yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
Well, this strikes me as a peculiarly pretentious, self-involved, useless and WRONG statement. If we take this poll as an example, from the start people agreed it was flawed. And discussion strayed from it quite quickly, even if it remained in quite the same "topic".

not pretentious dude fact ! in this section apart from the stickies this is by far the most popular thread and has actually got some debate going.

in the upgrading thread .. apart from the stickies and the real VGA thread .. my SHIFT thread is by far the most popular thread so what gives?

yeah i bought the wrong device i researched it b4 buying but i assumed the video would work, i assumed the mp3 playback might be better , I thought web pages might load within my life time and i thought video streaming would not buffer every 10 seconds

i at least thought the call quality via a BT headset would be good IT WASNT so sue me

I WAS WRONG!

I kinda expected the phone aspect to be a bit crap to be honest but thought that if the above worked well i could LIVE with it.

sadly they didnt and i couldnt.. At least im man enough to admit i made a mistake and move on. whereas your probably some gutless freak.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] leoni1980:
heartofdarkness, your description of using a phone as a modem with a umpc does not fit my experience. For one it is infinitely less fiddly than your (and what used to be my) approach. I turn on my mini laptop and it takes about 20 seconds to boot, it then automatically connects to my phone. No yes, no or connect button pressing required.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
Oh silly me if only i knew that you had to detach something from your watch and stick it in your ear and then stick it back on the watch again i would have had a TOTALLY different answer.!

That doesnt sound like anything complicated at all and theres no chance of ever losing the earpiece is there? wow CONVERGENCE IN ACTION

as for my good , how does my talking on a PDA website affect my own good. apart from talking to humourless plonks like you ?
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
ok i went to the bluevoice website ...............you gotta be f**kin kidding right

a cheapo digital watch which you have to dismantle to take out the earpiece and another

charger ...............................
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] eaglesteve:
So, you didn't know a bluetooth headset requires it to be charged every few days? Or you are under the impression that you need to carry a charger with you all the time if you use bluetooth headset? I'm impressed with your hughly increased intelligence now.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
of course i do u numpty but now i have to wear a cheapo digital watch , take it apart with some fiddly headset and charge it!

I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE 3 DEVICES ! so no convergence

3 devices are the ATHENA , the Crappy watch and a headset.

should i wear BT glasses as well
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] eaglesteve:
You forgot to count the Athena's stylus and keyboard which are all detachable.

Aren't you going to tell me that you need more bags to carry the watch if you use it? :D
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] leoni1980:
ding ding, round two
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] wgary:
OK, here's my $0.02 (US).

1. Of the convergent devices I have owned, this is the first one with phone functionality that is reliable. It actually works. Others have had frequent drops, freezes, and so forth. My last one (TMo MDA) would not reliably hold a call, conference, and many other features. So that's for starters.

2. MS VoiceDial works reasonably well on this device, at least as well as the voice dial on my wife's BlackBerry Curve, plus I don't have to tag entries. Also, the predictive entry by name or number in the dialer works well for me. Call logs work well. Summary: I can find and dial numbers easily.

3. Overall integration is also very good. For example, if someone e-mails or texts a phone number, I can click to dial.

4. The only downside I can see is not being able to hold it to your ear to talk. But that is not part of the design, so get over it. I have BT in my car, and a BT headset for elsewhere. They both work really well. In a pinch, I use the speaker for a short conversation or to say, hold on until I can get my headset on. No biggie for me.

Granted, I'm not a heavy phone user. I do much more with e-mail and text, both of which work very well. But increasingly I am forwarding all phone calls to my mobile because of the integration features, plus I *like* not holding a phone to my ear. If I regularly spent many hours per day on the phone, maybe I'd want a different device -- but I'm not entirely sure about that.

All in all, I'd give this at least a "B" in terms of meeting my telephony needs. Add to that all it's other features, and I am really satisfied. The first time maybe ever that I didn't buy a new phone and immediately start thinking about what I wanted next. I've had it for 7 months and I am happy (although it took a ROM upgrade and lots of tweaking to get to this point).
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
Well...

It seems that not only do you have a dung-beetle's mouth, you also have its brain-size.

Please go back to the hole you crawled out of to be "man enough" to please yourself with the number of views for the thread, for if the Athena didn't do for you, this indeed seems to.

And let the grownups have a real conversation.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] eaglesteve:
I also gave a "B", and with the edited post number 1 (reason for the edit was to clarify ), that means "ok" and nothing more nothing less.

But our friend in his SHIFT can make call thread says this means neutral.

I knownot all polls are meant to be fair, but this is like casting a vote for Hillary Clinton, and end up getting George Bush! :D
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] eaglesteve:
It's only "humour". :D

Let's face it, you all got to love this guy . Just don't take him seriously. Otherwise you'll go crazy with his very strange logic :D
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
Exactly my case. It's probably the first time in a looong while, actually, that I'm not even looking at what goes on anymore in the PDA-Phone world with nothing more than mild curiosity.

