My VWD Lottery Experience.

I have been playing with my new phone, the XDA Orbit. All I can say is “WHAT A GREAT PHONE!”. I had the XDA IIi PDA phone before and although it was packed with features, it left a lot to be desired when it came to actually functioning. The (XDA IIi) battery would run down super quickly, the touchscreen would occasionally not work with certain letters and when I installed TomTom on it then it would always crash (the pda, not the car) at a complicated junction. It was also pretty clunky and completely impossible to use one handed.

All that has changed, the XDA Orbit is fantastic. Some of the new features:

A scroll wheel on the front like an ipod, it also has a small track ball in the center of that which really helps to select icons and options. It has a few extra buttons like an “ok” button, a windows key for opening the start menu, a GPS key and two soft keys. And that’s just on the face of the phone.

Built in GPS receiver with option to add an external antenna. I was a little dubious about the built in GPS functionality at first seeing as it didn’t seem to bulge the phone but after installing TomTom 6 and seeing the phone locate my position in less than a minute and then continue to function flawlessly for my whole journey I changed my mind (and felt a little gutted about having bought a TomTom 910 a couple of months ago!!)

The size is much better too, it doesn’t look as small in pictures but take it from me, it’s a usable size. The battery life is very good too, play mp3’s with the screen set to always on will allow you to listen for over 5 hours! amazing.

The camera is a 2 megapixel affair, not too shabby but not super high rez either. The interface for the camera software is good though, it takes landscape pictures and there’s plenty of options available on the touch screen. I particularly liked the scroll wheel being used as a zoom dial. To take the picture you can touch the screen or use the camera button located on the bottom right of the phone, which becomes the top right when the phone is being used as a camera - the same place you would expect a button to be on a camera. There’s no flash but it takes decent pictures if the lighting is good, on screen buttons can adjust the contrast, lighting, resolution (with settings for MMS size).

It’s got a fast scanning FM radio too, you have to use the headphones supplied as they act as an antenna but you can still output the sound through the speaker once they’re in.

Also, voice dialling which worked really well on the phone and through my bluetooth headset. Press the button, wait for the beep and then say your pre-recorded name. It plays the recording back to you before it dials so you can hear that you’ve got the right number (useful on a bluetooth headset).

The OS is windows mobile 5 and works much faster than previous XDA’s. No agonising wait for the phone interface to come up if you’re using other apps. The screen is good quality, I used my previous XDA to read ebooks using MS Reader and it works just as well on the Orbit, even better perhaps because the scroll wheel is a much more natural way to turn the page.

I downloaded quite a few apps for it this week, my favourite is the PPOD which turns it into a virtual ipod which displays the ipod on the screen and even uses the touch screen for the scroll wheel. It looks and feels just like an ipod! lame I know but I never bought an ipod so it pleased me no end! see here for a video showing ppod on a windows pda

The XDA Orbit uses a micro-sd card for expanded memory which is a little fiddly to install because the port is located under the sim which means you have to switch the phone off to change cards. Not a big deal really if you have a big enough card to start with.

The charger, data connection and headphones all fit into the mini-usb port at the bottom of the phone so you can’t charge and listen to the radio at the same time which, again, is no big deal.

They managed to put the stylus in a tight fitting hole this time so it’s not going to fall out like the last model, I have found I rarely have to use the stylus. Only when I’m sending text messages will it come out from hiding. Another bonus!

All in all, I love this phone. It’s not because of the amount of features but simply because it works and works well, everything is easy to get to and use. The position of the buttons and their function are natural.

This is what all my previous smartphones and pda’s should have acted like.

bye bye Nokia!! hahaha, in the bin with you and your “wait a couple seconds between menus” lol