SX1 - Yes or No??

5 replies · 2,261 views · Started 19 September 2005

Panasonic 19 Sep 2005, 20:24

I am going to buy a SX1 by the end of this month, and therefore I am asking about this phone.

I heard a lot of good and bad things about this phone.
So, many people say that the sofware crashes a lot of time, and the system is instabile. Also, there are a lot of complaints that the phone often (after a couple of months of using) doesn't work, and it must be reapired in a service . Is it true?
It's very important to me that the software is stabile, without crashes etc... and I read that the FW15 solves this problem, so, please can you send me the link where I can download FW15 (and how to put/install the FW15 into the phone)? Was your phone crashing before you had FW15?

I am asking this because a lot of people have problems with the auto-restarts and crashes of this phone.
And, please, can I send mp3 files from my PC to the SX1 by using a bluetooth device?

Now I am having a Nokia 3650 and I hope that the SX1 is better that 3650 because I don't want to buy an inferior phone than the 3650. 😊

And is there any difference between SX1's made in China, Taiwan... and SX1's made in Germany? (I heard that the SX1's made in Germany haven't so much problems, crashes, and instabile system)

Cheers

clonmult 20 Sep 2005, 11:36

Haven't had one phone that is totally reliable - all have had hung at one time or other; its just a fact of life with such devices.

I'm running FW14, and its fine.

The synching of data via bluetooth will be slow - you really need to get a memory card reader instead, much faster.

Panasonic 22 Sep 2005, 19:13

thx clonmult for the answer.

Is it true that the length of sms message is limited to 160 characters? Do u think that Siemens is going to solve this problem?

Actually, I think its a good phone 😉

Cheers

clonmult 27 Sep 2005, 12:42

Panasonic wrote:thx clonmult for the answer.
Is it true that the length of sms message is limited to 160 characters? Do u think that Siemens is going to solve this problem?
Actually, I think its a good phone 😉
Cheers

Yup, 160 character SMS limit; but then again, that is the limit of a single SMS.

Quite a few phones I've seen that support longer SMS just split it up into multiples - so for sending 320 characters, you do get charged double.

Doubt they'll change it now though - maybe a FW16 will come out, but don't hold your breath. Its a good phone, no doubt, its kinda spoilt me for my next upgrade (which is coming along quite soon).

flipwils11 04 Oct 2005, 16:29

You may have read my rant a few weeks ago when my phone died. If not, click here.

SX-1 rant

For the money (or even more money than an SX-1 now that their prices have come down) I don't think there's a device out there that does as much as these things do. I get pissed when it crashes but you learn what it can handle and what it can't. I'm usually using it as my jukebox mp3 player (1 gig MMC, maybe an upgrade soon to a 2GB card?) so when I receive a call during that time, about half the time the mp3 player crashes and I have to reboot the phone. About 5% of the time the whole phone will crash but this hasn't happened in a long time now, maybe because firmware version 15.

Bluetooth, FM radio, IR, big color screen, camera (not-so-great quality though), tons of great games and apps (with a huge source of support and info thanks to the Symbian OS and other phones like Nokia's that are out there), mp3's, memory card slot, all of these are items that really make the SX-1 extremely unique. When mine died a few weeks ago (before I formatted it and fixed it) I was struggling for what I would get to replace it. There are some newer expensive devices that have a lot of great features (WiFi for instance) but none that I saw had the FM radio and some don't even have memory card slots!

It's been over a year since I got my SX-1 and as long as it doesn't break on me, I don't see anything that makes me want to spend money to replace it right now.

flipwils11 04 Oct 2005, 16:42

I thought of some more examples that show how great this phone can be (when it doesn't crash).

I bought the Lonely Cat Games SmartMovie player for the phone and it is really cool. I'm a car nut and am usually downloading car movies from the web. By using this player (after first formatting the movies through the pc program which compresses them and removes some frames) I can load them on my phone and play them. The video quality is amazing. I also have some funny commercials I found on the web that I loaded. Just the other day my wife and I were at some friends and the husband and I were talking about this commercial. I whipped out my phone and handed it to him so he could watch it himself. Incredible. Another friend who uses a cell phone for voice calls and that's it thought my phone was a big waste of money. Until we were traveling somewhere and were waiting in the airport for our plane to leave. I handed him my phone to watch some car racing videos and he said it changed his opinion completely about the money I spent on the SX-1.

I also have ProfileMail loaded on my phone and I use it for Pop access to my yahoo account. It's a good program since it only downloads the message titles so you can choose what you want to read to conserve bandwidth. I used to have the Opera browser on the phone but it was a memory hog when it ran. And I don't have unlimited bandwidth anymore through AT&T/Cingular the way I used to with T-Mobile.

So a typical day for me with the phone is:

Get to work. Queue up my 100 or so mp3's on the phone (again the 1 gig MMC is essential to really get the most out of the phone) and listen all day at work.

Maybe take some phone calls (hopefully the mp3 player doesn't crash).

Go eat lunch downstairs in the cafeteria and work on homework (I'm in grad school part time for an MBA). Listen to radio or mp3's to drown out noise of cafeteria.

Back to my desk, listen to mp3's some more.

Drive home before school. Cell phone call to my wife to check in.

Download email through Profile Mail to check yahoo mail. Maybe send an SMS to someone.

More music (mp3 usually) on the train ride into the city on the way to class.

Turn phone on silent in class, use it to check yahoo mail some more during lecture. Get bored and do a bluetooth device search in class to see what other blue tooth devices are out there (laugh).

Take train home and amuse myself watching movies I have loaded. Or queue up mp3's and play Tetris at the same time (the phone will do both at the same time).

Get home, charge phone!! I charge it every day and I have a spare battery.

So that's a good sample of how I use my SX-1 nearly every day. I don't take many pictures with it, but it's nice to know the feature is there if I really needed it.