I’ve been the proud owner of a shiny new T-Mobile Ameo (a phone/PDA based on the HTC Advantage design) for a day now, so thought I’d post my first thoughts on it.
Before I start, it’s worth pointing out a couple of things. Firstly, I’m on holiday this week so I’ve not used it in earnest yet. These are my first impressions from playing with it at home and setting it up. Secondly, this is mainly going to be in terms of a comparison with my last PDA (the O2 XDA Exec – based on the HTC Universal), which I had for about a year and a half, and loved. So this may not be very objective!
The good
Everything the Universal can do…
It has Pocket Office for working on documents and spreadsheets, my wiki lets me organise my notes, it syncs with Outlook to manage my calendar and task lists, my bluetooth keyboard (that I mentioned recently) works well with it, and the integrated QWERTY keyboard is good for quick data entry.
Usability enhancements to Windows Mobile 5
Not sure where all of these have come from (Microsoft update to WM? HTC? T-Mobile?), but I’ve noticed a bunch of little improvements to the interface.
For example, in Outlook, you couldn’t get to your folders list without clicking on the current folder name. This meant you couldn’t do it if you were using your phone with one hand, or didn’t want to have to get your stylus out. On the Ameo, there is a new menu option from the soft-key menu that opens the folder list. I’ve already spotted about a dozen little improvements like this.
There are also a few preinstalled HTC utilities, like one to get the close button to actually close instead of minimize apps (you can see here if you’re not familiar with Windows Mobile and aren’t aware of this issue) if you press-and-hold close.
I’m sure I could’ve found some freeware to do this on the Exec if I’d bothered to look, but having some well-designed, tested, carefully selected apps preinstalled is nice – and much better than the “Active” interface junk that O2 preinstall on their devices.
Big screen
With the keyboard detached, running the Ameo in tablet mode makes for a fantastic ebook reader. The size, weight, shape and very high-quality screen (with software on ereader.com including good support for VGA screens) makes reading a book on it a pleasure. I was already a big fan of reading on my old HTC Universal, but this is even better. I’ve put the font size down, and this gives me a page that feels a lot like a small paperback book.
It’s also made reading through my RSS feeds better – egress scales nicely to the bigger screen, and it’s quite cool to be able to see more of my stories on screen at once.
I’ve not had the chance to write a document on it yet, but I’m thinking that the big screen will make writing a document even easier than on the Universal. With writing on a small screen, it can sometimes feel like your peering through a keyhole at your document – making it difficult to get the feel of the bigger picture. This screen should be really good to write with – I’m looking forward to my first chance to do some serious work with it.
VGA support in some apps
Like the Universal, the Ameo has a VGA compatible screen. But (without the OzVGA hack) it doesn’t really look like it. The pixels are all doubled, so instead of getting more on screen, you just get the same stuff on screen but it just looks better. You could always just zoom out and set font sizes smaller, so you got high quality small text. But with images, you were kind of stuck with big images. This made web browsing a little strange looking.
On the Ameo, the Opera and Internet Explorer web browsers render in true VGA. So webpages look much closer to how they look on a desktop browser. It’s really well done, and makes for a more comfortable web browsing experience – a bit like I imagine using the Nokia Internet tablets is.
Opera included
Speaking of web browsing, I’m liking Opera – preinstalled on the Ameo. It’s fast, renders nicely, and has tabs! Yay.
More memory
The Universal would run out of memory when you opened too many apps, and grind to a halt until you killed some. I’ve not noticed this be a problem on the Ameo, and it’s 111mb of program memory (over double what I am used to with the Universal) seems to cope with having lots of apps open at once really well. Need to see what it’d be like with having lots open over a normal working day to really know what it’s like, though.
Integrated GPS
I’ve been using TomTom Navigator with my HTC Universal for over a year now, and it has helped me out lots of times. But it was always a little annoying to have to use the separate bluetooth GPS receiver. It wasn’t that bad – it lived in the bottom of my bag, and I just had to dig it out and switch it on when I needed directions. Even so, I quite like having the GPS unit included in the Ameo – it’s just a tiny bit simpler.
