September 2007

Yesterday the lock on my apartment door broke. I went to a hardware store and got myself one of the new Mul-T-Lock locks. Then I asked my father to team up with me and install the lock.

Not so much to my amazement, but just to prove the point, the 3.5 hour installation (including steel plate on the exterior of the door and other minor parts) went exactly the way any web project goes – with tests, beta versions and live releases. We measured the holes and distance between them, we put the lock on the door to see how it would look like (created a mash-up), we drilled the holes and installed parts of the lock without fully tightening screws (there’s your beta version) to see if key is able to rotate and the lock is, indeed functioning, then we tightened the screws and moved on to a next part of installation (there is your milestone).

The point I am trying to make here is no matter what you do – there is always a little project management going on.

HTC Advantage 7501 with Windows Mobile 6 So, the first impressions.
The device was ordered August 17 from Amazon, half a month after I have discovered the existence of HTC Advantage (aka Athena) 7501, but arrived almost 3 weeks later, last Friday. While unpacking I came to a realization that the device is just a little too big and a little too heavy. It’s of a size of a small pocketbook, yet I don’t really have any pockets for it (except with winter coming – maybe somewhere in winter jacket). So I end up carrying the unit either in hands or in my backpack, which isn’t really a good idea.

First off – the phone capabilities of this HTC Advantage 7501. Let me go ahead and make a bold statement. Anyone talking with this thing next to his or her head looks dumber then a monkey talking through banana. At least monkey has a reason for that, while no sane human being has no reason to talk into that big black box with shiny screen. Throughout the weekend I used speakerphone (it’s quite decent, try it). First thing I did when arrived at my office – paired my Bluetooth headset with Advantage.

Snap-on magnetic keyboard is a real blessing if you need to type URLs, SMS, short e-mail or use instant messenger, but don’t count on it for lengthy letters. It’s just a little larger then regular thumb keypad, and smaller then any decent size keyboard. I was, however, able to get used to it after couple of days. Keyboard acts as a screen protection when Advantage is stowed away, as a very firm stand (see picture) but absolutely gets in a way when using PDA in a portrait mode. HTC supplies the device with nice leather cover that holds the 7501 by special latches and the keyboard just snaps to magnets hidden in a flap. Overall, if you can get to any horizontal surface – HTC Advantage is a great tool, that will allow you to type away whatever you need.

Not quite so if you don’t have such surface. As a part of my daily routine I spend around 1 hour in NYC subway. Good thing I almost always get a seat. Bad thing that MTA didn’t get tables by them. Reading eBooks from large, 5-inch screen is much like reading a real book. Except for the sun, since the 7501’s screen is almost invisible in bright sunlight. Note to self: I think I saw a protective self-adhesive cover for screen, must try that tomorrow. Writing or typing while holding the devide in the air is very complicated, since the 7501 is much larger then any other PDA, keyboard isn’t in a right place and if you decide to go with on-screen tapping or writing you must hold the device in a proper fashion which isn’t an easy thing to do. Currently I am giving a try to Spb Full Screen Keyboard, but found myself adapting to use attachable one more and more often. After all, it is a real keyboard.

The built-in GPS wasn’t very useful last Saturday, when I was a bit lost while driving to Renessanse Faire. While passengers in the car were very supportive and understanding about my geeky need to figure out how to make Advantage show us right directions it still worked pretty slow, probably because I used Google Maps for Mobile instead of pre-installed, subscription-based (and for some reason non-functioning) TeleNav. We used Garmin Nuvi 360 in the meantime, to get to the place.

Video playback was a major disappointment. DivX programs encoded to 512×384 pixels with 24 fps were a snail-paced slide show (I used Core player, since Windows Media player just won’t accept the DivX video at all). For comparison – the previous HTC that I owned (BlueAngel) was able to play the files flawlessly (if only dragged a little during fast-action sequences, but I don’t watch movies on PDA at all, so it’s okay). However, when I re-encoded files using Pocket DivX Encoder – everything just started flying (and files took much less space – around 100MB for PPC video as opposed to 600MB for source). Now 8GB microdrive starts looking real spacious.

Concluding the first impressions I should add that charging via USB cable yields weird results – battery indicators showed anything they wanted and not the real status of things. Another dis-Advantage is that device is using miniSD memory cards, instead of full size SD (I believe there was plenty of space for it) or microSD.

Knowing how lazy I am I probably would not post a full hands-on review, but I will try to get pictures of line-up of all my devices – Samsung i607, Verizon VX6600 (HTC BlueAngel), HTC Advantage and maybe even iPhone. Stay tuned.