Fantastic phone, decent network | T-Mobile Dash myFaves Smartphone (T-Mobile)

At Long Last - from an X Tier 3 suppor tech! | T-Mobile Dash myFaves Smartphone (T-Mobile)

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	• T-Mobile Dash myFaves Smartphone (T-Mobile) T-Mobile T-Mobile, 2007 average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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Exactly what I was looking for...

I was a little skeptical in the beginning with all the negative reviews about the LCD screen breaking and all but overall I have to say it's a decent phone and exactly what I was looking for. I'm sure the screen would break if you rammed the phone into the little pocket of your two-sizes too small jeans on your way to the hamburger stand. Yeah, that will cause the screen to crack. Or, you could hit up weightwatchers and actually use the included case with the phone and then you won't have to worry about a thing. It's good looking, it's got great call quality, it can be used as an mp3 player and all that jazz. The only reason I didn't give it 5 out of 5 is because it could use a standard headphone jack instead of the mini usb one.

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Fantastic phone, decent network

I have owned this T-Mobile Dash for the last year now, and I am really getting great mileage out of it. This is the first smartphone I have ever owned, though I have played around with smartphones, Blackberries, and pocket PC's for years as a cellphone salesman. Some other members of my family have owned Blackberries, and I was never very impressed with them; in fact, I avoided selling Blackberries as much as I could back in the day. I have long since moved on from the cellphone industry, but I needed a phone with PDA functionality to keep track of my appointments and scheduling, and I was tempted by the idea of being able to edit documents and spreadsheets on the go.

Consequently, I went to T-Mobile (I had previously been with Cingular and then Sprint, and I preferred Cingular... which had become AT&T) because, with my shot credit, AT&T wanted a humongous $300 deposit to give me service again, and I did not have that kind of money to throw in on top of a smartphone purchase. T-Mobile does not charge deposits any more these days, and I was approved for Flex-Pay, so I went with it. The phone was sold to me at a price-match value that strongly discounted the phone below the new contract price. I purchased the newly released Windows Mobile 6 edition.

Things went very well. The phone has only a few quirks, mostly related to the resource memory space and Windows Mobile hickups which I anticipated. The phone does freeze once in a while, usually only if I am doing something resource-intensive and simultaneously recieve a call. There were actually alot less events of this kind than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. The Comm Manager display is confusing in one way; it shows a button for managing IR Beaming, which the phone does NOT do. The phone does not have IR Beaming capability, even though the Windows Mobile Comm Manager screen apparently has this feature listed anyway. The volume strip was frustrating and difficult to figure out for a while, and in many a moment of stupidity I thought that pressing on the strip was supposed to change the volume. Once I read the manual in full I was able to see how it should work, and it has worked quite well ever since, although it does seem a bit over-sensitive from time to time.

The phone keypad does not automatically lock, which has been troublesome on occassion, but I have learned to live with it. It is a full QWERTY pad, which is nice, but it is quite cramped compared to many others; personally, this does not bother me at all, but the fat-fingered must beware. Lack of a touch screen does not seem to affect my ability to navigate through the phone's features and applications, although some people may find it annoying. Also, the microSD card slot is somewhat inconvenient, located under the back plate; however, this fact does reassure me that the microSD card is quite secure and will not fall out.

The screen is QVGA (320x240, 65000 colors) and quite vibrant, and I have no problem reading it in most lighting conditions. I have heard others claim that the screen is quite fragile and will crack for no apparent reason: I accidentally tested this when I dropped my phone, from about waist-height, onto a bare wood floor with the screen-side squarely down forcefully enough that the battery door popped off and leapt back up into my hand, but fortunately the screen was unharmed and the phone functioned as if nothing had happened. It has been 7 months since then, and there have been no side-effects from the fall.

