O2 XDA Venn Review - A week in my life!

Introduction It's been a pretty barren year if you're a Windows Mobile fan and a customer of O2. While the market in general has excited us with impressive new devices featuring the state of the art Snapdragon chipset and awesome sequels like the Diamond2 and Touch Pro 2 there has been very little to get excited about from Telefonica's UK SP. It was then, with high hopes of a WM6.5 device tidal wave, we looked to the Autumn and almost missed the XDA Venn as it stealthily krept into O2's product catalogue. The reason for such a low key debut is unclear, but then the device itself seems a slightly eccentric selection for a company that typically brings us Windows Mobile's big guns. Being a fan of the Windows Mobile Standard platform (Smartphone to us regular Joes) I decided we needed to see first hand why so little noise has been made about what looks like it could be a cracking little messager. Read on to find out!

Thanks go out to O2 for providing us with a review sample.
For more information on the O2 XDA Venn go to the O2 website at http://xda.o2.co.uk

As is the new trend with these reviews I'll produce a day by day commentary of a week’s use of the O2 XDA Venn along with photos/screen grabs and my thoughts as I go along. Feel free to ask questions, I'll endeavour to satisfy your need for detail. I'll use this for a more formally structured review you're all used to once the week is through.

Day 1: Unboxing & First Impressions

After I'd wrestled for several minutes to break into the courier branded, child unfriendly, impossible to open plastic bag I finally rescued the Venn box from within. If you've owned an XDA Zest you'll recognise the packaging as it's very similar. For those of you that haven't seen it before there's a simple (compared to O2's exotic secret drawer boxes of old) gatefold type box which is nicely decorated with O2's electric blue and black livery.

The box inside is split into 3 sections with the device on the left, the 3 piece adapter on the right and the USB lead, headset and pouch in the middle. The Warranty card, Quick start guide and software CD sit on top of the centre and right sections.

The software and documentation is a little lighter than we are used to, but lets face it does anyone actually read any of it? No? I thought not. The software comes on a single CD and it's interesting to note that without it I couldn't install my Venn to sync to my PC. None of my machines automatically discovered the device or started WMDC until the software was loaded so don't sling the CD out just yet!

The accessories themselves are reasonably standard fare, but are at the better end of the scale. The headset and USB cable seem of a slightly higher standard than usual, and the pouch is a nice soft affair not unlike something you'd put a pair of glasses into. I'm guessing the soft fluffy outer is designed to double as a screen cleaner and wiping of those pesky fingerprints that attach so easily to shiney devices. The power adapter too is better than the bricks of old and as you can see comes with both UK and European folding attachments to a USB block.

Going back to the USB charger and the headset, you can see from a closer look at the charge and sync socket that it is a non standard proprietary socket. At first I thought it was the first device with the new Micro USB standard connector on, but sadly this is not the case. As I said previously the USB cable and headset are of a slightly height standard than usual, with the USB cable sporting a spring loaded clip mechanism to ensure there are no unwarranted disconnections. The headset is not that unusual for a bundled accessory but it is nice none the less.

Ok, that's all the packaging gumph out the way let's get down to it. When you first open the box the first thing you'll notice about the Venn is the paint job. The term "High Gloss" was designed to describe this device. I think it's without a doubt the shiniest device I've ever seen. As the light changes and the gloss dims you'll notice the beautiful metallic blue/green finish. It's almost turquoise when the light hits it just right and the flecks in the paint sparkle. Very nice indeed.

The device feels solid enough in the hand, but not overly heavy. The Venn isn't small by Smartphone standards, it's relatively short but very thick. It's not heavy, but then you couldn't call it light either. I think solid is as good a description as I can conjure without you having held the device itself.

