T-Mobile Shadow Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Alfredo Padilla
Published on November 21, 2007 Comment on this

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.

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