When it comes to the T-Mobile Dash 3G, I have some simple advice.
Don’t.
The longer I have this phone, the more of a clunker it becomes. My list of complaints include:
- In the last 24 hours, the battery has started to drain for no apparent reason – and yes, WiFi, Bluetooth, and background apps are all off. There appears to be no reason or logic behind this. The phone drained itself sitting on my bedside table last night, supposedly doing it’s standby routine
- Windows Mobile 6.1 is underpowered and ancient. There are a lack of (Social Media) apps for the Windows Mobile platform. All development seems to be focused on the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry platforms. And with Windows Mobile 6.5/7.0 delayed or underwhelming, it’s not going to get any better anytime soon
- It has weird behavior with bluetooth headsets. For every call, you have to manually tell the phone that “Hey! How about setting this to handsfree?”
- I got it for Active Sync, but frankly I could do better by hacking my way to near-Active Sync using Google Sync and routing my work email through a GMail account
- 3G Maybe. The TMobile 3G network is definitely not developed outside of major metro centers. I spend most of my time in EDGE mode, so the upgrade I thought I was going isn’t really there
Overall, this phone gets a monstrous thumbs-down from me. But, I’m stuck with it. I can’t afford to replace it, and the more I handle it, the crankier I get. I’m to the point that I may drag my old, underpowered, EDGE Blackberry 8100 out of the drawer and stop using the Dash 3G altogether.
Buyer’s Remorse is sometimes hard to swallow. Looks like I have to swallow it for another 23 months.
2009-08-28 — 04:08
If you really want to hate it. Download or use Google Maps or GPSed. You will soon see that it is quiet hard of hearing when it comes to GPS satellites. Sometimes it hears 10 of them, half the time it doesn't hear any.If you use the auto lock feature (so if someone finds your phone they can read your email or otherwise use the phone), every time it kicks in (like every 10 minutes) it pulls you out of your gps app…. so, if you want to use it as a gps while driving or if you want to let others track your travel via the web…. you're out of luck.
2009-08-28 — 10:08
If you really want to hate it. Download or use Google Maps or GPSed. You will soon see that it is quiet hard of hearing when it comes to GPS satellites. Sometimes it hears 10 of them, half the time it doesn't hear any.If you use the auto lock feature (so if someone finds your phone they can read your email or otherwise use the phone), every time it kicks in (like every 10 minutes) it pulls you out of your gps app…. so, if you want to use it as a gps while driving or if you want to let others track your travel via the web…. you're out of luck.
2010-01-27 — 14:32
I agree with those comments. I've had the Dash for about 10 months. I don't know how I'm gonna live with it for another 14!!! Like you said, it drained the battery on my nightstand from full at 10pm to nothing at 3am. It woke me up when I heard it playing the power-off jingle. I use it for an alarm clock, so I had to wake up and figure out another alarm. I frequently locks up and I have to take the battery out to reboot it. It doesn't even have the courtesy of giving me the blue screen of death. When my contract is up, T-mobile will probably lose me as a customer.