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So I’ve been thinking, which is normally a bad idea, the gist of it was “how many people want a phone that does email, t’internet, games, music, videos which doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to buy and run”, it was such a good idea I thought “I know I’ll ask people to see what they think”. So some phone calls where made, emails exchanged, brown parcels exchanged in dark corners of some pubs and I found an answer, its T-Mobile's MDA Compact II.
Its basically the Jam/M500 with the ‘new’ OMAP CPU, more memory and Windows Mobile 5, there isn’t much I can write about it, I normaly use an Orange SPV M500 as my day to day phone, the MC2 is as fast, as reliable, lasts as long with the battery as my M500.
So your thinking, “its just a M500 with WM5, why bother? There are shiny handsets available that do more, why should I spend my money on it?”. Well true, it doesn’t have WiFi, a slide-out keyboard or a gigapixel camera, but its not got the plasticy build of the Vario, the hugeness of the XDA Exec or the stupid security and lack of MSN that the M600 has.
The slide-out keyboard and WiFi on the Vario rocks, the VGA screen and 3G of the XDA Exec kicks ass, and the M600 is an evolution of the Magician device, and does have the features that the MC2 lacks. But that’s not what the MC2 is about, the MC2 is aimed at the beginners end of the market.
“A Beginners Phone”
As a PDA/Phone its good, yes its missing the advanced features the high end devices have, but T-Mobile have a plan, 90% of the PDA users want WiFi because GPRS costs a fortune (the other 10% want it for downloading stuff quickly or having a flat battery), so the clever chaps at T-Mobile decided “here, have a bucket load of data for pence a day”
So downloading those attachments to watch on your phone isn’t a problem, in fact being able to use the internet as much as you want with out thinking about the cost is what the mobile internet should be about.
So as I’ve written lots about nothing your asking “what’s the phone like to use?”. That’s an easy one to answer, its great, admittedly not the greatest phone spec wise, but it chatted to my exchange server out of the box (without the nasty hard reset trick you need on the M500 so you can install the certificates), the internet was painless to use, it sync'd fine with my desktop PC’s at home and the office, the camera is a bit weak, but overall it’s a cracking little phone.
So the killer question is would I put my money down on this, the answer is YES! As a cost thing, the worst price on the T-Mobile site at the moment is £80 for the phone, then £15 per month for line rental then £7.50 for unlimited data, or get the phone free for £18.75 per month.
So to conclude, if your on a budget and want a PDA/Phone get the Compact2, if your after cheap data I would say have a chat with T-Mobile, and if you’re a executive at one of the other networks, your punters have gone to T-Mobile and you need to get a data plan which doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
For more information and maybe to buy the Compact2 check out http://www.tmobile.co.uk
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Windows Mobile Reviews 