Connect to printer or monitor
The Ameo can connect to a monitor using the VGA cable included in the kit that came with it – without needing a computer. Presumably this means that you could also connect it to a digital projector. So you could run a Powerpoint presentation from it. That’s quite cool.
It also comes with the software needed to print directly to a network-shared printer – again without needing a computer. Not sure when I’ll need either of these features, but they’re still pretty impressive.
8GB harddrive
This is a nice addition over the Universal – it’s nice to have a large amount of space to dump files on. With a 1gb Mini-SD card, and a 8gb hard-drive, I’ve got plenty of space! I’m not going to install programs to it, as I’m guessing it’s not gonna be that fast. But as a dumping ground for files, it’s ideal.
Data plan
Even after 18 months, I never really worked out O2’s approach to charging for data. It was always a bit of a dark art, and I never knew how much my next bill would be. And they didn’t have any dedicated data plans.
So I’m loving the web’n’walk plan – ‘unlimited’ Internet access. This might not be a direct comparison between the Universal and the Ameo, but it does change how I feel about using it. For over a year now, I’ve got used to connecting, do what I needed, then quickly click on ‘Disconnect’ on the Universal. It’s very cool to just leave my phone connected, ready to be used whenever I want something, without worrying. I’ve even set Pocket Outlook to check for new emails every half-hour, which I never used on the Universal.
Quick delivery!
I ordered it at about 4pm Tuesday afternoon, and it arrived a bit after 7am on Wednesday morning. That was cool – can’t remember how long I had to wait for the XDA Exec, but I’m sure it wasn’t that quick.
Other bits and pieces
The kit that comes with the Ameo is very nice – you get a nice looking dual-function pen (pen or stylus), a nice leather case, spare stylus, and a little bag to keep your bits and cables in. And the stylus stays in! (Sounds unimpressive perhaps, but the stylus never stayed in – would fall out if you held the PDA upside down, which made me lose several of them!)
The bad
It’s big
Really big. Seriously big. In it’s leather case, it looks a lot like a small filofax. That’s fine in meetings, or at work – or when I am going anywhere with my bag. But I used to use Windows Media Player to use my old phone as an mp3 player, and the Ameo doesn’t really fit in my pocket. So it’s really a rubbish portable music player. I might need to buy a separate mp3 walkman at some point. 🙁
The quiet keyboard
The keyboard on the Ameo doesn’t give any tactile feedback when you type. Presumably that was intentional, so you can tap away silently in meetings without driving everyone mad. If it wasn’t for seeing letters appear on the screen, you can’t tell when you’ve pressed the button. But I’d got used to the click feedback on the Universal, and I’m finding the Ameo keyboard quite strange so far.
The small keyboard
There’s no dedicated number keys, like there is on the Universal. You have to press a modifier key, and then one of the letter keys in the middle. It’s another thing that I’m finding a little hard to get used to when trying to type quickly.
No Pocket MSN
The Universal came with Pocket MSN Messenger preinstalled. I assumed that this was free, and came with Windows Mobile. Apparently, it’s neither. O2 install it on their devices, and I guess T-Mobile don’t as I don’t have it on the Ameo. And after a quick check on msn.com, it seems that they charge £10.99 for it. That wasn’t a nice surprise!
ActiveSync
Connecting it to my computer is getting really annoying. ActiveSync was never an example of reliability with the Universal – it’s temperamental, and every now and then will refuse to connect without restarting both the PDA and computer. But it’s noticeably worse on the Advantage. Even restarting doesn’t resolve the problem sometimes – needing multiple reboots of both PDA and computer to connect successfully.
I don’t know why… I’m using ActiveSync 4.5 (which I was using before with the Exec) instead of the ActiveSync 4.2 that was supplied with the Ameo. But I wouldn’t have expected that to cause problems.
