My contracts up and I can upgrade to the XDA ll at anytime from my Orbit XDA. Anybody any complaints about the XDA ll ? I was going to wait for the Samsung Omnia i 900, but I've got a feeling the GPS will only be one of many add ons and therefore won't be as good as the XDA ll.
O2 Orbit XDA ll ..anybody any complaints ?
- Thread starter the_tyke
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In short, yes - the biggest being that it apparently completely dead as of yesterday.. I took it on holiday and ran the battery right down, and now it's refusing to charge at all - I'm calling O2 to get a replacement tomorrow. However I'm hesitant to say this is a problem with the phone, and instead is more likely to just be a fluke - I haven't seen any other reports of the same problem..
Other than that - the SatNav is extremely capable, but the software itself takes a good two minutes if not more to start up (compared to 15 seconds for TomTom to load on the same phone, although TomTom's a hell of a lot more basic, and in my opinion crap in comparison to CoPilot).. however acquiring a GPS fix is very quick and usually takes less than 15 seconds. I'd say the SatNav is the best feature of the phone, and its made the phone worth the expense.
The camera as you'll probably come to expect is an absolute shambles, and any picture I've tried to take with it is frankly rubbish. I miss my Sony Erricson camera : /
There's a few more niggles - mainly down to having an iPod Touch and realising that the iPhone's interface is much more clean and heaps more intuitive, and with the release of the iPhone 3G I'll be trying as hard as I can to get my hands on one/swap the Orbit II
To summarise - I like the phone, but I don't love it. And all the niggles that at first bugged me to hell I eventually got over and learnt workarounds for. Nice little (mostly third party touches) such as the Spb today screen and TouchFlo menu really add a bit of shine to it, but I just haven't gelled with it as I'd hoped..
I'll gladly answer any questions you might have
Other than that - the SatNav is extremely capable, but the software itself takes a good two minutes if not more to start up (compared to 15 seconds for TomTom to load on the same phone, although TomTom's a hell of a lot more basic, and in my opinion crap in comparison to CoPilot).. however acquiring a GPS fix is very quick and usually takes less than 15 seconds. I'd say the SatNav is the best feature of the phone, and its made the phone worth the expense.
The camera as you'll probably come to expect is an absolute shambles, and any picture I've tried to take with it is frankly rubbish. I miss my Sony Erricson camera : /
There's a few more niggles - mainly down to having an iPod Touch and realising that the iPhone's interface is much more clean and heaps more intuitive, and with the release of the iPhone 3G I'll be trying as hard as I can to get my hands on one/swap the Orbit II
To summarise - I like the phone, but I don't love it. And all the niggles that at first bugged me to hell I eventually got over and learnt workarounds for. Nice little (mostly third party touches) such as the Spb today screen and TouchFlo menu really add a bit of shine to it, but I just haven't gelled with it as I'd hoped..
I'll gladly answer any questions you might have
Some of the XDA's have a massive design flaw. You need a small amount of charge in the battery for it to have enough power to turn the charger on... so if it is indeed completely flat you can't charge it. Someone at work had this problem (not sure the exact XDA model though) and had to "hotwire" it with a battery to get it to charge.
i had one for a week as a trial and thought it was excellent.
Camera was pretty good except for low light as it lacked a flash.
GPS and co pilot were spot on.
Wifi was decent and downloading from GPRS/HDSPA was good.
Screen was great and touchflow was good too.
Can have its memory upto 32GB soon
Battery could have lasted longer.
Screen was hard to see in sunlight, especially when it locked.
It didnt integrate with linux too good (only reason i gave it up in the end)
i would defo recommend them if you cant get the latest and greatest. Its still up there.
Camera was pretty good except for low light as it lacked a flash.
GPS and co pilot were spot on.
Wifi was decent and downloading from GPRS/HDSPA was good.
Screen was great and touchflow was good too.
