Home > Reviews > Manufacturer > T-Mobile Shadow Cell Phone Review

T-Mobile Shadow Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on November 21, 2007 Comment on this

Related ArticlesReviews: LG Venus Cell Phone Review · HTC Touch Cell Phone Review · LG Chocolate VX8550 Cell Phone Review · Apple iPhone Cell Phone Review News: Verizon Wireless 4G devices to be GSM Blog: First Call: LG Voyager

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The T-Mobile Shadow is the latest smart phone from T-Mobile. Running the non-touchscreen version of Windows Mobile the Shadow is an attractive device with a custom home screen that makes accessing various functions easier than on most Windows Mobile devices. The Shadow has a large 2.4 inch display and a slide out SureType keyboard similar to that found on the BlackBerry Pearl. It also sports a rotating D-Pad for easily scrolling through lists. Windows Mobile Standard is a fairly powerful operating system but has a couple of annoying limitations that aren't found on the Professional version of Windows Mobile like the inability to create new office documents.

We found the Shadow had some problems with audio quality during calls, however it does support MyFaves for T-Mobile. The 2 megapixel camera was only average and has some annoying interface issues. Battery life on the Shadow was also sub-par, not surprising given its small 920 mAh battery. On the connectivity side the Shadow supports Bluetooth 2.0 with support for wireless stereo headphones and we liked that Wi-Fi was supported as well, although T-Mobile's Hotspot at Home service was not. T-Mobile hasn't rolled out its 3G network though so you'll be limited to the slower EDGE speeds when browsing on the cellular network. Overall the Shadow has a lot to recommend it and we especially liked it's slick looks. The Shadow is available for $149.99 from T-Mobile with a two-year contract.

Below is a guide to the review. Clicking on a section title will skip to that section.

Tour & Design - The T-Mobile Shadow is a small and slick looking device with solid construction.

Audio Quality - The Shadow didn't do very well in our audio tests, with sub par scores across the board.

Imaging - The T-Mobile Shadow's two megapixel camera is about average, and thankfully it doesn't have the serious white balance issues we've seen on other HTC cameras.

Making/Receiving Calls - The Shadow is easy to make calls on and Windows Mobile Standard provides solid call features.

Messaging - Windows Mobile Standard is a very good messaging platform and we found the T-Mobile Shadow's SureType keyboard easy to use.

Organizer - With all the basic Windows Mobile Standard PIM applications on board the Shadow is a fully featured PDA.

Multimedia - Windows Media Player Mobile provides solid music and video playback support.

Software - The T-Mobile Shadow runs Windows Mobile Standard, which lacks a touch screen and a few other features from it's Windows Mobile Professional cousins, but it is much snappier than other Windows Mobile phones we've seen recently.

Battery Life - The Shadow did not perform particularly well in our battery tests, we recommend you get an extra battery or keep a charger handy.

Connectivity - The T-Mobile Shadow lacks 3G connectivity as T-Mobile hasn't rolled out their network yet, but makes up for it with Wi-Fi support.

Hardware - The Shadow's SureType keyboard isn't as easy to type on as a full QWERTY but it's close, and we love the largish 2.4 inch screen.

Other Features - The Shadow can be used as a modem for your computer but lacks GPS functionality.

Value & Comparisons - At $149.99 with a two-year contract the Shadow is good deal.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
When you look at the front of the T-Mobile Shadow you immediately notice the smooth black plastic that covers most of the front. The screen sits in the upper two thirds of the phone and near the bottom are controls.

Front Open
When you slide the front of the phone up you reveal a SureType QWERTY hybrid keyboard with two letters on each button. The buttons are large and comfortable and there's also a delete key, something that some Windows Mobile Standard phones lack as the back button also fulfills this function when entering text.

Left
The left side of the phone holds the volume rocker key near the top of the phone and a covered Mini-USB port just below it. Near the bottom is the slot for Micro SD cards, which is also protected by a cover.

Top
The top of the T-Mobile Shadow doesn't have any buttons or features.

Bottom
The bottom of the Shadow has a small pin hold for the phone microphone and on the right you see the loop for a lanyard.

Right
The right side of the phone has two buttons. Near the top is a user customizable shortcut key while at the bottom is a dedicated camera button.

Back
The back of the T-Mobile Shadow is fairly clean. The bottom half can be removed to reveal the battery while the top half houses the camera lens and loud speaker.

Battery Out
When you remove the battery cover on the Shadow you reveal a 920 mAh battery. Below the battery is a slot for your SIM card.

In the Box (6.0)
The Shadow ships with a decent selection of accessories. In addition to a software CD and manuals you get a USB cable, charger, stereo headset and case. You also get an adaptor that allows you to have both headphones and charging/sync cable plugged into the phone at the same time. We would have liked to see an adaptor for 3.5mm heaphones and a Micro SD card included as well, but I guess you can't have everything.

Handling (6.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow feels very comfortable in your hand. Although the handset is blocky the back edges are slightly rounded so it sits well in your palm and it's small and light enough that you won't have trouble holding it up to your head for long calls. We did find that the all plastic construction was a little slick, we would have liked to see some soft touch paint on the back like on the T-Mobile Dash. We also didn't like that there's nothing to hold onto when opening or closing the slide, meaning you'll end up leaving finger prints all over the smooth black plastic in front, so be ready to do some cleaning.

