Current Treo 700wx user inquiring about the Sprint Mogul..

[MrOuija36]

Honest opinion should i switch?

are the bugs serious enough to wait out for now?

have any of you guys done the treo to mogul switch?

excuse me if a comparison post has already been posted if u could kindly link it in here that will be helpful

[papped]

I went from the 700wx to the Mogul, I like the Mogul WAY better.

Larger screen makes everything much easier.
The camera is leaps better than the 700wx.

You just have to get it configured properly to your liking (same deal with the 700wx).

Just remember the device is completely different from your 700wx, especially typing on the keyboard. Allocate a few weeks just to get used to the device.

[Bearxor]

Stay away.

I'm working on a video comparison between the two now. The mogul is nice, but like all other HTC phones, just isn't very intuitive.

[MrOuija36]

yeah i would love to see their strengths and weaknesses side by side the moguls screen is whats making me wanna get it.. would love that extra space the square screen is real limited

[Kasracer]

I came from a 700wx and I have to say I will not go back.

Why the mogul is better than the 700wx:

• Larger and higher resolution screen. It looks absolutely beautiful
• Great keyboard. It's much larger than the 700wx's keyboard
• Much faster/snappier. I have about 18 applications installed and my physical storage is not even CLOSE to being full and the applications run very fast. I practically never feel lag
• I can keep a data connection while on the phone. While it drops to 1X, I can still keep a connection which is awesome! My 700wx instantly disconnected me.
• EV-DO Rev A in a few months. Also, the chipset does include GPS functionality and Sprint representatives have said GPS will be unlocked in Q4 for the Mogul. While this isn't 100% verifiable yet, it's still a better shot than the 700wx getting GPS
• Windows Mobile 6. It rocks. HTML e-mail, more stable than WM5 and a lot of nice improvements (especially in the looks)

What the 700wx has over the mogul:

• One-handed operation. This was a great feature of the 700wx
• More sensable screen lock (hit the red phone rather than touching the screen on the Mogul)

I love my Mogul and it comes with quite a few accessories most phones don't include. While I miss the one handed operation and the better screen lock of the 700wx... compared to the Mogul I don't even care.

[MrOuija36]

thanks just the kind of reply i needed.. sounds like i might make that move especially since its gonna only cost me 250 lol

only thing ima need to get used to is the slide out keyboard but hopefully i can try n use the virtual keyboard iphone style while the device is closed hmmm

[fablife]

Here is a good comparison of them...
http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=pdacomp...d1=770&id2=585

[nsinsinsi]

I owned the Mogul for about 27 days, just returned it last week. Here's some extra information some other people may be neglecting:

1- The device works very well as a plain WM6 device. You can run TomTom 6 with bt GPS like a champ, it can run emulators and games perfectly, and web browsing on it is absolutely excellent over EVDO or WiFi as long as you're using it two-handed. It feels fast enough in most situations.

2- It eats up memory much faster than the 700wx, and you become very worried about running more than a handful of apps or you start getting out of memory errors, some of them requiring a reset. For example, you usually have to go on an app-quitting tour before running the camera to take a simple photo.

3- The above problem is compounded by the fact that you have to get a bunch of different third party programs running at all times to make up for deficiencies in the device, such as PocketCM for one handed contact dialing, OnLock for device locking without going to the Today screen, and whatever today plugin you may need for speed dialing (I used the HTC homeplug, nice but took a lot of ram with it as well), among others.

4- No hardware mute switch. The Treo has a nice mute switch on top which should be part of any device calling itself a phone. The Mogul doesn't have suich a thing. So you end up having to run yet another application to be able to do this without operating the phone's on-screen interface. Even then, there were many situations where the Mogul just wouldn't shut up even after muting it.

5- Even though the Mogul has about 13 buttons on it (some of them in weird locations), soon, after all this, you start running out of buttons to launch of all these patchy applications you have to use in order to operate it comfortably.

