Continued...

From a features standpoint, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Wing is Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6 OS. It doesn’t bring a lot of substantial additions to the table, but it improves a lot of minute things that make a noteworthy difference. For instance, the Calendar view is more revealing with an updated user interface. Now, you can have access to information, for instance where you are holding the meeting, right on the display without the need to open each entry. The email functionality is more streamlined with automatic syncing between Wing and Outlook on your PC. Call History is another feature that sees an update. It’s more organized based on specific contact information.

Obviously alarm, voice recording and other standard PIM options are available as well.

Then there’s onboard Bluetooth connectivity, integrated WiFi (a huge improvement for us), EDGE support, full HTML web browsing and Windows Live search for Mobile, which are all handy to have. Even though T-Mobile itself doesn’t have a music/video service like Verizon, it does support AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4 and WMV formats in case you want to upload your own.

The 2.0-megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom does a pretty good job of taking pictures, although they had an odd shade of yellow. You can certainly manipulate some of the settings to make your pictures look better, such as taking pictures in five different resolutions and in four quality settings. Disappointingly, there is no flash, but you can still work with color settings, pick between day/night shots and a plethora of other configurations.

In terms of performance, the call quality of the T-Mobile Wing is absolutely remarkable. There was negligible hissing sound in the background, but it was not bothersome at all. EDGE speeds were good, even though we are absolute fans of the new EV-DO network from certain carriers or the WiFi option which we used extensively. The only downside is that once you get a taste of WiFi on your smartphone, it’s difficult to switch back to EDGE in areas where WiFi signals are not available. Audio quality was good, but of course, it’s not going to replace your iPod. Video quality was acceptable as well with excepted pixilation in fast-paced and action sequences.

T-Mobile Sidekick 3: Long Awaited Mobile Goodness...

According to T-Mobile, the call time is rated at 4.5 hours with 3 days of standby time. We managed to score a whopping 8 hours with a little bit of web browsing, gaming, video/audio playback and photo taking mixed in. Talk about under promising and over delivering.

With that said, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 is a disappointment. Working with a number of applications or "heavy" documents was painful. The delay was too much, especially in Word and PowerPoint files that it wasn’t possible for us to work with the device without messing up somewhere and not realizing it in the end. This lag is present across a number of other scenarios as well.

All in all, the T-Mobile Wing is one of the first smartphones with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 OS onboard, and it’s a decent smartphone. If nothing else, it’s an interesting gadget for the young and hip crowd, though we wouldn’t recommend it for productivity hounds that are looking to do reports and presentations on the Wing. Not to mention, the sexy and strange appeal of the device can’t be pleasing to serious professionals. For $299.99 from T-Mobile, it’s a worthy Sidekick replacement.

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