It seems to be limited to USB connections – Bluetooth connections seem to work better, but I don’t want to rely on Bluetooth syncing as I use USB connections to keep the PDA charged through the day. I’ve tried different USB cables, including the really short one I got with my external USB harddrive, but no joy.
As a stand-alone device, it’s great. But as something that connects to a computer, it’s very flaky.
Different size SD card
My SD cards that I used with the Universal wont work with my new PDA – which only takes Mini-SD cards. That’s a little annoying.
The colour
I don’t get the grey-and-pink colour scheme that T-Mobile have. I miss the black and silver look of O2’s XDAs that I had on my XDA Exec.
Screen protector
Screen protectors are vital as otherwise I’d scratch the screen to bits. So it was a nice surprise to find an unexpected free screen protector included with the T-Mobile Ameo (especially as noone seems to be selling them for this model yet).
It was a shame that it’s such a cheap nasty screen protector! I’m not the best at fitting these things at the best of times, but I’ve tried a few over the years (on an old iPaq, on Palm Pilots, on my old Clie UX50, and I tried a couple on my current Universal) and this one was by far the worst – it’s rubbish. It looks cheap and nasty, and even after being really careful was impossible to get all the bubbles out.
Conclusion
Is the HTC Advantage better than the HTC Universal?
In theory, yes. But I’m not sure yet – it depends on whether I can get used to the bigger size. Need to see what it’s like to use for a day away from home (and more importantly, my laptop!) to know if it was really a good purchase though. I’ve got a couple of days working in London next week, so that should be a good test for it!
.
Update – See comments to this post for more thoughts as I use the Ameo more…
Really glad to hear about the pros, and I hope you are able to work out the cons quickly. You probably are already familiar, but Agile work great for messaging, and supports MSN Messenger. I’ll be curious to see how the size and bulk settles on you. Its probably a good thing you were already used to the Universal, right?!
Great review!
More thoughts…
It has a Ctrl key!
This is really good – it means you can do stuff like Cut (Ctrl-X), Copy (Ctrl-C), Paste (Ctrl-V) and Select All (Ctrl-A) from the keyboard. I had to remap the Caps Lock button on my Universal to Ctrl to do this – is nice to have a dedicated button now.
Another good thing – listening to podcasts.
I rarely listen to podcasts in one go – take a 1 hour podcast like TWiT, and a 15 minute commute, and you can see why i need to listen to it in bits.
Because the files are generally quite big, I used to store them on a Storage Card. The problem is, I would switch the Universal off after pausing. When I switched it back on, the delay before the SD card was powered up and ready was long enough that Media Player would panic that the mp3 it was playing had vanished (assuming that the SD card must’ve been removed while the universal was switched off). Media Player returns to the main screen and loses my place in the podcast. Really annoying.
On the Ameo, I can put podcasts on the harddrive. As it’s not a removable disk, Media Player doesn’t seem to have this problem, so I don’t lose my place. Yay.
(And if i listened to Audiobooks, it’d be even better.)
More goodness (can you tell I’m out and about using the Ameo today? :-))
The external screen – I’m loving it. A problem with the Universal was needing to open it to see stuff like the time, or identify incoming callers.
The Ameo has a long external screen strip, which shows time, signal strength, notifications (e.g. new emails, reminders), identifies incoming calls (with a name and little contacts picture), and more.
For example, slide the volume switch and the external screen shows a volume bar. Or when playing mp3s in Media Player, the external screen shows the track and artist name. It’s all well thought out, and I’m finding it really useful.
A downer compared with the Universal – the screen is really reflective, making it very difficult to use in daylight.
The Universal had a nice screen – even in bright sunshine you could just turn up the brightness and read stuff on the screen. The Ameo is nowhere near as good to use outside.
(I’m hoping that this might be better once I get a screen protector on the screen, which should make it less reflective.)
RE: ActiveSync problems
This seems to be less of a problem if I shutdown (instead of hibernating) my laptop when I’m not using it. Perhaps the hibernation doesn’t stop/start the USB drivers properly?
