What’s in the box?
Well I picked up my M5000 this morning and sat in the car park of the depot going through the box.
This is what you get..
• The Phone (of course)
• USB cable
• Mains cable
• Battery
• Spare Stylus
• A much better fitting set of headphones, and greatly improved. Each incarnation of them seems to get better.
• Outlook 2002 + Active Sync 4.0 CD
• Slip case
• M5000 Manual
• Pocket PC Manual
Setting Up
The initial Set up took about 10 mins, calibrating the screen took a while and I must admit that at first I thought it had got stuck in a loop and kept repeating the 5 calibration points a number of times, but it wasn’t and after what seemed like 5 or 6 cycles it then spent the next 5 mins or so initialising the operating system. No memory card was included which seems a shame.
My first impression of it is that it’s everything I expected, it just fits in my shirt pocket with out the case on, I am not too sure about the case yet, I feel it’s a very tight fit and you cant answer any calls with it on and being so tight you might have to struggle getting it off to answer a call. At the moment I am going to try and live without it, but what would be a nice accessory would be a shoulder holster.
I like the keyboard backlight auto sensor, it glows a very nice deep orange when it’s dark enough. At the moment I have only received calls on it but the sound seems very crisp and clear.
That’s my first impressions so far, now to start using it, more over the next few days
First Use
The first small moan I have is the stylus, it may be that I have to adjust the way I hold it, but the top end of it comes to a point and in my hands it does tend to dig in a bit and get a little uncomfortable.
My interest for the first days use is how the battery stands up, I have a Tom Tom Go 700 so I have the Bluetooth enabled, I can’t be bothered to keep disabling it, so it stays on all day. I also leave the wireless on as I work in schools and means that I can use their connection when it’s available, so those two would be a constant drain on the battery. I didn’t use it a great deal today in respect of making calls and texting but in all it had nearly 8 hours use and had 59% left.
Things I had taken a shine to straight away, I like the way it lays out the contacts and how it presents the different options to you when you click on one of them. I decided against the orange icon bar I much rather see my up coming appointments, tasks and messages on the home screen. One thing that is a pain when using is in landscape mode is the pen location, being left handed the pen is on the right, just takes a bit of getting used to. The one feature I have used the least is the directional pad, I don’t think I will hardly ever use it, I much rather use the pen. The scribe feature is great, I am an owner of a 12.1 tablet PC so using the scribe function on the M5000 is great and much more natural for me.
Another feature I like is being able to add notes to your received and sent calls, its great for my memory to be able to go over certain ones. I know I am going to grow to love this machine and rely on it even more, I have set up ActivSync on my Main PC and Tablet PC which makes my appointment making less prone to errors.
Example photo taken with the M5000..
One Week On
Well I have been using my phone a week now, and boy do I love it, on Tuesday I gave the battery some serious caning, had the wireless and Bluetooth enabled, and had the phone connected to MSN for a good 4 hours, sent texts and made calls and managed to get the battery down to under 20% in about 8 hours use. Compare that to today (Friday) and relatively normal use still had 80% battery left. Me and the scribe input get on very well, I can quite happily write free handed on the screen and get very high character recognition, the odd letter causes me problems but I put that down to me being left handed, and I know that it will improve as I get used to it, my Tablet PC changed the way I wrote and that’s after 40yrs of writing left handed.
When I first got the phone I would use the pen for everything and I must admit sometimes found it a bit of a pain, then one day I twigged when using the phone, you of course don’t need to use the pen, use your finger when you can, with the phone/number pad up it’s much more responsive to use a finger then the pen, even general navigating round the menus can be done this way.
I am sure some people will look at the phone and say it’s a gimmick, lots of feature you are unlikely to use, for me I would say there may be one or two that I might not use very often but this is a great addition to any mobile office, I liked my previous SPV’s and would put contacts in it and it would sync with my outlook for diary dates, but the fag was putting them into the phone and then tidying them up once they sync to the main PC, either that or I wouldn’t bother putting them in. Now appointments and tasks go straight into the phone when I make them, nice and straight forward, no re editing on my main PC, I have yet to use Excel and Word but I have plans for that and they will be called into action in the near future.
Being and MSN Mobile Beta tester I use MSN a lot, and having access to MSN and hotmail wherever I am is great. If I have spare time while ghosting machines or in between appointments I will pop on to MSN see if I can grab a quick chat with someone, I can put the phone on to standby and let it buzz/beep me when someone comes online.
The sound quality seems very clear to me, I haven’t used it with my Tom Tom so it will be interesting to see if I get the delay that I seemed to get with my C500.
Media Player, as mentioned in the beginning of this review the headphones that come with this are much improved, I wont use the media player lots but I will have a small SD card with my current favourite artist on to dip into now and again.
And what mode do I use it in, well when I am out and about I have the phone in portrait mode with the screen facing out, I have started using the slip case when it is this way, there is an option in the menus to lock the buttons when you press the standby/power button, to wake the phone up you just press the standby/power button again. When the phone is in landscape mode and the screen faces in the phone goes into standby and locks the buttons after 30secs on my setting.
A nice timely addition I had the other day from the MSN Mobile Beta Team is a non slip mat emblazoned with MSN Mobille Beta. It fits nicely on the top of my dashboard and the M5000 sticks like s&*% to a blanket, so no more leaving it to slide about on the passenger seat.
Conclusion
My conclusion after the first week, WOW, I love my SPV M5000, thank you Orange a free upgrade I hoped for but actually didn’t expect, all I need now is someone to try a video call to, they have given me 60 mins free for the first three months and 1 Gb of 3G a month too.
Buy this phone, beg for the upgrade, get it anyway you can, you won’t be disappointed.