Geeky Stuff...

Yesterday I finally got my much anticipated new phone, the HTC Universal. Originally I was going to get one of these from Orange, then O2, but I ended up going with T-Mobile because they were the first to offer it over here, AND they have a good deal on data. You get 40meg a month transfer rate, which is hardly flat rate, but for personal use it's about the best deal in the UK.

So here it is...



It's more mini-laptop than phone with a full QWERTY keyboard (that's not too shabby) and stylus. It can connect to the internet using a PC (either as USB or Bluetooth - I think), 3G network (that's your 40meg option), or Wi-Fi.

At the moment it's connected to the Wi-Fi at Medulla Corp HQ Version 2.0 BETA and works really well. 3G is also suprisingling speedy too. You can use the phone as a modem if you ever need to get online with your laptop, don't have a connection, but do have a 3G signal. Very handy for visits to see my Mum.

The screen twists 180 if yuo want to use it like a regular PDA...



...and there are 2 camera. The main cam is 2m/pixel (with flash) and the second is a low res cam for video calls.

Making calls, as you would expect, is a little more complicated then on a regular phone - but pushing the number keys automatically takes you to the dialing screen and you can setup voice activated dialing. I've paired it with a Bluetooth headset so I don't have to hold the brick to my ear.

Software wise is comes with mobile versions of Office (Word, Power Point, Excel), Outlook for you emails and SMS/MMS, and Interner Explorer. All the usual Microsoft things you would expect EXCEPT MSN! I have MSN on my old Smartphone, so not sure where it has gone. No big deal though as I always used Agile Messenger cos it does Yahoo, MSN, AOL, ICQ in one package. That works fine on the Universal.

It comes with Windows Media Player and will playback MP3s and some video...



...and there's an SD slot for your memory cards (you geta free 512meg Mini-SD and SD converter in the box)...



I picked up a 1gig card for less than £50 and I'll start to fill it with things to watch on the train on the way into work pretty soon.

Video playback for DivX is very good (much better than media player but you need to install TCPMP)...



...it does struggle a little on high data rate 640x480 (the screen is VGA 640x480 - forgot to mention that!) movies, or maybe it's Kawaii meter goes off the scale, I'm not sure ;)

I suspect this is more a data transfer rate problem than a processor/software problem.

Importantly to comes with a full size headphone socket, not one of those micro sockets so you can plug your fav headphones in, making it more useful as a mobile movie/mp3 player.

I've had it lock up a few times. For example this blog crashes IE (some script on the page freaks it out). Sometimes the home (sorry TODAY) screen freezes up a little. But on the whole it's working pretty well. It's easy to reset the device with the stylus anyway.

In fact, the only BIG problem I've found is ActiveSync 4. If you have Mozilla Thunderbird installed - you're going to have REAL problems syncing your contact list. I'm sure there will be a work around for this soon. I did manage to get it to work - just the once.

So - if you want your phone to be less of a phone and more of a pocket laptop, I highly recommend the HTC Universal in one of it's many guises.

I'll let you know if I find anything else good or bad with it and if you have any questions about it, put a message in the comments and I'll try and answer.

Two things left for me to do... 1 - try and install Skype on it... 2 - try and blog from it :)

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 4:25 PM 4 comments