My Phone of Choice!

Ok, I work in the mobile industry. I get to come across tons of phones and see what works and what doesn't. When it comes to getting a phone for myself, I used to just take anything, but now I'm a bit more picky. This is why I've come to the conclusion that the T-Mobile Dash is the phone for me.

The T-Mobile Dash is T-Mobile's replacement to the old SDA (which resembled a standard Nokia bar phone). The Dash is slightly wider and taller than a credit card, and about as thick as 4 credit cards stacked. It features a 320x240 resolution screen which sits above a qwerty keypad. The viewable area is 2” by 1.5”. The quality is rather well. The phone is wide enough to fit ergonomically in your hand.

Running on Windows Mobile 6, the Dash features a very familiar interface. The most familiar place to start your navigation is with the “Start” menu. Just like Windows, you have the familiar options as well as some native to the phone. Although older models of the Dash come with Windows Mobile 5, the upgrade to WinMobile 6 is free. Upgrading provides the ability to view and alter some of the most common document types used in Microsoft Office. The down side is that you cannot create these documents on your own. The Dash retains Window's ability to multi-task. As such, you can have multiple applications open at once as opposed to the one at a time of most other smart phones I've seen. The downside to this feature is that you must have enough memory available to run the application or you'll receive a notification warning you to close other programs. This can sometimes be annoying because you'll have to open the task manager every time you wish to close an application. Thankfully, the task manager is just on the Start Menu, and easy to locate.

Like most smart phones, the Dash has a built-in camera. A 1.3 mega pixel (MP) camera is mounted on the back of the phone with a reflective panel for self portraits. I hear a lot of people complain about the positioning of this camera, because when the Dash is held in the left hand, it's easy to put your finger on the lens. I haven't experienced this problem for myself, so I conclude that how you hold the phone is what makes the difference. Regardless, you can snap pictures at a resolution of 1280x1024 (1 MP). This is nice because most PC's have the display preset to 1280x1024. You can also snap pictures at 640x480, 320x240, or 160x120. I don't see many reasons to go lower than the 1MP setting, so I doubt most people will take advantage of this feature. You can adjust the quality of the image you're taking from Basic to Super Fine. Personally, I didn't see much of a difference to recommend a specific setting.

Like most cameras, you have a few options for Effects added to your pictures. Though not much, you have gray scale, sepia (like old film from the 70's), cool (blue overtones), and negative (all colors inverted). If you want to get artistic, I'd recommend feeding the image through photoshop instead. Other features to the camera include video. The resolution on videos is 320x240, and the camera supports two modes of video capture. The first is standard. This allows you to take videos for as long as you have open space on your phone or microSD card. The second mode is Video Message. This limits your video to under 300kb, so it can be sent as an MMS (Multi-Media meSsage) to your friends or whoever. The benefit of this mode is that it prevents you from taking videos that will be too long to send, but the downside is that it doesn't provide a timer that counts down how long you have left. As such, you simply need to guess how long your video has been and how long until it's cut off.

Just like Windows, the Dash comes loaded with Window Media Player. This is your default playback for audio clips. What's nice about this, is that it supports quite a few formats. The downside is that it loads the entire clip into RAM. This means that if you have a 5MB MP3 file loaded, you'll only have 15MB of the 20MB RAM left. To circumvent this, I recommend downloading a third party player. The other limitation of the Windows Media Player is that it can only play back a few video formats. As such, you'll want to download another media player for your Dash.

The Dash is more of a business phone. As such, it comes packaged with active sync software. Because of its Windows based software, the Dash handles all contacts, tasks, and schedules just like Microsoft Outlook. This makes synchronizing it with Outlook a good choice. The Active Sync software that is bundled with the Dash includes a copy of MicroSoft Outlook 2007, but it's only a trial version and you'll find yourself having to purchase it at some point. If you already have a version of Microsoft Office, you can simply sync your Dash with your Outlook client with the single press of a button. It's that simple. In addition to this, the Dash will periodically synchronize itself while plugged into your PC's USB port. This means that any contacts you update while the Dash is connected will be automatically updated as well.

