Keyboard: I thought that the keyboard would really bother me. Many of the keys are moved around from the kbd on the 8525, which I was used to. The FN key (Blue dot) was moved to the middle of the left side and the OK button was in it's place. I thought that i'll be closing my messages while in the midst of entering them. I also thought that they COULD have made the new 5th row emulate a PC keyboard and put the numbers row up there instead of having to FN them. After using it for a bit, i found that HTC/AT&T placed the most used keys (even the special characters) on their own keys, so you can punctuate and :) ;) without having to shift or FN them, therefore the likelyhood of my hitting the end key instead of the formerly located FN key is more remote.
TouchFLO: I keep hearing people complain about how slow it is, how non-configurable it is, how it will not do this or that... It is ONLY a free desktop app not the device's only interface... If you do not like it, turn it off and go with the standard WM desktop and do what you want with it as you would have done had HTC not given it to you for free, as WM enthusiasts have done since CE3. You could buy MobileShell and PhoneSuite, both are very good apps... They are not free however.
GPS: There are some issues with GPS. I don't know if it is a hardware implementation, driver issue, software, weather, poor satellite coverage or a combination of the above. Some people with the same configuration have no problems, others cannot get it to do anything functional. In my experience, I find occasional lag in the updating of position in driving navigation apps, but it is typically accurate. Walking or hiking apps are another story. The lat/long/alt seems to update, but headings are not available... I find it fine for being a co-pilot, not so good for geocaching/hiking.
Camera: The camera seems much the same as other cell cameras, but with a higher resolution. It still never gets enough light, backlight will wash out the whitebalance, the autofocus adds about 3 seconds to the time it takes to snap a pic. It would have been nice if the devs at HTC made the flash autoenable, you know, like every $15.00 camera in the world does... It even has an integrated light sensor, perhaps they could try and use that... It isn't a BAD camera, it is probably better than most cellphone cameras, but it will NOT replace a even a cheap digital camera. I haven't bothered to take video with it, I don't expect much beyond the typical grainy-jerky motion that all these cameraphones generate.
The Screen: The VGA screen is absolutely beautiful. I had forgotten how nice a VGA device looks. The black is a true black and the screen finish looks amazing. Hopefully, it will remain unblemished and durable for the life of the device. The screen is only a tiny fraction smaller than the screen on my 8525, while to overall dimensions are significantly smaller (as shown in Chris' execellent review). The screen requires a fair amount of pressure to make it respond, although there are some tweaks around to modify that somewhat. I haven't tried any real video to test the graphics performance, but it is easily suitable for flash animation and youtube videos. The finger touch sensitivity is fine as are the enlarged menus and interfaces. My only difficulty is the right side vertical scroll... I have a hard time with my fat fingers making it go.
Buttons: HTC removed the hardware "soft keys" and the scroll wheel is unusual and infrequently implemented. Unusual means that instead of the "wheel", you have to rub your finger in a circular motion around the center "enter/action" button. It isn't implemented by many apps and when it is, it is usually does something stupid, like changing font size. There are 3 hard buttons on the side, factory configured for vol up, vol down, and PTT. There is no simple way of changing those assignments, the only configurable button on the device is long press the hangup button. This makes the purchase of AEButtons Plus a necessity. That will allow the remapping of all the hard buttons on the device. I have vol up=startmenu, vol down = alt-tab, ptt short = voicecmd, ptt long = camera, and the default long press hang up = vibrate toggle.
Audio: I just noticed something unusual with the audio. I have a BT stereo receiver connected to a cassette adapter, so I can play audio from the PPC to the car stereo without wires (I posted the setup in the BT forum a few months ago)... That is fine and that works as expected. However, I also had Garmin Mobile XT running so it could show me the way home and all the audio from it came out of the loudspeaker, not though the BT audio into my radio. I had a similar setup on my 8525 using iGuidance and the spoken directions came out as did the music via BT. I don't know if this is a hardware feature where the Fuze can manage multi-channel audio or Garmin is forcing it out of the loudspeaker regardless of the other connections. It isn't wrong, but it is different and might be an issue if you were listening to music on your headphones and it started broadcasting "you've got mail" alerts into the room around you.
LED Indicators: If you were familiar with my Rules for Technology, one of my biggest issues was the overabundance of bright flashy LEDs attached to things for little to no purpose, like BT headsets with blue LEDs so bright it looks like they have a disco on the side of their head. On the Fuze, there is only a backlit area around the center enter/action button. it has a progression/movement pattern when showing a notification and a slightly differnt one where the phone "dial" button also backlights for a missed call indication. It is very subtle. The only other LED indicators are VERY tiny LEDs on the hardware keyboard for FN and Shift indicators.
more to come as I sober up...
All in all, I LOVE this phone... Nothing else has pleased me more than breaking up with my with my ex-girlfriend
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Last edited by radimus; 01-01-09 at 12:39 PM.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to radimus For This Useful Post:
I've had the luxury of playing around with a Fuze over the last couple of weeks, and think it's a really great device. The TouchFLO is pretty and nice looking, but after a couple of days I turned it off because I really don't care or need all the eye candy and animation.
