I am not satisfied with the phone, and I thought it might be useful for people who haven't got the phone yet if I explain why I'm not going to stick with it. I'm not trying to disagree with people who love their A920 and I certainly am not trying to start a flame war.
Some of the issues relate to the phone itself, others to the Three network and some perhaps to Symbian. It doesn't really matter though, you buy them all together.
1) Service unreliability
The unreliability of the three network has been widely discussed so I'll be brief. I work in central London (about 200 yards from Oxford Circus) in a small building. My T Mobile phone has a perfectly good full strength signal at my desk.
My Three phone has a borderline 3g video connection (one bar) and frequently swaps down to the next level. And this means it is utterly unreliable for receiving or making calls. I've had three dropped connections this week, while at my desk - not in a moving vehicle or anything like that.
I'm not confident that Three will sort it out soon enough. If it doesn't work in central London, then I dread to think how bad it must be elsewhere.
2) Restricted applications
The decision to lock down the A920 means that I am left with a very heavy phone with an adequate calendar and contacts database. No games (you have to download them and pay per use/time) not even snake. This means that if I want to use the phone to help me pass time I can either listen to MP3s or watch a video clip. Better than nothing, but pointlessly restricted.
It is frustrating to know that there are a raft of compatible applications out there that I cannot use. It is obvious that Three want to make money out of any additional applications made available or they would long ago have enabled developers of P800 software to get their security certificates. At the very least it needs some form of ebook reader.
3) The games are poor
So far I have tried Combat, PlayGolf and SuperBreakOut. As if the fact that they are crap, and you have to pay to play wasn't enough, they are agonising slow to start up - I guess because the phone is connecting to the network to gratuitously download the game rather than just downloading it properly once.
I have got PlayGolf installed. From the moment I start the game to the moment I first get to hit the ball takes XXX minutes. I was going to put the accurate time there, but it's been sitting on the Loading screen for over five minutes (I assume it's crashed as it normally takes more like 2 minutes - time to load the first menu, then select play, then another loading screen, then select the player, then another loading screen, then select a hole, then another loading screen, at last you can play. Utterly tedious.
I find Combat utterly unplayable. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the computer tank kicks me about like a football.
I quite enjoyed SuperBreakOut, until I'd managed to get to lvl 16 (must have taken 15+ minutes), had an incoming call, and when I went back to the game it had lost my progress (and presumably wanted to charge me to play again).
My point is that these are crap little games, they should download fully and they should load up quickly. The whole tedious process of downloading and installing the games is so slow that I can't be bothered to try out the other ones.
4) Restricted internet access
Pathetic. I guess they want me to pay to access crap content that they are charging third parties to make available. No way. It didn't work for CompuServe it's not going to work for Three.
5) Battery life
I know to expect battery life to be worse than a normal mobile. But I charged my phone fully overnight. I've played about 15 minutes of MP3 on the way to work. Made 10 minutes of phone calls, sent two emails and one text message, I tried and failed to play PlayGolf (see above). It's now 3pm and my battery is 'Low'. The phone has not yet made it through a full day without needing to be charged, and that's just not practical for me.
6) Silly little things
Some of these may be user error, but they still bug me:
Browsing the 3 web content (which is utter shite) is soooo soooo slow. There is so little text up there that surely it could all be downloaded and cached in the time it takes me to load one page. I'm sick of that Loading... flashing away. At this level of performance I just don't use it.
I want more control over the phone functions: a quick way to change profiles (from ring to vibrate and mute the calendar alarms), how many rings before voicemail etc.
When miss a call, I want the log to display the name from contacts, not the number.
If the browser had the ability to zoom out, like most of the other apps, I might find it a little less aggravating (not much though).
Half of the main screen taken up with three links to rubbish Three content (extras, search, quick map) that I never want to use.
No infrared - ridiculous.
Only one address line in the contacts database.
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I'm sorry to be returning it as I really wanted it. It's a great piece of kit, wonderful screen, good sound playback, expandable memory, neat operating system, great text prediction. The calendar and contact apps are pretty good - good enough for me to retire my Palm V. But the combination of the closed functionality (and sure, 3 may open it up, or they may not), crap network (I expect a mobile phone to be 100% reliable) and poor battery life is too much.
It's a potentially amazing PDA, and it was effectively free. But it's just not good enough with the restrictions they have put in place and more importantly, the Three network is absolutely not good enough.
Now I'm back to deciding whether to wait for, and pay for, the new P810 or just accepting I'll have to carry a phone and a PDA.
Regards
Spam Monkey