Portability (8.0)
At 2.05 x 4.06 x 0.59 inches and weighing in at 5.29 ounces the T-Mobile Shadow isn't the smallest phone you've ever seen, but it is pretty small for a smart phone. It's only slightly wider and taller than a Razr2, but a bit thicker as well. Still, it should fit comfortably into most pants pockets, unless you're into really tight jeans, and will fit comfortably into any bag or purse. It's nowhere near as big as smart phones like the BlackBerry 8800 or AT&T Tilt.

Aesthetics (7.0)
We have to admit we're pretty smitten with the Shadow. You're mileage will of course vary but we got the "sage" version of the phone and our reviewer happens to like earth tones so the subtle green coloring made him swoon. The Shadow is also available in a "copper" color. Compared to some of the slicker phones out there like the Razr2 or iPhone the Shadow isn't as pretty, but it's much nicer to look at than some of the less attractive smart phones we've reviewed like the Palm Centro or Nokia N95. We like to describe the Shadow as having understated good looks.

Durability (5.0)
The Shadow feels pretty well put together, but we do have some concerns. First of all any phone with moving parts like the Shadow's slide automatically brings up a red flag. With enough use any moving part is going to give out eventually. The Shadow's slide is spring loaded, but we did notice a rasping sound when the handset was opened or closed. The all plastic construction also gives us pause as we feel it might be prone to nicks and scrapes. That being said we feel like the Shadow will hold up pretty well under moderate use, but if you're one of those people who abuse their phones you may want to consider a BlackBerry instead.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

The most important thing any cell phone does is make and receive calls, thus the audio quality during a call is extremely important. To test audio quality we use professional grade hardware and software, which is often used by the phone manufacturers themselves. To simulate the human ear we use a Head and Torso Simulator (HATS), and to analyze the sound we use Listen Inc's SoundCheck software. For more information on how we test see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (5.68)
This test analyzes the quality of the sound received by the Shadow, so this is how well people on the other end of the call sound to you. The chart above indicates the Shadow's performance with a blue line while the limits against which we test are indicated by red lines. As you can see the Shadow rises up above our limits in two peaks across the middle frequencies, this means that voices may sound exaggerated at times. The Shadow also may clip voices at both high and low ends as the curve rises and falls pretty precipitously. As you can see below the Shadow put up the worst score in this section of any of our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	T-Mobile Shadow	HTC Touch on Sprint (on Sprint)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)
Score	5.68	7.44	8.30
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Razr2 V9m on Verizon (on Verizon)	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	T-Mobile Wing (on T-Mobile)
Score	8.28	7.88	6.14
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (6.40)
In this test we measure the quality of sound sent by the T-Mobile Shadow. This is how you will sound to people on the other end of a call. The chart above shows the Shadow's performance with a blue line while two red lines delineate the limits against which we test. As you can see the T-Mobile Shadow's audio sent is exaggerated across almost all frequencies, meaning people may sound boomier than you would expect. The curve also falls off pretty quickly at the high end, so voices may also be clipped occasionally. This isn't great performance, and although a couple of our other comparison phones below posted similar scores, it's sub-optimal.

Cell Phone	T-Mobile Shadow	HTC Touch on Sprint (on Sprint)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)
Score	6.40	6.56	7.51
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Razr2 V9m on Verizon (on Verizon)	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	T-Mobile Wing (on T-Mobile)
Score	7.34	6.45	8.06
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (4.64)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that is piped back into your ear so you can judge how loudly you're speaking. Optimally we'd like to see side tone of around -18 decibels. Unfortunately the T-Mobile Shadow scored well below this at -12.64 decibels. This isn't the worst we've ever seen, but it's close. What this means in practice is that your voice will sound louder to you, possibly leading you to speak more softly than is optimal. If you use the Shadow and you find people constantly asking you to speak up, this is probably the reason.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	12.64	4.64
HTC Touch on Sprint	20.36	7.64
BlackBerry Curve 8320	20.53	9.88
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	17.78	9.78
Helio Ocean	22.95	5.50
T-Mobile Wing	20.98	7.02

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (2.28)
To test the resolution of photos produced by the T-Mobile Shadow's two megapixel camera we take photos of an industry standard resolution chart. These photos are then run through the Imatest software, which produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph). This score indicates how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
The T-Mobile Shadow did not perform particularly well in this test, scoring 717 lw/ph horizontal and 766 lw/ph vertical. This is is worse than both the BlackBerry Curve and Razr V9m, both of which have 2 megapixel cameras as well. In fact as you look at our comparison chart below you will notice that all most of the lowest scores belong to phones produced by HTC, which has traditionally not made very good phone cameras.