6- Build and materials are not the highest quality. You can usually hear the phone creak beneath your ear while you're on a phone call, because the keyboard is bending against the other half of the device's body.

7- The keyboard is inferior to the Treo, in my opinion, not only in form factor, but also in layout and physical arrangement - I really missed the Treo's Alt key, for example. The keys have very nice button-push action though.

8- The screen looks very nice indoors, but is essentially invisible and unusable outdoors during the day. A lot of the time I couldn't even tell if it was on or not when I was outside in daylight. I had to swirl around looking for shade to be able to see anything. I also noticed text would become blurry when seen in landscape mode, especially if Cleartype was enabled.

9- Compounding the above problem further, they device has very poor battery life if you spend a lot of time in a low coverage area. This forces you to turn off all beams, bluetooth, and also turn down screen brightness to a usable minimum in order to last about 6-8 hours on a good day. I couldn't get past a single day without having to recharge at some point in the middle of the afternoon. Battery life is not as bad if you spend most if your time in an area with good signal coverage.

10- Outgoing sound quality was extremely poor in all conditions according to people I talked to on the other line. Even the Sprint operator kept asking me to repeat myself. This was regardless of coverage or mic device - onboard mic, wired headset, etc. Not to mention Bluetooth issues with the phone, which was essentially unusable for me. Also, I kept wishing for more volume in most applications.

11- The device doesn't seem to have proper video drivers so all video funcionality is extremely poor, the worst of any current device I have tried. Video recording looks horrible and is extremely low resolution (half of the Treo's), as well as low framerate. Playback is also very choppy compared to other devices, even after setting the proper Video settings in TCPMP. It works, but it's the worst of the current crop of smartphones in my experience, including new multimedia Blackberries and both flavors of Treos.

12- I still can't understand the decision not to include a headphone jack of any kind (2.5 or 3.5). Instead, you get a semi-proprietary mini-USB connector. It's great for charging and syncing, but it sucks to have to use the included headset or be forced to carry one of the weird, unwieldy adapters it comes with. Also, you have to use yet another adapter if you want to talk on a headset while charging the phone in order to avoid killing the battery even faster.

Just some of my thoughts after intensely using this device for nearly a month. Your mileage may vary, but my recommendation would be to stay away from it. I'm waiting for the Treo 800w, personally.

[Kasracer]

At first I thought you made up a list of the good and bad but it sounds more like a rant after going through 11 bad items and 1 good item. Surely a device like the Mogul can't be that bad! I love mine!

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

2- It eats up memory much faster than the 700wx, and you become very worried about running more than a handful of apps or you start getting out of memory errors, some of them requiring a reset. For example, you usually have to go on an app-quitting tour before running the camera to take a simple photo.

Well it eats up memory "faster" because it has less but I've only gotten memory errors with WMP. I've never received any with the camera or any other application. This is really an issue that ends up coming up on all WM devices because of the way memory is handled but the device is always very snappy for me and this never becomes an issue for me so it may depend what you're doing and what programs you're running.

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

3- The above problem is compounded by the fact that you have to get a bunch of different third party programs running at all times to make up for deficiencies in the device, such as PocketCM for one handed contact dialing, OnLock for device locking without going to the Today screen, and whatever today plugin you may need for speed dialing (I used the HTC homeplug, nice but took a lot of ram with it as well), among others.

I agree with the third party apps. I hate having a software lock! Though I am in love with the HTC Home Plugin and it doesn't really take up much memory on my device (I constantly have about 15-20mb free).

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

4- No hardware mute switch. The Treo has a nice mute switch on top which should be part of any device calling itself a phone. The Mogul doesn't have suich a thing. So you end up having to run yet another application to be able to do this without operating the phone's on-screen interface. Even then, there were many situations where the Mogul just wouldn't shut up even after muting it.

This is definately something I miss from my 700wx but I've never had any issue with the Mogul not "shutting up". The profiles in the HTC Home plugin work great for me!

