Jul
02
The T-Mobile Shadow is one of the few Windows Mobile devices on the market that makes use of the slider form factor. The design allows the Shadow to use a massive 2.6″ main display while still having enough room left over for a full control cluster and a 20 key alphanumeric keypad. The Shadow isn’t small, at 104mm x 52mm x 16mm (4.1″ x 2.0″ x .6″), but it is pretty light for its size: only 108g (3.8oz).
The display itself is a 65k color unit with QVGA (240×320 pixel) resolution. There is no brightness control, automatic or otherwise, on the Shadow, but it does have a power saving dim mode that it enters after a user configured number of seconds. After a second user configurable timeout, the display turns off completely. When the display is on, text is crisp and bright and very easy to read.
Beneath the display is the main control cluster. The controls include a pair of softkeys, a pair of larger home and back function keys, the red and green call keys, and the dual-mode d-pad that can also be rotated to act like a scroll wheel. The d-pad works very well for normal up/down/left/right navigation, and is passable for scrolling. My impression is that the scroll wheel works fine physically, but that the software support in certain sections of the phone is not calibrated well. Either way, it is very nice to have in certain situations. I also like that the center of the d-pad glows a soft green color for a short time when a new message arrives. A pair of small LEDs near the earpiece of the phone provides long term status information for new messages and charging.
The last major attraction on the Shadow is its 20 key hybrid keypad/keyboard. Looking very much like the SureType keyboard RIM developed for the Pearl 8100, the 20 keypad on the Shadow improves upon the accuracy of predictive systems like T9 without requiring the 50+ keys found on a traditional QWERTY keyboard. It has some issues, which I will talk about later, but in general it works very well for light messaging. The keys themselves are very large and stable, and offer nice, consistent tactile feedback. There is a bit of a problem with the backlight, though. The backlight for the keypad and the softkeys will sometimes turn off and not turn back on even if the d-pad is clicked or scrolled. This can be a real problem when using the device in the dark, as you have to hit a keypad button (that you can’t really see) in order to get the backlight to turn back on.
The rest of the physical design of the Shadow is very nice, as well. While the gold-green color scheme of our review unit might not suit everybody, few will take issue with the build quality of the device or the nice soft-touch paint used on its back cover. Other controls on the Shadow include a volume rocker, a camera shutter button, and a user configurable shortcut key, which I used for messaging and voice dialing. A microSD memory card slot and the miniUSB power/data/headset port are also easily accessible on the left side of the phone, even though the attached covers seem to be a bit stubborn during removal. The 2 megapixel camera lens and speaker grille for the ringtones are located on the back of the device.
Apart from the sometimes slow scroll wheel response, I truly love the physical design of the Shadow. It is simple, comfortable to hold and use, and has elegant lines and curves.
The T-Mobile Shadow, built by HTC, is the first Windows Mobile 6 device to sport Microsoft’s new Neo home screen. Neo is an attempt at making the power of a smartphone accessible to novice users, users that have traditionally shied away from such devices because of its complexity. On top of that, the Shadow has a very compelling design, and offers messaging fans a new 20 key QWERTY-like keypad that should make the phone’s XT9 predictive text input system both faster and more accurate. That’s something that goes well with the Shadows built-in IM clients, email and SMS support, and large 2.6″ display.
Multimedia / Applications
Most Windows Mobile 6 devices come with a fairly standard array of applications for entertainment and personal organization. To that end, the T-Mobile Shadow has the standard calendar, tasks, and calculator applications. It also comes equipped with a notepad, world clock and alarm, and the normal Microsoft Mobile Office suite: Excel Mobile, Word Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile, in addition to OneNote. These office applications can be used to view and edit existing documents, but can not be used to create brand new documents on the phone.
There are a few other 3rd party apps on the phone, but not many. Adobe’s PDF viewer is on board, as is the previously mentioned IM application. The Shadow supports 3rd party Java applications as well as native WM6 apps. With 135MB+ of built-in storage and over 100MB of application RAM, there is plenty of room for users to install additional applications. A microSD card slot means that there is a lot of potential space for media files as well.
