Verizon SMT5800 Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Mark Brezinski
Published on March 17, 2008 Comment on this

Summary
Like its messaging software, the SMT5800 has some great organizational tools that are second only to the upper echelon of smart phones. Also like messaging, there is really only one aggravation that drags it down. In this case, it's the lack of a notes application. Most carriers or manufacturers address this silly deficiency of Windows Mobile by adding a third party notes application in, but neither HTC or Verizon saw fit to do that in this case.

Synchronization (6.67)

As is typical for Windows Mobile phones, you can synchronize your SMT5800 with ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Manager (on XP and Vista respectively). You will need to install the included software, but that's the extent of setting everything up. Virtually everything can be synchronized: Contacts (with photos), calendar entries, tasks, and any file. PIM information will be synchronized via Outlook or, if available, Windows basic PIM management programs. The SMT5800 doesn't support synchronization with Mac out of the box, you'll have to go looking for some third party software like The Missing Sync.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
You can perform an over-the-air PIM synchronization with Exchange. This, of course, means you'll need access to an Exchange server. Assuming you do, you'll be able to sync up your contacts, tasks and calendar information.

Alerts (2.0)
Alerts have never really been Windows Mobile Standard's strong suit. The reminder that pops up that has a gray background with no animation, so it's not very eye-catching. The alarm sound will only chirp once before giving up. We expect our phones to try just a bit harder to remind us of our appointments.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (5.71)
It took 17.52 seconds for us to add a contact, which is an average speed for a smart phone. The quickest way to store a contact with the SMT5800 is to dial the number first, then opt to save it as a contact. Given how slow the SMT5800 is to dial, we were surprised it was able to score as well as it did. For more info on how we conduct this test, see this article.

Looking/Sorting/Search (6.0)

Users are provided with a few ways to search or sort through contacts. You could use either the QWERTY or keypad with T9 to type out names, either first or last. You can also scroll around with the d-pad if that's more your thing. If you wish to filter your contacts, you can choose either name or company as your filtration criteria.

Fields (8.5)

Contacts will have 43 different fields for users to customize (or ignore). If you've always had a hard time remembering someone's radio phone number, or their Government ID, the SMT5800 is happy to remind you. Though a comprehensive series of fields, true obsessive-compulsives should know that Series 60 Symbian handsets also allow users to create custom fields, which you can't on the SMT5800 and other Windows Mobile devices.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (6.0)
There are 99 potential potential speed dial assignments, minus a few pre-assigned functions like voicemail. You can assign any contact or application to a speed dial, which is a great way of extending the functionality of speed dials. There are no voice tags, but the voice command software was able to recognize every one of our diverse test names.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (8.51)
The SMT5800 was able to add items faster than average, but compared to other smart phones it was a bit slow. This is partially because we used the QWERTY to type out the subject line, and holding the phone in this position makes navigating with the d-pad a bit awkward. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Calendar Views (4.67)
If you've used any Windows Mobile device before, either Standard or Professional, you can go ahead and skip this section. The SMT5800 fails to make any sort of change to the typical design and functionality of the calendar. If you're still reading, then you might be interested to learn that there are three views: month, week, and agenda.

This month view is like most cell phone month views: uninformative. You can tell what days have at least one appointment on them -- they get a colored dog-ear in their top right corner -- but beyond this superficial knowledge the month view offers nothing. It's actually less functional than a paper calendar, because holidays and other days of interest aren't labeled. If you want to learn more about a specific day, you can click to check out the agenda view.

The week view is virtually a constant amongst all cell phones: hours down the left side, days across the top, the resulting grid shows appointments in purple. Unlike month view, highlighting a busy time will display a few tidbits of information, such as its title, start, and end time.

Some of you may be disappointed to find out that agenda view is actually a mislabeled day view. Agenda views display all scheduled items, past, present, and future. This agenda view only displays items on a given day. Granted, it's a great day view: it has a timeline at the top that blocks out your free and busy time. This innovation doesn't, however, make it an agenda view.

Fields (10.0)

Calendar appointments receive 13 fields. All the basic fields are present and accounted for. More uncommon fields, such as an all-day-event, recurrence, and the ability to invite people are all present on the SMT5800. There are a few other fields as well, such as status and sensitivity. One field that is both important and missing is category. Not being able to assign categories means that appointments can't be filtered based on whether they are business or personal (or anything else). Given that both tasks and contacts can be categorized, this omission is about twice as disappointing.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (6.41)
We were able to add a task in 15.6 seconds, which is about average. The task application is filed under "Applications" in the Start menu, which is a bit of a pain to navigate to. Once you've opened it, however, it's not hard to plug in all your info. For more info on this timing test, read this article.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)

Tasks can be given a priority of low, normal, or high. They can also be assigned a category which they can later be filtered by. are a few options for prioritizing and sorting tasks. You can assign one of three priorities to your tasks: low, normal, or high. Categories can also be assigned, which a user can filter by. Finally, users can opt to sort their tasks by status, priority, subject, start date, or due date.

Fields (10.0)

The SMT5800 has all the fields we look for in tasks. Until task functionality is revolutionized by some incredible scientific breakthrough, this phone shouldn't disappoint anyone.

Notes

Adding Notes (0.0)
The SMT5800 gets a giant zero here, which is really disappointing. First of all, such functionality should simply be part of the Windows Mobile Standard OS. Secondly, when HTC and Verizon were tweaking the device, either one of them could've easily dropped in a notepad. The absence of a note application is only exacerbated by Windows Mobile Standard's horribly crippled version of Word: you can only edit document files, not make new ones. Therefore, unless you toss a blank document file onto your memory card, it can't be used as an ad-hoc notepad.

Note Interface (0.0)
N/A: no notes application.

Note Formatting (0.0)
N/A: no notes application.

Voice Memo (8.0)

The voice memo application is the typical, incredibly basic Windows Mobile affair. Recording a message will show a giant timer on the screen in 00:00 format. There is no obvious cap on message length; we're assuming the only limits you'd have to abide by are available memory and the timer's inability to count to more than 99:59.

Recordings can be renamed, deleted, or set as ringtones, but there are no sorting options. They will be stored in the order they were recorded.

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