Editing Microsoft documents and spreadsheets is a breeze, and quite powerful. My only concern is that there are no blank templates for either Word docs or Excel spreadsheets on the phone, so I made templates on the computer and put them on my microSD card. There is not much room for this on the phone memory itself, so I strongly suggest either a 1GB or 2GB microSD card if you plan on storing a whole lot of anything in the phone. Luckily for me, everything I have produced electronically over my entire lifetime (now almost 28yrs) fits within half a gigabyte, so I basically took the entire My Documents folder from my home computer and copied it all onto the microSD card. Since then, about 8 months ago, I only turn on the house computer to sync the phone to it. The phone has replaced my home PC!

The camera on the phone is 1.3 Mpixel, and takes video clips. Very nice. I also like the rubberized surface of the phone, which makes one-handed operation very easy and comfortable. The phone (WM6 version) comes with Adobe Reader installed, so I have imported all of my pdf files into the phone via microSD. Bluetooth works well, and voice command features are simple and useful. The Outlook calendar will actually speak your appointment reminders to you, either on speakerphone or through your Bluetooth.

WiFi capability works well and is fast; in fact, I cancelled my T-Mobile data plan to save money, and I get reliable high-speed internet for free in any unsecured WiFi hotspot. The Outlook calendar feature also automatically silences the phone when I mark a calendar item as "busy", which means I don't have to worry about silencing the phone manually as long as the item is in the calendar. Furthermore, the security on the phone is intense; earlier this year, my wife was playing with my phone (I said okay because I thought she was going to listen to music or play a game, not change all the settings and passwords...) and tripped a phone-lock by accident. She couldn't remember what she had put in for a password, and after a few tries she had it locked to the point that it was asking for a PUK code. I took it into T-Mobile and let my rep Paul take a stab at it. Seriously, Paul at T-Mobile, my rep, treats me like a frickin' rockstar... Whenever I show up, it seems like he always drops whatever he's doing and runs over to greet me and help me out. He always remembers my name, and he is always very generous, courteous, and friendly... but to get back on topic, Paul had to call HTC to get it resolved. They had to do a master-reset, which could have been a real nightmare, but since everything was backed up or on a microSD card I only had to change a few settings and it was back to the way it was. Just a warning though; if you accidentally lock your phone, don't keep trying random password ideas, because the phone is rigged to fry itself if you try too many incorrect passwords. Literally. It will shut down, short out the processor, and never, ever, ever turn on ever again. So, as long as your data is on microSD or on your desktop Active-Sync, you need not worry about having to go through that, and you can rest assured that sensitive information is secure.

Unfortunately, the phone has no 3G data, although as long as I have WiFi I don't care a whole lot. But the point is that the T-Mobile network, although it gets you alot of service for less, really hobbles the true capabilities of the phone in a way. I have not been incredibly impressed with T-Mobile's voice coverage, and T-Mobile's EDGE data is not any faster than Sprint's 1xRTT in my area. I have to say that T-Mobile's service is not terrible in any way; it is decent in my opinion, and works everywhere that I really need it, but it is not as wide as AT&T's local coverage. The phone has only dropped a handful of calls when inside a coverage area, and pulls in signal well. It will hold a call even when one or no bars are showing. However, I have dropped a few more calls as a direct result of actually leaving a voice coverage area. T-Mobile's EDGE is faster than AT&T's, but not by much, and neither are worth paying for in my opinion. The phone also lacks GPS support, as most of the GSM phones of similar age do. These facts may dissappoint some. After my contract expires I may consider unlocking the phone just so I can try it on AT&T (if my credit is any better by then...).

I have mostly been a fan of Nokia's S60 smartphones, and HTC and Samsung seemed a little cheap and unstable to me for a long time, but the Dash has changed my mind about HTC's competency. This is the best HTC phone I have ever seen, even though it may seem a bit simpler and less fully-featured than other recent HTC smartphone and pocket PC models. It may be simple, but it is a solid phone.

