expert advice re windows mobile phone

Clowance

I have a t mobile vario 3 which cost a fortune about 18 months ago. The battery life is rubbish - discharges in a couple of days without being used at all, I make very few short phone calls and it is now unreliable - even when charged and in a good signal area when I try to dial out it just cuts itself off before connecting. The next day, I try again in the same room and it works! Meanwhile the rest of the phone (calc, word, excel etc) works fine.
So although I considered getting a new battery, I don't trust the phone anymore as it has let me down so often.
I would like a new phone with windows mobile but don't know what to get. Not too expensive and payg as contracts are a waste of money for my low usage.
Advice please?

Happy_Shrimper

Clowance wrote: »

I have a t mobile vario 3 which cost a fortune about 18 months ago. The battery life is rubbish - discharges in a couple of days without being used at all, I make very few short phone calls and it is now unreliable - even when charged and in a good signal area when I try to dial out it just cuts itself off before connecting. The next day, I try again in the same room and it works! Meanwhile the rest of the phone (calc, word, excel etc) works fine.
So although I considered getting a new battery, I don't trust the phone anymore as it has let me down so often.
I would like a new phone with windows mobile but don't know what to get. Not too expensive and payg as contracts are a waste of money for my low usage.
Advice please?

I have the same phone although Orange branded version - Its actually a HTC Kaiser or TyTN II. It is a fab phone and can do soooo much! Payback is in size and battery life. I guess you are using the phone as it came from TM? Standard TM rom.
You can flash the phone with different encarnations of Windows mobile upto the latest 6.5 and they are way better than the operators efforts.
Head over to www.xda-developers.com and navigate to the Kaiser forum where there is so much info on how to unlock (from network) for free, upgrade OS etc. If you do fancy flashing your phone with a new OS (even android if you want to!) make sure you read the wiki, then read it again and follow all the advice to avoid damaging the phone.
Save yourself a fortune, unlock and reflash! IF you still fancy a new WMphone, there is a forum on XDA for all of them! Unfortunatley, although battery performance is always improving, touchscreen smart phones are always going to be battery hungry I don't think that many large touchscreen phones would last more than a couple of days at best!
Good Luck

Buzby

I can vouch for this phone being OK too - the longevity of the battery is an issue for me at times, but not always, as it depends on what programs I am running, as some of the applications make data-use on the fly and if not controlled, will flatten your battery in record time. Push email is also great for cutting standby times by a half or a quarter!

Regularly check what is running on your handset to ensure you kill power-hungry applications that you don't need! And this hold true for ANY handset new or old!

Clowance

Yes I like my phone but the issue of it letting me down even though fully charged has put me off it. when I dial the number it just goes "plink" and comes up call ended even though it didn't get as far as ringing.
No information as to why, its not the signal strength either as the next day I can call the same number ok without doing anything to the vario in between, from the same location. This means I now carry two phones - the vario for windows and an old one which actually reliably makes calls.
I have been on the developers forum but quite honestly its all far too technical for me. I couldn't even unlock my Nokia following an idiots guide!

Buzby

The 'plink' is the BTS (cellsite) dumping the call due to lack of bandwidth - this happens more on the edge of cells as if your request to connect to it is weak, it'll try to dumb you so as to connect to a better (nearer?) BTS instead. The state of your batter won;t be an issue here - just call up the battery application, or get one of those natty power monitors to keep you netter informed than the dreadful WM icon.