[8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam General] herman3101:
Hey,

just upgraded my MDA Vario to the MDA Vario II (my third HTC phone in less than 18 months, these things are addictive) and wanted to share my thoughts for people who might be thnking of doing the same. To a lot of people there doesn't seem much more to shout about between the two but I believe the upgrade is well worth it.

Form Factor, Appearance and Build Quality:

- The Vario II (from here on referred to as as VII) is slightly longer but also marginally thinner than the VI, the difference is only small but to me the reduction in thickness is certainly welcome. The shape of the VII is very similar to the Magician, less rounded compared to the VI and flatter.

- In terms of build quality the VII is far superior, it feels much more solid especially when the keyboard is concealed (you cannot tell that there is one, feels like one continuous unit). The buttons all have a nice tactile feel to them and the jog wheel is very solid.

- Appearance is obviously a subjective matter but in my opinion the VII looks far nicer, especially the dark metallic red keyboard. It has a much more professional look to it, rather than the plasticy VI.

==> The VII takes this round hands down, it's thinner, better looking and more solid feeling with great build quality.

Ease of Use:

- The VII has more buttons than the VI which is a welcome addition for me. I used to map the top buttons (Messaging and IE) to the Start Menu and OK, there are now dedicated buttons below the soft keys. I used to find that I accidently would hit the camera button, so far have not pressed any button by accident on my VII.

- The scroll wheel wasn't a feature I was to bothered about until I used it and have got to say that it makes one handed operation even easier, especially considering there is a second OK button below the wheel which cleverly acts as the Start Menu button when on the today screen meaning you can launch programs using just your thumb. It also allows you to scroll through documents easily although for making large jumps it is a pain. I would mention the equivelent on the VI but that would be the volume slider which was the tackiest part of that phone.

- Another small but overdue feature is the new layout of the number on the keyboard, they are now arranged in a standard numerical block. This feature really comes into its own when dialing a phone number as you now no longer need to double click circle to access the numbers, when your in phone mode you just use the keys and it automatically recognizes that it should use the numbers instead of the letters (this works with SmartDialer and without).

- Keyboard shortcuts have considerably improved, you can now launch File Manager, turn on WiFi and use PgUp/PgDn using the keyboard. There is also a new input method, Symbol Pad which has common and unusual characters in a list (this can be launched directly from the keyboard).

- The stylus is almost identical to that of the VI, although it is very stiff in the VII.

==> Again the VII has some great improvements, some minor but they all add up to make a more satisfying experience using the VII.

Communication:

- Data transfer is the big change between the two devices, the VI has GPRS/EDGE compared to the VII which supports HSDPA. With the VI I only had 6Mb allowance per month and so my general usage was kept to a minimum (MSN, vgsmail and occasional web browsing) and for this purpose GPRS was generally acceptable. Not trying to sound cheesy but HSDPA is going to completly change the way I use my phone, browsing is now almost instaneous even with pictures set to download and I no longer have to worry about how much data I use. Some people mention that although download speeds are impressive there is a lag between loading pages, I have not found this to be the case. I was browsing xda-developers on my phone today and I wouldn't say there was a noticable difference between browsing on my phone and my laptop (4Mbits/s Cable). I did a speedtest on http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/ and it rated at 1.2Mbits/s (I'm in Leeds)

- Speech quality, without doing professional tests is subjective but in my opinion has improved with the VII as has reception.

==> This is where you'll notice the biggest difference, I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the VII will drastically change the way you use your phone.

NB: The phone came with HSDPA enabled in software but I had to phone customer services (150 from your phone then options 2 => 6, they have to get through the tech department but don't think there's a direct number)

Hardware:

- You can definitly tell that there is a more powerful processor in the VII, menus load without lag and programs load faster. There is a known issue at the moment which affects video playback (search on the forums) but this would be my only grumble with speed. Overall it is far more responsive than the VI (I always had the latest ROM and not one of them matches the VII in responsiveness).

- The one issue the VII has with speed is the length of time it takes to come out of sleep, there is a gud second lag which can get irritating if you just whipped your phone out to check for mesages.

- The camera has received a much needed upgrade as has the camera software. There does seem to be a noticable difference in quality but I don't use it much so won't comment on differences although it is clear that the VII has a better camera than the VI. One thing the VII has which at first I thought was its most pointless feature has actually turned out to be great, on the main camera theres a little macro slider (lets you focus on close-up objects) and it really works. It is excellent for taking photos of documents or writing and you can actually read the text easily from the photo. There is also a second camera on the front for video calling but I don't know anyone who has video calling so cant test it.

- Yet another memory format yet another damn card to buy, the good news is I can't feasably see how a memory format can get smaller then MicroSD without running the risk of it absorbing into your skin so hopefully this one will be around to stay for a little while longer than MiniSD. Have not yet bought a MicroSD card so cannot comment on any performance differences.

- I'm hoping that the battery life on my phone is still being misread as I have only charged it once now but if not then it is awful. I left the house this morning at 9 with a fully charged battery, as I'm still in the honeymoon phase with it I used it constantly until 2pm (webbrowsing, live messenger, no calls, 2 texts, imap idle) and the battery was down to 10%!!!! Another known issue at the moment is that the battery level goes down in 10% blocks, apparently a lot of early ROMs for HTC have this issue and it then gets corrected so fingers crossed. Something else to note is that the VII battery capacity is 100mAh higher (1350mWh vs. 1250mAh).

Update on battery life, it has indeed improved but not as much as I had hoped. My VI is still sitting in my draw, turned on waiting for messages and with no exageration its well over a week between charges. My VII on the other hand needs charging every couple of days, but I do use it a lot.

==> Apart from the battery life the VII beats the VI

Software:

- For the stock ROM unlocking the extended ROM is simply a case of running fit4cats registry tweaker, there seems to be far less less applications in extended rom as well (total ~ 3Mb). For the first time I'm not bothered about letting the extended rom as it doesn't install anything instrusive or bloating.

- Live Messenger Beta runs fine, any problems being related to the software bugs rather than the phone (all my contacts appeared to be offline, had to "Switch User" option to fix that). The voiceclips feature works flawlessly and combined with HSDPA makes for a useful method of communicating when you cant type. Live beta is currently not working

- VGSmail works fine as expected

- Resco Explorer 2005 is fine

CONCLUSION:

The Vario I was a great phone but not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, on the whole it worked but had too many annoyances for me. The Vario II I believe corrects almost every single one of these as well as providing new features. I would not consider this to be a necessary upgrade for those who don't use data communication and can live with the Vario's flaws. For the heavier users I could not recommend this phone more, as I mentioned before I have had the Magician, Wizard and now the Hermes. I'm sure it comes as no surprise that for me this is the best out of the three, but it also the first time I have considered a Pocket PC to be a worthy substitute for a dedicated phone. It truly is an amazing piece of hardware and could not imagine anyone who takes the plunge being the slightest bit disappointed.

Pros:

- HSDPA

- More responsive

- Better keyboard, buttons and general buil quality

- True one handed operation may now be a reality

Cons:

- Battery life (under very heavy usage on new battery)

Hope this helps some people when deciding whether to go for it or not, I will keep this post updated if I think of anything and don't hesitate to post any questions.