HTC S710 - Anyone have one?

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=105979

another one, also too big :(

Dimensions 116 x 55 x 15 mm
Weight 140 g

ultimate8502bw0.jpg


Don't want the keyboard on the outside...
 
I'm getting excited here with this F700. Ridiculous 3.2 inch screen which it looks like you never need a stylus for. Full slide-out qwerty keyboard. 3.2MP camera with flash...

Measures 112x 56 x 15.9 , weighs 139g...
 
Hi all, here are my views on the F700 for what they are worth. Please note if it does not make perfect sense in some places I have actually cut & pasted it from an email I sent to a chap that was interested in getting this phone.

It's quite lengthy so if you can't be bothered to read it let me just say this. DO NOT GET the F700.

Let me just say that I usually spend a lot of time choosing a phone, especially now the best deals are restricted to 18 month contracts.

I have to say that I wanted the iphone pretty badly when I first seen it. After playing with it for 5 minutes I was in love with it. However after reading the specs. & reviews I was slightly put off. No video, no MMS, no 3G & various other stuff together with a hefty price tag got me looking else where.

I came across the F700 a few months ago & it looked to be an excellent alternative to the iphone. It had better specs & was free; with a set of Bose headphones thrown in it looks irresistible.

Until just recently there were no concrete specs on the phone. Every website was listing it with incorrect old specs; 5 mega cam, 3.5GB memory plus more.

I changed to Vodafone to specifically get this phone.

Main reasons for wanting this phone were,

1) Glorious big touchscreen.
2) 3.6 Mbps connection.
3) Emailing using a QWERTY keyboard.
3) Its touted as a 'smart phone'

With the big screen I thought the applications would look & feel wonderful. MP3's would be a joy & video would be excellent. Not to mention the cam. Although only 3.2 mp (previous phone was Nokia N80 with same spec cam & was more than happy with it) I thought technology would have moved on a bit & the camera & video would compliment the big screen.

The truth is that the screen is completely wasted on this phone.

The MP3 player is the worst I have ever experienced. Given that the screen is so big & that the phone has won awards for its 'croisse interface' I was looking forward to music & video. The MP3 screen is very basic. You might expect to see a nice big picture of the album cover; no, instead you get a tiny picture in the top corner & only if you choose to listen by selecting albums.
The screen is just a big black empty screen with a giant blue cross that does not work particularly well.

You can swipe the screen to go to next track or previous but that's about it.

You can not simply minimise the MP3 screen & use other applications. Instead you get to choose the ability to listen in the background which seems OK at first but it just don't seem to work well at all.


The sound from the speaker is also the worst I have ever heard; music or hands-free speech are very poor through the speaker.

The audio output level to the headphones is very low also.

I tried over 30 video clips on the phone & not one of them would play full screen. Most of the clips were MP4 or 3GP, I could not get a WMV to work.

The camera is very slow from the time you press autofocus to actually getting a picture saved. I know cam phones are always slow but you have to keep the phone still for about 5 seconds after pressing the take picture button otherwise you end up with a blur.

It's virtually impossible to take a picture of something moving & catch the right moment.

Making/taking a simple phone call will drive you insane. The iphone has a proximity detector that can tell when you put it to your ear. The F700 simply locks the touchscreen, sounds OK but is dreadful in operation.

Also the F700 screen is locked via a mechanical switch on the side & it must be looked before putting in pocket as you get all sorts happening. Again this switch is not user friendly at all. Yeah it's just a flick of a switch but in practice it works very poorly.

The memory is only 100MB. I complained that the phone was advertised by Vodafone as 4GB expandable. This to me said it was a 4GB phone that was further expandable. The Vodafone Rep. Agreed & said they had many queries on this. He agreed to send me a free 4GB card.
Once the card was more that half full the phone slowed down. Browsing through tracks, albums, videos & pictures was a slow painful experience.

