Parting Shots: Verizon SMT5800

After having spent the last week with Verizon's SMT5800 Windows Mobile Standard device we found any positive thoughts we had about the device overwhelmed by one major drawback: battery life. Like any Windows Mobile device the SMT5800 provides users with a powerful set of tools that will let you use it as both a cell phone, PDA and email device. The latter is helped by the slightly cramped, but still very usable, slide out QWERTY keyboard. The Standard version of Windows Mobile does have a few drawbacks, but these can always be addressed with third party software if you want.

Throw in some professional good looks and solid build quality and we were on our way to what looked like a positive review on a solid device. Unfortunately this trajectory was upset when we started running battery tests. Quite simply the SMT5800 put up some of the worst battery scores we've ever seen from a phone. In fact it's talk time of two hours eighteen minutes is the worst we've seen from any device and music playback and browsing times were barely better. Given that any smart phone is inevitably going to be put to more use than regular phones this drawback means anyone looking at the SMT5800 as their all-in-one device better be ready to invest in chargers everywhere and a selection of backup batteries, or maybe just look elsewhere.

Read the full SMT5800 review here.