The real draw of the Venn for most of it's suitors is going to be the combination of both keyboard and keypad. The two way slide that exposes the keyboard or the keypad (but not both at the same time) feels very sturdy which ever way it slides. I'd have no worries about it getting sloppy. The keys on the keyboard have a good travel distance and a nice solid click. My first impressions of device use are very positive in keyboard mode but not so for the keypad mode. Again the slide that reveals the keypad is nice but the actual keypad itself I'm not so fond of. Again there's a good travel and click but the keys themselves are not separated. This feels a bit strange to me. I'll keep you posted as the review goes on with respect to this but at the moment I'm loving the keyboard and am relatively non-plussed by the keypad.

Build quality of the Venn is generally very good. As I've said the slide mechanism seems sturdy and the front hardware and keyboard buttons have a good solid click. The dpad also seems to have a good travel distance although I'm unsure as to why it's round. I'd have preferred a square dpad. I like the way the all the external ports are covered. There's nothing worse than keeping your phone in your pocket and having to clear out fluff before you can charge it!

To finish this first day’s commentary I think I need to say something about the O2 XDA Venn's name. I think most of us who've followed the XDA range over the years have wondered by what process the devices are issued with their XDA moniker, but Venn? For me, Venn conjures images of an old Geography Teacher (Mr. Venn) and Venn diagrams, a mathematical excuse to use a Spiro graph! What happened to exciting sounding names like Stellar, Ignito and Zest? Venn indeed.......

Day 2: Powering up and setting up!

Ok, with all the boxy stuff out the way we'll get onto the real meat of things. At the risk of getting off to a bad start, I haven't got past powering the device up, and already I have a gripe. It's the location of the power button that I have issue with, or rather what it' replacing. Ordinarily the power toggle has it's own hardware but on the Venn it shares it's functionality with that of the end call (red phone) button. Now, usually the end call button long press function is used to lock the device. Happy days, except not this time. "It's a slider" I hear you cry, surely the slide will lock and unlock the device won't it? Well, no actually it doesn't. It's criminal but the lock feature is tagged onto the record button on the left hand side. Oh well, things can only get better.

Hmmm... I've powered the device on and it's not getting better, rather it's getting worse. As the O2 "bubbles" logo is being displayed the worst, most awful jingle in the world ever is played. It sounds out of tune and too slow. It's about the worst first impression of a device I've ever had. Seriously O2, on future ROM versions the start-up jingle (and the shutdown one for that matter, it's just as bad) has to be dropped.

I'll take a little step backwards at this point and point out a couple of the good things I've noticed today as well. To start with, when you do first power up the device the screen leaps out at you. Although it's only QVGA the brightness and clarity is excellent, even if the resolution is a little under par compared to what we've become accustomed to.

The next thing you'll notice is the sliding panel interface that signifies you're looking at a Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard operating system. There are a lot of people who find the Standard (Smartphone) operating system too restrictive compared to the Professional (Pocket PC) OS. Personally although I agree it is less impressive from an aesthetic and functional perspective the easy to use dpad control system can be a godsend if you're not looking to customise your device too much. You can still tweak the OS but some of the really nice graphical front ends we've come to love on Professional like TouchFlo and SpB Mobile Shell are not available. That you do get is a real no messing back to basics OS that has changed very little since the Smartphone OS's inception. Having effectively said it's simplicity is one of it's strengths, and being a personal fan of Standard even I have to admit the 6.1 sliding panel facelift struggles to disguise the dated OS beneath.

If you've ever set up a Windows Smartphone before there will be very few surprises in store for you when it comes to configuring the Venn. The menu system is the same as it always was, so whether you're configuring and exchange email account it's all through the same old keypad friendly settings applet. The main bonus the Venn offers is that you get the ease of navigating through the settings menu with the keypad and then when it comes to entering text for say the Exchange settings you again have the advantage of using the keyboard. It's really this initial setup process where you'll be "exposed" to the raw Windows Mobile Standard OS the most and to be honest it's not inspirational stuff but it should be over quite quickly.

