Customer Reviews

T-Mobile Shadow Phone, Copper (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The T-Mobile Shadow is visually a gorgeous phone, however it has some serious flaws. First, here's the good news:

It has the standard features of most smartphones out now: camera, music player, speakerphone, IM capabilities, internet access. It's not as big as T-Mobile's Wing or Sidekick, and you can hold it one hand and do what you need to do. Like a Blackberry, it has a wonderful QWERTY keyboard that allows me to send text messages and email pretty quickly. You can program it to receive mail (be it AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, your internet service provider, company intranet, etc.) through Outlook. The screen is large and the display is beautiful, bright and easy to read - which is a relief for those who have to wear glasses (like me) in order to see some of the smaller text (you can adjust the font size as well). I have the MyFaves plan, so I have those five folks who I call the most in a little circle on the home screen - I love that. It has many other functions that I really don't use that much or at all, but it is basically like carrying a mini-PC in your pocket. It is powered by Windows Mobile, and you'd think it should be everything that anyone who wants and needs to stay connected to the web...but it isn't.

The bad news is that as efficient as this phone is, there are several annoying things about it that prevents me from rating it more than just the three stars I gave it - and with that, I was being generous. T-Mobile is tagging this "the official phone of fun" but with all these glitches, I don't see anything funny about it.

Number 1: BATTERY LIFE IS HORRIBLE!! This, by far, is the biggest drawback with this phone. You should expect a battery to hold a full charge for a good part of the day, but this one doesn't. I thought the battery life on the RAZR was bad, but the Shadow is far worse. Charge the battery all night and the next day you'll see what I mean. If you make a couple of phone calls, check your email, surf the web for a little while, listen to some music and perhaps take a picture, half of your power will be GONE - I'm dead serious. Even though it comes with stereo earbuds, I wouldn't recommend anyone counting on using the music player to replace their iPod. If you are planning to go anywhere for longer than four or five hours, BRING ALONG YOUR CHARGER OR AN EXTRA BATTERY because this phone will die on you. It won't take you through the day unless you recharge it two or three times.

Number 2: This is really related to Number 1, but I'll mention it here because it is vital information for anyone who has this phone. At the end of each function you use, you need to go to the Task Manager to quit the application - be it answering a phone call, sending or answering an email or text, or something as simple as using the calculator or looking at your calendar. If you don't, it will continue to run in the background and sap even more power from the battery. It doesn't matter if you're no longer using that particular application - even after closing all functions, the battery doesn't hold much of a charge. And don't even think about keeping your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on - those will drain your battery faster than anything!

Number 3: The 2 megapixel camera takes decent pictures, but the photos have a dull, washed-out and yellowish-beige tint to them, no matter how you adjust the camera function - the pics look old and faded. There is no flash or light included, so if you take a pic in a dim room, it's going to come out looking very dark. I took some photos with this camera phone and they were pretty sharp but the color was completely off. In order to fix them, I had to upload them to my computer and work on them via Photoshop - not something I should have to do with all the money I spent on this phone.

Number 4: The speaker sounds very tinny and scratchy.

Number 5: Many of the links in the emails are not clickable, so you still would have to go to your computer to access these. This is yet another thing that does not make this phone "mobile". Also connecting to the internet can be sluggish at times, which I heard has more to do with the Windows Mobile OS through T-Mobile installed on this phone.

Number 6: The phone has the tendency to freeze up and you have to remove the battery to reset it.

I wish I could recommend this PDA, but I just can't. It has far too many problems with it that would drive anyone crazy. I have come to the conclusion that T-Mobile's phones, no matter what models they are, are just crappy. I know there is no cell phone that is perfect, but it seems to me that T-Mobile consistently gets phones that are cheap and work fine for a while, then something comes up where they become unusable. Can't wait until my contract is up.

I had high hopes for this phone when I first purchased it. I guess I'm kind of a sucker for good advertising. Unfortunately, beyond the sleek style and a nice user interface, this phone is a piece of garbage. It falls apart easily, has more annoying quirks than any phone I've ever used, and falls short of expectations at almost every turn. The qwerty keyboard is nice, but the t9 is terrible. It has wi-fi, but its a pain in the butt to set up, rarely works, and is extremely slow. Also, its necessary to use the phone lock feature to avoid making unwanted phone calls, but when taking incoming phone calls, the lock gets in the way frequently. I have had more dropped calls than I can count, which hasn't happened with my other t-mobile phones, so I have to assume that the problem is the device and not the network. Not even worth the current price of $.01 to get stuck with this terrible phone.