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

5- Even though the Mogul has about 13 buttons on it (some of them in weird locations), soon, after all this, you start running out of buttons to launch of all these patchy applications you have to use in order to operate it comfortably.

Agreed. Thankfully AE Button is simply awesome and I can do so much more with my buttons than I ever could on my Treo (granted AE Button should work on the Treo as well, heh).

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

6- Build and materials are not the highest quality. You can usually hear the phone creak beneath your ear while you're on a phone call, because the keyboard is bending against the other half of the device's body.

How hard are you pressing the phone to your head!? I have never heard mine crack or make any noise like that and I dropped it twice pretty hard (once onto a thinly carpetted floor, which made it bounce into a metal desk and the second time was on a hard, wooden deck) and I haven't had any issues with the build quality.

The battery door is a bit flimsy, I'll give you that, but the device feels pretty solid to me.

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

7- The keyboard is inferior to the Treo, in my opinion, not only in form factor, but also in layout and physical arrangement - I really missed the Treo's Alt key, for example. The keys have very nice button-push action though.

Personally, I like the Mogul's keyboard better. The buttons feel great and they're more spaced apart. Not to mention there are more of them

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

8- The screen looks very nice indoors, but is essentially invisible and unusable outdoors during the day. A lot of the time I couldn't even tell if it was on or not when I was outside in daylight. I had to swirl around looking for shade to be able to see anything. I also noticed text would become blurry when seen in landscape mode, especially if Cleartype was enabled.

Cleartype is just like Cleartype on Windows XP. It's usually recommended to not enable it as text can become slightly blurry. Having said that, I usually have my brightness a little under the half way point when I'm not using my phone that much and I will give you that it's a little hard to see it outside like that. But (and this is a big butt), if I crank my brightness all the way up I can see my screen clear as day outside. This phone gets brighter than my 700wx's dull screen which was more difficult to see outside than my Mogul.

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

9- Compounding the above problem further, they device has very poor battery life if you spend a lot of time in a low coverage area. This forces you to turn off all beams, bluetooth, and also turn down screen brightness to a usable minimum in order to last about 6-8 hours on a good day. I couldn't get past a single day without having to recharge at some point in the middle of the afternoon. Battery life is not as bad if you spend most if your time in an area with good signal coverage.

You're doing something wrong. While I do not use bluetooth or beams, I use my phone to surf the internet at least 1-2 hours a day and I listen to podcasts throughout the entire work day. Not only that but I also talk and text on the phone quite a bit and usually my phone can go for about 15 hours without a charge if I do everything I said I do. While I would like more power, I am using my phone very heavily so I don't really mind. I am getting the extended battery anyway for those long, long days at work

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

10- Outgoing sound quality was extremely poor in all conditions according to people I talked to on the other line. Even the Sprint operator kept asking me to repeat myself. This was regardless of coverage or mic device - onboard mic, wired headset, etc. Not to mention Bluetooth issues with the phone, which was essentially unusable for me. Also, I kept wishing for more volume in most applications.

Really? I've found the sound quality thus far much improved over the 700wx. The quality of the phone calls for me have been about on par with my land line and the volume is much louder than my very quiet 700wx. Not only that but I have a much better signal on my Mogul than on my 700wx so the calls are much clearier.

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

11- The device doesn't seem to have proper video drivers so all video funcionality is extremely poor, the worst of any current device I have tried. Video recording looks horrible and is extremely low resolution (half of the Treo's), as well as low framerate. Playback is also very choppy compared to other devices, even after setting the proper Video settings in TCPMP. It works, but it's the worst of the current crop of smartphones in my experience, including new multimedia Blackberries and both flavors of Treos.

No clue what you're talking about. The video plays very well on my Mogul and I haven't had any issues with it. Video capture also works pretty well but the qualtity isn't the greatest (though it's definately better than my 700wx).

I would also like to add that the BlackBerry's video support (or, at least the 8800's) is mediocre at best. My girlfriend owns this device and not only can you not download videos easily but it supports a very limited amount of files formats. WM devices are far superior in video playback simply due to the third party codec support.