But the reactions in this thread have me wondering why HTC, with its 7501, didn't choose to integrate an earpiece. I mean, seeing how vehemently some people here consider that it is a requirement for any phone, some people must have told them about it.

Actually, when I heard about hardware differences between the 7501, I was expecting integrated earpiece (however foolish it may look like to be holding such a device to one's ear) and, more importantly, a mecanic keyboard the like of the Hermes'... THAT was something of a disappointment, because although no reviewers anywhere considered the absence of an earpiece an actual problem, pretty much everyone dislikes, at best, the keyboard.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
lol Well, I do look kindly upon dung-beetles, after all, they're the great sh*t-eaters that, for instance, allow the savanah to work as an ecosystem.

But they usually don't call me names... :-S

:D
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
is that the best you can come up with? oooh i feel so put down err not

You know u dont have to post in the thread why dont u take the grown up way out

and not bother. in other words f**k off! :)

as for Eagle dont give up the day job for comedy mate !

yes my logic is really flawed a Phone the size of a book assisted by a Crappy watch and a headset is truly a description of CONVERGENCE IN ONE DEVICE!

I must have been mistaken when using my athena into thinking i was having a bad phone experience , all those missed calls, the bad reception, the BT headset cutting out, the poor voice recognition software, the slow internet , jerky video, crap video streaming

IT WAS ALL A BAD DREAM ...............wasnt it? NO it wasnt.

your logic of denying the GLARING faults of this device is ILLOGICAL

you seem to get very upset when someones says it is a bit crap in certain areas

you are DRAWN LIKE A MOTH TO MY THREADS you cant help yourself, how do you find the time to answer within minutes when your so busy checking stocks and shares on your ATHENA that NEVER LEAVES ITS HOLSTER ON YOUR SIDE !! now thats scary.

You are a bit of weirdo dude, unclip the holster ..PUT THE ATHENA DOWN take your meds

and have a lie down
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
Hey Heartofdarkness (HODS) why dont you post in one of your 2 THREADS with a TOTAL of 27 posts between them

HODS posts about himself

1. why am i such a boring twat

2. will my balls ever drop?

answers who knows and NEVER
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
LMAO This is awesome, lol ! Would sound like my 3 year old nephew, if, of course, his vocabulary consisted of a few semi-english cuss-words.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
Mon DIEU! MY LEETLE SARKOZY IDIOT
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] Flar:
Hi Guys,

I can understand that when you start a thread asking for people's opinions you might get a heated debate. However this seems to me more like a pissing contest then a good discussion.

So I'd suggest, you guys all clean up your piss, put on your diapers and behave more like grown-ups and less like 3 year old cousins.

Greetz,

Flar

Site admin.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] mahjong:
I'm using the WM5 oficial ROM in spanish and I don't "tweak" nothing yet and I'm still happy with my X7500 even as a phone.

For me is a replacement for a laptop in the tasks I use the laptop when traveling. I mean... powerpoint, email and storage. I agree with you (and I think I mentioned it) that Word and Excel are far from being perfect in PPC.

Anyway and paying attention to the general "weather" in this threat I must add that I'm happy with my X7500 and I don't want to offense anyone with this.

Peace all.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
Thanks Flar !

Well ok, but that still is a very bulky, and less convienient solution than:

- press "on" on the 300g, 5" wide screen device.

And there you are.

Besides, I don't think you can say that what you describe as your "procedure" didn't require that you fiddle and tweak for a while before getting everything to work correctly, both on the laptop, on the phone, etc., can you ? :-)

In all honesty, the Athena is of course not perfect. But I *do* (still) wonder why you bought it in the first place, since you don't want to use the clearly stated as mandatory earpiece, be it wired or bluetooth. And since you could see that it was bigger than you evidently consider a phone must be.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] techntrek:
As has already been covered ad-nauseum, the poll here is heavily biased so I'll just weigh in with this. I have had a cell phone since 1993. My first was one of those Motorola gray "flip" phones. I think you were lucky to get 30 minutes talk time on one charge, and it had to be recharged daily. Over the years the phones I used grew in features and battery life, and shrank in size. Yet I never used them for anything but phones - entering contacts was a pain, and trying to keep a schedule was worse. I tried a PDA at one point, but it was useless without an Internet connection anywhere I was and I hate carrying more than one device. Then I learned about the Athena. I was hooked, and now have everything I've always wanted in one device. Yes its large - nearly as large as my first Motorola phone from 1993. But that size also gets a screen size thats actually USEABLE. Everyone here knows the rest of the positives, and the few negatives. I plan on using mine for years, until something finally comes out that still has all the positives and has taken away the negatives.

