Friday, 2007.10.05 16:20 JST
w-zero3[es] Advanced and WM6
A few months back I tested some smartphones and eventually I ended up getting the newly released (well, it was when I got it) Sharp w-zero[es] Advanced available through Willcom. So how does it compare to the ones I wrote about before?
The phone
The phone itself is an updated version of the old w-zero[es] and is in many ways very similar; Windows Mobile (version 6 Classic this time), slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, normal phone keypad, PHS phone network, USB host, etc. Additionally there are some improvements on the spec sheet; the PHS is a tad faster than before (8 of 10 times it would be to slow for Skype calls though), the CPU is faster at 520mhz, and there is more heap memory (128MB), it now boosts wifi by default, microSD instead of miniSD, and the screen resolution is bumped up to a whopping 800x480 in 3" (!!!). The most noticeable difference at first is the size reduction though. Not only is it a lot smaller than the previous model, it is also shaped better so it feels better in your hand and fits in your pocket. The QWERTY keyboard has also improved a lot. I found the w-zero[es] keyboard to be utterly useless, but the keyboard on the Advanced is way better and in a pinch I can write e-mails on this one without wanting to bite my fingers off to avoid the abuse on them. New is the so-called XCrawl directional-pad thing, which includes something similar to the iPod's click-wheel, but the movements are tracked by the middle button. Kinda hard to explain, but it works well as a scroll wheel and directional keys when you get used to it. The overall plastic feel is still there to some extent, though the build quality is head and shoulders above the previous phone.
Windows Mobile
So far so good... Must be something awfully bad, right? Unfortunately there is, and again it is Windows Mobile. I don’t get how a company the size of Microsoft with their resources can be spending years and millions creating this utter piece of rubbish when Apple can pull of magic like the iPhone’s UI with seemingly little effort. To be fair, Windows Mobile 6 is better than the previous incarnations of the OS - but not by much. It should be version 5.01 really... which in turn should be 1.05. It’s that bad. It crashes left and right, and often you find that the whole thing is hanging and you wonder how many phone calls you’ve missed. Also, sometimes it would hang and run out of batteries before you noticed. Daily reboots is part of life when using a Windows Mobile and it’s even more annoying that when Windows kept taking down your machine in its 3.x days. The UI is still about as bad as ever. Sure, they’ve changed the colour scheme a bit, but that does no usable UI make.
Applications
The only saving grace with Windows Mobile is that given that it’s been around for so long and that it is somewhat open to develop on, there are lots of good applications available that turns the little device cursed with such a mind boggling bad OS and turn it into a useful tool. Things I found myself always using includes;
QMail (freeware). Not to be confused with the mail server, this is a mail client running running on various platforms including Windows Mobile. The interface is somewhat odd, but it is a lot more powerful than the bundled Mobile Outlook and it doesn’t have the massive flaw Mobile Outlook has; Mobile Outlook plays the “you’ve got mail”-sound for EVERY mail you get. Serious. If it POPs your account for 100 new mails, it will play back that sound 100 times! How retarded is that?
Opera Mobile (bundled), with Flash. Strangely the version bundled is a newer version than what appears as the latest on their site (8.65 vs 8.7) at the time of writing. Unfortunately this take a bit of time to load compared to Mobile Internet Explorer which I reckon already has the render engine etc. loaded at boot time, but while Mobile IE is an utter piece of junk, this one gets the job done and seems to handle pretty much everything I’ve bothered to throw at it. The slow PHS isn’t the greatest when browsing though. The PHS data access card I have at 800kbps (and you actually get that speed) is great for browsing, but the 240kbps - or whatever - in this phone isn’t nearly as comfortable to browse with.
Spb Insight (payware). Mobile RSS has never been this good. Every RSS reader reads RSS feeds, but this one go a step further and scrapes down a bunch of related sites (there is an online scraper catalogue so you can just pick whatever site you want to scrape like a feed). This is great because you get the whole articles (with pictures and everything) on the go, rather than just the headlines most RSS feeds provide.
Total Commander (freeware). Manage your files, zip/unzip, etc.
Google Maps is also a free download, but for some reason it is surprisingly slow compared to the likes of iPhone, which is odd as this phone is supposed to have more raw power. When things do show up however, everything looks awesome on the 800x480 screen. Other useful apps include; TaskMgr, Spb Imageer, MyMobiler, Spb Mobile Shell, Mobile Putty, etc.
Conclusion
So is the phone worth getting? To be honest, despite all its annoying OS problems, overall I found it very useful. Being able to be on top my emails before arriving at the office, reading up on the news in the RSS reader, or talk to people via MSN messenger, Skype or IRC, etc. all makes it worthwhile as a secondary phone. More like a PDA with Internet always available kinda. As a primary phone I don’t think I would get it. Even if my company pays the phone bills on it, I found myself whipping out my personal au phone and making business calls with that one as it is so much easier. It’s a shame because the hardware is really impressive. If someone could get a proper OS on this thing, it would be great.
Links:
Willcom's w-zero3[es] Advanced product page
Sharp w-zero3[es] Advanced page
PDA Review - Sharp w-zero[es] Advanced
 tmk
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