I’ve been thinking a long time about upgrading my old “Nokia 8265″:http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/8265 mobile to something a little more modern. The 8265 is a “TDMA”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TDMA phone that runs on AT&T Wireless Service’s network (now part of Cingular). Cingular is moving to an all GSM network, so folks with TDMA phones will be orphaned at some point. That point for me was a couple of months ago when the TDMA service in my area began acting really flaky… dropping calls all the time, service disappearing from areas, etc. This finally convinced me to upgrade both my phone and service.

My criteria for the new phone included: a “candy bar” form factor (as opposed to a flip phone), no external antenna (ruling out Verizon), internet capability and a size approximately equal to the 8265. My preference would have been to stick with Nokia, since my 8265 has served me well over the past four years or so (including numerous hard drops onto hard surfaces). However, all of the current Nokia phones are either two large and/or just plain ugly. Pretty much the only phone that met my criteria was the “Audiovox SMT5600″:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00068577C/.

*Size and Design*
This SMT5600 is a great size easily fitting in your pocket. It looks great too. Hey, a female friend of mine told me the phone looked “cool” completely unprompted. But like most phones, it’s very slippery so hold on tight or you’ll see it bouncing across the floor. Hum… I might have to invest in some “egrips”:http://www.egrips.com/.

*Sound, Network and Phone UI Features*
The sound and call quality are acceptable as is the network coverage (but being “acceptable” in the US is a very low standard). One thing that could be improved is the speaker. You have to place your ear _directly_ over the little speaker hole to hear anything.

The phone UI features verge on awesome — mostly very ergonomic and quickly accessible. For example, you can quickly lock the keypad by holding down the large, red “hang up” button. Another clever UI feature is the unlock function. Instead of pushing the unlock softbutton once followed by the “#” key to unlock the phone, you have to push the unlock button twice followed by the # key. Originally, I didn’t like this (why push a button twice?), but I have found that it makes sense. You can quickly access the homescreen of the phone (which displays the time and other useful information) with the first push, while the second push displays a message to hit the # key to unlock the phone. One nit about the unlocking feature is that it is a hard thumb movement. That is, it is a natural thumb movement to move down the keypad to the from the unlock key to the * key (as on my old Nokia), but very unnatural to move down _and_ across the keypad to the # key. Details count in something you use ALL THE TIME.

Other functions like contacts can be quickly accessed through the contacts softkey. Call history can be filter to display only missed calls, made calls, etc.

The supplied stereo headset is very uncomfortable in the ear, and not really loud enough. Sometimes I have to risk a ticket by using both of the ear buds just to hear the caller — it’s illegal in California to wear a stereo headset while driving. In addition, even though my old Nokia headset is compatible with the phone (since the phone uses a standard 2.5 mm jack not a proprietary jack like the new Nokias), the sound level is just too low for me to use it.

*Texting*
Texting on the SMT5600 is a bit of a mess. The menu structure of the texting application really needs to be changed. I commonly get into situations while texting where I don’t know what button to hit next. Overall, the texting application feels very uneven and amateur.

On the good side, “T9″:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9 is supplied with the phone, which makes text messaging more rapid. The * button acts as toggle between T9, numeric and “normal” entry modes. It’s also easy to access the symbols menu by holding down the * key.

*Keypad*
The feel of the keypad is good. Button sizes in general are acceptable, but the # and * keys could be a bit larger. These keys are rounded off to make them look better. However, the five-way navigation button (the big, silver button in the middle of the phone) is flawed. The up, down, left and right functions are fine, but the middle push (pushing down the entire button) is terrible. Even after a couple of months of using the phone, I still activate a direction click instead of the desired middle click about half the time. Unfortunately, you use the middle click button a lot.

*A Quick Bit About the Software/Operating System*
The SMT5600 run Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition which doesn’t have a large install base (compared to Windows Mobile PocketPC version), so software for the phone is somewhat limited but growing. The default software supplied with the phone is very Microsoft centric, so most of it I don’t use. For example, you can only synchronize your contacts through Outlook. Since I don’t have Outlook bloatware loaded on my machine, I’m not about to install it just to synchronize contacts. This forced me to manually input my contacts into the phone — a pain, but not that big a deal.

Also included is a phone version of Windows Media Player which is something I’ll probably play around with once I get a miniSD memory card for the phone.

*Camera*
The camera on the phone is fine — about as good as the first Sony MVC-FD73 Mavica floppy disk based digital camera I purchased in 1998ish. To qualify, when I say “fine,” I really mean “not entirely useless” as I had expected it to be. It’s pretty convenient to have a camera with you all the time. You can take pictures to remind yourself of things such as cool designs or products that you want to look up later on the web. For those things the camera works well. For great pictures however, use a real camera.

*Stability*
I’d rate the SMT5600, or more generally the Windows Mobile OS, as somewhere between Windows 98 (crash-o-matic) and Windows XP (rarely crashes). That is, I have been able to crash the phone numerous times, but most of the time this occurs when using the more advanced features of the phone. General reliability is pretty good, but not up to the 8265’s standard — which to be fair is a very simple phone. And to be even more fair, my friend experiences similar stability problems with his Symbian-based Nokia “6600″:http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,4879,33210,00.html. But not to let Microsoft off the hook (bad pun), they really need to make the OS at least as bomber as Windows XP.

*Internet Access*
I can’t say much about this. Currently, Cingular charges so much for data that I haven’t used the internet capability of the phone. Once Cingular gets a clue and lowers the prices, I’m really to start surfing.

*Battery Life*
It seems like I need to charge the phone every couple of days or so. Battery life could be better, but I don’t think that it’s going to be a problem.

*Settings*
I found the settings, and there are a lot of them, for the phone to be complicated to find. It seems like they are randomly scatter about the phone’s menu structure. Simple things like turning on the ring/vibrate mode is a chore. Plan on spending several hours finding them and becoming familiar with their locations.

*Overall*
I really like the SMT5600. There are a few small nits like the unlock feature, settings menus and lack of software and some larger problems like the texting application and stability, but overall it’s a great phone which meets my needs.