Advice for new Smartphone owners

[SimpleSi]

Charge the phone up fully and then go and find the firmware upgrade and upgrade straight away before playing with your new toy

Really - don't play with it until you've done this first as you'll just waste days of time trying to work out why it doesn't do what is says on the packet!

Having just bought myself a Samsung Omnia and following on from my trials and tribulations with my daughter's N96, I wished I done this myself

Merry Christmas

Simon

[Domino]

....Santa?!?!

[Sylv3r]

Same here with my Blackberry Bold. Battery life etc is awful without the latest firmware upgrade.

[linkazoid]

The Samsung Omnia, is a great phone after the FW upgrades.... Over at i900.modaco.com the are loads of Custom firmwares... A new revision is being released tomorrow so loads more will pop up.

I have my own fw there aswell.

MD01 Cleaner Rom - Sprry bit busy to provide the link at the mo.

Mike

[SimpleSi]

The Samsung Omnia, is a great phone....

It almost certainly isn't

Its a flaky toy

I got one after my trusty MDA Vario II had taken too many knocks - I went to buy an HTC Touch but the Vodaphone people were offering too much of a good deal for mins/texts and data for £30 and I thought - its a windows mobile - how different can it be from my old the 2 Vario's I've had over the past 3 years (HTC's rebadaged)

Points for the prosecution

1. (And crime of the century IMO) - it doesn't have an internal stylus - you laughingly are supposed to tie one onto the side - its just a joke - stylus that came with it is already lost!

2. Because it doesn't have the 3 thousand buttons (and nice little scroll wheel) of the Vario - you have to totally rely on touch screen and standard windows mobile screen controls can't cope with my stubby fingers

3. It has about 10 different ways of accessing programs but the ones that are easy to use aren't customisable (by someone without a 1st class degree in PDAs) and the ones you CAN adjust are 4 levels down in the menu system.

It's just an abomination But a pretty looking one

However, It will be alright to ring and phone people (its not much good at texting someone not in your recent history - takes 9 key strokes if you accidently use the button called text to get to point where you type any text! But only 4 if u know the bodge way!) and hopefully with my data allowance I can finally have my helpdesk prog send me emails when someone enters has a problem

.... after the FW upgrades

And which one of the zillions would you recommend (and which vital feature won't work afterwards)

regards

Simon

PS anyone considering buying any of these so called smartphones should have a long chat with someone who's actually used one and get them to show you its faults and not the clever features (that only work on 29th Feb with a following wind)

For instance - try to use SatNav and see how reliable your phone becomes especially as you get to Birmingham and try and navigate your way to Fort Dunlop for a bit of shopping

[kmount]

Bitter? =)

... I want a smartphone ... Santa brought me a new telly instead though, shouldn't complain too much.

[SimpleSi]

I want a smartphone

yes - but just because they call it a smartphone doesn't mean it is - just like the shop called 1 hour cleaners - its just the name of the shop

With the N96 and Omnia (only 2 recent examples I've had experience with) they just don't reliably do what they purport to do.

Once you've press more than 6 buttons and ended up with 10 applications running - the machine can't cope with running them all at the same time

And as for design faults - the omnia comes with 8G of built in storage - guess how they partition it - 100M for 1st partition 7.9G for 2nd.

Guess where everything defaults to storing its data? (i'll give u 2 guesses but ur only going to need 1 )

Daughter went to Bluetooth me a video file - 300M - completely filled up main storage and crashed my phone - I haven't seen that happen for 30 years (CDC Cyber)

[linkazoid]

: Si,

How strange, i came from the MDA II also... i do miss the slide out kb, but my fingers are not too stubby for the touch screen, and i dont mind the stylus dangling from the side..

There should be a spare stylus in the box, is there not?

The wheel is not needed on the omnia, as you can slide your finger from top to bottom to scroll up and down.

I've customised my own rom over at modaco.com, here is the link to my topic

Linkazoid Rom


It's based on the DXHK3 Rom, which is a newer UK rom, which is most people preference for stability and speed. iGo 8 is quick to connect, 10 seconds to sat fix.

Please read the linked topic, to see what i've done to the rom regarding removing and adding, i guarantee you wont be disappointed, or have a look at Taril's rom there, as other people seems to favor that.

If you want any more help to make the phone useable, please let me know what i can do.

Michael

[linkazoid]

Once you've press more than 6 buttons and ended up with 10 applications running - the machine can't cope with running them all at the same time

Slide your finger from the samsung logo to the middle of the screen to quickly open task switcher, click end all tasks to close all open programs, or close which ones you wish.

And as for design faults - the omnia comes with 8G of built in storage - guess how they partition it - 100M for 1st partition 7.9G for 2nd.

You can regedit the default locations, but this can be a bit lengthy.. also sure you can change the location to default save all files through bluetooth, in the bluetooth settings. Change it from bluetooth FTP to My storage or Storage card.

Mike.

[Little-Miss]

I got an Omnia....lets just say, if there's an emergency, dont rely on me to phone the appropriate people....2 key strokes just to get to dialer...

I do regret getting this phone from Voda...it's a nice PDA though.

[linkazoid]

I dont understand why people hate this phone???

How many key presses /slides /strokes does it take on other phones?

Hold red button for two seconds to unlock, press the green button, dialer opens, dial 999.. no more than 5 seconds...

I think it obvious that i like this phone. lol

Mike

[jason5catt]

It's good advice, there needs to be more simple stuff like on the web because for first time buyers or people who don't know a great deal about smartphones or mobiles in general, I find there's nothing out there to educate. Just tech tech tech!

I found this site which has given a comprehensive 101 guide on Windows Mobile, which I found interesting and other beginners might too. It kind of runs you through what it's all about and what you can do with the OS...
101 Beginners Guide to using Windows Mobile 5 and 6 software

Hope this is helpful!
Jase

[pagelad]

I just scored myself a HTC Pro and its totally awesome,

Ive had just about every iteration of HTC's phones from original XDA and this ones definately a marked improvement on all of them. After you apply the speed fixes touchFlo is pretty awesome and it feels like a well built solid handset.

[SimpleSi]

After you apply the speed fixes touchFlo is pretty awesome

My original point

These devices all seem to need upgrading before they do you what you expected them to do out of the box

regards

Simon

[Little-Miss]

Where did you get the Omnia updates from?