To summarize, I would say that this is a great smartphone, but the T-Mobile service, although decent, is not really exceptional. I went into this expecting alot of problems, which I had seen with many other smartphones and pocket PC's, and I was truly surprised that I have had so few difficulties. If this phone was offered by AT&T, it might have been more versatile. Adding 3G support would have turned this into a BlackJack killer!

The Dash is a great phone for the money. If you want a smartphone that is both affordable AND really works well, then the Dash is for you...

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At Long Last - from an X Tier 3 suppor tech!

I was finally able to upgrade my phone after being with T-mobile for about a year. Actually, what I had to end up doing was buy a new line and migrate my existing number over to a family plan, but for the additional $10 month it was worth keeping my old number.

I've been wanting this phone for about a year, while I was still working Tier 3 Data support for T-mobile. I read through the bad reviews and I know from experience before owning the phone what to expect. Having said that, is it worth it - I guess only time will tell.

What to look out for ...?

Phone OS, slow/freezing. Before Windows Mobile 6 came out, there was really no way to release applications that were still in memory (I think you could shut the phone off and turn it back on, but even that may not have worked, short of taking out the battery). With WM6 go into "Task Manager" and Stop All, this should fix the slow/freezing issue 9 out of 10 times.

side volume control - I have a leather case (not the one that comes with it) that covers this, so I don't think unintentional volume changes will be an issue.

This will also hopefully fix the cracked display issue as well.

Others have ranted about the Wi-Fi not connecting, or staying on "conneccting" eventhough they are able to surf on-line. This is probably related to slow/freezing (see above).

Contacts/organizer - Some people just have way too many contacts (over 1-2,000). Come on, how many people do you actually know/be in contact with on a regular basis! Is this a cop-out in my support for Microsoft/T-Mobile, I don't know, but if your BUSINESS needs to track that many contacts, that is one thing, but do you really need to have that many people reachable at the touch of your fingertips? yes, I know this is a business persons device, but let's be reasonable about how many people you need to be in touch with - if you have over 1,000 people that you communicate with, you probably aren't doing much more than communicating! Good luck doing anything else. Think of how much work a manager could do if they have more than a couple dozen people reporting directly to them? How much "sales" could a sales person do if they have more than a couple dozen people they connect with at any given time - now, most times once a sales person makes a sale, the customer is passed off to Customer Service, so there you go.

ActiveSync - yes, this program sucks. Fortuntately with WM6, Microsoft smartened up and included a "PC to USB" feature that was previously a 3rd party free download. Basically there was something wrong in the Communication stack in Windows Mobile phones that prevented syncing. As a tier 3 support agent, I loved these calls, I could open up their data/internet port, send them a link to donwload and run the program and viola, ActiveSync was fixed.

Why I chose this phone, out of all the choices? That brings me to another rant I read - there isn't very much software out there for this phone! Of course this person went on to say that "most software" is written in Java. I've been a programming for about 15 years, and my only Java experience has been in the classroom, and yes, I can even write stuff for Windows Mobile - which is why I bought this phone. If you don't find something out there that suits your needs, then you can make it (Using Visual Studio) yourself and upload it to your phone. Unfortunately, I don't believe mobile device programming is included in the free "express" versions of Visual Studio, so I guess that limits it for the every day person. Of course, there are already almost 2,000 downloads available [...].

I'm even helping a friend's security guard business by writing them an application for the smartphone.

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Exclusive to T-Mobile service, the quad-band T-Mobile Dash is everything you need to stay connected. Perfect for business or leisure applications, the Dash is a slim Windows Mobile Smartphone that's comfortable to hold and provides crystal-clear calling. Send, receive, and reply to your personal and business email easily with the built-in full QWERTY keyboard and the convenience of integrated Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile software. You can even browse the Web using the included Wi-Fi connectivity or built-in EDGE data support. Other highlights include myFaves compatibility, Bluetooth 2.0, a microSD memory card slot, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and more.

