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FirehawkNS
Weaksauce
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2003
- Messages
- 67
Most of this review is cut/paste from another site that isn't as technical so forgive the obvious things I might have point out.
After weeks of reading around on howardforums I finally picked up a 8525 Hermes. Been using it about a week and I love this thing. Went ahead and did the unlimited PDA plan so I could surf away on it. Have a ton of playing and even more modding to do before it is perfect, but thats the fun of new toys.
Pics
Also got the wife a new Razr since we were both leaving a joint Nextel plan.
Also, 3G rocks. my best speed test hit 786k on a 3g network with 3 bars service and 101k on a GSM network with 4 bars.
Quick review for those that care.
So far I love the phone. The power, data, and stereo headphones that came with the phone all plug into the mini USB port on the phone. It also came with a Y adaptor so you could plug two USB items in at the same time (the power and headphones for example). The phone will also charge from the computers USB like the ipod.
The size of the phone is really about perfect, you would think it would be big, but it really wasn't much bigger then my i860 in thickness and length (counting the antenna). Maybe a little bulky, but fits nice in a pocket....or on a hip (as I have been told is the nerdy thing to do, but I like it on my hip).
Service picks up great so far, although there is still a lot of testing for this, I mean I’ve only had it for a week, and most of that I have been at work which gets no service from any carrier at my desk). The house is in a "moderate signal strength" zone on Cingular’s site, but so far I always have 3 bars in the house. Even get 3G service in most of the house. Only negative thing I find here is sometimes in certain areas in the house it will drop 3g and go back to regular GSM which will pretty much stop a download, if I am in the middle of one when it happens. There is a Hacked ROM update that addresses this, but I’m going to wait till the official release of the newest one (should be in the next few weeks).
Windows mobile 5 is setup really well, but there are some annoyances as you will find with most any MS software. One is that the "X" doesn't close programs, you have to go to start, system, memory, "close running apps" to actually close the programs. Also there is no easy way to change the volume of the speaker while talking on the phone. Being as deaf as I am this really sucks. I already miss the simple up/down volume button on the side of all my other phones. Also most the buttons on this thing do the same thing as other buttons. So you will have three separate buttons all doing the same thing with no way to assign them differently through windows (not that I have found anyway). Good news is both of these issues are now fixed with two apps I have downloaded that makes the "X" close programs and lets me assign any button on the device to any function I wish. I got the volumn up, but that is one of the only flaws with the phone that I can't seem to fix. Sad truth is this phone just isn't as loud as other phones I have had. Luckly my bluetooth headset is plenty loud and I luckly haven't had to bad of a time on the phone now that the volumn is all the way up and I have it set to stay there.
The touch screen is awesome and very easy to use even with your finger. The phone app is very easy to dial using your fingers as well. The screen quality looks incredible (watched an episode of South Park on it), but is kinda hard to see in direct sunlight (I have brightness turned down to save power, so turning it back up might fix this).
As far as power there are a few complaints on the boards about this phone draining the battery fast. Some worse then others. They all say that the battery last longer after a few weeks of charging and discharging, but some still complain of only getting a day power out of it (some only 10 hours). They must be hardcore users because I tried using it all day on and off and also left the phone trying to connect all day at work (sometimes trying to force it to find a 3G signal) and the battery was at 60% by the end of the day. With my i860 I could charge it all night, sit at work never using it and by the end of the day if I used the phone any at night the battery would be dead. Now this is mainly because of it trying to connect to Nextel all day when there was no signal in my office, but there is no cingular (or verizen, tmobile, or sprint) signal in the office here at work either and searching for service all day didn’t drain the battery like my other phones would have (with the exception of my old sprint Samsung that went into power save mode at work).
MS Voice Command software is leaps above any other phones voice dialing I have had. I really like Outlooks Contacts for my address book as well. Got all my contacts downloaded to Outlook on the PC last night and synced my calendar from outlook at work to the phone. Sync’ing works like a charm.
I have spent some time browsing online which works very well and is pretty fast on the 3G network as I have stated. The wap sites work very well when you find them. I have Installed many programs, including Google maps . Cool thing about it is if you have someone’s address in your contacts, you can “right click” the contact and click find on Google maps and it will go to their address on the maps. I also plan to get the external GPS kit which integrates with Google for GPS’ing
Got my email setup on it. Nothing special, uses outlook mobile for this. Automatically checks for email, works very well. Also got Gmail mobile installed, it also works well.
