Eten M500 - Part III - Usability Benchmarks

Eten M500 Pocket PC Review Part III - Usability & Benchmarks Supplier : SmartDevicesDirect.com Manufacturer: Eten Product : Eten M500 Pocket Pc Colour : Black/Silver Cost : £299 ex vat; £351.32 inc VAT Supplier Product Web Site: Eten M500 PocketPC Home Page : SmartDevicesDirect Welcome to the third and final part of the ETEN M500 Review here at 4WM! This part concentrates on usability and benchmarks. The usability angle will look at the device in action, quality of the camera output and anything I may have missed in parts I & II , whereas the benchmarking aspect will pit the M500 against a variety of competitor’s devices in the Pocket PC space. As with the previous parts, many thank to Nick France & Smart Devices Direct for providing the ETEN M500 Review unit for Tekguru!! Usability As we saw in the previous part of the review, the M500 comes seriously loaded with extra functionality when compared with other PocketPC devices straight out of the box. ETEN’s forward thinking continues in the usability stakes, with some nice touches being included to enable the user to get the most from the device! The next section takes a look at some of those usability enhancements. The M500 comes with some of the applications & shortcuts grouped into folders, which should make locating common functionality a lot simpler, especially for the first time user of a PocketPC Phone Edition Device. The default groups are Multimedia, Phone, Utilities & Voice Commander. First up for a mention is the Multi-Media folder. No prizes for guessing what this folder houses, yes, you’ve got it, the multi-media applications. I won’t say any more here, as I covered these applications in part II! The Phone folder provides us with a little more in the usability stakes. In addition to grouping the links for the core phone applications together, the M500 also provides shortcuts enabling the user to jump straight to the messaging application at the create SMS screen, or jump straight to the Speed Dial screen to make a call, without loading the phone application first. The last in the folders group is the Utilities folder. As with the others the Utilities folder contains shortcuts to the Backup, Format Flashdisk, M-Desk & Self Test applications, as well as a link to the initial configuration wizard. All in all, ETEN have provided quite a good structure in grouping the various applications together, something that I feel will benefit the new user as they get used to navigating around the device. Another interesting aspect of the ETEN that I didn’t cover in the last part of the review is the Self Test application. The application itself is quite simple to use, just select which tests you wish to run and click on the Start button. After pressing Start, the application takes you through the test cycle, some of the tests, such as the Notifications, Touch Panel & Buttons require user intervention to complete, the rest auto-complete on their own, and once completed, the result is displayed As you can see from my tests, the Button test was failed, don’t worry, there isn’t anything wrong with M500, I simply pressed the wrong button during the test, but thought I’d leave it in to illustrate the point!! Once the test cycle is complete, you are offered the option of saving the results to a file, which is then stored in the My Documents directory. I’m not convinced of the applications usefulness, I would imagine that if you had a problem, you’d know about it before running these tests, which may negate the point of running them, although running the tests would confirm your suspicions. As promised in part II of the review, I’ve included a selection of pictures taken using the M500 so that you can get a feel for the quality of the included 1.3 Megapixel Camera. The above pictures were taken in daylight, and in my opinion, aren’t too bad. The close of the car shows the limitations in the digital zoom in it being quite blocky, but both photographs of my car where taken from exactly the same distance, so for me, the zoom was pretty impressive! Another interesting point about the M500 is in how the zoom is activated, on my MDA Compact, the joypad (or is that D-pad) is used to control zoom, not so on the Eten, you use the volume slider to zoom in & out!! The photo's can be clicked on to view a larger image! Unfortunately, the camera didn’t fare so well in lower light conditions! As the picture of my Jabra Bluetooth headset shows, I didn’t find that the built in flash was much use at all, although that could be down to the way that I was using it, as my camera skills & knowledge are quite limited!! I did try to get some decent shots using the flash, but didn’t really succeed! The photo's can be clicked on to view a larger image! An important factor to consider in the usability of a PocketPC Phone Edition device is the Phone functionality itself! And I am glad to report that the ETEN M500 doesn’t disappoint in this respect. The M500’s Phone unit is a Quad band affair, one of the first Quad band devices I’ve seen, which means that it will pretty much work everywhere that you take it, so no more purchasing another phone to use in the USA!! The call quality I have experienced with the ETEN has easily surpassed that of my original XDA-II, and is very much on a par with my current personally owned PE device, the MDA Compact. The clarity and volume of speech is very good, no straining here to understand what someone is saying to you, and I’ve had no complaints regarding the quality of my outgoing speech from those with whom I have conversed whilst using the device, and believe me, I do use my mobile extensively day to day, as it is my primary means of contact in both my business & personal life. One last thing I forgot to mention is that you can use your Bluetooth headset in conjunction with the Voice Commander software for voice dialling, although I achieved roughly the same results as described in part II when using the headset in this manner! Another facet of the M500 that I didn’t cover in the first two parts of the review is the internal Flash Disk. I must admit, I was surprised once again as I was with my MDA compact, in that the on-board RAM is only 64Mb. I needn’t have worried, the M500 comes with a much welcomed 84Mb internal FlashDisk, just waiting for you to install all your apps without using precious runtime memory, well, all those apps that will install on internal storage that is….. The only issue I noticed with this is that WebIS Mail does load a lot slower from the FlashDisk, but you are adequately warned about this during the install process, so you can’t say fairer than that! Once loaded though, the application performs sweetly!! During my extensive ‘road-testing’ of the ETEN M500, it has continued to impress, the device has handled everything I’ve thrown at it!! The response from the unit has been quick & snappy, and my personal impression is that on the whole, it is somewhat faster than my MDA Compact. The device has had no problems running applications such as WebIS Mail, Pocket Informant 2005 & The new TomTom Navigator 5 as depicted. One thing I noticed is that the TomTom map scrolls incredibly smoothly on the M500, so I can’t wait to get it installed onto my MDA Compact to see how it fares there! Which leads me neatly into the next section……. Benchmarks This next section is pretty self-explanatory. All the benchmarks have been collected using the excellent Spb Benchmark Version 1. I’ve just heard that version 1.5 is now available from the Spb website, although I didn’t have time to use it during this review, and I’m not up to speed on the changes, if any that the upgrade to 1.5 brings. Indices CPU Graphics File System Usability & Benchmarks Conclusion As I stated previously, the M500 is an incredibly usable device, with every aspect of the design being slanted towards making the most of the functionality and putting at the user’s fingertips. ETEN have done a fine job here, and I think most people would be at home using the ETEN, probably more so than other current PocketPC Phone Edition devices out there! The Spb Benchmark output speaks for volumes for the device, the M500 is certainly one high powered hombre, coming out on top in all the benchmark indices, which just reinforces my opinion that the M500 is the fastest PocketPC I’ve used to date. Well Done ETEN on producing a truly phenomenal device, it has been a pleasure to review it!! Now, the question on everyone’s lips is, which is better…….. The HTC Magician or the ETEN M500… And I must admit, at first I was still smitten with my beloved HTC Magician, but the sheer power and the usability of the M500 with no customisation, plus the 84Mb internal flash disk is a big draw, but on the other hand, the Magician wins hands down on style, being incredibly svelte & sexy, and slimmer than the M500, and between handling the devices, the M500 is noticably the bulkier of the two! It’s a split decision here, but, I can’t make up my mind…… If I had my way, I’d have them both!! But if sheer power is your game, you could do worse than choose the M500! Overall 4WinMobile Rating: 93%