The Dash is the the perfect mobile office and mobile entertainment device. See it in detail. You can also watch a product demo (requires Flash). Design
Under the hood, the Dash features 23 MB of built-in flash memory, a memory card slot for more memory, and a speedy 200 MHz OMAP 850 processor. Up front, the large 2.4-inch 320 x 240 QVGA touch-screen supports over 65,000 colors, while the rear of the device houses the 1.3-megapixel camera. The design of the Dash is clean and uncluttered, with most of the buttons easily accessible with one hand. Just to the right side of the display you'll find convenient up/down keys for volume adjustment and handy keys for browser control. There's also a handy HTC JOGGR control pad with variable speed, drag, and hold functions that makes document viewing a pleasure. Meanwhile, call answer and end buttons surround a five-way toggle that allows you to navigate and control the Windows Mobile interface. A full QWERTY keyboard resides underneath the large display. As mentioned earlier, a microSD memory expansion card slot is provided, and USB/Bluetooth connectivity is included for convenient data transfers.

Calling and PDA Features
The Dash's phone and PDA functions are designed to provide an integrated, seamless experience. The included Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone software with Direct Push technology gives you instant access to your emails, calendar, and contacts at anytime. That means wherever and whenever, you'll be connected. A single main screen summarizes all the important information you need to make it through the day. Here you'll get message notification, upcoming appointments, dialing functions, tasks, and more all in one spot.

As a phone, the Dash features all the functionality folks expect from an advanced cell phone, including a handsfree speakerphone, polyphonic ringtones, a vibrate mode, and picture and ringer ID. Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile combines email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes into a single application that seamlessly integrates with the Dash's phone functions. Meanwhile, headsets, car kits and other wireless peripherals can also be paired with the unit via Bluetooth.

Staying productive on the road is made possible by the Microsoft Office Mobile suite, which includes Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile. Meanwhile, the File Explorer application makes it easy to browse the files on your Dash.

Like all T-Mobile phones, the Dash supports voicemail, caller ID, conference calling, call forwarding, call waiting, call hold, built-in paging, and access to T-Mobile's 411 service.

This phone is fully compatible with T-Mobile's myFaves service, which allows you to call up to five of your most common contacts--on any network, even landlines--without using any of your minutes. Learn more about myFaves.

Messaging and Internet
Using T-Mobile's EDGE-powered Internet service, you can surf the Web with the bundled Internet Explorer application, or use MSN, Yahoo!, or AOL messenger services to stay in contact via instant messaging. Plus, the inclusion of Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) in the Dash allows you to surf the Web or check your email at blazing speeds when you're connected to a Wi-Fi network. With the purchase of T-Mobile Hotspot data service, you can get online at thousands of locations coast-to-coast. Lastly, robust SMS and MMS functionality is built into the Windows Mobile interface, too.

One of the most important tools bundled with the Dash is Microsoft ActiveSync, which allows you to quickly synchronize your device's tasks, calendars, email, and contacts with your desktop. You also get Exchange ActiveSync, an application that lets you synchronize data with an Exchange server. Syncing can be done via USB or wirelessly via Bluetooth.

Imaging and Entertainment
Another great feature of the Dash is that it supports Windows Media playback right out of the box. With Windows Media Player, you can play streaming and downloaded video and audio content in a variety of formats. You can also keep favorite tunes loaded on a memory card and listen to your music wherever you roam.

As mentioned, the Dash can take 1.3-megapixel pictures, and while the camera is great for taking stills, it can also function as a camcorder, allowing you to capture video to the unit's memory. An integrated media application organizes your captured photos and videos. For gamers, the phone supports Java-based and Windows Mobile games.

The Dash also sports an airplane mode feature, which allows the user to safely use the non-wireless functions of a phone (such as music, games, or organizer functions) on an airplane during flight.

Vital Statistics
The T-Mobile Dash weighs 4.23 ounces and measures 4.39 x 2.46 x 0.51 inches. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 5 hours of digital talk time, and up to 216 hours of digital standby time. It runs on the 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE frequencies. The phone comes with a one year limited warranty.

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