After a full week with my new XV6700, I’ve noticed a few more things that I forgot to mention in my initial review of the phone.
First, the signal meter in the top bar is more or less useless. Not because of its size (or lack thereof) but the fact that it doesn’t accurately reflect any sort of dBm readings it seems. Now, I realize that this is more or less typical but this stupid thing seems almost random. Running “fieldtrial.exe” from the \windows folder on the phone gives you a nice in-depth look at what kind of signal strength you really have. At the moment, I’m showing -74dB and 3 bars out of 4 on the phone. That seems fairly appropriate… However, I’ve had several occasions where the phone is showing -80dB or so and will show 1 bar on the signal meter. I’m still able to make a call and everything but given the signal meter, it looks as though I have no signal since 1 bar is basically just a little dot under the representation of a tower in the signal meter. Annoying, but I’m more or less used to it. As long as I don’t see a little X there, I’m fine.
Now for the good part. I was toying around with the wifi and trying to get it to connect to my friend’s wifi router. I’m happy to say it worked perfectly well. He’s using a Linksys WAP54g with SSID broadcast turned off and WPA-PSK for security. The phone supports both perfectly fine. Granted, I had to manually add the network into my list but it worked great. Just type in the SSID (it’s case sensitive!) and select the encryption method (WPA-PSK in this case) and enter the passphrase. Bang, connected just fine! Also, signal strength is every bit as good as what he gets with his linksys wifi card on his laptop.
More bad stuff now… MMS messaging has one annoying trait. From what I can tell, there’s no way to reply to a pix message with a standard text msg. You go into the MMS inbox and “reply” and it gives you two options: pix or flix… no text msg option. So if someone sends you a pic and you just want to reply with something like “haha, cool” and no picture in return, you have to go into the regular “text messages” inbox (they’re separate entries in pocket outlook) and create a new message to the person that initially sent you the pix msg. I think it has a lot to do with MS’s insistence on using Pocket Outlook for everything messaging related. Jerkoffs. 
I also bought a Motorola H700 Bluetooth headset. I must say it probably has the most pathetic range of any headset I’ve owned so far. I’m lucky to get 10ft from either my PM-325 or my XV-6700. Even worse, the phone and headset have to be on the same side of my body or I get quite a bit of static. It does have the advantage of being extremely small and you can turn it on and off just by flipping the boom in and out. I’ll deal with it for now until I can find another headset that really catches my eye.
Technorati Tags: xv6700, pda, cellphone, phone, reviews, geek
So - what’s the verdict on the XV 6700 now that it’s mid-March?
I still like the phone quite a bit but I’ve been having issues where it locks up at random, especially on bootup when it tries to load both voice command and SBP PocketPlus at the same time. Disabling VC seems to have solved the problem. I’m still not happy with the free AIM clients out there (Agile blows nuts horribly and Verichat works great but isn’t free). Also, 2GB is the largest miniSD you can buy and they’re somewhat scarce. Keeping the screen clean is nearly impossible as well. Overall, it’s buggy but no showstopping bugs that make me have second thoughts about buying it.
I picked one up this weekend - the first until I got had a problem with the switch that rotated the screen - which I didn’t discover until after I had it all set up using Intellisync (odd name, ’cause it’s rather stupid) - so I took it back, got a replacement that has a keyboard that works great - but now as soon as I get the Intellisync crap up - the regular USB cable ActiveSync shits out… Technology is GREAT!
Had mine less than a week and I can tell you one potential deal breaker is the pitiful alert for appointments. I can say that it looks like I can with the WIFI on, I can receive calls–no hacks involved. The phone audio and reception seems on par with my old Treo 600.
Luckily I don’t use mine for very important appointments, but I’ll agree that it sucks. Seems that to get the best out of the phone you have to spend $100 on add-on applications. Perhaps that might be fixed in the upcoming ROM update for Verizon, though.
Need Help! I want to purchase the xv6700 . i will ONLY purchase the data plan and not use WIFI. Is EVDO available for the data plan or I need to purchase the EVDO plan seperately? Can I also syn my yahoo email as my primary email in outlook? and can i chat in YM and use the camera as a webcam? Is it really faster than dial up internet when I surf the net??
Hope some1 can help me, i really want to purchase this pda but I want to know if it can do what I want it to do??
I love this phone. even thogh i have had to replace it 4 times. once it just shut off never to coem on again, then i cant remember what happened to the cecomd one, the third wouldnt receive calls or texts without me dailing out to my voicemail to initiate contact with the network, but the 4th phone…well its golden! I cant tell you how many times it has been useful to have th einternet available at lightining speed. On occasion it will error connecting to the network for internet but not often. volume on the phone is bad liek mentioned earler. the alarm sucks though.