Between its Windows Media Player application and its included 3.5mm headset adapter and Bluetooth stereo support, the T-Mobile Shadow is fairly capable of acting as an MP3 player. The Windows Media Player might be awkward to use at times, especially when it comes to creating playlists on the phone, but it plays the actual music tracks quite well and synchronizes easily with a desktop computer via the supplied USB cable. The integration with the new Neo home screen, complete with album art, is pretty nifty and makes the music easier to access.
While devices built by HTC have historically had poor cameras, the 2 megapixel imager on the Shadow turns in a pretty good performance. Its fixed focus lens is tuned for portraits more than landscapes, which should work for most people. The photos have a nice colorful look to them, and the white balance system performs pretty well. The camera can also record video in one of three formats: H.263, MPEG4, and Motion JPEG (commonly used in dedicated digital cameras). The camera user interface is simple to understand and use. There really is very little to complain about overall.
User Interface
When it comes to user interfaces, typically every Windows Mobile device looks like pretty much every other Windows Mobile device - at least among versions (i.e. Standard vs. Professional). That is not the case with the Shadow, which uses a new Microsoft developed home screen. Neo, as the home screen was known as during development, integrates some features that were originally developed for Photon (Windows Mobile 7) into the existing WM6 codebase. The goal is to put a friendlier face on a smartphone that novices will be able to adapt to without the normally steep learning curve.
To that end, Neo arranges the major functions of the phone into a series of full screen panels that can be navigated through by moving up and down on the d-pad. The phone starts on the home panel (or MyFaves, if your account includes that), and includes panels for notifications, messaging, calendar, web browsing, windows media, photos, and, finally, settings. Once the proper panel is selected, the user can then navigate to specific functions of that type by moving left or right on the d-pad. When at the particular panel they need, the user simply presses the d-pad button or the context sensitive right softkey. I particularly like how Windows Media Player, and its album art, and the photo viewer are integrated into Neo.
Neo lets users easily find the function or setting they need, but it doesn’t provide the all-in-one screenful of information that the other Windows Mobile home screen configurations do. Luckily, there are a large number of those provided as well. The T-Mobile home screen layouts are quite good, integrating appointments, connect management, musicm and messaging into one screen. Check out our video to get a better look at Neo in action.
Apart from the Neo home screen, though, the rest of the user interface on the T-Mobile Shadow appears to be stock. In general it works well, but I did notice a few quirks from time to time, some of which having to do with slider specific functions. For instance, when an appointment reminder goes off and the screen is locked (something it can do automatically), opening the phone will cause the alert to disappear before the user can acknowledge it.
The new scroll wheel is also sometimes a problem. In certain applications it works fine, coasting through menus and screens easily. Other times, though, it just is too slow to be used practically. In the main icon grid Start menu, it takes a little less than a third rotation to move from one icon to the next. A bit slow, but fine. One turn moves down 5 email messages in the Inbox, which is good, but it takes 3 complete rotations to scroll a single page when reading an email or a web page. Luckily the d-pad click method is always available.
The 20 key keypad on the Shadow is also pretty new - at least to non-RIM cellphones. As opposed to the normal 12 key layout, where 3 or 4 letters are assigned to a key for text input, the 20 key layout uses only two letters per key. This improves the accuracy of the XT9 predictive text input system on the Shadow. It is not perfect, though. While long-pressing a key to get a number or punctuation mark is convenient in general, having to do that for common marks like the period (full stop) and comma, and having to bring up a separate symbols screen just for an apostrophe, is a real pain in the neck. If you aren’t a real stickler for grammar and punctuation, though, this shouldn’t be much of a bother.
Lastly, the Shadow 201MHz processor seems to be overwhelmed at times. This is part of the reason that even most intermediate users are going to find the Neo home screen too slow to use, even if it does have a nice bit of visual appeal to it. In any case, all of this is a step in the right direction, and the Shadow is probably the most novice friendly Windows Mobile phone on the market.
Conclusion
The T-Mobile Shadow is one fun handset to own and use. It is good looking, has some nice user interface enhancements, and can even take a nice photo. It has a lot going for it, but the poor battery life is more than enough to keep the Shadow from getting our highest ranking. But because of all of the things it does well, it still earns a “Recommended” rating.
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