Ok, I’ve got my XDA Exec from O2 and have had it for a couple of days. My number hasn’t been ported yet but thankfully O2 don’t lock their phones so I can use the existing SIM from my Motorola A1000. This is just as well as I’ve had a small accident with my A1000 involving a firmware programmer and now I can’t get the thing to charge. This is just a preview of the XDA Exec, I’ll write some more about it later but here are my personal experiences so far.
The XDA Exec is a sweet piece of kit. It’s smaller than a Toshiba Libretto (the smallest laptop I ever had), but larger than any phone I’ve had. It’s about the size of two XDA IIs’ stuck together. It has a fold out clamshell style design that reminds me of the old HP Jornada series (the landscape models) and a ‘twisty’ screen so you can switch into table form. I’ll post some pictures later but for now here’s an idea of what it’s like.
It comes with a bunch of software including a PDA reader which has to be installed separately. This is strange for me as I’m more likely to read PDFs on a smartphone than word documents but doesn’t come as standard. Ho hum. Pocket IE is like grown up IE except for the cool one-column format. Pocket Word is reasonably ok but I’d like to see a bar at the top for formatting and rulers. Pocket Excel looks fine, and I’d be happy to put stuff into it but less happy to create a new spreadsheet on there.
Powerpoint is a bit of a let-down. I’d love the ability to edit powerpoint slides with this. Powerpoint isn’t something I use often, but when I do I often need to customize existing presentations (move slides around, add client logos, remove slides or pictures and change texzt). Unfortunately PowerPoint mobile is a viewer, which makes it quite strange compared to Excel and Word. The other strange thing is that there’s no Microsoft Access equivalent. I generally don’t use databases on the desktop – I use things such as wordpad for quick notes and generally leave cluttered files lying around my desktop. On a Pocket device though, I would use Access, as I’d be able to do things like implement a time tracking system that could export to my tracker using ODBC, or a quick customer tracking database (not everything should go in contacts – especially if they’re shared)
It’s not all bad news, the keyboard isn’t something I’d want to write a novel on but is great for thumb-typing and better than any screen-based keyboard I’ve ever used, and it reminds me of how I’d imagine a pocket spectrum to look. I put Pocket Clive on there to see what it’d be like (sad bastard that I am) but that doesn’t support landscape rotation or the keyboard.
WiFi is great, MSN is also great, synchronisation is great too (but make sure you’re running the DHCP client service on your windows desktop as ActiveSync is now IP only), Bluetooth is also great (but with caveats – I’ll explain later).
Overall, my first impressions are good – the only downsides being the Office suite (which applies to all Windows Mobile devices) and the fact that I need a bluetooth headset in order to make and receive calls (try holding something that big next to your head without looking daft). I’ll post a thorough review later, once I’ve worked out what apps I want on there. In the meantime, some questions:
What are your ‘must-have’ applications?
What alternatives to MS Access are there?
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