Bluetooth sync worked like a charm to both my Bluetooth Jabra headset and my Logitech Bluetooth stereo headphones. If I had a Bluetooth dongle it can also connect to the PC to transfer files or to tether a laptop for wireless internet on the laptop (use the phone as a modem [this can also be done with the USB cable]). Since this phone is also 802.11B and G capable I was able to log onto my network at the house last night, but didn’t have time to do anything past getting it connected. It also has IR on it so I plan to get me a universal remote program.
On to the camera.
I haven’t played with it a lot, but the features you have for this being a phone are awesome.
Options:
2MP camera (although note MP on a phone/PDA is not the same as MP on a digital Camera)
Different capture modes (photo, video, MMS Video, Contacts pictures, picture theme, panorama, sports, burst)
Up to 8x zoom
Self Timer (2 or 10 seconds)
White balance (auto, day, night, incandescent, fluorescent)
Effects (grayscale, sepia, cool, negative)
Resolutions (160x120, 320x240, 640x480, 1280x1024, 1600x1200)
Metering Mode
Macro setting
ESP -2.0 to +2.0
In burst mode you can set it to take 5 or 10 quick pictures in a row with one hit of the button which is cool. Haven’t done a video yet, but took some pictures to show.
Here is a quick shot of the office need to take some outside, these lights suck, taken on photo (auto) at 1600x1200, I just resized it to 800x600.
Quick Macro shot taken in auto at 1600x1200 and resized to 800x600.
Well I think that’s it. I believe this one will be a keeper. I now need a regular cingular phone if anyone has one around that I can swap sim cards with when ever I go somewhere I don’t want to risk this one getting messed up (like the beach or hiking). If anyone has a few year old cingular phone that can accept the sim card let me know.
Have done a few apps to enhance my PPC experience.
Loaded pocket plus with themes plus, changed themes to vista black.
Loaded the button hack and assigned the voice command and "alt+tab" command to buttons on the side of the phone. Also loaded a hack that allows for the vibrate on/off to be assigned to a button on the phone.
Loaded a Vista black Dialer for the phone, Screen shot below
Loaded SPB weather for the today screen (desktop) for up to the minute weather alerts.
Google Maps mobile installed as stated
Siriuswm5 app so I can stream sirius straight to the phone.
Loaded a picture dialer that allows for full screen caller ID pictures and dialing by selecting a picture.
Man it's amazing how you can turn these things into totally different phones with a few apps
Bought a clip and some screen protectors today so I will post later how that turns out.
After weeks of reading around on howardforums I finally picked up a 8525 Hermes. Been using it about a week and I love this thing. Went ahead and did the unlimited PDA plan so I could surf away on it. Have a ton of playing and even more modding to do before it is perfect, but thats the fun of new toys.
Pics
Also got the wife a new Razr since we were both leaving a joint Nextel plan.
Also, 3G rocks. my best speed test hit 786k on a 3g network with 3 bars service and 101k on a GSM network with 4 bars.
Quick review for those that care.
So far I love the phone. The power, data, and stereo headphones that came with the phone all plug into the mini USB port on the phone. It also came with a Y adaptor so you could plug two USB items in at the same time (the power and headphones for example). The phone will also charge from the computers USB like the ipod.
The size of the phone is really about perfect, you would think it would be big, but it really wasn't much bigger then my i860 in thickness and length (counting the antenna). Maybe a little bulky, but fits nice in a pocket....or on a hip (as I have been told is the nerdy thing to do, but I like it on my hip).
Service picks up great so far, although there is still a lot of testing for this, I mean I’ve only had it for a week, and most of that I have been at work which gets no service from any carrier at my desk). The house is in a "moderate signal strength" zone on Cingular’s site, but so far I always have 3 bars in the house. Even get 3G service in most of the house. Only negative thing I find here is sometimes in certain areas in the house it will drop 3g and go back to regular GSM which will pretty much stop a download, if I am in the middle of one when it happens. There is a Hacked ROM update that addresses this, but I’m going to wait till the official release of the newest one (should be in the next few weeks).
Windows mobile 5 is setup really well, but there are some annoyances as you will find with most any MS software. One is that the "X" doesn't close programs, you have to go to start, system, memory, "close running apps" to actually close the programs. Also there is no easy way to change the volume of the speaker while talking on the phone. Being as deaf as I am this really sucks. I already miss the simple up/down volume button on the side of all my other phones. Also most the buttons on this thing do the same thing as other buttons. So you will have three separate buttons all doing the same thing with no way to assign them differently through windows (not that I have found anyway). Good news is both of these issues are now fixed with two apps I have downloaded that makes the "X" close programs and lets me assign any button on the device to any function I wish. I got the volumn up, but that is one of the only flaws with the phone that I can't seem to fix. Sad truth is this phone just isn't as loud as other phones I have had. Luckly my bluetooth headset is plenty loud and I luckly haven't had to bad of a time on the phone now that the volumn is all the way up and I have it set to stay there.