I got this phone on christmas as a gift and i was very happy with it for a while until it started giving me hell. I mean real hell! First, the first one i got for christmas started freezing up and anyone who called me will hear me but i couldn't hear them at all. The phone will work in different places and in some places, nothing! I complained to T-mobile and they went through the master resetting with me but to no avail. Finally, i returned it and they mailed me a new one. The new on was a piece of CRAP! This made me lose a few of my friends because they said i wasn't picking up my phone. The phone stopped ringing and it will only blink. you can change the ringtone but the new one will get corrupted in a few hours.Then a month later, the phone stopped working completely. Nothing will make it work so i sent it back to tmobile. Now the next replacement. This new one only lasted two days. Yes! Please, if you rely so much on your cell phone then, for your own sake don't get tmobile shadow because it will live up to its name "It will only be a shadow of a phone"! It needs MAJOR improvements. Get a samsung or a motorolla no matter how ugly it looks!

I purchased this phone in October 2007. Since April 2008, it's been living it's box in the closet as a 'to do' project.

Let's delve into the positive aspects -
It's a great looking phone- No one disputes this, the operating system seems to be well built , easy to manipulate, and I personally never had a problem with battery life. I used to charge it overnight, turn on the bluetooth when driving to work, and then use it all day at work for text, email, calendar, etc. Repeat the process driving home, and by then the phone would be ready to be charged. Now granted, I don't listen to music, so that probably played a lot into my battery life. The screen is rich, full sized, and beautiful to look at. Combine that with a blackberry-esque keyboard, and you would think you'd have a winning configuration.

However, and it's a big one: that nice gorgeous full-sized screen is very VERY fragile. Being it has a very miniscule frame around it, it's very easy to flex the screen and break it. How easy you might ask ? Well, I had the phone in my cargo pocket (I'm in the Marines, no cell phone holders allowed) and it cracked when I walked up a flight of stairs. So yes, that screen is beautiful, but be REALLY careful with it.

If you accientally drop this phone, you may just want to borrow a friends to call Tmobile for their warranty replacement ($150 for a phone that is $49 right now!) or just buy a replacement screen. Odds are, it'll be broken. (About $55 from nearly a hundred different manufacturers)

Not a bad phone for it's time...but HTC should've put a little more thought into the design of their screens.

For the people who complain about the battery life, just a thought: the aftermarket ROMS that the other reviewer was talking about will get you more battery life than the stock Tmobile or HTC roms. Check out [...] and look up the tmobile Shadow. You'll find hundreds of different ROMS, and I'm sure one of them will suit your needs. (The perk of the Windows Mobile Operating System)

I'm a little shocked that there aren't hundreds of positive reviews posted on Amazon for this phone seeing that I discovered a huge online community dedicated to nothing else but this phone. And when I say it's a 'huge community', it's no understatement. But I'll come back to this in a minute.

First, I'm not a person who ever relied on a blackberry or a palm pilot, but I knew that I needed a better phone to handle my email concerns, periodic web surfs while on the road and basic hand-held quick camera. This phone is all those things and much more. I was very happy to receive this phone when it came, but I was a little overwhelmed once I pulled it out of the box and browsed the manual. Often times companies put a massive amount of features into a product just hoping to please that 5% that is always nitpicky. It's like Microsoft Word, they keep piling on the features, but I'll never use most of them. For most of us, all we want are the basic features ready for us, and for those features to operate seamlessly when we start to retrain ourselves.

I had a Nextel phone for about 10 years -- but after a year of a living nightmare with Sprint, I decided on T-Mobile as I live in Los Angeles and they have very good coverage, reception and signal strength. Until Japan puts their cell-phone transceivers on the moon in 2020 (ahem), we're all stuck with the spiderweb coverage of Antenna towers. So for me, T-Mobile has been more than satisfactory in the last 9 months that I've been a customer. I upgraded my phone from the Samsung SGH T629, which I loved and was sad when I lost it.

