First takes on the O2 XDA Atom

I’m going out today, but I’m not bringing this one with me. Pity, since with specs like these it’s hard not to think ‘dream machine’.

Platform

• Microsoft Windows Mobile� 5.0
• Integrated personal digital assistance, tri-band EDGE phone, FM radio, high-resolution camera, Bluetooth, and Wireless LAN

Processor

• Intel PXA272 416MHz

Memory

• Flash ROM: 128MB in total
• RAM: 64MB

Display

• 2.7″ TFT LCD display with touch panel
• 240 x 320 dots resolution
• Supports 262K colours (65,536 effective)

Audio

• Stereo speaker
• Speaker with receiver
• Omni-directional mono microphone
• Support speaker phone operation
• Ringtone support: 64-chord MIDI, MP3, WMA, WAV
• Playback support: MIDI, MP3, WMA, WAV, AMR

Device-to-Device Connectivity

• Bluetooth
• Wireless LAN IEEE 802.11b compliant
• Infrared Infrared IrDA 1.2 SIR (115kbps at 30cm)

GSM / GPRS

• Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
• GSM services Speech services with EFR/FR/HR/AMR codec Emergency call DTMF tone generation Call holding, waiting, forwarding, barring SMS w/ MT/PP, MO/PP, Cell broadcast, text mode, PDU mode
• GPRS / EDGE functionality EGPRS class 10 GPRS CS 1 to 4 coding scheme supported EDGE MCS 1 to 9
• SIM function 3V SIM operation SIM application toolkit Over the air provisioning
• Internal antenna

Battery

• Removable rechargeable Li-Ion battery, 1,530mAh

Operation time

• Standby: 150 hours
• Talk time up to 5.5 hours

Keyboard / Button / Switch

• Power button
• Send and End phone button
• Start and O2 MediaPlus button
• Side buttons: Volume up, Volume down, Camera and Recorder
• 5-way navigation buttons: Right, Left, Up, Down and Action

Camera

• Colour 2-mega-pixel CMOS camera
• Preview mirror for self portrait
• White LED strobe flash
• Support still image and video capture

Interface

• Infrared IrDA 1.2 SIR (115kbps at 30cm)
• Mini-USB connector for USB 1.1 connection and power charging
• SIM card slot
• MiniSD memory card slot
• Audio jack (2.5mm �)

Notification

• Three-color LED (amber, green and blue)
• Notification by sound, message and vibration

Here are the reasons why the O2 isn’t a good companion for me today:

• It’s slow – slow as molasses in winter. I heard that once in a bugs bunny cartoon and I gotta admit, it’s quite apt. You click on something, nothing happens and you assume it didn’t register, so you click again, or you click something else, and bam, it happens twice + the second button you clicked starts activating, and you don’t know what to do anymore.
• Not for texters – PDAs have always been poor text machines. Texting with a stylus on a tiny keyboard is a stupid stupid thing. Forget it.
• Making a call is tedious – Click ‘contacts’, type the contact on the tiny keyboard. Wait for it to show up (read ‘it’s slow’ above), click call. Wait. If it doesn’t connect, find out how to do it again. The fact I can’t even remember how to do it again and I have to check the phone how it’s done as I type this speaks volumes.
• It didn’t charge last night – I think this is a bug and maybe particular to this unit only (it looks beat up, probably by other writers before me), but it doesn’t charge even as I tried to overnight. You actually have to pull the battery out to kill it (I don’t know how to turn it off. It didn’t come with the manual), plug it to charge and turn it on after a few hours. Unfortunately that resets everything including date and time. Trying to charge it while its on will display that it’s ‘charging’, but it’s actually not. After you pull out the charger it’ll show the same batt level as when you first plugged it up.

I’m gonna try to get in touch with the local o2 people as I’m fairly sure they’re not going to want me to write that up. That’s only a part of lots of other things I don’t like about it, which I’m hoping is due to a faulty unit. At least I hope so for their sake.

In the meantime, I’m back to my old phone because I can’t risk not having a phone to call and text people with on a trip to Makati. A $850.00 phone, and I can’t even count on it to make calls. Sheesh.