Ooh, it's been a long time since I did a techy blog posting, but I've finally got something to rant about. I've owned a couple of O2 XDA devices over the past couple of years - the first was an XDA 2, and the most recent is an XDA Exec. I really love the concept of these devices - a phone and a pretty powerful PDA all in one - fantastic premise, shame that it's never quite been achieved in either of my two devices.
The XDA 2, when I got it, was lovely and slim, and for a while, I was happy. I didn't mind the fact that I had to charge it every single night, or that the phone locked up and the whole thing had to be reset every now and then. But after several months of this, I was about ready to come to blows with it. Forget your charger when you go away? Say goodbye to all your text messages, photos, applications, and anything not explicitly backed up or synchronised. I'd had enough - but then I went to PDC.
At PDC 2005 there was a gorgeous Windows Mobile 5 device with a funky hingy-flippy screen thing that was being sold very, very cheaply. I was gutted that they all sold out so quickly, but was really pleased when O2 brought out the XDA Exec - basically the same device but with their badge on it. It had a wonderful invention - memory that wasn't wiped when the battery ran out! Oh how happy I was! And, I figured, this is a new release - they'll have figured out and ironed out the nasty bugs in the phone software by now? Sadly, no. I had to reboot that damn thing so often I might have been better off adding a reboot to my daily routine. It was almost impossible to use it as a phone without a bluetooth headset, and even that kept crashing as I frequently had to re-pair the devices.
I'd had enough, and so I'm now the proud owner of a gorgeous Nokia 6131. Not the newest, or most fancy, but it's small, sleek, and it works! Took no time at all to get it working, synched all my contacts via bluetooth without a hiccup - a refreshing change!