts etc
-for light email use and text messaging the phone works fine, for heavy use I would get a phone card for your laptop.
-much lighter and more comfortable than the treo, the 680 metallic finish is slippery.
Cons-
-Battery life is not very good.
-I wish I could lock in the most used features on my today page.
Conclusion-I would highly recommend this phone.
Tmobile Dash Phone, a Perfect Phone
Pros: Good audio, great GUI interface. Love all the features it offers. Easy to handle. Very Good Speakers.
Cons: Don't like the fact that I have to end a program in the task manager. Closing the program does not end its processes in the background. Not ending the programs using the task manager slows down the phone and usage of other programs and can end up freezing it. The Touch Strip Volume on the side is very sensitive, when using the phone my fingers at times touch this strip and change the volume. Other than these, The phone is the best smartphone ever.
good phone....
all around good phone im not going to repeat all the stuff the other guys said but one bad thing i have is the message tone plays all the way through no way to stop it if you have a song clip sucks bad so if you have this phone call tmobile and tell them so they can do a software up date on it and yea wifi gets touchy some time every thing else on the phone is great...
yea its ok////
i like alot about it good stuff but i feel like its kinda out dated already and mine still is not running like it should ... it will just stop working .. and lock up the worst thing about it is the caller volume it will turn its self down if u hold the phone to ur ear due to the touch sensitive volume bar.. but other than that is a really good phone
Fair PDA
I had the Dash, and it did do well. It had its problems a PC would. Freezes, Laggy when running multiple programs, but handled it well. The Wi-Fi was good with stability and connections to Hot Spots. The workability with my E-Mail servers was good. I would rarely get a problem. As far as personalizing like choosing themes, it was easy. There are programs on the web that can allow you to customize it deeply for free if you look. I abused it, and it handled the pains well. I have friends who have it, but because "they liked the look", and dont know how to fully use it, and make it useless because they dont want the 29.99 package plan. Be sure you FULLY know what a Smart Phone is.
PROS:- Clear speaker and tones
- Can stream live media thanks to Windows
Mobile Media Player
- Was able to put many 3rd party programs
easily
- Data service was good
- Had good uses as a college student
like writing a paper or preparing
Power Points
- Handled multi-tasking good
WM Player, while on the Net, while
running Power Point program
- Was able to use Dash as a modem
to my laptop with around 215KB/S
CONS: - Program memory greatly low usually
experienced 9MB free vs my SDA
21MB free
- Did reboot itself sometimes
- Tends to freeze when heavily used
- Would leave programs running
even after fully exiting
Like I said before, if you plan to purchase this PDA, please be sure you know how a Smart Phone work. I seen many friends sell it because they didnt know its purpose. Also the Data Package by T-Mobile is 29.99 and without it, its basically useless. Any Q's, E-Mail me, I dont mind helping. Thanks
