Messaging, Internet & Connectivity
4.5
Messaging on Mogul is excellent, so long as you don’t need to send MMS messages. I really found the slide-out QWERTY board a pleasure to type on, and the speed of Sprint’s EV-DO network made sending and receiving Email quick and easy. Windows Mobile 6 provides support for multiple POP and IMAP email accounts and while there’s no ultra-friendly setup wizard, I was able to configure a few of my accounts - including server options and signature files - with no trouble.
Outlook Mobile features good integration between messaging accounts and contacts, and Windows Mobile 6 upgrades Outlook to support full HTML email. Email attachments are also supported, and as mentioned, Mogul ships with pocket versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint which allow for document creation and editing in addition to viewing. Really, with Mogul in your pocket you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself if you’re not productive on the road.
Web Browsing using the included Internet Explorer browser was okay, but things perked up considerably when I downloaded and installed Opera Mobile. IE has never been my favorite browser, and the mobile version suffers from quirks and crashes more than its desktop counterpart does. I also experienced some difficulty clicking Web links using IE on the Mogul - on a fairly regular basis I would click a link, but instead of taking me to a new page, the software would instead highlight the link I just clicked. Clicking again would trigger the pop-up contextual menu that’s supposed to be launched by clicking and holding. It happened enough times that it became a pretty big annoyance.
That being said, IE did a generally okay job of rendering Web pages but the experience on Opera Mobile was just an all-around smoother, better one. Sprint’s Power Vision network is fast enough that I rarely thought to turn on Mogul’s Wi-Fi antenna to search for an open 802.11 network when browsing the Web - I just used EV-DO instead. Not to say that EV-DO is on par with Wi-FI, because it’s not. But average download speeds between 400-700 Kbps were plenty fine for browsing, and those speeds should increase by up to twofold when Mogul gets upgraded to Rev. O.
Mogul may also be used as a cellular modem, and Sprint’s new Internet Sharing app makes the process even easier. For the record, I was able to get strong EV-DO signals everywhere I went during my three-week trip, though I was in or near a major US city basically at all times.
The HTC Mogul for Sprint is locked to the Sprint network in the United States. It combines a CDMA cell phone with EV-DO data services for Email, Web, and other Net-based applications. The device ships with 151MB of onboard memory accessible to users, and another 512MB of storage in the form of a microSD card. Cards of up to 2GB are officially supported.
HTC built Bluetooth v2.0 into the Mogul, and file transfer, information synching, voice dialing, laptop tethering, and both mono and stereo (A2DP) audio are supported. The integrated mini-USB jack can be used to connect to a computer for synching, file transfers, and use of the Mogul as a cellular modem. The USB jack is also used for charging the device and for connecting to the included stereo earphones. A dual port-replicator/2.5mm headphone port USB cable is also included..
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