I'm not sure if I like or dislike the keyboard. I think it would take some time to get used to having it, but it seems like it would be easier to use than the keyboard on my hw6925. I don't enter much information directly into my pocket pcs and don't text message much, so having a keyboard is not a big sell to me.
What do you think of the camera? I wouldn't pay extra for a camera, and cellphone cameras tend to be slow and not all that great, but the quality of the pictures seems to be pretty decent.
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Thanks for the preview, Radimus. With any luck in the next couple of weeks I'll be getting a Fuze. I really don't want to wait another 3 months before my current provider contract cancels, but my First Mate doesn't want us to pay $120 cancellation fee to Verizon ($60/per line).
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Julie, I have an HTC Touch Pro from Sprint. I have been playing around with the camera for awhile now. While it isn't a 12 megapixel canon, it does take pretty good pictures, I just had to play around with the color settings a bit.
It is definitely better than my old dumbphones camera, and find it adequate for everything I would need a camera for.
What did you replace Touchflo with? I am still using mine, but am open to suggestions, hehe.
Julie, I have an HTC Touch Pro from Sprint. I have been playing around with the camera for awhile now. While it isn't a 12 megapixel canon, it does take pretty good pictures, I just had to play around with the color settings a bit.
It is definitely better than my old dumbphones camera, and find it adequate for everything I would need a camera for.
What did you replace Touchflo with? I am still using mine, but am open to suggestions, hehe.
I installed spb mobile shell (turned off the animation on that too) and it's quite nice, but I think I prefer something simpler and cleaner. I've used cLaunch for quite a while on the hw6925 and I'm wondering how well it would work on WM6.1 mobile devices.
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i haven't gotten the cable yet... but I do want to try it
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I am really enjoying the Fuze.
I would agree with many of the comments above. So far I have stuck with the TouchFlo interface, because it is fun and pleasant to use. It would be nice if it went a bit deeper, ie. with managing ALL contacts.
Your comments are right on about the camera. Inside photos just don't get enough light. However, I have found that the LED flash allows you to certainly capture more image than you would be able to get otherwise. Outside photos are great.
I also noticed that outside VIDEOS are much cleaner and clearer - I am sure that is due to the light.
I really like the keyboard - and am getting pretty good at text entry with it. I didn't think that was going to be much of an add-on, but have gotten into texting and text entry for new appointment, etc is a lot easier with the keyboard.
BUTTONS: I have found the main buttons on the machine more than adequate. The dpad is a bit clunky, but still usable. I find that I miss the up-down and right-left options pretty frequently when I try to do them. Have used the spin around the pad technique for zooming and scrolling, and it works pretty well.
Another feature I have used extensively with a bluetooth headset is the voice command. I am getting used to the commands, but find they are amazingly useful -- and it is pretty good at capturing what I want when I say, "Call Jane Doe."
All-in-all, this is a fabulous phone!
It's been time for a new phone since July. I have the X51v and I use it for lots of things. Keeping time records via Excel, Zagats, internet sometimes, email sometimes, I have about 3500 contacts, notes and things for which I need instant recall and I have the Stowaway keyboard.
I want a phone like an Iphone but the IPhone is not for me because it cannot sync doc, pdf and xls files...or edit them...only music and video files. If I am not near Wifi or if it's just inconvenient, I want a phone that can receive an email with a report, worksheet or pdf in it and from their I can sync it into my laptop, which doesn't have an air card.
The other things I want is push email and the ability to have the great Internet access that the IPhone or the Storm has. I use ATT and so does lots of my family and I love the rollover minutes. However, I should get the Storm. The screen on the Bold is much too small for me. Would the Fuze handle all I need, including web access with cookies and full functionality, unlike the X51V, which at times cannot find a submit key?
From your description, it sounds like the Fuze would be a good fit.
I have totally abandoned my x51v.
It is so great to have a converged device. I thought that it would be harder to let go of my large screen -- and yes, I was disappointed that the HTC Touch HD was not ported to the US - but I really haven't missed it that much.
Just yesterday I used my stowaway keyboard during a meeting to revise a draft of a document - and I was very pleased with how it worked.
The Internet experience over wifi is overall better for me than it was on the x51v - due mostly to how well Opera works on the Fuze. The zooming and scrolling works great and the Fuze never tells me that I have run out of memory (I was always getting that on the Axim). My only complaint about Opera is that it takes a while to load. I wouldn't describe it as a "warp speed" app, and am eager to see how some of the new browsers fare when they get optimized for this phone. But it is, all-in-all, very satisfactory.
For me personally, the loss of the larger screen is more than made up for by the delight of having everything on one, compact device.
I agree the Fuze is an awesome phone all around. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. It's user friendly and I love the touchflow 3d. It's really cool. The speaker phone is a tad bit disappointing. It gets a bit muffly at high volume. My 3 year old Nokia 6102 had a better speaker phone, but that shouldn't deter anyone from buying this phone. Anyone know how to actiavte the flash light for the camera?
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