Microsoft saw fit to include a mobile version of Internet Explorer with the Dash. The beauty of this is that you can surf the web with the world's most compatible browser. The downside to this is that it doesn't support Flash as well as some other plugins. So, what seems like a great web browsing experience falls just a little short on some sites. Another drawback to surfing the web is the 320x240 resolution. Because the screen is a smaller resolution, pages with larger dimensions may not display correctly. Instead, you may find yourself scrolling vertically or horizontally to view certain content on a page. As a web browser, IE Mobile does work fairly quickly. I use it a bit to check my email as well as miscellaneous sites here and there. Bottom line, it gets the job done for being a mobile browser.

When it comes to surfing the web, it seems T-Mobile thought of everything. The Dash includes an 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi connection. This is a nice feature, since it allows you to connect to the Internet without paying the $30 for the Web Connection or the $20 for T-Mobile's hot spots. The Dash is very good at recognizing nearby networks. Once you see the network you wish to connect to, just hit connect and you're there. The simplified Wi-Fi configuration provides all the information you'd need to make a wireless connection in only two pages (the iPhone had 3 when I tried this). Plus, you have an antenna indicator at the top of your Dash's screen indicating signal strength at all times. When connected to a wireless network, the Dash will zip around the Internet at a speed slightly slower than most laptops, but still fairly quick. This Wi-Fi connnection can also be used for an ad-hoc connection to other Wi-Fi devices, however, I haven't seen many chances to use this mode of connection.

The Dash features a Bluetooth 2.0 connection. This means you have enhanced security and speed of data transfer. The beauty of this is that the Dash will allow you to choose whether you want to be discoverable or not. This is a great feature because it prevents others from being able to view your handset unless they've already been paired with you. In addition to this, you can use your Bluetooth connection to send more than just your contacts. You can share contacts, photos, videos, or pretty much any file that you have on your Dash. This is a far cry better than the iPhone which only allowed the connection between the phone and a hands free device. While we're on the topic of hands free devices, the Dash has some minor issues while connecting to my Motorola H350. I noticed that at first the connection was fuzzy. It seems that it takes about an hour before the connection is established and 100% operational. After this time, I haven't had any quality issues. The H350 and Dash work very well together, paired/bonded. A feature I have not yet used is the Dash's stereo Bluetooth. This means you can pipe stereo sound through any Bluetooth device that supports it. I highly recommend this if you plan to listen to music or whatever using your T-Mobile Dash.

Once you have your Bluetooth paired, one would think you should only use it for talking to others. Well, the Dash has a few surprises in store. First, the Dash has a built-in voice recognition software. This allows the user to use either the mouth piece (on the phone itself) or a Bluetooth headset to command their phone. You can ask the Dash things like, “What time is it?” The Dash will then respond with a simulated female voice and notify you of the current time. You can also tell the Dash to call anyone in your contacts. The upside to this is that it doesn't require training. The downside is if you have people with obscure, foreign names, the Dash may not recognize them. So, if you want to call Mr. Milosovichic (pronounced like mihl oh so vee shik), the recognition software may not understand and fail. Granted, most people have common names like: Smith, Carter, Johnson. So, I doubt this will be a problem for many. Suppose you're feeling too lazy to navigate the Start Menu, you can tell the Dash to open programs using the voice recognition. You could say, “Open Solitaire”, and in no time, you're playing America's most abused card game.

But the voice action doesn't just stop there. The Dash does a lot more with the Voice than I expected. When properly set, you can have the Dash read your text messages and emails as they come in. This is a mixed breed, since it can cause expected results. For me, I was in a store when a friend sent me something that sounded obscene. It was funny, and I laughed. Not knowing what was going on, the cashier thought I was laughing at her. If I wasn't using my Bluetooth hands free, the Dash would've recited the message out loud for everyone to hear. As such, the text to speech option must be carefully used. It could cause issues in meetings or other sensitive locations. The Dash also provides more voice goodness by announcing the caller. Even if you're on the other line, the Dash will cut into the conversation (but not over power the other speaker) and warn you, “John Smith Mobile is Calling”. This is really helpful, as you can decide to accept the call or not before you take the Dash out of it's case. Yet another bonus to the voice activation is the reading of appointments. When you have an upcoming meeting with a reminder attached to it, the Dash will notify you of this ahead of time. So, if you have your Bluetooth hands free on, the Dash will announce in your headset that “You have a Meeting at the office in 15 minutes”. This level of text to speech is a surprise, but very welcomed.

