I changed jobs at New Year to something less stressful. I was an electronics design engineer, but I changed to a self employed courier! Engineer to White Van Man!! Strange, I know, but there was plenty of logic behind this... though some did suggest there was more than a little stupidity!! Oh well, maybe they were right... but I think not :o)
Anyway, being on the road all the time, I need a piece of decent communications technology. The XDA 2i was perfect. Instead of WAP, I got Internet Explorer, along with Bluetooth for handsfree and legal phone use whilst driving, spreadsheets, email, address books, pc connection... what more could I want? All of this it does very well indeed. Put simply, it's a handheld PC with a mobile phone thrown in, all in a package that gives you what you want when you need it.
You can sense a "but" coming up, can't you? Well, I'd hate to disappoint you and this "but" is huge!!!
The but is, the fatal flaw in this wonderful device. You charge through the same connector that you connect to the pc with, and like all such connectors it's seriously flimsy!! It seems that Nokia are the only manufacturer to recognise this and provide a seperate jack plug connector for charging, limiting the use of flimsy connectors to pc connections. Good idea on their part, so why can't all the others do it?
Little knocks you get during normal everyday use can damage it. Normal everyday use will eventually wear it out and break it. Unfortunately, the damage isn't limited to the bits you can see, it damages it inside, too. Mine, from merely connecting it to the chargers and pc cradle supplied with it, eventually broke the main pcb INSIDE the device.
But this isn't the biggest problem. This is reserved for the customer service of O2. Internal damage voids the warranty so they won't help you even if all you've done is try to charge it. And a damaged board can cost around £200 to repair. All for simply using it??? They had every sympathy with me, they said, but there wasn't anything they could do!
And this is a real shame. It's a superb piece of kit, it really is. When I decided on something like this, the XDA 2 was the only one I even looked at. And O2 were, too. Decent tariffs and problem free custom up until now. But like with any customer orientated company, you find out how good they really are when you have a problem.
And now I know!
Cheers,
Schneckster
PS. Not sure why it asked for "Quality of Shave". I answered poor because I didn't think it'd cope with a wet shave on a bleary eyed, cold monday morning!!! LOL
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Jul 19th, 2005
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