Another thing I miss from the Universal… The keyboard isn’t backlit! You can just about make out the keys from the light given out by the screen, but it isn’t ideal. 🙁
Hi, Great review, at least you get the chance to write up your thoughts. I got an Ameo as an upgrade to my “MDA PRO” from T-Mobile. It looks like a UMPC but not quite there. I second all your thoughts on the device. One thing that is “interesting is the motion sensor” i.e. you can move around the web browsers via tiliting the machine, but a bit like my PS3 Motion Sensor Games it gets a bit of getting use to so I tend not to use it.
Another useful thing above the MDA was the little 5 way joypad which is useful if you don’t feel pulling out the pen.
I always try and get the most techie gadget from my Tmobile as possible, the odd view I know but I dont actaully beleive this is a usuable phone, so I still use my trusty SONYp900 with rubbish battery.
Although I must admit the MDA pro battery is pretty bad, that I upgraded to a larger and thus more bulkier model.
So Far I have been incredibly impressed with the Ameo’s battery – life and as others have commented that the usb charging takes longer from Laptop/PC than the official adapter included.
One thing I am confused about is that T-Mobile – I never had any Composite out / S-VHS output cable – just a VGA cable, not sure if this is standard or misinformation I did however had VGA out – it would have been nice to show family pics when travelling etc on family TV’s at times.
For me this is exactly as you said a Filofax that BT headset would be useful for making calls. I use it to do exactly “work” related diarycalendar and massive contact list, and keep documents hat I am working on within for reference, must get a Blue Tooth keyboard that sounds useful.
Use the MDA PRO keypad was actually quite tactile and usuable, this Ameo however is a very ZX80 “showing my age”. but that being said I did edit my CV quite easily.
I would like to say when I saw the screen size I was impressed but the resolution is a let down, I think its more to do with WM5 rather than the device I presume but not sure of the Technical on this.
This machine is just screaming to be a LINUX machine with Phone and GPS built in, open office and more etc, utilising the screen size to a better effect. Dunno just a thought.
WM5 is not really eye candy in pink, so this is a let down, if not embarrasing, some peopel out there would slap you if you answered the Ameo in public so BT is useful and Handfree a necessity.
It “could” make a useful recorder for meetings. Also useful that it has a 3MP Camera, I took some shots and all were useful, but the device is slow and tedious and simple camera’s are better Although it has stretched the boundaries i.e PDA/Phone etc. (noting the Nokia N95)
One thing is that it requires you to have a very steady hand or need to be leaning against something to take a top quality shot taht again needs to be Still, I got tried of asking my 3 year old lad to hold still 😉 and did not even try with my fast crawlings 9 month baby boy.
My wife thinks its yet another waste of money, but I explained to her that I never actually bought it, and it allowed me not to have to carry a laptop and the Work PC and this would be sufficient. So If you are after saving your back then great.
I am now actually on the look out for a really simple phone which can sync with outlook and prefereably pay as you go.
So – now I dont have to carry my ipod – music, Sony PSP for MP4, Laptop – general work. If I look at it that way all well and good. It does feel a bit odd that one I do pull it out it feels like the daddy of PDAs or an ARCHOS Media Player. Pity that the Linux thought tht the USB sync cable could connect it to a further Hard drive? making it a TV recorder? Dreaming now sorry.
I hear HTC have a 7inch Vista Compatible. I think that Microsoft/HTC need to release WM6 on the AMEO with T-Mobile quickly.
Anyone know how to get rid of the T-Mbile customisation I remember that there use to be hack for the MDA PRO.
Also NO Anti Virus – or is it that I have not even opened or read Manual the CD-ROM may contain it? can someone confirm as I have to hide everything from the kids otherwise it becomes pulp in there mouths.
So far my littles ones have some great hand me downs, whilst I try and justify the Apple TV thing that just came through a month or so late 😉 belated Valentines Gift for my wife 😉
Pity I could not get this thing engraved with my wifes name on it.
