Features
Basic Features
The P3300 has all the basic features that Windows Mobile has to offer. You have basic calendar functions with appointments, calculator, PDF viewer, tasks and a lot more. The P3300 also comes complete with Microsoft Pocket Office which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With Word and Excel you can not only view documents but edit them too.
Advanced Features
The P3300 has a lot of advanced features like a 2 mega-pixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, GPS, GPRS & EDGE, FM radio, Mouse and more.
The P3300 has built in GPS and comes with TOMTOM navigator 6 preinstalled. The GPS chipset is the new SiRFSTAR III which is currently one of the best chipsets on the market. Although the TOMTOM navigation comes preinstalled, it does not come with any maps. The phone offers you one free city download when you first turn on the software but I had no luck in finding the city I was looking for. The maps of Canada and USA cost 80 Euro which is around 100 dollars US. You will also need a big memory card because the maps alone are nearly 1 GB in size. After purchasing the maps, the preinstalled software works like a charm. You can select various voices, Point of interests, addresses and what ever else you expect from a GPS device. The back of the P3300 has a rubber cover that says “GPS” on it. If you lift the rubber you can insert a GPS antenna. I don’t see the point in the GPS antenna because I never had a problem catching a signal in the car. The phone also comes with a small application called QuickGPS. This program uses your data connection to find your position faster. You can also download through Active Sync when connected to the computer. Without this application GPS sometimes takes a while in finding your exact location.
The camera is 2.0 mega-pixels and is located on the back of the phone. It is too bad that there is no flash, maybe because it would ruin the looks of the phone? In the camera options you can select which type of picture you want to take. You can select sport for fast moving pictures and you can also select features like exposure compensation, white balance and self timer. The camera interface has been completely redesigned and offers more options but overall cannot compete with Sony Ericsson and Nokia camera phones.
The P3300 comes preinstalled with a FM radio program. The radio can only work with the headphones plugged in because they are used as an antenna. Once the antenna is plugged in you can also listen aloud with the speaker. The program has a nice layout and you can set up presets for all your favorite radio stations. The trackball is used for changing radio stations and the scroll ring is used for volume control. Sometimes you cannot get all the radio stations and sometimes there is a lot of static. Overall the radio works well but in my opinion Sony Ericsson phones have better Radio capabilities. Another downside is that you can only listen to FM and not AM radio.
The P3300 is the first phone/PDA to have a built in mouse. The mouse resembles the trackball on older computers and works the same way. The trackball is similar to the one in the Blackberry Pearl but has more functionality. When the trackball is in use it glows blue. Around the trackball there is a scroll ring which turns both clockwise and counterclockwise. The functionality is similar to a trackwheel found on other devices. When the mouse mode is off, you can better control the device. When you scroll up or down with the scroll ring you can press down on the trackball to select. When the mouse is on you would have to select it with the mouse pointer. Overall I love the idea of a mouse on a PDA and it works better than I thought. In future devices I would like to see the scroll ring have more functionality. In the future if the scroll ring was a button too it would function a lot better because you could select with the ring and still have the mouse mode on.
There are a couple of software applications that are a must on the P3300. Microsoft Voice Command is one of the most important programs on Pocket PC’s in my opinion because at times it gets hard to dial numbers without a keypad. Voice Command works great when you want to dial contacts or numbers and the best part is that you do not need to pre-record anything. Voice command version 1.5 does not work with the P3300 and you will need to upgrade to the new version 1.6. Another excellent program for the P3300 is SPB Pocket Plus. With this program you can have a home screen plug-in with all your programs, system information, and battery life. The phone only lets you rotate the display left, you cannot rotate the display right. Pocket Plus gives you the option to do so and in my opinion web browsing is a lot better when you have the mouse and scroll on the left and hold the stylus with your right. SPB Pocket Plus also closes your programs instead of minimizing them which is key feature that Windows mobile is currently missing. Another key program is the SPB full screen keyboard. With this program you can have an on screen keyboard and use either your fingers or stylus to type with. This is a must have program since the P3300 does not have a built in keyboard and the Windows keyboard is a bit too small.
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4.7
