Posted by jomni1
(For some of you who don't know, ETEN is a Taiwanese corporation who pioneered the Big5 Chinese encoding format used in the net. They are now producing handheld devices and laptops.)
Since I just got the ETEN P300 yesterday and haven't played with its functions too much so here are my first impressions... I will add more comments as I discover more.
I will compare the phone with the SE P800 (my previous phone) and the SE P900 and sometimes with the the XDA and XDA II (because it runs on the Windows Pocket PC 2003 Phone Edition).
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
Unlike the XDA the p300 is relatively smaller. It is almost the size of the P800 and P900 (same length and thickness but wider by about 3/4 of a cm). It's screen is obviously smaller than regular pocket pc's but larger than the p800/p900. The stylus is cleverly hidded in the antenna. It has an LED which indicates if the phone is on (green blinking), if battery level is low (red), if an error/warning occurs (orange). The IR can is located at the top of the phone beside the antenna and also the earhone jack (with rubber cover).
At the left side is the power button and "jog dial". The dial is primarily used for adjusting volume (not navigation) but some apps may use it for some other purpose). There is also a hard reset pin (similar to calculators) where you can press by inserting the stylus in a hole.
Below the screen, you have 4 buttons: 1) Answer Phone (also used to prompt the phone application or virtual dial pad), 2) Contacts button, 3) Today button, and 4) End Call button. You can actually change the functionalities of these buttons. There is also a joystick in the middle which you can also press (for example to active the shutter of the camera).
Speaking of the camera, it is located in an unusual spot in the device. You can find the camera beside the peaker facing the user. I guess the purpose of this is for video conferencing. A disadvantage of this is that you will find it hard to take images the other way around.
At the bottom of the phone is the connector and the SD slot. You cannot directly plug the AC adaptor to the phone for charging. You will have to place it in the cradle.
At the back is the battery pack and the battery lock switch. The OS will turn itself automatically off (sometimes hang) as a safety feature if you turn on the phone when the battery is unlocked (so keep this in mind).
HARDWARE SPECS
The screen has only 4k colors... it is comparable to the P800 and the XDA (new phone models would already have 65k colors). Yet the screen quality of the P300 seems have more pixels than the P800 giving more harp pictures and clearer fonts. In fact, for a relatively small screen, the P300's today view can show more information more clearer than the P800 with handy day or tracker. An advantage I can see in this is lower power consumption.
It has a 200MHz processor, similar to the P800 and the XDA. I believe the XDA2 has a stronger processor. But things seem to run smoothly (so far). This can be another power saving trade-off.
Of course we also have an SD slot like other pocket PC's. Which would compensate it for it's lack of bluetooth (since bluetooth SD adaptors are available as well as WiFi adaptors).
SOFTWARE
The standard operating system is solid with true PDA functionalities compared to the P800 and P900. The essential phone features are present: it has silent and vibrate modes, ringtone (midi) selector, ringtone types (normal, ascending, etc.), speed dial, etc. No profiles as some phone users are accustomed to but I don't look for this function.
It already has windows media player, pocket word and excel, internet explorer.
Some non-standard windows 2003 apps are also present like an image capture software and picture editor. The image capture is just basic, with only contrast and color settings. Too bad it does not have brightness settings as it seems that pictures taken are quite dark. No night mode either. So people who like to take pictures with their phones will not like this. There's no video recording either like the XDA II. But I guess there are 3rd party apps out there that has improved functionalities.
More to come tomorrow...
Posted by vwbeetle
hehehe nice. you think if an SD camera would be plugged in it would work? isnt it ironic that the cam was meant for video conferencing and yet the device has no video-cam capability?
[ This Message was edited by: vwbeetle on 2003-11-10 18:27 ]
Posted by jomni1
@VW, well everything actually depends on 3rd party apps. It is very possible to insert and SD cam and use a software that is provided with the cam. Who knows, it may be better.
Now for more comments...
The P300 has two batteries. It has an internal battery (called back up) and a detachable battery (like celphones). Since Pocket PC's automatically reset to factory settings when power is drained, the internal battery will give you some additional time to replace the battery. The cradle that is provided actually has another slot to slip in an extra battery (sort of like a desk top charger).
According to the manual, Pocket PC users should try as much as possible to use external power (cradle pluged into a socket) when not mobile to save energy and use only the battery power when mobile. This is unlike common cellphone usage where we completely drain the battery before charging. Today is the first day that I will not use the cradle (left it at home). Let's see how long the battery lasts.