I've always been on for saving the best til last and today it's no difference. For me, an average days device use is about 20 minutes worth of calls, EAS with about 40 or 50 emails, 30 minutes of music using a Bluetooth stereo headset and 20 minutes or so of browsing. It's been two days now since I've charged the XDA Venn and the battery is still showing between 50% and 60%. Just in case you missed that the first time that's a Windows Mobile device with a projected battery life of 5 days from a single charge. 5 DAYS! That's just unprecedented. Wow. Oh, there's something I forgot to mention, that's 5 days with HSDPA enabled and connected too. To be honest, I'm not sure I believe it myself. I wonder if the charging fairies have been about...... I'm not sure about you folks but I'm getting quite interested to find out how far this bad boy will go on a single charge. Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Day 3: General thoughts on usage.

Now everything’s up and running I can finally get on with using the Venn in anger. Looking at the Homescreen for the first time and you can instantly see the pros and cons of the sliding panel layout. For most of us you have all the real-time information you need right there. Time, date, number of missed calls, SMS, emails, appointments and active profile, phew. It's all right there in front of you. The animation of the sliding panels offers a little eye candy but realistically it's all about function with only an after thought given to form. This in itself will divide opinion on the device as other than a half hearted attempt by HTC to bring their HTC home to the Standard OS there's really no other Homescreen options. If you like all your information right there than this isn't going to matter, but if you like it a little more aesthetically appealing then you'll be left wanting.

There is one little tweak that would give one last statistic that is important to a lot of people, and also make the clock panel a touch prettier, the weather. There are several weather panels available from different software houses but it's worth taking a look at, NRG MiniWeather which is available from XDA-Developers here NRG MiniWeather differs from the other weather options as you can see by adding the current weather into the clock panel. Very cool.

I've mentioned already that the device feels a little "chunky", but how does it compare to other devices? I've taken a few images to compare the Venn to some of the equivalent devices in it's class. To represent the Venn's competitors past and present we have the HTC S710 (In my opinion the best Smartphone ever) and the latest contender to the throne, HTC's S740. For the obligatory "device everyone knows the size of" category we have the Touch Diamond2.

As you can see from the profile shot all the devices wielding keyboards are significantly thicker than the Diamond2. Not shocks there, but from this angle you can see not only that the two HTC Smartphones are roughly the same thickness but also you can see the layers of hardware that make up the Venn. As you can see the extra width is from having the two middle layers represent both the keypad and keyboard as opposed to just one of them.

Disregarding the Diamond2 and focussing on the keyboards you can see the Venn is a very similar size and shape to the excellent S710 keyboard although the Venn has less space between the top row of keys and the screen than the HTC devices. Interestingly, from my own perspective I'd put the keyboards in order of merit going from the S710 as being the best, the Venn a touch behind it because of not having the gap between the screen and top row of keys or the Cap/FN indicators, and finally the S740 because I just find it nasty to use. I don't like keyboards with no space between the keys ordinarily (The Touch Pro is the exception to the rule). Another thing worth mentioning is that the keyboard has changed screen sides from the S710 to the S730 and Pantech have gone along with the newer configuration too. I'm not sure what prompted this change of direction but I'm currently finding it a little tricky to get used to.

Getting back to daily use experience I think we'll look at the communications aspect now. I found the call quality on the Venn to be pretty good and the volume levels across the whole device is better than average. You'll not be sleeping through these alarms! As far as Windows Mobile devices go it's one of the better devices for making and receiving calls. The vertical sliding action means that you get a good size and shape "phone mode" to hold to your ear which coupled with the keypad for physically punching in numbers not in your contacts makes outgoing calls a pleasure. While Pantech held off on a slide to unlock facility there is a slide to answer/hang up option which again adds to the calling experience by making it easier to accept and terminate calls.

With a device containing WM6.1 and a hardware keyboard you'd expect the messaging side of things to be pretty spot on and the Venn doesn't disappoint. If there's one thing that the Smartphone OS is good at it's email. The coupled with Exchange Active Sync on the software side of things the hardware keyboard as I've already mentioned is one of the better ones on the market and after just a few days training I'm finding myself rattling off emails left, right and centre. The number pad takes a little getting used to at first, as does the soft key position (left and right top corner of the keyboard), and I'd like a bit more space between the screen and keyboard. The keys are very nicely spaced however and give a nice reassuring click and feel when pressed. It's also much more natural to use the dpad with your right hand than your left too, in my opinion.

