T-Mobile Wing Review

With so many features and functionalities being embedded into regular cell phones, users have craved for something with much more functionality and ease of use. Treo brought out such success that smartphones have become more and more popular. The T-Mobile Wing falls into this group of phones and replaces the T-Mobile MDA. It sports everything you would want from a smartphone: internet browser, MP3 player, instant messaging, camera, email client, video player, and much more.

The Wing is a slider with a QWERTY keyboard and a large 2.8” display. The display, which is touch-sensitive with 65k colors at a resolution of 240 x 320, dominates the front of the phone. The display is very rich and bright. The only times we had a problem seeing the display outside was when the sun was shining directly onto it. Just below the screen are the soft keys, D-pad, and shortcut keys which allow you to complete most of the functions. Above the screen is the earpiece. To the left and right, there are small indicative LED’s that inform you of what is being used. The left one will let you know about GSM/GPRS/EDGE standby, message, network, and battery status while the right one lets you know if Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is on.


Even with the size and weight of the phone, it is very comfortable to hold and use. The finish is a dark blue soft-touch material that gives you plenty of grip. The build feels very solid and there is little play with the sliding mechanism in the closed or open position, all of which is in the direction that the keyboard slides out to. The sliding mechanism needs to be opened about halfway and then the spring will take care of the rest as the phone snaps open or shut.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (MM)	Weight (OZ)	Weight (Gramms)
T-Mobile Wing	4.29" x 2.32" x 0.66"	109 x 59 x 17	5,9	168
T-Mobile MDA	4.25" x 2.28" x 0.93"	108 x 58 x 24	5,6	160
Cingular 8525	4.4" x 2.3" x 0.86"	112.5 x 58 x 22	6,2	176
Blackberry 8800	4.5" x 2.6" x 0.6"	114 x 66 x 14	4,7	134
Apple iPhone	4.5" x 2.4" x 0.46"	115 x 61 x 11.6	4,8	135

The phone opens to the right and displays the full QWERTY keyboard. At the very top of the keyboard there are two indicators that inform the user whether the caps lock or alt button is activated or not. To the right of those, there are two soft touch buttons located. All of the keys have to actions associated with them. The general actions are colored in white and the secondary options, which are activated by pressing the alt key, are colored blue. Each button is raised and easily discernable from the other buttons around it. The buttons are small and the incorrect button may be pressed sometimes when typing really quickly.

On the left side of the phone, there are the camera shortcut, volume slider, microSD slot, and strap holder. The camera shortcut is very easy to press while holding the phone with either the left or right hand. The volume slider is a little difficult to use and a rocker would be much more appropriate. There is a raised plastic piece so the it is easier to move as opposed to a sliding piece alone but it still doesn’t help much unless it is moved by using your fingernail.

At the bottom, there is the microphone, and the miniUSB connection which is used to charge the phone, connect it to the PC, or to plug headphones into it. While the connector does not look like a regular miniUSB connecter, it will work with any miniUSB cable.

Located on the right side of the phone are the messaging shortcut, voice command shortcut, and the stylus. The stylus is located at the bottom corner and is contoured so that it matches the smoothness of the phone. It does not have to be used at all but gives a much more accurate selection than a figure.

At the very top is the power button. To turn on the phone, just simply press the button and wait. To turn it off, you have to hold it for a few seconds and it will prompt you with a message whether or not you want to such the device down. To put the phone in sleep mode, just press the power button once. Pressing it again will bring the phone out of sleep mode.



The entire back of the phone makes up the battery cover. In the top left-hand corner are the hands-free speaker, the 2MP camera, and the reflector. On the bottom left-hand corner is connection for an external antenna. The phone does not have any flash on it which is a shame seeing that most phones offer this feature along with the camera. To remove the battery cover, you simply just push up on the cover and pull it off. This will reveille the battery which is an 1130mAH Li-ion battery rated for 5 hours of talk time or 200 hours of stand by time.

Interface:

T-mobile Wing is Windows Mobile 6 Professional device and as a whole, its software and possibilities are almost entirely identical to the other phones using the same operating system. If you know it, then the possibilities offered by the phone including phone book, organizer, messages, media player, etc. won’t surprise you and will be familiar to you. Therefore you should bear in mind that certain problems and positive features of theirs are valid not only for the phone or make’s models, but for the models using this operating system (WM6 Professional), too.

Phonebook:

The phone book of WM6 is not much different from the phone book of WM5. It has no restriction on the amount of contact that can be added, depends only on the memory available. When you open the phonebook all contacts are displayed as a list; each field consists of the name and the number of the contact, while a letter placed beside them indicates what the type of the number is (w – work; m – mobile, etc.). Pictures are not displayed even if there is one attached to the contact.