Cell Phone	T-Mobile Shadow	HTC Touch on Sprint	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	2.28	3.56	5.25
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	717 / 766	895 / 1082	1087 / 933
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Razr2 V9m on Verizon	Helio Ocean	T-Mobile Wing
Score	4.34	2.18	1.26
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	988 / 958	701 / 476.6	533.3 / 422
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (5.61)
To see how well the T-Mobile Shadow's camera reproduces color we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays 24 different colors. We then run these photos through Imatest, which compares the captured colors to the original chart colors.
Imatest produces the chart above, which shows the captured colors in the outer square, the ideal color in the small rectangle and the original adjusted color in the inner square. Imatest also produces the chart below that indicates the ideal color with square with the actual captured color with a circle. The longer the line between the two the more inaccurate the color capture.
As you can see the T-Mobile Shadow didn't perform too badly in this test. We did see some innacuracies in reds, blues and yellows, but nothing as bad as what we've seen on phones like the HTC Touch or T-Mobile Wing. We would call the T-Mobile Shadow's performance fairly average, and as you can see below it falls right in the middle of our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	T-Mobile Shadow	HTC Touch on Sprint	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	5.61	2.23	4.92
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Razr2 V9m on Verizon	Helio Ocean	T-Mobile Wing
Score	5.71	6.66	3.35
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (1.23)
To measure how much noise is produced by the Shadow's camera we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels, ranging from bright to low light. We then run these photos through Imatest, which produces a noise score at each level. We consider both the level of noise at each lighting level and consistency across lighting levels to produce our final score. The T-Mobile Shadow performed reasonably well in our test, producing fairly low noise at every lighting level except the lowest. Noise levels at the three higher lighting levels where also very consistent. You can see below that there really isn't very much differentiation across scores, because frankly almost all cell phone cameras are pretty poor when it comes to noise, but the Shadow did do better than any other comparison phone except the BlackBerry Curve 8320.

Cell Phone	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	1.23
HTC Touch on Sprint	1.14
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.41
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	0.84
Helio Ocean	1.14
T-Mobile Wing	1.10

Live Preview (6.0)
The live preview on the T-Mobile Shadow's camera is pretty good. We like that the whole screen is used for the preview, and the color you see on the preview is pretty true both to what you're looking at and what is finally captured. Where the Shadow did show a little bit of an issue is with the refresh rate, when you pan the camera we did see some blurring and artifacts, so you'll want to hold the camera still when taking a photo.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.25)
This test measures how long it takes to whip your phone out of your pocket, launch the camera and take a photo. This is important for those who like to use their cell phone cameras to take quick spurt of the moment shots. We do this test until we get a consistent time. The T-Mobile Shadow took 3.2 seconds to take a photo under these conditions. This is on the slow side, you can see below that only the Helio Ocean took more time in this test. Of course any camera phone is going to be slower than a dedicated point and shoot camera, but with the Shadow you better hope that your subject for quick shots will hold still for a few seconds.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	3.2	6.25
HTC Touch on Sprint	2.7	7.41
BlackBerry Curve 8320	2.9	6.90
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	2.85	7.02
Helio Ocean	4.1	4.88
T-Mobile Wing	2.97	6.73

Shot to Shot Time (5.28)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how long it takes to take a series of photos in quick succession. When possible we use a camera's burst mode to do this test. The Shadow does have such a burst mode, called Sport mode, and we were able to take three photos in 1.7 seconds using it. It should be noted however that like many burst modes on camera phones the photos taken are at a much lower resolution, 640 x 480 instead of the maximum 1600 x 1200. This means the quality of the photo will be much lower, if you want to take a series of photos at full resolution you'll need to do so manually, which will slow you down significantly. The Shadow's performance in this test using burst mode works out to 1.76 frames per second (fps), which is pretty decent. You can see below that only the T-Mobile Wing did better in this test than the Shadow, although several other phones had results that were pretty similar. If you're willing to take the hit on the quality of the photos the Shadow's burst mode should allow you to capture some actions shots.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	1.76	5.28
HTC Touch on Sprint	1.67	5.00
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.35	1.05
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	0.29	0.86
Helio Ocean	1.25	3.75
T-Mobile Wing	2.3	6.90

Shutter to Shot Time (2.22)
Shutter to shot time measures how long it takes for a camera to actually capture a photo once you've hit the shutter button. We do this test repeatedly until we get a consistent result. The T-Mobile Shadow had a delay of 0.9 seconds when you hit the shutter button, which is pretty bad. You can see below that it performed worse in this test than any of our comparison phones. The Shadow's poor performance in this test means that when taking regular photos you better make sure that your subject is still, because this camera needs some processing time.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	0.9	2.22
HTC Touch on Sprint	0.26	7.69
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.43	4.65
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	0.34	5.88
Helio Ocean	0.6	3.33
T-Mobile Wing	0.43	4.65