Finally for Day 3 another battery update. As I pointed out last time the battery use on the Venn has been exceptional so far. The first two days use depleted approximately 20% of the battery per day and this third day is no different. I continue to be amazed by the performance here to the point that after 3 whole days without so much as a sniff of a power source I'm looking at between 30% and 40% battery remaining. I'm not sure we're going to reach the 5th day but still, Kudos to the Venn for making it past the 2 day mark. The Venn has a 1320mAh battery which is pretty big compared to the HTC devices we've looked at in comparison, just a measly 1000mAh for the HTC S740 and a slightly better 1050mAh for the HTC S710. More tomorrow!

Day 4 - Media

Well, half way through day four now and it looks like I'm finally going to have to charge the battery. 4 and a half days from a Windows Mobile device, Standard or otherwise is exemplary. I'm not quite sure what Pantech/O2 have done to get this kind of performance from the device but it's certainly impressive. The battery is bigger than normal at 1320mAh and is more like the capacity you'd expect from a Professional (Touch screen) device than a Standard device. Even so, compare just about 2 days usage from something like the s740 and it's 1000mAh or so battery and the Venn is still something special.

I thought for this fourth day I'd concentrate on media and internet use from the device. The newer Professional devices that are on the market now and forthcoming with the launch of WM6.5 are very much media focussed. The Smartphone form factor generally with it's smaller, lower res, non touch screen is not so well suited to media use. I've always found the hardware keyboards make entering complex web addresses a breeze but the QVGA screen really lets down the device from a surfing perspective. If you really want to use the Venn to surf the web then you're basically stuck with Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) from the standard ROM although obviously you can choose to download a third party browser. PIE is ok, but to be honest it struggles with anything bar mobile formatted web pages. In my opinion you're probably looking at emergency internet usage only with the Venn.

The camera on Windows Mobile devices is typically less than spectacular. That said, I've seen some decent images captured on devices like the S710 and the Venn has an almost identically spec'ed camera. It's only 2 megapixel, but as we all know, it's not just about megapixels. In the case of the Venn though, I don't think you're going to get any shocks using the onboard camera. It works, it'll give you and emergency snap of your mate falling in a river or something, but you're not going to be blowing up anything and hanging it on your living room wall. It's probably a little better than the HTC equivalent, but as with the web browsing, I'd chalk this up to emergency use only. As with a lot of WM Standard devices there's no LED flash included either so you're essentially limited to well lit outdoor shots only.

While we're on the subject of internet access and browsing, I think it's a good time to examine one of the features we take for granted these days that Pantech have not included in the Venn. It might even be the devices relatively poor internet performance that there is no WiFi facility. It's interesting however that while there is no WiFi, there is HSDPA. I'd have thought the high speed access and WiFi go hand in hand. Maybe Pantech decided it was an either or situation? Either way, there's no WiFi. Personally I've never really found lack of WiFi an issue on a Standard device compared with a Professional one as I tend not to use internet much with them. That said, it is quite unusual for a device to not have WiFi these days. I think you'd need to assess this omission for yourself, but to me it's no big deal.

From an audio perspective I found the Venn to tick pretty much all the boxes. I use my Windows Mobile devices to listen to music quite a lot, about an hour a day on average. I cycle to work and back so my headphones of choice are Motorola S9's, which are Bluetooth audio compatible. Being wire free is a distinct advantage when you're on a bike, no cables to restrict your movement or get wrapped around anything. One of the first things I noticed was the Venn uses the Widcomm stack and software. Typically this means good volume, but not the best integration with WMP. As expected my music came through the headset loud and clear and retained much of the AVRCP functionality too. Good stuff. The Bluetooth signal was nice and strong as well so I had no pauses or break-ups to spoil my enjoyment either. The Venn has a standard MicroSDHC slot on the bottom of it so you can cram a lovely 32GB of musical madness onto your device should that be your wish.

