Sony Ericcson m600i compared to Dell AXIM x30 PDA

I recently got myself Sony Ericsson m600i. My main objective was to test my SVG animation clips and our mobile content publishing platform and I was surprised that my clips worked well in native browser without a need of Ikivo player; however the XSLT formatting of xml files was not yet implemented.

It’s opera version 8, so I still have need to wait for opera 9 for mobiles to use more innovative standards properly.

Otherwise it’s a nice tool with touch screen interface. Somehow I’m surprised that the phone comes without any protective cover because putting it to any pocket it starts to make actions and even used all my calling credit by recording over an hour to some person’s voicemails.

Besides calling, SMS, MMS, email and internet browsing functions it supports calendar, tasks, mp3 music, videos, J2ME games and applications, mini word and excel, and had also Adobe PDF reader installed.

It does not include camera so if you have need for the camera phone, you should consider other models.

Since 2004 I had used Dell AXIM x30 but as it screen got scratches, I wasn’t able anymore to align the screen during setup process and therefore use it further.

Dell AXIM was perfect for my communication needs as it included WiFi, Word and Excel, MSN messenger and internet browser.

After installing Adobe Reader to it, I was able to read eBooks and necessary documentation so I never imagined buying paper books anymore to take those to my bed reading.

Even installing Adobe Flash Lite it was practically impossible to find Flash Lite content then so it wasn’t much useful then and now seems to be same problem. That’s why I decided to use SVG for my clips even most of those SVG enabled phones year ago where full of bugs and didn’t play my clips properly.

Even I had converted all my music collection to SD memory cards, but using it as walkman was difficult as Dell batteries lasted only around 20 minutes.

Same problem was when I wanted to work outside on WiFi hotspots areas, so practically I was able only to check and write some emails.

That’s why we tested solar panel back bags with Pauli but find those Chinese manufactured ones total crap and using newest technology to manufacture them in EU would have increased the price to several hundred pounds so it isn’t yet much viable business idea.

Another problem with Dell was playing video clips. It uses Microsoft Windows for Pocket PC and Microsoft had their own special video format unknown to most publishers which didn’t play any mpg files. I found some third party player so was able to get MPEG video working even standards like DivX wasn’t much implemented.

Anyway, I decided that it’s a time to move forward. But after nearly a month of usage of my m600i, I started to miss my Dell.

First my dell screen was bigger and even it did not included keyboard, using virtual keyboard on touch screen was more convenient than Sony Ericsson keys.

Sure, I’m able to open virtual keyboard in my mobile but it again takes most of the screen so I’m using it to enter special characters only like $, £, etc.

But the biggest problem is performance.

Writing articles, business plans, etc it’s so slow that i have long time before ended my sentence until it shows up. Especially, when the predictive text option is set on and I haven’t yet figured out how to use it properly.

Second problem is that after the file size will be over 30k it becomes so slow that I have to create separate file so this small article was stored in four separate files.

It doesn’t include any spellchecker either so I assume, including it would affect the performance more.

With excel I was able to calculate my businesses cash flow but using tabs between different business activities wasn’t much useful option as I wasn’t able to integrate my calculations to common summary. At least didn’t encounter any problems there even more complex datasheets should be made in PC.

As my network provider Vodaphone is reformatting internet sites, those at least don’t crash my browser but are still inconvenient to use. Why Webmasters still do not understand that instead flashing websites they need properly working ones?

Anyway, Internet usage is very expensive so it could have been more efficient still use Dell with WiFi in hotspots. But as I want to earn my income from mobile markets, I have to spend it to mobile markets too.

The phone browser includes RSS reader so subscribing RSS feeds instead browsing the net is viable option.

Daily tasks and calendar has been now good tools for me to use as I have spent some time again programming and setting up online businesses. Tasks have been my bug management tool and calendar have feature to specify where some event takes place so I could enter addresses there or select previously entered.

I wasn’t able to setup emails to my hotmail account as it’s not listed, otherwise it could have been nice to get my emails directly to the mobile and write answers directly from my phone. Currently I have to use browser to do that, same as it was using Pocket PC as hotmail didn’t support POP3/SMTP interface.

Music plays well but the problem is again, that Sony Ericsson has their own headphone socket and I’m unable to use my gold headphones with it or use it as player with my Bose sound system.

USB cable is most important to put to your pocket as besides exchanging the files with PC in public library, you can charge your phone from any computer.

As access to phone memory needs special software to be installed, save your files to memory card so you are able to use them from there without any troubles from PC.

But the memory card is again non standard? It could have been nice to put my SD memory card to my phone to listen my music collection, but now I have to buy new mobile phone memory cards and find a way to copy those from SD memory cards?

SD memory card is less than twice wider compared to phone memory card slot and could have been fit perfectly.

PDF reader supports longer documents than Word however starting to read over 30MB brochure it crashed the application after few pages and was drawing a page minutes.

Reading text documents it has been working fine when you select “Fit to Page” option to avoid scrolling.

As a conclusion I would rather use pocket PC to do my work if the battery and charger problem could be fixed, operating system upgraded to support latest technologies and plug to PC would not demand special software.

Even Pocket PC was around same size, the charger was so big that it didn’t even fit to my pocket. At least Ericsson charger is much smaller and batteries will last over a day normal usage.

But mostly I’m upset that I can’t use old accessories, like memory cards, headphones, etc. with my phone because handset manufactures want to earn extra money selling those in extremely high prices.