T-Mobile Shadow Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on November 21, 2007 Comment on this |
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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)
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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 |
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