When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Like the other XDA units, the Mini sports an integrated digital camera, and in keeping with the best that we're seeing in mobile phone cameras at the time of writing, it's a 1. It's also Bluetooth capable, although that's not the only way to synchronise it with a suitable PC; a USB cable is also provided.
Performance The first thing we noticed about the XDA II Mini is a common fault with smart phones lacking an integrated keyboard; the screen smudges quickly and often; we'd suggest carrying a cleaning cloth around with you if you're keen to show this phone off to your friends.
Aside from that, the display is clear and bright, with the usual adjustments for maximising battery life by dipping screen brightness depending on your situation. As a phone we had few complaints about its performance, aside from one situation where it for some reason it incorrectly grabbed contact details for somebody phoning us -- although to be fair to O2, it does note on the splash screen of our review unit that it's a test unit, so some bugs are probably inevitable.
Even though it was their own. I dont feel they were helpful when it came down to my problem. Just sell the product and move on in my opinion. I should have listened to the people who wrote the reviews. Many seemed to have had the same experience of it not lasting but a short… Read Full Review. Battery life, easy availability of 3rd party software, fast Wi-Fi, ease of use Palm TX Handheld is a useful tool with all the functions I need in a compact package.
Good value for money… Read Full Review. Wi-fi internet and email are very good. They operate at roughly dial-up speed limited by the processor speed I guess. The MP3 software also included works perfectly. For me one of the best features is that you can increase memory using an SD card.
Finally, as with all Palms, there is a vast choice of third party software available, some of the best being freeware. This is an amazing piece of… Read Full Review. I got this as a present to replace my M and have been really pleased with it for nearly a year.
I find the interface easy to use and it synching directly with Outlook is much better than needing extra software. I own a Palm TX and I have been using it for almost 8 months by now. I use it quite regularly everyday for organizing my stuff and sometimes playing a small game or reading news and ebooks. I can easily connect it to my PC at home and also at work to synchronize my documents. The large, silvery cradle - which has an embedded Dell logo that glows blue when the PDA is connected - has a secondary bay for recharging spare batteries.
A nice touch, that - less so is the very steep, almost vertical angle the cradled x3i sits at, making it difficult to use when connected this way. Dell says the battery should be charged for four hours before the x3 is activated, but you won't find that mentioned unless you happen to read the manual. The quick start guide simply gives the initial charge duration, not the instruction to keep the device turned off. Naturally enough, we did turn it on.
And we got plenty of 'backup battery too low' warnings as a result. Fortunately, once the main battery is charged, the x3 powers up the backup battery, so you're ready to go.
Fully charged, the back-up cell protects your data for 30 minutes while you find a recharge point. Maxing the screen brightness and running Windows Media Player continuously drains the battery in almost three hours. That's with the Wi-Fi adaptor turned off. Turning it on and cycling through a series of web sites, doing a browser cache refresh each time, gave us an hour's usage for the first half of the battery's charge.
Maximum Power also operates at MHz. That's what the Settings panel says, at least. Normal is also slower than Maximum, with tasks taking the same duration or up to 25 per cent longer. As the chart below shows, the Axim isn't the fastest Pocket PC machine we've seen, being outgunned in every test by Asus ABT, but it delivers better performance than the old x5, particularly in the graphics test.
In the case of the Asus and the x3i, the processors were set to run as fast as possible - the x5 and HP results come from SPB's benchmark archive, but we trust they were taking using a similar CPU configuration. The x3i's WLAN adaptor was a joy to use. At the start, at least. Turning the radio on for the first time provides a list of nearby access points - just select the one you want, and the x3i connects.
What makes it so is the fact that we used an insecure access point. Repeated attempts to connect failed, and involved much wailing and gnashing of teeth as WEP keys and MAC addresses were checked and re-checked. Trips to a variety of Dell and non-Dell Axim bulletin boards showed many users with similar problems.
We got connected eventually, because we spotted an extra setting in our Proxim Skyline base-station's wireless set-up screen. Apply that, and noting that the WEP keys were set to 'shared', allowing us to check a previously un-checked box in the Axim's wireless network profile page - Network Authentication Shared Mode - allowed us to connect.
Experienced network admins should have little difficulty sorting this out. But it highlights a key Wi-Fi problem: terminology differs between vendors. How device manufacturer A labels an option isn't necessarily how access point manufacturer B does. That may not matter if you're using a default-set open network, but if you decide to implement a half-decent level of security and access control, it makes matters very tricky indeed, particularly if you're adding an x3i to an existing network.
Since WLAN security is important, a more in-depth guide than the list of options Dell provides is essential.
Yes, Dell, I know what the checkboxes are called, I can see that. Tell me what they mean. Dell isn't noted for offering a big fat bundle of software with its PDAs, though since that's one of the ways it keeps the price of the hardware down, perhaps that's fair enough.
The x3i does come with a few extra applications, though. Data Backup does what it says on the tin, copying all your code to the user-accessible internal Flash memory, or to an SD card - handy if you're not going to be connecting the PDA to a host PC, but less valuable if you sync frequently.
It's not fast, either, taking around s to back-up just over 1MB of data - the first 75 per cent of which took under 30s to write to the internal Flash memory. Dell also provides Switcher Bar, an app switcher, which usefully lets you quit unneeded apps, but is positioned in the menu bar at the top of the screen so it obscures the name of the application you happen to be using at any given moment.
Home, meanwhile, provides a Palm OS-style icon-based application launcher. It's perhaps not too user friendly, but it does provide all the information you need to establish a network connection, and integrates nicely with the Windows Mobile 's own Wireless Ethernet app, which offers little in the way of useful data.
We liked the x3i. It's a good-looking device that feels good in the hand: it's solid but not weighty. The display isn't bad. It's not great either, but perfectly usable.
The x3i is impressive as a Wi-Fi device, too. The x3i's power management gave us a good hour's surfing, which used half the battery's charge. That might not sound much, but that's a lot of email checks. It's also particularly good for a device that's had its battery capacity cut so Dell can deliver a slimmer, lighter model than its predecessor.
If you know there's a hotspot you can use, fine.
0コメント