Got the new MPx200 SmartPhone

No, it's not .NET, but it's the next best thing...a cool new Windows-powered gadget. It's in the process of charging up, but the first impression is that the screen is much nicer than I'd anticipated. It will be interesting to see how my wife likes using it (it's her phone), but she already loves how it looks.

Given that my wife, though computer-literate, is not a gearhead like myself, I think how she responds to the non-phone features of the MPx200 will be illuminating. She currently carries a Palm III that I got for her years ago, and although I don't think she's thrilled with it, it has served her adequately. The real test will be whether she uses the contact and calendar features of the smartphone, or whether she continues to use the Palm. For me, combining both into a single device (I carry an XDA PocketPC Phone) was a no-brainer. But my wife is more of the average phone user, so if she gets into the non-phone features and finds them easy to use, that will probably be a good sign for the Microsoft smartphones.

4 Comments

  • Do keep us informed of your wife's feelings about the new smartphone. I am more than a little curious. I will be doing some writing for MobilitySoftware.com, and so hearing about a real Smartphone user's experience (and a non programmer at that) will be interesting...

  • Will do, Doug. And though the MPx200 doesn't have .NET preinstalled, I may try my hand at an app or two using embedded VB and see what she thinks about that.

  • Well, I'll be posting a new post once we get the phone up and running, but the first encounter with AT&T customer service is not encouraging. The phone, while working fine from an OS standpoint, does not currently acknowledge having any service. It shows signal, but will not connect to any network. I'm assuming that this is because AT&T has not yet done whatever is necessary to enable the account. Unfortunately, when we called AT&T to confirm this, they could not help us because they are upgrading their customer service systems such that they will have no access to customer data until Monday at the earliest.



    Now I recognize that there are often disruptions when one upgrades systems. But I'm baffled as to how AT&T could think it's acceptable to have no access to customer service info for an entire weekend for a software upgrade. Was there no way for them to minimize the downtime?



    At any rate, hopefully by Monday we'll have the phone set up on the network, and I can report more about how it works.

  • I am interested to see how this goes too. I just bought a PDA because though my phone has had contacts and calendar sections for years (and WAP), the form factors of the devices seem too dissimilar for true merger to occur to me. My phone needs a certain shape to be used in my hand between ear and mouth. My PDA needs a decent sized tablet surface for notes. I dislike hands-free solutions and wonder if this much-heralded merger is really going to happen.

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