I really have few gripes about the Dash. I thoroughly enjoy this phone. Although, the keypad is super small. I find that when I hit the camera, it's right next to my T-Zones button, so I often get the Internet loading at the same time as trying to take pictures. Plus, when texting, the keys are so close, that I often have to go back to erase a misspelled word. The Predictive Text is mostly helpful, but occasionally will suggest then approve a word that I didn't mean to use. This can get annoying at times. Finally, I'm not too happy with the memory management. I can't figure a rhyme or reason to how much memory each application takes. As such, I find Task Manager isn't as helpful for determining your open RAM as one would think. The volume control is on the side of the device and very sensitive. I've heard several complaints about this being too easy to bump, but I've fixed this problem by turning the sensitivity down.

Contrary to popular believe, I haven't seen any slowdown or crashing on the Dash. It does lock up momentarily if you try to open too many applications at once, but this is what I'd expect from a Windows based operating system.

As I stated earlier, working in the mobile industry, I come across many phones. The T-Mobile Dash was one of two chooses for me. The other choice was the T-Mobile Wing, but its cost veered me toward the Dash. I'm quite happy with my phone and would recommend it to others. You can enhance your Dash experience by adding up to a 2 GB microSD card for additional storage of pictures, applications, or videos. The Dash may not be perfect, but it's one of the best phones I've seen so far. Highly recommended.



*** Update 2007 Oct 18 ***
After adding T-Mobile's "Total Internet" package to my plan, I've gotten a chance to test the Dash's abilities online.

Well, online the Dash performs fairly well. From Speed Testing, it's determined to run at 113kb/sec. This is good if you want something a little stronger than dial up. On the other hand, pages with large images or video may not load so quickly. This will put you at a disadvantage when it comes to browsing sites like YouTube. The Dash supports Flash Mobile, but due to it's processing power, cannot display Flash controls on most sites. A benefit to the Dash is the ability to set automated retrieval of email. In the Text Messaging/Email center, you can synchronize your email as often as once every five minutes, or as few as once a day. When new emails arrive, there is a different sound played from your standard SMS/Text messages. The Dash will even read off the subject of the email out loud if you have the Voice Command set to read them. This can often lead to embarrassing moments, if your account gets tons of spam. My recommendation is to either set the filters on your email account or disable the reading of new mail.

Windows Live is a blessing that works most of the time. If you have a Hotmail account, when adding new contacts, you can directly store them to your Live account. The benefit here is a web backup of your contacts. The downside is that Live tends to fail in connecting periodically. More so than other services, which means you have to relogin every now and again. For me, it's about twice a day, even when I'm in strong signal areas. When adding contacts, you can send them directly to your Live account. This is great news, however, the contacts that have been added through Outlook or your SIM card will not be synced to your Live Account. Instead, you must add these yourself.

Most popular sites (such as Google and Yahoo) will offer you software that you can use to enhance your experience. I recommend accepting with caution. In a recent use of the Yahoo! Go software, Yahoo's software completely erased all my contacts. This was detrimental, as I had to locate over 150 contacts to reenter back into my phone. When adding third party software, it's recommended that you back up any information you don't want to loose.

The Dash is usable as a Modem for those without an ISP. To be honest, it works quite well. Granted, you're surfing the web at 113kb/sec, but the benefit is that you'll have internet access. For a person like myself, that's not a bad thing. I find that for what I do, it's much more affordable to have internet on my Dash than from the local ISP. Despite the speed, I can get around and do what I need to. Granted, I can't get YouTube in seconds (like with the local Cable ISP), but Google, ePinions, and other news sites that I surf load just fine. Though, I wouldn't recommend gaming on this connection, unless you're playing something super old like Starseige Tribes. Downloads can be a test of patience with this connection. Overall, the Dash does its job as a faithful modem, but with the speeds it offers, I don't recommend this for gamers or those seeking a high bandwidth internet experience.

The internet is a double edged sword with your Dash. I would advise to be mindful of your settings, as the software you use can shorten the battery time to less than a two hours, rather than the normal eight hours (talk time) T-Mobile advertises. If you need to remain constantly updated on events, I recommend having them routed through your Live Account. Beyond that, other accounts will deplete the battery.

Overall, I'm still very satisfied with my T-Mobile Dash. It's still a good phone, and with the internet package, I've been able to experience more of the functionality this phone offers. I strongly recommend owning a T-Mobile Dash.