[General Questions and Answers] itburns:
Hi Mhz250,

I've been delivered the model you describe as "The Great One", i.e. with 1GHz processor (at least, that's what it reports) and NOT dual boot.

I can't tell you which one to buy as I'm not familiar with the others, but below are some of my impressions. As a disclaimer, the model I'd ordered was meant to be the dual boot one, so I'm a bit disgruntled, and also this is my first smart phone, so I don't have anything to compare it to with regards performance. However I do have an Ipod touch so I'm familiar with capacitive screens.

Build Quality:

The body feels reasonably solid. There's a bit of a plastic squeek when you squeeze if from the sides but otherwise there's a nice weight to it. The battery cover is metal and again feels solid.

The buttons below the screen and the two volume buttons on the side feel robust, but the cover for the memory card slot is a loose friction fit, and the small power button feels like it might eventually fall out.

Screen quality:

Brightness:

It doesn't seem as bright as my Ipod touch, even with the lightness up full. I've not tried to use it outdoors on a sunny day (I'm avoiding using it until I've my support query on sorting the dual-os settled) but for indoor use it has been fine.

Touch:

I'm using a screen protector that I ordered with the phone, which might have an effect on the responsiveness. It is a resistive screen rather than capacitive: sometimes a light touch is sufficient to get a response, other times you've got to press firmly. I'd characterise the difference like this:

- with a capacitive screen you can lightly "swoosh" with the pad of a finger to scroll

- with the S880, I find I either have to drag with the pad of my finger to scroll, or else use the tip of my finger/nail.

- in general, I find I've to re-enter my taps etc to get a response some of the time, other times it works fine.

- also bear in mind that you will not have multi-touch (pinch-to-zoom), which makes browsing less convenient.

OS:

In my opinion Windows mobile 6.5 is not very nice to use without a stylus: the settings menus and the keyboard are rather small and, although not impossible to use with the tip of your finger, it's still quite easy to select the wrong item. Note that the S880 doesn't come with one of those built-in stylus slots (or even a stylus). Installing FingerKeyboard helps with the keyboard issue, but doesn't help with the small menus.

The lack of an "alt-tab" built in to the OS to switch between running apps is a pain. Perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the OS, I keep finding myself back at the home screen and have to re-navigate to the application (sometimes via task manager).

I downloaded a trial of SPB Mobile shell and that helps to make the screen feel more responsive. That's all very well while you're in the SPB shell (navigation) but when you finally arrive at the app, you're back in the Win6.5 world :eek:. It also adds an extra $30 to the factor into the cost, but if I cannot get the dual-os issue resolved, I'd personally go for this (and, before anyone asks, no, I'm not affiliated with SPB)

So, although this shouldn't be a review of the OS, in terms of selecting which S880 model to go for, all else being equal I'd lean towards the dual boot in order to be able to use Android. (I'm sure there are threads arguing over which OS is better, I don't mean to kick of any such debate here).

Conclusions

This is an admittedly selective review: for me, the two dominant factors are the resistive screen and the Windows interface, neither of which I particularly like, and I don't think they compliment each other.

I hope this helps!