While I'm on the subject of the MicroSD slot there's a couple of points I'd like to bring to your attention. Firstly, I love the location of the MicroSD slot. It's situated on the bottom edge of the device just below the call buttons. There's a cover over the slot too, which matches the lovely paintwork and will keep out any dust or dirt nasty’s from the device internals. On the down side I did find the slot a little tricky to use the first couple of times. It's the push in and click and then push to eject type mechanism that you just have to have fingernails for. If you're a bit of a closet nail chomper then getting the card in and out can be a bit of a game. You can try using the stylus but it's a skill that takes a while to master.

In this day and age you kind of expect all WM devices to come equipped with high speed internet access in one form or another. We've already noted that there's a lack of WiFi on the Venn but it does pack HSDPA should you require that little extra speed GSM can't offer. As I already pointed out, the web experience on this device is not exceptional so the HSDPA may be a little lost there. One feature the Venn would be very good at that uses HSDPA is for tethering a laptop. For this feature alone it would be superb.

In all honesty there are very few features that distinguish the Venn from many other WM Standard devices other than the dual slider and GPS. There are not many Standard devices on the market that have GPs, but then as I've recently found, there are not many Standard compatible GPS navigation programs either. In some cases you can use a mouse pointer type app with a regular PPC app, but this is really just a hack. I've eventually settled on just trying the GPS with Google Maps and Latitude to see how well it works. It didn't. I waited 30 minutes and didn't get a lock. Ok, I thought, I'll try ZorroGPS, but this didn't install on the device for some reason. I'll keep trying to find a GPS program to test it, but in the meantime we'll have to put this one down as a maybe.

Day 5 - Summary and Conclusions

I really like the XDA Venn. Although I think it personifies all that is bad with Windows Mobile Standard it also highlights the benefits very well too. The battery life and dual sliding keyboard make it the perfect messaging device and coming from a smaller manufacturer like Pantech it has a real "unique" appeal to it. Unfortunately, I think the Windows Mobile Standard OS (Smartphone) has had it's day, and it was a while ago. The GUI is looking very tired now and it's just too dated to offer any real challenge to the market's big guns in this modern era of WM Touch devices, iPhones and Androids. That said, while the size of the niche market the Venn will appeal to is diminishing it's still very much alive at the moment. For an Enterprise messenger, or a "going out phone" the Smartphone OS is easy to use and the non touch screen form factor is a lot more hardy than your, 1Ghz, Snapdragon packing, big screen, all in one powerhouse. The Venn isn't perfect, O2 have to do something about those jingles for a start, and I'm still not keen on the implementation of the keypad. I can't fathom whether there is GPS in there and whether it's enabled or not and the web surfing experience is not exactly state of the art. Having said all that it's nice looking and functionally it's spot on. Everyone will love the dual slider from both a gadget and practical perspective. The bottom line is there's a lot to like about the O2 XDA Venn if you're looking for a tool as opposed to a toy.

Pros and Cons

Beautiful metallic high gloss turquoise finish
Very nice keyboard
Solid feeling 2 way slide
Good selection of hardware buttons
All ports are covered
Keypad a bit plasticky but better than nothing
Awesome battery life even with HSDPA
Bright, Clear screen
Windows Mobile 6.1
Big battery
Loud volume throughout
Good call quality
Excellent Bluetooth range and quality (A2DP)
External MicroSD slot, but sticky
Voice Commander installed
Full WM Smartphone app set
HSDPA
Better than average camera

No slide to lock/unlock
Only QVGA
Very thick, generally not small
Proprietary Charge/Sync connector
Font too big on email
Slightly tricky lock mechanism
No WiFi
GPS seems poorly implemented



