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following all the “hype” around the new Shadow, I thought I would give it a try. I was planing to upgrade for a while, but wanted to wait until the “right one” comes along. I thought the shadow would be it, but I was dead wrong.
Yes, it looks very impressive. yes, it’s “neo” interface is cool and even easy to navigate, and yes – on paper its list of features is impressive. But that is pretty much it.
Before I decided to get the Shadow, I did my research – I think I read everything available on line about this phone. Two main issues kept coming up: slow processor and very short battery life. Wanting to get the shadow, I convinced my self that other reviewers just didn’t know what they were doing: they left their WiFI and blue tooth on all time, they left many processes running in the background, in short – self convincing at its best.
I took the Shadow for the 14 days trail period, and after less then a week it was clear that it was going back.
I wont even go into all of the problems (and there are quite a few), just that after a few days I had to say to myself “hold on buddy, you need to clear your head from all this gadgets stuff and go back to basics”, which was true: I am a serious tech fun, but at the end of the day I wanted first and for most a phone! and at this point the Shadow simply does not deliver!
I want a phone that I can put in my pocket and know that it is there when I need it, without being concerned all the time if I can make it to the next plug to recharge (Yes – the battery life is ridiculesly short). I want to be able to hear the person on the other end of the line clearly, without turning the volume all the way up, and even then looking for a quite corner (and yes – I did take the plastic cover off the earpiece)
I talked to T mobile reps. several times and hit a wall. obviously, they are aware of these problems, since they are pretty much on every review, but all they did was to try and explain to me that “if you want a small smart phone, you need to compromise” are you kidding me? I am not interested in the physics behind the issue! if you can’t make it to work properly, don’t market it and that’s it. A phone that at best holds a charge for a day is simply not acceptable, no matter how many bells and whistles you add to it.
the end? I brought the Shadow back, got to hear the sales rap. telling the lady on the other side of the line, at t mobile, that they must do something about these issues, since its the third Shadow people return during a single day, and took a Nokia 6263. there is no way around it – Nokia where and apparently still are, the best Phones! sturdy, good size, great battery life, excellent sound quality, and on top of all that – this phone can do anything the shadow does, in an easier, more elegant way – e-mails, IM, pics, video, web surfing, music playing, excellent “predictive text”, and even a radio – simply great.
don’t fall for all the commotion – get a decent real phone, not a toy.
Yes, this phone has some good features, but to use them regularly you will be recharging it 2 to 3 times a day. I bought this phone to be mobile. If I wanted to be plugged in all the time I would have kept my Razr and used my laptop for email and internet. T-Mobile says there is no issue with the phone or the battery and will not send me a new battery without charging me $30+ and probably extending my contract. If you have to buy a t-mobile smartphone, get the Motorola Que or a Blackberry. Stay away from this one. I didn’t want to even give it one star, but Amazon won’t let me, so be advised my true rating of this item is less than one star.
Rating: 1 / 5
Not only are other reviewers correct: it freezes, programs keep running until you go to the task manager and exit them each individually, and battery life is beyond awful, but the list continues. If using the calendar aspect, as I was syncing with Outlook, when the alerts come up and the phone is shut, opening it makes them disappear. The only way to acknowledge them and snooze or dismiss is to wait another few minutes (with the phone open) until they appear again. Worst of all my battery would hold NO charge after about a week and a half. I was able to use it for about another week, as long as it was plugged in, but then even that stopped. So in less than 3 weeks it was completely non-functional, trash, a complete waste. Amazon’s return policy was already past. Oh, and it didn’t come set up for new service either. I waited 3 hours for the text with my phone number (as the included paperwork described), but finally had to phone the provider, T-Mobile, who had to start from scratch for the service which took over an hour. Now I have no phone, but still have to pay for the service!!!
Rating: 1 / 5
When I first received this phone for a birthday gift, I thought “WOW what a great gift/awesome phone etc.” It worked fine initially…fast forward to the present and 4 phones later…I am about to get my 5th phone as the fourth phone stopped working.
I put up with the terrible battery life and all the other cons. I even loved it in spite of them. However, going on to my fifth phone…I have to say, I will never buy another HTC product again.
Let’s list the problems with my last phones (keep in mind I have never dropped them, spilled anything on them and I treat them with the utmost care) [I work customer service at a tech place so I know about hardware]:
- Buttons mysteriously stop working….permanently
- It stops being able to make phone calls….permanently
- The screen goes black and you cannot get out of this
- After some error, you cannot exit a call by hanging up…only restarting the phone (really now)
- It can no longer locate “signal” despite the fact I have not gone anywhere…it claims the sim card does not work (works just fine tried it on another phone)
- AND MORE!
I am so fed up with this phone that I would have literally run it over with my care by now if T-Mobile did not need me to send it back to get a replacement.
Windows Mobile 6 has a lot of improvements over 5, but it still takes some navigation to get to some things. Recently upgraded the ROM to 1.11 via T-Mobile support, which had some tweaks that improved battery life a bit. Still can’t get it to sync with Exchange Server over GPRS, though it works fine over WiFi (server issue, maybe?), but everything else is good..nice keyboard, not a bad camera, large contact and calendar capabilites, good web browsing for a phone, ActiveSync mostly works very well, syncs with Exchange fine (except for the DirectPush issue, which I think will get solved), and more…T-Mobile does indeed have good customer support, probably the best in the cell phone biz that I know of, and I’ve worked with a lot of them. So even they can’t help me solve the GPRS/Exchange sync issue I don’t think I’ll have a problem getting a credit for the GPRS fees I’ve run up, not that they amount to much.
Rating: 4 / 5
February 8th, 2010 at 19:15
following all the “hype” around the new Shadow, I thought I would give it a try. I was planing to upgrade for a while, but wanted to wait until the “right one” comes along. I thought the shadow would be it, but I was dead wrong.
Yes, it looks very impressive. yes, it’s “neo” interface is cool and even easy to navigate, and yes – on paper its list of features is impressive. But that is pretty much it.
Before I decided to get the Shadow, I did my research – I think I read everything available on line about this phone. Two main issues kept coming up: slow processor and very short battery life. Wanting to get the shadow, I convinced my self that other reviewers just didn’t know what they were doing: they left their WiFI and blue tooth on all time, they left many processes running in the background, in short – self convincing at its best.
I took the Shadow for the 14 days trail period, and after less then a week it was clear that it was going back.
I wont even go into all of the problems (and there are quite a few), just that after a few days I had to say to myself “hold on buddy, you need to clear your head from all this gadgets stuff and go back to basics”, which was true: I am a serious tech fun, but at the end of the day I wanted first and for most a phone! and at this point the Shadow simply does not deliver!
I want a phone that I can put in my pocket and know that it is there when I need it, without being concerned all the time if I can make it to the next plug to recharge (Yes – the battery life is ridiculesly short). I want to be able to hear the person on the other end of the line clearly, without turning the volume all the way up, and even then looking for a quite corner (and yes – I did take the plastic cover off the earpiece)
I talked to T mobile reps. several times and hit a wall. obviously, they are aware of these problems, since they are pretty much on every review, but all they did was to try and explain to me that “if you want a small smart phone, you need to compromise” are you kidding me? I am not interested in the physics behind the issue! if you can’t make it to work properly, don’t market it and that’s it. A phone that at best holds a charge for a day is simply not acceptable, no matter how many bells and whistles you add to it.
the end? I brought the Shadow back, got to hear the sales rap. telling the lady on the other side of the line, at t mobile, that they must do something about these issues, since its the third Shadow people return during a single day, and took a Nokia 6263. there is no way around it – Nokia where and apparently still are, the best Phones! sturdy, good size, great battery life, excellent sound quality, and on top of all that – this phone can do anything the shadow does, in an easier, more elegant way – e-mails, IM, pics, video, web surfing, music playing, excellent “predictive text”, and even a radio – simply great.
don’t fall for all the commotion – get a decent real phone, not a toy.
Rating: 1 / 5
February 8th, 2010 at 21:40
Yes, this phone has some good features, but to use them regularly you will be recharging it 2 to 3 times a day. I bought this phone to be mobile. If I wanted to be plugged in all the time I would have kept my Razr and used my laptop for email and internet. T-Mobile says there is no issue with the phone or the battery and will not send me a new battery without charging me $30+ and probably extending my contract. If you have to buy a t-mobile smartphone, get the Motorola Que or a Blackberry. Stay away from this one. I didn’t want to even give it one star, but Amazon won’t let me, so be advised my true rating of this item is less than one star.
Rating: 1 / 5
February 8th, 2010 at 23:57
Not only are other reviewers correct: it freezes, programs keep running until you go to the task manager and exit them each individually, and battery life is beyond awful, but the list continues. If using the calendar aspect, as I was syncing with Outlook, when the alerts come up and the phone is shut, opening it makes them disappear. The only way to acknowledge them and snooze or dismiss is to wait another few minutes (with the phone open) until they appear again. Worst of all my battery would hold NO charge after about a week and a half. I was able to use it for about another week, as long as it was plugged in, but then even that stopped. So in less than 3 weeks it was completely non-functional, trash, a complete waste. Amazon’s return policy was already past. Oh, and it didn’t come set up for new service either. I waited 3 hours for the text with my phone number (as the included paperwork described), but finally had to phone the provider, T-Mobile, who had to start from scratch for the service which took over an hour. Now I have no phone, but still have to pay for the service!!!
Rating: 1 / 5
February 9th, 2010 at 00:00
When I first received this phone for a birthday gift, I thought “WOW what a great gift/awesome phone etc.” It worked fine initially…fast forward to the present and 4 phones later…I am about to get my 5th phone as the fourth phone stopped working.
I put up with the terrible battery life and all the other cons. I even loved it in spite of them. However, going on to my fifth phone…I have to say, I will never buy another HTC product again.
Let’s list the problems with my last phones (keep in mind I have never dropped them, spilled anything on them and I treat them with the utmost care) [I work customer service at a tech place so I know about hardware]:
- Buttons mysteriously stop working….permanently
- It stops being able to make phone calls….permanently
- The screen goes black and you cannot get out of this
- After some error, you cannot exit a call by hanging up…only restarting the phone (really now)
- It can no longer locate “signal” despite the fact I have not gone anywhere…it claims the sim card does not work (works just fine tried it on another phone)
- AND MORE!
I am so fed up with this phone that I would have literally run it over with my care by now if T-Mobile did not need me to send it back to get a replacement.
What a piece of crap. F you HTC.
Rating: 1 / 5
February 9th, 2010 at 01:22
Windows Mobile 6 has a lot of improvements over 5, but it still takes some navigation to get to some things. Recently upgraded the ROM to 1.11 via T-Mobile support, which had some tweaks that improved battery life a bit. Still can’t get it to sync with Exchange Server over GPRS, though it works fine over WiFi (server issue, maybe?), but everything else is good..nice keyboard, not a bad camera, large contact and calendar capabilites, good web browsing for a phone, ActiveSync mostly works very well, syncs with Exchange fine (except for the DirectPush issue, which I think will get solved), and more…T-Mobile does indeed have good customer support, probably the best in the cell phone biz that I know of, and I’ve worked with a lot of them. So even they can’t help me solve the GPRS/Exchange sync issue I don’t think I’ll have a problem getting a credit for the GPRS fees I’ve run up, not that they amount to much.
Rating: 4 / 5