[General Topics] P996:
The 9502 started to annoy me more and more and I explain why:

1. the ROM isn't really stable I think. Sometimes the device gets very slow, I have to make a soft reset to bring everything back to normal. It may have to do with my installed programs but anyway...never had a similar problem with the same programs on the i780 or TyTN II.

2. the missing SDHC support is ridiculous, I won't even start to comment because we're having May 2008, SDHC support should be something very common.

3. the GPS seems to have similar problems like the i780 has. I tried to use GPS Tuner(latest version) and it doesn't work, only if I'm using a port splitter like GPS Gate. Google Maps works but apparently no other GPS program...unless GPS Gate runs on your 9502.

This wouldn't really be a problem but apparently GPS Gate doesn't run stable on the 9502(maybe issues with the VGA resolution?). Whenever I installed GPS Gate, trouble was waiting around the corner, I had to hardreset the 9502 two times because of that.

The most annoying incident was when everything seemed to work fine but after two(!) days of using the 9502 and not doing anything new(installing, etc.), the 9502 suddenly slowed down a lot and I had to initiate a soft reset. After the soft reset, the device got stuck in the blue i-mate boot screen, so I had to remove the battery and hardreset it.

4. the 9502 is heavy and I just realized that after using my Nokia N95 8GB for half a day yesterday. The metal casing is surely a nice quality feature but add the somehow slightly bulky design and it feels worse in your hand than the Nokia E90.

5. the position of the ON/OFF button is horribly bad. It should be on the opposite side(to the rear), so you can easily use it to turn the screen on and off. The current position makes it very difficult to use this button with one hand one, very annoying. I have small hands, so maybe this is the problem.

6. the display turns off too fast and I don't seem to find a setting to change this. Sometimes tapping on the display makes it start again, sometimes I need to shortly press the ON/OFF button. This is strange. It would also be much better if when the display is off, tapping on it once would NOT start the application on the part of the display you just tapped to.

My personal conclusion: although the 9502 looks better than the HTC TyTN II and although the VGA display of the 9502 is a real treat, I think that the TyTN II could be the better choice for most people. Not because it is superiror to the 9502, hardware-wise, but because there are dozends of cooked ROMs already available, some of them being very nice and providing a huge performance gain compared to the original TyTN II ROM.

Without ROM cooking, the 9502 is kind of lame and not attractive enough.

That said, I slightly regret that I spent over 600 EUR for the 9502. This is a lot of money, the same money which would get you a HTC TyTN II or better...a Nokia E90 or N95 8GB.

Comparing the Samsung i780 to the 9502, the i780 seems to be the best Pocket PC offer on the market right now. I paid 450 EUR for my i780 more than two months ago, compared to the 9502 this is a bargain, especially since Samsung did a REALLY good job on the i780.

I'm not sure what i-mate is up to but if they don't deliver an updated ROM soon, the 9502 will soon be forgotten. Regarding ROM cooking, I highly doubt that we 9502 will be lucky enough to find some people starting to cook 9502 ROMs. This ain't gonna happen I'm afraid.

So like it or not but the new HTC Diamond may(MAY!) be the better choice, unfortunately it seems to run on a Qualcomm CPU too, so maybe we should not put our hopes too much up.

4.