An IT guy's dream.
I'm a partner and lead programmer/systems engineer at an IT firm. I've had this phone for 4 months now and it has cut me free from my office so that I can truly telecommute from anywhere and still provide 24/7 responsiveness. I found an RDP client that works wonderfully on this phone since it has as spacious 640x480 screen. I also found an SFTP client for file transfers...
Decent - especially for the price (currently free)
I've had this phone for about a year now and its held up pretty well physically. However, the face scratches very easily, so if you get this phone, get a plastic film cover for it. It will freeze from time to time and its extremely easy to have it dial or answer a call while its in your pocket. Even if you get an app like I have where you have to slide your finger across...
I've had this phone for about a year now and its held up pretty well physically. However, the face scratches very easily, so if you get this phone, get a plastic film cover for it. It will freeze from time to time and its extremely easy to have it dial or answer a call while its in your pocket. Even if you get an app like I have where you have to slide your finger across the screen in a certain place, that doesn't always work because it doesn't always go into the sleep mode like its supposed to. My screen is also starting to lose its sensitivity. Has decent battery life, considering that I use it a lot for emails and reading e-books as well as as a phone.
However, it DOES work for Microsoft Reader for those of you who are looking for a phone that will do that. I've had other smart phones and this one is nothing special. Kinda finicky, scratches easily, freezes too frequently... just kinda blah.
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I'm a partner and lead programmer/systems engineer at an IT firm. I've had this phone for 4 months now and it has cut me free from my office so that I can truly telecommute from anywhere and still provide 24/7 responsiveness. I found an RDP client that works wonderfully on this phone since it has as spacious 640x480 screen. I also found an SFTP client for file transfers. In short, it's my very capable mobile desktop for emergencies or when I'm bored and wanting to get work done in random places. When I need a full-blown computer, I just quickly tether the phone to my laptop. In another month, I'm going out of country and I will truly put this phone to the test.
FYI: Get a screen protector (which strikes me as a no-brainer there). Tethering is only supported by Windows but I'm working on a solution for Ubuntu. There's a beefier battery and adjusted back cover available from Seidio that I'd highly recommend.
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It is a very nice phone with many useful features. The Fuze is a sharp looking phone with a solid and well built feel. It does a superior job as a phone as well as PC.
Highlights:
The backlit slide-out keyboard is wonderful. Top marks for key size and function assignments.
Touch screen brightness and resolution are fabulous.
Size and weight aren't issues.
Battery life is super (but I guess anything would be after my last phone).
The processor and response time are impressive for this class of phone.
Not as positive:
Lack of external antenna connector.
Touch-flo is very very quirky.
HTC really could throw in a case of some kind.
Windows Mobile still has almost no options for personalizing a phone. It has the look and feel of a project that left the drawing board and had to hit the market by due date.
And I still despise activesync.
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I replaced my HTC Tilt with this phone (Thanks to AT&T) it works good, a bit faster thent he tilt, but smaller keys on the keyboard, so maybe a bit harder for men with fat fingers.
The camera is hidden and difficult to get to, but there is a now new ROM update available at the HTC website that will make the PTT button programable so that makes life a bit easier (now with one button I get my camera).
All in all the phone works great, but as any new Microsoft run phone, it should. It has frozen up a few times and I have had to shut it down, but that onlt has beem due to software issues. First thing I did was get to handango and d/l the SPB software and got some COLOR on the screen.
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This phone has better specs than my computer in highschool. Windows Mobile is descent, but very open to customized, open source programs unlike the i-Phone. This phone is the i-Phone for people who want the features, but also the freedom to actually customize the product they payed for without the cell phone manufacturers consent. This phone takes some learning if you want to get full functionality. Touchflow 3D is novice friendly, but it has some lag. I take that off because the Windows Mobile program is a good business tool stand alone. Also, with a little time and understanding you can go on XDA Developers and make the phone do about any program imaginable. Their are LOTS of great, free software options for this phone. With 32 gb micro SD capability there is plenty of room to put what you want on it. I really recommend this phone, unless you are not that tech savy as this phone has so many options that might be too much for some. A great piece of convergence technology.
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Reviewing this phone is very difficult for me. It's hard to separate how I feel about Windows Mobile versus how I feel about the great job HTC has done with the device itself. I'm going to try to keep my thoughts on those matters separate, but it is a Windows Mobile device, after all.
When I first got this phone last year on 26 December, I was in love with it. This phone can just about do anything that you can imagine. 3G, including HSDPA and HSUPA, check. Wifi, check. Microsoft Exchange, contacts, 3rd party applications, all check, check, check. I was, and still am, amazed that so much functionality could be packed into one device.
The TouchFLO UI that HTC has built on top of Windows Mobile is outstanding and makes using the phone a treat. It's so great that you'll actually groan a little whenever you have to dig down into the Windows Mobile UI to change settings. HTC just cannot be commended enough on how much they've increased the usability of the phone. If this were simply a Windows Mobile device with no TouchFLO, I would have been very unhappy with it.
After a month or so of owning the device, I started to realize its flaws. The touch-sensitive screen will accidentally make and answer calls for you (butt calls anyone?). The phone was becoming incredibly sluggish. Programs would open slowly and become unresponsive, typing would lag far behind my actual keystrokes, etc, etc. We all know that Windows Mobile is slow and not so optimal.
However, I'm a programmer and love to tinker. I had read in all my research about different places on the web to get custom ROMs and applications for the phones to make it run faster. If you don't know what a ROM is, then just skip to the next paragraph. See, many reviewers had said that the Fuze can be made much better, faster, and more iPhone-like by installing "custom-baked ROMs". This is completely true. I spent a joyous month downloading and installing new ROMs on my Fuze, finding exactly the one that offered the best performance/featurest balance. The unfortunate downside of that is that most custom ROMs are unstable. I eventually settled with HTC's official ROM (*not* the official AT&T ROM that comes installed on the phone, which is slow). HTC's official ROM is fast, stable, and works great! Again they have done an amazing job with this device!
I had fallen back in love with my new, improved, speedy and responsive Fuze! But sadly, it was not meant to last. While I love to tinker, love to figure out how things work, love to squeeze that last bit of performance out of something, after a year of ownership, I just want a phone that plain works. I want to be able to check email, read text messages, surf the web, connect to Wifi, all that, but I don't want to have to manually tweak settings to make it do so in an acceptable manner. That's the ultimate crutch of this phone: It's built on Windows Mobile, which has fallen far behind Apple and Google in creating OSes for mobile devices. Windows Mobile is so slow and sluggish that you have to do quite a bit of manual tweaking to this phone to make it run in tip-top shape.
All that tinkering and tweaking was fun for a while. I'm a little older now, with a little less patience and a little less free time, and I just want a phone that works, period. No registry tweaking, no having to download .CAB hacks, just, pow, here's my phone, it works, I haven't had to restart it in three weeks.
The HTC Fuze was a great phone for the year that I've had it. It can do just about everything under the sun. With lots of research and tweaking, you can make this phone run well and be wonderfully responsive, or at least as responsive as Windows Mobile will allow. One day, though, you may become like me, and want something that just plain works well out of the box, no tweaking required.
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Beware that you will have to buy a data plan with this phone for at least $30.00 a month. This is not mentioned when you add the phone to your cart. When you try to check out it will force you to add features to your existing account. This seems a lot like the used car salesman's "bait and switch" trick.
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![Seidio UltiMate Screen Guard for AT&T HTC Fuze [2 Pack]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41NKR4MOt-L._SL160_SL90_.jpg)