Originally Posted by nsinsinsi

12- I still can't understand the decision not to include a headphone jack of any kind (2.5 or 3.5). Instead, you get a semi-proprietary mini-USB connector. It's great for charging and syncing, but it sucks to have to use the included headset or be forced to carry one of the weird, unwieldy adapters it comes with. Also, you have to use yet another adapter if you want to talk on a headset while charging the phone in order to avoid killing the battery even faster.

I agree that it sucks it doesn't include 3.5mm by default but at least it has 2.5 with the included jack. Though you don't need yet another adapter to charge and have a headset plugged in as one is already included that can do both.

[nsinsinsi]

I'll answer to all these because I think it will be informative to anyone and it's all based on real experiences while I tried really hard to make this phone work for me.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

At first I thought you made up a list of the good and bad but it sounds more like a rant after going through 11 bad items and 1 good item. Surely a device like the Mogul can't be that bad! I love mine!

I understand it comes off a bit negative, but that's because my experience with the phone was pretty negative. Like I said, everyone's mileage may vary. Glad for you if you love yours, really.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

Well it eats up memory "faster" because it has less but I've only gotten memory errors with WMP. I've never received any with the camera or any other application. This is really an issue that ends up coming up on all WM devices because of the way memory is handled but the device is always very snappy for me and this never becomes an issue for me so it may depend what you're doing and what programs you're running.

Definitely, this comes down to what use you personally give it. I'll give you my example: Sprint business connection service, Outlook, Bizcon Calendar, PocketCM Contacts and Keyboard, HTC Home plug (a necessity on the Mogul in my opinion), TreoAlarm (vital for profiles), OnLock (which worked half the time) and spb pocketplus (for its task manager and close program functionality). That usually left me just enough memory to run one more intensive application, my usual ones are Opera or Egress. I could try to run both but i would get a memory error after little use. Running the camera would require me to quit those extra apps. On a Treo, not only do you have more memory, but you can get rid of most of those usability extras because they are not needed, and the camera on the Treo always runs. Additionally, all of those extra apps introduce a bunch of little bugs and odd behaviors all over the place - for example, ButtonAE would cause the right softbutton to stop working after a while, I still don't know why.

Seriously, you've never seen your camera app ask for memory? It happened to me during the first week.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

I agree with the third party apps. I hate having a software lock! Though I am in love with the HTC Home Plugin and it doesn't really take up much memory on my device (I constantly have about 15-20mb free).

It seemed to take up too much ram for a today plug on mine. Also, it introduced a lot of lag when switching between portrait and landscape if you have to go to the today screen, don't you find?

Originally Posted by Kasracer

This is definately something I miss from my 700wx but I've never had any issue with the Mogul not "shutting up". The profiles in the HTC Home plugin work great for me!

I would go to the HTC plugin, set it to silent or vibrate during a meeting, and the phone would still chime in with every email and reminder. *Shrugs*.. too many problems to track down at once.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

Agreed. Thankfully AE Button is simply awesome and I can do so much more with my buttons than I ever could on my Treo (granted AE Button should work on the Treo as well, heh).

Yep, tried that but like I said, it caused some other weird behavior elsewhere. Too bad, I really like that app.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

How hard are you pressing the phone to your head!? I have never heard mine crack or make any noise like that and I dropped it twice pretty hard (once onto a thinly carpetted floor, which made it bounce into a metal desk and the second time was on a hard, wooden deck) and I haven't had any issues with the build quality.

How hard? I don't know Just as hard as I hold any phone. I guess I press harder when the volume isn't loud enough. I could definitely hear the plastic creaking. Not surprising really, this machine is pretty much all plastic, unlike a Treo or an iPhone. I remember the Treo 650 did the same because Palm hadn't learned how to muffle the battery door, so people would stuff it with foamcore or something to stop it from creaking. A 700wx or a 750v feels like a solid piece of machine in your hand, no creaking anywhere.

