T Mobile Shadow T-Mobile today announced the Shadow, a consumer-focused Windows Mobile 6 smartphone with an unusual hybrid keyboard similar to the BlackBerry Pearl's.
Like the Pearl, the sliding Shadow's keypad is five keys wide, with two letters on each key, and it uses predictive software (in this case, Tegic's XT9) to predict the next word in a sentence. Younger phone users who grew up with text messaging love hybrid keypads; they're faster and more accurate than typing out messages on a traditional phone's keyboard. Older users, however, tend to prefer QWERTY keyboards over predictive text on hybrids.
Trying to type out several text messages on the keypad, I found it accurate enough for everyday use. The XT9 predictive software is smart enough to learn anything you've typed once, such as my unusual name. Plus, T-Mobile softens the blow of entering a lot of contacts and appointments by offering two ways to enter information on your PC: either by locally syncing the phone using ActiveSync, or by using T-Mobile's Web site to beam data to and from the phone over the air.
The Shadow is a rather wide phone at 4.06 by 2.09 by 0.59 inches and weighs 5.29 ounces, but it surprisingly doesn't feel huge or heavy. Its appearance is luxurious, with its subdued gray and silver color and soft-touch back. The center of the scroll wheel lights up when you're using it, and the keys are backlit, too. The slide takes some effort to get going, but slides smoothly and quickly.
The Shadow has a cute, animated interface with a 2.6-inch, 320-by-240 rich color screen. T-Mobile and HTC, the Shadow's manufacturer, worked together to make Windows Mobile look cuddlier and less businesslike than it does on other devices. Slide the Shadow's screen up and it comes alive with an animated menu and eight main options arranged vertically: MyFaves, Notifications, Calendar, Message Center, Internet, Music, Photos and Settings. By turning the Shadow's scroll wheel, access sub-options, arranged horizontally, that pop up on the screen as large icons. For instance, scrolling right on Message Center lets you pick text messages, picture messages, or e-mail. The Shadow isn't a touch-screen device, but I found the combination scroll wheel and cursor pad easy to use and navigate between options.
Could this all have been more elegant? Sure. In a perfect world, we would get all of our messages in one inbox, not three. Alas, the Shadow can gussy up the Windows Mobile interface, but it's still working within the operating system's limitations.
The Shadow connects to the Internet using EDGE and Wi-Fi, and has a 2-megapixel camera with video recording on the back. The 201 Mhz processor isn't very powerful for a Windows Mobile phone, but the model we received seemed to respond quite well. The Shadow supports microSD memory cards up to 4GB for music and video playback, according to T-Mobile. Music should work fine, though I'd be skeptical of playing video in full screen with a 210 Mhz processor. Although the Shadow has a roomy 72MB of program memory to prevent those dastardly Windows Mobile out-of-memory errors, one good touch is a task manager for quitting programs in one of the main animated menus.
Other Shadow features include stereo Bluetooth for music, an integrated IM client that works with MyFaves (but for some bizarre reason doesn't show up on the Message Center options), a speakerphone, voice dialing, and quad-band support for world roaming.
The Shadow is a higher-end, messaging-oriented phone for people into e-mail and multimedia. As such, it goes up primarily against the BlackBerry Pearl and T-Mobile's new Sidekicks. Windows Mobile brings more multimedia power to the Shadow than the other guys have, especially for folks who use one of the Windows Media Player-compatible music services like Napster or Yahoo!, and want effortless syncing with Windows Media Player. The Shadow also works seamlessly with Exchange servers.
The Shadow's major hurdle is getting past Windows Mobile's added complexity and system instability over the BlackBerry and Sidekick's simpler interfaces. Will it manage to attract the younger set, or stick out like the guy in the business suit at a college party? We'll have a full review up on PCMag.com next week.
The T-Mobile Shadow will sell for between $149.99 and $349.99, depending on the contract. T-Mobile has also lowered its unlimited Wi-Fi and EDGE data plan to $19.99 per month, from $29.99 per month. The Shadow goes on sale on Wednesday, October 31.
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2208078,00.asp
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