Detailed Specifications

From PDADB.net

Brand: O2
Manufacturer: Pantech Curitel
Hardware Designer: Pantech Curitel
Project Codename: Pantech Mustang 2
Release Date: July, 2009
Predecessor Model: Pantech DUO C810 (Pantech Mustang)

Physical_Attributes

Dimensions
(width x height x depth): 51 x 106 x 21.6 millimetres - 2 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
Bounding Volume: 116.8 cubecentimetres
Mass: 151 grams (battery included)

Software Environment

Embedded Operating System: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard
Operating System Kernel: Windows CE 5.2.19581

Microprocessor Chipset

CPU Clock: 528 MHz
CPU: Qualcomm MSM7201A
Width of Machine Word: 32 bit
CPU Core: ARM1136EJ-S
Instruction Set: ARMv6
Memory, Storage capacity
RAM type: SDRAM
RAM capacity: 128 MiB, 68MiB accessible
ROM type: Flash EEPROM
ROM capacity: 256 MiB

Graphical subsystem

Display Type: color transflective TFT display
Display Color Depth: 18 bit/pixel (262144 scales)
Display Diagonal: 2.4 " (61 millimetres)
Display Resolution: 240 x 320 (76800 pixels)
Viewable DisplaySize: 1.44 " x 1.92 " (36.6 x 48.8 millimetres)
Dot Pitch: 166.6 pixel/inch (0.1525 millimetre/pixel)

Audio:Subsystem

Audio Channel(s): stereo sound
Digital/Analog Converter
(Playing): 16 bit resolution
44100 Hz holding frequency
Microphone(s): mono sound
Loudspeaker(s): mono sound
Audio Output: Proprietary plug

Cellular Phone

Cellular Networks: GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS2100
Cellular Data Links: CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA
Cellular Antenna: Internal antenna
Call Alert: 64 -chord melody (polyphonic)
Vibrating Alert: Supported
Speakerphone : Supported
Phone Controller: Qualcomm MSM7201A (QDSP4000, QDSP5000)
SAR (head) GSM850: 0.467 W/kg
SAR (body) GSM850: 1.12 W/kg

Control Peripherals

Positioning Device: Not supported
Primary Keyboard: Slide-out QWERTY-type keyboard, 35 keys
Automatic keyboard backlight (upon press of any key)
Secondary Keyboard: Slide-out numeric phone keyboard, 12 keys
Automatic keyboard backlight (upon press of any key)
Directional Pad: Four-way (with action button)
Scroll Wheel: Rotary full area roller

Interfaces

Expansion Interfaces: microSD, microSDHC, TransFlash, SDIO
Supports High Capacity (SD 2.0/HC) memory cards with capacity of up to 32GB
USB: USB 2.0 client, Full-Speed (12Mbit/s)
Proprietary connector
Bluetooth (802.15): Bluetooth 2.0, Internal antenna
Wireless LAN/Wi-Fi (802.11): Not supported
Infrared Gate: Not supported

Multimedia Broadcast

Analog Radio: Not supported
Digital Media Broadcast: Not supported
Satellite Navigation
Built-in GPS module: Supported
GPS Protocol: NMEA 0183
GPS Antenna: Internal antenna
Complementary GPS Services: Assisted GPS
Navigation Chip(set): Qualcomm MSM7201A gpsOne

Built in Digital Camera

Sensor Type: CMOS sensor
Resolution: 1600 x1200 pixels (1.92MP)
Autofocus_(AF): Not supported
Optical Zoom: 1 x
Macro Mode: Not supported
Built-in Flash: Not supported
Camcorder: 320x240 pixels
Recordable Image Formats: JPG
Recordable Video Formats: 3GP, MPEG4

Power Supply

Battery Technology: Lithium-ion battery
Battery Build: removable
Battery Capacity: 1320 mAh
Additional Details
Additional Features:

* GPRS Class 10
* Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP)
* 3.5mm audio jack adapter included

Related-Page: http://xda.o2.co.uk/devices/xda_venn.jsp