T-Mobile Wing Review

Messaging:

Different message types are placed in a single menu - SMS, MMS and e-mails. There is nothing unexpected here. If you do not wish to use the built-in keyboard then entering text is done by one of the following touch display methods:

• Block Recognizer
• Keyboard
• Letter Recognizer
• Transcriber
  

We think that the on-screen keyboard is the fastest and most convenient way to do it, but if you train the other methods, they can also be quite handy! Combined with the T9 predictive system, entering text with the phone is really quick.

Just a few steps away is the option to add your e-mail account (POP3 or IMAP) and to use it on your mobile phone. Windows Mobile 6 already supports HTML formatted e-mails. The client is very similar to the Outlook on a computer, you can filter your inbox to see just some results, reply to message or forward it to other person. The support for attachments allows you to download or send one, in addition to the text body. The phone can be set to synchronize with your company Exchange Server.

As standard, Windows Mobile comes preloaded with the mobile version of Live! Messenger (MSN). Windows Live account will be added in Messaging when you add your e-mail account. As a T-Mobile phone, the Wing also has third party instant messenger application for AIM, Yahoo! and ICQ chat.

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Connectivity:

Wing is a quad-band model, which allows it to be used as a global phone. Since this is a T-Mobile phone, it is not equipped with 3G capabilities, instead you will be surfing the internet through EDGE. Even when T-Mobile launches their 3G network, the Wing will not be able to take advantage of it.

Standard for a smartphone, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are available. Bluetooth is mainly used for connecting to other nearby devices, as accessories (earpieces, car-kits, multimedia devices) and for data transfer (transfer of files to/from another phone/PC). The technology helps wireless connection and the data transfer speed we achieved was about 40KB which is quite slow compared to the wire connection by a cable which was 8 times higher – 320 KB meaning that a song in MP3 format with average size of about 5 MB will be uploaded in 16 seconds. Like all other Windows phones, you need to have ActiveSync installed on the computer to connect to it. The program will let you easily synchronize the phone (contacts, emails, organizer) with Outlook.

With WiFi you can connect to a wireless LAN network covering you, use it as an Internet source and view shared folders (input \\name-of-computer in Internet Explorer and you will see what is shared). In our test the connection was 50KB/sec.


Internet:

The mobile version of Internet Explorer is used for internet browsing; loading standard pages in full size is not a problem, because of the relatively high resolution (320x240 pixels) of such devices but you have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically almost all the time. If you want to read a text, it is almost sure you will not be able to fit the whole row in those 240 (or 320 if you put the phone in landscape mode) pixels. Full-screen usage is almost mandatory when the page has loaded.


There is also One Column View option which eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling but increases the need for vertical scrolling. The page is narrowed and thus it changes its initial look. As it is a Pocket PC, you can always use third party software to replace the original one.