Interface (5.0)
The camera interface on the T-Mobile Shadow is pretty good. Like many HTC handsets the full screen is used for the preview with controls overlaid. You can pull up a camera-like menu interface when you hit the right soft key, while the left one takes you to the album. You can control the camera mode by using left/right on the D-Pad while up/down controls zoom, when it's available. What isn't so great about the camera interface is what happens when you're done taking a photo.
Instead of the standard HTC review screen with a few small icons on the bottom of the screen that allow you to save, delete or send the photo, T-Mobile has instead inserted it's own review screen that is not very well thought out. First of all it's focused on T-Mobile's online album service, which we can't imagine many people use. When the photo review comes up you have the option to go back to the camera, upload the photo to the online album or go see the menu. The second problem comes up when you decide to go into the menu, perhaps because you want to send the picture via MMS.
What happens now is that the interface switches orientation, as illustrated above, and you're given a menu with six options. But it doesn't stop there, instead of having straightforward and simple options, many of these take you to another sub menu, so to send a photo via email you will have to go through multiple menus. The end result is a clunky and difficult to use system. Thankfully you can turn this off in the settings and then photos will revert to the more simple and well thought out HTC default review screen. Unless you actually use T-Mobile's online albums we recommend you turn this feature off.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)
The photo album software on the T-Mobile Shadow is the same Pictures & Video software used on all Windows Mobile Standard devices. This isn't a bad thing as this software does a decent job, presenting photos in a grid of thumbnails and with the ability to create a basic slide show. You can also create folders to store you images in and easily move photos between folders. Not the best album software we've ever seen, but it does the basics well. We do wish that there were more slide show options however.

Manual Control (2.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow's doesn't provide users with any of the manual controls we normally look for like manual white balance and full manual mode, however it does have a couple of manual controls we thought were worth a couple of points. First is the ability to manually adjust contrast, hue, saturation and contrast. This is buried in the menu under image properties, so you have to go looking for it. There's also a setting for flicker adjustment, which allows you three presets to better control the shutter speed depending on how the lighting is flickering.

Zoom (0.0)
Although the T-Mobile Shadow does have a digital zoom, the zoom is not available at the highest capture resolution. Given that all digital zoom does is crop and enlarge an area of what you're seeing only being able to use it at lower resolution settings makes it almost useless. As such we are not awarding any points to the Shadow for zoom.

Focus (0.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow has a fixed focus lens, which means what you see is what you get. We do not award points for fixed focus lenses.

Flash (0.0)
The Shadow does not have a flash.

Metering (6.0)
Like many of the newer HTC phones we've reviewed the T-Mobile Shadow has some basic metering controls. Metering allows you to control from which point or points of the scene that light is judged. The Shadow allows you to choose from center area and average metering. There are also manual brightness settings available.

White Balance (2.0)
The Shadow has several pre-sets for white balance, including incandescent and fluorescent. There's no evaluative white balance that uses a white card to set white balance.

Image Handling (6.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow's album software provides some decent image handling options. You can rename, rotate and crop photos. You can also use an auto-correct feature to try and adjust the photo automatically. This isn't as many options as you see on some high end Nokia N-Series devices, but it's significantly better than what most phones come with. If you want to do more serious imaging adjustments on the Shadow you can probably go find some third party software that gives you more image handling options.

Video

Overall Video Score (1.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow captures video at a fairly low resolution of 176 x 144 pixels. The quality of the video is pretty bad. Color fidelity was decent, but any motion or panning will cause serious blurring and artifacts. Of course most videos have some kind of movement in them, so you're unlikely to be able to capture any kind of decent video on the Shadow.

Video Resolution (2.59)
To test the resolution of video captured by the T-Mobile Shadow's camera we take a video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for the stills resolution test. We then run frames from this video through Imatest to produce the same line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score, which measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The T-Mobile Shadow scored 156 lw/ph horizontal and 166 lw/ph vertical. This isn't a particularly good score, as you can see below only the T-Mobile Wing scored worse on this test than the Shadow.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	156 / 166	2.59
HTC Touch on Sprint	204 / 221	4.51
BlackBerry Curve 8320	n/a - no video capture	0.00
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	208 / 244	5.08
Helio Ocean	283.2 / 160.1	4.53
T-Mobile Wing	82.39 / 141.3	1.16

Video Compression (2.0)
Video on the T-Mobile Shadow is captured in an Mpeg-4 variant of 3GP. You don't have any other options for video capture, which considering the poor quality of the video probably isn't too big a deal.

Interface (6.0)
The video interface on the T-Mobile Shadow's is very similar to the image capture interface, except that instead of using the whole screen as a viewfinder only a small box in the center is used, which we don't like. The way controls are overlaid and camera-like however is good, and thankfully videos don't use the same terrible T-mobile review interface as still images.

Manual Control (0.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow's video capture doesn't offer any manual controls.

Zoom (1.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow's video capture offers up to 2x digital zoom. Given how small the resolution of the video capture already is, digital zoom is well nigh useless, but because it's available at all resolution levels we do award a point for it.

Editing (0.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow doesn't allow you to edit videos.