Now, I didn't really say it was flimsy, just doesn't feel like top notch quality. I did drop it once and it just got a little scratched (and of course the battery cover flew away) but nothing serious.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

Personally, I like the Mogul's keyboard better. The buttons feel great and they're more spaced apart. Not to mention there are more of them

This is another very personal thing. I can understand anyone liking this or that better. I just found the layout a little odd (having to press fn to mark a period seems particularly inefficient to me, for example), and I actually thought the keyboard was unecessarily big, but that's really just my opinion and I have been "training" on Treo keyboards for many years now

Originally Posted by Kasracer

Cleartype is just like Cleartype on Windows XP. It's usually recommended to not enable it as text can become slightly blurry. Having said that, I usually have my brightness a little under the half way point when I'm not using my phone that much and I will give you that it's a little hard to see it outside like that. But (and this is a big butt), if I crank my brightness all the way up I can see my screen clear as day outside. This phone gets brighter than my 700wx's dull screen which was more difficult to see outside than my Mogul.

Actually, if you read closer, what I meant to say was the all text becomes blurry when seen in landscape mode, at least to my eyes - Cleatype or not. Cleartype just makes it worse. This is not uncommon on cheaper screens, and I've seen worse, such as odd stroboscopic effects when seen sideways, but it's certainly not perfect in any orientation like an iphone screen or a Treo 700p. It's not a top of the line screen.

And yes, I found that if a pump the brightness to full level it becomes distinguishable in daylight, but it was never great, just usable. But of course, battery life being a problem, this became a point of stress for me, and I can't telly ou how many times I got an email alert while standing outside and I had to run indoors to read what was on the screen. The 700wx doesn't have a great screen by any stretch of the imagination, and looks like crap compared to the Mogul's when indoors, but it is definitely much more readable outside, in my experience.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

You're doing something wrong. While I do not use bluetooth or beams, I use my phone to surf the internet at least 1-2 hours a day and I listen to podcasts throughout the entire work day. Not only that but I also talk and text on the phone quite a bit and usually my phone can go for about 15 hours without a charge if I do everything I said I do. While I would like more power, I am using my phone very heavily so I don't really mind. I am getting the extended battery anyway for those long, long days at work

This is one area where I really did my homework from the beginning because it was the first show stopper, let me telly ou what I found. I work in an area where there is extremely poor Sprint coverage, inside a large tech campus, ground floor. People with Verizon and ATT have nice coverage inside. Those of us with Sprint are constantly switching between roaming and no reception, even when outside. (FYI, this is Santa Clara, California). Since I've been working there, I've owned a 650p, a 700p, a 700wx, a Blackberry (on tmobile), a Mogul, and a 755p. They all did the same duties - RSS feeds, web browsing, constant push email, calendar, reminders, SMS, and the odd video playing or quick games. Out of all of those, the only phone I have been forced to have a recharger at the office for has been the Mogul. All the others make it home at night with at least a 40% battery (and I never had to turn BT off or dim the screen to 20%). The Mogul required an urgent charge around 2 or 3 PM, depending on my time of arrival - I keep the phone charging in my car during my commute.

I tried everything. Disabling beams, bluetooth, screen dimming, etc. They helped a little bit but still the phone wouldn't make it through the day. Eventually I became afraid of using the phone too much, so there were many days when I avoided using the phone at all costs so I wouldn't have to recharge it, but that didn't help either.

On the weekends, I stayed at home, where I have great reception. The Mogul's battery lasted all day if I disabled the extra stuff. It's not great, but it makes it to my bedtime with a 20% charge. I also went on a trip to Europe where there is no CDMA coverage and made extensive use of WiFi. Same deal, about 20% when I got to the hotel at night. In short, it was definitely the roaming that killed the battery, and it's the only phone I've owned that is dumb enough to let it happen.

