T-Mobile Dash vs. Blackberry Pearl
This post will mainly be an insight on my newly purchased T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur). Although I do not own a Pearl, many of my friends do and I have used them extensively. At first glance out of the box the Dash is beautiful, more beautiful than the pictures. Small thin body, metallic front, and rubber back makes it a nice hold in hands. Then for the boot up (a little long) I find a colorful Windows Mobile 5. With that, I go to T-Mobiles website to get WM6 (free of coarse). After I download it I search endlessly on forums and websites to find info on Mac integration. I could only find one easy to use program called Missing Sync, that will run you a whopping $40. But wait, even if you think that’s not good deal for Macintosh integration, it only works with WM5 (for now)… so as soon as I download it, I will only be able to use it once to transfer WM6, which you need some sort of syncing program to do, then I am stuck not being able to transfer music, documents, etc.
On to the software… windows mobile 6 is great, I finally got over it and just used my PC partition through boot camp to transfer files. Windows Media Player is disappointing in that it can only play .mp3, wma, and wmv. So for my .mp4 and .avi, I had to download various media players. With the Dash’s not-so-fast processor, playing movies of great sizes/resolutions was impossible. Terrible fps. Short clips played and looked beautiful with the Dash’s Huge screen.
Along with the slow boot up, the whole WM6 interface was pretty sluggish, not because of WM6, but because of the low processor speed, and small amount of memory. With the more programs I had opened, the slower everything moved, to eventually it was saying I couldn’t open any more programs for there was not enough memory. Overall the operating system seemed great, but it’s hardware could hardly support it.
A week after purchase, I was packing up for California. Got in the car, pulled out the Dash to listen to some tunes and realized that there were dead pixels forming. I called up T-Mobile on the drive up only to find that it was a “pressure crack” aka “physical damage” that would not allow me to return the phone in during the 14 day test trial, and was also not covered by the warranty. By this point I was extremely upset. Through the course of my trip, the dead pixels formed a huge black ink blot the rest of the screen was a clean white of more dead pixels. I had just purchased a brand new phone hardly used it, never dropped it once, took extremely good care of it, and it was virtually worthless. It would be 2 weeks before I would come back to Arizona (today) and talk to a representative. They confirmed in was a pressure crack on the internal workings of the screen, and with a thin, larger display, you can’t have it in your pocket because any sort of pressure can damage it. The representative reassured me that they can’t do anything about it, except give me the number of the third party insurance company they use (and I did buy insurance.) With the decision already in my mind that I no longer wanted this phone because of it’s breaking in such a short amount of time (ridiculous!) I called the insurance company to see if I could claim for a Blackberry Pearl. They said the only way I could get a phone of equivalent value (Dash and Blackberry cost exactly the same) was if they were out of stock of my model. The insurance company was so crappy they couldn’t even tell me how long I have insurance with them. (To see if I wanted to call back when they were out-of-stock). I just said that I would cancel the claim and call back later. So I called T-Mobile back convinced that this was a manufacturers defect, and a screen should not break this easily without any physical trauma whatsoever. So tomorrow I will send it in for them to check if there was a defect. If not, the insurance will make me pay half the cost a sluggish fragile phone that I don’t want anymore.
When and if I receive a new Dash, I will probably sell it to some unsuspecting victim on eBay. At least the Pearl has a processor and memory that can definitely hold it’s own. The data plan on the Dash costs $10 more than the Pearl, and does not include international email like the Blackberry does. The main reason that I initially chose the Dash over the Pearl is because I live in Tempe Arizona, an area that is completely wifi. The Dash has a wifi card, and the Pearl does not. Direct push email does not work on wifi though, instead email checks every 5 minutes with WM6 and ever 15 minutes with WM5. I wish I would have originally got the Pearl along with the cheaper more extensive data plan. At first, the Dash was the phone of my dreams, but that’s the problem with Cnet reviews, they never show the “2 weeks later,” which leads me to wonder why it is the highest ranked smart phone on their website.
HTC Excalibur vs. REM Blackberry Pearl Specifications
Loading …June 29 2007 12:07 am | Technology and Thoughts
Jackeith McMillian on 24 Nov 2007 at 12:13 pm #
Well one of my friends has a dash, and my sister and brother-in-law had a Pearl{black,and cream} and the dash is very “High-Quality” its very sleek,and fun! I love the dash and wouldn’t mind having one myself… on the other hand the pearl is very fun also, it’s complicated at first but comes in handy …so it’s a close race
will on 29 Nov 2007 at 9:38 am #
good ol dash
it is a hunk o junk
slow etc
t mobile will just wash their hands of you if something goes wrong (insurance or not).
there are tens of thousands (if not more) of people griping all over the web about THE SCREEN…..
i have been through 2 already (bought the phone in June 07)
the lcd screen basically turns into an ink blot test if you carry it in your pocket
while t mobile wants you to pay the deductible/get a new phone ($150)
you can get a new screen via ebay or wherever for $35-50
there is a video on you tube that showed me how to do the “cellphone surgery”
not too bad/hard
just ordered another screen - at $70 total spent up until now on 2 screens, im still havent reached the price of the deductible
regardless, if it happens again…..ill finally pay up and get a different phone or use my old one
*****REALLY NEED TO USE THE CARRYING CASE******
(as unattractive/not cool as it is)
i have finally learned my lesson
caveat emptor