The touch screen is awesome and very easy to use even with your finger. The phone app is very easy to dial using your fingers as well. The screen quality looks incredible (watched an episode of South Park on it), but is kinda hard to see in direct sunlight (I have brightness turned down to save power, so turning it back up might fix this).
As far as power there are a few complaints on the boards about this phone draining the battery fast. Some worse then others. They all say that the battery last longer after a few weeks of charging and discharging, but some still complain of only getting a day power out of it (some only 10 hours). They must be hardcore users because I tried using it all day on and off and also left the phone trying to connect all day at work (sometimes trying to force it to find a 3G signal) and the battery was at 60% by the end of the day. With my i860 I could charge it all night, sit at work never using it and by the end of the day if I used the phone any at night the battery would be dead. Now this is mainly because of it trying to connect to Nextel all day when there was no signal in my office, but there is no cingular (or verizen, tmobile, or sprint) signal in the office here at work either and searching for service all day didn’t drain the battery like my other phones would have (with the exception of my old sprint Samsung that went into power save mode at work).
MS Voice Command software is leaps above any other phones voice dialing I have had. I really like Outlooks Contacts for my address book as well. Got all my contacts downloaded to Outlook on the PC last night and synced my calendar from outlook at work to the phone. Sync’ing works like a charm.
I have spent some time browsing online which works very well and is pretty fast on the 3G network as I have stated. The wap sites work very well when you find them. I have Installed many programs, including Google maps . Cool thing about it is if you have someone’s address in your contacts, you can “right click” the contact and click find on Google maps and it will go to their address on the maps. I also plan to get the external GPS kit which integrates with Google for GPS’ing
Got my email setup on it. Nothing special, uses outlook mobile for this. Automatically checks for email, works very well. Also got Gmail mobile installed, it also works well.
Bluetooth sync worked like a charm to both my Bluetooth Jabra headset and my Logitech Bluetooth stereo headphones. If I had a Bluetooth dongle it can also connect to the PC to transfer files or to tether a laptop for wireless internet on the laptop (use the phone as a modem [this can also be done with the USB cable]). Since this phone is also 802.11B and G capable I was able to log onto my network at the house last night, but didn’t have time to do anything past getting it connected. It also has IR on it so I plan to get me a universal remote program.
On to the camera.
I haven’t played with it a lot, but the features you have for this being a phone are awesome.
Options:
2MP camera (although note MP on a phone/PDA is not the same as MP on a digital Camera)
Different capture modes (photo, video, MMS Video, Contacts pictures, picture theme, panorama, sports, burst)
Up to 8x zoom
Self Timer (2 or 10 seconds)
White balance (auto, day, night, incandescent, fluorescent)
Effects (grayscale, sepia, cool, negative)
Resolutions (160x120, 320x240, 640x480, 1280x1024, 1600x1200)
Metering Mode
Macro setting
ESP -2.0 to +2.0
In burst mode you can set it to take 5 or 10 quick pictures in a row with one hit of the button which is cool. Haven’t done a video yet, but took some pictures to show.
Here is a quick shot of the office need to take some outside, these lights suck, taken on photo (auto) at 1600x1200, I just resized it to 800x600.
Quick Macro shot taken in auto at 1600x1200 and resized to 800x600.
Well I think that’s it. I believe this one will be a keeper. I now need a regular cingular phone if anyone has one around that I can swap sim cards with when ever I go somewhere I don’t want to risk this one getting messed up (like the beach or hiking). If anyone has a few year old cingular phone that can accept the sim card let me know.
Have done a few apps to enhance my PPC experience.
Loaded pocket plus with themes plus, changed themes to vista black.
Loaded the button hack and assigned the voice command and "alt+tab" command to buttons on the side of the phone. Also loaded a hack that allows for the vibrate on/off to be assigned to a button on the phone.
Loaded a Vista black Dialer for the phone, Screen shot below
Loaded SPB weather for the today screen (desktop) for up to the minute weather alerts.
Google Maps mobile installed as stated
Siriuswm5 app so I can stream sirius straight to the phone.
Loaded a picture dialer that allows for full screen caller ID pictures and dialing by selecting a picture.
Man it's amazing how you can turn these things into totally different phones with a few apps
Bought a clip and some screen protectors today so I will post later how that turns out.