Modes (5.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow has a separate capture mode for MMS video, which is a nice feature given that videos captured on the phone are really only good for MMS messages. Manual brightness controls and metering controls are also on board.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (5.81)
To see how easy it is to dial a number on the T-Mobile Shadow we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have dialed each of five we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have dialed each of five different test numbers. We take the average time for our score. The T-Mobile Shadow took an average of 3.44 seconds to make a call in our test. This is not particularly impressive, but not too bad either. You can see from the chart below that the Shadow comes in right around the mid range of our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	3.44	5.81
HTC Touch on Sprint	6.98	2.87
BlackBerry Curve 8320	3.16	6.33
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	3.48	5.75
Helio Ocean	3.1	6.45
T-Mobile Wing	5.46	3.66

Talk and End Buttons (5.0)
The talk and end buttons on the T-Mobile Shadow flank the D-Pad and are the bottom most of a set of three buttons on either side of the D-Pad. They are also slightly raised above the other buttons and are slightly larger, both of which make them very easy to hit, although we did notice that occasionally our finger would slip and hit the buttons above them. They are well differentiated so you can find them easily by feel and have a reasonable amount of travel and tactile feedback. Our only other concern is that when the phone is closed they are positioned rather low, which means you have to hold the phone slightly awkwardly to press them.

Call Management (7.0)
As is typical for Windows Mobile Standard phones the T-Mobile Shadow does a solid job in terms of call management. During a call the left soft key is assigned to the mute function while the right soft key opens a menu where you can access additional functions like hold and speakerphone. Because Windows Mobile Standard is a multi-tasking environment you can also access any other application on the phone during a call.

The call history on the T-Mobile Shadow is accessible in two ways that offer you slightly different functionality. Hitting the call key will take you to a simple list of your calls. Accessing the call history from the programs screen gives you a more complete call history that can be filtered by incoming, outgoing or missed calls. You can also assign an item from the call history to a new or existing contact. When you select an item you're shown more information about the call, including time of the call and duration. There are also call timers available. Overall the call management features are pretty good, about the only thing we're missing is the ability to record a call.

Startup to Call (1.28)
This test measures how long it takes the Shadow to start up and make a call. This is important to anyone who turns their phone off from time to time but needs to quickly get the phone going and make a call. We do this test with the same five test numbers we used in our dialing test and once again take the average time for our score. The T-Mobile Shadow took a ridiculous 1 minute 18.4 seconds to start up and make a call. As you can see from the chart below this seems to be a problem endemic to Windows Mobile devices as the HTC Touch and T-Mobile Wing were the only other device to come anywhere near the Shadow's startup time. Our other comparison phones were much faster. If you're someone who turns their phone on and off a lot you may want to avoid Windows Mobile devices like the Shadow.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	78.36	1.28
HTC Touch on Sprint	70.24	1.42
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.12	14.04
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	22.82	4.38
Helio Ocean	9.5	10.53
T-Mobile Wing	62.86	1.59

Ring Volume (8.54)
To see how loud the ring volume gets on phones we turn the phone's volume to maximum and then play all of the ring tones pre-loaded on the device. We use a sound pressure meter from a couple of inches away to measure in decibels how loud the phone can get. The T-Mobile was pretty typical with a ring volume of 85.4 decibels. As you can see below none of our comparison phones are much different, it's rare to find a phone with ring volume below 80 decibels or over 90 decibels.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	85.4	8.54
HTC Touch on Sprint	84.8	8.48
BlackBerry Curve 8320	85.6	8.56
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	85.7	8.57
Helio Ocean	85.4	8.54
T-Mobile Wing	85.3	8.53

Ringtone Customizability (6.0)
We were pleased to see that you can use any Mp3, AAC or WMA music file as a ring tone simply by placing it into the My Ringtones folder on the device. You can't record a voice note to use as a ring tone or edit ring tones on the device however.

Non Audio Alerts (6.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow's vibrate alert is pretty week, we barely felt it in a pants pocket and you're unlikely to feel or hear it at all if its in a jacket pocket or a bag. When a call comes in the screen lights up and gives you the option to accept or ignore the call. If you're looking at the screen you should be fine.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported Email Services (8.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow's email client provides a solid range of support for different account types. POP3 and IMAP4 standards are supported and we were happy to see that the client will automatically set up popular email services like AOL, Gmail and Yahoo. As a Windows Mobile device the Shadow also supports Hotmail accounts, which is a nice extra as Hotmail isn't usable with the email clients on most phones because it doesn't use a standardized server profile. We were quite pleased with the Shadow's support for email services.

Push Email (3.0)
The Shadow supports push email via a Microsoft Exchange Server out of the box. Push email allows you to receive email on your device as it arrives rather than polling your server at a set interval. Although support for other push email services like BlackBerry and Good are not available out of the box you should be able to find and install a client to support just most push email services, one of the bonuses of using a extensible platform like Windows Mobile Standard.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow allows you to create up to six different email accounts, although you can only have one Exchange account on the device at one time. We only award points for up to five accounts so the Shadow receives full points in this section.

HTML and Attachements (11.0)
One of the great things about Windows Mobile 6 is that it supports viewing full HTML emails, something that few other platforms allow. The T-Mobile Shadow also does a good job with attachments with support for viewing Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. You can also edit the Word and Excel files. Unfortunately there's no support for zip files, but there are a wide variety of third party solutions if you get a lot of attachments in this format.

Email Customizations (2.0)
One place where the messaging program on the T-Mobile Shadow falls a little short is in email customization options. To be fair this is true of most mobile devices, few offer options like the font type, size or color. Some phones allow you to control how many lines of an email are shown in the default list, but the Shadow does not. About the only thing you can do is add signatures, and thankfully this feature is pretty good, allowing you to have multiple signatures for different accounts and controlling whether they're added to replies and forwards.