Can have its memory upto 32GB soon
Battery could have lasted longer.
Screen was hard to see in sunlight, especially when it locked.
It didnt integrate with linux too good (only reason i gave it up in the end)
i would defo recommend them if you cant get the latest and greatest. Its still up there.
Had mine since launch with only 2 complaints.
First is the handsfree head set is a bit plasticy, considering the quality of the phone.
Second is the lack of a flash for the camera.
The O2 ROM is absolutely rubbish, first thing I did was flash it with the official HTC one and the camera and video are now far far better as well as the actual phone itself far more responsive.
GPS is second to none, most accurate I've ever used.
I've bought a different battery, so can generally get about 3-4 days out of it before needed a recharge.
As for the interface comments, definately a fair point, but using SPB Mobile Shell at a couple of quid and using the Diamond or Mobile 7 interface it takes on a totally different game.
Best phone I've ever owned and 2 people in the office were so impressed with it's ease of use they've switched over and had only 2 complaints, one of the sunlight hitting the screen and the other couldn't see the sense of the screen switching off when on a call (until it was explain why!)
First is the handsfree head set is a bit plasticy, considering the quality of the phone.
Second is the lack of a flash for the camera.
The O2 ROM is absolutely rubbish, first thing I did was flash it with the official HTC one and the camera and video are now far far better as well as the actual phone itself far more responsive.
GPS is second to none, most accurate I've ever used.
I've bought a different battery, so can generally get about 3-4 days out of it before needed a recharge.
As for the interface comments, definately a fair point, but using SPB Mobile Shell at a couple of quid and using the Diamond or Mobile 7 interface it takes on a totally different game.
Best phone I've ever owned and 2 people in the office were so impressed with it's ease of use they've switched over and had only 2 complaints, one of the sunlight hitting the screen and the other couldn't see the sense of the screen switching off when on a call (until it was explain why!)
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Sorry to derail slightly - but you couldn't give me an e-mail telling me how I go about getting the Diamond's interface on the Orbit II could you? h4xtbh at gmail dot com. I saw a video of the interface and was muy impressed
(Oh after some messing about the charge light is now staying on my Orbit II - thanks for the info on the minimum charge though Hades - much appreciated, it'll be my next line of investigation if it doesn't manage to take a charge
)Have you got any links on where to download & how to flash it? I've been happy with mine but if it can be made a bit more responsive and have a better camera that would be brilliant.
Also if I flash it will I lose the custom software & skins I've installed?
LinkZ | the_tyke:
Goto forum.xda-developers.com and look in the Polaris Upgrades for a thread called "All Polaris ROMS collected"
There's a list of official (and unofficial) ROMS's to upgrade your phone to Mobile 6.1
Personally, I use Bepe's ROM, super fast and has a lot of the rubbish taken out.
But, do read the instructions to the full. There's a handful of people who have bricked their phone, not because it's dodgy, but because they've simply dived in and not read everything.
As for the custom software and skins, yeah, they'll go.
Just remember to backup your contacts/messages with something like PIM Backup (free, fast and so easy to use) and restore it when you've flashed.
This is my Orbit 2 at the moment, so responsive and so easy to use now, all finger controlled and hardly ever use the stylus:
Goto forum.xda-developers.com and look in the Polaris Upgrades for a thread called "All Polaris ROMS collected"
There's a list of official (and unofficial) ROMS's to upgrade your phone to Mobile 6.1
Personally, I use Bepe's ROM, super fast and has a lot of the rubbish taken out.
But, do read the instructions to the full. There's a handful of people who have bricked their phone, not because it's dodgy, but because they've simply dived in and not read everything.
As for the custom software and skins, yeah, they'll go.
Just remember to backup your contacts/messages with something like PIM Backup (free, fast and so easy to use) and restore it when you've flashed.
This is my Orbit 2 at the moment, so responsive and so easy to use now, all finger controlled and hardly ever use the stylus: