Pharos 137 phone

This phone is OK, but when you take it out of the box be prepared to apply updates to its operating system. If you are not familiar with Windows Mobile you may have a bad experience.

Once the current suite of updates are applied the phone is pretty tolerable to use.

* The motion sensor support is flaky. It will work when it decides to.

* Do NOT hard reset this phone from the control panel unless the memory card and your SIM have been removed. I haven't experienced this but there are numerous warnings that on hard reset this phone will wipe both the memory card and your SIM (not sure if that's just contacts or the bits that identify your service!)

* Updates to the phone software may corrupt the SD card. Take it out to be safe. They've also had mis-cues with the updates not working in Windows Vista.

* If you're accustomed to GSM voice and EDGE data in marginal signal locations (i.e. on your previous phone that worked just fine at a particular spot) - you are giving that up by buying this phone.

Pharos seems to be quite responsive to user feedback. So far issues are being fixed.

Pharos 137 Phone

I got another new toy I don't really need this week. Of course, I couldn't live without it now.

The specs for the Pharos 137 are widely available, just google 'em. I could write it all down but it would look like an eye chart. In short its the first Windows Mobile phone that supports T-Mobile USA's odd choice of frequency for a 3g mobile network.

The phone has some very appealing features. A GPS that gets its position fix pretty quickly (outdoors, naturally) and navigation software included. A VERY high resolution screen as well.

In a 3g coverage area the phone is a great little media toy. Slingplayer Mobile works flawlessly to bring in TV from home - say, to the office :) The streaming audio options that can be made to work on Windows Mobile work quite well - this may provoke me to finally ditch XM/Sirius, which I've been contemplating since their recent price increase. Viewing as well as upload to YouTube are supported. Xtube does not seem to be supported though I didn't try very hard. (It might work with that Skyfire browser)

The phone has one feature that may never work - the built in phone application supports "video calling." This is the reason for the phone's two cameras - one is front-facing. T-Mobile would have to implement support for it and even then a video call would only be successful to another 3g phone supporting video calls. Given that their own models don't support it nor does anything upcoming, don't hold your breath. But it's a button you can push all the same.

Awesome phone really! And yes, it works all over the world for low-speed data and voice calls.

I got a google voice phone number...

I finally got an "invite" for a Google voice account. Unfortunately the only numbers available in the Phoenix metro area are area code 623. I don't live anywhere near there and I don't WANT a 623 phone number, thanks...

But I got a neat number that spells something and is in a somewhat meaningful geographic area (to me at least). No, I'm not going to post what it is.

The service looks to be very useful for getting around international text message charges to Canada :) T-Mobile charges like 15c per international message and this is free. Haven't tried to use it through the Windows mobile internet browser yet but that will come.

Shit economy + airport = :)

Ok, I suppose its a bad thing that the airport is utterly uncrowded on the evening before a holiday weekend. But it is! It's kinda nice.