Ask The Admin

Ok Boys and Girls,
Commodore 64 is back to finish his thoughts on a great device, all things considered.
Firstly, I want to delve into my choice of title for this, and the last post. I truly believe that Wizard is the device that started it all. In my opinion, it was the first device with wifi, gprs, mini- sd expandable Windows Mobile device with a slide out full qwerty keyboard that was actually accessible, price wise. I bought my first one for $250 after rebate and I think that price point is the ceiling for what is generally accessible to working schlubs such as myself. And most of all, it was the phone that started it all for me. My prior phone was a Sidekick, which I don't put in the same categorization as the 8125, simply for the lack of open source availability and pretty much unexpandable platform. Because of the 8125 I am so much more aware of the plethora of open source solutions for this platform and OS. It's kind of enlightening.
On to the list of gripes, keeping in mind I don't have the phone in front of me, and will only speak of the issues that stand out the most, while the phone is out of sight and out of mind.

Minuses(-)
- Send button is too close to the qwerty keys making for many a truncated email/text message (this is the first issue I noticed, ever). I'm talking about the 2 variable action buttons above the keyboard
- OS reacts slowly with the hardware, things on this phone just don't happen when you touch a button, but rather get 'buffered' and almost always happen a few moments later, very not tight in my opinion.
- Calls are not sacred. I think that since this is a communication device, and most likely a user's sole mobile device, since that's what HTC is trying to accomplish I'm sure; this device should display some sort of inclination towards phone calls. Basically if the phone's memory is tied up doing something else, its possible, in my experience that an incoming call will get sent to voicemail, or simply not get noticed by the phone. Also, if trying to attempt an outgoing call while the phone is crunching some numbers, it takes a while until the phone app appears. I believe this device should first and foremost be a phone, and second a programming platform to run apps and accomplish certain tasks, app wise. After all, people depend on their phones in a clinch, and when the Wizard didn't come through for me, I felt almost alienated($250 worth).
- The camera, oh God, the camera. It's a travesty. My nieces $40 digital built in RAM camera has such better resolution than this phone. My fiance's Blackjack has a crystal clear camera compared to the Wizard. I mean you cant even discern faces sometimes, and this has been the same with each of my 3 iterations of this phone, so it's no accident. I don't consider it a camera phone, should have just made it lighter and thinner rather than half-assing a camera for competition's sake and a marketing bullet.
- Switching orientation - very slow sometimes, since this is an inherent part of the hardware, I think this feature should carry a certain amount of sacredness as well, memory and speed wise.
- Original version of the phone had a Mini SD glitch. Every time I pulled out the Mini-sd card while the unit was turned on, and subsequently re-inserted the card, it would be renamed to Storage Card2, and then Storage Card3 and so on. This means that all the timeI spent moving the PIE cache and installing apps and generally optimizing the unit to make more use of the memory card in its minute to minute tasks was destroyed, and it wouldn't let me rename back to the original name (Storage Card) until a later update which apparently resolved this. Now it's ok, but for a while it was a hassle.
- Screen gets oily from touching my face and ears
- Not comfortable ear wise.
- Bulky, thick and heavy - though for the amount of features, quantified with the time of release, it was actually considered a pretty tight package - things have progressed since then so take what you will away with you from this one
- needs more ram, 64 megs ram and 128 megs of on board storage. Not enough when the OS takes up roughly half of each in it's own requirements.
- Last but certainly the biggest problem - The famous 8125 battery drain glitch. Seems the battery needs the OS to get its charge routed to it from the mini-usb. Not enough charge - No OS. No OS - No charging. You do the math. A vicious circle which results in a stubbornly dead device which required jumping thru hoops to get it back up and running again. I wont take you thru all my trials and tribulations in this article, but let's just say I've ended up with a mini usb power adapter, with the business end cut off, wires stripped and exposed, at the ready to jump start my phone manually if necessary. Case in point, can't let this phone totally die. BTW anybody that's currently having this problem can email us at info at asktheadmin dot com, or leave a comment below for one of the various solutions to this common problem which resulted from a logical error on the part of HTC and their integration of WM5 with the power scheme on this device. Hey, maybe my next blog in this series will be the solution to the 8125 battery drain issue. LET'S SEE SOME COMMENTS AND I'LL THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE.
Peace
Commodore 64 (the one you played Bruce Lee on)