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Thursday, November 17, 2005

Audiosucks 6600

A Phone? A PDA? Nope! It is effectively neither.

I bought a fancy pants PDA phone. I figured, hey, why carry a PDA and a cell phone when I could carry just one device. Why not? I'm worth it. I could use more synergy, I'm a good person. People like me. And whats more I know someone who swears by theirs.

So I went and paid through the nose for an Audiovox 6600. Its got the same kinda PDA setup I was use to with my IPaq. This allows me to do nifty stuff, like sync my PDA with Outlook, listen to Mp3s, take notes while on the phone, use my contacts from the computer to call people and so on.

Well it sucks. It sucks in that special way Microsoft Windows and Office suck. Plenty enough to be bothersome, not quite enough to make you switch to something else.

Firstly there is no way to carry the damn thing in its carrying case without mashing a button and hence turning it on. And once its on you'll inevitably end up mashing a bunch of other stuff. So when you go use it again you've written a note that says "sa3r f923" and taken a picture of the inside of your pocket. Speaking of the camera, at 1.3 megapixels its more like a tile mosaic than a photograph, and heaven forbid you try to take a picture in anything other that perfect conditions. And what is it about Pocket PC? Why won't they let you end programs, The X in the corner of the program doesn't end the running of the app. The only way is to go into the settings and do a hard kill of the programs. The head phone/speaker situation leaves something to be desired. The built in speaker is just above the screen. When you put your ear on it your naturally going to get your skin oil all over the screen. Which isn't a problem the first few days but after that your cleaning the screen all the time. Getting a Bluetooth solution headset is cool until you realize that you cant leave the PDA in your pocket and get a strong enough signal. Also if you stray more than 4 feet from your phone your headset and PDA will lose contact and you'll have to reestablish the connection.

Most of the problems revolve around the phone. Example: battery is low, you get a call, the phone rings, it presents you with caller id info. All good except the answer/send button goes dead. A phone call also uses a heavy amount of resources. Meaning that its not uncommon for a phone call to crash the device. One sweet thing about an old fashioned land line is they don't crash. Fortunately a reset takes only about 20 seconds and doesn't erase all the data.

So why did I buy such a piece? Well I had a 2-week trial all set up, but it only took Rocky 2 hours to have a moment and put some bite marks in it. Needless to say they didn't want it back.

Truth be told I like my fancy phone, and quite enjoy not carrying two devices anymore. But if you were debating a PDA phone I'd steer clear of the Audiovox 6600 and any other Pocket PC phone. I give them a year to 18 months before they get all the kinks worked out. Perhaps by then Google will have given the nation free WIFI and we can all have bitchen VOIP PDA videophone watches. But then pigs would fly from my butt, and that might smart.

Labels: consumer goods, image