As for the phone part, overall I would also give it a B. Signal reception is the best of any phone I have ever owned - I'm guessing the large size allows for a large internal antenna. Areas near where I live which had "zero bars" (usually well over -100 db) and wouldn't allow a call to complete unless an external high-gain antenna was connected, now have 2 of 4 bars and good reception. Its nice to have a phone with a speakerphone. The large display (with related large keypad) and ease of maintaining/syncing contacts is wonderful. I do wish they would just have put a damn private speaker into it and been done with it, I don't like being forced to carry a BT around with me. This is the only reason it doesn't get an A.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] eaglesteve:
I'm using official DopodU1000 ROM, and also did not have to tweak in any shape or form as far as the phone aspect is concerned. I don't even use bluetooth. Even with speaker phone, I personally do not think it's so bad to the extent of being labeled complete crap. Perhaps I'm just a little more thick skinned than most people. For VOIP calls I always use wired headset and this gives good enough result.

Signal strength wise, this is the only phone that I've owned that keeps me connected when I go to rural areas in Australia. My Nokia phone which was only a GSM phone, would have zero ability to make call in most part of Australia as GSM is not widely deployed in the rural areas.

This is my only phone with video call capability.

I've installed a program that allows me to send SMS in mass mode, so I'm very pleased with that too.

When I make mobile phone calls, the voice quality is not as good as if I use the headset, but I just decided to accept it and but worry about it as I can still hear what the other guy is saying. I don't need crystal clear sound quality.

Size wise, it's big, but that does not really worry me personally. Yes, some may say I've committed the most unforgivable crime by not feeling any embarrassment. But, if I'm not bothered why should you? I'm not saying you should do what I'm doing. In fact, I think you should get yourself a headset, and that would be the best choice for most people. It's just me that feel ok with holding it against my face, and please don't let that bother you. You see, the thing is, I take Athena as a data device first and voice second. With this mind set I want the size to be this big. As long as iit is still pocketable, the size is right for the data part. When I'm not using my belt pouch, I'm always able to carry it in my pocket. Any bigger will become a problem. Too much smaller will mean realvga not being useful.

The speaker phone is excellent way to make call while driving. Some of my friends install a bluetooth speaker, not with Athena, you don't need to do that.

Searching for name is super easy compared to my previous phones. The intelligent search is fantastic.

Another really positive things about this phone, if we call it a phone, is that the same SIM card is also used for surfing the internet, getting push mail. I could never do that in any of my previous dedicated phones.

If the volume could be controlled to stop the broadcast of my conversation, I would have given it an A rating. For not being able to do this I gave it a B, taking into consideration all the other merits. This means I'm quite happy with it as a phone rather than no strong feeling either way.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
After all the back and forth yadda yadda yadda

The extremes of the argument appear to be those think that the phone is

TOO big and therefore compromised, this is further compounded by the many other faults that have arisen, poor keyboard,slow internet,poor video etc etc

Others feel that the device is a great size esp the huge screen, GPS, etc etc and are prepared to overlook the negative issues

so what would be the best solution to keep all happy?

IMHO I think HTC peaked in terms of size versus portability with the XDA Exec

it was quite biggish but not outlandishly so and also had a lovely big bright touch screen, the keyboard was well designed and could not only protect the screen but also could be swivelled to create a tablet.

If they could have crammed in the Athena specs HSDPA,WM6,GPS,and a micro SDHC slot (minus all the dodgy stuff) i.e. resolved the video and internet issues properly and in the land of dreams put in XP then that would have been the dogs danglies and it would have been worth coping with the larger size

the ATHENA was one design meeting TOO far and the SHIFT was about ten!

HTC have tried too hard and the awful implementation of the SHIFT shows what direction they are heading in
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
lol

Ever considered your Athena may have been faulty ?

Because when you're not yadda-ing, you keep rambling on about abysmal video playback, etc.

I am a long-time Archos user (since I'm french, as you so subtely interjected), and their players may not be the best in the world, but are supposed to at least be "solid". And well, since I've had the Athena, my Archos has been gathering dust most of the time on my desk. And I'm not easily satisfied on that matter: I have Shure ER5 earbuds to go with the Archos, and a home-theater system worth a few tens of thousand dollars, and a few years ago was the admin of a hi-fi oriented webzine that emphasized on sound and video quality. And yet, for on the go video without hassle, I find the Athena very much on par with many a video player out there, especially considering that very few of those players have screens even half the size of the Athena's.

Aside from the fact that you didn't care to read the full product specifications before buying, did you expect it to be top-notch in everything ? While a "standard", basic mp3-playing Sony Ericsson, for instance, costs almost as much, or even half its price, with barely a tenth of the functionnalities and none of its evolutivity ?