The software has many power saving features like, backlight activation, backlight brighness, auto shutdown. The auto shutdown only works for the PDA. This means that if you turned on the phone, the PDA will still shut down (blank screen, no response to taps and button presses) but will still continue to recieve the signal. This compensates for the lack of a screen lock freature in the OS. This in theory would also save more battery (In the P800 both PDA and phone are always turned on).
Some neat stuff that I discovered:
SMS is embedded in the outlook mail client. There is a separate section for SMS and is structured like email (Trash, inbox, outbox, draft, sent). AND YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN FOLDERS! (something P800 and P900 users miss). Since the SMS client is built in with outlook, you have the capability of running a SPELL CHECK. There is also a little button below (cassette tape-looking) to record your voice and send it.
You can change the ringtones and assign picutres to EACH number (the P800 can only assing a ringtone to each person). In the P300, if a person has several numbers, you can assing a different tone to each of them.
Moreover, you can also select the type of ring for each of them (normal, ascending, vibrate, ring and vibrate, etc.)... sort of like a profile.
The input methods are great (similar to Pocket PCs). It has 4 modes.
1) keyboard: very similar to the P800's virtual keyboard but with built in predictive capabilies (autocomplete)... no need for 3rd party apps like eZitap. And the letters are big enough for accurate tapping.
2) Handwriting using the Palm sorthand (also with predictive capabilities?)
3) Handwriting using regular writing like the one in the P800 (also with preditive capabilities)
4) Transcribe: which can identify script, cursive, whole words and sentences. It will wait for you to stop writing for 2 seconds before analysing and transforming your writing into text. (this is cool but you should have good handwriting to be efficient).
Personally, I usually use the keyboard.
The sync software is efficient and easy to use... of course, it's microsoft. The software also includes file management capabilities to transfer files between the computer and the phone.
Pocket Excel and Word enables the users to seamlessly edit documents. Conversion is perfect unlike 3rd party apps available for Palm and Symbian. It can handle a lot of sheets, as well as passwords.
There you have it. I'm open to questions.
[ This Message was edited by: jomni1 on 2003-11-11 00:41 ]
Posted by jomni1
I already tried GPRS. It seems that the Internet Explorer cannot read WAP pages... just HTML. The program automatically includes the http:// prefix even when inputing a wap adress resulting into a "Page not found" message. This means you need 3rd party apps like EZWap (which also includes an MMS client) to browse wap pages (I believe EZWap is already included in the O2 XDAII?).
[ This Message was edited by: jomni1 on 2003-11-11 03:35 ]
Posted by vwbeetle
@jomni - 619 and I tried the P300 in G&G. the speaker seemed too soft, is that the case? Can the ringtone of the phone be heard distinctly?
how did you find the speed of the processor, does it seem to lag whenever a program is running in the background?
[ This Message was edited by: vwbeetle on 2003-11-11 10:06 ]
Posted by jomni1
Yes it's quite soft (in noisy environments) even at full volume. But it's the same case with the P800 so I'm used to it. There's a vibrate function anyway.
The speed of the processor is not much of a problem, I've been running several apps in the background 5 or 6 and I still do not experience any slow down. You have memory options in "Settings". You can actually manually adjust memory allocation between storage (saving files and installing) and program (running apps). Standard setting is 50:50. This means that the P300 will use 50% of it's 64M memory for saving files and apps and 50% for running them. In theory, it will turn off some runnings apps if you exceed 50%. You also have a task manager function to manually shut down running apps.
If you have a large SD card, you can actually allocate most of the internal memory for running apps.
Think you have seen what comes with the package. It comes with a stereo headset whith a volume knob, cradle, leather case, usb cable, ac adaptor.
SMS works like a charm just like any other cell phone. SMS settings are automatically set once you use your SIM. Writing SMS is similar to writing email (it also gives you a character limit counter). When you receive SMS a small icon appears at the status bar on top. Then you have a "balloon" (like the one in the comic strips when a character talks) which shows you the message and you immediately have the option to call, reply, save, delete the message.
[ This Message was edited by: jomni1 on 2003-11-12 01:05 ]
Posted by jam
how much did you get the p300?
Posted by jomni1
Got it at PHP 27,500 or roughly USD 367.
Very reasonable price.
Posted by shadow_allan
I cant find a p300 that sells for 27,500... where did you buy?