Time to a New Message (4.76)
To see how easy it is to create a new email message on the T-Mobile Shadow we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a new message dialogue on the screen. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The T-Mobile Shadow took an average of 4.2 seconds to complete this process. As you can see below this isn't the fastest in the world, the BlackBerry Curve 8320, which obviously specializes in email, took only 1.7 seconds. Thankfully it is faster than the T-Mobile Wing, which suffered from lag in almost every area and took 7.46 seconds in this test. To create a new email message on the T-Mobile Shadow we used the custom home screen that allows us to navigate down to the messaging section, we then navigate left/right until we see the icon for our test email account and can then hit the right soft key to take us directly to a new message.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	4.2	4.76
HTC Touch on Sprint	4.5	4.44
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.7	11.76
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	n/a - no email client	0.00
Helio Ocean	2.1	9.52
T-Mobile Wing	7.46	2.68

Email Usability (6.0)
We found the email program on the T-Mobile Shadow to be fairly easy to use. When you launch the application you are shown a list of your accounts, including SMS/MMS, that you can choose from. If you prefer not to see this list you can turn it off in settings. When you are actually viewing an account inbox messages are arranged chronologically with the newest at top. You can resort messages by subject, sender and message type. The left soft key is assigned to delete the currently selected message while the right soft key opens a menu where you can access additional functions such as viewing the folder list for the current account. Up/Down on the D-Pad will move you up and down the list of the current mailbox while left/right switches to the next or previous account. We did notice that some functions like sorting and folders are in the menu system on Windows Mobile Standard while Windows Mobile Professional devices like the T-Mobile Wing allow you to access these functions via the touch screen. Overall the interface is well thought out and simple to learn.

Supported IM Services (1.0)


The T-Mobile Shadow supports four different instant messaging services. Like most Windows Mobile Standard devices it comes pre-loaded with a client for Microsoft's instant messaging service. The Dash also has a separate instant messaging client from T-Mobile that allows you to use AIM, ICQ and Yahoo's instant messaging services. The key distinction between the two is that the IM client provided by T-Mobile charges you for a text message every time you send or receive an instant message. The MSN Messenger client does not do this, it just uses data, so if you don't have a data plan you will need to pay per kilobyte and if you do have an unlimited data plan (which we recommend) you're good. We don't award points for IM services that charge you for a text message so the T-Mobile Shadow will only receive a single point in this area.

MMS Support (6.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow provides mixed support for multimedia messages. We were pleased to see that MMS messages come into the same inbox as your regular text messages. Unfortunately this doesn't extend to a unified composing window, so when you create a new message you will need to decide if its going to be an SMS or MMS. Integration with the album software is good, allowing you to pick any photo and send it as an MMS. What is more troublesome is the integration with the camera. T-Mobile has added an additional interface that pops up after you take a photo. This interface offers to send your photo to your online album. This interface replaces the typical interface that allows you to easily send the photo as an MMS. Instead you have to hit the left soft key for options, which takes you to another menu where you have to choose "send to" and then there's another menu where you can choose to send it to a contact, a new number, an email address, album or journal. Needless to say this is annoying. Thankfully you can turn this interface off in the options which gives you the nice and clean review screen with an icon that allows you to quickly and easily send a just taken photo as an MMS.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (2.0)
As with other Windows Mobile devices we've reviewed the T-Mobile Shadow doesn't convert smiley faces into graphical equivalents. You can insert smileys fairly easily however by hitting the symbol key on the SureType keyboard where you will see a selection of smiley faces included with all the other symbols.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (7.0)
The SMS/MMS interface on the T-Mobile Shadow is integrated into the messaging application. This makes it easy to switch from an email account to text/multimedia messages. We're glad to see that both types of messages are integrated into a single inbox, simplifying things compared to phones that separate them. As with email the left soft key is assigned to the delete function and the right soft key opens a menu to access additional functions. Unfortunately there's no threaded view as found on Treo devices. Overall we found it as easy to use as any other SMS/MMS program on other phones, but its nothing special.

Time to a New SMS Message (5.05)
To see how easy it is to create a new SMS message on the T-Mobile Shadow we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a new message interface on screen. We do this test five times and take the average time for our score. The T-Mobile Shadow did well in this test, taking an average of 1.98 seconds to create a new text message. As with our email composition test we used the custom home screen, but the fact that the default when you scroll down to the messaging section is text messages meant all we had to do was hit the right soft key to begin composing a new sms. As you can see below the T-Mobile Shadow was faster in this test than any of our comparison phones. We're sure that text mavens will love this.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	1.98	5.05
HTC Touch on Sprint	3.98	2.51
BlackBerry Curve 8320	4.22	2.37
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	2.66	3.76
Helio Ocean	3.1	3.23
T-Mobile Wing	7.1	1.41

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization Ease of Use (6.67)
The T-Mobile Shadow uses Microsoft's ActiveSync software to synchronize with a Windows XP or older computer and Windows Mobile Device Manager to synchronize with a Windows Vista machine. Windows Mobile Device Manager offers a few extras over ActiveSync but both pieces of software are very easy to set up. Just install the software, plug in your device via USB and follow the short on screen wizard to define what will be synchronized.

