T-Mobile Shadow Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls
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Alfredo Padilla Published on November 21, 2007 Comment on this |
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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.
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