So let me break down what you want to know:

Battery:

Some people know that not all consumer products are made equal. It's like buying a car, you may get a lemon, but the chances of that are slim. In reading the other review, I get the feeling that's what happened because my wife ran into a similar problem with her phone, the Samsung SGH T629, which were issues I never had to worry about. She must've changed that phone four times. Refurb phones are never the same as new. Are they? So I feel the pain of that person for sure.

The battery connects with the now standard 11-pin connection that seems to be becoming the standard with all cell-phone providers. I connected it easily, which makes solid contact and the phone was fully charged within three hours. I can run a full two-and-half to three days on a charge depending on usage. I have a thousand minutes and use around 650 minutes a month, so I'm not a heavy talker like some might be. The battery has proven itself exceptional thus far.

Workmanship of the phone:

The phone has a nice feel, the slider is smooth and the flat glassy screen is easy on the eye and nice to look at. The buttons are not a hassle or too small to use, at least not for me, and the dialing pad has a very sophisticated feel to it which probably assists the user to dial numbers when they cant see at all. You can adjust the backlight display for time and brightness and the qwerty keypad is also a nice touch.
It does cancel out your chances of trying to dial things like 1-800-Monkey-face, because the phone doesn't have the old school layout. But in truth most multi-use phones like this do not. So no surprise there.

Phone software:

The Operating system is Microsoft of course, but it works flawlessly. Shocking, huh? It transitions smooth between menus and is not overly complicated. This is a good phone for people who want to read their email but who do not want a blackberry or anything similar or that complicated. Matter of fact, look for a lot of phones, like the Motorola Blackberry to emulate this phone very soon if not already. This phone used to be only available in Japan for awhile and was the "it phone" for some time. Again the screen makes reading emails and even PDF's a joy.

Reception:

The phone, with HTC's communication software and T-Mobile's support preforms aptly. I had no reception issues in the three months I've had the phone and all my calls were free of static and I always had enough bars. The standard complaints though persist, like with hospitals, office buildings and the like. Being inside large structures with dampeners make cell-phone life trying sometimes.

Speakerphone / Volume:

I use the speakerphone all the time, so I just thought I'd mention it as I've noticed a wide difference in quality with all my different phones. The volume is loud enough to hear and be heard, the speaker doesn't come out 'tinny' and no one ever sounds as if they're in a well, unless of course ... they're in a well.

Camera:

I'll be honest about the camera, it's not the best I've seen. Matter of fact, from what I've heard, HTC made a version of this phone that had a 5 mega-pixel camera with Zeiss glass inside it. But alas, this phone has a 2 mega-pixel camera. I've uploaded a few pics from my phone so you can see the actual quality of the shots, so I won't belabor the point. I think the camera is good in areas that are well lit, but it doesn't have an on-board lamplight (which is a waste of tech actually) and only gives you that ol' "2 mega-pixel look." But it's actually better than a lot of phones, so I wont deride it too much. Just check out the pics I put up.

Also, you can sync your camera to send your pics directly to your email account, Picasa or a multitude of other photo management accounts which is a very nice touch and something that I actually use. You do have to set your phone up with your computer though which was pretty simple and is standard.

MP3 Player:

The MP3 Player works just fine and the sound is quite good. I don't know where one would actually want to listen to something like this, on your phone, but again, this is just added technology for that 5% that want everything, regardless if they ever use it or not.

Scroll Wheel:

I actually like this feature and wanted to point it out. It's like a micro-version of the control wheel that can be found on the BMW 7-Series. It helps you scroll through the menus, land on items quickly and punch down into submenus with ease. I like it and was pleased to have this over a touch screen any day.

T-Mobile Service:

I'm happy with T-Mobile and their customer service. I pay my bill with auto-pay and never have to bother worrying, I even opted out of a paper bill. I never go over my minutes or get jammed with charges. I also don't have to worry about getting a UPS package the size of toaster oven like iPhone girl because the phone is doing all kinds of nasty stuff by itself, like i-Phones are known for. I mentioned this to the T-Mobile people and they just laughed out loud. They knew about iPhone girl and just said: 'a good reason not to get an iPhone'. Just check out youtube if you haven't seen the jaw dropping video I'm referencing.