The T-Mobile Shadow supports synchronization with a computer via USB or Bluetooth. You can synchronize contacts, including photos, tasks and calendar appointments. Unlike Windows Mobile Professional devices like the Touch the Shadow does not synchronize notes. The Shadow can be synchronized with Outlook or Windows Vista's built in PIM applications. There is no native Mac support, however you can get third party software like Mark Space's The Missing Sync to synchronize with a Mac. There is also no support for alternative PIM applications like Eudora.

Alerts (8.0)
Alerts are handled a little differently on the T-Mobile Shadow than on other Windows Mobile Standard devices. When an alert sounds you still get a full screen indicator with information about the alert and options to dismiss, view or snooze it. If you miss the alert this indicator doesn't stay on screen, instead all alerts are grouped together in the notifications tab on the home screen. You can create alerts for calendar appointments and tasks, including support for recurring appointments. You can't set a unique sound for each appointment or task, instead the appropriate sound for your current profile is used.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
The T-Mobile Shadow can be synchronized over the air with a Microsoft Exchange server. Contacts, calendar appointments and tasks are synchronized. There is no native support for synchronization with other services like Google or Yahoo.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (4.57)
To see how easy it is to add a contact to the T-Mobile Shadow we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a contact name and phone number. We repeat this for five different test contacts and take the average time for our score. The T-Mobile Shadow took an average of 21.88 seconds to add a new contact in our test. As you can see below this is a little on the slow side, but not the slowest we've ever seen. The Shadow is an interesting case because we saw a vast range between our contacts based on their names. We use five very diverse names in our tests; for more common names like Jackson or Joseph the predictive software on the SureType keyboard made it easy to enter, but for less common ones like Zhen and Alberto we had to pick and choose the letter, which slowed us down significantly.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	21.88	4.57
HTC Touch on Sprint	29.42	3.40
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.1	7.09
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	19.26	5.19
Helio Ocean	21.24	4.71
T-Mobile Wing	16.04	6.23

Looking/Sorting/Search (6.0)


The T-Mobile Shadow offers pretty good sorting and searching options for your contacts. You can view contacts by last name or company, unfortunately though you can't view them by first name. You can also filter your contacts by category. Searching through your contacts is a simple affair, simply start typing a name in the name view or a company in the company view and the list will be automatically filtered. Thankfully predictive searching using the SureType keyboard is supported, so for "Sarah" you only have five key presses rather than the eight you would need if multi-tap was used. For those who don't know what multi-tap is an example is that if you have a key with the letters A and S on it you would need to tap the key once to get an A and then twice to get an S. With predictive search you just have to hit the key twice and it will search for both AS and SA.

Fields (8.4)
We were very happy with the range of fields available for a new contact on the T-Mobile Shadow. You can choose from entering forty-two different pieces of information, including things like custom ringtone, assistant, notes, categories and customer ID. About the only thing missing is the available to create custom fields just in case one of the plethora available doesn't fit your needs.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
The T-Mobile Shadow allows you to assign speed dials to your contacts and also has voice command software built in. Normally we aren't fans of voice command software as it rarely works well, but the T-Mobile Shadow's implementation is pretty good. It was able to recognize all five of our test contacts, which have diverse names that often stymie other voice command software. Given how good the voice command performed we aren't too worried about the lack of voice tags.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (10.57)
To see how easy it is to add a calendar appointment to the T-Mobile Shadow we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a new lunch appointment for the following day with a reminder before hand. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Shadow was able to create a new appointment in an average of 9.46 seconds, which is a pretty good score. As the table below makes clear it's not the fastest we've ever seen, but it is pretty speedy. We found the home screen interface that allows you to scroll down to the calendar tab and then move left to choose the new appointment option made this process fairly quick.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	9.46	10.57
HTC Touch on Sprint	7.94	12.59
BlackBerry Curve 8320	6.04	16.56
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	14.48	6.91
Helio Ocean	24.2	4.13
T-Mobile Wing	11	9.09

Calendar Views (4.4)
Windows Mobile Standard devices like the T-Mobile Shadow don't have as many calendar views as Windows Mobile Professional devices like the T-Mobile Wing. There is an agenda view, which is sometimes referred to as day view, weekly and monthly. This means it is missing a true day view and a yearly view, which the Wing and Touch have. We don't consider this to be a major issue as the views provided will cover the needs of most people. In particular we like the agenda view, which lists all the appointments on the selected day with a free/busy bar at the top.
 

The weekly view is also pretty good with a typical grid view and a small section at the bottom that gives you details about the currently selected appointment. The monthly view is less impressive, just showing you if days have an appointment, but no detailed information about those appointments. We were disappointed that you could not filter your views based on appointment categories. Despite the limitations imposed because of the Windows Mobile Standard platform we still feel like the calendar views are pretty good on the Shadow.

