HTC P3600i Review

Last update: 8th November 2007

Well I’m not a professional reviewer, just a casual user who wants to share his experience with his new HTC P3600i +built-in GPS bought from Organiser World ^^ I was replacing my mini O2, so most of the words I say will unfortunately compare my mini O2 with the HTC P3600i (besides the migration experience of moving from WM2003 to WM2006). This short review should be useful to those who want to purchase HTC P3600i.

The positives:

The Phone

• The HTC P3600i is sort of similar in weight and size with my mini O2; I can still put it in my pocket, even in my jeans pocket (I hate hanging my phone on the belt)
• It’s responsive (due to more processing power + I guess the stability of WM2006)
• It has more memory to install your programs to (No more headache of “install as many programs as possible in your storage card!”).
• Built in GPS! It may take some time to lock your position (depends on where you are). Have a look at my other blog entry here if you already have this phone and unsure if your GPS is working or not. The best way to try it, is to go outside of CBD area, open your GPS software (TomTom etc), and wait for the lock.
• The camera is not of bad quality but it doesn’t have a flash, so don’t expect to take good pictures under a low-light situation. Personally I think the new Nokias/Ericsson have better cameras. Well it’s a PDA, what do you expect? You can see some of my photo samples on the next page. There are options to zoom, tweak some camera effects, exposure and other settings.
• HTC P3600i can accept 4 Gb of memory card (I saw the sales assistant on Organizer World put a 4 Gb miniSD on it and the HTC P3600i can recognise it as a 4 Gb storage card). I only use 1 Gb though and it’s so much more than enough for me, but I guess some people want more.
• HTC P3600i really has a power off/shutdown feature (my mini O2 can only put the phone in “standby” mode if you press the power button). To really shutdown HTC P3600i, just press and hold the power button for a few seconds. It’s useful to save the battery when you are in a flight, for example.
• Doesn’t come with any miniSD when you buy this phone,  but with $25 or even less for 1 Gb MiniSD, I think no one should complain here.
• Built-in Wi-Fi! Meaning, you can go online wherever you are (go and find free wireless/wi-fi hotspots near you) or you can even browse through your home wireless network.

WM2006 and its default applications

• Much much more intuitive than WM2003 in terms of interfaces and menu (for calling, sms notifications, etc)
• Built in Voice Commander Application to those who use it (voice recognition application)
• Comes with the latest .NET framework installed.
• WM2006 doesn’t suffer from WM2003’s “Non-wake up” bug (alarm’s not ringing)

The negatives:

• Fingerprint magnet. But I’ve put my phone in the pouch that I used for my mini O2, so no more finger magnet there.
• No built in radio (although I don’t hear radio much)
• Doesn’t come with a regular audio jack, so you may need to get a converter or a special headset if you want to listen to the music.

WM2006 and its default applications

• The battery power level is only displaying 100%, 90%, 80% instead of 87%, 93%, etc.
• If you want to sign in to your WLM (messenger), it forces you to add all of your MSN contacts to your phone’s address book!! This puts too many rubbish in there which most of them contain just email addresses and you’ll never gonna call those people around the world anyways! The latest WLM goes around this problem (it will not add your contacts anymore, so make sure you update your WLM!
• A few reviews say that this phone is bundled with Tomtom Navigator?? Definitely not.
• Why Microsoft doesn’t allow sync on Wi-fi? I hate using bluetooth on my Vista or a USB cable..It’s probably a security thingie, but can’t they just put a passworded connection or something?
• Can’t select and delete all contacts in your address book. After the horrible 200 hundreds of my MSN contacts added in there due to the WLM problem, I had to manually select the contacts one by one and remove them
• It forces you to enter your email server/pop3 settings on your first reboot (I don’t use the phone for emailing, so I entered a dummy account) – not really a big deal though, just skip the process and you’re good to go (unless if you want to check your emails through this phone)
• I had a problem with memory being run out before, but this was due to a memory leak from one of the application that I installed on the phone.

Photos taken by the built-in camera:

See also my Melbourne Game Expo photos taken with HTC P3600i

Conclusion

So far, this is the best PDA phone that I’ve ever had. HTC P3600i is stable, fast, sleek looking and quite affordable. You may want to check other reviews as well if you are still considering to get it. But with built-in GPS, the latest Windows Mobile 2006, nothing can go wrong with this one! If you are upgrading from your mini O2 like me, or from a Dopod d810, all of your accessories (charger, USB cable, etc) will still work with HTC P3600i too. Please feel free to come back here and check for updates. I might add more stuffs here in the future. [rating:4/5] (4/5)

Other Related Pages:

• Read how TomTom Navigator saves this guy’s life