Anyway...
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] leoni1980:
that's a bit of a loose argument. Were my two athenas faulty too?! I imagine most people the athena would not be an acceptable mp3 player substitute since the device is big, fragile and startup and track changing of songs leaves a lot to be desired. I believe you find mp3 playback fine, but the market for mp3 players demands slim performers with good battery life and intuitive gui. As an mp3 player athena does not fall into these paradigms, though for you it is fine and i respect that. Video playback out of the box is abysmal. With tcpmp it will play most videos but they will tend to go totally out of sync or be jerky. There is a thread entirely devoted to this problem which is still unresolved and whose blame lies for the most part with the unsupported graphics chip. This and the mic issues are the two major problems i had with the device. No-where in the blurb for this device did it say that there was no embedded mic. Either way the device only cost me 50gbp on contract so i thought i'd give it a shot, and give it a shot i did - for most of a year. I don't wholeheartedly dislike the device and i shouldn't be criticised for giving it a shot. I am perfectly willing to overlook problems and give things a chance, it just happens that in this instance the problems eventually destroyed my enjoyment of the device. I don't decry you for finding the device suited to your needs, but don't overlook the deficiencies of the device for the sake of confrontation. I have many different handsets and am perfectly willing to acknowledge their flaws where any exist.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] wgary:
You raise two additional important points of merit:

1. Signal strength -- Yes! I get signals where my wife's Curve is flat.

2. Speaker phone -- Yes! This is actually very good. I've done impromptu conference calls in a meeting of 5-10 people with good results. Everyone could hear and be heard. FOR FREE! No extra fee!

I upgrade my rating to a B+.
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
well actually i had 2 as well and both were the same.

As well as the poor video and mp3 playback issues there was the Slow internet, rubbish keyboard as well. BT was quite flakey as well.

The ATHENA is one of those devices that SEEM LIKE A GOOD IDEA

sure i was taken in by the huge screen but after a while ... in my case 7 months .. it just wears off and the irritating things you once ignored start to grate on your nerves.

So Aurevoir Mon Athena !
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] wgary:
"You Will Be Missed!" (not)

Wishing you the best in the forum for whatever device you buy! I suggest Nokia! That would be great!

And, hey man, be a stranger, OK??
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] spacecat:
actually I meant goodbye to my Athena not that I would be leaving this forum .... so MOFO u will see lots more of me .. i will stick around just to p**S YOU OFF!
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
But this is exactly my point: I think you guys have, compared to other devices on the market, way too high expectancies for the Athena.

I agree with you that there are better, smaller, easier to use mp3 players on the market. But there also are worse players, on many respects, GUI-wise, sound quality-wise. Same thing with video, same thing with phone functionalities, same thing with GPS (although I find, comparatively with other solutions, the Athena actually very good in that respect), etc.

With its price tag, it IS a feat to have a device that has such an array of functionalities, even if all of them are averagely implemented.

I think that the differences between our perception is that we who are satisfied with the Athena, on the one hand, had reasonable expectancies about its functionnalities, which is, we didn't expect it to be the equivalent, for each functionality, to the top-notch dedicated device on the market, but a reasonably correct implementation of the functionnality. And we are therefore extremely satisfied that it does all this reasonably well, and that it all fits into a reasonably compact casing.

On the other end, you compare the Athena, functionnality for functionnality, with dedicated, or almost dedicated, devices. Of course, in each case, the Athena may be "beaten", hands down. But where is the integration and the convergence ?

But thanks for explaining the circumstances of you trying on the Athena for size. I just couldn't understand why, with all that you'd said was important to you about a phone, you'd still picked such an expensive device. :-)
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] HeartOfDarkness:
ROFL !!

Sounds like "the man" got robbed with some kind of chineese copy of the Athena, lol !

Do you sometimes take the time to re-read (see, I didn't even say "think", which shows that I know that some things simply are impossible) the nonsense you write ?

On the same device:

- crappy phone;

- crappy video playback;

- crappy mp3 playback;

- crappy wifi;

- crappy bluetooth.

Wondrous indeed that the leader in PDA Phone manufacture ever let such crap come out of their plants, labeled it for a while its flagship device, not mentionning the fact that even a few people scattered around the globe actually seem to ENJOY using the device.

These couple of lines of yours are a caricature, just like you, in fact.

lol ! Thanks for one thing, at least: the laugh ! :D
[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] leoni1980:
flagship device it was not: the Wizard and its updates are the flagship line, Athena was devised to show what could be done with Windows mobile devices. A flagship device would never be aimed at such a small market.

No offence.

One thing I would say about the Athena: the black one is so much better isn't it?

It's amazing how a change of colour can change something from ugly (silver/white) to expensive-looking and desireable (shiny black). Whoever is responsible for T-Mobile's colour schemes needs shooting.