I know there are registry tweaks to try and address this issue, but I don't see why I should be messing around with registries on my cellphone for something so basic.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

Really? I've found the sound quality thus far much improved over the 700wx. The quality of the phone calls for me have been about on par with my land line and the volume is much louder than my very quiet 700wx. Not only that but I have a much better signal on my Mogul than on my 700wx so the calls are much clearier.

Wow, that is totally not my experience. Every one of my callers complained about the audio quality: friends, wife, and business contacts. My friend clearly told me "since you've had this new phone I can barely understand anything you say". The other day I was in a conference call for an hour with some partners. When I visited them in person a week later, they said "thank god you came, because we didn't understand crap you said on the phone last time". The day I switched back to a Treo, my wife (who is pretty much oblivious to my tech gizmos) immediately said "woah you sound like you're in the car with me, did you do something to your phone?". The call to activate my new phone was just comical, because I had to do it from the Mogul. The Sprint operator couldn't understand every other thing I said, and I kept saying "as you can see, this is one of the reasons I'm returning this phone"...

And this happened on all of my wired headsets as well as the built in mic, so I ruled out defective hardware. BT was just completely unusable for my headsets.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

No clue what you're talking about. The video plays very well on my Mogul and I haven't had any issues with it. Video capture also works pretty well but the qualtity isn't the greatest (though it's definately better than my 700wx).

Two different subjects: video recording, and video playback. When recording video, the Treo does twice the resolution of the Mogul, 352 x 288 on the Treo vs 176x144 on the Mogul. Try it out. I'm not saying the Treo is the best camcorder in history, but it does give you twice the resolution at a better framerate than the Mogul operating at half. The Mogul is so bad that it can't even record clean frames, it's all full of weird deformed frames due to the slow scan sampling, especially in lower light situations. It's a clear win there.
For playback it's not such a huge difference, but it's still bad. A 320x240 mp4 video that TCPMP plays nicely and very smoothly on a Treo (both WM and PalmOS btw) exhibits choppy framerate and screen tearing on the Mogul. I wish I could show you the difference, but I assure you, it's very clear when you compare side to side. The Mogul should absolutely perform better than a Treo on this front, and it can't even match it.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

I would also like to add that the BlackBerry's video support (or, at least the 8800's) is mediocre at best. My girlfriend owns this device and not only can you not download videos easily but it supports a very limited amount of files formats. WM devices are far superior in video playback simply due to the third party codec support.

Two different subjects as well . The Blackberry has next to no third party or open source support, which is why it lacks in downloadable services or cool, free players like TCPMP and all its plugins.This is the biggest downfall of the Blackberry for me. However, when you do get the videos on it, they do play nicely, with an ok framerate, no bad artifacts, and at a larger resolution than what the Mogul can handle. At least this is what I have observed.

Originally Posted by Kasracer

I agree that it sucks it doesn't include 3.5mm by default but at least it has 2.5 with the included jack. Though you don't need yet another adapter to charge and have a headset plugged in as one is already included that can do both.

What I meant to say is that you need to keep such an adapter with you at all times. So when I put my Mogul in my bag in the morning, I need to through in a dual USB adapter, a USB to minijack adapter, a USB to USB + minijack adapter, a set of special headphones that no one else on earth makes, and a USB charger. If I don't do this I might find myself in a situation where I can't use on of these things.

When it's time to get on a call, I have to figure out which adapter I want to use, find it, and then plug it in, which is a three step process, and leaves a big ugly dongle hanging from the phone. Now imagine if you need to do all this *during* a call. It's crazy.

On any other phone, you only need your charger, and any standard headset you have lying around. They're very cheap and can be found anywhere, I keep one in my car, one on my travel bag, and one in my office. In the morning, I just throw my Treo in my pocket and I'm done. When I want to use a headset, I just find the one closest to me and plug it in. If I realize the call is getting too long, I just plug in the charger. When I'm done, I unplug both and that's it.

The Mogul's adapter issue is much more annoying to me than it sounds, mainly because it's just completely unnecessary. There is simply no good reason not to include a minijack in a new, expensive phone, and I find it completely unacceptable.