Oh boy before I forget, I thought it was just me, but the screen is useless outside. it reflects so much that you cannot see anything outside. this is really annoying try to use the GPS. so the Voice and sound need to be loud. Notably I did have the screen protector supplied stuck on the Ameo. One thing it makes it more UNsensitive i.e. need to prod it firmly when utilising one finger and not the pointer, which surprisingly does stay in it hole, and does not fall out when there is a breeze in the air.
Another good thing is that streaming books is great for the Kids. The Speakers (stereo work well) althought they are very spoilt with Beolabs 8000 and 6000’s around the house, amazingly they don’t touch those.
With all the usb charges cables about the place and prying childrens hands I am a bit wary of the thing beling pulled of table.
The leather case is really good quility leather, and I think although I like to keep everything quite new looking it may look even better with age.
BUT the protection it offers is minimal, i.e. its no ipod rubber skin etc, and the Ameo is no Light Bunny. I fthis was picked up in “food fight accidentally then this would hurt ;-). Where am I going with this is that the Hard Drive, and I have worked within IBM Engineering Manufacturing “Files/DASD” or Hard Drives. Can it take a bump is going to be found out by my toddlers sooner than later and this scares me a tad, Solid State could not arrive quick enough albeit for in flight parking technologies.
That Magnetic Keyboard is definitely a Trick and credit to HTC nice idea and shows the shielding has been well thought out it reminds me of the shielding in Larger drives and Actuator Arms. One thing I would have like was another case which just allowed the Ameo to be used Palm Like.and a carrying strap should had least been an option, as long as it was not as girly as the PSP one.
Thinking Back PSION and HP and Ericson Pocket PC etc, this is that Nokia Communicator type machine. It nearly all there but not just quite.
Yes I will get an I-Phone engraved for my wife of course,. As I got this on a twelve month Contract. It does allow me to surf the web adequately but jave based websites still struggle with WM5. this is annoying if you use BT Yahoo, and even there non java based site there is issues with some very important icons.
Skype –usauge with T-Mobile costs extra on top of web-n-walk so bear that in mind. This is a bit of a farce. But it would be ideal for Skype etc. If any hackers out there sort this out I will be impressed, I suppose T-Mobile monitor the Skpe services PORT?
One other thing I maybe correct about is there is no infra red port, as this would have made the best ever remote control. Although I do have an amazing B&O 7000 and beolink 5000 and standard beolink which all have immensely powerful beams. It would have been nice to add to my collection one that I could programme the non B&O kit with.
Hmmmm could add it to the Kitchen that I am thinking of doing up, drop down timer, internet cookbook, bollywod film streamer 😉 I think my wife may allow for it.
Anyways hope this adds to some of the thoughts others have written.
Speed of use and generally moving about I not totally impressed about although I am use to trading floor compute back bones, you can live with it. Thing that annoys me is the start up time to making a phone call quickly if you had to. One of the reasons for not using it as phone apart from looking like a person ready to be mugged.NFL.
More updates later.
kind regards Aamir.
Geekiness in me – I have an Ipod Video, PSP, PS3, XBOX 360, several laptops / UNIX Server etc and an avid B&O Collector.
Just got a new Ameo on trial snd am desparate to find out if I can connect to a standard ethernet LAN.
I have got a USB to ethernet adaptor but it does`t want to know.
I would really appreciate it anyone out there could advise me if they have had the same issues.
Apart from that first impressions are all good!
@Aamir
Thanks for your comments – some interesting points.
Here are a couple of comments that jumped out at me as things I could reply to:
> VGA cable supplied only, no composite for connecting to TV
Yeah, bit of a shame, but probably a cost-saving effort. I’m planning on getting the cable from expansys which gives you Composite Video and S-Video connections for the Ameo, as well as a USB host. Using this you could connect a regular USB keyboard, mouse, thumbdrive etc. It’s about £14 which doesn’t seem too unreasonable.
> No infrared
Oh yeah! Hadn’t noticed that. I guess that’s probably an indication of how rarely I used the infrared on my Universal.
Finally got around to getting video on to my Ameo (a fairly high quality AVI file – about 350 megs for 40 minutes) and as you might expect, it is a fantastic. It makes a really good media player. The playback (using TCPMP, for those who’ve heard of it) is fast, the picture is crystal clear, and the sound (as far as you can tell with earbud headphones) is brill.
I’ve never really used a PDA for watching videos before – I was always running out of space, and videos would be the first to go. But I think I’m gonna use the Ameo for video more often.
Battery life – the more I use the Ameo, the more I am impressed with it’s staying power. I can sit and work on it (online and everything!) for hours, far longer than I could with a full laptop.
This evening I spent nearly four hours working on it continuously – making notes, browsing the web, etc. – and the battery is still at 60%.
Very nice.
Quick question (as a potential buyer) … can the Ameo read/write USB memory sticks (with the aid of a mini-USB to USB type A socket adapter, of course)? The lack of full-sized SD cards is a bit of a bummer for those quick floppy-style file transfers, but if it’s compatible with USB sticks that’d be enough for me …
I can’t speak from experience on this – I’ve not tried.
But I’ve read in a few places that the 4 in 1 cable from expansys includes a USB port that would allow the Ameo to support a USB memorystick (or USB keyboard, mouse, or other low-powered devices).
I’ve ordered the cable for myself, so when it arrives I’ll probably post about my experiences with it.
D
The cable arrived today, and it reads USB memory sticks fine – they come up in File Explorer as “Hard Drive”.
Very cool
Anyone tried T-Mobile sat nav on the ameo? Its expensive so any feed back would be useful before I buy
Yeah, I’ve used the Ameo with TomTom Navigator 5 several times, and it works well. Can sometimes take a long time to initially locate it’s position (like 10 minutes or so), but once it’s worked out where it is, it works great.
I use a pqi mini-sd card with my Universal, I just use it with the mini to full size adapter it came with and the Universal has no problems recognising it.
I have just got hold of my ameo and i am extremely pleased with it. This is the first handheld type of device i have had and so far it has lived up to expectations.
I would agree with all the other reviews and add a small point to the negatives list..the power supply cannot be easily plugged in abroad!
the other strange thing is that my mini drive seems very full before i have put anything on it…lots of files called testx etc. not sure whether to delete them or if they are needed for something.
Anyway i am on holiday at the moment and hope to start testing it more in the next few days, so will send in another report after more testing. Unfortunately i have only been able to connect to the web via wifi as i am out of the country, and setting up in France is too daunting.
Oh, anyone tried using the ameo as a modem for your laptop?
🙂
can you open hotmail on the ameo? also am due for an upgrade this month am hoping to get the ameo, do u think theres anychance they will give it for free? seeing as ive been a customer for 5 years
Hotmail – yeah, that’s no problem
As for getting it for free… I dunno, maybe if your monthly bills are usually pretty big. I’d be surprised, though – it’s not a cheap device so you’d really have to spend a lot of money with them for them to want to give it to you for free.
[…] fair to say that more than a few people have commented that my phone is a bit big, and that it is difficult to make a call with it without looking like a bit of a […]
Loving my new ameo, had to pay 190 for it though as an upgrade, was a little dissapointed, as I have been with t mobile for over 13yrs, also very crafty on their part as I stated that sat nav was one of my main requirements, and now I have it , it apparently supports it but you need seperate software that conveniently on their part they have not included, still trying to sort this out with them and they are not keen to provide it so far, after speaking to the fourth person and being on the phone with them for a total of about 3hrs, still waiting to hear back. Can anyone tell me what sat nav software is the best for the ameo??
I’m using Tom Tom Navigator 5 (because I had a copy of it already), which works very well.
It does seem to take an age to initially work out where it is (5 mins or more), but I don’t know whether this is due to Ameo GPS hardware or the Tom Tom software.
Little update…i was worried that a big sd card might not work..but just tried out a 4 gig one….no problems!……..anyone found a way to use skype on this?
From my day to day use so far I’ve found it to be good as a media player – TCPMP with the AC3 plugin means I can watch TV shows on the commute in without having to do any fiddling/transcoding.
