In sum: If you want coverage independent navigation or T-Mobile 3G, you may consider this phone, but you must live with Windows Mobile and the most non-standard headphone jack imaginable.Pros:
1. Offers T-Mobile 3G on my grandfathered plan, though the coverage is spotty.
2. Nice screen--480x800. Feels good in hand. Nice form factor.
3. Decent sound in speakers after load Pocket Player. Sounds poor with Windows Mobile player.
4. Includes Opera 9.5 browser.
5. Sbp interface included. Quite glossy and graphical interface overlay. But takes work to set up and is flakey at times.
6. Some nice third party software can improve matters, such as Pocket Player, which has better sound and a resume function for audio books. Kinoma also is good and includes Audible integration.
7. The Pharos navigation software has ugly and dated graphics but does include turn by turn directions, and is not dependent on the wireless connection. A 2 gb navigation card in included, but this can be transferred to a card with more more memory. The gps was not as sensitive as advertised, but not too bad--it did pick up a signal in my tree lined street.
8. Is said to be able to be used as a modem. Haven't tried this yet.
Cons:
1. The most non-standard USB headphone jack I could imagine. I thought, at least, I could use HTC or Motorola Razr headphones or jacks. No. HTC jacks will not fit in the phone, and the Motorola USB jacks yield no sound. This is quite an outrage.
2. A close second for bad--Windows Mobile. The level of frustration which this OS presents is incredible at this stage in mobile development. It takes days to try to set up the phone to work in some reasonable way. The OS is slow and the stock programs are poor. The browser is bad--Opera is much better. The Media Player is horrible--the sound, compability and functionality. It will hardly play any videos. The freeze ups are common--many times per day with constant use.
3. A close third for terrible--the keyboard implementation. The biggest problem--if you touch the on-screen keyboard even a millisecond too long, you get multiple character entries. After using the iPhone, this is very annoying. Also, although it includes a nice sbp keyboard, it pops up inconsistently.
4. The touch screen functionality is poor; it is either too sensitive (selecting what you don't want) or not sensitive enough.
5. The accelerometer is flakey, being delayed in switching between landscape and portrait or flashing back and forth.
6. The jury is still out, but battery life seems very poor.
7. Many programs don't work--Mobipocket for books (a shame with the big screen); the divx player; and many others I tried to load.
However, I finally give a try, and got 137E (no software card). Strangely, mine doesn't have problem some other users stated, I can assume it's different hardware.
Touchscreen is reliable, no "single tap, multiple characters" issue.
Battery is still kinda short, but I expect that happens, running over 3G is certainly battery killer, I have ordered 2 more batteries along with software card (137E has a coupon, which gives $50 off).
Charging this phone from USB hub works with a trick, that you have to cover 2 center conductors on the USB plug to make it NOT data capable, failure to do it will activate ActiveSync and halt charging; same way applies to iGo AA battery charger, NiMH batteries will work, but Lithium AA batteries are recommended as it draws a lot of power.
The new hardware has better radio, no "losing reception" problem like other stated; however, the antenna is located on the bottom (back of trackball), and I hate this design, because your palm will affect reception. Bluetooth is OK, but I wish it's Broadcom stack because it works better, wifi is fine.
I personally like SPB shell more than HTC TouchFlo 3D, the virtual keyboard takes time to learn, but it's cool, and it can take different language layout.
Trackball is OK, but I think it's too slow to scroll on a web, and it's difficult to catch a link, tapping is way better.
This phone has a special USB jack, that only wired headset sold from Pharos work; fortunately, I use wireless headset/headphones all the time, that this is not big deal.
It comes with SPB TV with few free channels, you can pay monthly fee to unlock other channels; however, wifi and/or 3G connection is required to view. Slingplayer works, but rendering is not so ideal especially in full screen mode. Pocket Player works fine, but you need to disable auto screen off, and let the system handle it.
Voice quality is not really ideal, sound comes from earpiece is like some Samsung phones (compressed), even I heard through wireless headset. Audio from wireless headphones is affected by system.
Camera is kinda dark if you take pics indoors, video only renders QVGA in 3GP format.
GPS takes about 3-5 mins to fix, but currently I can't really test it because software card is on the way.
Conclusion: if you plan to get this smartphone, make sure you get 137E model, the cost of software card is worth for better stability.Pros
1. A lot of free Software bundled, including Navigation softare and US Map.
2. Unblocked with Quad-band, good for international traveler.
Also good for domestic traveling too, Notebook using "Internet Share" (data Modem) software, allow me to connect to Internet.
3. Very sensetive GPS receiver.
4. Very high resolution in Display (800X480)
5. A lot of memory.
6. Got 3G bandwidth with T-mobile most of time.
Cons
1. Stylus easy to lost. Drop it couple of times, but fortunately found it back.On the plus side, the design of the software is attractive. The SPB software is nice with a lot of good features. The GPS traveller is good and the receiver was sensitive enough (not as good as my Garmin though). Although sometimes finding a POI in the database was not quite intuitive if it did not fall in one of the categories. I got through to their Tech support very quickly and easily which is good. Call quality was fine. Nice screen and resolution.
On the negative side mine is on its way back to Amazon.com because I found the camera button does not work on my unit (spoke to Pharos Tech Support to confirm). Also the G-sensor worked sometimes and locked up in one orientation from time to time which can be irritating. The FM radio requires use of the provided headphones as the antenna and won't turn on without it plugged in. This sucks because you have to carry that around to listen to the FM radio? What if you want to use bluetooth headphones? Battery life seems short (ran out before the end of the day both days I had the phone). Trackball feel was iffy (I could live with it) and Internet Explorer was tiny (could not figure out how to adjust or zoom) so it was hard to read or zoom into maps on weather.com. I read somewhere that the USB headphone jack does not work with all USB headphones although I did not confirm this myself.The model I have is 137-E. This unit has following major features: Windows Mobile Apps, Navigator, Wireless connection, Bluetooth 3MP camera, FM tuner and Quadband GSM phone. Sound quality is excellent. It has a nice trackball for scrolling. This one feels good in hand. I bought this phone for international travel. It worked well in other countries.
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