Home page » Mobile Devices

Search:

Refine search for Mobile Devices

Apple’s magical iPhone may currently be wowing the tech world, but the fact is that it won’t be available on British shores until practically the end of the year – a long time in technology terms. That leaves plenty of time for products that are actually here now to make their mark, such as the XDA Orbit from O2 and the MDA Compact III from T-Mobile.

While they might not be as sleek or sexy as the iPhone, 02 and T-Mobile have achieved something rather special with these phones, at least compared to the rest of the current market’s offerings.

Both are small format Windows Mobile Pocket PCs with SIM support, both are available with the excellent CoPilot navigation software and, joy of joys, both have GPS antennae built in – something you won’t be seeing on the iPhone. Both devices are made by HTC which has its own, non operator specific version called the HTC P3300.

At first glance the O2 XDA Orbit and T-Mobile MDA Compact III could be considered clones of each other. But that isn’t quite true, and so, for a change, I’m going to put them head to head and take a look at how they fare in four important aspects:

- Look and feel
- Core specifications
- Extras
- Performance and battery life

Look and Feel

Both the XDA Orbit and MDA Compact III are small Pocket PCs. Physically they look different, but their dimensions and general design are similar. For example, the respective companies quote that the XDA Orbit measures 108 x 58 x 16.8mm and weighs 129g while the MDA Compact III comes in at 108 x 58 x 16mm and weighs 160g.

Intrigued by the weight variance I stuck both devices onto my scales and they both came out 134g. Go figure.

There are significant differences in design, but also significant similarities. The screens are identical being touch sensitive, displaying 65,000 colours at 240 x 320 pixels and measuring 2.8 diagonal inches.

The general Pocket PC look and feel prevails, and both the XDA Orbit and MDA Compact III share a superb combination of wheel and miniature trackball. The miniature trackball is very similar to that found in the BlackBerry Pearl. You rotate it under the thumb to navigate and press it to make selections. A blue backlight illuminates its otherwise white colour when in use.

If the mini trackball is borrowed from notebook computing, the wheel is rather more in the mobile music player genre. Rotate it under the thumb to scroll up and down the screen.

Add your comment

© 2003-2008 TrustedReviews | About Us | Contact Us | Legal | Privacy | RSS