beware the T Mobile MDA touch plus

[+kbootb]

There has been much talk on here about using mobile devices to hunt caches in the wild, with mobile internet and GPS built in.

 

Recently all the managers at work were issued with T Mobile MDA touch plus devices. Great, as many of these are desk bound jobs and those of us that are out in the 'wild' (schools) all day, have to use our own... good to get that off my chest.

 

Anyway, I had a play with the boss's one and thought this is good enough for me to look at one as an upgrade to my scratched and battered phone. I looked at the T Mobile website and they had 2 offers for this device, one had GPS SatNav CoPilot installed.

 

Excellent, I thought. And it would work out cheaper than my current deal, mean that I don't have to carry phone, SatNav and PDA everywhere I go. (Would still use ETrex for serious tupperware hunt, but MDA might do for an improptu hunt when at a course)

 

So I checked a few other websites in case there were any known problems and lo and behold....

 

It doesn't have a built in GPS

 

There are a number of posts on user forums saying that customer services are telling people that it does. Some people seem to have been given a separate Bluetooth GPS to work with it. Others were given the impression that they assumed you had your own Bluetooth unit to hand.

 

I contacted customer services who confirmed there is no GPS and gave me the phone number of Telenav to discuss this further.

 

How can they sell a device with SatNav on but no GPS receiver?

 

Still not sure what to get, but the O2 XDA looks like a front runner. Need to see how big this thing is.

[+The Bongtwashes]

Approx 11cm x 6cm x 1.75cm, we use them for work, but don't have the GPS enabled.

 

(sorry, that's refering to the O2 XDA Orbit, not the TMobile MDA)

Edited June 9, 2008 by The Bongtwashes

[+kbootb]

Approx 11cm x 6cm x 1.75cm, we use them for work, but don't have the GPS enabled.

 

(sorry, that's refering to the O2 XDA Orbit, not the TMobile MDA)

 

Thanks for that... but there's no substitute for going into the shop and actually holding the thing. Not sure I like touch screen only with no real buttons for text input. Anybody got comments on that?

[+Primitive Person]

Approx 11cm x 6cm x 1.75cm, we use them for work, but don't have the GPS enabled.

 

(sorry, that's refering to the O2 XDA Orbit, not the TMobile MDA)

 

Thanks for that... but there's no substitute for going into the shop and actually holding the thing. Not sure I like touch screen only with no real buttons for text input. Anybody got comments on that?

 

I've got an MDA Vario III, which has both built-in GPS, and a little fold-out keyboard. It's pretty tiny but surprisingly usable - I log most of my finds with this device as soon as I've tracked them down, and use it for blogging as well.

 

However, the battery life with GPS on is very poor, and more often than not I'll still use my trusty old Geko 201 for actually finding caches.

 

Lee

[+The Bongtwashes]

.... Not sure I like touch screen only with no real buttons for text input. Anybody got comments on that?

 

We use the touchscreen for text input for entering job reports, and I find it good for that, the thing I don't like is using the touchscreen for the phone keypad.

[+The Bouncy Boys]

I use an XDA mini S, it's quite old now but it does everything I need. It doesn't have a built in GPS so I have to use a bluetooth GPS, which I tend to think is better than using a built in device.

 

Why, well I can spend a day using Tomtom and memory map on a single charge. The battery on the GPSR is doing the bulk of the work, not the phone. Plus I have a phone pouch on my the shoulder strap of my ruck sack which I put the GPSR into, thus the receiver is alway pointing skyward, ideal when you are under tree cover. If it's raining I can keep my phone in a nice dry pocket until I need to steal a glance at it but can risk having the relatively cheap GPSR in the not so waterproof pouch on the shoulder strap keeping my track. I doubt I'd be able to do this if the phone had a built in GPSR I bet it will keep loosing its signal when buried deep into my waterproofs.

 

I get your point that T Mobile are miss selling the MDA touch but if it's cheap enough I'd say go for it. You may find a separate GPSR more useful than a built in one.