That said, getting videos onto the system is a pain – activesync 4.5 will find the device and start letting me copy the file but then drop out randomly through the file copy. Shall start using the Mini->Plain SD adapter and just use that to copy large files. ActiveSync works well for calendar/mail sync though.
My main complaint with it though is that as a phone it sucks. Everything is done via speaker phone which makes having a private conversation in an open plan office impossible. I’ve had several people complain to me that call quality is poor on their end when I call them using the supplied earbud/mic combo cable (to have that private conversation).
I honestly think that if I can’t come up with a workable means of making calls as I could on my old Orange M2000(HTC BlueAngel), then I may have to get a cheap and nasty pay-as-you-go phone for calls which rather defeats the point of device convergence.
– Suggestions welcome…
Oh and does anyone know why Agile messenger has stopped working in the past few days? It worked fine till my number ported and now it wont connect to any services…?
RE: …as a phone it sucks…
Have a look at https://dalelane.co.uk/blog/?p=157 – since getting my LG Style-I, I’ve found it works really well
Cannot get my ameo to sync remotely with outlook using either WiFi or Web and Walk. Works fine when connected direct with usb.
Any thoughts guys
How are you trying to sync it? I’ve only seen USB and Bluetooth as options
according to the handbook you can sync with outlook using an internet connection. it says to just click send and receive in the outlook email part of messaging.
It works fine with a pop3 connection, but not with outlook
I’ve not tried that, sorry. It might be worth looking for an answer on http://forum.xda-developers.com/ – I’ve found it a very useful source of info on all things Windows Mobile. Good luck!
thanks – i will give it a try
I have been following the blog with interest because I am in the same position that Dale was in – an HTC Universal user (Vodafone version in my case) – and the Ameo tied to T-Mobile Web’n’Walk looked like a good option. Once I moved to the Universal I bought a small pay-as-you-go phone for the trouser pocket, the bike, etc. I found the Universal too bulky and the Ameo would be impossible. I cracked the screen on A Nokia Communicator when I had it in the back pocket on a bike. Dale’s LG Style-I works if you still want to carry the Ameo in a bag but if you only have pockets available you need another mobile phone. That’s not a big deal if you stick to pay-as-you-go.
My Universal works brilliantly on push-email but it can get very expensive if I download attachments. I would not go for the Ameo until someone has managed to get push-email to work – I would be interested to hear if someone has. The diificulty in seeing the screen in sunlight would be a bit of a downer for me as that is another area where the Universal is very effective – it may have something to do with preserving the battery life on the Ameo – battery life on the Universal is not as good.
Given the positive comments from Dale, if push email works well then I would probably go for the Ameo but I would also upgrade my pay-as-you-go phone. Thanks Dale for setting up this blog. Tim
Java on the Ameo? spent a lot of last night wandering round the Sun site and it seems as if we are very much at the mercy of HTC, who say “Its down to T-Mobile”
So when are we going to get Java on the Ameo then?
@peter lyons
are midlets not enough? what is it that you want to do with Java?
[…] blog post after my first day with the T-Mobile Ameo still gets a surprising amount of views, and raised some interesting questions. I got a good […]
has anyone else had problems when trying to make a conference call? i tried it a few times but kept getting the following message:
unable to conference the calls
The Ameo is a really big device when compared to the Universal, in my opinion the Ameo is a bit of trial from HTC as it is really too large to be a phone and not powerful enough to compete with the ultra portables as it runs on windows mobile. That said windows mobile consumes less power, it really depends on the needs of the user and time will tell if there is more of a market for this device than for a fully fledged windows ultr portable device.
do any ultra portables allow for handwritting recognition
[…] use the HTC Advantage as my main ebook reader. I’ve mentioned before that it’s a great […]
[…] And the blog I linked to at the beginning also has a write-up about it too. […]
did anyone manage to use a USB Ethernet adaptor with the 4-in-1 cable?
Thanks
Roberto
@Roberto – I’ve never tried. Used lots of USB devices with it, but never for ethernet.
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