The line displayed at the top of the screen is a search field, which starts searching through the names and numbers on entering a symbol – the more symbols you type, the more accurate the match is – it’s quite useful! This one searches all names entered for the contact, but if you want to find by other field like “company” for example, you have to use the “Search” application. There are tabs with different letters (divided in groups of three) just below it. This way you can arrange the contacts so that only the ones beginning with a given letter are displayed. These two search features are quite handy and they make finding a particular contact in the phonebook very quick.

Too bad that’s not the case when adding a new name to the phonebook; the device offers way too many capabilities, including multiple work and home numbers, but there’s only one for mobile –something quite inconvenient as that’s exactly where we wanted to add multiple numbers to. The numerous address, e-mail and other address fields confuse you even further – it would have been a lot easier if the most frequently used fields are highlighted in some way. We would choose this to be done with the Name, Picture, Mobile number and e-mail fields and thus finding them would have been easy, eliminating the need to go through the long list.

Personal photos and ringtones can be assigned to each contact; there’s no restriction on the size of the pictures but they are visualized in very small size even on an incoming call – we think they are useless. You can also add a note to each contact.

The problem of WM5 because of which you couldn’t add an unknown number from the call history to an existing contact, is eliminated here.

Dialer:

You can dial a number not included in your contacts by inputting its numbers. This can be done by either bringing up the digital keyboard or by using the physical keyboard. To display this digital keyboard you have to press the green receiver once. When using the physical keyboard, the same display will show and you just have to start dialing the number. You will see information on the last dialed number and you can call it by pressing the green receiver again.

Pressing the buttons you will start imputing the digits of a possible number, but at the same time you will search the phone book as if imputing a text by a predictive text input system. So, to call John you can press 5-6-4-6 and the matching contacts will be visualized in the list.

Organizer:

Alarms can be directly accessed through the home screen, by tapping on the clock. They are three, and they all can be configured to be active for certain days of the week, and you can also assign names and different sounds to each of them. All alarms can be active simultaneously, and overall they are easy to use and do what they are supposed to. We are rather disappointed that their number is limited to three, as it was in the previous version of the OS.

The next tab in this menu is the clock; there is a field called Visiting next to it which can be used as a World Clock – select another location and the phone starts using its local time. The clock has an option to be displayed on the title bar of all the menus, which is handy.

In the phone menu you can find your electronic calendar where you can save your appointments. They have fields for subject, starting/ending time/all day event, location, notes. You can use options like: reminder (PRIOR NOTICE 1/5/10/15/30/45 minutes, 1/2/3/4/5/6 hour/day/week), recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-and-month) for every year, sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). You can also add attendees (required or optional) from your contacts where e-mail addresses have been added and where meeting requests will be sent.


Examining the calendar can be done by day/week/month and you can choose starting day for the week and the week duration (5-6-7-day week). The appointments for the day are clearly shown in their time limits, so you can see your free time at a glance. This is one of the new things of WM6 compared to WM5.

The Wing doesn’t have a good voice commands system but only a possibility for voice dialing of contacts which you have to input in advance. This is quite an inconvenient, clumsy and old system and it’s a pity that the manufacturer has not used something better. The Eten and Nokia smartphones for instance, have a speaker-independent voice commands/dialing system.

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.

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.

Camera:

The Wing is equipped with a 2MP camera. As stated earlier, it does not come with a flash built-in so it is rather worthless when trying to take photos in a dark environment.

Once the shortcut is pressed, the interface comes up in about 2 seconds. To hold the camera upright, you have to hold it in the same direction as you would when using the physical keyboard. The camera makes full use of the widescreen and has to be held sideways, as if the keyboard was extended.


The layout is similar to the interface of other models (P3300). Once the shortcut is pressed to take a photo, the Wing takes the picture almost immediately. About 4 photos can be taken within a 10 second period.

Picture quality is good but not great. Pictures do come out great but there are moments when they seem as if they are not properly focused. This could be because of the lack of an autofocus feature with the Wing. The camera is great for a device which tries to be good at everything and not focus too much on one area.



Multimedia:

The Wing is equipped with the standard mobile version of Windows Media Player. It is a multimedia player for music and video files. MP3 format is supported, as well as WMA and WAV. After updating the library with files, all supported types are found, and they can be added to playlists. This function is not well implemented and organizing them is quite hard. Songs can be viewed by artist, album and genre, as these are taken from the ID3 tag of the files.

The supported video formats are MPEG4/H.263, WMV and 3GP, while the quality of the latter is pretty low. They can be viewed in fullscreen and the picture quality is quite good and looks very nice on the almost-three-inch display. Although the processor is not very fast, we are happy that no frames are skipped.

