After months on backorder my HTC Cruise arrives, was it worth the wait?
What seems many months ago I ordered an HTC Cruise from Expansys. My old QTEK S100 was literally falling apart. The new phone was supposedly on 4 day delivery, well it took best part of 4 months to arrive (don't you just hate online stock levels and delivery dates that are just wrong) but was the wait worth it?
Well I have been using it for a couple of weeks and in general I would say yes it was worth the wait. As with any of these phone/PDA devices some features can be a compromised, they are never the best phones in the world, if you want a great phone with a long battery life get something like an old Nokia 6310 from eBay. That said, on first impressions the HTC Mobile 6 package with their Touch interface does seem a good all rounder.
For me this phone does all I currently need: WiFi, GPS and most importantly 3G. Unlike previous Windows Mobile versions it does seem easy to manage which communication features are on and off using the new Comms Manager. Also you can now make the phone a 3G USB/BlueTooth modem and with a single button press.
I also like the fact my old Jabra BlueTooth headset can now do voice dialling again, a feature that was not present on the S100's Second Edition operating system. Microsoft in their wisdom removed voice dialling as this was a PDA and not a phone!
I do have a niggle. This is one I have seen with all Microsoft PDAs I have had, if you put the phone on vibrate then back to normal ring it seems to reset the volume to low/off so you don't hear it ring. My tip, always check the volume when you come out of vibrate only mode.
Overall option - the HTC Cruise is well worth a look for general use PDA especially now all the mobile providers are offer competitive data packages