The Internet was not a particularly good experience either. If you save a book mark it simply goes into a list of bookmarks. You scroll through these books marks & choose the one you want. This is very very poor. The window for scrolling through is a quarter of the screen size available. The rest of the screen is pretty redundant. It's very difficult to quickly find a book mark if you have dozens of them.

Another gripe is that in the Internet mode you can not change to widescreen view unless you slide the keyboard open (as in most of the applications other than video).

It is also very hard to choose some of the content on screen by tapping the screen as it is so small.

I tried the Musicstation application as it's free for a month. Overall I think it's very good if you like your music. You can find pretty much anything & it even downloads the cover. However, you must be connected via 3G to listen (even when you have already downloaded the track). This means that no one can get through to you call wise. Also you can not use any other function of the phone whilst using Musicstation, this is very restricting. Also you can not listen via Bluetooth which is a problem for me as I stream my music to my car stereo. As far as I know unlimited really does mean unlimited when downloading via Musicstaion. I was impressed at first with the speed of the downloads; then I found out that the vast majority of the tracks are under 1MB. Tracks were taking between 30 to 60 seconds each which does not sound that bad & is livable with. When you see that using 3.6Mbps connection they should take no longer than 5-10 seconds (according to other sources I have checked) you kind of feel a bit cheated.

There is very little customisation available. There are no themes & the only thing you can change is the background picture.

There is a shortcut menu that has 5 preset shortcuts that also can not be changed or added to.

This phone is by no means a smartphone. There is no way to add any 3rd party applications. Check the list of stuff available for the Sony & Nokia Symbian phone. If you look in the right places you can download all of these applications for free (including the excellent Tom Tom).

My girlfriends Samsung G600 has far more menu's & options that the F700. This is one of the reasons I went for it; thinking that the F700 would be far superior. Its not.

My best advice would be to try the Viewty, W960i & F700 in store (the viewty is not available from Vodafone).

The reason I did not get the viewty is that a friend had the prada phone & it felt very light & toy like. Also I did not want to have to use a stylus only. Having seen the phone since I got the F700 I was going to get one as you can use fingers (check out the Viewty on the LG website. Sorry I don't have links to hand.

Vodafone have been very good to me as it is well outside of the 14 day trial period they do. This is why I have decided to go for the W960i rather than cancelling & going to another provider for the Viewty.

I think I would still go for the W960i as it has the best Walkman functions of any phone & most stand alone MP3 players (apparently).
Click to expand...

This is pretty in depth and pretty damning too :(
 
b*ll*cks

'scuse the language

you get excited over some phone, and then you'll find a review which brings you down to earth...

:(
 
My Nokia 6600 (which I've lost) was pretty much OK - despite a bit slow - and I enjoyed uploading new themes and ringtones to it, as well as the occasional game or two.

That's all I want.
 
The_Librarian said:
My Nokia 6600 (which I've lost) was pretty much OK - despite a bit slow - and I enjoyed uploading new themes and ringtones to it, as well as the occasional game or two.

That's all I want.
Click to expand...

I just want my K810 with the buttons and joystick from the K750 and a screen from the N73.
 
Get a Navigator..

PRO's
keypad
size
screen
battery(as long as you dont leave GPS on)
brilliant out the box GPS
decent camera
Its version of symbian is FAST(not sure of the version)
sound
HSDPA
Tons of applications available, installed lots & phone still fast.. Got fring, mxit, worms world party, tomb raider, pandamonium etc etc

oh forgot to mention its stable, havnt had one freeze or restart.

1st phone that i have ever had that i have been truely happy with.
 
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Brawler said:
Get a Navigator..

PRO's
keypad
size
screen
battery(as long as you dont leave GPS on)
brilliant out the box GPS
decent camera
Its version of symbian is FAST(not sure of the version)
sound
HSDPA
Tons of applications available, installed lots & phone still fast.. Got fring, mxit, worms world party, tomb raider, pandamonium etc etc

oh forgot to mention its stable, havnt had one freeze or restart.

1st phone that i have ever had that i have been truely happy with.
Click to expand...

Version?

Link?

Price?

Thanks

:)
 
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