Email:

I mention this point again because this was my primary concern and my main desire to have on a phone. The screen makes reading email, PDF and other text files easy and very clear to see. The software is a simple version of Outlook and operates quickly and seamlessly. My phone syncs with my gmail every five minutes. I can adjust these settings as well, which makes it a thoughtless process.

The Community:

A lot of people on the internet have dedicated many hours and hundreds of programming hours making updates, adjustments and 'skins' for the operating system, which changes all the basic colors, fonts, icons, what-have-you. Some people will want to tweak their phone while others will not. Just go to allshadow dot com and you would be surprised at how fanatical some people are about their phones. It's actually pretty cool. I changed mine to the very slick looking 'Dark Knight' theme. I posted a pic above as well.

What else can I say about this phone without going on and repeating the service manual or being pedantic? This is a sturdy phone and the ease of use puts this in a class all by itself, outstripping the competition through its flexibility. A fantastic choice for anyone young or old. Good for the folks, too.


...

I like this phone a lot, especially the speakers that they have. I feel it is louder than an i-phone that many carry around.
It is an easy phone to use. In time, after browsing through the entire phone, in & out of all the settings, I thought it is easy & handy to use.
Battery will lose its power in time when you browse internet especially, music- not so much along with using the speakers.
It is a small, smooth phone & the durability of it seems good to me so far.
The screen, brightness, display is all fine with me.
I use my phone a lot because it plays music well using Windows media player.
Internet through the phone works at a decent speed for me. Receiving e-mails are done according to how you set the settings for them & I get mails easily on the phone. Twitter, yahoo mobile don't seem to work with the phone in terms of receiving updates.
Where I live on the 1st floor, for the 1st time using this phone, I don't get much coverage/ reception.
Camera quality -2 megapixels seem fine with me.
8 Gb storage card is provided with the phone.

Windows Mobile is OK, and it syncs well with Exchange. So the PDA is good.

But now for the other features - This phone doesn't get signal in many places where my old Motorola v360 did. That's huge because we dropped landline service at our summer place since we hardly used it anymore. No more signal. When we put the home HotSpot service into our home, it turned out that this phone doesn't support HotSpot. Also, one of the big draws to this phone was Wi-Fi for connecting to my work network, and avoid Edge service. I've never been able to make a connection to ANY Wi-Fi network, even the most innocuous unprotected home routers. I wouldn't buy this phone again on a bet, it's been a very disappointing first experience with a smartphone, albeit a low-end, entry level phone.

I was so excited when I got my copper Shadow in November 2007. I really needed a phone with an easy to read screen and keypad. This seemed the perfect choice.
The music player is not great. It seemed a little quirky at times, and it did not have a flash for the camera, which was inconvenient, but I thought the pros would obviate these minor things.
Well, the quirkiness came to the fore right before Hurricane Ike when my screen froze and it was not possible to go to the T-Mobile store. They ended up being closed and then out of phones for sometime afterwards. In other words, during and after Hurricane Ike, when I really needed to communicate with friends via text--I could not.
When things settled down, I was sent a refurbished phone. This never ceases to amaze me that one can spend $200 or $300 for a phone but if it messes up and it's not the customer's fault, you still end up with a used phone.
Now it does not always ring for an incoming call. The screen will freeze and tile. Yes, I update it but it is unreliable. At best, I feel like I have a stone age texting device. I can't afford a new phone and I still need to make it to November before I decide whether to renew my contract with T-M or not.
This phone is not worth the price on Amazon or anywhere else. There are better, newer, and more reliable phones.

All I have to say is a big fat ditto to the list created by "blackprincess". This phone grabbed me solely because of its appearance, and sadly, the employees at T-Mobile had no advice, good OR bad, so I bought it anyway, like a FOOL. I have regretted it ever since. There is absolutely no logic in some of the organization and function in this phone. I find myself truly upset frequently when I try to use it for anything! Most importantly, this phone makes me LONG for the days when I had a free phone that made sense and WORKED WELL. That is pathetic.