O2 XDA Exec
I've been wanting a mobile device with good email capabilities for a while now and I finally settled on the XDA Exec from o2 in the UK. The features that sold me on the product, in order of importance:
- WiFi connectivity
- 3G
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- Windows Mobile 2005 with Outlook + Push Email
- Mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel
- PDF viewer
- It looks cool ;-)
I can now pick up emails at no cost using my WiFi connection at home or in the garden. Also, at WiFi hotspots I can download emails and surf the internet much faster than when using a phone connection.
Another cool benefit is that I can run Skype on the phone so I can get cheap international calls if I'm in a WiFi hotspot.
The keyboard is by far the best keyboard I have used on a mobile device and it's actually feasible to write short emails on it.
If you decide to buy one of these you definitely need to set aside at least half a day to get it fully setup. I ran into some issues getting ActiveSync to work. It wouldn't work at all on 2 PCs but did work on the 3rd PC I tried. All of the PCs are running Windows XP Pro SP2 and the only difference I can think of is that the two that failed to work have USB2 ports rather than original USB. I had to apply the following XP patch so that the device is still recognized after a reboot (of either the device or the PC)
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=838989
I then downloaded the software update from the o2 site that brings the CE image up to version 1.30.107. The update is available here:
http://xda.o2.co.uk/xdaExecSoftware.aspx
The update gives a warning about not disconnecting the device until the upate is finished as it could leave the device in an usable state. Imagine my horror when a few seconds into the install the device appeared to power down and the installer failed with a connection error. The device hadn't powered down but had gone into some boot state with the text "USB" and "v1.00" at the top and bottom of the screen respectively. I was unable to power the device back up to its normal state after this so I tried running the software update installer again and this time it worked correctly.