So after a nightmarish experience trying to get my broken phone replaced last week, I decided it was time to get myself a little upgrade. I wound up ordering the Mogul from Sprint, and after a bit of adjustment I’m really starting to like this little bastard.
The Good
First and foremost, it’s got a little slideout keyboard, which reorients the screen to landscape mode. It’s also got internet everywhere, and on a faster network than the iPhone. The combination of the touchscreen and keyboard is pretty handy, although I still haven’t quite gotten used to using the little alt key to enter numbers quickly though, I half to retard my way around the keypad until I remember how to do it.
I downloaded a bunch of cool free shit, like Pocket Putty and Google Maps Mobile which work exceptionally well. I hear that we’re getting a firmware update soon that will unlock the GPS thingy in there so that it can pinpoint your directions like the iPhone does.
Speaking of which, they’ve got Picsel on there, which pretty much emulates the rad point and zoom functions of the iPhone’s browser. Pretty keen. Right now I’m doing my best to get Windows 98 emulating on this thing so that I can start playing Warcraft 2.
Another plus is that it’s mildly complicated. Not so much that I can’t get around it, but it’s officially too much for someone like my girlfriend or sister to handle properly. This means that you don’t have to deal with people asking you to “check their myspace” because they’re the type of people who only browse to shit on their computer through the desktop icons. That little Windows insignia in the corner is just as mysterious on a small screen. Believe me, if they release some sort of iPhone-menuesque Today page (that’s the little desktop) I’m going to install that fucker and not tell a soul.
The Bad
This thing can be a bit frustrating. Touchscreen phones are just as annoying as you’d expect, so get used to using the voice dial button. Speaking of which, that voice dial button is the work of Satan himself. They put it in the exact spot where your fingers wind up a lot of the time, so you are constantly hitting it by accident and hearing the stupid beeping noise. I just remapped that motherfucker, I didn’t have time to figure out how to be more graceful with the thing.
I also can’t figure out how to get it to ring and vibrate. It seems to want to do one, but not the other.
Since a lot of the software is open source third-party and not ruthlessly controlled like anything for the iPhone, there’s a lot of it that doesn’t run perfectly well. Some things were designed for different types of phones and then just ported on over, because who’s got time to test these fucking things on 80 different phones?
That’s about all I have to say at the moment. Once I get Warcraft II running on this fucker, I’ll most likely buy a tin shed somewhere and begin my slow descent into mildly insane hermitude.
Hey man, get at me. I’ve had mine for a few weeks. We need to exchange some software.
Hey Sharkey,
I work at Sprint and I’m using the same phone as you (We basically demo around phones). Basically you’ll need to use the stylus and click on the volume icon on the top right hand side. it’ll open up and give you options to have vibrate, have ringer on or off.
Mogul is ok overall. But the battery life is just depressing.
how in the name of jesus christ am i supposed to get my hands on this picsel genius? must have