Fields (10.0)
When you create a new appointment on the T-Mobile Shadow you are given a good selection of fields to choose from. The basics like title, start/end, all day event and reminder are all there. Recurrence options are on board, although these are not as good as those found on Windows Mobile Professional devices like the HTC Touch. Instead of almost complete control over the recurrence pattern you're given a few presets, which lack things like weekday or weekend recurrence. We are happy to see the ability to invite attendees, and if you're working with an Exchange server you can control whether an attendee is optional or required. Category support is missing however, which is a shame.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (6.84)
To see how easy it is to add a new task to the T-Mobile Shadow we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a new task reminding us to get groceries. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. It should be noted that  older Windows Mobile 5.0 devices like the T-Mobile Dash had terrible task support, so much so that we couldn't even do this test because we couldn't enter a due date. Thankfully Windows Mobile Standard 6.0 brings a significant upgrade to the tasks program so it's actually usable now. We found that it took an average of 14.62 seconds to add a task to the T-Mobile Shadow. This is a pretty good score, we've seen faster on other devices but you can see below that the Shadow did better on this test than any of our comparison phones. Unlike many other functions there's no home screen tab for tasks on the Shadow so we did have to go into the Start menu and navigate to the program to create a new task.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	14.62	6.84
HTC Touch on Sprint	19.28	5.19
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.80	6.76
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	n/a - no tasks	0.00
Helio Ocean	n/a - no tasks	0.00
T-Mobile Wing	18.96	5.27

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
As we mentioned before the T-Mobile Shadow's task program is significantly better than older Windows Mobile 5 devices like the T-Mobile Dash. One of these improvements includes support for adding priority and categories to tasks, as well as the ability to sort by priority and filter by category.

Fields (8.0)
Probably the biggest improvement in the tasks program has been the addition of real options when you create a new task. On older devices all you could do was create a task with a title and mark it completed or uncompleted. On the Shadow you now have a decent selection of fields, including title, priority, start/due date, recurrence and reminders, amongst others. This makes the tasks program actually usable and obviates the need to go looking for a third party replacement. In fact you pretty much have the same options you would have on Windows Mobile Professional devices like the Touch, although we have to mention that recurrence options are as limited as we found with calendar appointments.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.39)
Normally Windows Mobile Standard devices don't come with any notes application, however we were happy to see that T-Mobile and HTC addressed this issue on the T-Mobile Shadow by adding Microsoft's excellent OneNote Mobile program. Well get into its feature set in the sections below, but for now let's see how easy it is to add a new note. To do this test we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have created a new test note. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Shadow took an average of 14.76 seconds to add a new note. This isn't lighting fast, but it isn't terrible either. As you can see below we've seen worse, and even the Curve, which is usually pretty fast, was only able to create a note a little faster than the Shadow. We were slowed down by the fact that the OneNote application was buried in the Start menu.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
T-Mobile Shadow	14.76	3.39
HTC Touch on Sprint	17.64	2.83
BlackBerry Curve 8320	12.2	4.10
Razr2 V9m on Verizon	13.96	3.58
Helio Ocean	16.06	3.11
T-Mobile Wing	15.42	3.24

Note Interface (4.0)
OneNote Mobile's interface is pretty simple. When you open the application you are shown a list of your notes organized by date modified. You can change this to organize notes by name in the options. The left soft key allows you to create a new note while the right soft key opens a menu where you can delete or rename the selected note, as well as access sorting options. There is no search functionality as found on BlackBerry devices like the Curve. When you create a new note you're given a fairly clean interface where you can start typing. The left soft key is assigned to "Done" while the right soft key again opens a menu. Overall we found the interface very straightforward, we liked the ability to choose between two sorting options, but wish that there was search functionality built in. We did like the cleaner interface better than that found on the standard Windows Mobile Professional notes application, which can get somewhat busy.

Note Formatting (7.0)
Formatting is where OneNote Mobile shines. Unlike most notes applications on phones that just let you enter simple text OneNote allows you to format your text with bold, italic, underline and strikethrough effects. You can also add numbered or bulleted lists to your notes and insert audio recordings and pictures, including the option to go and take a photo. All of these options put OneNote Mobile miles ahead of the notes applications we've seen in the past. About the only thing missing is the ability to add hand drawn items, which makes sense given that the Shadow isn't a touch screen device.

Voice Memo (3.0)
There are a couple of ways to record a voice note on the T-Mobile Shadow. The first is to add a voice recording to a note in OneNote Mobile, as we mention above. The second is to use the included Voice Notes application, however this method has some serious limitations. It does not allow you to save voice notes or record multiple voice notes, instead you can just record a note that's a maximum of 60 seconds long and then send it to an email address. This is similar to the very limited voice notes application found on the BlackBerry Curve. Either way we're not very impressed, we would have preferred an application that could create voice notes and store them on the device.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (4.08)
To see how easy it is to get music playing on the T-Mobile Shadow we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a song playing. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The T-Mobile Shadow took an average of 4.9 seconds to get a song playing. This is a pretty decent score, you can see below that it's faster than any of our comparison phones. We were helped out on the Shadow by the fact that there is a home screen tab for music that allows you to get a song playing directly instead of having to dig into the applications menus.

Cell Phone

Time (sec)