There are three methods of listening to music in the Wing: the speaker on the back, USB headphones, or Bluetooth headphones. The speaker on the back does very well considering its size. At full volume, the sound is very loud but is lacking on precision. The vocals can be drowned out easily by instruments but once the volume is turned down a little, the lyrics can be heard much better.

When using headphones that have been supplied with the phone, the sound is much clearer and precise. Even at max volume, the sound is sharp and precise. Bass is lacking on the phone but for music on the go, it is a great device. So that you don’t have to use the volume rocker to adjust the volume, there is a volume control switch located on the headphones. As with all headphones provided with cell phones, the switch also has a built-in MIC and a button to accept and end calls. Sadly, the Wing does not offer a 3.5mm jack but instead uses the USB connection. There is a USB splitter supplied with the package but not USB to 3.5mm adapter.

The final method of listening to music is with Bluetooth headphones. The Wing, sadly, is not equipped with A2DP. The sound comes out very crackled and flat through the headphones. There are no issues using the buttons on the headset though. Using Bluetooth headphones is suggested only when you have no other option.

Windows Media Player (WMP) can be controlled either by using the onscreen buttons or the d-pad. With the onscreen controls, there are the regular buttons seen on WMP, play/pause, fast-forward, rewind, skip, go-back, volume up and down. Using the d-pad, up and down will control the volume. Left sends you back to the beginning of the song or the previous song when pressed but if held will rewind. Right will skip to the next song when pressed or will fast-forward when held. Both rewind and fast-forward skip the song at 5 second intervals and do this very quickly. The center button acts as the play/pause button.

If a call is coming through, WMP will pause the song and then resume it once the conversation is over. The music player can also play in the background while other functions are being performed.

Task manager

Software:

The Wing has 128MB ROM and 64MB RAM that is normal, compared to other similar models. Internal memory capacity can be expanded through the microSD card slot . It comes preinstalled with Task manager, which is located on the top right corner of your homescreen. Here you can tap and close the loaded applications in a second, in order to free RAM memory.

WM for PPC provides unlimited capabilities for installing software. The only restrictions are the memory available and the hardware of the phone. The first problem is easily solved by getting a memory card as there are microSD cards with capacity of up to several GB. Every WM6 Professional phone comes with programs that are modified, “pocket” versions known PC applications. Such programs are the mobile versions of (Microsoft) Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Explorer, Media Player, etc. The Office applications allow you to view and edit documents of the most-used types and the phone opens them without any error. Even a complicated Excel document with a few sheets is not a problem. Wing also has Adobe PDF Reader preloaded, which like the Office works flawless. Many more programs could be downloaded from third party sources.


There are numerous programs created for this platform, almost as much as the ones intended for PCs with Windows operating system. The most popular are the various utilities for personalizing the PPC, multimedia players, file explorers, Instant Messengers, etc. You can download third party applications to be used instead of the preloaded ones.

Performance:

The UI is very slow on the Wing. When sliding the keyboard, there is a delay of a few seconds before the UI switches to landscape view. Opening menus or loading programs is sluggish as well. This is a serious disadvantage as other smartphones have a much faster UI giving them a major advantage in this area. The major reason for such sluggish performance comes from the 200MHz processor that is used in the Wing.

We are happy that the Wing can use Skype application for VoIP calls. The processor is not very fast and the system lag when you are during a call, but still you will be able to switch to different tabs and send a chat message for example, while you talk. The Voice is not lagging if you are using fast internet connection. For Skype calls, Wing uses the loudspeakers and you will not be impressed by its quality, but it is still usable. The other party hears you clear, but some echo also appears. For the test, we used Wi-Fi connection.

We used Spb Benchmark to compare the Wing system performance with other PocketPC Phones. The phone performed well in all the tests that were thrown at it.

As a phone, the Wing works great. Signal reception is very good and voice clarity is average, even in areas with very low reception. We had the chance to use the Wing, Samsung U600, and Apple iPhone all in an area with very little reception and the Wing was the only one to pick up a signal. Granted it was only one bar but both parties could hear the other without problems. With a talk time rating of 5 hours, we were stunned to see that the Wing lasted for 8 hours in our tests from just one charge.

Conclusion:

The Wing is a great replacement for the MDA. In a time where slim phones are in, the Wing is a monster in size but it is very comfortable at the same time. If using a stylus bothers you, then there is always the iPhone, HTC Touch, Samsung F700, and LG Prada to consider. If not, then the Wing is a great phone for those that want a PDA, MP3 player, camera, and phone all in one easy to use package.