O2 XDA Atom

Exterior
The shell of the device is black in colour. The ceramic finish of the shell was sleek and classy, and this was countered perfectly by the silver buttons and the silver frame for the camera lens on the back.

The screen is slightly lower than the surrounding shell, and this is a good move as it will reduce the chances of accidentally scratching the screen. The screen is big in relation to the size of the device, and this is great except that I had to hold the Atom at a slight angle away from my face when talking on the phone.

The battery cover is of the slide-out variation, and the memory expansion card slot is on the top of the device where the ‘on’ button is also located. An up and down pair of buttons are on the left of the device. The camera, video and voice recorder hotkeys are on the right side of the device, and the USB port and a headset receptor can be found on the bottom of the device.

The speakers are found both on top and at the bottom of the device, and this made for some really cool musical sounds. The service light is hidden at the top of the device, and you can see it blinking through the slit where you put your ear while fielding a telephone conversation.

Buttons/Screen
Aside from the bright screen, only the call and end keys are lit up in green and red respectively. None of the other keys are lit, not even the Windows keys and the O2 media key found below the screen.

The tactile response of the navigation button is a dream, and would likely be the main focus of the user in moving around the menus.

The screen is a 262K TFT coloured one, although the specs say that only 65K is effective. I’m sure that this is pretty confusing to the user, but my judgement is that this is rather pleasant screen to be looking at, if only it responded a little better and faster to the user inputs.

Software/Messaging
Windows Mobile 5.0 is the OS of choice here, and it is a little slow unless you tweak the system a little. To speed up Windows Mobile 5, use a registry editor like RescoExplorer 2005 and set the following keys to the values listed:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\StorageManager\FATFS\CacheSize=4096
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\StorageManager\FATFS\EnableCache=0x1(1)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\StorageManager\Filters\fsreplxfilt\ReplStoreCacheSize=4096
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\StorageManager\Profiles\MSFlash\FATFS\DataCacheSize=0x1000(4096)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\StorageManager\Profiles\MSFlash\FATFS\Flags=0x28(40)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\GDI\GLYPHCACHE\limit=0x8000(32768)

The messaging is terrible on this device, I must say. The virtual keyboard is much too small for this. Add in an unresponsive screen and the tendency of the cursor to go on a leave of absence when tapping the virtual spacebar, and you have what must be a hair-pulling experience.

If you can’t do without SMS, then get a good Bluetooth keyboard. Of course, this will add another RM 500 to the purchase price, and one can get some pretty good notebooks for the resulting total, and maybe a 3G card and some Skype software. The downside is that the laptop will make you look like a total geek whereas the Atom makes you look like, well, a geek too, albeit a slightly hip one.

PIM
What else is there to say about the Personal Information Manager (PIM) functions of a Windows Mobile device? As usual, nearly everything can be synchronised to the users PC. The list of transferable data includes email, contacts, calendar and notes.

Camera/Video
It took a good 10 seconds to fire up the camera application. This is a bit too slow and ensures that you can’t get a quick shot when you need it. The zoom goes all the way up to 8x, and I must say that the picture on the viewfinder looks really clear, if a bit slow to respond.

Photo files are stored in the JPEG format, and one nice aspect of the camera is that there are some preloaded picture frames in the device, and you can actually superimpose the picture frame so that you can see how your photo will look when placed within the picture frame.

Picture frames are good for livening up your pictures, especially when you want to send a photo to a friend via MMS, or to simply store it on a regular computer or photo website.

Multimedia/Voice
The Xda Atom comes with a built-in FM radio, which you will need to plug in the headset if you want to enable this function to work. The device supports MP3 and MIDI files, not to mention MPEG-4 and H.263 video files.

Voice notes can be accessed either from the main menu or via the shortcut button at the right side of the device. Voice dialling can be programmed into the device via the voice speed dial application in the programs menu.

Connectivity
This device comes with both Bluetooth and infrared built into it. The infrared port can be found on the right of the device, next to the voice recorder hotkey. A silly feature is that when I transfer an MP3 file to the Atom, it downloads the whole file before asking if I want to keep the file. That seems a little bit silly to me, when the permission to download should have been asked before downloading the file.

As a plus, Wi-Fi connectivity is built into the device, and EDGE is supported all the way up to class 10. The USB port, as mentioned, is found on the bottom of the device, and this is probably the best way to connect to a computer.

Games
The device carries the Solitaire and Jawbreaker games. Jawbreaker has been renamed to Bubble Breaker, but this is essentially the same game as found on other PPC devices. Again, the small definition forces the user to concentrate on where he or she is tapping on the screen, as a slight error may cause something else to happen.