T-Mobile SDA - A First Look

Review & Cam Pics – Ian Moore
Additional Handset Pics / Screens – AgentM

T-Mobile SDA, various prices (dependent on tarrif) – Here on the T-Mobile SDA page

After previously owning an SPV E200 (remember the battery life before the update?!), I really got put off the Smartphone, as I’d get up for work at 6am, and by 2pm the same day, it’d be beeping at me telling me to charge up. 🙁 Basically, I got so fed up, Orange gave me a Nokia 6600, which at the time I thought was a good choice.

After a slight disagreement with Orange over a bill, I decided to go over to T-Mobile as their Mix-It price plan offering let me control my spending a tad better than Orange did, and I started off with a Sony Ericsson T610.

So … a few months went by, and one day I saw a collegue with his new Orange C500… my first reaction was… did I make the right move?! Plus, in a Little Britain-esque kinda way i thought “I want tha one”…..go back to Orange!

After doing some research, I found that T-Mobile were testing the water with a similar phone, but couldnt find too much information about it, till it sprung up on good old trusty CoolSmartPhone.com 😉 After many months of speculation that it was going to come out in nov, then dec, it finally popped up in UK stores near the end of February. I received a call from my local T-Mobile shop, then went to go pick it up. Following all the nitty gritty CD’s and a nice leather carry case.

After a few days of getting impatient, I decided to order a 1Gb MiniSD card from the guys @ MobyMemory.com – and as promised… it was delivered next day (but me being me, was still asleep, so I had to goto the sorting office!) As Gears will well know, after a few emails, I’m still let down by a few features that bog standard T610’s have and the SDA doesnt, such as being able to send/recieve pics/midis/mp3s by bluetooth, but Gears being the oracle of the Smartphone world quickly advised me about Binarys “smartphone Explorer” which pretty much sorts that problem out… (cheers Gears!)

So far, messing about with ringtones and having bluetooth on, taking pics and generally meffing about with the phone, the SDA can go two whole days without needing a charge! I’m guessing with the likes of blueooth connections to GPS stuff, it may run it out a tad faster…

I think the quality of the pics, whilst they aren’t mega pixel, are still pretty sharp none the less. Video is slightly jerky, but it’s nothing to worry about… another clever little thing I’ve noticed is when recoring video, to save space, if the phone detects silence, it stops recording sound, as you will notice on this sample video link.

I will be buying TomTom5 when it is released, as my father is well impressed by what the SP simply does as being a phone – sync-ing with outlook… but maybe that gives him an opportunity to think he can nick it when hes going on a journey… hehe

Regarding the SDA music, I have heard various rumours T-Mobile want to release it as the same time as orange do with the C550, as this should cause a price war to bring them down to dirt cheap prices. Another rumour I’ve heard is that they think it will appeal more to the Mix-It (mix of contract and pay as you go) & Pay as you go arena, thus the “younger” arm of the market, so they are waiting for the right time to subsidise them as it were, but we will see!!

Anybody who uses the “my T-Mobile” as part of their account online will spot the SDA Music in the drop down menu when you want to download ringtones etc… so obviously, T-Mobile have a trick up their sleeve, but are keeping well shctum about it!

Overall, the SDA has put my faith back in the Smartphone world, and like all phones, you can never have a perfect one, but this is pretty much 98% of one.

Although you will have probably seen some shots from the c500 camera, just for arguments sake, I thought I’d include some so you can make some comparisons…

UPDATE – A million people have asked where to get the cool “skin” or theme shown on the pictures here – it’s from the excellent Kleinweder site and you can get it by clicking here.